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6:00 am, September 13th, 2025 - 81 comments
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Open mike is your post.
For announcements, general discussion, whatever you choose.
The usual rules of good behaviour apply (see the Policy).
Step up to the mike …
Today's Posts (updated through the day):
The infantilisation of Western Grand Strategy – and the rise of Eurasia.
New Post up:
The infantilisation of Western Grand Strategy – and the rise of Eurasia.
There's a clue in the report here to his motive: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c784end1wxvo
The clue suggests to me he saw Kirk as anti-trans and acted according to the hater elimination theory that christians used for two millennia.
[formatting edited to make clear where the breaks in the copy and paste are]
[I can’t see anything in your comments that supports the idea that the shooter was pro-trans, or that he saw Kirk as anti-trans and this was his motivation for the shooting. You say ‘the clue’ but don’t explain what you think the clue is. You reference a hater elimination theory, but likewise don’t explain. I warned you yesterday that this habit of making misleading statements is a problem on TS. I’m particularly irked that you’ve been asked in this thread to explain your thinking and/or provide evidence and have refused. Rather than me asking as a mod and going through another round of tedious teeth pulling, and looking at your recent mod history and how much mod time this is taking, I am banning you. Please take my warnings about this seriously and if you don’t understand, then ask. 1 month – weka]
WTF Frank? There is NO indication the killer was pro trans. There is speculation he is part of Nick Fuentes group of 4chan shit posters, "groypers", basically Kirk wasn't right enough for them. There's already inages of him dressing as Pepe/Trump, his parents are Republican, his dad an ex cop now a minister. The shooter is a white male, 22 years old, from a conservative family.
Moron.
The family member reported that conversation, so it will appear in court as evidence. Denying evidence is irrational, so why do it??
IFL is right . Charlie Kirk was an equal opportunity hater . Trans might be your focus but CK well blacks , jews, feminists et cetera were targets.He wasn't ONLY spreading trans hate.
If it turns out this guy is, indeed, a 'nice white conservative young man from a good conservative home, watch the Republican spin machine tie itself up in knots, quickly pivoting to 'such a dreadful tragedy by someone clearly mentally ill.'
http://brokeonomics.com
The guy is a white, conservative, Republican, gun nut from a white, conservative, Republican, gun nut family. This does seem right on right violence. There's a whole 4 chan, 8 chan, internet shit post memes, online shooter game references, Nick Fuentes white Christian racist/nationalist, civil war acceleration mumbo jumbo all mixed into it.
Frank is an idiot, a useful one.
Just saw the FBI director (a Hindi Indian) say he was going to see CK (an evangelical Christian) in Valhalla. It's all like a da Vinci code puzzle at the moment, so much cross referencing.
The only deniers are going to be the magas & useful idiots everywhere.
I'll pipe down now, gardening duties.
I'll pipe down now, gardening duties.
Yeah, best thing to do when stuck in evidence denial.
So far, this:
Oh right that is that then, hook line sinker. I can't figure out if you are shit posting or you believe that. We've gone from "he's a trans" to "antifa". Has anyone who supports antifa (a group with no membership) assanated anyone leaving "clues" that they belong to "antifa". Keep being useful Frank. I guess I'm giving you the attention you crave which I'm annoyed about because I actually don't believe you're this stupid. Enjoy your day.
How the hell do you fit all that one a small shell cartridge. Makes me wonder how much reporting so far is fact based. Very little I suspect.
Oh, and this too…
Lol Fox. Ok now I know you're taking the piss. You had me Frank I'll admit. Thanks for the laugh.
More likely it seems he was a groyper who have been pushing against Kirk for a while. The alt-right hate fascists as well as the left.
Unusually we have someone who still lives so maybe he will eventually explain himself.
