Open mike 15/03/2025
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6:00 am, March 15th, 2025 - 25 comments
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Shoutout to the Tamehaka, Tamekana and Uenuku iwi for getting their settlement through.
A hard won $20+million. Lots of land taken for public works in there.
Now the hard planning towards prosperity begins.
And a personal shoutout to my friend of >40 years Aiden Gilbert for his untiring work and leadership to secure the future for his Iwi.
Too block is Aiden, chase the white ball with him on occasion
Movie star, too.
truth, comes in a punk song
What a surprise!
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/business/544873/libelle-announces-sale-of-school-lunches-operation
Still, it might be good news for the workers and for the school kids.
How could this possibly be construed as 'good news . . . for the school kids?'
Labour's finance person Edmond points out somewhere in this infrastructure planning clip with BHN that, while the current lunches cost $3, schools are getting additional funds to cover transport of lunches, bringing the cost to over $5.
Labour's trial scheme ran to $5-8 per lunch, seems like transport inclusive. Where lunches were made locally or on-site, the transport cost was low. Just what is the budget for lunch transport from OZ?
The infrastructure discussion is good, too.
Trump adopts Putin's tactic of taking foreign citizens as hostages to trade for
its criminalseconomic concessions..
Family and friends of a Vancouver entrepreneur are demanding answers after she was unexpectedly detained by U.S. immigration officials while attempting to cross the border with a job offer and visa paperwork in hand.
Jasmine Mooney, a 35-year-old business consultant and co-founder of a drink brand, has been detained for 10 days under what her supporters describe as “inhumane conditions,” with no clear explanation of why U.S. Customs and Border Protection arrested her.
[…]
Eagles said an immigration lawyer was finally able to reach Mooney late Thursday, but despite having no criminal record and facing no charges, Mooney remains in custody with no clear timeline for release.
https://vancouversun.com/news/bc-woman-detained-at-us-border-sent-to-arizona-detention-facility
Crossing from Canada into the US is an experience I no longer want to undertake. Went for 3 day visit down from Toronto through Detroit to visit a cousin in Ohio. Beautiful time of year (the fall) and the country was full of colour – but the passage thru immigration in Detroit was something I never want to experience again. Everyone treated as a criminal. Going into Canada on the other hand was the complete reverse. That was 10 years ago, so nothing to do with Trump.
I experienced US border patrol hospitality on a seventies surf trip to California and Mexico's Baja peninsula.
Best described as boorish, paranoidly aggressive thugs with guns.
A friend of mine – a woman in her late 70's was visiting her grand daughter in San Francisco. She had been there before with no problems but last time she was kept at Immigration for 5 hours while her family waited outside, questioned frequently and had her fingerprints taken twice.
I have never set foot in the USA and never will. The closest I have been was about half a K from the border on the British Columbia side and I made damn sure that nobody took a wrong turn.
Jimmy Carter will be rolling.
.
The FBI is moving to criminalize groups like Habitat for Humanity for receiving grants from the Environmental Protection Agency under the Biden administration.
Citibank revealed in a court filing Wednesday that it was told to freeze the groups’ bank accounts at the FBI’s request. The reason? The FBI alleges that the groups are involved in “possible criminal violations,” including “conspiracy to defraud the United States.”
https://newrepublic.com/post/192660/trump-fbi-charge-climate-organizations
https://newsroom.co.nz/2025/03/15/why-marking-march-15-is-helpful-and-healing/
I had a look on the Beehive website, because the RSS feed is dead again, and there’s nothing from the Coalition, which shows how much they care – ‘deal’ with it quickly and then move on as if there’s nothing more to see and do.
The DPMC website was last updated on 12 August 2024 – out of sight, out of mind.
Fair is fair, Luxon did show up.
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/544912/luxon-says-nz-must-confront-forces-that-led-to-mosque-attacks-on-the-sixth-anniversary
What have Ardern and Hipkins had to say? The last thing I remember form Chris H was in 2023 when he said there would be no public remembrance.
