What's stopping them find common ground? Corbyn "said his party had negotiated "in good faith and very seriously, and put forward a lot of very detailed arguments", which he thought was "the responsible thing to do". He added: "The issue [is] that the government has not fundamentally shifted its view and the divisions in the Conservative Party mean the government is negotiating with no authority and no ability that I can see to actually deliver anything.""
"Speaking after meeting Tory activists in Bristol, Mrs May said: "There have been areas where we have been able to find common ground, but other issues have proved to be more difficult. In particular, we haven't been able to overcome the fact that there isn't a common position in Labour about whether they want to deliver Brexit or hold a second referendum to reverse it."
In other words, there's obvious common ground: equivocation & disunity in both wings of the establishment. A common quicksand – no basis upon which to proceed.
Or to return to a frequent theme, this is a direct consequence of globalisation lacking common principles and democratic accountability.
Our physical reality is a world with 7 billion people that is one species rapidly converging as a single geo-social polity. Trade, travel, communication and a myriad of legal, commercial and technical mechanisms compel us into connection, yet the nation states have been unable to deliver an effective political mechanism to match.
We've lived in an era in which there have been more and more powerful multilateral organizations and binding agreements across the known world than since the Christian church. Most of them formed in the last 70 years.
May and Corbyn simply don't believe in the best and most complex of these: the E.U.
Good point. You are quite correct, I carelessly glossed over that.
May and Corbyn simply don't believe in the best and most complex of these: the E.U.
Yet neither of these people are fools, nor all the aprox 50% of Britons who voted for Brexit. The question has to be why do they not believe in it? My answer is that we have yet to fully embrace the idea of globalisation as an moral idea. We believe in our families, our communities (whatever form they may take) and the nations we're citizens of yet somehow the next logical step, a belief in the organic unity of the human race, eludes us.
Stiglitz' 'Globalisation And Its Discontents' covers most of this ground.
I think we're about as unified as a human race as we are going to get, and we've done pretty well at it. Importantly we prefer the nation-state a the most powerful and enduring of the collective.
And honestly we expect too much from any one cross-national agreement, the CPTPP being a fairly strong recent one with buckets of extra moral suasion thrown in at the end to keep us happy.
I certainly expect the nation state to endure. Human history can be roughly modeled as successive extensions of our ability to unite. We started with modest family clan and tribal units, then built layers onto them, the village, the city state and currently the nation. It's crucial to recognise that each new layer incorporated and enhanced the ones that came before.
For instance, when the family/tribal unit is the largest political unit you have to work with, everything must be solved at that level. The appearance of the nation state far from being a constraint, liberated the family unit.
At this moment in history all the big problems we face are global in nature. Only when we have the political mechanisms at that scale to address them, will the nation states be liberated to reach their full and unsuspected potential.
And thanks for the Stiglitz link. Yes worth a read by the looks.
“The main message of Globalization and its Discontents was that the problem was not globalization, but how the process was being managed. Unfortunately, the management didn’t change. Fifteen years later, the new discontents have brought that message home to the advanced economies.”
The global agreements that will bind nations to reverse the great global problems won't exist. We've pushed human cooperation as far as it's going to get. There's plenty of juice left in the existing organizations if they were supported. You can probably name good examples.
But there are plenty of other mechanisms that are more powerful than national and multinational agreements. The most powerful of them are markets, and many of those are already regulated in the broader interest very well.
Other mechanisms exists in only two of the most powerful countries we have: China and the United States. China's Belt and Road initiative for example. Plenty of faults, but no lack of international ambition or will.
Further mechanisms for global consensus exist in social media. Trump has led the way on how strong this mechanism is.
Even Ardern+Macron's Christchurch Call shows that agreement can simply start from fresh events. It's not a breakthrough, but it's a dent.
I don't think there's any need to wait until a global government arrives.
Britain went through much the same turbulent era, such as the War of the Roses, as it transitioned from city state level of social unity to the nation state. Achieving a broader level of social cohesion never an easy process, and encounters much resistance. This isn't necessarily a bad thing; not all new forms are necessarily a good thing. It's wise that we should test the new before we commit irreversibly.
Yet there is a deep paradox in human social organisation. We value our freedom and independence, yet in isolation we perish. It's a terrible contradiction, but in order to gain true liberty we must first surrender part of our freedom. For example, in order to make the best use of a road we must collectively abide by the constraints of a road code. If we each retained the right to randomly choose whichever side of the road to drive on each morning, collectively the result would render them catastrophically useless.
Collectively we all share a planet and the nation states have reached the point where each must surrender a part of their sovereignty in order to evolve to their next step. Until then we're stuck in escalating cycles of mismanaged globalisation, confrontation and conflict.
I do agree with your last sentiment; waiting for a fully functioning federated global government is not necessary; there are many incremental steps along the way that can be achieved. The EU was as you say one of the better attempts.
It is Germany's sense of postwar cross-national amity that sought a structure of cooperation that would stop all future wars, and that evolved from the EC to the EU we have today.
The E.U. is still expanding, so that impulse is still alive. But barely.
So the historical circumstance is pretty different to what you point to.
I'm still waiting for the Pacific Islands to figure that their tiny non-sustaining little fiefdoms are better amalgamated into a pan-national confederation. They've got plenty to fight for after all.
In the meantime New Zealand needs to keep dear, dear hold of that special relationship with Australia. That's as close as we're going to get to Federation with something of any heft.
So the historical circumstance is pretty different to what you point to.
In the normal course of events you are right, the impulse toward higher levels of cooperation is fitful and unsatisfying.
But every now and then, such as in the aftermath of WW1 and WW2, we have a moment of clarity, when in horror and shame at what we have done, we take a decisive step.
We have a choice, doing this the hard way, or the very horrifyingly traumatic way. But it will happen, because the alternatives to my mind are not acceptable.
Seems to me it's the difference between ideal & reality. United Europe is an excellent idea. The consequent eurocracy has alienated too many people. Just as the United Nations was an excellent idea, discredited by dysfunction.
What's necessary in high-level political organisations is appropriate design, followed by smooth operation. Design flaws and malfunctions must be eliminated as they appear. Instead, the human tendency to instutionalise such problems kicks in. The tacit assumption `fixing it is too hard' prevails. We need to empower fixers. Democracy selects non-fixers.
We've lived in an era in which there have been more and more powerful multilateral organizations and binding agreements across the known world than since the Christian church. Most of them formed in the last 70 years.
Very powerful and ubiquitous these new religions eg Harari (sapiens)
“The capitalist and consumerist ethics are two sides of the same coin, a merger of two commandments. The supreme commandment of the rich is ‘Invest!’ The supreme commandment of the rest of us is ‘Buy!’ The capitalist–consumerist ethic is revolutionary in another respect. Most previous ethical systems presented people with a pretty tough deal. They were promised paradise, but only if they cultivated compassion and tolerance, overcame craving and anger, and restrained their selfish interests. This was too tough for most. The history of ethics is a sad tale of wonderful ideals that nobody can live up to. Most Christians did not imitate Christ, most Buddhists failed to follow Buddha, and most Confucians would have caused Confucius a temper tantrum. In contrast, most people today successfully live up to the capitalist–consumerist ideal. The new ethic promises paradise on condition that the rich remain greedy and spend their time making more money and that the masses give free reign to their cravings and passions and buy more and more. This is the first religion in history whose followers actually do what they are asked to do. How though do we know that we'll really get paradise in return? We've seen it on television.”
I've been waiting to see how long it would take for kiwi entrepeneurs to rise to the challenge of waste recycling since the early eighties. It's finally happened!
"When China stopped taking plastic in 2018, it had a knock-on effect. Our soft plastics had been going to Australia but with a global market flooded with plastic, we can no longer rely on overseas processors and are forced to manage our own waste. Soft plastic has no commercial value and is difficult to repurpose."
"That's where Jerome Wenzlick steps in. He's a farmer and fencer who came up with an idea while putting up fencing at a rubbish dump. "We were putting wooden posts into the ground and the posts were snapping and we thought why don't we make some posts out of the plastic that's in the ground," he told Newshub. He's set up a company called Future Post and since the start of the year, he's recycled 300 tonnes – that's 75 truck loads."
"The soft plastic is sorted and granulated, then mixed with milk bottles, before going through a New Zealand-designed and built extruder to melt and reform it into fence posts. The equivalent of 550 plastic bags goes into making each post."
Fancy a district council being that enterprising! "It's up to the Manawatū District Council to persuade the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment after the provincial development unit handed it $81,000 to put together a business plan."
I hope the economics is viable. Fits in with regional development too eh? Not many jobs but they all help. I wouldn't trust the MBIE to necessarily get it right though.
If they fail to approve it, the MDC ought to pay a leading economic consultancy to appraise the plan too, to identify whatever the design flaw is, or it exists merely in the minds of bureaucrats, formulate a contrary analysis in support of it which the MDC could then submit directly to the minister for regional development – or the minister for the environment, perhaps. Because a viable scheme could be copied in other regions…
Yes, that's a realistic view of local body politics. And why the MDC initiative is so unusual. To be optimistic, one could also anticipate a copycat effect, which is likely if the scheme works. That would provide a progressive trend.
While agreeing that the way Tame Iti was treated was appaĺling and most certainly had a racist element to it, the major flaw in your argument is that he couldn't be charged with murder, having not killed anyone! Besides, the murder charge for the Chch perpetrator is, as I understand it, only an initial charge and there is more to come. I think you are comparing apples with oranges
…the major flaw in your argument is that he [Tama Iti] couldn't be charged with murder, having not killed anyone! JanM
Hi Jan,
I didn't argue, that Tama Iti should have been charged with murder. That would have obviously been completely ridiculous, (almost as completely ridiculous as charging him with terrorism).
I contended that if Tama Iti could be charged with terrorism, (despite not terrorising anyone), then the Christchurch white supremacist must be charged with terrorism, after oganising and planning an attack that killed 51 innocent New Zealand men women and children.
I further contend; that to not to charge this white supremacist with committing a terrorist act would represent a racist double standard.
….the murder charge for the Chch perpetrator is, as I understand it, only an initial charge and there is more to come. JanM
Jan you are absolutely right, the police can bring extra charges under the Suppression Of Terrorism. But will they?
Can a white person be a terrorist in New Zealand, or not?
The whole world is watching.
I am hopeful that this white supremacist mass murderer, will face extra charges laid under the Suppression Of Terrorism Act.
I suspect (though don't know) that if hes charged with murder its probably because charging him with terrorism might be problematic in getting the conviction whereas 51 counts of murder will certainly be easier to prove
to be honest you need to take that up with the current government not me.
to me he is a white supremacist and a terrorist and a mass murderer and an all around shitheel.
Any other question you may have you need to address with those that make the rules and that ain't me.
As for the privilege that white people have i have on more then on occasion addressed the fact that us white people have it, want it and are currently crying big tears about the fact that we are loosing it. And again, my position is that white people should never have had that privilege in the first place and in the case of many countries only got to be the top dog by systematically killing and eradicating the first nations by point of gun, with the help of chicken pox invested blankets, starvation, stolen generations and so forth.
As for those that cry over lost 'equality' in this country of any other 'white' country, i would like to point out that people of color, and women/children of all colors never were considered 'equal', never had 'equal rights' and certainly did not have the 'equal protection' accorded to white men in the courts of law and public opinion.
You haz questions. The esteemed and learned Professor Geddis haz answers.
Go to https://www.pundit.co.nz/ and scroll down to March 16, 2019. (the URL for the article contains the fuckwit's name so it gets caught in the moderation trap here)
tl;dr Charging the fuckwit with terrorism involves trying to prove stuff like state of mind that's much more difficult to prove than the bare facts of his murderous actions. In any case, getting a conviction for terrorism on top of the murders won't have any material effect on what his sentence is likely to be. So yes, that shows the terrorism law is not fit for purpose and needs to be changed.
it wont have any material effect on sentencing but it will set precedent (and unfortunately provide platform) ….if this isnt a terrorist act then what is?…is that a question worth asking including removal of some future defendant using a lack of charge in this instance as a potential defence?
"During Mike Pence’s first year as governor of Indiana, his state put a young woman in prison for having a miscarriage, alleging that she’d taken an abortion-causing drug. Purvi Patel didn’t have a trace of such a drug in her system, but Pence’s state sentenced her to 20 years in prison anyway. Just a few years earlier, Indiana had also held Bei Bei Shuai for 435 days in the brutal maximum security Marion County prison, facing 45 years to life for trying to kill herself and, in the process, causing the death of her 33-week fetus.
Utah charged 28-year-old Melissa Ann Rowland with murder because she refused a C-section, preferring vaginal birth for her twins, and one of them died. Sixteen-year-old Rennie Gibbs was charged by the state of Mississippi with “depraved heart murder” when her baby was born dead because his umbilical cord was wrapped around his neck: her crime was that she had cocaine in her bloodstream, according to prosecutors. Angela Carder was ordered to have a C-section to deliver her baby before she died of cancer; both she and the baby died from the procedure."
yeah, lets all just mock the idea of some religious zealots having a party in NZ and getting a say in Parliament because the Party of No mates is run by wet toast covered in margarine.
Cause we absolutely should not look to what happens in other countries and wonder if we want the same shit happening here.
Sabine (5) this is shocking! Yet they are out there, those "Christian" zealot conservative white males, wanting complete control over vulnerable women and girls. Demonstrating total ignorance of the highest order!
I'd be interested to know if the same cruel rules and actions would apply to the wives, daughters and granddaughters of the sadistic, vile Mike Pences of the world, whose rabid and dangerous mindsets belong back in the dark ages and before that even.
NZers have to be very alert as to who/what creeps into our political system, particularly when it comes to electing representatives.
the whole point is not to give married women grief (at least for now), but to harrass unmarried women who may only have sex for fun or so and force them back under the tutelage of Daddy until given over to Hubby at the church. Ownership over women and children is the whole point. The fetus is just the tool to achieve that.
in saying that, if you look at south america you will see that many women already are in prison for having miscarriages/or self induced abortions as the doctors don't want to incriminate themselves or simply report them to police and ……..locking up some poor women is just easier then proving solutions that would allow women access to science based healthcare, prenatal care, and / or simply the right to live a live save of sexual predators.
Modern, innovative learning environment in re-born Christchurch.
Police have been called in after a pig in the school's petting zoo had a stick stuck up its bum.
At the very least the children should have been taught how to slaughter and prepare the pig before putting it on the spit.
Seriously, is this school an anomaly, or is this the reality for education today?
An in depth article which gathers opinions from both sides.
Many staff who had their own children enrolled had since removed them, they said.
"I know those leaders were really intent on believing in the school philosophy but at the end of the day, after under two years, they just couldn't sacrifice their beloved kids.
"They [Haeata management] developed a philosophy without knowing the kids. They left out the most important thing."
Kai Fong said that every staff member had the opportunity to give feedback and meet face to face with the board if they chose.
Relief teacher Nadine Garrett liked Haeata's environment but said it wasn't right for everyone.
"I felt really sorry for the traditional teachers, they felt like they were just floating."
Personally, I'd find the noise in a classroom of 300 self -directed learners unbearable and while its laudable for the school to use incidences of bullying as a learning opportunity it appears it is not doing much to reduce the level of violence.
It's going to take a while and a lot of training to bring mainstream teachers to a point where they can operate successfully in an environment like this. Its basic kaupapa would appear to be similar to the ec Te Whariki curriculum and is common sense to us (I am ece trained ) but very scary, I would think, to a lot of the 'chalk and talk' brigade. By the way, I would never leave animals unprotected in any environment around children, no matter what their backgrounds. The inability to show kindness and compassion is most emphaticaĺly not confined to any one class or ethnicity.
Kai Fong said there was no evidence to suggest the rate of violence was higher at Haeata than other schools and he believed there was an "inherent bias" against the east side of Christchurch. "I think the preconception of more violence here is unjustified."
However, he said a proportion of Haeata's pupils struggled to "engage consistently in learning" and some "do not have the requisite social and emotional skills to be fully functional in learning".
A former teacher recalled incidents in 2017 when a glass object was thrown near an itinerant teacher and smashed. She was also told to "f… off, you b….," while being swung at with a traffic patrol pole by a 5-year-old. Children threw scooters, rode bikes inside, and there was constant swearing and verbal abuse.
As a result, the teacher took two terms off with post-traumatic stress, and had private counselling for 12 weeks.
The following year, the school sought police help to change the culture. The "highly successful initiative" focused on "pro-social behaviours" with girls at Haeata.
