Open mike 12/12/2010
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6:00 am, December 12th, 2010 - 32 comments
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Ka nui te mihi kia koutou. Ka mihi ki te mana whenua ko Ngāti Whātua Ōrākei. Kia ora and good morning everyone. Thank you Fran and Simon for inviting me here today, and importantly your leadership of this forum over several years now. I want to acknowledge David Gehrenbeck, Deputy ...16 hours ago
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The server will be getting hardware changes this evening starting at 10pm NZDT.
The site will be off line for some hours.
So confirmation, via Wikileaks, of some things we pretty much knew:
John Key is more pro-US than Clark,
http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/4449699/WikiLeaks-Kiwi-leaks
Clark, but more so Key, renewed intelligence gathering co-operation with the US, but deliberately kept it secret from the public,
http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/4449695/US-cables-spill-beans-on-NZ-ties
Chris Finlayson and Don Brash were picked by the US as the most likely NZ MPs to help the US end NZ’s ban on nuclear-powered ships, the US aimed to use the carrot of free trade to get NZ to end the nuclear ban:
http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/4449698/US-tried-to-change-nukes-stand-in-2005
Awesome, a closer relationship with the USA, of couse people here would probably perfer, Iran, North Korea and China.
Im glad this national party doesnt have a chip of their shoulder or suffer from little brother syndrome.
Sean Brooks thinks It’ll be awesome to be close to a country that shows no compunction financing the child sex trade. Go team USA, world pimp and provider of boys.
Oh dear, always with the big bad america thing huh. This from a bunch of people who thought Paul Henry should say sorry to India. I’m done. see ya next time.
The US is the biggest and most powerful rogue state in the world – they do not follow international law. If they did then the entire Bush Administration would be behind bars for Crimes Against Humanity.
This is why people march for sanity.
Instead of chucking your toys out of the cot and running away Sean why not try and explain to me why I shouldn’t regard a country that has been caught with its pants down, and shown to conduct itself in a way that would make Big Tony proud, as anything other than a criminal enterprise.
I run away from Hypocrites. I cant be bothered dealing with them.
Hypocrites……who….where?..
Isn’t it interesting that the US of A has to rely on China to fund its day to day activities? And has done so for many years now?
There must be a historical lesson in this, somewhere.
Little brother sydrome is it exactly! Just sad…
Deb
I would like to express deep sympathy and hope for a full recovery to the policeman savagely assaulted in performing his duty near Taihape. It is a shocking indictment on our society that we can grow young men to whom such extreme violence is a normal manner of expression.
I am also hoping beyond hope that the reaction to the perpetrators of this appalling act is not a call to hang em high, to punish. Retribution only fosters more acts of this nature. So Judith and John, Wodders and you “sensible sentencing types” keep your psychotic reactions in check please as they are the mirror image of this foul deed. Dont confuse preventative measures for our safety with punishment please.
Thoughts with this Policeman’s family, lets hope he can make a full recovery.
The children of the world, Australia and NZ missed out of synopsis. Their health and welfare.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/11/opinion/11blow.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=a212
It’s not the end of the world, just the end of consumerism. We are about to wave goodbye to the dream of endless economic growth – always, every year, more stuff. However, we have enough already. We really do.
Dr Susan Krumdieck, an engineering professor at the University of Canterbury, addresses her audience with a smile. The message is radical, but she believes it will be good news once we have had time to get used to it.
A change is about to be forced on society because energy consumption pretty much is the economy. And we are about to run short of the cheap energy which has been driving the past century of unchecked economic expansion.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/the-press/lifestyle/mainlander/4448279/End-of-consumerism
We have much to be thankful for though although I’m sure that a lot of people won’t think so for awhile.
Just the end of consumerism….yeah right. It is going to be a lot more than that, huge dislocation of all the physical and organisational systems we take for granted to start with. I think the jorno and good Dr might be trying to avoid scaring the horses.
Good interview about book examining world past and possible future this morning, catch up with some great research and thinking about western and Chinese culture among other things. On RadioNz Chris Laidlaw interviewed Professor Ian Morris Stanford University. Great stuff for the thinkers and ponderers.
The podcast has been uploaded.
Worth listening as well to the Mediawatch piece about investigative journalism (also 60 Minutes will be scrapped).
http://www.radionz.co.nz/national/programmes/sunday
No, seriously, tell me what you *really* think about the capture of the Celtic Tiger:
I think John Key is right we should follow in the foot steps of the Celtic Tiger, drop our corporate and banking tax rates to nothing, become a centre was washing corporate money, enjoy 10 years of fake boom times before we hit a wall, 20% unemployment and have to be bought out by Australia/China at firesale rates, enslaving NZ children to pay off the debts to rich people in the process.
Wonderful documentary on Wikileaks – an hour long but definitely worth the watch.
http://svtplay.se/v/2264028/wikirebels_the_documentary
Nasa: 2010 Meteorological Year Warmest Ever.
According to NASA climatologist and Goddard director James Hansen, the main driver for the increased warmth was the Arctic, where temperatures in Hudson Bay were “10˚C above normal” for November
And the response from David Whitehouse of the GWPF, predictably, 2010: An Unexceptional El Nino Year
Meanwhile, Citing privacy concerns, Director Benny Peiser declined to reveal the sources of funding for the GWPF. Peiser said GWPF does not receive funding “from people with links to energy companies or from the companies themselves”
COIN is hard, etc.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/12/world/asia/12drugs.html?_r=1&hp
“The relationship between the United States government and Mr. Juma Khan is another illustration of how the war on drugs and the war on terrorism have sometimes collided, particularly in Afghanistan, where drug dealing, the insurgency and the government often overlap.”
umm, might there have been a typo there? collided? colluded?
I saw this item on Al Jazeera Newshour this morning on Trangle TV. It’s about a couple who own most of a small town in NZ’s Southern Alps – really a dying town because tourist trains tend to pass it by – don’t stop long enough to let tourists off. The owners of the town are retiring, so the town is up for sale:
http://english.aljazeera.net/video/asia-pacific/2010/12/201012119501342663.html
It’s a bit of a sad tale about how such places seem to be no longer viable places to live. But why is this bid for a buyer being promoted on AJ’s newshour?
Some depressing news from the latest Reid Research Poll I didnt think it possible that Goff could actually slip lower..
Duncan frakin Garner, did he have a National Pary lapel pin on when writing this?
No but he had “Im a smug redneck prick” written all over his face
This is not unexpected salsy. Remember it’s on the back of the Pike River disaster. Actually Phil Goff probably gave a lot more help and comfort to the relatives etc. than John Key did, but in Phil’s case it wasn’t in front of the TV cameras. And naturally Garner and Co. were not going to tell anyone.