Alan Charman, aka The Recruiter!
Some see
, while
others see this!
7 May 2012
This is beautiful.
Having backed ACT, and as a result, having a majority of one in Parliament, Key and the Nats have found a potential saviour should Banksie be tossed out for breaking the law.
None other than the looniest of loonies, Colin Craig and his "God First, Fuck Everyone Else" Party.
Who could possibly be more suitable for a National Party than a genuine Conservative Party?
Loving it!
1 May 2012
I'm getting sick of saying "I told you this would happen", but in the case of obscene rate increases on Auckland corporates, I indeed did tell you this would happen, some two years ago, long before Brown the Clown was elected mayor of Auckland.
I said and have been proven right, that he would protect his South Auckland voter base and hammer corporates.
Today's Herald shows that that's exactly what he's doing, with rate increase proposed for Westfield of 50% and Progressive of over 30%.These are two of the very largest employers, landlords and retailers in the city.
Hammering them makes no sense at all, because ultimately, we will all pay, with costs passed on to the consumer. Given those consumers in Brown's South Auckland precincts spend the largest percentage of income at those shops, Brown proves himself to be not just a wanker, but stupid with it. In trying to protect his voters, he is going to increase their costs, and this at a time when rents are at incredible highs and petrol is but a few cents off a historical high.
What an idiot. If you voted for Clown, go and boil your head.
30 April 2012
Nice to see:
Stuff.co.nz, one of the worst examples of populist journalism, has one of the best articles in a long time - Why Extended Warranties are Rubbish.
While it's a great article, it doesn't get all the way to the bottom of the practice of selling extended warranties - which is that the seller - both shop and salesperson - get a kickback from sales of these idiotic plans.
Secondly, the majority of people who take them out are hire purchase buyers, as pressure is often exerted on the buyer that if they do not take the warranty, the loan may not be approved.
I'm not convinced the additional "cooling down" period will help, but any publicity which allows the uninformed to realise they are being ripped off is a good thing.
Bravo, Stuff!
29 April 2012
Message to Michael Fay and his unnamed group of investors:
Kiss my arse.
Who the zarking fardwarks do you think you are to complain about a Chinese firm buying the Crafar farms?
In case any other xenophobic dickheads are aligning themselves with Michael Fay and his band of robber barons, let's not forget that this is the very same Michael Fay who made his millions from ripping off every New Zealander in the country during the 1980s.
Sure, the government was equally to blame, but if Fay the Rich White man had not had his hooks into the members of Lange's government, then we may have received a fair price for the public assets Fay the Rich White man stole from their owners - the New Zealand taxpayers.
Don't believe me? The details are so well known they are in Wikipedia for fark's sake!
This piece of human excrement and his friends benefitted by over half a billion dollars from their dirty deals. The twenty million bucks they had to pay the Securities Commission to have charges dropped must have seemed like an amazing bargain.
Fay is a corrupt prick who has no real regard for New Zealand, jumping ship for Europe when the going got a little tough here when the hard questions started to be asked.
Even when he does come crawling back quietly, where does he go? In the heart of New Zealand society, standing among us, whom he cares so much for that he is even preparing a court challenge to the Crafar sale?
Nope.
He buys an island and lives on it, excluding everyone but his equally-corrupt pals.
Yep, there's a true Kiwi patriot for you!
Make no mistake: Michael Fay is a self-serving wanker with no regard for the country at all. Wow, so by diverting a few of his ill-gotten dollars into yachting he managed to capture the world's most elitist sporting trophy. Big farkin' deal.
Possibly the worst thing in all of this is that Fay has made his intentions clear with the statement: "These farms are going to be more successful owner-operated".
That makes it abundantly clear that he is going to approach it in his usual asset-stripping style, re-packaging the farms into small units, to be sold individually. There are no prizes for guessing who will end up owning those farms, or who will make a profit out of it.
The other side of the Crafar farm debacle that nobody is touching is that the Chinese buyers aren't going to import a shipload of Chinese workers to take the place over - they merely wish to lease it back to the government, providing jobs for local farmers. The Crafar saga is a sordid tale, and involves many people known to me. The Crafars themselves were just very ordinary farmers who were encouraged into becoming a corporate farmers by greedy Westpac executives who thought the price of rural land would continue to sky-rocket.
