Open mike 11/11/2024

Written By: - Date published: 6:00 am, November 11th, 2024 - 66 comments
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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 …

66 comments on “Open mike 11/11/2024 ”

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  1. Morrissey 1
    11 November 2024 at 6:53 am

    Astonishing Development!

    Proof that Miracles DO Occur!!

    Britain's Sky TV has hired an honest reporter….

    https://x.com/LoveIntegrity9/status/1855346271109652528

    [text unbolded]

    • Dennis Frank 1.1
      11 November 2024 at 7:26 am

      If you equate honesty with truth-telling, I doubt she qualifies. To do so, she would have to tell her audience that Israelis & Palestinians are both semites, right?

      Semites is a term for an ethnic, cultural or racial group associated with people of the Middle East, including Arabs, Jews… https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semitic_people

      Nobody in the msm has done that yet, have they? Nor commentators here. The truth is, truth-telling is extremely unpopular most of the time.

      • SPC 1.1.1
        11 November 2024 at 12:21 pm

        Yes, but the historic term refers to relations between Europeans and Jews.

        It could be also used for Arab Palestinians and other ME Arabs (North Africans not so much except they are associated with the Arab Semites by language and religion), but generally that is a sub-set of European racism towards Moslems in general (includes Africans and Asians). A wider group, not European in their race and cultural origin.

    • Nic the NZer 1.2
      11 November 2024 at 7:42 am

      Kick Israeli clubs out of the Europa league.

    • Jenny 1.3
      11 November 2024 at 8:58 am

      Sky News goes full Orwell, reinvents the ‘Memory Hole’

      When Orwell wrote '1984', the majority the news was still delivered in newspapers and magazines. So George Orwell envisaged a fictional Ministry of Truth with printing presses, to reprint old headlines and news reports, and furnaces in the basement to burn headlines and news reports the state wanted re-edited, to better support the states propaganda narrative of the day.
      George Orwell's eponymous hero Winston Smith was an employee at the Ministry of truth where his job is to rewrite headlines and news reports and put the original printed news reports in to what Orwell called a 'memory hole' a chute beside his desk which whipped the original stories to be deleted to the basement furnaces. This fictional cumbersome process has been streamlined.

      George Orwell predicted interactive video screens that spied on you and even an AI that monitored you. But he didn't quiet foresee a time when information technology was fully digital Where Headlines and news stories could be erased and re edited and published with just a few key strokes and the touch of a button.

      In 1948 when George Orwell wrote, '1984', despite its its title which should have dated it and condemned it to obscurity, '1984' became timeless. It could have been titled '2024'.

  2. Dennis Frank 2
    11 November 2024 at 7:36 am

    Lux twists & turns in the media spotlight:

    In the latest episode of 30 with Guyon Espiner, Prime Minister Christopher Luxon acknowledged using “corporate speak” after referring to voters as “customers”… “I need to work harder on this corporate speak"

    Precisely. He needs to be trained to identify them as consumers. Its a core tenet of neoliberalism, so his prep has been defective. Get it right, lad!

    New Zealand is currently 38th out of 38 countries in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) for attracting capital investment, and bringing in a CGT “doesn’t make sense” with regard to improving on that, he said.

    He didn't get to the point: "The economy is not about fairness". To scrape neoliberalism up off the floor in Aotearoa, folks must consume more crap.

    https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/pm-christopher-luxon-admits-he-needs-to-work-harder-on-corporate-speak-after-customers-reference/2TZAGFSSRBC4BNGG6PLAVWBKEE/

  3. Koina 3
    11 November 2024 at 8:10 am

    11th hour 11th day 11th month.

    The war to end all wars.

    A war where there were no victors.

    Everybody lost.

    The rise of Hitler. The holocaust.

    Britain and France destroyed by 1940.

    Russia then invaded 20 million dead then Germany destroyed

    Europeans fighting wars over and over for a thousand years.

    Russia and the USA still fighting 80 years later.

    Gaza the result of European invasion post WW1

    NZ rushing off to European wars which had nothing to do with thePacific.

    And NZ involvement made zero difference. All lives lost for no gain.

    Utter stupidity.

    At the going down of the sun and in the morning we will remember

    mans ability to prioritize ego, pride and mindless Nationalism over anything else.

  4. Dennis Frank 4
    11 November 2024 at 8:29 am

    Damian Grant examines how principled the Greens are nowadays. When the Greens ate Marama's dead rat, it

    seemed an acceptable compromise, if you accept that politics is about deciding what is more important in the moment.

    Pragmatic adaption to circumstance enables survival. That's the moral of the story of evolution, as preached by St Charles the Darwin. Becoming adaptive rather than ideological enabled them to scramble up out of the hole Fitzsimons & Donald dug them into years earlier. Damian explores Green hypocrisy, then

    Swarbrick, in 2017, told those assembled to hear her first words to then House, “If I can accomplish one thing during my time here, if I can change one thing, I want to change people’s awareness of what politics really is, because if we can change that, everything else can change.”

    https://www.stuff.co.nz/politics/360479570/damien-grant-green-partys-u-turn-mp-dismissal-challenges-its-core-principles

    Right on! Damian ends on the note of realism in her leadership style, yet fails to make the evolutionary point that being adaptive is the path to political success.

    As I explained onsite here at the time, the Greens needed to integrate the principle of the social contract between MP & voters. The morality of waka-jumping hinges on why folks voted the way they did to enable representation (via list or locality), and the party share is reduced by the waka-jump. Seems clear to me that the Greens still only vaguely grasp this principle, but they finally did the right thing anyway. Social contract theory has been widely discussed for several centuries. Their excuse is that teachers and professors remain too stupid to include it in the education system. Ignorance is bliss.

    • Adrian 4.1
      11 November 2024 at 11:40 am

      No surprises that Grant is on the side of the fraudsters.

    • Obtrectator 4.2
      11 November 2024 at 12:56 pm

      When the Greens adopted those core principles, it was to safeguard an MP's entitlement to disagree about policy. They did not envisage the future arrival in their ranks of someone of apparently dubious character, who gave every appearance of gaming the system for their personal benefit, and whose continued presence was a distracting embarrassment.

      I'd have a little more respect for Mr Grant if his spellings were more accurate or consistent. For his information it's RoD Donald, NapoleOn, and only one "m" in Jeanette's last name.

      • alwyn 4.2.1
        11 November 2024 at 1:36 pm

        The article has Fitzsimon's name three times. Two of them have a single m and one has two. That is pretty good for something in Stuff. I wouldn't look at the spelling within any Stuff article as being the responsibility of the author.

        Stuff gave up on having sub-editors or proof readers years ago. Far too expensive I would think.

    • Ad 4.3
      11 November 2024 at 1:09 pm

      Political principles are vastly overrated and Swarbrick should be praised for sustaining 12-14% of the vote preference AND maintaining her party together AND rolling on the party-hopping legislation AND multiple mishaps.

      They are well positioned for breaking into 15-18% in 2026 and Swarbrick is the one to get them there.

    • SPC 4.4
      11 November 2024 at 1:12 pm

      He falsely claims Tana was elected to office.

      The wake jumping law has real import as to electorate MP's, who are elected to office.

      In missing the key determination, parliamentary tradition and its continuance in the MMP framework, he became irrelevant in much of his column.

      The Greens standing by parliamentary tradition is noble – but in some irony they have greater freedom to act as a list party, otherwise.

      Another MP resigned over their retail behaviour, here Tana has offended the retail politics of the party brand. One they were elected on.

  5. gsays 5
    11 November 2024 at 8:47 am

    So, today when RNZ has the political pundits on, there is a fulsome declaration of interests.

    Rightly so.

    However when RNZ has a professor of banking on, no such info.

