I am not sure I really care about “punishing” her on behalf of those who had the cash to invest. I no longer believe in ma and pa investors, garden faeries are more believable. Stuffed if I want taxes spent protecting the rich from the predations of other rich people: if they can afford to invest it they can afford to lose it, or be taxed.
It surprises me that the home is apparently not in a trust, so she’ll lose it anyway. The quality of Directors these day eh? She should have at least known how to protect her own assets even if she didn’t have a clue about protecting the easy money of the investors looking for super returns.
Great, if people save instead of consume and try to invest that capital to keep themselves out of poverty in old age they are according to Leftists like you “EVIL CAPITALIST SCUM WHO DESERVE TO GET FUCKED!!!”.
You might wish to check out who the average investor was: it was not you and me. The small ones who saved and scrimped were pretty much a tiny minority. Look at SCF, the “Ma and Pa” investors got a guarantee and ripped the tax payer big time. Look at the “ma and pa” 2.5% of the NZ population who bought MRP shares…are they you and me? Fuck them, Let the buyer beware.
On the other hand there are the savers who believe in banks for long term security. Think more about how their savings get rorted by tax / inflation / bank rip offs etc.
Moral does not equal integrity either. An investor with integrity will be aware they’re getting pretty high interest for taking pretty high risks. They’ll check out the background of the Directors before they invest, weigh it up and wear it when they take a loss, not withstanding the criminal charges a Director, or ‘financial planners’ should get if they mislead.
This is also why it’s curious that this Director doesn’t have her home in a Trust. Finance company directors aren’t known for integrity nor for selling homes to pay back investors.
So you also believe that a savings bank deposit is the only “moral” wealth anyone is allowed to have?
Nope, that’s completely immoral. Or, to be more precise, expecting interest on it is.
What about kiwisaver?
Completely immoral as well as it seeks to prop up an immoral system. It can’t, of course, as the system depends upon ever increasing debt and use of oil neither of which is possible.
Completely immoral as well as it seeks to prop up an immoral system. It can’t, of course, as the system depends upon ever increasing debt and use of oil neither of which is possible.
Best investment – put excess money into things that will promote survival and resiliency in the future (that’s not accrual of money in case it’s not obvious).
Draco, what do you think about organisations like Prometheus?
Isn’t the problem with under-investment in NZ that everyone now knows the market here is just dangerously risky for small players, and you don’t know which advisers you can trust when they are all probably more heavily attuned to taking their personal cut of transactions than worrying about your personal risk?
Mr Turkey Brain aka KP. State your working credentials before you accuse me of that. Do you run companies? Do you understand the workings of general ledgers, P&Ls, tax accounting, finance, contracts etc? Is it something you have to apply to company operations, sales, profitability on a daily basis? Demonstrate that and I might consider your flippant charge of illiteracy worthy of debate.
PS The leftist anti capitalist bit…what the hell did I say that was necessarily leftist per se? Who are these “capitalists” of whom you speak?
You might wish to check out who the average investor was: it was not you and me. The small ones who saved and scrimped were pretty much a tiny minority. Look at SCF, the “Ma and Pa” investors got a guarantee and ripped the tax payer big time. Look at the “ma and pa” 2.5% of the NZ population who bought MRP shares…are they you and me? Fuck them, Let the buyer beware.
Ennui, do you have some figures on that? Leaving aside MRP, how many people who got burned in the finance company collapses were of what class and income bracket?
I have seen a finance companies books but cannot comment on that publicly as it was in confidence. I will have a look around the public records however and report back what is there.
Cut one was revealing, read this little beauty http://www.rbnz.govt.nz/research/econresearch/3198451.pdf does not give hard numbers but if you read between the lines pages 3 to 5 you get the flavour of huge under investment in finance because disposable income is too low and housing seen as safer with better returns.
You’re vigorous for so early on a Saturday morning there KP. Triple-shot was it ?
Rosy simply points-up that empathy for others doing it hard is an unknown quantity amongst many who have “done well”. The ones who cluck disgustedly, point judgmental fingers, then cheer Boss Hogg Bennett when she launches yet another dog-whistling salvo against beneficiaries and other “unworthy” types.
The “done-well” become vaguely aware of the concept only when they themselves are reduced to the level of their “lessers”. Even then it’s not actually empathy. It’s essentially sympathy, for themselves.
I support Rosy in making that point without you jamming your abusive words into her mouth.
Hope your day improves. Im sure it can. Just summon up some humility, offer it up to your own petard, and ask politely that you be hoisted down a little.
Doesn’t matter who you “thought” you were replying to – given the “ideologially driven” screech you’re broadly into your reply can be taken up by many.
Got nothing to do with belief – just the facts of what actually happens in a capitalist society. A few get very rich and well off while everyone else becomes poorer.
Well, actually it does Draco, because you have made a blanket statement that every capitalist (without defining what ‘capitalist’ means to you) is ‘scum’.
You seem to believe and hold the opinion that ‘capitalist’ is a single entity where, in actual fact, there are sharp degrees of capitalism.
“just the facts of what actually happens in a capitalist society. A few get very rich and well off while everyone else becomes poorer.”
That has happened, and can always happen, under any ideology. The best we can do is mitigate the bad while trying to exemplify the good.
I think capitalism can work just fine. Does that me a ‘capitalist’ because you need to define your terms here. We touched on this on The Daily Blog where you suggested that capitalism = Right Wing but used neo-liberalism as an example. Neo-liberalism is a type of capitalism, not capitalism in itself. I am not a neo-liberal, but I am a proponent Social-market economy capitalism. They are different beasts.
Well, actually it does Draco, because you have made a blanket statement that every capitalist (without defining what ‘capitalist’ means to you) is ‘scum’.
They’re the biggest bludgers in the world. Seemingly their sole purpose in life is to have an income from other peoples work. That’s what investment means in our society and what having money in the bank is. To have an income generated by the work of others.
It’s what our entire society is geared for but it only works for the few as to produce a high income from it it needs to clip the ticket of as many people as possible. It’s why globalisation happens – to increase the number of people that the rich can steal from.
We don’t need foreign investment as we have all the resources we need right here in NZ – the actual physical resources, the education and the people – and yet the governments keep saying that we do and making it possible for foreigners to buy up NZ. The only reason for foreign investment to happen is for the rich of other countries to steal from us as well as their own people because they’ve reached the limits of their own economy (a firm in a local economy can only grow so much but a global firm can grow so much bigger – the limits are still there though).
I am not a neo-liberal, but I am a proponent Social-market economy capitalism. They are different beasts.
What a crock of shit, Draco. It is hard to find a starting point in order to address your bizarre uttering so I’ll just address the relevant points here.
“They’re the biggest bludgers in the world. Seemingly their sole purpose in life is to have an income from other peoples work.”
Who is ‘they’? Are ‘they’ the ‘capitalists’? You’ll have to define your term here. Are ‘they’ those whose actively seek to use capitalism as an economic system to benefit themselves at the expense of others? Or those who benefit from the capitalist system without ever considering it as the ruling economic paradigm? Your use of ‘they’ and ‘the capitalists’ is so ill defined as to be useless.
“No, not really.”
Yes, really. You understand there is a difference between laissez faire neo-liberalism and Social-Market Economy, right? One promotes privatisation of everything from the police to healthcare while the other supports and fund social welfare, education and health (to name but a few). This is your problem Draco, you have an extremely binary view of the world. Black, white, On, off. Which, to be frank, is a conservative, right-wing view. One that you cloak in left-wing rhetoric but it is a ‘us/them’ mentality all the same which reeks of no true scotsman fallacy.
“It’s always centred around private ownership and the dead weight loss of profit and it is that which makes capitalism, any variant of it, right wing.”
False.
Private ownership of goods =/= right-wing. Capitalism =/= right-wing.
Do you own anything, Draco? Have you ever benefited from interest, investment or Kiwisaver?
Capitalism is the major problem. People making a habit of using their existing wealth to garner additional unearned wealth, while the labour utilised on the way gets fuck all.
I fail to understand why you remain in NZ. The country does not have a communist party in power nor is it likely to have in the near future. You are so far left you should wear a harness to arrest your fall.
That’s a bit unfair. I wouldn’t say Draco T Bastard is hard left for thinking every capitalist is a scumbag! Most capitalists have attained their wealth from the suffering of the poor after all. If you recognize or have been a victim of a corrupted system, then viewing those who have benefited from that corruption as being scum is entirely justified.
It might not be strictly correct in terms of all rich people aren’t capitalist scum, but it is entirely justified to have formed such beliefs because of the failures inherent within capitalism, namely that it increases inequality. Such a view as Draco has expressed is therefore not extreme at all, unless you’re arguing that inequality is somehow justified?
“unless you’re arguing that inequality is somehow justified?”
no, i doubt they would go so far as ‘justified’, they would turn off at ‘necessary’ and take the link road back to Imperialism via the scenic vistas of ‘entitlement’
Here’s a better idea.
How about we release a number of women serving time in Arohata or Wiri for minor property crimes equal to the total amount that this woman ripped off. And let them serve out the rest of their sentences in this Remuera Mansion. I am sure they won’t mind. And it would be a big saving on the tax payer.
May 10, 2013 Assange speech about to read by Daniel Ellsberg in San Francisco for Global Exchange Human Rights Award tonight
(Noam Chomsky and Jacob Appelbaum also present)
Thank you for this honor.
I am very happy to be sharing it with Noam Chomsky whose generosity and strength of character I have felt personally. Noam, you are the sea–relentless and enduring. You have crashed wave after wave of understanding into towering cliffs of lies, eroding them at their base. If the rotten foreshore of empire collapses it will be for this reason. You have inspired and continue to inspire many, including me.
Thank you to the people in this room for supporting this award. I’m going to thank you and Dan in the best way I know. By keeping this speech short. Then you can go and do the important thing. Make alliances to fight for WikiLeaks, Bradley Manning and me. Don’t think you can escape just because I am not there. We have a lot more spies in this room than the FBI.
San Francisco and the Bay Area is important to us. We fought our first big court case in the San Francisco federal courts in 2008; That was no coincidence. If we were going to have a fight, anywhere in the world, then I wanted it to be in San Francisco. I structured WikiLeaks to encourage attacks on us to be drawn to San Francisco (sorry about that). The Electronic Frontier Foundation, the Freedom of the Press Foundation and many of our other defenders are based here. If any state of the Union is going to save the United States from itself, it will be California. Washington sees that too–that’s why we’re being prosecuted in Virginia and Maryland.
Noam’s presence in this room –useful, even though he’s from Massachusetts– reflects something very special. Cross generational solidarity. From Dan and Noam to Michael Ratner, from Kiki to me, from Jacob to Bradley Manning. The issues of each demi-generation are being understood as a continuation into the present. My fight is right now. But so is Bradley Manning’s. So is Jacob’s. I want Dan, Noam and Jacob–all of you here–together with me in this fight because I know you understand. Our conflict tests every aspect of character, but it has also shown it in many and I am proud of them.
Remember that Bradley Manning’s trial starts on June 3. It is scheduled to run for twelve to sixteen weeks. The prosecution is bringing 141 witnesses. That is a show trial. A twelve-week off-Broadway extravaganza being performed at Fort Mead. Its legal and political result will directly feed into the larger prosecution of WikiLeaks.
What is to be done? The answer is easy. It has always been easy. Stop saying “not in my name” and start saying “over my dead body”. That’s what we did. It works. Do it.
Sorry, haven’t you heard, he is a Feminist pariah? Assange is a white guy with CIA backed false rape allegations made against him which the feminasties have swallowed hook, sinker and line.
You will accused of “rape culture” supporter in a political necklacing, Morrissey, if you are not careful.
KP, Who knows? But the comment does not help because right now we need EVERY believer in justice and fair play to put their support very publicly behind Bradley Manning.
