Don’t mention the fascism

Written By: - Date published: 7:30 am, August 10th, 2019 - 103 comments
Categories: democracy under attack, racism, us politics - Tags: , , ,

 
We are the frogs in the pot.
 
We’re being incrementally desensitized via one small cruelty after the next.
 
This is how countries slide from decency into committing wholesale atrocities against minorities.
 
This is what the period before a genocide looks like.

– The Hoarse Whisperer on twitter.

250 characters summing up such a terrible state of a nation, THW is referring to ICE’s raids on immigrant workers in Mississippi this week.

People have been writing and commenting about rising fascism in the US for a long time, and in particular since the build up to the last US election. Yet it still seems hard to have this conversation. Fascism is a big word with a heavy and complex history, and I agree with the analysis that it shouldn’t be over-used.

But the risk here is that the very nature of rising fascism involves denial and propaganda that prevent the frogs in the pot from realising what is going on. It’s past time we yelled ‘fascism is here!’ into the pot.

We have pressures in our own society that are proto-fascist. Anti-immigration rhetoric and rising Islamophobia, racism, Dirty Politics, the centre-left afraid to do anything meaningful about the class prejudice against beneficiaries, the tenor of talkback radio and social media. Much of it emboldened by the Trump era.

The liberal frog in me says that these pressures are still small, fascism could never happen in New Zealand, we have a chance to turn things around with the centre-left government, the Mosque shootings were a one off, she’ll be right. And it’s true that we are still a much more tolerant country than the US.

But rising fascism in New Zealand wouldn’t look like the US, and we had nine long years of the Key government and the Dirty Politics crew socially engineering society to accept all sorts of things that are agin a society that actively rejects fascism. Sometimes the pot of water slowly coming to a boil is camouflaged by a smile and a wave.

This happened in the United States this week:

Where the news coverage is reporting the raids as the atrocity that everyone can see it is, it is also telling people how they can help: by donating to the man organising food and shelter for the night for the kids whose parents were just stolen by the state. Which is right, but holy hell, the response to the government stealing people is to feed their kids for a night?

How about: IF YOU WANT TO HELP YOU HAVE TO TAKE TO THE STREET! NOW! General strike, rolling strikes, occupations, whatever will mobilise the people and grind the economy to a halt. Use the tactics and strategies of all the movements that have been honing their skills for the past decade: Black Lives Matter, Standing Rock, Extinction Rebellion, The Arab Spring. Do the other things: vote, lobby, organise marches, build community, but these alone are insufficient.

It’s ok though, because ICE temporarily released some of the arrested immigrants. It’s not so bad. See how we all adjust? The pot of water’s just that bit warmer now, but not so hot as to make the frogs jump.

In 2009 r0b wrote a post about the five steps of fascism: The F Word, based on a three part essay series by US writer Sara Robinson about the rise of fascism in the US. The first essay is worth reading to see how far they have come.

Thinking it can’t happen here? R0b links to a short post by Irish Bill in early 2009 about the insanity of the 2008 NZ General Election and what the right were up to: Now with a little perspective.

As Robinson said in 2009 about the US situation,

Our choice now is stark: knock them back while they’re still new, small and not yet entrenched; or deal with them later, when they’ve got some real power to fight back with, and the cost to all of us will be so much higher.

We can’t say we weren’t warned.

If that’s a bit too bleak (and it is), Robinson’s follow up was 7 Ways We Can Fight Back Against the Rising Fascist Threat. We should be translating that into the NZ political context.

Post script: to cheer myself up I read this piece at RNZ about the NZ train conductor who literally stopped a Wellington train on Thursday and had an abusively racist passenger removed. See also Lynn’s post yesterday about how Whale Oil was finally taken down. Sometimes we really get it right.

103 comments on “Don’t mention the fascism ”

  1. marty mars 1

    Horrific.

    I don't know about fascism – I think the terminology has been usurped. Where I work we have lots of diagnosis and terms for people – we look at the behaviours and deal with them. The behaviours – the inhumanity, the cruelty, the pretend ignorance – I agree we become desensitised to cruelty – that has been one of my themes for vegetarianism – to move away from the utter cruelty of the current industrial farming area.

    My solution is simple – we fight it. We fight it directly and indirectly. We don't allow space for their erosion of our values via micro-meanings for words, or lets hear the other side, or hey they have a right to a view, or they had a hard life. We concentrate on the victims of fascism – the poor, the vulnerable and we stand with them.

    • greywarshark 1.1

      We help the victims, the poor, the vulnerable and look after their kids for a night… and then we find a way to give them better conditions that will help them get on their feet, and then we are there for them to call on as help when they start off to make their own way. And we encourage them to turn round and give a hand to others in turn.

      Do we do this by becoming authoritarian and rigid, black is black and white is white. Do we adopt PC terms with the first rule that using the words black and white are to be constantly contested. Is this the way we behave? Forgetting that a little bit of us is in every event and sentence that everyone says?

      What we should do is to think about ourselves first and then society and assist a better way, and encourage people who are trying to get a better society but not by being dogmatic in their beliefs – the Ring to Rule Them All as in Oranga Tamariki and Dept of reducing social welfare for instance.

      Jobs with decent hours, standards and wages and a place to live would be a great help and forget the employment figures used by the Stats to fudge the real situation on the hard ground.

  2. joe90 2

    History, huh.

    Terrible things are happening outside. At any time of night and day, poor helpless people are being dragged out of their homes. They’re allowed to take only a knapsack and a little cash with them, and even then, they’re robbed of these possessions on the way. Families are torn apart; men, women and children are separated. Children come home from school to find that their parents have disappeared.

    Anne Frank.

    https://twitter.com/DanKaszeta/status/1159362885610549248

    Undocumented migrants will have tax and social security deducted ftom their payroll and paid to the Federal government via fictional SSNs

    Nobody will file a return asking for refunds

    Ask Trump how and when the US Treasury is going to refund the money defrauded from workers for social security benefits they can never collect

    The US government trousers the money

    Trump understands this scam. His businesses likely did it.

    https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1159362885610549248.html?

  3. joe90 3

    Miniluv or Minitrue?

    The White House is contemplating issuing an executive order that would widen its attack on the operations of social media companies.

    The White House has prepared an executive order called “Protecting Americans from Online Censorship” that would give the Federal Communications Commission oversight of how Facebook, Twitter and other tech companies monitor and manage their social networks, according to a CNN report.

    Under the order, which has not yet been announced and could be revised, the FCC would be tasked with developing new regulations that would determine when and how social media companies filter posts, videos or articles on their platforms.

    The draft order also calls for the Federal Trade Commission to take those new policies into account when investigating or filing lawsuits against technology companies, according to the CNN report.

    Social media censorship has been a perennial talking point for President Donald Trump and his administration. In May, the White House set up a tip line for people to provide evidence of social media censorship and a systemic bias against conservative media.

    https://techcrunch.com/2019/08/09/reports-say-white-house-has-drafted-an-order-putting-the-fcc-in-charge-of-monitoring-social-media/

    • greywarshark 3.1

      Good people being picked out of society because their nose is wrongly shaped etc etc Their religion or something else is not accepted. They don't look right, they just don't fit, with a stroke of the pen they can be banished. This is Hitler's group early on in the 1930's upping their determination and rhetoric (then aggression), and then the authorities caved in to his rhetoric and made him Chancellor. Similar to Britain today? Coming to Kiwis in Oz tomorrow? The climate for Oz to invade NZ has been created for the acceptance of Oz citizens. Disturbing stories about perceptions of ordinary Oz citizens about Kiwis continue to arise. The pattern is there in front of our eyes.

    • SPC 3.2

      The fascist state

      The state determining who is a good media oligarch and who is not. Check.

  4. Andre 4

    "The cruelty is the point." The conscious deliberate evil is an electoral strategy to keep the deplorables ever more firmly onside.

    https://www.salon.com/2019/08/09/the-truth-about-trumps-ice-raids-botched-mississippi-operation-was-good-optics/

  5. Jenny - How to Get there? 5

    Tick off all the points of similarity:

    Mocking the disabled. Check

    Lying press. Check

    Inciting speeches interrupted by chants, to kill the targets of his speech. Check

    Pulling out of international agreements. Check.

    Suggesting that politicians from other parties were hopelessly corrupt and should be locked up. Check

    …..a police report on one of Hitler’s early speeches, in which he “used vulgar comparisons” and “did not shy away from the cheapest allusions.” Hitler’s language was never measured or careful, but “like something merely expulsed.” Yet, revising earlier opinions, Ullrich shows how carefully Hitler prepared his speeches. Seemingly spontaneous, they were in fact calculated. Full of base allegations and vile stereotypes, they were precisely designed to gain maximum attention from the media and maximum reaction from the crowds he addressed. When he declared that fines were of no use against those he called Jewish criminals, his listeners interrupted him with chants of “Beatings! Hangings!”

    Aided by his talented propaganda chief Joseph Goebbels, Hitler not only flaunted his vulgarity and exploited tribal hatreds; he also lied and lied his way to success. The Jews, he argued, had stabbed the German Army in the back in 1918; the politicians of the other parties, he insisted, were hopelessly venal and corrupt and should be put in jail; the Nazi thugs who were condemned to death in 1932 for the “Potempa murders” were victims of a “monstrous blood-verdict”; liberal newspapers that criticized Hitler were, as Goebbels put it, the “Jewish lying press.”

    Few took Hitler seriously or thought that he would actually put his threats against the country’s tiny Jewish minority, his rants against feminists, left-wing politicians, homosexuals, pacifists, and liberal newspaper editors, into effect. Fewer still believed his vow to quit the League of Nations, the forerunner of the United Nations. But within a few months of taking office, he did all of these things—and much more.

