Daily review 02/09/2022

18 comments on “Daily review 02/09/2022 ”

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1. Anne 1

   2 September 2022 at 6:34 pm

   I maybe wrong but it doesn't look like anyone on TS had commented on the death of former Russian president, Mikhail Gorbachev.

   https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/world/473861/world-politicians-react-as-last-soviet-president-mikhail-gorbachev-dies

   He has been shunned by the current regime (not surprising) and described by the stupid (Yep. Russia has plenty of them too), but I predict that one day in the future he will be revered by his own as a man of great mana and vision. Here's hoping….
   • Stuart Munro 1.1

     2 September 2022 at 7:25 pm

     He is blamed, by many contemporary Russians, for the painful reforms that accompanied the end of the Soviet regime. Yeltsin's coup took power out of his hands, and prevented him from completing most of his changes. If we can take Primorye as an example, his glasnost style policies there (unlike the cynical theft of NZ public resources by Douglas) improved both the economy and quality of life of residents. But he was pushed before he could achieve anything comparable for Russia.

     Gorbachev was a provincial, and to Russian ears sounded like a hick from the sticks, while Yeltsin, a drunken bum to western eyes, had the accent and vocabulary of Moscow intelligentsia. I think Gorbachev might have achieved much more, as that rarest of things, an honest man in Russia. But his character was of little help against the entrenched corruption of institutional Russia.
     • Anne 1.1.1

       2 September 2022 at 7:35 pm

       Thanks so much for that Stuart Munro. I didn't know the background politics. Honesty and decency is always the loser against the liars, the cheats and the corrupt whether it be in national or international arenas or the lives of ordinary people.

       Russia is truly an enigma. On the one hand It has immense cultural significance and has spawned some of the most famous authors, composers and cultural giants of the last two centuries, yet on the other hand is so sinister and corrupt.
       • mikesh 1.1.1.1

         3 September 2022 at 8:14 am

         yet on the other hand is so sinister and corrupt.

         I doubt if Russia is more sinister or corrupt than many other countries. Certainly, the current premier, Vladimir Putin, seems pretty ruthless when it comes to holding on to power, but he is probably the best man for the job, and he knows it. He more than anybody can take the credit for bringing Russia back from the brink of the serious state of poverty in which it found itself after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

         Communism of course was no great loss. The problem lay in in the way its collapse was brought about. The Russian economy, I think, was too dependent on oil revenues, so Ronald Reagan persuaded Saudi Arabia to open the floodgates and flood the world with oil, which led to a collapse in its price, and eventually bankrupted Russia. The bastard even boasted of how he had brought about the end of communism.
2. Anne 2

   2 September 2022 at 7:26 pm

   Can anyone supply the full version of the following for those of us who refuse on principle to subscribe:

   https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/politics/police-seeking-mole-who-leaked-sensitive-email-to-right-wing-blogger/MSKMMRZKLKCISCIBSNFGW7IG2U/

   Sounds interesting.
   • Patricia Bremner 2.1

     2 September 2022 at 8:36 pm

     Yes please.
   • Belladonna 2.2

     2 September 2022 at 9:34 pm

     Relevant quotes.

     The email was sent from the Interpol office at police national headquarters in New Zealand to its counterpart in Canberra and sought information that could be used to stop a pair of alt-right agitators with large social media followings from going to the latest protest in Wellington.

     It was obtained and published on Monday by former Whaleoil blogger Cameron Slater on his new blog which regularly pushes Covid-19 conspiracy theories and views well along the right of the political spectrum.

     And then picked up on right wing blogs and news-sites world wide.

     Police have confirmed that there is nothing unusual about the message being sent. And this is supported by "Security expert Dr Paul Buchanan of 36th Parallel Assessments"

     The email from police in Wellington to Australian counterparts highlighted the imminent arrival of Avi Yemini and Rukshan Fernandes who produce content for the right-wing website Rebel News.

     No further info about the mole – I gather investigations are furiously going on inside the police security unit.

     Rest of the article is a rehash of the Yemini & Fernandes 'non arrival'.
     • Anne 2.2.1

       2 September 2022 at 9:41 pm

       Thanks for that Belladonna.

       So Slater is back in the game.
3. arkie 3

   2 September 2022 at 11:04 pm

   Apropos of nothing I was thinking about poetry and its ability to use combinations and juxtapositions of words, phrases, even grammatical marks, to convey sometimes deep, often multitudinous meanings. The meaning derived from works of poetry can be highly individual, a distinctly personal interpretation. One can ignore different or contradictory meanings arrived at by others or one can accept that there can be multiple readings simultaneously, the existence of which do not nullify each other.

   Such is language.

   I was at the same time reminded of Emma Lazarus’ poem inscribed on the Statue of Liberty, The New Colossus. The then senior policy advisor to Trump, Stephen Miller, decided that the later addition of the poem to base of the statue rendered the following words meaningless in it’s application to modern immigration issues:

   Give me your tired, your poor,
   Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
   The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
   Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
   I lift my lamp beside the golden door!

   That Miller sought to nullify the meaning of Lazarus’ poem to exclude and reject people is ironic being that she also authored the words: Until we are all free, we are none of us free. Which in reference to the enduring civil rights struggle and MLKs dream of equality, poet Maya Angelou, rephrased as:

   The truth is, no one of us can be free until everyone is free

   These words and their sentiment mean a lot to me and, I hope, to other people here.
   • Molly 3.1

     3 September 2022 at 4:07 am

     Apropos of nothing….
   • Mac1 3.2

     3 September 2022 at 9:15 am

     Thanks, arkie. There are other lines in Lazarus' sonnet which carry strong meaning for me.

