Edi­to­r­ial: For a min­is­ter, the line is thin between the pri­vate and the pub­lic – It is prob­a­bly to be expected that Prime Min­is­ter John Key would back his Social Devel­op­ment Min­is­ter Paula Ben­nett after it was revealed that a vio­lent street gang mem­ber wa [NZ Her­ald Pol­i­tics]

The Her­ald on Sun­day has a sanc­ti­mo­nious edi­to­r­ial lec­tur­ing John key and Paula ben­nett about the fine line between being a min­is­ter and puclic interest.

That is all fine and dandy but the issue in ques­tion hap­pened before she was a min­is­ter. They are being disin­gen­u­ous with the head­line and with the edi­to­r­ial and utterly sanc­ti­mo­nious in the extreme. I don’t recall them ever play­ing hard­ball with any Labour min­is­ter in this way, in fact if the truth be told they went out of their way to fawn to them and suck their spittle.

The HoS should be chas­ing and hound­ing David Cun­liffe and Shae Jones about the role both of them played in the Cash for Cit­i­zen­ship scan­dal that engulfed Labour in its fina days. At least those two were Min­is­ters when they made some deci­sions. No one has held them account­able yet, but tno the go chas­ing after Paula for some­thing any mother worth her salt would do.

Pop­u­lar­ity: 1% [?]

John Key’s cast is up on Trademe now and bid­ding has already passed $710.00. It has been signed by John, Kevin Rudd and most of the Pacific pre­miers who attended the Pacific Forum meet­ing. I don’t think Frank Bain­i­marama signed it though.

The ben­e­fi­ciary of the win­ning bid will be The Fred Hol­lows Foun­da­tion NZ, which oper­ates blind­ness pre­ven­tion pro­grammes in the Pacific. The Foun­da­tion esti­mates there are 5,000 blind peo­ple in the Solomon Islands, mainly need­ing cataract surgery. A fur­ther 15,000 will be suf­fer­ing from poor vision from cataracts and the need for glasses. Five eye doc­tors and 20 eye nurses are required to address blind­ness and vision dis­abil­ity in the Solomon Islands. There are cur­rently two eye doc­tors and 12 eye nurses work­ing in the Solomon Islands.

The Fred Hol­lows Foun­da­tion is an extremely worth cause. Get in and get bidding.

I won­der though if this cast will suf­fer the fate of pre­vi­ous PM signed char­ity auc­tion pieces?

Pop­u­lar­ity: 1% [?]

Paula Bennett’s two let­ters – Cab­i­net Min­is­ter Paula Ben­nett was yes­ter­day forced to reveal two pre­vi­ously undis­closed let­ters she wrote to a judge and a Parole Board in sup­port of a vio­lent gang mem­ber liv­ing in her home. The Min­is­ter of Social Devel­op­ment,… [NZ Her­ald Pol­i­tics]

Taudry rag, the Her­ald on Sun­day, con­tin­ues its base­less smears against Paula Bennett.

Yes she was a bit dumb in not reveal­ing the let­ters but she actu­aly has done noth­ing wrong and is in fact set­ting an exam­ple where she has stepped up to the plate.

Her let­ters were when she was in oppo­si­tion, they were writ­ten in her capac­ity as a mother and grand­mother. Quite where the prob­lem is is seem­ingly known only to the Her­ald on Sun­day reporters. I see though that they have handed the story from the fat-arsed Rebecca Milne to Jane Phare.

I hope John Key has told Paula he expects bet­ter and there won’t be a next time.

Pop­u­lar­ity: 1% [?]

Peters’ big black shop­ping trol­ley – Win­ston Peters’ big, black min­is­te­r­ial four-wheel-drive was meant to get him around the coun­try to do his job bet­ter. But on Fri­day morn­ing – nearly three months after he was ousted from Par­lia­ment – it was prov­ing a rather use­ful… [NZ Her­ald Pol­i­tics]

As is usual now for the MSM they do not credit a blog with scoop­ing them with the story. Rebecca Milne, the fat-arsed reporter, must be an avid reader of this blog because she sent pho­tog­ra­phers round to Winston’s place after this blog had already pho­tographed the car over sev­eral days and pub­lished the address. You would think she would have had the cour­tesy to at least shout me for lunch.

