Ardern's government might have sounded progressive, but it was all talk. They never did anything good and I'm still poor and I struggle to save any money. My future has been destroyed by these people who pretend to be progressive.
That's true and I'm aware of it. If we had an authoritarian leader who would build houses then I'd be all for it, but more likely we'll get some out-of-touch boomer who brings in a racial agenda and other crap, while not fixing the daily problems that people like me face.
This happens when the spirit of a nation is crushed. For example, the same thing happened under communism.
I'm living in a crowded boarding house and it isn't fun. Especially when 1 room has a couple with a child. Lots of screaming, banging on walls and crap like that. It still costs half my wage and I can't use the facilities most of the time. The hot water usually doesn't work between 9am and 8pm.
I'd like to step up and start a discussion group or political movement, since there are NIMBY elements still trying to slow down density. Would anyone care to meet up in Christchurch? It can be a pub or pizza at first.
I think kiwis are strange in general. We live in a shame based culture, similar to Japan. Top priority is to be seen doing the "right thing". Wrong think is unacceptable, even in your own private thoughts. No wonder why Reddit became the new TradeMe Forum, people love the downvote feature, because it promotes shame and silence. Other countries have more inquisitive and open-minded citizens.
I think it's a good thing if people trust the government less and less, all this conspiracy stuff just means that people have access to other information. I'll end up dying alone in a run-down hostel at the rate things are going, I have no interest in defending the government here in New Zealand after everything they've done to spread poverty. I don't care what the official narrative is. I may be aware of it, but I don't actively follow it.
From reddit:
Aaron Swartz was a man who was a part of a whoooole lot of really cool things. He helped to make a thing called "RSS" which helps people learn all the stuff they want to without going to all the different websites that that takes. It's like if you want to make a sandwich, but normally you'd have to go to a bread store, a meat store, a cheese store, and a vegetable store. RSS makes it so you can get that all at once (and enjoy your sandwich much more easily).
Aaron also was part of a group of guys who helped give out information from "PACER", which is a big system full of information about what happened at courts. But, even though all of this information should have been free, they charged people for it. Imagine if each time you asked your teacher a question you had to pay a quarter. Even though that's their job, and it should be free, they made you pay. Well that sure did make some law-people mad. They started to investigate Aaron, but eventually stopped when they realized Aaron was right.
Aaron did some more stuff, too. You know this website you're on? Aaron was a big part of it at the very beginning. A lot of people call him one of the founders, but that's not entirely true. What is true is that Aaron helped to shape and mold and make this website what it is today. It's like when mommy buys you Play-Doh. She actually started it, but you're the one that made the amazing sculpture out of it (with help from your friends, of course).
Aaron also did something that made some people pretty mad. You see Aaron thought that information should be very free. He though that people like you, and me, and everyone else should be able to read as much information as we could on stuff. He thought that the work that scientists did at colleges should be seen by everyone! So he went to MIT to access JSTOR, basically a virtual library of science, and went "out of bounds" according to MIT. He went somewhere he wasn't supposed to go, and went there to try to get all this information and science from JSTOR, which he was actually allowed to do. The problem was like this though. Imagine Aaron went to the library. He can check out as many books as he wants, right? What Aaron wanted to do was check out every book, and make sure that everyone around the world had the same chance to read them that he did. But in order to check out those books, he had to go behind the desk, which was a no-no.
So what happened is that Aaron got in trouble with JSTOR, the library, and with MIT, who is pretty much the librarian. Eventually, JSTOR decided they didn't think Aaron did anything wrong, and didn't want to try anymore. MIT was a little slower though, and didn't say much. Then the US Attorney's office came in. They're like the cops that might come to the library. The owners of the library didn't think that you did anything wrong, and wanted the cops to leave. The librarian didn't answer as quickly though, so the cops stuck around and kept asking Aaron questions and checking through his pockets for stuff.
This whole thing was very scary for Aaron. Aaron didn't have a whole lot of money, and if he got in as much trouble as the cops wanted to put him in, he would have to give it all up, and go to prison for a long time. This scared Aaron a lot. This was especially tough for Aaron because he had been really sad for quite some time. It was a special kind of sad that doesn't go away with a tight hug from mom, so it was especially hard to deal with.
(again not my words but I thought it was interesting enough to re-share)
The free trade agreement with China allows them to send their citizens here, to teach Chinese language in NZ schools.
I wish they could get CGTN onto terrestrial TV, it'd spice things up a little.
Watch this documentary "remote killing" by CGTN. This would never be allowed on NZ television, it would cause outrage.
Chinese TV can say whatever it wants about the U.S.
Here it seems we only get American talking points, and American propaganda. If our media (CNN/ABC/NBC/Reuters/AP) tell the truth, they should have nothing to fear if New Zealanders decide to watch CGTN sometimes. If it's just propaganda, then we can expose it as such. We have a community of experienced moderators here, who could be part of a watchdog organisation :P
I believe that bandwagon politics has ruined any chance of progress here in New Zealand.
What do I mean?
Binary concepts, defending Parliament, defending democracy, defending the media when they lie about someone, just because you might not like the person being lied about...
