The first of the The Green Party mining our future community tour hui is to be held tonight, 7pm, Wednesday, 11 April, 2012
Green Party MPs Catherine Delahunty and Gareth Hughes invite you to discuss the Government’s broad “drill it, mine it” agenda for Aotearoa – what’s happening, what does it mean to our environment and communities and how do we stop it.
Where – University of Auckland Campus, Auckland
Lecture Theatre B15,
First floor University Library
With the Greens at record highs in polls the subjects being discussed here may well end up in government policy. So make sure you have your say.
Last month the UN conducted a world-wide survey. The only question asked was:-
“Would you please give your honest opinion about solutions to the food shortage in the rest of the world?”
The survey was a huge failure because of the following:
1. In Eastern Europe they didn’t know what ‘honest’ meant.
2. In Western Europe they didn’t know what ‘shortage’ meant.
3. In Africa they didn’t know what ‘food’ meant..
4. In China they didn’t know what ‘opinion’ meant.
5. In the Middle East they didn’t know what ‘solution’ meant.
6. In South Africa they didn’t know what ‘please’ meant.
7. In the USA they didn’t know what ‘the rest of the world’ meant.
8. In Australia they hung up as soon as they heard the Indian accent.
Food for thought? I think it was designed as humour but there’s more in it than that.
One source of this used Australasia instead of Australia, and the first response must have been from an American: “Australasia?” Where the hell’s that?
Yesterday Kotahi Tane Huna/One Anonymous Bloke thought it would be fun to ask me for serious calculations about the mass and potential energy of the Twin towers which were attacked on 911. Hard sums he called them.
Which is great because generally people find it hard to read such rapports which is why I usually limit myself to videos such as this, this, this and this all different video’s of building 7 falling into its own foot print and made by News senders who were on the scene that day.
And while I’m sure the Mr. Unknown will move the goal posts because in all probability the 43 pages of this paper are going way over his head and hey on paper you can put any old numbers right? Here is a PDF discussing exactly that.
And for all of you scientists out there who prefer to read scientific papers many of whom were peer reviewed and some of home appeared in peer reviewed scientific magazine and all of whom were written by Scientist who are respected amongst their peers for doing outstanding scientific research in their tenures at universities you might find more to your liking here and here
And here is what fire fighters for 911 truth have to say about the “evidence”.
Oops forgot to link to the video’s of building 7 collapsing. Here is a compilation of all these video’s and here is some footage of amateur video’s showing how huge this building was.
As I said you wankers will probably move the goal post but calculations is what your colleague troll wanted and that is what he got now go bully someone else and yes that quote applies totally to you and your wanker mates.
I can’t believe the size of the blinkers you guys are wearing and what gets me is that while you fight back the fear and the dawning realisation your rich prick masters don’t give a flying fuck about you trying to silence me and the thousands of scientists, fire fighters, engineers and other professionals risking their jobs and reputations who speak the truth.
There are three things you can not hide for long: The sun, the moon and the truth. Buddha
Abstract: The widespread belief among those who question the official account of 9/11, that a large plane did not hit the Pentagon on 9/11, is unsupported by the evidence. The failure of the 9/11 truth movement to reach consensus on this issue after almost a decade is largely due to a failure to rigorously apply the scientific method to each proposed theory. This paper, by so applying the evidence to each proposed theory, shows that a large plane hitting the Pentagon is by far the most plausible theory.
Good for you Rosy, you discovered the scientific method.
Some hypothesis (not conspiracy theory but a scientific theory, BIG difference) will be proven right, some wrong. Now read on.
It may surprise you I wouldn’t have got my degrees without some understanding of the scientific method. Watching videos over and over again until you see what you want to see and then interpreting everything through what you ‘saw’ is not it.
I think the official account is more probable than any other account I’ve seen. (I also think their mistakes before the event haven’t helped with their perceived post-event credibility).
Rosy, for clarity, what do you call the official account? The 911 Commission Report, The NIST report? or are you simply singing the pavlovian aria, repeating ad-nauseum the MSM bleatings that have programmed so much of the population to not believe what they saw, but what they are told they saw.
My family would lol if they saw you insulting me with that ‘Pavlovian response to MSM’ line. I’m not known for being in thrall of ‘authority’.
I’ve read NIST and browsed the 911 Commission report, so for me they are both part of the official account.
I’m not an engineer, physicist, emergency response person nor was I an eyewitness so like most people I get my information interpreted from others. Were you there? are you qualified to opine? One of us will be sucking eggs in 50 years when the original docs are released. Until then you’re welcome to interpret things in a way that makes sense to you, and I’ll do the same.
I believe the NIST report and i know a little more than most about fires and accident investigation. However i don’t feel any need to try to ‘prove’ all the conspiracy theorists wrong
Investigate all aspects of WTC7 and your understanding of the whole matter should improve to the extent that you no longer need faith to consider the many outstanding questions.
let me repeat: i have read the NIST report and i understood it. “Believe” was a very bad word to use – I should have said: i accept that the NIST report was written by professionals who have a good understanding, and their analysis of the evidence gives me certainty the WTC buildings burnt down. Nothing else i’ve read, and that’s plenty, has led me to have any doubts about their findings.
There have been no other instances in history where a steel framed skyscraper “burnt down” collapsing to the ground on its own foot print.
Yet suddenly we get three in one day, each of the three having suffered assymetrical impact and fire damage, yet each collapsing in a completely symmetric and instantaneous way?
i strongly suspect you have not read the NIST report at all, but may have glanced at a couple of quotes from it as any rational person who has actually read the report knows full well the questions raised by the numerous omissions of fact, far outweigh any conclusive proof offered by its flawed methods and fictitious theories. All Hail Thermal Expansion !!!
How can you put any faith in a report that has actually changed its official final and complete story . . . three times ???
i’d be more concerned if the report had been accepted in its entirety first up without any critical analysis. Peer reviews and revision based on expert input is essential in this kind of investigation. The findings are critical for future building design and fire safety.
I think the official account is more probable than any other account I’ve seen.
Isn’t it remarkable that “probable” is all we have to go on at the moment as opposed to say, “beyond all reasonable doubt”.
Interesting isn’t it.
By the way, how did they explain the issue of how an amateur student single engine light plane pilot managed to successfully fly a commuter passenger jet nap-of-the-earth (well under radar detection altitudes) over urban terrain for at least a mile in order to hit the side of a low-rise structure like the Pentagon?
That’s fucking expert flying even for a seasoned military professional who is experienced “on type” (i.e. has many flying hours on that specific kind of plane).
– a student pilot
– studying only on light single engine planes
– successfully flew a large passenger jet type (that he had zero hours experience on)
– nap-of-the-earth hugging the ground for over a mile
– on an approach that he had never used or practiced before
– straight into the side of the Pentagon
– the first time he tried it (i.e. he didn’t muck up his approach, overshoot and have to double back, or abort his final approach because he was on the wrong heading and be forced to retry, etc)
Incredible piloting skills, unvelieveable one might say. The only two planes ever to have vapourized on impact, about as convincing as the passports found unscathed under the rubble of the twin towers, or the building 7 “collapse”
Beyond reasonable doubt – Please never serve on a jury!
Edit – cv, nothing in those lines of enquiry to look at mate. I practiced those maneuvers daily while doing a PPL. Amazing what you can learn in a Grumman
I’ve been looking for the very funny comedy skit where Bush and Cheney get together to plan the whole thing – figure out how to bribe the tens-of-thousands of air-traffic controllers, engineers, police and firecrew etc etc.
It’s impossible to find though because of all the other witless crap from the loony echo chamber. If anyone has a link I’d love to read it again 🙂
Although I accept that it is almost impossible to change anyone’s deeply held beliefs the is ample evidence that the pentagon plane didn’t ‘vapourize’ on impact there were plenty of pieces scattered about.
If you do simple search on google there’s oodles of photos showing wreckage.
oh you poor sad puppy. If that wreckage is what you believe came from a 757 airliner then you are in need of either, a: new eyes or b: a few basic lessons in spatial reasoning. Where are the wings???? the seats ???
and where are two six tonne Jet engines ?? Where are the undercarriage assemblies? Where is anything apart from a few scraps of painted aluminium and a rotor head that only matches an aircraft engine that is not only used on much much smaller planes but also can be found in a few drone aircraft and some missile assemblies.
but to return to your wreckage … do not overlook the fact that this evidence of a crime was illegally collected in the hours after the attack, and magically dissappeared before any official investigation was begun, much like the steel from the towers for example
you sad sad puppy, Q. when your Uncle took your nose did you believe that too?
Yes an amateur pilot flew that huge commercial jet in patters which experienced military pilots said are almost impossible, right into the pentagon, and it left damage the size of a cesna!
Yet nobody saw the jet, and no cameras picked it up on the way to the building, and the debris was , lets call it, non existent!
Facinating stuff!
I fly planes, my old man flies plans, his old man flew planes in the air force, and none of us think that a plane that size hit the pentagon! The evidence around that impact was…where was it again, non existent!
Oh dear. Yes Muzza, that’s right, that’s the only name I’ve got. A Google search for eye witness accounts returns no results, honest, no really, trust me.
I can also reveal that Thierry Meyssan was definitely right there, standing next to you, Muzza.
as stated by the authorities themselves there are/were approximately 63 cameras pointing towards the very area of the Pentagon where a large commercial Airliner is meant to have impacted. The views are from hotels and gas stations and freeway cameras and cctv security systems in the area. Even the Pentagon admits that over twenty cameras exist and were recording the impact site. The Pentagon was at the time, one of the most cctv surveillance heavy buildings in the entire world.
yet oddly, the only images they could find of use were six completely useless images from behind a carpark barrier partially obscuring the stated flight path and impact site.
Even if you only take the same time period that the six frames the FBI released images came from, allow for abare a minimum image capture system of five frames a second that is still over three hundred single frames of images that were recorded, confiscated and never released…why?
Just for fun you may want to explain how a plane with a wingspan of over a hundred feet folds up into a sixteen foot wide imapct zone, has two six tonne engines evaporate due to the intense fireball yet leaves telephone books and office chairs unsinged barely thrity feet away?
Explain? Various people already have, from Popular Mechanics on up, but according to you their explanations don’t add up, because you reckon they just don’t, or something.
Not that you back up your vague feelings with actual calculations, though, and you can’t even all agree on the same narrative. I think you don’t understand the Physics involved, so you mask your ignorance with incredulity.
PS: re: cameras, you mean to tell me that they could bribe all those people and mount a covert inside attack on their own armed forces, but not fake a few blurry CCTV images? Are you completely dense?
I am not going to sit here rehashing ten years of dialogues and providing thousands of links to scientifically verifiable work because you fail to present any credible credentials that you seek the truth. The evidence you put forward only promotes doubt that you have even brought the most basic tenets of critical thought to bear on any of the Official Story. Even when the Official Story constantly needs updating every-time new scientifically proven data is presented to contest it.
..and Popular Mechanics??? well they have had their bugle calls silenced so many times even the original die hard pundits of their propaganda steer clear of it.
in short, the Standard has seen this dialogue many times before and perhaps if you spent some time going through the vast wealth of data previously spoken of on the site then you would not look like a man holding a sieve to capture the rain.
Hey Voice does it scare you to think there are things happening in the world, beyond your control or comprehension! It must do, as between Bloke and yourself, the thought of such a scenario allows you to believe in fantasy, the same way you ridicule others for, hypocrite much!
Denier, truther , racist, anti semite…..Thats all you got, is labels….and a very closed mind!
Maybe Bloke can repeat once more “don’t have such an open mind that your brains fall out”
Hey I’ll call you next time there is a quiz on somewhere, keep your phone handy!
If you cast your gaze upon a few of my responses on this very page, you will debunk your own bullshit – I have spent plenty of time looking at plenty of your “evidence” and finding the same tired old zombie crap reheated over and over.
Take your whining, “Freedom” – first you draw my attention to a lack of camera footage, then when I address that you back right off. Come on, how come the all powerful, able-to-suborn-anyone-they-please secret chiefs couldn’t muster up a few grainy ol’ photos eh? All those “eye-witnesses” and they couldn’t even manage a bit of Photoshop. Were the secret chief’s computers down that day? Perhaps they’d gone Galt for the weekend, no\?
I’m excitedly waiting for the call, Muzza! I sure hope you ring soon because after waiting 10 and a half years for any evidence of a conspiracy other than the actual one that caused 9/11, I tend to get a little bored.
Denier, turther, racist etc are not merely labels, they accurately describe Ev’s political position, based on her own words. Don’t forget climate change denier, either. If you want to defend the illogical and unprovable fantasies of a right wing loon, that’s your problem, not mine. Me, I’m going to stick with rationality, empirical method and left wing politics.
Kotahi Tane Huna,
firstly, all video footage was confiscated by the authorities, they freely admit that.
i am completely befuddled by what the hell you are talking about.
“how come the all powerful, able-to-suborn-anyone-they-please secret chiefs couldn’t muster up a few grainy ol’ photos eh? ” that is the very question people would like to know. ‘They’ confiscated every image, every tape, every hard drive that held or could possibly hold an image of the aircraft, So where is the plane? Ask the authorities !
Certainly there is still room for the occasional comment here and there but this forum is generally exhausted of dialogue on 911. So i am not backing off in quivering fear as you suggest. I am simply respecting the wishes of our hosts by not bothering to do battle on certain blog boards everytime some troll wants an itch scratched. There are better uses for this medium, as The Standard has proven time and again, NZ is in a very fragile place in its history.
Trying to convince those that support the Official Story of 911 to question the findings, takes a back seat when whatever paradigm shifting event required to personally wake you up is obviously still some time off. Perhaps when your grandkids are standing in a meal-line presenting their RFID implant and receiving their work voucher for the next day, you may think back and quietly feel very very ill. It has all been said, for over ten years the debate has continued and yes there are fanatics on both sides. Yes there are people doing the Truth movement much harm. There are also thousands of highly qualified and respected people who certainly know a hell of a lot more on the topic than you do. Popular Mechanics? LOL, and i guess G W Bush won two elections also.
If the official Story is so simple, why was Saudi Arabia not attacked as that is where the terrorists purportedly came from? oh yeah and how come so many of the 19 high-jackers are alive today ????? And WTC7 fell down because of Thermal Expansion ? ? ?
See how stupid the story gets without even trying.
You want the Truth to be a simple story. One that can be laid at the doorstep of a bunch of guys in a cave. It is not that simple. It will not go away. If you decide to rehash the illusory rhetoric that passes for 911 reality then do not abuse others simply because they have the common sense not to swallow the koolaid.
If the official Story is so simple, why was Saudi Arabia not attacked as that is where the terrorists purportedly came from?
Because the AQ leadership was in Afghanistan. OBL had had his saudi citizenship revoked, he had declared war on Saudi Arabia, reasons like that.
oh yeah and how come so many of the 19 high-jackers are alive today ?????
Really? I assume you have reliable links for that. How come AQ released martyrdom videos for the hijackers? Why did senior AQ planners do interviews detailing their planning fo 9/11? I assume you’ve read Yosri Fouda’s book “masterminds of terror”. along with the looming tower it’s a must read whatever side of the debate you are on.
I must admit that I tend to find truthers to be remarkebly uninformed about the official theory, for people trying to critique it.
And WTC7 fell down because of Thermal Expansion ? ? ?
It was a factor, yes. Read the NIST report, try and understand it. Do you think thermal expansion is a trivial thing, by the way?
See how stupid the story gets without even trying
Not really. No where near as tupid as any alternate theory that gets put forward, oh hang on there are none. Just wiffle.
“WTC7 fell down because of thermal expansion.” No, you tiresome parrot, it fell down because of damaged sustained in a terrorist attack, as evidenced by a highly detailed report – linked above. You think you can summarise that in one easy soundbite, and then you have the stupidity to lecture me about evidence and science.
Do you think the US needed to do this to justify attacking Iraq? When have they ever cared about justification before? Chomsky quite clearly outlined the military doctrine driving their quest for oil – you think they have to make shit up on top of that? How absurdly naive.
You think the evidence that there is a war on democracy somehow validates your fantasies about cruise missiles and thermite and controlled demolition and all the other facile dreck that keeps you clicking feverishly?
Before you talk about respecting others, don’t you think a little self-respect might be in order, instead of humiliating yourself over again?
oh yeah and how come so many of the 19 high-jackers are alive today ?????
LOL. This caught my reply in PB’s response (I didn’t bother to read the original comment, naturally). So the truthers really believe that someone carried out this huge conspiracy but didn’t even bother to have the hijackers they blamed killed? Seriously???
No, you tiresome parrot, it fell down because of damaged sustained in a terrorist attack, as evidenced by a highly detailed report – linked above.
Not sure how assymetrical damage mainly to one side of the building structure caused the entire building structure to symmetrically collapse, instantaneously.
You see, that normally takes a carefully planned controlled demolition event to accomplish because normally severe assymetrical damage would cause the building to collapse unevenly on to one side.
It might even leave parts of the building standing upright as other parts collapsed and tore away.
It is still a hotly debated subject. I’m with you guys on this one but only a real independent investigation with all the video’s confiscated around the Pentagon will solve this tantalising conundrum. I personally think something like this is what hit the Pentagon.
There you go, another one of those Key talking pints rolled out to manipulate the emotional environment in which 911 needs to be discussed to keep the official conspiracy theory in tact.
It is the survivors and family members of people who died in those towers that had to lobby for 1.5 years for an official investigation which when it happened was judged to be a cover up and a great big lie by those same family members and to this day it is the family members who want a new and independent investigation.
For those of you interested in what family members really want and feel here is a heartbreaking documentary called: Press for truth.
Here is how they are still trying to get answers to their questions
Here is a list of names (not all inclusive) of family members and survivors of 911 speaking out on 911 and to this day I have several facebook friends who have lost loved ones on that day.
I would personally like to see them in a pit with you you manipulating bastard or perhaps not because I wouldn’t want to see an asshole like you cause them more pain with your horrible insensitive use of their loss as an argument to stifle the need for a new and independent investigation into what happened on that day.
“…the need for a new and independent investigation…” is precisely what you have failed to show exists. Abject, complete, utter, total, failure.
Ten years, five months, no evidence.
Just the same tired old right-wing bullshit about government conspiracies. Fits with the rabid survivalist narrative much?
I have wasted enough time on this today. Keep believing the fantasies. The best thing about your abuse of me and others is that you are going to get more tired and more bitter and learn more ways to fail and wallow in ridicule, for the rest of your life, most likely. And I’m going to laugh at you 🙂
Wow, this is what is called projection in Psychiatry. I haven’t seen a single rational argument from you. Only emotional pressure, ridicule and warped talking points and now the old I have wasted enough time on you meme. Classic. Have a nice day.
I wonder if you have read Urich’s report, which “…refutes the popular notion that the building
weighed 500,000 tons.”
It quotes NIST as a reliable source. Oh noes, he’s joined the dark side 😆
Or the Journal of 9/11 Studies, for example, which presents the following:
“The widespread belief among those who question the official account of 9/11, that a large plane did not hit the Pentagon on 9/11, is unsupported by the evidence.”
ROFL, you call that an exposure?
Why is it that when material proven to be correct but coming from a tainted institution all of a sudden a “debunking” argument.
Why is self doubt and research possibly correcting one hypothesis all of a sudden proof that all the hypothesis which we were able to proof correct as incorrect.
And why is a rant of a forum all of a sudden proof that someone is a liar. Erik Lawyer points out that the standard according to which all fires are investigated was not applied to the 911 collapses/fires and that’s OK because the standard set in 1000s of precedents was not a Law?
What I do get an inkling of is that you spend an inordinate amount of time online reading “debunking” sites and you are a master of all the Key “debunking” points. I wonder how much you get paid?
