That piece is about what the establishment can do by way of self preservation. I mean, okay, depending on how you define ‘progressive’ it might contain something by way of a lesson for progressives in NZ.
Or does it merely just add highlighter pen to what should already have been some pretty obvious writing on the wall for the establishment’s liberal left? That’s what I’d pick it to amount to. A kinda “Gadzooks! This triangulation and third way shit really is dead on its feet. Oh noes, what’s we going to do?”
As one who has lived in paradise 1950 though to paradise 2016 I tend to agree.
It is just we have different problems to cope with today.
Remember 6 O’clock closing, Nordies budget, Holyoakes guff, separate traffic cops from regular cops etc etc.
And I was reading an article a year or two back that made the argument that we should split them apart again as they use different skill sets. Although that article seems to be more concerned with improving the image that the police have which I think would come more from them being better police.
Disturbing, Did the police know it was fake before the raid, what if it was a toddler running around with a toy gun. with that extra 30 sec’s to a minute to have the dog under control make that much difference, maybe they could have got there earlier if they are in such a hurry or was the young fella legging it over the fence. Not a good look again for the department.
One would assume the police were initially taking it the gun was real.
Going off what was reported, the dog was in a fenced off area. The police claim they were at risk of attack.
Therefore, for the dog to put the officers at risk, it must of either got out of the enclosed area (which wasn’t reported) or the police entered into the enclosed area (knowing an irate dog lay within, hence putting themselves at risk) while ignoring pleas by the young girl to allow her to further constrain the dog.
Can you keep us updated on this, very sad about the dog and keen to learn more on the so-called fake pistol or was it a rifle, maybe air pistol which are not illegal per say, I know they are using gun (what terminology). Ta
I mean I am curious as to why no political party has mentioned going back to the old system of having separate, dedicated traffic cops as I don’t think its a good look having police sitting on the side of the road with a speed camera
I’d much rather see traffic cops patrolling the highways and dealing with traffic offences and let the police deal with everything else
I’m positive our PM compared working as a junior doctor with working for Merrill lynch this morning on breakfast, similar working conditions, similar stresses…
Did the doctor also earn 50 million speculating on foreign currency and earn the name “smiling assassin”, for his cheerfulness while putting people out of work like Key’s days at Merrill?
A beautiful day ….. Now which incompetent natz is going to utter some Bullshit and be the first on a Monday to fuck it up?…. ShonKey, Joyce, parata, Smith, collins, English.. … The list seems endless
Women’s refuges, church agencies and other community groups will soon have to hand over their client details to the Government in return for funding.
Ministry of Social Development (MSD) deputy chief executive Murray Edridge says all 823 agencies funded by the ministry’s $330 million Community Investment arm will have to provide client details for funding by next July.
Well now, wouldn’t Paula Bennett have a ball. Every time someone criticised her she could demand to see their file and publicly discredit them for perceived misdemeanours in the past.
Apart from that, it’s an insult to all the social groups who have had to pick up the work the government is no longer supporting – turning these organisations into the whipping boys and girls in order to take the heat off themselves?
No surprises here, just more contempt from this Government to make vulnerable people’s lives more shitty. How much more does this Government have to do with its punitive, controlling and vindictive attitude towards unfortunate people, to make themselves feel satisfied and happy? Extermination of them all – would they like that? I see a Police State on the horizon and rights and freedoms removed from the political landscape in the near future. Someone on this site keeps on about a revolution – not us, we are too feeble and ignorant to do anything like that. We are sleepwalking right into misery in this country and the 1% will just love that.
We are sleepwalking right into misery in this country and the 1% will just love that.
Although true I’m pretty sure that they won’t like the inevitable result. And they always act so surprised when they find out that their actions have consequences.
There are few jobs for immigrants as well as locals. We can get migrants here, but we don’t have a decent job for them in our low wage economy. Same for the 1 in 4 Kiwis that have to work overseas. Adding more people just increases the problem.
So that leaves the elderly and children who want to live here. Not only that, but I think people are coming into NZ and then leaving on other passports. So it appears there are more people here, but NZ or at least Auckland, is emptying again.
It’s not rocket science, even with all the fake government Stats, migrants and Kiwis need real jobs. If they are not here and with the lack of innovation and diversification, then there is no future and people will relocate for work.
As with many things, immigration is about getting the balance right.
We often hear talk of balancing the skills requirement and numbers coming in, but little on the age balance.
Immigration can be utilized to help offset our aging population.
I’m with Winston, immigration should only be used as a stop-gap measure. Our skill requirements should be met at home.
Immigration shouldn’t be used to lower incomes or NZ work practice standards.
Numbers coming in are currently far too high. Infrastructure is failing to cope.
And the high number of older immigrants is putting pressure on the health system while putting the sustainability of our superannuation at further risk.
Therefore, when it comes to immigration, it’s clear to see the Government has got the balance all wrong.
Denis O’Rourke introduced a very good N.Z.F. policy of pro rata super where the Government pays super proportionate to the amount of time one spends of their career working in N.Z. If you spent half your 40 years working here then you get 50% of what a New Zealander who did their entire career here.
Go Bus has been accused of exploitation after it illegally housed migrant workers in an office building at its Dunedin depot early last year.
The Tramways Union, which represents workers at the site, said the housing of workers, believed to be Filipinos, at the depot was part of a wider problem where Go Bus was employing foreign workers to keep wages low.
The workers were moved after the Dunedin City Council, which owns the building, informed Go Bus it was illegal under the district plan for people to live in commercial premises “due to fire risk and other safety factors. It would have been unpleasant,” council property manager Kevin Taylor said of the suitability of the building as worker accommodation.
To those who say this is common practice world wide I say “Multiple wrongs do not make it right” … another field for NZ to lead the world. 12 hour shifts are fine but only as long as one has time to recuperate after three or four days.
I presume you don’t literally mean 3 or 4 days off, rather that a 12 shift is not followed by another the next day. That the next day shift would be a standard 8 hour shift.
There are plenty of jobs/vocations that require people to do two or three 12 hour days in a row. Seemingly without any serious problems. I have had these type of jobs in the past.
I appreciate that the default position of Standardnistas is always to support strikers. However, I am a bit surprised at this strike given the shift by the DHB’s in the current negotiations.
Some years ago Junior doctors (led by Deborah Powell who seems to have been the union leader for about two decades) went on strike to get better conditions and pay. Most people were pretty sympathetic to their cause, since some of the days were very long indeed, way beyond 12 hours. And there was a big increase in pay so that the compulsory residency years in hospital have become quite well paid, around $100,000 a year I think, when all the shift work is taken into account
At that time the junior doctors essentially got what they wanted, at least as I recall it. Presumably what they got has applied through to the present. So why has this strike arisen?
Why are the conditions now terrible, but were OK when the junior doctors accepted them, and not so many years ago? Did they think they were hard done by when they accepted the offer of some years ago?
I do appreciate there have been annual negotiations each year on pay, and presumably conditions.
Incidentally I suspect not all junior doctors will actually go on strike.
OK, firstly hours and conditions creep, especially in highly critical areas that are understaffed: someone stays ten minutes over in an incident, and without careful and bastardy behaviour it can become the norm. Then ten minutes gets stretched, then it gets formalised.
I’ve done twelve or thirteen hour shifts myself. As an extension to a regular day, they’re bad. On a rotating 24hr roster, they’re fucking murder. I’d say that three calendar days off after a twelve hour night shift should be the minimum, just to teach HR to not do it again.
Doctors are paid a lot, but your argument reminds me of the ports of auckland bullshit around salaries. Even if doctors didn’t have larger student loans to pay (thanks for that) it should be illegal to sell your good health. We don’t allow it with steriod abuse, we don’t allow people to take cuts in workplace safety in exchange for a pay bump, why do we expect doctors to operate, literally, while fatigued for long hours?
So very very true – and let’s sheet this problem right back to where it starts – consistent underfunding of our DHB’s by central government. There should be no surplus while we cannot employ sufficient staff in our hospitals and pay them adequately. We might also have a look at the obscene levels of renumeration our DHB CEO’s are granting themselves.
Was your comment that Deborah Powell had been the union leader for 20 odd years meant as a criticism? Perhaps she is dedicated to her cause, just as Helen Kelly had been involved with union concerns for many years. I guess some farmers have been involved with Federated Farmers for years, or pilots with their union, or business people with their “union”.
Why are the conditions now terrible, but were OK when the junior doctors accepted them, and not so many years ago?
You’re assuming that the doctors were OK with them when they accepted them then rather than that they accepted those terms then understanding that they were the best that they were going to get then and that they would ask for more at the next negotiations.
Hell, if we followed your prescribed logic we’d still have slavery. After all, the slaves were Ok with the conditions then weren’t they?
Presumably what they got has applied through to the present.
Have they though? Because from what I’ve been hearing/reading things have been getting worse over the last few years of this governments attacks on public services.
I do appreciate there have been annual negotiations each year on pay, and presumably conditions.
No, it’s pretty obvious that you don’t appreciate it at all.
Why are the conditions now terrible, but were OK when the junior doctors accepted them, and not so many years ago?
Yeah, funnily enough, employers also come to the table with demands, even though they accepted the last agreement without those demands in it. What an impenetrable mystery! Actually, I’m sure you don’t find it as mystifying as you make out.
Actually Wayne should thank his lucky stars he’s on the pig’s back and stop sniping at real workers in our society. We should really be looking at stopping ex parliamentarian perks, and spending it somewhere useful.
I can understand progressive annual adjustments to agreements.
However, Deborah Powell negotiated the last junior doctors agreement, which as I noted was not that many years ago.
She now says how terrible things are, but these terrible conditions are presumably the ones she previously agreed to.
Now I don’t know the actual details of the agreements, there have been too many claims and counterclaims on the media to know the actual status of the negotiations. Certainly two weeks ago listening to the Morning Report interviews of the DHB rep, and to Deborah Russell, they seemed not to even agree what was actually in dispute, or at least did not agree to a common set of facts.
But I do know that Deborah Russell always says that all the conditions she has to negotiate are terrible and will lead to deaths. So presumably when she has negotiated in the past, she has agreed to hospital deaths due to the terrible working conditions she has agreed to.
… and we should still be sending children up chimneys because they accepted it in the nineteenth century and change should take place only on geological time scales. So says the fossil.
“I have had these type of jobs in the past.” Are you seriously trying to conflate what you do (office, sitting on your arse, drinking coffee all day) with truck drivers & cleaners & doctors? No wonder you guys don’t take workers rights seriously!
Well in the spirit of not trying to better oneself or your conditions why did you ever stop being a paperboy? Didn’t you find the conditions acceptable when you first began under the existing conditions?
In an exclusive interview on The Nation, Justice William Young said courts could benefit from having a Criminal Cases Review Commission, like that established in the UK.
Despite high-level support, the Government has ruled out a commission in New Zealand.
Yes we should have a criminal cases review.
We also need a prosecutorial misconduct review
And a police misconduct review (that is not the disfunctional one we have now!)
“Why Hillary Clinton Is More Dangerous Than Donald Trump”
Thanks save nz.
In 2009, President Obama stood before an adoring crowd in the centre of Prague, in the heart of Europe. He pledged himself to make “the world free from nuclear weapons”. People cheered and some cried. A torrent of platitudes flowed from the media. Obama was subsequently awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
It was all fake. He was lying.
The Obama administration has built more nuclear weapons, more nuclear warheads, more nuclear delivery systems, more nuclear factories. Nuclear warhead spending alone rose higher under Obama than under any American president.
Of course, Obama never had the guts or the werewithal to stand up to the wishes of the Deep State on these issues.
But I do credit him with holding back a full scale US invasion of Syria which many neocons wanted – and still want.
So pilger also prefers a candidate who wants to make it policy to murder innocent civilians by drone simply because they’re related to suspected terrorists, and wants to throw out the nuclear non-proliferation treaty.
For my money the Jill Stein interview that has elicited the Pilger link was making the very good point that when we’re reduced to choosing the lesser of two evils, then our choices are being made somewhere down the path to hell.
That was, in my mind, worthy of discussion/debate.
And it’s a crying fucking shame that it got fucked by a piece of exaggeration (she didn’t actually say a vote for Clinton would result in war with Russia, she said it could result in war with Russia – a reasonable analysis) and a nose dive into the tired old shit about which one of the two despicable presidential candidates was the more despicable, vile and dangerous.
Neither should be allowed to be in office. One of them will be. We’re about to be in the shit unless unreported, the broader left in the US has got its shit together and is ready to confront whoever becomes El Presidente from day one of their term.
I just hope to fuck the discussion in the US is a bit more mature than the school yard point scoring nyah, nyah, nyah nyah nyah bullshit that’s been sprayed over this site of late.
The question is whether Clinton will lead to significantly worse shit than Trump, or whether bother of them are any worse than the current shit we’re in.
Neither are ideal for office. It’s a question as to whether the office itself should even exist. But the current shitpool we’re in is set to get some different shit in it. It might be better shit (but I doubt it). One of the prospective new shits might look a bit greener than the other, or more orange, but does that make it better shit or worse shit? And will it blend in well with the current shit, or will the two combine to make some really manky shit? Can we keep swimming in the new shit, or will we finally drown in shit?
I think I might call this The shitpool model of democratic decisionmaking.
How long are we going to stare at shit saying “It’s shit” and arguing over how much worse the shit might become, or not become, before we get bored staring at shit, stating the fucking obvious about shit, how it looks, smells and feels like shit; before we lift our eyes to take in something else and bend our minds to ways in how that something else might be realised? Or give some thought to how we might neutralise or ameliorate the effects of the shit that, yes, we know about but are no longer intently focused on because, I dunno, maybe we’ve grown the fuck up and aren’t so taken by the prospect of dabbling in other peoples’ potties any more?
Your preference is fine. But seeing as how (presumably) you don’t get to cast a vote in the US elections and (presumably) have no impact on any left activism in the US, then your preference can only be just that. The passive wish of a by stander who hopes to be not too adversely impacted by whatever goes down.
Meanwhile, we could have been having more meaningful or productive discussions on what was what US wise, that were situated somewhere beyond the tedious Clinton/Trump flavoured poop throwing contest that the campaign seems to have unleashed on this site.
We are all bystanders aren’t we and therefore any discussion on the whys and wherefors of the US is really just for the benefit of our intellectual stimulation isn’t it.
There has been the potential to springboard into discussions that might have led to a better understandings on a number of fronts, but when everything nosedives into Clinton/Trump shitsmear…
Throwaway examples off the top of my head.
1.The msm is partisan and would have been against whoever or whatever was positioning itself against the status quo or establishment. It happened with the SNP during the independence campaign, to Corbyn, to Sanders…so Trump is correct to say there’s a bias and whatever. That’s not saying that Trump shouldn’t be hung, drawn and quartered. But it might be questioning what is being glossed over with regards Clinton.
2. The reality of abuse and power that’s suddenly in every living room because Trump is a valuable discussion. I’d hate to see it fade after the election but fear it will. Y’know? Trump will be ‘the bad apple’ – the exception to the rule etc and the cozy world of entitlement will get back to it’s default and invisible setting again.
3. Policy? Beyond soundbites and bullshit, I can’t say I’ve much of an idea about much actual policy and what its impact might be. Yes, there’s Syria and woefully inadequate action on CC that I get or am aware of.
4. The friction between a swathe of the broader left and the liberal establishment left and the utter disconnect of the latter from swathes of the population across western (so-called) social democracies.
5. There’s probably a 5 and a 6 and whatever. You get the picture. But it seems all the discussions and debates or disagreements, yeah…potty time.
ffs CV. The important word – the one you threw away in your haste to get all wavy armed was could.
Everybody knows that Clinton has spouted shit about having a no-fly zone. And everybody knows what that’d likely entail…which is why she probably won’t get her way (assuming she hasn’t already changed her mind through taking a reality check).
And sure, even if there’s no ‘no-fly’ zone, I’m pretty sure a Clinton administration will find 1001 other stupid and highly risky ways to impress on Russia that the US means business and means to rule.
You weren’t reserved on how you interpretated Steins comments – you misrepresented them, and worse,you obliterated the far more important message she was imparting with all your pointless fucking arm waving.
Well people could have read past the title of my post to read the exact quotation from Stein which I included for everyone to see.
But since you raised this point, and have returned to it, I’ve gone back to edit the title of my post to
“Jill Stein: a Clinton Presidency could mean nuclear war with Russia”
which exactly reflects what the Green Candidate said. You may think this reflects a great improvement now that it doesn’t “misrepresent” what Stein said.
Everybody knows that Clinton has spouted shit about having a no-fly zone. And everybody knows what that’d likely entail…which is why she probably won’t get her way (assuming she hasn’t already changed her mind through taking a reality check).
Pretty sure the US deliberately bombed that Syrian military outpost in Eastern Syria killing over 80 Syrian soldiers (final death toll, initial death toll was ~62) as well as killing a few Russian military advisors (reading between the lines) during up to an hour of aerial bombing.
So don’t over estimate the level of common sense and cool headedness in the Pentagon at the moment.
I’m pretty sure they deliberately bombed the position as well.
I just don’t know whether they thought it was an Isis position or a Syrian one when they decided to bomb it.
I’d agree those bombing runs were probably deliberate. And I’d say the risk of dead Syrian army regulars escalating into a confrontation with Russia was about 5/8ths of zero. Totally different ball game to a direct attack on Russian military.
And yes, I know Turkey got away with it, but then, if Russia had retaliated militarily, they’d have found themselves at war with NATO. Who knows? Maybe the whole Turkish downing of a Russian bomber was to gauge Russian reactions?
US and Russia are working together in Syria, both Asad and Isis are losing every day, and the EU having to deal with a few refugees, like wtf, who cares.
Lets run it by. Should Asad win, more than half of all Syriams want him gone, or worse. Isis would be gone. So why would the US waste time on Russia, especially since Russia for the most part is stable, and eventually will be a muslim nation, so Putin is just create a legacy, not a good one.
Syria is what happens when both Asad and Isis are loathed by the world.
