Some of the reasons the US military consistently and strongly advises the US government to get serious about climate change. And gets ignored, just like any other experts giving advice to those that don’t want to hear it.
One of the most destructive industries/businesses in the history of our species, whose essence is to destroy ‘things’ using land, sea and air … offers advice of climate change…
And you’ve posted the link, in support of that position…
Some of your comments are in the right direction, but this is not one of them…and you have missed the point completely….
The perverse use of an article in which one of the most polluting industry’s in human history, directly and indirectly responsible for greater environmental damage and destruction than any other…is ‘concerned’ about impacts climate change…
You’d think the military should be concerned about the contribution they make to ‘climate change’…Andre couldn’t make that association in his desperation to poke sticks at Trump….
The perverse use of an article in which one of the most polluting industry’s in human history, directly and indirectly responsible for greater environmental damage and destruction than any other
[citation needed]
The military is one of those ‘necessary evils’ that we need. That said the US uses theirs to maintain control over the rest of the world rather than as simple defence. This makes their reasons for preventing Climate Change immoral as it’s just to help them maintain their global control but at least they’re saying that Climate Change is a major issues and are working to prevent it.
Whether or not you’ll find comparative data is another matter entirely. Considering the impact of fossil fuels upon foreign policy (and its wars) I don’t think it’s a a particularly bold statement.
I think you are right One Too. It strikes me as another example of American Exceptualism. Even they can’t understand they are the biggest polluters , all they care about is Pax Americana, which means perpetual war.
Why would you trust or believe any military even around cc. They are big polluters, liars, uncaring, blissfully ignorant, living in denial even when the noises they make sound plausible – really, the military are EXACTLY like the rest of us.
There are other good reasons to at least be aware of their perspective, especially in regards to threat analysis. After all, getting that wrong can mean significant personal cost.
Read the linked article marty. While I’m sure no-one here regards the US military as their favourite cuddle bunny, it isn’t reason to so lightly dismiss their strategic thinking.
WW2 as been described by some as the First Great Petroleum War … so many crucial tactical moments pivoted on access to fuel. If Rommel had won that last crucial battle at Ruweisat Ridge and made it to Cairo, closed the Mediterranean, and captured the Saudi oil fields it’s hard to overstate the impact. Or if the American’s were not able to pump so much oil domestically. Or how the Japanese lost the Pacific because their navy never had enough bunker oil. Any student of the military understands this.
Unnecessarily high and growing operational fuel demand increases mission risk
Critical missions at fixed installations are at unacceptable risk from extended power loss
So, too much liquid fuel needed in the field and too much reliance on unsteady power grids at the bases
In other documents the US military has clearly signalled cc as a global destabilisation threat.
So while it’s true they’re very much burdened into a legacy of gross over-dependence on oil, they’re not so stupid (as the rest of us are) to continue to deny how this potentially compromises their mission.
Im saying their thinking is based upon THEIR issues, agenda, objectives etc. So yes if fuel runs out, or a big storm occurs they won’t get to kill as many of the enemy as they want.
Amazing to me the ability of some to accept and bow down to authority just cos they are authorities. Humans are definately pack animals.
Oh and why do we need more evidence the shit has hit the fan. The military has bought all this up so they can maintain mission ability – the mission is what again?
Yes that sums it up. As I said these guys aren’t cuddly bunnies.
But the interesting thing here is that when you look at outfits like big insurers and the military whose operations are grounded in very hard reality … all the politicized climate denying bullshit melts away very quickly.
As an ex-military officer I concur with the sentiments expressed above. We have an on-going military situation in Syria which many have indicated is a result of the drought of 2006 onwards. The drought http://www.huffingtonpost.com/peter-h-gleick/water-and-conflict-in-syr_b_5404774.html (the worst in recorded history) lead to a severe shortage of grain in the region, with a resultant spike in food prices. The failure of the Assard Govt to respond to this crisis ended in the resultant civil conflict. Syria could be said to be one of the first Climate Wars. So to is the continual war in South Sudan. Both these areas are highly succeptable to climate change in a rapidly warming world.
That is one reason for military to be concerned wrt to AGW.
Another – from a Naval perspective – is Sea Level Rise. Naval ports and harbours (as are all ports world wide), are going to be serverly affected by SLR by the end of this century with the resulting loss of extensive infrastructure and damage caused by storm surges.
Yes Andre, you are right most western military forces are now factoring climate change in our strategic and tactical planning. I discussed this with Weka sometime ago in one of Weka posts.
Of course I have bias, you silly person. Everyone does. That being so, I’m not particularly “angry” about it.
This “Globalist” (with a capital ‘G’) media you speak of, do they have anything to do with the UN, and its plan to take away your guns? Or is it George Soros? I get so confused. Where do HAARP fit in?
Basically, the answer is that the industry has increased tourism numbers, brought in more bizniz, but the downside is a threat to, and disregard of the consequences for the environment.
In short maximise short term dollars and bring in mostly minimum wages workers to satisfy the tourist demand, while polluting and degrading the environment for local communities and future generations…. and that’s not even touching the other issues of bottling water and selling land that was formerly used as parks, reserves and environmental areas, to put up more houses, more people, more cars, more pollution and higher prices, higher rates to pay for the infrastructure as the ponzi scheme continues….
I’m for tourism, but tourism designed around preserving the environment and creating satisfying local jobs for local people, sharing the experience of pure nature with tourists… not the other way around…
You can see the attraction that tourism holds for National. It’s cheap, easy to understand and the major costs can be put upon the taxpayers all of which makes it a nice earner for the owners who won’t have to do anything such as researching and developing new products.
Unfortunately, they didn’t really think about what the added numbers meant in terms of infrastructure and so didn’t plan it at all. We’re now seeing what happens when you follow National’s lack of planning and foresight.
The short-termism is also apparent in the implicit CC denial in the push to expand tourism. If/When tourists have to pay the real cost of their CO2 emissions – would they travel all this way and back?
CC is likely to create a pincer movement that will greatly damage mass tourism – on one hand the need to reduce CO2 emissions will make discretionary travel very expensive, and on the other, CC itself will wreck some of the scenic landscapes people are coming to see.
A third factor may be that larger, more frequent and more violent storms will produce enough accidents to make people feel that conventional passenger aircraft are not safe enough.
all good points. The problem in NZ that Natz in particular have caused is that much of our economy is based around short term and changing industries…. a quick look in the future would have foreseen having an economy around cows, tourism and construction is not lasting….. diversification was badly needed a decade ago.
Also tourism is changing about being a unique experience, just as the Natz are trying to commercialise it for short term profit (and not even profit much of the time) and going in the opposite direction.
If Natz were not so bad, you could laugh at them. Their obsession with oil exploration in the time of peak oil and sustainable energy, giving away water rights when water is predicted to be one of the most precious resources, have a low wage economy when countries like Norway do the opposite and invest in their countries future, importing young people apparently for our aging population crisis, but then allowing the aged parents to come too and get full welfare within a few years, investing in motorways when you have little public transport….
Which raises the question of just how large storm radii, or how clustered, they can get in a +2degree climate.
And of course the risk isn’t really the chances of a divert, it’s the chances of a pilot or controller incorrectly deciding the line of “too tough to land or take off”. Which causes a lot of air accidents.
Tautoko, Tautoko Manga Mata 🙂
That’s an excellent article you’ve recommended, thanks. I found this paragraph:
“As these lies become transparent we are thrown into what Gramsci calls an interregnum—a time when the reigning ideology has lost efficacy but has yet to be replaced by a new one. “The crisis consists,” Gramsci wrote, “precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born, [and] in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear.” Hence political mutations such as Donald Trump, or in Gramsci’s time Mussolini.”
Market forces take effect on an ideology. A use by date exists. Idealogy creates behaviours that amass waste, create reluctance to change, invite entrepreours to game, thus the potancy, force for good, orginial goals of the ideology is undermine. So how ironic that a ideology of pro-market forces should be undermined by market forces. Climate change, debt, social maliase, inevitable really that a creed of ignoring govt would pile up more fiscal, environmental, social waste so quickly and so hard to ignore.
The neo-libs were right, market forces would ridicule them into oblivion.
Revolutionary policy for Gramsci did not come from above but from below. It was organic. And the failure, in his eyes, of revolutionary elites is that they were often as dictatorial and disconnected from workers as capitalist elites. The masses had to be integrated into the structures of power to create a new form of mass politics—hence his insistence that all people are intellectuals capable of autonomous and independent thought. A democracy is only possible when all of its citizens understand the machinery of power and have a role in the exercising of power.
And hence my insistence that the policies that parliament work on should be voted upon by the people first, that businesses become cooperatives that aren’t owned by anyone and that all the resources of the national territory are owned by the people.
The people need to have power and not individuals.
It repeats the familiar theme of the absolute requirement for independent autonomic critical thinking and awareness to safeguard society against evil forces (i.e. from our fellow humans). A theme that is also reminiscent of Hannah Arendt who argued that political action must be rooted in proper thinking and judgement.
What also caught my eye was in one of the comments:
People act from emotion not intellect, as those who control society have learned so well.
I’ve heard this assertion many times, often in the context of politics and how people tend to vote and for whom.
I think it needs a minor ‘adjustment’ to:
People react from emotion and act from intellect
To be wholly human means that emotion and intellect work in concert and complement each other. And only then can we accomplish what Gramsci and Arendt envisioned and have a chance of freeing of the shackles imposed upon us by others and ‘normative’ society and thus ultimately by ourselves.
Menstrual bleeding may have to be treated as a disability to get fair treatment for girl pupils with early age onset at 10, perhaps just a suitable receptacle for used product. The cost of the products is also beyond poor students’ parents budgets and some teachers are funding needy students who would otherwise stay home because being blood stained is so noticeable and embarrassing.
Amazingly this normal bodily process is not accepted by society or schools. Now it has become something public and a talking point instead of something private, the embarrassment needs to be pushed aside and action taken to assist these young girls entering womanhood.
The trend in western countries I think, is that onset will be at an earlier age than previously. Of course NZ has no information gathering about this, we don’t want to know about things apart from financial matters pertaining to the wealthy, their profit and investments.
Of course NZ has no information gathering about this, we don’t want to know about things apart from financial matters pertaining to the wealthy, their profit and investments.
And how many people will complain about the government gathering such data as a breach of privacy?
Russian military intelligence executed a cyberattack on at least one U.S. voting software supplier and sent spear-phishing emails to more than 100 local election officials just days before last November’s presidential election…
Ms Reality Winner should’ve done an Ed and bolted when she could.
JUST IN: FBI has arrested and charged the woman they say leaked a Top Secret document to The Intercept, federal official tells NBC News.— NBC News (@NBCNews) June 5, 2017
best I’ve seen was 2% but that didn’t take into account margin of error. Myself, I think it’s going to waste important left wing votes. Not that cannabis people haven’t done that before. FFS, the Greens have a good cannabis policy.
TOP has good ideas, and their policies look good on the surface, but scratch the surface and what I find is an economist’s view of the world. They’re getting too many things wrong in the detail.
edit, sorry, should have said that I think most polls are showing TOP under 1%
My understanding was that ‘The Green Party’ originally courted the legalise vote because that was the 5% dealt with.
TOPs are apparently polling at 2% – which considering there is no campaign underway yet and they have no history…
As for supposed ‘wasted votes’. If everyone always operated by that yard-stick, nothing new would ever arise in the parliamentary system we have. Ever. However, ‘wasted’ votes pushing a party to 4.8% (say) sends a clear signal to all those who baulked that yes, they did actually have an option – and that they unfortunately chose to forego it “this time around”.
Agree with both comments that the 5% should be dog tucker. Apart from anything else it would end the nonsense of people voting for “a lesser” because they fear that their 1/2 500 000th of a say in matters will be reduced to 1/∞.
Threshhold i like, it provides some moderation against rampant democracy just as moderation does here. Everything needs some balance and I want some protection against the tunnel visioned, the narrow obssessives, the nutty dreamers, the ones who never reflect or look for their own faulty thinking and results – keep the threshhold, alter it around the edges perhaps reducing it to 4% only.
We need to make mistakes to learn from them. The threshold prevents that from happening and it also prevents us from changing a system that doesn’t actually work.
We have a system that propagates failure because it prevents us making the mistakes we need to grow and find solutions.
DTB
I am so impressed with your unshakeable belief in humanity and how well it will manage when it just gets the right system. You are a sentinel of fine human thought and goodwill. And I am sincere and probably embarrass you. But when you talk about threshholds being a barrier to learning, I think that there is a limit to what we want to learn now, and we have heaps we don’t face, so don’t deluge us with more, we’ll collapse and turn away, lose our mojos. Face it we people don’t learn from our mistakes, or the lesson doesn’t last beyond a few generations and then only if it is dished out regularly and rigidly along with the morning porridge.
We haven’t time to live through the evolution of any new great idea for humanity that requires us to rely on it and abandon every old sensible practice we have organised for ourselves. The bloody little backstabbers who come along with better ideas to replace existing ones are willing to abandon the work done on building a good-enough system, in favour of some super-duper one they are over-confident about – they give me the shits. Most of them will drift away as it fails to work and provide the needed outcomes, and only one determined old shit will continue, bemoaning that if only something different had been done then… Think of Roger Douglas, perfect example.
Work with what we have, tweak it so it flies in a reasonable stable way, and guard it against the revolutionaries who have a better idea that is being formulated as we speak. And watch your back – all workers for society aren’t the same, and don’t assume you know the pretensions of others and they are good, and check your own for practicality and principle. Be ready to control yourself and think around the situation when there might be need to abandon principles in emergencies.
There is so much PC talk as people shrink from looking at our present, and want the future to remain hazy where all problems will have been solved. You know, in 2080 when our pollution targets will all have been met and so on.
Essentially you’re just saying you don’t trust people to choose decent representatives. Don’t get me wrong, I detest representative ‘democracy’ because it’s a sham.
But there are degrees of undemocratic, and the 5% threshold reduces even the small degree of democracy that can be said to exist in a representative system.
I have concern about the frequent absence of thought about job creation and training and skill education in serving life purpose when discussing need for better social conditions for the future.
People kept isolated in poverty, with no job to fit themselves into society and fill their days, no wages, having to ask for extra when specially needy but probably denied, or even not able to be heard, never having much, with no future achievable goals, and getting anything mainly through theft – these will become a permanent sub-culture.
I almost feel embarassed for Hillary when she narrates a story where blame lands everywhere except on her poor performance and the fact everyone hates her.
The Dems could have run with almost any other candidate and won, but no they had to go with their Globalist political dynasty heiress.
[TheStandard: A moderator moved this comment to Open Mike as being off topic or irrelevant in the post it was made in. Be more careful in future.]
[lprent: I meant to do this earlier, but got distracted by site issues. This comment was in a post that didn’t refer to Hillary Clinton at all. Your comment was the first comment and caused a major diversion away from the topic of the post. As you probably intended.
There is a rule against that and since you ignored my wee warning… Well I really like to train social fucktards (like you) about why that rule is there. Now you have to read instead of writing for a while. Watch the careful social behaviour that doesn’t step past moderators tolerances. And if you don’t like it, well just read the last paragraph of the about.
Banned for 4 weeks.
Read the policy about diverting from the author’s topic. ]
Except Clinton didnt say ‘blame lies elsewhere’- FAKE NEWS ALERT
““I take absolute personal responsibility,” Clinton said of her November defeat during a sit-down with CNN’s Christiane Amanpour at an event titled Women for Women International in New York. “I was the candidate, I was the person who was on the ballot. I am very aware of the challenges, the problems, the shortfalls that we had.”
Did we make mistakes? Oh course we did. Did I make mistakes? Oh my gosh, yes.”
Everybody hates her? Is that why she got got 3.5 million more primary votes than Sanders and almost 3 mill more votes than Trump ( but not in all the right places)
Could we just let it go that YOU hate her, not the american voters for whom you speak
Why do I care? No idea why I should care about a major so called good political figure throwing out a big barrel of porkies. If you’re on the good side shouldn’t you be expecting rationality and integrity from your politicians, and from all the good media too? Or do you let it slide by because they’re against the most evil Trump/Russia and anything goes to stop the evil doers.
When people stop saying things like “everyone hates her” despite the objective evidence to the contrary, then I’m sure people will stop bringing up reality.
No, there’s a difference between refuting stupid claims (like calling Trump “one of the most despised politicians in history”) and gnashing one’s teeth in despair. If you want to talk about American democracy, then the example of the Electoral College overruling the popular vote is relevant. If you want to say Clinton was universally hated, then the popular vote is also relevant.
But it wasn’t even the clintonists who raised her name in this thread. Maybe it’s sanders or trump supporters with buyers’ remorse who should learn to gtf over it.
How’s about you address the person you’re addressing by the things the person you’re addressing has said or claimed, as opposed to what others aside from the person you’re addressing has said or claimed?
Because otherwise, it’s just ‘picking fights’ for the hell of it. Which is boring.
I did. 808 made a claim about Clinton, I pointed out how it was factually incorrect, then Adam came in asking people to stop pointing out reality, so I responded to that request by saying why my comment was relevant rather than any “desperation”.
“When people stop saying things like “everyone hates her” despite the objective evidence to the contrary, then I’m sure people will stop bringing up reality.”.
Not necessarily “hated” but by no means popular – even less so, it seems, than the Trumpet
Washington Post-ABC News Poll (April 17-20 2017)
Suggests Hillary Clinton would not win a rematch with Donald Trump.
Trump leading 43 to 40 percent on the question of who voters would pick if the election were held today.
96 percent of those who voted for Trump would do so again. Among Clinton voters, 85 percent said they would stand by their decision – with most of those who would not saying they’d either go with a third-party candidate or not vote at all.
Suffolk University poll (March 2017)
As Hillary Clinton makes her reemergence with a speech at the Kennedy Center in Washington on Wednesday night, a new poll shows her with her worst image numbers ever. The Suffolk University poll shows that just 35 percent of registered voters have a favorable opinion of Clinton, compared with 55 percent who have an unfavorable one.
The decline is due to both Democrats and independents apparently souring on Clinton. While 88 percent of Democrats and 32 percent of independents liked Clinton in October, today those numbers are 74 percent and 25 percent, respectively.
None of which is to say that she can’t right the ship. But for now, Clinton is a uniquely unpopular figure in American politics – more uniquely unpopular, it seems, than the uniquely unpopular figure to whom she lost.
Is that result really surprising? Trump’s been president with daily coverage for for 5 months – a shitty president, but that still counts for something. Clinton hasn’t been doing a damned thing to raise her profile or defend herself in that time. Do you think trump would be anything more than a half-remembered joke if the outcome were reversed?
As 808 shows, memories about politics are often fleeting.
” Is that why she got got 3.5 million more primary votes than Sanders ”
#FAKE CAMPAIGN
She got more votes because she had her underlings at the DNC sabotaging Sanders – do you not remember the DNC president quitting and slithering over to war hawk Hillary’s campaign when Wikileaks exposed the DNC backstabbing?
Bernie supporters HATE her. They aren’t stupid.
“almost 3 mill more votes than Trump ( but not in all the right places)”
LOL, how does that make her not hated?
Could we just let it go that YOU just cant see what a failed politician Hillary is, but the US voters can?
Your heroine had the entire state apparatus including the Media Party (#Fake News) trying to haul her rotten carcass across the finish line first. And failed spectacularly because she was such a hated figure.
You have to remember the US voters are corralled into a #Fake choice between two carefully screened globalist loyalists. Except this time it went terribly terribly wrong, lol.
So bragging about Hillary’s hollow “popular” vote is as delusional as her own inability to take any responsibility for her catastrophic failure.
If you believe that your idol has been some how “cheated” of the presidency then maybe you better go brush up on the humanist political philosophy underpinning the concept of democracy – you demonstrate a poor grasp of this subject.
Dude, I’ve never called her my heroine, I don’t believe that I’ve even gone so far to say she was “cheated” out of the presidency (although I have pointed out an inconsistency in the processes of a supposedly democratic nation, but hey, the UK is FPP, too). Those are your fixations.
I just point out when your hatred of clinton oversteps reality into comments about how “everyone hates her”. Classic projection. YOU hate her, fine, but tens of millions voted for her, and surely even a zealot like you would concede that it’s likely a chunk of those people liked her.
Why do I think your delusion is a big deal? Because it is a dodge. It means that people didn’t vote for trump, they just got given a horrible choice between trump and clinton, and bernie would have vanquished the trump dragon because his heart is pure.
The fact is bernie lost fairly. Clinton lost fairly.
Trump won because he was the loudest voice in the chaotic start to an imperfect system, Fox loved him, and that gave him a certain cache amongst obsessive idiots, and normal people in politics didn’t know how to deal with someone who can insult the grieving parents of a dead US soldier, have multiple sexual assault allegations against him, and still go up in the polls.
Dukeofurl: “Everybody hates her? Is that why she got got 3.5 million more primary votes than Sanders and almost 3 mill more votes than Trump ( but not in all the right places)”
Oh yeah, lots of Americans just LOVE Clinton, don’t they? It was the blogosphere, and comments thereon, prior to the US election that first alerted me to the possibility that Clinton might just lose.
Saw this comment online a little while ago: ‘The thinking people in USA KNOW Russia had nothing to do with our elections! We hated Clinton and would have voted for an alligator if that was the only opponent to Clinton!” Ha! Think that alligator coulda been a contender…..
With regard to the popular vote, that’s not how elections are won in the US. As Clinton ought to have known. It didn’t matter a good goddamn how big a share of the popular vote she got: she needed the EC votes to win.That’s how the system works there; she and her team were evidently too incompetent to figure that out.
“It didn’t matter a good goddamn how big a share of the popular vote she got”
There is a graphic showing where Hillary won the popular vote across the USA. She only secured major urban centers with large populations of blacks, latinos and white hipster/cosmopolitan types. The vast swathe of “fly over country” was lost to Trump.
And the whole point of the Electoral College is to counter balance the urban population.
But if you run a campaign relying on Mylie Cyrus and Katie Perry beseeching unemployed Illinois steel workers to vote for you, its going to end badly.
re point england reserve/development enabling bill
Can I republish an article that appears in the Te Awa, which appeared in a green party magazine, but not online. The authours have given me their permission and at the very least would like to raise awareness on this issue.
Or should I just post it all in the comments?
It would be great if you would allow it as a guest post.tks
Amongst those receiving public acclaim I see a category … a Queen’s honour (knighthood) for services to my community.
Apparently opening a “healthy” American Burger chain in my community is a virtue.
Over 130 Imams & Religious Leaders from diverse backgrounds refuse to perform the funeral prayer for London attackers in an unprecedented move
5 June 2017
Imams and religious leaders from across the country and a range of schools of thought have come together to issue a public statement condemning the recent terror attack in London and conveying their pain at the suffering of the victims and their families.
In an unprecedented move, they have not only refused to perform the traditional Islamic prayer for the terrorist – a ritual that is normally performed for every Muslim regardless of their actions – but also have called on others to do the same. They said:
“Consequently, and in light of other such ethical principles which are quintessential to Islam, we will not perform the traditional Islamic funeral prayer over the perpetrators and we also urge fellow imams and religious authorities to withdraw such a privilege. This is because such indefensible actions are completely at odds with the lofty teachings of Islam.”
For the full statement and list of signatories, see below.
This is what needs to happen
plus
let us see CHRISTIAN leaders denouncing the making and SALE OF ARMS (conveniently called DEFENCE).
What is Christ-like about this? How can a good Christian reconcile the $110bn arms deal to Saudi Arabia who won’t be using these arms in their own country.
In UK the police are trying to find the bomb-maker for a terrorist incident.
USA and UK ARE also Bomb-makers!
NZ business and how it is treated by the business-friendly Gnashional government.
Rod Oram referred to the government undercutting NZ businesses that had been asked to develop forward-thinking plans by going to Amazon which is likely to be setting up a South Pacific office in Australia.
Tues 6 June Business commentator Rod Oram
Rod talks to Lynn Freeman about the severe lack of international carbon credits will require a big revamp of our Emissions Trading, the government signs up Amazon for a big cloud computing deal, to the great disappointment of NZ suppliers, and Spark drops plans for a venture capital fund with other major corporates.
The US could well be using their Saudi proxies to undermine a Qatari regime that’s on speaking terms with Iran.
Note from the author: Events have happened faster than I imagined when I wrote this last week. Six Arab states have now cut diplomatic relations with Qatar. Its land borders with Saudi Arabia are closed and 85 percent of its imports are cut. A full siege is in place. This is no longer a “spat”. It is looking as if the object of this pre-planned campaign is regime change in Qatar.
It would appear that Stephen Joyce is has become Associate Minister of Conservation by default..
“The Department of Conservation is being accused of failing in its conservation role after it made a neutral submission on a proposed West Coast coal mine.”
“DOC said both it and MBIE had an interest in the proposal and there was a cabinet directive to submit together when this occurred, which often resulted in a neutral submission.
Forest and Bird said the department seemed to have abdicated its advocacy role.
And pointed out the submission suggested minimising the damage to conservation values, yet DOC’s own experts said the site was of high value and was significant.
“The function of the department is to advocate for the protection, not advocate for the minimisation of the destruction”.
And remember we are basically a developing country relying on commodity farming, tourism, and overseas companies buying up special resources and anything clever we achieve.
Japan famously had an “income-doubling” plan in the 1960s. With that successful example in mind, why not introduce a “minimum wage doubling” plan, to be carried out over a period of years, thus giving business the chance to adjust?
as Keynes famously said, when the facts change, I change my mind.
The main reason governments are leery of intervening in labor markets is bad memories of failed wage and price controls during the high-inflation 1970s. But a second, more current, reason is that businesses everywhere lobby them to keep out, arguing that competitiveness depends on cheap labor.
But it’s time to ignore the lobbies and take courage. Sometimes, raising the minimum wage really would risk killing employment. But today that looks unlikely, at least in countries where unemployment rates are now low. And we need more investment in new technology to raise productivity, not less. Raising minimum wages would help stimulate that investment, while boosting consumer demand.
as Keynes famously said, when the facts change, I change my mind.
Ah, but do facts change?
Or is it that we find out that what we thought was true was actually wrong?
And we need more investment in new technology to raise productivity, not less. Raising minimum wages would help stimulate that investment, while boosting consumer demand.
That’s what penal rates are for. Instead of having the same people work more and more it encourages a) employment of more people and b) investment in new technology to boost productivity. The latter also being helped by depreciation rules.
“Lady Bronagh?” Sorry Bronagh that title is reserved for female members of the British Aristocracy who inherit the title.
Bronagh will be “Bronagh, Lady Key”
(Thanks Ruth Gardener, Ch Ch.)
Adult children of authoritarians are useful in three ways: first, they tend to be trustworthy confidants in regimes rife with paranoia, as corrupt authoritarian states usually are. Second, they are excellent vessels for laundering money, creating enough distance that assets stolen from the state are harder to track. Third, they tend to have a warmer public profile which offsets the brutality of the dictator by distracting the population with pictures of their happy families or glamorous lifestyle.
Something good to hear and see.
If you like Don McLean singing Vincent watch this youtube which is presented with a
backdrop of Van Gogh’s paintings – a beautifully presented video which honours the painter and the writer and singer well.
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Finally, governments seem slowly to be beginning to act on climate change. But its not enough. While they're publicly signing up to targets, they're planning to destroy the world by continuing fossil fuel extraction:The world’s nations are on track to produce more than twice as much coal, oil and gas ...
Stuff has begun interviewing NZ First's secret donors, and it turns out that its as bad as we expected. They start with racing industry figure Garry Chittick, who is predictably grumpy about NZ First's coalition choices. Meanwhile, I'm looking at the list of pork NZ First has effectively given its ...
Stag At Bay: Twelve years ago, Winston Peters was still robust enough to come back from the political crucifixion which his political and media enemies had prepared for him. In his seventies now, the chances of a second resurrection are slim. We should, therefore, prepare for the last gasp of ...
Satellites pass over NZ all the time (literally). Here I focus on the 187 Planet Labs ‘Dove’ Earth-imaging satellites, and I show that one can determine in advance where they will be, enabling scientists on the ground to correlate their environmental and other data collection with opportunities to get imaging ...
The Council of Disobedient Women has learned that the Prefect of Aro Valley has been promoted to a new role with the blessing of the Pope of Wellington. Softy Jejune Parson has been appointed Mother Superior of Woke Wellington for the work she has been doing calling out heretics, ...
On both sides of the Atlantic, some purportedly “contentious” and “difficult to deal with” leadership contenders to lead the US and UK, as President and Prime Minister respectively, seem to have thrown a few spanners into the works of the normal messaging most are used to hearing constantly. Except they’re ...
In Question Time today the Prime Minister was naturally facing questions about Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters and his dubious party financing arrangements, which seem to violate electoral finance law. Her response was to pretend that it was nothing to do with her, and that she is not responsible for ...
A prisoner stripped of their name, imprisoned for a secret crime after a secret trial, with all details legally suppressed for secret reasons. A story by Kafka or Dumas? China? No, its just the latest stage of Australian tyranny:An Australian citizen was prosecuted, convicted, and jailed in the ACT last ...
Stuff has more details on what New Zealand First's slush-fund has been funding, with much of the spending directly benefiting the party. Which makes it look a lot like hidden donations, rather than the completely-innocent-giant-pile-of-cash Winston is trying to portray it as. The Electoral Commission is now investigating, but Simon ...
I've joked before about how hosting international summits effectively turns part of your country into a police state for the duration. Well, New Zealand is hosting APEC in 2021, with events throughout the year in Christchurch, Wellington, and Auckland. And the government has put up a bill to give itself ...
Climate Explained is a collaboration between The Conversation, Stuff and the New Zealand Science Media Centre to answer your questions about climate change.If you have a question you’d like an expert to answer, please send it to climate.change@stuff.co.nzI saw an article claiming that “king tides” will increase in ...
It has been revealed that firing ranges used by the NZDF while deployed to the Provincial Reconstruction Team (PRT) in Bamyan Province, Afghanistan, contained unexploded ordnance that caused numerous deaths and injuries after the NZDF withdrew the PRT in April 2013. In 2014 seven children were killed when an unidentified ...
Didn't See It Coming: NZ Herald columnist Lizzie Marvelly's latest column merits serious scrutiny because such a clear example of anti-democratic thinking is encountered only rarely on the pages of the daily press. Which is not to say that the elitism which lies at the heart of such social disparagement ...
by Gearóid Ó Loingsigh Initially it was reported that in an aerial bombardment that took place on August 30th seven children were massacred; the figure then went up to eight and then on November 11th Noticias Uno reported that, according to people from the community in close proximity to the ...
A lot has happened since the UN’s report on 1.5ºC was released in October 2018. New Zealand’s Zero Carbon Bill has passed, and enshrines the 1.5ºC goal in law. The UK and France have also legally strengthened their targets to Net Zero 2050. The School Strike For Climate and Extinction ...
Next year is an election year, and Labour needs money to fund its campaign. So naturally, they're selling access:Labour is charging wealthy business figures $1500-a-head to lunch with Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern at its annual conference later this month. [...] On the weekend beginning November 29th, around 800 delegates will ...
Yesterday the government announced its changes to tenancy laws, including an end to no-cause evictions, limits on rent increases, and anonyminity for tenants who defend their rights against bad landlords (sadly necessary because landlords are scum who maintain blacklists of "uppity" tenants). They're all good moves, and have resulted in ...
In 2003 New Zealand sent a Provincial Reconstruction Team to Afghanistan to support America's doomed war there. While there, they conducted regular weapons practice on local firing ranges, littering the landscape with unexploded ammunition. These ranges weren't secure - they're on land used by locals for animal herding - so ...
Green MP Gareth Hughes has announced he will retire at the election. Its understandable - he's been there ten years, and wants to actually see his children grow up rather than miss it while drowning in the toxic parliamentary sewer. But his departure is also a huge loss for the ...
Words and images by Jacqui GibsonGone are Auckland Museum’s days of doing science using a museum-centric academic approach, after Māori land rights holders Ngāti Kuri gave the museum an ultimatum.Tom Trnski holding a fossilised whale tooth from the Far North.Aussie-born Head of Natural Sciences at Auckland Museum ...
MediaWorks announced in October 2019 that it intended to sell off its struggling television business and cancel or cut back on several popular local programmes, including New Zealand Today, Married at First SightNew Zealand and 7 Days. Its radio and outdoor advertising arms are currently performing well, but MediaWorks’ ...
Westminster voting intention:CON: 44% (+3)LAB: 28% (-1)LDEM: 14% (-1)BREX: 6% (-)via @OpiniumResearch, surveyed this weekChgs. w/ 08 Nov— Britain Elects (@britainelects) 16 November 2019 This, of course, doesn't look good. Labour have been chucking big, headline grabbing policies left, right and centre ... Well, maybe not right. Left, left ...
Some readers may remember that I mentioned last year that I was applying for NZ citizenship. I filled out the paperwork and had my original citizenship interview in February. Everything went well until they discovered that, because I had spent five months in the US in 2017, I had not ...
by Deirdre O’Neill It is becoming quite acceptable for certain sections of the left to declare that people like me – women who are ‘gender critical’ – should not be allowed in leftist or anarchist spaces. Leaving aside the arrogance and implicit authoritarianism of this claim, its lack of critical ...
There is an article in The Conversation, written by Jeremy P. Shapiro (Adjunct Assistant Professor of Psychological Sciences, Case Western Reserve University), about what he sees as the psychologically-based underpinnings of three main matters that seem to vex people all around the planet. The article is titled “The Thinking ...
. . Blogger Martyn Bradbury has won his case against unreasonable search and surveillance against the NZ Police; and subsequent Police attempts to produce evidence in secrecy, in a closed Court. His case highlights a disturbing growing trend in Aotearoa New Zealand for State power to be used against ...
The Committee of Disobedient Women has intercepted an email from Dr Emma Eejut, Senior Lecturer in Sociology, Massey University to the university’s Vice-Chancellor, Jan Thomas. Dear Jan, Thank you for your courageous move. I think 10 pages of blether** should tie any of the students game enough to try holding ...
That's the only response to the findings of the Ombudsman's investigation into LGOIMA practices at the Christchurch City Council:My investigation identified serious concerns about the Council’s leadership and culture, and its commitment to openness and transparency. In particular, Council staff raised concerns with me about various methods employed by some ...
NZ First seems to be nakedly trying to enrich itself from public office:A powerful New Zealand First figure helped establish a forestry company that then pushed for money from two key funding streams controlled by a New Zealand First Minister. An RNZ investigation has found Brian Henry, lawyer for Winston ...
Behrouz Boochani is an award winning author and journalist. He is also a refugee, who for the past six years has been detained in Australia's offshore gulag on Manus Island, and in Papua New Guinea. But last night, with the cooperation of the WORD Christchurch festival and Amnesty International, he ...
Different Strokes: If a multicultural immigration policy imposes no obligation on immigrant communities to acknowledge and ultimately embrace their host nation’s most cherished traditions and values, then how is that nation to prevent itself from being reduced to a collection of inward-looking and self-replicating ethnic and cultural enclaves?THE COALITION GOVERNMENT’S ...
Protective Zone: Reading the rules and guidelines released by Massey University, it is impossible to avoid the conclusion that its governing body considers the whole concept of free speech a disruptive threat to the orderly imparting of orthodox academic knowledge.IN TRUE ORWELLIAN fashion, Massey University has announced its commitment to ...
Brian Oliver, University of Technology SydneyNew South Wales and Queensland are in the grip of a devastating bushfire emergency, which has tragically resulted in the loss of homes and lives. But the smoke produced can affect many more people not immediately impacted by the fires – even people many ...
Farmers held a hate-march on Parliament today, complete with MAGA hats, gun-nut signs, and gendered insults. While supposedly about a grab-bag of issues - including, weirdly, mental health - it was clear that the protest was about one thing, and one thing only: climate change. And specifically, forestry "destroying" rural ...
The Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security released their annual report today, and I've been busy reading through it. In amongst the usual review of what they've been doing all year, there's a few interesting bits. For example, a discussion on "agency retention and disposal of information", which points out that ...
Recently more than 150 post-graduate students and young scientists presented an open letter to the Green Party via The Spinoff, encouraging them to reconsider their position on genetic modification. Their target is tackling climate change issues.[1] Can any party continue to be dismissive about genetic modification (GM) contributing to ...
by Deirdre O’Neill Under Thatcher and then Blair and continuing up until our contemporary moment, the working class has seen its culture slowly and progressively destroyed. The change from an industrial society to a service society produced a marked shift in focus from the working class as the backbone of ...
Since 2013, the Australian government has detained refugees without trial in Pacific gulags, where they are abused, tortured, and driven to suicide. The policy is not just an abuse of human rights and possible crime against humanity; it has also had a corrosive effect on the states Australia uses as ...
It seems fair to say that we currently live in a problematic political moment in world history. Democracies are in decline and dictatorships are on the rise. Primordial, sectarian and post-modern divisions have re-emerged, are on the rise or have been accentuated by political evolutions of the moment such as ...
Last month, Greenpeace head Russel Norman surrendered his speaking slot at an EPA conference to student climate activist Sorcha Carr, who told the EPA exactly what she thought of them. It was a bold move, which confronted both regulators and polluters (or, as the EPA calls them, "stakeholders") with the ...
The core principle supposedly underlying New Zealand's electoral finance regime is transparency: parties can accept large donations from rich people wanting to buy policy, but only if they tell the public they've been bought. Most parties abide by this, so we know that TOP was wholly-owned by Gareth Morgan, and ...
Today is a Member's Day, probably the second-to-last one of the year, and its a big one, with the Third Reading of David Seymour's End of Life Choice Bill. last Member's Day it was reported back from committee, after MPs voted narrowly to make it subject to a (rules TBA) ...
Climate Explained is a collaboration between The Conversation, Stuff and the New Zealand Science Media Centre to answer your questions about climate change.If you have a question you’d like an expert to answer, please send it to climate.change@stuff.co.nzThe growth of the human population over the last 70 ...
by The Council of Disobedient Women In her excellent oral submission to the Abortion reform select committee on 31st October on behalf of Otago University’s Department of Public Health, historian and public health researcher Hera Cook stated: “We would ask that the committee not use the term ‘pregnant persons’ and ...
by Don Franks In 1957, E M Forster wrote, of his greatest work: “The India described in ‘A Passage to India’ no longer exists either politically or socially. Change had begun even at the time the book was published ( 1924) and during the following quarter of a century it ...
The Referendums Framework Bill was due back from select committee today. But there's no report on it. Instead, the bill has been bounced back to the House under Standing order 29593) because the Committee didn't bother to produce one. They probably tried. But given the membership of the committee (which ...
