This was one of those on the Waikanae Lions Garden Trail.

by Geoffrey Churchman

About 60 people attended this on Sunday afternoon. Although the only Councilor who did was Liz Koh, at least 4 community board members did, including Phil Byrne of Waikanae.

The slides shown on the screen are below. Chris Harwood and Kathryn Ennis of the committee began promptly at 3 pm and spoke to different slides, explaining in futher detail.

Probably the point that drew the biggest gasp from the audience was that KCDC bosses don’t intend to consult on this year’s Annual Plan, which even under CEOs Dougherty and Maxwell always happened in the past.

That came across to the audience as arrogant, showing a total disconnect between the bosses and the people who pay their salaries. As has been commented many times, the senior bureaucrats treat Ratepayers as an ATM and otherwise as a nuisance. Transperancy and accountability? To be kept to an absolute minimum.

The biggest point is that these rapacious types on huge salaries need to change their way of thinking — that the people who they treat as peasants are no longer going to tolerate lavish payments to inefficient, unnecessary staff, generous Wokeist handouts to people based on that ideology, doing things that is beyond their remit, and ego-tripping at poor people’s expense.

Write to the Councilors, the Mayor and the Top Boss (Mr Edwards) to tell them so.

After questions and discussion from the floor, the meeting wound up promptly at 4 pm.

By Jeremy Roebuck and Molly Hennessy-Fiske, Washington Post

The gunman, who was killed by officers at the scene, has been identified as Ndiaga Diagne, a 53-year-old naturalized U.S. citizen who came to the country from Senegal in 2006, according to people familiar with the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a continuing investigation. He had been living in Pflugerville, Texas, a city outside Austin.

At the time of the shooting, Diagne was wearing a shirt with an Iranian flag that read “Property of Allah,” and investigators later found a Quran in the car he drove to the shooting scene, one of the people familiar said.

The FBI has activated its Joint Terrorism Task Force to assist with the investigation. The agency did not immediately respond to requests for comment Sunday.

Security concerns have emerged throughout the country since the U.S. and Israel launched coordinated strikes against Iran on Saturday, and several local law enforcement agencies have reported that authorities are on heightened alert over possible retaliation.

Authorities do not believe Diagne was working directly in coordination with any groups connected or sympathetic to the Iranian regime, the people familiar with the investigation of the Austin shooting said. They cautioned, however, that the probe remains in an early stage and information could change.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said President Donald Trump had been briefed on the shooting.

Austin police have said the shooter several times drove past Buford’s, a popular nightspot in Austin’s Sixth Street entertainment district, before stopping and firing a pistol out the window of his SUV.

The gunman hit several people on the patio, Austin Police Chief Lisa Davis said at a news conference Sunday morning. He then parked the vehicle, emerged with a rifle and opened fire at people fleeing the area before officers who rushed to the intersection fatally shot him, Davis said.

At 1 degree C. Not that Waikanae was much better yesterday, a bit of premature ‘global boiling’ at only 10C. (pic by The Scottish Guy in Moscow)

Don’t drink and drive under the influence.

by Andrew Korybko

The goal is to obtain proxy control over Iran’s enormous oil and gas reserves so that they can be weaponized as leverage against China for coercing it into a lopsided trade deal that would derail its superpower rise and therefore restore US-led unipolarity.

Trump claimed that the US’ military campaign against Iran is to “defend the American people”, while many critics have alleged (whether in jest or not) that it’s to distract from the Epstein Files, but few observers realize that it’s actually all about China. It was explained here that Trump 2.0 “decided to gradually deprive China of access to markets and resources, ideally through a series of trade deals, in order to imbue the US with the indirect leverage required to peacefully derail China’s superpower rise.”

To elaborate, “The US’ trade deals with the EU and India could ultimately result in them curtailing China’s access to their markets under pain of punitive tariffs if they refuse. In parallel, the US’ special operation in Venezuela, pressure on Iran, and simultaneous attempts to subordinate Nigeria and other leading energy producers could curtail China’s access to the resources required for fueling its superpower rise.” The resource dimension that’s relevant to Iran is a major part of the US’ “Strategy of Denial”.

That’s the brainchild of Under Secretary of War for Policy Elbridge Colby, and it was expanded on in this analysis here from early January. As was written, “US influence over Venezuela’s and possibly soon Iran’s and Nigeria’s energy exports and trade ties with China could be weaponized via threats of curtailment or cut-offs in parallel with pressure upon its Gulf allies to do the same in pursuit of this goal”, which is to coerce China into indefinite junior partnership status vis-à-vis the US through a lopsided trade deal.

Most observers missed it, but the new National Security Strategy calls for ultimately “rebalance[ing] China’s economy toward household consumption”. This is a euphemism for radically re-engineering the global economy through the previously described means, namely curtailing China’s access to the markets and resources responsible for its superpower rise, so that it no longer remains “the world’s factory” and thus ends its era of being the US’ only systemic rival. US-led unipolarity would then be restored.

Circling back to Iran, “[it] represented about 13.4% of the total 10.27 MMbpd of oil [that China] imported by sea” last year per Kpler, hence why the US wants to control, curtail, or outright cut off this flow. ‘Plan A’ was to achieve this through diplomatic means for replicating the Venezuelan model that entered into effect after Maduro’s capture. Iran flirted with this but didn’t commit since it would entail the country’s strategic surrender, ergo why Trump authorized military action for achieving this instead.

In pursuit of this, Trump promised the IRGC in his video announcing his country’s military campaign against Iran that they’d have immunity if they laid down their arms. This reinforces the abovementioned claim that the US wants to replicate the Venezuelan model since it strongly suggests that he envisages newly US-aligned IRGC running Iran in the political interim before new elections just like the newly US-aligned Venezuelan security services run their own country during their own current political interim.

Such a scenario would avert Iran’s possible “Balkanization”, thus preserving the state so that it can then resume its prior role as one of the US’ top regional allies, which might then aid the Azeri-Turkish Axis’ efforts to project Western influence along Russia’s entire southern periphery. In that event, the US would simultaneously obtain unparalleled resource leverage over China via proxy control of Iran’s oil and gas industries while tightening its encirclement of Russia, which would deal a powerful blow to multipolarity.

Anyone sensible would; Iran is ruled by a horrible Islamist theocracy but it’s no North Korea or Uzbekistan or, for that matter, Saudi Arabia. There won’t be regime change with this attack and it’s going to cause, like Covidiocy, major economic damage in the world.

Story

If you’re a white, straight male you’re not wanted.

The University of Toronto is hiring a biology professor. Selection will be limited to candidates who identify as women, trans, nonbinary, Two-Spirit, and gender fluid, racialized persons/visible minorities, Indigenous Peoples, persons with disabilities. The salary range is… pic.twitter.com/bMCjm8hDcE

— Brian Atlas (@BrianAtlas) February 28, 2026

People are becoming fed up with the problems Islamists are causing there? The Bondi massacre was likely a trigger.

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