Is it time yet for a 1930s style Mortgage Moratorium?
Or, to save small businessess, and up against it home owners, should we pack it in and let the virus rip?
…..by 1931, it was clear that further intervention was necessary to prevent widespread foreclosures and mortgagee sales.
1936 as successive governments tried to cope with the worsening crisis…..
….Although mortgage relief was frequently discussed at some length by contemporary commentators, and by some historians in the 1950s and 1960s, it has been relegated to a few lines at most in more recent works.'
The Mortgagors and Tenants Further Relief
Act, 1932, gave new rights to mortgagors. Whereas, previously, mortgagors could seek relief only when they were directly threatened by mortgagee action, they could now apply for relief independently of any action taken by a mortgagee.
This Act also extended to lessees the same protection that had been granted to mortgagors,,
The definition of a capitalist is someone who knows the price of everything but the value of nothing.
At the Macro Level;
At lockdown level 3 & 4 lockdown, the banks are still demanding their pound of flesh. While our accounts are being drained by the banks, the population with severely curtailed freedom of movement, peoples and businesses and livelyhoods and ability to earn an income is on hold . The free flow of capital offshore to our foreign owned banks is completely unimpeded. Meanwhile everyone else's accounts, (including the government's) are being drained.
At the Micro level;
This morning at 9am two men wearing bandanas and not proper masks were at my garden gate demanding to entry into my yard to pick up my garden bag.
During the last level 4 & 3 lockdowns, and for weeks after, my garden bag was not collected for months, (despite the fact that it was over flowing). In fact I heard that the garden bag company was very close to being ruined and on the verge of going out of business.
Magically, this time around collecting grass clippings and garden waste is an essential service.
You've got to be kidding me. This is not an essential service.
And this not the only medium to small company that I know is operating as if there is no lockdown. I personally know of three others. Friends and and extended family members have told me that they have been called back to work. When last time they were ordered to stay at home on the government wage subsidy.
Obviously the government wage subsidy is not enough to keep these small companies viable during repeated lockdowns.
If the government are not to abandon their elimination strategy, if lockdowns are not to become farcical. The banks need to be ordered to do their share.
P.S Now I can understand that this company's existence and the jobs of its workers are at stake here, but so is public health.
Meanwhile, here I am hunkering down like a fool, trying to do my civic duty and barely leaving the house.
It may have 'Green' in its name, but I will cancelling my subscription to this service.
With the level 4 lockdown continuing in Auckland – the Auckland City Mission/Te Tāpui Atawhai is reporting a regrettable record.
Since this lockdown began, the Mission, with its partners, has distributed more than 6000 food parcels to Aucklanders needing support….
…..Missioner Helen Robinson says COVID-19 is once again highlighting the increasing incidence of food insecurity and its long-reaching effects in our country.
“Every day we help people who cannot otherwise adequately provide for their families. The demand is even greater than the previous lockdowns,” says Robinson. “People who have not fully recovered from the last lockdown had just been coping. This latest level four change has left many more people no option than to request support such as a food parcel so they can put food on the table.”
A moratorium on rents and mortgages for the period of the lockdown would eliminate food insecurity, and make the lockdown more bearable for tens of thousands of struggling families and small businesses.
It is not like our foreign owned banks can't afford it. They take $3.5 billion out of the country every year.
Food insecurity and high mortgage and rental costs are not just a lockdown problem. Lockdown makes these costs worse.
There is the pre Covid world and the post Covid world. I feel that the full impact of Covid has not yet occurred economically. With some luck there is not a worse variant than Delta to manage.
If anything could earn this government the love of the farmers, it would be a nationwide Moratorium on Mortgages for the period of the crisis. it would certainly undercut farmers support for the right wing 'Groundswell" movement and the National Party. Which would give a big boost to the government's poll ratings.
Not that they should do it for that reason.
The thing is if you are going to lock down a population you should do it, because it is the right thing to do.
I've posted before about the civilian casualties (a family of 10, including children) of this Pentagon-claimed "righteous strike" against a 2nd suicide bomber in Kabul during the evacuations.
A New York Times investigation has now established that the Reaper drone operator that followed the car for hours likely mis-read what he or she was seeing & that the "bomber" was a completely innocent man going about his normal daily business.
Thanks for posting that Gezza, and strangely enough it is the notorious Daily Mail who have given this story the most coverage out of all MSM as far as I can make out…well not strange really, they are are also are the best MSM outlet when it comes to coverage of Assange and Epstein.
'They are so burned we cannot identify their bodies': Grieving relatives' fury over US drone strike targeting ISIS-K that killed six children, including two toddlers aged 2, and four adults
As of April 2021, more than 71,000 Afghan and Pakistani civilians are estimated to have died as a direct result of the war.
The United States military in 2017 relaxed its rules of engagement for airstrikes in Afghanistan, which resulted in a massive increase in civilian casualties.
The CIA has armed and funded Afghan militia groups who have been implicated in grave human rights abuses and killings of civilians.
Afghan land is contaminated with unexploded ordnance, which kills and injures tens of thousands of Afghans, especially children, as they travel and go about their daily chores.
The war has exacerbated the effects of poverty, malnutrition, poor sanitation, lack of access to health care, and environmental degradation on Afghans’ health.
Yes. Doesn't take long on google to find various organisations that have investigated & counted the thousands of innocent people killed by US missile-armed Predator & Reaper drone strikes around different conflict zones. The US military basically doesn't follow up.
There have even been several cases reported where they've made a claim to have assassinated a particular target, only to discover later they got someone else, sometimes a probable militant, other times someone completely innocent.
Their "collateral damage" toll is eye-watering & shameful & never gets covered in their (or our) media.
And Biden's administration is talking up their intention to maintain this "over-the-horizon capability" to strike at terrorists in Afghanistan & elsewhere. 😠
The Russians say they are helping defend the legitimate government of Syria against terrorists & just don't talk about civlians murdered in their joint, savage attacks on medical centres & towns.
And the Israelis remain totally unconcerned about the grossly disproportionate civilian death tolls in their routinely savage reprisals against Hamas & Islamic Jihad unguided rocketing of Israel. They know the world's media's not really looking on any more & that the US will veto any meaningful Security Council punishment.
But neither of these two maintain the pretence that the US constantly does that they are defending the free world with precision "surgical strikes” that are assiduously studied beforehand, & only launched when they have definitively identified a terrorist target in a zone where they always avoid civilian casualties.
Reaper (& the earlier, smaller Predator) drones are usually armed with Hellfire mssiles. This a very brief Military Reaper promo (I've avoided selecting one of the many available YouTube videos of actual strikes on real human targets).
Just from the practice strikes in here you can see how using these damned things kills so many innocent bystanders or passers-by that come onto the scene once the bloody thing's launched.
A 9/11 essential read for anyone who thinks NZ should countenance the self-appointed "world policeman" or for those who need an alternative view of the US consensus that is blithely picked up by the MSM and has shaped the decades since prior to the Vietnam war.
I think I was watching a rare live broadcast of the burning North tower on tv1 on my little black & white tv on a shelf in the kitchen when the 2nd 757 hit the South tower.
I remember thinking, my god. Someone has got straight through the defences of the most powerful militarised country, the ONLY global superpower, in the world, by using their hubris & their own civilian technology in a major trojan horse attack on the American mainland.
Also, while pained at the thoughts of the last moments of the horrified defenceless passengers & occupants of the towers, I thought, detachedly, that this was a stunning feat of arms.
Shock & awe, from a small number of Islamic militants outraged at infidel America's presence & actions in Muslim lands.
Whilst the 9/11 attacks were horrendous. The death, destruction and invasion of sovereign lands killing 100s of thousands of innocent people far outweighs the brutality of twin towers. So much so that I find it very hard to have any sympathy for US citizens.
The US military left their huge military bases in Saudi Arabia after the UN-authorised & Arab-govt-supported first Gulf War (Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait) because the Saudi population was becoming so vocally opposed to their arrogant infidel culturally-offensive presence in the Muslims' holiest land the Saudi Royal Family got really concerned about a possible general revolt if they didn't tell them to go.
It seems to be only when the US service personnel body bag count starts to rise into the thousands that the US public & politicians begin to seriously demand answers as to why their sons & daughters are even fighting in these far-off countries.
The US Military response to the body bag problem has been to develop & utilise stand-off capability as much as possible. It reduced the body count significantly. As well as the disastrous idea of using private security contractors (mercenaries, by anybody else's definition) post-invasions in Iraq – so any losses in those cases didn't officially count as US Military corpses & other casualties.
Their armed Reaper drone programme has taken this to such an extreme I think I've read somewhere that US Reaper operators based in the US itself are now also able to fly some assassination missions in far off countries.
As I've noted, Biden & co have said several times since their panicked Kabul evacuation scramble that they intend to utilise their "Over-the-Horizon capability" to strike at IS & other terrorists in Afghanistan.
This stand-off capability insulates the US public far too much from the reality of what really happens to the locals in their far-flung wars. And reporters on the ground are either not permitted – or just not safely able – to report the daily horrors – as they did in the Vietnam war.
One further, major worry is that the US – and Russia, & China – are reported to be going hell-for-leather developing & testing autonomous stand-off attack UAVs including AI-equipped armed drones – potentially taking even the current human remote pilot last-minute MISSILE ABORT capability away.
It's looking likely the US will give an emergency use authorisation towards the end of the year. Depending on how our current outbreak plays out and how our approval authorities view the data, we too might start vaccinating all our school-age kids late this year to early next year. Maybe even in time for the start of school next year.
I had my first Covid jab a week ago. Just some pins and needles in the arm where I had the jab for about 30 mins and mild pain in the arm for a couple of hours 6 hours after. The mast cell activation and GAVE which I have made me vaccine hesitant, I over came this. A grandchild age 12 had the Covid jab on the same day. All went well.
Pleased for you Treetop. When one has other conditions it is a cause of anxiety. Our son in Australia, and a number of his Dr's patients, have had severe headaches after Astra Zeneca. He also knows someone who has had covid and says this is a small price to pay, as after the second dose this side effect goes according to the Dr.
I stayed for an hour after the jab just to be sure as a relative could not make it as planned. Usually anything medical does not faze me (tubes/injections).
I had a good laugh to myself post the jab, a man stood up and his track pants were so loose, half of his back side was exposed. He was seated 2 meters directly in front of me with his back facing me.
I would like to know what sort of antibodies I make.
As I have already said…I have no idea if there has been a reply to a comment I have made unless I actively search for one. There is no "Reply" button on the sidebar on my screen. If I do not respond, it is not me giving the single digit salute….even if it where warranted.
As for not commenting about Covid or the vaccines…are you serious?
[comment deleted in part for the second time.
I’m not going to waste more time on you on Covid-19 vaccines. Take the deal (https://thestandard.org.nz/open-mike-01-09-2021/#comment-1813086) or take the ban. You can leave your response anywhere you like; it doesn’t have to be in OM 01-09-2021 and you can do it here in this thread if you wish. If you don’t respond the default will be the ban – Incognito]
Again…and this is also in response to your Mod note from last week…
[comment deleted in part for the third and final time.
As I said before, I’m not going to waste more time on you on Covid-19 vaccines. If you think you can argue your way out of it, you are wrong. I’m starting to suspect that I cannot trust you to keep your part of the bargain, but the deal still stands and time will tell or not. Take it or leave it.
BTW, this is not censoring, it is Moderating. The discussion will continue with or without you regardless – Incognito]
I personally would be very, very interested in reading these arguments.
And in the interest of fairness and transparency, how about not censoring this comment at all…let others decide if I am spreading bullshit.
Because how it is at the moment you seem to be implying (by viciously heavy censoring) that I am quoting shit from some dark- hole nutbar conspiracy site… not the fucking British Broadcasting Corporation. Fffs!
We should not rush into authorizing vaccinations for 12 yr olds and under until the science is out some studies show little benefits. We have time to sit back and make an focused decision.
Just like our roll out being later than everyone else's it has meant we get the maximum benefit.
ie 6 weeks between doses gives longer immunity.the fact we have vaccinated later gives us an 6 months on everyone else which also gives us time to look more closely at the research data.
Let's not be panicked by the bullying of the right wing business first at all Cost's that's cost business more as we have had to have a second lockdown.Collins and Seymour and their groupies will be pushing hard to open up at the earliest date.Our economy did just fine without Tourism.
Robertson needs to fund tourism to change to other types of business for in the longterm tourism is never going to be the same again.
Agree that international tourism looks likely to be a major health risk for many years to come. This will strike some formerly-thriving Māori tourism-related enterprises hard, as well as Pākehā tourist & tourism-dependent ancilliary businesses.
