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Open mike 08/06/2025

Written By: - Date published: 6:00 am, June 8th, 2025 - 44 comments
Categories: open mike - Tags:


Open mike is your post.

For announcements, general discussion, whatever you choose.

The usual rules of good behaviour apply (see the Policy).

Step up to the mike …

44 comments on “Open mike 08/06/2025 ”

  1. Mirela 1
    7 June 2025 at 11:59 pm

    My question is, who are those people? Are they working? Ever did? So basically why you all believe is normal for government to give food, shelter and everything to people who never contribute and never will. Build something where they have a room, food provided and that it.

    [SHOUTING deleted]

    [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.]

    Reply
    • weka 1.1
      8 June 2025 at 10:18 am

      if you want to take part in the conversation here you need to learn how things work. Read the Policy. Shouting and bigotry against poor people or those economically and politically coerced into not working, aren't going to get anywhere. This is a blog aligned with the labour movement. Dehumanising people like you just did isn't new, but it's sad that it's on the rise again.

      Reply
    • SPC 1.2
      8 June 2025 at 10:35 am

      More than food and shelter is expected of nation states that are signatories of the UN Declaration of Human Rights.

      https://www.amnesty.org/en/what-we-do/universal-declaration-of-human-rights/

      Build something where they have a room, food provided and that it.

      Those in prison also get clothing and access to a bathrooms/showers, gym, library and television.

      people who never contribute and never will

      A generalisation about whom? Based on what misconception?

      Reply
  2. Todays Posts 2
    8 June 2025 at 6:00 am

    Today's Posts (updated through the day):

    The Auckland Mayoralty

    Reply
  3. ianmac 3
    8 June 2025 at 10:42 am

    Just remembered the day that Key made a throat cutting gesture across the floor in an angry rejection of a Labour MPs position. Remember the outcry and the Privilege Committee Ruling? What!

    Reply
    • Anne 3.1
      8 June 2025 at 11:29 am

      A distressed individual was trying to jump off the balcony onto Opposition MPs. Key, for some unknown reason, decided it was a stunt organised by the Labour Parry and he made the throat slitting gesture to Phil Goff who was the leader at the time. I expect he later privately apologised to Goff, but he never publicly did so as far as I know. Not a good look.

      Reply
      • ianmac 3.1.1
        8 June 2025 at 11:47 am

        Was it more lethal than a pointed finger?

        Reply
        • Anne 3.1.1.1
          8 June 2025 at 1:53 pm

          I have watched that Haka clip many times and cannot see any pointed finger. What I did see however were two pointed fingers which fitted in with the Maori tradition where they flutter their fingers in quick succession. It probably has a special name in Maori.

          Seymour's claim they pointed a finger at him was fictitious. He used that traditional action to sow the seed of doubt in people's mind.

          God I loath him!

          Reply
          • SPC 3.1.1.1.1
            8 June 2025 at 2:55 pm

            AI says

            that what you describe is this

            The two pointed fingers that "flutter" or rapidly move in a traditional Māori tradition, especially within haka, are part of the wiri movement. Wiri is the term used to describe this trembling or quivering of the hands, often representing a spiritual connection to the natural world or a specific deity according to a Te Pā Tū article. Wiri can be a common action in many haka, symbolizing things like shimmering water, heat waves, or even the wind moving leaves.

            Also here.

            https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-meaning-of-the-fluttering-hand-movements-of-Maori-haka-dancers

            Reply
          • Obtrectator 3.1.1.1.2
            8 June 2025 at 11:54 pm

            So, no wonder the Committee of the Privileged didn't want anyone knowledgeable about tikanga being involved with their precious hearing!

            Reply
    • bwaghorn 3.2
      8 June 2025 at 5:18 pm

      Yip key did , nothing said or dine and not one reporter has mentioned it during this fiasco, fucking gutless owned weak bunch of skinless rock dwellers

      Reply
  4. Incognito 4
    8 June 2025 at 11:55 am

    Neal Curtis has penned a contra-neoliberalism polemic that’s excellent, in my opinion.

