Just testing the waters here (off the back of this) but are there any women here who would find value in having a daily “dick free” post/thread – a bit like Open Mike but with no male contributions?
Hardly possible to make it perfect since a commentator’s gender isn’t always obvious, but the idea would be that any comments from people known to be male would simply be shunted to Open Mike in the first instance, and anyone seeking to masquerade as female would have the known threat of a ban (to be counted in years?) hanging over any possible discovery of their shenanigans.
More than that very rudimentary level of moderation would be contingent on a women with back end access and permissions taking up the baton. (Which may never happen.)
sigh – painful to feel this necessity to state the obvious, but this comment is seeking responses only from women who frequent the site.
“The Guardian’s Alarming Recent Record Of Propaganda, Misinformation, And Slander
As has often happened to progressive-minded people who’ve reached a more radical point in their political evolutions, I’ve become disillusioned with many organizations, leaders and media sources that I used to rely on. One of these dubious sources is The Guardian.
At first, it seemed to me like The Guardian is a good alternative to the American mainstream media outlets. It’s often featured quality articles about subjects like climate change, and its columnist George Monbiot is the one who first taught me what the term “neoliberal” means. But this good material is what gives a feel of reliability to the misleading claims that The Guardian very often puts out……”
Good Morning to you Ed, From the link you have provided, What you and your writer object to is the Guardian’s exposure of your other’s fascism denial, and the Guardian’s continued exposure and coverage of the genocide being carried out by your favourite dictator. I have no doubt you find this exposure “alarming”. And it is your alarm and fear of being exposed that fuels your hatred of the Guardian
However what I sense is that lately your and others support for fascism has become somewhat muted, for fear of being laughed out of court. Witness the long winded lead in before this writer dares to mention their real gripe with the Guardian, their coverage of Syria.
But this good material is what gives a feel of reliability to the misleading claims that The Guardian very often puts out.
And Monbiot himself has been one of The Guardian’s main sources of these claims. In a 2014 essay, the journalist Jonathan Cook called Monbiot “the left’s McCarthy,” and wrote that Monbiot “is not a guardian of our moral consciences, as he likes to think, but a guardian of the outer limits of a corporate-sanctioned consensus.” Cook provided good reasons for these characterizations; when the scholars Ed Herman and David Peterson argued that recent conflicts in Rwanda and the Balkans have been falsely characterized as “genocides” to benefit Western narratives, Monbiot wrote a 2011 column in The Guardian denouncing these scholars as genocide deniers……
……..I’m referring to Monbiot’s coverage of Syria in the last eight years. In 2011, Monbiot used two expat businessmen and one British man as his personal consultants over whether the West should impose sanctions on Syria-while the opinions of the Syrian people were completely ignored. This journalistic practice was biased to say the least, and it indicated that Monbiot would stay within official Western narratives in his reporting on Syria.
Monbiot has since consistently pushed narratives about Assad’s government that help advance the U.S./NATO empire’s goals for Syrian intervention. In 2014, Monbiot wrote a column in The Guardian which characterized an al-Qaeda fighter’s act of terrorism as an “act of extraordinary courage” because the fighter had targeted an Assad-controlled prison. In November 2016, Monbiot tweeted that Assad and Putin had been carrying out a “destruction in Aleppo” when there had been no massacre in Aleppo, and when the rebel fighters were allowed to leave with their families and their weapons. And whenever Monbiot’s fellow journalists have questioned Assad’s role in Syrian chemical incidents, Monbiot has attacked them in the same aggressive and closed-minded way he attacked Herman and Peterson……
I find it breathtaking myself that the Standard tolerates Ed’s fascist propagandizing for a moment. He was running some crap yesterday about world war two in the Ukraine, as part of his campaign manufacturing consent for Putin’s invasion there.
I guess all the old tropes are being shown to be true – the intellectually weak being susceptible to propaganda, and the mild liberals being too nice to reject fascism and trying to accommodate it. It’s as if all the lessons of the early twentieth century were forgotten. Though of course it’s a generational thing – they never learned it.
[My “breathtaking” is to be found in my hitherto tolerance for your tiresome and dishonest hounding of contributors to the site over days and weeks – for your apparent presumption to determine who should and should not comment here; to determine what political opinions ought to be allowed and not allowed; to openly lie about peoples’ political leanings and motivations…Etc.
Notice the word “hitherto”? The tolerance has been chibbed, and this is the only warning you’ll be getting to pull your head in, stop disrupting the flow of comments with your vendettas or whatever the hell it is you think your doing, and engage solely with the topic or arguments at hand.] – B.
It’s funny you should say it’s a generational thing, Stuart, because Ed does kinda remind me of a particularly naive commenter from years back, Kiwiteen 123.
The nice thing about Ed’s contributions is that he occasionally hits the nail on the head, so it’s probably better to encourage him when he does get it right, rather than get overly negative on his dictator boostering. Like all of us, Ed’s a work in progress and every day’s a learning day.
As for Kiwiteen 123, I reckon he’s at uni now and every bit as annoying:
I’ll fess up now @ Stuart M and a few others. My penis is considerably CONSIDERABLY less in length than yours.
I console myself in the knowledge that its girth is something to behold.
And while I’m in the confessional, it’s possible I’ve sometimes told a little white lie or two – definitely two at least. One as to its length, the other its girth.
@ Jenny@Stuart Munro@te reo putake….Ed is exactly right to feel disillusioned with The Guardian, I take it you all don’t?
Yet The Guardian is plainly biased against the first tangible Left Wing political movement to give a viable alternative to Liberalism to emerge in the UK for a couple of generations…so I take it from your vocal defense of The Guardian that you all have more sympathy for a the New Labour Blairite style Labour, rather than a Socialist Labour?
I have considerable reservations about the Guardian’s anti-Corbyn campaigns and similar nonsense. But when we look at what Ed does endorse the Guardian starts to look pretty good.
Jenny Monbiot is just one journalist.
The Guardian deliberately puts forward opposing views.
Your description of Assad is only an opinion.
The Syrian war is a power grab by Putin pushing back the Arab spring Obama cockup who followed George W’s cock up.
If the US got more involved we would have seen more wars breaking out.
While Assad is a nasty Dictator who would have replaced him IsIs.
GH Bush warned his son not to invade Iraq as it would open an hornets nest
Guess what the hornets nest has been opened and its never going to be closed.
Religious fanatics from all sides will ensure that peace will never be achieved.
Arms sales will go up and who are the 2 biggest arms exporters they will want continuous dysfunction in the Middle East.
You’ll be liking this article Ed.
The Guardian explaining that the Saudis were actually quite a progressive and reasonable state with a restrained attitude who have, under Prince Mohammed, had a fine respect for human life and freedoms, its just that they are falling under the evil and nefarious influence of Putin.
“The Russian president’s role in the Middle East had suddenly expanded and his footprint throughout Europe and the US was growing just as rapidly. The young prince seemed curious about what the mercurial Putin had been up to: annexation, intimidation, deflection, the denial of objective facts. But he kept coming back to one question, the officials recalled: how does he get away with it? “He was fascinated by him,” one of the Britons told the Observer. “He seemed to admire him. He liked what he did.” Two years later Prince Mohammed is embroiled in a crisis unlike any other in his short, combustible time as the world’s most powerful thirtysomething. The crown prince stands accused of ordering the brutal death of a prominent critic on foreign soil – a state-sanctioned hit that is without precedent in the kingdom’s modern history, but is not quite so unknown in Russia.”
You’d be right in thinking I’ve sneakily linked to some sabre rattling paranoia and misinformation in the Daily Mail, but no, it really is the Guardian blaming Putin for prince Muhammad’s ‘misstep’. poor boy gullible that he is.
Nicely put Siobhan
The Guardian really has become shameless and reckless about fact checking;
seemingly these are the Guardian’s “values” now
Chulov has always been more of an opinion piece guy, but this is passed off as news!
MSB was never a reformer, as shown by the provided links https://www.amnesty.org.nz/free-saudi-women-who-fought-right-drive
If it’s a bad news story, there’s always a Russian angle to be had.
Nice (though painfully see through) cover for, or deflection from, all the diplomatic, economic and military support afforded SA by the UK and others though, aye?
Sioban the Saudi govt is playing Putin off against Trump another Syria in the making.
Like Trump says if we don’t supply them with the US$120 billion arms deal Russia will.
You’d be right in thinking I’ve sneakily linked to some sabre rattling paranoia and misinformation in the Daily Mail, but no, it really is the Guardian blaming Putin for prince Muhammad’s ‘misstep’. poor boy gullible that he is.
Sioban
I think Sioban that the Guardian article is hysterical and more balanced than you give them credit for.
Blaming Trump as much as Putin as setting the low bar on human rights and international norms of behaviour.
From the linked article you supplied:
Trump repeatedly claims that the US no longer sets the world order – except on Iran – and has pointedly eased pressure on states that previous administrations claimed had long fallen short on human rights and governance. The result has been a vacuum in global leadership, emboldening leaders who might otherwise have checked their behaviour, a Riyadh-based western ambassador said.
“Relationships are being redefined. People know there are no limits,” the ambassador said. “If ever there was a case study of the post-fact Middle East, this is it. There is impunity all around.”
Back in 1990(?) The Guardian (then still in a broadsheet format) ran a front page consisting of a full page, disturbing photo of a dead man’s face. It was in the lead-up to what would become the break up of Yugoslavia, and The Guardian was baying for war/intervention.
Back then, The Guardian was considered to be the middle class, sandal wearing peoples’ rag that offered the ‘correct’ spelling of youghourt, the mis-spelling of just about everything else (their typos were a running joke), alongside many articles on the fine art of hand wringing and “first world” problems.
So they haven’t really changed. And there is still the occasional nugget to be found in their pages.
It was The Guardian (accidentally or otherwise) that published an article based on official government documents that exposed UK government funding to Syrian Jihadists.(I’ve linked to it a few times) And sure, they never built on it and it ran entirely counter to their editorial line – which is and always has been crap.
Meanwhile, Monbiot does some good stuff on the environment, but is otherwise a complete waste of time and space. Larry Elliot has written some good stuff on the economics front. And they otherwise sometimes carry good opinion pieces.
It was the Grauniad that broke the Murdoch newspapers phone hacking scandal, which ended in the closure of the News of the World. And there’s their work with Edward Snowden and others. The Panama Papers was theirs in part as well.
It’s always worth remembering that the paper itself doesn’t claim to be left wing, though obviously a lot of its writers are. There are alternatives in the UK (the Mirror is surprisingly good on politics and the Morning Star is devoted to left wing analysis), however there isn’t another major English language newspaper in the world that is as consistently progressive as the Guardian.
In a wider sense, the problem is that the Russians and others have devalued ‘news’ to the point where even the concept of journalism is a mystery to a lot of people and opinion writers get confused with reporters of fact as if they were one and the same thing.
I wouldn’t characterise the Guardian as “progressive”. It’s liberal and always has been, which is fine unless the reader expects a perspective coming from the left.
Devaluing news? Dumbing down? That started back before the internet and I’d think more or less coincided with the reprise of liberalism across the Anglosphere.
There’s a pattern here.
Short staffing.
Wonder if RNZ noticed it and could join the dots.
“Workloads and pay would need to improve before NZ teacher Michael Harvey would consider returning as part of the government’ recruitment drive, he says.”
What nonsense blaming the teacher shortage on neo-liberalism. Teachers have been complaining about workload and class sizes all my adult life. In the late sixties when I was at school the typical fifth form class was a little over 30 students.
On the views of the PPTA the teaching “crisis” must have been continuously running for over 50 years.
Same with nurses. Hospitals seem to have had similar staffing ratios for just about forever.
It suits the unions to say everything is a crisis because they know the government will give in. It is after all the government the unions financed so these pay rounds are just their due reward.
Same across the entire state sector. Just about everyone will get pay rises over the next 3 years of between 5 and 10% per year.