The Sunday-Star Times also cov­ers the non-return of the bauble-mobile but missed that it got picked up on Friday.

Time from this blog ask­ing why he hadn’t returned it to the car being picked up – 6 days. Pho­tos on Thurs­day, car picked up Fri­day. Just what on earth are the fools at Min­ste­r­ial Ser­vices doing that an unpaid blog­ger can beat them to the car in just 4 days when they have taken more than 3 months?

Both papers, how­ever, let Min­is­te­r­ial Ser­vices and Win­ston Ray­mond Peters, 63, Unem­ployed of no fixed abode off the hook because of their indo­lence. Why weren’t these ques­tions asked and answered;

1. What date did Win­ston Pters make the alleged arrange­ments to pur­chase the vehicle?
2. What date/s was he asked to hand back the vehicle?
3. How many times was he com­mu­ni­cated with about the vehi­cle and what man­ner of communication?
4. What charges, if any, have been made on the fuel card between the fol­low­ing dates? 9 Nov 2008 – 30 No 2008, 1 Dec 2008 – 31 Dec 2008 and 1 Jan 2009 – 31 Jan 2009.
5. When will WRP, 63, UONFA be invoiced for the fuel?
6. Did WRP, 63, UONFA use the vehi­cle on his recent trip to Tau­ranga to wind up his cam­paign com­mit­tee at the final meeting?

Since we can’t rely on the MSM to ask the ques­tions,  then this blog will do so and via an OIA request.

Pop­u­lar­ity: 1% [?]

hat tip Boing Boing

Ain’t the inter­net grand, there is a niche for almost any­one. A case in point is Old Jews Telling Jokes.

What is the site about? Exactly as it says, Old Jews telling Jokes. The explain on the site;

My dad can tell a story. But he’d pre­fer to tell a joke.

Sto­ry­telling is a Jew­ish tra­di­tion.  You’ve prob­a­bly seen Fid­dler on the Roof.  When­ever they ask the Rabbi a ques­tion, he tugs thought­fully on his beard and says  “let me tell you a story.” Then they sing.

Jokes are like sto­ries, but shorter and fun­nier. Old jokes tend to have a stigma, but they only last if they’re good. Some of the best ones pro­vide a win­dow to the cul­ture of a bygone era.  They can reveal the con­cerns of a gen­er­a­tion or even the gen­er­a­tion before.  Anx­i­eties of com­ing to a new coun­try, of pros­per­ing, of assim­i­lat­ing, of hav­ing fam­i­lies, of fear­ing and wor­ry­ing about, well, everything. Humor was and is the ulti­mate anti-depressant.

My father gath­ered twenty of his friends to share their favorite jokes. We set three rules for the pro­duc­tion: the joke-tellers were to be Jew­ish, at least sixty years of age and they were to tell their favorite joke – the one that always kills.

Here, you will find them, Old Jews Telling Jokes.

Pop­u­lar­ity: 1% [?]

Remem­ber the fuss the media and jihad-enabler like Bomber made about Israel shelling a UN school. Slight prob­lem. They didn’t nor did they kill any­one at the school. The sto­ries were all lies as you will see below.

From Andrew Bolt.  There is too much detail to edit this story. it is also too impor­tant not to tell it.

Every Israeli oper­a­tion to defend itself has one. And the “bombed school” was the ”Jenin mas­sacre” or the ”bombed ambu­lance” hoax of Israel’s oper­a­tion this past month in Gaza.