That the Crafars were unable to cope with the scale of the operation was evident years before the crash, with constant infringements of animal health, effluent disposal and flaunting of workers' rights.
With the sale to Shanghai Pengxin, the farms will be managed by Landcorp, ensuring continuity of supply, proper farming practice and land management.
In the whole business, the funniest point escapes most of the anti-Chinese faction: they are ostensibly concerned that a whole twenty million bucks worth of Fonterra bonuses will go back to China.
I will bet my life that Michael Fay - and almost all of the opponents - bank with a bank which is not New Zealand-owned, and considering that the Australian-owned banks repatriate 5-6 billion dollars of our money to Aussie every year, $20m isn't a drop in the bucket.
Fay is a hypocritical and cynical prick whose playing of the "I love NZ" card is a bad joke.
26 April 2012
Well, I've been saying it since before he was picked as leader, and now, it seems that I was conclusively right.
David Shearer is not the man to lead Labour.
Languishing in the opinion polls, unable to make headway on National, internal staff troubles, political murmurings; all of which have been caused by his invisibility and inability to grab Key & English by the throat at a time when they have been lying down with legs open and "kick me here" signs taped to their crotches.
Major newspapers, bloggers and internal Labour voices have been heard in the past week, all suggesting that Labour recognises that shearer is hopeless and unable to win an election. As of now, it doesn't matter much who takes over - they need not even have much charisma - it just needs to be someone with some political nouse.
And don't forget as all the minor bloggers like Cameron Slater and David Farrar hop on the "Shearer must go" bandwagon is - you saw it here first! Check back - right from the time of Goff's demise I have been saying that Shearer was the wrong man for the job.
Proven right again; god, how I hate that.
25 April 2012
Special investigation - Dr Ian Coulter.
If you know anything about me, you'll know that I hate medical scammers above all.
Ian Coulter is a facilitator for medical scammers, supporting homeopathy, naturopathy and chiropractic, while denying evidence-based medicine.
He is unquestionably one of the biggest douche bags on the planet.
19 April 2012
"Cancer Rates Institutionalised Racism"
So says Toi Ora primary health organisation chief executive Tureiti Moxon, whoever the hell he might be. (link)
According to Mr Moxon, studies that show Maori have less success at beating cancer than the rest of the population somehow means that we should spend more money on Maori health.
Wrong.
What Mr Moxon fails to account for - surprise, surprise - is that those figures are not just about money.
If you tell me paying a lousy ten bucks to go to the doctor is "too much" then you are talking shit, and that's how much it costs to a doctor in a decile one area.
Mr Moxon is a liar and dick.
The rates have nothing whatsoever to do with money spent by the government and everything to do with the life choices many Maori make.
As Gladstone once said, "There are lies, damned lies, and statistics"
Mr Moxon is clearly aware of this and uses coarse data to make a statement which is neither logical nor supportable. Alas, in the 21st century, journalists no longer question statements made off the cuff, instead merely acting as a conduit for news deemed of sufficient interest to sell copy.
The first thing which needs to be pointed out is that a much higher percentage of Maori smoke than the rest of the population. (evidence)
This alone almost certainly accounts for the difference in survival rates of cancer. The study looked at all forms of cancer combined, and if twice as many Maori smoke as other people, then it's pretty bloody obvious that twice as many Maori will die of smoking-related cancers than everyone else. Given that cancers caused by smoking are the least-survivable forms, with all smoking-related lung cancers being virtually a death sentence, it ought to be abundantly clear that the death rate for Maori from cancer is going to be significantly higher than the standard population rate.
So, what Mr Moxon is proposing is that we institute free health care for Maori, because the $10 cost is almost a packet of fags, to be paid for by everyone who pays to go to the doctor.
Genius.
17 April 2012
In other news, I'm loving the Taranaki iwi that was given a $14M Waitangi settlement, only to invest most of it in a dodgy Aussie company which has since gone bankrupt.
Just wait for the Ngati Tama to come back to Waitangi with their hands out.
17 April 2012
Yeah, I've been lax with the blog, but I do have an excellent excuse.
