I am increasingly thinking that cities like Auckland are on the wrong track in moving towards a more centralised organisation. I want to link together comments from a couple of threads yesterday.
On the lost in suburbia thread, a couple of us argued for decentralisation:
I commented on the way the shift to Auckland supercity has meant more people traveling across and into Auckland, and more cultural establishments/buildings etc being situated in the centre of Auckland:
Penny Bright, on open mike last night, provides evidence of a conflict of interest involved in the buying of the ASB building by the Auckland Council, in order to make it a bigger HQ for the council:
It seems Peter George Wall is both one of 2 directors of the business, Brookfield Multiplex, that currently owns the building. He is also on the executive team of Auckland Council Property Ltd.
All this Auckland Council centralisation seems to be in the interests of the cultural and business elite in central Auckland. This is what those of us in west and South Auckland didn’t want when we voted Brown for mayor, rather than Banks. But it seems the crony capitalists of central Auckland are still getting their way, while a large proportion of the less wealthy and powerful languish in the suburbs.
I should temper this argument with acknowledgement that some local boards have significant plans to upgrade their areas as important living and working hubs (e.g. in New Lynn and Massey), but those boards have been created to have less power than the top of the Auckland Council pyramid.
It is the most spectacular legislated monopoly, and those characteristics get really evident within the CCOs.
In terms of supporting elites, my principle concern is that there is a helluvalot being spent on transport capex, but very little on social housing, directed toward softening the massive housing crisis.
Are there any structural changes proposed for this CCO setup from either the Greens or Labour?
Pretty unfortunate the way Brownlee squashed the Mayor’s ideas for alternative funding. The alternative funding package is the gap between business as usual and the Auckland Plan targets i.e. no alternative funding, probably no rail tunnel, probably no Avondale-Southdown line, probably no Harbour tunnel, etc etc. AucklandTransportBlog have been the best at holding Tranport CCO to account.
Could probably do with a property-focussed blog to scrutinize as well.
Here’s the problem for Len. He won. National had Rodney Hide ram through the Super City annexation through Parliament under urgency for one purpose and one purpose only, to ease and speed the sale of Auckland’s Assets.
The ridiculously named ‘Council Controlled Organizations’ were stacked with right wing appointees to quietly work on ‘asset rationalization’ far from public and SuperCity Council scrutiny.
[..]
Len is very good at bringing people to the table, but this is a fight, not a meeting of minds. Len has got to stop being the weak nice guy and actually throw some punches at the Government or else come election time he’ll be perceived to have stood for nothing more than siding with the Ports over their disgusting bullyboy tactics against the union.
Auckland is an isthmus. Cities like London grew out of villages that then grew and connected up, making rail much more efficient since they just place the stations under.
Auckland is an isthmus. Long ago Auckland should have been creating a line of town centers leading south, and have by now connected them with stations in the town centers, not a km off to the side.
NZ will be forever be shackled in its growth due to the Aucklands nature limitations.
Pro-democracy Labour Branches, LECs and Sector groups must have their Amendments to the NZ Councils proposed rules lodged by the end of August. They need to watch the four month rule.
Read the full Constitution carefully and look at where the rule changes remove or shrink many components of democracy. There is some erroneous guidance in emails from the Gen Sec as to what the NZ Council and the Conference can and cannot decide. Get stuck onto the nuts and bolts of how our party works. Much of the findings of the advisory group that visited all the regions (Rick Barker et al) has had the eyes picked out of it. The time has come for those who see the big picture to roll up their sleeves and to get stuck in. Otherwise the democracy of the Labour Party will be pulled from under your feet. BE ALERT.
It’s interesting isn’t it. We all have our barrows to push. Living where I do, I cannot understand why the park and ride at Silverdale was stopped, and Penlink put on the back burner.
Looking at the broader picture, the secrecy that can veil the CCOs is a real worry. In most jobs transparency is crucial, why is politics the exception?
Silverdale Park and Ride is waiting for the private developer to get their shit together.
Penlink just didn’t have the benefits to go in front of things like AMETI or Tiverton-Wolverton or such. It’s still in the RLTP, just a few years back.
Interestingly, upon CNN this am, discussion of wealthy Americans fleeing (my choice of action word) North America.
Fleeing to settle some place else. possibly the new frontier of the antipodean “wild, wild, west”
Well, theres a “new sherriff in town” and “this town aint big enough for the both of US”
(long memories and short, slow, boat to China)
But they sure do have some big guns on those battle-ships, settling further across the Pacific.
What happened to the investigation into The Living Wage? All gone quiet on that front. The more I read about the struggle to put food on the table and a roof over heads, the living wage seems a better and better idea.
Its okay to discriminate, as long as you don’t tell anyone why you are, and its not obvious.
You are bleeding kidding me, NZ is not about fairness, fairness only happens when the
politicians fear upsetting you. And that means only the rich at the moment gets them stressed.
You much remember that hopelessly stupid statement must be ridiculed if they come from
a poor person, but if Glen says wifes turn to seeking status, you cannot point out that his whole
purpose in working is to create status for himself. As we know, work is essential part of
a person identity, that’s the whole basis for the work testing, that the state has the right
to tell poor people to get work since work is good for them. Living wage, not going to happen
until we have mass movements that government shits itself rather than awaken from their apathy.
The title of this website: https://www.myopinioncounts.co.nz/home.php
purports to encourage people to express opinions, but it is possible that by signing in all that would happen would be to add to the number of people they would claim support smoking. Has anyone signed in and fund out whether it is possible to then express an opinion? Or see the opinions of others? Are any of those opinions against the Philip Morris views, or does my opinion not count?
It also enables the company to get hold of addresses so they can send out ‘newsletters’ – branded and colour-coded. Stealth marketing at it’s most cynical, I reckon.
The “information we share” section in the privacy policy gives a pretty open indication that their ‘affiliates’ will contact the subscriber.
Will those ‘newsletters’ breach any law, in fact it’s a perfectly legal product, tobacco that is, so what actual right have you or anyone else got to interfere in my or anyone else’s legal use of a legal product…
Kronic BS no body has died from that rubbish yet so it should be legalized according to your analogy.
If tobacco was a new product to the market it would immediately be made illegal and those pushing it would be locked up for a very long time.
All other illegal drugs used in NZ since have caused less than deaths in a 100 years less than 500 than tobacco does in one year. That’s less than 0.1%yet the laws against these illegal drugs are draconian by comparison.
Laugh, Yes if i read all the comments in the debate on ‘tobacco’ in today’s Open Mike it appears that there are more than a few that know what’s best for me,
So much so that when i ask a logical question like, IF as the produced stats say, tobacco use has declined by 6% since 1999, where in the health stats is the equivalent decline in the deaths from heart disease, there is no answer,
Heart disease is a biggy for the ASH fanatics to have included in the statistics of tobacco use caused deaths and as the ASH fanatics didn’t really get called on the Bullshit of ”tobacco use MIGHT cause heart disease”, on cigarette packets that has now graduated to the even bigger Bullshit of ”tobacco use CAUSES heart disease”,
In today’s debate i have been ”playing with a straight bat”,but, can anyone imagine the ‘Bizniss’ Government of National really going after the tobacco industry???,
Hardly, National have just seized upon a perfect means of revenue raising through tobacco excise tax which directly attacks the income of those mostly on low incomes who are the majority by far of tobacco users knowing that ‘the left’ wont object because the justification for such tax is coming directly from ‘professional lefty’s in the health system’…
who are the majority by far of tobacco users knowing that âthe leftâ wont object because the justification for such tax is coming directly from âprofessional leftyâs in the health systemââŠ
Yes, I have always seen it as a class thing! The uppers drink fine wine, and the lowers smoke.
I’m not interfering in your use of the product. However I’d prefer you didn’t use it in spaces we may share. I’m interested in whether the people who profit from that product continue to market it. Surely marketing has no effect on smokers – so there is no reason for you to be concerned if that is restricted.
When the stated aim of Government is to have ‘NZ smoke-free by 2020’ then everything Government does after making such a pronouncement is an attempt to curtail the legal rights of a certain section of society,
I have the legal right to use tobacco products as does a tobacco company wishing to sell the product to me,
I agree with your right to not have me use those tobacco products in a public space that you at any time might occupy…
Yes, you have a legal right to use a product that they legally sell. My comment above is not about that – it was about whether this site will be used as a marketing tool.
And yes, it may breach the law if marketed in NZ – hence my interest in the privacy policy affiliates. Who are they? where are they based will that get around legal restrictions?
How do you feel about the tobacco companies’ right to market their product given that established smokers (like established drinkers and alcohol) say it has no impact on their use of the product? – because they are marketing, just look at the publicity since they launched the site – Who are they marketing it to? And if it is young non-smokers is that ethical, in your opinion?
Firstly, as a smoker of some 43 years i have yet to see the health profession put a time line on the ‘smoking kills’ inflamation, (as opposed to information),
Second,and i have posted this a number of times on this web-site and others, IF any Government were serious about having people QUIT smoking and NOT allowing those under 18 to use and become addicted to tobacco products that Government only need declare Tobacco to be in the same category as ‘party pills’, make it’s continuing use a matter of doctors prescription to manage those presently addicted and disallow anyone presently under the age of 18 from being able to register as an addict,
The fact is that it is YOU, the likes of ASH, and various others who do not smoke who in fact are the TOOLS being used by Government to allow my legal rights to use a legal product to be continually infringed upon,
How do i feel about tobacco company’s being able to advertize, on one level i don’t give a toss,plain packaging will only restrict smokers with a taste,habit,addiction to a particular brand, the young when they smoke, mostly unable to afford whole packet purchases, will smoke any old tobacco that is available,
Having said the above, i come full circle, as tobacco is a legal product Government does not in my opinion have the legal right to restrict the products advertising anymore than it does any other legal product available to be sold…
So after an irrelevant 3 paragraph rant (I’ve not said anything that infringes your right to smoke, except that I’d prefer you didn’t smoke in places we might share), you finally [sort of] address the questions by basically saying you couldn’t give a toss if giant corporates market their addictive product to young people. Good-oh.
Being a tool of politicians and ASH loony’s seems to have it’s health side-effects like tobacco use, seems to have made you go both blind and lose any sense of comprehension at the same time,
In spite of all the current restrictions, in spite of the rack raising of excise tax on tobacco products, in spite of the only advertizing on TV concerning tobacco products being the anti- attempt at brainwashing, the young (and by that i mean under the age of 18), continue to take up tobacco use at the same rates they did prior to the concerted efforts to stop them,
In the young,and here i address college aged kids there is now a definite ‘black-market’ in tobacco products, it is not as yet confined in a ‘young criminal element’ it is a floating market in the nature of whomever can get their hands upon the product on any given day sells to their mates at the rate of 2 bucks a ciggy,
Such a growing black-market does not differentiate over product brands and tends to suggest that those under the age of 18, supposedly those who the plain packaging is aimed at, will not be effected one iota by such plain packaging as a deterrent…
Daily smoking rates for 14â15 year olds have declined considerably since 1999. Between 1999 and 2009, the prevalence of daily smoking declined by 65 percent for boys in this age group (from 14 percent to 5 percent) and by 63 percent for girls (from 17 percent to 6 percent).
I reckon it’s worth continuing to restrict advertising to until there is a clear picture on this – because the later people start smoking, the less likely addiction is to take hold. And seeing as advertising doesn’t affect your right to smoke one iota, I can’t for the life of me see why you have a problem with this. I mean if I had my way I’d restrict all advertising – consumer culture of whatever type does nobody, nor the environment, any good.
