A ‘dirty bomb’ means a (large) conventional one but packed with radioactive material.

Would Russia just make up a story like this? From Scott Ritter at consortiumnews.com: Russia appears to be legitimately concerned about the possibility of Ukraine building and using a “dirty bomb,” so much so that it has taken the unprecedented step of reaching out to multiple senior Western defense authorities. In the span of a […]

SCOTT RITTER: Russia’s ‘Dirty Bomb’ Scare — STRAIGHT LINE LOGIC

The name had been used before, by the Napier newspaper before it merged with the Hastings newspaper in 1999 to become Hawkes Bay Today. The DTNZ has become an important part of a small but significant community of unfunded current affairs websites that challenge the narrative relentlessly pursued by the government-paid Mainstream on behalf of the establishment. The editorial marking the occasion is below and the sentiments expressed are almost identical to ones of our editors. In our case, we’ve also had the primary role for over 7 years of being a community news and lifestyle e-zine for our town and district, but if that was all we did, we wouldn’t have much to write about as Waikanae isn’t a place where much happens (and that’s the way most residents like it).

Well, actually, our first article was published just over a year ago, on the 10th of October 2021. The milestone slipped by unnoticed, largely because there’s more important things, as a society, to concern ourselves with right now – which is an extended way of saying ‘we were too busy.’

Our first article was about the Kiwis rugby league team’s wider training squad for the Rugby League World Cup taking place right now in England.

In the year since that first article was published, just over 3.7 million readers have graced our pages, racking up nearly 19.5 million page views.

We are sincerely grateful to each and every one of our readers. We cannot thank you enough. We are also eternally grateful to all the writers who have contributed stories to DTNZ, and to those who have made donations and sent us messages of encouragement.

The readership numbers are most noteworthy for the fact they have been achieved in spite of an unrelenting campaign by Big Tech to censor DTNZ. The lengths Twitter, Facebook and Google are going to in order to silence us are astounding. We have suspicions also that Telegram is similarly compromised. We’ve had people from Europe contact us to describe how Google is flagging DTNZ in search results in France, the UK and the Netherlands. We know Twitter and Facebook are shadow-banning our links on an industrial scale, while Twitter and YouTube are manipulating our follower numbers – we can see all this happening in real time and by tests we, and third parties, have conducted.

We’re not bothered. Like water, the truth always finds a way.

DTNZ is proud to have been part of a new movement of independent news outlets and freedom individuals and organisations which told New Zealanders the truth about the Pfizer mRNA jabs and the government’s real intentions from the beginning. We continue to be inspired by these courageous individuals and organisations, and all Kiwis who are pushing back against state and media corruption in their own way.

I remember clearly the trepidation I felt hitting the ‘Publish’ button to send that first article out onto the internet, knowing full well that I was starting something that was likely to make me a target – an Enemy of the State; an enemy of the legacy media.

If I were honest, I would say starting Daily Telegraph NZ was the last thing I wanted to do, if these were ordinary times. I already had my hands full with work and family commitments.

But these are not ordinary times.

Many New Zealanders know that something sinister is happening in our country – a cancerous force, of which Ardern is just the visible head of the snake, but behind her, an array of evil-doers lurk, inside and outside of the Labour Party and Parliament, both foreign-based and local, comprised of powerful interests who seek to swindle our cherished way of life from the grip of our hands, to satisfy their insatiable greed and maniacal desire for total control over our lives.

I am motivated by my son – his future, and indeed, the future of all the sons and daughters and tamariki of New Zealand.

My son is nearly three. I look at him and know that as a father the best gift I can leave him is that he, his children and grandchilren, will live to old age free and independent, as all New Zealanders are born to be – to the have the same rights and freedoms his grandfather and I had, and for which his great-grandfather fought for in the WWII deserts of North Africa. I want him to live in a world ruled by truth, justice and righteousness – not one fashioned by lies, corruption and evil.

This wish may seem ‘over-the-top’ – after all, things appear relatively ok now, don’t they? The vax mandates and passports are gone. The face masks have been consigned to the dust bin. The tracer apps have been deleted from our smartphones. Baker, Bloomfield, Wiles, Hendry and Rod Jackson have vanished from our TV screens (hallelujah!). Everything seems to be getting back to ‘normal’.

