Daily Archives: February 17, 2022

SOUTH AFRICA TOUR OF NEW ZEALAND, 2022

Taylor (retirement), Williamson (injury) and Boult (birth of child) are unavailable for the for the first Test but South Africa will be well advised to not take New Zealand lightly Getty

Two New Zealanders walk into a bar. One sits down at a table near the door, and says to the other, "Get us a beer, will ya?" The other replies, "Mate, your legs aren't painted on." Translation: what makes you so special that you don't have to walk to the counter to order your own drinks?

Kiwis seem to be born with an innate sense of equality. We're all the same, mate. No-one is better than anyone else, and we'll bloody-well make sure they know it. No-one is spared. Martin Crowe, for instance, was a victim of "tall poppy syndrome", which demanded that prominent figures be taken down a peg or two. That happened because, along with his specialness as a cricketer, Crowe was unusually and unapologetically unorthodox in his way of being part of the wider world. Can't have that, mate. The corrective action involved slurring Crowe with the term used by New Zealanders who don't live in the country's biggest city to denigrate those who do: "Jafa". It stands for "just another f*****g Aucklander".

Happily, this unhealthy tendency has diminished. New Zealanders seem to have come round to the idea that while stars shouldn't be polished beyond their deserved lustre, they should be allowed to shine their natural brightest without being cynically tarnished. Recalcitrants will be tested during the Test series against South Africa in Christchurch, which starts on Thursday. Because Ross Taylor, Kane Williamson and Trent Boult, the supernova stars of this generation of New Zealand's players, will not be in the XI. Taylor has retired, Williamson is nursing a chronic elbow injury, and Boult is about to become a father and will miss the first of the two matches.

Since Taylor, the senior among those three, made his debut in November 2007, he and Williamson have scored more than a quarter of their team's total runs. Williamson's 7,272 and Taylor's 7,046 allow them to tower over the third name on the list, Brendon McCullum, who made almost three-quarters of his career aggregate of 6,453 once Taylor's career had begun. Taylor and Williamson are, in that order, New Zealand's all-time highest run-scorers. New Zealand haven't played a Test without both of them since January 2008. That's 117 Tests ago, of which Taylor has featured in 110 and Williamson in 86.

No New Zealander has taken more wickets than Boult's 301 - more than a fifth of the Kiwis' total during his career - since he made his debut in December 2011. Boult is behind Richard Hadlee, Daniel Vettori and Tim Southee on New Zealand's all-time list of wicket-takers, but he has bowled between 11,963 and 2,137 fewer deliveries than them. Remarkably for a fast bowler, Boult has missed only 11 of the 86 Tests New Zealand have played since he earned his first cap.

New Zealand have won 44 and lost 41 of Taylor's Tests. Those figures become 37 and 28 for Williamson and 38 and 23 for Boult. But it's as part of a united force that the three players' worth is most apparent: the Kiwis have won 35 and lost 17 of the 64 matches in which their XI has been studded with Taylor, Williamson and Boult. That's a winning percentage of 54.69. Before the Taylor-Williamson-Boult era, New Zealand won just 18.76% of their Tests. In before and after terms, they are 36.02% more successful when the trio have been in action compared to previously. Pertinently, they featured in seven of the nine victories New Zealand earned in the 16 matches they have played in the World Test Championship (WTC). With weird symmetry, Taylor and Williamson are both sixth on the list of run-scorers worldwide measured from their debuts, and Boult is sixth among the wicket-takers.

Whichever way you spin the numbers, the three Kiwis are giants of the modern game. But New Zealand are hardly pushovers when those players don't make their presence felt more strongly than their teammates. That much was made plain during the inaugural WTC final in Southampton in June last year. Boult was tight but not especially successful in taking 2/47 in India's first innings of 217, in which Kyle Jamieson claimed 5/31. Williamson and Taylor made 49 and 11 in their side's reply of 249, which was led by Devon Conway's 54. Boult took 3/39 in the second innings, but Southee banked 4/48. Even so, Williamson and Taylor did show their class in chasing down the target of 139 with an unbroken stand of 96. Williamson made 52 not out and Taylor was unbeaten on 47.

