One day to go before the big meeting in the Auckland Town Hall GCSB bill.
And the leader of the Opposition Labour Party hasn’t made it clear if he will even be there.
Already we know that David Shearer refuses to stand on the podium with every other Opposition Party Leader.
The actions of David Shearer are deliberately undermining the sincere efforts of those who are trying to lobby Peter Dunne and/or any National MPs who have concerns about this bill to vote against it.
How can Peter Dunne or any other Government MP make this weighty decision to change their vote, when they can witness with their own eyes that the Opposition leader David Shearer is standing with the Prime Minister John Key on this issue.
David Shearer’s mealy mouthed words calling for a “review” (something that Peter Dunne has already asked for, and the Prime Minister has already agreed to), Is not enough.
So come on David Shearer. In the best traditions of Labour Party leaders of the past, why don’t you show that you stand with the grass roots of your own party and the rest of the opposition, and the nation. Announce that tomorrow you will be mounting the podium with the other leaders to make your opposition to this bill clear.
If it is beyond you. You don’t have to say anything. Just stand there in solidarity.
Given his name’s on the poster, does anyone other than you seriously doubt his intention to attend? I’m not interested in your opinion, just a link to someone other than you saying it will suffice.
Jenny, I usually do not bother reading or replying to your comments as IMO they contain a lot of ignorance and/or misinformation – sometimes IMO quite deliberately.
On this occasion:
1. Shearer was announced as a speaker at tomorrow night’s public meeting last Tuesday, I think, on The Daily Blog and has been on the poster since then.
2. Your remark that “We already know that Shearer refuses to stand on the podium with every other Opposition Party leader”. Since when? Show us evidence of this statement. Shearer has ‘stood on the podium’ with Norman and Peters on a number of occasions over the last year or so on manufacturing, housing and other issues.
3. After the last public meeting, on 26 July Shearer announced that if he became PM, he would initiate a wider ranging inquiry into all intelligencies agencies, their roles, functions, powers etc on coming into office, with the review to be completed within six months IIRC
I posted the link to this Herald article on TS and seem to remember that you were part of the discussion on this at the time.
As for your comment, nice try, but you do realise that she was posting from Planet Jenny, an alternate universe where everything looks familiar but has a Jenny-esque spin to it that has the unfortunate side effect one making one’s eyes roll.
LOL. Thanks weka. As I said ,I don’t normally respond to Planet Jenny but was not in a good mood when I read the latest dribble first thing this morning. Shaky Wellington is not my favourite place right now as quakes are my biggest phobia/paranoia. But – must be strong as can’t do anything about it! Or about Planet Jenny.
Shearer declared his intention to be one of the speakers earlier in the week since when he’s been on the “list” of speakers. He has emailed members and supporters twice in the past few days urging people to attend.
I thought Shearer was very good on Key’s exclusive NZ Herald GCSB ‘clarification’ when Shearer said that Key didn’t understand his own legislation and was making it up as he went along.
So reads the banner headlline by an article penned by journalist Tracey Chatterton for Fairfax NZ News,
I might like to ask Tracey Chatterton;
So What?
Would a headline reading hand cuffed man shot in the back be more accurate. What if this helpless and unarmed man had been shot in the back by someone other than a police officer?
Would his list of convictions be in the headline? Would that even be seen as relevant?
What is Tracey Chatterton trying to say here?
That the man deserved to be shot in such circumstances because he had a list of convictions?
That people who have convictions are more likely to get shot while being under arrest vulnerable and helpless, than those without previous convictions?
Despite the purposely leading headline, the report itself is less judgemental laying no fault on the arrested man who was offering no resistance at the time when he was shot.
When it comes to bad journalism this example surely must rank at the top.
It’s also very unlikely that a gun would simply just go off. Despite what the movies try to make us believe, guns don’t usually go off by themselves. If the riffle was slung over the officers shoulder, it should have been located at the officers back. Therefore he would have to have been leaning forward away from Iriheke Te Kani Pere for him to be shot. However it was also reported that the unarmed man was being helped to his feet by the officer when he was accidentally shot in the back with a Bushmaster rifle, that should have had it’s safety on. The events as described by the police seem highly implausible.
Could it be that under this government the police feel they have the right to administer their own penalties out to suspected law breakers. This could see a handcuffed suspect thrown off a fence and paralysed or handcuffed then shot in the back. Serco may not like the loss of income from these events but Paula Bennett will be fond of this style of treatment of suspects I’m sure.
The police have always felt that they have the right to administer their own penalties. What changes are the penalties. When a government with some interest in human rights is in power, they scale things down a bit, maybe to the level of grievous bodily harm. With the present government and its absolute contempt for any sort of legalities, the death sentence can be on the table. As a society we give the police enormous powers. We should make equally enormous efforts to hold them to account when they step outside these powers.
So you’re saying the police should just stand there like numpties and allow themselves to be shot? Of course I expect you will probably say they could shoot the perp in an arm or a leg, but that would be to reveal a fatal misunderstanding of how deadly someone with a fire arm can still be or how quickly they can squeeze off a bullet
Not enough time spent training on weapons would be my guess, they fire SFA rounds a year to be current, and I would find it hard to believe they even know how to pull their weapons apart. But surely he answer must be to carry them all the time, that would fix everything when they have no idea how to use them, that seem’s to be the modus operandi of this government?
Also lack of procedural weapons safety discipline, including the very basics…do not point your weapon, loaded or unloaded, at anything you are not willing to kill.
“..Why should dogs die – so humans can get high?..”
(cont..)
(ed:..and of course it would be salutary to see the (totally-justified) outrage at this plan to overdose dogs to death..to test the toxicity of new legal-highs for humans..
..to see this outrage spread to the fact that 270,000 animals are tortured/killed by the vivisectors in new zealand..
..each and every year..
..let that fact sink in…
..and then please start asking ‘why?’…’why are we torturing/killing animals..?
..to test cosmetics/dishwashing liquids..?’
‘cos..y’see..there are computer-testing programs that
can replace these hidden horrors..obviate the need for this litany of cruelties/miseries..
..’so why?’..i hear you ask..
..that ‘why’ is the same as for all the other industries that thrive on the miseries inflicted on others (alcohol/tobacco/legal-highs..)
..these animals continue to be tortured because of economic reasons..
..those doing the torturing..and the breeders..
..are locked in a ghastly dance of monetary self-interest..
….so what needs to happen..
..is for a large spotlight to be shone on the practices of this industry..
..and for them to justify the/any compelling need to be doing this to animals..
..until this comes to pass..
..these pieces of shit who garner their gold from torturing defenceless animals all day..
..will just continue inflicting these miseries..
..and it may be a cliche..
..but the animals cannot speak up for themselves..eh..?
..it has to be us..eh..?..
(and irony o.d-alert..!..for many years the spca has sat on the panel ‘approving’ these experiments/tortures on 270,000 animals each and every year..)
..and guess what..?..the spca used to sell/supply animals to the vivisectors..
..and how do i know this..?
..i know this because i once ‘liberated’ a dog from a courier van..
..that dog was enroute from the spca in auckland..
..to vivisectors in wellington..
..she ended up living a long and happy/well-loved life..
..so the next questions for the spca must be:
‘do you still sell/supply animals to the vivisectors..?’
and..’how do you – as an organisation purporting/fund-raising on the premise you help/protect these defenceless animals..
..how do you marry that with ‘approving’ the torture/killing of 270,000 of those ‘defenceless-animals’ you claim to ‘protect’..?
Good grief! (Still gagging) I have just caught a bit of the Nation with bill ralston and somebody else( aided by nodding and smiling smallie) going orgasmic over keys performance on JC Live. How concise and coherent he was and how he spoke to middle nz so that they could all understand his message. And how bad JC was in comparison and labelling him as pretty much politically biased. Did they not read the transcript! As far as I am concerned JCLIve is the only TV programme that is trying to give us ordinay kiwis a say and actually putting the TRUTH out there so we can make an informed opinion. Elsewhere you have Fran,Audrey,John A all using the NZ Herald as their no obstacles vehicle for waving the pom poms for national EVERY WEEK! It’s blatant and it is wrong that we are being fed their infantile drivel under the guise of political commentary. Go John Campbell and boo hiss to the herald.
I feel like that too! Strange (yeah right) that Ralston and Walden never mentioned the big back-down from Key since the interview either, where what he had said turned out to be WRONG – But he’s going to make no written change to the bill and just says that he won’t give the OK to read our mail – Do we really trust Key to keep his word that he won’t read our emails and how would we ever find out if he did? Sorry, I’d need that in WRITING!! This IS a merchant banker talking, don’t forget that!!
Someone on radio said that so much political chatter is about performance instead of substantive matters. It is commentators treating politics as a sports game, and the politicians merely players. Shakespeare understood it (No fear Shakespeare site)
Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day
To the last syllable of recorded time,
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
Hamlet A5/Sc5/5.
Ralston and Walden subscribe to the construct of an Auckland media/political “glitterati”. They cannot be accurately assessed or relied upon without prior disclosure of that comedic self-consciousness. Hitching up to Planet Key provides buoyancy for ascent to the surface of the little pond of Auckland and confirms “glitterati” membership.
Yes, more that just Walden and Ralston subscribe to this, every commentator seems to have jumped on the bandwagon Kerre Mc Ivor (who ever she is), Sean Plunkett, Armstrong, etc…it seems very few commentators will challenge John Key. Not one commentator has brought up John key’s major cock up in the interview, which is amazing. I’m sure your explanation has something to do with it, along with some really savvy media management by the National Party.
On August 17, 1975, U.S. Senator Frank Church appeared on NBC television’s Meet the Press to discuss the results of his full-scale investigation into America’s burgeoning intelligence capabilities. Senator Church revealed startling information and closed with a dire warning to every citizen of the United States:
“American intelligence gathering capability at any time could be turned around on the American people and no American would have any privacy left. Such is the capability to monitor everything: telephone conversations, telegrams, it doesn’t matter. (This was before internet.) There would be no place to hide.”
