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notices and features - Date published:
5:37 pm, October 4th, 2017 - 44 comments
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The current rise of populism challenges the way we think about people’s relationship to the economy.We seem to be entering an era of populism, in which leadership in a democracy is based on preferences of the population which do not seem entirely rational nor serving their longer interests. ...
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Humans.
Finally, in the most disturbing part of the footage, a small female elephant, likely around five years old, is seen standing in the trailer. Her body is tightly tied to the vehicle by two ropes. Only minutes after being taken from the wild, the animal, still groggy from the sedative, is unable to understand that the officials want her to back into the truck, so they smack her on her body, twist her trunk, pull her by her tail and repeatedly kick her in the head with their boots.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/oct/03/exclusive-footage-shows-young-elephants-being-captured-in-zimbabwe-for-chinese-zoos
This is scary stuff.
This is the reporters video.
Oh dear,
Controversial blogger Cameron Slater, public relations man Carrick Graham and former MP Katherine Rich have failed in a court bid to knock out a defamation claim by three health experts.
The High Court would not strike out the case, which was prompted by revelations in the 2014 book Dirty Politics, and said the defamation action could yet proceed to a jury trial.
Slater, founder of the Whaleoil blog, is accused by Dr Doug Sellman and two other health academics Boyd Swinburn and Shane Bradbrook, of defaming them in a series of posts on his site.
They allege Graham, son of the former National cabinet minister Sir Douglas Graham, arranged for the posts to be published on the Whaleoil site for a fee and was in turn paid by the ex-National MP Rich through her employer the Food and Grocery Council, for having the pieces posted.
The case claims Graham wrote one of the pieces himself, “authored, commissioned or procured Slater to publish the others and authored and published” comments made about the articles.
Justice Matthew Palmer, who declined to strike out the case on the grounds of it being out of time, being the honestly-held opinion of the writer or as having qualified privilege as part of robust political debate about alcohol, sugar, fat and tobacco, suppressed the “alleged defamatory statements” until after a trial.
https://www.newsroom.co.nz/2017/10/04/51558/whaleoil-ex-mp-pr-man-to-face-jury-trial
Oh Dear! How Sad! Never mind!
What is it with these people?
Oh yeah! As today’s Image reminds us..
“Rich people, paying rich people, to tell middle class people, to blame poor people.”
Rich people?, I think Slater is still living in a caravan out west in Auckland somewhere.
He chose the side of the Rich. A bit like you, BM. No doubt you are now going to tell us how ordinary and un-rich you are?
Golden laughter abounds here as I read this post – Thanks In Vino.
“BM. No doubt you are now going to tell us how ordinary and un-rich you are?”
BM = bags of money.
You know his dad was president of the National Party, It’s not as if he is ever going to be destitute in the future. If he chooses to live in a caravan, then that’s his affair…
They are all associated with the gnats – spose Wayne will be here soon spinning wildly…
Yeah they are as thick as thieves.
Oh that’s right! They are not thieves ….
They just steal from the poor.
.. and Alwyn…
Pleased that is continuing. Very pleased indeed.
I just duckduckgoed my local National Electorate MP,
and truly, can’t find that MP’s certification for those calms in his business advertisements… (seems to be endless, and alarmingly easy to dig this stuff out.)
Many our us bloggers here should be joining the gnats, for the inviting leadership vacuum.
Me too @Martymars. Hope Palmer J keeps on the case as well after the strike out. Very fair and very intelligent man
Couldn’t happen to nicer people. I hope Rich and Graham get fucked over royally. As for Slater, I hope he sues them for exploiting his National-Party fostered pathology.
A more nuanced look at the differing treatment white mass murderers and non-white mass murderers get in the media.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/double-standard-white-privilege-media-las-vegas-shooting_us_59d3da15e4b04b9f92058316?ncid=inblnkushpmg00000009
It’s more about things like how whites get humanising background information published about them, whereas the non-whites get derogatory background info dredged up. Whites get called lone wolves that don’t fit the type (in fact the most common mass murderer is a white male with a fondness for guns). White mass murderers don’t get collectivised to their community, non-whites do get collectivised.
Good article – hopefully this differing reporting, and portrayal is starting to penetrate the conciousness of society but I’m not holding my breath because – as a member of the dominant culture doing this, other members cannot face it and this is why the lone wolf analogies imo. Zombiefication in front of our eyes as in, no control, unmet insatiable urges, people but not as we know it jim’, and so on.
And also pertains to adams point on the ‘terrorist’ descriptor.
