Up early to watch dawn service on ODT, so was glancing at sites I'd not looked at for a while. I guess this is not as bad as the RSA's (Rhodesian Services Association) cooption of ANZAC day up in Tauranga, but the ignorance of history is astonishing – especially when linked to the slogan; "Lest we Forget"
The Military Service Act 1916 required the registration of non-Māori men aged between 20 and 46. They were sorted into two divisions – the unmarried or recently married, and everyone else. Some were chosen by ballot, initially from the first division and later from the second, and sent to training camps…
Men who objected to military service could appeal to the Military Service Board and about half of those called up did so. They could appeal on grounds of family hardship, public interest (that they were carrying out socially useful work at home) or religious objection. The boards rejected most appeals and unsuccessful appellants who refused to serve were imprisoned.
Oof! "Today we wear the puppy..", but I did like that she continued on despite the flub rather than drawing more attention with correction. Eg "Centenary.. uh; Centennial" just now.
Prayers now, which I can't be bothered with – one advantage of the Pandemic is that I don't have to pretend quiet respect for that.
What kind of clueless arsehole do you have to be to stand at the front of an ANZAC day crowd unmasked and chatting during the moment of silence between the Last Post and Reveille? Camera held on them for an uncomfortably long time too! There were enough unmasked that I am glad I didn't attend for my own safety's sake, but at least most had the grace to remain silent during the heart of the event.
I am actually slightly nauseated. But then I am also rather hungover, so it could be a bit of that too.
Anyway, to expand on my earlier point regarding the "Freedom" those NZers who participated in the "Great War" had:
The opening of a national memorial in Dunedin for conscientious objectors has been held up as a celebration of courage and prompted an apology from Deputy Prime Minister Grant Robertson.
The memorial includes an abstract depiction of Field Punishment No1, for which men were tied to posts and had their hands tightly bound behind their backs for hours at a time during World War 1.
Opening the Archibald Baxter Peace Garden yesterday, Mr Robertson said the punishment was a gross and inhumane form of state-sponsored torture.
‘‘I want to say sorry {-} it was wrong.’’
Mr Robertson said the apology was personal, rather than officially from the Government, and he acknowledged the suffering of conscientious objectors…
Several speakers, including Mr Robertson, referred to the 1881 invasion of Parihaka, which happened the same year Mr Baxter was born.
Why was this not an official governmental apology? Would that open them to claims for compensation from the tortured's descendants or something? I mean; ka pai ki Robertson for making the statement as an individual citizen, but it does ring a little hollow with his role as deputy PM.
Only Quakers, Christadelphians and, later, Seventh-day Adventists were automatically exempted from military service. Most other conscientious objectors were imprisoned for up to two years with hard labour, and sometimes returned to prison if they still refused to go to war. Fourteen especially determined conscientious objectors were forcibly shipped overseas and faced severe punishments – they included Archibald Baxter who later wrote about his experiences. At the end of the war New Zealand was the only country to deny conscientious objectors voting rights or employment in the public service or local bodies – for 10 years…
His son, the poet James K. Baxter, later wrote:
When I was only semen in a gland
Or less than that, my father hung
From a torture post at Mud Farm
Because he would not kill.
The giant $5.4 billion Hells Gates Dam project has received guaranteed funding, unlocking the agriculture sector in some of the driest parts of northern Australia.
Key points:
The federal government has committed $5.4 billion to building Hells Gates Dam.
The 2,100-gigalitre dam is forecast to unlock agriculture in northern Australia.
The dam is still subject to a business case and environmental approvals.
But the project remains subject to a business case expected in June this year, and other environmental approvals.
The Federal Government has since committed $54M towards Phase 1 of the Project which includes the $30M for the first stage of Big Rocks Weir at Charters Towers. The final Business Case for Big Rocks Weir was delivered to the Department of Natural Resources, Mines and Energy and North Queensland Water Infrastructure Authority on 21 August 2020 and has had both State and Federal governments commit $60M for the construction of Big Rocks Weir.
The remaining $24M is for the Business Case of the Hells Gates Dam, including geotechnical and cultural heritage assessments, construction proposals, enhanced economic modelling works, environmental impact and social assessment and engineering investigations. The Business Case will assess and provide further investigative works into the findings of the feasibility study completed in 2018.
Coincidentally the latest Caspian Report covered some of the history of this plan.
The money shot….'Neither party wants to acknowledge the real causes of our inflation: explosive housing costs driven by leveraged investment demand and super-powered by monopoly power across most of the economy.'
Vote Luxon for PM and risk following Sri Lanka into economic disaster.
If you love tax cuts be warned
Causes of Sri Lanka’s Economic crisis
Lack of Foreign Reserves: Sri Lanka “has been running a trade deficit for decades.” …..
Hits to the Tourism Industry: …..such hits worsened the nation’s ability to repay its debt.
Agri-Sector Crisis: In 2021, the Rajapaksa government, with the aim of moving toward 100% organic agriculture, chose to ban chemical fertilizers. This decimated farmers’ yields,….
Ill-Advised Tax Cuts: In a bid to revitalize the economy, the government cut taxes. However, this had the backfiring effect of greatly impacting government revenue. The action also “prompted rating agencies to downgrade Sri Lanka to near default levels,”…..”
Government Mismanagement: Rather than supporting the local economy and boosting its exports, the Sri Lankan government has been borrowing vast sums of money to fund public services and imported goods…..
Russia-Ukraine Conflict: The ongoing conflict between Russia and Ukraine has led to a staggering “price inflation of crude oil, sunflower oil and wheat.”….
While our government may not be able to control things like hits to the tourism sector by the covid crisis.
Or rising costs of crude oil and wheat due to the war in Ukraine.
Or making unavoidable cuts to our agricultural emissions to save the planet.
Over the things our government can control, New Zealand would be very poorly served if we copied Sri Lanka's "Ill advised" tax cuts.
The other thing that sunk the Sri Lanka economy was that country’s massive amount of overseas borrowing.
The legacy of massive overseas borrowing by the Key government to bail out the financiers and billionaire investors who lost their investments after the GFC also has to be accounted for in this country.
You paint a misleading picture Ad. It is always better to deal in facts.
The profligate high-spending Key/English government added a huge amount to public debt between 2008-17 after the Clark/Cullen government of 1999-2008 had massively reduced public debt. The Ardern/Robertson government, 2017-onwards, was in the process of reducing public debt as the pandemic hit when, of course, public debt was bound to balloon.
You can see this from the 25 year chart on this site.
good info bearded .Luxons slip ups and selfishness shown up by direct questioning from Jack Tane put Nationals policy of crumbs for the poor and huge tax windfalls for the well off and the very well off like Luxon in the spotlight. Luxons plan was as inflationary as Labours as well so own goal by Luxon.Tane should have asked Luxon if he would cut Air NZ bailout to.Luxon was fuming by the end of the interview.Tane only mentioned the tax cuts Luxon would get from his parliamentry salary $18,000 a year not the income from his 7 rental properties and other investments maybe up to $30,000 a year plus in tax cuts. While the vast majority do it hard .Then govt revenue drops and no doubt National would have to cut spending on public services like Health,education,policing, and welfare denying payments to the homeless and disadvantaged.
And the books will be worse then forecast,due to the problem with falling asset values.The NZ superannuation fund lost 1.2 billion in the first two months of this year,which will have doubled in the last 2 months.
Those ethical investments are good creators of wealth destruction.
ACC will have a double problem with falling investment values,and increased medical costs not due to more accidents,but increased wages for health such as vehicle registration,fuel levy,income levy etc.
It is bad Ad, but could be miles worse. I have just read an article on Stephanie Browitt a survivor of Te Puia o Whakari White Island.
It is humbling and uplifting and says a great deal about the human spirit and our ability to overcome difficulties. Despair does more damage.
Hindsight is being clever after the fact. Luxon may think he has a handle on things, and yes he may improve with advice, but truly steam was coming out his ears and he was very red with shock at being challenged by Tame.
This is a double whammy, Pandemic dollars plus the oil shock/ wheat/ sunflower oil/ all combining to create difficult conditions.
Robertson and we are between a rock and a hard place. I don’t think the Opposition has any answers, just move the pieces and pay their piper.
We are a very inter related World now, and Luxon is no diplomat.
Sri Lanka has been operating a fixed exchange rate to reach the present situation. NZ went through a similar currency crisis in 1984 and has floated its exchange rate since.
The differences are NZ has a lot more space for fiscal policy interventions, the country mostly borrows in NZ currency (so if the govt wants any such debt to be repaid, or guaranteed the country has the means to make that payment).
As a result of this the countries are not really comparable.
You are correct Nic, Sri Lanka and New Zealand are not directly comparable.
But it would be foolish to ignore the lesson of Sri Lanka. Because you reap what you sow.
The Grim reaper.
Christopher Luxon sharpens his metaphorical scythe for tax cuts.
You reap what you sow.
Sri Lankan lessons: as you sow, so you reap
Abdul Bayes | Published: April 24, 2022 21:53:25
…..The reasons for such a sorry state of affairs of the Sri Lankan economy can be traced back to several factors.
First, the present government of Sri Lanka went for a dramatic reduction in both personal and corporate taxes resulting in lower revenue earnings and bigger budget deficit…..
Second, the president of the country declared in April 2021 that use of chemical fertilisers would be banned to pave the way for organic farming……
The takeaway lesson for New Zealand is this; If you really want to take radical measures to protect the environment and the climate, you must be prepared to tax the rich to pay for it.
Luxon on climate change.
'Random' [sic] government activity at huge cost is dangerous..
Pretentious necessity
@ 2;00 minutes ….if we look at transport, ….. we know there is a good technology and pathway to solve those emissions over the next 15 years.
@ 2:50 minutes …we've got an Emissions Trading Scheme.
@ 3:15 minutes ….the danger is a government that goes in with a lot of random activity at huge cost.
@ 3:50 minutes ….The market will sort that out.
@ 4:20 minutes …When we are talking about agriculture.
There is no obvious technological pathway to deal with agricultural emissions.
Unfortunately that narrative places the rich in the benefactor position of paying for a countries climate policy. Since they are paying they will ultimately determine the terms of the transition off fossil fuel. I don't think this is going to accelerate the transition. This is unfortunate as NZ can afford to fund many transitional policies as is, and wont actually face such a currency crisis as a result.
Reuters has articles describing the Central Bank devaluing to slow foreign exchange losses and the Rupee is otherwise described as a closed currency (not available outside Sri Lanka).
"Sri Lanka has a floating exchange rate system since 2001 which allowed the independent adjustment of the exchange rate according to the market forces of demand and supply. However, there could be interventions in the market for the purpose of curbing excess volatility in the exchange rate. The CBSL prescribes maximum net open position (NOP) limits for LCBs and closely monitors the activities in the domestic foreign exchange market to ensure an orderly functioning of the market."
I think its floating inside Sri Lanka is how to read that. But clearly their arrangements are not providing financial stability due to the amount of foreign denominated debt the country has taken on.
Not at all…it is quite evident that the suppliers of goods from offshore no longer accept the Rupee as payment and want hard currency and Sri Lanka has run out of reserves…a situation any economy, including NZ could face,
Confidence in a currency is tied to collateral and its obvious all confidence in the Sri Lankan economy has been lost….a floating exchange rate dosnt function when confidence is lost.
Theatre company tries to put on a queer culture sex education show for teens and their parents. Called The Family Sex Show (yes, really). All hell breaks loose. Stock writes a very funny but also nuanced and intelligent post about what happened and what the problems are and in the process breaks the binary.
“Back in reality, there’s only so long that progressives can carry on pretending that the only possible objections to things like The Family Sex Show must come from prudes who don’t like sex, or bigots who don’t like queer people.”
The Family Sex Show was advertised as suitable for 5yrs +.
Link to the cleaned up website that now doesn’t suggest children use Google to search for “animals that masturbate” so they can draw pictures of them, can be found here:
hmm, I'm seeing conflicting things about the age bracket. But yeah, that's pretty clear, and yep, their sense of what's ok is well off. But we knew that from the name. I wish I could feel some confidence that lessons might be learned.
The title "the family sex show" is a red flag for me.
Introduction to knowledge about sex (and sex itself ) needs to be age appropriate.
Animals masturbating? Please. As an adult I don't see why I need to know about that. What is the purpose of getting kids to google search it? It embeds the idea that you can search for things of a sexual nature on the net……..
I am glad to hear apple a putting in a filter on their devices that filters out nudity. Good.
NBC News: Federal prosecutors and the FBI Boston are announcing the arrest of a Jeremy David Hanson, 34, a Californian man tonight for threatening Miriam-Webster's over their definition of a man and a woman.
He allegedly made a bomb threat and now faces up to 5 years in prison.
60,000 of new irrigated land on the other side of the Queensland ranges, funded by the Morrison government. One big new dam and several major reservoirs.
If the Australian Federal government wants to essentially replace much of Ukraine's agricultural production, pulling all the climate change floodwater from Queensland and tunneling it through the ranges to the west, and link up with the Murray-Darling, would be the way to do it.
I imagine there are plenty of areas in New Zealand that could easily grow wheat. For instance, Central Otago, where they tend to have very dry, hot summers.
Who knows, going forward, wheat production could become more profitable and less damaging to the environment than dairy production given that the set up and ongoing costs should be a lot lower I imagine.
