The Daily Blog Open Mic – 22nd November 2025
Announce protest actions, general chit chat or give your opinion on issues we haven’t covered for the day.
The Editor doesn’t moderate this blog, 3 volunteers do, they are very lenient to provide you a free speech space but if it’s just deranged abuse or putting words in bloggers mouths to have a pointless argument, we don’t bother publishing.
All in all, TDB gives punters a very, very, very wide space to comment in but we won’t bother with out right lies or gleeful malice. We leave that to the Herald comment section.
EDITORS NOTE: – By the way, here’s a list of shit that will get your comment dumped. Sexist abuse, homophobic abuse, racist abuse, anti-muslim abuse, transphobic abuse, 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.
You haven’t really made it in the US as a civil rights defender until Texas legislates that you are terrorists.
Governor Abbott Designates Muslim Brotherhood, CAIR As Foreign Terrorist Organizations
November 18, 2025 | Austin, Texas | Press Release
https://gov.texas.gov/news/post/governor-abbott-designates-muslim-brotherhood-cair-as-foreign-terrorist-organizations
Governor Greg Abbott today designated the Muslim Brotherhood and the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) as foreign terrorist organizations and transnational criminal organizations. This designation authorizes heightened enforcement against both organizations and their affiliates and prohibits them from purchasing or acquiring land in Texas.
“The Muslim Brotherhood and CAIR have long made their goals clear: to forcibly impose Sharia law and establish Islam’s ‘mastership of the world,’” said Governor Abbott. “The actions taken by the Muslim Brotherhood and CAIR to support terrorism across the globe and subvert our laws through violence, intimidation, and harassment are unacceptable. Today, I designated the Muslim Brotherhood and CAIR as foreign terrorist organizations and transnational criminal organizations. These radical extremists are not welcome in our state and are now prohibited from acquiring any real property interest in Texas.”
Read the Governor’s proclamation here:
https://gov.texas.gov/uploads/files/press/PROC_declaring_Muslim_Brotherhood_and_CAIR_Transnational_Criminal_Organizations_IMAGE_11-18-2025.pdf
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/579600/full-statement-by-chelsey-field-mum-to-august-hugo-and-goldie-who-died-in-the-sanson-house-fire
This incident has left me heartbroken and devastated. My children did not deserve this….
A serious misuse of the word ‘deserve’, when it refers to a bad happening. Not ‘my children didn’t deserve this.’ Does anyone deserve to die in a fire or other tragic circumstance? Ir’s a stupid habitual saying. Can we cut this out of our language please. What was meant, would be ‘My children should not have suffered this tragic end.’ People in general don’t deserve to die – in pain and fear. The lengthy statement of a perfect life and perfect love is exposing private feelings to excess. They have been given a lot of money so a short statement and a thank you would have been sufficient.
We are sentimental, I remember a sad happening decades ago where a man entered a little boy’s room at night, abducted him and left him in an orchard where he was found in the morning all alone and no doubt devastated. A friend suggested that people might like to contribute so that mother and son could go away for a short break to recover. I don’t remember people or institutions coming forward in kindness. We should be giving money and support to the Palestinians but the Israelis are stopping aid and -I think we need to freshen up our compassion circuits for all events.
Our well run expensive authorities, councils, politicians etc etc
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/business/579557/neighbour-wins-30k-payout-over-half-done-blight-of-an-apartment-block-in-auckland
…A man whose business sat right next to a half-finished apartment block is still waiting to be paid $30,000, after ageing concrete collapsed and blocked his driveway.
The Epsom Central Apartments Project halted six years ago, after Auckland Council found it had not complied with building consent.
The original partnership, Epsom Central Apartments LP, was put into receivership in 2022, and purchased by Xiao Liu, the director at the time, of a company named Reeheng Limited, in September 2023.
In September 2024, RNZ spoke to community members and business owners who described the building as a “blight on the Epsom landscape”, which at one point attracted rats and squatters.
Since then, Forrest Tan, who owned neighbouring business Just Laptops, said, not much had changed to the building – but he did take Reeheng Ltd to the disputes tribunal.