Oh the pay’s quite good actually. Shilling for the man is a growth industry these days of course, what with all the right wing claptrap to defend, and I’ve had a few lucky breaks. I’ll leave your fertile imagination to fill in the blanks.
“Ten years, five months, no evidence.” Cheers TRP 🙂
Same as me Travellerev. Although he normally does the early morning shift and I take the afternoon.
It’s a good gig. You should get into it. It might give you some spare cash to send to your mate Richard Gage keeping him in the style he has become accustomed to.
Oh looki here, Work day started has it? Come in at 8 am, get coffee start the computer and hook up to the Standard for more hour long time wasting.
Maybe you’re on the dole Gossi, maybe you’re a paid shill because if I was your boss I sure as shit wouldn’t want you to spend hours debunking mad conspiracy theorists.
Trav, I am curious as to why you continue to try and proof to an unreceptive audience that there was a conspiracy behind the Twin Towers nightmare. From where I see it there quite possibly could BUT even if there was who can ever be called to account.
My take is that there was a massive “intellegence failure” from the CIA etc, and that even if it was known there was something afoot lots of parties had agendas that sidelined them. The same has been said of Pearl Harbour, again there is no definitive proof of systemic conspiracy or blind eyes.
So if we have no real proof of conspiracy OR if the people are going to ignore it (i.e Joe Public and their “leaders”), why concentrate on the act. What can be easily demonstrated is that the US and its allies used this act as “justification” for wars they needed to fight for geo political reasons such as oil. That is where the lack of honesty becomes apparent, the simple line that “We in the west needed to kick the shit out of Iraq to grab their oil so we could continue happy motoring for another few years”.
expressed so succintly with the recent announcement that one of the very archtiects of the deception that signed the death warrants for a million civilians admits the lies and the whole world shrugs and carries on ..
It is difficult to convince someone that a conspiracy theory is false, because what ever contradictory evidence that is produced is considered by the conspiracy theorists to have been manufactured by the conspirators so that it doesn’t appear to be a conspiracy. How do you argue against that?
Yep, then you get accused of being a ‘paid shill’, without any hint as to who the paymaster might be or what services they are paying for.
Still, 911 truth denial is mainly righties arguing with righties, and I’m fine with that. Distracts them from doing real damage elsewhere, such as in the idiot cousin to the Turth movement, climate change denial.
The ‘spirit’ of the “magic bullet” often comes to mind during the regular 9/11 discussions here.
I pay little heed to the utterings of the US Military Industrial set up as it used to be known, hanging ‘chads’ leading to illegitimate President Dubya, more invasions of sovereign lands than you can shake a Humvee at, what a bunch of assholes. The whole set up is bent and undemocratic. The attack on Iraq was a major earn for a motley crew of corporates.
9/11 events are far from proven IMO, and I don’t like the bullying tone of responses to Ev’s posts. I don’t have the dedication or time to devote to the 9/11 building collapses but something there stinks bigtime. Ev always links to videos or documents that are worth a look. Lay people I know watch some of the vids and just don’t buy the official line. As Bhudda said (n.b. as a marxist I am not a major Bhudda quoter) “three things always come out; the sun, the moon and the truth.
Bored,
Do you have any idea how many people lurk on this blog?
While the above idjits ridicule me and the others who know the official Conspiracy theory can not be true because basic laws of physics can’t be broken and who want a new and independent investigation into the events of 911 a lot of people who are intelligent, curious and waking up to the fact that a small group of rich people are destroying the global economy for their own gain find my blog and other websites with information through debates such as this and as long as people are dying as a result of the events of that day I and tens of thousandsof others will keep it alive in the communal memory so that one day the real perpetrators may be brought to justice.
The government is refusing to reveal the amount of taxpayer funding and other details around the public private partnership involved in building two new schools in Auckland.
I have been involved in chool governance long enough to realise that anything to do with school property can be very fraught, and new buildings are very vulnerable to flaws, often because of building shortcuts and insufficient attention to detail (often to save money). What is the record of the companies involved, and what is their liability?
There is also nothing in this deal abut how appropriate the spaces are for modern teaching, for example are there quiet spaces and low sensory areas, and how easy would it be for a child or teacher in a wheelchair to get out in a hurry?
Trust us we know what we are doing, as Craig Foss says, only makes me more suspicious.
I have tried to find who “Learning Infrastructure Partners” is. The best I have been able to come up with is http://www.nbr.co.nz/article/nz-consortium-preferred-bidder-first-ppp-school-ck-114649 from the NBR, Hawkins are the only company I recognised from the consortium, the others are all acronyms. Mary Wilson did better last night than Simon Mercep this morning, but neither managed to get anything out of Craig Foss about costs, etc. He just mouthed the party line re “commercial sensitivity”, and “all will be revealed”. No one is asking why the two new schools are going the Donkeys electrorate and not where they are really needed like Christchurch.
Interesting it’s being underwritten by the taxpayer via the super fund money channelled through Morrison & Co.
From MED….
“The Learning Infrastructure consortium is made up of firms with significant experience in designing and building New Zealand schools including ASC Architects and Hawkins Construction. Programmed Facility Maintenance (PFM) will maintain the school buildings. Morrison & Co’s Public Infrastructure Partnership Fund will provide the equity and Westpac Bank will provide the senior debt.”
I can recall Morrison & Co were bragging potential returns of more than 20% when they launched the Public Infrastructure Partnership Fund.
Morrison is part of Infratil, Super Fund is also involved with Infratil in the ex-Shell petrol stations.
From Foss…
““I’m confident Learning Infrastructure Partners is up to the task of creating world class facilities for 21st century learners, this is important because the PPP model transfers all risk onto the private partner”
Err, no the Govt still carries some of the risk through the super fund.
Actually, the government carries all of the risk as it can’t allow the schools to fail and, IMO, the Learning Infrastructure consortium will be wound up and unable to be found once the buildings start failing.
Another one for you Janice, this looks to be the maintenance contractor…. an Aus player who call themselves Programmed Facility Maintenance back in Aus .
Thanks for that DH, I still couldn’t find any names of directors or CEO on the site, only clients and photos of smiling people working hard. I wonder what blind trusts are also investing in this.
I doubt there any Janice, I’d expect the business structure to be pretty standard with the usual shell company to hide the parents from liabilities. If there’s any corruption here it would likely be the jobs for favours variety; some cosy directorships or similar for a select few and perhaps some inside info on share prices etc. Could be there’s been some kickbacks already to swing the PPP concept, I doubt we’ll ever know for sure there.
Maybe our media will do their job for a change & start asking the serious questions but I wouldn’t hold out much hope on that front.
Wouldn’t it be nice to have a guaranteed job & income for 25 years. Alas it’s not for us mortals.
Peter Dunne was on Firstline this morning laying out his case for supporting increasing the length of Paid Parental Leave.
He said it was far too soon to worry about the possible use of a “rare” veto to block the bill, should it get the support of all of Labour, Greens, Mana, Maori Party, NZF and United Future.
As coalition partners United Future and Maori Party are in similar positions, but should be free to support a bill that fits with their policies.
The National blitzkrieg in favour of the misnamed “civil detention” is being rolled out.
On Sunday the SST had an in-depth article on Murray Wilson aka “the Beast of Blenheim”.
Then true to form yesterday Cabinet discussed and approved Judith Collins’ proposed legislation.
And this morning on Morning Report the police chipped in. Former police officer Nigel Hendrcks who was stabbed continuously by a recidivist and paralyzed was interviewed. Understandably at a human level he thinks his attacker should never be released. The Sensible Sentencing Trust is fully in support. No surprise there.
Then the officer in charge of the Wilson case chipped in and inevitably supported the proposal.
A couple of opponents made very qualified statements.
But this proposal breaches the universal declaration of human rights and is an utterly appalling attempted political wedge. Labour cannot support it but National will then attempt to paint them as “weak on crime”.
Collins stated that a Bill of Rights Certificate will be issued. It will be interesting to see how much strain the English Language will be subject to in order to justify something that clearly breaches some fundamental rights.
It seems that the sentence of preventive detention would give the prison system the right to hold onto the thoroughly warped and vicious. It is very expensive letting such people out into society under control and restraints. And the human rights of others who haven’t committed a string of vicious offences should be paramount. It is not fair to victims, usually women and children, and people who have become the object of focussed hatred, to be the tethered goats to a warped vicious personality.
One example is of the woman murdered within hours by a voluntary patient at a mental hospital who checked herself out. In that case I don’t know what could have been done to restrain her but many women in NZ are trying to have a life but have become the obssession of a diseased mind and their lives are filled with fear. Who cares about their rights in this great country? Not many men, who can afford to be objective, philosophical and legalistic about it, being usually untouched by such danger.
“Under current sentencing regimes, Wilson would be a prime candidate for preventive detention – the open-ended jailing of sexual offenders deemed too dangerous ever to return to society. There are around 270 prisoners in this category, and although they are all technically entitled to parole, only a couple a year are ever granted it.
Wilson slipped that net because his sexual convictions pre-date the arrival of preventive detention.
Wilson is unusual not because his crimes are horrific, nor because his attitude towards rehabilitation has been hopeless (when asked last year if he would stick to a post-release condition that he have no contact with children under the age of 16 he said “I don’t give a stuff about it”). He is unusual because those facts aren’t enough to keep him locked up.”
The best thing that could have happened to this oxygen thief would have been a bullet into the temple post conviction.
So HS are you comfortable with changing of the rules after the game has finished? Not a teensy bit anxious that the Executive should determine who gets locked away not based on the rule of law but based on how icky the subject is? Not worried at the slipperly slope to the curtailing of our freedoms this sort of action represents?
In extreme situations retrospective legislation is required – this appears to be one of those times. Do I like it? No but that doesn’t mean that it isn’t necessary.
But this is not a case where an unusual legal finding has popped up. The law was very clear when Wilson was sentenced. He received a long but finite sentence. There was nothing controversial about what happened. Why should his expectation of freedom be taken away from him for political gain?
But this is not a case where an unusual legal finding has popped up.
No, it was a case where the judge couldn’t put him away indefinitely even though that was obviously needed. The judge recognised this at the time but the law wouldn’t allow it.
It’s National and probably is being done almost solely for political gain but that doesn’t mean that the community doesn’t need to be permanently protected from this person. In this case the right of the community not to be put in danger takes precedence over the persons expectation of freedom.
Oh ffs someone acting under the influence of severe but obviously under-diagnosed mental illness is not even in the same league as a criminal that the double-bunking put-’em-in-chains-crowd failed to rehabilitate the first dozen times.
I am thoroughly in favour of preventative detention of those who pose a danger to themselves and to others. My biggest issue with it is how we prevent the abuse of detention by politicians and pressure groups, simply because they regularly demonstrate that they cannot be trusted to be our “guardians”.
I’m in favour of medical detention for people who pose a danger to themselves or others.
I regard the danger of these few individuals (who A]are incorrigible serious offenders; and B]committed their last offence before preventative detention came into effect) as being less than the danger of a government that feels entitled to retrospectively lock people up for previously addressed criminal charges.
First they came for the psychopathic fucktards, but I was not a psychopathic fucktard, and all that…
Preventative detention laws today give the Courts the power to lock away people like Wilson. The legislation is to try and catch about 10 historical cases where PD was not available and these people are coming to the end of their sentences. The problem is not the fact of indefinite detention per se, just the retrospective effect of the proposed law change.
I do not for a second think that the National Government are pushing for political gain when a person possess such a risk to vulnerable members of the community.
A sex abuse survivor serves a long sentence, (45 years in my case to date) the course of their life is impacted on in many ways.
But I am opposed to the state changing the rules after someone has been sentenced.
I appreciate this is a really difficult subject. Wilson and his ilk are scum and all victims deserve the utmost respect and support. But changing the rules part way through is a breach of basic rights concepts.
This is the wedge issue of wedge issues. When yourself and Draco adopt measured responses in favour I can see that those opposed to the proposal are in for a hard time.
Generally speaking I’m with you. The rules aren’t perfect and we have a process for changing and, hopefully, improving them and that change should come into effect no sooner than on the day that the change was legislated. I really don’t like retrospectively changing the rules but there are times when we have to accept an exception. This is, IMO, one of those times because the community does need to be protected from this sociopath.
That said, we also have to be aware of when the government tries to retrospectively change the rules when it’s not needed and stop them from doing so.
I thought about search and rescue last night, in particular Pike River. The reason that no rescue team entered the mine was because it was deemed to be too dangerous when the decision was made. Morally and ethically this is also a wedge issue when the safety of the rescuers cannot be guaranteed.
But I am opposed to the state changing the rules after someone has been sentenced.
In the case of pedophiles/rapists/murderers society now has a better understanding of the damage/injury which is caused to those who are perpetrated against, this is why we have preventative detention for those who are deemed to be a very high risk of reoffending. Were someone to have been sentenced prior to the introduction of preventative detention and not be deemed to be a public risk today and detained after the sentence had been completed, I to would oppose the changing of the rules.
Detail of the proposed legislation is required to ensure that a person’s liberty is not being with held unless it is necessary for the safety of the public.
Nearly 9,000 researchers have already signed up to a boycott of journals that restrict free sharing as part of a campaign dubbed the “academic spring” by supporters due to its potential for revolutionising the spread of knowledge.
But the intervention of the Wellcome Trust, the largest non-governmental funder of medical research after the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, is likely to galvanise the movement by forcing academics it funds to publish in open online journals.
Sir Mark Walport, the director of Wellcome Trust, said that his organisation is in the final stages of launching a high calibre scientific journal called eLife that would compete directly with top-tier publications such as Nature and Science, seen by scientists as the premier locations for publishing.
My understanding has been that academic journals pretty much just break even, and there’s not much profit in it. What’s the evidence of vast profits being made? Maybe a handful of the MOST high status journals make some profit, but I reckon most don’t.
It’s not so much that vast profits are being made, although 35% profit margins is quoted, it’s the money academic libraries have to spend to access research papers – up to 20,000 euros/yr according to the article.
And it’s the universities research as well that was paid for by the taxpayers. Making a profit off other peoples work that was paid for by the taxpayers is a rort.
My understanding has been that academic journals pretty much just break even, and there’s not much profit in it. What’s the evidence of vast profits being made? Maybe a handful of the MOST high status journals make some profit, but I reckon most don’t.
The journals themselves make very little money. The publishers/distributors of the journals like Elsevier make a killing.
Very interesting Joe. Rote learning seems to be the essence. Depends on how the connectivity works with real learning problems .
I can teach my children to say E=MCsquared. And answer tests which has E = ? But whether they or I understand what it means and how it connects is seriously in doubt.
The argument that kids do need to be able to read and operate basic maths in order to progress is true but surely most do that now anyway.
It also reminds me of those very insulated religious groups who are totally sure of their beliefs and the kids also being brought up so believing and in total denial of the real world view.
Be interesting to see just what the NZ version of Charter schools are planning.
here is an interview with a lady who has tried for years to highlight what is happening to education around the world by focusing on steps taken in America over the last thirty years. It includes a link to her free e-book. A publication some may find has many relevant points as to why Education in NZ is not what it used to be , and is fast heading in the wrong direction. http://tickergrail.blogspot.co.nz/2011/12/secret-history-of-western-education.html
and a whole bunch of related articles, videos, interviews,some good, some waffly, all of them pertinent to the issue. http://www.deliberatedumbingdown.com/
Some great graphics there freedom. The trouble is that to outsiders a Developmentally based program looks so “messy” whereas a heavily controlled behavioural type looks “good”. It is easier to persuade parents that a sequence of tested steps must mean good teaching even though no-one really learns that way.
In the first 5 years children learn the huge majority of their lifelong learning in a jumbled way at their own pace and in their own unique way with nary a test in sight. Well until recently!
You know it Ianmac, The herd mentality must be enforced at all costs for fear of what calamity could face the world if the billions of young minds being borne actually were allowed to garner independent thought and implement rationality into their life process. Godalmighty can you just imagine the hell that would be created in a few short generations. Fewer wars, less poverty, better housing, cleaner heavy industry, widespread fair employment practices,
Thanks Ianmac and Freedom, something of substance here: cant help thinking that education has become a follow the money game (i.e a commodity transaction) as opposed to equipping everybody with some ability to think critically. Those who “already have” would not want that would they?
when you remove the ability to think rationally, you get to do fun stuff like this …
“It is being used to get the people used to new types of documentation and carrying new types of identity cards pursuant to the United States instituting a formal policy of internal passports.
“What Primakov finds funny are what he calls these ‘right wing flag wavers’ who were so anti-communist and they’re supporting a state policy of internal passports. The irony is deafening.”
Now ask yourself, whose domestic security policies have we been mimicking these past years and who has been at the forefront of biometric data implementation?
Since Gutenberg first looked to press knowledge instead of grapes, education has always been about how best to control the masses to facilitate the incumbent authority. It has never been about your independent development as a free human being. Don’t believe me, count the drones. The ones beside you and the ones now flying above.
Counting the drones…Gos, HS, PG etc etc all touting the party line even when they don’t receive direct benefit in a rational self interested way. Then there is the other party line from most of the rest of us who argue about fixing a paradigm that cant be fixed because we cant see any alternative structure…my God it hurts the brain to imagine anything outside of the box. We just have not been educated to do so…wonder why… proves your point.
Freedom, the Charlotte Iserbyt document is indeed very interesting, I read this a while back.
I should expect that the document will come under fire from those who would call “conspiracy theory”, at the content of the book, because accepting a “dumbing down” is juxta to their belief that they are free in their thoughts. The dumbing down is also a key component of the propaganda war, which of course hold direct ties into the wider context of world conditioning!
Control of the mind is critical to the status quo, but more importantly, to the direction the stakeholders of the status quo want to take humanity! Those same stakeholders have spent generations studying and learning the human mind!
Education at all levels from pre to tertiary has been, and is being subjected to the same ideology!
The time spent on churning over details of the NY Twin Towers and Pentagon disaster should be
extended to cover other important historic events. There is such a lot to learn about the details of World War 1 and World War 2 for instance. Understanding the latest disaster shouldn’t become so all encompassing that thoughts and information about past larger ones should be boxed, filed in dusty corners and forgotten.
I have been reading about Chamberlain in Britain before World War 2 and have gained a different interpretation of his peace-making forays which I had learned were appeasing and lacking integrity. The time between the talks he held and the declaration of war was vital for a better-prepared Britain to withstand the onslaught of offensive instead of being in a very weak and vulnerable condition.
It was easy for history to mock Chamberlain’s “Peace in Our Time” yet the window gained may have been the time which lead to UK surviving – just. History is vulnerable to just what is chosen and how it is interpreted. Open minds are needed I suppose. Travellev might have a point but why would “they” lie? Mmmmm.
Rubbish. This analysis ignores the fact that the German army was in no shape to fight a two front war in 1938 especially as it would have had to commit most of the troops to defeating
Czechoslovakia as they had a world class defensive system and some of the best tanks in Europe. These were the same tanks that the Germans eventually used in great numbers in the Battle of France two years later. On top of this was the fact that the German military hierarchy were still very suspicious of the Nazis at this stage and thought it would be madness to start a shooting war against the UK and France. There were only a handful of third rate garrison divisions in the west of Germany that could be spared to fight the Allies. A concerted effort would have cut Germany in two quite quickly. For a decent read on this I highly recommend Len Deighton’s Blitzkrieg.
A pertinent question Gozzie, is whose side (fascist/Allies) would you have been on in WWII?, assuming that you are not now in your 90s, which might make for an easier conclusion.
So Hitler would have gifted Stalin a bit more of Poland. England being 4-800 fighter aircraft down on its numbers in the Battle of Britain would have fucked them. Then you get into the “scapa flow fleet cutting logistics for Sea Lion” debate, but of course with Bismark, Tirpitz and Scharnhorst all operational in the North Sea that changes the equation. And now we’re in “what if what if what if” territory. Good for cheap novels, not so hot for judging the leaders of the time.
