Last nights Tv3 news lead story….Zara Phillips in a nothing piece about a nothing story, unless you consider english professional sports folk getting on the turps news.
Followed by Pyke river……the inquest into 29 deaths having some ‘shocking new evidence’ ranking below a puff piece with no content about some royal married to a sportsman.
Also their rocked the nation show earlier having sideshow rabbeting on about a sporting moment which occurred prior to the 81 bok tour, yet not having him talk about the tour which was ranked 3rd ………that licensing deal Joyce gifted media works sure is the best PR our money can buy.
1984 arrives 27 years later. Hopefully one day people will decide to take the red pill and realise what is happening. Right now far too many are taking the blue pill. How spooky is it that the Matrix got the colors right …
Matrix had issues, certainly, but Inception suffered with that small detail of explaining exactly where they were every thirty seconds so Americans could follow the story. :]
Not of any political or otherwise significance but the one band I hadn’t seen but still wanted to are no more. REM call it a day. http://www.remhq.com/news_story.php?id=1446
O dear, I’ve done it all wrong. For all of you suffering from cognitive dissonance I apologise unreservedly and will from now on follow the advise of all these Psychologists and Psyciatrists and respond to your fearful denial with open ended questions and compassionate carefullness when helping you towards your new and unescapable reality so you may heal from your traumas with regards to the events of 911.
Well, you’re halfway there. Getting in the men in white coats is definitely a good idea for you denialists, but I’d suggest using ones that aren’t equally mad for the best results.
ROFL, here’s a new MSM theory for ya!!! Molton aluminium reacted with the water from the sprinklers and caused the collapse of both towers! Wahahaha!!!!
What do you think about that VOR. Does it have merit?
Hmmmm, it’s possible that such explosions happened, Ev, but I think that would be secondary at best. I’ve no doubt that molten metal of any kind coming into contact with water would react ‘explosively’, but the theory seems a bit fanciful to me. As do most alternatives to the truth, actually.
when i was six i twice refused my first holy communion stating ( acording to family )
” I don’t understand it, the church has money and people are hungry”
guess there was never any hope for me
The MSN have finally decided to state that explosions were heard. This is long overdue.
– of course they are now having to run around to find a reason for them.
Reality will continue to consume the fantasy until Truth stands taller than the Towers ever did.
Er, that’s MSN, not MSM, freedom. And I don’t think there’s ever been a denial of explosions. Jetliners hitting large structures are not quiet events and the subsequent collapse of the buildings after being hit is also going to involve lots of noise.
Can’t wait for the results of the Toronto hearings, btw. Will it be long before the names of the hundreds of the conspirators is released to an eager public and the arrests start?
One last time TVOR, the Hearings are a presentation of evidence to be used in the drive for a new and independant Investigation. They are not and can not supply you with a list of conspirators. The constant bleating of this idea from you is an embarrassment to your often cogent (if badly flawed) arguments. The T H Report will be a common ground document that contains the best and most relevant information that was collected over the last ten years. I sincerely believe that if you ever decide to spend an hour of time in objective review, you would realise the disparity between the plethora of scientifically tested evidence and the Official Story.
As far as the release date, well i for one would like the Honorary President of the Italian Supreme Court and his collegues who are compiling the Report to take all due care and attention that is warranted by such an effort. This may not fit in with your blipvert attention span of mass consumerism but sadly the reality of the extensive work ahead demands accuracy, care and diligence in the presentation of data that is so explosive.
ffs when will people realise that honorary titles such as “Professor Emeritus” (it usually just means they are old, retired and out of touch with recent developments in their field) are mostly worthless. They are just there to lend a degree of authenticity to the hearings that would be lacking if it was just James Gourley.
Zorr, what gives the Hearings credibility is the format followed, the evidence presented and the science displayed. Your bias against any individual is just that, bias. It has little to no bearing on data being presented. I also have issues with certain people who are party to the organisations involved but i have confidence that the data will dissuade the ego and this is not and never will be about money, except the badly needed medical funds for the first repsponders. These are men and women who are dying in their hundreds, and there are also the thousands of families who refused to sign off on the Official Story and received no monies from the Government. Their families were left destitute when their loved ones were murdered by persons unknown at this time. They are the focus. Not your unfounded suspicions of corruption and people lining their own pockets.
Freedom, I wonder when you and Ev are going to realise that VoUR is never going to listen to what you and she say? I used to weigh in on your side, but then after she in particular, nastily put me in my place, I am not involved any more. Have fun, but for goodness’ sake change the bloody record! I still am a ‘Truther’, and always wil be, but I am not arguing the toss here – as I am not commenting on anything else that might cause me to be abused again. Maybe one day you’ll learn that overweening self-love and just plain nastiness gets you nowhere especially in terms of persuading people of the rightness of your cause.
Oh and I just want to add that I am sceptical about your story about being a prodigy who refused communion at 6 years old – no real church allows 6 year olds to take communion! It sounds like a Dawkins story…
Those Toronto hearings are a farce anyway. The guy bankrolling the entire deal is an attorney and the person compiling and presenting the evidence at the end of the day isn’t an impartial body but… get this… the same stupid attorney.
This isn’t the first time something like this will have been done by a lawyer in order to generate income/large public cases. The exact same thing happened with the vaccination autism link – Andrew Wakefield (the doctor) was collaborating with a lawyer to create the evidence in order to be able to prosecute the vaccine companies and they would both get a cut of the ensuing income.
There is no reason to even pay any attention to the Toronto hearings until, at the least, an impartial board is appointed to review and compile the evidence otherwise it is just a gerrymandered show for the benefit of this lawyer.
“..James Gourley, …[International Center for 9/11 Studies] is currently known best for its success in gaining the release of approximately four terabytes of video evidence held (and kept from the public) by the National Institute of Standards and Technology.”
yeah he is so selfish and focused on his wallet he spent tens of thousands of dollars to battle for the release of information the Government wanted kept secret
Do you actually have any idea how many high-level people are beginning to back away from the Offiicial Story. Military leaders, Businessmen, Politicians,. There are members of the Official Commission who have stated the Official Story is not accurate. If they decided to publicly stand on the side of Truth i suspect you diss them also as they were once part of the problem. People are complex entities, and many have the capacity to learn, adapt and some even grow to realise they were wrong and try to make things right. James Gourley, has nothing to gain financially as you disparagingly suggest. I guess the authors of the books that drive the funding of many Truth events are also to be ignored based on your reasoning.
You know that “not for profit” companies still actually pay their employees salaries, right?
You can be a “not for profit” company while paying your director a $1,000,000 salary. In fact being “not for profit” encourages unscrupulous companies to do do such things.
Similar to the “Emeritus Professor” note above, being “not for profit” is simply a distraction that doesn’t necessarily mean what it implies.
Gee can they? wow thanks for the newsflash. Sarcasm aside, with no proof or valid reasoning you want to tar an organisation with the mercenary ideals of your own suspicions. That is not an attractive quality. Guess what, most Aid agencies throughout the Globe are rife with corrupt accounting practises yet they still seem to be on every street corner and Tv screen without a whisper of your discontent.
Many of the major charities operating today declare adminstrative costs that have been as high as 75% of donated funds. When i see your vitriol expressed at the gravey train of relief organisations that swim in money, i will happily make enquiries about unfounded accusations against the shoestring budgets of Truth Organisations.
State your concerns, supply the evidence or give them the benfit of the doubt that this organisation is operating in a NFP manner, exactly how it says it does.
Actually freedom, it is you saying the words “not for profit” magically mean that there is no corruption involved, everything is above board and we should not be suspicious of this guys motive at all. I’m merely pointing out that the words “not for profit” don’t mean any of that and you’ve just agreed with me.
See, it goes like this:
Zorr:
Those Toronto hearings are a farce anyway. The guy bankrolling the entire deal is an attorney and the person compiling and presenting the evidence at the end of the day isn’t an impartial body but… get this… the same stupid attorney.
freedom:
p.s. “The International Center for 9/11 Studies is a not-for-profit organization ”
NOT FOR PROFIT
do you understand these simple words ? or is the concept foreign to your dogma
Here you go a video of 18 seconds. Explosions at the start of the collapse of building 7.
Here is dr Shyam Sunder the head of the WTC7 investigation by NIST giving a radio interview about the pending report. Here is the official presentation of NIST of the WTC7 report
Here is NIST’s computer model of the collapse and the building actually collapsing.
ROFL!!! If you believe that Dr Shyan Sunder of NIST, when he says we took the most probably hypothesis and ignored all other info because it did not fit our hypothesis, is performing science you are a sad puppy!
Nice video. No source of origin or indication of what caused the bang, though – fracturing columns, collapsing walls, TNT?
It would, however, be able to be compared with the known frequency of explosions caused by nanothermite (not all explosives sound the same – some pop, others wooomph, others crack, etc). Might be useful.
Personally it sounded to me like internal structural failures, but that’s just a gut instinct.
Firefighters only duck if explosives detonate, but not to other sudden sounds? Even if you were right in general, that was by then what one might regard as “a very bad day”.
I have a certified copy of 9/11 Raw which is a real time untouched unedited A/V recording of the time period immediately prior to the collapse of WTC 1 & 2, and the subsequent chaos. http://www.911raw.com/ ( clean link kept breaking up)
It was filmed by Richard A Siegel from a vantage point in Hoboken. The DVD has been rigorously analyzed and declared as an authentic recording of the events that occured as viewed from the Hoboken harbour where the filming took place.
On this DVD are numerous auditory anomolies that can only be ascribed to the existence of explosive events.
All attempts to present the data to the Official 9/11 Commission were refused.
Dunno about the gun shot records, CV and I wouldn’t be entirely sure that the area around the WTC complex has recordings anyway as I wouldn’t have thought it was a high gun crime area. Plus the overall level of noise with the collapse of the buildings would probably render them ineffective.
However, there were also seismic recordings on the day, from a station on the outskirts of the city, that show the collapse in reasonable detail. No sign of thermite style explosions, of course, because that didn’t happen, but the usual pattern of noise and vibration consistent with a large building falling down.
and the numerous other seismic recording devices that were confiscated by the FBI and other agencies immediately after the attack and never presented as evidence or returned to their original operators? Where are their records ? Why were they removed?
Kind of like the 89 surveillance cameras around the Pentagon and local businesses that had all footage removed and subsequently ‘lost’ or ‘damaged’ during the 9/11 investigation
TVOR
If you ever bother to watch the video of that particular moment in the collapse you will see the twenty odd story section of the tower begins to follow the path of least resistance as expected, then it does a bizarre thing, it does not continue to arc out according to the laws of physics and collapse enmasse into the street eighty floors below, no, instead it turns into dust and debris. Remember this section, the one YOU have pointed out, is above the impact zone of the Aircraft and has no forces working upon it except for gravity and newtonian physics.
That was a clip from a documentary made by an Italian main stream media network (They have a lot of experience with state crimes against democracy after all) Here is the six minute version.
It is way at the end and you can see the interaction the two man have with the firefighters.
Note that never in the history of steel framed buildings there had been a collapse in free fall speed as result of office fires(Not before nor after 911) and that Jovenko the Dutch demolition expert who was interviewed by a Dutch mainstream media sender (We to have our experiences with governments and their inherent unreliability) died recently in a car crash.
This wasn’t an office fire. It took two fuel laden aircraft hitting the buildings at several hundred kph to make them collapse. Or, maybe 2 holograms, several hundred tons of thermite, an army of thousands and vast conspiracy of silence.
By the way, what happened to all the people that boarded the holograms/and or disguised missiles in Boston? I’ve been meaning to ask for ages if we know what happened to them. I presume they were executed in the departure lounge and the bodies buried out the back of Logan Airport and the phone calls from the planes, sorry, hologram/missile were faked as well.
Nothing pleasant, I imagine. BTW its not a question of whether or not the planes struck the two towers (the Pentagon is another issue). But whether or not assymetrical strikes, assymetrical structural damage and assymetrical fires, could have caused not just one, but both towers to fall perfectly vertically and symmetrically, directly down on to their own streetside footprints.
In the other scenario, an army of thousands? I'd say 50-100 people all up, tops would have been ample.
Hundreds of tons of thermite? No, less than 10 tonnes might have done the trick. Moved in over 12 months, thats 30kg shifted per day. Could do it in a back pack.
Actually NIST specified that the damage to building 7 wasn’t severe enough to cause the collapse and that office fires had caused the almost free fall collapse of building 7. We are talking about building 7 here not the twin towers.
You are getting quit emotional over this aren’t you? I mean your going of on all kinds of strange tangents such as holograms and that. I have never denied planes flew in the buildings or that real people died when the buildings came down.
By the way the Manhattan project (Nuclear bombs and that) involved about a 125.000 individuals and was kept secret for about 12 years. (Even though Russian spies managed to penetrate the wall of secrecy. The American population most assuredly was kept in the dark.
” … to fall perfectly vertically, directly down on to their own streetside footprints”
What a weird statement! While the buildings obviously fell straight down, more or less, pancaking on themselves as the laws of physics demand, tons of debris was flung for considerable distances, including the portion that detached and struck WTC7. You know that they’re not trees, eh? Buildings don’t fall sideways like a pinus radiata being logged, but WTC’s 1 and 2 definitely did not impact just in their own footprints.
There’s a great photo showing the upper portion of one them twisting away from the centre line here. The article’s good reading too and also contains a bit about the seismic readings that give the lie to the thermite explosions theory.