“If this government ever became a tyrant, if a dictator took charge in this country, the technological capacity that the intelligence community has given the government could enable it to impose total tyranny, and there would be no way to fight back because the most careful effort to combine together in resistance to the government, no matter how precisely it was done, is within reach of the government to know. Such is the capability of this technology.”
“I don’t want to see this country ever go across the bridge. I know the capacity that is there to make tyranny total in America, and we must see to it that (the NSA) and all the agencies that possess this technology operate within the law and under proper supervision so that we never cross that abyss. That is the abyss from which there is no return.”
Only took three decades and a couple of collapsing skyscrapers to turn the good results of the Church Committee around. Pumping more money into the corporate/military/industrial/intelligence complex and then allowing a system where individual congressmen have to become more susceptible to money just to get re-elected finished it.
As has been said by several people previously…the US has suffered a slow motion corporate/internal coup d’état over the last 20 years. Five hundred senior officials, a few billionaires, and a couple of hundred corporate board members have more say over the USA today than 250M voters.
My perfect scenario for Question Time in Parliament would be for the Opposition to ask jk a question, sit through the now standard garbage he spews and then on a point of order point out to him that he is WRONG and then sit down. What would his retaliation be? Everyone should just keep saying YOU ARE WRONG and only that. It’s when you go down the rabbit hole with him that you just lose the will to live. He does it all the time, without actually showing any solid proof to his challenge.
The SST also does a good job in its leader today of highlighting the fact that Key does not understand the GCSB Bill and screwed up (or IMO lied) in the John Campbell interview.
Even Colin Espiner, on the same page, says the GCSB Bill is bad law.
Is No Minister really a left wing blog? Sure, it has contributions from Psycho Milt, but he’s being somewhat overwhelmed by the stupid Tories over there. May I suggest some of these as a replacement?
And when it comes to the New Zealand economy, our situation is seen by many as deeply paradoxical. International economists refer to the “New Zealand paradox” when pointing out that getting the market fundamentals right doesn’t always lead to economic growth.
There’s no paradox at all – the economic fundamentals are wrong and so by getting them right we’ve been damaging our economy.
Economics is and always has been a pseudoscience. It uses mathematics the same way astrologers do. Yes, there are real stars and yes, there are real resources and money, but let’s start studying them in a real scientific manner. Astronomers have been at it for a long time. I invite economists to do the same, any century now – no pressure [gritted teeth].
+1 …I think astrology works better…it does not pretend to be a science…but open to interpretation and imagination.
….economics is similar …depends who does it and what their ideology is and then they get the maths hocus pocus equations to prove it..tweek it here….tweek it there…..and bingo the bankers and wealthy 5% come out on top
………And have any of these economic theories really worked for the majority of people in individual countries , let alone the world?…that is the acid test….’economics’ as a ‘science’ has been an abject failure
@ depends on whether the ‘scientist’ starts with an open mind or not….
…some ‘scientists’ have closed minds and will try and fit the facts/stats/equations to their own predilections and preferred ideologies …as is the case in economics and much less so in astronomy( hard science) …hence economics called a ‘pseudoscience'( accept that some economics is descriptive /phenomenological)
It depends on nothing of the sort. You aren’t taking peer review into account. Scientists must present their findings in public where their worst enemies can pull them to pieces. Looking for the mythical unbiased opinion is a mistake: everyone exhibits bias.
It can take decades for science to progress in any field: Economics is no different.
OAK, indeed, the joke about cosmology told by physicists is that cosmologists put error bars on the exponents. However, it seems economists don’t use error bars at all.
Sciences do progress, and it’s the scientific process not only of peer review but of correlation with other sciences that matters – every chemist is open to review by physicists, but economists still try to be a closed shop. Their fundamental paradigms are jealously guarded from scrutiny and review and are therefore arbitrary (a euphemism for self-gratifying bullshit).
Scientific disciplines advance at different rates in any case. In a couple of centuries, whatever replaces the current pseudoscience of economics may reach the equivalent of Newtonian physics (i.e.., where physics was in the seventeenth century), but it’s nowhere near that position yet.
Yes, and many self-professed experts in Klingon who like to dress up in costumes can pull each other to pieces too – and they do – but I challenge them to engage with real linguists.
No real science is an island, and I’ll take an economist seriously when they are routinely open to review by physicists, tribologists, and herpetologists. If you think that I’m being facetious, I’d like to point out that physics is telling us a lot about palaeontology through biomechanical analysis of skeletons. That’s how real science works, not a cargo cult.
Not facetious at all Rhino, in fact I broadly agree with you that economics can and should learn more from other disciplines, for precisely the reasons you outline.
@ well I dont know about alchemy being a waste of time…Jung seemed to get quite a lot out of it….depends on whether you take it literally or not…maybe it is a metaphor for components/development of the psyche?
In a literary sense, I think that both Jung and Freud have real value and I regard Freud’s essay on the uncanny as a masterpiece of literary and aesthetic criticism. However, “science” is a very precise term, denoting verifiability and consistency. A lot of art and literature is “true” in ways that sciences aren’t, but be that as it may, “economics” as it stands is not a science.
@ Rhinocrates
If you don’t view chemistry as a waste of time, then alchemy wasn’t either; because chemistry arose out of alchemy.
Practical applications of alchemy produced a wide range of contributions to medicine and the physical sciences. The alchemist Robert Boyle[8] is credited as being the father of chemistry.
….. The attempts of alchemists to arrange information on substances, so as to clarify and anticipate the products of their chemical reactions, resulted in early conceptions of chemical elements and the first rudimentary periodic tables. They learned how to extract metals from ores, and how to compose many types of inorganic acids and bases. ~ Wikipedia – Alchemy
The equations used in economic models are not fundamental but phenomenological ie they relate to the process but not to the cause,hence you cannot ask to much of them anyway.
In other words: make-believe, the mere aping of forms and not amenable to empirical tests. Unfalsifiable. Bullshit, to put it bluntly.
Sorry, I have too much experience in both hard disciplines and the humanities to take all of their weasely pantomime seriously. Indeed, the intellectual pretence is offensive.
Edmund Gustav Albrecht Husserl (German: [ˈhʊsɐl]; April 8, 1859 – April 27, 1938[3]) was a philosopher and mathematician and the founder of the 20th century philosophical school of phenomenology. He broke with the positivist orientation of the science and philosophy of his day, yet he elaborated critiques of historicism and of psychologism in logic. Not limited to empiricism, but believing that experience is the source of all knowledge, he worked on a method of phenomenological reduction by which a subject may come to know directly an essence.
Have to say I agree – again, straddling the hard professions and the humanities, I think that there can be parallel kinds of truth.
A couple of my degrees, my work and a lot of my publication would not be possible if I didn’t appreciate phenomenology – I’m just aware of the demarcations.
Sorry to be cryptic, but I value my privacy and don’t want to give too much away (someone has already found out who I am and I don’t want that repeated).
Hall and Hitch concluded that businessmen did not generally estimate the elasticity of the demand curves for their products or equate marginal revenue with marginal cost, but instead set prices by means of “full cost pricing” (Lee 1998: 90), which was their terminology for what are now called “administered prices.”
Hall and Hitch found that full cost pricing was determined by the following factors:
(1) direct material and labour costs per unit of output;
(2) indirect costs at an expected level of output, and
(3) a markup for profit. (Lee 1998: 90).
The poor economists, finding out that pricing of goods has absolutely nothing to do with margins.
Yes business have a series of indicators which indicate how pricing should be achieved, based of course around the level of competition and one other important imperative,
The less competition the higher the price and that is always coupled with that other business tool known as ”coz we can” where in the absence of any real competition prices are fixed by either the individuals involved or by agreement of the Cartels,
The electricity industry is a great indicator of such Cartel price fixing where at a time small consumers have reduced demand for the product competition would indicate that prices would drop in an effort for the different players to attract more custom the opposite is the reality as Cartel price fixing keeps all the players profits rising…
Chrysi Avgi (Golden Dawn) polling at around 12% and the ruling Nea Dimokratia at 28%, give them another year or so and the fuckers could well hold the balance.
Recently, Golden Dawn has signaled it would like to go global, and has opened offices in Germany and Australia. A website has appeared claiming to be the hub for the group’s New York City office.
“Nightline’s” repeated email requests for interviews from Golden Dawn members were met with an angry “No.”
“You can blame your fellow mainstream media cohorts for that, who do nothing but shamelessly slander us,” one email response to “Nightline” said.
But as Georgousis’ film shows, Golden Dawn sees the blame for Greece’s woes spreading far beyond its shores. The party claims the economic crisis in Greece is not just caused by immigrants in Athens, but in Chicago and “especially New York,” Georgousis said.
“They keep posting articles that, ‘it’s the Jewish capital that has brought Greece to this point, which is located in New York,’” he said.
Watched Susan Woods today – I think it will be the last time – she makes me cringe when she interviews foreign visitors (in this case from Iran) with a preconceived propaganda point of view trying hard to be a Christiane Amanpour. Please, please, please take Mrs Woods off politics programs, give her gardening or something else.
The government wants the GST on on-line purchases. The retailers association want it too.
Well I guess they could also chase the corporate tax avoidance rorts that are ripping us all off while they are at it. (That would be billions, and not just a few million).
“Well I guess they could also chase the corporate tax avoidance rorts that are ripping us all off while they are at it. (That would be billions, and not just a few million).”
Yes – its 8pm on a Sunday night. But for those interested before it disappears behind NBR’s paywall – A MUST READ on the effects of the combine GCSB Bill and its companion TICS Bill.
An article on NBR today by Vikram Kumar, former SSC manager and CEO of InternetNZ, now CEO of Mega, giving more – very disturbing – insight into the effects of the TICS Bill.