In the fall of 2019, Kirk launched a college speaking tour with Turning Point USA titled "Culture War", featuring himself and guests such as Rans Paul, Donald Trump, ….., Fuentes began organizing a social media campaign asking his followers to go to Kirk's events and ask provocative and controversial leading questions about his stances on immigration, Israel, and LGBT rights to expose Kirk as a "fake conservative". At a Culture War event hosted byOhio State University on October 29, 11 out of 14 questions were asked by Groypers.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Groypers
nice to see the right eating itself (the groyper tour organising not the shooting)
On the other hand he simply played Helldivers 2. Gamers recognised the r4eferences straight away.
In Helldivers 2, "up, right, down, down, down" is the stratagem code to call in the Eagle 500kg Bomb, a massive airstrike that drops a huge explosive on enemies. "Hey fascist!" appears to be a community meme or taunt players use when deploying it against foes like the automatons, tying into the game's satirical themes.
Well, at least you put "There is speculation…" on this instalment of "We are the Good People, therefore this evildoer can't possibly have been one of us."
Sigh…you project so much.
But Milt is saying the evildoer could be one of us.
Nah he's having a dig once again at the left suggesting we're sanctimonious. Just a continuation of his educating us that the left rhetoric can have bad outcomes as well.
I often like a lot of the stuff he posts even if I don't always agree but I think he is way off base here with the audience here. Most on the left have taken a wait and see approach and abhor the violence by any side. I don't think he's referring to the right here.
"We are the Good People, therefore this evildoer can't possibly have been one of us."
that's true, he's referring to the liberals who argue that the right are the evildoers, and can't accept that Tyler Robinson might have been a liberal.
I don't think he's saying all liberals or all of the left, nor is he saying that the left doesn't understand that the left can be violent. He's pointing in his rhetorical style to the fact that we won't look at the mote in our own eye and discuss it.
There's nothing wrong with taking a dig at the left. Imo his motivation isn't to harm the left, but to get the left to stop and think this through for a while instead of being continually in hate the right mode i.e. to change so that the left is better than we are currently.
These are my words, because I want this too. I want us to stop and talk strategy about where we are getting things right, where we are not, and what we can do about it.
I rate both you and Milt as commenters on TS, I usually read what you both write, and it's frustrating seeing you talk past each other, not least because I can see the productive conversation we could be having but aren't.
Yep. And I especially want people to think about how referring to people whose opinions we disagree with as "spewing hate," "bigots," "fascists," "nazis" (in lower case because morons) etc might be unhelpful if we want less tribalist, partisan politics and less violence.
Correct, I wasn't referring to the right with that. I was referring to the liberal left's eagerness to find some way to portray the shooter as somehow right-wing, because if he's of the left it's uncomfortable for everyone on the left who thinks of us as the Good People, as opposed to the Bad People who have conservative or right-wing views.
And I think it does apply to this audience. Look at the posts on here quoting 'bad' things Kirk said. How are those relevant? What do you think is being argued? What are we intended to conclude from it?
Kirk was being idolised for his willingness to debate, but his advocacy as per government policy was otherwise. Hypocrisy is always called out.
and yet when we call out the hypocrisy on the left it's hard to have that conversation.
I believe that's a very generous interpretation of the social media posts listing his allegedly 'hateful' comments, but regardless: his political advocacy was right-wing Christian conservative, yes. I certainly wouldn't want to see any of it implemented. His advocacy for debate as a better option than shouting down, drowning out, refusing to engage, shutting down venues, responding with violence or whatever else was consistent, so why shouldn't he be praised for it and how was it hypocrisy?
Did he protest a requirement of having no record of any pro Palestinian state posts to stay in America, or be allowed entry?
I've no idea, but I also reject the idea that to be able to claim a commitment to freedom of speech you must have a record of protesting every single possible breach of that freedom everywhere.
So no willingness to object to right wing, or GOP censorship of free speech.
Thus his "debate" project on campus was performance theatre to create an audience for his narrative. .
A bit like our Free Speech Union, then.
They oppose adding extra categories to the Human Rights Act. Saying this would be a restraint on free speech. But cannot say how that would be different than the existing ones.
what’s your point? that the right can be hypocrites? Isn’t that a given? You’re arguing with Milt as if he’s championing the right, but he’s really not. I’m not a fan of Kirk’s but I like Peter Boghosian’s street epistemology and really which the left had come up with that (likewise, I wish the left had created Let Women Speak, or had occupied parliament grounds). We can learn from the fact that we’re not doing these things.
