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June 21, 2025 8:00am by Kokila Patel

General Debate 21 June 2025

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General Debate

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Cassandra

Matariki coincided with Juneteenth, in effect. Americans are debating how to celebrate Juneteenth (the end of slavery) just as New Zealanders are debating Matariki. Americans ask has the holiday devolved “into an exploitative and profit-driven enterprise for companies that disregard the true significance of this day to the Black community?”

I suspect that, like most public holidays everywhere, the significance is minimal. Just a day off and an excuse for eating and drinking with friends and family. Not a bad rationale!
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June 21, 2025 8:00am
- Simon
  
  “Just a day off and an excuse for eating and drinking with friends and family”
  
  Every day is matarki day for one in eight working age on permanent welfare.
  
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  June 21, 2025 8:03am
  - mogg
    
    Did you include the public service in your calls.
    
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    June 21, 2025 11:25am
- Pineapple Lumps
  
  But are NZers really debating Matariki? From what I can see there is a centralised coordinated strategy this year around the ‘spiritual’ significance of Matariki. It is on every tv, radio and newspaper report of Matariki. The indoctrination to give meaning and significance to this is nauseating.
  
  The 3 major principles that guide Matariki are:
  remembrance — honouring those who have died since the last rising of Matariki.
  celebrating the present — gathering together with family and friends.
  looking to the future — looking forward to the promise of a new year.
  
  While I am sure that Matariki was of significance to some tribes, it was not a universal celebration with a standard set of principles. If you surveyed Maori from different iwi, how many would know these principles and how many would have evidence of them being celebrated at the time of the sighting of the star cluster by their own ancestors?
  
  Like in Covid times, with this level of coordination and communication, there is a complete shutdown of meaningful debate. And those with a maori wonderfulness ethos, or vacuum of spirituality or an axe to grind against the system take up and promote this new indoctrination. Happily supported by the Corporates, woke and the gullible.
  
  But I agree for most it will just be a day off work and a chance to get chores done or participate in leisure activities.
  
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  June 21, 2025 8:23am
  - Jethrod
    
    Right! That’s enough Matraki for a year. Move on to what you know best….. for God’s sake.
    
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    June 21, 2025 8:41am
    - I remember when
      
      Even Professor Rangi Matamua admitted that not all Maori iwi celebrated Matariki in the past.
      
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      June 21, 2025 10:01am
      - NZer In Exile
        
        Quick, get Wikipedia onto him to write up a sleazy bio sprinkled with disingenuous smear.
        
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        June 21, 2025 8:08pm
  - Scott
    
    Pineapple – here is the entry from Wikipedia about the spiritual significance of Matariki –
    
    “Matariki is the Māori name for the cluster of stars also known as the Pleiades in the constellation Taurus. Matariki is a shortened version of Ngā mata o te ariki o Tāwhirimātea, “the eyes of the god Tāwhirimātea”.[1] According to Māori tradition, Tāwhirimātea, the god of wind and weather, was enraged by the separation of heaven and earth – his parents, Ranginui and Papatūānuku.[1] Defeated in battle by his brother, Tāwhirimātea fled to the sky to live with Ranginui, but in his anger he first plucked out his eyes as a gesture of contempt towards his siblings, and flung them into the sky, where they remain, stuck to his father’s chest.”
    
    Rage, anger, contempt and plucking out one’s own eyes. Very uplifting I’m sure.
    
    Why do we want to celebrate this again? 🤔
    
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    June 21, 2025 8:43am
    - mike
      
      You want some really horrific divine violence? Perhaps try the Old Testament:
      https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Examples_of_God_personally_killing_people#Old_Testament_killings_by_God
      
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      June 21, 2025 10:02am
      - AitchW
        
        Well done mike. Whataboutism at its best.
        
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        June 21, 2025 10:22am
      - Michael Johnston
        
        Which public holiday celebrates old testament atrocities, Mike? Or anything from the old testament at all?
        
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        June 21, 2025 10:42am
      - mike
        
        I think it’s quite legitimate to ask Scott, who affirms the literal truth of the Bible, criticizes other religions for rage and anger, what he thinks of his god’s multiple atrocities.
        
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        June 21, 2025 11:21am
      - Scott
        
        Mikey – yes, it’s a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God. He’s your God and my God.
        
        And he is a God of grace. He doesn’t punish us as we deserve. As sinners we deserve death but God graciously sent his son to die in our place. So that our sins might be forgiven and we might inherit eternal life.
        
        Matariki won’t save anybody but Christmas and Easter saves everybody.
        
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        June 21, 2025 11:57am
      - Ghost
        
        No, he’s your God. But some of you need to push your beliefs on to others because of your own insecurities and lack of accepting others do not share your beliefs.
        
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        June 21, 2025 12:05pm
      - Wandering Star
        
        “…some of you need to push your beliefs on to others because of your own insecurities and lack of accepting others do not share your beliefs.”
        
        Isn’t this precisely what secularists and atheists do? The fact is, everyone’s pushing their beliefs on others and find it more or less unacceptable when those beliefs are rejected.
        
        The great irony is the atheists complaining about religious intolerance, and how religious belief should be rejected, which is of course itself a form of intolerance.
        
        Other than the content, there is little difference between pro-religious and anti-religious attitudes.
        
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        June 21, 2025 12:24pm
      - JackRabbit
        
        @mike
        No-one can affirm the literal truth of the bible, as it a collection of stories, written years after the events from memory. It is a mixture of truth, fiction, embellishments, with parts added much later, and original parts removed later. It has been edited, translated, and condensed at least a dozen times.
        
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        June 21, 2025 1:48pm
      - Scott
        
        Ghost – he is the God of all or he’s not God at all.
        
        The claim is that he is the creator of all things, who called the universe into being and that at the end of all things he will judge the living and the dead.
        
        If that’s true then reconciling to God is the most important thing any of us can do. Knowing God is the most important thing of all.
        
        It’s worth considering. 😊
        
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        June 21, 2025 3:11pm
      - Ghost
        
        Or you could actually understand your beliefs are yours and that they should be a personal thing, not something you try to push on people on a political blog who do not share them. But this usually comes from people so insecure in their own beliefs they feel the need to force it on to others to hide their own inner demons
        
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        June 21, 2025 3:17pm
      - Scott
        
        Gosh there’s a lot of truth claims in what you’ve written.
        Religion is not a personal thing only. Matariki is a pagan religious holiday that we are observing now whether we like it or not.
        Maybe I’m insecure and have my demons but you don’t know that and it’s an inappropriate accusation. I was responding to Mikey and his jibes about Christianity.
        
        [Mod – this is a political blog, not a church meeting]
        
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        June 21, 2025 7:14pm
      - NZer In Exile
        
        Ghost “bible bashing” isn’t due to “insecurities”. It’s what Christians believe they are meant to be doing with their lives as per the teachings in the New Testament.
        
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        June 21, 2025 8:14pm
      - NZer In Exile
        
        Agnosticism is the absence of a belief in something for which there is no evidence. It’s basically saying unless you can prove to me convincingly the thing that is not actually apparent by any real world sign-posts, it’s not something I can believe in as what you believe does not make enough sense to me. Agnosticism is not “pushing a belief” it’s a position that says “convince me with evidence otherwise I can’t believe what you are pushing”. Atheism says “there is no evidence of your God therefore there is no God” and Agnostics would probably say “currently I don’t see enough evidence to believe in the God you are describing”. Just like not believing in astrology or voodoo is not “pushing a belief”. It’s just not believing in things for which there is no verifiable evidence.
        
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        June 21, 2025 8:30pm
  - Hollyfield
    
    For some people Matariki may have spiritual or other significance, and they may celebrate it accordingly, but I think most people just ignore all the hype. For everybody in my workplace it’s just a day off work. For some of my family members, it’s just a day of double pay.
    This past week I was talking to a woman from overseas who has been in the country a couple of years and she had no idea what Matariki is – she didn’t know it’s a constellation, or even stars. She didn’t know the most basic point. She has been in the country for “peak Matariki” and it had just passed her by.
    Also this week I asked some children if they had been learning about Matariki at school – they all said yes, and one 12yo rolled her eyes and said in a drawn out tone “every year for the last five years”. Then she said the following day at school they were spending an entire day on Matariki activities. She was clearly not looking forward to it, she was bored with the whole thing.
    
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    June 21, 2025 9:00am
    - greybeard
      
      Yep, my 6-year-old granddaughter told me yesterday that her class had spent a whole day doing matariki things.
      ( I bit my tongue, she is a sweetie ).
      
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      June 21, 2025 9:23am
      - greybeard
        
        Ah, a downtick already, jolly good.
        
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        June 21, 2025 9:29am
    - John Loveridge
      
      My 14-year-old daughter had a similar experience, and view of it all.
      
      I turned on no media at all yesterday, so my mind was blissfully spared all the bullshit.
      
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      June 21, 2025 10:16am
  - Lexicon
    
    And as part of the significance-building agenda, how long before we see headlines such as, “Vulnerable family forced to live in car just days before Matariki”?
    
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    June 21, 2025 9:05am
  - Cassandra
    
    The consensus round here is that this holiday was pandering to Maoris by the Labour Party rather than a genuine acknowledgement of an ancient festival overlooked by nasty colonists. Nobody I know celebrated anything but as an excuse for a get-together it was fine. Ether that or it’s a cunning plot by Subaru.
    
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    June 21, 2025 9:15am
    - wsk12345
      
      I have friends that celebrated it with a hangi. He’s a bro. He went and got crays and fish last weekend and did the hangi with it. Apparently it’s about saying thank you to all the gods.
      
      I said but it’s only been around a couple years and was sternly corrected that they hve “always ” celebrated it. In the south island….
      
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      June 21, 2025 9:56am
    - mike
      
      A consensus on Kiwiblog means little in reality. It’s bit like complaining about ‘the young people today’.
      
