Labour MPs receive gifts from Huawei which wants to roll out 5G in NZ

Should we feel better that corruption is out in the open in New Zealand?

Rangitikei Environmental Health Watch

These were formerly termed bribes. Gifts sounds better though doesn’t it? Not so borderline criminal? And who reports them as ‘gifts’? Why NZ mainstream whore media of course, they’re all in each others’ corporate pockets. Well in bed with each other would be more to the point. Takoha, the time worn tactic from way back & still in business. Only small gifts somebody has said, still large or small it has the same magical effect.

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From tvnz

It’s been revealed several Labour MPs have accepted gifts from controversial Chinese Communication company Huawei.

MPs have to register interests such as assets, debts and gifts they have received, and the list as at 31 January 2019 was presented to Parliament today.

Police Minister Stuart Nash accepted tickets and hospitality to an All Blacks v France rugby game from Huawei Technologies.

Māori Development, Local Government and Associate Environment Minister Nania Mahuta received Warriors…

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Auto Industry Showing Cracks: Ford Begins Final Round Of Layoffs As Unsold Cars Keep Piling Up

 

By Mac Slavo | SHTFplan.com

Ford Motor Co. is finishing up their final round of layoffs today. About 7,000 workers worldwide are losing their jobs in this “booming economy” as unsold vehicles continue to pile up in the once empty parking lots of closed retail establishments.

CEO Jim Hackett notified employees in an email Monday that Ford was nearing the end of its months-long bout of white-collar layoffs that would eliminate 7,000 jobs globally, roughly 10% of the automaker’s global salaried workforce, according to Detroit News. When the U.S. layoffs wrap by June, Ford would have cut around 800 jobs in addition to 1,500 buyouts that occurred late last year, or around 7% of its U.S. salaried workforce.

The first 500 employees to be laid off are being told today.  Both sets of layoffs are largely a result of a slowing auto market and looming economic recession. Ford’s layoffs are part of a $25.5 billion pool of cost cuts expected to roll out over the next few years.

Ford layoffs aim to prune management levels, which would allow for quicker ascension through executive ranks and quicker decision-making. Anderson said Ford’s job cuts aim to answer a tougher problem than GM’s. “Ford set a target for a gross number of management jobs to be reduced,” Anderson said. “That is harder to achieve and keep a successful company than it will be for General Motors. … It’s going to be harder for Ford to maintain the quality they have with this significant headcount reduction.”

But the auto industry is barely holding on right now, and it wouldn’t be too surprising if Ford laid off more workers by the end of this year as well.

Dealers Scramble To Deal With 4.2 Million UNSOLD CARS

Abandoned factories, forgotten shopping malls, and undeveloped parcels of land have become parking lots full of new cars as dealers try to figure out what to do with mounting inventories of unsold vehicles, according to OKCFox, a local Oklahoma City Fox News affiliate reported. But the mainstream media keeps saying the economy is great, and even though stocks have fallen on the news of a heightened trade war, there isn’t much other real truth happening when it comes to reporting on the economy. –SHTFPlan

Of the over 4 million unsold cars and light trucks, over half are from General Motors, Ford or FCA brands. May sales have slumped as consumers just cannot afford to buy at this time […]

via Auto Industry Showing Cracks: Ford Begins Final Round Of Layoffs As Unsold Cars Keep Piling Up — A Sweet Dose of Reality | The Mad Truther

Capitalism Will Fall: Not a Matter of If, but a Matter of When

by Daniel de Klerk

It is absolutely true that there is no such thing as “free stuff.” Everything has a cost and that cost can come in both the form of concrete labour or that of abstract value and means of exchanging.

The question of wealth distribution is never a question of simply wanting things for free and getting handouts, it is about the question of access. People want food, housing, health care and power over the organisation of their own lives; they don’t want it for nothing, they want it to be within their means to access and use. It is not a matter of entitlement to meaningless luxury, it’s an articulation of real needs necessary for life.

People work their asses off under degrading, backbreaking, boring and mind numbing circumstances, selling away most of their life to be able to live it, or struggle without whilst being deprived of the most basic means to participate in society; while around them the mass of collective wealth accumulates in the hands of rich people and faceless institutions. These People (unlike some other people) are not asking for yachts, private jets, palaces and lifetime supplies of cocaine. Around the world, they’re asking for a roof over their head, food on their table, the health care they need and the real ability to direct the course over their own life. A demand for the most basic necessity for the continuation of *this society* and a demand that is increasingly regarded as impossible and unrealistic.

If life under capitalism becomes impossible then so the continuation of capitalism becomes impossible. The governments developed the welfare system in an attempt to solve this social question, not because we asked them too but because they hoped to stave off the inevitable […]

via Capitalism Will Fall: Not a Matter of If, but a Matter of When — ANARCHIMEDIA

How the Promise of Roe v. Wade Left Women of Color Behind

The Hyde Amendment, which bans Federal funding for abortions, has made safe abortion services inaccessible for many low income women.

TheConfirmationFiles

Roe has never been full of promise for women of color, immigrant women and women with low incomes, who also have the most to lose.

