The Far Right have issued death threats against the organisers of the Syria Speaks Hui, (which have been passed on to the police in the interests of attendees safety).
Syrians in New Zealand speak about the uprising against the Assad government, the violence that has followed, the role of foreign governments in the conflict, and what New Zealanders can do to help…..
Syrians in New Zealand speak about the uprising against the Assad government, the violence that has followed, the role of foreign governments in the conflict, and what New Zealanders can do to help.
An informational meeting supported by Fightback and by Organise Aotearoa (views of speakers do not necessarily represent OA). The new edition of Fightback magazine, “Syria: Revolution and Counter-Revolution”, in English and Arabic, will be available.
(NOTE: this meeting was originally scheduled for March 15, [the anniversary of the start of the popular revolt against Assad]*, but was postponed after the massacre that day of 50 worshippers at Christchurch mosques, some of whom were Syrian refugees).
Speakers:
ALI AKIL came from Syria as a teenager and has lived here for two decades. His father was an activist against the Assad regime who was imprisoned, tortured and narrowly escaped execution. Ali was the founder of Syrian Solidarity NZ, which was established in 2011 in response to the dignity uprising in Syria.
MIREAM SALAMEH (by Skype from Melbourne) was born in Homs, Syria in 1983. When the Syrian Revolution broke out in 2011, Salameh was persecuted both as a revolutionary and visual artist. Miream, with her friends, founded a magazine called (Justice) in which they documented Assad abuses in the city of Homs. Due to her involvement in anti-government activism, she was forced to leave her homeland after regime forces made threats of rape, arrest and murder against her, looting and destroying most of her artwork. With her three remaining artworks, she fled her homeland to Lebanon in 2012 and came to Australia in 2013 as a refugee. Miream’s artwork addresses issues of social justice, freedom and the suffering of the Syrian people, who are being violently oppressed for resisting dictatorship.
Trouble with Syria is that the U.S., Britain, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, the U.A.E., and France have diplomatically and militarily supported Al Qaeda, ISIL, and al-Nusra.
To true morrissey …. although I should thank jenny for leading me down the road to learn a lot about the christchurch sub-uber racist killer.
Which she tried to blame on Assad … in a sickness on top of sickness kind of way.
Here's some real info from a little internet digging
****************************************
Reading NZ papers on wikileaks I learnt John Key was in Obamas company , giving a speech , immediately after Norwegian mass murderer Anders Behring Breivik, killed 77 people in 2011.
Key took the opportunity to call for more resources and surveillance to counter and stop future terrorist attacks … Cynically.
The budget for spooks and security went from $56 Million in 2011 … up to over $ 150 million now.
But apparently while 'making us safe', they were not looking at people like Anders Behring Breivik … who our killer admired in posts on known ‘extreme’ chat rooms … and he wanted to achieve a similar kind of racist immortality. https://www.beehive.govt.nz/sites/default/files/2017-12/GCSBandNZSIS.PDF
In the days and hours ahead of his deadly killing spree at a New Zealand mosque on Friday, the alleged shooter left a trail of digital evidence
His followers knew to tune in because he had advertised the shooting—and the fact that he would stream it live—on the message board site 8chan,
Here’s your UN compact! … was one of the many twink scrawled message written on one of the assault rifles in Christchurch … a message that ricochet back at the tRumps … and our Nacts… who effectively gave ammo to a sick mind.
Vote buying and stoking a toxic minority … Invaders!
To lift the topic ,,,,,,I’ll finish with a bloody good powerful Aussie rock song about Aussie racism and exploitation …
The Far Right have issued death threats against the organisers of the Syria Speaks Hui, (which have been passed on to the police in the interests of attendees safety).
Just the regular necessary reminder that most of the economics profession is dedicated to pushing ideas that are flat-out wrong, but happen to benefit wealthy people and screw the not-wealthy. Hence their symbiotic relationship with the "conservative" part of the political spectrum.
A truly silly column by Fran O'Sullivan in the Herald where she offers the opine that the PM should not have annoyed the hosts by making representations over the deportations of Kiwis, but instead raise the matter of New Zealand banking rules.
The thing is the PM is now in the position to quote their words back at them when they representations on behalf of their banks.
And to have raised the matter of banking with the Oz government would have been to undermine the sovereignty of our regime in this matter.
Fran O'Sullivan discards herself as a piece of rubbish. She does not understand the horrendous, indeed Attrocius destruction of Human Life that Australians have carried out on their Country – and continue to carry out.
Concerning Australian Strong arm Deportation
Contrary to little Fran,
I do not see that we need to accept any deportation attempted by the Australian Government.
As far I know, New Zealand has never undertaken to off load citizens from an unfriendly nation.
Any attempt to fly any aircraft or sail any ships into our waters without permission will be deemed a violation.
Any attempt to fly any aircraft or sail any ships into our waters without permission will be deemed a violation
How about an 18 ton spacestation that went down yesterday.
The time has come, however, for Tiangong-2 to be deorbited and, naturally, destroyed in the process. The China National Space Administration indicated that the 18-meter-wide station and solar panels will mostly burn up during reentry, but that a small amount of debris may fall “in a safe area in the South Pacific,” specifying a rather large area that does technically include quite a bit of New Zealand (160-190°W long by 30-45°S lat).
To what extent do you think excusing non-Western imperialism actually manifests a form of racism?
The first time this struck me was when the Arab uprisings started, and I noticed that a section of the Left lumped together the attack on Iraq by U.S.-U.K. imperialism with the uprisings in Libya and Syria, falsely claiming that the uprisings were simply examples of imperialist intervention. This happened despite the fact that we saw huge crowds on television chanting, “The people want the downfall of the regime!” But to this section of the Left, apparently, the peoples of these countries are too backward to fight against an oppressive dictatorship or to want democracy, and those massive crowds simply showed that they were fools being manipulated by Western imperialism and Islamist fundamentalism…..
It seems that this support for authoritarianism leads to a blurring of the line between Left and Right. Do you think this is the case? Is there reason to see this as part of a left-wing authoritarianism that finds affinities with the Right on the issue of imperialism?
Look at the people and parties that admire Bashar al-Assad or have visited him: former KKK leader David Duke, the white supremacists demonstrating at Charlottesville, British National Party leader Nick Griffin, Greek fascists of Golden Dawn, the French National Front, the Belgian Vlaams Belang—all of them are neo-fascists who see their own politics reflected in Assad’s ruthless totalitarian regime. Yet at the same time you find people who are seen to be on the Left, figures like Seymour Hersh, Robert Fisk, David North and Alex Lantier of the World Socialist Web Site, and Max Blumenthal supporting Assad by spreading his propaganda. You find the same convergence between the extreme Right and people seen to be on the Left like John Pilger supporting Putin’s imperialist annexation of Crimea…..
And those supporting Israel's annexation of the Golan heights and East Jerusalem … also supporting the removal of Assad (but failing) …
The right wing white race nationalists only prefer Assad to Islamists. The secular left wingers prefer a secular dictatorship to one based around Islamist theocracy. Compaining about that is in service to the former – the White House and its UK poodle and Israel.
Israel and the USA do not care for ME democracy – being onside with Sisi and the Riyadh Crown Prince and the censorship of al Jazeera.
While the Centre Left still, even now, courts racism and fascism, Leftist webcaster, Democracy Now, offers a different perspective.
“For Sama”
…..And regarding the lies, I think the propaganda has led the conflict to be between al-Assad and the Russians against terrorist groups, ISIS, al-Nusra. And like through all the years, like in 2015, nobody was saying anything about a revolution, about like civilians who are protesting, what happened to those people. All the focus of the media was about beheading people, the ISIS, and the Russians and the Syrians fighting those people.
I think that was the most depressing part for me as a Syrian, to be like ignored from all the Western media, and not mentioning anything about me…..
…..Hamza, you were working as a doctor in Aleppo in 2016 when there was reportedly a chlorine gas attack. There are clips in the film where you see children and adults wearing gas masks. Now, there was some uncertainty about whether there was in fact a gas attack at that time and who was responsible for it. What do you know of what happened?
DR. HAMZA AL-KATEAB: We heard that there was an attack in a near neighborhood. And then, when the casualties, the people started to rush into the hospital, you immediately can tell by the weird smell of the people’s clothes. And it was just like the—it was just chlorine. And we started immediately to get rid of the people’s clothes, wash them, and then start to just examine their respiratory system and try to give them oxygen. This is the only thing that we could do. And the most, like, frustrating thing that the [inaudible] WHO or the U.N. or Security Council, they’re always like uncertain about who does this. Like, when Al Quds Hospital was attacked in April 2016, and it was like obviously attacked by an aircraft, all the reports and the statements by WHO, by the U.N., by the Security Council was the hospital was attacked. Like, they are not sure who attacked it. And there are only like aircrafts there by they can tell exactly what aircrafts were flying at that day…..
SPC to keep things simple, and to avoid the running into the pitfalls of Godwin's Law. I reserve accusations of racism and fascism to;
1/ Those like Philip Arps who openly self identify as fascists, racists/white supremacists/anti-semites/Islamophobes etc.
2/ Those like David Irving who cover up or excuse genocide.
3/ Those like Bashar Assad who commit genocide
As for the governments of the US and Israel
A war of choice launched by the US against Iran, (which would be a genocidal war), in my opinion, would elevate Donald Trump from xenophobic racist to fascist.
I think that it can be reasonably argued, and it has been, that Benjamin Netanyahu is guilty of committing genocide against the people of Gaza. Which by my definition would also qualify Netanyahu as a 'fascist'.
The term ‘fascist’ might well have been around for a hundred years* But in the age of the internet Godwyn’s law rightly warns against the devaluation of the designation of 'fascist' to anyone who disagrees with you.
Godwyn himself has since said that this should not be used to avoid using this description where it is apt and justified.
This obviously makes necessary to define the term in a concise manner where it is accurate.
You might disagree with me that my determination that those who commit or excuse genocide fit this designation. personally I think it is accurate.
*The term fascist has been around for over 2,000 years referring to fasci or sticks carried by Roman Senators which when bound together could not be broken. The symbol of which was adopted by the modern fascists.
It might pay to remember that the ancient Roman Empire which the modern fascists so admire was a brutal slave society.
Jenny, the problem you run into when you use words that already have well-established meanings to mean different things is that nobody then has any chance of figuring out WTF you're on about.
In this particular case, genocide and fascism are separate things. Some genocides were carried out by fascist governments, some were not. Some fascist governments have been genocidal, some have not.
Instead of re-defining a word or language to suit one’s narrative one should re-phrase and re-frame one’s narrative to avoid ambiguity and confusion as much as possible. That is a golden rule in and of communication, especially on a blog site. The problem is that not all people have an equally good grasp of language, which on its own is not a major issue and can be ‘corrected’, but when they dig in and refuse to accept their ‘lingual faux pas’, it can become a major one.
It seems to me that some commenters here are only interested in writing their own comments but not in taking on-board comments by others. In fact, they often become defensive and aggressive or evasive when challenged …
The most notable aspect of fascism is the use of genocide.
At the very least genocide could be called a sub-set of fascism.
I have termed (at various times), the Assad regime as "a fascist style regime" because of its of genocidal air campaign against its own citizens.
Another notable feature of fascist style regimes is the maintenance and operation of mass detention and death camps.
Of which the Assad regime has several, the most notable of these being Saydnaya on the outskirts of Damascus.
You say that I am redefining the meaning of the word fascist. Well one thing I know for sure, a fascist is no longer an ancient stick bearing slave owning Roman Senator.
Next you will be telling me that I would be wrong to label General Pinochet of Chile a fascist. Or General Franco of Spain a fascist. Because they don't meet your Hollywood characterisation of German fascists.
You say that I shouldn't define fascists as people who commit genocide.
Why don't you do some research on the term "fascism" while putting aside the genocide thing for a while? Learn what the term means and then come back. Even just reading the wiki page would be help you heaps.
Next you will be telling me that I would be wrong to label General Pinochet of Chile a fascist. Or General Franco of Spain a fascist.
While Pinochet certainly displayed some elements of fascism, fascist really isn't a good descriptor for Pinochet's flavour of pseudo-populist ultra-nationalist despotism. Furthermore, while Pinochet had a weak spot for mass-murder of his opponents, the fact that it was his political opponents he was murdering rather than attempting to eliminate a particular ethnic/cultural group makes genocide an inaccurate descriptor for Pinochet's murders.
Fascism certainly is a good descriptor for Franco's particular nasty flavour of ideology. However, like Pinochet, genocide is a poor descriptor for Franco's mass murderous activities since it was targeted at political opponents rather than elimination of ethnic/cultural groups.
You say that I shouldn't define fascists as people who commit genocide.
What would you call people who commit genocide?
Genocidal is a pretty good descriptor for those who commit genocide. Rwanda is an example of genocide without fascism.
Indeed. Even though the Japanese Empire, did not explicitly share the Italian and German fascist icongraphy and language, (harking back to the glories of the Western Imperial slave society of ancient Rome). Following the Rape of Nanking, the Japanese imperialists (rightly in my opinion) were termed fascists.
In its brutality and carnage on the same scale as the destruction of Homs by the Assad regime.
One of many main problems jenny … is who are you asking to win your war….. surely not the people commiting genocide in Yemen ??
And even if we were to believe your good war / we must kill more and add more deaths …. to stop a genocide logic.
Lets look at the 'care' towards civilians you are asking for …. a recent war crime shows a good example …of your good war, being nothing but a uncaring death and refugee machine.
So who are you calling on to kill more ?? Turkey is your best option for dragging it out at the moment.
In their campaign against Isis the US has slaughtered civilians also identified by the Assad regime as enemies.
I have never denied Reason, that the US has committed massive crimes against the people of Syria in fact I have written about them long before you. As soon as the Amnesty report came out. I wrote on these pages about this crime.
The US is in Syria for its own reasons. The US has never unleashed the same fury against the Assad regime that it has unleashed against perceived enemies of the US. In the two air strikes against regime resources the US gave the Assad regime, (through its Russian ally), advanced notice of both attacks. And notably, no regime forces were ever killed or wounded in these two attacks. The US didn't exercise such niceties toward the civilian population of Raqqa.
The West and particularly the US has a fetish against anyone (but themselves of course) having weapons of mass destruction, WMDs. As horrible as these weapons are, most of the regime's slaughter of civilians has been conducted with so called "conventional weapons" which the US has raised no real objection to, and has certainly not acted to stop.
You are not anti-war, if you are not anti-Assad's war.
….So who are you calling on to kill more ?? Turkey is your best option for dragging it out at the moment.
reason
It is actually you reason, who is calling to kill more.
In your comment above you are of course alluding to Idlib.
Idlib had previously with Turkish support been declared a deconfliction zone.
Lately the Turkish government of Erdogan has made its peace with the Assad regime and their Russian ally, giving the green light for the regime and Russia to continue their genocidal campaign against the Syrian people into Idlib.
Completing the encirclement Erdogan has ordered the closing of the border to civilians fleeing the impending slaughter, leaving them no where else to go.
Reason you are cheering on this slaughter to begin.
And even when the regime conquers Idlib, the killing will not stop. This is a regime that is currently rounding up and "disappearing" thousands of civilians in the areas it has already retaken.
A year after “reconciliation”: Arrests and disappearances abound in southern Syria
……Among those arrested was Rateb al-Jabawi, the former head of Jasim local council during the opposition rule. In September 2018, al-Jabawi was taken from his home and arrested by a security service patrol in the city of Jasim. “[His arrest] is one of the most important violations of the settlement deal,” said the former military commander.”
