Open mike 15/03/2025

Written By: - Date published: 6:00 am, March 15th, 2025 - 41 comments
Categories: open mike - Tags:


Open mike is your post.

For announcements, general discussion, whatever you choose.

The usual rules of good behaviour apply (see the Policy).

Step up to the mike …

41 comments on “Open mike 15/03/2025 ”

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  1. Ad 1
    15 March 2025 at 8:27 am

    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.

  2. adam 2
    15 March 2025 at 12:22 pm

    truth, comes in a punk song

  3. Incognito 3
    15 March 2025 at 12:49 pm

    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.

    • Tony Veitch 3.1
      15 March 2025 at 2:34 pm

      has agreed to sell its lunch operation to Compass Group NZ.

      How could this possibly be construed as 'good news . . . for the school kids?'

    • tWig 3.2
      15 March 2025 at 4:21 pm

      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.

  4. joe90 4
    15 March 2025 at 12:57 pm

    Trump adopts Putin's tactic of taking foreign citizens as hostages to trade for its criminals economic 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

    • Macro 4.1
      15 March 2025 at 2:16 pm

      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.

      • joe90 4.1.1
        15 March 2025 at 3:03 pm

        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.

        • Anne 4.1.1.1
          15 March 2025 at 9:18 pm

          And the boorishness and thuggery isn't always confined to the USA.

          Had the misfortune to find myself working under an ex-American marine in the latter1980s and early 1990s on a NZ Defence Force base. We were a civilian division providing specialist information. I, along with one or two others, had questions about his presence there – bearing in mind NZ and the USA were not on good terms at the time because of our relatively new anti-nuclear status.

          If the work-place harassment and the covert thuggery beyond I encountered during that period was any indication, we were right to be asking those questions. I might add, he was eventually removed from that base. Nuff said.

      • Visubversa 4.1.2
        15 March 2025 at 5:46 pm

        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.

      • Obtrectator 4.1.3
        15 March 2025 at 11:37 pm

        What pisses me about US immigration is that they make you go through it even if you're only transiting their sh*t-heap country; fingerprinting, herding about at gunpoint and all. Every other country in the world spares you the experience unless you actually want to set foot there. Not the good ol' USofA; they always have to be be the bloody exception to normality. I used to be tempted to write on the form, under “Reason for coming to the USA”: “To get the hell out of it ASAP”. But that might have resulted in an extended stay as one of their less-favoured “guests”.

    • Macro 4.2
      16 March 2025 at 10:20 am

      Meanwhile the bigoted/racist POTUS*** gets even more nastyzi.

      https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/mar/15/trump-administration-travel-restrictions

      Trump administration mulling new travel restrictions on citizens from dozens of countries

      New memo lists 41 countries – including Afghanistan, Cuba and Syria – that could face new restrictions, evoking first-term Muslim ban

      Orange "Muslim" is the new Black "Jew" from 1930's

  5. joe90 5
    15 March 2025 at 1:13 pm

    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

  6. Incognito 6
    15 March 2025 at 1:14 pm

    The Government should, when it can, Cook says, look at how to maintain the attention on the March 15 attack at a local and national level – “how there can be some commemoration that’s meaningful, not only the Christchurch families, but the Muslim community.”

    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.

  7. Incognito 7
    15 March 2025 at 1:40 pm

    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
  8. Morrissey 8
    15 March 2025 at 2:26 pm

    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]

    • Incognito 8.1
      15 March 2025 at 2:53 pm

      Mod note

    • joe90 8.2
      15 March 2025 at 3:31 pm

      This morning I posted a message quoting a United Nations report on Israel's policy of rape and sexual terrorism.

      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

      • Incognito 8.2.1
        15 March 2025 at 3:47 pm

        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.

        • joe90 8.2.1.1
          15 March 2025 at 4:11 pm

          It’s not very nice to kick someone who cannot defend themselves

          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.

          • tWig 8.2.1.1.1
            15 March 2025 at 4:37 pm

            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." '

          • Incognito 8.2.1.1.2
            15 March 2025 at 5:20 pm

            Similarly if you act like a machine (ie a troll) you will be treated as one – a form of spambot. A troll is generally defined on this site as someone who clearly isn’t bothering to engage their brain when commenting. The standard is that the troll could be replaced with a dictionary of lines and phrases, and no-one would know the difference. Typically trolls do not interact with other commentators as they either ignore what others say in reply or write a reply that ignores what they said. In either case it is ignorant, anti-social, annoying to read, and will often result in a banning so that others don’t have to read the comments of someone living with their sense organs turned off.

            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.

            • tWig 8.2.1.1.2.1
              15 March 2025 at 6:45 pm

              Actually, knowing some 'tankies' as close friends, who believe whole-heartedly in Putin's framing, I don't experience either weston or Morissey as trolls. Whereas I wonder sometimes whether Belladonna is paid to cruise here and insert [rw framing of the day on issue x].

              So when I wrote about cognitive dissonance, it's because I genuinely wondered how Putin supporters are managing the re-frame, with Trump's intervention. And TS is a place to explore that, where, in all honesty, I fear to talk about it with my friends, in case the friendship goes up in smoke.

