I was tasked by local Iwi to try and grow the black Colocasia esculenta as they'd 'forgotten how' (told they never did grow it as they could not and were rightly frustrated with such nonsense as it was on the land). Many trials later the plant showed me how it works.
In a bowl in the land, where after rain it holds water, but can still dry out. Wherever the white (funeral aka peace aka calla) lily grows. In partial shade. In shelter.
Find a sheltered concave spot where the lily grows. Place Taro plants with the lilys, watch the Taro take over.
For the non-black varieties, similar rules, but extra care making sure the place gets water. There are many varieties but these are what you'd typically encounter. Both can cope with dry for a period, the black is much hardier but only when in the right spot (ousting lilys).
What I like most about this plant is that it is a part of the landscape. It looks really good, and it doesn't have to be decimated to be enjoyed (just thin the big stuff and eat that), this can be a staple, or emergency supplies.
Does well beneath bananas and nut trees so very low maintenance polyculture is also an option.
Yes there are a few here in Westmere growing it too. Interestingly it is mostly Islanders growing it, few Maori (though no qualms with eating it). I hope this historical find helps it make a comeback within 'local' cuisine as well – any variety to our staples lends resilience.
My favorite expert here, strain specific siting is important for producers to know about:
Interesting indeed about taros role in enabling life in the Pacific. We need to look back and gather in all sorts of knowledge they had in simpler times. It is what intelligent people do when faced with an uncertain future, climate and political -wise. And thanks WtB for transferring the video link. That stuff is gold I reckon and you are doing interesting, good stuff. Thanks for keeping us informed.
We need to know useful stuff as we continue along our smooth road built on sandy ground, driven by a love of machines and technology that allow those with class connections and power to sacrifice people's lives for the love of doing things fast, getting grand things – houses, cars, planes, lime scooters, and childishly adopting ideas and things enthusiastically but shortly after throwing them out of the cot. And all to get lots of financial credits to enable the above cycle to continue. Mad. We have had heaven and never recognised it, seeking it in some vague form of the after-life. But children's thinking of a future is where there will be more and greater things when they grow up.
I have the notion that culture begins as an interaction with the environment peoples find themselves in .They learn how to live with those conditions. There's a certain cultural character that arises from those countries that have climates that restrict the growing season, thus they learn to grow food in a limited season and then store it
Those in more optimal climes have less anxiety about food and don't learn to stockpile and store.
I really regret the homogenisation of the world's societies .We have lost so much knowledge about how to live in suboptimal circumstances(without the excessive use of energy)
We need cultural diversity just as much as biodiversity
Wow! That's cool (yes the pun was deliberate). It was 11 degrees here this morning I felt the chill then wondered what you were getting: Riverton 7. Colder…
We're quite blessed up here getting sub-tropicals running wild. Site selection is key to it, basic earthworks. I never in a million (ok, with climate change I totally imagined it possible) thought of Taro in Invercargill.
Do you know their target market? That's really interesting.
Members of the Pacific Island community have a couple of big tunnelhouse in which they grow sizeable and healthy taro; huge leaves, as you know. I was promised some rhizomes, but forgot to collect, but now that I'm reminded, I'll go back, spade in hand. I don't know anything about cultivation, but they'll show me.
No. Just read the wiki on it and there was little information.
What are you up to with it?
I saw some bamboo hedging/shelter belts recently in the Waitakere ranges, it was almost as tall as mature poplars, it was being used to shelter forestry – impressive!
I think Sabine on How to.. was asking about safe bamboo ie not spreading and problematic, so if someone hasn't replied, could someone do that. She is keen on giving things a go.
NZ bamboo society link. Just need to do a little bit of googling and check that whatever species you are thinking of doesn't "run" in your local micoclimate/conditions.
A friend and I were discussing her new tunnel house
I told her that in mine I didnt replace or sterilise the soil each growing season, but rather added to the soil constantly with all manner of organic matter. This I said, all wise and knowledgeable ,was so that all the available living sites in the soil would be taken up by saprophytic fungi , thus excluding the parasitic fungi .But then my voice faltered as I thought about that.
Why would parasitic fungi be in dead and decaying matter, when its liking is for living tissue? Resting bodies? Overwintering ?
Now I'm all at 6s and 7s
So, I'll still keep up with the seagrass and horseshit and the like , and actually , I haven't had any problems with fungal diseases the entire 10 years, but now I'm having doubts about my advice.
Yeah some fungi can encyst or hibernate for winter, some vary in hosts for winter vs summer and might be bad for one and no sign on the other.
There's biotrophic (attack living) and necrotrophic (attack dead) fungal pathogens. A necrotrophic pathogen kills living cells and then consumes them dead while a biotrophic pathogen feeds on the living cells. Some might switch it up…
Saprotrophs are neither supposedly – eating already dead materials. But who knows what else they get up to, trying to pin one function to one fungi is problematic at best. Botrytis use hackers, armored vehicles, propaganda and more when they attack. Plants kill off cells trying to stop it and so just play into the pathogens 'hands'.
Fungi are crazy cool, but we know jack shit…
Some fungi are symbionts in one circumstance and pathogens in the next, why is mostly a mystery. Changing circumstances. The pathogens of pathogenic fungi are mostly free living but can be employed by plants. Other symbionts, like mycorrhizae may provide niche exclusion where they've coated the rhizosphere… Any beneficial potentially helps exclude problematic microbes, but their functions might be important.
In the gut Akkermancia gets a bad rap degrading sulphide bridges (memory here, forgive if I mess it up) but their wastes feed beneficial bacteria that entrain the immune system to fight bugs like Akkermancia… it pays to be careful what we consider problematic. Often the 'problems' are parts of systems beyond our comprehension.
A complex food web is created by the organic matter, it is also protected (from weather) by it with the majority of microbial life residing in the upper surface of the soil. There are fungi for every occasion in the soil food web, most of which we've not discovered yet.
If it's working, I wouldn't sweat it too much. I have many species on my section right now I don't know them by name – yet I'm often the go to guy for fungi…
What's that (any clearly visible mushroom) people say?
My Dip Hort training was very black and white , good and bad bugs etc,roundup was a "good "herbicide rendered inactive by the soil, saprophytic fungi good , parasitic bad.Jeez, I spent loads of my working life unlearning stuff.The best was plant ID, and lifecycles of the rust fungus, plus metamorphosis and all that wonderful scifi life of insects
All in all as long as you've got a thriving live community of microbiota they'll sort it out.?
Can't help thinking that sterilisation just clears the slate for the most aggressive colonisers
Think I'll keep recommending the organic matter but lay off suggesting that'll give immunity to any pathogens
It's illegal to bromide soils anymore, but those in the know know that marigolds produce bromide in their root zones and can be used to control soil insect pests.
I have some damage to some root crops and could cycle the marigolds in the area to alleviate insect pressure in the soil. I'll probably not, hoping instead to bring in predatory beetles through providing habitat, but it is an option. What damage there is I cut around it, feed to chooks, it's all good.
Problematic fungi typically like damp poor draining places, but I can't speak too soon, in super dry California they've many pathogens all of their own.
Organic matter might give immunity to pathogens. There's plenty of studies to suggest compost does this. It is not just nutritional but the biota. If you break it down there are many species that produce compounds plants use in defense against various parasites and pathogens and there are myriad papers of all sorts of wierd and wonderful goings on with bacteria fungi and more.
Silica is definitely useful in plant defense – a constituent in abundance in sea grass.
Some tried to teach me in black and white. A mugs game at best. Read the damn text books.
A tunnelhouse is a bubble of exclusivity and the environment inside, removed from many natural processes. Minimising that exclusive quality as far as possible is the best management, imo; get rainwater in there as often as you can, allow or attract insects and birds to visit, promote the through-flow of fresh air and encourage as wide as possible a range of plants to grow in there as your sense of aesthetics will allow. If you can, flood the soil at the end of the main growing season, with rain water and rinse away any built-up salts. Bring in home-made composts. Refresh the soil if needed; take out any that's looking less than healthy and replace it with compost thats been exposed to the wide world conditions. That should do it. Focus on and promote that which is healthy and your under-cover environment will be healthy. Pay only slight heed to the pathogens; they're going to struggle in any healthy environment you create. S'wot I reckon.
A Samoan family rented a house near us in Blenheim. I think that they had a crop of Taro growing in a little garden facing north. It looked like Taro leaf anyway.
The taro plants (each one beautiful in itself) rising from the plain carefully levelled surface, which was sometimes even strewed with white sand brought from a distance, and patted smooth with their hand;*
Nice! The white sand reflects and thus enhances light availability. Maori gardeners knew lots of great tricks.
The opening lines reveal the story this paper you linked failed to correct (in the PDF):
"Two gross errors have largely and repeatedly been industriously published concerning the ancient Maoris, and these, too, from our first knowledge of them: [….] (2) Their great want of food.Hence [….] the poor creatures were necessarily in a savage and starving state."
We've evolved somewhat in our views, but make no mistake the denial of indigenous intelligence was widespread.
These go a lot further towards being political charges and being protected speech activities. So the prosecutorial overreach may in fact help Assange argue against extradition, whether it be directly from the UK, or from Sweden. And if it's from Sweden, then the UK also has to agree, so Assange may get extra protection from that.
what the new charges indicate are that even if they can’t get him to the US they will fight this for ever – he will be held in cells for a long long long time.
Dunno about that. In 2013 Obama and his Justice Department concluded that it wasn't in the national interest to go after Assange because of the potential harmful chilling effect on legitimate journalism and free speech. Come January 2021, there may be a new prez and Attorney General that feel that same way.
I gotta confess to some curiosity about about what Assange now thinks about his activities helping elect the most committed anti-free press pro-corruption president in modern history.
Whether he's filed it under "oops, seemed a good idea at the time" or whether he's so consumed by anti-american hate that he thinks the damage getting done to the US by Tyrannosaurus Arse makes it worth it.
Assange's thoughts would be more complex and labelling them as anti-american hate is a knee jerk choice of term I am sure. Anyone who tries to be objective about the behaviours of countries and particularly the large ones will be extremely worried and wary about their attitude to the people of the world. I don't think that calling big countries' attitudes anti-people-hate is taking it too far when one looks at the sort of things they have done.
For instance the Marshall Islands have had to fight back from being guinea pigs for atomic blasts from the USA. Also the French exploded over a hundred atomic devices mostly in the South Pacific.
The USA has used its prominence to do lots of bad stuff. Simply put. Assange recognises this and has reacted to it by showing up their hypocrisy of pretending they are good guys protecting the free world! Andre I think you have said you are American. I think therefore that your views may be biased and not objective.
And now this:
In Fiji on Thursday, he [UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres] told the crowd about "a kind of coffin" built by the US in the Marshall Islands to house the deadly radioactive debris from 1980s.
The structure, however, was never meant to last. Today, due to disrepair and rising sea tides, it is dangerously vulnerable. A strong storm could breach the dome, releasing the deadly legacy of America's nuclear might.
"I've just been with the President of the Marshall Islands (Hilda Heine), who is very worried because there is a risk of leaking of radioactive materials that are contained in a kind of coffin in the area," Guterres said in Fiji, Agence France-Presse reported.
Guterres' "coffin" was the product of a belated American response to the testing of the 1940s and 1950s. Beginning in 1977, the Defence Nuclear Agency began a sustained cleanup of the nuclear debris left over on Enewetak Atoll…
Assange's actions around shoving his cock into women's bodies in ways that were explicitly not consented to, then scarpering every time it looked like he might get held accountable, don't speak to much complexity of thought on his part.
Well then Andre he deserves the judicial and psychological rape he is now being subjected to does he?
And the military and economic rape the lawless US dishes out daily and which Assange exposed to the world can carry on merrily because …Assange is accused(but not convicted) of not using a condom
And the powers that be are now in possession of a wonderful weapon… the gullibility of the public when accusations of sexual impropriety are thrown around.
The chilling effect that this has on journalists, because we are all, every one of us flawed in all kinds of ways, and the compliant media could discredit every one of us, destroy us , rape us psychologically every day of the week and people like you will stand on the roadside cheering and jeering
Assange successfully stalled the legitimate judicial process for seven years. His choices and actions, nobody else's. And now the legitimate judicial process is starting up again. Which you seem to be objecting to.
Starfuckers aren't allowed to set limits to what they consent to? And because they're starfuckers, they lose the right to hold accountable those that breach the limits of their consent? When you’re a star, it’s ok even if they don’t want to let you do it?
You seem to know a lot about his sexual carrying on Andre. All you described is covered by the words 'had sex with'. Do you find this itself a disgraceful and unpleasant behaviour? There might not be complexity in Assange's mind about it but there certainly seems to be in yours.
As I understood it he had had sexual relations with his female partner, and then felt desire and had it again when she wasn't fully awake. You speak of 'ways that were explicitly not consented to' is that two counts or one? Was it the ways that he performed this act, or did he go against explicit instructions, ie not used condom? If he had not used a condom. that is wrong and exposes the woman to possible pregnancy and/or sexual diseases so is a no-no, but doesn't constitute rape.
All you described is covered by the words 'had sex with'. Do you find this itself a disgraceful and unpleasant behaviour?
Why ask Andre? What counts is what the person he "had sex with" has to say about it, and what they've had to say can't have been that complimentary, given the criminal investigation.
If he had not used a condom. that is wrong and exposes the woman to possible pregnancy and/or sexual diseases so is a no-no, but doesn't constitute rape.
Consent can be conditional on use of a condom. In which case the term for not using one isn't the "surprise creampie" often depicted as a hilarious gag in porn videos, it's "rape."
You stupid twats are sick in the head. It's non of your business what two people do in the bedroom. For starters Julian's accusers wanted Julian tested for STDz. It was a secound prosecutor under orders who had the allegations upgraded. This has and never have been about the victim. All this is is an excuse for the woke to demonstrate how virtuous there feelings of victimhood is.
Absolutely it's none of my business what two people do in a bedroom, but it definitely is my business when people are posting rape apologia on a blog I read.
Also: believing that consent matters is not virtue-signalling for the woke. Men who don't understand that consent matters sometimes end up having to tell a court why the jury should believe sex was consensual when the other party vehemently denies it. Why not just avoid that scenario and avoid being a creep at the same time?
It seems to be that sex sets many of you off like wind-up clockwork toys.
Sex? Haven't noticed that topic come up. Rape apologia certainly sets some of us off though, yes. Have you all considered not writing any? That would shut down my comments on the subject of Assange almost completely.
This actually goes to a wider set of societal norms. So is it okay for the state to run assignation programmes? Or in this case against Assange, is it okay to use the coercive powers of the state keeping in mind that Hillary Clinton while Secretary of State public stated a desire to drone him for publishing evidence that she was malfeasance in the death of a Lybian Ambassador. So the question I'm trying to get at here is it it cool for the state to use rape allegations as a tool to extradite Assange?
There's far more compelling evidence that Assange sacrificed young boys to the goddess Chamunda while in the Ecuadorian embassy. You'd build a more convincing case if you followed up that rumour.
So the question I'm trying to get at here is it it cool for the state to use rape allegations as a tool to extradite Assange?
Well, that depends, doesn't it? If it's using rape allegations to extradite Assange for some nefarious non-rape-allegations-related purpose, then that wouldn't be cool at all.
However, if it's using rape allegations to extradite Assange because someone's made a rape allegation against him, then yes, totally cool. I notice that someone has made a rape allegation against him.
So my comments aren't state sponsored then. Nasty thing to accuse me of, that.
Summing up the entire swedish situation as people saying "he's a rapist" is a straw man argument. It allows no room for the concept of "he was accused of rape, so should face up to the legal system on that charge". And before you dolt45 "no charges", the British Supreme Court disagreed with that argument.
The statement in jeremyB's link "InterPol bizarrely issued a Red Notice for Assange, typically reserved for terrorists and dangerous criminals, not alleged first-time rapists" is a mischaracterisation of interpol notice classifications. And rape is a serious crime, even the first time. So that's a not-quite-truth.
And so on, with everything covered before here on rape-apology groundhog day, anyway.
Edit: yeah, 1 through 10. I could agree with that although as you can see from Mc Trashs response, you either agree that the state should be held to account or not.
@Poission: depends on whether those people end up in front of a real judge or a Drumpf appointee whose only qualification was an ability to crawl so far up Drumpf's ass they got to shake hands with Hannity.
Francesca, the outstanding independent journalist Allan Nairn was on Democracy Now! today. He had words of counsel for the Democratic Party:
AMY GOODMAN: Just before you leave, can you weigh in on the whole impeachment debate in the United States?
ALLAN NAIRN: Well, it’s a longer discussion. But if you turn on CNN, MSNBC these days, unless you’re someone who has been following these channels avidly, I think you’ll find a lot of what they’re talking about is incomprehensible gobbledygook, because they go on and on about Don McGahn and all these figures who most people don’t know who they are, rather than talking about the substantive issues of the atrocities that Trump is committing daily—the abduction and, as you just mentioned, de facto murder of children on the border, the gutting of labor rights, the gutting of environmental protections. And instead, they’re talking about—the Democrats are going off on a tangent, and they’re handing Trump a political gift. If you’re going to impeach him, impeach him on substance, not a Russia plot, which Mueller already concluded Trump didn’t criminally participate in.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, we’re going to have to leave it there, because I know you have to catch a train. But I do want to ask you, on other grounds—that’s what a number of the Democrats are talking about now—for example, not being willing to cooperate with Congress on giving over information.