    Once in power, the Nazi regime was run exclusively by men: Only heterosexual white males, the Nazis thought, had the required detachment and lack of emotional connection to the issues at hand to make the right calls. Nazi propaganda mocked disabled people; within a few years, they were being sterilized and then exterminated. Hitler railed against the roving bands of criminals who were destroying law and order and called for the return of the death penalty, effectively abrogated under the Weimar Republic. Within a short space of time, the executions began again, reaching a total of more than 16,000 during his 12 years in power, while Germany’s prison population rocketed from 50,000 in 1930 to more than 100,000 on the eve of the war. Feminist associations were all closed down, the law forbidding homosexual acts between men was drastically sharpened, vagrants were rounded up and imprisoned, illegal Polish immigrants were deported. Germany pulled out of international organizations and tore up treaties with cynical abandon, dismantling or emasculating the structures of international cooperation erected after World War I and freeing the way for rogue states like Italy and Japan to launch their own wars of conquest and aggression. Ullrich tellingly quotes the Nazis’ triumphant declaration of “our departure from the community of nations,” buttressed by Hitler’s assurance that he would “rather die” than sign anything that was not in the interests of the German people…..

    https://www.thenation.com/article/the-ways-to-destroy-democracy/

    The big question for us, is will our country go along with this?

    Will we bend to US pressure to supply cannon fodder to the next aggressive war of choice, as we have done for all past US military adventures?

  6. Stuart Munro. 6

    A lot of Trump's success stems from an opposition unprepared for his demagogic excesses. It's not been an easy thing to oppose historically, and violent resistance embeds the conflict even if, as very rarely happens, it succeeds.

    What's needed is a quiet dedication to the restoration of the rule of law. Documenting as well as protesting Trump's ICE gulags, and especially those responsible and collaborating. Securing commitment from aspiring political representatives to go after the human rights abusers and take class actions against the for-profit imprisonment companies.

    The soft treatment of serial systematic law breakers like Semenoff shows we had the same problems developing here under the feckless administration of the Key Kleptocracy, and there is still much wrongdoing from that era to wind up.

  7. Can I draw readers' attention to the 1935 novel by Sinclair Lewis: It Can't Happen Here.

    In it he mirrors the rise of fascism in Germany with an own-grown fascist in 'the land of the free' United States.

    Would it be too far to suggest that another two or three terms of 'Key' type National Government, with Key's disregard for the truth, with dirty politics the norm, with demonising of various groups in society etc and – oh la la, we would be heading down the same right-wing path.

  8. Dennis Frank 8

    Trump's approval rating has been on a gradual climb trajectory since the low a couple of years back, check out the graph for that & see him marginally ahead of Obama – and how they've been on a par with each other since late 2017.

    http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/trump_administration/prez_track_aug09

    So it's a divided country scenario, as one would expect in a nation conditioned by binary thinking. Zoroaster has a lot to answer for.

    • Andre 8.1

      Rasmussen is widely considered biased to the right in their polling.

      Fivethirtyeight's polling average gives you a lot more stuff to look at, more presidents to compare against, approval, disapproval and net approval charts etc. 538 have Il Douche at 41.4% approval/53.2% disapproval a year after taking office, and neither of those has varied by much more than a percent either way since. Even the shutdown just barely blipped out of that range.

      I interpret that as a few Repugs starting to disapprove of King Con when it looked like he couldn't even deliver on their core priority of tax cuts for the rich. When he finally signed that off in December 2017, they drifted back to him. Since then he's nominated enough reactionary judges that committed Repugs can choke down his offensiveness, and he's been sufficiently offensive to keep the middle finger voters locked on.

  9. NZJester 9

    Just saw this on TYT about the ICE raids in the US.

    Wednesday’s raid by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), which led to nearly 700 workers being detained, targeted seven Koch Foods Inc. poultry plants in Morton, Mississippi. As it happens, last year, Koch Foods settled a $3.75 million lawsuit for racial discrimination, national origin discrimination, and sexual harassment against its Latinx workers in that very same Morton facility. According to the suit brought by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), supervisors, “touched and/or made sexually suggestive comments to female Hispanic employees, hit Hispanic employees, and charged many of them money for normal everyday work activities.” Many workers were reportedly either discharged or subjected to other forms of retaliation when they complained.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c5HePqgw8eQ&t=0s

  10. joe90 10

    Rotten to the core.

    https://twitter.com/howroute/status/1159736425132285952

    The Trump administration has known since at least April that alleged white supremacists were responsible for every single act of race-based domestic terrorism in the U.S. in 2018, yet not only took no action to combat the growing right wing violent extremism, but actually substantially reduced or even eliminated funding and programs that combat white supremacist extremism, violence, and terrorism – and then blocked the data from reaching the hands of Congress.

    “Domestic Terrorism in 2018,” a document (embedded below) prepared by the State of New Jersey’s Office of Homeland Security Preparedness, “shows 25 of the 46 individuals allegedly involved in 32 different domestic terrorism incidents were identified as white supremacists,” Yahoo News’ Jana Winter and Hunter Walker report.

    That document finds there were “32 domestic terrorist attacks, disrupted plots, threats of violence, and weapons stockpiling by individuals with a radical political or social agenda who lack direction or influence from foreign terrorist organizations in 2018.

    https://www.rawstory.com/2019/08/revealed-doj-blocked-report-showing-white-supremacists-responsible-for-all-race-based-domestic-terrorism-incidents-in-2018/

  11. Daveski 11

    Indefensible indeed. But so too is the attempt to brand this as simply "fascist". The coverage of China's oppression of minorities, particularly in regions on the periphery are as bad but simply receive less coverage in NZ.

    • In Vino 11.1

      Not sure what you are getting at.. We thought Germany a highly 'civilised' country, where the Weimar Republic might have endured without the effects of the Great Depression. It is of great concern to us that Germany could have turned so fascist, and we still agonise over the causes. The Anglo-Saxon dominance of the world (British empire + USA) has always prided itself (if hypocritically) on its democratic style of rule.

      I don't China has ever done so: it has a tradition of being ruled by strong Emperors, or weak ones. Most were fairly despotic to our minds. When the empire was strong, countries like Tibet were subjugated provinces. When China was weak, Tibet etc were independent. Not a great deal has changed in that pattern.

      When a country like USA looks to be at risk of becoming fascist, it is of far greater relevance and importance to us, and merits far more publicity.

  12. Ad 12

    Both left and right have been rejecting globalization in the form of the free movement of labour for years, and this is the natural conclusion.

    Australia's borders are stronger now, as they are in Europe, the US, and in the UK, and most of Scandinavia, and Russia. And Japan, and most others in the OECD. And China.

    The borders are up, so globalization of labour retreats to its own and slows, nations strengthen their identities and definitions, and it all helps to slow the entire global economy.

    Hard Brexit is about to occur and seal more borders off.

    Sure it's painful. Our ethics need to adjust to what most of the world is saying over successive elections again and again and again. They say this:

    This is a border: You have no assumed right to enter: Stop.

    • Stuart Munro. 12.1

      The "free movement of labour" is only a good to employers who mean to depress wages and conditions. It is inconsistent with any party that pretends to be Left, though it is a neoliberal wet dream complete with the usual effects of reducing overall wealth and productivity.

      Of course borders are in principle hard – the nation state is the unit of political accountability – large scale changes in the population produce undesirable effects for which voters must necessarily punish the scoundrels who enable them.

      • Ad 12.1.1

        The free movement of labour has been utterly awesome for New Zealanders particularly to Australia We've had it good for a very very long time: sport, law, tourism, construction, mining, housing, etc etc.

        Global borders are hardening in both principle and in the more important fact. The state is reasserting its power against such flows like it hasn't ever done before.

        Stiglitz' Globalisation and its Discontents shows that such limitation is attractive to left and to right parties. In the last year on the left, only Denmark has figured out how to work with this.

        New Zealand and others open their doors to poor countries to drag in cheap international labour at harvest times – but soon even that will decrease.

        Corbyn believes in Brexit and hard borders – far harder than they have been for a century. He shares that with Trump, and with so many other leaders whether left or right.

        UK Labor is just an example. The left will pretty much be eradicated if it doesn't agree to the same anti-immigration theme as Trump. Not as extreme, but same policy continuum.

        • adam 12.1.1.1

          And right there that what authoritarian shit fuckery looks like – well said Ad.

          Right on the money.

          Neo-liberlism and it's supporters have created an environment of fear, distrust, and ultimately hate.

          In doing so, they not only killed the left, they have embed fascism as the saviour of capitalism.

          Good luck surviving this shit fuckery folks.

          I hope your white, male and armed.

        • Stuart Munro. 12.1.1.2

          The free movement of workers to Oz merely saved the neoliberals from the comeuppance that naturally attends wrecking the lives of a third of the population. Far be it from our erstwhile leaders to take the consequences of their brutal incompetence – consequences are clearly for other people.

    • Pat 12.2

      Look past the rhetoric and you will see that although the likes of Trump et al talk a big game on immigration and present a hard man attitude to those being stopped/removed the numbers of migrant labour continues unabated….just as does the free movement of capital.

      Smoke and mirrors

    • Macro 12.3

      And yet in America the very people they are now herding up and shipping out (a large number of them who have been living in the country from childhood – the so called "dreamers") are the very ones they really need right now to work in the low skill jobs processing their food, working in their bars and hotels, caring for their golf courses (Trump infamously employs many) and working on construction sites and buildings.

      In March, there were only 811,000 unemployed workers with bachelor’s degrees looking for work, and 1.4 million open positions for professionals like them. The US needs more high-skilled workers to fill all those positions, sure, but the gap is even bigger in low-wage industries that don’t require a college education.

      There were more than 2.1 million open positions for low-skilled workers in March, but only 1.4 million people without college degrees looking for work. That’s nearly two jobs available for every unemployed person with nothing more than a high school diploma.

      In Mississippi, for example, the most in-demand jobs require little to no training or education. In fact, 16 out of the 20 most needed jobs in 2018 didn’t require more than a high school education. That includes cooks, janitors, and construction workers. Yet there are fewer people than ever looking for work. The unemployment rate in Mississippi, while higher than the national average, is at its lowest point in decades, making it hard for businesses to find workers.

      https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/8/8/20791508/mississippi-ice-immigration-raids

      I think the worst factor in this latest episode – and apparently Trump and his gang are planning more of these raids, is that the people who are being targeted are not recent arrivals. Many of these people have been in the US for years brought in by their parents as toddlers and young children. They have grown up in the US and had all their schooling there and are to all intents and purposes US citizens apart from the fact that they do no hold the requisite piece of paper that says they are. Their children are US citizens by right of birth, They may even have a spouse/partner who is a US citizen. No matter! They are alien and have no right to be there even though they are productive, law abiding, and needed. 🙄 So sick pricks like Trump and co. have no compunction about splitting up a family or leaving children homeless with nowhere to go. They are simply evil. And anyone who supports or "rationalises" such an evil policy is as much to blame and bears as much fault as Trump himself.

