The recent visit by British anti-trans rights activist Kellie-Jay Keen-Minshull has sparked a massive increase in the level of online hatred directed at the trans community here.
Analysts monitoring online extremism say it has hit new lows with one researcher describing it as “genocidal”.
When a so called researcher describes the expression of words as genocidal, you know that you are not dealing with serious people. It is in fact insulting to victims of actual genocide.
Meanwhile, the researchers say the amount of hate being directed at the Green Party co-leader Marama Davidson is now as bad as that towards former Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern.
I guess labelling an entire race as being responsible for all the violence in the world pisses people off. Of course people should not react with personal abuse, but the context is important. If a right wing MP said that (for example) Maori men were responsible for all the violence in NZ, then I am sure that MP would also have an increase in online hate towards them.
I wish NZ had an organisation that actually objectively measured online disinformation. But the Disinformation Project is not that. Whenever I see them in the media, they talk in sweeping generalisations, and use hyperbole. I don’t see hard data. I don’t see any details of what they classify at disinformation or hate. I don’t see analysis of what the reach of those saying hateful things is. All I see is hysterical statements like the one above.
The chart above from The Facts speaks for itself, in relation to Marama Davidson’s claim that it is white CIS men responsible for violence in the world.
As he lay on the tarmac outside his business, Ashfaq Farooqi suffered a heart attack.
Robbed of cigarettes and tobacco by four armed thieves, his Flagstaff Supervalue superette has been the target of 12 robberies in 12 months, he says.
On the most recent occasion, he attempted to prevent the thieves leaving the car park by standing in front of their getaway vehicle with a trolley full of beach toys.
For his efforts he was run over. It was then he suffered a heart attack.
I wonder if it is the same thieves each time or different ones. If the same ones, then it shows they are not getting caught. If it is different ones, then there are a hell of a lot of thieves out there.
Whatever the answer is, the owner would I am sure just like to be able to run a business without being held up.
“I can’t sell (the superette), no-one will buy it. I can’t run away. What can I do?”
Not only did Farooqi come away from the ordeal with an overbearing sense of despair as to the future of his business, he displays a laundry list of medication and a suicide prevention plan prepared for him by doctors at the hospital.
Should thieves attempt to rob his store again, Farooqi has a warning for them that leaves little to the imagination.
“I will kill them.”
Which is not the answer, but he obviously feels desperate and trapped.
Zombie Economics (2010) is a worthwhile and challenging book because author John Quiggin paces theory and actual events through the previous 100 years.
New Zealand has “Zombie Educationalists” who deserve nothing like the same level of respect. As soon as someone – other than Labour – releases an education policy they stir into action thrust limbs upwards through the dank earth to make proclamations that make me feel as despondent for them, and the people they may influence, as Solomon was in the first chapter of Ecclesiastes.
“All things are wearisome, more than one can say. The eye never has enough of seeing, nor the ear its fill of hearing. What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.”
The background to the reanimation of two such EdZombies was National having the temerity to acknowledge that our education system (i.e. bureaucracy, schools, teachers) are currently failing to lift ability and outcomes for students – with huge personal and societal consequences. The first of their proposals – and I am sure there will be more – is a policy that in our primary schools students get to spend an hour a day on Math, Reading and Writing. Accompanying that is a progression-based testing programme that will take a teacher all of five hours – total – per year and provide accurate data/information to teachers and parents (remember those people?).
For Peter O’Connor (Professor of Education and Director of the Centre for Arts and Social Transformation – don’t giggle – it is a real position) this is just too much, and he is reanimated. He hadn’t been heard of since Charter Schools were succeeding and he hated that.
He states (about a curriculum that hasn’t even been written yet – yet another non-evidence based “academic”):
What he fails to see is that he is outright bagging the quality and competence of every primary school teacher in NZ. He is telling us that they cannot make teaching the basics and then, thoroughly, expanding upwards, exciting and worthwhile. Frankly – he is calling the primary teacher work-force a bunch of unimaginative dullards. He claims the position of Professor of some form of the Arts but cannot see the excitement of reading and writing.
What he also fails to see is that in many areas of learning – music, tennis and all sports, Maths, driving, … the list is endless – that a huge amount of significant, purposeful, practice is required. I love watching great musicians – e.g. RHCP guitarist John Fruciante. These people literally play faster than thinking as they have drilled their skill set, through hours or purposeful practice, into the highly efficient long term memory part of the brain. That then enables to be creative and keep learning in the conscious thinking part of the brain. This should be very well known to anyone genuinely interested in high quality education.
