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notices and features - Date published:
7:03 am, December 26th, 2016 - 63 comments
Categories: open mike -
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The server will be getting hardware changes this evening starting at 10pm NZDT.
The site will be off line for some hours.
The big news.
Arctic to be 20C hotter than average in-record breaking North Pole heatwave.
Prince of tides: New Zealand’s shrinking coastline
Just in case people think that we won’t be affected by ongoing global warming.
Reported by the western media
Christians in Mosul-area town liberated from Isis celebrate Christmas
Not reported by the western media
Two regime supporters blathering on about “the terrorists” weren’t reported by the western media? I’m shocked.
Mosul?
Fallujah?
Yemen?
US atrocities on an epic scale yet barely a word from the US, UK and NZ corporate media. Can’t you see the different way the same stories are reported totally differently reported?
As to Aleppo. we now we have some interesting figures. Before the recent eastern Aleppo “moderate” headchoppers’ defeat around 150,000 people lived there, but ten times more, some 1,500,000 lived in Syrian government held parts of the city. Following the rebel defeat just over 30,000 decided to go and join the other jihadists in Idlib, but four times as many opted to stay in government territory – and yet to listen to the MSM you would still think that those 30,000 jihadists and their families were all of Aleppo!
Where are the casualties hidden? In the 30,000 or the 120,000?
Dear Paul and PM,
It would be really good if you two could accept that you are always going to disagree on the truth in Syria and both back off and leave well alone. You both have your points but, and I’m sure many will agree, your diatribes are not working.
Happy to agree to that
🙂
I can happily commit to starting no threads about Syria on the Standard, as I haven’t started any anyway (actually I think I did post something once, but that was it). No commitment to ignore things other people post, though.
Deal.
🙂
Exactly. That’s all you do. React to posts about Syria but provide nothing to refute the truth that the MSM has been telling lies.
I have decided I can’t be bothered discussing the issue with pm anymore.
That’s all you do. React to posts about Syria but provide nothing to refute the truth that the MSM has been telling lies.
As someone who’s posted particularly virulent collections of lies on this subject, you’re hardly in a position to complain about others.
Thought there was a plan to agree to disagree on this issue?
Somebody breached the agreement.
We agree on a lot of other stuff.
Let’s focus on those points.
Thank you garibaldi – I’m finding it extremely irritating. I want the truth to come out but my immediate concern is for the innocents trying to survive, i e the children and their parents and other civilians and also the hospitals and doctors and staff trying against all odds to do their vital work. Whoever is bombing them into oblivion needs their collective heads read. I’m sorry I can’t come up with a better idea because suggesting an eye for an eye simply won’t be a solution.
US atrocities on an epic scale yet barely a word from the US, UK and NZ corporate media. Can’t you see the different way the same stories are reported totally differently reported?
US atrocities in Mosul, Fallujah and Yemen? As far as I can see, the media isn’t reporting them because they aren’t happening. And they have reported on what the Saudi regime’s doing in Yemen.
Don’t support fascism
(It really shouldn’t have to be said).
Which means don’t support genocidal regimes and their foreign allies committing mass murder from the safety of the sky. A crime against humanity not matched in scale and ferocity since the bombing of Guernica and Warsaw by fascist airforces in WWII, nor indeed since the Allied Forces aerial genocide carried out against German and Japanese civilian cities with firestorm and nuclear weapons.
I do not support fascism.
I didn’t mention your name Paul, but you obviously feel that my criticism above applies to you.
Are you are feeling the pin prick of conscience for being a supporter of the Assad regime?
Your comment was a reply to my post at 2. Therefore I assumed it was directed at me.
Garibaldi requested that folk leave off making their points about Syria. Out of respect to her, I have desisted from making further comments.
I choose to disagree with your view and do not like your assertion that I support the Assad regime, but shall leave it alone.
However if you continue to post the links you do, I may put forward the views of independent journalists who disagree with the points you make.
Very well, since you decry anything that comes from the MSM media as being biased against the regime, let us start with this:
http://litci.org/en/rami-makhlouf-a-corruption-poster-boy/
Paul the childishly simplistic and erronous narrative, (that you now seem to be backing away from); maintains that Syria has been invaded as part of a planned “regime change” by the Western powers, and not primarily a mass democratic revolt by the Syrian people against the oppressive dictatorship of the Assad regime.
What do your stable of ‘independent journalists who disagree with the points I make’, have to say about the following, which shows that Bashar Assad is very far from being an enemy of imperialism and instead as my previous post points out, is more a partner with imperialism in ripping off his own people, than its opponent.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10023538868
That the dictator now seems to fallen out of favour with the West is more to do with a recognition of the power of the popular revolutionary movement against him, than any genuine support for the struggle of the Syrian people to rid themselves of tyranny.
