#nz prisons

[if-you-fan-a-fire]

"One night, to create a little diversion in the wearing monotony of those long evening hours, when I heard my neighbour’s shutter click, I placed myself up against the door where I was out of sight from the spy-hole.

‘Where are you, Baxter?’ shouted the warder and, hastily unlocking the door, he threw it open, appearing in the doorway in great agitation.

He was plainly relieved at the sight of me. ‘What do you mean, standing where I can’t see you? don’t you know you’re not allowed to do that?’

‘Is that another regulation?’ I asked. ‘I thought at least I had the freedom of the cell.’

‘You’ll get something you won’t like,’ he said, and slammed the door.

Those regulations! As every prisoner had to obey them it seemed only reasonable that there should be a copy in every cell. Far from it. We were not even allowed to read the copy pasted up in the hall. I tried to, but was driven away every time by the warder in charge.

‘No loitering in the passages.’

Finally, but starting every time where I had left off the time before, I managed to commit most of the printed form to memory.

I don’t know why there should be this objection to the prisoners knowing the regulations. Possibly because the warders are afraid of being held too strictly to them themselves.

That first night, when I started to go to bed, I found I had struck one of the worst things in my prison experience. No sheets, no pillowcase; only blankets, hard and brittle with age and much baking, and foul smelling beyond belief. The pillow was a greasy, filthy bit of ticking, filled with small hard pellets of what appeared to be metal of some sort. I never found out what they were. The blankets were too old and hard to have much warmth in them. They were baked to destroy germs and lice, but the knowledge that the dirt and the odour were hygienic did not help me much that first night. In time I seemed to get accustomed to them. Or perhaps it was that I never struck anything quite so bad as those first ones. Often during the night – and during all the nights I passed in prison – the silence was broken by horrible, long-drawn howls, expressive of pent-up misery, bitterness, hate. The warders rushed about, trying to locate the culprit. But they seldom succeeded. Such sounds echoing and re-echoing as they did were exceedingly difficult to trace to their source." - Archibald Baxter, We Will Not Cease (2nd ed., Christchurch, NZ: The Caxton Press, 1968) reprinted in Peter Brock, ed., 'These Strange Criminals': An Anthology of Prison Memoirs By Conscientious Objectors from the Great War to the Cold War. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2004. p. 106.

[mihotose]

[bookofmac]

I binged all the new Aussie Guy Montgomery's Guy Mont Spelling Bee and oh GOD

[1995lahaine]

fuckin weird day. found out my mentor/boss/a true hero in the legal profession passed away while looking at matisse’s snail.

[peopleagainstprisonsaotearoa]

our justice system is broken.

it has been for a long time. yet, this election, as always, our media and politicians have been feeding a moral panic around crime. this moral panic has been used to justify ‘tough on crime’ policies like increased policing, harsher prison sentences, and youth boot camps.

policies like these have never succeeded. they fail to reduce crime and social harm. they breach Te Tiriti o Waitangi and make marginalisation and inequality worse.

we're launching Care Not Cages, a campaign to oppose tough on crime policies and to transform our criminal justice system into one that centres (re)habilitation, restoration, transformation and prevention and honours Te Tiriti.

this campaign challenges the government to adopt all 12 recommendations of the Turuki Turuki! report, which you can read here.

register for the online launch on Zoom, Monday 10 July at 11AM NZST, here.

speakers include:

Emmy Rākete

Julia Whaipooti

Aphiphany Forward-Taua

Awatea Mita

we'll talk about the campaign, its goals, and what you can do to support it! there'll be time for questions as well. if you're interested in prison abolition or reform in aotearoa, we'd love to have you.

[sapphia]

love how everyone on this website is like "the justice system's broken!" but they mean like, the US justice system. which is not a system that half of the userbase here actually live under

[violetsandshrikes]

kiwis get up on their high horse a lot about being a “better” western nation and a lot of the time need to be brought back down to earth

one thing that i finds really shocks and horrified people though is learning that aotearoa nz basically sold/trafficked kids in the 70s/80s. young women who were pregnant would “disappear” and come back “normal” again - they were basically forced to put their child up for adoption, and then these kids would be adopted out to families in predominantly other western countries. there are multiple groups dedicated to people trying to find family members who were lost this way, because there are practically no records.

i know this very intimately because this is how i lost an uncle and an aunt. one ended up in australia, one in texas. one with 90%+ burn scarring, one serving life in prison. both incredibly traumatised and abused. this is a very common story from that era.