It's kahawai season!
For the last couple of weeks, the kahawai have been running, and while it's not the best eating fish, it sure as hell is the best fighting fish for its size, and catching them on small gear is superb sport.
Here's an example of what we've been catching - do note the fish is bent into a U shape after being in the chilly bin, but it's 25 inches long and took the small chap about 10 minutes of hard fighting to get it ashore:
10 April 2012
I'm already said it, and I'll keep on saying it; Labour is dead and David Shearer is a political nonce.
The past few weeks has been a time when Key & Co have offered unprecedented opportunity to roast them like a dead pigeon, but who has been the beneficiary of Key's gaffe's and National's disasters?
The bloody Greenmunists!
Their [co] leader is an Aussie dick who should simply be unpalatable to even tree-hugging, hemp-wearing poofters, but the Greens are picking up votes because it seems Labour doesn't want them. All Shearer has to do is come out swinging - the Nats have given him enough ammunition for about six months, but he stays silent, instead preferring to try to reinvent Labour.
Bit late, old son. Trying to be some kind of Key lite isn't going to save your bacon, or Labour's. Winston Peters is giving free lessons in Parliament, so you have no excuse for not learning what to attack.
For god's sake quit now and allow the superb David Cunliffe to have a shot at CPR on Labour's corpse.
10 April 2012
What the hell is happening in England? Unlimited powers to snoop into private correspondence?
Didn't England fight a war just last century to stop that stuff?
If the planet has developed a slight list, it will be due to Orwell spinning in his grave.
Lunacy.
3 April 2012
A growing problem?
I have seen and spoken to an amazing number of really talented 50+ year olds in the past couple of weeks.
Due to no fault of their own, they have found themselves in need of a job, and there are none.
More on this to come.....
30 March 2012
End of the last quarter for FY 2011-12 and the end of the first quarter of the calendar year; where are we, precisely?
While unemployment is seen as relatively good by world standards, I think there is strong anecdotal evidence that it's going to climb before it falls, but I also think that all political parties have missed the bus on this one - to National's enormous relief, no doubt, because statistics are more akin to Mark Twain's "damned lies" than any scenario dealing with reality.
Firstly, the numbers are being kept artificially low by 450 people leaving the country each week for greener pastures in Australia. Many of those people end up in Australia unemployed and uncounted, but living with relatives or friends. Just imagine if a mere 30% of last year's emigres had stayed here and were unemployed. Simple arithmetic will tell you with that another 10,000 people added to unemployed numbers, the percentage would be 7.2 rather than the allegedly admirable 6.7 National is proudly quoting.
If all 35,000 permanent migrants had decided to stay, unemployment would be 8.1%, hardly a desirable number.
Secondly, if economic growth was a lousy +0.3% for the December quarter, and tens of thousands of school kids leaving school are added to the numbers looking for work, the situation starts to look a touch bleak.
I also reiterate my past comments that all NZ employment and unemployment statistics continue to ignore the vast pool of migrants looking for jobs here. These people are unemployed by any measure, other than governmental ones, because they aren't NZ residents and therefore are ineligible for the dole or any assistance. I would love to know how many of these people there are in NZ, but it must be several thousands at least.
Unemployment, especially of young people, is a major international problem, because the growth that creates new jobs just is not happening fast enough to cope with the demand. We've seen the riots in England that were unquestionably caused by idle minds rather than any real economic problems - even those on the dole are getting enough to eat and drink, but they don't have anything to do.
This chart here is revealing: http://www.dol.govt.nz/publications/lmr/lmr-labour-market-update.asp fig 3 in particular. The very high [traditional] rate of employment pretty well guarantees that there is very little growth left in the present economy, so where are jobs going to come from with a lousy 1-2% growth? Even worse, when much of that growth - if not all - is going to be siphoned out by the oil companies and producers?
At the same time, petrol prices have risen to a historical new high - and they've done so very, very quietly.
The biggest problem, for Auckland, the powerhouse of the NZ economy, is that rents are now at truly insane levels. The same problem is besetting Chch, with many reports of people living in cars because they cannot find accommodation they can afford.
This ain't good.
