UNITED STATES PUBLICLY CONDEMNS ISRAEL
National Radio, Wednesday 26 September 2012
In a great rush a few minutes ago, I turned on National Radio for the news and could hardly believe my ears: the U.S. has finally come out and condemned Israel, just as it eventually did with other protégés such as Suharto’s Indonesia, Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, and apartheid South Africa.
This is the only part I heard from the news broadcast: “President Obama said that if there is a case that should arouse protests across the world today, it is a regime that tortures children and fires rockets into apartments.”
No doubt we’ll be hearing more of this remarkable political and moral volte-face as the day goes on.
Here’s what our friend Morrissey transcribed from the radio: “President Obama said that if there is a case that should arouse protests across the world today, it is a regime that tortures children and fires rockets into apartments.”
“A regime that tortures children and fires rockets into apartments.” That’s the Israeli regime.
No kidding! It’s also the NZ regime and every other country on the planet bar Switzerland. Obama was referring to Syria, Mozza was riffing on that. I’m starting to think you’re not really a Professor.
“It’s also the NZ regime and every other country on the planet bar Switzerland.”
That statement is either deliberately nonsensical, or simply dishonest.
“Obama was referring to Syria,”
The president was talking about “a regime” that “tortures children and fires rockets into apartments.” That describes Israel, which has done those things for a much longer time than Syria has.
“Mozza was riffing on that.”
To any non-ideologue of good faith who was listening, the condemnation of a regime that tortures children and fires rockets into apartments would have to be a condemnation of Israel. Of course, after the statement has been fed through the filter of hypocrisy, it only applies to officially designated enemies.
“I’m starting to think you’re not really a Professor.”
By gad, sir! I have a good mind to thrash you with a horse-whip, on the steps of your club.
Horse whipping eh? It’s the only language the likes of me understand!
Like it or not, it was a direct quote from Obama about Syria, not Israel, though as I pointed out, it could apply to pretty much any country. NZ, for example, did the first in Samoa, Parihaka, the Ureweras and elsewhere and that SAS soldier chappie who’s just retired got a VC for the latter.
(Just for the record, I’m anti-zionist and I believe in a two state solution, with the Palestinion people having a country with contiguous borders and a working port)
Some very good points there, my man. I think I’ll shelve the horse-whipping for the time being, seeing as you seem to be someone who might enjoy it a little too much for your own good.
Would you like me to put you in touch with like-minded people?
Can I just check that I’ve got Joyce and Blinglish right: basically, give up your legal rights, forget about protecting the environment, forsake the conservation estate and National Ltd™ will, maybe, provide some extra jobs . . . blackmail, divide and rule, with a touch of “serves you right”, is that how it goes?
Yep, but the important thing is the newly announced extension to the John Key Memorial Cycleway which will Joyce reckons will create at least a million jobs on the West Coast. I understand the route will now terminate inside the Spring Creek Mine, echoing the NZ economy’s disappearence down a deep, dark hole.
If you read the report, you’ll see that we at National Ltd cannot just “make some jobs” for you people. The only exception is when we say we can make some jobs. Those jobs are not jobs that can be worked, per se, they are ledger jobs for reporting purposes only. We have not read the report and don’t intend to, since we take our word. It’s about integrity. You see, it’s about the economy. We cannot go on redistributing tax payer money. This does not exclude us selling thing you own to our friends.
If you have any further questions, please make an appointment for Tuesday. We will be unexpectedly unavailable on Tuesday while we watch softball overseas. Nothing will happen between then and now, except for the stuff that is already happening, of which we have no knowledge.
Whilst watching the softball overseas can you please consider this “redistribution of taxpayer money”. If I stop paying tax do I still qualify? As a “citizen”. Do I have rights as a “citizen” or only as a taxpayer? Can you redistribute it to “citizens” or only those paying taxes? I really need to understand where I fit into your governments re distributive plans.
You are right to be humble, or at least meek. However, our lawyers have instructed us to tell you that this is no gaurantee you shall inherit the earth or the profits of your time under the National Ltd administration.
If you stop paying taxes, we will have you arrested, though this action may not be taken depending on the evaluation of your personal valuation you have yet to supply. We of course cannot view your valuation ourselves, or consider it’s contents. It is a matter of integrity. You will have to supply a certified viewer who will give us the signal by running over a person poorer than you, in a town of your choosing.
Going forward, we encourage your intent to not pay taxes, in principle, and this alone may enhance our reading of your personal valuation. As a Tradeable Work Unit, you qualify to pay us tax, but the rights of citizenship are unsure. What is citizenship? A ship made of buddhist cities? I bet I could find a lawyer who could say the opposite. Obligations on our part remain strictly defined. It is a matter of integrity, except in the case of you being unable to arouse our interest in your personal fortune or the poor person you run down surviving.
To avoid arrest the money has been ETed (I figured habeus corpus was at risk if I said it “was in the mail”. Recent events indicate the NZ Police dont quite “understand” the law). The IRD when presented with the extra payment charged me interest on not declaring this as provisional tax at the beginning of the FY, thereby defining my relationship as a taxpayer rather nicely (from their viewpoint). What was intriguing was that they had a copy of all my emails to you via GCSB, maybe they are watching you because you still talk to foreign criminal types who you used to work with.
I did take your advice: I ran down a rather rotund man with a German accent, injuring myself in the process. ACC state that they wont pay for my injuries because the gent was rather too large and should have been avoidable. My counter claim is that he was too big to avoid. Either way they are checking out my ACC levy via the aforementioned IRD. The vehicle went to the panel beater who suggested that I flag the insurance excess claim because the said German gent represents a credit risk and cant pay me for the “accident”. He was apparently formerly rich but by some dint of misfortune he met up with bad company (an MP from Epsom) and its been all downhill since. The insurance claim came back nicely, good riddance Mr B, we went bust with Christchuch, thanks for your money……
So in summary thank you for the explanation of my relationship with the state as a taxpayer: I keep paying, you transfer to your mates in Reemers who dont pay tax. With regard to citizenship I am now more informed: it is off to Greenland where plenty of new land becomes available weekly.
Thanks for your note. John is out of town and has left me in charge of correspondence and crises. If we could keep this on the hush hush, that would be good. Don’t worry about GCSB. Those guys are all pinstripes and salad lunches. Sorry to hear about the damage to your car. Germans, what have they ever given us?
Will be driving the new BMW home for Christmas. Plan to start a boutique brewery making Doppelbockbeir. Could be fun. Have you considered The South as a holiday destination? I could hook you up. Call me maybe?
Maybe the South will be good for a holiday: currently the beach in Greenland is unseasonably balmy. Even the bears have left. Do you still have penguins?
Pretty galling to hear last night the Minister of Economic Development blame the Forest and Bird Society for holding up jobs on the west cost because apparently they are stopping the whole of a plateau from being strip-mined. Actually encouraging the quarry-enclave economy to continue in New Zealand is no economic strategy and should simply embarrass him. But doubling down on making the West Coast more vulnerable to global unprocessed commodity prices such as coal is mind-spinningly dumb, and then offloading the blame to environmental defenders is just nasty.
Even worse for Minister of State owned Enterprises for not topping up Solid Energy to keep the Springfield Mine open. Not even bothering to run the ruler over social welfare and wider economic benefit costs vs keeping the mine going is bad. But holding out a cruel hope to turn miners into carpenters on the Christchurch rebuild that will never happen is reprehensible.
In reality mining on the West Coast will eventually become a thing of the past. We are at a point with the planets climate where we cant continue to burn fossil fuels regardless of the economic circumstance. As a consequence would it not be a clever move from a far sighted society to transition to a solid state economic model that does not rely upon depleting resources. Something todays and future generations can aspire to as viable and rewarding. Starting with the West Coast. Any ideas?
Latest MediaLens report released today. Follows the events of the protests across the ME.
Poses the question was the initial Embassy attack a concerted attack…
If so are the Mainstream media responsible for setting off a chain of religiously motivated protests around the world in an attempt to cover up an obvious failure in the Western intervention in the Middle east. What does this mean for the Syrian situation??
Quoted:
reporting suggested that the initial media consensus blaming a provocative film was false. The Telegraph noted:
‘A security guard wounded in the attack… has insisted it was a planned assault by Islamist fighters, and not a protest that got out of hand.
‘The guard, who works for a British firm, said there was no demonstration over a controversial anti-Islamic film before extremists stormed the compound in the eastern city of Benghazi.’
Matthew Olsen, director of the US National Counterterrorism Center, told the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs: ‘I would say [the four Americans] were killed in the course of a terrorist attack.’
What National have not been able to achieve…
Roads of National Significance – reduced, delayed and not wanted
Ultra Fast Broadband – not going to hit target dates
National Standards – up shit creek
Keeping NZdrs in NZ – record numbers moving to Australia
Thousands upon thousands of new jobs – increasing unemployment
Reaching parity with Australian wages – the gap geting wider
Restore integrity to government – John Banks is still a minister
Sale of assets to mum and dad investors – in a slow, uncontrolled decent into failure
Fiscally responsible government – increased government debt
Push to get people to invest in business – house prices increasing again
Earthquake recovery – people still living in damaged houses while slap-up dinners for business people and unqualified people/friends paid large sums for unskilled work.
What National have been able to achieve…
Restrictions on beneficiaries – affects the poor
Tax cuts for the rich – makes our country poorer
Reduced public service – makes public servants unemployed and poorer
Restrictive labour laws – forces the poor to stay in work and keep there mouths shut
Halved the Kiwisaver member tax credit
No national cycleway but disjointed cycleways
Fraction of the jobs promised by the national cycleway
ECE subsidies changed
Thousand more children living in welfare dependant homes
More children in poverty
Used our money to pay people sell our assets that we don’t want sold
Shifted $2 billion in wealth from taxpayers to SFC investors
Increased GST to remove more wealth from taxpayers
$400 million taken away from Working for Families
Lovely list…..its amazing how well Lord Haw Haw Key has managed to avoid the opprobrium.
PS Love the photostream picture of Betty Windsor with Shonkers.
thanks for sorting out linking tidiness for luddites like me guys 🙂
hookie; please forward me a blank cheque. today i am gonna try and find a free scholarship in my “field” of interest
NZ- a kiwi-Fruit Republic, dayo…dayaayo…daylight come and me wanna go home…
Obama startin to pound those war drums on Assad and Iran; catch a few more disillusioned Republicans i spose,
now Joyce wants to leverage Spring Creek losses to ‘get on up’ on the Denniston Plateau; what a callous, transparent, blind, optimist.
See! any body can intercept IT information in transit according to Martin Cocker of Netsafe.
China’s first aircraft carrier enters service-TWP
Christian Conservatives? – i pray they get a LIFE. Dawks! (stumbling blocks) who the freak do they think they are? God?