[mengjue]

What's Happening in China? The November 2022 Protests

Hello! I know that there's so much going on in the world right now, so not everyone may be aware of what is happening in China right now. I thought that I would try to write a brief explainer, because the current wave of protests is truly unprecedented in the past 30+ years, and there is a lot of fear over what may happen next. For context, I'm doing this as someone who has a PhD in Asian Studies specialising in contemporary Chinese politics, so I don't know everything but I have researched China for many years.

I'll post some decent links at the end along with some China specialists & journalists I follow on Twitter (yeah I know, but it's still the place for the stuff at the moment). Here are the bullet points for those who just want a brief update:

Xi Jinping's government is still enacting a strict Zero Covid policy enforced by state surveillance and strict lockdowns.

On 24 November a fire in an apartment in Urumqi, Xinjiang province, killed 10. Many blamed strict quarantine policies on preventing evacuation.

Protests followed and have since spread nationwide.

Protesters are taking steps not seen since Tiananmen in 1989, including public chants for Xi and the CCP to step down.

Everyone is currently unsure how the government will respond.

More in-depth discussion and links under the cut:

First a caveat: this is my own analysis/explanation as a Chinese politics specialist. I will include links to read further from other experts and journalists. Also, this will be quite long, so sorry about that!

China's (aka Xi Jinping's) Covid Policy:

The first and most important context: Xi has committed to a strict Zero Covid policy in China, and has refused to change course. Now, other countries have had similar approaches and they undoubtedly saved lives - I was fortunate to live in New Zealand until this year, and Prime Minister Ardern's Zero Covid approach in 2020-2021 helped protect many. The difference is in the style/scope of enforcement, the use of vaccines, and the variant at play. China has stepped up its control on public life over the past 10 years, and has used this to enforce strict quarantine measures without full regard to the impact on people's lives - stories of people not getting food were common. Quarantine has also become a feared situation, as China moves people to facilities often little better than prisons and allegedly without much protection from catching Covid within. A personal friend in Zhengzhou went through national, then provincial, then local quarantines when moving back from NZ, and she has since done her best to avoid going back for her own mental and physical health. Xi has also committed China to its two home-grown vaccines, Sinovac and Sinopharm, both of which have low/dubious efficacy and are considered ineffective against new variants. Finally, with delta and then omicron most of the Zero-Covid countries have modified their approach due to the inability to maintain zero cases. China remains the only country still enacting whole-city eradication lockdowns, and they have become more frequent to the point that several are happening at any given time. The result is a population that is incredibly frustrated and losing hope amidst endless lockdowns and perceived ineffectiveness to address the pandemic.

Other Issues at Play:

Beyond the Covid situation, China is also wrestling with the continued slowdown in its economic growth. While its economic rise and annual GDP growth was nigh meteoric from the 80s to the 00s, it has been slowing over the past ten years, and the government is attempting to manage the transition away from an export-oriented economy to a more fully developed one. However, things are still uncertain, and Covid has taken its toll as it has elsewhere the past couple of years. Youth unemployment in particular is reaching new highs at around 20%, and Xi largely ignored this in his speech at the Party Congress in October (where he entered an unprecedented third term). As a result of the perceived uselessness of China's harsh work culture and its failure to result in a better life, many young Chinese have been promoting 躺平 tǎng píng or "lying flat", aka doing the bare minimum just to get by (similar to the English "quiet quitting"). The combination of economic issues and a botched Covid approach is important, as these directly affect the lives of ordinary middle-class Chinese, and historical it has only been when this occurred that mass movements really took off. The most famous, Tiananmen in 1989, followed China's opening up economic reforms and the dismantling of many economic safety nets allowing for growing inequality. While movements in China often grow to include other topics, having a foundation in something negatively impacting the average Han Chinese person's livelihood is important.

The Spark - 24 Nov 2022 Urumqi Apartment Fire:

The current protests were sparked by a recent fire that broke out in a flat in Urumqi, capital of the Xinjiang province. (This is the same Xinjiang that is home to the Uighur people, against whom China has enacted a campaign of genocide and cultural destruction.) The fire occurred in the evening and resulted in 10 deaths, which many online blamed on the strict lockdown measures imposed by officials, who prevented people from leaving their homes. It even resulted in a rare public apology by city officials. However, with anger being so high nationwide, in addition to many smaller protests that have occurred over the past two years, this incident has ignited a nationwide movement.

The Protests and Their Significance:

The protests that have broken out over the past couple of days representing the largest and most significant challenge to the leadership since the 1989 Tiananmen movement. Similar to that movement, these protests have occurred at universities and cities across the country, with many students taking part openly. This scale is almost unseen in China, particularly for an anti-government protest. Other than Tiananmen in 1989, the most widespread movements that have occurred have been incidents such as the protest of the 1999 Belgrade bombings or the 2005 and then 2012 anti-Japanese protests, all of which were about anger toward a foreign country.