    Banks don't ever get voted out and depending on who you ask, have a major negative impact on Aotearoa balance sheets

    Professor used to imply a neutral stance. I know one of the mouthpieces used to be the manager of our local Westpac. Their input rarely varies, defending banks, scaremongering over any reform…

    I would like to know if they have any banking interests – shares, directorships etc

  6. Dennis Frank 6
    11 November 2024 at 8:50 am

    Epic troll here? https://www.foxnews.com/politics/trump-teases-bailing-out-harris-campaign-debts-for-sake-of-unity-in-latest-troll

    The Harris-Walz campaign is reportedly $20 million in debt, having raised more than $1 billion and had $118 million in the bank as of Oct. 16, according to Politico reporter Christopher Cadelago.

    In the name of unity, or more likely in an epic troll, Trump says people should chip in and bail out the vice president’s campaign.

    The cynic may think so but why not take it at face value? Incoming presidents always posture around uniting the nation. Trump doing left/right solidarity makes sense.

    Whatever we can do to help them during this difficult period, I would strongly recommend we, as a Party and for the sake of desperately needed UNITY, do.

    See here he borrows the classic leftist linguistic style so loved by new-agers: speaking in capital letters so thickos can get the point. No better way to bridge the left & right than that, huh? Also using ethos, to share common values. Whatta guy!

  7. Muttonbird 7
    11 November 2024 at 8:54 am

    Luxton is such a coward:

    Govt bars journalist from abuse apology at Parliament

    Ministers citing concerns over the style and manner of a reporter’s questioning have convinced Parliament’s Speaker to withhold accreditation for when the Crown says sorry

    https://newsroom.co.nz/2024/11/11/govt-bars-journalist-from-abuse-apology-at-parliament/

    • Macro 7.1
      11 November 2024 at 9:20 am

      This surely is the most mean spirited and unscrupulous government NZ has had to suffer in decades.

      • Anne 7.1.1
        11 November 2024 at 11:46 am

        The Muldoon government between 1975 and 1984 had much to answer for, but their enablers of the day did a grand cover-up job for Muldoon in particular.

        The 28th Nov, 2024 marks the 45th anniversary of the Erebus tragedy. It is time the truth about the aftermath of that disaster also got an airing. It was another disgraceful, unscrupulous and criminal cover-up job.

        The name of the game is to avoid admitting the offences in the first place and if that fails, limiting monetary reparation to an absolute minimum. If they can make a complainant go away and be too frightened to return – all the better.

        • Maurice 7.1.1.1
          11 November 2024 at 12:04 pm

          The Mahon Report on the Erebus tragedy summed political expediency so well.

          "I am forced reluctantly to say that I had to listen to an orchestrated litany of lies.” (Paragraph 377).

          • Anne 7.1.1.1.1
            11 November 2024 at 12:20 pm

            Yes. But it was more than just lies. There was criminal activity Mahon would not have been aware of at the time. I was one of those targeted because of my knowledge of an individual associated with the cover-up.

        • tWig 7.1.1.2
          11 November 2024 at 4:44 pm

          That retroactive legislation we've seen is straight from Muldoon's playbook. Muldoon passed no-fault divorce legislation, to be back-dated, when he was threatened personally with being named as co-respondent in a Wellington local's divorce. All completely hidden by the press of the day, but well-known in Wellington gossip.

    • satty 7.2
      11 November 2024 at 9:31 am

      An apology not heard by the abused – I guess they're not all present in Parliament and not having a gigantic Zoom call – is not giving an apology at all.

      • Kay 7.2.1
        11 November 2024 at 10:17 am

        A lot of abused by the State aren't even worth of any sort of apology it seems. Been waiting for one since 2002 following the publication of a report that was commissioned by Helen Clark's government to show how much they cared.

        No acknowledgement/apology = no compensation costs on the crown. Most of us never even wanted compensation, just the former.

    • adam 7.3
      11 November 2024 at 11:07 am

      Filthy.