From deeper within the earth comes someone called David Cooke. His key statement is:
If that was the case our education system would be flying. No decline against international standards, much more than 50% of students fully attending school, no MASSIVE gaps between ethnicities and demographics, no significant failure in testing towards new and required NCEA credits for reading, writing and math, no schools – like Papakura High – having to send classes home on an afternoon as they are 10 teachers under being fully staffed. By the way – O’Connor calls all of this a “manufactured crisis” which I presume means he is comfortable with the problems just stated and examples such as 33% of South Auckland Maori boys leaving school, after 13,200 funded hours, with no qualifications at all. Maybe when a significant amount of our youth cannot land a well-paid job, rent a home, etc, O’Connor will host them and take care of them.
In reference to testing Cooke states: “[Luxon] proposes standardised testing for benchmarks stating “explicit expectations of achievement and knowledge dissemination for each year group”. He doesn’t explain how these standards square with children learning at different speeds, but perhaps we can’t have all these mysteries revealed in a single media stand-up.”
This is plainly nonsensical. If testing shows that someone has progressed very well through the levels – then you provide teaching at that higher level. If someone is behind expectations, then you skillfully work with the child to improve their knowledge and processes. It is not rocket-science but perhaps Luxon figured anyone who actually understood teaching and learning would know this stuff and that he did not need to spell it out.
Fortunately, the are people highly invested on a day-to-day basis on education in the land of the living such as Dr Michael Johnston of the NZ Initiative. The man privileged to make it into Michael Wood’s sub-urbane lexicon of insults when the Honourable Minister referred to Johnston as a “right wing hack” on the AM Show.
In the NZ Herald today Dr Johnston nails it with this comment:
This is a good start from National on a crucial aspect of our nation’s issues. Cameron Bagrie’s comments about the education system today being the best predictor on the state of our nation in 30 years is both frightening and highly motivating. Luxon may not have the charisma of Paul Newman in his prime – but maybe that is a good thing in this moment. His party NEEDS to produce outstanding policy that the nation sees will bring improvement. I hope there is a lot more to come on education (but not “Charter Schools” there is a better way to skin that cat) and, also on policies for good parenting. The two go hand in hand. Why was our education system comparatively strong in the 1970s – 80s? Largely because our family and social institutions were strong, and our schooling system (with some notable exceptions) has not pivoted to the societal changes/decline. Both parenting and education can, and must, become world class in NZ.
Newshub can reveal the percentage of callers to the 1737 mental health line who have hung up while waiting in a queue has nearly doubled over the past three years.
In January 2020, 16 percent of callers to 1737 hung up while they were in the queue. Three years later, it was 31 percent. It peaked in November last year at 33 percent.
Amazing. They announce $1.9 billion in extra mental health funding, and the outcome is 1 in 3 callers to the mental health line hang up because it takes so long to get the phone answered.
Once again we see the Government manage the rare feat of spending heaps more and delivering worse outcomes.
A group called Common Ground Aotearoa has launched, to advocate that rates should be based on land value, not capital value.
The weird thing is they are an anonymous lobby group. Their website doesn’t list a single name of who they are.
How do they hope to be taken seriously when they have no actual people listed.
I actually agree with the policy proposition. I think taxing just land, rather than capital value, would be good for the housing market. But they’re not going to have any real impact on the political process if they remain anonymous.
You may have heard of Byron C Clark. In the last few years, he has been promoted as an authority on the far right/alt right extremism, and disinformation. With the parliamentary protest a year ago, he became one of the media’s go-to experts on such matters. This expertise is based largely, it seems, on him spending untold hours burrowing down fetid rabbit holes on the internet. He has just published a book “Fear: New Zealand’s Hostile Underworld of Extremists” and is doing the press rounds promoting it.
The far right is clearly a growing problem in New Zealand and elsewhere and, while I and others have serious doubts about Clark’s methodology, I don’t doubt his good intentions. However, if someone is purporting to be an expert on extremism, I believe it’s important to know about their own history on that subject.
It is a matter of public record that Clark was a member of the Workers Party of New Zealand, a socialist/Marxist political party that operated for about a decade from 2002. He was not just any member of the party. He unsuccessfully stood for the Christchurch mayoralty in 2007 on its ticket.
