Posts by Alfie
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Hard News: Dirty Politics, in reply to Ian Dalziel,
By virtue of her accusation she outs herself as a ‘Right Wing Conspiracy Theorist’ – which is apparently an okay thing to be….
Which ties in nicely with her warning to Jacinda Ardern on The Nation last week that she shouldn't aim for the moral high ground, because "I've been there and it isn't very nice."
Bennett's own words confirm that she's more comfortable maintaining the moral low ground. In other words, cesspit politics.
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Hard News: Dirty Politics, in reply to simon g,
It’s just something to bear in mind as the smear machine starts up again today, with predictable (and largely unchallenged) attacks on the authors (see most media outlets, next 48 hours).
Paula Bennett became rattled and elected to take the low ground on Morning Report today by accusing Nicky Hager of being a "left wing conspiracy theorist".
In the face of what appears to be well-researched evidence that NZ troops engaged in war crimes, the Nats have chosen to double down, close ranks and follow their now familiar "nothing to see here" line.
Morals only apply to poor people.
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David Fisher follows up on the Todd Barclay story (discussed earlier in this thread). You'll recall that Barclay was accused of recording private conversations which led to the resignation of three of his staff.
It seems that Barclay "refused to co-operate with detectives" and was never interviewed about the matter. It appears that the 10 month investigation has now been shelved, with Police citing "insufficient evidence".
Does the former tobacco lobbyist really qualify as a prominent New Zealander? Or perhaps he's just a right Dipton.
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Cops and choppers
Police in the Eastern District (Waipukurau to the top of East Cape) -- have located in excess of 10,000 cannabis plants this season. The cops there must have a better budget than the Tasman boys because they had "aerial support over 10 days from a plane and a helicopter."Back in Nelson Police have criticised "social media trolls" who dare to question the waste of Police resources in their area. Methinks the good officer needs to look up the definition of troll.
"The public don't seem to understand the connection between the cultivation of cannabis and these criminal fraternities and other class A drugs," he said.
"Other class A drugs"? Someone may have a minor perception problem, but nothing a little re-education wouldn't fix.
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Hard News: What the wastewater tells us…, in reply to Ian Dalziel,
Whoops... my bad Ian. And Russell is right. The amount of resource Police devote to chasing a relatively benign weed is out of proportion when NZ's main drug problem is meth.
At least the cops appear to have ceased their rather silly practice of quoting invented and over-inflated dollar amounts of "social harm" prevented every time they bust a small time grower. Maybe the tide is changing... slowly.
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Hard News: What the wastewater tells us…, in reply to Russell Brown,
Along the same lines... West Coast cannabis haul plummets 43 per cent
This year's annual cannabis operation on the Coast netted less than half the number of cannabis plants found last year when police used helicopters in the search.
Police announced yesterday they had seized 1300 cannabis plants across the Coast and would charge seven people in relation to the operation.
And...
This year's operation began two weeks ago. Thirty police staff have been involved.
What's the cost of tying up thirty cops for two weeks, plus helicopters? I bet it far exceeds the retail value of 1,300 plants.
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Hard News: Meet the new bots, same as…, in reply to Ian Dalziel,
With the bot posts here, what is the aim?
It's simple. They're forum spammers aiming to place links on any site which rates well with Google.
I help to run a specialised forum which is only open to NZ and AU members. While we make this clear on the front page, we still get new signups most days from dodgy countries. Sometimes it's bots, other times it's actual people -- often from India or Russia. "Buy 1,000 Google 3+ links for $100" is their motivation. And as Linger observed above, reviving dormant threads is a useful method for these people as they have zero interest in intereacting with real people.
Some of the bots are easy to spot. We've set up our forums to ask for the user's "first name" during the signup process. Bots aren't that smart and almost always use their (randomly generated) username for this field. "Hi, my name is uoghqwfhjiP6$7 and I want to join your group." Ah huh.
Once they have a login, they can change their online signature (or their website link on PAS) at will. This allows the operators to change their links to suit whatever campaign they're being paid for. So suddenly you can have 1,000+ links from credible sites such as this, pointing at a new site which is selling "men's health" products or whatever. Those links boost the site's profile and increase its ranking in Google searches.
Some of the bots which have appeared on PAS recently have attempted to sign up on our forums at around the same time using the same website links. We blacklist vast IP ranges, check every new member and disable bots straight away. But still they keep coming. It's a game of whackamole.
However, that's forum spammers. Twitter bots are different.
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Comedian Peter Serafinowicz takes Trump's own words, and reads them in a slightly more camp style.
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Time isn't holding back either.
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Swedish 3D artist Anders Ryttar created this cute take on Trumpet's bizarre handshake.