I’ve just spent a little while skimming over coverage of some of the mass murder attacks, and it didn’t jump out at me that that there was a big difference in whether a mass murder got called terrorism depending on whether the perpetrators were white or not. Personally I’d have been calling many of those incidents terrorism long before any authorities or responsible media did. I’ll take a guess that’s because authorities and responsible news organisations are careful not to call something terrorism until it meets specific definitions. Opinion piece writers on the other hand….
But the difference in how reports treated the other aspects highlighted by the HuffPo piece certainly was obvious.
So I’d be interested to see what a rigorous study found.
Tip of the iceberg – checking detail on this will be like ballooning in Gulf hurricane.
http://norightturn.blogspot.co.nz/2017/10/climate-change-australia-burning.html
We should be changing our laws so we can tax them, but they can’t vote right? Maybe an extra tax at the border too?
though I guess we’re going to have more storms and be a less desireable location too…
Unfortunately, that’s why we’re copping so much rain, Oz is now this massive heat block that funnels all the shit weather over us.
The main reason why you lot are the our winter and spring rains is because the Indian Ocean and Pacific Ocean are operating as two separate weather systems or in layman terms out wack too each other which is pushing all our winter and spring rains to the South. For us in the Top End a early start to the build up/ wet season where everyone goes bat shit crazy until the monsoon arrives.
The link is the outlook for Oct to Dec which was on the ABC’s Landline last Sunday
http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/outlooks/#/overview/video
Whereas over here in WA Perth it’s down right cool at the moment. Sunny but cool southerly winds. Didn’t bring any warm clothes with me, so went to find some the other day. Shops have declared its summer – T shirts only – and not a sweater to be seen. Found the last warm jacket on the clearance rack and wear that inside. Rain forecast for the weekend again. 🙁
As for the continual love affair with coal that Oz has – the continuing declining cost of solar and wind means that even continuing to externalise all costs of coal production and consumption will not be enough to sustain the industry. It will die out. The conservatives in Aus are fighting for a lost cause, they are just too stupid to realise it.
Despite all the disincentives and obstacles placed by these idiots – Abbott, Hansen, et al – the fact remains that 25% of Australian residences have some form of alternative solar energy supply, and that figure continues to grow.
Give it a couple mths and you will needing an cold room to keep you cool once that wind swings round to the nth east, but then again you have Fremantle doctor in the avo to cool things down.
I tend to feel sorry for poor old Mal sometimes as he has to put up with Stone Age knuckle heads from right wing of Lib/Nat coalition because they are really holding back Oz ATM as regards to clean energy. But there will still be coal mining go on in regards to producing steel, alloys, smelting base metals etc.
(Disclaimer I have shares in South 32, OZ mins, and in some spec mining shares in base mentals, rare eaths and Uranium companies)
Also I don’t trust sell out Shorten either.
A couple of our friends are currently in a couple of defence houses that have on grid solar and they are loving it. There is talk within Defence Housing Authority of building off grid defence houses in the future.
I know our next house will be off grid if we can do it, as it’s the way to go and been look at doing the same for Bach, but sticking point is the AirCon for the misses lol.
Some states are stopping on grid houses from being built as too many were built , as they were feeding to much unused power back into the and blowing up a number transformers/ substations as what happened up Port Headland way a few yrs back.
Did you get the Four Corners program on Monday night about that Indian Coal mining company?
Yes there will be still some mining of Coal for Steel production – but even there the recycling of steel will mean less is needed as the global quantity of steel increases. As you observe Oz being held back from transitioning to a more sustainable energy production by the RWNJ in Nat/Lib. But despite that people are seeing the economic viability of transitioning to Solar and doing so despite the winding back of feed-in tarriffs. Here in WA it was reduced from 47c per unit to 7c. Resulting in a down turn in the up take and a resultant loss of jobs for installers etc. But even with that disincentive there are still homes being built with Solar.
Yes the increasing number of off grid installations as battery design improves is a new movement. Smart grids are the next step on the way and that will remove many of the problems you allude to of oversupply.
https://westernpower.com.au/energy-solutions?gclid=EAIaIQobChMI85qGvf3W1gIVnggqCh2_5QCkEAAYASAAEgJ_w_D_BwE#ilp-3
Good grief Macro, that’s a bloody big drop in the feed in tariffs and it’s no wonder the off grid instalments have taken off. There is a electrical company here in Darwin called Delta where we brought our 6.5kva back up genset off for the wet season. Are now marketing off grid systems and I was talking to the marketing manager he was saying “what you see in store now will be outdated within 12-18mths because the technology is move so fast because of the market demand”. Then you have these Stone Age knuckleheads within the Lib/Nat coalition who still want coal power generator stations, hell even wind power moving quite fast as well.