In 2024, Tan said ageing scaffolding and unsafe pieces of metal had started falling from the building. He said this included steel bars falling into his carpark and skewering a worker’s car….
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/579577/did-plunket-founder-truby-king-really-believe-in-eugenics-history-isn-t-that-simple
It must have crossed any thinking person’s mind. I looked through a historic booklet of a NZ settlement early 1900s and saw that one wife was said to have had 22 children. We have regular and cruel devastating numbers of deaths in war. And these events call a question of the status quo. We can accept that so let’s look at people making combined community reasoned decisions rather than suffer the rulings of some despots.
There is such a reluctance to apply minds to our situation now we can’t get a good euthanasia ritual and method – let’s not hit the thinkers around the head please.
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/indonz/579636/warning-over-looming-driver-shortages-following-commercial-licence-revocations
This is the sort of thing that we might have complained about from government before neolib. So when do we take note that neolib is driving us into the ditch, drivers with licences or no. And how can we change back and take back most of our autonomy
and sovereignty: Contra proferentem? appeal to the Brit monarchy for reversion to colonial conditions of rule?
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/business/579648/who-s-really-paying-for-incredibly-aggressive-cash-back-competition
Banks using good profits from other customers to compete for more.
Supermarkets in Oz. here? specialled milk, and other?, taking the cost of the promotion from the payments to the suppliers. Is there a similarity here?
Also rates are going up by local councils which don’t or can’t do what ratepayers want, if they dig their heels in. Instead the bulk of the dosh is going to prepare the ground, literally, for new customers/property owners. And so it goes.
Not only, but also…..
Check out the latest AJ Upfront with Nancy Fraser and Marc Lamont Hill
I look at Tony Robinson in this item and think he looks like the sort of man I would like as our Prime Minister. He looks, wise, cunning, humourous, knowing, practical, human, friendly…
https://www.rnz.co.nz/life/people/tony-robinson-on-blackadder-i-learned-how-to-ride-at-the-feet-of-those-masters
He has a sense of the past and that made us what we are now. We don’t automatically deserve to get goodies dropped from the skies without any thought or gratitude for society on our part. We do not live alone, in our aim to be individuals, we must understand we also are part of a giant jigsaw. The whole thing, not just bits we saw off for our benefit.
As a young boy listening to his parents’ stories about life during WWII, he had a fondness for what we call “history” before he knew what it was.
“I just knew that here was a time when my grandparents must have been young and having larks, and their parents and theirs and theirs, right back to all those people who spoke funny and had pointed sleeves. They were all the same as me, in a way. ”
The words ‘history’ and ‘archaeology’ sound “dry as dust”, Robinson says, and what he’s interested in can be simply described as “stuff”.
“I like everything that is part of the magic of the world we live in.”..
I’m looking at the book The Black Swan. It’s big and talks about how our history is shaped by randomness. I think that’s what it is about. I may report some of the content; I think it will make me discontented, but I’ll lighten that by sharing it with you
later.
Kwtc – I haven’t caught sight of you just now, and want to tell you I am reading George Monbiot on how Britain is prospering?
(2000). Captive State: The Corporate Takeover of Britain. Macmillan. ISBN 0-333-90164-9
The first subject is called ‘The Skye Bridge Mystery’. All the loops and tangles that the council authorities went through to get a Great Idea under way and to make life more expensive and difficult for the locals and travellers, mainly 1992-1995. It ended up being financed by the Bank of America I think. It controls the access to mainland UK. Has a stranglehold on access to nearby mainland.
Further https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skye_Bridge
I thought about Waiheke Island. Similarities – Learnings perhaps.
NOTE:
Monbiot says finally in the Introduction of the book: The struggle between people and corporations will be the defining battle of the 21st century. If the corporations win, liberal democracy will come to an end. The great social democratic institutions which have defended the weak against the strong – equality before the law, representative government, democratic accountability and the sovereignty of parliament – will be toppled. If, on the other hand, the corporate attempt on public life is beaten back, then democracy may re-emerge the stronger for its conquest. But this victory cannot be brokered by our representatives. Democracy will survive only if the people in whose name they govern rescue the state from its captivity.