Further to that, there is quite a bit of grain production in that area already, so could potentially be expanded.
Canterbury produces 70% of the worlds carrot seed.Agree on the land pricing,that was a result of low livestock prices and wool.There is still with some arable farmers who use livestock when they rotate the land to lie fallow,and put it back into pasture.
With constant droughts and rivers drying up and suffering degradation from nitrogen run off , cryptosporidiam andfaecal matter. Growing grains such as wheat and sunflower would be far more enviromentaly sustainable. With high prices profitable as well. also Chinas expansionism it would be smart to reduce our dpendence on Dairy production.
Arable farming is inherently risky….the returns are seasonal and fluctuate…especially when compared to dairy with its consistent output and monthly cheques.
As many cropping farmers are want to say, arable farming is a capital gain game….the capital outlay to return is considerable and dont really reflect the risks…and everyone in the chain clips the ticket.
My son Grant who was a Trade Cert Baker in a former life, tells me New Zealand produces flour that tends to make a heavy / wet crumb. It was mixed with Australian flour to lighten the crumb. With dry conditions and growing temperatures and improved varieties our wheat crumb may improve.
Other valuable crops could be sunflowers for oil and hemp for clothing As dairy prices go into retreat, other farming may begin.
UK think tank report on Russia's imperial delusion, what went wrong, expectations and conclusions.
The foremost conclusion is that Russia is now preparing, diplomatically, militarily and economically, for a protracted conflict
[…]
The pattern is universal.Almost all of Russia’s modern military hardware is dependent upon complex electronics imported from the US, the UK, Germany, the Netherlands, Japan, Israel, China and further afield.57
[…]
Finally, the Russian decision to double down is a high-stakes gamble. If Russia mobilises and eventually overcomes Ukrainian resistance then NATO will face an aggressive, isolated and militarised state. If Russia loses then President Putin has now begun radicalising the population in the pursuit of policies that he will struggle to deliver. Failure to defeat the Ukrainian state after relentlessly comparing it to the Nazi regime may have serious consequences for Putin and those around him. To frame a conflict as existential and to lose must necessarily call the suitability of a leader into question among Russia’s political elites. NATO states therefore need to consider how to manage escalation pathways that follow if Russia is not only defeated in Donbas but finds its newly mobilised and poorly trained troops, with few remaining stocks of precision munitions, unable to deliver a victory in the summer. The death of Putin’s political project is plausible, but it has already inflicted immense damage internationally and risks doing considerably more.
So far, Russia’s attempts to expand its available military manpower has rested on pressuring conscripts to sign contracts of service and reducing the requirements for people to join without prior military service. For Russia to significantly increase its numbers it would need to retain its last round of conscripts and call up reserves. Both of these are politically contentious in Russia. Nevertheless, the propaganda narrative and local initiatives to rally support appear to be creating an environment in which 9 May can be used as a fulcrum to mobilise a much larger force. It appears increasingly likely that rather than use it to announce victory, the Russian government will instead use 9 May as the day on which the ‘special military operation’ is officially framed as a ‘war’
Probably scrambling up more forces by declaring war is possible. I think the biggest issue for the Russians will be arming the new troops.
I have seen a number of videos of Russian soldiers using vintage rifles etc. And, they are having trouble manufacturing new gear to replace the existing equipment being lost due to the sanctions.
— Team Stollberg 🇺🇦🇪🇺🏳️🌈 (@Team_Stollberg) March 1, 2022
🇷🇺 | Medios reseñan la extraña postura corporal de Vladimir Putin frente a su ministro de defensa, hombros elevados y su mano derecha tomando la mesa.
Hace algunos años que se especula sobre su salud, y su último vídeo, aparece encorvado y agarrado a la mesa durante 15 minutos. pic.twitter.com/5YSrkvoXd9
As someone often critical of poor legislation, I appreciated this report from RNZ:
For an insight into how drafting works, The House [Phil Smith]chatted with Cassie Nicholson (who as Chief Parliamentary Counsel is the chief executive of the PCO) and Richard Wallace (who heads the drafting team) about the art of drafting law.
All law begins with a policy idea. Sometimes PCO is involved in that early, feeding back on how it could (and couldn’t) work. Cassie Nicholson says the entry point can vary. “Sometimes [we get] a fully formed policy paper to comment on, sometimes an idea that then we work with the agency to flesh out, but it can vary from quite detailed to a very high level idea.”
This early work is done with the policy and legal folk inside a ministry. Nicholson says this is “because we want ministers to be making a decision on as close to fully formed policy as possible, something that can actually be built when it comes to us”.
Wallace describes this as “testing the policy,” Nicholson calls it “kicking the tyres, (in a really gentle, friendly way) to make sure that actually we've worked through the logic and the wrinkles; we understand the anticipated flow-on consequences, both for the real world and the statute book”. No actual law is written until the policy is approved by cabinet so PCO doesn’t waste its time writing legislation that will never be law.
I was impressed at how they incorporate the principle of reflexivity into praxis:
Once it is approved, the PCO received drafting instructions outlining the legal effect to be achieved. Thankfully, no-one sits down and just blats out law from start to finish. Wallace says it’s an iterative process sending out drafts to government departments. “We continue doing that until we're all comfortable that we've addressed all the issues and that what we've got actually works. So we're not trying to do it on a single shot.”
Here's an insight into the psychology that comes into play:
Richard Wallace describes constructing law as both storytelling and puzzle solving. It is also answering hundreds of questions about what is really wanted.
You can summarise that last sentence as stakeholder interactivity. The Q+A format drives the process of design towards optimal output – in theory. As a grouch like me would point out, results suggest the theory often gets flawed by the practice!
The Parliamentary Counsel is not an individual but a large team… not just lawyers. They comprise publishing experts (who publish legislation), and IT and web teams (the law is published online); plus all the others that make an office run. PCO doesn’t offer legal advice to Parliament or the Government. That’s the Office of the Clerk’s team (for Parliament), and the Solicitor General at the Crown Law Office (for Government).
Wait a sec. "Its boss describes it as “the Government's legislative advisors”. So legal advice and legislative advice are different critters. Ok, got it. A fine distinction!
Crown Law, parts of DPMC, and legal counsel within the sponsoring Departments also have strong drafting roles. Some Departments are a lot better at gaming out the operational practise of new legislation than others.
Didn't make the msm last year, but a noteworthy report from the leading edge:
researchers at Google in collaboration with physicists at Stanford, Princeton and other universities say that they have used Google’s quantum computer to demonstrate a genuine “time crystal.”
Like a perpetual motion machine, a time crystal forever cycles between states without consuming energy.
Physics grad went huh??
In addition, a separate research group claimed earlier this month to have created a time crystal in a diamond. “The consequence is amazing: You evade the second law of thermodynamics,” said Roderich Moessner, director of the Max Planck Institute for the Physics of Complex Systems in Dresden, Germany, and a co-author on the Google paper. That’s the law that says disorder always increases.
The time crystal is a new category of phases of matter, expanding the definition of what a phase is. All other known phases, like water or ice, are in thermal equilibrium: their constituent atoms have settled into the state with the lowest energy permitted by the ambient temperature, and their properties don’t change with time. The time crystal is the first “out-of-equilibrium” phase: It has order and perfect stability despite being in an excited and evolving state.
“This is just this completely new and exciting space that we’re working in now,” said Vedika Khemani, a condensed matter physicist now at Stanford who co-discovered the novel phase while she was a graduate student and co-authored the new paper with the Google team.
A revolutionary paradigm-shifter, seemingly plausible due to replication (two teams of physicists), but we await further developments that may point to utility.
The new time crystal demo marks one of the first times a quantum computer has found gainful employment.
With yesterday’s preprint, which has been submitted for publication, and other recent results, researchers have fulfilled the original hope for quantum computers. In his 1982 paper proposing the devices, the physicist Richard Feynman argued that they could be used to simulate the particles of any imaginable quantum system. A time crystal exemplifies that vision. It’s a quantum object that nature itself probably never creates, given its complex combination of delicate ingredients. Imaginations conjured the recipe, stirred by nature’s most baffling laws.
Quanta presents a summary of that recipe on their page. It uses this triad:
1. many-body localisation (a row of particles get stuck in synch)
2. eigenstate order (they retain symmetry when spin-flipped)
3. periodic driver (laser light triggers system flipping which perseveres)
A 2015 paper described it in these words:
when you tickle a localized chain of spins with a laser in a particular way, they’ll flip back and forth, moving between two different many-body localized states in a repeating cycle forever without absorbing any net energy from the laser.
Thus authenticity to claim the first workable demonstration of the mythical perpetual-motion machine. Now the challenge is to invent uses that users deem valuable…
A climate activist, Wynn Bruce, has died after setting himself on fire outside the US Supreme Court.
The U.S. Supreme Court had heard arguments in late February on an important environmental case that could restrict or even eliminate the Environmental Protection Agency’s authority to control pollution. The court’s conservative majority had voiced skepticism of the agency’s authority to regulate carbon emissions, suggesting that a decision by the justices could deal a sharp blow to the Biden administration’s efforts to address climate change.
…
Bruce set himself on fire in an apparent imitation of Vietnamese monks who burned themselves to death in protest during the Vietnam War. His Facebook page commemorated the death of Thich Nhat Hanh, an influential Zen Buddhist master and anti-war activist who died in January.
Thich Nhat Hanh, in a letter he wrote in 1965 to the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., had idolized those monks. Kritee cited that letter in another tweet on Bruce’s death Sunday morning.
“The press spoke then of suicide, but in the essence, it is not. It is not even a protest,” Thich Nhat Hanh wrote of the monks, adding that “to burn oneself by fire is to prove that what one is saying is of the utmost importance. There is nothing more painful than burning oneself. To say something while experiencing this kind of pain is to say it with utmost courage, frankness, determination and sincerity.”
If it was indeed a protest then it must be witnessed. At it's end a protest is a performance, and if it is ignored then it is futile. Sadly for Wynn Bruce, and for all of us, it is seemingly easier to despair the systemic inaction of the status quo powers.
I encourage anyone feeling despair to reach out to those around you, like action on climate change, we can all support each other through this, be it just conversation and a cuppa, advice and encouragement, all the way through to developing and honing skills in gardening and composting, to reusing and reprocessing materials; We can all work towards food and material sustainability and that really helps to feel more positive.
In the last 13 years, nearly 160 Tibetan Buddhists have set themselves on fire in opposition to the Chinese government’s violent suppression of their country and national identity.
Bruce belonged to Shambhala, a Boulder-born Buddhist organization. He was also a regular presence at virtual sanghas, online gatherings of Buddhists to reflect and meditate, according to other members.
Last December, Bruce posted a quote attributed to Carl Sagan to his Facebook. “Don’t sit this one out,” it read. “Do something. You are – by accident of fate – alive at an absolutely critical moment in the history of (y)our planet.”
In 2018, environmental advocate and civil rights lawyer David Buckel set himself on fire in Brooklyn. In a statement he emailed to multiple news outlets the morning of his death, Buckel explained that his “early death by fossil fuel reflects what we are doing to ourselves.”
One must respect another's intent in ending their lives via such signalling. Not for us to judge spiritual motivations. The assumption that changes in public policy will result (triggered by mass realisation that they must happen) is based on a misread of mass psychology, unfortunately…
Are you saying that an isolated act, assuming it political, of self-immolation is not affecting public policy change or that any isolated and individual act is ineffective? Either way, it sounds your personal belief (aka reckon) rather than a generally accepted fact.
When a single act of self-immolation catalyses a movement, as has happened in other countries, you will be hard-pushed to ignore and categorically deny its influence in each and every case.
Yeah, just my take on the effect it seems to have on western countries. Your point is valid – a single immolation triggered the Arab Spring phenomenon that brought down a couple of dictators & threatened a few others.
So I suppose a better generalisation would be that the catalysis effect is culture-dependent. The symbolism activates a shared feeling that is likely to ramp up via contagion in suitable cultural/political contexts…
Population transfers, summary executions, mass deportations and the beginnings of an attempt to erase a nation and it's people from the textbooks.
But sure, it's all about de-nazification and NATO.
/
"Here in the Federation Council they found out that not all children" from the liberated territories of Donbass "have sufficient command of the Russian language. They will be retrained."
Пизда.
"Тут в Совфеде выяснили, что не все дети "с освобождённых территорий Донбасса" владеют русским языком в достаточной степени. Переучивать будут." pic.twitter.com/KFW81grq5f
On February 24, Vladimir Putin announced the start of a "special operation" and Russian troops invaded Ukraine. Immediately after that, employees of the Enlightenment group of companies, one of the largest and oldest publishers of educational and pedagogical literature in the country, were urged to remove the “incorrect” references to Ukraine and Kyiv from all school textbooks. "Mediazona" talked with the editors of the publishing house about how the "cleansing" of history, geography and literature is going on.
[…]
So, from paragraphs that give examples of the heraldry of different states, including flags, a few years ago it was strongly recommended to remove the flag of Ukraine and replace it with the flag of any other country. If it is necessary to give an example of the capital in the chapter, Kyiv was replaced by another capital. “A couple of times I had to remove the US flag as well, but it’s simpler there, our program pays little attention to world history,” says one of the Enlightenment employees. Now editors should remove references to Ukraine wherever possible.
