THE MENTAL DETOX

Ka kite ano!

2009-08-19T00:45:00.000-07:00

Thanks and much aroha to all the followers and contributors that made THE MENTAL DETOX so awesome during 2008 and 2009. This online political project has ascended to 'the next level' so follow the links below to track our frequencies otherwise reminisce in the crypts.

Mauri Ora!
xx

Bomber
www.tumeke.blogspot.com

Alkom
www.dreamalities.blogspot.com

Agent Ali
www.specialagentali.blogspot.com

Hayley
www.hayleyjhansell.com

Flowsion
www.warrenbeazley.blogspot.com

Cat
www.yellingmouth.blogspot.com

Coco
www.jessicoco.blogspot.com

Emma Jean
www.thehalftruth.wordpress.com

Bomber's Blog - The War On News - Ep 5

2009-08-04T19:27:00.001-07:00

Bomber's Blog - The War On News - Ep 4

2009-07-25T14:04:00.000-07:00

Bomber's Blog - The War On News - Ep 3

2009-07-22T14:10:00.001-07:00

Bomber's Blog - The War On News - now online

2009-07-19T11:18:00.001-07:00

NZ International Film Festival: Red Cliff

2009-07-14T13:15:00.001-07:00

God I love John Woo, with his massive cast of thousands he manages to narrate the multi-perspective collective view of a 5000 year old culture in a way that makes the western individualist cinematic narrative seem shallow.

His movies are like a multi-board Vulcan chess game with political Machiavellian machinations and Art of War quotations. The grace with which he films and the sheer choreography required to move that many people on screen around is a technical rubix cube that Woo never loses his place in as he spins and re-aligns shot after shot into a seamlessly completed image rich story.

It’s the Chinese Empire again, there is a dictatorial Prime Minister who after quelling Northern rebellions is now eyeing up future enemies who need crushing now. The young and nervous Emperor weakly agrees to give his ambitious General of a Prime Minister a shot at beating the snot out of the two Southern power blocks who have so far resisted the authoritarian rule used to crush the North. I’m guessing with China’s level of censorship all political criticism has to be couched within an historic context as the resulting plot and message of resisting authoritarian rule while remaining loyal has far more to do with the social friction currently rubbing modern day China against a one party state.

Woo mixes moments of quiet gentle grace with cheesy martial arts in a way few others could credibly get away with. There’s something for everyone, Horse shunting, in-flight pigeon cam and semi-erotic bandage wrapping. Red Cliff is another triumph from a Director who has set the benchmark for vast cinema.

3.5/5

NZ International Film Festival: Bright Star

2009-07-14T13:14:00.001-07:00

Opening night of the NZ International Film Festival is one of the best cultural events on the Auckland social calendar and my love affair with NZFF was reflected in this years romantic premiere masterpiece, Jane Campion’s ‘Bright Star’.

I see so much Jane Campion in her work. In The Piano she seemed to embody the search for identity in NZ and in her latest work as a film maker she is personified in the fastidious craftsmanship of Fanny Brawnes sewing skills in Campion’s retelling of Brawnes love affair with the greatest romantic poet ever, John Keats. Campion’s own brilliant eye for subtle detail is matched by Fanny’s exact fashion skills and a tender yearning for an 18th century love that seems magically innocent to 21st century cultural sensibilities.

Set in 1800’s London, the visual accuracy and sheer beauty of imagery is a frame by frame feast with acting that makes the dialogue believable and not archaic. Abbie Cornish’s skills helps her span the history gap by symbolizing the modern career woman’s attempt at finding love with a man whose status and wealth doesn’t meet hers, a dilemma many Sex in the City generation single women in their 30’s seem to identify with.

Ben Whitshaw’s portrayal of Keats gives insight to a literary icon leaving an appreciation of Keats poetry as graceful and layered as his performance and Paul Schneider is a scene stealing gem providing much of the brilliant wit as Keats protective best friend. Hat tip also to Kerry Fox who as the loving mother gives glimpses as to where Brawnes fierce independence and love of culture originates.

A beautifully well crafted film that reignites cinematic romance and adds another standing ovation to one of this country’s finest film makers.

5/5

NZ International Film Festival: We Live In Public

2009-07-14T13:12:00.000-07:00

The tragic story of lonely genius, Josh Harris, the first person to ‘get’ how the internet would radically change TV. In the heady 90’s as technology and media clashed, his foresight with the 1999 – ‘Pseudo TV’ starts to collapse under the weight of it’s brilliant master as he opens his life to a 24/7 experiment in celebrity. Performance artists were interrogated by ex CIA officers and the flood of people prepared to follow them was the horrific pre-taste to it’s bastard offspring, reality tv .

People lived in ‘pods’ beneath the ground in this hotel Josh builds filming everyone as Josh starts to become affectionately known as ‘Oz’. Everyone has a camera and there are screens everywhere playing everything being filmed, people showering, eating, partying, shitting and fucking are all captured in glorious grainy vision, the countdown to absolute oblivion is so self evident the tension is beautiful. Josh proclaims, “Warhol was wrong, people don’t want 15 minutes of fame, they want 15 minutes of fame EVERY day”.

The fascist surveillance culture added with the hard core interrogations start to drive the contestants crazy and the truly amazing thing is how quickly the entire process starts to border on Abu Ghraib. January 1st 2000, the authorities close the entire thing down believing it’s a millennium death cult and Josh gets bored of his subjects and ends up throwing them all out on to the street.

The excitement and terror of breaking new media ground in a surveillance format we take for granted each day without questioning buzzes through this doco and the culmination of his final experiment, weliveinpublic.com, saw him rig his apartment with cameras to watch everything he and his girlfriend do was the final leap of madness.

A new reality based on the alienation caused by modern society was Josh’s insight, but it was an insight that ended up destroying him. This doco is a must to understand the zeitgeist of today’s media.

4 stars

We Live In Public
USA
Director/Screenplay/Photography: Ondi Timoner

NZ International Film Festival: Afghan Star

2009-07-14T13:10:00.000-07:00

The first time many young Afghan’s had ever voted was by text vote for Afghan Star, a Pop Idol-esk TV show on the endearingly modern Tolo TV: think TVNZ in the 80’s with less pastels. In the West these shows tend to have contestants that burn with the naked greed of celebrity, people you’d cross the street to avoid, but as we catch a glimpse of each Afghan contestant’s hell on earth set in a bombed out urban mud background, their wide eyed drive for existence beyond such a nightmare gives this doco a gravitas Simon Cowell fails to deliver.

The Taliban weren’t big fans of art and banned dancing and singing which to a people as fond of the song as Afghans are based on the near hysteria the show caused in the country seems a bizarre and hateful form of torture the Taliban meted out to their own people. After such a cultural genocide, singing goes beyond musical expression, it in itself becomes a brave resistance to such terminal ignorance and the Afghan people leapt to the show with an enthusiasm reserved ironically for invaders meddling in Afghanistan.

The songs of the finalists are all originals, memorable lyrics were, “The people yearn for reconstruction”, “I want to be famous” and my personal favourite, “The bend of your eyebrows are like a scorpion”.

Scandal erupts near the end of the finals when one female contestant starts dancing a little during her song. A male contestant denounces her actions as not dear to the Afghan people, and the horror expressed by one of “what is she doing” as 21 year old Setara leaves the competition with a performance where she dances much more than she previously did sums up a shocked people. The public response was like Footlose meets Sharia law, the man on the street was explaining how her dancing effectively made her a ‘loose woman’. Nice to see that double standard sexism is a global movement, but a glorious 1980s Kabul University new wave electro band music video fronted by a singing short haired Afghan woman complete with neon pink shoulder pads reminds us that Afghanistan wasn’t always the stone aged hell it’s been bombed into with 1980 street shots showing women freely walking around minus Burka. The Ullema Council, a religious Islamic Council focused on repressing good times leans on Tolo TV to stop the dancing, but they courageously push onwards. A great doco.

3 and-a-half Stars

Afghan Star
Afghanistan/UK 2008
Director/Producer: Havana Marking

How evil is Cheney? Very evil!

2009-07-14T13:08:00.001-07:00

Dick Cheney 'hid plans to kill al-Qaida operatives abroad'
Dick Cheney, the former vice president, ordered a highly classified CIA operation hidden from Congress because it pushed the limits of legality by planning to assassinate al-Qaida operatives in friendly countries without the knowledge of their governments, according to former intelligence officials. Former counter-terrorism officials who retain close links to the intelligence community say that the hidden operation involved plans by the CIA and the military to launch operations, similar to those by Israel's Mossad intelligence service, to hunt down and kill al-Qaida activists abroad without informing the governments concerned, even though some were regarded as friendly if unreliable.

So we now have an idea as to what the CIA program was that Cheney was trying to hide and it seems to be 'Death Squads' - is there any other way we can read this? Cheney wanted to send Death Squads into 'friendly' countries who have pesky laws against state sanctioned none judicial execuations, so that would place NZ, Australia, Europe, Canada, India and most of the developed world into that basket. Effectively it was a progam to murder whomever the CIA thought was a terrorist - how the hell does endorsing madness like this fight for freedom and democracy? Screw it, Cheney is a war criminal and this mad beast of a man needs to be prosecuted! If any other country was caught trying to endorse secret plans to send death squads around the globe they would be branded a terrorist nation - how is what Cheney was planning differ from the criminals he is hunting?

How do you defeat terrorism? Solid Police work and eliminating the righteous grievance and grinding poverty that recruits so many desperate young Muslim men into al-Qaida's ranks is the way you fight terrorism, creating CIA death squads in secret that break every international law under the sun to execute people you've none judiciously selected for assassination is the total antitheses of fighting for freedom and democracy.

Secret Water

2009-07-14T13:07:00.001-07:00

Complaints over secret agreements
An attempt to hold negotiations over Auckland’s water services in secret might be a breach of the law, Progressive Wigram MP Jim Anderton says. He is going to the Ombudsman and Auditor-General with complaints over a ‘confidentiality agreement’ Watercare has tried to make Auckland councils sign. The agreement would stop councils from disclosing any details about the transfer of water businesses to Watercare. Jim Anderton says the agreement appears to be an attempt to thwart the law around official information - in particular the Local Government Official Information and Meetings Act 1987. It provides the only grounds councils can use to restrict disclosure of information. It also provides for redress through the Ombudsman.

Why the hell is the largest water monopoly gaining total secrecy under the new Super City to take over all the water services in Auckland? These are assets that NZers have built up over generations and they are to all be handed over to Watercare in total secrecy?

First ACT and National ram through the annexation of Auckland under a misuse of urgency, then appoint 5 of Rodney’s unelected mates to run it (quorum is only 2 on that board by the way) oh and the Chair of Rodney’s unelected board just happens to be the head of Watercare who are now trying to smoother any public scrutiny on them seizing the rest of Aucklands water resources.

How’s that change feeling Auckland? Auckland Labour voters didn’t vote last year in droves meaning the last election was one of the lowest turn outs ever, will Labour voters stay at home again in Auckland in 2011 after seeing National and ACT steal their city off them readying it for mass privatization?

Absolutely, Positively, Bollard (is he smoking something?)

2009-07-14T13:05:00.000-07:00

Bollard upbeat on early recovery
New Zealand is likely to lead the world out of the recession, Reserve Bank Governor Alan Bollard says. In his most upbeat remarks in months, Bollard told a Hawke's Bay audience yesterday that New Zealand had a rare opportunity to "rebalance" its economy. "Early signs of global recovery have now emerged. We have avoided a repeat of the Great Depression," Bollard said. "The New Zealand economy has taken knocks in this crisis, but some form of recovery is now on the horizon. Our opportunity is to use this time to rebalance the economy for the medium term." He said world growth would probably be subdued for several years, and fiscal stimuli would be necessary for some time.

Ummmm – isn’t this the exact same Dr Bollard that told us just before Christmas last year that the recession was over? 7 months later he’s now telling us that it’s over again? Wow Alan, and what a ringing endorsement, we’ve just avoided a second great depression but recession will be here for several years, hardly time for a party folks. Aren’t these ‘green shoots’ really just dried snot and pretending that the next several years will be anything other than the most difficult time our Country has seen since the Great Depression is absolutely, positively denial.

Bollard is starting to remind me of the desperate way the Real Estate industry incessantly screams each month that ‘it’s never been a better time to buy’. People with a vested interest in the ‘confidence’ of the economy are doomed to become cheerleaders on the sideline trying to pacify angry spectators as our team gets thrashed 100-0. Honestly if the Reserve Bank Governor has been on the Titanic while it was sinking, he’d be assuring everyone that there was never a better time to buy a cabin, that the owner was motivated to sell and that you would have great sea views.

Let’s see how NZers joining the dole at 1000 a week feel about Bollard’s optimism.

Global warming is happening despite what the right pretend

2009-07-06T12:46:00.001-07:00

Deadly warning as tropics advance
CANBERRA - A widening of the world's tropical belt that will turn Sydney's climate into that of Brisbane will hammer Aboriginal communities and the poor nations of Asia and the Pacific, new studies warn. The studies say there is already evidence that the tropics are moving further north and south in a trend that will also extend the range of sub-tropical climates, drying out present fertile regions with devastating effects on health and food production. James Cook University Vice-Chancellor Professor Sandra Harding said tropical climates had already moved more than six degrees of latitude beyond the traditional confines of the Tropics of Cancer and Capricorn, and were continuing to expand. About half the world's population, including most of its poorest and least educated, lived in tropical climates that were also home to 80 per cent of plant and animal species, and which generated about 20 per cent of the planet's wealth. "It is in the tropics where we have new and dangerous diseases evolving and spreading," Harding said. "According to genetic studies, about 80 per cent of infectious diseases arise in the tropics, with many new illnesses resulting from viruses that jump from animals to humans. "And it's in the tropics that we are seeing massive extinction of plant and animal life, the loss of indigenous cultures and deforestation on a scale that is scarcely imaginable." Harding's warning, based on a new James Cook University review of the scientific literature on climate change, was echoed by a report by the aid group Oxfam, which found that formerly distinct seasons are shifting, destroying harvests and causing widespread hunger.

Surprise, surprise, global warming is going to crucify the poor, and as the economy tanks (because of unregulated American greed), the poor are the last ones we start to care about, as an example look at how Murray McCully killed off independence in aid and married it to trade.

According to our friends on the right (the ones who are holding the Spanish inquisition select committee into climate change) and our very own on-line right wing bloggers in this country, they can’t argue that there isn’t climate change occurring any longer (because punters can clearly see the effects of climate change disrupting the agricultural cycle), so they pretend that it isn’t man made pollution that is causing the climate to change. I believe currently Ian Wishart is claiming the Antarctic is melting because of a ‘volcano’…

Alarm grows over big melt in Antarctica
Antarctica is shrinking more quickly than expected and the pace is increasing, a conference has been told. Professor Peter Barrett of Victoria University's Antarctic Research Centre summarised the latest findings at the Annual Antarctic Conference. Recent satellite pictures showed the frozen continent was calving glaciers from its edges at a rate adding up to about 0.4mm of sea-level rise a year. That might not sound like much, he said, but the rate of ice loss was increasing quickly - up 75 per cent since 1996. The Antarctic ice sheet has been stable for a million years and until recently had seemed too large and too cold to be vulnerable. But Dr Barrett said scientists now believed it could change significantly in a matter of decades. A new assessment adding up global ice loss from Greenland, Antarctica and other glaciers suggested sea levels would rise between 80cm and 2m by 2100, he said.