    I note this to introduce my central concern that economic policy, as has been the case for the last four decades, is dominated by the central myth (now axiomatic for almost every government) that all our ills will be solved if we keep giving as much money as possible to the rich.

    https://newsroom.co.nz/2025/06/08/lets-call-taxing-the-rich-what-it-really-is/

    My slogan would be:

    Rehabilitate the Rich

    Reply
    • aj 4.1
      8 June 2025 at 12:08 pm

      Jeffrey Sachs discusses the 'the virtues of selfishness' in this interesting discussion, where he brings together the commonality between Confucianism, Buddhism, Aristotle, Socrates, then the change wrought by Hobbes and Adam Smith, and the battle between mankind's fight between ethical virtues and our in-built selfish nature.

      We are still in a mindset in the western world where it is competition and struggle that is the absolute underpinning of society.

      I was never taught even one minute about perfect cooperation, the idea doesn't even exist in economics, the idea of cooperation as a norm doesn't exist.

      The notion of letting greed motivate action perhaps did generate the spirit of innovation to some extent, but the way that it was championed and taught led to the worst excesses. So the world became richer and those who were rich became devoid of benevolence and compassion.

      Ayn Rand, a popular philosopher among young people and among many politicians wrote a famous essay about the virtues of selfishness. So selfishness became a virtue.

      https://youtu.be/vV6g3BDhLvw?si=KFkHelCgnOmzYGcp

      Reply
      • Incognito 4.1.1
        8 June 2025 at 12:28 pm

        Thank you for the link.

        The arguments have been going back & forth for a long time indeed. And indeed, the prevailing Western dogma of establishment centres [no pun] on finding the sweet spot, the mythical optimum, and setting the dial between two opposing forces, e.g., more or less tax, etcetera. I think the way forward lies in acknowledging the existence of such forces, especially in human nature, and integrating this dualism to rise above it – we will never be able to escape it, but we can evolve through integration rather than simplistic Darwinian adaptation to ensure survival of the fittest.

        Reply
        • AB 4.1.1.1
          8 June 2025 at 3:33 pm

          acknowledging the existence of such forces, especially in human nature

          Yes, that for sure. But more than just in our nature. It is actually evidenced in our human past as we would all know if ethnologists and economic anthropologists were given the platforms to say so.

          The late Elinor Ostrom is groundbreaker in this area by (as I read it), taking real ethnolological research and turning it into models of actual human behaviour that could be carried over into the sphere of economics. This seems like a much better approach than what economists seem to do normally – invent a largely mythical rational, self-interested type of human because doing so helps them to mathematise their subject and look like scientists.

          Reply
          • Incognito 4.1.1.1.1
            8 June 2025 at 6:27 pm

            Thanks for bringing that angle into the conversation. I think there are risks with lifting theories & models from one context and applying them to another and often important assumptions, understandings, and relationships between factors tend to get lost ‘in translation’. A good example is the simplistic and outdated view of the human body as ‘a machine’.

            Reply
        • SPC 4.1.1.2
          8 June 2025 at 4:18 pm

          Just change economic ideology for history and go …

          Human beings have an emotional and psychological need to convert history into a science, for we have longed to have life and the world make sense. Yet, there are no general laws of history that can give precise measurement to human thought or action.

          https://theimaginativeconservative.org/2024/11/history-science-exposition-critique-mark-malvasi.html

          If that is your thing, there is this just out as a doctorate work, cited for being readable…

          Charles Darwin's science of history

          https://searchworks.stanford.edu/view/in00000441996

          Reply
          • Incognito 4.1.1.2.1
            8 June 2025 at 5:33 pm

            Yes, history, economics, and science are variations on a theme and human constructs. The point is that rather than explain & understand our thoughts & actions in merely descriptive manner, we should progress our learnings and evolve our learned behaviours. This is where particularly neoliberals and conservatives tend to stay stuck, by dogmatically clinging on to their ideologies.

            Reply
      • joe90 4.1.2
        8 June 2025 at 12:44 pm

        lol

        //

        Jeffrey Sachs gained notoriety for advocating and implementing what is now called “neoliberal” capitalist economics with a vengeance. Following in the footsteps of Milton Friedman’s “Chicago Boys” – who helped the dictator Augusto Pinochet in mid-1970s Chile starve workers and the poor for the greater glory of the “free market” – Sachs first made the spotlight as leader of the “Harvard Boys” who brought shock treatment economics to Bolivia in 1985.