ALLAN NAIRN: Yeah. One problem, though, is the Democrats are creating this constitutional confrontation. They rightly point out that it’s outrageous that Trump is refusing to turn over documents that Congress has legally and rightfully subpoenaed, but the Democrats are doing that premised on what is a very weak premise, the idea that somehow there’s something nefarious in the Russia plot, when Mueller has already concluded that there was nothing there criminally.
Do that based on substance. Do it based on his refusal to turn over documents about the crimes he’s committing along the Mexican border, about the way he’s driving the world to possible extinction through his stance on global warming, about his lifting of restrictions on the killing of civilians with the U.S. bombing and droning operations in the Middle East and North Africa. Do it on real issues, not a premise that has already been undercut by the Mueller investigation.
Its obviously much more exciting to believe in cartoon villains like them evil Rooskies….whatever they do its Wrong…they can't help it its in their nature
especially if you've been brought up on comics and Lex Luthor
India's Prime Minister Modi showed an echo of Trump when he was talking about making India great again, or similar expression. He is very popular despite some worrying tendencies in the past. Populism is in eh.
The whole Indian election thing I don't find the least bit surprising. And like the OZ elections thing across the ditch, there are parallels here that are also interesting.
Personally I'm NOT AT ALL surprised at the Modi clean sweep (or indeed the ScoMo phenomenon) but what worries me is that we could see those parallels here in 2020 DESPITE an opposition being completely fucking useless, punitive, vacuous, nasty, and basically just a bit fik at times. (In fact I predicted it and I'm $5 better off).
And in !ndia, that's even AFTER rural farmers committing suicide, the whole demonetisation fiasco, and a number of other things. I mean……… I know a couple of Congress and Smajwadi Party politicians (i.e. non-corrupt and with left-wing values the founders of NZ's Labour Party would be envious of) who jumped ship to the BJP before the latest. They did so because they perceived, and are now in a better position to get a few things done. I wish them the best of British luck too if any lil 'ole Koiwoi goes grovelling for, or to advance a FTA. )
Pardon my resorting to buzz lingo, but basically the "Let's do this!" after now what is half way through a parliamentary term is being perceived by many as
"Let's do this in the fullness of time going forward". (1984 and 1987 were also "transformational", as was Ruthenasia.)
At the moment, 2020 is Labour and partners' election to lose, and it could ekshully happen.
There's so much 'low hanging fruit' this coalition COULD be dealing with – and I mean some comparatively simple things….. but it's now evident to me that they won't.
What are people at grass root pissed off with? and what do they perceive is being done about it? It isn't the cost of Corban's White Label Chardonnay – so far, it's SFA and it doesn't really fit with what their day-to-day experiences are – whether it's with Health, Edjikayshun, Social Warfare, Transport, etc.
Why is food so expensive in NZ? (Why is it that locally produced [NZ] food can be obtained overseas CHEAPER than here)
Why are building materials (including NZ pine timber) more expensive here? And why, if housing is (and was) a crisis, isn't the coalition responding with mechanisms normally used during an emergency or crisis – especially with regard to homelessness.
Why do the exploited – whether the minimum waged (citizen or immigrant) get half-hearted measures and promises to rectify – there are one or two things that can be done there IMMEDIATELY.
Why is it that restoring prisoners right to vote considered low priority – not too hard to simply repeal a bit of legislation promoted by a total fuckwit and failed public servant whose only real achievements involve successfully stealing and plagiarising others' policy and getting away with it.
Why do problems in Health and Education keep persisting down.
(Gawd!!!! there's so much more but it's involve a rave)
There's so much the current opposition could take advantage of, and really the only reason they're not making any traction (so far) is that they're a complete load of plastic, self-entitled fuckwits – possibly as they always will be.
We're so fortunate that the previous junta is struggling and that we have an amazing, intelligent and compassionate PM – even if she has to be assisted by a wise old owl dadda figure.
My fear is that it's all being taken a wee bit for granted and some of them seem totally unaware who their enemas are (They're quite obviously closer to home than they know)
Dr. Rob Beaglehole (and friends) again call on the Government to implement a tax on sugar.
Of course Clark again says, nah.
"I have met several times with the food industry and set out the clear expectation that business and the Government will work together on this issue."
Sound science on the cost benefits of a sugar tax has been put before this government as it was to previous incumbents and yet Clark assumes the perennial default position of the neo liberal government by declaring a closer relationship with big business than it has with its own science advisors.
It is odd, general consensus that a tax would do good and certainly no harm, strong clinical and scientific support and the general public appear OK with a tax, yet the minister and government doing next to nothing.
Good moves on the political front on RadioNZ this morning that we would not have got if National was still in warming their bums, and drinking their summer wine (mulled in winter).
Ron Mark is going ahead with the Defence Forces looking at man-rape in the '70s. Good on him for caring about the men's welfare. Fair's fair, we need to prevent people from being brutalised in any role, as the sealing off and secrecy about bad behaviour just produces rottenness underneath, like a wound not cleansed. (Single cells in prison also please. Perhaps with a review about some prisoners being let out, but having to attend remedial classes for their day task.)
The Police are looking practically at speed cameras which are expensive in money and person-hours – and not good for the image of the Force which people think should be dealing with crime. Give them to the Transport Authority – managing road usage is their bag and they are good fine with spending money.
Also the Commissioner for Children is requesting again that Police rethink their unwise chasing of stolen cars, and those who won't stop and salute. Speeding after speeding cars tends to make them go faster, the Commissioner referred to one at 160 kmh. Simple psychology says that fear and excitement mixed in immature brains will not result in reasoned thinking. Too much like film Thelma and Louise feeling!
CAA spokesperson uttered the basic problem of neo liberalism that affected them, that for a period in decades back they were not sure of their required role. Was their role an enforcement regulator, or as a support to help business to be effective and efficient.
(That's my take on his quote. And I think that would be behind the actions or inactions of the Christchurch building, planning and inspectors department. They were criticised but no doubt caught between a rock and a hard place by the invidious government acceptance of neo lib. This resulted in withdrawal from their role of responsibility for standards and the passing the ball to business which hailed itself as better, more efficient, reliable, knowledgable about the latest and always looking for the optimum standards, not wastefully over-specified by timid government.
We can rue the past experiment with business cowing government and strutting like peacocks themselves, now with far too many failures left to government to clean up, or structures with built-in weaknesses, leading to early failures. Let's have a sea change to this approach now.)
"Also the Commissioner for Children is requesting again that Police rethink their unwise chasing of stolen cars, and those who won't stop".
The problem I have with this idea is the question of how you are supposed to know that the driver is young and that they are only joy-riding. How would you like to be the Policeman who had to answer this question after they had stopped chasing a car?
"Why did you stop chasing this car? There were 3 men in it together with a young girl they had abducted. After you stopped they continued to a deserted spot where they raped and murdered her. This would not have happened if you had stopped them, and protected her, as your oath required you to. What do you say to her family?"
Of course it is hypothetical. However such abductions do, occasionally, happen and I would hate to be a Policeman who was responsible for allowing it.
Look at the cases of Teresa Cormack and Kirsa Jensen in Hawke's Bay in the 1980s.
My worry is of course an extreme one. However even having to account for your actions in not chasing a stolen car which then continued on and, 5 kilometers further along the road, crashed head-on into another car filled with totally innocent people who were killed in the crash would continue to haunt the police driver who gave up the chase.
And I have to admit I have no idea what the right thing to do is.
Trying to attach a tracker depends on getting close enough to actually make it work. Most chases will have gone on for quite a long time before that happens.
Personally, I'd be fine with every car getting some sort of tracking transponder before getting the privilege of being licensed to go out on public roads, and the cops being able to tap into the tracking information whenever they want. But I imagine that would trigger all sorts of objections from civil-liberties types. Some of those objections might even be valid.
I wouldn't be surprised if sometime soon there's some big scandalous revelation that new cars are already doing it and it can't be disabled since it's built into the vehicle control systems. I vaguely recall reading something about Tesla collecting data from all their autonomous-ready vehicles to develop the mapping info they need to actually make fully autonomous work.
I thought similar, but what if you could just not chase suspects, but laser tag vehicles so a drone follows it. They wouldn't know they were being followed and with a bit of slick drone GPS-cop radio coordination, they stop someplace, cops move in.
The problem I have with this idea is the question of how you are supposed to know that the driver is young and that they are only joy-riding.
It is a fair point in general, although in a recent case in the news they were looking for that specific kid, ID'd the car he'd stolen, and knew the kid had a history of dangerous flight.
CAA spokesperson uttered the basic problem of neo liberalism that affected them, that for a period in decades back they were not sure of their required role. Was their role an enforcement regulator, or as a support to help business to be effective and efficient.
It is a troubled organisation is the Civil Aviation Authority and they seem to get on the wrong side with just about everyone they deal with.
New Zealand is a tiny country and governing bodies have a hard time sourcing board members with the appropriate industry knowledge who are also free from conflicts of interests.
My own dealings with CAA a number of years go has left me fearful in the knowledge that despite clear and proveable breaches of the regulations and strong evidence of incompetency and prevarication, an offending pilot can enjoy enjoy apparent immunity from being held to account.
Closer attention to air traffic rules would have saved the lives of four I think, of our scientists that were killed in a charter plane crash near Christchurch. We are slack often.
Thousands of school kids and others on climate change action protests all over NZ today, but you wouldn't know it was happening from the almost total absence of news in the media. Guess if you keep quiet about climate change it will just go away! Over where I am in Australia, it seems that the federal Labor Party is set to backpedal on climate change policy and the Queensland state labor government will probably allow the huge Adani coal mine to be approved in Queensland because of the recent loss to the Coalition in the federal election. Maybe that's the answer to climate change? You can just vote against doing anything about it and CO2 levels will come tumbling down?
900 million eligible voters have cast their ballot
Al jazeera reports
“There is no denying that this is the result of a formidable Modi wave ”
In the lead-up to the results, the opposition’s Hopes were pinned on a good showing in states such as Bengal in the east and the Hindi-speaking heartland states of Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan.
But these were the states where the BJP performed exceedingly well and dashed the opposition’s plans.
BJP ( National Democratic Alliance ) has increased their majority in the Indian general election.
Guyon has been busy in his new role. Good work on a Pharmac expose that began yesterday, the final 2 episodes air on Morning Report and the website next week. While unfortunately it;s unlikely to change much, short of the Government being shamed into a serious cash injection for drug funding- which we should not hold our collective breath for-I always enjoy a spot of public humiliation towards Public Sector CEOs who say things like this: (from episode 1)
What does Pharmac chief executive Sarah Fitt make of people taking desperate measures to fund their own medicine? "I don't think it is a two-tiered system," she says.
"We have to make the decisions about what are the best uses of the medicines we've got. If people choose to go and fund medicines themselves then that is their choice … It's like having elective surgery on insurance – you can choose whether to do that rather than going to the hospital system."
But what if you are a low-income earner? "Yeah, that's not going to be a choice. Absolutely," she says.
Thanks Kay for posting those links… and most definitely did Ms. Fitt present herself as being less than sensitive to the people she is supposed to be serving.
I too have the more than occasional fantasy of seeing some sociopathic so -called Public Servant being forced to suffer some of the pain and humiliation they have happily metered out to those they are paid to serve.
Perhaps they should be made to open a Givealittle page to fund their salaries?
As for the 'two-tiered' system for access to pharmaceuticals, it came as a revelation to me a few years ago that ACC will fully fund drugs for its clients that Pharmac refuses to fund for those under the Public Health system.
To head Pharmac is a job many of us would never want to have it. To have restricted funds to purchase medication.
To fund a drug to save or improve the life of same would mean that other medication is not funded, I would imagine that those in such organisations must face many moral dilemmas daily, and IMO do not deserve personal attacks. There is no win win in these positions, having to work out what is the best they can do, the minister and govt. restrict what they fund, so perhaps look in that direction.
To fund a drug to save or improve the life of same [sic] would mean that other medication is not funded …
Some of those horrendously expensive drugs only work in a small number of patients and do diddly squat in others except for exposing them to the risk of the unwanted side effects that all these drugs carry. It is like buying a very expensive Lotto ticket and hope for the best …
So if IQ scores are really dropping, that could not only mean 15 more seasons of the Kardashians, but also the potential end of progress on all these other fronts, ultimately leading to fewer scientific breakthroughs, stagnant economies and a general dimming of our collective future.
the kardashians is that like Coronation Street or Shortland Street? I confess to not having watched either of them and I have no intention. But i remember the looks i got from people in the office (when i was still a workdrone for others) when details were discussed and I looked at people like ….sorry i has no idea what you are on about.
As for fewer scientific breakthroughs, stagnant economies and a general dimming of our collective future we could argue that we are already there.
I must add tho that the daughter of a friend of mine what so happy when the kardashians arrived at the scene many many moons ago….reason why? Finally a 'star' who looked like here, hipped, small waisted, dark hair, matte skin and black eyes. She felt pretty in her very blond white society were she grew up.
So maybe that explain their success…..that women that look like them feel validated in a world where skinny, boyish hips, tiny bust, blondes are elevated to 'norm' status.
There have been a couple of articles recently potentially linking lower IQ to air pollution in the cities and higher CO2 concentrations in general. Was it in The Guardian?
What are you worried about the Kardashians for? Shouldn't you concern yourself with the likes of the Obamas, the Bushes, the Blairs, the Trumps, the Pelosis?
Distorted videos of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), altered to make her sound as if she’s drunkenly slurring her words, are spreading rapidly across social media, highlighting how political disinformation that clouds public understanding can now grow at the speed of the Web.
[…]
Rudolph W. Giuliani, Trump’s personal attorney, tweeted a link to the altered video Thursday night with the note, “What is wrong with Nancy Pelosi? Her speech pattern is bizarre.” The tweet has since been deleted.
On Thursday night, Trump tweeted a separate video of Pelosi — a selectively edited supercut, taken from Fox News, focused on moments where she briefly paused or stumbled — that he claimed showed her stammering through a news conference. The clip included roughly 30 seconds of Pelosi’s full 21-minute briefing on Thursday, in which she took questions from reporters and discussed what she called Trump’s “temper tantrum.”
She's useless. The horrid fact that she is still No. 1 in the Democrats explains why we are facing five and a half more years of Trump—and no doubt eight years of Pence after that.
People, especially working class white men with economic anxiety, their wifes, the evangelic anti abortion pro forced birther crowd, and then lovely people like Paris Hilton and her ilk voted of Uncle Donnie (her words no mine) and everyone else did not vote for the orange shitshow that currently slings shit at everyone that crosses his way.
And while you cry foul, please also keep in mind that Mike Pence is there to keep the anti abortion pro forced birth anti gay anti gay marriage anti trans anti lesbian anti other anti brown people crowd to keep on voting for this shit show.
I can understand taht it is easy to find someone and blame them for the evils that are,. but sadly, no, Nancy Pelosi is not at fault for the choice people take, these people would vote for Attila the Hun if they promise to make america great again, call all Mexicans rapists and murderes, blames the loss of manufacturing on the overseas car industry that produces a lot of cars in Alabama (but never call out the US American companies that left for cheaper labour), that calls women Nasty for wanting the right to bodily autonomy and that lie about 'cutting out babies and the discussing with the doctors how to best kill them'. These people will never vote democrats, no more then Mike Hoskins is ever gonna vote for Labour.
Sometimes people just do vote for the worst human being they can find precisely because he is a bully, a fuckwit, a sadist, a feces flinging shitgibbon who fantasizes about bedding his own daughter, and they do so to 'own the libs'.
Cause that is what it is, owning the libs, owning the uppity women, owning the uppity people of color, owning the uppity gay lesbians/trans/other and the country can be fucked.
People wanted someone who would tear it all apart, Clinton was gonna start world war three five minutes after election, and other assorted bullshit, and well they all got what they wanted.
And in 2020 they have exactly the same choice. Politicians for the most are useless overpaid suits. But some are better then other, and sadly that is the choice we all have. So maybe it behooves to not vote for useless fucks like Donald Trump, or in NZ terms Alfred Ngaro or Brian Tamaki.
Yes it's hilarious to see the Dems continuing to lose their minds over Trump. They just don't seem to realise they are making the nutbar a shooin for 2020.
Not much happening for Genter that is disability specific, just meetings with two groups…both of which have already had too much attention for very little benefit for non ACC disabled.
NZ bamboo society link. Just need to do a little bit of googling and check that whatever species you are thinking of doesn't "run" in your local microclimate/conditions.
NZ bamboo society link. Just need to do a little bit of googling and check that whatever species you are thinking of doesn't "run" in your local microclimate/conditions.
The Green MPs have delivered us up the Zero Carbon Act which has not one single measure to cut GHG emissions, or even any measure to keep us, to the targets set out in it.