Beyond the scale the protests are hugely significant in their message as well. Protesters are publicly shouting the phrases "习近平下台 Xí Jìnpíng xiàtái!" and "共产党 下台 Gòngchǎndǎng xiàtái!", which mean "Xi Jinping, step down/resign!" and "CCP, step down/resign!" respectively. To shout a direct slogan for the government to resign is unheard of in China, particularly as Xi has tightened control of civil society. And people are doing this across the country in the thousands, openly and in front of police. This is a major challenge for a leader and party who have prioritised regime stability as a core interest for the majority of their history.

Looking Ahead:

Right now, as of 15:00 Australian Eastern time on Monday, 28 November 2022, the protests are only in their first couple of days and we are unsure as to how the government will respond. Police have already been seen beating protesters and journalists and dragging them away in vehicles. However, in many cases the protests have largely been monitored by police but still permitted to occur. There seems to be uncertainty as to how they want to respond just yet, and as such no unified approach.

Many potential outcomes exist, and I would warn everyone to be careful in overplaying what can be achieved. Most experts I have read are not really expecting this to result in Xi's resignation or regime change - these things are possible, surely, but it is a major task to achieve and the unity & scale of the protest movement remains to be fully seen. The government may retaliate with a hard crackdown as it has done with Tiananmen and other protests throughout the years. It may also quietly revamp some policies without publicly admitting a change in order to both pacify protesters and save face. The CCP often uses mixed tactics, both coopting and suppressing protest movements over the years depending on the situation. Changing from Zero Covid may prove more challenging though, given how much Xi has staked his political reputation on enforcing it.

What is important for everyone online, especially those of us abroad, is to watch out for the misinformation campaign the government will launch to counter these protests. Already twitter is reportedly seeing hundreds of Chinese bot accounts mass post escort advertisements using various city names in order to drown out protest results in the site's search engine. Chinese officials will also likely invoke the standard narrative of Western influence and CIA tactics as the reason behind the protests, as they did during the Hong Kong protests.

Finally, there will be a new surge of misinformation and bad takes from tankies, or leftists who uncritically support authoritarian regimes so long as they are anti-US. An infamous one, the Qiao Collective, has already worked to shift the narrative away from the protests and onto debating the merits of Zero Covid. This is largely similar to pro-Putin leftists attempting the justify his invasion of Ukraine. Always remember that the same values that you use to criticise Western countries should be used to criticise authoritarian regimes as well - opposing US militarism and racism, for example, is not incompatible with opposing China's acts of genocide and state suppression. If you want further info (and some good sardonic humour) on the absurd takes and misinfo from pro-China tankies, I would recommend checking out Brian Hioe in the links below.

Finally, keep in mind that this is a grass-roots protest made by people in China, who are putting their own lives at risk to demonstrate openly like this. There have already been so many acts of bravery by those who just want a better future for themselves and their country, and it is belittling and disingenuous to wave away everything they are doing as being just a "Western front" or a few "fringe extremists".

Links:

BBC live coverage page with links to analysis and articles

ABC (Australia) analysis

South China Morning Post analysis

Experts & Journalists to Check Out:

Brian Hioe - Journalist & China writer, New Bloom Magazine

Bonnie Glaser - China scholar, German Marshall Fund

Vicky Xu - Journalist & researcher, Australian Strategic Policy Institute

Stephen McDonnell - Journalist, BBC

M Taylor Fravel - China scholar, MIT

New Zealand Contemporary China Research Centre - NZ's hub of China scholarship (I was fortunate to attend their conferences during my PhD there, they do great work!)

If you've reached the end I hope this helps with understanding what's going on right now! A lot of us who know friends and whanau in China are worried for their safety, so please spread the word and let's hope that there is something of a positive outcome ahead.

[genericpuff]

I got bored so I looked around on ACON3D to see if I could find any of the models LO uses and yes I did find most of them but omg the courthouse set they used for the end of the trial arc is 60 us dollars??? which would be 100 dollars in NZ currency. it's called "Fantasy Supreme Court and Prison Set" if you want to look it up for yourself. the modern court sets she used earlier in the arc in comparison are around 11 - 20 dollars which are also on ACON3D

did she change the setting and costumes out of nowhere just to justify spending that much money on a model she should have gotten earlier LOL I wouldn't put it past her

NOOO YOU'RE SO RIGHT THO ANON LOL

I think this just once again goes to show how inefficient Rachel's workflow is, that she's buying these $60+ models (after converting to NZ it's like $100) only to paint them with washed out gradients and then never use them again.