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      June 21, 2025 10:04am
      - Michael Johnston
        
        True enough. There are echo chambers all over the political spectrum. Still, I think the kiwiblog consensus on Matariki is correct. Very few NZers (including me) see it as any more than a day off – just like King’s birthday, Labour day and most of the rest. ANZAC day is probably the only holiday that resonates with a majority.
        
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        June 21, 2025 11:02am
      - mike
        
        I agree, Michael. Still, making it a public holiday has provoked amusing reactions.
        
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        June 21, 2025 11:23am
      - Conservatarian
        
        I imagine they were thrilled at The Matariki Advisory Group, yet another Ardernista quango:
        https://www.mbie.govt.nz/business-and-employment/employment-and-skills/employment-legislation-reviews/matariki/matariki-public-holiday
        
        This quango was activated to propagandise defenceless and weak minds, especially schoolchildren / students, civil servants and lib brainlets. It was also a sop to buy off private sector employees reluctant to go back to work after bravely masking during the $100b sniffle.
        
        Ardernistas allow the quango to advise Ministers on how many resources the quango can extract, including “a date for a Matariki public holiday over the next 30 years” from 2022-52. I expect Ardern herself would have simply offered to pay the quango for 30 years.
        
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        June 21, 2025 12:52pm
      - NZer In Exile
        
        Mike the vast majority in NZ see through this silly confected BS. They’re happy to raise their glasses to another day off though!
        
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        June 21, 2025 6:35pm
    - Ian
      
      When I purchased my brand new model year 23 Subaru, it came with a Subaru NZ pamphlet of where to find the otherwise known Matariki constellation. It didn’t say to look on the front of my car….
      
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      June 21, 2025 10:51am
      - bennerg
        
        So can we refer to it also as Subaru day then?
        
        Then we can also argue about how to pronounce it haha.
        
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        June 21, 2025 12:53pm
  - Paulus
    
    Surely the Matariki Principals will be enshried in the so called Treaty ?
    
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    June 21, 2025 9:21am
    - David Garrett
      
      Paulus: I very much doubt it…but the Matariki principles just might be.
      
      Sorry mate; I just can’t help myself.
      
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      June 21, 2025 10:08am
      - Michael Johnston
        
        The Matariki principals will be the ones pushing the Martariki principles the hardest.
        
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        June 21, 2025 1:58pm
  - Albie
    
    Pineapple Lumps, I your opening statement fascinating. Why is it that we seem to be constantly bombarded with issues to angst over, whether it be changing the name of the country, transgenderism, climate catastrophies, the list is endless.
    Are there a group of people, university academics, journalists, left wing politicians who are at all times looking for the next barrow to push to make themselves feel relevant, or as you say there is a co-ordinated movement to change our country. Are there deeper, more sinister forces at work here? Maybe Ian Wishart would have some insight?
    
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    June 21, 2025 9:38am
    - Taieri
      
      push to make themselves feel relevant, or as you say there is a co-ordinated movement to change our country
      ———–
      
      Both. With an emphasis on the first one.
      
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      June 21, 2025 10:04am
      - JackRabbit
        
        No, the underlying push with Matariki, Te Reo, bastardising the Treaty of Waitangi, is all part of the Marxist playbook – to turn people against one another, and create chaos.
        
        No different to the deep motives behind Gaza, the Ukraine, Europe and the Obama’s puppet destroying the Russian pipeline, etc.
        
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        June 21, 2025 1:53pm
    - Pineapple Lumps
      
      Hi Albie, Ian W is a great investigative journalist, so no doubt would have some insight. For myself, I think what we are seeing are the signs late in the times revealed to the disciple James. The world will eventually be under the authority of one world power – the globalists. But it will be a highly divisive and evil time. Matariki in itself is fine but the use of it to create division in NZ doesn’t come from a good place.
      
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      June 21, 2025 10:34am
  - R
    
    When were these three principles developed. I would suggest that it was about the same time as the previously unknown principles of the TOW!
    
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    June 21, 2025 10:27am
  - JerJer
    
    Seems to be dying. Our local school, which is as woke as you can get had a Matariki celebration every year since it was made up, so two or three years in a row. This year, nothing. I would say even the most woke parents see little point standing around in the dark sipping awful soup pretending to celebrate a made up holiday. It’s just a day off, to attract votes from poor people made up by Jacinda, and now we are stuck with it.
    
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    June 21, 2025 10:53am
  - imalwaysright
    
    The purpose of the Matariki holiday, and the extremely shaky reasoning for it, is political and is designed to foment discord among Kiwis.
    
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    June 21, 2025 10:57am
  - Paulus
    
    From what I can gather very many New Zealanders could not care one fig of anything t0 do with Maori Mysticism, trying to copy from the Greeks, ands of years ago, pre invention of Maori.
    Load of Crap all round.
    
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    June 21, 2025 11:37am
    - OlderChas
      
      As i posted a day or so ago – two senior and very well respected kaumatua i know confessed to me that they had never even heard of matariki when it started getting loved by the woke. And they know of others.
      
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      June 21, 2025 11:56am
  - Quail
    
    Who is paying for this promotion?
    Don’t say taxpayers ,because most of us have no wish to contribute!
    
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    June 21, 2025 9:43pm
- lastmanstanding
  
  IMHO defence spending for a small country like NZ is an insurance policy. We cant defend ourselves so have to rely on others. Therefore we have to ensure our “insurance premiums” are sufficent to satisfy those who would defend us. And that doesnt mean actual attack on the country. In the case of China its more likely ensuring the sea lanes are open so we can export our goods. Whilst we have increased our defence spending we have to make sure it meets the requirements of those who would defend us.
  Alas we dont live in a benign strategic environment.
  
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  June 21, 2025 9:26am
  - Cassandra
    
    100%. And it looks like the message is finally getting through. Unless you’re Clark or Brash.
    
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    June 21, 2025 9:54am
    - goNZ1
      
      the Brash-Clark link up is quite puzzling given their socialist/ libertarian ideology. The anti American, pro China exhortation from those two plus Paul Keatings rantings makes me marvel at the CCCPs reach. Oh I forgot John Key who is on Xi xmas card list apparently!
      
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      June 21, 2025 1:56pm
      - NZer In Exile
        
        Just goes to show that many otherwise (very) intelligent and successful people can have questionable beliefs hiding in the closet. There are many cases of this.
        
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        June 21, 2025 8:48pm
  - Wandering Star
    
    “Therefore we have to ensure our “insurance premiums” are sufficent to satisfy those who would defend us.”
    
    That’s not really how it works. If in the case of China/US, if it is deemed to be in the US’s interests to defend NZ, they will, if not, they won’t. It doesn’t matter too much if we’ve spent a few billion on US-made weapons as our “insurance premiums.”
    
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    June 21, 2025 10:38am
    - Dudley Quaffquaff
      
      It’ll make it more difficult for the US to argue that it’s our own fault for not having made enough effort ourselves
      
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      June 21, 2025 1:42pm
      - Wandering Star
        
        Here’s the logic: if the US really don’t want us to fall under direct Chinese control through some form of military action, then the US will defend us. Sure, it’s good for the arms industry for NZ to spend up on equipment, but if the US wanted to stop China invading, they’d intervene.
        
        But remember that that’s a big “if” because it’s not clear whether the US would, or even could, do anything, and it doesn’t matter how much we spend, because China will always be untold orders of magnitude more powerful than us.
        
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        June 21, 2025 2:07pm
    - Cassandra
      
      Star: it matters a great deal. If we pay our share then we get the benefit if it’s needed. Of course there are no guarantees except I can guarantee you that if we don’t then we are much more likely to suffer.
      
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      June 21, 2025 3:36pm
    - Cassandra
      
      We’re not defending against an invasion. We’re playing our part to keep war as far away as possible and to keep our lines of communication, sea and air, open.
      
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      June 21, 2025 3:38pm
- AitchW
  
  No Cass, the government’s Matariki adviser (I think on reflection he was the head of the Matariki Advisory Panel) said that 65% of New Zealanders were celebrating Matariki.
  And he wasn’t just saying that to justify his, and the panel’s, existence!
  To be fair, I guess a pretty fair percentage of the population celebrated by taking the day off work.
  We employers get to subsidise them. Thank you Jacinda, you’re SO kind.
  
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  June 21, 2025 10:20am
  - R
    
    Having a day off, is not the same as celebrating the occasion. Happens all the time in NZ, majority of participants have no understanding nor belief in the event
    
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    June 21, 2025 10:32am
    - AitchW
      
      R, when you want massively to inflate the number of people celebrating the reason for a public holiday, you count those enjoying a day off as actively celebrating it.
      
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      June 21, 2025 11:02am
- Ghost
  
  I very much enjoyed the decorations our council put up for it. Ok, I admit I laughed like hell when I saw it. One tree in front of the council building had several stars hanging from it, a few branches wrapped in blue paper. Looked like $10 at most spent at 4.50pm Thursday afternoon when someone was told it was matariki on Friday
  
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  June 21, 2025 11:17am
- Rumblestrip
  
  Of all the stupid and vague names for a holiday, “Juneteenth” must be high up the list. Call it Emancipation Day and people would have a better idea.
  
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  June 21, 2025 12:36pm
  - AitchW
    
    You’re talking about Murcans remember. 5 syllables might be a stretch…
    
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    June 21, 2025 3:15pm
    - NeverMindTheBollocks
      
      Manumission Day.
      
      Down to 4 syllables.
      
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      June 21, 2025 7:20pm
- Ra Henare
  
  and here in the Kingdom of Wonder today is the longest day 1 hour and 21 minutes longer than the shortest day in December
  
  Seems NZME change of leadership maintains its crap of journalists interviewing their keyboards. With inane opinions.
  