…that’s right folks, what the hell does Professor Peter Barrett know! It isn’t global warming from man made pollution – IT’S A VOLCANO YOU IDIOT! This is true because Leighton Smith and Ian Wishart say so! I find it amusing that so many right wing bloggers in this country take the very same ‘it isn’t man made pollution causing climate change’ attack line that the Heartland Institute takes. The Heartland Institute (who until 2006 were receiving money from Exxon Mobile) is also behind the Tobacco Industries ludicrous position that Tobacco isn’t scientifically proven to cause cancer and as such there shouldn’t be taxes on cigarettes.

Capitalism has a problem, I’m not talking about the inherent injustice of a few having all the money or the slavish ideological worship of the free market or even the IMF and worldbank genocide of poor people they commit every day with policies that promote Western mega corporations and their ability to dump heavily subsidized mass produced food on countries thus destroying the local markets – oh no, I’m talking about it’s impact on the environment. The reality is that the filth we pump into our planet has an impact on that planets health, a truth that the right wing desperately want to cover up.

We have had to put up with oil funded skeptics claiming the entire global warming idea is a hoax created by Greenpeace to make money for tree huggers for too long. The reality is that our pollution created by an unsustainable consumer greed capitalism is killing the planet and we push the environment to its very edges of being able to sustain our civilization with our denial of this fact. Right now we have a climate change denial Government in power, led by a man who initially didn’t believe in global warming supported by a political party that claim C02 is a misunderstood nutrient and that a 2 degree rise in temperatures would be “beneficial” for NZ. In their first week in power, nACTional have destroyed the Emission Trading Scheme and they are embarrassingly setting up a select committee to examine the 'science' behind global warming to provide pollution Industry funded quack science with a platform. It will be a global media embarrassment that will make NZ out to be a backwater Hicksville that seems unable to accept that the world isn’t flat.

This isn’t a debate about science because the science has been ‘settled’ in the same way evolution science has been ‘settled’, this is a culture war. Those in denial will not accept that their lifestyle is part of the problem and their ego’s are so inflated that to admit ‘tree huggers’ (a group they despise as much as their mythical ‘nanny state’ bullshit) are right and they are wrong would be such a devaluation of their status driven personalities that they fight with the venom of vanity. Would Paul Henry or any of his ilk ever admit they were wrong? We know the answer to that. They’re petty denial should be viewed with the contempt it deserves and their role in the debate should be as marginalized as much as one would marginalize someone trying to argue the planet is only 5000 years old at an evolution conference.

Royal Rayman Rife

2009-07-03T16:27:00.000-07:00

Royal Rife Story Electromagnetic Cancer Therapy1/3

"This is the fascinating video documentary The Royal Rife Story (2004) which tells the lifestory of a forgotten medical pioneer in fields of micro optics, germ research and cancer therapy. Rife won 14 government awards for scientific discoveries, and received an honorary medical degree from the University of Heidelberg for his work in bacteriology. He is most famous for building the world’s most powerful optical microscopes which overcame the limits of standard research microscopes and became the first person ever to see a living virus. During his germ research he developed a method of destroying disease-causing microorganisms using frequencies which was later also applied to cancer with major success.

Rife’s microscopes and bacteriological discoveries were featured in many official medical reports and hundreds of newspaper articles throughout the world. Doctors used Rife’s instruments in the 1930’s, 40’s and 50’s and reported very high success rates. Dr. Rife’s technique was first embraced by the medical community, used by many doctors and then later rejected because antibiotics showed greater financial promise but didn’t deliver any real medical results. Now over 50 years later, there has been a renewed interest in the incredible method he used.

This video reveals the dedication and commitment of Dr. Rife, and the many medical doctors who worked with him. All their efforts were focused on helping mankind. It also takes an in-depth look at his life and the wonderful discoveries he made in bacteriology. Dr. Rife said in 1967, “Having spent every dime I earned in my research for the benefit of mankind, I have ended up as a pauper but I achieved the impossible and would do it again.” This historical documentary is a must see for anyone interested in Dr. Rife and his amazing discoveries as he already successfully cured cancer by 1934 with his expertise in optics and innovation with a specially designed microscope and frequency generator.

You have probably never heard of Dr. Royal Raymond Rife before, but in this unique documentary you will learn all about the life of this overlooked medical genius and his great scientific accomplishments which can benefit everybody if only we could learn to use them."

The Making of Turtle Pizza Cadillacs

2009-07-01T16:39:00.000-07:00

SELF DETERMINATION

2009-07-01T09:08:00.000-07:00

Determined in a spark

the electricity of art

creation's inspiration

multiple levels apart

but not more than the heart.

The unlimited will still travels through life

like water through light

like a kid rides a bike

all initiated in atomic time

(then someone borrows my light,

it turns out for a crack pipe

right in the middle of the sentence that I write)

and despite this the universe is prepared for the fight

it all changes if you get one thing right...

wondering what to tick....?

2009-06-28T17:57:00.000-07:00

My friend gave permission for me to post his correspondence up ~

"Kia ora Sue,

Regarding the upcoming referendum and its ambiguous, leading question, I wanted to ask if you would make a statement of how you would suggest those who disagree with the wording of the referendum should answer. I've so far heard of a number of options: ticking every box, not answering at all. For those who are supportive of the current legislation but against the referendum, what would you suggest? There must be so many New Zealanders against the wording of it, but obviously if as many of us as possible answer it in protest in the *same* way, the impact will be felt more by the instigators, and at a government level.

Many thanks for your time Sue.
Dudley Benson"

response:

"Hi Dudley

Sue Bradford has asked me to respond to your email regarding the very confusing referendum question. You will probably have seen the intense media response to this, which has taken up a lot of Sue’s time over the last few days. However the Green “position” is that people should respond to the referendum by voting “yes” in spite of its ambiguity. This is the position the NGOs who supported the s59 Bill throughout have taken and this response is in support of them. You may know their website www.yesvote.org.nz. Sue Bradford has also launched a Private Member’s Bill on Referenda which I will attach to this email for your information.

Kind Regards

Geraldine Molloy
Executive Assistant to Sue Bradford MP"

R.I.P Michael Jackson

2009-06-28T15:57:00.000-07:00

August 1958 - June 2009
R.I.P Michael Jackson

Michael Jackson - Rock With You (Official Music Video) - Funny home videos are a click away

Family Fist turn referendum into referendumb ( I want to hit their kids as well)

2009-06-18T20:28:00.002-07:00

Key dragged into smacking debate
Prime Minister John Key has been dragged into the centre of the resurgent smacking debate. As the controversy around the citizens-initiated referendum mounted, one of the organisations backing it last night called for a meeting with Mr Key and said it could produce evidence that parents were being needlessly prosecuted under the 2007 law change. It removed the defence of reasonable force from the Crimes Act, effectively banning smacking as a means of correction while giving police discretion over prosecutions. Arguments have raged ever since and opponents managed to get enough signatures on a petition to force the referendum to be held. It will ask the question: "Should a smack as part of good parental correction be a criminal offence in New Zealand?"

What the fundie Family Fist need to understand is that if they get the legal right to hit their kids, we will all want the legal right to hit their kids. Seriously though Family Fist need to get that their expensive, ill worded tantrum isn’t going to move popular support into a reversal of the repeal of section 59 and the reason is we are as a nation in a different headspace.

The media fuelled debate over the repeal of section 59 was inspired mostly by talkback hosts convincing NZers that the Labour Party nanny state dykeocracy was kicking in the door and telling you what water shower heads and lighbulbs you are allowed to have. The Nanny State myth (a myth that NOT PC has amusingly built an entire blog site out of catering to white men who feel so threatened by equality that they bitch like little girls about their restriction of ‘freedom’s – yawn, grow some balls and be men boys) was created by talkback hosts and played into this con that ‘Labour knew best’. NZers hate that so much that they can get blinded by nothings like ‘political correctness’ and forget the actual issues. Now we have the reality of the Daddy state, the myths of the Nanny state seem far away and silly, which is where all this hysteria about the repeal of section 59 has ended up.

David Farrar, the man who was running all the technical aspects of Don Brash’s office at the time the printed emails were leaked, was yesterday saying on Kiwiblogh that he supported Family Fist because the relationship between a child and parent was special and the Government shouldn’t regulate that relationship. This was the exact same argument used by Farrar’s religious mates in the 1970s when the Government ruled that rape in marriage was a crime. The religious buddies of Farrar’s cried out just as David does now that the relationship between a married man and woman was special and that the Government shouldn’t regulate that. Thank God we’ve moved on from such a petty view of the world.

The repeal of section 59 closed a loophole in the legislation that meant the Court ended up defending parents who had assaulted their children, that was a ridiculous position to be in. The Court is there to defend the weak, and a child in the care of their parent has very little power, to end up with a situation where the power of the court was being used against the child to protect a parent who assaulted that child was a legal philosophical position that simply wasn’t tenable in a progressive country. The nonsense that the Nanny State would jail parents who smacked was hysterical verbal diarrhea from a conservative Christian clique who believe that physical punishment is required to keep Satan, the dark lord of evil, away from their children, obviously that belief isn’t tenable in a secular country, so they polished their attack and made it all about the Nanny State.

Public referendum are important, too important to let Family Fist ruin it for everyone. There is no requirement on the Clerk of the House to inform Family Fist that their question made no sense, but there is room for the question to be modified with the help of the Clerk IF Family Fist initiates that discussion. Wasting $9million on a poorly worded tantrum mocks democracy and serves no point in determining the mood of the nation on important issues. In future the petitioner needs to seek out the advice of the Clerk of the House to make sure the question makes sense and is valid in clearly calling for a change in legislation.

Regardless of where you are in this debate, this abortion created by Family Fist serves no one well.

Cops & Power

2009-06-18T20:28:00.001-07:00

Police stop and search innocent people to balance race figures, terror watchdog says
White people are being unjustifiably stopped and searched to provide racial balance in police statistics, the antiterrorism watchdog said yesterday. Lord Carlile of Berriew, QC, described the searches in his annual report on the operation of counterterrorism legislation as “almost certainly” illegal. He said that he knew of cases where people were stopped by officers even though they did not fit any known terrorist profile. He accused the police of wasting time and money by carrying out “self-evidently unmerited searches”, which were also an invasion of civil liberties. The searches, for example, of blonde women who fit no terrorist profile came against a backdrop of complaints from rights groups that the number of black and Muslim people being stopped and searched by police was disproportionate.

TUMEKE! To make up the numbers to pretend they are not racist, UK cops have been stopping white people and putting them through ‘terrorist’ searches to pump up numbers to hide their original racial discrimination. Giving more power to the cops is always a questionable move: Police getting tasers, lowering the evidential threshold to declare you a gang member and freeze personal assets, the NZ Police taking your DNA on mere suspicion and new surveillance powers to film you secretly without judicial oversight are all examples of creeping Police powers in NZ at a time when the Independence Complaints process is only funded to independently investigate 30% of cases.

Police power without independent oversight is not security.

National green lights moves to let Japan hunt Whales (how’s that change feeling?)

2009-06-18T20:27:00.001-07:00

When National announced that they were going to butcher Labour’s ‘hug a polar bear’ programmes, their spin drs giggled at how clever they were to avoid answering hard questions about deep social cuts by wrapping the entire affair up as some type of cleansing of political correctness from the awful Nanny State, but few would’ve guessed that National were actually serious at least in killing whales.

Murray McCully, The Dark Lord of the Sith (who NEVER seems to get criticized by Jane Clifton in the Listener*) has been screwing over international aid by removing its independence so that Murray can use the aid money to further corporate interests over and above humanitarian interests. But his latest move to let the Japanese hunt whales is surely a right wing move too far. McCully is destroying NZ’s long stand against whaling by agreeing to a compromise (something the Australians refuse to do) with the Japanese means that NZ will willingly accept that ‘scientific’ whaling is legitimate when every intelligent person knows that ‘scientific’ whaling is an utter lie.

McCully’s aim seems to be the same as his destruction of the independence of the International Aid fund, he wants to give Japan a get out of jail free card on whaling in expectation of trade interests. That this Government’s greenlighting of a concession to let Japan continue the ‘scientific’ whaling lie is more to do with McCully’s trade before aid world view and is just another example of the real type of ‘change’ these right wingers have slipped past the voters. We should NOT allow Japan to continue the 'scientific' whaling lie, and we sure as hell shouldn't be letting them do so because of McCully's bloodmoney worldview. I didn't notice National letting voters know NZ was going to bend over and take it from the Japanese by giving up on whaling protections.

(* PS – I haven’t bought a copy of the Listener since that nice Findlay stopped being editor so I was interested to peruse a free copy I received this week and oh my Christ it’s gone so hard right I had to perform an exorcism with old bong water on my copy as soon as I had read it fearing the combined evil within my house would lead me to start wanting to physically discipline children. The National Party zeitgeist that has washed over NZ is reflected in right wing columnist after right wing columnist of a once great magazine that now sums up the new Sylvia Park anti-intellectualism Ponsonby housewife perspective that the Listener perfectly represents. Won’t someone please give Deborah Hill Cone a) a cone and b) some friends to tell her those Harry Potter glasses are terribly unflattering).

Iranian watershed moment?

2009-06-18T20:25:00.001-07:00

Day of mourning called for
Supporters of Iran's defeated presidential candidate Mirhossein Mousavi are preparing for a day of mourning for eight people killed in mass demonstrations against what he says was a rigged election. Iran's English-language state television has reported eight people killed in protests since official results from Friday's poll showed President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had been re-elected. His huge lead on Mousavi, a moderate former prime minister, has provoked Iran's worst unrest since the 1979 Islamic revolution. Bloodshed, protests, arrests and a media crackdown have rocked the world's fifth biggest oil exporter, embroiled in a dispute with the West over its nuclear programme.

I think the televised debates which caused the very foundations of the Islamic Republic to shake has changed the debate in Iran forever. I think that this is a watershed moment in Iranian history, one which the US should step back from and watch rather than directly interfere, let’s not forget that it was the CIA coup blowback 5 decades ago that created the conditions that birthed this theocracy in the first place and direct US intervention will only reopen that wound. Let’s also not forget that Ahmadinejad was elected by a freaked out Iranian population that George Bush had terrified with his Axis of Evil brainfart and by parking the US army next door to them: this is not the time to exacerbate what could be a natural evolution towards democracy.

Let’s also not get too blinded by any nonsense that Mousavi is some sort of beacon for liberal democracy, it is a sad indictment on the Theocracy as a whole that the people of Iran are so limited for real choice that Mousavi can be considered moderate. Which is why I think the change is much more profound than Mousavi winning or not. I tend to lean with STRATFOR’s assessment…

"........this election has shed light on an underlying reality that is difficult for most Western analysts and media agencies to accept. Mousavi derives most of his support from urban professional classes who responded positively to “Obamaesque” calls for change and felt that their time had come to take Iran in a different direction. The fact remains, however, that the clerical regime still carries broad support, and Ahmadinejad — despite being lambasted by his political rivals for mishandling the economy and foreign relations — has strong support among the rural, poorer and mostly deeply religious population. Ahmadinejad campaigned heavily for this election and made sure during the campaign to visit rural provinces, where some 24 million Iranians, or 34 percent of the total population, make their living. He also put a lot of money into his campaign to buy popular support. Mousavi, on the other hand, returned into the political limelight only about four months ahead of the election and struggled to connect with Iran’s lower classes, who fail to identify with the working elite or with an Ahmadinejad rival and Mousavi supporter like Rafsanjani, who is widely known and criticized for his corruptive practices."
STRATFOR

…and here’s the rub, for as much as no one likes a crank like Ahmadinejad running things, we have yet to see any actual evidence that the vote has been rigged, yes there are questions, but no proof yet, in fact in an environment where Twitter can evade state repression, it is actually of some concern that no evidence of fraud has been tweeted to the rest of the planet yet. The reality is that cheat or not Ahmadinejad may well have ‘won’ the election, but the reverberations of the open debate on TV has meant that reform must come and I think the Guardian Council is starting to acknowledge this new reality as the anger from the middle class intelligentsia continues to cleverly use street politics to force home the new paradigm they want a modern Iran to evolve into.