Edit: Ev, the majority of the Manhattan project workers were not privy to the ultimate goal, that is true. Only a handful knew. But your 9/11 theory requires all of the conspirators to know and still keep silent. I’m not emotional about this at all, but it’s fair to say I don’t believe in pissing on the dead.
While the buildings obviously fell straight down, more or less, pancaking on themselves as the laws of physics demand, tons of debris was flung for considerable distances, including the portion that detached and struck WTC7. You know that they’re not trees, eh? Buildings don’t fall sideways like a pinus radiata being logged, but WTC’s 1 and 2 definitely did not impact just in their own footprints.
There’s a great photo showing the upper portion of one them twisting away from the centre line here. The article’s good reading too and also contains a bit about the seismic readings that give the lie to the thermite explosions theory.
And for you in the real world here is a presentation of Greame McQueen about the collapse of the twin towers.
By the way VOR, even NIST deserted the pancake theory a long time ago and no the laws of physics do not demand pancaking but do require the path of least resistance which means that that upper portion twisting away should have fallen of the top not toward it but that is neither here nor there because it pulverized in mid air as visible in this 2 minute video. Also very interesting is the strange shaking of the camera just before the collapse.
“But your 9/11 theory requires all of the conspirators to know and still keep silent”
complete horse manure and you know it. The whole event could be done with a couple of dozen well placed people of authority and means. Who benefits? the Afghanistan nation surely didn’t. Modern high energy explosives can be painted on and any crew can be told it is a new form of fireproofing paint and they would have no reason to think otherwise. The maintenace and structural areas for WTC can be accessed and walked through without the public/tenants knowing. There are numerous anomolies of the weeks preceeding the event. These include unprecedented power-downs of both towers, weeks of unspecified upgrading of communications data including a vast new wireless network and in the weekend prior to the event, the removal of Bomb sniffing dogs who had been on duty every day since 1993. WTC7 had also undergone major structural work in the three years prior.
The very real planes can be and most likely were remote controlled. This has beeen possible for a half century. The fate of the actual aircraft and the passengers are unknown but there is a lot of information pertaining to landings at a Govt controlled landing strip and disembarkation of congruous numbers of people has been reported. The Pentagon story was so thoroughly obliterated during the Toronto hearings i won’t even bother to detail how.
The list goes on and on but the idea that thousands of people are needed to be aware of it, in order to carry it out, ignores the inherent and quite brilliant simplicity of the plan. Let us wait for some common ground shall we. Let us all await the Toronto Hearings and the actual data, the actual facts as science has declared them to be. Let us see if the weight of factual evidence will finally destroy the spineless illusions dictated by the Official 911 Commission.
tons of debris was explosively flung for considerable distances sometimes at hundreds of metres per second, including the portion that detached and struck WTC7.
Fixed that up for you.
Glad you brought up the point about jets of debris visible in the videos, shooting out sideways at high speed.
“Personally it sounded to me like internal structural failures, but that’s just a gut instinct.”
wow, Mcflock, heard many steel framed sky scrapers suffer structural failure have you?
when and where?
your comment reminds me of the ‘guy on the street’ they kept interviewing on the day who said ” ….mostly due to structural failure because the fire was too intense..’
in a world where
NO STEEL FRAMED BUILDING HAD EVER COLLAPSED DUE TO FIRE
and people were panicked and in shock, they found the one guy amongst the chaos who had worked out the cause and could plainly and repeatedly state it for the cameras.
i must have seen this guy interviewed on camera a dozen times on 9/11 2001
True enough that I don’t have much of a comparison set, although I’ve heard one or two loud bangs in my time.
But I noticed that the firefighters continued their personal calls without utterances like “omg, that sounded like artillery!” or “golly, I’ve never heard something like that before, what could it be?” The closest they got were references to “blow up” or “exploding”. Pretty understandable given the width of the debris field.
Pretty understandable given the width of the debris field.
The debris field of WTC7 did not exceed its footprint when intact. It came straight down in its own footprint in near free fall speed. If no explosives were used it broke all laws of physics.
there are numerous videos and testimony is prolific from Firefighters and Police who witnessed/heard/felt explosions and adequately define them as such. Not just during but prior to the onset of collapse.
watch this video of Firefighters discussing activity in the Lobby AFTER the planes hit and tell me they imagined it.
Nah, watched the entire clip.
It’s an interesting piece, but not conclusive by any stretch of the imagination. I am tempted to call it your most persuasive link to date, but that is saying less than nothing.
PS: if explosives were used and it’s collapse was as perfectly confined as you suggest, it still “broke all the laws of physics” (translation: achieved an extremely low-probability outcome based on rough estimates of a highly complex system).
I think it’s a video of people trying to process a massive event very shortly after it happened, subsequently being overanalysed by people who are simply looking for evidence that supports their thesis, rather than impartially assessing all the available data.
I also love how you guys are now being a touch sarcastic about video times, simply because I can’t dick about watching youtube all day at work. Maybe the trouble you guys have is too much time on your hands so you let your imaginations run a little hot.
Well that confims it then. You are all complete nutjobs. No one takes 9/11 conspiricy theories seriously anymore.
I cant wait for you to get up on the next global warming thread and complain about the unfounded views of idiots with crazy views who ignore the evidence and come up with increasingly bizzare rationalisations.
Yes. And im sure you could find a couple of thousand people with science degrees who question global warming without any trouble. The fact remains that the overwhelming majority of engineers and architects believe that there is no conspiricy based on the evidence of what brought the buildings down.
“Only a handful of architects and engineers question the NIST Report, but they have never come up with an alternative. Although at first blush it may seem impressive that these people don’t believe the NIST Report, remember that there are 123,000 members of ASCE(American Society of Civil Engineers) who do not question the NIST Report. There are also 80,000 members of AIA(American Institute of Architects) who do not question the NIST Report.
Although their field of expertise is not related to the construction of buildings – they don’t seem to have a problem with that over at AE911truth – there are also 120,000 members of ASME(American Society of Mechanical Engineers) who do not question the NIST report. There are also 370,000 members of IEEE(Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) who do not question the NIST report. There are also 40,000 members of AIChE(American Institute of Chemical Engineers) who do not question the NIST Report. There are also 35,000 members of AIAA (American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics) who do not question the NIST report. So who would you rather believe?”
The latest contender for Richardhead of the year has to be Matthew Ridge. Although why the Herald should consider this a story is beyond me. After all who would be surprised that a rugby jock used car selling millionaire would be anti Labour?
because of the words ‘Say no to Labour’, and the reference to voting and tick in a box on a blue background which may reasonably be regarded as encouraging or persuading voters not to vote for the Labour Party as a political party,”
Self explanatory really – don’t need to be a rocket scientist to figure out that it’s an underhanded election advert in the guise of a business hoarding.
Quite smart starting the ‘unofficial’ National Party campaign with the Ridge. The inherent buffoonery can swipe away the seriousness of the transgression. If they got caught (AS THEY HAVE) then it is wet bus tickets and just boys having a laugh. I suspect there are many more of these types of campaign messages to come over the next eight weeks and they will now be groomed based on the fines/judgements of these early efforts.
lower wages, employer friendly climate and if ya don’t like the way that person’s slaving over yo car….ya got 90 days to sack em without any qusetions…..what the jocks would call a ‘full credit’ outcome.
Ridgey and his partners would be lovin the brighter future….do the maths on charges V min wages next time you venture into one….water’s still cheap as Wodneys reforms haven’t kicked in yet.
I hope that someone is putting Bernie Monk up for some recognition in the New Year Honours. Despite his personal grief he has always been available to speak for the Pike River families in a concise and respectful manner. Given the facts coming out at the commission there must have been many times when he had to bite his lip when being interviewed by ignorant journalists making thier own assumptions. Now RNZ is reporting that the families have asked for a meeting with the key, when another family member was on earlier saying that it was his office that asked for the meeting – no doubt for a serious photo op after all the ra ra ra photos of the RWC.
Well yes Key is in Greyhole today no less. No doubt he will try to get a photo like the pathetic image of him standing adjacent to Mealamu for the nat anthem at the Japan game last week. It was like he was pretending he could run with a rugby ball… actually, has anybody ever seen Key run?
It will be interesting to see what comes of Pike River today with mr shallow in attendance…
Sorry but the way the media are reporting Pike River is doing my head in. You can’t show lawyer from EPMU, Labour Dept, Pike River, families etc. attacking someone on the stand and report it that way and then go back to Bernie Monk every bloody day so he can speak on behalf of the family. Its a royal commission and I can’t stand how the media have been reporting it. Its not healthy to have a set of conclusions made every time someone speaks. Its just not good.
so it is not an election ad but they let him make an election statement whilst telling you it’s not an election ad. I see a wet bus ticket in ridge’s future and the herald just wanders off without a word against their manipulations.
Another clearly stated opinion this time by Mai Chen on the five issues that she perceives with the retrospective Surveillance proposals. http://www.nzherald.co.nz/opinion/news/article.cfm?c_id=466&objectid=10753400
Her last para sums it up nicely in my opinion. No one wants to let criminal offenders get off scot free, but if the Government passed prospective, rather than retrospective, legislation concerning the Supreme Court decision, this would preserve the fundamental constitutional principle that we are all ruled by law (including the police) and we should know what the law and its consequences are before we act.
“The US has less than 5% of the world’s population but over 23% of the world’s incarcerated people.
In the past 30 years, the United States has come to rely on imprisonment as its response to all types of crime.
Even minor violations of parole or probation often lead to a return to prison.
This has created a prison system of unprecedented size in this country.
The US incarcerates the largest number of people in the world.
The incarceration rate in the US is four times the world average.
Some individual US states imprison up to six times as many people as do nations of comparable population.
The US imprisons the most women in the world.
Crime rates do not account for incarceration rates.
Local and state facilities across the country are overcrowded, exacerbate prisoner health problems, risk the safety of both staff and prisoners, are in poor repair, and strain taxpayers.
The nationwide bill for incarceration is conservatively estimated at $42 billion annually (see AOUSC, May, 2004).
Many prison and jail systems havebeen sued for failure to meet minimum requirements for health and safety.
Prisoner rehabilitation and reentry services are inadequately funded.”
I wonder how many of those incarcerated in the USA are in prison for ‘white collar’ crime?
In NZ – you will note that the ‘three strikes’ policy does NOT apply to ‘white collar’ crime?
Penny Bright. Independent ‘Public Watchdog’. Candidate for Epsom.
Troy Davis is due for Lethal Injection in a half hour, unless Georgia can admit it made a mistake.
This case is not a million miles away from the problems we are facing in NZ. The supposition that the State knows best has only dragged Justice backwards and i have a recurring nightmare that the call for a death penalty will be revisited if National get back in.
Southern trees bear strange fruit
Blood on the leaves
Blood at the root
Black bodies swinging in the southern breeze
Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees
Pastoral scene of the gallant south
The bulging eyes and the twisted mouth
The scent of magnolia sweet and fresh
Then the sudden smell of burning flesh
Here is a fruit for the crows to pluck
for the rain to gather
for the wind to suck
for the sun to rot
for the tree to drop
Here is a strange and bitter crop
the big day has come
the bell is sounding
i run my hands through my hair one last time
outside the prison walls
the town is gathering
people are trading crime for crime
everyone needs to see the prisoner
they need to make it even easier
they see me as a symbol, and not a human being
that way they can kill me
say it’s not murder, it’s a metaphor
we are killing off our own failure
and starting clean
standing in the gallows
everyone turned my way
i hear a voice ask me
if I’ve got any last words to say
and i’m looking out over the field of familiar eyes
somewhere in a woman’s arms a baby cries
i think guilt and innocence
they are a matter of degree
what might be justice to you
might not be justice to me
i went to far, i’m sorry
i guess now i’m going home
so let any amongst you cast the first stone
now we’ve got all these complicated machines
so no one person ever has to have blood on their hands
we’ve got complex organizations
and if everyone just does their job
no one person has to understand
you might be the wrong colour
you might be too poor
justice isn’t something just anyone can afford
you might not pull the trigger
you might be out in the car
and you might get a lethal injection
’cause we take a metaphor that far
the big day has come
the bell is sounding
i run my hands through my hair one last time
outside the prison walls
the town has gathered
people are trading crime for crime
people are trading crime for crime
people are still trading crime for crime
You’ve missed one crucial point about the US prison system: it is modern day slave labour. Once you understand that point, the motivations for the rest of it becomes clear. Sorry for the long copy and paste dump, but this is all very pertinent:
“The prison industry complex is one of the fastest-growing industries in the United States and its investors are on Wall Street. “This multimillion-dollar industry has its own trade exhibitions, conventions, websites, and mail-order/Internet catalogs. It also has direct advertising campaigns, architecture companies, construction companies, investment houses on Wall Street, plumbing supply companies, food supply companies, armed security, and padded cells in a large variety of colors.”
According to the Left Business Observer, the federal prison industry produces 100% of all military helmets, ammunition belts, bullet-proof vests, ID tags, shirts, pants, tents, bags, and canteens. Along with war supplies, prison workers supply 98% of the entire market for equipment assembly services; 93% of paints and paintbrushes; 92% of stove assembly; 46% of body armor; 36% of home appliances; 30% of headphones/microphones/speakers; and 21% of office furniture. Airplane parts, medical supplies, and much more: prisoners are even raising seeing-eye dogs for blind people.”