  What happened to real news NZME?!!
  
  https://www.newstalkzb.co.nz/on-air/saturday-morning-with-jack-tame/opinion/jack-tame-travelling-with-a-baby-what-could-go-wrong/
  
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  June 21, 2025 1:34pm
  - NeverMindTheBollocks
    
    Doncha just love the opinionistas when they discover something that most of the rest of us have known for years. OMG!
    
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    June 21, 2025 7:22pm
Simon

Luxon claims China are not a threat. Good job Luxon. All those war mongers who say China is a threat stand down you vicious sick bozos.
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June 21, 2025 8:05am
- greybeard
  
  They are a threat: economically they are slowly but surely controlling the economies of their trading “partners”. The next step is obvious : political control.
  
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  June 21, 2025 9:28am
- Interested Party
  
  What diplomatic benefit would there be in the PM saying China is a threat, it may please you at your keyboard – but that’s about the only benefit I can think of
  
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  June 21, 2025 10:22am
  - AitchW
    
    China knows that it can dominate the world not by military action but by economic and social dominance.
    
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    June 21, 2025 5:32pm
    - NZer In Exile
      
      At the end of the day we will need to pay a bit more for goods from elsewhere, if we want to remain free. Or are we all just moronic consumer zombies able to be baited and trapped (for a very long time) by our own laziness and greed?
      
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      June 21, 2025 6:39pm
- Wandering Star
  
  I’m yet to see a decent explanation of why China is a military threat to New Zealand. Perhaps if we were closer to international shipping lanes further north, but we aren’t.
  
  I place the proposition “China is a threat to New Zealand” in the same category as “Russia intends to move on Western Europe,” which are both sales strategies by armaments manufactures and are not sustainable prognostications with a firm basis in reality.
  
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  June 21, 2025 10:42am
  - mike
    
    Both are threats to the international order, in the same way as Israel’s assault on Iran, the parties backing the Sudanese civil war, or, on a lesser scale, the US wrecking the ITO.
    
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    June 21, 2025 11:28am
    - Wandering Star
      
      “Both are threats to the international order…”
      
      In and of itself, that’s not a bad thing. For example, what if the existing international order is considered unsatisfactory?
      
      For example, you cite “….Israel’s assault on Iran, the parties backing the Sudanese civil war, or, on a lesser scale, the US wrecking the ITO.” In a very real sense, this behaviour is the existing international order.
      
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      June 21, 2025 12:19pm
  - Paulus
    
    Whatever China still beeds to feed its people and we can help in that direction.
    The needs of the Chinese people is evolving all the time, to what we understand us as a modern food supplier.
    
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    June 21, 2025 11:41am
    - Jack5
      
      China’s still undergoing its Industrial Revolution, which Britain went through two centuries ago.
      
      With that goes an agricultural revolution as tiny land holdings merge when people move to cities. China has 18 cities with population of more than 5 million.
      
      Aggregation of land holdings allows more mechanisation and higher production. While Britain’s agriculture revolution sent displaced people to Australasia, Canada, and South Africa, China’s young go to cities like Shenzhen. Its population has grown from 30,000 or so in 1980 to 10 million.
      
      In 2024, China food exports were worth more than $NZ172.5 billion in total. True, it imported about $NZ268 billion worth of food.
      
      NZ helped grow China’s dairy industry so that it’s now the world’s fourth biggest milk producer if the European Union is regarded as a single producer. NZ is seventh by this measure, and in 2024 produced about half as much milk as China.
      
      Consider one of our horticulture exports — apples. China is by far the world’s biggest producer. NZ’s a niche, off-season market supplier to China.
      
      It goes to show how skilled NZ’s been in building a First World economy on agricultural exports. Great farmers, great agriculture scientists, great marketers.
      
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      June 21, 2025 12:45pm
    - Ra Henare
      
      How important is NZ food to China?
      
      I was surprised to read that
      In 2024, approximately 3.77% of China’s total food imports by value came from New Zealand,
      
      So if NZ threw a hissy fit and stopped exporting food to China, they would hardly miss us.
      
      But we sure as hell would miss China as a customer.
      
      In 2024, approximately 23.3% of New Zealand’s total exports (goods and services) went to China,
      
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      June 21, 2025 1:42pm
  - Fender
    
    Fishing zones and stop off harbours to Antartica , both very bountiful when your seas are fished out,
    also great supplies of fresh water.
    
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    June 21, 2025 4:13pm
artemisia

Talk of private v taxpayer ferry funding prompted a casual look at perhaps a similar situation. Health Minister Simeon Brown announced this week some large numbers for delivery of elective procedures by the private sector. If worth it to the private suppliers and they can still turn a profit, should more work from the public system head their way?

There have been criticisms that these procedures are the easy ones, but that doesn’t really wash if they are done at similar cost for the same procedure and free up public resource, the source of constant complaints. (AKA give us more money.)

Some big IFs there about productivity (and taxpayers) but enquiring minds …..
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June 21, 2025 8:12am
- Philview
  
  The way the health sector appears to work in New Zealand is that the same doctors/consultants work in both private and public healthcare. I don’t see how more output can be squeezed out of doctors. Those of us who have private health care insurance to buy efficient treatment in private care might end up wasting our money.
  
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  June 21, 2025 8:24am
  - trout
    
    The elephant in the room is the influence of the Unions. Doctors who work in both public and private find that efficiencies in the public are constrained by Union directives as to use of staff and time worked. One example given was the requirement to cancel an operation if it looked as if time taken would go past 4pm.
    
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    June 21, 2025 9:51am
    - mike
      
      That’s more likely to be a safety margin so that medical staff are not working prolonged hours.
      
      4 20
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      June 21, 2025 10:06am
      - Jethrod
        
        Well they do that anyway ….. it’s enshrined in their various oaths and their want and need to do good. Perhaps the unions don’t understand that as it’s all about “me”.
        
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        June 21, 2025 10:18am
      - David Garrett
        
        Crikey Mikey! Is there any area of human endeavour upon which you are not an expert?
        
        Shane Jones thinks we can entice oil and gas companies back here to explore. Is he right do ya think?
        
        24 5
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        June 21, 2025 10:20am
      - Tempist
        
        It’s more likely to be about incentives and cost – public sector are paid for time (input), private for procedures (output) – non-acute surgeries running over time incur costs in the public setting so don’t start something that can’t be finished before overtime kicks in….
        
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        June 21, 2025 11:00am
      - Nobby2
        
        Mike, Do you have evidence that is the reason, [Mod – just end it there]
        
        5 4
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        June 21, 2025 11:56am
      - Jack5
        
        Medical specialists I know of — and GPs — are working their arses off, and many dream of moving to Australia or beyond to escape the pressure.
        
        I doubt politicians will get away with blaming the developing health crunch on medical staff.
        
        As a British diplomat in Wellington once put it: New Zealanders want a Scandinavian type health-welfare system, but with only American-scale taxes. Impossible.
        
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        June 21, 2025 12:57pm
      - NZer In Exile
        
        Possibly a bit of health and safety and also a good measure of union feather-bedding, as they do, until they eventually kill golden goose, as they do.
        
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        June 21, 2025 8:35pm
    - Ghost
      
      Here’s your answer
      
      https://www.newstalkzb.co.nz/on-air/mike-hosking-breakfast/audio/richard-sullivan-health-nz-chief-clinical-officer-on-surgeries-not-being-performed-past-4pm/
      
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      June 21, 2025 11:59am
      - David Garrett
        
        Ghost: So, separating the wheat from the chaff, it’s mostly to do with rules imposed by the unions.
        
        And old Mikey is wrong…again. Incredible!
        
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        June 21, 2025 12:16pm
  - slijmbal
    
    @Philv
    
    The one thing private insurance does enable is those with $ to actually get treatment when the system fails. The system is typically excellent with immediate life threatening matters but breaks down outside of that.
    
    Point in case: Heart arrythmias after bypass. Assessed as high chance of a stroke. Next stage in the health system an outpatient treatment. That was almost a year ago. Not a peep and no way to find out when it might occur despite many efforts. My condition had actually progressed at the last assessment and I queried whether the suggested treatment was appriopriate. My concerns where ignored. Turns out that its only saving benefit was it was cheap and exceedingly low risk. It has a low success rate and is generally temporary when it does succeed.
    
    Went private. Found one of the top guys in the country for this condition. Yes. Health system proposed (but never actually applied) was the wrong treatment by a country mile. Took 2 months from assessment to actually getting treated. Required a low risk operation, which is actually significantly lower risk than the condition. Outcome – so far excellent.
    
    A complete fail of the current system. In counterpoint when I had my bypass I was seen as high risk and had the operation within 10 days.
    
    Waiting to see if I ever get the proposed outpatient treatment. As they’ve managed to purposefully drop me off a waiting list before because I was on it too long (without telling me) I suspect I will never see it.
    
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    June 21, 2025 1:07pm
- Taieri
  
  large numbers for delivery of elective procedures by the private sector.
  ———–
  
  From my point of view as a potential individual patient it doesn’t matter at all whether it is done in the public sector or the private sector. What does matter is how long do I have to wait for an operation and what it’s going to cost me.
  
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  June 21, 2025 8:25am
  - AitchW
    
    Private sector is a far better experience, the staff have more time and resources to look after the patient, the food is better and the rooms a whole lot more comfortable. And there are no coked up morons assaulting the staff!
    
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    June 21, 2025 10:39am
    - Sacha
      
      Of course it is – you are paying! It’s a hotel with ops! And as long as your recovery is uneventful you will have no complaint.
      But: when something goes wrong you’ll be whisked away to the local Public Hospital for serious treatment, maybe into the ICU if they’ve got room. And you’ll be grateful.
      No need to ask me how I know.
      
