Watch on the webpage

We’ve heard from people who are sick of red tape and regulation making it too hard to get on with business, from business owners who find overzealous workplace rules are making it too hard to make a profit, from law-abiding firearms owners who are concerned safe areas like clubs and ranges will be driven out of business, from farmers who are sick of their property rights being trampled over, and from New Zealanders who are sick of their taxes going towards schemes that are not providing a benefit to taxpayers.

The first 100 days tackles these issues.

ACT campaigned for a government of real change. We are proud to be contributing ideas to this Government that will solve the urgent problems people elected us to address. ACT’s Ministers are ready to hit the ground running and get to work for New Zealanders.

Our coalition commitments will form a core part of the Government’s key priorities in the first 100 days of office, that includes:

• Stop work notices on the Income Insurance Scheme, Industry Transformation Plans, and the Lake Onslow pumped hydro scheme.
  
• Start work to improve the quality of regulation through a new regulation agency.
  
• Repeal the Fair Pay Agreement legislation.
  
• Introduce legislation to restore 90-day trial periods for all businesses.
  
• Introduce legislation to narrow the Reserve Bank’s mandate to price stability.
  
• Begin to cease implementation of new Significant Natural Areas.
  
• Repeal Labour’s RMA replacement the Spatial Planning and Natural and Built Environment Act and introduce a fast-track consenting regime.
  
• Make Medium Density Residential Standards (MDRS) optional for councils.
  
• Stop taxpayer funding for section 27 cultural reports.
  
• Begin to repeal and replace Part 6 of the Arms Act 1983 relating to clubs and ranges.
  
• Introduce legislation to disestablish the Māori Health Authority.
  
• Allow the sale of cold medication containing pseudoephedrine.
  
• Begin work to crack down on serious youth offending.

This is a mammoth agenda but ACT’s Ministers are up for the challenge.

Yours sincerely,

David Seymour ACT Leader | MP for Epsom

from Redacted

UNESCO released a plan to combat “misinformation” by creating what it calls the “Internet of Trust.” If you think it sounds Orwellian, you’re not alone.

UNESCO stands for the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. It is a specialized agency of the United Nations established with the goal of promoting world peace and security through international cooperation in the fields of education, the sciences, and culture. If you think that sounds broad, you’re also not alone. That broad job description gives them access to ring in on just about every aspect of human life. 

The report claims to safeguard free speech while figuring out how to censor it. They claim to need to create this Internet of Trust in order to deal with “dis- and misinformation, hate speech, and conspiracy theories.”

What they suggest is an international standard for speech censorship which would apply to every UN member state, regardless of its sovereignty. This would include “online moderators” in all languages. Who will pay these moderators? Who will decide the parameters for moderation? 

The document also suggests a need for “election integrity.” How will they decide what information is shared during open and free elections? 

Obviously there are too many problems with this idea to count but we tried. Watch our segment about this from Monday’s live broadcast of Redacted.

The architect and now KCDC Cr says: “My first big house (10,000 square feet). Sprog architect at 28.”

That’s 929 square metres, although the listing says 1027 sq m plus 5 garages, 7 bedrooms and 3 bathrooms — ideal for a Saudi oil sheik’s harem?

Realtor’s listing

…with the the Public Interest Journalism Fund (PIJF) which had to —

“…actively promote the principles of Partnership, Participation and Active Protection under Te Tiriti o Waitangi acknowledging Māori as a Te Tiriti partner.”

By Roger Childs

Media reaction to charges of bribery

The mainstream media reacted with shock, horror and indignation at the claim made by the Deputy Prime Minister that the Ardern–Hipkins regimes had financed the media to get them to support government policies. … you can’t defend $55 million of bribery.  Chris Hipkins strenuously denied the accusation when interviewed on Radio New Zealand on Wednesday 29 November.     

However, Winston Peters is quite right. To get the money to keep their papers and magazines going, the owners and editors had to agree to the PIJF Guidelines which included a Treaty related clause which is set out above. That clause contains as least two errors – there were no principles or reference to partnership in the 1840 Te Tiriti o Waitangi. 

Among many guidelines and goals the media was directed to– 

• reflect and develop New Zealand identity and culture
• promote Maori language and culture
• support the production of PIJ that is relevant and valued by New Zealanders
• engage citizens in informed public debate.

As a result papers like the Wellington (Dominion) Post became in the words of one journalist “Pravda with puzzles”.

Imagine how newspapers like The Australian, The Guardian and The Washington Post would react to being told by their government how to report on the nation and the world around them.