Iran is still on a knife edge I’m not pretending it is safe, but I think the televised debates sparked a deep yearning for reform that goes well beyond the current limitations of the Iranian state. My hope is that we are viewing the painful birthing of Iran’s maturity from radical theocratic reaction to the 1958 coup to a reasoned realignment redefining what a modern Muslim country should look like.

In Search of the Miraculous

2009-06-14T22:17:00.000-07:00

Fragments of an Unknown Teaching
P. D. Ouspensky

Rehearsals for Extinct Anatomies

2009-06-13T16:18:00.000-07:00

Brothers Quay -1987- Rehearsals for Extinct Anatomies
Uploaded by petitlolotechre. - Arts and animation videos.

This is the new sound, just like the old sound, just like the noose round, over open ground

2009-06-08T12:16:00.000-07:00

Pakistan army chief says tide turned in Swat
Pakistan's army had "turned the tide" against Taliban fighters and aimed to completely eradicate them from the Swat valley, the army chief said, ahead of a meeting with US special envoy Richard Holbrooke on Friday. On Thursday, hours after President Barack Obama's point man for Afghanistan and Pakistan visited Mardan district to see camps set up for some of the 2.5 million people who fled the conflict zone, militants shot dead five police and a soldier after first targetting a convoy with a roadside bomb. Pakistan launched an offensive to expel Taliban militants from Swat last month in a move welcomed by Western allies worried that the nuclear-armed country was sliding into chaos.

Oh you’ve won? Really? Because my reading of the situation is exactly what always happens in the Swat Valley, the Military move in, the extremists move into the mountains and restart their guerilla war against the military. Seeing as this humanitarian catastrophe that has seen millions displaced and the damage done to civilian infrastructure run into a Billion dollars has all been done at the behest of America, it is America’s responsibility to stump up the entire Billion and make sure the rebuilding of Mingora is done because if none of that rebuilding is done, all this military action will have succeeded in doing is causing the next generation of radicalized militants righteously furious at their displacement, ie the military action will end up causing more harm than it ‘solved’.

Obama needs to walk the walk as well as talk the talk because if demanding humanitarian crises via military intervention that they then don’t bother to clean up afterwards is the ‘new America’, I’ve got news for him, it’s the same old bullshit blowback America with a friendly new smile, that ain’t change.

The Rodney Hide Auckland Super City agenda a direct assault on democracy

2009-06-08T12:14:00.000-07:00

Hide plans radical shakeup of councils
Local Government Minister Rodney Hide has Cabinet approval to look into law changes that will strip local council spending back to core services rather than cultural, environmental and social spending. The Cabinet has signed off on Mr Hide's request for the Department of Internal Affairs to review local government law, including the removal of the requirement for councils to deliver on "community outcomes" such as social, environmental and cultural "wellbeing" which Mr Hide said pushed councils into providing services well beyond their core roles. In the Cabinet paper Mr Hide said there was a need for a clearer delineation of central and local government roles. He proposed making councils more financially transparent to force them to focus on core activities. He listed these as transport and water services and public health and safety, such as rubbish collection.

AND IT BEGINS! Rodney Hide has been using the Super City as a grand privatization blueprint he intends to use for the entire country post second term of the National/ACT Government and gutting any social and community responsibility for Councils by suggesting such services are central Government responsibilities is a smokescreen because Central Government WILL NOT increase funding for those local community services at all.

Not content with annexing the entire city of Auckland and placing 5 of Rodney’s hand picked clique headed by the largest privatizer of water in the country to control Auckland (quorum is 2 for that ruling council), Rodney now wants to purge all community and social services from Council responsibilities. The true agenda of what ACT have been planning to do by forcing these hard right policies through under a misuse of urgency is nothing short of a coup, ACT have no mandate for these radical changes, and National are allowing them to push this through so John Key’s hands don’t get dirty. In the Auckland Commission Executive summary, the core brief is framed in terms of cost efficiency…

in order to maximise, in a cost effective manner,—
(a) the current and future well-being of the region and its communities; and
(b) the region’s contribution to wider national objectives and outcomes.
and so:
a secure, prosperous, and sustainable future. Maintaining the status quo, or tinkering around the edges, is not the answer. Bold change is required, and that is what the Commission is recommending.

…with so many efficiency’s created by a unitary Council, how come the Council will now have no cash to fund the crucial social services for their communities? If the social well being of the people living in the city ISN’T a concern for the Council, what the hell is the Council for? Will we allow the hard right to redefine the responsibilities of civic duty to a handful of services they intend to sell off minus a social conscience? Note of course all of this is being done without ANY mandate or ANY consultation and by misusing Parliamentary process in the manner National have throughout their short term in office, often Parliament is being asked to vote on law they have only just read at the opening of urgency, this is a coup and as the size of that coup starts to dawn on Aucklanders there will be anger.

The Auckland Commission Executive’s first quote from any interest group just happens to be the hard right think tank The Committee for Auckland…

Commenting on current financial circumstances, the Committee for Auckland observed recently, “It is difficult to imagine how New Zealand can recover, and succeed economically, unless Auckland does”.1

…their ‘plan’ for ‘prosperity’ seems to be a mass immigration policy for Auckland, they mention ‘growth’ 13 times on their first page, as my co-blogger Tim put it…

From that and the infrastructure and project pitches I take it the construction companies must be up to their manhole covers in this front group. It's all GDP and business buzz-words with a heavy large open-ended public works angle. And the immigration issue the Commissioners have alluded to only as the encouragement of talent is clearly just numbers when the veneer of "talent" is stripped away by the Committee's call to continue to deluge the city with ever more immigrants:

…so we are seeing a pro-business mass immigration ‘throw-another-million- in-there-worry-about-infrastructure’s-inability-to-cope-later ’ policy to create ‘growth’ at the exact same time they gut the Council from social responsibilities. Remember, all of this has been done without Aucklanders being consulted. This is a coup, a naked attempt to not only seize power but to recast the entire system to benefit the right’s corporate chums.

Politically correct water reducing shower heads and light efficient light bulbs don’t really seem so hysterically important in the wake of what the right are doing now do they?

How is that change feeling now folks?

Key must rein in Hide’s radical right agenda
The release of an obscure cabinet paper revealing a plan to gut local government and open the door to privatisation of assets has Green Co-Leader Russel Norman calling on the Prime Minister to rein in Rodney Hide. The Cabinet Paper, released onto the Department of Internal Affairs website and signed off by Local Government Minister Rodney Hide, seeks approval to develop legislation to amend the Local Government Act. “This Cabinet paper wants to implement ACT Party policy by narrowing the powers of local government and making it easier to sell Auckland’s $23 billion in public assets. The paper proposes to do this without public consultation,” Dr Norman said today.
“John Key needs to come clean on whether he supports the direction that Rodney Hide proposes for local government. And if he doesn’t, then he needs to rein Rodney in.” The Paper proposes to restrict the freedom of Councils to work outside a narrow band of ‘core services’ (para 13). The Cabinet Paper also complains about the “requirements to consult the public on some decisions – notably decisions to contract major council services to the private sector or to sell shares in a port or airport company” (para 18). Dr Norman said that “Hide may not like it but the public don’t want it to be easy to sell public assets or contract out core services to the private sector.” “Remarkably, Hide doesn’t propose to talk to Aucklanders about these changes to the Local Government Act but will conduct a ‘some targeted consultation’ (para 37), which presumably means checking with the Business Roundtable.” Dr Norman said that both Hide and Associate Minister John Carter should be made to explain themselves at public meetings in Auckland this week. “The people of Auckland are already under attack from the anti-democratic Minister of Local Government with the forced amalgamation of the city’s councils. John Key needs to tell us where he stands,” Dr Norman said. Local Government Spokesperson Sue Kedgley said: “This paper reveals Act’s secret agenda to castrate local democracy. He is trying to reduce local government's powers to the point where they are unable to deliver social and environmental services, which are surely their core business. An extremely dangerous agenda is revealed in this cabinet paper, and all of New Zealand, and not just Aucklanders, need to understand what Hide is trying to do here.”

Just when you thought you couldn’t hate George W Bush anymore…

2009-06-07T13:47:00.000-07:00

Investigation finds U.S. military hardware easy to buy, ship
• Watchdog agency GAO buys military hardware, ships it overseas with ease
• Lawmaker: "Gigantic loophole" allows enemies to get U.S. technology
• Hardware that can be used in nuclear devices and ground fighting purchased
• "The scandal here may be what is legal, not what is illegal," representative says
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Military hardware that can be used in nuclear devices and ground fighting can be easily purchased In the United States and shipped overseas, a government investigation revealed Thursday. The Government Accountability Office (GAO) watchdog agency set up fake companies to obtain military and dual use items -- which have both military and commercial use -- in the United States and ship them overseas, according to a report made public at a House subcommittee hearing. The domestic purchases allow buyers to avoid U.S. restrictions on sales to foreign entities, it noted. Items purchased in the bogus transactions included parts for making nuclear devices and guiding missiles that could carry nuclear warheads, as well as night-vision devices, body armor and other hardware for ground combat, said the report provided to the House Energy and Commerce subcommittee. "There appears to be a gigantic loophole within our laws that makes it easy for our enemies to get hold of our superior military technology and use it against us," said Rep. Bart Stupak, D-Michigan. Gregory Kutz, a GAO managing director who led the 13-month investigation, said it found "sensitive dual-use and military technology can be easily and legally purchased from manufacturers and distributors within the United States and illegally exported without detection." He stressed that no laws were broken by any of the companies that sold items to the undercover GAO operation, and that the magnitude of trying to check all overseas travelers and shipments made it impossible to halt illegal export of the items under current law. Committee members said the lack of regulation or export controls made the situation particularly troubling. "The scandal here may be what is legal, not what is illegal," said Rep. Greg Walden, R-Oregon.

Dear Mr Bush
Let me get this straight, in the 8 years of your “Ye-ha” as a foreign policy to fight a self created war of terror, it NEVER occurred to you to check domestic military hardware sales to the very nations you put on the list of people you would like to bomb back into the stone age for freedom and democracy??? You had time to torture, start a war based on a pack of lies, kill a million or so Iraqi’s (we’re not sure because you don’t count them when you kill them), set the economy into decline through the offensive cost of the war, set up secret CIA torture prisons in Europe, kidnap people illegally from around the planet, spy on American’s, erode their civil rights, hold people indefinitely without charging them and lower America’s standing in the world supposedly to combat extremists who wish to do the West harm YET AT NO TIME thought of perhaps passing restrictions on NOT SELLING EXTREMISTS THE BLOODY WEAPONS IN THE FIRST PLACE!!!!

Just when I didn’t think I could despise the moronic, ill thought out knee jerk manner in which you ran America, along comes news of the one thing you could have done that would’ve successfully stopped high tech military hardware getting into the hands of extremists and you didn’t do a bloody thing – what kept you George? Busy torturing illegally kidnapped people in secret prisons to save democracy? It didn’t occur to you perhaps to not sell extremists military hardware direct from your factories? America allows it’s corporate military industrial complex to sell America’s enemies the very weapons that could end up killing Americans!

What bold leadership, state sanctioned torture and a war based on lies to stop terrorism – yes. Regulation not to sell the extremists military hardware from your own arms industry – apparently no.

Mt Albert byelection update

2009-06-07T10:44:00.000-07:00

Grim poll result caps bad week for Nats
National's worst week in office since the election was yesterday capped with a poll showing Labour has an unassailable lead in the Mt Albert byelection. Labour may even increase its majority in the seat this weekend, which would be a big boost to the authority of new leader Phil Goff within the Labour Party. Prime Minister John Key's day of campaigning in the electorate yesterday will be his last. Mr Key and Mr Goff passed within metres of each other at Westfield St Lukes but the PM appeared determined to avoid his rival. The pair have been engaged in a war over how to progress a complaint against former Internal Affairs Minister Richard Worth. At one point yesterday, Labour activists followed Mr Key at St Lukes shouting, "Where is Dr Worth?" but he ignored them. Mr Goff attributed Labour's commanding lead in last night's One News poll not to the Worth scandal but rather to the issue of the SH20 motorway extension through Mt Albert to Waterview, the Super City plans and the campaign run by National's Melissa Lee.

You know, part of me feels sorry for Melissa Lee – her public meltdown is taking on Britney Spears proportions but the question is where are the National Party in all of this? After executing dear old Christian fundamentalist Ravi on the grounds that Lee would be more electable (hahahahahahah, I feel a Tui billboard coming on), National have done nothing to actually help their candidate deal with the intense media scrutiny and policy strategies she needed to adopt to have a chance of winning here, the fact is National kneecapped Melissa with their motorway announcement and have shown as much political mismanagement of Lee’s candidacy as they have with Worth and Rankin. With mates like National, who needs enemies?

National wanted to win this by-election, it would destabilize Goff’s leadership and leave Labour utterly unprepared for the crucial 2011 election, however cruising at historically high approval levels has breed an arrogance in 9 months that took Labour 9 years to develop.

Kiwiblogh and Whaleoil drew first blood in this game by perpetrating the Tizard effect and promptly led to claims by Matt McCarten that Labour had weakly collapsed when they shafted Twyford for he CV rich Shearer. The right wing blog conspiracy quickly turned pressure on local boy Ravi to kneecap him fearing his fundy views on life wouldn’t gain much traction in their bid to win Mt Albert and thus crucify Goff’s leadership. While Ravi, a little battler who had thanklessly faced off against Clark for two elections, may have lost, his losing would be nothing as spectacular as the implosion Lee has become, let’s gleefully recap her campaign so far shall we?

In a move that was jaw dropping, National highlighted the arrogance that has so far shaped their short term in office (culminating in last months annexation of Auckland) by not telling Lee what their motorway plans were, leaving her high and dry trying to explain away the destruction of 300 odd homes. In her attempt to find a new line to spin this unpalatable policy, she astoundingly tried to claim a motorway would draw South Auckland criminals away from Mt Albert. The media gasped, pundits choked and the National Party defense line was quickly established that Melissa had blurted her motorway crime prevention scheme out in the heat of a public meeting under intense provocation from Labour. Bullshit! Listen to Melissa Lee and she wasn’t pressured at all to make the comment, she tried to argue her position rationally, this stupid clown actually tried to reason her racist undertones regarding South Aucklanders, she wasn’t cornered and lost her head in the heat of the moment, she was rationalizing her law and order spin on the motorway, but that truth was far too unpalatable and National pretended she was ‘under pressure’.

Worse was to come, she then went into hiding finding any excuse not to be interviewed until Paul Henry demolished her on Close Up in what was one of the best political interviews of his life. Not wanting to keep her meltdown to just one media outlet, Melissa then went onto TV3 and gave Duncan Garner his Qantas TV Award entry with an interview that had her blankly trying to answer basic questions the way a puppet does when no one has a hand up its bum.

