General Debate 30 December 2010

December 30th, 2010 at 8:00 am by David Farrar
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38 Responses to “General Debate 30 December 2010”

  1. Rodders (1,790) Says:

    Whimp by name, wimp by nature

    http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=10697055

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  2. Pete George (17,877) Says:

    An insight into problems dealing with abuse in families.

    From the front lines

    The problem is that the Children, Young Persons and their Families (CYPF) Act, 1987, had an assumption written into it that mothers and fathers don’t ever set out to harm their children; and that there will always be people in the wider family who are normal and able to step into the breech when parents are found wanting.

    “It’s crap, to be honest” she says.

    The solution is that everyone – the public and the lawmakers – need to try and put aside the emotive side of the argument and “face facts”.

    “People want to believe that mums and dads always ‘really’ have their kids best interests at heart, that mothers are ‘sacred cows’ than can never be found wanting,” she says.

    “But there are so many people who are simply ‘not normal’ out there, whatever the do-gooders say. We need an Act that understands that, and, moreover, puts the safety of children before the feelings of the family.

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  3. Manolo (10,202) Says:

    Taking the piss aiming at the expense of the hardworking Messiah: http://michellemalkin.com/2010/12/29/pga/

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  4. Manolo (10,202) Says:

    Excellent article on crime and its perpetrators in New Zealand: http://www.city-journal.org/html/8_2_oh_to_be.html
    Also, the dumbing down of the police in England (and now here): http://www.city-journal.org/html/10_2_oh_to_be.html

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  5. TripeWryter (715) Says:

    As much as I want to believe otherwise, but I wonder if the Special Air Service and Isaf got it wrong over the raid on the factory in Kabul the other night.

    Chest-beating indignation by the Afghani owners of the business and by police officials aside, the stories told by the security guards seem pretty specific and definite and consistent about about their actions.

    The other question that needs answering is why a business that depends on providing services to Western security services in Afghanistan would be engaged in bomb-making to blow up the US Embassy.

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  6. wreck1080 (2,920) Says:

    Jeez, is it kill – a – cop month?

    Whats going on?

    I reckon, assaulting a cop should be a mandatory jail sentence.We can make a special jail for those who assault cops.

    Problem is, some cops are a bit dodgy and no doubt a few innocents will go to jail – but,acceptable to me . The greater good blah blah blah.

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  7. hj (4,068) Says:

    The scholarly Margaret Mutu’s holiday ruined

    http://news.tangatawhenua.com/archives/8852

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  8. hj (4,068) Says:

    Dalrymple
    “This rise provides no support for liberal theories of crime, no sustenance for the kind of person who proves the strength of his compassion by conceiving of those less law-abiding than himself as automata, mere executors of the dictates of circumstance. It is true, of course, that the decision of criminals to commit their crimes must have antecedents; but they are not to be found in New Zealand’s poverty, unemployment, or inequality. Rather, they are to be found in the prudential calculations such criminals make (the likelihood of being caught, imprisoned, and so forth) and also in the characteristics of the culture, particularly the popular culture, from which they construct their thoughts about the world. And this is a culture that not only despises the achievements of past ages, inflaming ignorant egotism by teaching that we need no connection with them, but is profoundly antinomian—of which there could be no better illustration than the name of a rock band, hundreds of posters for whose concerts were plastered everywhere in Wellington and Christchurch during my visit: Ben Harper and the Innocent Criminals.”

    That ties in with the spate of attacks on police. The popular culture says that people who do things like that achieve instant status (like an interesting specimen in a specimen jar). They are a product of society; had society been good to them that sort of thing would never have happened. Culture must have something to do with it. I don’t think inequality (or itself) has sufficient explanatory value.

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  9. black paul (124) Says:

    wreck1080: “no doubt a few innocents will go to jail – but,acceptable to me . The greater good blah blah blah.”

    Ok are you putting your hand up to go to jail for this cause? Or send your family to jail? Or you just mean other people?

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  10. Pete George (17,877) Says:

    Outside view not so pessimistic…

    World’s top destinations for 2011

    Where on Earth will you find yourself in 2011?

    Here’s wishing it’s somewhere unforgettable — and the time to plan your journey is now, as the New Year brings the customary yearning for a fresh start and the promise of new people and places.