In early Jan­u­ary Israel was once again accused of a hor­rific war crime – an alle­ga­tion that ran and ran. Some examples:

From Britain’s The Inde­pen­dent:

Mas­sacre of inno­cents as UN school is shelled

From The Aus­tralian:

THE deaths of 42 peo­ple in an Israeli attack at a UN-run school in Gaza overnight has finally forced Barack Obama to break his silence over the conflict…

From The Age:

43 Pales­tini­ans in a UN school were killed by Israeli shelling…

From Iran:

The UN High Com­mis­sioner for Rights has also called for inde­pen­dent inves­ti­ga­tions into pos­si­ble war crimes after Israel’s shelling of a UN school com­pound which killed 42 peo­ple…

From India:

Israeli tank shells killed more than 40 Pales­tini­ans on Tues­day at a UN school where civil­ians had taken shel­ter, in car­nage likely to boost inter­na­tional pres­sure on Israel to halt a Gaza offensive.

The key ingre­di­ents in this lat­est “proof’’ of Israeli deprav­ity: 43 dead, school attacked, shel­ter­ing civil­ians mas­sa­cred. Oh, and with no good cause:

The United Nations on Wednes­day denied Israeli army alle­ga­tions that mil­i­tants were inside a school in Gaza that was hit the pre­vi­ous day by an Israeli strike, killing at least 42 people.

Now for the facts of that Jan­u­ary 6 mor­tar shelling of the Ibn Rushd Prepara­tory School for Boys, run by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency.

Yes, the 43 peo­ple are dead, and that is a tragedy, given many were undoubt­edly inno­cent. But the rest of the alle­ga­tions? False, false and false. Yet again the media has bought anti-Israeli pro­pa­ganda, as a Toronto Globe and Mail inves­ti­ga­tion has found:

Phys­i­cal evi­dence and inter­views with sev­eral eye­wit­nesses, includ­ing a teacher who was in the school­yard at the time of the shelling, make it clear: While a few peo­ple were injured from shrap­nel land­ing inside the white-and-blue-walled UNRWA com­pound, no one in the com­pound was killed. The 43 peo­ple who died in the inci­dent were all out­side, on the street, where all three mor­tar shells landed….

While the killing of 43 civil­ians on the street may itself be grounds for inves­ti­ga­tion, it falls short of the act of shoot­ing into a school­yard crowded with refuge-seekers….
The teacher, who refused to give his name because he said UNRWA had told the staff not to talk to the news media, was adamant: “Inside [the com­pound] there were 12 injured, but there were no dead.”…

Hazem Balousha, who runs an auto-body shop across the road from the UNRWA school, was down the street, just out of range of the shrap­nel, when the three shells hit. He showed a reporter where they landed: one to the right of his shop, one to the left, and one right in front.

UNRWA itself now openly con­cedes its school was not actu­ally shelled:

John Ging, UNRWA’s oper­a­tions direc­tor in Gaza, acknowl­edged in an inter­view this week that all three Israeli mor­tar shells landed out­side the school and that “no one was killed in the school.” … The Israelis are the ones, he said, who got every­one think­ing the deaths occurred inside the school.

“Look at my state­ments,” he said. “I never said any­one was killed in the school. Our offi­cials never made any such allegation.”

But the Globe and Mail recalls an ear­lier Ging quote:

Speak­ing from Shifa Hos­pi­tal in Gaza City as the bod­ies were being brought in that night, an emo­tional Mr. Ging did say: “Those in the school were all fam­i­lies seek­ing refuge. … There’s nowhere safe in Gaza.”

And a World Health Orga­ni­za­tion report:

On 6 Jan­u­ary, 42 peo­ple were killed fol­low­ing an attack on a UNRWA school …

And a UN Office for the Co-ordination of Human­i­tar­ian Affairs weekly report:

Israeli shelling directly hit two UNRWA schools [includ­ing this one]…

So why did Israel lob those three mor­tar shells into the street out­side the school? As Asso­ci­ated Press reported at the time:

In a state­ment, the Israeli army said an ini­tial inves­ti­ga­tion found that “mor­tar shells were fired from within the school at IDF sol­diers. The force responded with mor­tars at the source of fire. The Hamas cyn­i­cally uses civil­ians as human shields.” The army said two Hamas mil­i­tants — Imad Abu Askar and Hasan Abu Askar — were among the dead.

