Kremlin spokesperson Peskov says oil at the Tuapse refinery hit by Ukraine was intended for export.

With these strikes, the Kiev regime increases the oil shortage on world markets.

Legacy media will never mention this part. https://t.co/6KNJ2Qcl4s pic.twitter.com/SvOyrRvWXZ

— Chay Bowes (@BowesChay) April 28, 2026

from a piece by Tom Hunt on Te Pou (The Post)

Andrew Little met his new chief executive within 24 hours of being elected, with council culture on the agenda. Six months in, Wellington’s new mayor says “we still have a way to go”.

The tail-wagging-the-dog image of the council is exemplified in the new council offices on Jervois Quay, where staff allocated who was based where. The mayor will meet dignitaries in a first floor office with a view of a busy road. The council executive are said to have expansive harbour views.

But that image was there in the Reading fiasco, where most councillors were kept out of the loop of the $32 million deal for months, or the advice council staff passed on to councillors about the planned sale of council airport shares. The list, pre-dating Little and chief executive Matt Prosser, goes on.

“There has been a bit of a culture of the council officers doing their thing, fulfilling their statutory role, as they would see it, but not necessarily engaging to the quality I would expect with councillors,” Little told Te Pou in an interview to mark his six month anniversary.

It was a topic he bought up with Prosser during a two-hour meeting on October 12, the day after he won the mayoralty. Prosser, he said, did not disagree.

“Part of the challenge is to re-orient council to the point where councillors … set policy, they set the direction and the role of council officers to make sure that what they’re doing, the way they do their job, is consistent with that. I think we still have a way to go on that.”

These types of comments are not ones Kapiti mayor Holborow would ever make. –Eds

by John McLean

My earliest memory of Anzac Day is as a child standing on Wellington’s Lambton Quay watching the parade pass — first some army jeeps with about a dozen very old men in them =- too old to march. These were the Boer War veterans. Next came a mass of grey-haired men — a few with walking sticks and the odd wooden leg or so, but all of them in jackets and ties and wearing their colourful medals. These were the First World War men.

Then an even larger group of much younger men — again all in jackets and ties and with medals and banners proclaiming Alamein, Crete, Italy and, of course, a handful of Battle of Britain fighter pilots. Then a much smaller bunch of much younger looking Korean War vets brought up the rear together with Wrens and bands and other things to impress my young mind.

This was the way that Anzac Days had been commemorated ever since the first Anzac Day in 1916 and, because of its sacred character and deeply personal meaning for those who had lost loved ones, that is how it should always be commemorated — except that the old men in the jeeps are no longer those who fought on the veldt, but the diminishing band of those who served in the Solomons, Normandy and elsewhere in the Second World War.

That was then — when New Zealanders were one people and before the newly formed tribal elite of one-eighth and one-sixteenth part-Maoris have tried to take over the country, pushing the rest of us out of the way, even on Anzac Day. Governments — both National and Labour — have been collaborators in this crime, starting with renaming the National War Memorial in Wellington “Pukeahu” — whatever that means.

The Ministry of Culture and Heritage produced a programme that had everything from prayers to hymns in two languages -= with the so-called Maori language taking first position and primacy over English. In other words this wretched Ministry is collaborating with the tribal elite to bring about division in a society that was once united. There is nothing more divisive than promoting two languages where there was only one before in all official functions.

The  ceremony at Wellington began with a “karakia” — in Maori, of course — as if the 2% or 3% of New Zealanders who understand this primitive and largely recently made-up tongue are the only ones who matter. There was also a “karanga” — whatever that is — and a response (all in Maori). The ceremony finished up with a Maori hymn “E Te Ariki” and an ode by the President of the Returned Servicemen’s Association (R.S.A.) in Maori which appears to be a translation of that well-known and moving verse “They shall not grow old as we who are left grow old”. This followed the Maori “ode” even though an ode is a form of English poetry that had no place in Maori culture as the Maoris didn’t even have a written language until the missionaries arrived in the early 19^th century and gave them one.

Then it was the National Anthem — in Maori first, of course — and the last thing that the people were forced to suffer was yet another karakia in Maori to polish off proceedings.

In Rotorua the Dawn Service in 2025 was conducted not by the Rotorua R.S.A., which includes all returned servicemen, but by some race-based racket called Te Arawa Maori Returned Servicemen’s League. This one started with a “mihi” (welcome) and then all the rest in an exercise that was more about advancing Maori culture and language and putting down the white man than honouring the war dead.

If anything, it was worse in Australia where gutless Returned Servicemen’s Leagues, in cahoots with state governments, began many of the services with the new phenomenon of “Welcome to Country” – the Aborigines welcoming Australians to their own country!!

