Police have today arrested a 28-year-old man, alleged to have held a gathering at a Redvale property over the weekend in breach of Covid-19 restrictions.
The man has been charged with Failing to Comply with the Covid-19 Public Health Response (Alert Level Requirements) Order (No 12) 2021, and is scheduled to appear in North Shore District Court on 22 October.
There are 94 new community cases of COVID-19 to report today; 87 in Auckland and seven in Waikato.
As of 10am, 41 of these cases are linked – 26 of which are household contacts – and 53 remain unlinked, with investigations continuing to help determine their connection to the outbreak.
Here’s a breakdown of today’s cases:
*One case reported yesterday has been reclassified as under investigation as a possible historical case and has been removed from the case total.
The death of General Colin Powell has drawn an outpouring of sympathy and praise from politicians, but social media users made “war criminal” trend instead, having not forgiven Powell for his role in the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
Powell died on Monday of complications from Covid-19, according to his family. He was eulogized in major media outlets as the first black secretary of state and chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. President Joe Biden said Powell embodied “the highest ideals of both warrior and diplomat,” while 43rd president George W. Bush called him a “great public servant.”
Another image, however, dominated the social media reactions to his death: that of Powell holding up a vial of fake anthrax in the UN General Assembly in 2003, claiming that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and making the case for the US invasion that followed.
RIP Colin Powell, a war criminal who lied to the UN and to Congress about Saddam Hussein possessing weapons of mass destruction; a lie that cost the lives of over 1 million Iraqis. pic.twitter.com/yGCRjXDk6Y
— Alan MacLeod (@AlanRMacLeod) October 18, 2021
Mass murderer and war criminal Colin Powell, who lied to the United Nations and the world about WMDs in Iraq, leading to the death and displacement of millions of Iraqis; who helped destroy the Middle East under George Bush’s neocon administration, has just died. pic.twitter.com/IbEvleHEKT
— Richard Medhurst (@richimedhurst) October 18, 2021
Others noted that Powell’s connection to US atrocities goes back to the Vietnam War.
Colin Powell was a liar and a war criminal,” said anti-war activists Code Pink.
Others, like the Intercept’s Ken Klippenstein, opted for sarcasm, calling Powell “a man of unparalleled integrity and courage” – as caption to the infamous UN photo.
RIP Colin Powell, a man of unparalleled integrity and courage. pic.twitter.com/oKO3e9VDYD
— Ken Klippenstein (@kenklippenstein) October 18, 2021
When Congressman Jamaal Bowman (D-New York) praised Powell as an inspiration to himself as “a Black man just trying to figure out the world,” one socialist publication accused him of praising a war criminal.
Fighting the status quo and bombs by [checks notes] praising a war criminal ???? https://t.co/GGEEgHyswj pic.twitter.com/1ns7eXTXex
— Left Voice (@left_voice) October 18, 2021
Meanwhile, Grayzone’s Max Blumenthal mocked MSNBC’s Joy Reid for saying Powell “had some tough moments around our wars, but was a fundamentally good and decent man and a great American we could all be proud of.”
“He had some tough moments around our wars” is the new “yeah we tortured some folks” https://t.co/XQvUi3NihU
— Max Blumenthal (@MaxBlumenthal) October 18, 2021
The opprobrium over Powell seemed particularly in evidence on the political left.
Andray Domise, who describes himself as a “Marxist-Dessalinist,” said that not criticizing a black war criminal amounted to “benevolent racism,” and that atrocities don’t disappear “when it’s a Black person giving the green light.”
Noname Book Club, a “community dedicated to uplifting POC voices” with nearly 600,000 followers, criticized the treatment of Powell as “first black,” arguing that this was a feature of “white domination” that “reduces our desire for collective liberation and makes us hyper focus on white approval” and well as idolizes “the first black billionaire or war criminal.”
Born in New York of Jamaican parents, Powell was in Vietnam on two occasions – first as a captain, advising the South Vietnamese Army, and later as a major investigating the unit behind the My Lai massacre. He rose to the top of the US military hierarchy by the late 1980s, serving as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under President George H.W. Bush during the 1991 war against Iraq over Kuwait. He would return to the Middle East as the younger Bush’s secretary of state a decade later.
Powell retired from the State Department in January 2005, and was replaced by Condoleezza Rice.
The Black Caps have lost to Australia by 3 wickets, and one ball remaining in a T20 World Cup warm up match in Abu Dhabi.
A full match report is available here.
Ireland have comprehensively defeated The Netherlands by 7 wickets at the ICC cricket T20 World Cup in ABu Dhabi.
This was a Group A match. The highlight of the Irish performance was an historic ‘double hatrick’ by bowler Curtis Campher.
Full match report is available here.
Sri Lanka have defeated Namibia in the ICC cricket T20 World Cup match in Abu Dhabi.
