Conference Invitation
People who are in, or can get to Wellington on the weekend of 9 & 10 October – 3 weeks away would enjoy Information, ethics and the public good.
Conference info at http://bit.ly/whocanwetrust
The mini-conference will be held at St Andrews on the Terrace church and conference centre. It follows on from one held last year titled democracy, ethics and the public good when Sandra Grey, Bronwyn Hayward and Jane Kelsey were amongst the speakers. 2014 Conference report
This years conference has come directly out of the recommendations of last years which were that the lack of reliable information and problems with information flows to and from the media were amongst the most important challenges to NZ’s democracy. Like last year the focus is as much on participation as listening.
If you’d like to support this but can’t come you can donate to help us cover the costs of videoing, facilitation and some of the speakers travel costs.
The conference is part of the programme of lectures and seminars put on by the St Andrews Trust for the Study of Religion and Society and also Public Good whose kaupapa is to defend strong public services and a good quality democracy.
Jan Rivers
Thanks for the heads up on that conference. I hope you will get good numbers and help with donations. It is good that there are meetings for thought and discussion in other places than Auckland. I hope people will be able to go. You can get cheap hotels in the weekends in Wellington when the political tide is out. Myself I have another project on just now but will try to get to Wellington from Nelson. There are lots of airlines available for from here to there now.
It would be lovely to meet you. I’m sure we can find places to stay in Welly for anyone coming from out of town, We’ll be videoing parts of the conference as per last year. To get a sense of what happened last year here’s a href=”http://www.publicgood.org.nz/wp/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/Democracy-conference-summary.pdf” title=”summary report “ with links to video presentations by Jane Kelsey, Bronwyn Hayward, Lloyd Geering and Michael Macaulay and Sandra Grey and Charles Sedgwick’s report on their research on NGOs amongst others.
Anyone’s who’s needs somewhere to stay can text or email the address on the public good website – http://www.publicgood.org.nz
There’s a couple of feel good stories on rural delivery this am (will be on tv1 delay at 8) one’s a young orchard grower that employs local and pays a living wage the other one is for Draco T B about growing pine nuts on hard country.
Noms Pine nuts! A crop we should be growing instead of importing the korean ones. Theres many years wait before the tree is mature enough to harvest, but those little beauties are worth the wait. Once you’ve had a NZ grown pine nut you’ll never go back.
Buy NZ grown walnuts too. Support our local growers (lots of walnuts come from Canterbury) and wow yourself with their superior taste and freshness
Is the show about pine nuts on tvnz on demand?
Sometimes country calendar has good news shows about sustainable agricultural and cropping practices. Nice antidote to the horror stories about pollution, unsustainable irrigation and farmed animal cruelty.
Thank you Robert. I missed that show. I’ve watched a few minutes and put it in a file to watch the rest later.
I love what you both have done with your land. The food forest and native forest look’s like it’s bursting with life as a result of the methods you’ve used for cultivation. What an achievement!
Lowers my blood pressure just to see all that green and hear the bird song. I live on a wasteland of a development and really do feel the loss of connection to nature. You actually feel it almost as a physical loss, because the psychological loss is so great.
Look forward to watching the rest of the show when chores are out of the way.
Great to see your picture on promo on TV on Demand. Sounds great what you have done but don’t want to get on TV1 list of addresses. So can’t get access to this public service. I don’t need their sort of service, just would like to catch up on occasional archives.
– More corporate welfare – if the big 4 media companies were so sure he was guilty (Unlike Sony who kept out of it) why is the NZ taxpayer paying this legal tab. Shouldn’t the overseas media companies be paying the bill as this is a civil claim! Of course to make the corporate welfare work they had upgrade the charges. Hmmm – this is a good way to waste NZ taxpayers money on red herrings for the movie industry. They have the money to fight, but why should they, when John Key will get the NZ public to pick up the tab to get back at him.
Did he even get compensation when the GCSB illegally spied on him?
ISDS; privatized justice system, conflicts with human rights, rubbished in
UN report published 17 Sept 2015
UN expert: UN Charter and Human rights treaties prevail over free trade and investment agreements
GENEVA (17 September 2015) – United Nations Independent Expert Alfred de Zayas today urged the UN system and Governments across the world to radically reform the international investment regime by putting an end to free trade and investment agreements that conflict with human rights treaty obligations. In his full-length report* to the Human Rights Council, he also called on States “to conduct human rights, health and environmental impact assessments before and after entering into bilateral and multilateral investment agreements.”