Or, because of the demonization of ‘smoking’ the number of young people willing to admit that they use tobacco products is declining,
My view= a bit of both…
Heres another for the statistically minded, if in 20 years the use of tobacco products has fallen by 6% where in the health statistics is the corresponding fall in the New Zealand rate of those who die of Heart Disease,(the use of tobacco products supposedly now a major cause of such)…
I reckon itâs worth continuing to restrict advertising to until there is a clear picture on this â because the later people start smoking, the less likely addiction is to take hold.
Utter nonsense! I started when I was 27, having spent all of my childhood and teens very a self-righteous anti-smoking prat. I quit a few years later, then started again when I was 37!
The snobbery element is very strong. The upper class kids I meet are all ‘Oh get that cigarette away from me, you scruffy old biddy’. The lower class kids smoke. If I were in any trouble, I’d far rather ask a smoker for help – a non-smoker would want to spend hours, days or weeks telling me why whatever problem I had was my own fault for being (a) old (b) a beneficiary (c) a smoker (d) poor and/or (e) unmarried.Â
This even if all I wanted them to do was help me change a lightbulb as I’m 1.5 metres tall and the ceiling is 2.5 metres! đ
Bad12 – I’m quite happy to leave extrapolating Japanese non-smokers’ heart disease with New Zealand smokers’ heart disease to you. Similarly the effects of increasingly poor diets and increasing rates of inactivity leading to rises in heart disease compared with reduced heart disease from reduced smoking rates.
Vicky32 – yeah, I had my first cigarette when I was about 12, gave up when I was 15 because it was no good for the baby đ But I do realise that individual experiences, while important, are not necessarily significant in terms of the overall population.
Vicky32 – it would appear that you are indeed no longer “anti-smoking”, but i for one would question whether you have moved on from being “a self-righteous prat”. Maybe you could add “classist” to this self-assessment?
make itâs continuing use a matter of doctors prescription to manage those presently addicted and disallow anyone presently under the age of 18 from being able to register as an addict,
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I quite agree bad, and I’d guess that when the govt gets to the point of banning smoking that that is exactly what it will do (as opposed to just making tobacco illegal).
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I don’t really see what the problem is. If you don’t mind sales being restricted in this way, and you are happy to not smoke around other people, then what’s wrong?
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Also, you use the term legal right as if you have free access to smoking. You don’t. Tobacco is already subject to a number of laws, including around sale, who can grow it, and where it can be used. Even when I smoked 30 years ago there were laws regulating tobacco. It’s been a long time since there was any degree of freedom around tobacco.
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Do you not tho see the arse about face nature of the present situation, we have a Government saying that in an effort to FORCE me to not use a product that is legally for sale across the nation i will be forced to pay more and more for that product through the addition of excise taxes,
IF tobacco products are able to be legally sold which they are where then does any Government have the legal right to try and force me not to use the product???…
Ok, that probably got lost in the ranting đ
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Yes, the first point makes completes sense. I would be highly annoyed if my drug of choice had increasing taxes put on it. And I also agree that there are social justice issues here.
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The second point I disagree with. Tobacco already has many restrictions on its legality, and the govt definitely has the right to increase restrictions where there is a public health risk (which there patently is).
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Instead of increasing taxes they should just go straight to prescription only. And people should be allowed to grow their own. But which govt is going to do that?Â
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btw, alcohol has a massive tax on it. Are you in favour of that being taken off?
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How about petrol?
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Road user charges?
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My point being that the Government is trying to force me to STOP using a legal product,
The intention as stated by Government is ‘for a smoke-free New Zealand by such and such a date’
Therein lies the difference between taxes on other products that you list, the stated intention for those taxes is to cover the additional cost to the community of those using those products,
No,no,no,tobacco has restrictions upon where and to who it can be sold to and from, these are not restrictions on tobacco’s overall legality as a product sold…
OK, so maybe it’s more akin to not allowing people to use woodburners in Chch anymore, or bringing in legislation to reduce car emissions. From a public health perspective, it makes sense and I don’t have a problem with the govt’s intention. I do have an ethical problem with taxing the poor though.
Do you have a link to the govts plant to enforce smoke free by 2020?
No idea, but they’re using some fairly manipulative copy on that site. For instance the visual saying Outdoor Smoking Bans? (read more), then slides across to show Behind Closed Doors? (read more). My immediate thought was it would be about plans to ban people smoking at home, but it’s merely that shops will no longer be allowed to display brands to customers.
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The only thing I can see that shows what joining does is this. It doesn’t really make sense though.
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From time to time, membership of this website will help you:
Stay informed about current and pending proposals
Share your views with politicians and other key decision makers
Yes to the first 2 questions,No to the 3rd, don’t know to the 4th, and on the 5th as it’s a web-site specifically set up by a tobacco company to gauge the opinion of those who use tobacco products i would guess it’s a big YES your opinion on that particular web-site don’t count,
The fact that from the Government on down to the ‘average wowzing wanker in the street’ want to prohibit me from using what is a perfectly legal product points to a serious case of the asylum of Western democracy definitely being taken over by the loony’s,
Tobacco company’s do not need to inflate the numbers of those who ‘support smoking’, there are approximately 600,000 of us and as the site is in it’s infancy, (the ASH fanatics having had a 20 year head start), it will be interesting to see what, if anything, comes from a ‘smokers web-site’,
Should this ”smokers web-site’ be able to bring together a large proportion of those who use tobacco products their will obviously be political ramifications and i would hope at least 1 high Court case testing the Government’s legality in it’s stated attempts to stop people from using what is a perfectly legal product…
Anyone else who posts to NZ Herald online comments noticed their annoying habit of removing links and references from posts.
It gives an entirely false impression of your posts.
It makes the post look like made up unsupported opinion instead of something based on research and study.
It makes quotes in the original appear as the writers own writing.
Anyway, it misrepresents the contributors actual posting.
Maybe it is because, so called, “reporters” do not like to give references in their own articles. I suspect so that it is harder to catch them out in their lack of research, knowledge and objectivity. To often I have managed to find the research or paper the News article is based on, to find the newspaper article oversimplifies or totally misrepresents the original.
Ames takes a systematic look at the scores of rage killings in our public schools and workplaces that have taken place over the past 25 years. He claims that instead of being the work of psychopaths, they were carried out by ordinary people who had suffered repeated humiliation, bullying and inhumane conditions that find their origins in the “Reagan Revolution.” Looking through a carefully researched historical lens, Ames recasts these rage killings as failed slave rebellions.
I always read your links and I’m rarely disappointed.
Why do you think we have all of these “wage slave” and “temp slave” T-shirts and e-jokes around? Americans like to turn everything painfully true into a little quip, as if by quippifying the painful truth, as if by becoming self-aware of one’s shameful and intolerable existence, one partially nullifies one’s pain. This is what you’d call “slave humor.” Slaves did the same thing, turning their pain into quips.
Oh yes. I’ve worked in the past subcontracting into a US company working on several large projects. At first it’s like living in a 24hr sitcom. You really can’t keep up with their non-stop wisecrack, one-liners and put-downs… I recall my sides hurting from it.
Yet after a month or so it started to turn sour. While at one level they were good people and a lot of fun to be with, at another more personal, intimate level I found them very guarded and brittle. You could only get to know them so far… and that was it.
Under all the fun was a lot of hard-arsed bitterness.
And when people are put into an insane, inhuman culture and simply expected to try and cope, increases in mental illness and addictive behaviours can be fully expected.
I don’t intend to dimiss Ames’s analysis. But I think it’s only a contributory part of the problem. The increased sense of dislocation and stress etc, imposed on individuals in a neo liberal market environment doesn’t lead to random killings. It leads to psychotropic drug prescriptions. And those drugs often cause mayhem if they are stopped abruptly or not taken in a regular enough fashion.
Having put this line of argument out before, I know that some people will want to respond that the drugs are helpful and so on. But to be honest, I’ve had that discussion and don’t see much point in having it again.
Suffice to say, there is a body of thought within US psychiatric circles that claims all instances of random killings for no apparent reason (ie, killings like this Batman one) have psychotropic meds as a common underlying factor. From scanning some previous incidents, it appears to be true….at least so far and in relation to the incidents I’ve found and read press reports for. But I haven’t seen any mention of medication in this case.
So, what I would appreciate is if anyone comes across a news article that states James Holmes had recently been on psychotropic meds and had either stopped taking them or wasn’t taking them as prescribed, that they’d throw a quick link up here. Cheers.
It seems to me that Ames consistently ignores one thing most of these mass shooters have in common – that they are usually men. I can’t actually remember any such mass shooting by a woman.
Ames talks about the perps in non-gendered terms as “people”, “slaves” etc.
Why is it mainly men who respond this way? It doesn’t require a male’s superior strength to pull a trigger.
It seems to me that Ames consistently ignores one thing most of these mass shooters have in common â that they are usually men. I canât actually remember any such mass shooting by a woman
Gee sure looks like the timing will really put pressure on the Senate…I guess the next few days will tell us how much. Of course the Senate would not be swayed by the prepared MSM machine…
Correction: Women Against Rape did not criticise Julian Assangeâs legal team
On 16-17 January 2011, Women Against Rape was quoted in a number of papers as âcriticisingâ Julian Assangeâs legal team for including the names of the women making allegations against Mr Assange in their skeleton argument.
The articles gave a misleading impression of our views. We never criticised or even mentioned Mr Assangeâs legal defence in our comment to the Press Association. Following our complaint, the PA apologised for their mistake by circulating the advisory below with our full quote. Can you please publish and/or circulate this correction.
Press Association wire 19 January at 1635:
ADVISORY: In 1 POLITICS WikiLeaks (ASSANGE LEGAL TEAM UNDER FIRE AFTER ACCUSERS NAMED), sent at about 0245, on January 16, we reported that legal representatives of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange had come under fire for inadvertently publicly naming two women who claim he raped them. Women Against Rape, which was quoted in the story, has asked us to make it clear that it did not criticise or even mention Mr Assangeâs legal team in their comment. The Press Association regrets that the story and its headline gave a misleading impression of the views expressed by Women Against Rape.
âšFor reference, the following is the full quote from Women Against Rape on the issue: âThe rape allegations against Julian Assange have become entangled with the politics centred on WikiLeaks. In the last few months this has led to the publication on the internet of the names of the women involved, and to a call for women who report rape to lose their anonymity. Rape victimsâ right to anonymity and defendantsâ right to be presumed innocent until proven guilty, are both crucial. We oppose the use of rape for political agendas which undermine protection and justice for both rape victim and accused. We are appalled that rape allegations may be manipulated to facilitate Mr Assangeâs extradition or even rendition to the US where elected officials have called for his execution for his Wikileaks activities. Women Against Rape cannot ignore this threat. We oppose the death penalty for any crime, let alone when no charges have been brought.âšend
Yeah, Whatever dude. Some women think it’s a CIA plot, and they’re practically lesbians what with being anti rape and all, so the criminal complaints don’t need to be investigated.
” âThe rape allegations against Julian Assange have become entangled with the politics centred on WikiLeaks.” – Yes they have, primarily by Julian Assange, who is worried about a rape conviction.
âThe rape allegations against Julian Assange have become entangled with the politics centred on WikiLeaks.â â Yes they have, primarily by Julian Assange, who is worried about a rape conviction.
You need to do some serious reading on this topic. At the moment, you are ignorant.
Well now its our turn to have EQC and insurers smack us in the head. Thought we were tootling through the queue for repairs only to get a copy of a report which is blatantly dishonest and incomplete. So much so that the main broken parts of the house were not even referenced in the report.
EQC’s approach is complete and utter bullshit. Our experience is that they are totally dishonest – for the purpose of avoiding their due liability. Which is in fact fraud – misrepresentation for the purpose of pecuniary gain.