NZ ideology is that we must defend politicians and parliament and the media... because if we don't stick up for those poor lads and lassies in Parliament, then the Russians or the Chinese will come in, and pollute our pure democracy (fear of foreign interference drives us to support corrupt idiots)
I owe nothing to these MPs who have betrayed my generation, I'll never say anything good about this Parliament building or the people in it. They've done nothing to help me.
It's often said that if you don't vote for anyone, you have no right to complain, or by not voting you are automatically supporting the status quo. I argue the opposite - if you vote for these people, you are defending the status quo. If you want to elect Raf Manji then great, but where is the grass roots movement? What happens when a person becomes corrupted after you helped elect them? Do you just place unlimited faith in voting every 3 years?
What will it take for people to make a grass-roots movement that's not controlled by experienced thieves, such as the ones we keep electing? Some of these MPs have been in Parliament for over 10 years now. Faith in democracy keeps them in power.
The election cycle is bandwagon politics and I don't give a s*** about voting for the lesser evil. To understand how I got here, I recommend talking to Muslims or Jehovah's witnesses, they're the only people who seem to get it.
Morality and honesty, is not a feature of politics...
In 2015 I worked with a convert to Islam who was Ukrainian/Russian (he's from the Russian side, but near to Ukraine's border, but I digress!) People often asked him whether he supported Putin, and he didn't like this question. He'd say "I have no nation brother, I am a muslim. There is only the umma, we muslims are all one body. Yes I am from Russia, that doesn't mean I support the government".
If you talk to muslims you will find some pretty liberal muslims, but equally, you will find muslims like Omar Nabi who are highly sceptical about politics. He doesn't like some stuff that America does in the world, but he also doesn't like the taliban either. So what's his position? He doesn't give a s*** about politics, because it's the work of the devil.
The 5 Stages Of The Soul Leaving The Body | Friday Khutbah | Abu Bakr Zoud
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5jnpnnEOoTc
My former colleague said that people like Vladimir Putin will burn in the hellfire for destroying Grozny and killing so many muslims. Not to mention Chechen War part II and also the war in Syria which ISIS and the American-backed groups lost.
The same comment about hellfire could be said of our western politicians too. Australia is spending billions of dollars on submarines to d*** swing against China. Where's the public benefit? What's in it for Australian people? $80 billion dollars down the drain as far as I'm concerned. It doesn't help make housing cheaper, or let people keep more of their wage.
Trump allowed us to understand this fake political dynamic when he talked about the pressure he faced. There was a Russian ship off the American coast a few years back, I remember Trump telling the media "the best thing I could possibly do, is blow that ship out of the water". Because that's what makes a U.S. President become... "presidential". The last thing the ruling elite and media want, is someone like Robert F. Kennedy, because he'd be no good at starting a war with a rival nuclear power. God forbid, he might even care about students or workers or families.
New Zealanders are naive about politics, but other countries aren't so charitable. I read a book by a journalist who'd interviewed coal miners in Donbass. These guys were so worried about Viktor Yanukovych being overthrown, because it was Yanukovych who guaranteed a pension (including free coal) to the retired miners. Under a pro-European Union government, they could take it away and make heating more expensive. So, the miners said "all politicians are bandits, but Yanukovych is our bandit".
You'll never hear a New Zealander say this. There's no landlord who's like, yeah Luxon wants to pave over productive farmland, but he's our bandit. Without him, rents would go down and my tenants would find better deals when higher density housing is built. The evil intensification must be stopped!!!!!!1
Crap government theory...
Everything that a government touches turns to s***. The media was talking about the cost of living back in 2015 and 2016, regarding cleaner's work at Parliament. Remember that? What has changed since then, many of us are still poor. Things have either not changed, or they've got worse.
We invaded Afghanistan and stayed there for 20 years, to bring education to girls. What of it? I read on the BBC last week that some women are killing themselves, because they're not allowed to study now. The Taliban are still in power. Billions spent, and Afghanistan is the same as when we invaded. No infrastructure, opium addicts everywhere, and Al Qaeda still lurking in caves. Boeing, General Electric and Raytheon did awesome on the stock market though, perhaps that was the real reason for staying 20 years? By 2010 we knew it was almost certainly futile, but the media covered it up.
Remember the last doctor in Aleppo, and all those other stupid American "humanitarian" propaganda messages about how evil Assad was? Just in the last few weeks, Syria made friends with Saudi Arabia, and Assad has negotiated Syria back into the Arab League. As a politician, you can shoot protesters like it's Tropico 5, and still be respected by other politicians. It's all about your timing, and what gestures and signals you make to other politicians.
All this talk about bloody-thirsty dictators, and them being held to account by peace-loving democracies. All these people are the same to me. They can say "kia ora" and pretend to care about the poor, but NZ politicians are in the gutter as far as I'm concerned. They exist at the same moral level as Bashar Al-Assad, Xi Jin-Ping or Vladimir Putin.