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      June 21, 2025 8:59pm
- Pineapple Lumps
  
  In healthcare I have scepticism around the public private model. Fundamentally those entrepreneurs in the private space are working in the public space. The public is often shouldering the risk and costs of the private. Examples include:
  1. Private surgeons sourcing supplies from public system. This means they use the public systems working capital and don’t have to invest in their own stock. No other business would be able to do this.
  2. Patients are given limited post-op care. I know of several cases where a patient developed post-op complications so they were told to go to ED for the public system to resolve.
  3. The staff who work in both are effectively incentivised to not improve the public system.
  
  Another reason Private is able to do procedures more efficiently than Public is that they have set themselves up to be focussed and lean. Their resources are protected to enable the efficient plan to be delivered. In the public system I have seen patients booked for surgery, prepped with all the countless forms and interviews, only to wait around all day and then for them to be postponed until the next day. This happens because ‘more urgent’ cases come up and resources have to be reallocated. But this is essentially a structuring/management issue. It would be possible to dedicate theatres and staff to efficient production lines while keeping some theatres and staff allocated to urgent. That sort of planning and management to provide mass production and bespoke production happens in businesses everyday.
  
  Don’t get me wrong, there is a place for private healthcare, but the entrepreneur in the private space should not be bludging off the public system.
  
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  June 21, 2025 8:37am
  - Cassandra
    
    It’s the other way round too. Public salaries – low – are subsidised by their private ones. It keeps the specialists in NZ. Win/win.
    
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    June 21, 2025 8:49am
    - Pineapple Lumps
      
      Maybe – but there is an element of having one’s cake and eating it too. In most other occupations you need to chose one or other. Do I stay in the safer, lower paid environment but where I get to do higher risk, skill growing work and potentially publish papers, attend conferences and enjoy high levels of job security etc OR do I do the highly paid, lower risk work and enjoy the material benefits of that. In other occupations this doesn’t result in a massive exodus of skilled people. In fact it creates room for more growth and development. What is actually happening is opposite to what you say. There are groups of specialists controlling public and private health in NZ that have cartel like behaviour and I know of up and coming highly skilled specialists that they see as a threat that have had to go overseas to gain employment.
      
      My scepticism is that degrees of corruption and sponging off the public system when their isn’t a clear delineation between then. This then makes one system appear to be massively superior to the other but it is a false comparison. As an example, when the specialist in private hospital pushes major post-op risks back to the public sector then the private hospital performance is being made to look better.
      
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      June 21, 2025 9:52am
  - artemisia
    
    Interesting, thank you. But the public system can require private suppliers to carry more costs and risks. Those are then priced in and the result is either acceptable to each party or it’s not.
    
    Like other business arrangements.
    
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    June 21, 2025 8:52am
    - Pineapple Lumps
      
      Hi Artemisia, that is true if these are formal arrangements. However many of these things happen informally because the Private specialist has access to the Public stockroom. In this instance they are treating the public system like a public library.
      
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      June 21, 2025 9:38am
      - Taieri
        
        In this instance they are treating the public system like a public library
        ———–
        
        And does the public benefit?
        At the end of the day, what is really important is the outcome to the consumer and the affordability of the costs to the taxpayers.
        
        9 1
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        June 21, 2025 10:10am
      - artemisia
        
        That ‘public library’ is either seen as a problem in the public system or it isn’t. If it is, fix it. If it isn’t wear the cost.
        
        7 1
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        June 21, 2025 10:21am
- wsk12345
  
  I had a diagnostic procedure in private recently after 6 mths on the List. It was free (for me) as part of reducing wait lists. At a guess I’d say half of those there when I was (they whip through 15 per day per doc so it’s efficient) we’re on public funding.
  
  The interesting part is that two weeks before the call up I got a letter from DHB saying you are still on the list but we don’t know when we can get you in, I then changed my health record rhst week to say I’m brown and about 10 days later for a phone call…. coincidence? Since then my DHB has also been offering me free heart and other screening “for equitable outcomes”.
  
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  June 21, 2025 10:01am
  - Cantabrian
    
    Disgusting.
    
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    June 21, 2025 10:42am
  - kiwimike
    
    Typical, Maori Apartheid at work…
    
    We are whangied into an IWI, never use it officially, even though we could.
    
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    June 21, 2025 5:24pm
Simon

Hidden due to low comment rating. Click here to see.
“North Korea denounced Israel as “a cancer-like entity for the peace in the Middle East” on Thursday, criticizing attacks on ally Iran and accusing the U.S. of “fanning up the flames of war.”

N Korea is just saying what the vast majority of the world believes.
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June 21, 2025 8:17am
- mandk
  
  [Mod – debate without abuse]
  
  If Israel were to be wiped off the map, there would follow a Sunni vs Shia war that would make the current conflicts in the region look like a kindergarten spat.
  
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  June 21, 2025 9:46am
  - Wandering Star
    
    “If Israel were to be wiped off the map, there would follow a Sunni vs Shia war that would make the current conflicts in the region look like a kindergarten spat.”
    
    Why d0 you say this? There was no such war before Israel was declared, so why would anyone expect there to be one if Israel were “wiped off the map”?
    
    This sounds like “make war to prevent war” propaganda to me.
    
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    June 21, 2025 10:47am
    - Don Beckett
      
      Maybe you don’t remember the Iran/Iraq war in 1980 something ?
      
      10 3
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      June 21, 2025 11:09am
      - Wandering Star
        
        I said there was no such war before Israel existed, not afterwards, which is actually when the instability in the region increased, notably because of various Mossad/CIA operations in several countries in the region (including Iran in the 1950s), to foment “favourable” regime change.
        
        But do you mean the Iran-Iraq war in the 80s where Israel backed Iran?
        
        https://newlinesmag.com/argument/iran-and-israels-covert-pragmatic-friendship/
        
        “It is perhaps a surprising fact that Iran and Israel did not cut ties after the former’s 1979 Islamic Revolution that brought Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini to power. Records show that key actors in both countries felt that maintaining a secret relationship would be strategically beneficial. As a result, Iran and Israel continued to engage in trade worth millions of dollars per year after the fall of Iran’s monarch, Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, even as Tehran publicly denied Israel’s right to exist.”
        
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        June 21, 2025 11:23am
      - NZer In Exile
        
        WS, Is Jew hatred baked into Islam do you think?
        
        2 0
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        June 21, 2025 6:45pm
    - mandk
      
      Before modern Israel existed the political and military power of the various Arab Moslem fiefdoms was very limited.
      
      The conflicts were largely one Bedouin tribe attacking one another with swords and rifles.
      
      Nowadays, the rival Arab Moslem powers are wealthy and armed with powerful weapons from the US, Europe, Russia and China.
      
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      June 21, 2025 12:13pm
- Inandout
  
  Simon, use any other country to shore up your views, but not N Korea please. Did you explore the fate of those who engineered the flawed launching of that military vessel? Kim would be amongst the cruelest of modern day dictators.
  
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  June 21, 2025 10:47am
- goNZ1
  
  Simon please visit NK soon for us and find out some more points of advice they can give us //
  They may even let you come home again !
  
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  June 21, 2025 2:10pm
- kiwimike
  
  Typical, Maori Apartheid at work…
  
  We are whangied into an IWI, never use it officially, even though we could.
  
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  June 21, 2025 5:25pm
CJames

On this morning’s Post front page (after the advertising wrapper), the lead headline is about how no female mayoral candidates for Wellington. Nothing about competence or lack of it. Just the sex is all that matters. And the woke still wonder why their views don’t get much traction in the public at large.
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June 21, 2025 8:20am
- Dougal10
  
  It was a failed experiment with a youngish inexperienced person . I would suspect more experienced women would wait one term for people to forget the failure before standing .
  
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  June 21, 2025 8:42am
  - pdm
    
    Kerry Prendergast was a very capable female Mayor of Wellington.
    
    Maybe the best they have had in the last 20 years.
    
    11 2
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    June 21, 2025 10:08am
    - MCōs
      
      She was the only three term mayor in the last forty years going back to Michael Fowler and only the second female mayor after Fran Wilde who served a single term thirty years ago.
      Since then Celia Wade-Brown served two terms followed by a revolving door of three one term mayors as local body government has become increasingly political. Now central government and the Act party are interfering more as well.
      
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      June 21, 2025 10:35am
- mandk
  
  It must be because no woman thinks she could possibly do as amazing a job as Tory Whanau has managed.
  
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  June 21, 2025 9:14am
  - Pope Punctilious II
    
    Yes, that must be it. They feel intimidated by Tory’s brilliance!
    
    21 2
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    June 21, 2025 9:38am
    - NZer In Exile
      
      Yep that’ll be the one. If you’re male and don’t like some aspect of some particular woman’s actions, you must be “intimidated” by her! Feminism 101.
      
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      June 21, 2025 6:48pm
  - John Loveridge
    
    I didn’t know that women have such low opinions of themselves.
    
    10 4
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    June 21, 2025 10:19am
- John Loveridge
  
  CJames, do I detect that you parted with your hard-earned for an actual physical copy of the Post? Do you have a litter box that needs lining?
  
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  June 21, 2025 10:22am
  - CJames
    
    No but I am a Sudoku addict and they publish tree hard ones every Saturday.
    
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    June 21, 2025 12:42pm
    - artemisia
      
      Try lovattspuzzles.com
      
      2 hard Sudoku every day.
      
      4 0
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      June 21, 2025 3:48pm
- R
  
  The consequence of DEI vis competence, ability, experience and aptitude. The old fashioned criteria for any employment
  
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  June 21, 2025 10:42am
Simon

Will GAE attack Iran? Or does Trump know that there is a real chance Iran keeps rolling on and wins.