We are not talking about Poland here but Czechoslavakia. The German’s would have had a hard time giving away bits of Czechoslavakia to the Soviet Union and carving up Poland at the same time. On top of this is the fact that 1938 was the height of the great Red Army purges in the Soviet Union. They certainly were not in a shape to participate very easily in any offensive operations in support of the Germans. Czechoslavakia had one of the more modern armies in Europe at this stage as well as top class military fortifications along the border with Germany. Virtually the entire German army would have had to have concentrated againstthem and the French and British would have not faced much opposition in the West.
Oh please. England/France mass on Rhineland border (but in not too much of a rush because of the Maginot line), Germany polishes off Cz while maintaining defensive reserves to West, but Cz needs defensive reserves to NE in case Stalin doesn’t want to stop. Germany then hangs a left and takes out the remainder of Poland. Army is one thing, but at that stage the Germans were way ahead in integrating full combined forces operations. Not to mention the fact that Poland also invaded Czechoslovakia at the same time as Germany.
But the big difference is that the Czechoslovakians had some good tanks and some excellent weapons factories. The Germans were fighting to a next-gen playbook from everyone else.
And then on the flipside you’ve got a lower level of hostility between the US and Japan – the US embargoes against Japan escalated over 3 or 4 years from Nanking, and the real brinkmanship was the oil embargo of 1941. That’s a full year of additional fighting without direct US intervention. One might argue that had Germany gone to a Channel stalemate on the Western front and launched Barbarossa a year earlier, they could have taken Moscow the following year (especially if the Japanese weren’t quite so anti-US or even had eyes on “German” oil from the Caucuses, so the Siberian divisions couldn’t be safely redeployed).
The Government’s plan to block public scrutiny of partially privatised power companies is unjustified on commercial grounds and will see a valuable part of the democratic process lost, Chief Ombudsman Beverley Wakem has warned.
Ms Wakem – whose office investigates public complaints against the Government – said the fact that the Crown was maintaining controlling stakes in the companies on behalf of the public demonstrated their importance to New Zealand’s interests.
“The sale of a minority shareholding in them did not affect the reasoning for them being subject to the independent oversight and accountability provided through the Ombudsman Act and the Official Information Act (OIA).
“They will carry on the same operations as they do presently which have significant scope to impact on individuals and communities and the environment. It’s not just about commercial interests, the impact of these companies goes much wider than that and all of those interests ought to be protected.”
Ms Wakem said there were plenty of safeguards in the OIA to protect against disclosure of commercially sensitive issues.
Partially privatised council-owned businesses had proved that ongoing obligations under the Local Government Official Information and Meetings Act and Ombudsman Act did not put them at a commercial disadvantage. “There’s no evidence that continued coverage under the OIA would place these companies at a competitive disadvantage.”
Green co-leader Russel Norman said that given there appeared to be no clear rationale for removing the companies from OIA requirements, the move suggested “the long-term direction is full privatisation”.
this government is composed of venal nitwits who dont want any part of their machinations to see the light.
they are capitalists pure and simple and anyone who has ever red thorstein veblens ‘theory of business enterprise’ will know that keeping people ignorant and off guard is a key part of confusing the opposition.
I read Veblens “Theory of the Leisured Classes” and pissed myself laughing when he compared the well healed capitalists of the Hamptons with New Guinea tribals. have not read the Business book but hear its also quite a laugh.
Latest news update fromthe Meatworkers’ Union. A bit lengthy for a comment, but it’s interesting to read.
Talley’s/AFFCO Fact Sheet
11 April 2012
The Meat Workers Union (MWU) has over 1300 workers in AFFCO meat plants located in: Moerewa, Horotiu (near Hamilton), Rangiuru (near Te Puke), Wairoa, Whanganui and Feilding. It also has a membership in two small leather processing plants in Wiri (Auckland) and Napier.
AFFCO is owned by the Talleys. This is one of the biggest privately owned company in the country and the Talley family have interests in meat, dairy, fish and horticulture. Combined it employs up to 4500 New Zealand workers. The NBR rich list has the family wealth estimated at $300 million.
On 24 February this year after only 10 hours of negotiations for a new Collective Agreement, the company gave the MWU notice of an indefinite lockout for 770 of its 1300 members leaving the remaining to continue working. The MWU has subsequently issued a number of limited days strike action for those remaining in the plants and subsequently a further 50 workers have been indefinitely locked out with an additional 470 locked out over Easter meaning they did not receive statutory holiday pay for these days. Following Easter AFFCO intend the 470 “Easter lockout” workers will return to work while their union colleagues remain locked out. These workers will take one weeks strike action beginning 13th April. As at 10 April the locked out workers have been locked out for 42 days without pay!
We estimate up to 5000 children are impacted by the lockout. What are the issues?
Talleys /AFFCO workers are covered by a core collective agreement with site agreements determining additional terms and conditions. The core pay rates range from $13.48 to $15.76 per hour. On top of this workers are paid a rate based on the number of animals killed. If the “tally” for the day is reached, wages range from $27 to $31 per hour. The work is seasonal (2 to 11 months per year, with many short days and short weeks even during the season).
To secure wages set by tally, manning levels and tally rates are agreed. The company wants the right to change these unilaterally stating the need to manage the plants according to changing circumstances. The union has agreed they should manage the plant but want provisions in the agreement to continue to secure the large part of wages that are currently determined by tally and manning numbers. They agree that AFFCO should manage but not manipulate! The company is saying it won’t use the changes to reduce pay but will not put this in writing.
The company is also complaining that the union is too quick to go to the Employment Court over an interpretation of the collective agreement. This is not true. There have been numerous interpretation difficulties and the union has gone to Court but only because it has not been able to get agreement from the company. It has won almost all these cases. The union has agreed to new provisions in the new agreement that set out the process when disagreements occur. The Company continues to raise this as an issue even though it has been resolved.
The company has said it wants reduced Union presence in the plant. It is offering workers the ability to return to work if they leave the union and sign an IEA. The company is notoriously anti-union and has de-unionised in many its other businesses. The Meat Workers Union believe this to be a major driver in the companies aggressive approach to this bargaining. Where to from here?
There is mediation set down for 12 April in Auckland. There is also a Court hearing booked for 23/24 April to hear the unions claim that the lock out is not lawful. The workers are continuing to picket and campaign and organise community support.
The major needs are for support at the protests and pickets and for donations of food and money. To sustain such a large group of workers requires large amounts of regular funds. It costs $50,000 per week to provide as little as $50 per member for food – much more is needed.
There is a website at http://www.mwu.org.nz/ for more information.
If after 10 hours of negotiation AFFCO issued lock-out notices to its unionized work-force then to all extents and purposes the Company has put itself in the position of having created a serious breach of the provisions in the Act requiring it,(the Company), to bargain in good faith…
And there is the matter of Talley’s engaging scabs during good faith bargaining, which in Dairy Workers Union Te Runanga Wai U vs. Open Country Cheese, the Employment Court finally found 2 years after the 2009 OCC lockout in favour of the union. A higher court refused to hear Talley’s appeal.
The govt plans to remove state owned power companies from the obligations under
the official information and ombudsman acts.
These include, Mighty River power,Meridian energy,Genisis energy,Solid energy.
The Ombudsman has warned the govt against it.
The herald has a story under the politics headline.
South Korea parliamentary elections are currently on. BBC World reported that the two main parties are fighting over the centre-left. The current conservatives are moving towards the left on welfare and other social policies to pretty much where the main left opposition is now, and that the only main difference between the two is their free-trade agreement with the US. What needs to happen in NZ to get our two main parties racing to the left?
respectfully wondering why my 2:18pm comment was put into moderation ? Wondering why it was in moderation more than how long it has been there …
it has no profanity, godwins or similar such alarms…. was it the word fanatic?
[lprent: I put “troll” on the auto-moderation list a few weeks ago after a bout of rampant over-use in comments and some incredibly tiresome sequences that were simply people accusing others of being trolls when mostly none were. The general category of moderation was “boring the moderators shitless with having to read the drivel”.
We tend to view trolling as being a quite technical offence that we will warn about and ban for if it persists. It actually gets more complicated if all and sundry are accusing each other of doing it as it means that is the moderators happen to agree then we leave ourselves open to charges of favouritism. The intent is to frustrate people over-using it and to provide an opportunity for moderators to exercise sarcasm when they find a good example in the moderation queue. Of course since then, the usage dropped an out external workloads increased, which means we haven’t had our fun yet….
So until the usage of the word drops back to a non-accusatory level, you’ll just have to get used to being automatically moderated if you want to use it. 😈 ]
Thanks for the clarification lprent. It is always good to know the trigger words.
I should never have taken the bait but the worm was so juicy, i had to nibble on the line.
I was going to leave this alone but in fairness some statements have to be properly denied. I refer to the comments made earlier by a couple of flag waving mutton shanks who seem to have absolutely no respect for the victims they so often claim to support.
Here is the most mainstream example i have that mentions the issue of the very much alive high-jackers. I figured anything less than the accepted authority of the BBC would no doubt be subject to ridicule and general accusations of nuttery from those loons who seem not to believe, that in the linear experience of 4d space, 1+1=2. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/1559151.stm
I mean the BBC are so solid on the news they report events 22 minutes before they even happen :] http://www.wtc7.net/bbc.html
This article mentions four, but seven have been confirmed and some put the number as high as nine. That is nine people who were absolutely definitely guilty of being 911 high-jackers turning up alive and well.
I refer to the comments made earlier by a couple of flag waving mutton shanks who seem to have absolutely no respect for the victims they so often claim to support.
…is completely uncalled for.
Moving on though, I’ll note your careful phrasing in this line:
Here is the most mainstream example i have that mentions the issue of the very much alive high-jackers
“mentions the issue” is not the same thing as what I was asking for was it?
And yet, by the end of your comment, the BBC report has somehow become related to this:
This article mentions four, but seven have been confirmed and some put the number as high as nine. That is nine people who were absolutely definitely guilty of being 911 high-jackers turning up alive and well.
Hang on, how does four names being mentioned in the BBC report suddenly become evidence of the idea that up to 9 hijackers have turned up alive and well?
It doesn’t. The BBC report is from shortly after the attacks. It’s about confusion around some of the names. .
That report is not about a story of. “Some of the supposed hijackers are alive!”
The report is a story about how some of the names on the list could be wrong, that they are common names, with many spellings, and that the hijackers could have using false travel documents, etc
Read the link at the bottom of the BBC report, it looks like this:
(Note: An update on this story was published in October 2006 in the BBC News editors’ blog)
.
So who are these 7 that have been ‘confirmed’ as being alive?
And how outlandish is the idea that conspirators at the level you are alleging, would fuck up such an important point, to have 7 guys they said absolutely did it still alive?
You claim the nist report is not credible, but seriously, how credible is this idea you are pushing?
A theory based only on evidence that you are apparently ashamed to bring forward
But I’m a mutton shank for asking obvious questions, and actually reading what is written down.
PB – SO the BBC changed their tune years later, and your point is what exactly? – Nice attempt to steer away from discussion BTW – SO because people question events they are disrespecting “victims”, if I read you right, that is simple laudable, and rediculous!
Original story should never be editied, only amended – Surely what any changes tell you is that the official line was unstable from the start, it had to be or why the changes!
The point here is that, nothing is 100% clear, in fact not even close, so your diss of Freedoms links only make you look as if you are defending something that can’t be defended!
Nice use of the word conspiracy theory by BBC in order to discredit discussion around the original article linked by Freedom…it does little other than raise serious credibility questions…Like the BBC needed more of that following the Dr David Kelly affair firectly linked to wars stemming from 911
Just keep thinking you have it all licked, and giving grief to others because they can be aware enough that things do not stack up..
There is BS on all sides, and the only thing anyone should be ashamed of, is ruling out categorically , what they simply do not know either way!
PB, I said the BBC article mentioned the topic, I did not say it was the herald of all that is true and holy. The BBC article was included as it was one of the first screw ups to make it into the public arena and in no way does it simply discuss a mix up in names. It shows a shambolic cover story that fell apart once the innocent parties were identified, and they have been. If you bother to work your way through ‘the welfarestate ‘link you will see there is a volume of data out there on this subject alone and i will not spoon feed you. Those days are basically gone. I prefer to leave 9/11 discussion to face to face encounters these days where you have a real chance of helping someone. With a face to face dialogue it is much harder to atutomatically deny evidence when you actually have another human there to answer your doubts and share the tiller as it were. It is too easy to negate difficult data when all you have to work off is the reflection in your screen. Rational critical thought so often seems to be elsewhere as the blog boxes get filled with reactionary cliches from myopic supporters of lies deception and murder. You have been around long enough to know that if it smells like coffee looks like coffee and tastes like coffee, they will still try to tell you its a milkshake.
I will apologise for the muttonshanks remark, it was a bit snappy and not very nice to highlight someone’s handicap. I know some very pleasant sheep but sheep they are and sheep they will remain. If you want to be called something else, then do the work, learn the truth and wake up!
I know what i know and i suspect you know it too, the difference is i have acknowledged the heart-splintering reality that is the lie we all suffer under. It makes the world that little bit darker but at least i see where the light is coming from more easily.
Most of your comment is just an extended attack on me, based on nothing at all. It’s fine for you to disagree with me, and even have a go, but at least try and put forward an argument that is more than just “It is too a conspiracy and yuo’re just stupid and evil if you claim you don’t believe me”
The stuff about face to face discussions is like-wise nonsense. The internet has the advantage of people being able to link to data, something not available face to face.
I looked at the links at the welfare state site, and it’s a series of news reports about the same mistaken identities and confusion.
Confusion always exists in breaking stories. It is natural that the picture becomes clearer as time passes. This is not evidence of conspiricay and coverup. Conspirators would have their story straight and convincing from the get go.
And it’s not like we haven’t had this conversation before, but that time you told me that you included the BBC article as a ‘joke’, again saying that I was an idiot for not getting the joke.
In that conversation I linked to an article in which a Saudi Prince apologised to the people of the US for the actions of its citizens.
Previously, Saudi Arabia had said the citizenship of 15 of the 19 hijackers was in doubt despite U.S. insistence they were Saudis. But Interior Minister Prince Nayef told The Associated Press that Saudi leaders were shocked to learn 15 of the hijackers were from Saudi Arabia.
“The names that we got confirmed that,” Nayef said in an interview. “Their families have been notified.”…
…Nayef said it was natural that the kingdom had not noticed the 15 hijackers beforehand.
“How can I place the name of a Saudi on a blacklist when I have nothing to justify the action? The Saudis are free to travel wherever they like,” he said. “If we had known they were going to do what they had done, we would have stopped them.
“I believe they were taken advantage of in the name of religion and regarding certain issues pertaining to the Arab nation, especially the issue of Palestine,” said Nayef
You’ll note that the saudi prince was for the first time admitting that the hijackers were indeed saudis, and that they did what was alleged. He is saying that the Saudi govt would have stopped them if they had known what they were going to do, but they didn’t know.
Importantly, you’ll note that he says the families had been contacted.
Do you think the Suadi government would have changed their tune about the identity of the hijackers if the families had told them that their guys were alive, out the back, sipping on a cool glass of water and a wee bit distressed that the US was calling them terrorists?
Here is the link to our previous discussion about this, the one where you claimed you linked to the BBC report as a joke:
Confusion always exists in breaking stories, and gives easy outs to blame conspircay theorists, as the story changes. It is natural that the picture becomes clearer as time passes and the conspirators line their ducks up properly in a slightly more co-ordinated propaganda campaign. This is of course a solid base for evidence of conspiricay and coverup. Conspirators would have their story straight and convincing from the get go, except that this time the story is too big to cover all the the bases – FIFY
Saudi Arabia – One of the most oppressive monarchist states on earth, totally untrustworthy, and a key part of the imperialist clique, and you take them at their word, BRAVO!
“The names that we got confirmed that,” Nayef said in an interview. “Their families have been executed” FIFY Too
I missed the part of your comment where you provide the slightest bit of evidence that the people the US claims did it, the same poeple the saudis admit did it, and the very same peopleAQ praise for doing it, didn’t do it.
PB – Evidence, yeah its been contentious on all sides, hence my stance of not pretending I have it all sorted in my head. That said the evidence you seem to be in favour of has lead to the direct deaths of hundreds of thousands, if not millions of innocent people, in multiple countries in the resulting wars – I’m not a fan of war or lies, and the stories concocted to brainwash public opinion simply do not stack up in multiple ways, and I will continue to question anything I see fit, when my guts tell me that it stinks!
If you want to be an apologist for imperialist wars and lies, that is your prerogative, you are as entitled to your line of thought, as anyone else!
PS – You seem to not understand who or what AQ is, or where it was born from!
thanks for the reminder and in the time since i have shifted my view from that article being a joke to something slightly more worrying in that it highlights how the MSM had been swamped under the message so quickly. Since 2001 the debris that has popped up has become its own Sargasso Sea. Navigating it will always have its hazards.
Yes i am tired and bored with talking to sheep about 9/11. If you take that personally then that is your decision and i can only hope the unfortunate negativity it stirs up can be be used in a positive manner. I do try to refrain from personal attacks but to be fair my statements were fairly lowkey and your reaction does tip your hand a little if you take them so personally. ( take for example the accusations of rascism and misogyny i received the other day from QoT, for simply asking a question! did i get all riled up? no, i know i am neither misogynist nor rascist, so feel no need to defend it. Always seems like such a waste of energy and inevitably only gets misconstrued anyway) I will make more of an effort but if you truthfully do not see that 1+1=2 there is no way that anything anyone says will ever sway you. It is something you must come to on your own, which is why face to face discussion on 9/11 is far superior to web wars.
– “The stuff about face to face discussions is like-wise nonsense. The internet has the advantage of people being able to link to data, something not available face to face.”
– Regarding your bizarre statement above, working face to face does not in any way preclude the use of the web. (I have heard that assumption many times and i never understand how doing one somehow precludes the other.) When you spend time with a person and are physically there as the data is searched, you witness the change and it is a startingly powerful moment, it is like a homecoming, someone’s humanity returning.
Finally, i do not trust any statement made from the Saudi, or any government, that ‘clarifies’ their knowledge of events or persons pertaining to the events of September 11 2001. Without an independent and binding international tribunal that openly and honestly investigates the events, no-one will ever know the Truth. Why is the mere suggestion of that tribunal so horrifying to the powers that be ? ? ? that is the 22 trillion dollar question
But what’s it got to do with what freedom and I were discussing?
What do you think about his theory that 9 of the people currenetly thiought to be the hijackers are actually confirmed to be alive?
Don’t you think that would be an incredibly stupid mistake for the conspirators to make?
And what do you think of the fact that the saudi government, and AQ admit that the names on the list are the people that did it? Do you think thaty carries any weight?
Have freedom/muzza got it right? The saudis are just lying about it, for some reason, and AQ are just something that I don’t know anything about?
If you do know who and what they are then how can you honestly trust a single statement made about them or anything they have reportedly done. Usama bin Laden’s dad is a business partner with dubya’s dad and has been since 1973. I have a copy of the notarised agreement authorising the agent to act on their behalf. Do not forget that AQ was fingered on the day of the attacks. On the day. Remember the info published on Lee Harvey Oswald that turned up in a kiwi paper the day after the shooting ??? The US is not alone in this complicity and nor is it innocent when it comes to lying through their teeth about some pretty heinous acts in their history. The Gulf of Tonkin springs to mind! The US admitted just a couple of years ago it never happened. This very week we have the lies about WMD’s in Iraq completely exposed and admitted to yet it is business as usual.
Operation Northwoods is also good starter for ten. or, take the WTC bombing in ’93. They have admitted that it was an FBI sting op that went wrong. These guys are criminals acting out a very dark plan that has you, your family and several billion other people listed as future compost material. It has been a long slow road that is hundreds if not thousands of years long and to claim you believe what they tell you is possibly the most distressing aspect of this entire topic.