“right now we need EVERY believer in justice and fair play”
[Deleted]
[lprent: So you took that as an opportunity to offensively insulting my half of my relatives again. Cretinous misogynistic drivel. And I too believe in delivering justice and fair play. I delete the ravings of bigoted fuckwits. ]
The western garment industry exploits the vulnerable, largely women, in poor countries, so they can make exorbitant profits, and try to buy off our resistance with relatively cheap clothing.
“throwing out some obscure points that most feminists have never heard of.”
The examples I give are of ideas central to Feminist ideology – Critical Theory, Feminist “Theory”, “Queer Theory” – all psuedo intellectual drivel that has wrecked the Humanities.
k_p has been given enormous leeway in recent days with multiple warnings for his horrible bigotry and false accusations. It doesn’t seem to be working. Again and again he spouts nonsense about the views of others, as he always has.
I wonder if he ought to be given some sort of penance to perform. Perhaps the severity of the penance could be determined by the quality of his answer to your question above.
k_p drops in and repeats a cherry-picked one liner, making accusations about feminism. He brandishes it like a weapon, jumps up and down claiming victory, then runs away without seriously engaging.
Yes, we know that, but perhaps it’s time to pull the plug? He’s derailing at best, but his intention is to intimidate and his method is stalking. Maybe no single post has violated any rule, but perhaps his pattern has to be considered?
He’s definitely a misogynist and he’s clearly trying to bully specific women he’s very obsessively targeted, and he consistently tries to derail threads to shut down discussion.
Moreover, he ignores repeated warnings about appropriate conduct.
It’s all very well if Karol and The Queen of Thorns have thick skins, but I worry that he’s driving off other potential contributors – as he intends to.
Indeed. Manning too often gets neglected and he is suffering a the result of his brave act in passing over the damning information about the US military.
My first tertiary education was in education, especially education of those with disabilities. I learned things about biology, neurology, and how people learn, and child development. This learning formed the basis of much of my later learning inside and outside the uni.
The human brain is a wondrous thing. I learn more about it every day, but some people’s brain functioning remains curiously obscure.
I’m appalled at Manning’s treatment, but the fact of the matter is that he committed treason in the eyes of the law. It is inconceivable that he wouldn’t be punnished in some way, but torture is unacceptable.
It is often overlooked. The entire document is a flow on from those three simple words. It was the People he was defending, but I do have my doubts you even grasp what that means.
He swore the U.S. Armed Forces Oath of Enlistment
This includes the propagandized ‘against all enemies foreign and domestic’ line.
He concentrated this time on the domestic bit.
Freedom, I presume that you do realize you’re trying to argue in good faith with the Kiwi equivalent of a Soviet commissar.
If you’re engaging in that futile exercise as an intellectual workout, that’s fine. As long as you don’t expect anything like enlightened or serious debate.
…the fact of the matter is that he committed treason in the eyes of the law.
What a disgusting, Wieselian hypocrite you are. As those of us who do not share your Maoist/Stalinist view of the world know, is not treason to bring war crimes to the attention of the world.
And spare us the bombast about being “appalled” by mistreatment of which you have repeatedly endorsed on this forum.
It is inconceivable that he wouldn’t be punnished [sic] in some way…
It is conceivable that he would be lauded and honoured in a state that valued human rights and the rule of law.
….but torture is unacceptable.
But you endorse the torturers and say that the person who exposed them “committed treason”. If I did not know better, I would think you were merely another bewildered mouth-breathing NewstalkZB listener.
For anyone with a shred of commonsense or common decency, here’s a reminder of why the full vengeance of the state is being unleashed on Manning and Assange…. http://www.collateralmurder.com/
…which the feminasties have swallowed hook, sinker and line.
Some nasty and politically aligned women have chosen to accept the British government’s black propaganda, but Swedish Rape Crisis has, like anyone honest, condemned the British-U.S. government campaign.
and the lead prosecutor, a woman, resigned from the case. A lot of of media are saying she resigned because the case was unravelling faster than a cardigan caught in a cartoon cartwheel
I think the ladies did the right thing: go public. Let the court of public opinion judge the hoteliers with their cash. Conversely if you legislate you only force legal acceptance, which is worth nothing compared to mind share.
Just observing that the guesthouse proprietor refused to allow a lesbian couple to share a bed because they would be accommodating “behaviour that is sodomy.”
That doesn’t go quite so well as Hillary Sodom Clinton—which I am sure, by the way, is actually used by the legion of extreme right wing “Christian” Hillary-haters—but it is not bad, I suppose.
TRP……..(apologies Morrissey – I’m a fan of yours)……..shouldn’t it be MorrisOddomy ? OK, not as good as either of yours’ but I’m a little hobbled today.
Consequent upon Kiwi Promethium alleging I’m on synthetic cannabis and Bowel Motion counselling that I should lay off the drink in the mornings. Have a good day folks. Must back to ma Twelve Steps.
Ironically – sodomy is anything that isn’t straight missionary position (hard right fundy def.) and given the Ruskin’s love of prying into other consenting adults sex-lives, methinks then it’s fair to speculate that the Ruskin’s hath done much sodomy themselves
Ergo, they should kick themselves out of their dwelling since apparently “no sodomites allowed” is the golden rule thou shalth not break.
But owner Karen Ruskin said she and husband Michael could dictate what went on at the property: “Homosexuals have a whole industry of hotels that they can go to,” she said.
Legally a business cannot discriminate on the basis of stuff that falls under the Human Rights Act iirc and you can bet these two muppets would scream blue murder along that line if they suddenly got booted from a business due to being fundamentalist christians.
Bring on the rainbow cluebat of bad PR and legal challenges!
as noted in the corresponding thread; we all know about sublimation, delusional projection, distortion, superiority complexes and repression do we not.
“No one becomes equal by the killing of another innocent life. That’s not equality, that’s enmity.” – Ryan Bomberger
Supporting mothers in having the ‘right’ to work from 9-3 tax free, in ‘most’ jobs, if they choose to do so, means that children will be feed before school.Amongst other things.
Now doesn’t all that bring new meaning to the words ‘productivity gains’ now, and in the next generations!
Four conclusions can be drawn from this.
1) Our continued civilisation is under threat on this planet.
2) More people in NZ know about Aaron Gilmore than details about climate change.
3) The NZ Herald is a poor excuse for journalism.
4) There is a link between 1,2 and 3.
Jeeez they are a fiesty lot today on open mike TRP, every day is still like Sunday for Morrissey and KP can’t get much higher. “Sodom Clinton” heh what next.
Must be something about the weekend that brings out the warrior in them! Sadly, I’m off to footy, so I’ll have to wait till tonight to catch up with various witterings. Have a good one, TM.
Just what is it that makes today’s Labour leaders so dithering, so unappealing?
Let’s not beat about the bush: David Shearer is a terrible, ineffective, wishy-washy Labour leader.
But as bad as Shearer might be, here’s one fellow who is even worse. Pity the good people of Great Britain if this is all they can put up against Dave Snooty and his Eton chums…
The neoliberals captured the British Labour Party when Blair took over.
There is no one for workers to vote for in the UK.
People are that desperate for an alternative and the corporations are ensuring there is not one.
Elie Wiesel: Break Your Silence and Come with Us to Gaza!
When Elie Wiesel spoke at Saint Louis University on December 1, 2009, three women challenged him to break his silence about Gaza and to travel with them on the Gaza Freedom March to see for himself the devastation caused by Israel’s Operation Cast Lead in December 2008 and the ongoing siege.
Keen has his eye on margin debt. This is the money people borrow from their stockbrokers to expand their holdings of shares. Keen says the ratio is now 70%, meaning with $300,000 you can borrow $1 million worth of shares.
Here’s where it gets interesting. Steve has found a relationship between the change in margin debt and the level of asset prices. Even more importantly, he points to a correlation between the acceleration in margin debt and the rise in asset prices.
If his theory holds true, this means we’re relying on the acceleration of margin debt to drive rising share prices. And when that acceleration slows down, equity prices will fall.
Thing is, it’s more borrowing that both National and Labour are after with their affordable homes. More people buying = more borrowing and thus we get an increase in money in the system raising GDP. It’s not sustainable and must crash but the politicians will just push some other barrow that achieves the same end – more borrowing.
The only winners in such a system are the people who print the money with interest on it – the private banks.
No one has the stomach to reform our debt based money supply. It’s possibly the biggest no-no in the capitalist banking framework that we have locked ourselves into.
and it is one simple question every person can consider for themselves without having to wave a flag or sign a paper or anything. All they have to do is spend a moment of honest contemplation. Something many more should do, more often than we do. I am as guilty as any of that failing.
Here are ten facts you may wish to pop into tonight’s dinner conversations. I know, I know, facts are so infuriating when they completely contradict hysterical fantasies, but reality is like that, facts are facts and lies are just business. http://www.collective-evolution.com/2012/10/16/10-eye-opening-facts-about-hemp/
Instead of building its future, New Zealand is disintergrating. An average house for a family should not cost $750,000. Things are out of control. A future requires a society to obtain levels of sustainability.
(If you do not believe that, good luck to you and yours.)
There is not one single reason hemp should not become a primary industry in NZ.
Building. Medicines. Food. Textiles. Plastics. Fuel. It just goes on and on and on.
We could be making milllions of dollars from hemp and hemp related industries if we wanted to, at the very least we could be saving billions if we chose to. The employment opportunities, the related economic growth, the social benefits, the sustainability bonuses, these are not things that should be dismissed lightly. But we all know the drill.
We have a problem, we look for a solution.
Whenever hemp is investigated as a viable solution, BAM ! straight into the wall !
It does have a very bad habit of highlighting sustainability nightmares. Mostly though, there are good responsible reasons given why not to go forward and they usually hold water as strongly as a $2 bucket.
However you spin it, money influence and engrained propaganda are difficult to overcome without forcing a fundamental breakthrough in how people comprehend the machine around them, and that’s not gonna happen anytime soon if some of the wanderers we meet here are anything to go by. I get that.
To the reader, I ask you. Will ignoring it all, solve any of the issues?
Shall we let blinkers crop the vista of our future?
A future requires a society to obtain levels of sustainability.
Building. Medicines. Food. Textiles. Plastics. Fuel.
I cannot see a single reason hemp should not become a primary industry in NZ.
This is quite a big deal, we get that, but ….
Anyone know why he was here?
What the event was?
Who the other businessmen that are mentioned were?
What this piece of US-focused dross is meant to be conveying?
“How Class Works – Richard Wolff Examines Class ”
Shows up the class war of selling our Power companies whose future profits will accrue to the wealthy instead of the commons.
“Working for an employer is like rowing an oar as a galley slave. You can quit and jump overboard but you splash right into the great ocean of unemployment, exclusive professional guilds, multi-level marketing scams, lying temp agencies, credit card debt, college loan scams, a 90% self-employment failure rate due to competition and deficient government benefits. You are forced to swim to and board another galley. Now all the galley ships have robotic oarsmen and you sink beneath the waves.”
I’m gradually learning more about the Second World War. There is so much to know and it has always been in my background, occasionally coming to the fore. Now I am older and less hopeful about humanity I have been reading about Resistance fighters etc.
This morning I am looking at The White Rose on wikepedia. That was the name that a group of protesting and defiant young people mostly students used as their symbol. When studying events in Germany between the wars it becomes obvious that the country had been occupied mentally internally by this authoritarian and brutal regime far before the 1939 declaration of war against Germany.
The things that are so emotionally expressed in these students’ words have been applied to what is going on in NZ. Many of these young people died at Nazi hands. One group were beheaded in 1943 I think in a public square.
So what happens every day to limit human rights and step up authoritarianism and fascism must be looked at carefully. Some quotes from the German group:
If everyone waits until the other man makes a start, the messengers of avenging Nemesis will come steadily closer. (From Leaflet 1, urging immediate initiative by the reader. Nemesis of course punished those who had fallen to the temptation of hubris.)