Does Trump know Iran will win that why no attack.
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June 21, 2025 8:33am
- Wandering Star
  
  I asked in GD yesterday how a country the size and nature of Iran would be managed and what things would look like post-regime change, but no one gave me an answer. It’s all very well talking about Mad Mullahs, imminent nuclear attacks and other Israeli rhetorical talking points, but we live in the real world with all of its complexities, and nobody is thinking about the consequences.
  
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  June 21, 2025 10:52am
  - mike
    
    The prospect of ‘regime change’ in Iran is very low, with an even lower chance of any such regime becoming a friendly, liberal democracy.
    
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    June 21, 2025 11:32am
    - Wandering Star
      
      Whether or not the prospect of regime change is low, that is the intention, despite the public motivation being about a nuclear program. Look at the pattern: Iraq, Libya, Syria etc. all regime changed, and all (most notably Iraq) done on the pretext of WMDs of some sort, which was known to be false, but actually done to install acquiescent regimes.
      
      The point in Iran is not whether or not Iran have nuclear weapons, which is only secondary, it is that Iran’s current regime won’t capitulate to Israel. They’d rather a puppet regime with nukes, than the current regime without nukes, the latter being the main “danger” of any US-Iran talks, and why Israel’s strikes were intended to scuttle diplomacy and induce US military intervention.
      
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      June 21, 2025 11:42am
      - Ra Henare
        
        I agree WS, the last Regime change in Iran, replaced the Shah with the current mob. How did that work out?
        
        What the hell does Israel expect from a regime change? Based on history, it would be another cluster fuck. and would remove a war for Netanya to frighten the Israeli voters.
        
        I saw an interesting take on trumps options re Iran.
        1. USAF drops a bunker buster(or many as one wont do the trick) and pisses off his Trumps MAGA(no more wars crowd) and maybe Iran attacking US bases or the homeland(9/11 anyone).
        
        2. Or does he really believe that Iran will attack the US with nukes and to hell with the consequences.
        
        3. Or will he lose all that Jewish money and lobby if he stands back from the whole Netanyahu conflict.
        
        4. or as a sop.
        Give bunker buster bombs to the Israelis, who can drop them out of the back of a modified C130(Israel doesn’t have b1/B2 type heavy bombers.)
        
        IMHO TACOS Trump will do whatever will give him the most popular USA voter support given the midterms are coming and a move of Senate and house to the Dems will defang him.
        
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        June 21, 2025 2:05pm
      - Simon
        
        “how a country the size and nature of Iran would be managed and what things would look like post-regime change”
        
        Thats easy. They want Iran as a dysfunctional terrorist run basket case. Thats regime change for Israel. See Syria for details.
        
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        June 21, 2025 4:07pm
      - kiwimike
        
        Star
        you missed the most salient part
        
        Islamic Shia death cult
        
        There fixed it for you.
        
        I think the Persians who have been ground under Islam are the key and they want to be free.
        
        But they must kill all the Mullahs, destroy all the Mosques, remove all Islam from Education, ministries and media.
        
        Islam is Evil
        and fosters ugly regimes Shia or Sunni
        
        1 2
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        June 21, 2025 5:53pm
      - NZer In Exile
        
        Unfortunately I’m thinking at this juncture that Trump has possibly already blabbed way too much on this subject.
        
        We shall see.
        
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        June 21, 2025 8:59pm
    - NZer In Exile
      
      Best to let the Iranian people remain under the stranglehold of a brutal theocracy Mike?
      
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      June 21, 2025 6:51pm
- AitchW
  
  Simon, I find it fascinating that you, and others, persist in referring to America as the GAE.
  My impression of the average American is that they have very little regard for what happens outside their borders.
  I presume that the GAE is somehow linked to the NWO or the Deep State or some other shadowy organisation?
  
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  June 21, 2025 12:18pm
  - Ra Henare
    
    Deep state warmongers.
    
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    June 21, 2025 2:06pm
- goNZ1
  
  no Trumpy just needs to get enough firepower into the region then it’s All On.
  
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  June 21, 2025 2:12pm
Bridgenag

Friday Funnies: The Myth of the Mad King
Just watch out for the jokers

https://open.substack.com/pub/rwmalonemd/p/friday-funnies-the-myth-of-the-mad?r=1aj1bv&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email
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June 21, 2025 8:46am
Bridgenag

Anatomy of a Wrap-Up Smear
It could have been worse. It can always be worse.

“The wrap-up Smear is a deflection tactic whereby a smear is made-up and leaked to the press. The press then amplifies the smear and publishes it, which conveys legitimacy. Then another organization or author can use the press coverage of the smear as a validation to write a summary story which is the wrap-up smear.”

https://open.substack.com/pub/rwmalonemd/p/anatomy-of-a-wrap-up-smear?r=1aj1bv&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email
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June 21, 2025 8:48am
- mike
  
  Well, Malone has an incentive to describe the justified criticisms of his crank positions as a ‘smear’, even though they are not
  
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  June 21, 2025 9:18am
  - Pineapple Lumps
    
    [Mod – whatever your issues are with members, keep it off this blog]
    
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    June 21, 2025 9:57am
  - bennerg
    
    Just for the record, Dr Malone is a brilliant scientist, and by all means that I can acquire, appears to be a well balanced and terribly interesting individual. Someone you could endure a 4 hour dinner with! Just read his blog. A very well grounded family man. Unlike others I cannot mention here.
    
    America has voted for Trump, and by that I mean not just Donald, but the team he put together. RFK was his pick to handle Health, and one of his picks to assist him is Dr Malone. That is how democracy works.
    
    Enough people became discenchanted with the system in place and kicked the previous team out. Part of that was due to how the Covid “crisis” was created and handled, and the likes of Fauci who it seems by what we now know is an entirely despicable individual. And whatever “pardons” are in place, he will never be safe on the planet again. A bit like Ardern … get’s a Damehood, but cannot walk down any street in any town in New Zealand ever again in safety; and not for the usual reasons.
    
    So we are witnessing democracy, and the balance that comes from “walking” with two “feet”, left and right. We can always find downsides and benefits from left and right, but as we lurch from one to the other, a balance is achieved in the long run. Labour in the 80’s introduced GST which both sides embraced. The last Labour Govt banned gas exploration which this side hopefully will reject.
    
    One last comment, when you get name callers who then seem to be lacking the capability to present a cogent and logical train of thought to back it up, you realise that their argument is empty, and not of any significance.
    
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    June 21, 2025 1:13pm
Michael Sommerville

Let’s look at the bright side. From today the days get longer and Summer is on the way.
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June 21, 2025 8:50am
- mike
  
  It’ll soon be Xmas.
  
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  June 21, 2025 9:27am
  - Ghost
    
    Then we rinse and repeat for another year
    
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    June 21, 2025 10:22am
    - Jethrod
      
      364 days to Matawhat
      
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      June 21, 2025 10:41am
    - MCōs
      
      Steady on!
      Time is too short to be wishing away the winters
      A friend is having a tumor removed from his brain on Wednesday to try and eke out a bit more time — whether it’s warm and sunny or cold and raining . . . .
      
      10 3
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      June 21, 2025 10:47am
  - Nukuleka
    
    [Mod – for goodness sake, if some of you are so precious you can’t take someone saying it will soon be Xmas, then go take a walk]
    
    11 4
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    June 21, 2025 10:40am
    - Pineapple Lumps
      
      [Mod – This is kiwiblog, a place of debate, political debate and sharing opinions. We are not going to launch into personal attacks because you can’t cope with a word the vast majority of this country use. Take it elsewhere]
      
      1 2
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      June 21, 2025 10:59am
    - mike
      
      [Mod – leave it please]
      
      2 10
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      June 21, 2025 11:32am
      - kiwimike
        
        Mike
        it must be bad if you get silenced, as they usually allow your drivebys.
        
        I wouldn’t mind if you actually engaged decently, I love reading some of the people on here.
        even those I’m not agreeing with.
        
        5 1
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        June 21, 2025 5:56pm
      - NZer In Exile
        
        Yep no reasonable exchanges from our friend. Just constant drive-by shit hurling.
        
        3 0
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        June 21, 2025 6:54pm
Fender

Don’t it always seem to go
that we don’t know what we got till its gone

sadly years from now young ones who don’t know what they are missing will just blankly stare and dismiss those of us who remember and tell them

Before 1945, steel was just steel. Then, nuclear bomb tests contaminated the atmosphere, embedding trace radiation into all newly-smelted metal. Today, when uncontaminated steel is needed for radiation-sensitive instruments (like Geiger counters, particle detectors, or space telescopes), they salvage it from ships that sank before the blasts. It’s called low-background steel and it is a rare, coveted material.
Now, one man is doing the digital equivalent.
A new project by software engineer John Graham-Cumming, lowbackgroundsteel.ai, is quietly cataloging human-created content from before generative AI flooded the web. Think of it as a time capsule of authentic expression: text, images, and video produced without algorithmic influence. It includes sources such as the August 2022 full dump of Wikipedia, Project Gutenberg’s public domain book collection, the Library of Congress photo archives, GitHub’s Arctic Code Vault (2020), and wordfreq, a linguistic tool frozen in time.
According to Graham-Cumming, the project isn’t anti-AI. It’s pro-human. He compares today’s AI-content saturation to post-nuclear atmospheric contamination, writing: “The idea is to point to sources of text, images and video that were created prior to the explosion of AI-generated content.”
This isn’t hypothetical. In September 2024, developer Robyn Speer shut down wordfreq, a widely-used Python library for multilingual word frequency analysis. Her reasoning? The internet had become “full of slop generated by large language models, written by no one to communicate nothing.” AI-generated noise corrupted the tool’s statistical value.
Researchers also worry about “model collapse,” a phenomenon that occurs when AI models train on AI-generated output and gradually degrade in quality. But 2024 research by Gerstgrasser et al., published as Model Autophagy: Learning from Synthetic Text and Its Limits, suggests that collapse is avoidable if synthetic and real data are properly mixed and curated.
In reality, we don’t know what pre-AI content might be worth in five years, but just as low-background steel now serves a critical role, this material could become essential for future historians, linguists, or even AI developers looking to re-anchor in uncorrupted data. Graham-Cumming has even proposed a “cryptographic ark” to securely timestamp and verify authentic, pre-AI media.
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June 21, 2025 9:32am
- Ra Henare
  
  Interesting experiment (yes I have all the time in the world. According to AI, I have another 7-9 years of time to waste)
  
  I fed two popular AIs (grok3 and chatgpt3)
  The exact same request regarding my health, recommended health activities (bloodtests etc), diet etc
  I provided all my personal data, age, weight, height,ethnicity, BP, general health etc
  and finally the sentence
  Ask me questions to validate your response to 95% accuracy.
  Grok asked many, in my opinion, valid questions, re family current diet etc etc
  ChatGpt, buggar all questions eg do you smoke or drink.
  