Two years into New Zealand’s Labour-led government, the long-delayed Zero Carbon Bill became law on 7 November. Passed essentially unanimously, the lengthy public debates and political manoeuvring faded away until the final passage was even anticlimactic: Flipping through the @nzstuff@DomPost I was starting to wonder if I’d dreamt ...
Now the Zero Carbon Bill is law, what's next? Obviously, the ETS changes currently before select committee are going to be the next battleground. But we're also going to get a good idea of where we're going, and if the progress the Zero Carbon Act promises is good enough, during ...
Grant PearceThe effects of the current Australian bushfires in New South Wales and Queensland (and also again in California) are devastating and far-reaching. To date, the fires have resulted in several lives being lost and many homes and properties destroyed. Here in New Zealand, the impacts have been only ...
A passing comment in a post the other day about the labour force participation rates of older people prompted me to pull down the fuller data and see what we could see about various participation rates over the decades since the HLFS began in 1986. As it happens, the ...
Distract And Divert: The rise of what we have come to call “Identity Politics” represents the ideological manifestation of the ruling class’s objective need to destroy class politics, and of the middle-class’s subjective need to justify their participation in the process.THE RELIEF of the ruling class can only be imagined. ...
"I saw a newspaper picture,From the political campaignA woman was kissing a child,Who was obviously in pain.She spills with compassion,As that young child'sFace in her hands she gripsCan you imagine all that greed and avariceComing down on that child's lips?" ...
Dr Matt Boyd, Prof Michael Baker, Prof Nick WilsonThe Global Health Security Index which considers pandemic threats has just been published. Unfortunately, NZ scores approximately half marks (54/100), coming in 35th in the world rankings – far behind Australia. This poor result suggests that the NZ Government needs to ...
The Zero Carbon Act is inadequate, with a weak methane target designed to give farmers a free ride. But it turns out it could have been worse: Climate Change Minister James Shaw was so desperate to get National on board, he wanted to gut that target, and leave it in ...
The Herald reprints an Australian story on a couple of tragic deaths in Bali from drinking cocktails that had methanol in them. The story argues that methanol is likely the result of home distillation. But what the young tourists were experiencing was far from a hangover. They’d consumed a toxic cocktail ...
Last month, the police announced a trial of specialist roaming armed units, which would drive round (poor, brown) areas in armoured SUVs, armed to the teeth. When they announced the trial, they told us it was about having armed police "ready to attend major incidents at any time if needed". ...
Spain went to the polls today in the second elections this year, after the Socialists (who had come to power in a confidence vote, then gone to the polls in April) rejected the offer of a coalition with the left-wing PoDemos, and instead decided to gamble n a better outcome ...
A couple of days ago I attended (and spoke at) the University of Waikato’s “LearnFest” event. There were lots of talks and sessions on very diverse aspects of teaching, mostly at tertiary level. One was by Myra Williamson from Te Piringa Faculty of Law here at Waikato, on Contract Cheating ...
There will be a transit of Mercury – the planet Mercury will pass across the face of the Sun – taking place at sunrise in New Zealand on Tuesday, 12th November. It was by observing such an event 250 years ago that James Cook and his scientist colleagues were able ...
Since becoming the world’s first openly transexual mayor and member of parliament, Georgina Beyer has been recognised as a trailblazer for trans rights. Daphna Whitmore talks with her about where she sees the current trans movement We start out talking about legislation the government put on hold that would have ...
If FFNZ really put their faith in “Top Medical Journals” they would now be amending their billboards to recognise new research results. Image from FFNZ but updated to agree with the latest research. ...
National Messiah? Chris Luxon identifies himself as an evangelical Christian. If he is genuine in this self-characterisation, then he will take every opportunity his public office provides to proselytise on behalf of his faith. He will also feel obliged to bear witness against beliefs and practices he believes to be ...
I'm going to make a Reckless Prediction™ that the Tories have 'topped out' in the 'poll of polls' / Britain Elects multipoll tracker at about 38%, and in the next week we will start to see Labour creep up on them.In fact, we might just be seeing the start of ...
by The Council of Disobedient Women Lizzie Marvelly: “I may have missed this… has @afterellen gone all terf-y? Or am I reading something incorrectly? “ https://twitter.com/LizzieMarvelly/status/1191840059105742849 After Ellen is a lesbian website that is unashamedly pro-lesbian, as you’d expect. So why is Ms Marvelly so bothered about lesbians having their ...
Did you know there once was a time when it was illegal to be a gypsy (aka Romani) in Britain?That was between 1530, when the Egyptians Act was passed, and 1856, when it was repealed.Amongst other things, the act forbade the entry of 'Egyptians' into England, ordered those already there ...
Some days I sit and think, “what will I write…?” What do you say when you get to 1000 posts? Maybe you just start where you are, diverge to where this all began, then offer a collection of reader’s favourite posts, and a few of your own? (And throw in ...
Counter-Puncher: The “activists” and “radicals” (his own words) from the Indian community who took such strong exception to Shane Jones’ remarks about Immigration NZ’s treatment of arranged marriages, may end up bitterly regretting their intervention. Jones is not the sort of person who turns the other cheek to his critics.SHANE ...
New Zealand First are celebrating the announcement of an investment of $3.5 million into five new trapping devices. These are a range of bait and trap devices, all designed to be left unattended for long periods of time. NZ First conservation spokesperson Jenny Marcroft says that this latest development will ...
Clayton Mitchell, Spokesperson for Consumer Affairs The ‘wheel clamping’ Bill that will cap clamper fees to $100 passed its third readinginParliament today. New Zealand First welcomes The Land Transport (Wheel Clamping) Amendment Bill to combat predatory wheel clamping behaviour in what is currently a largely unregulated business. Cowboy clampers are: gouging ...
Jenny Marcroft, Spokesperson for Health New Zealand First welcomes the passage of the Mental Health and Wellbeing Commission Bill through its first reading in Parliament. “Today’s progress takes serious action on the mental health and addiction crisis the country is facing,” says New Zealand First Health Spokesperson Jenny Marcroft. “The re-establishment ...
Mark Patterson, Spokesperson for Primary Industries Today the Government announced the delivery of the promise to protect New Zealand interests by applying a new National Interest Test to the sales of our most sensitive and high risk assets to overseas buyers. This further strengthening of the Overseas Investment Act will ...
The Coalition Government is delivering on its promise to protect New Zealanders’ interests by applying a new national interest test to the sales of our most sensitive and high-risk assets to overseas buyers. Under current Overseas Investment Act (OIA) rules, assets such as ports and airports, telecommunications infrastructure, electricity and ...
Rt Winston Peters, Leader of New Zealand First Allegations raised this morning by Stuff Limited / Fairfax concern a party matter but I am confident that New Zealand First has operated within electoral laws, now and for the last 27 years. Declarable donations were declared to the Electoral Commission. Our ...
The chairman of the Upper North Island Supply Chain Strategy (UNISCS) working group, Wayne Brown, has hit back at critics of his group’s recommendations to relocate the Ports of Auckland cargo operations to Whangarei’s deepwater port of Northport. The working group's recommendation to close Auckland waterfront to all but cruise ...
Jenny Marcroft MP, Spokesperson for Health New Zealand First backs the public to decide on the End of Life Choice Bill via a referendum at the 2020 General Election. The Bill, with New Zealand First’s referendum provision incorporated, passed its final reading in Parliament this evening. New Zealand First Spokesperson for ...
Darroch Ball, Spokesperson for Justice New Zealand First is proud that a key Coalition Agreement commitment which will provide for a more transparent and effective criminal justice system has been realised. Legislation to establish the Criminal Cases Review Commission, an independent body focused on identifying and responding to possible miscarriages of ...
"Today we have made a choice that will leave a legacy... I hope that means that future generations will see that we, in New Zealand, were on the right side of history." - Jacinda Ardern, Third Reading of the Zero Carbon Bill ...
Darroch Ball, New Zealand First List MP A Member’s bill has been proposed that would provide income tax exemptions for all New Zealand Defence Force (NZDF) personnel while on operational deployment overseas. The Income Tax (Exemption for Salary or Wages of NZDF Members on Active Deployment) Amendment Bill proposed by New Zealand First ...
Rt Hon Winston Peters, New Zealand First Leader New Zealand First is proud to have brought common sense to the Climate Change Response (Zero Carbon) Amendment Bill, which passed its final reading in Parliament today. Party Leader Rt Hon Winston Peters says months of hard work went into negotiating a balanced ...
Jenny Marcroft MP, Spokesperson for Health New Zealand First has listened to calls to recognise paramedics as registered health professionals under the Health Practitioners’ Competence Assurance Act (the Act).Today, the Coalition Government announced plans for paramedics to be registered as health practitioners under the Act, and the establishment of a ...
The Coalition commitment to add 1800 new Police officers to frontline policing has been achieved with the graduation of 59 constables from the Royal New Zealand Police College today. Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters say today’s graduation means 1825 new Police have been deployed all ...
Ensuring APEC work gets input from diverse New Zealand business and trade interests is behind three new appointments to the APEC Business Advisory Council (ABAC), Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern says. Rachel Taulelei, Malcolm Johns and Toni Moyes have been appointed to represent New Zealand on the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) ...
Nau mai, haere mai. Tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou, tēnā tatou katoa. Thank you for having me to speak today. To start, I’d like to acknowledge Sharron Lloyd, the General Manager of the Trans–Tasman Business Circle, the partners for this event Westpac’s David McLean, and Derek McCormack from AUT, and, of course ...
A four-month investigation by former Environment Court judge Professor Peter Skelton found that Otago’s freshwater planning system is not fit for purpose to manage the region’s rivers, lakes and aquifers and that the Council has inadequate rules for the taking of water and the discharge of nutrients. “Existing planning provisions ...
Introduction Thank you for the invitation to speak to you today. This is the first opportunity I’ve had to speak to an LGNZ meeting since the local elections, and I’m delighted to see the fresh faces of newly elected mayors. To returning mayors here today, as well as chief ...
Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters departs New Zealand today to attend the G20 Foreign Ministers’ Meeting in Nagoya at the invitation of this year’s G20 President, Japan. “This is the first time New Zealand will attend a G20 Foreign Ministers’ Meeting and we are deeply honoured that it is at ...
Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters today announced the appointment of diplomat Carl Reaich as New Zealand’s next Ambassador to the European Union. “The Ambassador to the EU is one of the most important and senior roles in New Zealand’s foreign service, advocating for New Zealand’s interests with the EU institutions,” Mr ...
Innovation and technology are behind five new tools to give nature a helping hand by helping eliminate predators, funded through the Provincial Growth Fund (PGF), Minister for Conservation Eugenie Sage and Parliamentary Under-Secretary for Regional Economic Development Fletcher Tabuteau announced today. “The new tools will be trialled in ...
Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters has welcomed the first reading of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation 2021 (APEC 2021) Bill in Parliament today. The temporary bill supports New Zealand’s security preparations for hosting the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Forum in 2021. “APEC is the leading economic and trade forum ...
The Government is making progress on improving the wellbeing of the one million New Zealanders under the age of 18,” Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said on World Children’s Day. The Government has today recommitted to the most widely ratified human rights treaty in history – the United Nation’s Convention on ...
Minister for Women Julie Anne Genter has released a new report celebrating the contribution of Māori women in business across Aotearoa New Zealand. “Māori women are leaders in our communities, they employ many people and support our economy and our communities,” Julie Anne Genter said. The report, Ngā wāhine kaipakihi: ...
Four parcels of land have been bought in Omokoroa, in the Western Bay of Plenty District, for an education facility that will accommodate both a primary and secondary school on a campus-like facility, Education Minister Chris Hipkins said today. Two parcels were acquired from private land owners and two were ...
1 million New Zealanders warmed by the Winter Energy Payment 36,000 families bank the Best Start Payment in first year 6,000 more families received the Family Tax Credit, 220,600 in total They receive an increase too – from an average of $117 to $157 a week for Inland Revenue clients, ...
New rules to clamp down on overzealous wheel clamping and extortionate fees charged in order to release a vehicle have passed their final stage in Parliament today. The Land Transport (Wheel Clamping) Amendment Bill has now passed its third reading. “These changes mean $100 will be the maximum wheel clamping ...
An independent Mental Health and Wellbeing Commission is a step closer after it unanimously passed its first vote in Parliament today. The Mental Health and Wellbeing Commission Bill lays the groundwork for establishing the Commission as a fully independent crown entity – delivering on a key recommendation of He Ara ...
We’ve improved border security with the NZeTA, New Zealand Electronic Travel Authority, which helps us to screen travellers for border and immigration risks off-shore before they travel to New Zealand. It was launched in August and became mandatory on 1 October 2019. More than 500,000 NZeTAs have been issued since ...
A proposed national plan of action to reduce the number of seabirds caught in fisheries is being circulated for public feedback. Fisheries Minister Stuart Nash and Conservation Minister Eugenie Sage say New Zealand is a global centre of seabird diversity with about 145 species in our waters. It has more ...