“Who is investing? At least 37 states have legalized the contracting of prison labor by private corporations that mount their operations inside state prisons. The list of such companies contains the cream of U.S. corporate society: IBM, Boeing, Motorola, Microsoft, AT&T, Wireless, Texas Instrument, Dell, Compaq, Honeywell, Hewlett-Packard, Nortel, Lucent Technologies, 3Com, Intel, Northern Telecom, TWA, Nordstrom’s, Revlon, Macy’s, Pierre Cardin, Target Stores, and many more. All of these businesses are excited about the economic boom generation by prison labor. Just between 1980 and 1994, profits went up from $392 million to $1.31 billion. Inmates in state penitentiaries generally receive the minimum wage for their work, but not all; in Colorado, they get about $2 per hour, well under the minimum. And in privately-run prisons, they receive as little as 17 cents per hour for a maximum of six hours a day, the equivalent of $20 per month. The highest-paying private prison is CCA in Tennessee, where prisoners receive 50 cents per hour for what they call “highly skilled positions.” At those rates, it is no surprise that inmates find the pay in federal prisons to be very generous. There, they can earn $1.25 an hour and work eight hours a day, and sometimes overtime. They can send home $200-$300 per month.
Thanks to prison labor, the United States is once again an attractive location for investment in work that was designed for Third World labor markets. A company that operated a maquiladora (assembly plant in Mexico near the border) closed down its operations there and relocated to San Quentin State Prison in California. In Texas, a factory fired its 150 workers and contracted the services of prisoner-workers from the private Lockhart Texas prison, where circuit boards are assembled for companies like IBM and Compaq.”
Yeah sure, but unlike the evil empire they’re not talking out of the sides of their mouths about human rights while they go about killing their own citizens.
I’m actually a judicially-recognised ‘Public Watchdog’ (on Metrowater, water and Auckland regional governance matters) , and a publicly-acknowledged ‘anti-corruption campaigner’ – not a politician.
I find that the electoral process is a good way of helping to focuss public attention on the issues.
That’s the main reason why I chose to stand as an ‘Independent Public Watchdog’ candidate in the ‘Auckland Mayoral election , and Botany and Howick by-elections.
🙂 Penny Bright. Independent ‘Public Watchdog’. Candidate for Epsom.
Good on Amnesty International for campaigning ‘to halt the execution of Troy Davis, an American citizen convicted of killing a police officer. ‘
What hapened to ‘innocent until PROVEN guilty’ – ‘beyond reasonable doubt’?
Troy Davis has already spent 20 years on ‘Death Row’.
America – the ‘land of the free’?
Sadly, they killed him! I heard that this afternoon on the BBC WS, they had it as breaking news… His last words were that he forgave those murdering him, and that the family of his ‘victim’, should look into having the case re-investigated….
“The economy is in flames and the neoliberal model that has brought it to this pass is bust – even as the political class clings stubbornly to the orthodoxies of the boom years. But those who grasp that the crisis is transforming politics will shape its future.”
Perhaps the Left should be better grasping the changing narrative then!
This is the opportunity to educate the electorate and show the status quo is the cause for the predicament, and that Key n co are wedded to an ideology which proved itself to have failed in Chile in the 70’s, Asia in the 90’s.
And now that the debt bubble fueled by Asia – who learnt the lessons we didn’t, and saved and managed rather than consumed and deregulated, flooding us with liquidity with which to pretend we were booming – has burst and the failure throughout the Western economies is irrefutable, why isn’t the Left dominating the debate rather than running scared of the focus group.
Last night, New Zealand’s mainstream media reiterated that the Fukushima nuclear disaster was officially recognized as an accident similar in scale to Chernobyl, and that typhoon Roke, was heading towards the stricken nuclear power plant, which was devastated in the 11 March earthquake and tsunami…
Anyone think the price of fuel has been upped for the last week or so and for the next couple of weeks? Considerably more traffic (camper vans, rental cars, etc) on the roads.
They are price gouging… the cost of a barrel of Brent crude has fallen by $20 over the last two weeks. Being that the oil industry wants National to win (because National will ignore New Zealand’s obligations under the Kyoto protocol an is pro deep sea oil drilling), we can expect the price of crude to continue to fall leading up to the next general election. The increase at the pump is just a small blimp to take advantage of the increased traffic.
I have waited in vain, of course ,for the Herald to headline the sleazy actions of National President Goodfellow regarding his business concerned with allegations of slave labour with his shiping company.
There was a small column in last weeks Sunday Star but so far I have seen nothing in the Herald.Just imagine if this had involved any one from Labour.It would have been headline news , In fact they would be demanding his resignation and prosecution .
We all know that our reliance on petroleum-based products will come to an end, the question is when and how much damage is going to be caused in the mean time. The difficulty is that we’ve built our entire system around cheap oil with little consideration for the environment. Even when informed of the danger, mankind is failing to change its habits…
McFlock,
My work allows me to maintain a proximity to ongoing discussions, i am not going to apologise for that.
I am dissapointed however with your insinuations against the work ethic of people you do not know.
That said, let’s move on shall we?
Firemen in distress.
I always tend to trust reality over editing.
In any investigation of a terrorist attack, a natural disaster or similarly destructive event, the eyewitness reports of trained professionals in the moments after an event are proven to be some of the most crucial.
Years ago, I did watch a lot of 9/11 videos. Many of them were terrible and were not very constructive. Others were pure dis-info and were highly destructive by design. Knowing this, i actually do not spend all day watching YouTube. I occassionally pop in to grab a video i know is there, when requiring the content for illustration of a discussion. I downloaded many of these videos and now and again i may watch one or a part of one. Since then it has been a steady diet of actual information not just absorbing others’ visual interpretations of the content. I absolutely agree there is a risk of over exposure to information and a corresponding impairment to judgement.
Is 9/11 Truth the only topic with this malady?
Ongoing discussions is one thing – I’m in the same priviledged boat, there. But being able to set aside 3 hours to watch something in the hope that it will be more persuasive than the wishful thinking previously exhibited seems a bit high-cost low-gain.
Yes, professional contemporaneous eyewitness statements are usually very valuable. This is why I’m not quite so derisive as if someone is arguing that aluminium cannot possibly melt in a fire. But such footage is indicative, not conclusive. E.g. even if there were explosions, were those bombs, structural failures prior to the eventual collapse, or even gas cylinders from restaurants, floor polishers, forklifts, or even something else that is explosive under some circumstances and perfectly reasonable to store in a large facility?
I think the issue about 9/11 is that it goes to a lot of people’s hearts and serves to highlight their initial biases. These are things that we all need to overcome to lok at the evidence impartially, but as soon as we do that we realise that 99.9% of the “evidence” is supposition, hearsay, assumption, overinterpretation of misinterpretation or whatever – we’re swamped with bullshit.
All that can be said with any degree of probability is that it was then used as a casus belli against at least one nation that was almost certainly unconnected to the attacks.
It is most certainly the Wars that are too often neglected in 9/11 discussion. I like to think people generally dislike them and prefer not to be reminded they are ongoing. They certainly do not smile when shown War’s relationship to the world we share. The pure subconscious terror that many experience as doubt gnaws their heart has become more obvious and more pertinent as the years pass.
Many people use this as a reality barometer.
Another useful measure would have been a ‘global debate worm’ during the Toronto Hearings.
McFlock , If it began with the 99.9 % figure you provided, over the four days of the evidence,
i believe the nose dive of belief in the Official Story would have been impressive to witness.
“If it began with the 99.9 % denial figure you provided, over the four days of the evidence,i believe the nose dive of belief in the Official Story would have been impressive to witness.”
What’s really important is that no evidence of a crime at was presented over the four days, freedom. What was presented, as McFlock suggests, was supposition, hearsay, assumption, over interpretation or misinterpretation.
By the way, would you convict the Urewera accused on ‘evidence’ as flimsy as that that you currently hold in regard to a 9/11 conspiracy? Law is a yes or no thing. Either you have evidence or you don’t. The coppers didn’t, so they dropped the charges against most. There needs to be a level of proof of a conspiracy before any of your theories have any validity. Any credence. So, even if the theories are all correct, it doesn’t matter a damn if you can’t pin it on someone.
And then there is the little question of why. Why the fuck would you do this to your own country? Cui bono? There is no benefit to America, only downsides. And, as I know you think it was needed to spur a war or two, why bother? A fertiliser bomb laden truck outside the US embassy childcare facility in Baghdad or Kabul or any number of similar atrocities would work just as well and be a damn sight easier to organise.
Nah, it’s shit. Sorry mate, but there you have it.
Ridge is an entertainer. Not a league player. Right from when he signed his contract with Manly in ’89 he became an entertainer. Not an ‘all round working class man’. Pro sport is all about entertainment. NOT sport.
We also call on all employees of Dr. Musso’s businesses, RainbowMedical Associates and Correct Health, Inc., who have anyinvolvement with implementing the Georgia Department of Corrections execution protocol, to refuse to participate in theexecution of Troy Davis. Remember your humanity and that youroath is to facilitate healing, not killing!
Thanks for reading Frankly Speaking ! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.It was another ‘SHOCK! HORROR!’ headline from a media increasingly venturing into tabloid-style journalism:Andrea Vance’s article seemed to focus on the "million dollar sums from the Government as the country grapples with a housing ...
Dr Brian Easton writes: It’s the summer break. Everyone settles down with family, books, the sun and some fishing. But the Prime Minister has a pile of briefing papers prepared just before Christmas, which have to be worked through. I haven’t seen them. Here is my guess at some ...
What Was the Prime Minister Reading in the Runup to Election Year?It’s the summer break. Everyone settles down with family, books, the sun and some fishing. But the Prime Minister has a pile of briefing papers prepared just before Christmas, which have to be worked through. I haven’t seen them. ...
In case you hadn't noticed, FYI, the public OIA request site, has been used to conduct a significant excavation into New Zealand's intelligence agencies, with requests made for assorted policies and procedures. Yesterday in response to one of these requests the GCSB released its policy on New Zealand Purpose and ...
Farming leaders are watching closely whether Damien O’Connor keeps the key portfolios of Agriculture and Trade when Prime Minister Chris Hipkins restructures his Cabinet. O’Connor has been one of the few ministers during Labour’s term in office who has won broad support for what he has done ...
South Islands farmers are whining about another drought, the third in three years. If only we knew what was causing this! If only someone had warned them that they faced a drying climate! But we do know what is causing it: climate change. And they have been warned, repeatedly, for ...
Ok, there’s good news and bad news in this week’s inflation figures, but bad > good. Our inflation rate held steady but hey, at a level below the inflation rate in Australia. The main reason for the so/so result here? A fall in petrol prices of 7.2% offset the really ...
Dr Bryce Edwards writes: Since her shock resignation announcement, Jacinda Ardern has been at pains to point out that she isn’t leaving because of the toxicity directed at her on social media and elsewhere, rebutting journalists who suggested misogyny and hate may have driven her from office. Yet ...
Since her shock resignation announcement, Jacinda Ardern has been at pains to point out that she isn’t leaving because of the toxicity directed at her on social media and elsewhere, rebutting journalists who suggested misogyny and hate may have driven her from office. Yet there have been dozens of columns ...
The Clinical Magus: Of particular relevance to New Zealanders struggling to come to terms with the sudden departure of their prime minister, Jacinda Ardern, is Jung’s concept of the anima. Much more than what others have called the feminine principle, the anima is what the human male has made out ...
The Select Committee, considering the proposed RNZ-TVNZ merger, has come back with a report conceding many of the criticisms that were made of the original legislation. In what is one of the most comprehensive demolitions of a Bill submitted to a Select Committee, the Economic Development, Science and Innovation ...
Such are the 2020s, the age when no-one, it seems, actually respects the basic underpinnings of democracy. Even in New Zealand. This week, I stumbled across a pair of lengthy and genuinely serious articles, that basically argue that Something is Rotten in the state of New Zealand democracy. One ...
Buzz from the Beehive Hurrah. Today we found something fresh on the Beehive website, Beehive.govt.nz, which claims to be the best place to find Government initiatives, policies and Ministerial information. It wasn’t from Finance Minister Grant Robertson, whose reaction to the latest inflation figures would have been appreciated. So, too, ...
Smiling And Waiving A Golden Opportunity: Chris Hipkins knew that the day at Ratana would be Jacinda’s day – her final opportunity to bask in the unalloyed love and support of her followers. He simply could not afford to be seen to overshadow this last chance for his former boss ...
Extremism Consumes Itself: The plot of “Act of Oblivion” concerns the relentless pursuit of the “regicides” Edward Whalley and William Goffe – two of the fifty-nine signatories to King Charles I’s death warrant. As with his many other works of historical fiction, Robert Harris’s novel brings to life a period ...
To challenge the Government’s promotion of co-governance, to share power between Maori and public authorities and agencies, is to invite accusations of racism. An example: this article by Martyn Bradbury on The Daily Blog headed Luxon’s race baiting hypocrisy at Ratana. The article was triggered by National leader Christopher Luxon, ...
A very informative video discussion: Are we getting the whole story about Ukraine? | Robert Wright & Ivan Katchanovski Getting objective information on the situation in Ukraine and the cause of this current war is not easy. There is the current censorship and blatant mainstream media bias – which ...
Yesterday the Herald ran an op-ed from Mayor Wayne Brown titled “The case for light rail is lighter than ever” and a few things stood out. However, it’s getting more and more tricky to make a strong economic case for spending up to $29 billion on a single route of ...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections by Samantha Harrington Imagine it’s a cold February night and your furnace breaks. You want to replace it with an electric heat pump because you’ve heard that tax credits will help pay for the switch. And you know that heat pumps can reduce ...