So the South Africans would be well advised not to expect a lesser examination on Thursday (February 17). By the sound of bowling coach Charl Langeveldt's rumination on Hagley Oval's famously green and grassy pitch, the visitors are indeed wise to the subtleties of the challenge ahead of them: "It can be misleading. That's how New Zealand wickets are. It looks green, and probably with the new ball it will swing and seam. But it gets easier once the ball gets old. We spoke long and hard about it when we got here. The discussion was about getting used to the overcast conditions, too. When the sun is out, it's easier [to bat] - the ball doesn't swing and nip, the colour of the grass changes. But we will focus on bowling fuller. We need to make them play with the new ball. It's all about being adaptable."

Even the fact that Tom Latham has presided over only three wins in his six Tests as Williamson's understudy as captain shouldn't be taken as an obvious chink in the home side's armour. In January, six days after Latham had scored one and 14 in Bangladesh's shock eight-wicket win in Mount Maunganui, he led his team to victory by an innings at Hagley Oval, his home ground. Latham made 252, his sixth century and second double hundred in his last 39 Test innings. Clearly, his legs aren't painted on.

Cricbuzz

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New Zealand still as dangerous despite the absence of big three | Cricbuzz.com - Cricbuzz - Cricbuzz

Marlborough is at the heart of a new $1 billion hardwood industry project that aims to eradicate the need for chemically-treated timber in New Zealand and provide a boost for the environment and regional economies.

With the New Zealand timber industrys continued use of toxic agents, such as the carcinogenic Chromate Copper Arsenic (CCA) to treat timber, the countrys inability to reuse or recycle the waste has meant more than 400,000 tonnes of contaminated wood is being sent to the nations landfills each year.

New Zealand is one of the world's largest users of CCA-treated timber, but the masses of waste wood, broken posts and off-cuts cannot be safely disposed of and are too contaminated to be recycled.

It is illegal to burn CCA-treated timber as it releases poisonous chemicals, including high-levels of arsenic, into the air that can be harmful to people and the environment.

READ MORE:* Forestry minister mucks in to help plant first of a new generation eucalyptus tree* Pyrolysis plant 'put to sleep' after Marlborough District Council cancel deal* Round two in pyrolysis plant fight as new application lodged

Just over a decade ago, the New Zealand Dryland Forest Initiative (NZDFI) began its quest to develop a durable hardwood industry and to find a suitable replacement for radiata pine - New Zealands most commonly used wood.

Radiata pine, a species that requires chemical treatment prior to use, is used heavily in the agricultural industry, especially across vineyards where an estimated 15 to 18 million CCA-treated timber posts are being used in the Marlborough region alone.

Andy Brew/Marlborough Express

University of Canterbury PhD student Yanjie Li using a coring drill to test the durable properties of the heartwood in a young eucalyptus tree.

As many as 630,000 posts are damaged each year, ending up in landfill sites and adding to the ever-increasing stockpiles of contaminated waste mounting up around New Zealand.

NZDFI said the region was a prime location for the burgeoning industry to take root.

Marlborough is the home of the NZDFI, initially established because of the wine-growing industry's perceived need for an alternative to CCA-treated radiata pine posts and poles. This post and pole market, combined with high summer temperatures and very low summer rainfall in many regions, make Marlborough highly suited to growing drought-tolerant durable eucalyptus as a land-use diversification and as the basis for a sustainable regional hardwood industry, NZFDI said.

The projects motto, Whakatipu taikk mauroa (Breeding tomorrows trees today), emphasises NZDFIs vision to build a $1 billion hardwood industry by 2050 that will be able to supply all New Zealands timber requirements while, at the same time, making the need for toxic timber treatments redundant.

Marlborough Research Centre chief executive Gerald Hope said the wine industry was the backbone of the district's economy and was always looking to reduce its environmental footprint.

Marlborough is the bulk of the New Zealand wine industry, 80 per cent of our exports come out of this region. However, from an environmental point of view there is one thorn in our heel and that is the disposal of, and use of, CCA-treated timber.

Durable hardwood is the future, Hope said.

Scott Hammond/Stuff

NZDFI project manager Paul Millen was named New Zealand Forester of the Year last year for his 18 years of work breeding eucalyptus.

The NZ Institute of Forestry 2021 Forester of the Year winner and NZDFI's project manager Paul Millen said the industry would attract investment into Marlborough, provide employment opportunities and inject millions into the region's economy.