      Last night I watched the movie "When Hands Touch" which graphically depicts many times the callousness of Germans in WW2 to their citizens who were different, including the separation of children from their parents. One scene in particular reminded me in particular of the atrocity in Mississippi.

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0t8iVtFGHCc

      • Ad 12.3.1

        The shock value of televised raids doesn't change a thing. Dead bodies floating by the bushel in the Mediterranean, and Italy turns them back.

        The US should copy New Zealand's Seasonal Employment Scheme.

        We already prop up many Pacific states with remittances.

        • Andre 12.3.1.1

          The US already has the H-2A visa category for temporary or seasonal agricultural work.

          https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H-2A_visa

          • Macro 12.3.1.1.1

            Yes that is true Andre – but the allocation of available visas per year (75,000) is no where near enough to cover the work requirements. And nothing available for those in year long employment like food processing.

            From the vox link above:

            The best chance for a poor, low-skilled Central American immigrant to work in the US is through one of two guest worker programs: The H2A program for agricultural workers and the H2B program for seasonal work, which includes jobs at hotels, amusement parks, and landscaping firms.

            But there are only about 75,000 visas available each year for guest workers, and they only cover some high-demand jobs like landscaping and food preparation. There is no guest-worker program for year-round jobs, like those at chicken processing plants in Mississippi, for example.

            One of the driving factors behind the “enormous growth” of undocumented immigrants living in the US in the 1990s and 2000s is the lack of legal avenues for low-skilled immigrants to work in the United States, write Madeleine Sumption and Demetrios Papademetriou at the Migration Policy Institute.

            So one obvious solution to the problem of unauthorized immigration is to create a program that provides work visas to low-skilled immigrants. But no one is seriously discussing this, least of all the 2020 candidates.

  13. Dennis Frank 13

    Here's some relevant historical context. Memorial Day army veterans parade, New York, 30 May 1927. “Around 8am, a group of Italian immigrants living in the Bronx set out for the elevated train on their way to Manhattan to join the parade… Like all his fellow Fascists intending to march that day, Joseph Carisi was wearing the blackshirt uniform, sporting leather boots, jodhpurs, a black cap, and carrying a steel-tipped riding crop. When he stopped to buy a newspaper, Carisi was jumped by two men, stabbed in the neck and left to die on the sidewalk.”

    Another Fascist “was shot four times, once right through the heart. One of the two murdered men had served in the American army during the Great War, the other with the Italian army, papers reported’.

    “The biggest outbreak of violence that Memorial Day, however, occurred in Queens… By 1927, the Ku Klux Klan had spread across the United States since its rebirth in Georgia twelve years earlier… The Klan had an active presence in New York City and Long Island in 1927, with favourite slogans, which they even attempted to copyright at various points. That year the Klan was `call[ing] attention to the fact that it first announced the program of 100% “Americanism” and of “America first”. They were not, in fact, the first to adopt these mottos, as this book will show: both phrases had been around for a decade or more.”

    “But as far as the Klan… was concerned, `America first’ belonged to them, and on Memorial Day in Queens a thousand or so of them had gathered to march… accompanied by 400 women from the so-called `Klavana’ (the feminine branch of the Klan). Some of the reported 20,000 spectators in Queens that day objected to the Klan’s presence, as others defended their right to march; scuffles broke out and it turned into a riot”

    “Within a week, New York had banned any public appearance by either `the white-robed Ku Klux Klan’ or `the black-shirted Fascisti’… The Klan, meanwhile, blamed the police for being Catholic… As far as the Second Klan was concerned, Catholics couldn’t be loyal Americans because their higher allegiance was to the Pope.”

    “In the days after the riot, the New York Times revealed the names of the total of seven men who had been arrested in Queens. Five of them were identified as `avowed Klansmen’… A sixth was a mistake… The seventh, a 20-year old German-American was not identified in the press as a Klansman. The reports only stated that he was arrested, arraigned and discharged. No one knows why he was there, but it appears that he wouldn’t leave. His name was Fred Trump.”

    Like father, like son? Conservatives do replicate, but Trump has to be judged on his track record rather than his ancestry. Watch carefully to see if jodhpurs are becoming a fashion trend amongst millennials, and if you notice them accompanied by a steel-tipped riding crop, ring the alarm bell. [Source: prologue of Behold America – A History of America First and the American Dream, S. Churchwell 2018]

    • JO 13.1

      And we should keep an eye out for phalanxes of goose-stepping cheerleaders brandishing golden pompoms at the 2020 4th July march past.

  14. greywarshark 14

    Trump's childhood years would be strong in forming his behaviour also his parents behaviour towards him. Here are some quotes from a link about this time.

    http://www.lifedaily.com/story/42-little-known-facts-about-donald-trumps-childhood/

    His family home was large and in a good neighbourhood. The family cars both Cadillacs were unusual for the neighbourhood.

    1. When Trump was only five years old, he followed his babysitter into the New York City sewers on a sort of “urban safari” of sorts. Despite his caretaker’s reservations that that child might become scared, little Donny pressed onward into the darkness. Even at that age, the future president was fearless.
    2. Their mother was severely ill after her last child's birth, Donald was fourth out of five. Even with their mother at death’s door, the Trump children were expected to go on with life as usual. Maryanne Trump, Donald’s sister, once spoke of how callous her father was during that time. She was expected to just go to school and if anything changed, her father would call for her.
    3. Trump pulled hair, taunted children on the playground, and disrupted the classroom on more than one occasion. He and his friends threw spitballs, cursed, and caused trouble all around his neighborhood.
    4. Donald was considered surly, determined, and headstrong by several of his teachers. Once, he even gave a music teacher a black eye because he “thought he didn’t know anything about music.” He misbehaved so often that his initials became his friends’ shorthand for detention.
    5. Ann Trees, a teacher at Kew-Forest School during Trump’s tenure, found him utterly unforgettable. The headstrong boy was determined but surly to a fault. He would sit, arms folded, face contorted in a grimace as if he were daring people to disagree with him.
    6. If his current Tweets are any indication, Trump has always seemed to lack a voice of reason in his head when it came to amending what he was about to say. Even as a child, he would say anything that came into his mind, wrong or right, and he’d stick to that position no matter what.
    7. Throughout his childhood and into his adult life, Trump showed the sort of behavior that is considered common for bullies. Young Donald was narcissistic, charismatic, and popular, and he delighted in proving his superiority over those he considered weaker than himself.
    8. Trump would often erupt in fits of anger. He started fights and he pummeled other boys on more than one occasion. Despite a great love for baseball, he smashed more than one baseball bat if he made an out.
    9. At the age of 12, Trump would take the E train into Manhattan with his friends. They did not ask their parents for permission and purchased knives while in the city in an effort to channel gang members from the then Broadway hit, “West Side Story”.
    10. Due to his seemingly endless string of behavior problems, and following the knife incident, Trump’s father enrolled him in the New York Military Academy at the age of 13, where he finished eighth grade and high school.
    11. Despite the positive influence of the military school, Trump still had a temper. He once struck a fellow cadet with a broomstick during a fight and he tried to push another out a second-floor window. Though, thankfully, this attempt was thwarted by two other students.
    12. His own school career didn’t see him losing any steam in the rankings, however. By the time he was a senior, he had become the prestigious captain of A Company. During his tenure, he never had to raise his voice, just flash a look. Trump was not the type of man you wanted to mess with or disappoint.
    13. Eventually, though, a crisis emerged that saw Trump reassigned as a battalion training officer and stripped of the captain’s rank. One of his sergeants shoved a plebe and the school decided that rather than face more hazing controversy, they’d simply make the problem go away.
    14. During the Vietnam War, Trump was in college and therefore obtained four student deferments. In 1968, Trump was briefly classified as fit by a local draft board, but was given a 1-Y medical deferment in October of 1968. Trump’s official position was that this was a medical deferment due to heel spurs, despite being deemed fit for service previously in 1966.
  15. phantom snowflake 15

    Meanwhile in Aotearoa… it seems our very own Incel Horde has shapeshifted again, this time into 'Action Zealandia.'

    https://action-zealandia.com/ideals/faq

    Not for these wee petals the sting of rejection; women are excluded from membership.

    • McFlock 15.1

      So the no-girls-allowed club has day trips to the park and beach? Behold the superman.

      Just as long as they don't have access to firearms.

      • weka 15.1.1

        Or tech to manipulate social media.

        Who is the woman in the graphic? By the look of her face she knows exactly what is going on.

        • McFlock 15.1.1.1

          Queen Mary, being offered the crown about a hundred years before James Cook set sail.

          I'm sure it has some relevance in the minds of insecure little incels who think going to the gym makes them better people.

          • weka 15.1.1.1.1

            what is she so unhappy about? William doesn't look too flash either.

            • McFlock 15.1.1.1.1.1

              PR job.

              James 2 was a bit of a dick, and the combo of Catholic monarch wanting absolutist powers over a largely Protestant English parliament and James suddenly having a male heir (=Catholic dynasty) meant things were looking like another civil war was going to happen. So the nearest pretender was his daughter Mary, who was a Protestant married to William of Orange (Netherlands). William and Mary sailed to England with a massive army, most of James' army deserted, so he skipped to France and William wanted to be king – but that would look like a Dutch invasion and boost James' popularity. So they went through this entire thing of parliament offering William and Mary a co-monarchy and them going "oh if you insist".

              Or the woodcutter who made the print was a bit shit at smiles – that's always a possibility 🙂

              • The Al1en

                He came ashore in Brixham, a fishing village in Torbay, South Devon, a place I lived in for eight years or so. There's a statue, of course, and a landing stone said to be the place of his first footstep on English soil.

                Every Friday and Saturday night it's covered in the puke of cheap lager and fish and chip suppers. How history really remembers. lol

                • McFlock

                  Heh.

                  The precursor to Shelley's Ozymandias

                  • The Al1en

                    “My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”

                    Makes our place in time seem even less irrelevant than it already is.