I am out of my depth here on the tech aspects, but if what Kumar is saying is true, then it is very revealing.
“The government is planning to issue secret orders to service providers when the Telecommunications (Interception Capability and Security) Bill (“TICS Bill”) becomes law to force them to create interception capability for surveillance agencies. This has been approved by cabinet and is therefore official Government policy.
What’s not clear is if the mechanism of a Ministerial directive will also be used to gag the service provider? Or is the secrecy merely a guise to allow compliant service providers to pretend they haven’t been forced to create a backdoor for the government?
Either way, the impact on New Zealand online service providers, and New Zealand as a country, could be truly devastating. …”
To read the whole article – and the comments and remarks by the NBR editor at the start of the article – the link is
A Ministerial directive will be used to secretly/confidentially impose an obligation to create interception capabilities by individually named service providers (referred to as “deem-in” but what I call a backdoor) “so as not to publicly announce a lack of capability in a particular service.”
“when X is “deemed” to be Y it is ordinarily conceded that X is not Y, and is known not to be Y”
Legal Fictions and Common Law Legal Theory Some Historical Reflections, Eben Moglen
i’ve only just discovered Richard Wilkinson’s (co-author of The Spirit Level) TED talk about why reducing income differentials in developed democracies really matters.
if you’ve not heard him talk, take a few minutes…. and note where NZ figures in most of the data he presents
And it’s pretty hard to see how this could be an oversight, or some sort of mistake.
The list of proscribed ‘luxury items’ would have had to have been produced at some point. And it should have been checked pretty thoroughly after that.
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Can we trust New Zealand’s military? There must now be serious doubt, given the landmark report released on Friday concluding the investigation into allegations made in the book Hit and Run by Nicky Hager and Jon Stephenson about a 2010 SAS killing raid in Afghanistan. The most recent Colmar Brunton ...
In New Zealand, we've just had the report of the Hit and Run inquiry, which found that a New Zealand led raid had accidentally killed civilians, including a child. meanwhile, around the same time, the British SAS was conducting its own raids in Afghanistan, and theirs were a hell of ...
In addition to establishing a process for setting emissions reductions plans, the Zero Carbon Act established a process for managing the risks of climate change. The first part of this is the preparation of regular risk assessments, looking at the risks to our economy, society, environment, and ecology. The first ...
Over on The spinoff, Amnesty International's Meg de Ronde has a response to Friday's release of the Hit and Run report. And in response to Attorney-General David Parker's claim that the government was being "transparent" by releasing the report, its titled "we shouldn’t have to work this hard to get ...
Story of the Week... Opinion of the Week... Toon of the Week... Coming Soon on SkS... Poster of the Week... SkS Week in Review... Story of the Week... Rising Seas Could Menace Millions Beyond Shorelines, Study FindsAs climate change raises sea levels, storm surges and high tides will ...
There's an election next month, so you'd be expecting political parties to be telling us what they stand for and what they'd do if they'd win. But while the Greens have given us a detailed policy platform, and National has talked about roads and austerity, Labour, currently leading the polls ...
"Who's youse accusin' of innference?" Without the timely intervention of a team of top American political consultants and campaign experts, Boris Yeltsin would never have won his second term as President of the Russian Federation. The Russians waited 20 years to return the favour.WHEN IT COMES to the disinformation game, ...
As polling day in the American presidential election draws closer, things are looking bad for Donald Trump. The polls show that he is tracking well behind his Democrat rival. Most people assume that the President will be striving might and main to avoid what looks increasingly likely to be a ...
Our health professionals do an amazing job. Image credit: Wikipedia – Cardiac surgery. Finally, I have got back to these rankings. A long period in hospital and computer problems meant the June 2020 rankings were abandoned. Now, with a new personal defibrillator implanted in my chest and a new hard ...
A chronological listing of news articles linked to on the Skeptical Science Facebook Page during the past week: Sun, July 26 through Sat, Aug 1, 2020Editor's ChoiceThe four types of climate denier, and why you should ignore them allThe shill, the grifter, the egomaniac and the ideological ...
Over the last few days, reports have emerged of people travelling from New Zealand and testing positive for Covid-19 upon arrival at their destination. First in South Korea and now in Australia. What might these positive tests mean?They’re false-positives As Toby Morris and I have explained before, there are ...
Former National Minister - Wayne MappYou could tell that the Hit and Run book by investigative journalists Nicky Hager and Jon Stephenson was right on the money by the way former National Party Minister of Defence, Wayne Mapp, reacted to its now largely vindicated claims.Even though the recent inquiry into ...
So, the Hit and Run inquiry has reported back, and found some appalling shit at NZDF and NZSIS. And while they quibble a few of the details - the name of a dead child - they basicly uphold Hager and Stephenson's version of events. The SAS went to those villages. ...
We are failing to think though the interdependencies in an economy. We miss economist Bryan Philpott (1921-2000). I miss him personally – we used to have such great discussions – but this column is about how the nation misses his economic experience and wisdom. We tend to ...
Michelle Boag - LeakerThe Heron report (PDF) was released yesterday, and it was a bit disappointing to say the least. It correctly found that former National Party president Michelle Boag and National Party MP Hamish Walker were politically motivated in leaking peoples private medical information, but didn’t look further into ...
Adam Smith, Massey UniversityA recent global assessment of shark populations at 371 coral reefs in 58 countries found no sharks at almost 20% of reefs and alarmingly low numbers at many others. The study, which involved over 100 scientists under the Global FinPrint project, gave New Zealand a good ...
On different trajectories and from different ends of the political spectrum, last night’s One News/Colmar Brunton poll has the Green Party and ACT converging around the five percent mark. And, as odd as it may sound, they head into the election campaign with a lot in common.Putting the Greens and ...
Janet Stephenson, University of OtagoA proposed multibillion-dollar project to build a pumped hydro storage plant could make New Zealand’s electricity grid 100% renewable, but expensive new infrastructure may not be the best way to achieve this. New Zealand’s electricity generation is already around 80% renewable, with just over half ...
Truth In Advertising: Labour, it would seem, is the party that knows nothing about running the economy right up until the moment that it does. HOW DID LABOUR acquire its reputation for being a poor economic manager? As with most things political and historical, it’s a long story.In the beginning, the ...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections Government rulemakers looking to decide how much money to spend to avoid adding more greenhouse gases to the atmosphere need a good estimate of what a warming climate will cost in social damages, for example through more extreme weather events. That point makes ...
Fact Check: New Zealand’s own relationship with China might, however, be salvageable if our own Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade was willing to equip its minister, Winston Peters, with a few facts. Legislating for the protection of national security – the very action our Foreign Minister is decrying – ...
I hope we can all agree that charging only certain returning expats for isolation costs is the right call. Instead of a blanket fee, which may have resulted in a small number of Kiwis deciding not to return home because of financial reasons, the Government has chosen to implement a ...
Back at the beginning of this government, the Greens made a foolish decision to support the Electoral Integrity Act - demanded by Winston Peters to keep his own backbench in line as part of his coalition deal with Labour - as an act of good faith within the coalition. It ...
SATURDAY AUGUST 1Artefact (Prime, 7.30pm). The series presented by Dame Anne Salmond screened on Māori Television, but is totally worth revisiting if you saw it the first time. Dame Anne tells the stories of taonga that highlight the history of Aotearoa. Further reading: this 2013 interview with Dame Anne by the lovely ...
Have unions and the Government sold workers short with their attempt at fixing the so-called “Hobbit Law”? Unionist Ian Powell argues that the union movement has been outmanoeuvered, and the Government has agreed to a new piece of anti-worker legislation that retains the principles of the previous National Government’s hated ...
Most of the claims made by anti-fluoride propagandists are simply wrong. Image source:Fluoridation and the ‘sciency’ facts of critics Anti-fluoride propagandists continually cite studies from areas of endemic fluorosis in their arguments against ...
An article in the EETimes suggests that advances in autonomous vehicles are not moving as quickly as expected because those working on them have confused complicated problems with complex ones. Engineering can only take you so far in complex worlds. Complicated systems tend to have fairly predictable inputs, processes and outputs. Complex systems (like ...
Last week, after Judith Collins announced that National would be cruel and vicious to kiwis caught overseas by the pandemic, and rob them at the border if they returned home, Labour looked like it was falling all over itself to cry "me too". But now, it looks like kindness has ...
If entry into New Zealand from abroad is safe, it should be allowed. People arriving from places that are Covid-free, or no more risky than New Zealand, and who get here on flights that do not intersect with risky places, should return to normal travel arrangements. Currently, the Cook ...
Liz SlootenScientists from the University of Otago, working with colleagues from around the world, have found that New Zealand right whales are doing much better than right whales in other parts of the world. The research was published as the feature article in the journal Marine Ecology Progress ...
Back in 2019, the government asked for a comprehensive, independent review of the Resource Management Act and associated legislation. That review has now reported back and recommended a complete repeal and re-enactment. Despite the headlines, this is not a "scrapping" - we're still going to have a resource management law, ...
By Associate Professor Mik Black, Department of Biochemistry, University of OtagoThe increased availability of complex biological data sets means that analysis and computation are becoming critically important skills for New Zealand’s future scientists. Because of this, we need to be doing everything we can to help our students develop ...
Climate Explained is a collaboration between The Conversation, Stuff and the New Zealand Science Media Centre to answer your questions about climate change.If you have a question you’d like an expert to answer, please send it to climate.change@stuff.co.nzIs humanity doomed? If in 2030 we have not reduced ...
Britain's spy agencies are supposedly overseen by various watchdogs, including the investigatory powers tribunal. But it turns out that MI6 at least has contempt for those watchdogs, and attempted to interfere with the operations of the tribunal by concealing evidence from its judges: MI6 has been accused of “inappropriate interference” ...