Not to mention, this is literally just some generic fantasy set, I know we should have suspension of disbelief when it comes to the modern setting of LO (obviously the gods also didn't have cars or cellphones) but like, the environment being so generic goes to show no thought went into it as a Greek setting. The Greeks and Romans literally invented the forum-

like?? what a missed opportunity to show off culturally relevant history through the architecture???

idk I'm probably being nitpicky but like. it just bugs me how you can literally switch out the characters in LO with normal people and it barely changes anything. what's the point of writing a comic that describes itself as "what the gods do after dark" if they have all of the things that make them GREEK GODS stripped from them?

[tinystepsforward]

ngl it makes me want to die a little bit that it's so often trans people who feel that sex is mutable but oppression is always-forever based on asab in ways that allow them to demand that information from other trans people. like it feels fucking bad. it feels bad when it's people holding up someone who posts a lot of selfies as transition goals to a degree they have to clarify what they have or haven't done or what "direction" they're going in, it feels worse when people are out there like "caster semenya is not tma" or whatever the fuck. i am, as always, not a trans woman, but here's a sentiment echoed by many of the trans women around me who log the fuck off, quoted directly from one: "people who draw a clear line where they say that semenya or khelif are tme and then call me tma are just calling me male at this point".

like i get it. i really do. we seek community and shared experiences, and we feel betrayed when people have less in common with us than we thought they did. [*more on this later.] but that's not those people's faults and my god in the case i'm seeing play out on twitter rn this poor person did absolutely nothing to intentionally mislead people, just posted pictures of their actual kid self. who looks a lot like i did, because shockingly enough "we can always tell" doesn't fucking work for trans people either!

on the one hand i move in intersex circles which are unapologetically welcoming in cis "dyadic" people with pcos, because it serves nobody to draw a clear line where mutilation or genetics or some ineffable childhood suffering are what make somebody intersex, especially when most of us (esp in places like nz) have never been karyotyped and are being treated for symptoms without a pinned-down cause anyway. the more of us there are the stronger we are, the more pressure we can exert on a medical profession which doesn't like to consider how common outliers are, how uneasy sex is at all. and then on the other hand there's dyadic trans people on the internet who've yelled me out of spaces because a couple of traumatised incarcerated trans women i worked with as a prison abolitionist assumed i was also a trans woman and i didn't immediately tell them my entire csa-involved history of being sexed in varying ways as an infant and child and/or exactly how big my phallus was at birth or where in my junk config my urethra lives so they could decide i was tme or whatever.

returning to the * for a related but not identical thought: i think presuming shared experiences leads to some fucked shit in general! "oh we all had a radfem phase" or "oh we all were channers" no we fucking weren't and it's particularly obnoxious when me & mine are trying to build trans community locally to organise and resist the growing wave of far-right backlash against our existence, and there's just white people in there on a spectrum from "straight up being antisemitic and trying to get the n-word pass" through "handwringing about how they need to make space for people who aren't politically correct" to "handwringing about how brown people are right to be mad at them but doing shit fuckall". and then the other fucking brown people in the space are on some identity politics shit where they're like "trans joy inherently excludes those of us who could get deported" or "big city white queers are killing us by being visible instead of going stealth bc it stirs up the discourse" or whatever the fuck i've heard pulled out this year. there's a bunch of reasons i primarily organise outside of trans spaces and that's one of them. i've never felt more alone in spaces where people claim we're all the same than being left as the brownest moderator or organiser in a space full of people to whom "this is a safe trans space" apparently means they get to abdicate all other responsibilities not to lapse into presumed shared patterns that are fucking racist or otherwise alienating. i've never felt more alone than surrounded by exclusively trans people who sort people into boxes and assume everyone in those boxes has the transition goals they have. like i was on cypro until it disagreed with me to the point of endocrine crisis and now i'm on t and at both those points people were so fucking presumptive or entitled to my reasons or journey or personal relationship w my body

literally just submitted on (and was invited to consult on) the nz law commission's review of the human rights act and like. it's straight up fucked how many nz trans people fully do not comprehend that any "sex assigned at birth" type definitions fundamentally exclude migrants who have no way of proving it and many intersex people who happen to have been reassigned later or many times or never assigned at all as a baby. we can't make law with this shit and that's why we have to have symmetrical protections for all genders/sexes/expressions/presentations, bc naming and defining a protected class here often leaves the people who already are left out from those shared experiences of marginalisation out in the cold when they face violence

[if-you-fan-a-fire]

"[Once in solitary confinement] you start thinking about what to do now. A false sense of energy and hope seizes hold of you. Wasn't it my friend Laurie who devised about fifty different things you can do in a cell to keep your mind occupied? I can only remember two of them. [I could do] exercises. ... but it doesn't keep you going for long. Oh then, there's the Bible. Why not make up your mind to start reading it from beginning to end? Or make a study of one book? The book of Job? The Lord gave and the Lord hath taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord. But Job wasn't in solitary confinement. Good God, he wasn't even in prison, the lucky soandso.