And just when National voters couldn't imagine it could get any worse, it did. Not content to keep her implosion to just the Television medium, Melissa went on Radio NZ and TOLD them that she expected to lose? WTF? Test this woman for P – the golden rule of elections is that you NEVER admit defeat until the Polls close, why the hell would anyone vote for you if you don’t believe in yourself? And we still have 3 weeks left before the election, Christ you couldn’t make this stuff up.

Melissa Lee held up her CV as a TV presenter and that she could handle the media, to now have her boss weakly rush to the electorate in a desperate attempt to at least win second place shows just how badly National have cocked this whole by-election up. At the beginning National Party mouth-pieces, Kiwiblogh and Whaleoil, were crowing that Labour had everything to lose here, now it is National who has everything to lose, what if Melissa Lee came 3rd? Wouldn’t that start the death knell to National being a 1 term party, I mean who would publicly claim to have voted for Melissa Lee and by extension the National Party after their joint performance so far?

Hood Nerds

2009-06-05T15:49:00.001-07:00

Not since N*E*R*D have I been so jazzed about the homie/point dexter hybrid, something obviously close to my heart. This is a community group in America called Hood Nerds who encourage 'getting good grades and still living in the hood'.

I can't wait til something like this comes to NZ, although the property market always looking for 'the new Ponsonby' must also mean there is a 'new Rewa hard'. And having grown up there I know not to assume South Auckland would be the only thriving scene for Hood nerds. South-side thugs travel aaaaall the way to Mt Albert to commit crimes anyway, haven't you heard?

Forever Wack...

2009-06-03T22:20:00.000-07:00

"Forever Strong has arisen concerns because of the use of Ka Mate within the film. The tribe Ngati Toa, whom the iconic dance ideally belongs to is widely used within New Zealand sports teams and recognised as a symbol of New Zealand. Ngati Toa believe that in order to use the war dance within the film, producers should have asked direct permission from the tribe. Creators of Forever Strong has yet to comment on the situation."

WTF?

Hip Hop Special from 1981

2009-05-31T19:58:00.000-07:00

pt.1

pt.2

Muslim Demographics

2009-05-26T16:22:00.001-07:00

As Above So Below, An Introduction To Fractal Evolution

2009-05-24T02:21:00.000-07:00

"A decade after Mandelbrot published his physiological speculations, some theoretical biologists began to find fractal organization controlling structures all through the body. The standard 'exponential' description of a bronchial branching proved to be quite wrong; a fractal description turned out to fit the data...." --James Gleick. In the view of the Darwinists, the endlessly exquisite designs of nature are the result of an interplay of two factors--random genetic mutation and Natural Selection. Genetic mutation proposes, Natural Selection disposes.

The question of "design" in nature was one that troubled Charles Darwin all his professional life. In the year following the publication of the Origin, he writes to Asa Gray: "I am conscious that I am in an utterly hopeless muddle. I cannot think that the world, as we see it, is the result of chance; and yet I cannot look at each separate thing as the result of design." Darwinist Ernst Mayr, for one, is well aware of the design dilemma. "No consequence of Darwin's theory of natural selection was a source of greater dismay to his opponents than the elimination of design from nature. Those who studied the countless superb adaptations of animals and plants had been most gratified by the explanation that such perfection was clearly the result of design by the maker of this world." In fact, Darwin did not eliminate design from nature, as he himself indicates in his letter to Gray. Darwin and his followers succeeded only in challenging the traditional idea that the source of all design is God.

Today, any graduate student asked to develop a paper on the subject of design in nature would invariably wind up looking into fractal geometry and mathematics. Fractal geometry, as its name implies, is a geometry focusing on the description of geometrical structures, and structuring, in fract[ion]al space

Until 1975, we didn't have a fractal geometry. Our only geometry was the familiar Euclidean geometry, which goes back over two thousand years. The Elements of Euclid (circa 300 B.C.) summarized in thirteen volumes the mathematical knowledge of ancient Greece. Up into our own century, Euclid's books of geometry were taken as the final, authoritative word on the subject. Euclidean geometry deals with whole rather than fractional realities. Plane geometry concerns planar (one- and two-dimensional) structures, and solid geometry describes volumetric (three-dimensional) structures.

"New geometry's always begin," writes James Gleick, "when someone changes a fundamental rule." Fundamental supposition would be a better term than rule. Gleick continues: "Suppose space can be curved instead of flat, a geometer says, and the result is a weird curved parody of Euclid that provides precisely the right framework for the general theory of relativity. Suppose space can have four dimensions, or five, or six. Suppose the number expressing dimension can be a fraction.... suppose shapes are defined, not by solving an equation once, but by iterating it [repeating it] in a feedback loop,....... Suppose that fractals are the secret to your answers."

As Above So Below, An Introduction To Fractal Evolution Part 1

Misinformed NZ hip hop journalism cant be stopped (pity)

2009-05-20T21:35:00.000-07:00

This is a response to this blog post as written by a long-serving local DJ, producer, hip hop musician and part-time contributor Exile

You blow your own horn. You have no idea how tough it is on the streets and where the origins of Hiphop began in NZ, this is apparent in your tone and use of poor gramatical structure for balance of opinion in your article to describe the feats that people have made as Hiphop artists in NZ. You have taken the easy path of discrimination towards a genre of music in NZ, namely hiphop.

Before Scribe and before Deceptikonz NZ had not accepted its own people to make a brand of hiphop that could be even be considered as influential, to the point where the multi nationalists companies are willing to put foward offers for marketing, promotions, advertising to help spread the fact that the Hiphop artists you refer to actually have talent thats good enough to carry itself both nation wide and world wide.

In terms of lyrical content, music is a form of expression and hard times exist on the streets of South Auckland, West Auckland, Central Auckland, East Auckland infact in all the impoverished suburbs of NZ, and this is reflected in the lyrical content, hiphop in NZ is not young indeed but the artist are, and infact as the artist grows then so does the demand for intelligence in the lyrical content as there are more and more hiphop artists raising the standards. Ladi 6, King Kaps, Sunshine Soundsystem, Coco Solid, Flowsion, Hayley J Hansell, Mikey Rockwell, Kolab, RockSolid DJs, the list is goes on.

I am not defending the artist you are refering to however I am stating that the artist that have come before me have laid a solid foundation for the Hiphop genre to evolve into concious hiphop like that of African American artist Common or Mosdef or even De la Soul or on more of a political stand point Paris or Public Enemy. It is a matter of maturation that is required of our artists that are going to be the next generation to join the hiphop scene.

Hiphop is not just a genre, Hiphop is a culture in NZ and has been that way since Kool Herc left Jamaica to reside in NYC.

In summary, rather then judging what you mostly see on T.V,what you hear on the commercial radio and making a poor effort to reveiw an album by the artists you refer to, look a little deeper because as you have fallen into the commercial trap yourself by making weak comments on how NZ hiphop is over.

Look into the NZ hiphop scene a little more closely and you will hear that it is thriving more so then ever.

Hiphop - Freedom of thought - EXILE 2009

Stop begging for hits on your site make better use of your time.

interbrigadas.org

2009-05-13T16:36:00.000-07:00

“So, well … what did you do in South America?” I asked the guy working next to me and he came up with this mind blowing story. It goes like this: A few young people watched the movie “the revolution will not be televised” and got hooked by the revolutionary energy in Venezuela. At the same time it seems they were quite bored of partying every weekend and felt like they could use their holidays in a more sophisticated way.

Soon, they visited Venezuela and found that people were incredibly open-minded towards their ideas. So from 2007 they started organizing workshops in Latin America, where voluntaries from European countries support local communities by teaching whatever they are skilled in. During these so-called “brigades” mainly young people give lessons in ceramics, drama, history, dance, English, French, biology or graffiti.

The feedback is amazing. Not only the locals appreciate the programme, also many sponsors find this project worth supporting. Furthermore the guys finance their trips by printing and selling T-Shirts and also started organizing street concerts in Germany. Among May and June there will be some exhibitions and concerts in Berlin with various artists from Latin America.
So if you are around, check it out!

For further info please have a look at their homepages:

www.interbrigadas.org
www.myspace.com/interbrigadas

How they describe themselves:

“The International Brigades want to give young people the opportunity
to become involved in the process of change in Latin America and
express their solidarity. Our project has nothing to do with simple
tourism. Every participant is asked to bring their skills, knowledge
and creativity to local people.

We see ourselves as heterogeneous platform, which organizes solidarity
work with Venezuela, i.e. cultural exchange and educational work. Our
work goes beyond the pure demonstration of solidarity as we aid
directly on the spot.

First and foremost, we support initiatives which develop from the communes themselves, from the bottom up.”

(taken from interbrigadas.org)

Fractals, The Colors of Infinity

2009-05-07T21:42:00.000-07:00

Arthur C. Clarke, through interviews with scientists and mathematicians like Benoit Mandlebrot, use the popular Mandlebrot Set to explore how easy formulas can bring about intricate results. It is also used in an attempt to answer questions about the longevity of the universe.

Fractals, The Colors Of Infinity Part 1

Fractals, The Colors Of Infinity Part 2

Fractals, The Colors Of Infinity Part 3

Sarah Jones

2009-05-04T22:37:00.001-07:00

Twitter me

2009-04-30T11:16:00.000-07:00

We Twitter:

Bomber is on Twitter @ NZbomber

Tumeke! blog is on twitter @ TUMEKE_blog

Tumeke! international (news) is on twitter @ NEWS_UPDATES

Anne Tolley is Ronald McDonalds new girlfriend

2009-04-16T17:19:00.001-07:00

Alarm over rise in junk food options
School tuckshops are selling 14 per cent more junk food such as pies and sausage rolls than last year, sparking calls for the reinstatement of healthy eating guidelines. The Green Party released its annual school food survey yesterday. It showed a 14 per cent rise in pie, hot dog, sausage roll and hot-bite sales compared with the year before. More than half of the 50 schools surveyed sold donuts, cookies and cakes while 42 per cent sold chips. The Green Party says the survey results show an urgent need for the reinstatement of the School Food Guidelines ditched by Education Minister Anne Tolley this year. Tolley told The Press schools were still required to promote healthy food and drink options and she trusted school boards of trustees to make appropriate decisions. Green Party health spokeswoman Sue Kedgley said schools were now free to sell as much junk food as they pleased.

Of all the stupid things National have done since becoming Government, deciding to allow junk food back into schools BECAUSE it was – get this – “Political Correctness” to ban them in the first place was petty and blind stupidity at its worst? Ask anyone working with child obesity and the issues poverty play within obesity about the intelligence of this move, look at the concentration rates from children not popped up to the eyeballs on sugar and fat and how much better they perform, talk to nutritionists about how children learn healthy eating styles and everyone of them were critical of this jawdroppingly moronic move by Tolley. The only reason why Tolley would agree to letting junk food back into schools would be because of industry pressure from big sugar and schools complaining about a drop in revenue, letting junk food back into schools is not in the interests of the child health wise or educationally. National need to admit they got it wrong and had used the nanny state bogeyman for the usual political and cultural advantages and ban junk food from schools, it really is as simple as that - they’re wrong and they need to admit that.

To Russia with hate

2009-04-16T17:17:00.001-07:00

Russia 'ends Chechnya operation'
Russia has ended its decade-long "counter-terrorism operation" against separatist rebels in the southern republic of Chechnya, officials say. The move aimed "to create conditions to further normalise the situation", the National Anti-terrorist Committee said. Russian forces have fought two wars in the mainly Muslim republic since 1994. Moscow says Chechnya has stabilised under its pro-Kremlin President, Ramzan Kadyrov, but human rights groups accuse his militias of widespread abuses.

While George Dubya was illegally invading parts of the planet to cause terror, Russia were quietly re-opening the wound of Chechnya and were exterminating any defiance to their brutal occupation, so concerned were Russia that a Chechnya independence bid could lead to other provinces splitting away. While the West were perpetrating their own human rights abuses, it left no moral high ground to demand Russia stop the butchery in Chechnya, the latest move to downgrade their occupation has more to do with shrinking oil revenues to pay for the occupation force than any real stability in the region.

The horror story of Chechnya and Moscow’s vested interest in killing journalists who ask questions became painfully apparent in 2006 with the poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko by Russian agents who were also allegedly involved in the murder of Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya. Both researched Russian war crimes in Chechnya, Litvinenko (former KGB)in particular accused the Russians of bombing their own citizens in Moscow, and by blaming rebels from Chechnya, gained popular support from Russians to re-invade Chechnya. The true depth of human rights abuses and the outright manipulation by the secret police to murder their own citizens to create a pretense for re-invasion and to eliminate those who asked such questions may never see the light of day, if the West hadn’t been so busy perpetrating their own war crimes the horror story of Chechnya may have been challenged at the time.

Boot camps and throwing kids in Police cells – like 4.6% of NZ, they don’t work

2009-04-16T17:16:00.001-07:00

Child advocate opposes tougher laws
A tough new law may force young teenage offenders into police cells again because there will be nowhere else to put them, says outgoing Children's Commissioner Cindy Kiro. The proposed new law, on which submissions close today, lowers Youth Court jurisdiction from age 14 to 12 for serious offences, facilitates the National Party's election promise of military-style "boot camps" and creates other new youth penalties. Dr Kiro said the changes threatened one of her proudest achievements as Children's Commissioner since 2003 - a project she led to reduce the numbers of young people being held in adult police cells. "I'm very optimistic about the work being done on reducing the number of young people in police cells, but with the dropping of the legal age to 12 and 13 that will put pressure on the whole system to drive up the numbers again."

Overseas, the private prison industry funds victims rights groups in the hope that the shrill debate that typically follows prompts conservative law and order politicians to pass kneejerk policy. Take the $35 million we are blowing on Boot Camps that every academic report shows don’t work, the level of evidence that runs contrary to talkback rhetoric was so immense that Paula Bennett had the nerve to recently declare that National weren’t setting up Boot camps. Look at the foaming reaction this week to Dr Pita Sharples desire to make prisons places where prisoners can be healed before they are let back out into society, NZ simply isn’t mature enough as a country to look beyond basic vengeance as a motivating factor regardless of what the research or facts show us. Many NZers want people who have wronged us to physically suffer, the concept of a loss of liberty isn’t even considered a punishment any longer and with the desire purely on punishment we start implementing policy as pointless as Boot Camps and lowering the criminal threshold on children without resourcing the places these children will be sent to meaning, as Cindy Kiro points out, more Children being held in Police cells. The utter lack of compassion and understanding (for victims as well as those broken human beings who end up in prison) feeds on each other. Those righteously outraged by the pain caused on innocent people becomes warped into something as bleak as the perpetrator, but the insanity of putting damaged individuals into violent environments that only further dehumanize them is as much a problem as the initial criminal actions that put them there. We aren’t learning from our very obvious mistakes.

He ain’t called Veitchy anymore

2009-04-16T17:14:00.000-07:00

NZ Herald.

They don’t call him Vietchy much anymore do they, they call him ‘Mr Veitch’ as in ‘Mr Veitch you have some very serious charges pending’.

Ugh – the whole thing was so human and awful wasn’t it? A media that when they weren’t being played by each persons PR team were breathlessly reporting allegations as fact to a gossip loving public on one of the last great taboos of NZ society – domestic violence. She was painted as some kind of bunny boiler who wouldn’t leave Vietch alone and when she did push him too far and he attacked her she manipulated the situation to gain cash and a scorned woman’s vengeance. He was painted as a jumped up little git who like a spoiled child couldn’t seem to comprehend anything beyond ‘why me’ and effectively walked with a very light sentence that if had been committed by anyone of a lesser social class would’ve been jail. All of this with a Public campaign in the background that domestic violence isn’t acceptable, a message which seems to have been lost somewhere in the scandal laden headlines.