        Determined to smash the combative tin miners who were the backbone of the Andean country’s radical labor movement, newly elected president Víctor Paz Estenssoro and his ally, former military dictator Hugo Banzer, put forward a “new economic policy” which – in the words of the standard history of U.S.-Bolivia relations – “had a certain ‘made in the USA’ stamp about it”:

        “Its primary architect was Jeffrey Sachs, a bright, brash, young Harvard professor whom the Los Angeles Times called ‘the Indiana Jones of economics.’ Its domestic manager was Planning Minister Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada, a businessman who had spent so much time in the United States that he spoke Spanish with an accent….

        “The social costs…were immense…. Paz passed the costs of stabilization on to the lower classes. In the new era [of neoliberal economics], Paz looked to Sachs and Machiavelli…. The statistical details roll by too quickly for an outsider to fully grasp the human costs. In 1986 the purchasing power of the average Bolivian was down 70 percent…. Unemployment reached 20-25 percent, and nearly all social welfare benefits to workers were swept away.”

        – Kenneth D. Lehman, Bolivia and the United States (1999)

        […]

        “This Man Is A Criminal Enemy of the Working Class”

        At an October 7 conference on “Defending Public Higher Ed,” organized by the Professional Staff Congress union of faculty staff at the City University of New York (CUNY), speaker after speaker praised the Occupy Wall Street protest, while a CUNY Internationalist Clubs activist warned that the protests are dominated by bourgeois populism. Minutes later the word spread that Sachs was speaking at OWS. Hastening to the square, Internationalist supporters saw Sachs, having finished his presentation, chatting with the crowd.

        A CUNY adjunct who teaches Latin American history and has written extensively on the struggles of Bolivian miners broke through the atmosphere of adulation to denounce Sachs: “What about Bolivia? What about the shock treatment you put into effect there? This man is a criminal enemy of the working class. He brought incalculable misery to the working people. He was the adviser to the presidents who unleashed bloody repression against the Bolivian miners, their wives and their families.”

        https://www.internationalist.org/jeffreysachsows1110.html

        Reply
        • Incognito 4.1.2.1
          8 June 2025 at 1:26 pm

          sigh

          This is nothing but shooting the messenger without addressing anything in aj’s comment and the discussion on YouTube.

          Reply
          • joe90 4.1.2.1.1
            8 June 2025 at 2:08 pm

            Tankie ignores the fact that the neo-liberal policy settings Sachs unleashed on millions were underpinned by competition, struggle, diktat, greed, and the virtue of selfishness, to wax lyrical about Sachs.

            lol is about as polite as I can be

            Reply
            • gsays 4.1.2.1.1.1
              8 June 2025 at 2:11 pm

              I assume you didn't look at the clip.
              He gives a timeline of philosophy and politics moving from ‘for all’ to the supremecy of of the individual.
              Neo-liberalism is an extension of that.

              Reply
              • joe90 …
                8 June 2025 at 2:47 pm

                I did. A context free (where,who?) grab-bag of references with 242 views and 1 comment on a channel with a hand full subscribers and little content that's been up for 11 years, pitched at what appears to be a Chinese audience.

                Reply
      • gsays 4.1.3
        8 June 2025 at 1:55 pm

        Chur. An interesting overview.

        Assuming Sach's take on Hobbes is correct, it is a fairly dim take on humanity.

        I'm firmly of the experience, that with cultivation of the higher virtues, experience of the universality (through meditation and ability to connect with and stay present) then Hobbes theory goes out the door.

        He cites Christ with 'Love thy neighbour as you love thyself'. I understand it more as a law. That you do love your neighbour as you love yourself. Like gravity, it doesn't matter if you believe it. This means whenever we speak, we reveal our heart.

        Hobbes and Smith appear to be reflecting this.

        Politic's and 'the market's' stain appear to influence philosophy.

        The concept of no theory of co-operation explains how 'deeply hippy' thinking sounds so unlikely and out of whack.

        Reply
    • Bearded Git 4.2
      8 June 2025 at 12:12 pm

      Yes the Curtis article is good.

      Rather than a Wealth Tax we could call it a Fair Wealth Share Tax.

      Anyone on TS got a better name along the same lines?

      Reply
    • Drowsy M. Kram 4.3
      8 June 2025 at 12:56 pm

      Rehabilitate the Rich

      yes But the rich have to want to be rehabilitated – to share the(ir) wealth.