29 March 2012
Almost Easter - as has been said to me many times this week, where the hell is the year going?
26 March 2012
Art.
I'm not an arty person at all, being far too much the rationalist to be moved by a painting as much as I am by say, a time-lapse video of a seed sprouting or a cell dividing as seen through an electron microscope.
Despite that, I am a big fan of surreal art forms, from Dali through to Ted Bullmore and contemporary surrealists.
What amazes me is what can be classed as art in the 21st century, and that people are paid for foisting a con as art. This comes about because when there are no rules as to what constitutes art, anything anyone claims is art, can be!
I've kept my mouth shut - and fingers off the keyboard - when Auckland City paid tens of thousands of dollars for a piece of art that consisted entirely of two tip trucks parked at oblique angles on Auckland's wharf. Or the two pieces of black steel painted completely black which masqueraded as art in the Auckland City Art Gallery. I can even smile when I see a Colin McCahon consisting of some words scrawled on a large bit of canvas selling for $125,000. If people want to find art in dross and everyday sights, more power to their elbows.
This one, however, I am just gob-smacked by: a piece of unmown grass.
Pity the Philistine lawnmowing contractors who kept wanting to cut it!
Art as she is seen in the 21st century:
Genius! I note that I must be the greatest artist in Auckland - my lawn usually looks like that. (There is no worse gardener than a former lawnmowing contractor!)
Sorry, you arty types, but you really should reserve that bullshit for your next art project - I hear it makes good fertiliser.
23 March 2012
Kim Dotcom again.
I know Gary Gotlieb, QC, is paid to say this stuff, but his comment in the High Court at Auckland yesterday is accurate to a fault:
''Someone else in the world will be doing it, and simply to bend towards business interests in America, which is really what it's about, kowtowing to business interests in America, I would have thought would not sit comfortably with many New Zealanders.''
It sure as hell doesn't sit well with this one!
Predictably, as you can read in the same article, the USA's lawyer, Anne Toohey, of Crown Law, says that suggestions of pressure are unfounded.
This is such a blatant lie I wonder she doesn't get her bottom smacked for lying to a judge!
The dear old New Zealand police, for whom an assignment of a dozen officers for a gang raid is a big operation, are somehow supposed to have decided all on their own that they needed to hit Kim Dotcom's house like Steven Segal and a team of testosterone-junkies?
Piss off!
Operation Ark, one of New Zealand's largest-ever police operations, required 200 cops to raid 45 gang and drug-related houses, an average of fewer than five cops per house. Operation Ark was also the culmination of six months' undercover and intelligence work by the police. The people arrested were involved in an immense drug syndicate and many of the people to be arrested were known to be armed and highly bloody dangerous. These guys are going to the slammer for years, killing someone getting away wouldn't stop them, so the cops go in prepared and aware that they are putting their lives in danger.
Do note the number of cops per property of this drug raid again - fewer than five.
Compare that with the police operation to arrest Kim Dotcom.
Seventy police, including two helicopters.
To arrest one bloke at home with his heavily-pregnant wife. One bloke who was wanted for the heinous crime of copyright breach.
Kim Dotcom has no record of violence, and is clearly not a threat to anyone. He is not a murderer, a gunman or gangster, yet a force of seventy cops was assembled in no time.
There is no way the NZ Police would have dreamt up the attack on Dotcom's mansion without some serious pressure from Uncle Sam. The Commissioner would have taken direction from the Crown, which just happens to be the Crown Law office, in this instance.
Accordingly, I am quite happy to state categorically that Anne Toohey is a liar. Pressure was brought to bear, either on her, or Obama's best pal, Johnny Key, by the United States' Government. She even gives herself away when she notes that arresting people on behalf of other governments is quite routine. That being the case, and considering some of those arrested are wanted for murder or other violent crimes, it proves that pressure was involved, or the SEAL-team airborne attack on Kim Dotcom's house would not have happened.
Like everything else in the case so far, Anne Toohey's statements in court are just opera of the bizarre.
22 March 2012
Good grief, a week is a long time in politics! No sooner do I slag off the city for its borrowing than Dr Nick Smith slams them in the guts, only to resign on a completely different matter two days later.