Daphna Whitmore So far this year over 7.4 million people have died from preventable communicable diseases. There were 4.3 million children who died under the age of five. Nearly one million people have died of HIV/AIDS in the past six months. A similar number of people have died from malaria ...
Four weeks ago I wrote about the last time a sizable asteroid hit our planet – the ‘Tunguska Event’ of 1908, when an object about 50 metres across exploded above the Siberian taiga – but smaller cosmic rocks shoot close by Earth fairly frequently. In the past 42 hours ...
Last month, China imposed a new "national security law" on Hong Kong. The law imposes a penalty of life imprisonment for secession, subversion, and "colluding with foreign forces" - which basicly means peacefully advocating for democracy or independence. It has been used to crush peaceful protests and interpreted by the ...
Powerful Connection: Neoliberalism is the antithesis of everything that has traditionally been associated with the feminine aspects of human nature. Kindness and compassion, nurturance and inclusiveness: such qualities have no place in the neoliberal order. When Jacinda proclaimed her determination to practice the “politics of kindness”, she was, wittingly or ...
The bad news: Jacinda Ardern still wants to bill exiled kiwis for returning home. The good news: it would require a law change, which the Greens won't back, so she'll need to go grovelling to National. The other good news: she's running out of time to do it. This ...
. . For the mainstream media, today (22 July) was even a better day than yesterday. More Sex. More Politics. More Sex AND Politics. Yesterday, the msm dealt with Andrew Falloon. The obscure backbench MP had been found to have sent pornographic images to at least four women. The woman’s ...
If you want to understand what is happening in this year’s election campaign, it’s worth looking to the past for guidance. Colin James delves into recent contests and finds some interesting parallels. July 28 is 53 days before the 2020 election. Just 53 days before the 2017 election ...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections by Jeff Masters Wildfires burned much less acreage in the U.S. than average during the first half of the year, but with hot and dry conditions expected over much of the nation in the coming months, fire activity is likely to ramp up. ...
Today a full bench of the High Court is hearing Andrew Borrowdale's challenge to the legality of the COVID-19 lockdown. That lockdown ended two months ago, so the point seems moot - but it was never about ending it. Instead, as Andrew Geddis points out, its about a key principle ...
Kia orana and kia ora koutou katoa. It is a privilege to be able to speak in this adjournment debate and to mark and acknowledge the fact that we are now two years and 10 months into the conclusion of a parliamentary term that has been extraordinary in so many ...
On 1 August, we marked the anniversary of Jacinda Ardern becoming the Leader of the Labour Party. On that day in 2017, Leader Andrew Little nominated Jacinda Ardern to succeed him and lead the party to victory.Now, three years on, we look back at some of the key moments ...
With the June 2020 quarter showing underemployment increasing, the Green Party is calling for a Guaranteed Minimum Income and an increase to the abatement threshold to ensure everyone has a dignified income. ...
We went hard and we went early in our health response to COVID-19, and we did everything we could to cushion the economic impact too. In fact, we can fill every letter of the alphabet with the steps we took to fight COVID-19 and ensure we were in a position ...
Investing in our people, backing businesses, and upgrading infrastructure and housing throughout the country - it's been another week of progress for New Zealanders as we deliver our plan to recover and rebuild. ...
July was another busy month, packed with key investments aimed at progressing our economic recovery as we rebuild New Zealand. We extended support for businesses, helped create jobs through local infrastructure projects, and kept working to clean up our waterways so Kiwis can access safe clean water. Check out the ...
The Green Party is calling for the Defence Force Chiefs in place between 2010-2017 to front up and explain how dishonesty, process and policy failures within the Defence Force led to ‘a series of incorrect statements in briefings to ministers and public releases’ regarding alleged breaches of international torture prevention ...
Thanks to our strong health response, New Zealand’s economy is more open than many other countries. But as COVID continues to surge around the world, the economic consequences of the virus will continue to be a challenge, which is why we have a detailed plan to help New Zealand bounce ...
Thanks to our strong health response, New Zealand’s economy is more open than many other countries. But as COVID continues to surge around the world, the economic consequences of the virus will continue to be a challenge, which is why we have a detailed plan to help New Zealand bounce ...
The Green Party are ensuring that New Zealanders who were overseas when COVID-19 hit will not be charged for the cost of isolation or quarantine if they return home to live. ...
It's been another week of creating jobs, supporting local businesses, and investing in infrastructure up and down the country - all of which are helping to keep our economy moving post-COVID-19. ...
Law changes to end tenure review and provide for better management of Crown pastoral lands in the South Island high country were considered by Parliament today with the first reading of the Crown Pastoral Land Reform Bill says Minister for Land Information, Eugenie Sage. ...
The Green Party have secured legislative amendments in a bill expected to pass third reading this week, to ensure better rules for school teachers and staff, so they can de-escalate children with diverse needs and cognitive differences, such as autism, rather than using unnecessary and often traumatising force. ...
New Zealand needs to be more aggressive in pursuing economic opportunities and resist the short-term thinking affecting some of its major industry, Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters says.Mr Peters told Wellington Chamber of Commerce members this morning that the planned closure of the Tiwai Point aluminium smelter will have ...
Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters has ridiculed the National Party "circus", with the politician saying it was in "chaos" after the resignation of another MP.Rangitata MP Andrew Falloon announced on Monday he would retire from politics after he allegedly sent inappropriate pornographic images to a young woman. Following a ...
Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters today outlined what he saw as the requirements to re-open New Zealand's borders for tourists and travellers. If New Zealand was dealing solely with an Australian state such as Tasmania, we wouldn't need a vaccine, said Mr Peters, but these moves were complicated by the ...
New Zealand First leader Winston Peters appears to have prompted last-minute alterations to proposed legislation for commercial landlords and their tenants. Mr Peters told reporters on Wednesday said that he was making sure the proposed bill was in step with what the parties had actually agreed to. He said he ...
Associate Minister for State Owned Enterprise and New Zealand First List MP Shane Jones attended the groundbreaking ceremony for the new NZ Post "super depot" in Wellington. The state-owned postal service, which got $280 million from the Coalition Government last month, is expanding its operations to handle surging parcel volumes. ...
Rt Hon Winston Peters, Leader of New Zealand First CHECK AGAINST DELIVERYIntroduction Good afternoon. Welcome to you all here today and party supporters watching from around the country. We appreciate your hard work keeping New Zealand First strong; thank you for keeping the faith. Sixty-three days out from Election Day, ...
The diversity of conservation boards around Aotearoa is increasing with 47 appointments to 14 of the 15 conservation boards across New Zealand announced today by the Conservation Minister Eugenie Sage. ...
The Green Party is honoured to be remembering former co-leader Jeanette Fitzsimons today at a public memorial service in the heart of Wellington at the Cathedral of St. Paul’s. Following her passing in March, this celebration of her life brings together her friends, family and colleagues to honour her life ...
Conservation Minister Eugenie Sage has announced a $2.5 million boost for South Westland to help a regional alliance of local businesses and government agencies provide nature based jobs. ...
Getting low-emission trucks on the road is a step closer with investment in infrastructure to support hydrogen vehicles, the Energy and Resources Minister Megan Woods has announced. The Infrastructure Reference Group has provisionally approved $20 million for New Plymouth company Hiringa Energy to establish a nationwide network of hydrogen-fuelling stations. ...
A new trades training centre to upskill the local workforce will be built in the South Waikato town of Tokoroa through funding from the Government’s COVID-19 Response and Recovery Fund, Education Minister Chris Hipkins and Regional Economic Development Minister Shane Jones have announced. The Government will contribute $10.84 million from ...
The Government has agreed to repeal part of the Oranga Tamariki Act subsequent children provisions, Minister for Children Tracey Martin announced today. “There are times when children need to go into care for their safety – the safety and care of children must always be paramount,” Minister Martin said. “But ...
A $1.5 million boost to grow primary mental health and addiction services for Pacific peoples in Auckland, Hamilton and Canterbury will lead to better outcomes for Pacific communities, Associate Health Minister Jenny Salesa says. Pasifika Futures has received funding to expand services through The Fono, Aotearoa New Zealand’s largest by ...
Twenty-two projects to boost the sustainability and climate resilience of New Zealand’s food and fibres sector have been announced today by Agriculture Minister Damien O’Connor. The $18m funding will deliver practical knowledge to help farmers and growers use their land more sustainably, meet environmental targets, remain prosperous, and better understand ...
Employment Minister Willie Jackson welcomes an initiative that assists employers to get mature workers into New Zealand small businesses. The disadvantages that older people face in the workplace was highlighted in the whole of Government Employment Strategy. In order to address this, a Mature Workers Toolkit has been developed and ...
New Zealand and Australia reaffirmed today the need for the closest possible collaboration as they tackle a global environment shaped by COVID-19, Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters said. “In these challenging times, our close collaboration with Australia is more vital than ever,” said Mr Peters. Mr Peters and his Australian ...
The recovery and forensic examination of the loader driven by survivor Russell Smith means the underground team are now moving into an area of the Pike River Mine that has not been seen since the explosion, Minister Responsible for Pike River Re-entry Andrew Little said. “The fifth and last robot ...
The Government has confirmed a community-wide trial of CovidCard technology as it explores options for COVID-19 contact tracing. “Effective contact tracing is a vital part of the COVID-19 response,” Minister of Health Chris Hipkins said. “While manual processes remain the critical component for contact tracing, we know digital solutions can ...
The government is proposing changes to aquaculture legislation to improve the process for allocating and transferring aquaculture assets to iwi. Fisheries Minister Stuart Nash has introduced the Maori Commercial Aquaculture Claims Settlement Amendment Bill to Parliament. It proposes a limited new discretionary power for Te Ohu Kaimoana Trustee Limited (ToKM). ...
The Minister of Justice has today introduced the Family Court (Supporting Children in Court) Legislation Bill – the next step in the ongoing programme of work to fix the failed 2014 Family Court reforms led by then Justice Minister Judith Collins. The Bill arises from the report of the Independent ...
