Here is what still bothers me about the pandemic: The decisions that closed schools, shuttered businesses, and mandated vaccines were not made by anyone who faces voters. They were made by career bureaucrats, advised by outside interests, funded by private money, and none of it… pic.twitter.com/Tkm2a6sJue

— Rand Paul (@RandPaul) August 25, 2026

In Mitre 10 Mega all the spray paint cans are under lock and key behind grilled doors. A Ministry of Justice sign says buyers have to produce ID to show they are 18+.

But you still see tagging around the towns. Do they simply use normal paint cans with brushes? Or do they get friends over 18 to buy the spray cans? There is an analogy here with the proposed under-16 social media ban.

I wrote a long piece on my Substack about the Government’s new social media Bill.  
Jillaine read it and asked whether I would share a shorter version analysing National’s proposed legislation with the Free Speech Union’s supporters.  

I was glad to.  

This has been on the table for months – with many variations discussed in the media. 

I hope this helps clarify what’s actually been put forward.  
The Free Speech Union’s official position is set out in yesterday’s media release, forwarded below. The Union is opposed to the under-16 social media ban, especially the risks to adult freedoms and the lack of clear non-intrusive solutions.  

Who are YOU? 
That is the question this Bill will put to you every time you open an account, for the rest of your life. 
Not to your children. To you. 

What the Bill actually does 
The Online Safety (Minimum Age and Child Safety Risk Assessment) Bill was introduced on 24 August. The news media have trumpeted it as a “ban”. It is nothing of the sort. 

It is a set of managed restrictions on account-holding, not a prohibition on children seeing content — publicly available material remains reachable. 

Clause 11 requires operators to take reasonable steps to stop under-16s holding an account. Clause 14 requires an annual written child safety risk assessment. 

Behind these sits a formidable enforcement apparatus — penalties of up to the greater of NZ$40 million or 10% of global turnover, and, as a last resort, orders that would conscript internet providers and app stores into blocking a platform from New Zealand altogether. 

The Bill has not yet had its First Reading. It may yet fall at that fence. 

Everybody gets checked 
The Bill’s appeal rests on the claim that it targets under-16s. Its mechanism does not. 
To keep one 15-year-old from holding an account, a platform must satisfy itself about the age of every account-holder — which means age-assuring the entire adult population as well. As the Privacy Commissioner Michael Webster put it, keeping under-16s out means everyone over 16 has to prove they are over 16. 

That is not a drafting quibble. It is the whole problem, and the Bill never resolves it.

Restricting access to a primary medium of modern communication is a prima facie limit on expression — yet the policy engages neither the section 14 right to freedom of expression in the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act 1990, which includes the right to receive information, nor the section 5 requirement that any limit be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society. 

What being checked looks like 
Clause 11 forbids the cheap check — a manual date of birth entry will not do. So platforms are pushed toward document verification, facial age-estimation, or inference from your device and behaviour. Each fails in its own way, and none of them is confined to children. 

Document verification turns every covered service into a honeypot of passports and driver licences. In 2025 Discord exposed roughly 70,000 users’ government IDs through a compromised vendor, and the Tea app leaked tens of thousands of verification selfies and IDs. A leaked password can be reset. A leaked passport cannot. 

Facial estimation is spoofable — Australian teenagers reportedly defeated the cameras with a drawn-on moustache — and genuinely inaccurate in the 13 to 17 band that actually matters. 
Inference is behavioural profiling, a surveillance technique the Bill elsewhere lists as a risk and here repurposes as a safety tool. 

Whichever route is chosen, the endpoint is the same: a durable, centralised link between a real human identity and online activity, checked continuously, for everyone, on every covered service. Destroying the data after each check does nothing about that. 

And does it even work? 
Australia switched its under-16 ban on in December 2025. Its own three-month evaluation found 81.5% of under-16s still using an age-restricted platform — down barely four points from 85.9%. The Government’s response was to double the maximum fine. 

In Britain, VPN sign-ups surged more than 1,400% within minutes of the equivalent duties taking effect, returning users to exactly the unverified internet the law tried to wall off. 
A law its targets can defeat with a felt-tip pen is not regulation. 