Christ was the most radical man the world had ever seen until the next great prophet (blessings and peace be upon his name)
and now, when i go to NEWS NOW .co.uk, i get a freakin Herald ad; ggod thing my breakfast had settled; too early int the day to throw up.
u can read all the herald has to tell in one front webpage; it sorta goes like this
crime
sex
corruption
sport
violence
social deterioration
gossip
celebrity
the worst government in my lifetime
health epidemics
poverty
blame the parents
tar the unions
crime
sex
corruption
sport
violence
gossip
drugs
celebrity
crime
sex….
Ultimately, the fading of democracy comes as little surprise. Neoliberal capitalism, already ascendant before the earthquake, has little interest in community participation, the environment, or very much besides economic gain. Rod Carr, a year on from his talk at TEDxEQCHCH, was telling staff members at the University to ‘dob in’ underperforming colleagues. A department strongly critical of the earthquake response, American Studies, has now been disestablished. Further cuts are ahead. Westfield, the owners of Riccarton Mall, has recommended to the City Council that it sells off its stock of social housing; the National government has recommended that the CCC sell its other assets. Brownlee has mobilized anti-Council sentiment to broaden the powers of CERA, an unelected body. The BNZ Tower, on the edge of Cathedral Square, has gained approval to rebuild to thirteen storeys, eliminating the possibility of a low-rise central city. The principles of the Draft Central City Plan, namely ‘community involvement’ and ‘business investment’, have never been placed in starker opposition. Government and business—the TEDxCHCH crowd—have staged a counter-revolution, using the language of ‘disaster capitalism’ to lock out the hopes and dreams of those who took part in the performance of democracy at CBS. Gerry Brownlee now fronts the advertising campaign for TEDxEQCHCH: Uncontained, which is scheduled for this September.
It seems the SAS needs a brand spanking new training facility South of Auckland. To be build by a foreign designer and ready to train our boys to work through battle scenarios on buses, trains and oil rigs. We are not allowed to know the budget and how big it’s going to be but it will be ready in 2015. Can you say US bases?
Ardmore is nicely convenient to Auckland too, which means when we have the “event” which will allow the permanent stationing of the mercenaries, they will be here quick smart.
High tech tooled up choppers, and jacked up psychos who love to blow things up and kill people, all just a stones throw away!
And right next to the commercial airport too, gee I hope all the live munitions in the area will not bother the jumbo jets!
I feel much safer already knowing that this facility will be so close by.
Commercial sensitivities = BS, and an open cheque!
WTF are they looking offshore for designers? I’m sure that any competent architect could do it after speaking with the SAS about they want in such a facility.
How to throttle protests.
How to storm a social housing complex.
How to breach a citizen advocacy clinic.
How to protect state property from the citizenry.
How to recover occupied assets of trans-national corporations.
“I frankly think that crisis initiation is very tough and it’s very hard for me to see how the US president can get us to war with Iran” says Israel lobbyist Patrick Clawson, who continues with a call for the mass murder of Americans, along the lines of the USS Maine, Lusitania, Pearl Harbor, USS Liberty, and (by implication) 9/11 orchestrated war-trigger events to get the President of the US to help Israel to start a war with Iran.
Not that he’s advocating a false flag of course! Well… maybe a sinking sub or something like that I mean “We’re in the game of using covert means against Iranians, we could get nasty about it”!!
Some well-dressed and well-spoken young protesters in Britain gatecrashed a farewell dinner for the boss of Britain’s Inland Revenue Department recently to protest against his close links with the regulated.
He was accused of signing off on a deal that saved Goldman Sachs £20m in tax payments and another which cut Vodafone’s tax bill from £8bn to £1.25bn.
Miners loose jobs, next day joyce is telling enviromentalists to pull their protests out of
the court system,to allow bathhurst to mine,there is something shonkey about this,
shonkey has shares in bank of america which funds loans to bathurst,shonkey opened
the bathhurst conference,why? this also needs some investigation,perhaps another
shonkey deal to be bought out into the public arena.
China now see Japanese aggression, the same aggression
Japanese for decades has used in whale hunting in
the southern oceans, as if Japan had a historical
right to hunt Whales in the Southern Hemisphere.
Atleast with European Whalers they came, and stayed,
married, and settled, what has Japan done but aggressively
seized resources.
It has worked out pretty well for them I reckon. And the loss of carriers at Midway was bad luck, fortunes of battle – but guaranteed in the long run Uncle Sam would pay for Japan’s defense while Mitsubishi, Toyota, Sanyo etc etc got on with the job. Ever read about a crooked Jap firm or product ???
Jap = quality and reliability.
Hmmmmm I think your memory is a little short. “Jap Crap” was a pretty accurate description of most Japanese manufactured consumer products up until the late 60’s/early 70’s.
And the loss of carriers at Midway was bad luck, fortunes of battle
Nope – the Americans knew the exact date and target of the Japanese attack, as well as the exact disposition of the enemy forces and order of battle.
The Japanese also decided to split their fleets up into smaller groups which could not support each other.
It has worked out pretty well for them I reckon.
Uh, you gotta be kidding. Hiroshima and Nagasaki for starters. What do you consider that acceptable collateral damage?
aerobubble 15
Different culture and tightened borders now – can’t compare with previous history. Also I understand there is some power group that wants to catch whales that has influence with their political leaders. Sort of like the SCF investors that got everything they wanted in NZ. Or did they? Near enough anyway. And the oil industry etc..
given the large number of state agencies with
search powers, one does need to ask the question
if evidence say discovered about ACC clients was
safe if the same ‘legal’ understanding has been
used to that against Dot Com.
It’s apparent that the GCSB routinely spies on the electronic communications of New Zealand citizens and residents. In doing so it grossly breaches our right to privacy and ignores the well defined laws it’s meant to adhere to. The lack of proper oversight and avenues for redress when things go wrong shows that the current system is not operating in the best interests of the country or its people. But what’s going to be done about the problem? Absolutely nothing while John Key is in charge…
Roll up and enjoy a great left versus right argument between Red Logix and Tighty Righty on
“Work” and the false economy of Bennett’s welfare reforms. Some good stuff gone down there.
The Whale has been doing some spouting about this analysis:
—–
[WO said:] I am proud that I am easier to read than other bloggers. But very upset to lose to Pinko in these ratings and ask for a recount.
…
Mr Bradbury’s legendary stream-of-conciousness, fifty line, single sentence paragraphs on the blog would have completely munted those stats. I’m guessing it wasn’t one of those days. I find them easy to read though – but that’s me.
Perhaps unsurprisingly Wha***** and Kiwib*** find themselves in the special class/remedial learners end of the spectrum. Indeed 🙂
well, heres my summary of a day through the looking glass;
‘in the house; 400 notifications to CYPFs a DAY-do the math
(poverty and poor human education; REPARENT)
I very comfortable listening to David Cunliffe speak; he speaks to the Worker.
Hollande requests UN enter Syria
Greece; Poverty takes hold of the middle classes, the middle classes disappearing
the “New Poor” coming to a bungalow near you.
see Key on 3; “ahhh, (residency publicity) that runs to the heart of the matter”; wotta Dick
Spain; ” load up…load up …those rubber bullets..”
Fonterra; “drop in forthcoming capital projects, farmers to hunker down”
fortunately at present,
a “hungry market” for arable crops, yet very climate contingent
btw, Tolley the Trolley did come to carry Key’s excuses
and it’s Good Night from Him, and it’s Good Night from me. 😉
The latest Roy Morgan is out (hat tip Gobsmacked on the ‘Polls’ post).
National 43.5, Maori Party 2.5%, ACT NZ 0.5% and United Future a big fat duck egg. Totalling 46.5%.
Support for Labour is 33% (up 2%); Greens are 11.5%, New Zealand First 5%, Mana Party 1.5%, totalling 51 percent. And this before the Dotcom cock up hit the news stands.
…And only 3% of New Zealanders think the Prime Minister has done a good job trying to sell privatisation. Dotcom also inferred there was more to come that will no doubt further discredit John Key… Talk about Hoist with his own petard.
Dotcom also inferred there was more to come that will no doubt further discredit John Key…
I was quite taken aback at Key’s appearance on TV tonight. He looked almost a shadow of his former self – drawn and hollowed out looking eyes. Methinks he’s not been getting his beauty sleep…
I wonder what he was really doing in the USA when he wasn’t watching his son’s base ball game.
Electorally, assuming the MP get 3, UF 1 and ACT 1, its game on.
55 seats Lab + Greens. Add in two seats for Mana (Tiger Mountain will be pleased!) for 57 positive votes. The lukewarm puddle of piss that passes for a Government right now can only muster 58.
Winston has the casting vote with six.
Note that I’ve assumed ACT win Epsom. If the Nats run a candidate who passes the critical test of a) being alive and b) no, that’s it, breathing and upright should do it, then Key only has 57. Lab/Green/NZF have a comfortable 4-6 seat majority.
It’s this kind of polling that will see the Maori Party wondering if its best to start cuddling up to Shearer. After all, Government’s where its at for them. What would be the point of the MP in opposition? It would be a death sentence to go down with Key.
I read that poll as saying that up to 85% of kiwis want a government somewhere between the centre right and the far right. I don’t feel encouraged by it at all.
Economic Development Minister Steven Joyce has launched a broadside against the environmental opponents of The privately owned Denniston mine project. To do this Stephan Joyce has tried to draw a bow linking those who wish to stop the opening of the Dennistion mine, with the closing of the Spring Creek mine.
Everyone has been told this, including the Minister. Spring Creek is being closed because to the falling global price of commodities, especially coal, due to the recession and falling global demand.
The Minister is drawing a very long bow to suggest otherwise, and he knows this.
But he is doing it for a reason and his target is very clear.
For those of us concerned about climate change, to which burning coal is the single greatest contributor, it is an inescapable fact that we need to work with the West Coast communities that currently rely on coal as their mainstay industry….
On the other side….
Joyce and his fossil fuel mates are opportunistically trying to take advantage of the suffering of the West Coast workers and their communities to remove all environmental safeguards. Listen to his complaints about environmental “mitigations”, specifically his complaint against raising climate change. Joyce is a liar. The Minister is trying to get these workers on his side when it is he who is attacking them.
Blaming environmentalists for these job losses is a lie. This is clearly not the position in this case.
For misleading the public, the Green Party should be demanding that Joyce be forced to apologise in the house.
Because Spring Creek and Denniston are both coal exporting mines in competition with each other in a shrinking market, It is in the interests of the Spring Creek mine and the Greymouth community that Denniston never open.
Opening Denniston in the hope that coal prices will eventually recover. (dubious as this argument might be). Is the same argument being put by the workers and their union for keeping Spring Creek open. With the world slump in coal demand, to have in existence an already producing mine competing in the same area of the market, is a dagger in the heart of the Denniston project.
The publicly owned Spring Creek mine is in direct competition with the privately owned Denniston project.
The question must be asked;
With Solid Energy on the market – has possible private investor in Solid Energy, namely Bathhurst Resources, requested as a condition of sale that Spring Creek be closed?
Would an Official Information Request, if granted, reveal this?
Is Spring Creek being closed because it makes the Denniston project unviable?
Do, the underground workers of Spring Creek and the anti-coal lobby have a common interest in seeing that Denniston never opens?