Some words of advice: Never ever trust EQC or an insurance company. Do everything to your house to avoid ever having to make a claim.
The simple fact is that the insurance companies don’t have the money to pay out to have everything that’s covered fixed. That goes for EQC as well. There’s no way that they could have as: a) they planned around the normal earthquake risk which doesn’t include entire cities collapsing, b) they misestimated the actual costs involved for the rebuild and thus c) they then thought that they could set prices well below costs (See Fletcher’s dropping painting down from $25/m to $19/m).
C) is the direct result of capitalists thinking that workers don’t actually have costs to cover and thus can be paid as little as the capitalists want to pay
I hear that branch staff are being pressured to become sales people, being asked to literally go out door knocking to recruit new customers. If they don’t meet their targets they are being told that their jobs will be at risk.
And where is this high pressure sales drive coming from? Surprise surprise, we have a former Westpac senior banker now in charge of the former PSIS.
Alex Jones is not as enamoured by the Truth movement as you might think. He gets a certain level of respect for the years of exposing the media lies we all swallow and has tirelessy fought a good fight. He is also widely reagrded as a loud and often unstable voice with a tendancy to jump into rivers before checking their depth. His manner of attack and his willingness to throw baseless accusations into serious discussion and his ever growing ‘God is the way to truth!’ message costs him as many listeners as it wins him. There are also some great rumours that he is a deep cover co-intel operative….ooooh! For many who use InfoWars it is the excellent library of resources they offer and the very well researched articles by some of the staffers that have kept the place alive. It only took a few minutes for the first ‘it’s all a gov op’ stories to hit the wires. Then again Alex is not the only one throwing spurious accusations around on this story.
The media have as usual decided what they want you to believe. Early this a.m. NZ time, I watched a talking head breathlessly announce that an affiliate had spoken to the Mother of the shooter. It was reported at the time that the affiliate asked the woman if her son lived in Aurora Colorado? That was how it was reported. An inquiry to confirm the familial relationship. The Mother is reported to have said, “yes you have the right person”.
At the time this was reported as the mother simply confirming that her son lived in Aurora. This [most likely innocent] statement is now being reported twisted and corrupted by all networks as if the Mother was asked if she was aware that her son was the shooter and that her affirmation is stating she was aware her son was a sociopathic nutter. This thread of the story has already been so twisted and misrepresented that it has destroyed any possibility of the original broadcast ever being seen or heard of again.
PB, anyone who reads, thinks and forms opinions relying too much on any source, really is not in a good position to form opinions with any foundational basis, let alone cast them out in public.
If one is able to suspend bias and emotional attachments to reading matter, and reads enough variation over a period of time, it becomes very easy to spot BS at a distance.
The critical factor is being able to dethatch from bias, also known as pre conceived ideas, which explicitly requires the individual to know themself well.. Read from as many media sources as possible, left, right and centre from as many different angles as you can get. Speak with people you have some faith in, and check for people thoughts etc from decent blogs such as this site. Over time, if open enough, and free from bias, the words really will just reek of shit when you read them, or hear them,, its called using your intuition, which humans have had dulled/removed over the past decades, where they mostly believe what they are told, and that’s enough for them!
For mine, I am calling BS on this shooting spree, massive false flag, just like Norway, with too much else going on around the second amendment for years. See fast and furious, Eric Holder if you don’t know what I am talking about. This is all about attempting to disarm the American people, using the worst type of scare tactics you could imagine, and then bestowing to the UN even more sovereignty as the empowered authority in the global structure, once the treaty I linked to previously is signed!
Whatever the solution wanted by those in control actually is, could be varied from my thoughts around this event, but I still call false flag.
We have seen the “problem”, we are getting, and will get the “reaction” over the near term, as shaped by the MSM, which will lead to the “solution” being provided. Its really only once the solution is being offered forward that the agenda become clearer, but there is more than enough history around the second amendment to see where this event fits in.
Its tragic to see yet more innocent people used to create a desired outcome, but its standard MO, so its not in any way a surprise. The new “enemy” is being clearly defined, and was called some time back, its gone from “brown faces abroad” (even though they are still getting fucked), to “white faces” at home.
Just follow along the media narrative, as that will tell you much of the underlying intentions.
At the end of the day, we all get the society, and the puppet masters which we allow to create our environment for us, that society as a whole deserves!
Doesn’t look like the west deserves too much these days!
“Quite clearly analysing events without resorting to any pre-concieved ideas about whatâs going on there muzza. Yep.”
–Not at all, I read the early headlines, and some articles from this “shooting spree”, and drew my own conclusion, that it stinks.
Other statements above are my own conjecture on where this could tie in elsewhere, because little happens in silo. That does not mean one can’t evaluate something in silo, or not and still keep bias out. Just means you have to be prepared to factor various possibilities in as well.
“The new âenemyâ is being clearly defined, and was called some time back, its gone from âbrown faces abroadâ (even though they are still getting fucked), to âwhite facesâ at home.”
Yeah, they are clearly being oppressed. Here’s a list of them that have been disappeared by ZOG on obvioulsy trumped up charges following one of them there judicial activism rulings taking away their shootin irons. They’re probably all in FEMA camps.
SPLC, sponsored by “Hatewatch”…either way it illustrates nicely how the charade works in “media”.
Whatever this event, does or does not equal, is always going to be drowned in information of all, and every type imaginable, which of course is designed for no other reason than to misinform, and confuse.
Getting to opinion state is a matter of individual preferences, and a myriad of other factors, assuming people are putting a degree of effort into forming them!
And like I said, when the argument is made that guns protect your freedoms and liberties, ask why one or two incidents of voter fraud can be used to justify taking away the freedom and liberty to vote, yet graveyards full of dead fathers, mothers, sons and daughters are not justification to take away the liberty of gun nuts to stockpile weapons of mass murder and why Joe The Plumber gets to own a rack of bigger better guns than Paul The Policeman sent to stop him shooting his neighbours.
“sighâŠone a damning indictment and the other crackpot cynicism and dishonesty, Iâd certainly hope not muzza.”
–Thats a big sigh jo too much net time eh…. For mine an “unwell man” could be used as a false flag, quite easily in fact!
While not a big gun person myself, I will say that guns are not the problem. Simplistically its as bad as the article saying the Brits are capable of “adult conversation”, I almost snorted when I read that nonsense!
Lets just make sure that the “authorities and other assorted crooked officialdom” are the only tooled up people, I reckon society will be just peachy if that is achieved. / Gee, can you tell me another story papa!
Why do the Nats project so much of their own failings on to the opposition?
Paula Bennett – “social obligations”…. on parents on DBP? What about social obligations of the government to enable jobs that pay a living wage? To provide a livable society and environment?
Bill English – “planet Labour”…. as though NAct aren’t in their own neoliberal parallel universe that denies the reality of peak everything?
Steven Joyce – on Labour’s “fairytales” – and Joyce’s own little crony capitalist “reality” that denies the reality of the large numbers of people with low incomes and little power? And who believes in RONs as the road to prosperity?
Bill English 2008: “”No country can afford ongoing migration losses of this size relative to its total workforce. The problems are showing up most visibly in the professional workforce”.
Bill English 2012 : “What’s the point of standing in the airport crying about it?”
“In the immediate future, National’s infrastructure plan will create jobs and growth opportunities for businesses, while, in the medium-term, providing the conditions and assets needed to put our economy on to a strong growth path.
Away from the welfare changes, the economy dominated the day, with Finance Minister Bill English explaining the current economic downturn could last “a generation”.
âThe global economy is the dark cloud on the horizon and it’s not going away for a generation, certainly 15 or 20 years anyway,â says Mr English.
âWe’ve certainly had huge change,â says John Key. âIt will take some time to bounce back.â
If the 49% that the government plans to sell in MRP, GEN, MERI, end up in the hands of the community trusts that own the local network companies.
Then the companies can be run in the *genuine* interest of power consumbers, not private shareholders.
Solid Energy is one of the biggest employers on the West Coast. Imagine if the holding companies of Westland and Buller councils each purchased shareholdings?
The governments plan to dilute public ownership would be well and truly sunk.
Maybe you could add âclassistâ to this self-assessment?
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Locus, could you please explain what it is you mean by the above remark? Oh, by the whole posting? I am not a self-righteous prat, because I am not the one telling other people where they fail my high standards, and where they fall down…
A listing of 25 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, December 15, 2024 thru Sat, December 21, 2024. Based on feedback we received, this week's roundup is the first one published soleley by category. We are still interested in ...
Well, I've been there, sitting in that same chairWhispering that same prayer half a million timesIt's a lie, though buried in disciplesOne page of the Bible isn't worth a lifeThere's nothing wrong with youIt's true, it's trueThere's something wrong with the villageWith the villageSomething wrong with the villageSongwriters: Andrew Jackson ...
ACT would like to dictate what universities can and can’t say. We knew it was coming. It was outlined in the coalition agreement and has become part of Seymour’s strategy of “emphasising public funding” to prevent people from opposing him and his views—something he also uses to try and de-platform ...
Skeptical Science is partnering with Gigafact to produce fact briefs — bite-sized fact checks of trending claims. This fact brief was written by Sue Bin Park from the Gigafact team in collaboration with members from our team. You can submit claims you think need checking via the tipline. Are we heading ...
So the Solstice has arrived – Summer in this part of the world, Winter for the Northern Hemisphere. And with it, the publication my new Norse dark-fantasy piece, As Our Power Lessens at Eternal Haunted Summer: https://eternalhauntedsummer.com/issues/winter-solstice-2024/as-our-power-lessens/ As previously noted, this one is very ‘wyrd’, and Northern Theory of Courage. ...
The Natural Choice: As a starter for ten percent of the Party Vote, âsaving the planetâ is a very respectable objective. Young voters, in particular, raised on the dire (if unheeded) warnings of climate scientists, and the irrefutable evidence of devastating weather events linked to global warming, vote Green. After ...
The Government cancelled 60% of Kāinga Ora’s new builds next year, even though the land for them was already bought, the consents were consented and there are builders unemployed all over the place. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāMōrena. Long stories short, the six things that mattered in Aotearoa’s political ...
Photo by CHUTTERSNAP on UnsplashEvery morning I get up at 3am to go around the traps of news sites in Aotearoa and globally. I pick out the top ones from my point of view and have been putting them into my Dawn Chorus email, which goes out with a podcast. ...
Over on Kikorangi Newsroom's Marc Daalder has published his annual OIA stats. So I thought I'd do mine: 82 OIA requests sent in 2024 7 posts based on those requests 20 average working days to receive a response Ministry of Justice was my most-requested entity, ...
Welcome to the December 2024 Economic Bulletin. We have two monthly features in this edition. In the first, we discuss what the Half Year Economic and Fiscal Update from Treasury and the Budget Policy Statement from the Minister of Finance tell us about the fiscal position and what to ...
The NZCTU Te Kauae Kaimahi have submitted against the controversial Treaty Principles Bill, slamming the Bill as a breach of Te Tiriti o Waitangi and an attack on tino rangatiratanga and the collective rights of Tangata Whenua. âThis Bill seeks to legislate for Te Tiriti o Waitangi principles that are ...
I don't knowHow to say what's got to be saidI don't know if it's black or whiteThere's others see it redI don't get the answers rightI'll leave that to youIs this love out of fashionOr is it the time of yearAre these words distraction?To the words you want to hearSongwriters: ...
Our economy has experienced its worst recession since 1991. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāMōrena. Long stories short, the six things that matter in Aotearoa’s political economy around housing, climate and poverty on Friday, December 20 in The Kākā’s Dawn Chorus podcast above and the daily Pick ‘n’ Mix below ...