It seems counterintuitive to have a bunch of kids with known behavioural and learning difficulties in such an open plan environment. Too much noise and distraction and it would be damn near impossible to concentrate. I wonder if (in these days of mainstreaming kids with learning/behavioural issues) they have a squadron of teacher aides,or if they have 'special' rooms where those kids that are struggling can go for quiet time.
It would be interesting to know the make up of the kids being pulled from Haeata.
Experience in how politicians and government interact with the rich, relative to how they interact with the poor, points directly to such a school never being allowed to be experimented in Remuera or Fendalton.
Wake up.
No apology, but yes plenty of bitterness. All very real. Is why society is cleaving down the middle. Fuck the rich and their politicians.
This quote confirms a comment I made the other day about the difficulties that teachers have these days.
But a former teacher said teaching was impossible because they would spend their time wrangling naughty students. "I can't believe what a bad teacher I became," they said.
If this is an experimental school it has too big a roll. Nearly a thousand children can't be thrown together with the emphasis on them finding their own preferences.
I was waiting in the library at school while one of my children was in a class decades ago and the kids were supposed to be using the library facilities and looking at the range of books. One boy got out a motor magazine and turned the pages making vroom,vroom noises. I was helping another who couldn't concentrate his mind because he wanted to watch his friend. Encouraging him to work out a plan for a short piece on what he remembered from a trip to California was very difficult. Distraction is no good for the 10 second attention span generation.
Is the National Party tearing itself apart? Here's a letter posted on kiwiblog today.
Chuck Bird
It will be interesting to see which National MPs respond.
To all National MP’s
As a National supporter for the past 47 years, I wish to voice my disgust at your actions in supporting the Government in the passing of the recent bill to make criminals of law abiding gun owners. I attended a recent meeting in Te Awamutu where MP’s Bishop and Kuriger were speaking about this very topic. I have never been in a group of people so hostile to anybody, let alone MPs. I would venture to say that about 300-350 people were there. Most would have been National party supporters. For how long, I can only guess. If they are like me, not for much longer, unless you change the way you are heading.
Your actions were despicable in casting aside the rights of law abiding citizens. All in the name of socialist ideology. I thought that was the purvue of the left. How wrong I am.
This will be posted on my blog site http://www.ysb.co.nz . It is a blog dedicated to upholding free speech and WAS a National Party support blog. Your actions mentioned above have seriously bought this support into question.
well that is a bit of a stretch would you not think?
Consider that the only one type of weapon was outlawed and a few tools around ( i am not a gun enthusiast so am not too versed in that lingo) and that he still can own chickenshit loads of other weapons for his hunting and collecting needs.
So no, legal gun owner have not been criminalised, but a legal gun owner has mowed down 50 people and maybe he should think about that too.
But he is lucky, soon he can vote for a bunch of "Not National – but almost" Parties and all is good again.
Earlier today, I read the then 25 comments and they were so stereotypical of RWNJs that I thought that blog was an extremely well done parody of KB. Fact is stranger than fiction and reality is scarier than nightmares.
The means of exchange need to be regulated as otherwise when it becomes an end to itself, value systems and directions are lead by donkeys towards cliffs.
It would seem likely that the majority of collusion that takes place with the use of financial bubbles in unproductive predatory capitalism would involve relatively concentrated/substantial actors rather than such endeavours being the co-operation of multitudes, so a small financial transaction tax system could be a good way to provide tag and trace info to that, which can then be graduated up down the chain when critical thresholds start to be traced before such acts are able to be followed through to completion.
Rose delivers his mostly banal ruminations in a croaky basso profundo, his words larded with an extraordinarily high "um" and "y' know" count. Donovan's role is to meekly underscore Rose's philosophical gems occasionally with a supportive "Mmmm, mmmm."
EMIL DONOVAN: It's time for Midweek Media Watch, our weekly catch-up with the Mediawatch teeeeam, one of the Mediawatch team, to talk about all things media. Today it's Jeremy Rose's turn in the chair. Hullo, Jeremy.
JEREMY ROSE: Gid-daaaaay Emil, how ARE ya?
EMIL DONOVAN: Very well thank you. Ahhhh, what've you got for us this week?
JEREMY ROSE: Well I THOUGHT I'd start with the "power of the signature" you were just talking, y'know, about….
Rose spends an inordinate time talking about a woman's Facebook petition to change the Milo recipe. Donovan thinks this is a very serious topic: "It taps into the cultural zeitgeist, doesn't it," he observes.
Next topic: a Russian blogger called "Stalin Gulag" who operates on a site called Telegram. "It shows the importance of social media for holding the powerful to account," says Rose.
Rose says something about the need to break up Facebook, and then moves on to the distasteful topic of white supremacist sites like 8chan. He praises recent work on this by Max Towle and Patrick Gower. Rose plays a clip of Gower in fighting mood: "I'm ready for ANOTHER go with Stefan Molyneux and Lauren Southern." That cuts no ice with Jeremy Rose, however. He reckons that interviewing people like Molyneux and Southern is unwise—"these people are nonentities"—and akin to a prizefight.
So far, so humdrum. Then the interview with Jeremy Rose, who's billed as a media "expert", becomes foolish, bizarre, almost inexplicable. It turns out that Rose, who just a couple of minutes earlier talked grandly about "the importance of social media for holding the powerful to account", does not think that the mainstream media, i.e. the BBC, should hold the powerful or the influential to account at all. In fact, he says, there's no "point" in holding the words of a brutal racist against him in an interview. "I just don't think it HELPS", he croaks to an obviously unconvinced Donovan. Here, for those who can stomach pretentiousness and bewilderment dressed up as media commentary, is four minutes of Jeremy Rose's dire and dismal vaporing….
(For those listening on the audio link, the horror starts at the 19:33 mark)
JEREMY ROSE: …..so I really wanna know WHY you'd bother getting them on. And that kinda brings us to ANOTHER one that's had a bit of a sporting overtone. I think you were quite keen to talk about, which is the Ben Shapiro—
EMIL DONOVAN: Yes.
JEREMY ROSE: —interview. A well known, American, ultra-conservative, right wing commentator with a LOT of Twitter followers, I think, y'know, well over a million—
EMIL DONOVAN: Mmmm.
JEREMY ROSE: And he was interviewed on the BBC byyyyy, um—-
EMIL DONOVAN: Andrew Neil, the notorious hard-nosed interviewer Andrew Neil. Yeah this was a FASCINATING interview, wasn't it.
JEREMY ROSE: It, it really was. Shall we—let's, let's have a listen to a BIT of it.
ANDREW NEIL: Some of the ideas that are popular in YOUR side of politics, ahh, would seem to take us back to the DARK AGES. These GEORGIA new ABORTION laws, ahhh, which YOU are much in FAVOUR of, ahhhh, that a woman who MISCARRIES could get THIRTY YEARS, A Georgian woman who travels to another STATE for an abortion procedure could get TEN years! These are EXTREME hard policies.
BEN SHAPIRO: Well, okay, a couple of things. One, I'm not sure, I mean frankly I don't know whether you're a s— , ARE you an objective journalist or are you an opinion journalist?
ANDREW NEIL: I'm a journalist that asks QUESTIONS.
JEREMY ROSE: Y-y-yeah, ha, so y' know, uh, it's gone VIRAL on the internet. Everyone, including ahhhh, Shapiro, say that it, that it was a DISASTROUS performance by him. He's tweeted, though, "Neil one, Shapiro zero." Again, that sporting kind of metaphor.
EMIL DONOVAN: Mmmmm.
JEREMY ROSE: Wanting a rematch. I don't think there was much in it, I don't think you LEARNT much, and I ACTUALLY think he had a KIND of point, whe-e-e-ere, that there was, y'know, when he was accused of being from the Dark Ages—
EMIL DONOVAN: Mmmm.
JEREMY ROSE: —which is obviously a metaphor. But it wasn't actually that HELPFUL, and it ended UP just being …. [long caesura]…. for want of a better word, a shit fight.
EMIL DONOVAN: Mmmm, mmmm.
JEREMY ROSE: A-and I'm NOT sure that that REALLY serves ANYBODY.
EMIL DONOVAN: Yeah, I know it was fascinating stuff wasn't it. It's um, yeeeahh, the idea that—I mean, it's a TEMPTING metaphor. Sporting metaphors ARE tempting when it comes to, to interviews like tha-a-a-at, because the, a confrontational interview can sometimes be NECESSARY, right? Y' know? And, and sometimes there IS a winner and a loser out of an interview. And sometimes people are satisfied by seeing that. But it's not necessarily a HELPFUL metaphor.
JEREMY ROSE: No-o-o-o. And I, and I, and that whole idea of kinda punching OUT and a winner. And that was how it was portrayed, because he kept THROWING these ABSOLUTELY obnoxious quotes which he had ma-a-a-ade—
EMIL DONOVAN: Mmmm.
JEREMY ROSE: —in the past at him, and asking him to DEFEND them. ….[long caesura]…. I don't know what the POINT is. If I hadn't seen the interview, I wouldn't know that this guy had made these racist, revolting comments about Arabs, about—- And I don't think that it HELPS, knowing that.
EMIL DONOVAN: Mmmm, mmmm.
JEREMY ROSE: Ahhhm, and he did have a BOOK out, I've got NO idea what he says in the book. There was nothing in it in the interview.
EMIL DONOVAN: Well I think this was the thing about it, that the book was about the rise of, um, extremist discourse, and, and, and ANGER within sort of SOCIETY and I think that Andrew Neil was pointing out the hypocrisy of the idea that Ben Shapiro would write a book about anger and society when he had contributed to it himself through his previous kinds of statements. But it's a very interesting kind of issue, isn't it—
JEREMY ROSE: Yeah.
EMIL DONOVAN: —and one that I imagine we won't see go away, because they always seem to be held up as SPECTACLES, these interviews, y'know….
JEREMY ROSE: I think that's exactly right. It, it, it's interviewers' performance. I think when we're dealing with things that matter as much as white supremacy, THAT's not the time to do that. To me-e-e-e-e, THAT's actually exactly what white supremacist type people would ENJOY.
EMIL DONOVAN: Mmmm, mmmm. It's sort of, yeah, the fuzzy line where information blurs into entertainment. Yeahhhh. Well, uh, Jeremy, thanks so much for that. Really appreciate it.
1. Andrew Neil is an excellent interviewer. He has variously made mincemeat of Jeremy Corbyn, Diana Abbot, Natalie Bennett and many others. Andrew has no problem tackling those on the right of politics, it is just that generally the left provide easier targets.
2. Andrew underestimated Ben Shapiro's intellect, and his attack dog line about Georgia's abortion law was ill-informed and justified Ben's response. At the same time, Ben was clearly ill-informed about Andrew's interview style, and came across as petulant. That's a shame, because Ben is intellectually the superior of virtually anyone Andrew will have interviewed, and the exchange could have been far more productive if both men had been better prepared.
3. For anyone to suggest Ben Shapiro was treated 'unfairly' by Andrew Neil is nonsense. Ben has been interviewed countless times, he has spoken to openly hostile audiences and has faced de-platforming by the lefty snowflakes on US campus's. In short, he is tougher than the person you quote gives him credit for.
4. Take time to listen to what Ben Shapiro says. You might not agree with him, but unlike some of the crazies on both the left and right of politics, Ben is a sound thinker, who speaks a rational, conservative voice into the issues of the day.
Watch the disastrous (for Shapiro) interview with Andrew Neil again. Neil reels off example after example of Nazi-quality filth, all of them direct quotes from Shapiro.
You are excoriating Morrissey of all in broadcasting and media generally.
Your statement is demonstrably incorrect. A quick review of my oeuvre shows I am more than happy to praise ethical, talented and conscientious journalists—both locally and internationally. On this forum and on many others I have praised: Julian Assange, Max Blumenthal, Mihi Forbes, Juan González,Amy Goodman, Glenn Greenwald, Nicky Hager, Amira Hass, Paul Jay, Caitlin Johnstone, Gideon Levy, Selwyn Manning, Abby Martin, Aaron Maté, Matt Nippert, Paula Penfold, John Pilger, Laura Poitras, Jeremy Scahill, Jon Stephenson….
That's just a few off the top of my head, in alphabetical order. I've praised every one of them at least once, some of them many times.
I hope someone pays you for all that. I don't think TS does, so whom?
What difference does it make? Mike Hosking gets paid to produce his rubbish; all the easy money in the world doesn't give him an ounce of credibility.
Temperatures Soar as Nearly All Old Arctic Sea Ice Has Vanished HEADLINEMAY 16, 2019
In climate news, temperatures near the entrance to the Arctic Ocean in northwest Russia reached a record-shattering 84 degrees Fahrenheit over the weekend, in an area where high temperatures are normally 30 degrees cooler this time of year. This comes as the National Snow and Ice Data Center recorded a record-low sea ice extent for the Arctic Ocean in April, noting that almost all of the sea ice more than four years old is gone. Over the weekend, meteorologists measured carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere at over 415 parts per million — the highest level in human history, and a concentration that’s not been seen on Earth in over 3 million years.
A campaigner from Big Brother Watch – who were protesting the use of cameras on the day – was also filmed telling an officer: ‘I would have done the same.’
https://metro.co.uk/2019/05/15/bike-handle-stuck-woman-two-years-husband-shoved-vagina-9556829/ My summary – This shows how women get treated when they are not respected in a society and become helpless pawns. Husband intoxicated by alcohol – such a common drug abuse. Woman 30 has six children, can't have any more. Might be good for her in the long run – depends on husband. If she hasn't had boys he might put her aside.
Millions of birds are being sucked out of trees and killed each year to feed our olive oil habit. Iconic birds such as robins, warblers and wagtails have seen their numbers decimated because of intensive farming practices. Experts have warned the international community that it needs to act before legally-protected species disappear for good. During the winter months, birds from central and northern Europe, flock to the Mediterranean basin. At the same time, the olive oil harvest happens in Spain, France, Italy and Portugal…
Farmers use large and intensive harvesting machines at night to strip the trees of their fruit. However, the birds are sleeping in the trees and are getting sucked into the machines on a ‘catastrophic scale.’…But, 96,000 birds are known to die in Portugal every winter as a result of this technique.
RSPCA director of conservation, Martin Harper, said: ‘Numbers of farmland birds in Europe have plummeted by 55% over the last three decades and this is another shocking example of how modern agricultural practices are impacting our bird populations, including some UK species passing through the region.’
And koalas. This cant' be.
The Australian Koala Foundation has confirmed that, with only 80,000 members of the species left in the wild there isn’t enough to support a new generation.
They’ve declared the marsupial ‘functionally extinct’ which means the population has dropped so low it no longer has any effect on its surrounding environment. Koalas have too few breeding adults left to support the species and any kind of genetic disease or pathogen would put the final nail in the coffin.
Koalas are dying out due to effects caused by climate change. Rising temperatures are causing heatwaves that kill thousands of koalas through dehydration. The species has also suffered hugely from deforestation. According to the Australian Koala Foundation, there are no koalas left at all in 41 out of 128 Federal environments where they have known habitats.
I suggest NZ sets up a fund to support the Koala Foundation and give the Australians a message that they need to both support their own vulnerable animals and the Kiwi people who live there and who they have arbitrarily arrested on spurious grounds and hold in camps against international law precedents. Maybe there will be some politicians who have integrity to do something for the Koalas and the Kiwis.
When you think these pricks had hit peak vileness.
Oklahoma state legislator Rep. Justin Humphrey is sponsoring a draconian bill, HB 1441, that would require a woman to get written permission from her sexual partner if she wants to have an abortion.
Attempting to justify the despicable legislation Rep. Humphrey told The Intercept that women have no right to bodily autonomy once they are pregnant because they are merely “hosts”:
I understand that they feel like that is their body. I feel like it is a separate — what I call them is, is you’re a ‘host.’ And you know when you enter into a relationship you’re going to be that host and so, you know, if you pre-know that then take all precautions and don’t get pregnant.
The Missouri House has voted to approve some of the strictest abortion laws in the country, and because it's Missouri, the process somehow managed to include a Republican lawmaker defending the bill by talking about, sigh, "consensual rape."
[…]
It was on the issue of exceptions for rape victims that Hovis, a retired Cape Girardeau police lieutenant first elected to office in 2017, took his stand. He pointed out that "most of the rapes" that he saw in law enforcement didn't involve "gentlemen jumping out of bushes."
"Most of them were date rapes or consensual rapes," he continued, "which were all terrible, but I'd sit in court when juries would struggle with those situations, where it was a 'he-said-she-said,' which was unfortunate if it really happened."