     The first is the opening line of what the statue, Mother of Exiles, 'cries with silent lips'. (Is she heard, by the way?) She cries, "Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp". That is a short condemnation of the old ways of pomp and fable, a rejection of self-serving nationalist history and expensive frippery that benefits only the ruling classes at the expense of the poor, downtrodden.

     The Mother of Exiles lays the blame at the feet of these 'ancient lands' of Europe especially with their multitudinous destructive ways of racism (Emma Lazarus was Jewish, she knew), bigotry, war, oppression, colonialism, et cetera.

     Instead, silently she seeks a new world where the victims of human greed and vice can be free.

     The second line that speaks to me is the opening which says that the new world is not to be symbolised by a giant, conquering and male warrior with legs astride others' lands.

     Instead, by a female who holds up a different symbol. Not a sword, but a torch that sheds the light of compassion.

     And dare I say it, kindness? (Take a bow, PM Ardern).

     And finally, the lesson that we learn from asking the question, "Did America listen to Emma Lazarus via the Mother of Exiles?"

     Is America free of 'storied pomp'? Does she welcome those huddled masses?

     Or is she again like the Colossus of Rhodes, its power spanning continents, to perpetuate the hegemony of male, nationalist, racist, war-mongering and cruel violence in the way that ancient lands even still do?

     À propos of everything………
     • arkie 3.2.1

       3 September 2022 at 12:09 pm

       Tautoko Mac1, thank you. The comparison of the Mother of Exiles contrast with the Colossus of Rhodes is astute. The US may well be struggling to live up to Lazarus' words on the pedestal, but the hope remains that as long as they remain inscribed there, the message of the poem will continue to shine a light that leads to a new and better world, even if, like Shelley's statue of Ozymandias, nothing beside remains.

       This korero about these built monuments also reminded me of another poem that is important and meaningful to me; Bertolt Brecht's A Worker Reads History:

       Who built the seven gates of Thebes?
       The books are filled with names of kings.
       Was it the kings who hauled the craggy blocks of stone?
       And Babylon, so many times destroyed.
       Who built the city up each time? In which of Lima's houses,
       That city glittering with gold, lived those who built it?
       In the evening when the Chinese wall was finished
       Where did the masons go? Imperial Rome
       Is full of arcs of triumph. Who reared them up? Over whom
       Did the Caesars triumph? Byzantium lives in song.
       Were all her dwellings palaces? And even in Atlantis of the legend
       The night the seas rushed in,
       The drowning men still bellowed for their slaves.

       Young Alexander conquered India.
       He alone?
       Caesar beat the Gauls.
       Was there not even a cook in his army?
       Phillip of Spain wept as his fleet
       was sunk and destroyed. Were there no other tears?
       Frederick the Great triumphed in the Seven Years War.
       Who triumphed with him?

       Each page a victory
       At whose expense the victory ball?
       Every ten years a great man,
       Who paid the piper?

       So many particulars.
       So many questions.
       • Mac1 3.2.1.1

         3 September 2022 at 12:54 pm

         Yes, I learned some time ago what Brecht wrote about. When, as a older man I got to see the marvels of Europe, I often thought of the craftsmen, the workers, the builders, masons, woodworkers, painters, tilers, roofers, smiths, plumbers, carvers, etc.

         Those architects and planners designed and built what they did because they knew it could be done, by workers with the necessary skills.

         The rulers, owners, nobles who had them built and who claimed the nominal credit instead were better described by Emma Lazarus in her term "storied pomp".

         The other thing I read about Lazarus' poem is that actually what it calls for has not happened, it is in the future. The Mother of Exiles did not stand there when she wrote the sonnet.

         The question then is, was her vision fulfilled?

         As the article cited below concludes, "Thus, “The New Colossus” presents freedom as a worthy ideal that has yet to be realised in the world outside the poem."

         https://smartenglishnotes.com/2022/01/15/the-new-colossus-by-emma-lazarus-summary-analysis-and-themes/
   • Drowsy M. Kram 3.3

     3 September 2022 at 9:31 am

     
   • mary_a 3.4

     3 September 2022 at 1:29 pm

     "The truth is, no one of us can be free until everyone can be free."

     Powerful sentiment in those words indeed @ arkie (3).
4. pat 4

   3 September 2022 at 5:01 am

   Al Bartlett prescient again (2012)

   "Most discussions of sustainability, especially scientific discussions, tell repeatedly of experts who advocate major programs to increase supplies (“Drill baby, drill!”) to meet the demands of growing populations. In this scenario, production is governed largely by demand. The more you need, the more you can have. But now, as the peak of global production of petroleum is near, the world is making the transition from the left side of the Hubbert Curve to the right side. On the left side the quantity produced each year is determined largely by demand while on the right side the quantity produced each year is falling so that the quantity produced will be governed mainly by the availability of supplies. As we pass the peak, Nature changes the game. On the left side of the peak, resource shortages are met by increasing production, so the cost of a barrel of petroleum tends over time to rise only slowly. On the right side of the peak, production (barrels per year) is constrained by the availability of supplies of petroleum so that shortages develop and prices rise rapidly. The discipline of economics has long been accustomed to dealing with life on the rising left side of the Hubbert Curve for most critical resources. On the rising left side we have worked hard to increase resource production in order to meet the growing demand. The big question is, will economics be able to adapt to the completely changed conditions on the right side of the Hubbert Curve where production is determined, not by what we want, but rather by what is available? Will we continue to try to apply left side economics to the right side of the Hubbert Curve?"

   https://www.albartlett.org/articles/art_meaning_of_sustainability_2012mar20.pdf
   • mikesh 4.1

     3 September 2022 at 8:41 am

     Also, the EROI of more recently discovered oil sources seems to have drastically fallen.
     • pat 4.1.1

       3 September 2022 at 9:30 am

       Yes…the reduced EROI is indicative of the falling supply.

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