We are a pretty angry, uptight, alcoholic society, in a colonial culture that respected hard men who earned the family wage, masculinity and the emotional capacity to deal with stress is as primordial as it always has been, while women have taken the 1970’s creed of ‘Women can do anything’ to new levels of independence that seem to further intimidate men who aren’t sure what their role in society is any longer. I’ve never hit a woman, it breaches fundamental principles within my own honour code that I refuse to breach, but I’m cognitive of my honour code and don’t define my own self respect with my fists, many blokes I’ve met however don’t seem to be cognitive of their honor code, there seems to me to be a dark fetid pool of subconscious fury that finds voice through violence that I suspect is rooted in a serious lack of male self identity.

How we go about seriously combating domestic violence requires men challenging other men about their violent behavior, but it is a challenge that demands the violent person to look within themselves and actually talk about why they feel the way they do, to identify the root cause of their malaise while honestly dispatching the bullshit excuses men use to defend the indefensible. Nominally that is a lesson-gift a father passes to his son, but with so many NZ fathers preferring to walk rather than stick around the fundamentals of redefining masculinity are left unlearnt and violently explode out in times of stress and insecurity.

It really is time for NZ men to man up.

Earth to Pita Sharples - you’re being taken for a ride!

2009-04-14T15:29:00.000-07:00

Minister backs separate prison unit for Maori
A separate Maori prison unit where the inmates go flatting and the focus is on healing is under consideration by the Government. The "alternative rehabilitation centre" is being promoted by Associate Corrections Minister and Maori Party co-leader Pita Sharples. The National Government is open to the concept. Corrections Minister Judith Collins says she is "very keen" if it can be shown to reduce the Maori crime rate. Dr Sharples wants the 60-bed institution to be located in an urban centre so education and employment opportunities can be provided to Maori prisoners "who are determined to learn, heal and socialise". He said the institution would still have security measures like other prisons: "There'll be locks on the gates". Dr Sharples said he had previously referred to the centre as an "alternative prison". It would have fewer jailers and "more healers, teachers, social workers".

Well said Dr Sharples, and about time! We SHOULD see our prisons as a place where broken people heal and liberty granted only when the possibility of recidivism has been dramatically reduced that way parole could actually mean something and be used a s tool to moderate prisoner behaviour rather than what it is being used as now which is a mechanism to free up prison beds. Losing ones liberty is punishment enough a fact so many on the right don’t grasp, but why should this vision of what prisons should become be limited only to Maori, why couldn’t that healing mindset be used for all prisons?

The ones I feel sorry for are the rednecks, here they have Judy ‘crusher’ Collins, their poster girl for public floggings and David ‘homophobic drunk’, Garret, the poster boy for public hangings both agreeing with giving Maaaari softy prison options – which is why Dr Pita Sharples should be so careful, because he’s being taken for a ride. Garrett and Collins haven’t suddenly woken up today caring about the welfare of Maori prisoners, far from it, they want the private prison industry (an industry that may or may not have ‘donated’ money to the Sensible Sentencing Trust AND the National Party, we can’t know because both organizations are so secretive about who donates to them) to take over with the horrific warping their profit motives create. Private Prisons don’t give a fuck about rehabilitation, they care only to have more people in more prisons for longer periods of time, especially now our prisons have been changed into work camps, remember under National no slave work = no parole. These private prisons DON’T save money, they only warp the prison numbers, and overseas they fund victim rights groups so that the public debate becomes so shrill that only 'lock-em-up' longer becomes the only sound heard.

Garrett and Collins are setting Sharples up, they’ll give him his ‘Maori Unit’ but it will be in the form of a private prison, if Sharples idea of jails as healing places are so good, why the hell can’t they be adopted within the public service, how come they can only be adopted in the private system which overseas evidence shows provide a worse service than the current public system?

Forget the war on terrorism we now have a war on Pirates!

2009-04-14T13:32:00.000-07:00

Pirates – scary huh? So scary the planet suddenly needs to send most of the worlds navy’s there to battle small boat loads of half starved men armed with a couple of Ak-47’s, let’s nuke the fuckers! Let’s teach them that while they watch the blood oil being sucked out of their region to feed greedy western lifestyles which they see no recompense for aside from us propping up the regions most brutal regimes, that they are supposed to shut up and lump it.

I don’t wish to be facetious BUT has it occurred to anyone that perhaps the west might have had a hand in the creation of these pirates – I know, I know, how could I make such a claim, don’t I understand that ‘we’ are the good guys? The West are so righteous and good and sexy, how could the West be blamed for these terrors of the deep? Weeeeeel, I’m no expert BUT perhaps if we had a wee gander at how the West has behaved with Somalia since the collapse in 1991 when 9 million people were suddenly thrown in the deep end and have been close to starvation ever since.

Let’s start with our raping and pillaging (almost pirate behaviour isn’t it) of Somalia’s seafood, $300million a year are stolen from Somalia’s waters, but that’s not piracy, that’s lunch buddy! The transition from fisherman to pirate can’t be too difficult when the west have stripped their waters of anything edible, and what about our dumping of nuclear waste in Somalian waters? As the ever brilliant Johann Hari point’s out…

Yes: nuclear waste. As soon as the government was gone (in 1991), mysterious European ships started appearing off the coast of Somalia, dumping vast barrels into the ocean. The coastal population began to sicken. At first they suffered strange rashes, nausea and malformed babies. Then, after the 2005 tsunami, hundreds of the dumped and leaking barrels washed up on shore. People began to suffer from radiation sickness, and more than 300 died. Ahmedou Ould-Abdallah, the UN envoy to Somalia, tells me: "Somebody is dumping nuclear material here. There is also lead, and heavy metals such as cadmium and mercury - you name it." Much of it can be traced back to European hospitals and factories, who seem to be passing it on to the Italian mafia to "dispose" of cheaply. When I asked Ould-Abdallah what European governments were doing about it, he said with a sigh: "Nothing. There has been no clean-up, no compensation, and no prevention."

…ha ha ha, hilarious hu, we strip their waters of fish and dump nuclear waste and then get huffy when one American captain gets attacked by hungry fisherman – HAHAHAHAHA – great.

But let’s not hurt peoples minds by demanding we go all the way back to 1991 to try and get a grip on why Somalian’s might not have the infrstructure in place to help up-skill hungry fishermen who can’t catch anything because we strip them of their food while poisoning them with nuclear waste, let’s just have a wee gander at what America has secretly been doing to help re-build Somalia.

Because America can’t tell the difference between ‘Muslim’ and ‘Terrorist’, in 2006 the American’s backed Somalian warlords who butcher and murder (think of them as land pirates) over the Union of Islamic Courts in one of the worst CIA blowbacks since they funded Osama Bin Laden. Once the local population realized the American’s were backing the bloodthirsty war lords, the Union of Islamic Courts received mass popular support and they overthrew the land pirates, and it created for the first time since 1991 a level of stability without the terror of the warlords - now go and guess what America did next, go on, you’ll laugh, did they..

a) Accept they cocked it up and probably never should’ve backed the warlords and that the stability the Union of Islamic Courts created a unqiue situation which could be built upon

OR

b) Give vast military backing to Ethiopia to invade and start a new war?

COME ON DOWN B – that’s right, the fucking American’s backed Ethiopia and launched a war, and we wonder why there are no training polytechs to retrain fishermen.

But it get’s funnier, so let’s put aside the over fishing, the dumping of nuclear waste, the support of warlords and the invoking of a war, how about civilian death from remote control?

January 9th, 2007 and the American’s launched a remote controlled X-box 360 attack on terrorists in Somalia because they had CREDIBLE EVIDENCE. At the time I critiqued America’s CREDIBLE EVIDENCE…

Oh, I get it now, America had ‘CREDIBLE EVIDENCE’ that the people they blew up and killed in Somalia (in what amounts to an illegal military action on the soil of another country) were involved in American Embassy bombings – and I suppose I should just believe you shouldn’t I America. I mean I should ignore the fact that the Union of Islamic Courts wouldn’t have taken over if you hadn’t supported the Warlords last year and that this is just another fucking example of America playing God in third world countries, and I suppose I should just accept this ‘credible evidence’ the same way we had to when you told the world you had ‘credible evidence’ that Saddam had WMDs, and that you had ‘credible evidence’ Iraq had something to do with 9/11 and that you had ‘credible evidence’ to declare ‘Mission was accomplished’ and ‘major military battle in Iraq were over’ and that you had ‘credible evidence’ catching Saddam would be the ‘turning point in Iraq’, oh and let’s not forget the ‘credible evidence’ that hanging Saddam would also ‘turn a corner in Iraq’ - I’m sorry America, with you poised to surge more young men to their death in Iraq, you no longer have any credibility in this war of errorism.

…so what was the outcome of these Somalian ‘terrorists’? Less than 5 days later the American’s were admitting they weren’t who they thought they were after all. Hilarious.

Okay so let’s forget the fact we strip their seas of food, let’s forget the fact that we dump nuclear waste in their seas, let’s forget the fact that the American’s backed the bloodthirsty land pirate warlords, let’s forget the fact that the Union of Islamic Courts brought about the first stability since 1991 and let’s forget the American’s invoked a war to get rid of that stability and let’s forget that America has been mistakenly blowing up civilians via remote control for sometime – LET’S FORGET ALL THOSE MITIGATING CIRCUMSTANCES which may explain why starving impoverished men would jump in tiny boats and dare show any resistance. Let’s instead do a big song and dance about pirates, fuck the facts and our role as the West in bringing about their misery, let’s just go on and on and on about bloody pirates.

Hilarious!

ACT to privatize Auckland

2009-04-13T13:12:00.000-07:00

Hide rejects accusation he misled John Key over super city
Local Government Minister Rodney Hide has denied accusations he misled Prime Minister John Key about his consultation with Auckland's mayors over restructuring plans. The Government on Tuesday said it would adopt the Royal Commission's idea for a single council for Auckland, but that it would appoint 20-30 "local boards" instead of six "local councils" to look after community matters. Mr Williams said Mr Key told TV3's Sunrise programme last Tuesday that "Rodney Hide did a lot of great work in the last sort of week or so, working closely with all the officials and listening to the community, spent time going out and talking to the various Mayors and different people". However, Mr Williams said the only mayor Mr Hide consulted with was Auckland City Mayor John Banks.

Of course ACT are backing this rushed through Super City to privatize Auckland’s assets, let’s recap on ACT shall we? This is a party that claims Global Warming caused by man made pollution is a hoax, this is a party that used the deaths of 78 NZers to grandstand on law and order and lied about how their medieval 3 strikes policy would’ve saved those 78 lives, this is a party that has allowed a drunk homophobe a position of power to try and screw around with our bill of rights because the Sensible Sentencing Lynch mob have taken over ACT (a group we are still not certain aren’t being given money from the private prison industry), this is a party that pretended in the last week of the election that their leaders vomit yellow jacket was being reported to the Electoral Commission for breaches of the EFA when in reality it was an ACT activist who made the complaint to create publicity and finally let’s remember that ACT are quietly setting up TABOR as a ratchet legislation to strangle public spending forever – this is a far right, extremist political party who want to privatize everything they possibly can, to pretend otherwise is just that, a pretense. To trust someone like Rodney Hide with a rushed through change as massive as the Super City that gags representation of Maori and locals when he’s been caught out lying already about his consultation process is utter madness. Rodney may have lost weight and learnt to dance, but he sure as hell ain’t changed his spots.

Goodbye Helen

2009-04-13T12:40:00.000-07:00

Greens to contest Clark's old seat
Party says it will contest 'important' Mt Albert byelection despite Labour qualms The Green Party has decided to stand a candidate in the Mt Albert byelection - despite informal approaches by Labour people concerned that it would split the centre-left vote.

With the Greens so desperate to be relevant they are cutting deals with the National Party (something they decried the Maori Party for), it looks like Labour are the only opposition party in Parliament and that’s how they will have to fight for the Mt Albert electorate. How the Greens think they can cut a deal with a Political Party holding a skeptics select committee into the science of global warming, or who voted junk food back into schools or who gutted the environmental protections from the RMA – how the Greens think they can work with the Nats suggests someone has gotten into the hash cookies.

All of that to one side, goodbye Helen, I’m glad she is off to much greater things, these lone crags of NZ don’t deserve someone of her talents, I have been disgusted by the many NZers whom Radar bumped into who have laughed that “we had gotten rid of the communist lesbian’, what a petty people, she deserves much better and 3rd in line at the UN sets her up as the possible first female leader of the UN, she has worked hard for her country and she deserves this recognition, even if the petty people of her own Islands can’t see that.

While there were times I utterly disagreed with Helen (the disgusting confiscation through legislation of the foreshore and seabed, the despicable imprisonment of Ahmed Zaoui and her refusal to reverse the mother of all benefit cuts) , I do believe she was one of our greatest Prime Ministers, where she and Labour came apart was through their refusal to combat NZs redneck culture, preferring to try and manage it instead. In the wake of ‘Maaaaaaaaaaaaari get too much’ Labour freaked out and started eliminating progressive legislation like closing the gaps. Labour allowed a talkback creation like the ‘Nanny state’ to become a reality that National built into a social movement for all those disgruntled feckless men down at the Sports bar who have backlashed against MMP because their voices were no longer the only ones listened to when making decisions. Rather than challenge their prejudice, Labour tried to manage it and that was their downfall, rather than fronting up to Gerry Brownlee when he claimed Maori were trying to steal the beaches, Helen tried to out redneck the rednecks by passing the legislation and stealing Maori land herself.

She always said NZ was conservative with a little c, and I think she also knew we were racist with a little r, but in the end prejudice has to be challenged rather than managed and without a fresh vision, her 9 years of power ended. History will be much kinder to Helen than bitter nasty NZers are to her right now, she became Prime Minister at a time when Government after Government had lied about their manifestos and she actually brought back trust to politics.

Good luck at the UN Helen, NZ was lucky to have had you as a leader.

Ronald Jenkees

2009-04-10T17:16:00.000-07:00

this guy got the mad skillz

Ratamahatta - Sepultura

2009-04-07T20:59:00.001-07:00

Sepultura - Ratamahatta
Uploaded by Cemoes

Paul Henry’s Mo-chismo (the blind leading the deaf)

2009-03-29T15:48:00.000-07:00

A lot of righteous criticism has been heaped on Paul and his decision to mock Stephanie Mills on Breakfast last week. Stephanie had been on the show to discuss the death of a French agent who had been involved in the Rainbow Warrior bombing and ended up being mocked by Paul for having facial hair. How base, how ugly, how very NZ, we seemed to have forgotten being under Labour for 9 years that there is a garden variety bigotry that stalks these fair isles, the out of town drunk Uncle who you have to put up with at Christmas once a year with their ‘bloody maaaaaaaaaaaoris get too much’ dinner table speeches is not only alive and doing well, but is currently the Government. The resentment of education is back and Political Correctness book burning is the new fad. The rednecks have been in full bloom on talkback on this facial hair issue (very much in the same vein their sickening attacks on Helen Clark’s UN appointment) that remind us that the view has narrowed with National and ACT in power. The white males who under FPP were never challenged for cultural power have felt that under MMP their cultural power had been rubbed raw, other people get to have a say in the decision making process meaning their voice wasn’t the only one, that really rips the nighties of the Paul Henry’s of this world. That perception and insecurity of a loss of male power has been the driving backlash against ‘political correctness’ and has given our redneck friends the talkback justification to cry about how hard done by they’ve all been for just being blokes. Well sadly that backlash has found political voice and for all the Paul Henry’s out there who have felt alienated at those Christmas dinners, it’s all their dream Christmas dinners come at once – they and their ilk are in power now and the facial hair of a woman is much more important than what that woman has to say. Paul Henry represents more than just Paul Henry, he represents all well to do old white males who feel the same ‘social engineering’ resentments and who now think under their Government being in power that they can go back to the racist jokes and sexist crap with the sly winks and devil may care smirks that give them the self esteem boost their Viagra pills can’t seem to match.