Millen said it was estimated that the project could be worth up to $82.5m annually to the Marlborough GDP.

In Marlborough our vision is for a sustainable hardwood industry to be centred on a small-to-medium sized processing operation based at Kaituna, near Blenheim. We could build an adjoining mill onto the Kaituna saw mill, and it would be the perfect place for transportation and access to Picton port, Millen said.

NZDFI said the eucalyptus hardwood could be used beyond vineyard posts as its natural durability also made it ideal for power poles, wharfs, boat-building, decking and furniture.

Andy Brew/Marlborough Express

The University of Canterbury's Wood Technology Research Centre Co-Director and science team leader at NZDFI Clemens Altaner has sampled more than 800 species of eucalyptus to find the best ones suited to NZ conditions.

The University of Canterbury's Wood Technology Research Centre co-director and science team leader at NZDFI Clemens Altaner said it was these attributes, along with consumers growing appetite for organically grown products, that inspired the creation of NZDFI.

It started with the problems in the vineyards, he said. If you are an organic grower, you cant use CCA-treated timber in your vineyard, and you cant covert one to organic if the CCA is still in the soil. So, they need something else.

Little over a decade later, and the testing and trailing of several hundred different types of eucalyptus, Altaner and his team have developed several distinct species that offer rapid growth, high durability and can be used and recycled in its natural condition.

There are over 800 different species of eucalyptus, and some of them are extremely durable, he said. So we brought over hundreds of seeds from Australia to see which ones would grow in New Zealand conditions.

Andy Brew/Marlborough Express

The logging and timber industry has changed considerably over the past century, with science and technology now at the forefront.

NZDFI used world-first research techniques that involved coring into the trunks of young trees for analysis of the heartwood and extractives to determine their natural resistance against biodegradation, decay and wood-degrading insects. Heartwood grows in the centre of the trunk and is the only part of the tree that holds the natural durability properties required.

The NZDFI, working in conjunction with its partner Proseed NZ Ltd, were able to whittle down their search to several species of eucalyptuses that could withstand environmental decay and insect infestation without the need for chemical treatment.

NZDFI has 13 plantation sites across Marlborough with a range of landowners hosting trials on their land, including farmers, vineyard owners, local authorities, and large-scale forest owners and processors.

Visit link:

Marlborough at the heart of new $1 billion timber industry - Stuff.co.nz

As border tensions continue to build with Russia, Foreign Minister Nanaia Mahuta has told New Zealanders in Ukraine to leave the country immediately.Video / AP

A New Zealand journalist on the frontline in Ukraine believes an imminent Russian invasion is a 50/50 prospect, which would result in "very bloody, very brutal" fighting and high civilian casualties.

Fears that Russian President Vladimir Putin will unleash 130,000 troops currently massed near Ukraine's border and even order an "aerial bombardment" on the capital Kyiv have ramped up over the last few weeks.

But on Saturday Washington spy chiefs warned an invasion could come within days, prompting western governments, including New Zealand, to urgently pull their citizens out of the country.

"In response to heightened tensions between Russia and Ukraine, the New Zealand Government is advising New Zealanders in Ukraine to leave immediately while there are commercial flights able to get them home," Foreign Minister Nanaia Mahuta said yesterday.

Kiwi freelance photo-journalist Tom Mutch, who spent months reporting in Afghanistan last year as it fell back into Taliban control, was working in Iraq last month when word came through that Ukraine was "heating up".

The 30-year-old had been to Ukraine and its conflict region before as a UK parliamentary researcher on defence and security issues so he was well-placed to quickly get to grips with the escalating situation.

Christchurch-born Mutch, who has written for The Times, Telegraph, open Democracy, and Foreign Policy magazine, knew it was where he needed to be.

He arrived three weeks ago to a confused scene.

While western intelligence agencies have been warning of a Russian invasion, locals have remained stoical and calm.

In the big cities like Kyiv and Kharkiv, which is just 40kms from tens of thousands of Russian troops massed at the border, life has gone on "pretty much as normal".

13 Feb, 2022 05:28 PMQuick Read

The Kyiv opera house is advertising shows for the next few weeks. Friends make plans for upcoming weekends.

"But there's always a 'but' attached: the city could be under siege by then," Mutch says.

Last week, he covered supermodels on the catwalk of Ukraine's fashion week. Within days, he was with soldiers huddled on the frontline.