And we can keep pointing out the flaws on the right, which is a necessary thing to do but it’s not sufficient.
I want to know the strategy for the numbers of people not committed to the right, who this week are looking at some of the liberal response and going wtf? Are we going to lose them? I think there is a real risk of this, and each time one of us tries to talk about this we get met with resistance or arguments as if we are rw, or betraying the left somehow.
Actually this afternoon when I was looking at twitter and what is happening with the politics around Kirk’s death, I thought, oh, we’ve actually already lost. Not irretrievably, but there’s been a sea change and we’re not even acknowledging that there are tides. We have to be able to talk about this.
You can frame an absence of comment from him on any particular freedom of speech issue however you like, but I already told you I reject the idea that a commitment to freedom of speech requires publicly protesting every single possible breach of that freedom everywhere.
And your characterisation of the FSU is simply false. Its reasons for opposing making identity claims protected characteristics under the HRA are here: https://www.fsu.nz/blog/free-speech-union-submits-in-opposition-to-law-commission-consultation-on-amendments-to-human-rights-act.
Yes, me too. I suspect accusing them of siding with fascists isn't going to cut it.
Why?
Yes, I based what I wrote on it.
amend how
They mention it being like a hate speech law, and thus a threat to free speech in the proposed new category areas
But for mine make no good case for how that would be any different than the existing categories.
If you think they do, how do they do it?
The relevance is that Turning Point wants an end to the civil rights legislation of the 1960’s.
The final part of their anti DEI agenda.
Your argument re FSU is disingenuous. We both know that the push to include identity claims in the HRA isn't to prevent a terrible injustice of people who make identity claims being fired from their jobs or refused housing or service, it's to allow identity-claims people to punish those who won't indulge their claims, ie it's hate-speech legislation via the back door.
Re Turning Point wanting to overturn the Civil Rights Act, yes. They're a right-wing organisation. It's the same thing as ACT wanting to implement a right-wing set of alleged 'Treaty principles.' But the fact someone is right-wing doesn't demonstrate a lack of commitment to freedom of speech on their part.
Well that is not true. You accuse advocates (for a change) of an unjust purpose to dismiss their claim for protection from injustice. When the purpose is to separate out gender from biological sex and sexuality as a protected characteristic. It is both eminently possible to do this and also useful to do so.
myself, I’m in the middle and I believe Speak Up for Women had a submission that protected both women and trans people (I couldn’t find it last night when I looked but pretty sure it’s on the website). Unfortunately the HRC and Law Commission positions remove protections for women and gender critical beliefs (hence the FSU involvement)
Let’s look at it another way. Do you believe that lesbians (same sex attracted adult human females) should be protected from discrimination on the basis of their sexuality and/or their gender critical beliefs (the lesbians that are GC)?
LAVA are taking a case to the HRC as we speak to protect both of those. It’s also a test case to see what the pro-gender identity/gender before sex HRC will do. You can read about the case in the link below if you’re not familiar with it. LAVA were initially accepted as a stall holder at a Pride event in Wellington, then told they couldn’t because they are anti-trans. Anti-trans here means saying trans-identified males are not lesbian. Given social self ID, any man who says they are a woman is to be considered a woman, so the GI position is basically that males can be lesbians. You can imagine how lesbians feel about that.
https://www.lava.nz/our-case
If trans people were already a protected characteristic under teh HRA, how would lesbians be protected to have same sex services/space, and how would they be protected from being banned from events on the basis of being actually lesbian?
That’s not a rhetorical question, I’d really like to know how you see that working.
the Speak Up For Women submission to the Law Commission’s HRA review is here.
https://www.speakupforwomen.nz/hra-review
I’ve asked if they have a synopsis.
And we know that there are people on the left amongst us who see other people on the left as the real problem.
https://thestandard.org.nz/weasel-winstons-fiveeyes-fudge/#comment-2037234
Sort of relevant, as per groypers not for turning (point) on the right.
how about addressing the arguments?
