Open Mike 28/08/25
Open Mike 28/08/25
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6:00 am, August 28th, 2025 - 37 comments
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Today's Posts (updated through the day):
Why Changing the Government Should Be Enough
I'm reminded of a line from Blazing Saddles, where a little old lady shouts "Have you ever seen anything so cruel?"
Well, have you ever seen anything so cringeworthy? Arse-lickers of Trump's cabinet!
5.10 minutes long – go on, watch and spoil your day!
https://villains.fandom.com/wiki/Hedley_Lamarr
A public service merger of MoT, M Housing, and Urban Development would be a useful centre for advice and accountability particularly of local governments delivering integrated roads, public transport, and housing – and to pressure greater integrated delivery between NZTA and Kainga Ora:
Major public service reshape afoot | The Post
"The Government is already considering a triple ministry merger between the Ministry of Transport, Ministry of Housing and Urban Development. And Roche has reportedly refused to rule out the Ministries for Women, Disabled People, Pacific Peoples being absorbed into larger ministries."
Very hard to see a future Labour-led government disagreeing with the first merger.
But it looks like there are a lot more coming up this term.
Ah, David Seymour ? Do they know the guy ?
The other David Seymour…(from The Herald..no lefty paper)
“Act launches Treaty principles referendum campaign to twist National’s arm”
Seymour said the party was “launching a campaign to give Kiwis the facts on the Treaty Principles Bill”.
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/politics/act-launches-treaty-principles-referendum-campaign-to-twist-nationals-arm/JUJIBSVQANAVVIOTK3DXPNG62Y/
“France, the United Kingdom, Canada and now Australia, have all declared an intention to recognise a Palestinian state at a United Nations summit next month.
Asked why New Zealand was delaying this decision, Seymour said “we shouldn’t assume that other countries are right”.
“It was easy to by horrified by the violence in the Palestinian territories shown on television and social media and to be driven to want to take action, he said.”
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/political/569681/it-s-a-matter-of-when-not-if-new-zealand-recognises-a-palestinian-state-david-seymour-says
Another excellent article by Braunias (paywalled) demonstrating the paranoia of the Trump administration.
It is a badge of honour to be refused entry….but who would want to go?
"…they ask you for all your social media handles for the past five years when you send in your forms for an interview at the consulate. A French scientist was denied entry to the US in March after immigration officers at an airport searched his phone and found messages criticising the Trump administration. The US state department advises it is on the lookout for “any indications of hostility toward the citizens, culture, government, institutions, or founding principles of the United States”, ie, an opinion."
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/the-listener/life/steve-braunias-on-the-trial-of-getting-a-visa-for-america/F7ABM3SVKZFBBG53RCGLDTODHM/
Sometimes it’s a fine line between disagreement, criticism, hostility, and personal attacks and this line easily blurs or disappears from sight altogether. It almost never is at the level of a single individual but a social phenomenon. When it happens at the political level with the full might of government behind it, it takes another dimension.
One would not go to Germany in 1938 either.
Blood on her trotters.
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https://bsky.app/profile/brycepearce.bsky.social/post/3lxfzina7h22k
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/political/562876/brooke-van-velden-shifts-worksafe-s-focus-from-enforcement-to-advice
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/political/571335/alcohol-laws-to-be-loosened-government-announces?utm_source=newsshowcase&utm_medium=discover&utm_campaign=CCwqGQgwKhAIACoHCAow35aQCzD3-KMDMK7EvAQw1MfoBA&utm_content=bullets
Acts donors have spoken and the policy has been amended to not impede profits in the name of reducing harm.
Tell the truth CNN/Stuff. This is not a woman – this is a violent psychotic young man whose mental illness was camouflaged by his assertion of a Trans identity. Not only did he not get the appropriate treatment, he was also able to get hold of a semi-automatic gun.
"Westman knew their friends would hate them for it and they planned to take their own life after the shooting, CNN reported"
https://www.stuff.co.nz/world-news/360806054/us-school-shooter-wrote-homage-christchurch-mosque-shooter-weapons
Where in the article you link, does it say Westman ( the shooter) is a women?
Lots of they them horse shit
Here's a better example. NYT,
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/27/us/minneapolis-school-shooting-suspect-gunman.html
NYT can get fucked. These are not women's crimes. They're harming society, women and trust in the MSM by doing this.
Here is a copy of a page the alleged manifesto of the shooter posted on X.
He apparently used a coded form of Russian type script, which isn't actually Russian, but coded English.
It apparently translates as:
ABC News reports on a lot of the other content in his manifesto, expressing hatred to a lot of groups & Trump, but also apparently expressing the desire to kill children..
I've seen some of those pages too, just haven't been able to verify. Are they from the youtube? Or did the police release them?
someone in the newsroom getting a bollocking for the word gunman 😉
I would expect the BBC to be not reporting on trans status, but tbf, this early in reporting, most good outlets will be wanting confirmation before reporting. I've seen one UK MSM say the shooter was trans (on the basis of name change from Robert to Robin), but not sure if it's actually confirmed. Lots of internet rumour.
Kash Patel of the FBI said that the shooter was transgender. CNN/Stuff weasel worded it with they/them.
https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:ul6257nlxim4rdn7i7ujruy2/bafkreifbx5daqvghnk3yjnjq2gxrpe34zlfwnbttkztsglfrcmqthbqsla@jpeg
When someone commits mass murder, their whole lives are up for scrutiny. This is because society needs to understand why such things happen and how to prevent them.