Two neigh­bor­hood res­i­dents con­firmed the Israeli account, say­ing a group of mil­i­tants fired mor­tars from a street near the school, then fled into a crowd of peo­ple in the streets. Israel then opened fire. The res­i­dents, who spoke on con­di­tion of anonymity because they feared for their safety, said the Abu Askar broth­ers were known low-level Hamas militants.

“Within” is not right, of course. But it seems the real story is that 43 peo­ple, includ­ing at least two Hamas mil­i­tants, were killed when Israel returned fire from Hamas mor­tars launched from among a crowd in the street.

You might still not like what occured. But it is very, very dif­fer­ent to what was so widely alleged, and far more forgivable.

And after the ear­lier evi­dence of the media repeat­ing pro-Hamas pro­pa­ganda and gross exag­ger­a­tions of the death toll in Gaza, espe­cially among civil­ians, we need to ask again: how much can we trust the cov­er­age of jour­nal­ists and wel­fare groups report­ing from ter­ri­tory run by terrorists?

Pop­u­lar­ity: 1% [?]

Brian Gaynor reveals some eye-opening stuff about Nathans Finance. I too can tell some sto­ries about this bunch of nefar­i­ous pricks.

Brian though details the var­i­ous money-go-rounds that existed to feed money into the grinder that was VTL Group. he also explains about their nick­ing of a famous name but a lit­tle bit of subterfuge.

Essen­tially 97% of Nathans Finance lend­ing was to related par­ties and worse they also cap­i­talised the inter­est on those loans as well. It looks like John Hotchin has been learn­ing well from his brother Mark over at Hanover as they also used this dodgy tech­nique though not to the same extent.

Two of the most notable fea­tures of the Nathans Finance receiver­ship are the dread­ful state of its loan book and an antic­i­pated repay­ment to secured deben­ture hold­ers of just 10c or less in the dollar.

The accom­pa­ny­ing table shows the book value assets and lia­bil­i­ties of Nathans Finance on the day Price­wa­ter­house­C­oop­ers (PWC) was appointed receivers.

A finance com­pany bor­rows money from the pub­lic, mainly in the form of secured deben­tures, and should lend it to par­ties that have a strong busi­ness model with the abil­ity to pay 100 per cent of the loans back.

Accord­ing to Nathans Finance’s last prospec­tus it had “a robust credit assess­ment process” and pro­vided “loans to a broad range of com­mer­cial entities”.

These com­ments were made even though, accord­ing to PWC, $170.8 mil­lion or 97 per cent of its total loans of $176.1 were to related par­ties, mainly VTL.

Where did the $162.3 mil­lion of loans to VTL Group, other VTL Group com­pa­nies, mas­ter fran­chisee and fran­chisee in the accom­pa­ny­ing table dis­ap­pear to? What were they secured against?

At least as far as Hanover Finance and Bridgecorp are con­cerned there is land and devel­op­ments in Queen­stown, Matarangi and Fiji, but there is vir­tu­ally noth­ing left at Nathans Finance. The company’s vaults are almost empty except for the stench of foul air.

Did VTL ever make a gen­uine profit? Did Nathans Finance lend money to mas­ter fran­chisees who then used this money to pay VTL and the listed com­pany was able to report a big profit on this money go round? What did the mas­ter fran­chisees obtain from VTL in return for these payments?

There is noth­ing in the kitty as far as VTL is con­cerned as it now has vir­tu­ally no assets and has neg­a­tive share­hold­ers’ funds of $135.3 million.

Some­one has the hooter, it is up to the SFO to find it and slam these pricks into one of Judith’s new prisons.

Pop­u­lar­ity: 1% [?]

Wait­akere Mayor Bob Har­vey has a pen­chant for putting both feet in his mouth and mak­ing an arse of himself.

Today is no excep­tion with him bleat­ing to the West­ern Leader (isn’t that an oxy­moron?) that he isn’t paid enough.

“I con­sider myself grossly under­paid for the work I do 24 hours, seven days a week,” he says.

“MPs get a life­time pen­sion when they retire, yet when I fin­ish I won’t get a thing, even though I’ve done 16 years in local gov­ern­ment. It’s grossly unfair.”