Setting out targets is good, but with no measures to achieve them targets are meaningless.
I could set a target to be a millionaire in ten years.
I could even set down intermediate targets, that to reach my goal I will need to meet a target of a $100,000 a year.
Sorted.
To give myself further excuse not to implement any measures to achieve it, I could push my millionaire target out to thirty years from now, so that no one can really check whether I achieve it or not.
Sadly they appear to believe that some nominal consensus is the best strategy but confoundedly fail to understand that if your boat is miles from shore and taking on water the best strategy is not to design new pumps to be built and installed when next in port but to start bailing NOW as if you dont you will never reach port
Chris the government needs to run the books sustainably you can not just splash the cash that's foolish. I see national supporters promoting the teachers striking .
I,, it stinks that Wahine who have conceived by rape were being charged child support this story shows if you don't give up one can succeed kia kaha.
The culture in ACC has been changed by national party the culture now is one that does its best not to pay compensation to the people who needs it. Of course ACC pays for the hospital bills as they have to keep the wheels of the health system rolling but paying fair/ compensation to people is what ACC was designed for. (Bring back the right to SUE).
I can't see these new parts floating to high but I just had to give Eco Maori point of view on them .
Here is a link that shows how the defense forces cover there ass weather it distorts the course of JUSTICE. No matter what the Defense forces credibility/image comes first ka kite ano links below.
Op Burnham Inquiry: Hager accuses NZDF of spin and lies
Whanau here is another concern about climate change tropical diseases will plague te tangata. I see the warning effect back home the kikuyu grass is not being kill of by frost it is out growing all the Rye an clover grasses.
The nation's nurses are warning a failure to combat climate change may enable new diseases to spread.
Mosquitos and rats could spread new diseases if climate change continues unabated, nurses have warned. Photo: mrfiza/123RF
The New Zealand Nurses Organisation is supporting school students in their calls for the government to declare a climate emergency.
Union climate change spokesperson Rachel Dobric said continuing warming would boost the risks of exotic diseases spread by rats and mosquitos.
Outbreaks of diseases, such as malaria, would dramatically affect communities that had never been exposed to those illnesses.
Ms Dobric said a zero carbon future would improve public health by reducing respiratory diseases and making people more active.
Climate change was declared an emergency by Kāpiti Coast District Council on Thursday
I see May is resigning let's hope that the alt right doesn't get into POWER.
Milia all the bad bullshit bombs shootings that is sweeping te papatuanuku at the minute is bad.
There are many flaws in the building trade people should legislated to provide a quality service.
That's sad those mountains climbers dieing on mountain Everest 9 this year to.
That's stealing Mr Lowes bonsai trees I can see it's his passion desperate people stealing to pay their PEE habbit one of my clients lost a bird bath she was upset to.
The Ebola outbreak in DRC in Africa is bad enough and they are being shot at and harassed so sad .ka kite ano.
I know a couple of Vietnam veterans it's cool that they are running a event to educate te tangata about the services available to help them ka paid.
The Ahewhenua cup has been won by King whanau from te taiwhiti Matawai it looks like a well run farm awesome that's good for Maori farmers lifting their mana.
A YMCA youth conference so the rangatahi can let the older generations know what they want a happy healthy future that means the ruling class will have to accept the changes needed to guarantee THEIR FUTURE.
Ahikaroa is a great watch I watch the show whenever I can its cool they use both Maori and English on the show it shows the world one side to tangata whenua O Aotearoa.
Cool Maori art at the Auckland airport telling Tangata Whenua stories in the Art . Eco Maori is a big fan of Railways transportation its awesome that new trains are coming on line for the Auckland Hamilton route. Ka kite ano.
I say Wahine have advanced more in Aotearoa than other countries we still have a long road ahead for equlaty to be achieved.
I agree Ngati Porou Wahine status has slipped back a bit from the past I see this with our kau matua point of views.
If you can complete a task as good as MAN you should be payed the same it all about being fair.
Jacinda is a great role model for our Wahine all around te Papatuanuku she will help lift there aspercration and goals.
Our Wahine sports stars help lift the mana wairua of there fellow Wahine .
I agree that there is a brown gap in equity but I say even though equally for Wahine has not been a Maori kauppa I say lifting Maori Wahine status in Maoridom will help close the equalty brown gap a lot of times when the going get tuff te Wahine rise to the challenge.
Its cool the story of Whatu Nelson Iwi winning in the highest court of the land about the loses of there Whenua.
The crown is just stalling the crown should treat them honorably and fairly from were I'm looking David that's is not happening m8. It's awesome that thehui has given this story of Nelson Iwi issues with the crown.  and helped te iwi get some respect on this subject
I think that Kelvin Davis has achieved a lot te tangata just have to go on YouTube and look at news articles 3 years old and compare it to the minute you can see that this coalition government has lifted Maoridom MANA with how Maori is treated NOW. KA KITE ANO
Masculinity is the way of the world men are displaying there mana .
I say aorha should be of a higher quality of value for our society to counteract that phenomenon.
I have just read a story on a our national swimming coach on very serious sexual offenses against his students and what do you know swimming nz is protecting this man if he was brown he would have gone down years ago with weeks of bad publicity from the media on the subjects because he is light colored he gets the cover from this system. What I'm getting at is not just MAORI do bad stuff white people do to but the system protects them so the true data on there offenses is not reported on but when Tangata Whenua have a pehau/ FART EVERYONE HEARS that go figure. Ka kite ano P.S and when Eco Maori farts its spun out and the whole Papatuanuku hears
Whanau here is the story I referred to in my last post the system protects its OWN. Maori are —————— by the same system WAKE UP. Ka kite ano links below.
It was lucky that whaine was found in Hawaii lost for weeks.
What's driving the crime problems in Auckland is poverty and who did this well policys that are made for the wealthy without considering the consequences it has on the common person is the cause national.
It would be great to have a vaccine that covers all viruses we could get .
It gives me a sore face to see more funds for our valuable tamariki up to the age of 18 they need all the care they can get ka pai.
Lloyd I seen a story on shady nigel forage it backs my point of view.
Ka pai Newshub it is not on the way the crown is treating te tangata whenua of Nelson they are owed whenua what's wrong with doing the correct thing.
The transition support for our tamariki that end up in Oranga tamariki till they are 18 is good news they need all the care that they can get.
Cool that the Deaf All blacks had test 3 against Argentina in Aotearoa it good for their wairua playing Rugby it would be nice if they got more funding.
Congratulations to Ben O'Keefe for being involved in the Rugby World Cup reffing ka pai the only Maori ref at the World Cup.
I the SuperRugby is very different from the last comps it's a lot closer than the past between the teams.
I say that the new rocket technology being developed by Rocketlab yes it could be used for bad things but we must develop new technologies to advance our society into space travers the math shows us that is what we have to achieve this as the populations out grows Papatuanuku.
Andrew I agree totally having young people in custody without a charge is foolish and inhumane. Breaks International human rights laws to thanks shonky.
The Auckland house prices are just in correction mode it's a good phenomenon it will let kiwi family's back into the market after all whare/houses are for whanau/family's not for the wealthy to short and make millions of in Eco Maori point of view don't panic I have just seen a story about our tourist industry pumping hold onto your property and reap the future growth.
Tipical national scare tactics trying to scare the public into voting for simon the crime reporting stats is done people who love national ????????they have there own press team to manipulate te tangata into believing that crime is out of control so simon can use it to try and float his TOILET YAR RIGHT Who cares whom he stuffs up in Simon's quest for POWER.
With the teeth decaying problems of Aotearoa we have 2 factors driving the bad teeth problems 1 sugar is ruining our tamariki teeth and adults .PEE a easy indicator of a PEE user is it stuff's their teeth after a few short years .so spending billions to have a AMBULANCES at the bottom of the monga hill is not a logical or efficient way to fix the problems first tax sugary drinks and spend more money eradicating/minimizing PEE in Aotearoa advertising to showing the people that PEE make a mess of people and shortens there life expectancy by decades. Paddy's actor fits the profile.
If the Army put them into a trade training that would be OK. IT would not be hard to run a risk assessment on the youth remanded in custody a sort out the small portion of them that could be a bad person and do dumb stuff.
Mark first duncans story is False did that blow to the head make you lose your marbles the police have not had any powers removed HAVE THEY so stop taking shit about them being hamstrung by the new government fool I think I should over RIDE my humane side and just keep use pined down with my WORDs and not care about your consequences.
Bilingenglish was just going to use the health and state care system to line his —– pockets by shouting the bad stats out say it needed to be privatized so he could cream millions off the system like his $40.000 parliament accommodations support he got caught ripping.
Every problem can be solved one just has be determined and find a simple solution to the problem.
Ka kite ano
Whanau this gives me a sore face and shows Eco Maori that the STUDENTS STRIKES is having a positive effect on the way te tangata/the people of OUR Papatuanuku/ world sees buring carbon HAS TO STOP students Strikeing kia kaha/stay strong and champion action on climate change
BHP is looking to add more oil, copper and nickel resources to its portfolio, while souring on thermal coal because it thinks the fossil fuel will be phased out, “potentially sooner than expected”.
BHP’s chief financial officer, Peter Beaven, told investors and analysts in a strategy briefing on Wednesday that “the world will be a very different place in 10 to 20 years’ time” and the global miner must be thoughtful about the risks and opportunities Ka kite ano links below P.S Who's going to tell their grandchildren they don't care about there FUTURE
Ka pai to Cedella Marley for tau toko/supporting Jamaican Wahine Football Eco Maori loves your father music its still ring TRUE in 2019 he was a master musician .I tau Yoko /suport equal rights for Wahine.
"Big up to Cedella Marley for putting her neck on the line for us."
To say Jamaica's success owes much to Menzies' vision and passion would be an understatement. When the JFF had little interest in organizing international matches for its female footballers, Menzies ensured the country's most promising players had a pathway, had hope.
In 2008, funding was cut and the women's senior team was disbanded. Six years later, Bob Marley's daughter, Cedella, attempted to fix things by becoming an ambassador and sponsor through the Bob Marley Foundation, raising just enough for the team to re-form. But in 2016, the federation disbanded the team again.
Cedella, who lives in America, redoubled her efforts, convincing Alessandra Lo Savio, co-founder of the Alacran Foundation, to become a major contributor.
"Big up to Cedella Marley for putting her neck on the line for us," Menzies told reporters immediately after the shootout win in Dallas. But perhaps her greatest act was persuading Menzies to coach the team because, in truth, it took some convincing.
"She told me her purpose. A large part of it is her dad's love for the game and, second of all, she wanted to inspire young females in Jamaica," explains Menzies, who gave up a career in corporate finance to become a full-time soccer coach la kite ano link below.
I,,, there is a massive housing shortage no Mitch the cause is the there is no housing shortage by you know who over the last 8 years and that's part of the SHORT the other is opening the floodgates for imagination to push up rents and down wages and wala.
Paddy I say we have to stop PEE and sugar drinks if you don't stop the cause of tooth decay trying to fix their teeth will be a never ending game as there teeth will carry on decaying if the cause is not SORTED.
Air Newzealand is buy new planes that are 25 % more efficient than the old ones that good b saving a lot of carbon being burned I can see the game.
It's is a unusually warm autumn in Aotearoa that's Global Climate change .
That is a big baby nearly 12 pounds 10 pounds 11 ounces the baby and mother seem Ok .
I have a lot of respect for Andrew Beecroft he is correct the young people should not be held in custody without any charges.
Our Coalition
I see our Maori King payed a visit to the Pope I read he offered him a invitation to Aotearoa its cool that our Maori King gets on the Papatuanuku stage that will help lift his and our mana ka pai.
I quite enjoy watching Casket Affairs its got a good Maori way of how we treat our loved ones who have passed respects your tipuna congratulations for your winnings.
That's the way Maori Wahine be proud of our great culture 3 finalist cool.
Story of the Week... Opinion of the Week... El Niño/La Niña Update... Toon of the Week... Coming Soon on SkS... SkS Week in Review... Poster of the Week... Story of the Week... Climate change leads to more violence against women, girlsRape, domestic violence, forced marriages: A new ...
A chronological listing of news articles linked to on the Skeptical Science Facebook Page during the past week, i.e., Sun, Feb 16, 2020 through Sat, Feb 22, 2020 Editor's Pick JP Morgan economists warn climate crisis is threat to human raceLeaked report for world’s major fossil fuel financier says ...
Last week the Wall Street Journal published an article ‘The Dangerous Denial of Sex by two scientists Colin Wright and Emma Hilton. Write is an evolutionary biologist at Penn State and Hilton is a developmental biologist at the University of Manchester. It is well worth reading the article in full. Here ...
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Winston Peters - Deputy Prime Minister and leader of the NZ First PartyWe all know that politics can be pretty messy at times. Just look at the Dirty Politics saga in New Zealand, the misgovernment of the Australian bushfires or the recent Trump impeachment debacle in the US. In a ...
Last Monday SpaceX launched another clutch of Starlink satellites into low-Earth orbit, bringing up to 300 the number of these units intended to bring 5G internet to the whole globe. In this post I present a movie showing how all 300 such satellites will be zipping around our planet over ...
The recent floods in Southland have highlighted the issue of Rio Tinto's illegal toxic waste dump in Mataura. But according to Newsroom, there's an even worse mess in Ruakaka near Whangarei:A Northland property stockpiled one million litres of flammable and toxic chemicals. Almost two years since the situation came to ...
It’s amazing just how many attack ads $100,000 buys you these days. The National Party has really been going to town lately, with their latest Twitter campaign making a number of questionable and blatantly false assertions, one being that poverty has worsened under the Labour led Government.The National Party's claim ...
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The Democracy Virus: China’s authoritarian political system enables a level of social surveillance and control that liberal democratic societies cannot match. The Chinese Government makes full use of the latest digital technology to both punish – and reward – its citizens. The plans it formulates cannot be challenged, or hindered. Where ...
Another day, another IPCA report on criminal conduct by policy. This time they kicked a child in the head when he was handcuffed:Police chased him and yelled out for him to stop. When he turned to face the police, he threatened them with a hammer. That's when the officers tasered ...
The investigation of two of the five parties in Parliament for fraud around their election donations has pushed the issue of party funding back into the spotlight. And while there are obvious things we can do to tighten up the donations regime - a much lower declaration threshold, realtime disclosure ...
While the south of New Zealand has been struggling with too much rain in recent days, here in the north we are so very short of it (though Saturday’s forecast looks promising). Basically, we have had almost none since Christmas.As someone who relies on rain to wash the car, ...
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Stand Clear! Winston Peters is encouraging voters to think of RNZ as belonging to “The Media Party”. He wants them to see it as a politically partisan institution with its own, vicious attack-dogs in the electoral fight. If he succeeds, it will be, and probably should be, the end of ...
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Former National Party chief whip Jami-Lee Ross is one of the four people charged over National's multiple fraudulent donations. How unsurprising. Meanwhile, just days ago National leader Simon Bridges was trying to pretend the charges were nothing to do with his party. Yeah, right. When your chief whip effectively publicly ...
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Collateral Damage: For the Green Phoenix to be reborn, the funeral pyre so patiently assembled by its identity politicians over the course of many fractious years – but with growing intensity over the past three – first has to be ignited. The terrible probability, of course, is that, in setting ...
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So the Serious Fraud Office has another secret $100,050 National Party donation before the Courts in a major scandal that looks set to quash any chances Simon Bridges had of winning the 2020 election.Yesterday, Newsroom reported:The Serious Fraud Office prosecution of four people over donations to the National Party involves ...
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The Helen Clark Foundation has released its report on the housing crisis, and found that house-hoarders are to blame for it:Property investors are to blame for New Zealand's high house prices, a new research paper published by the Helen Clark Foundation says. [...] McArthur said previous attempts to address housing ...
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Brexit is likely to be a disaster for the UK (how sad, never mind). But now that they're out of the EU, the latter has finaly taken the opportunity to blacklist one of their key tax havens:The Cayman Islands, a British overseas territory, is to be put on an EU ...
I’m not quite sure of what to make of the new figures for COVID-19 (as we must now call the novel coronavirus – though I’m not sure the capitalisation is correct) from Hubei province:Image from https://www.bbc.com/news/world-51495484The spike yesterday is a consequence of a using a different way of ...
Bob Jones has dropped his defamation case against Renae Maihi. Good. But at the same time, it perfectly exposes what the case was all about: not protecting Jones' reputation, but punishing someone who had dared to criticise him, and deterring others from doing the same. This rich pompous asshat dragged ...
As I've done for the past few years, I'm curating and presenting The Listening Lounge, the talk programme at Splore. On the morning of Saturday the 22nd at the Living Lounge stage, the korero goes like this.Yes, we're talking about drugs again, not just because I'm professionally interested in drug ...
What Were They Thinking? RNZ's CEO Paul Thompson (left) and Jim Mather, Chairman of the RNZ Board of Governors, attempt to justify the debacle arising out of their attempt to downgrade RNZ Concert to the Economic Development, Science and Innovation Select Committee at Parliament on Thursday, 13 February 2020.WHAT IS ...