    To set your itinerary in motion, we sought out recommendations from three travel experts: Robert Reid, U.S. travel editor for Lonely Planet; Pauline Frommer, creator of Pauline Frommer’s guidebooks; and Martin Rapp, senior vice president of leisure sales at Altour.

    2. New Zealand

    The Rugby World Cup will be held next fall in New Zealand, adding excitement to an already popular destination.

    Good for tourism, bad for crowds (if you’re not into them).

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  11. Tauhei Notts (1,293) Says:

    WAIROA
    I hear that a policeman was attacked when he went to make an arrest.
    That man’s supervisor must be “perfed” immediately. To let a cop go out on his own in that town is the action of an imbecile.
    Wairoa is the scungiest town in New Zealand, and just marginally ahead of Frasertown. Make no mistake about that.
    I was surprised that members of the public came to the cop’s assistance. I thought, maybe there are decent people in that town and my hate of the place is misplaced. Then I listened further and heard that the members of the public who came to the cop’s assistance were off duty police, who obviously felt sorry that they were not with their colleague when he was attempting to make an arrest.

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  12. grumpyoldhori (2,350) Says:

    Christ those that rant from overseas are a giggle, bludged on the NZ payer to get an education then gave up NZ citizenship but still believe they have the right to input what NZ should do.
    How do I put this, oh yes, it is none of your fucking business what NZ does, when the going got a bit tough you wimps ran away.

    Fuck, I have more respect for NZ Libertarians as much as I would leave them to grill in a car wreck, trying to find that $5000 in cash or gold for rescue, at least unlike you lot their mantra was not, the going is a bit tough, let’s run away.
    And do not say you are from NZ, say Aus

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  13. Pongo (334) Says:

    I see the Japs have decided against introducing an ETS, ironic considering it is the Kyoto Treaty. Funny its not been mentioned in the media though and I wonder if it would make the news here if they were introducing one.

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  14. cha (2,398) Says:

    An off-duty policeman and some early-rising fishermen were among others who helped the constable,

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  15. Diziet Sma (109) Says:

    ^^ in Socialist Colony NZ, criminal arrest you!!!

    Kindergartens ordered to pay copyright for songs
    This seems a bit over the top but maybe it’s doing future Germans a favour by stopping Beiber et al.
    http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,,14741186,00.html?maca=en-rss-en-all-1573-rdf

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  16. Pete George (17,877) Says:

    Poll: In light of the increasing attacks on Police, do you think the time has come to have all Police routinely armed?

    I’m tending more towards this view now (voted Yes) but with qualifications – all police probably don’t need to be armed, but most or all frontline police should at least have ready access to firearms with the freedom to carry them at their discretion, especialy if working on their own.

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  17. TripeWryter (715) Says:

    Diziet:

    If you read down into the story the need for licence doesn’t seem all that Draconian.

    It doesn’t affect older songs.

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  18. Fletch (4,402) Says:

    In case you didn’t know, in late 2009 the US relinquished control of the Internet, it’s gift to the world. Now other countries (mostly Islamic) and the UN are getting involved. Look for an end to free speech, as sites that criticize Islam are removed or taken down.

    From Pamela Geller at American Thinker

    It was hardly noticed at the time, but its consequences could be catastrophic. Late last September, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), which assigns internet domain names, approved a huge change in the way it operates. Europe and North America will now have five seats on its Board of Directors, instead of ten, and a new “Arab States” region will have five seats as well.

    How big a deal is this? ICANN at the same time took a reference to “terrorism” out of its Draft Applicant Guidebook. Why? Because Arab groups complained. And so now jihad terror websites can grow and prosper, as ICANN has removed its own ability to police them.

    This has been a long time coming.

    Back in October 2009, I warned of a seismic transformation in internet regulation and free speech. Under the transnational-happy Obama administration, the U.S. relinquished control of the net at that time. ICANN ended its agreement with the U.S. government.

    If not America, who? Now we know the answer to that. The new agreement gave other countries (including dictatorships and rogue nations) and the U.N. the ability to set internet use policies. At the time, I wrote, “[W]atch for Sharia law to find its way into this.”