It's a great shame that Smith blew it so badly - he was one of the few talented National MPs and I feel he would have been leader years ago but for a complete charisma by-pass.
It also seems that there's a rift between Len Clown and John Key. Brown has been trying to convince the council to become involved in education and unemployment, which the gov't has quite rightly said are none of the council's business and they have been banned from working on those kind of things that require national policies.
The only question remaining is where the Auckland City Council has spent that vast sum of money. I doubt we'll ever be told, though.
18 March 2012
Yet again, the NZ Justice system exposes its two faces - the one which is slavishly devoted to doing whatever the US Government asks, and the other one, which is still committed to actual justice.
The Kim Dotcom saga took a surprising new twist on Friday, with Judge Judith Potter announcing that the original documents served in court in respect of seizure of Kim's assets, was wrong!
The Crown Law office and the NZ Commissioner of Police both got it wrong, using the wrong document.
If any more evidence of the Mickey Mouse way this has been handled by NZ Police and Crown Law, this is the crowing glory. So eager to please some US FBI or State Department lackey that they didn't even check the document properly.
The finger must also be pointed - and maybe more angrily - at the poor judge who allowed the original documents to pass muster. They should have been thrown out when they were first presented, leaving the cops their helicopters and butch gear at home.
More 18 March
Danger, Will Robinson, Danger!
I'm a bit disappointed this news has come out on a weekend, but the Auckland City Council has just had a review by rating agency Standard & Poors, because the ACC is about to borrow money offshore. This is pretty much the entire reason for the European sovereign debt crisis - borrowing more money than the economy can afford instead of cutting expenditure and increasing income.
It seems to me that the increase in Auckland debt from $1.8 bn in 2002 to a whopping $7 bn in 2012 is really a result of successive Auckland mayors and councils not prepared to make the hard decisions in case voters get turned away from them. There can be no other reason for this profligate spending by Auckland's councils.
The increase in debt - which can only be caused by expenditure - has happened at an astonishing annual capitalised rate of 15%. During that entire time, inflation has averaged 3-4%, so the council is spending money 4 or 5 times faster than inflation.
It's pretty clear that a business or person doing this would become bankrupt very quickly, but investors will still lend money to Auckland City, because they know that if the shit hits the fan and ACC can't pay, the dear old ratepayers will just have to cough up.
Quite how Auckland has managed to spend so much more than its income over this period eludes me - it has happened at a time of almost unprecedented growth in the city, creating vastly more rating and income streams as hundreds of thousands of extra citizens have arrived. Yes, those people have caused new infrastructure needs, but most of the major projects in the city in the past decade have been funded by central, not local, government.
The debt burden of local authorities has been a worldwide issue, with even AAA rated countries like France having major issues over debt. That Auckland is about to join them by issuing bonds to try to fund whatever white elephant the present council wants to build disturbs me.
The interest alone on a bill of $7 bn is enormous, and at a rate per head of around $6000, it doesn't reflect well against cities like London, with a debt of a mere $2000 per person.
Note the way London's debt per capita has been falling while Auckland's has been rising.
Looking for direction from Len Clown isn't going to help, and it's not one we can help until the next election, by which time the incoming council will be forced to act.
15 March 2012
The religion of peace Part MMCLXVIII
Raped as a 15-year old, her family allowed the rapist to marry her to preserve their "honour".
Only a sicko could possibly think there was anything honourable in that behaviour, and the girl clearly agreed, preferring to die in agony from eating rat poison rather than submit to her rapist again. And again, and again, and again.....
Authorised by laws based on 1000-year old lack of critical thinking skills.
Bravo, islam! You've done it again.
13 March 2012.
Shearer Part Deux.
Having tried to establish himself, Shearer has managed to disgrave himself already, with glaring errors in the submission of a Private Member's Bill. Details are here.
While they may seem like minor points - as they actually are - the point is that you just can't do it with legislation. If you doubt me, try reading some current legislation; it must be absolutely perfect.
By bringing his lack of skills and support into focus, Shearer has made himself a clown, just at the time when Key needed a buffoon to take some pressure off his own blunders and fast-receding popularity.
Bravo, David!
That moves him from a political rating of 6/10 for the week to minus several million out of ten.