      Seems the racism that underpinned the whole coverup of abuse in care, is being embraced again by national party.

    • Incognito 7.4
      11 November 2024 at 11:34 am

      It’s all about optics, which is why King Christopher and his court want to distance themselves as much as possible from this thorn in their thigh, and similar to the political circus of grandstanding by the ring-master David Seymour who says he’d consider meeting with hīkoi organisers.

      Aaron Smale is effectively penalised and banned without warning, which is neither fair nor accountable but completely consistent with the other actions for this neo-authoritarian coalition government, especially against independent critics who dare to publicise evidence-based criticism instead of manipulative crap evidence.

    • SPC 7.5
      11 November 2024 at 12:49 pm

      If Trump had done this, it would be world news. This is stooping to Muldoonist era style intimidation of media.

      The reason appears obvious, there was a cover up and the journalist has exposed part of it. More is not yet known, including the cover up being an on-going one.

      The work around.

      https://www.icij.org/

      And write a book about it.

      Most of the public remain unaware that Crown Law had a part in this.

      What Mahon and Cooke would have said would have been a literate and judicial expression of contempt at the injustice, in all its phases.

  8. Dennis Frank 8
    11 November 2024 at 9:57 am

    Greens get radical via a liminal play: https://www.1news.co.nz/2024/11/08/greens-copyright-parody-and-satire-bill-to-be-debated-in-parliament/

    The Green Party's Copyright (Parody and Satire) Amendment Bill was pulled from the ballot on Friday. It will allow people to use a copyright work for parody or satire, such as memes. Green Party MP Kahurangi Carter said Kiwis were known for their love of spoofs, parodies and dark humour. "Satire is more than a joke – it's also a way of making sense of the world when sometimes it can feel dark and heavy," said Carter.

    The boundary between sense & nonsense is liminal. Playing there, on that boundary, induces cognitive shifts. You can get mass traction doing that!

    "This Bill protects artists' right to freedom of speech, and in doing so helps protect our democracy." Humour was essential to a thriving democracy, and parody and satire played a critical role in public discourse, she said. "If it passes, big companies won't be able to sue artists for being cool and funny."

    Corporate suppression of personal opinion works via the law. Lawyers act as agents of the control system, which is why they always struggle to attain public respect. Denial of a sense of humour extends to the education system: it uses science to brainwash everyone to believe that there are only 5 senses, so the sense of humour isn't real.

    If you believe it is real, tell every teacher and professor you meet to stop being such a loser. It will traumatise them when confronted with the truth, so watch them retreat into denial. They will take time to heal. The truth gestates within awhile before you can get it out there, but they will eventually become human.

  9. Subliminal 9
    11 November 2024 at 11:02 am

    It can be difficut to understand the degree to which the Hannibal directive has become main stream in Israel. Almost at the flick of a switch, the captured or even potentially captive, become Amalek. Tainted. Of course, it can be harder for relatives to flick that switch but not always. The Electronic Intifada has documented the willingness of a father to assent to the slaughter of his young daughter if captured. He talked about this to a reporter in her presence. They have also documented the killing frenzy created by the Hannibal directive on Oct 7.

    We now have Yedioth Ahronoth publishing a story detailing papers written by ultra right religious MK fruitcakes that set out the appropriate acceptence of the death of remaining hostages under the same conditions as those imposed on Palestinians. The Hannibal directive is intimately tied to the logic of genocide. Captives can not be allowed to come between it's continuation. Nor can any form of ceasefire since the illusion of a war against Hamas is the best cover for the ongoing slaughter of Palestinians.

    https://thecradle.co/articles/israeli-ministers-want-issue-of-captives-in-gaza-to-be-solved-naturally-and-tragically-report

    • Dennis Frank 9.1
      11 November 2024 at 11:15 am

      Just an extension of realpolitik. The UN supports hegemony via international law in accord with the principle of state sovereignty. That principle prevails via recognition from other states. It's a collegial global regime thing.