Hard to disagree with that since it concords with my experience too. Important for teachers to bleat in general terms rather than blame the evil controller who keeps refusing to give them more money. Serves the subsidiary purpose of reinforcing the public view that teachers are unable to connect cause & effect.
It doesn’t occur to you that cost of living has grown rapidly under neo-liberalism Wayne? Of course it wouldn’t – such stresses do not touch insiders. Particularly expensive cities now represent a losing deal for teachers and nurses unless they already own their own housing, which is no incentive to stay in the profession.
The stress this generates is worsened by ill-conceived reforms and gratuitous dead weight nuisances like the Novapay debacle. But by all means keep whistling in the dark – it’s going to be a long time before the Gnats see the light at the end of the tunnel.
No, your talking through a hole in your head. I have worked in Health for forty odd years, clinical management for half of them. Its only in the last few years that we have had massive shortages, you should try being confronted with up to 50% shortages for night shift and thats before Nurses ring in sick. Sick because they had worked 16 hr shifts the previous day and the day before. This is all because of a lack of work force planning for the last decade, poor wages in comparrison to other professions and countries.
The majority of Nurses like Teachers are fast approaching retirement age, still no planning to replace them other than poaching a workforce from third world countries who need their own health and Education workers.
Wayne So Simple Soimens smaller class sizes are going to be achieved by sinking lid policies that National do to any publicly funded service govt provides so we end up with as in the education sector a shortage of teachers.
Poor education outcomes 96,000 unemployed under 24 year old when we have massive shortages in construction, IT, nursing teaching agriculture, tourism.
National is a short sighted win power at all cost’s let the invisible hand of the market sort it out.
If you ran a business like that it would fail.
Investing in education was identified as important back in the latter part of the 19 th century when Germany began investing in education for economic and strategic military reasons other countries watching quickly jumped on the band wagon realising that superior economic, technology and industrial power would leave those left behind in a very weak strategic position.
National are guilty of under investing in our most valuable resource.
NZ knows this hence Simple Siomon’s massive U turn on Nationals woeful history on education spending.
Highlighting Nationals failure.
Kids behaved themselves back then or they got beaten wayney. And the stroppy ones were out by age 15. Marking was tick/cross/ x/10 with a rare as hen’s teeth comment in actual words.
Obviously you went to a very different school to me (mine was Reporoa College). I had very decent and highly motivated teachers (mostly). At least in the sixth and seventh forms (20 students and 8 students respectively) the teachers went to huge lengths to lift the aspirations of the students. To be fair, not so much in the fifth form (65 students in two classes).
In the 1960’s there was country service. So we got some extremely good young teachers.
I did get caned on a fair bit, but not in the 6th and 7th form. We were treated as young adults, and we lifted our own standards accordingly.
Both Wayne and Gabby: Caning kids did not actually make teaching them easier. I think the difficulty of teaching them remains constant.
What changes is support and obstacles.
Support has diminished. Teachers are less often backed by parents and the legal system. Govt (through Ministry) has so often prompted teachers to ‘work smarter, not harder’, while ‘doing more with less’. That cracked old record broke apart long ago… And salaries have slipped inexcusably because of penny-pinching Govts of both Right and Left.
Obstacles: Workload was massively increased over the years, with increased paperwork in that 80s period of ‘increased transparency’.. one had not only to do the same work, but write screeds for ERO about how one did it as well. Bollocks. Then came NCEA for secondary teachers – another big shift of workload onto teachers with Internal Assessment (teachers had now to make up their tests and mark them and have them moderated) along with other extra paperwork.. And I gather Primary teachers got much the same thing with National Standards.
All this is symptomatic of Govts wanting to impose austerity instead of social well-being. (Yuk – I hate that phrase.)
Low pay has now become an Obstacle as well. Dedicated teachers who 30 years ago would stay in the profession are now leaving after a few years, after they realise what the job is now actually like.
I began in 1970. I am now semi-retired. NO WAY will I return to full time under current conditions. Your time as part of Govt helped create this, Wayne.
My family has turned it’s back on RNZ as we see it now simply as a right wing media platform.
We have been denied any media coverage of our community transport problems since labour took over and the Government have done nothing to fix this right wing misuse of our public media.
Last week the sharemarket plunged over the course of two intense days, shedding enormous value off major stocks. While the chaos was concentrated in the US market, the impact spread across the world and also hit New Zealand. In what was one of the worst days in the history of the NZ sharemarket, S&P/NZX50, which tracks the top 50 stocks in New Zealand, dropped 3.64 per cent. While the market did recover on Friday, it caused many to question whether the next big crash was on the horizon…..’
He could now be involved with taking a ‘financial hedge’ against the NZ dollar again as he did in 1987 with has high flying buddy Andy Krieger?
Key & his Wall St mate Andy Krieger just may actually repeat what they did when Labour booted National out in 1984!!!!!
Key will leave NZ after pushing up the dollar with their money, and then pulling it out and slumping the dollar and again making yet another $40 million again.
Key and Krieger were written up in global news as one of the most successful raids ever made on a county’s currency.
So don’t have any illusions that this man known as the smiling assassin is nice, he is ruthless.
The timing of his elevation, in the midst of a financial crisis, may be quite prophetic. After all, Key’s rise to prominence in foreign exchange circles came after he struck a rewarding relationship at Bankers Trust with Andy Krieger, a daring New York-based trader who launched a legendary raid against the NZ dollar in 1987.
John Key is living proof that not all heads of derivatives operations for large US investment banks end up in the dog house. Some get to run their own country.
The obvious expectation upon retirement was that the Bilderbergers would offer him a coordinating role at the top level. The only evidence we’re likely to get on that is if he was reported as routinely travelling overseas (to foreign capitals, Geneva, NY). Alternatively, just as likely he told the truth about wanting to relax into family life.
It’s quite often when these predictions come out that they do not happen. Crashes happen when no one is predicting them. When everyone is bullish. Currently there are a lot of people with cash on the sidelines because they think the market has got ahead of itself. When that is the case it is not the right environment for a crash.
Do I think stocks are overvalued? Maybe a bit. Average PE’s are high but that is exacerbated by a few larger companies that dominate these indexes. Time will tell, but every year you have these commentators that cry doom and gloom. One year they will be right.
I will look for the full article in North and South later this week.
Curiously, there was a similar plot line in a Danish drama series that showed in the last year on NZ TV. It was a drama about a family headed by a patriarchal priest. His priest son served with the military, and while accompanying soldiers on a mission, he was encouraged to shoot at an alleged sniper – it was in fact an innocent woman.
Like the NZ medic in Hager’s report he was afterwards so totally tortured by the killing, he left the church and became an independent minster working with street people. But his crime was also covered up by the establishment.
I suspect such incidents are not isolated occurrences.
“there was a similar plot line in a Danish drama series”.
Well Nicky has to get his plot lines from somewhere. You might call it plagiarism but Nicky would just say he was doing a bit of creative interpretation.
Listening to him on Morning Report today leaves me thinking that he only has to change a couple of names and he can sell the story again.
Just change NZDF to NZ Labour Party and SAS to Young Labour and he can publish it again.
How is the coverup of the Labour Party sex scandal going by the way? Have the Police Force started obeying orders from the Boss and quietly dropped all the charges yet?
On Wednesday, we’re holding a rally in Wellington at William Colenso Square on Molesworth Street at 4:30pm. Come along and tell the NZDF that you condemn its war crimes and culture of sexual abuse and homophobia! https://www.facebook.com/events/2245324562207138/ …
Mr Hager, probably needs to understand the difference between a combat medic and your bog standard medic that you would see in Regimental Aid Post/ Casualty Clearing Post at A Echelon or B Echelon. The days of a medic armed with his Red Cross and his medical gear running around a battlefield ended around the latter stages of WW2/ Korean War due to a number of Nations had a habit of shooting Medics on the battlefield.
A Combat Medic is an Infantryman within a section, a Tankie within an Armoured Vehicle Crew, A Gunner within a Gun section, a Field Engineer within a section, Airforce Gound Defence Section (Airforce Infantry) and in Special Forces Ptl or Section etc.
A Combat Medic role is a secondary role within the Fighting unit/ Combat Platoon/ Team. As a result some Combat Medics are more highly trained than others within a Combat Medic role. For example some Combat Medics can perform basic minor surgery on the casualty or trained similar to that of a Para Medic, A&E or ICU Nurse/ Doc and in my case as a basic Combat First Aid dealing dealings trauma wounds, Minor first aid injuries, using drugs/ drips, stabilise the casualty IOT safety move the casualty back to the A Ech or help other Medics at a Cleaning Station or during clinics at local villages etc.
So in my humble opinion, I don’t think it would be Vampire (Military slang for a Medic) running around battlefield kicking doors in and shooting up the place. Or else this person is in the wrong job for starters, as all the medic’s I’ve come across or worked alongside do take their Red Cross obligations quite seriously which than I could say about some Medical NGO’s over the years.
The headline has it that unions are to blame for low wages. So if there’d been no unions in New Zealand workers would be highly paid. Yes Mike Hosking I believe you. Not.
With household inflation forecast to be in the range of 3% (and this was before the massive fuel increases) teachers are being told a 3% increase in wages is a good thing by the govt ?
And notice the language that Chris Hipkins is using by aggregating the 3 year increase of $7k in his interviews.
Teaching friends of mine accept that this govt is currently better then the last, but they are becoming very frustrated in the rhetoric that the govt is using and its lack of action in addressing this crisis. https://www.rbnz.govt.nz/statistics/m13
This was a Road transport association (RTA) orchestrated attack on our Minister of Transport Phil Twyford, as he is taking some money from the “Land Transport ‘consolidated fund” and using it to fund rail repairs and urgently needed upgrades.
Truckles fear they may loose freight around the country to rail.
But the roads are now falling to bits by the large road freight increases in the last 10 yrs!!!!
So road user charges now must increase dramatically;
Or road taxes must increase to make roads safer.
Many people are dying under trucks see here last weekend again a death with accidental truck incident.
Gosman South America is under the CIA’s influence since the US decided to become a super power.
Gossipboy Dogmatic till the end. Your never going to get anyone to listen or change if you carry on with your un yielding unscientific rants.
Despot dictators have been installed where ever possible mainly murderous Fascists.
Who buy military hardware from the US and use it to suppress democracy.
The left end up just as nasty as the right.
If not for the US Colonialist meddling you would have moderate Democracies by now.
The cold War is over communism and Fascism are a complete failure.
So Gosman and DTB both of you are extremists ideologues who think their utopic ideology will work both have failed miserably.
Argentina trialled pure capitalism it lasted 18months it was a disaster.
Cuba and Venezuela tried communism it has failed.
*yawn* still with b.s. about Venezuela ah Gosman. Why don’t you just publish John Oliver’s piece while your at it, it’s full of out right misinformation.
People wanting to run their own country is a crime. What next Gosman, the US has to invade….
– Venezuela is in serious crisis as evidenced by the massive outward migration to other nations
– Many, many companies and businesses have closed; it is difficult to get a formal job; there is a dramatic shortage in food and medicine; wages are low; the prices of products found in commerce are high; there is a hyperinflation that causes prices to rise every day.
– Maduro and the Chavista regime is in large part, to blame for the tragedy. Due to bad decisions and the confrontational attitude of his government. He has also contributed to the legal insecurity in Venezuela, which drives away investments and discourages entrepreneurs.
Gossipboy ranting in your Silo again
ffs try something new for godsake.
Surely someone as intelligent and well educated widely read as your self can come up with something new and better than reheating the same stale mouldy old story.
Gossipboy I’ll bet you anything you like that Bolisarno will be as corrupt as any previous Brazilian leader.
And Brazil will do no better corruption is endemic this will not change in our lifetimes.
Dictatorship’s aren’t corrupt Gossipboy
Your dictating of only one side of the story boringly corrupt.
Repeating the failure of Venezuela ruins any argument you may have had.
Dictatorship’s are Dogmatic like spin lies while murdering the truth just like you gossip boy.