Not sure when trash first appeared. Now 6-10m high. Great example of market forces at work without regulation.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-11-22/rubbish-mountain-in-england-sparks-outcry/106025532
But this isn’t the first time industrial amounts of garbage have turned up somewhere they shouldn’t in Blighty. In fact, it’s big business…
A UK parliamentary committee began investigating “waste crime” in September, and has identified multiple problem areas around the country..
Baroness Shas Sheehan, the politician leading this probe, said at least 38 million tonnes of rubbish was disposed of illegally in England every year.
“The scale of the issue really surprised and shocked us,” she said.
Baroness Sheehan’s inquiry was told criminal gangs had a stranglehold on the industry.
…She accused local councils of being reluctant to act, and said police were “not doing what they should have been”.
The UK’s Environmental Agency (EA) — which is responsible for regulating waste — was “a complete failure” on the issue, she said…
“It’s very attractive to serious organised crime groups because it’s a low-risk, very high-profit enterprise for them.”
Gangs had become so prolific in dumping waste illegally, former EA boss Sir James Bevan described it as “the new narcotics” in a 2016 interview with the Guardian.
These strong words, critics contend, had no impact. Since he said them, the problem has spiralled…
British Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer this week said “all available powers” would be used to ensure whoever was behind the illegal fly-tip paid to clean it up.
The local municipality has estimated the cost of removing the rubbish could be more than its entire annual budget. There’s even been suggestions the army may need to help.
A solution can’t come soon enough for residents in the nearby village of Kidlington, who are now not only living next to the issue but sometimes smelling it too…
(Note report of EA critical of procedure in 2016 and problem still extant in 2025 – Niine years. It is a war of theft against citizens, shoddy, dishonest and Monbiot’s warning which I put up separately sounds loudly meaningful.)
Privatisation – that’s the problem, and citizens losing control over their councils which take no responsibility since shifting jobs off their shoulders to contractors. There is a transference and delegation of duty, and if not complete, still leading to unsatisfactory performance and deterrence of complaints on responsibility for proper performance.
It will not even be better or cheaper in the long run.
Julian Assange is not in the news as there is fresh meat to carve up by the media. This is dated October 2025. He is trying to get some consideration for law and justice from the large government systems.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-10-19/julian-assange-suggested-sentence-for-david-morales/105908048
Julian Assange has asked Spain to hand a 20-year jail sentence to the head of a security firm who spied on him whilst he was holed up in Ecuador’s embassy in London. [2012 to 2019].
His lawyers suggested the jail term for David Morales, accused of discovery and disclosure of secrets, bribery, money laundering and illegal possession of weapons, in a statement seen by AFP on Saturday, local time…
Between 2015 and 2018, the Spanish company Undercover Global oversaw the embassy’s security.
It is owned by Mr Morales, a former military officer who is awaiting trial in Spain.
Mr Assange’s defence argued that in 2016, Mr Morales and US authorities established contact regarding the passing of information about the Australian.
A Spanish court concluded that Mr Morales allegedly spied on Mr Assange and handed over “illegally obtained information” about him and other personalities, including several Latin American presidents, with whom he had contact.
The judge said in 2017, Mr Morales installed new security cameras which, unlike the previous ones, recorded confidential conversations the activist had with his defence team, his family members and public figures.
Mr Morales told technicians to enable a real-time streaming system while they were installing the cameras, according to the judge.
“He intended to open two streaming channels for online access, an official one for Ecuador and another for ‘friends of the United States’,” who wanted Mr Assange’s extradition, the investigating judge said.
Plans to kidnap Assange
In 2020, two anonymous sources who worked for the Spanish security firm contracted to work within the embassy told a London court… [of] plans to kidnap Mr Assange.
Julian Assange’s conversations, including legally privileged meetings with Australian lawyers, were secretly recorded inside his London embassy home.
The security contacts said Mr Morales and US representatives discussed plans to kidnap or poison Mr Assange as part of an elaborate spying operation during the latter part of his seven-year stay at the Ecuadorian embassy….