USSR was its own karma. AS for post wall. Russia weakness in grafting on the profit motive, meant going straight to a few rent seeking oligarchs, was its own decision. Russia has China, the Artic, Islam and Europe, each requires a different strategy, its past, present and future are all different. So of course the world needs Putin in charge, not only to stablize, or to take potshots at, but to hold back Islam entering Europe, provide a backdoor to moderate China, to burn off oil adventures in the Arctic, the EU helps by being a incentive to keep a militrary up to scratch, Ukraine would be good fit to keep Russia Christian…
Look Russia needs all the enemies it can get, since nobody wants to invade, climate change will decimate it in a hundred years.
There’s some truth in that, some on the Left anticipated a thawing after the war – but Russia had cheerfully allied with Hitler before WWII – they or at least their leadership were by no means innocent.
There’s an interesting parallel with the end of the Cold War – when, given the absence of a credible enemy there was some expectation of a universal move to moderate centrism. I imagine the same forces that drove the US remorselessly to the Right are to blame for both events.
Trump is merely symptomatic of this – the US Right are now so extreme they can no longer find anyone credible to represent them. The pendulum cannot move indefinitely in the same direction.
“They have shat on Russia at every opportunity since Roosevelt died.”
Winston Churchill could see what was coming, and felt Roosevelt did not fully comprehend that all the West was doing was replacing one madman (Hitler) with another (Stalin).
Churchill was proven correct.
To say the US was paranoid with Russia (USSR), you would also have to say Russia (USSR) was paranoid with the USA.
A question…would you rather that the USSR was the dominant world power or the USA?
I say the USSR because if they had “won the cold war” there would have been no break up of the USSR…
So 40% living under a new syria, all with network access gathering intel for the next civil war. No. No nation could survive with such poor weak leadership like Asad. A nation that does not fear ts population isnt long for overthrow. In a time of pre internet the terrorizing dicator held the upper hand. Remember Bush juniors axis of evil, its was just the report of the inevitable overthrow of dictators by network enhanced peoples. Syria was just unfortuae in being a first mover and has to learn how to threaten its elites properly, i.e midle classes rule.
He has opposed just about everything the US has done for decades, including opposing the international effort to get Iraq out of Kuwait in 1990. I guess he is also opposed to the anti-ISIS coalition. I suspect Jill Stein would be of the same persuasion. Pilger makes Robert Fisk look like a moderate.
Now if that is your benchmark, fine, but in my view it does not define Clinton as a warmonger, unless for instance you think resisting ISIS makes one a warmonger. On that basis, most if not all, western and other leaders are warmongers since the anti-ISIS coalition has about 60 countries in it (including Russia).
If you think about it real hard, you might be able to figure out why blaming the US for Saddam Hussein ordering the invasion of Kuwait is completely moronic. This may come as a great shock, but not everything bad that happens in the world is the work of the US government.
Wayne. Iraq and Kuwait. You’ve heard of the road to Basra, yes? A huge military and civilian convoy heading out of Kuwait that was bombed to shit for no fucking good reason at all. Oh yeah. And the non-existent babies in incubators that weren’t actually thrown out of hospital windows by Iraqi troops that was used as a pretext to go all gung ho on the situation….
Syria. ISIS and Al Nusra, or whatever name change either adopts, are being directly funded by both the UK and the US through the ‘white helmets’. The Syrian government, with the aid of Russia (that it requested) is resisting ISIS and AL Nusra. Oddly, ‘our’ media says that makes the Syrian government and Russia the (irredeemable) bad guys. Go figure.
Same goes for the peoples in Rojava. Branded as terrorists, yet on the front line in the war against religious extremism.
And Turkey? Who gives save haven to Al Nusra and others while bombing the crap out of any and all Kurds? Good guys.
Saudi Arabia? Bombing the crap out of Yemen and funding every ‘religious’ lunatic in the middle east? Good guyss.
Militants have banned civilians from leaving the city have set up checkpoints on outwards roads and have blown up the homes of those who do flee.
While leaving can mean trekking through minefields and the risk of discovery and punishment by Isis, those who stay know they face airstrikes, street battles, a potential siege by the Iraqi security forces and the grim possibility of being used as human shields by Isis.
Just the logic of it. Why else would you advertise all over the corporate mainstream media that you are going to launch a huge offensive on Mosul weeks ahead of time.
That and the US effort to build a Salafist principality in eastern Syria where they bombed the Syrian military outpost.
You should know better than to trust The Guardian.
Wall St Journal Sept 8, 2016
U.S. Gets Ready to Assist Offensive to Retake Key Iraqi City From Islamic State
The U.S. is gearing up to assist in an offensive to reclaim the Iraqi city of Mosul from Islamic State, and has sent 400 additional troops to the country in anticipation Iraqi forces will begin the long-delayed battle in October, officials said.
BTW I heard about this because Trump has been saying in his speeches that it is total incompetence to let the enemy know in advance what your plans and timing are.
To be fair to the Guardian (not because i think it should be trusted you understand) but the piece said that “The start of the offensive, which has been months in the planning, was announced in an address on state television by Iraq’s prime minister in the early hours of Monday morning.”
Stupid me just assumed that was the, well….announcement. Not an announcement in a long trail of announcements 😉
Heh! They coudn’t have telegraphed their plans any louder and further ahead if they had tried (which I believe was the point…but that’s “conspiracy theory” stuff.)
If you have complete air dominance, and the city is in a state of siege, then please tell me how it is incompetent to let the population of the city know what your plans are? And it would not take a genius to work them out anyway. Besides it is not the US who are the dominant force in this instance.
Iraqi government forces have launched a campaign to retake Mosul, the de-facto capital of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) group in Iraq.
The bid to retake Mosul comes after the military, backed by armed tribes, militias and US-led coalition air strikes, regained much of the territory the fighters seized in 2014 and 2015.
“We are proud to stand with you in this historic operation,” Brett McGurk, US envoy to the coalition against ISIL, said on Twitter at the start of the Mosul offensive.
Al Jazeera’s Zeina Khodr, reporting from Khazir, just east of Mosul, said preparations for the offensive had long been under way, with forces amassing around the city where an estimated one million people still live under the control of ISIL, also known as ISIS.
“Now that the formal announcement has been made, we are expecting the US-led coalition to carry out air strikes in support of what is expected to be a ground advance from a number of front lines around the city,” she said.
The dropping of thousands of leaflets on the city advising the population of the impending offensive I see as a humanitarian gesture not one of incompetence.
ISIS got at least 6 weeks warning from the Wall St Journal and other news sources that Americans were sending in extra help for a big push which was going to happen in October.
You think that’s a humanitarian move?
I do not think that ISIS allowed any significant evacuations from the city.
The Wall Street Journal has an interesting line – which we cannot confirm – in its piece on the battle for Mosul, suggesting that Isis has decided to give up on the city.
A mid-ranking Islamic State commander said in an interview over Facebook that the group has made a tactical decision to partially abandon Mosul, recalling their “human resources” to Syria where they hope to strengthen their foothold. “There will be no big great epic battle in Mosul,” the commander said. “The tactic now is hit-and-run.”
And why not strike a deal with your enemy’s enemy that will cause your enemy a heap of trouble? Hell, throw in a bit of armament for the inconvenience you’re causing them.
And then, hey….do a photo-op Boys Own military advance on….nothing.?
And even get to show how you took a city in ‘no time’ with ‘only acceptable’ civilian casualties!
And then back to finger pointing and condemning the Russians and the Syrian government…
So, basically, while the ISIS leadership would have noticed a massing of something like 45000 troops, telling them the volume (and maybe even overegging the actual numbers) has shifted ISIS from conventional warfare in a city to leaving some smaller forces to hold out forlornly (then asymmetrically), while most ISIS forces leave the city (probably in convoys easily observable from the air if they want to take heavy equipment with them)?
And even get to show how you took a city in ‘no time’ with ‘only acceptable’ civilian casualties!
I love these win-win-win scenarios. The Americans look good. The Baghdad government looks good. And Assad/the Ruskies get heartburn from a few thousand more ISIS fighters.
(Shame about those Syrian civilians who will get torn apart.)
A huge military and civilian convoy heading out of Kuwait that was bombed to shit for no fucking good reason at all.
Meh. Same thing happened to the retreating German forces at the Falaise pocket – if you have a large force trying to escape along a single route, and the enemy has 100% air superiority, your people are going to die like flies. That’s a given, and it doesn’t happen for “no fucking good reason at all,” it happens because competent military commanders don’t allow the enemy to withdraw intact with their heavy weaponry. It was horrifying to us because we didn’t live through WW2 – in the first half of the 1940s, this kind of thing happened multiple times.
I visited the junk pile in 2005 – 14 years later there were still wrecked Iraqi military vehicles there being cut up and put into containers for scrap. The Kuwaitis weren’t shedding any tears over it and neither was I.
Oh yeah. And the non-existent babies in incubators that weren’t actually thrown out of hospital windows by Iraqi troops that was used as a pretext to go all gung ho on the situation…
Again, meh. First casualty of war is truth, and the Kuwaitis were willing to lie in their propaganda, although probably not to the extent Saddam Hussein was. The fact remains that Iraq invaded and occupied Kuwait, and the rest of the world had an obligation to kick the Iraqis back out of the place. Responsibility for any and all ugly shit that resulted lay with the Iraqi government and no-one else.
PM ,you conveniently leave out the complete US support Saddam had up until then.
The whole Middle East cock up since WW1 can be blamed on the West. Their treatment and attitude towards them has been, and still is ,appalling (and that is over and above religious and oil concerns). We have practiced extreme levels of deceit and hypocrisy in our dealings with them.
Isis came into existasnce in Iraq out of the rubble, destroyed society, and secular cleansing that Bush and Blairs illegal invasion and war brought to that country …..
Wayne supported this illegal war and alongside ‘get some guts johnny’ urged New Zealand to join it ……….. based on WMD bullshit and lies…….
Apart from supporting war crimes……. wayne badmapp is the closest NZ has had to an official minister of propaganda ….. when the nutty nats put him in charge of the very important “Political Correctness Eradication” ministry …. http://norightturn.blogspot.co.nz/search?q=mapp%2Bpolitically
Wayne cares not for the ethics of a man like John Pilger …. as racist warmongers like him look even worse and more disgusting after watching a Pilger doco
There’s a bit of work involved. I think it’s worth trying I’m just trying to decide if it’s a good use of time, or if I even have the time. Encouragement in the comments makes it more likely to happen 🙂
“Trump is not running a presidential campaign, he is running a cult.” Here are a few signs of a cult:
Submission: Complete, almost unquestioned trust in leadership.
Persecution complex: Us against them mentality.
Control: Manipulate members actions and thinking through repetitive indoctrination.
Indoctrination: Teachings of the group are repeated and drilled into members.
Salvation: The belief that what your hopes and dreams can only be accomplished by following this group.
Cognitive dissonance: Avoidance of critical thinking, maintaining illogical or impossible beliefs, while denying any facts that contradict your beliefs.
Sunning: Those who are not like us are the enemy. All of that (plus racism, bigotry, fear-mongering, and more) is exactly what Trump has done throughout his campaign.
They exclude economic arguments as not being “left wing”. Ok, let’s go with that: what are the non-economic arguments for and against immigration? Not considered, and no explanation as to why “left wing economics” isn’t a thing according to the author.
The article doesn’t say why the author “changed their mind” on immigration. House prices? It’s not immigrants who are the problem, but more likely foreign absentee owners and years of increasing government mismanagement. Besides, that’s economic. Schools demand? More jobs for teachers. Infrastructure? What, are immigrants the cause of auckland’s traffic woes? Come on.
Seems to me to be just a bullshit piece that tries to turn dunnokeyo’s flipflops and waffle into a positive factor, rather than the vacancy that results when you substitute apparent amiability for leadership.
If the system is broken after a 1% increase, it’s probably solidly broken before the 1% increase. And any solution, to be a solution, would have to be able to handle a 1% fluctuation or the system is still broken.
Our level of immigration doesn’t break infrastucture, or make it more difficult to solve. If it did, an unexpected home semi-final or any particularly rainy day would drive the transport system into dispair. Or an outbreak of gastroenteritis would overflow the sewers.
Immigration is a distraction, at the current levels. It would have to increase markedly to be an economic or infrastructure problem.
Our current level of immigration does make the problem of our lacking infrastructure more difficult to solve.
Take housing for example, while immigration isn’t the only factor driving demand, it is still largely adding to it.
And as you well know, this also drives up the cost of housing.
Therefore, not only do we need to build more homes to make up for the extra demand, but we are also going to require a larger correction (due to the extra demand further increasing prices) to bring house prices back into line with incomes or increases at the rate of inflation. Making the challenge more difficult.
New homes being built can’t keep up with demand without immigrants, and hasn’t for years.
And yet the number of vacant homes in Auckland in the 2013 census was 33,000, about 6%, similar to the rest of the main centres (although regions have higher rates), and similar to preceding census.
The problem, therefore, isn’t a shortage of homes. It’s a shortage of availability, for whatever reason. And immigrants are too small in number to be that reason.
We have plenty of vacant homes, and yet the number of homeless has increased. This points to a sick system, not a problem with immigration.
To the point you’re effectively saying “don’t throw that thimle of fuel on the house fire, it’ll make it worse” while the fire department (government) just stands by and watch the house burn down.
Immigration is a distraction when it comes to the inequity and hardship in this country. An historically tried and true distraction, but a distraction nonetheless. We are not in hardship because of immigrants, they don’t make the problem detectably worse compared to normal social fluctuations, and bitching about it does nothing to address the real problems in our society.
Unless they occupy homes at six times the rate of those already here, their contribution to any of our problems is indistinguishable from the background noise that is the general systemic clusterfuck in our country at the moment.
Their negative impact is unnoticed. An unnoticed impact compounds nothing.
Really? An increase of 1% is noticed by whom? assumed, maybe, but things like transport and electricity use fluctuate many more times than 1% every day, and longer term things like housing and education are significantly worse off than 1%.
Logically, yes, an increase of 1% would increase the burden by 1%, give or take some population differences. But no, we don’t notice a 1% increase in discomfort, or even a 1% delay in our typical daily commute. Or are you one of these people who consistently arrives at work in the same level of relaxed punctuality, within a couple of minutes of the same time every single day? Never 5 mins early or even five mins late?
And given the population of New Plymouth also contains families, we’d be looking at requiring around the same number of homes (as New Plymouth) to house them.
But I suspect about half of permanent and long term migrants settle in auckland these days. If that. Most recent report on regions vs nationally I could find was data 2010.
But, yes you’re right, 74,000 people and 31,000-odd dwellings in New Plymouth. 33,000 unoccupied dwellings in Auckland. So everyone in New Plymouth could move to Auckland and fill up the empty houses, while all the 69,000 net migrants can live in New Plymouth and have slightly more vacant dwellings there.
So how were you negatively impacted by immigration?
and liked some of the comments too… in particular Setting your moral sights on the globe is a complete non-starter if you can’t keep your own society healthy and flourishing:
So everything was just fucking peachy when her party was flat out gerrymandering and suppressing voters to disadvantage other communities for their own political gain, attacking African Americans, women’s reproductive rights, WOC, solo mothers,Hispanics, immigrants trade unions, the poor, the working poor, Muslims…..but sexually assaulting in the main wealthy white women was a step too far so she had to speak up……really?.
//
Once she’s finished clutching her pearls in shock, she could reflect that the Republicans are fully on track to retain control of both the Senate and Congress.
The Republican Party is going to do just fine out of this election.
“The problem with this approach is that it reduces the incentive for tenants to take good care of the property they rent. It also reduces the landlord’s incentive to have insurance as it lessens tenants’ responsibilities.”
Who says Trump hasn't won any newspaper endorsements? Here's one from "The Premier Voice of The White Resistance." https://t.co/Olgy6a5YK1— America's Voice (@AmericasVoice) October 16, 2016
“As I’ve said to others. Either comment (honestly) on the substance of the post (preferably intelligently) or take yourself away to the fuck somewhere else.”
you abuse your responsibility and the power it confers
you accuse the poster of dishonesty…… (honestly)
you dismiss ad hominum their arguments….. (preferably intelligently)
you do not hold yourself to the standard you impose on others
Ironic in thread discussing the abuse of power
[Happy to oblige you with your call to martyrdom. Two days. Longer if I forget…on second thoughts…] – Bill
[TheStandard: A moderator moved this comment to Open Mike as being off topic or irrelevant in the post it was made in. Be more careful in future.]
Regarding the women groped by Trump, in real life, was the problem there that they didn’t ” set their own limits”?
What women? The majority of these stories currently exist at the same level of tabloid heresay and have not been established as fact with any independent witnesses or evidence.
[TheStandard: A moderator moved this comment to Open Mike as being off topic or irrelevant in the post it was made in. Be more careful in future.]
Assuming tabloid level allegations against Trump as fact is on topic and relevant, but pointing out that those allegations are at this stage poorly substantiated is off topic and irrelevant???
Well, he told “bushy” he did it. Was recorded doing so.
A dozen women have agreed with him, claiming that he assaulted them on separate occasions.
How many before you believe it about Trump? Three was enough for Bill Clinton. Two is too few for Assange. Your judgementalism seems to be a bit erratic.
Which is precisely why we need everything everyone does recorded 24/7/365. Then put it all in the public domain. Stop sex crimes absolutely in their tracks.
Why not? It would remove all this ‘he said, she said’ malarkey. No abusive court cross-examinations, no faulty memories, no quibble about the facts.
Here is the thing; in recent days we have seen an avalanche of women telling of their millions of rapes and assaults that happen to them every day. They live in constant fear. But in my daily life I see none of this; so I conclude that all these sex crimes occur in private, when other people are not around to witness them. Removing all privacy would logically immediately stop all sex crimes.
Besides we really only have a selective privacy for the very wealthy and powerful; the rest of us can have anything we do recorded and made public at any time with complete impunity.
100% transparency for everyone. Totally fair and even handed.