You start reading, but you find you can't concentrate. Your mind wanders away to the people outside. I suppose the V.J. [Visiting Judge, who ordered punishments like solitary confinement] is looking forward to sitting down to a nice lunch. Meat and white bread and pastry, I'll bet. I hope it ties knots in his guts. Jesus Maria. How did you ever let yourself get in this position? And you make a resolution then. Never again. If it ever looks that you might get arrested, rather shoot your way out. They took you away, the police did, and locked you up. And now the screws have done it again. Take him away and lock him up. Theme song of all authority for 1,900 years. And getting worse now. Take the derelict away and lock him up.

Outside, in the world which you left behind you ages ago, there are people actually walking about the streets wondering what they'll have for lunch, worrying about some silly business problem, thinking what a time they're going to have that night with some girl. Girls, my God. While you squat here, like some bloody animal in the half-dark.

Or in the country. Actually in the country near birds and trees. Grumbling about having to milk cows. It's almost unbelievable. They ought to throw their arms round the cows' necks and hug them for the privilege of being free to milk them. Of being free to touch them. Of being free.

I'm so tied to my farm, writes one cow-cocky in the paper, that the only difference between it and a concentration camp is the height of the boundary fence.

You damn fool, you crazy bastard, you lying hound. You can go out and eat grass, can't you? You can drink the milk, you can get down on your knees and suck the cow's teats? You can do anything, you fool, you're FREE.

Try sitting in a cell in semi-darkness reading the Book of Job on an empty stomach. Try praying to God for the minutes to go, just a little quicker. Try having the smell of your own pisspot in your nostrils night and day. Try waiting through interminable hours for night to come so as you can steal a little enjoyment from a smoke as thin as the lead in a lead pencil; hoping to God a screw won't pass by and smell you out. Try being a derelict in solitary confinement. Try getting into such a degraded state that a bit of cheese, shoved under the door by a friendly cleaner, seems like one of the miracles of Christ. Try those things just once. Then get down on your knees again, but instead of sucking teats, thank God you're alive and on the right side of the walls."

- Ian Hamilton, Till Human Voices Wake Us. Auckland: Auckland University Press, 1983 (first published by private subscription, 1953). p. 65-66.

[I've read a lot of prison memoirs this year, with many more to come. This may be one of the best. Hamilton was a conscientious objector in New Zealand-Aotearoa during World War 2, a pessimistic socialist humanist, a playwright, and sheep farmer. This may be one of the best, just raw but well-directed anger, utter contempt for polite New Zealand settler society and for what he viewed as a growing bureaucratization and dehumanization of society. I thought this bitter anger directed at people who use metaphors of imprisonment lightly to describe minor incovencies.]

[sometimes-men-need-help-too]

Woman avoids prison after having sex with son’s underage friend

This was posted on the 2nd of this month. And when it says name suppression, if you don’t know what that is, it means that her name or any details that could identify her aren’t being put out there for all to see. This also took place in New Zealand 

A woman who had sex with her son’s underage friend on several occasions has avoided prison and being registered as a sex offender.

The woman, in her 30s, appeared in court yesterday charged with doing an indecent act and five counts of sexual connection with a young person.

She was granted permanent name suppression, despite opposition from the victim, because her son had struggled with a range of mental health problems after learning about the relationship between his mother and his friend.

“Schooling has been very difficult for him, with the stigma and rumour of what’s been going on,” the woman’s lawyer, Lucie Scott, told the court.

The court heard how the woman’s son was no longer in his mother’s care but was slowly rebuilding a positive relationship with her.

According to the summary of facts, the offending took place over several months.

The Crown says on one occasion the woman approached the boy, who was under 16, and after touching him, performed oral sex. She then told him to get in her car, which was parked nearby, and had sex with him.

She performed oral sex on him at her home on several other occasions.

On one occasion at a party she gave him a drink of juice after. The boy says he doesn’t remember anything after that and awoke on her bedroom floor the next morning.

The woman had pleaded not guilty and was to appear before a jury last year, but changed her plea after being given a sentence indication.

Yesterday, she was sentenced to three months’ community detention and a year of intensive supervision.

Judge Bruce Northwood also declined to add her name to the sex offender’s register. If a person is sentenced to a form of community detention - rather than prison - for sexual offending, it is up to the judge to decide whether they’re added to the register.

“It seems you have some insight as to what’s gone wrong here,” Judge Northwood said.