Does the minister know this?
Is this the reason the Minister is trying to turn the Greymouth community’s anger against Solid Energy against the environmental opponents of Denniston?
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It's my distraction, setting up tiny scenes to photograph. I've got stuck on the Babushka dolls for now. Something about their bubble shape. Something about their never changing, smiling features, suggesting persistent equanimity. Can we get through everything that is being thrown at us and keep at least a tiny ...
. . March 31: Day six of living in lock-down… This time I managed to sleep a little longer and the alarm woke me at the pre-set time: 6.55am. Then remembered I was working a later shift and could’ve slept in. Oh well, there are things to do at home. ...
Image credit:Diamond Harbour School Blogs I notice a few regulars no longer allow public access to the site counters. This may happen accidentally when the blog format is altered. If your blog is unexpectedly missing or ...
Yesterday's Horizon poll showing support for a "Yes" vote in this year's cannabis referendum sliding into the majority for the first time in a year looked like good news for reformers – and it probably is. But the result warrants some scrutiny.The poll is the fifth in a series commissioned ...
For almost a week now, every one of us who isn’t an essential worker has been confined to their bubble. We are allowed to go shopping for groceries, to visit the doctor, and to get a bit of exercise if we stay local. The reason we are doing this is ...
The Covid-19 saga will no doubt produce many twists and turns for us before it is finally brought to an end. But one thing it has shown us – and what comfort it should bring us – is that our country’s government is in good hands. I am not thinking ...
In the absence of a vaccine or a cure for a deadly disease, staying home in your bubble is what you do, the concept is not new. To the best of my knowledge last time we did this in NZ was for polio, in the years before a vaccine came ...
The following statement was released on March 28 by the National Network on Cuba, a coalition of 40 groups, based in the United States. In recent weeks, Cuba has deployed hundreds of medical providers to over a dozen countries in Europe, Asia, as well as to their neighbors in Latin ...
This has been a terrible summer for Hector’s dolphins. The first indication was very low numbers of dolphin sightings during late spring and early summer. The Otago University Marine Mammal Research Team has carried out routine dolphin surveys at Banks Peninsula for more than 30 years. In all that time, ...
On March 17, Finance Minister Grant Robertson was quick out of the blocks with an economic rescue package to help businesses through the inevitable recession resulting from the coronavirus pandemic. Robertson had pulled together a scheme in short order that so far seems to have saved many jobs. In his ...
The purpose of the lockdown is to save lives, by reducing the spread of covid-19. We won't know if its really working for another week, but given the devastation that will result if it doesn't - 14,000 dead is the optimistic scenario - its definitely worth trying. But pausing the ...
. . March 30: Day five of living in lock-down… Woke up still in darkness. Alarm hadn’t gone off. Turn to radio clock; it’s a few minutes after 6am… I lie there in the dark, waiting to drift off to sleep… but it ain’t happening. Clock ticks over to 6.55 ...
The story of Les Gray, the public sector psychologist who told the truth about his use of cannabis and set off a storm, has a special place in the lore of cannabis reform in New Zealand.When Paul Shannon interviewed Gray for the 'Dope and Hope' issue of Planet magazine in ...
by Phil Duncan For Marxists, a key concern about social trends is their context – not just their causes, but why they happen when they do. Events and phenomena have causes, but they also are time or period-specific. While much of the left have capitulated recently to postmodernism, most notably ...
Since the lockdown began, we've all suddenly been reminded who the actually essential workers in our society are: not the people at the top who pay themselves the big bucks and rort the perks, but the people at the bottom they screw over and squeeze: cleaners, warehouse staff, truck drivers ...
Kia ora! As I've watched nearly all my remaining work vanish over the past couple of days, it has occured to me that one good way to keep me away from arguing with fools on Twitter all the time (in the knowledge that all we're really doing is processing our ...
Aotearoa New Zealand has committed to trying to extirpate the virus that causes COVID-19 from its shores. To do that, as a society we’ve moved to “Level 4”. That means adapting to unprecedented restrictions on our personal freedoms, particularly to our rights to move freely and associate with friends and ...
When the Prime Minister declared a state of emergency last week, she handed the police powers to enforce it. And almost immediately, we started hearing about heavy-handed, arbitrary "enforcement" by police who (at best) cared more about order than law, or (more likely) had no idea what the rules were ...
. . Lock Down: Day 4 – A photo essay with observations . March 29: Usual wake up routine as RNZ snaps on my radio-clock. Jim Mora’s voice slowly enters my conciousness; there’s talk of a second wave of covid19 taking hold in South Korea; the week in Parliament – ...
Yesterday, New Zealand recorded its first Covid-19 related death on the West Coast. Unfortunately this is unlikely to be the only fatality, with the virus now being found in every region of the country.However despite the significant danger, people are still unfortunately breaching lockdown rules.There’s really only one main very ...
Story of the Week... Toon of the Week... Coming Soon on SkS... Climate Feedback Claim Review... SkS Week in Review... Poster of the Week... Story of the Week... ‘Misinformation kills’: The link between coronavirus conspiracies and climate denialGrist / Rob Kim / Stringer / CSA Images Scientific ...
The kids did surprisingly well today – meltdown count was about 3, and mostly fairly short ones. (And a fourth while I was writing.) Game-wise I had a go at Fell Seal: Arbiter’s Mark. It’s a fairly standard RPG with turn-based combat and what they call a “mature storyline” (it ...
by Don Franks Hi David, Nice hearing from you, I’m glad to hear you’re getting by okay in these grim times. You asked how’s it going for us back here in New Zealand. You would have heard that the whole country is locked down and with breaks for exercise and ...
. . Lock Down: Day 3 – A photo essay with observations . March 28: First day of the first weekend in Lock Down. It feels like it’s been weeks since only Level 3 was declared last Tuesday, only four days ago. Woke up this morning to RNZ; coffee; toast, ...
A chronological listing of news articles linked to on the Skeptical Science Facebook Page during the past week, i.e., Sun, Mar 22, 2020 through Sat, Mar 28, 2020Articles Linked to on FacebookSun, Mar 22, 2020In Just 10 Years, Warming Has Increased the Odds of Disasters by Chelsea Harvey, ...
I’m here in lockdown with my flatmate and her two girls (6 and 2) and it. is. a time. They’re usually really active so to start with the only boardgame in the house is the copy of Guess Who that the 6 year old got for her birthday. Flatmate commented ...
The CV-19 (COVID) pandemic has seen the imposition of a government ordered national quarantine and the promulgation of a series of measures designed to spread the burden of pain and soften the economic blow on the most strategically important and most vulnerable sectors of society. The national narrative is framed ...
. . Lock Down: Day 2 – A photo essay with observations . March 27 – Day 2 of our Strange New World. The Park and Ride near my suburb, usually filled with hundreds of vehicles, had just… four; . . Another drive into Wellington City on a highway nearly ...
Fortune's Children: Under extraordinary pressure, the leader of the Government and the leader of the Opposition will each show us what they are made of. Have they been blessed with intelligence, grace, wit, poise, toughness, empathy and humour – and in what measure? More importantly, to what extent have they ...
If you’ve ever had the misfortune of having to rent a property on the open market in New Zealand, which is one of the most expensive in the entire world, you’ll likely be keenly aware of just how arrogant and entitled landlords and their real estate agents can be.Unfortunately for ...
Society-wise, aside from the specific morbidity shall we say of the medically-oriented aspects of this COVID-19 crisis, what is unfolding before the world is in more than one way an instructive study of humanity and reactions to a high intensity, high stress environment in real time. Friends, we are at ...
Right now low waged and insecure workers are feeling the economic brunt of the looming #Covid19 Recession. In response legal advocate Toby Cooper* and hospitality and worker’s rights advocate Chloe Ann-King, are putting together a series of legal blogs about your employment rights:In this legal blog we outline some ...
by Equipo Jurídico Pueblos and Gearóid Ó Loingsigh (25/03/2020) An escape plan in question On the night of March 21st and the early morning of the 22nd, the forces of the Colombian state stormed into the Modelo prison in Bogotá, murdering 23 prisoners and injuring 83, in response to the ...
When the government banned semi-automatic weapons in response to a terrorist atrocity, gun-nuts were outraged. Mired in toxic American gun culture, they thought owning weapons whose sole purpose was killing people was some sort of "constitutional right", a necessity for "defending themselves" against the government. Now, the Court of Appeal ...
Just before midnight on Wednesday March 25, Aotearoa New Zealand entered a countrywide alert level four lockdown. For at least the next four weeks, everyone who isn’t an essential worker is confined to their bubble. We are doing this to stop the explosive growth in people contracting and dying from ...
. . Lock Down: Day 1 – A photo essay with observations . Day one of the Level 4 nationwide lock-down (or, DefCon 4 as I sometimes cheekily call it) started at 11.59PM on 25 March. For a moment, most of the nation held it’s collective breath. In that brief ...
Broad, Sunlit Uplands: How those words fired my young imagination! Or, perhaps, it is more accurate to say: how those words fused, in my young mind, with the image printed on every packet of Fielder’s Cornflour. Always fascinated by history, especially modern history, I cannot hear Churchill’s wonderfully evocative words, even ...
. . 24 March 2020 9.46AM Number of covid19 cases in Aotearoa New Zealand: 102 . As of 11.59 on Thursday, most of New Zealand will go into “lock down”. People will be expected not to travel to work; not to socialise; and to stay home. I will not be ...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections A respected research group, Project Drawdown, finds that deploying solutions consistent with meeting the Paris climate targets would cost tens of trillions of dollars globally. But crucially, those outlays would also yield long-term savings many times larger than the up-front costs. The new 2020 Drawdown ...
It will pass. What happens next? Not immediately, but longer term. There are many opinions, fewer certainties. Will it “change everything!” as many confidently, and contradictorily predict? In this post I look at how foresight can help bound some of the uncertainties so you can more objectively consider the future. ...
We’ve been meaning t write something on Cuba and the coronavirus but have just discovered a very good article on the subject in the US left publication Jacobin. The article looks at how Cuba, a poor country but one where capitalism has been done away with, is leading the way ...
In 2018, El Shafee Elsheikh and Alexanda Kotey - two British citizens who had purportedly been stripped of their citizenship by the British government - were captured while fighting for Isis in Syria. The British government then conspired to hand them over to the US, and agreed to provide evidence ...
Transformers: The disaster of the Great Depression was transformed into a new and fairer society by the democratic socialism of the First Labour Government. The disaster of the Covid-19 Pandemic offers a similar transformative possibility to the Labour-NZ First-Green Government. Seize the time, Jacinda! You will never have a better ...
Tamper with The System? Well, we already are. But there's a difference between accidentally trickling sand into a precision gearbox versus formulating a plan to alter it on the fly with improvements in mind. One action is more or less innocently unscrupulous, the other amenable to earning an easy ...