Dame Tariana Turia with former PM John KeyWhat is it about Tariana Turia’s grudge against the Labour Party? Not content with attacking the Government over Whānau Ora funding, which was increased by $80 million in 2019, she has now made it personal by saying that Jacinda Ardern is out of her ...
Back in 2017, right after being elected, Jacinda Ardern promised that there would be no new mines on conservation land. Since then, her government has done nothing to make that happen, and now the policy has been officially "parked" for the election:West Coast-Tasman MP Damien O'Connor says the "no new ...
So the guy who advocated for public burning and beheading feels offended because someone called him a racist!Perhaps Bob Jones hasn't heard of the very old saying; Live by the sword, die by the sword?I mean for someone who often writes opinionated nonsense about Maori; this is a ridiculous case ...
The government today announced a major support package aimed at reducing homelessness. A thousand new transitional housing places, more support for people to find homes (or not lose them in the first place), all good stuff. The one problem with it is that they're going to start charging people in ...
Courtroom Drama: There is no off-switch in a courtroom. Neither is it possible to turn the page in disgust. Ill-formed and ill-defended opinions will be exposed ruthlessly and unapologetically. As Shakespeare put it: “Reputation is an idle and most false imposition; oft got without merit, and lost without deserving.” Sometimes the ...
As of today, the novel coronavirus spreading in China is called COVID-19. Why does it matter? Around the office, we’ve had several conversations over the past few weeks about how 2019-nCoV needed its own name. First, it was getting annoying calling it by the above designation, and ‘novel coronavirus’ doesn’t ...
by Philip Ferguson Last month B’Tselem, the Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories, reported: “In 2019, Israeli security forces killed 133 Palestinians, including 28 minors. Of the casualties, 104 were killed in the Gaza Strip, 26 in the West Bank (including East Jerusalem) and three within ...
A ballot for a single Member's Bill was held today, and the following bill was drawn: Arms (Firearms Prohibition Orders) Amendment Bill (No 2) (Brett Hudson)Its basicly more "tough on crime" nonsense (its already illegal for unlicensed people to own guns) designed to wedge NZ First against its arsehole base. ...
In 2015 the world agreed to the Paris Agreement to fight climate change. Each country would offer a Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) "that it intends to achieve", and "pursue domestic mitigation measures, with the aim of achieving [it]". And every five years, they'd improve on it, ratcheting up ambition until ...
In theory, the emissions trading scheme should reduce emissions. Making polluters pay for permits to pollute lets them save money by reducing pollution, giving them a financial incentive to do the right thing. But right from the start the ETS was broken with a system of free allocation, so polluters ...
Irish voters went to the polls on Saturday in parliamentary elections, and perhaps delivered a political revolution. Since independence, Irish politics has been dominated by two parties, Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael. Basicly patronage networks with indistinguishable policies, their cleavage isn't ideology, but who killed whose father or grandfather in ...
Once again the Aotearoa Bike Challenge is on us, and once again I’m participating. In principle this is not hard because it does not represent a significant switch in behavior for me. I already bike nearly every day. The Bicycle The fascinating thing about cycling is the realisation that this ...
Lately there has been a great deal of misinformation regarding the origins and purpose of Skeptical Science. As John Cook wrote nearly a decade ago, Skeptical Science is primarily a website that debunks climate misinformation with peer-reviewed science. Despite the ever-worsening impacts from climate change, with record after record being broken in ...
Under Attack: By sacking not only RNZ Concert’s presenters, but also its producers and librarians, and reducing the station to an automated purveyor of classical music in-between parliamentary broadcasts, RNZ’s CEO, Paul Thompson, wasn’t simply announcing an operational shake-up, he was declaring war on one of the most important guardians of ...
Story of the Week... Editorial of the Week... Toon of the Week... Quote of the Week... Coming Soon on SkS... Climate Feedback Reviews... SkS Week in Review... Poster of the Week... Story of the Week... Australian smoke plume sets recordsThe recent wildfires in Australia sent one of ...
The Global Protest to #FightInequality was powerful – thankyou and what next? Dear allies, We started the decade with a huge protest to #FightInequality that was heard around the world, including the 1% at Davos. Watch and share the highlights on facebook and twitter. A huge thank you. Together we ...
The Ministry of Health have announced a package that might ensure NZ will never experience another measles epidemic. While at the time of writing the details are still limited it appears that the important limitations in our current programme have been acknowledged and the intent is to address them. Great ...
Prof Nick Wilson, Prof Michael BakerIn this blog we briefly summarise our assessment of the highly uncertain new coronavirus threat. Given its potential to become a severe and prolonged global pandemic, a precautionary response now means activating all components of our pandemic plan, with a particular focus on ‘keep ...
When Labour was running for election, Jacinda Ardern famously said that climate change was "my generation's nuclear free moment". The implication was that her government would take the problem seriously, and act swiftly to reduce emissions. The reality:New Zealand will emit a million more tonnes of greenhouse gases in 2020 ...
Today New Zealand First made a pledge to campaign at the election to fund St John Ambulance the 90 per cent it has asked for. Government funding would allow St. John’s to achieve fully funded status. Leader of New Zealand First, Rt Hon Winston Peters publicly declared his determination to deliver ...
Darroch Ball MP, Spokesperson for Law and Order Newly released Police data shows once again the number of fleeing drivers have continued to skyrocket with a record 512 incidents occurring in December – almost tripling the number of incidents occurring just ten years ago, says New Zealand First Law and ...
While the Provincial Growth Fund has provided $2 million to set up temporary water supplies in Kaikohe and Kaitaia, Regional Economic Minister Shane Jones said he is greatly concerned that there are “issues” in implementing the projects. The Minister said the immediate solution was to pipe water from a bore ...
Mark Patterson MP, New Zealand First List MP for Clutha-Southland NZ First is calling on Rio Tinto to accept its responsibilities to the Southland community and enable the immediate removal of the toxic Aluminium Dross from the Mataura Paper Mill site. New Zealand First List MP for Clutha-Southland, Mark Patterson ...
The Coalition Government has announced that a further $500,000 will be given to help residents in Southland and Otago to speed up recovery efforts from the floods. It follows prior government assistance of $200,000 earlier this month where the Southland Mayoral Relief Fund received $100,000 to support communities impacted by ...
Regional Economic Development Minister Shane Jones was on RNZ’s Morning Report talking about the recent droughts in the Northland region and what the Provincial Growth Fund (PGF) is doing to alleviate its impact. The PGF recently announced a funding of $2 million for temporary water supplies to Kaikohe and Kaitaia, ...
Speaking to The Country’s Jamie Mackay, New Zealand First MP and Cabinet Minister Shane Jones talks water storage, plant-based meat imitation, and superstar Hollywood director James Cameron. While water storage may have its critics, Minister Jones defended the scheme by saying: “unless we invest and continue to invest” in this ...
Regional Economic Development Minister Shane Jones is accusing northern iwi leaders of selling out Māori by voting for ideologically-driven court cases rather than practical steps to increase water supply. “I just think that iwi leaders who think that water issues are going to be solved by perpetually fighting in the ...
A dairy owner in St Kilda, Dunedin was delighted to hear that an attempted robbery of his establishment was foiled by a government-funded security system. Sean Lee was delighted at how well the anti-theft smoke system worked. When a knife-wielding man entered the store, the shop assistant immediately pressed a ...
Customs says it stopped more than three tonnes of illegal drugs coming into New Zealand last year. This includes 1,180kg of methamphetamine, 329kg of ephedrine and pseudoephedrine precursors, which could have been converted into 246kg of methamphetamine, 739kg and 6469 pills of MDMA or Ecstasy and 60kg of cocaine. Offshore, ...
Hon. Shane Jones, Minister for Regional Economic Development Up to $2 million will be allocated from the Provincial Growth Fund to set up temporary water supplies in Kaikohe and Kaitaia where drought is biting hard, Regional Economic Development Minister Shane Jones has announced. Drought conditions in Northland have led to ...
Darroch Ball, Spokesperson for Law and Order New Zealand First welcomes the deployment of an Eagle Police helicopter in Christchurch in what is a step towards fulfilling its long-standing goal to increase the use of police helicopters for the front line, particularly in addressing the scourge of fleeing drivers. Christchurch leads ...
It may have been the first sitting week of 2020, but our Government is already in full-swing - managing a strong economy, investing in infrastructure, and working to break the cycle of homelessness. Read below for all that, and more... ...
In a heated debate in Parliament, National's Deputy Leader Paula Bennett claimed that “nearly 1600 patched gang members have been added” since the Coalition Government took power. To illustrate her point, she altered a chart used by Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern to show her government’s progress in housing to instead ...
Speech by the Rt Hon Winston Peters at Parliament’s Opening 2020 "We all need insurance" This year New Zealanders are going to have a clear choice to make That choice is between: Optimism versus pessimism; More progress versus back to the future; Investment versus divestment; Unity versus division. New Zealand ...
Infrastructure Minister Shane Jones has slammed the Board of Auckland Airport following the airport's runway closing twice within two weeks due to maintenance. Around 2,000 passengers were affected by last week’s runway closures, according to 1NEWS. Another maintenance closure on January 24 saw two international flights and three domestic flights ...
Jenny Marcroft, Spokesperson for Broadcasting New Zealand First supports the commissioning of a business case to assess the viability of a new public media entity. “A strong media environment is critical for a healthy democracy. New Zealand First is a strong supporter of a diverse, independent media,” New Zealand First broadcasting spokesperson ...
Pounamou and technology industries in the West Coast region are set to receive more than $2 million in Provincial Growth Fund (PGF) funding. This was announced by the Under-Secretary for Regional Economic Development Fletcher Tabuteau during Waitangi Day commemorations in Hokitika. He said $800,000 would be given to Development West ...
Clayton Mitchell MP, New Zealand First spokesperson for Labour and Industrial Relations Unemployment and wage growth numbers released by Stats NZ today demonstrate a labour market in good shape with unemployment falling to 4.0%, the underutilisation rate falling to an 11 year low, and wage growth at a 10-year high ...
Hon. Ron Mark, New Zealand First Spokesperson for Defence New Zealand First Spokesperson for Defence Ron Mark, welcomes the official opening of Te Rau Aroha, a new museum at Waitangi Treaty Grounds as part of our Coalition Agreement. “It is a great honour to be part of an effective Government ...
Rt. Hon. Winston Peters, Deputy Prime MinisterGood morning,Let us start with important acknowledgements.First, this special day, in remembrance of the 28th Maori Battalion, is also to honour all those men and women who have risked their lives in the service of our country.Second, special guest Robert ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters says New Zealand will look to build on its relationship with the United Kingdom and recommit to the European Union, after the country officially left the continental union recently. The Minister said New Zealand already cooperates closely with Britain on defence and security issues and has ...
Hon. Shane Jones, Minister for Regional Economic Development The Provincial Growth Fund (PGF) is delivering on its commitment to unlock the potential of Māori-owned land with investments up and down the country making a genuine difference to communities, Regional Economic Development Shane Jones says.At Waitangi last year, the Government ...
Rt. Hon. Winston Peters, Deputy Prime Minister The Government is placing temporary entry restrictions into New Zealand on all foreign nationals travelling from, or transiting through mainland China to assist with the containment of the novel coronavirus and to protect New Zealand and the Pacific Islands from the disease. This ...
Conservation Minister Eugenie Sage has extended the date for people to have their say on proposed changes to improve management of whitebait across New Zealand. Submissions were due to close on 2 March 2020 but will now remain open until 9am on Monday 16 March 2020. “I have ...
The endangered toroa/Antipodean albatross has new international protection for its 100,000km annual migration, thanks to collaborative efforts led by New Zealand, Australia and Chile. Today, 130 countries agreed to strictly protect Antipodean albatross at the Conference of Parties on the Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species of Wild ...
No sales to under-18-year-olds No advertising and sponsorship of vaping products and e-cigarettes No vaping or smokeless tobacco in smokefree areas Regulates vaping product safety comprehensively, - including devices, flavours and ingredients Ensure vaping products are available for those who want to quit smoking Vaping regulation that balances ...
Justice Minister Andrew Little will travel to Berlin tomorrow to represent New Zealand at a high-level summit on nuclear disarmament. This year, the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) celebrates 50 years since it entered into force. “New Zealand’s proud record and leadership on nuclear disarmament is unwavering, so it’s important we are present ...
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern will visit two of New Zealand’s most important Pacific partners, Fiji and Australia, next week. The visit to Fiji will be the first by a New Zealand Prime Minister in four years and comes during the 50th anniversary of Fijian independence and diplomatic relations between our ...
Justice Minister Andrew Little and New Zealand First MP Darroch Ball, have today announced the appointment of the Chief Commissioner of the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC), the location, and the membership of the Establishment Advisory Group. Colin Carruthers QC has been appointed Chief Commissioner of the CCRC for an ...
Māori Development Minister Hon Nanaia Mahuta and Agriculture Minister Hon Damien O’Connor co-announced the first horticultural finalists for the Ahuwhenua Trophy celebrating excellence in the Māori agricultural sector. The three finalists are Ngai Tukairangi Trust from Mt Maunganui, Otama Marere Trust from Tauranga, and Hineora Orchard Te Kaha 15B Ahuwhenua ...
A new kete of resources to strengthen support for students with dyslexia will provide extra tools for the new Learning Support Coordinators (LSCs) as they start in schools, Associate Education Minister Tracey Martin announced today. The Minister launched the kete in Wellington this morning, at the first of three induction ...
The Government continues to make progress on a fairer and more secure rental market for renters and landlords with the First Reading of the Residential Tenancies Amendment Bill and its referral to the Social Services and Community Select Committee. “Now is the opportunity for landlords, tenants and others who want ...
Papua New Guinea’s Prime Minister Hon James Marape will visit New Zealand from 21-25 February, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announced today. “New Zealand and Papua New Guinea have a warm and friendly relationship. I look forward to welcoming Prime Minister Marape here and strengthening the relationship between our two countries,” ...
Thousands of children have begun receiving a free lunch on every day of the school week, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said. The Government’s free and healthy school lunch programme is under way for 7,000 students at 31 schools in Hawke’s Bay / Tairāwhiti and Bay of Plenty / Waiariki, extending ...
The Minister for Social Development Carmel Sepuloni today announced a new approach that continues to broaden the Government’s social sector focus from a narrow, investment approach to one centred on people and wellbeing. Minister Sepuloni said redefining the previous approach to social investment by combining science, data and lived experience ...
The Government is strengthening the Protected Disclosures Act to provide better protection for whistle blowers, Minister of State Services Chris Hipkins said today. “The Protected Disclosures Act is meant to encourage people to speak up about serious wrongdoing in the workplace and protect them from losing their jobs or being ...
Nǐn hǎo (Hello in Mandarin). Xīn Nián Kuài Lè (Happy New Year in Mandarin) Néi Hóu (Hello in Cantonese). Sun Nin Fai Lok (Happy New Year in Cantonese) Tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou katoa. Thank you for your invitation to attend this celebration today. I would like to acknowledge ...
Kia ora. Ngā mihi nui ki a koutou katoa. Nau mai haere mai ki te Whare Pāremata. E ngā mana whenua ki tēnei rohe Taranaki Whānui, Te Upoko o Te Ika, Ngāti Toa Rangatira, Ngāti Raukawa – kei te mihi, kei te mihi, kei te mihi. E ngā mana, e ...
Kia ora. Ngā mihi nui ki a koutou katoa. Nau mai haere mai ki te Whare Pāremata. E ngā mana whenua ki tēnei rohe Taranaki Whānui, Te Upoko o Te Ika, Ngāti Toa Rangatira, Ngāti Raukawa – kei te mihi, kei te mihi, kei te mihi. E ngā mana, e ngā ...
Tougher penalties for gun crime are a step closer with the passage of firearms reform legislation through another stage in Parliament. The Arms Legislation Bill has tonight passed its Second Reading. “The changes have one objective - to prevent firearms falling into the wrong hands,” said Police Minister Stuart Nash. ...
Introduction Mr Speaker We all know why we are here today. It has been a long journey. The journey did not actually begin on 15 March 2019. It began on 30 June 1997. Almost 23 years ago, Justice Sir Thomas Thorp told us what was wrong with our firearms legislation. ...
The Government’s work to put trades and vocational education back on the agenda took another major step forward today with the passing of the Education (Vocational Education and Training Reform) Amendment Bill, Education Minister Chris Hipkins said. “This is a watershed day for trades and vocational education. These law changes formalise ...
Speeding up the return of Christchurch regeneration activities to local leadership is behind the Greater Christchurch Regeneration Amendment Bill introduced to Parliament today by Minister Megan Woods. “As we approach nine years since the February 2011 earthquake in Canterbury, and with the transition to local leadership well underway, the time ...
Hundreds of New Zealanders and international visitors will be able to get back out into nature with the Milford Track partially reopening next week, after extensive assessments and repairs, the Minister of Conservation Eugenie Sage announced today. The popular Great Walk has been closed since 3 February after an extreme ...
