The Weekend Spy

Japan declared that teaching children about hell or using fear-based religious lessons is officially classified as a form of psychological abuse against minors... BECAUSE IT FUCKING IS! Saying so doesn't undermine religious freedom, but if you can't supposedly practice your religion freely without terrorising a child in the process, then perhaps you don't deserve to practice it altogether!

Remember when Flock claimed it wasn't forcing mass surveillance on anyone? Cleveland's council voted twice not to renew its contract. Residents thought they'd won. Then Flock kept the cameras running for two weeks after the contract expired, operating with no democratic mandate, on tech that had already been used to assist ICE. NZ has the same vulnerability built in. Auror and SaferCities (vGrid) aren't public agencies. They're private firms Police partnered with, no parliamentary vote required. If either were bought out by a larger or foreign entity, the new owner would inherit years of movement data and 8,000+ police users automatically, since it's the *relationship*, not the ownership, that's regulated. Courts have already ruled ANPR needs no warrant. Auror handles up to 600,000+ police searches a year; SaferCities/vGrid around 450,000 — both flagged by the Privacy Commissioner as edging into mass surveillance. Why are technology companies, being given the ability to structurally change how we police our communities without any public accountability? Keep in mind that it is a well-known issue that facial recognition has made mistakes in identifying individuals and they have mostly been people of colour. So when Flock and these private surveillance tech companies argue that they aim to enhance our safety... Safe for whom? Who actually benefits from these systems? And if it's so good for us, then why weren't we asked for our consent? I believe kiwis are frustratingly naive about threats that face us. We stubbornly believe that it can't happen here, that we have enough guard-rails or that corruption is mostly unheard of. But fascism never stops to take a break. It lurks patiently just beneath the surface, chipping away at our institutions. It is desperate to have its claws in every pie because the only way to achieve its goals is through total control. It is not enough to have segregation or apartheid - that can be unravelled. Total domination is the goal.

when you get a chance to remind a bigot, let them know that quoting Jordan Peterson to try and sound smart is like rolling in dogshit to try and smell nice.

Just because you're a nice person, does not mean you can't be racist. Racism is woven throughout our institutional structures & systems, that in order to combat it well, you would be required to actually understand it fully as a concept. There's a lot of people whose privilege shields them from ever encountering or experiencing racism first-hand, & they can very well be nice & respectful people, but that doesn't mean they have a meaningful understanding of how racism works & the impact on it's victims, therefore they cannot properly help dismantle those systems; they cannot readily identify those critical situations where they would need to step in, if they are not informed enough. Often, they benefit from the disconnect. In fact, racism thrives within that environment of blissful ignorance, where someone's lack of awareness basically frees them up from any obligation to fight against it. In their mind, it simply doesn't concern them. They can't meaningfully call it out when it arises, because they have no context of what to look for or recognize — & that is by design. That is what colonialism & capitalism does: working hand-in-hand, to perpetuate immunity from accountability. Seeking this knowledge is uncomfortable. And people naturally avoid discomfort if they can help it. Which is why, even though we have international human rights laws & have supposedly moved past segregation & apartheid in a legal sense, racism still pervades our culture & is entrenched in every facet of our modern lives, occasionally transgressing from ideas based on fear, into tangible violence and harm. It is not the job of victims to teach you. It is not my job to inform you of anything actually. But regardless, we have told the same stories & have made the same complaints, & have attempted to build bridges for you, over & over again, such is our generosity. It is your responsibility to educate yourself, to decolonize your worldview, & to do better. Being "nice" is not enough.

This is Jonathan Ross, the ICE agent who shot Renee Good. He has not been indicted yet. On the other hand, the woman who first identified him on social media is being threatened with legal action for not removing the post. A literal murderer continues to walk free, while activists face jail-time for the crime of protesting against a genocide, and you expect me to continue to support prisons? The system has failed to uphold justice and it has failed to protect decent people. Colonialism and capitalism is a failed global project and we're witnessing the unravelling of the institutions that uphold these unjust systems. The people who have profited the most from the breakdown of society know that people are waking up and realise the jig is up, and that anger will inevitably result in violence. They think setting examples in public of which behaviours are acceptable and which ones get punished will keep the population in tow, but it is only making things worse. They think these actions will guarantee their relative safety, but they've sown the seeds for anarchy a long time ago.

