Keeping the Bledisloe Cup under lock and key for his entire tenure with the All Blacks will be one of Steve Hansen’s most gratifying achievements upon departure this year.
Hansen has revealed a “not on my watch” attitude to retaining the trans-Tasman prize became more focused as each defence ticked by.
The 36-0 victory in Auckland on Saturday made it 16 in a row and allowed the veteran coach to exhale.
Hansen steps down after the World Cup and regardless of whether the All Blacks defend their crown in Japan, the 60-year-old will regard his Bledisloe shut-out as an accomplishment to savour.
He joined New Zealand’s coaching structure as an assistant to Graham Henry in 2004, a year after the record reign began.
Eight years in that role were followed by eight in charge.
Multiple Bledisloe Cup Tests have marked every season and he says the occasions when the Wallabies had sent the series to a decider remain burned in his memory.
“It’s massive,” he said.
“As we’ve talked about for many years now, outside the World Cup it’s the most important thing that we have.
“We seem to have this thing in World Cup years that we come to that final game and have to win.
“It’s just a nice feeling to be able to say, ‘well, not on my watch’.”
Saturday’s Test was Hansen’s 100th in charge, a milestone he played down.
However, he has few peers over that period having lost just nine times.
Only three of 23 trans-Tasman Tests have been lost, including the 2015 World Cup final.
Australia can’t celebrate seeing the back of him just yet as the All Blacks and Wallabies could meet again in Japan, although it would need to be in the last-four stage of the tournament.
The United Nations’ crackdown on “hate speech” defines the term so
broadly that just about anything could be considered in violation,
according to a political analyst.
“The U.N.’s all-out war on free speech is on,” she said.
“Forget everything about the free exchange of ideas: the U.N. feels
that its ‘values’ are being threatened and those who criticize those
values must therefore be shut down,” she explained.
Bergman said the newest attack on speech got started when U.N.
Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told the special adviser for the
prevention of genocide, Adama Dieng, to draw up a plan.
Guterres said, “We need to enlist every segment of society in the
battle for values that our world faces today – and, in particular, to
tackle the rise of hate speech, xenophobia and intolerance. We hear
troubling, hateful echoes of eras long past.”
Then he likened segments of today’s political debates to the 1930s.
He said: “Words are not enough. We need to be effective in both
asserting our universal values and in addressing the root causes of
fear, mistrust, anxiety and anger. That is the key to bring people along
in defense of those values that are under such grave threat today.”
Now that plan is ready, Bergman wrote, with Guterres’ confirmation of
the United Nations Strategy and Plan of Action on Hate Speech.
Stating that “hate” is going mainstream, it promises to “confront
hate speech at every turn” without limiting “freedom of speech.”
“Except the U.N. most definitely seeks to limit freedom of speech,
especially the kind that challenges the U.N.’s agendas,” Bergman wrote.
“This was evident with regard to the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly
and Regular Migration in which it was explicitly stated that public
funding to ‘media outlets that systematically promote intolerance,
xenophobia, racism and other forms of discrimination towards migrants’
should be stopped.”
Bergman wrote that whatever “constitutes intolerance, xenophobia,
racism or discrimination was naturally left undefined, making the
provision a convenient catchall for governments who wish to defund media
that dissent from current political orthodoxy on migration.”
The U.N. says any communication containing discriminatory language
based on “religion, ethnicity, nationality, race, color, descent, gender
or other identity factor” is hate speech.
It demands all governments, societies, and the private sector attack such speech with which it disagrees.
“Disturbingly, the U.N. plans to put pressure directly on media and
influence children through education,” she explained, citing the U.N.’s
own call for “partnerships” with media to “promote” nondiscrimination.
“The new action plan plays straight into the decades-long attempts of
the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) to ban criticism of
Islam,” Bergman noted. “In the wake of the launch of Guterres’ action
plan, Pakistan has already presented a six-point plan ‘to address the
new manifestations of racism and faith-based hatred, especially
Islamophobia’ at the United Nations headquarters.”
Bergman said Pakistan’s ambassador already has proposed international
efforts to “counter Islamophobia, which is today the most prevalent
expression of racism and hatred.”
The effort already has earned the support of Facebook, the report
said, which promised “to remove fake accounts” that upset “the entire
Muslim Ummah (community).”
And Pakistan has demanded that national legislation be used by governments, civil society and social media to stop such speech.
There are efforts by the Organization of Islamic Cooperation to have installed in international law a ban on any criticism of Islam.
Under Islamic law, it is a serious offense to criticize Allah,
Muhammad or Islam. In countries such as Pakistan, a Muslim can take a
non-Muslim to court and claim he was “offended” by something that was
said, resulting in a trial and jail time, even death, for the
non-Muslim.
Christians in Pakistan, Indonesia, Egypt, Sudan and other
Muslim-dominated countries have been the targets of brutal persecution,
with the blasphemy laws often serving as the catalyst for their
incarceration. Christians have been jailed, stoned, beheaded and had
acid thrown in their faces for violating the blasphemy laws.
The OIC consists of 57 Muslim-majority countries and boasts the
largest voting bloc at the United Nations. Its goal has been to make
members’ bans on criticism of Islam the standard worldwide.
As far back as 2011, with the help of then-Secretary of State Hillary
Clinton, the U.N. Human Rights Council was pursuing plans to combat
“intolerance, negative stereotyping and stigmatization of, and
discrimination, incitement to violence, and violence against persons
based on religion or belief.”