Oh Boo-fucking-Hoo Bob, cry me a river of tears.

Here’s a thought why don’t you ditch the may­oral chains, the job dis­ap­pears in about 18 months any­way, and go find a job in the real world instead of suck­ing off the ratepay­ers tit in your ivory tower built at great expense.

Banksie must be grin­ning from ear to ear today. Any con­tender against Banksie for the Lord Mayor role seems to seems to want to spike their own guns before the get go. The Cock from Camp­bells, Andrew Williams (still wait­ing for the court date Andy) self destruc­ted long ago, Mayor Len Brown, though com­pe­tent is only a heart­beat away from a by-election, Bob just blew both feet off and is a Labour lia­bil­ity right now. That pretty much clears the decks of any seri­ous contender.

Yizard is said to be con­tem­plat­ing stand­ing but that’d be the hard­est she has thought about any­thing for a while.

Pop­u­lar­ity: 1% [?]

hat tip LGF

At about 39:20 into this video from the World Eco­nomic Forum in Davos, Switzer­land, Shi­mon Peres launches into an impas­sioned defense of Israel’s actions against Hamas—provoking an angry out­burst from Turk­ish Prime Min­is­ter Recep Tayyip Erdo­gan, who then stalks off stage as Wash­ing­ton Post mod­er­a­tor David Ignatius sput­ters and the audi­ence sits stunned.

As Peres speaks, you can almost feel the hatred radi­at­ing from Erdogan.

It is well worth watch­ing this video. Shi­mon Peres was very, very impres­sive. I’d be inter­ested to hear Bomber rebut that.

Pop­u­lar­ity: 1% [?]

Two arti­cles today in the Her­ald today show just how out of touch Labour had become and still is when it comes to Law and Order. It is tak­ing Judith Collins all of her strength not to smack around some of the nump­ties she has inher­ited and you can almost hear her teeth grind­ing when com­ment­ing Labour’s incred­i­bly rude and out of touch con­tin­ued med­dling in the Police Force.

Back off, Collins tells Goff – Police Min­is­ter Judith Collins has accused Labour of “politi­cis­ing” the police by invit­ing Auck­land regional com­man­ders to speak to the party’s MPs at their out-of-Wellington cau­cus meet­ing. “It is incred­i­bly impor­tant that police… [NZ Her­ald Pol­i­tics]

Judith is right, clearly Labour got used to hav­ing the Police at their beck and call, it became increas­ingly very handy with all the­Labour Party meme­bers and min­is­ters involved in crimes to have the police become dis­in­ter­ested in pros­e­cut­ing them. I note that Len “Mega­phone” Richards still remains uncharged for his assault against a pro­tes­tor out­side teh Labour Party congress.

Labour needs to pull their heads in and STFU. I find it incred­i­ble that they are hav­ing a meet­ing of “stake­hold­ers” to “under­stand” the issues in Auck­land. Just WTF were they doing for nine years that they don’t know what is going on in Auck­land, for­merly a Labour strong­hold? I can under­stand their frus­tra­tion a lit­tle because Helen Clark relied so heav­ily on per­haps the lazi­est MP known to Auck­land in liv­ing memory.

Prison pre-fabs to halve cell costs, halt ‘extrav­a­gance’ – Cor­rec­tions Min­is­ter Judith Collins has slammed the “extrav­a­gance” of the pre­vi­ous Government’s prison build­ing pro­gramme and is look­ing at using pre-fabricated mod­u­lar units to slash con­struc­tion costs by more than half. She said… [NZ Her­ald Pol­i­tics]

Jusith Collins has again shown some inno­va­tion when it comes to Cor­rec­tions and is look­ing at mod­u­lar designs rather than the extrav­agent mon­strosi­ties that Labour built. I doubt a National gov­ern­ment will be installing under­floor heat­ing for any new prison.

I think though that the Min­is­ter could go even more mod­u­lar and build a new prison out of used and leaky ship­ping containers.

Pop­u­lar­ity: 1% [?]