A new Department of Conservation (DOC) action plan tackles the impacts of climate change on New Zealand’s biodiversity and DOC managed infrastructure including tracks, huts and cultural heritage. Minister of Conservation Eugenie Sage says extreme weather events around the country have really brought home our vulnerability to changing weather patterns. ...
A heavily scaled back international Antarctic season will commence this week, Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters and Research, Science and Innovation Minister Megan Woods have confirmed. “Antarctica is the only continent that is COVID-19 free,” Mr Peters said. “Throughout the global pandemic, essential operations and long-term science have continued at ...
The Government is providing up to $30 million to help fund the NZ Campus of Innovation and Sport in Upper Hutt - an investment that will create 244 jobs. “The sports hub is designed to be a world-leading shared service for a range of sports, offering the level of facilities ...
Transport Minister Phil Twyford announced today transport projects currently in construction will continue at pace due to extra Government support for transport projects to mitigate the impact of COVID-19. To keep the $16.9 billion 2018-21 National Land Transport Programme going the Government has allocated funding from the COVID Response and ...
$50 million for further rural broadband digital connectivity has been allocated from the $3 billion infrastructure fund in the COVID Response and Recovery Fund has been announced by Shane Jones, Minister for Infrastructure and Kris Faafoi, Minister for Broadcasting, Communications and Digital Media. The investment will go to boosting broadband ...
The Minister for Broadcasting, Communications and Digital Media has congratulated the Ultra-fast Broadband (UFB) programme on its major milestone of connecting more than 1 million New Zealand households and businesses to UFB. “This milestone has been 10 years in the making and demonstrates the popularity of the UFB network. “Uptake ...
Landmark legislation passed today puts New Zealand on track to saving thousands of lives and having a smokefree generation sooner rather than later, Associate Health Minister, Jenny Salesa says. The Smokefree Environments and Regulated Products (Vaping) Amendment Bill regulates vaping products and heated tobacco devices. “There has long been concern ...
A discriminatory law that has been a symbol of frustration for many people needing and providing care and support, has been scrapped by the Government. “Part 4A of the New Zealand Public Health and Disability Amendment Bill (No 2) was introduced under urgency in 2013 by a National Government,” Associate ...
Kiwi motorists are set to reap the benefits of a more competitive fuel market following the passing of the Fuel Industry Bill tonight, Energy and Resources Minister Megan Woods says. “This Act is where the rubber meets the road in terms of our response to the recommendations made in the ...
The Government has delivered on its promise to New Zealanders to modernise tenancy laws with the passing of the Residential Tenancies Amendment (RTA) Bill 2020 today, says Associate Minister of Housing (Public Housing), Kris Faafoi. “The Residential Tenancies Act 1986 was out-dated and the reforms in the RTA modernise our ...
New rules to protect and restore New Zealand’s freshwater passed into law today. Environment Minister David Parker and Agriculture Minister Damien O’Connor welcomed the gazetting of the new national direction on freshwater management. “These regulations deliver on the Government’s commitment to stop further degradation, show material improvements within five years and ...
Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters has announced the appointment of Jeremy Clarke-Watson as New Zealand’s new Consul-General in Los Angeles. “New Zealand and the United States share a close and dynamic partnership, based on a long history of shared values and democratic traditions,” Mr Peters said. “Mr Clarke-Watson is a ...
Victims of family violence can end a tenancy with two days’ notice Landlords can terminate tenancies with 14 days’ notice if tenants assault them Timeframe brought forward for limiting rent increases to once every 12 months Extension of time Tenancy Tribunal can hear cases via phone/video conference Reform of New ...
Two employment schemes – one new and one expanded – going live today will help tens of thousands of people continue training on the job and support thousands more into work, the Government has announced. Apprenticeship Boost, a subsidy of up to $12,000 per annum for first year apprentices and ...
The Government is funding a significant infrastructure package at Omokoroa which will create 150 new jobs and help transform the Western Bay of Plenty peninsula, Urban Development Minister Phil Twyford announced today. Phil Twyford says the Government is investing $14 million towards the $28 million roading and water package. This ...
The Bill allowing the Government to recover some costs for managed isolation and quarantine passed its third reading today, with charges coming into force as soon as regulations are finalised. Putting regulations into force is the next step. “The COVID-19 Public Health Response Amendment Bill and its supporting regulations will ...
Today’s unemployment data shows the Government’s plan to protect jobs and cushion the blow for businesses and households against the economic impact of COVID-19 was the right decision, Finance Minister Grant Robertson says. Stats NZ said today that New Zealand’s unemployment rate in the June quarter – which includes the ...
A new role of New Zealand Reading Ambassador for children and young people is being established, Prime Minister and Minister for Arts, Culture and Heritage Jacinda Ardern and Minister for Internal Affairs and for Children, Tracey Martin announced today. The Reading Ambassador, announced at a Celebration of Reading event at ...
Community Law Centres will receive a funding boost to meet the increased need for free legal services due to COVID-19, Justice Minister Andrew Little said. The $3.5m funding is for the next three financial years and is additional to the almost $8 million for Community Law Centres announced in Budget ...
New Zealand has joined Canada and Chile in a new trade initiative aimed at increasing women’s participation in global trade. Trade and Export Growth Minister David Parker, together with Canada’s Minister for Small Business, Export Promotion and International Trade Mary Ng, Chile’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Andrés Allamand, and Chile’s Vice ...
Building owners around New Zealand have benefited from the latest round of Heritage EQUIP funding with grants totalling $2,230,166. “The Heritage EQUIP grants for seismic strengthening assist private building owners to get the professional advice they need to go ahead with their projects or support them to carry out the ...
• New paediatric facilities, including a Special Baby Care Unit • Up to 50 extra inpatient beds • New lab facilities Northland babies and their whānau will soon have access to improved hospital care when they need it with Health Minister Chris Hipkins today confirming new paediatric facilities and more ...
People walking and cycling between Featherston and Greytown, or along Wellington’s Eastern Bays will soon have a safe shared path, as part of a $220 million shovel-ready cycleways package announced by Associate Transport Minister Julie Anne Genter. “During lockdown we saw many more families and kids out on their bikes, ...
Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters today extended New Zealand’s condolences following the death of Vanuatu’s High Commissioner to New Zealand, Johnson Naviti, who passed away yesterday afternoon in Wellington. “Our thoughts are with the High Commissioner’s family and colleagues during this difficult time. This is a terrible loss both to ...
The Government has today set out the regional allocations of the $761 million Three Waters stimulus and reform funding for councils announced by Prime Minister Hon Jacinda Ardern this month. "I want to thank Councils around the country for engaging with the Central Local Government Steering Group who have been ...
Students with high and complex learning needs, as well as their teachers and parents, will benefit from a substantial increase to Ongoing Resourcing Scheme (ORS) funding, Associate Education Minister Martin announced today. “Nearly $160 million will go towards helping these students by lifting their base support over the next four ...
Funding for innovative projects to connect Kiwis with affordable, safe and wholesome food, reduce food waste, and help our food producers recover from COVID-19 has been announced today by Agriculture Minister Damien O’Connor. “COVID-19 has seen an increasing number of families facing unprecedented financial pressure. Foodbanks and community food service ...
Eight shovel-ready projects within Kāinga Ora large-scale developments, and the Unitec residential development in Auckland have been given the go-ahead, Minister for Housing Dr Megan Woods announced today. Megan Woods says these significant infrastructure upgrades will ensure that the provision of homes in Auckland can continue apace. “The funding announced ...
The Government is funding a new separated walking and cycleway path along Napier’s Chambers and Ellison streets to provide safer access for local students and residents across Marine Parade and State Highway 51, Transport Minister Phil Twyford and Police Minister Stuart Nash announced today. Funding of $2.7 million has been ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra COVID-19 has now made us two Australias. There’s Victoria – most specifically Melbourne – and then there’s the rest of the country. Melbourne’s extraordinary lockdown complete with curfew is an act of desperation by Daniel ...
Report by Dr David Robie – Café Pacific. – The Hiroshima devastation 75 years ago today. Image: ICAN By David Robie While the globe struggles to cope with the deadly onslaught of the covid-19 pandemic, communicators, historians, journalists and activists ...
Pacific Media Centre Newsdesk Indonesia’s West Papua province has again been recorded as having the worst democracy index in the republic, reports CNN Indonesia. This year (2019), the West Papuan Democracy Index (IDI) was 57.62, even dropping lower from 2018 when it was 58.29 points. Based on data from the ...
This week’s 75th anniversary of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, with 250,000 killed and many more suffering terrible effects on their health, is a sombre reminder of the appalling destruction of nuclear weapons and should spur international efforts ...
Analysis - Can we postpone this year's election? We've ended up with a campaign focused on scandal, personality and leadership, with a policy void that's worse than usual. ...
We seek the indulgence of readers of a delicate disposition to bear with us for a moment as we dip into what some call crude soldiery and examine some important aspects revealed in the Arnold-Palmer report into Operation Burnham. We know this concerned the NZ Special Air Service in actions ...
At an event at the controversial Cloud Ocean bottling plant in Christchurch today, The Opportunities Party said governance of water could not be any worse than how it is now. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Odette Best, Professor, Nursing, University of Southern Queensland Recently announced Closing the Gap targets aim to improve the health and well-being of Indigenous people. But if that’s to happen, we need to provide health advice suitable for First Nations Australians. That includes ...
The Ombudsman's report to Parliament on the children's ministry's taking of babies is scathing of its misuse of the law and treatment of families caught in its routine use of 'uplifts'. Tim Murphy reports. The latest damning inquiry into Oranga Tamariki finds that in 100 percent of cases investigated by the ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Liz Giuffre, Senior Lecturer in Communication, University of Technology Sydney Review: Paul Kelly: The Man, the Music and Life in Between (Hatchette) Stuart Coupe’s new biography of Paul Kelly takes many known elements of Kelly’s story and rouses them again. Paul Kelly: ...