“That is, we are faced with the task of making it as if Ukraine simply does not exist,” his colleague says. “It's much worse when the textbook just doesn't mention a country. A person grows up without a knowledge base about some country, and then it is much easier for him to believe what he is told about it from TV.
The hardest part is for those who work on history textbooks: it is often impossible to remove references to Ukraine and Kyiv without compromising the content, then you have to change the wording to more “safe” ones.
Ljubljana, Slovenia (Reuters)Slovenia's populist Prime Minister, Janez Janša, lost a national election on Sunday as the environmentalist Freedom Movement party won more votes than his SDS party, according to preliminary figures from election authorities.
Janša, who had hoped to win a fourth term in office, conceded that he had been defeated in the vote, adding however that his SDS party had secured more votes than ever before.
"The results are what they are. Congratulations to the relative winner," Janša said, addressing his supporters.
The election had been expected to be tight but the official preliminary figures showed the Freedom Movement, a newcomer in the election, leading with 34.34% of the vote, far more than expected, while the SDS secured 23.83%, based on 98.20% of counted ballots.
That would give the Freedom Movement, which campaigned on a transition to green energy, an open society and the rule of law, 40 seats in the 90-seat parliament, and the SDS 28 seats.
kicked off deal negotiations with Elon Musk on Sunday [who] has been meeting with Twitter shareholders in the last few days, seeking support for his bid… Many Twitter shareholders reached out to the company after Musk outlined a detailed financing plan for his bid on Thursday and urged it not to let the opportunity for a deal slip away, Reuters reported earlier.
The social media company adopted a poison pill after Musk made his offer to prevent him from raising his more than 9% stake in the company above 15% without negotiating a deal with its board. In response, Musk has threatened to launch a tender offer that he could use to register Twitter shareholder support for his bid on Sunday.
Liberals are freaked. Dunno why, but useful insights here:
Robert Reich, former U.S. secretary of labor and professor of public policy at the University of California at Berkeley, lamented that Musk was seeking to “control one of the most important ways the public now receives news” and “be the wizard behind the curtain” deciding what gets projected onto the world’s computer screens. Max Boot, a one-time conservative pundit now aligned with Democrats as a result of his opposition to Donald Trump, even suggested on Twitter that there was cause to worry about the future of democracy itself if Musk were to acquire the platform.
I have no doubt that a lot of right-wing complaints of oppression on Twitter are whiny grievance politics. In a recent study led by researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, for instance, two-thirds of “strong Republican” Twitter users thought it was “anti-conservative” to suspend accounts pushing the QAnon conspiracy theory about global pedophile cabals. The same study found that in the six months after the 2020 election, pro-Trump accounts were roughly five times more likely to get suspended on Twitter than ones supporting Joe Biden
Users have been banned, suspended and otherwise censored not only for attacking specific transgender women, but for making general statements such as, “All rapists are men. In U.K. law, rape is committed by a person with a penis.” Meanwhile, tweets that appear to call for the violent rape of a mainstream, left-of-center journalist who has been accused of transphobia for writing about the complexities of gender transition for minors are allowed to stay up.
This is less about intentional discrimination than about the instinctive progressive biases of many of the top staff at Twitter. Del Harvey, a Twitter veteran who served as the company’s vice president for trust and safety until last October, has been fairly open about her belief that preventing “harm” to “marginalized” users—women, racial minorities, LBGT people, etc.—should take priority. However noble the intent, this is a prescription for nannyism at best (especially since progressive discourse defines “harm” very broadly) and political bias at worst.
You can see why Musk wants to clean the thing up, eh? Then there's this glimpse into the twits & their leverage on the msm…
I do think one potentially good lesson from the Musk/Twitter saga would be to prompt a rethinking of the extent to which we have made Twitter our “town square”—given that only one in five Americans use it and 10 percent of users provide 80 percent of the content. (Notably, Twitter’s policing of election-fraud and anti-vaxx conspiracy theories has not prevented large segments of the population from embracing them.)
Part of Twitter’s outsize importance is that it’s the playpen of choice for media and for political activists. It can be a useful tool for news gathering and discussion, but it can also create a faux consensus increasingly adrift from the real world. Too many journalists are too married to Twitter.
Gates replied, “Sorry to say I haven’t closed it out. I would like to discuss philanthropy possibilities.”
Musk confirmed that the messages were real and added that he did not leak them to the New York Times… Musk told Gates that he was unable to take his philanthropy on climate change seriously in light of Gates’ short position against Tesla.
Humanity is divided into serious folk & fun folk? Well, some are a bit of both, eh? Ole Bill was just having a bit of fun but young Elon didn't see the funny side.
#BREAKING: Protests have broken out all over France after Macron’s election win over rival Le Pen. Watch as protestors throw fireworks at a police car in Lyon & police offers deploy tear gas in Place de la Republique in Paris.pic.twitter.com/GiU4kmIHUD
"It's part of a larger conversation, because there are councils all around the country right now that are talking about the idea of co-governance. It's a very important kaupapa."
In a statement on Friday, Coffey said: "This is a Local Bill, so the changes are being requested by the Rotorua District Council, not the Government. As such, the Rotorua District Council will need to consider the implications of the Bill of Rights analysis, alongside the select sommittee."
"The proposed arrangements in the Bill would make the number of council members for the Māori ward disproportionately higher than the number of council members for the General ward in comparison to their respective populations," Parker wrote in his legal analysis published on Friday.
"As the disadvantaged group is those on the General roll, changing representation arrangements away from proportional representation therefore creates a disadvantage for non-Māori as they cannot in future elect to change rolls."
Parker concluded: "The Bill appears to limit the right to be free from discrimination affirmed in s 19 of the Bill of Rights Act and cannot be justified."
"As the disadvantaged group is those on the General roll, changing representation arrangements away from proportional representation therefore creates a disadvantage for non-Māori as they cannot in future elect to change rolls."
I imagine you have a vote in your ward and an at large vote.
As to proportion..
"The Council is currently pursuing a law change to enable an undemocratic representation model to be implemented. The model it prefers would consist of three Māori ward seats, three general ward seats, and four at-large seats. However, adopting this arrangement would give the 19,791 citizens on the Māori roll 2.6 times the voting power of the 51,618 citizens on the general roll.
The proposed model is not only unfair, it is also unlawful. Clause 2 of Schedule 1A of the Local Electoral Act requires representation from wards to be proportional to their electoral populations. "
107 years ago the Ottoman Empire kicked off it's effort to exterminate it's two million Armenian subjects. New Zealand is yet to acknowledge Armenian suffering. For shame.
So, after interfering with the police, and then interfering with immigration decisions, Stuart Nash has finally been sacked: Stuart Nash has been sacked as a minister, after Stuff revealed he had emailed business figures, including donors, detailing private Cabinet discussions. Prime Minister Chris Hipkins confirmed the people Nash emailed ...
Nearly 25% of mortgages in Auckland are deemed at risk in a 1-in-100 year flood event. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: Once a year, every year, from now on, in our not-so-slow-cooking climate crisis, there will be a moment when the most important number in Aotearoa’s own personal, national ...
Item One: About a confected crisis Please bear with me for a moment, readers outside Auckland, I wish to sound the klaxon. Auckland, we have until 11pm today to have our say. About what? About this, as copied and pasted from Pippa Coom’s Facebook page:The "austerity" budget is built on ...
Buzz from the Beehive Yet again, the statement we were looking for could not be found on the Beehive website. Nor was it on the Scoop or Green Party websites. But – come to think of it – we are probably wasting our time by searching. Our quest is for the ...
The following is from a speech given by Arundhati Roy at the Swedish Academy on March 22, 2023, at a conference called Thought and Truth Under Pressure and reprinted from Literary Hub. I thank the Swedish Academy for inviting me to speak at this conference and for affording me the privilege ...
After almost two decades of racism, Australia is finally getting off its "stop the boats" bullshit. But don't worry, racists - Michael Wood has your back!The Government wants to increase the time it can detain without a warrant people seeking asylum en masse from four days to 28 ...
Last year, the Education and Workforce Committee recommended that the government legislate for pay transparency to prevent employers from secretly discriminating. This ought to be a bread and butter issue for Labour - discrimination sees women (and particularly Māori and Pasifika women) paid significantly less than men. But since then ...
Thomas Cranmer writes – ———— An unruly mob in Albert Park has catapulted New Zealand into the global headlines with ugly images that may become iconic in the debate about the dangers of transgenderism. ———— Bravo Kellie-Jay Keen. She did the job that needed to be done. For all the ...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections Global warming is melting the Arctic ice cap, and that’s having unforeseen effects on the world’s weather — even thousands of miles away from the North Pole. Some climate scientists have begun to link increasingly common heat waves in Europe to what is ...
Hot on the heels of the demotion of former police Minister Stuart Nash for breaching the Cabinet Manual, Radio New Zealand has revealed the close links between lobbyists and politicians- an area of New Zealand politics that is completely unregulated. The evidence in Guyon Espiner’s series Mate, Comrade, Brother, the ...
At the Auckland Transport board meeting today a series of papers really highlight the cost of sprawl. For the last few years, the Supporting Growth work has been looking at designing the strategic transport networks for future greenfield areas in the South, Northwest, North (around Dairy flat) and in Warkworth. ...
Hi,Today’s newsletter is something I’ve wanted to report for ages, but I have been waiting on a New Zealand judge to make a ruling. That ruling has been made — so here we go.Enjoy.A scene from Mister Organ.Two Police Officers Knock on My DoorOn November 4 last year, I was ...
Only three days after Nanaia Mahuta had dinner with China’s Foreign Minister, New Zealand’s intelligence chiefs were talking about state actors interfering in New Zealand politics and using ethnic communities here for espionage purposes. Neither GSCB Director (and new SIS director) Andrew Hampton nor acting SIS CEO Phil McKee ...
In what has been one of her most important diplomatic mission, Foreign Minister Nanaia Mahuta has opened the door for a visit to Beijing by Prime Minister Chris Hipkins later this year. Such a mission is regarded as vital with a new Prime Minister Li Qiang settling into office. ...
Saturday morning, we went to Albert Park.We were there to show support, to challenge words of demonisation.To repeat those words from Michèle A’Court:Making them sound “other” is a technique used by racists and homophobes to dehumanise whole groups of people who “aren’t like them”. If you dehumanise people, it is ...
Too Strong For The Law’s Web: But, if the USA is too big to punish, why isn’t the Russian Federation? Russia’s economy may be roughly the size of Italy’s, but it’s nuclear arsenal is more than capable of laying human civilisation to waste. Threatening to arrest Vladimir Putin - especially when ...
Nobody likes a fascist, except other fascist’s of course. Thankfully they were completely outnumbered in Auckland last Saturday when a supposed advocate for women’s rights, Kellie-Jay Keen-Minshull aka Posie Parker, tried to give a public speech about how transgender people are worthy of persecution.You can understand why Parker and her ...
On Friday I sent out a newsletter called Posie Parker vs Transgender Rights to provide information about the visit to our shores of Ms Parker. I attempted to show there were multiple points of view but on balance my sympathies were strongly with the counter protest group standing up for ...
Brian Easton writes – Evaluating the recent crashes of Silicon Valley Bank in the US and Credit Suisse in Switzerland plus two other banks (perhaps more by the time you read this) needs to begin with a review of the inevitable instability in the financial sector. The financial sector ...
Oh, the irony. Kellie-Jay Keen-Minshull has made a career out of inciting public hostility against the trans community, only to find herself on the receiving end of public hostility at her Auckland rally. In a further case of karmic justice, the people who brought her into the country ended up ...
In 1972, British soldiers tortured a false confession out of Liam Holden, resulting in him being given Britain's last death sentence. While it was commuted to life imprisonment, Holden was wrongly imprisoned for 17 years. Now, the courts have finally recognised that it was torture: In 1973 Liam Holden ...
Taxpayers are not only subsidising already-very-profitable private banks via the cheap ‘Funding For Lending’ loans that helped pumped up house prices in 2021, but are also paying the banks upwards of $2 billion a year in interest for cash kept with the Reserve Bank. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: ...
This weekend saw a showdown between two tribes of contemporary gender politics: those in favour of progressing transgender rights versus women wishing to defend their spaces. It’s a debate with huge passion, outrage and consequences. The figure at the centre of the clash was the British “trans-exclusionary radical feminist” Posie ...
Tomorrow the Auckland Transport board meet again. Here are some of the highlights from their board papers. The open session starts at 9am and can be watched on this Teams link. Closed Session The closed session is typically where the most interesting items are discussed. Items for Approval ...
Mutual Support: Democracy in New Zealand will not be saved by pitting Pakeha against Māori, but by joining together with every other citizen who still understands the meaning of working together to build something good that will last. Call that co-governance if you like, or call it something else – ...
Imagine being a great big business success enjoying your lavish Waiheke island property with infinity pool and ballroom and riparian rights and heli-pad. Sweeeet. But imagine, also, having to take orders from some little bureaucratic oik about how often you can land a chopper on it.I can’t, really, but it ...
Hi,New Zealand’s Life megachurch has confirmed to Webworm it was paid $10,000 by Hillsong for investigating Brian Houston’s sexual misconduct allegations.Following Webworm publishing this piece about the $10,000 payment, Life’s Corporate Communications Manager Phil Irons has confirmed what it was for:Paul [de Jong] was engaged by Hillsong to assist in ...