Twas the Friday before Christmas and all through the week we’ve been collecting stories for our final roundup of the year. As we start to wind down for the year we hope you all have a safe and happy Christmas and new year. If you’re travelling please be safe on ...
The podcast above of the weekly ‘Hoon’ webinar for paying subscribers on Thursday night features co-hosts & talking about the year’s news with: on climate. Her book of the year was Tim Winton’s cli-fi novel Juice and she also mentioned Mike Joy’s memoir The Fight for Fresh Water. ...
The Government can head off to the holidays, entitled to assure itself that it has done more or less what it said it would do. The campaign last year promised to âget New Zealand back on track.â When you look at the basic promisesâto trim back Government expenditure, toughen up ...
Open access notables An intensification of surface Earth’s energy imbalance since the late 20th century, Li et al., Communications Earth & Environment:Tracking the energy balance of the Earth system is a key method for studying the contribution of human activities to climate change. However, accurately estimating the surface energy balance ...
Photo by Mauricio Fanfa on UnsplashKia oraCome and join us for our weekly ‘Hoon’ webinar with paying subscribers to The Kākā for an hour at 5 pm today.Jump on this link on YouTube Livestream for our chat about the week’s news with myself , plus regular guests and , ...
âLike you said, Iâm an unreconstructed socialist. Everybody deserves to get something for Christmas.ââONE OF THOSE had better be for me!â Hannah grinned, fascinated, as Laurie made his way, gingerly, to the bar, his arms full of gift-wrapped packages.âOf course!â, beamed Laurie. Depositing his armful on the bar-top and selecting ...
Data released by Statistics New Zealand today showed a significant slowdown in the economy over the past six months, with GDP falling by 1% in September, and 1.1% in June said CTU Economist Craig Renney. âThe data shows that the size of the economy in GDP terms is now smaller ...
One last thing before I quitI never wanted any moreThan I could fit into my headI still remember every single word you saidAnd all the shit that somehow came along with itStill, there's one thing that comforts meSince I was always caged and now I'm freeSongwriters: David Grohl / Georg ...
Sparse offerings outside a Te Kauwhata church. Meanwhile, the Government is cutting spending in ways that make thousands of hungry children even hungrier, while also cutting funding for the charities that help them. It’s also doing that while winding back new building of affordable housing that would allow parents to ...
It is difficult to make sense of the Luxon Coalition Governmentâs economic management.This end-of-year review about the state of economic management â the state of the economy was last week â is not going to cover the National Party contribution. Frankly, like every other careful observer, I cannot make up ...
This morning I awoke to the lovely news that we are firmly back on track, that is if the scale was reversed.NZ ranks low in global economic comparisonsNew Zealand's economy has been ranked 33rd out of 37 in an international comparison of which have done best in 2024.Economies were ranked ...
Remember those silent movies where the heroine is tied to the railway tracks or going over the waterfall in a barrel? Finance Minister Nicola Willis seems intent on portraying herself as that damsel in distress. According to Willis, this countryâs current economic problems have all been caused by the spending ...
Similar to the cuts and the austerity drive imposed by Ruth Richardson in the 1990’s, an era which to all intents and purposes we’ve largely fiddled around the edges with fixing in the time since – over, to be fair, several administrations – whilst trying our best it seems to ...
String-Pulling in the Dark: For the democratic process to be meaningful it must also be public. WITH TRUST AND CONFIDENCE in New Zealandâs politicians and journalists steadily declining, restoring those virtues poses a daunting challenge. Just how daunting is made clear by comparing the way politicians and journalists treated New Zealanders ...
Dear Nicola Willis, thank you for letting us know in so many words that the swingeing austerity hasn't worked.By in so many words I mean the bit where you said, Here is a sea of red ink in which we are drowning after twelve months of savage cost cutting and ...
The Open Government Partnership is a multilateral organisation committed to advancing open government. Countries which join are supposed to co-create regular action plans with civil society, committing to making verifiable improvements in transparency, accountability, participation, or technology and innovation for the above. And they're held to account through an Independent ...
Today I tuned into something strange: a press conference that didn’t make my stomach churn or the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end. Which was strange, because it was about the torture of children. It was the announcement by Erica Stanford — on her own, unusually ...
This is a must watch, and puts on brilliant and practical display the implications and mechanics of fast-track law corruption and weakness.CLICK HERE: LINK TO WATCH VIDEOOur news media as it is set up is simply not equipped to deal with the brazen disinformation and corruption under this right wing ...
NZCTU Te Kauae Kaimahi Acting Secretary Erin Polaczuk is welcoming the announcement from Minister of Workplace Relations and Safety Brooke van Velden that she is opening consultation on engineered stone and is calling on her to listen to the evidence and implement a total ban of the product. âWe need ...
The Government has announced a 1.5% increase in the minimum wage from 1 April 2025, well below forecast inflation of 2.5%. Unions have reacted strongly and denounced it as a real terms cut. PSA and the CTU are opposing a new round of staff cuts at WorkSafe, which they say ...
The decision to unilaterally repudiate the contract for new Cook Strait ferries is beginning to look like one of the stupidest decisions a New Zealand government ever made. While cancelling the ferries and their associated port infrastructure may have made this year's books look good, it means higher costs later, ...
Hi there! I’ve been overseas recently, looking after a situation with a family member. So apologies if there any less than focused posts! Vanuatu has just had a significant 7.3 earthquake. Two MFAT staff are unaccounted for with local fatalities.It’s always sad to hear of such things happening.I think of ...
Today is a special member's morning, scheduled to make up for the government's theft of member's days throughout the year. First up was the first reading of Greg Fleming's Crimes (Increased Penalties for Slavery Offences) Amendment Bill, which was passed unanimously. Currently the House is debating the third reading of ...
We're going backwardsIgnoring the realitiesGoing backwardsAre you counting all the casualties?We are not there yetWhere we need to beWe are still in debtTo our insanitiesSongwriter: Martin Gore Read more ...
Willis blamed Treasury for changing its productivity assumptions and Labour’s spending increases since Covid for the worsening Budget outlook. Photo: Getty ImagesMōrena. Long stories short, the six things that matter in Aotearoa’s political economy around housing, climate and poverty on Wednesday, December 18 in The Kākā’s Dawn Chorus podcast above ...
Today the Auckland Transport board meet for the last time this year. For those interested (and with time to spare), you can follow along via this MS Teams link from 10am. I’ve taken a quick look through the agenda items to see what I think the most interesting aspects are. ...
Hi,If you’re a New Zealander — you know who Mike King is. He is the face of New Zealand’s battle against mental health problems. He can be loud and brash. He raises, and is entrusted with, a lot of cash. Last year his “I Am Hope” charity reported a revenue ...
Probably about the only consolation available from yesterday’s unveiling of the Half-Yearly Economic and Fiscal Update (HYEFU) is that it could have been worse. Though Finance Minister Nicola Willis has tightened the screws on future government spending, she has resisted the calls from hard-line academics, fiscal purists and fiscal hawks ...
The right have a stupid saying that is only occasionally true:When is democracy not democracy? When it hasn’t been voted on.While not true in regards to branches of government such as the judiciary, it’s a philosophy that probably should apply to recently-elected local government councillors. Nevertheless, this concept seemed to ...
Long story short: the Government’s austerity policy has driven the economy into a deeper and longer recession that means it will have to borrow $20 billion more over the next four years than it expected just six months ago. Treasury’s latest forecasts show the National-ACT-NZ First Government’s fiscal strategy of ...
Come and join myself and CTU Chief Economist for a pop-up ‘Hoon’ webinar on the Government’s Half Yearly Economic and Fiscal Update (HYEFU) with paying subscribers to The Kākā for 30 minutes at 5 pm today.Jump on this link on YouTube Livestream to watch our chat. Don’t worry if ...
In 1998, in the wake of the Paremoremo Prison riot, the Department of Corrections established the "Behaviour Management Regime". Prisoners were locked in their cells for 22 or 23 hours a day, with no fresh air, no exercise, no social contact, no entertainment, and in some cases no clothes and ...
New data released by the Treasury shows that the economic policies of this Government have made things worse in the year since they took office, said NZCTU Economist Craig Renney. âOur fiscal indicators are all heading in the wrong direction â with higher levels of debt, a higher deficit, and ...
At the 2023 election, National basically ran on a platform of being better economic managers. So how'd that turn out for us? In just one year, they've fucked us for two full political terms: The government's books are set to remain deeply in the red for the near term ...
AUSTERITYText within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedMy spreadsheet insists This pain leads straight to glory (File not found) Read more ...
The NZCTU Te Kauae Kaimahi are saying that the Government should do the right thing and deliver minimum wage increases that donât see workers fall further behind, in response to todayâs announcement that the minimum wage will only be increased by 1.5%, well short of forecast inflation. âWith inflation forecast ...
Oh, I weptFor daysFilled my eyesWith silly tearsOh, yeaBut I don'tCare no moreI don't care ifMy eyes get soreSongwriters: Paul Rodgers / Paul Kossoff. Read more ...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections by Bob HensonIn this aerial view, fingers of meltwater flow from the melting Isunnguata Sermia glacier descending from the Greenland Ice Sheet on July 11, 2024, near Kangerlussuaq, Greenland. According to the Programme for Monitoring of the Greenland Ice Sheet (PROMICE), the ...
In August, I wrote an article about David Seymour1 with a video of his testimony, to warn that there were grave dangers to his Ministry of Regulation:David Seymour's Ministry of Slush Hides Far Greater RisksWhy Seymour's exorbitant waste of taxpayers' money could be the least of concernThe money for Seymour ...
Willis is expected to have to reveal the bitter fiscal fruits of her austerity strategy in the HYEFU later today. Photo: Lynn Grieveson/TheKakaMōrena. Long stories short, the six things that matter in Aotearoa’s political economy around housing, climate and poverty on Tuesday, December 17 in The Kākā’s Dawn Chorus podcast ...
On Friday the government announced it would double the number of toll roads in New Zealand as well as make a few other changes to how toll roads are used in the country. The real issue though is not that tolling is being used but the suggestion it will make ...
The Prime Minister yesterday engaged in what looked like a pre-emptive strike designed to counter what is likely to be a series of depressing economic statistics expected before the end of the week. He opened his weekly post-Cabinet press conference with a recitation of the Governmentâs achievements. âIt certainly has ...
This whooping cough story from south Auckland is a good example of the coalition governmentâs approach to social need – spend money on urging people to get vaccinated but only after youâve cut the funding to where they could get vaccinated. This has been the case all year with public ...
And if there is a GodI know he likes to rockHe likes his loud guitarsHis spiders from MarsAnd if there is a GodI know he's watching meHe likes what he seesBut there's trouble on the breezeSongwriter: William Patrick Corgan Read more ...
Here’s a quick round up of today’s political news:1. MORE FOOD BANKS, CHARITIES, DOMESTIC VIOLENCE SHELTERS AND YOUTH SOCIAL SERVICES SET TO CLOSE OR SCALE BACK AROUND THE COUNTRY AS GOVT CUTS FUNDINGSome of Auckland's largest foodbanks are warning they may need to close or significantly reduce food parcels after ...
Iain Rennie, CNZMSecretary and Chief Executive to the TreasuryDear Secretary, Undue restrictions on restricted briefings This week, the Treasury barred representatives from four organisations, including the New Zealand Council of Trade Unions Te Kauae Kaimahi, from attending the restricted briefing for the Half-Year Economic and Fiscal Update. We had been ...
