Julian Pistorius

http://tvnz.co.nz/view/page/1316907/1500456

"In a report released on Wednesday the ombudsman is critical of the way the potential health risks from the spraying were communicated.

But the findings aren't sitting well with Anderton.

The minister accepts there are lessons to be learned but says the recommendation that such operations be subject to the Resource Management Act is disingenuous.

He says anyone who knows about the RMA process knows it can take years to complete.

Anderton says biosecurity issues are such that if you wait years it'll be all over and the problem won't be able to be fixed."

Hahaha! Yes, so he admits the RMA is a pain in the ass, but it's OK for the government to bypass it when it suits. Instead of making exceptions, just scrap the bloody thing.

For more about the evils of the RMA, see PC's posts concerning the beast:
http://del.icio.us/NotPC/RMA

http://www.economist.com/displayStory.cfm?story_id=10277230&fsrc=RSS

"According to figures compiled by the American Religious Identification Survey (ARIS), almost 30m people claimed "no religion" in 2001, a doubling from 1991. This dwarfs America's 2.8m who describe themselves as Jews according to the same survey (although other estimates suggest that the Jewish population is much larger, at about 6m). Catholicism, the country's largest Christian denomination, boasts 51m followers. In other words, irreligion claims a surprisingly large number of adherents. Mr Romney's attack on disbelievers prompted Christopher Hitchens, a well-known polemicist and the author of "God Is Not Great: Why Religion Poisons Everything", to describe him as "Entirely lacking in dignity or nobility (or average integrity)". Others cited Thomas Jefferson's ruder comments about religion. Even some conservative columnists chided Mr Romney for not saying, as George Bush has, that people of no faith at all are Americans too."

A friend sent me this link:
Toddler fools the art world into buying his tomato ketchup paintings

And this is the online gallery the article mentions.

It's funny, and sad. The world of 'high-art' has well and truly devoured itself.

My little sister, Caren, is performing in her first play this week:

http://premier.ticketek.co.nz/shows/show.aspx?sh=LOSER07

Jasmine and I will be there for the Saturday performance. Come along if you're in Auckland.

For Auckland friends, would you like to catch up for drinks/dinner beforehand? This will be our last time in Auckland before we head overseas. We'd like to say goodbye to you guys!

Cheers
Julian

Reproduced from PC's Blog:

If it moves, they've taxed it. If it keeps moving, they've regulated it. When it stops moving, they've subsidised it. If they don't like it they've banned it, and if they do like it, they've made it compulsory.

They've taxed you to hell, regulated you into the ground, and turned nearly two-thirds of New Zealanders into welfare beneficiaries. And they've lied to you about it all.

In times of tyranny the only relief from dictatorship is through free and fair elections -- the right retained by the people to throw the buggers out -- and the right -- the right! -- to raise your voice in protest.

Both forms of pressure release are now being taken away.

Elections are now being fixed to favour the ruling party -- and the so called opposition is so spineless in any case as to be no real alternative -- and for one year in three political protest is being muzzled, requiring registration with a censor's office.

To raise your voice in protest you'll have to ask permission first.

It's the last straw.

There is no free speech under a tyrant.

This government has declared war on the liberties of New Zealand's free men and women. Our last chance is to raise our voices today in protest against the obscenity -- but we must be under no illusion about the situation we face.

This is not as Helen Clark claimed on Monday just a party political issue, and it sure as hell isn't politics as usual. Says Lindsay Perigo this morning,

"In its stated intent to persevere with the iniquitous Electoral Finance Bill, the Clark-Cullen government has lost all claim to legitimacy and may now be overthrown with impunity."

Read on here, and take copies with you this afternoon when you take your last chance to protest the onset of tyranny.

Assemble in Helengrad's Civic Square today at 12:30, and head to Parliament and make your protest count. The tired and corrupt Clark regime is no longer fit to govern. They want to make it illegal to tell that truth. Tell them that today. As Bernard Darnton said in a recent issue of The Free Radical:

Labour seems to have concluded that political speech is so important that no one else should be allowed to have any... The Clark Government is not just nibbling at the edges of free speech, they are engaged in both direct frontal assaul and deliberate flanking attacks on free speech [and democracy].

... Political speech must be especially protected because it is in the political arena that all other freedoms must be protected. The Clark Government's assaults on free political expression must be resisted because if we fail to withstand this latest round of assaults, it will be illegal to resist the next.

KILL THIS BILL NOW, before it kills liberty in New Zealand stone dead.

Protest against it now, before protest itself is made illegal.

Labels: EFB, Politics

See here: Sixties and Seventies







I don't remember these - I was too young, but I've seen photos of my mum wearing things like these! :) Why have people stopped dressing like this?

Hat tip to Ross

Reproduced from PC's blog:

Bore's baloney battered in British court

Most of you have probably already heard that a British High court found last week, to put it bluntly, that Al Gore's film is little more than political propaganda.

Responding to plaintiff Stewart Dimmock, who objected to the film's "serious scientific inaccuracies, political propaganda and sentimental mush" being shown in British schools, Justice Burton agreed that Al Gore's science fiction climate porn promotes "partisan political views" -- which under British law would normally make it unlawful to show in schools -- and decided that the film may only be shown if the government's guidance notes for the film are rewritten to make clear the film "promotes partisan political views" and contains "eleven serious inaccuracies." Notes the (UK) Daily Telegraph:

The surprise move [to require guidance notes to be rewritten] was a result of concerns voiced by the judge during the hearing that Gore's critically-acclaimed work contained statements about global warming for which there was currently insufficient scientific evidence. The judge also queried whether the film might appear to promote partisan views, rather than provide information about climate change, and thus make showing it in schools - without further efforts to counterbalance it - a breach of the 1996 Education Act [which forbids the showing of partisan political propaganda in schools].