                    I met a traveller from an antique land
                    Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
                    Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
                    Half sunk, a shatter’d visage lies, whose frown
                    And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
                    Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
                    Which yet survive, stamp’d on these lifeless things,
                    The hand that mock’d them and the heart that fed.
                    And on the pedestal these words appear:
                    “My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
                    Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”
                    Nothing beside remains: round the decay
                    Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
                    The lone and level sands stretch far away.

              • greywarshark

                Like the explanation McFlock When I look closely at it there seems to be a lot of eyeing up others, except for William who is feeling 'uncomfortable'. Mary and the carrier of the crown on the left might be doing reconnaissance.

            • Anne 15.1.1.1.1.2

              To put it bluntly weka, William of Orange was a boring old fart with a brain the size of a pea. I doubt Mary was much better.

              Oh well, he would have been easy to keep under control I suppose.

              Edit: you may be wishing you’d never asked. 😉

    • lprent 15.2

      I’d admit that they do read like they are huddling together for self-protection. But it reads far more like a group of simple traditionalists from a background that still has sexual segregation than the more angry and bitter incel material that I’ve looked at.

      Who knows, and really, who cares if they don’t interfere or coerce in the lives of others. There is room in our society for people with many different silly beliefs.

      • weka 15.2.1

        Hard to tell from the photos, but they look like young to young-ish guys to me. Lots of daft ideas there, but some red flags too (reading the Newsroom article below). Excluding women isn't that surprising, but women, non-whites and disabled people is pretty blatant (haven't seen what NR mean by disabled). If they're on places like 4chan recruiting, someone should be keeping an eye on them.

        • phantom snowflake 15.2.1.1

          The sheer novelty of the idea that the extreme right might possibly be …umm dangerous! should keep these guys in the sights of our security services for a few more months perhaps, before normal service resumes and it’s back to focusing on Maori and environmental and animal rights activists.

          • weka 15.2.1.1.1

            One hopes the security services have caught up by now :-/

            • lprent 15.2.1.1.1.1

              It is unlikely. As far as I can tell the sigint is looking at american targets. The SIS is doing much the same along with their traditional observations of left organisations. The police used to collect some human intel of the right nutbars – but kind of stopped in the last decades because issue protesters were easier.

        • McFlock 15.2.1.2

          not to mention the phrase "sexual deviancy" thrown in there.

          But they can't do a website properly – the faq in the link upthread doesn't seem to be accessible within the actual site menues lol

          Basic out of the box CMS with no real tweaks.

          • weka 15.2.1.2.1

            I missed the sexual deviancy bit but tbh I'm not scanning not reading.

            The FAQ works for me from the menu bar.

            • McFlock 15.2.1.2.1.1

              In their "ideals" section: "Any individuals that partake in self-destructive behaviours such as drug use and sexual deviancy will never be allowed to partake in the movement."

              Partake that however you want to partake it 🙂

              Figured out the web thing – their responsive menu isn't quite suited to my screen resolution, so unless I zoom my bropwser out I get the dropdown style rather than lines on the top. FAQ isn't in the dropdown as far as I can see.

        • lprent 15.2.1.3

          I tend to keep the occasional eye on many of the local sites, simply because I hate being blindsided during moderation.

          To me this feels like yet another small group or person with weird ideas. Sort of wannabe exclusive brethren – which is what the ideas read like. Or someone recently watched fight club.

          If the site appears to be actually active in a few months, I may get interested enough to dig around.

    • Drowsy M. Kram 15.3

      Hmm, a values-based ‘community’ organisation that requires members to have a "body in a decent shape", and doesn't admit women. Hope it doesn't go pear-shaped!

      • greywarshark 15.3.1

        Mission – Building a Community for European New Zealanders.

        Why can’t women join?

        Action Zealandia is a fraternity and membership isn’t open to women. Women can partake in some social events if their boyfriend or husband is a member, however they can’t be members on their own accord.

        We are open to potential networking and support in the future if the need arises. Contact us and we’ll let you know if there’s any way we can help or if anything comes up that you may be interested in.

    • weka 15.5

      Not to worry, Paddy Gower is on to them.

      /sarc

    • marty mars 15.6

      nice the losers are into the celtic NZ bullshit – shows how thick they are – very

    • Carolyn_Nth 15.7

      There also seems to be an element of eco-fascism.

      <a href="https://action-zealandia.com/ideals ">See the sustainability section at the bottom of their Ideals page

      <a href="https://action-zealandia.com/actions/july-2019-action-summary ">And their July actions summary

      <a href="https://theintercept.com/2019/08/05/el-paso-shooting-eco-fascism-migration/ ">Rise of eco-fascism in this Intercept article

      Don’t know why the link codes aren’t working.

      [Made minor adjustments to make links readable and work– Incognito]

      • Andre 15.7.1

        re: link codes – the new comment editor doesn't seem to like people doing it themselves first time around. But the linking tool (the one that looks like chain links or a messed-up infinity) works fine. But if you want to put in an link like that in an edit, you'll need to do it the old-skool way like you've just done.

        Also, if you want to link to a comment on The Standard, use the linking tool or at least put the copy'n'pasted url on the end of a sentence. If you just put the url as a standalone paragraph, it strips off the #commentnumber and just goes to the OP.

  16. A country as big as the USA , China or Russia or India is always going to have regions of entrenched prejudice. Long forgotten wars, economic rivalry's , fear of another's believes etc… in fact country's as small as NZ as well.

    As an aside, remember the film, 'The Eagles have Landed?'… it was about German crack troops landing in rural England during WW2,… amongst the mayhem and the gunfire,… an old chap slurps on his beer and says… 'bloody foreigners'… we all laughed in the cinema because it was recognized old school 'Empire ' thinking… classic 'English snobbery '.

    As for Trump ,… I don't think he's the worst U.S Pres in history ,… there were many who were openly racist before him ,- and actively encouraged it. Yes, some incidents , not directly caused by him but by popular policy's which he and his party endorse ,…may offend our modern sensitivity's,… but we dont live in the USA and really,…not many are aware of historic presidents by which to measure him against.

    A case in point is the 'Manifold Destiny' ideal that so many Presidents of former era's used to sway the masses into accepting genocide of the Native Americans and to do so to steal their lands.

    Now to some, Trump is a fascist ,… but often that is with the benefit of hindsight of historic cases during the 1930's and 1940's… it was a term that was given at that time and after…but extrapolating on that… was William the Conqueror a fascist? Was Charlemagne? Was King Henry VIII ?… you see where this is going… its all in context of the era of those leaders. And all of those leaders had blood on their hands.

    We like to think times have changed and we have advanced. The truth is we haven't. We are still the same species subject to the same depravities as our ancestors. But you say ''but we have the United Nations and other bodies born of horrific tradgedy's and put in place to prevent that ever happening again'' …

    Not so.

    Yet they have done some good,… but that was mainly through using the old Geneva Convention and 'humane' ways of conducting war and the banning of horrific weapons, especially when western powers were involved. It doesn't look good or inspire the populace to fight for the cause when they see thousands come back in body bags or with horrific injuries,… at least ,… politically….

    But primarily ,… their job was to maintain global order and trade. But you say ,- ''what about the U. N Human Bill of Rights Charters?''

    Well ,… just think of Bosnia , Angola, Congo , Tibet , Argentina , Peru , Columbia Paraguay … dozens and dozens of places where the U.N was less than impotent,… they were an impediment. And only concerned with western interests first, and human rights second.

    Now NZ.

    Yes we have had our genocides ,.. and the indigenous peoples of these lands are still suffering the effects of that. It was labelled 'Colonialism'. But was not England the prime mover and shaker to beat the Spanish, the Dutch and the Americans to claim these lands?

    And do we call that Fascism? , or Colonialism ?, … simply because it did not have one centrist leader advocating the theft and thus genocides of the peoples there before them?

    In that it was a collective of vested interest groups and political bodies who had the same mindset and endorsed the same policy's?, – that being the use of bogus alibi's to foment a war for theft of land , – and genocide merely being the by- product of that process ? Do not all fascists broadly do such as that regards expansionism?

    Franco , Mussolini, Hitler,.. and from the Left?, – Stalin. And Pol Pot.

    Donald J Trump pales into insignificance compared to the ' Big Four'. Or possibly Five. Or Six.

    ( Do we count Pol Pot or Mao Zedong because they were not westerners or not ? )

    Are we, in NZ,… really on the formal early road to Fascism ?

    Is Jacinda Adern a dupe for the U.N or Americanization ( how do we reconcile that with the powerful NRA opposing the very thing Australia and NZ have done regards limiting military style firearms to the civilian populace? ) or 'western interests'?

    I do not think we have done nearly enough to put right the wrongs of colonialism as a country. But that is a complex issue regarding the tribal versus the individuals rights… and be not mistaken… the Maoris were avid capitalist's when they had their lands. Make no mistake of that. They were also conquerors , Te Ruaparaha comes to mind.

    Was he a ' Fascist'?

    Personally ?… I do think we need to limit immigration.

    A quota system from each country, A background check of sound characters. Do they contribute skills needed for this country ? Vetting, in other words. Yet with mitigating circumstances for immediate family members. For humanity's sake. Family's should always be together if possible and so desired . Refugees are another thing entirely. Let them in. They've gone through hell. Give them a nurturing environment for their offspring. The least we can do. And yet vetted for any violent ideology's.

    Is this Fascism?

    To ensure our own nationals are safe?

    Does this go against the liberal left thinking in using recent immigrants as political footballs?

    I think ,… that the reclamation of class is the great leveler.

    I think ,… that reclamation of workers ( and that includes the thousands of people in offices, – not just the 'cloth cap' labourers ) rights is where a country reaches its most proudest moments. Whereby the rights, freedoms and prosperity of a society is judged by those on the lowest rungs of the socio-economic ladder. In other words, – their standard of living.

    Disregarding the coercion and Fascism of Nazi Germany in dictating where someone should work and and what type of occupation one should be forced into ( usually in manual semi skilled jobs for a future war effort ) ,…

    Are the Scandinavians to be accused of being Fascists? Dictatorial ?

    Hardly.