This is a guest post by Tim Adriaansen, a community, climate, and accessibility advocate.I won’t shut up about climate breakdown, and whenever possible I try to shift the focus of a climate conversation towards solutions. But you’ll almost never hear me give more than a passing nod to ...
A grassroots backlash has forced a backdown from Brown, but he is still eyeing up plenty of tolls for other new roads. And the pressure is on Willis to ramp up the Government’s austerity strategy. Photo: Getty ImagesMōrena. Long stories short, the six things that matter in Aotearoa’s political economy ...
Hi all,I'm pretty overwhelmed by all your messages and emails today; thank you so very much.As much as my newsletter this morning was about money, and we all need to earn money, it was mostly about world domination if I'm honest. 😉I really hate what’s happening to our country, and ...
A listing of 23 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, December 8, 2024 thru Sat, December 14, 2024. Listing by Category Like last week's summary this one contains the list of articles twice: based on categories and based on ...
I started writing this morning about Hobson’s Pledge, examining the claims they and their supporters make, basically ripping into them. But I kept getting notifications coming through, and not good ones.Each time I looked up, there was another un-subscription message, and I felt a bit sicker at the thought of ...
Once, long before there was Harry and Meghan and Dodi and all those episodes of The Crown, they came to spend some time with us, Charles and Diana. Was there anyone in the world more glamorous than the Princess of Wales?Dazzled as everyone was by their company, the leader of ...
The collective right have a problem.The entire foundation for their world view is antiscientific. Their preferred economic strategies have been disproven. Their whole neoliberal model faces accusations of corporate corruption and worsening inequality. Climate change not only definitely exists, its rapid progression demands an immediate and expensive response in order ...
Just ten days ago, South Korea's president attempted a self-coup, declaring martial law and attempting to have opposition MPs murdered or arrested in an effort to seize unconstrained power. The attempt was rapidly defeated by the national assembly voting it down and the people flooding the streets to defend democracy. ...
Hi,“What I love about New Zealanders is that sometimes you use these expressions that as Americans we have no idea what those things mean!"I am watching a 30-something year old American ramble on about how different New Zealanders are to Americans. It’s his podcast, and this man is doing a ...
What Chris Penk has granted holocaust-denier and equal-opportunity-bigot Candace Owens is not “freedom of speech”. It’s not even really freedom of movement, though that technically is the right she has been granted. What he has given her is permission to perform. Freedom of SpeechIn New Zealand, the right to freedom ...
All those tears on your cheeksJust like deja vu flow nowWhen grandmother speaksSo tell me a story (I'll tell you a story)Spell it out, I can't hear (What do you want to hear?)Why you wear black in the morning?Why there's smoke in the air? Songwriter: Greg Johnson.Mōrena all ☀️Something a ...
National has only been in power for a year, but everywhere you look, its choices are taking New Zealand a long way backwards. In no particular order, here are the National Government's Top 50 Greatest Misses of its first year in power. ...
The Government is quietly undertaking consultation on the dangerous Regulatory Standards Bill over the Christmas period to avoid too much attention. ...
The Governmentâs planned changes to the freedom of speech obligations of universities is little more than a front for stoking the political fires of disinformation and fear, placing teachers and students in the crosshairs. ...
The Ministry of Regulationâs report into Early Childhood Education (ECE) in Aotearoa raises serious concerns about the possibility of lowering qualification requirements, undermining quality and risking worse outcomes for tamariki, whÄnau, and kaiako. ...
A Bill to modernise the role of Justices of the Peace (JP), ensuring they remain active in their communities and connected with other JPs, has been put into the ballot. ...
Labour will continue to fight unsustainable and destructive projects that are able to leap-frog environment protection under Nationalâs Fast-track Approvals Bill. ...
The Green Party has warned that a Green Government will revoke the consents of companies who override environmental protections as part of Fast-Track legislation being passed today. ...
The Green Party says the Half Year Economic and Fiscal Update shows how the Government is failing to address the massive social and infrastructure deficits our country faces. ...
The Governmentâs latest move to reduce the earnings of migrant workers will not only hurt migrants but it will drive down the wages of Kiwi workers. ...
Te PÄti MÄori has this morning issued a stern warning to Fast-Track applicants with interests in mining, pledging to hold them accountable through retrospective liability and to immediately revoke Fast-Track consents under a future Te PÄti MÄori government. This warning comes ahead of todayâs third reading of the Fast-Track Approvals ...
The Governmentâs announcement today of a 1.5 per cent increase to minimum wage is another blow for workers, with inflation projected to exceed the increase, meaning itâs a real terms pay reduction for many. ...
All the Government has achieved from its announcement today is to continue to push responsibility back on councils for its own lack of action to help bring down skyrocketing rates. ...
The Government has used its final post-Cabinet press conference of the year to punch down on local government without offering any credible solutions to the issues our councils are facing.   ...
The Government has failed to keep its promise to âsuper chargeâ the EV network, delivering just 292 chargers - less than half of the 670 chargers needed to meet its target. ...
The Green Party is calling for the Government to stop subsidising the largest user of the countryâs gas supplies, Methanex, following a report highlighting the multi-nationalâs disproportionate influence on energy prices in Aotearoa. ...
The Green Party is appalled with the Governmentâs new child poverty targets that are based on a new âpersistent povertyâ measure that could be met even with an increase in child poverty. ...
New independent analysis has revealed that the Governmentâs Emissions Reduction Plan (ERP) will reduce emissions by a measly 1 per cent by 2030, failing to set us up for the future and meeting upcoming targets.  ...
The loss of 27 kaimahi at Whakaata MÄori and the end of its daily news bulletin is a sad day for MÄori media and another step backwards for Te Tiriti o Waitangi justice. ...
Yesterday the Government passed cruel legislation through first reading to establish a new beneficiary sanction regime that will ultimately mean more households cannot afford the basic essentials. ...
Today's passing of the Government's Residential Tenancies Amendment Billâwhich allows landlords to end tenancies with no reasonâignores the voice of the people and leaves renters in limbo ahead of the festive season. ...
After wasting a year, Nicola Willis has delivered a worse deal for the Cook Strait ferries that will end up being more expensive and take longer to arrive. ...
Green Party co-leader Chlöe Swarbrick has today launched a Memberâs Bill to sanction Israel for its unlawful presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, as the All Out For Gaza rally reaches Parliament. ...
After years of advocacy, the Green Party is very happy to hear the Government has listened to our collective voices and announced the closure of the greyhound racing industry, by 1 August 2026. ...
In response to a new report from ERO, the Government has acknowledged the urgent need for consistency across the curriculum for Relationship and Sexuality Education (RSE) in schools. ...
The Green Party is appalled at the Government introducing legislation that will make it easier to penalise workers fighting for better pay and conditions. ...
Thank you for the invitation to speak with you tonight on behalf of the political party I belong to - which is New Zealand First. As we have heard before this evening the Kinleith Mill is proposing to reduce operations by focusing on pulp and discontinuing âlossmaking paper productionâ. They say that they are currently consulting on the plan to permanently shut ...
Auckland Central MP, Chlöe Swarbrick, has written to Mayor Wayne Brown requesting he stop the unnecessary delays on St James Theatreâs restoration. ...
Today, the Green Party of Aotearoa proudly unveils its new Emissions Reduction PlanâHe Ara Anamataâa blueprint reimagining our collective future. ...
Health Minister Dr Shane Reti says Health New Zealand will move swiftly to support dozens of internationally-trained doctors already in New Zealand on their journey to employment here, after a tripling of sought-after examination places. âThe Medical Council has delivered great news for hardworking overseas doctors who want to contribute ...
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon has appointed Sarah Ottrey to the APEC Business Advisory Council (ABAC). âAt my first APEC Summit in Lima, I experienced firsthand the role that ABAC plays in guaranteeing political leaders hear the voice of business,â Mr Luxon says. âNew Zealandâs ABAC representatives are very well respected and ...
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon has announced four appointments to New Zealandâs intelligence oversight functions. The Honourable Robert Dobson KC has been appointed Chief Commissioner of Intelligence Warrants, and the Honourable Brendan Brown KC has been appointed as a Commissioner of Intelligence Warrants. The appointments of Hon Robert Dobson and Hon ...
Improvements in the average time it takes to process survey and title applications means housing developments can progress more quickly, Minister for Land Information Chris Penk says. âThe government is resolutely focused on improving the building and construction pipeline,â Mr Penk says. âApplications to issue titles and subdivide land are ...
The Governmentâs measures to reduce airport wait times, and better transparency around flight disruptions is delivering encouraging early results for passengers ahead of the busy summer period, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says. âImproving the efficiency of air travel is a priority for the Government to give passengers a smoother, more reliable ...
The Government today announced the intended closure of the Apollo Hotel as Contracted Emergency Housing (CEH) in Rotorua, Associate Housing Minister Tama Potaka says. This follows a 30 per cent reduction in the number of households in CEH in Rotorua since National came into Government. âOur focus is on ending CEH in the Whakarewarewa area starting ...
The Government will reshape vocational education and training to return decision making to regions and enable greater industry input into work-based learning Tertiary Education and Skills Minister, Penny Simmonds says. âThe redesigned system will better meet the needs of learners, industry, and the economy. It includes re-establishing regional polytechnics that ...
The Government is taking action to better manage synthetic refrigerants and reduce emissions caused by greenhouse gases found in heating and cooling products, Environment Minister Penny Simmonds says. âRegulations will be drafted to support a product stewardship scheme for synthetic refrigerants, Ms. Simmonds says. âSynthetic refrigerants are found in a ...
People travelling on State Highway 1 north of Hamilton will be relieved that remedial works and safety improvements on the NgÄruawÄhia section of the Waikato Expressway were finished today, with all lanes now open to traffic, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says.âI would like to acknowledge the patience of road users ...
Tertiary Education and Skills Minister, Penny Simmonds, has announced a new appointment to the board of Education New Zealand (ENZ). Dr Erik Lithander has been appointed as a new member of the ENZ board for a three-year term until 30 January 2028. âI would like to welcome Dr Erik Lithander to the ...
The Government will have senior representatives at Waitangi Day events around the country, including at the Waitangi Treaty Grounds, but next year Prime Minister Christopher Luxon has chosen to take part in celebrations elsewhere. âIt has always been my intention to celebrate Waitangi Day around the country with different ...
Two more criminal gangs will be subject to the raft of laws passed by the Coalition Government that give Police more powers to disrupt gang activity, and the intimidation they impose in our communities, Police Minister Mark Mitchell says. Following an Order passed by Cabinet, from 3 February 2025 the ...
Attorney-General Judith Collins today announced the appointment of Justice Christian Whata as a Judge of the Court of Appeal. Justice Whataâs appointment as a Judge of the Court of Appeal will take effect on 1 August 2025 and fill a vacancy created by the retirement of Hon Justice David Goddard on ...
The latest economic figures highlight the importance of the steps the Government has taken to restore respect for taxpayersâ money and drive economic growth, Finance Minister Nicola Willis says. Data released today by Stats NZ shows Gross Domestic Product fell 1 per cent in the September quarter. âTreasury and most ...
Tertiary Education and Skills Minister Penny Simmonds and Associate Minister of Education David Seymour today announced legislation changes to strengthen freedom of speech obligations on universities. âFreedom of speech is fundamental to the concept of academic freedom and there is concern that universities seem to be taking a more risk-averse ...
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I am increasingly thinking that cities like Auckland are on the wrong track in moving towards a more centralised organisation. I want to link together comments from a couple of threads yesterday.