…why do you allow these men who are in power to rob you step by step, openly and in secret, of one domain of your rights after another, until one day nothing, nothing at all will be left but a mechanised state system presided over by criminals and drunks? Is your spirit already so crushed by abuse that you forget it is your right – or rather, your moral duty – to eliminate this system? (From Leaflet 3)
Why do German people behave so apathetically in the face of all these abominable crimes, crimes so unworthy of the human race? … The German people slumber on in their dull, stupid sleep and encourage these fascist criminals….[The German] must evidence not only sympathy; no, much more: a sense of complicity in guilt….For through his apathetic behaviour he gives these evil men the opportunity to act as they do…. he himself is to blame for the fact that it came about at all! Each man wants to be exonerated ….But he cannot be exonerated; he is guilty, guilty, guilty!… now that we have recognized [the Nazis] for what they are, it must be the sole and first duty, the holiest duty of every German to destroy these beasts. (From Leaflet 2)
One of the episodes is about the Soviet partisan war against the Germans.
Also consider – 4 out of 5 German soldiers killed in WWII were killed on the Eastern Front.
The D-Day landings at Normandy in 1944, although an important step in securing western europe, were not very relevant to Germany’s final defeat. Germany had already long lost the war in 1943, at the Battle of Kursk.
The role of the ANZACs is not to be unterestimated. Had they not kept Rommel tied up in North Africa, the Soviets might not have had time to rearm after the Ribbentrop-Molotov fiasco.
Not to mention that if the Germans had secured fuel supplies from the middle east then their strategies in Russia wouldn’t have been so skewed by the need to secure oilfields during Barbarossa.
Ultimately it was the inability of Germany to get a few essential strategic materials from outside of their conquered territories that lost them the battles. It forced them to make strategic mistakes.
They made strategic errors, yes, but their big error was going into total war with Russia AND America. Either one could have out produced, outgunned and out fought Germany in the long run. By wars end Russia and the USA were just getting warmed up and Germany was a smoking ruin which had run out of manpower and the ability to re-arm. Also, the conventional war had just about run it’s course anyway. The US had the A bomb. They also had the means to deliver it anywhere in German territory. Germany were close to a bomb, but had lost air superiority and were a long way from having true ICBM’s.
I agree that North African action greatly limited German options. Further, the horrific two and a half year siege of Leningrad was a disaster for Germany – it tied down 20% of their eastern forces even as 500-1000 Leningrad citizens starved to death daily.
As for forced mistakes…Hitler regarded himself as a military super-genius and things went down hill rapidly when he decided to put himself in charge of all military operations. Not letting his army withdraw from Stalingrad and deciding that a quarter million cut off German forces could be resupplied by air? Mad.
The Afrika Korps wouldn’t have even been noticed on the Russian Front. It swallowed up whole Army Groups. Rommel fought against a few divisions which made up the 8th Army. Operation Barbarossa kicked off seventeen months before the second Battle of El Alamein, which was three years after Ribbentrop and Molotov divided up Poland.
If anything, the Red Army saved Egypt for the British Empire, not the other way around.
It helped that Hitler made a few bad choices as well, peeling off elsewhere when he had a chance to press home his advantage. I think one of them was to push down into Ukraine when he could have taken Moscow before winter.
You would’ve thought that Germany would not want to make Napolean’s same mistakes in Russia.
Hitler did need to capture the industrial centre of Kiev so there was a strategic purpose to that. However, delays to capturing Moscow created huge problems for the Germans, and it allowed the Soviets to ship in elite eastern divisions to bolster the Moscow front.
Trying to go after the caucuses and Stalingrad and Moscow at the same time was never going to work. Classic Art of War – if you try to be everywhere, everywhere you will be weak.
You also have to factor in the massive intelligence failures of the Nazis regarding the USSR. They completely underestimated the size of the soviet forces and their massive reserves. They underrated the intelligence and determination of the soviet soldiers and officers who, after initial mass surrenders, chose to thereafter fight on behind advancing German lines even after being encircled and were a constant threat to their rear and flanks, as well as to their fronts.
They had no idea that the soviets even had the T34 and KV tanks, far superior to the panzer III and IV’s, nor that they had developed aircraft like the Mig 3, Yak 3, La 5 and 7’s, Il 2 and 10 shturmovics, and their katyushas etc. They never gave any consideration to the industrial capacity of the USSR and their ability to dismantle and reassemble their armaments factories well out of reach of German short-range bombers. Even though lend-lease provided them with allied war materiel, the USSR proved itself able to produce all manner of war materiel in such high volumes they were easily able to replace their losses as the war dragged on, when the Germans could not.
If you can get access to the War Memorial Museum library, then that’d be about the best source in NZ on some of the resistance movements.
Not only did we have people scattered throughout europe and the pacific and they wrote stuff down, but we also got quite a lot of refugees and emigres pre and post war who did as well. It seems like most of the hardcopy wound up there.
There was a year when I was a kid where I was attempting to soak up that library.
The same steady withdrawl of rights is happening now in NZ, but the populance finds it hard to get a fix on it and react. Much easier to join in the scrum on Mr Gilmore’s flaws than that of democratic rights or security from spying etc. We need a serious focus to prevent the slide. Sympathise with the Germans of the 30’s because they by the time they realised the significance of what they had lost it was too late to resist.
(Read about a butcher in Vienna who was anti-Nazi until the day the German army marched into Austria and declared the country to be part of the German Nazi empire. The next day the butcher marched down the road waving the German flag. “Survival,” he said.)
A survivor of a high-level ring involving child sacrifice, torture and trafficking went public today in an exclusive disclosure and interview with Freedom Central’s Mel Ve and ITCCS Field Secretary Kevin Annett.
Toos Nijenhuis, a fifty four year old physiotherapist and mother of five from Holland, was tortured, raped and used experimentally from the age of four years old by wealthy and powerful men around the world, including top officials of churches and governments.
And, Nijenhuis claims, these crimes are continuing today, including the ritual sacrifice of children in rural Holland.
Is that tinfoil hat too tight again. Show me on the doll where the Illuminati touched you?
Seriously? I’m not doubting she suffered terrible abuse, but she’s quite obviously projecting this elaborate fantasy onto it to try and give that horrible abuse some meaning. Another similar and widespread projection onto childhood sexual abuse is alien abduction. There is no global satanic conspiracy and this sort of nonsense just distracts from the horrible mundane reality of child abuse.
To The Handlers;
Risk is not necessary. Scientific development concept
Bone-modern-marrow admirably sails, bracing
the vigorous weight of the People while The Struggles
with the Persians remaining indecisive, abundant Africa
is being recovered from the vandal al1ens.
You can pencil that in three places
(Ray-guns are a fetish for steam-Punks,
may be buried with Wessex culture) We all
harden up with influence and Able instrumental guidance;
Plumb the depths, clean out the pipes, dispose the waste.
Quelle : Lectiones geometricae; pictures italicized
(or a combination Friend rice, Edgar; #23 8)
Eponymous / Mick Ronson Priestley (Whats My Name)
contend more in written acts than words.
The Shepherd’s crook, cuts right across the diagonal;
“he came to minister, not to be ministered to”.
“and let no-one attempt to reclaim (them) from the stigmata of their new master”.
Let no-one trouble them for the record of their transaction is in the temple.
The political petrified piece of wood, Winston Peters, who refuses to retire gracefully, has had an eventful couple of weeks peddling transphobia, pushing bigoted policies, undertaking his unrelenting war on wokeness and slinging vile accusations like calling Green co-leader Chlöe Swarbrick a “groomer”.At 80, the hypocritical NZ First leader’s latest ...
It's raining in Cockermouth and we're following our host up the stairs. We’re telling her it’s a lovely building and she’s explaining that it used to be a pub and a nightclub and a backpackers, but no more.There were floods in 2009 and 2015 along the main street, huge floods, ...
The National Party’s Minister of Police, Corrections, and Ethnic Communities (irony alert) has stumbled into yet another racist quagmire, proving that when it comes to bigotry, the right wing’s playbook is as predictable as it is vile. This time, Mitchell’s office reposted an Instagram reel falsely claiming that Te Pāti ...
In the week of Australia’s 3 May election, ASPI will release Agenda for Change 2025: preparedness and resilience in an uncertain world, a report promoting public debate and understanding on issues of strategic importance to ...
In a world crying out for empathy, J.K. Rowling has once again proven she’s more interested in stoking division than building bridges. The once-beloved author of Harry Potter has cemented her place as this week’s Arsehole of the Week, a title earned through her relentless, tone-deaf crusade against transgender rights. ...
Health security is often seen as a peripheral security domain, and as a problem that is difficult to address. These perceptions weaken our capacity to respond to borderless threats. With the wind back of Covid-19 ...
Would our political parties pass muster under the Fair Trading Act?WHAT IF OUR POLITICAL PARTIES were subject to the Fair Trading Act? What if they, like the nation’s businesses, were prohibited from misleading their consumers – i.e. the voters – about the nature, characteristics, suitability, or quantity of the products ...
Rod EmmersonThank you to my subscribers and readers - you make it all possible. Tui.Subscribe nowSix updates today from around the world and locally here in Aoteaora New Zealand -1. RFK Jnr’s Autism CrusadeAmerica plans to create a registry of people with autism in the United States. RFK Jr’s department ...
We see it often enough. A democracy deals with an authoritarian state, and those who oppose concessions cite the lesson of Munich 1938: make none to dictators; take a firm stand. And so we hear ...
370 perioperative nurses working at Auckland City Hospital, Starship Hospital and Greenlane Clinical Centre will strike for two hours on 1 May – the same day senior doctors are striking. This is part of nationwide events to mark May Day on 1 May, including rallies outside public hospitals, organised by ...
Character protections for Auckland’s villas have stymied past development. Now moves afoot to strip character protection from a bunch of inner-city villas. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāLong stories shortest from our political economy on Wednesday, April 23:Special Character Areas designed to protect villas are stopping 20,000 sites near Auckland’s ...
Artificial intelligence is poised to significantly transform the Indo-Pacific maritime security landscape. It offers unprecedented situational awareness, decision-making speed and operational flexibility. But without clear rules, shared norms and mechanisms for risk reduction, AI could ...
For what is a man, what has he got?If not himself, then he has naughtTo say the things he truly feelsAnd not the words of one who kneelsThe record showsI took the blowsAnd did it my wayLyrics: Paul Anka.Morena folks, before we discuss Winston’s latest salvo in NZ First’s War ...
Britain once risked a reputation as the weak link in the trilateral AUKUS partnership. But now the appointment of an empowered senior official to drive the project forward and a new burst of British parliamentary ...
Australia’s ability to produce basic metals, including copper, lead, zinc, nickel and construction steel, is in jeopardy, with ageing plants struggling against Chinese competition. The multinational commodities company Trafigura has put its Australian operations under ...
There have been recent PPP debacles, both in New Zealand (think Transmission Gully) and globally, with numerous examples across both Australia and Britain of failed projects and extensive litigation by government agencies seeking redress for the failures.Rob Campbell is one of New Zealand’s sharpest critics of PPPs noting that; "There ...
On Twitter on Saturday I indicated that there had been a mistake in my post from last Thursday in which I attempted to step through the Reserve Bank Funding Agreement issues. Making mistakes (there are two) is annoying and I don’t fully understand how I did it (probably too much ...
Indonesia’s armed forces still have a lot of work to do in making proper use of drones. Two major challenges are pilot training and achieving interoperability between the services. Another is overcoming a predilection for ...
The StrategistBy Sandy Juda Pratama, Curie Maharani and Gautama Adi Kusuma
As a living breathing human being, you’ve likely seen the heart-wrenching images from Gaza...homes reduced to rubble, children burnt to cinders, families displaced, and a death toll that’s beyond comprehension. What is going on in Gaza is most definitely a genocide, the suffering is real, and it’s easy to feel ...