The world is being split into two blocs, partly due to the crap diplomacy of our puts on an imperialist british accent traditional allies. Meanwhile, you get to have 1 or 0 children, and live in a tiny townhouse with a 30 year mortgage. But because you live in a democracy, you can complain online about it and feel better. Plus Australia will eventually get nuclear submarines, and our bandit politicians can protect you from wars started by rival bandits.
I don't mean to blackpill people, I just want some of you to wake up and realise that the political system is morally bankrupt, and doesn't care about us. If you want a good government then you have to get rid of all existing MPs and start over with a less-easily-bribed group of people. Current MPs only care about power politics. They are living on another planet from us, I swear. I talked to Megan Woods in person and she's just as delusional as any common "public servant" in Wellington, who get reality checks from other so-called public servants every day.
Please stop defending Parliament and politicians. Just admit that nothing will change, and start doing something about it (other than voting for more bandits)
Across the hall and one door down, there was a convicted arsonist but he was alright. The biggest problem I had was the bed bugs. Nobody seemed to care about that except me. I guess if you smoke 'P' every day, you're scratching and itching all the time, and would probably think it was normal to have itchy skin. So the bed bugs were fully grown. Nobody asked to have their room sprayed, I had to complain constantly until the useless landlord finally got tired of hearing about bed bugs every day (landlord isn't on site, and may have lived in another city). As I left, they were spraying some of the rooms to reduce the bed bug population.
I was bitten in the night by very small ones and it's bloody concerning that they were in my bedding. Around the time I left, there were large bed bugs crawling across my floor, from the room above or below me. I'm lucky that they didn't move on my belongings and contaminate my next rental! Once they make themselves at home it's impossible to 100% remove them, unless you can heat an entire building complex to around 55 Celsius. Which means lost profit for the landlords of course, lol. They can get into any gap, so your PC, laptop and phone have to be thrown away if it's contaminated with bed bug eggs.
Once I walked down the hallway and a guy came out of a door ahead of me, from the left side of the hall. He looked to his right and saw me, then he walked left, the same way I was going. This guy reeked like P.
Some of these tenants had been to prison before, because a couple of them were obsessed with rules. I went to the lounge one evening to see what channels they had. When I picked up the remote and changed the channel, some guys near the entrance way told me that I couldn't do that. I didn't realise they were watching because they were off to the side, not really in the room. They waited for me to touch the remote and then they spoke. Maybe they're not allowed food in the lounge, except for on the table near the entry hall where they sat? Anyway, these guys seemed to take the rules rather seriously than what I'd normally expect. They must have learned this in prison with the lockup times etc.
One time I got a newsletter from the lodge in which they said that a tenant had died. I later found out he had hanged himself in the cupboard. Some tenants were so poor that they washed their clothes in the communal kitchen sinks.
This place is 15 Sioux Avenue, Wigram, Christchurch and it shouldn't exist.
uh oh, don't say that, you'll only bring the mob upon yourself.
A bank account to chuck donations would be nice, but not rules. They just set this up and there is no problem. Why would you want rules? You'd just end up with another Reddit. Do you need rules for a pub or an outdoor cafe table that has 10 people? The last thing a new website needs, is a debate around what rules should exist. Here, have a fake hall monitor badge and go back to reddit ;-)
I'm going to visit lemmy.ml now, to see what these weird political beliefs are. Must be pretty good if you didn't elaborate :) maybe it involves area 51 and little grey men.
I have a flyer design (PDF) that was made by a student at Auckland University. If anyone wants to print it out and delivery it, just write on here and I can arrange it. Maybe there's a Free Software Foundation website where I can host the PDF, instead of using Google/Microsoft.
We've reached the point where the amount of outrage, false info, and bots is too much to handle. We actually need networks like Lemmy or Urbit which are closed off from the public internet, and invite only. Give people an invite code like Gmail did when it was new and coveted. When everyone comes to one place it will naturally degenerate into garbage. That's why we need a variety of different groups, made by different people. With some more open than others, so there can be actual debates instead of downvote mobs.
Being able to downvote without contributing any thoughts is just childish and stupid. I hate websites with a downvote feature because it ruins the authenticity of the website. People begin to act cautiously and don't say what they think, and don't challenge anyone on a touchy subject. The word "troll" has also lost meaning. It used to mean someone being intentionally disruptive, but now anyone with a different view is just a "troll". I could go on Reddit and use my real name and I'd be a "troll" for having my own opinion, while anonymous cowards chuck insults from the safety of their keyboards behind a VPN.
There are ways to handle dissenting views, like having a debating board on a website that's separate from the main topics. Of course nobody does this on the big websites.
"RNZ is concerned and takes this matter extremely seriously."
This topic received 400+ upvotes on Reddit. The Redditors went wild over this, suggesting it must be a far-right insider who worships Elon Musk, and that he should be fired. Seems like a hack rather than a rouge employee or a bad case of journalism.
It should be obvious that nobody in our media uses the term "colour revolution" to describe the Maidan coup/revolution. This is a term that is used exclusively by anti-NATO or anti-US groups.
BTW this wouldn't be the first time that a website was hacked, and had some propaganda edited into it. Years ago I saw a BBC article that was compromised by Israel.