Letters to the Editor.
Local! Please make it your mantra.
Times are tough. Let’s spare a thought for retail business in Whitianga. (I believe the same is felt in Tairua retail) and indeed for readers beyond Whiti, I know you will understand.
Our town is the hardest hit on the Peninsula and significant, worthwhile and ongoing assistance for our predicament is currently absent. With heavily restricted access and ongoing bad weather, which is successfully forcing regular visitors to abandon our town, the future for larger retail business is looking dire.
We need to understand that their expenses do not end with the rent on the shop floor area. There is also the storage required. Then there are staff, insurance, and all the other expenses related to having the courage and commitment to owning and operating a large retail business in Whitianga. It has never been an easy town to operate in but these businesses have looked after us well over many years.
Are we prepared to risk losing them? Once gone, they will be hard to replace. These businesses can’t be sold – who is going to be foolish enough to buy a business in a rapidly declining area with no access. These people stand to lose everything.
So Please – Make your Mantra “Buy local” Support our own people who have supported and offered such wonderful service over a long period of time. Every gift you buy – make it local.
Explore the shops you have not visited before. Whatever you need, you can find it here. We are blessed with retailers like Fagans, and 100%, - and we can’t afford to lose them. Sure, I know we can buy liquor at the liquor store, but go further and sample the stunning little tasty gifts as well that are everywhere. “Which one?” you ask. Well, you might just have to visit them all to find out. Yes, gifts for all occasions can be found. So next time you are sitting down to buy online, beyond the shores on form the big cities. Stop and spare a thought for “Our Town” and ‘Our Peninsula” and go and explore everything that is on offer from our own retail businesses.
United we stand – divided we fall.
Ady Cole-Ewen
Simpsons Beach
How smart are 5G towers?
What are they for? Who wants them and who does not? Why?
Some say this new generation of artificial intelligence (AI) will make our lives easier, processes faster, more intelligent and efficient, give more access to services, better services. What they see with excitement are the unlimited possibilities with the continual upgrades of AI. Others say AI is taking over our lives, undermining the human unlimited capacity to think, feel and create, enticing us into dependency. How many still know how to calculate, write or work without the help of AI?
The concerns?
Each time we use our phones or computers, we give data and teach AI to develop algorithms. This means AI puts the information into patterns and programs that identify and can then influence or control in return.
Moreover, unbeknown to most, these capabilities show we are on the brink of AI going beyond just harvesting our data, to using that data to create “realities”. The development is going so fast that it becomes questionable as to who is in charge. Legislators and authorities stumble behind or are heavily lobbied to accept biased research and are facing serious difficulties in putting safe parameters in place to protect everybody, including themselves.
All AI needs is access to us.
So, thousands of satellites are orbiting our planet now and since they are vulnerable to our atmosphere, float high above it, needing transmitters on earth. Towers, towers of increasing capacity and speed. Satellites and towers are creating a network covering every inch of our planet, reaching every human, every animal, every plant, everything living or man-made. AI is watching, listening, evaluating and influencing via “smart” technology.
Structures sensitive to radiation emitted by the towers are introduced everywhere. Metals like graphene are in our food chain and hidden in ‘medicines’. Programmable hydrogels find their way into our blood streams as tiny nano particles and bypass natural cell barriers, thereby arriving in every corner of our body. Whether we received modern vaccines or carry tech in the form of pacemakers in our body, or whether we simply carry our phones in our pockets, bras or schoolbags, use computers, have a smart meter, smart fridge, or a car sporting a computer under the bonnet, all data, even pictures and sounds are being tracked, monitored, stored, collated and can be connected to and controlled by AI.
Is it surprising that some in our communities say stop? Think again!
They are pulling their hair, wondering, protesting, urging others to open their eyes, minds and hearts to their concerns. They ask to observe and question changes in our general physical, mental and emotional health. They point to the spreading confusion about what and who we are as a gender, as individuals and in society.
What does it mean today to be human? To focus on being connected to life from our heart or via the net?