Security and military patrols have also been conducting raids and searches on houses of civilians in the town of Rasm al-Halabi, a village in the countryside of al-Quneitra, and have specifically targeted former members of the Civil Defense (The White Helmets). They have recently arrested two brothers who formerly worked with the White Helmets, Bilal and Ala’a Shubat.
A week before the arrest of the Shubat brothers, three former members of the Civil Defense from the village of Saidah al-Joulan, near the Golan Heights, were kidnapped while traveling between the city of al-Sheikh Maskin and Nawa in the Daraa governorate. Local media outlets accused the Syrian government security forces of being behind the kidnappings.
Mohammad al-Ahmad (a pseudonym), a member of the Civil Defense who was displaced from al-Quneitra to Idlib, said that he had nine Civil Defense colleagues working in al-Quneitra.
“Some of them have disguised themselves, as they’re still wanted by the regime. Other [members] are paying money to officers in the regime to ensure that they are not pursued and that they’re protected from arrest.”
Al-Ahmad’s house was raided after he was relocated to Idlib. His brother was at the house at the time and was arrested and taken to an unknown location, while his family was evicted from the home. Security forces also confiscated his cars, farmland, and family possessions.
Al-Ahmad is not the only member of the White Helmets that has faced arrest, expropriation and the detainment of family members at the hands of security services, who have repeatedly accused the group of working with terrorists. He has heard similar stories of White Helmet members and their families being pursued by security services.
Though many members of the group fled the south before the government retook the area, others were unable to make it to the specified spot in time to be “evacuated”.
In July 2018, 400 members of the White Helmets and their families crossed through the Occupied Golan Heights to reach Jordan, after which they were granted refuge in Britain, Germany, and Canada.
After the completion of the evacuation operations, the government campaign against the White Helmets intensified. The Syrian government accused them not only of working with terrorists but also of being Israeli agents.’ The remaining members became wanted by the government, especially in al-Quneitra.
Jenny , you just cant stop your bullshitting your one sided propaganda can you ?? …
Things like your wild conspiracy theories about the Christchurch racist mass murderer … or the murder of British Labour MP Jo Cox … both being caused by Assad / Syria ….
Leave you with sub-zero credibility…. You've proven you'll write any shit.
your comment above you are of course alluding to Idlib.
My comment was about a 100 mile deep strip running the length of the border with Syria ….
Perhaps Turkey was promised it … and Israel the Golan Heights too… in a pre-arranged divy up upon the destruction / balkinization break up of Syria …. which was all on course and following the script of Libya ,,,
before the Isis / al nusra tide was repelled.
Regarding Idlib and ignoring your asshat blather ….The problem with Idib is all the foreign fighters / mercenaries, ,,,which their home countries do not want them to returning too.
New Zealand had 1 ,,,,, and there was a big fuss about him …. Britian and France have hundreds,
“He was part of the al-Muhajiroun network. They were Anjem Choudary’s boys. When the Syrian war first broke out, these guys were organising a lot of people to go there and fight. They did it under humanitarian cover, pretending they were going to give aid and stuff.”
Both the brits and frogs have previously stated they would rather have their radicalized citizens killed than returned … do your own internet search.
So I imagine the best result for the sponsors of your peaceful bloodbath would be to block their return … yet pretend moral outrage when they lose their last Jihad battles.
Personally I believe quite a few could be de-radicalised ,,,,,, so unlike you I'm not into more war / killing….
And I heard that you stayed with people …. like the fine ones in this video … during your time in syria ;(
Assad is not a racist (anti-Zionist maybe), and whether a one party (not based on race, ethnicity or religion) tyranny posing as socialist qualifies as fascist is debatable (a matter of technical definition). Resorting to methods (bombing in civilian areas and economic blockade) used by the Allies during WW2 is not genocide, though war crimes are/were involved. Each would claim they did it to defeat a fascist threat (and Islamo-fascism was ultimately the alternative posed to the regime, not a democracy).
I would also argue that Netanyahu has not committed genocide, albeit collective punishment and war crimes. An ethnic state asserting its will by force is racist and fascist.
As for Trump, his white race nation, "the will of our God and our nation be done" assertion of economic and military power (including sanctions against those nations that refuse to enforce sanctions against targeted states) is fascist in its belligerent exercise of power.
SPC you object to me identifying the Assad regime "fascist" as inaccurate and a redefinition of the word. Yet you have no hesitation of identifying Assad's opponents as "Islamofascists".
The crimes of Isis are dire and extreme, but don’t reach by numbers anywhere near the sheer scale of the crimes committed by the Assad regime.
You criticise me for redefining the word fascist and then make your own redefinition, fascism is the "beligerant exercise of power".
In my opinion your definition is too tame and too broad.
Fascism is something much worse than this.
In my opinion you have fallen into the Godwyn trap.
But even using your definition Assad is a fascist.
Er no, I disagree whether the term fascist is accurate for Syria's Baath regime and explained why (I did not discuss redefintion of the word fascist but mentioned the technical use of the term, as distinct from the colloquial use which both of us are doing). Many have called Moslem terrorists intent on imposition of their rule Islamo-fascists. And not just Islamic State, but also al Nusra.
And I did not redefine fascism as "belligerent exercise of power" but noted that such was practiced by fascist regimes – fascist in its "belligerent use of power" (either domestically and externally).
Yes the Assad regime did exercise "belligerent use of power", but not until it was subject to a conspiracy to depose the regime (its earlier use of gunfire to intimidate democratic protesters in Damascus was commonplace tyranny).
What I find notable SPC is that in his recent extended interview on Democracy Now in which Noam Chomsky covered a wide range of issues, imperialism, the rise of fascism in the ’30s, the campaign against nuclear weapons in the ’80s the Iraq war, the war in Yemen. the war in Libya. But during this extended interview where he was given the complete floor to say whatever he wanted Noam Chomsky never mentioned, (apart from a mention of Israel annexing the Golan Heights). Chomsky never mentioned, not even once, the war in Syria.
This could represent one of two things;
1/ That Chomsky is changing from his previous held position of endorsing the US regime change conspiracy theory spread by the Assad regime and its supporters.
2/ That Chomsky has not changed from his previous position, but knows that it is indefensible, and that Democracy Now will challenge him on it.
I would like to believe that it is the first case not the second.
Thanks for that learned theory about Chomsky's "indefensible" position on Syria. Do you think he should come out in support of Al Qaeda and the Al Nusra Front?
Don't you think it worthy noting SPC that a learned scholar like Noam Chomsky did not feel confidant enough to make a comment on Syria before people who he knew would challenge him on it?
Chomsky is not some cowardly politician. And he has never supported a “regime change conspiracy theory.”
Morrissey
How Noam Chomsky Betrayed the Syrian People
……While those who support Chomsky’s position on Syria may label supporters of the revolution, like myself, as “neoconservatives” or “pro-imperialists,” they are, in fact, more deserving of these epithets themselves.
The Contours of Chomsky’s Views
During his September 2015 Harvard lecture, Chomsky was asked whether Russia’s deployment to Syria was imperialistic. In response, Chomsky repeated the capricious claim that the entire Syrian opposition is either part of ISIS or some variant of al-Qaeda.
As even the most casual observer of the Syrian conflict knows, however, this claim is false. A major contingent of Syria’s rebel forces is not “jihadist” in any sense. Even among those who are Islamist, many support a democratic government, in some form, and are more similar to Hamas than ISIS or al-Qaeda.
Instead of reckoning with these and other realities of the Syrian revolution, Chomsky has tacitly endorsed the logic of the “war on terror,” accepting the view that allying with dictatorships in order to defeat terrorism is perfectly ok…..
…….In 2014, during the height of ISIS’s expansion, Assad and his allies attacked the group only 6 percent of the time, while 64 percent of ISIS attacks were against the Syrian rebels. There have also been numerous cases in which ISIS and Assad’s forces have effectively been allied, with Russian airstrikes often aiding, instead of hindering, the group.
Clearly, the Syrian regime’s sectarian slaughter, backed by Iran and its proxy militias, has generated unprecedented support for ISIS, making Chomsky’s support for an anti-ISIS alignment with Assad ironic at best and unsupportable at worst…..
…..In an interview with Jacobin, Chomsky provides a glimpse into the deeper reasons behind his views on Syria. In response to a question asking for his thoughts on the West’s bombing efforts against ISIS, Chomsky noted that the “sectarian conflicts that are tearing the region to shreds are substantially a consequence of the Iraq invasion.”
For Chomsky, as well as much of the left, the United States’s perceived proximity to the conflict (or the pathological belief that the United States is responsible for the devastating war) has alternatively shaped indifference to and hostility toward the Syrian revolution. In other words, because the United States is against the Assad regime, the left feels compelled to either ignore the revolution all together, or oppose the regime’s enemies.
In his case, Chomsky has expressed ideological disdain for revolutionary forces by supporting their complete annihilation. In the same interview with Jacobin, Chomsky said the outcome in Syria could be “just as bad [as an ISIS victory] if the jihadi elements supported by Turkey, Qatar and Saudi Arabia are the victors.” His statement amounted to tacit approval for the brutal war being waged against these so-called “jihadi elements” by Russia, Iran and Assad…..
…..Though Chomsky and the wider left might not appreciate this, the part they are playing in Syria’s counter-revolution is discrediting leftism. In this way, their actions are comparable to those “socialists” who destroyed the left for generations because of a blind loyalty to the nightmare of Stalinism.
Sadly, the conservative, orientalist, and incoherent stance on Syria expressed by Chomsky and his supporters is symptomatic of a leftism that has no reason to exist beyond the narrow parameters of its own subculture.
Quoting wacky blogs does nothing for your argument, Jenny. The ridiculous sight of a lightweight like “analyst Sam Hammad” calling Noam Chomsky, of all people, “conservative, orientalist, and incoherent” is almost as ridiculous as the shrieking charge that he “betrayed” anyone.
When I read Manufacturing Consent as a teenager, in the summer of 2002 to be precise, at the beginning of War on Terror fever, I never thought that one day its most esteemed author, Noam Chomsky, would accuse me of supporting al-Qaeda. In the following exchange, he does exactly that, as well as accusing me of supporting Daesh. That makes it three times, by my count, that he’s issued this most scurrilous and ironic smear, with his initial accusation of my support for Daesh coming in a response he gave to a friend who had sent an article I wrote criticising his stance on Syria for Muftah……
"And even if it is an immediate disaster, visible on day one, there are few guarantees that leavers would admit their error and seek once more the embrace of Brussels. As Charles Grant of the Centre for European Reform puts it, “Just because babies are dying, does that mean they’ll say we were better off in the EU?” Aren’t they just as likely to blame the beastly Europeans for inflicting such a hellscape on an innocent nation? After all, even Boris Johnson once thought Britain could leave the EU and keep its seat on the European council of ministers. The Brexiters will cry, “How we were to know that leaving the EU meant leaving the EU?” And if they don’t blame Brussels, they’ll blame someone else: foreigners, minorities, anyone but themselves."
he looks like he is in for (another) hard life lesson – most of which are of his own doing and could have been resolved years ago if he was reasonable.
Massey University’s Dr Andy Towers, from the School of Public Health, wants minimum pricing for alcohol as part of a campaign to make it socially unacceptable for poor people to drink – saying “Sub-groups” who continue to smoke, even though it’s socially unacceptable and expensive, they’re addicted. The same would happen with alcohol if minimum unit pricing came in”
Mimimum pricing would of course have no impact on the craft beers and wines drunk by the well to do, for whom drinking would presumably remain socially acceptable in more upmarket locations and more exclusive private clubs (a bit like in Teheran behind the walls of the well to do).
The Panopticon Society rears its head via Public Health policy academics, their cohorts in criminology presumably justify targeting of the underclass without religion with fear and obey policing intimidation.
The enemies of equality and freedom come out in public like this because they have no shame.
If Andy Tower stuck his head out the window he would realise poor people can barely pay for their rent, pay off their tertiary loan and save a deposit to buy a home and this is why less young people drink. We have the highest rent to house value in the world and the second most expensive property to wages in the world.
Using "price to signal that drinking is unacceptable" (and reserving it as a privilege for those whose drinks prices will remain unchanged) is of an alliance between the haves and those who want to control the behaviour and lives of the common folk. His agenda to describe poor people who drink as addicts is telling.
There is an article linked to the story on Stuff the about a study by Andy Towers himself coming to the same conclusion that the increase in drinking is by those is by those over 50 – so he should know minimum pricing would have no impact on that.
Using "price to signal that drinking is unacceptable"…
Unacceptable to whom? Seriously, apart from devout Muslims, who wants to "signal that drinking is unacceptable?" Some technocrats in government departments in universities, maybe? I was at a pub last night and drinking seemed pretty acceptable to everyone present.
ISTR a low minimum pricing/quantity deters kids when there's not age restriction (e.g. single cigarette sales I think were banned before tobacco became R18). Keeps it just outside the reach of their pocket money.
But I suspect that as the price of alcohol goes up, the more people bring homebrew to parties for their friends. Maybe with a nod and a wink, maybe gratis. None of my business.
Foreigners' unpaid medical debts revealed. And this is just for the Auckland region.
More than $35 million in unpaid debts by foreigners treated for healthcare in Auckland has been written off in the past three years.
Acting Health Minister Julie Anne Genter and the DHBs declined to comment. But in Counties Manukau's OIA response, it stated significant resource goes into determining a patient's eligibility status, and then seeking payment.
Here's a possible solution. Require them to have insurance when entering the country, making it available for those that don't already have cover. No insurance, no entry.
Yesterday I heard a worker at the Maori agency [sorry forget its name] say the problem with Maori babies being taken is that the department will not build/get more housing so Mother AND child can be helped away from their bad life situation.
Such a simple solution to the problem … it must be correct and so beyond the comprehension of beaurocrats
The links are to the NZ Centre for Political Research, which despite it's institutional name is a right-wing political think tank.
I tried to read the second link but could only get through the introduction by Muriel Newman, and the first page before deciding to skim for any nuggets of information. The report by a retired Canadian judge is indicative of the further harm that can be caused by those in authority. His mention of the residential schools being a 'dumping ground' for children of abusive alcoholic parents, ignores the reality that many were taken from intact and loving environments, and put into these abusive institutions.
His reference to FASD is without context for the conditions in which alcohol is used as a release from despair for whole indigenous communities.
I don't think he adds anything new to the conversation, except provide evidence of the level of assumptions that must be made in order to continue to justify the status quo and the harm that occurs.
This refusal to consider perpetual harm and the long-term consequences of government and societal actions on the indigenous community is obstructive to effective solutions.
In Australia they spend more on seizing children … due largely to poverty of their homes / parents …… than would be needed to just lift them out of poverty.
Families are paying a toll for the settings of society …. any civilized evolving society should adapt to overcome serious problems … like affordable housing for all its citizens.
I could well believe market ideology is the main impediment to fixing the failures harming NZ society.
Thimerosal is a mercury-containing compound that has been widely used as an antimicrobial agent in vaccines for over 60 years.
Human exposure tomercury may have potentially significant health con-sequences.
By mid-1999, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) had discovered that children could be exposed to an amount of mercury from vaccines that exceeded 1 of 3 existing federal safety thresholds.
After this realization, the organized medical and public health communities in the United States became involved in a series of urgent and intense discussions to determine an appropriate response to the issue.
Not sure how may of the vaccines on the NZ schedule contain thiomersal as formulations and preservatives are constantly evolving but as ever it’s disappointing that Philu is still spreading his antivac. drivel….
First, there is no mercury in vaccines, and never was. And thiomersal is not banned, anywhere.