Having suggested that rape is often no big deal — because hey, if it didn't happen at gunpoint, it's a real struggle for a jury to know what to do — Hovis finally seemed to find his point, which appeared to be that that rape victims would still have plenty of time, after the rape, to decide whether to get an abortion
If you're looking for someone without a humorous bone in her body, and lacking even a rudimentary sense of the ridiculous, you can't go past this thoroughly Anglo, non-German, fool (unfunny fool)….
no, you just looked for a reason to again post one of your pointless video clips.
it has nothing do to with what i posted, and it is so far removed from anything that really it is just your typical posting a shit video so that you can post a shit video.
and when it comes to you and your shit videos i am just bored and bored, and bored, and bored, and bored.
no, you just looked for a reason to again post one of your pointless video clips.
"Pointless"? You didn't get the point? Frankly, I'm not surprised.
it has nothing do to with what i posted,
In fact, it has everything to do with what you posted. In a fit of self-deprecation, you repeated the stupid falsehood that Germans "don't have a sense of humour." I helpfully steered you to an example of someone—a non-German— completely lacking any sense of humour, or absurdity, or even increasingly—it's been clear for more than two years now—any grasp of reality.
and it is so far removed from anything that really it is just your typical posting a shit video so that you can post a shit video.
???? You really can't understand that clip? Really?
and when it comes to you and your shit videos i am just bored and bored, and bored, and bored, and bored.
There are German writers I admire tremendously: Mann, Sebald, Roth. Your embarrassing and awkwardly phrased rants are not quite in their company, I'm sorry to say. Perhaps you should read a bit more, think a bit more, see if you can pick up a few stylistic tips from some of your compatriots who can actually write.
It's extremely serious. See, Andre is afflicted by these Russian bots, controlled by those Russian masterminds who control Trump, and …. hell, you know the rest. It's what Rachel Maddow says.
Thoughts and prayers, Andre. That evil Putin, darn him.
Hi Sabine It might have been one of my videos that you didn't like. Sorry. But I put them in as changes when the tone is too dark or it seems we need some light relief. They are just a break in between bouts of seriousness, or indeed slapstick occasionally.
You're a real gentleman, Mr Shark. But rest assured: unser guter freund Sabine has been confused and bewildered for a good two and a half years now. Sie kann dich nicht dafür verantwortlich machen.
Yep. I used to love one NDR programme in the mid-90s, can't remember what is was called now – everything absolutely deadpan, no clues you were supposed to find it funny, fuck it was good. Morrissey just lacks the self-awareness to recognise bigotry when he's indulging in it.
Sorry Milt, you've got the wrong end of the shoe here. It's our friend Sabine that's running down Germans, not me. I stuck up for them, having appreciated their music, literature, art, cinema, food, beer and, yes, their sense of humour for as long as I can remember.
The Trump administration has taken its war on abortion worldwide, cutting off all funding to any overseas organisation or clinic that will not agree to a complete ban on even discussing it.
The Mexico City policy, dubbed the “global gag” by its critics, denies US federal funds to any organisation involved in providing abortion services overseas or counselling women about them. It was instituted by the then US president Ronald Reagan and has been revoked by every Democrat and reinstated by every Republican president since.
“For the past three days, Ollie Langridge has sat on the lawn of Parliament, sitting on a bolster pillow wrapped in plastic, and holding a sign calling on the Government to declare a climate change emergency.
Langridge is a self-employed father of six, living in Thorndon with no political affiliation or ties to climate change advocacy groups – just a man worried about the future he's leaving for his children.
"I just see myself as a normal guy that doesn't know what to do and this is the best thing I could think of.”
National's Finance Minister once met a poor person.A scornful interview with National's finance guru who knows next to nothing about economics or people.There might have been something a bit familiar if that was the headline I’d gone with today. It would of course have been in tribute to the article ...
Rob MacCulloch writes – Throughout the pandemic, the new Vice-Chancellor-of-Otago-University-on-$629,000 per annum-Can-you-believe-it-and-Former-Finance-Minister Grant Robertson repeated the mantra over and over that he saved “lives and livelihoods”.As we update how this claim is faring over the course of time, the facts are increasingly speaking differently. NZ ...
Chris Trotter writes – IT’S A COMMONPLACE of political speeches, especially those delivered in acknowledgement of electoral victory: “We’ll govern for all New Zealanders.” On the face of it, the pledge is a strange one. Why would any political leader govern in ways that advantaged the huge ...
Bryce Edwards writes – The list of former National Party Ministers being given plum and important roles got longer this week with the appointment of former Deputy Prime Minister Paula Bennett as the chair of Pharmac. The Christopher Luxon-led Government has now made key appointments to Bill ...
TL;DR: These are the six things that stood out to me in news and commentary on Aotearoa-NZ’s political economy at 10:06am on Wednesday, May 1:The Lead: Business confidence fell across the board in April, falling in some areas to levels last seen during the lockdowns because of a collapse in ...
Over the past 36 hours, Christopher Luxon has been dong his best to portray the centre-right’s plummeting poll numbers as a mark of virtue. Allegedly, the negative verdicts are the result of hard economic times, and of a government bravely set out on a perilous rescue mission from which not ...
Auckland Transport have started rolling out new HOP card readers around the network and over the next three months, all of them on buses, at train stations and ferry wharves will be replaced. The change itself is not that remarkable, with the new readers looking similar to what is already ...
Completed reads for April: The Difference Engine, by William Gibson and Bruce Sterling Carnival of Saints, by George Herman The Snow Spider, by Jenny Nimmo Emlyn’s Moon, by Jenny Nimmo The Chestnut Soldier, by Jenny Nimmo Death Comes As the End, by Agatha Christie Lord of the Flies, by ...
On February 14, 2023 we announced our Rebuttal Update Project. This included an ask for feedback about the added "At a glance" section in the updated basic rebuttal versions. This weekly blog post series highlights this new section of one of the updated basic rebuttal versions and serves as a ...
Have a story to share about St Paul’s, but today just picturesPopular novels written at this desk by a young man who managed to bootstrap himself out of father’s imprisonment and his own young life in a workhouse Read more ...
The list of former National Party Ministers being given plum and important roles got longer this week with the appointment of former Deputy Prime Minister Paula Bennett as the chair of Pharmac. The Christopher Luxon-led Government has now made key appointments to Bill English, Simon Bridges, Steven Joyce, Roger Sowry, ...
Newsroom has a story today about National's (fortunately failed) effort to disestablish the newly-created Inspector-General of Defence. The creation of this agency was the key recommendation of the Inquiry into Operation Burnham, and a vital means of restoring credibility and social licence to an agency which had been caught lying ...
Holding On To The Present:The moment a political movement arises that attacks the whole idea of social progress, and announces its intention to wind back the hands of History’s clock, then democracy, along with its unwritten rules, is in mortal danger.IT’S A COMMONPLACE of political speeches, especially those delivered in ...
Stuck In The Middle With You:As Christopher Luxon feels the hot breath of Act’s and NZ First’s extremists on the back of his neck and, as he reckons with the damage their policies are already inflicting upon a country he’s described as “fragile”, is there not some merit in reaching out ...
The unpopular coalition government is currently rushing to repeal section 7AA of the Oranga Tamariki Act. The clause is Oranga Tamariki's Treaty clause, and was inserted after its systematic stealing of Māori children became a public scandal and resulted in physical resistance to further abductions. The clause created clear obligations ...
Buzz from the Beehive The government’s official website – which Point of Order monitors daily – not for the first time has nothing much to say today about political happenings that are grabbing media headlines. It makes no mention of the latest 1News-Verian poll, for example. This shows National down ...
It Takes A Train To Cry:Surely, there is nothing lonelier in all this world than the long wail of a distant steam locomotive on a cold Winter’s night.AS A CHILD, I would lie awake in my grandfather’s house and listen to the traffic. The big wooden house was only a ...
Packing A Punch: The election of the present government, including in its ranks politicians dedicated to reasserting the rights of the legislature in shaping and determining the future of Māori and Pakeha in New Zealand, should have alerted the judiciary – including its anomalous appendage, the Waitangi Tribunal – that its ...
Dead Woman Walking: New Zealand’s media industry had been moving steadily towards disaster for all the years Melissa Lee had been National’s media and communications policy spokesperson, and yet, when the crisis finally broke, on her watch, she had nothing intelligent to offer. Christopher Luxon is a patient man - but he’s not ...
Chris Trotter writes – New Zealand politics is remarkably easy-going: dangerously so, one might even say. With the notable exception of John Key’s flat ruling-out of the NZ First Party in 2008, all parties capable of clearing MMP’s five-percent threshold, or winning one or more electorate seats, tend ...
Bryce Edwards writes – Polling shows that Wellington Mayor Tory Whanau has the lowest approval rating of any mayor in the country. Siting at -12 per cent, the proportion of constituents who disapprove of her performance outweighs those who give her the thumbs up. This negative rating is ...
Luxon will no doubt put a brave face on it, but there is no escaping the pressure this latest poll will put on him and the government. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: These are the six things that stood out to me in news and commentary on Aotearoa-NZ’s political ...
This is a re-post from The Climate Brink by Andrew Dessler In the wake of any unusual weather event, someone inevitably asks, “Did climate change cause this?” In the most literal sense, that answer is almost always no. Climate change is never the sole cause of hurricanes, heat waves, droughts, or ...
Something odd happened yesterday, and I’d love to know if there’s more to it. If there was something which preempted what happened, or if it was simply a throwaway line in response to a journalist.Yesterday David Seymour was asked at a press conference what the process would be if the ...
Hi,From time to time, I want to bring Webworm into the real world. We did it last year with the Jurassic Park event in New Zealand — which was a lot of fun!And so on Saturday May 11th, in Los Angeles, I am hosting a lil’ Webworm pop-up! I’ve been ...
Education Minister Erica Standford yesterday unveiled a fundamental reform of the way our school pupils are taught. She would not exactly say so, but she is all but dismantling the so-called “inquiry” “feel good” method of teaching, which has ruled in our classrooms since a major review of the New ...
Exactly where are we seriously going with this government and its policies? That is, apart from following what may as well be a Truss-Lite approach on the purported economic “plan“, and Victorian-era regression when it comes to social policy.Oh it’ll work this time of course, we’re basically assured, “the ...
Hey Uncle Dave, When the Poms joined the EEC, I wasn't one of those defeatists who said, Well, that’s it for the dairy job. And I was right, eh? The Chinese can’t get enough of our milk powder and eventually, the Poms came to their senses and backed up the ute ...
Polling shows that Wellington Mayor Tory Whanau has the lowest approval rating of any mayor in the country. Siting at -12 per cent, the proportion of constituents who disapprove of her performance outweighs those who give her the thumbs up. This negative rating is higher than for any other mayor ...
Buzz from the Beehive Pharmac has been given a financial transfusion and a new chair to oversee its spending in the pharmaceutical business. Associate Health Minister David Seymour described the funding for Pharmac as “its largest ever budget of $6.294 billion over four years, fixing a $1.774 billion fiscal cliff”. ...
Bryce Edwards writes – Many criticisms are being made of the Government’s Fast Track Approvals Bill, including by this writer. But as with everything in politics, every story has two sides, and both deserve attention. It’s important to understand what the Government is trying to achieve and its ...
TL;DR: Here’s my top 10 ‘pick ‘n’ mix of links to news, analysis and opinion articles as of 10:10am on Monday, April 29:Scoop: The children's ward at Rotorua Hospital will be missing a third of its beds as winter hits because Te Whatu Ora halted an upgrade partway through to ...
span class=”dropcap”>As hideous as David Seymour can be, it is worth keeping in mind occasionally that there are even worse political figures (and regimes) out there. Iran for instance, is about to execute the country’s leading hip hop musician Toomaj Salehi, for writing and performing raps that “corrupt” the nation’s ...
Yesterday marked 10 years since the first electric train carried passengers in Auckland so it’s a good time to look back at it and the impact it has had. A brief history The first proposals for rail electrification in Auckland came in the 1920’s alongside the plans for earlier ...
Right now, in Aotearoa-NZ, our ‘animal spirits’ are darkening towards a winter of discontent, thanks at least partly to a chorus of negative comments and actions from the Government Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: These are the six things that stood out to me in news and commentary on ...
You make people evil to punish the paststuck inside a sequel with a rotating castThe following photos haven’t been generated with AI, or modified in any way. They are flesh and blood, human beings. On the left is Galatea Young, a young mum, and her daughter Fiadh who has Angelman ...
April has been a quiet month at A Phuulish Fellow. I have had an exceptionally good reading month, and a decently productive writing month – for original fiction, anyway – but not much has caught my eye that suggested a blog article. It has been vaguely frustrating, to be honest. ...
A listing of 31 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, April 21, 2024 thru Sat, April 27, 2024. Story of the week Anthropogenic climate change may be the ultimate shaggy dog story— but with a twist, because here ...
Hi,I spent about a year on Webworm reporting on an abusive megachurch called Arise, and it made me want to stab my eyes out with a fork.I don’t regret that reporting in 2022 and 2023 — I am proud of it — but it made me angry.Over three main stories ...
The new Victoria University Vice-Chancellor decided to have a forum at the university about free speech and academic freedom as it is obviously a topical issue, and the Government is looking at legislating some carrots or sticks for universities to uphold their obligations under the Education and Training Act. They ...
Do you remember when Melania Trump got caught out using a speech that sounded awfully like one Michelle Obama had given? Uncannily so.Well it turns out that Abraham Lincoln is to Winston Peters as Michelle was to Melania. With the ANZAC speech Uncle Winston gave at Gallipoli having much in ...
She was born 25 years ago today in North Shore hospital. Her eyes were closed tightly shut, her mouth was silently moving. The whole theatre was all quiet intensity as they marked her a 2 on the APGAR test. A one-minute eternity later, she was an 8. The universe was ...
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 in collaboration with members from our Skeptical Science team. You can submit claims you think need checking via the tipline. Is Antarctica gaining land ice? ...
Images of US students (and others) protesting and setting up tent cities on US university campuses have been broadcast world wide and clearly demonstrate the growing rifts in US society caused by US policy toward Israel and Israel’s prosecution of … Continue reading → ...
Barrie Saunders writes – Dear Paul As the new Minister of Media and Communications, you will be inundated with heaps of free advice and special pleading, all in the national interest of course. For what it’s worth here is my assessment: Traditional broadcasting free to air content through ...
Many criticisms are being made of the Government’s Fast Track Approvals Bill, including by this writer. But as with everything in politics, every story has two sides, and both deserve attention. It’s important to understand what the Government is trying to achieve and its arguments for such a bold reform. ...
Peter Dunne writes – The great nineteenth British Prime Minister, William Gladstone, once observed that “the first essential for a Prime Minister is to be a good butcher.” When a later British Prime Minister, Harold Macmillan, sacked a third of his Cabinet in July 1962, in what became ...
Ele Ludemann writes – New Zealanders had the OECD’s second highest tax increase last year: New Zealanders faced the second-biggest tax raises in the developed world last year, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) says. The intergovernmental agency said the average change in personal income tax ...
We all know something’s not right with our elections. The spread of misinformation, people being targeted with soundbites and emotional triggers that ignore the facts, even the truth, and influence their votes.The use of technology to produce deep fakes. How can you tell if something is real or not? Can ...
This video includes conclusions of the creator climate scientist Dr. Simon Clark. It is presented to our readers as an informed perspective. Please see video description for references (if any). This year you will be lied to! Simon Clark helps prebunk some misleading statements you'll hear about climate. The video includes ...
It is all very well cutting the backrooms of public agencies but it may compromise the frontlines. One of the frustrations of the Productivity Commission’s 2017 review of universities is that while it observed that their non-academic staff were increasing faster than their academic staff, it did not bother to ...
Buzz from the Beehive Two speeches delivered by Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters at Anzac Day ceremonies in Turkey are the only new posts on the government’s official website since the PM announced his Cabinet shake-up. In one of the speeches, Peters stated the obvious: we live in a troubled ...
1. Which of these would you not expect to read in The Waikato Invader?a. Luxon is here to do business, don’t you worry about thatb. Mr KPI expects results, and you better believe itc. This decisive man of action is getting me all hot and excitedd. Melissa Lee is how ...
…it has a restricted jurisdiction which must not be abused: it is not an inquisitionNOTE – this article was published before the High Court ruled that Karen Chhour does not have to appear before the Waitangi Tribunal Gary Judd writes – The High Court ...
