The Daily Blog Open Mic – Thursday – 24th October 2019

1. Why is the NZ government issuing so many visas to NZ! It works out badly for everyone and why is nobody prosecuting the labour firms like NPL bringing them in!

   Their is not work for them, so they should be sent back and the government/unions sues and gets their money back if it was paid to a NZ firm. If not ban the overseas firm from issuing visas.

   We have a housing and health crisis in NZ, with more and more people on jobseeker (up 11% this year) and needing emergency food, accomodation etc – so the last thing NZ needs is more people coming to NZ on scams.

   Immigration New Zealand pressured to give Chinese workers alternative visas

   https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/new-zealand/2019/01/immigration-new-zealand-pressured-to-give-chinese-workers-alternative-visas.html

   • Its been standard policy to punish the victim and let the arseholes get away with it for several years @SaveNZ.
     Thankfully, INZ and the Labour Inspectorate have woken up to the mess they have created for themselves but the problem has become so big they’re overwhelmed. It was all working as designed by the previous junta. Lack of proper oversight and resources

     And now the current coalition government seems to be reacting in knee jerk style playing catchup. It might take a while for them to realise the whole bloody thing needs to be rebuilt from the ground up and taken away from Joyce and Coleman’s vanity project (MoBIE).

     Don’t hold your breath. These things take time (including fucked up restructures and managing racists and muppets out of the place). You have to give them E for Effort though

     • Totally agree OnceWasTim, the Government don’t seem to want to rock the boat as business still braying for cheap labour and the money that companies like INZ can make is very impressive off the back of the visas, then of course, supply the ‘accomodation’ etc etc

       Why the wokies are not focused on prosecuting INZ and the other labour companies is beyond me.

       The current government don’t seem to understand many of the migrants are probably told outright lies about their prospects in NZ and have to keep paying and paying and paying. That is ok for those that have the money, but some borrowed it and like the Kiwis for a student loan for example will never be able to pay it back as the low wages offered.

       it’s a scam with many victims including local victims displaced in the process in terms of work and accomodation, as well as the migrants if they are not in on the scam , but bringing people into NZ under false pretences and overblown promises in both work and study, so that labour/tertiary companies can profit should not be acceptable to this government and they are not doing enough to stop it.

       The 18% increase each year under the Labour government shows not only are they not containing the issue, they are allowing it to escalate.

2. Might explain the ‘record’ tourism and 300,000 temp and residency visas issues.

   ‘Desperate people will pay significant money’: Human smuggling groups target New Zealand

   “Organised criminal groups are charging tens of thousands of dollars to manufacture fraudulent passports in an effort to smuggle people into New Zealand. ”

   https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/new-zealand/2019/09/desperate-people-will-pay-significant-money-human-smuggling-groups-targeting-new-zealand.html

   Since any man and his dog can get into NZ on the back of a fake degree or pay a visa company, I guess the advantages to a fake passport is that you avoid the waiting list at immigration NZ and like Sroubek can get operate as a drugs smuggler, open a business, get your ’employees’ citizenship with the job, and then get granted permanent residency in jail after getting off multiple charges in court with the help of your QC lawyer!

   • And I wouldn’t be too quick to blame I L-G for all that either. Better to blame the cistern and some pretty fucked up past policy advice, and at a pinch, his naivety and being such a nice bloke, absent of an adequate bullshit detector
     (see the response also to your previous @ SaveNZ).
     It’s all what you get when you treat people as economic units whose only purpose is to pipe them through ANZCO skill shortage lists (that are always out of date) and other business enterprises (such as the shit PTEs that have smeared the reputation of the genuine), and without any, or little regard for social and cultural imperatives.
     (INZ, the Labour Inspectorate, and other little compliance fiefdoms under MoBIE have been built just for that purpose).
     Then of course there’s NZQA. And then there’s also Shane and the compromises necessary to maintain a coalition – kind of like Obama’s “Redline”

     What’s it going to take to be kind and transformational? Certainly not one or two suicides that go unnoticed.
     I know……Maybe something like a refrigerated truck load of 39 of the desperate onshore, or even being given the two finger salute when we go grovelling for a free trade agreement.
     Yea, but Nah

3. Govt gives Japanese-owned forestry company Pan Pac Forest Products free pass to buy NZ land

   Foreign ownership U turn from Greens, wasn’t this the party where their rules are already set out in their policy document?

   https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/new-zealand/2019/09/desperate-people-will-pay-significant-money-human-smuggling-groups-targeting-new-zealand.html

   (Starting to sound like Key with the Thiel citizenship bypassing normal rules).