The Government is delivering on its promise to protect New Zealanders’ interests by applying a new national interest test to the sales of our most sensitive and high risk assets to overseas buyers. Associate Finance Minister David Parker said under current Overseas Investment Act rules, assets such as ports and ...
The Government is building special housing to accommodate one of Aotearoa’s greatest taonga- our kaumātua, says the Minister for Māori Development, Hon Nanaia Mahuta. Speaking at a National Kaumātua Service Providers Conference in Rotorua today, the Minister reinforced the importance kaumātua play in maintaining and passing on mātauranga Māori, knowledge, ...
Eleven men from a pilot forestry training programme for prisoners in Northland now have full time jobs or job offers upon release, Corrections Minister Kelvin Davis and Forestry Minister Shane Jones announced today. The ‘release to work’ programme was a collaboration between Te Uru Rākau and the Department of Corrections, ...
Minister of State Services Chris Hipkins today introduced into Parliament a Bill that will make it easier for the public service to tackle the biggest challenges facing Governments. The Bill represents the most significant change in the public service in 30 years. The State Sector Act 1988 will be repealed ...
The families of more than 416,000 students will be better off next year as their schools have signed up to the Government’s donations scheme, Education Minister Chris Hipkins said today. The scheme will see almost $62.5 million in additional Government funding go to schools nationwide next year. “I’m really pleased ...
Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters has announced further support as the Government of Samoa responds to a serious measles outbreak. “New Zealand will deploy a further 18 vaccination nurses, bringing the total to 30 working in Samoa over the next four weeks,” Mr Peters said. “A New Zealand Medical Assistance ...
Fa’atalofa atu, malo e lelei, Kia ora koutou katoa Thank you to the Child Poverty Action Group for asking me to be here today to provide an update on some of the things that have been happening across my the social development portfolio. Can I firstly acknowledge the vast ...
***Please check against delivery*** Good morning everyone. It is a pleasure to be with you this morning to open this year’s New Zealand Thoroughbred Racing Conference and AGM. Firstly, thank you Dr Alan Jackson, NZTR Chair for your introduction. And let us acknowledge also: The NZTR Board; Dean McKenzie, Chair ...
The Government has delivered on its promise to the over one million New Zealanders who now rent to make it fairer and more secure, Associate Minister of Housing (Public Housing) Kris Faafoi has announced today. Both renters and landlords will benefit from the suite of practical changes to the Residential ...
A marine conservation milestone - the 20th anniversary of the establishment of Te Tapuwae o Rongokako Marine Reserve - is being celebrated today at a community event in Tairāwhiti/East Coast attended by the Minister of Conservation, Eugenie Sage. “The creation of this marine reserve in November 1999 was a game ...
The Government is asking the food industry to step up work to tackle obesity including reducing sugar, fat and salt in their products, better information for consumers, and tighter restrictions on advertising to children. Health Minister David Clark and Food Safety Minister Damien O’Connor have responded to a ...
ew, modern emergency department and outpatient facilities at Queenstown’s Lakes District Hospital mean better emergency care for the growing tourist mecca’s visitors and locals, says Health Minister David Clark. Today Dr Clark officially opened the hospital’s redeveloped Emergency Department and Outpatient facilities. The new facilities include: • An extended Emergency Department ...
Associate Health Minister Julie Anne Genter says today’s release of sexual and reproductive health data reinforces the significance of the Government’s commitment to providing free or very low-cost contraception. The Ministry of Health today published statistics from the Ministry of Health’s 2014/15 Health Survey. “It is important people can make ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters has announced that at the request of the Samoan Government, New Zealand will be providing further support to Samoa as it faces a worsening measles outbreak. “In response to a request from the people of Samoa, New Zealand is providing 3000 measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) ...
“The new Disability Action Plan 2019–2023 moves us towards the inclusive and accessible New Zealand that this government has committed to,” Minister for Disability Issues Carmel Sepuloni announced today. “The Action Plan was designed by disabled people, their family and supporters, the disability sector and government agencies. It will ensure ...
Third Singapore-New Zealand Defence Ministers’ Meeting 14 November 2019 Joint Statement 1. Defence Ministers Ron Mark and Dr Ng Eng Hen today conducted their third annual Singapore-New Zealand Defence Ministers’ Meeting in Singapore. 2. Building on the Enhanced Partnership signed between both countries in May this year, this annual meeting ...
A Bill to improve the court system’s response to sexual violence has passed its first reading in Parliament today. Justice Minister Andrew Little says the Sexual Violence Legislation Bill will reduce the trauma sexual violence complainants experience in court, while maintaining defendants’ fundamental rights and making sure the trial process ...
Streamlined payment practices are a step closer for Kiwi businesses with the formal launch of New Zealand’s e-Invoicing framework. Small Business Minister Stuart Nash says the government has now established the structure to enable automated and direct data exchange between the accounting systems of buyers and sellers. “The move to ...
Another 51 quarantine officers and four new biosecurity detector dog teams will help protect New Zealand from invasive pests and diseases this summer, says Biosecurity Minister Damien O’Connor. “The Government is delivering on its commitment to strengthen New Zealand’s biosecurity system and support our valuable primary sector “New Zealand’s flora, fauna ...
A new report has found New Zealand’s space sector contributed $1.69 billion to the economy in the last financial year and employs 12,000 people, Minister for Economic Development Phil Twyford announced today. The report by Deloitte was commissioned by the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment and shows New Zealand ...
Judge Coral Shaw has been appointed as the new Chair of the Royal Commission into Historical Abuse in State Care and in the Care of Faith-based Institutions, Internal Affairs Minister Tracey Martin announced today. "Judge Shaw, who is currently one of the inquiry commissioners, is extremely well qualified for the ...
The Government has confirmed its third major mental health facility upgrade since the Budget, this time at Palmerston North Hospital. The Prime Minister and Health Minister today visited MidCentral DHB to announce that $30 million has been allocated to upgrade its acute mental health facility. It follows earlier announcements in ...
The roll out of the National Bowel Screening Programme has reached the halfway mark, with 10 out of 20 District Health Boards now part of the programme. MidCentral DHB, which covers Palmerston North, Manawatu and surrounding districts, this week became the latest to DHB to offer free bowel screening to ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra Scott Morrison’s government is heading to the end of 2019 amid a debate about its economic judgement and with a number of substantial policy moves started but not completed. Morrison this week delivered to an ...
Newsroom's major investigations into Oranga Tamariki and a Fijian resort development have won us the award for best current affairs programme at the NZ TV awards. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Peter Christoff, Associate Professor, School of Geography, University of Melbourne A new United Nations report shows the world’s major fossil fuel producing countries, including Australia, plan to dig up far more coal, oil and gas than can be burned if the world ...
New Zealand First leader and Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters with Governor General Dame Patsy Reddy and Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern.New Zealand is officially one of the least corrupt countries in the world. But it could be argued that our political system is still biased in favour of the ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Scott Hamilton, Strategic Advisory Panel Member, Australian-German Energy Transition Hub, University of Melbourne The possibilities presented by hydrogen are the subject of excited discussion across the world – and across Australia’s political divide, notoriously at war over energy policy. Read more: Hydrogen ...
The Real Pod assembles to dissect the week in reality television and real life, with special thanks to Nando’s.We’re still buzzing after the rip-roaring success of the Corny Christmas party this week and we won’t even let a rogue earwig in the studio dampen our spirits. There’s a lot of exciting ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Heidi Norman, Professor, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, University of Technology Sydney Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers are advised this article contains images and names of deceased people.Review: Linear, Powerhouse Museum, Sydney The value of Australian First Peoples’ scientific ...
Sam Brooks reviews the latest generation of the Pokémon games which finally hits the big-ish screen.“I love Pokémon but I wish I could play it on my TV.”I’ve been playing Pokémon for 20 years and that’s been the main thing I’ve heard from my fellow Pokémon friends/fans. The games have been engrossing, ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Helen Dickinson, Professor, Public Service Research, UNSW National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) Minister Stuart Robert this month announced a number of “practical changes” to the scheme. Acknowledging the NDIS is not consistently living up to expectations, he said these improvements will put ...
The trustee of the New Zealand First Foundation and Winston Peters' personal lawyer has threatened a $30 million lawsuit against a National MP, in the latest twist of the donations scandal. ...
The Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) is a regional economic forum based in the Asia-Pacific Region. New Zealand will host APEC 2021 in November 2021, with related events running for a year from December 2020 until November 2021. ...
Business is Boring is a weekly podcast series presented by The Spinoff in association with Callaghan Innovation. Host Simon Pound speaks with innovators and commentators focused on the future of New Zealand. This week he talks to Dr Brian Ward of soft-tissue repair company Aroa.Dr Paul Callaghan, who inspired Callaghan ...
Emerging political leaders from 15 Pacific countries and territories will be in New Zealand next week to meet with one and other, and their New Zealand counterparts, to discuss major challenges and opportunities in the Pacific. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Anthony Billingsley, Senior Lecturer, School of Social Sciences, UNSW The small number of Australians being held in prison camps in northern Syria has been an ongoing, albeit low-level, challenge for the Australian government. There are believed to be eight Australian fighters for ...
Louise Mensch is set to hit New Zealand airwaves this evening. Who is this conspiracy theorist and what could she possibly be saying to Lisa Owen?Who is Louise Mensch?She’s a former Tory MP, founder of the Rupert Murdoch-funded “no safe spaces” website Heat Street, a romance novelist, and a conspiracy ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Dennis McNevin, Professor of Forensic Genetics, University of Technology Sydney Designer baby, anyone? A New Jersey startup company, Genomic Prediction, might be able to help you. Genomic Prediction claims to be able to use DNA testing to predict disease risk in an ...
Marion McLeod revels in the return of Olive Kitteridge, the compassionate curmudgeon who won Elizabeth Strout a Pulitzer Prize. It’s the year of the sequel: My Big Fat Greek Wedding 3, Toy Story 4, Rambo 5 … Do movies ever make it to double figures? Books and miniseries certainly do. Genre ...
National is questioning those in charge of the Provincial Growth Fund after it was revealed a NZ First-linked forestry company made an application to the fund, headed by NZ First MP Shane Jones. ...
James Borrowdale spent the last cricket season examining Neil Wagner and his unique approach to bowling. Today, in the first test of the Black Caps’ summer, Wagner returns.Neil Wagner has a wicket. He freezes mid-pitch, fists clenched at his side, knees slightly bent, a roar on his lips. His brows ...
A record volume of resales of units in its retirement villages has boosted Ryman's first half profit with the second half expected to be stronger than the first, the company says. ...
The main problem with HIV today is stigma – and it is almost entirely based on outdated information and fear, says Mark Fisher of HIV+ support organisation Body Positive ahead of the World AIDS Day Festival which opens in Auckland tomorrow.A person living with HIV on effective treatment cannot pass ...
The Department of Conservation (DOC) is hoping floating platforms will help to keep the chicks of a central Christchurch colony of critically endangered tarāpuka/black-billed gulls from drowning this breeding season. ...
The Foundation Against Islamophobia and Racism (FAIR) is a newly formed NZ-based independent Muslim human rights advocacy organisation. One of the key projects of FAIR is to provide a Report Islamophobia ( http://report.islamophobia. ) portal where ...
The Royal Commission held its fourth hui with the Muslim Community Reference Group in Christchurch this month as part of an ongoing discussion with Muslim communities. ...
The Spinoff presents the premiere of buzzed-about Auckland post-punk band Daffodils’ new music video ‘Boys’.Theo Spike Salmon says:I wrote ‘Boys’ two years ago, around the end of high school. We’ve revised stuff, and played around with slightly different structuring, but it’s honestly not changed much at all. When I wrote ...
A Waikato stud owner Garry Chittick reveals as a New Zealand First donor says he doesn't care how the money got to the party, as long as it was used to benefit it. ...
In the wake of Wellington City Councillors voting for a 28 per cent increase in their base salaries , the New Zealand Taxpayers’ Union is questioning Iona Pannett’s decision to take a second salary. Taxpayers’ Union Executive Director Jordan Williams ...
For nearly six years, Laura Giddey has been a permanent house sitter in Auckland. Here, she explains why she does it and how it’s changed her life for the better. It all began in December 2013. I had a friend whose husband was in the navy and was going away for ...
A Waikato stud owner revealed as a New Zealand First donor says he doesn't care how the money got there, as long as it was used to benefit the party. ...
The Point of Order Trough Monitor, programmed to alert us to ministerial handouts, nevertheless sounded the alarm when the latest Provincial Growth Fund spending was announced by a politician further down in the pecking order. Accordingly we have learned that the Provincial Growth Fund (PGF) has allocated $3.5 million to develop ...
Fonterra’s farmer shareholders might have been stung by pangs of envy as they looked into the next paddock, and discovered how another company in the same industry is racking up huge revenue gains from the same markets in which their co-op is competing. But A2 Milk, a company founded in ...
In the 1970s, agriculture made the largest single contribution to New Zealand’s economy, but other industries, especially services, have become more dominant in recent years, Stats NZ said today. ...
Government finance statistics (general government) gives an economic representation of New Zealand's central and local government financial activity. ...
The government should look at an unemployment insurance scheme and add new benefits to help support people who lose their jobs, the Productivity Commission suggests. ...
Today Hāpai Te Hauora’s Māori Public Health Team launches "Tobacco is Not Our whakapapa" a series of video clips which seeks to re-center whakapapa in the narrative of tobacco harm minimisation. ...
Editor’s Note: Here below is a list of the main issues currently under discussion in New Zealand and links to media coverage.New Zealand Parliament Buildings, Wellington, New Zealand.Today’s content by Dr Bryce Edwards.NZ First Matt Shand (Stuff): Who are the donors behind the NZ First Foundation? Matt ...
A leaked email from prominent share broking firm Forsyth Barr perpetuates a tediously old-fashioned idea of the way people think – and it isn’t even salvaged by wit or originality, writes business editor Maria Slade.Investment manager Forsyth Barr’s daily market commentary came with a seasonal extra on November 1. Atop ...
Newly released documents reveal Cabinet considered whether immigrants should be forced to take their elderly parents with them if they leave the country. ...
More than 640 letters in parcels filled with nonrecyclable single-use plastics have been mailed to MPs in Parliament via freepost since the plastic2parliament initiative started in mid-October. Another 125 plastic-stuffed letters were directed to National ...
Agrochemical company Ravensdown is risking potentially disruptive direct action by refusing to allow port workers to register their protest at the importing of Blood Phosphate from the Western Sahara, says the Rail and Maritime Transport Union (RMTU). ...
A few days ago, Fanimals announced it would not be returning for another season. Emily Writes, and her kids, are heartbroken.On my list of things I might write about one day it simply said ‘Fanimals’ sandwiched between ‘How old is BeckBroJack?’ and ‘Is Peter Krause the most dad-like dad on television?’I ...
Family First says that the trend to extend daycare times, and its role to be virtually de facto parents, is concerning, ignores the real needs of children, and reinforces the need for more support to be given to parents with young children. “Babies are ...
Donors to NZ First’s slush fund believed they were making political donations to the party itself in accordance with the law – especially as an NZ First MP organised some of the donations. ...
When the current coalition government was formed, there was some comment that this was perhaps New Zealand First's last chance at political redemption. The party's two previous stints in government had failed to last three years. The 1996-98 coalition ...
Newly released documents reveal the cabinet considered whether immigrants should be forced to take their elderly parents with them if they leave the country. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Gavin Rowell, Associate Professor in High Energy Astrophyics, University of Adelaide The brightest fireworks in the universe are called gamma-ray bursts and are created by the death throes of certain kinds of stars. These intense blasts release as much energy in one ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Peter McPhee, Emeritus professor, University of Melbourne We live in a world of violent challenges to the status quo, from Chile and Iraq to Hong Kong, Catalonia and the Extinction Rebellion. These protests are usually presented in the media simply as expressions ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Nicole Sadler, Associate Professor, Department of Psychiatry, University of Melbourne A career in the Australian Defence Force (ADF), or the armed forces in any country, can be rewarding, but also demanding. Challenges include the rigorous training, frequent moves, and maintaining social connections. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Aniko Blanka Toth, Postdoctoral Fellow, Macquarie University As the world grapples with an extinction crisis, our large mammals are among the most endangered. These threatened species – rhinos, pandas, tigers, polar bears and the like – greatly influence their ecosystems. So what ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Benjamin Nickl, Lecturer in International Comparative Literature and Translation Studies, University of Sydney In September, the Fair Work commission rejected an unfair dismissal claim by a BP worker who made a Downfall video meme about his boss. Fair Work called it “inappropriate ...
Good morning and welcome to The Bulletin. In today’s edition: Dozens of electorates will have boundary changes, Zespri launches legal action over special kiwifruit, and more tumbles out of NZ First Foundation.Dozens of electorates will see their boundaries change, and a whole new electorate will be created in Auckland, if ...
On a farm near Rotorua, breeding rams are having their methane-laced burps measured - so the next generation of lambs can be bred from climate-friendlier fathers. ...
Back from a freak injury, White Ferns quick bowler Lea Tahuhu continues to make the most of her "gift" as the world's fastest woman with a cricket ball ...
NZ phone companies and the government are setting up a system that will identify scam callers within hours and, they hope, stop them in their tracks, the Spinoff can reveal.We’ve all received them. The calls from strange corners of the world at odd times of the day. After I made ...
The process to appoint Steve Hansen looks increasingly like a farce as quality candidate after quality candidate rule themselves out. Was it all preordained, asks Jamie Wall.For an awful lot of 2019, I was one of the select few that sat in a room with Steve Hansen several times a ...
News that one big publisher wants to buy the other, giving the state a Kiwishare to avoid regulatory objections, complicates a media crisis the government hasn't yet addressed. ...
Open Mike 06/06/2017 
There are perennial arguments about the circumstances of the assassination of President Kennedy in 1963, and in particular whether more than one shooter is required by the evidence (such as the Zapruder film). Those who know little about physics frequently claim that the sharp backwards motion of JFK’s head as ...2 hours ago
Last week we learned that New Zealand First had apparently tried to enrich itself from public office, with a dodgy forestry company linked to a number of NZ First figures sticking its hand out repeatedly for government money. Today in Question Time Regional Economic Development Minister Shane Jones had his ...12 hours ago
22 hours ago
The Council of Disobedient Women has learned that the Prefect of Aro Valley has been promoted to a new role with the blessing of the Pope of Wellington. Softy Jejune Parson has been appointed Mother Superior of Woke Wellington for the work she has been doing calling out heretics, ...1 day ago
On both sides of the Atlantic, some purportedly “contentious” and “difficult to deal with” leadership contenders to lead the US and UK, as President and Prime Minister respectively, seem to have thrown a few spanners into the works of the normal messaging most are used to hearing constantly. Except they’re ...1 day ago
It has been revealed that firing ranges used by the NZDF while deployed to the Provincial Reconstruction Team (PRT) in Bamyan Province, Afghanistan, contained unexploded ordnance that caused numerous deaths and injuries after the NZDF withdrew the PRT in April 2013. In 2014 seven children were killed when an unidentified ...2 days ago
by Gearóid Ó Loingsigh Initially it was reported that in an aerial bombardment that took place on August 30th seven children were massacred; the figure then went up to eight and then on November 11th Noticias Uno reported that, according to people from the community in close proximity to the ...3 days ago
MediaWorks announced in October 2019 that it intended to sell off its struggling television business and cancel or cut back on several popular local programmes, including New Zealand Today, Married at First Sight New Zealand and 7 Days. Its radio and outdoor advertising arms are currently performing well, but MediaWorks’ ...4 days ago
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Some of the reasons the US military consistently and strongly advises the US government to get serious about climate change. And gets ignored, just like any other experts giving advice to those that don’t want to hear it.
https://www.vox.com/2017/6/5/15729426/paris-agreement-climate-change-military
One of the most destructive industries/businesses in the history of our species, whose essence is to destroy ‘things’ using land, sea and air … offers advice of climate change…
And you’ve posted the link, in support of that position…
Didn’t think through this one either, did you!
The ego self-interacts with sub-empirical spacetime events.
It appears that you’re the one who isn’t thinking.
One of the things that the military is worried about is that Climate Change will cause more wars and they don’t want that.
‘They don’t want that’
Don’t they…really..and how would you know?
Some of your comments are in the right direction, but this is not one of them…and you have missed the point completely….
The perverse use of an article in which one of the most polluting industry’s in human history, directly and indirectly responsible for greater environmental damage and destruction than any other…is ‘concerned’ about impacts climate change…
You’d think the military should be concerned about the contribution they make to ‘climate change’…Andre couldn’t make that association in his desperation to poke sticks at Trump….
Seems it went right by you, as well
The levels are dropping, lower!
Because they say so.
Interestingly enough, the US military is <a href="http://grist.org/climate-energy/why-the-military-is-trying-to-reduce-its-fossil-fuel-use/"doing quite a bit about reducing their reliance upon fossil fuels.
[citation needed]
The military is one of those ‘necessary evils’ that we need. That said the US uses theirs to maintain control over the rest of the world rather than as simple defence. This makes their reasons for preventing Climate Change immoral as it’s just to help them maintain their global control but at least they’re saying that Climate Change is a major issues and are working to prevent it.
[citation needed]
As is often the case, Wikipedia’s article is a good place to start.
Whether or not you’ll find comparative data is another matter entirely. Considering the impact of fossil fuels upon foreign policy (and its wars) I don’t think it’s a a particularly bold statement.
I think you are right One Too. It strikes me as another example of American Exceptualism. Even they can’t understand they are the biggest polluters , all they care about is Pax Americana, which means perpetual war.
Why would you trust or believe any military even around cc. They are big polluters, liars, uncaring, blissfully ignorant, living in denial even when the noises they make sound plausible – really, the military are EXACTLY like the rest of us.
Why would you trust them? Wrong question.
There are other good reasons to at least be aware of their perspective, especially in regards to threat analysis. After all, getting that wrong can mean significant personal cost.
Read the linked article marty. While I’m sure no-one here regards the US military as their favourite cuddle bunny, it isn’t reason to so lightly dismiss their strategic thinking.
WW2 as been described by some as the First Great Petroleum War … so many crucial tactical moments pivoted on access to fuel. If Rommel had won that last crucial battle at Ruweisat Ridge and made it to Cairo, closed the Mediterranean, and captured the Saudi oil fields it’s hard to overstate the impact. Or if the American’s were not able to pump so much oil domestically. Or how the Japanese lost the Pacific because their navy never had enough bunker oil. Any student of the military understands this.
In other documents the US military has clearly signalled cc as a global destabilisation threat.
So while it’s true they’re very much burdened into a legacy of gross over-dependence on oil, they’re not so stupid (as the rest of us are) to continue to deny how this potentially compromises their mission.
Im saying their thinking is based upon THEIR issues, agenda, objectives etc. So yes if fuel runs out, or a big storm occurs they won’t get to kill as many of the enemy as they want.
Amazing to me the ability of some to accept and bow down to authority just cos they are authorities. Humans are definately pack animals.
Oh and why do we need more evidence the shit has hit the fan. The military has bought all this up so they can maintain mission ability – the mission is what again?
Yes that sums it up. As I said these guys aren’t cuddly bunnies.
But the interesting thing here is that when you look at outfits like big insurers and the military whose operations are grounded in very hard reality … all the politicized climate denying bullshit melts away very quickly.
Yep and I agee we need to keep an eye on what they think and another eye on why they are saying what they are saying in the way that are saying it.
As an ex-military officer I concur with the sentiments expressed above. We have an on-going military situation in Syria which many have indicated is a result of the drought of 2006 onwards. The drought http://www.huffingtonpost.com/peter-h-gleick/water-and-conflict-in-syr_b_5404774.html (the worst in recorded history) lead to a severe shortage of grain in the region, with a resultant spike in food prices. The failure of the Assard Govt to respond to this crisis ended in the resultant civil conflict. Syria could be said to be one of the first Climate Wars. So to is the continual war in South Sudan. Both these areas are highly succeptable to climate change in a rapidly warming world.
That is one reason for military to be concerned wrt to AGW.
Another – from a Naval perspective – is Sea Level Rise. Naval ports and harbours (as are all ports world wide), are going to be serverly affected by SLR by the end of this century with the resulting loss of extensive infrastructure and damage caused by storm surges.
The military are exactly like the rest of us, only more so – with the worst aspects written larger.
The unexplainable fascinates infinite genes
Yes, wars have encouraged destructive technologies.
http://science.howstuffworks.com/war-drive-technological-advancement.htm
Yes Andre, you are right most western military forces are now factoring climate change in our strategic and tactical planning. I discussed this with Weka sometime ago in one of Weka posts.
Anyone know why most U.K. Election poll reporting leaves out the SNP?
I think because outside Scotland they have no impact.
But they’re a potential coalition or C and S partner for Labour, so being able to count all the seats is crucial.
A lot of that actually applies to the Globalist media machine’s onslaught against Trump.
[TheStandard: A moderator moved this comment to Open Mike as being off topic or irrelevant in the post it was made in. Be more careful in future.]
Nope. In fact it applies to all sources all the time. Thanks for displaying your bias though.
Of course you have no bias do you?
I merely pointed out the Globalist media beat up of a nationalist politician. Why does that make you so angry?
Of course I have bias, you silly person. Everyone does. That being so, I’m not particularly “angry” about it.
This “Globalist” (with a capital ‘G’) media you speak of, do they have anything to do with the UN, and its plan to take away your guns? Or is it George Soros? I get so confused. Where do HAARP fit in?
New series of investigations by RNZ journos on (pros and cons of) how Key/Nats’ government has shaped NZ. Today’s installment is on tourism:
“Brighter Future? Does tourism trump taonga?”
Basically, the answer is that the industry has increased tourism numbers, brought in more bizniz, but the downside is a threat to, and disregard of the consequences for the environment.
In short maximise short term dollars and bring in mostly minimum wages workers to satisfy the tourist demand, while polluting and degrading the environment for local communities and future generations…. and that’s not even touching the other issues of bottling water and selling land that was formerly used as parks, reserves and environmental areas, to put up more houses, more people, more cars, more pollution and higher prices, higher rates to pay for the infrastructure as the ponzi scheme continues….
I’m for tourism, but tourism designed around preserving the environment and creating satisfying local jobs for local people, sharing the experience of pure nature with tourists… not the other way around…
You can see the attraction that tourism holds for National. It’s cheap, easy to understand and the major costs can be put upon the taxpayers all of which makes it a nice earner for the owners who won’t have to do anything such as researching and developing new products.
Unfortunately, they didn’t really think about what the added numbers meant in terms of infrastructure and so didn’t plan it at all. We’re now seeing what happens when you follow National’s lack of planning and foresight.
The short-termism is also apparent in the implicit CC denial in the push to expand tourism. If/When tourists have to pay the real cost of their CO2 emissions – would they travel all this way and back?
CC is likely to create a pincer movement that will greatly damage mass tourism – on one hand the need to reduce CO2 emissions will make discretionary travel very expensive, and on the other, CC itself will wreck some of the scenic landscapes people are coming to see.
A third factor may be that larger, more frequent and more violent storms will produce enough accidents to make people feel that conventional passenger aircraft are not safe enough.
all good points. The problem in NZ that Natz in particular have caused is that much of our economy is based around short term and changing industries…. a quick look in the future would have foreseen having an economy around cows, tourism and construction is not lasting….. diversification was badly needed a decade ago.
Also tourism is changing about being a unique experience, just as the Natz are trying to commercialise it for short term profit (and not even profit much of the time) and going in the opposite direction.
If Natz were not so bad, you could laugh at them. Their obsession with oil exploration in the time of peak oil and sustainable energy, giving away water rights when water is predicted to be one of the most precious resources, have a low wage economy when countries like Norway do the opposite and invest in their countries future, importing young people apparently for our aging population crisis, but then allowing the aged parents to come too and get full welfare within a few years, investing in motorways when you have little public transport….
Passenger aircraft already fly well above any storms. Stronger and more violent storms are more likely to affect sea-going luxury passenger liners.
we don’t expect passengers to parachute in, do we?
No but then planes also have about an hour of spare flight time in case of storms so that they can also land outside of a storm’s radius.
Which raises the question of just how large storm radii, or how clustered, they can get in a +2degree climate.
And of course the risk isn’t really the chances of a divert, it’s the chances of a pilot or controller incorrectly deciding the line of “too tough to land or take off”. Which causes a lot of air accidents.
“Tourists are like dairy”…
http://www.radionz.co.nz/national/programmes/afternoons/audio/201846479/tourism-infrastructure-and-the-environment
A good long read from Chris Hedges on mass culture and herd mentality.
https://www.commondreams.org/views/2017/06/05/antonio-gramsci-and-battle-against-fascism
Tautoko, Tautoko Manga Mata 🙂
That’s an excellent article you’ve recommended, thanks. I found this paragraph:
“As these lies become transparent we are thrown into what Gramsci calls an interregnum—a time when the reigning ideology has lost efficacy but has yet to be replaced by a new one. “The crisis consists,” Gramsci wrote, “precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born, [and] in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear.” Hence political mutations such as Donald Trump, or in Gramsci’s time Mussolini.”
Interregnum. Interesting.
Robert – you may find this book of essays interesting as well. It was edited by the wonderful Morgan Godfrey and published last year.
http://bwb.co.nz/books/interregnum
Thank you very much, Karen.
Market forces take effect on an ideology. A use by date exists. Idealogy creates behaviours that amass waste, create reluctance to change, invite entrepreours to game, thus the potancy, force for good, orginial goals of the ideology is undermine. So how ironic that a ideology of pro-market forces should be undermined by market forces. Climate change, debt, social maliase, inevitable really that a creed of ignoring govt would pile up more fiscal, environmental, social waste so quickly and so hard to ignore.
The neo-libs were right, market forces would ridicule them into oblivion.
And hence my insistence that the policies that parliament work on should be voted upon by the people first, that businesses become cooperatives that aren’t owned by anyone and that all the resources of the national territory are owned by the people.
The people need to have power and not individuals.
An excellent article, thank you.
It repeats the familiar theme of the absolute requirement for independent autonomic critical thinking and awareness to safeguard society against evil forces (i.e. from our fellow humans). A theme that is also reminiscent of Hannah Arendt who argued that political action must be rooted in proper thinking and judgement.
What also caught my eye was in one of the comments:
I’ve heard this assertion many times, often in the context of politics and how people tend to vote and for whom.
I think it needs a minor ‘adjustment’ to:
People react from emotion and act from intellect
To be wholly human means that emotion and intellect work in concert and complement each other. And only then can we accomplish what Gramsci and Arendt envisioned and have a chance of freeing of the shackles imposed upon us by others and ‘normative’ society and thus ultimately by ourselves.
How to counter terrorism…
Canadians carry out acts of kindness to honor victim of London Bridge attack
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/jun/05/london-bridge-attack-christine-archibald-canada
Menstrual bleeding may have to be treated as a disability to get fair treatment for girl pupils with early age onset at 10, perhaps just a suitable receptacle for used product. The cost of the products is also beyond poor students’ parents budgets and some teachers are funding needy students who would otherwise stay home because being blood stained is so noticeable and embarrassing.
Amazingly this normal bodily process is not accepted by society or schools. Now it has become something public and a talking point instead of something private, the embarrassment needs to be pushed aside and action taken to assist these young girls entering womanhood.
The trend in western countries I think, is that onset will be at an earlier age than previously. Of course NZ has no information gathering about this, we don’t want to know about things apart from financial matters pertaining to the wealthy, their profit and investments.
Earlier onset of puberty in deprived households.
http://www.radionz.co.nz/national/programmes/morningreport/audio/201844930/early-puberty-linked-to-growing-up-in-poorer-homes
http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/92906575/early-puberty-linked-to-the-poverty-trap
Primary school ‘excludes’ girl with period
And how many people will complain about the government gathering such data as a breach of privacy?
It’s official, The Intercept must be working for the fake news media! Bigly!
Coincidentally…..
https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/federal-government-contractor-georgia-charged-removing-and-mailing-classified-materials-news
Ms Reality Winner should’ve done an Ed and bolted when she could.
This caught my attention this morning on RNZ. Abe Gray president of the ALCP is resigning to join the Opportunities Party.
Not sure how many from the ALCP will follow him.
Were Morgan to get over 5% this could be interesting.
How many votes from ALCP or current or new voters could vote for Morgan’s party?
How many votes does Morgan need to get to reach 5%?
100,000 votes i believe give or take
Pipe dream
whats top polling like? a lot of what he says i get, but with my voting record he probably doesn’t want my vote i seem to back losers every time.
best I’ve seen was 2% but that didn’t take into account margin of error. Myself, I think it’s going to waste important left wing votes. Not that cannabis people haven’t done that before. FFS, the Greens have a good cannabis policy.
TOP has good ideas, and their policies look good on the surface, but scratch the surface and what I find is an economist’s view of the world. They’re getting too many things wrong in the detail.
edit, sorry, should have said that I think most polls are showing TOP under 1%
My understanding was that ‘The Green Party’ originally courted the legalise vote because that was the 5% dealt with.
TOPs are apparently polling at 2% – which considering there is no campaign underway yet and they have no history…
As for supposed ‘wasted votes’. If everyone always operated by that yard-stick, nothing new would ever arise in the parliamentary system we have. Ever. However, ‘wasted’ votes pushing a party to 4.8% (say) sends a clear signal to all those who baulked that yes, they did actually have an option – and that they unfortunately chose to forego it “this time around”.
It also sends the message that having a 5% threshold is a stupid, undemocratic idea.
Curtailing democracy is why we have a 5% threshold.
Politicians and capitalists really don’t like it when the ‘common’ people have a say in their own governance.
Agree with both comments that the 5% should be dog tucker. Apart from anything else it would end the nonsense of people voting for “a lesser” because they fear that their 1/2 500 000th of a say in matters will be reduced to 1/∞.
MMP is much better than first past the post, more interesting as well.
True but our MMP can be improved and become even more democratic simply by removal of the threshold.
Threshhold i like, it provides some moderation against rampant democracy just as moderation does here. Everything needs some balance and I want some protection against the tunnel visioned, the narrow obssessives, the nutty dreamers, the ones who never reflect or look for their own faulty thinking and results – keep the threshhold, alter it around the edges perhaps reducing it to 4% only.
We need to make mistakes to learn from them. The threshold prevents that from happening and it also prevents us from changing a system that doesn’t actually work.
We have a system that propagates failure because it prevents us making the mistakes we need to grow and find solutions.
DTB
I am so impressed with your unshakeable belief in humanity and how well it will manage when it just gets the right system. You are a sentinel of fine human thought and goodwill. And I am sincere and probably embarrass you. But when you talk about threshholds being a barrier to learning, I think that there is a limit to what we want to learn now, and we have heaps we don’t face, so don’t deluge us with more, we’ll collapse and turn away, lose our mojos. Face it we people don’t learn from our mistakes, or the lesson doesn’t last beyond a few generations and then only if it is dished out regularly and rigidly along with the morning porridge.
We haven’t time to live through the evolution of any new great idea for humanity that requires us to rely on it and abandon every old sensible practice we have organised for ourselves. The bloody little backstabbers who come along with better ideas to replace existing ones are willing to abandon the work done on building a good-enough system, in favour of some super-duper one they are over-confident about – they give me the shits. Most of them will drift away as it fails to work and provide the needed outcomes, and only one determined old shit will continue, bemoaning that if only something different had been done then… Think of Roger Douglas, perfect example.
Work with what we have, tweak it so it flies in a reasonable stable way, and guard it against the revolutionaries who have a better idea that is being formulated as we speak. And watch your back – all workers for society aren’t the same, and don’t assume you know the pretensions of others and they are good, and check your own for practicality and principle. Be ready to control yourself and think around the situation when there might be need to abandon principles in emergencies.
There is so much PC talk as people shrink from looking at our present, and want the future to remain hazy where all problems will have been solved. You know, in 2080 when our pollution targets will all have been met and so on.
Essentially you’re just saying you don’t trust people to choose decent representatives. Don’t get me wrong, I detest representative ‘democracy’ because it’s a sham.
But there are degrees of undemocratic, and the 5% threshold reduces even the small degree of democracy that can be said to exist in a representative system.
Graig nearly got 5% in 2011.
Correction 2011 Conservative Party 2.65% of vote, 2014 3.7% of vote.
Shame he didn’t opt to support the Greens and urge his members to follow him.
I have concern about the frequent absence of thought about job creation and training and skill education in serving life purpose when discussing need for better social conditions for the future.
People kept isolated in poverty, with no job to fit themselves into society and fill their days, no wages, having to ask for extra when specially needy but probably denied, or even not able to be heard, never having much, with no future achievable goals, and getting anything mainly through theft – these will become a permanent sub-culture.
This rash of thefts will be the norm for all except the gated communities.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/the-press/news/92465179/students-restaurant-patrons-and-church-parishioners-hit-by-west-christchurch-breakins
any one who doesn’t grasp that a government has to actively make work (more now than ever ) is a fool who shouldn’t be in politics.
But people who have sucked into their pores the propaganda that business has to be the innovator find it hard to shake that off.
More propaganda from the Globalists.
I almost feel embarassed for Hillary when she narrates a story where blame lands everywhere except on her poor performance and the fact everyone hates her.
The Dems could have run with almost any other candidate and won, but no they had to go with their Globalist political dynasty heiress.
[TheStandard: A moderator moved this comment to Open Mike as being off topic or irrelevant in the post it was made in. Be more careful in future.]
[lprent: I meant to do this earlier, but got distracted by site issues. This comment was in a post that didn’t refer to Hillary Clinton at all. Your comment was the first comment and caused a major diversion away from the topic of the post. As you probably intended.
Just as you’d done earlier /open-mike-06062017/#comment-1337108
There is a rule against that and since you ignored my wee warning… Well I really like to train social fucktards (like you) about why that rule is there. Now you have to read instead of writing for a while. Watch the careful social behaviour that doesn’t step past moderators tolerances. And if you don’t like it, well just read the last paragraph of the about.
Banned for 4 weeks.
Read the policy about diverting from the author’s topic. ]
Ok then.
So The Intercept is working for Hillary? It sounds to me as though she’s controlling the Russians too 🙄
Except Clinton didnt say ‘blame lies elsewhere’- FAKE NEWS ALERT
““I take absolute personal responsibility,” Clinton said of her November defeat during a sit-down with CNN’s Christiane Amanpour at an event titled Women for Women International in New York. “I was the candidate, I was the person who was on the ballot. I am very aware of the challenges, the problems, the shortfalls that we had.”
Did we make mistakes? Oh course we did. Did I make mistakes? Oh my gosh, yes.”