Rape is not logical. That’s why we have a very powerful man admitting to sexual assault and still being able to become president. It’s in the public domain, and people are still arguing that it didn’t happen or it wasn’t assault. And that’s not even getting to the issues of tech and how criminals can stay ahead of that.
That you don’t see sexual assault going on is in part to do with you not looking in the right place. Women see it all the time.
Privacy is an intrinsic human need. It varies culturally, but in generally it exists across all societies. That we have lost a lot of privacy doesn’t make that benign. And even though in limited circumstances we can have things recorded and made public against our will, we are still a long way from the absolute loss of privacy you are advocating.
Not really. One of the most striking things about the few remaining indigenous hunter-gatherer societies that is noticed by those privileged enough to live with them for a time, is the complete lack of personal privacy.
And the complete absence of sex crimes.
we are still a long way from the absolute loss of privacy you are advocating.
Not really … technology is ensuring that we are losing privacy at a very rapid rate. Within our lifetimes it will, for all practical purposes, be entirely gone.
Once everything is recorded, then it becomes a question of what is made public and what remains private … and who does the selecting?
So you are suggesting that humans in general are going to be ok with being recorded having sex or going to the toilet or giving birth or crying and for all of that to be made public?
“One of the most striking things about the few remaining indigenous hunter-gatherer societies that is noticed by those privileged enough to live with them for a time, is the complete lack of personal privacy.”
I don’t think that’s true. I think you are comparing their cultural privacy with your own and assuming that because theirs looks like no privacy to you, with your cultural lens, that there isn’t any. But there is, it just manifests in ways that work for that culture. That you can’t see it doesn’t mean it’s not there.
“Once everything is recorded, then it becomes a question of what is made public and what remains private … and who does the selecting?”
Which brings us neatly back to technology like this won’t solve rape.
So you are suggesting that humans in general are going to be ok with being recorded having sex or going to the toilet
Well yes. Aaron Smith may not be ok with it, but almost everyone else is. Donald Trump may well regret being recorded, but everyone else can only be grateful his vulgar gloating about his sexual crimes have been revealed.
I guess if women have a problem with being recorded having sex, the technology could be enhanced to ensure all females have their faces and bodies automatically pixelated or something.
I think you are comparing their cultural privacy with your own and assuming that because theirs looks like no privacy to you, with your cultural lens, that there isn’t any.
I don’t really understand this.
Which brings us neatly back to technology like this won’t solve rape.
I imagine this naturally turns into all women should wear body cameras. If the case goes to court the defence will say “Why was she not wearing her body camera!”
Well, he told “bushy” he did it. Was recorded doing so.
Did what? To whom? Do you imagine that recording of Trump trash talking like a frat boy on an illegally recorded conversation would be any kind of evidence in any kind of court – other than the court of Tabloid journalism?
A dozen women have agreed with him, claiming that he assaulted them on separate occasions.
What dozen women? Who are their independent witnesses? What due process has Trump been given to refute their claims, most of which would be totally inadmissable in court without substantially more evidence?
Three was enough for Bill Clinton. Two is too few for Assange. Your judgementalism seems to be a bit erratic.
They found semen stains for Clinton. Where are the semen stains from Trump?
As for Assange – you want to go another round of that here? I’m game if you are. The only parallel Trump has with the Assange case is the insidious political motivation associated with each case.
Actually no I was not being cute at all. Given that 99.9% of sexual allegations are true, Trump is almost certainly a serial rapist. I fully anticipate at least one of these women will put him into prison for the rest of his life.
Why not? There would be enormous support for any one of Trump’s many victims to take this through to a conviction.
For a start there could be no question of a hostile cross-examination in such a high profile setting. The pressure on the court to ensure the process avoids the usual re-traumatising aspects of these cases would be immense.
Taking down Trump with a life-sentence would be massive and powerful message that women were no longer going to tolerate unwanted sexual aggression from men ever again.
When the two of you start agitating for justice for women that have been sexually assaulted (and men and children), then you might gain some credibility on this topic.
Pretty basic shit from you cv -discredit the women – soon you’ll have all sorts of backstory and trumpish bullshit from your trump fanboy sites. It is 101 stuff bur still dusgusting, demeaning and diminising but what happens to these women now doesnt bother you does it.
For someone making allegations about the evidence against Trump “what women” is a stupid question to ask. It shows that you’re either a blinkered fool or a callous, blinkered fool.
Similarly, your comment about semen stains shows that you still don’t understand the difference between a allegation of a consensual if unprofessional affair and an allegation of sexual assault. A bit like the NZRFU, I guess.
Do you imagine that recording of Trump trash talking like a frat boy on an illegally recorded conversation would be any kind of evidence in any kind of court – other than the court of Tabloid journalism?
Illegally recorded? they were mic’d up for their own fucking TV appearance!
And if you think that what they joked about was typical “frat boy” conversation, he wasn’t a fucking frat boy when he said it. And I worry about the people you regularly associate with if you think that was normal conversation and boasting.
Apparently Trump was just acting like a man of his age and station.
Interesting that it’s frat boy though, given that in the US campus rape is a huge issue publicly now. I guess he can’t use locker room now that athletes have come out and said it’s not locker room talk.
poor trumpeters just can’t catch a break, trying to find groups of men who are willing to say that they boast privately about sexually assaulting women.
No CV. Reasonably assuming that women who are speaking out are being honest is on topic. Suggesting it’s all just tabloid bullshit isn’t.
That and like many, many others I’m basically just sick and fucking tired of the constant casual misogyny you throw around the threads. Funnily enough, given that your usual line is a variation of ‘men too’, the piece in the posted article you completely missed…This is bigger than us. We know feminism isn’t just for women, but we need to keep saying this aloud until it’s crystal clear. The fortification of the gender binary hurts all of us. It’s about freeing everyone from the expectations and inequalities of each, and creating the freedom to be yourself – despite what society tells you you should be because of your assigned gender.
Nah fuck it Bill, what I am really sick and tired of is the hypocritical Left totally ignoring the stories of all the women who have come forward over DECADES describing how Hillary Clinton knew exactly what Bill Clinton was up to, enabled his predatory behaviour and in some cases organised to threaten and fuck up these womens lives in order to protect Bill.
While SIMULTANEOUSLY acting all pious about how we have to give strict credence and assign immediate credibility to all the women who have come forward and made lesser allegations against Trump.
And why this clear and blatant hypocrisy? Because of, as far as I can tell, nothing more than closed minded political tribalism masquerading as moral righteousness.
Suggesting it’s all just tabloid bullshit isn’t.
I’ve never said these women are lying. But it seems that independent witnesses, corroborating evidence and due process is too much to ask that the Left wait for nowadays before assuming and assigning guilt.
No idea what you said there but I will simplify my point:
-Bill Clinton’s female victims who claimed for years that Hillary enabled/protected Bill’s predatory behaviour while threatening them personally have no credibility with the Left.
-Donald Trump’s female victims who claimed for a week that they were assaulted and humiliated by Trump have full credibility with the Left.
You may consider that “false equivalence” but I think its pretty damn obvious tribal hypocrisy.
-Bill Clinton’s female victims who claimed for years that Hillary enabled/protected Bill’s predatory behaviour while threatening them personally have no credibility with the Left.
Actually, can you find any allegation of HRC’s complicity in any of WJC’s sexual misconduct allegations prior to 2016? Link pls.
And who “in the Left” has said that those allegations against HRC had no credibility?
Donald Trump’s female victims who claimed for a week that they were assaulted and humiliated by Trump have full credibility with the Left.
A bit more than a week, but it has snowballed recently, I agree.
Well, plus the fact that he claimed he did it, on tape. Illegally recorded or not – you’re a fan of wikileaks aren’t you? Oh, and a lawsuit in 1997 filed by jill Harth. But whatever.
You may consider that “false equivalence” but I think its pretty damn obvious tribal hypocrisy.
Actually, it seems to be putting the “false” in “false equivalence”.
I don’t know who the Left is, but am wondering if we should form a club.
Then there is this (note the date)
An anonymous “Jane Doe” filed a federal lawsuit against GOP presumptive nominee Donald Trump last week, accusing him of raping her in 1994 when she was thirteen years old. The mainstream media ignored the filing.
If the Bill Cosby case has taught us anything, it is to not disregard rape cases against famous men. Serious journalists have publicly apologized for turning a blind eye to the Cosby accusers for over a decade, notwithstanding the large number of women who had come forward with credible claims. And now history is repeating itself.
In covering a story, a media outlet is not finding guilt. It is simply reporting the news that a lawsuit has been filed against Mr. Trump, and ideally putting the complaint in context. Unproven allegations are just that – unproven, and should be identified that way. (Mr. Trump’s lawyer says the charges are “categorically untrue, completely fabricated and politically motivated.”) Proof comes later, at trial. But the November election will come well before any trial. And while Mr. Trump is presumed innocent, we are permitted – no, we are obligated — to analyze the case’s viability now.
No outsider can say whether Mr. Trump is innocent or guilty of these new rape charges. But we can look at his record, analyze the court filings here, and make a determination as to credibility – whether the allegations are believable enough for us to take them seriously and investigate them, keeping in mind his denial and reporting new facts as they develop.
I have done that. And the answer is a clear “yes.” These allegations are credible. They ought not be ignored. Mainstream media, I’m looking at you.
Legal analyst for NBC News and Avvo and attorney Lisa Bloom.
Oh, that would be all the people who refuse to accept that HRC probably knew about, was complicit with, and helped protect Bill Clinton from the consequences of his long term ongoing predatory sexual behaviour.
Leaving aside the weirdness of providing a Fox news reference
Maybe pretend for a moment that Broderick has credibility as a rape victim despite the Fox News logo, and actually listen to what she says about both Bill and Hillary Clinton.
“Oh, that would be all the people who refuse to accept that HRC probably knew about, was complicit with, and helped protect Bill Clinton from the consequences of his long term ongoing predatory sexual behaviour.”
Right. All those people that you can’t actually point out.
“Maybe pretend for a moment that Broderick has credibility as a rape victim despite the Fox News logo, and actually listen to what she says about both Bill and Hillary Clinton.”
I already watched the video and don’t see any reason to not believe her. The comment about Fox was a reflection on you, not her. But interesting that you conflated those two things (my thinking the Fox reference was weird, with my ability or not to listen to and believe someone’s story). Interesting slur-y attempt to undermine me though.
I know you struggle with this because you are so caught up in the false binary you have created, but you really are missing the fact that my criticism of your rape apology doesn’t stop me from seeing rape culture elsewhere in the world including with Bill Clinton.
When Hillary was starting to run for president then. see how that works, by your standards?
But thanks for finally providing a link to an actual sexual assault allegation against Bill Clinton. Feel free to focus on that instead of a consensual affair.
And yes, I do have reservations about WJC being back in the White House – but at least he’s not president. As for the clip, I believe the incident she described happened. I’ll even go so far as to say the inferred subject was probably implied. Whether that was intended as “threatening them personally” is unclear.
Unlike Trump’s tape and the explicit allegations against Trump and WJC.
Your problem there CV is that you think Monica Lewinsky having an affair with Bill Clinton is the same as Donald Trump grabbing women’s crotches. That you don’t understand the difference is a large part of why no-one here takes what you say about the Clintons as meaningful. You are the one creating a false dichotomy, and you are doing it in a sick and manipulative way by conflating different kinds of behaviour of two men and then using that to try and minimise the one that women are most concerned about. And to push a political agenda.
“I’ve never said those women are lying. But it seems that independent witnesses, corroborating evidence and due process is too much to ask that the Left wait for nowadays before assuming guilt.”
If you think that justice for men is the most important thing, that makes sense. However women, and many men, want justice for women too. Those of us who have paid attention to rape culture (or who just care) know that the justice system is hugely biased against women who are victims of rape. We also know that rape culture in large part promotes and supports that by say not believing women. Trump will get his day in court and that’s the place where legal guilt or not will be established. Outside of that it’s not longer acceptable for rape culture to enable rape and for women to just put up with that. We’re done with that. You can make out that this is some kind of trial by public, but that’s just you distorting it again to suit your political agenda.
Of course your other big problem here is that the man who the accusations are being against, has just admitted to the behaviour.
Your problem there CV is that you think Monica Lewinsky having an affair with Bill Clinton is the same as Donald Trump grabbing women’s crotches. That you don’t understand the difference is a large part of why no-one here takes what you say about the Clintons as meaningful.
Bill Clinton used the obscene differential in power, financial and experience differential between himself as President of the United States to ply sexual favours from the lowly paid/unpaid young temporary White House intern Monica Lewinsky.
It’s pretty clear there are direct parallels there with the alleged behaviour of money drunk power drunk billionaire Donald Trump.
Even at a straight legal level there are differences between sexual harassment in the workplace, and sexual assault. I don’t know the exact laws in the US, you can look it up seeing as how you are so concerned about justice and due process.
What you are saying is that you have a problem with how the men are acting, because of how they are acting (is that a moral thing?). I have a problem with how they are acting because of how it affects the people being acted upon. That’s why I can tell the difference between sexual harassment in the workplace and sexual assault. It’s why I can tell the difference between consensual sex and rape. Because I listen to women.
It’s also why I don’t need to minimise Trump as a sexual predator in order to look at BC and his actions. You on the other hand…
My god, man, you can’t even bring up an actual sexual assault allegation against Clinton, you’re so fixated on a consensual affair. And yes, it was consensual. Not even the Republicans at the time alledged otherwise.
Of course your other big problem here is that the man who the accusations are being against, has just admitted to the behaviour.
Firstly, it’s not “my problem.”
Secondly, Trump said a whole bunch of locker room trash talk. That means he’s guilty of having talked crass shit about women.
It doesn’t mean he confessed to sexually attacking Anderson, Zervos or Leeds, unless it is your position that what he said on that illegal recording is as good as a confession to attacking Anderson, Zervos or Leeds.
Yeah it is your problem. You are arguing that he’s not getting due process. That might have been true had he not said he sexually assaults women. He’s the one that lowered the bar so massively.
“It doesn’t mean he confessed to sexually attacking Anderson, Zervos or Leeds, unless it is your position that what he said on that illegal recording is as good as a confession to attacking Anderson, Zervos or Leeds.”
Strawman, I’m not conflating what Trump said with those allegations. I’m saying that for you to argue that Trump’s word that he didn’t sexually assault those women means no-one should be talking about him as if he did has bigger all credibility. The guy is a self-confessed sexual predator, of course people are going to talk about him as such when looking at the accusations.
I’m saying that for you to argue that Trump’s word that he didn’t sexually assault those women means no-one should be talking about him as if he did has bigger (sic) all credibility.
That’s not what I argued. Please don’t lie about what I said or claimed people should do.
Come on CV, why don’t you give this a rest. Trump’s comments and excuses for those comments are defensible. You could argue if it’s frat boy talk or locker room talk (although lots of locker room people have already said its not), if it was confession or boast, whether women are confirming that behaviour or making unfounded allegations, but that’s the past and it’s not affecting his rating, apparently.
Why don’t you argue on policy – the future, that’s what counts if he becomes president, yes? There’s plenty there – immigration, tax, why the US doesn’t use nukes even though they have them, waterboarding, China as an economic threat, climate change, taking oil from countries that have it…. all things he could do something about – things that would make a difference if he were president.
Because it seems impossible, given attitudes of the defenders of Trump, to see how attitudes and behaviours could ever change in a way that would make a difference to the well-being of women if he was to become President.
Probably the clearest comment you have made to illustrate your frustration
The twisting of positions could be more apparant in the hypocrisy over reaction to the allegations against Trump versus the complete dissonance and denial over Bill Clinton
Trump alleged to have sexually assaulted women
Hillary who is alleged to have covered up for and enabled Bill’s multiple rapes and affairs over many many years.
But yeah, the hypocritical political tribalism is fucking rampant.
Well yes there is the ‘covering up’ aspect which the ‘progressives’ disregard at the same rate as the ‘allegations’ against Bill. The abuse involved , is still abuse
So very limp on self discipline with regards to elementary rationale and reasoning
Quite why, is the interesting aspect
Perhaps bullying, denial and hipocrisy are considered ‘tools of empowerment’
“Some believe there is somehow a difference in what they are”
Citation needed. Or at least clarify if you are referring to people in this thread. You imply that you are, and if you are then you need to provide a reference. If not, then clarify that.
Oh you mean the women who have made ALLEGATIONS that they were groped by Trump. Yes there are a few of those who have suddenly come out of the woodwork, all at once, and several using the same lawyer.
So much of what comes from you are just scenes and dialogue from movies – the funny thing is you think you’re being clever but I think you are like a parrot not even comprehending any depth in the syllables escaping your lips like a rapidly deflating balloon. Sunnyside up for me ta.
The only person I suspect to have definitively organised against women in this way is Hillary Clinton, in order to protect the political career of her husband, Bill Clinton. Do you not get this?
I know, cheap shot but I’m tired of arguing against people who believe Trump’s female accusers in a flat second, while simultaneously utterly dismissing the female accusers of Hillary Clinton who have been speaking out for years.
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We may see a few more luxury cars on Queen Street, but a loosening of rules to entice rich foreigners to invest more here is unlikely to “turbocharge our economic growth”. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāLong stories short, the top six things in Aotearoa’s political economy around housing, climate ...
Let us not dance daintily around the elephant in the room. Our politicians who serve us in the present are not honest, certainly not as honest as they should be, and while the right are taking out most of the trophies for warping narratives and literally redefining “facts”, the kiwi ...
A few weeks ago I took a look at public transport ridership in 2024. In today’s post I’m going to be looking a bit deeper at bus ridership. Buses make up the vast majority of ridership in Auckland with 70 million boardings last year out of a total of 89.4 ...
Oh, you know I did itIt's over and I feel fineNothing you could say is gonna change my mindWaited and I waited the longest nightNothing like the taste of sweet declineSongwriters: Chris Shiflett / David Eric Grohl / Nate Mendel / Taylor Hawkins.Hindsight is good, eh?The clarity when the pieces ...
Photo by Towfiqu barbhuiya on UnsplashHere’s what we’re watching in the week to February 16 and beyond in Aotearoa’s political economy around housing, climate and poverty:Monday, February 10The Kākā’s weekly wrap-up of news about politics and the economy is due at midday, followed by webinar for paying subscribers in Substack’s ...
