Bollard doesn’t inspire confidence when he says inflation expectations “appear to remain anchored…though there is a slight upward drift.”So, we're hanging our hopes on a convenient coral reef for our anchor to trip over. Has the RBNZ been selling any $NZ lately? And what's going to happen to the price of oil once the Northern Hemisphere winter hits?
"After months of mounting pressure over corruption allegations... Last night's announcement came as a surprise but hardly a shock, given the accumulating weight of comment that he could not go on in the face of a slew of police and judicial inquiries."
"Britain now has by far the largest DNA database in the world. It includes an estimated one million people who have never been found guilty of any offence, some 100,000 of whom are children. About 40 per cent of young black men have been forced to provide samples, compared with 13 per cent of Asian men and 9 per cent of white men.
Genetic material is now taken from all people arrested by police, regardless of whether they are subsequently charged or convicted, and remains on file for life. Offences covered include begging, being drunk and disorderly, taking part in an illegal demonstration and minor acts of criminal damage caused by children kicking footballs or, in one instance, throwing a snowball.
...It registered alarm over the "very lax security" protecting the database and concerns over "who had access to samples and profiles and for what purpose"."
New Zealand's DNA database needs to be kept on a very tight leash, and it certainly should not have its reach broadened to include anyone ever busted. I've heard enough stories of cops here heavying arrestees to provide DNA even when under the law they aren't obliged to. I do not trust the police with this level of personal detail, and if this plan to expand NZ's DNA database goes ahead, I fear it will all end in tears.
"The Supreme Court has been asked to determine and has granted an appeal on three questions of law. Number one, can the police supply so-called vetted jury lists to the Crown, to assist the Crown in deciding whether or not to challenge a prospective juror in a criminal case? The answer that is yes.J Fogarty raised the issue in February, dismissing the practice which various police districts had been using, giving these vetted lists over to the Crown. I agree with Fogarty on this. Jurors are not on trial, and if previous convictions for the defendant were inadmissable (this too is changing, but that's another story again), what the hell has a juror's past got to do with it?
"The second question is should the vetted jury list that is supplied to the Crown, also be made available to the accused? And the third question is, can the Crown peremptorily challenge a prospective juror, on the basis of information contained from a vetted jury list."
"Police also found dried cannabis at the address and a small amount of cannabis resin, but no other drugs, money or firearms were located."This grower should be applauded for their ethics, not thrown into jail! Growers aren't just your typecast gang profile. Most of 'em are law-abiding and peaceful medicine men and women.
Language is bigger than humans, demonstrated by Nim, the dope fiend chimp.Elizabeth Hess: The idea was to put an infant chimp into a human family, allow that chimp to learn language in the same way that human children might learn language, that they would absorb it naturally from their siblings. And the reason that they were using American sign language is there had been earlier studies which had shown that chimps are extremely gestural, they were able to learn American sign language whereas they don't have the same voice boxes that we have. But no chimp had been raised from infancy in a human language and taught ASL, so this was an experiment that everybody was really looking at and watching to see what would happen.
Natasha Mitchell: He even got to a point where he drank beer and smoked.
Elizabeth Hess: Yes, it was the 70s so you know it wasn't uncommon for Columbia students to be hanging around at night smoking pot, and Nim loved pot and eventually developed his own sign for give me a joint (goNZo emphasis). You know chimps have the same vices that we have. Nim started the day for his entire life with a cup of coffee and as he grew older was often grumpy if he didn't get it.
Said Alice, "but when you have to turn into a chrysalis- you will some day, you know- and then after that into a butterfly, I should think you'll feel it a little queer, won't you?"The Ministry of Health could learn from Alice and have a little more empathy.
"Not a bit," said the Caterpillar.
"Well, perhaps your feelings might be different," said Alice; "all I know is, it would feel very queer to me."
"You," said the Caterpillar contemptuously. "Who are you?"