In 2005, then-National Party leader based his entire election campaign on racism, with his infamous racist Orewa speech and racist iwi/kiwi billboards. Now, Christopher Luxon seems to want to do it all again: Fresh off using his platform at this week's Rātana celebrations to criticise the government's approach to ...
Inflation is showing little sign of slowing down, posing a problem for freshly minted PM Chris Hipkins. According to that old campaigner Richard Prebble, Hipkins should call a snap election. If he waits till October, he risks being swept away. The dilemma for the new leader is that fighting an election ...
Buzz from the Beehive A great deal has happened since January 19. Among other things, a new Prime Minister and deputy have been sworn in and our leaders (past, present and aspiring) have delivered speeches at Ratana. Newshub reported that politicians of all stripes had descended upon Rātana for the ...
It’s a big day for New Zealand; our 41st Prime Minister has taken office and the new, “Chippy” era of politics is underway. Or, on the other hand, the Labour Party continues to govern with an overall majority and much the same leadership team in place. Life goes on and ...
New Zealand has another Prime Minister who does not have a basic grasp of the three articles of the Treaty of Waitangi. THOMAS CRANMER writes: It is simply astonishing that New Zealand’s next Prime Minister, Chris Hipkins, is unable to give even a brief explanation of the three articles ...
A statue of a semi-naked Nick Smith puts the misogyny debate into perspective. GRAHAM ADAMS writes … In the wake of Ardern’s abrupt resignation, the mainstream media are determined to convince us she was hounded from office mainly because she is a woman and had to fall on her sword ...
A Different Kind Of Vibe: In the days and weeks ahead, as the Hipkins ministry takes shape, the only question that matters is whether New Zealand’s new prime minister possesses both the wisdom and the courage to correct his party’s currently suicidal political course. If Chris “Chippy” Hipkins is ...
An editorial in the NZ Herald last week, titled “Nimbyism goes bananas as housing intensifies“, introduced Herald readers to a couple of acronyms that go along with the now-familiar NIMBY (Not in My Back Yard): “bananas” (build absolutely nothing anywhere near anyone) “cave” dwellers (citizens against virtually everything). The editorial ...
Back in the dark autumn of 2020, when the prospect of Covid was freaking the country out, Finance Minister Grant Robertson set himself and Treasury a series of questions about what a post-Covid economy might look like. Those were fearful days, and the questions in part reflected a series ...
Buzz from the Beehive Yet another day has passed without Ministers of the Crown posting something to show they are still working for us on the Beehive website. Nothing new has been posted since January 17. Perhaps the ministers are all engaged in the bemusing annual excursion ...
Incoming Prime Minister Chris Hipkins has already indicated he intends making the tax system “fairer”. That points to the route a government facing an election could take to tilt the odds towards winning in its favour, given Labour’s support in the last months of the Ardern era had been ...
NewsHub has a poll on the cost-of-living crisis, which has an interesting finding: the vast majority of kiwis prefer wage rises to tax cuts: When asked whether income has kept up with the cost of living, 54.8 percent of people surveyed said no and according to 58.6 percent of ...
Labour has begun 2023 with the centre-left bloc behind in the polls and losing ground. That being so, did his colleagues choose Chris Hipkins as the replacement for Jacinda Ardern because they think he has a realistic shot at leading them to victory this year, or because he‘s the best ...
Two Flags, Two Masters? Just as it required a full-scale military effort to destroy the first attempt at Māori self-government in the 1850s and 60s (an effort that divided Maoridom itself into supporters and opponents of the Crown) any second attempt to establish tino rangatiratanga, based on the confiscatory policies ...
The first of Kiwirail’s big network shutdowns to fix the foundations on our tracks is now well underway with the Southern Line closed between Otahuhu and Newmarket. This is following on from the network wide Christmas/New Year shutdown, during which Kiwirail say that nearly 1,300 people working across 69 different ...
This is a re-post from the Citizens' Climate Lobby blogIn last year’s passage of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), Congress included about $20 billion earmarked for natural climate solutions. The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) is responsible for deciding how those funds should be allocated to meet the climate ...
You’ve really got to wonder at the introspection, or lack thereof, from much of the mainstream media post Jacinda Ardern stepping down. Some so-called journalists haven’t even taken a breath before once again putting the boot in, which clearly shows their inherent bias and lack of any misgivings about fueling ...
Over the weekend I was interviewed by a media outlet about the threats that Jacinda Ardern and her family have received while she has been PM and what can be expected now that she has resigned. I noted that the level of threat she has been exposed to is unprecedented ...
Dr Bryce Edwards writes: The days of the Labour Government being associated with middle class social liberalism look to be numbered. Soon-to-be Prime Minister Chris Hipkins and Deputy Prime Minister Carmel Sepuloni are heralding a major shift in emphasis away from the constituencies and ideologies of liberal Grey ...
A Different Kind Of Vibe: In the days and weeks ahead, as the Hipkins ministry takes shape, the only question that matters is whether New Zealand’s new prime minister possesses both the wisdom and the courage to correct his party’s currently suicidal political course. If Chris “Chippy” Hipkins is able to steer ...
The days of the Labour Government being associated with middle class social liberalism look to be numbered. Soon-to-be Prime Minister Chris Hipkins and Deputy Prime Minister Carmel Sepuloni are heralding a major shift in emphasis away from the constituencies and ideologies of liberal Grey Lynn and Wellington Central towards the ...
Following the surprise resignation of Jacinda Ardern last week, her replacement, Chis Hipkins, has said: Over the coming week, Cabinet will be making decisions on reining in some programs and projects that aren’t essential right now That messaging is similar to what Jacinda Ardern said late last year and as ...
Much of what will mark the early days of Chris Hipkins’ Prime Ministership would have happened anyway. By December, the Prime Minister and Finance Minister were making it clear the summer break and early days of this year were going to be spent on a reset of government policy. ...
Going to try to get into the blogging thing again (ha!) what with an election coming up and all that. So today I thought I'd start small and simple, by merely tackling the world's (second) richest man.I'm no fan of Elon Musk. You don't want to know why, but I'll ...
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Well, that was a disappointment. As of today, the New Zealand Labour Caucus opted for Chris Hipkins as our new Prime Minister, and I cannot help but let loose a cynical cackle. ...
Get ready for a major political reset once Chris Hipkins is sworn in as Prime Minister this week. Labour’s new leader is likely to push the Government to the right economically, and do his best to jettison the damaging perceptions that Labour has become “too woke” on social issues. Overall, ...
Things have gone sideways… and it’s only the third week of January? It was political earthquake time. For some the Prime Minister made a truly significant announcement. For others – did you have this on your bingo card? – a body double did so (sit tight, you’ll understand later, ...
Buzz from the Beehive Because our hard-working Ministers of the Crown are engaged in Labour Party caucus stuff in Napier, no doubt jockeying to ensure they keep their jobs or get a better one, Point of Order was not surprised to find no fresh news on the Beehive website this ...
By the end of 2019, Jacinda Ardern was a political superstar heading towards an election defeat. She was an icon, internationally beloved, on track to be an ex-prime minister before the age of forty. It was the year of the Christchurch terror attack when Ardern’s response to the atrocity saw ...
People complain about their jobs being meaningless. Does it matter?David Graeber, author of Bullshit Jobs: The Rise of Pointless Work and What We Can Do About It, would have smiled at Elon Musk’s sacking half the Twitter workforce. Musk seems to be confirming the main thesis of the book, that ...
Dr Bryce Edwards writes: Should New Zealand have a snap election? That’s one of the questions arising out of the chaos of Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern’s shock resignation. There’s an increased realisation that everything has changed, and the old plans and assumptions for election year have suddenly evaporated. ...
Should New Zealand have a snap election? That’s one of the questions arising out of the chaos of Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern’s shock resignation. There’s an increased realisation that everything has changed, and the old plans and assumptions for election year have suddenly evaporated. So, although Ardern has named an ...
I warned about the trap of virtue signaling in my article Virtue signaling over Ukraine. This video is still relevant – but have we moved on since then? The Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 was universally condemned at the time. Or was it? Certainly, the political atmosphere ...
Earlier this week Point of Order carried a post by Geoffrey Miller on how Japan under a new security blueprint is doubling its defence spending. The plans see Japan buying up advanced weaponry – including long-range Tomahawk cruise missiles from the US – and spending more on ...
Anyone else suffering back-to-work-blues? We’re battling, but still upright. Haere tonu! Today’s cover image is of sunset over Tirohanga Whānui Bridge, sourced from Twitter. The week in Greater Auckland On Monday, Jolisa pondered the fate of AT’s ‘Statements of Imagination’. Tuesday’s post was a guest post by Grady ...
Open access notables Bad news delivered by an all-star cast of familiar researchers: Another Year of Record Heat for the Oceans. From the abstract: In 2022, the world’s oceans, as given by OHC, were again the hottest in the historical record and exceeded the previous 2021 record maximum. According to IAP/CAS data, ...
The resignation of Jacinda Ardern has already made more global headlines than you might expect for that of the PM of a small commonwealth nation like say Sierra Leone (population 6.5 million) or Singapore (population 5.5 million). But international observers might not be too surprised by Ardern’s announcement that ...
One of my earliest political memories is the resignation of Prime Minister David Lange in August 1989. I remember this because of a brown felt-tipped pen drawing I did of the Beehive, the building that houses the Executive of the New Zealand Government. More than thirty years later, we ...
Buzz from the Beehive Hard on the heels of our Buzz from the Beehive earlier today, the PM has made two announcements – the 2023 general election will be held on Saturday 14 October and she will not be campaigning to win a third term as Prime Minister. She will ...
Jacinda Ardern had an outsized impact on New Zealand’s international relations. While all Prime Ministers travel internationally, Ardern’s calendar was fuller than most. Ardern’s first major foreign trip came within weeks of her election in 2017, to the APEC summit in Vietnam. The meeting gave Ardern her first in-person encounter ...
She gave it her all. No New Zealand Prime Minister has ever dominated the political scene at home as she has done, or has established an international profile to match hers. No New Zealand Prime Minister has had to confront such a sequence of domestic and international catastrophes – from ...
Jacinda Ardern's shock resignation announcement today has left a lot of us with a lot of complicated feelings. In my case, while I've been highly critical of Ardern's government, I'm still sorry to see her go. We've had far too many terrible things happen during her term as Prime Minister ...
The decision by Jacinda Ardern to end her term as Prime Minister on February 7 has come as a stunning surprise. It turns the task of a centre-left government winning re-election this year from difficult to nigh on impossible. No-one else among the Labour caucus has Ardern’s ability to explain ...
Jacinda Ardern’s first press conference as Labour leader in August 2017 was a defining moment in the past decade of New Zealand politics. A young woman (by the standards of politics) who had long been tipped for higher office, she had underperformed as a minister and Andrew Little’s noble resignation ...
The tools exist to help families with surging costs – and as costs continue to rise it is more urgent than ever that we use them, the Green Party says. ...
Members of Parliament for the Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand have today written to Iran’s Grand Ayatollah Khamenei to condemn the ongoing violence and killing of women’s rights and democracy protesters, and to call on him to intervene immediately. ...
As the Mayor of Auckland has announced a state of emergency, the Government, through NEMA, is able to step up support for those affected by flooding in Auckland. “I’d urge people to follow the advice of authorities and check Auckland Emergency Management for the latest information. As always, the Government ...
Ka papā te whatitiri, Hikohiko ana te uira, wāhi rua mai ana rā runga mai o Huruiki maunga Kua hinga te māreikura o te Nota, a Titewhai Harawira Nā reira, e te kahurangi, takoto, e moe Ka mōwai koa a Whakapara, kua uhia te Tai Tokerau e te kapua pōuri ...
Carmel Sepuloni, Minister for Social Development and Employment, has activated Enhanced Taskforce Green (ETFG) in response to flooding and damaged caused by Cyclone Hale in the Tairāwhiti region. Up to $500,000 will be made available to employ job seekers to support the clean-up. We are still investigating whether other parts ...
The 2023 General Election will be held on Saturday 14 October 2023, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announced today. “Announcing the election date early in the year provides New Zealanders with certainty and has become the practice of this Government and the previous one, and I believe is best practice,” Jacinda ...
Jacinda Ardern has announced she will step down as Prime Minister and Leader of the Labour Party. Her resignation will take effect on the appointment of a new Prime Minister. A caucus vote to elect a new Party Leader will occur in 3 days’ time on Sunday the 22nd of ...
The Government is maintaining its strong trade focus in 2023 with Trade and Agriculture Minister Damien O’Connor visiting Europe this week to discuss the role of agricultural trade in climate change and food security, WTO reform and New Zealand agricultural innovation. Damien O’Connor will travel tomorrow to Switzerland to attend the ...
The Government has extended its medium-scale classification of Cyclone Hale to the Wairarapa after assessing storm damage to the eastern coastline of the region. “We’re making up to $80,000 available to the East Coast Rural Support Trust to help farmers and growers recover from the significant damage in the region,” ...
The Government is making an initial contribution of $150,000 to the Mayoral Relief Fund to help communities in Tairāwhiti following ex-Tropical Cyclone Hale, Minister for Emergency Management Kieran McAnulty announced. “While Cyclone Hale has caused widespread heavy rain, flooding and high winds across many parts of the North Island, Tairāwhiti ...