This was a Group A match.
RESULT: Sri Lanka won by 7 wickets (with 39 balls remaining). Sri Lanka 100/3 (13.3/20 ov, target: 97) v Namibia.
Full match report is available here.
Four-star general Colin Powell has died at the age of 84, due to complications from Covid-19. The prominent Republican had been receiving treatment at the Walter Reed National Medical Center.
Colin Powell, who was the first black individual to serve as US Secretary of State, has passed away, his family announced on Monday in a post on his Facebook page. “We have lost a remarkable and loving husband, father, grandfather and a great American,” they said, adding that he had been fully vaccinated against Covid-19, but that it eventually took his life.
His family thanked the medical staff “for their caring treatment.” The cause of death was stated as “complications from Covid-19.” He passed early on Monday morning. Powell had been diagnosed with multiple myeloma, according to media reports, a type of blood cancer that hinders the body’s ability to fight infections.
Powell was a 35-year veteran of the US Army who rose to the rank of four-star general before entering politics. He served as the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the highest military position in the US Department of Defense, under President George H.W. Bush, and was the youngest person and the first African American to hold that position.
He was even touted to become the first black president of the US, after his popularity soared following the US-led campaign against Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait in 1990.
He later served as George W. Bush’s first secretary of state and, during that time, became the highest-ranking black public official. In 2003, Powell made his administration’s case for invading Iraq to the United Nations, citing faulty intelligence that Hussein’s Ba’athist regime was stockpiling weapons of mass destruction.
In a now-iconic photograph, he held up a model vial of faux anthrax in front of the UN General Assembly, but would come to acknowledge the event as a “blot” on his record. What ensued was a ruinous eight-year war.
It is estimated that more than a million Iraqis lost their lives in the violence or due to the deprivation caused by the invasion, and thousands of American troops died during the course of the US’ ventures in Iraq. The aftermath of the invasion led to widespread sectarian violence and the rise of Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS).
The former military man became disillusioned by his party’s move to the right and even publicly supported Barack Obama in his bid for the presidency.
Powell also endorsed Joe Biden’s candidacy to lead the country, stating that he would be “a president we will all be proud to salute.“
Powell had three children and is survived by his wife, Alma, whom he married in 1962.
I am aware of a number of businesses in the Auckland area which will be hit hard by the government’s vax mandate for the education sector. These are small to medium sized operations, primarily family owned, some of whom have been trading for decades.
I spoke to one owner, John*, whose real name and that of his company I have chosen not to publish, for he has a real and genuine fear his business will suffer repercussions for speaking out. Welcome to Pyongyang folks.
‘They’re just senseless,’ said John. I would go further and call them idiotic and illogical. For John’s business, already suffering from eight weeks of no revenue, they could be the final death blow.
John explained how his company does a lot of contract work at schools in a particular trade. His company has been successful in the past, and built a reputation for reasonable prices, and good workmanship. Things were looking good, even through the first lockdown last year, which the company was able to weather, with financial help from the government.
But the landscape has changed dramatically with Chris Hipkins’ announcement last week that all workers in the educational and health sectors would need to be jabbed, or else lose their job. This was despite Jacinda Ardern’s repeated assurances in 2020 and 2021 that no person would ever suffer adverse consequences for not taking the jab.
Suddenly, everyone was scrambling. Project managers and head contractors now demanded proof of a clear test, no less than three days old, before anyone could enter a school work site. Huge wads of Health and Safety pamphlets were circulated, with updated COVID requirements. There’s now more COVID compliance paperwork than contractual paperwork. You need a lawyer just to understand what half of it means.
But for John the consequences of the vax mandate are more than just an administrative nightmare. He contracts out a lot of his work to sub-contractors, or independent contractors as they’re also known. The relationship he has with them is close – they’ve been working together successfully on jobs for years. They’re also all highly qualified and experienced, having spent decades in the trade. It would be no exaggeration to say these men are experts. Together with John they have worked on hundreds of school jobs, delivering quality, reliabilty and value for the taxpayer and children of Auckland.
Two have told John they will no longer do school work, because they refuse the jab. One has made plans to leave the trade and go farming. The third is jabbed, but won’t do anymore school work because he can’t be bothered with all the paperwork and testing. He has better things to do. You see, the nature of their work requires them to be on site multiple times at various stages of the project. Althought the work is critical in nature, typically they would only spend an hour or two each time they needed to be on site. If the contractor has to get a clear test each time he needs to go to site, at $300 a pop, the costs add up. Over the course of a typical school project, that’s an additional $1200 or $1500 in cost, none of which was quoted for in tenders awarded and underway prior to the current lockdown.
That’s three experts, with a combined experience of more than 100 years, lost to the trade, because of the illogical vax mandate. And for John, that leaves only one contractor who is able and willing to do the work. The potential loss of revenue is too much to think about.