A local woman explained to him how Ukrainians "live these insane double lives" where they go to work and endure normal days but when they return home for dinner, instead of sharing work stories they discuss evacuation strategies and where bunkers are located.

"She said that on the outside it's a completely normal life, yet there's this constant turmoil and fear hanging over everyone's head because we know all that could change in an instant," Mutch says.

Last month, as satellite images started to show the massing of Russian troops and military hardware on the border, it might just have been another of Putin's sabre-rattling moves.

But over recent weeks that has seemed "less and less likely", according to Mutch, who now believes an invasion is a 50/50 prospect.

"It's a coin toss, really," he says, pointing to some recent indications that Putin's plans are more than posturing, including evidence of mobile field hospitals and riot control police being mobilised.

For the last few days, Mutch has been in Mariupol, a border city of 500,000 people that was briefly captured by Russia-backed separatists in 2014 and has suffered significant conflict over the years.

Mariupol locals, he says, all remember the last war and have long been prepared for more fighting.

Access to the frontline has been remarkably easy - you can catch a train from the main centres and then hire a driver, or even catch a taxi "pretty bloody close to the action".

The frontlines of the Donbas region, which Mutch has visited several times, resemble First World War trenches. Walking through them, between sandbagged gun emplacements, he has to duck down, with snipers known to take potshots. Explosions are occasionally heard.

Across a wide-open field about 900m-1000m away are the Ukrainian separatists, who are pro-Russia and often professional Russian soldiers.

So what would an invasion look like?

The Russians have troops "pretty much everywhere around Ukraine", Mutch says, with the Crimean Peninsula stacked with poised soldiers, amphibious assault units in the south, and in the east the separatist-controlled Donetsk regions. In the north-east there are troops near Kharkiv, while they are also staging "military exercises" in neighbouring Belarus.

Various scenarios have been predicted, Mutch says, including the Russians making a land grab in the east, a push into Kharkiv, or they might try and take everything east of the Dnieper River which bisects Ukraine.

And then there's Kyiv. If the Russians make a play for the capital, with its pro-western population of three million, Mutch believes it could get extremely serious.

"If the Russians did decide to try and take Kyiv, you could see genuine urban warfare on a scale that people haven't seen since the Second World War," he says.

Any invasion would be "very bloody, very brutal", with new kinds of weaponry deployed and the likelihood of high civilian casualties.

Ukrainians hold no hope that Nato or other western allies will join them in the fight.

"They know they're pretty much going to be on their own."

Mutch, who went to Burnside High School, left for the UK as a 19-year-old to attend university. He's never been back.

He is a single man without children but his parents back in New Zealand worry about his safety while reporting in danger zones like Nagorno-Karabakh in 2020, where he experienced the most intense fighting he's ever seen.

"The risks I've taken, I have chosen those risks. My family hasn't chosen them, so that's what I worry about more than my own personal safety," Mutch says.

"You take as many precautions as possible; you make sure you have body armour and travel with people you trust and know, and have people who speak the language. You can never really know how these things will turn out, but you have to suck it up and get on with the job."

See the rest here:

Kiwi on Ukraine front line: Invasion would be 'very bloody, very brutal' - New Zealand Herald

Extremism

Days of protesters' chats reveal the inside story of how New Zealand's convoy was hijacked by the far-right fringe, Marc Daalder reports

Special report:The convoy wasn't supposed to end this way.

What organisers hoped would be a mass movement shutting down the nation's capital until vaccine mandates were removed has devolved into a few hundred radical protesters scrapping with police, death threats against politicians which is keeping any MPs from turning out to speak with the aggrieved, and the hijacking of the event by a Trump-aligned alternative media outlet.

Analysis of posts on the chat app Telegram as well as more traditional social media platforms shows how the convoy went from a targeted protest of vaccine mandates to a vehicle for fringe and even violent extremist ideologies over the course of the event. Pleas from the original organisers on Thursday morning to abandon the camp went unheeded and more than 100 people were arrested. At the end of the day, however, protesters cheered whenpolice gave up all of the ground they had gained through painstaking, inch-by-inch advances.

As the occupation stretches into its fifth day, it is now being seen in starkly different ways by extremists on the ground, by a more moderate anti-mandate minority and by the general New Zealand public.