I end with that most well known and highly worrying statement made by one of the architects of today, David Rockefeller, made to the Bilderberg group, who you may remember denied even existing until independent media exposed them, their members and their invited guests, all of whom are very powerful and secretive people who did not appreciate the exposure. Why is that?
“”We are grateful to the Washington Post, The New York Times, Time
Magazine and other great publications whose directors have attended
our meetings and respected their promises of discretion for almost
forty years.”
“It would have been impossible for us to develop our plan for the world
if we had been subjected to the lights of publicity during those years.
But, the world is now more sophisticated and prepared to march towards a
world government. The supranational sovereignty of an intellectual elite
and world bankers is surely preferable to the national
auto-determination practiced in past centuries.”
“Auckland Council’s proposed compact city approach, based on containment of the city, undermines the aspiration of affordable housing.”
However…
Auckland – pop = 1.4m, area = 559 km2, density = 2,700 km2
Vienna – pop = 1.7m, area = 414 km4, density = 4,970 km2 (always near the top of QoL lists)
New York – city pop = 8.2m, area = 468 km2, density = 27,012 km2
Increasing the land for Auckland is such a waste of resources – there is a long way to go before Auckland is too densely populated. The compact city approach is the way to go – more combined public outdoor space and less private outdoor space – and shouldn’t detract from affordability or desirability if planned well.
I agree that urban spread is a waste of resources, but increasing density isn’t always the answer either. Who wants to give up the Kiwi lifestyle and live in a chicken coop? So there’s a balance that should be based on optimum habitat requirements and not speculators and developers profiteering.
What I think New Zealand needs to do is improve work opportunities for smaller communities so there is less migratory pressure on places like Auckland. Increasing wages and the affordability of building materials by reducing market domination and implementing a proper social housing policy would also help more Kiwi’s into home ownership.
You’re right about reducing migratory pressure and about reducing market domination and social housing. Investing in regional development should be a top priority, it that hasn’t happened for decades and it would be nice to see a return to that. However, that doesn’t mean that urban density is not an issue.
Increasing density doesn’t have to mean chicken coop living – as usual NZ is doing it the wrong way by increasing density for poor families, using poor materials with expansion on the periphery so the middle classes can have their large blocks of land. It needs to be reversed – that apartments become a style statement, so to speak. Some of the best QoL cities in the world are dominated by apartment living. Generally the apartments are not tower blocks, but a more human scale, with lots of green space nearby rather than minimal private sections and no public space provision.
The key point here is to think about land as the obvious scarce resource it is – especially in our cities. If land is being used for wider and wider roads and larger and larger parking lots, that is land which cannot be used for buildings, parks and other – arguably more productive and desirable – uses.
Cars really are massively inefficient and have huge negative impact upon our lives.
While in some areas high-rise residential development will be an appropriate way to intensify, we need to break the connection that high-density automatically means high-rise apartments. Each Sheehan Street terraced house has a small courtyard, a deck, there’s a shared (admittedly quite small) green space in the internal area for residents to share. Each place has its own front door and a direct pedestrian link to the street – all at a density significantly higher than that of a 16 level tower block.
And Sheehan Street is probably both far more social and more private.
So in order to help those who seem to have absolutely no conception that life in Auckland is possible, for some even preferable, outside of a detached suburban 3 bedder I have dipped into my archives. These are simply random examples of the rich variety of lives lived by different people with different interests and different resources already enjoying the ‘absolutely gobsmacking‘ life that so terrifies the good councillor Quax.
Ok, that’s enough, I didn’t find the article I was looking for but enough to show that high density living isn’t the nightmare that some would have you believe it is.
Bill English – “I think the public would be probably as concerned that the Labour Party don’t appear to have learnt anything that they think that handing out lollies is how you get political favours.”
You mean unaffordable tax cuts? Additional Pokie Machines / License extensions? Employment Law Changes for Movie Execs? Loans to MediaWorks while axing TVNZ7? Stop me when we’ve run out of lollies
I/S on No Right Turn in “If all you have is a hammer…” makes a couple of noteworthy observations.
The first is the fact that Nationals policy announcements consists of just a load of waffle with no actual detail whatsoever – It is quite an effective strategy, albeit a darkly cynical one given the importance of the issues paid only lip service to. For those wanting to critique the ‘plans’ or even to understand them there is nothing to grasp onto. An educated or informed response is impossible when slogans are all that we have been given.
But where is the critique in the media of the lack of detail? Nationals policy announcements are about as convincing as a new years resolution and their Ministers should be laughed out of their press conferences for daring to turn up and make proclamations that are a deliberate study in vagueness.
Secondly I/S highlights the growing use of ‘the children’ as an excuse for implementing unpopular policies or reform. Once again it is only the most darkly cynical who would deliberately use peoples concern for their children to promote a course of action – when a hostage taker holds a gun to the head of someone’s child and demands obedience the violence of the act is rightly condemned by law and society – yet the governments modus operandi is now little different.
It is time that the government stopped implying that children will suffer if we don’t accept their austerity and their radical hard right agenda or that children will benefit if we do.
Austerity harms economies and harms society. The Nats don’t care about kids any more than the hostage taker does.
Hello! Here comes the Saturday edition of More Than A Feilding, catching you up on the past week’s editions.State of humanity, 20242024, it feels, keeps presenting us with ever more challenges, ever more dismay.Do you give up yet? It seems to ask.No? How about this? Or this?How about this?Full story Share ...
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Graham Adams writes about the $55m media fund — When Patrick Gower was asked by Mike Hosking last week what he would say to the many Newstalk ZB callers who allege the Labour government bribed media with $55 million of taxpayers’ money via the Public Interest Journalism Fund — and ...
Note: this blog post has been put together over the course of the week I followed the happenings at the conference virtually. Should recordings of the Great Debates and possibly Union Symposia mentioned below, be released sometime after the conference ends, I'll include links to the ones I participated in. ...
The following was my submission made on the “Fast Track Approvals Bill”. This potential law will give three Ministers unchecked powers, un-paralled since the days of Robert Muldoon’s “Think Big” projects.The submission is written a bit tongue-in-cheek. But it’s irreverent because the FTAB is in itself not worthy of respect. ...
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Jack Vowles writes – New Zealand is said to be suffering from ‘serious populist discontent’. An IPSOS MORI survey has reported that we have an increasing preference for strong leaders, think that the economy is rigged toward the rich and powerful, and political elites are ignoring ‘hard-working people’. ...
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Foreign Minister Winston Peters is understood to be planning a major speech within the next fortnight to clear up the confusion over whether or not New Zealand might join the AUKUS submarine project. So far, there have been conflicting signals from the Government. RNZ reported the Prime Minister yesterday in ...
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Buzz from the Beehive Oceans and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones relishes spatting and eagerly takes issue with environmentalists who criticise his enthusiasm for resource development. He relishes helping the fishing industry too. And so today, while the media are making much of the latest culling in the public service to ...
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Karl du Fresne writes – There’s a crisis in the news media and the media are blaming it on everyone except themselves. Culpability is being deflected elsewhere – mainly to the hapless Minister of Communications, Melissa Lee, and the big social media platforms that are accused of hoovering ...
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Buzz from the Beehive David Seymour and Winston Peters today signalled that at least two ministers of the Crown might be in Wellington today. Seymour (as Associate Minister of Education) announced the removal of more red tape, this time to make it easier for new early learning services to be ...
Politicians across the political spectrum are implicated in the New Zealand media’s failing health. Either through neglect or incompetent interventions, successive governments have failed to regulate, foster, and allow a healthy Fourth Estate that can adequately hold politicians and the powerful to account. Our political system is suffering from the ...
David Farrar writes – The Broadcasting Standards Authority ruled: Comments by radio host Kate Hawkesby suggesting Māori and Pacific patients were being prioritised for surgery due to their ethnicity were misleading and discriminatory, the Broadcasting Standards Authority has found. It is a fact such patients are prioritised. ...
PRC and its proxies in Solomons have been preparing for these elections for a long time.A lot of money, effort and intelligence have gone into ensuring an outcome that won’t compromise Beijing’s plans. Cleo Paskall writes – On April 17th the Solomon Islands, a country of ...
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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. ...
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. ...
The Green Party has today launched a step-by-step guide to help New Zealanders make their voice heard on the Government’s democracy dodging and anti-environment fast track legislation. ...
The National Government’s proposed changes to the Residential Tenancies Act will mean tenants can be turfed from their homes by landlords with little notice, Labour housing spokesperson Kieran McAnulty said. ...
Green Party co-leader Marama Davidson is calling on all parties to support a common-sense change that’s great for the planet and great for consumers after her member’s bill was drawn from the ballot today. ...
A significant milestone has been reached in the fight to strike an anti-Pasifika and unfair law from the country’s books after Teanau Tuiono’s members’ bill passed its first reading. ...
New Zealand has today missed the opportunity to uphold the right to a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment, says James Shaw after his member’s bill was voted down in its first reading. ...
Today’s advice from the Climate Change Commission paints a sobering reality of the challenge we face in combating climate change, especially in light of recent Government policy announcements. ...
Minister for Disability Issues Penny Simmonds appears to have delayed a report back to Cabinet on the progress New Zealand is making against international obligations for disabled New Zealanders. ...
The Government’s newly announced review of methane emissions reduction targets hints at its desire to delay Aotearoa New Zealand’s urgent transition to a climate safe future, the Green Party said. ...
The Government must commit to the Maitai School building project for students with high and complex needs, to ensure disabled students from the top of the South Island have somewhere to learn. ...
Mental Health Minister Matt Doocey and his Government colleagues have made a meal of their mental health commitments, showing how flimsy their efforts to champion the issue truly are, says Labour Mental Health spokesperson Ingrid Leary. ...
Māori are yet to see anything from this Government except cuts, reversals and taking our people backwards, Māori Development spokesperson Willie Jackson said. ...
The Coalition Government’s refusal to commit to ongoing funding for social housing is seeing the sector pull back on developments and families watch their dreams of securing a home fade away, says Labour Housing spokesperson Kieran McAnulty. ...
Changes to minimum wage and benefit indexation means many New Zealanders will get less this year, as the Government gives a big tax break to landlords instead. ...
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon has completed a successful trip to Singapore, Thailand and the Philippines, deepening relationships and capitalising on opportunities. Mr Luxon was accompanied by a business delegation and says the choice of countries represents the priority the New Zealand Government places on South East Asia, and our relationships in ...
New Zealand is demonstrating its commitment to reducing global greenhouse emissions, and supporting clean energy transition in South East Asia, through a contribution of NZ$41 million (US$25 million) in climate finance to the Asian Development Bank (ADB)-led Energy Transition Mechanism (ETM). Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and Climate Change Minister Simon Watts announced ...
The Government is today releasing a list of organisations who received letters about the Fast-track applications process, says RMA Reform Minister Chris Bishop. “Recently Ministers and agencies have received a series of OIA requests for a list of organisations to whom I wrote with information on applying to have a ...
Attorney-General Judith Collins today announced the appointment of Wellington Barrister David Jonathan Boldt as a Judge of the High Court, and the Honourable Justice Matthew Palmer as a Judge of the Court of Appeal. Justice Boldt graduated with an LLB from Victoria University of Wellington in 1990, and also holds ...
Education Minister Erica Stanford will lead the New Zealand delegation at the 2024 International Summit on the Teaching Profession (ISTP) held in Singapore. The delegation includes representatives from the Post Primary Teachers’ Association (PPTA) Te Wehengarua and the New Zealand Educational Institute (NZEI) Te Riu Roa. The summit is co-hosted ...
A stopbank upgrade project in Tairawhiti partly funded by the Government has increased flood resilience for around 7000ha of residential and horticultural land so far, Regional Development Minister Shane Jones says. Mr Jones today attended a dawn service in Gisborne to mark the end of the first stage of the ...
Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters will represent the Government at Anzac Day commemorations on the Gallipoli Peninsula next week and engage with senior representatives of the Turkish government in Istanbul. “The Gallipoli campaign is a defining event in our history. It will be a privilege to share the occasion ...
Science, Innovation and Technology and Defence Minister Judith Collins will next week attend the OECD Science and Technology Ministerial conference in Paris and Anzac Day commemorations in Belgium. “Science, innovation and technology have a major role to play in rebuilding our economy and achieving better health, environmental and social outcomes ...
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon held a bilateral meeting today with the President of the Philippines, Ferdinand Marcos Jr. The Prime Minister was accompanied by MP Paulo Garcia, the first Filipino to be elected to a legislature outside the Philippines. During today’s meeting, Prime Minister Luxon and President Marcos Jr discussed opportunities to ...
The Government has announced that $20 million in funding will be made available to Westport to fund much needed flood protection around the town. This measure will significantly improve the resilience of the community, says Local Government Minister Simeon Brown. “The Westport community has already been allocated almost $3 million ...
The Government is proud to support the first ever Repco Supercars Championship event in Taupō as up to 70,000 motorsport fans attend the Taupō International Motorsport Park this weekend, says Economic Development Minister Melissa Lee. “Anticipation for the ITM Taupō Super400 is huge, with tickets and accommodation selling out weeks ...
Local Government Minister Simeon Brown has announced an increase to the Rates Rebate Scheme, putting money back into the pockets of low-income homeowners. “The coalition Government is committed to bringing down the cost of living for New Zealanders. That includes targeted support for those Kiwis who are doing things tough, such ...
The Coalition Government is investing in a project to boost survival rates of New Zealand mussels and grow the industry, Oceans and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones has announced. “This project seeks to increase the resilience of our mussels and significantly boost the sector’s productivity,” Mr Jones says. “The project - ...
Benefit figures released today underscore the importance of the Government’s plan to rebuild the economy and have 50,000 fewer people on Jobseeker Support, Social Development and Employment Minister Louise Upston says. “Benefit numbers are still significantly higher than when National was last in government, when there was about 70,000 fewer ...
The Government’s commitment to doubling New Zealand’s renewable energy capacity is backed by new data showing that clean energy has helped the country reach its lowest annual gross emissions since 1999, Climate Change Minister Simon Watts says. New Zealand’s latest Greenhouse Gas Inventory (1990-2022) published today, shows gross emissions fell ...
The Government is bringing the earthquake-prone building review forward, with work to start immediately, and extending the deadline for remediations by four years, Building and Construction Minister Chris Penk says. “Our Government is focused on rebuilding the economy. A key part of our plan is to cut red tape that ...
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and his Thai counterpart, Prime Minister Srettha Thavisin, have today agreed that New Zealand and the Kingdom of Thailand will upgrade the bilateral relationship to a Strategic Partnership by 2026. “New Zealand and Thailand have a lot to offer each other. We have a strong mutual desire to build ...
RMA Reform Minister Chris Bishop and Transport Minister Simeon Brown have today announced the Coalition Government’s intention to extend port coastal permits for a further 20 years, providing port operators with certainty to continue their operations. “The introduction of the Resource Management Act in 1991 required ports to obtain coastal ...
Today’s announcement that inflation is down to 4 per cent is encouraging news for Kiwis, but there is more work to be done - underlining the importance of the Government’s plan to get the economy back on track, acting Finance Minister Chris Bishop says. “Inflation is now at 4 per ...
Refreshed health guidance released today will help parents and schools make informed decisions about whether their child needs to be in school, addressing one of the key issues affecting school attendance, says Associate Education Minister David Seymour. In recent years, consistently across all school terms, short-term illness or medical reasons ...
Oceans and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones is streamlining high-level oceans management while maintaining a focus on supporting the sector’s role in the export-led recovery of the economy. “I am working to realise the untapped potential of our fishing and aquaculture sector. To achieve that we need to be smarter with ...
Associate Agriculture Minister Mark Patterson is speaking at the International Wool Textile Organisation Congress in Adelaide, promoting New Zealand wool, and outlining the coalition Government’s support for the revitalisation the sector. "New Zealand’s wool exports reached $400 million in the year to 30 June 2023, and the coalition Government ...
The Government is making legislative changes to make it easier for new early learning services to be established, and for existing services to operate, Associate Education Minister David Seymour says. The changes involve repealing the network approval provisions that apply when someone wants to establish a new early learning service, ...
Changes to the Resource Management Act will align consenting for coal mining to other forms of mining to reduce barriers that are holding back economic development, Resources Minister Shane Jones says. “The inconsistent treatment of coal mining compared with other extractive activities is burdensome red tape that fails to acknowledge ...
Trade, Agriculture and Forestry Minister Todd McClay has concluded productive discussions with ministerial counterparts in Beijing today, in support of the New Zealand-China trade and economic relationship. “My meeting with Commerce Minister Wang Wentao reaffirmed the complementary nature of the bilateral trade relationship, with our Free Trade Agreement at its ...
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon today paid tribute to Singapore’s outgoing Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong. Meeting in Singapore today immediately before Prime Minister Lee announced he was stepping down, Prime Minister Luxon warmly acknowledged his counterpart’s almost twenty years as leader, and the enduring legacy he has left for Singapore and South East ...
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon held a bilateral meeting today with Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong. While in Singapore as part of his visit to South East Asia this week, Prime Minister Luxon also met with Singapore President Tharman Shanmugaratnam and will meet with Deputy Prime Minister Lawrence Wong. During today’s meeting, Prime Minister Luxon ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters has made further appointments to the Board of Antarctica New Zealand as part of a continued effort to ensure the Scott Base Redevelopment project is delivered in a cost-effective and efficient manner. The Minister has appointed Neville Harris as a new member of the Board. Mr ...
Finance Minister Nicola Willis will travel to the United States on Tuesday to attend a meeting of the Five Finance Ministers group, with counterparts from Australia, the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom. “I am looking forward to meeting with our Five Finance partners on how we can work ...
The coalition Government has today announced purrfect and pawsitive changes to the Residential Tenancies Act to give tenants with pets greater choice when looking for a rental property, says Housing Minister Chris Bishop. “Pets are important members of many Kiwi families. It’s estimated that around 64 per cent of New ...
State Highway 1 (SH1) through Wellington City is heavily congested at peak times and while planning continues on the duplicate Mt Victoria Tunnel and Basin Reserve project, the Government has also asked NZ Transport Agency (NZTA) to consider and provide advice on a Long Tunnel option, Transport Minister Simeon Brown ...
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and Foreign Minister Winston Peters have condemned Iran’s shocking and illegal strikes against Israel. “These attacks are a major challenge to peace and stability in a region already under enormous pressure," Mr Luxon says. "We are deeply concerned that miscalculation on any side could ...
Hundreds of people in little over a week have turned out in Northland to hear Regional Development Minister Shane Jones speak about plans for boosting the regional economy through infrastructure. About 200 people from the infrastructure and associated sectors attended an event headlined by Mr Jones in Whangarei today. Last ...
Health Minister Dr Shane Reti has today thanked outgoing Health New Zealand – Te Whatu Ora Chair Dame Karen Poutasi for her service on the Board. “Dame Karen tendered her resignation as Chair and as a member of the Board today,” says Dr Reti. “I have asked her to ...
The NZ Transport Agency (NZTA) has signalled their proposed delivery approach for the Government’s 15 Roads of National Significance (RoNS), with the release of the State Highway Investment Proposal (SHIP) today, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says. “Boosting economic growth and productivity is a key part of the Government’s plan to ...
New Zealand is renewing its connections with a world facing urgent challenges by pursuing an active, energetic foreign policy, Foreign Minister Winston Peters says. “Our country faces the most unstable global environment in decades,” Mr Peters says at the conclusion of two weeks of engagements in Egypt, Europe and the United States. “We cannot afford to sit back in splendid ...
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon has announced the Australian Governor-General, His Excellency General The Honourable David Hurley and his wife Her Excellency Mrs Linda Hurley, will make a State visit to New Zealand from Tuesday 16 April to Thursday 18 April. The visit reciprocates the State visit of former Governor-General Dame Patsy Reddy ...