Donald Trump, who has called the Chair of the Federal Reserve “a major loser”. Photo: Getty ImagesLong stories shortest from our political economy on Tuesday, April 22:US markets slump after Donald Trump threatens the Fed’s independence. China warns its trading partners not to side with the US. Trump says some ...
Last night, the news came through that Pope Francis had passed away at 7:35 am in Rome on Monday, the 21st of April, following a reported stroke and heart failure. Pope Francis. Photo: AP.Despite his obvious ill health, it still came as a shock, following so soon after the Easter ...
The 2024 Independent Intelligence Review found the NIC to be highly capable and performing well. So, it is not a surprise that most of the 67 recommendations are incremental adjustments and small but nevertheless important ...
This is a re-post from The Climate BrinkThe world has made real progress toward tacking climate change in recent years, with spending on clean energy technologies skyrocketing from hundreds of billions to trillions of dollars globally over the past decade, and global CO2 emissions plateauing.This has contributed to a reassessment of ...
Hi,I’ve been having a peaceful month of what I’d call “existential dread”, even more aware than usual that — at some point — this all ends.It was very specifically triggered by watching Pantheon, an animated sci-fi show that I’m filing away with all-time greats like Six Feet Under, Watchmen and ...
Once the formalities of honouring the late Pope wrap up in two to three weeks time, the conclave of Cardinals will go into seclusion. Some 253 of the current College of Cardinals can take part in the debate over choosing the next Pope, but only 138 of them are below ...
The National Party government is doubling down on a grim, regressive vision for the future: more prisons, more prisoners, and a society fractured by policies that punish rather than heal. This isn’t just a misstep; it’s a deliberate lurch toward a dystopian future where incarceration is the answer to every ...
The audacity of Don Brash never ceases to amaze. The former National Party and Hobson’s Pledge mouthpiece has now sunk his claws into NZME, the media giant behind the New Zealand Herald and half of our commercial radio stations. Don Brash has snapped up shares in NZME, aligning himself with ...
A listing of 28 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, April 13, 2025 thru Sat, April 19, 2025. This week's roundup is again published by category and sorted by number of articles included in each. The formatting is a ...
“What I’d say to you is…” our Prime Minister might typically begin a sentence, when he’s about to obfuscate and attempt to derail the question you really, really want him to answer properly (even once would be okay, Christopher). Questions such as “Why is a literal election promise over ...
Ruth IrwinExponential Economic growth is the driver of Ecological degradation. It is driven by CO2 greenhouse gas emissions through fossil fuel extraction and burning for the plethora of polluting industries. Extreme weather disasters and Climate change will continue to get worse because governments subscribe to the current global economic system, ...
A man on telly tries to tell me what is realBut it's alright, I like the way that feelsAnd everybody singsWe are evolving from night to morningAnd I wanna believe in somethingWriter: Adam Duritz.The world is changing rapidly, over the last year or so, it has been out with the ...
MFB Co-Founder Cecilia Robinson runs Tend HealthcareSummary:Kieran McAnulty calls out National on healthcare lies and says Health Minister Simeon Brown is “dishonest and disingenuous”(video below)McAnulty says negotiation with doctors is standard practice, but this level of disrespect is not, especially when we need and want our valued doctors.National’s $20bn ...
Chris Luxon’s tenure as New Zealand’s Prime Minister has been a masterclass in incompetence, marked by coalition chaos, economic lethargy, verbal gaffes, and a moral compass that seems to point wherever political expediency lies. The former Air New Zealand CEO (how could we forget?) was sold as a steady hand, ...
Has anybody else noticed Cameron Slater still obsessing over Jacinda Ardern? The disgraced Whale Oil blogger seems to have made it his life’s mission to shadow the former Prime Minister of New Zealand like some unhinged stalker lurking in the digital bushes.The man’s obsession with Ardern isn't just unhealthy...it’s downright ...
Skeptical Science is partnering with Gigafact to produce fact briefs — bite-sized fact checks of trending claims. You can submit claims you think need checking via the tipline. Is climate change a net benefit for society? Human-caused climate change has been a net detriment to society as measured by loss of ...
When the National Party hastily announced its “Local Water Done Well” policy, they touted it as the great saviour of New Zealand’s crumbling water infrastructure. But as time goes by it's looking more and more like a planning and fiscal lame duck...and one that’s going to cost ratepayers far more ...
Donald Trump, the orange-hued oligarch, is back at it again, wielding tariffs like a mob boss swinging a lead pipe. His latest economic edict; slapping hefty tariffs on imports from China, Mexico, and Canada, has the stench of a protectionist shakedown, cooked up in the fevered minds of his sycophantic ...
In the week of Australia’s 3 May election, ASPI will release Agenda for Change 2025: preparedness and resilience in an uncertain world, a report promoting public debate and understanding on issues of strategic importance to ...
One pill makes you largerAnd one pill makes you smallAnd the ones that mother gives youDon't do anything at allGo ask AliceWhen she's ten feet tallSongwriter: Grace Wing Slick.Morena, all, and a happy Bicycle Day to you.Today is an unofficial celebration of the dawning of the psychedelic era, commemorating the ...
It’s only been a few months since the Hollywood fires tore through Los Angeles, leaving a trail of devastation, numerous deaths, over 10,000 homes reduced to rubble, and a once glorious film industry on its knees. The Palisades and Eaton fires, fueled by climate-driven dry winds, didn’t just burn houses; ...
Four eighty-year-old books which are still vitally relevant today. Between 1942 and 1945, four refugees from Vienna each published a ground-breaking – seminal – book.* They left their country after Austria was taken over by fascists in 1934 and by Nazi Germany in 1938. Previously they had lived in ‘Red ...
Good Friday, 18th April, 2025: I can at last unveil the Secret Non-Fiction Project. The first complete Latin-to-English translation of Giovanni Pico della Mirandola’s twelve-book Disputationes adversus astrologiam divinatricem (Disputations Against Divinatory Astrology). Amounting to some 174,000 words, total. Some context is probably in order. Giovanni Pico della Mirandola (1463-1494) ...
National MP Hamish Campbell's pathetic attempt to downplay his deep ties to and involvement in the Two by Twos...a secretive religious sect under FBI and NZ Police investigation for child sexual abuse...isn’t just a misstep; it’s a calculated lie that insults the intelligence of every Kiwi voter.Campbell’s claim of being ...
New Zealand First’s Shane Jones has long styled himself as the “Prince of the Provinces,” a champion of regional development and economic growth. But beneath the bluster lies a troubling pattern of behaviour that reeks of cronyism and corruption, undermining the very democracy he claims to serve. Recent revelations and ...
Give me one reason to stay hereAnd I'll turn right back aroundGive me one reason to stay hereAnd I'll turn right back aroundSaid I don't want to leave you lonelyYou got to make me change my mindSongwriters: Tracy Chapman.Morena, and Happy Easter, whether that means to you. Hot cross buns, ...
New Zealand’s housing crisis is a sad indictment on the failures of right wing neoliberalism, and the National Party, under Chris Luxon’s shaky leadership, is trying to simply ignore it. The numbers don’t lie: Census data from 2023 revealed 112,496 Kiwis were severely housing deprived...couch-surfing, car-sleeping, or roughing it on ...
The podcast above of the weekly ‘Hoon’ webinar for paying subscribers on Thursday night features co-hosts & talking about the week’s news with regular and special guests, including: on a global survey of over 3,000 economists and scientists showing a significant divide in views on green growth; and ...
Simeon Brown, the National Party’s poster child for hubris, consistently over-promises and under-delivers. His track record...marked by policy flip-flops and a dismissive attitude toward expert advice, reveals a politician driven by personal ambition rather than evidence. From transport to health, Brown’s focus seems fixed on protecting National's image, not addressing ...
Open access notables Recent intensified riverine CO2 emission across the Northern Hemisphere permafrost region, Mu et al., Nature Communications:Global warming causes permafrost thawing, transferring large amounts of soil carbon into rivers, which inevitably accelerates riverine CO2 release. However, temporally and spatially explicit variations of riverine CO2 emissions remain unclear, limiting the ...
Once a venomous thorn in New Zealand’s blogosphere, Cathy Odgers, aka Cactus Kate, has slunk into the shadows, her once-sharp quills dulled by the fallout of Dirty Politics.The dishonest attack-blogger, alongside her vile accomplices such as Cameron Slater, were key players in the National Party’s sordid smear campaigns, exposed by Nicky ...
Once upon a time, not so long ago, those who talked of Australian sovereign capability, especially in the technology sector, were generally considered an amusing group of eccentrics. After all, technology ecosystems are global and ...
The ACT Party leader’s latest pet project is bleeding taxpayers dry, with $10 million funneled into seven charter schools for just 215 students. That’s a jaw-dropping $46,500 per student, compared to roughly $9,000 per head in state schools.You’d think Seymour would’ve learned from the last charter school fiasco, but apparently, ...
India navigated relations with the United States quite skilfully during the first Trump administration, better than many other US allies did. Doing so a second time will be more difficult, but India’s strategic awareness and ...
The NZCTU Te Kauae Kaimahi is concerned for low-income workers given new data released by Stats NZ that shows inflation was 2.5% for the year to March 2025, rising from 2.2% in December last year. “The prices of things that people can’t avoid are rising – meaning inflation is rising ...
Last week, the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment recommended that forestry be removed from the Emissions Trading Scheme. Its an unfortunate but necessary move, required to prevent the ETS's total collapse in a decade or so. So naturally, National has told him to fuck off, and that they won't be ...
China’s recent naval circumnavigation of Australia has highlighted a pressing need to defend Australia’s air and sea approaches more effectively. Potent as nuclear submarines are, the first Australian boats under AUKUS are at least seven ...
In yesterday’s post I tried to present the Reserve Bank Funding Agreement for 2025-30, as approved by the Minister of Finance and the Bank’s Board, in the context of the previous agreement, and the variation to that agreement signed up to by Grant Robertson a few weeks before the last ...
Australia’s bid to co-host the 31st international climate negotiations (COP31) with Pacific island countries in late 2026 is directly in our national interest. But success will require consultation with the Pacific. For that reason, no ...
Old and outdated buildings being demolished at Wellington Hospital in 2018. The new infrastructure being funded today will not be sufficient for future population size and some will not be built by 2035. File photo: Lynn GrievesonLong stories short from our political economy on Thursday, April 17:Simeon Brown has unveiled ...
Thousands of senior medical doctors have voted to go on strike for 24 hours overpay at the beginning of next month. Callaghan Innovation has confirmed dozens more jobs are on the chopping block as the organisation disestablishes. Palmerston North hospital staff want improved security after a gun-wielding man threatened their ...
The introduction of AI in workplaces can create significant health and safety risks for workers (such as intensification of work, and extreme surveillance) which can significantly impact workers’ mental and physical wellbeing. It is critical that unions and workers are involved in any decision to introduce AI so that ...
Donald Trump’s return to the White House and aggressive posturing is undermining global diplomacy, and New Zealand must stand firm in rejecting his reckless, fascist-driven policies that are dragging the world toward chaos.As a nation with a proud history of peacekeeping and principled foreign policy, we should limit our role ...
Sunday marks three months since Donald Trump’s inauguration as US president. What a ride: the style rude, language raucous, and the results rogue. Beyond manners, rudeness matters because tone signals intent as well as personality. ...
There are any number of reasons why anyone thinking of heading to the United States for a holiday should think twice. They would be giving their money to a totalitarian state where political dissenters are being rounded up and imprisoned here and here, where universities are having their funds for ...
Taiwan has an inadvertent, rarely acknowledged role in global affairs: it’s a kind of sponge, soaking up much of China’s political, military and diplomatic efforts. Taiwan soaks up Chinese power of persuasion and coercion that ...
The Ukraine war has been called the bloodiest conflict since World War II. As of July 2024, 10,000 women were serving in frontline combat roles. Try telling them—from the safety of an Australian lounge room—they ...