Lindsay Mitchell writes – One of reasons Oranga Tamariki exists is to prevent child neglect. But could the organisation itself be guilty of the same?Oranga Tamariki’s statistics show a decrease in the number and age of children in care. “There are less children ...
David Farrar writes: Graeme Edgeler wrote in 2017: In the first five years after three strikes came into effect 5248 offenders received a ‘first strike’ (that is, a “stage-1 conviction” under the three strikes sentencing regime), and 68 offenders received a ‘second strike’. In the five years prior to ...
Bryce Edwards writes – Prime Minister Christopher Luxon has surprised everyone with his ruthlessness in sacking two of his ministers from their crucial portfolios. Removing ministers for poor performance after only five months in the job just doesn’t normally happen in politics. That’s refreshing and will be extremely ...
TL;DR: These are the six things that stood out to me in news and commentary on Aotearoa-NZ’s political economy in the two days to 6:06am on Thursday, April 25:Politics: PM Christopher Luxon has set up a dual standard for ministerial competence by demoting two National Cabinet ministers while leaving also-struggling ...
Hi,Today I mainly want to share some of your thoughts about the recent piece I wrote about success and failure, and the forces that seemingly guide our lives. But first, a quick bit of housekeeping: I am doing a Webworm popup in Los Angeles on Saturday May 11 at 2pm. ...
It is hard to see what Melissa Lee might have done to “save” the media. National went into the election with no public media policy and appears not to have developed one subsequently. Lee claimed that she had prepared a policy paper before the election but it had been decided ...
Open access notablesIce acceleration and rotation in the Greenland Ice Sheet interior in recent decades, Løkkegaard et al., Communications Earth & Environment:In the past two decades, mass loss from the Greenland ice sheet has accelerated, partly due to the speedup of glaciers. However, uncertainty in speed derived from satellite products ...
Buzz from the Beehive A statement from Children’s Minister Karen Chhour – yet to be posted on the Government’s official website – arrived in Point of Order’s email in-tray last night. It welcomes the High Court ruling on whether the Waitangi Tribunal can demand she appear before it. It does ...
Mr Bombastic:Ironically, the media the academic experts wanted is, in many ways, the media they got. In place of the tyrannical editors of yesteryear, advancing without fear or favour the interests of the ruling class; the New Zealand news media of today boasts a troop of enlightened journalists dedicated to ...
It's hard times try to make a livingYou wake up every morning in the unforgivingOut there somewhere in the cityThere's people living lives without mercy or pityI feel good, yeah I'm feeling fineI feel better then I have for the longest timeI think these pills have been good for meI ...
In 1974, the US Supreme Court issued its decision in United States v. Nixon, finding that the President was not a King, but was subject to the law and was required to turn over the evidence of his wrongdoing to the courts. It was a landmark decision for the rule ...
Every day now just seems to bring in more fresh meat for the grinder.In their relentlessly ideological drive to cut back on the “excessive bloat” (as they see it) of the previous Labour-led government, on the mountains of evidence accumulated in such a short period of time do not ...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections by Megan Valére SosouMarket gardening site of the Itchèléré de Itagui agricultural cooperative in Dassa-Zoumè (Image credit: Megan Valère Sossou) For the residents of Dassa-Zoumè, a city in the West African country of Benin, choosing between drinking water and having enough ...
Buzz from the Beehive Melissa Lee – as may be discerned from the screenshot above – has not been demoted for doing something seriously wrong as Minister of ...
Morning in London Mother hugs beloved daughter outside the converted shoe factory in which she is living.Afternoon in London Travelling writer takes himself and his wrist down to A&E, just to be sure. Read more ...
Mike Grimshaw writes – The recent announcement of the University Advisory Group, chaired by Sir Peter Gluckman, makes very clear where the Government’s focus and priorities lie. The remit of the Advisory Group is that Group members will consider challenges and opportunities for improvement in the university sector including: ...
Eric Crampton writes – The Reserve Bank of New Zealand desperately wants to find reasons to have workstreams in climate change. It makes little sense. They’ve run another stress test on the banks looking to see if they could find a prudential regulation case. They couldn’t. They ...
Unemployment is on the rise and it’s only going to get worse under this Government, Labour finance spokesperson Barbara Edmonds said. Stats NZ figures show the unemployment rate grew to 4.3 percent in the March quarter from 4 percent in the December quarter. “This is the second rise in unemployment ...
This afternoon’s interim Waitangi Tribunal report must be taken seriously as it affects our most vulnerable children, Labour children’s spokesperson Willow-Jean Prime. ...
Te Pāti Māori are demanding the New Zealand Government support an international independent investigation into mass graves that have been uncovered at two hospitals on the Gaza strip, following weeks of assault by Israeli troops. Among the 392 bodies that have been recovered, are children and elderly civilians. Many of ...
Our two-tiered system for veterans’ support is out of step with our closest partners, and all parties in Parliament should work together to fix it, Labour veterans’ affairs spokesperson Greg O’Connor said. ...
Stripping two Ministers of their portfolios just six months into the job shows Christopher Luxon’s management style is lacking, Labour Leader Chris Hipkins said. ...
Tonight’s court decision to overturn the summons of the Children’s Minister has enabled the Crown to continue making decisions about Māori without evidence, says Te Pāti Māori spokesperson for Children, Mariameno Kapa-Kingi. “The judicial system has this evening told the nation that this government can do whatever they want when ...
It appears Nicola Willis is about to pull the rug out from under the feet of local communities still dealing with the aftermath of last year’s severe weather, and local councils relying on funding to build back from these disasters. ...
The Government is making short-sighted changes to the Resource Management Act (RMA) that will take away environmental protection in favour of short-term profits, Labour’s environment spokesperson Rachel Brooking said today. ...
Labour welcomes the release of the report into the North Island weather events and looks forward to working with the Government to ensure that New Zealand is as prepared as it can be for the next natural disaster. ...
The Labour Party has called for the New Zealand Government to recognise Palestine, as a material step towards progressing the two-State solution needed to achieve a lasting peace in the region. ...
Some of our country’s most important work, stopping the sexual exploitation of children and violent extremism could go along with staff on the frontline at ports and airports. ...
The Government’s Fast Track Approvals Bill will give projects such as new coal mines a ‘get out of jail free’ card to wreak havoc on the environment, Labour Leader Chris Hipkins said today. ...
The government's decision to reintroduce Three Strikes is a destructive and ineffective piece of law-making that will only exacerbate an inherently biased and racist criminal justice system, said Te Pāti Māori Justice Spokesperson, Tākuta Ferris, today. During the time Three Strikes was in place in Aotearoa, Māori and Pasifika received ...
Cuts to frontline hospital staff are not only a broken election promise, it shows the reckless tax cuts have well and truly hit the frontline of the health system, says Labour Health spokesperson Ayesha Verrall. ...
The Green Party has joined the call for public submissions on the fast-track legislation to be extended after the Ombudsman forced the Government to release the list of organisations invited to apply just hours before submissions close. ...
New Zealand’s good work at reducing climate emissions for three years in a row will be undone by the National government’s lack of ambition and scrapping programmes that were making a difference, Labour Party climate spokesperson Megan Woods said today. ...
More essential jobs could be on the chopping block, this time Ministry of Education staff on the school lunches team are set to find out whether they're in line to lose their jobs. ...
Te Pāti Māori is disgusted at the confirmation that hundreds are set to lose their jobs at Oranga Tamariki, and the disestablishment of the Treaty Response Unit. “This act of absolute carelessness and out of touch decision making is committing tamariki to state abuse.” Said Te Pāti Māori Oranga Tamariki ...
The Government is trying to bring in a law that will allow Ministers to cut corners and kill off native species, Labour environment spokesperson Rachel Brooking said. ...
Cancelling urgently needed new Cook Strait ferries and hiking the cost of public transport for many Kiwis so that National can announce the prospect of another tunnel for Wellington is not making good choices, Labour Transport Spokesperson Tangi Utikere said. ...
A laundry list of additional costs for Tāmaki Makarau Auckland shows the Minister for the city is not delivering for the people who live there, says Labour Auckland Issues spokesperson Shanan Halbert. ...
Te Pāti Māori co-leader Rawiri Waititi, and Mema Paremata mō Tāmaki-Makaurau, Takutai Tarsh Kemp, will travel to the Gold Coast to strengthen ties with Māori in Australia next week (15-21 April). The visit, in the lead-up to the 9th Australian National Kapa haka Festival, will be an opportunity for both ...
The Green Party has today launched a step-by-step guide to help New Zealanders make their voice heard on the Government’s democracy dodging and anti-environment fast track legislation. ...
The National Government’s proposed changes to the Residential Tenancies Act will mean tenants can be turfed from their homes by landlords with little notice, Labour housing spokesperson Kieran McAnulty said. ...
Green Party co-leader Marama Davidson is calling on all parties to support a common-sense change that’s great for the planet and great for consumers after her member’s bill was drawn from the ballot today. ...
People with an interest in the health of Northland’s marine ecosystems are invited to a public meeting to discuss how to deal with kina barrens, Oceans and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones says. Mr Jones will lead the discussion, which will take place on Friday, 10 May, at Awanui Hotel in ...
Kiwi exporters are $100 million better off today with the NZ EU FTA entering into force says Trade Minister Todd McClay. “This is all part of our plan to grow the economy. New Zealand's prosperity depends on international trade, making up 60 per cent of the country’s total economic activity. ...
There are heartening signs that the extractive sector is once again becoming an attractive prospect for investors and a source of economic prosperity for New Zealand, Resources Minister Shane Jones says. “The beginnings of a resurgence in extractive industries are apparent in media reports of the sector in the past ...
The return of the historic Ō-Rākau battle site to the descendants of those who fought there moved one step closer today with the first reading of Te Pire mō Ō-Rākau, Te Pae o Maumahara / The Ō-Rākau Remembrance Bill. The Bill will entrust the 9.7-hectare battle site, five kilometres west ...
Energy Minister Simeon Brown has announced 25 new high-speed EV charging hubs along key routes between major urban centres and outlined the Government’s plan to supercharge New Zealand’s EV infrastructure. The hubs will each have several chargers and be capable of charging at least four – and up to 10 ...
The coalition Government will not proceed with the previous Government’s plans to regulate residential property managers, Housing Minister Chris Bishop says. “I have written to the Chairperson of the Social Services and Community Committee to inform him that the Government does not intend to support the Residential Property Managers Bill ...
The Government has announced an independent review into the disability support system funded by the Ministry of Disabled People – Whaikaha. Disability Issues Minister Louise Upston says the review will look at what can be done to strengthen the long-term sustainability of Disability Support Services to provide disabled people and ...
Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith has attended the Universal Periodic Review in Geneva and outlined the Government’s plan to restore law and order. “Speaking to the United Nations Human Rights Council provided us with an opportunity to present New Zealand’s human rights progress, priorities, and challenges, while responding to issues and ...
The Government and Rotorua Lakes Council are committed to working closely together to end the use of contracted emergency housing motels in Rotorua. Associate Minister of Housing (Social Housing) Tama Potaka says the Government remains committed to ending the long-term use of contracted emergency housing motels in Rotorua by the ...
Trade Minister Todd McClay heads overseas today for high-level trade talks in the Gulf region, and a key OECD meeting in Paris. Mr McClay will travel to Riyadh to meet with counterparts from Saudi Arabia and the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). “New Zealand’s goods and services exports to the Gulf region ...
Education Minister Erica Stanford has outlined six education priorities to deliver a world-leading education system that sets Kiwi kids up for future success. “I’m putting ambition, achievement and outcomes at the heart of our education system. I want every child to be inspired and engaged in their learning so they ...
The new NZ Transport Agency (NZTA) App is a secure ‘one stop shop’ to provide the services drivers need, Transport Minister Simeon Brown and Digitising Government Minister Judith Collins say. “The NZTA App will enable an easier way for Kiwis to pay for Vehicle Registration and Road User Charges (RUC). ...
Whānau with tamariki growing up in emergency housing motels will be prioritised for social housing starting this week, says Associate Housing Minister Tama Potaka. “Giving these whānau a better opportunity to build healthy stable lives for themselves and future generations is an essential part of the Government’s goal of reducing ...
Racing Minister Winston Peters has paid tribute to an icon of the industry with the recent passing of Dave O’Sullivan (OBE). “Our sympathies are with the O’Sullivan family with the sad news of Dave O’Sullivan’s recent passing,” Mr Peters says. “His contribution to racing, initially as a jockey and then ...
Assalaamu alaikum, greetings to you all. Eid Mubarak, everyone! I want to extend my warmest wishes to you and everyone celebrating this joyous occasion. It is a pleasure to be here. I have enjoyed Eid celebrations at Parliament before, but this is my first time joining you as the Minister ...
Associate Health Minister David Seymour has announced Pharmac’s largest ever budget of $6.294 billion over four years, fixing a $1.774 billion fiscal cliff. “Access to medicines is a crucial part of many Kiwis’ lives. We’ve committed to a budget allocation of $1.774 billion over four years so Kiwis are ...
Hon Paula Bennett has been appointed as member and chair of the Pharmac board, Associate Health Minister David Seymour announced today. "Pharmac is a critical part of New Zealand's health system and plays a significant role in ensuring that Kiwis have the best possible access to medicines,” says Mr Seymour. ...
Hundreds of New Zealand families affected by Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (FASD) will benefit from a new Government focus on prevention and treatment, says Health Minister Dr Shane Reti. “We know FASD is a leading cause of preventable intellectual and neurodevelopmental disability in New Zealand,” Dr Reti says. “Every day, ...
Regional Development Minister Shane Jones today attended the official opening of Kaikohe’s new $14.7 million sports complex. “The completion of the Kaikohe Multi Sports Complex is a fantastic achievement for the Far North,” Mr Jones says. “This facility not only fulfils a long-held dream for local athletes, but also creates ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters’ engagements in Türkiye this week underlined the importance of diplomacy to meet growing global challenges. “Returning to the Gallipoli Peninsula to represent New Zealand at Anzac commemorations was a sombre reminder of the critical importance of diplomacy for de-escalating conflicts and easing tensions,” Mr Peters ...
Ambassador Millar, Burgemeester, Vandepitte, Excellencies, military representatives, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen – good morning and welcome to this sacred Anzac Day dawn service. It is an honour to be here on behalf of the Government and people of New Zealand at Buttes New British Cemetery, Polygon Wood – a deeply ...
Distinguished guests - It is an honour to return once again to this site which, as the resting place for so many of our war-dead, has become a sacred place for generations of New Zealanders. Our presence here and at the other special spaces of Gallipoli is made ...
Mai ia tawhiti pamamao, te moana nui a Kiwa, kua tae whakaiti mai matou, ki to koutou papa whenua. No koutou te tapuwae, no matou te tapuwae, kua honoa pumautia. Ko nga toa kua hinga nei, o te Waipounamu, o te Ika a Maui, he okioki tahi me o ...
Paul Goldsmith will take on responsibility for the Media and Communications portfolio, while Louise Upston will pick up the Disability Issues portfolio, Prime Minister Christopher Luxon announced today. “Our Government is relentlessly focused on getting New Zealand back on track. As issues change in prominence, I plan to adjust Ministerial ...
Recreational catch limits will be reduced in areas of Fiordland and the Chatham Islands to help keep those fisheries healthy and sustainable, Oceans and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones says. The lower recreational daily catch limits for a range of finfish and shellfish species caught in the Fiordland Marine Area and ...
Energy Minister Simeon Brown has welcomed an important milestone in New Zealand’s hydrogen future, with the opening of the country’s first network of hydrogen refuelling stations in Wiri. “I want to congratulate the team at Hiringa Energy and its partners K one W one (K1W1), Mitsui & Co New Zealand ...
The coalition Government is delivering on its commitment to improve resource management laws and give greater certainty to consent applicants, with a Bill to amend the Resource Management Act (RMA) expected to be introduced to Parliament next month. RMA Reform Minister Chris Bishop has today outlined the first RMA Amendment ...
Overseas models for regulating the oil and gas sector, including their decommissioning regimes, are being carefully scrutinised as a potential template for New Zealand’s own sector, Resources Minister Shane Jones says. The Coalition Government is focused on rebuilding investor confidence in New Zealand’s energy sector as it looks to strengthen ...
Emergency Management and Recovery Minister Mark Mitchell has today released the Report of the Government Inquiry into the response to the North Island Severe Weather Events. “The report shows that New Zealand’s emergency management system is not fit-for-purpose and there are some significant gaps we need to address,” Mr Mitchell ...
Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith is today travelling to Europe where he’ll update the United Nations Human Rights Council on the Government’s work to restore law and order. “Attending the Universal Periodic Review in Geneva provides us with an opportunity to present New Zealand’s human rights progress, priorities, and challenges, while ...
Associate Agriculture Minister, Mark Patterson, formally reopened the world’s largest wool processing facility today in Awatoto, Napier, following a $50 million rebuild and refurbishment project. “The reopening of this facility will significantly lift the economic opportunities available to New Zealand’s wool sector, which already accounts for 20 per cent of ...
Hon Andrew Bayly, Minister for Small Business and Manufacturing At the Southland Otago Regional Engineering Collective (SOREC) Summit, 18 April, Dunedin Ngā mihi nui, Ko Andrew Bayly aho, Ko Whanganui aho Good Afternoon and thank you for inviting me to open your summit today. I am delighted ...
The Government is delivering on its commitment to bring back the Three Strikes legislation, Associate Justice Minister Nicole McKee announced today. “Our Government is committed to restoring law and order and enforcing appropriate consequences on criminals. We are making it clear that repeat serious violent or sexual offending is not ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters has today announced four new diplomatic appointments for New Zealand’s overseas missions. “Our diplomats have a vital role in maintaining and protecting New Zealand’s interests around the world,” Mr Peters says. “I am pleased to announce the appointment of these senior diplomats from the ...
New Zealand is contributing NZ$7 million to support communities affected by severe food insecurity and other urgent humanitarian needs in Ethiopia and Somalia, Foreign Minister Rt Hon Winston Peters announced today. “Over 21 million people are in need of humanitarian assistance across Ethiopia, with a further 6.9 million people ...
Minister for Arts, Culture and Heritage Paul Goldsmith is congratulating Mataaho Collective for winning the Golden Lion for best participant in the main exhibition at the Venice Biennale. "Congratulations to the Mataaho Collective for winning one of the world's most prestigious art prizes at the Venice Biennale. “It is good ...
The Government is reforming financial services to improve access to home loans and other lending, and strengthen customer protections, Commerce and Consumer Affairs Minister Andrew Bayly and Housing Minister Chris Bishop announced today. “Our coalition Government is committed to rebuilding the economy and making life simpler by cutting red tape. We are ...
“China remains a strong commercial opportunity for Kiwi exporters as Chinese businesses and consumers continue to value our high-quality safe produce,” Trade and Agriculture Minister Todd McClay says. Mr McClay has returned to New Zealand following visits to Beijing, Harbin and Shanghai where he met ministers, governors and mayors and engaged in trade and agricultural events with the New ...
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon has completed a successful trip to Singapore, Thailand and the Philippines, deepening relationships and capitalising on opportunities. Mr Luxon was accompanied by a business delegation and says the choice of countries represents the priority the New Zealand Government places on South East Asia, and our relationships in ...
New Zealand is demonstrating its commitment to reducing global greenhouse emissions, and supporting clean energy transition in South East Asia, through a contribution of NZ$41 million (US$25 million) in climate finance to the Asian Development Bank (ADB)-led Energy Transition Mechanism (ETM). Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and Climate Change Minister Simon Watts announced ...
Asia Pacific Report Ngāti Kahungunu in Aotearoa New Zealand’s Hawkes Bay region has become the first indigenous Māori iwi (tribe) to sign a resolution calling for a “ceasefire in Palestine”, reports Te Ao Māori News. Reporter Te Aniwaniwa Paterson talked to Te Otāne Huata, who has been organising peace rallies ...
By Dale Luma in Port Moresby “We want grants and not concessional loans,” is the crisp message from Papua New Guinea businesses directly affected by the Black Wednesday looting four months ago. The businesses, which lost millions after the January 10 rioting and looting, say they need grants as part ...
Happy May Day. Join a union. Q: What’s worse than a staff break room where the only place to sit and have a cup of tea is on a teetering stack of old pornography magazines? A: Your boss replacing the magazine stacks with chairs that are “heartily encrusted with ...
By Koroi Hawkins, RNZ Pacific editor Former opposition leader Matthew Wale has been announced as the second prime ministerial candidate ahead of the election in Solomon Islands tomorrow. He will face off against former foreign affairs minister Jeremiah Manele, who was announced by the Coalition for National Unity and Transformation ...
We get but one birthday a year – why not make it last as long as possible by scheduling as many meals with friends and family as you can? This is an excerpt from our weekly food newsletter, The Boil Up. How do you celebrate your birthday? Do you celebrate at ...
A Koi Tū discussion paper released today proposes sweeping changes to New Zealand’s media industry. The principal’s key author, Gavin Ellis, explains how journalists have a key role to play in making others value their role in society. This is an abridged version of a piece first published on knightlyviews.com ...
The Government’s spending cuts are again targeting support for Māori with proposed reform of the agency charged with advising on Māori wellbeing and development. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ian Douglas, Honorary Senior Lecturer, UNSW Aviation., UNSW Sydney The history of budget jet airlines in Australia is a long road littered with broken dreams. New entrants have consistently struggled to get a foothold. Low-cost carrier Bonza has just become the industry’s ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Rosalind Dixon, Director, Gilbert + Tobin Centre of Public Law, UNSW Sydney Australia is finally having a sustained conversation about violence against women and what we can do about it. It is more than time. Australian women and girls continue to experience ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Stephen Duckett, Honorary Enterprise Professor, School of Population and Global Health, and Department of General Practice and Primary Care, The University of Melbourne stockfour/Shutterstock Preliminary bulk billing data released this week shows a 2.1% rise in bulk billing up to March. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Samantha Schulz, Senior Lecturer, University of Adelaide Australia is once again grappling with how we can stop gendered violence in our country. Protests over the weekend show there is enormous community anger over the number of women who are dying and National ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Peter Martin, Visiting Fellow, Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University AnastasiaDudka/Shutterstock What if the government was doing everything it could to stop thieves making off with our money, except the one thing that could really work? That’s how it ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Erin Harrington, Senior Lecturer in English and Cultural Studies, University of Canterbury The Conversation It seems to be a time of old favourites. This month our experts have recommended two new seasons – the second season of Alone Australia (although ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jonti Horner, Professor (Astrophysics), University of Southern Queensland A bright Eta Aquariid meteor photobombed this photo of comet C/2020 F8 (SWAN) in May 2020.Jonti Horner Meteors – commonly known as shooting stars – can be seen on any night of the ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tim Flannery, Honorary fellow, The University of Melbourne Shutterstock Current concentrations of carbon dioxide (CO₂) in Earth’s atmosphere are unprecedented in human history. But CO₂ levels today, and those that might occur in coming decades, did occur millions of years ago. ...
Winston Peters has been keen to dismiss speculation on our involvement in Aukus but will give a speech tonight on the direction of our foreign policy, writes Anna Rawhiti-Connell in this excerpt from The Bulletin, The Spinoff’s morning news round-up. To receive The Bulletin in full each weekday, sign up here. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Patrick Usmar, Lecturer in Critical Media Literacies, Auckland University of Technology Getty Images With the coalition government’s ban of student mobile phones in New Zealand schools coming into effect this week, reaction has ranged from the sceptical (kids will just get ...
Hospitals around the country are not allowed to make a single hiring decision without the approval of Te Whatu Ora's head office, including for cleaners and administration staff. ...
A new report on protecting journalism and democracy in New Zealand recommends a levy be charged on global platforms like Facebook and Google to fund media firms undertaking public interest reporting. It also calls for the reinstatement of a powerful Broadcasting Commission to distribute public funding for journalism and other ...
On International Workers' Day, also known as May Day, the New Zealand Council of Trade Unions Te Kauae Kaimahi and the wider union movement are celebrating the proud history of the labour movement during a tough time for working people. ...
From bills to beards, a walk through the former Green co-leader’s time in politics. After close to a decade in politics, James Shaw is preparing to bid farewell to parliament. Tonight will see the former minister deliver his valedictory address, certain to be a speech filled with Shaw’s trademark wit ...
Two months ago, MPs unanimously voted to give themselves a week off in Efeso Collins’ honour. On Tuesday, most were too busy to give even an hour of their time. The day Fa’anānā Efeso Collins died, parliament felt different. In a building that operates at a breakneck pace, everyone stopped ...
India’s election involves hundreds of millions of people and is a months-long affair. Here’s how voting works and what’s at stake.The biggest-ever election in world history started on April 19, with more than 10% of the world’s population eligible to vote. Elections in India, the world’s most populous country ...
After the Christchurch earthquake, the then-national civil defence boss compared his experience to “putting a team on the rugby field who have never ever played together before”. Now, eight years later – and following a damning inquiry into the emergency response of cyclones Gabrielle, Hale and the Auckland anniversary weekend floods – ...
“I had just come off the end of a major robbery case which I had been working on for six months when I got a call on the afternoon of September 1, 1992, that some remains had been found at a building site in Devonport, so I drove over with ...
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Comment: Journalists are very good at telling other people’s stories, but they fall well short when writing about their own profession. Perhaps that is why it is so undervalued. Every successive poll on the public’s attitude toward journalism is more alarming than the last. In the last month we have ...
Opinion: A young Māori woman and her Pacific partner arrive at their local hospital by ambulance. She has gone into labour at just under 24 weeks, but the couple haven’t recognised the symptoms – and don’t know the risks of premature birth for their baby. By the time they arrive, ...
Behind closed doors, NZ First will be arguing fiercely against any watering down of the ministerial decision-making powers in the Bill The post Bishop backtracks after fast-track backlash appeared first on Newsroom. ...
Emotional scenes played out in the Invercargill courthouse on the first two days of the coronial inquest into the death of Gore toddler Lachlan Jones, in which the boy’s mother was accused of disposing of her son’s body. The second season of Newsroom’s award-nominated podcast The Boy in the Water ...
Opinion: The impression from the carpark is very inviting. The area is well fenced but barred so there is easy visibility of loved ones. Inside, the spaces are welcoming and clean and staff are friendly and clearly comfortable. I am greeted by ‘Kim’. She has worked here for three years, ...
Asia Pacific Report A Pacific civil society alliance has condemned French neocolonial policies in Kanaky New Caledonia, saying Paris is set on “maintaining the status quo” and denying the indigenous Kanak people their inalienable right to self-determination. The Pacific Regional Non-Governmental Organisations (PRNGOs) Alliance, representing some 15 groups, said in ...
Koi Tū New Zealand cannot sit back and see the collapse of its Fourth Estate, the director of Koi Tū: The Centre for Informed Futures, Sir Peter Gluckman, says in the foreword of a paper published today. The paper, “If not journalists, then who?” paints a picture of an industry ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra Foreign investment proposals with implications for Australia’s strategic or economic security will face tougher scrutiny, under a policy overhaul to be announced by Treasurer Jim Chalmers on Wednesday. At the same time, the government ...
A Waitangi Tribunal inquiry report has warned government that a repeal of Section 7AA of the Oranga Tamariki Act could cause harm to children in care. ...
The Treasury has published today three new papers covering government consumption multipliers, automatic stabilisers and the impacts of global shocks on New Zealand’s economy. ...
Asia Pacific Report The Pacific state of Hawai’i’s House of Representatives has joined the state’s Senate in calling for a ceasefire in Israel’s war on Gaza, becoming the first state to pass such a resolution, reports Hawaii News Now. In March, the Senate passed a ceasefire resolution with a 24–1 ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Christopher Ferrie, A/Prof, UTS Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Research and ARC DECRA Fellow, University of Technology Sydney PsiQuantum The Australian government has announced a pledge of approximately A$940 million (US$617 million) to PsiQuantum, a quantum computing start-up company based in Silicon Valley. Half ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Hunter Bennett, Lecturer in Exercise Science, University of South Australia Cameron Prins/Shutterstock If you spend a lot of time exploring fitness content online, you might have come across the concept of heart rate zones. Heart rate zone training has become more ...
SPECIAL REPORT:By Eugene Doyle He is the most popular Palestinian leader alive today — and yet few people in the West even know his name. Absolutely no one in Gaza or the West Bank does not know him. That difference speaks volumes about who dominates the media narrative that ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Will McCallum, PhD Candidate – School of Communication and Creative Arts, Deakin University Earlier this year, Opposition Leader Peter Dutton accused Prime Minister Anthony Albanese of not supporting Operation Sovereign Borders – the military-led border security operation that has “closed Australia’s borders ...
By Melyne Baroi in Port Moresby A Papua New Guinea MP, Peter Isoaimo, who had been ousted by the National Court in an alleged bribery case, has been reinstated by the Supreme Court on appeal. A three-member Supreme Court bench found that the National Court had erred in finding that ...
Publisher Chris Holdaway reflects on the unique project of collecting the work of the late, terrific poet Schaeffer Lemalu. One of the nice things you can do as a truly independent publisher is to make the books that writers want to make, whatever they happen to be. That’s how I’ve ...
Those profiled in the stamp series served on overseas deployments from 1995 onwards, and all have been awarded theNew Zealand Operational Service Medal. ...
Last night’s dismal poll result for the coalition government shows the limits of trying to govern as an opposition, argues Joel MacManus. There’s a quote from the American political activist Barbara Deming: “Vengeance is not the point; change is. But the trouble is that in most people’s minds, the thought ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Shireen Morris, Associate Professor and Director of the Radical Centre Reform Lab at Macquarie University Law School, Macquarie University Leonid Andronov/Shutterstock Foreign interference in Australian democracy poses a growing risk to our national sovereignty. It refers to coercive, corrupt or ...
A defendant charged by the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) has pleaded guilty to four charges of obtaining by deception in relation to a mortgage fraud scheme. Sentencing has been scheduled for 14 August 2024. ...
What to say when pesky journalists ask gotcha questions like ‘can you name a single book you’ve ever read?’ and ‘did you read it, or did you just see the movie?’This week, Act Party arts spokesperson Todd Stephenson foolishly agreed to an interview with Newsroom’s Steve Braunias regarding his ...
Explainer - What will a ban on cellphones in schools achieve? Can students use them during lunch breaks? And what happens if you need to contact your child? ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jodi Rowley, Curator, Amphibian & Reptile Conservation Biology, Australian Museum, UNSW Sydney Jodi Rowley, CC BY-NC-ND In winter 2021, Australia’s frogs started dropping dead. People began posting images of dead frogs on social media. Unable to travel to investigate the deaths ...
In the year ended March 2024, 0.4 percent of home transfers were to people who didn’t hold New Zealand citizenship or a resident visa, according to figures released by Stats NZ today. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Wasay Majid, Research Assistant , University of Auckland, Waipapa Taumata Rau New Zealand’s accommodation supplement scheme is facing scrutiny, with Social Development Minister Louise Upston recently saying “there is merit in considering whether the current settings are fair and sustainable long-term”. The ...
By Koroi Hawkins, RNZ Pacific editor The first prime ministerial candidate has been announced in Solomon Islands and it is not Manasseh Sogavare. The man of the hour is Jeremiah Manele, the MP for Hograno/Kia/Havulei constituency in Isabel Province, who served as minister of foreign affairs in the last government. ...
Protesting the removal of bins by leaving piles of your dog’s shit for others to deal with doesn’t make you a hero – it’s precious and entitled behaviour. You haven’t truly lived until you’ve stood on the shoreline of Auckland’s Cheltenham beach, desperately trying to scoop increasingly liquid dog shit ...
Analysis - Christopher Luxon will be alert to the factors driving the dire polling, but won't be waving the white flag just yet, RNZ political editor Jo Moir writes. ...
Writer, teacher and academic Vincent O’Sullivan died on Sunday 28 April. Here we gather tributes from friends, colleagues, and students who remember his extraordinary contributions. I went down to the garage tonight. There was a bird shrieking out in the bush, in the dark, maybe a kākā. Miraculously, through the ...
If there is going to be a new Conservative / Christian Party ..
Then they will need renounce those parts of the Bible that condemn Gays to hell ..
Like the Israel Folau outrage expressed..
But it wont happen will it. So neither the christians nor the outraged have credibility.
Over to Bridges and Ngaro…
Hi Vto
I do not recall Christ sending Gays to Hell.
Nor do I recall Christ playing Rugby Union.
However, HIV is still a big problem in our Society. Have you heard of that ?
Why bring up HIV? Curious, did Jesus mention HIV?
It must be big in rugby or something. I'm sure the preachers are on it.
Split the National Party vote.
Blue/Greens, New Conservatives, Ngaro Christian Party, Act Party.