This was the last week of Parliament before the election and departing politicians had the opportunity to offer final thoughts in their valedictory speech. The stark contrast between the careers and speeches of two Labour ex-Ministers, Hon Ruth Dyson ...
Analysis by Keith Rankin. Money as an Unfortunate Metaphor for CostKeith Rankin. Especially but not only in election years, when any new policy is proposed by a major party, a ubiquitous refrain follows: “what will it cost?”; “where will the money come from?”. The context is that cost ...
Analysis by Dr Bryce Edwards Political scientist, Dr Bryce Edwards. Can we postpone this year’s election? Quite frankly, the political parties don’t seem ready for it, and aren’t about to offer voters the necessary policy choices for the unprecedented times we’re in. We’ve ended up with a campaign focused ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Philip Gibbons, Professor, Australian National University Most people probably associate the Australian Alps with skiing and snow. Others might think of the Man from Snowy River legend or the engineering feats of the Snowy Hydro-Electric Scheme. But few people know the region’s ...
The Serious Fraud Office has welcomed a court decision confirming the confidentiality of material that was inadvertently disclosed by the agency to the defendants in the National Party donations case. The material was disclosed recently during the course ...
The Cancer Society is pleased to see the new vaping legislation passed with general cross-party support as it will help protect people from the harms of e-cigarettes and nicotine addiction while also supporting those who use vaping to quit smoking. ...
Imperial Brands says it is excited that a new law will allow it to sell vapes but is disappointed that the Smokefree Environments and Regulated Products (Vaping) Amendment Bill has made vapes harder to get than cigarettes. Imperial Brands spokesperson Kirsten ...
A loader driven by former miner Russell Smith at the time of the Pike River Mine explosion has now been recovered from 1581m up the 2.3km drift access tunnel. The recovery of the loader went smoothly and to plan. Pike River families were able to ...
The removal of a 20 tonne loader that has blocked the Pike River drift since the day the mine exploded marks the start of the forensic recovery of a crime scene that has been locked away for ten years. Russell Smith was driving the loader when the ...
Business is Boring is a weekly podcast series presented by The Spinoff in association with Callaghan Innovation. Host Simon Pound speaks with innovators and commentators focused on the future of New Zealand. This week he talks to Mitchell Pham, founder of Augen Software Group.If the last century was the American ...
At this year's general election, the public will also be asked to cast a referendum vote on the End of Life Choice Act 2019. Here is an explainer on the Act, who is eligible and how we got here. ...
Ngāti Tūwharetoa has just become the first iwi to be approved under the Resource Management Act to take over certain council duties. Here’s why that matters.In 1991, the Resource Management Act (RMA) allowed councils to transfer any of their functions to local iwi. Now, almost 30 years after that act ...
The Public Service Association strongly opposes allowing privately-run quarantine facilities to open for international travelers, and the union says it would put all New Zealanders in danger. PSA members work in the government agencies spearheading ...
Catherine Woulfe reviews Upstream on the Mataura, a memoir by Gore flyfisherman Dougal Rillstone chronicling his journey along the Southland river.Dougal Rillstone is some guy you’ve never heard of, who grew up in Gore and is in love with a river. He also loves to fish for trout. He’s in ...
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Open mike 18/08/2013 
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One day to go before the big meeting in the Auckland Town Hall GCSB bill.
And the leader of the Opposition Labour Party hasn’t made it clear if he will even be there.
Already we know that David Shearer refuses to stand on the podium with every other Opposition Party Leader.
The actions of David Shearer are deliberately undermining the sincere efforts of those who are trying to lobby Peter Dunne and/or any National MPs who have concerns about this bill to vote against it.
How can Peter Dunne or any other Government MP make this weighty decision to change their vote, when they can witness with their own eyes that the Opposition leader David Shearer is standing with the Prime Minister John Key on this issue.
David Shearer’s mealy mouthed words calling for a “review” (something that Peter Dunne has already asked for, and the Prime Minister has already agreed to), Is not enough.
So come on David Shearer. In the best traditions of Labour Party leaders of the past, why don’t you show that you stand with the grass roots of your own party and the rest of the opposition, and the nation. Announce that tomorrow you will be mounting the podium with the other leaders to make your opposition to this bill clear.
If it is beyond you. You don’t have to say anything. Just stand there in solidarity.
Remember: Actions Speak Louder Than words!
Given his name’s on the poster, does anyone other than you seriously doubt his intention to attend? I’m not interested in your opinion, just a link to someone other than you saying it will suffice.
Not on any poster I have seen. Not on the ones posted on this site.
Oops looked again his name is there my sincere apologies.
When did this happen?
http://thedailyblog.co.nz/2013/08/18/holding-the-prime-minister-to-account-monday-night-auckland-town-hall-7pm/
Jenny, I usually do not bother reading or replying to your comments as IMO they contain a lot of ignorance and/or misinformation – sometimes IMO quite deliberately.
On this occasion:
1. Shearer was announced as a speaker at tomorrow night’s public meeting last Tuesday, I think, on The Daily Blog and has been on the poster since then.
http://thedailyblog.co.nz/2013/08/12/speakers-announced-for-next-mondays-stop-the-gcsb-bill-public-meeting/
2. Your remark that “We already know that Shearer refuses to stand on the podium with every other Opposition Party leader”. Since when? Show us evidence of this statement. Shearer has ‘stood on the podium’ with Norman and Peters on a number of occasions over the last year or so on manufacturing, housing and other issues.
3. After the last public meeting, on 26 July Shearer announced that if he became PM, he would initiate a wider ranging inquiry into all intelligencies agencies, their roles, functions, powers etc on coming into office, with the review to be completed within six months IIRC
I posted the link to this Herald article on TS and seem to remember that you were part of the discussion on this at the time.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/politics/news/article.cfm?c_id=280&objectid=10903651
To clarify, the above was a response to Jenny’s #1, but went into moderation and somehow ended up as 1.1.1.2.
EDIt – did this partly as a test as to whether it went into moderation, which it has. Not sure why, but had the same thing late yesterday.
It’s a known bug (the moderation thing).
As for your comment, nice try, but you do realise that she was posting from Planet Jenny, an alternate universe where everything looks familiar but has a Jenny-esque spin to it that has the unfortunate side effect one making one’s eyes roll.
i see the Arab Spring is going well too. And that’s what she wants to see happen in Syria next. Another “popular revolution”.
civil war in Egypt was predicted following the ousting of Morsi.
LOL. Thanks weka. As I said ,I don’t normally respond to Planet Jenny but was not in a good mood when I read the latest dribble first thing this morning. Shaky Wellington is not my favourite place right now as quakes are my biggest phobia/paranoia. But – must be strong as can’t do anything about it! Or about Planet Jenny.
Heh, Planet Jenny, very appropriate.
Kudos to weka, not me, for that one!
Shearer’s name was NOT there originally. It is not on this poster:
http://gpjanz.files.wordpress.com/2013/08/townhall-bill3-page1-1-424×600.jpeg
Shearer declared his intention to be one of the speakers earlier in the week since when he’s been on the “list” of speakers. He has emailed members and supporters twice in the past few days urging people to attend.
I thought Shearer was very good on Key’s exclusive NZ Herald GCSB ‘clarification’ when Shearer said that Key didn’t understand his own legislation and was making it up as he went along.
It was quick, sharp and to the point
Talking about bad journalism;
“Shot man had lengthy list of convictions”
So reads the banner headlline by an article penned by journalist Tracey Chatterton for Fairfax NZ News,
I might like to ask Tracey Chatterton;
So What?
Would a headline reading hand cuffed man shot in the back be more accurate. What if this helpless and unarmed man had been shot in the back by someone other than a police officer?
Would his list of convictions be in the headline? Would that even be seen as relevant?
What is Tracey Chatterton trying to say here?
That the man deserved to be shot in such circumstances because he had a list of convictions?
That people who have convictions are more likely to get shot while being under arrest vulnerable and helpless, than those without previous convictions?
Despite the purposely leading headline, the report itself is less judgemental laying no fault on the arrested man who was offering no resistance at the time when he was shot.
When it comes to bad journalism this example surely must rank at the top.
It’s also very unlikely that a gun would simply just go off. Despite what the movies try to make us believe, guns don’t usually go off by themselves. If the riffle was slung over the officers shoulder, it should have been located at the officers back. Therefore he would have to have been leaning forward away from Iriheke Te Kani Pere for him to be shot. However it was also reported that the unarmed man was being helped to his feet by the officer when he was accidentally shot in the back with a Bushmaster rifle, that should have had it’s safety on. The events as described by the police seem highly implausible.
Could it be that under this government the police feel they have the right to administer their own penalties out to suspected law breakers. This could see a handcuffed suspect thrown off a fence and paralysed or handcuffed then shot in the back. Serco may not like the loss of income from these events but Paula Bennett will be fond of this style of treatment of suspects I’m sure.
The police have always felt that they have the right to administer their own penalties. What changes are the penalties. When a government with some interest in human rights is in power, they scale things down a bit, maybe to the level of grievous bodily harm. With the present government and its absolute contempt for any sort of legalities, the death sentence can be on the table. As a society we give the police enormous powers. We should make equally enormous efforts to hold them to account when they step outside these powers.
Has there ever been an instance of someone pointing a firearm at a nz police officer and living to tell the tale?
I don’t recall it ever happening.
So you’re saying the police should just stand there like numpties and allow themselves to be shot? Of course I expect you will probably say they could shoot the perp in an arm or a leg, but that would be to reveal a fatal misunderstanding of how deadly someone with a fire arm can still be or how quickly they can squeeze off a bullet
No Pop, I’m not saying any of those things.
Once again you are arguing against your own imagination.