    Well, that didn’t take long. The ICANN action in September gave the Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC) and other unfriendly nations a prominent internet role — something they never could get during the administration of George W. Bush.

    News analyst Daniel Greenfield explains:

    The OIC has already effectively used the UN to push its censorship agenda. But the UN is virtually toothless when it comes to the United States. However if the Muslim world can dominate ICANN the way it dominates the UN General Assembly, then free speech on the internet is dead.

    In practice, the new arrangement makes it much easier for Muslim countries to dictate what stays on the internet and what doesn’t. The removal of the material about “terrorism” was just muscle-flexing; there is much more of that kind of censorship coming. If this stands, anti-jihad sites like my own site AtlasShrugs.com and the JihadWatch.org site run by my colleague Robert Spencer will likely lose their domain names. It will become harder and harder to find the truth about jihad activity, or any resistance to it, on the internet or anywhere else.

    Why is this necessary at all? Why should the U.S. relinquish control of its own invention? The internet was our extraordinary gift to the world. We kept it free. And now, like some depraved drunk, we are tossing it away and relinquishing control to the vultures and destroyers.

    The new “net neutrality” rules approved last week by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) will just make that easier as well. Columnist Jonathan Gurwitz explains:

    Net neutrality is anything but neutral. It takes the operation of the Internet away from the heterogeneous and diversified interests of the private sector that has created it and concentrates it in the hands of an unelected and unaccountable board of political appointees atop a federal bureaucracy.

    “Few proposals in Washington have been sold employing such deceptive language – and that’s saying something,” observed James G. Lakely, the co-director of the Center on the Digital Economy for the Heartland Institute, a free-market think-tank. “But few public policy ideas can boast the unashamedly socialist pedigree of net neutrality.”

    Lakely charged that FCC chairman Julius Genachowski, an Obama crony, wants to “claim for the FCC the power to decide how every bit of data is transferred from the Web to every personal computer and handheld device in the nation.” While net neutrality advocates advertised their plan as one that would ensure a “free and open internet,” in reality, net neutrality was an attempt to limit the freedom of internet users by subjecting what had always been a free-market give-and-take to government regulation. In short, the FCC would control how all information reached personal computers.

    An internet censored by Muslim ideologues and controlled by the feds. Do you see your freedom of speech slipping away?

    John Bolton said at an appearance at Duke University in 2009, “[I]t’s not American strength that’s provocative, it’s American weakness.” Now we are reaping the poisonous fruit of Obama’s skulduggery: Islamic takeover.

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  19. Diziet Sma (109) Says:

    Hence my reference to Beiber. Their could be better ways to win hearts & minds to rightful copyright claims.

    Speaking of songs: ‘A Musical interpretation of the viral Quantitative Easing Explained video’. Yes it’s annoying & still doesn’t provide an explanation, as if anything could, though somehow it manages to have more meaning than many songs.

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  20. reid (13,652) Says:

    Not a bad analysis of the outlook for the US and the geopolitical financial games on the currency markets.

    You might disagree with one or two of his tangential references but overall trends he discusses are visible in the published data.

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  21. reid (13,652) Says:

    Plus Celente’s trends for 2011:

    Gerald Celente’s Top Trends Of 2011
    By Gerald Celente
    12-28-10

    Top Trends of 2011

    KINGSTON, NY, 28 December 2010 – After the tumultuous years of the Great Recession, a battered people may wish that 2011 will bring a return to kinder, gentler times. But that is not what we are predicting:

    1. Wake-Up Call The people of all nations, having become convinced of the inability of leaders and know-it-all “arbiters of everything” to fulfill their promises, will do more than just question authority, they will defy it. The seeds of revolution will be sown.

    2. Crack-Up 2011 In 2011, with the bailout funds and arsenal of other schemes to prop up the economy depleted, teetering economies will collapse, currency wars will ensue, trade barriers will be erected, economic unions will splinter, and the onset of the “Greatest Depression” (a trend we forecasted before the massive bailouts existed) will be recognized by everyone.

    3. Screw the People As times get even tougher and people get even poorer, the “authorities” will intensify their efforts to extract the funds needed to meet fiscal obligations. While there will be variations on the theme, the governments’ song will be the same: cut what you give, raise what you take.