"There's something going on here that's actually quite disturbing, in terms of splintered realities and lack of a shared narrative," Sanjana Hattotuwa, who monitors extremism and misinformation in New Zealand for Te Pnaha Matatini's Disinformation Project, told Newsroom.

While police are now managing the physical event on the ground, the battles being fought over narrative online threaten to further fray New Zealand's social fabric, he warned.

A viral moment

The speed at which the convoy went from an event in Canada to an online discussion in New Zealand to something that was actually happening is unprecedented in the country's conspiracy scene.

Hattotuwa first noticed discussion around the convoy on New Zealand-based Telegram channels on January 30. The next day, a private Facebook group to support the effort already had 7200 members. It now has nearly 70,000.

"It was first chatter about a convoy and then it became the convoy as its amorphous organisers wanted it to become. And that took less than 48 hours. It was fast," he said.

"We're looking at a propagation from ideation online on the 30th of January to what we have now. That's very, very fast."

At the time the plans were launched, the truckers' occupation of Ottawa was the big story on the anti-vax fringe and the far right globally. Efforts everywhere sought to emulate its success. In New Zealand, early attempts to recruit significant numbers of truckers failed, so the movement quickly became a convoy of regular vehicles.

We now know that Canada's convoy was not an organic uprising of truckers but the scheme of a QAnon conspiracy theorist. In New Zealand, there are no signs yet that the convoy movement was launched by any of the usual conspiracy theorist or extremist suspects.

"This was pretty organic. It came from nowhere," Hattotuwa said. It received early support and amplification from the anti-lockdown, anti-vax group Voices for Freedom and then went truly viral on the conspiracy fringe when it got coverage from Counterspin Media.

Convoy's big tent

Within a matter of days, Counterspin and the convoy's organisers would be locked in a struggle for control of the narrative around the protest as well as the physical event itself. But at that early stage, the organisers were grateful for the signal boost.

Counterspin is one of the largest platforms for conspiracy theories and far-right ideology in New Zealand. It airs on an online TV channel set up by former Donald Trump advisor and far-right extremist Steve Bannon and was started by Kelvyn Alp, an extremist known for agitating for armed resistance against the New Zealand government in the early 2000s.

Alp hasn't grown any moremoderate in the interim. On January 30, the day the convoy discussions really picked up, he put out a call for armed kidnapping of MPs, journalists and anyone else his audience might perceive as upholding the Government. That statement was amplified across Telegram, but was drowned out the next day by convoy chatter. Every single one of more than 100 Telegram channels surveyed by Hattotuwa mentioned the convoy in some capacity that day.

For their part, the convoy organisers tried to keep to a narrow message: They wanted the end of vaccine mandates, the repeal of Covid-19-related legislation and for anti-vaccination doctors suspended by the Medical Council to be reinstated. While Counterspin framed the event as the start of a "war" in which politicians would be arrested for the "crime" of promoting vaccination, the organisers asked that views not related to the mandates be shared privately.

There were early warning signs of division. As the convoy made its way down the country, some users on Telegram complained about the use of Trump- and QAnon-related imagery by some vehicles.

"They are completely irrelevant and only serve to discredit the entire cause," one user wrote.

Fractures also appeared on Zello, an app that replicates a walkie-talkie which the convoy used to coordinate logistics and keep entertained for the drive to Wellington. This forum was more strictly controlled by the organisers, however, with several people complaining on Telegram that they had been kicked out of the Zello groups.

Notwithstanding these occasional disagreements, the movement's unity held as it arrived in Wellington. The first day saw participants busy setting up tents and occupying the Parliamentary precinct, with little time available for ideological scuffles.

They got tacit support from politicians like Winston Peters as well as white supremacist groups like Action Zealandia. While the organisers' official communications focused on unity, others used the platform to callfor a siege of an animal vaccine factory in Timaru. At the event, signs about love and community sat alongside references to executions of politicians. Some protesters brought nooses with them.

Online, content moved like lightning in this period, Hattotuwa observed, spreading across platforms and then bouncing back with new and more extreme falsehoods appended, before beginning the cycle anew. But the differences of opinion didn't lead to direct conflict. For a day, the big tent was holding.