“In his report the expert deplores the paradox resulting from assuming conflicting treaty obligations. “States that ratify human rights treaties also enter into agreements that prevent them from fulfilling their human rights obligations. Revision of the investment treaties must ensure that in case of conflict, human rights prevail,” he noted.
“In the light of widespread abuse over the past decades, the Investor-State Dispute Settlement mechanism, which accompanies most free trade and investment agreements must be abolished as contra bonos mores, because it encroaches on the regulatory space of States and suffers from fundamental flaws including lack of independence, transparency, accountability and predictability,” he stressed.
In his report, the expert observes that: “This dispute settlement mechanism has mutated into a privatized system of ‘justice’, incompatible with article 14(1) of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, whereby three arbitrators are allowed to override national legislation and the judgments of the highest national tribunals, in secret and with no possibility to appeal. This constitutes a grave challenge to the very essence of the rule of law”.
Mr. de Zayas also recommends that the International Court of Justice issue an advisory opinion clarifying that in case of conflict between human rights treaty obligations and investment treaties, priority must be given to human rights. “Moreover those provisions of international investment agreements that violate fundamental principles of the UN Charter including State sovereignty and self-determination must be declared invalid under article 103 of the Charter, and eliminated pursuant to the doctrine of severability” he says.
This.
It is this that pretty much rules invalid all of the present FTAs.
TPPA developments – we need to keep the pressure on PM John Key and Trade Minister Tim Groser!
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Last ditch TPPA Ministerial in 10 days
Press Release – Professor Jane Kelsey (17 September 2015)
Last ditch TPPA Ministerial in 10 days – is Groser preparing to swallow the rat? Canadian officials have confirmed rumours that the trade ministers from the twelve countries negotiating the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPPA) plan to meet …Last ditch TPPA Ministerial in 10 days – is Groser preparing to swallow the rat?
Canadian officials have confirmed rumours that the trade ministers from the twelve countries negotiating the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPPA) plan to meet in Atlanta, US at the end of the month in a last ditch attempt to conclude the deal. The chief negotiators are set to meet on 26 September to try to clear the ground for the politicians.
The ministers’ meeting coincides with the UN Sustainable Development Summit when their political leaders will be together in New York, giving US President Obama the perfect opportunity to pressure John Key and the others to accept US demands, according to Auckland University law professor Jane Kelsey.
Of the three big outstanding issues – market access on automobiles and dairy and longer monopoly protections biologic medicines – autos is the only one where there have been public moves to settle the differences.
Mexico and Canada object to a deal on autos reached by the US and Japan. The four said progress was made at a meeting this week and will meet again early next week in the US.
‘Whether the Atlanta ministerial would proceed without agreement on autos remains to be seen’ Professor Kelsey said. ‘Another failed ministerial would doom the negotiations. But they are between a rock and a hard place, as the controversial deal is now hostage to the US presidential election cycle and this is really their last chance to conclude it under Obama’.
The market access issues are especially sensitive for Canada, which has an election in a month from now, but the details of the deal would not be released until after that date.
‘In contrast to autos, there has been no noise about dairy at all,’ Kelsey said. ‘This lends support to the view expressed to me by informed people in other countries that autos is the bigissue and once that is settled dairy is not expected to delay a final agreement.’
‘Put another way, Groser is expected to swallow the rat, rather than hold up the deal, and wear the flack at home by saying New Zealand couldn’t afford not to be part of the TPPA. The details of the final deal won’t be available for another 30 days so he can talk up the benefits without any facts to get in the way.’ *
Professor Kelsey called on Minister Groser to ‘abandon his carefully ambiguous language and set out some real bottom lines on pharmaceuticals, investment, state-owned enterprises, and dairy so New Zealanders know where he stands before the secret deal-making resumes in Atlanta.’
* New Zealand officials have confirmed inevidence to the Waitangi Tribunal that no substantive changes can be made after the negotiations are concluded. The US Fast Track law then drives the timetable. The President must give 90 days notice before signing the TPPA and the text must be made available 30 days after that – but too late to change anything in the text.