Following Canadian authorities’ discovery of a Chinese information operation targeting their country’s election, Australians, too, should beware such risks. In fact, there are already signs that Beijing is interfering in campaigning for the Australian election ...
This video includes personal musings and conclusions of the creator climate scientist Dr. Adam Levy. It is presented to our readers as an informed perspective. Please see video description for references (if any). From "founder" of Tesla and the OG rocket man with SpaceX, and rebranding twitter as X, Musk has ...
Back in February 2024, a rat infestation attracted a fair few headlines in the South Dunedin Countdown supermarket. Today, the rats struck again. They took out the Otago-Southland region’s internet connection. https://www.stuff.co.nz/nz-news/360656230/internet-outage-hits-otago-and-southland Strictly, it was just a coincidence – rats decided to gnaw through one fibre cable, while some hapless ...
I came in this morning after doing some chores and looked quickly at Twitter before unpacking the groceries. Someone was retweeting a Radio NZ story with the headline “Reserve Bank’s budget to be slashed by 25%”. Wow, I thought, the Minister of Finance has really delivered this time. And then ...
So, having teased it last week, Andrew Little has announced he will run for mayor of Wellington. On RNZ, he's saying its all about services - "fixing the pipes, making public transport cheaper, investing in parks, swimming pools and libraries, and developing more housing". Meanwhile, to the readers of the ...
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?W.B. Yeats, The Second Coming, 1921ALL OVER THE WORLD, devout Christians will be reaching for their bibles, reading and re-reading Revelation 13:16-17. For the benefit of all you non-Christians out there, these are the verses describing ...
Give me what I want, what I really, really want: And what India really wants from New Zealand isn’t butter or cheese, but a radical relaxation of the rules controlling Indian immigration.WHAT DOES INDIA WANT from New Zealand? Not our dairy products, that’s for sure, it’s got plenty of those. ...
In the week of Australia’s 3 May election, ASPI will release Agenda for Change 2025: preparedness and resilience in an uncertain world, a report promoting public debate and understanding on issues of strategic importance to ...
The Government must support Northland hapū who have resorted to rakes and buckets to try to control a devastating invasive seaweed that threatens the local economy and environment. ...
New Zealand First has today introduced a Member’s Bill that would ensure the biological definition of a woman and man are defined in law. “This is not about being anti-anyone or anti-anything. This is about ensuring we as a country focus on the facts of biology and protect the ...
After stonewalling requests for information on boot camps, the Government has now offered up a blog post right before Easter weekend rather than provide clarity on the pilot. ...
More people could be harmed if Minister for Mental Health Matt Doocey does not guarantee to protect patients and workers as the Police withdraw from supporting mental health call outs. ...
The Green Party recognises the extension of visa allowances for our Pacific whānau as a step in the right direction but continues to call for a Pacific Visa Waiver. ...
The Government yesterday released its annual child poverty statistics, and by its own admission, more tamariki across Aotearoa are now living in material hardship. ...
Today, Te Pāti Māori join the motu in celebration as the Treaty Principles Bill is voted down at its second reading. “From the beginning, this Bill was never welcome in this House,” said Te Pāti Māori Co-Leader, Rawiri Waititi. “Our response to the first reading was one of protest: protesting ...
The Green Party is proud to have voted down the Coalition Government’s Treaty Principles Bill, an archaic piece of legislation that sought to attack the nation’s founding agreement. ...
A Member’s Bill in the name of Green Party MP Julie Anne Genter which aims to stop coal mining, the Crown Minerals (Prohibition of Mining) Amendment Bill, has been pulled from Parliament’s ‘biscuit tin’ today. ...
Labour MP Kieran McAnulty’s Members Bill to make the law simpler and fairer for businesses operating on Easter, Anzac and Christmas Days has passed its first reading after a conscience vote in Parliament. ...
Nicola Willis continues to sit on her hands amid a global economic crisis, leaving the Reserve Bank to act for New Zealanders who are worried about their jobs, mortgages, and KiwiSaver. ...
The tech sector is New Zealand's third biggest source of exports behind meat and dairy, the prime minister has told those attending an event in London. ...
The call has sent ripples through the veteran community — but behind the protest lies a deeper story of neglect, frustration and a system many say has failed those it was meant to serve.Every year on April 25, politicians and dignitaries stand before the nation, flanked by medals and ...
From real-terms minimum wage cuts to watering down health and safety, the government is subtly chipping away at pay, conditions and many of the other things that make work life-giving, writes Max Rashbrooke. Frogs, it turns out, do notice when they’re being boiled. For years the favourite metaphor for people’s ...
Speaker of the House Gerry Brownlee says he believes Te Pāti Māori’s Treaty Principles Bill haka showed “huge disrespect for the Parliament itself”, and disrespect for “some aspects of the Treaty”.Brownlee cannot influence the committee considering potential disciplinary actions against the three Te Pāti Māori MPs who left their seats ...
On a tattered Red Cross map, four nearly-straight pencil lines track north from Capua, near Naples, to Chavari then Ubine. From here, over the border to Breslau in what was then German-occupied Poland, then on to Lübeck, north-east of Hamburg. Above each line a single handwritten word – “Train”, “Train”, ...
After weeks of turmoil in the global markets, economists and commentators have used words like ‘bloodbath’ and ‘carnage’ to describe the world’s financial situation.And while New Zealand often feels relatively cushioned, what happens in the US is inextricably linked to the rest of the world.“It will impact us to some ...
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NZ tracks far below the OECD average when it comes to investing in research and science and attempts to catch up just haven’t worked The post NZ’s long-standing R&D target scrapped appeared first on Newsroom. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra This election has been lacklustre, without the touch of excitement of some past campaigns. Through the decades, campaigning has changed dramatically, adopting new techniques and technologies. This time, we’ve seen politicians try to ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra A re-elected Albanese government will take the unprecedented step of buying or obtaining options over key critical minerals to protect Australia’s national interest and boost its economic resilience. The move follows US President Donald Trump’s ...
RNZ Pacific Despite calls from women’s groups urging the government to implement policies to address the underrepresentation of women in politics, the introduction of temporary special measures (TSM) to increase women’s political representation in Fiji remains a distant goal. This week, leader of the Social Democratic Liberal Party (Sodelpa), Cabinet ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra A re-elected Albanese government will take the unprecedented step of buying or obtaining options over key critical minerals to protect Australia’s national interest and boost its economic resilience. The move follows US President Donald Trump’s ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Stephen Appiah Takyi, Senior Lecturer, Department of Planning, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) Urban flooding is a major problem in the global south. In west and central Africa, more than 4 million people were affected by flooding in 2024. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Peter Layton, Visiting Fellow, Strategic Studies, Griffith University Just as voting has begun in this year’s federal election, the Coalition has released its long-awaited defence policy platform. The main focus, as expected, is a boost in defence spending to 3% of Australia’s ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Liz Hicks, Lecturer in Law, The University of Melbourne Roberto La Rosa/Shutterstock Snipers in helicopters have shot more than 700 koalas in the Budj Bim National Park in western Victoria in recent weeks. It’s believed to be the first time koalas ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Gabriele Gratton, Professor of Politics and Economics and ARC Future Fellow, UNSW Sydney Pundits and political scientists like to repeat that we live in an age of political polarisation. But if you sat through the second debate between Prime Minister Anthony Albanese ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Siobhan O’Dean, Research Fellow, The Matilda Centre for Research in Mental Health and Substance Use, University of Sydney Kaboompics.com/Pexels There’s no shortage of things to feel angry about these days. Whether it’s politics, social injustice, climate change or the cost-of-living crisis, ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Darius von Guttner Sporzynski, Historian, Australian Catholic University The death of Pope Francis this week marks the end of a historic papacy and the beginning of a significant transition for the Catholic Church. As the faithful around the world mourn his passing, ...
A recent survey, carried out by PPTA Te Wehengarua, of establishing and overseas trained secondary teachers found that 90% of respondents agreed that mentoring had helped their development. ...
Other Honours recipients include country singer Suzanne Prentice, most capped All Black Samuel Whitelock, and Māori language educator and academic Professor Rawinia Higgins. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Intifar Chowdhury, Lecturer in Government, Flinders University The centre of gravity of Australian politics has shifted. Millennials and Gen Z voters, now comprising 47% of the electorate, have taken over as the dominant voting bloc. But this generational shift isn’t just ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Richard Dunley, Senior Lecturer in History and Maritime Strategy, UNSW Sydney National security issues have been a constant feature of this federal election campaign. Both major parties have spruiked their national security credentials by promising additional defence spending. The Coalition has ...
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“A director of Dominion Finance, which lost investors more than $176 million, wants to serve home detention in her $6.8 million Remuera mansion.”
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10882946
Stick bricks in her coat pockets and throw her in the swimming pool.
I am not sure I really care about “punishing” her on behalf of those who had the cash to invest. I no longer believe in ma and pa investors, garden faeries are more believable. Stuffed if I want taxes spent protecting the rich from the predations of other rich people: if they can afford to invest it they can afford to lose it, or be taxed.
It surprises me that the home is apparently not in a trust, so she’ll lose it anyway. The quality of Directors these day eh? She should have at least known how to protect her own assets even if she didn’t have a clue about protecting the easy money of the investors looking for super returns.
Great, if people save instead of consume and try to invest that capital to keep themselves out of poverty in old age they are according to Leftists like you “EVIL CAPITALIST SCUM WHO DESERVE TO GET FUCKED!!!”.
Sigh.
You might wish to check out who the average investor was: it was not you and me. The small ones who saved and scrimped were pretty much a tiny minority. Look at SCF, the “Ma and Pa” investors got a guarantee and ripped the tax payer big time. Look at the “ma and pa” 2.5% of the NZ population who bought MRP shares…are they you and me? Fuck them, Let the buyer beware.
On the other hand there are the savers who believe in banks for long term security. Think more about how their savings get rorted by tax / inflation / bank rip offs etc.
“savings get rorted by tax / inflation / bank rip offs etc.”
You aren’t telling me anything their I’m not already aware of.
You are in la la land though if you think bank deposits are the only legitimate form of investment or will ever give good investment returns.
Finance companies play an important role in the economy, too bad that poor regulation and inforcement have blown that sector up – NZ is poorer for it.
But you are obviously too ideologically driven to realise the importance of investment for personal and national wealth creation.
Learn how to read and reason, Get the facts first. Idiot.
You are financially illiterate.
Financial integrity does not equal financial illiteracy.
So you also believe that a savings bank deposit is the only “moral” wealth anyone is allowed to have?
Anything else brings suspicion and accusations of being a “Capitalist Enroader!”.
What about kiwisaver?
Moral does not equal integrity either. An investor with integrity will be aware they’re getting pretty high interest for taking pretty high risks. They’ll check out the background of the Directors before they invest, weigh it up and wear it when they take a loss, not withstanding the criminal charges a Director, or ‘financial planners’ should get if they mislead.
This is also why it’s curious that this Director doesn’t have her home in a Trust. Finance company directors aren’t known for integrity nor for selling homes to pay back investors.
What about Kiwisaver?
Nope, that’s completely immoral. Or, to be more precise, expecting interest on it is.
Completely immoral as well as it seeks to prop up an immoral system. It can’t, of course, as the system depends upon ever increasing debt and use of oil neither of which is possible.
“What about kiwisaver?
Completely immoral as well as it seeks to prop up an immoral system. It can’t, of course, as the system depends upon ever increasing debt and use of oil neither of which is possible.
Best investment – put excess money into things that will promote survival and resiliency in the future (that’s not accrual of money in case it’s not obvious).
Draco, what do you think about organisations like Prometheus?
http://www.prometheus.co.nz/
Isn’t the problem with under-investment in NZ that everyone now knows the market here is just dangerously risky for small players, and you don’t know which advisers you can trust when they are all probably more heavily attuned to taking their personal cut of transactions than worrying about your personal risk?
” What about kiwisaver?
Completely immoral as well as it seeks to prop up an immoral system.”