    4. Crime Waves No job + no money + compounding debt = high stress, strained relations, short fuses. In 2011, with the fuse lit, it will be prime time for Crime Time. As Gerald Celente says, “When people lose everything and they have nothing left to lose, they lose it.” And “lose it” they will.

    5. Crackdown on Liberty As crime rates rise, so will the voices demanding a crackdown. A national crusade to “Get Tough on Crime” will be waged against the citizenry. And just as in the “War on Terror,” where “suspected terrorists” are killed before proven guilty or jailed without trial, in the “War on Crime” everyone is a suspect until proven innocent.

    6. Alternative Energy In laboratories and workshops unnoticed by mainstream analysts, scientific visionaries and entrepreneurs are forging a new physics incorporating principles once thought impossible, working to create devices that liberate more energy than they consume. What are they, and how long will it be before they can be brought to market?

    7. Journalism 2.0 2011 will mark the year that new methods of news and information distribution will render the 20th century model obsolete. With its unparalleled reach across borders and language barriers, “Journalism 2.0″ has the potential to influence and educate citizens in a way that governments and corporate media moguls would never permit.

    8. Cyberwars In 2010, every major government acknowledged that Cyberwar was a clear and present danger and, in fact, had already begun. The demonstrable effects of Cyberwar and its companion, Cybercrime, are already significant ­ and will come of age in 2011. Equally disruptive will be the harsh measures taken by global governments to control free access to the web, identify its users, and literally shut down computers that it considers a threat to national security.

    9. Youth of the World Unite University degrees in hand yet out of work, in debt and with no prospects on the horizon, feeling betrayed and angry, young adults and 20-somethings are mad as hell, and they’re not going to take it anymore. Not mature enough to control their impulses, the confrontations they engage in will escalate disproportionately.

    10. End of The World! The closer we get to 2012, the louder the calls will be that “The End is near!” Among Armageddonites the actual end of the world, and annihilation of the Earth in 2012, is a matter of certainty. Even the rational and informed may sometimes feel the world is in a perilous state. Both streams of thought are leading many to reevaluate their chances for personal survival, be it in heaven or on earth.

    11. The Mystery Trend … will be revealed upon publication of theTrends Journal in mid-January.

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  22. backster (1,800) Says:

    Pete George 8.10am……..That was a brilliant and totally accurate appraisal but in my view you left out the paragraphs most relevant to what is incorrectly perceived as insufficient Police, Social Workers etc.

    “We spent hours and thousands and thousands of tax payer dollars at family group conferences, with reports drafted in from counsellors, psychiatrists, Maori elders, extended family members and the like. There would be so many reports, all talking about how the mother was ‘working on her issues’, how the aunty was ‘involved with gangs but trying to turn her life around’ and that kind of thing. Whoever’s story was the most convincing was the one going home with the child,” she says.

    Being ‘captured’ by the sob stories of abusive families was a constant risk. It lead to the frequent heartache of seeing kids returned to their wider families and subjected to even worse abuse – and the frequency and severity of it eventually burnt out and discouraged the most idealistic social workers, says Ira.”

    ……….That was my experience over 20 years ago and I have no doubt it has got much worse since. The bureaucratic response to relatively simple issues of right and wrong has paralysed judicial and Governmental agencies to such a degree an at such enormous expense that they are barely functional and are detrimental to the National economy.

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  23. tom hunter (3,852) Says:

    The drain of jobs spread to Japan, as its robust economy began to feel the impact.

    Really? Seriously? This is not a tangential reference by “The Jackass”, it’s part of his core argument about China – “the New Japan”.

    It’s a fundamentally stupid thing to say and think. Japan’s economy has not been “robust” for twenty years and asserting the opposite casts a poor reflection on his other arguments if he can get something that big so fundamentally wrong. Perhaps he needed to read Ms McCardle’s article on Japan in The Atlantic.

    The budget’s structural position is what is known technically to economists as “completely hosed”; borrowing now exceeds tax revenue, and debt service costs now eat up almost half of the tax revenue the government collects.

    “Unsustainable” is too weak to describe the situation; I don’t know how they’re doing it now.