“It seems to me that when I assess the risk of reoffending it is low, intensive supervision will be fine.”

Judge Northwood said he granted the woman permanent name suppression in order to protect her son.

https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/woman-avoids-prison-after-having-sex-with-sons-underage-friend/ZHNIRDCFEBBQRHIBPX73SPDHYY/

The age of consent for New Zealand is 16. The article states that the boy was under 16 when this happened. Why is she not receiving a harsher punishment? Why is she not being registered as a sex offender? She’s not even facing consequences, really. Not in comparison to what she should be facing. 

They can’t even call it rape in New Zealand because the rape law is restricted to cases of men raping women 

[doomedandstoned]

New Zealand’s SIDEWINDER Reveal 2nd Single “Prisoner” from upcoming ‘Talons’ LP

~Doomed & Stoned Debuts~

By Billy Goate

It's been just a minute since we released our compilation Doomed and Stoned in New Zealand, which we were honored to have preserved by The National Library of New Zealand. The current of underground heavy rock and metal is still strong in The Land of the Long White Cloud (or if you prefer, Middle Earth).

Our latest discovery is Wellington five-piece heavy rock beast SIDEWINDER, who today air their latest single "Prisoner" from the upcoming LP 'Talons' (2024), an album that has some monumentally heavy moments (wait'll you hear "The Depths"). We've already gotten a taste of the band's bouncy heavy psychedelic groove with the first single "Disarm The King," and the second showcases their swagger even further with soaring melodic lines, crunchy southern sludge riffage, chugging bass, and workhorse drumming.

Jem Tupe is a powerful vocalist, on the order of Laura Donnelly from King Witch. She can really belt it out with ferocity and it meshes really well with the swampy might of the band's hefty, hefty low-end. Sidewinder is taking no prisoners with this one -- a big sound through and through.

"Prisoner has been a staple for us with our live shows for years," says guitarist Ben Sargent. "It was our opener for a while and quickly became a crowd favourite. We did a few things we hadn't tried before with the recording: like the whisper track through the verses. A lot of the lyrical content refers to Tartarus too which tied in with overall themes of the album. Big riffs, dissonant verses, lead breaks and heavy bridge sections – Prisoner's got it all."

"Prisoner was one of those songs that came together naturally and without too much difficulty," adds guitarist Thomas Rousell (yes, we've got two axemen at the ready with Sidewinder). "Ben had a banging riff, we threw in some rolling verses and great melodies, it all came together to make a killer track. The crowd have been hearing this one for quite some time now, but there's some special bits added to the recording that really lift the track to new heights."

Sidewinder's Talons strikes on August 23rd c/o Wyrmwood Records (pre-order here).

Give ear...

Talons by Sidewinder

SOME BUZZ

Since their formation in Wellington back in 2021, NZ heavyweights Sidewinder have always summoned the biggest riffs and most monumental of grooves possible to carve their own path out from the underground.

In a short space of time, they’ve proven themselves to be an integral part of the burgeoning NZ hard rock/stoner scene and this summer they return to the fray with their eagerly anticipated follow-up to their 2022 debut, Vines.

Due for release this August, new studio album Talons is a breathtaking byproduct of their tight, high-energy performances and sold out shows with bands like Orange Goblin and Sasquatch. A swirling tempest of bluesy southern rock and grunge in keeping with the quintet’s heavyset approach to sonic exploration, it draws on influences that span decades, from the hard-driven strut of Kyuss to the spirited sensibilities of Church of Misery.

"We’re really excited for this album,” explains guitarist Ben Sargent. “It’s a lot darker and heavier than our last. There are some monster riffs throughout, some great psych and doom sections and plenty of that eerie, swampy blues thing we do too."

Featuring new vocalist Jem Tupe; guitarists Ben Sargent and Thomas Rousell, bassist Sean Fitzpatrick and drummer Grant Lister, Sidewinder is primed and ready to bring it all home in the most spectacular of fashions, with their, “wall of riff-heavy psych, with lashings of delta-blues.”

Produced by James Goldsmith (Beastwars, End Boss, Planet of the Dead) and mastered by Will Borza (Deftones, Smashing Pumpkins), just one listen to "Prisoner" showcases just how heavier, darker, and more powerful they’ve become.