I don’t know if this man’s gender identity is a relevant part of the picture or not. I’ve read your meme and I’ve seen other ones saying he regretted his transition. We don’t actually know the truth at this point.
There is a long history now of MSM reporting trans women’s crimes as women’s crimes. Part of that history is that liberals have insisted that we don’t talk about the trans status of trans identified men who murder or rape. As if somehow trans people are exempt from the norms of civil society. Or perhaps liberals are saying that protecting trans people generally is more important than protecting society for murderers and rapist.
Or perhaps liberals are saying that protecting trans people generally is more important than protecting society from murderers and rapists.
Women have particular skin in this game because we generally don’t commit these kinds of crimes, so when men say they are women and those crimes get counted as women’s crimes it skews the statistics in an area already fraught with messy stats and research.
It also starts teaching society that women are violent too. It’s true that women can be violent but it’s rare relative to how often men do it. This kind of murder is overwhelmingly a male crime. There are also correlations between male shooters and domestic violence.
There are also correlations between male shooters and domestic violence.
This man’s life should be under a microscope.
We also need to understand how transition may impact on criminality. For trans men this includes the impact of taking testosterone. Will trans women issues will be different, physiological, psychological and social. No Debate has meant we can barely talk about these things, let alone study them in a meaningful and robust way.
I'd really like to see the liberal argument for not examining the trans status of a mass murderer.
Most mass murders (with guns) are cis gender men.
Is their status part of the discussion over their (hate) crimes?
That said access to guns is a public safety issue and thus there is some relevance of determination of risk in legal access to gun ownership.
As for the stats, transgender numbers are too small to have much influence on the aggregate male and female stats.
That said there is a case for separate stats.
If so, then sub categories, those who went through the health system, those who self-identify and those who only claim to be transgender after the crime is committed (heterosexual male criminals).
The issue would then be how far this went – committing crime, being victims.
Where do we separate out based on difference (race, ethnic group, sex, gender claim, sexuality, religion, political creed etc)?
No, because it's inherently understood. Most of the world outside of certain liberal circles still thinks in terms of sex not gender identity.
Citation needed. The number of women who rape for instance is tiny, so it doesn't take much in a country like the UK for trans-identified males to impact on stats. I'm mentioning the UK here because in the English speaking world the UK is one of the few places where No Debate has been broken, and better analysis of the issues is available.
Sure. This should have been happening all along, and didn't because of liberal insistence that trans women are always good and virtuous.
what?
Where it matters. eg religion is more an issue of fundamentalism I think, but obviously there are issues with Islam and Christianity. Sex we already know about (murder is a sexed crime).
If we were to look at ethnicity, in the NZ context we would look why Māori are disproportionately represented in crime stats, how that is fits in with socioeconomic and sex classes, and colonisation. To say, oh we should never mention the ethnicity of a criminal would be daft. We should also look at the inherent biases in various systems eg how MSM reports on crime and ethnicity.
Which is probably what your meme was getting at. We shouldn't assume trans women are inherently violent and we need to be careful in how we discuss the issues. We know that in the US the right are going hard against trans people, and we can see this playing out in MSM and SM in the past few days.
The push back against that isn't to use No Debate tactics like the meme, it's to allow progressive gender critical voices to be heard (while we still have some). The people who will say both 'trans people shouldn't be pillorised by this one individual' and 'we need to look at this murderer's mental health, including GI and how transition might have been part of that'. And feminists need to be able to talk about how this affects women.
On X/Twitter, I read some extracts from what is claimed to be a statement or statements on social media by the alleged gunman. It sounds like the guy is mentally all over the place and probably has serious mental health issues.
He talked about knowing he wasn't a woman, but wanted to look pretty, was envious of pretty women, and seems sometimes to have regretted his transition.
But according to the statements he seems to be well into fascism/neo-fascism, and revered other mass murderers eg the Christchurch Mosque killer.
major mental health issues from what I can tell. Living in an increasingly transphobic country might have been part of that, as might the dysphoria. But I would guess some level of sociopathy to act out of whatever mental distress by killing kids.
As to recording stats, as either perps or victims
still not following the how far it went bit. We can collect stats based on sex where that matters, and on GI where that matters, for both committing crimes and being a victim of a crime.
As to how many sub categories …
Thus is either based on someone's determination as to when this matters, or just collect it all and then search for relevant information off the aggregate date base.
third option: use academic work to establish which need to be used when. There’s been significant work done on this in the UK around stats, because the census used stupid questions after being told not to, got stupid results, and then others had to step up and fix it.
https://www.sociology.ox.ac.uk/article/flawed-census-question-leads-to-inaccurate-data-on-gender-identity
Whose academics?
I don’t know what you mean by ‘whose academics’.
But reading between the lines, I would say the ones not ideologically committed to replacing sex with GI. Hence my talking about what happened with the UK census.
Whose academics is irrelevant, if collecting base data in all categories.
All particular categories can then be compared across time.
who decides which categories?
The taking of (medicinal/prescribed) drugs can be relevant but is a much wider issue than identity transition.
And can be relevant.
yep. The whole mental health field is a nightmare.
This in the NZ Herald: