Open mike 07/12/2024

Written By: - Date published: 6:00 am, December 7th, 2024 - 25 comments
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25 comments on “Open mike 07/12/2024 ”

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  1. SPC 1
    7 December 2024 at 6:23 am

    When it is obvious that the direction is wrong, it is time for a change.

    We are obviously not reaching growth targets, so Young has to open with Latham and Conway drops down the order to keep.

    Three years of losses is too much. Two and no more, NZ First.

    • Bearded Git 1.1
      7 December 2024 at 7:25 pm

      Conway has to go…just replace him with Young. Santner in for Southee too.

      Latham isn't the best captain-somebody else should take the reins.

  2. Ad 2
    7 December 2024 at 6:29 am

    Huge shoutout to all the nurses standing strong against this government right now.

    • Patricia Bremner 2.1
      7 December 2024 at 10:44 am

      Agree Ad. In this political climate it is also brave. Health and Te Tiriti will be the nemesis of this Government imo.

  3. Barfly 3
    7 December 2024 at 7:21 am

    Excitement in Romania the first round of the Presidential elections has been annulled. They are having a redo ! Romania's Constitutional Court for the save ! Apologies for no link am a tech Luddite on a phone not my trusty PC.

    Edit: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c7vee5n5lp0o

    [link added, for convenience; HT to SPC @ 4 – Incognito]

    • Ad 3.1
      7 December 2024 at 7:50 am

      Once Russia gets hooks into Romania proper, it will politically reassert in Moldova, after that Ukraine is almost an island in a broad Russian bloc.

      So much hangs on a knife-edge and Russia appears to be using the US electoral interregnum to its fullest.

  5. Dennis Frank 5
    7 December 2024 at 8:13 am

    Waste not, want not. China's play the other day, forbidding exports to the USA of rare earth metals, now seems irrelevant:

    Scientists analyzed coal ash from power plants across the United States and found it could contain up to 11 million tons of rare earth elements — nearly eight times the amount the US has in domestic reserves — worth around $8.4 billion, according to recent research led by the University of Texas at Austin. https://edition.cnn.com/2024/12/06/climate/coal-ash-rare-earth-elements/index.html

    These so-called rare earths are a cluster of metallic elements, with names like scandium, neodymium and yttrium, which exist in the Earth’s core. They have a critical role in clean technology, including electric vehicles, solar panels and wind turbines.

    Prospects for the US economy derive from this unsatisfactory current situation:

    US supply remains small. Its only large scale rare earths mine is Mountain Pass in California. The country currently imports more than 95% of its rare earth elements, the vast majority of which come from China…

    Around 70 million tons of coal ash is produced each year in the US. “There’s huge volumes of this stuff all over the country. And the upfront process of extracting… is already taken care of for us,” said Davin Bagdonas, a study co-author and research scientist at the University of Wyoming.

  6. Stephen D 6
    7 December 2024 at 8:17 am

    Democratic backsliding. Aotearoa is not immune.

    https://newsroom.co.nz/2024/12/07/amid-doubt-and-uncertainty-democracy-slips/

    “Consider the Fast-Track Approvals Bill. Proponents argue it will streamline significant developments as part of the wider RMA reforms. Opponents claim that giving individual ministers a final say without the checks from some previous legislation and sufficient consultations with iwi will produce undemocratic outcomes.

    The Government backtracked on parts of the Bill to instead give an expert panel rather than ministers the final say. But, since the expert panel remains government-chosen, there is still ambiguity about its lasting impact on our democratic practice.

    The Treaty Principles Bill is similar. Critics argue its principles are redefined in an undemocratic way, reducing commitments to Māori and undermining the Treaty. Supporters, meanwhile, suggest that the Bill promotes democracy by making the principles concrete therefore avoiding what they believe are unequal obligations.

    [Block-quote added to make clearer that it was all quoted text from the link – Incognito]

    • mpledger 6.1
      7 December 2024 at 9:59 am

      The "expert" panel just means if things go wrong then it doesn't track back to the minister. The minister can pre-pick the panel then when things go wrong s/he can just say "it wasn't my decision".

    • Bearded Git 6.2
      7 December 2024 at 7:27 pm

      Fast-track processes are a disaster and completely unnecessary. There is a reason we have always had district plans.

  7. Hunter Thompson II 7
    7 December 2024 at 9:59 am

    The government has announced a $3 million handout of taxpayer funds for the purpose of investigating whether the Ruataniwha dam proposal in Hawkes Bay should be revived.

    The scheme has already been turned down in the courts (with a sneaky effort to resuscitate it rejected by the Supreme Court later on, thanks to the efforts of Forest & Bird Society).

    Once again, we see a few seeking private profit at the expense of the environment and the taxpayer.

  8. adam 8
    7 December 2024 at 10:13 am

    WOW American liberals are just so dumb – mind you they are quite right wing.

    Someone should remind Reti that this is the future of his under funding health.

  9. Dennis Frank 9
    7 December 2024 at 10:33 am

    Western civilisation evolved into the hybrid of capitalism & democracy we currently use in the 19th century, and now exemplifies it extremely well. Of the prospective cabinet valuations here (18) most are billionaires, with the least valuable being worth only $100 million: https://www.axios.com/2024/12/06/trump-billionaires-cabinet-elon-musk

    • "We have to reduce spending to live within our means," Musk – whose PAC spent nearly $200 million to help Trump get elected – declared days before the election.
    • "And, you know, that necessarily involves some temporary hardship, but it will ensure long-term prosperity," the world's richest man added.

    He's right. One must hoard wealth, not spend it, if one wants to prosper. Austerity requires self-discipline – yet not as much as asceticism. Using monks as role models is too traditional – one must be moderate as per neolib doctrine. Whether this thinking continues to entrain leftists as much as it has done the past 4 decades is moot though.

  10. joe90 10
    7 December 2024 at 12:39 pm

    More revisionism from Poots – Stalin's victims were guilty!

    //

    Vladimir Putin's Russia has coined a new word: "derehabilitation." The closure of the Gulag History Museum in Moscow on November 14 – and the removal announced on December 3 of the Solovetsky Stone "in memory of the millions of victims of the Soviet totalitarian regime" from Lubyanka Square, the historic headquarters of the KGB in the heart of the capital – have confirmed what the Russian prosecutor's office has been slowly accomplishing over the past two years. Since the second half of 2022, it has examined some 14,000 cases of the rehabilitation of victims of Soviet repression and canceled more than 4,000 of them.

    https://www.lemonde.fr/en/international/article/2024/12/05/kremlin-seeks-to-erase-the-memory-of-soviet-repression_6735220_4.html

    edit:

    The Prosecutor General’s Office will return to Soviet repressions
    Rehabilitation decisions will be sent for review

    The Prosecutor General’s Office intends to work “on a permanent basis” to cancel the rehabilitation of victims of Soviet political repression. The agency claims that its goal is to prevent “the acquittal of Nazi collaborators and traitors to the Motherland.” The head of the Presidential Council for Human Rights, Valery Fadeyev, approves of the initiative, but does not understand how it will be technically implemented, since “it will be necessary to look at millions of names.”

    https://www-kommersant-ru.translate.goog/doc/7050311?_x_tr_sl=ru&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en&_x_tr_pto=wapp

    • Morrissey 10.1
      7 December 2024 at 1:02 pm

      … the Gulag History Museum in Moscow …. the Solovetsky Stone "in memory of the millions of victims of the Soviet totalitarian regime" from Lubyanka Square, the historic headquarters of the KGB in the heart of the capital…

      When will a museum in Washington D.C. dedicated to the tens of millions of victims of U.S. and British repression from Indonesia to Chile to Yemen (and more than a hundred other countries) be established? How long do you think the likes of "Bides" or "Obes" or "Trumps" or "Clints" would tolerate its presence?

      • joe90 10.1.1
        7 December 2024 at 1:06 pm

        8=✊=D💦💦

        • Morrissey 10.1.1.1
          8 December 2024 at 2:29 pm

          Failure to answer two pertinent questions. Interesting. By the way, you should preface nearly every post you make with that witty little emojistic message. It's an appropriate stand-in for most of your content.

  11. Joe90 11
    7 December 2024 at 11:49 pm

    Doesn't sound good for Assad.

    .

    عاجل

    @AlArabiya_Brk

    وزير الخارجية الإيراني: لا يمكن التنبؤ بمصير الرئيس السوري #العربية_عاجل

    Translated from Arabic by

    Iranian Foreign Minister: The fate of the Syrian president cannot be predicted

    https://x.com/AlArabiya_Brk/status/1865137269486612931