By comparing a country which is controlled by drug Cartels with any form of democracy looses the point of your pathetic arguments.
And Besides Brazils economy is much larger with much more money to corrupt.
Lift your game Gossipboy boring people with your repetitive dreary Dogma barking madly and incessantly.
Not a reply to Bill’s top-of-thread comment, but inspired by it:
The Standard has traditionally been a forum for arguing – vigorously – frequently descending into slanging matches and abuse. Not only the commenters but also some authors and moderators have behaved in this way. This seems OK to me, there is a niche for this kind of site, it gives people a bit of interest in their lives and keeps them coming back.
It does however put off many people particularly women, right-wingers, centrists, people with good manners and normal people in general.
Mods need to decide what the Standard is for.
Is it still for arguing and wrangling? Then fine, just go on as you are. (Probably some commentators will leave in disgust. Some will come back in time.)
Or is it for reasoned, measured, sometimes impassioned but basically polite discussion? Then you need to make some very significant changes. Starting by taking a good hard look at yourselves and your own conduct. (I’m looking at lprent, TRP, Bill among others.) You will probably have to get rid of quite a few ‘old guard’ commenters who cannot be reformed as well.
I think Weka was trying to take the Standard down the latter route. It proved unachievable for her.
“particularly women, right-wingers, centrists, people with good manners and normal people in general“..
I notice you forgot to include Left wingers in your list.
Nearly all my commited left wing friends, a good percentage of whom are male, refuse to comment or even read the Standard because of the abusive tone.
That and the perception that its dominated by Labour Party fan boys and girls who tolerate no questioning of the Party line. Particularly scary when they form packs and start accusing every man, woman and his dog of being a troll, which happens far too often.
Personally I walked through the ring of fire, being called an ‘arsehole’, a ‘nutter’, a ‘gormless idiot’, ‘disappointingly boring and quite predictable’ (ouch!!), among other things, by The Sysop in the course of one memorable week. Which I guess I’m grateful for, as it left me with no illusions about the nature of this site. But on the other hand I really doubt there is any strong appetite and commitment for change.
And, in a way, I understand why many of those who dominate this site are happy with its culture, and don’t want it to change. When people have a little status in a little domain, they are unwilling to give it up.
But it doesn’t represent the wider left – although, as I have said previously, all the big left wing blogs are male dominated, in one way or another.
And there’s no major left site really providing much space for socialist feminists, or even social democratic women, or LGBT+ people, or people of colour/Maori/Pacific people – except in a pretty marginal way.
However, i would have expected a little more self reflection from those who dominate this site, as presumably committed lefties, on the male dominance herrre
To a large extent, it’s up to the commenters what TS is, or becomes. The site has certainly evolved over the years (google Robinsod if you want to get a flavour of the anarchic early days). I see it now as reasonably mature in a blog sense, with a distinct tone and an engaged community.
There has been a good effort from the authors in recent times to guide commenters rather than argue with them or simply ban them. In the few months I’ve been back I’ve binned a few comments, gave some clear direction to a couple of folk and banned nobody. Last month only 5 people got banned, all for short periods.
I think the authors are much more aware these days of the power imbalance, too. I’ve even walked away from a couple of discussions where my status appeared to be affecting other commenter’s ability to say what they wanted to.
None of us writers are paid, though we all try to write in a professional way. Just for the record, even a simple ‘notices and features’ post takes 10-15 minutes to put together. The more involved opinion pieces can take an hour or more. Then add in the time taken to monitor comments and you’ve got a significant commitment to the site.
It’s a job, really. No monetary reward, however some occasional, fleeting satisfaction at a turn of phrase, a heartfelt comment or an issue elevated into the public consciousness.
1) There’s been a lot of handwringing in the media pundit corps and centrist politicians these days about the loss of comity, post-Kavanaugh. And then Donald Trump made them all look absurd with his remarks at his rally last night. Thread follows.
Thread is about how the RWNJs in the US are promoting civil war.
It’s not “800 pages culled”. It’s another 800 pages on top of previous take downs and shut downs that are being done largely at the behest of four designated organisations acting as approved censors for facebook.
That aside. The unnecessary personal dig included your comment? Leave it out, aye?
How many pages have been reinstated from those previous take-downs?
And the personal dig also pointed out that FB is not essential to “the left”. Adam was commenting here, and AFAIK this is the only place I see their comments. Even if zucks were trying to turn FB into FoxNews Social Media, it’s not the only platform in town.
I don’t know how many have since been re-instated. I also don’t know what knock-on effect the loss of a fb page has for a news or info source, though given the large percentage of people who apparently get their news from fb, it’s unlikely to be having a minimal impact.
There’s quite a bit of dodgy stuff going on with regards the web and censorship that affects a huge chunk of the web (ie – google, fb and youtube).
Thoughtful and thought provoking articles, info and analysis are there to be had if information and controlling access to it interests you.
There is also a lot of dodgy stuff going on with regards to lack of censorship on the web, too. Bullying, bots, phishing, etc.
It’s sort of a microcosm of society – if there’s no sherriff, society usually becomes parasitic and toxic. If there’s too much sherriff, it becomes a police state.
I like how you shift the point to avoid the point. The problem is the broad sweep censorship, with a big chuck of what is being hit is left wing voices. Not parasites and generally not toxic, but you only want to listen to your take on the left – so I get why your clapping and cheering on this sort of stuff.
A big chuck of right wing voices are hit, too. The question is how many of these left and right “voices” deserve to be taken down because they are outright dangerous. And the question of any screening system is how false negatives and false positives are caught and re-evaluated, hence my question of how many are reinstated after appeal.
Because “generally” non-toxic means that even you would admit that some toxic content occurs even from the left, no?
You and I do toxic ever once in a while, so yes it exists on the left. But the point of the post was the blanket approach used by the monolith that is facebook – has a tendency to target social activists and left leaning people rather than toxic and vial idiots you are talking about. Yes it got a few of those, but people like
are not in that group. If anything, the outright dangerous like Alex Jones, have profited by the facebook doing this sort of thing. And grown in support – so blocking them is not working either.
That’s an odd site, and hardly left wing. Looking at some of its stories I’d want to see what they were sharing via FB before making a call on their case.
Bullying, bots, phishing, etc. would strike me as coming down to moderation (not censorship), bullshit chasing money or rating (as far as I understand bots) and security against….well, I was gong to say malware, but nothing really protects a person from their own stupidity.
Censorship of information by arguably monopolistic platforms is something else entirely, but hey…
The point is that censorship itself isn’t a bad thing. Sometimes it’s necessary, whichever the platform. The existence isn’t the problem, the balance is the issue. I think bringing the reins in a bit is necessary. As long as the good outweighs the bad of overreach in individual cases, it’s a positive.
Here’s a case in point about censorship that you may or may not want to consider.
That post on Zionism I did a week or so back involved sourcing info on Kastner. Google ‘curates’ searches to such a degree that I simply couldn’t break through from one side of the story and finally dumped google in favour of duckduckgo.
I was free to express myself, but I had some problems informing myself because of the censorious effect of algorithms – put in place by a company that’s signed up to a deal with the Chinese government promising to ensure no searches in China will go to any info the government would rather remained unseen.
Another case would be facebook responding to something like 80% or 90% of Israeli takedown requests when the people in Gaza use facebook for almost all of their news access.
And then there’s the ‘deplatforming’ and ‘demonetising’ malarky that’s going on with youtube…
So yeah, maybe anyone’s free to express whatever (assuming the platform they use remains open to them) , but the library shelves are going to have all these huge gaps and/or the books containing the info we really need are going to be in storage (and so require a presence of prior knowledge to be specifically requested ) rather than happened upon by browsing.
The point is that many people use duckduckgo because google doesn’t serve their needs.
I bet you lots of people in Gaza are now beginning to use something other than FB, too.
Which is what we never really got with libraries – if one library wasn’t making some subject areas accessible, say didn’t have a large section on medieval armour, there were a lot more barriers. You couldn’t just type in a new address and thereby visit a completely different library. And if somoene blocks that library, you figure out a way to another address.
Facebook, meanwhile, had empowered the right-wing outlet the Weekly Standard to “fact check” articles. The Weekly Standard, invested in Kavanaugh’s confirmation, deemed the Think Progress article “false.” The story was effectively nuked from Facebook, with other outlets threatened with traffic and monetary consequences if they shared it. The story is republished below, with permission from Think Progress, though not from Facebook or the Weekly Standard.
Fetlife would be more interesting. NSFW if you google it.
Amazing the, er, “niche” platforms out there if you just want to connect with likeminded folks. And when all else fails, opensource content managers can be knocked up into social media pretty quickly.
Thanks for your backgrounding of that McFlock. I should use duckduckgo and just haven’t got it into my daily practice. And
thanks for your argument path that seeks to be objective and winds its way between alternatives.
cheers. Yeah I set ddg as my default search engine a while ago 🙂
Private browsing windows are also good for minimising cookies and tracking, not just for tinfoil hat reasons but also to stop ads crossing over now that google is doing cross-platform matching more often. I don’t need my home searches turning up at work, people will think I’m goofing off more than usual lol
This fellow was hopeless, but I’ve heard worse today.
Just heard a disastrously inept performance from High Performance Sport New Zealand’s CEO Michael Scott. He was being interviewed on RNZ National, and he came across as panicked and inarticulate.
Still better than that shower in the National Party “leadership”, however.
Here’s a bit of an update from the Wentworth Races (Not the NSW Town btw). Since my last post a couple of days ago, the mud throwing has started with Liberal candidate saying a vote the Phelps is a vote for a hung parliament etc etc. Yesterday and today old Phelps has said again the she will vote for the Coalition on matters for supply and on confidence if elected and all this talk is from the Lib candidate is BS. Anyway I find old Shifty Bill won’t be doing many walk abouts this week (or does this include his front bench as well), which has me thinking have Labour given up and now realise it’s now a 2 horse race between Phelps and old mate Sharma? As ScoMo and his front bench have hit streets running about the place like a headless chickens or one arm plumber from Baghdad trying fix million to one leaks.
So someone is shit scared atm.
I leave you with comment from a Lib Coalition pollie flying back into Canberra on Sunday when asked about this Saturday’s by-election “Well we are going to be in the Penthouse or the Shit House after next Saturday”. Yes mate from what the polls are saying atm, I’ll say the Shit House atm.
So Aussie. Penthouse or shithouse. Well-chosen words. It must be like the old Roman days, watching the fights at the Colosseum, and they had them in the Senate too.
Kia ora The Am Show congratulations to the couple expecting their new baby .
I get what our All Blacks Coach up to Stue Wilson ?????????.Its cool that Stue talks about his alcohol experiences on the show lets the youth no some of the side effects of the stuff.
I had that problem a company payed with a credit card they were taking money when there service was cancelled send them a email they will most times refund your money.
I wondered whats world he is IN.
Amanda that black bear cub with the bucket stuck on his head they tracked it for 3 days and tranquilised it to get the bucket off its ka pai to see people care for animals .
I agree with Jacinda our political seen needs to change a bit what stop the mud sling and get on with running the country it’s not a good look for the mokos and is not good for te wairua.
The Air New Zealand flying taxis to commute people to the Auckland city is a great goal to have Ka pai.
Wars like this War in YEMEN need to stop all the wars around the Papatuanuku need to stop .I don’t know the reason they give for this war but I do know that its the rich who start wars for power and money . I do know that its the common poor man who fights these stupid wars the common mothers and fathers lose their offspring to wars .P.S I do know that rich men do not fight in these wars
I do know that its the common tangata /people who are dieing because of the rich MANS WAR we need to fight climate change and not each other this is so backwards to the Dark ages I say humans have never left that era .
Ka kite ano
International trasport of the future here are some new designs link below Ka kite ano
I laws were made to encourage this leap forward in air planes that would speed up the development of low carbon passenger planes link below ka kite ano
Electric Container Ships another blow to the Human Caused Climate Change deniers
EGO P.S I seen some trolls quoting that air travel and container ships could not be carbon free.