While some can pivot towards encouraging more local tourism it won't make up the gap in numbers & total income.
I think the pressure is going to go the government to open up regardless because of this.
Not sure how Māori tourism operators are thinking on this. Hapu & Iwi spokespeople around the country are understandably vocal & active in protecting their kaumatua & communities. Mārae visits by touring parties have been a welcome source of funds & relationship-building for some.
Which will be no bad thing, if you're right. Unconstrained, cheap & easy tourism has resulted in damage and an incredible amount of littering in some World Heritage sites in various places around the world.
Quite apart from the dangers inherent in allowing hundreds of tourist climbers to swarm Mt Everest, for example, the sheer amount of litter left on that maunga is staggering. Even today in the 'death zone' there are used oxygen cylinders, other climbing bric-a-brack, and some unrecovered bodies.
It's just too difficult and dangerous to try and find and bring them all down. Google "Green Boots".
We really don't have much time to sit back and wait for indefinite rounds of more data gathering for 5 to 11 year olds.
The pressure to open back up and end the use of lockdowns will become too much for the government to stand against very soon after we stop hearing people complaining that they want vaccination and haven't yet been able to get it.
That means covid is going to get in and spread quite widely and quite quickly. Despite the misinformation promoted by some, significant numbers of young kids get very sick and get long-term disabilities or even die from covid. It's imperative to give them as much protection as we can before they get exposed to the virus.
I would like to know if one Pfizer vaccine makes enough antibodies to give protection for the 12 – 18 age group?
I am undecided on children age 5 – 11 being vaccinated. Children in the UK have returned to school and a double blind study needs to be done to determine what the benefit is for children age 5 – 11. Transmission of Covid among children occurs. The teachers would be under strain.
Covid is also hard on parents and caregivers of children. Being a single parent without enough support would not be easy.
Seems to have a disproportionate effect on boys so much so it potentially carries more risk than covid itself for that cohort. At least according to that study.
No easy answers but given vaccination offers good protection from serious illness in adults etc we should and can afford imo to exercise extreme caution in giving it to children.
A few comments on the study referenced by the Guardian piece before the likely rebuttals start coming out in a few days as actual experts respond to it:
It's a dumpster dive in VAERS of the type that VAERS is explicitly not designed for and actual experts warn against.
The lead author Tracy Hoeg has been a long time advocate of basically reopening schools and letting the covid chips fall where they may. Kind of a "plan B" type.
Looking for previous citations, it appears Hoeg frequently appears cited on Children's Health Defense, a notorious source of vaccine misinformation and disinformation.
It appears fairly likely that the article won't make it through peer review. Indeed, it may not be intended to, if the intent is simply to provide an anti-vax talking point. Its work will have already been done.
Given that the methodology of the study appears at odds with accepted good practice, the priors of the author, and that the conclusions are way way at odds with the conclusions of more reputable sources, caution around that article is well warranted.
Here's a piece that examines the risk of the disease versus the vaccine from a better-accepted viewpoint:
It is interesting that you dismiss concerns about the risks of the vaccine for children. In order to protect the children you immediately render some expendable for the greater good. Until we know why, and how many children will react then we should proceed with caution or not proceed at all. If we are simply exchanging one risk for another for the sake of an ideology that the technical solution is best then we need to think again.
I'm not dismissing concerns about the health of children.
However, I am unapologetic about dismissing the evidence-free beliefs in stories fabricated by grifters and the feels and reckons of ignorants that are contradicted by the actual facts and evidence.
tl;dr Kids' perma-snotty noses actually contain a first response system to viruses that are new to them, that adults never used to need so it doesn't get maintained.
Which is all very well. But the situation we're facing is that kids are very likely to be facing a new virus that breaks through this defence and wreaks havoc in enough of them that a strong response is warranted.
We have multiple vaccines that are being checked in these age groups to find appropriate dosages, and whether there are any adverse effects specific to those kids. The question is finding the balance of having enough data to say the risk-benefit is in favour of vaccinating those kids, versus taking a chance on how many of them get damaged or killed by the disease, versus the broader cost to society of maintaining non-vaccine protections such as lockdowns.
Children, "also more quickly produce type 1 interferons, which are crucial for fighting viruses."
Were the snotty nose and the type 1 interferon defence to fail in children there needs to be a back up plan. That would at this point in time be vaccination.
I've now had both. Painless injection, both times. Hardly felt it (trick is, don't look).
The information sheet given to me after the first jab mentioned side effects were more likely to occur after the 2nd one.
Sore/tender upper arm at injection site, & a morning headache the day after, both times. Headache easily dealt to with two ibuprofen at breakfast. No other effects. Went well.
I plan to have the jabs 6 weeks apart to not confuse my already confused immune system. I will give anything a go when it comes to Covid keeping me out of hospital were I to have it and not to increase the work load of the health workers.
I'm thinking we need a surge of testing now in South Auckland to keep elimination alive as an outcome. But how is it done in a way that gets compliance and doesn't appear racist?
Has to be done in consultation with Maori & Pasifika community leaders & churches. And saliva testing would seem to be the best, least-invasive way to go, if that can be established to be accurate enuf?
Auckland has been impacted the most due to lockdowns and the number of those with Covid.
I tend to look at who is going to be worse off economically and have their health impacted by Covid the most.
Two facts, those on low incomes and those with health conditons are impacted the most. Testing and vaccinating for Covid reduces the impact.
Every town and city needs to have good access to test and vaccinate for Covid. In the areas with the greatest need eliminate the barriers to get tested and to get vaccinated.
Agree AB. It would seem that the bulk of the Sth Auckland cases are linked to church gathering and general ignorance on the part of some who have not picked up the Covid messages and how to respond to them. Not all the church leaders appear to be proactive in supporting and guiding these people – perhaps for the same reason.
The rest of Auckland cannot continue to tolerate this situation for much longer, and I wonder of there is going to be a requirement for two Auckland levels… one applying to South Auckland and the the rest of Auckland can join the rest of the country. Whether that is even feasible is a moot point.
Of the Pasifika churches in New Zealand, it appears that Samoan churches have in fact been quietly getting on with organising vaccination events etc. Here's just a couple of examples:
Yes Andre the differences are stark. Many churches are doing a wonderful job and all hail to them for their efforts. But others are falling through the cracks and simply not sticking to the rules out of ignorance and poverty. They need to be identified post haste and given extra support and assistance. Of course the moment you do that you will have Seymour and Co. screaming discrimination blah blah, but I think they're reputations are on a downward trend these days.
It's not so much the ones falling through the cracks; when there's attention to spare from just focusing on pushing the maximum numbers through right now, a lot more attention can go to that outreach.
The bigger problem is the outright anti-vax churches, such as Density and City Dimpact. The only viable responses I see to those are mandates and Darwin.
Calling it 'ignorance' downplays the failure of authorities to engage some communities properly – as they were advised to invest in very early on. That is a systemic failure, not a personal one. Too many white organisations in Wellington making policy for populations they have no real idea about.
Churches aren't the problem, plenty of parties happening down south… can see photos of em on Facebook etc…
End of the day successive govts have shat on the communities in South Auckland some are pretty disenfranchised from society at large and wont play by the 'rules'
To get surge testing in South Auckland organised it needs to be done in consultation with Maori & Pasifika community leaders & organisations (which would incude church pastors).
Also hopefully we'll soon be able to use saliva testing instead of the more invasive/uncomfortable nasal swabs.
Nah, not really. A lot of Donnie One-Term's supporters are middle-finger voters that previously never had anyone they were enthusiastic about. Shrub's opinions won't matter in the slightest to them.
As for traditional Repugs, they'll rationalise it away as the insurrectionists weren't really Repugs, so those words don't apply to them.
The Democrats in 2016 had the chance to follow democratic procedures and give people a genuinely popular candidate, proposing popular, decent, centrist policies, who drew far larger numbers to his events than Trump ever did. But the masterminds of the DNC ensured that the candidate put forward was Hillary Clinton.
Yup. A Bernie Presidency would not have gotten all his activists might have wished for – probably a good deal less – but we would not have gotten Trump and everything that's fallen out of that.
And I'm coming to the view that the worst thing about the Trump period was not his erratic, irresponsible, polarising and confronting politics – but that everyone else has adopted the same behaviour in response.
Do you think he'll run again in 2024? By the way, RL, in late 2013, this writer, i.e., moi, predicted Trump would be a one-term president from 2020 to 2024.
If the Republicans fail to put up a candidate with the charisma and intelligence to unite the American people – then yes Trump might well see the door open to a second run.
And while we're on the topic of one term Presidents – it's pretty clear Biden is declining cognitively (the exact facts of this I accept are hard to decode from all the political noise) and it's reasonable to think the chances of a second term for him are less than good.
Scanned through that whole OM – it was both robust and funny. In the intervening 8yrs we've made TS safer but lost something along the way. And not a few good people too. Your prediction I assume was intended as satire – but doesn't life have a way of topping even the best comedians.
It would have been infinitely better for everyone if America had done nothing, absolutely nothing, in response to 9/11,
I recall writing somewhere years back that in response to 9/11 the best thing the US could have done was to mourn it's dead with dignity and then defiantly declare "is that the worst you can do"?
And then in hindsight they should have quietly gone to the Saudi's (who were after all definitively involved in the attack) and demand that the culprits be handed over to justice or something unpleasant might happen.
Bit awkward for them to do that, the Saudis were worth too much to them in arms purchases & financial, diplomatic, military & intelligence collaborations to piss them off or pressure them, I suspect.
Besides which, didn't they know bin Laden was operating out of Afghanistan?
They cruise-missiled Al Qaeda's known training camps there. Then they demanded the Taliban hand him & his associates over to the US for trial.
The Taliban offered to surrender bin Laden to a neutral country as they said they didn't trust the US to give him a fair trial. The US should perhaps have gone with that option, but instead they decided to go & get him & to depose the Taliban regime at the same time via an invasion by another ill-advised "coalition of the willing" of the usualsuspects countries.
They probably should have instead just gone for one or more covert intelligence-based Special Forces operations to kill or capture him. These days they have more capability for this kind of assassination operation via stealth or drone air attacks.
You're not wrong… moderation feels more heavy handed these days. Has shut down some different but valuable view points. Seems to be getting worse recently sorta in tune with how societies heading, tolerance for opposing views is disappearing fast… as is trust in people being able to make up their own minds. Worrying times some friends I have that grew up in communist eastern Europe are getting worried in that they are seeing similar behaviors establish here.
I think moderation first started heading in the this direction when we started shutting down climate change deniers. At the time – and even now – it seemed reasonable and justified to do so. But it was the first big topic where we started moderating on content and not behaviour, and this change has proven to be tricky to manage.
Partly because it's hard to disentangle from the personal views of the moderators, and then again because of scope-creep. Some authors curate their threads quite tightly, others don't at all. I'm reasonably OK with this, especially if OM remains just that – open. There have been some benefits to this, we sometimes get better focused debates without derails and distractions. Sometimes like weka's recent posts on trans issues I've understood that quite strong moderation was justified.
But the trend really discourages me is moderators starting to assume the role of defining 'misinformation'. I know they mean well and I've not been keen to make an issue of it, but if TS heads the way of FB, Twitter and YT and starts regularly constraining the debate to a list of 'approved' topics I think it will be game over here.
He was the worst thing for journalism, for one any hack could say what he liked about Trump as long as it vilified him in some way, and it would be applauded.Any retrograde politician or bad actor could say something nasty true or not about Trump, and that person;s whole questionable career would be instantly sanitised, and the media would bay in approval
His actual suppression of journalism was eclipsed by Obama, who jailed more whistleblowers than any other president
Apart from the exception of Assange, for which he can never be forgiven.But I don’t see Obama or Clinton standing up for Assange either, and Biden perfectly happy to continue with Trump’s decision to prosecute.
If Obama had made a speech carrying the same sentiments would it have been worth more than a bucket of spit? Would it actually have been "Right on!"
The sentiments?
Could a president, a party have survived if he'd said “We love you; you’re very special,” and called them “peaceful people, these were great people” if the Jann 6 mass were foreign rather than domestic people (terrorists.)
As Jennifer Rubin said, "No president could have avoided prosecution if the crowd he inspired to march on the Capitol had been radical Muslims ready to kill elected leaders and stop democracy in its tracks.
In every case, had the terrorists been foreigners, we would have labeled their Republican apologists as anti-American, if not traitorous."
You think someone originally from the Middle East with a microphone encouraging a mass of Muslim people to go to the Capitol to stop the implementation of the electoral aspects of the Constitution would be lauded, supported, defended? You think a mass of Muslims ready to attack and kill elected leaders would be celebrated?