    And yet to date, they have … the most advanced welfare state on earth , the highest per capita annual incomes, the highest taxation's,… and yet the highest quality of life / standards of living globally. And that being also the case among those who are regarded as being the ' semi skilled, the labourers'….

    So my question is WHY … are we staring at our navels and looking at Trump ( who is a shadow of former Presidents we woild now deem as 'Fascists' ) or even pontificating around with age old colonialism and its failed 19th century Empiric results… and WHY have we not moved on from being succoured to an out of date 19th century frame of reference????

    And WHO are the people, – that body of vested interest groups who want to keep it this way?

    Perhaps that is the question we should be asking rather than looking at Fascists under every 'George .W. Bush'….

    I'll leave you with this to consider genocide.

    Traditional Lakota/Dakota Sundance Songs 3/6 – YouTube
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=car9pBXHXKQ

    • Oh , and I'm a white Anglo Saxon type yet of Scots / Norse decent.

      I live in a shitty , moldy two bedroomed sleep out and I fill two buckets every time it rains right next to my bed. Half the wiring doesn't work and its a death trap, and I've spent around $1000 to fix a shower that was blocked at no expense to the landlord. The toilet leaks and builds up mold. The curtains have black mold on them and haven't been changed for years. There is no insulation. There is no room to store my personal effects and thus it feels like a tip.

      Before that , I owned a half million dollar property in Karapiro , I had done up two property's and sold them for a bomb. Along came the 2007/2008 financial crash caused by suited fuckwits overseas… I lost the property ( Australian banks sold them without my real estate agent or my knowledge from under us ) , my business , my dogs , and lost contact with my remaining son( the first having died from medical 'misadventure ' – FFS = negligence)…

      Continuing on the theme of dispossession and this country's following in the wake of big Brother America… my heart has softened , as always I was prone to being,.. as a bush baby , less influenced by material shit and more interested in what matters… therefore I bring you this…

      NOW,… see the direct parallels we see in our OWN society.

      Stop the lies.

      Its there.

      Yes this may be for political purposes, it may be 'contrived' , … but for many its reality. In that country and many poorer country's. The model repeats itself. And no amount of Bill Gates ' humanitarianism’ is ever gonna change it.

      WHY?

      Because 'they ' don't want it changed.

      Your job therefore is to find out the 'WHO' and then you'll understand the 'WHY'.

      Inside life on the Lakota Sioux reservation l Hidden America – YouTube

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJapHc7B8Xs

      • WILD KATIPO 16.1.1

        If you want to view the vid… click on the youtube link provided in the vid itself.

        Worth the drama of a simple click to thank your lucky stars and be thankful for the good things you have as others don’t…

      • roblogic 16.1.2

        I hear your pain and my own circumstances aren't so great either, plenty of us Pakeha NZers missed out on the National party lolly scramble of the last 10 years, especially the younger ones. But NZ still has a very comfortable middle class and most of the people missing out on the economic gains have been the non voting poorer (brown) segment of society, (who also happen to make up the bulk of the NZ military)… I just don't see any viable alt-right or fascist movement gaining traction in NZ anything like Trumpism in the US

        • WILD KATIPO 16.1.2.1

          No son.

          I was around when you were in nappies, and if its entertainment desired by the cowards I'll give it. When you were in nappies, or a sperm in your fathers ballbag, I was in the workforce. That was 35 years ago at the time of Roger Douglas in 1984 and his Mont Pelerin inspired neo Nazi takeover of the NZ economy.

          It was my generation , – not yours , – that bore the brunt of that fascist economic takeover of this country. Not yours.

          You are but a newboy , a wet behind the ears post neo liberal commentator of things you know jack shit about. And the same with your interpretation of old history. A stooge. One who has no knowledge of his own history and thus falls victim to the re-writers of history itself.

          I forgive you.

          But don't you even TRY to comment on things you have less than shits knowledge of. I'll help you out, boy,… and that's an extension I don't offer lightly… now then … if you can bother yourself to read this site,… and even better,… try to understand it… I might just give you some credence.

          So here it is.

          Read it well and understand it even better.

          Because ignorant cusses like you bore me completely stupid, lad.

          New Right Fight – Who are the New Right?
          http://www.newrightfight.co.nz/pageA.html

          It also deserves a Celtic song… it’ll cheer you up.

          The Rumjacks – A Fistful O’ Roses (Official Music Video) – YouTube
          https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ZlLk-PxAbI

          • roblogic 16.1.2.1.1

            Thanks, "post neo liberal", I like that. I note that you didn't actually respond to my comment. Must be past your bedtime

            • WILD KATIPO 16.1.2.1.1.1

              You are in your twenties, thirty's at most.

              Commenting on the origins of Fascism.

              OK , then.

              And as for your bothering to 'comment on your comment' as it were,… if you had come up with something of legitimate substance, perhaps there would have been an obligation.

              But you haven't.

              All we have seen is the same old avante guard/ conservative ( juxtaposition ) viewpoint of 'orthodox' viewpoints that serve current political dogmas. And that's just the problem. It is intended to smother truth that threatens the status quo, – which is my original claim… and protestation.

              And why this country cannot move ahead.

              • roblogic

                I don't understand your ire and insults when I merely expressed skepticism at your earlier, somewhat incoherent, thesis that NZ is ripe for Fascist takeover. I agree that malignant corporate forces want to parcel up NZ for themselves, but that's different from Nazi ideology taking root and a broad section of the community suddenly going nuts like the American alt-right

                • weka

                  The issue for me is that fascism in NZ wouldn't look like the US and we'd let it happen in part because of that. I hope we are still culturally strong enough to not let white supremacy and alt right bullshit grow here, but I am more concerned about National and the Dirty Politics crew and their now blatant position of using divisive tactics and Trumpian politics to regain power.

                  If you read the essay in the post, she is talking about how the Republicans would do anything to regain power after losing to Obama. We shouldn't be complacent here.

    • roblogic 16.2

      Trump is an economic and political nationalist; panders to the darkest fears and tribal instincts of his cult like following; tweets a constant stream of racism, paranoia, and vindictiveness against the press; glories in military power and oaths of fealty; routinely demonises the most vulnerable and exploited people in America; justifies ICE brutality and concentration camps…

      but nahh, he's not a fascist, he's just trying to make America white again

      /sarc

      • WILD KATIPO 16.2.1

        Sounds like Churchill then , eh mate?

        Much to learn we have me young Bonhommie…

        So whats your point, exactly ?

        • roblogic 16.2.1.1

          In one of your earlier drunken rambles you seemed to claim that Trump wasn't a fascist. Now you equate Trump with Churchill!!! Bonkers stuff.

          • WILD KATIPO 16.2.1.1.1

            Getting aggrieved are we now?

            You think I'm impressed?

            Not at all. And if insulting you to shake you out of your lazy political naiveness is whats needed, I'm more than happy to oblige. You see, there isn't much difference between Trump or Churchill, in fact ,… many world leaders you may hero worship at your age.

            What you have to do is discern the motives,…. never mind the soaring speeches, never mind the emotion laden narratives,…Trump as a fascist???… do you even know what fascism really is?

            Were you there when the great generation stormed the beaches of Normandy to defeat it?

            Did you suffer with having your legs blown off in the act of storming those beaches?

            I doubt it.

            Were you there when Pol Pot created the Killing Fields and filled those mass graves with tens of thousands of his own countrymen and women.

            I doubt that also.

            Were you there in 1945 at Yalta when Churchill, Stalin and Roosevelt demanded Germany's surrender?

            Of course not.

            You were not even born.

            Do you really know a thing about Fascism and what it really means in real terms in real peoples lives?

            Of course you dont. You read it from the safety of your history lecturers notes.

            And you don't even know what it was like to challenge neo liberalism in this very own country of yours.

            Don't even talk to me if you cannot even have the empathy of understanding. You want to talk as an authority. Yet you were , as I have said, nothing more than a sperm in your fathers ballsack when all this was going on.

            You really can teach us nothing.

            • roblogic 16.2.1.1.1.1

              Is that supposed to convince me that Trump is a great leader on par with Churchill? I don’t get it. You’ve written a nice list of historical events irrelevant to the OP

            • roblogic 16.2.1.1.1.2

              PS: patronizing verbosity and (inaccurate) age-related insults do nothing to bolster your argument. In fact, I can't really discern a coherent argument, merely a paranoid stream of consciousness. Too much electric puha can do that to a fella.

  17. Y'know sometimes I don't think you woke types give a damn about indigenous issues, or workers condition's and wages… why is that?

    Is it because you are the purest of political beasts and only pay attention when it serves your purposes and then discard it when its 'old hat ' ? Passed its use- by date?

    Do we really want to build a society based on such fickle political followers such as these?

    Or do you find yourselves , like Che Guevara said ,… 'fit into the useful urban communist stooges ' ,.. to be used by those who do the heavy lifting…? while you pontificate about the ideals of your Brutopia, and with your Marxist ideals cower in your urbane residences,,,,, and do nothing?…

  18. C'mon Weka, I support you in many areas, but there comes a time, when certain censorship must desist. It opens it up to honesty and appraisal, without which , it is simply an echo chamber of the willing… like the coalition of the willing,.. like Fascism.

    I would appreciate your support in this and other areas in a token of goodwill and fair discussion. At the very least , as a true forum in the Greek tradition. As a true forum of many ideas , many aspects,… not as one of dictatorialism.

    • And to do this , we must take the good with the bad,… to acknowledge the crimes we have all committed, collectively,… not necessarily individually…down through history. I am on your side…generally.

      The issues are complex , – as is Fascism.

      There are many different scholars who have weighed in with their opinions to what exactly constitutes Fascism. And as they try to define it in simple terms … ALL of them have struggled with a definitive definition of it. In my view?… it is simply a strong man , who after wielding popular mass opinion, goes on towards expansionism,… and genocide.

      That separates it from the 'Empiric' cult.

      But still holds the same potential ominous similarity's.

      The only differences being, … that the 'Empire' has many vested interests,… whereby the Fascist or the Totalitarian is headed by one individual.

      Julie Covington – Don't Cry For Me Argentina – YouTube

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=adUPdnzCAk8

      Beautiful song.