      The Israeli govt is doing this traditional fundamentalism just like all the other top global players. Rules of the game. Re hostages, trad spirituality rationalises making them expendable. Sure, it's not humanitarian or compassionate, but those dimensions don't rule at the top. Nor are they explicitly incorporated into democracy. They're incidental in function, rather than structural in the system.

      Just like empires used the masses as cannon fodder, religions use them as martyrs. Extremely traditional mass psychology prevails in the middle east, which is why arab fanatics are averse to civilised behaviour. Macho ethos rules both sides.

      • Subliminal 9.1.1
        11 November 2024 at 11:39 am

        Thats about the most pathetic and weasel worded platitudes in acceptence of genocide that Ive ever read.

        Hiding behind the facade of "real politik" does not excuse it.

        • Dennis Frank 9.1.1.1
          11 November 2024 at 11:50 am

          So you misinterpreted what I wrote – that's fairly normal onsite here. The possibility of trying to excuse Israeli genocide has never occurred to me. I was simply pointing to why it happens. You could try to comprehend that.

          The first step to a balanced overview is to balance the genocide perpetrated by both sides in the conflict. Are you trying to suggest you are incapable of that?

          • Incognito 9.1.1.1.1
            11 November 2024 at 12:09 pm

            A cynic may say that you come here only to jump on your high horse patronising the shit out of others, preferably lefties, to then ride off sanctimoniously into the sunset.

          • gsays 9.1.1.1.2
            11 November 2024 at 12:11 pm

            I was with you until:

            "balance the genocide perpetrated by both sides in the conflict. "

            What genocide perpetrated by the Palestinians?

            • Dennis Frank 9.1.1.1.2.1
              11 November 2024 at 1:11 pm

              The Israeli folks the hostage-takers killed. Death counts establish the Israelis are guilty of over-kill in retaliation for that, but the tit-for-tat thing is parity in principle because it motivates the masses to polarise them in perpetuity. I saw a poll a while back on the ratio of Palestinians favouring the 2-state solution and was quite perturbed by the amount that didn't (still clinging to the old wipe-out Israel stance).

          • Subliminal 9.1.1.1.3
            11 November 2024 at 12:12 pm

            You do understand that Israel could not take a single breath without the day to day military and financial support of the US? And that perhaps this is the real reason for the current barbarity in the Middle East?? Rather than your victim blaming of the "barbarity" of the indigenous populations?

            You would have slotted in well with the upper crust in the colonisation process of North America

            • Dennis Frank 9.1.1.1.3.1
              11 November 2024 at 1:14 pm

              Of course I'm aware of that. I believe the real reason lies in mass psychology: neither bunch of semites wants to abandon traditional warfare to adopt peaceful co-existence as a problem-solving strategy.

              Victim blaming cuts both ways, but anyone who retaliates with violence when they have a pathway to peace in front of them as an option deserves blame.

              • Subliminal …
                11 November 2024 at 3:36 pm

                I'm not sure what your views are on Te Tiriti but would you expect Maori to capitulate to David Seymours idea of "the path to peace"? Because these are the only types of "paths to peace" that Palestinians have been offered even though they breach their guaranteed rights to self determination.

                And what of Palestinians attempts to protest peacefully in their right of return marches? The UN has documented Israeli snipers deliberately targeting the kneecaps, chests and heads of unarmed protesters (including tetraplegics,press, medics and very small children) at distances where they could not pose any threat and from behind a very solid fence?? Your portrayal of "both sides" just shows your ignorance.

                If you confine a population to be born into, live through and die in the hopelessness of what has been described by numerous people including genocidal Israelis as a concentration camp and then whine when they shoot a few sky rockets or fly some burning kites or make a jail break then all that can be said is that you are complicit in their oppression

                • Dennis Frank …
                  11 November 2024 at 4:36 pm

                  Well Te Tiriti is a social contract, effectively. I'm open to the possibility that it can be reframed for the 21st century but think Seymour's approach to that is moronic. Technically, Te Tiriti is akin to a treaty between nations, but it was novel at the time due to being between crown & iwi.