Let’s start with the beginning. Thiomersal is a powerful antiseptic, that, even in tiny doses, (nanogram levels) blocks the growth of bacteria. Up until the anti-vaccination movement invented some tropes about thiomersal, we had less expensive, multi use vials for many drugs, including vaccines. Thiomersal prevented bacterial growth, which is much more dangerous than the imagined danger of thiomersal.
The claim that it is mercury is silly and shows of an ignorance of chemistry. Thiomersal is not a fancy name for “mercury” it is the proper chemical term for ethyl mercury, an organic compound attached to the mercury molecule. They do not disassociate in the body, and is quickly eliminated through the kidneys.
Table salt is sodium bonded to chlorine. Elemental sodiums is explosive. And elemental chlorine, a gas, is deadly. Yet when they are combined, they became a stable salt. And it does disassociate (unlike thiomersal), although the ionic forms of the sodium and chlorine are not dangerous.
Reducing chemistry to the basic elements is not how biochemistry works. It’s the whole molecule that matters, not the individual parts. So thiomersal does not add to the mercury burden of a human being, unless you have some nobel prize winning research that shows that somehow the mercury atom cleaves from the organic molecule in water. And we have no evidence of that.
Moreover, there simply is no research whatsoever that has established a link between thiomersal or anything, up to and including autism.
What’s next on your list Phil…fluoride in the water ? or is it back to the 5G ?
I could very well be missing something here Higherstandard, and everyone else in the world knows the source of your quoted text, but help me out here and provide a link.
Dr. Baskin: Baylor School of Medicine Neurologist “
There is more data, more and more data on ethylmercury. The cells that I showed you dying in cell culture are dying from ethylmercury. Those are human frontal brain cells. You know, there has been a debate about . . . ethyl versus methyl. But from a chemical point of view, most chemical compounds that are ethyl penetrate into cells better than methyl.
Cells have a membrane on them, and the membrane is made of lipids, fats. And ethyl as a chemical compound pierces fat and penetrates fat much better than methyl. And so, you know, when I began to work with some of the Ph.D.s in my laboratory and discuss this everyone said, `oh gosh, you know, we've got to adjust for ethyl because it's going to be worse; the levels are going to be much higher in the cells
' So . . . I think at best they're equal, but it's probably highly likely that they are worse. And some of the results that we are seeing in cell culture would support that.''
Dr. Baskin explained that according to scientific research in humans and animals, brain tissue absorbs five times more mercury than other tissues in the body.
The vaccine industry plays games suggesting that 10 times the EPA, FDA and WHO maximum ingestion of mercury is safe.
That is not only untrue, but deceptive as oral exposure is very poorly absorbed, whereas injected exposure is 100% absorbed
The culmination of the research that examines the effects of Thimerosal in humans indicates that it is a poison at minute levels with a plethora of deleterious consequences, even at the levels currently administered in vaccines.
It may all be rather pointless discussion though ….. as I said above I not sure if any vaccines in the NZ schedule use thimerosal as a preservative anymore. If philu wants to tell us whether they do he can search it up on the Medsafe website.
Had a wee look.A bunch of different credible sites say thimerosal has not been in any New Zealand childhood vaccines since 2000, and is not currently in any vaccines of any kind in New Zealand (although flu vaccines overseas are commonly cited as still possibly containing thimerosal). Haven't spotted anything that gives a date on when the last vaccines containing thimerosal were phased out in New Zealand.
There's an odd absence of triumphant articles claiming reductions in illnesses previously attributed to thimerosal due to the removal of it, however.
The culmination of the research that examines the effects of Thimerosal in humans indicates that it is a poison at minute levels with a plethora of deleterious consequences, even at the levels currently administered in vaccines.
If you read the linked material… you should have managed to figure out that I had forgotten to used the <blockquote> on 11.1.1.3
The present study showed that Thimerosal-induced cellular damage among in vitro human neuronal and fetal model systems in a concentration- and time-dependent fashion.
Thimerosal at low nanomolar concentrations was able to induce significant cellular toxicity in human neuron and fetal cells.
Thimerosal-induced cellular cytotoxicity similar to that observed in pathophysiological studies of patients diagnosed with ADs. Namely, in both cases, there was evidence of mitochondrial dysfunction, reduced cellular oxidative–reduction activity, cell death, and cell degeneration.
The present study also revealed that Thimerosal is significantly more toxic than several other well-established neurodevelopmental toxins.
Finally, future studies should be conducted to further evaluate additional mechanisms for Thimerosal-induced cellular damage and to further assess potential co-exposures that may work to ameliorate or enhance its toxicity.
Vaccines are prophylactics used as the first line of intervention to prevent, control and eradicate infectious diseases.
Young children (before the age of six months) are the demographic group most exposed to recommended/mandatory vaccines preserved with Thimerosal and its metabolite ethylmercury (EtHg).
Particularly in the less-developed countries, newborns, neonates, and young children are exposed to EtHg because it is still in several of their pediatric vaccines and mothers are often immunized with Thimerosal-containing vaccines (TCVs) during pregnancy.
While the immunogenic component of the product has undergone more rigorous testing, Thimerosal, known to have neurotoxic effects even at low doses, has not been scrutinized for the limit of tolerance alone or in combination with adjuvant-Al during immaturity or developmental periods (pregnant women, newborns, infants, and young children).
Scientific evidence has shown the potential hazards of Thimerosal in experiments that modeled vaccine-EtHg concentrations. Observational population studies have revealed uncertainties related to neurological effects.
However, consistently, they showed a link of EtHg with risk of certain neurodevelopment disorders, such as tic disorder, while clearly revealing the benefits of removing Thimerosal from children's vaccines (associated with immunological reactions) in developed countries.
So far, only rich countries have benefited from withdrawing the risk of exposing young children to EtHg. Regarding Thimerosal administered to the very young, we have sufficient studies that characterize a state of uncertainty:
The collective evidence strongly suggests that Thimerosal exposure is associated with adverse neurodevelopmental outcomes.
It is claimed that the continued use of Thimerosal in the less-developed countries is due to the cost to change to another preservative, such as 2-phenoxyethanol.
However, the estimated cost increase per child in the first year of life is lower than estimated lifetime cost of caring for a child with a neurodevelopmental disorder, such tic disorder.
The evidence indicates that Thimerosal-free vaccine options should be made available in developing countries.
That concludes the background detail around the toxins which triggered US governmental intervention more than 20 years ago, leading toward so called ‘settled science’…
I’ll be posting about closed door sessions held by the IOM who were hired by the CDC to provide desired outcomes…which the CDC had paid service fees to receive.
Leading to reports (including 2004) which were based on inconclusive studies which can’t ever show ‘safety’…the 2004 report also essentially removed any required for future necessary lab research.
The handful of studies are cited globally including in NZ as ‘settled science’….
16000 more beneficiaries since Labour won the treasury benches, and hardship grant's up from 270,000 which were a disgrace under National to 490,000 per year now. Jeez this politics of kindness is great isn't it, and all the while the neoliberal machine keeps thundering along…
Don't be so mean. Everything is absolutely wonderful. Beloved leader says so so it must be true.
On the other hand she said that her meeting with the Australian PM had been a great success. Perhaps she was talking about her future career after she get bounced from her current role next year.
I heard a suggestion that she and Clarke were going to become stand up comedians. She was practicing for that and her prepared patter at the meeting certainly seemed to cause much hilarity for the Australians didn't it? Scott Morrison and his colleagues were openly laughing at her complaints about the deportations.
Like the Key government, and the Clark government before it, it's going to take over 2 parliamentary terms for the shine to come off this one, no matter the actual results.
The shine WON'T come off inside two terms no matter the actual results – and the shine WILL come off after two terms no matter the actual results. Which points at an electorate detached from, and maybe unaware of, actual results. Depressing really. It results in an excellent government killed off by fear of low-energy light bulbs, and a terrible government surviving fiscally unnecessary public sector austerity.
Cream at the top for public sector chief executives
Public sector salaries are once again under the spotlight after the announcement that Christchurch City Council's new chief executive will earn almost $500,000. But are they really that bad? DOMINIC HARRIS investigates.
I would dispute Todd Muller's disapproval of old cars as at 87 I have been driving for over sixty years, all sorts of vehicles from Trucks to 50cc motorcycles with few problems. Most of which were old and now have a 14yo WV which looks like new to me when washed and waxed, an import. Careful driving and responsible attention to road and conditions rather than arbitary rules.
Driving experience is important and I am sure this started for me as my grand dad drive our 1937 Morris 8 with me beside him sitting on Nan's lap …. not that I would reccomend that 🙂 [no seat-belts in those days]
Plus cycling to school in the easy days before the roads were littered with cars during WWII.
Then there are JAG's speed changes. A good driver slows when the road suggest it and driving in America it was a constant worry looking out for endless speed restriction signs … apart from motorways which are a delight to drive on often above the limi when safe as no cars around and long distances to be covered.
It seems silly to reduce speed limits when all new imported cars are capable and safe at well over the limits.
Western Elites Spruik Media Freedom While Torturing Julian Assange In Belmarsh Supermax.
Jim Mora, Chris Knox, Denise L’Estrange-Corbet, Graham Bell, Australian prime minister Scott Morrison and other such worthies are amused no end by Assange’s persecution and suffering, but serious people, like the Australian psychologist Dr Lissa Johnson don’t see the funny side….
The state-sanctioned mobbing of Julian Assange, the likes of which Professor Melzer has not seen in his 20 years investigating torture, has involved abuse of both legal and political process to pursue, harass and defame the Wikileaks founder. This sustained assault has been augmented by a vicious and baseless smear campaign, conducted through the media, to alienate public support and to hound, humiliate and intimidate Julian Assange, including multiple calls for his assassination.
Treatment such as this, Melzer warns, “aims straight at the destruction of your innermost self, albeit without leaving a physical trace… Through relentless over-stimulation, confusion and stress, it eventually causes total exhaustion, cardiovascular failure and nervous collapse”.
So much for the UK Foreign Office commitment to the safety and protection of journalists.
Thanks Morrissey, interesting ‘perspective’, but Prof. Nils Melzer is just "one academic, and like lawyers, I can provide you with another one that will give you a counterview."
Deeper look at some of the aspects of the simple question – worthwhile read imo
The simple question “where are you from?” becomes, again, regardless of the intent of the questioner, a declaration: “I am entitled, because of my white European-ness, to ask you where are you from.” The pathology becomes most apparent when the person being asked the question is Indigenous. Because of the sense of entitlement that oozes out of it – and that is what is often hard, but not impossible, for others to understand – the question becomes threatening: a person of non-white European ancestry can immediately discern in the power to ask “where do you come from?” the residual power to say: “go back to where you came from”.
yet you refuse to accept the truth – when will you front up moonbreen
A pregnant African American lawmaker in Georgia said she was verbally attacked in a supermarket Friday by a middle-aged white man who used profanity, called her vulgar names and told her to “go back where you came from” as her nine-year-old daughter looked on.
Erica Thomas, a Democrat and Georgia state representative from Austell, said the man was irate that she was in an express line with too many items. Thomas said she was in a line for customers with 10 items or less because she cannot stand for long periods of time.
“And this white man comes up to me and says, ‘You lazy son of a bitch,”’ Thomas said, sobbing as she described the confrontation in a Facebook video. “He says, ‘You lazy son of a bitch; you need to go back where you came from.”’
And yet, and I can't stress this enough, that particular link to the Guardian was incredibly pertinent to the times we live in, the rise of fascism from the dustbin of history. Or so we thought – maybe we just hadn't wanted to notice that the lid wasn't shuit on the dustbin.
You want to bitch about the Guardian not meeting your approval. That's your thing. Ok. I'm fucking worried about if there's anything I can do to stop these bastards, because they will end up killing us all quicker than climate change ever would. Physics doesn't care if we live or die. Fascists actively want to kill all non-fascists. Not just over there, over here, too.
We need to maximise inclusion. That means learning new things about how our behaviour excludes or intimidates groups of people, even if innocently intended.
Putting up with the paradox of tolerance meaning that we have to exclude people with whom there is no compromise on exclusion isn't enough. That's the pointy bit of the pyramid. But the wider bit, about avoiding unintended exclusion, That's what the pointy bit sits on.
So what are your specific thoughts on the Guardian article? Given that you know that the article was quite interesting, what are your thoughts on the topic?
To get really mad about something to the point of yelling or fighting. To go out of one's mind because of the gravity of the seriousness of the situation. To lose it or flip out. Reference to Captain Kirk from Star Trek and the way he used to sign off the com speaker “Kirk out” when he was upset.
National Party embedded journalist, Stacey Kirk, kirks out of journalism. This is yet another example of a right wing media person throwing their toys and quitting because the National Party are in opposition.
True to form, her letter of resignation is nothing more than a John Key puff piece, mentioning him, oh, a dozen or so times.
I read that as her imagining she's been doing public service work thus far, and is embarking on what she imagines is new public service work, ie press secretary for the National Party.
One of the comments after her piece on John Key suggested she left because she didn't get the political editor job after her mate Tracy Watkins left.
Here's who did:
A born and bred Cantabrian, (Luke Malpass) had also worked as a general reporter at the Sydney Morning Herald and previously helped set up the NZ Initiative's operations.
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) will not halt a pesticide linked with brain damage from being sprayed on crops, the agency said Thursday in response to a lawsuit.
Chlorpyrifos, known on the market as Lorsban, is used on a wide variety of crops, including corn and cranberries, and farmers often call it a last line of defense against certain insects.
A federal appeals court in April gave the EPA 90 days to decide how to deal with the pesticide.
Environmental groups have long contended it’s dangerous and have spent years suing the EPA to end its agricultural use. Studies have linked chlorpyrifos to learning and memory issues and prolonged nerve and muscle stimulation.
Won't be much trouble getting new planes for the NZDF now that the Prime Minister and journalists got stranded in Melbourne when their official RNZAF 757 broke down with a computer malfunction.
Bet the PM ditches our own military service next time and just goes commercial.
If the Prime Minister was really serious about improving wellbeing she would accept the recommendations from her own Welfare Experts Advisory Group to increase benefits by $5.2b/yr now..
Instead of raising benefits, the Minister of Finance would do better to bully and force seasonal employers to put their wages up, because that is where the workers are needed.
Instead we open the doors to foreigners with temporary visas just to get the apples and grapes in. So unemployed NEETS don't see enough attraction to work in season areas.
With Brexit, the US-China trade crisis pulling Chinese economic demand down, and now Iran heating up, and having one of the top two most exposed housing markets in the OECD, I see plenty of reason for the Minister of Finance to keep plenty of debt capacity in reserve.
Agree, wages for seasonal workers need to increase. However, a number of seasonal workers end up back on the benefit when the season is over. Additionally, higher benefits puts upward pressure on wages.
There is scope for loosening the purse strings a little and the extra expenditure will result in savings re improvements in social ills along with increased tax revenue via the economic stimulus due to the increased benefit spend. Nevertheless, loosening the purse strings is merely one option. Cuts could be made elsewhere.
Seems Grant has a blank cheque to tackle Mycoplasma bovis.
There's also a lot of expensive stuff that comes with it – injector pens, needles, blood glucose monitor, test strips etc. I pay a small fraction of what all that costs, thanks to what US right-wingers contemptuously dismiss as "socialised medicine." They'd much rather have ideological purity, readily available at the low, low cost of lots of dead poor people.
Playing footsie with the murderous Assad wasn't such a good idea.
As she runs for the Democratic nominee for president, Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-HI) also faces a primary challenge for her seat in the House. But if recent filings made by her political team are any indication, she’s not sweating.