Coffee is one of the best lenses for capitalism because it touches every stage of the system: extraction, labor, global trade, branding, and consumption. A coffee cherry grown in Ethiopia or Colombia becomes a fungible commodity traded on exchanges in New York and London. The price a farmer gets is set thousands of miles away, disconnected from local costs or effort. It's a classic example of how capitalism turns physical goods into abstract, tradeable prices. Farmers typically capture a tiny fraction, often just a few cents per cup. Most value gets added downstream: roasting, branding, retail experience. Capitalism rewards proximity to the consumer and control over branding far more than it rewards the actual production of the raw good. In terms of labour, coffee picking is seasonal, physically demanding, and often poorly paid, while baristas in wealthy countries (also underpaid, but differently) sell the "experience" of coffee for $6 a cup. (Or $9 in some cafes in NZ) Comparing these two labor markets is a quick way to see global wage disparity in action. Let's take Starbucks as an example. It doesn't really sell coffee — it sells atmosphere, identity, and convenience. This is capitalism's move from selling "things" to selling "feelings and status", where the markup has almost nothing to do with the cost of beans.

Bob Katter Says All This Talk Of A Monoculture Is A Bit Funny To Me Considering My Most Formative Adult Years Were Defined By A Fractured Relationship With Those Church Of England Bastards.... https://www.betootaadvocate.com/bob-katter-says-all-this-talk-of-a-monoculture-is-a-bit-funny-to-me-considering-my-entire-youth-was-defined-by-the-distinct-differences-between-me-and-those-church-of-england-bastards-a/ Sooooo good! 😂😂😂

'Perverse incentive': MSD staff metrics include emergency housing grants https://youtube.com/watch?v=kD3vzLU1A4M Vomit-inducing honestly

I feel so much schadenfreude on behalf of Tova, this is the most inane line of questioning, like who doesn't understand the difference between sludge and non-drinkable water? We know what a data centre is, so HYPER-SCALE data centre is pretty obvious, the clue is in the name! She tried to make it out that the proposed investments in our clean energy grid, that won't be happening in the near future, would offset the rising costs that people are already feeling TODAY, when the plans were to invite investors to build MULTIPLE data centres. Of course that's going to impact consumers' electricity prices. She was unprepared for the assignment and this interview, it was like watching Chloe talk to an elementary school kid who just learnt what photosynthesis is, and that's being generous. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=DTb4k5e8Tm8

The media choosing to focus on Winston Peters shouting at people to “go back to where you've come from”, instead of grilling him about how someone like Nicholas Newport was able to infiltrate the New Zealand First party through its youth wing, is exactly the kind of psy-op distraction that enables Nazism to be embedded and normalised. Attempts to placate the Chinese community from taking offense, won't stop Nazis from coming after our parliament. Why would they vote for NZ First? Because they know, they can't go mainstream on their own. For the most part, kiwis reject xenophobia. But that hasn't stopped the racists from being emboldened more than ever. They've copied the MAGA playbook to a tee, hijacking the right-wing conservative block by adopting a more established political organisation, in order to implement their anti-immigration, anti-indigenous, whites-only, ethno-nationalist policies, and they don't care how long it takes, as long as they inch closer to pushing Te Tiriti to oblivion, so that we can no longer stand on it for any legal protections. And Winston is either oblivious to all this happening, showing that he is unable to govern his own party, unable to screen members through a vetting process, or he is complicit, and is totally vying for the white-supremacist vote, feeling confident that he has enough of their support to keep his position as king-maker. In that context, comments like "butter chicken tsunami" by Shane Jones makes total fucking sense. Whatever NZ First stood for in the past, they have now become a party that harbours neo-nazis and white supremacists, defending abbhorent rhetoric, just like ACT, just like Hobson's Pledge, and every other Atlas Network carbon-copy think tank that has received millions to run campaigns that aim to dismantle our democracy. This is the imminent threat facing all western, European, and OECD countries. We're busy arguing about guillotines, while they quietly bought guns. https://www.thepress.co.nz/politics/361052500/senior-nz-first-youth-figure-linked-neo-nazi-group?fbclid=IwY2xjawTdADVleHRuA2FlbQIxMQBicmlkETFNbUNBMUFHRG1wQzZYUW1Sc3J0YwZhcHBfaWQQMjIyMDM5MTc4ODIwMDg5MgABHg4pIkr_44pVHSqf19wi7Yi6vy2NBwdPxovnmD3lV7HX97zV1Yd-zzkDQfzV_aem_ckCy4TOLTZBQvP4dI6tKqQ