“Legal abortion means little to communities without the ability to access it.”

This article originally appeared in ColorLineson January 19, the anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court decision on Roe v. Wade.

Forty-six years ago today, millions of women across the country celebrated as Roe v. Wade, which legalized abortion, was made the law of the land. No more hiding in the shadows, no more being ashamed to talk about abortion, we thought. We finally had complete control of our reproductive future and the ability to plan our families.

But the truth is, not all women have benefited from Roe. Women of color have been forced to survive in a reality without the full protections of Roe for decades.

Fake women’s health centers have blatantly targeted…

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Cases Against Assange, Manning Prove: US Legal System Is a Farce

Washington’s case against Julian Assange is so contrived and so weak, that the corrupt US attorney assigned to frame-up Assange has resorted to persecution of Manning in an effort to coerce false testimony against Assange from Manning.

Worldtruth

Paul Craig Roberts Mon, May 20, 2019

https://russia-insider.com/en/cases-against-assange-manning-prove-us-legal-system-farce/ri27082
“Everyone who is aware of the US government’s extraordinary criminal actions at home and abroad bears a heavy weight. The millions of peoples murdered, maimed, orphaned, widowed, and displaced by gratuitous American military aggression comprise a Holocaust of deaths based entirely on lies and false accusations in order to advance secret American and Israeli agendas. I suspect that the heavy burden of responsibility for mass murder and destruction committed in our name is the reason most Americans prefer the fake news fed to them about how good and wonderful and exceptional we are and how hard our government works to protect us from the nasty folks elsewhere.

This storyline converts the illegal brutal war crimes of the US government against women, children, defenseless citizens, schools, wedding parties, funerals, and farmers in their fields into glorious and brave defenses of our liberty and…

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The US Government Assault on World War I Veterans and Their Families

The March of the Bonus Army

PBS (2013)

Film Review

This documentary concerns the brutal 1932 massacre of World War I veterans and their families by Generals MacArthur, Eisenhower and Patton.

Owing to insufficient volunteers (the army paid $1.25 a day), the US government was forced to initiate a draft when they first entered World War I in April 1917. When the war ended, veterans agitated for lost wages, leading Congress to authorize payment of a $1.25 bonus, to be paid in 1938.

With the 1929 Depression, unemployment rates for veterans were especially high, and an ex-GI from Portland organized a veterans march on Washington to demand immediate payment of their bonus.

After dozens of veterans occupied every Congressman’s office, the House passed the Bonus Bill.

As the Senate took up the bill, the veterans and their families set up an enormous tent and shack city in the Anacostia neighborhood of Washington DC. They passed the time preparing communal meals, boxing, making music, preparing and visiting a library set up by the Salvation Army. One of the most remarkable features of the Anacostia tent city was the natural integration of black and white veterans in all aspects of daily life. During the war, black troops weren’t allowed to fight alongside white Americans, leading 100,000 African Americans to fight under the French flag.

The the Senate overwhelming defeated the Bonus Bill, Congress adjourned and Hoover ordered the evacuation of the 45,000 Bonus Army veterans from downtown Washington DC. After a battle broke out between city police and veterans, Hoover ordered and attack by 400 infantry, accompanied by tanks and armored vehicles to attack. General MacArthur ignored his order not to cross the Anacostia River, and he and his men burned the shacks and tents filled with the wives and children of Bonus Army members.

Congress ultimately passed the Bonus Bill in 1933. I was very surprised to learn that Roosevelt vetoed it and that the House and Senate overrode his veto.

 

What It’s Like at an Alabama Clinic Still Performing Abortions (HBO) – VICE News Published on May 20, 2019

 

 

The day after Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey, a Republican, signed a bill that put her state on the path to banning almost all abortions, a 20-year-old woman from Tennessee walked into an abortion clinic with an ex-boyfriend and underwent the procedure.

“I’m a single mom of three kids,” said the woman, who asked to remain anonymous, after having an abortion. “I have nothing to offer this child. You know, like, I’m already spread thin. I have my other three to take care of.”

She was one of about 20 women who had the procedure that day at the Alabama Women’s Center. Because there, it was business as usual. The ban — which is certain to be challenged in court — won’t go into effect for several months. Meanwhile, abortion is still legal in the state.

Dalton Johnson co-founded the Alabama Women’s Center in 2001, and since then, the center has had to adapt and sue over multiple new laws and ordinances designed to shut its doors.

“It’s been one thing after another. You know, I kind of feel almost at home in the federal courthouse,” Johnson said. “It’s been admitting privileges. It’s been the zoning.”

“The anti-choice group sued the City of Huntsville for issuing my business license, and so that was a whole battle that we had to fight and pay for out of pocket. And, of course, we prevailed in that one. The building codes,” she added. “And probably some more I just can’t even think of.”

So for Johnson, the latest law isn’t much of a surprise. But that doesn’t mean it wasn’t emotionally affecting the staff at the clinic, as they answered phones and cared for patients […]

via What It’s Like at an Alabama Clinic Still Performing Abortions (HBO) – VICE News Published on May 20, 2019 — Just Sayin’