I think it's unlikely that he had any sort of coherent political ideology at all – therefore the groupings of 'us' and 'them' sort of dissolve into meaninglessness.
If he detested Charlie Kirk, then he and I are an "us'. If he thinks murdering people for what they say or think is right in principle, or astute political tactics, or necessary just in case they might incite someone to murder him first, then he and I are not an "us'.
In the internet age we are all on our own in a festering stew of opinions – we make our own way, picking up appealing ideas here and there and in some cases building online reputational 'capital'. In the spirit of the age, we are all ideological entrepreneurs now. There is no "us" and no "them".
We pick our groups/groupings as we please (and as pleases us) and try to find acceptance & belonging, among other things. Yet, some tend to ignore more immutable traits such us ancestry and upbringing, which is often a characteristic of privilege. Others go the opposite way and affirm those traits and draw strict & strong boundaries (e.g., Tākuta Ferris). Your comment reminded me of Margaret Thatcher and her infamous comment that she made in 1987, i.e., before the internet was omni-present.
https://theconversation.com/why-theres-no-such-thing-as-society-should-not-be-regarded-with-moral-revulsion-136008
mod note.
Motive
Right wing – to pose violence as coming from antifa – an anti-fascist group.
Most anti-fascists are not into use of force, but protest.
Right wing – to pose violence (including gun violence) as coming from transgender people.
Gun violence is most likely otherwise.
This case.
It does appear that the perp did regard Kirk as fascist. There is, as yet, no known connection to Antifa.
The memes used do indicate knowledge of a video game that used language such as goodbye fascist. And gay lmao. It also used the three arrows.
There is also no known, as yet, to the Fuentes leader of a rival white race, Christian nationalist group to Turning Point.
It's early days (or hours) to have a sense of who Robinson is, but this is one of the better takes I've read so far,
https://x.com/zachdcarter/status/1966538991253004723
Sure.
The politics of video gaming in a gun culture – as per three arrows, is based on the USA being anti-monarchy (1789 republic), anti-fascist (WW2) and anti-communist.
It is in synch with American patriotism and access to and use of guns.
What is not a matter for debate is the reaction of the left to George Floyd and the right to Charlie Kirk
Because police violence and vigilante violence is so alike?
The left are much quicker to resort to organised mass violence then the right are
Better funded as well
No one is better funded than the political right.
Left wing protest being posed as violent, how original.
You don't recall what happened after George Floyd?
Mass riots vs Mass prayer circles
Go on, keep explaining why you chose that example.
In the Harris Trump election the Democratic Party was much better funded than the Republicans
such as?
Can we please stop with the rhetorical positioning and make some actual arguments.
You never wondered how or why mass pallets of bricks just happe to be near the protests in the US, just a coincidence I'm sure
Soros ring a bell?
I literally have no idea what you are talking about, which is why I'm asking for an actual argument rather than ideological posturing. If you want to make the argument you are running, then show us the evidence. You know how it works here.
Malaysian bricks?
As protests over mass deportations flared in Los Angeles in June 2025, conservative social media users circulated two photos of brick piles they claimed were strategically placed nearby to inflame violence. But the images do not show stacks set for the California protesters to hurl at police. One was lifted from an online marketplace, where a Malaysian hardware dealer uploaded it years ago, while the other was snapped near a construction site in New Jersey.
"Soros funded organizations have ordered countless pallets of bricks to be placed near ICE facilities to be used by Democrat militants against ICE," says a June 7, 2025 Facebook post from David Harris Jr, a commentator supportive of US President Donald Trump whom AFP has previously fact-checked for spreading misinformation.
https://factcheck.afp.com/doc.afp.com.49XW2T2
ah. I guess that answers the question of why Puck didn’t provide any explanation or evidence.
Is Soros the milkman who goes around in his little refrigerated cart delivering milk (and bricks?) whilst ringing his bell? Milk from Soros was the best – those were the days!
did all milkmen ring a bell or just Soros?