I leave the last word to a much more dignified Stephanie Mills
"It's trademark Paul Henry and there are bigger issues in the world to worry about - like people dying of leukaemia from French [nuclear] testing. I think he likes being controversial - that's a polite way to put it. This is who I am and people make choices about who they are. "I have a really wonderful family, three gorgeous kids, a loving husband, great friends, really challenging job that I do part-time around all the other things I do in my life, and I love my life. "I'm secure with myself and I feel sorry that these people are so insecure about either their own appearance or mine. This is not about me, it's about them."

Turtle Pizza Cadillacs

2009-03-23T13:09:00.000-07:00

Aleks Sakowski Presents
The Parallel Dance Ensemble
Coco Solid and Bobbi Soxx
In Turtle Pizza Cadillacs
www.cocosolid.co.nz - www.youtube.com/alkom

Be sure to watch this in 'High Quality"
Thanks to everyone who contributed to this,
your hard work and amazing talent is much appreciated.
The making of video coming soon.

The Obama Deception

2009-03-16T15:50:00.000-07:00

Carol Brown

2009-03-15T13:31:00.000-07:00

Meet your new Prison Company

2009-03-12T15:21:00.002-07:00

The despicable move to privatize prisons, a move I am 1000% opposed to, grinds on as this Government is forced to live up to their raw meat election campaign promises of public floggings and neon orange jumpsuited chain ganged prisoners singing Negro spirituals alongside motorways while a mirrored glass wearing Simon ‘bossman’ Powers stands over them with a shotgun resting on his hip.

The problem of promising such ridiculous over the top lynch mob justice is that it costs a bloody arm and a leg, so what’s a big tough hard on crime Government to do? Why privatize the entire industry and get someone else to worry about overcrowded and beatily violent prisons, so who are our new Private Prisons going to be? GEO, who are GEO, well Frogblog has some pretty disturbing things to say about them…

The GEO Group, Inc. is part of the The Wackenhut Corporation, the owner of 13 correctional facilities, 11 of which are operated by GEO. They have immigrant detention centres, youth facilities and adult prisons. GEO’s value now apparently exceeds a billion dollars. This from CorpWatch

• settled a case where they placed a woman in a cellblock with male inmates who raped and beat her, she later took her life;
• had 125 inmates removed from a prison by state authorities for inadequate staff training and inadequate health care;
• served rotten food;
• knowing made false and misleading statements to state officials;
• failed to complete criminal record checks on at least 100 guards;
• violated domestic and international laws on due process and humane treatment;

And this is the company that the Sensible Sentencing Trust has been accused of taking money from. I don’t know about you, but having a private prison company fund victims rights groups to manipulate an angry electorate into voting for harsher sentences so that the private prison company can more people in more prisons for longer an abomination of the entire justice system.

The Lynch mob may have won, and we may have a homophobic drunk MP trying to change our bill of rights to allow this, but rational NZers can’t let this go on. We’ve got an election in 2 and a half years.

The Push-me-Pull-me John-key

2009-03-12T15:21:00.001-07:00

Help me out here folks, here is John Key our blessed saviour in blue telling the Wall Street Journal that he doesn’t believe in all this bullshit lefty crap about spending your way out of a recession (the article is called, “You can’t spend your way out of a recession”), and yet only last month this very same National Party were bleating (lying as it turns out) that they had put together the 3rd best stimulus package in the world.

WTF? So at home National are trying to pretend that they are spending the 3rd largest stimulus package in the world, yet as soon as John has an overseas audience, he’s telling them that spending your way out is the last thing that should be done because it doesn’t work

Do we have a Prime Minister or a push-me-pull-me donkey that talks out of both sides of his mouth.

The Mysterious Explorations of Jasper Morello

2009-03-12T03:12:00.000-07:00

New Vid...

2009-03-11T17:47:00.000-07:00

SPACE AND TIME Hayley J Hansell from MediaButcher on Vimeo

The N Word

2009-03-10T19:16:00.000-07:00

The word nigger has always been associated with overt racism, but a provocative documentary is about to show the rest of the world that Australian Government will happily endorse its use on a public building

Stephen Hagan began his campaign back in 1999, and even then he thought it was an open and shut case. He couldn’t have been more wrong. Nine years on and he is still pursuing the Toowoomba Sports Ground Trust, owners of the local Athletic Oval, to have a sign removed that included the word ‘Nigger’ (the ES ‘Nigger’ Brown Stand). Edward Stanley Brown, Toowoomba’s first rugby league international, who died in 1972 aged 74, was actually a white Australian - not an Aborigine - and was believed to have earned the nickname because of his extremely fair complexion.

Arguing that the sign was offensive and racist, Hagan’s case failed to move Australia’s domestic judiciaries including the Supreme Court and finally went all the way up to the United Nations, where in 2003 the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination found the term offensive and insulting and recommended the federal government remove the word; but the Howard government refused to act against it.

DID YOU KNOW?

Little Nigger Creek (between Townsville and Tully in Queensland) was successfully renamed in 2000 to Little Gin Creek.

Stephen Hagan's house need to be controlled by police due to threats.

"The Brown family is happy to take [the sign] down." - personal comment of the son of Edward Stanley Brown to Stephen Hagan.

Stephen Hagan wrote a book called 'The N Word' about his fight.

Mr Hagan also spearheaded an unsuccessful legal challenge against an Australian brand of cheese called Coon. The cheese was named after Edward William Coon who developed it in the 1920s. The name has been retained since despite its racist connotations.

Edward Stanley 'Nigger' Brown died in 1972 at the age of 74.

In 2007 the Toowoomba Sportsground Trust decided to tear down the stand due to safety concerns. However, it also decided to erect a statue to 'Nigger Brown' at the site.

Daniel Clowes

2009-03-10T16:02:00.000-07:00

Daniel Clowes Part (BBC Documentary)
by lesebb1

One of my favourite comic book creators of all time

www.walkingisoverrated.com

2009-03-09T20:24:00.000-07:00

This is from the website www.walkingisoverrated.com the dopest site about disability culture, stereotypes, problems, jokes and everyday Aotearoa life for the sites creator Red Nicholson. I met Red last year and he is a total babe and charmer.

The prison nightmare begins

2009-03-09T19:32:00.001-07:00

Inmates faced with two in a cell
Prison inmates could soon find themselves forced to share a room, as the Corrections Department talks with staff about putting two beds into every standard prison cell. Corrections Association president Beven Hanlon said the move would add an extra 950 beds to the jail system, covering expected growth in prisoner numbers in the next 18 months.
He said the move - known as double-bunking - would be on top of new prisons, and would be permanent. The extra beds would be added in the four new jails opened in the past four years. Putting two prisoners in each cell has previously been rejected by the Corrections Department as it believed the standard 6.5sq m cell was not suitable for two people. Such close-quarter living had the potential to cause "issues of inmate compatibility and tensions", the department has said. The proposal has horrified criminologist Greg Newbold, who himself spent time in prison. He said the plan would be "disastrous", and lead to increased violence towards inmates and staff. "When you're locked up with someone you can't get away from [or] with someone you may detest, people will explode in that type of environment," Dr Newbold said. "It's the worst thing they can possibly do. It leads to homosexual rape and bullying in cells, and dehumanises the inmate. "Any inmate doing a long term knows the hour you look forward to is lock-up time - time on your own without hindrance from another inmate." Dr Newbold has researched prisons in the US and Australia, where cell-sharing is common. In Louisiana, he observed five-bunk stacking, as well as dormitory-style rooms with 100 to 200 people inside. As well as rapes, stabbings were also common in such environments, he said. "It is a cheap and nasty solution. The beginning of the decline of Corrections in this country."

And the nightmare begins, Simon Powers has baited a frightened and furious electorate by painting prison out to be some sort of plasma TV, underfloor heated adult Disneyland and now has to manage a social policy of hate with a drunk homophobe from ACT who wants to mess around with your bill of rights so he can pass his $30 billion medieval law and order 3 strikes and you’re locked up forever policy. To manage this Simon will import Dick Cheney’s profit driven private prison industrial complex but will still need to double bunk prisoners in a situation horrified criminologist Greg Newbold describes as “disastrous”.

How will prison rape make any prisoner a better human being? How will the demands on an underfunded, corrupt and violent prison system mange to provide any rehabilitation in a public debate now deafened by the shrill scream for vengeance. This prison system will only create more offenders, it will bear a bitter and dreadful harvest.

When social policy becomes warped by hatred, then that system merely exacerbates the damage, If a human being is dehumanized by their experiences inside prison, then that dehumanized human being will only go on to create more damage once they are released.

Reason has failed here, the lynch mob has won.

Nikki Patin plays NZ this week

2009-03-09T18:22:00.000-07:00

Go to her cheese on toast interview to see her tour dates

The Coen Brothers vs. Reality

2009-03-09T18:02:00.000-07:00

This is an advertisement directed by award-winning directors The Coen Brothers and their take on clean coal for thisisreality.org

12 year old girl delivers epic speech to UN

2009-03-05T15:36:00.000-08:00

Turtle Pizza Cadillac

2009-03-05T01:47:00.000-08:00

Fungi

2009-03-04T13:34:00.000-08:00

Paul Stamets has been a dedicated mycologist for over thirty years. Over this time, he has discovered and coauthored four new species of mushrooms, and pioneered countless mind blowing world saving techniques in the field of shroomology.

From medieval law and order policy to changing your bill of Rights

2009-03-02T10:53:00.000-08:00

Remember that drunk on Eye to Eye who started a despicable slur against gay people by comparing them with paedophiles?

“Paedophiles, like homosexuals, 30 years ago homosexuals had, according to experts, a disease and they needed to be cured and it was a spectacular failure because homosexuality is a sexual orientation, so we decided that because there were 10 per cent of people who were homosexual it was no longer a disease.

"Paedophiles cannot be cured any better than…," he continued, before being interrupted by other panel members.

Yeah well that drunk is Sensible Sentencing hangman and ACT party MP David Garrett. Currently Garrett is pretending that his 3 strikes and you’re screwed won’t cost $30billion because second time offenders will get a maximum sentence (he hopes they will die before they re-offend for the 25 year 3rd strike) and because they will go overseas. Firstly the second offence can be for something as low as a 5 year sentence so maximizing the second crime may be for as little as 5 years, that won’t kill off the prison population and the idea that these prisoners will then leave overseas with their criminal convictions is just a bloody joke. So now our favorite jumped up little Reservoir Dog, David 'Mr Pink' Garrett not only wants to initiate law and order policy that National’s own Attorney-General describes as such ” severe punishment it would breach fundamental human rights of New Zealanders”, yeah well surprise surprise, Mr Pink wants to change the NZ Bill of Rights

His direct quote when told his brutal new law would breach the NZ Bill of Rights – wait for it “So what?”

His words now "Alter the Bill of Rights Act. We've got too hung up on people's rights."

We are too hung up on people’s rights??????? – his words, not mine. Start feeling very frightened now. Would anyone want a drunk homophobe who is promoting law and order legislation that would be so severe it would breach our bill of rights fucking around with our bill of rights in anyway shape or form?

It took a couple of months, but the real right wing are now starting to peep out from under the veneer of moderation, his opinion of our rights and his desire to circumvent them for only groups David deems as okay is an influence in Parliament that no free citizen would want to continue.

Ghost in the Shell

2009-02-28T00:18:00.000-08:00

Cinema Classic

JAMIE WOON / BURIAL - Wayfaring Stranger (Burial Mix)

2009-02-25T12:04:00.000-08:00

2009-02-24T18:30:00.000-08:00

The Cuboctahedron

2009-02-23T14:53:00.001-08:00

Well done bloggers

2009-02-23T11:08:00.001-08:00

Internet copyright law delayed
A controversial copyright law covering the internet will be delayed to see if the sector can make it workable, Prime Minister John Key said today. The online community has been up in arms in recent weeks as the law is due to come into effect on Saturday. Protesters say Section 92A of the Copyright Amendment Act could force the closure of any internet account following any accusation of breach of copyright, even if it was not proven. A large number of websites and blogs blacked out their sites this morning to raise awareness about the issue. Mr Key told journalists that Cabinet had discussed the issue today and decided to delay the implementation for one month until March 27.

See what we can do when we work together? Well done, let's make sure National listen to the rightous concerns we've expressed ovcer this dog of a bill and don't try any tricky back door means to make it law.

Well done bloggers.

Bondage under National

2009-02-23T11:07:00.001-08:00

$10 million carrot thrown to graduates
A $10-million-a-year sweetener is being used to lure young medical, teacher and veterinarian graduates to areas difficult to staff. The Government announced yesterday it would pay graduates to work in regions that have struggled to fill medical and teaching vacancies with young doctors the biggest winners. They will receive a salary top-up of more than $45,000, less tax, after three years, if they stay put in a speciality or job that has traditionally struggled to attract graduates.

I like the bonding idea, Drs and Nurses and Teachers SHOULD go to rural areas, it’s great to have that new talent moved around and learn a bit of humble public service, the concept that the state will give you your education in response to the graduate staying in areas difficult to staff is EXACTLY the kind of thinking that will help rebalance services. It’s a great start but one that needs to be widened well beyond the limited careers it’s being offered. This is final proof that the student loan system NEVER WORKED, user pays education for crucial public services only meant the public ended up paying for the interest as well as the education and this massive U-turn in policy recognizes this.

Cheating cops?

2009-02-23T11:05:00.000-08:00

Police replace recruit test after discovery of cheat
Police have had to ditch their recruitment test questions and bring in a new set after they found a copy was being circulated among a small network of potential candidates. Police said they found out last Thursday that an applicant had access to the police officer recruitment test, prior to the testing day. They replaced the test with a new set of questions. They are looking at whether they can charge the person who used the circulated test questions and anyone else who might have been involved.

Hmmm, recruits who cheat to pass their exams to be a cop – not really the best start in a career of honest service protecting the public is it? How could a course that is only 19 weeks long be so difficult that you need to cheat to pass it anyway? I wonder if a new question will be asked in this exam,
If someone tries to pass off Police exams for sale do you
a) High five the officer offering the exam over a gangbang on the Clint Rickards memorial bonnet.
b) Seal the deal with a blaze up from the evidence locker.
c) Turn down the offer and become immediately ostracized by the ridiculously warped alpha male environment.

Unemployment plan isn’t working

2009-02-23T11:04:00.000-08:00

PM rejects estimate of 11.2pc jobless
Government departments are bracing for the unemployment rate to reach double figures as the economy shrinks and the outlook for New Zealand's trading partners gets bleaker. Prime Minister John Key refused to speculate yesterday about how high unemployment could go, but rejected a calculation by think tank the New Zealand Institute that it could reach 11.2 per cent. He said the Government was concentrating on ways to curb the rise in joblessness, including options to be considered at Friday's job summit, rather than seeking regular Treasury updates.