Gabbard raised just $11 in the second quarter of 2019. That number does not factor in a $31 contribution refund, which means her campaign committee ended in the red during that three month period.
The committee spent just $8,828.59 during the quarter—almost all of which was on financial compliance—leaving it with just over $30,000 cash on hand.
The absence of any fundraising or spending on her House race has left political observers with the impression that Gabbard may not return to Congress at all if her White House bid falls short. By contrast, during this quarter in the 2018 election cycle, Gabbard brought in more than $225,000 in net contributions, per federal filings.
On February 14, 2023 we announced our Rebuttal Update Project. This included an ask for feedback about the added "At a glance" section in the updated basic rebuttal versions. This weekly blog post series highlights this new section of one of the updated basic rebuttal versions and serves as a ...
TL;DR: In today’s ‘six-stack’ of substacks at 6.06pm on Tuesday, March 19:Kāinga Ora’s dry rot The Spinoff DailyBill McKibben on ‘Climate Superfunds’ making Big Oil pay for climate damage The Crucial YearsPreston Mui on returning to 1980s-style productivity growth NoahpinionAndy Boenau on NIMBYs needing unusual bedfellows Urbanism SpeakeasyNed Resnikoff's case ...
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Bryce Edwards writes – It’s been a tumultuous time in politics in recent months, as the new National-led Government has driven through its “First 100 Day programme”. During this period there’s been a handful of opinion polls, which overall just show a minimal amount of flux in public support ...
Inspirational: The Family of Man is a glorious hymn to human equality, but, more than that, it is a clarion call to human freedom. Because equality, unleavened by liberty, is a broken piano, an unstrung harp; upon which the songs of fraternity will never be played.“Somebody must have been telling lies about ...
Tax Lawyer Barbara Edmonds vs Emperor Justinian I- Nolo Contendere: False historical explanations of pivotal events are very far from being inconsequential.WHEN BARBARA EDMONDS made reference to the Roman Empire, my ears pricked up. It is, lamentably, very rare to hear a politician admit to any kind of familiarity ...
It’s been a tumultuous time in politics in recent months, as the new National-led Government has driven through its “First 100 Day programme”. During this period there’s been a handful of opinion polls, which overall just show a minimal amount of flux in public support for the various parties in ...
Buzz from the Beehive Housing Minister Chris Bishop delivered news – packed with the ingredients to enflame political passions – worthy of supplanting Winston Peters in headline writers’ priorities. He popped up at the post-Cabinet press conference to promise a crackdown on unruly and antisocial state housing tenants. His ...
Ele Ludemann writes – The Reserve Bank is advertising for a Diversity, Equity and Inclusion advisor. The Bank has one mandate – to keep inflation between one and three percent. It has failed in that and is only slowly getting inflation back down to the upper limit. Will it ...
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Bryce Edwards writes – Last week former National Party leader Simon Bridges was appointed by the Government as the new chair of the New Zealand Transport Agency Waka Kotahi (NZTA). You can read about the appointment in Thomas Coughlan’s article, Simon Bridges to become chair of NZ Transport Agency ...
TL;DR: My top 10 news and analysis links this morning include:Today’s must-read: Gavin Jacobson talks to Thomas Piketty 10 years on from Capital in the 21st CenturyThe SalvoLocal scoop: Green MP’s business being investigated over migrant exploitation claims StuffSteve KilgallonLocal deep-dive: The commercial contractors making money from School ...
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This is a guest post by Connor Sharp of Surface Light Rail Light rail in Auckland: A way forward sooner than you think With the coup de grâce of Auckland Light Rail (ALR) earlier this year, and the shift of the government’s priorities to roads, roads, and more roads, it ...
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Geoffrey Miller writes – Timing is everything. And from China’s perspective, this week’s visit by its foreign minister to New Zealand could be coming at just the right moment. The visit by Wang Yi to Wellington will be his first since 2017. Anniversaries are important to Beijing. ...
Depictions of Islam in Western popular culture have rarely been positive, even before 9/11. Five years on from the mosque shootings, this is one of the cultural headwinds that the Muslim community has to battle against. Whatever messages of tolerance and inclusion are offered in daylight, much of our culture ...
Last week Transport Minster Simeon Brown and Mayor Wayne Brown opened the new Auckland Rail Operations Centre. The new train control centre will see teams from KiwiRail, Auckland Transport and Auckland One Rail working more closely together to improve train services across the city. The Auckland Rail Operations Centre in ...
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Peter Dunne writes – This week’s government bailout – the fifth in the last eighteen months – of the financially troubled Ruapehu Alpine Lifts company would have pleased many in the central North Island ski industry. The government’s stated rationale for the $7 million funding was that it ...
See if you can spot the difference. An Iranian born female MP from a progressive party is accused of serial shoplifting. Her name is leaked to the media, which goes into a pack frenzy even before the Police launch an … Continue reading → ...
Ele Ludemann writes – The government is omitting general Treaty references from legislation : The growth of Treaty of Waitangi clauses in legislation caused so much worry that a special oversight group was set up by the last Government in a bid to get greater coherence in the public service on Treaty ...
What was that judge thinking?Peter Williams writes – That Golriz Ghahraman and District Court Judge Maria Pecotic were once lawyer colleagues is incontrovertible. There is published evidence that they took at least one case to the Court of Appeal together. There was a report on ...
TL;DR: My top 10 news and analysis links this morning include:Today’s must-read:Climate Scorpion – the sting is in the tail. Introducing planetary solvency. A paper via the University of Exeter’s Institute and Faculty of Actuaries.Local scoop:Kāinga Ora starts pulling out of its Auckland projects and selling land RNZ ...
Wellington’s massively upzoned District Plan adds the opportunity for tens of thousands of new homes not just in the central city (such as these Webb St new builds) but also close to the CBD and public transport links. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: Wellington gave itself the chance of ...
It’s Friday and we’re halfway through March Madness. Here’s some of the things that caught our attention this week. This Week in Greater Auckland On Monday Matt asked how we can get better event trains and an option for grade separating Morningside Dr. On Tuesday Matt looked into ...
Something you might not know about me is that I’m quite a stubborn person. No, really. I don’t much care for criticism I think’s unfair or that I disagree with. Few of us do I suppose.Back when I was a drinker I’d sometimes respond defensively, even angrily. There are things ...
Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: The five things that mattered in Aotearoa’s political economy that we wrote and spoke about via The Kākā and elsewhere for paying subscribers in the last week included:PM Christopher Luxon said the reversal of interest deductibility for landlords was done to help renters, who ...
It was not so much the Labour Party but really the Chris Hipkins party yesterday at Labour’s caucus retreat in Martinborough. The former Prime Minister was more or less consistent on wealth tax, which he was at best equivocal about, and social insurance, which he was not willing to revisit. ...
Buzz from the BeehiveThe text reproduced above appears on a page which records all the media statements and speeches posted on the government’s official website by Melissa Lee as Minister of Media and Communications and/or by Jenny Marcroft, her Parliamentary Under-secretary. It can be quickly analysed ...
For forty years, Robert Muldoon has been a dirty word in our politics. His style of government was so repulsive and authoritarian that the backlash to it helped set and entrench our constitutional norms. His pig-headedness over forcing through Think Big eventually gave us the RMA, with its participation and ...
Bryce Edwards writes – Is the new government reducing tax on rental properties to benefit landlords or to cut the cost of rents? That’s the big question this week, after Associate Finance Minister David Seymour announced on Sunday that the Government would be reversing the Labour Government’s removal ...
Saudi Arabia is rarely far from the international spotlight. The war in Gaza has brought new scrutiny to Saudi plans to normalise relations with Israel, while the fifth anniversary of the controversial killing of Jamal Khashoggi was marked shortly before the war began on October 7. And as the home ...
Questions need to be asked on both sides of the worldPeter Williams writes – The NRL Judiciary hands down an eight week suspension to Sydney Roosters forward Spencer Leniu , an Auckland-born Samoan, after he calls Ezra Mam, Sydney-orn but of Aboriginal and Torres Strait ...
Ele Ludemann writes – Contrary to what many headlines and news stories are saying, residential landlords are not getting a tax break. The government is simply restoring to them the tax deductibility of interest they had until the previous government removed it. There is no logical reason ...
I can't remember when it was goodMoments of happiness in bloomMaybe I just misunderstoodAll of the love we left behindWatching our flashbacks intertwineMemories I will never findIn spite of whatever you becomeForget that reckless thing turned onI think our lives have just begunI think our lives have just begunDoes anyone ...
Michael Bassett writes – At first reading, a front-page story in the New Zealand Herald on 13 March was bizarre. A group of severely intellectually limited teenagers, with little understanding of the law, have been pleading to the Justice Select Committee not to pass a bill dealing with ram ...
How much political capital is Christopher Luxon willing to burn through in order to deliver his $2.9 billion gift to landlords? Evidently, Luxon is: (a) unable to cost the policy accurately. As Anna Burns-Francis pointed out to him on Breakfast TV, the original ”rock solid” $2.1 billion cost he was ...
TL;DR: My top 10 news and analysis links this morning include:Today’s must-read:Jonathon Porritt calling bullshit in his own blog post on mainstream climate science as ‘The New Denialism’.Local scoop:The Wellington City Council’s list of proposed changes to the IHP recommendations to be debated later today was leaked this ...
TL;DR:Prime Minister Christopher Luxon said yesterday tenants should be grateful for the reinstatement of interest deductibility because landlords would pass on their lower tax costs in the form of lower rents. That would be true if landlords were regulated monopolies such as Transpower or Auckland Airport1, but they’re not, ...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections by Tom Toro Tom Toro is a cartoonist and author. He has published over 200 cartoons in The New Yorker since 2010. His cartoons appear in Playboy, the Paris Review, the New York Times, American Bystander, and elsewhere. Related: What 10 EV lovers ...
The business section of the NZ Herald is full of opinion. Among the more opinionated of all is the ex-Minister of Transport, ex-Minister of Railways, ex MP for Auckland Central (1975-93, Labour), Wellington Central (1996-99, ACT, then list-2005), ex-leader of the ACT Party, uncle to actor Antonia, the veritable granddaddy ...
Hi,Just quickly — I’m blown away by the stories you’ve shared with me over the last week since I put out the ‘Gary’ podcast, where I told you about the time my friend’s flatmate killed the neighbour.And you keep telling me stories — in the comments section, and in my ...
The first season of Rings of Power was not awful. It was thoroughly underwhelming, yes, and left a lingering sense of disappointment, but it was more expensive mediocrity than catastrophe. I wrote at length about the series as it came out (see the Review section of the blog, and go ...
Buzz from the Beehive Workplace Relations and Safety Minister Brooke van Velden told Auckland Business Chamber members they were the first audience to hear her priorities as a minister in a government committed to cutting red tape and regulations. She brandished her liberalising credentials, saying Flexible labour markets are the ...
Chris Trotter writes – TO UNDERSTAND WHY NEWSHUB FAILED, it is necessary to understand how TVNZ changed. Up until 1989, the state broadcaster had been funded by a broadcasting licence fee, collected from every citizen in possession of a television set, supplemented by a relatively modest (compared ...
Bob Edlin writes – The Māori Party has been busy issuing a mix of warnings and threats as its expresses its opposition to interest deductibility for landlords and the plans of seabed miners. It remains to be seen whether they follow the example of indigenous litigants in Australia, ...
The Government has accepted Labour’s change to the Road User Charge (RUC) discount for hybrid vehicles, meaning there will still be some incentive for people to buy greener vehicles. ...
Kicking the most vulnerable people out of state housing and pushing them towards homelessness will result in a proliferation of poverty and trauma across our most vulnerable communities. ...
Te Pāti Māori co-leader and MP for Waiariki, Rawiri Waititi has penned a letter asking MPs to support his members bill to remove GST from all food. The bill is expected to go through its first reading in parliament this Wednesday. “I’m calling on all political parties to support my ...
This year is about getting real with Kiwis and discussing the tough issues, as the National Government exacerbates inequality and divides New Zealand, Labour Leader Chris Hipkins said ...
The Government adding Significant Natural Areas (SNAs) to its already roaring environmental policy bonfire is an assault on the future of wildlife that makes Aotearoa unique. ...
After 12 years of fighting to protect our moana we are finding ourselves back at square one and back at court. Today, the Environmental Protection Agency is sitting in Hawera to reconsider an application from Trans-Tasman Resources to dig up 50 million tonnes of the seabed in South Taranaki. This ...
Minister Shane Jones’ decision to step away from a seabed mining project is evidence of the murky waters surrounding the Government’s fast-track legislation. ...
The growth of Treaty of Waitangi clauses in legislation caused so much worry that a special oversight group was set up by the last government in a bid to get greater coherence in the publicservice on Treaty matters. When ministers first considered the need for tighter oversight in 2021, there ...
The growth of Treaty of Waitangi clauses in legislation caused so much worry that a special oversight group was set up by the last government in a bid to get greater coherence in the publicservice on Treaty matters. When ministers first considered the need for tighter oversight in 2021, there ...
The Coalition Government’s miscalculation saga continues as it has forgotten an eyewatering $90 million gap in its interest deductibility cost figures, say Labour Finance spokesperson Barbara Edmonds and Revenue Spokesperson Deborah Russell. ...
He Pou a Rangi Climate Change Commission has today released advice that says if the Government doesn’t act now New Zealand is at risk of not meeting its climate goals. ...
The Coalition Government has today confirmed it is abandoning first home buyers who are struggling to get ahead, says Labour Finance spokesperson Barbara Edmonds. ...
The New Zealand public voted for a change in direction at the 2023 general election and that is exactly what this coalition government has been delivering in its first 100 days. There was an immediate focus on the economy, easing the cost of living, cracking down on law and order ...
The Government has left the health system as an afterthought, announcing half-baked targets at the last minute of their 100-day plan, says Labour Health spokesperson Ayesha Verrall. ...
Kiwis are still waiting for their promised cost of living support after 100 days of a National Government that is taking us backwards, Labour Leader Chris Hipkins said today. ...
The National Government has spent its first 100 days stopping, cutting and reversing. They have scrapped stuff for stuff for the sake of it, without putting up any solutions of their own – and it’s hardworking New Zealanders who will pay for it. ...
100 days of National taking NZ backwardsThe National Government has spent its first 100 days stopping, cutting and reversing. They have scrapped stuff for stuff for the sake of it, without putting up any solutions of their own – and it’s hardworking New Zealanders who will pay for it. ...
The Government must commit to funding free and healthy school lunches, as thousands of people sign the petition to keep them, education spokesperson Jan Tinetti says. ...
If the Government was serious about moving families into public housing, they would build more houses so there is actually somewhere for people to go. ...
The free and healthy school lunches programme feeds our kids, helps them to learn, and saves families money – but it is at risk under this Government, education spokesperson Jan Tinetti said. ...
The Government’s proposed changes to Firearms Prohibition Orders (FPO) add almost nothing new and are merely an attempt to distract from its plans to loosen gun laws, police spokesperson Ginny Andersen and justice spokesperson Dr Duncan Webb said. ...
The great Victorian era English politician Lord Macauley stood in the British House of Parliament and said, "The gallery in which the reporters sit has become a fourth estate of the realm".He understood and outlined even way back then, the significant role and influence media have in a democracy. ...
"The Government is moving quickly to realise an additional $46 million in tariff savings in the EU market this season for Kiwi exporters,” Minister for Trade and Agriculture, Todd McClay says. Parliament is set, this week, to complete the final legislative processes required to bring the New Zealand – European ...