So what, you might ask? Well, a major policy of the party was to actively support and fundraise for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, known as the PFLP, which was by then a designated terrorist organisation in the US, the EU, Israel and other places (although not New Zealand). In a 2014 profile on the PFLP, the BBC noted “Combining Arab nationalism with Marxist-Leninist ideology, the PFLP saw the destruction of Israel as integral to its struggle to remove Western capitalism from the Middle East.” The PFLP became notorious in the late 1960s and 70s for attacking airports and hijacking commercial aircraft and holding passengers hostage, sometimes destroying the aircraft and killing passengers.
So the guy who is held up by the media as an expert on the so called extreme right is himself a member of the extreme left. Marxism and fasicsm are equally bad, having caused untold misery and death. Both stand for powerful authoritarian governments.
But Clark was not only a Marxist, but an active supporter and fundraiser for a terrorism.
Terrorists always believe that their attacks on innocent civilians are justified in pursuit of their political or ideological aims, and that they are resisting oppression of one sort or another. The Christchurch gunman was no different.
The end does not justify the means.
If someone who was held up as an authority on extremism had supported and fundraised for the KKK or another far right organisation, however long ago, I feel confident that there would be a powerful drive – championed by Clark himself – for that person to be deplatformed and suffer other social and financial consequences, and not to attend the Counterterrorism Hui, as Clark did last year.
It seems incredible that Clark, an organiser of this group at the time, and someone whose name is on the pamphlet, would have thought that the PFLP had denounced violence. The PFLP has never renounced vioence. If we are to believe Clark we would have to believe he never read any of the literature the Party put out, and that he had put his name on. Or that he never read the slogan on the T-shirt he and his comrades were selling, or seen the images on the T-shirt of armed militants.
Or, in fact, that he never read his own post on the Fightback website from 2009 when he said “All profits raised by the campaign go directly to the PFLP to help fund all aspects of their struggle against the Zionist state of Israel both politically and militarily.” [emphasis added]
His claim that the PFLP never received funds from the Workers Party is questionable also. Was the Party lying when they announced, in 2010, that it was donating $1,000 to the PFLP, raised mostly through the sale of PFLP t-shirts? According to a former comrade (who wished to remain anonymous) a payment was sent to the group and a second one was forthcoming until the Christchurch Earthquake struck, and the individual in charge of the money dissapeared with it.
My real problem with this book isn’t its sloppiness, dreary re-telling of uninteresting internet encounters, or uninteresting prose; it is how it wraps vile ideologies around decent people with either careless or intentional ambiguity.
Chris Lynch is a popular Christchurch journalist with what appears to be a mainstream, mildly conservative world view. He interviewed then New Conservative deputy leader Elliot Ikilei over Ikilei’s opposition to the UN compact on refugees.
No credible author can consider either Lynch or Ikilei as part of a hostile underworld of extremists, and yet in Clark’s re-telling of a mundane interview a cloud forms over both men. “It is concerning,” Lynch is quoted. “[O]ur friends across the ditch, why are they not signed up to it? … Makes you wonder.”
You can disagree with Ikilei, and Lynch, but what is Clark trying to achieve here? Why are these two conventional gentlemen woven into a narrative about a “hostile underworld of extremists”?
If the extremely moderate Chris Lynch has made it into a book on extremism, I’m surprised I’m not featured also!
Requesting the Speaker remove swipe-card access to Parliament for business, non-government sector and union representatives
Offering Government support to third-party lobbyists to establish a voluntary code of conduct
A refreshed Cabinet Manual being published this month sets clear expectations for Ministers in relation to conduct and decisions when considering future employment
Starting long-term work on policy options to regulate lobbying
These range from trivial to insignificant.
The fourth point is merely announcing there might be a discussion document some stage after the election.
The third point is almost meaningless. It just says if a Minister is planning to jump ship and become a lobbyist, they should not make decisions that might benefit their future employer. This is not the issue. The issue is a Cabinet Minister with their detailed knowledge of every Cabinet discussion on every issue, should not be able to become a lobbyist within weeks of leaving Cabinet. There should be a stand-down period.
The second point is also meaningless. It means they will write a letter to the lobbyists asking them to do something.
The first point is probably the most laughable. The swipe cards (I have one) merely means you don’t have to go through the security scanner and wait at reception for a staffer to come down to walk you down a corridor to an office. Rather than make it harder for people to access Parliament, they should be making it easier and granting swipe cards to anyone who is a regular visitor. All this change will do (if the Speaker agrees) is mean staffers have to walk to and from their office more often when they have a visitor for their MP.
This announcement is so laughably weak, it shows how desperate the Government is to try and look like they are doing something, even if something is dreamed up in ten minutes.