The news and the "eleven serious inaccuracies" will be no surprise to readers of this blog, but it's worth being reminded of the level of deception:

1. The film claims that melting snows on Mount Kilimanjaro evidence global warming. The Government’s expert was forced to concede that this is not correct.
   
2. The film suggests that evidence from ice cores proves that rising CO2 causes temperature increases over 650,000 years. The Court found that the film was misleading: over that period the rises in CO2 lagged behind the temperature rises by 800-2000 years.
   
3. The film uses emotive images of Hurricane Katrina and suggests that this has been caused by global warming. The Government’s expert had to accept that it was “not possible” to attribute one-off events to global warming.
   
4. The film shows the drying up of Lake Chad and claims that this was caused by global warming. The Government’s expert had to accept that this was not the case.
   
5. The film claims that a study showed that polar bears had drowned due to disappearing arctic ice. It turned out that Mr Gore had misread the study: in fact four polar bears drowned and this was because of a particularly violent storm.
   
6. The film threatens that global warming could stop the Gulf Stream throwing Europe into an ice age: the Claimant’s evidence was that this was a scientific impossibility.
   
7. The film blames global warming for species losses including coral reef bleaching. The Government could not find any evidence to support this claim.
   
8. The film suggests that the Greenland ice covering could melt causing sea levels to rise dangerously. The evidence is that Greenland will not melt for millennia.
   
9. The film suggests that the Antarctic ice covering is melting, the evidence was that it is in fact increasing.
   
10. The film suggests that sea levels could rise by 7m causing the displacement of millions of people. In fact the evidence is that sea levels are expected to rise by about 40cm over the next hundred years and that there is no such threat of massive migration.
    
11. The film claims that rising sea levels has caused the evacuation of certain Pacific islands to New Zealand. The Government are unable to substantiate this and the Court observed that this appears to be a false claim.

Notes Australian Andrew Bolt, "The new Guidance Notes, very grudgingly amended, are here. Would that even this small gesture was matched by Australian schools." And would it be mathced too by partisan Gore supporters worldwide, and by those New Zealand politicians whose "buttons" were "pushed" by Gore's seductive spin and who are now so enthusiastically selling us down the river.

Labels: Films, Global Warming, Politics-NZ, Politics-UK

This is something straight out of Atlas Shrugged. *shakes head* For localise, read pillage, steal and nationalise:

Zimbabwe's ruling party has pushed a bill through parliament giving local owners majority control of foreign-owned companies including mines and banks.

The ZANU-PF party led by Robert Mugabe, the president, pushed through the bill on Wednesday after members of the main opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) walked out in protest.

Analysts say the move could drive the country's fragile economy deeper into crisis.

The bill proposes handing indigenous black Zimbabweans a stake of at least 51 per cent in "every business that is being transferred, merged, restructured, unbundled or demerged and in any new investments".

Read the rest here:
http://mwcnews.net/content/view/17014/0/

Saw this on PC's blog. The Daily Show hosting a debate about whose god is greater - Muslims or Christians:

http://www.aish.com/jewlariousMultiMedia/jewlariousMultiMediaDefault/Even_Stevphen_The_Great_Debate.asp

As Ed Hudgins says: "This three-minute clip pretty much summarizes the nature of religious debate."

Well, not all tyranny, but it is at the root of some of the most totalitarian legislation and the New Zealand government's most pervasive interference in our lives recently, says SOLO (Sense of Life Objectivists) spokesman Lance Davey.

"Let me make something explicitly clear, something that should be obvious, but seems to be forgotten by most people in New Zealand. It is this: You OWN your body, you OWN your life, your life is yours, it is YOURS to dispose of as YOU please. It was not given to you by God, the public, the Earth, or the state. Your life was NEVER anyone else's to give to you," says Davey.

"Bearing that in mind, why are we allowing the government to say what we can, cannot, should and MUST put in our bodies? Why are we allowing the government to force medicate us with folate? Why are we allowing the government to label our food with kindergarten level 'traffic light' charts? Why recently did Labour and the Greens consider making workplaces 'water only'? Why are they trying to make us stop smoking? Why can't I smoke marijuana, eat psilocybin mushrooms, take BZP-based stimulants or writhe maniacally in an abandoned warehouse high on ecstasy and listening to a cacophony of noise until my ears bleed? WHY? When you acknowledge that an individual owns his own life, and that it is his property, to do with as he pleases, there is NO justifiable reason. For the state to do all those things above and more is criminal; they are assuming ownership of YOUR life. It is THEFT!

"So why the hell ARE we letting them do it? Because in New Zealand you DON'T have exclusive ownership of your life. In New Zealand, the government, using money confiscated from every other taxpayer and citizen, considers itself a shareholder in your life. As such it considers your body to be its property. The state, by assuming responsibility and cost for your health care, assumes ownership of your body. Now if that idea isn't repugnant to you, perhaps we are in even worse shape than I thought.

"The worst part is that there is no great conspiracy behind this, there is no single evil person or group we can confront and cry 'Stop!' to. No one is out to get us. It is just the rationalized progression, one step at a time until we are all doing compulsory calisthenics and eating a mandatory macrobiotic diet, of the idea that anybody or anything else can own another human being."

SOLO — www.solopassion.com

Lance Davey - ldavey@xtra.co.nz

Lindsay Perigo - 021 255 8715