International Criminal Court judge, "sanctioned" by the USA for doing his job, blocked from using internet services worldwide, credit cards, banking... And nobody cares...

Wow, this is a great summary of COP30! All the COPs, come to think of it. 🤔

350 children held: The Palestinian Prisoners' Media Office confirmed that International Children's Day is being observed this year amidst an unprecedented escalation in Israeli violations against Palestinian children, with the Israeli enemy holding approximately 350 children in its prisons

I'd be v unsurprised if an OIA request turned up some things that might be intelligible to a judge as evidence of either improper purpose, consideration of irrelevant facts, or otherwise inadequate evidentiary basis to make the decision. So the next step ought to be to *make* such an OIA request...

"When it came to Covid, we completely blew out what the value of a life was, completely, I've never seen such a high value on life.” - Brooke van Velden

The PRC has taken over Grey St again. Who are we grovelling to today?

TL;DR: we're paying $45 million more to get smaller boats. Also, the regime isn't funding as much landside stuff, leaving it for a future government to pay for www.rnz.co.nz/news/politic...

In addition to the incredibly apt comparison to Robotdebt I reposted earlier, I'd like to mention the perverse incentives here about getting folks off ACC. Not removing their need for ACC, but rather removing the provision of ACC to them. There's quite a difference. www.rnz.co.nz/news/nationa...

Benjamin Netanyahu's de facto propagandist and spokesman, Amit Segal, has written a long and meandering blog post arguing that Turkey is the new Iran and that Israel must prepare for existential measures against the NATO member-state.

British troops are using Israeli arms technology tested in Gaza They’re now equipped with a ‘cutting-edge weapons sight’ produced by an Israeli arms firm nurtured by its defence ministry.

This contribution to the volume of human misery is yet another policy from Labour based on a false premise, in this case that refugees are overly attracted to Britain. It will increase bureaucratic limbo, thus making worse the problem of "cohesion" it purports to solve. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

A pariah state completely out of control

30 hours in to a power cut to a couple of apartment buildings. With a baby. And a cold. Apparently they don't work on this stuff overnight.

I would have acted sooner if not for the systems put in place to facilitate plausible deniability—

Israel's collapse continues: "Ben-Gvir continues to push to loosen the law’s application even more to give Israeli forces the authority to execute Palestinians in the field"

The fact that anybody in DPMC thought any of this was free and frank and could be withheld speaks to a level of paranoia and contempt for the public in that agency - not to mention OIA illiteracy. They don't seem to think we should know the basics about how this country is governed.

Big Fresh. Billy T James. Big Snow. Aramoana. Ruthanasia. Oh, and Radiohead, and Servalan from Blake's Seven. Yes, it's the Nineties! You can now dive into The Press from 1990 to 1995 with Papers Past. my.christchurchcitylibraries.com/blogs/post/1... ^DR #Christchurch #Ōtautahi

It's always nice to see @fyi.org.nz acknowledged in a news story as the source of an official information response. Roger Calkin has used the service for many years in his efforts to stop preventable deaths on Wellington's waterfront.

Sometimes I'm reminded of Renshaw Edwards and laugh. (I probably find it funnier than the country's senior solicitors did.)

The admission that the police are deliberately siphoning off correspondence to the PM and the Minister of Police from members of the public to make sure it is never seen sure strikes at the heart of a democracy. Corruption at the top level. Heads must roll.

"It's a few bad apples..." Enter, stage right an angry goose: "How does that saying finish, motherfucker, what does a bad apple do?"

@chrishipkins.bsky.social Care to apologise to Tamatha Paul for your public belittling of her when she dared to suggest some people may not trust the police? I expected a more considered response from you. Instead you were all in on the side of the police. Shameful. #nzpol

Fantastic. I hope there will be apologies to Ms Paul from the MPs who attacked her for expressing these views.

Not mentioned: the law creates a framework for surveillance of people's vehicle movements and allows the data captured to be shared with the Police and intelligence agencies. (see section 65ZF(3)). No explicit protection against capturing faces and sharing those. legislation.govt.nz/bill/governm...