This Government cannot claim their stimulus package is the 3rd best stimulus package in the world when they base that claim on old figures that didn’t consider the rest of the planets response since November, especially when the majority of the stimulus package is in fact money Labour put aside. Their stimulus package is more akin to a warm glass of milk before bedtime and their inability to come up with a response to the global meltdown is embarrassing and their scramble to deny how bad it will become starts looking like denial. If John Key denied unemployment will hit 11.2% what was his response to Paula Bennett’s claim in Parliament on the first day back this year that she had seen reports suggesting unemployment will be as high 14%?

John Key’s solution to all of this? A ‘job summit’ that the Labour Party aren’t even invited to, hardly the broad based discussion National had promised, the economy is in freefall and this Government has no plan other than to glide through the honeymoon period and hope for the best.

Has anyone noticed that we haven’t heard from Rodney Hide for a while, doesn’t that concern anyone? Where is he and what awfulness is he brewing?

United States of Torture

2009-02-23T11:03:00.000-08:00

Freed Guantanamo prisoner alleges torture
A British resident held at Guantanamo Bay for more than four years has returned to Britain a free man and accused the US government of inflicting "medieval" torture on him – with British collusion.
Binyam Mohamed, an Ethiopian citizen with British residence, was returned on a charter flight after the US government agreed last week to a British request to free him. All charges against him were dropped and he was never tried.
He is the first Guantanamo Bay detainee to be freed since US President Barack Obama came to power with a pledge to shut the prison. Human rights groups say 241 Muslim detainees remain at the camp, including one other British resident.
Mohamed, 30, said he was "neither physically nor mentally capable" of facing the media after nearly seven years in captivity, but in a statement he denounced the US government.
"I have been through an experience that I never thought to encounter in my darkest nightmares," he said via his lawyers in a statement issued shortly before he stepped gingerly off an airplane at a British military airport looking thin and frail.
"Before this ordeal, 'torture' was an abstract word for me. I could never have imagined that I would be its victim. It is difficult for me to believe that I was abducted, hauled from one country to the next, and tortured in medieval ways – all orchestrated by the United States government," he said.

Wow, so this is what the West did to win the war on terror, torture and abuse to bring freedom and democracy, why it almost sounds like the crazy evil we were supposed to be fighting doesn’t it folks? What a sickening reminder of the hypocray of the West and the horror of the Bush years. When the West tortures, we lose all moral high ground to lecture the dictatorships we prop up to sell us cheap oil, oh wait, we don’t have any fucking moral leg to stand on do we.

Remember all those NZers who sprayed foam braying to join the war on terror, they’re pretty quiet these days. Are we fighting for freedom and democracy when we get into these wars, is Afghanistan really about freedom and democracy? I thought we were in Afghanistan because we were trying to find Osama Bin Laden, wasn’t Alexander the Great the last military leader to hold Afghanistan? Why do we think the West with it’s hands covered in the blood of civilians think it has the moral compass to decide for the people of Afghanistan?

We lost the war on terror a long time ago.

Stephen Fry protests NZ's copyright law

2009-02-18T13:05:00.000-08:00

See Stephen Fry flex his twitter power, objecting to copyright law in NZ.

"It's not about Great Britain, its about Great Butter"

2009-02-17T18:56:00.000-08:00

A post-punk head-fuck to confuse any Sex Pistols fan

Full news conference with slain teen tagger's mother

2009-02-12T18:30:00.000-08:00

Friday, 13 February 2009, 2:00pm
Source: TV3

CLICK HERE TO VIEW THE FULL PRESS CONFERENCE

Frantz Fanon

2009-02-11T16:49:00.000-08:00

Frantz Fanon (July 20, 1925 – December 6, 1961) was a psychiatrist, philosopher, revolutionary, and author from Martinique. He was influential in the field of post-colonial studies and was perhaps the pre-eminent thinker of the 20th century on the issue of decolonization and the psychopathology of colonization. His works have inspired anti-colonial liberation movements for more than four decades among them the groundbreaking book 'Wretched of the Earth' which not only inspired philosphy, academia, politics and many colonised societies - but Fanon's work still inflitrates hip hop, art and activism today.

Go to Frantz Fanon's Wikipedia page for more info on his life and complete works, or watch this summarised youtube eulogy

Urgency?

2009-02-11T14:19:00.001-08:00

The Clerk of the House advises that urgency be accorded the introduction and first reading of the Taxation (Business Tax Measures) Bill, the Gangs and Organised Crime Bill, the Criminal Investigations (Bodily Samples) Amendment Bill, and the Sentencing (Offender Levy) Amendment Bill.

Urgency is supposed to be used rarely for urgent issues, National are using it to ram through poorly thought out dog whistle legislation in a pack rape of the select committee process, the likes of which we need to go back to 1998 to get another example of. Ramming through legislation that the other political parties haven't even been able to fully read is an outright abuse of our democracy and misusing urgency is not 'change' one can believe in. Giving cops the power to rob you of your DNA merely on being arrested is despicable enough, but these pricks want the cops to have that power based on nothing more than suspicion, Jesus wept folks, if that isn't enough to scare your shit white, then look at the extra surveillance powers they want where the Police can break into your home, plant spy cameras and record you for a couple of days WITH NO WARRENT.

NZ, you are being tricked into consent of a massive erosion of civil rights by National blindsiding Parliamentary process.

Airplot thickens

2009-02-10T19:43:00.000-08:00

In a canny move, Greenpeace UK – along with Oscar winning actress Emma Thompson, comedian Alistair McGowan and prospective Conservative parliamentary candidate Zac Goldsmith - has purchased a piece of land smack bang in the middle of the proposed third runway site at Heathrow Airport near London.

The UK government plans to go ahead with airport expansions across the country even though this would wipe out its chance of meeting its legally binding climate emission reduction targets. For some perspective on aviation’s contribution to the UK’s emissions, consider this: even if the whole rest of the UK economy shut down and reduced its emissions to zero, if every power station switched off and every car was taken off the road – aviation under the Government’s plan would alone still make the UK well in excess of its CO2 targets and a climate criminal.

Actress Emma Thomson, and British comedian Alistair MacGowan as well as the main UK opposition party (The Conservatives) environment advisor, Zac Goldsmith, have bought the land with Greenpeace. MPs from all parties, as well as a Royal Society scientist and other prominent figures, are also named on a legal deed of trust for the land and are supporting the campaign are asking thousands of people - worldwide - to ‘join the plot’ and sign up to join the legal deed of trust as well.

I have noticed that bureaucracy is a powerful tool for activism albeit too bourgeois and slow-burn for some. Much like the 'Last Auction Hero' post we had and much of the work I'm doing alongside Greenpeace, I am learning legislation is sometimes the only weapon that can swing an issue, hows that for an impotent truth.

Highly charged, intelligent and when one throws it back in the face of the red-tape inventers, pretty effective. When you hit at the heart of the corporate culture by speaking their bullshit language and then legally take it into activst realms I think it makes for one of my favourite sayings (coined by me and my sisters) "pimp the system while bad-mouthing it at all times". A pretty sweet revenge tactic on a system that doesnt work.

I wondered what Emma Thompson had been up to since her Shakespearian overload, period-piece, thee-ya-ter days lol

Extraordinary Nature of Water

2009-02-10T14:00:00.000-08:00

Based on Viktor Schauberger's brilliant work with natural energy and water, translated and written by Callum Coats in the books "Nature as Teacher", "Living Energies" and "The Water Wizard". Viktor (1885 to 1958) made a lifelong study of water, from mountain springs to river flows and highly evolved hydraulics. He earned the name "Water Wizard" by developing a deep understanding of water... the most important life-giving and energy empowered substance on the planet.

Extraordinary Nature of Water - Callum Coats Pt 1 of 6

Click here for all episodes

Daddy State inject hate into prisons and defends stealing your DNA for cops

2009-02-10T09:26:00.000-08:00

No frills for new prisons says National
Justice Minister Simon Power says prisons built by National will not have underfloor heating, plasma TVs or flash gymnasiums and could include inmates being housed in prefabricated cells from 2012. Mr Power said the Corrections Department was investigating "prefabricated modular units", which could be built for about half the $643,000 per-cell prisons built under the last government.

No one has done more to inject hate into the law and order debate than Simon Power. He used the plasma TV issue (bought because they could be mounted flat on a wall to stop prisoners being able to touch them and being flat they could be viewed by more prisoners) and underfloor heating (the cheapest option to heat the prison) to whip up hatred towards prisoners by painting prison out to be some sort of adult Disneyland, once again this prick quips that the gyms in prison could sell annual subscriptions. His suggestion is shitty built cheap pre-fabricated prisons where they can cram as many human beings in as possible effectively warehousing prisoners, why? Because National (supported by ACT who are bloated to significance by the death penalty fantasists in the Sensible Sentencing lynch mob) have passed medieval law and order policy that will dramatically increase the already overcrowded prison population and the corporate private prisons companies they want to bring into run these things only build cheap pre-fabricated ill equipped prisons with zero interest in rehabilitation services.

Watching nACTional inject hate into social policy so that social policy becomes warped meaning we end up with worse prisons which only exacerbate the behaviour of the damaged individuals who become more damaged by the process and have the whole thing sold as a ‘solution’ makes me wonder if NZ will ever grow up. With Unemployment tipped by the Minister of Social Development to be as high as 14%, you can see why National are scrambling to put massive, cheap, private prisons into place – they have a plan for all those angry poor NZers.

Oh and notice how Simon glossed over the major change to allow the Police to take your DNA by force merely for being arrested, scrapping all judicial oversight, I said it yesterday and I will continue to make this stand, I will NOT hand over my DNA to the cops merely for being arrested, this is a gross attack on our civil rights as New Zealanders and one that I point blank refuse to be part of, I am 100% behind taking DNA if you are convicted of a serious crime, but I will act with total civil disobedience to any Police Officer trying to take my DNA merely for being arrested, and I recommend to everyother NZer to take the exact same stand. Ask David Dougherty what it feels like to have the Police use your DNA to stitch you up for a crime you haven’t committed.

Other than spitting directly into the face of the Police Officer, you can take my DNA from my cold dead hands John Key!

Fiji and understanding coup culture

2009-02-09T20:02:00.000-08:00

Watch this interesting insight on Fijian politics and how the New Zealand media patronises this image and perpetuates stereotypes (John Key told the Fijian attorney general that he 'should be on trial' a fact which Fiji hates and NZ ignores). Mainstream journalistic irresponsibility and romanticising our own government agenda is rife, loaded deportations aplenty, not to mention it being left up to blogs to have the true political debate on the subject. Video is in 3 chapters and has a short Waitangi bonus story worth watching, more misdirected media from the crypts.

Death aiiiight!

2009-02-09T16:55:00.000-08:00

Inspired by the 'Bad Brains' post a lil while ago I thought you mentaldetoxers might be into these cats, I know one anonymous commenter was... they're called DEATH...
They're an all black punk group, of 3 brothers from Detroit and if you dig Bad Brains, you'll love these guys (who actually pre-date Bad Brains too!)...
The story goes, back in 1975 they recorded an album, but released only one single from it before breaking up shortly after... it was said that the Hackney brother's recordings were lost, until a whanau member found them in an attic?! - so they're album is now going to see the light of day, and is set to be released off-shore later in February 2009...
Might pay to go down to your local record store now and import a copy in!
Album is called "For the World to See"
here's a link to the the promotional download of they're single that was originally released on 45, called "Politicians In My Eyes"
http://dragcity.com/mp3/DEATH_Politicians.mp3

Drowning In A Sea Of Noise...

2009-02-09T16:44:00.000-08:00

Telling Daddy State to fuck off is in my blood (you can take my DNA from my cold dead hands)

2009-02-09T11:01:00.000-08:00

Law change expected to extend police use of DNA
Police will be given controversial new powers to take DNA from suspected criminals under a raft of law and order changes before Parliament this week.
Under the changes, police will no longer need approval from a High Court judge before someone is forced to provide DNA before they are convicted, with samples immediately matched against samples from unsolved crimes. The Criminal Investigation (Bodily Samples) Amendment Bill will eventually extend police powers to collect DNA to everyone arrested of an imprisonable offence with samples taken at the point charges are about to be laid. Samples will be destroyed in the case of acquittals or charges being dropped, but can be matched in the meantime. The bill comes after it was revealed police had stepped up the collection and use of DNA profiling, with the new hardline approach including samples taken from a man who stole vegetables from his neighbour's garden. It has raised further concerns from civil liberties lawyers who fear the system will be open to abuse.

Let me be very crystal clear I WILL NOT VOLUNTARILY GIVE THE COPS MY DNA IF ARRESTED! How dare National pass law to allow the cops to take your DNA merely for being arrested NO JUDICIAL OVERSIGHT WHAT-SO-FUCKING-EVER! On Sunday night on TVNZ was a drama on how the cops stitched New Zealander David Dougherty up falsely for the rape of an 11 year old girl by purposely ‘mis-reading’ his DNA and claiming it was him. If you are convicted of a crime, I have no issue with the Police taking your DNA, but merely for being arrested and not needing a Judge to sanction the taking of the DNA and seeing how the Police have previously used DNA to stitch innocent people up makes me incandescent with rage that National are simply handing our civil rights over to the cops without one word to the public justifying this gross intrusion of our rights. DO NOT GIVE THE COPS YOUR DNA – refuse to and make the pricks take it by force, resist EVERY attempt.

My personal pledge, I will not voluntarily give you my DNA Mr Officer unless it is spitting directly into your face, you can take my DNA from my cold dead hands (or unless I have been CONVICTED of a crime, I have no problems with DNA AFTER you have been convicted).

Mainstream media allow John Key to have his cake and eat it to.

2009-02-07T22:18:00.001-08:00

Aren’t we lucky to live in a country where the mainstream media actually do their job and hold the Government to account? I wouldn’t know because I live in NZ and our mainstream media do everything EXCEPT hold John Key to account, take Waitangi Day, if you had been watching Breakfast on TVNZ you’d have been left with the impression that this was the first time NZ ever HELD Waitangi Day. In Australia, Rupert Murdoch has been a major force in deforming ‘Australia Day’ into a Nationalist head fuck and our Little Brother media in NZ jumped on the same bandwagon with John Key hailed as some sort of reverse Moses who is un-dividing the red sea of NZ race relations.

What a crock of shit.

Why do so much of our media simply buy the fluff puff pastry of spin and focus on the meaninglessly empty gestures by National and not on the actual fucking policy that National have passed, EVERY SINGLE ONE OF WHICH is negative to Maoridom. We have 40 million sheep in NZ, 4 million can vote, and when they aren’t all baa-ing “C-h-a-n-g-e”, they are buying this fluff puff pastry spin that National are moderate because they have a window dressing relationship with the Maori Party, if the media spent as much time on POLICY as they have on John Key’s fucking broken arm we wouldn’t have this myth carry on.

The architect of National’s new ‘inclusive tent, European NZers only in management positions please’ is National Party svengali, Matt Hooten. In the Hollow Men (page 81), Matt implores Don Brash via email to fake an interest in Maoridom so that it would make Don look less right wing, appeal to conservative Maori and appeal to Urban Liberals. Don didn’t take Matt’s advice and ended up doing his racist “Maaaaaaaori get too much” speech. The blatant pandering to NZers garden variety talkback bigotry won him support but created a disgust from the centre and National lost, allowing Matt to try this strategy again, and hasn’t it paid divvies at the TAB. Somehow (mainly because the mainstream media are fucking idiots) John Key has been allowed to have his cake and eat it too, the empty gestures towards the Maori Party have somehow made him immune from scrutiny of the ACTUAL legislation he has passed, all of which is incredibly negative for Maoridom, let’s have a wee gander shall we….