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Energy and Resources Minister, Simon Bridges, refused to answer questions over the bulbs, instead sending a statement via his private secretary Stephanie Edridge.
It read: “The Government believes that consumer choice should be preserved, and so does not support the phasing out of whole categories of lighting. Instead, our focus has been on encouraging consumers to make informed choices about their lighting needs.”
It stated that market share of “efficient lighting for the year ending July 2015 has reached around 27 per cent of total sales in supermarkets, where most consumers buy their lightbulbs,” but did not define efficient lighting.
The statement said the numbers showed Government did not need to get involved.
It happens that if you are very short of cash, had $5, and need to buy a light bulb, some bread and stuff for sandwich lunches, you will buy a bulb for $1, some white bread for $1, and have $3 for a couple of bananas and some other fillings. Buy a long-last bulb and you are lucky to have any of that $5 left. They are too dear for poor people, and will lead to a rise in candle use.
They are too dear for poor people, and will lead to a rise in candle use.
Interestingly enough the solution to that is to get the cheap, inefficient light bulbs out of the market pushing demand for the efficient ones and thus shifting the resources used for the bad light bulbs to efficient light bulbs.
BTW, if I had $5 and had to buy a light bulb and food I’d go hungry for a meal or two to get the efficient light bulb because I’d save more money and thus be able to get more food.
Of course, in reality I plan it so that I don’t get into that position.
I think the point is that not everyone has the same choices you do.
btw, have the pollution issues been solved with CFLs? If not, it’s just swapping one set of problems for another. What we should have done is worked towards transitioning to LEDs and then we wouldn’t have wasted all that industry on tech that too many people didn’t want to take up and that was always going to cause environmental problems. I agree with you that the govt should have regulated this process.
edit, myself, I’d rather we had a choice, and I’d choose incandescents where appropriate and save power in other ways. But really the whole notion that we would increase efficiency via light bulb change when we ignore conservation and sustainability in almost every other area kind of makes a mockery of the conversation.
btw, have the pollution issues been solved with CFLs?
Nope because we still don’t have proper recycling processes. That said, it was never really that much of a problem. A concern that should have been addressed, yes, and now that LEDs are available it probably means that we should be banning CFLs but watch as National and other idiots scream blue murder over that one.
Shifting over LEDs would also give us the excellent excuse to shift house lighting over to 12v DC as well thus improving safety there.
edit, myself, I’d rather we had a choice, and I’d choose incandescents where appropriate and save power in other ways.
I’m happy for people to have that choice – as long as we get to charge for the extra power that they use. I suggest a selling price of $20 each with $19 of that going to lower power prices for everyone else.
Or perhaps we could have it so that the price per kilowatt went up with the more you used on the basis of supply and demand. You demand more (use inefficient light bulbs) you get charged more.
Or, the better option, is to just ban inefficient light bulbs (it is possible to get efficient light bulbs that look like incandescent bulbs and even have similar colour).
And then read this article to find out why you’d never, ever buy an incandescent light bulb ever again if you were smart:
Of course, that same math could indeed kill the incandescent light bulb one day. While a compact fluorescent might cost you $2 each, or $13 for a 60-watt equivalent LED, they use closer to $1 a year in electricity, and since they last much longer that yearly savings can stack. The expected life of a halogen bulb is just one or two years, but compact fluorescents can sometimes make it to ten. According to manufacturer estimates, an LED bulb can last 15-20 years before it even starts to dim by a perceptible measure. That’s why savings-conscious consumers already stocked up on fluorescents years ago, and why they might pick LEDs now.
Going hungry for a day is worth it to buy an efficient light bulb so that you’ll eat better for years to come.
Interesting DTB about DC lighting. Going hungry to afford a better light bulb is making a sacrifice for the future public good. Austerity touch.
But when each day there is something one has to sacrifice food as a gesture of public good, rational choice for the future you can end up with a starving child and a parent with insufficient energy to even think and cope with today. That’s the reality.
Going without now to make a better future is only possible if you are in the precariat and managing your way through the present with time to think and hope for a future that’s better.