Members of the local community campaigned for almost a year, addressing the technology provider, the Community Board, issuing affidavits to Council (which were undisputed), handing out research papers to police and medical professionals. Despite all this, on Monday, 19 June the tower arrived.
It was a most challenging week for those in Coromandel Town witnessing the erection of a 15 metre high, 4G and 5G capable tower with a radius of at least 1.2km, right in the middle of a residential zone.
As rumours had it, these protesters were violent, so police, as well as security paid by the telecommunications company, were called in.
What they saw were banners and cut-out wooden hearts calling for love and care for the community and the environment. They witnessed prayers, songs of unity and encouragement to be led by loving consciousness. They were given detailed documentation and introduced to many voices in the group.
Slowly ears and hearts were opening on both sides. Slowly the tension fell away and made room for listening. Separation turned into connection.
No one will forget the sense of peace.
Where to from here? Can we keep the peace? Keep listening? Talking? Reviewing? Can we stay connected and care for each other?
Can we be and do what humans are capable of and AI isn’t?
Love.
Julia Biermann
Coromandel Town
I am a resident of Coromandel Town and part of the community opposing the 5G tower which has been erected directly opposite homes on Pagitt Street, without consent of the home owners and wider community. This is an encroachment on our rights, and all efforts to negotiate have been ignored.
This is often the case when globalist agenda is involved, and the power is in the hands of the greedy. We can clearly see from news around the world, our struggle is shared by many other communities and there is a great resistance.
I am a New Zealand citizen who has travelled extensively and have a deep love for our country, am ashamed by the Council and Government's actions, although not surprised, but moreso shocked at the disregard for community wishes displayed by the security and the Police, the people on the ground.
Our forefathers fought wars protecting our country and now their descendants are installing foreign powers directly into our communities against our will and the evidence presented by top scientists from around the world.
Yours,
James Castle
Coromandel
Dear Informer,
I hope this message finds you well. I am writing to express my concerns about a recent article that was published on your platform. The piece in question is the one detailing Dennis Kailing's journey in 'HOME2HOME' and the subsequent commentary on societal norms and relationships.
While I appreciate the diversity of opinions and perspectives that your platform offers, I found this particular article to be problematic in several ways. Firstly, the narrative seemed to veer off course from the initial topic of Kailing's journey to personal anecdotes and opinions that were not only unrelated but also potentially offensive to some readers.
The author's personal experiences and views on homosexuality and lesbianism were presented in a way that could be construed as dismissive and derogatory. It is important to remember that such topics require sensitivity and respect, as they pertain to individuals' identities and personal lives.
Moreover, the author's assertion that "bouncing about and bed hopping can be fun, but it can also be disorienting and devaluing" is a gross oversimplification of the complexities of human relationships and sexuality. It is not appropriate to make sweeping generalizations about people's choices and lifestyles, especially when they are based on personal beliefs rather than empirical evidence.
Lastly, the anecdote about the six-year-old girl was disturbing and seemed to be included for shock value rather than contributing to the overall narrative. It is inappropriate to use such a serious issue to make a point in an article that started as a travelogue.
I believe that your platform has a responsibility to its readers to provide content that is respectful, inclusive, and considerate of diverse perspectives. I urge you to review your editorial guidelines to ensure that future articles meet these standards.
Thank you for your attention to this matter. I look forward to seeing improvements in the content published on your platform.
Best regards,
Daniel Williams
Coromandel
Informer - Reply to the letter of Daniel Williams with reference to Stan’s Stuff in the Issue 1059.
I apologise for any distress I may have caused by my references to lesbian and homosexual. I intended simply to share my awakening to these meaning of these words in the dark ages of my Australian upbringing 60- 70 years ago. My main point was to stress the value of stable, long-term relationships. I wrote this with reference to man woman relationships. However, I believe this applies to all couple relationships, be they heterosexual, homosexual or lesbian. Now after reading Daniel’s letter, if I was writing this piece again, I would have made this clear.
Stan Stewart
Whitianga.