And if the leader said, to and of them, “We love you; you’re very special,” and called them “peaceful people, these were great people” how would he be regarded? Would he and they be praised as 'patriots?'
The great unwashed of America, the Jim Jordans, the Marjorie Taylor Greens, the Josh Hawleys, the Madison Hawthorns would have demanded the horde be gunned down as they went on their mission down Washington Avenue.
So should Cheney & the late Rumsfeld, & Blair. But there's some international law or something that prevents war criminals like these beggars from being charged with war crimes, as they're the leaders of countries.
Or maybe it’s just because no other country is powerful enough to capture and try them.
Rodney Jones from Wigram Capital Advisors spoke to Q+A after addressing the Government's select committee earlier this week about some of his concerns for the current outbreak of the Delta strain, particularly in South Auckland where there has been community transmission.
"What we've experienced this time is actually what we've seen in the rest of the world that in affluent areas and affluent suburbs, outbreaks are brought under control very, very quickly," Jones said.
…
"The cost of this inequality has manifested over a long period of time; the thing with Covid is that the cost appears over three months where you get a Delta outbreak in a part of your community struggles and you can't control it, you can't manage it.
"We're paying the cost today instead of in 30 years time through health spending or prisons."
…
"This has been a consequence of what we did in the 80s and 90s and sorts of reforms we adopted; it meant more inequality and we thought we could live with that but we can't."
As such, Jones said now is the opportunity for New Zealand to seize the much-needed change.
Thirty years ago, Paul McCartney stopped Weird Al Yankovic releasing a parody of “Live and Let Die” by Wings because he thought Yankovic’s parody—"Chicken Pot Pie"— would promote immoral behavior.
…. According to Rolling Stone, Yankovic said “Paul didn’t want me to do it because he’s a strict vegetarian and he didn’t want a parody that condoned the consumption of animal flesh. He said, ‘You can do something else like tofu pot pie.’ I said, ‘No, the chorus of my song will be ‘Bawk-bawk-bawk-bawk’ and tofu doesn’t make any noise. It’s not going to work.”
Some years after that demonstration of concern for moral behaviour, McCartney performed in apartheid Israel….
…. A small group of Palestinians had urged McCartney to call off the show, saying it was supporting the Israeli occupation of the West Bank. A radical Muslim preacher in Lebanon also called on McCartney to cancel the show.
During a visit to the biblical town of Bethlehem on Wednesday, McCartney brushed off the criticism.
"I get criticized everywhere I go, but I don't listen to them," McCartney said. "I'm bringing a message of peace, and I think that's what the region needs."
Remember this? From memory it was released during The Troubles, was deemed too provactive & was banned in England. As a consequence it received no promotion or airplay there.
While he'd never struck me as being politically & socially active as Lennon (who was a deeply flawed individual but knew it) this song was played on Radio Hauraki a few times & I remember thinking that was quite a gutsy stance to take in those times.
… In a furtively short ceremony, overshadowed by Hillary Clinton's confirmation hearings, George Bush awarded Tony Blair and John Howard the presidential medal of freedom, America's highest civilian honour, praising them as "the sort of guys who look you in the eye, keep their word, and tell the truth".
Colombia's president, Alvaro Uribe, also received the award. Wives, Cherie among them, looked on approvingly. …
Does anybody who often posts here know if there's quick way way to access macrons using an ordinary Win 10 laptop keyboard?
I like to try & remember to use them when typing kupu Māori (words) as a means of reinforcing my very limited Te Reo Māori language learning.
It's a piece of cake on my iPad2 as various language accent marks come up when character keys are held briefly before release.
But my now ancient iPad2 requires frequent reboots after posting here once or twice, & switching to the lappy I lose that functionality. I don't want to have to use, say the MS Word app & copy paste after selecting “Insert Symbol”. Takes way too long to find the macrons.
I bought this Lenovo laptop a couple of years back.
(I had to; my previous Compaq spent all night and half a day downloading the free Win 10 OS but, at the last minute during the install self-check, frustratingly announced that my Video card was incompatible with Win 10. So I just carried on using Win 7, which I liked & still prefer to Win 10. But MSoft stopped supporting Win 7 in Jan 2020, meaning no more security patches.)
When I completed the set up of this computer it had some other language for keyboard pre-loaded. Pressing certain keys resulted in a completely different letter appearing. Forget which. It was a baffling & irritating experience. In the end I rang Harvey Norman, where I'd got it from, and got talked through selecting the right keyboard language.
I'm not that tech-savvy, McFlock. Hope loading the Maori language doesn't give me a similar problem. Do I do this in System Settings?
In Firefox I can add the Maori language as an add on.
So spell it with a lower case m which will high light it as mis-spelt. Then when you right click to correct the spelling, select language and then Maori.
First can I apologize to rest of nz for the criminal behaviour of a couple of born to rule a…holes from dorkland endangering your health. Writing from dorkland.
It seems to be a deliberately planned exercise rather than an impulsive event.
Therefore, I hope they get the book thrown at them, that they, as the law allows, spend time on the inside looking out, and having a criminal record restricts there overseas travel. We dont need despicable examples of kiwis representing the face of kiwis offshore
We were wondering how they got shopped. Most of the people I know from Wanaka are firmly in the MAGA (Kiwi version) camp, so unlikely to nark, probably congratulate them. High likelihood they were self entitled enough to park their car in the Hamilton Airport carpark and the plods did a quiet check for plates that came through the checkpoints, ooops….
"An unfounded rumour about the student's death appears to have first popped up on Saturday night and was given a big boost when lawyer and NZ Outdoors Party co-leader Sue Grey, a well-known anti-vaccine activist, posted about it to her followers.
The post attracted over 1400 comments before it was taken down late this morning but has also been cited overseas."
Scott Hamilton also posts: "Alanna Ratna is the latest anti-vax activist to suggest the PM's life is in danger. 'We're going to get you Jacinda. Your future is bleak' she wrote yesterday on fb. Ratna is a doctor & close ally of John Ansell. Like him she believes the covid vaccine is depopulating NZ."
Is it hate speech to say I hate it that there are people like Grey, Ratna and Ansell in the world?
Ansell should take notice of the US antivax covid denial radio talkback host's who are no longer here crying on their death beds wishing they had been vaccinated.
If they are making death threats they should be arrested and hauled into court.
Four of the six Palestinans who recently escaped by tunnelling out of an Israeli maximum security prison have now been recaptured, so far without sparking off another revolt in occupied Palestine. One of them looks the worse for wear after apparently resisting:
Oops. Spoke (typed?) too soon. Aljazeera tv's quick headline news summary just reported that Palestinian militants have fired several missiles into Israel, & that Israel has immediately struck back with their own missiles into Gaza. 😐
April 30 was going to be the day we’d be calling Mum from London to wish her a happy birthday. Then it became the day we would be going to St. Paul's at Evensong to remember her. The aim of the cathedral builders was to find a way to make their ...
Rob MacCulloch writes – Can’t remember the last book by a Kiwi author you read? Think the NZ government should spend less on the arts in favor of helping the homeless? If so, as far as Newsroom is concerned, you probably deserve to be called a cultural ignoramus ...
Eric Crampton writes – Grudges are bad. Better to move on. But it can be fun to keep a couple of really trivial ones, so you’re not tempted to have other ones. For example, because of the rootkit fiasco of 2005, no Sony products in our household. ...
A new report warns an estimated third of the adult population have unmet need for health care.Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāHere’s the six key things I learned about Aotaroa’s political economy this week around housing, climate and poverty:Politics - Three opinion polls confirmed support for PM Christopher Luxon ...
Today is May the fourth. Which was just a regular day when my mother took me to see the newly released Star Wars at the Odeon in Rotorua. The queue was right around the corner. Some years later this day became known as Star Wars Day, the date being a ...
Buzz from the Beehive Much more media attention is being paid to something Winston Peters said about former Australian Foreign Minister Bob Carr than to a speech he delivered to the New Zealand China Council. One word is missing from the speech: AUKUS. But AUKUS loomed large in his considerations ...
Is the economy in another long stagnation? If so, why?This is about the time that the Treasury will be locking up its economic forecasts to be published in the 2024 Budget Economic and Fiscal Update (BEFU) on budget day, 30 May. I am not privy to what they will be ...
The annual list of who's been bribing our politicians is out, and journalists will no doubt be poring over it to find the juiciest and dirtiest bribes. The government's fast-track invite list is likely to be a particular focus, and we already know of one company on the list which ...
In the weeks after the October 7 Hamas attacks on Southern Israel I wrote about the possible 2nd, 3rd and even 4th order effects of the conflict. These included new fronts being opened in the West Bank (with Hamas), Golan … Continue reading → ...
Peter Dunne writes – It is one of the oldest truisms that there is never a good time for MPs to get a pay rise. This week’s announcement of pay raises of around 2.8% backdated to last October could hardly have come at a worse time, with the ...
David Farrar writes – Newshub reports: Newshub can reveal a fresh allegation of intimidation against Green MP Julie-Anne Genter. Genter is subject to a disciplinary process for aggressively waving a book in the face of National Minister Matt Doocey in the House – but it’s not the first time ...
The Treasury has published a paper today on the global productivity slowdown and how it is playing out in New Zealand: The productivity slowdown: implications for the Treasury’s forecasts and projections. The Treasury Paper examines recent trends in productivity and the potential drivers of the slowdown. Productivity for the whole economy ...
Winston Peters’ comments about former Australian foreign minister look set to be an ongoing headache for both him and Luxon. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: The podcast above of the weekly ‘hoon’ webinar for subscribers features co-hosts and , along with regular guests on Gaza and ...
These puppet strings don't pull themselvesYou're thinking thoughts from someone elseHow much time do you think you have?Are you prepared for what comes next?The debating chamber can be a trying place for an opposition MP. What with the person in charge, the speaker, typically being an MP from the governing ...
The land around Lyme Regis, where Meryl Streep once stood, in a hood, on the Cobb, is falling into the sea.MerylThe land around Lyme Regis, around the Cobb that made it rich, has always been falling slowly but surely into the sea. Read more ...
Buzz from the Beehive Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters was bound to win headlines when he set out his thinking about AUKUS in his speech to the New Zealand Institute of International Affairs. The headlines became bigger when – during an interview on RNZ’s Morning Report today – he criticised ...
The Post reports on how the government is refusing to release its advice on its corrupt Muldoonist fast-track law, instead using the "soon to be publicly available" refusal ground to hide it until after select committee submissions on the bill have closed. Fast-track Minister Chris Bishop's excuse? “It's not ...
As pressure on it grows, the livestock industry’s approach to the transition to Net Zero is increasingly being compared to that of fossil fuel interests. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / Getty ImagesTL;DR: Here’s the top five news items of note in climate news for Aotearoa-NZ this week, and a discussion above ...
The New Zealand Herald reports – Stats NZ has offered a voluntary redundancy scheme to all of its workers as a way to give staff some control over their “future” amidst widespread job losses in the public sector. In an update to staff this morning, seen by the Herald, Statistics New Zealand ...
On Werewolf/Scoop, I usually do two long form political columns a week. From now on, there will be an extra column each week about music and movies. But first, some late-breaking political events:The rise in unemployment numbers for the March quarter was bigger than expected – and especially sharp ...
David Farrar writes – The Herald reports: TVNZ says it is dealing with about 50 formal complaints over its coverage of the latest 1News-Verian political poll, with some viewers – as well as the Prime Minister and a former senior Labour MP – critical of the tone of the 6pm report. ...
Muriel Newman writes – When Meridian Energy was seeking resource consents for a West Coast hydro dam proposal in 2010, local Maori “strenuously” objected, claiming their mana was inextricably linked to ‘their’ river and could be damaged. After receiving a financial payment from the company, however, the Ngai Tahu ...
Alwyn Poole writes – “An SEP,’ he said, ‘is something that we can’t see, or don’t see, or our brain doesn’t let us see, because we think that it’s somebody else’s problem. That’s what SEP means. Somebody Else’s Problem. The brain just edits it out, it’s like a ...
Our trust in our political institutions is fast eroding, according to a Maxim Institute discussion paper, Shaky Foundations: Why our democracy needs trust. The paper – released today – raises concerns about declining trust in New Zealand’s political institutions and democratic processes, and the role that the overuse of Parliamentary urgency ...
This article was prepared for publication yesterday. More ministerial announcements have been posted on the government’s official website since it was written. We will report on these later today …. Buzz from the BeehiveThere we were, thinking the environment is in trouble, when along came Jones. Shane Jones. ...
