Random Politics

[StN]

Sixteen year olds can drive, give consent, obtain a gun license, leave school and home – seventeen year olds can even join the army. Nobody could claim that any of these freedoms required greater maturity than the freedom to cast a ballot.

Originally Posted by Ab

right there

hmmmm...

[blynk]

Why the hell would we want to lower it. We should be raising it. I think 55 is good.
They have had a lot of experience in life and a probably at a good stage to understand politics, whats on offer and what is required to run the country.

Nothing could possibly go wrong by limiting the rest of the population to vote.

/sarcasm.

I am open to more people being able to vote. Everyone single person is affected by voting - even the young and the incarcerated.
There is obviously a fine line for age, between someone being able to decide by themselves and someone just being told by their parents. But 16 feels like a better cut off.

[Ab]

Who could have predicted that a bunch of activists staging a land occupation without consulting the mana whenua would turn into an intersectional clusterfuck #Ihumātao

[Ab]

When the going gets tough, the tough get outta town

"Ardern made the statement from Auckland International Airport before departing for a three-day visit to Tokelau, the first by a Kiwi PM in 15 years."

[crocos]

Originally Posted by Ab

Who could have predicted that a bunch of activists staging a land occupation without consulting the mana whenua...

Which of the 3-4 groups (depending on who's counting) are you referring to here? You're right about this turning into a clusterfuck though

[Lightspeed]

It looks like AUT has planned and scrapped another political event.

[Ab]

You fucking cowardly hypocritical bitches.

[pxpx]

Economic reality suuuuuuuuuucks. It's time for the international student market to start diversifying away from China.

[Ab]

Originally Posted by crocos

Which of the 3-4 groups (depending on who's counting) are you referring to here? You're right about this turning into a clusterfuck though

If this is the woman leading the protestors, Fletcher should just give up and go home now.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tT11yvE5plo

[fixed_truth]

My first take was that the local iwi made a deal with Fletchers & the protesters were just a minority who disagree with the mandated decision. The more I've looked into it the more complicated it gets. The other side of the argument is that the iwi made a pragmatic decision from a place of historical dejection and decided that something was better than nothing. From that the protesters are standing up and saying yeah nah.

I guess technically the Govt. could buy the land of Fletchers & partner up with the iwi to decide what's done with it, but that would be a risky political move.

[crocos]

Originally Posted by Ab

If this is the woman leading the protestors, Fletcher should just give up and go home now.

Not actually sure if Poe's Law applies here or not, but she does an excellent job of plucking the heart strings.

[Lightspeed]

Did I hear right that there's been 13 mass shootings in the US this week?

[Ab]

Well there’s been 2 today..

[fixed_truth]

"Most of us wander round thinking that New Zealand is a fair and decent country where everyone's treated equally, that we're a right on, cool bunch of people who are a bit different to every other place in the world but the reality is a bit different. That's the bottom line. New Zealand is a different place depending on the colour of your skin and the accent you have."

"It's not that nasty name-calling, low-level, joking, silly stuff. It's how your opportunities are affected based on unconscious decisions people make in positions of power," Andrews says.

I think because a lot of institutional racism is 'unconscious', mainstream shows like this are important in bringing this sort of thing into the light.

https://www.tvnz.co.nz/shows/thats-a-bit-racist

[Lightspeed]

Head of inquiry into historical abuse steps down

This was a complete fuck up. But I'm not sure how it wouldn't be.

You can't run an inquiry on all abuse. Any government trying to fund that would get laughed out of office. So you focus on something, something big, but not overwhelming. But all that does is evoke strong responses from all those whose abuse isn't getting investigated.

Short a miracle, I anticipate little if anything worth the pain this inquiry will stir up.

[DrTiTus]

https://www.businessinsider.com.au/d...19-8?r=US&IR=T

Get "paid" to take out a home loan in Denmark?

Negative interest rate mortgages. Yikes.

[fixed_truth]

Jeffrey Epstein 'found dead in cell'

No surprises here

[Nich]

the arrangements were probably made at Mar-a-Logo with Clintons, Trumps, and royal family all working out how to make this all go away.

Apparently there is a blackmail safe that is in police custody. this will probably be misplaced, or never mentioned ever again.

And the crooks continue to run the world...

[fixed_truth]

Cue another 9-11 to take media precedence?

[Nich]

In a way, the news of his death is white washing the news of the unsealed court documents

[Ab]

Originally Posted by Nich

Apparently there is a blackmail safe

yes I too read this on the secret IRC channel #qanon

[Nich]

If I was running a pedo sex trafficking ring for the ultra elite, I'd be a fool if i didn't have a blackmail safe and a killswitch to release its contents.

[pxpx]

Originally Posted by Nich

If I was running a pedo sex trafficking ring for the ultra elite, I'd be a fool if i didn't have a blackmail safe and a killswitch to release its contents.

So is the blackmail safe an actual physical safe? I mean, it would have to be, if it were in police custody, right? How would a kill-switch work? Did Epstein have his fitbit send a call to the cloud when his heartbeat ended, which then connected to a Rasberry Pi that operated a servo inside the safe to open it?