A chronological listing of news articles posted on the Skeptical Science Facebook Page during the past week: Sun, Mar 19, 2023 thru Sat, Mar 25, 2023. Story of the Week Q&A: IPCC wraps up its most in-depth assessment of climate change The final part of the world’s most comprehensive assessment of ...
by Daphna Whitmore I thought the #LetWomenSpeak meeting would be a good time to talk about free speech and why it is important for the left. Then the mob stampeded the open-air gathering and no one got to speak. Here’s what I was had prepared. Today I want to talk ...
By Don Franks Today my friend Ani O’Briien went to a meeting in Auckland and wrote: “No sooner had Kellie-Jay Keen Minshull arrived at the Rotunda, a protestor (who had managed to get past the barrier) ran at her and threw a red substance all over her and a security ...
Jonathan Milne, managing editor for Newsroom Pro, has expressed his indignation about the outcome of a court decision yesterday in an article headed Posie Parker wins the beautiful freedom to make an ugly argument.Newsroom Pro laments: High Court Justice David Gendall has regretfully allowed an outspoken anti-trans activist to enter New ...
imagine my surprise this week when the National Party, in their infinite wisdom, decided to release an education policy. As you can imagine, this got us so riled up here in the office that we dusted off our Windows XP laptop, waiting 17 hours for all the updates to be ...
Come on Jess thought Mr Evans come on. He watched the large clock on the wall tick closer to 8:40am. Come on girl.In two minutes he had to submit the class attendance report and with Jess having already been late once that term it’d mean an automatic visit from the ...
This week’s UN IPCC report warned climate emissions will need to be cut by almost half by 2030, if warming is to be limited to 1.5°C. Bronwyn Hayward points out in The Hoon podcast how far behind NZ’s government and councils are now on climate action compared to the rest ...
Chris Hipkins, after he became prime minister, committed to defeating the cost-of- living crisis. He proceeded to make a bonfire of policies that were at the heart of Jacinda Ardern’s administration. But, as Richard Prebble pointed out this week, “the government has not just U-turned, it has repudiated the ...
There are some wellness, crystal-gazing, holistic spiritual guidance types in my disaster-hit coastal community who insist that the power of positive thinking will overcome the physical and material damages incurred by the community. They object to restrictions on road travel … Continue reading → ...
Evaluating the recent crashes of Silicon Valley Bank in the US and Credit Suisse in Switzerland plus two other banks (perhaps more by the time you read this) needs to begin with a review of the inevitable instability in the financial sector. The financial sector is inherently unstable, like military ...
1. We see here new police minister Ginny Andersen. Which larger than life NZ political figure was her great-uncle?a. Rob Muldoonb. Bill Andersenc. Richard John Seddond. Norman Kirk2. We see here archival footage of Ginny Andersen coming out of her electorate office to ask ex-tobacco lobbyist Chris Bishop if he ...
Buzz from the Beehive Stuart Nash, speaking as Minister of Oceans and Fisheries, one of his remaining portfolios after he was dropped down the Hipkins Government batting order, has drawn attention to the blue economy and its potential. Nash says the government is investing in the blue economy, or – ...
Photo by Josh Mills on UnsplashIt’s that time of the week for an ‘Ask Me Anything’ session for paying subscribers about the week that was for the next hour, including:The runs on Silicon Valley Bank and First Republic Bank on the west coast of the United States that forced the ...
Roundup is back! We skipped last week’s Friday post due to a shortage of person-power – did you notice? Lots going on out there… Our header image this week shows a green street that just happens to be Queen St, by @chamfy from Twitter. This week (and last) in ...
After threatening Prime Minister Chris Hipkins of consequences if he dared to bar her entry, Kellie-Jay Keen-Minshull has been given her visa, regardless. This will enable her to hold rallies in Auckland and Wellington this weekend, and spread her messages of hostility against an already marginalised trans community. Neo-Nazis may, ...
* Bryce Edwards writes – The New Zealand Government has been silent about Australia’s decision to commit up to $400bn acquiring nuclear submarines, even though this is a significant threat to peace and stability in the Asia Pacific. The deal was struck by the Albanese Labor Government as ...
Boomers voted him in, but Brown’s Trumpish moments might spook Aucklanders worried about what a change to National nationally might mean. Photo: Lynn Grieveson/Getty ImagesTL;DR:Auckland MayorWayne Brown has become our version of Donald Trump and Boris Johnson, except without any of the insatiable appetite for media appearances. He ...
The New Zealand Government has been silent about Australia’s decision to commit up to $400bn acquiring nuclear submarines, even though this is a significant threat to peace and stability in the Asia Pacific. The deal was struck by the Albanese Labor Government as part of its Aukus pact with the ...
Recently you might have heard of a person called Posie Parker and her visit to Aotearoa. Perhaps you’re not quite sure what it’s all about. So let’s start with who this person is, why their visit is controversial, and what on earth a TERF is.Posie Parker is the super villain ...
The chair of Parliament’s Select Committee looking at the Government’s resource management legislation wants the bills sent back for more public consultation. The proposal would effectively kill any chance of the bills making it into law before the election. Green MP, Eugenie Sage, stressing that she was speaking as ...
Open access notables The United States experienced some historical low temperature records during the just-concluded winter. It's a reminder that climate and weather are quite noisy; with regard to our warming climate,, as with a road ascending a mountain range we may steadily change our conditions but with lots of ...
Buzz from the Beehive The Nanny State has scored some wins (or claimed them) in the past day or two but it faltered when it came to protecting Kiwi citizens from being savaged by one woman armed with a sharp tongue. The wins are recorded by triumphant ministers on the ...
Sometimes you see your friends making the case so well on social media you think: just copy and share.On acceptance and decency, from Michèle A’CourtA notable thing about anti-trans people is they way they talk about transgender women and men as though they are strangers “over there” when in fact ...
Not that long ago, things were looking pretty good for climate change policy in Aotearoa. We finally had an ETS, and while it was full of pork and subsidies, it was delivering high and ever-rising carbon prices, sending a clear message to polluters to clean up or shut down. And ...
Comparing (and switching) electricity providers has become easier, but bundling power up with broadband and/or gas makes it more challenging. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The Kākā TL;DR: The new Consumer Advocacy Council set up as a result of the Labour Government’s Electricity Price Review in 2019 has called on either ...
Hokitika-based Westland Milk Products has put the heat on dairy giant Fonterra with a $120m profit turnaround in 2022, driven by record sales. Westland paid its suppliers a 10c premium above the forecast Fonterra price per kilo, contributing $535m to the West Coast and Canterbury economies. The dairy ...
* Bryce Edwards writes – New Zealanders are uncomfortable with the high level of influence corporate lobbyists have in New Zealand politics, and demands are growing for greater regulation. A recent poll shows 62 per cent of the public support having a two-year cooling off period between ministers leaving public ...
New Zealanders are uncomfortable with the high level of influence corporate lobbyists have in New Zealand politics, and demands are growing for greater regulation. A recent poll shows 62 per cent of the public support having a two-year cooling off period between ministers leaving public office and becoming lobbyists and ...
This is a guest post by accessibility and sustainable transport advocate Tim Adriaansen It originally appeared here. A friend calls you and asks for your help. They tell you that while out and about nearby, they slipped over and landed arms-first. Now their wrist is swollen, hurting like ...
Floating offshore wind turbines offer incredible opportunities to capture powerful winds far out at sea. By unlocking this wind energy potential, they could be a key weapon in our arsenal in the fight against climate change. But how developed are these climate fighting clean energy giants? And why do I ...
Over the past two or three weeks, a procession of Maori iwi and hapu in a series of little-noticed appearances before two Select Committees have been asking for more say for Maori over resource management decisions along the co-governance lines of Three Waters. Their submissions and appearances run counter ...
The decision of the International Criminal Court (ICC) to issue war crimes arrest warrants for the Russian President and the Russia Children Ombudsman may have been welcomed by the ideologically committed but otherwise seems to have been greeted with widespread cynicism (see Situation in Ukraine: ICC judges issue arrest warrants ...
Let’s say you’re clasping your drink at a wedding, or a 40th, or a King’s Birthday Weekend family reunion and Drunk Uncle Kevin has just got going.He’s in an expansive frame of mind because we’re finally rid of that silly girl. But he wants to ask an honest question about ...
National Party leader Christopher Luxon may be feeling glum about his poll ratings, but he could be tapping into a rich political vein in describing the current state of education as “alarming”. Luxon said educational achievement has been declining, with a recent NCEA pilot exposing just how far it has ...
Way Beyond Reform: Rawiri Waititi and Debbie Ngarewa-Packer have no more interest in remaining permanent members of “New Zealand’s” House of Representatives than did Lenin and Trotsky in remaining permanent members of Tsar Nicolas II’s “democratically-elected” Duma. Like the Bolsheviks, Te Pāti Māori is a party of revolutionaries – not reformists.THE CROWN ...
Buzz from the Beehive Auckland was wiped off the map, when Education Minister Jan Tinetti delivered her speech of welcome as host of the inaugural Conference of Pacific Education Ministers “here in Tāmaki Makaurau”. But – fair to say – a reference was made later in the speech to a ...
Morning mate, how you going?Well, I was watching the news last night and they announced this scientific report on Climate Change. But before they got to it they had a story about the new All Blacks coach.Sounds like important news. It’s a bit of a worry really.Yeah, they were talking ...
Always a bailout: US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said the Government would fully guarantee all savers in all smaller US banks if needed. Photo: Getty ImagesTL;DR: No wonder an entire generation of investors are used to ‘buying the dip’ and ‘holding on for dear life’. US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen ...
Wealthy vested interests have an oversized influence on political decisions in New Zealand. Partly that’s due to their use of corporate lobbyists. Fortunately, the influence lobbyists can have on decisions made by politicians is currently under scrutiny in Guyon Espiner’s in-depth series published by RNZ. Two of Espiner’s research exposés ...
Yesterday afternoon it rained and traffic around the region ground to a halt, once again highlighting why it is so important that our city gets on with improving the alternatives to driving. For additional irony, this happened on the same day the IPCC synthesis report landed, putting the focus on ...
The Beginning: Anti-Co-Governance agitator, Julian Batchelor, addresses the Dargaville stop of his travelling roadshow across New Zealand . Fascism almost always starts small. Sadly, it doesn’t always stay that way. Especially when the Left helps it to grow.THERE IS A DREADFUL LOGIC to the growth of fascism. To begin with, it ...
Hi,From an incredibly rainy day in Los Angeles, I just wanted to check in. I guess this is the day Trump may or may not end up in cuffs? I’m attempting a somewhat slower, less frenzied week. I’ve had Unknown Mortal Orchestra’s new record on non-stop, and it’s been a ...
On February 14, 2023 we announced our Rebuttal Update Project. This included an ask for feedback about the added "At a glance" section in the updated basic rebuttal versions. This weekly blog post series highlights this new section of one of the updated basic rebuttal versions and serves as a ...
The Government’s decision to introduce ‘mass arrivals’ legislation goes against the values we all share of Aotearoa as a place where all people are treated fairly, the Green Party says. ...
MINISTER DAVIDSON MUST RESIGN AFTER 'VIOLENCE' COMMENTS Marama Davidson should stand down as ‘Minister for the Prevention of Family and Sexual Violence’ for the clear and outrageous statement she made at the Posie Parker protest that ‘white straight men’ are the cause of violence. Her offensive, racist, and sexist remarks ...
In response to Newshub and Amelia Wade’s obvious and ham-fisted attempt at a typical and predicted political hit job. As any politically aware reporter would know, any Cabinet subcommittee has a duty and obligation as a part of any government to respond to any UN declaration, in this case ...
Good afternoon. Thank you for the invitation to speak with you today and in your busy lives turning up to this meeting. Forty five years ago, in Howick, often described as racist, and where few Maori lived because it had been a ‘Fencible’ settlement at the time of the Anglo-Maori ...
The Green Party has marked the National Party’s new education policy and given it a fail, especially for its failure to address the underlying drivers of school performance. ...
Political parties that want to negotiate with the Green Party must come to the table with much faster, bolder climate action, co-leaders James Shaw and Marama Davidson emphasised in their State of the Planet speech today. ...
Political parties that want to negotiate with the Green Party after the election must come to the table with much faster, bolder climate action, co-leaders James Shaw and Marama Davidson emphasised today. ...
You will never truly understand, from the pictures you’ve seen in the newspapers or on the six o-clock news, the sheer scale of the devastation wrought by Cyclone Gabrielle. ...
We’re boosting incomes and helping ease cost of living pressures on Kiwis through a range of bread and butter support measures that will see pensioners, students, families, and those on main benefits better off from the start of next month. ...
The error Labour Ministers made by stopping work on a beverage container return scheme will be reversed by the Greens at the earliest opportunity as part of the next Government. ...
“Cabinet needs to do better - and today has shown exactly why we need Green Ministers in cabinet, so we can prioritise action to cut climate pollution and support people to make ends meet,” says Green Party co-leader Marama Davidson. ...
Biggest increase in food prices for over three decades shows the need for an excess profit tax on corporations to help people put food on the table. ...
New legislation passed by the Government today will make it harder for gangs and their leaders to benefit financially from crime that causes considerable harm in our communities, Minister of Justice Kiri Allan says. Since the Criminal Proceeds (Recovery) Act 2009 came into effect police have been highly successful in ...