But, I hear you say, why doesn’t he just find replacements? The short answer to that is, there are none. He has advertised repeatedly over the years for extra contractors, just to keep up with his existing workload. Not one ad has been answered. There is a serious shortage of these skilled workers, and the government just doesn’t understand the implications of these mandates.
Here’s why the mandate is illogical.
Neither children nor their parents are required to be vaxed to enter school grounds. Don’t get me wrong, that’s a good thing, because who wants to have the clot shot? But the illogicality comes from the fact that children, in particular, are more likely to spend more time on the school grounds than one of John’s contractors. If the children are under 12, they won’t have been vaxed. Furthermore, the area where John works, and access to it, is usually fenced off. There’s no chance of a worker or tradie coming into contact with a student. Even workers that have been jabbed are considered a risk, because they still have to provide a clear test result. Madness.
A vaxed WORKER on site for no more than an hour has to have a clear test to enter school grounds, but an unvaxed parent or child can spend hours at school WITHOUT A TEST. It just doesn’t make sense.
In a statement today by Judith Collins, she said, ‘The Government is once again making things up as it goes along.’ There seems to be no rationality and logic to many of the rules. They’re arbitrary, piecemeal, and not thought through well.
Personally, I’m determined not to have the vax, for my own personal reasons, which I will divulge in a later post. The point is we are meant to believe this Delta variant is contagious and deadly. If it was that black and white, the rules of social interaction and work would not be so illogical. The fact they are, and are amenable to political experdiency, proves this pandemic has very little to do with protecting people’s health.
In a statement today, National Party Leader and Leader of the Opposition Judith Collins accused the government of having ‘no plan, no ideas, no hope for Aucklanders.’
Here is Ms. Collins’ statement in full:
“People tuning into today’s 4pm pronouncement from the podium were expecting some semblance of a plan about the pathway forward for Auckland. Instead, they got more of the same: announcements about announcements to come later in the week, and self-congratulation about Super Saturday.
“All of this on a day spent by many Aucklanders on tenterhooks, after Dr Ashley Bloomfield publicly floated the idea of Auckland returning to a hard Level 4 lockdown this morning – speculation about which the Government then allowed to fester all day.
“Across the Tasman, state and territory leaders are outlining clear and easily digestible plans about loosening restrictions on people at various vaccination levels. Why is the Prime Minister waiting until Friday to do this for New Zealanders?
“Why should Aucklanders spend the week wondering about the vaccination target and what it might mean for their freedoms, for their businesses and for their kids?
“The Government’s belated recognition of the necessity of setting a vaccination target is overdue. National has been pushing for formal targets for months now. But Aucklanders need clarity now and shouldn’t be forced to wait for yet another 4pm podium announcement on Friday.
“The Government is once again making things up as it goes along. The Government is utterly bereft of ideas, having spent the first six months of this year in self-congratulation mode, happy to have the developed world’s slowest vaccine rollout and spending the Covid Response Fund not on contact tracing, saliva testing and boosting ICU treatment, but on art therapy and cameras on fishing boats.
“Unlike Labour, National has done the thinking about a vigorous suppression strategy, where we work to minimise the number of Covid cases in the community but accept they will be there. We call on the Government to urgently scale up saliva testing capability, order vaccine booster shots and next generation Covid treatments, roll out rapid antigen tests particularly to essential workers crossing alert level boundaries, and urgently implement National’s specialist healthcare workforce migration plan.
“The Government also needs to move heaven and earth to roll out effective vaccine authentication as quickly as it can. Every week it fails to deliver this forces unneeded restrictions on fully vaccinated Kiwis.
“It makes no sense to keep the hundreds of thousands of Aucklanders who are now fully vaccinated at home.
“Likewise, the South Island remains at Level 2 despite having no Covid cases for nearly a year. There was some rationale for this when only around 20 per cent of South Islanders were fully vaccinated. But, two months on from the initial restrictions, many part of the South Island have high rates of vaccination that should allow for an easing of restrictions.
“Finally, I urge the Government to publish the health advice which so far it has refused to do, despite repeated calls for it to do so. Independent public health experts are confused by the Government’s approach, and who can blame them.
Rising consumer prices see New Zealand’s inflation rate at its highest level since 2011.
According to the latest data, consumer prices rose 2.2 percent in the three months ended September, taking the annual rate to 4.9 percent.
The consumers price index (CPI) is a measure of inflation for New Zealand households. It records changes in the price of goods and services. It influences interest rates and is used to calculate changes to benefit payments.
Prices rose over 10 of the 11 price groups used by Stats NZ to calculate the rate. The largest surge was seen in the construction industry, with the price of new build houses rising a massive 12.5% for the year.