I enjoy read­ing Aard­vark, every so often Bruce comes up with gen­uine pearls of wis­dom that peo­ple should take notice of. Today was one of those days. He believes that amongst all the doom and gloom there is the recipe for our suc­cess. I’m with Bruce on this one.

Quite frankly, I’m sick and tired of econ­o­mists and eco­nomic com­men­ta­tors telling me how dire the sit­u­a­tion is and how much worse it’s going to get.

Unem­ploy­ment tipped to break eight per­cent, 50 mil­lion out of work world-wide, record lev­els of busi­ness fail­ures and mort­gage fore­clo­sures, etc, etc.

In the face of all this bad news I expect we can also count on a sig­nif­i­cant increase in the sui­cide rate as well.

Well I say “enough”.

There were two items of good news that I sim­ply have to bring to read­ers’ atten­tion today.

If we can bring these two good-news sto­ries together then the future might be brighter than ever, at least for the res­i­dents of GodZone.

The first, and most impor­tant of these good-news sto­ries is a report that sug­gests there are now more than a bil­lion peo­ple who are con­nected to the inter­net — a full 15% of the world’s total population.

That is sim­ply fan­tas­tic news!

The other ray of sun­shine is that the NZ gov­ern­ment (like gov­ern­ments of most devel­oped coun­tries) is look­ing to pour a snot­load of money into the local econ­omy in an attempt to ward-off the worst effects of the recession.

Now let’s stop and look at these two sto­ries for a moment…

On the one hand we have a bil­lion peo­ple who are all rich enough to afford an inter­net con­nec­tion and on the other we (at last) have a gov­ern­ment who’s pre­pared to spend money to make money.

In between, we have four mil­lion Kiwis, a greater than aver­age num­ber of who (we like to tell our­selves) are smart, edu­cated, inno­v­a­tive and entrepreneurial.

Sounds like a recipe for suc­cess to me.

This coun­try needs more peo­ple like Bruce Simp­son and less peo­ple like union­ists, socilaists and bludgers.

Pop­u­lar­ity: 1% [?]

I went to Wark­worth today via Sil­verdale and the new toll road going north.

My first stop was with Clas­sic Campers, they spe­cialise in Clas­sic Retro VW Kombi and Mod­ern camper rental, or depend­ing on where you come from, Microbus, Vanagon, T4 Trans­porter or Combi hire. Pretty cool niche tourism busi­ness. Chat­ted with Bevan for about an hour then went north to Warkworth.

I got back on the motor­wat at Sil­verdale and headed up to Orewa where the new North­ern Gate­way toll­road starts. What a bloody mar­vel, not hav­ing to mean­der down through Orewa and then slog over the hills past Hat­fields Beach and Wai­w­era. I reckon the $2 charge is just fine and you would eas­ily save that in time and petrol.

Still three quar­ters of my fel­low motor­way users peeled off and went the long, slower free routes. Suck­ers! The toll road rocks and has some good views. The engi­neer­ing is spectacular.

I say give me more toll­roads, this one rocks. The only down­side I can see is the fools that pull over to pay on the road­side rather than bar­rel on through and sort it out with the 0800 num­ber or on the website.

I reckon this road shaves a good 10 min­utes off the trip and since I went up to Wark­worth and back again I saved about 20 minutes.

You would use more than $2 in petrol going the long way due to the hill gra­di­ents and the stop start nature of tra­vers­ing Orewa’s res­i­den­tial areas.

Defi­nately a huge benefit.

Pop­u­lar­ity: 1% [?]

Maori Party MP wants offend­ers denied a marae tangi – A Maori Party MP is call­ing for con­victed gang mem­bers to be refused their own tangi on marae after another gang-related death this week [TVNZ News Pol­i­tics]

Top stuff here from Te Ururoa Flavell. Finally some in Maori-dom are start­ing to assert them­selves and call­ing things as they see them.

“There seems to be a con­tra­dic­tion to me that on one side of the coin, there’s a will­ing­ness of gang mem­bers to pick up their tikanga Maori, their Maori cus­tom­ary beliefs, to go back to the marae, but on the other side, con­tra­dicted by tak­ing a life which is a part of whakapapa,”

Good stuff.