Some birds, the little shits, started to mimic the bell, which was funny, but frustrating.
https://x.com/georgesoros/status/794480226260631552
Please repeat the right wing talking points delivered to you in your social media neighbourhood.
One thing overlooked so far is that Robinson and Kirk both dropped out of college early.
Kirk, despite going onto to form a group active on campus across the USA was an advocate of others doing this.
Robinson went on to do an electrical apprenticeship.
Well. We knew this already!
Govt's dirty little Treasury Secret is finally out: Will this govt cut healthcare and raise the retirement age?
If the RW acts true to form it'll be both. Cos well they're sorted aren't they.
While I agree with the thrust of what Dr Payinda has to say there his acceptance of the govts framing is a massive mistake. The treasury paper claims that only constrained spending can hit the govts selected debt goal. It doesn't however say that should be the goal, this is at best a political choice of the present govt.
The CoC are essentially just squeezing the public sector to be as small a part of our economy as possible with damaging consequences for the majority of NZ. Stating it in terms of a debt goal makes it less clear this is a policy choice.
If Labour gets elected and returns to properly funding the public sector that pays for itself by boosting the economy and the country does better as a result.
If a clear division forms within the Maori Party it will make it difficult for Labour and the Greens to choose which faction to support.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/politics/360822330/takuta-ferris-and-te-pati-maori-undergo-tikanga-based-restorative-process-after-racist-posts
America's power grid is near breaking point, partly because Data Centres used 4.4% of the countries power in 2023 and presumably more in 2025. Data Centre usage could triple to 13% by 2028. That is a hell of a lot of power.
https://www.zerohedge.com/energy/americas-grid-nearing-its-breaking-point
Power to the
PeopleData Centres – how on spaceship Earth did we ever do without AI?https://www.technologyreview.com/2025/05/20/1116327/ai-energy-usage-climate-footprint-big-tech/
As a proud (if selective) Luddite, I reckon I know how lucky we were.
https://marketoonist.com/cartoons
We must build more Power Plants and have more humans using AI more.
https://matrix.fandom.com/wiki/Power_plant
Is AI is a stalking horse for nuclear power?
More expensive power, higher inflation.
Bitcoin as a hedge anyone?
Yes
Yes
Yes – AI cryptocurrencies is a thing
Power use per capita (ironically sourced from AI):
NZ 8527 kWh
USA 12741 kWh
By my reckoning, using populations of 340m and 5.5m, 13% of the USA’s power is equivalent to 12 times the total power used in NZ.
We need to keep data centres out of NZ. I’d rather go back to blackboards and chalk.
Fat chance with this Coalition who are just fawning over themselves because of the billions of dollars of overseas investment that supposedly come flooding in and that are supposedly unleashing magnificent economic growth here in NZ. If they must go ahead, close the Bluff smelter and build a data centre there instead of in West Auckland.
My handwriting has become unintelligible and on a blackboard it will look like runes. Love the chalk dust and sound though.
haha…but the problem is that we are going to have rows of wind towers on pristine mountains and spectacular wild rivers dammed just so that people, who are too lazy to write CV's or letters or reports or PHD’s, can use AI to do it for them.
The price of electricity for crucial things like powering a home or manufacturing is also likely to be higher.
It is a non-sustainable (and eminently stupid) trade-off.
We’ll be writing application letters + CVs because of the jobs we’ll have lost thanks to AI, directly or indirectly. It’s a rare moment when I don’t envy the young ones.
Depends on what they are used for, but it's easier to comply with the Privacy Act by using NZ or Australian data centres for cloud-based storage of private information.
Not a bad showing for NZ’s “March for Humanity” – a peaceful event.
Fewer participants than those who attended the pro-Palestine 2025 Sydney Harbour Bridge protest, but within cooee of the Melbourne protest.
From free speech martyr to an unfortunate cost of protecting the 2nd amendment in ..3..2…
https://www.latintimes.com/tyler-robinson-childhood-photos-guns-spark-debate-after-charlie-kirk-shooting-589532