                  Making any analogy to the middle east seems too much of a stretch but I do share your scepticism re any realism in whatever 2-state pathways have been used so far. Could be that yank designs of that have been so compromised by yanks being unable to grasp relevant principles that the polarised semites couldn't deem them credible.

                  Yeah, I mostly agree re Israeli oppression of Palestinians but that's no excuse for desperate violence in my opinion. If you believe their violence is justified, but lack the guts to say so, that would explain your pathetic attempt to pretend that I'm ignorant, right? And I can't be complicit in their oppression when I don't approve of it.

                  • Subliminal …
                    11 November 2024 at 6:39 pm

                    To set the record straight. I absolutely believe their violence is justified. Any entity wilfully driven to despair by violent oppression is justified in their resort to violence. It is recognised in law as well. The oppression of a women by a man in a relationship with a man that drives her to violence against him may be so great that she is spared even prison. Violence against the military of an occupier in an occupied state is legal. I understand and accept that in order to release some of the many, many Palestinians held in arbitrary detention, tortured and raped, may resort to kidnapping Israeli civilians to exchange for those kidnapped from the Gaza concentration camp

                    • Dennis Frank …
                      11 November 2024 at 6:50 pm

                      Okay, I get where you're coming from. I became non-violent in '64, age 14, but if I was in that situation I would be morphed into fighting back too, I suspect. There's a point at which morality in the abstract must yield to morality on the ground…

                      So thanks for rising to the challenge. You deserve respect for doing so. I guess your point re "recognised in law" refers to the right of self-defence, and I acknowledge that too.

              • Obtrectator …
                11 November 2024 at 3:49 pm

                War – for some – is more fun than peace. It justifies all kinds of vile practices in the name of "the cause". The extremists on either side need each other – to justify what they're doing – more than they need their own (often involuntary) supporters.

                • Subliminal …
                  11 November 2024 at 5:02 pm

                  War is a very convenient term for Israel to describe what is happening in Gaza. It allows them to manipulate numbers in extraordinary ways.

                  They can claim 1 000 of the civilians crushed and burned by 2000kg bombs as Hamas and then make the absurd claim that they are the most moral army in the world since their ratio of deaths civilian:military is in the range of 1 to 1.5

                  But how exactly would they know? They certainly dont go in to sort the dead in the rubble. Many of the dead are collected in bags of 70kg bits and pieces. Many disappear in the heat of thermobaric munitions or white phophorous.

                  The telling point in the Israeli narrative is the death toll in the IDF. It is less than 1 per day through the whole sorry saga.

                  The South African application to the ICJ did not mention Hamas nor "war" because the IDF death toll points to the absolute insignificance of the resistance element to the Gaza genocide. They made their case on the observation that what is happening is not war. It is anhilation. It is properly called a genocide. Israel is following the logic of genocide not war

                  This is not war. It is anhilation. It is genocide

                  • Dennis Frank …
                    11 November 2024 at 6:30 pm

                    Yes, you have described very well the view that I myself had formed since the initial massacre by the other side. yes

              • adam …
                11 November 2024 at 7:30 pm

                FFS Dennis have you not heard of the great march of return, or the Oslo accords. Both times peaceful and attempts at co-existence. Only to be burnt to the ground by the IDF and a insane Zionist government lead by an equally insane PM.

        • Incognito 9.1.1.2
          11 November 2024 at 12:07 pm

          Publication is neither agreement nor endorsement necessarily although one expects a good faith commenter to express their opinion here and argue for it to stimulate robust debate.

    • tWig 9.2
      11 November 2024 at 4:47 pm

      Plenty of stuff in the old testament about men sacrificing their womenfolk to save themselves. have to wonder whether he would say the same if it were a son taken hostage.