On the lost in suburbia thread, a couple of us argued for decentralisation:
I commented on the way the shift to Auckland supercity has meant more people traveling across and into Auckland, and more cultural establishments/buildings etc being situated in the centre of Auckland:
http://thestandard.org.nz/stranded-in-suburbia/comment-page-1/#comment-495847
Weka referred to “Australian sustainability expert David Holmgren” who argues for decentralising CBDs and creating more localised and accessible hubs.
http://thestandard.org.nz/stranded-in-suburbia/comment-page-1/#comment-495932
Penny Bright, on open mike last night, provides evidence of a conflict of interest involved in the buying of the ASB building by the Auckland Council, in order to make it a bigger HQ for the council:
http://thestandard.org.nz/open-mike-20072012/comment-page-1/#comment-495949
It seems Peter George Wall is both one of 2 directors of the business, Brookfield Multiplex, that currently owns the building. He is also on the executive team of Auckland Council Property Ltd.
All this Auckland Council centralisation seems to be in the interests of the cultural and business elite in central Auckland. This is what those of us in west and South Auckland didn’t want when we voted Brown for mayor, rather than Banks. But it seems the crony capitalists of central Auckland are still getting their way, while a large proportion of the less wealthy and powerful languish in the suburbs.
I should temper this argument with acknowledgement that some local boards have significant plans to upgrade their areas as important living and working hubs (e.g. in New Lynn and Massey), but those boards have been created to have less power than the top of the Auckland Council pyramid.
It is the most spectacular legislated monopoly, and those characteristics get really evident within the CCOs.
In terms of supporting elites, my principle concern is that there is a helluvalot being spent on transport capex, but very little on social housing, directed toward softening the massive housing crisis.
Are there any structural changes proposed for this CCO setup from either the Greens or Labour?
Pretty unfortunate the way Brownlee squashed the Mayor’s ideas for alternative funding. The alternative funding package is the gap between business as usual and the Auckland Plan targets i.e. no alternative funding, probably no rail tunnel, probably no Avondale-Southdown line, probably no Harbour tunnel, etc etc. AucklandTransportBlog have been the best at holding Tranport CCO to account.
Could probably do with a property-focussed blog to scrutinize as well.
Yes, the whole CCO set-up, and central government veto are at the heart of the problem. I see that bomber also blogged about it yesterday:
http://www.tumeke.blogspot.co.nz/2012/07/lens-12-2day-monthly-11million-dinner.html
Auckland is an isthmus. Cities like London grew out of villages that then grew and connected up, making rail much more efficient since they just place the stations under.
Auckland is an isthmus. Long ago Auckland should have been creating a line of town centers leading south, and have by now connected them with stations in the town centers, not a km off to the side.
NZ will be forever be shackled in its growth due to the Aucklands nature limitations.
Ah, but there lies some of Auckland’s potential future transport…. just like Maori did way back then – water transport – sail etc.
Now was that a good thing or a bad thing đ
Well talk to Len and sort it out. what’s the problem? Just as well John Banks didn’t get in, isn’t it?
Pro-democracy Labour Branches, LECs and Sector groups must have their Amendments to the NZ Councils proposed rules lodged by the end of August. They need to watch the four month rule.
Read the full Constitution carefully and look at where the rule changes remove or shrink many components of democracy. There is some erroneous guidance in emails from the Gen Sec as to what the NZ Council and the Conference can and cannot decide. Get stuck onto the nuts and bolts of how our party works. Much of the findings of the advisory group that visited all the regions (Rick Barker et al) has had the eyes picked out of it. The time has come for those who see the big picture to roll up their sleeves and to get stuck in. Otherwise the democracy of the Labour Party will be pulled from under your feet. BE ALERT.
It’s interesting isn’t it. We all have our barrows to push. Living where I do, I cannot understand why the park and ride at Silverdale was stopped, and Penlink put on the back burner.
Looking at the broader picture, the secrecy that can veil the CCOs is a real worry. In most jobs transparency is crucial, why is politics the exception?
Well you can hardly claim to be an anonymous donor if everything’s done in public, can you?
laaarf.
Silverdale Park and Ride is waiting for the private developer to get their shit together.
Penlink just didn’t have the benefits to go in front of things like AMETI or Tiverton-Wolverton or such. It’s still in the RLTP, just a few years back.
Interestingly, upon CNN this am, discussion of wealthy Americans fleeing (my choice of action word) North America.
Fleeing to settle some place else. possibly the new frontier of the antipodean “wild, wild, west”
Well, theres a “new sherriff in town” and “this town aint big enough for the both of US”
(long memories and short, slow, boat to China)
But they sure do have some big guns on those battle-ships, settling further across the Pacific.
What happened to the investigation into The Living Wage? All gone quiet on that front. The more I read about the struggle to put food on the table and a roof over heads, the living wage seems a better and better idea.
Its okay to discriminate, as long as you don’t tell anyone why you are, and its not obvious.
You are bleeding kidding me, NZ is not about fairness, fairness only happens when the
politicians fear upsetting you. And that means only the rich at the moment gets them stressed.
You much remember that hopelessly stupid statement must be ridiculed if they come from
a poor person, but if Glen says wifes turn to seeking status, you cannot point out that his whole
purpose in working is to create status for himself. As we know, work is essential part of
a person identity, that’s the whole basis for the work testing, that the state has the right
to tell poor people to get work since work is good for them. Living wage, not going to happen
until we have mass movements that government shits itself rather than awaken from their apathy.
Who was doing an “investigation” into the living wage?
The title of this website:
https://www.myopinioncounts.co.nz/home.php
purports to encourage people to express opinions, but it is possible that by signing in all that would happen would be to add to the number of people they would claim support smoking. Has anyone signed in and fund out whether it is possible to then express an opinion? Or see the opinions of others? Are any of those opinions against the Philip Morris views, or does my opinion not count?
It also enables the company to get hold of addresses so they can send out ‘newsletters’ – branded and colour-coded. Stealth marketing at it’s most cynical, I reckon.
The “information we share” section in the privacy policy gives a pretty open indication that their ‘affiliates’ will contact the subscriber.
Will those ‘newsletters’ breach any law, in fact it’s a perfectly legal product, tobacco that is, so what actual right have you or anyone else got to interfere in my or anyone else’s legal use of a legal product…
Kronic BS no body has died from that rubbish yet so it should be legalized according to your analogy.
If tobacco was a new product to the market it would immediately be made illegal and those pushing it would be locked up for a very long time.
All other illegal drugs used in NZ since have caused less than deaths in a 100 years less than 500 than tobacco does in one year. That’s less than 0.1%yet the laws against these illegal drugs are draconian by comparison.
Tobacco= legal product….
Bad12, We know what is best for you.
Laugh, Yes if i read all the comments in the debate on ‘tobacco’ in today’s Open Mike it appears that there are more than a few that know what’s best for me,
So much so that when i ask a logical question like, IF as the produced stats say, tobacco use has declined by 6% since 1999, where in the health stats is the equivalent decline in the deaths from heart disease, there is no answer,
Heart disease is a biggy for the ASH fanatics to have included in the statistics of tobacco use caused deaths and as the ASH fanatics didn’t really get called on the Bullshit of ”tobacco use MIGHT cause heart disease”, on cigarette packets that has now graduated to the even bigger Bullshit of ”tobacco use CAUSES heart disease”,
In today’s debate i have been ”playing with a straight bat”,but, can anyone imagine the ‘Bizniss’ Government of National really going after the tobacco industry???,
Hardly, National have just seized upon a perfect means of revenue raising through tobacco excise tax which directly attacks the income of those mostly on low incomes who are the majority by far of tobacco users knowing that ‘the left’ wont object because the justification for such tax is coming directly from ‘professional lefty’s in the health system’…
Yes, I have always seen it as a class thing! The uppers drink fine wine, and the lowers smoke.
I’m not interfering in your use of the product. However I’d prefer you didn’t use it in spaces we may share. I’m interested in whether the people who profit from that product continue to market it. Surely marketing has no effect on smokers – so there is no reason for you to be concerned if that is restricted.
When the stated aim of Government is to have ‘NZ smoke-free by 2020’ then everything Government does after making such a pronouncement is an attempt to curtail the legal rights of a certain section of society,
I have the legal right to use tobacco products as does a tobacco company wishing to sell the product to me,
I agree with your right to not have me use those tobacco products in a public space that you at any time might occupy…
Yes, you have a legal right to use a product that they legally sell. My comment above is not about that – it was about whether this site will be used as a marketing tool.
And yes, it may breach the law if marketed in NZ – hence my interest in the privacy policy affiliates. Who are they? where are they based will that get around legal restrictions?
How do you feel about the tobacco companies’ right to market their product given that established smokers (like established drinkers and alcohol) say it has no impact on their use of the product? – because they are marketing, just look at the publicity since they launched the site – Who are they marketing it to? And if it is young non-smokers is that ethical, in your opinion?
Firstly, as a smoker of some 43 years i have yet to see the health profession put a time line on the ‘smoking kills’ inflamation, (as opposed to information),
Second,and i have posted this a number of times on this web-site and others, IF any Government were serious about having people QUIT smoking and NOT allowing those under 18 to use and become addicted to tobacco products that Government only need declare Tobacco to be in the same category as ‘party pills’, make it’s continuing use a matter of doctors prescription to manage those presently addicted and disallow anyone presently under the age of 18 from being able to register as an addict,
The fact is that it is YOU, the likes of ASH, and various others who do not smoke who in fact are the TOOLS being used by Government to allow my legal rights to use a legal product to be continually infringed upon,
How do i feel about tobacco company’s being able to advertize, on one level i don’t give a toss,plain packaging will only restrict smokers with a taste,habit,addiction to a particular brand, the young when they smoke, mostly unable to afford whole packet purchases, will smoke any old tobacco that is available,
Having said the above, i come full circle, as tobacco is a legal product Government does not in my opinion have the legal right to restrict the products advertising anymore than it does any other legal product available to be sold…
So after an irrelevant 3 paragraph rant (I’ve not said anything that infringes your right to smoke, except that I’d prefer you didn’t smoke in places we might share), you finally [sort of] address the questions by basically saying you couldn’t give a toss if giant corporates market their addictive product to young people. Good-oh.
Being a tool of politicians and ASH loony’s seems to have it’s health side-effects like tobacco use, seems to have made you go both blind and lose any sense of comprehension at the same time,
In spite of all the current restrictions, in spite of the rack raising of excise tax on tobacco products, in spite of the only advertizing on TV concerning tobacco products being the anti- attempt at brainwashing, the young (and by that i mean under the age of 18), continue to take up tobacco use at the same rates they did prior to the concerted efforts to stop them,
In the young,and here i address college aged kids there is now a definite ‘black-market’ in tobacco products, it is not as yet confined in a ‘young criminal element’ it is a floating market in the nature of whomever can get their hands upon the product on any given day sells to their mates at the rate of 2 bucks a ciggy,
Such a growing black-market does not differentiate over product brands and tends to suggest that those under the age of 18, supposedly those who the plain packaging is aimed at, will not be effected one iota by such plain packaging as a deterrent…
Smoking in young people is declining
I reckon it’s worth continuing to restrict advertising to until there is a clear picture on this – because the later people start smoking, the less likely addiction is to take hold. And seeing as advertising doesn’t affect your right to smoke one iota, I can’t for the life of me see why you have a problem with this. I mean if I had my way I’d restrict all advertising – consumer culture of whatever type does nobody, nor the environment, any good.
Advertising needs to be banned. Once it is we’ll have a hell of a lot more wealth with which to work.