New Zealand now has the fourth most depressed construction sector in the world behind China, Qatar and Hong Kong. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: These are the six things that stood out to me in news and commentary on Aotearoa-NZ’s political economy at 8:46am on Thursday, May 2:The Lead: ...
Hi,I am just going to state something very obvious: American police are fucking crazy.That was a photo gracing the New York Times this morning, showing New York City police “entering Columbia University last night after receiving a request from the school.”Apparently in America, protesting the deaths of tens of thousands ...
Winston Peters’ much anticipated foreign policy speech last night was a work of two halves. Much of it was a standard “boilerplate” Foreign Ministry overview of the state of the world. There was some hardening up of rhetoric with talk of “benign” becoming “malign” and old truths giving way to ...
Graham Adams assesses the fallout of the Cass Review — The press release last Thursday from the UN Special Rapporteur on violence against women and girls didn’t make the mainstream news in New Zealand but it really should have. The startling title of Reem Alsalem’s statement — “Implementation of ‘Cass ...
This open-for-business, under-new-management cliché-pockmarked government of Christopher Luxon is not the thing of beauty he imagines it to be. It is not the powerful expression of the will of the people that he asserts it to be. It is not a soaring eagle, it is a malodorous vulture. This newest poll should make ...
The latest labour market statistics, showing a rise in unemployment. There are now 134,000 unemployed - 14,000 more than when the National government took office. Which is I guess what happens when the Reserve Bank causes a recession in an effort to Keep Wages Low. The previous government saw a ...
Three opinion polls have been released in the last two days, all showing that the new government is failing to hold their popular support. The usual honeymoon experienced during the first year of a first term government is entirely absent. The political mood is still gloomy and discontented, mainly due ...
National's Finance Minister once met a poor person.A scornful interview with National's finance guru who knows next to nothing about economics or people.There might have been something a bit familiar if that was the headline I’d gone with today. It would of course have been in tribute to the article ...
Rob MacCulloch writes – Throughout the pandemic, the new Vice-Chancellor-of-Otago-University-on-$629,000 per annum-Can-you-believe-it-and-Former-Finance-Minister Grant Robertson repeated the mantra over and over that he saved “lives and livelihoods”.As we update how this claim is faring over the course of time, the facts are increasingly speaking differently. NZ ...
Chris Trotter writes – IT’S A COMMONPLACE of political speeches, especially those delivered in acknowledgement of electoral victory: “We’ll govern for all New Zealanders.” On the face of it, the pledge is a strange one. Why would any political leader govern in ways that advantaged the huge ...
Bryce Edwards writes – The list of former National Party Ministers being given plum and important roles got longer this week with the appointment of former Deputy Prime Minister Paula Bennett as the chair of Pharmac. The Christopher Luxon-led Government has now made key appointments to Bill ...
TL;DR: These are the six things that stood out to me in news and commentary on Aotearoa-NZ’s political economy at 10:06am on Wednesday, May 1:The Lead: Business confidence fell across the board in April, falling in some areas to levels last seen during the lockdowns because of a collapse in ...
Over the past 36 hours, Christopher Luxon has been dong his best to portray the centre-right’s plummeting poll numbers as a mark of virtue. Allegedly, the negative verdicts are the result of hard economic times, and of a government bravely set out on a perilous rescue mission from which not ...
Auckland Transport have started rolling out new HOP card readers around the network and over the next three months, all of them on buses, at train stations and ferry wharves will be replaced. The change itself is not that remarkable, with the new readers looking similar to what is already ...
Completed reads for April: The Difference Engine, by William Gibson and Bruce Sterling Carnival of Saints, by George Herman The Snow Spider, by Jenny Nimmo Emlyn’s Moon, by Jenny Nimmo The Chestnut Soldier, by Jenny Nimmo Death Comes As the End, by Agatha Christie Lord of the Flies, by ...
On February 14, 2023 we announced our Rebuttal Update Project. This included an ask for feedback about the added "At a glance" section in the updated basic rebuttal versions. This weekly blog post series highlights this new section of one of the updated basic rebuttal versions and serves as a ...
Have a story to share about St Paul’s, but today just picturesPopular novels written at this desk by a young man who managed to bootstrap himself out of father’s imprisonment and his own young life in a workhouse Read more ...
The list of former National Party Ministers being given plum and important roles got longer this week with the appointment of former Deputy Prime Minister Paula Bennett as the chair of Pharmac. The Christopher Luxon-led Government has now made key appointments to Bill English, Simon Bridges, Steven Joyce, Roger Sowry, ...
Newsroom has a story today about National's (fortunately failed) effort to disestablish the newly-created Inspector-General of Defence. The creation of this agency was the key recommendation of the Inquiry into Operation Burnham, and a vital means of restoring credibility and social licence to an agency which had been caught lying ...
Holding On To The Present:The moment a political movement arises that attacks the whole idea of social progress, and announces its intention to wind back the hands of History’s clock, then democracy, along with its unwritten rules, is in mortal danger.IT’S A COMMONPLACE of political speeches, especially those delivered in ...
Stuck In The Middle With You:As Christopher Luxon feels the hot breath of Act’s and NZ First’s extremists on the back of his neck and, as he reckons with the damage their policies are already inflicting upon a country he’s described as “fragile”, is there not some merit in reaching out ...
The unpopular coalition government is currently rushing to repeal section 7AA of the Oranga Tamariki Act. The clause is Oranga Tamariki's Treaty clause, and was inserted after its systematic stealing of Māori children became a public scandal and resulted in physical resistance to further abductions. The clause created clear obligations ...
Buzz from the Beehive The government’s official website – which Point of Order monitors daily – not for the first time has nothing much to say today about political happenings that are grabbing media headlines. It makes no mention of the latest 1News-Verian poll, for example. This shows National down ...
It Takes A Train To Cry:Surely, there is nothing lonelier in all this world than the long wail of a distant steam locomotive on a cold Winter’s night.AS A CHILD, I would lie awake in my grandfather’s house and listen to the traffic. The big wooden house was only a ...
Packing A Punch: The election of the present government, including in its ranks politicians dedicated to reasserting the rights of the legislature in shaping and determining the future of Māori and Pakeha in New Zealand, should have alerted the judiciary – including its anomalous appendage, the Waitangi Tribunal – that its ...
Dead Woman Walking: New Zealand’s media industry had been moving steadily towards disaster for all the years Melissa Lee had been National’s media and communications policy spokesperson, and yet, when the crisis finally broke, on her watch, she had nothing intelligent to offer. Christopher Luxon is a patient man - but he’s not ...
Chris Trotter writes – New Zealand politics is remarkably easy-going: dangerously so, one might even say. With the notable exception of John Key’s flat ruling-out of the NZ First Party in 2008, all parties capable of clearing MMP’s five-percent threshold, or winning one or more electorate seats, tend ...
Bryce Edwards writes – Polling shows that Wellington Mayor Tory Whanau has the lowest approval rating of any mayor in the country. Siting at -12 per cent, the proportion of constituents who disapprove of her performance outweighs those who give her the thumbs up. This negative rating is ...
Luxon will no doubt put a brave face on it, but there is no escaping the pressure this latest poll will put on him and the government. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: These are the six things that stood out to me in news and commentary on Aotearoa-NZ’s political ...
This is a re-post from The Climate Brink by Andrew Dessler In the wake of any unusual weather event, someone inevitably asks, “Did climate change cause this?” In the most literal sense, that answer is almost always no. Climate change is never the sole cause of hurricanes, heat waves, droughts, or ...
Something odd happened yesterday, and I’d love to know if there’s more to it. If there was something which preempted what happened, or if it was simply a throwaway line in response to a journalist.Yesterday David Seymour was asked at a press conference what the process would be if the ...
Hi,From time to time, I want to bring Webworm into the real world. We did it last year with the Jurassic Park event in New Zealand — which was a lot of fun!And so on Saturday May 11th, in Los Angeles, I am hosting a lil’ Webworm pop-up! I’ve been ...
Education Minister Erica Standford yesterday unveiled a fundamental reform of the way our school pupils are taught. She would not exactly say so, but she is all but dismantling the so-called “inquiry” “feel good” method of teaching, which has ruled in our classrooms since a major review of the New ...
Exactly where are we seriously going with this government and its policies? That is, apart from following what may as well be a Truss-Lite approach on the purported economic “plan“, and Victorian-era regression when it comes to social policy.Oh it’ll work this time of course, we’re basically assured, “the ...
Hey Uncle Dave, When the Poms joined the EEC, I wasn't one of those defeatists who said, Well, that’s it for the dairy job. And I was right, eh? The Chinese can’t get enough of our milk powder and eventually, the Poms came to their senses and backed up the ute ...
Polling shows that Wellington Mayor Tory Whanau has the lowest approval rating of any mayor in the country. Siting at -12 per cent, the proportion of constituents who disapprove of her performance outweighs those who give her the thumbs up. This negative rating is higher than for any other mayor ...
Buzz from the Beehive Pharmac has been given a financial transfusion and a new chair to oversee its spending in the pharmaceutical business. Associate Health Minister David Seymour described the funding for Pharmac as “its largest ever budget of $6.294 billion over four years, fixing a $1.774 billion fiscal cliff”. ...
Bryce Edwards writes – Many criticisms are being made of the Government’s Fast Track Approvals Bill, including by this writer. But as with everything in politics, every story has two sides, and both deserve attention. It’s important to understand what the Government is trying to achieve and its ...
TL;DR: Here’s my top 10 ‘pick ‘n’ mix of links to news, analysis and opinion articles as of 10:10am on Monday, April 29:Scoop: The children's ward at Rotorua Hospital will be missing a third of its beds as winter hits because Te Whatu Ora halted an upgrade partway through to ...
span class=”dropcap”>As hideous as David Seymour can be, it is worth keeping in mind occasionally that there are even worse political figures (and regimes) out there. Iran for instance, is about to execute the country’s leading hip hop musician Toomaj Salehi, for writing and performing raps that “corrupt” the nation’s ...
Yesterday marked 10 years since the first electric train carried passengers in Auckland so it’s a good time to look back at it and the impact it has had. A brief history The first proposals for rail electrification in Auckland came in the 1920’s alongside the plans for earlier ...
Right now, in Aotearoa-NZ, our ‘animal spirits’ are darkening towards a winter of discontent, thanks at least partly to a chorus of negative comments and actions from the Government Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: These are the six things that stood out to me in news and commentary on ...
The Government is again adding to New Zealand’s growing unemployment, this time cutting jobs at the agencies responsible for urban development and growing much needed housing stock. ...
With Minister Karen Chhour indicating in the House today that she either doesn’t know or care about the frontline cuts she’s making to Oranga Tamariki, we risk seeing more and more of our children falling through the cracks. ...
The Labour Party is saddened to learn of the death of Sir Robert Martin, a globally renowned disability advocate who led the way for disability rights both in New Zealand and internationally. ...
Labour is calling for the Government to urgently rethink its coalition commitment to restart live animal exports, Labour animal welfare spokesperson Rachel Boyack said. ...
Today’s Financial Stability Report has once again highlighted that poverty and deep inequality are political choices - and this Government is choosing to make them worse. ...
The Green Party is calling on the Government to do more for our households in most need as unemployment rises and the cost of living crisis endures. ...
Unemployment is on the rise and it’s only going to get worse under this Government, Labour finance spokesperson Barbara Edmonds said. Stats NZ figures show the unemployment rate grew to 4.3 percent in the March quarter from 4 percent in the December quarter. “This is the second rise in unemployment ...
The New Zealand Labour Party welcomes the entering into force of the European Union and New Zealand free trade agreement. This agreement opens the door for a huge increase in trade opportunities with a market of 450 million people who are high value discerning consumers of New Zealand goods and ...
The National-led Government continues its fiscal jiggery pokery with its Pharmac announcement today, Labour Health spokesperson Ayesha Verrall says. “The government has increased Pharmac funding but conceded it will only make minimal increases in access to medicine”, said Ayesha Verrall “This is far from the bold promises made to fund ...
This afternoon’s interim Waitangi Tribunal report must be taken seriously as it affects our most vulnerable children, Labour children’s spokesperson Willow-Jean Prime. ...
Te Pāti Māori are demanding the New Zealand Government support an international independent investigation into mass graves that have been uncovered at two hospitals on the Gaza strip, following weeks of assault by Israeli troops. Among the 392 bodies that have been recovered, are children and elderly civilians. Many of ...
Our two-tiered system for veterans’ support is out of step with our closest partners, and all parties in Parliament should work together to fix it, Labour veterans’ affairs spokesperson Greg O’Connor said. ...
Stripping two Ministers of their portfolios just six months into the job shows Christopher Luxon’s management style is lacking, Labour Leader Chris Hipkins said. ...