Up to 110 new EV chargers nationwide in cities and regions 50 electric vehicles for ride-sharing The Government is helping deliver more infrastructure and options for low emissions transport through new projects, Energy and Resources Minister Dr Megan Woods says. Tauranga, Nelson, Levin, New Plymouth and Oamaru are just some ...
New Zealanders are increasingly better off under this Government as wages rise and families have more disposable income, Finance Minister Grant Robertson says. Stats NZ reported today that average household disposable incomes after housing costs rose 4.9% in 2019. This was the highest rise in four years and came as ...
All New Zealanders need to have their voices heard at work to ensure we have an inclusive and productive economy. Today we introduce a Bill to do this for workers in the New Zealand screen industry, Workplace Relations and Safety Minister Iain Lees-Galloway says. “The Screen Industry Workers Bill will ...
The Government has announced further help for the Southland and Otago regions to speed up recovery efforts from the floods. “I’ve approved Enhanced Taskforce Green (ETFG), making $500,000 available to help with the clean-up in Fiordland, Southland, and the Clutha district in Otago,” Minister for Social Development Carmel Sepuloni said. ...
Following the announcement that more than 340 schools will be funded to run events promoting vocational education, the Government has announced it will fund a further 257 events to be run by employers and industry. “These industry-run events will allow more than 30,000 students to connect with more than 2,000 ...
Today the Government is making progress on a fairer and more secure rental market for renters and landlords with the introduction of the Residential Tenancies Amendment Bill in Parliament. “This Bill includes a series of reforms to improve the wellbeing of the 609,700 households that live in rented homes, and ...
A Government programme to wipe out pea weevil has achieved a world first, with Biosecurity Minister Damien O’Connor today announcing the successful eradication of the noxious pest from Wairarapa. This means the nearly four-year ban on pea plants and pea straw was lifted today. Commercial and home gardeners can again grow ...
Southland residents hit by flooding caused by heavy rainfall can now access help finding temporary accommodation with the Government activating the Temporary Accommodation Service, Minister of Civil Defence Peeni Henare announced today. “The Temporary Accommodation Service (TAS) has been activated by the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment to help ...
“Is that it?” That’s Finance Minister Grant Robertson’s response to Simon Bridges’ much-hyped economic speech today. “Simon Bridges just gave the most over-hyped and under-delivered speech that I can remember during my time in politics,” Grant Robertson said. “It’s not surprising. Simon Bridges literally said on the radio this morning ...
A trial deployment of the Police Eagle helicopter in Christchurch will test whether the aircraft would make a significant difference to crime prevention and community safety. “The Bell 429 helicopter will be based in Christchurch for five weeks, from 17 February to 20 March,” said Police Minister Stuart Nash. “The ...
The Government has kept up the pace of its work to promote New Zealand’s trade interests and diversify our export markets, with visits to Fiji and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) by Trade and Export Growth Minister David Parker. Building momentum to bring the PACER Plus trade and development agreement ...
The Coalition Government’s investment in a strong border and disrupting transnational organised crime produced record results for stopping drugs in 2019, says Minister of Customs Jenny Salesa. The illegal drugs were seized at the New Zealand border by Customs, and overseas by Customs’ international border partners before the drugs could ...
Transport Minister Phil Twyford today kicked off construction of a separated cycleway alongside Tamaki Drive. A two-way separated cycleway will be built along the northern side of Tamaki Drive, between the Quay Street Cycleway extension and Ngapipi Road. There will be a separate walking path alongside. Phil Twyford said giving ...
Owner-occupiers of unit and apartments living in earthquake-prone buildings will have certainty about the financial support they’ll be eligible for with the release of criteria for an upcoming assistance scheme, Minister for Building and Construction Jenny Salesa says. The Residential Earthquake-Prone Building Financial Assistance Scheme will help unit owners facing ...
Temporary restrictions on travel from China will remain in place as a precautionary measure to protect against the spread of the COVID-19 coronavirus. The restrictions which prevent foreign nationals travelling from, or transiting through, mainland China from entering New Zealand have been extended for a further 8 days. This position ...
Employment Minister Willie Jackson announced today that Tairāwhiti rangatahi will benefit from an investment made by the Government’s He Poutama Rangatahi (HPR) scheme. The funding will go to the Tautua Village, Kauneke programme and the Matapuna Supported Employment Programme which will fund 120 rangatahi over two years. “Both programmes work ...
All parents and caregivers need to ensure that their children go to school unless they are sick, Associate Education Minister Tracey Martin said today. “The school attendance results for 2019 show, across the board, a drop in the number of students going to school regularly,” the Minister says. “Apart from ...
A Deed of Settlement agreeing redress for historical Treaty claims has been signed by the Crown and Moriori at Kōpinga Marae on Rēkohu (Chatham Islands) today, Minister for Treaty of Waitangi Negotiations Andrew Little has announced. Moriori have a tradition of peace that extends back over 600 years. This settlement ...
Transport Minister Phil Twyford today with Māori King Tuheitia Pōtatau Te Wherowhero VII officially opened the country’s newest road, the $384 million Huntly section of the Waikato Expressway. The 15km four-lane highway with side and central safety barriers takes State Highway 1 east of Huntly town, across lowlands and streams ...
Opposition leader Simon Bridges says a National government will look at amending the law to allow Australians convicted of serious crimes in New Zealand to be deported. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Carlo Perrotta, Senior lecturer, Monash University The spread of the coronavirus disease known as COVID-19 is a public health emergency with economic and social ramifications in China and across the world. While the impacts on business are well documented, education is also ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Holly Cullen, Adjunct professor, University of Western Australia The extradition hearing to decide whether to send Julian Assange to the United States to be tried for publishing classified military documents on Wikileaks is expected to finally begin today in London. Assange is ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Bernadette McSherry, Foundation Director, Melbourne Social Equity Institute, University of Melbourne In 2018, the Victorian Ombudsman, Deborah Glass, delivered a report about “the saddest case” she had ever seen. A 39-year-old woman with a developmental disorder had been locked in her prison ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Patrick O’Connor, Associate Professor, University of Adelaide Among the vast number of native species damaged by the recent bushfire crisis, we must not forget native pollinators. These animals, mainly insects such as native bees, help sustain ecosystems by pollinating native plants. Native ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Natalie Skead, Professor, Dean of Law School, University of Western Australia In 2017, a business lecturer posted a photo on LinkedIn showing a completely empty university classroom, 15 minutes after the class had been scheduled to start. This is not an isolated ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Neil G Sipe, Adjunct Researcher in Transport and Planning, The University of Queensland Over the past decade almost US$200 billion has been invested globally in mobility technology that promises to improve our ability to get around. More than US$33 billion was invested ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Andrew Dodd, Director of the Centre for Advancing Journalism, University of Melbourne In a recent ruling the Australian Press Council has given a signal to gossip magazines it is OK to make up and publish rubbish about people, so long as the ...
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern anticipates cabinet ministers will decide to extend the ban on foreign travellers arriving from mainland China which is due to expire tonight. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra The transformation of the national electricity market has “progressed at a remarkable pace and scale” over the last year as it moves towards renewables, but security is a critical issue, according to the Energy Security ...
The Labour Party has selected Kerrin Leoni as their candidate for the electorate of Waikato. In a confirmation meeting held in Ngaruawahia on 23rd February, Ms Leoni, 39, was nominated unopposed as the electorate candidate, with the electorate covering ...
RNZ Checkpoint last week reported that the rodeo industry has killed two animals during the current rodeo season. Information recently obtained by animal rights organisation SAFE reveals two bulls were killed at ‘Mad Bull’ rodeo events in November and ...
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern anticipates cabinet ministers will decide to extend the ban on foreign travellers arriving from mainland China - which is due to expire tonight. ...
Climate change will be a hot topic in Jacinda Ardern's meeting with the Fijian PM this week, but an elephant in the room for her talk with the Australian PM. ...
In today’s edition: plant-based diets add a new item to the rural-urban tension menu, Genesis plans NZ’s biggest solar farm and a major regulatory push on vaping.The Sunday Star-Timesdevoted its whole cover to a dramatic image under the headline ‘Is meat for the chop?’, while inside a Colmar ...
What’s the economic impact of draining a wetland, or depleting soil health? An economist is looking at the value of some of the mostly unseen ecological services nature performs. A lot of what occupies economist Professor Sir Partha Dasgupta’s mind is invisible processes. While environmentalists fighting for wetland protection, or ...
Coronavirus has created new economic uncertainties in China and beyond. There is no doubt the short-term impact on New Zealand’s businesses will be severe, but how exactly is difficult to foresee. The outlook for global trade already looks grim compared to our expectations late last year. CNN reported that Maersk, ...
Belinda Muller has managed major Kiwi sports teams in three different codes – netball, rugby and, now, cricket. The only difference, she's found, is the size of their balls. It was supposed to last just three days. A bit of a paperwork at a netball centre, to help out a ...
The Children’s Commissioner responds to a UN committee's decision about the torture of children at Lake Alice. David Williams reports Pressure is building on a police review of their file into Lake Alice psychiatrist Selwyn Leeks. The review was prompted by a landmark decision by the United Nations Committee against ...
ReadingRoom is devoting all week to the best-selling book in New Zealand right now, In The Clearing, the brilliant new thriller by Kiwi author JP Pomare, inspired by creepy Australian cult The Family. Today: The creepy opening chapter.— Amy’s journal — Here are two things I learnt today: 1. ...
Back to university today? Beware the flashy voluntourism brochures promising a chance to save the world, writes AUT lecturer Daniel Crouch.It was my first day as a lecturer, February 2018, and I was feeling pretty nervous as students filed in. Just before the nine o’clock start, a young woman approached ...
The rise of litigation funding in New Zealand puts politicians and business leaders on notice – their actions will now be policed by a powerful new sheriff, writes Chris Lee.In business, as in life, there may be a range of thought processes that quell the temptation to cheat. One would ...
Aucklanders are breaking records for water usage - at the same time as the city breaks records for days without rain. How secure is the city's future water supply if these droughts continue? Auckland's water use has gone through the roof this summer, breaking records of 560 million litres per ...
News broke today that Hannah Tamaki has been cast for the upcoming season of Dancing with the Stars. Emily Writes explains why the religious leader and aspirant politician has no place on the show.In an exceptionally sad display of desperation, MediaWorks appears to have booked Hannah Tamaki, known for her ...
Political parties must, this election year, pledge to press forward with a massive build of “social” homes to tackle New Zealand’s human rights crisis in housing, a move that will also help reduce inequality, Peter Malcolm, spokesperson for the ...
Details of the Government's newly-announced vaping crackdown may keep New Zealanders smoking and paying exorbitant excise taxes, says the New Zealand Taxpayers' Union. Taxpayers' Union spokesman Louis Houlbrooke says, "We welcome the decision not ...
News that the Government is set to regulate vaping is welcomed. However, heavily restricting where most vape flavours can be sold is a step too far and could lead to rising smoking rates, says the Vaping Trade Association of New Zealand (VTANZ). ...
Tala Pasifika is applauding Associate Minister of Health Jenny Salesa’s Vaping Amendment Bill announcement and hopes that all parties will support the bill as a positive move for Pacific peoples trying to quit smoking. The Smoke-free Environments ...
Rawiri Waititi will stand for the Maori Party in Waiariki at September’s General Election. The 39-year-year old’s candidacy was today confirmed in Rotorua. Waiariki Maori Party Electorate Chair Verna Ohia-Gates said Waititi was an outstanding choice ...
ASH NZ congratulates Minister Salesa on the introduction of legislation to regulate vaping. ASH NZ Chair, Prof Robert Beaglehole said, “It is wonderful that a Bill will be introduced next week and we congratulate Minister Salesa on balancing the ...
Associate Minister of Health Jenny Salesa has announced, after an anxious wait, the proposed Vaping Amendment Bill. CEO of Hāpai Te Haora, Selah Hart wants to congratulate the Minister and is encouraging all parties to help bring the bill home. The Smoke-free ...
ALRANZ president Terry Bellamak and HELP Chief Executive Conor Twyford respond to the news that medical practitioners may keep the right to refuse to provide contraception to sexual assault survivors. Approximately 1 in 4 New Zealand women experience a serious sexual assault. That’s a lot of suffering. How do we care for ...
The Cancer Society calls for cross-party support to ensure vaping regulations are introduced. The Cancer Society is pleased to see the vaping Bill introduced by Associate Health Minister Jenny Salesa and urges for a speedy process, supported by all political ...
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Open mike 24/05/2019 
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Taro has finally been vindicated as a staple plant of early Maori in NZ. Now can we get back to growing it?
https://www.auckland.ac.nz/en/news/2019/04/09/new-fossil-evidence-claims-first-discovery-of-taro-in-mori-garde.html?utm_source=newsletter&utm_campaign=at_aucklandmay19&utm_term=hum,his,res,art
I was tasked by local Iwi to try and grow the black Colocasia esculenta as they'd 'forgotten how' (told they never did grow it as they could not and were rightly frustrated with such nonsense as it was on the land). Many trials later the plant showed me how it works.
In a bowl in the land, where after rain it holds water, but can still dry out. Wherever the white (funeral aka peace aka calla) lily grows. In partial shade. In shelter.
Find a sheltered concave spot where the lily grows. Place Taro plants with the lilys, watch the Taro take over.
For the non-black varieties, similar rules, but extra care making sure the place gets water. There are many varieties but these are what you'd typically encounter. Both can cope with dry for a period, the black is much hardier but only when in the right spot (ousting lilys).
What I like most about this plant is that it is a part of the landscape. It looks really good, and it doesn't have to be decimated to be enjoyed (just thin the big stuff and eat that), this can be a staple, or emergency supplies.
Does well beneath bananas and nut trees so very low maintenance polyculture is also an option.
Grow some history, serve with corn beef – YUM.
https://polynesiankitchen.blogspot.com/2008/08/lu-pulu-taro-leaves-and-corned-beef.html
Yum with chicken as well.
There are a lot of Pacific Islanders that grow Taro in south auckland.
The friend who works for the Department of Conservation just went to Taiwan to follow the roots of the Taro in the pacific. Very very interesting.
Yes there are a few here in Westmere growing it too. Interestingly it is mostly Islanders growing it, few Maori (though no qualms with eating it). I hope this historical find helps it make a comeback within 'local' cuisine as well – any variety to our staples lends resilience.
My favorite expert here, strain specific siting is important for producers to know about:
Interesting indeed about taros role in enabling life in the Pacific. We need to look back and gather in all sorts of knowledge they had in simpler times. It is what intelligent people do when faced with an uncertain future, climate and political -wise. And thanks WtB for transferring the video link. That stuff is gold I reckon and you are doing interesting, good stuff. Thanks for keeping us informed.
We need to know useful stuff as we continue along our smooth road built on sandy ground, driven by a love of machines and technology that allow those with class connections and power to sacrifice people's lives for the love of doing things fast, getting grand things – houses, cars, planes, lime scooters, and childishly adopting ideas and things enthusiastically but shortly after throwing them out of the cot. And all to get lots of financial credits to enable the above cycle to continue. Mad. We have had heaven and never recognised it, seeking it in some vague form of the after-life. But children's thinking of a future is where there will be more and greater things when they grow up.
Absolutely Grey
I have the notion that culture begins as an interaction with the environment peoples find themselves in .They learn how to live with those conditions. There's a certain cultural character that arises from those countries that have climates that restrict the growing season, thus they learn to grow food in a limited season and then store it
Those in more optimal climes have less anxiety about food and don't learn to stockpile and store.
I really regret the homogenisation of the world's societies .We have lost so much knowledge about how to live in suboptimal circumstances(without the excessive use of energy)
We need cultural diversity just as much as biodiversity
Grows in tunnelhouses in Invercargill – I seen it!
Wow! That's cool (yes the pun was deliberate). It was 11 degrees here this morning I felt the chill then wondered what you were getting: Riverton 7. Colder…
We're quite blessed up here getting sub-tropicals running wild. Site selection is key to it, basic earthworks. I never in a million (ok, with climate change I totally imagined it possible) thought of Taro in Invercargill.
Do you know their target market? That's really interesting.
Members of the Pacific Island community have a couple of big tunnelhouse in which they grow sizeable and healthy taro; huge leaves, as you know. I was promised some rhizomes, but forgot to collect, but now that I'm reminded, I'll go back, spade in hand. I don't know anything about cultivation, but they'll show me.
Do you know the multiplex bamboos?
No. Just read the wiki on it and there was little information.
What are you up to with it?
I saw some bamboo hedging/shelter belts recently in the Waitakere ranges, it was almost as tall as mature poplars, it was being used to shelter forestry – impressive!
Robert and WtB
I think Sabine on How to.. was asking about safe bamboo ie not spreading and problematic, so if someone hasn't replied, could someone do that. She is keen on giving things a go.
http://www.bamboo.org.nz/
NZ bamboo society link. Just need to do a little bit of googling and check that whatever species you are thinking of doesn't "run" in your local micoclimate/conditions.
Robert
Can I pick your brains?
