Open Mike 29/09/25
Open Mike 29/09/25
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6:00 am, September 29th, 2025 - 40 comments
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Today's Posts (updated through the day):
Christopher Luxon: We’ve shown meaningful leadership on Palestine
On The Shameful, Incompetent Decision On Palestine
New Post up:
Christopher Luxon: We’ve shown meaningful leadership on Palestine
New Post up:
On The Shameful, Incompetent Decision On Palestine
Chloe was interviewed by Gary! Such a nice thing to wake up to. It's a such a pity she's in a party of complete flakes.
https://youtu.be/zl_LgDjpzxE?feature=shared
Yeah Chloe is great.
Needs to run a ministry for a while to feel policy and politics hit actual execution.
"It's a such a pity she's in a party of complete flakes."
You say it as though all the other parties are full of fine upstanding MP's. None of them would have MP's who lie about owning 25 houses or would try and destroy Te Tiriti or would deny Palestine a state or would yell "Drill Baby Drill". I could go on.
For me Marama, Chloe, Julie Ann, Ricardo, Steve , Tamatha (I could go on) are some of the sanest people in parliament.
As for policies: Party Vote Green.
I rate Steve Abel too
Steve Abel is awesome.
Would be a great successor to Sage in Conservation.
Weka-You saw him in my list I hope?
haha, no, I missed that!
Maybe USA should consider becoming NAFTA in the Ryder Cup to get some of Canada & Mexico's best. Not ready to call it just yet …. but it looks like the plucky band of Irish, Scandi, Scots & English are going to smoke the USAUSAUSA
Had a great experience in Queenstown Lakes democracy on Friday.
All candidates for Council and Mayor and Wanaka were in one large room, and we did speed dating for a top of 3 minutes, with each one. Desk to desk to desk.
That was a very efficient way for candidates to talk with a lot of people over 3 hours, and good that I could get a moment with each one.
I'm sure it was exhausting for all, but good work on QLDC staff for organising it. Possibly wouldn't work in larger centres, but in Wanaka at least it is still efficient.
Curiously Wanaka has about 30% of the QLDC population but over 40% of the total vote and I think it will be proportionally higher this time. We are a motivated and engaged bunch.
And being a Friday afternoon, we all then spread the word in all the various bars and micro-breweries about how we thought they did.
how does that work? more holiday houses?
We're just more motivated than the Queenstowners.
I do suspect there are more unoccupied houses in Queenstown though there are whole empty streets in Wanaka outside of winter and late summer for sure.
New Zealanders have been reassured that we can be proud that their government made an independent decision not to recognise a Palestine state (he also gave no indication of when it would).
Because our leader says we have his permission to be proud.
The PLO leader and PA President Abbas saying they would accept a demilitarised state is apparently not enough.
Does he even know the coalition government has via its Knesset majority declared sovereignty over the West Bank?
That a settlement development that cuts the West Bank in half (end of contiguity) has been approved.
Or that the Israeli PM says there will never be a Palestinian state?
Does the Prime Minister, the Right Honourable Christopher Luxon, not know what the 1949 terms for Israeli membership in the UN were (they include enabling the establishment of a Palestine state)?
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/world/574427/kiwis-can-be-proud-nz-isn-t-recognising-palestine-yet-pm-christopher-luxon
3 conditions for recognising Palestine.
When will he place any test on continued recognition of Israel?
Being “friends” to both.
Given the statement by Benjamin Netanyahu is in breach of his nations UN membership.
We would want to warn Israelis of the threat their PM poses to their future.
An apologist for the Atlas Network (that capitalism is the pole that the people must satellite around), champion of the few and not the many, remains inadequate and unsurprising.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/politics/360837691/luxon-you-cant-recognise-state-when-terrorists-play-significant-role
This is why he's not fit to be in government, he he truly believes there outcome is the right one , but he has to insult anyone who doesn't agree with him , ugly little man
Silly Christopher – has no-one told him that independence matters only if it leads you to a correct answer? Is it too late to sit him down with a pencil and paper and draw a simple matrix with four combinations: independent + right; independent + wrong; dependent + right; dependent + wrong ? Then ask him to identify the two most preferable options. It may take some time, but I'm confident he would get there in the end.