Tonight’s court decision to overturn the summons of the Children’s Minister has enabled the Crown to continue making decisions about Māori without evidence, says Te Pāti Māori spokesperson for Children, Mariameno Kapa-Kingi. “The judicial system has this evening told the nation that this government can do whatever they want when ...
It appears Nicola Willis is about to pull the rug out from under the feet of local communities still dealing with the aftermath of last year’s severe weather, and local councils relying on funding to build back from these disasters. ...
The Government is making short-sighted changes to the Resource Management Act (RMA) that will take away environmental protection in favour of short-term profits, Labour’s environment spokesperson Rachel Brooking said today. ...
Labour welcomes the release of the report into the North Island weather events and looks forward to working with the Government to ensure that New Zealand is as prepared as it can be for the next natural disaster. ...
The Labour Party has called for the New Zealand Government to recognise Palestine, as a material step towards progressing the two-State solution needed to achieve a lasting peace in the region. ...
Some of our country’s most important work, stopping the sexual exploitation of children and violent extremism could go along with staff on the frontline at ports and airports. ...
The Government’s Fast Track Approvals Bill will give projects such as new coal mines a ‘get out of jail free’ card to wreak havoc on the environment, Labour Leader Chris Hipkins said today. ...
The government's decision to reintroduce Three Strikes is a destructive and ineffective piece of law-making that will only exacerbate an inherently biased and racist criminal justice system, said Te Pāti Māori Justice Spokesperson, Tākuta Ferris, today. During the time Three Strikes was in place in Aotearoa, Māori and Pasifika received ...
Cuts to frontline hospital staff are not only a broken election promise, it shows the reckless tax cuts have well and truly hit the frontline of the health system, says Labour Health spokesperson Ayesha Verrall. ...
The Green Party has joined the call for public submissions on the fast-track legislation to be extended after the Ombudsman forced the Government to release the list of organisations invited to apply just hours before submissions close. ...
New Zealand’s good work at reducing climate emissions for three years in a row will be undone by the National government’s lack of ambition and scrapping programmes that were making a difference, Labour Party climate spokesperson Megan Woods said today. ...
More essential jobs could be on the chopping block, this time Ministry of Education staff on the school lunches team are set to find out whether they're in line to lose their jobs. ...
Te Pāti Māori is disgusted at the confirmation that hundreds are set to lose their jobs at Oranga Tamariki, and the disestablishment of the Treaty Response Unit. “This act of absolute carelessness and out of touch decision making is committing tamariki to state abuse.” Said Te Pāti Māori Oranga Tamariki ...
The Government is trying to bring in a law that will allow Ministers to cut corners and kill off native species, Labour environment spokesperson Rachel Brooking said. ...
Cancelling urgently needed new Cook Strait ferries and hiking the cost of public transport for many Kiwis so that National can announce the prospect of another tunnel for Wellington is not making good choices, Labour Transport Spokesperson Tangi Utikere said. ...
A laundry list of additional costs for Tāmaki Makarau Auckland shows the Minister for the city is not delivering for the people who live there, says Labour Auckland Issues spokesperson Shanan Halbert. ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters discussed the need for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, and enhanced cooperation in the Pacific with German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock during her first official visit to New Zealand today. "New Zealand and Germany enjoy shared interests and values, including the rule of law, democracy, respect for the international system ...
The Minister Responsible for RMA Reform, Chris Bishop today released his decision on four recommendations referred to him by the Western Bay of Plenty District Council, opening the door to housing growth in the area. The Council’s Plan Change 92 allows more homes to be built in existing and new ...
Thank you, John McKinnon and the New Zealand China Council for the invitation to speak to you today. Thank you too, all members of the China Council. Your effort has played an essential role in helping to build, shape, and grow a balanced and resilient relationship between our two ...
The Government is modernising insurance law to better protect Kiwis and provide security in the event of a disaster, Commerce and Consumer Affairs Minister Andrew Bayly announced today. “These reforms are long overdue. New Zealand’s insurance law is complicated and dated, some of which is more than 100 years old. ...
The coalition Government is refreshing its approach to supporting pay equity claims as time-limited funding for the Pay Equity Taskforce comes to an end, Public Service Minister Nicola Willis says. “Three years ago, the then-government introduced changes to the Equal Pay Act to support pay equity bargaining. The changes were ...
Structured literacy will change the way New Zealand children learn to read - improving achievement and setting students up for success, Education Minister Erica Stanford says. “Being able to read and write is a fundamental life skill that too many young people are missing out on. Recent data shows that ...
Trade Minister Todd McClay says Canada’s refusal to comply in full with a CPTPP trade dispute ruling in our favour over dairy trade is cynical and New Zealand has no intention of backing down. Mr McClay said he has asked for urgent legal advice in respect of our ‘next move’ ...
The rights of our children and young people will be enhanced by changes the coalition Government will make to strengthen oversight of the Oranga Tamariki system, including restoring a single Children’s Commissioner. “The Government is committed to delivering better public services that care for our most at-risk young people and ...
The Government is making it easier for minor changes to be made to a building consent so building a home is easier and more affordable, Building and Construction Minister Chris Penk says. “The coalition Government is focused on making it easier and cheaper to build homes so we can ...
New Zealand lost a true legend when internationally renowned disability advocate Sir Robert Martin (KNZM) passed away at his home in Whanganui last night, Disabilities Issues Minister Louise Upston says. “Our Government’s thoughts are with his wife Lynda, family and community, those he has worked with, the disability community in ...
Good evening – Before discussing the challenges and opportunities facing New Zealand’s foreign policy, we’d like to first acknowledge the New Zealand Institute of International Affairs. You have contributed to debates about New Zealand foreign policy over a long period of time, and we thank you for hosting us. ...
From today, passengers travelling internationally from Auckland Airport will be able to keep laptops and liquids in their carry-on bags for security screening thanks to new technology, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says. “Creating a more efficient and seamless travel experience is important for holidaymakers and businesses, enabling faster movement through ...
People with an interest in the health of Northland’s marine ecosystems are invited to a public meeting to discuss how to deal with kina barrens, Oceans and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones says. Mr Jones will lead the discussion, which will take place on Friday, 10 May, at Awanui Hotel in ...
Kiwi exporters are $100 million better off today with the NZ EU FTA entering into force says Trade Minister Todd McClay. “This is all part of our plan to grow the economy. New Zealand's prosperity depends on international trade, making up 60 per cent of the country’s total economic activity. ...
There are heartening signs that the extractive sector is once again becoming an attractive prospect for investors and a source of economic prosperity for New Zealand, Resources Minister Shane Jones says. “The beginnings of a resurgence in extractive industries are apparent in media reports of the sector in the past ...
The return of the historic Ō-Rākau battle site to the descendants of those who fought there moved one step closer today with the first reading of Te Pire mō Ō-Rākau, Te Pae o Maumahara / The Ō-Rākau Remembrance Bill. The Bill will entrust the 9.7-hectare battle site, five kilometres west ...
Energy Minister Simeon Brown has announced 25 new high-speed EV charging hubs along key routes between major urban centres and outlined the Government’s plan to supercharge New Zealand’s EV infrastructure. The hubs will each have several chargers and be capable of charging at least four – and up to 10 ...
The coalition Government will not proceed with the previous Government’s plans to regulate residential property managers, Housing Minister Chris Bishop says. “I have written to the Chairperson of the Social Services and Community Committee to inform him that the Government does not intend to support the Residential Property Managers Bill ...
The Government has announced an independent review into the disability support system funded by the Ministry of Disabled People – Whaikaha. Disability Issues Minister Louise Upston says the review will look at what can be done to strengthen the long-term sustainability of Disability Support Services to provide disabled people and ...
Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith has attended the Universal Periodic Review in Geneva and outlined the Government’s plan to restore law and order. “Speaking to the United Nations Human Rights Council provided us with an opportunity to present New Zealand’s human rights progress, priorities, and challenges, while responding to issues and ...
The Government and Rotorua Lakes Council are committed to working closely together to end the use of contracted emergency housing motels in Rotorua. Associate Minister of Housing (Social Housing) Tama Potaka says the Government remains committed to ending the long-term use of contracted emergency housing motels in Rotorua by the ...
Trade Minister Todd McClay heads overseas today for high-level trade talks in the Gulf region, and a key OECD meeting in Paris. Mr McClay will travel to Riyadh to meet with counterparts from Saudi Arabia and the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). “New Zealand’s goods and services exports to the Gulf region ...
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Racing Minister Winston Peters has paid tribute to an icon of the industry with the recent passing of Dave O’Sullivan (OBE). “Our sympathies are with the O’Sullivan family with the sad news of Dave O’Sullivan’s recent passing,” Mr Peters says. “His contribution to racing, initially as a jockey and then ...
Assalaamu alaikum, greetings to you all. Eid Mubarak, everyone! I want to extend my warmest wishes to you and everyone celebrating this joyous occasion. It is a pleasure to be here. I have enjoyed Eid celebrations at Parliament before, but this is my first time joining you as the Minister ...
Associate Health Minister David Seymour has announced Pharmac’s largest ever budget of $6.294 billion over four years, fixing a $1.774 billion fiscal cliff. “Access to medicines is a crucial part of many Kiwis’ lives. We’ve committed to a budget allocation of $1.774 billion over four years so Kiwis are ...
Hon Paula Bennett has been appointed as member and chair of the Pharmac board, Associate Health Minister David Seymour announced today. "Pharmac is a critical part of New Zealand's health system and plays a significant role in ensuring that Kiwis have the best possible access to medicines,” says Mr Seymour. ...
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Regional Development Minister Shane Jones today attended the official opening of Kaikohe’s new $14.7 million sports complex. “The completion of the Kaikohe Multi Sports Complex is a fantastic achievement for the Far North,” Mr Jones says. “This facility not only fulfils a long-held dream for local athletes, but also creates ...
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Paul Goldsmith will take on responsibility for the Media and Communications portfolio, while Louise Upston will pick up the Disability Issues portfolio, Prime Minister Christopher Luxon announced today. “Our Government is relentlessly focused on getting New Zealand back on track. As issues change in prominence, I plan to adjust Ministerial ...
Recreational catch limits will be reduced in areas of Fiordland and the Chatham Islands to help keep those fisheries healthy and sustainable, Oceans and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones says. The lower recreational daily catch limits for a range of finfish and shellfish species caught in the Fiordland Marine Area and ...
Energy Minister Simeon Brown has welcomed an important milestone in New Zealand’s hydrogen future, with the opening of the country’s first network of hydrogen refuelling stations in Wiri. “I want to congratulate the team at Hiringa Energy and its partners K one W one (K1W1), Mitsui & Co New Zealand ...
The coalition Government is delivering on its commitment to improve resource management laws and give greater certainty to consent applicants, with a Bill to amend the Resource Management Act (RMA) expected to be introduced to Parliament next month. RMA Reform Minister Chris Bishop has today outlined the first RMA Amendment ...
Overseas models for regulating the oil and gas sector, including their decommissioning regimes, are being carefully scrutinised as a potential template for New Zealand’s own sector, Resources Minister Shane Jones says. The Coalition Government is focused on rebuilding investor confidence in New Zealand’s energy sector as it looks to strengthen ...
Comment: Almost half the world is voting in national elections this year and artificial intelligence is the elephant in the room. There are genuine fears AI-generated or AI-edited deepfakes will potentially manipulate election outcomes not just in the US and UK, but critically in countries such as India. For that ...
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Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Andrew Norton, Professor in the Practice of Higher Education Policy, Australian National University Every year on June 1, student debt in Australia is indexed to inflation. In 2023, high inflation pushed the indexation rate to 7.1%, the highest since 1990. This ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra Changes in the May 14 budget will cut the student debt of more than three million people, wiping more than $3 billion from what people owe. The government will cap the HELP indexation rate ...
Asia Pacific Report The prosecutor’s office at the International Criminal Court (ICC) has appealed for an end to what it calls intimidation of its staff, saying such threats could constitute an offence against the “administration of justice” by the world’s permanent war crimes court. The Hague-based office of ICC Prosecutor ...
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New Zealand Food Safety is monitoring overseas recalls of Indian packaged spice products manufactured by MDH and Everest due to concerns over a cancer-causing pesticide. ...
By Stephen Wright and Stefan Armbruster of BenarNews Fiji’s ranking in a global press freedom index has jumped into the top tier of countries with free or mostly free media after its government last year repealed a draconian law that threatened journalists with prison for doing their jobs. Fiji’s improvement ...