Idiot.
12 March 2012
At last, David Shearer has started making waves ripples.
In a clearly populist move, Shearer has aimed at the foreign ownership issue.
Somewhat after the horse has bolted, in my opinion.
We already have 95+% of banking controlled by foreign companies, with a consequent $4 bn sent offshore last year, iconic "Kiwi" companies like Watties, Goodman Fielder, Lion, DB and Tip Top [bread] owned offshore and an enormous amount of land in foreign ownership.
Whether there's any point in trying to stop the flood is one of the less-important things, but Shearer sees it as a means to getting his face on telly, and it's working to some extent, so he can have a smattering of applause so far.
Balancing it up is the whipping Key gave him in the House last week, at a time when someone with balls would have had Key bent over like a 1960s schoolboy.
9 March 2012
Has anyone else noticed the stench of lies and corruption around sabu's - Hector Xavier Monsegur - claims?
It is alleged that he forgot to mask his ip on one occasion, which led to a tip-off that led to his arrest.
Really?
The world's #1 hacker - according to the G-Men and sabu - forgot to mask?
The statements are mutually exclusive - either sabu is a bum who got caught unmasked, or he's a genuine legendary hacker and got caught somehow else. Plenty of DDOS script kiddies get caught, but hackers getting caught is a rarity, and I do not believe that a career hacker would ever be online without a trail of impenetrable proxies. If he did, then he should have taken the pain for being an ignorant twat instead of ratting on his mates for favour, you traitor.
The building up of sabu into a genius may just be part of the FBI's case-building - if they implant in the minds of the world that sabu was a legend, then it will be much easier for a Grand Jury, or whatever system they're using here, to believe that his evidence is true and beyond question.
I see the Anonymous Twitter feed has carried "Cut one head off and two more will grow" defiance, but the fact remains that whatever the truth is, the people arrested this week were betrayed by a friend and confidant. Given that nobody can now afford to trust anyone else, it's going to make concerted action pretty difficult - posting at /b/ and hoping someone sees it is a hit-and-miss way of organising, and that's what they will be left with.
Any space in cyberspace dedicated to Anonymous/LulzSec/hackers must now be highly suspect, as will any kind of meeting or transaction between people of like minds. What's to say one of them isn't a Fed/cop?
The irony that USA is expending so many millions persecuting hackers, Kim Dotcom and Julian Assange, while making no effort whatsoever to arrest scammers, phishers and credit card thieves is outstanding.
Real people, committing real crimes against other real people are ignored, while internet pirates are thrown in jail. For 120 years, so we are told.
China, which even the US State Department admits is behind the vast majority of cyber-attacks and industrial spying, faces no sanctions. The fact that China holds $US1T of bonds may have something to do with that.
A disgraceful episode all round, but I still await some more evidence on what really happened.
7 March 2012
Along with the War on Drugs, the War on Terror and the War on Afghanistan, it seems the USA has quietly launched a War on The Internet.
It has come out today that the shameful scumbag Hector Xavier Monsegur - online "sabu" - has been spying on his former friends at LulzSec for the FBI for the past six months.
He was arrested last year by the Feds for hacking, but
as soon as the Feebs saw that he was a cowardly little snivelling scumbag
piece of filth willing to sell his friends for favour, they were in like
robbers' dogs. Before you could say "Deal!" the yellow worm was ratting his
mates, which look as though it unfortunately includes a couple of Poms, one
of whom may well have been the hacker that took policy bank US security
company Stratfor to the cleaners last year.
Once we take into account the Kim Dotcom and Julian Assange cases - and the recent swingeing sentences handed down to other hackers - it becomes apparent that USA is expending enormous sums of money and manpower on this battle, and they're hands-down winning by a street at this stage. How they must be laughing!
In Dotcom's case, they have destroyed his business and income and if they manage to get him to jail, it will be only spite and a warning to others, because the damage has already been done and with the removal of Pirate Bay and Megaupload, the internet is now virtually free of large-scale file-sharing sites. The SEAL-style raid on Kim Dotcom's house 10,000 km away from USA is stark evidence that nowhere is safe from the prying eyes of USA's security organisations.