This evening I have advised the Governor-General to dismiss Stuart Nash from all his ministerial portfolios. Late this afternoon I was made aware by a news outlet of an email Stuart Nash sent in March 2020 to two contacts regarding a commercial rent relief package that Cabinet had considered. In ...
Legislation to enable more build-to-rent developments has passed its third reading in Parliament, so this type of rental will be able to claim interest deductibility in perpetuity where it meets the requirements. Housing Minister Dr Megan Woods, says the changes will help unlock the potential of the build-to-rent sector and ...
A law passed by Parliament today exempts employers from paying fringe benefit tax on certain low emission commuting options they provide or subsidise for their staff. “Many employers already subsidise the commuting costs of their staff, for instance by providing car parks,” Environment Minister David Parker said. “This move supports ...
Today marks the 40th anniversary of Closer Economic Relations (CER), our gold standard free trade agreement between New Zealand and Australia. “CER was a world-leading agreement in 1983, is still world-renowned today and is emblematic of both our countries’ commitment to free trade. The WTO has called it the world’s ...
The Government is making procedural changes to the Immigration Act to ensure that 2013 amendments operate as Parliament intended. The Government is also introducing a new community management approach for asylum seekers. “While it’s unlikely we’ll experience a mass arrival due to our remote positioning, there is no doubt New ...
The Government welcomes progress on public sector pay adjustment (PSPA) agreements, and the release of the updated public service pay guidance by the Public Service Commission today, Minister for the Public Service Andrew Little says. “More than a dozen collective agreements are now settled in the public service, Crown Agents, ...
The Government has introduced the Severe Weather Emergency Recovery Legislation Bill to further support the recovery and rebuild from the recent severe weather events in the North Island. “We know from our experiences following the Canterbury and Kaikōura earthquakes that it will take some time before we completely understand the ...
Further assistance is now available to businesses impacted by Cyclone Gabrielle, with Customs able to offer payment plans and to remit late-payments, Customs Minister Meka Whaitiri has announced. “This is part of the Government’s ongoing commitment to assist economic recovery in the regions,” Meka Whaitiri said. “Cabinet has approved the ...
More than 41,000 sole parent families will be better off with a median gain of $20 a week Law change estimated to help lift up to 14,000 children out of poverty Child support payments will be passed on directly to people receiving a sole parent rate of main benefit, making ...
A major investment by Government-owned New Zealand Green Investment Finance towards electrifying the public bus fleet is being welcomed by Climate Change Minister James Shaw. “Today’s announcement that NZGIF has signed a $50 million financing deal with Kinetic, the biggest bus operator in Australasia, to further decarbonise public transport is ...
A world-leading payments system is expected to provide a significant cash flow boost for Kiwi innovators, Minister of Research, Science, and Innovation Ayesha Verrall says. Announcing that applications for ‘in-year’ payments of the Research and Development Tax Incentive (RDTI) were open, Ayesha Verrall said it represented a win for businesses ...
Minister of Transport Michael Wood joined crowds of keen cyclists and walkers this morning to celebrate the completion of the Te Awa shared path in Hamilton. “The Government is upgrading New Zealand’s transport system to make it safer, greener, and more efficient for now and future generations to come,” Michael ...
Treaty of Waitangi Negotiations Minister Andrew Little has delivered the Crown apology to Ngāti Kahungunu ki Wairarapa Tāmaki nui-a-Rua for its historic breaches of Te Tiriti of Waitangi today. The ceremony was held at Queen Elizabeth Park in Masterton, hosted by Ngāti Kahungunu ki Wairarapa Tāmaki nui-a-Rua, with several hundred ...
Minister of Foreign Affairs Nanaia Mahuta has concluded her visit to China, the first by a New Zealand Foreign Minister since 2018. The Minister met her counterpart, newly appointed State Councilor and Minister of Foreign Affairs, Qin Gang, who also hosted a working dinner. This was the first engagement between the two ...
World-class satellite positioning services that will support much safer search and rescue, boost precision farming, and help safety on construction sites through greater accuracy are a significant step closer today, says Land Information Minister Damien O’Connor. Damien O’Connor marked the start of construction on New Zealand’s first uplink centre for ...
Attorney-General David Parker has announced the appointment of Christopher John Dellabarca of Wellington, Dr Katie Jane Elkin of Wellington, Caroline Mary Hickman of Napier, Ngaroma Tahana of Rotorua, Tania Rose Williams Blyth of Hamilton and Nicola Jan Wills of Wellington as District Court Judges. Chris Dellabarca Mr Dellabarca commenced his ...
Tēnā koutou katoa. Can I begin by thanking Gary Taylor, Raewyn Peart and others in the EDS team for their herculean work in support of the environment. I’d also like to acknowledge Hon Simon Upton, Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment, my parliamentary colleagues, and the many activists here who strive ...
A new Government-backed project will help ocean-related businesses in the Nelson Tasman region to accelerate their growth and boost jobs. “The Nelson Tasman region is home to more than 400 blue economy businesses, accounting for more than 30 percent of New Zealand’s economic activity in fishing, aquaculture, and seafood processing,” ...
After three years of COVID-19 disruptions schools are finally settling down and National want to throw that all in the air with major disruption to learning and underinvestment. “National’s education policy lacks the very thing teachers, parents and students need after a tough couple of years, certainty and stability,” Education ...
People aged over 50 with innovative business ideas will now be able to receive support to advance their ideas to the next stage of development, Minister for Seniors Ginny Andersen said today. “Seniors have some great entrepreneurial ideas, and this programme will give them the support to take that next ...
A cross government target for relevant government procurement contracts for goods and services to be awarded to Māori businesses annually will increase to 8%, after the initial 5% target was exceeded. The progressive procurement policy was introduced in 2020 to increase supplier diversity, starting with Māori businesses, for the estimated ...
77,000 fewer children living in low income households on the after-housing-costs primary measure since Labour took office Eight of the nine child poverty measures have seen a statistically significant reduction since 2018. All nine have reduced 28,700 fewer children experiencing material hardship since 2018 Measures taken by the Government during ...
Deputy Prime Minister Kamikamica; distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen. Tēnā koutou katoa, ni sa bula vinaka saka, namaste. Deputy Prime Minister, a very warm welcome to Aotearoa. I trust you have been enjoying your time here and thank you for joining us here today. To all delegates who have travelled to be ...
$2.9 million convertible loan for Scapegrace Distillery to meet growing national and international demand $4.5m underwrite to support Silverlight Studios’ project to establish a film studio in Wanaka Gore’s James Cumming Community Centre and Library to be official opened tomorrow with support of $3m from the COVID-19 Response and Recovery ...
[CHECK AGAINST DELIVERY] E ngā mana, e ngā reo, e ngā tangata katoa, o moana-nui-a-kiwa, E ngā mate, haere, haere, haere atū ra, manuia lau Malaga. Thank you for the kind introduction and opportunity to join you this morning. It is always good to be here in Aukilani, where I ...
E nga mana, e nga reo, e nga iwi, tēnā koutou katoa. Talofa lava and thank you Catherine, for the warm welcome. I’m sorry that I can’t be there in person today but it’s great for the opportunity to contribute virtually. I’d like to start by acknowledging: Alzheimers New Zealand, ...
Transport Minister Michael Wood has today launched the first national EV (electric vehicle) charging strategy, Charging Our Future, which includes plans to provide EV charging stations in almost every town in New Zealand. “Our vision is for Aotearoa New Zealand to have world-class EV charging infrastructure that is accessible, affordable, ...
Associate Minister for Social Development and Employment Priyanca Radhakrishnan has today launched the Love Better campaign in a world-leading approach to family harm prevention. Love Better will initially support young people through their experience of break-ups, developing positive and life-long attitudes to dealing with hurt. “Over 1,200 young kiwis told ...
Hon Rino Tirikatene, Minister for Courts, welcomes the Ministry of Justice’s appointment of Dr Garry Clearwater as New Zealand’s first Chief Clinical Advisor working with the Coroners Court. “This appointment is significant for the Coroners Court and New Zealand’s wider coronial system.” Minister Tirikatene said. Through Budget 2022, the Government ...
The Government via the Cyclone Taskforce is working with local government and insurance companies to build a picture of high-risk areas following Cyclone Gabrielle and January floods. “The Taskforce, led by Sir Brian Roche, has been working with insurance companies to undertake an assessment of high-risk areas so we can ...
E te huia kaimanawa, ko Ngāpuhi e whakahari ana i tau aupikinga ki te tihi o te maunga. Ko te Ao Māori hoki e whakanui ana i a koe te whakaihu waka o te reo Māori i roto i te Ao Ture. (To the prized treasure, it is Ngāpuhi who ...
113,400 exits into work in the year to June 2022 Young people are moving off Benefit faster than after the Global Financial Crisis Two reports released today by the Ministry of Social Development show the Government’s investment in the COVID-19 response helped drive record numbers of people off Benefits and ...
The Government’s priority to keep New Zealand at the cutting edge of food production and lift our sustainability credentials continues by backing the next steps of a hi-tech vertical farming venture that uses up to 95 per cent less water, is climate resilient, and pesticide-free. Agriculture Minister Damien O’Connor visited ...
E nga mana, e nga iwi, e nga reo, e nga hau e wha, tena koutou, tena koutou, tena koutou kātoa. Warm Pacific greetings to all. It is an honour to host the inaugural Conference of Pacific Education Ministers here in Tāmaki Makaurau. Aotearoa is delighted to be hosting you ...
The new renal unit at Taranaki Base Hospital has been officially opened by the Minister of Health Dr Ayesha Verrall this afternoon. Te Huhi Raupō received around $13 million in government funding as part of Project Maunga Stage 2, the redevelopment of the Taranaki Base Hospital campus. “It’s an honour ...
Defence Minister Andrew Little has marked the arrival of the country’s second P-8A Poseidon aircraft alongside personnel at the Royal New Zealand Air Force’s Base at Ohakea today. “With two of the four P-8A Poseidons now on home soil this marks another significant milestone in the Government’s historic investment in ...
Aotearoa New Zealand will provide further humanitarian support to those seriously affected by last month’s deadly earthquakes in Türkiye and Syria, says Foreign Minister Nanaia Mahuta. “The 6 February earthquakes have had devastating consequences, with almost 18 million people affected. More than 53,000 people have died and tens of thousands more ...
Migrant communities across New Zealand are represented in the new Migrant Community Reference Group that will help shape immigration policy going forward, Immigration Minister Michael Wood announced today. “Since becoming Minister, a reoccurring message I have heard from migrants is the feeling their voice has often been missing around policy ...
Construction has begun on major works that will deliver significant safety improvements on State Highway 3 from Waitara to Bell Block, Associate Minister of Transport Kiri Allan announced today. “This is an important route for communities, freight and visitors to Taranaki but too many people have lost their lives or ...
By Gorothy Kenneth in Port Moresby Private security companies are currently holding Papua New Guinea together with the largest workforce of 29,445 and supporting the police in managing law and order issues. There are only 6832 policemen and women serving the country currently, according to reports. Internal Security Minister Peter ...
By Gorothy Kenneth in Port Moresby Private security companies are currently holding Papua New Guinea together with the largest workforce of 29,445 and supporting the police in managing law and order issues. There are only 6832 policemen and women serving the country currently, according to reports. Internal Security Minister Peter ...
US President Joe Biden (right) meets with Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese (left) during the AUKUS summit at Naval Base Point Loma in San Diego California on 13 March 2023. Image: RNZ Pacific/Jim Watson/AFP “But it is what it is,” he said of the tripartite arrangement. ‘Escalation of ...
US President Joe Biden (right) meets with Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese (left) during the AUKUS summit at Naval Base Point Loma in San Diego California on 13 March 2023. Image: RNZ Pacific/Jim Watson/AFP “But it is what it is,” he said of the tripartite arrangement. ‘Escalation of ...
Procurement professional Ankit Bansal has been selected by local party members as National’s candidate in Palmerston North for the 2023 General Election. “I’d like to thank our local party members for endorsing me to campaign in Palmerston ...
Executive Manager of Te Mahia Community Village Rima Nakhle has been selected by local party members as National’s candidate in Takanini for the 2023 General Election. “The Takanini electorate is my home and I’m really excited to have the opportunity ...
Property management company director Dr Carlos Cheung has been selected as National’s candidate in Mt Roskill for the 2023 General Election. “Mt Roskill is my home and I’m grateful for the opportunity to campaign here for a National Government that ...
The Chairperson of the Governance and Administration Committee is calling for submissions on the Severe Weather Emergency Recovery Legislation Bill The Severe Weather Emergency Recovery Legislation Bill is the second bill in response to Cyclone Gabriel. The ...
Prime minister Chris Hipkins’ full statement, as shared to media, on the decision to remove Stuart Nash from cabinet: This evening I have advised the Governor-General to dismiss Stuart Nash from all his ministerial portfolios. Late this afternoon I was made aware by a news outlet of an email Stuart ...
Four strikes and Stuart Nash has been ousted from cabinet. It follows revelations this evening that he shared private cabinet discussions with business leaders and criticised decisions made in a 2020 email, according to reporting by Stuff. In the email, Nash set out his opposition to a decision cabinet had ...