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Former Olympic swimmer James Magnussen has already started training for the Enhanced games, though says he won’t start taking performance enhancing substances until about nine months out from the competition. The Australian world champion was the first athlete to be announced by Enhanced, but he says the organisation has had ...
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Council members voted 21 to 4 in favour of Ahluwalia returning to the Laucala campus following a much-awaited meeting in Vanuatu this week. It comes as USP and its two unions — the Association of the University of the South Pacific Staff (AUSPS) and the Administration and Support Staff Union ...
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Political parties have now fully disclosed the donations they received last year - with National getting more than double the cash of any other party. ...
A Pacific regionalism expert has called out New Zealand's Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters for withholding information from the public on AUKUS military pact. ...
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Is it time yet for a 1930s style Mortgage Moratorium?
Or, to save small businessess, and up against it home owners, should we pack it in and let the virus rip?
…..by 1931, it was clear that further intervention was necessary to prevent widespread foreclosures and mortgagee sales.
1936 as successive governments tried to cope with the worsening crisis…..
….Although mortgage relief was frequently discussed at some length by contemporary commentators, and by some historians in the 1950s and 1960s, it has been relegated to a few lines at most in more recent works.'
The Mortgagors and Tenants Further Relief
Act, 1932, gave new rights to mortgagors. Whereas, previously, mortgagors could seek relief only when they were directly threatened by mortgagee action, they could now apply for relief independently of any action taken by a mortgagee.
This Act also extended to lessees the same protection that had been granted to mortgagors,,
http://www.nzjh.auckland.ac.nz/docs/1987/NZJH_21_2_03.pdf
A business relies on people buying their product or needing their service.
When there is a crisis people tend to restrict what they purchase or use a service when it is really needed.
Is New Zealand in a recession due to Covid?
Most likely and all because we had a travel bubble. Seems that everything has a price.
The definition of a capitalist is someone who knows the price of everything but the value of nothing.
At the Macro Level;
At lockdown level 3 & 4 lockdown, the banks are still demanding their pound of flesh. While our accounts are being drained by the banks, the population with severely curtailed freedom of movement, peoples and businesses and livelyhoods and ability to earn an income is on hold . The free flow of capital offshore to our foreign owned banks is completely unimpeded. Meanwhile everyone else's accounts, (including the government's) are being drained.
At the Micro level;
This morning at 9am two men wearing bandanas and not proper masks were at my garden gate demanding to entry into my yard to pick up my garden bag.
During the last level 4 & 3 lockdowns, and for weeks after, my garden bag was not collected for months, (despite the fact that it was over flowing). In fact I heard that the garden bag company was very close to being ruined and on the verge of going out of business.
Magically, this time around collecting grass clippings and garden waste is an essential service.
You've got to be kidding me. This is not an essential service.
And this not the only medium to small company that I know is operating as if there is no lockdown. I personally know of three others. Friends and and extended family members have told me that they have been called back to work. When last time they were ordered to stay at home on the government wage subsidy.
Obviously the government wage subsidy is not enough to keep these small companies viable during repeated lockdowns.
If the government are not to abandon their elimination strategy, if lockdowns are not to become farcical. The banks need to be ordered to do their share.
P.S Now I can understand that this company's existence and the jobs of its workers are at stake here, but so is public health.
Meanwhile, here I am hunkering down like a fool, trying to do my civic duty and barely leaving the house.
It may have 'Green' in its name, but I will cancelling my subscription to this service.
Everything has a price. Their price is my custom.
It is not just businesses that need relief.
A moratorium on rents and mortgages for the period of the lockdown would eliminate food insecurity, and make the lockdown more bearable for tens of thousands of struggling families and small businesses.
It is not like our foreign owned banks can't afford it. They take $3.5 billion out of the country every year.
Food insecurity and high mortgage and rental costs are not just a lockdown problem. Lockdown makes these costs worse.
There is the pre Covid world and the post Covid world. I feel that the full impact of Covid has not yet occurred economically. With some luck there is not a worse variant than Delta to manage.
If anything could earn this government the love of the farmers, it would be a nationwide Moratorium on Mortgages for the period of the crisis. it would certainly undercut farmers support for the right wing 'Groundswell" movement and the National Party. Which would give a big boost to the government's poll ratings.
Not that they should do it for that reason.
The thing is if you are going to lock down a population you should do it, because it is the right thing to do.
I've posted before about the civilian casualties (a family of 10, including children) of this Pentagon-claimed "righteous strike" against a 2nd suicide bomber in Kabul during the evacuations.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Z0DF7LX_pW0
A New York Times investigation has now established that the Reaper drone operator that followed the car for hours likely mis-read what he or she was seeing & that the "bomber" was a completely innocent man going about his normal daily business.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/10/world/asia/us-air-strike-drone-kabul-afghanistan-isis.html
Thanks for posting that Gezza, and strangely enough it is the notorious Daily Mail who have given this story the most coverage out of all MSM as far as I can make out…well not strange really, they are are also are the best MSM outlet when it comes to coverage of Assange and Epstein.
'They are so burned we cannot identify their bodies': Grieving relatives' fury over US drone strike targeting ISIS-K that killed six children, including two toddlers aged 2, and four adults
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9940633/Pictured-Ten-Afghan-family-members-killed-drone-strike-ISIS-K-targets.html
Of course the cost of 9/11 to the Afghan people is rarely mentioned…
Costs of War Project
As of April 2021, more than 71,000 Afghan and Pakistani civilians are estimated to have died as a direct result of the war.
The United States military in 2017 relaxed its rules of engagement for airstrikes in Afghanistan, which resulted in a massive increase in civilian casualties.
The CIA has armed and funded Afghan militia groups who have been implicated in grave human rights abuses and killings of civilians.
https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/costs/human/civilians/afghan
Afghan land is contaminated with unexploded ordnance, which kills and injures tens of thousands of Afghans, especially children, as they travel and go about their daily chores.
The war has exacerbated the effects of poverty, malnutrition, poor sanitation, lack of access to health care, and environmental degradation on Afghans’ health.
Yes. Doesn't take long on google to find various organisations that have investigated & counted the thousands of innocent people killed by US missile-armed Predator & Reaper drone strikes around different conflict zones. The US military basically doesn't follow up.
There have even been several cases reported where they've made a claim to have assassinated a particular target, only to discover later they got someone else, sometimes a probable militant, other times someone completely innocent.
Their "collateral damage" toll is eye-watering & shameful & never gets covered in their (or our) media.
And Biden's administration is talking up their intention to maintain this "over-the-horizon capability" to strike at terrorists in Afghanistan & elsewhere. 😠
It's ok though, because the act of being murdered by a yankistani drone makes you a terrorist.
The Russians & Israelis are just as bad.
The Russians say they are helping defend the legitimate government of Syria against terrorists & just don't talk about civlians murdered in their joint, savage attacks on medical centres & towns.
And the Israelis remain totally unconcerned about the grossly disproportionate civilian death tolls in their routinely savage reprisals against Hamas & Islamic Jihad unguided rocketing of Israel. They know the world's media's not really looking on any more & that the US will veto any meaningful Security Council punishment.
But neither of these two maintain the pretence that the US constantly does that they are defending the free world with precision "surgical strikes” that are assiduously studied beforehand, & only launched when they have definitively identified a terrorist target in a zone where they always avoid civilian casualties.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=wm4h1dA8ORo
Reaper (& the earlier, smaller Predator) drones are usually armed with Hellfire mssiles. This a very brief Military Reaper promo (I've avoided selecting one of the many available YouTube videos of actual strikes on real human targets).
Just from the practice strikes in here you can see how using these damned things kills so many innocent bystanders or passers-by that come onto the scene once the bloody thing's launched.
Using them in narrow city streets is criminal.
A 9/11 essential read for anyone who thinks NZ should countenance the self-appointed "world policeman" or for those who need an alternative view of the US consensus that is blithely picked up by the MSM and has shaped the decades since prior to the Vietnam war.
Indeed.
I think I was watching a rare live broadcast of the burning North tower on tv1 on my little black & white tv on a shelf in the kitchen when the 2nd 757 hit the South tower.
I remember thinking, my god. Someone has got straight through the defences of the most powerful militarised country, the ONLY global superpower, in the world, by using their hubris & their own civilian technology in a major trojan horse attack on the American mainland.
Also, while pained at the thoughts of the last moments of the horrified defenceless passengers & occupants of the towers, I thought, detachedly, that this was a stunning feat of arms.
Shock & awe, from a small number of Islamic militants outraged at infidel America's presence & actions in Muslim lands.
Whilst the 9/11 attacks were horrendous. The death, destruction and invasion of sovereign lands killing 100s of thousands of innocent people far outweighs the brutality of twin towers. So much so that I find it very hard to have any sympathy for US citizens.
Two wrongs have never ever made a right
The US military left their huge military bases in Saudi Arabia after the UN-authorised & Arab-govt-supported first Gulf War (Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait) because the Saudi population was becoming so vocally opposed to their arrogant infidel culturally-offensive presence in the Muslims' holiest land the Saudi Royal Family got really concerned about a possible general revolt if they didn't tell them to go.
It seems to be only when the US service personnel body bag count starts to rise into the thousands that the US public & politicians begin to seriously demand answers as to why their sons & daughters are even fighting in these far-off countries.
The US Military response to the body bag problem has been to develop & utilise stand-off capability as much as possible. It reduced the body count significantly. As well as the disastrous idea of using private security contractors (mercenaries, by anybody else's definition) post-invasions in Iraq – so any losses in those cases didn't officially count as US Military corpses & other casualties.
Their armed Reaper drone programme has taken this to such an extreme I think I've read somewhere that US Reaper operators based in the US itself are now also able to fly some assassination missions in far off countries.
As I've noted, Biden & co have said several times since their panicked Kabul evacuation scramble that they intend to utilise their "Over-the-Horizon capability" to strike at IS & other terrorists in Afghanistan.
This stand-off capability insulates the US public far too much from the reality of what really happens to the locals in their far-flung wars. And reporters on the ground are either not permitted – or just not safely able – to report the daily horrors – as they did in the Vietnam war.
One further, major worry is that the US – and Russia, & China – are reported to be going hell-for-leather developing & testing autonomous stand-off attack UAVs including AI-equipped armed drones – potentially taking even the current human remote pilot last-minute MISSILE ABORT capability away.
Here's a simple easy to read explainer of what's happening to extend the Pfizer vaccine to 5 – 11 year olds.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/health/2021/09/10/fdas-dr-peter-marks-explains-authorizing-covid-vaccines-children/8276288002/
It's looking likely the US will give an emergency use authorisation towards the end of the year. Depending on how our current outbreak plays out and how our approval authorities view the data, we too might start vaccinating all our school-age kids late this year to early next year. Maybe even in time for the start of school next year.
I had my first Covid jab a week ago. Just some pins and needles in the arm where I had the jab for about 30 mins and mild pain in the arm for a couple of hours 6 hours after. The mast cell activation and GAVE which I have made me vaccine hesitant, I over came this. A grandchild age 12 had the Covid jab on the same day. All went well.
Pleased for you Treetop. When one has other conditions it is a cause of anxiety. Our son in Australia, and a number of his Dr's patients, have had severe headaches after Astra Zeneca. He also knows someone who has had covid and says this is a small price to pay, as after the second dose this side effect goes according to the Dr.
I stayed for an hour after the jab just to be sure as a relative could not make it as planned. Usually anything medical does not faze me (tubes/injections).
I had a good laugh to myself post the jab, a man stood up and his track pants were so loose, half of his back side was exposed. He was seated 2 meters directly in front of me with his back facing me.
I would like to know what sort of antibodies I make.
[comment deleted in full.
You need to respond to this: https://thestandard.org.nz/open-mike-01-09-2021/#comment-1813086 – Incognito]
See my Moderation note @ 9:40 am.
[comment deleted in part for the second time.
I’m not going to waste more time on you on Covid-19 vaccines. Take the deal (https://thestandard.org.nz/open-mike-01-09-2021/#comment-1813086) or take the ban. You can leave your response anywhere you like; it doesn’t have to be in OM 01-09-2021 and you can do it here in this thread if you wish. If you don’t respond the default will be the ban – Incognito]
See my Moderation note @ 12:51 pm.
Again…and this is also in response to your Mod note from last week…
[comment deleted in part for the third and final time.
As I said before, I’m not going to waste more time on you on Covid-19 vaccines. If you think you can argue your way out of it, you are wrong. I’m starting to suspect that I cannot trust you to keep your part of the bargain, but the deal still stands and time will tell or not. Take it or leave it.
BTW, this is not censoring, it is Moderating. The discussion will continue with or without you regardless – Incognito]
I personally would be very, very interested in reading these arguments.