The same situation exists with Julian Assange. Confined to a house in Britain, he is toothless and his organisation is a rudderless ship these days, despite the Stratfor hack and release. Wikileaks has been more or less dormant since Assange's arrest and the organisation itself is so poorly run that even their Facebook page - a logical public domain for Wikileaks - has had its pages largely taken over by spammers and promoters of Illuminati conspiracies.
Whether or not Assange is ever extradited to USA matters not anymore, Wikileaks has been de-powered and relegated to a fringe site. Prior to the Stratfor release, Wikileaks' main page was just a plea for money. Assange was no Dotcom to begin with, and while he has plenty of mates who have helped, the legal bills must be horrendous and cannot be carried forever. And if you think the lawyers will continue from the goodness of their hearts, take a deep breath.
That brings us back to the traitorous sabu.
What impact will his treachery have on LulzSec, and by loose association and similarity of targets, Anonymous?
It will destroy them.
Traitors have always existed, so Hector Xavier Monsegur is nothing new, but it will haunt the online arena for years to come. These are not hardened criminals who will enjoy twenty years in Rahway or Wormwood Scrubs, these are young geeks with a passion for justice. The sheer length of their sentence will place them in high-security prisons. among dangerous inmates - which is no doubt why sabu not just sang, but deliberately led his friends into a trap: he was scared shitless.
If a scummy piece of shit commits a burglary, a rape or a murder, he does it with intent and the full knowledge that he is morally and legally wrong and subject to penalty.
If a young, confused and angry person does something just for the LULZ, he/she doesn't expect to be incarcerated for twenty years for what is in truth a victimless crime. Now that they realise they will be targeted by the Feebs and will be locked up, the attraction of being an internet hero & rebel will quickly lose its attraction.
6 March 2012
The biggest scam in history?
Bernie Madoff? Made off with around $65 bn.
The Y2K crisis scam? Allegedly cost 3% of the world GDP for one year, which would make it around the 300 bn mark. I think the Y2K scam was at least partially responsible for an upgrade in computing systems that would need to have been made in the short term anyway, so much of the direct costs have been recouped.
My pick is Symantec and its major product suite of "Norton" "anti-virus". I do put anti-virus in quotation marks advisedly, because it flat-out doesn't work.
The ultimate irony came a few weeks ago, when Symantec admitted they'd been hacked and that their major product ought to be disconnected. No doubt they've fixed that now, but they are worse than a joke. They don't protect you from any new virus, and they don't protect you from lots of the old ones.
I consider Norton to be spyware itself. The only purpose of the product is to report back your habits and information back to Symantec.
If you're willing to bet Symantec does work, e mail me and I'll send you a Trojan for it to play with.
6 March 2012
I am beginning to wonder if there is a deliberate attempt currently being made by our secondary schools to teach their pupils that all whites are racist and that the much-vaunted "colonialism" is the reason for Maori & Polynesian poverty and crime.
Small anecdote, maybe, but my daughter - who is in her first year of high school - has had several recent assignments and studies of NZ literature and film that feature exactly these perspectives.
First up is a short film "Manurewa" by the allegedly top-flight film maker Sam Peacocke. This piece of fantasy would sit well alongside a revisionist history of the Holocaust. A pack of small-time criminals is portrayed as sensitive and thoughtful as they variously feed horses and make boom-box combinations.
Worst of all, the film shows the shooting as accidental, when actual video footage shows the cold-blooded shooting as no accident, but a deliberate and calculated murder. It is impossible to reconcile the real shooter with the sensitive young man in tears at the result of a horrible accident, as the film shows.
I can understand why a minor film maker would want to make a controversial film, but for a school to show it is beyond belief.
I live in South Auckland, and between 1999 and 2004, my family and I lived less than 200m from the Riverton Drive liquor store, where the killing took place.
Next up, we have a short story, by another allegedly high-quality writer, Patricia Grace, New Zealand's foremost Maori woman author. The short story, Going for the Bread is said by Patricia Grace to reflect an actual incident that happened to her when she was five years old.
The basis of the story is that she was sent to the shop to buy bread, bullied and beaten on the way there, only to return home a bloody mess.