      The Light Bulb Has to Want to Change [12 December 2012]
      Reflecting back on the joke about the psychologist and the light bulb, it may not be all that funny when considered as a metaphor for collaborative co-mentorship in schools. I think about that lonely psychologist sitting in the dark, wondering when a dead bulb will choose to change itself. This sad psychologist, sitting there with his (or her) advanced training and the ability not only to recognize that something is wrong with the situation, but to name it in great detail, to explain the processes required for change, to cite the theories and practices that indicate that doing so will bring light to a dim situation and how, continues to stare at the light bulb and wait…and wait…and…

      Reply
  5. SPC 5
    8 June 2025 at 11:57 am

    Fisking Damien Grant.

    Goff quotes the death toll, 54,000 killed, but neglects to mention that this is from the Hamas controlled Gaza Ministry of Health. Now. This doesn’t mean that the figure is wrong, we have little other data to work with, but Hamas has done enough to allow us to question their credibility.

    Given it is based on dead bodies and those under rubble are not counted, most reasonable people regard it as conservative.

    Hamas … failed to keep many of their hostages alive, with credible evidence that some were killed in captivity.

    And Israel killed some of the hostages in south Israel when taking out those who took them hostage.

    It has since effectively taken the entire population of Gaza hostage, via occupation and a series of forced evacuations into confined areas.

    but it is not reasonable to write, as Goff does, that: “Sadly, a country of people who were themselves long victims of oppression is now guilty of oppressing and committing genocide against others.”

    However, in common usage the term is understood to mean a deliberate attempt to destroy a people in whole or in part. What is happening in Gaza is a war. We should not conflate the two.

    The oppression goes beyond normal actions of war, they are crimes against humanity during war, war crimes.

    Which is not to claim that Israel should be immune from criticism. The blockade imposed since the ceasefire collapsed in March, ostensibly to compel the release of the remaining hostages, raises legitimate concerns about what appears to be collective punishment. There is also criticism on the level of collateral damage the IDF is willing to accept to achieve a military objective that has raised concerns in the west.

    Obviously cutting off food aid and fuel (some of which is used to power desalination to provide safe drinking water) to civilians for nearly 3 months is not an act of war. And it has gone from collective punishment of a population to a crime against humanity during a war, a war crime.

    This when combined with threats to force displacement out of Gaza of its population, ethnic cleansing, from members of the Israeli government (including its Security Minister) and the deliberate destruction of remaining housing by the IDF (including the family home of a doctor) is reason for international action to prevent Israel crossing the rubicon into pariah status.

    But this is part of a wider story; why is the conflict in Gaza so compelling? In adjacent Syria the death toll over a decade of civil war is an order of magnitude higher.

    It's been over as a civil war for years. The recent sudden overthrow of the former "regime" came after a long period of effective cease-fire (during which the defeat of Islamic State moderated the rebels).

    It was hard for anyone to mobilise consistent cause against the Syrian government fighting rebels (including al Qaeda in Syria) with Russian help, while USA was aiding the Iraq government fighting against rebels (first al Qaeda in Iraq and then Islamic State).

    Who in the West wanted the Islamic State to rule over Syria and Iraq?

    And all of this was after the West made a mess in Libya, after making a mess going into Iraq. Some people did however protest against that at the time.

    And why no mention of the constant expansion of Jewish settlement across the occupied West bank?

    In Yemen children have been starving and dying in vast numbers since war erupted in 2014 with little commentary, flotillas or protest marches in Times Square, Hyde Park or Aotea Square.

    The civil war there and the US backed Saudi Arabia bombing of the Houthi both ended years ago.

    Some people did protest the bombing of Yemen and the famine that was occurring.

    Equally, Vladimir Putin’s regime remains relatively free from condemnation and protest despite their frequent attacks on civilian infrastructure and ongoing invasion of its neighbour with heavy civilian and military casualties.

    Yet it is the State of Israel that remains the focus of consistent attention, held to impossible standards, misinformation and subject to a permanent campaign of vilification.

    The lesson of the last few years should have inoculated us against accepting something as truth based on the intensity of the feelings of those proposing it.

    The real issue is who opposes both the Russian ambition for Ukraine land and Israeli ambition for Palestinian land. The UN Charter was based on defence of all nation state borders.

