Open mike 01/11/2023
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- Treasury warns deeper recession worsening Budget deficit
The gift that keeps giving: David Seymour has now opened a split in the coalition over the future of National’s promise to build a new medical school. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / TheKakaKia ora. Long stories short, here’s my top things to note in Aotearoa’s political economy around housing, climate and ...2 hours ago - Weekly Roundup 22-November-2024
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Record Numbers: The Hīkoi mō te Tiriti, which began at the tip of the North, and the tail of the South, on 11 November, culminated outside Parliament on Tuesday, 19 November 2024, in one of the largest demonstrations in New Zealand’s political history.ACCORDING TO TE ARA, the Ministry of Culture ...3 hours ago - The Rush To Blame “The Activists”
Activists are such easy scapegoats. The right and center have been conditioned for decades to roll their eyes at all protests. The left are easily aggravated over students leading movements they see as belonging to grownups, who have more important concerns like the economy and whether the trains come on ...4 hours ago - Cutting Through An Inundation of Dipshit Racists
Hi,Watching New Zealand from afar offers a strange perspective. It can be a good thing — distance from Aotearoa helped keep me sane while I reported on abuse at New Zealand’s biggest megachurch over the course of a year. It helps fuel my silly podcast. But it can also be ...4 hours ago - This is bad news
The speech yesterday by Treasury’s Chief Economic Advisor warning that the books are in worse shape than forecasted looks like it’s part of a softening-up process for either more cuts or a longer wait to get back into surplus. The speech was a highly unusual public preview of Treasury’s Half-Yearly ...6 hours ago - Skeptical Science New Research for Week #47 2024
Open access notables Projected increase in the frequency of extremely active Atlantic hurricane seasons, Lopez et al., Science Advances: Future changes to the year-to-year swings between active and inactive North Atlantic tropical cyclone (TC) seasons have received little attention, yet may have great societal implications in areas prone to hurricane ...15 hours ago - Chicken Kiev
Chatting in the supermarket this morning, I found I needed to lunge for the chicken drumsticks.Coping mechanisms: who hasn’t felt a greater need for them lately?When it all gets too much, I turn to demonstrating handy butchery hacks.It wasn’t that she’d said anything wrong, our friend, not at all. We ...18 hours ago - The year is 2024 and it’s 1984
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Back in 2022, RNZ took an in-depth look at the "Independent" Police Conduct Authority and its handling of killings by police. These are the most serious test of oversight, and you would expect the police's use of lethal force to receive the most severe scrutiny. But despite the police regularly ...23 hours ago - Thursday 21 November 2024
The Hīkoi mō Te Tiriti arrived at Parliament on Tuesday – the size is being debated but estimates range from 42,000 to 100,000. The Prime Minister is defending not attending due to some of the organisers being affiliated with Te Pāti Māori. The national gang patch ban came into force ...23 hours ago - ‘These budget cuts are counter-productive and make no sense’
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Nicola Willis’ budget cuts are under fire from economists for having no clear rationale and worsening the recession. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāKia ora. Long stories short, here’s my top things to note in Aotearoa’s political economy around housing, climate and poverty on Thursday, November 21: The news at ...1 day ago
- The end of policing by consent
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- 27% of kids going hungry, up from 21% in a year
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- Young Maori take over
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The government's Treaty Principles Bill is up for its first reading today - bought forward in a rush in a desperate effort to avoid the hikoi which is currently marching on Wellington. But the Prime Minister won’t be there for it – he’s literally running away to Peru! But he ...1 week ago
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...1 week ago
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Kua hinga te manawa kairākau o Te Rua Tekau Ma Waru Tiwhatiwha te po! Kakarauru i te po! Ka rapuhia kei hea koe kua riro! Haere e te Ika a Whiro ki o tini hoa kua ngaro atu ki te Pō ...2 weeks ago
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- Release: Labour, Greens and Te Pāti Māori call on the Prime Minister to block the Treaty Principle...
The opposition parties stand united for an Aotearoa that honours Te Tiriti, rather than seeking to rewrite it. Labour, the Greens and Te Pāti Māori are working together against the Government’s divisive Treaty Principles Bill. ...2 weeks ago
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As far as I'm aware, Labour & the Greens still haven't adopted women's rights policies. Winston is showing them how to do it:
Seems like sensible centrism, huh? Why is it so hard for leftists to stand up for women??
Only because you have not bothered to go to their sites and find out.
The Building Act one is OK, but does not specify “what woman or girl means” so its careless and lazy.
The amendment to the Sport and Recreation New Zealand Act has even worse wording … what does it even mean?