Kia ora Newshub I don’t like kicking a person when they are down bridges & ross .
It give me a sore face when some people start writing about New Zealand and Australia becoming a republic when the Royal Family is so popular there dreaming.
That’s a od phenomenon compressed air is safer and better for some patients I say big company interference in reality once again .
I see that company teaming up with Air New Zealand in designing and testing auto flying vehicles my guess is that Aotearoa’s air traffic laws are not as stringent as other country’s but Its cool we will be pioneers in this industry.
Paul Allan one of the Microsoft founders condolences to his whano.
I say with the organ donation problem could be solved with a opted out clause if you don’t want to donate you have to say know problem solved business people use this very effectively Ka kite ano
The Cowd Goes Wild Mulls & Storm Ka pai to the young Aotearoa Ferns win in Gold.
congratulations to all the Kiwis at the youth game’s .
Josh Rugby mana all around Papatuanuku that’s cool.
Wairangi sore face E hoa don’t count Mals men out to soon they are world champions .
Ka kite ano P.S Eco know what that is like Bolt
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 ...
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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 ...
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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 ...
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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 ...
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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 ...
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It is all very well cutting the backrooms of public agencies but it may compromise the frontlines. One of the frustrations of the Productivity Commission’s 2017 review of universities is that while it observed that their non-academic staff were increasing faster than their academic staff, it did not bother to ...
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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. ...
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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. ...
Te Pāti Māori co-leader Rawiri Waititi, and Mema Paremata mō Tāmaki-Makaurau, Takutai Tarsh Kemp, will travel to the Gold Coast to strengthen ties with Māori in Australia next week (15-21 April). The visit, in the lead-up to the 9th Australian National Kapa haka Festival, will be an opportunity for both ...
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 ...
Education Minister Erica Stanford has outlined six education priorities to deliver a world-leading education system that sets Kiwi kids up for future success. “I’m putting ambition, achievement and outcomes at the heart of our education system. I want every child to be inspired and engaged in their learning so they ...
The new NZ Transport Agency (NZTA) App is a secure ‘one stop shop’ to provide the services drivers need, Transport Minister Simeon Brown and Digitising Government Minister Judith Collins say. “The NZTA App will enable an easier way for Kiwis to pay for Vehicle Registration and Road User Charges (RUC). ...
Whānau with tamariki growing up in emergency housing motels will be prioritised for social housing starting this week, says Associate Housing Minister Tama Potaka. “Giving these whānau a better opportunity to build healthy stable lives for themselves and future generations is an essential part of the Government’s goal of reducing ...
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. ...
Hundreds of New Zealand families affected by Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (FASD) will benefit from a new Government focus on prevention and treatment, says Health Minister Dr Shane Reti. “We know FASD is a leading cause of preventable intellectual and neurodevelopmental disability in New Zealand,” Dr Reti says. “Every day, ...
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 ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters’ engagements in Türkiye this week underlined the importance of diplomacy to meet growing global challenges. “Returning to the Gallipoli Peninsula to represent New Zealand at Anzac commemorations was a sombre reminder of the critical importance of diplomacy for de-escalating conflicts and easing tensions,” Mr Peters ...
Ambassador Millar, Burgemeester, Vandepitte, Excellencies, military representatives, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen – good morning and welcome to this sacred Anzac Day dawn service. It is an honour to be here on behalf of the Government and people of New Zealand at Buttes New British Cemetery, Polygon Wood – a deeply ...
Distinguished guests - It is an honour to return once again to this site which, as the resting place for so many of our war-dead, has become a sacred place for generations of New Zealanders. Our presence here and at the other special spaces of Gallipoli is made ...
Mai ia tawhiti pamamao, te moana nui a Kiwa, kua tae whakaiti mai matou, ki to koutou papa whenua. No koutou te tapuwae, no matou te tapuwae, kua honoa pumautia. Ko nga toa kua hinga nei, o te Waipounamu, o te Ika a Maui, he okioki tahi me o ...
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 ...
Emergency Management and Recovery Minister Mark Mitchell has today released the Report of the Government Inquiry into the response to the North Island Severe Weather Events. “The report shows that New Zealand’s emergency management system is not fit-for-purpose and there are some significant gaps we need to address,” Mr Mitchell ...
Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith is today travelling to Europe where he’ll update the United Nations Human Rights Council on the Government’s work to restore law and order. “Attending the Universal Periodic Review in Geneva provides us with an opportunity to present New Zealand’s human rights progress, priorities, and challenges, while ...
Associate Agriculture Minister, Mark Patterson, formally reopened the world’s largest wool processing facility today in Awatoto, Napier, following a $50 million rebuild and refurbishment project. “The reopening of this facility will significantly lift the economic opportunities available to New Zealand’s wool sector, which already accounts for 20 per cent of ...
A warning – suicide is discussed in this podcast New Zealand’s own long-running soap Shortland Street doesn’t hesitate to kill off its much-loved characters. But would TVNZ dare to kill off our favourite soap? That’s the fear as times get tough in television – even though it’s been pointed out ...
Essay: If the Crown harms children, how do you hold it accountable? Analysis by Aaron Smale in light of the Waitangi Tribunal court decision. The post The Crown versus Māori Children appeared first on Newsroom. ...
Opinion: PFAS – per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances – are a class of thousands of man-made chemicals used widely in everyday consumer items such as textiles, packaging, and cookware, popular for their water, grease and stain-repellent properties. However, the very properties that make PFAS so attractive to manufacturers are also what ...
NONFICTION 1 The Last Secret Agent by Pippa Latour & Jude Dobson (Allen & Unwin, $37.99)’ This is the hottest book in New Zealand, number one with a bullet in its first week, selling more than any overseas title, and demand is so huge that it’s already been reprinted. A ...
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Asia Pacific Report A West Papuan resistance leader has condemned the United Nations role in allowing Indonesia to “integrate” the Melanesian Pacific region in what is claimed to be an “egregious act of inhumanity” on 1 May 1963. In an open letter to UN Secretary-General António Guterres, Organisasi Papua Merdeka-OPM ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra A key part of the Albanese government’s political strategy is to fill the news cycle with its presence and messaging. Ministers are deployed to the maximum, even when they’ve little to say. This week ...
Recent extreme weather events showed the importance of a well-functioning insurance system, says Commerce and Consumer Affairs minister Andrew Bayly. ...
By Jo Moir, RNZ News political editor, and Craig McCulloch, deputy political editor New Zealand’s Labour Party is demanding Winston Peters be stood down as Foreign Minister for opening up the government to legal action over his “totally unacceptable” attack on a prominent AUKUS critic. In an interview on RNZ’s ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Christian Brakenridge, Postdoctoral research fellow at Swinburne University, Centre for Urban Transitions, Baker Heart and Diabetes Institute The Conversation, Gorodenkoff/Shutterstock People have a pretty intuitive sense of what is healthy – standing is better than sitting, exercise is great for overall ...
The Wellington-based Reserve Force soldier is now almost three years into his New Zealand Army career with 5th/7th Battalion, Royal New Zealand Infantry Regiment. ...
"The Government needs to release the review immediately as this reckless approach to change risks disjointed decision making and creates more distress and uncertainty for staff," Fitzsimons said. ...
By Koroi Hawkins, RNZ Pacific editor Jeremiah Manele has been elected Prime Minister of Solomon Islands, polling 31 votes to 18 over rival candidate and former opposition leader Mathew Wale with one abstention. The final result of the election by secret ballot was announced by the Governor-General, Sir David Vunagi, ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Priestley Habru, PhD candidate, public diplomacy, University of Adelaide Former foreign minister Jeremiah Manele has been elected the next prime minister of Solomon Islands, defeating the opposition leader, Matthew Wale, in a vote in parliament. The result is a mixed bag for ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Shaun Eaves, Senior Lecturer in Physical Geography, Te Herenga Waka — Victoria University of Wellington Jamey Stutz, CC BY-SA How often do mountains collapse, volcanoes erupt or ice sheets melt? For Earth scientists, these are important questions as we try ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michael Flood, Professor of Sociology, Queensland University of Technology Shutterstock Most young adult men in Australia reject traditional ideas of masculinity that endorse aggression, stoicism and homophobia. Nonetheless, the ongoing influence of those ideas continues to harm men and the people ...
The NZQA proposal released to staff today would involve a net loss of 35 roles. There are 66 roles being disestablished with 13 of those currently vacant, and 31 new roles proposed, said Fleur Fitzsimons Public Service Association Te Pūkenga Here Tikanga ...
Alex Casey talks to Loren Taylor, the writer, director and star of new film The Moon is Upside Down, about assembling her dream ensemble cast, toilet paper pads and turning literal dreams into reality. There’s a moment in The Moon is Upside Down where frazzled anaesthetist Briar (Loren Taylor) gets ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Cassy Dittman, Senior Lecturer/Head of Course (Undergraduate Psychology), Research Fellow, Manna Institute, CQUniversity Australia With winter sports swinging into action, adults around the country have volunteered or been volunteered by others (humorously known as being “volun-told”) to coach junior sports teams. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Karleen Gribble, Adjunct Associate Professor, School of Nursing and Midwifery, Western Sydney University richardernestyap/Shutterstock Parents are often advised to burp their babies after feeding them. Some people think burping after feeding is important to reduce or prevent discomfort crying, or to ...
Workers at a major ASB contact centre in Auckland have voted to take strike action and withdraw their labour following disappointing pay negotiations with the employer and an "offer" to workers that would leave them worse off than the previous year. ...
As the government tries to get the country back on track with a school phone ban, Tara Ward has an idea for where they should turn their attention to next.New Zealand students returned to school on Monday morning, but their cellphones did not. The government’s new phone ban began ...
The Labour Party is demanding Peters be stood down, saying "he's embarrassed the country" with a "totally unacceptable" attack on a prominent AUKUS critic. ...
The Inter-Parliamentary Alliance, whose members were victims of a China-backed cyber attack, is discussing forming a standing committee to deal with foreign influence. ...
The PSA is concerned that the voluntary redundancies being offered to staff by Stats NZ will impact on the agency’s ability to deliver on its core functions. ...
Results ranged from surprisingly yum to soul-destroying. I love cooking. The kitchen is a hearth of culinary creation, of sensory delights, of gastronomic poetry. I also can’t afford anything nice. Why does a pack of instant noodles and some milk cost ten bucks? I love you, Aotearoa, but I miss ...
By Koroi Hawkins, RNZ Pacific editor Police in Solomon Islands are on high alert ahead of the election of the prime minister today. The two candidates for the top job are former foreign affairs minister Jeremiah Manele at the head of the Coalition for National Unity and Transformation, which is ...
He’s fine but it feels like I’m losing a friend and it’s making me bitter. How do I say ‘enough is enough’? Want Hera’s help? Email your problem to helpme@thespinoff.co.nzHey Hera,I’ve recently moved in with a girlfriend, her partner Steve, and his friend. We all live in a lovely little house. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Nick Chartres, Senior Research Fellow, Faculty of Medicine & Health, University of Sydney shutterstockAhmet Misirligul/Shutterstock You go to the gym, eat healthy and walk as much as possible. You wash your hands and get vaccinated. You control your health. This is ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jacqueline Hendriks, Research Fellow and Lecturer, Curtin University Children and young people may be seeing news headlines about men murdering women or footage of people rallying to call for action. Perhaps they or their friends have even gone to the protests. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jessica Balanzategui, Senior Lecturer in Media, RMIT University ABC “Bluey mania” shows no sign of abating. Bluey’s season finale, The Sign, was the most viewed ABC program of all time on iView. A “hidden” follow-up episode, aptly named The Surprise, created ...
Labour market figures came in softer than the Reserve Bank had forecast, but they won’t be enough to move the needle on interest rates, writes Catherine McGregor in this excerpt from The Bulletin, The Spinoff’s morning news round-up. To receive The Bulletin in full each weekday, sign up here. Unemployment ...