Not enough time spent training on weapons would be my guess, they fire SFA rounds a year to be current, and I would find it hard to believe they even know how to pull their weapons apart. But surely he answer must be to carry them all the time, that would fix everything when they have no idea how to use them, that seem’s to be the modus operandi of this government?
Budget cuts, heightened stress with too few experienced staff around, not enough training and weapons handling time.
The sun, the moon, and the high tide…
Also lack of procedural weapons safety discipline, including the very basics…do not point your weapon, loaded or unloaded, at anything you are not willing to kill.
The last frontier, shoot first ask question later.
Try that is someone is pointing a gun at you
“…bad journalism…”
From memory it’s usually the sub-editor who chooses the headline.
And subs are only a couple of chromosomes away from being cabbages
heh. 🙂
“..Why should dogs die – so humans can get high?..”
(cont..)
(ed:..and of course it would be salutary to see the (totally-justified) outrage at this plan to overdose dogs to death..to test the toxicity of new legal-highs for humans..
..to see this outrage spread to the fact that 270,000 animals are tortured/killed by the vivisectors in new zealand..
..each and every year..
..let that fact sink in…
..and then please start asking ‘why?’…’why are we torturing/killing animals..?
..to test cosmetics/dishwashing liquids..?’
‘cos..y’see..there are computer-testing programs that
can replace these hidden horrors..obviate the need for this litany of cruelties/miseries..
..’so why?’..i hear you ask..
..that ‘why’ is the same as for all the other industries that thrive on the miseries inflicted on others (alcohol/tobacco/legal-highs..)
..these animals continue to be tortured because of economic reasons..
..those doing the torturing..and the breeders..
..are locked in a ghastly dance of monetary self-interest..
….so what needs to happen..
..is for a large spotlight to be shone on the practices of this industry..
..and for them to justify the/any compelling need to be doing this to animals..
..until this comes to pass..
..these pieces of shit who garner their gold from torturing defenceless animals all day..
..will just continue inflicting these miseries..
..and it may be a cliche..
..but the animals cannot speak up for themselves..eh..?
..it has to be us..eh..?..
(and irony o.d-alert..!..for many years the spca has sat on the panel ‘approving’ these experiments/tortures on 270,000 animals each and every year..)
..and guess what..?..the spca used to sell/supply animals to the vivisectors..
..and how do i know this..?
..i know this because i once ‘liberated’ a dog from a courier van..
..that dog was enroute from the spca in auckland..
..to vivisectors in wellington..
..she ended up living a long and happy/well-loved life..
..so the next questions for the spca must be:
‘do you still sell/supply animals to the vivisectors..?’
and..’how do you – as an organisation purporting/fund-raising on the premise you help/protect these defenceless animals..
..how do you marry that with ‘approving’ the torture/killing of 270,000 of those ‘defenceless-animals’ you claim to ‘protect’..?
..and this each and every year..?
..eh..?..
..eh..?..)
phillip ure..
animals are tested on for medical purposes to deal with the effects of…
alcohol
sports
coffee
sugar
drugs
driving
everything.
Good grief! (Still gagging) I have just caught a bit of the Nation with bill ralston and somebody else( aided by nodding and smiling smallie) going orgasmic over keys performance on JC Live. How concise and coherent he was and how he spoke to middle nz so that they could all understand his message. And how bad JC was in comparison and labelling him as pretty much politically biased. Did they not read the transcript! As far as I am concerned JCLIve is the only TV programme that is trying to give us ordinay kiwis a say and actually putting the TRUTH out there so we can make an informed opinion. Elsewhere you have Fran,Audrey,John A all using the NZ Herald as their no obstacles vehicle for waving the pom poms for national EVERY WEEK! It’s blatant and it is wrong that we are being fed their infantile drivel under the guise of political commentary. Go John Campbell and boo hiss to the herald.
I feel like that too! Strange (yeah right) that Ralston and Walden never mentioned the big back-down from Key since the interview either, where what he had said turned out to be WRONG – But he’s going to make no written change to the bill and just says that he won’t give the OK to read our mail – Do we really trust Key to keep his word that he won’t read our emails and how would we ever find out if he did? Sorry, I’d need that in WRITING!! This IS a merchant banker talking, don’t forget that!!
I thought he was just a money trader and general go to boy to do Merrill Lynch’s dirty work. With a smile.
Someone on radio said that so much political chatter is about performance instead of substantive matters. It is commentators treating politics as a sports game, and the politicians merely players. Shakespeare understood it (No fear Shakespeare site)
Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day
To the last syllable of recorded time,
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
Hamlet A5/Sc5/5.
MacBeth
Thanks Rogue That Hamlet I don’t know how he got into the comment.
These corporate shills have a lot to lose.
Remember CL challenged their lack of action in his report on Thursday.
Bill Ralston sold out long ago.
Ralston and Walden subscribe to the construct of an Auckland media/political “glitterati”. They cannot be accurately assessed or relied upon without prior disclosure of that comedic self-consciousness. Hitching up to Planet Key provides buoyancy for ascent to the surface of the little pond of Auckland and confirms “glitterati” membership.
Yes, more that just Walden and Ralston subscribe to this, every commentator seems to have jumped on the bandwagon Kerre Mc Ivor (who ever she is), Sean Plunkett, Armstrong, etc…it seems very few commentators will challenge John Key. Not one commentator has brought up John key’s major cock up in the interview, which is amazing. I’m sure your explanation has something to do with it, along with some really savvy media management by the National Party.
On August 17, 1975, U.S. Senator Frank Church appeared on NBC television’s Meet the Press to discuss the results of his full-scale investigation into America’s burgeoning intelligence capabilities. Senator Church revealed startling information and closed with a dire warning to every citizen of the United States:
“American intelligence gathering capability at any time could be turned around on the American people and no American would have any privacy left. Such is the capability to monitor everything: telephone conversations, telegrams, it doesn’t matter. (This was before internet.) There would be no place to hide.”
“If this government ever became a tyrant, if a dictator took charge in this country, the technological capacity that the intelligence community has given the government could enable it to impose total tyranny, and there would be no way to fight back because the most careful effort to combine together in resistance to the government, no matter how precisely it was done, is within reach of the government to know. Such is the capability of this technology.”
“I don’t want to see this country ever go across the bridge. I know the capacity that is there to make tyranny total in America, and we must see to it that (the NSA) and all the agencies that possess this technology operate within the law and under proper supervision so that we never cross that abyss. That is the abyss from which there is no return.”
Only took three decades and a couple of collapsing skyscrapers to turn the good results of the Church Committee around. Pumping more money into the corporate/military/industrial/intelligence complex and then allowing a system where individual congressmen have to become more susceptible to money just to get re-elected finished it.
As has been said by several people previously…the US has suffered a slow motion corporate/internal coup d’état over the last 20 years. Five hundred senior officials, a few billionaires, and a couple of hundred corporate board members have more say over the USA today than 250M voters.
Has John Key’s government done anything to improve New Zealand’s environmental record?
I see nothing doing but maybe somebody can point to something which has improved the situation.
jk has stopped farting in public?
That doesn’t count if he then uses his mouth as an exit for the hot air instead.
My perfect scenario for Question Time in Parliament would be for the Opposition to ask jk a question, sit through the now standard garbage he spews and then on a point of order point out to him that he is WRONG and then sit down. What would his retaliation be? Everyone should just keep saying YOU ARE WRONG and only that. It’s when you go down the rabbit hole with him that you just lose the will to live. He does it all the time, without actually showing any solid proof to his challenge.
points of order aren’t allowed purely on the grounds of disagreeing with contentions made..
phillip ure..
Well they should be.
Rod Oram blasts the government with both barrels. Why aren’t we hearing this kind of coherent narrative from Labour?
Yep excellent piece Pete.
The SST also does a good job in its leader today of highlighting the fact that Key does not understand the GCSB Bill and screwed up (or IMO lied) in the John Campbell interview.
Even Colin Espiner, on the same page, says the GCSB Bill is bad law.
+1
Is No Minister really a left wing blog? Sure, it has contributions from Psycho Milt, but he’s being somewhat overwhelmed by the stupid Tories over there. May I suggest some of these as a replacement?
I had a look at it too (yesterday) J, and asked myself the same question! Short answer NO! or no longer.
Selwyn Manning asks some interesting questions about the consequences that the GCSB Bill may have for NZ’s relationship with China
Special Feature: For China Is The GCSB Bill One Insult Too Many?
http://thedailyblog.co.nz/2013/08/18/special-feature-for-china-is-the-gcsb-bill-one-insult-too-many/
“Get off the Grass”
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business-editors-picks/news/article.cfm?c_id=1501981&objectid=10912950
(bright light that Shaun Hendy).
Down the Publons on a wet Sunday
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=10912868
“We’re caught in a trap…”
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=10913571
“…with Suspicious Minds”
Quoting Get off the Grass:
There’s no paradox at all – the economic fundamentals are wrong and so by getting them right we’ve been damaging our economy.
Reality doesn’t conform to their carefully crafted and mathematicised parallel universe of economics? Who wudda thunkit?
Economics is and always has been a pseudoscience. It uses mathematics the same way astrologers do. Yes, there are real stars and yes, there are real resources and money, but let’s start studying them in a real scientific manner. Astronomers have been at it for a long time. I invite economists to do the same, any century now – no pressure [gritted teeth].
+1 …I think astrology works better…it does not pretend to be a science…but open to interpretation and imagination.
….economics is similar …depends who does it and what their ideology is and then they get the maths hocus pocus equations to prove it..tweek it here….tweek it there…..and bingo the bankers and wealthy 5% come out on top
………And have any of these economic theories really worked for the majority of people in individual countries , let alone the world?…that is the acid test….’economics’ as a ‘science’ has been an abject failure
The same could be said of pre-Hubble telescope Cosmology, but that doesn’t mean said Cosmology was a waste of time.
All science progresses more by debunking failed dogma than by genius insights. It progresses nonetheless.