And in the interest of fairness and transparency, how about not censoring this comment at all…let others decide if I am spreading bullshit.
Because how it is at the moment you seem to be implying (by viciously heavy censoring) that I am quoting shit from some dark- hole nutbar conspiracy site… not the fucking British Broadcasting Corporation. Fffs!
See my Moderation note @ 3:48 pm.
We should not rush into authorizing vaccinations for 12 yr olds and under until the science is out some studies show little benefits. We have time to sit back and make an focused decision.
Just like our roll out being later than everyone else's it has meant we get the maximum benefit.
ie 6 weeks between doses gives longer immunity.the fact we have vaccinated later gives us an 6 months on everyone else which also gives us time to look more closely at the research data.
Let's not be panicked by the bullying of the right wing business first at all Cost's that's cost business more as we have had to have a second lockdown.Collins and Seymour and their groupies will be pushing hard to open up at the earliest date.Our economy did just fine without Tourism.
Robertson needs to fund tourism to change to other types of business for in the longterm tourism is never going to be the same again.
Agree that international tourism looks likely to be a major health risk for many years to come. This will strike some formerly-thriving Māori tourism-related enterprises hard, as well as Pākehā tourist & tourism-dependent ancilliary businesses.
While some can pivot towards encouraging more local tourism it won't make up the gap in numbers & total income.
I think the pressure is going to go the government to open up regardless because of this.
Not sure how Māori tourism operators are thinking on this. Hapu & Iwi spokespeople around the country are understandably vocal & active in protecting their kaumatua & communities. Mārae visits by touring parties have been a welcome source of funds & relationship-building for some.
I think the wealthy will still travel as they will afford the time and the money the remaining systems will cost.
Others will do the work / learn and stay.
Maori Tourism will become more targetted at this market imo, as will others.
We will have fewer tourists for longer periods. Quality not quantity.
Which will be no bad thing, if you're right. Unconstrained, cheap & easy tourism has resulted in damage and an incredible amount of littering in some World Heritage sites in various places around the world.
Quite apart from the dangers inherent in allowing hundreds of tourist climbers to swarm Mt Everest, for example, the sheer amount of litter left on that maunga is staggering. Even today in the 'death zone' there are used oxygen cylinders, other climbing bric-a-brack, and some unrecovered bodies.
It's just too difficult and dangerous to try and find and bring them all down. Google "Green Boots".
We really don't have much time to sit back and wait for indefinite rounds of more data gathering for 5 to 11 year olds.
The pressure to open back up and end the use of lockdowns will become too much for the government to stand against very soon after we stop hearing people complaining that they want vaccination and haven't yet been able to get it.
That means covid is going to get in and spread quite widely and quite quickly. Despite the misinformation promoted by some, significant numbers of young kids get very sick and get long-term disabilities or even die from covid. It's imperative to give them as much protection as we can before they get exposed to the virus.
Outside of kids with pre existing conditions I think we need to be really damn careful with vaccinating the young.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/world/2021/sep/10/boys-more-at-risk-from-pfizer-jab-side-effect-than-covid-suggests-study
I was aware of the Myocarditis risk in teenagers.
I would like to know if one Pfizer vaccine makes enough antibodies to give protection for the 12 – 18 age group?
I am undecided on children age 5 – 11 being vaccinated. Children in the UK have returned to school and a double blind study needs to be done to determine what the benefit is for children age 5 – 11. Transmission of Covid among children occurs. The teachers would be under strain.
Covid is also hard on parents and caregivers of children. Being a single parent without enough support would not be easy.
Seems to have a disproportionate effect on boys so much so it potentially carries more risk than covid itself for that cohort. At least according to that study.
No easy answers but given vaccination offers good protection from serious illness in adults etc we should and can afford imo to exercise extreme caution in giving it to children.
When it comes to children/teenagers the research needs to be througher.
It is about the efficacy and duration of antibodies from one jab. People under 18 do get Covid and require hospitalisation.
A few comments on the study referenced by the Guardian piece before the likely rebuttals start coming out in a few days as actual experts respond to it:
It's a dumpster dive in VAERS of the type that VAERS is explicitly not designed for and actual experts warn against.
The lead author Tracy Hoeg has been a long time advocate of basically reopening schools and letting the covid chips fall where they may. Kind of a "plan B" type.
Looking for previous citations, it appears Hoeg frequently appears cited on Children's Health Defense, a notorious source of vaccine misinformation and disinformation.
It appears fairly likely that the article won't make it through peer review. Indeed, it may not be intended to, if the intent is simply to provide an anti-vax talking point. Its work will have already been done.
Given that the methodology of the study appears at odds with accepted good practice, the priors of the author, and that the conclusions are way way at odds with the conclusions of more reputable sources, caution around that article is well warranted.
Here's a piece that examines the risk of the disease versus the vaccine from a better-accepted viewpoint:
https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/what-does-it-mean-to-be-anti-vaccine/
It is interesting that you dismiss concerns about the risks of the vaccine for children. In order to protect the children you immediately render some expendable for the greater good. Until we know why, and how many children will react then we should proceed with caution or not proceed at all. If we are simply exchanging one risk for another for the sake of an ideology that the technical solution is best then we need to think again.
I'm not dismissing concerns about the health of children.
However, I am unapologetic about dismissing the evidence-free beliefs in stories fabricated by grifters and the feels and reckons of ignorants that are contradicted by the actual facts and evidence.
Children having Covid and fighting it off, I decided to look up very recent science on this.
26/08/2021 Scientific American Unraveling the Mystery of Why Children Are Better Protected From Covid than Adults.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.scientificamerican.com/article/unraveling-the-mystery-of-why-children-are-better-protected-from-covid-adults/%3famp=true
Sorry a problem with the link.
Link that works:
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/unraveling-the-mystery-of-why-children-are-better-protected-from-covid-than-adults/
tl;dr Kids' perma-snotty noses actually contain a first response system to viruses that are new to them, that adults never used to need so it doesn't get maintained.
Which is all very well. But the situation we're facing is that kids are very likely to be facing a new virus that breaks through this defence and wreaks havoc in enough of them that a strong response is warranted.
We have multiple vaccines that are being checked in these age groups to find appropriate dosages, and whether there are any adverse effects specific to those kids. The question is finding the balance of having enough data to say the risk-benefit is in favour of vaccinating those kids, versus taking a chance on how many of them get damaged or killed by the disease, versus the broader cost to society of maintaining non-vaccine protections such as lockdowns.
Thanks for the fix up.
In the link
Children, "also more quickly produce type 1 interferons, which are crucial for fighting viruses."
Were the snotty nose and the type 1 interferon defence to fail in children there needs to be a back up plan. That would at this point in time be vaccination.
I've now had both. Painless injection, both times. Hardly felt it (trick is, don't look).
The information sheet given to me after the first jab mentioned side effects were more likely to occur after the 2nd one.
Sore/tender upper arm at injection site, & a morning headache the day after, both times. Headache easily dealt to with two ibuprofen at breakfast. No other effects. Went well.
I plan to have the jabs 6 weeks apart to not confuse my already confused immune system. I will give anything a go when it comes to Covid keeping me out of hospital were I to have it and not to increase the work load of the health workers.
Anyone here not had their first shot yet, that intends to get one?
I'm thinking we need a surge of testing now in South Auckland to keep elimination alive as an outcome. But how is it done in a way that gets compliance and doesn't appear racist?
Has to be done in consultation with Maori & Pasifika community leaders & churches. And saliva testing would seem to be the best, least-invasive way to go, if that can be established to be accurate enuf?
[e-mail address corrected]
(Sorry Mod. Mucked up my email addy)
Auckland has been impacted the most due to lockdowns and the number of those with Covid.
I tend to look at who is going to be worse off economically and have their health impacted by Covid the most.
Two facts, those on low incomes and those with health conditons are impacted the most. Testing and vaccinating for Covid reduces the impact.
Every town and city needs to have good access to test and vaccinate for Covid. In the areas with the greatest need eliminate the barriers to get tested and to get vaccinated.
Their own Pasifika community leaders have been calling out for it for a while.
Let the virtue signallers rage.
Agree AB. It would seem that the bulk of the Sth Auckland cases are linked to church gathering and general ignorance on the part of some who have not picked up the Covid messages and how to respond to them. Not all the church leaders appear to be proactive in supporting and guiding these people – perhaps for the same reason.
The rest of Auckland cannot continue to tolerate this situation for much longer, and I wonder of there is going to be a requirement for two Auckland levels… one applying to South Auckland and the the rest of Auckland can join the rest of the country. Whether that is even feasible is a moot point.
Of the Pasifika churches in New Zealand, it appears that Samoan churches have in fact been quietly getting on with organising vaccination events etc. Here's just a couple of examples:
https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/new-zealand/2021/05/coronavirus-church-ministers-help-in-push-to-get-pacific-people-vaccinated.html
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/446611/pacific-vaccination-event-with-wedding-atmosphere-attracts-1000-people
Which makes it tragically ironic that the latest outbreak has hit them so hard.
Yes Andre the differences are stark. Many churches are doing a wonderful job and all hail to them for their efforts. But others are falling through the cracks and simply not sticking to the rules out of ignorance and poverty. They need to be identified post haste and given extra support and assistance. Of course the moment you do that you will have Seymour and Co. screaming discrimination blah blah, but I think they're reputations are on a downward trend these days.
It's not so much the ones falling through the cracks; when there's attention to spare from just focusing on pushing the maximum numbers through right now, a lot more attention can go to that outreach.
The bigger problem is the outright anti-vax churches, such as Density and City Dimpact. The only viable responses I see to those are mandates and Darwin.
https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/shows/2021/08/coronavirus-why-are-almost-a-quarter-of-kiwis-still-vaccine-hesitant.html
Calling it 'ignorance' downplays the failure of authorities to engage some communities properly – as they were advised to invest in very early on. That is a systemic failure, not a personal one. Too many white organisations in Wellington making policy for populations they have no real idea about.
This right here. (the Collins zoom interviewer)
https://twitter.com/cmalietoabrown/status/1434416779158188037
Yeah, maybe he should start to follow his own supposed principles and “values”.
All class.
Churches aren't the problem, plenty of parties happening down south… can see photos of em on Facebook etc…
End of the day successive govts have shat on the communities in South Auckland some are pretty disenfranchised from society at large and wont play by the 'rules'
How would you propose to split off suburbs in auckland when everyone goes every which way for work or business.
How about we shut auckland airport and divert all flights to ohakea or chch, let them carry the load for a while. (Tongue in cheek here)
There will be a reason why Ohakea or Burnham is not being used. Personnel would be doing MIQ from Ohakea and Burnham.
To get surge testing in South Auckland organised it needs to be done in consultation with Maori & Pasifika community leaders & organisations (which would incude church pastors).
Also hopefully we'll soon be able to use saliva testing instead of the more invasive/uncomfortable nasal swabs.
(Sorry Mod. Mucked up my email addy)
Shoutout to Jane Campion for winning the Best Director prize at the Venice Film Festival.
Film was: The Power of the Dog.
Also starring: Central Otago
We've seen the movie..
https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/world/2021/09/covid-19-thirteen-gorillas-contract-virus-at-us-zoo-more-to-undergo-testing.html
Interesting rhetorical step for President Bush to equate AlQaeda and the MAGA supporters who stormed Congress on March 6th this year.
https://edition.cnn.com/2021/09/11/politics/george-w-bush-9-11-speech-domestic-violent-extremism/index.html
At minimum it puts the extremist end of Trump's supporters into a very difficult box.
Nah, not really. A lot of Donnie One-Term's supporters are middle-finger voters that previously never had anyone they were enthusiastic about. Shrub's opinions won't matter in the slightest to them.
As for traditional Repugs, they'll rationalise it away as the insurrectionists weren't really Repugs, so those words don't apply to them.
The Democrats in 2016 had the chance to follow democratic procedures and give people a genuinely popular candidate, proposing popular, decent, centrist policies, who drew far larger numbers to his events than Trump ever did. But the masterminds of the DNC ensured that the candidate put forward was Hillary Clinton.
Yup. A Bernie Presidency would not have gotten all his activists might have wished for – probably a good deal less – but we would not have gotten Trump and everything that's fallen out of that.
And I'm coming to the view that the worst thing about the Trump period was not his erratic, irresponsible, polarising and confronting politics – but that everyone else has adopted the same behaviour in response.
Do you think he'll run again in 2024? By the way, RL, in late 2013, this writer, i.e., moi, predicted Trump would be a one-term president from 2020 to 2024.