There is a lot we don’t know about the new lighting, its effects on the human brain through changing light levels and spectrum, then there is the extra bulb cost, noticeable for multiple lights. There is a lack of information and effective regulation with new lighting being placed into old fittings some of which can be a fire hazard,
And not overlooking that there may be extra energy and resource required to make these bulbs. Is there a sufficiency of the raw materials for them? Will the gas in them add to greenhouse gases, or mix with other gases resulting in another problem. Perhaps we should start burning rushes again, be collecting fat from meat eating households and making old fashioned tallow candles?
Then there are the manufacturers statements about their efficacy. How many people know how long their bulbs last? I have marked the base of my incandescent ones and get about 6 months. How many people do that with their new bulbs, said to last four years, actually much less – who would remember, who would note the placement date?
And the lightness comparison doesn’t seem correct. Supposed to be 75 watt equivalent, it seems more like 60watt. I fear that we will never get a true statement of equivalence on the packets and we will end up disagreeing with scientific findings presented to us and have to go by our own findings. This could be like television advertisers saying that ads are not louder, they just sound that way because of compression (whatever that is. And don’t anyone bother to tell me –
I will just accept that and put my time into thinking about the news and information about the world falling to pieces round our ears.)
Going hungry to afford a better light bulb is making a sacrifice for the future public good.
Actually, it was for your own personal good. And I did point out that people should plan these things so that they’re not in that position. It is possible to do that.
And not overlooking that there may be extra energy and resource required to make these bulbs.
There isn’t. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if they ended up using less.
Is there a sufficiency of the raw materials for them?
Yes – once we get recycling going properly.
Will the gas in them add to greenhouse gases, or mix with other gases resulting in another problem.
How many people do that with their new bulbs, said to last four years, actually much less – who would remember, who would note the placement date?
Occasionally you’ll get a bad one. I’ve personally had one last for more than ten years. The one in my bedroom is more than two years old.
And the lightness comparison doesn’t seem correct.
It’s correct. The problem seems to come from the fact that a lot of modern ones have a lot of blue light in them which looks darker to many people. If this is true for you then look for ones that have more yellow light in them (usually advertised as warm).
There is a lot we don’t know about the new lighting, its effects on the human brain through changing light levels and spectrum
It’s like stocking up on cheap specials on groceries, or buying good quality (as opposed to just plain expensive) clothes, or paying the power bill early to get the discount, or getting the vehicle serviced regularly to avoid breakdowns – richer people can afford to do that, so end up spending less than poor people.
Remember the stated reasons for the establishment of the United Nations?
If the underpinning ‘Purposes and Principles’ were actually PRACTISED – would there be such an international refugee crisis happening now?
As New Zealand is currently a member of the UN Security Council – what steps are being taken to advocate, promote, implement and enforce the following underpinning ‘Purposes and Principles’ of the UN Charter?
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CHAPTER I: PURPOSES AND PRINCIPLES
Article 1
The Purposes of the United Nations are:
To maintain international peace and security, and to that end: to take effective collective measures for the prevention and removal of threats to the peace, and for the suppression of acts of aggression or other breaches of the peace, and to bring about by peaceful means, and in conformity with the principles of justice and international law, adjustment or settlement of international disputes or situations which might lead to a breach of the peace;
To develop friendly relations among nations based on respect for the principle of equal rights and self-determination of peoples, and to take other appropriate measures to strengthen universal peace;
To achieve international co-operation in solving international problems of an economic, social, cultural, or humanitarian character, and in promoting and encouraging respect for human rights and for fundamental freedoms for all without distinction as to race, sex, language, or religion; and
To be a centre for harmonizing the actions of nations in the attainment of these common ends.
Article 2
The Organization and its Members, in pursuit of the Purposes stated in Article 1, shall act in accordance with the following Principles.
The Organization is based on the principle of the sovereign equality of all its Members.
All Members, in order to ensure to all of them the rights and benefits resulting from membership, shall fulfill in good faith the obligations assumed by them in accordance with the present Charter.
All Members shall settle their international disputes by peaceful means in such a manner that international peace and security, and justice, are not endangered.
All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations.
All Members shall give the United Nations every assistance in any action it takes in accordance with the present Charter, and shall refrain from giving assistance to any state against which the United Nations is taking preventive or enforcement action.