Rural Communities Minister Damien O’Connor has classified this week’s Cyclone Hale that caused significant flood damage across the Tairāwhiti/Gisborne District as a medium-scale adverse event, unlocking Government support for farmers and growers. “We’re making up to $100,000 available to help coordinate efforts as farmers and growers recover from the heavy ...
A vaccine for people at risk of mpox (Monkeypox) will be available if prescribed by a medical practitioner to people who meet eligibility criteria from Monday 16 January, says Associate Minister of Health Dr Ayesha Verrall. 5,000 vials of the vaccine have been obtained, enough for up to 20,000 ...
RNZ News Prime Minister Chris Hipkins has acknowledged the way Aucklanders have come together and opened their homes to those in need, with the New Zealand government focused on providing the resources needed to get the city back up and running. The new prime minister — just four days into ...
RNZ News Minister for Emergency Management Kieran McAnulty has asked for communication on support after the severe thunderstorm in Auckland to be stepped up. It comes after a Civil Defence warning text failed to be sent out, and Auckland Mayor Wayne Brown told RNZ they will be reviewing the response, ...
RNZ News Three people are dead and at least one person is missing following the flooding overnight in Auckland, New Zealand’s largest city. About 1000 people were still stranded today after Auckland Airport was closed last night because of flooding of the arrival and departure foyers. Flights were cancelled for ...
Wayne Brown has doubled down on his decision last night to shun the media until close to midnight and only order a state of emergency at 9.30pm. In a defensive display to the media this afternoon, the Auckland mayor was questioned on comments other councillors made last night, including some ...
Prime minister Chris Hipkins has confirmed there are three deaths linked to the extreme weather event in Auckland over the past 24 hours. There is also at least one person missing. Speaking at a press conference in Auckland, Hipkins said the priority was to make sure Aucklanders were safe, housed ...
*This story was first published on The Conversation and is republished with permission*Until New Zealand's stormwater drain system adapts to our rising climate, it will never be able to cope with the level of flooding seen in Auckland on Friday night, writes James Renwick The extraordinary flood event Auckland experienced ...
Chris Hipkins has experienced his first major event as prime minister, just days into his tenure. He’s spent the day in Auckland alongside emergency services, surveying the damage and assessing next steps. He’s due to speak at 3.15pm alongside Auckland mayor Wayne Brown. Thanks to Stuff, here is a livestream. ...
Due to the “unprecedented weather event” in Auckland, organisers have confirmed the “heartbreaking decision” to cancel this year’s Laneway Festival. “We were so excited to deliver this show to our biggest crowd ever in New Zealand, our team has been working around the clock to do everything they can to ...
With the rain easing for a moment, many will be beginning the arduous task of cleaning out their flooded property. Auckland council has release advice for cleaning up after a flood. Cleaning up after a flood It is important to clean and dry your house and everything in it. Floodwater ...
Air New Zealand Chief Operational Integrity and Safety Officer Captain David Morgan says the airline’s domestic flights in and out of Auckland resumed from 12pm today as Auckland Airport re-opens. But he said with a backlog of flights and customers, the priority is those who need to travel urgently. “Those ...
Festival-goers holding on hope for Laneway, set to take place at Western Springs on Monday, will have to wait a bit longer for an official update. A brief post on Facebook this afternoon stated: “Safety is Laneway Festival’s number one priority. With the large weather event Auckland is currently experiencing, ...
Wayne Brown has defended the timing of a declaration of a state of emergency last night following record rainfall in Auckland. “The state of emergency is a prescribed process, it’s quite formal, and I had to wait until I had the official request from the emergency management centre. The moment ...
After the 11th hour cancellation last night, Elton John has cancelled the second concert of his farewell tour at Mt Smart, which had been scheduled for this evening. In a statement, John said: “Following the instruction of the emergency services, we have no option but to cancel tonight’s show in ...
The member of parliament for Mt Albert, Jacinda Ardern, has posted a message on Facebook following the flooding in Auckland. “I’m very conscious that it’s been a while since I posted, and there have been a few big things happening. But today the most important thing is everyone’s wellbeing and ...
Flooding of the runway, the check-in and arrivals areas on the ground floor and surrounding roads has disrupted operations at Auckland International, halting all departures until at least 5pm today, with no arrivals before 4:30am tomorrow. “People are asked not to come to the International Terminal at this time for ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By James Renwick, Professor, Physical Geography (climate science), Te Herenga Waka — Victoria University of Wellington Victoria Park near the Auckland CBD on January 27.Getty Images The extraordinary flood event Auckland experienced on the night of January 27, the eve of the ...
New Zealand’s largest insurance group, IAG, says it is on track to receive more than 1,100 claims from Aucklanders by lunchtime after the city was deluged in the wettest day on record. Those claims, said the group which includes AMI, State and NZI Insurance, span property damage to homes and ...
The rampant flooding in Auckland didn’t just detonate its provincial public holiday weekend – it coincided with the biggest weekend of the year to date for live events. A pair of Elton John concerts at Mt Smart stadium had a combined capacity of over 80,000, while both Laneway at Western ...
Auckland is beginning a clean-up after its wettest day since records began. “Auckland was clobbered on Friday,” said emergency management duty controller Andrew Clark. “We won’t start to get a good idea of numbers affected until later today and, even then, this will take time, with information still coming in ...
The prime minister, Chris Hipkins, is travelling to Auckland after devastating floods hit the city overnight. With the airport out of operation until at least midday, he is landing at Whenuapai air base on a New Zealand Defence Force Hercules aircraft from Wellington. ...
Prime Minister Chris Hipkins has arrived in Auckland for a daylong visit to the city following its catastrophic flood on Friday night. Flying in an Air Force Hercules to Whenuapai, Hipkins will spend roughly three hours on the ground assessing flood damage in the city before returning. He will receive ...
A quirk of timing left all Auckland’s institutions on the back foot. But social media, particularly TikTok, graphically showed just how bad the situation was. Late afternoon on a Friday is known as time to quietly drop bad news. You have the plausible deniability of it happening during work hours, ...
It’s a common sight during summer. It’s also a recipe for disaster.I recently drove with my family from New Plymouth to Tāmaki Makaurau and, just like how I lost count of how many cows I saw on the way, I lost count of how many cars had a passenger ...
Opinion - Election year has begun with a bang, and already the punditry and speculation are ramping up, but Grant Duncan warns not to treat polls as gospel. ...
New Zealand’s new prime minister, Chris Hipkins, is formally facing down an emergency just a few days after being sworn in, summoning the National Crisis Management Centre to the Beehive. The Beehive Bunker is being stood up to help with coordination of the emergency response in Auckland. I’ve asked ...
Analysis - Jacinda Ardern is one of New Zealand's most historically significant leaders. But she did not achieve the grand vision for Aotearoa her outsized rhetoric promised. ...
Brits abroad can be an asset to Aotearoa - but only if we make an effort to engage with te ao Māori, writes Scottish expat Fran Barclay Earlier this week, the UK High Commissioner signalled a promising intention to address the barriers facing young Māori and Pasifika who aspire to ...
"They want the Māoris out": provincial life in NZShe hadn’t learned to shut her mouth. Howard was tired of Councillor Kemp harping on and on and on. He pushed himself deeper into the boardroom chair and leaned back as far as he could force it. This woman had ranted ...
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Ellen Rykers visits Mahakirau Forest Estate, ‘a crown jewel in the Coromandel Range’, where pest control is serious business.This is an excerpt from our weekly environment newsletter Future Proof – sign up here. The Mahakirau Forest Estate is not your average subdivision. Enter through its tall ...
As Auckland tackles severe floods and the city’s airport emerges from a deluge on both the runway and in terminals, Air New Zealand has confirmed that no flights will leave or arrive before noon on Saturday at the earliest. In a statement, the airline said anyone booked for a flight ...
RNZ News Mayor Wayne Brown has shut down criticism that he was too slow in declaring a state of emergency after severe flooding in Auckland, New Zealand’s largest city. In a media stand-up late on Friday evening, Brown said he was following advice from experts and as soon as they ...
The Prime Minister has gone down to the Beehive bunker to help coordinate the emergency response, as the Insurance Council warns some Aucklanders whose homes and business are flooded face very hard times ahead. Jonathan Milne reports.Comment: Standing by the south-western motorway, I watched in dismay as hundreds of cars ...
A state of emergency has been declared in Auckland as severe weather causes major flooding across much of the city. It’s expected the rain will continue into the morning. This post will be updated as more information is shared.What does a state of emergency mean? A state of emergency ...
Auckland’s mayor Wayne Brown said he declared an emergency in Auckland as soon as he possibly could – and he made the decision without listening to the “clamour” of the public. There has been some criticism of the mayor for his relative silence today throughout the deadly flooding that’s hit ...
Welcome to a special late night edition of The Spinoff’s live updates as Auckland enters a state of emergency. Stewart Sowman-Lund is on deck, with help from our news team.The top linesAuckland is in a state of emergency. It will remain in place for seven ...
Prime minister Chris Hipkins is pleased the call was made to declare a state of emergency in Auckland. All government agencies were working “flat out” to help in what was an “extraordinary set of circumstances”, Hipkins said in a tweet. “The emergency response is underway and the government is ready ...
Auckland’s mayor Wayne Brown has released a statement following the decision to declare a state of emergency in Auckland. Brown has faced criticism this evening for his relative silence throughout today’s major flooding, with the first public pronouncement of the state of emergency coming from his deputy. Brown said the ...
Christopher Luxon has criticised the time it took for the state of emergency in Auckland to be declared. The National Party leader is currently in Southland, but told Today FM he intends to get back to Auckland as soon as possible. Earlier in the night, Luxon sent a tweet “urging” ...
Here is, verbatim, that latest information we have from Civil Defence on tonight’s state of emergency in Auckland: Auckland Emergency Management has opened a Civil Defence Centre to assist those that have been displaced or need assistance following today’s severe weather. The centre is open now and is based at ...
Severe flooding has ravaged Auckland today but the mayor of the city is barely visible. As I write, the airport has flooded, check-in areas looking like a public pool. Motorways are overflowing and cars have been seen floating down streets like a river. A person has died in floodwaters in ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra Treasurer Jim Chalmers has laid out an economic blueprint for pursuing “values-based capitalism”, involving public-private co-investment and collaboration and the renovation of key economic institutions and markets. In a 6000-word essay in The Monthly ...
This is live coverage of the developing situation in Auckland. We will continue to update this with photos and information as it comes to hand. After a day of torrential rain, and new reports of at least one death in the flood water, a state of emergency has been declared ...
Fans are describing Auckland Transport's plans to help them get to and from Elton John's concerts in the supercity this weekend as a fiasco with tonight's concert now cancelled due to the weather. Two concerts were due at Mt Smart Stadium before tonight's concert was called off in the face ...
A state of emergency has been declared in Auckland due to severe flooding that has caused people to evacuate their homes. It was officially declared at 9.54pm. Meanwhile, Auckland Airport has closed its international terminal check-in due to flooding inside the building. The airport says it is sincerely sorry to ...
RNZ News Residents in flood-prone areas of West Auckland are being asked to prepare to evacuate as bad weather causes power cuts and car crashes across Tāmaki Makaurau, with a severe thunderstorm watch in place for the north of Aotearoa New Zealand. Auckland Emergency Management said the severe weather across ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Ward, Postdoctoral research fellow, The University of Queensland Five years ago, bulldozers with chains cleared forests and woodlands almost triple the size of the Australian Capital Territory in a single year. Brazil? Indonesia? No – much closer: Queensland. In 2018-19, ...
Auckland Transport has apologised for confusing messaging that suggested attendees of tonight’s Elton John concert should drive. In a post on Facebook last night, AT said “driving to the concert is recommended” – a suggestion that prompted backlash due to the lack of parking options near the stadium. The announcement ...
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In his memoir Spare, Prince Harry revealed he attended the future King and Queen of England’s wedding with a frostbitten penis. A veteran of Antarctic expeditions says it’s not an issue that crops up often, if at all.Now that the avalanche of coverage about the Duke of Sussex’s memoir ...
A new poem by Wellington poet and publisher Ash Davida Jane. objects in the mirror are closer than they appear if a dog digs in the right spot and unearths a rib what do I care if a woman grows from that bone take her in and tend to her ...
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REVIEW:By Rowan Callick Radio Australia was conceived at the beginning of the Second World War out of Canberra’s desire to counter Japanese propaganda in the Pacific. More than 70 years later its rebirth is being driven by a similarly urgent need to counter propaganda, this time from China. Set ...
The yellow brick road to Mt Smart stadium looks to be packed this weekend as thousands travel to dual Elton John concerts In the words of pop royal Elton John, “I think it’s going to be a long, long time” - in this case for the 40,000 odd concert-goers driving ...
The decision by Sport Northland to deny 'Stop Co-Governance', a community group, use of their Whangarei venue to hold a public meeting is illegal and defies the rights given to all Kiwis to voice their political opinions. This case, yet again, illustrates ...
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Everything you need to know to get through the chaotic commute to to the Elton John concert in Tāmaki Mākaurau this weekend. Fans heading to Elton John’s concerts at Mt Smart Stadium this weekend have been advised to drive or walk thereby Auckland Transport (AT). In a Facebook post ...
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Last nights Tv3 news lead story….Zara Phillips in a nothing piece about a nothing story, unless you consider english professional sports folk getting on the turps news.
Followed by Pyke river……the inquest into 29 deaths having some ‘shocking new evidence’ ranking below a puff piece with no content about some royal married to a sportsman.
