Open mike 14/08/2022

Written By: - Date published: 6:00 am, August 14th, 2022 - 32 comments
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For announcements, general discussion, whatever you choose.

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32 comments on “Open mike 14/08/2022 ”

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  2. joe90 2
    14 August 2022 at 9:18 am

    Seize their land, steal their children, expropriate their art and artifacts, erase their language and extinguish their culture. Sounds familiar.

    https://twitter.com/vamelina/status/1527956771620495360

    Karandeev said at a news briefing in the Ukrainian capital: “It’s typical Russian policy – destroying the native language, imposing their own rules for life.”

    He added: “101 libraries have lost a significant part of their collections, while a further 21 have lost everything, down to the last document,” the PAP news agency reported, citing the Suspilne website.

    Karandeev also said that Russian occupation authorities were “stripping libraries and schools of all books in the Ukrainian language.”

    https://www.polskieradio.pl/395/9766/Artykul/3018890,Russia-destroyed-over-100-libraries-in-Ukraine-officials

    .

    2,000 stolen artworks attest to Putin’s desire to erase a nation’s history – like so many despots before him

    Scythian treasure … A 4th century BC gold breastplate, currently still safe in the collection of the Kyiv-based National Museum of the History of Ukraine. Photograph: Efrem Lukatsky/AP

    […]

    To date, Russian forces have caused the destruction or severe damage of 250 museums and institutions in Ukraine. Twenty-five paintings by Ukrainian folk artist Maria Prymachenko were incinerated after the Museum of Local History in Ivankiv was hit by a missile. The Arkhip Kuindzhi museum in the besieged city of Mariupol was badly damaged by an airstrike that left paintings exposed to the elements, hanging on walls amid piles of rubble. The Cultural Heritage Monitoring Lab, run by the Virginia Museum of Natural History in association with the Smithsonian, has already logged more than 110 memorials destroyed by Russian weapons. But as well as destroying museums and galleries, Russian troops are accused of having stolen an estimated 2,000 artworks. In addition to the theft of the Scythian gold in Melitopol, in Mariupol a handwritten Torah scroll and a valuable gospel printed in Venice in 1811 were all have been taken.

    https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2022/may/27/ukraine-russia-looting-museums

  3. Ad 3
    14 August 2022 at 9:49 am

    It is very hard to see the world tilting away from a Russia-China-Iran axis after this war. In particular Russia and Iran appear to be working pretty hard on trade together in recent months:

    • Establishing Iranian trade centers in Moscow and joint economic zones;
    • Increasing passenger flights between Russia and Iran and other aviation cooperation;
    • *<a href=”https://en.mehrnews.com/news/189790/Iran-Russia-ink-cooperation-document-on-economy” rel=”nofollow ugc”
    • Increasing food exports to Russia; and
    • Increasing the use of the Kremlin’s Mir electronic payment system to replace the SWIFT financial transaction service, from which Russian banks were banned in response to the invasion.

    In case we wondered the uses of China's Belt and Road thing, part of it will enable transfer of goods from Russia to India via Iran's new transit corridor for the first time in July 2022.

    Iran's shipping allocates 300 containers for cargo to Russia| ILNA News Agency

    (for that link make sure you hit the translate button)

    For those countries already dependent on Russia, China or Iran, that is actually a remarkably large sphere of influence across Eurasia. All of them will tighten up together with the different sanction regimes against them.

    Check out the list of client states around them: Iraq, Belarus, Krgystan, Kazakhstan, Armenia, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Pakistan, Myanmar, Laos, Cambodia, North Korea.

    Didn't even have to get to the countries who survive on the Chinese economy like us.

    Sure NATO may well be strong and strengthening, but check out how clearly the other side is unifying ever deeper.
    (sorry some of the links have muddied in the formatting. Just worth googling Iran-Russia recent agreements)

  4. pat 4
    14 August 2022 at 11:07 am

    The power of positive thought?