Or, because of the demonization of ‘smoking’ the number of young people willing to admit that they use tobacco products is declining,
My view= a bit of both…
Heres another for the statistically minded, if in 20 years the use of tobacco products has fallen by 6% where in the health statistics is the corresponding fall in the New Zealand rate of those who die of Heart Disease,(the use of tobacco products supposedly now a major cause of such)…
Utter nonsense! I started when I was 27, having spent all of my childhood and teens very a self-righteous anti-smoking prat. I quit a few years later, then started again when I was 37!
The snobbery element is very strong. The upper class kids I meet are all ‘Oh get that cigarette away from me, you scruffy old biddy’. The lower class kids smoke. If I were in any trouble, I’d far rather ask a smoker for help – a non-smoker would want to spend hours, days or weeks telling me why whatever problem I had was my own fault for being (a) old (b) a beneficiary (c) a smoker (d) poor and/or (e) unmarried.Â
This even if all I wanted them to do was help me change a lightbulb as I’m 1.5 metres tall and the ceiling is 2.5 metres! đ
Bad12 – I’m quite happy to leave extrapolating Japanese non-smokers’ heart disease with New Zealand smokers’ heart disease to you. Similarly the effects of increasingly poor diets and increasing rates of inactivity leading to rises in heart disease compared with reduced heart disease from reduced smoking rates.
Vicky32 – yeah, I had my first cigarette when I was about 12, gave up when I was 15 because it was no good for the baby đ But I do realise that individual experiences, while important, are not necessarily significant in terms of the overall population.
Vicky32 – it would appear that you are indeed no longer “anti-smoking”, but i for one would question whether you have moved on from being “a self-righteous prat”. Maybe you could add “classist” to this self-assessment?
I quite agree bad, and I’d guess that when the govt gets to the point of banning smoking that that is exactly what it will do (as opposed to just making tobacco illegal).
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I don’t really see what the problem is. If you don’t mind sales being restricted in this way, and you are happy to not smoke around other people, then what’s wrong?
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Also, you use the term legal right as if you have free access to smoking. You don’t. Tobacco is already subject to a number of laws, including around sale, who can grow it, and where it can be used. Even when I smoked 30 years ago there were laws regulating tobacco. It’s been a long time since there was any degree of freedom around tobacco.
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Do you not tho see the arse about face nature of the present situation, we have a Government saying that in an effort to FORCE me to not use a product that is legally for sale across the nation i will be forced to pay more and more for that product through the addition of excise taxes,
IF tobacco products are able to be legally sold which they are where then does any Government have the legal right to try and force me not to use the product???…
Ok, that probably got lost in the ranting đ
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Yes, the first point makes completes sense. I would be highly annoyed if my drug of choice had increasing taxes put on it. And I also agree that there are social justice issues here.
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The second point I disagree with. Tobacco already has many restrictions on its legality, and the govt definitely has the right to increase restrictions where there is a public health risk (which there patently is).
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Instead of increasing taxes they should just go straight to prescription only. And people should be allowed to grow their own. But which govt is going to do that?Â
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btw, alcohol has a massive tax on it. Are you in favour of that being taken off?
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How about petrol?
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Road user charges?
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My point being that the Government is trying to force me to STOP using a legal product,
The intention as stated by Government is ‘for a smoke-free New Zealand by such and such a date’
Therein lies the difference between taxes on other products that you list, the stated intention for those taxes is to cover the additional cost to the community of those using those products,
No,no,no,tobacco has restrictions upon where and to who it can be sold to and from, these are not restrictions on tobacco’s overall legality as a product sold…
OK, so maybe it’s more akin to not allowing people to use woodburners in Chch anymore, or bringing in legislation to reduce car emissions. From a public health perspective, it makes sense and I don’t have a problem with the govt’s intention. I do have an ethical problem with taxing the poor though.
Do you have a link to the govts plant to enforce smoke free by 2020?
It’s been pushed to 2025.
No idea, but they’re using some fairly manipulative copy on that site. For instance the visual saying Outdoor Smoking Bans? (read more), then slides across to show Behind Closed Doors? (read more). My immediate thought was it would be about plans to ban people smoking at home, but it’s merely that shops will no longer be allowed to display brands to customers.
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The only thing I can see that shows what joining does is this. It doesn’t really make sense though.
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I joined, but more to piss off the self-righteous than for any other reason! đ
Yes to the first 2 questions,No to the 3rd, don’t know to the 4th, and on the 5th as it’s a web-site specifically set up by a tobacco company to gauge the opinion of those who use tobacco products i would guess it’s a big YES your opinion on that particular web-site don’t count,
The fact that from the Government on down to the ‘average wowzing wanker in the street’ want to prohibit me from using what is a perfectly legal product points to a serious case of the asylum of Western democracy definitely being taken over by the loony’s,
Tobacco company’s do not need to inflate the numbers of those who ‘support smoking’, there are approximately 600,000 of us and as the site is in it’s infancy, (the ASH fanatics having had a 20 year head start), it will be interesting to see what, if anything, comes from a ‘smokers web-site’,
Should this ”smokers web-site’ be able to bring together a large proportion of those who use tobacco products their will obviously be political ramifications and i would hope at least 1 high Court case testing the Government’s legality in it’s stated attempts to stop people from using what is a perfectly legal product…
Anyone else who posts to NZ Herald online comments noticed their annoying habit of removing links and references from posts.
It gives an entirely false impression of your posts.
It makes the post look like made up unsupported opinion instead of something based on research and study.
It makes quotes in the original appear as the writers own writing.
Anyway, it misrepresents the contributors actual posting.
Maybe it is because, so called, “reporters” do not like to give references in their own articles. I suspect so that it is harder to catch them out in their lack of research, knowledge and objectivity. To often I have managed to find the research or paper the News article is based on, to find the newspaper article oversimplifies or totally misrepresents the original.
Neoliberalism: the weaponisation of economic theory
This is a very very good synopsis of what is going on.
http://www.zerohedge.com/contributed/2012-07-20/weaponization-economic-theory
Following another mass shooting in the US this 2005 interview with Mark Ames joins a few dots.
A Brief History of Rage, Murder and Rebellion.
Ames takes a systematic look at the scores of rage killings in our public schools and workplaces that have taken place over the past 25 years. He claims that instead of being the work of psychopaths, they were carried out by ordinary people who had suffered repeated humiliation, bullying and inhumane conditions that find their origins in the “Reagan Revolution.” Looking through a carefully researched historical lens, Ames recasts these rage killings as failed slave rebellions.
joe…
I always read your links and I’m rarely disappointed.
Why do you think we have all of these “wage slave” and “temp slave” T-shirts and e-jokes around? Americans like to turn everything painfully true into a little quip, as if by quippifying the painful truth, as if by becoming self-aware of one’s shameful and intolerable existence, one partially nullifies one’s pain. This is what you’d call “slave humor.” Slaves did the same thing, turning their pain into quips.
Oh yes. I’ve worked in the past subcontracting into a US company working on several large projects. At first it’s like living in a 24hr sitcom. You really can’t keep up with their non-stop wisecrack, one-liners and put-downs… I recall my sides hurting from it.
Yet after a month or so it started to turn sour. While at one level they were good people and a lot of fun to be with, at another more personal, intimate level I found them very guarded and brittle. You could only get to know them so far… and that was it.
Under all the fun was a lot of hard-arsed bitterness.
Its a mistake to think that rats don’t realise that they have been caged and put on the wheel.
thanks joe
So true.
And when people are put into an insane, inhuman culture and simply expected to try and cope, increases in mental illness and addictive behaviours can be fully expected.
I don’t intend to dimiss Ames’s analysis. But I think it’s only a contributory part of the problem. The increased sense of dislocation and stress etc, imposed on individuals in a neo liberal market environment doesn’t lead to random killings. It leads to psychotropic drug prescriptions. And those drugs often cause mayhem if they are stopped abruptly or not taken in a regular enough fashion.
Having put this line of argument out before, I know that some people will want to respond that the drugs are helpful and so on. But to be honest, I’ve had that discussion and don’t see much point in having it again.
Suffice to say, there is a body of thought within US psychiatric circles that claims all instances of random killings for no apparent reason (ie, killings like this Batman one) have psychotropic meds as a common underlying factor. From scanning some previous incidents, it appears to be true….at least so far and in relation to the incidents I’ve found and read press reports for. But I haven’t seen any mention of medication in this case.
So, what I would appreciate is if anyone comes across a news article that states James Holmes had recently been on psychotropic meds and had either stopped taking them or wasn’t taking them as prescribed, that they’d throw a quick link up here. Cheers.
There are so many shootings in the US that we hear nothing about. I don’t know how many can be put down to rage, meds or anything else:
http://www.bradycampaign.org/xshare/pdf/major-shootings.pdf
It seems to me that Ames consistently ignores one thing most of these mass shooters have in common – that they are usually men. I can’t actually remember any such mass shooting by a woman.
Ames talks about the perps in non-gendered terms as “people”, “slaves” etc.
Why is it mainly men who respond this way? It doesn’t require a male’s superior strength to pull a trigger.
I expect that women tend to turn their anger and frustration against themselves, as compared to men.
Absolutely right Carol!
This is true – and unbelievable:
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2012/07/departing-imf-economist-blasts-fund.html
The treaty seems unlikely to ever receive the two-thirds majority necessary to be ratified by the US Senate,
I wonder how the Senate might react after this latest “incident”, involving a white guy and guns…
Colorado shooting suspect James Holmes was in the process of withdrawing from a doctorate program in neuroscience at the University of Colorado Denver,
Gee sure looks like the timing will really put pressure on the Senate…I guess the next few days will tell us how much. Of course the Senate would not be swayed by the prepared MSM machine…
http://www.womenagainstrape.net/content/correction-women-against-rape-did-not-criticise-ju
Correction: Women Against Rape did not criticise Julian Assangeâs legal team
On 16-17 January 2011, Women Against Rape was quoted in a number of papers as âcriticisingâ Julian Assangeâs legal team for including the names of the women making allegations against Mr Assange in their skeleton argument.
The articles gave a misleading impression of our views. We never criticised or even mentioned Mr Assangeâs legal defence in our comment to the Press Association. Following our complaint, the PA apologised for their mistake by circulating the advisory below with our full quote. Can you please publish and/or circulate this correction.
Press Association wire 19 January at 1635:
ADVISORY: In 1 POLITICS WikiLeaks (ASSANGE LEGAL TEAM UNDER FIRE AFTER ACCUSERS NAMED), sent at about 0245, on January 16, we reported that legal representatives of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange had come under fire for inadvertently publicly naming two women who claim he raped them. Women Against Rape, which was quoted in the story, has asked us to make it clear that it did not criticise or even mention Mr Assangeâs legal team in their comment. The Press Association regrets that the story and its headline gave a misleading impression of the views expressed by Women Against Rape.
âšFor reference, the following is the full quote from Women Against Rape on the issue: âThe rape allegations against Julian Assange have become entangled with the politics centred on WikiLeaks. In the last few months this has led to the publication on the internet of the names of the women involved, and to a call for women who report rape to lose their anonymity. Rape victimsâ right to anonymity and defendantsâ right to be presumed innocent until proven guilty, are both crucial. We oppose the use of rape for political agendas which undermine protection and justice for both rape victim and accused. We are appalled that rape allegations may be manipulated to facilitate Mr Assangeâs extradition or even rendition to the US where elected officials have called for his execution for his Wikileaks activities. Women Against Rape cannot ignore this threat. We oppose the death penalty for any crime, let alone when no charges have been brought.âšend
http://www.womenagainstrape.net/content/correction-women-against-rape-did-not-criticise-ju
Yeah, Whatever dude. Some women think it’s a CIA plot, and they’re practically lesbians what with being anti rape and all, so the criminal complaints don’t need to be investigated.
Yeah, Whatever dude.