But cast your mind back just a year ago, about the time the first DTNZ article I mentioned above was published. Ardern had just brought in the mandates, after telling us she wouldn’t. She then recruited the majority of Kiwis, and the legacy media, as foot soldiers for her diabolical aspirations, by turning the vaxxed against the unvaxxed. She blamed the unvaxxed for causing the pandemic, and by extension, the shutdown of the economy, the COVID deaths and hospitalisations, the restriction of freedoms, the closing of bars and restaurants, the cancelling of concerts, funerals and surgeries. She falsely characterised the pandemic as ‘one of the unvaccinated’. All of these accusations had no basis in science or common sense.

This was no innocent error by the Prime Minister and her advisors. The science was already available then to show she was lying. The evidence would soon accumulate to show the Pfizer mRNA jab was causing unprecedented harm and didn’t work. Even today, there is still no long-term safety data, and there are some worrying indications the spike protein will cause untold havoc inside the bodies of the vaccinated in the weeks, months and years to come.

Ardern’s campaign of hate towards the unvaxxed could not have worked without the assistance of the legacy media – Newshub, 1News, NZHerald, Stuff, RNZ – not one of these corrupt media organisations defended the unvaccinated against the unscientific, ludicrous madness. They will deny it, but the parallels with their actions and those of Hitler’s press in conditioning the consent of the German population to accept anti-semitism prior to WWII are clear. Hilary Barry, Mark Richardson, Jenna Lynch – these names spring to mind first, but there were many other mainstream media journalists whose names will in time be linked to New Zealand’s darkest days – for many they already are.

They targeted an innocent and harmless minority. They labeled them with slurs. They sought to destroy the reputations of those who spoke out. They portrayed them as subhuman, and outsiders.

So, today, while DTNZ quietly celebrate’s its one year milestone, and being conscious that times have changed a lot since we started, our message is that all New Zealanders must nevertheless remain vigilant and aware that the forces of evil who wrought havoc on our country these past two or so years do not rest.

We must be prepared for new crises ahead. They will, again, be engineered, propagandised and thrust upon us when we least expect it.

Farmers – make no mistake, you are next on the chopping block. What are you going to do about it? Sit there and take it?

We must never forget what’s happened thus far, and we must never forgive it.

Original article

A good critique of the arguments presented by the pro-Biden/Zelensky virtue signalers has been made by Lushington D, Brady on the BFD website:

“Either sovereignty matters, or it doesn’t. As Caitlin Johnstone rightly says, International law is a meaningless concept when it only applies to people the US power alliance doesn’t like. This is not, as is so often claimed, a ‘whataboutism’: it’s a direct challenge to the arguments made against Putin.

“If George W. Bush, Tony Blair or Barack Obama can violate another country’s sovereignty, then Putin can claim justification for doing it, too.”

Full article

It’s unclear why Ardern wants to skip Parliament to visit Antarctica, but it does bring to mind last year’s research regarding Maori voyages and the little noticed response from Ngāi Tahu.

For reasons known only to her closest advisors, the Prime Minister seems intent on missing this week’s sitting of Parliament in order to travel to Antarctica — a place described as “the coldest, windiest, remotest place on Earth” by Antarctica NZ general communications manager Megan Nicholl. According to Grant Robertson, the man who deputizes for Ardern during her absences abroad, “it’s the kind of visit the New Zealand Prime Minister should make”.

For the rest of us, we are left to scratch our heads and speculate. The stated reason of marking the 65th anniversary of Scott Base seems, on the face of it, a tenuous excuse to make a very climate unfriendly return flight on a C130 Hercules particularly at a time when there are so many pressing issues on the domestic political agenda.

Commentary yesterday, including from Bryce Edwards, offered alternative interpretations of events, including pointing to the increasing number of rumours circulating in Wellington that Ardern will step down before the next election, and possibly before Christmas. Does the Prime Minister foresee defeat at the next election, and is she about to emulate an exhausted and dying Captain Oates when he left his tent for a final time and remarked to Scott, “I am just going outside and may be some time.”?