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  24. tom hunter (3,852) Says:

    Oh god – how could I have missed this earlier in the article:

    Maybe the entire deal was well planned, a leftover of Mao Tse Tung days when he was a member of the Skull & Bones group.

    I’ll read the whole thing of course, in breathless anticipation of the Bilderberg Group making its appearance.

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  25. Pete George (17,877) Says:

    I agree backster, that’s probably the most telling part of it. Sad. But difficult to know how to deal with it. Amending the CYPF Act may help, but it will take a lot more than that. And it’s certain that under different laws and priorities the family members will learn new ways of avoiding and exploiting, and continue hiding their abusing.

    And as soon as you put in a law that places the priority on safety of the child over the rights of the parents and families there will be family groups complaining about parental rights being further eroded. S59 is a prime example – while those that will probably never be affected by it (legally) make all the hue and cry those that smack/hit far to much and far too hard keep abusing under the radar.

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  26. cha (2,398) Says:

    I’ll read the whole thing of course, in breathless anticipation of the Bilderberg Group making its appearance.

    Don’t be silly Tom, the Elders have retired.

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  27. reid (13,652) Says:

    Ah, cognitive dissonance rears its head again. I thought it probably would.

    Bilderberg. Pavlovian response: world doesn’t work like that. Shut down receptor circuits and engage embedded image = conspiracy = nuts = the whole thing is made up and it doesn’t exist.

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  28. Offshore_Kiwi (557) Says:

    And then place hands over ears and chant “La-la-la-la” until it really doesn’t exist.

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  29. Pete George (17,877) Says:

    My favourite picture from the Ashes: Elation v. Desolation

    It’s only sport, the phoenix may rise again.

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  30. jaba (1,937) Says:

    regarding arming our cops .. Keith Locke doesn’t even want them to have tasers

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  31. Steve (3,691) Says:

    When are you whities going to stop bashing?
    http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/crime/4502386/Babys-arm-broken-in-alleged-assault
    Not tough enough to pick on someone stronger?

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  32. Manolo (10,202) Says:

    When are you whities going to stop bashing?
    tunuhuruhuru

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  33. Hurf Durf (2,860) Says:

    Alright, proggies, it’s question time! Why is it than when a country finds common cause with the US it’s “imperialism” but when a country takes direct orders from a Communist in Moscow (historical) or an Army commander in Iran (contemporary) it’s “solidarity?”

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  34. Hurf Durf (2,860) Says:

    Proggy piggy uses dodgy science to justify whatever atrocities she wants to commit against people she doesn’t like. Where have I heard that before? Oh, never mind.

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  35. dad4justice (7,339) Says:

    God didn’t make many true conservatives Hurf Durf. We laugh at twit Proggy and Froggy types.

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  36. Hurf Durf (2,860) Says:

    Away from my usual spoutings of bile, this is the official website for the film Space Jam. It has not been touched since 1996. That’s history, right there.

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  37. Tauhei Notts (1,293) Says:

    Manolo at 7.18.
    I telephoned my mate and wanted to bet $50 that the offender had a name that suggested that he was from Burkina Faso. We have been chatting about the fact that every child beating case that we have seen or read about in New Zealand features a person with a Burkina Faso name. I told my mate that I would accept odds of $1.10, but he would only offer $1.04, which I thought was a bit too short, even for an odds on certainty. When determining the outcome of the bet we judge that if the offender’s family offer whanau support then they are definitely from Burkina Faso. Similarly if they have Burkina Faso rituals like a tangi or a hongi.
    My mate says that he would have offered odds of $1.12, but the location, being a hot bed of Burkina Faso nationalism, namely Kaikohe, shortened the odds to $1.04. I was thinking of taking the $1.04, but the thought of risking $200 to win enough to buy one beer at The Viaduct was too tough. Several years ago my (now late) mother introduced me to some of her Tauranga contemporaries who all thought that Winston Peters was the most presentable Burkina Faso politician that they had ever seen.

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  38. Akaroa (299) Says:

    Crikey!

    I just saw a headline: ‘Clarke receives temporary Coronation’

    I thought, ‘Oh no!. Not her!. Not that!”

    Then it was – Phew, What a relief! -

    The item was about some cricketer after all!

    Blood pressure returns to normal!

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