One of the worst of these “humiliation rituals” across the Ditch was in Melbourne where some part-Aborigine, with the very English name of Mark Brown, said, “I’m here to welcome everybody to my father’s country [not everybody else’s country!]”. He then hogged the limelight for four minutes with similar nonsense. “They didn’t die for this” called out someone while others booed this demonstration of divisiveness and racism.

In Sydney the main Dawn Service was hogged by another part-Aborigine (all part of Australia’s tribal elite) called “Uncle” Ray Minniecon, who gave his Acknowledgement of Country as if the Anzac service could not proceed without this little piece of arrogant racism. No surprisingly he was booed too. He was wearing three medals that he did not earn – and on the wrong side of his chest! 

In an interview after the service “Uncle” told the ABC, “This is Aboriginal land. Always was and always will be too. So we stand on the truth. And the truth can’t be shaken”. Why have an enemy of Australia such as this clown to spit venom on Australia’s heritage and rights that the brave Diggers fought for in the two world wars?

When asked about the booing of his “Acknowledgement of Country” Uncle said that those who booed “should understand their place”. In other words in a country that once respected free speech they should now bow down to the demands of the tribal elite and say nothing.

So, what is this new phenomenon of “Welcome to the Country” to Australians whose families have lived there for 200 years, who built the country and whose taxes now pay for the massive Aborigine welfare bill? Well, this is what South Australia’s Minister of Aboriginal Affairs, Kyam Maher [a man], said, “Being welcomed to country is something that Aboriginal people have done for tens of thousands of years, welcoming OTHER ABORIGINAL PEOPLE to their particular country”. So why use it for welcoming non-Aboriginal Australians who do not need such pious and condescending waffle as they travel around their great continent?

The barely concealed racism and race hatred towards white people at these ceremonies was described by “First Nations woman” [not “Australian woman”] Colleen Clarke, as “It’s welcoming people to OUR country”.

Instead of clamping down on the introduction of all this racism into Anzac services many of the authorities in Australia are promoting it. At the Dawn Service at King’s Park, Perth, a few hours behind the eastern states, police moved in on certain persons in the crowd and moved five people on from the gathering, saying “Due to your association with the March for Australia group you’re being moved from the ceremony due to the belief that you’ll interrupt it”.

This is the stuff of dictatorship. How do the cops know whether or not someone will do something before it is actually done? Do they think they’re God? And what about free speech which was one of the things that our servicemen fought for in the world wars? Australian police are better known for corruption than their efficiency and this is yet another example of that well known fact.

In the two world wars Australian servicemen fought our external enemies such as Germany and Japan. Now we need to fight the internal enemies such as “Uncle” and all the others who are trying to use Anzac Day to promote their own greedy and racist agendas. And yet the authorities, including some of the R.S.L.s, give such types a platform on Anzac Day.

Fortunately, not all R.S.L.s in Australia were so craven and cowardly as they were in Sydney, Melbourne, Perth and other places. There was none of this nonsense in Townsville where the President of the Townsville Returned Servicemen’s Association, Mr. Colin Mosch, said, “The Anzac Day Dawn Service is about one thing, remembering those who have served and have paid the ultimate sacrifice”. Neither Shakespeare not Kipling could have expressed it better. That is the line that we should have in New Zealand too.

Part 1

by Concerned Ratepayers Kapiti

Kapiti Coast District Council is clearly proceeding with a deliberate three-pronged strategy, which consists of:

1. Let’s sit tight and hope we’ll get a change of Government in November.  Let’s hope that a new Government will reverse what’s coming out of this current Government, so that we can keep on with high rates and “business as usual” (that is, business as we want it). That means we can ignore recent or upcoming legislative changes and messages from the Government about rates capping and the need for Councils to re-focus on core services and infrastructure and cut back on non-essential expenditure.
2. Let’s not talk to the public in the meantime. That way we can ignore their concerns about rates increases and won’t have to take on board any feedback that might be contrary to what we want to do.
3. Let’s kick the can down the road and put off public discussion about Council direction and expenditure until later in the year when we review the Long-Term Plan. That way in the meantime we can avoid public scrutiny of our annual plan for this year and the money we plan to spend, while we lock certain things in place… for the 2026/27 year, and hopefully beyond.

Why do we say this?

It’s been six months since last year’s election and Concerned Ratepayers Kapiti have had a good number of interactions now, with some Councillors individually and with the Council as a whole.

Some things have really struck us about what we are seeing.  Even though the Government has very clearly signalled that it wants councils to reign in their rates increases in advance of rates capping coming into effect in 2029, KCDC is determined to continue down a high rates path. 