      • WILD KATIPO 18.1.1

        I think the fundamental difference between the Totalitarianism as opposed to an 'Empire' is that it is headed by one individual. Through fear,.. and that gained by devious means in securing the armed forces,… the death squads,… however,.. that rules true with 'Empire' as well … the Praetorian Guards as an example …

        Perhaps the difference is,… that with disposing of the 'strong man'… you divide and water down its influence… such as the Mongolian Empire… such was Hitlers…eventually ,… and even such was Rome when it was weakened…

        Yet not so the 'Empire' by definition. It tended to have a longer lifespan.

        Look at Rome.

        Hundreds of years of dictatorial rule. Held in place by a 'succession' of rulers. That was the difference. Totalitarian it was. Yet not governed by the lifespan of one leader,… but by the vested interests of a multitude of leaders who wished for them and their family's to continue on into perpetuity…

        Personally?.. I do not think Donald J Trump approaches anywhere near these sorts of precedents.

        Nor either Jacinda Adern.

        I think ,… we suffer more from a lack of historical knowledge and context,… on just what totalitarianism and 'Fascism' really means / constitutes in the 21st century.

  19. So ,… how does this fit in with a rainy Auckland night?

    From someone who supports those out in South Auckland land protecting in the freezing winter?

    ROFL!

    Lets mellow somewhat…

    Cody Jinks – Alone – YouTube

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MRRXHzuiiLI

  20. reason 20

    An interesting and educational video …. it gives good info on the modern euphemisms used by fascists …. and it debunks the right wing false equivalence regarding antifa, some of which I've seen used here at TS ,,,,,14mins