Also their rocked the nation show earlier having sideshow rabbeting on about a sporting moment which occurred prior to the 81 bok tour, yet not having him talk about the tour which was ranked 3rd ………that licensing deal Joyce gifted media works sure is the best PR our money can buy.
1984 arrives 27 years later. Hopefully one day people will decide to take the red pill and realise what is happening. Right now far too many are taking the blue pill. How spooky is it that the Matrix got the colors right …
Damn dude, I was thinking exactly the same thing yesterday…
The Matrix was way overrated, Inception was way better.
Red pill. blue pill, if only they gave a pill that could of given me my two hours back.
Matrix had issues, certainly, but Inception suffered with that small detail of explaining exactly where they were every thirty seconds so Americans could follow the story. :]
Yeah but visually just park the brain and enjoy…..plots have far too many flaws these days to appease the funding committee machine.
Not of any political or otherwise significance but the one band I hadn’t seen but still wanted to are no more. REM call it a day.
http://www.remhq.com/news_story.php?id=1446
Ah well, at least it’s not the end of the world as we know it.
O dear, I’ve done it all wrong. For all of you suffering from cognitive dissonance I apologise unreservedly and will from now on follow the advise of all these Psychologists and Psyciatrists and respond to your fearful denial with open ended questions and compassionate carefullness when helping you towards your new and unescapable reality so you may heal from your traumas with regards to the events of 911.
Psychologists: Questioning 9/11 Is the Sane Thing To Do
Well, you’re halfway there. Getting in the men in white coats is definitely a good idea for you denialists, but I’d suggest using ones that aren’t equally mad for the best results.
ROFL, here’s a new MSM theory for ya!!! Molton aluminium reacted with the water from the sprinklers and caused the collapse of both towers! Wahahaha!!!!
What do you think about that VOR. Does it have merit?
Hmmmm, it’s possible that such explosions happened, Ev, but I think that would be secondary at best. I’ve no doubt that molten metal of any kind coming into contact with water would react ‘explosively’, but the theory seems a bit fanciful to me. As do most alternatives to the truth, actually.
And one shall not deny the truth as it has been handed down, lest one be branded a heretic and be cast out.
🙂 Being a heretic is in my blood apparently as I am on my mothers side a decendant from a huquenot refugee!
when i was six i twice refused my first holy communion stating ( acording to family )
” I don’t understand it, the church has money and people are hungry”
guess there was never any hope for me
LOL
The MSN have finally decided to state that explosions were heard. This is long overdue.
– of course they are now having to run around to find a reason for them.
Reality will continue to consume the fantasy until Truth stands taller than the Towers ever did.
Er, that’s MSN, not MSM, freedom. And I don’t think there’s ever been a denial of explosions. Jetliners hitting large structures are not quiet events and the subsequent collapse of the buildings after being hit is also going to involve lots of noise.
Can’t wait for the results of the Toronto hearings, btw. Will it be long before the names of the hundreds of the conspirators is released to an eager public and the arrests start?
One last time TVOR, the Hearings are a presentation of evidence to be used in the drive for a new and independant Investigation. They are not and can not supply you with a list of conspirators. The constant bleating of this idea from you is an embarrassment to your often cogent (if badly flawed) arguments. The T H Report will be a common ground document that contains the best and most relevant information that was collected over the last ten years. I sincerely believe that if you ever decide to spend an hour of time in objective review, you would realise the disparity between the plethora of scientifically tested evidence and the Official Story.
As far as the release date, well i for one would like the Honorary President of the Italian Supreme Court and his collegues who are compiling the Report to take all due care and attention that is warranted by such an effort. This may not fit in with your blipvert attention span of mass consumerism but sadly the reality of the extensive work ahead demands accuracy, care and diligence in the presentation of data that is so explosive.
ffs when will people realise that honorary titles such as “Professor Emeritus” (it usually just means they are old, retired and out of touch with recent developments in their field) are mostly worthless. They are just there to lend a degree of authenticity to the hearings that would be lacking if it was just James Gourley.
Zorr, what gives the Hearings credibility is the format followed, the evidence presented and the science displayed. Your bias against any individual is just that, bias. It has little to no bearing on data being presented. I also have issues with certain people who are party to the organisations involved but i have confidence that the data will dissuade the ego and this is not and never will be about money, except the badly needed medical funds for the first repsponders. These are men and women who are dying in their hundreds, and there are also the thousands of families who refused to sign off on the Official Story and received no monies from the Government. Their families were left destitute when their loved ones were murdered by persons unknown at this time. They are the focus. Not your unfounded suspicions of corruption and people lining their own pockets.
Freedom, I wonder when you and Ev are going to realise that VoUR is never going to listen to what you and she say? I used to weigh in on your side, but then after she in particular, nastily put me in my place, I am not involved any more. Have fun, but for goodness’ sake change the bloody record! I still am a ‘Truther’, and always wil be, but I am not arguing the toss here – as I am not commenting on anything else that might cause me to be abused again. Maybe one day you’ll learn that overweening self-love and just plain nastiness gets you nowhere especially in terms of persuading people of the rightness of your cause.
Oh and I just want to add that I am sceptical about your story about being a prodigy who refused communion at 6 years old – no real church allows 6 year olds to take communion! It sounds like a Dawkins story…
Those Toronto hearings are a farce anyway. The guy bankrolling the entire deal is an attorney and the person compiling and presenting the evidence at the end of the day isn’t an impartial body but… get this… the same stupid attorney.
This isn’t the first time something like this will have been done by a lawyer in order to generate income/large public cases. The exact same thing happened with the vaccination autism link – Andrew Wakefield (the doctor) was collaborating with a lawyer to create the evidence in order to be able to prosecute the vaccine companies and they would both get a cut of the ensuing income.
There is no reason to even pay any attention to the Toronto hearings until, at the least, an impartial board is appointed to review and compile the evidence otherwise it is just a gerrymandered show for the benefit of this lawyer.
Hear are the specifics from the information page:
“Who is the Sponsor?
The lead sponsor of these Hearings is the International Center for 9/11 Studies. Established by U.S. attorney James Gourley”
“the final report will be edited by the American attorney James Gourley”
“..James Gourley, …[International Center for 9/11 Studies] is currently known best for its success in gaining the release of approximately four terabytes of video evidence held (and kept from the public) by the National Institute of Standards and Technology.”
yeah he is so selfish and focused on his wallet he spent tens of thousands of dollars to battle for the release of information the Government wanted kept secret
Do you actually have any idea how many high-level people are beginning to back away from the Offiicial Story. Military leaders, Businessmen, Politicians,. There are members of the Official Commission who have stated the Official Story is not accurate. If they decided to publicly stand on the side of Truth i suspect you diss them also as they were once part of the problem. People are complex entities, and many have the capacity to learn, adapt and some even grow to realise they were wrong and try to make things right. James Gourley, has nothing to gain financially as you disparagingly suggest. I guess the authors of the books that drive the funding of many Truth events are also to be ignored based on your reasoning.
p.s. “The International Center for 9/11 Studies is a not-for-profit organization ”
NOT FOR PROFIT
do you understand these simple words ? or is the concept foreign to your dogma
You know that “not for profit” companies still actually pay their employees salaries, right?
You can be a “not for profit” company while paying your director a $1,000,000 salary. In fact being “not for profit” encourages unscrupulous companies to do do such things.
Similar to the “Emeritus Professor” note above, being “not for profit” is simply a distraction that doesn’t necessarily mean what it implies.
Gee can they? wow thanks for the newsflash. Sarcasm aside, with no proof or valid reasoning you want to tar an organisation with the mercenary ideals of your own suspicions. That is not an attractive quality. Guess what, most Aid agencies throughout the Globe are rife with corrupt accounting practises yet they still seem to be on every street corner and Tv screen without a whisper of your discontent.
Many of the major charities operating today declare adminstrative costs that have been as high as 75% of donated funds. When i see your vitriol expressed at the gravey train of relief organisations that swim in money, i will happily make enquiries about unfounded accusations against the shoestring budgets of Truth Organisations.
State your concerns, supply the evidence or give them the benfit of the doubt that this organisation is operating in a NFP manner, exactly how it says it does.
Actually freedom, it is you saying the words “not for profit” magically mean that there is no corruption involved, everything is above board and we should not be suspicious of this guys motive at all. I’m merely pointing out that the words “not for profit” don’t mean any of that and you’ve just agreed with me.
See, it goes like this:
Zorr:
Those Toronto hearings are a farce anyway. The guy bankrolling the entire deal is an attorney and the person compiling and presenting the evidence at the end of the day isn’t an impartial body but… get this… the same stupid attorney.
freedom:
p.s. “The International Center for 9/11 Studies is a not-for-profit organization ”
NOT FOR PROFIT
do you understand these simple words ? or is the concept foreign to your dogma
TVOR,
MSN in July 2011 received 400,000,000 unique visitors, not exactly a barren wasteland of news
http://www.google.com/adplanner/static/top1000/
Here you go a video of 18 seconds. Explosions at the start of the collapse of building 7.
Here is dr Shyam Sunder the head of the WTC7 investigation by NIST giving a radio interview about the pending report. Here is the official presentation of NIST of the WTC7 report
Here is NIST’s computer model of the collapse and the building actually collapsing.
ROFL!!! If you believe that Dr Shyan Sunder of NIST, when he says we took the most probably hypothesis and ignored all other info because it did not fit our hypothesis, is performing science you are a sad puppy!
Nice video. No source of origin or indication of what caused the bang, though – fracturing columns, collapsing walls, TNT?
It would, however, be able to be compared with the known frequency of explosions caused by nanothermite (not all explosives sound the same – some pop, others wooomph, others crack, etc). Might be useful.
Personally it sounded to me like internal structural failures, but that’s just a gut instinct.
Gun shot acoustic recording systems which keep track city wide will have recorded that ‘explosion’.
Notice how the firemen ducked when the sudden sound came through. That’s a reaction to ordnance going off, not a wall etc tumbling down.
Where are those acoustic records now.
Firefighters only duck if explosives detonate, but not to other sudden sounds? Even if you were right in general, that was by then what one might regard as “a very bad day”.
I have a certified copy of 9/11 Raw which is a real time untouched unedited A/V recording of the time period immediately prior to the collapse of WTC 1 & 2, and the subsequent chaos.
http://www.911raw.com/ ( clean link kept breaking up)
It was filmed by Richard A Siegel from a vantage point in Hoboken. The DVD has been rigorously analyzed and declared as an authentic recording of the events that occured as viewed from the Hoboken harbour where the filming took place.
On this DVD are numerous auditory anomolies that can only be ascribed to the existence of explosive events.
All attempts to present the data to the Official 9/11 Commission were refused.
Dunno about the gun shot records, CV and I wouldn’t be entirely sure that the area around the WTC complex has recordings anyway as I wouldn’t have thought it was a high gun crime area. Plus the overall level of noise with the collapse of the buildings would probably render them ineffective.
However, there were also seismic recordings on the day, from a station on the outskirts of the city, that show the collapse in reasonable detail. No sign of thermite style explosions, of course, because that didn’t happen, but the usual pattern of noise and vibration consistent with a large building falling down.
and the numerous other seismic recording devices that were confiscated by the FBI and other agencies immediately after the attack and never presented as evidence or returned to their original operators? Where are their records ? Why were they removed?
Kind of like the 89 surveillance cameras around the Pentagon and local businesses that had all footage removed and subsequently ‘lost’ or ‘damaged’ during the 9/11 investigation
reply to your popular mechanics comedy
TVOR
If you ever bother to watch the video of that particular moment in the collapse you will see the twenty odd story section of the tower begins to follow the path of least resistance as expected, then it does a bizarre thing, it does not continue to arc out according to the laws of physics and collapse enmasse into the street eighty floors below, no, instead it turns into dust and debris. Remember this section, the one YOU have pointed out, is above the impact zone of the Aircraft and has no forces working upon it except for gravity and newtonian physics.
Those gun shot mics can pick up firearms activity anywhere from 2km – 4km away. They dont need to be on top of a site of interest.
Sorry mate you can only say that if that station can routinely pick up controlled demolition activity of old buildings a similar distance away.
That was a clip from a documentary made by an Italian main stream media network (They have a lot of experience with state crimes against democracy after all) Here is the six minute version.
It is way at the end and you can see the interaction the two man have with the firefighters.
Note that never in the history of steel framed buildings there had been a collapse in free fall speed as result of office fires(Not before nor after 911) and that Jovenko the Dutch demolition expert who was interviewed by a Dutch mainstream media sender (We to have our experiences with governments and their inherent unreliability) died recently in a car crash.
This wasn’t an office fire. It took two fuel laden aircraft hitting the buildings at several hundred kph to make them collapse. Or, maybe 2 holograms, several hundred tons of thermite, an army of thousands and vast conspiracy of silence.
By the way, what happened to all the people that boarded the holograms/and or disguised missiles in Boston? I’ve been meaning to ask for ages if we know what happened to them. I presume they were executed in the departure lounge and the bodies buried out the back of Logan Airport and the phone calls from the planes, sorry, hologram/missile were faked as well.
What’s the go there?
Nothing pleasant, I imagine. BTW its not a question of whether or not the planes struck the two towers (the Pentagon is another issue). But whether or not assymetrical strikes, assymetrical structural damage and assymetrical fires, could have caused not just one, but both towers to fall perfectly vertically and symmetrically, directly down on to their own streetside footprints.
In the other scenario, an army of thousands? I'd say 50-100 people all up, tops would have been ample.