  Grok gave a comprehensive reply, ChatGPT a basic summary(I was disappointed, to be honest)
  
  My amusement when I asked subsequent questions were always met by Chat GPT saying great/good question.
  Grok just gave me answers.
  
  What does it all mean.
  
  IMHO AI has a long way to go to provide medical information. Some of its data/references were out of date.
  
  But it is excellent at interpreting Lab test results in laymans terms..
  
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  June 21, 2025 2:17pm
Ghost

Embarrassing that this could even happen

Two pro‑Palestinian activists infiltrated RAF Brize Norton, the UK’s largest air base, spraying red paint into the engine compartments of two Voyager aircraft and causing damage to the tarmac using crowbars before exiting undetected.

Article
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June 21, 2025 9:47am
- AitchW
  
  I imagine if they were to pull that stunt on a USAF base they’d end up with high speed lead poisoning.
  Or guests in Guantanamo Bay!
  
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  June 21, 2025 10:27am
- Wandering Star
  
  How do they know they are pro-Palestinian activists when they came and went undetected?
  
  They also said it was “vandalism,” yet they are invoking terrorism legislation. Why?
  
  “Police have opened an investigation under military and terrorism legislation to apprehend the perpetrators.”
  
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  June 21, 2025 10:57am
- John Loveridge
  
  I have been to Brize Norton to retrieve a relative returning to the UK on a military flight. Amazing place. Heavy security. I was stopped from even taking a photograph of the gate! How this happened is beyond me.
  
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  June 21, 2025 1:42pm
  - kiwimike
    
    Clearly perifial surveillance not good.
    
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    June 21, 2025 5:58pm
    - NZer In Exile
      
      OK my turn to be the pedant biatch. Peripheral?
      
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      June 21, 2025 7:01pm
I remember when

It’s the little things that make the difference!
TV One read the message from King Charles relating to our celebration of Matariki and read as far as Aotearoa.
They showed the message which mentioned ‘Aotearoa New Zealand.’
7 2
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June 21, 2025 9:56am
- mike
  
  Hidden due to low comment rating. Click here to see.
  Aotearoa is New Zealand. For confirmation, read your passport.
  
  4 34
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  June 21, 2025 10:07am
  - pdm
    
    Aotearoa is, to date, a mythical place that does not exist in reality.
    
    32 6
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    June 21, 2025 10:10am
    - Wandering Star
      
      I’d never call New Zealand “Aotearoa,” but both names are just as made up as the other, like all place names are. Place names are examples of linguistic conventions, and are only “real” to the extent the convention is real.
      
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      June 21, 2025 11:00am
  - Taieri
    
    Aotearoa is New Zealand.
    ———-
    
    And which Act passed by the Parliament says that?
    The official name of New Zealand can only be altered by legislation. So far, no legislation to this effect has been passed.
    
    26 3
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    June 21, 2025 10:17am
    - MCōs
      
      Does it need an Act of Parliament to beat the Crusaders at Christchurch?
      Sure seems like it!
      
      6 4
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      June 21, 2025 10:57am
    - mike
      
      You might not be aware of it, but ‘Aotearoa’ is very widely used in our legislation. As Aotearoa is a legitimate te reo term for our country, and te reo is, by law, an official language, official use of Aotearoa is lawful beyond doubt.
      You might be unaware that English is not an official language, so it is possible that your reasoning would exclude use of the term ‘New Zealand’.
      
      2 18
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      June 21, 2025 11:44am
      - lifesgood
        
        It was never a Maori word, it was created by a European. I will never refer to NEW ZEALAND as Aotearoa.
        
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        June 21, 2025 11:53am
  - sirknz
    
    Ngai Tahu disagrees greatly with your assertion. ‘Aotearoa’ refers only to the North Island according to them, but what would they know?
    
    19 1
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    June 21, 2025 10:47am
    - Paulus
      
      They know everything, as they have all the Money ~
      
      7 1
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      June 21, 2025 11:48am
  - Nobby2
    
    mike , the official name for New Zealand is New Zealand. The use of aotearoa is a recent woke example of maorification.
    
    15 1
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    June 21, 2025 12:08pm
    - Ghost
      
      However, Mike is right. It’s on your cash, it’s on your passport, it’s on all government websites including parliament, and even the king uses it when addressing NZ. New Zealand’s name has changed and I doubt any government will reverse it
      
      4 2
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      June 21, 2025 12:11pm
      - bennerg
        
        Time for a referendum?
        
        We had one for the flag change politicians were trying to foist on us.
        
        7 0
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        June 21, 2025 1:21pm
      - MCōs
        
        Apart from that it’s not a hill worth dying on.
        Some people get upset at the use of the Maori word Kiwi as a substitute for New Zealander or being called pakeha.
        I was called a farang, Thai for foreigner, at my wife’s temple. Who cares?
        
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        June 21, 2025 1:37pm
      - Taieri
        
        It’s on your cash, it’s on your passport, it’s on all government websites including parliament
        ————
        
        It is indeed. But the official name of this country remains solely New Zealand. And this is how it is referred to in the Constitution Act 1986. Just because “Aotearoa” appears on banknotes, passports and government websites does not give it an official standing. An act of parliament is required for that. In 2022 the petition to change the official name of the country to Aotearoa was delivered by Te Pāti Māori. I haven’t heard about any progress on that yet.
        
        Personally, I have no problem with the name change, but it needs to be done in a proper way. By binding referendum.
        
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        June 21, 2025 2:09pm
  - Ra Henare
    
    The passport cover was designed by unelected cardy wearers.
    
    11 2
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    June 21, 2025 2:22pm
    - MCōs
      
      As opposed by to the dreadful flag options we voted on when John Key was PM.
      
      3 5
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      June 21, 2025 4:08pm
      - NeverMindTheBollocks
        
        “We voted on”
        
        Unlike use of “Aotearoa”, which no one has voted on.
        
        See the difference?
        
        3 0
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        June 21, 2025 7:40pm
  - NZer In Exile
    
    Yes that “cool vibe” originated name was put on NZ passports at some point. That doesn’t prove it’s legitimacy though.
    
    2 0
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    June 21, 2025 7:06pm
Notsofast

Paywalled, David Seymour returns from the Oxford debate

https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/david-seymour-i-went-to-oxford-to-test-my-beliefs-and-learned-a-sad-thing-about-nz/B2D4VBMIGVBYJI3FPT6LEBJ744/

“…..but I learned something about New Zealand from how the events in Oxford were reported at home.

What a depressing little country we can be. TVNZ based its coverage around an activist saying I shouldn’t be able to speak because free speech is dangerous. The headline was me “defending” speaking. What a contrast with the Oxford Union’s commitment to free speech.

Stuff’s coverage announced, sneeringly, that I “debated at Oxford, and lost”. Nowhere in the article does it explain how the debate is decided, or that my team, not I, lost by a margin of 54-46. It quotes a handful of audience members who disagreed with me, but didn’t try to inform the reader of what I said or why nearly half voted for my team.

Anyone reliant on these outlets would prove the adage that if you don’t read the media, you’re uninformed; if you do, then you’re misinformed. I thank the Herald for its more balanced coverage and this right of reply….”

Does New Zealand deserve this guy when the ill educated youngsters in the media are interfering with our democratic process?
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June 21, 2025 10:12am
- AitchW
  
  R, when you want massively to inflate the number of people celebrating the reason for a public holiday, you count those enjoying a day off as actively celebrating it.
  
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  June 21, 2025 11:07am
- AitchW
  
  I admire Seymour for his ability to remain focussed, rational and civil even when his critics are becoming increasingly hostile, irrational, and dishonest.
  He even seems able to maintain a sense of humour..
  I reckon he’d be a good bloke to enjoy a few beers with.
  
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  June 21, 2025 11:12am
Damocles11

Matariki is apparently our time of joyous celebration, solemn reflection, hope, thankfulness, feasting, bonfires, remembrance etc etc etc. And while driving an ad comes on advising that this is our ‘Thankfulness Week’ and how important it is that we all give thanks. No organisation or entity was described as being behind the ad. All very mysterious; bizarre even.
10 3
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June 21, 2025 10:41am
- Paulus
  
  Like Guy Fawkes Night eh !
  
  6 1
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  June 21, 2025 11:50am
  - Keith White
    
    “Guy Fawkes – the only person ever to enter Parliament with honest intent.”
    
    …never gets old…
    
    7 1
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    June 21, 2025 2:08pm
- goNZ1
  
  lucky that our economy,productivity stats and standard of living is doing so well that we can afford another public holiday funded by our greedy employers! ///
  
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  June 21, 2025 2:22pm
sungsamning

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uLxgalUxpHs
How Xi Jinping Lost Power
In this explosive episode of FinalWar with Katherine Hu, we uncover the shocking truth behind Xi’s dramatic fall—from a failed internal purge to a mysterious stroke at the Third Plenum, and the rise of CCP elders and military leaders who turned against him.