So Trump is about to embark on the largest sacking of US public servants in history.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/sep/28/us-mass-resignation-federal-workers
If he wants to understand what that will do for the Washington economy, Luxon would have some good advice from what he did to Wellington.
I saw "Prime Minister" yesterday. What a privilege it was to see Jacinda in the behind the scenes events that occurred during her tenure. But also so sad to see the pressures put on her which wore her down. Her empathy and 24/7 desire to always do her very best for New Zealand during Covid and the other extraordinary events in her time as PM. I miss her smile, her humour, her quick witted responses, her charm, her dignity and genuine liking for people from all walks of life. "Prime Minister" is my movie of the year.
When I think of the current inadequate human with few, if any, redeeming qualities that we are stuck with at present!!! I could list what I find so unlikable about Luxon but will not waste my time.
Totally agree. For those of you who haven't seen it – please make the effort – it's well worth it.
Also – just to give a taster:
A true star from way back…
Happily sowing division and discrimination in the name of a 'vaccine' she knew did not prevent infection or transmission, and had only a small window for potentially reducing severe illness.
Outbreak of SARS-CoV-2 Infections, Including COVID-19 Vaccine Breakthrough Infections, Associated with Large Public Gatherings — Barnstable County, Massachusetts, July 2021 – PMC
Is it fair to compare a nation with few cases of infection (enzed) and a nation that had many infected before there was a vaccine (thus some immunity)?
The importance of vaccine immunity here was more important than in the USA (their stats are not relevant).
The Pfizer product did not confirm 'immunity'. Did not prevent infection or reduce viral load in the fully 'vaxxed' infected. At the very most it might reduce symptoms…allowing some infected fully vaccinated to wander around spreading the virus.
https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7031e2.htm
Published on CDC site on 6th August 2021.
Of course with our closed borders and lockdowns we had fewer cases than the US…but we soon caught up in 2022.
I'll not contend with your opinion about what "one study proved".
I will provide a link to the opinion of a range of people with some expertise in the field and what evidence demonstrates.
https://sciencemediacentre.es/en/reactions-pfizer-executives-claim-they-did-not-test-whether-covid-19-vaccines-stopped-transmission
Because of our closed borders we had less lockdowns than in other nations (and even Auckland had less than those in Victoria).
2022 was the arrival of omicron, it got around vaccines & previous infection, but was less of a threat.
I'll not contend with your opinion about what "one study proved".
That 'one study'…did you read it? All of it?
I did when it was first published on the US CDC website.
Because I was checking what overseas health authorities were doing and saying as they were some months further down the track than us.
This 'study' is actual data…not opinion.
Now, I do understand that I was breaking the rules as set down by Our Leader in early 2020…
If that had been a politician from National, Act or NZ First The Left here would have had a collective meltdown.
[“That ‘one study’…did you read it? All of it?” I didn’t. Because I’m busy. Here’s what needs to happen: if you make claims of fact about vaccination etc you need to do these things:
you’re in premod to make sure this happens – weka]
Yes the study provided data. You provided your opinion (version of what it showed, you could quote it).
What did you conclude from reading it and the comments in the link I provided?
All your demonstrating is your continued lack of understanding of how vaccine's perform (We've had this discussion before).
As you highlight the Pfizer vaccine (in general no known vaccine) produces sterilizing immunity to Covid-19 including variants. This is not new, the flu vaccines seasonally administered have similar performance, with their effectiveness being impacted by the ability of manufacturers to guess the viral composition of the next flu season. For some reason you want to contrast this to certain vaccines for other viruses which can have the property of sterilizing a high enough portion of the population from infection that the virus stops spreading inside that population of vaccinated people.