That's a great plan. National might poll in the 20's on a good day.
Funny how the religious right are so selective in their reading of the Bible.
"Gays are unnatural and doomed to hell!"
The whole rich man going to heaven thing…..silence
LOL.
Along with usery.
"Talks between Labour and the government aimed at breaking the Brexit impasse have ended without an agreement." https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-48304867
What's stopping them find common ground? Corbyn "said his party had negotiated "in good faith and very seriously, and put forward a lot of very detailed arguments", which he thought was "the responsible thing to do". He added: "The issue [is] that the government has not fundamentally shifted its view and the divisions in the Conservative Party mean the government is negotiating with no authority and no ability that I can see to actually deliver anything.""
"Speaking after meeting Tory activists in Bristol, Mrs May said: "There have been areas where we have been able to find common ground, but other issues have proved to be more difficult. In particular, we haven't been able to overcome the fact that there isn't a common position in Labour about whether they want to deliver Brexit or hold a second referendum to reverse it."
In other words, there's obvious common ground: equivocation & disunity in both wings of the establishment. A common quicksand – no basis upon which to proceed.
Or to return to a frequent theme, this is a direct consequence of globalisation lacking common principles and democratic accountability.
Our physical reality is a world with 7 billion people that is one species rapidly converging as a single geo-social polity. Trade, travel, communication and a myriad of legal, commercial and technical mechanisms compel us into connection, yet the nation states have been unable to deliver an effective political mechanism to match.
Until we do expect more quicksand everywhere.
We've lived in an era in which there have been more and more powerful multilateral organizations and binding agreements across the known world than since the Christian church. Most of them formed in the last 70 years.
May and Corbyn simply don't believe in the best and most complex of these: the E.U.
Good point. You are quite correct, I carelessly glossed over that.
May and Corbyn simply don't believe in the best and most complex of these: the E.U.
Yet neither of these people are fools, nor all the aprox 50% of Britons who voted for Brexit. The question has to be why do they not believe in it? My answer is that we have yet to fully embrace the idea of globalisation as an moral idea. We believe in our families, our communities (whatever form they may take) and the nations we're citizens of yet somehow the next logical step, a belief in the organic unity of the human race, eludes us.
Stiglitz' 'Globalisation And Its Discontents' covers most of this ground.
I think we're about as unified as a human race as we are going to get, and we've done pretty well at it. Importantly we prefer the nation-state a the most powerful and enduring of the collective.
And honestly we expect too much from any one cross-national agreement, the CPTPP being a fairly strong recent one with buckets of extra moral suasion thrown in at the end to keep us happy.
I certainly expect the nation state to endure. Human history can be roughly modeled as successive extensions of our ability to unite. We started with modest family clan and tribal units, then built layers onto them, the village, the city state and currently the nation. It's crucial to recognise that each new layer incorporated and enhanced the ones that came before.
For instance, when the family/tribal unit is the largest political unit you have to work with, everything must be solved at that level. The appearance of the nation state far from being a constraint, liberated the family unit.
At this moment in history all the big problems we face are global in nature. Only when we have the political mechanisms at that scale to address them, will the nation states be liberated to reach their full and unsuspected potential.
And thanks for the Stiglitz link. Yes worth a read by the looks.
“The main message of Globalization and its Discontents was that the problem was not globalization, but how the process was being managed. Unfortunately, the management didn’t change. Fifteen years later, the new discontents have brought that message home to the advanced economies.”
https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/globalization-new-discontents-by-joseph-e–stiglitz-2016-08
The global agreements that will bind nations to reverse the great global problems won't exist. We've pushed human cooperation as far as it's going to get. There's plenty of juice left in the existing organizations if they were supported. You can probably name good examples.
But there are plenty of other mechanisms that are more powerful than national and multinational agreements. The most powerful of them are markets, and many of those are already regulated in the broader interest very well.
Other mechanisms exists in only two of the most powerful countries we have: China and the United States. China's Belt and Road initiative for example. Plenty of faults, but no lack of international ambition or will.
Further mechanisms for global consensus exist in social media. Trump has led the way on how strong this mechanism is.
Even Ardern+Macron's Christchurch Call shows that agreement can simply start from fresh events. It's not a breakthrough, but it's a dent.
I don't think there's any need to wait until a global government arrives.
We've pushed human cooperation as far as it's going to get.
Yet this same statement could have been made by any of the tiny warlord duchy states prior to the emergence of say the unified German state.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_historic_states_of_Germany
Britain went through much the same turbulent era, such as the War of the Roses, as it transitioned from city state level of social unity to the nation state. Achieving a broader level of social cohesion never an easy process, and encounters much resistance. This isn't necessarily a bad thing; not all new forms are necessarily a good thing. It's wise that we should test the new before we commit irreversibly.
Yet there is a deep paradox in human social organisation. We value our freedom and independence, yet in isolation we perish. It's a terrible contradiction, but in order to gain true liberty we must first surrender part of our freedom. For example, in order to make the best use of a road we must collectively abide by the constraints of a road code. If we each retained the right to randomly choose whichever side of the road to drive on each morning, collectively the result would render them catastrophically useless.
Collectively we all share a planet and the nation states have reached the point where each must surrender a part of their sovereignty in order to evolve to their next step. Until then we're stuck in escalating cycles of mismanaged globalisation, confrontation and conflict.
I do agree with your last sentiment; waiting for a fully functioning federated global government is not necessary; there are many incremental steps along the way that can be achieved. The EU was as you say one of the better attempts.
Germany is a Federation within a Community.
It is Germany's sense of postwar cross-national amity that sought a structure of cooperation that would stop all future wars, and that evolved from the EC to the EU we have today.
The E.U. is still expanding, so that impulse is still alive. But barely.
So the historical circumstance is pretty different to what you point to.
I'm still waiting for the Pacific Islands to figure that their tiny non-sustaining little fiefdoms are better amalgamated into a pan-national confederation. They've got plenty to fight for after all.
In the meantime New Zealand needs to keep dear, dear hold of that special relationship with Australia. That's as close as we're going to get to Federation with something of any heft.
So the historical circumstance is pretty different to what you point to.
In the normal course of events you are right, the impulse toward higher levels of cooperation is fitful and unsatisfying.
But every now and then, such as in the aftermath of WW1 and WW2, we have a moment of clarity, when in horror and shame at what we have done, we take a decisive step.
We have a choice, doing this the hard way, or the very horrifyingly traumatic way. But it will happen, because the alternatives to my mind are not acceptable.
Seems to me it's the difference between ideal & reality. United Europe is an excellent idea. The consequent eurocracy has alienated too many people. Just as the United Nations was an excellent idea, discredited by dysfunction.
What's necessary in high-level political organisations is appropriate design, followed by smooth operation. Design flaws and malfunctions must be eliminated as they appear. Instead, the human tendency to instutionalise such problems kicks in. The tacit assumption `fixing it is too hard' prevails. We need to empower fixers. Democracy selects non-fixers.
We've lived in an era in which there have been more and more powerful multilateral organizations and binding agreements across the known world than since the Christian church. Most of them formed in the last 70 years.
Very powerful and ubiquitous these new religions eg Harari (sapiens)
“The capitalist and consumerist ethics are two sides of the same coin, a merger of two commandments. The supreme commandment of the rich is ‘Invest!’ The supreme commandment of the rest of us is ‘Buy!’ The capitalist–consumerist ethic is revolutionary in another respect. Most previous ethical systems presented people with a pretty tough deal. They were promised paradise, but only if they cultivated compassion and tolerance, overcame craving and anger, and restrained their selfish interests. This was too tough for most. The history of ethics is a sad tale of wonderful ideals that nobody can live up to. Most Christians did not imitate Christ, most Buddhists failed to follow Buddha, and most Confucians would have caused Confucius a temper tantrum. In contrast, most people today successfully live up to the capitalist–consumerist ideal. The new ethic promises paradise on condition that the rich remain greedy and spend their time making more money and that the masses give free reign to their cravings and passions and buy more and more. This is the first religion in history whose followers actually do what they are asked to do. How though do we know that we'll really get paradise in return? We've seen it on television.”
I've been waiting to see how long it would take for kiwi entrepeneurs to rise to the challenge of waste recycling since the early eighties. It's finally happened!
"New Zealand's soft packaging recycling scheme is about to start up again on Monday, after being suspended last year when global recycling options dried up." https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/new-zealand/2019/05/soft-packaging-recycling-scheme-relaunches-in-new-zealand.html
"When China stopped taking plastic in 2018, it had a knock-on effect. Our soft plastics had been going to Australia but with a global market flooded with plastic, we can no longer rely on overseas processors and are forced to manage our own waste. Soft plastic has no commercial value and is difficult to repurpose."
"That's where Jerome Wenzlick steps in. He's a farmer and fencer who came up with an idea while putting up fencing at a rubbish dump. "We were putting wooden posts into the ground and the posts were snapping and we thought why don't we make some posts out of the plastic that's in the ground," he told Newshub. He's set up a company called Future Post and since the start of the year, he's recycled 300 tonnes – that's 75 truck loads."
"The soft plastic is sorted and granulated, then mixed with milk bottles, before going through a New Zealand-designed and built extruder to melt and reform it into fence posts. The equivalent of 550 plastic bags goes into making each post."
Thanks Dennis, a bit of good news that includes atypical ingenuity.
Is is going too far to call it plastic sequestering?
If this gets off the ground maybe they could talk to each other:
https://www.stuff.co.nz/environment/111784322/feilding-could-home-new-zealands-first-plastic-reprocessing-centre#comments
Fancy a district council being that enterprising! "It's up to the Manawatū District Council to persuade the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment after the provincial development unit handed it $81,000 to put together a business plan."
I hope the economics is viable. Fits in with regional development too eh? Not many jobs but they all help. I wouldn't trust the MBIE to necessarily get it right though.
If they fail to approve it, the MDC ought to pay a leading economic consultancy to appraise the plan too, to identify whatever the design flaw is, or it exists merely in the minds of bureaucrats, formulate a contrary analysis in support of it which the MDC could then submit directly to the minister for regional development – or the minister for the environment, perhaps. Because a viable scheme could be copied in other regions…
This, or any other proposal, when a district council is involved, can only succeed when it doesn't clash with councillor's own vested interests.
So to have councils being the ones to tackle climate change, doesn't fill me with hope especially the provincial councils.
Yes, that's a realistic view of local body politics. And why the MDC initiative is so unusual. To be optimistic, one could also anticipate a copycat effect, which is likely if the scheme works. That would provide a progressive trend.
Is the Christchurch killer a terrorist, or a white person?
Both I would have said.
he is both,
a white supremist terrorist.
there, that was not hard.
The White supremacist shooter is only being charged with 'murder'.
Tam Iti, who is not white, was charged with terrorism.
Despite not killing, or even threatening to kill, anyone.
A double standard?
Guilty of terrorism until proven white?
I will repeat the question, and enlarge on it.
Is the Christchurch killer a terrorist, or a white person?
Are white people, not terrorists by definition?
How can anyone explain this discrepancy?
While agreeing that the way Tame Iti was treated was appaĺling and most certainly had a racist element to it, the major flaw in your argument is that he couldn't be charged with murder, having not killed anyone! Besides, the murder charge for the Chch perpetrator is, as I understand it, only an initial charge and there is more to come. I think you are comparing apples with oranges
…the major flaw in your argument is that he [Tama Iti] couldn't be charged with murder, having not killed anyone! JanM
Hi Jan,
I didn't argue, that Tama Iti should have been charged with murder. That would have obviously been completely ridiculous, (almost as completely ridiculous as charging him with terrorism).
I contended that if Tama Iti could be charged with terrorism, (despite not terrorising anyone), then the Christchurch white supremacist must be charged with terrorism, after oganising and planning an attack that killed 51 innocent New Zealand men women and children.
I further contend; that to not to charge this white supremacist with committing a terrorist act would represent a racist double standard.
….the murder charge for the Chch perpetrator is, as I understand it, only an initial charge and there is more to come. JanM
Jan you are absolutely right, the police can bring extra charges under the Suppression Of Terrorism. But will they?
Can a white person be a terrorist in New Zealand, or not?
The whole world is watching.
I am hopeful that this white supremacist mass murderer, will face extra charges laid under the Suppression Of Terrorism Act.
I hope that I am not proved wrong.
I suspect (though don't know) that if hes charged with murder its probably because charging him with terrorism might be problematic in getting the conviction whereas 51 counts of murder will certainly be easier to prove
I understand that is correct. Much easier to get a conviction for multiple murders.
to be honest you need to take that up with the current government not me.
to me he is a white supremacist and a terrorist and a mass murderer and an all around shitheel.
Any other question you may have you need to address with those that make the rules and that ain't me.
As for the privilege that white people have i have on more then on occasion addressed the fact that us white people have it, want it and are currently crying big tears about the fact that we are loosing it. And again, my position is that white people should never have had that privilege in the first place and in the case of many countries only got to be the top dog by systematically killing and eradicating the first nations by point of gun, with the help of chicken pox invested blankets, starvation, stolen generations and so forth.
As for those that cry over lost 'equality' in this country of any other 'white' country, i would like to point out that people of color, and women/children of all colors never were considered 'equal', never had 'equal rights' and certainly did not have the 'equal protection' accorded to white men in the courts of law and public opinion.
I hope this answers all your question for now.
You haz questions. The esteemed and learned Professor Geddis haz answers.
Go to https://www.pundit.co.nz/ and scroll down to March 16, 2019. (the URL for the article contains the fuckwit's name so it gets caught in the moderation trap here)
tl;dr Charging the fuckwit with terrorism involves trying to prove stuff like state of mind that's much more difficult to prove than the bare facts of his murderous actions. In any case, getting a conviction for terrorism on top of the murders won't have any material effect on what his sentence is likely to be. So yes, that shows the terrorism law is not fit for purpose and needs to be changed.
it wont have any material effect on sentencing but it will set precedent (and unfortunately provide platform) ….if this isnt a terrorist act then what is?…is that a question worth asking including removal of some future defendant using a lack of charge in this instance as a potential defence?
currently in the US
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2019/5/17/1858446/-Republican-Party-Is-on-the-Road-to-Mass-Lockups-for-Women-Who-Have-Miscarriages-by-Thom-Hartmann?utm_campaign=recent
"During Mike Pence’s first year as governor of Indiana, his state put a young woman in prison for having a miscarriage, alleging that she’d taken an abortion-causing drug. Purvi Patel didn’t have a trace of such a drug in her system, but Pence’s state sentenced her to 20 years in prison anyway. Just a few years earlier, Indiana had also held Bei Bei Shuai for 435 days in the brutal maximum security Marion County prison, facing 45 years to life for trying to kill herself and, in the process, causing the death of her 33-week fetus.
Utah charged 28-year-old Melissa Ann Rowland with murder because she refused a C-section, preferring vaginal birth for her twins, and one of them died. Sixteen-year-old Rennie Gibbs was charged by the state of Mississippi with “depraved heart murder” when her baby was born dead because his umbilical cord was wrapped around his neck: her crime was that she had cocaine in her bloodstream, according to prosecutors. Angela Carder was ordered to have a C-section to deliver her baby before she died of cancer; both she and the baby died from the procedure."
yeah, lets all just mock the idea of some religious zealots having a party in NZ and getting a say in Parliament because the Party of No mates is run by wet toast covered in margarine.
Cause we absolutely should not look to what happens in other countries and wonder if we want the same shit happening here.
Geez, that is horrific Sabine..
Sabine (5) this is shocking! Yet they are out there, those "Christian" zealot conservative white males, wanting complete control over vulnerable women and girls. Demonstrating total ignorance of the highest order!
I'd be interested to know if the same cruel rules and actions would apply to the wives, daughters and granddaughters of the sadistic, vile Mike Pences of the world, whose rabid and dangerous mindsets belong back in the dark ages and before that even.
NZers have to be very alert as to who/what creeps into our political system, particularly when it comes to electing representatives.
the whole point is not to give married women grief (at least for now), but to harrass unmarried women who may only have sex for fun or so and force them back under the tutelage of Daddy until given over to Hubby at the church. Ownership over women and children is the whole point. The fetus is just the tool to achieve that.
in saying that, if you look at south america you will see that many women already are in prison for having miscarriages/or self induced abortions as the doctors don't want to incriminate themselves or simply report them to police and ……..locking up some poor women is just easier then proving solutions that would allow women access to science based healthcare, prenatal care, and / or simply the right to live a live save of sexual predators.
https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-24532694
https://www.thenation.com/article/ecuador-abortion-miscarriage-prosecution/
Tracey Watkins swansong????