A listing of 23 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, February 2, 2025 thru Sat, February 8, 2025. This week's roundup is again published soleley by category. We are still interested in feedback to hone the categorization, so if ...
Today, I stumbled across a Twitter Meme: the ending of The Lord of the Rings as a Chess scenario: https://x.com/mellon_heads/status/1887983845917564991 It gets across the basic gist. Aragorn and Gandalf offering up ‘material’ at the Morannon allows Frodo and Samwise to catch Sauron unawares – fair enough. But there are a ...
Last week, Kieran McAnulty called out Chris Bishop and Nicola Willis for their claims that Kāinga Ora’s costs were too high.They had claimed Kāinga Ora’s cost were 12% higher than market i.e. private devlopersBut Kāinga Ora’s Chair had already explained why last year:"We're not building to sell, so we'll be ...
Stuff’s Political Editor Luke Malpass - A Fellow at New Zealand IniativeLast week I half-joked that Stuff / The Post’s Luke Malpass1 always sounded like he was auditioning for a job at the New Zealand Initiative.Mountain Tui is a reader-supported publication. For a limited time, subscriptions are 20% off. Thanks ...
At a funeral on Friday, there were A4-sized photos covering every wall of the Dil’s reception lounge. There must have been 200 of them, telling the story in the usual way of the video reel but also, by enlargement, making it more possible to linger and step in.Our friend Nicky ...
Skeptical Science is partnering with Gigafact to produce fact briefs — bite-sized fact checks of trending claims. This fact brief was written by Sue Bin Park from the Gigafact team in collaboration with members from our team. You can submit claims you think need checking via the tipline. Is methane the ...
The Government’s idea is that the private sector and Community Housing Providers will fund, build and operate new affordable housing to address our housing crisis. Meanwhile, the Government does not know where almost half of the 1,700 children who left emergency housing actually went. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāLong ...
Oh, home, let me come homeHome is wherever I'm with youOh, home, let me come homeHome is wherever I'm with youSongwriters: Alexander Ebert / Jade Allyson CastrinosMorena,I’m on a tight time frame this morning. In about an hour and a half, I’ll need to pack up and hit the road ...
This is a post about the Mountain Tui substack, and small tweaks - further to the poll and request post the other day. Please don’t read if you aren’t interested in my personal matters. Thank you all.After oohing-and-aahing about how to structure the Substack model since November, including obtaining ...
This transcript of a recent conversation between the Prime Minister and his chief economic adviser has not been verified.We’ve announced we are the ‘Yes Government’. Do you like it?Yes, Prime Minister.Dreamed up by the PR team. It’s about being committed to growth. Not that the PR team know anything about ...
The other day, Australian Senator Nick McKim issued a warning in the Australian Parliement about the US’s descent into fascim.And of course it’s true, but I lament - that was true as soon as Trump won.What we see is now simply the reification of the intention, planning, and forces behind ...
Among the many other problems associated with Musk/DOGE sending a fleet of teenage and twenty-something cultists to remove, copy and appropriate federal records like social security, medicaid and other supposedly protected data is the fact that the youngsters doing the data-removal, copying and security protocol and filter code over-writing have ...
Jokerman dance to the nightingale tuneBird fly high by the light of the moonOh, oh, oh, JokermanSong by Bob Dylan.Morena folks, I hope this fine morning of the 7th of February finds you well. We're still close to Paihia, just a short drive out of town. Below is the view ...
It’s been an eventful week as always, so here’s a few things that we have found interesting. We also hope everyone had a happy and relaxing Waitangi Day! This week in Greater Auckland We’re still running on summer time, but provided two chewy posts: On Tuesday, a guest ...
Queuing on Queen St: the Government is set to announce another apparently splashy growth policy on Sunday of offering residence visas to wealthy migrants. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāLong stories short, the top six things in our political economy around housing, climate and poverty on Friday, February 7:PM Christopher ...
The fact that Waitangi ended up being such a low-key affair may mark it out as one of the most significant Waitangi Days in recent years. A group of women draped in “Toitu Te Tiriti” banners who turned their backs on the politicians’ powhiri was about as rough as it ...
Hi,This week’s Flightless Bird episode was about “fake seizure guy” — a Melbourne man who fakes seizures in order to get members of the public to sit on him.The audio documentary (which I have included in this newsletter in case you don’t listen to Flightless Bird) built on reporting first ...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections by Karin Kirk The 119th Congress comes with a price tag. The oil and gas industry gave about $24 million in campaign contributions to the members of the U.S. House and Senate expected to be sworn in January 3, 2025, according to a ...
Early morning, the shadows still long, but you can already feel the warmth building. Our motel was across the road from the historic homestead where Henry Williams' family lived. The evening before, we wandered around the gardens, reading the plaques and enjoying the close proximity to the history of the ...
Thanks folks for your feedback, votes and comments this week. I’ll be making the changes soon. Appreciate all your emails, comments and subscriptions too. I know your time is valuable - muchas gracias.A lot is happening both here and around the world - so I want to provide a snippets ...
Data released today by Statistics NZ shows that unemployment rose to 5.1%, with 33,000 more people out of work than last year said NZCTU Te Kauae Kaimahi Economist Craig Renney. “The latest data shows that employment fell in Aotearoa at its fastest rate since the GFC. Unemployment rose in 8 ...
The December labour market statistics have been released, showing yet another increase in unemployment. There are now 156,000 unemployed - 34,000 more than when National took office. And having thrown all these people out of work, National is doubling down on cruelty. Because being vicious will somehow magically create the ...
Boarded up homes in Kilbirnie, where work on a planned development was halted. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāLong stories short, the top six things in our political economy around housing, climate and poverty on Wednesday, February 5 are;Housing Minister Chris Bishop yesterday announcedKāinga Ora would be stripped of ...
This week Kiwirail and Auckland Transport were celebrating the completion of the summer rail works that had the network shut or for over a month and the start of electric trains to Pukekohe. First up, here’s parts of the press release about the shutdown works. Passengers boarding trains in Auckland ...
Through its austerity measures, the coalition government has engineered a rise in unemployment in order to reduce inflation while – simultaneously – cracking down harder and harder on the people thrown out of work by its own policies. To that end, Social Development Minister Louise Upston this week added two ...
This year, we've seen a radical, white supremacist government ignoring its Tiriti obligations, refusing to consult with Māori, and even trying to legislatively abrogate te Tiriti o Waitangi. When it was criticised by the Waitangi Tribunal, the government sabotaged that body, replacing its legal and historical experts with corporate shills, ...
Poor old democracy, it really is in a sorry state. It would be easy to put all the blame on the vandals and tyrants presently trashing the White House, but this has been years in the making. It begins with Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan and the spirit of Gordon ...
The new school lunches came in this week, and they were absolutely scrumptious.I had some, and even though Connor said his tasted like “stodge” and gave him a sore tummy, I myself loved it!Look at the photos - I knew Mr Seymour wouldn’t lie when he told us last year:"It ...
The tighter sanctions are modelled on ones used in Britain, which did push people off ‘the dole’, but didn’t increase the number of workers, and which evidence has repeatedly shown don’t work. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāLong stories short, the top six things in our political economy around housing, ...
Catching you up on the morning’s global news and a quick look at the parallels -GLOBALTariffs are backSharemarkets in the US, UK and Europe have “plunged” in response to Trump’s tariffs. And while Mexico has won a one month reprieve, Canada and China will see their respective 25% and 10% ...
This post by Nicolas Reid was originally published on Linked in. It is republished here with permission. Gondolas are often in the news, with manufacturers of ropeway systems proposing them as a modern option for mass transit systems in New Zealand. However, like every next big thing in transport, it’s hard ...
This is a re-post from The Climate BrinkBoth 2023 and 2024 were exceptionally warm years, at just below and above 1.5C relative to preindustrial in the WMO composite of surface temperature records, respectively. While we are still working to assess the full set of drivers of this warmth, it is clear that ...
Hi,I woke up feeling nervous this morning, realising that this weekend Flightless Bird is going to do it’s first ever live show. We’re heading to a sold out (!) show in Seattle to test the format out in front of an audience. If it works, we’ll do more. I want ...
From the United-For-Now States of America comes the thrilling news that a New Zealander may be at the very heart of the current coup. Punching above our weight on the world stage once more! Wait, you may be asking, what New Zealander? I speak of Peter Thiel, made street legal ...
Even Stevens: Over the 33 years between 1990 and 2023 (and allowing for the aberrant 2020 result) the average level of support enjoyed by the Left and Right blocs, at roughly 44.5 percent each, turns out to be, as near as dammit, identical.WORLDWIDE, THE PARTIES of the Left are presented ...
Back in 2023, a "prominent political figure" went on trial for historic sex offences. But we weren't allowed to know who they were or what political party they were "prominent" in, because it might affect the way we voted. At the time, I said that this was untenable; it was ...
I'm going, I'm goingWhere the water tastes like wineI'm going where the water tastes like wineWe can jump in the waterStay drunk all the timeI'm gonna leave this city, got to get awayI'm gonna leave this city, got to get awayAll this fussing and fighting, man, you know I sure ...
Waitangi Day is a time to honour Te Tiriti o Waitangi and stand together for a just and fair Aotearoa. Across the motu, communities are gathering to reflect, kōrero, and take action for a future built on equity and tino rangatiratanga. From dawn ceremonies to whānau-friendly events, there are ...
Subscribe to Mountain Tūī ! Where you too can learn about exciting things from a flying bird! Tweet.Yes - I absolutely suck at marketing. It’s a fact.But first -My question to all readers is:How should I set up the Substack model?It’s been something I’ve been meaning to ask since November ...
Here’s the key news, commentary, reports and debate around Aotearoa’s political economy on politics and in the week to Feb 3:PM Christopher Luxon began 2025’s first day of Parliament last Tuesday by carrying on where left off in 2024, letting National’s junior coalition partner set the political agenda and dragging ...
The PSA have released a survey of 4000 public service workers showing that budget cuts are taking a toll on the wellbeing of public servants and risking the delivery of essential services to New Zealanders. Economists predict that figures released this week will show continued increases in unemployment, potentially reaching ...
The Prime Minister’s speech 10 days or so ago kicked off a flurry of commentary. No one much anywhere near the mainstream (ie excluding Greens supporters) questioned the rhetoric. New Zealand has done woefully poorly on productivity for a long time and we really need better outcomes, and the sorts ...
President Trump on the day he announced tariffs against Mexico, Canada and China, unleashing a shock to supply chains globally that is expected to slow economic growth and increase inflation for most large economies. Photo: Getty ImagesLong stories short, the top six things in our political economy around housing, climate ...
Photo by Towfiqu barbhuiya on UnsplashHere’s what we’re watching in the week to February 9 and beyond in Aotearoa’s political economy around housing, climate and poverty:Monday, February 3Politics: New Zealand Government cabinet meeting usually held early afternoon with post-cabinet news conference possible at 4 pm, although they have not been ...
Trump being Trump, it won’t come as a shock to find that he regards a strong US currency (bolstered by high tariffs on everything made by foreigners) as a sign of America’s virility, and its ability to kick sand in the face of the world. Reality is a tad more ...
A listing of 24 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, January 26, 2025 thru Sat, February 1, 2025. This week's roundup is again published soleley by category. We are still interested in feedback to hone the categorization, so if ...
What seems to be the common theme in the US, NZ, Argentina and places like Italy under their respective rightwing governments is what I think of as “the politics of cruelty.” Hate-mongering, callous indifference in social policy-making, corporate toadying, political bullying, intimidation and punching down on the most vulnerable with ...
If you are confused, check with the sunCarry a compass to help you alongYour feet are going to be on the groundYour head is there to move you aroundSo, stand in the place where you liveSongwriters: Bill Berry / Michael Mills / Michael Stipe / Peter Buck.Hot in the CityYesterday, ...
Shane Jones announced today he would be contracting out his thinking to a smarter younger person.Reclining on his chaise longue with a mouth full of oysters and Kina he told reporters:Clearly I have become a has-been, a palimpsest, an epigone, a bloviating fossil. I find myself saying such things as: ...
Warning: This post contains references to sexual assaultOn Saturday, I spent far too long editing a video on Tim Jago, the ACT Party President and criminal, who has given up his fight for name suppression after 2 years. He voluntarily gave up just in time for what will be a ...
Skeptical Science is partnering with Gigafact to produce fact briefs — bite-sized fact checks of trending claims. This fact brief was written by Sue Bin Park from the Gigafact team in collaboration with members from our team. You can submit claims you think need checking via the tipline. Is global warming ...
Our low-investment, low-wage, migration-led and housing-market-driven political economy has delivered poorer productivity growth than the rest of the OECD, and our performance since Covid has been particularly poor. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāLong stories short, the top six things in our political economy around housing, climate and poverty this ...
..Thanks for reading Frankly Speaking ! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.As far as major government announcements go, a Three Ministers Event is Big. It can signify a major policy development or something has gone Very Well, or an absolute Clusterf**k. When Three Ministers assemble ...
New Zealand First has today introduced a Member’s Bill which would restore decision-making power to local communities regarding the fluoridation of drinking water. The ‘Fluoridation (Referendum) Legislation Bill’ seeks to repeal the Health (Fluoridation of Drinking Water) Amendment Act 2021 that granted centralised authority to the Direct General of Health ...
New Zealand First has introduced a Member’s Bill aimed at preventing banks from refusing their services to businesses because of the current “Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) Framework”. “This Bill ensures fairness and prevents ESG standards from perpetuating woke ideology in the banking sector being driven by unelected, globalist, climate ...
Erica Stanford has reached peak shortsightedness if today’s announcement is anything to go by, picking apart immigration settings piece by piece to the detriment of the New Zealand economy. ...
Our originating document, theTreaty of Waitangi, was signed on February 6, 1840. An agreement between Māori and the British Crown. Initially inked by Ngā Puhi in Waitangi, further signatures were added as it travelled south. The intention was to establish a colony with the cession of sovereignty to the Crown, ...
Te Whatu Ora Chief Executive Margie Apa leaving her job four months early is another symptom of this government’s failure to deliver healthcare for New Zealanders. ...
The Green Party is calling for the Prime Minister to show leadership and be unequivocal about Aotearoa New Zealand’s opposition to a proposal by the US President to remove Palestinians from Gaza. ...
The latest unemployment figures reveal that job losses are hitting Māori and Pacific people especially hard, with Māori unemployment reaching a staggering 9.7% for the December 2024 quarter and Pasifika unemployment reaching 10.5%. ...
Waitangi 2025: Waitangi Day must be community and not politically driven - Shane Jones Our originating document, theTreaty of Waitangi, was signed on February 6, 1840. An agreement between Māori and the British Crown. Initially inked by Ngā Puhi in Waitangi, further signatures were added as it travelled south. ...
Despite being confronted every day with people in genuine need being stopped from accessing emergency housing – National still won’t commit to building more public houses. ...
The Green Party says the Government is giving up on growing the country’s public housing stock, despite overwhelming evidence that we need more affordable houses to solve the housing crisis. ...
Before any thoughts of the New Year and what lies ahead could even be contemplated, New Zealand reeled with the tragedy of Senior Sergeant Lyn Fleming losing her life. For over 38 years she had faithfully served as a front-line Police officer. Working alongside her was Senior Sergeant Adam Ramsay ...
Green Party co-leader Marama Davidson will return to politics at Waitangi on Monday the 3rd of February where she will hold a stand up with fellow co-leader Chlöe Swarbrick. ...
Te Pāti Māori is appalled by the government's blatant mishandling of the school lunch programme. David Seymour’s ‘cost-saving’ measures have left tamariki across Aotearoa with unidentifiable meals, causing distress and outrage among parents and communities alike. “What’s the difference between providing inedible food, and providing no food at all?” Said ...
The Government is doubling down on outdated and volatile fossil fuels, showing how shortsighted and destructive their policies are for working New Zealanders. ...
Green Party MP Steve Abel this morning joined Coromandel locals in Waihi to condemn new mining plans announced by Shane Jones in the pit of the town’s Australian-owned Gold mine. ...
The Green Party is calling on the Government to strengthen its just-announced 2030-2035 Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) under the Paris Agreement and address its woeful lack of commitment to climate security. ...
Today marks a historic moment for Taranaki iwi with the passing of the Te Pire Whakatupua mō Te Kāhui Tupua/Taranaki Maunga Collective Redress Bill in Parliament. "Today, we stand together as descendants of Taranaki, and our tūpuna, Taranaki Maunga, is now formally acknowledged by the law as a living tūpuna. ...
Labour is relieved to see Children’s Minister Karen Chhour has woken up to reality and reversed her government’s terrible decisions to cut funding from frontline service providers – temporarily. ...
It is the first week of David Seymour’s school lunch programme and already social media reports are circulating of revolting meals, late deliveries, and mislabelled packaging. ...
The Green Party says that with no-cause evictions returning from today, the move to allow landlords to end tenancies without reason plunges renters, and particularly families who rent, into insecurity and stress. ...
The Government’s move to increase speed limits substantially on dozens of stretches of rural and often undivided highways will result in more serious harm. ...
In her first announcement as Economic Growth Minister, Nicola Willis chose to loosen restrictions for digital nomads from other countries, rather than focus on everyday Kiwis. ...
The Government’s commitment to get New Zealand’s roads back on track is delivering strong results, with around 98 per cent of potholes on state highways repaired within 24 hours of identification every month since targets were introduced, Transport Minister Chris Bishop says. “Increasing productivity to help rebuild our economy is ...
The former Cadbury factory will be the site of the Inpatient Building for the new Dunedin Hospital and Health Minister Simeon Brown says actions have been taken to get the cost overruns under control. “Today I am giving the people of Dunedin certainty that we will build the new Dunedin ...
From today, Plunket in Whāngarei will be offering childhood immunisations – the first of up to 27 sites nationwide, Health Minister Simeon Brown says. The investment of $1 million into the pilot, announced in October 2024, was made possible due to the Government’s record $16.68 billion investment in health. It ...