The future of Stuart Nash, recently demoted to the bottom rung of cabinet, hangs in the balance following reports that he shared private cabinet discussions with business leaders and criticised decisions made in a 2020 email, according to reporting by Stuff. It follows Nash losing his police portfolio for breaching ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kate Crowley, Adjunct Associate Professor, Public and Environmental Policy, University of Tasmania Labor and the Greens on Monday announced a deal to strengthen a key climate policy, the safeguard mechanism, by introducing a hard cap on industrial sector emissions. But the ...
The native parrot the kea is under siege from aerial spread 1080 poison drops says a West Coast wildlife advocate Laurie Collins of Westport. While it is accepted that a good proportion of New Zealanders are opposed to aerial 1080 poison drops used ...
West Coasters might have a taste for the gung-ho but pragmatism has taken a turn for the cautious at an extraordinary Greymouth council meeting Outspoken West Coast Regional Council chair Allan Birchfield has been rolled by his colleagues in a bid to make peace with the government and stem the ...
By Tim Wilson, Executive Director, Maxim Institute* What does politics produce when mixed with violence and intimidation? Sadly nothing constructive, plus a humungous helping of anger, division, recrimination, spleen and confusion. Oh, and headlines. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra Senator Lidia Thorpe’s defection from the Greens changed the power dynamic in the Senate. Now the government needs two crossbenchers (and the Greens) to pass legislation opposed by the Coalition. Tasmanian Senator Jacqui Lambie and ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kate Crowley, Adjunct Associate Professor, Public and Environmental Policy, University of Tasmania Labor and the Greens on Monday announced a deal to strengthen a key climate policy, the safeguard mechanism, by introducing a hard cap on industrial sector emissions. But the ...
Security guards have made their voices heard and now have enough signatures to initiate a Fair Pay Agreement (FPA) for workers in their occupation. Since the Fair Pay Agreements Bill was passed in October 2022, more than 1000 security guards across Aotearoa New ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Bianca Fileborn, Senior Lecturer in Criminology, The University of Melbourne ShutterstockThe following article discusses sexual violence, self-harm and suicide. Gender and sexuality diverse (LGBTQ+) people experience disproportionately high levels of sexual violence, but we still know very little about ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jesse J. Fleay, Republic Constitutional Scholar, Federalist, Co-Author of the Uluru Statement, University of Notre Dame Australia Australia is preparing for a referendum to decide on the proposed Voice to parliament for First Nations people. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has stated the ...
Toni Collette and John Leguizamo tell Tara Ward about the electric drama set in a world where gender equality becomes a sudden and shocking reality.There’s a moment halfway through in The Power when it seems Toni Collette could be channeling Jacinda Ardern. A mysterious medical event is sweeping the ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Fiona Charlson, Conjoint NHMRC Early Career Fellow, The University of Queensland Shutterstock Last week the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, comprised of the world’s most esteemed climate experts, delivered its sixth report and “final warning” about the climate crisis. It ...
The government's national security arm says it is working on how to address the spread of disinformation and this is not directed specifically at the general election. ...
Poet Ash Davida Jane talks with poet Andrew Johnston about his Selected Poems, which spans 23 years of his published work. I’ve started writing this review in the notes app on my phone from the backseat of my friend’s car, which feels a far cry from the world of Andrew ...
National is demanding Marama Davidson apologise to cis white men over her comments from Saturday. Prime Minister Chris Hipkins says he considers the matter closed. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kate Manlik, Casual Academic and PhD Candidate, Macquarie University ABC The recent ABC mini-series, In Our Blood, offers a fictionalised account of Australia’s response to AIDS, focusing on the development of a partnership between impacted communities, health professionals and government. ...
Aucklanders – it’s your last chance to have a say on the council’s upcoming budget. Submissions close at 11pm tonight, after which they will be collated and considered by councillors before a final proposal’s released by the end of June. As my colleague Tommy de Silva explained earlier this month, ...
Aucklanders – it’s your last chance to have a say on the council’s upcoming budget. Submissions close at 11pm tonight, after which they will be collated and considered by councillors before a final proposal’s released by the end of June. As my colleague Tommy de Silva explained earlier this month, ...
After breaking a years-long gap between New Zealand ministerial visits to China, Nanaia Mahuta says the relationship is in good shape but the Government will keep discussing differences of opinion between the countries - including support for Ukraine New Zealand will keep pushing China to use its influence to help end ...
The government has commissioned an inquiry after forestry waste caused widespread devastation in Cyclones Hale and Gabrielle. But records show experts have been sounding the alarm for decades – why did no one hear them?This story was first published on Stuff. Ten minutes into the grey wasteland of the Mangatokerau ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Oliver A.H. Jones, Professor, RMIT University Shutterstock You might have noticed many skin and haircare products are advertised as “paraben-free”, or come across online influencers warning parabens are terrible for your health. But what is a paraben? And could a ...
Green Party co-leader Marama Davidson should apologise to white men over the “sweeping generalisation” she made ahead of the Posie Parker counter-protest on Saturday. That’s according to National’s leader Christopher Luxon who was questioned on the comments this morning at parliament. Davidson was caught on camera blaming “cis white men” ...
Candida auris is more likely to infect those who are already ill or immunocompromised and is fatal for 30-60% of those infected.What is Candida auris?Candida auris (also known as C. auris) is a type of fungus called a yeast. It was first identified in 2009 from the ear ...
Lorde’s always been mysterious and her latest newsletter to fans does nothing to change that. The New Zealand singer has just wrapped up her lengthy Solar Power tour in support of her third album released at the height of the delta Covid wave back in 2021. And while reports have ...
New Zealand Politics Daily is a collation of the most prominent issues being discussed in New Zealand. It is edited by Dr Bryce Edwards of The Democracy Project. Other items of interest and importance todayPOSIE PARKER RALLY The Facts: New Zealanders are world leaders in respecting transgender men and women Chris ...
New figures show the government has called on just 3 percent of the half a billion dollars approved to build or expand mental health hospital facilities. ...
Prime Minister Chris Hipkins believes the polarising debate in the wake of British gender activist Posie Parker's New Zealand visit has not been helpful, nor was it helpful to bring ethnicity and race into the debate. ...
The Kiwibank Local Hero of the Year will be announced this Thursday. The judges have had their work cut out for them choosing a winner from these finalists.There are hundreds of New Zealanders across the motu who devote time to their communities. Those people who go the extra mile ...
Late last year, at the time David Farrier was readying to release his new documentary Mister Organ, broadcaster Sean Plunket started tweeting out what appeared to be court documents. As we detailed in our extensive timeline of the Mister Organ saga, the tweets included claims that Farrier had been served ...
Prime minister Chris Hipkins’ morning media round has been largely dominated by remarks made by one of his ministers over the weekend. Marama Davidson, who is also co-leader of the Green Party, was caught on capture at a counter-protest to anti-trans speaker Posie Parker stating: “I am the prevention violence ...
If insurers aren’t involved in discussions on how New Zealand adapts to climate change, we risk whole sections of the country becoming uninsurable. As New Zealand considers how to better prepare for a future affected by climate change, the insurance sector needs to be part the discussion on where and ...
It will also be a couple of months before a decision is made on what approach will be taken with Coromandel’s SH25A which has been closed since cracks appeared on January 27 in the wake of ex-Cyclone Hale. Any fix will take nine to 12 months to implement. Access in ...
Consumer NZ has warned customers to be aware of “unsubstantiated” or “misleading” eco-friendly claims made at the supermarket. The watchdog has taken a closer look at several items including a supposedly “planet conscious” air freshener, “ocean plastic” bags and “industrial compostable” teabags. But Gemma Rasmussen, Consumer’s head of research and ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Clancy William James, Senior Lecturer (astronomy and astroparticle physics), Curtin University ASKAP.CSIRO We have just published evidence in Nature Astronomy for what might be producing mysterious bursts of radio waves coming from distant galaxies, known as fast radio bursts or FRBs. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Wanning Sun, Professor of Media and Cultural Studies, University of Technology Sydney Shutterstock Early this month, the Daily Mail published a story online implying three Chinese men taking photos at the Avalon Airshow in Melbourne were spies. After complaints and ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Vincent Ho, Associate Professor and clinical academic gastroenterologist, Western Sydney University Shutterstock We all get hiccups from time to time, and sometimes they just won’t seem to go away. Hiccups are involuntary contractions of the diaphragm – the muscle ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Albert Van Dijk, Professor, Water and Landscape Dynamics, Fenner School of Environment & Society, Australian National University Shutterstock A new report card on Australia’s environment reveals 2022 was a bumper year for our rivers and vegetation – but it ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Darcy Watchorn, PhD Candidate, Deakin University Discoveries of albino animals have a unique ability to capture the public imagination, often leading to flurries of social media and news coverage. (Think Migaloo, the famous white humpback whale.) It’s easy to see why ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By John Dumay, Professor – Department of Accounting and Corporate Governance, Macquarie University Pxfuel What distinguishes a company that makes “good” chocolate (chocolate untainted by child labour, modern slavery, deforestation and the overuse of agrichemicals) from one that merely makes chocolate? ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle de Souza, Lecturer in Law, University of New England Binge British comedy Romantic Getaway recently dropped on streaming service Binge. The show stars Katherine Ryan and Romesh Ranganathan as Alison and Deacon, a couple desperate for a child. Alison ...
The GCSB and NZSIS revealed concerns about the growing threat of foreign interference yesterday as RNZ launches new Chinese language news service and the national security system faces reform, writes Anna Rawhiti-Connell in this excerpt from The Bulletin, The Spinoff’s morning news round-up. To receive The Bulletin in full each weekday, sign ...
Tim Brown is an ex-professional footballer turned co-founder of internationally recognised, Wellington-based footwear company Allbirds. They have just announced a world-first zero carbon shoe that Tim hopes can change the industry for good. He chats with Simon Pound about Allbirds’ kaupapa, growing a business overseas, and the reality of sustainable ...
For the first time in decades, a major new piece of Sky hardware launches without TVNZ’s channels alongside all the others. Duncan Greive explains why this is a big deal for the future of television. This week marks a landmark for Sky NZ – the debut of a piece of ...
She may not agree with them all. They may not agree with each other. But they found common cause. In New Zealand, as across much of the world, many of the groups that espouse anti-vaccine, conspiracy-aligned and rightwing extremist ideas have hitched their wagons to anti-trans-rights movements. Little surprise, therefore, ...
In NZ the long shadow of colonial overlay is reflected in the endurance of names with little bearing to the land, its stories or peopleOpinion: Ngā Pou Taunaha o Aotearoa New Zealand Geographic Board (Pou Taunaha) has made decisions that were confirmed by the Minister for Land Information on ...
An author on her desire to write a book with plenty of sex in it There is sweet FA equal division of labour in my house: I do the lion’s share of cooking and cleaning and my husband brings home the bacon. To our children I willingly gave his ...
Auckland's floods unearthed a precious medal for Kiwi football great Michele Cox, carrying special memories of her professional career. Suzanne McFadden was there when she saved it from the skip bin. Michele Cox wears a delicate medal around her neck. A reminder of an important era in her footballing past. But ...
The world's been given yet another stark warning about the state of the climate - is New Zealand doing enough to bring its emissions down? The Detail takes a closer look at Labour's record on climate change. During the 2017 election campaign, then-Labour leader Jacinda Ardern made a bold statement: "We will ...
Up early to watch dawn service on ODT, so was glancing at sites I'd not looked at for a while. I guess this is not as bad as the RSA's (Rhodesian Services Association) cooption of ANZAC day up in Tauranga, but the ignorance of history is astonishing – especially when linked to the slogan; "Lest we Forget"
https://twitter.com/Te_Taipo/status/1518183580794466304
https://teara.govt.nz/en/conscription-conscientious-objection-and-pacifism/page-1
Oof! "Today we wear the puppy..", but I did like that she continued on despite the flub rather than drawing more attention with correction. Eg "Centenary.. uh; Centennial" just now.
Prayers now, which I can't be bothered with – one advantage of the Pandemic is that I don't have to pretend quiet respect for that.
What kind of clueless arsehole do you have to be to stand at the front of an ANZAC day crowd unmasked and chatting during the moment of silence between the Last Post and Reveille? Camera held on them for an uncomfortably long time too! There were enough unmasked that I am glad I didn't attend for my own safety's sake, but at least most had the grace to remain silent during the heart of the event.
I am actually slightly nauseated. But then I am also rather hungover, so it could be a bit of that too.
Anyway, to expand on my earlier point regarding the "Freedom" those NZers who participated in the "Great War" had:
https://www.odt.co.nz/news/dunedin/conscientious-objectors-commemorated
Why was this not an official governmental apology? Would that open them to claims for compensation from the tortured's descendants or something? I mean; ka pai ki Robertson for making the statement as an individual citizen, but it does ring a little hollow with his role as deputy PM.
https://teara.govt.nz/en/conscription-conscientious-objection-and-pacifism/page-2
Has anyone seen any commentary in the Australian federal election campaign about the New Bradford Plan?
I can see Queensland Labor are pretty keen especially after the last big floods.
Was just thinking about whether Australia would go full-noise nationbuilding to replace Ukrainian wheat production, in time.
New Bradfield scheme on agenda as north Queensland prepares for floods (brisbanetimes.com.au)
Mad Bob (Bob Katter), usually have something on the Bradford Plan as it's one of his "Pet Projects".
Actually the scheme has been assured funding. Still subject to a business case being released in June.
More info here.
