Announce protest actions, general chit chat or give your opinion on issues we haven’t covered for the day.
Moderation rules are more lenient for this section, but try and play nicely.
EDITORS NOTE: – By the way, here’s a list of shit that will get your comment dumped. Sexist language, homophobic language, racist language, anti-muslim hate, transphobic language, Chemtrails, 9/11 truthers, Qanon lunacy, climate deniers, anti-fluoride fanatics, anti-vaxxer lunatics, 5G conspiracy theories, the virus is a bioweapon, some weird bullshit about the UN taking over the world and ANYONE that links to fucking infowar.
As the Vladolf Putler’s Special Military Operation continues, it sure is revealing many special operations all right.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-62931224
It is easy to understand why the Ukrainians have such incredible resolve to retake their land. Just ask the Poles
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-poland-katyn-idUSBRE99K0CZ20131021
The Poles used to own half of Ukraine tho…
lol you’re unbelievably guillible
I bet you still believe Huns bayoneted Belgian babies and Iraqi soldiers threw Kuwaiti newborns out of incubators
A few rays of sun shine breaking thru the covid coverup? More and more mainstream serious people starting to push back.
Prof. Peter Doherty
@ProfPCDoherty
Unlike flu, SARS-CoV-2 gets into the blood & infects cells throughout the body. it’s also a clotting disease with strokes & heart problems. Imagining COVID is ‘like the flu’ is cutting thousands of lives short. It’s time to wake up https://theconversation.com/imagining-covid-is-like-the-flu-is-cutting-thousands-of-lives-short-its-time-to-wake-up-190545?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=bylinetwitterbutton via
@ConversationEDU
In the meantime avoid getting infected or worse reinfected.
SARS2 pandemic is NOT over. Mask up!
Bevan Weir
@BevanWeir
·
Sep 14
Just had a meeting with microbiologists at Auckland University. 100% of students and staff were wearing masks. Might tell you something about what experts think about dropping the mask mandate.
While we footle around as a people, and the authorities make efforts to ‘plug the hole in the dykes’ Netherlands-wise, this is the latest elsewhere.
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/world/474979/japan-storm-two-million-told-to-seek-shelter-as-typhoon-nanmadol-approaches
Question – What have we found about storms from those days when I read of the USA having special probe planes flying into storm clouds, and looking at ‘seeding’ clouds to bring rain. Do we know? A few links from google.
Keywords: intervention dissipating storm weather is it scientifically possible
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Stormfury
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Severe_weather
https://www.spc.noaa.gov/faq/tornado/
https://www.snexplores.org/article/weather-control-dream-or-nightmare
book: Waters of the World: The Story of the Scientists Who Unraveled the Mysteries …
By Sarah Dry
https://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2009/10/08/2708649.htm – Can humans control the weather?
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/vapor-storms-are-threatening-people-and-property/
https://insideclimatenews.org/news/11052022/aerosols-global-warming-tropical-storms/
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/11/26/how-extreme-weather-is-shrinking-the-planet
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/475003/oamaru-vintage-train-s-future-in-doubt-if-forced-to-relocate
Why would a Council destroy something that is still working when they have so much to prepare for and mitigate against? Being rigid and petty behaviour of little value ought to be avoided unless necessary things force early action. Can, does the Local Government authority have any insight and intention to co-ordinate and guide our local Councils who struggle. And not fall back on one or two businesses like Tonkin and Taylor for instance, who will be good but may become duplicitous.
What is local government NZ?
Local government makes decisions about local issues and services, having regard to local needs and priorities. This recognises that not all communities are the same, nor do they have the same issues. There are 78 local authorities representing all areas of New Zealand.
About Local Government – https://www.localcouncils.govt.nz › lgip.nsf › wpg_url
This link seems built to be a PR presentation. I think we need less pictures and glossy
presentation and more simplicity directly going to the heart of matters with accompanying explanatory images. And the salaries of these titivators to go instead to funding a Help Desk fielding calls for advice and direction, from Councillors and ordinary citizens needing information, second opinions, beyond the advice and facts they receive from their local Councils.
https://www.lgnz.co.nz/
Local democracy’s vision and voice.
Delivering the local voice at a national level.
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/475002/penguins-blocked-at-500m-shelly-bay-development
Photos have emerged of fences blocking penguins from Shelly Bay – the site developer Ian Cassels bought under the condition he looked after the kororā that nested there.
Cassels has long planned a $500 million development at the former Air Force base at Shelly Bay, on the western fringe of the Miramar peninsula, but it has been mired in controversy and litigation for years.
One of his final hurdles was eventually crossed when the Wellington City Council voted to sell and lease its land there to him.
The Council and developers hoist on their own petard perhaps! Have the ‘chickens come home to roost’ yet found their entrance barred, as in the old saying. Perhaps some interest in proper and fair behaviour for them by authorities and $peculators will force correct treatment for them plus their Maori connections belatedly.
Toilet paper – a major item in our hygiene process and quick off the shelves of supermarkets.
Don’t knock its importance.
https://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL2209/S00026/essity-ends-lockout-in-new-zealand-after-unions-impose-sellout-deal.htm
On September 14, toilet paper manufacturing company Essity agreed to end its lockout of 145 workers in the New Zealand town of Kawerau, after they voted to accept a below-inflation pay agreement. Workers will return to the factory next week.