New Zealand’s social workers are qualified, experienced, and more representative of the communities they serve, Social Development and Employment Minister Louise Upston says. “I want to acknowledge and applaud New Zealand’s social workers for the hard work they do, providing invaluable support for our most vulnerable. “To coincide with World ...
Cabinet has agreed to a reduced road user charge (RUC) rate for plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs), Transport Minister Simeon Brown says. Owners of PHEVs will be eligible for a reduced rate of $38 per 1,000km once all light electric vehicles (EVs) move into the RUC system from 1 April. ...
Minister of Agriculture and Trade, Todd McClay, says that today’s opening of Riverland Foods manufacturing plant in Christchurch is a great example of how trade access to overseas markets creates jobs in New Zealand. Speaking at the official opening of this state-of-the-art pet food factory the Minister noted that exports ...
Minister of Foreign Affairs Winston Peters met with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi in Wellington today. “It was a pleasure to host Foreign Minister Wang Yi during his first official visit to New Zealand since 2017. Our discussions were wide-ranging and enabled engagement on many facets of New Zealand’s relationship with China, including trade, ...
Kāinga Ora – Homes & Communities has been instructed to end the Sustaining Tenancies Framework and take stronger measures against persistent antisocial behaviour by tenants, says Housing Minister Chris Bishop. “Earlier today Finance Minister Nicola Willis and I sent an interim Letter of Expectations to the Board of Kāinga Ora. ...
Tēna koutou katoa. Greetings everyone. Thank you to the Auckland Chamber of Commerce and the Honourable Simon Bridges for hosting this address today. I acknowledge the business leaders in this room, the leaders and governors, the employers, the entrepreneurs, the investors, and the wealth creators. The coalition Government shares your ...
Minister Winston Peters completed the final leg of his visit to South and South East Asia in Singapore today, where he focused on enhancing one of New Zealand’s indispensable strategic partnerships. “Singapore is our most important defence partner in South East Asia, our fourth-largest trading partner and a ...
Minister of Internal Affairs and Workplace Relations and Safety, Hon. Brooke van Velden, will travel to the Republic of Korea to represent New Zealand at the Third Summit for Democracy on 18 March. The summit, hosted by the Republic of Korea, was first convened by the United States in 2021, ...
ICNZ Speech 7 March 2024, Auckland Acknowledgements and opening Mōrena, ngā mihi nui. Ko Andrew Bayly aho, Nor Whanganui aho. Good morning, it’s a privilege to be here to open the ICNZ annual conference, thank you to Mark for the Mihi Whakatau My thanks to Tim Grafton for inviting me ...
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and Lead Coordination Minister Judith Collins have expressed their deepest sympathy on the five-year anniversary of the Christchurch terror attacks. “March 15, 2019, was a day when families, communities and the country came together both in sorrow and solidarity,” Mr Luxon says. “Today we pay our respects to the 51 shuhada ...
Speech for Financial Advice NZ Conference 5 March 2024 Acknowledgements and opening Morena, Nga Mihi Nui. Ko Andrew Bayly aho, Nor Whanganui aho. Thanks Nate for your Mihi Whakatau Good morning. It’s a pleasure to formally open your conference this morning. What a lovely day in Wellington, What a great ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters held discussions in Jakarta today about the future of relations between New Zealand and South East Asia’s most populous country. “We are in Jakarta so early in our new government’s term to reflect the huge importance we place on our relationship with Indonesia and South ...
Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs Winston Peters has announced that the Foreign Minister of China, Wang Yi, will visit New Zealand next week. “We look forward to re-engaging with Foreign Minister Wang Yi and discussing the full breadth of the bilateral relationship, which is one of New Zealand’s ...
Transport Minister Simeon Brown has today opened the new Auckland Rail Operations Centre, which will bring together KiwiRail, Auckland Transport, and Auckland One Rail to improve service reliability for Aucklanders. “The recent train disruptions in Auckland have highlighted how important it is KiwiRail and Auckland’s rail agencies work together to ...
The Government is proud to support the 10th edition of Crankworx Rotorua as the Crankworx World Tour returns to Rotorua from 16-24 March 2024, says Minister for Economic Development Melissa Lee. “Over the past 10 years as Crankworx Rotorua has grown, so too have the economic and social benefits that ...
Legislation implementing coalition Government tax commitments and addressing long-standing tax anomalies will be progressed in Parliament next week, Finance Minister Nicola Willis says. The legislation is contained in an Amendment Paper to the Taxation (Annual Rates for 2023–24, Multinational Tax, and Remedial Matters) Bill issued today. “The Amendment Paper represents ...
Associate Environment Minister Andrew Hoggard has today announced that the Government has agreed to suspend the requirement for councils to comply with the Significant Natural Areas (SNA) provisions of the National Policy Statement for Indigenous Biodiversity for three years, while it replaces the Resource Management Act (RMA).“As it stands, SNAs ...
Agriculture Minister Todd McClay has classified the drought conditions in the Marlborough, Tasman, and Nelson districts as a medium-scale adverse event, acknowledging the challenging conditions facing farmers and growers in the district. “Parts of Marlborough, Tasman, and Nelson districts are in the grip of an intense dry spell. I know ...
The Government is helping farmers eradicate the significant impact of facial eczema (FE) in pastoral animals, Agriculture Minister Todd McClay announced. “A $20 million partnership jointly funded by Beef + Lamb NZ, the Government, and the primary sector will save farmers an estimated NZD$332 million per year, and aims to ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters has completed a successful visit to India, saying it was an important step in taking the relationship between the two countries to the next level. “We have laid a strong foundation for the Coalition Government’s priority of enhancing New Zealand-India relations to generate significant future benefit for both countries,” says Mr Peters, ...
Cabinet has agreed to provide $7 million to ensure the 2024 ski season can go ahead on the Whakapapa ski field in the central North Island but has told the operator Ruapehu Alpine Lifts it is the last financial support it will receive from taxpayers. Cabinet also agreed to provide ...
Health Minister Dr Shane Reti says the launch of a new mobile breast screening unit in Counties Manukau reinforces the coalition Government’s commitment to drive better cancer services for all New Zealanders. Speaking at the launch of the new mobile clinic, Dr Reti says it’s a great example of taking ...
Health Minister Dr Shane Reti says the launch of a new mobile breast screening unit in Counties Manukau reinforces the coalition Government’s commitment to drive better cancer services for all New Zealanders. Speaking at the launch of the new mobile clinic, Dr Reti says it’s a great example of taking ...
Unlocking economic growth and land for housing are critical elements of the Government’s plan for our transport network, and planned upgrades to State Highway 29 (SH29) near Tauriko will deliver strongly on those priorities, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says. “The SH29 upgrades near Tauriko will improve safety at the intersections ...
Unlocking economic growth and land for housing are critical elements of the Government’s plan for our transport network, and planned upgrades to State Highway 29 (SH29) near Tauriko will deliver strongly on those priorities, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says. “The SH29 upgrades near Tauriko will improve safety at the intersections ...
Lower fruit and vegetable prices are welcome news for New Zealanders who have been doing it tough at the supermarket, Finance Minister Nicola Willis says. Stats NZ reported today the price of fruit and vegetables has dropped 9.3 percent in the 12 months to February 2024. “Lower fruit and vege ...
Tēnā koutou katoa and greetings to you all. Chair, I am honoured to address the sixty-eighth session of the Commission on the Status of Women. I acknowledge the many crises impacting the rights of women and girls. Heightened global tensions, war, climate related and humanitarian disasters, and price inflation all ...
Tēnā koutou katoa and greetings to you all. Chair, I am honoured to address the 68th session of the Commission on the Status of Women. I acknowledge the many crises impacting the rights of women and girls. Heightened global tensions, war, climate related and humanitarian disasters, and price inflation all ...
The coalition Government is supporting farmers to enhance land management practices by investing $3.3 million in locally led catchment groups, Agriculture Minister Todd McClay announced. “Farmers and growers deliver significant prosperity for New Zealand and it’s vital their ongoing efforts to improve land management practices and water quality are supported,” ...
Good evening everyone and thank you for that lovely introduction. Thank you also to the Honourable Simon Bridges for the invitation to address your members. Since being sworn in, this coalition Government has hit the ground running with our 100-day plan, delivering the changes that New Zealanders expect of us. ...
Recommendations from the Climate Change Commission for New Zealand on the Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) auction and unit limit settings for the next five years have been tabled in Parliament, Climate Change Minister Simon Watts says. “The Commission provides advice on the ETS annually. This is the third time the ...
The coalition Government is beginning its fight to lower building costs and reduce red tape by exempting minor building work from paying the building levy, says Building and Construction Minister Chris Penk. “Currently, any building project worth $20,444 including GST or more is subject to the building levy which is ...
Proposed changes to tax legislation to prevent the over-taxation of low-earning trusts are welcome, Finance Minister Nicola Willis says. The changes have been recommended by Parliament’s Finance and Expenditure Committee following consideration of submissions on the Taxation (Annual Rates for 2023–24, Multinational Tax, and Remedial Matters) Bill. “One of the ...
Assalaamu alaikum. السَّلَام عليكم In light of the holy month of Ramadan, I want to extend my warmest wishes to our Muslim community in New Zealand. Ramadan is a time for spiritual reflection, renewed devotion, perseverance, generosity, and forgiveness. It’s a time to strengthen our bonds and appreciate the diversity ...
Former Transport Minister and CEO of the Auckland Business Chamber Hon Simon Bridges has been appointed as the new Board Chair of the New Zealand Transport Agency (NZTA) for a three-year term, Transport Minister Simeon Brown announced today. “Simon brings extensive experience and knowledge in transport policy and governance to the role. He will ...
Good morning all, it is a pleasure to be here as Minister of Science, Innovation and Technology. It is fantastic to see how connected and collaborative the life science and biotechnology industry is here in New Zealand. I would like to thank BioTechNZ and NZTech for the invitation to address ...
Regional Development Minister Shane Jones says he is looking forward to the day when three key water projects in Northland are up and running, unlocking the full potential of land in the region. Mr Jones attended a community event at the site of the Otawere reservoir near Kerikeri on Friday. ...
Associate Finance Minister David Seymour has today announced that the Government has agreed to restore deductibility for mortgage interest on residential investment properties. “Help is on the way for landlords and renters alike. The Government’s restoration of interest deductibility will ease pressure on rents and simplify the tax code,” says ...
Sport and Recreation Minister Chris Bishop will travel to Switzerland today to attend an Executive Committee meeting and Symposium of the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA). Mr Bishop will then travel on to London where he will attend a series of meetings in his capacity as Infrastructure Minister. “New Zealanders believe ...
Pacific Media Watch Earthwise hosts Lois and Martin Griffiths. Earthwise presenters Lois and Martin Griffiths on Plains FM 96.9 community radio talk to Dr David Robie, a New Zealand author, independent journalist and media educator with a passion for the Asia-Pacific region. David talks about the struggle to raise awareness ...
Pacific Media Watch Ismail al-Ghoul, an Al Jazeera Arabic correspondent who was held for 12 hours at Gaza’s al-Shifa hospital, says Israeli forces rounded up Palestinian journalists at the facility and made them kneel on the ground for hours, while naked and blindfolded. “The occupation forces handcuffed and blindfolded us ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tony Wood, Program Director, Energy, Grattan Institute chinasong, Shutterstock Electricity customers in four Australian states can breathe a sigh of relief. After two years in a row of 20% price increases, power prices have finally stabilised. In many places they’re ...
Chumbawamba have reportedly issued the deputy PM a cease-and-desist notice after he used their song 'Tubthumping' before his state of the nation speech. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Deborah Lupton, SHARP Professor, Vitalities Lab, Centre for Social Research in Health and Social Policy Centre, and the ARC Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision-Making and Society, UNSW Sydney kitzcorner/Shutterstock The assertion from Queensland’s chief health officer John Gerrard that ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Peter Martin, Visiting Fellow, Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University Shutterstock Why are musicians so keen to get played on the radio? It can’t be because of the money. In Australia they are paid at rates so low they ...
"Farmers make a point not to tell our urban cousins how to live, yet Chlöe from central Auckland is hell-bent on having her say about farmers," says ACT Rural Communities spokesman Mark Cameron. “On her first day in the House as Green ...
Analysis by Dr Bryce Edwards – Democracy Project (https://democracyproject.nz)Political scientist, Dr Bryce Edwards. It’s been a tumultuous time in politics in recent months, as the new National-led Government has driven through its “First 100 Day programme”. During this period there’s been a handful of opinion polls, which overall just ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tim Curran, Associate Professor of Ecology, Lincoln University, New Zealand Getty Images/Gerald Corsi In the latest move to reform environmental laws in New Zealand, the coalition government has introduced a bill to fast-track consenting processes for projects deemed to ...
Uber has argued it does not have as much control over drivers as the unions suggest, and wants a judgment ruling that drivers are employees and not contractors set aside and sent back to the Employment Court. The 2022 ruling followed a three-week hearing in which four drivers sought to ...
What can and can’t be purchased by disabled people or their carers has been slashed in an effort by the Ministry of Disabled People Whaikaha to save money. The purchasing guidelines, a set of rules that sets out what can be purchased using the various streams of Government disability funding, ...
The Treasury has published today a new Analytical Note by Tod Wright and Hien Nguyen, Fiscal incidence in New Zealand: The effects of taxes and benefits on household incomes in tax year 2018/19 . Analyses of the distributional impact of taxation and government ...
The Treasury has published today a new Analytical Note by Cory Davis, Boston Hart and Benjamin Stubbing, Household cost-of-living impacts from the Emissions Trading Scheme and using transfers to mitigate regressive outcomes . This Analytical Note ...
A coalition of public transport and climate organisations, united as ‘Transport for All’, is actively opposing the government’s transport proposals. The draft Government Policy Statement (GPS) includes plans for higher fares for public transport, ...
Greater Wellington is inviting feedback on proposed changes to its Revenue and Financing Policy. The Revenue and Financing Policy covers the Council’s various sources of funding, and how the cost of services is shared across the region. This includes ...
Labour has conceded it could have done more to deal with disruptive state housing tenants while in government but says the current coalition is going too far. ...
The band has asked their record label to issue a cease and desist to stop the NZ First leader using their 1997 hit to support his ‘misguided political views’. “I get knocked down, but I get up again,” blared through the speakers on Sunday as Winston Peters took the stage ...
By Lydia Lewis, RNZ Pacific journalist Food rationing is underway in remote areas in Papua New Guinea’s Highlands following torrential rain and flash flooding. More than 20 people have been reported dead in Chimbu Province. In nearby Enga Province, the centre of last month’s massacre, a 15-year-old boy has been ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Andrew Hughes, Lecturer, Research School of Management, Australian National University After months of debate and intrigue, the AFL’s 19th and newest team, the Tasmania Devils, finally launched its jumper, logo and colours in Devonport this week. The Devils will wear green, ...
Brannavan Gnanalingam reviews the debut novel by Saraid de Silva.One of the most baffling things for children who move to a new country is what their parents’ (or grandparents’) lives were like prior to moving – for kids in particular, they’re too busy trying to fit in in their ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Stephen Gaunson, Associate Professor in Cinema Studies, RMIT University Narelle Portanier/Binge “If you don’t know who your mob are, you don’t know who you are,” Detective Andrea “Andie” Whitford (played by Leah Purcell) is told early into the new crime ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Elise Klein, Associate professor, Australian National University It’s commonly accepted that women do the vast majority of caregiving in Australian society. But less appreciated is that Indigenous women do larger amounts of unpaid care than any other group. Working with the Aboriginal ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Adrian Beaumont, Election Analyst (Psephologist) at The Conversation; and Honorary Associate, School of Mathematics and Statistics, The University of Melbourne Joe Biden and Donald Trump have both secured their parties’ nominations for the November 5 United States general election by winning a ...