It is theatre — and that evidence was available before New Zealand chose to proceed. The wrong regulator This is my sharpest objection, and the Government has presented it as an unremarkable administrative detail. 

The regulator is to be the Secretary of Internal Affairs — the chief executive of the Department of Internal Affairs (DIA), which is anything but a neutral, single-purpose body. 

It already runs the Digital Child Exploitation Filtering System, which blocks websites at internet-provider level. It houses the Censorship Compliance Unit and its warranted inspectors. And it holds the country’s core identity infrastructure — passports, citizenship records, and the Digital Identity Services Trust Framework. This Bill would layer onto that same department a new power over age verification and access to social media. Identity verification, content classification, internet filtering and investigative enforcement, concentrated in a single agency.

The department’s defence, when it came, was operational: it is competent, law-abiding and well supervised. But that answers the wrong question. 
The question is not whether the DIA can be trusted today. 

It is whether any single agency should hold this capability at all — because infrastructure outlasts intentions. 

Once built, it survives its builders and becomes available to administrators whose priorities we cannot know. The one check worth having is an independent distribution of power, and that is precisely what a department vouching for itself cannot supply. 

If Parliament insists 
The harms are real and well evidenced. The engineering of compulsion is deliberate, and the algorithmic funnelling toward self-harm content is documented. Public and parental demand is genuine, and the risk-assessment limb is a real accountability mechanism worth keeping. 
But if Parliament acts, it should house these functions in an independent, single-purpose regulator and drop or radically narrow the age-verification mandate. 

Enforcement and identity governance should not sit in the same department that already runs censorship, filtering and the national identity database. 

The better course is festina lente — hasten slowly. The verification server does not expire.​The VPN that defeats it takes about ninety seconds to install. 

Best wishes, 

David Harvey,Former District Court Judge 

PS. If you want to read the Free Speech Union’s official response to the proposed ban, I’ve forwarded their media release from yesterday, see below. 

MEDIA RELEASE Failed in Australia. Now National wants a censor to enforce it. Failed in Australia. Now National wants a censor to enforce it. The Government today introduced legislation barring under-16s from social media. Neither coalition partner will vote for it. The Greens are opposed. Labour has not committed. National cannot pass this without borrowing Labour’s votes. “When nobody else in the House will put their name to your child protection law, the problem is not that everyone else is soft on child safety. The problem is the legislation,” said Jillaine Heather, Executive Director of the Free Speech Union. Three months into Australia’s ban, its own regulator found 81.5 percent of under-16s were still using an age-restricted platform, down from 85.9 percent. More than half said the platform never checked their age. Complaints about cyberbullying and image-based abuse did not fall. “The Government’s own factsheet quotes Australian data, but it only quotes the parts that suit it,” Heather said. “When this fails here, and it will, the answer will not be repeal. It will be tighter checks, a wider definition of what counts as a platform, and the VPN restrictions ministers keep insisting are off the table.” The Bill puts an online safety regulator inside the Department of Internal Affairs and says it will monitor platforms independently. It will not. “You cannot put a regulator inside a government department and then claim it is independent. Departments answer to ministers. That is what a department is,” Heather said. “One department will decide which platforms are covered, investigate them, compel information under threat of prosecution, and fine them a share of their global revenue. That is not child protection. It is the machinery of state control over speech, built inside the department that already runs the country’s content filtering,” Heather said. Budget 2026 gave Internal Affairs $30.7 million over four years before any law existed. In April the department advertised for a Programme Implementation Director. Internal emails obtained by the Free Speech Union describe the work as implementing restrictions, not scoping options. “We do not have to guess how this department behaves once it holds power. It has spent a year building this regime without Parliament’s approval,” Heather said. “A department that would not wait for a democratic Parliamentary process will not restrain itself once Parliament has said yes.” Protecting children is a good aim, but you do not achieve it by building a censor with power over what every adult New Zealander says online, especially one without appropriate checks and balances. The Free Speech Union is reviewing the Bill and will submit.

There’s more to Russia’s drinking culture than vodka. The brewery has some nice architecture.

by Andrew Korybko

Conservative President Karol Nawrocki is Poland’s Commander-in-Chief, but if the ruling liberal coalition’s Defense Minister places some Polish troops under EU control through the “European Legion”, then it’s unclear whether he could prevent them from being deployed to Ukraine.