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"The thing that makes New Zealand's economy tick is agriculture, and so you could say that that 20 percent of our GDP actually relies on the top 15 centimetres of our soil."In order to preserve our economic base, we need to declare war on erosion. Thanks to years of chopping and burning down the forests that once held this land together:
"It's actually natural capital that you can't get back... We've lost a lot of soil organic matter, and that's the glue that holds our soil together... We live in a windy climate, prone to a bit of wind erosion. We're in a rainy climate, so we're prone to water erosion. And also we have some very steep land, so... that's why the silt ends up in our estuaries."
Senior Sergeant Mel Aitken said police acted on information from officers at the scene that Gray was smoking marijuana at a Norml stall at a market day on the university's union lawn. Police also received a complaint from the university proctor's office.Tell me, people, who are YOU more worried about? A coward of the country or a couple of poor Dunedin hippies?
"I have weighed up the balance between the right to life – the most important civil liberty – the fact that there is no such thing as complete security, and the importance of our hard-won civil liberties. Therefore, on a matter of principle, I cannot support 42 days' pre-charge detention. I do understand different views and that there are judgements honestly reached by others, and I respect these views."
"No. 1 was surly, 2 was mean, 3 was vicious and 4 was brutal - although Mean Machine, as he became to he known, was to prove most dangerous on those rare occasions when his dial setting got stuck on 4½."Thank you frog for curing my writer's block on how I was going to start this post. Because the last week has shown that Labour has got its dial stuck on 4½ and is caught up in a headbutting frenzy.
The speech was going competently enough until these chilling ideas were introduced. This is not America, and I'll be damned if I'll support anyone who wishes to pollute this country's privacy with such notions. So what if Sweden has seen fit to legislate wiretapping of its citizens? So what if Britain is nuts for CCTVs? THIS IS NEW ZEALAND!"Just look on the internet at the publicly available version of 'Google Earth' to see how much can be seen via satellite. It is easy - if we have the right relationship with our traditional allies and they provide us with intelligence - to observe the movement of cars and individuals without the need for kicking in doors or planting bugs and GPS locators (although, clearly, the latter technologies have their role).
Power consumption analysis can show potential hydroponic growing operations, and crowd motion studies via satellite or covert filming can identify 'tinnie houses' or other sites of interest. Infra-red and related technologies can reveal certain types of illegal activity - but it is naïve to expect that staking out these sites will turn up a high-level gang boss, who will never be seen in those places."
"Ephraim Halevy, a former head of the intelligence agency Mossad, told a meeting of the Jewish Agency in Jerusalem on Tuesday that Iran's nuclear ambitions did not represent an existential threat to Israel.Unfortunately, Bush's invasion of Iraq has given precedent to pre-emptive military action, upping the ante considerably. It is entirely plausible for Israel to consider unilateral strikes against Iran, knowing full well that the US went to war in Iraq with far less justification and got away with it.'I am convinced that Israel cannot be destroyed,' Halevy said. 'We should not sink into the doldrums of "Israel is on the verge of extinction".' Ultimately, he said, the United States would talk to Iran, and Israel needed to be part of that dialogue."
Clandestine operations against Iran are not new. United States Special Operations Forces have been conducting cross-border operations from southern Iraq, with Presidential authorization, since last year. These have included seizing members of Al Quds, the commando arm of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, and taking them to Iraq for interrogation, and the pursuit of “high-value targets” in the President’s war on terror, who may be captured or killed. But the scale and the scope of the operations in Iran, which involve the Central Intelligence Agency and the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), have now been significantly expanded, according to the current and former officials. Many of these activities are not specified in the new Finding, and some congressional leaders have had serious questions about their nature.Destabilisation is a precursor to attack. The US hasn't learnt its lesson with the Iraqi quagmire, and enough voices in power are sabre-rattling for a fight in Iran to see it become an awful reality. With the military dangerously exposed on several fronts, the US is a Gulliver looking for a bunch of Lilliputians to get tied down to.