The Organization shall ensure that states which are not Members of the United Nations act in accordance with these Principles so far as may be necessary for the maintenance of international peace and security.
Nothing contained in the present Charter shall authorize the United Nations to intervene in matters which are essentially within the domestic jurisdiction of any state or shall require the Members to submit such matters to settlement under the present Charter; but this principle shall not prejudice the application of enforcement measures under Chapter Vll.
“Ending Syria’s horrific civil war is possible, but the political will to do so remains elusive. Over the years the facts on the ground have changed in Syria – with the rise of the Islamic State being the deadliest new reality. But Washington and its regional allies remain focused on an illegal regime change in Damascus. The west is fighting the wrong war and will surely lose the peace.
CrossTalking with Kapil Komireddi, Scott Bennett, and Richard Murphy.”
Sigh. I take it some developer or other has their eye on Jollie St in Christchurch. McGehan Close, Madeline Ave, now the whole of Glen Innes – the list goes on. The subtext is always the same – this place will be lovely once we remove the scary poor people. They could basically have a standard form newspaper article ready for download and just change the street name as each one becomes ripe for middle class/developer colonisation:
They could basically have a standard form newspaper article ready for download and just change the street name as each one becomes ripe for middle class/developer colonisation:
Sounds Rachmanish. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Rachman
” In the annals of the London underworld, few names cast as long a shadow as that of slum landlord Peter Rachman, a racketeer and pimp who ran a squalid empire of overcrowded properties in the run-down Notting Hill area in the post-war period.
His speciality was “sending in the schwarzes” which is a disparaging Yiddish term for Blacks. Rachman would put West Indians and their prostitutes into his London properties to drive out rent-controlled White neighbours with their outrageous and disgusting behaviour. To ensure stubborn tenants got the message, a crew of thugs with Alsatians doled out threats, intimidation and worse.”
The link is not a balanced one so no address.
Peter Rachman sounds like a regular old racketeer, without the veneer of respectability given to our lot. And where he was into rack-renting, our lot seem to be more into ethnic or class cleansing. But the get-the-money-and to-hell-with-the-people principle seems to rule in both cases.
The rise of ad blockers isn’t just a clash of sensibilities, though. The major leaders in tech are all trying to leverage their advantages at the expense of their competitors. “So it’s Apple vs. Google vs. Facebook, all with their own revenue platforms,” Nilay Patel wrote, in his article for The Verge. “Google has the web, Facebook has its app, and Apple has the iPhone.” It’s also no mistake, as Newitz pointed out, that Apple starting allowing ad blockers on the same operating system that features a news app that can’t be deleted from people’s homescreens.
Bold mine.
Can’t say I’m surprised by Apple’s tactics there. It’s pretty much the end of ‘competition’ where each ‘player’ is out to destroy the others rather than working together to develop better products.
I use ad blockers. I’m paying for my bandwidth and not the advertisers. I’m also against ads anyway as I view them as psychopathic manipulation of the people and thus think that they should be banned. There has got to be a better business model than manipulation.
hi draco
“I’m also against ads anyway as I view them as psychopathic manipulation of the people and thus think that they should be banned. There has got to be a better business model than manipulation.”
amen brother.
minutemen “fuck advertising,
psychological methods to sell,
should be destroyed.
let the products sell themselves.”
and don mcglashan re ads,
“with their enticements and their threats.”
i feel the same as you have described, and that is partly why i have kicked the habbit of ugly fm,newspapers and most tv.
It has always been there. However it has become mandatory on iOS9 which got released some time last week. It was a bloody nuisance as I was direct updating an inhouse app (that I’d fixed bugs in) on a pile of iPod touch. That useless behemoth iTunes kept prompting me for each of them about an upgrade to the iOS.
Takes about 4 minutes to boot a iPod, update the app, check that it works, and shut it down. Takes about 15 minutes to update the iOS.
One of the problems with the Apple ad blocker is that it also blocks trackers like google analytics, sitemeter, and wordpress stats.
We depend on those for figuring out loads. I can tolerate robots that do that because I have many mechanisms to limit their access and cut them off. At present the only limits on humans are the numbers of pages per minute and no cutoff, just a throttle. The reason that works is because trackers allow the databases for not-humans to be updated automatically. They don’t execute the JavaScript. If we lose the trackers, then we lose that ability.