Are you in the Kiwisaver scheme Draco, or did you opt out?
Saving bank deposits were the choices of our parents and grandparents generations. They seem to do pretty alright.
You seem to be speaking the same language of those who support the so-called MOM for SOE’s.
Mr Turkey Brain aka KP. State your working credentials before you accuse me of that. Do you run companies? Do you understand the workings of general ledgers, P&Ls, tax accounting, finance, contracts etc? Is it something you have to apply to company operations, sales, profitability on a daily basis? Demonstrate that and I might consider your flippant charge of illiteracy worthy of debate.
PS The leftist anti capitalist bit…what the hell did I say that was necessarily leftist per se? Who are these “capitalists” of whom you speak?
You might wish to check out who the average investor was: it was not you and me. The small ones who saved and scrimped were pretty much a tiny minority. Look at SCF, the “Ma and Pa” investors got a guarantee and ripped the tax payer big time. Look at the “ma and pa” 2.5% of the NZ population who bought MRP shares…are they you and me? Fuck them, Let the buyer beware.
Ennui, do you have some figures on that? Leaving aside MRP, how many people who got burned in the finance company collapses were of what class and income bracket?
I have seen a finance companies books but cannot comment on that publicly as it was in confidence. I will have a look around the public records however and report back what is there.
Cut one was revealing, read this little beauty http://www.rbnz.govt.nz/research/econresearch/3198451.pdf does not give hard numbers but if you read between the lines pages 3 to 5 you get the flavour of huge under investment in finance because disposable income is too low and housing seen as safer with better returns.
You’re vigorous for so early on a Saturday morning there KP. Triple-shot was it ?
Rosy simply points-up that empathy for others doing it hard is an unknown quantity amongst many who have “done well”. The ones who cluck disgustedly, point judgmental fingers, then cheer Boss Hogg Bennett when she launches yet another dog-whistling salvo against beneficiaries and other “unworthy” types.
The “done-well” become vaguely aware of the concept only when they themselves are reduced to the level of their “lessers”. Even then it’s not actually empathy. It’s essentially sympathy, for themselves.
I support Rosy in making that point without you jamming your abusive words into her mouth.
Hope your day improves. Im sure it can. Just summon up some humility, offer it up to your own petard, and ask politely that you be hoisted down a little.
You got yourself all confused North, if you check the thread I wasn’t replying to Rosy, at that point I didn’t notice she had posted.
Synthetic marijuana was it, North?
Not needed in the North, dickhead.
Doesn’t matter who you “thought” you were replying to – given the “ideologially driven” screech you’re broadly into your reply can be taken up by many.
Disingenuous is what you are.
Um, that’s the whole basis of capitalism. What you’re actually demanding is that people don’t have to pay the costs of the risks that they take.
And, yes, every capitalist out there is scum who wants money for nothing. That too is part and parcel of capitalism.
Shorter Draco:
“And, yes, every person who doesn’t believe as I do is scum who want money for nothing.”
You have an extremely binary view of the world, Draco.
Got nothing to do with belief – just the facts of what actually happens in a capitalist society. A few get very rich and well off while everyone else becomes poorer.
“Got nothing to do with belief”
Well, actually it does Draco, because you have made a blanket statement that every capitalist (without defining what ‘capitalist’ means to you) is ‘scum’.
You seem to believe and hold the opinion that ‘capitalist’ is a single entity where, in actual fact, there are sharp degrees of capitalism.
“just the facts of what actually happens in a capitalist society. A few get very rich and well off while everyone else becomes poorer.”
That has happened, and can always happen, under any ideology. The best we can do is mitigate the bad while trying to exemplify the good.
I think capitalism can work just fine. Does that me a ‘capitalist’ because you need to define your terms here. We touched on this on The Daily Blog where you suggested that capitalism = Right Wing but used neo-liberalism as an example. Neo-liberalism is a type of capitalism, not capitalism in itself. I am not a neo-liberal, but I am a proponent Social-market economy capitalism. They are different beasts.
They’re the biggest bludgers in the world. Seemingly their sole purpose in life is to have an income from other peoples work. That’s what investment means in our society and what having money in the bank is. To have an income generated by the work of others.
It’s what our entire society is geared for but it only works for the few as to produce a high income from it it needs to clip the ticket of as many people as possible. It’s why globalisation happens – to increase the number of people that the rich can steal from.
We don’t need foreign investment as we have all the resources we need right here in NZ – the actual physical resources, the education and the people – and yet the governments keep saying that we do and making it possible for foreigners to buy up NZ. The only reason for foreign investment to happen is for the rich of other countries to steal from us as well as their own people because they’ve reached the limits of their own economy (a firm in a local economy can only grow so much but a global firm can grow so much bigger – the limits are still there though).
No, not really.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitalism
It’s always centred around private ownership and the dead weight loss of profit and it is that which makes capitalism, any variant of it, right wing.
What a crock of shit, Draco. It is hard to find a starting point in order to address your bizarre uttering so I’ll just address the relevant points here.
“They’re the biggest bludgers in the world. Seemingly their sole purpose in life is to have an income from other peoples work.”
Who is ‘they’? Are ‘they’ the ‘capitalists’? You’ll have to define your term here. Are ‘they’ those whose actively seek to use capitalism as an economic system to benefit themselves at the expense of others? Or those who benefit from the capitalist system without ever considering it as the ruling economic paradigm? Your use of ‘they’ and ‘the capitalists’ is so ill defined as to be useless.
“No, not really.”
Yes, really. You understand there is a difference between laissez faire neo-liberalism and Social-Market Economy, right? One promotes privatisation of everything from the police to healthcare while the other supports and fund social welfare, education and health (to name but a few). This is your problem Draco, you have an extremely binary view of the world. Black, white, On, off. Which, to be frank, is a conservative, right-wing view. One that you cloak in left-wing rhetoric but it is a ‘us/them’ mentality all the same which reeks of no true scotsman fallacy.
“It’s always centred around private ownership and the dead weight loss of profit and it is that which makes capitalism, any variant of it, right wing.”
False.
Private ownership of goods =/= right-wing. Capitalism =/= right-wing.
Do you own anything, Draco? Have you ever benefited from interest, investment or Kiwisaver?
Thanks for the clarification.
Capitalism is the major problem. People making a habit of using their existing wealth to garner additional unearned wealth, while the labour utilised on the way gets fuck all.
hey Contrarian, have you heard about the trickle down theory?
it’s going to be a great economic boon for everybody.
It’s so exciting,
i can’t wait
I fail to understand why you remain in NZ. The country does not have a communist party in power nor is it likely to have in the near future. You are so far left you should wear a harness to arrest your fall.
That’s a bit unfair. I wouldn’t say Draco T Bastard is hard left for thinking every capitalist is a scumbag! Most capitalists have attained their wealth from the suffering of the poor after all. If you recognize or have been a victim of a corrupted system, then viewing those who have benefited from that corruption as being scum is entirely justified.
It might not be strictly correct in terms of all rich people aren’t capitalist scum, but it is entirely justified to have formed such beliefs because of the failures inherent within capitalism, namely that it increases inequality. Such a view as Draco has expressed is therefore not extreme at all, unless you’re arguing that inequality is somehow justified?
“unless you’re arguing that inequality is somehow justified?”
no, i doubt they would go so far as ‘justified’, they would turn off at ‘necessary’ and take the link road back to Imperialism via the scenic vistas of ‘entitlement’
Oh so you now accept that we’re not overrun by North Korean answers do you Dunmbarse. Jesus you’re an egg. Piss off to Slater Porn.
You shouldn’t start drinking so early…….. Wanker.
Here’s a better idea.
How about we release a number of women serving time in Arohata or Wiri for minor property crimes equal to the total amount that this woman ripped off. And let them serve out the rest of their sentences in this Remuera Mansion. I am sure they won’t mind. And it would be a big saving on the tax payer.
Splendid and creative idea.
Jenny for Minister of Justice and Housing. I love that idea.
May 10, 2013
Assange speech about to read by Daniel Ellsberg in San Francisco for Global Exchange Human Rights Award tonight
(Noam Chomsky and Jacob Appelbaum also present)
Thank you for this honor.
I am very happy to be sharing it with Noam Chomsky whose generosity and strength of character I have felt personally. Noam, you are the sea–relentless and enduring. You have crashed wave after wave of understanding into towering cliffs of lies, eroding them at their base. If the rotten foreshore of empire collapses it will be for this reason. You have inspired and continue to inspire many, including me.
Thank you to the people in this room for supporting this award. I’m going to thank you and Dan in the best way I know. By keeping this speech short. Then you can go and do the important thing. Make alliances to fight for WikiLeaks, Bradley Manning and me. Don’t think you can escape just because I am not there. We have a lot more spies in this room than the FBI.
San Francisco and the Bay Area is important to us. We fought our first big court case in the San Francisco federal courts in 2008; That was no coincidence. If we were going to have a fight, anywhere in the world, then I wanted it to be in San Francisco. I structured WikiLeaks to encourage attacks on us to be drawn to San Francisco (sorry about that). The Electronic Frontier Foundation, the Freedom of the Press Foundation and many of our other defenders are based here. If any state of the Union is going to save the United States from itself, it will be California. Washington sees that too–that’s why we’re being prosecuted in Virginia and Maryland.
Noam’s presence in this room –useful, even though he’s from Massachusetts– reflects something very special. Cross generational solidarity. From Dan and Noam to Michael Ratner, from Kiki to me, from Jacob to Bradley Manning. The issues of each demi-generation are being understood as a continuation into the present. My fight is right now. But so is Bradley Manning’s. So is Jacob’s. I want Dan, Noam and Jacob–all of you here–together with me in this fight because I know you understand. Our conflict tests every aspect of character, but it has also shown it in many and I am proud of them.
Remember that Bradley Manning’s trial starts on June 3. It is scheduled to run for twelve to sixteen weeks. The prosecution is bringing 141 witnesses. That is a show trial. A twelve-week off-Broadway extravaganza being performed at Fort Mead. Its legal and political result will directly feed into the larger prosecution of WikiLeaks.
What is to be done? The answer is easy. It has always been easy. Stop saying “not in my name” and start saying “over my dead body”. That’s what we did. It works. Do it.
http://www.twitlonger.com/show/n_1rk78hl
https://twitter.com/search?q=%23Assange
https://www.eff.org/
http://somersetbean.blogspot.co.nz/2012/12/new-ts-for-launch-of-fpf.html
Sorry, haven’t you heard, he is a Feminist pariah? Assange is a white guy with CIA backed false rape allegations made against him which the feminasties have swallowed hook, sinker and line.
You will accused of “rape culture” supporter in a political necklacing, Morrissey, if you are not careful.
KP, Who knows? But the comment does not help because right now we need EVERY believer in justice and fair play to put their support very publicly behind Bradley Manning.
“right now we need EVERY believer in justice and fair play”
[Deleted]
[lprent: So you took that as an opportunity to offensively insulting my half of my relatives again. Cretinous misogynistic drivel. And I too believe in delivering justice and fair play. I delete the ravings of bigoted fuckwits. ]
That’s right lprent, censor anything that doesn’t concur with your feminist dogma.
What’s wrong lprent, that it enrages you when I point out crazy feminist propaganda like the “E=mc2 is a sexed equation” nonsense.
You are no better than a fundamentalist Christian.
*sigh* more of your dogma, k_p, throwing out some obscure points that most feminists have never heard of.
Tell that to the 1000+ people (mainly women) who died in the Bangladesh garment factory collapse.
The western garment industry exploits the vulnerable, largely women, in poor countries, so they can make exorbitant profits, and try to buy off our resistance with relatively cheap clothing.
“throwing out some obscure points that most feminists have never heard of.”
The examples I give are of ideas central to Feminist ideology – Critical Theory, Feminist “Theory”, “Queer Theory” – all psuedo intellectual drivel that has wrecked the Humanities.