What I find very funny is these Neo Lib knuckleheads talk about market forces and the free market, but these knuckleheads are still in the Stone Age when the market forces are moving forward.
They don’t believe in the market – they believe in things always being exactly the same and thus they can continue to get rich doing stuff that they understood in primary school.
‘the market’ isn’t moving forward – research and development is and often doing so in-spite of ‘the market’.
Well, the off grid systems are flying off the selves ATM which is driving research & development, which is driving down the price of off grid power systems to a point that the building code in some States of Oz is not keeping up. All because the massive cuts to the feed in tariffs for on grid power systems and the rising costs in power bills.
That’s what people think but often the R&D is done by government and then adopted by the private sector (see The Entrepreneurial State). Apple is a great example of R&D done by government and then used by the private sector.
Coal isn’t strictly necessary for steel making. It can be done electrolytically with much lower emissions. But I won’t take a guess about when the changeover might happen since there’s so much capital tied up in coal-based steelmaking.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/cleaner-cheaper-way-to-make-steel-uses-electricity/
I believe this is what old mate is doing to do where he brought the steel works in SA as part of his long term plan for the steel works and I believe the blast frunces need to be replaced in the near future.
If you have an hour or so.
Like this …
https://www.buzzfeed.com/tasneemnashrulla/weird-moments-from-trumps-puerto-rico-vist?utm_term=.etvj44Y258&bftwnews#.blmr44azwg
And this if you can stomach it!
https://www.buzzfeed.com/tomnamako/trump-visit-puerto-rico?bftwnews&utm_term=.afkwgg7pmL#.ocWPllN7RA
Trump is a freaking clown in a clown suit. Utter disgrace as a human. He puts the ug in ugly.
Impressive. Well worth the time to watch this if you have the smallest science bone in your body!
Dicamba and Monsanto. I hadn’t heard of the latest onslaughter by the M compnay but like rust they never sleep.
Monsanto is pushing a super poison that flies through the air killing plants in its path…except for Monsanto GMOs. But we can get it banned!
Monsanto just threatened to sue government officials if they ban the super poison! Let’s make sure legislators stand up to the bullying — join the urgent call and Avaaz will deliver it just before the vote
sign the petition
It’s no surprise farmers are up in arms. Dicamba spreads death with the wind, drifting onto their crops, trees, soil, and water. Farmers are now faced with a terrible choice — switch to Monsanto GMO seeds, or watch their crops die.
It’s a greedy, dangerous scheme that will make Monsanto billions and could destroy our food system.
But we can stop it. 17 US states opened Dicamba investigations and key Arkansas authorities just recommended a ban — now it is up for a vote. Regulators from the EU to Latin America are watching carefully. If one million of us face down Monsanto in Arkansas, and win a ban, we could stop this deadly poison in its tracks.
Stand up to Monsanto
Good article from the Washington Post on this topic: This miracle weed killer was supposed to save farms. Instead, it’s devastating them.
Interesting piece on drone mounted laser control of weeds.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/farming/97534064/dronemounted-lasers-to-be-studied-in-the-war-against-weeds
http://www.radionz.co.nz/national/programmes/ruralnews/audio/201861190/morning-rural-news-for-5-october-2017
How can anyone contemplate signing that TPP free trade deal when companies like that are flogging there poisons with the propaganda of O it is safe because one is been poisoned slowly any product that kill,S another living organism is going to have negative effects on other living organism .
They are poisoning US and they justify there products with O it’s ok we are just slowly killing you.
What the big problem is what these chemicals are doing to OUR children when we are exposed to these chemicals the damage is past on to our children look at OUR sperm count bee’s many example of US being poisoned just for profits
What amaze,S me is we all let company’s like these sell us there poisons It is 2017 we all should be banning these companies and there products.
WE NO THEY ARE FLOGGING POISON WTF
The same boneheads that have conditioned reflexes to less tax, less government, more money, want, want, for me, me, which voted for National as a rite of passage to the golden lands of El Dorado in NZ, are the same that accept that killing nature to save a crop is just an annoying externality in an economic sense.
And as they have no sense of what is right and what should never be done, they can accept all the nonsense of modernity, clever science, finding new procedures trumpeted and celebrated by Big Business and follow it without scruple.
And that is why the unthinking, uncaring, farmers, National voters, and assorted boneheads male and female, can go on buying into Monsanto, also the other chemical companies that don’t receive the same scrutiny and name recognition as M but carry out the same brutal regime on Nature and ultimately on all of us and anything living, and non-living on the planet.