    “When there is more certainty, they will re-enter the market, but over the next year or so we’ll see a collective focus on falling consent numbers. This will be a mild reality check for the home building sector, but it won’t be a horror show.”

    https://www.stuff.co.nz/life-style/homed/real-estate/129528399/is-the-residential-construction-sector-heading-for-a-crash

    • Poission 4.1
      14 August 2022 at 11:38 am

      Its more a managed retreat,with a lot of building cost reflecting over capacity.When it returns to a sustainable level ( within capacity constraints) metre rates will reflect their actual cost,not an excessive profit.

      The policy change by government for the interest rate deduction ( high density rentals with long tenure) will not make them more affordable as the costs increase with higher structures.

      Look at Christchurch with 46 hecatres of available land for housing in the 4 avenues,nearly all owned by the government ,the greatest land bank in a cbd.

      Central banks rationale is to reduce inflation by QT (incl interest rates) which is focused on the service economy and labour rates without productivity increases.

      There is no doubt interest rates will rise to dampen animal spirits.

      • pat 4.1.1
        14 August 2022 at 12:09 pm

        They (Gov/RBNZ) may wish a 'managed retreat', controlling one however is a little more difficult.

        The RBNZ may be happy to see a reallocation of labour away from the non tradable sector but that becomes problematic when the main sector impacted has been the basis of the economy (and credit growth) for so many years.

        No soft landing in the offing.

        • Poission 4.1.1.1
          14 August 2022 at 1:18 pm

          Reducing the builds in the main centres will reduce building costs,bringing in trades to pump up headcounts will not (it will increase inflation)

      • pat 4.1.2
        14 August 2022 at 12:44 pm

        You may have seen it already but an excellent analysis by Karen Karniol-Tambour at Interest.

        "With most energy sources being expandable only on a multi-year time horizon, and with inventories at historic lows, the market has been left with only one way to achieve a near-term equilibrium: a sharp increase in prices, resulting in lower aggregate demand. The new world of persistent energy shortages is thus stagflationary as well as regressive. While inflation rises, economic activity declines, because there is inadequate energy to fuel it. Without subsidies, lower-income people could be priced out of the energy market entirely, introducing a dangerous form of inequality."

        https://www.interest.co.nz/public-policy/117163/karen-karniol-tambour-shows-why-acute-energy-shortages-are-set-remain

        • Poission 4.1.2.1
          14 August 2022 at 1:33 pm

          The UK winter energy prices see an energy subsidy needed for 1/2 the population.France and Germany (as well as most of northern Europe) need subsidy for both Industry and households.

          The US (excluding failure states such as California) will still have significant baseline generation,although gas prices will move north for exports to debt laden Europe.

          Peak money will be the constraint for emerging markets as depreciating currencies along with high interest rates price them out of the energy markets.

          • pat 4.1.2.1.1
            14 August 2022 at 2:00 pm

            Energy dosnt equal electricity and regressive is both within and between economies.

            • Poission 4.1.2.1.1.1
              14 August 2022 at 6:16 pm

              Energy is former of the economy in full as Vaclav Smil argued.

              Smil’s Energy in Nature and Society: General Energetics of Complex Systems, more encyclopedia than argument, introduced the notion that all human activity—indeed, all human civilization—can be seen in energetic terms. Joules are the language of the universe. Everything we grow, build, illuminate, or set in motion can be measured by the energetic costs of doing so. This includes the narrow corner of the universe we call economics. “Economic activity” is just a fancy way to say “energy put to human use.” From this perspective fantastical wealth of the last two centuries was not caused or enabled by humanity’s expanding energy consumption—wealth is our energy consumption, just packaged in goods and services.

              https://scholars-stage.org/has-technological-progress-stalled/

              The other problem is that most of the technological advances came in the Gilded age around 1867-1914,The physics (theory and invention from 0-manufacture), in the last 30 years only improvement in transformation,

              • pat …
                14 August 2022 at 6:23 pm

                "From this perspective fantastical wealth of the last two centuries was not caused or enabled by humanity’s expanding energy consumption—wealth is our energy consumption, just packaged in goods and services."

                I take it this is your interpretation ?…I have yet to read the link but from the brief quote I would take the opposite meaning, the fantastical wealth (and population) has indeed been enabled by energy consumption.