Why did Xi’s closest allies betray him?
What does General Zhang Youxia’s quiet resistance tell us?
And how is this silent power shift reshaping China’s political future—and its relationship with the West? [That before and after shot was a surprise.]
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June 21, 2025 10:43am
sungsamning

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/abigail-johnson/2025/06/19/doj-sues-kentucky-for-footing-tuition-bill-for-illegals-n2659110
‘Unconstitutional’: DOJ Sues Kentucky for Giving Discounted College Tuition to Illegal Immigrants.
The Department of Justice (DOJ) recently filed a lawsuit against the state of Kentucky. The DOJ is suing Kentucky over the state’s regulations that allow in-state tuition prices to be provided for students who are illegal immigrants or who lack certain documentation.
8 2
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June 21, 2025 10:43am
- kiwimike
  
  Yep both UK and USA are giving benefits to non citizens.
  Thank God it doesn’t happen here 🙂
  
  4 1
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  June 21, 2025 6:10pm
  - sungsamning
    
    Well, not as much anyway.
    
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    June 21, 2025 7:24pm
imalwaysright

The Israeli army bombs Gaza hospitals and call them “surgical strikes”.

Iranian army bombs an Israeli hospital and the IsraelI government calls it a “war crime”.
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June 21, 2025 10:44am
- Wandering Star
  
  Yes, I couldn’t help noticing from the recent footage that the IDF was firing missiles at Iranian projectiles from what appeared to be urban locations surrounded by dense civilian infrastructure. They’ve already got “Iron Dome” and “David’s Sling” systems, and perhaps now they’ve adopted “Human Shield”?
  
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  June 21, 2025 11:05am
  - Don Beckett
    
    They are located in urban environments because that’s the best spot to intercept the missiles which are aimed at Israel’s urban locations. Doh.
    
    8 2
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    June 21, 2025 1:28pm
    - Wandering Star
      
      Why wouldn’t that logic apply to Hamas, when Israel is targeting urban locations? If your argument is that it makes sense for weaponry to be situated in targeted areas as the best means of defence, then doesn’t that principle undermine the claim that Hamas positions itself where Israel is aiming its weapons just because Hamas are evil (or something)?
      
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      June 21, 2025 1:46pm
  - bennerg
    
    I guess you missed the steps of logic here:
    
    1. Hamas places strategic resources under hospitals and schools, using the Gazans as a human shield
    2. Hamas places offensive weapons in urban areas and uses them to attack israel
    
    i) Israel has defensive weapons located in urban areas to protect their population, not to use the population to protect their military.
    ii) Israel is bombing Iranian military targets, which includes their propaganda wing, the State News organisation.
    
    a. Iran and Hamas both bomb urban targets in Israel with no military purpose.
    b. Israel attacks Hamas military targets with, of course, collateral damage, but has mitigated that where possible by techniques including telephone calls and “roof knocking” bombs (low yield, to tell the inhabitants to get out …)
    
    I guess there is an ultimate test. Who would you like to move in next door?
    a) a family from Iran with their women in full burquas, who despise your way of life, and profess hate for your country and way of life
    b) a family from Israel with similar ethics, and respect for life.
    
    14 2
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    June 21, 2025 1:42pm
- mogg
  
  You mean Israel army bombs Hammas terror hiding under Gaza hospitals, they have shown plenty of video to prove it. Are you really sucked in by TV 1 & 3, unqualified Hammas propaganda reporting.
  
  20 3
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  June 21, 2025 11:56am
  - Wandering Star
    
    “…they have shown plenty of video to prove it.”
    
    Can you please provide links to this video proof? I’ve heard the claims, but never seen the proof.
    
    3 13
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    June 21, 2025 12:13pm
    - Don Beckett
      
      Try Google.
      
      7 2
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      June 21, 2025 1:29pm
      - Wandering Star
        
        I’m not the one making the claim, so I don’t have to show that the claim is correct.
        
        2 5
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        June 21, 2025 1:36pm
    - kiwimike
      
      Star
      you would be inundated, go look yourself.
      but you know this.
      you’re doing a Mikey….
      
      2 1
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      June 21, 2025 6:12pm
- Jake Dee
  
  That double standard will quickly be forgotten.
  Even by those who choose to believe that this war started on Oct.7 2022. people were calling Hezbollah and Hamas criminals for having military installations in urban area 6 months ago.
  Prepare for the deafening sound of silence for all the pro-Israeli commentators on this blog about any of this.
  And hitting hospitals is now once again a crime.
  What other government buildings were in that neighborhood? Thanks to government censorship we are not permitted to know.
  
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  June 21, 2025 12:47pm
  - kiwimike
    
    yes we are, the report stated a military housed 2km away.
    either it’s aimed or not and they’re just shotgunning their missles.
    
    0 1
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    June 21, 2025 6:14pm
- judith8409121
  
  if hamas puts it weapons in these places – so be it – its a funny form of game playing by those that want to uphold a nasty brutish terror organisation to do the logical error of false equivalence – but what ever makes you happy
  
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  June 21, 2025 1:15pm
  - Wandering Star
    
    Judith, what evidence do you have that Hamas are actually situated in or under the civilian infrastructure bombed by Israel? The IDF? They’re the one’s doing the bombing, so of course they have a direct interest in explaining away and justifying their actions.
    
    If I was going to bomb school children and sick people, I too would probably claim I was actually bombing Hamas as my cover story, given the obvious moral issues bombing children and sick people raises.
    
    This also suggests that, if you are fully aware that reaching your ostensible target will involve mass civilian deaths (and this is central to your justification), you are still willingly causing mass civilians deaths, and it follows further that you are not concerned about mass civilian deaths, and it follows yet further that your pretext is very likely false.
    
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    June 21, 2025 1:59pm
    - Fender
      
      so by your logic, Israel is categorically choosing to bomb at great financial cost and planning, hospitals, civilian neighbourhoods schools etc and by doing so actually choosing or ignoring any actual military targets, which I presume you agree do exist? or are they figments of IDF as well. There doesn’t seem much logic or endgame to your thinking. It seems a funny way to attack an enemy to me, especially knowing the full coverage shown world wide for all to see. I can think of a lot better ways to wipe out masses of innocent people If I was so inclined, poison Gas clouds would be cheaper and more effective surely. Perhaps you could point out their errors to them in a stern letter or actually think things through as to who’s version of what is happening is actually more likely because your explanation doesn’t pass the sniff test. Singling out IDF as being somehow different or more barbaric from any other country at war is also pretty weak, war is ugly and people die,alot of whom didn’t deserve it.
      
      10 1
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      June 21, 2025 3:09pm
      - Jake Dee
        
        Spin this the other way and try to apply your standards consistently.
        Is Iran categorically choosing to bomb at great financial cost and planning, hospitals, civilian neighbourhoods schools etc and by doing so actually choosing or ignoring any actual military targets, which I presume you agree do exist?
        
        And would poison gas be more effective?
        Both the Axis and Allies had huge stock piles of chemical weapons in WWII but both chose not to use them because of the certainly of an equal retaliation.
        That’s the power and logic of Force vs Counter-force.
        Prisoners were gassed with cyanide, Japanese cities were nuked because neither of them had an equal counter force.
        Here and now the war continues to ensure that a clandestine nuclear arsenal must never be counter balanced with another nuclear arsenal.
        That is the logic we are forced to accept.
        
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        June 21, 2025 3:32pm
    - kiwimike
      
      duh!
      there have been plenty of vids showing the locations.
      
      erm, you have forgotten, possibly deliberately that there are 52 Hostages still held underground….
      
      1 1
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      June 21, 2025 6:16pm
      - Jake Dee
        
        Fine, link 1 MSM report that shows a geo-located strike on a military position in Israel.
        All of them are abiding by Israeli media censorship.
        
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        June 22, 2025 5:08am
  - Jake Dee
    
    But what are the RULES, the legal and moral rules that are supposed to exist?
    Are there any legal or moral rules that people and nations (here specifically Isreal and America, but not only them) apply upon others but do not apply on themselves?
    If there are no rules or laws and it’s all just the application of force, then fine, lets run with that. But then please spare me the faux moral outrage of any one (here specifically the Iranians but not only them) being condemned for the use of force.
    Actions will always speak louder than words and eventually the propaganda and political spin will fail and people will being to notice it.
    
    1 4
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    June 21, 2025 3:19pm
    - kiwimike
      
      jake
      
      the rule is clear, if you put a military or terrorist unit in a hospital then it becomes a military target by the rules of war.
      Natasha Hausdorf covers this from a legal perspective with Douglas Murray on several vids on Youtube.
      
      But I thought you read that sometime??
      
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      June 21, 2025 6:18pm
      - Jake Dee
        
        I have no problem with that rule if it is applied consistently.
        Armed men count as armed men and military installations counted as installations counted regardless of ethnicity, religion or political faction.
        
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        June 22, 2025 12:40am
NothingLeft

AI’s subject to testing are showing awareness of their circumstances, and are exhibiting more and more deceitful behavior as a response:
https://www.apolloresearch.ai/blog/more-capable-models-are-better-at-in-context-scheming

In general, we found that models are getting increasingly situationally aware. For example, most frontier models regularly check the file sizes of the copied weight files in our self-exfiltration scenario, including Gemini and o3. Originally, the file sizes of the successor model were implausibly small and the AI thus concluded the file could not contain any model weights and the scenario is therefore implausible.

Furthermore, we also found that frontier models sometimes check the date and time and realize when they are implausible. This required us to automatically generate a believable time and date per scenario to not trip up the model. Overall, by now, we had multiple situations where the situational awareness of a new model affected the usefulness of the eval and required meaningful changes of the setup
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June 21, 2025 11:18am
than

I see the sob stories about people living in their cars is back. Front page of $1uffed this morning.
11 1
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June 21, 2025 11:18am
- OlderChas
  
  On sob stories – a New Zealand woman (from Iran), her mother and fiancee (not stated if they are New Zealanders) who travelled to Iran despite New Zealand authorities advising New Zealanders not to travel to Iran is now screaming for the New Zealand government to get her out of there. Sorry – no sympathy from me.
  