Associate Prof George Thomson, Louise Delany, Prof Nick WilsonWhile it is possible that New Zealand can use intense public health controls to eradicate COVID-19 from the country – we must also plan for other scenarios where thousands of New Zealanders are sick – including many urgently hospitalised.1 Better resilience ...
Kia ora my name is Chloe Ann-King* and I am the founder of Raise the Bar, a campaign and non-profit that gives free legal aid, advocacy and tautoko to hospitality workers in Aotearoa. Right now all over our country hospo workers are being fired at will, having shifts cut or being ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters says getting New Zealanders back home and other travellers out of the country is "a nightmare for our embassies, consuls, and staff around the world".Speaking to NewstalkZB's Mike Hosking, the Foreign Minister said that he gave a clear message to people travelling overseas that they ...
The domestic travel ban has been lifted for stranded foreign tourists trying to get to international airports to fly home, after the Coalition Government announced a plan to help the tens of thousands of foreigners stranded here. Foreign Minister Rt. Hon. Winston Peters spoke with RNZ's Susie Ferguson said foreign ...
Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters believes the country is rediscovering its resilience and self-reliance through its response to the COVID-19 pandemic.He says he is heartened that the mass majority of New Zealanders are following lockdown rules and that the government looking at the future, including paying to keep much ...
New Zealand can emulate the success of the US after the Great Depression by exploiting our own resources to turn the economy around quickly, Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters says. Mr. Peters told Magic Talk that New Zealand has an opportunity to come out of the COVID-19 pandemic a "superior, ...
All 45 New Zealand Defence Force (NZDF) personnel are either on their way back to New Zealand, or already in the country, according to Defence Minister Ron Mark."Twenty-eight personnel arrived back in New Zealand last week and are in isolation at the Royal New Zealand Air Force base in ...
The COVID-19 situation in New Zealand is moving fast - and to avoid what we've seen overseas - the Government's response must be to move fast too. We're committed to keeping New Zealanders safe and well-informed every step of the way. ...
We know people are feeling anxious about COVID-19. While the situation is serious, New Zealand has a world-class health system and we’re well-prepared to keep New Zealanders safe. ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters is encouraging New Zealanders overseas to stay where they are amid the COVID-19 pandemic. "We are reaching a point where the best option for most New Zealanders offshore is to shelter in place, by preparing to safely stay where they are.” "This includes following the instructions ...
Rt. Hon. Winston Peters, Deputy Prime Minister, Minister of Foreign Affairs Foreign Minister Winston Peters is encouraging the tens of thousands of New Zealanders travelling overseas to consider sheltering in place, in light of COVID-19. “Since 18 March, we have been warning New Zealanders offshore that the window for flying ...
Ground-breaking law has passed that will decriminalise abortion and ensure women and pregnant people seeking abortions have compassionate healthcare. ...
The Green Party says that the measures announced by the Government today will help families and businesses to prioritise our collective health and wellbeing in the response to COVID-19. ...
As New Zealanders brace for a global downturn due to Covid-19, Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters says his Coalition Government’s rescue package "more significant" than any other he's seen around the world. The Coalition is to reveal a multi-billion-dollar stimulus plan on Tuesday afternoon designed to cushion the economic blow ...
The Government will be introducing legislation to make changes to the Companies Act to help companies facing insolvency due to COVID-19 to remain viable and keep New Zealanders in jobs. The temporary changes include: Giving directors of companies facing significant liquidity problems because of COVID-19 a ‘safe harbour’ from insolvency ...
The Government’s plan to cushion the blow of COVID-19 by supporting incomes, jobs and businesses, and position the economy to recover has been backed by another international report. International credit rating agency Moody’s today reaffirmed its highest Aaa credit rating on New Zealand, saying the economy is expected to remain ...
National sports organisations have been given certainty of funding to ensure they can remain viable through the COVID-19 pandemic, Sport and Recreation Minister Grant Robertson announced today. “The global spread of COVID-19 has had a significant impact on sport and recreation in New Zealand, including the cancellation or postponement of ...
Changes have been made to allow butchers to process pork, only for supply to supermarkets or other processors or retailers that are open, Agriculture Minister Damien O’Connor has announced. “We carefully weighed the risk of allowing butchers to open their shops for retail customers, but the risk of spreading COVID-19 ...
Essential workers who take leave from work to comply with public health guidance are being supported with a leave scheme to ensure they will continue to receive income, say the Minister of Workplace Relations and Safety Iain Lees-Galloway and Minister for Social Development, Carmel Sepuloni. A number of essential businesses ...
A Government WhatsApp channel has been launched to help make information more easily accessible and shareable in the fight against COVID-19. Govt.NZ, which is free to use on any mobile device, will carry information and news for the public, businesses, healthcare providers, not for profits and local government. It can ...
The Government has announced a plan to enable the safe, orderly exit of tens of thousands of stranded foreign nationals from New Zealand during the current COVID-19 Alert Level 4 restrictions, Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Winston Peters has said. “When we moved into lockdown a week ago, the ...
Health Minister Dr David Clark says the Government is delivering on its commitment to support general practice doctors and nurses, and pharmacies on the front-line of our fight against COVID-19. "For us to overcome COVID-19, we need community health services such as general practice and community pharmacy to step up ...
Justice Susan Thomas has been appointed Chief High Court Judge, Attorney-General David Parker announced today. She replaces Justice Geoffrey Venning who has resigned from the position. David Parker paid tribute to Justice Venning, who he said had stewarded the High Court very capably over the last five years. “On behalf ...
Businesses can start applying to their banks for loans under the Business Finance Guarantee Scheme set up to support the New Zealand economy during the COVID-19 pandemic. “We’re moving quickly to protect New Zealand businesses, jobs and the economy during this unprecedented global economic shock,” Finance Minister Grant Robertson said. ...
Work is underway looking at measures to speed up consents for development and infrastructure projects during the recovery from COVID 19, to provide jobs and stimulate our economy. Environment Minister David Parker said the COVID-19 pandemic is a serious global crisis that will have a wide ranging and lasting impact ...
Advance payments will be made to transport construction industry contractors to retain the workforce and ensure it is ready to quickly gear up to build projects which will be vital to New Zealand’s COVID-19 economic recovery, Transport Minister Phil Twyford announced today. He said keeping the workforce required to build ...
The Government has tasked a group of industry leaders to seek out infrastructure projects that are ready to start as soon as the construction industry returns to normal to reduce the economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, Economic Development Minister Phil Twyford and Infrastructure Minister Shane Jones say. The Infrastructure ...
Work to scale up the health system in preparation for COVID-19 was today outlined by Health Minister David Clark, as he reported back to the new Epidemic Response Committee. “We are well placed to contain the spread of COVID-19. We have taken early and decisive action at our borders, and ...
The Government is refining its COVID-19 essential business guidance to include the distribution of news publications for communities which are hard to reach. The Minister of Broadcasting, Communications and Digital Media, Kris Faafoi, said the move was in recognition of the importance for New Zealanders who might be harder to ...
The Government is ensuring supermarkets can open on Easter Sunday so we can buy groceries, but stay closed on Good Friday allowing workers to take a break. This provides a balanced approach and ensures we avoid large queues that two days closure may cause. “Supermarkets will be able to open ...
Following the successful conclusion of the Building Partner Capacity (BPC) mission at Taji, New Zealand defence personnel are returning to New Zealand from Iraq, in accordance with the Cabinet decision made in June 2019, Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters and Defence Minister Ron Mark announced today. “New Zealand is very ...
The State of National Emergency to help stop the spread of COVID-19 has been extended for a further seven days, Minister of Civil Defence Peeni Henare said. The initial declaration on March 25 lasted seven days and can be extended as many times as necessary. “Since we went into isolation ...
New Zealand’s ability to go hard and go early in the fight against COVID-19 has been underpinned by strong Government finances and the growing economy heading into this global pandemic, Finance Minister Grant Robertson says. The Treasury today released the Crown financial statements for the eight months to the end ...
Health Minister Dr David Clark says 36 new intensive care beds at Christchurch Hospital’s new Hagley building are being fast tracked so they are available for treatment of COVID-19 patients. The Ministry of Health is working with contractor CPB and Canterbury DHB to enable access to the hospital’s ICU, ...
The Government has fast-tracked up to $1 million to help Air New Zealand move urgent freight to and from New Zealand, with the first flight to Shanghai leaving tonight, Transport Minister Phil Twyford announced today. Phil Twyford says it’s crucial that trade in vital goods such as medical supplies and ...
New Zealand will temporarily remove tariffs on all medical and hygiene imports needed for the COVID-19 response. Trade and Export Growth Minister David Parker and Commerce and Consumer Affairs Minister Kris Faafoi said today that the New Zealand Customs Service will apply tariff concessions to all diagnostic reagents and testing ...
Minister of Finance Grant Robertson has clarified that the changes to the wage subsidy scheme announced yesterday mean that employers should be passing on the full subsidy to workers, except in the case where the person’s normal income is less than the level of the subsidy. “We still want employers ...
Medical face masks from the national reserve supply are now being distributed to District Health Boards, while at the same time local production is being ramped up. Yesterday more than 640,000 masks were sent to DHBS – that is an immediate two week supply, with more to follow in coming ...
The Government has made modifications to the wage subsidy scheme to ensure people don’t lose their jobs during the national lockdown. These changes will soften the impact of COVID-19 on workers, families and businesses, and position them to exit the lockdown and look to recovery, Finance Minister Grant Robertson says. ...
Farmers whose herds were culled in response to the outbreak of Mycoplasma bovis will be able to minimise the tax treatment of their income in some circumstances. Revenue Minister Stuart Nash says Cabinet has agreed to change the law. It means farmers may be eligible to spread their income over ...
A $27 million dollar package, effective immediately, is being provided to social sector services and community groups to ensure they can continue to provide essential support to communities as we stay at home as a nation to stop the spread of COVID-19, Minister for Social Development Carmel Sepuloni announced. “At ...
“The guilty plea today will provide some relief to the many people whose lives were shattered by what happened on March 15,” Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said. “These guilty pleas and conviction bring accountability for what happened and also save the families who lost loved ones, those who were injured, ...
The Prime Minister is holding daily press conferences to update New Zealanders on the Government's response to COVID-19. Links to videos and transcripts of these updates below. These transcripts also include All of Government press conferences led by Director Ministry of Health's Director-General of Health Dr Ashley Bloomfield. 25 March: Live update from the Prime ...
Frontline Police numbers have broken through the 10,000 mark for the first time in history as officers step forward to keep the community safe during the COVID19 lockdown. “Two Police graduations in Auckland and Wellington in the past week have been conducted in unprecedented circumstances,” Police Minister Stuart Nash said. ...
Urgent legislation has been passed to support the package of economic and social measures needed to recover from the impact of the coronavirus outbreak. “The COVID-19 Response (Taxation and Social Assistance Urgent Measures) Bill will cushion New Zealanders from the worst economic impacts of the COVID-19 outbreak,” said Revenue Minister ...