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/opinion/112809543/palaces-protests-prime-ministers-and-a-donald-trump-hat–memories-ive-got-a-few
I faced it all and I stood tall; I did it my way.
She certainly managed to demonstrate an inteĺlectual bypass. Facile and disingenuous
Indeed
"Clark moved in artistic circles but probably didn't have an arty bone in her body" (pfft!)
and of Key "Behind the humour and optimism was a sharp financial brain" I presume she means in a Nick Leeson kind of way
I'm hoping she's not going to be put on the RNZ goto list of rent-a-voices – it's been under a big enough threat as it is.
Humbling to realise that decades of experience in a job does not necessarily make you any wiser. We deserve better.
We do deserve better, but we rarely get it. Most journalists, in this country anyway, are certainly members of the B team 😣
Modern, innovative learning environment in re-born Christchurch.
Police have been called in after a pig in the school's petting zoo had a stick stuck up its bum.
At the very least the children should have been taught how to slaughter and prepare the pig before putting it on the spit.
Seriously, is this school an anomaly, or is this the reality for education today?
An in depth article which gathers opinions from both sides.
Many staff who had their own children enrolled had since removed them, they said.
"I know those leaders were really intent on believing in the school philosophy but at the end of the day, after under two years, they just couldn't sacrifice their beloved kids.
"They [Haeata management] developed a philosophy without knowing the kids. They left out the most important thing."
Kai Fong said that every staff member had the opportunity to give feedback and meet face to face with the board if they chose.
Relief teacher Nadine Garrett liked Haeata's environment but said it wasn't right for everyone.
"I felt really sorry for the traditional teachers, they felt like they were just floating."
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/education/112671944/pet-pig-assaulted-by-christchurch-school-students
Personally, I'd find the noise in a classroom of 300 self -directed learners unbearable and while its laudable for the school to use incidences of bullying as a learning opportunity it appears it is not doing much to reduce the level of violence.
Shameful experiment tried out on the poorest people in town
Unbelievable
Why didn't the education department try it out in Remuera? Or Fendalton? Or Max Key's school?
Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why?
We all know the answer. Fuck the rich.
'We all know the answer. Fuck the rich.'
Do tell – how is this 'the rich's' fault ?
While you're at it who are there 'rich' ?
Perhaps in this instance the MoE was trying to do the right thing and the school in question just lacked the appropriate leadership and governance.
It's going to take a while and a lot of training to bring mainstream teachers to a point where they can operate successfully in an environment like this. Its basic kaupapa would appear to be similar to the ec Te Whariki curriculum and is common sense to us (I am ece trained ) but very scary, I would think, to a lot of the 'chalk and talk' brigade. By the way, I would never leave animals unprotected in any environment around children, no matter what their backgrounds. The inability to show kindness and compassion is most emphaticaĺly not confined to any one class or ethnicity.
Headmaster…
Kai Fong said there was no evidence to suggest the rate of violence was higher at Haeata than other schools and he believed there was an "inherent bias" against the east side of Christchurch. "I think the preconception of more violence here is unjustified."
However, he said a proportion of Haeata's pupils struggled to "engage consistently in learning" and some "do not have the requisite social and emotional skills to be fully functional in learning".
A former teacher recalled incidents in 2017 when a glass object was thrown near an itinerant teacher and smashed. She was also told to "f… off, you b….," while being swung at with a traffic patrol pole by a 5-year-old. Children threw scooters, rode bikes inside, and there was constant swearing and verbal abuse.
As a result, the teacher took two terms off with post-traumatic stress, and had private counselling for 12 weeks.
The following year, the school sought police help to change the culture. The "highly successful initiative" focused on "pro-social behaviours" with girls at Haeata.
It seems counterintuitive to have a bunch of kids with known behavioural and learning difficulties in such an open plan environment. Too much noise and distraction and it would be damn near impossible to concentrate. I wonder if (in these days of mainstreaming kids with learning/behavioural issues) they have a squadron of teacher aides,or if they have 'special' rooms where those kids that are struggling can go for quiet time.
It would be interesting to know the make up of the kids being pulled from Haeata.
Kids with parents who give a toss I guess.
”We all know the answer. Fuck the rich.”
thats the the kind of comment often made by people who are far from rich and normally because of their own actions.
Stop being so bitter.
Experience in how politicians and government interact with the rich, relative to how they interact with the poor, points directly to such a school never being allowed to be experimented in Remuera or Fendalton.
Wake up.
No apology, but yes plenty of bitterness. All very real. Is why society is cleaving down the middle. Fuck the rich and their politicians.
An inane response that one can only pontificate a real looser that is looking for sone one to blame re their lot
Why is the word "loser" so hard to spell?
I note that loose spelling too.
This quote confirms a comment I made the other day about the difficulties that teachers have these days.
But a former teacher said teaching was impossible because they would spend their time wrangling naughty students. "I can't believe what a bad teacher I became," they said.
If this is an experimental school it has too big a roll. Nearly a thousand children can't be thrown together with the emphasis on them finding their own preferences.
I was waiting in the library at school while one of my children was in a class decades ago and the kids were supposed to be using the library facilities and looking at the range of books. One boy got out a motor magazine and turned the pages making vroom,vroom noises. I was helping another who couldn't concentrate his mind because he wanted to watch his friend. Encouraging him to work out a plan for a short piece on what he remembered from a trip to California was very difficult. Distraction is no good for the 10 second attention span generation.
Is the National Party tearing itself apart? Here's a letter posted on kiwiblog today.
Chuck Bird
It will be interesting to see which National MPs respond.
To all National MP’s
As a National supporter for the past 47 years, I wish to voice my disgust at your actions in supporting the Government in the passing of the recent bill to make criminals of law abiding gun owners. I attended a recent meeting in Te Awamutu where MP’s Bishop and Kuriger were speaking about this very topic. I have never been in a group of people so hostile to anybody, let alone MPs. I would venture to say that about 300-350 people were there. Most would have been National party supporters. For how long, I can only guess. If they are like me, not for much longer, unless you change the way you are heading.
Your actions were despicable in casting aside the rights of law abiding citizens. All in the name of socialist ideology. I thought that was the purvue of the left. How wrong I am.
This will be posted on my blog site http://www.ysb.co.nz . It is a blog dedicated to upholding free speech and WAS a National Party support blog. Your actions mentioned above have seriously bought this support into question.
Your replies will be appreciated
Regards
Chris Roberts
MAY 18, 2019 9:10AM
well that is a bit of a stretch would you not think?
Consider that the only one type of weapon was outlawed and a few tools around ( i am not a gun enthusiast so am not too versed in that lingo) and that he still can own chickenshit loads of other weapons for his hunting and collecting needs.
So no, legal gun owner have not been criminalised, but a legal gun owner has mowed down 50 people and maybe he should think about that too.
But he is lucky, soon he can vote for a bunch of "Not National – but almost" Parties and all is good again.
Diddums to Chris. He can't be Rambo this weekend.
The 37 odd comments criticising Simon and the National Party are very telling.
https://ysb.co.nz/email-to-all-national-mps/#comments
Earlier today, I read the then 25 comments and they were so stereotypical of RWNJs that I thought that blog was an extremely well done parody of KB. Fact is stranger than fiction and reality is scarier than nightmares.
Australia goes to the polls.
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/may/17/australian-election-day-guide-what-you-need-to-know
Watch the Oz election live here:
Hope the "Bob Bounce" carries Shorten home but GO THE GREENS.
Thanks!. I've been suffering Skoi News Stray ya.
They just had some fukwit on called Poida Duddin, Minstafa Homo Fears
The means of exchange need to be regulated as otherwise when it becomes an end to itself, value systems and directions are lead by donkeys towards cliffs.
https://www.dw.com/en/eu-fines-major-banks-1-billion-over-currency-cartels/a-48759642
It already is.
The systemic failing is that the regulators are the financial institutions.
They exist in a mutual symbiotic relationship to ensure the flows.
$1bn dollar fine is simply… good business for all involved.
It would seem likely that the majority of collusion that takes place with the use of financial bubbles in unproductive predatory capitalism would involve relatively concentrated/substantial actors rather than such endeavours being the co-operation of multitudes, so a small financial transaction tax system could be a good way to provide tag and trace info to that, which can then be graduated up down the chain when critical thresholds start to be traced before such acts are able to be followed through to completion.
FTT you think there is hope to get that?
Or are you just continuing the legendary oral history tradition so you can recite it to your great-grandchildren about the inglorious past.
"I don't know what the POINT is. … I don't think that it HELPS."
Incredibly, Jeremy Rose contends that Ben Shapiro was treated unfairly by Andrew Neil
Lately, RNZ National, Wednesday 15 May 2019, 10:30 pm
https://www.rnz.co.nz/national/programmes/lately/audio/2018695310/midweek-mediawatch
Midweek MediaWatch
Jeremy Rose is this weeks Midweek Mediawatcher.
Rose delivers his mostly banal ruminations in a croaky basso profundo, his words larded with an extraordinarily high "um" and "y' know" count. Donovan's role is to meekly underscore Rose's philosophical gems occasionally with a supportive "Mmmm, mmmm."
EMIL DONOVAN: It's time for Midweek Media Watch, our weekly catch-up with the Mediawatch teeeeam, one of the Mediawatch team, to talk about all things media. Today it's Jeremy Rose's turn in the chair. Hullo, Jeremy.
JEREMY ROSE: Gid-daaaaay Emil, how ARE ya?
EMIL DONOVAN: Very well thank you. Ahhhh, what've you got for us this week?
JEREMY ROSE: Well I THOUGHT I'd start with the "power of the signature" you were just talking, y'know, about….
Rose spends an inordinate time talking about a woman's Facebook petition to change the Milo recipe. Donovan thinks this is a very serious topic: "It taps into the cultural zeitgeist, doesn't it," he observes.
Next topic: a Russian blogger called "Stalin Gulag" who operates on a site called Telegram. "It shows the importance of social media for holding the powerful to account," says Rose.
Rose says something about the need to break up Facebook, and then moves on to the distasteful topic of white supremacist sites like 8chan. He praises recent work on this by Max Towle and Patrick Gower. Rose plays a clip of Gower in fighting mood: "I'm ready for ANOTHER go with Stefan Molyneux and Lauren Southern." That cuts no ice with Jeremy Rose, however. He reckons that interviewing people like Molyneux and Southern is unwise—"these people are nonentities"—and akin to a prizefight.
So far, so humdrum. Then the interview with Jeremy Rose, who's billed as a media "expert", becomes foolish, bizarre, almost inexplicable. It turns out that Rose, who just a couple of minutes earlier talked grandly about "the importance of social media for holding the powerful to account", does not think that the mainstream media, i.e. the BBC, should hold the powerful or the influential to account at all. In fact, he says, there's no "point" in holding the words of a brutal racist against him in an interview. "I just don't think it HELPS", he croaks to an obviously unconvinced Donovan. Here, for those who can stomach pretentiousness and bewilderment dressed up as media commentary, is four minutes of Jeremy Rose's dire and dismal vaporing….
(For those listening on the audio link, the horror starts at the 19:33 mark)
JEREMY ROSE: …..so I really wanna know WHY you'd bother getting them on. And that kinda brings us to ANOTHER one that's had a bit of a sporting overtone. I think you were quite keen to talk about, which is the Ben Shapiro—
EMIL DONOVAN: Yes.
JEREMY ROSE: —interview. A well known, American, ultra-conservative, right wing commentator with a LOT of Twitter followers, I think, y'know, well over a million—
EMIL DONOVAN: Mmmm.
JEREMY ROSE: And he was interviewed on the BBC byyyyy, um—-
EMIL DONOVAN: Andrew Neil, the notorious hard-nosed interviewer Andrew Neil. Yeah this was a FASCINATING interview, wasn't it.
JEREMY ROSE: It, it really was. Shall we—let's, let's have a listen to a BIT of it.
JEREMY ROSE: Y-y-yeah, ha, so y' know, uh, it's gone VIRAL on the internet. Everyone, including ahhhh, Shapiro, say that it, that it was a DISASTROUS performance by him. He's tweeted, though, "Neil one, Shapiro zero." Again, that sporting kind of metaphor.
EMIL DONOVAN: Mmmmm.
JEREMY ROSE: Wanting a rematch. I don't think there was much in it, I don't think you LEARNT much, and I ACTUALLY think he had a KIND of point, whe-e-e-ere, that there was, y'know, when he was accused of being from the Dark Ages—
EMIL DONOVAN: Mmmm.
JEREMY ROSE: —which is obviously a metaphor. But it wasn't actually that HELPFUL, and it ended UP just being …. [long caesura]…. for want of a better word, a shit fight.
EMIL DONOVAN: Mmmm, mmmm.
JEREMY ROSE: A-and I'm NOT sure that that REALLY serves ANYBODY.
EMIL DONOVAN: Yeah, I know it was fascinating stuff wasn't it. It's um, yeeeahh, the idea that—I mean, it's a TEMPTING metaphor. Sporting metaphors ARE tempting when it comes to, to interviews like tha-a-a-at, because the, a confrontational interview can sometimes be NECESSARY, right? Y' know? And, and sometimes there IS a winner and a loser out of an interview. And sometimes people are satisfied by seeing that. But it's not necessarily a HELPFUL metaphor.
JEREMY ROSE: No-o-o-o. And I, and I, and that whole idea of kinda punching OUT and a winner. And that was how it was portrayed, because he kept THROWING these ABSOLUTELY obnoxious quotes which he had ma-a-a-ade—
EMIL DONOVAN: Mmmm.
JEREMY ROSE: —in the past at him, and asking him to DEFEND them. ….[long caesura]…. I don't know what the POINT is. If I hadn't seen the interview, I wouldn't know that this guy had made these racist, revolting comments about Arabs, about—- And I don't think that it HELPS, knowing that.
EMIL DONOVAN: Mmmm, mmmm.
JEREMY ROSE: Ahhhm, and he did have a BOOK out, I've got NO idea what he says in the book. There was nothing in it in the interview.
EMIL DONOVAN: Well I think this was the thing about it, that the book was about the rise of, um, extremist discourse, and, and, and ANGER within sort of SOCIETY and I think that Andrew Neil was pointing out the hypocrisy of the idea that Ben Shapiro would write a book about anger and society when he had contributed to it himself through his previous kinds of statements. But it's a very interesting kind of issue, isn't it—
JEREMY ROSE: Yeah.
EMIL DONOVAN: —and one that I imagine we won't see go away, because they always seem to be held up as SPECTACLES, these interviews, y'know….
JEREMY ROSE: I think that's exactly right. It, it, it's interviewers' performance. I think when we're dealing with things that matter as much as white supremacy, THAT's not the time to do that. To me-e-e-e-e, THAT's actually exactly what white supremacist type people would ENJOY.
EMIL DONOVAN: Mmmm, mmmm. It's sort of, yeah, the fuzzy line where information blurs into entertainment. Yeahhhh. Well, uh, Jeremy, thanks so much for that. Really appreciate it.
JEREMY ROSE: Oh thanks very much.
EMIL DONOVAN: Mediawatch's Jeremy Rose.
More Mediawatch mediocrity….
https://morrisseybreen.blogspot.com/2019/01/liars-of-our-time-no-27-lyse-doucet-i.html
Morrissey
1. Andrew Neil is an excellent interviewer. He has variously made mincemeat of Jeremy Corbyn, Diana Abbot, Natalie Bennett and many others. Andrew has no problem tackling those on the right of politics, it is just that generally the left provide easier targets.
2. Andrew underestimated Ben Shapiro's intellect, and his attack dog line about Georgia's abortion law was ill-informed and justified Ben's response. At the same time, Ben was clearly ill-informed about Andrew's interview style, and came across as petulant. That's a shame, because Ben is intellectually the superior of virtually anyone Andrew will have interviewed, and the exchange could have been far more productive if both men had been better prepared.
3. For anyone to suggest Ben Shapiro was treated 'unfairly' by Andrew Neil is nonsense. Ben has been interviewed countless times, he has spoken to openly hostile audiences and has faced de-platforming by the lefty snowflakes on US campus's. In short, he is tougher than the person you quote gives him credit for.
4. Take time to listen to what Ben Shapiro says. You might not agree with him, but unlike some of the crazies on both the left and right of politics, Ben is a sound thinker, who speaks a rational, conservative voice into the issues of the day.
He "made mincemeat" of Corbyn, did he? That seems unlikely.