Why I doubt the story is that while there were indeed racist laws in existence in NZ up to WWII, there was little discrimination at the societal level, mainly due to the well-known and -publicised efforts of the Maori Battalion. That doesn't mean incidents of racial discrimination didn't happen, but the story goes further and enters fantasy, which gives me serious cause to doubt the major premise.
At the end, the mother tells her little girl that she won't have to go to the shop any more, because the mum will pay for a taxi from now on. As the story takes place in 1942, there is no chance whatsoever that anyone was going to take a taxi to the shop to buy bread. Petrol rationing had been in place for two years at that stage, and taxis, such as they existed at all, were used only for emergency or official business, and while there may have been exceptions in the rural areas, away from official eyes, the story allegedly took place in the capital, Wellington.
As the story contains one clear falsehood, I am not prepared to allow that the major premise has any more veracity than the taxi myth.
Maybe I'm just a cynical old bastard (I freely admit to that) but it smacks of propaganda at this stage. The rest of the year's curriculum will be interesting.
5 March 2012
Some people just will not get it, will they?
Yet again, I hear the idiotic idea that fresh fruit and vegetables are "too expensive" and that is given as a reason why people choose less-healthy alternatives.
Bullshit!
One single piece of KFC will cost you two bucks. $19.99 will buy you two Macs, two small burgers and four fries - hardly a dinner, and with a nutritional value of 5/8 of F/A.
Let's look at a family of four; two adults and two smallish children, say aged 6 and 8. As long as they don't mind finishing a bit hungry, you could spend $20 on the Mac meal.
On the other hand, yesterday at the local supermarket, I could buy skinless, boned chicken breast for $11-99/kg.
1 kg will get you five juicy, delicious, high-protein, low-fat pieces of chicken, of which one is easily enough for an adult, with a half being more than the equivalent amount of meat in the small Macdonald burgers.
I can add to that, a whole head of broccoli for $1.69 and a kg of carrots for $2.25.
So, with those base ingredients, I can cut the chicken into pieces and casserole the chicken and vegetables (about 2/3 of the carrots), which will take about an hour, and will use $1-80 worth of power.
To get some carbs into the meal, and add a little separate flavour, take 1 cup of flour ($0.30), one size 8 egg ($0.40) and about 3/4 of a cup of milk ($0.20). Put flour into bowl, add egg and milk and mix to a smooth, thinnish batter. Pour 1 tbsp into each space of a patty tray and bake in an oven at 180C for about 10 minutes. Another whopping $0-60 worth of power. Voila, 12 tasty mini-Yorkshire puddings - an excellent addition to a casserole in place of potatoes.
Total cost of meal:
Chicken $11.99
Broccoli 1.69
Carrots 2.25
Power 1.80
Mini-Yorks 1.50
Total $19-23
Note that while this is only $0.70 cheaper than the Macdonald meal, it will satisfy four appetites, and there will be a considerable amount of chicken left over - about 40% of it, in fact - 400gm, plus about the same amount of carrots, which will give everyone a delicious lunch of chicken salad sandwiches the next day, with the mere addition of $0.50 worth of lettuce. (Updated 12 March: last week I bought 1.5kg of boned and skinned chicken breast at Mad Butch for $10-99/kg. It fed our family of five for two dinners, bringing the cost down to around $15 total.)
You can swap the mini-Yorks for standard potatoes at the same, or slightly lower, cost.
Therefore, we have in fact not spent less going to Macdonald's, but have created two extremely healthy - and almost totally non-fat - meals for $0.70 less than the lousy Macdonald's meal.
Yes, chicken isn't always on special, but something sure as hell is, and always a healthy alternative. I can't stand pork, but lean pork is a good as comes from a nutritional standpoint, and pork is nearly always less than $10 a kg. By being cautious, and buying meat when on special, it is always possible to get good, low-fat meat at no more than $12 per kg. Each week, one of the major meats has at least one good special at that price. Lamb is notoriously expensive, but even lamb is occasionally down at those levels, and you will do even better by talking to a Mad Butcher store, where I last week bought some insanely good rump steaks for $12 a kg.
I never want to hear another word about the cost of fresh food, because it's a lie - fresh is not just best, it's also the best price.