I don’t personally think there is an issue with staffers (not Ministers) going on to become lobbyists. But having lobbyists parachute in to be the PMs Chief of Staff is an issue. Both Ardern and Hipkins have done this. Nothing in the announcement today will change that.
Nearly 40 years after a caretaker at a union building was killed picking up a suitcase with a bomb in it, the chief suspect has died. A never-before-released transcript reveals what the man told police, writes Sam Sherwood. …
However, circumstantial evidence did point to one person, marine engineer Edgar Kidman, a former army sergeant with experience in handling explosives including gelignite.
The Herald on Sunday can reveal Kidman died in May 2021 with a cloud of suspicion hanging over his head. And for the first time, a transcript of his interview with police from the time can be shared. …
The device was wrapped in newspaper and fragments from the scene were identified as coming from the June 18, 1977 edition of the Evening Post, specifically pages 9, 10, 19 and 20. …
Police also believed there were two bottles of accelerant, likely petrol, inside a Teal brand soft drink bottle and a bottle sealed with an Asti Riccadonna cork. There was also an Eveready 6-volt battery. …
In August 1984, police searched Kidman’s home in Breaker Bay. Inside the home, police found four Teal brand soft-drink bottles, electrical tape, a packet of detonators, safety fuses and a torch without its battery.
Also inside was the Evening Post dated June 18, 1977. Pages, 9, 10, 19 and 20, which were found inside the suitcase, were among the pages missing.
This is not proof beyond reasonable doubt, but certainly well beyond the balance of probabilities.
Very very few people have experience in explosives in NZ. What is the chance that at one house you have someone who:
Had experience with explosives
Had the same brand of soft drink bottle as used in the bomb
Had a missing battery, where one was used in the bomb
Had detonators at home
Had a copy of the very same newspaper as used in the bomb, with missing pages that corresponded to those found in the bomb
The last one especially takes it from plausible to very likely he did it.
I opposed the Iraq war. I also covered it and reported on the misuse of intelligence about weapons of mass destruction to justify the war. I hammered Bush for the eight years he was in office over Iraq, torture, Guantánamo, Darfur, reproductive health and so much more.
And the best policy by an American president?
I’d argue that it was something else that Bush did that constitutes his most important legacy and that we in the media under-covered. At the same time that Bush was planning the Iraq war, he was also starting the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, or PEPFAR, a global effort to turn the tide of the AIDS epidemic. PEPFAR continues to this day and has saved 25 million lives worldwide so far. Think about that: 25 million lives. What can compare with that?
When Bush rolled out this initiative, he wasn’t reacting to pressure from Democrats, and he didn’t gain any political benefit. The American public is still mostly unaware of PEPFAR.
My take is that we in the media bungled things in both directions: We were insufficiently skeptical of the Iraq war in the run-up to it, and then we were insufficiently attuned to something that Bush did that was actually heroic.I know, I know. This messes with our heads. How can I, as a good liberal, accept that the most important humanitarian initiative by the United States in modern times wasn’t organized by some progressive Democrat whom I admire but rather by an evangelical Republican whom I disagree with on almost everything?
HealthNZ is now apparently unable to report on staff vacancies in emergency departments, National’s Health spokesperson Dr Shane Reti says.
“New Zealand is facing a workforce shortage, and it is one of the most important issues facing the health sector right now. It is simply not credible that HealthNZ do not know how many emergency department staff vacancies there currently are.
“Late last year, the previous Health Minister was able to send a detailed breakdown of staff vacancies at every single emergency department. But recently HealthNZ through the current Health Minister effectively said they do not have the data.
“None of this makes sense. According to this Labour Government one of the key factors of creating the health restructure was to centralise data and decision making. After spending half a billion dollars, key data is suddenly nowhere to be found.
It is bizarre. The data should, in theory, now be able to be collated by one person, not 23 people. Yet under the old system we could find out this health data, and under this new expensive system, we can’t.
I saw on Twitter that after the recent SNP election, the UK now has:
A Hindu Prime Minister
A Muslim First Secretary of Scotland
A Buddhist Home Secretary
None of them are there because of any quotas or because they are Hindu, Muslim or Buddhist. They just happen to be from diverse backgrounds.
But it reflects well on the UK that it is such a great melting pot of different cultures and faiths. Can you imagine many or any other countries where this would be the case?
Prime Minister Netanyahu Benjamin Netanyahu announced on Monday evening that he was temporarily freezing the bill that would alter the makeup of the Judicial Appointments Committee and was willing to give a “real opportunity to real dialogue” over the government’s judicial reforms, which have thrown the country into turmoil and unprecedented civil unrest.