I am not backing away from my view that we have been lied to about the events in Syria by the western media. I agree with the views of the independent journalists I have referenced over the past week. I respect the work of experienced reporters like Patrick Cockburn, Robert Fisk, John Pilger and Peter Oborne.
I am merely trying to avoid a flame war.
So according to you Paul your sources are so ilustrious that you (and they) don’t have to address the facts.
But as the saying goes, ‘Facts are stubbourn things’.
Just because you or your arrayed stable of illustrious experts refuse to address them, doesn’t mean that they will go away.
So what do your stable of experts have to say, about the 19,000 Syrian troops that Bashar Assad supplied to George Bush Senior’s “Coalition Of The Willing”?
What do your experts have to say about the Arab Spring, the single greatest uprising, by sheer weight of numbers, in human history. Dwarfing the numbers involved in the French and Russian revolutions combined. At one time 20 million Egyptians were in the streets protesting against the regime of Hosni Mubarak.
Are you and them of the opinion that this was all a CIA conspiracy?
What about the dictatorship itself, how come all the heads of government in Syria seem to be directly related to the ruling family directly or by marriage. And what do you have to say about the ruling elite around Assad letting the world bank into privatise all the state assets while coruptly taking a cut for themselves?
You refuse to address any of these questions with the lame excuse that you don’t want to start a flame war.
The truth is your support for mass murder and destruction wrought by the regime and its allies against the Syrian people which the whole world is witness to, has no moral or ethical basis, which you can openly defend. And you know it.
Don’t support fascism.
The head chopping Jihadis of Aleppo have left evidence behind of how they treat their opponents.
Cheerleaders for the ‘rebels’ need to be aware of the vicious authoritarian criminals they are aligning themselves with.
Assad is a dictator -(Once the war ends, I sense the Russians will retire him) yet his opponents are so awful, most Syrians prefer his regime to a gang who would impose a barbarism is becoming more evident by the day.
” Russian troops have found mass graves in Aleppo with bodies showing signs of torture and mutilation, the Russian defence ministry has claimed.
Major General Igor Konashenkov said the Russians “found mass graves of several dozens of Syrians who suffered atrocious torture and massacre”.
In a statement, he said some of the bodies had been mutilated and some had gunshot wounds.”
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/aleppo-syria-mass-graves-russia-claims-rebels-torture-mutilation-massacre-a7496066.html
It was reported in a number of Western media sources:
http://www.reuters.com/video/2016/12/22/celebrating-victory-in-aleppo?videoId=370787914
France 24 showed footage a few days ago.
Snopes…yet another site with political bias that isn’t obvious at first.
http://www.naturalnews.com/2016-12-25-snopes-fact-checkers-actual-whores-david-mikkelson-elyssa-young-presstitutes-fraud.html
(Article above implies that sex acts make you somehow inappropriate to have opinions or a life in general. Apologies for that. You should know that Mike Adams battles with his own beliefs. Think he is either a Scientologist or JW, either way both are cults imo)
People were starting to think
http://investmentwatchblog.com/obama-signs-christmas-bill-making-alternative-media-illegal/
http://financialsurvivalnetwork.com/2016/12/chris-martenson-fake-news-and-the-demise-of-the-legacy-media/
Did you know that audio and video disengage your critical thinking? Apparently so.
Key message: Read your news, avoid radio and TV. Ugh.
That looked interesting, so I went looking for more information. While it seems to be all over the kook and crank websites that live by gathering clicks from the gullible, there’s a definite lack of sober fact-checking analysis raising concerns about the legislation.
So for now, it looks to me like it probably belongs in the “fake news” basket. Fortunately it’s less likely to result in people harming each other than that “pizzagate’ bullshit you sprayed all over the place.
Neo-liberalism’s impacts……
on the people of Ireland
Thousands queue for food parcels in Dublin city centre
on the people of Britain
Christmas at a food bank: ‘They’ve not eaten for three days’
on the people of the US
Feeding 43 Million Americans at Food Banks Each Year
on the people of New Zealand
Hundreds sleep outside Auckland City Mission, night after night, over the Christmas period
The economic system for the 1%.
I too am concerned about the plight of the 1% of the population who still struggle despite living in the best country in the world. That would be 47,000 people out of 4,700,000. There is no simple solution given the multiplicity of situations but as Hamilton has shown the answers are local and I reckon we could aim to abolish homelessness in NZ within three years. This is not politics. This is community concern. The other 99% can make it happen.
Bryan Bruce’s Facebook post on the December 24th is the best riposte to your hateful lies.
I have put in bold the statistics that would shame you if you had a conscience or some empathy.