Associate Health Minister David Seymour has announced that Medsafe has approved 11 cold and flu medicines containing pseudoephedrine. Pharmaceutical suppliers have indicated they may be able to supply the first products in June. “This is much earlier than the original expectation of medicines being available by 2025. The Government recognised ...
New Zealand and the United States have recommitted to their strategic partnership in Washington DC today, pledging to work ever more closely together in support of shared values and interests, Foreign Minister Winston Peters says. “The strategic environment that New Zealand and the United States face is considerably more ...
April 11, 2024 Joint Declaration by United States Secretary of State the Honorable Antony J. Blinken and New Zealand Minister of Foreign Affairs the Right Honourable Winston Peters We met today in Washington, D.C. to recommit to the historic partnership between our two countries and the principles that underpin it—rule ...
In apparent defiance of the Biden administration, the Netanyahu government has now initiated missile strikes against Iran. Last Saturday night (Sunday morning in New Zealand) Iran launched more than 300 drones, cruise missiles and ballistic missiles against Israeli military targets. With the assistance of US, UK and possibly French forces, ...
Māori representation brings a perspective that encompasses not only the interests of Māori communities but also a broader, holistic approach to environmental stewardship and community well-being, principles deeply embedded in Te Ao Māori (the Māori ...
This week in Auckland, a group of young people took over the microphone at a ministerial press conference, to explain why they oppose the Fast-Track Approvals Bill. One young woman said, ‘We’re here because we love Aotearoa New Zealand. We want to raise our children in an environment that’s thriving, ...
The summer was wonderful. Evie was wonderful, too; finally a teenager, finally worthy of long, hot days. She shaved her legs for the first time and bought cut-off shorts from the op-shop that made them look long. She got a Warehouse singlet so tight on her new shape that her ...
When Thomas James was on his solo camp as part of Outward Bound, the keen outdoorsman didn’t find it too challenging, as others often do. In what might just be the perfect illustration of his character, he saw it as a great opportunity to solve a few problems. “I thought, ...
From the unstable and drippy to the hi-tech and pretty, here’s our ranking of all the tunnels you can drive through in this country. The first tunnel seems to have been built in 2200BC in Babylonia, kicking off a global phenomenon for digging holes in order to get places more ...
Lucinda Bennett on the art of being greedy but resourceful. This is an excerpt from our weekly food newsletter, The Boil Up. When I picture the market, it is always this time of year. Crisp air, dripping nose, counting coins with cold fingers. Sunlight pale, filtered through specks of dew still ...
Zoë Colling’s favourite piece in the ‘That’s So Last Century’ collection is a lubrication chart for a sewing machine from the ’60s. It’s about the size of a postcard, and carefully maintained. “I like it that this piece of ephemera highlights that manual and technical side of the skill involved ...
Kia Ora Gaza A passionate haka reverberated through Auckland International Airport as a medical team of three New Zealand doctors received an emotional farewell from a big crowd of supporters before flying to Turkey to join the international Freedom Flotilla to Gaza. The doctors, who left Auckland yesterday, hope to ...
With submissions closing today, Macassey-Pickard says groups around the country have been supporting a huge range of people to make their submissions. ...
Our response to the new legislation is informed by targeted conversations with practitioners working in the system and through an implementation lens. ...
The new ‘Fast-track Approvals Bill’ would give just three Ministers the power to approve or deny development projects. They would avoid the usual checks and balances that are in place to protect rivers, land, the ocean, and communities. ...
COMMENTARY:By Eugene Doyle Helen Clark, how I miss you. The former New Zealand Prime Minister — the safest pair of hands this country has had in living memory — gave a masterclass on the importance of maintaining an independent foreign policy when she spoke at an AUKUS symposium held ...
The government's released the list of organisations provided with information on how to apply - just hours before public submissions on the bill close. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Milton Speer, Visiting Fellow, School of Mathematical and Physical Sciences, University of Technology Sydney Before climate change really got going, eastern Australia’s flash floods tended to concentrate on our coastal regions, east of the Great Dividing Range. But that’s changing. Now ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Elizabeth Finkel, Vice-Chancellor’s Fellow, La Trobe University Sia Duff / South Australian Museum In February, the South Australian Museum “re-imagined” itself. In the face of rising costs and inadequate government funds, CEO David Gaimster, who took the reins last June, declared ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Alan Pearce, Professor, School of Allied Heath, Human Services & Sport, La Trobe University, La Trobe University This week, Collingwood AFL player Nathan Murphy announced his retirement, brought on by his concussion history and ongoing issues. The 24-year-old’s seemingly sudden retirement, ...
The Mental Health Foundation provides support and resources for those facing the loss of their job, so it’s wrong in the very week the Government adds another 1000 jobs to its tally of cuts, that this is happening. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Alexander Howard, Senior Lecturer, Discipline of English and Writing, University of Sydney Daniel Boud/Sydney Theatre Company Decay, terror, revulsion. These are three of the central themes of Thomas Bernhard’s rarely performed play The President. The Austrian is one of the greatest ...
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon says threats by ministers Shane Jones and David Seymour to reform or close down the Waitangi Tribunal were “ill-considered”, as legal experts say the ministers may have breached Cabinet Manual conventions. “I think those comments are ill-considered and we expect all ministers to actually exercise good ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ye In (Jane) Hwang, Postdoctoral Research Associate at School of Population Health, UNSW Sydney Shutterstock You’d be hard pressed to find any aspect of daily life that doesn’t require some form of digital literacy. We need only to look back ten ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Rob Newton, Professor of Exercise Medicine, Edith Cowan University Pexels/RDNE stock project You’re not in your 20s or 30s anymore and you know regular health checks are important. So you go to your GP. During the appointment they measure your waist. ...
A new poem by Evangeline Riddiford Graham. Mitochondrial Problem I. It was long drive to Kansas for the man and his dog but you have to understand he said She doesn’t fly. Which calls to mind not carsick shitting barking or whining but a dog who chooses not to as ...
The only published and available best-selling indie book chart in New Zealand is the top 10 sales list recorded every week at Unity Books’ stores in High St, Auckland, and Willis St, Wellington.AUCKLAND1 Hemingway’s Goblet by Dermot Ross (Mary Egan Publishing, $38)Hot off the press, this debut ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Laura Wajnryb McDonald, PhD candidate in Criminology, University of Sydney Less than 24 hours after Ashlee Good was murdered in Bondi Junction, her family released a statement requesting the media take down photographs they had reproduced of Ashlee and her family without ...
Chief executive Shaun Robinson said it has not had any government funding cut, but government-funded contracts have not kept pace with rising costs. ...
The Ministry of Health has delayed the release of its evidence brief on the safety, reversibility and mental health and wellbeing outcomes for puberty blockers. While we wait, Julia de Bres speaks to those with firsthand experience. Best practice gender-affirming healthcare is based on trans people’s self-determination and agency. The ...
Barcelona’s city streets have gone from traffic-clogged to pedestrian-friendly. How? Superblocks. Ellen Rykers explains. This is an excerpt from our weekly environmental newsletter Future Proof. Sign up here. Last week I read a great interview with renowned urbanist Janette Sadik-Khan by The Spinoff’s Wellington editor Joel MacManus: “You can reimagine streets, ...
Student groups ‘Climate Action VUW’, Schools Strike 4 Climate and VUWSA will be on the street in Wellington today, the last day for submissions on the Fast-track Approvals Bill, with a message that the fight against the Government’s ‘War on ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sofia Ammassari, Research Fellow, Griffith University Since 2014, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s popularity has grown exponentially – and so has the formidable organisational machine of his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). These two factors will be key to delivering the BJP a ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Brendon Hyndman, Associate Professor of Education (Adjunct) & Senior Manager (BCE), Charles Sturt University During COVID almost all Australian students and their families experienced online learning. But while schools have long since gone back to in-person teaching, online learning has not gone ...
Yes, they’re better for the environment. No, that’s not a good enough reason for me to use them. Once every 26 days or so, my period arrives, and if struck by an act of God, I am caught red-crotched without products. How, after 17 years of this, do I still ...
“It will cause significant harm to our environment and communities. It is completely at odds with New Zealanders’ relationship with nature and our need for a low-carbon, sustainable economic future." ...
The Chair of the National Maori Authority, Matthew Tukaki, has warned a Parliamentary Select Committee that fast-tracking legislation is a perilous practice that undermines the core tenets of democracy, transparency, and accountability. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tim Tenbensel, Associate Professor, Health Policy, University of Auckland, Waipapa Taumata Rau Getty Images Since coming into power, the coalition government has adopted a simple but shrewd see-how-fast-we-can-move political strategy. However, in the health sector this need for speed entails ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Anastasia Hronis, Clinical Psychologist, University of Technology Sydney Darya Sannikova/Pexels Whether you’re watching TV, attending a footy game, or eating a meal at your local pub, gambling is hard to escape. Although the rise of gambling is not unique to Australia, ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Mark Wong, Forrest Fellow, School of Biological Sciences, The University of Western Australia Have you ever wondered if there are more insects out at night than during the day? We set out to answer this question by combing through the scientific ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Carol T Kulik, Research Professor, University of South Australia IR Stone/Shutterstock In Australia, it’s not the done thing to know – let alone ask – what our colleagues are paid. Yet, it’s easy to see how pay transparency can make pay ...
The Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE) is sounding a warning to migrants, that running foul of the law may see them leaving the country prematurely. ...
The government’s plan to get 50,000 people off jobseeker support by 2030 has had a rocky start, writes Catherine McGregor in this excerpt from The Bulletin, The Spinoff’s morning news round-up. To receive The Bulletin in full each weekday, sign up here. Beneficiary numbers are up – and so are ...
Raglan Roast is a staple of Wellington coffee culture. But with five branches across the capital, which one is the best? I am a die-hard Raglan Roast fan. It’s consistently the most affordable cafe in Wellington, and one of the only places you can get a coffee after 3pm. So, ...
Residents of University of Auckland halls are being urged to withhold their accommodation fees from May 1, in a bid to force the university to take student concerns over rent hikes seriously.The University of Auckland is facing a strike from students over the cost of on-campus accommodation. The Students ...
New Zealand and the Philippines have signed a new maritime security agreement and stated their concerns over activity in the South China Sea, as Chinese vessels continue to flout international law. Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and Philippines President Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos committed to signing a Mutual Logistics Supporting Arrangement by ...
The thousands of government “back-office” job cuts are causing widespread pain in the capital city. In today’s episode of The Detail, we speak to three journalists and a think tank researcher, looking at the larger picture around the cuts and what effect it will have on Wellington, a city that’s ...
Opinion: The famed American architect and urban designer Daniel Burnham once said, “Make no little plans. They have no magic to stir men’s blood!” Burnham wouldn’t have been referring to the transport plans in Aotearoa New Zealand over the past five years; projects so big they hadn’t the credibility to ...
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Opinion: With maths understanding at 42 percent for Year 8 students, there’s no doubt something has to be done. But how? The post Financial literacy should be on all of us appeared first on Newsroom. ...
Hineaupounamu ‘Missy’ Nuku has been scaling mountains in Canada for her college basketball team, the Lakeland Rustlers. Alberta is currently home for the 20-year-old point guard, who is in her first year of a scholarship at Lakeland College, where she is studying for a business degree. She has certainly made ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra When ASIO boss Mike Burgess delivered his annual threat assessment earlier this year, he stressed the rising danger posed by espionage and foreign interference. “In 2024, threats to our way of life have surpassed ...
The Tribunal had called on Minister for Children Karen Chhour to provide evidence at an urgent inquiry into the repeal of Section 7AA of the Oranga Tamariki Act. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By T.J. Thomson, Senior Lecturer in Visual Communication & Digital Media, RMIT University Midjourney image by T.J. Thomson As more than half of Australian office workers report using generative artificial intelligence (AI) for work, we’re starting to see this technology affect every ...
“Be there or be square”*
The first of the The Green Party mining our future community tour hui is to be held tonight, 7pm, Wednesday, 11 April, 2012
Green Party MPs Catherine Delahunty and Gareth Hughes invite you to discuss the Government’s broad “drill it, mine it” agenda for Aotearoa – what’s happening, what does it mean to our environment and communities and how do we stop it.
Where – University of Auckland Campus, Auckland
Lecture Theatre B15,
First floor University Library
With the Greens at record highs in polls the subjects being discussed here may well end up in government policy. So make sure you have your say.
*old greeny saying
Last month the UN conducted a world-wide survey. The only question asked was:-
“Would you please give your honest opinion about solutions to the food shortage in the rest of the world?”
The survey was a huge failure because of the following:
1. In Eastern Europe they didn’t know what ‘honest’ meant.
2. In Western Europe they didn’t know what ‘shortage’ meant.
3. In Africa they didn’t know what ‘food’ meant..
4. In China they didn’t know what ‘opinion’ meant.
5. In the Middle East they didn’t know what ‘solution’ meant.
6. In South Africa they didn’t know what ‘please’ meant.
7. In the USA they didn’t know what ‘the rest of the world’ meant.
8. In Australia they hung up as soon as they heard the Indian accent.
Food for thought? I think it was designed as humour but there’s more in it than that.
One source of this used Australasia instead of Australia, and the first response must have been from an American: “Australasia?” Where the hell’s that?
No, not food for thought. Just classic stereotyping.
…and Monsanto suggested that all will be well if GM food was used…
Yesterday Kotahi Tane Huna/One Anonymous Bloke thought it would be fun to ask me for serious calculations about the mass and potential energy of the Twin towers which were attacked on 911. Hard sums he called them.
Which is great because generally people find it hard to read such rapports which is why I usually limit myself to videos such as this, this, this and this all different video’s of building 7 falling into its own foot print and made by News senders who were on the scene that day.
And while I’m sure the Mr. Unknown will move the goal posts because in all probability the 43 pages of this paper are going way over his head and hey on paper you can put any old numbers right? Here is a PDF discussing exactly that.
And for all of you scientists out there who prefer to read scientific papers many of whom were peer reviewed and some of home appeared in peer reviewed scientific magazine and all of whom were written by Scientist who are respected amongst their peers for doing outstanding scientific research in their tenures at universities you might find more to your liking here and here
And here is what fire fighters for 911 truth have to say about the “evidence”.
Oops forgot to link to the video’s of building 7 collapsing. Here is a compilation of all these video’s and here is some footage of amateur video’s showing how huge this building was.
“With regard to matters requiring thought: the less people know and understand about them, the more positively they attempt to argue concerning them.”
― Galileo Galilei
Ten years, 5 months. No evidence.
As I said you wankers will probably move the goal post but calculations is what your colleague troll wanted and that is what he got now go bully someone else and yes that quote applies totally to you and your wanker mates.
I can’t believe the size of the blinkers you guys are wearing and what gets me is that while you fight back the fear and the dawning realisation your rich prick masters don’t give a flying fuck about you trying to silence me and the thousands of scientists, fire fighters, engineers and other professionals risking their jobs and reputations who speak the truth.
There are three things you can not hide for long: The sun, the moon and the truth. Buddha
I love the piety of the faithful.
The first one I opened has this for an abstract:
One conspiracy theory down, which one goes next?
Good for you Rosy, you discovered the scientific method.
Some hypothesis (not conspiracy theory but a scientific theory, BIG difference) will be proven right, some wrong. Now read on.
It may surprise you I wouldn’t have got my degrees without some understanding of the scientific method. Watching videos over and over again until you see what you want to see and then interpreting everything through what you ‘saw’ is not it.
No, just reading one paragraph of one paper to judge the many is.
Rosy, whatever.
I’ve read more on this topic than I’ve ever wanted to. I just had a quick look to see if there was something different… and that was it 😉
OK simple question – do you believe the official account Rosy?
I think the official account is more probable than any other account I’ve seen. (I also think their mistakes before the event haven’t helped with their perceived post-event credibility).
Rosy, for clarity, what do you call the official account? The 911 Commission Report, The NIST report? or are you simply singing the pavlovian aria, repeating ad-nauseum the MSM bleatings that have programmed so much of the population to not believe what they saw, but what they are told they saw.
My family would lol if they saw you insulting me with that ‘Pavlovian response to MSM’ line. I’m not known for being in thrall of ‘authority’.
I’ve read NIST and browsed the 911 Commission report, so for me they are both part of the official account.
I’m not an engineer, physicist, emergency response person nor was I an eyewitness so like most people I get my information interpreted from others. Were you there? are you qualified to opine? One of us will be sucking eggs in 50 years when the original docs are released. Until then you’re welcome to interpret things in a way that makes sense to you, and I’ll do the same.
I believe the NIST report and i know a little more than most about fires and accident investigation. However i don’t feel any need to try to ‘prove’ all the conspiracy theorists wrong
If you “believe” (a matter of faith) I suspect you didn’t read the NIST report, where the question of WTC7 has a convoluted and unlikely explanation.
From a group of architects and engineers – http://www.ae911truth.org/en/news-section/57-news-releases-by-others/450-scientific-theory.html
A free-falling building means there is no supporting structure whatsoever below to slow the building’s fall. The NIST theory does not explain this astounding fact. (more at link)
Investigate all aspects of WTC7 and your understanding of the whole matter should improve to the extent that you no longer need faith to consider the many outstanding questions.
let me repeat: i have read the NIST report and i understood it. “Believe” was a very bad word to use – I should have said: i accept that the NIST report was written by professionals who have a good understanding, and their analysis of the evidence gives me certainty the WTC buildings burnt down. Nothing else i’ve read, and that’s plenty, has led me to have any doubts about their findings.
There have been no other instances in history where a steel framed skyscraper “burnt down” collapsing to the ground on its own foot print.
Yet suddenly we get three in one day, each of the three having suffered assymetrical impact and fire damage, yet each collapsing in a completely symmetric and instantaneous way?
i strongly suspect you have not read the NIST report at all, but may have glanced at a couple of quotes from it as any rational person who has actually read the report knows full well the questions raised by the numerous omissions of fact, far outweigh any conclusive proof offered by its flawed methods and fictitious theories. All Hail Thermal Expansion !!!
How can you put any faith in a report that has actually changed its official final and complete story . . . three times ???
i’d be more concerned if the report had been accepted in its entirety first up without any critical analysis. Peer reviews and revision based on expert input is essential in this kind of investigation. The findings are critical for future building design and fire safety.
Improving upon an essential and changeable fiction is a very necessary process, yes.
Isn’t it remarkable that “probable” is all we have to go on at the moment as opposed to say, “beyond all reasonable doubt”.
Interesting isn’t it.
By the way, how did they explain the issue of how an amateur student single engine light plane pilot managed to successfully fly a commuter passenger jet nap-of-the-earth (well under radar detection altitudes) over urban terrain for at least a mile in order to hit the side of a low-rise structure like the Pentagon?
That’s fucking expert flying even for a seasoned military professional who is experienced “on type” (i.e. has many flying hours on that specific kind of plane).
Ok I’ll go with beyond reasonable doubt. We’ll have to disagree on this one.
Being pedantic and just for the record:
– a student pilot
– studying only on light single engine planes
– successfully flew a large passenger jet type (that he had zero hours experience on)
– nap-of-the-earth hugging the ground for over a mile
– on an approach that he had never used or practiced before
– straight into the side of the Pentagon
– the first time he tried it (i.e. he didn’t muck up his approach, overshoot and have to double back, or abort his final approach because he was on the wrong heading and be forced to retry, etc)
Incredible piloting skills, unvelieveable one might say. The only two planes ever to have vapourized on impact, about as convincing as the passports found unscathed under the rubble of the twin towers, or the building 7 “collapse”
Beyond reasonable doubt – Please never serve on a jury!
Edit – cv, nothing in those lines of enquiry to look at mate. I practiced those maneuvers daily while doing a PPL. Amazing what you can learn in a Grumman
No debris to see here, especially not from this angle.