I’ve been following this issue with interest because what Netanyahu has proposed is pretty much the status quo in New Zealand, so have been bemused by why it has caused such huge division. It might be because it is him proposing it, and that he is facing trial himself – which is a bad look.
But I was surprised by how anti-democratic the status quo is.
In New Zealand every Judge is appointed by the Government of the Day. The Attorney-General or Prime Minister appoints them. In Israel they are appointed by a nine member committee that has two Ministers on it, two MPs (one Govt/one Oppn), three Supreme Court Judges and two lawyers from the Bar Association. So the judiciary and legal profession have the majority on the committee and can appoint judges against the wishes of the Government. The Government basically has little say in who is appointed.
Now for the last 30 years or so, the public have voted for centre-right Governments. But the legal profession and judiciary are fairly heavily centre-left. So for the left, the judiciary is their one remaining source of power, while to the right the judiciary is a self-appointing elite out of touch with the country. Hence the conflict.
Now this would not be as big an issue if the judiciary merely interpreted laws made by the Knesset. But despite the fact there is no written constitution, the judiciary gave itself the power to strike down laws that it regards as incompatible with what are called the basic laws.
Finally you have the odd situation of the Attorney-General of Israel. Despite the name, they are not a democratically elected person. In Israel the role is almost a merger of both Attorney-General and Solictor-General. They head up the legal system and are the sole advisor to the Government. Their decisions are binding on the entire Government. Recently they blocked the National Security Minister from sacking a regional police chief. The AG can decide not to defend the Government in court. This role is incredibly powerful and appointed for a six year term so one Government can appoint someone who will have power over the next Government.
There are arguments for and against the status quo, but it is a very unusual arrangement.
One in three staff at Te Pūkenga don’t believe there is a future for them at the new mega polytech, while the vast majority surveyed would not recommend working there to whānau and friends.
The national tertiary provider carried out its fourth employee questionnaire in November 2022, with 50% (4311) of staff responding.
Staff were then asked “how likely are you to recommend Te Pūkenga as a place of work for your whānau and friends”.
The answered generated an Employee Net Promoter Score (ENPS), a measurement used by the business community.
A score above zero is considered good. The worst score is -100.
For the organisation as a whole, Te Pūkenga scored -59, while every polytech received a score of less than zero.
This merger was Hipkins’ pet project. It was not recommended to him. He ignored all the advice about maybe doing some regional mergers and decided to centralise the entire industry.
The result is a cost blowout in the hundreds of millions, fewer students completing courses and staff so unhappy that almost none of them recommend it as a place to work.
I have ordered a government inquiry under S6(3) of the Inquiries Act 2013 in relation to the e-mail sent by the Hon Stuart Nash in 2020 and its subsequent handling by the offices of Hon Stuart Nash and Rt Hon Jacinda Ardern.
I accept the assurances of those involved that genuine mistakes were made with no improper motives, but I also accept that it is important for the public to have confidence in how the Government operates. For this reason I have appointed former Prime Minister, the Rt Hon Sir Geoffrey Palmer, to conduct a government inquiry, to report to me by 31 May 2023.
I’m pleased to see the the PM has agreed to an independent inquiry, It simply wasn’t credible to keep claiming that there was nothing to be investigated.
I would have preferred it was a public inquiry, rather than a government inquiry, as a public inquiry’s report must be tabled in the House of Representatives while a government inquiry only goes to the commissioning Minister.
But I think it is inevitable that the report would be publicly released, so it isn’t a huge deal. I think the PM should get credit for his decision to have an independent inquiry.
Donald Trump has been indicted by a Manhattan grand jury, according to multiple sources familiar with the matter – the first time in American history that a current or former president has faced criminal charges.
The indictment has been filed under seal and will be announced in the coming days. The charges are not publicly known at this time, one source told CNN.
I have blogged previously that this case appears very weak compared to other cases. But until we see the actual charges and evidence, we won’t know.
The case I am most interested in is the classified document case. Not so much the possession of them, but the probability that Trump lied to his own lawyers (who unknowingly lied to the FBI) that he had returned them all. The fact that the courts have compelled his lawyers to break client attorney privilege and testify suggests there is very strong evidence in that case.
So anyway I await with interest the actual evidence. Unlike some who are so blinded by their devotion or hatred they think Trump is automatically innocent or guilty, I am keeping an open mind on this case. But as I said previously many legal experts have said it appears relatively weak.