4. 22 Oct, 2019 craig Murray
   I was deeply shaken while witnessing yesterday’s events in Westminster Magistrates Court. Every decision was railroaded through over the scarcely heard arguments and objections of Assange’s legal team, by a magistrate who barely pretended to be listening.
   Before I get on to the blatant lack of fair process, the first thing I must note was Julian’s condition. I was badly shocked by just how much weight my friend has lost, by the speed his hair has receded and by the appearance of premature and vastly accelerated ageing. He has a pronounced limp I have never seen before. Since his arrest he has lost over 15 kg in weight.
   But his physical appearance was not as shocking as his mental deterioration. When asked to give his name and date of birth, he struggled visibly over several seconds to recall both. I will come to the important content of his statement at the end of proceedings in due course, but his difficulty in making it was very evident; it was a real struggle for him to articulate the words and focus his train of thought.
   Until yesterday I had always been quietly sceptical of those who claimed that Julian’s treatment amounted to torture – even of Nils Melzer, the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture – and sceptical of those who suggested he may be subject to debilitating drug treatments. But having attended the trials in Uzbekistan of several victims of extreme torture, and having worked with survivors from Sierra Leone and elsewhere, I can tell you that yesterday changed my mind entirely and Julian exhibited exactly the symptoms of a torture victim brought blinking into the light, particularly in terms of disorientation, confusion, and the real struggle to assert free will through the fog of learned helplessness.
   I had been even more sceptical of those who claimed, as a senior member of his legal team did to me on Sunday night, that they were worried that Julian might not live to the end of the extradition process. I now find myself not only believing it, but haunted by the thought. Everybody in that court yesterday saw that one of the greatest journalists and most important dissidents of our times is being tortured to death by the state, before our eyes. To see my friend, the most articulate man, the fastest thinker, I have ever known, reduced to that shambling and incoherent wreck, was unbearable. Yet the agents of the state, particularly the callous magistrate Vanessa Baraitser, were not just prepared but eager to be a part of this bloodsport. She actually told him that if he were incapable of following proceedings, then his lawyers could explain what had happened to him later. The question of why a man who, by the very charges against him, was acknowledged to be highly intelligent and competent, had been reduced by the state to somebody incapable of following court proceedings, gave her not a millisecond of concern.
   The charge against Julian is very specific; conspiring with Chelsea Manning to publish the Iraq War logs, the Afghanistan war logs and the State Department cables. The charges are nothing to do with Sweden, nothing to do with sex, and nothing to do with the 2016 US election; a simple clarification the mainstream media appears incapable of understanding.

   The purpose of yesterday’s hearing was case management; to determine the timetable for the extradition proceedings. The key points at issue were that Julian’s defence was requesting more time to prepare their evidence; and arguing that political offences were specifically excluded from the extradition treaty. There should, they argued, therefore be a preliminary hearing to determine whether the extradition treaty applied at all.
   The reasons given by Assange’s defence team for more time to prepare were both compelling and startling. They had very limited access to their client in jail and had not been permitted to hand him any documents about the case until one week ago. He had also only just been given limited computer access, and all his relevant records and materials had been seized from the Ecuadorean Embassy by the US Government; he had no access to his own materials for the purpose of preparing his defence.
   Furthermore, the defence argued, they were in touch with the Spanish courts about a very important and relevant legal case in Madrid which would provide vital evidence. It showed that the CIA had been directly ordering spying on Julian in the Embassy through a Spanish company, UC Global, contracted to provide security there. Crucially this included spying on privileged conversations between Assange and his lawyers discussing his defence against these extradition proceedings, which had been in train in the USA since 2010. In any normal process, that fact would in itself be sufficient to have the extradition proceedings dismissed. Incidentally I learnt on Sunday that the Spanish material produced in court, which had been commissioned by the CIA, specifically includes high resolution video coverage of Julian and I discussing various matters.
   The evidence to the Spanish court also included a CIA plot to kidnap Assange, which went to the US authorities’ attitude to lawfulness in his case and the treatment he might expect in the United States. Julian’s team explained that the Spanish legal process was happening now and the evidence from it would be extremely important, but it might not be finished and thus the evidence not fully validated and available in time for the current proposed timetable for the Assange extradition hearings. ”

   cont @ : https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/

   • Sad that Assange, an Australian citizen is not being hailed a hero for exposing torture and murder, or at the very least tried in OZ. Extraditions for political purposes are a joke!

     Especially for journalistic rights and freedom of speech and ability to publish whistleblowing!

   • Yes. And mostly just silence from the whole world as though the man already doesnt exist. And we point the finger at Russia or China?? Many people say if all these really bad things are happening in the world then surely someone would spill the beans. Well this is exactly why they dont and it is exactly the message that is being sent. Fuck with us and this will happen to you. Its pure mafia and we are all expected to turn somersaults for the joy of Western Democracy. Julian Assange is the hero that lifted the veil on the monster. It may not yet feed on us but will not hesitate when done with chewing and spitting every other third world country for every ounce of resources

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