Another brilliant rejoinder. You obviously win a lot of debates with such tactics.
I like the way you suddenly start fantasizing about lesbians.
Love your routine, my friend.
” âThe rape allegations against Julian Assange have become entangled with the politics centred on WikiLeaks.” – Yes they have, primarily by Julian Assange, who is worried about a rape conviction.
And more worried about serving time for a Swedish rape conviction at Guantanamo Bay.
or is using that as a nice, if far fetched, excuse to avoid a rape investigation.
Now I wish I’d bought that bag of burger rings from the supermarket today. It’s going to be a long night.
âThe rape allegations against Julian Assange have become entangled with the politics centred on WikiLeaks.â â Yes they have, primarily by Julian Assange, who is worried about a rape conviction.
You need to do some serious reading on this topic. At the moment, you are ignorant.
Well now its our turn to have EQC and insurers smack us in the head. Thought we were tootling through the queue for repairs only to get a copy of a report which is blatantly dishonest and incomplete. So much so that the main broken parts of the house were not even referenced in the report.
EQC’s approach is complete and utter bullshit. Our experience is that they are totally dishonest – for the purpose of avoiding their due liability. Which is in fact fraud – misrepresentation for the purpose of pecuniary gain.
Some words of advice: Never ever trust EQC or an insurance company. Do everything to your house to avoid ever having to make a claim.
The simple fact is that the insurance companies don’t have the money to pay out to have everything that’s covered fixed. That goes for EQC as well. There’s no way that they could have as: a) they planned around the normal earthquake risk which doesn’t include entire cities collapsing, b) they misestimated the actual costs involved for the rebuild and thus c) they then thought that they could set prices well below costs (See Fletcher’s dropping painting down from $25/m to $19/m).
C) is the direct result of capitalists thinking that workers don’t actually have costs to cover and thus can be paid as little as the capitalists want to pay
EQC (and ACC) have the money to pay all valid claims – they have an unlimited guarantee by government. Also, neither are insurance companies.
It does however appear that our current government has a desire to reduce claim payments – despite payments being set out in legislation.
Any Red Alert monitors on-line? The Constitutional debate should be there. The last post is 18th July!
Labour should have a members only space.
Oops the Place for Labour feedback is on Labour.org.nz/yoursay
Do they harvest your emails from that site?
Certainly not impossible. Do they have a privacy policy statement which might shed some light?
Ethos of Co-operative Bank being screwed with
I hear that branch staff are being pressured to become sales people, being asked to literally go out door knocking to recruit new customers. If they don’t meet their targets they are being told that their jobs will be at risk.
And where is this high pressure sales drive coming from? Surprise surprise, we have a former Westpac senior banker now in charge of the former PSIS.
http://www.interest.co.nz/news/59879/co-operative-bank-appoints-former-westpac-nz-acting-ceo-bruce-mclachlan-ceo-and-reports-f
And behind every CEO, we also have to remember the Board who appointed him and is giving him strategic direction.
oh well.
I was just going to post a link to the Truthers favourite newsman reacting to the denver shootings. But I see muzza beat me to the skinny on it.
http://littlegreenfootballs.com/page/280878_Alex_Jones_Says_Aurora_Shootin
Alex Jones is not as enamoured by the Truth movement as you might think. He gets a certain level of respect for the years of exposing the media lies we all swallow and has tirelessy fought a good fight. He is also widely reagrded as a loud and often unstable voice with a tendancy to jump into rivers before checking their depth. His manner of attack and his willingness to throw baseless accusations into serious discussion and his ever growing ‘God is the way to truth!’ message costs him as many listeners as it wins him. There are also some great rumours that he is a deep cover co-intel operative….ooooh! For many who use InfoWars it is the excellent library of resources they offer and the very well researched articles by some of the staffers that have kept the place alive. It only took a few minutes for the first ‘it’s all a gov op’ stories to hit the wires. Then again Alex is not the only one throwing spurious accusations around on this story.
The media have as usual decided what they want you to believe. Early this a.m. NZ time, I watched a talking head breathlessly announce that an affiliate had spoken to the Mother of the shooter. It was reported at the time that the affiliate asked the woman if her son lived in Aurora Colorado? That was how it was reported. An inquiry to confirm the familial relationship. The Mother is reported to have said, “yes you have the right person”.
At the time this was reported as the mother simply confirming that her son lived in Aurora. This [most likely innocent] statement is now being reported twisted and corrupted by all networks as if the Mother was asked if she was aware that her son was the shooter and that her affirmation is stating she was aware her son was a sociopathic nutter. This thread of the story has already been so twisted and misrepresented that it has destroyed any possibility of the original broadcast ever being seen or heard of again.
PB, anyone who reads, thinks and forms opinions relying too much on any source, really is not in a good position to form opinions with any foundational basis, let alone cast them out in public.
If one is able to suspend bias and emotional attachments to reading matter, and reads enough variation over a period of time, it becomes very easy to spot BS at a distance.
The critical factor is being able to dethatch from bias, also known as pre conceived ideas, which explicitly requires the individual to know themself well.. Read from as many media sources as possible, left, right and centre from as many different angles as you can get. Speak with people you have some faith in, and check for people thoughts etc from decent blogs such as this site. Over time, if open enough, and free from bias, the words really will just reek of shit when you read them, or hear them,, its called using your intuition, which humans have had dulled/removed over the past decades, where they mostly believe what they are told, and that’s enough for them!
For mine, I am calling BS on this shooting spree, massive false flag, just like Norway, with too much else going on around the second amendment for years. See fast and furious, Eric Holder if you don’t know what I am talking about. This is all about attempting to disarm the American people, using the worst type of scare tactics you could imagine, and then bestowing to the UN even more sovereignty as the empowered authority in the global structure, once the treaty I linked to previously is signed!
Whatever the solution wanted by those in control actually is, could be varied from my thoughts around this event, but I still call false flag.
We have seen the “problem”, we are getting, and will get the “reaction” over the near term, as shaped by the MSM, which will lead to the “solution” being provided. Its really only once the solution is being offered forward that the agenda become clearer, but there is more than enough history around the second amendment to see where this event fits in.
Its tragic to see yet more innocent people used to create a desired outcome, but its standard MO, so its not in any way a surprise. The new “enemy” is being clearly defined, and was called some time back, its gone from “brown faces abroad” (even though they are still getting fucked), to “white faces” at home.
Just follow along the media narrative, as that will tell you much of the underlying intentions.
At the end of the day, we all get the society, and the puppet masters which we allow to create our environment for us, that society as a whole deserves!
Doesn’t look like the west deserves too much these days!
Quite clearly analysing events without resorting to any pre-concieved ideas about what’s going on there muzza. Yep.
“Quite clearly analysing events without resorting to any pre-concieved ideas about whatâs going on there muzza. Yep.”
–Not at all, I read the early headlines, and some articles from this “shooting spree”, and drew my own conclusion, that it stinks.
Other statements above are my own conjecture on where this could tie in elsewhere, because little happens in silo. That does not mean one can’t evaluate something in silo, or not and still keep bias out. Just means you have to be prepared to factor various possibilities in as well.
“The new âenemyâ is being clearly defined, and was called some time back, its gone from âbrown faces abroadâ (even though they are still getting fucked), to âwhite facesâ at home.”
Yeah, they are clearly being oppressed. Here’s a list of them that have been disappeared by ZOG on obvioulsy trumped up charges following one of them there judicial activism rulings taking away their shootin irons. They’re probably all in FEMA camps.
http://www.csgv.org/issues-and-campaigns/guns-democracy-and-freedom/insurrection-timeline/
Or maybe there are a bunch of right wing nutters with guns using their intuition too much and going a bit loco.
50/50 call I guess.
That list is mindblowing – thanks Pb
Yeah, it’s quite a trend eh?
The most shocking one to me was this one:
http://content.usatoday.com/communities/ondeadline/post/2011/12/white-supremacist-sentenced-to-32-years-for-mlk-day-bomb/1
Didn’t recieve much coverage at all compared to islamic plots that were, well nothing really.
The bomb was discovered by pure luck
A wee google search >> july 27 obama < http://www.splcenter.org/blog/2012/07/19/conspiracists-adopt-nra-talking-points-on-un-arms-treaty/
SPLC, sponsored by “Hatewatch”…either way it illustrates nicely how the charade works in “media”.
Whatever this event, does or does not equal, is always going to be drowned in information of all, and every type imaginable, which of course is designed for no other reason than to misinform, and confuse.
Getting to opinion state is a matter of individual preferences, and a myriad of other factors, assuming people are putting a degree of effort into forming them!
Otherwise its likely just follow along as usual!
False flag muzza or an unwell mans actions co-opted?.
Same thing are they not jo?
sigh…one a damning indictment and the other crackpot cynicism and dishonesty, I’d certainly hope not muzza.
Anyhoo, some on topic linky stuff.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/07/21/1112292/-Adult-Conversation
And like I said, when the argument is made that guns protect your freedoms and liberties, ask why one or two incidents of voter fraud can be used to justify taking away the freedom and liberty to vote, yet graveyards full of dead fathers, mothers, sons and daughters are not justification to take away the liberty of gun nuts to stockpile weapons of mass murder and why Joe The Plumber gets to own a rack of bigger better guns than Paul The Policeman sent to stop him shooting his neighbours.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2011/jan/10/gun-crime-us-state
“sighâŠone a damning indictment and the other crackpot cynicism and dishonesty, Iâd certainly hope not muzza.”
–Thats a big sigh jo too much net time eh…. For mine an “unwell man” could be used as a false flag, quite easily in fact!
While not a big gun person myself, I will say that guns are not the problem. Simplistically its as bad as the article saying the Brits are capable of “adult conversation”, I almost snorted when I read that nonsense!
Lets just make sure that the “authorities and other assorted crooked officialdom” are the only tooled up people, I reckon society will be just peachy if that is achieved. / Gee, can you tell me another story papa!
Why do the Nats project so much of their own failings on to the opposition?
Paula Bennett – “social obligations”…. on parents on DBP? What about social obligations of the government to enable jobs that pay a living wage? To provide a livable society and environment?
Bill English – “planet Labour”…. as though NAct aren’t in their own neoliberal parallel universe that denies the reality of peak everything?
Steven Joyce – on Labour’s “fairytales” – and Joyce’s own little crony capitalist “reality” that denies the reality of the large numbers of people with low incomes and little power? And who believes in RONs as the road to prosperity?
So that they can hide those failings from themselves and thus blame everyone else for things going wrong.
And the latest from Steven “Intellectual Dishonesty” Joyce is about wanting “to do a few things that make us uncomfortable” …..
….. o … O …..
Bill English 2008: “”No country can afford ongoing migration losses of this size relative to its total workforce. The problems are showing up most visibly in the professional workforce”.
Bill English 2012 : “What’s the point of standing in the airport crying about it?”
National Party campaigned on building a brighter future in 2008:
http://www.national.org.nz/Article.aspx?articleId=28817
Bill English, 2012:
http://www.3news.co.nz/National-outline-welfare-reforms/tabid/1607/articleID/262127/Default.aspx
You know what would be awesome?
If the 49% that the government plans to sell in MRP, GEN, MERI, end up in the hands of the community trusts that own the local network companies.
Then the companies can be run in the *genuine* interest of power consumbers, not private shareholders.
Solid Energy is one of the biggest employers on the West Coast. Imagine if the holding companies of Westland and Buller councils each purchased shareholdings?
The governments plan to dilute public ownership would be well and truly sunk.
Locus, could you please explain what it is you mean by the above remark? Oh, by the whole posting? I am not a self-righteous prat, because I am not the one telling other people where they fail my high standards, and where they fall down…
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