A short time later, the OIC launched the Istanbul Process with the help of Clinton to begin establishing the standards in laws.
A Kiwi Muslim community leader has called on our spy agencies to hire
better experts before there’s a repeat of the Christchurch attack.
Fifty-one people died when a gunman opened fire in two mosques in March, in New Zealand’s worst-ever mass shooting.
It was recently revealed the accused has been allowed to communicate with supporters around the world via mail, from his cell in Paremoremo’s Auckland Prison.
Aliya Danzeisen said on Saturday she doesn’t have faith in the
Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) to stop another white
supremacist attack.
“They got it wrong in Christchurch. I want people who are in the know who have been getting it right to be advising. They’ve already admitted that they weren’t focusing on them, so they weren’t prepared. We want people prepared,” she told Newshub Nation.
Excuse Me? “They didn’t get it wrong.” The cops and Cindy got it wrong when they removed face to face meetings with new gun license applicants.
“They have focused on the Muslim community for years… but they haven’t focused on the alt-right. They need to be focusing on them – they need to up-skill really quickly, and they need to get experts who already know what they are doing in, now.”
One of the letters, sent to a supporter in Russia, found its way onto the internet.
“It touches on all the key points of the white nationalist agenda and
ideology,” right-wing terrorism expert Dr Chris Wilson of the
University of Auckland – who’s read the whole thing – told Newshub
Nation.
“There’s misogyny in it, there’s talk about the threat to Europe… then most importantly talking about ‘a great conflict is coming and you need to prepare to protect your people’. These are the key mobilising emotional points for the white nationalist agenda. For that to go out to a supporter is incredibly dangerous.”
That’s because white supremacists often cite previous killers as
inspiration for their atrocities. Dr Wilson said there were copycats
after Norwegian white supremacist Anders Breivik’s rampage in 2011.
“That was when he had communications from prison. When the
communications were shut down, those copycat attacks started to die
off.”
They’re now back on the rise, Dr Wilson says, with conflicts in the
Muslim world sending waves of refugees towards safer places like
Europe.
Ban all communication?
The accused Christchurch gunman has a right to send and receive mail
under the law, and Corrections has a right to block it – but only on a
case-by-case basis.
Danzeisen says the alleged mass killer should lose his rights.
“He lost his rights to freedom of movement. He can lose his rights to
freedom of communication… he can be shut down… If this had been a
Muslim sending out something like this, you know it would have been shut
down.”
So far he’s received 48 pieces of mail. Fourteen of them have been blocked and 18 delivered, with the rest still being examined.
“This is part of him developing a cult following,” said Dr Wilson,
adding that GCSB and domestic-focused spies should have been brought in
to help Corrections screen the mail from the start.
“It’s astounding to me if they weren’t. If that’s not the core of their role, then what is?”
Even letters he writes that don’t contain specific calls to action
should be blocked, Dr Wilson said, saying extremists on sites like Gab
and 4chan will lap them up regardless of their content.
“Not many people are going to focus on the content of the letter – they’re quickly going to turn their attention to what he did, his manifesto, and so on. Any letter is giving him oxygen.”
The manifesto was banned by the Chief Censor earlier this year.
Like the GCSB, Danzeisen is urging Corrections to get experts in alt-right extremism in right away.
“This isn’t a place where people should be learning on the job… you need experts. Get them in.”
Tarrant wasn’t a white supremacist, but a failed little dumb arse from the left. Never let the facts get in the way of a story that shows a false narrative.
Coming soon to a farming village near us soon, or is it here already.?
Freedom of speech, freedom of association, freedom to do what you like on your own property is only a fallacy if the do-gooders get their way.
Look at this video and ask yourself what was the reasoning behind this courageous woman’s problems with the bureaucrats who tried to put her out of business.
Photos show the world’s first solar road that’s turned out to be a colossal failure because it’s falling apart and doesn’t generate enough energy
In July, a French daily newspaper published a story saying the longest solar road in the world had failed. It’s neither economically viable or energy efficient.
Less than three years since the road opened, it’s become cracked and damaged. Parts of the road have been demolished because they weren’t salvageable.
Energy targets were never hit, because engineers didn’t plan for rotting leaves to block sunlight.
France appears to have been on the solar road to nowhere.
In July, the French daily newspaper Le Monde reported that the 0.6-mile solar road was a fiasco.
In December 2016, when the trial road was unveiled, the French Ministry of the Environment called it “unprecedented”. French officials said the road, made of photovoltaic panels, would generate electricity to power streetlights in Tourouvre, a local town.
But less than three years later, a report published by Global Construction Review says France’s road of dreams may be over. Cracks have appeared, and in 2018, part of the road had to be demolished due to damage from wear and tear.
Even at its peak, the road was only producing half of the expected energy, because engineers didn’t take into consideration rotting leaves falling on the road.
It was all smiles and high hopes in 2016, when the world’s first solar panel road, called Wattway, opened. France spent $US5.2 million on 0.6 miles of road, and 30,000 square feet of solar panels. It was hailed as the longest solar road in the world.
Media gathered around to take a walk down what was thought to be the road of the future. The French minister for energy said she wanted to have solar panels on one mile of road every 621 miles in the country within the next five years.
It was a bold move beginning a solar panel trial in Normandy, France, since the region doesn’t have the most sunshine. Caen, a city in Normandy, only has 44 days of strong sunshine in a year. Thunderstorms also reportedly broke solar panels on the road.