      • Nic the NZer 9.2.1
        11 November 2024 at 5:18 pm

        Thomas Hand was not present during October 7th. As his own testimony indicates the belief that his daughter was better off killed rather than captured was predicated on what he believed was to occur during her captivity. It's hard to see any reason he would justify it differently considering a son, rather than a daughter.

        There is also testimony of a woman who survived a helicopter attack on the vehicle taking her to Gaza (other hostages and fighters were killed). Post her release she claims to have wished that the helicopter had returned once again and finished the attack (yes, killing her), which I read as a way to skirt part of Israeli society which found hostage negotiations got in the way of their preferred objective.

        There is something strange going on in Israeli society where a supposedly secret military murder-suicide doctrine (supposedly applying to military personal) is widely known, expected and supposedly welcomed by the general public.

  10. Dennis Frank 10
    11 November 2024 at 2:07 pm

    Trump does end-run around the lame duck:

    President-elect Trump spoke with Russian leader Vladimir Putin on Thursday and warned him not to escalate the fighting in Ukraine, according to a source briefed on the call. Why it matters: Trump said publicly that he is going to end the war in Ukraine and use his personal relationship with Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in order to get a peace deal. The source said Trump's message to Putin was roughly: "Don't escalate because I have weapons too." While the call wasn't made public by either Trump or Putin, the president-elect notified Zelensky that it had taken place.

    https://www.axios.com/2024/11/10/trump-putin-russia-ukraine-war-call

    He spoke to Zelensky with Elon Musk the day before (Weds) so his follow-up to Z was courtesy diplomacy. Dude seems on the ball for a change.

    • SPC 10.1
      11 November 2024 at 2:37 pm

      It's Biden's job to say no more weapons to Israel, if they do not cease-fire to allow aid in the period to Jan 20.

      His own policy on Russia-Ukraine in that period should be to state attacks on power supply in winter is unacceptable, as it is on food being transported.

      The issue of syncronisation (with Trump) is enabling wider use of limited use "weapons" otherwise.

      • Dennis Frank 10.1.1
        11 November 2024 at 3:35 pm

        Yeah but any consensus between Trump & Biden on strategy would make the news so I think we can deem it fortuitous if it can be seen in retrospect. My take is that T is firing a shot across P's bow because he wants to go down in history as the peacemaker in the situation & is seeking to pre-empt P taking advantage of the transition period by escalating again…

  11. SPC 11
    11 November 2024 at 4:35 pm

    From border control hotel sentry work to managing boot camps … the domestication continues. What next, for hire contracts to manage airport and or prison security?

    https://www.stuff.co.nz/politics/360481688/workforce-crisis-real-reasons-defence-force-didnt-want-run-boot-camps

    • tWig 11.1
      11 November 2024 at 4:49 pm

      Good article, and a ton-load of good reasons from the DF. The government wanted to do it so they could have boot camps on the cheap.

  12. joe90 12
    11 November 2024 at 6:06 pm

    Carol Cadwalladr;

    A new era dawns. America’s tech bros now strut their stuff in the corridors of power

    […]

    In hindsight, 2016 was the beginning of the beginning. And 2024 is the end of that beginning and the start of something much, much worse.

    It began as a tear in the information space, a dawning realisation that the world as we knew it – stable, fixed by facts, balustraded by evidence – was now a rip in the fabric of reality. And the turbulence that Trump is about to unleash – alongside pain and cruelty and hardship – is possible because that’s where we already live: in information chaos.

    It’s exactly eight years since we realised there were invisible undercurrents flowing beneath the surface of our world. Or perhaps I should talk for myself here. It was when I realised. A week before the 2016 US presidential election, I spotted a weird constellation of events and googled “tech disruption” + “democracy”, found not a single hit and pitched a piece to my editor.

    https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/nov/11/a-new-era-dawns-americas-tech-bros-now-strut-their-stuff-in-the-corridors-of-power