WTB also if he's in range
A friend and I were discussing her new tunnel house
I told her that in mine I didnt replace or sterilise the soil each growing season, but rather added to the soil constantly with all manner of organic matter. This I said, all wise and knowledgeable ,was so that all the available living sites in the soil would be taken up by saprophytic fungi , thus excluding the parasitic fungi .But then my voice faltered as I thought about that.
Why would parasitic fungi be in dead and decaying matter, when its liking is for living tissue? Resting bodies? Overwintering ?
Now I'm all at 6s and 7s
So, I'll still keep up with the seagrass and horseshit and the like , and actually , I haven't had any problems with fungal diseases the entire 10 years, but now I'm having doubts about my advice.
Can you enlighten me?
LOL! That's a crazy hard question.
Yeah some fungi can encyst or hibernate for winter, some vary in hosts for winter vs summer and might be bad for one and no sign on the other.
There's biotrophic (attack living) and necrotrophic (attack dead) fungal pathogens. A necrotrophic pathogen kills living cells and then consumes them dead while a biotrophic pathogen feeds on the living cells. Some might switch it up…
Saprotrophs are neither supposedly – eating already dead materials. But who knows what else they get up to, trying to pin one function to one fungi is problematic at best. Botrytis use hackers, armored vehicles, propaganda and more when they attack. Plants kill off cells trying to stop it and so just play into the pathogens 'hands'.
Fungi are crazy cool, but we know jack shit…
Some fungi are symbionts in one circumstance and pathogens in the next, why is mostly a mystery. Changing circumstances. The pathogens of pathogenic fungi are mostly free living but can be employed by plants. Other symbionts, like mycorrhizae may provide niche exclusion where they've coated the rhizosphere… Any beneficial potentially helps exclude problematic microbes, but their functions might be important.
In the gut Akkermancia gets a bad rap degrading sulphide bridges (memory here, forgive if I mess it up) but their wastes feed beneficial bacteria that entrain the immune system to fight bugs like Akkermancia… it pays to be careful what we consider problematic. Often the 'problems' are parts of systems beyond our comprehension.
A complex food web is created by the organic matter, it is also protected (from weather) by it with the majority of microbial life residing in the upper surface of the soil. There are fungi for every occasion in the soil food web, most of which we've not discovered yet.
If it's working, I wouldn't sweat it too much. I have many species on my section right now I don't know them by name – yet I'm often the go to guy for fungi…
What's that (any clearly visible mushroom) people say?
Basidiomycetes, I reply in sagacious tone.
Very good.Thanks WTB
My Dip Hort training was very black and white , good and bad bugs etc,roundup was a "good "herbicide rendered inactive by the soil, saprophytic fungi good , parasitic bad.Jeez, I spent loads of my working life unlearning stuff.The best was plant ID, and lifecycles of the rust fungus, plus metamorphosis and all that wonderful scifi life of insects
All in all as long as you've got a thriving live community of microbiota they'll sort it out.?
Can't help thinking that sterilisation just clears the slate for the most aggressive colonisers
Think I'll keep recommending the organic matter but lay off suggesting that'll give immunity to any pathogens
It's illegal to bromide soils anymore, but those in the know know that marigolds produce bromide in their root zones and can be used to control soil insect pests.
I have some damage to some root crops and could cycle the marigolds in the area to alleviate insect pressure in the soil. I'll probably not, hoping instead to bring in predatory beetles through providing habitat, but it is an option. What damage there is I cut around it, feed to chooks, it's all good.
Problematic fungi typically like damp poor draining places, but I can't speak too soon, in super dry California they've many pathogens all of their own.
Organic matter might give immunity to pathogens. There's plenty of studies to suggest compost does this. It is not just nutritional but the biota. If you break it down there are many species that produce compounds plants use in defense against various parasites and pathogens and there are myriad papers of all sorts of wierd and wonderful goings on with bacteria fungi and more.
Silica is definitely useful in plant defense – a constituent in abundance in sea grass.
Some tried to teach me in black and white. A mugs game at best. Read the damn text books.
A tunnelhouse is a bubble of exclusivity and the environment inside, removed from many natural processes. Minimising that exclusive quality as far as possible is the best management, imo; get rainwater in there as often as you can, allow or attract insects and birds to visit, promote the through-flow of fresh air and encourage as wide as possible a range of plants to grow in there as your sense of aesthetics will allow. If you can, flood the soil at the end of the main growing season, with rain water and rinse away any built-up salts. Bring in home-made composts. Refresh the soil if needed; take out any that's looking less than healthy and replace it with compost thats been exposed to the wide world conditions. That should do it. Focus on and promote that which is healthy and your under-cover environment will be healthy. Pay only slight heed to the pathogens; they're going to struggle in any healthy environment you create. S'wot I reckon.
Great advice
Yep , focus on all that good life giving stuff rather than the disease
Love the photo Robert, hows it going with the retirement sea straw house?
Oh, and on the topic of materials from the sea…
https://www.stuff.co.nz/life-style/home-property/nz-gardener/74112477/
A Samoan family rented a house near us in Blenheim. I think that they had a crop of Taro growing in a little garden facing north. It looked like Taro leaf anyway.
Taro is grown in the NMIT community gardens in Blenheim.
Taro was well known as a staple crop eg Colenso.
The taro plants (each one beautiful in itself) rising from the plain carefully levelled surface, which was sometimes even strewed with white sand brought from a distance, and patted smooth with their hand;*
http://rsnz.natlib.govt.nz/image/rsnz_13/rsnz_13_00_0028_0009_ac_01.html
Nice! The white sand reflects and thus enhances light availability. Maori gardeners knew lots of great tricks.
The opening lines reveal the story this paper you linked failed to correct (in the PDF):
"Two gross errors have largely and repeatedly been industriously published concerning the ancient Maoris, and these, too, from our first knowledge of them: [….] (2) Their great want of food.Hence [….] the poor creatures were necessarily in a savage and starving state."
We've evolved somewhat in our views, but make no mistake the denial of indigenous intelligence was widespread.
More indictments for Assange.
https://edition.cnn.com/2019/05/23/politics/julian-assange-espionage-act-charges/index.html
These go a lot further towards being political charges and being protected speech activities. So the prosecutorial overreach may in fact help Assange argue against extradition, whether it be directly from the UK, or from Sweden. And if it's from Sweden, then the UK also has to agree, so Assange may get extra protection from that.
what the new charges indicate are that even if they can’t get him to the US they will fight this for ever – he will be held in cells for a long long long time.
Dunno about that. In 2013 Obama and his Justice Department concluded that it wasn't in the national interest to go after Assange because of the potential harmful chilling effect on legitimate journalism and free speech. Come January 2021, there may be a new prez and Attorney General that feel that same way.
and then they elected the orange shit show and he has changed that. Elections have consequences.
https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/julian-assange-versus-the-trump-administration
https://www.thedailybeast.com/decision-to-go-after-assange-came-during-trumps-war-on-leakers
https://psmag.com/ideas/why-trump-reversed-himself-on-wikileaks
I gotta confess to some curiosity about about what Assange now thinks about his activities helping elect the most committed anti-free press pro-corruption president in modern history.
Whether he's filed it under "oops, seemed a good idea at the time" or whether he's so consumed by anti-american hate that he thinks the damage getting done to the US by Tyrannosaurus Arse makes it worth it.
Assange's thoughts would be more complex and labelling them as anti-american hate is a knee jerk choice of term I am sure. Anyone who tries to be objective about the behaviours of countries and particularly the large ones will be extremely worried and wary about their attitude to the people of the world. I don't think that calling big countries' attitudes anti-people-hate is taking it too far when one looks at the sort of things they have done.
For instance the Marshall Islands have had to fight back from being guinea pigs for atomic blasts from the USA. Also the French exploded over a hundred atomic devices mostly in the South Pacific.
The USA has used its prominence to do lots of bad stuff. Simply put. Assange recognises this and has reacted to it by showing up their hypocrisy of pretending they are good guys protecting the free world! Andre I think you have said you are American. I think therefore that your views may be biased and not objective.
And now this:
In Fiji on Thursday, he [UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres] told the crowd about "a kind of coffin" built by the US in the Marshall Islands to house the deadly radioactive debris from 1980s.
The structure, however, was never meant to last. Today, due to disrepair and rising sea tides, it is dangerously vulnerable. A strong storm could breach the dome, releasing the deadly legacy of America's nuclear might.
"I've just been with the President of the Marshall Islands (Hilda Heine), who is very worried because there is a risk of leaking of radioactive materials that are contained in a kind of coffin in the area," Guterres said in Fiji, Agence France-Presse reported.
Guterres' "coffin" was the product of a belated American response to the testing of the 1940s and 1950s. Beginning in 1977, the Defence Nuclear Agency began a sustained cleanup of the nuclear debris left over on Enewetak Atoll…
https://www.stuff.co.nz/world/south-pacific/112903016/worry-as-pacific-nuclear-waste-barrier-cracks
Assange's actions around shoving his cock into women's bodies in ways that were explicitly not consented to, then scarpering every time it looked like he might get held accountable, don't speak to much complexity of thought on his part.
Well then Andre he deserves the judicial and psychological rape he is now being subjected to does he?
And the military and economic rape the lawless US dishes out daily and which Assange exposed to the world can carry on merrily because …Assange is accused(but not convicted) of not using a condom
And the powers that be are now in possession of a wonderful weapon… the gullibility of the public when accusations of sexual impropriety are thrown around.
The chilling effect that this has on journalists, because we are all, every one of us flawed in all kinds of ways, and the compliant media could discredit every one of us, destroy us , rape us psychologically every day of the week and people like you will stand on the roadside cheering and jeering
Funny old world
What's the current going rate for how many documents showing shitty government behaviour you need to publish to get one freebie rape?
So the judicial process is now redundant?
Accusations are enough?
No need for trials in your post truth world?
Whoopy do, brave new world indeed
Assange successfully stalled the legitimate judicial process for seven years. His choices and actions, nobody else's. And now the legitimate judicial process is starting up again. Which you seem to be objecting to.
To your lower comment
The UN had different views , but what would the UN human rights
commission know compared to you eh Andre?
https://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=17013&
not a very charitable version.
2 starfuckers who compared notes and were…pissed off.
Starfuckers aren't allowed to set limits to what they consent to? And because they're starfuckers, they lose the right to hold accountable those that breach the limits of their consent? When you’re a star, it’s ok even if they don’t want to let you do it?
Yeah, these two and Christine Blasey Ford – all these awful women making false accusations. Won't somebody please, please think of the rapists?
You seem to know a lot about his sexual carrying on Andre. All you described is covered by the words 'had sex with'. Do you find this itself a disgraceful and unpleasant behaviour? There might not be complexity in Assange's mind about it but there certainly seems to be in yours.
As I understood it he had had sexual relations with his female partner, and then felt desire and had it again when she wasn't fully awake. You speak of 'ways that were explicitly not consented to' is that two counts or one? Was it the ways that he performed this act, or did he go against explicit instructions, ie not used condom? If he had not used a condom. that is wrong and exposes the woman to possible pregnancy and/or sexual diseases so is a no-no, but doesn't constitute rape.
Are you an expert in Swedish law? Do you know exactly what happened? If not, then how do you know that what happened didn't constitute rape?
All you described is covered by the words 'had sex with'. Do you find this itself a disgraceful and unpleasant behaviour?
Why ask Andre? What counts is what the person he "had sex with" has to say about it, and what they've had to say can't have been that complimentary, given the criminal investigation.
If he had not used a condom. that is wrong and exposes the woman to possible pregnancy and/or sexual diseases so is a no-no, but doesn't constitute rape.
Consent can be conditional on use of a condom. In which case the term for not using one isn't the "surprise creampie" often depicted as a hilarious gag in porn videos, it's "rape."
You stupid twats are sick in the head. It's non of your business what two people do in the bedroom. For starters Julian's accusers wanted Julian tested for STDz. It was a secound prosecutor under orders who had the allegations upgraded. This has and never have been about the victim. All this is is an excuse for the woke to demonstrate how virtuous there feelings of victimhood is.
Absolutely it's none of my business what two people do in a bedroom, but it definitely is my business when people are posting rape apologia on a blog I read.
Also: believing that consent matters is not virtue-signalling for the woke. Men who don't understand that consent matters sometimes end up having to tell a court why the jury should believe sex was consensual when the other party vehemently denies it. Why not just avoid that scenario and avoid being a creep at the same time?
I was talking about the way that Andre explained the matter PM. It seems to be that sex sets many of you off like wind-up clockwork toys.
yall are producing stupid comments that illustrate how naive you are.
It seems to be that sex sets many of you off like wind-up clockwork toys.
Sex? Haven't noticed that topic come up. Rape apologia certainly sets some of us off though, yes. Have you all considered not writing any? That would shut down my comments on the subject of Assange almost completely.
This actually goes to a wider set of societal norms. So is it okay for the state to run assignation programmes? Or in this case against Assange, is it okay to use the coercive powers of the state keeping in mind that Hillary Clinton while Secretary of State public stated a desire to drone him for publishing evidence that she was malfeasance in the death of a Lybian Ambassador. So the question I'm trying to get at here is it it cool for the state to use rape allegations as a tool to extradite Assange?
There's far more compelling evidence that Assange sacrificed young boys to the goddess Chamunda while in the Ecuadorian embassy. You'd build a more convincing case if you followed up that rumour.
So the question I'm trying to get at here is it it cool for the state to use rape allegations as a tool to extradite Assange?
Well, that depends, doesn't it? If it's using rape allegations to extradite Assange for some nefarious non-rape-allegations-related purpose, then that wouldn't be cool at all.
However, if it's using rape allegations to extradite Assange because someone's made a rape allegation against him, then yes, totally cool. I notice that someone has made a rape allegation against him.
There's far more compelling evidence that Assange sacrificed young boys to the goddess Chamunda while in the Ecuadorian embassy.
I wasn't aware you'd reviewed the evidence in this case, Morrissey. Have you passed your findings on to the Swedish investigators?
I found this to be quite a good read
https://medium.com/@caityjohnstone/debunking-all-the-assange-smears-a549fd677cac
More of the same, really.
Full of straw men and not-quite-truths.
?????
You really have nothing to offer except bile and lies. State-sponsored lies.
State sponsored? I thought my tax refund was a bit light, frankly.
You're doing it for free. At least the likes of hapless Hosking and his ilk get paid for their nonsense.
So my comments aren't state sponsored then. Nasty thing to accuse me of, that.
Summing up the entire swedish situation as people saying "he's a rapist" is a straw man argument. It allows no room for the concept of "he was accused of rape, so should face up to the legal system on that charge". And before you dolt45 "no charges", the British Supreme Court disagreed with that argument.
The statement in jeremyB's link "InterPol bizarrely issued a Red Notice for Assange, typically reserved for terrorists and dangerous criminals, not alleged first-time rapists" is a mischaracterisation of interpol notice classifications. And rape is a serious crime, even the first time. So that's a not-quite-truth.
And so on, with everything covered before here on rape-apology groundhog day, anyway.
"Rape apology"? State-sponsored or simply choosing to repeat state lies without shame, you're lying.
Are you an apologist for all rapes – or just these ones?
You say that, yet choose to not show how my examples from the link are not a " not-quite-truth" or a "straw man argument".
Because using either to minimise rape allegations against someone is rape apology. So therefore I'm telling the truth when I use that term.
Try using fewer slogans and more substance.
Dont mind McTrash. He's damaged.
Edit: yeah, 1 through 10. I could agree with that although as you can see from Mc Trashs response, you either agree that the state should be held to account or not.
Or maybe the state should be held to account, but so should individuals.
It was going so well 🙁
Going well? Really…
Assange has been stewing in jeopardy and this is well? I don't think so.
Yknow, New Zealand is a juvenile island Nation that for many reasons can not let go of the great powers car door, now America.
Never mind. Sam, I wasn’t commenting on Assange 😉
Well I was. We need global solutions and Assange is apart of the package.
How can you say that Assange helped elect Trump when Clinton won the popular vote?
How did Assange publishing accurate information swing the electoral college ?
How did Assange affect the votes of those crucial states which Clinton thought she had in the bag and didnt bother campaigning in?
How did Assange induce the DNC to deny opportunities to Sanders to fairly campaign?
By rigging the nomination the DNC denied voters the possibility of Sanders being a viable opposition to Trump
You can't blame Assange for that
Wow, you're really into this post-fact post-truth thing.
Here's a couple of pieces from The Intercept about how WikiLeaks was enthusiastically helping the Fraud from Fifth Avenue and dumping on Hillary.
https://theintercept.com/2018/02/14/julian-assange-wikileaks-election-clinton-trump/
https://theintercept.com/2017/11/15/wikileaks-julian-assange-donald-trump-jr-hillary-clinton/
Or there's things like WikiLeaks enthusiastically collaborating in spreading smears about Hillary's health.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/jerome-corsi-told-roger-stone-wikileaks-had-dirt-on-hillarys-health-then-the-attacks-started
Wow!
Read the comments below the line on those 2 outdated Intercept pieces?
Fucking hilarious, and better written than the articles
Intercept readers weren't buying it
Assange groupie endorses views of other Assange groupies, ignores anything unfavourable to Assange. What a surprise.
vice versa
Will Assange have some new room mates if extradited?