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sx4BVGPkdzk

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  • Don’t run your business like a criminal enterprise
    The Detail this morning highlights the police's asset forfeiture case against convicted business criminal Ron Salter, who stands to have his business confiscated for systemic violations of health and safety law. Business are crying foul - but not for the reason you'd think. Instead of opposing the post-conviction punishment and ...
    No Right TurnBy Idiot/Savant
    4 hours ago
  • Misremembering Justinian’s Taxes.
    Tax Lawyer Barbara Edmonds vs Emperor Justinian I - Nolo Contendere: False historical explanations of pivotal events are very far from being inconsequential.WHEN BARBARA EDMONDS made reference to the Roman Empire, my ears pricked up. It is, lamentably, very rare to hear a politician admit to any kind of familiarity ...
    5 hours ago
  • Bryce Edwards: Scoring 4.6 out of 10, the new Government is struggling in the polls
    It’s been a tumultuous time in politics in recent months, as the new National-led Government has driven through its “First 100 Day programme”. During this period there’s been a handful of opinion polls, which overall just show a minimal amount of flux in public support for the various parties in ...
    Democracy ProjectBy bryce.edwards
    5 hours ago
  • Bishop scores headlines with crackdown on unwelcome tenants – but Peters scores, too, as tub-thump...
    Buzz from the Beehive Housing Minister Chris Bishop delivered news – packed with the ingredients to enflame political passions – worthy of supplanting Winston Peters in headline writers’ priorities. He popped up at the post-Cabinet press conference to promise a crackdown on unruly and antisocial state housing tenants. His ...
    Point of OrderBy Bob Edlin
    6 hours ago
  • Will it make the boat go faster?
    Ele Ludemann writes – The Reserve Bank is advertising for a Diversity, Equity and Inclusion advisor. The Bank has one mandate – to keep inflation between one and three percent. It has failed in that and is only slowly getting inflation back down to the upper limit. Will it ...
    Point of OrderBy poonzteam5443
    9 hours ago
  • Bryce Edwards: Is Simon Bridges’ NZTA appointment a conflict of interest?
    Last week former National Party leader Simon Bridges was appointed by the Government as the new chair of the New Zealand Transport Agency Waka Kotahi (NZTA). You can read about the appointment in Thomas Coughlan’s article, Simon Bridges to become chair of NZ Transport Agency Waka Kotahi The fact that a ...
    Democracy ProjectBy bryce.edwards
    10 hours ago
  • Is Simon Bridges’ NZTA appointment a conflict of interest?
    Bryce Edwards writes – Last week former National Party leader Simon Bridges was appointed by the Government as the new chair of the New Zealand Transport Agency Waka Kotahi (NZTA). You can read about the appointment in Thomas Coughlan’s article, Simon Bridges to become chair of NZ Transport Agency ...
    Point of OrderBy poonzteam5443
    10 hours ago
  • Bernard's Top 10 @ 10 'pick 'n' mix' at 10:10am on Tuesday, March 19
    TL;DR: My top 10 news and analysis links this morning include:Today’s must-read: Gavin Jacobson talks to Thomas Piketty 10 years on from Capital in the 21st Century The SalvoLocal scoop: Green MP’s business being investigated over migrant exploitation claims Stuff Steve KilgallonLocal deep-dive: The commercial contractors making money from School ...
    The KakaBy Bernard Hickey
    10 hours ago
  • Bernard's six newsy things on Tuesday, March 19
    It’s a home - but Kāinga Ora tenants accused of “abusing the privilege” may lose it. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: The Government announced a crackdown on Kāinga Ora tenants who were unruly and/or behind on their rent, with Housing Minister Chris Bishop saying a place in a state ...
    The KakaBy Bernard Hickey
    11 hours ago
  • New Life for Light Rail
    This is a guest post by Connor Sharp of Surface Light Rail  Light rail in Auckland: A way forward sooner than you think With the coup de grâce of Auckland Light Rail (ALR) earlier this year, and the shift of the government’s priorities to roads, roads, and more roads, it ...
    Greater AucklandBy Guest Post
    12 hours ago
  • Why Are Bosses Nearly All Buffoons?
    Note: As a paid-up Webworm member, I’ve recorded this Webworm as a mini-podcast for you as well. Some of you said you liked this option - so I aim to provide it when I get a chance to record! Read more ...
    David FarrierBy David Farrier
    14 hours ago
  • Bernard’s six-stack of substacks at 6.06 pm on March 18
    TL;DR: In my ‘six-stack’ of substacks at 6.06pm on Monday, March 18:IKEA is accused of planting big forests in New Zealand to green-wash; REDD-MonitorA City for People takes a well-deserved victory lap over Wellington’s pro-YIMBY District Plan votes; A City for PeopleSteven Anastasiou takes a close look at the sticky ...
    The KakaBy Bernard Hickey
    1 day ago
  • Peters holds his ground on co-governance, but Willis wriggles on those tax cuts and SNA suspension l...
    Buzz from the Beehive Here’s hoping for a lively post-cabinet press conference when the PM and – perhaps – some of his ministers tell us what was discussed at their meeting today. Until then, Point of Order has precious little Beehive news to report after its latest monitoring of the ...
    Point of OrderBy Bob Edlin
    1 day ago
  • Labour’s final report card
    David Farrar writes –  We now have almost all 2023 data in, which has allowed me to update my annual table of how  went against its promises. This is basically their final report card. The promise The result Build 100,000 affordable homes over 10 ...
    Point of OrderBy poonzteam5443
    1 day ago
  • “Drunk Uncle at a Wedding”
    I’m a bit worried that I’ve started a previous newsletter with the words “just when you think they couldn’t get any worse…” Seems lately that I could begin pretty much every issue with that opening. Such is the nature of our coalition government that they seem to be outdoing each ...
    Nick’s KōreroBy Nick Rockel
    1 day ago
  • Wang Yi’s perfectly-timed, Aukus-themed visit to New Zealand
    Geoffrey Miller writes – Timing is everything. And from China’s perspective, this week’s visit by its foreign minister to New Zealand could be coming at just the right moment. The visit by Wang Yi to Wellington will be his first since 2017. Anniversaries are important to Beijing. ...
    Point of OrderBy poonzteam5443
    1 day ago
  • Gordon Campbell on Dune 2, and images of Islam
    Depictions of Islam in Western popular culture have rarely been positive, even before 9/11. Five years on from the mosque shootings, this is one of the cultural headwinds that the Muslim community has to battle against. Whatever messages of tolerance and inclusion are offered in daylight, much of our culture ...
    1 day ago
  • New Rail Operations Centre Promises Better Train Services
    Last week Transport Minster Simeon Brown and Mayor Wayne Brown opened the new Auckland Rail Operations Centre. The new train control centre will see teams from KiwiRail, Auckland Transport and Auckland One Rail working more closely together to improve train services across the city. The Auckland Rail Operations Centre in ...
    2 days ago
  • Bernard's six newsy things at 6.36am on Monday, March 18
    Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: Retiring former Labour Finance Minister Grant Robertson said in an exit interview with Q+A yesterday the Government can and should sustain more debt to invest in infrastructure for future generations. Elsewhere in the news in Aotearoa-NZ’s political economy at 6:36am: Read more ...
    The KakaBy Bernard Hickey
    2 days ago
  • Geoffrey Miller: Wang Yi’s perfectly-timed, Aukus-themed visit to New Zealand
    Timing is everything. And from China’s perspective, this week’s visit by its foreign minister to New Zealand could be coming at just the right moment. The visit by Wang Yi to Wellington will be his first since 2017. Anniversaries are important to Beijing. It is more than just a happy ...
    Democracy ProjectBy Geoffrey Miller
    2 days ago
  • The Kaka’s diary for the week to March 25 and beyond
    TL;DR: The key events to watch in Aotearoa-NZ’s political economy in the week to March 18 include:China’s Foreign Minister visiting Wellington today;A post-cabinet news conference this afternoon; the resumption of Parliament on Tuesday for two weeks before Easter;retiring former Labour Finance Minister Grant Robertson gives his valedictory speech in Parliament; ...
    The KakaBy Bernard Hickey
    2 days ago
  • Bitter and angry; Winston First
    New Zealand First Leader Winston Peters’s state-of-the-nation speech on Sunday was really a state-of-Winston-First speech. He barely mentioned any of the Government’s key policies and could not even wholly endorse its signature income tax cuts. Instead, he rehearsed all of his complaints about the Ardern Government, including an extraordinary claim ...
    PolitikBy Richard Harman
    2 days ago
  • 2024 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #11
    A listing of 35 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, March 10, 2024 thru Sat, March 16, 2024. Story of the week This week we'll give you a little glimpse into how we collect links to share and ...
    2 days ago
  • 2024 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #11
    A listing of 35 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, March 10, 2024 thru Sat, March 16, 2024. Story of the week This week we'll give you a little glimpse into how we collect links to share and ...
    2 days ago
  • Out of Touch.
    “I’ve been internalising a really complicated situation in my head.”When they kept telling us we should wait until we get to know him, were they taking the piss? Was it a case of, if you think this is bad, wait till you get to know the real Christopher, after the ...
    Nick’s KōreroBy Nick Rockel
    2 days ago
  • Bring out your Dad
    Happy fourth anniversary, Pandemic That Upended Bloody Everything. I have been observing it by enjoying my second bout of COVID. It’s 5.30 on Sunday morning and only now are lights turning back on for me.Allow me to copy and paste what I told reader Sara yesterday:Depleted, fogged and crappy. Resting, ...
    More Than A FeildingBy David Slack
    3 days ago
  • Bring out your Dad
    Happy fourth anniversary, Pandemic That Upended Bloody Everything. I have been observing it by enjoying my second bout of COVID. It’s 5.30 on Sunday morning and only now are lights turning back on for me.Allow me to copy and paste what I told reader Sara yesterday:Depleted, fogged and crappy. Resting, ...
    More Than A FeildingBy David Slack
    3 days ago
  • Bring out your Dad
    Happy fourth anniversary, Pandemic That Upended Bloody Everything. I have been observing it by enjoying my second bout of COVID. It’s 5.30 on Sunday morning and only now are lights turning back on for me.Allow me to copy and paste what I told reader Sara yesterday:Depleted, fogged and crappy. Resting, ...
    More Than A FeildingBy David Slack
    3 days ago
  • The bewildering world of Chris Luxon – Guns for all, not no lunch for kids
    .“$10 and a target that bleeds” - Bleeding Targets for Under $10!.Thanks for reading Frankly Speaking ! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.This government appears hell-bent on either scrapping life-saving legislation or reintroducing things that - frustrated critics insist - will be dangerous and likely ...
    Frankly SpeakingBy Frank Macskasy
    3 days ago
  • Expert Opinion: Ageing Boomers, Laurie & Les, Talk Politics.
    It hardly strikes me as fair to criticise a government for doing exactly what it said it was going to do. For actually keeping its promises.”THUNDER WAS PLAYING TAG with lightning flashes amongst the distant peaks. Its rolling cadences interrupted by the here-I-come-here-I-go Doppler effect of the occasional passing car. ...
    3 days ago
  • Manufacturing The Truth.
    Subversive & Disruptive Technologies: Just as happened with that other great regulator of the masses, the Medieval Church, the advent of a new and hard-to-control technology – the Internet –  is weakening the ties that bind. Then, and now, those who enjoy a monopoly on the dissemination of lies, cannot and will ...
    3 days ago
  • A Powerful Sensation of Déjà Vu.
    Been Here Before: To find the precedents for what this Coalition Government is proposing, it is necessary to return to the “glory days” of Muldoonism.THE COALITION GOVERNMENT has celebrated its first 100 days in office by checking-off the last of its listed commitments. It remains, however, an angry government. It ...
    3 days ago
  • Can you guess where world attention is focussed (according to Greenpeace)? It’s focussed on an EPA...
    Bob Edlin writes –  And what is the world watching today…? The email newsletter from Associated Press which landed in our mailbox early this morning advised: In the news today: The father of a school shooter has been found guilty of involuntary manslaughter; prosecutors in Trump’s hush-money case ...
    Point of OrderBy Bob Edlin
    3 days ago
  • Further integrity problems for the Greens in suspending MP Darleen Tana
    Bryce Edwards writes – Is another Green MP on their way out? And are the Greens severely tarnished by another integrity scandal? For the second time in three months, the Green Party has secretly suspended an MP over integrity issues. Mystery is surrounding the party’s decision to ...
    Point of OrderBy poonzteam5443
    3 days ago
  • Jacqui Van Der Kaay: Greens’ transparency missing in action
    For the last few years, the Green Party has been the party that has managed to avoid the plague of multiple scandals that have beleaguered other political parties. It appears that their luck has run out with a second scandal which, unfortunately for them, coincided with Golraz Ghahraman, the focus ...
    Democracy ProjectBy bryce.edwards
    3 days ago
  • Bernard’s Dawn Chorus with six newsey things at 6:46am for Saturday, March 16
    TL;DR: The six newsey things that stood out to me as of 6:46am on Saturday, March 16.Andy Foster has accidentally allowed a Labour/Green amendment to cut road user chargers for plug-in hybrid vehicles, which the Government might accept; NZ Herald Thomas Coughlan Simeon Brown has rejected a plea from Westport ...
    The KakaBy Bernard Hickey
    4 days ago
  • How Did FTX Crash?
    What seemed a booming success a couple of years ago has collapsed into fraud convictions.I looked at the crash of FTX (short for ‘Futures Exchange’) in November 2022 to see whether it would impact on the financial system as a whole. Fortunately there was barely a ripple, probably because it ...
    PunditBy Brian Easton
    4 days ago
  • Elections in Russia and Ukraine
    Anybody following the situation in Ukraine and Russia would probably have been amused by a recent Tweet on X NATO seems to be putting in an awful lot of effort to influence what is, at least according to them, a sham election in an autocracy.When do the Ukrainians go to ...
    4 days ago
  • Bernard’s six stack of substacks at 6pm on March 15
    TL;DR: Shaun Baker on Wynyard Quarter's transformation. Magdalene Taylor on the problem with smart phones. How private equity are now all over reinsurance. Dylan Cleaver on rugby and CTE. Emily Atkin on ‘Big Meat’ looking like ‘Big Oil’.Bernard’s six-stack of substacks at 6pm on March 15Photo by Jeppe Hove Jensen ...
    The KakaBy Bernard Hickey
    4 days ago
  • Buzz from the Beehive Finance Minister Nicola Willis had plenty to say when addressing the Auckland Business Chamber on the economic growth that (she tells us) is flagging more than we thought. But the government intends to put new life into it:  We want our country to be a ...
    Point of OrderBy Bob Edlin
    4 days ago
  • National’s clean car tax advances
    The Transport and Infrastructure Committee has reported back on the Road User Charges (Light Electric RUC Vehicles) Amendment Bill, basicly rubberstamping it. While there was widespread support among submitters for the principle that EV and PHEV drivers should pay their fair share for the roads, they also overwhelmingly disagreed with ...
    No Right TurnBy Idiot/Savant
    4 days ago
  • Government funding bailouts
    Peter Dunne writes – This week’s government bailout – the fifth in the last eighteen months – of the financially troubled Ruapehu Alpine Lifts company would have pleased many in the central North Island ski industry. The government’s stated rationale for the $7 million funding was that it ...
    Point of OrderBy poonzteam5443
    4 days ago
  • Two offenders, different treatments.
    See if you can spot the difference. An Iranian born female MP from a progressive party is accused of serial shoplifting. Her name is leaked to the media, which goes into a pack frenzy even before the Police launch an … Continue reading ...
    KiwipoliticoBy Pablo
    4 days ago
  • Treaty references omitted
    Ele Ludemann writes  – The government is omitting general Treaty references from legislation : The growth of Treaty of Waitangi clauses in legislation caused so much worry that a special oversight group was set up by the last Government in a bid to get greater coherence in the public service on Treaty ...
    Point of OrderBy poonzteam5443
    4 days ago
  • The Ghahraman Conflict
    What was that judge thinking? Peter Williams writes –  That Golriz Ghahraman and District Court Judge Maria Pecotic were once lawyer colleagues is incontrovertible. There is published evidence that they took at least one case to the Court of Appeal together. There was a report on ...
    Point of OrderBy poonzteam5443
    4 days ago
  • Bernard's Top 10 @ 10 'pick 'n' mix' for March 15
    TL;DR: My top 10 news and analysis links this morning include:Today’s must-read: Climate Scorpion – the sting is in the tail. Introducing planetary solvency. A paper via the University of Exeter’s Institute and Faculty of Actuaries.Local scoop: Kāinga Ora starts pulling out of its Auckland projects and selling land RNZ ...
    The KakaBy Bernard Hickey
    4 days ago
  • The day Wellington up-zoned its future
    Wellington’s massively upzoned District Plan adds the opportunity for tens of thousands of new homes not just in the central city (such as these Webb St new builds) but also close to the CBD and public transport links. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: Wellington gave itself the chance of ...
    The KakaBy Bernard Hickey
    4 days ago
  • Weekly Roundup 15-March-2024
    It’s Friday and we’re halfway through March Madness. Here’s some of the things that caught our attention this week. This Week in Greater Auckland On Monday Matt asked how we can get better event trains and an option for grade separating Morningside Dr. On Tuesday Matt looked into ...
    Greater AucklandBy Greater Auckland
    5 days ago
  • That Word.
    Something you might not know about me is that I’m quite a stubborn person. No, really. I don’t much care for criticism I think’s unfair or that I disagree with. Few of us do I suppose.Back when I was a drinker I’d sometimes respond defensively, even angrily. There are things ...
    Nick’s KōreroBy Nick Rockel
    5 days ago
  • The Hoon around the week to March 15
    Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: The five things that mattered in Aotearoa’s political economy that we wrote and spoke about via The Kākā and elsewhere for paying subscribers in the last week included:PM Christopher Luxon said the reversal of interest deductibility for landlords was done to help renters, who ...
    The KakaBy Bernard Hickey
    5 days ago
  • Labour’s policy gap
    It was not so much the Labour Party but really the Chris Hipkins party yesterday at Labour’s caucus retreat in Martinborough. The former Prime Minister was more or less consistent on wealth tax, which he was at best equivocal about, and social insurance, which he was not willing to revisit. ...
    PolitikBy Richard Harman
    5 days ago
  • Skeptical Science New Research for Week #11 2024
    Open access notables A Glimpse into the Future: The 2023 Ocean Temperature and Sea Ice Extremes in the Context of Longer-Term Climate Change, Kuhlbrodt et al., Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society: In the year 2023, we have seen extraordinary extrema in high sea surface temperature (SST) in the North Atlantic and in ...
    5 days ago
  • Melissa remains mute on media matters but has something to say (at a sporting event) about economic ...
     Buzz from the Beehive   The text reproduced above appears on a page which records all the media statements and speeches posted on the government’s official website by Melissa Lee as Minister of Media and Communications and/or by Jenny Marcroft, her Parliamentary Under-secretary.  It can be quickly analysed ...
    Point of OrderBy Bob Edlin
    5 days ago
  • The return of Muldoon
    For forty years, Robert Muldoon has been a dirty word in our politics. His style of government was so repulsive and authoritarian that the backlash to it helped set and entrench our constitutional norms. His pig-headedness over forcing through Think Big eventually gave us the RMA, with its participation and ...
    No Right TurnBy Idiot/Savant
    5 days ago
  • Will the rental tax cut improve life for renters or landlords?
    Bryce Edwards writes –  Is the new government reducing tax on rental properties to benefit landlords or to cut the cost of rents? That’s the big question this week, after Associate Finance Minister David Seymour announced on Sunday that the Government would be reversing the Labour Government’s removal ...
    Point of OrderBy poonzteam5443
    5 days ago
  • Geoffrey Miller: What Saudi Arabia’s rapid changes mean for New Zealand
    Saudi Arabia is rarely far from the international spotlight. The war in Gaza has brought new scrutiny to Saudi plans to normalise relations with Israel, while the fifth anniversary of the controversial killing of Jamal Khashoggi was marked shortly before the war began on October 7. And as the home ...
    Democracy ProjectBy Geoffrey Miller
    5 days ago
  • Racism’s double standards
    Questions need to be asked on both sides of the world Peter Williams writes –   The NRL Judiciary hands down an eight week suspension to Sydney Roosters forward Spencer Leniu , an Auckland-born Samoan, after he calls Ezra Mam, Sydney-orn but of Aboriginal and Torres Strait ...
    Point of OrderBy poonzteam5443
    5 days ago
  • It’s not a tax break
    Ele Ludemann writes – Contrary to what many headlines and news stories are saying, residential landlords are not getting a tax break. The government is simply restoring to them the tax deductibility of interest they had until the previous government removed it. There is no logical reason ...
    Point of OrderBy poonzteam5443
    5 days ago
  • The Plastic Pig Collective and Chris' Imaginary Friends.
    I can't remember when it was goodMoments of happiness in bloomMaybe I just misunderstoodAll of the love we left behindWatching our flashbacks intertwineMemories I will never findIn spite of whatever you becomeForget that reckless thing turned onI think our lives have just begunI think our lives have just begunDoes anyone ...
    Nick’s KōreroBy Nick Rockel
    5 days ago
  • Who is responsible for young offenders?
    Michael Bassett writes – At first reading, a front-page story in the New Zealand Herald on 13 March was bizarre. A group of severely intellectually limited teenagers, with little understanding of the law, have been pleading to the Justice Select Committee not to pass a bill dealing with ram ...
    Point of OrderBy poonzteam5443
    5 days ago
  • Gordon Campbell on National’s fantasy trip to La La Landlord Land
    How much political capital is Christopher Luxon willing to burn through in order to deliver his $2.9 billion gift to landlords? Evidently, Luxon is: (a) unable to cost the policy accurately. As Anna Burns-Francis pointed out to him on Breakfast TV, the original ”rock solid” $2.1 billion cost he was ...
    5 days ago
  • Bernard's Top 10 @ 10 'pick 'n' mix' for March 14
    TL;DR: My top 10 news and analysis links this morning include:Today’s must-read: Jonathon Porritt calling bullshit in his own blog post on mainstream climate science as ‘The New Denialism’.Local scoop: The Wellington City Council’s list of proposed changes to the IHP recommendations to be debated later today was leaked this ...
    The KakaBy Bernard Hickey
    5 days ago
  • No, Prime Minister, rents don’t rise or fall with landlords’ costs
    TL;DR: Prime Minister Christopher Luxon said yesterday tenants should be grateful for the reinstatement of interest deductibility because landlords would pass on their lower tax costs in the form of lower rents. That would be true if landlords were regulated monopolies such as Transpower or Auckland Airport1, but they’re not, ...
    The KakaBy Bernard Hickey
    5 days ago
  • Cartoons: ‘At least I didn’t make things awkward’
    This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections by Tom Toro Tom Toro is a cartoonist and author. He has published over 200 cartoons in The New Yorker since 2010. His cartoons appear in Playboy, the Paris Review, the New York Times, American Bystander, and elsewhere. Related: What 10 EV lovers ...
    5 days ago
  • Solving traffic congestion with Richard Prebble
    The business section of the NZ Herald is full of opinion. Among the more opinionated of all is the ex-Minister of Transport, ex-Minister of Railways, ex MP for Auckland Central (1975-93, Labour), Wellington Central (1996-99, ACT, then list-2005), ex-leader of the ACT Party, uncle to actor Antonia, the veritable granddaddy ...
    Greater AucklandBy Patrick Reynolds
    6 days ago
  • I Think I'm Done Flying Boeing
    Hi,Just quickly — I’m blown away by the stories you’ve shared with me over the last week since I put out the ‘Gary’ podcast, where I told you about the time my friend’s flatmate killed the neighbour.And you keep telling me stories — in the comments section, and in my ...
    David FarrierBy David Farrier
    6 days ago
  • Invoking Aristotle: Of Rings of Power, Stones, and Ships
    The first season of Rings of Power was not awful. It was thoroughly underwhelming, yes, and left a lingering sense of disappointment, but it was more expensive mediocrity than catastrophe. I wrote at length about the series as it came out (see the Review section of the blog, and go ...
    6 days ago
  • Van Velden brings free-market approach to changing labour laws – but her colleagues stick to distr...
    Buzz from the Beehive Workplace Relations and Safety Minister Brooke van Velden told Auckland Business Chamber members they were the first audience to hear her priorities as a minister in a government committed to cutting red tape and regulations. She brandished her liberalising credentials, saying Flexible labour markets are the ...
    Point of OrderBy Bob Edlin
    6 days ago
  • Why Newshub failed
    Chris Trotter writes – TO UNDERSTAND WHY NEWSHUB FAILED, it is necessary to understand how TVNZ changed. Up until 1989, the state broadcaster had been funded by a broadcasting licence fee, collected from every citizen in possession of a television set, supplemented by a relatively modest (compared ...
    Point of OrderBy poonzteam5443
    6 days ago
  • Māori Party on the warpath against landlords and seabed miners – let’s see if mystical creature...
    Bob Edlin writes  –  The Māori Party has been busy issuing a mix of warnings and threats as its expresses its opposition to interest deductibility for landlords and the plans of seabed miners. It remains to be seen whether they  follow the example of indigenous litigants in Australia, ...
    Point of OrderBy Bob Edlin
    6 days ago