From tomorrow, Government support for farmers and growers affected by drought will be expanded and extended across the country, with access to Rural Assistance Payments (RAPS) available throughout the North Island, parts of the South Island and the Chatham Islands, Social Development Minister Carmel Sepuloni announced. “These challenging conditions have ...
Parliament has passed amendments to legislation that give the Secretary of Education stronger powers to act in the fight to limit the spread of COVID-19, Education Minister Chris Hipkins said today. “They are part of a suite of changes passed under the COVID-19 Response (Urgent Management Measures) Legislation Bill,” Chris ...
Canada, Australia, Chile, Brunei and Myanmar have joined forces with New Zealand and Singapore by committing to keep supply chains open and remove any existing trade restrictive measures on essential goods, especially medical supplies, in the face of the Covid-19 crisis. Trade and Export Growth Minister David Parker today welcomed ...
Immediate freeze on rent increases Tenancies will not be terminated during the lock-down period, unless the parties agree, or in limited circumstances Tenants who had previously given notice can stay in their if they need to stay in the tenancy during the lock-down period Tenants will still be able to ...
As New Zealand unites to lock-down in the fight against COVID-19, the Finance Minister is urging all businesses and workers to stay connected over the next four weeks. “We understand the extreme pressure many businesses are under right now. I know most business owners think of their workers as family ...
A State of National Emergency has been declared across the country as the Government pulls out all the stops to curtail the spread of COVID-19. “Today we put in place our country’s second ever State of National Emergency as we fight a global pandemic, save New Zealanders’ lives and prevent ...
Mr Speaker I wish to make a Ministerial Statement under Standing Order 347 in relation to the recent declaration of a State of National Emergency. Having considered the advice of the Director Civil Defence Emergency Management, the Minister of Civil Defence declared a State of National Emergency for the whole of ...
People needing to travel on domestic flights, trains and Cook Strait ferries to get home before the country moves into level 4 lock-down tomorrow night will be able to continue using the passenger services until midnight on Friday, Transport Minister Phil Twyford said today. Domestic passenger services, particularly ferries, have ...
The Government, retail banks and the Reserve Bank are today announcing a major financial support package for home owners and businesses affected by the economic impacts of COVID-19. The package will include a six month principal and interest payment holiday for mortgage holders and SME customers whose incomes have been ...
Covid-19 is a real threat to older people, but these Central Otago seniors are embracing technology, experiencing no FOMO, and finding new ways to connect and share, finds Jill Herron When the full lockdown began on March 25 it meant the end of going for a swim, spa or to ...
Former editor of the Woman's Weekly, Nicky Pellegrino, bids farewell to the magazine that brought information and fun to generations of New Zealand women. All those stories. Gone. Stories about our politics, our health, our education, our aspirations. Stories about the houses we lived in and the gardens we grew, ...
As small businesses fight for their survival in the Covid-19 lockdown, it seems one of the country’s biggest retail landlords is not keen to share the pain. On the one side, you have Jonathan*. Jonathan runs a small business out of South Auckland’s Sylvia Park - New Zealand’s biggest mall. ...
With no Covid-19 cases and its economy desperate to restart, the Chathams is keen to go fishing again, writes Jim Kayes.It shouldn’t really be a surprise. They are, after all, ahead of New Zealand by 45 minutes.And though they are part of Wellington’s Rongotai electorate, the fiercely ...
Like countless New Zealanders stranded overseas, Wellingtonian Rosie O’Hagan will be braving authorities, airlines, airports and uncertainty to make it back from the other side of the world, writes Jim Kayes.Rosie O’Hagan hadn’t stepped outside for three weeks.When she finally did – around midnight on Friday ...
PACIFIC PANDEMIC DIARY:By David Robie A rather beautiful Guåhan legend is rather poignant in these stressed pandemic times. It is one about survival and cooperation. In ancient times, goes the story, a giant fish was eating great chunks out of this western Pacific island. The men used muscle ...
Simon Wren-Lewis, Emeritus Professor of Economics and Fellow of Merton College, University of Oxford, raises good questions about Britain’s response to the coronavirus pandemic. Some of them seem germane to this country’s response. Wren-Lewis posted his critique on his Mainly Macro blog under the heading Following the Science or a ...
Alex Casey speaks to a dream expert about why so many people are suddenly remembering their vivid and often horrible dreams. As the days begin to blur together and the only thing we get between sleeps is unimaginably horrible news and an embarrassing tootle around the block, it’s no surprise ...
How is Covid-19 spreading within the country? Newsroom is collating information as it's available to paint a picture of what's happening.The following charts are based on numbers shared at the daily press conference. These may vary from the full day's numbers released in the Ministry of Health's spreadsheet of ...
Medical centres across the country are condensing services, moving online, and ushering in pandemic plans. Josie Adams assesses what it’s like to access and provide essential medical care under alert level four.On Monday, Sandra Russell woke up before dawn and drove to Milford to get her blood tested. She has ...
In our new series The Lockdown Letters, some of New Zealand’s best writers tell us what they’ve been up to in the days of Covid-19 alert level four. Today, writer and doctor Glenn Colquhoun, with the second of his Letters to Hone Tūwhare and his Travelling Band of Constant Companions. ...
ANALYSIS:By Haiqing Yu of RMIT University and Michael Keane of Curtin University China has gradually emerged out of its shadow of despair as the epicentre where the coronavirus pandemic started. Now, there is face saving required – as well as agenda-setting in the global power play. China played ...
Tech giant Google has released a giant global data set which shows how different countries are locking down, and which NZ regions are most compliant with its lockdown.A giant set of reports released by Google, created using its anonymised cellphone location data reveals the scale of human behaviour change the ...
Comedian Penny Ashton writes on the necessity of the arts, especially during lockdown.On March 22, everyone’s favourite fiscal bloodhounds, the New Zealand Taxpayers’ Union, sent out a tweet in response to Creative New Zealand’s announcement that it will dedicate an emergency response package to helping New Zealand’s artists, in the ...
Wellington writer Philippa Swan’s new novel TheNight of All Souls is an homage to Pulitzer-winning and all-round fabulous American writer Edith Wharton. Wharton died in 1937 but, Swan writes, she’s very much of the moment. Nobody does social distancing like Wharton did. While Wharton was still comparatively young, she created the ...
For all The Spinoff’s latest coverage of Covid-19 see here. Read Siouxsie Wiles’s work here. New Zealand is currently in alert level four. The country is shut down, apart from essential services. For updated official government advice, see here.The Spinoff’s coverage of the Covid-19 outbreak is funded by The Spinoff Members. To support this work, join The ...
Normally heaving year-round, Queenstown has ground to an eerie halt as Covid-19 cases rise and tourism income plummets, reports Paul Taylor. On a hill behind Queenstown's coronavirus Covid-19 community testing centre, the resort's iconic Skyline gondola sits motionless. More than 17 million people are estimated to have ridden the gondola ...
Are we drinking more in the lockdown? Hard to know, writes David Slack, but we’re certainly having to get creative about it. Almost every phone call I’ve answered this week has begun the same way: “You still off the drink, then?” Fair question. What a time to be not drinking. ...
Kiwi clinical psychologist Desiree Dickerson is stuck with her family in Spain and has written a guide in Nature: "Seven tips to manage your mental health and well-being during the Covid-19 outbreak." It’s Day 17 of the Covid-19 lockdown in Spain. In a small village on the Mediterranean coast, about ...
"Will our ills be cured? Will our feet carry us? For how long?": a short story set in Henderson by West Auckland writer Serie Barford.I learned to drive a tractor when I was a kid feeding out hay with my cousins on a dairy farm down the line. I ...
Without active testing in the community our Covid-19 picture isn’t complete, an epidemiologist says. David Williams reports. There are worse places to be self-isolating than Whakatāne, in the Bay of Plenty, says Bridget Robson, who lives on a two-acre block and keeps chickens. “We live in a beautiful part of ...
How do you hold a funeral service with the country in lockdown? Where there’s a will – and a tech-savvy uncle – there’s a way, Erin Kavanagh-Hall discovered.I was floating somewhere in the Cook Strait when I heard my grandfather’s funeral had been cancelled.I should elaborate. It was a Monday, ...
‘Stay in your bubble’ didn’t exist 100 years ago, but our ancestors would want us to know how essential it is to do so, says Jai Breitnauer.It was a warm but slightly grey January day in 2019 when I pulled the car over to the side of SH1, just south ...
David Clark’s misadventure in mountain biking was a stupid, but ultimately forgivable offence. The bigger problem is the continued uncertainty around what is and isn’t appropriate activity in lockdown, as Sam Sachdeva writes. Given the pressure he and his Cabinet colleagues are under, it is little surprise Health Minister David ...
Assessing the economic impact of Covid-19 requires a new approach to a problem economists have not encountered in modern times, writes Dr Kirdan Lees Covid-19 has presented quite a problem for economists. Containment policies that seek to flatten the Covid-19 curve or eliminate the virus, restrict economic activity. All governments ...
Every day at 1pm New Zealand’s Director-General of Health Dr Ashley Bloomfield announces precise figures on the number of confirmed and probable cases of Covid-19 in the country. He is working on the best information available, and during this week the level of community transmission was put at around ...
Most of New Zealand's MPs are in lockdown just like the rest of us, confined to their neighbourhoods and stuck in their bubbles. Checkpoint called a few to ask them what they're doing. ...
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Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By David Tuffley, Senior Lecturer in Applied Ethics & CyberSecurity, Griffith University “Zoombombing” in case you haven’t heard, is the unsavoury practice of posting distressing comments, pictures or videos after gatecrashing virtual meetings hosted by the videoconferencing app Zoom. With hundreds of millions ...
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Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michael Lund, Commissioning Editor, The Conversation Editor’s note: The following is current as at April 3, 2020. Things are changing quickly so best to keep an eye on the latest information from WA Health, as well as the federal government.This article ...
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Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sunanda Creagh, Head of Digital Storytelling What does the COVID-19 pandemic sound like? For this episode, Dallas Rogers – a senior lecturer in the School of Architecture, Design and Planning at the University of Sydney – asked academic colleagues from all over ...
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Contact tracing is a crucial part of the Covid-19 puzzle and technology might prove essential to scaling up New Zealand's tracing capacity, Marc Daalder reports With the lockdown reducing physical contact between members of the public and testing ramping up, the only missing piece of the Covid-19 puzzle is contact tracing. ...
Insolvency laws will be temporarily changed to allow troubled companies to trade while technically insolvent Finance Minister Grant Robertson has announced changes to the Companies Act to allow companies to put their debts into "hibernation". Robertson said companies facing liquidity problems would have "safe harbour" from their normal insolvency duties ...
Te Rūnanga o Ngāti Ruanui and Te Kaahui o Rauru are celebrating the decision of the Court of Appeal, announced today, to stop Trans-Tasman Resources plans for risky seabed mining off the South Taranaki Bight. The Court of Appeal found that there ...
Bernard Hickey talks to Kiwibank Chief Economist Jarrod Kerr about a massive spike in US jobless claims, and they talk about an inspiring Kiwi app to fight Covid-19 globally. Guest, Pie Funds chief executive Mike Taylor also joins them to talk about the massive market swings and hopes for recovery. Bernard zooms out ...