              • Incognito …
                15 March 2025 at 7:09 pm

                TS is a place where people can explore ideas & opinions and argue for or against in a reasoned and intelligent manner, each at their own level. But this assumes and expects a commitment – one of the outcomes can be to agree to disagree or reserve judgment. Without this, it rapidly descends in irrational shouting that serves no other purpose than to cause outrage, to be outraged, and, most of all, to show outrage. When this happens, we request that people lift their game or go elsewhere, e.g., to social media that that thrives on this kind of behaviour, with like/dislike buttons and thumps up or down, and which makes a few very rich people even richer. TS is a place to enrich one’s mind, not somebody else’s pockets.

              • weka …
                15 March 2025 at 8:40 pm

                Whereas I wonder sometimes whether Belladonna is paid to cruise here and insert [rw framing of the day on issue x].

                I don't care if they are paid or if they're a volunteer RW propagandist. What I care about is if they bring good political debate to the table (they do), whether their behaviour impacts negatively on the site and commentariat (imo it doesn't) and how they respond to moderation (the few times I've seen another mod ban them, they've taken it on the chin which means less work for the mods).

                In other words, the robust debate ethic means that right wing people can in fact comment here and we have a long history of enabling debate from across the political spectrum.

                If we didn't have people presenting a rw framing of the day on issue x, we wouldn't get to wrangle with those ideas and figure out how to respond. We'd also risk being an echo chamber.

                We also have a history of a few RW trolls who know how to troll just inside the line, Gosman being one of the longest. They eventually step over the line and get banned. But the key here is behaviours not the politics or views of the person.

                • Bearded Git …
                  15 March 2025 at 9:41 pm

                  I don't read Belladonna, Dennis Frank and seldom read Alwyn.

                  There are far better posts from scarily intelligent people on TS that don't waste my time.

                  • Westykev …
                    16 March 2025 at 11:43 pm

                    Yeah best to stay in your bubble and only read shit that fits with your confirmation bias. Don’t vote left myself but I like to read the odd post here. Sometimes I agree and change my view. Some people here need to do the same.

    • weka 8.3
      15 March 2025 at 7:45 pm

      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?

      it's not all about you Morrissey. When someone gets banned their details get put in a system in the backend that automatically shunts any comments they make to Trash. That's done manually, and so is removing someone from the ban list. In periods of time when we don't have a lot of bans, we don't necessarily check the ban list daily. I simply forgot to release you yesterday.

      You've been commenting here long enough to know this.

      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.

      thing is, if you won't make an effort to understand why you get banned, you will find it harder to avoid more bands in the future.

      I didn't ban you for criticising a French politician and three weapons manufacturing companies. I banned you for lazy slurs and lack of meaningful critique after you'd been running round on site for few days doing the same.

      Maybe I misunderstood you and you aren't peddling fascism denial. But you can hardly complain about being misunderstood when you treat TS like FB or twitter.

      If you want to critique Malhuret, then write an actual critique, although at this point I'm wondering if you can't. You can also drop the ageist slurs, because I will moderate for that as well. If you want to argue that he is a warmonger, make the actual argument and provide some evidence to back up your claims.

      I also clearly stated that you were being banned for behaviour not politics. Continue to ignore that and you'll just cop a long ban. Your choice.

      • Incognito 8.3.1
        15 March 2025 at 8:57 pm

        thing is, if you won’t make an effort to understand why you get banned, you will find it harder to avoid more bands in the future.

        No, Morrissey doesn’t make an effort which is the exact same problem with not trying to understand what other commenters are saying and responding accordingly. The lack of effort is the most bothersome hallmark, which is what I tried to convey in my comment @ 7:09 pm.

  9. joe90 9
    15 March 2025 at 9:03 pm

    The big lie, beat the drum long and loud until people fall into step, and it's why Jim Grenon bought into NZME.

    /

    What is the Illusory Truth Effect?

    The illusory truth effect, also known as the illusion of truth, describes how when we hear the same false information repeated again and again, we often come to believe it is true. Troublingly, this even happens when people should know better—that is, when people initially know that the misinformation is false.

    […]

    Individual effects

    We all like to think of ourselves as being impervious to misinformation, but even the most well-informed individuals are still prone to the illusory truth effect. We may be skeptical of a false claim the first time it floats through our Twitter timeline, but the more we are exposed to it, the more we start to feel like it’s true—and our pre-existing knowledge does little to prevent this.

    In fact, all it takes is one repeated exposure of a given statement to increase our perception of truth.20 Subsequent repetitions of the statement make us even more likely to believe it, but the largest effect occurs right after we encounter a statement for the second time. This shows how very quickly our beliefs can be manipulated. Here’s how this can affect us:

    https://thedecisionlab.com/biases/illusory-truth-effect

  10. joe90 10
    15 March 2025 at 10:02 pm

    Congratulations, cookers. An entirely preventable tragedy.

    /

    Measles cases are at a 25 year high in Europe, while North America and Afghanistan are also dealing with major outbreaks and children dying from the preventable disease.

    Over 127 000 cases were reported across the World Health Organization (WHO) European region last year, the highest number since 1997 (216 000), according to a joint analysis by Unicef and WHO. Measles cases reached a low of 4440 in 2016 but have been on the rise since.1

    More than half of measles cases reported required hospital admission, and a total of 38 deaths have been recorded. Children aged under 5 accounted for more than 40% of all cases. Hans Kluge, WHO regional director for Europe, said, “Measles is back, and it’s a wake-up call. Without high vaccination rates, there is no health security

    https://www.bmj.com/content/388/bmj.r528