The campaign will engage the community and encourage submissions on the bill to the New Zealand government by the closing submission deadline of Friday 31st of May 2024 4pm. ...
The paper raises concerns about declining trust in New Zealand's political institutions and democratic processes, and the role that the overuse of Parliamentary urgency plays in that. ...
The Urban Habitat Collective was an attempt to built an innovative new form of apartment building in Wellington. Here’s why it failed, and why the idea could still work, writes co-founder Bronwen Newton. When we started the Urban Habitat Collective in November 2018, we thought we were starting a revolution, ...
Two decades ago this week, a controversial law that attempted to define ownership of the foreshore and seabed prompted a formidable display of outrage and kōtahitanga as 15,000 marched to parliament. Jamie Tahana looks back.‘Hīkoi, hīkoi,” they chanted by the thousands as the biggest Māori march in a generation ...
A Labour Party Member’s Bill aims to plug a culpability gap between manslaughter and health and safety breaches The post New push for corporate killing laws appeared first on Newsroom. ...
Terence O’Brien had the rare and no doubt undesired distinction of rising to one of the most exalted positions in New Zealand diplomacy, then being unceremoniously recalled to Wellington without explanation just when his career was at its zenith. What is perhaps more surprising is that he appears to have ...
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Why has New Zealand slipped from third to 12th on Quality of Death Indexes over the past decade or so? Hospice New Zealand Chief Executive Wayne Naylor has a list of reasons. “We don’t have a current national strategy – the Government hasn’t renewed our 2001 strategy, so we don’t ...
While women’s sport is exploding in Aotearoa and around the world, you still don’t hear a lot of talk about athletes and their periods, RED-S, breastfeeding and visible panty-lines. SASS (Suze and Sez Sports)Talk isn’t afraid to have that kōrero.LockerRoom founder Suzanne McFadden and Olympian broadcaster Sarah ...
On an unusually hot night in January 2019, a little boy’s lifeless body was found face up in a small town’s sewage oxidation pond. To the police, it was an open and shut case: three-year-old Lachlan Jones had run away from his home in the Southland town of Gore, climbed ...
Rongotai MP Julie Anne Genter has apologised in Parliament after National accused her of intimidating and attacking one of its ministers in the House. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra The Prime Minister and state and territory leaders met on Wednesday as the national cabinet to discuss a crisis gripping Australia – the horrific number of women murdered this year. The killings have shocked ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Radhika Raghav, Teaching Fellow, School of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Otago Netflix Indian director Sanjay Leela Bhansali is known for his big-budget Bollywood production, featuring grand sets, star casts, meticulously choreographed dance sequences and lavish costumes, jewellery and furnishings. ...
Just testing the waters here (off the back of this) but are there any women here who would find value in having a daily “dick free” post/thread – a bit like Open Mike but with no male contributions?
Hardly possible to make it perfect since a commentator’s gender isn’t always obvious, but the idea would be that any comments from people known to be male would simply be shunted to Open Mike in the first instance, and anyone seeking to masquerade as female would have the known threat of a ban (to be counted in years?) hanging over any possible discovery of their shenanigans.
More than that very rudimentary level of moderation would be contingent on a women with back end access and permissions taking up the baton. (Which may never happen.)
sigh – painful to feel this necessity to state the obvious, but this comment is seeking responses only from women who frequent the site.
The dislike of patriarchal culture and related abusive comments is not an MOR (or even right wing) thing as you are trying to paint it, Bill.
It is very radical against abuse, support, and reinforcement of long time conventions of power and privilege.
I’d rather see leadership on such matters from an author or commenter who understands the problem.
Sorry, I mixed this up with Antoine’s comment below:
https://thestandard.org.nz/open-mike-15-10-2018/#comment-1535865
Thought provoking for a Monday morning.
“The Guardian’s Alarming Recent Record Of Propaganda, Misinformation, And Slander
As has often happened to progressive-minded people who’ve reached a more radical point in their political evolutions, I’ve become disillusioned with many organizations, leaders and media sources that I used to rely on. One of these dubious sources is The Guardian.
At first, it seemed to me like The Guardian is a good alternative to the American mainstream media outlets. It’s often featured quality articles about subjects like climate change, and its columnist George Monbiot is the one who first taught me what the term “neoliberal” means. But this good material is what gives a feel of reliability to the misleading claims that The Guardian very often puts out……”
https://t.co/So4F8z76JQ?amp=1
Good Morning to you Ed, From the link you have provided, What you and your writer object to is the Guardian’s exposure of your other’s fascism denial, and the Guardian’s continued exposure and coverage of the genocide being carried out by your favourite dictator. I have no doubt you find this exposure “alarming”. And it is your alarm and fear of being exposed that fuels your hatred of the Guardian
However what I sense is that lately your and others support for fascism has become somewhat muted, for fear of being laughed out of court. Witness the long winded lead in before this writer dares to mention their real gripe with the Guardian, their coverage of Syria.
The Guardian’s Alarming Recent Record Of Propaganda, Misinformation, And Slander
Rainer Shea – October 14, 2018
I find it breathtaking myself that the Standard tolerates Ed’s fascist propagandizing for a moment. He was running some crap yesterday about world war two in the Ukraine, as part of his campaign manufacturing consent for Putin’s invasion there.
I guess all the old tropes are being shown to be true – the intellectually weak being susceptible to propaganda, and the mild liberals being too nice to reject fascism and trying to accommodate it. It’s as if all the lessons of the early twentieth century were forgotten. Though of course it’s a generational thing – they never learned it.
[My “breathtaking” is to be found in my hitherto tolerance for your tiresome and dishonest hounding of contributors to the site over days and weeks – for your apparent presumption to determine who should and should not comment here; to determine what political opinions ought to be allowed and not allowed; to openly lie about peoples’ political leanings and motivations…Etc.
Notice the word “hitherto”? The tolerance has been chibbed, and this is the only warning you’ll be getting to pull your head in, stop disrupting the flow of comments with your vendettas or whatever the hell it is you think your doing, and engage solely with the topic or arguments at hand.] – B.
Breathless, and suggesting a ban at the same time…
Nice one, Stu!
…
It’s funny you should say it’s a generational thing, Stuart, because Ed does kinda remind me of a particularly naive commenter from years back, Kiwiteen 123.
The nice thing about Ed’s contributions is that he occasionally hits the nail on the head, so it’s probably better to encourage him when he does get it right, rather than get overly negative on his dictator boostering. Like all of us, Ed’s a work in progress and every day’s a learning day.
As for Kiwiteen 123, I reckon he’s at uni now and every bit as annoying:
That special sort of rant that Rik Mayall delivered. What a loss – his bio:
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rik_Mayall
Do you think that Jonathan Pie has followed in his footsteps?
Thanks Grey, that was a hoot.
No I don’t t think Pie is channeling Rik, in fact Rik is what Pie is railing against.
Long past uni unless he has started a doctorate.
Funnily enough Rik is the character I think if when you get on your high horse, Te Reo.
I’ll fess up now @ Stuart M and a few others. My penis is considerably CONSIDERABLY less in length than yours.
I console myself in the knowledge that its girth is something to behold.
And while I’m in the confessional, it’s possible I’ve sometimes told a little white lie or two – definitely two at least. One as to its length, the other its girth.
@ Jenny@Stuart Munro@te reo putake….Ed is exactly right to feel disillusioned with The Guardian, I take it you all don’t?
Yet The Guardian is plainly biased against the first tangible Left Wing political movement to give a viable alternative to Liberalism to emerge in the UK for a couple of generations…so I take it from your vocal defense of The Guardian that you all have more sympathy for a the New Labour Blairite style Labour, rather than a Socialist Labour?
“Our report found that 75% of press coverage misrepresents Jeremy Corbyn – we can’t ignore media bias anymore”
https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/jeremy-corbyn-media-bias-labour-mainstream-press-lse-study-misrepresentation-we-cant-ignore-bias-a7144381.html
And The Guardian response…
“Yes, Jeremy Corbyn has suffered a bad press, but where’s the harm?”
https://www.theguardian.com/media/greenslade/2016/jul/19/yes-jeremy-corbyn-has-suffered-a-bad-press-but-wheres-the-harm
How the Guardian Changed Tack on Corbyn, Despite Its Readers
https://novaramedia.com/2017/01/08/how-the-guardian-changed-tack-on-corbyn-despite-its-readers/
How The Guardian Undermines Jeremy Corbyn and the Left
https://www.telesurtv.net/english/opinion/Liberal-Journalism-and-Its-Corporate-Sponsors-Interview-20160704-0024.html
Fuck The Guardian, just guard dogs of the establishment liberal status quo, and if you can’t see that plainly obvious truth, well then….
I have considerable reservations about the Guardian’s anti-Corbyn campaigns and similar nonsense. But when we look at what Ed does endorse the Guardian starts to look pretty good.
Jenny Monbiot is just one journalist.
The Guardian deliberately puts forward opposing views.
Your description of Assad is only an opinion.
The Syrian war is a power grab by Putin pushing back the Arab spring Obama cockup who followed George W’s cock up.
If the US got more involved we would have seen more wars breaking out.
While Assad is a nasty Dictator who would have replaced him IsIs.
GH Bush warned his son not to invade Iraq as it would open an hornets nest
Guess what the hornets nest has been opened and its never going to be closed.
Religious fanatics from all sides will ensure that peace will never be achieved.
Arms sales will go up and who are the 2 biggest arms exporters they will want continuous dysfunction in the Middle East.
You’ll be liking this article Ed.
The Guardian explaining that the Saudis were actually quite a progressive and reasonable state with a restrained attitude who have, under Prince Mohammed, had a fine respect for human life and freedoms, its just that they are falling under the evil and nefarious influence of Putin.
“The Russian president’s role in the Middle East had suddenly expanded and his footprint throughout Europe and the US was growing just as rapidly. The young prince seemed curious about what the mercurial Putin had been up to: annexation, intimidation, deflection, the denial of objective facts. But he kept coming back to one question, the officials recalled: how does he get away with it? “He was fascinated by him,” one of the Britons told the Observer. “He seemed to admire him. He liked what he did.” Two years later Prince Mohammed is embroiled in a crisis unlike any other in his short, combustible time as the world’s most powerful thirtysomething. The crown prince stands accused of ordering the brutal death of a prominent critic on foreign soil – a state-sanctioned hit that is without precedent in the kingdom’s modern history, but is not quite so unknown in Russia.”
You’d be right in thinking I’ve sneakily linked to some sabre rattling paranoia and misinformation in the Daily Mail, but no, it really is the Guardian blaming Putin for prince Muhammad’s ‘misstep’. poor boy gullible that he is.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/oct/13/saudi-arabia-khashoggi-chulov
Nicely put Siobhan
The Guardian really has become shameless and reckless about fact checking;
seemingly these are the Guardian’s “values” now
Chulov has always been more of an opinion piece guy, but this is passed off as news!
MSB was never a reformer, as shown by the provided links
https://www.amnesty.org.nz/free-saudi-women-who-fought-right-drive
https://theintercept.com/2018/10/12/jamal-khashoggi-saudi-arabia-dissidents/
If it’s a bad news story, there’s always a Russian angle to be had.
Nice (though painfully see through) cover for, or deflection from, all the diplomatic, economic and military support afforded SA by the UK and others though, aye?
Sioban the Saudi govt is playing Putin off against Trump another Syria in the making.
Like Trump says if we don’t supply them with the US$120 billion arms deal Russia will.
You’d be right in thinking I’ve sneakily linked to some sabre rattling paranoia and misinformation in the Daily Mail, but no, it really is the Guardian blaming Putin for prince Muhammad’s ‘misstep’. poor boy gullible that he is.
Sioban
I think Sioban that the Guardian article is hysterical and more balanced than you give them credit for.
Blaming Trump as much as Putin as setting the low bar on human rights and international norms of behaviour.
