Daily review 01/08/2024

13 comments on “Daily review 01/08/2024 ”

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1. SPC 1

   1 August 2024 at 6:33 pm

   Kainga Ora adapting to the C of C regime that wants less done for Maori, and making the associated administrative cost savings …

   https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/political/523841/kainga-ora-to-slash-maori-focused-housing-team-in-half
   • bwaghorn 1.1

     2 August 2024 at 7:42 am

     Assimilate or die seems to be the message to Maori!
2. SPC 2

   1 August 2024 at 6:35 pm

   The reason for the improved quality of Herald editorials has been found.

   Hiring students who used AI to do their assignments

   https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/523875/nzme-cops-criticism-after-using-ai-to-write-editorial
   • AB 2.1

     1 August 2024 at 9:55 pm

     Heh. That improved quality won't last. The ideological comissars at the Herald will soon realise that AI makes political propaganda so much easier. Rather than having to hire and then police an ideologically compliant human, with AI, the bias is simply contained in the instructions given to the machine
3. SPC 3

   1 August 2024 at 6:40 pm

   More evidence of what happens when a nation has a government like the C of C, there is no likelihood of the investment required to ensure it remains of the first world.

   https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/523878/tvnz-staff-fear-still-more-job-cuts-after-change-process-announced
4. SPC 4

   1 August 2024 at 7:01 pm

   The policeman, the nanny and the Hon@Minister.

   Another study identifies that people preload (cheaper) before going to licenced places.

   Again the policeman and the nanny say increase prices and reduce the hours for off-licence purchase.

   Consequence – carparks for late hour sale of alcohol and other stuff via selling agents to youth. And the working class have less money spare after paying rent.

   Some nations would simply allow people to bring Mary-Jane or Molly along, or ban sale prices of alcohol products except to licensed premises (supplying food, music entertainment, dancing or screen sports etc).

   https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/in-depth/523785/the-pre-loader-alcohol-problem-that-blights-ceTntral-cities
   • newsense 4.1

     2 August 2024 at 6:26 am

     Here’s a similar thing.

     The police, 4 of them, called to eject a family from the cinema who’d brought their own snack pack.

     Great chance for a bit of a left wing culture war issue. Turn up and give them a ten trip pass to a different cinema. Amazing that we can’t afford to pay the police properly, but we can afford to have them enforce excessive leisure inflation.

     Used to be 10p etc etc

     Picked up in a foreign paper as the way NZ is now. Under this penny pinching government that has money for its mates, money for tobacco companies, money to pay to companies to cut addicted customers lives short , but it is cutting health care budgets when there’s already a short fall in doctors and nurses and that’s only going to get worse. That’s us now. Kinda evil. And not in a cool way.

     180k on Premier House because it’s not liveable, but 4 cops to stop a family eating a Skittle. Spot the difference.

     To quote the Guardian:

     And in New Zealand, apparently they will call the police and tell your kids that you might be murdered in a state-sanctioned assassination if one of you eats a Skittle. So, you know, it’s probably a good idea to check first.

     https://www.theguardian.com/film/article/2024/aug/01/a-woman-brought-her-own-snacks-to-despicable-me-4-then-the-police-arrived
     • bwaghorn 4.1.1

       2 August 2024 at 7:45 am

       That lady shouldn't fret , after this weeks tax cut it'll be Ben and Jerry's icecream and cinema movies all the way!!!
   • newsense 4.2

     2 August 2024 at 6:31 am

     The biggest motivation for preloading – the reason given by 44 percent of those interviewed – was saving money.

     It’s a dilemma- lose money for their predatory mates in the supermarket trade who’ve muscled in and control the alcohol market or see downtown crumble. Their choice is to blame those who can’t afford a night out and paint them all as violent.

     And further, damingly :

     ‘An independent review of the alcohol levy, which funds public health measures to reduce alcohol harm, recommended raising it to collect $37 million, which would have added just half a cent to a can of beer.

     But in June the government opted to collect only $16 million, despite being told alcohol now caused more than $9 billion of social harm in New Zealand – more than 20 times the cost of meth.’
5. SPC 5

   1 August 2024 at 7:54 pm

   Professor Patman makes this case.

   When the New Zealand government accepted Washington's request in late January for a small defence force deployment in the Red Sea to counter Houthi attacks, the US was still resolutely opposed to a Gaza ceasefire.

   Meanwhile, the International Court of Justice has called for Israel to take steps to prevent genocide.