Hundreds of tons of thermite? No, less than 10 tonnes might have done the trick. Moved in over 12 months, thats 30kg shifted per day. Could do it in a back pack.
Actually NIST specified that the damage to building 7 wasn’t severe enough to cause the collapse and that office fires had caused the almost free fall collapse of building 7. We are talking about building 7 here not the twin towers.
You are getting quit emotional over this aren’t you? I mean your going of on all kinds of strange tangents such as holograms and that. I have never denied planes flew in the buildings or that real people died when the buildings came down.
By the way the Manhattan project (Nuclear bombs and that) involved about a 125.000 individuals and was kept secret for about 12 years. (Even though Russian spies managed to penetrate the wall of secrecy. The American population most assuredly was kept in the dark.
” … to fall perfectly vertically, directly down on to their own streetside footprints”
What a weird statement! While the buildings obviously fell straight down, more or less, pancaking on themselves as the laws of physics demand, tons of debris was flung for considerable distances, including the portion that detached and struck WTC7. You know that they’re not trees, eh? Buildings don’t fall sideways like a pinus radiata being logged, but WTC’s 1 and 2 definitely did not impact just in their own footprints.
There’s a great photo showing the upper portion of one them twisting away from the centre line here. The article’s good reading too and also contains a bit about the seismic readings that give the lie to the thermite explosions theory.
Edit: Ev, the majority of the Manhattan project workers were not privy to the ultimate goal, that is true. Only a handful knew. But your 9/11 theory requires all of the conspirators to know and still keep silent. I’m not emotional about this at all, but it’s fair to say I don’t believe in pissing on the dead.
And for you in the real world here is a presentation of Greame McQueen about the collapse of the twin towers.
By the way VOR, even NIST deserted the pancake theory a long time ago and no the laws of physics do not demand pancaking but do require the path of least resistance which means that that upper portion twisting away should have fallen of the top not toward it but that is neither here nor there because it pulverized in mid air as visible in this 2 minute video. Also very interesting is the strange shaking of the camera just before the collapse.
“But your 9/11 theory requires all of the conspirators to know and still keep silent”
complete horse manure and you know it. The whole event could be done with a couple of dozen well placed people of authority and means. Who benefits? the Afghanistan nation surely didn’t. Modern high energy explosives can be painted on and any crew can be told it is a new form of fireproofing paint and they would have no reason to think otherwise. The maintenace and structural areas for WTC can be accessed and walked through without the public/tenants knowing. There are numerous anomolies of the weeks preceeding the event. These include unprecedented power-downs of both towers, weeks of unspecified upgrading of communications data including a vast new wireless network and in the weekend prior to the event, the removal of Bomb sniffing dogs who had been on duty every day since 1993. WTC7 had also undergone major structural work in the three years prior.
The very real planes can be and most likely were remote controlled. This has beeen possible for a half century. The fate of the actual aircraft and the passengers are unknown but there is a lot of information pertaining to landings at a Govt controlled landing strip and disembarkation of congruous numbers of people has been reported. The Pentagon story was so thoroughly obliterated during the Toronto hearings i won’t even bother to detail how.
The list goes on and on but the idea that thousands of people are needed to be aware of it, in order to carry it out, ignores the inherent and quite brilliant simplicity of the plan. Let us wait for some common ground shall we. Let us all await the Toronto Hearings and the actual data, the actual facts as science has declared them to be. Let us see if the weight of factual evidence will finally destroy the spineless illusions dictated by the Official 911 Commission.
Fixed that up for you.
Glad you brought up the point about jets of debris visible in the videos, shooting out sideways at high speed.
“Personally it sounded to me like internal structural failures, but that’s just a gut instinct.”
wow, Mcflock, heard many steel framed sky scrapers suffer structural failure have you?
when and where?
your comment reminds me of the ‘guy on the street’ they kept interviewing on the day who said ” ….mostly due to structural failure because the fire was too intense..’
in a world where
NO STEEL FRAMED BUILDING HAD EVER COLLAPSED DUE TO FIRE
and people were panicked and in shock, they found the one guy amongst the chaos who had worked out the cause and could plainly and repeatedly state it for the cameras.
i must have seen this guy interviewed on camera a dozen times on 9/11 2001
(This man has been identified as Mark Walsh .
He worked as a freelance cameraman for Fox News in 2001, .)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rTrw9dh3xOU
True enough that I don’t have much of a comparison set, although I’ve heard one or two loud bangs in my time.
But I noticed that the firefighters continued their personal calls without utterances like “omg, that sounded like artillery!” or “golly, I’ve never heard something like that before, what could it be?” The closest they got were references to “blow up” or “exploding”. Pretty understandable given the width of the debris field.
The debris field of WTC7 did not exceed its footprint when intact. It came straight down in its own footprint in near free fall speed. If no explosives were used it broke all laws of physics.
McFlock
I take it that your lack of reaction to the entire clip means that it fell outside your 30 second rule?
there are numerous videos and testimony is prolific from Firefighters and Police who witnessed/heard/felt explosions and adequately define them as such. Not just during but prior to the onset of collapse.
watch this video of Firefighters discussing activity in the Lobby AFTER the planes hit and tell me they imagined it.
it is a short video, just a couple of minutes,
Nah, watched the entire clip.
It’s an interesting piece, but not conclusive by any stretch of the imagination. I am tempted to call it your most persuasive link to date, but that is saying less than nothing.
PS: if explosives were used and it’s collapse was as perfectly confined as you suggest, it still “broke all the laws of physics” (translation: achieved an extremely low-probability outcome based on rough estimates of a highly complex system).
freedom:
I think it’s a video of people trying to process a massive event very shortly after it happened, subsequently being overanalysed by people who are simply looking for evidence that supports their thesis, rather than impartially assessing all the available data.
I also love how you guys are now being a touch sarcastic about video times, simply because I can’t dick about watching youtube all day at work. Maybe the trouble you guys have is too much time on your hands so you let your imaginations run a little hot.
Hah ain’t that the truth(er)
Well that confims it then. You are all complete nutjobs. No one takes 9/11 conspiricy theories seriously anymore.
I cant wait for you to get up on the next global warming thread and complain about the unfounded views of idiots with crazy views who ignore the evidence and come up with increasingly bizzare rationalisations.
http://www.debunking911.com/
A couple of thousand registered architects, engineers and academics who are members of AE911 do.
Yes. And im sure you could find a couple of thousand people with science degrees who question global warming without any trouble. The fact remains that the overwhelming majority of engineers and architects believe that there is no conspiricy based on the evidence of what brought the buildings down.
http://911-engineers.blogspot.com/
“Only a handful of architects and engineers question the NIST Report, but they have never come up with an alternative. Although at first blush it may seem impressive that these people don’t believe the NIST Report, remember that there are 123,000 members of ASCE(American Society of Civil Engineers) who do not question the NIST Report. There are also 80,000 members of AIA(American Institute of Architects) who do not question the NIST Report.
Although their field of expertise is not related to the construction of buildings – they don’t seem to have a problem with that over at AE911truth – there are also 120,000 members of ASME(American Society of Mechanical Engineers) who do not question the NIST report. There are also 370,000 members of IEEE(Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) who do not question the NIST report. There are also 40,000 members of AIChE(American Institute of Chemical Engineers) who do not question the NIST Report. There are also 35,000 members of AIAA (American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics) who do not question the NIST report. So who would you rather believe?”
The latest contender for Richardhead of the year has to be Matthew Ridge. Although why the Herald should consider this a story is beyond me. After all who would be surprised that a rugby jock used car selling millionaire would be anti Labour?
I thought Labour meant doing work or have the Labour Party got a mortgage on the word Labour?
Bit like homos having a mortgage on the word gay.
How does one “mortgage” a word, exactly? What does that even mean?
because of the words ‘Say no to Labour’, and the reference to voting and tick in a box on a blue background which may reasonably be regarded as encouraging or persuading voters not to vote for the Labour Party as a political party,”
Self explanatory really – don’t need to be a rocket scientist to figure out that it’s an underhanded election advert in the guise of a business hoarding.
Countersinker – take your homophobic crap elsewhere you worm.
Quite smart starting the ‘unofficial’ National Party campaign with the Ridge. The inherent buffoonery can swipe away the seriousness of the transgression. If they got caught (AS THEY HAVE) then it is wet bus tickets and just boys having a laugh. I suspect there are many more of these types of campaign messages to come over the next eight weeks and they will now be groomed based on the fines/judgements of these early efforts.
lower wages, employer friendly climate and if ya don’t like the way that person’s slaving over yo car….ya got 90 days to sack em without any qusetions…..what the jocks would call a ‘full credit’ outcome.
Ridgey and his partners would be lovin the brighter future….do the maths on charges V min wages next time you venture into one….water’s still cheap as Wodneys reforms haven’t kicked in yet.
Never liked that wanker Ridge
I hope that someone is putting Bernie Monk up for some recognition in the New Year Honours. Despite his personal grief he has always been available to speak for the Pike River families in a concise and respectful manner. Given the facts coming out at the commission there must have been many times when he had to bite his lip when being interviewed by ignorant journalists making thier own assumptions. Now RNZ is reporting that the families have asked for a meeting with the key, when another family member was on earlier saying that it was his office that asked for the meeting – no doubt for a serious photo op after all the ra ra ra photos of the RWC.
Well yes Key is in Greyhole today no less. No doubt he will try to get a photo like the pathetic image of him standing adjacent to Mealamu for the nat anthem at the Japan game last week. It was like he was pretending he could run with a rugby ball… actually, has anybody ever seen Key run?
It will be interesting to see what comes of Pike River today with mr shallow in attendance…
Oi! ‘Greyhole’?
At least we don’t free shakes with our happy meals 🙂
Otherwise, i agree with what you said.
Sorry but the way the media are reporting Pike River is doing my head in. You can’t show lawyer from EPMU, Labour Dept, Pike River, families etc. attacking someone on the stand and report it that way and then go back to Bernie Monk every bloody day so he can speak on behalf of the family. Its a royal commission and I can’t stand how the media have been reporting it. Its not healthy to have a set of conclusions made every time someone speaks. Its just not good.
Anyone heard our country’s Attorney General trying to keep a straight face on Morning Report to cover his cock up?
Well done, Chris dahhhling. You could have fooled us.
Proof that not only the Right can be homophobic
and in this case, homophilic
lolololol
so it is not an election ad but they let him make an election statement whilst telling you it’s not an election ad. I see a wet bus ticket in ridge’s future and the herald just wanders off without a word against their manipulations.
don’t you just hate it when you miss another’s post on the same topic, sorry mickey
Another clearly stated opinion this time by Mai Chen on the five issues that she perceives with the retrospective Surveillance proposals.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/opinion/news/article.cfm?c_id=466&objectid=10753400
Her last para sums it up nicely in my opinion.
No one wants to let criminal offenders get off scot free, but if the Government passed prospective, rather than retrospective, legislation concerning the Supreme Court decision, this would preserve the fundamental constitutional principle that we are all ruled by law (including the police) and we should know what the law and its consequences are before we act.
Election hit
http://goldmedalfamous.bandcamp.com/album/john-key-is-a-dick-versions-for-different-markets
Need to share that one around
I have, now everybody else should, and formatted into various musical genre preferences too, good on them!
Good on Amnesty International for campaigning ‘to halt the execution of Troy Davis, an American citizen convicted of killing a police officer. ‘
What hapened to ‘innocent until PROVEN guilty’ – ‘beyond reasonable doubt’?
Troy Davis has already spent 20 years on ‘Death Row’.
America – the ‘land of the free’?
Yeah right.
http://www.nccd-crc.org/nccd/pubs/2006nov_factsheet_incarceration.pdf
“The US has less than 5% of the world’s population but over 23% of the world’s incarcerated people.
In the past 30 years, the United States has come to rely on imprisonment as its response to all types of crime.
Even minor violations of parole or probation often lead to a return to prison.
This has created a prison system of unprecedented size in this country.
The US incarcerates the largest number of people in the world.
The incarceration rate in the US is four times the world average.
Some individual US states imprison up to six times as many people as do nations of comparable population.
The US imprisons the most women in the world.
Crime rates do not account for incarceration rates.
Local and state facilities across the country are overcrowded, exacerbate prisoner health problems, risk the safety of both staff and prisoners, are in poor repair, and strain taxpayers.
The nationwide bill for incarceration is conservatively estimated at $42 billion annually (see AOUSC, May, 2004).
Many prison and jail systems havebeen sued for failure to meet minimum requirements for health and safety.
Prisoner rehabilitation and reentry services are inadequately funded.”
I wonder how many of those incarcerated in the USA are in prison for ‘white collar’ crime?
In NZ – you will note that the ‘three strikes’ policy does NOT apply to ‘white collar’ crime?
Penny Bright. Independent ‘Public Watchdog’. Candidate for Epsom.
Troy Davis is due for Lethal Injection in a half hour, unless Georgia can admit it made a mistake.
This case is not a million miles away from the problems we are facing in NZ. The supposition that the State knows best has only dragged Justice backwards and i have a recurring nightmare that the call for a death penalty will be revisited if National get back in.
SCOTUS still considering the Davis stay.
“The White House declined to comment on the case, saying “it is not appropriate for the president of the United States to weigh in on specific cases”
Yet the US President can pardon whomever he chooses to,
seems to be a bit of a contradiction there.
recent pardons by Obama
Live stream.
http://www.thenation.com/blog/163555/live-stream-democracy-now-outside-georgia-prison-where-troy-davis-be-executed
Its been delayed.