We simply do not know. Among the briefest of statements on the trip Ardern did say: “Antarctica is part of New Zealand’s heritage and future and we’re committed to its protection as a natural reserve for peace, science and co-operation”.

New Zealand does indeed have strong connections with Antarctica and it was those historic connections that made global news last year.

Last June, RNZ reported “Māori among first to see Antarctica, research suggests” and the Herald reported “Polynesians first to discover Antarctica, not news to Māori”. This was quickly picked up by the international press including the Guardian, CNN, NBC and the Smithsonian. The NY Times carried an article titled, “The Maori Vision of Antarctica’s Future” which proposed that “Maori may have been first to reach Antarctica, in the seventh century. But the past matters less than what lies ahead, Indigenous scholars say”.

This avalanche of press was set off by research led by Manaaki Whenua Landcare Research and Te Rūnanga o Ngāi Tahu which focused on Māori connections with the frozen continent. University of Otago associate professor and conservation biologist Priscilla Wehi, the project lead, said Māori links with Antarctica went back to the seventh century.

The researchers studied oral history – which Wehi said had often been overlooked – as well as more recent written literature to uncover Māori ties to the ice. This oral history included Polynesian narratives originating from Rarotonga of the voyages of Hui Te Rangiora and his crew on the vessel Te Ivi o Atea.

In reaching their conclusions, the researchers placed reliance on their belief that the name Te tai-uka-a-pia denoted the frozen ocean, with pia meaning arrowroot, which they suggested looked like snow when scraped. Amongst other things, the research paper and accompanying press omitted to explain exactly what the Maori connection to this voyaging was given that it related to early seventh century Polynesian history and therefore predated the arrival of Maori to New Zealand.

Even allowing for modern techniques, this voyage seemed at odds with what I had studied in my Maori Studies degree many years ago when we traced and dated Lapita pottery as a means of tracking the migratory voyages of Polynesians eastwards.

If the theory behind the research seemed questionable, the goals of the researchers were more obvious. The NY Times noted that after the first study had been published in the Journal of the Royal Society of New Zealand, a second study was published in Nature Ecology and Evolution, which looked ahead, proposing an Indigenous framework to manage and conserve the southernmost continent.

The NY Times remarked: “the authors hope to apply to Antarctica the Maori principle of kaitiakitanga, the concept of guardianship and stewardship of the environment. Their suggestions include getting more Indigenous voices in Antarctic governance and granting Antarctica legal personhood”.

What happened next is quite remarkable but has gone almost entirely without comment in the New Zealand media.

Nā Dr Michael Stevens, Emeritus Professor Atholl Anderson and Professor Te Maire Tau on behalf of Te Rūnanga o Ngāi Tahu issued a blistering response to the research titled “ ‘Our ultimate duty’ Defending the integrity of Maori tradition”. Their article deserves to be read in full in order to grasp its full impact – but it excoriates the Antarctica research paper.

It rails against “‘the surge of mysticism’ that fills too many of our books, libraries and museums, and a great many heads of the great unwashed.” And in answer to the question “what is to be done?” resolves:

First, apply scholarly standards to Māori tradition and history which ‘is, at root, the only weapon we have with which to defend the integrity of the Māori memory.’ Second, while it is a ‘difficult task … to prevent rubbish from being published,’ when it occurs ‘it behoves the academic community and the tribes to denounce it very clearly as such, and if possible, to prevent its ongoing dissemination.’

The Ngāi Tahu scholars then took direct aim at Wehi and her co-authors:

Written by a senior academic at the University of Otago, Priscilla Wehi, and six co-authors, this article advanced several spurious claims. Chief amongst them was that Polynesian explorers, beginning with a navigator named Hui te Rangiora, journeyed from Rarotonga into Antarctic waters ‘and perhaps even the continent likely in the early seventh century.’ The authors’ evidence? Their own inferences drawn from 1890s English translations by Percy Smith of Rarotongan narratives recorded in the 1860s. As we noted, with characteristic restraint, the authors presented this “traditional” material without nuance, qualification or critique, and based extraordinary claims upon it without commensurable evidence. For example, how the extreme practical difficulties of sailing a Polynesian waka to and through subpolar westerlies might have been overcome.