Coincidentally the latest Caspian Report covered some of the history of this plan.
Lovely and even-handed work by Mr Hickey this morning on the political economy of inflation and real estate capitalism.
The dirty little secrets inside our nation of inflation (substack.com)
Hickey absolutely nails it.
The money shot….'Neither party wants to acknowledge the real causes of our inflation: explosive housing costs driven by leveraged investment demand and super-powered by monopoly power across most of the economy.'
Vote Luxon for PM and risk following Sri Lanka into economic disaster.
If you love tax cuts be warned
While our government may not be able to control things like hits to the tourism sector by the covid crisis.
Or rising costs of crude oil and wheat due to the war in Ukraine.
Or making unavoidable cuts to our agricultural emissions to save the planet.
Over the things our government can control, New Zealand would be very poorly served if we copied Sri Lanka's "Ill advised" tax cuts.
The other thing that sunk the Sri Lanka economy was that country’s massive amount of overseas borrowing.
The legacy of massive overseas borrowing by the Key government to bail out the financiers and billionaire investors who lost their investments after the GFC also has to be accounted for in this country.
Actually it's this Labour government that has borrowed the most in many decades.
Both our public and private sector debt is astonishingly high under this government.
You paint a misleading picture Ad. It is always better to deal in facts.
The profligate high-spending Key/English government added a huge amount to public debt between 2008-17 after the Clark/Cullen government of 1999-2008 had massively reduced public debt. The Ardern/Robertson government, 2017-onwards, was in the process of reducing public debt as the pandemic hit when, of course, public debt was bound to balloon.
You can see this from the 25 year chart on this site.
https://tradingeconomics.com/new-zealand/government-debt
The clear message being Vote Labour/Green for sound financial management.
good info bearded .Luxons slip ups and selfishness shown up by direct questioning from Jack Tane put Nationals policy of crumbs for the poor and huge tax windfalls for the well off and the very well off like Luxon in the spotlight. Luxons plan was as inflationary as Labours as well so own goal by Luxon.Tane should have asked Luxon if he would cut Air NZ bailout to.Luxon was fuming by the end of the interview.Tane only mentioned the tax cuts Luxon would get from his parliamentry salary $18,000 a year not the income from his 7 rental properties and other investments maybe up to $30,000 a year plus in tax cuts. While the vast majority do it hard .Then govt revenue drops and no doubt National would have to cut spending on public services like Health,education,policing, and welfare denying payments to the homeless and disadvantaged.
Excellent all round thanks Bearded Git. Selected stats can often skew the view.
Your cited graph net debt exploding under Labour-Greens in 2020-2021.
Back in 2019 Roberston sort-of still had a debt target.
Grant Robertson blurs the line on his debt target | Stuff.co.nz
But he’s basically given up. Net core Government debt is now $123 billion, 35% of our GDP.
Grant Robertson urges caution after Government books bounce back from Covid – NZ Herald
Much of that he threw at employers as wage subsidies to keep us sane in 2020.
Treasury has warned about the implications.
Treasury warning to Government: Trillions of dollars in 'unsustainable' debt cycle – NZ Herald
A decently-briefed Luxon would not find it hard to show where this debt has not been good for us.
And the books will be worse then forecast,due to the problem with falling asset values.The NZ superannuation fund lost 1.2 billion in the first two months of this year,which will have doubled in the last 2 months.
Those ethical investments are good creators of wealth destruction.
ACC will have a double problem with falling investment values,and increased medical costs not due to more accidents,but increased wages for health such as vehicle registration,fuel levy,income levy etc.
It "exploded" because of the pandemic as i said before,,,d'oh.
You would have just crashed the economy would you?
Shovelling an untagged $60b was not the only way to address the crisis.
Our grandchildren are going to be paying for the set of decisions they made in a hurry in April 2020.
New Zealand Gross GDP 43.6% Nett GDP 11.6%
Norway Gross GDP 41.4% Nett GDP -121%
Sweden Gross GDP 37.3% Nett GDP 5.5%
U K Gross GDP 104.5%Nett GDP 91.8%
USA Gross GDP 133.9%Nett GDP 98.7
Germany Gross GDP 69.7%Nett GDP 50.1
Australia Gross GDP 57.3%Nett GDP 34.4
Now NZ’s is 53% during a pandemic and a war?
How does New Zealand compare? You decide.
History is making that public debt binge and easy Reserve Bank money to make the evaluation decision pretty easy:
Pandemic response funding
+Reserve Bank credit availability
+manufactured house price spike
+global supply chain crisis
+Ukraine War
= local and global inflation and interest rates heading for 10% per year
So Patricia you can decide out of the following consequences:
$4 91 per litre petrol, $3.9 per litre diesel,
$7 for a bag of apples,
Mortgage payments doubling in a year,
And the quickest and highest class separation since 1985.
Anyone here remember October 1987?
Is it any different anywhere else?
… is not an argument in anyone's favour. Nor particularly relevant to us: it is our government that intervened the most per capita across the OECD..
We have 3 weeks to Budget 2022 and to the Carbon Zero budget.
Will the greatest and fastest debt+public subsidy in our history get us anywhere?
It is bad Ad, but could be miles worse. I have just read an article on Stephanie Browitt a survivor of Te Puia o Whakari White Island.
It is humbling and uplifting and says a great deal about the human spirit and our ability to overcome difficulties. Despair does more damage.
Hindsight is being clever after the fact. Luxon may think he has a handle on things, and yes he may improve with advice, but truly steam was coming out his ears and he was very red with shock at being challenged by Tame.
This is a double whammy, Pandemic dollars plus the oil shock/ wheat/ sunflower oil/ all combining to create difficult conditions.
Robertson and we are between a rock and a hard place. I don’t think the Opposition has any answers, just move the pieces and pay their piper.
We are a very inter related World now, and Luxon is no diplomat.
Sri Lanka has been operating a fixed exchange rate to reach the present situation. NZ went through a similar currency crisis in 1984 and has floated its exchange rate since.
The differences are NZ has a lot more space for fiscal policy interventions, the country mostly borrows in NZ currency (so if the govt wants any such debt to be repaid, or guaranteed the country has the means to make that payment).
As a result of this the countries are not really comparable.
You are correct Nic, Sri Lanka and New Zealand are not directly comparable.
But it would be foolish to ignore the lesson of Sri Lanka. Because you reap what you sow.
The Grim reaper.
Christopher Luxon sharpens his metaphorical scythe for tax cuts.
You reap what you sow.
The takeaway lesson for New Zealand is this; If you really want to take radical measures to protect the environment and the climate, you must be prepared to tax the rich to pay for it.
Luxon on climate change.
'Random' [sic] government activity at huge cost is dangerous..
Unfortunately that narrative places the rich in the benefactor position of paying for a countries climate policy. Since they are paying they will ultimately determine the terms of the transition off fossil fuel. I don't think this is going to accelerate the transition. This is unfortunate as NZ can afford to fund many transitional policies as is, and wont actually face such a currency crisis as a result.
Sri Lanka floated the Rupee in 2001….as always the lender determines the conditions of the credit.
Do you have a source for that claim?
Reuters has articles describing the Central Bank devaluing to slow foreign exchange losses and the Rupee is otherwise described as a closed currency (not available outside Sri Lanka).
"Sri Lanka has a floating exchange rate system since 2001 which allowed the independent adjustment of the exchange rate according to the market forces of demand and supply. However, there could be interventions in the market for the purpose of curbing excess volatility in the exchange rate. The CBSL prescribes maximum net open position (NOP) limits for LCBs and closely monitors the activities in the domestic foreign exchange market to ensure an orderly functioning of the market."
https://www.cbsl.gov.lk/en/financial-system/financial-markets/domestic-foreign-exchange-market
A floating exchange rate is neither a panacea nor is it immune to manipulation.
I think its floating inside Sri Lanka is how to read that. But clearly their arrangements are not providing financial stability due to the amount of foreign denominated debt the country has taken on.
NZs situation is quite far from that.
Not at all…it is quite evident that the suppliers of goods from offshore no longer accept the Rupee as payment and want hard currency and Sri Lanka has run out of reserves…a situation any economy, including NZ could face,
Confidence in a currency is tied to collateral and its obvious all confidence in the Sri Lankan economy has been lost….a floating exchange rate dosnt function when confidence is lost.
It is a fair weather mechanism.
The foreign debts of Sri Lanka are not a recent thing.
One of the main reasons importers would not want to accept Rupee is because the only exchange market for that is inside Sri Lanka.
NZs situation is quite far from that.
The Sri Lankan Rupee is as tradable as the NZD….if you can find any takers
Top Traded Currencies
NZ comes in at #11.
Yep, we're a speculative currency that trades WAAAAAY above requirement.
Theatre company tries to put on a queer culture sex education show for teens and their parents. Called The Family Sex Show (yes, really). All hell breaks loose. Stock writes a very funny but also nuanced and intelligent post about what happened and what the problems are and in the process breaks the binary.
The Family Sex Show was advertised as suitable for 5yrs +.
Link to the cleaned up website that now doesn’t suggest children use Google to search for “animals that masturbate” so they can draw pictures of them, can be found here:
https://thefamilysexshow.com/tfss
The Family Sex Show
It’s indicative of how far they are removed from age-appropriate content, to see what still remains after they have “scrubbed” their site.
hmm, I'm seeing conflicting things about the age bracket. But yeah, that's pretty clear, and yep, their sense of what's ok is well off. But we knew that from the name. I wish I could feel some confidence that lessons might be learned.
I had a good look when the story broke, and took particular notice of the recommended age for the tour venues. At that time is was definitely 5yrs+.
Might have changed since the issue was highlighted.
I was mostly following on twitter, and as per usual there was a lot of exclammation and not a lot of backing up.
Sorry, meant had a good look at the website and the venues promoting, not just tweets.
I got that 🙂 You had a better look at it than me.
The title "the family sex show" is a red flag for me.
Introduction to knowledge about sex (and sex itself ) needs to be age appropriate.
Animals masturbating? Please. As an adult I don't see why I need to know about that. What is the purpose of getting kids to google search it? It embeds the idea that you can search for things of a sexual nature on the net……..
I am glad to hear apple a putting in a filter on their devices that filters out nudity. Good.
Always found this pretty funny…and sad
And here we are…
/
Can you elaborate on where you think 'here' is? And how you think we got there?
Here is innocents endangered. Rhetoric got us there.
Clarity not a strong point?
What rhetoric and from whom?
60,000 of new irrigated land on the other side of the Queensland ranges, funded by the Morrison government. One big new dam and several major reservoirs.
Morrison’s green light for Queensland’s Hells Gates Dam threatens Great Barrier Reef, experts warn | Queensland | The Guardian
This is the first part of the New Bradfield Scheme that is a revised version of the big Bradfield Scheme of 1942.
New Bradfield scheme on agenda as north Queensland prepares for floods (brisbanetimes.com.au)
This is irrigation on a terraforming scale.
If the Australian Federal government wants to essentially replace much of Ukraine's agricultural production, pulling all the climate change floodwater from Queensland and tunneling it through the ranges to the west, and link up with the Murray-Darling, would be the way to do it.
I imagine there are plenty of areas in New Zealand that could easily grow wheat. For instance, Central Otago, where they tend to have very dry, hot summers.
Who knows, going forward, wheat production could become more profitable and less damaging to the environment than dairy production given that the set up and ongoing costs should be a lot lower I imagine.
Further to that, there is quite a bit of grain production in that area already, so could potentially be expanded.
https://www.odt.co.nz/rural-life/rural-life-other/grain-production-passes-1million-tonnes
There's not a lot of wheat left growing in Canterbury now that it's almost fully irrigated. It's solid dairy as far as the eye can see,
But it's odd going up to Houhora in the Far North and seeing what was pretty average dairy country converted into avocados.
Then you must have one eye closed….wheat production has steadily increased in NZ since the dairy boom began and around 80% of it is from Canterbury.
Its also the largest pea production area in the Southern hemisphere,with the longest harvest season.
https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/rural/2020/02/longest-pea-harvest-in-the-world-underway-in-canterbury.html
Peas are a huge growth crop.
They are being used as gluten free substitutes in an array of new foods.
Gluten-free is going to be a big thing going forward given the amount of wheat production going off-line with the current conflict.
The problem is for many countries "gluten-free" means zero food.
Rice,corn,peas, potatos,cassava….fruit,veges ,plenty of GF crops to replace …wheat.
Fill your boots.
I am aware of the volumes Russia and Ukraine produce.
Regardless of war…25,000 die of starvation every day around the world.
I read somewhere over 20% of food produced is…wasted.
If you really want to scare yourself.
Interesting observations by PZ there Red.
Insightful comments too.
Zeihan regards Russia's whole existence is threatened!
A perfect storm mounting for rampant inflation….and the nuclear option.
And as mentioned in the article, seed crops…a lot of seed grown here to supply offshore producers.
But if it was so easy (and profitable) there wouldnt have been the mass conversion to dairy in the region that has occurred the past 20 years or so.
A lot of the conversions wernt by choice….as said before, inflated property values are not only a housing problem.
Canterbury produces 70% of the worlds carrot seed.Agree on the land pricing,that was a result of low livestock prices and wool.There is still with some arable farmers who use livestock when they rotate the land to lie fallow,and put it back into pasture.