   By reaffirming support for a NZ Defence Force team in the Red Sea without publicly calling on the US administration to end its support for Israel's military offensive in Gaza, the government has shown a selective concern about maintaining international law.

   He might be conflating continuance of military action with genocide, the ICC did not make such a claim itself.

   A statement would require more nuance than what he suggests.

   Compartmentalised policy

   In the process, New Zealand also seems to have retreated from an independent foreign policy based on firm principles and values

   to what degree does a trading nation, participant in the UN governance system, also in Five Eyes, NATO+ and with security partners (Oz*2, Singapore Malaysia UK) have an independent foreign policy? We work the way we do, because we cannot have effect standing alone.

   (and also on the concept of partnership and co-operation embodied in the Treaty of Waitangi)

   an interesting observation

   While the founding document's aspirations have yet to be fully realised, the credibility of its vision of reconciliation at home depends on New Zealand's willingness to robustly uphold respect for human rights and the rule of law in the international arena.

   The Cof C is capable of failing on all fronts.

   146 states have formally recognised the state of Palestine, New Zealand remains in a relatively small group of former colonial powers yet to do so.

   I presume he is aware that the majority of the residents of the Palestinian state area do not support the co-existence of two states – that is they do not support the state of Israel's continuance.

   The government should have been making it clear in Washington and elsewhere that the absence of a lasting ceasefire in Gaza is inexcusable and unacceptable.

   Is Hamas offering to release all hostages for one. In the meantime the issue is food and medical assistance whatever the impasse – this is the ICC concern.

   In the wider world, a values based diplomacy would highlight such as Sudan (earlier Ethiopia and Yemen). Or is selective concern, more a case of someone to blame/side against in the latest morality play.

   https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/on-the-inside/523769/an-ambiguous-foreign-policy-on-gaza-risks-undermining-nz-s-global-reputation
6. Nic the NZer 6

   2 August 2024 at 8:10 am

   I presume you are aware that,

   “the majority of the residents of the Israeli state area do not support the co-existence of two states – that is they do not support the state of Palestines’s existence” – as well as being instrumental in blocking it from being established.

   Ought we assume Israel should be disestablished by the UN on this basis? I mean what kind of point do you think you’re making here?
   • SPC 6.1

     2 August 2024 at 2:22 pm

     By what legal route could the UN dis-establish a state?

     On what cause, given Egypt and Jordan occupied Gaza and West Bank because they refused to recognise an Israeli state alongside a Palestinian state in Gaza and the West Bank? And without any consequence.

     My point, is that it would be pointless – that is achieve nothing. Moral posturing while Yemen, Ethiopia and Sudan …et al

     The time for UN intervention was when Arab nations threatened a war with any Jewish state, as soon as it was created. Because the UNSC took no action the matter was decided by war. All they have done since, is pass law in 1949 not allowing nations to keep territory won in war. Thus the refusal to accept that Israel could acquire territories occupied by Jordan and Egypt until 1967.

     Members of the UN are supposed to be provided with a collective security guarantee.

     If a Palestinian state hosted groups taking military action against Israel (as the occupied area of Gaza has and Lebanon does), what then – the action taken by the US in Afghanistan after 9/11?

     Could you imagine Russia saying it would vote with the USA on the issue in return for a Ukraine deal?

     Conclusion – Israel (and USA) will only allow a Palestinian state, if it cannot be used as a base for violence against it. Palestinians do not just oppose continuance of an Israeli state, they support violence against it.

     What is support for a Palestinian state, without constraint on a war by it, against another nation state?

     Those who oppose the settlement and occupation of the West Bank have to provide a viable alternative.
     • Nic the NZer 6.1.1

       3 August 2024 at 7:55 pm

       Not sure what to say about this. I demonstrated your supposed challenge to establishing a Palestinian state (that Palestinians may not want Israel to exist) already does not apply in reverse. Whether or not the UN could disestablish a state this still demonstrates your challenge is not a valid argument against establishing a Palestinian state.

       The UN establishing a Palestinian state would in fact have significant influence on the conflict, that is why Israel and the US have been so against it. Ultimately of course the resolution will have to be political and acceptable to a lot of Palestinians. At present maybe the most viable solution at hand is two states based on the 1967 borders.

       "Those who oppose the settlement and occupation of the West Bank have to provide a viable alternative."

       I have no idea why you seem to think that the solution is Israel should take the entire West Bank. At best that amounts to a slow burning ethnic cleansing ending in an officially apartheid Israel state. That is morally unacceptable.

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