Everybody hates her? Is that why she got got 3.5 million more primary votes than Sanders and almost 3 mill more votes than Trump ( but not in all the right places)
Could we just let it go that YOU hate her, not the american voters for whom you speak
Yeah total personal responsibility 🙄
I’m reminded of that sign that comes up during the classic Airplane movie “Unbelievable Bullshit”
Why do you even care what she does or doesn’t say? Seriously what’s the point?
Yeap she’s yesterdays news, move on people.
Why do I care? No idea why I should care about a major so called good political figure throwing out a big barrel of porkies. If you’re on the good side shouldn’t you be expecting rationality and integrity from your politicians, and from all the good media too? Or do you let it slide by because they’re against the most evil Trump/Russia and anything goes to stop the evil doers.
When they don’t get elected I forget about them -especially when they don’t deserve mentions.
Can we stop with the whole popular vote thing, it’s bloody useless and pointless bringing it up.
For the last 200 years the Democratic party knows how the election is won, and what it needs to be done to win it via the Electoral College system.
If you don’t understand how it works – here is an introduction.
https://www.britannica.com/topic/electoral-college
When people stop saying things like “everyone hates her” despite the objective evidence to the contrary, then I’m sure people will stop bringing up reality.
That is a equally silly statement as well – “everyone hates her”. But the other about the popular vote, is quite daft, and reaks of desperation.
Lets never forget she lost, and lost to on of the most despise politician in history.
No, there’s a difference between refuting stupid claims (like calling Trump “one of the most despised politicians in history”) and gnashing one’s teeth in despair. If you want to talk about American democracy, then the example of the Electoral College overruling the popular vote is relevant. If you want to say Clinton was universally hated, then the popular vote is also relevant.
But it wasn’t even the clintonists who raised her name in this thread. Maybe it’s sanders or trump supporters with buyers’ remorse who should learn to gtf over it.
How’s about you address the person you’re addressing by the things the person you’re addressing has said or claimed, as opposed to what others aside from the person you’re addressing has said or claimed?
Because otherwise, it’s just ‘picking fights’ for the hell of it. Which is boring.
I did. 808 made a claim about Clinton, I pointed out how it was factually incorrect, then Adam came in asking people to stop pointing out reality, so I responded to that request by saying why my comment was relevant rather than any “desperation”.
seems logical to me.
_____________________________________________________________________________
McFlock
____________________________________________________________________________
Not necessarily “hated” but by no means popular – even less so, it seems, than the Trumpet
Washington Post-ABC News Poll (April 17-20 2017)
Suggests Hillary Clinton would not win a rematch with Donald Trump.
Trump leading 43 to 40 percent on the question of who voters would pick if the election were held today.
96 percent of those who voted for Trump would do so again. Among Clinton voters, 85 percent said they would stand by their decision – with most of those who would not saying they’d either go with a third-party candidate or not vote at all.
Suffolk University poll (March 2017)
Is that result really surprising? Trump’s been president with daily coverage for for 5 months – a shitty president, but that still counts for something. Clinton hasn’t been doing a damned thing to raise her profile or defend herself in that time. Do you think trump would be anything more than a half-remembered joke if the outcome were reversed?
As 808 shows, memories about politics are often fleeting.
Your heroine is delusional:
“Hillary Clinton: ‘I take responsibility for every decision I made, but that’s not why I lost'”
http://www.cnbc.com/2017/05/31/hillary-clinton-speaks-at-code-conference-on-the-information-war.html
” Is that why she got got 3.5 million more primary votes than Sanders ”
#FAKE CAMPAIGN
She got more votes because she had her underlings at the DNC sabotaging Sanders – do you not remember the DNC president quitting and slithering over to war hawk Hillary’s campaign when Wikileaks exposed the DNC backstabbing?
Bernie supporters HATE her. They aren’t stupid.
“almost 3 mill more votes than Trump ( but not in all the right places)”
LOL, how does that make her not hated?
Could we just let it go that YOU just cant see what a failed politician Hillary is, but the US voters can?
Except the majority of US voters, who voted for her.
Your heroine had the entire state apparatus including the Media Party (#Fake News) trying to haul her rotten carcass across the finish line first. And failed spectacularly because she was such a hated figure.
You have to remember the US voters are corralled into a #Fake choice between two carefully screened globalist loyalists. Except this time it went terribly terribly wrong, lol.
So bragging about Hillary’s hollow “popular” vote is as delusional as her own inability to take any responsibility for her catastrophic failure.
If you believe that your idol has been some how “cheated” of the presidency then maybe you better go brush up on the humanist political philosophy underpinning the concept of democracy – you demonstrate a poor grasp of this subject.
Dude, I’ve never called her my heroine, I don’t believe that I’ve even gone so far to say she was “cheated” out of the presidency (although I have pointed out an inconsistency in the processes of a supposedly democratic nation, but hey, the UK is FPP, too). Those are your fixations.
I just point out when your hatred of clinton oversteps reality into comments about how “everyone hates her”. Classic projection. YOU hate her, fine, but tens of millions voted for her, and surely even a zealot like you would concede that it’s likely a chunk of those people liked her.
Why do I think your delusion is a big deal? Because it is a dodge. It means that people didn’t vote for trump, they just got given a horrible choice between trump and clinton, and bernie would have vanquished the trump dragon because his heart is pure.
The fact is bernie lost fairly.
Clinton lost fairly.
Trump won because he was the loudest voice in the chaotic start to an imperfect system, Fox loved him, and that gave him a certain cache amongst obsessive idiots, and normal people in politics didn’t know how to deal with someone who can insult the grieving parents of a dead US soldier, have multiple sexual assault allegations against him, and still go up in the polls.
Dukeofurl: “Everybody hates her? Is that why she got got 3.5 million more primary votes than Sanders and almost 3 mill more votes than Trump ( but not in all the right places)”
Oh yeah, lots of Americans just LOVE Clinton, don’t they? It was the blogosphere, and comments thereon, prior to the US election that first alerted me to the possibility that Clinton might just lose.
Saw this comment online a little while ago: ‘The thinking people in USA KNOW Russia had nothing to do with our elections! We hated Clinton and would have voted for an alligator if that was the only opponent to Clinton!” Ha! Think that alligator coulda been a contender…..
With regard to the popular vote, that’s not how elections are won in the US. As Clinton ought to have known. It didn’t matter a good goddamn how big a share of the popular vote she got: she needed the EC votes to win.That’s how the system works there; she and her team were evidently too incompetent to figure that out.
“It didn’t matter a good goddamn how big a share of the popular vote she got”
There is a graphic showing where Hillary won the popular vote across the USA. She only secured major urban centers with large populations of blacks, latinos and white hipster/cosmopolitan types. The vast swathe of “fly over country” was lost to Trump.
And the whole point of the Electoral College is to counter balance the urban population.
But if you run a campaign relying on Mylie Cyrus and Katie Perry beseeching unemployed Illinois steel workers to vote for you, its going to end badly.
So why have the FBI arrested the leaker 808?
@weka
re point england reserve/development enabling bill
Can I republish an article that appears in the Te Awa, which appeared in a green party magazine, but not online. The authours have given me their permission and at the very least would like to raise awareness on this issue.
Or should I just post it all in the comments?
It would be great if you would allow it as a guest post.tks
I’ll email you if that’s ok (I can get your email from the back end).
yep tks weka.
Amongst those receiving public acclaim I see a category … a Queen’s honour (knighthood) for services to my community.
Apparently opening a “healthy” American Burger chain in my community is a virtue.
Good.
Imam Abdullah Hasan
8 hrs ·
Over 130 Imams & Religious Leaders from diverse backgrounds refuse to perform the funeral prayer for London attackers in an unprecedented move
5 June 2017
Imams and religious leaders from across the country and a range of schools of thought have come together to issue a public statement condemning the recent terror attack in London and conveying their pain at the suffering of the victims and their families.
In an unprecedented move, they have not only refused to perform the traditional Islamic prayer for the terrorist – a ritual that is normally performed for every Muslim regardless of their actions – but also have called on others to do the same. They said:
“Consequently, and in light of other such ethical principles which are quintessential to Islam, we will not perform the traditional Islamic funeral prayer over the perpetrators and we also urge fellow imams and religious authorities to withdraw such a privilege. This is because such indefensible actions are completely at odds with the lofty teachings of Islam.”
For the full statement and list of signatories, see below.
An interesting statement. They’ve just declared that terrorists aren’t Islamic.
This is what needs to happen
plus
let us see CHRISTIAN leaders denouncing the making and SALE OF ARMS (conveniently called DEFENCE).
What is Christ-like about this? How can a good Christian reconcile the $110bn arms deal to Saudi Arabia who won’t be using these arms in their own country.
In UK the police are trying to find the bomb-maker for a terrorist incident.
USA and UK ARE also Bomb-makers!
Shouldn’t that be the “Performance artist known as Jonathan Pie”
Unfortunately some dont see it as only parody/satire
[TheStandard: A moderator moved this comment to Open Mike as being off topic or irrelevant in the post it was made in. Be more careful in future.]
Gotta love the British sense of humour,
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/jun/05/london-bridge-attack-brings-out-defiant-british-humour?CMP=share_btn_tw
NZ business and how it is treated by the business-friendly Gnashional government.
Rod Oram referred to the government undercutting NZ businesses that had been asked to develop forward-thinking plans by going to Amazon which is likely to be setting up a South Pacific office in Australia.
Tues 6 June Business commentator Rod Oram
Rod talks to Lynn Freeman about the severe lack of international carbon credits will require a big revamp of our Emissions Trading, the government signs up Amazon for a big cloud computing deal, to the great disappointment of NZ suppliers, and Spark drops plans for a venture capital fund with other major corporates.
business economy
about 1 hour ago
Business commentator Rod Oram
From Nine To Noon, about 1 hour ago
Listen duration 14′ :32″
http://www.radionz.co.nz/national/programmes/ninetonoon/audio/201846456/business-commentator-rod-oram
The US could well be using their Saudi proxies to undermine a Qatari regime that’s on speaking terms with Iran.
Note from the author: Events have happened faster than I imagined when I wrote this last week. Six Arab states have now cut diplomatic relations with Qatar. Its land borders with Saudi Arabia are closed and 85 percent of its imports are cut. A full siege is in place. This is no longer a “spat”. It is looking as if the object of this pre-planned campaign is regime change in Qatar.
http://www.middleeasteye.net/columns/why-saudi-rulers-need-foreign-approval-621030574
It would appear that Stephen Joyce is has become Associate Minister of Conservation by default..
“The Department of Conservation is being accused of failing in its conservation role after it made a neutral submission on a proposed West Coast coal mine.”
“DOC said both it and MBIE had an interest in the proposal and there was a cabinet directive to submit together when this occurred, which often resulted in a neutral submission.
Forest and Bird said the department seemed to have abdicated its advocacy role.
And pointed out the submission suggested minimising the damage to conservation values, yet DOC’s own experts said the site was of high value and was significant.
“The function of the department is to advocate for the protection, not advocate for the minimisation of the destruction”.
http://www.radionz.co.nz/news/national/332357/doc-issues-ambivalent-coal-mine-submission
A Stephen Fry, missed his wit on QI. This is nice piece from him, came up again when I opened YouTube – so thought would shear…
Electricity – minigrids – development.
https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/mini-grids-africa-electrification-by-strive-masiyiwa-and-richard-branson-2017-06
And remember we are basically a developing country relying on commodity farming, tourism, and overseas companies buying up special resources and anything clever we achieve.
Prescription to break the economic slowdown – raide the minimum wage. It uses what economic tools are left. What a good idea.
https://www.project-syndicate.org/onpoint/escaping-the-wage-trap-by-bill-emmott-2017-05
as Keynes famously said, when the facts change, I change my mind.
The main reason governments are leery of intervening in labor markets is bad memories of failed wage and price controls during the high-inflation 1970s. But a second, more current, reason is that businesses everywhere lobby them to keep out, arguing that competitiveness depends on cheap labor.
But it’s time to ignore the lobbies and take courage. Sometimes, raising the minimum wage really would risk killing employment. But today that looks unlikely, at least in countries where unemployment rates are now low. And we need more investment in new technology to raise productivity, not less. Raising minimum wages would help stimulate that investment, while boosting consumer demand.
Ah, but do facts change?
Or is it that we find out that what we thought was true was actually wrong?
That’s what penal rates are for. Instead of having the same people work more and more it encourages a) employment of more people and b) investment in new technology to boost productivity. The latter also being helped by depreciation rules.
“Lady Bronagh?” Sorry Bronagh that title is reserved for female members of the British Aristocracy who inherit the title.
Bronagh will be “Bronagh, Lady Key”
(Thanks Ruth Gardener, Ch Ch.)
The tale of the dictator’s daughter and her prince
Remind anyone of a particular NZ family?
Tillerson gets the fingers
http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/93382262/birdflipping-welcome-for-us-secretary-of-state-rex-tillerson-in-new-zealand
Something good to hear and see.
If you like Don McLean singing Vincent watch this youtube which is presented with a
backdrop of Van Gogh’s paintings – a beautifully presented video which honours the painter and the writer and singer well.