Political commentators from the left and right sides of the political divide are questioning the powers being exercised by police during the nation-wide “lockdown”. The Asian Invasion 2019 blog draws attention to the warning sounded by former UK Supreme Court Justice Jonathan Sumption when he challenged Covid-19 actions by British ...
Pacific Media Watch The International Coalition for Human Rights in the Philippines (ICHRP) has strongly condemned the shoot-to-kill order by President Rodrigo Duterte this week as a ‘dangerous’ opening to target and kill anyone in a public space. “We are raising the alarm in the international community on President ...
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Four PhD students engaged a clinical psychologist to help them navigate an uncertain time in their studies. They share their findings here.As four PhD students from Massey University’s Joint Centre for Disaster Research we, like many others, can’t stop reading and talking about the unfolding events that have gripped our ...
The SpinoffBy Ashleigh Rushton, Lisa McLaren, Marion Tan & Sara Harrison
Covid-19 testing of the wider population is on the cards as World Health Organisation research shows people are most contagious within their first few days of being infected Director-General of Health Ashley Bloomfield says Covid-19 carriers are highly infectious when they show few signs of carrying the virus. People were ...
Z Energy is the latest company to cut its dividend payout and start talking to its banks about strengthening its finances. Chief executive Mike Bennetts said the company, the largest fuel retailer in the country, had been battered by a range of issues over the past 18 months, and was ...
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Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Cassandra Pattinson, Research Fellow, The University of Queensland Getting a good night’s sleep can be difficult at the best of times. But it can be even harder when you’re anxious or have something on your mind – a global pandemic, for example. ...
Journalist and Great Barrier Island resident Lindsay Wright reflects on outer gulf pandemic preparedness. Hardy locals can tough it out but Auckland bach owners and boaties should keep their distance. Aotea Great Barrier, the easternmost island in the Hauraki Gulf, are undergoing a Covid-19-inspired population flood. Great Barrier has scenery that makes ...
The Pharmaceutical Society of New Zealand is delighted that the government has moved quickly to provide an initial financial support package for pharmacy. The $15 million package was paid this week to pharmacy contract holders. Pharmaceutical Society president ...
How is Covid-19 spreading within the country? Newsroom is collating information as it's available to paint a picture of what's happening.The following charts are based on numbers shared at the daily press conference and are "as of 9am" of the day. There were 71 new cases of Covid-19 in ...
A new poem by Wellington poet and bookseller Ash Davida Jane. washed up! it gets tiring pushing the fire alarm every nightbut things keep catching on fireor sometimes ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Charles Foster, Postdoctoral Research Associate, University of Sydney Our earliest vertebrate (animals with backbones) ancestors laid eggs, but over millions of years of evolution, some species began to give birth to live young. There is a traditional dichotomy in vertebrate reproduction: species ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Charles Foster, Postdoctoral Research Associate, University of Sydney Our earliest vertebrate (animals with backbones) ancestors laid eggs, but over millions of years of evolution, some species began to give birth to live young. There is a traditional dichotomy in vertebrate reproduction: species ...
Welcome to the second edition of our lockdown Top 10s. A reminder that this chart has nothing to do with sales or launches or the publishing cycle; these are just books the Unity team love – and this week it’s westerns, full of big skies and long rides and showdowns.AUCKLANDAll ...
Wellington Mayor Andy Foster’s plan to cover revenue shortfalls through borrowing without cutting low priority spending is immoral, says the New Zealand Taxpayers’ Union . “Businesses and households across the country are meeting financial challenges ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kevin John Brophy, Emeritus Professor of Creative writing, University of Melbourne “Katrina, I had in mind a prayer, but only this came,” Bruce Dawe wrote to his infant daughter, new-born, in intensive care, her life in the balance, declaring as poets must ...
The shock closure of Bauer NZ – and with it all of the country’s current affairs magazines – is a stark reminder of the fragile state of local media, writes Mel Bunce, the author of a book on the subject.It is a dark week for journalism in New Zealand, with ...
Join Leonie Hayden as she works through the first four weeks of Scotty Morrison’s Māori Made Easy.Rāmere/FridayWe made it to the end of week one e te whānau. It wasn’t that hard! In fact it was… Māori made easy.To end our week of pronunciation practice we’re going to revisit everything we ...
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By Sri Krishnamurthi of Pacific Media Watch The Vanuatu government is using the Covid-19 to impose draconian measures and authoritarian rule by end of last month. Wholesale censorship of all Covid-19 related content has been instituted. Office of the Government Chief Information Officer (OGCIO) took the extraordinary step to ...
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Editor’s Note: Here below is a list of the main issues currently under discussion in New Zealand and links to media coverage.New Zealand Parliament Buildings, Wellington, New Zealand. Today’s contentMedia Henry Cooke (Stuff): There’s no easy way for Government to save media drowning. But a fast fix is ...
Just after midday a cyclist was killed on a straight road on a clear day, after being hit by a van in North Canterbury. Lucinda Rees from NZ School Speeds is asking for the mandatory cyclist/vulnerable road user passing gap, which is in consultation, ...
By Indra Singh in Suva Prime Minister Voreqe Bainimarama says that if Fijians continue to disregard the Covid-19 coronavirus pandemic directives from authorities, a nationwide 24-hour curfew could be imposed. His comments come as Fiji yesterday recorded its two latest coronavirus cases, taking the total to seven. Bainimarama said ...
In our new series The Lockdown Letters, some of New Zealand’s best writers tell us what they’ve been up to in the days of Covid-19 alert level four. Today, Ōtaki author Renée.Yes, a few cyclists out and about. I remember my first bike bought from Farmers around 1942, five shillings a ...
Open mike 26/09/2012 
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NEWSFLASH!!!!
UNITED STATES PUBLICLY CONDEMNS ISRAEL
National Radio, Wednesday 26 September 2012
In a great rush a few minutes ago, I turned on National Radio for the news and could hardly believe my ears: the U.S. has finally come out and condemned Israel, just as it eventually did with other protégés such as Suharto’s Indonesia, Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, and apartheid South Africa.
This is the only part I heard from the news broadcast: “President Obama said that if there is a case that should arouse protests across the world today, it is a regime that tortures children and fires rockets into apartments.”
No doubt we’ll be hearing more of this remarkable political and moral volte-face as the day goes on.
Meanwhile, back to the books….
wotta u like? u satirist u.
“u satirist u”.
Nothing satirical about it. It seems our friend Morrissey took the president’s words as genuine.
The satire on view here is entirely by President Obama.
George W. Obama.
Pur the pipe down, Prof, Mozza was clearly being satirical. Obama was talking about Syria, obviously.
Here’s what our friend Morrissey transcribed from the radio: “President Obama said that if there is a case that should arouse protests across the world today, it is a regime that tortures children and fires rockets into apartments.”
“A regime that tortures children and fires rockets into apartments.” That’s the Israeli regime.
No kidding! It’s also the NZ regime and every other country on the planet bar Switzerland. Obama was referring to Syria, Mozza was riffing on that. I’m starting to think you’re not really a Professor.
“It’s also the NZ regime and every other country on the planet bar Switzerland.”
That statement is either deliberately nonsensical, or simply dishonest.
“Obama was referring to Syria,”
The president was talking about “a regime” that “tortures children and fires rockets into apartments.” That describes Israel, which has done those things for a much longer time than Syria has.
“Mozza was riffing on that.”
To any non-ideologue of good faith who was listening, the condemnation of a regime that tortures children and fires rockets into apartments would have to be a condemnation of Israel. Of course, after the statement has been fed through the filter of hypocrisy, it only applies to officially designated enemies.
“I’m starting to think you’re not really a Professor.”
By gad, sir! I have a good mind to thrash you with a horse-whip, on the steps of your club.
Horse whipping eh? It’s the only language the likes of me understand!
Like it or not, it was a direct quote from Obama about Syria, not Israel, though as I pointed out, it could apply to pretty much any country. NZ, for example, did the first in Samoa, Parihaka, the Ureweras and elsewhere and that SAS soldier chappie who’s just retired got a VC for the latter.
(Just for the record, I’m anti-zionist and I believe in a two state solution, with the Palestinion people having a country with contiguous borders and a working port)
Yep.
Some very good points there, my man. I think I’ll shelve the horse-whipping for the time being, seeing as you seem to be someone who might enjoy it a little too much for your own good.
Would you like me to put you in touch with like-minded people?
here’s a link to what he said and what he was talking about. Welcome to realpolitik.
The relationship is definitely changing, this sort of thing would have been unheard of not very long ago.
US Envoys Stay Seated For Ahmadinejad’s UN Speech, Israel Walks Out Alone!
http://www.veteransnewsnow.com/2012/09/25/us-envoys-stay-seated-for-ahmadinejads-un-speech-israel-walks-out-alone/
God bless Israel and Lebanon , let’s hope they finally recognise each others’ existence.
And before long, Israel will be condemning the U.S.?
thats funny!
It’s a tricky one, presedent Obama needs to do this, I doubt Israel will retaliate, it’s about opening the dialog at the moment.
.
Can I just check that I’ve got Joyce and Blinglish right: basically, give up your legal rights, forget about protecting the environment, forsake the conservation estate and National Ltd™ will, maybe, provide some extra jobs . . . blackmail, divide and rule, with a touch of “serves you right”, is that how it goes?
Thanks National Ltd™ – I’m lovin’ it.
Yep, but the important thing is the newly announced extension to the John Key Memorial Cycleway which will Joyce reckons will create at least a million jobs on the West Coast. I understand the route will now terminate inside the Spring Creek Mine, echoing the NZ economy’s disappearence down a deep, dark hole.
Ha! progress, I will pump up the tyres and add a parachute.
Sorry only the rich get Parachutes…. Golden ones!
If you read the report, you’ll see that we at National Ltd cannot just “make some jobs” for you people. The only exception is when we say we can make some jobs. Those jobs are not jobs that can be worked, per se, they are ledger jobs for reporting purposes only. We have not read the report and don’t intend to, since we take our word. It’s about integrity. You see, it’s about the economy. We cannot go on redistributing tax payer money. This does not exclude us selling thing you own to our friends.
If you have any further questions, please make an appointment for Tuesday. We will be unexpectedly unavailable on Tuesday while we watch softball overseas. Nothing will happen between then and now, except for the stuff that is already happening, of which we have no knowledge.
Dear John,
Whilst watching the softball overseas can you please consider this “redistribution of taxpayer money”. If I stop paying tax do I still qualify? As a “citizen”. Do I have rights as a “citizen” or only as a taxpayer? Can you redistribute it to “citizens” or only those paying taxes? I really need to understand where I fit into your governments re distributive plans.
Most humbly,
Mr Bored
Dear Mr Bored,
You are right to be humble, or at least meek. However, our lawyers have instructed us to tell you that this is no gaurantee you shall inherit the earth or the profits of your time under the National Ltd administration.