Response to Guest Editorial - 'A need for equality'
I am dismayed that the Editor published the “Guest Editorial” by Trevor Amundsen in the edition on the 27th of June. Mr Amundsen’s risible piece is riddled with right-wing neocolonial nonsense, outright lies, and incitement of racial disharmony and should be retracted with an apology.
Mr Amundsen naively claimed that “after the Treaty of Waitangi, we were all equal”, far from it. Since the Treaty in 1846, Māori were conned out of the vast majority of their assets, either by genocidal war campaigns by the settler armies or by sleigh of hands of colonial governments that never for a moment accepted Māori as equals in the first century following the Treaty. With regard to health, in 1891, 51 years after the Treaty signing, Māori life expectancy for men was 25 years and only 23 years for women, and the Māori population was almost cut in half in those 51
years. “We were all equal after the Treaty”,
Yeah, right! Significant inequalities and divisions continue to this day. The underserving of indigenous populations in healthcare results in excess rates of costly hospitalisation for cases that could have been prevented if adequate primary care had been provided. This government is trying to do better for Tangata Whenua to heal some of the existing divisions and not, as Mr Amundsen put it, “sought to create divisions”.
Mr Amundsen then lies outright by claiming that 3-Waters would give Māori 50% ownership. This, as he should know, is entirely untrue. All shares in the 3-Waters assets are owned by the collective of territorial authorities, our current councils.
There are no other shareholders. Get your facts right, Mr Amundsen!
Concerning his dreadful diatribe against the transgender minority, Mr Amundsen must be reminded that his very own liberty to live his life as he may wish is only ever as free as the freedom that he and society grant all others who are different from the majority. In a society that makes it illegal to be different, you are not free to be “normal” because you are forced to conform to the
ideas of others by law. Fascist nightmares start with careless racist, and bigot talk like
Mr Amundsen’s “editorial”, stirring up fear and hatred until one “glorious day”, the people of the land are frightened enough to elect a fascist government. We know how that ends. Trevor’s father’s generation fought with their lives to put the hydra of far-right fascism back in its cave back in 1945. What would they think of Trevor and The Informer paper now, bashing minorities in our town?
I hope that the Editors of The Informer will take note and consider if it was wise to publish such a disgraceful article that Mr Amundsen penned up under the status of a “Guest Editorial”. We do have standards of care set in law that apply in NZ for press coverage, and I could imagine that complaints may well be raised over this piece of trash that the paper let slip through. Whitianga is
better than this, and I hope that the quality control of the paper improves. Otherwise, advertisers will think twice about being seen in the context of racist and bigot nonsense.
Thomas Everth,
Whitianga
Guest Editor Misrepresentations
Guest Editor, you appear to feel that English is the only valid language of use. Therefore, I will not use your name - it appears not to be English and by your definition it could be confusing for some. Your article: Issue 1058, 13/06/23 has left three things for me to direct attention to.
1) You write about the The New Zealand Transport Authority’s (by your definition ‘Waka Kotahi’ may be too verbose here) decision to use bilingual signage. Māori is an official language of this country and every day more of the population are learning to use it. Is there a real reason that this sector of the population should not see their language used in all forums? In my writing to The Informer I indicated to an educated audience that all language requires context to have meaning.
You do realise signage does give context?
2) I did not say “anything that moves that does not breathe” is a translation for “waka”. I did give context for the modern day use of the word. You also infer that the use of ‘pahi’ invalidates the use of‘waka’. Do you consider a ‘bus’ to be a ‘vehicle’? Or, in your estimation, are these things different?
Give up trying to misrepresent reo Māori. Your knowledge of it is clearly non-existent. If you would like to begin learning, a very good reo Māori class is held in Whitianga on a Monday night.
3) You also say, “I do not have anything against the use of and growth in the use of the Māori language.” Your next sentence goes on to make declarations about language clarity. If you have no knowledge of a language, how can your declarations about clarity be taken seriously? Since you misrepresented information I gave, I have read a number of your articles. Try using reason rather than opinion – it is far more constructive.
Carol Buchanan,
Whitianga