And they are determined not to talk to residents about the upcoming 6.4% rates increase, even though we have requested several times (and as recently as 13 April) that KCDC do so.  It took the Mayor only 3 hours to rebuff our last letter asking for the Council to change tack in light of the fuel crisis.

The Government has legislation ready to pass in Parliament designed to re-focus councils back to their core functions. We’ve suggested to KCDC several times that it needs to develop a plan to give effect to that impending legislation, once passed.  KCDC is having none of it. 

One of the things that this legislation is designed to do is to limit in law the scope of how councils can contribute to economic development.  The law change would – on a plain reading of the legislation – significantly reduce the scope of this Council’s so called “Economic Development Strategy”.  Yet this Council have congratulated themselves that they think they have created a structure that would get around the upcoming law change.  They are determined not to change a thing, even though Parliament will pass a law that should require KCDC to change and to scale back.  This strategy costs you about $3.1 million a year.

So … we have stood back and asked ourselves: “Looking across all of what we are seeing, what’s going on here?”

The Council’s approach could also be called ‘The Three Un-Wise Monkeys Strategy’, that is:

• Don’t see anything – like the need to change
• Don’t hear anything – like the concerns of the community Council is supposed to represent
• Keep mum and carry on – keep up the KCDC rhetoric under the guise of ‘communication’ but keep the public largely in the dark about the details and carry on with the Council’s underlying agenda.

This year, for the third year in a row, KCDC decided not to consult with the public about its proposed Annual Plan for the 2026/27 financial year. This is important because the Annual Plan and the budget for the coming financial year is the basis on which the Council sets the rate each year.

The last time the Council formally consulted with the public on its direction and expenditure plans was in early 2024 – for the Long-Term Plan (LTP). This evades the provisions and intention of the Local Government Act that the public has an intrinsic right to have their say every year on what the Council is doing and spending ratepayers’ money on, the expenditures the Council is proposing for the financial year ahead, and the justification for rates increases.  Denying the public that right is a fundamental breach of the principles of community representation.

The Council will tell you that legally they don’t have to consult on the Annual Plan unless there are ‘significant and material’ variations from the relevant year of the LTP. That is true – well, sort of. The Act does contain a provision for that, but the implicit intention of the Act is that that primarily applies for the first year of an LTP. It should not be viewed as a rationale for Councils to go on year after year avoiding public scrutiny of their activities and expenditures.

And the subterfuge behind all this is that Councils determine their own criteria for what is ‘significant and material’ in their ‘Significance and Engagement Policy’ and then argue that they only have to consult with the public when those criteria are triggered. And even in a year where there are major changes happening and significant expenditure decisions, KCDC still proceeded with a determination to avoid talking to the public.

This year there are lots of important things happening that the Council should be discussing with the community. This includes:

• How the Council is implementing ‘Local Water Done Well’ and the impact that will have on people’s rates and water charges
• How the Council intends to respond to the Local Government (Systems Improvement) Amendment Bill, which will be passed by Parliament by mid-year. This repeals the ‘wellbeing’ clauses in the Act, which provided the basis for much of the Council’s current expenditures on non-core activities.
• How the Council has taken into account the Minister of Local Government’s directive to local Councils to consider the intention of the intended Rates Capping legislation in their imposition of rates increases
• Why the Council is forging ahead with an expensive Economic Development strategy that will cost ratepayers an extra $3.1 m per year. This is to finance an initiative where Council will fund a new Economic Development Kotahitanga Board, with a Board of Trustees and a Council-Controlled Organisation for implementation, both to be set up with Council and iwi membership and other Council-appointed persons as Trustees and Directors.  The EDKB will syphon funding to selected businesses of its own choosing, funded 70% by ratepayers and 30% through a levy on existing businesses.
• How the Council plans to dispose of its current ‘social housing’ portfolio for older persons by ‘gifting’ the properties to a community housing provider, thus writing off a $21.5M ratepayer asset with no recompense to ratepayers.
• The justification for the Council’s corporate bureaucracy blowout over the last three years, with increases in staffing and in the salary costs of staffing.

KCDC’s three-pronged strategy allows them to ignore feedback from the public about its financial impacts on ratepayers and to avoid public scrutiny of their expenditure decisions.

Concerned Ratepayers Kapiti (CRK) has provided consistent feedback to KCDC over the last eighteen months that KCDC must get its expenditure under control and to do that, must change its budgeting and financial management approach and process. This advice – from a team of professionally experienced people with combined central and local government and business backgrounds, with significant governance and financial management expertise – has fallen on deaf ears.