Troy Davis has just been executed! I have no words
bugger
Billie Holiday – Strange Fruit
Southern trees bear strange fruit
Blood on the leaves
Blood at the root
Black bodies swinging in the southern breeze
Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees
Pastoral scene of the gallant south
The bulging eyes and the twisted mouth
The scent of magnolia sweet and fresh
Then the sudden smell of burning flesh
Here is a fruit for the crows to pluck
for the rain to gather
for the wind to suck
for the sun to rot
for the tree to drop
Here is a strange and bitter crop
very apt
Strange Fruit
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h4ZyuULy9zs
Ani DiFranco – Crime for crime
the big day has come
the bell is sounding
i run my hands through my hair one last time
outside the prison walls
the town is gathering
people are trading crime for crime
everyone needs to see the prisoner
they need to make it even easier
they see me as a symbol, and not a human being
that way they can kill me
say it’s not murder, it’s a metaphor
we are killing off our own failure
and starting clean
standing in the gallows
everyone turned my way
i hear a voice ask me
if I’ve got any last words to say
and i’m looking out over the field of familiar eyes
somewhere in a woman’s arms a baby cries
i think guilt and innocence
they are a matter of degree
what might be justice to you
might not be justice to me
i went to far, i’m sorry
i guess now i’m going home
so let any amongst you cast the first stone
now we’ve got all these complicated machines
so no one person ever has to have blood on their hands
we’ve got complex organizations
and if everyone just does their job
no one person has to understand
you might be the wrong colour
you might be too poor
justice isn’t something just anyone can afford
you might not pull the trigger
you might be out in the car
and you might get a lethal injection
’cause we take a metaphor that far
the big day has come
the bell is sounding
i run my hands through my hair one last time
outside the prison walls
the town has gathered
people are trading crime for crime
people are trading crime for crime
people are still trading crime for crime
You’ve missed one crucial point about the US prison system: it is modern day slave labour. Once you understand that point, the motivations for the rest of it becomes clear. Sorry for the long copy and paste dump, but this is all very pertinent:
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=8289
“The prison industry complex is one of the fastest-growing industries in the United States and its investors are on Wall Street. “This multimillion-dollar industry has its own trade exhibitions, conventions, websites, and mail-order/Internet catalogs. It also has direct advertising campaigns, architecture companies, construction companies, investment houses on Wall Street, plumbing supply companies, food supply companies, armed security, and padded cells in a large variety of colors.”
According to the Left Business Observer, the federal prison industry produces 100% of all military helmets, ammunition belts, bullet-proof vests, ID tags, shirts, pants, tents, bags, and canteens. Along with war supplies, prison workers supply 98% of the entire market for equipment assembly services; 93% of paints and paintbrushes; 92% of stove assembly; 46% of body armor; 36% of home appliances; 30% of headphones/microphones/speakers; and 21% of office furniture. Airplane parts, medical supplies, and much more: prisoners are even raising seeing-eye dogs for blind people.”
“Who is investing? At least 37 states have legalized the contracting of prison labor by private corporations that mount their operations inside state prisons. The list of such companies contains the cream of U.S. corporate society: IBM, Boeing, Motorola, Microsoft, AT&T, Wireless, Texas Instrument, Dell, Compaq, Honeywell, Hewlett-Packard, Nortel, Lucent Technologies, 3Com, Intel, Northern Telecom, TWA, Nordstrom’s, Revlon, Macy’s, Pierre Cardin, Target Stores, and many more. All of these businesses are excited about the economic boom generation by prison labor. Just between 1980 and 1994, profits went up from $392 million to $1.31 billion. Inmates in state penitentiaries generally receive the minimum wage for their work, but not all; in Colorado, they get about $2 per hour, well under the minimum. And in privately-run prisons, they receive as little as 17 cents per hour for a maximum of six hours a day, the equivalent of $20 per month. The highest-paying private prison is CCA in Tennessee, where prisoners receive 50 cents per hour for what they call “highly skilled positions.” At those rates, it is no surprise that inmates find the pay in federal prisons to be very generous. There, they can earn $1.25 an hour and work eight hours a day, and sometimes overtime. They can send home $200-$300 per month.
Thanks to prison labor, the United States is once again an attractive location for investment in work that was designed for Third World labor markets. A company that operated a maquiladora (assembly plant in Mexico near the border) closed down its operations there and relocated to San Quentin State Prison in California. In Texas, a factory fired its 150 workers and contracted the services of prisoner-workers from the private Lockhart Texas prison, where circuit boards are assembled for companies like IBM and Compaq.”
Penny Bright:
You said, “Land of the free, yeah right.”
A New Zealand politician taking cheap shots at the states, heck that hasnt happen before.
Why on earth is New Zealand following a country with the most defunct and destructive prison system in the world?
Thejackel:
Yeah Im sure the prisons in south america, asia, africa, eastern europe are brilliant and obey by international human rights laws.
Yeah sure, but unlike the evil empire they’re not talking out of the sides of their mouths about human rights while they go about killing their own citizens.
I’m actually a judicially-recognised ‘Public Watchdog’ (on Metrowater, water and Auckland regional governance matters) , and a publicly-acknowledged ‘anti-corruption campaigner’ – not a politician.
I find that the electoral process is a good way of helping to focuss public attention on the issues.
That’s the main reason why I chose to stand as an ‘Independent Public Watchdog’ candidate in the ‘Auckland Mayoral election , and Botany and Howick by-elections.
🙂 Penny Bright. Independent ‘Public Watchdog’. Candidate for Epsom.
Good on ya Penny, you’ve been doing great work 🙂
You’ve got my vote Penny 🙂
What the US needs to do is lock more people up for longer, and then (clearly) things will improve.
Get put behind bars for robbing a business of $500, but steal $500B from the taxpayer and get a year-end bonus as a bankster.
Welcome to the USA.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/world/americas/5665974/Troy-Davis-executed-after-appeal-fails
Troy Davis has been murdered by the State of Georgia
Sadly, they killed him! I heard that this afternoon on the BBC WS, they had it as breaking news… His last words were that he forgave those murdering him, and that the family of his ‘victim’, should look into having the case re-investigated….
Just one more to add to the list really.
Going right back to when the Mayflower first landed.
Earth to Labour, from England to you…
“The economy is in flames and the neoliberal model that has brought it to this pass is bust – even as the political class clings stubbornly to the orthodoxies of the boom years. But those who grasp that the crisis is transforming politics will shape its future.”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/sep/21/radical-action-drag-economy-brink
We all knew that the neoliberal model was a nasty crock of shit by the time Roger Douglas got his knighthood, didn’t we?
Perhaps the Left should be better grasping the changing narrative then!
This is the opportunity to educate the electorate and show the status quo is the cause for the predicament, and that Key n co are wedded to an ideology which proved itself to have failed in Chile in the 70’s, Asia in the 90’s.
And now that the debt bubble fueled by Asia – who learnt the lessons we didn’t, and saved and managed rather than consumed and deregulated, flooding us with liquidity with which to pretend we were booming – has burst and the failure throughout the Western economies is irrefutable, why isn’t the Left dominating the debate rather than running scared of the focus group.
Some of us were saying it at the time.
Unfortunately everything we warned about has occurred.
George Orwell was right!
Fukushima is Worse
Last night, New Zealand’s mainstream media reiterated that the Fukushima nuclear disaster was officially recognized as an accident similar in scale to Chernobyl, and that typhoon Roke, was heading towards the stricken nuclear power plant, which was devastated in the 11 March earthquake and tsunami…
Keep the Middle East poor and oppressed quiet
By giving them free food and social services.
Can’t have a revisit of the ‘Arab Spring’.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-09-19/opec-s-1t-cash-quiets-poor-on-longest-ever-100-oil.html
Here’s a thought, only just occurred to me.
Anyone think the price of fuel has been upped for the last week or so and for the next couple of weeks? Considerably more traffic (camper vans, rental cars, etc) on the roads.
Are the petrol companies price gouging?
Last week the AA said they thought the increases were reasonable or in line with historic margins.
They are price gouging… the cost of a barrel of Brent crude has fallen by $20 over the last two weeks. Being that the oil industry wants National to win (because National will ignore New Zealand’s obligations under the Kyoto protocol an is pro deep sea oil drilling), we can expect the price of crude to continue to fall leading up to the next general election. The increase at the pump is just a small blimp to take advantage of the increased traffic.
I have waited in vain, of course ,for the Herald to headline the sleazy actions of National President Goodfellow regarding his business concerned with allegations of slave labour with his shiping company.
There was a small column in last weeks Sunday Star but so far I have seen nothing in the Herald.Just imagine if this had involved any one from Labour.It would have been headline news , In fact they would be demanding his resignation and prosecution .
Environment vs Big Oil & Gas
We all know that our reliance on petroleum-based products will come to an end, the question is when and how much damage is going to be caused in the mean time. The difficulty is that we’ve built our entire system around cheap oil with little consideration for the environment. Even when informed of the danger, mankind is failing to change its habits…
McFlock,
My work allows me to maintain a proximity to ongoing discussions, i am not going to apologise for that.
I am dissapointed however with your insinuations against the work ethic of people you do not know.
That said, let’s move on shall we?
Firemen in distress.
I always tend to trust reality over editing.
In any investigation of a terrorist attack, a natural disaster or similarly destructive event, the eyewitness reports of trained professionals in the moments after an event are proven to be some of the most crucial.
Years ago, I did watch a lot of 9/11 videos. Many of them were terrible and were not very constructive. Others were pure dis-info and were highly destructive by design. Knowing this, i actually do not spend all day watching YouTube. I occassionally pop in to grab a video i know is there, when requiring the content for illustration of a discussion. I downloaded many of these videos and now and again i may watch one or a part of one. Since then it has been a steady diet of actual information not just absorbing others’ visual interpretations of the content. I absolutely agree there is a risk of over exposure to information and a corresponding impairment to judgement.
Is 9/11 Truth the only topic with this malady?
Ongoing discussions is one thing – I’m in the same priviledged boat, there. But being able to set aside 3 hours to watch something in the hope that it will be more persuasive than the wishful thinking previously exhibited seems a bit high-cost low-gain.
Yes, professional contemporaneous eyewitness statements are usually very valuable. This is why I’m not quite so derisive as if someone is arguing that aluminium cannot possibly melt in a fire. But such footage is indicative, not conclusive. E.g. even if there were explosions, were those bombs, structural failures prior to the eventual collapse, or even gas cylinders from restaurants, floor polishers, forklifts, or even something else that is explosive under some circumstances and perfectly reasonable to store in a large facility?
I think the issue about 9/11 is that it goes to a lot of people’s hearts and serves to highlight their initial biases. These are things that we all need to overcome to lok at the evidence impartially, but as soon as we do that we realise that 99.9% of the “evidence” is supposition, hearsay, assumption, overinterpretation of misinterpretation or whatever – we’re swamped with bullshit.
All that can be said with any degree of probability is that it was then used as a casus belli against at least one nation that was almost certainly unconnected to the attacks.
It is most certainly the Wars that are too often neglected in 9/11 discussion. I like to think people generally dislike them and prefer not to be reminded they are ongoing. They certainly do not smile when shown War’s relationship to the world we share. The pure subconscious terror that many experience as doubt gnaws their heart has become more obvious and more pertinent as the years pass.
Many people use this as a reality barometer.
Another useful measure would have been a ‘global debate worm’ during the Toronto Hearings.
McFlock , If it began with the 99.9 % figure you provided, over the four days of the evidence,
i believe the nose dive of belief in the Official Story would have been impressive to witness.
“If it began with the 99.9 % denial figure you provided, over the four days of the evidence,i believe the nose dive of belief in the Official Story would have been impressive to witness.”
What’s really important is that no evidence of a crime at was presented over the four days, freedom. What was presented, as McFlock suggests, was supposition, hearsay, assumption, over interpretation or misinterpretation.
By the way, would you convict the Urewera accused on ‘evidence’ as flimsy as that that you currently hold in regard to a 9/11 conspiracy? Law is a yes or no thing. Either you have evidence or you don’t. The coppers didn’t, so they dropped the charges against most. There needs to be a level of proof of a conspiracy before any of your theories have any validity. Any credence. So, even if the theories are all correct, it doesn’t matter a damn if you can’t pin it on someone.
And then there is the little question of why. Why the fuck would you do this to your own country? Cui bono? There is no benefit to America, only downsides. And, as I know you think it was needed to spur a war or two, why bother? A fertiliser bomb laden truck outside the US embassy childcare facility in Baghdad or Kabul or any number of similar atrocities would work just as well and be a damn sight easier to organise.
Nah, it’s shit. Sorry mate, but there you have it.
So has Matthew Ridge made it onto Campbell Larsen’s list of people he wants to see “hurry up and die” yet?
Imagine that, two high profile league players and all round working class men coming out and backing the government.
It has not been a good week for you guys has it.
Ridge is an entertainer. Not a league player. Right from when he signed his contract with Manly in ’89 he became an entertainer. Not an ‘all round working class man’. Pro sport is all about entertainment. NOT sport.
Only in America is there money to be made in state sanctioned killings.
A Moment Of Brilliance–How To Not Kill Troy Davis
We also call on all employees of Dr. Musso’s businesses, RainbowMedical Associates and Correct Health, Inc., who have anyinvolvement with implementing the Georgia Department of Corrections execution protocol, to refuse to participate in theexecution of Troy Davis. Remember your humanity and that youroath is to facilitate healing, not killing!
#correcthealth