Well I did assume that they would have publicised such a timely stand in the media since it has been a hot issue the past couple of years!
Re meanings, I suspect politicians would rather follow a public consensus – and that would only emerge from sufficient public debate…
"Hot issue", bullshit. Aren't you always going on about "identity politics" & how that is "damaging to the left"? Jeez you're a shit stirrer sometimes. Well I bit I guess & I try to comment as less as I need to coz lifes too short than to be trying to get some lefties knickers in a twist about some faux outrage.
Well I did disclose here (and reiterated once or twice) that discrimination against an elderly woman caused me to abandon my membership of the Greens a couple of years back. I don't agree that the minority rights of those pretending to be women ought to prevail over those of actual women.
If you call that shit stirring you're evading the principle of minority rights, huh? I just want the issue dealt with suitably, so I pointed out that NZF (surprisingly) seemed to have the same intent. Why Labour & the Greens have failed to engage the issue, I'll leave to you for now…
How easy it is to demean people "I don't agree that the minority rights of those pretending to be women ought to prevail over those of actual women." when you look from a narrow, binary lens. Do you really think a Trans Person is simply "pretending to be a woman", you smug POS.
No wonder this site is becoming less and less inclusive.
No need to jump to the wrong conclusion: I pointed out onsite here a couple of years back when the issue first got hot that a user-defined public toilet ought to be configured in with the trad binary. The NZF policy seems headed in that direction, right?
Fraud is considered distasteful by most people, even illegal. The rights of women threatened by this instance of it must be protected by our law. The rights of trans folk likewise. Separately!
While I sympathise with your reaction, I do not consider your insult of DF as inclusive behaviour.
The Mods have been trying their hardest to find a balance between stimulating robust quality debate and keeping the site as inclusive as possible. However, all commenters need to play their part in this, starting with self-moderating their language in and of their comments.
Please be conscious of the effect your own comments may have here on TS.
I apologize to you and this site, meanwhile anyone struggling with their minority status will still be able to read that they are a pretence and a fraud according to DF.
Not the person, the behaviour. Many of us heterosexual folk have trans folk as friends or family, so we can sympathise with their difficulties.
The issue is public policy, which ought not to condone deceit. Trans folk must consider how threatened women feel in such closed-in situations. Being narcissistic instead is unhelpful…
I genuinely appreciate your reply, which shows you took my comment in the way it was intended (IMO, the apology wasn’t necessary, as you hadn’t offended me nor ‘the site’ that exists somewhere inside Lprent’s electronic hardware and, as such, has no feelings or emotions).
FWIW, I struggle with DF’s commenting behaviour, and I will deal with that when I have the time.
I thought Dennis Frank's comment describing transgender people as, "those pretending to be women", was highly aggressive and exclusive.
Followed by that old classic, 'some of my best friends are trans'.
Keeping the site as inclusive as possible is a good policy but transgender people reading Dennis Frank's comments would be alarmed.
A forum is made up of member comment and moderation. Sometimes not in equal parts.
https://thestandard.org.nz/labours-womens-manifesto/
https://www.greens.org.nz/womens_policy
I couldn't find any reference to the hot issue in either of those – just looks like leftist evasion fakery as usual. One expects relevant statements of principle.
So you are claiming gender identity is the only women's rights issue. A ridiculous position to hold, one suspects/should know the Women's Rights Party has a broader policy position than that.
https://thestandard.org.nz/the-womens-rights-party/
Isn't it obvious to you that NZF adopted that policy due to the hot issue??
And the WRP formed due to the left parties neglecting them! Getting real about this is the point I was making…
Most of the Women's Rights Party policies are the policies of the Green Party and the Labour Party.
Just because NZF adopted part of one policy of the Women's Rights Party does not make discussion about it, one about "Women's Rights".
I bet Weka & the others who have written into here on that issue the past year or two do see it as a women's rights issue. I'm puzzled that you can't.
You were the one claiming this.
Your meaning was obscure, it now seems you are arguing that "gender identity" is the only important women's rights issue.
As for the debate you talk about occurring here, I do not recall any participation in it from yourself.
No, the issue compounds discrimination and minority rights, and I still haven't seen evidence that either Labour or the Greens have yet grasped this, so it was worthwhile to report the evidence that NZF has!
Re the posts of Weka & others commenting on the issue, I do recall contributing early on & saying that women will have to form their own lobby group to represent their collective rights (a la Women's Lib in the old days). After that I left it to the women onsite here to sort out.
NZF being involved is sport of funny, they swing from being mainstream centre (super, anti large scale immigration, anti affirmative policies for Maori, anti indigenous rights status – UNDRIP for Maori) to adopting causes (Talley's/racing industry/anti vaccine mandate and a few others of recent social media times).