To keep loadings under control, I will probably set up a JavaScript feedback system that looks like a tracker and eliminate anything that doesn’t use it apart from google, natlib, and wayback.
Bye bye new safari users and a whole lot of bots. It lowers my costs and eliminate a browser that just became threatening to the net – safari heads off to extinction.
I couldn’t give a damn if apple eliminates ads. But when they start eliminating something useful for our site, then they can get stuffed.
There was a Radionz report on what it is like on a small poor Greek island getting an influx of refugees whose bags and their resources have been thrown over the side by their ferry masters – to fit the maximum people in without sinking.
I have just put $20 into helping through Give-A-Little. I have some big bills to pay but thought I’d keep feeding money in to various money ports set up by communities to go direct to their needs, toilet paper, feeding bottles, food, footwear, probably spades to dig graves, drinking water bottles, sanitary pads? You name it the refugees will need it – except clothes they have plenty. It is better to give money at this time from here. And Greece is still trying to run a country and may have to charge duty on gift parcels which no-one will be able to pay. http://www.radionz.co.nz/audio/player/201770839
09:05 New Zealander on front line of refugee crisis in Greece
As Europe fails to reach an agreement over how to share the burden of the massive flow of asylum seekers out of Syria and Iraq, we meet Christchurch woman Anne Tee, who has lived on the tiny Greek island of Leros for 25 years. Leros has been inundated by refugees, mostly from Syria, and Anne is co-ordinating volunteer aid to them.Just yesterday a boat from Turkey sank off the nearby island of Farmakonisi – the BBC are reporting that 34 people drowned, amongst them four babies and 11 children.
Give a little: Help a Kiwi care for Syrian refugees in Leros, Greece
But it’s one thing to speculate; it’s something entirely different to have hard proof.
And while speculation was rife that just like the CIA-funded al Qaeda had been used as a facade by the US to achieve its own geopolitical and national interests over the past two decades, so ISIS was nothing more than al Qaeda 2.0, there was no actual evidence of just this.
That may all have changed now when a declassified secret US government document obtained by the public interest law firm, Judicial Watch, shows that Western governments deliberately allied with al-Qaeda and other Islamist extremist groups to topple Syrian dictator Bashir al-Assad.
According to investigative reporter Nafeez Ahmed in Medium, the “leaked document reveals that in coordination with the Gulf states and Turkey, the West intentionally sponsored violent Islamist groups to destabilize Assad, despite anticipating that doing so could lead to the emergence of an ‘Islamic State’ in Iraq and Syria (ISIS).
… there is the possibility of establishing a declared or undeclared Salafist Principality in eastern Syria (Hasaka and Der Zor), and this is exactly what the supporting powers to the opposition want, in order to isolate the Syrian regime ….
In other words, the powers supporting the Syrian opposition – the West, our Gulf allies, and Turkey wanted an Islamic caliphate in order to challenge Syrian president Assad.
Apparently our troops are over there to help stop the allies that the US built up to topple Assad.
Like the tobacco companies and their research, the oil industry knew decades ago about the potential for disaster.
At a meeting in Exxon Corporation’s headquarters, a senior company scientist named James F. Black addressed an audience of powerful oilmen. Speaking without a text as he flipped through detailed slides, Black delivered a sobering message: carbon dioxide from the world’s use of fossil fuels would warm the planet and could eventually endanger humanity.
“In the first place, there is general scientific agreement that the most likely manner in which mankind is influencing the global climate is through carbon dioxide release from the burning of fossil fuels,” Black told Exxon’s Management Committee, according to a written version he recorded later.
It was July 1977 when Exxon’s leaders received this blunt assessment, well before most of the world had heard of the looming climate crisis.
A survey of 2,000 people found that Mr Corbyn’s election as Labour leader has made one in five people who voted for his party at the May general election more likely to vote Conservative next time. Some 37 per cent of Labour voters say they are less likely to back the party at the next election.