Follow The Band

Get Their Music

[ms-hells-bells]

I can never counter people who say that men are victims of sexism/misandry because they die a lot more than women in the workplace (tremendously), are less likely to get custody in general, get harsher prison sentences (true, and I'm not sure saying "judges are paternalistic" is the right answer), (have to) fight in wars, while most aren't directly responsible. I feel like usual feminist replies aren't enough. "Men create their own issues" seems too simplistic as well. I'm stuck and I feel dumb.

the workplace argument doesn't include both prostitution and stay at home motherhood in that, i wonder how that'd affect the stats. also, men actively prevent women from entering male dominated fields with hyper-hostility and sexual harassment.

men aren't less likely to get custody, they agree to the mother having primary custody. 92% of child custody cases are settled out of court, meaning the man agrees. for the 8% that go to court, men get partial or primary custody 70% of the time, meaning it's at least perfectly equal considering mothers do 90% of childcare. in fact, abusive men are more likely to initiate child custody battles AND get primary custody! claiming the father abused the mother in court makes the judge LESS likely to give full custody to the mother.

men commit worse crimes. i'm not joking, even when charged with the same crime, men often did it worse, have less contributing/extenuating circumstance, less remorse, and a higher reoffense risk assessment. a woman will hit someone and give them small face scratches and maybe a bruise, and get charged with battery. a man will hit someone and their nose breaks, and they have a black eye and a concussion, and they get charged with battery. do you think that both the man and the woman should get the same sentence because they both got charged with battery? a woman will shoot her pimp (legal in nz) in the head, killing him instantly. she gets charged with first degree murder. a man stalks his ex girlfriend and stabs her 27 times in the chest, neck, and face, she dies slowly. he gets charged with first degree murder. do you think they should get the same sentence? women in prison are vast majority mentally ill, abused, addicted, and largely non violent. sex offenders are near non existent. why would these women receive the same sentence as mentally well, angry men who harm others to maintain or regain power in some way?

men start the wars. not just as world leaders, but in all positions in government that contribute, local officials, fathers with expectations, and the young men eager to 'prove themselves'. these men, from both sides, then go out and rape women and girls. the women and girls on the enemy side, the women and the girls in neutral countries, the women and girls in their own countries, their own fellow female soldiers. the majority of war casualties are civilians, and those who suffer the most are women and children that didn't want anything to do with what's going on. why would women feel any obligation to risk their bodies and lives for men who would treat them like that? women didn't create drafts, men did, and so it's men's problem to sort out, not feminists'.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

This day in history

I'm coming to BURNING MAN! On TUESDAY (Aug 27) at 1PM, I'm giving a talk called "DISENSHITTIFY OR DIE!" at PALENQUE NORTE (7&E). On WEDNESDAY (Aug 28) at NOON, I'm doing a "Talking Caterpillar" Q&A at LIMINAL LABS (830&C).

#20yrsago European copyright extension: protecting Elvis to the detriment of everyone else https://web.archive.org/web/20040906201355/http://www.indexonline.org/news/20040812_unitedstates.shtml

#15yrsago Photos of science fiction writers’ nests http://www.whereiwrite.org/index.php

#15yrsago Guerilla gardens in newspaper boxes https://web.archive.org/web/20090806033424/http://www.bladediary.com/flyerplanterboxes-5/

#15yrsago Lethem and EFF on why Google Book Search needs privacy guarantees https://www.npr.org/2009/08/12/111797207/google-deal-with-publishers-raises-privacy-concerns

#15yrsago Movie industry wants the right to take your house off the net without full judicial review https://torrentfreak.com/movie-studios-want-own-version-of-justice-for-3-strikes-090812/

#10yrsago Biology student in Colombia faces jail for reposting scholarly article https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/07/colombian-student-faces-prison-charges-sharing-academic-article-online

#10yrsago Former NSA spook resigns from Naval War College in dick-pic scandal https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/08/snowden-critic-resigns-naval-war-college-over-online-penis-photo-flap/

#10yrsago Profile of Flickr and Slack founder Stewart Butterfield https://www.wired.com/2014/08/the-most-fascinating-profile-youll-ever-read-about-a-guy-and-his-boring-startup/

#10yrsago DOJ slams Riker’s Island for horrific violence against young inmates https://www.techdirt.com/2014/08/11/doj-report-details-massive-amount-violence-committed-rikers-island-staff-against-adolescent-inmates/

#10yrsago Profiles of brutalized laborers building Abu Dhabi’s Louvre and Guggenheim https://web.archive.org/web/20140806033053/https://www.vice.com/read/slaves-of-happiness-island-0000412-v21n8

#10yrsago NZ TV won’t air ads for geo-unblocking ISP https://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/mediaworks-joins-sky-tvnz-in-banning-slingshot-ads/QI7UJYTMZBALFI6E7W32WYYMTU/?c_id=3&objectid=11304231

#10yrsago Weaseling about surveillance, Australian Attorney General attains bullshit Singularity https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hw1ryLGs2ws

#5yrsago WordPress is buying Tumblr https://www.axios.com/2019/08/12/verizon-tumblr-wordpress-automattic