If you stop paying taxes, we will have you arrested, though this action may not be taken depending on the evaluation of your personal valuation you have yet to supply. We of course cannot view your valuation ourselves, or consider it’s contents. It is a matter of integrity. You will have to supply a certified viewer who will give us the signal by running over a person poorer than you, in a town of your choosing.
Going forward, we encourage your intent to not pay taxes, in principle, and this alone may enhance our reading of your personal valuation. As a Tradeable Work Unit, you qualify to pay us tax, but the rights of citizenship are unsure. What is citizenship? A ship made of buddhist cities? I bet I could find a lawyer who could say the opposite. Obligations on our part remain strictly defined. It is a matter of integrity, except in the case of you being unable to arouse our interest in your personal fortune or the poor person you run down surviving.
Stay humble, bottomfeeder,
National Ltd
Dear John,
To avoid arrest the money has been ETed (I figured habeus corpus was at risk if I said it “was in the mail”. Recent events indicate the NZ Police dont quite “understand” the law). The IRD when presented with the extra payment charged me interest on not declaring this as provisional tax at the beginning of the FY, thereby defining my relationship as a taxpayer rather nicely (from their viewpoint). What was intriguing was that they had a copy of all my emails to you via GCSB, maybe they are watching you because you still talk to foreign criminal types who you used to work with.
I did take your advice: I ran down a rather rotund man with a German accent, injuring myself in the process. ACC state that they wont pay for my injuries because the gent was rather too large and should have been avoidable. My counter claim is that he was too big to avoid. Either way they are checking out my ACC levy via the aforementioned IRD. The vehicle went to the panel beater who suggested that I flag the insurance excess claim because the said German gent represents a credit risk and cant pay me for the “accident”. He was apparently formerly rich but by some dint of misfortune he met up with bad company (an MP from Epsom) and its been all downhill since. The insurance claim came back nicely, good riddance Mr B, we went bust with Christchuch, thanks for your money……
So in summary thank you for the explanation of my relationship with the state as a taxpayer: I keep paying, you transfer to your mates in Reemers who dont pay tax. With regard to citizenship I am now more informed: it is off to Greenland where plenty of new land becomes available weekly.
Yours far less humbly
Mr B Esq.
Hello Mr. B Esq.,
Thanks for your note. John is out of town and has left me in charge of correspondence and crises. If we could keep this on the hush hush, that would be good. Don’t worry about GCSB. Those guys are all pinstripes and salad lunches. Sorry to hear about the damage to your car. Germans, what have they ever given us?
Will be driving the new BMW home for Christmas. Plan to start a boutique brewery making Doppelbockbeir. Could be fun. Have you considered The South as a holiday destination? I could hook you up. Call me maybe?
Bill E.
Dear Bill,
Maybe the South will be good for a holiday: currently the beach in Greenland is unseasonably balmy. Even the bears have left. Do you still have penguins?
B Esq
Uturn – key words, “of which we have no knowledge” – message for the day?
Shearer did some really good straight talk on the Key/Banks/English scandal just now on Morning Report.
If he keeps this up he could be leader of the opposition some day.
[audio src="http://podcast.radionz.co.nz/mnr/mnr-20120926-0714-pm_under_pressure_over_dotcom_spy_scandal-048.mp3" /]
Thanks for that felix, ‘Dottie’ has really got them dazed and confused. Blinglish takes the fall? don’t think he likes Key enough to do that.
Shearer did way better than usual in terms of knowing his subject.
Could be?, that’s mean.
Thanks for the link as I missed it live. Yep, he’s definitely getting better. Agree re clear straight talk. Good to give credit where credit due 🙂
“Yep, he’s definitely getting better.”
In the same manner, Mr John Banks, who has not told any ooutrageous lies this week, is also “getting better.”
You are without doubt a man of infinite generosity, LynW.
felix – great, Shearer finally showed after nearly one year!!
Pretty galling to hear last night the Minister of Economic Development blame the Forest and Bird Society for holding up jobs on the west cost because apparently they are stopping the whole of a plateau from being strip-mined. Actually encouraging the quarry-enclave economy to continue in New Zealand is no economic strategy and should simply embarrass him. But doubling down on making the West Coast more vulnerable to global unprocessed commodity prices such as coal is mind-spinningly dumb, and then offloading the blame to environmental defenders is just nasty.
Even worse for Minister of State owned Enterprises for not topping up Solid Energy to keep the Springfield Mine open. Not even bothering to run the ruler over social welfare and wider economic benefit costs vs keeping the mine going is bad. But holding out a cruel hope to turn miners into carpenters on the Christchurch rebuild that will never happen is reprehensible.
Not to mention claiming the miners’ union opposed the new Denniston mine proposal, when the opposite is true.
In reality mining on the West Coast will eventually become a thing of the past. We are at a point with the planets climate where we cant continue to burn fossil fuels regardless of the economic circumstance. As a consequence would it not be a clever move from a far sighted society to transition to a solid state economic model that does not rely upon depleting resources. Something todays and future generations can aspire to as viable and rewarding. Starting with the West Coast. Any ideas?
You know, I wonder if SE’s retrenchment is more because union membership at the SOE’s is greater than among the privately owned coal companies?
Latest MediaLens report released today. Follows the events of the protests across the ME.
Poses the question was the initial Embassy attack a concerted attack…
If so are the Mainstream media responsible for setting off a chain of religiously motivated protests around the world in an attempt to cover up an obvious failure in the Western intervention in the Middle east. What does this mean for the Syrian situation??
Quoted:
reporting suggested that the initial media consensus blaming a provocative film was false. The Telegraph noted:
‘A security guard wounded in the attack… has insisted it was a planned assault by Islamist fighters, and not a protest that got out of hand.
‘The guard, who works for a British firm, said there was no demonstration over a controversial anti-Islamic film before extremists stormed the compound in the eastern city of Benghazi.’
Matthew Olsen, director of the US National Counterterrorism Center, told the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs: ‘I would say [the four Americans] were killed in the course of a terrorist attack.’
FULL ARTICLE: http://www.medialens.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=697:us-consulate-killings-spontaneous-religious-or-planned-political&catid=25:alerts-2012&Itemid=69
Shalom. and now the news..
http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/iconic-israeli-newspaper-maariv-faces-collapse-critics-allege-its-part-of-anti-media-blitz/2012/09/25/4345d464-0749-11e2-9eea-333857f6a7bd_story.html?
Feel free to add to this lists…
What National have not been able to achieve…
Roads of National Significance – reduced, delayed and not wanted
Ultra Fast Broadband – not going to hit target dates
National Standards – up shit creek
Keeping NZdrs in NZ – record numbers moving to Australia
Thousands upon thousands of new jobs – increasing unemployment
Reaching parity with Australian wages – the gap geting wider
Restore integrity to government – John Banks is still a minister
Sale of assets to mum and dad investors – in a slow, uncontrolled decent into failure
Fiscally responsible government – increased government debt
Push to get people to invest in business – house prices increasing again
Earthquake recovery – people still living in damaged houses while slap-up dinners for business people and unqualified people/friends paid large sums for unskilled work.
What National have been able to achieve…
Restrictions on beneficiaries – affects the poor
Tax cuts for the rich – makes our country poorer
Reduced public service – makes public servants unemployed and poorer
Restrictive labour laws – forces the poor to stay in work and keep there mouths shut
Halved the Kiwisaver member tax credit
No national cycleway but disjointed cycleways
Fraction of the jobs promised by the national cycleway
ECE subsidies changed
Thousand more children living in welfare dependant homes
More children in poverty
Used our money to pay people sell our assets that we don’t want sold
Shifted $2 billion in wealth from taxpayers to SFC investors
Increased GST to remove more wealth from taxpayers
$400 million taken away from Working for Families
Lovely list…..its amazing how well Lord Haw Haw Key has managed to avoid the opprobrium.
PS Love the photostream picture of Betty Windsor with Shonkers.
+1
Sums up capitalism quite well.
thanks for sorting out linking tidiness for luddites like me guys 🙂
hookie; please forward me a blank cheque. today i am gonna try and find a free scholarship in my “field” of interest
NZ- a kiwi-Fruit Republic, dayo…dayaayo…daylight come and me wanna go home…
Obama startin to pound those war drums on Assad and Iran; catch a few more disillusioned Republicans i spose,
now Joyce wants to leverage Spring Creek losses to ‘get on up’ on the Denniston Plateau; what a callous, transparent, blind, optimist.
See! any body can intercept IT information in transit according to Martin Cocker of Netsafe.
China’s first aircraft carrier enters service-TWP
Christian Conservatives? – i pray they get a LIFE. Dawks! (stumbling blocks) who the freak do they think they are? God?
Christ was the most radical man the world had ever seen until the next great prophet (blessings and peace be upon his name)
and now, when i go to NEWS NOW .co.uk, i get a freakin Herald ad; ggod thing my breakfast had settled; too early int the day to throw up.
u can read all the herald has to tell in one front webpage; it sorta goes like this
crime
sex
corruption
sport
violence
social deterioration
gossip
celebrity
the worst government in my lifetime
health epidemics
poverty
blame the parents
tar the unions
crime
sex
corruption
sport
violence
gossip
drugs
celebrity
crime
sex….
An post about Chch from the inside…
Ultimately, the fading of democracy comes as little surprise. Neoliberal capitalism, already ascendant before the earthquake, has little interest in community participation, the environment, or very much besides economic gain. Rod Carr, a year on from his talk at TEDxEQCHCH, was telling staff members at the University to ‘dob in’ underperforming colleagues. A department strongly critical of the earthquake response, American Studies, has now been disestablished. Further cuts are ahead. Westfield, the owners of Riccarton Mall, has recommended to the City Council that it sells off its stock of social housing; the National government has recommended that the CCC sell its other assets. Brownlee has mobilized anti-Council sentiment to broaden the powers of CERA, an unelected body. The BNZ Tower, on the edge of Cathedral Square, has gained approval to rebuild to thirteen storeys, eliminating the possibility of a low-rise central city. The principles of the Draft Central City Plan, namely ‘community involvement’ and ‘business investment’, have never been placed in starker opposition. Government and business—the TEDxCHCH crowd—have staged a counter-revolution, using the language of ‘disaster capitalism’ to lock out the hopes and dreams of those who took part in the performance of democracy at CBS. Gerry Brownlee now fronts the advertising campaign for TEDxEQCHCH: Uncontained, which is scheduled for this September.
http://keaandcattle.com/cultureandsociety/goodbye-letter-to-christchurch
i have said it before; that V.C is a VERY unhelpful man 🙁
It seems the SAS needs a brand spanking new training facility South of Auckland. To be build by a foreign designer and ready to train our boys to work through battle scenarios on buses, trains and oil rigs. We are not allowed to know the budget and how big it’s going to be but it will be ready in 2015. Can you say US bases?
Great, just what we need to guarantee New Zealand remaining a free country.
Ardmore is nicely convenient to Auckland too, which means when we have the “event” which will allow the permanent stationing of the mercenaries, they will be here quick smart.