The authors concluded in sensible fashion: “In summary, we think the Hui te Rangiora narrative is more mythic or legendary as an origin story, than historical as a voyaging narrative”.

Sadly, this was not the end of the matter. Why has the public not heard of the Ngāi Tahu rebuttal? Why are the original domestic and international news articles still online without correction or at least some modification?

As Ngāi Tahu point out – at the time that the original research paper was published the media coverage was, unfortunately, uncritical and celebratory. They note “news outlets throughout New Zealand and around the world lauded the prowess of pre-modern Polynesian voyaging and the capacity of indigenous knowledge to survive colonial marginalisation and speak truth to patriarchal Western power on the dawn of the Anthropocene of its own making. A year later, the original article has been viewed nearly a whopping 19,000 times: a career-enhancing statistic by any measure.”

“How did the Royal Society respond to our request to publish a critical response to Wehi et al? To put it politely, utterly inconsistently with academic conventions, the principle of open debate, and the society’s stated aim of advancing and promoting the pursuit of knowledge. This attitude was unexpected, especially by Atholl and Tipene, a Fellow and Companion respectively of the Royal Society.”

“It was only our dogged determination that led to the eventual publication of our reply in September 2021. This has been viewed little more than 450 times, bringing to mind the quip of President Franklin Roosevelt’s Secretary of State, Cordell Hull, that ‘A lie will gallop halfway round the world before the truth has time to pull its breeches on.’”

The article goes on: “The society has also attempted to ‘unlock the innovation potential of Māori knowledge, resources and people’ and ‘blend’ mātauranga Māori and Western science, which are suspiciously treated as bounded. No matter how well-intentioned this all might be, were he alive today, Te Rangi Hīroa would likely have some difficulties with how institutional biculturalism and “cultural awareness” has unfolded within the Royal Society, and for that matter, New Zealand’s universities. In short, uncritical acceptance of Māori knowledge is arguably just as patronising as its earlier blanket rejection.”

It concludes by asking: “With that in mind, what repercussions befall Wehi et al? Well, in November 2021, the Marsden Fund – administered by the Royal Society – awarded her and the University of Otago $660,000 for a project entitled Kaitiakitanga and Antarctic narratives. This aims to bring ‘ancestral methodologies, from pūrakau (stories) through to traditional and contemporary visual and sensory transformations of Māori knowledge, to bear on the urgent need for future reimagining of human and planetary futures.’”

Notably Wehi also now co-heads Te Pūnaha Matatini – the New Zealand Centre for Research Excellence, having taken over from Shaun Hendy. TPM has recently been successful in its bid to be funded by the New Zealand Government’s Tertiary Education Commission (TEC) in the recent CoRE round. From 1 July 2021, the Centre’s funding will rise from $2.1 million per annum to $4 million per annum through to the end of 2028. In its announcement, the TEC singled out Te Pūnaha Matatini’s contribution to the COVID-19 response through its modelling of infection spread.

Te Pūnaha Matatini incoming co-directors Priscilla (Cilla) Wehi, a Conservation Biologist with Manaaki Whenua Landcare, and Murray Cox, a Professor of Computational Biology at Massey University, were delighted to hear the news.

“It is amazing to be leading such a strong cohort of researchers who can cross disciplines and address the complexity of systems,” said Cilla. “These ways of thinking will provide real traction in addressing some of the huge problems we are facing globally, and stimulate innovation.”

It is utterly baffling how the original research paper on Antarctica could have been accepted so unquestioningly and then for there to be no follow up by the media when Ngāi Tahu issued its rebuttal.

The article ‘Our ultimate duty’ is superb in every respect and deserves to be read and considered by as large an audience as possible. It articulates a viewpoint which I think would find widespread support throughout the country, and would be an important contribution to the debate surrounding Maori tradition and scholarship.

Original article

Washington — Plastic recycling rates are declining even as production shoots up, according to a Greenpeace USA report out Monday that blasted industry claims of creating an efficient, circular economy as “fiction.”