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-05-23/trump-orders-fbi-cia-fully-cooperate-barr-authorizes-full-and-complete-authority
@Poission: depends on whether those people end up in front of a real judge or a Drumpf appointee whose only qualification was an ability to crawl so far up Drumpf's ass they got to shake hands with Hannity.
And the penalty for espionage is?
https://www.rawstory.com/2019/05/trump-suggests-death-penalty-punishment-for-comey-page-strozk-and-mccabe/
For a start, they'd have to take that off the table to have a shit-show of getting him extradited to the US.
Francesca, the outstanding independent journalist Allan Nairn was on Democracy Now! today. He had words of counsel for the Democratic Party:
yeah thanks Morrissey
Its obviously much more exciting to believe in cartoon villains like them evil Rooskies….whatever they do its Wrong…they can't help it its in their nature
especially if you've been brought up on comics and Lex Luthor
His original extradition case only took a couple of years, and went all the way up the system.
But the British will have to have the same argument about freedom of speech and journalists as the US would if he ends up going over there.
https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/6024848/5-23-19-US-Assange-Superseding-Indictment.pdf
India's Prime Minister Modi showed an echo of Trump when he was talking about making India great again, or similar expression. He is very popular despite some worrying tendencies in the past. Populism is in eh.
The whole Indian election thing I don't find the least bit surprising. And like the OZ elections thing across the ditch, there are parallels here that are also interesting.
Personally I'm NOT AT ALL surprised at the Modi clean sweep (or indeed the ScoMo phenomenon) but what worries me is that we could see those parallels here in 2020 DESPITE an opposition being completely fucking useless, punitive, vacuous, nasty, and basically just a bit fik at times. (In fact I predicted it and I'm $5 better off).
And in !ndia, that's even AFTER rural farmers committing suicide, the whole demonetisation fiasco, and a number of other things. I mean……… I know a couple of Congress and Smajwadi Party politicians (i.e. non-corrupt and with left-wing values the founders of NZ's Labour Party would be envious of) who jumped ship to the BJP before the latest. They did so because they perceived, and are now in a better position to get a few things done. I wish them the best of British luck too if any lil 'ole Koiwoi goes grovelling for, or to advance a FTA. )
Pardon my resorting to buzz lingo, but basically the "Let's do this!" after now what is half way through a parliamentary term is being perceived by many as
"Let's do this in the fullness of time going forward". (1984 and 1987 were also "transformational", as was Ruthenasia.)
At the moment, 2020 is Labour and partners' election to lose, and it could ekshully happen.
There's so much 'low hanging fruit' this coalition COULD be dealing with – and I mean some comparatively simple things….. but it's now evident to me that they won't.
What are people at grass root pissed off with? and what do they perceive is being done about it? It isn't the cost of Corban's White Label Chardonnay – so far, it's SFA and it doesn't really fit with what their day-to-day experiences are – whether it's with Health, Edjikayshun, Social Warfare, Transport, etc.
Why is food so expensive in NZ? (Why is it that locally produced [NZ] food can be obtained overseas CHEAPER than here)
Why are building materials (including NZ pine timber) more expensive here? And why, if housing is (and was) a crisis, isn't the coalition responding with mechanisms normally used during an emergency or crisis – especially with regard to homelessness.
Why do the exploited – whether the minimum waged (citizen or immigrant) get half-hearted measures and promises to rectify – there are one or two things that can be done there IMMEDIATELY.
Why is it that restoring prisoners right to vote considered low priority – not too hard to simply repeal a bit of legislation promoted by a total fuckwit and failed public servant whose only real achievements involve successfully stealing and plagiarising others' policy and getting away with it.
Why do problems in Health and Education keep persisting down.
(Gawd!!!! there's so much more but it's involve a rave)
There's so much the current opposition could take advantage of, and really the only reason they're not making any traction (so far) is that they're a complete load of plastic, self-entitled fuckwits – possibly as they always will be.
We're so fortunate that the previous junta is struggling and that we have an amazing, intelligent and compassionate PM – even if she has to be assisted by a wise old owl dadda figure.
My fear is that it's all being taken a wee bit for granted and some of them seem totally unaware who their enemas are (They're quite obviously closer to home than they know)
Organisations who support a sugary drink tax
• Diabetes New Zealand
• Heart Foundation
• Dieticians NZ
• New Zealand Dental Association
• Public Health Association of New Zealand
• Toi Tangata
• FIZZ New Zealand
• Hapai te Hauroa: Māori Public Health
• Moana Ola: Pasifika Public Health Network
• New Zealand Medical Association
• Consumer NZ
• Health Coalition Aotearoa
• Diabetes Foundation Aotearoa (formerly Diabetes Project Trust)
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=12233791
Dr. Rob Beaglehole (and friends) again call on the Government to implement a tax on sugar.
Of course Clark again says, nah.
"I have met several times with the food industry and set out the clear expectation that business and the Government will work together on this issue."
Sound science on the cost benefits of a sugar tax has been put before this government as it was to previous incumbents and yet Clark assumes the perennial default position of the neo liberal government by declaring a closer relationship with big business than it has with its own science advisors.
SSDD.
It is odd, general consensus that a tax would do good and certainly no harm, strong clinical and scientific support and the general public appear OK with a tax, yet the minister and government doing next to nothing.
Good moves on the political front on RadioNZ this morning that we would not have got if National was still in warming their bums, and drinking their summer wine (mulled in winter).
Ron Mark is going ahead with the Defence Forces looking at man-rape in the '70s. Good on him for caring about the men's welfare. Fair's fair, we need to prevent people from being brutalised in any role, as the sealing off and secrecy about bad behaviour just produces rottenness underneath, like a wound not cleansed. (Single cells in prison also please. Perhaps with a review about some prisoners being let out, but having to attend remedial classes for their day task.)
The Police are looking practically at speed cameras which are expensive in money and person-hours – and not good for the image of the Force which people think should be dealing with crime. Give them to the Transport Authority – managing road usage is their bag and they are good fine with spending money.
Also the Commissioner for Children is requesting again that Police rethink their unwise chasing of stolen cars, and those who won't stop and salute. Speeding after speeding cars tends to make them go faster, the Commissioner referred to one at 160 kmh. Simple psychology says that fear and excitement mixed in immature brains will not result in reasoned thinking. Too much like film Thelma and Louise feeling!
CAA spokesperson uttered the basic problem of neo liberalism that affected them, that for a period in decades back they were not sure of their required role. Was their role an enforcement regulator, or as a support to help business to be effective and efficient.
(That's my take on his quote. And I think that would be behind the actions or inactions of the Christchurch building, planning and inspectors department. They were criticised but no doubt caught between a rock and a hard place by the invidious government acceptance of neo lib. This resulted in withdrawal from their role of responsibility for standards and the passing the ball to business which hailed itself as better, more efficient, reliable, knowledgable about the latest and always looking for the optimum standards, not wastefully over-specified by timid government.
We can rue the past experiment with business cowing government and strutting like peacocks themselves, now with far too many failures left to government to clean up, or structures with built-in weaknesses, leading to early failures. Let's have a sea change to this approach now.)
"Also the Commissioner for Children is requesting again that Police rethink their unwise chasing of stolen cars, and those who won't stop".
The problem I have with this idea is the question of how you are supposed to know that the driver is young and that they are only joy-riding. How would you like to be the Policeman who had to answer this question after they had stopped chasing a car?
"Why did you stop chasing this car? There were 3 men in it together with a young girl they had abducted. After you stopped they continued to a deserted spot where they raped and murdered her. This would not have happened if you had stopped them, and protected her, as your oath required you to. What do you say to her family?"
Of course it is hypothetical. However such abductions do, occasionally, happen and I would hate to be a Policeman who was responsible for allowing it.
Look at the cases of Teresa Cormack and Kirsa Jensen in Hawke's Bay in the 1980s.
My worry is of course an extreme one. However even having to account for your actions in not chasing a stolen car which then continued on and, 5 kilometers further along the road, crashed head-on into another car filled with totally innocent people who were killed in the crash would continue to haunt the police driver who gave up the chase.
And I have to admit I have no idea what the right thing to do is.
Re chases.
I have thought that a tag with a gps chip fired from ??? , and then track the car and pick up when safer.
Trying to attach a tracker depends on getting close enough to actually make it work. Most chases will have gone on for quite a long time before that happens.
Personally, I'd be fine with every car getting some sort of tracking transponder before getting the privilege of being licensed to go out on public roads, and the cops being able to tap into the tracking information whenever they want. But I imagine that would trigger all sorts of objections from civil-liberties types. Some of those objections might even be valid.
and then there's the issue that thieves could disable the transponder while they disable the car alarm lol
I wouldn't be surprised if sometime soon there's some big scandalous revelation that new cars are already doing it and it can't be disabled since it's built into the vehicle control systems. I vaguely recall reading something about Tesla collecting data from all their autonomous-ready vehicles to develop the mapping info they need to actually make fully autonomous work.
Oooo that's true. And we find out that their wifi/bluetooth capabilities are network sniffing like the google streetview cars were.
I keep forgetting that since about 2001 most cars have been more computer than mechanical. "Oh, just unplug it" works less and less these days 🙂
Well Mark Z turn 35 the other day – and all he wanted for his birthday was your personal data.
I thought similar, but what if you could just not chase suspects, but laser tag vehicles so a drone follows it. They wouldn't know they were being followed and with a bit of slick drone GPS-cop radio coordination, they stop someplace, cops move in.
It is a fair point in general, although in a recent case in the news they were looking for that specific kid, ID'd the car he'd stolen, and knew the kid had a history of dangerous flight.
CAA spokesperson uttered the basic problem of neo liberalism that affected them, that for a period in decades back they were not sure of their required role. Was their role an enforcement regulator, or as a support to help business to be effective and efficient.
It is a troubled organisation is the Civil Aviation Authority and they seem to get on the wrong side with just about everyone they deal with.
New Zealand is a tiny country and governing bodies have a hard time sourcing board members with the appropriate industry knowledge who are also free from conflicts of interests.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/102902046/civil-aviation-authority-cleans-house-and-rejects-toxic-label
My own dealings with CAA a number of years go has left me fearful in the knowledge that despite clear and proveable breaches of the regulations and strong evidence of incompetency and prevarication, an offending pilot can enjoy enjoy apparent immunity from being held to account.
Closer attention to air traffic rules would have saved the lives of four I think, of our scientists that were killed in a charter plane crash near Christchurch. We are slack often.
Thousands of school kids and others on climate change action protests all over NZ today, but you wouldn't know it was happening from the almost total absence of news in the media. Guess if you keep quiet about climate change it will just go away! Over where I am in Australia, it seems that the federal Labor Party is set to backpedal on climate change policy and the Queensland state labor government will probably allow the huge Adani coal mine to be approved in Queensland because of the recent loss to the Coalition in the federal election. Maybe that's the answer to climate change? You can just vote against doing anything about it and CO2 levels will come tumbling down?
Thanks, good comment.
Stuff live feed here
HHS : FDA. The US Constitution makes lawmakers democratically accountable, yet Americans are subject to thousands of rules that are issued by bureaucrats without democratic accountability.
Final Rules: 2001 – 2017
HHS (all)
29% – Constitutional
71% – Unconstitutional
FDA
2% – Constitutional
98% – Unconstitutional
900 million eligible voters have cast their ballot
Al jazeera reports
“There is no denying that this is the result of a formidable Modi wave ”
In the lead-up to the results, the opposition’s Hopes were pinned on a good showing in states such as Bengal in the east and the Hindi-speaking heartland states of Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan.
But these were the states where the BJP performed exceedingly well and dashed the opposition’s plans.
BJP ( National Democratic Alliance ) has increased their majority in the Indian general election.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/05/india-votes-modi-landmark-mandate-190523122306435.html
Guyon has been busy in his new role. Good work on a Pharmac expose that began yesterday, the final 2 episodes air on Morning Report and the website next week. While unfortunately it;s unlikely to change much, short of the Government being shamed into a serious cash injection for drug funding- which we should not hold our collective breath for-I always enjoy a spot of public humiliation towards Public Sector CEOs who say things like this: (from episode 1)
What does Pharmac chief executive Sarah Fitt make of people taking desperate measures to fund their own medicine? "I don't think it is a two-tiered system," she says.
"We have to make the decisions about what are the best uses of the medicines we've got. If people choose to go and fund medicines themselves then that is their choice … It's like having elective surgery on insurance – you can choose whether to do that rather than going to the hospital system."
But what if you are a low-income earner? "Yeah, that's not going to be a choice. Absolutely," she says.
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/in-depth/389835/guyon-espiner-investigates-pharmac-the-nz-buyer-s-club
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/in-depth/389918/guyon-espiner-investigates-pharmac-the-secret-list
https://www.rnz.co.nz/programmes/the-detail/story/2018696420/drugs-and-money (podcast)
Thanks Kay for posting those links… and most definitely did Ms. Fitt present herself as being less than sensitive to the people she is supposed to be serving.
I too have the more than occasional fantasy of seeing some sociopathic so -called Public Servant being forced to suffer some of the pain and humiliation they have happily metered out to those they are paid to serve.
Perhaps they should be made to open a Givealittle page to fund their salaries?
As for the 'two-tiered' system for access to pharmaceuticals, it came as a revelation to me a few years ago that ACC will fully fund drugs for its clients that Pharmac refuses to fund for those under the Public Health system.
To head Pharmac is a job many of us would never want to have it. To have restricted funds to purchase medication.
To fund a drug to save or improve the life of same would mean that other medication is not funded, I would imagine that those in such organisations must face many moral dilemmas daily, and IMO do not deserve personal attacks. There is no win win in these positions, having to work out what is the best they can do, the minister and govt. restrict what they fund, so perhaps look in that direction.
I would imagine that those in such organisations must face many moral dilemmas daily,
Oh, I don't know….they seem pretty proud of their efforts in their latest bragsheet…
https://www.pharmac.govt.nz/assets/briefing-to-incoming-minister-2017-11.pdf
…and they have Plans, Big Plans, for the future.
Some of those horrendously expensive drugs only work in a small number of patients and do diddly squat in others except for exposing them to the risk of the unwanted side effects that all these drugs carry. It is like buying a very expensive Lotto ticket and hope for the best …
I few here might be interested in a fb group called
50 shades of green .
They are trying to have a reasoned debate about farms and tree planting , carbon,methane etc
You'll have to ignore the fools from the nutty ends of the spectrum, but a few of the commenters are trying to think.
Looks good, I think we should at least track this – have put it up on How to get there.. Ta.
gonna follow that. thanks.
I'ts always about the oil.
More U.S troops to be deployed.
Iran vows no surrender – even if bombed by 'enemies'
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/05/iran-vows-surrender-bombed-enemies-190523191232934.html
The horror.
So if IQ scores are really dropping, that could not only mean 15 more seasons of the Kardashians, but also the potential end of progress on all these other fronts, ultimately leading to fewer scientific breakthroughs, stagnant economies and a general dimming of our collective future.
https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/iq-rates-are-dropping-many-developed-countries-doesn-t-bode-ncna1008576
the kardashians is that like Coronation Street or Shortland Street? I confess to not having watched either of them and I have no intention. But i remember the looks i got from people in the office (when i was still a workdrone for others) when details were discussed and I looked at people like ….sorry i has no idea what you are on about.
As for fewer scientific breakthroughs, stagnant economies and a general dimming of our collective future we could argue that we are already there.
I must add tho that the daughter of a friend of mine what so happy when the kardashians arrived at the scene many many moons ago….reason why? Finally a 'star' who looked like here, hipped, small waisted, dark hair, matte skin and black eyes. She felt pretty in her very blond white society were she grew up.
So maybe that explain their success…..that women that look like them feel validated in a world where skinny, boyish hips, tiny bust, blondes are elevated to 'norm' status.
There have been a couple of articles recently potentially linking lower IQ to air pollution in the cities and higher CO2 concentrations in general. Was it in The Guardian?
Interesting. Maybe indoor ventilation, too?
The benefits of a warming world?
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/unique-everybody-else/201211/cold-winters-and-the-evolution-intelligence
What are you worried about the Kardashians for? Shouldn't you concern yourself with the likes of the Obamas, the Bushes, the Blairs, the Trumps, the Pelosis?
The President of The United States. Rat fucker in chief.
Distorted videos of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), altered to make her sound as if she’s drunkenly slurring her words, are spreading rapidly across social media, highlighting how political disinformation that clouds public understanding can now grow at the speed of the Web.
[…]
Rudolph W. Giuliani, Trump’s personal attorney, tweeted a link to the altered video Thursday night with the note, “What is wrong with Nancy Pelosi? Her speech pattern is bizarre.” The tweet has since been deleted.
On Thursday night, Trump tweeted a separate video of Pelosi — a selectively edited supercut, taken from Fox News, focused on moments where she briefly paused or stumbled — that he claimed showed her stammering through a news conference. The clip included roughly 30 seconds of Pelosi’s full 21-minute briefing on Thursday, in which she took questions from reporters and discussed what she called Trump’s “temper tantrum.”
http://archive.li/LwkQ0
Will Fux newts be sued for broadcasting lies?