New Zealand’s strong commitment to the rights of disabled people has continued with the response to an important United Nations report, Disability Issues Minister Louise Upston has announced. Of the 63 concluding observations of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD), 47 will be progressed ...
Resources Minister Shane Jones has launched New Zealand’s national Minerals Strategy and Critical Minerals List, documents that lay a strategic and enduring path for the mineral sector, with the aim of doubling exports to $3 billion by 2035. Mr Jones released the documents, which present the Coalition Government’s transformative vision ...
Firstly I want to thank OceanaGold for hosting our event today. Your operation at Waihi is impressive. I want to acknowledge local MP Scott Simpson, local government dignitaries, community stakeholders and all of you who have gathered here today. It’s a privilege to welcome you to the launch of the ...
Racing Minister, Winston Peters has announced the Government is preparing public consultation on GST policy proposals which would make the New Zealand racing industry more competitive. “The racing industry makes an important economic contribution. New Zealand thoroughbreds are in demand overseas as racehorses and for breeding. The domestic thoroughbred industry ...
Business confidence remains very high and shows the economy is on track to improve, Economic Growth Minister Nicola Willis says. “The latest ANZ Business Outlook survey, released yesterday, shows business confidence and expected own activity are ‘still both very high’.” The survey reports business confidence fell eight points to +54 ...
Enabling works have begun this week on an expanded radiology unit at Hawke’s Bay Fallen Soldiers’ Memorial Hospital which will double CT scanning capacity in Hawke’s Bay to ensure more locals can benefit from access to timely, quality healthcare, Health Minister Simeon Brown says. This investment of $29.3m in the ...
The Government has today announced New Zealand’s second international climate target under the Paris Agreement, Climate Change Minister Simon Watts says. New Zealand will reduce emissions by 51 to 55 per cent compared to 2005 levels, by 2035. “We have worked hard to set a target that is both ambitious ...
Nine years of negotiations between the Crown and iwi of Taranaki have concluded following Te Pire Whakatupua mō Te Kāhui Tupua/the Taranaki Maunga Collective Redress Bill passing its third reading in Parliament today, Treaty Negotiations Minister Paul Goldsmith says. “This Bill addresses the historical grievances endured by the eight iwi ...
As schools start back for 2025, there will be a relentless focus on teaching the basics brilliantly so all Kiwi kids grow up with the knowledge, skills and competencies needed to grow the New Zealand of the future, Education Minister Erica Stanford says. “A world-leading education system is a key ...
Housing Minister Chris Bishop and Associate Agriculture Minister Mark Patterson have welcomed Kāinga Ora’s decision to re-open its tender for carpets to allow wool carpet suppliers to bid. “In 2024 Kāinga Ora issued requests for tender (RFTs) seeking bids from suppliers to carpet their properties,” Mr Bishop says. “As part ...
Associate Education Minister David Seymour has today visited Otahuhu College where the new school lunch programme has served up healthy lunches to students in the first days of the school year. “As schools open in 2025, the programme will deliver nutritious meals to around 242,000 students, every school day. On ...
Minister for Children Karen Chhour has intervened in Oranga Tamariki’s review of social service provider contracts to ensure Barnardos can continue to deliver its 0800 What’s Up hotline. “When I found out about the potential impact to this service, I asked Oranga Tamariki for an explanation. Based on the information ...
A bill to make revenue collection on imported and exported goods fairer and more effective had its first reading in Parliament, Customs Minister Casey Costello said today. “The Customs (Levies and Other Matters) Amendment Bill modernises the way in which Customs can recover the costs of services that are needed ...
Minister of Internal Affairs Brooke van Velden says the Department of Internal Affairs [the Department] has achieved significant progress in completing applications for New Zealand citizenship. “December 2024 saw the Department complete 5,661 citizenship applications, the most for any month in 2024. This is a 54 per cent increase compared ...
Reversals to Labour’s blanket speed limit reductions begin tonight and will be in place by 1 July, says Minister of Transport Chris Bishop. “The previous government was obsessed with slowing New Zealanders down by imposing illogical and untargeted speed limit reductions on state highways and local roads. “National campaigned on ...
Finance Minister Nicola Willis has announced Budget 2025 – the Growth Budget - will be delivered on Thursday 22 May. “This year’s Budget will drive forward the Government’s plan to grow our economy to improve the incomes of New Zealanders now and in the years ahead. “Budget 2025 will build ...
For the Government, 2025 will bring a relentless focus on unleashing the growth we need to lift incomes, strengthen local businesses and create opportunity. Prime Minister Christopher Luxon today laid out the Government’s growth agenda in his Statement to Parliament. “Just over a year ago this Government was elected by ...
Associate Education Minister David Seymour welcomes students back to school with a call to raise attendance from last year. “The Government encourages all students to attend school every day because there is a clear connection between being present at school and setting yourself up for a bright future,” says Mr ...
The Government is relaxing visitor visa requirements to allow tourists to work remotely while visiting New Zealand, Economic Growth Minister Nicola Willis, Immigration Minister Erica Stanford and Tourism Minister Louise Upston say. “The change is part of the Government’s plan to unlock New Zealand’s potential by shifting the country onto ...
The opening of Kāinga Ora’s development of 134 homes in Epuni, Lower Hutt will provide much-needed social housing for Hutt families, Housing Minister Chris Bishop says. “I’ve been a strong advocate for social housing on Kāinga Ora’s Epuni site ever since the old earthquake-prone housing was demolished in 2015. I ...
Trade and Investment Minister Todd McClay will travel to Australia today for meetings with Australian Trade Minister, Senator Don Farrell, and the Australia New Zealand Leadership Forum (ANZLF). Mr McClay recently hosted Minister Farrell in Rotorua for the annual Closer Economic Relations (CER) Trade Ministers’ meeting, where ANZLF presented on ...
A new monthly podiatry clinic has been launched today in Wairoa and will bring a much-needed service closer to home for the Wairoa community, Health Minister Simeon Brown says.“Health New Zealand has been successful in securing a podiatrist until the end of June this year to meet the needs of ...
The Judicial Conduct Commissioner has recommended a Judicial Conduct Panel be established to inquire into and report on the alleged conduct of acting District Court Judge Ema Aitken in an incident last November, Attorney-General Judith Collins said today. “I referred the matter of Judge Aitken’s alleged conduct during an incident ...
Students who need extra help with maths are set to benefit from a targeted acceleration programme that will give them more confidence in the classroom, Education Minister Erica Stanford says. “Last year, significant numbers of students did not meet the foundational literacy and numeracy level required to gain NCEA. To ...
Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters has announced three new diplomatic appointments. “Our diplomats play an important role in ensuring New Zealand’s interests are maintained and enhanced across the world,” Mr Peters says. “It is a pleasure to announce the appointment of these senior diplomats from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and ...
Ki te kahore he whakakitenga, ka ngaro te Iwi – without a vision, the people will perish. The Government has achieved its target to reduce the number of households in emergency housing motels by 75 per cent five years early, Associate Housing Minister Tama Potaka says. The number of households ...
The opening of Palmerston North’s biggest social housing development will have a significant impact for whānau in need of safe, warm, dry housing, Associate Housing Minister Tama Potaka says. The minister visited the development today at North Street where a total of 50 two, three, and four-bedroom homes plus a ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters has announced the new membership of the Public Advisory Committee on Disarmament and Arms Control (PACDAC), who will serve for a three-year term. “The Committee brings together wide-ranging expertise relevant to disarmament. We have made six new appointments to the Committee and reappointed two existing members ...
Ka nui te mihi kia koutou. Kia ora, good morning, talofa, malo e lelei, bula vinaka, da jia hao, namaste, sat sri akal, assalamu alaikum. It’s so great to be here and I’m ready and pumped for 2025. Can I start by acknowledging: Simon Bridges – CEO of the Auckland ...
The Government has unveiled a bold new initiative to position New Zealand as a premier destination for foreign direct investment (FDI) that will create higher paying jobs and grow the economy. “Invest New Zealand will streamline the investment process and provide tailored support to foreign investors, to increase capital investment ...
Science, Innovation and Technology Minister Judith Collins today announced the largest reset of the New Zealand science system in more than 30 years with reforms which will boost the economy and benefit the sector. “The reforms will maximise the value of the $1.2 billion in government funding that goes into ...
Turbocharging New Zealand’s economic growth is the key to brighter days ahead for all Kiwis, Prime Minister Christopher Luxon says. In the Prime Minister’s State of the Nation Speech in Auckland today, Christopher Luxon laid out the path to the prosperity that will affect all aspects of New Zealanders’ lives. ...
The latest set of accounts show the Government has successfully checked the runaway growth of public spending, Finance Minister Nicola Willis says. “In the previous government’s final five months in office, public spending was almost 10 per cent higher than for the same period the previous year. “That is completely ...
The Government’s welfare reforms are delivering results with the number of people moving off benefits into work increasing year-on-year for six straight months. “There are positive signs that our welfare reset and the return consequences for job seekers who don't fulfil their obligations to prepare for or find a job ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Bronwyn Orr, Veterinarian, Southern Cross University Mitchell Orr/Unsplash Late last year, rumours swirled online that HomeSafeID, a private Australian pet microchip registry, had stopped operating. On Feburary 5 2025, a notice appeared on the HomeSafeID website, ostensibly from the site’s ...
The government is taking far too long to allocate the 1500 social homes it announced nine months ago and the hold up is stalling desperately-needed homes, says a community housing provider. ...
The media is rife with headlines about people killing animals for kicks. Please don’t.In memory of an Auckland swan, a Bay of Plenty octopus and a Taranaki striped marlin.Imagine this. It’s 7.15am. You’re paddling around on a serene lake with your sweetheart. It seems likely that she’ll give ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra US President Donald Trump has agreed to “consider” exempting Australia from the 25% tariff he has imposed on imports of steel and aluminium to the US. Trump gave the undertaking during a wide-ranging 40-minute ...
Pacific Media Watch Israeli police have confiscated hundreds of books with Palestinian titles or flags without understanding their contents in a draconian raid on a Palestinian educational bookshop in occupied East Jerusalem, say eyewitnesses. More details have emerged on the Israeli police raid on a popular bookstore in occupied East ...
By Caleb Fotheringham, RNZ Pacific journalist China and the Cook Islands’ relationship “should not be disrupted or restrained by any third party”, says Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Guo Jiakun, as opposition leaders in Rarotonga express a loss of confidence in Prime Minister Mark Brown. In response to questions from the ...
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Some lessons for progressives in NZ here too.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/even-if-trump-loses-big-the-anger-will-remain-heres-how-the-left-can-address-it/2016/10/14/c848c4b0-8f02-11e6-9c52-0b10449e33c4_story.html?hpid=hp_no-name_opinion-card-e%3Ahomepage%2Fstory&utm_term=.1796d561ad6f
That piece is about what the establishment can do by way of self preservation. I mean, okay, depending on how you define ‘progressive’ it might contain something by way of a lesson for progressives in NZ.
Or does it merely just add highlighter pen to what should already have been some pretty obvious writing on the wall for the establishment’s liberal left? That’s what I’d pick it to amount to. A kinda “Gadzooks! This triangulation and third way shit really is dead on its feet. Oh noes, what’s we going to do?”
Its a beautiful morning – lets try to be positive today huh kids?
As your mentor Paul Henry says “welcome to paradise.”
Indeed. Having travelled a lot of the world I can testify that we do indeed live in a beautiful place.
That is a bit of a shallow measure, typical of non-thinkers attracted to shallow right wing soundbites
As one who has lived in paradise 1950 though to paradise 2016 I tend to agree.
It is just we have different problems to cope with today.
Remember 6 O’clock closing, Nordies budget, Holyoakes guff, separate traffic cops from regular cops etc etc.
And I was reading an article a year or two back that made the argument that we should split them apart again as they use different skill sets. Although that article seems to be more concerned with improving the image that the police have which I think would come more from them being better police.
Speaking of improving the image of the police, this doesn’t look good:
http://www.newshub.co.nz/nznews/police-shooting-of-dog-traumatises-auckland-family-2016101617
Disturbing, Did the police know it was fake before the raid, what if it was a toddler running around with a toy gun. with that extra 30 sec’s to a minute to have the dog under control make that much difference, maybe they could have got there earlier if they are in such a hurry or was the young fella legging it over the fence. Not a good look again for the department.
One would assume the police were initially taking it the gun was real.
Going off what was reported, the dog was in a fenced off area. The police claim they were at risk of attack.
Therefore, for the dog to put the officers at risk, it must of either got out of the enclosed area (which wasn’t reported) or the police entered into the enclosed area (knowing an irate dog lay within, hence putting themselves at risk) while ignoring pleas by the young girl to allow her to further constrain the dog.
Can you keep us updated on this, very sad about the dog and keen to learn more on the so-called fake pistol or was it a rifle, maybe air pistol which are not illegal per say, I know they are using gun (what terminology). Ta
I’m surprised no political party has mentioned splitting the cops and the traffic cops, I reckon it’d be a vote winner
/facepalm
I mean I am curious as to why no political party has mentioned going back to the old system of having separate, dedicated traffic cops as I don’t think its a good look having police sitting on the side of the road with a speed camera
I’d much rather see traffic cops patrolling the highways and dealing with traffic offences and let the police deal with everything else
good grief, we agree on something.
i need a drink 🙂
Well you’re intelligent so of course you’d agree with me 🙂
I’m positive our PM compared working as a junior doctor with working for Merrill lynch this morning on breakfast, similar working conditions, similar stresses…
similar motivations for working those long hours too. Love of people vs love of money…
Did the doctor also earn 50 million speculating on foreign currency and earn the name “smiling assassin”, for his cheerfulness while putting people out of work like Key’s days at Merrill?
I doubt Merrill Lynch has saved a life. These doctors on the other hand…
A beautiful day ….. Now which incompetent natz is going to utter some Bullshit and be the first on a Monday to fuck it up?…. ShonKey, Joyce, parata, Smith, collins, English.. … The list seems endless
Ah, the Cult of Positivity raises its ugly head.
Just ask any disabled person about the cult of positivity.
I mean being positive is not going to magically turn stairs, into a ramp…. No matter how positive you get.
Yeah positive feels good.
I’m positive we have a creepy P.M, and I’m positive we have a government full of incompetent ministers.
I’m very positive that this type of corporate capitalism is destroying society.
Yeah, feels good to be positive knowing, the Tories are the scum we know them to be.
Go being positive!
“Origin and Etymology of huh
imitative of a grunt”
From the oh shit files.
This will help!!
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/politics/news/article.cfm?c_id=280&objectid=11730063
Women’s refuges, church agencies and other community groups will soon have to hand over their client details to the Government in return for funding.
Ministry of Social Development (MSD) deputy chief executive Murray Edridge says all 823 agencies funded by the ministry’s $330 million Community Investment arm will have to provide client details for funding by next July.
In the herald this am
Well now, wouldn’t Paula Bennett have a ball. Every time someone criticised her she could demand to see their file and publicly discredit them for perceived misdemeanours in the past.
Apart from that, it’s an insult to all the social groups who have had to pick up the work the government is no longer supporting – turning these organisations into the whipping boys and girls in order to take the heat off themselves?
No surprises here, just more contempt from this Government to make vulnerable people’s lives more shitty. How much more does this Government have to do with its punitive, controlling and vindictive attitude towards unfortunate people, to make themselves feel satisfied and happy? Extermination of them all – would they like that? I see a Police State on the horizon and rights and freedoms removed from the political landscape in the near future. Someone on this site keeps on about a revolution – not us, we are too feeble and ignorant to do anything like that. We are sleepwalking right into misery in this country and the 1% will just love that.
Although true I’m pretty sure that they won’t like the inevitable result. And they always act so surprised when they find out that their actions have consequences.
According to Winston Peters, the two highest categories of immigrants coming into NZ are those that are pre-working age and those aged 55 to 60.
With our aging population and related fiscal pressure on our superannuation, shouldn’t the emphasis be on the young?
There are few jobs for immigrants as well as locals. We can get migrants here, but we don’t have a decent job for them in our low wage economy. Same for the 1 in 4 Kiwis that have to work overseas. Adding more people just increases the problem.
So that leaves the elderly and children who want to live here. Not only that, but I think people are coming into NZ and then leaving on other passports. So it appears there are more people here, but NZ or at least Auckland, is emptying again.
It’s not rocket science, even with all the fake government Stats, migrants and Kiwis need real jobs. If they are not here and with the lack of innovation and diversification, then there is no future and people will relocate for work.
As with many things, immigration is about getting the balance right.
We often hear talk of balancing the skills requirement and numbers coming in, but little on the age balance.
Immigration can be utilized to help offset our aging population.
I’m with Winston, immigration should only be used as a stop-gap measure. Our skill requirements should be met at home.
Immigration shouldn’t be used to lower incomes or NZ work practice standards.
Numbers coming in are currently far too high. Infrastructure is failing to cope.
And the high number of older immigrants is putting pressure on the health system while putting the sustainability of our superannuation at further risk.
Therefore, when it comes to immigration, it’s clear to see the Government has got the balance all wrong.
Denis O’Rourke introduced a very good N.Z.F. policy of pro rata super where the Government pays super proportionate to the amount of time one spends of their career working in N.Z. If you spent half your 40 years working here then you get 50% of what a New Zealander who did their entire career here.
It would save taxpayers a few dollars, but it overlooks the health burden a number pose. Moreover, the emphasis on the young we require.
Have a look at other N.Z.F. policies such as the recently released tertiary education policy. N.Z.F are not exclusively a party for the old any more.
And from the ODT
https://www.odt.co.nz/news/dunedin/migrants-housed-illegally
Go Bus has been accused of exploitation after it illegally housed migrant workers in an office building at its Dunedin depot early last year.
The Tramways Union, which represents workers at the site, said the housing of workers, believed to be Filipinos, at the depot was part of a wider problem where Go Bus was employing foreign workers to keep wages low.
The workers were moved after the Dunedin City Council, which owns the building, informed Go Bus it was illegal under the district plan for people to live in commercial premises “due to fire risk and other safety factors. It would have been unpleasant,” council property manager Kevin Taylor said of the suitability of the building as worker accommodation.
Jack Tame to John Key: ‘Would you want a junior doctor working on you after 12 days?’
Apparently conditions have changed over the last 30 or 40 years and young lawyers also work long hours.
To those who say this is common practice world wide I say “Multiple wrongs do not make it right” … another field for NZ to lead the world. 12 hour shifts are fine but only as long as one has time to recuperate after three or four days.
I presume you don’t literally mean 3 or 4 days off, rather that a 12 shift is not followed by another the next day. That the next day shift would be a standard 8 hour shift.
There are plenty of jobs/vocations that require people to do two or three 12 hour days in a row. Seemingly without any serious problems. I have had these type of jobs in the past.
I appreciate that the default position of Standardnistas is always to support strikers. However, I am a bit surprised at this strike given the shift by the DHB’s in the current negotiations.
Some years ago Junior doctors (led by Deborah Powell who seems to have been the union leader for about two decades) went on strike to get better conditions and pay. Most people were pretty sympathetic to their cause, since some of the days were very long indeed, way beyond 12 hours. And there was a big increase in pay so that the compulsory residency years in hospital have become quite well paid, around $100,000 a year I think, when all the shift work is taken into account
At that time the junior doctors essentially got what they wanted, at least as I recall it. Presumably what they got has applied through to the present. So why has this strike arisen?
Why are the conditions now terrible, but were OK when the junior doctors accepted them, and not so many years ago? Did they think they were hard done by when they accepted the offer of some years ago?
I do appreciate there have been annual negotiations each year on pay, and presumably conditions.
Incidentally I suspect not all junior doctors will actually go on strike.
OK, firstly hours and conditions creep, especially in highly critical areas that are understaffed: someone stays ten minutes over in an incident, and without careful and bastardy behaviour it can become the norm. Then ten minutes gets stretched, then it gets formalised.
I’ve done twelve or thirteen hour shifts myself. As an extension to a regular day, they’re bad. On a rotating 24hr roster, they’re fucking murder. I’d say that three calendar days off after a twelve hour night shift should be the minimum, just to teach HR to not do it again.
Doctors are paid a lot, but your argument reminds me of the ports of auckland bullshit around salaries. Even if doctors didn’t have larger student loans to pay (thanks for that) it should be illegal to sell your good health. We don’t allow it with steriod abuse, we don’t allow people to take cuts in workplace safety in exchange for a pay bump, why do we expect doctors to operate, literally, while fatigued for long hours?
So very very true – and let’s sheet this problem right back to where it starts – consistent underfunding of our DHB’s by central government. There should be no surplus while we cannot employ sufficient staff in our hospitals and pay them adequately. We might also have a look at the obscene levels of renumeration our DHB CEO’s are granting themselves.
Was your comment that Deborah Powell had been the union leader for 20 odd years meant as a criticism? Perhaps she is dedicated to her cause, just as Helen Kelly had been involved with union concerns for many years. I guess some farmers have been involved with Federated Farmers for years, or pilots with their union, or business people with their “union”.
You’re assuming that the doctors were OK with them when they accepted them then rather than that they accepted those terms then understanding that they were the best that they were going to get then and that they would ask for more at the next negotiations.
Hell, if we followed your prescribed logic we’d still have slavery. After all, the slaves were Ok with the conditions then weren’t they?
Have they though? Because from what I’ve been hearing/reading things have been getting worse over the last few years of this governments attacks on public services.
No, it’s pretty obvious that you don’t appreciate it at all.
Why are the conditions now terrible, but were OK when the junior doctors accepted them, and not so many years ago?
Yeah, funnily enough, employers also come to the table with demands, even though they accepted the last agreement without those demands in it. What an impenetrable mystery! Actually, I’m sure you don’t find it as mystifying as you make out.
Actually Wayne should thank his lucky stars he’s on the pig’s back and stop sniping at real workers in our society. We should really be looking at stopping ex parliamentarian perks, and spending it somewhere useful.
I can understand progressive annual adjustments to agreements.
However, Deborah Powell negotiated the last junior doctors agreement, which as I noted was not that many years ago.
She now says how terrible things are, but these terrible conditions are presumably the ones she previously agreed to.
Now I don’t know the actual details of the agreements, there have been too many claims and counterclaims on the media to know the actual status of the negotiations. Certainly two weeks ago listening to the Morning Report interviews of the DHB rep, and to Deborah Russell, they seemed not to even agree what was actually in dispute, or at least did not agree to a common set of facts.
But I do know that Deborah Russell always says that all the conditions she has to negotiate are terrible and will lead to deaths. So presumably when she has negotiated in the past, she has agreed to hospital deaths due to the terrible working conditions she has agreed to.
… and we should still be sending children up chimneys because they accepted it in the nineteenth century and change should take place only on geological time scales. So says the fossil.
The existing junior doctors agreement was negotiated just a few years ago.
Probably under the hellhole neo-liberal conditions that were such a prominent feature of the Helen Clark government.
“change should take place only on geological time scales”
“Buuut Hilary.”
How would you feel about being operated on in A&E by a doctor so sleep-deprived they were hallucinating?
Of course in your case it would be a paleontologist.
“I have had these type of jobs in the past.” Are you seriously trying to conflate what you do (office, sitting on your arse, drinking coffee all day) with truck drivers & cleaners & doctors? No wonder you guys don’t take workers rights seriously!
He takes workers’ rights seriously – he thinks there are far too many of them.
Do you think that an office job is the only style of job I have done?
Well in the spirit of not trying to better oneself or your conditions why did you ever stop being a paperboy? Didn’t you find the conditions acceptable when you first began under the existing conditions?
Do we need a Criminal Cases Review Commission?
In an exclusive interview on The Nation, Justice William Young said courts could benefit from having a Criminal Cases Review Commission, like that established in the UK.
Despite high-level support, the Government has ruled out a commission in New Zealand.
http://www.newshub.co.nz/tvshows/thenation/calls-for-new-body-to-end-wrongful-convictions-2016101509
http://www.newshub.co.nz/nznews/supreme-court-judge-calls-for-criminal-review-body-2016101510
Yes we should have a criminal cases review.
We also need a prosecutorial misconduct review
And a police misconduct review (that is not the disfunctional one we have now!)
Improved oversight in those areas would be of benefit.
Just following on from the Jill Stein, article yesterday. Apparently she is not the only one worried about Clinton starting a war.
John Pilger: Why Hillary Clinton Is More Dangerous Than Donald Trump
https://newmatilda.com/2016/03/23/john-pilger-why-hillary-clinton-is-more-dangerous-than-donald-trump/
“Why Hillary Clinton Is More Dangerous Than Donald Trump”
Thanks save nz.
Of course, Obama never had the guts or the werewithal to stand up to the wishes of the Deep State on these issues.
But I do credit him with holding back a full scale US invasion of Syria which many neocons wanted – and still want.
So pilger also prefers a candidate who wants to make it policy to murder innocent civilians by drone simply because they’re related to suspected terrorists, and wants to throw out the nuclear non-proliferation treaty.
Yeah, nah. He hasn’t thought it through.
For my money the Jill Stein interview that has elicited the Pilger link was making the very good point that when we’re reduced to choosing the lesser of two evils, then our choices are being made somewhere down the path to hell.
That was, in my mind, worthy of discussion/debate.
And it’s a crying fucking shame that it got fucked by a piece of exaggeration (she didn’t actually say a vote for Clinton would result in war with Russia, she said it could result in war with Russia – a reasonable analysis) and a nose dive into the tired old shit about which one of the two despicable presidential candidates was the more despicable, vile and dangerous.
Neither should be allowed to be in office. One of them will be. We’re about to be in the shit unless unreported, the broader left in the US has got its shit together and is ready to confront whoever becomes El Presidente from day one of their term.
I just hope to fuck the discussion in the US is a bit more mature than the school yard point scoring nyah, nyah, nyah nyah nyah bullshit that’s been sprayed over this site of late.
We’re already in the shit.
The question is whether Clinton will lead to significantly worse shit than Trump, or whether bother of them are any worse than the current shit we’re in.
Neither are ideal for office. It’s a question as to whether the office itself should even exist. But the current shitpool we’re in is set to get some different shit in it. It might be better shit (but I doubt it). One of the prospective new shits might look a bit greener than the other, or more orange, but does that make it better shit or worse shit? And will it blend in well with the current shit, or will the two combine to make some really manky shit? Can we keep swimming in the new shit, or will we finally drown in shit?
I think I might call this The shitpool model of democratic decisionmaking.
Let me put it another way.
How long are we going to stare at shit saying “It’s shit” and arguing over how much worse the shit might become, or not become, before we get bored staring at shit, stating the fucking obvious about shit, how it looks, smells and feels like shit; before we lift our eyes to take in something else and bend our minds to ways in how that something else might be realised? Or give some thought to how we might neutralise or ameliorate the effects of the shit that, yes, we know about but are no longer intently focused on because, I dunno, maybe we’ve grown the fuck up and aren’t so taken by the prospect of dabbling in other peoples’ potties any more?
Hey, if you can think of a way out of the shit, I’m all ears. But until then, I’d prefer the least stinky shit to swim in that is possible.
The immediate problem is the incoming bucket of shit – which one will it be? Will it make the pool worse, because for now we’re stuck in it.
Your preference is fine. But seeing as how (presumably) you don’t get to cast a vote in the US elections and (presumably) have no impact on any left activism in the US, then your preference can only be just that. The passive wish of a by stander who hopes to be not too adversely impacted by whatever goes down.
Meanwhile, we could have been having more meaningful or productive discussions on what was what US wise, that were situated somewhere beyond the tedious Clinton/Trump flavoured poop throwing contest that the campaign seems to have unleashed on this site.
We are all bystanders aren’t we and therefore any discussion on the whys and wherefors of the US is really just for the benefit of our intellectual stimulation isn’t it.
There has been the potential to springboard into discussions that might have led to a better understandings on a number of fronts, but when everything nosedives into Clinton/Trump shitsmear…
Throwaway examples off the top of my head.
1.The msm is partisan and would have been against whoever or whatever was positioning itself against the status quo or establishment. It happened with the SNP during the independence campaign, to Corbyn, to Sanders…so Trump is correct to say there’s a bias and whatever. That’s not saying that Trump shouldn’t be hung, drawn and quartered. But it might be questioning what is being glossed over with regards Clinton.
2. The reality of abuse and power that’s suddenly in every living room because Trump is a valuable discussion. I’d hate to see it fade after the election but fear it will. Y’know? Trump will be ‘the bad apple’ – the exception to the rule etc and the cozy world of entitlement will get back to it’s default and invisible setting again.
3. Policy? Beyond soundbites and bullshit, I can’t say I’ve much of an idea about much actual policy and what its impact might be. Yes, there’s Syria and woefully inadequate action on CC that I get or am aware of.
4. The friction between a swathe of the broader left and the liberal establishment left and the utter disconnect of the latter from swathes of the population across western (so-called) social democracies.
5. There’s probably a 5 and a 6 and whatever. You get the picture. But it seems all the discussions and debates or disagreements, yeah…potty time.
Actually Jill Stein said that Clinton’s actions could lead to NUCLEAR war with Russia.
I thought I was being quite reserved in how I interpreted Stein’s comments.
ffs CV. The important word – the one you threw away in your haste to get all wavy armed was could.
Everybody knows that Clinton has spouted shit about having a no-fly zone. And everybody knows what that’d likely entail…which is why she probably won’t get her way (assuming she hasn’t already changed her mind through taking a reality check).
And sure, even if there’s no ‘no-fly’ zone, I’m pretty sure a Clinton administration will find 1001 other stupid and highly risky ways to impress on Russia that the US means business and means to rule.
You weren’t reserved on how you interpretated Steins comments – you misrepresented them, and worse,you obliterated the far more important message she was imparting with all your pointless fucking arm waving.
Well people could have read past the title of my post to read the exact quotation from Stein which I included for everyone to see.
But since you raised this point, and have returned to it, I’ve gone back to edit the title of my post to
“Jill Stein: a Clinton Presidency could mean nuclear war with Russia”
which exactly reflects what the Green Candidate said. You may think this reflects a great improvement now that it doesn’t “misrepresent” what Stein said.
Pretty sure the US deliberately bombed that Syrian military outpost in Eastern Syria killing over 80 Syrian soldiers (final death toll, initial death toll was ~62) as well as killing a few Russian military advisors (reading between the lines) during up to an hour of aerial bombing.
So don’t over estimate the level of common sense and cool headedness in the Pentagon at the moment.
Pretty sure??? Is their evidence you can quote?
I’m pretty sure they deliberately bombed the position as well.
I just don’t know whether they thought it was an Isis position or a Syrian one when they decided to bomb it.
I’d agree those bombing runs were probably deliberate. And I’d say the risk of dead Syrian army regulars escalating into a confrontation with Russia was about 5/8ths of zero. Totally different ball game to a direct attack on Russian military.
And yes, I know Turkey got away with it, but then, if Russia had retaliated militarily, they’d have found themselves at war with NATO. Who knows? Maybe the whole Turkish downing of a Russian bomber was to gauge Russian reactions?
US and Russia are working together in Syria, both Asad and Isis are losing every day, and the EU having to deal with a few refugees, like wtf, who cares.
Lets run it by. Should Asad win, more than half of all Syriams want him gone, or worse. Isis would be gone. So why would the US waste time on Russia, especially since Russia for the most part is stable, and eventually will be a muslim nation, so Putin is just create a legacy, not a good one.
Syria is what happens when both Asad and Isis are loathed by the world.
The US has never ,in it’s eye’s, wasted time on Russia. It is paranoid on Russia. They have shat on Russia at every opportunity since Roosevelt died.
USSR was its own karma. AS for post wall. Russia weakness in grafting on the profit motive, meant going straight to a few rent seeking oligarchs, was its own decision. Russia has China, the Artic, Islam and Europe, each requires a different strategy, its past, present and future are all different. So of course the world needs Putin in charge, not only to stablize, or to take potshots at, but to hold back Islam entering Europe, provide a backdoor to moderate China, to burn off oil adventures in the Arctic, the EU helps by being a incentive to keep a militrary up to scratch, Ukraine would be good fit to keep Russia Christian…
Look Russia needs all the enemies it can get, since nobody wants to invade, climate change will decimate it in a hundred years.
There’s some truth in that, some on the Left anticipated a thawing after the war – but Russia had cheerfully allied with Hitler before WWII – they or at least their leadership were by no means innocent.
There’s an interesting parallel with the end of the Cold War – when, given the absence of a credible enemy there was some expectation of a universal move to moderate centrism. I imagine the same forces that drove the US remorselessly to the Right are to blame for both events.
Trump is merely symptomatic of this – the US Right are now so extreme they can no longer find anyone credible to represent them. The pendulum cannot move indefinitely in the same direction.
“They have shat on Russia at every opportunity since Roosevelt died.”
Winston Churchill could see what was coming, and felt Roosevelt did not fully comprehend that all the West was doing was replacing one madman (Hitler) with another (Stalin).
Churchill was proven correct.
To say the US was paranoid with Russia (USSR), you would also have to say Russia (USSR) was paranoid with the USA.
A question…would you rather that the USSR was the dominant world power or the USA?
I say the USSR because if they had “won the cold war” there would have been no break up of the USSR…
Assad would win any internationally monitored election by a landslide. 60% plus of the votes, at a guess.
Asad headed a dictatorial state, they always had massive majorities, duh.
So 40% living under a new syria, all with network access gathering intel for the next civil war. No. No nation could survive with such poor weak leadership like Asad. A nation that does not fear ts population isnt long for overthrow. In a time of pre internet the terrorizing dicator held the upper hand. Remember Bush juniors axis of evil, its was just the report of the inevitable overthrow of dictators by network enhanced peoples. Syria was just unfortuae in being a first mover and has to learn how to threaten its elites properly, i.e midle classes rule.
Trouble at mill.
Of course John Pilger would think that.
He has opposed just about everything the US has done for decades, including opposing the international effort to get Iraq out of Kuwait in 1990. I guess he is also opposed to the anti-ISIS coalition. I suspect Jill Stein would be of the same persuasion. Pilger makes Robert Fisk look like a moderate.
Now if that is your benchmark, fine, but in my view it does not define Clinton as a warmonger, unless for instance you think resisting ISIS makes one a warmonger. On that basis, most if not all, western and other leaders are warmongers since the anti-ISIS coalition has about 60 countries in it (including Russia).
maybe the US should not have signalled to Saddam that it would look the other way if Iraq moved against Kuwait.
If you think about it real hard, you might be able to figure out why blaming the US for Saddam Hussein ordering the invasion of Kuwait is completely moronic. This may come as a great shock, but not everything bad that happens in the world is the work of the US government.
Wayne. Iraq and Kuwait. You’ve heard of the road to Basra, yes? A huge military and civilian convoy heading out of Kuwait that was bombed to shit for no fucking good reason at all. Oh yeah. And the non-existent babies in incubators that weren’t actually thrown out of hospital windows by Iraqi troops that was used as a pretext to go all gung ho on the situation….
Syria. ISIS and Al Nusra, or whatever name change either adopts, are being directly funded by both the UK and the US through the ‘white helmets’. The Syrian government, with the aid of Russia (that it requested) is resisting ISIS and AL Nusra. Oddly, ‘our’ media says that makes the Syrian government and Russia the (irredeemable) bad guys. Go figure.
Same goes for the peoples in Rojava. Branded as terrorists, yet on the front line in the war against religious extremism.
And Turkey? Who gives save haven to Al Nusra and others while bombing the crap out of any and all Kurds? Good guys.
Saudi Arabia? Bombing the crap out of Yemen and funding every ‘religious’ lunatic in the middle east? Good guyss.
Same goes for Qatar. Good guys.
And Bahrain. “US resuming arms sales” Sept 2015
http://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-resuming-arms-sales-to-bahrains-military-1435618872
Meanwhile in Mosul 1.2 million civilians face death from coalition bombing,a factor of 4 greater then aleppo.