Titled “Circular Claims Fall Flat Again,” the study found that of 51 million tons of plastic waste generated by U.S. households in 2021, only 2.4 million tons were recycled, or around five percent. After peaking in 2014 at 10 percent, the trend has been decreasing, especially since China stopped accepting the West’s plastic waste in 2018.

Read the rest

General information is on the website

A message from the organisers:

“We’ve got an awesome opportunity for you to get involved on Race Day! We are putting the call out for Volunteers, who are the heart of all our events. 

“Your job is to help us put smiles on peoples faces and be part of inspiring them to reach their goals. Not only will it fill your heart, but you will also receive:

 Kāpiti Half Team T-Shirt
 Dark Horse Coffee to keep you fuelled
 Other Goodies and endless fun

“Follow this link to sign up for an epic day of Run the Coast: https://raceroster.com/…/kapiti-half/volunteer/register

“We still have opportunities for community groups to get involved, so please reach out for more info — amy@barefootsport.co.nz”

by Geoffrey Churchman

Based on the 1958 novel by Paul Gallico, this has been filmed before, but gets what is a delightful treatment this time that encompasses some nice period (set in 1957) atmosphere of aspects of life in London and Paris among both the lower and upper strata of society — and in Paris you couldn’t get much higher than haute couture, which was then as it is now the fashion capital of the world. The only other contenders for that title are Milan and, to a lesser extent, New York.

Mrs Harris is a cleaning lady whose husband was an RAF pilot killed in 1944 and has to do what she does with some affluent clients to make ends meet. But she is a dreamer and an elegant if flamboyant dress made by Christian Dior in Paris that she comes upon inspires her ambition to have one like it. The problem is the cost — £500 which according to the Bank of England inflation calculator would be £9,336 now. But a £150 win on the Football Pools (a peculiarly British form of sports betting) makes her think she can achieve it. An ill advised greyhound race bet sees her lose £100 of it, but there is better news from other occurrences and she manages to receive enough to head across to the Ville de Lumière to buy a very expensive dress at Maison Dior.

The reception she gets there is a mixed one: a few of the managers and invitees at the fashion show she walks in on have the attitude nous ne voulons pas de hoi polloi — but others are sympathetic and she manages to get the dress she wants — and a bit of romance from a Marquis in addition.

Maison Dior are credited as being collaborators with the movie, so it’s possible the bad financial situation the company is shown as being in, with a need to cater for a broad market with other products is fact.

The bittersweet experience continues when Mrs Harris gets back to London.

Much of the movie’s scenes, other than iconic landmarks set in Paris were actually filmed in Budapest streets, but the impression nevertheless is that you are looking at Paris streets. The beautiful city isn’t quite so beautiful with the garbagemen en grève (on strike), but it’s still like a fairytale compared with dingy London.

The juxtaposition of the mundane and the haut monde throughout works well, and needless to say, those into fashion history (I’m not) and classic vehicles (I am) should be amply satisfied. Things may be a little too cute, co-incidental, pert (and torpid) at various times, but that is what makes it absorbing.

For a presentation of what life was like in different parts of both cities at the time, this is pretty good. Recommended.

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Mrs Harris goes to Paris (115 minutes) is screening at the Shoreline.

(Stats NZ media release)
26 October 2022

Increasing prices were widely felt across all household groups in the September 2022 quarter, Stats NZ said today.

The cost of living for the average household, (as measured by the household living-costs price indexes) increased by 7.7 percent in the September 2022 quarter when compared with the September 2021 quarter. All household groups faced their highest or equal-highest annual cost-of-living increase since the series began in 2008.

Inflation experienced from the September 2021 quarter to the September 2022 quarter:

• all households was 7.7 percent
• beneficiary was 6.5 percent
• Māori was 7.7 percent
• superannuitant was 6.8 percent
• highest-spending households was 8.8 percent
• lowest-spending households was 6.5 percent.

Visit our website to read this news story and information release or to download CSV files:

• Rising cost of housing and food prices leads to higher inflation for households
• Household living-costs price indexes: September 2022 quarter
• CSV files for download