Is it an electronic 'soft' safe? Some kind of dropbox account with phone logs uploaded to it, that only Epstein, and Epstein's butler, the ever-loyal Jenkins had access to with instructions to circulate to media outlets in the event of his employers untimely demise? Has anyone actually seen Jenkins in public recently?

[Nich]

Only you can use your imagination, I can't do that for you.

[Ab]

How would you do an "in the event of my death" document drop? I guess the easiest thing would be a big encrypted archive and password in a sealed envelope with the lawyer?

[Cyberbob]

I'd happily distribute an encrypted yet publicly available document, with a decryption key on a deadman switch.
Delay the switch on a monthly basis, until it's not.

[Lightspeed]

Originally Posted by Ab

How would you do an "in the event of my death" document drop? I guess the easiest thing would be a big encrypted archive and password in a sealed envelope with the lawyer?

Yeah, that makes sense. Some super-old and boring firm out of the UK or Switzerland or something.

It would depend on the level of sophistication you'd be willing to engage in and what degree of proof of death you require. How much you trust formal institutions, how much money you have to engage with them.

A cheaper no-trust solution would be an archive that decrypts and publishes if you don't enter a password every so often. Of course that means it publishes in the event you're incarcerated or incapacitated. Which may be acceptable.

But how paranoid would this guy be? I could probably engage some cloud based VM without anyone knowing I'm using such services. But someone like Epstein might assume every dollar they've spent has been tracked. Even visiting a lawyer might be cagey.

[CCS]

Originally Posted by pxpx

So is the blackmail safe an actual physical safe? I mean, it would have to be, if it were in police custody, right? How would a kill-switch work? Did Epstein have his fitbit send a call to the cloud when his heartbeat ended, which then connected to a Rasberry Pi that operated a servo inside the safe to open it?

Is it an electronic 'soft' safe? Some kind of dropbox account with phone logs uploaded to it, that only Epstein, and Epstein's butler, the ever-loyal Jenkins had access to with instructions to circulate to media outlets in the event of his employers untimely demise? Has anyone actually seen Jenkins in public recently?

You sound like you've thought this through thoroughly, pxpx... or should I say JENKINS?!

[StN]

Clearly this is why that lady with the heinous clevage from that Netflix doco about Facebook visited Julian...

[Ab]

Decrypted text:

“In the form of my avatar I have hidden three Easter eggs in the #jailbait section of Pornhub. Whoever finds all three Easter eggs will unlock a magic gate and inherit my entire fortune”

[Cyberbob]

Damn Gunters.

[Nich]

It's not a fun story to try to get a handle on... that's for sure. I'm out. It just fills me with dread and makes me sad.

He's a smart guy who convinced the prison he wasn't a suicide risk, then found a way to off himself.

Still, to have a private jet dubbed the Lolita Express, and the kind of people who are in the passenger logs. Fuck these people.

[Lightspeed]

Originally Posted by Lightspeed

Feel bad for those in Hong Kong.

I don't see how they don't get fucked.

Seems like things might be about to heat up. Army convey reported seen at the border.

The loosely coordinated mass public demonstrations only work at disruption. Short of leadership appearing to stabilise the situation, the international community is going to be more and more sympathetic to the use of force.

If the protesters could immediately stop the demonstrations as a way of demonstrating control, they'd be in a better position.

[BoyWonder]

I've been across the border between Shenzen and Hong Kong a number of times over the past 10 years and there have always been soldiers and a line up of APCs not far up the road. I think China has been getting ready for years for this to happen.

[blynk]

Originally Posted by Nich

Apparently there is a blackmail safe that is in police custody. this will probably be misplaced, or never mentioned ever again.

Well fuck, here is the ammo for the next fucking 20 years of "Clintons are bad"

"Apparently". So basically if it doesn't actual exist, then the Clintons (and I guess others) covered it up.

[Lightspeed]

Good, fuck 'em. Their near-stranglehold on US Democratic politics hasn't been good for anyone.

[Nich]

An FBI search of his New York townhouse yielded “hundreds, if not thousands” of pornographic images of young-looking girls and women, which were kept on CD-ROMs hidden in a safe.

https://www.rollingstone.com/culture...-dubin-870022/

Federal agents who searched Epstein’s $77 million Upper East Side townhouse in Manhattan also found “in a locked safe ... compact discs with hand-written labels including the following: ‘Young [Name] + [Name],’ ‘Misc nudes 1,’ and ‘Girl pics nudes,’ ” according to a new court filing in Epstein’s case.

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/07/08/jeff...k-no-bail.html

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/artic...to-talk-to-you

[Nich]

The sooner the Clinton era is brought to an end, the better the world will be. Read Hitchen's book on Clinton to get a look at how goal-orientated Bill and Hillary are in their pursuit of money and power at the cost of all who happen to breathe the same air.

[Ab]

Yeah, that Hitchens book changed my perception of them.

[Ab]

Should the Christchurch shooter be allowed to vote in the upcoming election?

He's:

Older than 18
An Australian citizen
Has lived in NZ continuously for more than 12 months
Has not been convicted of a crime