"Women's identity" is one of the few that can come under both categories.
I figure there must be another Tracey Martin in their mix. I agree their policy mix is all over the park. That policy seems to me like it could only have been pushed thro by women.
Top capitalist anti-Trump takes a stand:
High time other influential Americans spoke out about the future of their country – recent years they've all seemed gormless.
Meh. Cooperman hates Trump more than Biden because he knows that of the two, Trump's chaotic, criminal, vulgar, proto-fascism is the bigger threat to continuing the neoliberal project that has so enriched him (Cooperman). That's because Trump probably can't win and takes the Republican Party off the table. Thus creating a better opening for Biden's timid efforts at ameliorating the worst cruelties of the project that has allowed Cooperman to wallow in wealth. If you are fooled into thinking Cooperman's pathology is 'centrism', there's no hope.
He is quoted as saying he's looking for centrists! Centrism would only be a pathology if leftism were more credible, I suspect, however subjectivity rules that dimension.
Given that the left parties betrayed the people by choosing to become neoliberal instead of socialist, I'm not surprised if he feels his wealth-creating enterprise benefits from both left & right govts…
If you mean he's just being cynical, that's not the impression I got. Folks who take a moral stand when it seems solitary have guts.
There are no centrists in the US political system. Unless you are using the term "centrist" in an entirely relativistic manner, rather than in an historical or analytical one.
There is of course a type of centrism that is better understood as ‘negotiation’ – mediating between different viewpoints. It’s a useful tool at times, but it’s not politics.
relativistic
Maybe. More to the point is the 40% of American voters who don't identify with either major party – so I use centrist to mean non-aligned – regardless how the rich dude meant it.
Great piece by David Williams highlighting the malevolent influence of the Tax Payers Onion in NZ politics.
https://www.newsroom.co.nz/chiding-in-plain-sight
Thanks for that Scotty-interesting indeed.
Williams and Farrar are devious bastards. I'm sure the massive donations they received before the election (mostly from big donors and not from small donors as Williams claims-that is a lie) and the campaigns they paid for (3 Waters, Co-governance, anti-wealth tax etc) made a difference in the election result.
Yes Scotty. A devious rotten bunch who repeats stuff with the help of the Media and in a insidious way persuades people that all is lost. eg
I see that David Williams has posted the above report on the TPU as
Part1 with Part 2 to come.
It's an upgrade of the Whaleoil/Kiwblog being assisted by certain beltway people to run lines/create stories for the MSM.
That said it appears the idea of running a right wing pac "Taxpayer Union" (Citizens and Ratepayers) was a Young Nats dream (adapting a Tory UK idea) years before that.
But the purpose was/is the same, create a campaign/message to the public for the MSM to notice. Obviously connecting it to a Free Speech Union (public comment on race, sexuality, religion and the threat of men consorting in women's areas).
Then there was the focus on the Kiwi Iwi reprise via celebrity golfer Peter Williams touring the provinces on the Three Waters and co-governance TU dime.
Chris Bishop is a prat – or should I say brat – of the highest order. And he's No 3 in seniority on their parliamentary list. What kind of effing idiots must the rest of them be?
The thought of someone like this moron having any legislative jurisdiction over the population fills me with horror:
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/501414/chris-bishop-spoken-to-by-christopher-luxon-on-strongly-worded-email-comparing-hamas-attack-to-holocaust
Seems to me to be a good analysis on the current political situation in Israel:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/oct/31/netanyahus-political-future-looks-shakier-in-midst-of-israel-hamas-war
Netanyahu needs to be ousted – and fast.
He was gone for a while, he was supplanted as PM by Barak, Sharon and Olmert but came back after the end of the peace process (2000) and its replacement the disengagement policy (this expired after Abbas allowed Hamas to contest the last ever PA election and this leading to the division of Gaza and WB).
So BN returned, as the most well known opponent of the peace process, to run an occupation regime. Which is now in its most right wing form. BN uses Hamas to justify continuing occupation of WB and they use him to justify their river to the sea campaign.
It is surprising Gantz joined the unity government without requiring the National Security Minister to be replaced first. And a commitment for new elections after the war vs Hamas is over.
Thanks for the reminder.
It was always going to end in horrific bloodshed. God only knows what is gong to happen now. One thing is certain: electing ultra right-wing populist politicians is not only a danger to the countries concerned, but they are a danger to world peace in general. I guess that doesn't even need to be said.
And are you also calling for elections in Gaza – after all, there haven't been any since 2005.