From the linked article you supplied:
Back in 1990(?) The Guardian (then still in a broadsheet format) ran a front page consisting of a full page, disturbing photo of a dead man’s face. It was in the lead-up to what would become the break up of Yugoslavia, and The Guardian was baying for war/intervention.
Back then, The Guardian was considered to be the middle class, sandal wearing peoples’ rag that offered the ‘correct’ spelling of youghourt, the mis-spelling of just about everything else (their typos were a running joke), alongside many articles on the fine art of hand wringing and “first world” problems.
So they haven’t really changed. And there is still the occasional nugget to be found in their pages.
It was The Guardian (accidentally or otherwise) that published an article based on official government documents that exposed UK government funding to Syrian Jihadists.(I’ve linked to it a few times) And sure, they never built on it and it ran entirely counter to their editorial line – which is and always has been crap.
Meanwhile, Monbiot does some good stuff on the environment, but is otherwise a complete waste of time and space. Larry Elliot has written some good stuff on the economics front. And they otherwise sometimes carry good opinion pieces.
In other words, the paper isn’t a total loss.
Definitely not a total loss, Bill.
It was the Grauniad that broke the Murdoch newspapers phone hacking scandal, which ended in the closure of the News of the World. And there’s their work with Edward Snowden and others. The Panama Papers was theirs in part as well.
It’s always worth remembering that the paper itself doesn’t claim to be left wing, though obviously a lot of its writers are. There are alternatives in the UK (the Mirror is surprisingly good on politics and the Morning Star is devoted to left wing analysis), however there isn’t another major English language newspaper in the world that is as consistently progressive as the Guardian.
In a wider sense, the problem is that the Russians and others have devalued ‘news’ to the point where even the concept of journalism is a mystery to a lot of people and opinion writers get confused with reporters of fact as if they were one and the same thing.
I wouldn’t characterise the Guardian as “progressive”. It’s liberal and always has been, which is fine unless the reader expects a perspective coming from the left.
Devaluing news? Dumbing down? That started back before the internet and I’d think more or less coincided with the reprise of liberalism across the Anglosphere.
There’s a pattern here.
Short staffing.
Wonder if RNZ noticed it and could join the dots.
“Workloads and pay would need to improve before NZ teacher Michael Harvey would consider returning as part of the government’ recruitment drive, he says.”
https://www.radionz.co.nz/news/national/368643/survey-of-dhb-staff-describes-dangerous-levels-of-short-staffing
“Health workers have described how “dangerous levels” of short-staffing across the country’s hospitals is putting patients and staff at risk.”
https://www.radionz.co.nz/news/national/368650/teacher-recruitment-drive-risks-creating-conveyor-belt
Neoliberalism.
Death by 1000 cuts for New Zealand citizens.
What nonsense blaming the teacher shortage on neo-liberalism. Teachers have been complaining about workload and class sizes all my adult life. In the late sixties when I was at school the typical fifth form class was a little over 30 students.
On the views of the PPTA the teaching “crisis” must have been continuously running for over 50 years.
Same with nurses. Hospitals seem to have had similar staffing ratios for just about forever.
It suits the unions to say everything is a crisis because they know the government will give in. It is after all the government the unions financed so these pay rounds are just their due reward.
Same across the entire state sector. Just about everyone will get pay rises over the next 3 years of between 5 and 10% per year.
Hard to disagree with that since it concords with my experience too. Important for teachers to bleat in general terms rather than blame the evil controller who keeps refusing to give them more money. Serves the subsidiary purpose of reinforcing the public view that teachers are unable to connect cause & effect.
It doesn’t occur to you that cost of living has grown rapidly under neo-liberalism Wayne? Of course it wouldn’t – such stresses do not touch insiders. Particularly expensive cities now represent a losing deal for teachers and nurses unless they already own their own housing, which is no incentive to stay in the profession.
The stress this generates is worsened by ill-conceived reforms and gratuitous dead weight nuisances like the Novapay debacle. But by all means keep whistling in the dark – it’s going to be a long time before the Gnats see the light at the end of the tunnel.
No, your talking through a hole in your head. I have worked in Health for forty odd years, clinical management for half of them. Its only in the last few years that we have had massive shortages, you should try being confronted with up to 50% shortages for night shift and thats before Nurses ring in sick. Sick because they had worked 16 hr shifts the previous day and the day before. This is all because of a lack of work force planning for the last decade, poor wages in comparrison to other professions and countries.
The majority of Nurses like Teachers are fast approaching retirement age, still no planning to replace them other than poaching a workforce from third world countries who need their own health and Education workers.
Wayne So Simple Soimens smaller class sizes are going to be achieved by sinking lid policies that National do to any publicly funded service govt provides so we end up with as in the education sector a shortage of teachers.
Poor education outcomes 96,000 unemployed under 24 year old when we have massive shortages in construction, IT, nursing teaching agriculture, tourism.
National is a short sighted win power at all cost’s let the invisible hand of the market sort it out.
If you ran a business like that it would fail.
Investing in education was identified as important back in the latter part of the 19 th century when Germany began investing in education for economic and strategic military reasons other countries watching quickly jumped on the band wagon realising that superior economic, technology and industrial power would leave those left behind in a very weak strategic position.
National are guilty of under investing in our most valuable resource.
NZ knows this hence Simple Siomon’s massive U turn on Nationals woeful history on education spending.
Highlighting Nationals failure.
Kids behaved themselves back then or they got beaten wayney. And the stroppy ones were out by age 15. Marking was tick/cross/ x/10 with a rare as hen’s teeth comment in actual words.
Gabby,
Obviously you went to a very different school to me (mine was Reporoa College). I had very decent and highly motivated teachers (mostly). At least in the sixth and seventh forms (20 students and 8 students respectively) the teachers went to huge lengths to lift the aspirations of the students. To be fair, not so much in the fifth form (65 students in two classes).
In the 1960’s there was country service. So we got some extremely good young teachers.
I did get caned on a fair bit, but not in the 6th and 7th form. We were treated as young adults, and we lifted our own standards accordingly.
Both Wayne and Gabby: Caning kids did not actually make teaching them easier. I think the difficulty of teaching them remains constant.
What changes is support and obstacles.
Support has diminished. Teachers are less often backed by parents and the legal system. Govt (through Ministry) has so often prompted teachers to ‘work smarter, not harder’, while ‘doing more with less’. That cracked old record broke apart long ago… And salaries have slipped inexcusably because of penny-pinching Govts of both Right and Left.
Obstacles: Workload was massively increased over the years, with increased paperwork in that 80s period of ‘increased transparency’.. one had not only to do the same work, but write screeds for ERO about how one did it as well. Bollocks. Then came NCEA for secondary teachers – another big shift of workload onto teachers with Internal Assessment (teachers had now to make up their tests and mark them and have them moderated) along with other extra paperwork.. And I gather Primary teachers got much the same thing with National Standards.
All this is symptomatic of Govts wanting to impose austerity instead of social well-being. (Yuk – I hate that phrase.)
Low pay has now become an Obstacle as well. Dedicated teachers who 30 years ago would stay in the profession are now leaving after a few years, after they realise what the job is now actually like.
I began in 1970. I am now semi-retired. NO WAY will I return to full time under current conditions. Your time as part of Govt helped create this, Wayne.
Ed,
My family has turned it’s back on RNZ as we see it now simply as a right wing media platform.
We have been denied any media coverage of our community transport problems since labour took over and the Government have done nothing to fix this right wing misuse of our public media.
‘Seven tell-tale signs the next crash is coming
Last week the sharemarket plunged over the course of two intense days, shedding enormous value off major stocks. While the chaos was concentrated in the US market, the impact spread across the world and also hit New Zealand. In what was one of the worst days in the history of the NZ sharemarket, S&P/NZX50, which tracks the top 50 stocks in New Zealand, dropped 3.64 per cent. While the market did recover on Friday, it caused many to question whether the next big crash was on the horizon…..’
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=12142148
I wonder how Sir Ponyboy’s portfolio’s looking.
I believe his children are doing well.
I Trust he’s not neglecting his own interests.
Ponyboy is as usual scamming the system again.
He could now be involved with taking a ‘financial hedge’ against the NZ dollar again as he did in 1987 with has high flying buddy Andy Krieger?
Key & his Wall St mate Andy Krieger just may actually repeat what they did when Labour booted National out in 1984!!!!!
Key will leave NZ after pushing up the dollar with their money, and then pulling it out and slumping the dollar and again making yet another $40 million again.
Key and Krieger were written up in global news as one of the most successful raids ever made on a county’s currency.
So don’t have any illusions that this man known as the smiling assassin is nice, he is ruthless.
http://www.businessspectator.com.au/article/2008/11/10/financial-markets/keys-house
The timing of his elevation, in the midst of a financial crisis, may be quite prophetic. After all, Key’s rise to prominence in foreign exchange circles came after he struck a rewarding relationship at Bankers Trust with Andy Krieger, a daring New York-based trader who launched a legendary raid against the NZ dollar in 1987.
John Key is living proof that not all heads of derivatives operations for large US investment banks end up in the dog house. Some get to run their own country.
I believe as a parent he has the interests of his children at heart.
He has been very successful over a long time – so I’m guessing he’s all good.
Probably missing the limelight and freebies and ‘donations’ for policy, bet he is yearning to get back into politics and the control of others.
The obvious expectation upon retirement was that the Bilderbergers would offer him a coordinating role at the top level. The only evidence we’re likely to get on that is if he was reported as routinely travelling overseas (to foreign capitals, Geneva, NY). Alternatively, just as likely he told the truth about wanting to relax into family life.
It’s quite often when these predictions come out that they do not happen. Crashes happen when no one is predicting them. When everyone is bullish. Currently there are a lot of people with cash on the sidelines because they think the market has got ahead of itself. When that is the case it is not the right environment for a crash.
Do I think stocks are overvalued? Maybe a bit. Average PE’s are high but that is exacerbated by a few larger companies that dominate these indexes. Time will tell, but every year you have these commentators that cry doom and gloom. One year they will be right.
Prof Tim Naish is my touchstone on climate change:
Thank you. I’ll listen later on today when I get the chance.
I find Kevin Anderson excellent.
Investigative journalist Nicky Hager reveals a culture of impunity and cover-ups within the NZDF https://www.noted.co.nz/currently/social-issues/defence-force-new-claims-of-war-crimes-and-sex-assaults/
Apparently in North and South coming out today.
Also Nicky Hager was interviewed on Morning Report.
And on a a separate note, that dreadful Giles Beckworth has taken Espiner ‘s spot.
Don’t we have better journalists?
I know, he doesn’t like squawky seabirds eddy. What’s with that?
RNZ’s report on it:
https://www.radionz.co.nz/news/national/368668/nicky-hager-reveals-fresh-allegations-on-nzdf-cover-ups-and-abuse
I will look for the full article in North and South later this week.
Curiously, there was a similar plot line in a Danish drama series that showed in the last year on NZ TV. It was a drama about a family headed by a patriarchal priest. His priest son served with the military, and while accompanying soldiers on a mission, he was encouraged to shoot at an alleged sniper – it was in fact an innocent woman.
Like the NZ medic in Hager’s report he was afterwards so totally tortured by the killing, he left the church and became an independent minster working with street people. But his crime was also covered up by the establishment.
I suspect such incidents are not isolated occurrences.
“there was a similar plot line in a Danish drama series”.
Well Nicky has to get his plot lines from somewhere. You might call it plagiarism but Nicky would just say he was doing a bit of creative interpretation.
Listening to him on Morning Report today leaves me thinking that he only has to change a couple of names and he can sell the story again.
Just change NZDF to NZ Labour Party and SAS to Young Labour and he can publish it again.
How is the coverup of the Labour Party sex scandal going by the way? Have the Police Force started obeying orders from the Boss and quietly dropped all the charges yet?