Comment: There has been a striking contrast in trans-Tasman interest about Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi’s visit to New Zealand and Australia. While the Australian press has been full of articles about the visit – including his curious decision to meet with former prime minister and China booster Paul Keating ...
After years of pressuring banks and other institutions to stop investing in fossil fuels, climate campaigners are making some progress. So how does divestment work?For years, climate activists have been pushing banks and other big institutions to divest from fossil fuels. New research from climate advocacy group 350 Aotearoa ...
For Boba, Ethan and Ashley, K-pop is a place to belong, a way to express themselves, and a bridge to connect with others. The three young Polynesians are part of a K-pop fan community in Tāmaki Makaurau. It’s one of many that have sprung up worldwide as K-pop has gone ...
For Boba, Ethan and Ashley, K-pop is a place to belong, a way to express themselves, and a bridge to connect with others. This one-off documentary presents three intimate portraits of young Polynesians who are pulled into a Korean cultural phenomenon. K-POLYS is directed by Litia Tuiburelevu, Produced by Hex ...
There’s ample evidence demonstrating free school lunch programmes provide wide benefits across schools, households and communities according to public health researchers. ACT Minister David Seymour wants to reduce the spending on Aotearoa New Zealand’s ...
By Wata Shaw in Suva Fiji is facing an exodus of Fijians as many are leaving for overseas seeking employment and education and others are migrating, says Opposition MP Viliame Naupoto. Speaking in Parliament, he said: “His Excellency’s speech (Ratu Wiliame Katonivere) comes after a little over one year of ...
The Taxpayers’ Union is welcoming comments from Christopher Luxon this morning recommitting to ‘no new taxes’ as part of Budget 2024. “Mr Luxon’s refusal at the Post-Cabinet press conference yesterday to repeat the ‘no new taxes’ promise ...
SAFE is urgently calling on the Environment Committee to reject the Government’s Fast-Track Approvals Bill, and is urging New Zealanders to rally behind the call. The proposed Bill, currently under consideration with the Environment select committee, ...
Teammates who spend all their time picking fights with spectators are only helpful for the other team, writes Madeleine Chapman. Anyone who has ever played a team sport competitively, particularly as a child and particularly, for some reason, basketball, will know that there’s a lot of politics involved. While there ...
The long-running Wellington music festival is too focused on the Jim Beam-ness and not enough on the Homegrown-ness.There is something about Homegrown that’s difficult to place. A barely perceptible-ness. Like feeling a ghost is watching you from the corner of the room but when you look, there’s nothing there. ...
The latest Ipsos New Zealand Issues Monitor reveals that fewer New Zealanders believe crime / law and order is one of the top issues facing our country. In 2018, Ipsos New Zealand started tracking the key issues facing New Zealand. In this wave ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kate Griffiths, Deputy Program Director, Budgets and Government, Grattan Institute Australia’s political donations rules are woefully inadequate, but donations reform is finally on the agenda. The federal government has signalled its interest in reform and will soon begin briefing MPs on its ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Mark Patrick Taylor, Chief Environmental Scientist, EPA Victoria; Honorary Professor, School of Natural Sciences, Macquarie University Naiyana Somchitkaeo/Shutterstock A recent study published in the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine has linked microplastics with risk to human health. The study ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Albert Van Dijk, Professor, Water and Landscape Dynamics, Fenner School of Environment & Society, Australian National University Global climate records were shattered in 2023, from air and sea temperatures to sea-level rise and sea-ice extent. Scores of countries recorded their hottest year ...
As part of our series exploring how New Zealanders live and our relationship with money, a teacher explains why he and his partner are in frugal mode – and how they’re making it work. Gender: Male Age: 35Ethnicity: Pākehā Role: I am an intermediate school teacher and my partner is ...
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Not to be missed event, The 'Syria Speaks Hui'
The Leftist Daily Blog gives solidarity to the "Syria Speaks' Hui
https://thedailyblog.co.nz/2019/07/19/the-liberal-agenda-syria-speaks/
The Centrist Standard) only posts pro Assad opinion.
https://thestandard.org.nz/category/international/war/syria-war/
The Far Right have issued death threats against the organisers of the Syria Speaks Hui, (which have been passed on to the police in the interests of attendees safety).
*My edit. J.
Trouble with Syria is that the U.S., Britain, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, the U.A.E., and France have diplomatically and militarily supported Al Qaeda, ISIL, and al-Nusra.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LEZUraRor1o
To true morrissey …. although I should thank jenny for leading me down the road to learn a lot about the christchurch sub-uber racist killer.
Which she tried to blame on Assad … in a sickness on top of sickness kind of way.
Here's some real info from a little internet digging
****************************************
Reading NZ papers on wikileaks I learnt John Key was in Obamas company , giving a speech , immediately after Norwegian mass murderer Anders Behring Breivik, killed 77 people in 2011.
Key took the opportunity to call for more resources and surveillance to counter and stop future terrorist attacks … Cynically.
The budget for spooks and security went from $56 Million in 2011 … up to over $ 150 million now.
They brag about how they have made us safe https://www.beehive.govt.nz/sites/default/files/2017-12/GCSB%20and%20NZSIS.PDF page 39 …
But apparently while 'making us safe', they were not looking at people like Anders Behring Breivik … who our killer admired in posts on known ‘extreme’ chat rooms … and he wanted to achieve a similar kind of racist immortality.
https://www.beehive.govt.nz/sites/default/files/2017-12/GCSBandNZSIS.PDF
Here’s your UN compact! … was one of the many twink scrawled message written on one of the assault rifles in Christchurch … a message that ricochet back at the tRumps … and our Nacts… who effectively gave ammo to a sick mind.
Vote buying and stoking a toxic minority … Invaders!
To lift the topic ,,,,,,I’ll finish with a bloody good powerful Aussie rock song about Aussie racism and exploitation …
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A0OPPUGJAj4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=16bFBzx7I_0
Jenny – How to Get there?
Your comment is awaiting moderation.
20 July 2019 at 7:25 am
Not to be missed event, The 'Syria Speaks Hui'
The Leftist Daily Blog gives solidarity to the "Syria Speaks' Hui
https://thedailyblog.co.nz/2019/07/19/the-liberal-agenda-syria-speaks/
The Centrist Standard) only posts pro Assad opinion.
/category/international/war/syria-war/
The Far Right have issued death threats against the organisers of the Syria Speaks Hui, (which have been passed on to the police in the interests of attendees safety).
That does tend to happen when you include nine live links and an email address, yes.
Just the regular necessary reminder that most of the economics profession is dedicated to pushing ideas that are flat-out wrong, but happen to benefit wealthy people and screw the not-wealthy. Hence their symbiotic relationship with the "conservative" part of the political spectrum.
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/7/19/20699366/interest-rates-unemployment-globalization-minimum-wage-deficit
https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2019/07/four-economic-myths-plus-one/
A truly silly column by Fran O'Sullivan in the Herald where she offers the opine that the PM should not have annoyed the hosts by making representations over the deportations of Kiwis, but instead raise the matter of New Zealand banking rules.
The thing is the PM is now in the position to quote their words back at them when they representations on behalf of their banks.
And to have raised the matter of banking with the Oz government would have been to undermine the sovereignty of our regime in this matter.
Fran O'Sullivan discards herself as a piece of rubbish. She does not understand the horrendous, indeed Attrocius destruction of Human Life that Australians have carried out on their Country – and continue to carry out.
Concerning Australian Strong arm Deportation
Contrary to little Fran,
I do not see that we need to accept any deportation attempted by the Australian Government.
As far I know, New Zealand has never undertaken to off load citizens from an unfriendly nation.
Any attempt to fly any aircraft or sail any ships into our waters without permission will be deemed a violation.
Any attempt to fly any aircraft or sail any ships into our waters without permission will be deemed a violation
How about an 18 ton spacestation that went down yesterday.
The time has come, however, for Tiangong-2 to be deorbited and, naturally, destroyed in the process. The China National Space Administration indicated that the 18-meter-wide station and solar panels will mostly burn up during reentry, but that a small amount of debris may fall “in a safe area in the South Pacific,” specifying a rather large area that does technically include quite a bit of New Zealand (160-190°W long by 30-45°S lat).
https://techcrunch.com/2019/07/18/chinese-space-station-tiangong-2-is-about-to-burn-up-over-the-pacific/
Glad we live in safe area in the SP
Feeding Racism.
How the (Centre) Left's support for the Assad regime has helped feed and spread the growth of fascism beyond Syria's borders.
And those supporting Israel's annexation of the Golan heights and East Jerusalem … also supporting the removal of Assad (but failing) …
The right wing white race nationalists only prefer Assad to Islamists. The secular left wingers prefer a secular dictatorship to one based around Islamist theocracy. Compaining about that is in service to the former – the White House and its UK poodle and Israel.
Israel and the USA do not care for ME democracy – being onside with Sisi and the Riyadh Crown Prince and the censorship of al Jazeera.
‘
While the Centre Left still, even now, courts racism and fascism, Leftist webcaster, Democracy Now, offers a different perspective.
“For Sama”
Racism and fascism is a good description of the governments in Israel and the USA at the moment.
SPC to keep things simple, and to avoid the running into the pitfalls of Godwin's Law. I reserve accusations of racism and fascism to;
1/ Those like Philip Arps who openly self identify as fascists, racists/white supremacists/anti-semites/Islamophobes etc.
2/ Those like David Irving who cover up or excuse genocide.
3/ Those like Bashar Assad who commit genocide
As for the governments of the US and Israel
A war of choice launched by the US against Iran, (which would be a genocidal war), in my opinion, would elevate Donald Trump from xenophobic racist to fascist.
I think that it can be reasonably argued, and it has been, that Benjamin Netanyahu is guilty of committing genocide against the people of Gaza. Which by my definition would also qualify Netanyahu as a 'fascist'.
Given that the term "fascist" has been around for a hundred years it seems silly to try and re-invent the meaning of it now.
Trying to impose order on a chaotic world can seem soothing to some, I guess.
The term ‘fascist’ might well have been around for a hundred years* But in the age of the internet Godwyn’s law rightly warns against the devaluation of the designation of 'fascist' to anyone who disagrees with you.
Godwyn himself has since said that this should not be used to avoid using this description where it is apt and justified.
This obviously makes necessary to define the term in a concise manner where it is accurate.
You might disagree with me that my determination that those who commit or excuse genocide fit this designation. personally I think it is accurate.
*The term fascist has been around for over 2,000 years referring to fasci or sticks carried by Roman Senators which when bound together could not be broken. The symbol of which was adopted by the modern fascists.
It might pay to remember that the ancient Roman Empire which the modern fascists so admire was a brutal slave society.
Fascism is a form of political and social organisation. It is not primarily about genocide.
Godwyn himself has since said that this should not be used to avoid using this description where it is apt and justified.
Exactly. So why don't you do that?
Jenny, the problem you run into when you use words that already have well-established meanings to mean different things is that nobody then has any chance of figuring out WTF you're on about.
In this particular case, genocide and fascism are separate things. Some genocides were carried out by fascist governments, some were not. Some fascist governments have been genocidal, some have not.
Instead of re-defining a word or language to suit one’s narrative one should re-phrase and re-frame one’s narrative to avoid ambiguity and confusion as much as possible. That is a golden rule in and of communication, especially on a blog site. The problem is that not all people have an equally good grasp of language, which on its own is not a major issue and can be ‘corrected’, but when they dig in and refuse to accept their ‘lingual faux pas’, it can become a major one.
It seems to me that some commenters here are only interested in writing their own comments but not in taking on-board comments by others. In fact, they often become defensive and aggressive or evasive when challenged …
Genocide and fascism are two different things?
The most notable aspect of fascism is the use of genocide.
At the very least genocide could be called a sub-set of fascism.
I have termed (at various times), the Assad regime as "a fascist style regime" because of its of genocidal air campaign against its own citizens.
Another notable feature of fascist style regimes is the maintenance and operation of mass detention and death camps.
Of which the Assad regime has several, the most notable of these being Saydnaya on the outskirts of Damascus.
You say that I am redefining the meaning of the word fascist. Well one thing I know for sure, a fascist is no longer an ancient stick bearing slave owning Roman Senator.
Next you will be telling me that I would be wrong to label General Pinochet of Chile a fascist. Or General Franco of Spain a fascist. Because they don't meet your Hollywood characterisation of German fascists.
You say that I shouldn't define fascists as people who commit genocide.
What would you call people who commit genocide?
Why don't you do some research on the term "fascism" while putting aside the genocide thing for a while? Learn what the term means and then come back. Even just reading the wiki page would be help you heaps.
Next you will be telling me that I would be wrong to label General Pinochet of Chile a fascist. Or General Franco of Spain a fascist.
While Pinochet certainly displayed some elements of fascism, fascist really isn't a good descriptor for Pinochet's flavour of pseudo-populist ultra-nationalist despotism. Furthermore, while Pinochet had a weak spot for mass-murder of his opponents, the fact that it was his political opponents he was murdering rather than attempting to eliminate a particular ethnic/cultural group makes genocide an inaccurate descriptor for Pinochet's murders.
Fascism certainly is a good descriptor for Franco's particular nasty flavour of ideology. However, like Pinochet, genocide is a poor descriptor for Franco's mass murderous activities since it was targeted at political opponents rather than elimination of ethnic/cultural groups.
You say that I shouldn't define fascists as people who commit genocide.
What would you call people who commit genocide?
Genocidal is a pretty good descriptor for those who commit genocide. Rwanda is an example of genocide without fascism.
Andre, You say that the word "fascist" has a well-established meaning. (which I have got wrong).
If the 'meaning' of the word fascist is, 'well-established' then you would have no trouble telling us what it is.
I await your reply.
Which of course you won’t give, despite it being so “well-established”.
FFS, check a dictionary or the wikipedia link I gave you above.
https://wikidiff.com/genocide/fascism
A couple more for you Jenny-Armenian genocide by Turkey and the Rape of Nanking by Japan.
Indeed. Even though the Japanese Empire, did not explicitly share the Italian and German fascist icongraphy and language, (harking back to the glories of the Western Imperial slave society of ancient Rome). Following the Rape of Nanking, the Japanese imperialists (rightly in my opinion) were termed fascists.
In its brutality and carnage on the same scale as the destruction of Homs by the Assad regime.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/video/2016/feb/04/drone-footage-homs-syria-utter-devastation-video
One of many main problems jenny … is who are you asking to win your war….. surely not the people commiting genocide in Yemen ??
And even if we were to believe your good war / we must kill more and add more deaths …. to stop a genocide logic.
Lets look at the 'care' towards civilians you are asking for …. a recent war crime shows a good example …of your good war, being nothing but a uncaring death and refugee machine.
So who are you calling on to kill more ?? Turkey is your best option for dragging it out at the moment.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BZRRIXH4GxI
In their campaign against Isis the US has slaughtered civilians also identified by the Assad regime as enemies.
I have never denied Reason, that the US has committed massive crimes against the people of Syria in fact I have written about them long before you. As soon as the Amnesty report came out. I wrote on these pages about this crime.
The US is in Syria for its own reasons. The US has never unleashed the same fury against the Assad regime that it has unleashed against perceived enemies of the US. In the two air strikes against regime resources the US gave the Assad regime, (through its Russian ally), advanced notice of both attacks. And notably, no regime forces were ever killed or wounded in these two attacks. The US didn't exercise such niceties toward the civilian population of Raqqa.