The Council’s budgeting process is ‘cost-plus’ – which simply consists of passing cost increases on to ratepayers, with little attempt to curtail or put a cap on non-essential expenditure, or look at the potential for savings from greater efficiencies. CRK has advised that Council needs to make clear to the public the distinction between what money is spent on baseline commitments for core functions and what on non-essential ‘nice to have’ discretionary activities.

But this year once again the Council’s approach to the budget for the 2026/27 Annual Plan was that staff delivered up for Council consideration a range of ‘low hanging fruit’ options where small  amounts could be cut or reduced. Nothing about the ‘big ticket’ items, and nothing that would result in a reduction in staffing costs of course. But plenty of Council rhetoric on what a good job they have done on reducing what the rates increase might otherwise have been.

What’s behind the ‘Three Un-Wise Monkeys’ Strategy?  Apart from KCDC wanting to carry on with what they want to do and avoid having to talk to the public?…

Part 2 to follow

by Andrew Korybko

Russia isn’t at risk of becoming a Chinese vassal, nor is India at risk of becoming an American one.

Russia’s legal information portal recently published the details of last year’s “Reciprocal Exchange of Logistics Support” (RELOS) military logistics pact with India. RT’s Air Marshal Anil Chopra (Retired) wrote a detailed analysis about it here, drawing attention to how it “allows for the simultaneous deployment of up to 3,000 troops, five warships, and ten aircraft to be stationed on each other’s soil.” There’s more to it, however, as this analysis will explain. Here are the five messages that RELOS sends to the world:

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1. Russia & India Remain Each Other’s Special & Privileged Strategic Partner

Pepe Escobar falsely claimed in mid-March that India “betrayed” Russia, yet that couldn’t be further from the truth after RELOS, which restores Russia’s Old Cold War-era permanent military presence in the Indian Ocean Region. Likewise, India will now obtain an unprecedented permanent military presence in the Russian Far East and Arctic if it so chooses, thus symbolizing the strength of their special and privileged strategic partnership. Speculation about a rift between them is therefore bonafide fake news.

2. Russia Is Preemptively Averting Disproportionate Dependence On China

Building upon the above, India’s military presence in Russia’s Far East is a matter of prestige for Delhi vis-à-vis Beijing even though there’s no chance that Moscow would authorize offensive operations from its territory. Nevertheless, the message to China and the rest of the world is clear, and it’s that Russia is preemptively averting disproportionate dependence on China. If it were already its vassal or on the way thereto as some claim, then Russia would never allow India to deploy its forces near the Chinese border.

3. Massive Japanese, South Korean, & Taiwanese Investments Might Follow

The Russian-US “New Détente” that’s being negotiated could see phased sanctions relief after the end of hostilities with Ukraine, which could lead to massive Japanese, South Korean, and Taiwanese investments in the resource-rich Russian Far East that Moscow just signaled isn’t a Chinese fief as some claimed. Knowing now for sure that Russia isn’t a Chinese vassal or on the way thereto as explained, they might then feel more comfortable investing at scale there, thus accelerating Russia’s “Pivot to Asia”.

4. Russia Won’t Let China Dominate The Arctic Like Some Claimed It Would

CNN and others have long fearmongered that Russia would let China dominate the Arctic upon becoming its vassal, hence the urgent need for NATO to militarize the region. That was never a credible scenario, however, but it’s now debunked due to RELOS allowing Western-friendly India to establish a military presence there if it wants one. India very well might do so too, not only for reasons of prestige (including vis-à-vis China), but to present itself as a responsible stakeholder in the Northern Sea Route.

5. India Has Now Become Russia’s Privileged Energy Partner In The Arctic

A key Chinese company pulled out of Russia’s Arctic LNG 2 megaproject in summer 2024 under Western sanctions pressure, which deeply disappointed some in Russia, who expected that the People’s Republic would show more of a spine in the face of these threats. With India now poised to establish a military presence in the Arctic, thus expanding their special and privileged partnership to this region, it’s expected to be given the first choice over all others for investments there once the sanctions are lifted.

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These five messages collectively show that Russia isn’t at risk of becoming a Chinese vassal nor is India at risk of becoming an American one. To the contrary, they’re once again relying on one another to preemptively avert the aforesaid scenarios through the strengthening of their complementary balancing acts, which takes the form of RELOS in this example. That military logistics pact therefore accelerates multipolar processes and thus reduces the chances of a future Sino-US bi-multipolar world order.

The signature looks like Peter G Lynch. The patterns of water before the shore don’t ressemble what we now see, but may be based on a very old photo.