There’s a demo planned for Wednesday in Wellington by Organise Aotearoa:
https://twitter.com/OrgAotearoa/status/1051626761220308992
Mr Hager, probably needs to understand the difference between a combat medic and your bog standard medic that you would see in Regimental Aid Post/ Casualty Clearing Post at A Echelon or B Echelon. The days of a medic armed with his Red Cross and his medical gear running around a battlefield ended around the latter stages of WW2/ Korean War due to a number of Nations had a habit of shooting Medics on the battlefield.
A Combat Medic is an Infantryman within a section, a Tankie within an Armoured Vehicle Crew, A Gunner within a Gun section, a Field Engineer within a section, Airforce Gound Defence Section (Airforce Infantry) and in Special Forces Ptl or Section etc.
A Combat Medic role is a secondary role within the Fighting unit/ Combat Platoon/ Team. As a result some Combat Medics are more highly trained than others within a Combat Medic role. For example some Combat Medics can perform basic minor surgery on the casualty or trained similar to that of a Para Medic, A&E or ICU Nurse/ Doc and in my case as a basic Combat First Aid dealing dealings trauma wounds, Minor first aid injuries, using drugs/ drips, stabilise the casualty IOT safety move the casualty back to the A Ech or help other Medics at a Cleaning Station or during clinics at local villages etc.
So in my humble opinion, I don’t think it would be Vampire (Military slang for a Medic) running around battlefield kicking doors in and shooting up the place. Or else this person is in the wrong job for starters, as all the medic’s I’ve come across or worked alongside do take their Red Cross obligations quite seriously which than I could say about some Medical NGO’s over the years.
Investigations take up valuable time that could be better used in haka practice.
The leak saga continues.
They want you gone’ – duncan garner confronts simon bridges with fresh leaks
https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/politics/2018/10/they-want-you-gone-duncan-garner-confronts-simon-bridges-with-fresh-leaks.html
Cinny, the natz elected an AI robot as their leader. High on the Artificial and a bit low on the intelligence.
Bahahahaha, nice one Nick.
Lol, even Garner doesn’t like him.
Coincidentally, I want dunkers gone.
Keep it under your hat.
The headline has it that unions are to blame for low wages. So if there’d been no unions in New Zealand workers would be highly paid. Yes Mike Hosking I believe you. Not.
@Pete +1, more fake news from Hosking. That’s a good one.
With household inflation forecast to be in the range of 3% (and this was before the massive fuel increases) teachers are being told a 3% increase in wages is a good thing by the govt ?
And notice the language that Chris Hipkins is using by aggregating the 3 year increase of $7k in his interviews.
Teaching friends of mine accept that this govt is currently better then the last, but they are becoming very frustrated in the rhetoric that the govt is using and its lack of action in addressing this crisis.
https://www.rbnz.govt.nz/statistics/m13
In the Herald this am
The truckies are flooding Auckland in a protest over petri tax.
GOVT- OK we will axe the tax.
TRUCKIES AND NATZ – Yippee Yah
GOVT – THE road need money to be maintained.
TRUCKIES AND NATZ – Yes the roads are in a terrible state, sort them OUT!!
GOVT Ok will do – road user charges will go up by …..say x10.
TRUCKIES AND NATZ ——Hey you can’t dot that!!!
In the Herald this am
The truckies are flooding Auckland in a protest over petri tax.
GOVT- OK we will axe the tax.
TRUCKIES AND NATZ – Yippee Yah
GOVT – THE road need money to be maintained.
TRUCKIES AND NATZ – Yes the roads are in a terrible state, sort them OUT!!
GOVT Ok will do – road user charges will go up by …..say x10.
TRUCKIES AND NATZ ——Hey you can’t do that!!!
This was a Road transport association (RTA) orchestrated attack on our Minister of Transport Phil Twyford, as he is taking some money from the “Land Transport ‘consolidated fund” and using it to fund rail repairs and urgently needed upgrades.
Truckles fear they may loose freight around the country to rail.
But the roads are now falling to bits by the large road freight increases in the last 10 yrs!!!!
So road user charges now must increase dramatically;
Or road taxes must increase to make roads safer.
Many people are dying under trucks see here last weekend again a death with accidental truck incident.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/107786920/Crashes-claim-three-lives-in-deadly-five-hours-on-North-Island-roads
The failure of Socialism in Venezuela is influencing electoral politics in other countries in the region
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/oct/11/brazil-venezuela-jair-bolsonaro-workers-party
Congrats supporters of Bolivarian socialism. The failure of your former ‘poster boy’ is leading to the rise of fascism in other countries.
Gosman South America is under the CIA’s influence since the US decided to become a super power.
Gossipboy Dogmatic till the end. Your never going to get anyone to listen or change if you carry on with your un yielding unscientific rants.
Despot dictators have been installed where ever possible mainly murderous Fascists.
Who buy military hardware from the US and use it to suppress democracy.
The left end up just as nasty as the right.
If not for the US Colonialist meddling you would have moderate Democracies by now.
The cold War is over communism and Fascism are a complete failure.
So Gosman and DTB both of you are extremists ideologues who think their utopic ideology will work both have failed miserably.
Argentina trialled pure capitalism it lasted 18months it was a disaster.
Cuba and Venezuela tried communism it has failed.
So THAT’s what caused the shitty mess in Syria and Libya gozzer.
*yawn* still with b.s. about Venezuela ah Gosman. Why don’t you just publish John Oliver’s piece while your at it, it’s full of out right misinformation.
People wanting to run their own country is a crime. What next Gosman, the US has to invade….
Here is an article analysing the situation in Venezuela from a left wing perspective.
https://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/14091
Key points:
– Venezuela is in serious crisis as evidenced by the massive outward migration to other nations
– Many, many companies and businesses have closed; it is difficult to get a formal job; there is a dramatic shortage in food and medicine; wages are low; the prices of products found in commerce are high; there is a hyperinflation that causes prices to rise every day.
– Maduro and the Chavista regime is in large part, to blame for the tragedy. Due to bad decisions and the confrontational attitude of his government. He has also contributed to the legal insecurity in Venezuela, which drives away investments and discourages entrepreneurs.
Gossipboy ranting in your Silo again
ffs try something new for godsake.
Surely someone as intelligent and well educated widely read as your self can come up with something new and better than reheating the same stale mouldy old story.
He needs the toilet paper…
grant robertson the maestro.
now the nationals party apologist is whining on rnz about petrol tax.
blerrrkkkk.
more sly nationals party memes.
there is a price to pay for everything.
Gossipboy I’ll bet you anything you like that Bolisarno will be as corrupt as any previous Brazilian leader.
And Brazil will do no better corruption is endemic this will not change in our lifetimes.
But will it be as corrupt as Venezuela is now?
Dictatorship’s aren’t corrupt Gossipboy
Your dictating of only one side of the story boringly corrupt.
Repeating the failure of Venezuela ruins any argument you may have had.
Dictatorship’s are Dogmatic like spin lies while murdering the truth just like you gossip boy.
By comparing a country which is controlled by drug Cartels with any form of democracy looses the point of your pathetic arguments.
And Besides Brazils economy is much larger with much more money to corrupt.
Lift your game Gossipboy boring people with your repetitive dreary Dogma barking madly and incessantly.
The chocapocalypse is coming!
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=12142488
ARGH!
The market will prevail. Prices may rise but the spice will flow.
(I suspect most ‘chocolate’ currently sold in the world contains very little cocoa anyway)
A.
Well, someone’s telling porkies.
https://screenshots.firefox.com/KAjXJ9bu7ZlMFEm2/www.whittakers.co.nz
Of course I know Whittakers has cocoa in it! The percentage is clearly printed on the packet!!
But how much cocoa do you think there is in a Mars Bar or a pack of M&Ms?
A.
I’ve never eaten either, so I wouldn’t know.
“You were probably right, Antoine. Sorry for calling you a liar” – joe90
Aww, pwecious.
/
Not a reply to Bill’s top-of-thread comment, but inspired by it:
The Standard has traditionally been a forum for arguing – vigorously – frequently descending into slanging matches and abuse. Not only the commenters but also some authors and moderators have behaved in this way. This seems OK to me, there is a niche for this kind of site, it gives people a bit of interest in their lives and keeps them coming back.
It does however put off many people particularly women, right-wingers, centrists, people with good manners and normal people in general.
Mods need to decide what the Standard is for.
Is it still for arguing and wrangling? Then fine, just go on as you are. (Probably some commentators will leave in disgust. Some will come back in time.)
Or is it for reasoned, measured, sometimes impassioned but basically polite discussion? Then you need to make some very significant changes. Starting by taking a good hard look at yourselves and your own conduct. (I’m looking at lprent, TRP, Bill among others.) You will probably have to get rid of quite a few ‘old guard’ commenters who cannot be reformed as well.
I think Weka was trying to take the Standard down the latter route. It proved unachievable for her.
A.
Good commenters also need to choose carefully who they engage with and why, and figure out quickly who is just not worth their while.
“particularly women, right-wingers, centrists, people with good manners and normal people in general“..
I notice you forgot to include Left wingers in your list.
Nearly all my commited left wing friends, a good percentage of whom are male, refuse to comment or even read the Standard because of the abusive tone.
That and the perception that its dominated by Labour Party fan boys and girls who tolerate no questioning of the Party line. Particularly scary when they form packs and start accusing every man, woman and his dog of being a troll, which happens far too often.
Personally I walked through the ring of fire, being called an ‘arsehole’, a ‘nutter’, a ‘gormless idiot’, ‘disappointingly boring and quite predictable’ (ouch!!), among other things, by The Sysop in the course of one memorable week. Which I guess I’m grateful for, as it left me with no illusions about the nature of this site. But on the other hand I really doubt there is any strong appetite and commitment for change.
it is what it is.
Yep.
And, in a way, I understand why many of those who dominate this site are happy with its culture, and don’t want it to change. When people have a little status in a little domain, they are unwilling to give it up.
But it doesn’t represent the wider left – although, as I have said previously, all the big left wing blogs are male dominated, in one way or another.
And there’s no major left site really providing much space for socialist feminists, or even social democratic women, or LGBT+ people, or people of colour/Maori/Pacific people – except in a pretty marginal way.
However, i would have expected a little more self reflection from those who dominate this site, as presumably committed lefties, on the male dominance herrre
Thanks, Antoine.
To a large extent, it’s up to the commenters what TS is, or becomes. The site has certainly evolved over the years (google Robinsod if you want to get a flavour of the anarchic early days). I see it now as reasonably mature in a blog sense, with a distinct tone and an engaged community.
There has been a good effort from the authors in recent times to guide commenters rather than argue with them or simply ban them. In the few months I’ve been back I’ve binned a few comments, gave some clear direction to a couple of folk and banned nobody. Last month only 5 people got banned, all for short periods.
I think the authors are much more aware these days of the power imbalance, too. I’ve even walked away from a couple of discussions where my status appeared to be affecting other commenter’s ability to say what they wanted to.
None of us writers are paid, though we all try to write in a professional way. Just for the record, even a simple ‘notices and features’ post takes 10-15 minutes to put together. The more involved opinion pieces can take an hour or more. Then add in the time taken to monitor comments and you’ve got a significant commitment to the site.
It’s a job, really. No monetary reward, however some occasional, fleeting satisfaction at a turn of phrase, a heartfelt comment or an issue elevated into the public consciousness.
According to Stuff, Jamie Lee Ross was the leak!!!!!
David Neiwert
@DavidNeiwert
Thread is about how the RWNJs in the US are promoting civil war.
Must say so impressed with all the anti-free speech people you have your wish – facebook is shutting down the left.
Who would have thought it. (well myself and few others here – you know who you are)
It’s all this our source is better than your source B.S. which has made it here as well has finally led to this.
So when they shut down the last of the dissenting voices, blame yourselves folks – you did this – you let the corporations walk all over you.
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2018/10/12/facebook-accused-full-frontal-suppression-dissent-after-independent-media-swept-mass?mc_cid=0da54e4c72&mc_eid=524e48683c
The left has been shut down? Gosh. 800 pages culled and the entire Left is ended. Who knew victory for the tories would be so easy.