I’ve been looking for the very funny comedy skit where Bush and Cheney get together to plan the whole thing – figure out how to bribe the tens-of-thousands of air-traffic controllers, engineers, police and firecrew etc etc.
It’s impossible to find though because of all the other witless crap from the loony echo chamber. If anyone has a link I’d love to read it again 🙂
Although I accept that it is almost impossible to change anyone’s deeply held beliefs the is ample evidence that the pentagon plane didn’t ‘vapourize’ on impact there were plenty of pieces scattered about.
If you do simple search on google there’s oodles of photos showing wreckage.
to Higher Standard 11:26
oh you poor sad puppy. If that wreckage is what you believe came from a 757 airliner then you are in need of either, a: new eyes or b: a few basic lessons in spatial reasoning. Where are the wings???? the seats ???
and where are two six tonne Jet engines ?? Where are the undercarriage assemblies? Where is anything apart from a few scraps of painted aluminium and a rotor head that only matches an aircraft engine that is not only used on much much smaller planes but also can be found in a few drone aircraft and some missile assemblies.
but to return to your wreckage … do not overlook the fact that this evidence of a crime was illegally collected in the hours after the attack, and magically dissappeared before any official investigation was begun, much like the steel from the towers for example
you sad sad puppy, Q. when your Uncle took your nose did you believe that too?
F-14 Tomcat??? lol
Yus, a plane will always be plane-shaped, especially after it flies through reinforced concrete at speed with substantial amounts of fuel on board.
Oh that’s right, a plane can’t burn.
Yes an amateur pilot flew that huge commercial jet in patters which experienced military pilots said are almost impossible, right into the pentagon, and it left damage the size of a cesna!
Yet nobody saw the jet, and no cameras picked it up on the way to the building, and the debris was , lets call it, non existent!
Facinating stuff!
I fly planes, my old man flies plans, his old man flew planes in the air force, and none of us think that a plane that size hit the pentagon! The evidence around that impact was…where was it again, non existent!
“…non-existent”? Not according to Allyn E. Kilsheimer. Who was at the scene. Were you at the scene, Muzza? Didn’t think so.
LOL – What about all the cameras Bloke….
Oh they all failed, apart from one, which showed nothing..
Guess the plane was moving too fast for it…
One name is all you got
Fuck off!
Oh dear. Yes Muzza, that’s right, that’s the only name I’ve got. A Google search for eye witness accounts returns no results, honest, no really, trust me.
I can also reveal that Thierry Meyssan was definitely right there, standing next to you, Muzza.
as stated by the authorities themselves there are/were approximately 63 cameras pointing towards the very area of the Pentagon where a large commercial Airliner is meant to have impacted. The views are from hotels and gas stations and freeway cameras and cctv security systems in the area. Even the Pentagon admits that over twenty cameras exist and were recording the impact site. The Pentagon was at the time, one of the most cctv surveillance heavy buildings in the entire world.
yet oddly, the only images they could find of use were six completely useless images from behind a carpark barrier partially obscuring the stated flight path and impact site.
Even if you only take the same time period that the six frames the FBI released images came from, allow for abare a minimum image capture system of five frames a second that is still over three hundred single frames of images that were recorded, confiscated and never released…why?
Just for fun you may want to explain how a plane with a wingspan of over a hundred feet folds up into a sixteen foot wide imapct zone, has two six tonne engines evaporate due to the intense fireball yet leaves telephone books and office chairs unsinged barely thrity feet away?
Explain? Various people already have, from Popular Mechanics on up, but according to you their explanations don’t add up, because you reckon they just don’t, or something.
Not that you back up your vague feelings with actual calculations, though, and you can’t even all agree on the same narrative. I think you don’t understand the Physics involved, so you mask your ignorance with incredulity.
PS: re: cameras, you mean to tell me that they could bribe all those people and mount a covert inside attack on their own armed forces, but not fake a few blurry CCTV images? Are you completely dense?
I am not going to sit here rehashing ten years of dialogues and providing thousands of links to scientifically verifiable work because you fail to present any credible credentials that you seek the truth. The evidence you put forward only promotes doubt that you have even brought the most basic tenets of critical thought to bear on any of the Official Story. Even when the Official Story constantly needs updating every-time new scientifically proven data is presented to contest it.
..and Popular Mechanics??? well they have had their bugle calls silenced so many times even the original die hard pundits of their propaganda steer clear of it.
in short, the Standard has seen this dialogue many times before and perhaps if you spent some time going through the vast wealth of data previously spoken of on the site then you would not look like a man holding a sieve to capture the rain.
To save time, here’s all the facts presented so far by the 9/11 denial movement:
And here are the names of the real conspirators:
Hey Voice does it scare you to think there are things happening in the world, beyond your control or comprehension! It must do, as between Bloke and yourself, the thought of such a scenario allows you to believe in fantasy, the same way you ridicule others for, hypocrite much!
Denier, truther , racist, anti semite…..Thats all you got, is labels….and a very closed mind!
Maybe Bloke can repeat once more “don’t have such an open mind that your brains fall out”
Hey I’ll call you next time there is a quiz on somewhere, keep your phone handy!
If you cast your gaze upon a few of my responses on this very page, you will debunk your own bullshit – I have spent plenty of time looking at plenty of your “evidence” and finding the same tired old zombie crap reheated over and over.
Take your whining, “Freedom” – first you draw my attention to a lack of camera footage, then when I address that you back right off. Come on, how come the all powerful, able-to-suborn-anyone-they-please secret chiefs couldn’t muster up a few grainy ol’ photos eh? All those “eye-witnesses” and they couldn’t even manage a bit of Photoshop. Were the secret chief’s computers down that day? Perhaps they’d gone Galt for the weekend, no\?
Oops, is that thought a bit too critical for you?
I’m excitedly waiting for the call, Muzza! I sure hope you ring soon because after waiting 10 and a half years for any evidence of a conspiracy other than the actual one that caused 9/11, I tend to get a little bored.
Denier, turther, racist etc are not merely labels, they accurately describe Ev’s political position, based on her own words. Don’t forget climate change denier, either. If you want to defend the illogical and unprovable fantasies of a right wing loon, that’s your problem, not mine. Me, I’m going to stick with rationality, empirical method and left wing politics.
http://thestandard.org.nz/open-mike-11042012/comment-page-1/#comment-457950
Kotahi Tane Huna,
firstly, all video footage was confiscated by the authorities, they freely admit that.
i am completely befuddled by what the hell you are talking about.
“how come the all powerful, able-to-suborn-anyone-they-please secret chiefs couldn’t muster up a few grainy ol’ photos eh? ” that is the very question people would like to know. ‘They’ confiscated every image, every tape, every hard drive that held or could possibly hold an image of the aircraft, So where is the plane? Ask the authorities !
Certainly there is still room for the occasional comment here and there but this forum is generally exhausted of dialogue on 911. So i am not backing off in quivering fear as you suggest. I am simply respecting the wishes of our hosts by not bothering to do battle on certain blog boards everytime some troll wants an itch scratched. There are better uses for this medium, as The Standard has proven time and again, NZ is in a very fragile place in its history.
Trying to convince those that support the Official Story of 911 to question the findings, takes a back seat when whatever paradigm shifting event required to personally wake you up is obviously still some time off. Perhaps when your grandkids are standing in a meal-line presenting their RFID implant and receiving their work voucher for the next day, you may think back and quietly feel very very ill. It has all been said, for over ten years the debate has continued and yes there are fanatics on both sides. Yes there are people doing the Truth movement much harm. There are also thousands of highly qualified and respected people who certainly know a hell of a lot more on the topic than you do. Popular Mechanics? LOL, and i guess G W Bush won two elections also.
If the official Story is so simple, why was Saudi Arabia not attacked as that is where the terrorists purportedly came from? oh yeah and how come so many of the 19 high-jackers are alive today ????? And WTC7 fell down because of Thermal Expansion ? ? ?
See how stupid the story gets without even trying.
You want the Truth to be a simple story. One that can be laid at the doorstep of a bunch of guys in a cave. It is not that simple. It will not go away. If you decide to rehash the illusory rhetoric that passes for 911 reality then do not abuse others simply because they have the common sense not to swallow the koolaid.
Because the AQ leadership was in Afghanistan. OBL had had his saudi citizenship revoked, he had declared war on Saudi Arabia, reasons like that.
Really? I assume you have reliable links for that. How come AQ released martyrdom videos for the hijackers? Why did senior AQ planners do interviews detailing their planning fo 9/11? I assume you’ve read Yosri Fouda’s book “masterminds of terror”. along with the looming tower it’s a must read whatever side of the debate you are on.
I must admit that I tend to find truthers to be remarkebly uninformed about the official theory, for people trying to critique it.
It was a factor, yes. Read the NIST report, try and understand it. Do you think thermal expansion is a trivial thing, by the way?
Not really. No where near as tupid as any alternate theory that gets put forward, oh hang on there are none. Just wiffle.
“WTC7 fell down because of thermal expansion.” No, you tiresome parrot, it fell down because of damaged sustained in a terrorist attack, as evidenced by a highly detailed report – linked above. You think you can summarise that in one easy soundbite, and then you have the stupidity to lecture me about evidence and science.
Do you think the US needed to do this to justify attacking Iraq? When have they ever cared about justification before? Chomsky quite clearly outlined the military doctrine driving their quest for oil – you think they have to make shit up on top of that? How absurdly naive.
You think the evidence that there is a war on democracy somehow validates your fantasies about cruise missiles and thermite and controlled demolition and all the other facile dreck that keeps you clicking feverishly?
Before you talk about respecting others, don’t you think a little self-respect might be in order, instead of humiliating yourself over again?
LOL. This caught my reply in PB’s response (I didn’t bother to read the original comment, naturally). So the truthers really believe that someone carried out this huge conspiracy but didn’t even bother to have the hijackers they blamed killed? Seriously???
Not sure how assymetrical damage mainly to one side of the building structure caused the entire building structure to symmetrically collapse, instantaneously.
You see, that normally takes a carefully planned controlled demolition event to accomplish because normally severe assymetrical damage would cause the building to collapse unevenly on to one side.
It might even leave parts of the building standing upright as other parts collapsed and tore away.
Yep, he spends a lot of time on ranting debunking forums or he gets the talking points fed to him.
It is still a hotly debated subject. I’m with you guys on this one but only a real independent investigation with all the video’s confiscated around the Pentagon will solve this tantalising conundrum. I personally think something like this is what hit the Pentagon.
I personally think it would be fun to build a pit, an arena of sorts, and let you argue it out with the families of the people who were on the plane.
There you go, another one of those Key talking pints rolled out to manipulate the emotional environment in which 911 needs to be discussed to keep the official conspiracy theory in tact.
It is the survivors and family members of people who died in those towers that had to lobby for 1.5 years for an official investigation which when it happened was judged to be a cover up and a great big lie by those same family members and to this day it is the family members who want a new and independent investigation.
For those of you interested in what family members really want and feel here is a heartbreaking documentary called: Press for truth.
Here is how they are still trying to get answers to their questions
Here is a list of names (not all inclusive) of family members and survivors of 911 speaking out on 911 and to this day I have several facebook friends who have lost loved ones on that day.
I would personally like to see them in a pit with you you manipulating bastard or perhaps not because I wouldn’t want to see an asshole like you cause them more pain with your horrible insensitive use of their loss as an argument to stifle the need for a new and independent investigation into what happened on that day.
“…the need for a new and independent investigation…” is precisely what you have failed to show exists. Abject, complete, utter, total, failure.
Ten years, five months, no evidence.
Just the same tired old right-wing bullshit about government conspiracies. Fits with the rabid survivalist narrative much?
I have wasted enough time on this today. Keep believing the fantasies. The best thing about your abuse of me and others is that you are going to get more tired and more bitter and learn more ways to fail and wallow in ridicule, for the rest of your life, most likely. And I’m going to laugh at you 🙂
Wow, this is what is called projection in Psychiatry. I haven’t seen a single rational argument from you. Only emotional pressure, ridicule and warped talking points and now the old I have wasted enough time on you meme. Classic. Have a nice day.
*Smooch!* Any time 🙂
Famous last word. ROFL
I don’t think it was a cruise missile, it needed something heavy enough to mechanically penetrate the wall of the inner ring too.
I wonder if you have read Urich’s report, which “…refutes the popular notion that the building
weighed 500,000 tons.”
It quotes NIST as a reliable source. Oh noes, he’s joined the dark side 😆
Or the Journal of 9/11 Studies, for example, which presents the following:
“The widespread belief among those who question the official account of 9/11, that a large plane did not hit the Pentagon on 9/11, is unsupported by the evidence.”
As for FFFNET, Eric Lawyer was exposed as a liar years ago. http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?t=183072
But keep clinging to your beliefs, hold them tight, eh. Just make sure you only ever consider evidence that supports them, though.
ROFL, you call that an exposure?
Why is it that when material proven to be correct but coming from a tainted institution all of a sudden a “debunking” argument.
Why is self doubt and research possibly correcting one hypothesis all of a sudden proof that all the hypothesis which we were able to proof correct as incorrect.
And why is a rant of a forum all of a sudden proof that someone is a liar. Erik Lawyer points out that the standard according to which all fires are investigated was not applied to the 911 collapses/fires and that’s OK because the standard set in 1000s of precedents was not a Law?
What I do get an inkling of is that you spend an inordinate amount of time online reading “debunking” sites and you are a master of all the Key “debunking” points. I wonder how much you get paid?
Oh the pay’s quite good actually. Shilling for the man is a growth industry these days of course, what with all the right wing claptrap to defend, and I’ve had a few lucky breaks. I’ll leave your fertile imagination to fill in the blanks.
“Ten years, five months, no evidence.” Cheers TRP 🙂
Same as me Travellerev. Although he normally does the early morning shift and I take the afternoon.
It’s a good gig. You should get into it. It might give you some spare cash to send to your mate Richard Gage keeping him in the style he has become accustomed to.
Oh looki here, Work day started has it? Come in at 8 am, get coffee start the computer and hook up to the Standard for more hour long time wasting.
Maybe you’re on the dole Gossi, maybe you’re a paid shill because if I was your boss I sure as shit wouldn’t want you to spend hours debunking mad conspiracy theorists.
is not scientifically possible
Trav, I am curious as to why you continue to try and proof to an unreceptive audience that there was a conspiracy behind the Twin Towers nightmare. From where I see it there quite possibly could BUT even if there was who can ever be called to account.
My take is that there was a massive “intellegence failure” from the CIA etc, and that even if it was known there was something afoot lots of parties had agendas that sidelined them. The same has been said of Pearl Harbour, again there is no definitive proof of systemic conspiracy or blind eyes.
So if we have no real proof of conspiracy OR if the people are going to ignore it (i.e Joe Public and their “leaders”), why concentrate on the act. What can be easily demonstrated is that the US and its allies used this act as “justification” for wars they needed to fight for geo political reasons such as oil. That is where the lack of honesty becomes apparent, the simple line that “We in the west needed to kick the shit out of Iraq to grab their oil so we could continue happy motoring for another few years”.
expressed so succintly with the recent announcement that one of the very archtiects of the deception that signed the death warrants for a million civilians admits the lies and the whole world shrugs and carries on ..
On that, I would agree with you Bored.
It is difficult to convince someone that a conspiracy theory is false, because what ever contradictory evidence that is produced is considered by the conspiracy theorists to have been manufactured by the conspirators so that it doesn’t appear to be a conspiracy. How do you argue against that?
Yep, then you get accused of being a ‘paid shill’, without any hint as to who the paymaster might be or what services they are paying for.
Still, 911 truth denial is mainly righties arguing with righties, and I’m fine with that. Distracts them from doing real damage elsewhere, such as in the idiot cousin to the Turth movement, climate change denial.
Well bugger me. How many shooters on the grassy knoll again?
The ‘spirit’ of the “magic bullet” often comes to mind during the regular 9/11 discussions here.
I pay little heed to the utterings of the US Military Industrial set up as it used to be known, hanging ‘chads’ leading to illegitimate President Dubya, more invasions of sovereign lands than you can shake a Humvee at, what a bunch of assholes. The whole set up is bent and undemocratic. The attack on Iraq was a major earn for a motley crew of corporates.
9/11 events are far from proven IMO, and I don’t like the bullying tone of responses to Ev’s posts. I don’t have the dedication or time to devote to the 9/11 building collapses but something there stinks bigtime. Ev always links to videos or documents that are worth a look. Lay people I know watch some of the vids and just don’t buy the official line. As Bhudda said (n.b. as a marxist I am not a major Bhudda quoter) “three things always come out; the sun, the moon and the truth.
Bored,
Do you have any idea how many people lurk on this blog?
While the above idjits ridicule me and the others who know the official Conspiracy theory can not be true because basic laws of physics can’t be broken and who want a new and independent investigation into the events of 911 a lot of people who are intelligent, curious and waking up to the fact that a small group of rich people are destroying the global economy for their own gain find my blog and other websites with information through debates such as this and as long as people are dying as a result of the events of that day I and tens of thousandsof others will keep it alive in the communal memory so that one day the real perpetrators may be brought to justice.
Who would believe anything James Randi says, he is the ultimate fraudster.
The government is refusing to reveal the amount of taxpayer funding and other details around the public private partnership involved in building two new schools in Auckland.
I have been involved in chool governance long enough to realise that anything to do with school property can be very fraught, and new buildings are very vulnerable to flaws, often because of building shortcuts and insufficient attention to detail (often to save money). What is the record of the companies involved, and what is their liability?
There is also nothing in this deal abut how appropriate the spaces are for modern teaching, for example are there quiet spaces and low sensory areas, and how easy would it be for a child or teacher in a wheelchair to get out in a hurry?
Trust us we know what we are doing, as Craig Foss says, only makes me more suspicious.
I have tried to find who “Learning Infrastructure Partners” is. The best I have been able to come up with is http://www.nbr.co.nz/article/nz-consortium-preferred-bidder-first-ppp-school-ck-114649 from the NBR, Hawkins are the only company I recognised from the consortium, the others are all acronyms. Mary Wilson did better last night than Simon Mercep this morning, but neither managed to get anything out of Craig Foss about costs, etc. He just mouthed the party line re “commercial sensitivity”, and “all will be revealed”. No one is asking why the two new schools are going the Donkeys electrorate and not where they are really needed like Christchurch.
Interesting it’s being underwritten by the taxpayer via the super fund money channelled through Morrison & Co.
From MED….
“The Learning Infrastructure consortium is made up of firms with significant experience in designing and building New Zealand schools including ASC Architects and Hawkins Construction. Programmed Facility Maintenance (PFM) will maintain the school buildings. Morrison & Co’s Public Infrastructure Partnership Fund will provide the equity and Westpac Bank will provide the senior debt.”
I can recall Morrison & Co were bragging potential returns of more than 20% when they launched the Public Infrastructure Partnership Fund.
Morrison is part of Infratil, Super Fund is also involved with Infratil in the ex-Shell petrol stations.
From Foss…
““I’m confident Learning Infrastructure Partners is up to the task of creating world class facilities for 21st century learners, this is important because the PPP model transfers all risk onto the private partner”
Err, no the Govt still carries some of the risk through the super fund.
Actually, the government carries all of the risk as it can’t allow the schools to fail and, IMO, the Learning Infrastructure consortium will be wound up and unable to be found once the buildings start failing.
Another one for you Janice, this looks to be the maintenance contractor…. an Aus player who call themselves Programmed Facility Maintenance back in Aus .
http://www.programmed.co.nz/
Curious the domain name was registered two days before the election in November 2008. Odd coincidence.
They have a media release on their Aus site confirming it
http://www.programmed.com.au
Will be interesting to see who their 25yr contract is with – the Govt or the owner of the building.