Reflecting the Ardern government’s wishes

The New Zealand press and magazines dutifully obliged from mid-2020 to get the cash they needed. Consequently the journalists wrote articles and editorials, and the cartoonists did their part, to show the Labour-led government in a good light.  There was:

• support for the government’s covid policies, ‘vaccine’ choice and ‘vaccine’ mandates
• support for He Puapua strategies
• no open criticism of Jacinda Ardern, the Waitangi Tribunal or the Maori Caucus
• little coverage on countries which didn’t follow New Zealand’s approach to covid and no balanced analysis of the effectiveness and casualties of vaccines and boosters
• no analysis of the dishonesty of the politicians
• no investigation into the Health Department’s advice to the government
• no meaningful discussion of the opposition to the government’s lockdowns
• support for Labour’s interpretation of the Treaty of Waitangi.

The Stuffers’ papers also produced a series of articles called “OUR TRUTH” which were anything but. The writing claimed to spell out what actually happened in our history and how Maori suffered. Many articles were riddled with inaccuracies and generally adopted a pro-Maori stance.

When an article appeared which included an apocryphal account of a massacre at Rangiaowhia in 1864, based on the opinions of local iwi, Maori oral history and the views of PC historians such as Vincent O’Malley, historian, Bruce Moon and I wrote letters to the paper complaining. They did not publish them, however we each received a reply from the Maori Affairs reporter.  When I asked if I could respond with a full article, she said to send one through, but The Stuffers decided not to print it.

These were times for following the official line and supporting Jacinda Ardern, who claimed her government was the sole source of truth during covid times.

Coming to a close

Funding under the PIJF came to an end in mid-2023 but the media continued to toe the party line. There were also rumours that Broadcasting Minister, Willie Jackson, was meeting with journalists to provide “advice”.

Hopefully Christopher Luxon’s government will terminate the PIJF requirements and we can have full freedom of speech and a truly independent fourth estate.

from the NZ Herald

Wellington City Councillor Teri O’Neill has defended her decision to post flyers featuring Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and his two deputies inside the image of a penis around Wellington City.

O’Neill took pictures of herself and her friends sticking the posters up around the city on Friday night and posted them to social media yesterday.

When contacted by the Herald about the pictures, she made her Instagram private but says she stands by her decision to post the flyers – one of which featured new Prime Minister Christopher Luxon inside the outline of a penis.

Another had Act leader David Seymour and NZ First leader Winston Peters inside the scrotum of the genitals while Luxon formed the head.

Read the rest

and David Seymour responds..

In a way, though, this Kakariki is right: Peters and Seymour give Luxon the balls to keep his promises.

Grocery shopping in 2023 🤣pic.twitter.com/u68ly8WYCz

— Kim Dotcom (@KimDotcom) November 25, 2023

by Caitlin Johnstone

Pentagon contractor Elon Musk and war criminal Benjamin Netanyahu had a conversation that they broadcast on Twitter during Musk’s apology pilgrimage to Israel in a desperate bid to salvage his public image amid costly accusations of antisemitism.

The “conversation” was really more of a monologue, with the Israeli leader droning on in his conspicuously American accent while Musk meekly agreed with him on every point. During his lecture, Bibi said something worth highlighting while complaining about the worldwide pro-Palestine protests that have been underway since the beginning of Israel’s ongoing Gaza massacre.

“We have mass demonstrations,” Netanyahu said at around the 15:55 mark. “Where were these demonstrations when over a million Arabs and Muslims were killed in Syria, in Yemen, many of them starving to death, those who didn’t die in explosions. Where were the demonstrations in London? In Paris? In San Francisco? In Washington? Where are they?”

“The answer is they don’t care about the Palestinians, they hate Israel,” Netanyahu said. “And they hate Israel because they hate America.”

You hear this “where were the protests over Yemen and Syria?” talking point over and over again from Israel apologists, the argument essentially being that because few people protested the mass killings in those countries then Israel should get to do a little genocide of its own, as a treat.

This talking point is stupid for a few reasons, including the way it tends to avoid the inconvenient fact that the bloodshed in both Yemen and Syria was facilitated by US interventionism, just like the bloodshed in Gaza is. The civil war in Syria was only able to occur because the western alliance and its regional partners flooded the nation with weapons given to extremist factions in the hope of toppling Damascus, and Saudi Arabia’s war crimes in Yemen were fully backed by the US and its allies.