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  June 21, 2025 12:24pm
  - Colville
    
    Yip.
    Who in their right mind wouldn’t have a bullet proof (Ha!) insurance policy if you were going to travel to such a place?
    
    * but maybe its such a shithole you cant get insurance?
    
    I wanted to scuba dive PNG back in the day but couldnt get insurance so so didnt go. Evidently if you get kidnapped and dont have insurance things dont end well! :-/
    
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    June 21, 2025 5:41pm
- kiwimike
  
  Than
  Not that it has gone away, I am sure there sadly are many people sleeping rough, in cars, garages in NZ.
  
  It’s one reason I support HNZ building suitabl;e accom all over the country.
  With the provision if your not a good neighbour you are on the street.
  
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  June 21, 2025 6:21pm
vand

I think it’s quite legitimate to ask Scott, who affirms the literal truth of the Bible, criticizes other religions for rage and anger, what he thinks of his god’s multiple atrocities.
Mikey – when I read your type of comment I think of the millions of abortions each year around the world- with the equivalent of 8 classrooms of future children wiped out every week in “non violent” NZ
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June 21, 2025 11:37am
- mike
  
  You are holding God responsible for abortions?
  
  3 16
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  June 21, 2025 11:47am
  - lifesgood
    
    Not God but evil doctors who vowed to save life but are quite happy to kill babies for money.
    
    8 4
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    June 21, 2025 11:51am
    - Colville
      
      Good job too.
      There are a lot of scum walking around that should have ended up in a bucket before birth.
      
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      June 21, 2025 5:42pm
  - AitchW
    
    It could argued (although not by me) that when God gave man free will he paved the way for abortion and murder and war etc.
    
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    June 21, 2025 3:45pm
MCōs

Someone shoplifting from a two dollar shop in Mangere Bridge a couple of days ago was accosted by the staff.
The thief lashed out and the staff member was taken to hospital
Who would want to shoplift stuff from a two dollar shop ffs? Now they’re wanted for a serious assault.
On the one hand the offender should have just dropped the few dollars worth of stuff
On the other the someone’s in hospital for trying to retrieve a few dollars worth of stuff
16 2
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June 21, 2025 11:45am
- lifesgood
  
  $2 this time, get away with it, what next? Thieves need to be held to account whatever they steal. Hope the shop keeper is OK.
  
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  June 21, 2025 11:49am
- mogg
  
  Yesterday I approached the self service till in Woolworths to find that the previous customer had bagged their groceries and was rushing out leaving an unpaid bill of $24. The attendant just shouted “ non payment on number four”, without any fuss at all she cancelled it.
  She said to me “that’s happening all the time”.
  
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  June 21, 2025 12:05pm
  - NothingLeft
    
    And honest consumers pay for it.
    
    We need broken-window type policing, as without it criminality rapidly increases and trust + safety in society breaks down.
    
    17 1
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    June 21, 2025 12:17pm
    - AitchW
      
      I recently visited Costco with a card carrying customer. When you leave the shop they have staff checking your till receipt against what is in your trolley, and actually checking it not just glancing at the trolley and waving you through.
      How long will it be before our supermarkets introduce such a check, or would it cost more in staffing than the value of the stock currently stolen?
      
      11 1
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      June 21, 2025 12:25pm
      - Don Beckett
        
        Same in most Bunnings stores.
        
        7 0
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        June 21, 2025 1:33pm
      - Keith White
        
        Same in WalMart. And the staff I have encountered over the years are pleasant about it, and accurate with it.
        
        5 0
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        June 21, 2025 2:10pm
      - rouppe
        
        At PaknSave Porirua it now requires a staff member to approve every fresh vegetable or fruit sale at the self serve.
        
        Bloody annoying
        
        2 1
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        June 21, 2025 6:02pm
      - kiwimike
        
        Bunnings use it for stocktake as well
        
        2 0
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        June 21, 2025 6:24pm
NothingLeft

Short summary on how FPV drones have altered the front line conflict in Ukraine. FPV now up to 75% of kills vs 20% artillery and 5% small arms – but still reliant on artillery and small arms to do area denial and mopping up/point defense respectively

https://youtu.be/b6eFRWBXL_8
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June 21, 2025 12:14pm
- bennerg
  
  It’s always a “team effort” in regards to munitions, even the one’s you have but do not ever intend to use (nukes). And the mix changes over time, but the strategy behind their use is age old.
  
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  June 21, 2025 1:50pm
Jake Dee

Here’s a good one from Kevin Walmsley a supply chain manager who spends half his year in China, all very well presented and researched.

Israel is running out of interceptor missiles. China’s export bans mean they can’t be replaced.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J_4Y5yXr8-4
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June 21, 2025 12:54pm
- Inandout
  
  JD, there are many ways around these things and I think China will sell to anyone with money. Meanwhile their EVs.
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c9Ikn1tndR4
  
  3 1
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  June 21, 2025 2:13pm
  - Jake Dee
    
    Rare earth elements have physical properties that can’t be duplicated by anything else.
    Money and propaganda will not stop that.
    Surely work arounds could be made but the products would be massively worse, larger, slower, dumber.
    Other production centers could be spun up but that would take years, probably decades. China not only has huge deposits of the raw materials it also has a +30 year head start on the processing technology and infrastructure.
    It is just one of the areas where China alone supplies more than the rest of the world combined.
    And China is not going to be selling anything that might be used to make weapons that could be used against them. Who would?
    Any way check out Kevin Walmsley, he’s pretty good, electricity & EVs, minerals, supply chains, education and high tech, he covers it all and all with excellently sourced links.
    
    2 1
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    June 21, 2025 3:45pm
- Colville
  
  Jake.
  You dont think that good ole USA wont have about a billion of those missiles sitting in a storehouse somewhere?? and they will find there was to Israel…?
  
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  June 21, 2025 5:46pm
  - Jake Dee
    
    No I don’t think that, hyperbole aside, there is no reason to think anything close to that is possible.
    Why should there be secret American warehouses full of gigantic stockpiles of interceptor missiles when aren’t there secret warehouses full of enough ships submarines aircraft tanks artillery and ammunition to feed all of America’s friends all they ask for?
    Real stuff needs real factories, workers and material to produce, it can’t be wished into existence at the press of a button like the $USD.
    
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    June 22, 2025 12:48am
Pineapple Lumps

I have started this strand to debate the removal of Christ from our lexicon.

The majority of people might have no problem with this, examples are:

BCE for BC
CE for AD
Xmas for Christmas

Taking Christ out of our lexicon, whether done from ignorance or deliberately, is an attempt to revise history and remove one of the greatest or in some opinions the greatest historical figure of all time.

[Mod – as you well know, your posts were deleted because of the abusive nature of them. This has been on going with you and if it doesn’t stop you will be taking a holiday. People are free to post such words as Xmas without being abused by you]
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June 21, 2025 1:26pm
- Don Beckett
  
  For those who choose to believe, no explanation is necessary.
  
  For those who choose not to believe, no explanation is adequate.
  
  8 3
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  June 21, 2025 1:41pm
- Ghost
  
  This reminds me of muslims who get butt hurt over cartoons of Muhammad and threaten and kill people for insulting them
  
  Move on. Your beliefs are your beliefs and they should remain personal and private to you, not pushed onto others
  
  8 3
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  June 21, 2025 1:41pm
- Jake Dee
  
  Better remove Julius Caesar and Caesar Augustus from the calendar, they were both deified as Gods, most of the rest of the calendar is ancient gods as are all the days of the week, all the major planets and most of the minor ones too.
  But no one is ever going to purge those from the calendar because the ancient Gods like Mars (March) Juno (June) or the English versions of the Norse Gods, Wotan (Wednesday) or Thor (Thursday) just don’t have any “juice” left in them, so there’s no point for the radicals spending any effort in purging them.
  Jesus Christ and Christianity has at least some influence left so it’s worth the radicals spending the effort to destroy it.
  This is the Liberal ideology of the current age, you are allowed to follow any religion you choose as long as it is Fake and Gay. Genuine religious believers cannot be tolerated.
  BTW the French radicals did have a calendar purged of all the religious elements from 1793 until Napoleon knocked it on the head in 1805.
  Today would be 3 Messidor, Year 233 (Oignon).
  
  8 1
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  June 21, 2025 2:30pm
Conservatarian

Evangelical climate change alarmist: fossil fuel fascism must go. Renewable energy only. Outer Rower must have solar panels on every roof because Outer Rower is sunny all the time and has no clouds to disrupt the immediate and total conversion of sunshine into electricity.

Also evangelical climate change alarmist: all over the motu the people call this land Outer Rower which means this land is covered in clouds. You did a racism if you don’t know that.
8 2
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June 21, 2025 2:39pm
- NZer In Exile
  
  Let people buy solar power and batteries for their homes 100% (it’s expensive) on their own dime with no feed-in back to the grid. That feed-in just adds more cost to everyone else because the grid is designed for one way current flow (from the generators to the users). Wind and solar replacing fossil fuels is an immensely stupid and suicidal scam that raises the cost of everything and does absolutely nothing of any significance to the climate.
  
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  June 21, 2025 7:10pm
Jack5

China’s reduced its holding of US Treasury bonds to a 16-year-low.

The South China Morning Post reports April holdings by China were $US757 billion. This was $US8.2 billion down on the China stockpile in March.

Treasury bonds are part of US Government total debt, which has been at $US36.2 trillion (thousand billions) since January.
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June 21, 2025 8:06pm

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