That’s your feminist contribution to knowledge.
[lprent: enough bullshit. bye. ]
Please explain how that “E=mc2 is a sexed equation” is central to Critical Theory, Feminist “Theory”, “Queer Theory”?
k_p has been given enormous leeway in recent days with multiple warnings for his horrible bigotry and false accusations. It doesn’t seem to be working. Again and again he spouts nonsense about the views of others, as he always has.
I wonder if he ought to be given some sort of penance to perform. Perhaps the severity of the penance could be determined by the quality of his answer to your question above.
k_p drops in and repeats a cherry-picked one liner, making accusations about feminism. He brandishes it like a weapon, jumps up and down claiming victory, then runs away without seriously engaging.
Yes, we know that, but perhaps it’s time to pull the plug? He’s derailing at best, but his intention is to intimidate and his method is stalking. Maybe no single post has violated any rule, but perhaps his pattern has to be considered?
He’s definitely a misogynist and he’s clearly trying to bully specific women he’s very obsessively targeted, and he consistently tries to derail threads to shut down discussion.
Moreover, he ignores repeated warnings about appropriate conduct.
It’s all very well if Karol and The Queen of Thorns have thick skins, but I worry that he’s driving off other potential contributors – as he intends to.
reminds me of our PM on any old day in the House
The examples I give are of ideas central to Feminist ideology
Citation needed. As usual.
Don’t hold your breath.
Indeed. Manning too often gets neglected and he is suffering a the result of his brave act in passing over the damning information about the US military.
“Manning too often gets neglected”
By you maybe, not by me.
You went to Uni right karol? What did you study?
My first tertiary education was in education, especially education of those with disabilities. I learned things about biology, neurology, and how people learn, and child development. This learning formed the basis of much of my later learning inside and outside the uni.
The human brain is a wondrous thing. I learn more about it every day, but some people’s brain functioning remains curiously obscure.
We’re learning more and more about bigotry. Things will get interesting when someone invents a cure.
there is a great new adventure sport called chuteless base jumping he could try,
I’m appalled at Manning’s treatment, but the fact of the matter is that he committed treason in the eyes of the law. It is inconceivable that he wouldn’t be punnished in some way, but torture is unacceptable.
“he committed treason” or the equally strong footed view :
He was upholding the Constitution of the Republic that he was serving.
Perhaps you would like to point out which bit of said Constitution he was upholding when he comitted treason against it?
‘We the People’ is a pretty good place to start.
It is often overlooked. The entire document is a flow on from those three simple words. It was the People he was defending, but I do have my doubts you even grasp what that means.
He swore the U.S. Armed Forces Oath of Enlistment
This includes the propagandized ‘against all enemies foreign and domestic’ line.
He concentrated this time on the domestic bit.
but you knew that already
http://www.theartnewspaper.com/imgart/frny13-d1-diary-metrpolitan-punk-02.jpg
“This is what punk was all about—about truth and justice and making a better world,”
Freedom, I presume that you do realize you’re trying to argue in good faith with the Kiwi equivalent of a Soviet commissar.
If you’re engaging in that futile exercise as an intellectual workout, that’s fine. As long as you don’t expect anything like enlightened or serious debate.
Cry me a river, build a bridge, and get over it.
that is an insult to the integrity and resourcefulness of a Soviet commissar.
Populuxe1 is more like the boot buckle worn by the Soviet commissar.
Rigid, functional but largely ineffectual to the goings on around him.
(i’ma gonna pay for that one i bet)
Well, a decent political commissar will keep his boot buckle pretty and polished up
So basically you’ve got nothing except handwaving and fantasy. Typical.
…the fact of the matter is that he committed treason in the eyes of the law.
What a disgusting, Wieselian hypocrite you are. As those of us who do not share your Maoist/Stalinist view of the world know, is not treason to bring war crimes to the attention of the world.
And spare us the bombast about being “appalled” by mistreatment of which you have repeatedly endorsed on this forum.
It is inconceivable that he wouldn’t be punnished [sic] in some way…
It is conceivable that he would be lauded and honoured in a state that valued human rights and the rule of law.
….but torture is unacceptable.
But you endorse the torturers and say that the person who exposed them “committed treason”. If I did not know better, I would think you were merely another bewildered mouth-breathing NewstalkZB listener.
For anyone with a shred of commonsense or common decency, here’s a reminder of why the full vengeance of the state is being unleashed on Manning and Assange….
http://www.collateralmurder.com/
Maoist? Hahahahaahahaha
What colour is the sky in your little fantasy world?
Your blind and rabid reiteration of government propaganda is comparable to the sort of comical craziness that came out of Red China in the 1960s.
I didn’t recognise the first blush when I read it this morning
…which the feminasties have swallowed hook, sinker and line.
Some nasty and politically aligned women have chosen to accept the British government’s black propaganda, but Swedish Rape Crisis has, like anyone honest, condemned the British-U.S. government campaign.
and the lead prosecutor, a woman, resigned from the case. A lot of of media are saying she resigned because the case was unravelling faster than a cardigan caught in a cartoon cartwheel
Link?
Or lie ?
Hyperlink?
Back to the old “cite everything” strategy, I see.
https://www.google.co.nz/search?client=ubuntu&channel=fs&q=assange+prosecutor+resigns&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&redir_esc=&ei=ZxWOUaaeFOyiiAeEtIGIBA
why would i say something like that without it being true? FFS, so boring !
Actually, that was for morrissey’s claim about rape crisis coming to assange’s support.
But to be fair, I didn’t see anything about the prosecutor’s motives for leaving the case in that google search you linked.
The trouble is that so many people heavily filter what they see or interpret on this issue that yeah, I want to see links for any claim they make.
just like TV ONE; it’s a Predicament!
“We have a lot more spies in this room than the FBI”
And the likes of Ian Fletchers are planted into Key spying positions while the “rotten foreshore of empire collapses”.
Well well, another gold star for an arrogant, mysogynist narcissist and a mendacious, hypocritical old fart.
“”Why do they assume that we have to change our standards, our values, to accommodate behaviour that is sodomy?””
http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/8659922/Guesthouse-refuses-to-let-gay-couple-sleep-together
Seems bigotry is perfectly fine though.
I think the ladies did the right thing: go public. Let the court of public opinion judge the hoteliers with their cash. Conversely if you legislate you only force legal acceptance, which is worth nothing compared to mind share.
The Pilgrim Planet Lodge. No sodomy.
LOL, they look like twins!
Who??? John Key and Aaron Gilmore ? Why they even dress the same. Maybe secretly separated Siamese twins?
“”Why do they assume that we have to change our standards, our values, to accommodate behaviour that is sodomy?”
So lesbians practice sodomy over and above any other sexual pairing? Riiight.
Don’t tell the heteros or they’ll be wanting to do the sodomy too.
What’s this about lesbians? Can you be more specific please?
hey Morrissey … rtfm
hey Morrissey … rtfm
WABM
“Can you be more specific please?”
Just observing that the guesthouse proprietor refused to allow a lesbian couple to share a bed because they would be accommodating “behaviour that is sodomy.”
Well, you know Rosy………just generally………Sodom and Gonorrh(oe)a.
It’s all in the same GPS ballpark.
As in Hillary Sodom Clinton?
As in Morrisodomy?
That doesn’t go quite so well as Hillary Sodom Clinton—which I am sure, by the way, is actually used by the legion of extreme right wing “Christian” Hillary-haters—but it is not bad, I suppose.
Keep it up, Te Reo!
TRP……..(apologies Morrissey – I’m a fan of yours)……..shouldn’t it be MorrisOddomy ? OK, not as good as either of yours’ but I’m a little hobbled today.
Consequent upon Kiwi Promethium alleging I’m on synthetic cannabis and Bowel Motion counselling that I should lay off the drink in the mornings. Have a good day folks. Must back to ma Twelve Steps.
Ironically – sodomy is anything that isn’t straight missionary position (hard right fundy def.) and given the Ruskin’s love of prying into other consenting adults sex-lives, methinks then it’s fair to speculate that the Ruskin’s hath done much sodomy themselves
Ergo, they should kick themselves out of their dwelling since apparently “no sodomites allowed” is the golden rule thou shalth not break.
Legally a business cannot discriminate on the basis of stuff that falls under the Human Rights Act iirc and you can bet these two muppets would scream blue murder along that line if they suddenly got booted from a business due to being fundamentalist christians.
Bring on the rainbow cluebat of bad PR and legal challenges!
as noted in the corresponding thread; we all know about sublimation, delusional projection, distortion, superiority complexes and repression do we not.
“No one becomes equal by the killing of another innocent life. That’s not equality, that’s enmity.” – Ryan Bomberger
Supporting mothers in having the ‘right’ to work from 9-3 tax free, in ‘most’ jobs, if they choose to do so, means that children will be feed before school.Amongst other things.
Now doesn’t all that bring new meaning to the words ‘productivity gains’ now, and in the next generations!
No, it just sounds like more uninformed ideological crap from you.
From the Guardian online today……
“Global carbon dioxide in atmosphere passes milestone level”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2013/may/10/carbon-dioxide-highest-level-greenhouse-gas
From the Herald online today….
“Do you know who I am now?”
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10882882
Four conclusions can be drawn from this.
1) Our continued civilisation is under threat on this planet.
2) More people in NZ know about Aaron Gilmore than details about climate change.
3) The NZ Herald is a poor excuse for journalism.
4) There is a link between 1,2 and 3.
Happy 400 ppm day, folks. Gonna be a warm one.
Jeeez they are a fiesty lot today on open mike TRP, every day is still like Sunday for Morrissey and KP can’t get much higher. “Sodom Clinton” heh what next.
Must be something about the weekend that brings out the warrior in them! Sadly, I’m off to footy, so I’ll have to wait till tonight to catch up with various witterings. Have a good one, TM.
Just what is it that makes today’s Labour leaders so dithering, so unappealing?
Let’s not beat about the bush: David Shearer is a terrible, ineffective, wishy-washy Labour leader.
But as bad as Shearer might be, here’s one fellow who is even worse. Pity the good people of Great Britain if this is all they can put up against Dave Snooty and his Eton chums…
Those hurrah henrys got enough bucks to finish their collars properly, surely ?
The neoliberals captured the British Labour Party when Blair took over.
There is no one for workers to vote for in the UK.
People are that desperate for an alternative and the corporations are ensuring there is not one.
hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way…
ashes and diamonds
foe and friend
we were all equal in the end
They haven’t yet silenced Chunkymark “The Artist Taxi Driver” and his “BBC Sucks O Cocks News” on YouTube. Ya gotta watch this one – it’s hilarious.
Elie Wiesel: Break Your Silence and Come with Us to Gaza!
When Elie Wiesel spoke at Saint Louis University on December 1, 2009, three women challenged him to break his silence about Gaza and to travel with them on the Gaza Freedom March to see for himself the devastation caused by Israel’s Operation Cast Lead in December 2008 and the ongoing siege.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w4wkR1IUUE8
Three years later, and the old hypocrite has still not gone to Gaza.
The Stock Market Is a Debt-Fueled Bubble: Steve Keen
Thing is, it’s more borrowing that both National and Labour are after with their affordable homes. More people buying = more borrowing and thus we get an increase in money in the system raising GDP. It’s not sustainable and must crash but the politicians will just push some other barrow that achieves the same end – more borrowing.
The only winners in such a system are the people who print the money with interest on it – the private banks.
No one has the stomach to reform our debt based money supply. It’s possibly the biggest no-no in the capitalist banking framework that we have locked ourselves into.
a great little video doing the rounds, with an interesting question
http://www.upworthy.com/watch-these-straight-people-answer-a-question-gay-people-have-been-asked-for-years-6?c=gt1
funny how it gets down to a very simple question. Great clip freedom.
and it is one simple question every person can consider for themselves without having to wave a flag or sign a paper or anything. All they have to do is spend a moment of honest contemplation. Something many more should do, more often than we do. I am as guilty as any of that failing.