The lockout began more than five weeks ago, on August 9, after workers rejected a pay offer of just 3 percent a year for three years and 67 workers took limited strike action. The Swedish-based multinational company’s aim was to starve workers into submission. Its actions demonstrate the ruthlessness with which the ruling elite is prepared to act, as it seeks to impose the burden of the global economic crisis on the working class.
The deal finally imposed, with the crucial assistance of the trade union bureaucracy, is an effective pay cut. According to the Pulp and Paper Workers’ Union (PPWU), it includes “a 5% increase and a $4,000 lump sum in 2022, a 4.5% increase and a $3,000 lump sum in 2023 and a 4% increase in 2024.”The deal finally imposed, with the crucial assistance of the trade union bureaucracy, is an effective pay cut. According to the Pulp and Paper Workers’ Union (PPWU), it includes “a 5% increase and a $4,000 lump sum in 2022, a 4.5% increase and a $3,000 lump sum in 2023 and a 4% increase in 2024.”
The union has indeed made a good settlement, and yet the statement is made that it is an effective pay cut. This report from the Socialist Equity Group. It would be better to be thankful publicly rather than resume this sullen dislike of business and employers.
(This is how I understood the offer originally: Essity locked out 145 Kawerau mill workers without pay on August 9 after they refused to accept a 3% pay rise plus a cash incentive of $1500 per year over three years….)
Our PM Ardern seems to have been dressed in the equivalent of a black tent to visit the Brit leaders and royalty. Is there some connotation with Victorian days when legs were disguised from the casual gaze? She also looks as if being propped up by crutches.
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/474969/ardern-meets-with-king-charles-and-uk-pm-liz-truss
Ardern meets with King Charles and UK PM Liz Truss
9:58 am today
NZ PM Jacinda Ardern speaks to media at The Mall about meetings with the UK PM Liz Truss and King Charles, in London.
Many things, awful ones, are remembered and some slide off the register but we need reminding that we are al the same in being able to rationalise mass killings, where everybdy is implicated.
https://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL2209/S00024/avenging-sabra-and-shatila-on-israeli-massacres-and-palestinian-resistance.htm
The late American journalist Janet Lee Stevens described what she had witnessed:
“I saw dead women in their houses with their skirts up to their waists and their legs spread apart; dozens of young men shot after being lined up against an alley wall; children with their throats slit, a pregnant woman with her stomach chopped open, her eyes still wide open, her blackened face silently screaming in horror; countless babies and toddlers who had been stabbed or ripped apart and who had been thrown into garbage piles.”
Dr. Swee Chai Ang had just arrived in Lebanon as a volunteer surgeon, stationed at the Red Crescent Society in the Gaza Hospital in Sabra and Shatila. Her book, ‘From Beirut to Jerusalem: A Woman Surgeon with the Palestinians’, remains one of the most critical readings on the subject.
In a recent article, Dr. Swee wrote that following the release of photographs of the “heaps of dead bodies in the camp alleys”, a worldwide outrage followed, but it was all short-lived: “The victims’ families and survivors were soon left alone to plod on with their lives and to relive the memory of that double tragedy of the massacre, and the preceding ten weeks of intensive land, air and sea bombardment and blockade of Beirut during the invasion.
The excerpt from above – outrage followed, but it was all short-lived: “The victims’ families and survivors were soon left alone to plod on with their lives describes what actually eventuated after the shooting at the mosque of Muslim worshippers in Christchurch. So we need to look at how far we are going to sink, in our lack of concern for others here and overseas. And we haven’t gone though the debilitating, destructive pain of the Holocaust victims’ survivors. Once you are dead well that is bad, but coping with the loss by the survivors frays your souls and only a cohesive, principled people can help each other to cope. But is something lost, never to be found again, so that acceptance of mass deaths caused by their own side cannot arouse shock in people numbed by the past? The Nazis planned to eliminate all rated as unsatisfactory to them, Jewish people being high.
This is important for us to keep a watching brief on:
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/475011/government-s-algorithm-charter-okay-could-do-better-review
…There is also little way for people to challenge decisions made about them by powerful public-sector algorithms.
These are among the findings of a review of the first year’s operation of the government’s algorithm charter.
There is no action plan to pick up on the findings, and policy options on data ethics are only in the early development stages, an Official Information Act response shows.
Algorithms are computing maths creations that solve problems. They are proliferating across government and industry, used for the likes of hiring decisions, or by courts to determine the risk someone poses; Netflix uses algorithms to pander to your preferences; and doctors to diagnose an illness or predict the next pandemic….
….Straight-out ban
The review said it could be useful to straight-out ban some algorithms, as Europe had done with AI systems used for “indiscriminate surveillance”.
The 28 signatories told reviewers they were in too much of a vacuum.
“Most agencies have addressed their charter commitments largely on their own and without knowledge of how other agencies were going about it.”
Stats NZ was now assessing its own “gaps and issues” with algorithms and would share it with other agencies, an OIA response shows.
A briefing to the Minister of Statistics David Clark asked him to note broad backing but lack of resources to “realise the desired shifts in the ethical use of algorithms”.