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/politics/pm-chris-hipkins-private-commemoration-of-christchurchs-march-15-terror-attack-preferred-by-community/TAHRE5HXIFDMDDE4OUDZKKGFWM/
[Last time, less than a year ago, you copped a ban for diversion trolling it was for 2 months. Since then, you’ve received already 2 warnings. So, here’s your final warning for diversion trolling and whataboutery.
Hipkins is no longer PM and neither is Ardern. Hipkins called out the Coalition in August of 2024 but it fell on deaf ears: https://www.labour.org.nz/statement_on_cancellation_of_march_15_royal_commission_of_inquiry_recommendations.
FYI, this is a Mod note for you and you only need to take heed, not reply – Incognito]
Mod note
I’m getting a feeling that we should start a project to get rid of the Coalition. Let’s call it:
Free Kiwi First 2026
On Wednesday, weka dished me out a two-day ban, charging me with the fantastical offence of "peddling fascism denial" after I criticised a French politician and three weapons manufacturing companies.
https://thestandard.org.nz/open-mike-12-03-2025/#comment-2028335
That was more than three days ago. This morning I posted a message quoting a United Nations report on Israel's policy of rape and sexual terrorism.
It has not been published. Are you now censoring criticism of Israel as well as of armaments companies and NATO?
[Another two-day ban.
Stop being a fuckwit and stop accusing TS of censorship.
I manually lifted your ban this morning @ 9:54 am.
You’re free to re-submit the comment that you tried to submit @ 9:02 am. I’d like to think that’s a pretty quick response from Mods. BTW, that comment was shite, as usual, but that’s beside the point.
If you keep up this fuckwit behaviour, your next ban will have 2 0s added to it, which means we will see you again on 1 October or later – Incognito]
Mod note
Thing is, unlike you and your fellow tankie/campists who openly support Putin's army of rapists, murderers, and toilet thieves, nobody here supports Israel's war crimes and sexual terrorism.
/
The new report by the UN's Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Ukraine, published online this week, is to be formally presented to the UN Human Rights Council next Tuesday.
"The commission has concluded that Russian authorities committed enforced disappearances and torture as crimes against humanity," the report said.
"Both were perpetrated as part of a widespread and systematic attack against the civilian population and pursuant to a coordinated state policy," it added.
[…]
Russia "systematically used torture against certain categories of detainees to extract information, coerce, and intimidate", the inquiry concluded.
The most brutal forms were used during interrogations, but Russian authorities had also "systematically used sexual violence as a form of torture against male detainees".
https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20250314-russia-committed-crimes-against-humanity-in-ukraine-un-probe
It’s not very nice to kick someone who cannot defend themselves and leave flaming comments for them that they can read but not respond to, is it?
Please make your comments here without the whataboutery and flaming, thanks.
Of course it isn't nice but then I'm addressing someone who can't bring themselves to condemn the motives and actions of an invading army that has been credibly accused of using sexual violence as a weapon of war.
Fuck him.
Cognitive dissonance, when you wirld-voew and the facts misalign. Those here who doggedly support Russia must be struggling to reframe their 'this is a proxy war with evil capitalist US amd noble socialist anti-nazi Putin', now that Trump has stepped out.
'A person who experiences internal inconsistency tends to become psychologically uncomfortable and is motivated to reduce the cognitive dissonance…mak[ing] changes to justify the stressful behavior, either by adding new parts to the cognition causing the psychological dissonance (rationalization), believing that “people get what they deserve” (just-world fallacy), taking in specific information while rejecting or ignoring others (selective perception), or by avoiding circumstances and contradictory information likely to increase the magnitude of the cognitive dissonance (confirmation bias).
'Festinger [1957 definition] explains avoiding cognitive dissonance as, "Tell him you disagree and he turns away. Show him facts or figures and he questions your sources. Appeal to logic and he fails to see your point." '
https://thestandard.org.nz/policy/#rules
Mossie displays all the hallmarks of a dumb fuckwit troll, so why waste oxygen on him – let the Mods take care of it. The problem here is that anti-troll warriors tend to become annoying and anti-social very quickly too.