You come over as the Ebenezer Scrooge of 2016.
The Ghost of Poverty This Christmas.
share.me.https://www.facebook.com/www.redsky.tv/posts/1208889542526729:0
Do you really believe than more than 1 in 4 children in NZ are experiencing material hardship? There is an issue of course but that sort of hyperbole is unbelievable.
You will find everything you want to know here.
http://www.childpoverty.co.nz/
Do you believe that report is truthful? False news.
There is no point discussing issues with you.
He’s asking a pretty basic question – what’s the harm in answering it – or does answering it truthfully it back up your links ?
The harm is that fisiani spends a lot of time trolling on this site.
I am not interested in discussing the views of people who deny climate change or poverty/inequality. I have better things to do.
false news??…a study and report from Otago Uni, NZs highest regarded University ….supported by a further report by the gov funded office of the children”s commissioner…..trip, trap.
man, I hope they pay you well.
Interesting reading.
Climate disruption Nature needs our help
An excerpt….
Another thought provoking read.
The disaster of the Russian military Tu-154 – a few short first thoughts
Pointing the finger at the Ukraine with no evidence if only as a hypothesis is not thought provoking, it is however, both daft and mischievous which is what one would expect from that website.
A clip from Good Will Hunting that will make you think.
Steve Braunias : 2016 – The way we were
An apocalyptic vision, deep, loved it
http://nzh.tw/11771632
An elegy for America…and New Zealand.
A good speech but the ending was wrong. The US has never been the greatest country in the world as it’s never been moral.
Yes – I don’t believe the indigenous peoples of the Americas and the West Africans targeted by the Atlantic slave trade would in any way regard the US as a great country.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genocide_of_indigenous_peoples
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantic_slave_trade
Another musician has left us.
George Michael
53.
R.I.P.
Always thought he was pretty crap personally
Hardly the time for such a comment, eh?
Listen without prejudice James.
I simply don’t like his music. Nothing else.
I thought his music was crap – and I’m not getting upset about a guy just because he was famous.
Just for you James, “Listen without Prejudice” was ,imo, his best album.
It would appear he was actually a really good person, giving millions to charities.
This Christmas, Don’t Forget That Jesus Was A Socialist
http://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/13854296
Heaven must be getting rather crowded with singers, musicians and actors not to mention the Red Army Choir. 2016 has been a rough year on them all.
Hopefully Carrie Fisher will beat the odds and stay on this side of the turf.
I’m in the generation after the Baby Boomers and I’m beginning to think that my generation is going to be the “grief generation”. With such a large cohort of people entering old age than the generation behind them is going to know many more people dying than would be usual (outside of war).
Grim news.
https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-XufTLF2sIIw/WGC6uGGuWtI/AAAAAAABxL4/Eo28_-y_Iwc8gcZ9OtELn46Yw14VUcmlwCLcB/s1600/15622706_10154064046611373_6949162012571194215_n.jpg
Just a general inquiry – why are comments taking so long to appear? Is there some form of moderation in place or a change in the system software or…?
I used to post a comment and it would appear within 30 seconds. Now it takes a lot longer (at least 10 minutes sometimes even longer than that).
[lprent: There are a lot of security systems in place on this site to prevent spamming, impersonations, trolling and other annoying and moderator time consuming behaviours. They usually work pretty well and save the volunteer moderators an awful lot of time.
One is that if you enter your handle or email differently, then you get treated as being a new user to the system. That means you have to have at least one comment released by a moderator before you can automatically have comments appear. This is pretty common, especially when people don’t watch their caps or punctuation or spelling.
At present a more sophisticated security system is having a conniptions about certain people and/or machines. Probably on the basis of IP numbers and/or the the reported locations and/or people using VPNs and/or ’email’ addresses it perceives people as coming from. You and a few others are getting hit by it.
I haven’t managed to pinpoint what security system is doing it as the dratted things don’t log and I don’t have the energy (or time) to watch in real time. So comments caught in auto-spam like yours tend to sit there until one of the moderators releases them.
Another separate issue (that doesn’t affect you) is due to people with logins not using them. The system views that as being a probable impersonation.
A simple solution to the first and second problems may be to have people just get logins. However I haven’t had time to reactivate and test the security on that system. Last time it was running it caused a lot of work for me dealing with non-human bots and the silly trolls. I don’t have that time to expend. ]
To follow up on my earlier post it’s nearly 1.5 hours later and it still hasn’t appeared.
[lprent: Holiday time. Personally I didn’t get out of bed until midday after binge watching the last episodes of The Good Wife with Lyn until 0400 last night. What do you expect for the cost of the service? ]
Thanks Lprent – no criticism implied – more a test for me to see when it appeared.
Enjoy your break.