With constant droughts and rivers drying up and suffering degradation from nitrogen run off , cryptosporidiam andfaecal matter. Growing grains such as wheat and sunflower would be far more enviromentaly sustainable. With high prices profitable as well. also Chinas expansionism it would be smart to reduce our dpendence on Dairy production.
Arable farming is inherently risky….the returns are seasonal and fluctuate…especially when compared to dairy with its consistent output and monthly cheques.
As many cropping farmers are want to say, arable farming is a capital gain game….the capital outlay to return is considerable and dont really reflect the risks…and everyone in the chain clips the ticket.
My son Grant who was a Trade Cert Baker in a former life, tells me New Zealand produces flour that tends to make a heavy / wet crumb. It was mixed with Australian flour to lighten the crumb. With dry conditions and growing temperatures and improved varieties our wheat crumb may improve.
Other valuable crops could be sunflowers for oil and hemp for clothing As dairy prices go into retreat, other farming may begin.
UK think tank report on Russia's imperial delusion, what went wrong, expectations and conclusions.
The foremost conclusion is that Russia is now preparing, diplomatically, militarily and economically, for a protracted conflict
[…]
The pattern is universal. Almost all of Russia’s modern military hardware is dependent upon complex electronics imported from the US, the UK, Germany, the Netherlands, Japan, Israel, China and further afield.57
[…]
Finally, the Russian decision to double down is a high-stakes gamble. If Russia mobilises and eventually overcomes Ukrainian resistance then NATO will face an aggressive, isolated and militarised state. If Russia loses then President Putin has now begun radicalising the population in the pursuit of policies that he will struggle to deliver. Failure to defeat the Ukrainian state after relentlessly comparing it to the Nazi regime may have serious consequences for Putin and those around him. To frame a conflict as existential and to lose must necessarily call the suitability of a leader into question among Russia’s political elites. NATO states therefore need to consider how to manage escalation pathways that follow if Russia is not only defeated in Donbas but finds its newly mobilised and poorly trained troops, with few remaining stocks of precision munitions, unable to deliver a victory in the summer. The death of Putin’s political project is plausible, but it has already inflicted immense damage internationally and risks doing considerably more.
https://static.rusi.org/special-report-202204-operation-z-web.pdf
The image on the cover of that report is remarkably striking. Will read.
Them turrets get around and fuck the crews. Cannon fodder.
https://taskandpurpose.com/analysis/russian-tanks-ukraine-turrets-blown-off/
Another chilling quote:
Probably scrambling up more forces by declaring war is possible. I think the biggest issue for the Russians will be arming the new troops.
I have seen a number of videos of Russian soldiers using vintage rifles etc. And, they are having trouble manufacturing new gear to replace the existing equipment being lost due to the sanctions.
Troop plus equipment do not equal capability. There is one hell of a lot more to it than this – you may find this extremely interesting.
Thank you for that. That was a really good read, and very informative.
Have you seen this latest video that adds quite a bit of weight to the theory going around for awhile that Putin has some serious disease such as Parkinsons or cancer.
Certainly looks a bit weird, and not the normal way people tend to sit at a table.
Seems alot more composed and lucid than the leader of the …free' world imo.
LOL. Probably not wrong there.
His right side doesn't look too flash.
As someone often critical of poor legislation, I appreciated this report from RNZ:
I was impressed at how they incorporate the principle of reflexivity into praxis:
Here's an insight into the psychology that comes into play:
You can summarise that last sentence as stakeholder interactivity. The Q+A format drives the process of design towards optimal output – in theory. As a grouch like me would point out, results suggest the theory often gets flawed by the practice!
Wait a sec. "Its boss describes it as “the Government's legislative advisors”. So legal advice and legislative advice are different critters. Ok, got it. A fine distinction!
https://www.rnz.co.nz/national/programmes/the-house/audio/2018838304/painting-the-legal-jigsaw-one-piece-at-a-time
Crown Law, parts of DPMC, and legal counsel within the sponsoring Departments also have strong drafting roles. Some Departments are a lot better at gaming out the operational practise of new legislation than others.
I wonder how long it’ll be before someone on the opposition’s benches tries this.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/apr/24/angela-rayner-hits-back-at-claims-of-basic-instinct-tactics-to-distract-pm?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other
Or maybe the Daily Herald.
Not very likely, still waiting for them to expose their mythical "big brains".
Chooks are scary.
They are a forest bird after all – very cool.
Helping a mate with his emus I often thought thank dog chooks aren't this big.
I sometimes thought tramping in NZ would have been a very different proposition if the moa was not extinct
Didn't make the msm last year, but a noteworthy report from the leading edge:
Physics grad went huh??
A revolutionary paradigm-shifter, seemingly plausible due to replication (two teams of physicists), but we await further developments that may point to utility.
Quanta presents a summary of that recipe on their page. It uses this triad:
1. many-body localisation (a row of particles get stuck in synch)
2. eigenstate order (they retain symmetry when spin-flipped)
3. periodic driver (laser light triggers system flipping which perseveres)
A 2015 paper described it in these words:
Thus authenticity to claim the first workable demonstration of the mythical perpetual-motion machine. Now the challenge is to invent uses that users deem valuable…
A climate activist, Wynn Bruce, has died after setting himself on fire outside the US Supreme Court.
…
If it was indeed a protest then it must be witnessed. At it's end a protest is a performance, and if it is ignored then it is futile. Sadly for Wynn Bruce, and for all of us, it is seemingly easier to despair the systemic inaction of the status quo powers.
I encourage anyone feeling despair to reach out to those around you, like action on climate change, we can all support each other through this, be it just conversation and a cuppa, advice and encouragement, all the way through to developing and honing skills in gardening and composting, to reusing and reprocessing materials; We can all work towards food and material sustainability and that really helps to feel more positive.
There's context:
One must respect another's intent in ending their lives via such signalling. Not for us to judge spiritual motivations. The assumption that changes in public policy will result (triggered by mass realisation that they must happen) is based on a misread of mass psychology, unfortunately…
Are you saying that an isolated act, assuming it political, of self-immolation is not affecting public policy change or that any isolated and individual act is ineffective? Either way, it sounds your personal belief (aka reckon) rather than a generally accepted fact.
When a single act of self-immolation catalyses a movement, as has happened in other countries, you will be hard-pushed to ignore and categorically deny its influence in each and every case.
Yeah, just my take on the effect it seems to have on western countries. Your point is valid – a single immolation triggered the Arab Spring phenomenon that brought down a couple of dictators & threatened a few others.
So I suppose a better generalisation would be that the catalysis effect is culture-dependent. The symbolism activates a shared feeling that is likely to ramp up via contagion in suitable cultural/political contexts…
Population transfers, summary executions, mass deportations and the beginnings of an attempt to erase a nation and it's people from the textbooks.
But sure, it's all about de-nazification and NATO.
/
"Here in the Federation Council they found out that not all children" from the liberated territories of Donbass "have sufficient command of the Russian language. They will be retrained."
On February 24, Vladimir Putin announced the start of a "special operation" and Russian troops invaded Ukraine. Immediately after that, employees of the Enlightenment group of companies, one of the largest and oldest publishers of educational and pedagogical literature in the country, were urged to remove the “incorrect” references to Ukraine and Kyiv from all school textbooks. "Mediazona" talked with the editors of the publishing house about how the "cleansing" of history, geography and literature is going on.
[…]
So, from paragraphs that give examples of the heraldry of different states, including flags, a few years ago it was strongly recommended to remove the flag of Ukraine and replace it with the flag of any other country. If it is necessary to give an example of the capital in the chapter, Kyiv was replaced by another capital. “A couple of times I had to remove the US flag as well, but it’s simpler there, our program pays little attention to world history,” says one of the Enlightenment employees. Now editors should remove references to Ukraine wherever possible.
“That is, we are faced with the task of making it as if Ukraine simply does not exist,” his colleague says. “It's much worse when the textbook just doesn't mention a country. A person grows up without a knowledge base about some country, and then it is much easier for him to believe what he is told about it from TV.
The hardest part is for those who work on history textbooks: it is often impossible to remove references to Ukraine and Kyiv without compromising the content, then you have to change the wording to more “safe” ones.
https://zona.media/article/2022/04/23/enlightenment
google translate
More stuff catching on fire in Russia. Now it is an oil refinery between Ukraine and Moscow mysteriously catching fire.
Prior to that there was a mysterious fire at a weapons research facility.
The there was a fire at a Russia's biggest chemical plant.
Now the fire I just mentioned above.
Lots of people smoking where they shouldn't perhaps?
Perhaps the quickest way to stop the war might be to target all the vodka factories. Inhumane I know …
Yes!! How to pass that idea on to the Ukrainians?
Hard to be grateful to the French for retaining Macron, but there it is.
You can probably thank Poots for a good chunk of that outcome.
Poots is on a roll.
Ljubljana, Slovenia (Reuters)Slovenia's populist Prime Minister, Janez Janša, lost a national election on Sunday as the environmentalist Freedom Movement party won more votes than his SDS party, according to preliminary figures from election authorities.
Janša, who had hoped to win a fourth term in office, conceded that he had been defeated in the vote, adding however that his SDS party had secured more votes than ever before.
"The results are what they are. Congratulations to the relative winner," Janša said, addressing his supporters.
The election had been expected to be tight but the official preliminary figures showed the Freedom Movement, a newcomer in the election, leading with 34.34% of the vote, far more than expected, while the SDS secured 23.83%, based on 98.20% of counted ballots.
That would give the Freedom Movement, which campaigned on a transition to green energy, an open society and the rule of law, 40 seats in the 90-seat parliament, and the SDS 28 seats.
https://edition.cnn.com/2022/04/25/europe/slovenia-election-environmentalists-beat-populists-intl/index.html
Cleaned up but unlikely to ever be forgotten.
Musk/Twitter saga update: https://www.reuters.com/article/twitter-m-a-musk-investors-exclusive-idUSKCN2MG0K7
So Twitter
Liberals are freaked. Dunno why, but useful insights here:
You can see why Musk wants to clean the thing up, eh? Then there's this glimpse into the twits & their leverage on the msm…
Bill Gates shorted Tesla.
And there were consequences…
Humanity is divided into serious folk & fun folk? Well, some are a bit of both, eh? Ole Bill was just having a bit of fun but young Elon didn't see the funny side.
Microsoft share price has lost 20% this year,Twitter is up 10% on the Musk offer.
As the US Fed has forced short positions on the SNAG stocks such as the FANG's,all the Billionaires will have downgrades in their wealth positions.
Seems to me that Musk is a bored rich boy who gets his kicks seeing how he can manipulate markets…..too much money and spare time.
They all are,the troublesome ones are at the WEF meetings,some of the thinking being out of the worst dystopian novels.
Joyful celebrations in France overnight.
Macron wins by around 5 million votes with around 12 million non voters
NOT much of a choice under the runoff system,and Macron will have the problem of increased ECB interest rates,that will now come sooner then later.
and a population thats not afraid to take to streets.
Car burning season is coming regardless of who won the election.
https://www.thelocal.fr/20191231/is-the-famous-french-tradition-of-torching-cars-dying-out/
Can anyone explain how the proposed Rotorua Council elections would work?
https://letstalk.rotorualakescouncil.nz/letstalk-rotorualakescouncil-nz-local-bill
"It's part of a larger conversation, because there are councils all around the country right now that are talking about the idea of co-governance. It's a very important kaupapa."
In a statement on Friday, Coffey said: "This is a Local Bill, so the changes are being requested by the Rotorua District Council, not the Government. As such, the Rotorua District Council will need to consider the implications of the Bill of Rights analysis, alongside the select sommittee."
https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/politics/2022/04/attorney-general-david-parker-deems-rotorua-council-s-proposed-m-ori-ward-restructure-discriminatory.html
"The proposed arrangements in the Bill would make the number of council members for the Māori ward disproportionately higher than the number of council members for the General ward in comparison to their respective populations," Parker wrote in his legal analysis published on Friday.
"As the disadvantaged group is those on the General roll, changing representation arrangements away from proportional representation therefore creates a disadvantage for non-Māori as they cannot in future elect to change rolls."
Parker concluded: "The Bill appears to limit the right to be free from discrimination affirmed in s 19 of the Bill of Rights Act and cannot be justified."
Yes, I saw that. What I don't understand is how the voting would work. What is the at large vote? Does everyone get two votes (ward and at large)?
Lol, kind of like Māori now.
I imagine you have a vote in your ward and an at large vote.
As to proportion..
"The Council is currently pursuing a law change to enable an undemocratic representation model to be implemented. The model it prefers would consist of three Māori ward seats, three general ward seats, and four at-large seats. However, adopting this arrangement would give the 19,791 citizens on the Māori roll 2.6 times the voting power of the 51,618 citizens on the general roll.
The proposed model is not only unfair, it is also unlawful. Clause 2 of Schedule 1A of the Local Electoral Act requires representation from wards to be proportional to their electoral populations. "
https://www.democracyaction.org.nz/rotorua_lakes_council_pushing_for_maori_co_governance
Onya, Glen.
/
107 years ago the Ottoman Empire kicked off it's effort to exterminate it's two million Armenian subjects. New Zealand is yet to acknowledge Armenian suffering. For shame.
Countries that Recognize the Armenian Genocide
https://www.armenian-genocide.org/recognition_countries.html
https://www.newsroom.co.nz/a-stain-on-our-moral-record