The talking point is also stupid because there are many entirely legitimate reasons the Gaza massacre is getting special attention. In a recent New York Times article titled “Gaza Civilians, Under Israeli Barrage, Are Being Killed at Historic Pace,” Lauren Leatherby explains that Israel’s actions in Gaza are actually quite different from other conflicts this century, killing far more civilians far more rapidly than the wars in places like Syria and Ukraine. Last week the UN’s emergency relief coordinator Martin Griffiths said during a CNN interview that Gaza is the worst humanitarian crisis he’s ever seen, even worse than the Killing Fields in Cambodia. This conflict is being treated differently because it is different.

Another reason this specific bombing campaign is getting so much more public backlash than others is because the pro-Palestine movement has had generations to build, whereas when the west lays waste to a country using military explosives it’s normally a fast ordeal which moves from manufacturing consent to execution very quickly. By the time people figure out they were lied to about the justifications for a depraved war the empire is usually two or three new wars down the track. The Israel-Palestine issue has been just sitting there for decades, so there’s been time to accumulate popular opposition. Once someone learns about the realities of the Palestinian plight they very seldom abandon their support for it, so every newly-opened pair of eyes stays open on this issue for a lifetime.

But perhaps the dumbest thing about this talking point is the fact that it ultimately works against the agendas of the people saying it. Israel apologists keep asking “Where were the protests over Yemen and Syria,” and gradually the millions of people who are beginning to wake up to the criminality of the US-centralized power alliance as a result of the Gaza massacre are going to start asking themselves the same question.

Because the assault on Gaza is so uniquely horrific and is being broadcast onto people’s social media feeds in real time, millions of people around the world are being snapped out of the propaganda-induced coma that has had them consenting to evil war after evil war over the years. People are starting to realize they’ve been deceived about the Israel-Palestine conflict, and they’re starting to wonder what else they’ve been deceived about. Keep asking them “Where were the protests over Yemen and Syria,” and eventually they’re going to start researching those conflicts and learning about their own government’s role in them, and from there it’s only a matter of time before they start asking, “Hey yeah! Where WERE the protests over Yemen and Syria??”

In a new article for The Guardian titled “The war in Gaza has been an intense lesson in western hypocrisy. It won’t be forgotten,” Nesrine Malik writes that “for the first time that I can think of, western powers are unable to credibly pretend that there is some global system of rules that they uphold. They seem to simply say: there are exceptions, and that’s just the way it is. No, it can’t be explained and yes, it will carry on until it doesn’t at some point, which seems to be when Israeli authorities feel like it.”

“Part of that inability to reach for convincing narratives about why so many innocent people must die is that events escalated so quickly,” Malik adds. “There was no time to set the pace of the attacks on Gaza, prepare justifications and hope that eventually, when it was all over, time and short attention spans would cover up the toll. Gaza has been a uniquely, inconveniently, intense conflict… The area is so densely populated that the toll of civilians is too high, and evidence for having undermined Hamas’s capabilities, the only possible justification for the casualties, is too low.”

This is the sort of political moment in which newly-formed critics of the western war machine are being asked to think carefully about why there hasn’t been a robust resistance to their governments’ other criminal actions. Which looks like a nightmare waiting to happen for the propagandists whose job is to manufacture consent for depraved acts of war.

One thing the empire is about to realize is that the western public has lost all its appetite for war. All the careful sanitising, video-gamifying and propagandizing that has been put in place since Vietnam in order to build a platform of consent for “humanitarian” wars has cratered into nothing over the course of mere weeks. 

You can’t have an up close and personal relationship with the reality of bombs and all the things they do to human flesh and then go back to the way you were ever again. Millions of western eyes have been changed forever. 

“War” is not abstracted any more.

The level of the river was later deepened to cope better with occasional deluges. (A b/w photo colorised with Photoshop)

Iran controls a chokepoint through which 40 percent of global oil exports passes. If the US-NATO don’t tread carefully, Iran could unleash a gigantic Oil Shock.

from Nick Giaumbruno at internationalman.com:

The Strait of Hormuz is a narrow strip of water that links the Persian Gulf to the rest of the world.

It’s the world’s single-most important energy corridor, and there’s no alternative route.

Five of the world’s top 10 oil-producing countries—Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq, United Arab Emirates, and Kuwait—border the Persian Gulf, as does Qatar, the world’s largest liquefied natural gas (LNG) exporter. The Strait of Hormuz is their only sea route to the open ocean… and world markets.

At its narrowest point, the space available for shipping lanes is just 3.2 kilometers wide.

According to the US Energy Information Administration, more than 40% of global oil exports (around 21 million barrels) transit the Strait daily.

That’s more than $1.5 billion worth of oil every day.

And that’s not considering the immense amount of LNG— about 33% of the world’s daily LNG exports—and other goods transiting the Strait.

It’s hard to overstate the importance of the Strait of Hormuz to the global economy.

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