  • Government moves to quickly ratify the NZ-EU FTA
    "The Government is moving quickly to realise an additional $46 million in tariff savings in the EU market this season for Kiwi exporters,” Minister for Trade and Agriculture, Todd McClay says. Parliament is set, this week, to complete the final legislative processes required to bring the New Zealand – European ...
    BeehiveBy beehive.govt.nz
    3 hours ago
  • Positive progress for social worker workforce
    New Zealand’s social workers are qualified, experienced, and more representative of the communities they serve, Social Development and Employment Minister Louise Upston says. “I want to acknowledge and applaud New Zealand’s social workers for the hard work they do, providing invaluable support for our most vulnerable. “To coincide with World ...
    BeehiveBy beehive.govt.nz
    8 hours ago
  • Minister confirms reduced RUC rate for PHEVs
    Cabinet has agreed to a reduced road user charge (RUC) rate for plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs), Transport Minister Simeon Brown says. Owners of PHEVs will be eligible for a reduced rate of $38 per 1,000km once all light electric vehicles (EVs) move into the RUC system from 1 April.  ...
    BeehiveBy beehive.govt.nz
    10 hours ago
  • Trade access to overseas markets creates jobs
    Minister of Agriculture and Trade, Todd McClay, says that today’s opening of Riverland Foods manufacturing plant in Christchurch is a great example of how trade access to overseas markets creates jobs in New Zealand.  Speaking at the official opening of this state-of-the-art pet food factory the Minister noted that exports ...
    BeehiveBy beehive.govt.nz
    10 hours ago
  • NZ and Chinese Foreign Ministers hold official talks
    Minister of Foreign Affairs Winston Peters met with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi in Wellington today. “It was a pleasure to host Foreign Minister Wang Yi during his first official visit to New Zealand since 2017. Our discussions were wide-ranging and enabled engagement on many facets of New Zealand’s relationship with China, including trade, ...
    BeehiveBy beehive.govt.nz
    24 hours ago
  • Kāinga Ora instructed to end Sustaining Tenancies
    Kāinga Ora – Homes & Communities has been instructed to end the Sustaining Tenancies Framework and take stronger measures against persistent antisocial behaviour by tenants, says Housing Minister Chris Bishop. “Earlier today Finance Minister Nicola Willis and I sent an interim Letter of Expectations to the Board of Kāinga Ora. ...
    BeehiveBy beehive.govt.nz
    1 day ago
  • Speech to Auckland Business Chamber: Growth is the answer
    Tēna koutou katoa. Greetings everyone. Thank you to the Auckland Chamber of Commerce and the Honourable Simon Bridges for hosting this address today. I acknowledge the business leaders in this room, the leaders and governors, the employers, the entrepreneurs, the investors, and the wealth creators. The coalition Government shares your ...
    BeehiveBy beehive.govt.nz
    3 days ago
  • Singapore rounds out regional trip
    Minister Winston Peters completed the final leg of his visit to South and South East Asia in Singapore today, where he focused on enhancing one of New Zealand’s indispensable strategic partnerships.      “Singapore is our most important defence partner in South East Asia, our fourth-largest trading partner and a ...
    BeehiveBy beehive.govt.nz
    4 days ago
  • Minister van Velden represents New Zealand at International Democracy Summit
    Minister of Internal Affairs and Workplace Relations and Safety, Hon. Brooke van Velden, will travel to the Republic of Korea to represent New Zealand at the Third Summit for Democracy on 18 March. The summit, hosted by the Republic of Korea, was first convened by the United States in 2021, ...
    BeehiveBy beehive.govt.nz
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  • Insurance Council of NZ Speech, 7 March 2024, Auckland
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