She's useless. The horrid fact that she is still No. 1 in the Democrats explains why we are facing five and a half more years of Trump—and no doubt eight years of Pence after that.
https://images.jpost.com/image/upload/f_auto,fl_lossy/t_Article2016_ControlFaceDetect/432315
People, especially working class white men with economic anxiety, their wifes, the evangelic anti abortion pro forced birther crowd, and then lovely people like Paris Hilton and her ilk voted of Uncle Donnie (her words no mine) and everyone else did not vote for the orange shitshow that currently slings shit at everyone that crosses his way.
And while you cry foul, please also keep in mind that Mike Pence is there to keep the anti abortion pro forced birth anti gay anti gay marriage anti trans anti lesbian anti other anti brown people crowd to keep on voting for this shit show.
I can understand taht it is easy to find someone and blame them for the evils that are,. but sadly, no, Nancy Pelosi is not at fault for the choice people take, these people would vote for Attila the Hun if they promise to make america great again, call all Mexicans rapists and murderes, blames the loss of manufacturing on the overseas car industry that produces a lot of cars in Alabama (but never call out the US American companies that left for cheaper labour), that calls women Nasty for wanting the right to bodily autonomy and that lie about 'cutting out babies and the discussing with the doctors how to best kill them'. These people will never vote democrats, no more then Mike Hoskins is ever gonna vote for Labour.
Sometimes people just do vote for the worst human being they can find precisely because he is a bully, a fuckwit, a sadist, a feces flinging shitgibbon who fantasizes about bedding his own daughter, and they do so to 'own the libs'.
Cause that is what it is, owning the libs, owning the uppity women, owning the uppity people of color, owning the uppity gay lesbians/trans/other and the country can be fucked.
People wanted someone who would tear it all apart, Clinton was gonna start world war three five minutes after election, and other assorted bullshit, and well they all got what they wanted.
And in 2020 they have exactly the same choice. Politicians for the most are useless overpaid suits. But some are better then other, and sadly that is the choice we all have. So maybe it behooves to not vote for useless fucks like Donald Trump, or in NZ terms Alfred Ngaro or Brian Tamaki.
Yes dear
Yes it's hilarious to see the Dems continuing to lose their minds over Trump. They just don't seem to realise they are making the nutbar a shooin for 2020.
It's not Trump that's the "nutbar", it's the horror show that's ganged up to run the country for him.
Unfortunately the US is attracting more than her share. Look down the list if Dem's seeking the nomination – a collection of bats and battier.
Nutbats
Natrad scrutinizes the Diaries of various Ministers and finds that…
An elite group of business and iwi leaders, union officials and lobbyists are frequently bending the ear of the Labour-led government ..
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/political/389965/ministerial-diaries-who-influences-those-in-power
Being particularly interested in matters to do with disability under the Misery of Health I keep a closish watch on what Julie Anne Genter gets up to.
https://www.beehive.govt.nz/sites/default/files/2019-05/Diary%20Summary%20April%202019%20Final.pdf
Not much happening for Genter that is disability specific, just meetings with two groups…both of which have already had too much attention for very little benefit for non ACC disabled.
SSDD.
http://www.bamboo.org.nz/
NZ bamboo society link. Just need to do a little bit of googling and check that whatever species you are thinking of doesn't "run" in your local microclimate/conditions.
Sorry don't know what happened there … meant to be a reply to Greywarshark at 1.3.1.1.1.1 or thereabouts about Sabine wanting to know a good bamboo.
http://www.bamboo.org.nz/
NZ bamboo society link. Just need to do a little bit of googling and check that whatever species you are thinking of doesn't "run" in your local microclimate/conditions.
PM May on the way out.
That snap election and loss of her majority a significant factor in her loss of authority.
Who would want this job !!!!!
The Green MPs have delivered us up the Zero Carbon Act which has not one single measure to cut GHG emissions, or even any measure to keep us, to the targets set out in it.
Setting out targets is good, but with no measures to achieve them targets are meaningless.
I could set a target to be a millionaire in ten years.
I could even set down intermediate targets, that to reach my goal I will need to meet a target of a $100,000 a year.
Sorted.
To give myself further excuse not to implement any measures to achieve it, I could push my millionaire target out to thirty years from now, so that no one can really check whether I achieve it or not.
I dont think theyre quite that cynical
Sadly they appear to believe that some nominal consensus is the best strategy but confoundedly fail to understand that if your boat is miles from shore and taking on water the best strategy is not to design new pumps to be built and installed when next in port but to start bailing NOW as if you dont you will never reach port
Quite the succinct analogy when one considers the myopic gazing into future tech to save us.
Kia ora Newshub Nation.
Chris the government needs to run the books sustainably you can not just splash the cash that's foolish. I see national supporters promoting the teachers striking .
I,, it stinks that Wahine who have conceived by rape were being charged child support this story shows if you don't give up one can succeed kia kaha.
The culture in ACC has been changed by national party the culture now is one that does its best not to pay compensation to the people who needs it. Of course ACC pays for the hospital bills as they have to keep the wheels of the health system rolling but paying fair/ compensation to people is what ACC was designed for. (Bring back the right to SUE).
I can't see these new parts floating to high but I just had to give Eco Maori point of view on them .
Ka kite ano
Here is a link that shows how the defense forces cover there ass weather it distorts the course of JUSTICE. No matter what the Defense forces credibility/image comes first ka kite ano links below.
Op Burnham Inquiry: Hager accuses NZDF of spin and lies
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL1905/S00117/op-burnham-inquiry-hager-accuses-nzdf-of-spin-and-lies.htm
Some Eco Maori music for the minute.
Some Eco Maori music for the minute.
Whanau here is another concern about climate change tropical diseases will plague te tangata. I see the warning effect back home the kikuyu grass is not being kill of by frost it is out growing all the Rye an clover grasses.
The nation's nurses are warning a failure to combat climate change may enable new diseases to spread.
Mosquitos and rats could spread new diseases if climate change continues unabated, nurses have warned. Photo: mrfiza/123RF
The New Zealand Nurses Organisation is supporting school students in their calls for the government to declare a climate emergency.
Union climate change spokesperson Rachel Dobric said continuing warming would boost the risks of exotic diseases spread by rats and mosquitos.
Outbreaks of diseases, such as malaria, would dramatically affect communities that had never been exposed to those illnesses.
Ms Dobric said a zero carbon future would improve public health by reducing respiratory diseases and making people more active.
Climate change was declared an emergency by Kāpiti Coast District Council on Thursday
Links below ka kite ano.
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/390009/new-zealand-nurses-warn-of-disease-risk-from-climate-change
Kikuyu grass https://g.co/kgs/qZsrBE
Kia ora Newshub.
I see May is resigning let's hope that the alt right doesn't get into POWER.
Milia all the bad bullshit bombs shootings that is sweeping te papatuanuku at the minute is bad.
There are many flaws in the building trade people should legislated to provide a quality service.
That's sad those mountains climbers dieing on mountain Everest 9 this year to.
That's stealing Mr Lowes bonsai trees I can see it's his passion desperate people stealing to pay their PEE habbit one of my clients lost a bird bath she was upset to.
The Ebola outbreak in DRC in Africa is bad enough and they are being shot at and harassed so sad .ka kite ano.
Kia ora te ao Maori news.
I know a couple of Vietnam veterans it's cool that they are running a event to educate te tangata about the services available to help them ka paid.
The Ahewhenua cup has been won by King whanau from te taiwhiti Matawai it looks like a well run farm awesome that's good for Maori farmers lifting their mana.
A YMCA youth conference so the rangatahi can let the older generations know what they want a happy healthy future that means the ruling class will have to accept the changes needed to guarantee THEIR FUTURE.
Ahikaroa is a great watch I watch the show whenever I can its cool they use both Maori and English on the show it shows the world one side to tangata whenua O Aotearoa.
Cool Maori art at the Auckland airport telling Tangata Whenua stories in the Art . Eco Maori is a big fan of Railways transportation its awesome that new trains are coming on line for the Auckland Hamilton route. Ka kite ano.
Kia ora R&R.
I say Wahine have advanced more in Aotearoa than other countries we still have a long road ahead for equlaty to be achieved.
I agree Ngati Porou Wahine status has slipped back a bit from the past I see this with our kau matua point of views.
If you can complete a task as good as MAN you should be payed the same it all about being fair.
Jacinda is a great role model for our Wahine all around te Papatuanuku she will help lift there aspercration and goals.
Our Wahine sports stars help lift the mana wairua of there fellow Wahine .
I agree that there is a brown gap in equity but I say even though equally for Wahine has not been a Maori kauppa I say lifting Maori Wahine status in Maoridom will help close the equalty brown gap a lot of times when the going get tuff te Wahine rise to the challenge.
Ka kite ano
Thehui.
Its cool the story of Whatu Nelson Iwi winning in the highest court of the land about the loses of there Whenua.
The crown is just stalling the crown should treat them honorably and fairly from were I'm looking David that's is not happening m8. It's awesome that thehui has given this story of Nelson Iwi issues with the crown.  and helped te iwi get some respect on this subject
I think that Kelvin Davis has achieved a lot te tangata just have to go on YouTube and look at news articles 3 years old and compare it to the minute you can see that this coalition government has lifted Maoridom MANA with how Maori is treated NOW. KA KITE ANO
Kia ora R&R Maori TV.
Masculinity is the way of the world men are displaying there mana .
I say aorha should be of a higher quality of value for our society to counteract that phenomenon.
I have just read a story on a our national swimming coach on very serious sexual offenses against his students and what do you know swimming nz is protecting this man if he was brown he would have gone down years ago with weeks of bad publicity from the media on the subjects because he is light colored he gets the cover from this system. What I'm getting at is not just MAORI do bad stuff white people do to but the system protects them so the true data on there offenses is not reported on but when Tangata Whenua have a pehau/ FART EVERYONE HEARS that go figure. Ka kite ano P.S and when Eco Maori farts its spun out and the whole Papatuanuku hears
Whanau here is the story I referred to in my last post the system protects its OWN. Maori are —————— by the same system WAKE UP. Ka kite ano links below.
https://i.stuff.co.nz/sport/other-sports/112959577/swimming-nz-face-human-rights-tribunal-over-secret-report
Some Eco Maori music for the minute.
Kia ora Newshub.
It was lucky that whaine was found in Hawaii lost for weeks.
What's driving the crime problems in Auckland is poverty and who did this well policys that are made for the wealthy without considering the consequences it has on the common person is the cause national.
It would be great to have a vaccine that covers all viruses we could get .
It gives me a sore face to see more funds for our valuable tamariki up to the age of 18 they need all the care they can get ka pai.
Lloyd I seen a story on shady nigel forage it backs my point of view.
Ka pai Newshub it is not on the way the crown is treating te tangata whenua of Nelson they are owed whenua what's wrong with doing the correct thing.
Ka kite ano
Kia ora te ao Maori news
The transition support for our tamariki that end up in Oranga tamariki till they are 18 is good news they need all the care that they can get.
Cool that the Deaf All blacks had test 3 against Argentina in Aotearoa it good for their wairua playing Rugby it would be nice if they got more funding.
Congratulations to Ben O'Keefe for being involved in the Rugby World Cup reffing ka pai the only Maori ref at the World Cup.
I the SuperRugby is very different from the last comps it's a lot closer than the past between the teams.
Ka kite ano
Kia ora The Am Show.
I say that the new rocket technology being developed by Rocketlab yes it could be used for bad things but we must develop new technologies to advance our society into space travers the math shows us that is what we have to achieve this as the populations out grows Papatuanuku.
Andrew I agree totally having young people in custody without a charge is foolish and inhumane. Breaks International human rights laws to thanks shonky.
The Auckland house prices are just in correction mode it's a good phenomenon it will let kiwi family's back into the market after all whare/houses are for whanau/family's not for the wealthy to short and make millions of in Eco Maori point of view don't panic I have just seen a story about our tourist industry pumping hold onto your property and reap the future growth.
Tipical national scare tactics trying to scare the public into voting for simon the crime reporting stats is done people who love national ????????they have there own press team to manipulate te tangata into believing that crime is out of control so simon can use it to try and float his TOILET YAR RIGHT Who cares whom he stuffs up in Simon's quest for POWER.
With the teeth decaying problems of Aotearoa we have 2 factors driving the bad teeth problems 1 sugar is ruining our tamariki teeth and adults .PEE a easy indicator of a PEE user is it stuff's their teeth after a few short years .so spending billions to have a AMBULANCES at the bottom of the monga hill is not a logical or efficient way to fix the problems first tax sugary drinks and spend more money eradicating/minimizing PEE in Aotearoa advertising to showing the people that PEE make a mess of people and shortens there life expectancy by decades. Paddy's actor fits the profile.
If the Army put them into a trade training that would be OK. IT would not be hard to run a risk assessment on the youth remanded in custody a sort out the small portion of them that could be a bad person and do dumb stuff.
Mark first duncans story is False did that blow to the head make you lose your marbles the police have not had any powers removed HAVE THEY so stop taking shit about them being hamstrung by the new government fool I think I should over RIDE my humane side and just keep use pined down with my WORDs and not care about your consequences.
Bilingenglish was just going to use the health and state care system to line his —– pockets by shouting the bad stats out say it needed to be privatized so he could cream millions off the system like his $40.000 parliament accommodations support he got caught ripping.
Every problem can be solved one just has be determined and find a simple solution to the problem.
Ka kite ano
Whanau this gives me a sore face and shows Eco Maori that the STUDENTS STRIKES is having a positive effect on the way te tangata/the people of OUR Papatuanuku/ world sees buring carbon HAS TO STOP students Strikeing kia kaha/stay strong and champion action on climate change
BHP is looking to add more oil, copper and nickel resources to its portfolio, while souring on thermal coal because it thinks the fossil fuel will be phased out, “potentially sooner than expected”.
BHP’s chief financial officer, Peter Beaven, told investors and analysts in a strategy briefing on Wednesday that “the world will be a very different place in 10 to 20 years’ time” and the global miner must be thoughtful about the risks and opportunities Ka kite ano links below P.S Who's going to tell their grandchildren they don't care about there FUTURE
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2019/may/22/bhp-warns-investors-coal-could-be-phased-out-sooner-than-expected
Some Eco Maori music for the minute.
Ka pai to Cedella Marley for tau toko/supporting Jamaican Wahine Football Eco Maori loves your father music its still ring TRUE in 2019 he was a master musician .I tau Yoko /suport equal rights for Wahine.
"Big up to Cedella Marley for putting her neck on the line for us."
To say Jamaica's success owes much to Menzies' vision and passion would be an understatement. When the JFF had little interest in organizing international matches for its female footballers, Menzies ensured the country's most promising players had a pathway, had hope.
In 2008, funding was cut and the women's senior team was disbanded. Six years later, Bob Marley's daughter, Cedella, attempted to fix things by becoming an ambassador and sponsor through the Bob Marley Foundation, raising just enough for the team to re-form. But in 2016, the federation disbanded the team again.
Cedella, who lives in America, redoubled her efforts, convincing Alessandra Lo Savio, co-founder of the Alacran Foundation, to become a major contributor.
"Big up to Cedella Marley for putting her neck on the line for us," Menzies told reporters immediately after the shootout win in Dallas. But perhaps her greatest act was persuading Menzies to coach the team because, in truth, it took some convincing.
"She told me her purpose. A large part of it is her dad's love for the game and, second of all, she wanted to inspire young females in Jamaica," explains Menzies, who gave up a career in corporate finance to become a full-time soccer coach la kite ano link below.
https://edition-m.cnn.com/2019/05/24/football/jamaica-womens-world-cup-reggae-girlz-bob-marley-wwc-spt-int/index.html?r=https%3A%2F%2Fedition.cnn.com%2F
Kia ora Newshub.
I,,, there is a massive housing shortage no Mitch the cause is the there is no housing shortage by you know who over the last 8 years and that's part of the SHORT the other is opening the floodgates for imagination to push up rents and down wages and wala.
Paddy I say we have to stop PEE and sugar drinks if you don't stop the cause of tooth decay trying to fix their teeth will be a never ending game as there teeth will carry on decaying if the cause is not SORTED.
Air Newzealand is buy new planes that are 25 % more efficient than the old ones that good b saving a lot of carbon being burned I can see the game.
It's is a unusually warm autumn in Aotearoa that's Global Climate change .
That is a big baby nearly 12 pounds 10 pounds 11 ounces the baby and mother seem Ok .
Ka kite ano
Kia ora te ao Maori news.
I have a lot of respect for Andrew Beecroft he is correct the young people should not be held in custody without any charges.
Our Coalition
I see our Maori King payed a visit to the Pope I read he offered him a invitation to Aotearoa its cool that our Maori King gets on the Papatuanuku stage that will help lift his and our mana ka pai.
I quite enjoy watching Casket Affairs its got a good Maori way of how we treat our loved ones who have passed respects your tipuna congratulations for your winnings.
That's the way Maori Wahine be proud of our great culture 3 finalist cool.
Ka kite ano