Process: The first two weeks of nACTional were the worst abuse of process we’ve seen since National were last in power (1998) when they pack raped the select committee process by ramming through absurd legislation under urgency, a power never supposed to allow a 3 hour reading of a bill to go directly into law. For the Maori Party who have a long history since being in Parliament of reading and thoroughly researching all legislation and getting as much community feed back as possible to go along with this pack rape certainly means whatever crumbs they get off the land of the wrong white crowd’s table better be pretty bloody amazing, embarrassingly for the Maori Party they have all been major steps backwards.

Tax cuts for the wealthy: Seeing as the Maori Party were asking for a one off Christmas bonus for beneficiaries before the election and yet in their first week of ‘relationship mana enhancement’ they are voting in tax cuts for the rich as part of nACTional’s April Fools Day Tax cuts one could be forgiven for wincing when nACTional forced the Maori Party to swallow this dead rat. What happened to redistribution of wealth to those who have been marginalized by the process of colonization Hone Harawira?

Truancy fines increased to $3000: Seeing as Maori turn up disproportionately in truancy stats, how the hell does raising the fines from $400 to $3000 help Maoridom?

Medieval Law and Order Policy Maori once again are disproportionately reflected in prison stats, how does locking more and more of them up for longer and longer in an overcrowded, corrupt and racist prison system going to help? Wait, Simon Powers has an idea, let’s import Dick Cheney’s Private Prison Industry to clean up the mess, who do the Maori Party think National are building all these new prisons for? Do they think it will be the kids from John Key’s leafy suburbs who will go to these new prisons?

Dick Cheney’s Private Prison Industry: Fed the masses a hateful message and allowed hate to warp your social policy so much so that when a prisoner with obvious mental issues commits suicide in protective custody the masses cheer and this makes it difficult to justify the mountain of cash needed to fund this medieval law and order policy? No problems, have we got the solution for you, the Prison Industrial Complex, fresh from allegations of abuse in America, we will be importing private corporations to jail NZers in forced prison labour camps where the prisoner gets 60cents a day and the corporation picks up $12 in the hour, and remember if the prisoner doesn’t work, they can’t get parole. How the fuck will importing the Prison Industrial Complex help Maoridom? Is Turiana still clinging to the well funded former remand center that was a showroom prison to con politicians into allowing this abortion of justice to occur? Pity the Maori Party don’t listen to native American Indian activist Ward Churchill and his research on what the Prison Industrial Complex in America has done for indigenous people. A real pity.

Environment: For a party that sees itself as guardians of the natural beauty of NZ, how do they collectively sleep at night watching the ETS scrapped and the RMA gutted so community representation is minimized not to mention the farce of holding a select committee meeting that will challenge the science behind global warming. While NZ burns, mACTional fiddle.

Right to sack: Got a thing about Maaaris? No probs mate, National have set it up so that you can exercise your white god given right to get rid of them without all the politically correct pinko crap in the Employment Court. The Maori Party have weakly defended this as ‘giving a bro a go’ where employers will try on workers, this is nonsense and will create an environment ripe for worker exploitation.

Junk food back into schools: Pray tell how clogging the arteries and increasing the diabetes rates amongst Maori children will help Maoridom? Anne Tolley is the new Jim Bolger of National, proof that even without 5th form School C, you can still end up becoming Minister of Education.

Past the fluffy puff pastry of spin, National have only passed legislation and set policy that will hurt Maoridom, a farce the mainstream media have wholeheartedly sucked up and bought in to. Who is the relationship mana enhancing for, the Maori Party or the Maori people, because based on the policy, NOT THE SPIN, but based on the policy it is pretty evident who is getting dicked.

N.A.S.A. "Money"

2009-02-05T15:09:00.000-08:00

Unemployment goes up

2009-02-04T21:25:00.000-08:00

Unemployment exceeds 100,000
LATEST: Economists seem prepared to dismiss a shock rise in employment to record levels as a statistical anomaly and say the jobs market looks bleak in the near future. Contrary to all expectations, Statistics New Zealand's Household Labour Force Survey for the December quarter showed that the number of Kiwis in work rose 0.9 percent to a new high of 2.19 million. However, a number of the extra jobs were part-time. Closer to expectations, but on the low side, was a rise in the number of unemployed to 105,000 from 94,000. That's the highest number out of work in over six years and brings the unemployment rate up to 4.6 percent from 4.2 percent. The apparent contradiction whereby both employment and unemployment levels rose can be explained partly through population growth due to migration and also by more people entering the workforce. The labour force "participation rate" rose by 0.6 percent to 69.3 percent in the quarter. JP Morgan economist Helen Kevans said she believed the sharp jump in part-time workers was owing to worker hours being cut back, or previously non-working members of the household returning to the workforce in an effort to make financial ends meet.

More minimum wage earners will need to stretch their pay further to cover unemployed members of family which is another reason why we need to increase the minimum wage. We are almost going to double our unemployment rate within 12 months, that has a massive negative social cost and what is National doing other than April fools day tax cuts for the rich, raising truancy fines to $3000 and allowing junk food back into schools. Un-fucking-believable. How's that Daddy State 'change' going?

Miles Davis

2009-02-01T00:52:00.000-08:00

So what

Media as corporate prostitution

2009-01-28T18:10:00.001-08:00

Gordon Campbell proves once again why he is one of the best commentators in NZ, a recent column by him gives an eye opening reality check of mainstream news media…

Gordon Campbell asks whether TVNZ and TV3 should be tutoring the spin merchants
Should shepherds be in the business of selling the secrets of how they guard their flocks? I know, that’s an awkward and not particularly accurate analogy - but it was the one that came to mind when considering a two day conference called MediaBiz-09 due to be held at the Sky City Convention Centre in mid February. Here’s how the ads go :

“The nightly news - a friend or a foe to your organisation? At Media Biz 09 a stunning line-up of professionals will share the secrets of getting your message across positively, in all forms of the media. Media Biz 09 brings you Mark Sainsbury, Mike McRoberts, Kevin Milne, Fran O’Sullivan and the country’s top consumer affairs media law and communications experts.

…if the news media are giving coporates the opportunity (at over $2000 per person for the conference) to show them how to manipulate the willing news media into twisting negative stories about those corporates into positive stories, why should the rest of us trust anything those bastions of media tell us? Shouldn’t we be deeply concerned that the mainstream media are actively touting for influence in the news?

Bad Brains

2009-01-28T18:03:00.000-08:00

Bad Brains_teaser

All About Eve

2009-01-27T03:33:00.001-08:00

Bette Davis, the original

Umi Says - MOS DEF

2009-01-23T22:16:00.001-08:00

Last Auction Hero

2009-01-21T18:29:00.000-08:00

Tim DeChristopher is an economics student at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City. He had just finished his last final exam before winter break. One of the exam questions was: If the oil and gas companies are the only ones who bid on public lands, are the true costs of oil and gas exploitation reflected in the prices paid?

DeChristopher was inspired. He finished the exam, threw on his red parka and went off to the controversial Bureau of Land Management land auction that the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance called “the Bush administration’s last great gift to the oil and gas industry.” Instead of joining the protest outside, he registered as a bidder, then bought 22,000 acres of public land. That is, he successfully bid on the public properties, located near the Arches and Canyonlands National Parks and Dinosaur National Monument, and other pristine areas. The price tag: more than $1.7 million.

“Once I started buying up every parcel, they understood pretty clearly what was going on … they stopped the auction, and some federal agents came in and took me out. I guess there was a lot of chaos, and they didn’t really know how to proceed at that point.”

Patrick Shea, a former BLM director, is representing DeChristopher. Shea told the Deseret News: “What Tim did was in the best tradition of civil disobedience, he did this without causing any physical or material harm. His purpose was to draw attention to the illegitimacy and immorality of the process.”

There is a long tradition of disrupting land development in Utah. In his memoir, “Desert Solitaire,” Edward Abbey, the writer and activist, wrote: “Wilderness. The word itself is music... we scarcely know what we mean by the term, though the sound of it draws all whose nerves and emotions have not yet been irreparably stunned, deadened, numbed by the caterwauling of commerce, the sweating scramble for profit and domination.”

New form of slavery in Lebanon - maid for sale

2009-01-21T12:58:00.000-08:00

Beirut: An Ethiopian housemaid lies bandaged in a government hospital after falling from a 12th floor balcony. She says her Lebanese employer pushed her off. "Madam asked me to hang the clothes. Then she came and pushed me from behind," the 25-year-old woman said. Too frightened to let her name be published, she said her employer had frequently threatened and abused her. "Madam would tell me, 'I will spill hot oil on you', so I hid the oil. She would take a knife and threaten to kill me. She would beat me with shoes, pull my hair to the floor," the injured woman said, her face still bruised a month later.

According to the New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW), nearly every week one of an estimated 200,000 migrant domestic workers in Lebanon dies. Suicide, falling while trying to escape their employer and untreated illness are the main causes of death. The employers are rarely prosecuted.
Live-in housemaids are like fixtures for well-off Lebanese families for years. They often do everything from heavy housework to nannying and helping with children's homework. Many get no days off, work for up to 18 hours and are locked indoors. Employers, who routinely confiscate their passports to deter them from running away, promise to pay maids $150 to $250 a month depending on their nationalities. But many employers don't pay as agreed. Some verbally and physically abuse their workers.
Women from Sri Lanka, the Philippines, and Ethiopia migrate to Lebanon legally, but often find themselves in conditions of forced labor, through unlawful withholding of passports, non-payment of wages, restrictions on movement, threats, and physical or sexual assault. During the armed conflict in July 2006, Sri Lankan domestic workers reported being restricted from leaving the country by their employers.
Sri Lankan women are usually recruited to work overseas by local agents who promise riches in exchange for jobs abroad. Those who respond to the offer are then required to pay a fee to the local agent -- up to $500, an overwhelming sum for most. At the other end of the labor migration chain are various Lebanese agencies constituting an unregulated -- and highly lucrative -- industry. At a cost ranging from $1,500 to $3,000, a Lebanese family can "buy" a Sri Lankan maid whose monthly salary will range from $100 to $150. The agency draws up a contract committing the maid to her employer for two or three years. Since the contract and negotiations are in Arabic, the Sri Lankan woman usually has little understanding of what she has committed herself to. The contract stipulates that the agency's responsibility for the woman expires after three months. The employer and the employee must then resolve any problems. If a dissatisfied employer brings the maid back to the agency, she will likely be beaten to render her "obedient."

Many abused women feel they have no choice but to escape. "Running away' evokes the era of slavery," said lawyer Mirella Abdel Sater. "You leave your job, but you run away only when enslaved." (…) Many employers report runaway maids to the police as thieves in order to track them down. "The employer cannot report that their maid has run away. It is not illegal for her to do so," Abdel Sater explained, "so they tell the police she stole something."
The police have not been helpful to Sri Lankan maids escaping abusive employers. Many police officers have demonstrated blatant racism when it comes to protecting foreign women seeking their assistance. "I had a case in which a Sri Lankan maid was raped by her employer," said Abdel Sater. "I immediately sent her to the police. When she got there, however, she learned that they already had a warrant for her arrest because her employer had accused her of theft.

In the U.S. State Dept Trafficking in Persons Report (June 2008) this issue has been summarized as follows:
“The Government of Lebanon does not fully comply with the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking; however, it is making significant efforts to do so. Nevertheless, Lebanon is placed on Tier 2 for its failure to provide evidence of increasing efforts to combat trafficking over the previous year, particularly in the area of law enforcement against trafficking of domestic workers for forced labor and trafficking for commercial sexual exploitation. Although it reported 17 prosecutions last year, the government failed to convict or criminally punish anyone for trafficking offenses, despite ample evidence of conditions of forced labor. In addition, the government continued to lack victim protection services or a formal system to ensure that victims are not punished.”

Even if rights groups persuade the Lebanese government to improve the legal framework for domestic workers, they face a tougher task in changing attitudes among many Lebanese who refer to their maids openly in conversation as "slaves" or "liars and thieves". "The way a large number of Lebanese deal with them is like a new slavery," said HRW's senior researcher Nadim Houry.

Human right groups now hope for an increased public awareness about this topic that might enhance the pressure on Lebanon’s government and encourage its population to end the abuse of housemaids. For further info please see:

http://de.youtube.com/watch?v=3rY91LCyY4s
(This video summarises the whole issue quite well.)

sources/ further reading:

http://www.alarabiya.net/articles/2008/12/18/62294.html
http://gvnet.com/humantrafficking/Lebanon-2.htm
http://www.labournet.de/internationales/rl/maids.html
http://www.gulfnews.com/Region/Lebanon/10268258.html
http://www.vision.org/visionmedia/article.aspx?id=2298
http://de.youtube.com/watch?v=9zmM0cgMPrA&NR=1

Milk Trailer - a previous election victory

2009-01-21T12:41:00.000-08:00

"Can two men reproduce?"
"No, but god knows we keep trying..."

President Obama sworn in: We are all Americans!

2009-01-20T08:07:00.001-08:00

I predicted that the wildcard campaign of Obama would become President right at the beginning of the democratic nomination process because I believe we are a planet of human beings needing soul, many of us desire peace and justice for all and his articulation of the promise of democracy breeds a hope that does speak to the better angels of our nature. To watch a black man in a nation built by slaves with Hussein as a middle name during the war on terrorism become President is as much a victory to the people of America as it is to his immense talents as an orator and visionary leader. The excitement of the democratic promise fulfilled became globally contagious and for the first time, with the swearing in of Obama as President of the United States of America, we are all Americans!

YES WE CAN!

Martin Luther King Jr may now rest in peace on the mountaintop as his dream has become our reality, what a beautiful moment in history.

The real work starts tomorrow.

The end of Bush – 8 years of incompetent horror and bankrupt intellectualism

2009-01-20T02:26:00.000-08:00

He’s gone, there is a God, a Jesus, a Buddha, an Allah and a Vishnu. This easily manipulated imbecile with the intellectual capacity of a drunk child holding an Ak-47, who was so embarrassingly impressed and in awe of neo-con fantasies has finally left, his reign against reason has ended. His support of torture has ended, his support of an illegal war based on a pack of lies that has killed over a million Iraqi’s is over, his war against global warming science is over, his radical Christian nonsense towards celibacy as State policy has ended, his war against stem cell research is over, his many, many, many, many mistakes in Post-Iraq are over, his unregulated handling of the economy is over, his despicable Guantanamo Bay is over, his you’re with me or against me madness is over, Abu Ghraib is over, his war crime buddies Rumsfeld and Cheney are over, his secret CIA prisons and waterboarding are over, his blank cheque to Israel is over, his milking of Sept 11 is over, his attempts to re-write the powers of President and spying on Americans is over, his theft of the 2000 election has ended, his fear mongering has finished and his infantile attempts at justifying the whole stinking mess of his 8 stinking years has ended.

And not a fucking second too early. May history damn him for his lack of mental capacity and may history damn him for nearly destroying the dream of America to lead by example and for destroying the moral leadership of the West by eroding human rights with the pretense of protecting democracy and freedom. He has left America a much worse place than September 11 ever could and is lucky he’s not being dragged in front of a war crimes tribunal.

Good riddance to such bad rubbish.