Now the important point to understand is, even for a sterilizing vaccine this doesn't prevent the virus being caught be someone who is vaccinated, and it doesn't prevent even someone who is vaccinated from becoming seriously ill from catching that virus. What is does do is alert the vaccinated persons immune symptom to the virus so that it can begin to fight it off sooner after the initial infection. This on average reduces the severity of the infection so in fewer cases the infection reaches an infectious level or at least lowers the severity of the infection. In the case of sterilizing vaccines this usually reduces the level that the virus doesn't further infect people, but can in the odd case still infect further people, this has a diminishing frequency so the infection never spirals. This is what we call herd immunity, and it depends on a high enough portion of that population to be vaccinated.
With this correct understanding it is fairly straight forward to correctly interpret the Pfizer study. The study did show the vaccine to induce reduced infection, viral load and transmission on average. While that was significant it was not sufficient to make this a sterilizing vaccine. The other thing going on being that the study was primarily on a population effected by the Delta variant for which it was manufactured. This had less (but still measurable) effect on the novel Omega variant which was both more infectious and less dangerous.
thanks.
Can you please explain how the non-sterilising covid vaccines reduce/d transmission, and severity?
Both sterilizing and non-sterilizing vaccines reduce transmission and severity by alerting (exposing) the immune system to the virus so that it's no longer novel at the point of actual infection. This causes the immune system to respond sooner and faster to an infection in the typical case meaning the virus doesn't get the opportunity to reproduce or develop significantly on contact.
They vary by how this exposure is injected including injecting (more) harmless variants, variants which don't reproduce, manufactured reproductions or in the case of mRNA vaccines triggering the same protein reproduction processes the viruses uses itself.
Link? Enough of your antivax bullshit……
The link is there. Here it is again straight fwrom the US CDC website. https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7031e2.htm
No. I want a Link to your quote that i put in my comment.
Ah. Thanks for clarifying.
OK…Back in April 2021
https://www.stuff.co.nz/nz-news/350511443/coronavirus-one-new-covid-19-border-case-in-new-zealand-none-in-community
Fully vaccinated border worker. Tested positive…ie; despite being fully vaccinated had detectable viral load.
The US CDC paper from August 2021 confirms that the infected fully vaccinated had similar viral loads as the unvaccinated.
I assume Ardern's advisors did the job we paid them to do and kept her fully appraised of data from overseas…especially the US.
The 324th mass shooting in the USA this year was in Michigan today.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mass_shootings_in_the_United_States_in_2025
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/world/574412/two-dead-children-among-injured-after-michigan-church-shooting-and-fire
One wonders why these are reported at all in NZ given they are more than daily occurrences.
I wonder when "thoughts and prayers" will not suffice to appease the conscience of US Law makers. Looking at you Repugnants.
Probably not.
https://bsky.app/profile/katz.theracket.news/post/3lzweksh3vs2t
A 40-year-old Marine veteran who pulled up to a waterfront North Carolina bar by boat fatally shot three people Saturday night, authorities say, shattering the peaceful atmosphere of a community rarely touched by violent crime.
Out-of-towners were enjoying the warm weather and music on an outdoor deck at the American Fish Company in Southport, a small and tranquil city near the mouth of the Cape Fear River, when gunshots rang out. Eight people were injured and at least one victim “is now clinging for their life,” Jon David, district attorney for North Carolina’s Judicial District 5, said at a Sunday morning news conference.
https://edition.cnn.com/2025/09/28/us/southport-yacht-basin-north-carolina-shooting-hnk
So under the COC's new earthquake building safety rules announced today a building in a town/city with more than 10.000 people may be deemed to be unsafe but an identical building in a town with less than 10,000 people will be deemed to be safe.
Brilliant.
Yet more legislation favouring rich people who own these buildings at the expense of public safety.
Yeah but your only gonna kill hicks in a small town so no problem there old chap,