. https://thestandard.org.nz/open-mike-31122013/#comment-751510
If the Republicans fail to put up a candidate with the charisma and intelligence to unite the American people – then yes Trump might well see the door open to a second run.
And while we're on the topic of one term Presidents – it's pretty clear Biden is declining cognitively (the exact facts of this I accept are hard to decode from all the political noise) and it's reasonable to think the chances of a second term for him are less than good.
Scanned through that whole OM – it was both robust and funny. In the intervening 8yrs we've made TS safer but lost something along the way. And not a few good people too. Your prediction I assume was intended as satire – but doesn't life have a way of topping even the best comedians.
Very astute comments, my friend. Much appreciated.
The kind of ridiculous hysteria around Trump and his "deplorables" does not look good for political divisions in the US healing any time soon
https://caityjohnstone.medium.com/twenty-years-of-phony-tears-about-9-11-a7926cd95e36
From the linked article:
It would have been infinitely better for everyone if America had done nothing, absolutely nothing, in response to 9/11,
I recall writing somewhere years back that in response to 9/11 the best thing the US could have done was to mourn it's dead with dignity and then defiantly declare "is that the worst you can do"?
And then in hindsight they should have quietly gone to the Saudi's (who were after all definitively involved in the attack) and demand that the culprits be handed over to justice or something unpleasant might happen.
Bit awkward for them to do that, the Saudis were worth too much to them in arms purchases & financial, diplomatic, military & intelligence collaborations to piss them off or pressure them, I suspect.
Besides which, didn't they know bin Laden was operating out of Afghanistan?
They cruise-missiled Al Qaeda's known training camps there. Then they demanded the Taliban hand him & his associates over to the US for trial.
The Taliban offered to surrender bin Laden to a neutral country as they said they didn't trust the US to give him a fair trial. The US should perhaps have gone with that option, but instead they decided to go & get him & to depose the Taliban regime at the same time via an invasion by another ill-advised "coalition of the willing" of the usual suspects countries.
They probably should have instead just gone for one or more covert intelligence-based Special Forces operations to kill or capture him. These days they have more capability for this kind of assassination operation via stealth or drone air attacks.
You're not wrong… moderation feels more heavy handed these days. Has shut down some different but valuable view points. Seems to be getting worse recently sorta in tune with how societies heading, tolerance for opposing views is disappearing fast… as is trust in people being able to make up their own minds. Worrying times some friends I have that grew up in communist eastern Europe are getting worried in that they are seeing similar behaviors establish here.
I think moderation first started heading in the this direction when we started shutting down climate change deniers. At the time – and even now – it seemed reasonable and justified to do so. But it was the first big topic where we started moderating on content and not behaviour, and this change has proven to be tricky to manage.
Partly because it's hard to disentangle from the personal views of the moderators, and then again because of scope-creep. Some authors curate their threads quite tightly, others don't at all. I'm reasonably OK with this, especially if OM remains just that – open. There have been some benefits to this, we sometimes get better focused debates without derails and distractions. Sometimes like weka's recent posts on trans issues I've understood that quite strong moderation was justified.
But the trend really discourages me is moderators starting to assume the role of defining 'misinformation'. I know they mean well and I've not been keen to make an issue of it, but if TS heads the way of FB, Twitter and YT and starts regularly constraining the debate to a list of 'approved' topics I think it will be game over here.
Not so much game over as echo chamber… some will be completely happy with that I guess. Shame really
I totally agree with you RL re Trump
He was the worst thing for journalism, for one any hack could say what he liked about Trump as long as it vilified him in some way, and it would be applauded.Any retrograde politician or bad actor could say something nasty true or not about Trump, and that person;s whole questionable career would be instantly sanitised, and the media would bay in approval
His actual suppression of journalism was eclipsed by Obama, who jailed more whistleblowers than any other president
Apart from the exception of Assange, for which he can never be forgiven.But I don’t see Obama or Clinton standing up for Assange either, and Biden perfectly happy to continue with Trump’s decision to prosecute.
Bush's analysis of anything is not worth a bucket of spit. Shouldn't he be in prison?
Bush saying it may not be worth a bucket of spit.
If Obama had made a speech carrying the same sentiments would it have been worth more than a bucket of spit? Would it actually have been "Right on!"
The sentiments?
Could a president, a party have survived if he'd said “We love you; you’re very special,” and called them “peaceful people, these were great people” if the Jann 6 mass were foreign rather than domestic people (terrorists.)
As Jennifer Rubin said, "No president could have avoided prosecution if the crowd he inspired to march on the Capitol had been radical Muslims ready to kill elected leaders and stop democracy in its tracks.
In every case, had the terrorists been foreigners, we would have labeled their Republican apologists as anti-American, if not traitorous."
You were doing well until "As Jennifer Rubin said…"
https://twitter.com/willmenaker/status/1163873361786822656?lang=en
You were doing well until you said "You were…"
You think someone originally from the Middle East with a microphone encouraging a mass of Muslim people to go to the Capitol to stop the implementation of the electoral aspects of the Constitution would be lauded, supported, defended? You think a mass of Muslims ready to attack and kill elected leaders would be celebrated?
And if the leader said, to and of them, “We love you; you’re very special,” and called them “peaceful people, these were great people” how would he be regarded? Would he and they be praised as 'patriots?'
The great unwashed of America, the Jim Jordans, the Marjorie Taylor Greens, the Josh Hawleys, the Madison Hawthorns would have demanded the horde be gunned down as they went on their mission down Washington Avenue.
“Shouldn’t [Bush] be in prison?”
So should Cheney & the late Rumsfeld, & Blair. But there's some international law or something that prevents war criminals like these beggars from being charged with war crimes, as they're the leaders of countries.
Or maybe it’s just because no other country is powerful enough to capture and try them.
Thoughtful interview this morning about how Covid highlights social inequity. (12m clip) https://www.tvnz.co.nz/one-news/new-zealand/were-paying-cost-expert-says-inequality-adding-nzs-covid-issues
A response..
https://twitter.com/ArbyHyde/status/1436810480450822144
Wouldn't a reset be great?
The reset under this government is only that dealt by fate through restricting international engagement to the digital world.
National would have done pretty much the same.
Saw that interview.
It was excellent.
Moral Leaders of Our Time. No. 1: Paul McCartney
Thirty years ago, Paul McCartney stopped Weird Al Yankovic releasing a parody of “Live and Let Die” by Wings because he thought Yankovic’s parody—"Chicken Pot Pie"— would promote immoral behavior.
Some years after that demonstration of concern for moral behaviour, McCartney performed in apartheid Israel….
Moral Leaders of Our Time is compiled and presented by Hector Stoop, for Daisycutter Sports Inc.
Dunno, M.
Remember this? From memory it was released during The Troubles, was deemed too provactive & was banned in England. As a consequence it received no promotion or airplay there.
While he'd never struck me as being politically & socially active as Lennon (who was a deeply flawed individual but knew it) this song was played on Radio Hauraki a few times & I remember thinking that was quite a gutsy stance to take in those times.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=r0zGVVcsbPg
Moral Leaders of Our Time. No. 2: George W. Bush
https://twitter.com/BeschlossDC/status/1436708314323243009
https://twitter.com/willmenaker/status/1163873361786822656?lang=en
Moral Leaders of Our Time is compiled and presented by Hector Stoop, for Daisycutter Sports Inc.
Does anybody who often posts here know if there's quick way way to access macrons using an ordinary Win 10 laptop keyboard?
I like to try & remember to use them when typing kupu Māori (words) as a means of reinforcing my very limited Te Reo Māori language learning.
It's a piece of cake on my iPad2 as various language accent marks come up when character keys are held briefly before release.
But my now ancient iPad2 requires frequent reboots after posting here once or twice, & switching to the lappy I lose that functionality. I don't want to have to use, say the MS Word app & copy paste after selecting “Insert Symbol”. Takes way too long to find the macrons.
You can install the NZ-Māori keyboard if you add the Māori language using the main settings.
After adding the keyboard you can type macrons by tapping the tilde (~) key then the vowel, so "ā" is "~" then "a".
Thanks. I'll look into that.
I bought this Lenovo laptop a couple of years back.
(I had to; my previous Compaq spent all night and half a day downloading the free Win 10 OS but, at the last minute during the install self-check, frustratingly announced that my Video card was incompatible with Win 10. So I just carried on using Win 7, which I liked & still prefer to Win 10. But MSoft stopped supporting Win 7 in Jan 2020, meaning no more security patches.)
When I completed the set up of this computer it had some other language for keyboard pre-loaded. Pressing certain keys resulted in a completely different letter appearing. Forget which. It was a baffling & irritating experience. In the end I rang Harvey Norman, where I'd got it from, and got talked through selecting the right keyboard language.
I'm not that tech-savvy, McFlock. Hope loading the Maori language doesn't give me a similar problem. Do I do this in System Settings?
In Firefox I can add the Maori language as an add on.
So spell it with a lower case m which will high light it as mis-spelt. Then when you right click to correct the spelling, select language and then Maori.
I've got MS Edge and Chrome browsers, Brigid. I mostly use Chrome on this laptop.
Used to have Explorer, Firefox and Google Chrome on my previous Win 7 lappy, but I can't be bothered loading more browsers onto this one.
https://twitter.com/jce_pc/status/1436813351816876036?s=21
Auckland couple leaves level 4 with essential worker exemptions, then fly from Hamilton to their holiday home in Wanaka! RNZ news at 5.
Self-centred entitled rich pricks, endangering the South Island!
National or Act supporters?
Probably Act at this stage
A Socialist country like Vietnam deals with such acts of selfishness strictly.
Le Van Tri, 28, got 5 years jail for "spreading dangerous infectious diseases."
https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/vietnamese-man-jailed-5-years-spreading-coronavirus-2021-09-06/
A flight attendant received a two-year suspended jail term for 'breaking COVID-19 quarantine rules and spreading the virus to others.'
https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/vietnam-sentences-flight-attendant-spreading-coronavirus-2021-03-30/
First can I apologize to rest of nz for the criminal behaviour of a couple of born to rule a…holes from dorkland endangering your health. Writing from dorkland.
It seems to be a deliberately planned exercise rather than an impulsive event.
Therefore, I hope they get the book thrown at them, that they, as the law allows, spend time on the inside looking out, and having a criminal record restricts there overseas travel. We dont need despicable examples of kiwis representing the face of kiwis offshore
I think we all understand a few a holes are not representatives of Auckland.
We were wondering how they got shopped. Most of the people I know from Wanaka are firmly in the MAGA (Kiwi version) camp, so unlikely to nark, probably congratulate them. High likelihood they were self entitled enough to park their car in the Hamilton Airport carpark and the plods did a quiet check for plates that came through the checkpoints, ooops….
They'll probably be in court next week lawyered up and in the meantime free to enjoy spring in Wanaka.
One is the son of a high ranking official so of course they will go for permanent name suppression.
I say name and shame them!
High-ranking official's son charged after flying to Wānaka during lockdown | Stuff.co.nz
Anti-vaxx trash are flat out doxxing the kid, too.
https://twitter.com/SikotiHamiltonR/status/1436883410929127426
"An unfounded rumour about the student's death appears to have first popped up on Saturday night and was given a big boost when lawyer and NZ Outdoors Party co-leader Sue Grey, a well-known anti-vaccine activist, posted about it to her followers.
The post attracted over 1400 comments before it was taken down late this morning but has also been cited overseas."
Scott Hamilton also posts: "Alanna Ratna is the latest anti-vax activist to suggest the PM's life is in danger. 'We're going to get you Jacinda. Your future is bleak' she wrote yesterday on fb. Ratna is a doctor & close ally of John Ansell. Like him she believes the covid vaccine is depopulating NZ."
Is it hate speech to say I hate it that there are people like Grey, Ratna and Ansell in the world?
Ratna can surely expect a friendly visit from security oriented officials at this point.
Ansell should take notice of the US antivax covid denial radio talkback host's who are no longer here crying on their death beds wishing they had been vaccinated.
If they are making death threats they should be arrested and hauled into court.
Four of the six Palestinans who recently escaped by tunnelling out of an Israeli maximum security prison have now been recaptured, so far without sparking off another revolt in occupied Palestine. One of them looks the worse for wear after apparently resisting:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=7SGzmtbcUJM
Oops. Spoke (typed?) too soon. Aljazeera tv's quick headline news summary just reported that Palestinian militants have fired several missiles into Israel, & that Israel has immediately struck back with their own missiles into Gaza. 😐
Tulsi at her progressive best.
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https://twitter.com/EoinHiggins_/status/1436778091980931084
She didn't mention the US funding of islamist groups interestingly.
So it was white supremacists who flew the planes – I just knew the official story didn't make sense!