#5yrsago Your phone is a crimewave in your pocket, and it’s all the fault of greedy carriers and complicit regulators https://krebsonsecurity.com/2019/08/who-owns-your-wireless-service-crooks-do/

#5yrsago The real meaning of plantation tours: American Downton Abbey vs American Horror Story https://afroculinaria.com/2019/08/09/dear-disgruntled-white-plantation-visitors-sit-down/

#5yrsago New York City raised minimum wage to $15, and its restaurants outperformed the nation https://gallery.mailchimp.com/a6170fa466dd7c8eed0aab6be/files/b2f3acd5-3884-42a7-a0bf-fa410b2b6544/Final_CNYCA_NELP_NYC_Min_Wage_Restaurants.pdf?mc_cid=5ce3fba121

#5yrsago Prior to Amazon acquisition, Ring offered “swag” to customers who snitched on their neighbors https://www.vice.com/en/article/ring-told-people-to-snitch-on-their-neighbors-in-exchange-for-free-stuff/

#5yrsago Stephen Wolfram recounts the entire history of mathematics in 90 minutes https://soundcloud.com/stephenwolfram/a-very-brief-history-of-mathematics

#5yrsago All flights in and out of Hong Kong canceled as protesters flood the airport https://twitter.com/erinhale/status/1160786319804493827

#5yrsago Rule of Capture: Inside the martial law tribunals that will come when climate deniers become climate looters and start rendering environmentalists for offshore torture https://memex.craphound.com/2019/08/12/rule-of-capture-inside-the-martial-law-tribunals-that-will-come-when-climate-deniers-become-climate-looters-and-start-rendering-environmentalists-for-offshore-torture/

#1yrago Paying consumer debts is basically optional in the United States https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/12/do-not-pay/#fair-debt-collection-practices-act

Community voting for SXSW is live! If you wanna hear RIDA QADRI and me talk about how GIG WORKERS can DISENSHITTIFY their jobs with INTEROPERABILITY, VOTE FOR THIS ONE!

[saintmeghanmarkle]

Boris Becker Bankruptcy Bad Investments Nigerian Oil Ghana and Internet scrubbing: Just who is Misan Harriman? by u/Maleficent-Trifle940

Boris Becker, Bankruptcy, Bad Investments, Nigerian Oil, Ghana and Internet scrubbing: Just who is Misan Harriman? ​Misan Harriman, Lilly Becker, Boris Becker, Photo: Dafydd Jones: Dafjones.comWe've seen enough of his 'photography' to understand 'mild-mannered photographer' isn't really his 'jam'. Sinners familiar with his 'work' won't be surprised he only took up photography in 2019 when his wife gave him a camera for his 40th birthday.A search of the internet will almost exclusively turn up articles about Harriman's now well known connection to Meghan Markle and Harry, he also photographed Beatrice & Edo for their engagement announcement. You might catch wind of his 'groundbreaking' British Vogue cover or his 'photojournalism' of the BLM protests in Britain, perhaps even his involvement with Sistah Space (of the wildly inauthentically costumed and ill-mannered NgoziFulani fame). Maybe even his Disney photocall for real life small children or how Soho house occasionally promotes his work.But what the internet doesn't want you to read about Harriman seems far more interesting. Prior to his royal related re-invention, Harriman was previously described as a 'business partner' of Boris Becker. Such was Harriman's presence in Becker's life he was quoted saying "‘I’m like the other woman in his marriage’". Boris as you may know has run into some money difficulties over the past decade or so, including bankruptcy and losing most of his fortune, resulting in time in prison. In fact, despite their apparent closeness I could only find one photo of Boris & Misan together (above). Articles connecting the two either no longer exist/have had Harriman's name deleted/are behind a paywall.Curiously, Misan-pre-Meghan, is on the record chatting about Nigerian Oil here: Misan Harriman, The Mastermind Behind the Digital Platform What We Seee - Best blogs about lifestyle, #1 Fashion and lifestyle blogs (zezeonline.com) - amongst other things like his time as a club promoter and digital PR strategist. This is a rather curious connection as, wouldn't you know, it has been reported Boris Becker lost his $178 million fortune 'investing in Nigerian oil firms' - NZ Herald. According to Der Spiegel, "a Nigerian employee of Becker's "prepared a deal in which at least ten million dollars should be invested in Nigerian oil wells".Fellow Sinners, over to you. It's time for some serious sleuthing and an answer to the question: Who is Misan Harriman really? post link: https://ift.tt/tiPjl6q author: Maleficent-Trifle940 submitted: October 01, 2023 at 02:03PM via SaintMeghanMarkle on Reddit