Such a tragedy that I’ll no longer see your comments.
It’s not “800 pages culled”. It’s another 800 pages on top of previous take downs and shut downs that are being done largely at the behest of four designated organisations acting as approved censors for facebook.
That aside. The unnecessary personal dig included your comment? Leave it out, aye?
How many pages have been reinstated from those previous take-downs?
And the personal dig also pointed out that FB is not essential to “the left”. Adam was commenting here, and AFAIK this is the only place I see their comments. Even if zucks were trying to turn FB into FoxNews Social Media, it’s not the only platform in town.
I don’t know how many have since been re-instated. I also don’t know what knock-on effect the loss of a fb page has for a news or info source, though given the large percentage of people who apparently get their news from fb, it’s unlikely to be having a minimal impact.
There’s quite a bit of dodgy stuff going on with regards the web and censorship that affects a huge chunk of the web (ie – google, fb and youtube).
Thoughtful and thought provoking articles, info and analysis are there to be had if information and controlling access to it interests you.
There is also a lot of dodgy stuff going on with regards to lack of censorship on the web, too. Bullying, bots, phishing, etc.
It’s sort of a microcosm of society – if there’s no sherriff, society usually becomes parasitic and toxic. If there’s too much sherriff, it becomes a police state.
I like how you shift the point to avoid the point. The problem is the broad sweep censorship, with a big chuck of what is being hit is left wing voices. Not parasites and generally not toxic, but you only want to listen to your take on the left – so I get why your clapping and cheering on this sort of stuff.
A big chuck of right wing voices are hit, too. The question is how many of these left and right “voices” deserve to be taken down because they are outright dangerous. And the question of any screening system is how false negatives and false positives are caught and re-evaluated, hence my question of how many are reinstated after appeal.
Because “generally” non-toxic means that even you would admit that some toxic content occurs even from the left, no?
You and I do toxic ever once in a while, so yes it exists on the left. But the point of the post was the blanket approach used by the monolith that is facebook – has a tendency to target social activists and left leaning people rather than toxic and vial idiots you are talking about. Yes it got a few of those, but people like
https://thefreethoughtproject.com/about-us/
are not in that group. If anything, the outright dangerous like Alex Jones, have profited by the facebook doing this sort of thing. And grown in support – so blocking them is not working either.
That’s an odd site, and hardly left wing. Looking at some of its stories I’d want to see what they were sharing via FB before making a call on their case.
Bullying, bots, phishing, etc. would strike me as coming down to moderation (not censorship), bullshit chasing money or rating (as far as I understand bots) and security against….well, I was gong to say malware, but nothing really protects a person from their own stupidity.
Censorship of information by arguably monopolistic platforms is something else entirely, but hey…
Could you explain more about the distinction between moderation and censorship?
Censorship deletes or makes invisible – eradicates. Moderation doesn’t.
But don’t moderators here sometimes redact some or all parts of a particular comment? In extreme cases, yes, but does it happen?
Yes, it happens – ie, moderation can slip over into censorship. What’s your point?
Doesn’t that count as “deletes or makes invisible”?
When it slips over from being one thing to being another? Why yes, it does.
So I guess I’m not sure what your point is. FB censorship isn’t a bad thing, just how extensive it might be becoming is the problem?
Good gawd. There is no way you misunderstood the term “from one to the other” – ie, two different things.
Can’t be arsed with the level of sophistry your indulging in.
The point is that censorship itself isn’t a bad thing. Sometimes it’s necessary, whichever the platform. The existence isn’t the problem, the balance is the issue. I think bringing the reins in a bit is necessary. As long as the good outweighs the bad of overreach in individual cases, it’s a positive.
Why do I always think of this song when I see your comments Mcflock?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CJQU22Ttpwc&ab_channel=waverlyflams
.
I would give you a considered answer, but it would be a personal dig.
I was hoping you could laugh at yourself, but you know, dreams are, well for the time being anyway – free.
What I’m laughing at is how severely you’ve been censored and are no longer free to express yourself because the left is being shut down.
Good, better than your usual grump self 🙂
Here’s a case in point about censorship that you may or may not want to consider.
That post on Zionism I did a week or so back involved sourcing info on Kastner. Google ‘curates’ searches to such a degree that I simply couldn’t break through from one side of the story and finally dumped google in favour of duckduckgo.
I was free to express myself, but I had some problems informing myself because of the censorious effect of algorithms – put in place by a company that’s signed up to a deal with the Chinese government promising to ensure no searches in China will go to any info the government would rather remained unseen.
Another case would be facebook responding to something like 80% or 90% of Israeli takedown requests when the people in Gaza use facebook for almost all of their news access.
And then there’s the ‘deplatforming’ and ‘demonetising’ malarky that’s going on with youtube…
So yeah, maybe anyone’s free to express whatever (assuming the platform they use remains open to them) , but the library shelves are going to have all these huge gaps and/or the books containing the info we really need are going to be in storage (and so require a presence of prior knowledge to be specifically requested ) rather than happened upon by browsing.
The point is that many people use duckduckgo because google doesn’t serve their needs.
I bet you lots of people in Gaza are now beginning to use something other than FB, too.
Which is what we never really got with libraries – if one library wasn’t making some subject areas accessible, say didn’t have a large section on medieval armour, there were a lot more barriers. You couldn’t just type in a new address and thereby visit a completely different library. And if somoene blocks that library, you figure out a way to another address.
Facebook, meanwhile, had empowered the right-wing outlet the Weekly Standard to “fact check” articles. The Weekly Standard, invested in Kavanaugh’s confirmation, deemed the Think Progress article “false.” The story was effectively nuked from Facebook, with other outlets threatened with traffic and monetary consequences if they shared it. The story is republished below, with permission from Think Progress, though not from Facebook or the Weekly Standard.
https://theintercept.com/2018/09/14/facebook-weekly-standard-suppressed-a-story-about-brett-kavanaughs-opposition-to-roe-v-wade-were-republishing-it/
So, there’s that. The censors with vested interests.
And you reckon people in Gaza can just choose to dump facebook and access news through…what, myspace maybe?
Fetlife would be more interesting. NSFW if you google it.
Amazing the, er, “niche” platforms out there if you just want to connect with likeminded folks. And when all else fails, opensource content managers can be knocked up into social media pretty quickly.
Niche platform versus ubiquitous platform. For general and/or important news and information – both the gathering and disseminating thereof. Hmm.
Maybe you honestly can’t see the issues around what is beginning to happen with google and facebook and youtube, or maybe you can but just don’t care.
I’d like to believe it’s the former.
I’m aware of the dangers. I’m also aware of the dangers of the monoliths’ previous almost-anything-goes approach.
It’s a balancing act, sure. But the nice thing about the internet is that the startup costs are minimal. And my nieice tells me FB is old-hat anyway.
Thanks for your backgrounding of that McFlock. I should use duckduckgo and just haven’t got it into my daily practice. And
thanks for your argument path that seeks to be objective and winds its way between alternatives.
cheers. Yeah I set ddg as my default search engine a while ago 🙂
Private browsing windows are also good for minimising cookies and tracking, not just for tinfoil hat reasons but also to stop ads crossing over now that google is doing cross-platform matching more often. I don’t need my home searches turning up at work, people will think I’m goofing off more than usual lol
McFlock
Hard to believe – never!
This fellow was hopeless, but I’ve heard worse today.
Just heard a disastrously inept performance from High Performance Sport New Zealand’s CEO Michael Scott. He was being interviewed on RNZ National, and he came across as panicked and inarticulate.
Still better than that shower in the National Party “leadership”, however.
Here’s a bit of an update from the Wentworth Races (Not the NSW Town btw). Since my last post a couple of days ago, the mud throwing has started with Liberal candidate saying a vote the Phelps is a vote for a hung parliament etc etc. Yesterday and today old Phelps has said again the she will vote for the Coalition on matters for supply and on confidence if elected and all this talk is from the Lib candidate is BS. Anyway I find old Shifty Bill won’t be doing many walk abouts this week (or does this include his front bench as well), which has me thinking have Labour given up and now realise it’s now a 2 horse race between Phelps and old mate Sharma? As ScoMo and his front bench have hit streets running about the place like a headless chickens or one arm plumber from Baghdad trying fix million to one leaks.
So someone is shit scared atm.
I leave you with comment from a Lib Coalition pollie flying back into Canberra on Sunday when asked about this Saturday’s by-election “Well we are going to be in the Penthouse or the Shit House after next Saturday”. Yes mate from what the polls are saying atm, I’ll say the Shit House atm.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-10-13/inside-the-race-for-malcolm-turnbull-wentworth-kingdom/10364908
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-10-15/wentworth-dave-sharma-treatment-of-malcolm-turnbull-appalling/10377790
So Aussie. Penthouse or shithouse. Well-chosen words. It must be like the old Roman days, watching the fights at the Colosseum, and they had them in the Senate too.
Kia ora The Am Show congratulations to the couple expecting their new baby .
I get what our All Blacks Coach up to Stue Wilson ?????????.Its cool that Stue talks about his alcohol experiences on the show lets the youth no some of the side effects of the stuff.
I had that problem a company payed with a credit card they were taking money when there service was cancelled send them a email they will most times refund your money.
I wondered whats world he is IN.
Amanda that black bear cub with the bucket stuck on his head they tracked it for 3 days and tranquilised it to get the bucket off its ka pai to see people care for animals .
I agree with Jacinda our political seen needs to change a bit what stop the mud sling and get on with running the country it’s not a good look for the mokos and is not good for te wairua.
The Air New Zealand flying taxis to commute people to the Auckland city is a great goal to have Ka pai.
Wars like this War in YEMEN need to stop all the wars around the Papatuanuku need to stop .I don’t know the reason they give for this war but I do know that its the rich who start wars for power and money . I do know that its the common poor man who fights these stupid wars the common mothers and fathers lose their offspring to wars .P.S I do know that rich men do not fight in these wars
I do know that its the common tangata /people who are dieing because of the rich MANS WAR we need to fight climate change and not each other this is so backwards to the Dark ages I say humans have never left that era .
Ka kite ano
https://edition.cnn.com/2018/10/15/middleeast/yemen-famine-war/index.html
Eco did a bit of research I got what going on in the middle east .
I don’t back ether side ECO MAORI BACKS PEACE AND HUMANITY.
International trasport of the future here are some new designs link below Ka kite ano
I laws were made to encourage this leap forward in air planes that would speed up the development of low carbon passenger planes link below ka kite ano
https://www.euronews.com/2018/10/15/futuris-reaches-for-the-sky-with-the-wings-of-the-future
Electric Container Ships another blow to the Human Caused Climate Change deniers
EGO P.S I seen some trolls quoting that air travel and container ships could not be carbon free.
I’ll have to thank my neo liberal capitalist red neck neighbour for helping with the
Eco Maori effect ka pai ka kite ano
Kia ora Newshub I don’t like kicking a person when they are down bridges & ross .
It give me a sore face when some people start writing about New Zealand and Australia becoming a republic when the Royal Family is so popular there dreaming.
That’s a od phenomenon compressed air is safer and better for some patients I say big company interference in reality once again .
I see that company teaming up with Air New Zealand in designing and testing auto flying vehicles my guess is that Aotearoa’s air traffic laws are not as stringent as other country’s but Its cool we will be pioneers in this industry.
Paul Allan one of the Microsoft founders condolences to his whano.
I say with the organ donation problem could be solved with a opted out clause if you don’t want to donate you have to say know problem solved business people use this very effectively Ka kite ano
The Cowd Goes Wild Mulls & Storm Ka pai to the young Aotearoa Ferns win in Gold.
congratulations to all the Kiwis at the youth game’s .
Josh Rugby mana all around Papatuanuku that’s cool.
Wairangi sore face E hoa don’t count Mals men out to soon they are world champions .
Ka kite ano P.S Eco know what that is like Bolt