I and I'm sure many others got a laugh from your comical assertion about Shapiro's great intellect.
Corbyn is a lightweight. No, I'll go further, he's a fool.
And it's a shame you have judged Shapiro without listening to him. You're the one missing out on that score.
I've listened to Shapiro, sadly. Unlike you, I've listened to him with a critical ear.
Your comment about Corbyn is as ridiculous as your insistence that Shapiro, that canting, brutal racist, is "a sound thinker."
Provide a single example of Ben Shapiro being 'racist'.
Watch the disastrous (for Shapiro) interview with Andrew Neil again. Neil reels off example after example of Nazi-quality filth, all of them direct quotes from Shapiro.
Disastrous? You are joking right?
And just over 16 minutes of video and you still haven't given a single example of Ben Shapiro being racist. Quote just one, Morrisey.
rofl, Oh my – just one.
"Arabs like to bomb shit, and live in garbage" – yeah that is racist.
Quote your source, and the context.
Are you really that stupid Shadrach?
It's from the video, which proves you either an idiot or bloody lazy…
Clearly nearly everything you've stated is wrong shadders. Lies or stupidity?
Wow you’ve just excelled yourself at hit and run.
You are excoriating Morrissey of all in broadcasting and media generally.
I hope someone pays you for all that. I don't think TS does, so whom?
You are excoriating Morrissey of all in broadcasting and media generally.
Your statement is demonstrably incorrect. A quick review of my oeuvre shows I am more than happy to praise ethical, talented and conscientious journalists—both locally and internationally. On this forum and on many others I have praised: Julian Assange, Max Blumenthal, Mihi Forbes, Juan González, Amy Goodman, Glenn Greenwald, Nicky Hager, Amira Hass, Paul Jay, Caitlin Johnstone, Gideon Levy, Selwyn Manning, Abby Martin, Aaron Maté, Matt Nippert, Paula Penfold, John Pilger, Laura Poitras, Jeremy Scahill, Jon Stephenson….
That's just a few off the top of my head, in alphabetical order. I've praised every one of them at least once, some of them many times.
I hope someone pays you for all that. I don't think TS does, so whom?
What difference does it make? Mike Hosking gets paid to produce his rubbish; all the easy money in the world doesn't give him an ounce of credibility.
Godbye world.
https://www.democracynow.org/2019/5/16/headlines/arctic_ocean_temperatures_soar_as_nearly_all_old_arctic_sea_ice_has_vanished Arctic Ocean
Temperatures Soar as Nearly All Old Arctic Sea Ice Has Vanished HEADLINEMAY 16, 2019
In climate news, temperatures near the entrance to the Arctic Ocean in northwest Russia reached a record-shattering 84 degrees Fahrenheit over the weekend, in an area where high temperatures are normally 30 degrees cooler this time of year. This comes as the National Snow and Ice Data Center recorded a record-low sea ice extent for the Arctic Ocean in April, noting that almost all of the sea ice more than four years old is gone. Over the weekend, meteorologists measured carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere at over 415 parts per million — the highest level in human history, and a concentration that’s not been seen on Earth in over 3 million years.
Some horribly fascinating things.
https://metro.co.uk/2019/05/16/moment-man-fined-90-hiding-face-police-facial-recognition-cameras-9571463/ The man pulled his jumper up above his chin as he walked past Met Police officers trialling Live Facial Recognition software in east London. BBC cameras filmed as officers swooped on the man, told him to ‘wind his neck in’ then handed him the hefty penalty charge.
A campaigner from Big Brother Watch – who were protesting the use of cameras on the day – was also filmed telling an officer: ‘I would have done the same.’
This not so bad. I am thinking that's a good design for a simple bus shelter. https://metro.co.uk/2019/05/17/bus-shelter-built-road-no-buses-9582629/
https://metro.co.uk/2019/05/15/bike-handle-stuck-woman-two-years-husband-shoved-vagina-9556829/ My summary – This shows how women get treated when they are not respected in a society and become helpless pawns. Husband intoxicated by alcohol – such a common drug abuse. Woman 30 has six children, can't have any more. Might be good for her in the long run – depends on husband. If she hasn't had boys he might put her aside.
https://metro.co.uk/2019/05/17/middle-class-murder-millions-birds-vacuumed-death-olive-picking-9584002/
Millions of birds are being sucked out of trees and killed each year to feed our olive oil habit. Iconic birds such as robins, warblers and wagtails have seen their numbers decimated because of intensive farming practices. Experts have warned the international community that it needs to act before legally-protected species disappear for good. During the winter months, birds from central and northern Europe, flock to the Mediterranean basin. At the same time, the olive oil harvest happens in Spain, France, Italy and Portugal…
Farmers use large and intensive harvesting machines at night to strip the trees of their fruit. However, the birds are sleeping in the trees and are getting sucked into the machines on a ‘catastrophic scale.’…But, 96,000 birds are known to die in Portugal every winter as a result of this technique.
RSPCA director of conservation, Martin Harper, said: ‘Numbers of farmland birds in Europe have plummeted by 55% over the last three decades and this is another shocking example of how modern agricultural practices are impacting our bird populations, including some UK species passing through the region.’
And koalas. This cant' be.
The Australian Koala Foundation has confirmed that, with only 80,000 members of the species left in the wild there isn’t enough to support a new generation.
They’ve declared the marsupial ‘functionally extinct’ which means the population has dropped so low it no longer has any effect on its surrounding environment. Koalas have too few breeding adults left to support the species and any kind of genetic disease or pathogen would put the final nail in the coffin.
Koalas are dying out due to effects caused by climate change. Rising temperatures are causing heatwaves that kill thousands of koalas through dehydration. The species has also suffered hugely from deforestation. According to the Australian Koala Foundation, there are no koalas left at all in 41 out of 128 Federal environments where they have known habitats.
https://metro.co.uk/2019/05/16/koalas-now-functionally-extinct-9565982/?ico=pushly-notifcation-small&utm_source=pushly
I suggest NZ sets up a fund to support the Koala Foundation and give the Australians a message that they need to both support their own vulnerable animals and the Kiwi people who live there and who they have arbitrarily arrested on spurious grounds and hold in camps against international law precedents. Maybe there will be some politicians who have integrity to do something for the Koalas and the Kiwis.
From the UK political scene.
Latest on Brexit and May-not. 17 May 2019
https://metro.co.uk/2019/05/17/prime-minister-theresa-may-tears-forced-say-will-quit-9580917/
Summary – May must go before June 30. Boris has put his name forward. Jeremy says that talks are not getting anywhere.
https://metro.co.uk/2019/05/17/neo-nazi-plotted-murder-mp-rosie-cooper-jailed-life-9583420/ 17May 2019 Summary – Young white youth – his ideas poisoned by evil ideas was planning to knife a woman MP. (Remember one woman MP was shot a few years ago.)
When you think these pricks had hit peak vileness.
Oklahoma state legislator Rep. Justin Humphrey is sponsoring a draconian bill, HB 1441, that would require a woman to get written permission from her sexual partner if she wants to have an abortion.
Attempting to justify the despicable legislation Rep. Humphrey told The Intercept that women have no right to bodily autonomy once they are pregnant because they are merely “hosts”:
https://www.patheos.com/blogs/progressivesecularhumanist/2017/02/oklahoma-lawmaker-men-must-approve-abortion-women-hosts/
As Colbert put it, "it's either an overreach by the Alabama gop or some pretty intense viral marketing for the new season of Handmaid's tale.
But wait, there's more.
The Missouri House has voted to approve some of the strictest abortion laws in the country, and because it's Missouri, the process somehow managed to include a Republican lawmaker defending the bill by talking about, sigh, "consensual rape."
[…]
It was on the issue of exceptions for rape victims that Hovis, a retired Cape Girardeau police lieutenant first elected to office in 2017, took his stand. He pointed out that "most of the rapes" that he saw in law enforcement didn't involve "gentlemen jumping out of bushes."
"Most of them were date rapes or consensual rapes," he continued, "which were all terrible, but I'd sit in court when juries would struggle with those situations, where it was a 'he-said-she-said,' which was unfortunate if it really happened."
Having suggested that rape is often no big deal — because hey, if it didn't happen at gunpoint, it's a real struggle for a jury to know what to do — Hovis finally seemed to find his point, which appeared to be that that rape victims would still have plenty of time, after the rape, to decide whether to get an abortion
https://m.riverfronttimes.com/newsblog/2019/05/17/missouri-lawmaker-cites-consensual-rapes-as-house-passes-abortion-bill
also this
https://rewire.news/article/2019/05/17/science-fiction-behind-ohio-reps-ban-insurance-ectopic-pregnancy/
it goes hand in hand with 'co-parenting rights for rapists ' . Cause …..something, reason, god, bullshit, and such.
well at least he understands that the dears actually believe they have a right to their bodies.
also hosts get pregnant and men have nothing to do with it until the host is pregnant and then the host needs permission from the man.
They used to call that shit slavery.
Rep. Humphrey told The Intercept that women have no right to bodily autonomy once they are pregnant because they are merely “hosts”:
That phrase "once they are pregnant" is redundant in context, said context being Rep. Humphrey's fucked-up opinions.
i know i know germans don't have a sense of humor, and they always only shout and the language is hard and what not….but
https://twitter.com/dw_sports/status/1128306663226843137?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.dw.com%2Fcda%2Fen%2Fgermanys-women-we-dont-have-balls-but-we-know-how-to-use-them%2Fa-48776813
quote: we don't need balls, we have ponytails (actually Horsetails but then english:) ) .
is funny.
Some subtleties are always lost in translation. Good ad!
Who said Germans don't have a sense of humour?
If you're looking for someone without a humorous bone in her body, and lacking even a rudimentary sense of the ridiculous, you can't go past this thoroughly Anglo, non-German, fool (unfunny fool)….
you are one boring shit stirrer aren't you?
Sorry, I should have made it clear that some Germans do lack a sense of humour. You're a case in point.
no, you just looked for a reason to again post one of your pointless video clips.
it has nothing do to with what i posted, and it is so far removed from anything that really it is just your typical posting a shit video so that you can post a shit video.
and when it comes to you and your shit videos i am just bored and bored, and bored, and bored, and bored.
no, you just looked for a reason to again post one of your pointless video clips.
"Pointless"? You didn't get the point? Frankly, I'm not surprised.
it has nothing do to with what i posted,
In fact, it has everything to do with what you posted. In a fit of self-deprecation, you repeated the stupid falsehood that Germans "don't have a sense of humour." I helpfully steered you to an example of someone—a non-German— completely lacking any sense of humour, or absurdity, or even increasingly—it's been clear for more than two years now—any grasp of reality.
and it is so far removed from anything that really it is just your typical posting a shit video so that you can post a shit video.
???? You really can't understand that clip? Really?
and when it comes to you and your shit videos i am just bored and bored, and bored, and bored, and bored.
There are German writers I admire tremendously: Mann, Sebald, Roth. Your embarrassing and awkwardly phrased rants are not quite in their company, I'm sorry to say. Perhaps you should read a bit more, think a bit more, see if you can pick up a few stylistic tips from some of your compatriots who can actually write.
Fuck me, you asserted something I agree with! Jimmy Dore is indeed completely lacking in humour or even any grasp of reality.
I feel a bout of introprobation coming on.
You're a funny guy, Andre. Sharp as ….. oh, Sabine?
That sounds pretty serious, Andre.
It'll pass quickly. I hope.
It is gut-wrenching when it goes on for too long. Some sufferers are never the same again after a severe and long bout.
Laughter really helps alleviate the symptoms. The mozzie is doing sterling work supplying that.
And there's no warning when the impacted matter flares up to cause a fresh attack.
It's extremely serious. See, Andre is afflicted by these Russian bots, controlled by those Russian masterminds who control Trump, and …. hell, you know the rest. It's what Rachel Maddow says.
Thoughts and prayers, Andre. That evil Putin, darn him.
When somebody talks of Russian masterminds I always think of chess. Maybe one of my hypnotherapy sessions went wrong.
Hi Sabine It might have been one of my videos that you didn't like. Sorry. But I put them in as changes when the tone is too dark or it seems we need some light relief. They are just a break in between bouts of seriousness, or indeed slapstick occasionally.
I have no idea what you talk about.
Seriously. I actually don't watch tv, listen to the radio generally because it is full of shit and nothing much else.
I usually scroll by Morrisey as i don't see why i should read stuff that i don't listen or watch.
and when Morrisey posts a video i don't expect humor nor slapstick as generally he/she is about outrage and i can't be bothered.
So really i have no idea what you talk about. Sorry.
Well I did wonder about the video reference which seemed very strongly negative.
and when it comes to you and your shit videos i am just bored and bored, and bored, and bored, and bored.
And i thought it might be some of mine you were thinking of. But not. So I'll forget about it. Sorry to have confused you.
Sorry to have confused you.
You're a real gentleman, Mr Shark. But rest assured: unser guter freund Sabine has been confused and bewildered for a good two and a half years now. Sie kann dich nicht dafür verantwortlich machen.
Germans have a great sense of humour! Usually very dry and dark, but very funny.
Yep. I used to love one NDR programme in the mid-90s, can't remember what is was called now – everything absolutely deadpan, no clues you were supposed to find it funny, fuck it was good. Morrissey just lacks the self-awareness to recognise bigotry when he's indulging in it.
Sorry Milt, you've got the wrong end of the shoe here. It's our friend Sabine that's running down Germans, not me. I stuck up for them, having appreciated their music, literature, art, cinema, food, beer and, yes, their sense of humour for as long as I can remember.
Shit I shared a flat with one German in Toronto and he was the most "wooden "person with absolutely no detectable chararter at all.
was he from hamburg?
that would explain a lot.
Harrumph. Hamburg was full of highly entertaining loose units when I lived there. Maybe it's become more spiessig in the last 20 years?
nope, but they are special. Usually very formal, quite uptight until they know you. I guess its the cold and the rain.
Compare Bavarians and Hamburg'ers and its like English and Italians. Bavarians being the Italians. 🙂
but yeah, the northern humor is something to behold. I lived there for a while and it was a good time.
Does that include Israel?
The Trump administration has taken its war on abortion worldwide, cutting off all funding to any overseas organisation or clinic that will not agree to a complete ban on even discussing it.
The Mexico City policy, dubbed the “global gag” by its critics, denies US federal funds to any organisation involved in providing abortion services overseas or counselling women about them. It was instituted by the then US president Ronald Reagan and has been revoked by every Democrat and reinstated by every Republican president since.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/may/17/trump-takes-war-on-abortion-worldwide-as-policy-cuts-off-funds
https://www.stuff.co.nz/environment/climate-news/112826745/parliaments-lone-protester-will-be-on-its-lawn-until-a-climate-emergency-is-declared
Cool guy. Follow him on https://www.instagram.com/thathumbleman/
“For the past three days, Ollie Langridge has sat on the lawn of Parliament, sitting on a bolster pillow wrapped in plastic, and holding a sign calling on the Government to declare a climate change emergency.
Langridge is a self-employed father of six, living in Thorndon with no political affiliation or ties to climate change advocacy groups – just a man worried about the future he's leaving for his children.
"I just see myself as a normal guy that doesn't know what to do and this is the best thing I could think of.”
DUM BRITONS
Exhibit 4: Kirsty Wark
Is there a stupider person in Britain than Kirsty Wark?
https://azvsas.blogspot.com/2019/05/eurovision-2019-madonnas-total.html
DUM BRITONS is compiled by Hector Stoop, for Daisycutter Sports Inc.
Collect ALL the Dum Britons….
1 Michael Gove; 2 Chris Leslie; 3 Sir Mark Thatcher.
https://morrisseybreen.blogspot.com/2018/11/dum-britons-exhibit-3-sir-mark-thatcher.html
Not all Germans lack a sense of humour, and not all Fox News hosts lack a heart and brain. Case in point: Geraldo Rivera
Poor old Dan Bongino is as bewildered and nasty as any of our own NewstalkZzzzzB hosts, however.
http://normanfinkelstein.com/2019/05/16/bongerinos-how-americans-talk-about-palestine/
Same old? same old from the Mozz, Zzzzzzz
Sleepy ol suburb with not much to do.. zzzz
heh
https://twitter.com/TheOnion/status/1129443052815360000
'Murica threatens to shoot down commercial airliners in the Arabian Gulf.
https://twitter.com/AJENews/status/1129657916116672513
So the US is officially a rogue state.
Arresting the last 4 peace activists in the Venezuelan Embassy in DC.
they have been a roque state for a long time now.