Key responds to cabbage boat threat

 I just knew it was all related somehow

The Listener gives Banks perspective

" I think you think I came up the river on a cabbage boat.

Which he did not.

Hurtle back a few months to the days after the election, and look at what Banks told the press pack:

I didn’t come up the river on a cabbage boat. "

From Scott at Imperatorfish

" John Key announced today that the law would be changed to put a stop to the influx of boatpeople and put an end to the massive crisis threatening to overwhelm New Zealand's immigration system.

Officials have long been concerned about the potential threat to civilised society that illegal refugees pose.

Although no illegal refugee boats have ever reached New Zealand, the dangers posed to a nation of four and a half million people by a boatload of desperate and wretchedly poor brown people, assuming they survived the immense sea voyage here, is too dreadful for many to countenance.

Experts say that brown people often speak a language other than English, eat different foods, and engage in unusual religious practices.

It is feared that if even one refugee boat managed to somehow make it across thousands of kilometres of difficult seas, the few dozen ragged and desperate brown people that set foot on New Zealand shores would corrupt our morals, destroy our economy with their bludging, and speak all funny funny. "

Todays  NZ Herald , 

" Prime Minister John Key ordered officials to stop work on plans for a national convention centre after Sky City indicated it might extend its existing facility, Cabinet papers reveal.

The papers have emerged as Key today said he "advised himself" to chase Sky City for a deal to build a new national convention centre in exchange for changes to gambling laws. "

Just fucking unbelievable.

Hat tip Tumeke

Bladerunner - The future of prostitution

Some groundbreaking research out of Victoria University New Zealand will solve the ignominy of prostitution in about 50 years time ( or when I am 84 and sex will be the last thing on my mind ).

" Machines have already changed the face of manufacturing industries, but what happens when prostitutes find themselves replaced by robots? Will machines populate our brothels instead of flesh and blood people? Will the social stigma of paying for sex fade? And how will the availability of robotic sex partners impact countries whose economies depend, in part, on sex tourism? "

I really don't care to much about the counties but the idea of a Daryl Hannah robot certainly grabs my attention.

" In their paper "Robots, men and sex tourism," which appears in the current issue of the journalFutures, Ian Yeoman and Michelle Mars of the University of Wellington's Victoria Management School explore how robotic prostitutes could provide a solution to many of the problems associated with the sex trade, namely human trafficking and the spread of sexually transmitting infections. Taking a cue from predictions by European Robotics Research Network chairman Henrik Christensen — who claims folks will be having sex with robots in five years — and University of Maastricht robotics researcher David Levy, who predicts that Massachusetts will legalize human-robot marriage by 2050 — Yeoman and Mars try to envision what Amsterdam's red-light district would look like in 2050:"


David Levy sounds like a forward thinking guy.

" The Yub-Yum is Amsterdam's top sex club for business travellers located beside a 17th century canal house on the Singel. It is modern and gleaming with about 100 scantily clad blonde and brunettes parading around in exotic G-strings and lingerie. Entry costs s10,000 for an all inclusive service. The club offers a full range of sexual services from massages, lap dancing and intercourse in plush surroundings. The Yub-Yum is a unique bordello licensed by the city council, staffed not by humans but by androids. This situation came about due to an increase in human trafficking in the sex industry in the 2040s which was becoming unsustainable, combined with an increase in incurable STI's in the city especially HIV which over the last decade has mutated and is resistant to many vaccines and preventive medicines."

If the past is a foreign country I guess the future is to. It is nice to know that an inflatable sex partner isn't the only possible destination available.

Apartheid America....

It should come as no suprise to Americans that the world has started to avoid the USA. The insane security laws in place at American airports has encouraged residents down under to transit through Asia when heading to Europe rather than suffer the indignities your law enforcement community enjoys inflicting on weary travelers, but this is moving things to a whole new level of fucking insanity.

From the New Zealand Herald today.

" A six-year-old who threw a tantrum at her small-town Georgia school was taken away in handcuffs, arms behind her back, in an episode that is firing up the debate over whether teachers and police around the US are overreacting all too often when dealing with disruptive students.

The family of Salecia Johnson lashed out early today (NZ time) over her treatment and said she was badly shaken, while the school system and the police defended how they handled the episode."

What the fuck ?  Look at her.

"Kids are being arrested for being kids," said Shannon Kennedy, a civil rights attorney who is suing the Albuquerque, New Mexico, school district, where hundreds of kids have been arrested in the past few years for minor offences - including such things as having cellphones in class, burping, refusing to switch seats and destroying a history book. In 2010, a 14-year-old boy was arrested for inflating a condom in class.

In Georgia, Salecia was accused of tearing items off the walls and throwing books and toys in an outburst last week at Creekside Elementary in Milledgeville, a city of about 18,000, some 140km from Atlanta, police said. Authorities said she also threw a small shelf that struck the principal in the leg, and jumped on a paper shredder and tried to break a glass frame.

Police refused to say what set off the tantrum. The school called police, and when an officer tried to calm the child in the principal's office, she resisted, authorities said. She then was handcuffed and taken away in a patrol car."

Police officers are defending this shit. America you are fucked. What I guess we should be grateful for is that the police didn't just gun her down. Maybe the principle would have done it if Georgia had " standing your ground " laws.

" He said the girl will not be charged with a crime because she is too young.

The girl's aunt, Candace Ruff, went with the child's mother to pick her up at the police station. She said Salecia was in a holding cell and complained about the handcuffs.

"She said they were really tight. She said they really hurt her wrists," Ruff said. "She was so shaken up when we went there to pick her up."

Why on earth isn't the police officer fuckwit facing charges. This reads like an apartheid South Africa story.

The Greens and reality

Scott at Imperatorfish cuts through the right wing bullshit.

Volvo Ocean Race

Report time: Wed, 04 Apr 2012, 19:01:56 UTC

Pos	Team		DTL (Nm)	DTLC (Nm)	Speed (KTS)	DTF (Nm)
1		PUMA	0.00	0	12.9	574.9
2		TELE	36.70	1	14.3	611.7
-		CMPR	Suspended Racing
-		GPMA	Suspended Racing
-		ADOR	Did Not Finish
-		SNYA	Did Not Finish

 Unprecedented carnage

Fiji Floods

Not wanting to distract from a natural disaster but why doesn't this surprise me ?

Golden retrievers !