High tech tooled up choppers, and jacked up psychos who love to blow things up and kill people, all just a stones throw away!
And right next to the commercial airport too, gee I hope all the live munitions in the area will not bother the jumbo jets!
I feel much safer already knowing that this facility will be so close by.
Commercial sensitivities = BS, and an open cheque!
QFT
WTF are they looking offshore for designers? I’m sure that any competent architect could do it after speaking with the SAS about they want in such a facility.
How to throttle protests.
How to storm a social housing complex.
How to breach a citizen advocacy clinic.
How to protect state property from the citizenry.
How to recover occupied assets of trans-national corporations.
Look stop telling them what to do bud, I want u too write out ten times ….
“I will not speak Evil to National” 🙂
The SAS have been based at Ardmore as long as I can remember. What is it exactly that’s “brand spanking new” about this base?
“I frankly think that crisis initiation is very tough and it’s very hard for me to see how the US president can get us to war with Iran” says Israel lobbyist Patrick Clawson, who continues with a call for the mass murder of Americans, along the lines of the USS Maine, Lusitania, Pearl Harbor, USS Liberty, and (by implication) 9/11 orchestrated war-trigger events to get the President of the US to help Israel to start a war with Iran.
Not that he’s advocating a false flag of course! Well… maybe a sinking sub or something like that I mean “We’re in the game of using covert means against Iranians, we could get nasty about it”!!
This is worth a look at Interest.co
http://www.interest.co.nz/opinion/61291/wednesdays-top-10-nz-mint-tax-avoidance-protesters-black-tie-pain-spain-mainly-around-
Some well-dressed and well-spoken young protesters in Britain gatecrashed a farewell dinner for the boss of Britain’s Inland Revenue Department recently to protest against his close links with the regulated.
He was accused of signing off on a deal that saved Goldman Sachs £20m in tax payments and another which cut Vodafone’s tax bill from £8bn to £1.25bn.
John Key receives a letter from a jilted lover: http://localbodies-bsprout.blogspot.co.nz/2012/09/dear-john-love-has-gone.html
Miners loose jobs, next day joyce is telling enviromentalists to pull their protests out of
the court system,to allow bathhurst to mine,there is something shonkey about this,
shonkey has shares in bank of america which funds loans to bathurst,shonkey opened
the bathhurst conference,why? this also needs some investigation,perhaps another
shonkey deal to be bought out into the public arena.
Indeed, it comes under the – Who are the major shareholders in Bathurst file…
followed by
Who has shares/interest in the major shareholders of Bathurst!
SNAFU
China now see Japanese aggression, the same aggression
Japanese for decades has used in whale hunting in
the southern oceans, as if Japan had a historical
right to hunt Whales in the Southern Hemisphere.
Atleast with European Whalers they came, and stayed,
married, and settled, what has Japan done but aggressively
seized resources.
Japan’s plans ran into problems off Midway in 1942
Yeah Japan was pretty much screwed from the time the US managed to break their naval code.
Choosing war against the USA was never going to work out well for Japan.
It has worked out pretty well for them I reckon. And the loss of carriers at Midway was bad luck, fortunes of battle – but guaranteed in the long run Uncle Sam would pay for Japan’s defense while Mitsubishi, Toyota, Sanyo etc etc got on with the job. Ever read about a crooked Jap firm or product ???
Jap = quality and reliability.
Hmmmmm I think your memory is a little short. “Jap Crap” was a pretty accurate description of most Japanese manufactured consumer products up until the late 60’s/early 70’s.
Nope – the Americans knew the exact date and target of the Japanese attack, as well as the exact disposition of the enemy forces and order of battle.
The Japanese also decided to split their fleets up into smaller groups which could not support each other.
Uh, you gotta be kidding. Hiroshima and Nagasaki for starters. What do you consider that acceptable collateral damage?
aerobubble 15
Different culture and tightened borders now – can’t compare with previous history. Also I understand there is some power group that wants to catch whales that has influence with their political leaders. Sort of like the SCF investors that got everything they wanted in NZ. Or did they? Near enough anyway. And the oil industry etc..
given the large number of state agencies with
search powers, one does need to ask the question
if evidence say discovered about ACC clients was
safe if the same ‘legal’ understanding has been
used to that against Dot Com.
Spooks – a law unto themselves
It’s apparent that the GCSB routinely spies on the electronic communications of New Zealand citizens and residents. In doing so it grossly breaches our right to privacy and ignores the well defined laws it’s meant to adhere to. The lack of proper oversight and avenues for redress when things go wrong shows that the current system is not operating in the best interests of the country or its people. But what’s going to be done about the problem? Absolutely nothing while John Key is in charge…
Roll up and enjoy a great left versus right argument between Red Logix and Tighty Righty on
“Work” and the false economy of Bennett’s welfare reforms. Some good stuff gone down there.
Yes, prism. Some comments have made a very good read, with various people, including RL & DTB providing some very good arguments and evidence.
Pete, stand up. Your stats on blog readability as posted on the Standard,
are getting some comment on other blogs. Tim Selwyn over at Tumeke put up a post on it this afternoon:
http://www.tumeke.blogspot.co.nz/2012/09/and-you-thought-national-standards-were.html
Onya Pete!, we got a “Yeah Na M8” from Whaleoil M8!
Hey we should throw a party and invite them over M8.
Yeah Naa M8!
Pete: thumbs up mate. I’ll get the choir to do an extra chorus of the Red Flag for ya.
Cheers. It’s nice to be appreciated.
well, heres my summary of a day through the looking glass;
‘in the house; 400 notifications to CYPFs a DAY-do the math
(poverty and poor human education; REPARENT)
I very comfortable listening to David Cunliffe speak; he speaks to the Worker.
Hollande requests UN enter Syria
Greece; Poverty takes hold of the middle classes, the middle classes disappearing
the “New Poor” coming to a bungalow near you.
see Key on 3; “ahhh, (residency publicity) that runs to the heart of the matter”; wotta Dick
Spain; ” load up…load up …those rubber bullets..”
Fonterra; “drop in forthcoming capital projects, farmers to hunker down”
fortunately at present,
a “hungry market” for arable crops, yet very climate contingent
btw, Tolley the Trolley did come to carry Key’s excuses
and it’s Good Night from Him, and it’s Good Night from me. 😉
The latest Roy Morgan is out (hat tip Gobsmacked on the ‘Polls’ post).
National 43.5, Maori Party 2.5%, ACT NZ 0.5% and United Future a big fat duck egg. Totalling 46.5%.
Support for Labour is 33% (up 2%); Greens are 11.5%, New Zealand First 5%, Mana Party 1.5%, totalling 51 percent. And this before the Dotcom cock up hit the news stands.
…and before the job losses in the mines and Nuplex? Labour may have just hit the ‘there is an alternative to doing nothing’ button at the right time.
http://www.roymorgan.com/ Up to 23 September
…And only 3% of New Zealanders think the Prime Minister has done a good job trying to sell privatisation. Dotcom also inferred there was more to come that will no doubt further discredit John Key… Talk about Hoist with his own petard.
Dotcom also inferred there was more to come that will no doubt further discredit John Key…
I was quite taken aback at Key’s appearance on TV tonight. He looked almost a shadow of his former self – drawn and hollowed out looking eyes. Methinks he’s not been getting his beauty sleep…
I wonder what he was really doing in the USA when he wasn’t watching his son’s base ball game.
Electorally, assuming the MP get 3, UF 1 and ACT 1, its game on.
55 seats Lab + Greens. Add in two seats for Mana (Tiger Mountain will be pleased!) for 57 positive votes. The lukewarm puddle of piss that passes for a Government right now can only muster 58.
Winston has the casting vote with six.
Note that I’ve assumed ACT win Epsom. If the Nats run a candidate who passes the critical test of a) being alive and b) no, that’s it, breathing and upright should do it, then Key only has 57. Lab/Green/NZF have a comfortable 4-6 seat majority.
It’s this kind of polling that will see the Maori Party wondering if its best to start cuddling up to Shearer. After all, Government’s where its at for them. What would be the point of the MP in opposition? It would be a death sentence to go down with Key.
true, and instead of getting crumbs, they’ll get mango skins.
Better watch that your roof painting ass doesn’t get reported to Paula Benefit.
I read that poll as saying that up to 85% of kiwis want a government somewhere between the centre right and the far right. I don’t feel encouraged by it at all.
not sure if anyone else has drawn this comparison yet: Paula Bennett = Dolores Umbridge.
http://harrypotter.wikia.com/wiki/Dolores_Umbridge
Also, every time she talks about ‘wrapping around’ all I can think of is the face-hugging alien in Alien.
Economic Development Minister Steven Joyce has launched a broadside against the environmental opponents of The privately owned Denniston mine project. To do this Stephan Joyce has tried to draw a bow linking those who wish to stop the opening of the Dennistion mine, with the closing of the Spring Creek mine.
Minister Blames environmentalists for the closing of Spring Creek
The Forest and Bird Protection Society has branded Joyce’s comments as “mischievious” and “opportunistic”.
Let’s get this clear.
Everyone has been told this, including the Minister. Spring Creek is being closed because to the falling global price of commodities, especially coal, due to the recession and falling global demand.
The Minister is drawing a very long bow to suggest otherwise, and he knows this.
But he is doing it for a reason and his target is very clear.
For those of us concerned about climate change, to which burning coal is the single greatest contributor, it is an inescapable fact that we need to work with the West Coast communities that currently rely on coal as their mainstay industry….
On the other side….
Joyce and his fossil fuel mates are opportunistically trying to take advantage of the suffering of the West Coast workers and their communities to remove all environmental safeguards. Listen to his complaints about environmental “mitigations”, specifically his complaint against raising climate change. Joyce is a liar. The Minister is trying to get these workers on his side when it is he who is attacking them.
Blaming environmentalists for these job losses is a lie. This is clearly not the position in this case.
For misleading the public, the Green Party should be demanding that Joyce be forced to apologise in the house.
Because Spring Creek and Denniston are both coal exporting mines in competition with each other in a shrinking market, It is in the interests of the Spring Creek mine and the Greymouth community that Denniston never open.
Opening Denniston in the hope that coal prices will eventually recover. (dubious as this argument might be). Is the same argument being put by the workers and their union for keeping Spring Creek open. With the world slump in coal demand, to have in existence an already producing mine competing in the same area of the market, is a dagger in the heart of the Denniston project.
The publicly owned Spring Creek mine is in direct competition with the privately owned Denniston project.
The question must be asked;
With Solid Energy on the market – has possible private investor in Solid Energy, namely Bathhurst Resources, requested as a condition of sale that Spring Creek be closed?
Would an Official Information Request, if granted, reveal this?
Is Spring Creek being closed because it makes the Denniston project unviable?
Do, the underground workers of Spring Creek and the anti-coal lobby have a common interest in seeing that Denniston never opens?
Does the minister know this?
Is this the reason the Minister is trying to turn the Greymouth community’s anger against Solid Energy against the environmental opponents of Denniston?