@ depends on whether the ‘scientist’ starts with an open mind or not….
…some ‘scientists’ have closed minds and will try and fit the facts/stats/equations to their own predilections and preferred ideologies …as is the case in economics and much less so in astronomy( hard science) …hence economics called a ‘pseudoscience'( accept that some economics is descriptive /phenomenological)
It depends on nothing of the sort. You aren’t taking peer review into account. Scientists must present their findings in public where their worst enemies can pull them to pieces. Looking for the mythical unbiased opinion is a mistake: everyone exhibits bias.
It can take decades for science to progress in any field: Economics is no different.
@ + 100 Poission and Rhinocrates….
Knucklehead ….who said I was looking for the mythical unbiased opinion?….it is a sliding scale
OAK, indeed, the joke about cosmology told by physicists is that cosmologists put error bars on the exponents. However, it seems economists don’t use error bars at all.
Sciences do progress, and it’s the scientific process not only of peer review but of correlation with other sciences that matters – every chemist is open to review by physicists, but economists still try to be a closed shop. Their fundamental paradigms are jealously guarded from scrutiny and review and are therefore arbitrary (a euphemism for self-gratifying bullshit).
Scientific disciplines advance at different rates in any case. In a couple of centuries, whatever replaces the current pseudoscience of economics may reach the equivalent of Newtonian physics (i.e.., where physics was in the seventeenth century), but it’s nowhere near that position yet.
their worst enemies can pull them to pieces.
Yes, and many self-professed experts in Klingon who like to dress up in costumes can pull each other to pieces too – and they do – but I challenge them to engage with real linguists.
No real science is an island, and I’ll take an economist seriously when they are routinely open to review by physicists, tribologists, and herpetologists. If you think that I’m being facetious, I’d like to point out that physics is telling us a lot about palaeontology through biomechanical analysis of skeletons. That’s how real science works, not a cargo cult.
Not facetious at all Rhino, in fact I broadly agree with you that economics can and should learn more from other disciplines, for precisely the reasons you outline.
Well fingers crossed then, if not for our generation, then the ones to come, because it’s a science we need.
Alchemy was a waste of time, chemistry isn’t.
@ well I dont know about alchemy being a waste of time…Jung seemed to get quite a lot out of it….depends on whether you take it literally or not…maybe it is a metaphor for components/development of the psyche?
In a literary sense, I think that both Jung and Freud have real value and I regard Freud’s essay on the uncanny as a masterpiece of literary and aesthetic criticism. However, “science” is a very precise term, denoting verifiability and consistency. A lot of art and literature is “true” in ways that sciences aren’t, but be that as it may, “economics” as it stands is not a science.
@ Rhinocrates
If you don’t view chemistry as a waste of time, then alchemy wasn’t either; because chemistry arose out of alchemy.
economic fundamentals are wrong
The equations used in economic models are not fundamental but phenomenological ie they relate to the process but not to the cause,hence you cannot ask to much of them anyway.
not fundamental but phenomenological
In other words: make-believe, the mere aping of forms and not amenable to empirical tests. Unfalsifiable. Bullshit, to put it bluntly.
Sorry, I have too much experience in both hard disciplines and the humanities to take all of their weasely pantomime seriously. Indeed, the intellectual pretence is offensive.
On phenomenology:
Edmund Gustav Albrecht Husserl (German: [ˈhʊsɐl]; April 8, 1859 – April 27, 1938[3]) was a philosopher and mathematician and the founder of the 20th century philosophical school of phenomenology. He broke with the positivist orientation of the science and philosophy of his day, yet he elaborated critiques of historicism and of psychologism in logic. Not limited to empiricism, but believing that experience is the source of all knowledge, he worked on a method of phenomenological reduction by which a subject may come to know directly an essence.
Have to say I agree – again, straddling the hard professions and the humanities, I think that there can be parallel kinds of truth.
A couple of my degrees, my work and a lot of my publication would not be possible if I didn’t appreciate phenomenology – I’m just aware of the demarcations.
Sorry to be cryptic, but I value my privacy and don’t want to give too much away (someone has already found out who I am and I don’t want that repeated).
Short answer: “Yes.”
“Mum’s the Word”
Lee’s Post Keynesian Price Theory: Chapter 4
The poor economists, finding out that pricing of goods has absolutely nothing to do with margins.
fuel and electricty not as inelastic as once held by economic theorists, but then, they may be Living In The Past.
Yes business have a series of indicators which indicate how pricing should be achieved, based of course around the level of competition and one other important imperative,
The less competition the higher the price and that is always coupled with that other business tool known as ”coz we can” where in the absence of any real competition prices are fixed by either the individuals involved or by agreement of the Cartels,
The electricity industry is a great indicator of such Cartel price fixing where at a time small consumers have reduced demand for the product competition would indicate that prices would drop in an effort for the different players to attract more custom the opposite is the reality as Cartel price fixing keeps all the players profits rising…
What has happened to the little colourful square things that used to sit next to our ‘names’? Those made it easier to follow conversations.
Distressed needing help on the street but ignored
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10913776
not sure if someone has already posted this. It seems if you are better dressed, people MIGHT think about helping you a bit faster.
I would have helped the old guy, because that’s what I do. I would have checked on the woman as well.
Chrysi Avgi (Golden Dawn) polling at around 12% and the ruling Nea Dimokratia at 28%, give them another year or so and the fuckers could well hold the balance.
Recently, Golden Dawn has signaled it would like to go global, and has opened offices in Germany and Australia. A website has appeared claiming to be the hub for the group’s New York City office.
“Nightline’s” repeated email requests for interviews from Golden Dawn members were met with an angry “No.”
“You can blame your fellow mainstream media cohorts for that, who do nothing but shamelessly slander us,” one email response to “Nightline” said.
But as Georgousis’ film shows, Golden Dawn sees the blame for Greece’s woes spreading far beyond its shores. The party claims the economic crisis in Greece is not just caused by immigrants in Athens, but in Chicago and “especially New York,” Georgousis said.
“They keep posting articles that, ‘it’s the Jewish capital that has brought Greece to this point, which is located in New York,’” he said.
http://abcnews.go.com/International/greeces-hostile-golden-dawn-party-filmmaker-captures-unguarded/story?id=19948097
(check the comments – auto play video too)
“They keep posting articles that, ‘it’s the Jewish capital that has brought Greece to this point, which is located in New York,’” he said.
That must come as a surprise to the Israelis
Watched Susan Woods today – I think it will be the last time – she makes me cringe when she interviews foreign visitors (in this case from Iran) with a preconceived propaganda point of view trying hard to be a Christiane Amanpour. Please, please, please take Mrs Woods off politics programs, give her gardening or something else.
Indeed! “Suzie’s Garden Show”, then maybe slip her in as a Nactzi Baggie Marry replacement.
Cow really does fancy she’s an Amanpour. What a joke !
Misogynist
What a joke !
The government wants the GST on on-line purchases. The retailers association want it too.
Well I guess they could also chase the corporate tax avoidance rorts that are ripping us all off while they are at it. (That would be billions, and not just a few million).
“Well I guess they could also chase the corporate tax avoidance rorts that are ripping us all off while they are at it. (That would be billions, and not just a few million).”
Can you be specific about these rorts?
Zzzzz
@ logie97….agreed…..
Loretta Napoleoni’s book ‘Rogue Economics- Capitalism’s New Reality’ (2008)…. indicates what is wrong with present day economics
Yes – its 8pm on a Sunday night. But for those interested before it disappears behind NBR’s paywall – A MUST READ on the effects of the combine GCSB Bill and its companion TICS Bill.
An article on NBR today by Vikram Kumar, former SSC manager and CEO of InternetNZ, now CEO of Mega, giving more – very disturbing – insight into the effects of the TICS Bill.
I am out of my depth here on the tech aspects, but if what Kumar is saying is true, then it is very revealing.
“The government is planning to issue secret orders to service providers when the Telecommunications (Interception Capability and Security) Bill (“TICS Bill”) becomes law to force them to create interception capability for surveillance agencies. This has been approved by cabinet and is therefore official Government policy.
What’s not clear is if the mechanism of a Ministerial directive will also be used to gag the service provider? Or is the secrecy merely a guise to allow compliant service providers to pretend they haven’t been forced to create a backdoor for the government?
Either way, the impact on New Zealand online service providers, and New Zealand as a country, could be truly devastating. …”
To read the whole article – and the comments and remarks by the NBR editor at the start of the article – the link is
http://t.co/kvhoyJCfse
From the 2012 technical paper:
A Ministerial directive will be used to secretly/confidentially impose an obligation to create interception capabilities by individually named service providers (referred to as “deem-in” but what I call a backdoor) “so as not to publicly announce a lack of capability in a particular service.”
“when X is “deemed” to be Y it is ordinarily conceded that X is not Y, and is known not to be Y”
Legal Fictions and Common Law Legal Theory Some Historical Reflections, Eben Moglen
Someone must have linked or commented on this –
http://www.nbr.co.nz/article/revealed-govt-plans-secret-orders-so-service-providers-under-spy-bill-ck-144562
Wildfire !
And just before I hit submit I see Veutoviper has.
Pretty much all isps are refusing to do it.
It isn’t law yet.
i’ve only just discovered Richard Wilkinson’s (co-author of The Spirit Level) TED talk about why reducing income differentials in developed democracies really matters.
if you’ve not heard him talk, take a few minutes…. and note where NZ figures in most of the data he presents
Jesus wept.
http://tuliathompson.wordpress.com/2013/08/18/no-paula-bennett-tampons-and-pads-are-not-luxury-items-winz-and-institutionalised-sexism/
And it’s pretty hard to see how this could be an oversight, or some sort of mistake.
The list of proscribed ‘luxury items’ would have had to have been produced at some point. And it should have been checked pretty thoroughly after that.
sometimes, not just lacrimal fluid.