The West and particularly the US has a fetish against anyone (but themselves of course) having weapons of mass destruction, WMDs. As horrible as these weapons are, most of the regime's slaughter of civilians has been conducted with so called "conventional weapons" which the US has raised no real objection to, and has certainly not acted to stop.
You are not anti-war, if you are not anti-Assad's war.
It is actually you reason, who is calling to kill more.
In your comment above you are of course alluding to Idlib.
Idlib had previously with Turkish support been declared a deconfliction zone.
Lately the Turkish government of Erdogan has made its peace with the Assad regime and their Russian ally, giving the green light for the regime and Russia to continue their genocidal campaign against the Syrian people into Idlib.
Completing the encirclement Erdogan has ordered the closing of the border to civilians fleeing the impending slaughter, leaving them no where else to go.
Reason you are cheering on this slaughter to begin.
And even when the regime conquers Idlib, the killing will not stop. This is a regime that is currently rounding up and "disappearing" thousands of civilians in the areas it has already retaken.
‘
Don't support fascism. (It really shouldn't have to be said).
Jenny , you just cant stop your bullshitting your one sided propaganda can you ?? …
Things like your wild conspiracy theories about the Christchurch racist mass murderer … or the murder of British Labour MP Jo Cox … both being caused by Assad / Syria ….
Leave you with sub-zero credibility…. You've proven you'll write any shit.
My comment was about a 100 mile deep strip running the length of the border with Syria ….
Perhaps Turkey was promised it … and Israel the Golan Heights too… in a pre-arranged divy up upon the destruction / balkinization break up of Syria …. which was all on course and following the script of Libya ,,,
before the Isis / al nusra tide was repelled.
Regarding Idlib and ignoring your asshat blather ….The problem with Idib is all the foreign fighters / mercenaries, ,,,which their home countries do not want them to returning too.
New Zealand had 1 ,,,,, and there was a big fuss about him …. Britian and France have hundreds,
https://medium.com/insurge-intelligence/isis-recruiter-who-radicalised-london-bridge-attackers-was-protected-by-mi5-232998ab6421
Both the brits and frogs have previously stated they would rather have their radicalized citizens killed than returned … do your own internet search.
So I imagine the best result for the sponsors of your peaceful bloodbath would be to block their return … yet pretend moral outrage when they lose their last Jihad battles.
Personally I believe quite a few could be de-radicalised ,,,,,, so unlike you I'm not into more war / killing….
And I heard that you stayed with people …. like the fine ones in this video … during your time in syria ;(
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ULtNYSUqYHw
The video link about Raqqa very specificly disproves one of your
Assad is not a racist (anti-Zionist maybe), and whether a one party (not based on race, ethnicity or religion) tyranny posing as socialist qualifies as fascist is debatable (a matter of technical definition). Resorting to methods (bombing in civilian areas and economic blockade) used by the Allies during WW2 is not genocide, though war crimes are/were involved. Each would claim they did it to defeat a fascist threat (and Islamo-fascism was ultimately the alternative posed to the regime, not a democracy).
I would also argue that Netanyahu has not committed genocide, albeit collective punishment and war crimes. An ethnic state asserting its will by force is racist and fascist.
As for Trump, his white race nation, "the will of our God and our nation be done" assertion of economic and military power (including sanctions against those nations that refuse to enforce sanctions against targeted states) is fascist in its belligerent exercise of power.
SPC you object to me identifying the Assad regime "fascist" as inaccurate and a redefinition of the word. Yet you have no hesitation of identifying Assad's opponents as "Islamofascists".
The crimes of Isis are dire and extreme, but don’t reach by numbers anywhere near the sheer scale of the crimes committed by the Assad regime.
You criticise me for redefining the word fascist and then make your own redefinition, fascism is the "beligerant exercise of power".
In my opinion your definition is too tame and too broad.
Fascism is something much worse than this.
In my opinion you have fallen into the Godwyn trap.
But even using your definition Assad is a fascist.
Er no, I disagree whether the term fascist is accurate for Syria's Baath regime and explained why (I did not discuss redefintion of the word fascist but mentioned the technical use of the term, as distinct from the colloquial use which both of us are doing). Many have called Moslem terrorists intent on imposition of their rule Islamo-fascists. And not just Islamic State, but also al Nusra.
And I did not redefine fascism as "belligerent exercise of power" but noted that such was practiced by fascist regimes – fascist in its "belligerent use of power" (either domestically and externally).
Yes the Assad regime did exercise "belligerent use of power", but not until it was subject to a conspiracy to depose the regime (its earlier use of gunfire to intimidate democratic protesters in Damascus was commonplace tyranny).
What I find notable SPC is that in his recent extended interview on Democracy Now in which Noam Chomsky covered a wide range of issues, imperialism, the rise of fascism in the ’30s, the campaign against nuclear weapons in the ’80s the Iraq war, the war in Yemen. the war in Libya. But during this extended interview where he was given the complete floor to say whatever he wanted Noam Chomsky never mentioned, (apart from a mention of Israel annexing the Golan Heights). Chomsky never mentioned, not even once, the war in Syria.
This could represent one of two things;
1/ That Chomsky is changing from his previous held position of endorsing the US regime change conspiracy theory spread by the Assad regime and its supporters.
2/ That Chomsky has not changed from his previous position, but knows that it is indefensible, and that Democracy Now will challenge him on it.
I would like to believe that it is the first case not the second.
https://www.democracynow.org/2019/7/5/an_hour_with_noam_chomsky_on
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WNIHZZ6qlgI
Thanks for that learned theory about Chomsky's "indefensible" position on Syria. Do you think he should come out in support of Al Qaeda and the Al Nusra Front?
Don't you think it worthy noting SPC that a learned scholar like Noam Chomsky did not feel confidant enough to make a comment on Syria before people who he knew would challenge him on it?
Chomsky did not feel confidant [sic] enough....
???????
Chomsky is not some cowardly politician. And he has never supported a "regime change conspiracy theory."
Chomsky is not some cowardly politician. And he has never supported a “regime change conspiracy theory.”
Morrissey
https://www.newsdeeply.com/syria/community/2016/04/14/how-noam-chomsky-betrayed-the-syrian-people
Quoting wacky blogs does nothing for your argument, Jenny. The ridiculous sight of a lightweight like “analyst Sam Hammad” calling Noam Chomsky, of all people, “conservative, orientalist, and incoherent” is almost as ridiculous as the shrieking charge that he “betrayed” anyone.
Sam Hammad is a 'lightweight'
Ironic then that the most common go to source, for Assad apologists on this site, is 9/11 Truther and comedian Jimmy Dore
YOU WANT THE TRUTH? A CORRESPONDENCE WITH NOAM CHOMSKY ON SYRIA
Posted on April 30, 2017 by Sam Hamad
When I read Manufacturing Consent as a teenager, in the summer of 2002 to be precise, at the beginning of War on Terror fever, I never thought that one day its most esteemed author, Noam Chomsky, would accuse me of supporting al-Qaeda. In the following exchange, he does exactly that, as well as accusing me of supporting Daesh. That makes it three times, by my count, that he’s issued this most scurrilous and ironic smear, with his initial accusation of my support for Daesh coming in a response he gave to a friend who had sent an article I wrote criticising his stance on Syria for Muftah……
https://herecomesthetumbleweed.wordpress.com/2017/04/30/you-want-the-truth-a-correspondence-with-noam-chomsky/
Sam Hammad is a 'lightweight'
Agreed.
The difficulties presented by polarisation
"And even if it is an immediate disaster, visible on day one, there are few guarantees that leavers would admit their error and seek once more the embrace of Brussels. As Charles Grant of the Centre for European Reform puts it, “Just because babies are dying, does that mean they’ll say we were better off in the EU?” Aren’t they just as likely to blame the beastly Europeans for inflicting such a hellscape on an innocent nation? After all, even Boris Johnson once thought Britain could leave the EU and keep its seat on the European council of ministers. The Brexiters will cry, “How we were to know that leaving the EU meant leaving the EU?” And if they don’t blame Brussels, they’ll blame someone else: foreigners, minorities, anyone but themselves."
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/jul/19/upside-no-deal-crashing-out-country-brexit
Exchange Brexit for climate emergency …..the same process is in play
Whaleoik's lawyer begs to be allowed off the case but judge refusing his client's illness or bankruptcy as further delaying tactics. Sheds light on how the slob has been gaming the court system for years. https://www.newsroom.co.nz/2019/07/18/687813/lawyer-let-me-off-whaleoil-case
he looks like he is in for (another) hard life lesson – most of which are of his own doing and could have been resolved years ago if he was reasonable.
No sympathy for his current legal predicament.
I feel for his children, but that's it.
Massey University’s Dr Andy Towers, from the School of Public Health, wants minimum pricing for alcohol as part of a campaign to make it socially unacceptable for poor people to drink – saying “Sub-groups” who continue to smoke, even though it’s socially unacceptable and expensive, they’re addicted. The same would happen with alcohol if minimum unit pricing came in”
Mimimum pricing would of course have no impact on the craft beers and wines drunk by the well to do, for whom drinking would presumably remain socially acceptable in more upmarket locations and more exclusive private clubs (a bit like in Teheran behind the walls of the well to do).
The Panopticon Society rears its head via Public Health policy academics, their cohorts in criminology presumably justify targeting of the underclass without religion with fear and obey policing intimidation.
The enemies of equality and freedom come out in public like this because they have no shame.
If Andy Tower stuck his head out the window he would realise poor people can barely pay for their rent, pay off their tertiary loan and save a deposit to buy a home and this is why less young people drink. We have the highest rent to house value in the world and the second most expensive property to wages in the world.
Using "price to signal that drinking is unacceptable" (and reserving it as a privilege for those whose drinks prices will remain unchanged) is of an alliance between the haves and those who want to control the behaviour and lives of the common folk. His agenda to describe poor people who drink as addicts is telling.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/114298788/a-change-to-minimum-unit-pricing-of-alcohol-will-reduce-harm-says-researcher#comments
If this study was accurate it would appear that the people who drink to much are the old rich ones.
Manual workers apparently drink much less than wealthy professionals. Price increase aren't therefore likely to have any effect.
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2018/may/01/wealthy-professionals-most-likely-to-drink-alcohol-regularly-figures-show
There is an article linked to the story on Stuff the about a study by Andy Towers himself coming to the same conclusion that the increase in drinking is by those is by those over 50 – so he should know minimum pricing would have no impact on that.
Using "price to signal that drinking is unacceptable"…
Unacceptable to whom? Seriously, apart from devout Muslims, who wants to "signal that drinking is unacceptable?" Some technocrats in government departments in universities, maybe? I was at a pub last night and drinking seemed pretty acceptable to everyone present.
ISTR a low minimum pricing/quantity deters kids when there's not age restriction (e.g. single cigarette sales I think were banned before tobacco became R18). Keeps it just outside the reach of their pocket money.
But I suspect that as the price of alcohol goes up, the more people bring homebrew to parties for their friends. Maybe with a nod and a wink, maybe gratis. None of my business.
Foreigners' unpaid medical debts revealed. And this is just for the Auckland region.
More than $35 million in unpaid debts by foreigners treated for healthcare in Auckland has been written off in the past three years.
Acting Health Minister Julie Anne Genter and the DHBs declined to comment. But in Counties Manukau's OIA response, it stated significant resource goes into determining a patient's eligibility status, and then seeking payment.
https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/politics/2019/07/foreigners-unpaid-medical-debts-revealed.html
Here's a possible solution. Require them to have insurance when entering the country, making it available for those that don't already have cover. No insurance, no entry.
Yesterday I heard a worker at the Maori agency [sorry forget its name] say the problem with Maori babies being taken is that the department will not build/get more housing so Mother AND child can be helped away from their bad life situation.
Such a simple solution to the problem … it must be correct and so beyond the comprehension of beaurocrats
While being one solution, the problem is more complex than that.
You are correct as I now know if I had not already realised from reading the article listed below
Add this (link below) to your reading list, John.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/114346832/mori-four-times-more-likely-to-have-children-removed-study
On the other hand. Rather than removing mother and child(ren) from the family home how about removing the abusive partner?
Set them all up in say one of these….https://www.stuff.co.nz/life-style/homed/houses/114172252/adult-dorms-a-look-inside-aucklands-newest-coliving-arrangement …and let 'em slug it out.
Sorry Rosemary .. a great idea but hamstrung I am sure by eager lawyers to proect the rights of those abusers.
"lets them slug it out" is not a solution IMO but compounding on the problem.
Here's one organisation doing that: https://gandhinivas.nz/our-houses/
Since writing the above I have been to the following ,,,,
https://www.nzcpr.com/new-zealands-maori-child-welfare-problem/#more-29704
or you could check this if you prefer ….
https://www.nzcpr.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Research-Paper-Child-Abuse-Brian-Giesbrecht.pdf
It is related to a counry on the other side of the world but I think as I read it often applying to here.
Rather long but full of background for somebody who only has seen two very small parts of that country …. Vancouver and Niagra Falls…. as a tourist 🙁
The links are to the NZ Centre for Political Research, which despite it's institutional name is a right-wing political think tank.
I tried to read the second link but could only get through the introduction by Muriel Newman, and the first page before deciding to skim for any nuggets of information. The report by a retired Canadian judge is indicative of the further harm that can be caused by those in authority. His mention of the residential schools being a 'dumping ground' for children of abusive alcoholic parents, ignores the reality that many were taken from intact and loving environments, and put into these abusive institutions.
His reference to FASD is without context for the conditions in which alcohol is used as a release from despair for whole indigenous communities.
I don't think he adds anything new to the conversation, except provide evidence of the level of assumptions that must be made in order to continue to justify the status quo and the harm that occurs.
This refusal to consider perpetual harm and the long-term consequences of government and societal actions on the indigenous community is obstructive to effective solutions.
Of course it is….
/
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/crime/114118908/man-charged-with-murder-of-10monthold-baby
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/113881098/breaking-homicide-investigation-launched-into-toddlers-death
https://www.sunlive.co.nz/news/215384-name-suppression-toddler-murder-accused.html
In Australia they spend more on seizing children … due largely to poverty of their homes / parents …… than would be needed to just lift them out of poverty.
Families are paying a toll for the settings of society …. any civilized evolving society should adapt to overcome serious problems … like affordable housing for all its citizens.
I could well believe market ideology is the main impediment to fixing the failures harming NZ society.
Joint Statement of The American Academy of Pediatrics and the Public Health Service (FDA & CDC), July 7, 1999
The Process of Public Policy Formulation: The Case of Thimerosal in Vaccines
EMERGENCE OF THIMEROSAL AS A CONCERN
Not sure how may of the vaccines on the NZ schedule contain thiomersal as formulations and preservatives are constantly evolving but as ever it’s disappointing that Philu is still spreading his antivac. drivel….
First, there is no mercury in vaccines, and never was. And thiomersal is not banned, anywhere.
Let’s start with the beginning. Thiomersal is a powerful antiseptic, that, even in tiny doses, (nanogram levels) blocks the growth of bacteria. Up until the anti-vaccination movement invented some tropes about thiomersal, we had less expensive, multi use vials for many drugs, including vaccines. Thiomersal prevented bacterial growth, which is much more dangerous than the imagined danger of thiomersal.
The claim that it is mercury is silly and shows of an ignorance of chemistry. Thiomersal is not a fancy name for “mercury” it is the proper chemical term for ethyl mercury, an organic compound attached to the mercury molecule. They do not disassociate in the body, and is quickly eliminated through the kidneys.