Polish Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski recently proposed the creation of a “European Legion” in an interview with Greek media. In his words, “I strongly advocate for a ‘European Legion’, a dedicated, standing force that could recruit seasoned professionals from the broader European family, including battle-hardened Ukrainian veterans after the war. The bottom line is that Europe must take ownership of its own security.”

He then added that “We cannot call Washington every time there is a fire in our backyard – whether that is a conventional threat or Moscow weaponizing migration flows from Africa and the Middle East against the EU. However, let’s be absolutely clear: This is not about building a parallel alternative to NATO or duplicating structures. What we need is a stronger European pillar within a stronger NATO. Our interests are complementary, not contradictory.”

Some observers were surprised by this since Sikorski rejected Zelensky’s proposed “Army of Europe” a year and a half ago. As Poland’s top diplomat said at the time, “I think we should be careful with this term because different people understand different things. If you understand by it the unification of national armies, it will not happen.” Therein lies the principal difference since the “Army of Europe” is about uniting national armies, which is a pipe dream, while the “European Legion” is a voluntary force.

To elaborate more on the latter, it appears that what Sikorski has in mind is a rapid reaction force comprised of troops from EU countries and Ukraine, which would presumably be under the leadership of some EU body. The purpose would be to respond to crises as they erupt, thus serving as tripwires for the involvement of either NATO as a whole or “coalitions of the willing” within the EU due to the presence of their troops in whatever conflict zone it might be.

Sikorski’s proposal comes two months after Britain, France, and Germany – collectively referred to as the E3 and the leaders of the reportedly uncertain “coalition of the willing” – confirmed that they plan to deploy troops to Ukraine after a ceasefire. Conservative President Karol Nawrocki, who’s the bête noire of the ruling liberal coalition that Sikorski represents, pledged in writing in May 2025 ahead of the second round of the presidential election that he won’t allow Polish troops to be sent to Ukraine.

He’s the Commander-in-Chief, but if the liberal Defense Minister places some Polish troops under EU control through the “European Legion”, then it’s unclear whether Nawrocki could prevent them from being deployed to Ukraine as part of the “coalition of the willing’s” plans. Polish society has soured on Ukraine in recent months since Zelensky glorified the Volhynia Genocide’s OUN-UPA culprits, so any such move by the ruling liberals could ruin their re-election bid ahead of fall 2027’s next Sejm elections.

Nevertheless, “The Recent Polish-German Defense Pact Indisputably Prioritizes Berlin’s Interests Over Warsaw’s”, and Prime Minister Donald Tusk is so close to Germany that the conservative opposition’s grey cardinal once accused him of being a “German agent”. It therefore can’t be ruled out that he’d risk sacrificing his hold on power next year if Germany demanded that Poland deploy troops to Ukraine through the “European Legion”, but whether Russia would tolerate such a mission is another question.

“Evidence of illness is not required” to trigger international pandemic reporting, WHO declares

by Jon Fleetwood (Substack and following at Instagram / X / Facebook)

The World Health Organization (WHO) says evidence that a person is actually sick is not required for a “laboratory-confirmed” human influenza infection with “the potential to cause a pandemic” to trigger mandatory international reporting.

“Evidence of illness is not required for this report,” WHO states in its latest Influenza at the Human-Animal Interface assessment, which covered July 8 through August 7, 2026.

WHO says countries must “immediately notify WHO of any laboratory-confirmed case of a recent human infection caused by an influenza A virus with the potential to cause a pandemic.”

Then, immediately afterward:

“Evidence of illness is not required for this report.”

The statement raises an obvious question: If evidence of illness is not required to set off a chain of events that could trigger authoritarian international pandemic response, what evidence is required?

WHO points to a “laboratory-confirmed” finding.

But WHO’s own influenza laboratory manual shows that such determinations are made using real-time RT-PCR tests.

But PCR does not directly observe a virus.

It measures fluorescence (the amount of light emitted) from test chemicals mixed with a sample.

WHO describes PCR methods using fluorescent dyes and probes carrying a fluorescent reporter and quencher.

But fluorescence can also increase through unintended pathways, potentially contributing to a false-positive reading.