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-37674693
This makes sense. A horrible sense, but still.
Militants have banned civilians from leaving the city have set up checkpoints on outwards roads and have blown up the homes of those who do flee.
While leaving can mean trekking through minefields and the risk of discovery and punishment by Isis, those who stay know they face airstrikes, street battles, a potential siege by the Iraqi security forces and the grim possibility of being used as human shields by Isis.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/oct/17/iraqi-forces-begin-assault-on-isis-stronghold-mosul
Now why the fuck is that same basic understanding not on display in reports about Eastern Aleppo?
Guess who makes the reports from east aleppo,we have not had such factual reporting since chemical ali.
Have you guys figured out why the Americans have given ISIS weeks and weeks of warning about the coming Mosul assault?
Ans: to convince as many ISIS fighters as possible to leave Mosul before the fighting starts so they can head west to reinforce ISIS in Syria.
Your source ?
Just the logic of it. Why else would you advertise all over the corporate mainstream media that you are going to launch a huge offensive on Mosul weeks ahead of time.
That and the US effort to build a Salafist principality in eastern Syria where they bombed the Syrian military outpost.
‘cept the city is apparently surrounded and the offensive was announced early on Monday morning …
So, notification of some hours, not weeks.
sourceGuardian.
Read and weep
You should know better than to trust The Guardian.
Wall St Journal Sept 8, 2016
U.S. Gets Ready to Assist Offensive to Retake Key Iraqi City From Islamic State
BTW I heard about this because Trump has been saying in his speeches that it is total incompetence to let the enemy know in advance what your plans and timing are.
http://www.wsj.com/articles/mosul-offensive-to-begin-within-a-month-u-s-general-says-1473339951
To be fair to the Guardian (not because i think it should be trusted you understand) but the piece said that “The start of the offensive, which has been months in the planning, was announced in an address on state television by Iraq’s prime minister in the early hours of Monday morning.”
Stupid me just assumed that was the, well….announcement. Not an announcement in a long trail of announcements 😉
Heh! They coudn’t have telegraphed their plans any louder and further ahead if they had tried (which I believe was the point…but that’s “conspiracy theory” stuff.)
If you have complete air dominance, and the city is in a state of siege, then please tell me how it is incompetent to let the population of the city know what your plans are? And it would not take a genius to work them out anyway. Besides it is not the US who are the dominant force in this instance.
The dropping of thousands of leaflets on the city advising the population of the impending offensive I see as a humanitarian gesture not one of incompetence.
ISIS got at least 6 weeks warning from the Wall St Journal and other news sources that Americans were sending in extra help for a big push which was going to happen in October.
You think that’s a humanitarian move?
I do not think that ISIS allowed any significant evacuations from the city.
Seen this weird ‘Boys Own’ fucking Adventure’ sickness?
https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2016/oct/17/mosul-battle-iraq-isis-islamic-state-peshmerga-latest
And boom. From that sick inducing Guardian feed….
Sounds about right Bill. Why fight a massive US backed Iraqi military assault when you can go west and cause hell for al-Assad instead.
And why not strike a deal with your enemy’s enemy that will cause your enemy a heap of trouble? Hell, throw in a bit of armament for the inconvenience you’re causing them.
And then, hey….do a photo-op Boys Own military advance on….nothing.?
And even get to show how you took a city in ‘no time’ with ‘only acceptable’ civilian casualties!
And then back to finger pointing and condemning the Russians and the Syrian government…
So, basically, while the ISIS leadership would have noticed a massing of something like 45000 troops, telling them the volume (and maybe even overegging the actual numbers) has shifted ISIS from conventional warfare in a city to leaving some smaller forces to hold out forlornly (then asymmetrically), while most ISIS forces leave the city (probably in convoys easily observable from the air if they want to take heavy equipment with them)?
Would that be the situation?
I love these win-win-win scenarios. The Americans look good. The Baghdad government looks good. And Assad/the Ruskies get heartburn from a few thousand more ISIS fighters.
(Shame about those Syrian civilians who will get torn apart.)
A great days work at the Pentagon.
A huge military and civilian convoy heading out of Kuwait that was bombed to shit for no fucking good reason at all.
Meh. Same thing happened to the retreating German forces at the Falaise pocket – if you have a large force trying to escape along a single route, and the enemy has 100% air superiority, your people are going to die like flies. That’s a given, and it doesn’t happen for “no fucking good reason at all,” it happens because competent military commanders don’t allow the enemy to withdraw intact with their heavy weaponry. It was horrifying to us because we didn’t live through WW2 – in the first half of the 1940s, this kind of thing happened multiple times.
I visited the junk pile in 2005 – 14 years later there were still wrecked Iraqi military vehicles there being cut up and put into containers for scrap. The Kuwaitis weren’t shedding any tears over it and neither was I.
Oh yeah. And the non-existent babies in incubators that weren’t actually thrown out of hospital windows by Iraqi troops that was used as a pretext to go all gung ho on the situation…
Again, meh. First casualty of war is truth, and the Kuwaitis were willing to lie in their propaganda, although probably not to the extent Saddam Hussein was. The fact remains that Iraq invaded and occupied Kuwait, and the rest of the world had an obligation to kick the Iraqis back out of the place. Responsibility for any and all ugly shit that resulted lay with the Iraqi government and no-one else.
PM ,you conveniently leave out the complete US support Saddam had up until then.
The whole Middle East cock up since WW1 can be blamed on the West. Their treatment and attitude towards them has been, and still is ,appalling (and that is over and above religious and oil concerns). We have practiced extreme levels of deceit and hypocrisy in our dealings with them.
“First casualty of war is truth”
Yet you karp on about certain issues as if you have ‘truth’
You don’t, no-one does!
The flexibility in your comments is comical
I guess Pilger doesn’t support illegal invasions and coups.
You I sense have a moral blind spot to US actions, as long as your own world is fine.
Isis came into existasnce in Iraq out of the rubble, destroyed society, and secular cleansing that Bush and Blairs illegal invasion and war brought to that country …..
Wayne supported this illegal war and alongside ‘get some guts johnny’ urged New Zealand to join it ……….. based on WMD bullshit and lies…….
Apart from supporting war crimes……. wayne badmapp is the closest NZ has had to an official minister of propaganda ….. when the nutty nats put him in charge of the very important “Political Correctness Eradication” ministry …. http://norightturn.blogspot.co.nz/search?q=mapp%2Bpolitically
And then he went a bit like this ……….. http://assets.nydailynews.com/polopoly_fs/1.453744.1314603807!/img/httpImage/image.jpg_gen/derivatives/article_1200/alg-resize-klu-klux-klan-jpg.jpg
Wayne cares not for the ethics of a man like John Pilger …. as racist warmongers like him look even worse and more disgusting after watching a Pilger doco
http://johnpilger.com/videos/paying-the-price-killing-the-children-of-iraq
http://johnpilger.com/videos/war-by-other-means
I thought someone was going to create a separate Trump thread? Let’s not have the same meandering conversation day after day.
There’s a bit of work involved. I think it’s worth trying I’m just trying to decide if it’s a good use of time, or if I even have the time. Encouragement in the comments makes it more likely to happen 🙂
Good read this
http://e-tangata.co.nz/news/too-many-pakeha-dont-know-our-history
Not happy about this
https://www.thenation.com/article/amy-goodman-is-facing-prison-for-reporting-on-the-dakota-access-pipeline-that-should-scare-us-all/
“Trump is not running a presidential campaign, he is running a cult.”
Here are a few signs of a cult:
Submission: Complete, almost unquestioned trust in leadership.
Persecution complex: Us against them mentality.
Control: Manipulate members actions and thinking through repetitive indoctrination.
Indoctrination: Teachings of the group are repeated and drilled into members.
Salvation: The belief that what your hopes and dreams can only be accomplished by following this group.
Cognitive dissonance: Avoidance of critical thinking, maintaining illogical or impossible beliefs, while denying any facts that contradict your beliefs.
Sunning: Those who are not like us are the enemy. All of that (plus racism, bigotry, fear-mongering, and more) is exactly what Trump has done throughout his campaign.
Read more at: http://www.forwardprogressives.com/donald-trumps-running-cult-not-presidential-campaign/
https://dimpost.wordpress.com/2016/10/16/immigration-and-changing-your-mind/
Makes some good points
Not really.
They exclude economic arguments as not being “left wing”. Ok, let’s go with that: what are the non-economic arguments for and against immigration? Not considered, and no explanation as to why “left wing economics” isn’t a thing according to the author.
The article doesn’t say why the author “changed their mind” on immigration. House prices? It’s not immigrants who are the problem, but more likely foreign absentee owners and years of increasing government mismanagement. Besides, that’s economic. Schools demand? More jobs for teachers. Infrastructure? What, are immigrants the cause of auckland’s traffic woes? Come on.
Seems to me to be just a bullshit piece that tries to turn dunnokeyo’s flipflops and waffle into a positive factor, rather than the vacancy that results when you substitute apparent amiability for leadership.
Well dimpost isn’t the normal Key cheerleader or has he/she changed recently?
dunno, don’t read it regularly.
It just seemed to me that the thing about key was the only firm statement in the post.
“It’s not immigrants who are the problem”
Perhaps not, but immigrants add to infrastructure demand. And with us largely playing catch up, the extra demand does become problematic.
Any system that can’t deal with a 1% increase in demand over a year is already fucked.
Indeed. Hence, it’s problematic encouraging and allowing more to enter.
Piling on extra demand makes it more difficult to get on top of the problem.
Bollocks.
If the system is broken after a 1% increase, it’s probably solidly broken before the 1% increase. And any solution, to be a solution, would have to be able to handle a 1% fluctuation or the system is still broken.
Our level of immigration doesn’t break infrastucture, or make it more difficult to solve. If it did, an unexpected home semi-final or any particularly rainy day would drive the transport system into dispair. Or an outbreak of gastroenteritis would overflow the sewers.
Immigration is a distraction, at the current levels. It would have to increase markedly to be an economic or infrastructure problem.
Our current level of immigration does make the problem of our lacking infrastructure more difficult to solve.
Take housing for example, while immigration isn’t the only factor driving demand, it is still largely adding to it.
And as you well know, this also drives up the cost of housing.
Therefore, not only do we need to build more homes to make up for the extra demand, but we are also going to require a larger correction (due to the extra demand further increasing prices) to bring house prices back into line with incomes or increases at the rate of inflation. Making the challenge more difficult.
Weasel words. 60000 immigrants a year. Same as the birth rate. What rate do you think they increase the pressure on infrastructures by?
Stuff all is my bet.
While the percentage of immigrants may be low in comparison to the population, new homes being built can’t keep up with the extra demand they add.
Moreover, as a number of them may become property investors themselves, it’s difficult to put a percentage on the total impact they have.
At 60 odd thousand we are looking at close to the population of New Plymouth entering the country annually.
New homes being built can’t keep up with demand without immigrants, and hasn’t for years.
And yet the number of vacant homes in Auckland in the 2013 census was 33,000, about 6%, similar to the rest of the main centres (although regions have higher rates), and similar to preceding census.
The problem, therefore, isn’t a shortage of homes. It’s a shortage of availability, for whatever reason. And immigrants are too small in number to be that reason.
We have plenty of vacant homes, and yet the number of homeless has increased. This points to a sick system, not a problem with immigration.
“New homes being built can’t keep up with demand without immigrants, and hasn’t for years”
Therefore, adding more immigrants into the mix is akin to pouring fuel onto the fire.
We require to get our own house in order before we encourage and allow more immigrants to enter.
An irrelevant amout of fuel.
To the point you’re effectively saying “don’t throw that thimle of fuel on the house fire, it’ll make it worse” while the fire department (government) just stands by and watch the house burn down.
Immigration is a distraction when it comes to the inequity and hardship in this country. An historically tried and true distraction, but a distraction nonetheless. We are not in hardship because of immigrants, they don’t make the problem detectably worse compared to normal social fluctuations, and bitching about it does nothing to address the real problems in our society.
Immigration isn’t a distraction. I’ve yet to see anyone blaming all our ills on immigration alone.
Nonetheless, the high number entering is compounding the problem.
“Compounding” by what proportion?
Unless they occupy homes at six times the rate of those already here, their contribution to any of our problems is indistinguishable from the background noise that is the general systemic clusterfuck in our country at the moment.
Their negative impact is unnoticed. An unnoticed impact compounds nothing.
Well, that’s where you’re wrong.
It is noticed and even if it wasn’t it’s impact would still compound the issues that we have.
Really? An increase of 1% is noticed by whom? assumed, maybe, but things like transport and electricity use fluctuate many more times than 1% every day, and longer term things like housing and education are significantly worse off than 1%.
Logically, yes, an increase of 1% would increase the burden by 1%, give or take some population differences. But no, we don’t notice a 1% increase in discomfort, or even a 1% delay in our typical daily commute. Or are you one of these people who consistently arrives at work in the same level of relaxed punctuality, within a couple of minutes of the same time every single day? Never 5 mins early or even five mins late?
At close to the population of New Plymouth entering the country annually, it’s far from a unnoticed impact.
But they don’t all go to New Plymouth, do they?
Hell, given many are in families you’d be lucky if they could fill up all the vacant homes in Auckland.
How have you, personally, been noticably negatively impacted by immigration? Because I sure haven’t.
They mostly end up in Auckland.
And given the population of New Plymouth also contains families, we’d be looking at requiring around the same number of homes (as New Plymouth) to house them.
And yes, I’ve been personally impacted.
Mostly? Got a source for that?
But I suspect about half of permanent and long term migrants settle in auckland these days. If that. Most recent report on regions vs nationally I could find was data 2010.
But, yes you’re right, 74,000 people and 31,000-odd dwellings in New Plymouth. 33,000 unoccupied dwellings in Auckland. So everyone in New Plymouth could move to Auckland and fill up the empty houses, while all the 69,000 net migrants can live in New Plymouth and have slightly more vacant dwellings there.
So how were you negatively impacted by immigration?
I agree with Dimpost and Puckish Rogue
and liked some of the comments too… in particular Setting your moral sights on the globe is a complete non-starter if you can’t keep your own society healthy and flourishing:
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/10/the-tweet-storm-that-should-terrify-the-republican-party/503771/
Some bigwig conservative Marybeth Glenn is outraged at her fellow Republicans, interesting stuff.
So everything was just fucking peachy when her party was flat out gerrymandering and suppressing voters to disadvantage other communities for their own political gain, attacking African Americans, women’s reproductive rights, WOC, solo mothers,Hispanics, immigrants trade unions, the poor, the working poor, Muslims…..but sexually assaulting in the main wealthy white women was a step too far so she had to speak up……really?.
//
It is a wee bit Niemöllerish…
Ha! Indeed.
Once she’s finished clutching her pearls in shock, she could reflect that the Republicans are fully on track to retain control of both the Senate and Congress.
The Republican Party is going to do just fine out of this election.
“The problem with this approach is that it reduces the incentive for tenants to take good care of the property they rent. It also reduces the landlord’s incentive to have insurance as it lessens tenants’ responsibilities.”
Hence, the Government is looking at a law change.
http://www.newshub.co.nz/nznews/govt-looking-to-change-law-for-renters-2016101510
Anyone know anything concrete about the Assange death rumours?
Nonsense from the usual suspects it seems.
http://archive.li/Kkusn
http://archive.li/9Pk36
Finally.
The 50/500 campaign
http://www.stuff.co.nz/business/industries/85412536/bosses-call-for-businesses-to-make-jobs-available-to-young-people
“As I’ve said to others. Either comment (honestly) on the substance of the post (preferably intelligently) or take yourself away to the fuck somewhere else.”
you abuse your responsibility and the power it confers
you accuse the poster of dishonesty…… (honestly)
you dismiss ad hominum their arguments….. (preferably intelligently)
you do not hold yourself to the standard you impose on others
Ironic in thread discussing the abuse of power
[Happy to oblige you with your call to martyrdom. Two days. Longer if I forget…on second thoughts…] – Bill
[TheStandard: A moderator moved this comment to Open Mike as being off topic or irrelevant in the post it was made in. Be more careful in future.]
What women? The majority of these stories currently exist at the same level of tabloid heresay and have not been established as fact with any independent witnesses or evidence.
[TheStandard: A moderator moved this comment to Open Mike as being off topic or irrelevant in the post it was made in. Be more careful in future.]
Assuming tabloid level allegations against Trump as fact is on topic and relevant, but pointing out that those allegations are at this stage poorly substantiated is off topic and irrelevant???
Well, he told “bushy” he did it. Was recorded doing so.
A dozen women have agreed with him, claiming that he assaulted them on separate occasions.
How many before you believe it about Trump? Three was enough for Bill Clinton. Two is too few for Assange. Your judgementalism seems to be a bit erratic.
Which is precisely why we need everything everyone does recorded 24/7/365. Then put it all in the public domain. Stop sex crimes absolutely in their tracks.
That wouldn’t stop sex crimes, and its extremely abusive to take away humans’ privacy absolutely.
Why not? It would remove all this ‘he said, she said’ malarkey. No abusive court cross-examinations, no faulty memories, no quibble about the facts.
Here is the thing; in recent days we have seen an avalanche of women telling of their millions of rapes and assaults that happen to them every day. They live in constant fear. But in my daily life I see none of this; so I conclude that all these sex crimes occur in private, when other people are not around to witness them. Removing all privacy would logically immediately stop all sex crimes.
Besides we really only have a selective privacy for the very wealthy and powerful; the rest of us can have anything we do recorded and made public at any time with complete impunity.
100% transparency for everyone. Totally fair and even handed.
Rape is not logical. That’s why we have a very powerful man admitting to sexual assault and still being able to become president. It’s in the public domain, and people are still arguing that it didn’t happen or it wasn’t assault. And that’s not even getting to the issues of tech and how criminals can stay ahead of that.
That you don’t see sexual assault going on is in part to do with you not looking in the right place. Women see it all the time.