'Never coming back'

The decisive moment came on Wednesday afternoon. Four days prior, a conspiracy theorist by the name of Brett Power had lodged a civil complaint against Andrew Little in the High Court in New Plymouth, accusing the health minister of murder. Like many of the protesters and high-profile extremists like Alp, Power is a sovereign citizen who believes that the Government has no legal power to tax or detain him.

After filing his papers at the High Court, Power and others had attempted to storm the offices of the Taranaki Daily News. He joined the convoy and ended up in Wellington on Tuesday.

At 3.15pm on Wednesday, Power attempted to breach the police line at Parliament to enter the building and serve his legal papers to Little. The plan was then to citizens arrest the health minister - effectively, to kidnap him - and then put him on trial. The preordained punishment was to be execution.

As Power tried to push past the officers, protesters surged forward. At least one metal barricade was knocked over. The convoy's original organisers called for calm on Zello, Counterspin pushed others to storm Parliament on the livestream and on Telegram and a new faction of protesters aligned with Brian Tamaki's anti-vax Freedom and Rights Coalition (FRC) seized control of the PA system to also call for calm.

Power and two others were arrested.

Hattotuwa saw this as the clear point where the convoy's original organisers lost all control.

"When you were looking at Counterspin and listening to what was being talked about by them on Zello, they had lost the plot."

Byron Clark, a video essayist who monitors New Zealand's extreme right, said that Counterspin's influence over the crowd was evident at that moment.

"They've expanded their audience and appear to be having a lot of influence on that new audience. When the three people broke the police line, that was after Kelvyn Alp had told people to go up the steps to Parliament and do this citizens arrest of the health minister."

Angry online exchanges between Counterspin and the FRC made headlines in the mainstream media, but few noticed that the official organisers were effectively in the dark after Wednesday. Thursday morning entrenched that position.

As police began pushing onto Parliament grounds in an effort to remove tents at around 8:30am, Counterspin agitators called for protesters to form a human barrier against the officers. The official convoy organisers blared in all caps on their Telegram channel "EVERYONE NOW PLEASE WALK AWAY BACK TO THE ROAD". Instead, the protesters pushed back and the arrests started.

"It's like two different worlds. There is no connection to ground reality anymore," Hattotuwa said.

"The last I heard from the organiser, who was a woman, was that she was walking to her car and never coming back."

Counterspin takes control

Police have since expressed frustration with the lack of official leadership at the event, saying it makes it difficult for them to liaise with the crowd. They also issued a statement on Friday attempting to rebut legal misinformation that the crowd had received.

"Some factions are actively promoting false advice about peoples rights and police powers, which is misleading and factually incorrect," Wellington District Commander Corrie Parnell said.

"For example, the use of a particular word or phrase by an individual will not impact the arrest of anyone involved in unlawful activity."

When arrests resumed on Thursday afternoon, the speaker on the megaphone advised, "If you say 'I do not consent, I do not understand' three times, the police have to release you".

Clark said this was straight from the sovereign citizen playbook and further evidence of Counterspin's growing influence. That was worrying if people had joined the convoy based on its more moderate aims and were now being radicalised right on Parliament grounds.

"It pulled in new people but in doing that has brought them into this space where they're encountering more extreme ideas and more conspiratorial ideas, like the various sovereign citizen style conspiracy theories. They're now believing that police can't arrest them if they say the right thing three times. People are being pulled in and either further radicalised or at least further misinformed with more and more disinformation that's being spread around," he said.

"I think the influence of Counterspin is quite visible in what's happening on the ground. So they're not just reporting on the protests but kind of shaping the direction of the protests with their livestreams."

The void left by the original organisers is being filled with more and more extreme content, Hattotuwa said.

"It's not surprising to me that you have the ineptitude of the organisers being hijacked by elements within the country and possibly outside as a vehicle to push their own agenda. That's actually more worrying to me than the convoy."

The size of Counterspin's captive audience isn't something it would have been able to summon by itself two weeks ago. But because the convoy tried to hold both moderate and extreme elements under the same roof, the whole house has now been seized by the extremists.

There are still clear divides among the protesters. On Thursday afternoon, Counterspin streamed a protester who was being interviewed by a 1Newscrew. The woman talked about how she was leaving her husband because he had had the booster shot and she was certain he would die from it.

Counterspin called the woman a "Kiwi Patriot", but others watching the stream worried she would discredit the movement.