    PS. Mr Grant has never been notable in any human rights cause in foreign policy, but the defence of Israel.

    https://breakingviewsnz.blogspot.com/2024/01/damien-grant-how-can-genocide-be-used.html

    Here his greater understanding of Putin's perspective on Ukraine.

    https://www.stuff.co.nz/opinion/301033398/everyones-truth-is-filtered-through-blinkers-of-their-place-in-the-world

    Something about mammon makes him and ACT weak at the knees in awe. Is it that those in charge of the US dollar, or the GOP at least, and ACT have a similar world view on Israel. It seems they are in the gated community order as are a murder of “right wing strongmen” crows that operate as a rentier cartel raiding corporate profit from the proletariat. All while posing a champion of populist nationalism (lock up and or expel or end provision for “the other” in need).

    Reply
  6. SPC 6
    8 June 2025 at 12:45 pm

    The proposed solution to building company management issues is not adding business training to apprenticeships, but

    1.company management courses for builders.

    2.companies specialising in management services for those setting up their own building team.

    https://www.1news.co.nz/2025/06/08/sector-leader-urges-overhaul-as-builders-face-mental-health-crisis/

    Reply
  7. SPC 7
    8 June 2025 at 1:04 pm

    The Muskelonite and Drumpster fire have moved on, their prime concerns met.

    One hopes he has rehabilitated himself with those who stopped buying Tesla's.

    And the other hopes that ends criticism of the extent of the Medicaid and Food stamps cuts, given Musk validated them by saying spending was not cut enough. Thus the "budget" legislation gets passed in the Senate.

    That there is bad stuff in the budget bill, that is unrelated to the budget itself, is getting overlooked.

    https://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/elon-musk-deletes-donald-trump-jeffrey-epstein-claim-amid-public-fallout/O67LRSSKNNETHBLOMXS7O55JME/

    Reply
  8. Muttonbird 8
    8 June 2025 at 1:40 pm

    This is all they've got now.

    Sending friendly business commentators to beg and plead 50-65s to bail out this reckless, incompetent government.

    In the most unstable and uncertain economic and social environment outside of war, Liam Dann wants people at the end of their careers, those who are being turfed out of jobs with little chance of rehire, to take on the burden of downturn and be as rash and impulsive as the government he defends:

    https://archive.is/u6D8G

    Reply
    • Drowsy M. Kram 8.1
      8 June 2025 at 2:42 pm

      These are the people who should be at the peak of their spending power.

      Those at the peak of their 'spending power' can still choose not to spend, thank planet.

      Reply
    • AB 8.2
      8 June 2025 at 4:05 pm

      They've done the things that their pseudo-religious economic zealotry tells them must result in growth: higher unemployment, lower taxes, lower wages, less regulatory burden for business. But the growth isn't there yet. So, either someone is to blame, or they haven't been tough enough or gone far enough. Look for the next step being that they double down and do it all again harder over the next 18 months, i.e. the 'unfinished business' delusion.

      Reply
  9. joe90 9
    8 June 2025 at 2:11 pm

    And they're off.

    .

    LOS ANGELES —

    President Donald Trump will deploy 2,000 members of the National Guard to Los Angeles after two days of clashes over immigration raids, the White House said on Saturday.

    “In recent days, violent mobs have attacked ICE Officers and Federal Law Enforcement Agents carrying out basic deportation operations in Los Angeles, California,” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said. Her statement alleged California’s “feckless Democrat leaders have completely abdicated their responsibility to protect their citizens.”

    https://www.kcra.com/article/president-trump-national-guard-la-gavin-newsom/65000613

    Reply
  11. PsyclingLeft.Always 11
    8 June 2025 at 7:29 pm

    Amongst all the notso good….here is someone with IMO, a Good heart. Would that we didnt need there to be, but I reckon Ashlee would reach out to many, and maybe make a big difference to some. Maybe for the first time in some cases…

    I have great respect and admiration for her : )

    From fine dining to feeding youth in need

    https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/563456/from-fine-dining-to-feeding-youth-in-need

    Reply
  12. georgecom 12
    8 June 2025 at 10:40 pm

    probably mentioned elsewhere however make a submission on david seymours grubby little regulations standards bill. Even if just a simple one, I made one today which was 3 paragraphs long. I opposed the bill because (1) it seeks to set in law the neo-liberal ideology of a party who represents 7% of voters (2) it ignores other principals such as environmental matters, the state provision of collective goods, state ownership of assets and TOW princiapals (3) if cutting government spending is so important Willis can make an easy win by canning this bill which will cost $20 million per annum rather than let seymour waste even more taxpayers money

    Reply

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