Privacy is an intrinsic human need. It varies culturally, but in generally it exists across all societies. That we have lost a lot of privacy doesn’t make that benign. And even though in limited circumstances we can have things recorded and made public against our will, we are still a long way from the absolute loss of privacy you are advocating.
Privacy is an intrinsic human need.
Not really. One of the most striking things about the few remaining indigenous hunter-gatherer societies that is noticed by those privileged enough to live with them for a time, is the complete lack of personal privacy.
And the complete absence of sex crimes.
we are still a long way from the absolute loss of privacy you are advocating.
Not really … technology is ensuring that we are losing privacy at a very rapid rate. Within our lifetimes it will, for all practical purposes, be entirely gone.
Once everything is recorded, then it becomes a question of what is made public and what remains private … and who does the selecting?
So you are suggesting that humans in general are going to be ok with being recorded having sex or going to the toilet or giving birth or crying and for all of that to be made public?
“One of the most striking things about the few remaining indigenous hunter-gatherer societies that is noticed by those privileged enough to live with them for a time, is the complete lack of personal privacy.”
I don’t think that’s true. I think you are comparing their cultural privacy with your own and assuming that because theirs looks like no privacy to you, with your cultural lens, that there isn’t any. But there is, it just manifests in ways that work for that culture. That you can’t see it doesn’t mean it’s not there.
“Once everything is recorded, then it becomes a question of what is made public and what remains private … and who does the selecting?”
Which brings us neatly back to technology like this won’t solve rape.
So you are suggesting that humans in general are going to be ok with being recorded having sex or going to the toilet
Well yes. Aaron Smith may not be ok with it, but almost everyone else is. Donald Trump may well regret being recorded, but everyone else can only be grateful his vulgar gloating about his sexual crimes have been revealed.
I guess if women have a problem with being recorded having sex, the technology could be enhanced to ensure all females have their faces and bodies automatically pixelated or something.
I think you are comparing their cultural privacy with your own and assuming that because theirs looks like no privacy to you, with your cultural lens, that there isn’t any.
I don’t really understand this.
Which brings us neatly back to technology like this won’t solve rape.
Nor this.
I imagine this naturally turns into all women should wear body cameras. If the case goes to court the defence will say “Why was she not wearing her body camera!”
Did what? To whom? Do you imagine that recording of Trump trash talking like a frat boy on an illegally recorded conversation would be any kind of evidence in any kind of court – other than the court of Tabloid journalism?
What dozen women? Who are their independent witnesses? What due process has Trump been given to refute their claims, most of which would be totally inadmissable in court without substantially more evidence?
They found semen stains for Clinton. Where are the semen stains from Trump?
As for Assange – you want to go another round of that here? I’m game if you are. The only parallel Trump has with the Assange case is the insidious political motivation associated with each case.
You know perfectly well that the allegations are quite sufficient for conviction in the court of public opinion. This is all that matters.
Quite; my mistake. I thought people on the Left might actually be interested in things like evidence, corroboration, due process, and justice.
Not just tabloid slander 3 weeks out from an election.
You didn’t think that at all – dank mates having a mutual rug – so cute.
Actually no I was not being cute at all. Given that 99.9% of sexual allegations are true, Trump is almost certainly a serial rapist. I fully anticipate at least one of these women will put him into prison for the rest of his life.
So the court of public opinion ISN’T all that matters – I agree with that.
True. And crucially public opinion will also ensure he never becomes President in three weeks time. And that can only be a good thing.
Nice to be agreeing with you
“I fully anticipate at least one of these women will put him into prison for the rest of his life.”
really? I assume that it’s likely that he won’t (for any number of reasons despite guilt).
Why not? There would be enormous support for any one of Trump’s many victims to take this through to a conviction.
For a start there could be no question of a hostile cross-examination in such a high profile setting. The pressure on the court to ensure the process avoids the usual re-traumatising aspects of these cases would be immense.
Taking down Trump with a life-sentence would be massive and powerful message that women were no longer going to tolerate unwanted sexual aggression from men ever again.
When the two of you start agitating for justice for women that have been sexually assaulted (and men and children), then you might gain some credibility on this topic.
Pretty basic shit from you cv -discredit the women – soon you’ll have all sorts of backstory and trumpish bullshit from your trump fanboy sites. It is 101 stuff bur still dusgusting, demeaning and diminising but what happens to these women now doesnt bother you does it.
For someone making allegations about the evidence against Trump “what women” is a stupid question to ask. It shows that you’re either a blinkered fool or a callous, blinkered fool.
Similarly, your comment about semen stains shows that you still don’t understand the difference between a allegation of a consensual if unprofessional affair and an allegation of sexual assault. A bit like the NZRFU, I guess.
Illegally recorded? they were mic’d up for their own fucking TV appearance!
And if you think that what they joked about was typical “frat boy” conversation, he wasn’t a fucking frat boy when he said it. And I worry about the people you regularly associate with if you think that was normal conversation and boasting.
Apparently Trump was just acting like a man of his age and station.
Interesting that it’s frat boy though, given that in the US campus rape is a huge issue publicly now. I guess he can’t use locker room now that athletes have come out and said it’s not locker room talk.
poor trumpeters just can’t catch a break, trying to find groups of men who are willing to say that they boast privately about sexually assaulting women.
Nice to see how times change.
True!
No CV. Reasonably assuming that women who are speaking out are being honest is on topic. Suggesting it’s all just tabloid bullshit isn’t.
That and like many, many others I’m basically just sick and fucking tired of the constant casual misogyny you throw around the threads. Funnily enough, given that your usual line is a variation of ‘men too’, the piece in the posted article you completely missed…This is bigger than us. We know feminism isn’t just for women, but we need to keep saying this aloud until it’s crystal clear. The fortification of the gender binary hurts all of us. It’s about freeing everyone from the expectations and inequalities of each, and creating the freedom to be yourself – despite what society tells you you should be because of your assigned gender.
I’ll leave you to it now.
Nah fuck it Bill, what I am really sick and tired of is the hypocritical Left totally ignoring the stories of all the women who have come forward over DECADES describing how Hillary Clinton knew exactly what Bill Clinton was up to, enabled his predatory behaviour and in some cases organised to threaten and fuck up these womens lives in order to protect Bill.
While SIMULTANEOUSLY acting all pious about how we have to give strict credence and assign immediate credibility to all the women who have come forward and made lesser allegations against Trump.
And why this clear and blatant hypocrisy? Because of, as far as I can tell, nothing more than closed minded political tribalism masquerading as moral righteousness.
I’ve never said these women are lying. But it seems that independent witnesses, corroborating evidence and due process is too much to ask that the Left wait for nowadays before assuming and assigning guilt.
Well the Donald is certainly guilty and the Hillary you think is guilty of not protesting sufficiently loudly? Strange false equivalence
No idea what you said there but I will simplify my point:
-Bill Clinton’s female victims who claimed for years that Hillary enabled/protected Bill’s predatory behaviour while threatening them personally have no credibility with the Left.
-Donald Trump’s female victims who claimed for a week that they were assaulted and humiliated by Trump have full credibility with the Left.
You may consider that “false equivalence” but I think its pretty damn obvious tribal hypocrisy.
Actually, can you find any allegation of HRC’s complicity in any of WJC’s sexual misconduct allegations prior to 2016? Link pls.
And who “in the Left” has said that those allegations against HRC had no credibility?
A bit more than a week, but it has snowballed recently, I agree.
Well, plus the fact that he claimed he did it, on tape. Illegally recorded or not – you’re a fan of wikileaks aren’t you? Oh, and a lawsuit in 1997 filed by jill Harth. But whatever.
Actually, it seems to be putting the “false” in “false equivalence”.
I don’t know who the Left is, but am wondering if we should form a club.
Then there is this (note the date)
An anonymous “Jane Doe” filed a federal lawsuit against GOP presumptive nominee Donald Trump last week, accusing him of raping her in 1994 when she was thirteen years old. The mainstream media ignored the filing.
If the Bill Cosby case has taught us anything, it is to not disregard rape cases against famous men. Serious journalists have publicly apologized for turning a blind eye to the Cosby accusers for over a decade, notwithstanding the large number of women who had come forward with credible claims. And now history is repeating itself.
In covering a story, a media outlet is not finding guilt. It is simply reporting the news that a lawsuit has been filed against Mr. Trump, and ideally putting the complaint in context. Unproven allegations are just that – unproven, and should be identified that way. (Mr. Trump’s lawyer says the charges are “categorically untrue, completely fabricated and politically motivated.”) Proof comes later, at trial. But the November election will come well before any trial. And while Mr. Trump is presumed innocent, we are permitted – no, we are obligated — to analyze the case’s viability now.
No outsider can say whether Mr. Trump is innocent or guilty of these new rape charges. But we can look at his record, analyze the court filings here, and make a determination as to credibility – whether the allegations are believable enough for us to take them seriously and investigate them, keeping in mind his denial and reporting new facts as they develop.
I have done that. And the answer is a clear “yes.” These allegations are credible. They ought not be ignored. Mainstream media, I’m looking at you.
Legal analyst for NBC News and Avvo and attorney Lisa Bloom.
CONTENT WARNING FOR DESCRIPTIONS OF RAPE –
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lisa-bloom/why-the-new-child-rape-ca_b_10619944.html
Seriously? Juanita Broderick speaks here in 2007
Leaving aside the weirdness of providing a Fox news reference, who on the left has said this allegation against HRC has no credibility?
Oh, that would be all the people who refuse to accept that HRC probably knew about, was complicit with, and helped protect Bill Clinton from the consequences of his long term ongoing predatory sexual behaviour.
Maybe pretend for a moment that Broderick has credibility as a rape victim despite the Fox News logo, and actually listen to what she says about both Bill and Hillary Clinton.
“Oh, that would be all the people who refuse to accept that HRC probably knew about, was complicit with, and helped protect Bill Clinton from the consequences of his long term ongoing predatory sexual behaviour.”
Right. All those people that you can’t actually point out.
“Maybe pretend for a moment that Broderick has credibility as a rape victim despite the Fox News logo, and actually listen to what she says about both Bill and Hillary Clinton.”
I already watched the video and don’t see any reason to not believe her. The comment about Fox was a reflection on you, not her. But interesting that you conflated those two things (my thinking the Fox reference was weird, with my ability or not to listen to and believe someone’s story). Interesting slur-y attempt to undermine me though.
I know you struggle with this because you are so caught up in the false binary you have created, but you really are missing the fact that my criticism of your rape apology doesn’t stop me from seeing rape culture elsewhere in the world including with Bill Clinton.
When Hillary was starting to run for president then. see how that works, by your standards?
But thanks for finally providing a link to an actual sexual assault allegation against Bill Clinton. Feel free to focus on that instead of a consensual affair.
And yes, I do have reservations about WJC being back in the White House – but at least he’s not president. As for the clip, I believe the incident she described happened. I’ll even go so far as to say the inferred subject was probably implied. Whether that was intended as “threatening them personally” is unclear.
Unlike Trump’s tape and the explicit allegations against Trump and WJC.
Yeah, very early in the Democrats Primaries process, not 4 weeks before the Presidential election to try and throw the election.
lol
whatever, dude. She was still campaigning.
You really are obsessed with precise timing these days – going full tory, eh…
I mention the fact so that people know what the timing was, and so that they can check it out for themselves.
Furthermore, Broaddrick’s accusations of rape against Bill had been known and examined by many, and for many years by that time.
I reckon most people here know how electoral cycles work.
1999, ISTR. But the allegation against HRC of “threatening”(your word and attribution of intention ) her? When did that come out?
Your problem there CV is that you think Monica Lewinsky having an affair with Bill Clinton is the same as Donald Trump grabbing women’s crotches. That you don’t understand the difference is a large part of why no-one here takes what you say about the Clintons as meaningful. You are the one creating a false dichotomy, and you are doing it in a sick and manipulative way by conflating different kinds of behaviour of two men and then using that to try and minimise the one that women are most concerned about. And to push a political agenda.
“I’ve never said those women are lying. But it seems that independent witnesses, corroborating evidence and due process is too much to ask that the Left wait for nowadays before assuming guilt.”
If you think that justice for men is the most important thing, that makes sense. However women, and many men, want justice for women too. Those of us who have paid attention to rape culture (or who just care) know that the justice system is hugely biased against women who are victims of rape. We also know that rape culture in large part promotes and supports that by say not believing women. Trump will get his day in court and that’s the place where legal guilt or not will be established. Outside of that it’s not longer acceptable for rape culture to enable rape and for women to just put up with that. We’re done with that. You can make out that this is some kind of trial by public, but that’s just you distorting it again to suit your political agenda.
Of course your other big problem here is that the man who the accusations are being against, has just admitted to the behaviour.
Bill Clinton used the obscene differential in power, financial and experience differential between himself as President of the United States to ply sexual favours from the lowly paid/unpaid young temporary White House intern Monica Lewinsky.
It’s pretty clear there are direct parallels there with the alleged behaviour of money drunk power drunk billionaire Donald Trump.
I can see it straight away. You can too.
Even at a straight legal level there are differences between sexual harassment in the workplace, and sexual assault. I don’t know the exact laws in the US, you can look it up seeing as how you are so concerned about justice and due process.
What you are saying is that you have a problem with how the men are acting, because of how they are acting (is that a moral thing?). I have a problem with how they are acting because of how it affects the people being acted upon. That’s why I can tell the difference between sexual harassment in the workplace and sexual assault. It’s why I can tell the difference between consensual sex and rape. Because I listen to women.
It’s also why I don’t need to minimise Trump as a sexual predator in order to look at BC and his actions. You on the other hand…
My god, man, you can’t even bring up an actual sexual assault allegation against Clinton, you’re so fixated on a consensual affair. And yes, it was consensual. Not even the Republicans at the time alledged otherwise.
It’s like watching a crash in slow motion.
Firstly, it’s not “my problem.”
Secondly, Trump said a whole bunch of locker room trash talk. That means he’s guilty of having talked crass shit about women.
It doesn’t mean he confessed to sexually attacking Anderson, Zervos or Leeds, unless it is your position that what he said on that illegal recording is as good as a confession to attacking Anderson, Zervos or Leeds.
Yeah it is your problem. You are arguing that he’s not getting due process. That might have been true had he not said he sexually assaults women. He’s the one that lowered the bar so massively.
“It doesn’t mean he confessed to sexually attacking Anderson, Zervos or Leeds, unless it is your position that what he said on that illegal recording is as good as a confession to attacking Anderson, Zervos or Leeds.”
Strawman, I’m not conflating what Trump said with those allegations. I’m saying that for you to argue that Trump’s word that he didn’t sexually assault those women means no-one should be talking about him as if he did has bigger all credibility. The guy is a self-confessed sexual predator, of course people are going to talk about him as such when looking at the accusations.
That’s not what I argued. Please don’t lie about what I said or claimed people should do.
What are you saying then?
Come on CV, why don’t you give this a rest. Trump’s comments and excuses for those comments are defensible. You could argue if it’s frat boy talk or locker room talk (although lots of locker room people have already said its not), if it was confession or boast, whether women are confirming that behaviour or making unfounded allegations, but that’s the past and it’s not affecting his rating, apparently.
Why don’t you argue on policy – the future, that’s what counts if he becomes president, yes? There’s plenty there – immigration, tax, why the US doesn’t use nukes even though they have them, waterboarding, China as an economic threat, climate change, taking oil from countries that have it…. all things he could do something about – things that would make a difference if he were president.
Because it seems impossible, given attitudes of the defenders of Trump, to see how attitudes and behaviours could ever change in a way that would make a difference to the well-being of women if he was to become President.
Probably the clearest comment you have made to illustrate your frustration
The twisting of positions could be more apparant in the hypocrisy over reaction to the allegations against Trump versus the complete dissonance and denial over Bill Clinton
Frankly its bizarre
Probably the clearest expression of your frustration
The dissonance involved is incredibly high and the bullying is out of control
Bill v Donald (they are one and the same)
Some believe there is somehow a difference in what they are and some even perform mental gymnastics in efforts to illustrate a difference
There is no difference!
Chur
Although in fact it is Hillary vs Trump
Trump alleged to have sexually assaulted women
Hillary who is alleged to have covered up for and enabled Bill’s multiple rapes and affairs over many many years.
But yeah, the hypocritical political tribalism is fucking rampant.
Well yes there is the ‘covering up’ aspect which the ‘progressives’ disregard at the same rate as the ‘allegations’ against Bill. The abuse involved , is still abuse
So very limp on self discipline with regards to elementary rationale and reasoning
Quite why, is the interesting aspect
Perhaps bullying, denial and hipocrisy are considered ‘tools of empowerment’
“Some believe there is somehow a difference in what they are”
Citation needed. Or at least clarify if you are referring to people in this thread. You imply that you are, and if you are then you need to provide a reference. If not, then clarify that.
Yep make the women invisible – tried and true tactic for bigots.
These women have been featured on US TV networks 24/7 in order to slam Trump.
What do you mean they are “invisible”?
‘What women’ ring a bell?
Oh you mean the women who have made ALLEGATIONS that they were groped by Trump. Yes there are a few of those who have suddenly come out of the woodwork, all at once, and several using the same lawyer.
Your sneery tone just shows what a right wing hater you are.
Yep reach for the ad homs, marty mars, it gives you strength and feels good to let the dark side flow.
So much of what comes from you are just scenes and dialogue from movies – the funny thing is you think you’re being clever but I think you are like a parrot not even comprehending any depth in the syllables escaping your lips like a rapidly deflating balloon. Sunnyside up for me ta.
Yes more ad homs marty mars, keep it flowing
Many havent been visible for decades due to fear of not being believed and threats from going up against powerful figures. Do you not get this?
The only person I suspect to have definitively organised against women in this way is Hillary Clinton, in order to protect the political career of her husband, Bill Clinton. Do you not get this?
Ok, you’re baiting and switching now.
I know, cheap shot but I’m tired of arguing against people who believe Trump’s female accusers in a flat second, while simultaneously utterly dismissing the female accusers of Hillary Clinton who have been speaking out for years.
test
test 2
Are you trying to ban some people? God, I hope so.
lolz, I fucking wish.