"Stop going on about conspiracies tell the MSM we are here for freedom of choice," one wrote.

Another tried to strikea middle ground between conspiracism and rationality. "Forget the conspiracies, tell them about the mandates, the vac injury, the vac deaths."

Splintered realities

On Facebook, at least, the traditional media might not have been mainstream anywayon Thursday.

"This is hitting, hard, social cohesion right now."

Hattotuwa said the Covid-19 misinformation pages he tracks on Facebook had more interactions on Thursday than the mainstream media pages - and nearly as many video views. The leading misinformation page, run by anti-vaxxer Chantelle Baker, garnered more video views with five posts than the leading media page, the NZ Herald, got with 73.

"I don't think people realise how consequential Thursday was. Not so much for what happened in front of the Beehive, though arguably that's what people are most fixated on. But it's the informational landscape. It's extraordinary," he said.

"Chantelle Baker is, with five videos, generating more video views than 73 videos put out by NZ Herald in the same 24-hour period. There are dynamics here that are unprecedented. You are talking about a small misinfo/disinfo community who are pushing out real-time footage and coverage and framing about something that is happening that is fundamentally different to what the mainstream media is putting out.

"And they are being engaged on parallel and par with the mainstream media who obviously have a larger following. There's something going on here that's actually quite disturbing in terms of splintered realities and the lack of a shared narrative."

These splintered realities risk setting us on the course towards splintered societies, Hattotuwa said.

"There are three different ways the convoy is being perceived and I cannot stress that enough. There is nothing that remotely connects what Counterspin is putting out about the convoy, in real time, to what the convoy's chatter on Zello is, like for example at the start of Thursday. It's totally disconnected.

"This is hitting, hard, social cohesion right now. It's a very sophisticated playbook. It is not original because it has been played out in developing countries like mine and also on both sides of the Atlantic, but here, it's playing out right now."

Hattotuwa compared the protest to a terror attack, not because of the physical impact on people but because of the social and political impact on New Zealand as a whole. He said the Government's social cohesion work programme, still under development in the aftermath of the March 15 mosque shootings, would be needed for this type of situation. The more social cohesion frays, the harder it is to rein in violent extremism - a lesson he learned from his home country of Sri Lanka.

"That is what keeps me up at night, because you're talking to a person who comes from a very different context. I come from the end point of where this leads. When you come from the end point of a journey, you realise the markers of how you got there," Hattotuwa said.

"What I'm seeing right now of course it's not destiny but what you're seeing is the inexorable traversing of a journey that will take you to not a good place. That is the problem. That is what worries me.It's not prophecy, but it is prescience because of the experience that we have been through elsewhere."

Link:

'Splintered realities': How NZ convoy lost its way - Newsroom

"On every litre of petrol, about a $1.40 is tax, that means in Auckland it's 52 percent. It's a little bit higher in Auckland because of the regional fuel tax.

"Nationwide on a litre of petrol, about 48 percent is Government taxes and levies," says Louis Houlbrooke of the New Zealand Taxpayers' Union.

Word of their deal got out fast.

"I've just paid $111 in petrol, and I got a $59 payback for tax," one person says.

"I thought hey, better come down, save myself $40, buy a box of beers for the weekend," another says.

The deal only lasted for half an hour at the Takapuna Gull station as a pointed exercise by the union.

Fuel costs are currently undoubtedly high. Based on the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment's reported prices, depending on the car, this time last year $100 of 91 could get you from Wellington to Warkworth.

But with current petrol prices, $100 would only get you to Hamilton.

"With shipping and other costs, it equated to a barrel of oil landing in New Zealand last week costing $111, that's the highest it's been in a year and it's still predicted to go upwards," says Terry Collins, AA principal advisor.

"I would say it's going to go up or at least staying where it is for another six months."

Energy Minister Megan Woods says climbing prices are largely due to the price of global crude oil being at record highs, geopolitical causes, and pandemic interruptions - factors outside the Government's influence.

She says for the Government's part, it's made a commitment not to raise fuel taxes this term.

But driving off from the pump with cash in hand, like about 50 Aucklanders did on Thursday, probably won't be a reality - for now.

See the rest here:

New Zealand Taxpayers' Union gives about 50 Aucklanders their petrol tax back in pointed exercise directed at Government - Newshub