Pop­u­lar­ity: 1% [?]

Proven liar, Al Gore, likes to drone on about the cli­mate and how he intends to save the planet. Ofcourse this is the same Al Gore that claimed he invented the inter­net, so take every­thing he says with a grain of salt.

A real cli­mate sci­en­tist, unlike Al Gore, has gone through his bol­locks and iden­ti­fied all of the pro­pa­ganda tech­niques used by Al Gore and his “sci­en­tific” advi­sor, the now dis­cred­ited James Hansen.

Listed below are ten pro­pa­ganda tech­niques I have excerpted from Wikipedia. Beneath each are one or more exam­ples of Mr. Gore’s rhetoric as he has attempted to goad the rest of us into reduc­ing our CO₂ emis­sions. Except where indi­cated, most quotes are from his tes­ti­mony before the U.S. Sen­ate Envi­ron­ment and Pub­lic Works Com­mit­tee, March 21, 2007. (Mr. Gore is sched­uled to tes­tify again tomor­row, Jan­u­ary 28, 2009, before the Senate’s For­eign Rela­tions Committee…if the cold and snowy weather doesn’t cause them to reschedule.)

Appeal to fear: Appeals to fear seek to build sup­port by instill­ing anx­i­eties and panic in the gen­eral population.

“I want to tes­tify today about what I believe is a plan­e­tary emergency—a cri­sis that threat­ens the sur­vival of our civ­i­liza­tion and the hab­it­abil­ity of the Earth.”

Appeal to author­ity: Appeals to author­ity cite promi­nent fig­ures to sup­port a posi­tion, idea, argu­ment, or course of action. Also, Tes­ti­mo­nial: Tes­ti­mo­ni­als are quo­ta­tions, in or out of con­text, espe­cially cited to sup­port or reject a given pol­icy, action, pro­gram, or per­son­al­ity. The rep­u­ta­tion or the role (expert, respected pub­lic fig­ure, etc.) of the indi­vid­ual giv­ing the state­ment is exploited.

“Just six weeks ago, the sci­en­tific com­mu­nity, in its strongest state­ment to date, con­firmed that the evi­dence of warm­ing is unequiv­o­cal. Global warm­ing is real and human activ­ity is the main cause.”

“The sci­en­tists are vir­tu­ally scream­ing from the rooftops now. The debate is over! There’s no longer any debate in the sci­en­tific com­mu­nity about this.” (from An Incon­ve­nient Truth)

Band­wagon: Band­wagon and “inevitable-victory” appeals attempt to per­suade the tar­get audi­ence to join in and take the course of action that “every­one else is tak­ing”. Also, Join the crowd: This tech­nique rein­forces people’s nat­ural desire to be on the win­ning side. This tech­nique is used to con­vince the audi­ence that a pro­gram is an expres­sion of an irre­sistible mass move­ment and that it is in their best inter­est to join.

“Today, I am here to deliver more than a half mil­lion mes­sages to Con­gress ask­ing for real action on global warm­ing. More than 420 May­ors have now adopted Kyoto-style com­mit­ments in their cities and have urged strong fed­eral action. The evan­gel­i­cal and faith com­mu­ni­ties have begun to take the lead, call­ing for mea­sures to pro­tect God’s cre­ation. The State of Cal­i­for­nia, under a Repub­li­can Gov­er­nor and a Demo­c­ra­tic leg­is­la­ture, passed strong, econ­omy wide leg­is­la­tion man­dat­ing cuts in car­bon diox­ide. Twenty-two states and the Dis­trict of Colum­bia have passed renew­able energy stan­dards for the elec­tric­ity sector.”

Flag-waving: An attempt to jus­tify an action on the grounds that doing so will make one more patri­otic, or in some way ben­e­fit a group, coun­try, or idea. Also, Inevitable vic­tory: invites those not already on the band­wagon to join those already on the road to cer­tain vic­tory. Those already or at least par­tially on the band­wagon are reas­sured that stay­ing aboard is their best course of action.