Thanks for that DH, I still couldn’t find any names of directors or CEO on the site, only clients and photos of smiling people working hard. I wonder what blind trusts are also investing in this.
I doubt there any Janice, I’d expect the business structure to be pretty standard with the usual shell company to hide the parents from liabilities. If there’s any corruption here it would likely be the jobs for favours variety; some cosy directorships or similar for a select few and perhaps some inside info on share prices etc. Could be there’s been some kickbacks already to swing the PPP concept, I doubt we’ll ever know for sure there.
Maybe our media will do their job for a change & start asking the serious questions but I wouldn’t hold out much hope on that front.
Wouldn’t it be nice to have a guaranteed job & income for 25 years. Alas it’s not for us mortals.
Peter Dunne was on Firstline this morning laying out his case for supporting increasing the length of Paid Parental Leave.
He said it was far too soon to worry about the possible use of a “rare” veto to block the bill, should it get the support of all of Labour, Greens, Mana, Maori Party, NZF and United Future.
As coalition partners United Future and Maori Party are in similar positions, but should be free to support a bill that fits with their policies.
The National blitzkrieg in favour of the misnamed “civil detention” is being rolled out.
On Sunday the SST had an in-depth article on Murray Wilson aka “the Beast of Blenheim”.
Then true to form yesterday Cabinet discussed and approved Judith Collins’ proposed legislation.
And this morning on Morning Report the police chipped in. Former police officer Nigel Hendrcks who was stabbed continuously by a recidivist and paralyzed was interviewed. Understandably at a human level he thinks his attacker should never be released. The Sensible Sentencing Trust is fully in support. No surprise there.
Then the officer in charge of the Wilson case chipped in and inevitably supported the proposal.
A couple of opponents made very qualified statements.
But this proposal breaches the universal declaration of human rights and is an utterly appalling attempted political wedge. Labour cannot support it but National will then attempt to paint them as “weak on crime”.
Collins stated that a Bill of Rights Certificate will be issued. It will be interesting to see how much strain the English Language will be subject to in order to justify something that clearly breaches some fundamental rights.
“…Adam Dudding comes face to face with the ‘Beast of Blenheim’….”
Not in the SST article he didn’t. Not even close. Laughable.
It seems that the sentence of preventive detention would give the prison system the right to hold onto the thoroughly warped and vicious. It is very expensive letting such people out into society under control and restraints. And the human rights of others who haven’t committed a string of vicious offences should be paramount. It is not fair to victims, usually women and children, and people who have become the object of focussed hatred, to be the tethered goats to a warped vicious personality.
One example is of the woman murdered within hours by a voluntary patient at a mental hospital who checked herself out. In that case I don’t know what could have been done to restrain her but many women in NZ are trying to have a life but have become the obssession of a diseased mind and their lives are filled with fear. Who cares about their rights in this great country? Not many men, who can afford to be objective, philosophical and legalistic about it, being usually untouched by such danger.
But surely this should be taken into account with the original court sentence? It seems wrong to me to over-ride that court sentence.
“Under current sentencing regimes, Wilson would be a prime candidate for preventive detention – the open-ended jailing of sexual offenders deemed too dangerous ever to return to society. There are around 270 prisoners in this category, and although they are all technically entitled to parole, only a couple a year are ever granted it.
Wilson slipped that net because his sexual convictions pre-date the arrival of preventive detention.
Wilson is unusual not because his crimes are horrific, nor because his attitude towards rehabilitation has been hopeless (when asked last year if he would stick to a post-release condition that he have no contact with children under the age of 16 he said “I don’t give a stuff about it”). He is unusual because those facts aren’t enough to keep him locked up.”
The best thing that could have happened to this oxygen thief would have been a bullet into the temple post conviction.
So HS are you comfortable with changing of the rules after the game has finished? Not a teensy bit anxious that the Executive should determine who gets locked away not based on the rule of law but based on how icky the subject is? Not worried at the slipperly slope to the curtailing of our freedoms this sort of action represents?
Yes, No and No
Cool, thanks!
In extreme situations retrospective legislation is required – this appears to be one of those times. Do I like it? No but that doesn’t mean that it isn’t necessary.
But this is not a case where an unusual legal finding has popped up. The law was very clear when Wilson was sentenced. He received a long but finite sentence. There was nothing controversial about what happened. Why should his expectation of freedom be taken away from him for political gain?
No, it was a case where the judge couldn’t put him away indefinitely even though that was obviously needed. The judge recognised this at the time but the law wouldn’t allow it.
It’s National and probably is being done almost solely for political gain but that doesn’t mean that the community doesn’t need to be permanently protected from this person. In this case the right of the community not to be put in danger takes precedence over the persons expectation of freedom.
Oh ffs someone acting under the influence of severe but obviously under-diagnosed mental illness is not even in the same league as a criminal that the double-bunking put-’em-in-chains-crowd failed to rehabilitate the first dozen times.
I am thoroughly in favour of preventative detention of those who pose a danger to themselves and to others. My biggest issue with it is how we prevent the abuse of detention by politicians and pressure groups, simply because they regularly demonstrate that they cannot be trusted to be our “guardians”.
I’m in favour of medical detention for people who pose a danger to themselves or others.
I regard the danger of these few individuals (who A]are incorrigible serious offenders; and B]committed their last offence before preventative detention came into effect) as being less than the danger of a government that feels entitled to retrospectively lock people up for previously addressed criminal charges.
First they came for the psychopathic fucktards, but I was not a psychopathic fucktard, and all that…
Preventative detention laws today give the Courts the power to lock away people like Wilson. The legislation is to try and catch about 10 historical cases where PD was not available and these people are coming to the end of their sentences. The problem is not the fact of indefinite detention per se, just the retrospective effect of the proposed law change.
Mickey are you opposed to preventative detention?
I do not for a second think that the National Government are pushing for political gain when a person possess such a risk to vulnerable members of the community.
A sex abuse survivor serves a long sentence, (45 years in my case to date) the course of their life is impacted on in many ways.
No Treetop I am not.
But I am opposed to the state changing the rules after someone has been sentenced.
I appreciate this is a really difficult subject. Wilson and his ilk are scum and all victims deserve the utmost respect and support. But changing the rules part way through is a breach of basic rights concepts.
This is the wedge issue of wedge issues. When yourself and Draco adopt measured responses in favour I can see that those opposed to the proposal are in for a hard time.
Generally speaking I’m with you. The rules aren’t perfect and we have a process for changing and, hopefully, improving them and that change should come into effect no sooner than on the day that the change was legislated. I really don’t like retrospectively changing the rules but there are times when we have to accept an exception. This is, IMO, one of those times because the community does need to be protected from this sociopath.
That said, we also have to be aware of when the government tries to retrospectively change the rules when it’s not needed and stop them from doing so.
This is the wedge issue of wedge issues.
I thought about search and rescue last night, in particular Pike River. The reason that no rescue team entered the mine was because it was deemed to be too dangerous when the decision was made. Morally and ethically this is also a wedge issue when the safety of the rescuers cannot be guaranteed.
But I am opposed to the state changing the rules after someone has been sentenced.
In the case of pedophiles/rapists/murderers society now has a better understanding of the damage/injury which is caused to those who are perpetrated against, this is why we have preventative detention for those who are deemed to be a very high risk of reoffending. Were someone to have been sentenced prior to the introduction of preventative detention and not be deemed to be a public risk today and detained after the sentence had been completed, I to would oppose the changing of the rules.
Detail of the proposed legislation is required to ensure that a person’s liberty is not being with held unless it is necessary for the safety of the public.
Free sharing of published scientific research is gaining some momentum. It can’t happen soon enough IMO.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2012/apr/09/wellcome-trust-academic-spring
It is long past time this was addressed.
Academic journals make a fortune out of publishing research, most of which is tax payer funded or would otherwise be public domain.
Universities and private citizens are paying for access to their own research results.
Many times I go to link to an article to find it is behind a paywall.
It also makes it very hard for private citizens to check up on the rubbish and propaganda from politicians and the media.
My understanding has been that academic journals pretty much just break even, and there’s not much profit in it. What’s the evidence of vast profits being made? Maybe a handful of the MOST high status journals make some profit, but I reckon most don’t.
It’s not so much that vast profits are being made, although 35% profit margins is quoted, it’s the money academic libraries have to spend to access research papers – up to 20,000 euros/yr according to the article.
And it’s the universities research as well that was paid for by the taxpayers. Making a profit off other peoples work that was paid for by the taxpayers is a rort.
The journals themselves make very little money. The publishers/distributors of the journals like Elsevier make a killing.
An indication of how the proposed charter schools will operate.
http://www.oregonlive.com/gresham/index.ssf/2012/04/teachers_at_troutdale_charter.html#incart_mce
Very interesting Joe. Rote learning seems to be the essence. Depends on how the connectivity works with real learning problems .
I can teach my children to say E=MCsquared. And answer tests which has E = ? But whether they or I understand what it means and how it connects is seriously in doubt.
The argument that kids do need to be able to read and operate basic maths in order to progress is true but surely most do that now anyway.
It also reminds me of those very insulated religious groups who are totally sure of their beliefs and the kids also being brought up so believing and in total denial of the real world view.
Be interesting to see just what the NZ version of Charter schools are planning.
here is an interview with a lady who has tried for years to highlight what is happening to education around the world by focusing on steps taken in America over the last thirty years. It includes a link to her free e-book. A publication some may find has many relevant points as to why Education in NZ is not what it used to be , and is fast heading in the wrong direction.
http://tickergrail.blogspot.co.nz/2011/12/secret-history-of-western-education.html
This link offers a glimpse into the mindset of those who have worked so diligently over the past century to destroy the human potential that is the backbone of education.
http://www.deliberatedumbingdown.com/MomsPDFs/Death%20of%20FreeWill_12_11_2010.pdf
and a whole bunch of related articles, videos, interviews,some good, some waffly, all of them pertinent to the issue.
http://www.deliberatedumbingdown.com/
lastly a couple of simple graphics that do the whole thousand word thing really well
http://static.infowars.com/2011/03/i/article-images/21school_dees.jpg
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-ExXXGJAVx0w/TvncUHXfEfI/AAAAAAAAH3o/TNcqdTBZ97s/s1600/dumbing+down+of+america.jpg
Some great graphics there freedom. The trouble is that to outsiders a Developmentally based program looks so “messy” whereas a heavily controlled behavioural type looks “good”. It is easier to persuade parents that a sequence of tested steps must mean good teaching even though no-one really learns that way.
In the first 5 years children learn the huge majority of their lifelong learning in a jumbled way at their own pace and in their own unique way with nary a test in sight. Well until recently!
You know it Ianmac, The herd mentality must be enforced at all costs for fear of what calamity could face the world if the billions of young minds being borne actually were allowed to garner independent thought and implement rationality into their life process. Godalmighty can you just imagine the hell that would be created in a few short generations. Fewer wars, less poverty, better housing, cleaner heavy industry, widespread fair employment practices,
the horror, the horror
Thanks Ianmac and Freedom, something of substance here: cant help thinking that education has become a follow the money game (i.e a commodity transaction) as opposed to equipping everybody with some ability to think critically. Those who “already have” would not want that would they?
when you remove the ability to think rationally, you get to do fun stuff like this …
“It is being used to get the people used to new types of documentation and carrying new types of identity cards pursuant to the United States instituting a formal policy of internal passports.
“What Primakov finds funny are what he calls these ‘right wing flag wavers’ who were so anti-communist and they’re supporting a state policy of internal passports. The irony is deafening.”
Now ask yourself, whose domestic security policies have we been mimicking these past years and who has been at the forefront of biometric data implementation?
Since Gutenberg first looked to press knowledge instead of grapes, education has always been about how best to control the masses to facilitate the incumbent authority. It has never been about your independent development as a free human being. Don’t believe me, count the drones. The ones beside you and the ones now flying above.
Counting the drones…Gos, HS, PG etc etc all touting the party line even when they don’t receive direct benefit in a rational self interested way. Then there is the other party line from most of the rest of us who argue about fixing a paradigm that cant be fixed because we cant see any alternative structure…my God it hurts the brain to imagine anything outside of the box. We just have not been educated to do so…wonder why… proves your point.
Freedom, the Charlotte Iserbyt document is indeed very interesting, I read this a while back.
I should expect that the document will come under fire from those who would call “conspiracy theory”, at the content of the book, because accepting a “dumbing down” is juxta to their belief that they are free in their thoughts. The dumbing down is also a key component of the propaganda war, which of course hold direct ties into the wider context of world conditioning!
Control of the mind is critical to the status quo, but more importantly, to the direction the stakeholders of the status quo want to take humanity! Those same stakeholders have spent generations studying and learning the human mind!
Education at all levels from pre to tertiary has been, and is being subjected to the same ideology!
The time spent on churning over details of the NY Twin Towers and Pentagon disaster should be
extended to cover other important historic events. There is such a lot to learn about the details of World War 1 and World War 2 for instance. Understanding the latest disaster shouldn’t become so all encompassing that thoughts and information about past larger ones should be boxed, filed in dusty corners and forgotten.
I have been reading about Chamberlain in Britain before World War 2 and have gained a different interpretation of his peace-making forays which I had learned were appeasing and lacking integrity. The time between the talks he held and the declaration of war was vital for a better-prepared Britain to withstand the onslaught of offensive instead of being in a very weak and vulnerable condition.
It was easy for history to mock Chamberlain’s “Peace in Our Time” yet the window gained may have been the time which lead to UK surviving – just. History is vulnerable to just what is chosen and how it is interpreted. Open minds are needed I suppose. Travellev might have a point but why would “they” lie? Mmmmm.
Rubbish. This analysis ignores the fact that the German army was in no shape to fight a two front war in 1938 especially as it would have had to commit most of the troops to defeating
Czechoslovakia as they had a world class defensive system and some of the best tanks in Europe. These were the same tanks that the Germans eventually used in great numbers in the Battle of France two years later. On top of this was the fact that the German military hierarchy were still very suspicious of the Nazis at this stage and thought it would be madness to start a shooting war against the UK and France. There were only a handful of third rate garrison divisions in the west of Germany that could be spared to fight the Allies. A concerted effort would have cut Germany in two quite quickly. For a decent read on this I highly recommend Len Deighton’s Blitzkrieg.
A pertinent question Gozzie, is whose side (fascist/Allies) would you have been on in WWII?, assuming that you are not now in your 90s, which might make for an easier conclusion.
So Hitler would have gifted Stalin a bit more of Poland. England being 4-800 fighter aircraft down on its numbers in the Battle of Britain would have fucked them. Then you get into the “scapa flow fleet cutting logistics for Sea Lion” debate, but of course with Bismark, Tirpitz and Scharnhorst all operational in the North Sea that changes the equation. And now we’re in “what if what if what if” territory. Good for cheap novels, not so hot for judging the leaders of the time.
We are not talking about Poland here but Czechoslavakia. The German’s would have had a hard time giving away bits of Czechoslavakia to the Soviet Union and carving up Poland at the same time. On top of this is the fact that 1938 was the height of the great Red Army purges in the Soviet Union. They certainly were not in a shape to participate very easily in any offensive operations in support of the Germans. Czechoslavakia had one of the more modern armies in Europe at this stage as well as top class military fortifications along the border with Germany. Virtually the entire German army would have had to have concentrated againstthem and the French and British would have not faced much opposition in the West.
Oh please. England/France mass on Rhineland border (but in not too much of a rush because of the Maginot line), Germany polishes off Cz while maintaining defensive reserves to West, but Cz needs defensive reserves to NE in case Stalin doesn’t want to stop. Germany then hangs a left and takes out the remainder of Poland. Army is one thing, but at that stage the Germans were way ahead in integrating full combined forces operations. Not to mention the fact that Poland also invaded Czechoslovakia at the same time as Germany.
But the big difference is that the Czechoslovakians had some good tanks and some excellent weapons factories. The Germans were fighting to a next-gen playbook from everyone else.
And then on the flipside you’ve got a lower level of hostility between the US and Japan – the US embargoes against Japan escalated over 3 or 4 years from Nanking, and the real brinkmanship was the oil embargo of 1941. That’s a full year of additional fighting without direct US intervention. One might argue that had Germany gone to a Channel stalemate on the Western front and launched Barbarossa a year earlier, they could have taken Moscow the following year (especially if the Japanese weren’t quite so anti-US or even had eyes on “German” oil from the Caucuses, so the Siberian divisions couldn’t be safely redeployed).
Ombudsman warns on power sell-down
The Government’s plan to block public scrutiny of partially privatised power companies is unjustified on commercial grounds and will see a valuable part of the democratic process lost, Chief Ombudsman Beverley Wakem has warned.
Ms Wakem – whose office investigates public complaints against the Government – said the fact that the Crown was maintaining controlling stakes in the companies on behalf of the public demonstrated their importance to New Zealand’s interests.
“The sale of a minority shareholding in them did not affect the reasoning for them being subject to the independent oversight and accountability provided through the Ombudsman Act and the Official Information Act (OIA).
“They will carry on the same operations as they do presently which have significant scope to impact on individuals and communities and the environment. It’s not just about commercial interests, the impact of these companies goes much wider than that and all of those interests ought to be protected.”
Ms Wakem said there were plenty of safeguards in the OIA to protect against disclosure of commercially sensitive issues.
Partially privatised council-owned businesses had proved that ongoing obligations under the Local Government Official Information and Meetings Act and Ombudsman Act did not put them at a commercial disadvantage. “There’s no evidence that continued coverage under the OIA would place these companies at a competitive disadvantage.”
Green co-leader Russel Norman said that given there appeared to be no clear rationale for removing the companies from OIA requirements, the move suggested “the long-term direction is full privatisation”.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/politics/news/article.cfm?c_id=280&objectid=10798005
this government is composed of venal nitwits who dont want any part of their machinations to see the light.
they are capitalists pure and simple and anyone who has ever red thorstein veblens ‘theory of business enterprise’ will know that keeping people ignorant and off guard is a key part of confusing the opposition.
I read Veblens “Theory of the Leisured Classes” and pissed myself laughing when he compared the well healed capitalists of the Hamptons with New Guinea tribals. have not read the Business book but hear its also quite a laugh.
Latest news update fromthe Meatworkers’ Union. A bit lengthy for a comment, but it’s interesting to read.
Talley’s/AFFCO Fact Sheet
11 April 2012
The Meat Workers Union (MWU) has over 1300 workers in AFFCO meat plants located in: Moerewa, Horotiu (near Hamilton), Rangiuru (near Te Puke), Wairoa, Whanganui and Feilding. It also has a membership in two small leather processing plants in Wiri (Auckland) and Napier.
AFFCO is owned by the Talleys. This is one of the biggest privately owned company in the country and the Talley family have interests in meat, dairy, fish and horticulture. Combined it employs up to 4500 New Zealand workers. The NBR rich list has the family wealth estimated at $300 million.
On 24 February this year after only 10 hours of negotiations for a new Collective Agreement, the company gave the MWU notice of an indefinite lockout for 770 of its 1300 members leaving the remaining to continue working. The MWU has subsequently issued a number of limited days strike action for those remaining in the plants and subsequently a further 50 workers have been indefinitely locked out with an additional 470 locked out over Easter meaning they did not receive statutory holiday pay for these days. Following Easter AFFCO intend the 470 “Easter lockout” workers will return to work while their union colleagues remain locked out. These workers will take one weeks strike action beginning 13th April. As at 10 April the locked out workers have been locked out for 42 days without pay!
We estimate up to 5000 children are impacted by the lockout.
What are the issues?
Talleys /AFFCO workers are covered by a core collective agreement with site agreements determining additional terms and conditions. The core pay rates range from $13.48 to $15.76 per hour. On top of this workers are paid a rate based on the number of animals killed. If the “tally” for the day is reached, wages range from $27 to $31 per hour. The work is seasonal (2 to 11 months per year, with many short days and short weeks even during the season).