Table salt is sodium bonded to chlorine. Elemental sodiums is explosive. And elemental chlorine, a gas, is deadly. Yet when they are combined, they became a stable salt. And it does disassociate (unlike thiomersal), although the ionic forms of the sodium and chlorine are not dangerous.
Reducing chemistry to the basic elements is not how biochemistry works. It’s the whole molecule that matters, not the individual parts. So thiomersal does not add to the mercury burden of a human being, unless you have some nobel prize winning research that shows that somehow the mercury atom cleaves from the organic molecule in water. And we have no evidence of that.
Moreover, there simply is no research whatsoever that has established a link between thiomersal or anything, up to and including autism.
What’s next on your list Phil…fluoride in the water ? or is it back to the 5G ?
I could very well be missing something here Higherstandard, and everyone else in the world knows the source of your quoted text, but help me out here and provide a link.
Please?
https://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=thiomersal&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8
Sorry Higherstandard, that simply takes me to generic search page…which particular paper are you quoting from?
Thimerosal: clinical, epidemiologic and biochemical studies.
CONCLUSION:
The culmination of the research that examines the effects of Thimerosal in humans indicates that it is a poison at minute levels with a plethora of deleterious consequences, even at the levels currently administered in vaccines.
One Two do you have any medical qualifications to make that claim to us?
One Two do you have any medical qualifications to make that claim to us?
Not unless he's been holding out on us this chap below does have some medical knowledge though…
https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/why-the-latest-geier-geier-paper-is-not-evidence-that-mercury-in-vaccines-causes-autism/
It may all be rather pointless discussion though ….. as I said above I not sure if any vaccines in the NZ schedule use thimerosal as a preservative anymore. If philu wants to tell us whether they do he can search it up on the Medsafe website.
Had a wee look.A bunch of different credible sites say thimerosal has not been in any New Zealand childhood vaccines since 2000, and is not currently in any vaccines of any kind in New Zealand (although flu vaccines overseas are commonly cited as still possibly containing thimerosal). Haven't spotted anything that gives a date on when the last vaccines containing thimerosal were phased out in New Zealand.
There's an odd absence of triumphant articles claiming reductions in illnesses previously attributed to thimerosal due to the removal of it, however.
The chemtrails took over where the evil vaccines left off. Stay in your caves, comrades!
Also, the links in that SBM piece all appear to be dead. But searching for Geier debunked brings up plenty of relevant info.
As if it wasn't blindingly obvious how you manage to maintain yourself at such a stunted level of ignorance.
To the point where you openly…and seemingly without a sense of shame or awareness… share your base level technique…
Andre keyword search:
[subject matter] | [persons name] | [debunk]
Bravo. Shameless.
I can't believe anybody still references that guy. But there it is before my eyes. Stunning.
Ooooh, sounds like this time it's going to need more than a hug and a kiss and a make-up sesh.
CONCLUSION:
If you read the linked material… you should have managed to figure out that I had forgotten to used the <blockquote> on 11.1.1.3
Mitochondrial dysfunction, impaired oxidative-reduction activity, degeneration, and death in human neuronal and fetal cells induced by low-level exposure to thimerosal and other metal compounds
Conclusion
Low-dose Thimerosal in pediatric vaccines: Adverse effects in perspective
That concludes the background detail around the toxins which triggered US governmental intervention more than 20 years ago, leading toward so called ‘settled science’…
I’ll be posting about closed door sessions held by the IOM who were hired by the CDC to provide desired outcomes…which the CDC had paid service fees to receive.
Leading to reports (including 2004) which were based on inconclusive studies which can’t ever show ‘safety’…the 2004 report also essentially removed any required for future necessary lab research.
The handful of studies are cited globally including in NZ as ‘settled science’….
16000 more beneficiaries since Labour won the treasury benches, and hardship grant's up from 270,000 which were a disgrace under National to 490,000 per year now. Jeez this politics of kindness is great isn't it, and all the while the neoliberal machine keeps thundering along…
Don't be so mean. Everything is absolutely wonderful. Beloved leader says so so it must be true.
On the other hand she said that her meeting with the Australian PM had been a great success. Perhaps she was talking about her future career after she get bounced from her current role next year.
I heard a suggestion that she and Clarke were going to become stand up comedians. She was practicing for that and her prepared patter at the meeting certainly seemed to cause much hilarity for the Australians didn't it? Scott Morrison and his colleagues were openly laughing at her complaints about the deportations.
ha – at least you're not trying to bully the baby anymore you sad sack of doggy doos
I don't believe I ever attempted to bully Jacinda Ardern.
What on earth are you dribbling on about, you sad little git?
yeah you’re real ignorant alright – make your idol t.rump look genius level
There are some details at
https://www.msd.govt.nz/about-msd-and-our-work/publications-resources/statistics/benefit/latest-quarterly-results/all-main-benefits.html
The main increase is in job seeker support and it would be interesting to know why given that many employers are struggling to find staff.
Like the Key government, and the Clark government before it, it's going to take over 2 parliamentary terms for the shine to come off this one, no matter the actual results.
And it goes both ways:
The shine WON'T come off inside two terms no matter the actual results – and the shine WILL come off after two terms no matter the actual results. Which points at an electorate detached from, and maybe unaware of, actual results. Depressing really. It results in an excellent government killed off by fear of low-energy light bulbs, and a terrible government surviving fiscally unnecessary public sector austerity.
The Ardern-Robertson Budget accountability framework will at least show the annual results on poverty alleviation to hold them to.
I have a sneaky feeling the media will warm to that task.
Meanwhile, at the other end of the pay scale
Cream at the top for public sector chief executives
Public sector salaries are once again under the spotlight after the announcement that Christchurch City Council's new chief executive will earn almost $500,000. But are they really that bad? DOMINIC HARRIS investigates.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/114345078/cream-at-the-top-for-public-sector-chief-executives
A good read.
National MP and climate change spokesperson Todd Muller, supports the government's low emission vehicle rebate policy.
Simon Bridges and the National Party oppose it.
https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/shows/2019/07/the-pitch-national-s-climate-spokesperson-supports-govt-electric-vehicle-policy-despite-party-opposition.html
I would dispute Todd Muller's disapproval of old cars as at 87 I have been driving for over sixty years, all sorts of vehicles from Trucks to 50cc motorcycles with few problems. Most of which were old and now have a 14yo WV which looks like new to me when washed and waxed, an import. Careful driving and responsible attention to road and conditions rather than arbitary rules.
Driving experience is important and I am sure this started for me as my grand dad drive our 1937 Morris 8 with me beside him sitting on Nan's lap …. not that I would reccomend that 🙂 [no seat-belts in those days]
Plus cycling to school in the easy days before the roads were littered with cars during WWII.
Then there are JAG's speed changes. A good driver slows when the road suggest it and driving in America it was a constant worry looking out for endless speed restriction signs … apart from motorways which are a delight to drive on often above the limi when safe as no cars around and long distances to be covered.
It seems silly to reduce speed limits when all new imported cars are capable and safe at well over the limits.
Regrettably there are too few responsible drivers and car owners like yourself.
Fresh regulation occurs when the system overall is failing. (usually 😉 )
With the road toll and urban air pollution as it is, we need new regulation.
Western Elites Spruik Media Freedom While Torturing Julian Assange In Belmarsh Supermax.
Jim Mora, Chris Knox, Denise L’Estrange-Corbet, Graham Bell, Australian prime minister Scott Morrison and other such worthies are amused no end by Assange’s persecution and suffering, but serious people, like the Australian psychologist Dr Lissa Johnson don’t see the funny side….
Thanks Morrissey, interesting ‘perspective’, but Prof. Nils Melzer is just "one academic, and like lawyers, I can provide you with another one that will give you a counterview."
Hold. Hold. Wait for it…
Ha, ha, ha, Mr. Kram. Thanks for spoiling this lovely afternoon with that repellent flashback.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tfUozKMgA-Y
Deeper look at some of the aspects of the simple question – worthwhile read imo
The Grauniad?!?!?!?!?
WTF, marty?
http://www.medialens.org/index.php/alerts/alert-archive/2019/894-dump-the-guardian.html
Or you could read the article Marty linked to. It was quite interesting.
Yes, I know that. Just be careful, that’s all. The Grauniad is dodgy, to say the least.
http://www.medialens.org/index.php/alerts/alert-archive/2019/894-dump-the-guardian.html
yet you refuse to accept the truth – when will you front up moonbreen
And yet, and I can't stress this enough, that particular link to the Guardian was incredibly pertinent to the times we live in, the rise of fascism from the dustbin of history. Or so we thought – maybe we just hadn't wanted to notice that the lid wasn't shuit on the dustbin.
You want to bitch about the Guardian not meeting your approval. That's your thing. Ok. I'm fucking worried about if there's anything I can do to stop these bastards, because they will end up killing us all quicker than climate change ever would. Physics doesn't care if we live or die. Fascists actively want to kill all non-fascists. Not just over there, over here, too.
We need to maximise inclusion. That means learning new things about how our behaviour excludes or intimidates groups of people, even if innocently intended.
Putting up with the paradox of tolerance meaning that we have to exclude people with whom there is no compromise on exclusion isn't enough. That's the pointy bit of the pyramid. But the wider bit, about avoiding unintended exclusion, That's what the pointy bit sits on.
So what are your specific thoughts on the Guardian article? Given that you know that the article was quite interesting, what are your thoughts on the topic?
Kirk out
verb
https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Kirk%20out
National Party embedded journalist, Stacey Kirk, kirks out of journalism. This is yet another example of a right wing media person throwing their toys and quitting because the National Party are in opposition.
True to form, her letter of resignation is nothing more than a John Key puff piece, mentioning him, oh, a dozen or so times.
https://i.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/114165092/conflict-scandal-eventually-progress–its-a-hard-road-making-a-difference-but-thats-politics
It's the ones who make no attempt to stay neutral who don't last. Bye Stacey, your partisan scribblings will not be missed.
Watch now for the announcement she has joined the National Party press team. She will have returned home.
Great news. Though it says she's going to "a new public service career".
I read that as her imagining she's been doing public service work thus far, and is embarking on what she imagines is new public service work, ie press secretary for the National Party.
One of the comments after her piece on John Key suggested she left because she didn't get the political editor job after her mate Tracy Watkins left.
Here's who did:
https://i.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/114251734/stuff-appoints-new-political-editor-to-lead-parliamentary-team
Another RWNJ.
Notice that the puff piece from Kirk used a bold photo of Key and English and a small one showing mostly Jacinda's hair.
Sad that a replacement will probably be a Trump trained mouth.
Love how she frames her whole departure as if she's rilly smart and getting out on top just like that John guy whose loafers she tongued for so long.
Heh heh, Ozzies passing themselves off as the 4th Island of NZ again…
http://www.dailyviewsonline.com/cultura/Nuova-Zelanda-leader-dice-che-CI-manca-di-interesse-in-Asia-Pacifico-h16263.html
Interesting. US govt working to get someone out of Swedish jail.. https://www.stuff.co.nz/world/americas/114384085/trump-weighs-in-on-rapper-asap-rocky-we-hope-to-get-him-home-soon
The things a million dollar inaugural gift to tRump can buy.
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) will not halt a pesticide linked with brain damage from being sprayed on crops, the agency said Thursday in response to a lawsuit.
Chlorpyrifos, known on the market as Lorsban, is used on a wide variety of crops, including corn and cranberries, and farmers often call it a last line of defense against certain insects.
A federal appeals court in April gave the EPA 90 days to decide how to deal with the pesticide.
Environmental groups have long contended it’s dangerous and have spent years suing the EPA to end its agricultural use. Studies have linked chlorpyrifos to learning and memory issues and prolonged nerve and muscle stimulation.
https://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/453777-epa-allows-continued-use-of-pesticide-linked-with-brain-damage
Bolton invokes Hague Invasion act.
https://twitter.com/DeepPolitics/status/1152100676069154817
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Service-Members%27_Protection_Act
Whilst lawful under US legislation, is it ethical?
Nothings changed except for the removal of a cloak of respectability
Won't be much trouble getting new planes for the NZDF now that the Prime Minister and journalists got stranded in Melbourne when their official RNZAF 757 broke down with a computer malfunction.
Bet the PM ditches our own military service next time and just goes commercial.
Get it together RNZAF!
Here's Jacinda (about 7 mins in on the clip in the link below) talking about the planes
https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/politics/2019/07/prime-minister-jacinda-ardern-won-t-compare-climate-change-to-world-war-ii.html
Bernard Hickey calls out Jacinda
https://twitter.com/bernardchickey
Instead of raising benefits, the Minister of Finance would do better to bully and force seasonal employers to put their wages up, because that is where the workers are needed.
Instead we open the doors to foreigners with temporary visas just to get the apples and grapes in. So unemployed NEETS don't see enough attraction to work in season areas.
With Brexit, the US-China trade crisis pulling Chinese economic demand down, and now Iran heating up, and having one of the top two most exposed housing markets in the OECD, I see plenty of reason for the Minister of Finance to keep plenty of debt capacity in reserve.
Agree, wages for seasonal workers need to increase. However, a number of seasonal workers end up back on the benefit when the season is over. Additionally, higher benefits puts upward pressure on wages.
There is scope for loosening the purse strings a little and the extra expenditure will result in savings re improvements in social ills along with increased tax revenue via the economic stimulus due to the increased benefit spend. Nevertheless, loosening the purse strings is merely one option. Cuts could be made elsewhere.
Seems Grant has a blank cheque to tackle Mycoplasma bovis.
https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/politics/2018/06/grant-robertson-signs-blank-cheque-to-tackle-mycoplasma-bovis.html
And of course, there is that massive military spend.
Alternatively, they could look at taxing this lot (in the link below) a bit more
https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/114345078/cream-at-the-top-for-public-sector-chief-executives
Cool.
https://twitter.com/physicsJ/status/1141963963451621376
Justin Pemberton talks to Kim Hill this morning about the film Capital In The Twenty-First
https://www.rnz.co.nz/national/programmes/saturday/audio/2018705001/justin-pemberton-capital-in-the-twenty-first-century
this is heartbreaking
https://twitter.com/hashtag/insulin4all?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Ehashtag
Insulin manufacturers have basically done a Shkreli. Incrementally, rather than in one hit, so it didn't quite get the attention.
https://www.vox.com/2019/4/3/18293950/why-is-insulin-so-expensive
There's also a lot of expensive stuff that comes with it – injector pens, needles, blood glucose monitor, test strips etc. I pay a small fraction of what all that costs, thanks to what US right-wingers contemptuously dismiss as "socialised medicine." They'd much rather have ideological purity, readily available at the low, low cost of lots of dead poor people.
Playing footsie with the murderous Assad wasn't such a good idea.
As she runs for the Democratic nominee for president, Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-HI) also faces a primary challenge for her seat in the House. But if recent filings made by her political team are any indication, she’s not sweating.
Gabbard raised just $11 in the second quarter of 2019. That number does not factor in a $31 contribution refund, which means her campaign committee ended in the red during that three month period.
The committee spent just $8,828.59 during the quarter—almost all of which was on financial compliance—leaving it with just over $30,000 cash on hand.
The absence of any fundraising or spending on her House race has left political observers with the impression that Gabbard may not return to Congress at all if her White House bid falls short. By contrast, during this quarter in the 2018 election cycle, Gabbard brought in more than $225,000 in net contributions, per federal filings.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/tulsi-gabbard-raised-negative-dollar20-for-her-house-campaign?
Fuckers are lining up their ducks.
https://twitter.com/CENTCOM/status/1152360605665452032