                • pat …
                  14 August 2022 at 6:43 pm

                  I see it is a quote from the linked article.

                  It is a wrong statement ….or perhaps a pointless one.

                  The wealth is representative of energy extracted but not enabled by it?….that is a thought process that eludes me im afraid.

                  I think the period of the 60s/70s will be seen to have been significant for 2 reasons….the introduction of fiat and the end of easy cheap oil.

                • Poission …
                  14 August 2022 at 7:02 pm

                  Its a way of measuring the flow of energy through a system,and the subsequent metrics or transformation through efficiency such as Whites Law

                  1. Technology is an attempt to solve the problems of survival.
                  2. This attempt ultimately means capturing enough energy and diverting it for human needs.
                  3. Societies that capture more energy and use it more efficiently have an advantage over other societies.
                  4. Therefore, these different societies are more advanced in an evolutionary sense.

                  (the evolutionary sense is the ability to transform and fix the flow of energy not a technocrats utopia)

                  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White%27s_law

                  • pat …
                    14 August 2022 at 7:43 pm

                    K….I would say then that Whites expression at least makes sense, whereas Smil's does not (Smil's Wiki page is interesting)….capturing energy is becoming increasingly difficult and those with access will increasingly jealously guard it….and those without will increasingly seek it, while they can.

                    Not a recipe for a culturally advanced world.

  6. Jenny how to get there 6
    14 August 2022 at 12:29 pm

    Luckily New Zealand will never have any nuclear facilities that could be used against us by a hostile power. (Can't say the same about Australia).

    War Proves Nuclear Is Always A Weapon Featuring Kevin Kamps

    What do you call a nuclear energy source when it is bombarded during a war? A nuclear bomb…

    Nuclear Power is never safe. A Nuclear Power Plant being targeted in the Ukraine/Russian war proves that even the safest plants can find themselves in unsafe places.

    https://www.facebook.com/ThomHartmannProgram/videos/5217481125014735

  7. joe90 7
    14 August 2022 at 12:42 pm

    Bit late but Kissinger puts a bob on the other way.

    He says, however, that the die has now been cast. After the way Russia has behaved in Ukraine, “now I consider, one way or the other, formally or not, Ukraine has to be treated in the aftermath of this as a member of NATO.”

    https://archive.ph/vRDGA#selection-499.0-499.224 (wsj)

  8. Matiri 8
    14 August 2022 at 3:42 pm

    Classic Victor Billot on Uffindell:

    you must learn to torture serfs
    through the policy process

    https://www.newsroom.co.nz/an-ode-for-the-uffindell

  9. Populuxe1 9
    14 August 2022 at 6:07 pm

    I rather like this analysis of Russia's invasion of Ukraine in the context of colonial and imperial aggression. Full article: The Postcolonial Moment in Russia’s War Against Ukraine (tandfonline.com)

    • joe90 9.1
      14 August 2022 at 6:46 pm

      The least the onlookers can do is to learn to empathize better with the perspective of the murdered, and not of the murderers57 – politically, analytically and disciplinarily

      Looking at you, tankies.

  10. Chess Player 10
    14 August 2022 at 7:19 pm

    If I was the government, I would simply build an additional 100,000 houses over ten years and plant one billion trees. How come nobody has ever thought of simply doing those things?

    [You are now on notice for trolling, i.e., no more warnings, just instant bans (aka check) – Incognito]

  11. roblogic 11
    15 August 2022 at 12:05 am

    Transcription of Luxon detailing his intention to bash beneficiaries

    https://twitter.com/CateOwen/status/1558399172088590343?s=20&t=Oy_PNtrDXsp-cYOJCp_6FQ

    As Martyn Bradbury wrote in his inimitable style:

    That’s the kind of needless spite masquerading as tough love that get National Party supporters sexually aroused.

    They love this shit. The more punitive, the better.

    • Drowsy M. Kram 11.1
      15 August 2022 at 10:03 pm

      They love this shit. The more punitive, the better.

      QFT. Here’s Slane from 2013 – the ‘beating’ heart of NAct.