To secure wages set by tally, manning levels and tally rates are agreed. The company wants the right to change these unilaterally stating the need to manage the plants according to changing circumstances. The union has agreed they should manage the plant but want provisions in the agreement to continue to secure the large part of wages that are currently determined by tally and manning numbers. They agree that AFFCO should manage but not manipulate! The company is saying it won’t use the changes to reduce pay but will not put this in writing.
The company is also complaining that the union is too quick to go to the Employment Court over an interpretation of the collective agreement. This is not true. There have been numerous interpretation difficulties and the union has gone to Court but only because it has not been able to get agreement from the company. It has won almost all these cases. The union has agreed to new provisions in the new agreement that set out the process when disagreements occur. The Company continues to raise this as an issue even though it has been resolved.
The company has said it wants reduced Union presence in the plant. It is offering workers the ability to return to work if they leave the union and sign an IEA. The company is notoriously anti-union and has de-unionised in many its other businesses. The Meat Workers Union believe this to be a major driver in the companies aggressive approach to this bargaining.
Where to from here?
There is mediation set down for 12 April in Auckland. There is also a Court hearing booked for 23/24 April to hear the unions claim that the lock out is not lawful. The workers are continuing to picket and campaign and organise community support.
The major needs are for support at the protests and pickets and for donations of food and money. To sustain such a large group of workers requires large amounts of regular funds. It costs $50,000 per week to provide as little as $50 per member for food – much more is needed.
There is a website at http://www.mwu.org.nz/ for more information.
If after 10 hours of negotiation AFFCO issued lock-out notices to its unionized work-force then to all extents and purposes the Company has put itself in the position of having created a serious breach of the provisions in the Act requiring it,(the Company), to bargain in good faith…
And there is the matter of Talley’s engaging scabs during good faith bargaining, which in Dairy Workers Union Te Runanga Wai U vs. Open Country Cheese, the Employment Court finally found 2 years after the 2009 OCC lockout in favour of the union. A higher court refused to hear Talley’s appeal.
And on the Talleys/AFFCO theme, heres some more news
http://www.stuff.co.nz/business/industries/6723730/SFO-complaint-over-union-accounts
Theres a whole lotta hating going on there.
The govt plans to remove state owned power companies from the obligations under
the official information and ombudsman acts.
These include, Mighty River power,Meridian energy,Genisis energy,Solid energy.
The Ombudsman has warned the govt against it.
The herald has a story under the politics headline.
South Korea parliamentary elections are currently on. BBC World reported that the two main parties are fighting over the centre-left. The current conservatives are moving towards the left on welfare and other social policies to pretty much where the main left opposition is now, and that the only main difference between the two is their free-trade agreement with the US. What needs to happen in NZ to get our two main parties racing to the left?
respectfully wondering why my 2:18pm comment was put into moderation ? Wondering why it was in moderation more than how long it has been there …
it has no profanity, godwins or similar such alarms…. was it the word fanatic?
[lprent: I put “troll” on the auto-moderation list a few weeks ago after a bout of rampant over-use in comments and some incredibly tiresome sequences that were simply people accusing others of being trolls when mostly none were. The general category of moderation was “boring the moderators shitless with having to read the drivel”.
We tend to view trolling as being a quite technical offence that we will warn about and ban for if it persists. It actually gets more complicated if all and sundry are accusing each other of doing it as it means that is the moderators happen to agree then we leave ourselves open to charges of favouritism. The intent is to frustrate people over-using it and to provide an opportunity for moderators to exercise sarcasm when they find a good example in the moderation queue. Of course since then, the usage dropped an out external workloads increased, which means we haven’t had our fun yet….
So until the usage of the word drops back to a non-accusatory level, you’ll just have to get used to being automatically moderated if you want to use it. 😈 ]
Thanks for the clarification lprent. It is always good to know the trigger words.
I should never have taken the bait but the worm was so juicy, i had to nibble on the line.
I was going to leave this alone but in fairness some statements have to be properly denied. I refer to the comments made earlier by a couple of flag waving mutton shanks who seem to have absolutely no respect for the victims they so often claim to support.
Here is the most mainstream example i have that mentions the issue of the very much alive high-jackers. I figured anything less than the accepted authority of the BBC would no doubt be subject to ridicule and general accusations of nuttery from those loons who seem not to believe, that in the linear experience of 4d space, 1+1=2.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/1559151.stm
I mean the BBC are so solid on the news they report events 22 minutes before they even happen :]
http://www.wtc7.net/bbc.html
This article mentions four, but seven have been confirmed and some put the number as high as nine. That is nine people who were absolutely definitely guilty of being 911 high-jackers turning up alive and well.
i include a long list of reference material that also mentions this widely known reality
http://www.welfarestate.com/911/
Freedom,
First up, this:
I refer to the comments made earlier by a couple of flag waving mutton shanks who seem to have absolutely no respect for the victims they so often claim to support.
…is completely uncalled for.
Moving on though, I’ll note your careful phrasing in this line:
Here is the most mainstream example i have that mentions the issue of the very much alive high-jackers
“mentions the issue” is not the same thing as what I was asking for was it?
And yet, by the end of your comment, the BBC report has somehow become related to this:
This article mentions four, but seven have been confirmed and some put the number as high as nine. That is nine people who were absolutely definitely guilty of being 911 high-jackers turning up alive and well.
Hang on, how does four names being mentioned in the BBC report suddenly become evidence of the idea that up to 9 hijackers have turned up alive and well?
It doesn’t. The BBC report is from shortly after the attacks. It’s about confusion around some of the names. .
That report is not about a story of. “Some of the supposed hijackers are alive!”
The report is a story about how some of the names on the list could be wrong, that they are common names, with many spellings, and that the hijackers could have using false travel documents, etc
Read the link at the bottom of the BBC report, it looks like this:
.
So who are these 7 that have been ‘confirmed’ as being alive?
And how outlandish is the idea that conspirators at the level you are alleging, would fuck up such an important point, to have 7 guys they said absolutely did it still alive?
You claim the nist report is not credible, but seriously, how credible is this idea you are pushing?
A theory based only on evidence that you are apparently ashamed to bring forward
But I’m a mutton shank for asking obvious questions, and actually reading what is written down.
PB – SO the BBC changed their tune years later, and your point is what exactly? – Nice attempt to steer away from discussion BTW – SO because people question events they are disrespecting “victims”, if I read you right, that is simple laudable, and rediculous!
Original story should never be editied, only amended – Surely what any changes tell you is that the official line was unstable from the start, it had to be or why the changes!
The point here is that, nothing is 100% clear, in fact not even close, so your diss of Freedoms links only make you look as if you are defending something that can’t be defended!
Nice use of the word conspiracy theory by BBC in order to discredit discussion around the original article linked by Freedom…it does little other than raise serious credibility questions…Like the BBC needed more of that following the Dr David Kelly affair firectly linked to wars stemming from 911
Just keep thinking you have it all licked, and giving grief to others because they can be aware enough that things do not stack up..
There is BS on all sides, and the only thing anyone should be ashamed of, is ruling out categorically , what they simply do not know either way!
PB, I said the BBC article mentioned the topic, I did not say it was the herald of all that is true and holy. The BBC article was included as it was one of the first screw ups to make it into the public arena and in no way does it simply discuss a mix up in names. It shows a shambolic cover story that fell apart once the innocent parties were identified, and they have been. If you bother to work your way through ‘the welfarestate ‘link you will see there is a volume of data out there on this subject alone and i will not spoon feed you. Those days are basically gone. I prefer to leave 9/11 discussion to face to face encounters these days where you have a real chance of helping someone. With a face to face dialogue it is much harder to atutomatically deny evidence when you actually have another human there to answer your doubts and share the tiller as it were. It is too easy to negate difficult data when all you have to work off is the reflection in your screen. Rational critical thought so often seems to be elsewhere as the blog boxes get filled with reactionary cliches from myopic supporters of lies deception and murder. You have been around long enough to know that if it smells like coffee looks like coffee and tastes like coffee, they will still try to tell you its a milkshake.
I will apologise for the muttonshanks remark, it was a bit snappy and not very nice to highlight someone’s handicap. I know some very pleasant sheep but sheep they are and sheep they will remain. If you want to be called something else, then do the work, learn the truth and wake up!
I know what i know and i suspect you know it too, the difference is i have acknowledged the heart-splintering reality that is the lie we all suffer under. It makes the world that little bit darker but at least i see where the light is coming from more easily.
For goodness sake.
Most of your comment is just an extended attack on me, based on nothing at all. It’s fine for you to disagree with me, and even have a go, but at least try and put forward an argument that is more than just “It is too a conspiracy and yuo’re just stupid and evil if you claim you don’t believe me”
The stuff about face to face discussions is like-wise nonsense. The internet has the advantage of people being able to link to data, something not available face to face.
I looked at the links at the welfare state site, and it’s a series of news reports about the same mistaken identities and confusion.
Confusion always exists in breaking stories. It is natural that the picture becomes clearer as time passes. This is not evidence of conspiricay and coverup. Conspirators would have their story straight and convincing from the get go.
And it’s not like we haven’t had this conversation before, but that time you told me that you included the BBC article as a ‘joke’, again saying that I was an idiot for not getting the joke.
In that conversation I linked to an article in which a Saudi Prince apologised to the people of the US for the actions of its citizens.
Here is that link again:
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2002/02/06/saudi.htm
and some quotes from it:
You’ll note that the saudi prince was for the first time admitting that the hijackers were indeed saudis, and that they did what was alleged. He is saying that the Saudi govt would have stopped them if they had known what they were going to do, but they didn’t know.
Importantly, you’ll note that he says the families had been contacted.
Do you think the Suadi government would have changed their tune about the identity of the hijackers if the families had told them that their guys were alive, out the back, sipping on a cool glass of water and a wee bit distressed that the US was calling them terrorists?
Here is the link to our previous discussion about this, the one where you claimed you linked to the BBC report as a joke:
http://thestandard.org.nz/open-mike-09112010/comment-page-1/#comment-268769
If you can’t actually discuss this in a sensible way, then I’ll be bowing out.
Confusion always exists in breaking stories, and gives easy outs to blame conspircay theorists, as the story changes. It is natural that the picture becomes clearer as time passes and the conspirators line their ducks up properly in a slightly more co-ordinated propaganda campaign. This is of course a solid base for evidence of conspiricay and coverup. Conspirators would have their story straight and convincing from the get go, except that this time the story is too big to cover all the the bases – FIFY
Saudi Arabia – One of the most oppressive monarchist states on earth, totally untrustworthy, and a key part of the imperialist clique, and you take them at their word, BRAVO!
“The names that we got confirmed that,” Nayef said in an interview. “Their families have been executed” FIFY Too
“I did not have relations with that woman”
“There are unknown unknowns”
“Iraq has WMD’s, and can strike in 45 minutes”
“Iran is building nuclear weapons”
Oh but wait….
I missed the part of your comment where you provide the slightest bit of evidence that the people the US claims did it, the same poeple the saudis admit did it, and the very same peopleAQ praise for doing it, didn’t do it.
PB – Evidence, yeah its been contentious on all sides, hence my stance of not pretending I have it all sorted in my head. That said the evidence you seem to be in favour of has lead to the direct deaths of hundreds of thousands, if not millions of innocent people, in multiple countries in the resulting wars – I’m not a fan of war or lies, and the stories concocted to brainwash public opinion simply do not stack up in multiple ways, and I will continue to question anything I see fit, when my guts tell me that it stinks!
If you want to be an apologist for imperialist wars and lies, that is your prerogative, you are as entitled to your line of thought, as anyone else!
PS – You seem to not understand who or what AQ is, or where it was born from!
thanks for the reminder and in the time since i have shifted my view from that article being a joke to something slightly more worrying in that it highlights how the MSM had been swamped under the message so quickly. Since 2001 the debris that has popped up has become its own Sargasso Sea. Navigating it will always have its hazards.
Yes i am tired and bored with talking to sheep about 9/11. If you take that personally then that is your decision and i can only hope the unfortunate negativity it stirs up can be be used in a positive manner. I do try to refrain from personal attacks but to be fair my statements were fairly lowkey and your reaction does tip your hand a little if you take them so personally. ( take for example the accusations of rascism and misogyny i received the other day from QoT, for simply asking a question! did i get all riled up? no, i know i am neither misogynist nor rascist, so feel no need to defend it. Always seems like such a waste of energy and inevitably only gets misconstrued anyway) I will make more of an effort but if you truthfully do not see that 1+1=2 there is no way that anything anyone says will ever sway you. It is something you must come to on your own, which is why face to face discussion on 9/11 is far superior to web wars.
– “The stuff about face to face discussions is like-wise nonsense. The internet has the advantage of people being able to link to data, something not available face to face.”
– Regarding your bizarre statement above, working face to face does not in any way preclude the use of the web. (I have heard that assumption many times and i never understand how doing one somehow precludes the other.) When you spend time with a person and are physically there as the data is searched, you witness the change and it is a startingly powerful moment, it is like a homecoming, someone’s humanity returning.
Finally, i do not trust any statement made from the Saudi, or any government, that ‘clarifies’ their knowledge of events or persons pertaining to the events of September 11 2001. Without an independent and binding international tribunal that openly and honestly investigates the events, no-one will ever know the Truth. Why is the mere suggestion of that tribunal so horrifying to the powers that be ? ? ? that is the 22 trillion dollar question
Couldn’t help myself so here is just another neat video of scientists explaining why the buildings had to come down with the help of explosives.
…and I’m sure it’s fascinating.
But what’s it got to do with what freedom and I were discussing?
What do you think about his theory that 9 of the people currenetly thiought to be the hijackers are actually confirmed to be alive?
Don’t you think that would be an incredibly stupid mistake for the conspirators to make?
And what do you think of the fact that the saudi government, and AQ admit that the names on the list are the people that did it? Do you think thaty carries any weight?
Have freedom/muzza got it right? The saudis are just lying about it, for some reason, and AQ are just something that I don’t know anything about?
Are those unreasonable questions?
PB are you being serious??? Do you not know who AQ are?
here’s that nice Mrs Clinton to help you understand
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dqn0bm4E9yw
If you do know who and what they are then how can you honestly trust a single statement made about them or anything they have reportedly done. Usama bin Laden’s dad is a business partner with dubya’s dad and has been since 1973. I have a copy of the notarised agreement authorising the agent to act on their behalf. Do not forget that AQ was fingered on the day of the attacks. On the day. Remember the info published on Lee Harvey Oswald that turned up in a kiwi paper the day after the shooting ??? The US is not alone in this complicity and nor is it innocent when it comes to lying through their teeth about some pretty heinous acts in their history. The Gulf of Tonkin springs to mind! The US admitted just a couple of years ago it never happened. This very week we have the lies about WMD’s in Iraq completely exposed and admitted to yet it is business as usual.
Operation Northwoods is also good starter for ten. or, take the WTC bombing in ’93. They have admitted that it was an FBI sting op that went wrong. These guys are criminals acting out a very dark plan that has you, your family and several billion other people listed as future compost material. It has been a long slow road that is hundreds if not thousands of years long and to claim you believe what they tell you is possibly the most distressing aspect of this entire topic.
I end with that most well known and highly worrying statement made by one of the architects of today, David Rockefeller, made to the Bilderberg group, who you may remember denied even existing until independent media exposed them, their members and their invited guests, all of whom are very powerful and secretive people who did not appreciate the exposure. Why is that?
“”We are grateful to the Washington Post, The New York Times, Time
Magazine and other great publications whose directors have attended
our meetings and respected their promises of discretion for almost
forty years.”
“It would have been impossible for us to develop our plan for the world
if we had been subjected to the lights of publicity during those years.
But, the world is now more sophisticated and prepared to march towards a
world government. The supranational sovereignty of an intellectual elite
and world bankers is surely preferable to the national
auto-determination practiced in past centuries.”
Productivity Commission slams National
Today, the newly formed Productivity Commission released its Final report into Housing Affordability (PDF), and it’s all bad news for young Kiwi’s who want to own their own homes.
From The Herald
However…
Auckland – pop = 1.4m, area = 559 km2, density = 2,700 km2
Vienna – pop = 1.7m, area = 414 km4, density = 4,970 km2 (always near the top of QoL lists)
New York – city pop = 8.2m, area = 468 km2, density = 27,012 km2
Increasing the land for Auckland is such a waste of resources – there is a long way to go before Auckland is too densely populated. The compact city approach is the way to go – more combined public outdoor space and less private outdoor space – and shouldn’t detract from affordability or desirability if planned well.
I agree that urban spread is a waste of resources, but increasing density isn’t always the answer either. Who wants to give up the Kiwi lifestyle and live in a chicken coop? So there’s a balance that should be based on optimum habitat requirements and not speculators and developers profiteering.
What I think New Zealand needs to do is improve work opportunities for smaller communities so there is less migratory pressure on places like Auckland. Increasing wages and the affordability of building materials by reducing market domination and implementing a proper social housing policy would also help more Kiwi’s into home ownership.
You’re right about reducing migratory pressure and about reducing market domination and social housing. Investing in regional development should be a top priority, it that hasn’t happened for decades and it would be nice to see a return to that. However, that doesn’t mean that urban density is not an issue.
Increasing density doesn’t have to mean chicken coop living – as usual NZ is doing it the wrong way by increasing density for poor families, using poor materials with expansion on the periphery so the middle classes can have their large blocks of land. It needs to be reversed – that apartments become a style statement, so to speak. Some of the best QoL cities in the world are dominated by apartment living. Generally the apartments are not tower blocks, but a more human scale, with lots of green space nearby rather than minimal private sections and no public space provision.
Land Hungry Cars
Cars really are massively inefficient and have huge negative impact upon our lives.
High Density & High Rise: not necessarily the same thing
And Sheehan Street is probably both far more social and more private.
What does density look like?
Auckland Density Illustrated I: The Inner City
Ok, that’s enough, I didn’t find the article I was looking for but enough to show that high density living isn’t the nightmare that some would have you believe it is.
Bloody hell.
http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/recenteqsww/Quakes/pt12102000.php
8.9
Yeah, not far from the earthquake that caused the tsunami that struck India in 2k4.
I hop it’s not a replay of that event. There was one in the same region a year later that didn’t cause a tsunami…
Just heard the tsunami warning has been upgraded to an alert.
Bill English – “I think the public would be probably as concerned that the Labour Party don’t appear to have learnt anything that they think that handing out lollies is how you get political favours.”
You mean unaffordable tax cuts? Additional Pokie Machines / License extensions? Employment Law Changes for Movie Execs? Loans to MediaWorks while axing TVNZ7? Stop me when we’ve run out of lollies
100 million to starlight fund SCF
30 m to private schools
I/S on No Right Turn in “If all you have is a hammer…” makes a couple of noteworthy observations.
The first is the fact that Nationals policy announcements consists of just a load of waffle with no actual detail whatsoever – It is quite an effective strategy, albeit a darkly cynical one given the importance of the issues paid only lip service to. For those wanting to critique the ‘plans’ or even to understand them there is nothing to grasp onto. An educated or informed response is impossible when slogans are all that we have been given.
But where is the critique in the media of the lack of detail? Nationals policy announcements are about as convincing as a new years resolution and their Ministers should be laughed out of their press conferences for daring to turn up and make proclamations that are a deliberate study in vagueness.
Secondly I/S highlights the growing use of ‘the children’ as an excuse for implementing unpopular policies or reform. Once again it is only the most darkly cynical who would deliberately use peoples concern for their children to promote a course of action – when a hostage taker holds a gun to the head of someone’s child and demands obedience the violence of the act is rightly condemned by law and society – yet the governments modus operandi is now little different.
It is time that the government stopped implying that children will suffer if we don’t accept their austerity and their radical hard right agenda or that children will benefit if we do.
Austerity harms economies and harms society. The Nats don’t care about kids any more than the hostage taker does.