Great clip. So true.
Here are ten facts you may wish to pop into tonight’s dinner conversations. I know, I know, facts are so infuriating when they completely contradict hysterical fantasies, but reality is like that, facts are facts and lies are just business.
http://www.collective-evolution.com/2012/10/16/10-eye-opening-facts-about-hemp/
Greens have been going on about that for awhile although I think that ALCP have more in depth policies on it.
Instead of building its future, New Zealand is disintergrating. An average house for a family should not cost $750,000. Things are out of control. A future requires a society to obtain levels of sustainability.
(If you do not believe that, good luck to you and yours.)
There is not one single reason hemp should not become a primary industry in NZ.
Building. Medicines. Food. Textiles. Plastics. Fuel. It just goes on and on and on.
We could be making milllions of dollars from hemp and hemp related industries if we wanted to, at the very least we could be saving billions if we chose to. The employment opportunities, the related economic growth, the social benefits, the sustainability bonuses, these are not things that should be dismissed lightly. But we all know the drill.
We have a problem, we look for a solution.
Whenever hemp is investigated as a viable solution, BAM ! straight into the wall !
It does have a very bad habit of highlighting sustainability nightmares. Mostly though, there are good responsible reasons given why not to go forward and they usually hold water as strongly as a $2 bucket.
However you spin it, money influence and engrained propaganda are difficult to overcome without forcing a fundamental breakthrough in how people comprehend the machine around them, and that’s not gonna happen anytime soon if some of the wanderers we meet here are anything to go by. I get that.
To the reader, I ask you. Will ignoring it all, solve any of the issues?
Shall we let blinkers crop the vista of our future?
A future requires a society to obtain levels of sustainability.
Building. Medicines. Food. Textiles. Plastics. Fuel.
I cannot see a single reason hemp should not become a primary industry in NZ.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/business/8661224/Like-China-Rens-still-a-wild-card
This is quite a big deal, we get that, but ….
Anyone know why he was here?
What the event was?
Who the other businessmen that are mentioned were?
What this piece of US-focused dross is meant to be conveying?
Good news.
http://www.680news.com/2013/05/10/ex-dictator-efrain-rios-montt-convicted-of-genocide-in-guatemala/
Strange that even the basics of US involvement in Guatemala since the 1950s have not rated a mention in the MSM.
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/US_ThirdWorld/US_Guat.html
Reagan refused to invite our PM David Lange to the White House, while right behind this murderer.
Despicable –
http://www.soaw.org/about-the-soawhinsec/soawhinsec-grads/notorious-grads
http://www.soaw.org/category-table/3873-guatemala-rios-montt-and-the-soa
USAID used to destabilise as well.
Wikileaks just keeps on giving.
http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/05/10/big-labors-tool-of-empire/
“How Class Works – Richard Wolff Examines Class ”
Shows up the class war of selling our Power companies whose future profits will accrue to the wealthy instead of the commons.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eGOA2WedIQo
“Working for an employer is like rowing an oar as a galley slave. You can quit and jump overboard but you splash right into the great ocean of unemployment, exclusive professional guilds, multi-level marketing scams, lying temp agencies, credit card debt, college loan scams, a 90% self-employment failure rate due to competition and deficient government benefits. You are forced to swim to and board another galley. Now all the galley ships have robotic oarsmen and you sink beneath the waves.”
RD Wolff makes a good political economic case for democratic socialism.
so does The Standard
I’m gradually learning more about the Second World War. There is so much to know and it has always been in my background, occasionally coming to the fore. Now I am older and less hopeful about humanity I have been reading about Resistance fighters etc.
This morning I am looking at The White Rose on wikepedia. That was the name that a group of protesting and defiant young people mostly students used as their symbol. When studying events in Germany between the wars it becomes obvious that the country had been occupied mentally internally by this authoritarian and brutal regime far before the 1939 declaration of war against Germany.
The things that are so emotionally expressed in these students’ words have been applied to what is going on in NZ. Many of these young people died at Nazi hands. One group were beheaded in 1943 I think in a public square.
So what happens every day to limit human rights and step up authoritarianism and fascism must be looked at carefully. Some quotes from the German group:
Excellent documentary series on WWII from the Soviet perspective:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0A6UWkK2U4s
One of the episodes is about the Soviet partisan war against the Germans.
Also consider – 4 out of 5 German soldiers killed in WWII were killed on the Eastern Front.
The D-Day landings at Normandy in 1944, although an important step in securing western europe, were not very relevant to Germany’s final defeat. Germany had already long lost the war in 1943, at the Battle of Kursk.
The role of the ANZACs is not to be unterestimated. Had they not kept Rommel tied up in North Africa, the Soviets might not have had time to rearm after the Ribbentrop-Molotov fiasco.
Not to mention that if the Germans had secured fuel supplies from the middle east then their strategies in Russia wouldn’t have been so skewed by the need to secure oilfields during Barbarossa.
Ultimately it was the inability of Germany to get a few essential strategic materials from outside of their conquered territories that lost them the battles. It forced them to make strategic mistakes.
They made strategic errors, yes, but their big error was going into total war with Russia AND America. Either one could have out produced, outgunned and out fought Germany in the long run. By wars end Russia and the USA were just getting warmed up and Germany was a smoking ruin which had run out of manpower and the ability to re-arm. Also, the conventional war had just about run it’s course anyway. The US had the A bomb. They also had the means to deliver it anywhere in German territory. Germany were close to a bomb, but had lost air superiority and were a long way from having true ICBM’s.
I agree that North African action greatly limited German options. Further, the horrific two and a half year siege of Leningrad was a disaster for Germany – it tied down 20% of their eastern forces even as 500-1000 Leningrad citizens starved to death daily.
As for forced mistakes…Hitler regarded himself as a military super-genius and things went down hill rapidly when he decided to put himself in charge of all military operations. Not letting his army withdraw from Stalingrad and deciding that a quarter million cut off German forces could be resupplied by air? Mad.
The Afrika Korps wouldn’t have even been noticed on the Russian Front. It swallowed up whole Army Groups. Rommel fought against a few divisions which made up the 8th Army. Operation Barbarossa kicked off seventeen months before the second Battle of El Alamein, which was three years after Ribbentrop and Molotov divided up Poland.
If anything, the Red Army saved Egypt for the British Empire, not the other way around.
It helped that Hitler made a few bad choices as well, peeling off elsewhere when he had a chance to press home his advantage. I think one of them was to push down into Ukraine when he could have taken Moscow before winter.
You would’ve thought that Germany would not want to make Napolean’s same mistakes in Russia.
Hitler did need to capture the industrial centre of Kiev so there was a strategic purpose to that. However, delays to capturing Moscow created huge problems for the Germans, and it allowed the Soviets to ship in elite eastern divisions to bolster the Moscow front.
Trying to go after the caucuses and Stalingrad and Moscow at the same time was never going to work. Classic Art of War – if you try to be everywhere, everywhere you will be weak.
You also have to factor in the massive intelligence failures of the Nazis regarding the USSR. They completely underestimated the size of the soviet forces and their massive reserves. They underrated the intelligence and determination of the soviet soldiers and officers who, after initial mass surrenders, chose to thereafter fight on behind advancing German lines even after being encircled and were a constant threat to their rear and flanks, as well as to their fronts.
They had no idea that the soviets even had the T34 and KV tanks, far superior to the panzer III and IV’s, nor that they had developed aircraft like the Mig 3, Yak 3, La 5 and 7’s, Il 2 and 10 shturmovics, and their katyushas etc. They never gave any consideration to the industrial capacity of the USSR and their ability to dismantle and reassemble their armaments factories well out of reach of German short-range bombers. Even though lend-lease provided them with allied war materiel, the USSR proved itself able to produce all manner of war materiel in such high volumes they were easily able to replace their losses as the war dragged on, when the Germans could not.
If you can get access to the War Memorial Museum library, then that’d be about the best source in NZ on some of the resistance movements.
Not only did we have people scattered throughout europe and the pacific and they wrote stuff down, but we also got quite a lot of refugees and emigres pre and post war who did as well. It seems like most of the hardcopy wound up there.
There was a year when I was a kid where I was attempting to soak up that library.
The same steady withdrawl of rights is happening now in NZ, but the populance finds it hard to get a fix on it and react. Much easier to join in the scrum on Mr Gilmore’s flaws than that of democratic rights or security from spying etc. We need a serious focus to prevent the slide. Sympathise with the Germans of the 30’s because they by the time they realised the significance of what they had lost it was too late to resist.
(Read about a butcher in Vienna who was anti-Nazi until the day the German army marched into Austria and declared the country to be part of the German Nazi empire. The next day the butcher marched down the road waving the German flag. “Survival,” he said.)
I agree ianmac, I spent some time there just yesterday and have real fear it is being repeated en masse.
A survivor of a high-level ring involving child sacrifice, torture and trafficking went public today in an exclusive disclosure and interview with Freedom Central’s Mel Ve and ITCCS Field Secretary Kevin Annett.
Toos Nijenhuis, a fifty four year old physiotherapist and mother of five from Holland, was tortured, raped and used experimentally from the age of four years old by wealthy and powerful men around the world, including top officials of churches and governments.
And, Nijenhuis claims, these crimes are continuing today, including the ritual sacrifice of children in rural Holland.
http://itccs.org/2013/05/08/child-sacrifice-and-trafficking-in-holland-and-abroad-an-eyewitness-comes-forward-and-names-her-torturers/
Is that tinfoil hat too tight again. Show me on the doll where the Illuminati touched you?
Seriously? I’m not doubting she suffered terrible abuse, but she’s quite obviously projecting this elaborate fantasy onto it to try and give that horrible abuse some meaning. Another similar and widespread projection onto childhood sexual abuse is alien abduction. There is no global satanic conspiracy and this sort of nonsense just distracts from the horrible mundane reality of child abuse.
Oh shucks another online spychology diagnosis.
Well why should you have all the fun with your diagnoses of sociopathy for the entire NACT caucus and so forth? Or did the Illuminati touch you too?
So are online psych diagnoses credible or not? Or only credible when they come from you?
Well either we can both be right or we can both be wrong. I’m fine either way, so take your pick.
You’ll have to ask Dr. Prentice.
cornell
“she’s quite obviously projecting this elaborate fantasy onto it to try and give that horrible abuse some meaning”
Obviously, meaning in your deranged opinion.
Institutional sexual abuse is nothing new.
Republican theory is not even wrong
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2013/05/facts-are-in-and-paul-ryan-is-wrong.html
not even “investing in new hospitals”, just ideology.
To The Handlers;
Risk is not necessary. Scientific development concept
Bone-modern-marrow admirably sails, bracing
the vigorous weight of the People while The Struggles
with the Persians remaining indecisive, abundant Africa
is being recovered from the vandal al1ens.
You can pencil that in three places
(Ray-guns are a fetish for steam-Punks,
may be buried with Wessex culture) We all
harden up with influence and Able instrumental guidance;
Plumb the depths, clean out the pipes, dispose the waste.
Quelle : Lectiones geometricae; pictures italicized
(or a combination Friend rice, Edgar; #23 8)
Eponymous / Mick Ronson Priestley (Whats My Name)
contend more in written acts than words.
The Shepherd’s crook, cuts right across the diagonal;
“he came to minister, not to be ministered to”.
“and let no-one attempt to reclaim (them) from the stigmata of their new master”.
Let no-one trouble them for the record of their transaction is in the temple.
Signs Of The End Of The Age, Watch!
Damn. The weird crash of php5-fpm and then apache happened again.
Reading the logs.
I think I’ll pull the APC offline as whatever is happening seems to be too low level to get logged.
Expect the odd outage for the next hour while I juggle the server.
Found. Fixed. Off for a walk while the weather lasts
This.
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/history.html
Hollywood Irons another 15% out of the NZ Film Submission taxpayer.Man