“After all, we have taken on prob­lems of this scope before. When Eng­land and then Amer­ica and our allies rose to meet the threat of global Fas­cism, together we won two wars simul­ta­ne­ously in Europe and the Pacific.”

Ad Hominem attacks: A Latin phrase which has come to mean attack­ing your oppo­nent, as opposed to attack­ing their argu­ments. Also Demo­niz­ing the “enemy”: Mak­ing indi­vid­u­als from the oppos­ing nation, from a dif­fer­ent eth­nic group, or those who sup­port the oppos­ing view­point appear to be subhuman.

“You know, 15 per­cent of peo­ple believe the moon land­ing was staged on some movie lot and a some­what smaller num­ber still believe the Earth is flat. They get together on Sat­ur­day night and party with the global-warming deniers.” (Octo­ber 24, 2006, Seat­tle University)

Appeal to Prej­u­dice: Using loaded or emo­tive terms to attach value or moral good­ness to believ­ing the proposition.

“And to solve this cri­sis we can develop a shared sense of moral pur­pose.” (June 21, 2006, Lon­don, England)

Black-and-White fal­lacy: Pre­sent­ing only two choices, with the prod­uct or idea being prop­a­gated as the bet­ter choice.

“It is not a ques­tion of left vs. right; it is a ques­tion of right vs. wrong.” (July 1, 2007, New York Times op-ed)

Eupho­ria: The use of an event that gen­er­ates eupho­ria or hap­pi­ness, or using an appeal­ing event to boost morale:

Live Earth con­certs orga­nized world­wide in 2007 by Al Gore.

Fal­si­fy­ing infor­ma­tion: The cre­ation or dele­tion of infor­ma­tion from pub­lic records, in the pur­pose of mak­ing a false record of an event or the actions of a per­son or orga­ni­za­tion. Pseudo-sciences are often used to fal­sify information.

“Nobody is inter­ested in solu­tions if they don’t think there’s a prob­lem. Given that start­ing point, I believe it is appro­pri­ate to have an over-representation of fac­tual pre­sen­ta­tions on how dan­ger­ous (global warm­ing) is, as a pred­i­cate for open­ing up the audi­ence to lis­ten to what the solu­tions are, and how hope­ful it is that we are going to solve this cri­sis.” (May 9, 2006 Grist interview)

Stereo­typ­ing or Name Call­ing or Label­ing: This tech­nique attempts to arouse prej­u­dices in an audi­ence by label­ing the object of the pro­pa­ganda cam­paign as some­thing the tar­get audi­ence fears, hates, loathes, or finds unde­sir­able. Also, Obtain dis­ap­proval: This tech­nique is used to per­suade a tar­get audi­ence to dis­ap­prove of an action or idea by sug­gest­ing that the idea is pop­u­lar with groups hated, feared, or held in con­tempt by the tar­get audience

“There are many who still do not believe that global warm­ing is a prob­lem at all. And it’s no won­der: because they are the tar­gets of a mas­sive and well-organized cam­paign of dis­in­for­ma­tion lav­ishly funded by pol­luters who are deter­mined to pre­vent any action to reduce the green­house gas emis­sions that cause global warm­ing out of a fear that their prof­its might be affected if they had to stop dump­ing so much pol­lu­tion into the atmos­phere.” (Jan­u­ary 15, 2004, New York City)

Pop­u­lar­ity: 1% [?]

Who does the New Zealand Navy actu­ally belong to?

a) The New Zealand Gov­ern­ment
b) The Cookie Mon­ster from Sesame Street
c) Car­los the Jackal
d) North Shore Mayor Andrew Williams, the cock from Camp­bells Bay

Who allegedly believes the New Zealand Navy belongs to them?

a) The New Zealand Gov­ern­ment
b) The Cookie Mon­ster from Sesame Street
c) Car­los the Jackal
d) North Shore Mayor Andrew Williams, the cock from Camp­bells Bay

They’re tough ques­tions I know but I’ll give you a clue for the answer to the sec­ond one.

The word dumb-arse starts with this let­ter. That’s it no more clues now.

Pop­u­lar­ity: 1% [?]