Those pathways include reagent cross-reactions, probe cleavage or degradation, reporter or quencher detachment or degradation, optical cross-talk, and changes in reporter–quencher behavior caused by heat—which PCR intentionally applies to the sample over and over during testing.

WHO’s manual confirms that PCR repeatedly heats the test material, including to 95°C, and that real-time PCR results are evaluated by whether fluorescence rises above a threshold.

It also explicitly acknowledges background signal, contamination, and false-positive results.

The implications are difficult to ignore.

This is one of four ‘first name’ streets on the north side of Sylvan Avenue — the others being Lesley, Graham and David. The belief is they were named after the developers’ kids or pets.

One of the big reasons the Globalist Cabal doesn’t like Russia

from The Professionalist

The first domino has fallen. Vladimir Putin has unleashed a storm no globalist can contain. Russia has officially purged the Rothschild banking cartel from its territory. This is more than financial news: it’s the first major blow to the heart of the New World Order.

“Our future generations will be born free from the chains of the Rothschilds around their wrists and ankles,” Putin thundered before the Russian Parliament. That statement shattered decades of silent global slavery.

For over two centuries, the Rothschilds ruled through economic conquest: central banks, manufactured crises, and IMF slavery. Their strategy: collapse economies, offer bailouts, and demand total control. Putin saw it—and destroyed it. He expelled their oligarch puppets, confiscated assets, and dismantled their influence from within. The untouchables have just been hit—and hard.

The biggest blow? DE-DOLLARISATION. Putin launched a full offensive against the Rothschilds’ favorite weapon: the US dollar. By replacing dollar-based trade with gold, rubles, and BRICS-backed currencies, he neutralized the IMF’s noose and broke the globalist monopoly.

“They said we would collapse. But we are stronger, freer, and no longer kneel before bankers,” Putin declared.

This is not just about Russia. It’s a global signal. A warning shot. A revolution underway. From Latin America to Africa, the world is watching and preparing to rise.

Putin’s message to the elites: YOU DO NOT OWN THE WORLD.

The Rothschilds built their empire on lies, theft, and manufactured dependence. Putin exposed and crushed their machinery. No more secret deals. No more Rothschild-controlled assets bleeding nations dry.

This is a war: economic, spiritual, existential.

Russia is free. The Rothschilds are staggering. And the peoples of Earth have just received a map to liberation.

from RCR Bites

RCR’s investigation into the teen Covid so-called ‘vaccine’ rollout is spreading, after revealing 311,257 teenagers received dose two after officials had been advised of the increased myocarditis risk. Independent media outlets are now picking up the story and putting the questions in front of their audiences.

Meanwhile, the silence from New Zealand’s mainstream media is deafening. RCR sent out a press release detailing our investigation to every media outlet in the country, yet not one has reported on the story or publicly examined the evidence.

This investigation isn’t based on rumours or anonymous claims. It is built on official Government documents, OIA releases, internal emails and Health NZ vaccination data.

As RCR reported last week, former Associate Health Minister Ayesha Verrall dismissed the investigation as “fake news,” but did not explain which part of the evidence she disputes.

RCR also offered the right of reply to the Vaccine Ministers, Dr Ian Town and Dr Ashley Bloomfield. We received no response from Chris Hipkins, Jacinda Ardern, Grant Robertson or Ayesha Verrall. Andrew Little, now Wellington Mayor, replied to say that this had been interrogated in the Phase 2 Covid Commission. So did Dr Ian Town.  Ashley Bloomfield responded but said he had no comment to make.

311,257 teenagers received dose two after officials and Vaccine Ministers had been advised of the increased myocarditis risk. Those numbers come from Health NZ. The advice is documented. And a former minister has dismissed the investigation as “fake news”. Where is the mainstream media scrutiny?

Thank you to everyone who has picked up the story, shared it and helped get the evidence in front of more New Zealanders.

The documents are public. The numbers are official. The silence is getting harder to explain.

As well as the many posts here on WW, read more at The Good Oil, The Noticer, Daily Telegraph NZ, Meryl Nass on Substack, Off Guardian, TrialSite News and Hatchard Report, all sites dedicated to taking apart the propaganda of the Leftist Mainstream Media.

For RCR news like this direct and free to your Inbox every day, go to biteme.news