At what point do we publicly accept that NZ is deeply corrupt and the only reason why we don’t have a culture of direct payoffs and bribery (that we cite as the evidence for us not being corrupt) is because it’s not needed? The boys club gets what it wants through people playing their social roles.

IPCA's policy of not using real names of Police employees is getting ridiculous.

ITV is braver than the BBC.

🍿 Were I to offer advice here, it would be to get into the High Court ASAP to seek a temporary injunction preventing this expulsion in order to complicate TPM being able to claim that there has been a "distortion of proportionality" in the House (thus enabling it to use the Party Hopping law).

Also 40 years since Huey Lewis sung "Don't need a credit card to ride this train" and we're still waiting for the national ticketing system to let us buy train tickets on our cards.

The Israelis are never going to withdraw further than the yellow line, they will leave the 2 million people boxed up in the rubble and filth stretching from Khan Yunis to Gaza City and just tell them "you can leave whenever you like" No economy, no life The concentration camp just got a lot smaller

"World's first potential trillionaire has killed 600,000 people, including 400,000 children" is the only headline that anyone should ever read about Elon Musk

Again a systemic story that's bigger than the individual bits: a govt which ran into power in large part based on banging the localism drum about water has accelerated the pace of centralised - and personal Ministerial - decision-making. This is a big story about this govt. Someone should tell it.

“You’ve been repeating several times that Russia should pay for the reconstruction of Ukraine. Do you believe that Israel should pay for the reconstruction of Gaza since they have destroyed almost all its civilian infrastructure?”

Great to see a prosecution (uncommon) and conviction not discharge (rare). However: The superior considered the officer's conduct "appropriate" - will that officer be sent for retraining too?

I was gobsmacked when I saw that story. For context ACC's levy income was $6.681bn and its $50bn investments brought in another $4.35bn. $1.1m is literally three-fifths of bugger-all. The pettiness & short-sightedness are jaw-dropping.

Bring back political postering.

New awareness campaign

Trump Writes Netanyahu Strongly Worded Check

Primary production committee has reported back on the Valuers Bill. We did not submit in vain. selectcommittees.parliament.nz/v/6/50867ff2...

“The few remaining hospitals in the territory lack the equipment for DNA testing, which is desperately needed to help identify thousands of missing or deceased peope. Israel does not allow DNA testing materials to enter Gaza.” www.theguardian.com/world/2025/n...

Last chance to turn it off. On Monday, November 3rd, Microsoft will start using your LinkedIn data for AI training. And remember, you're opted in by default. To toggle it off 👉 Account - Settings & Privacy > Data privacy > Data for Generative AI Improvement.

Allow me to summarize: 1. 5 IDF soldiers caught sexually molesting a Palestinian prisoner. 2. IDF files charges. 3. IDF AG faces enormous pressure from government to drop charges. Mob storms base where it happened. 4. IDF AG leaks video documenting the molestation. 5. IDF AG pushed out (continued)

Also worth noting that brand new pale stale male right wing councillor with zero experience Karl the ice cream man was given a chair role by Little.

If you or I did that, we'd be looking at 7 years in prison. But if the gang in blue does it, by setting practices and incentives which encourage their staff to lie, then what happens? www.legislation.govt.nz/act/public/1...

I've gone back and forth on whether to post about this -- part of me that is so, so tired of flaying open the details of our grief just to beg the world to care. They killed my friend. They fucking killed him. His wife is struggling immensely to feed their children. Anything you can donate helps.

Neat! So NZTA confirms that Tesla have no special approval to release "full self-driving" in New Zealand, and that there has been no advice sought or provided regarding whether the product is safe to deploy in New Zealand. Good luck if you're sharing the road with these things.

A while back I wrote about Auror for @davidfarrier.com's Webworm. They didn't like the story (lol) and said they didn't do facial recognition (which I didn't technically say the did at the time)... guess what they're rolling out now.

I meant it!