A long but interesting review of a book by Kevin M. Kruse
‘One Nation Under God: How Corporate America Invented Christian America’
The secret history of the 1950s Christian right and its zeal for capitalism. http://www.democracyjournal.org/38/laissez-prayer.php?page=all
Apologies in advance folks for being a prick but just talking on phone with a right-wing-ish mate in Aux (not by philosophy or considered application…….by default really) – prosaic Aux media type if you know what I mean.
Me: “Donald Trump reminds me of one of those blow-up plastic fuck dolls……mouth all circular and ready for use.”
My mate (belly laughing): “You’re right you’re right !”
Anyone else ?
I’m afraid that even if I was a coiffed, silver-haired, Viagra spruiked, Mid-West, GOP arsehole…….like the fruit loop who told Old Fuck Mouth that Obama’s a Muslim, that vision would haunt me……
So the EU don’t like the current ISDS setup and have proposed changes.
Will the TPPA be rushed through with the existing ISDS system (with its faults pointed out in the link in my comment #5) or will they take the time to look at alternatives, like those proposed below.
European Commission publishes draft investment chapter for the TTIP, including investment protection provisions and the establishment of an International Investment Court
“The proposed new Investment Court system
The Commission proposes the establishment of a new court system to resolve disputes under the TTIP, to be comprised of a Tribunal of First Instance (to be called the “Investment Tribunal”) and an Appeal Tribunal.
The Investment Tribunal would consist of 15 judges appointed jointly by the EU and US governments, with 5 EU nationals, 5 US nationals and 5 nationals of other countries. This standing body of judges would be appointed for a six-year term, renewable once. Tribunals would be appointed at random from the 15 members with no party influence over who would hear any case, although always comprised of one EU, one US and one third party tribunal member (with the third party member as chair). However, the disputing parties could agree on a sole arbitrator (to be appointed out of the 5 nationals of third countries). Once appointed, the tribunal would resolve the dispute under the rules chosen by the investor in the case in question from the ICSID rules, UNCITRAL rules or “any other rules agreed by the disputing parties”.
The permanent Appeal Tribunal would be comprised of six members, each appointed for a six year term, with two EU and two US nationals, and a further two nationals of third countries. The Appeal Tribunal would have a President and Vice-President selected only from the nationals of third countries. The composition of each Appeal Tribunal would be “random and unpredictable” (albeit that each tribunal would need an EU, US and third country national). The Appeal Tribunal would be there to ensure that there (to quote the Commission) “could be no doubt as to the legal correctness of the decisions of [first instance] tribunals“. There would be strict time limits for the parties to appeal an award (90 days from issuance) and for the appeal proceedings themselves (usually not to exceed 180 days from notification of appeal to decision, but subject to a longstop of 270 days).
All judges of the Investment and Appeal Tribunals would be required to have high technical and legal qualifications, including having demonstrated expertise in public international law. They would also be subject to strict ethical rules under Article 11 and a Code of Conduct under Annex II. In particular, Article 5 of Annex II requires that they “shall not be influenced by self-interest, outside pressure, political considerations, public clamour, loyalty to a Party or disputing party, or fear of criticism“. They would be prohibited from taking on work as counsel on any investment disputes under the TTIP or any other agreement.”
This is the way an agreement should be attained- by openly discussing the terms and rules of the agreement in the way that the European Commission has published this draft investment chapter for discussion.
The secrecy of the TPPA has been a total abuse of process. Sure, there are some aspects that needed to be treated in a confidential manner, but the blanket secrecy and shutting out of any public input (as if the public are not stakeholders when their sovereignty is being threatened) is downright shameful.
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Before Jacingrant There Was Gracinda: Grant Robertson and his 2014 running mate, Jacinda Ardern. She stood at his side: loyal and obliging, as she had ever been. The media dubbed this duo “Gracinda” – a sort of political “Brangelina”. The other young people who worked alongside Robertson were also ambitious ...
. . Just when you thought Simon Bridges couldn’t sink any lower – he has. After the March 15th Christchurch terror attack, the (current) Leader of the National Party issued strong committments to support urgently needed gun law reform; “We will be ready and prepared to be constructive and to ...
We all know that bad parents simply don’t care about their children’s education. Most truants have loser parents, and grow up to be involved with crime, or in low paid employment usually like their parents. The nonsense so-called “climate strike” coming up will be attended mostly by the least intelligent ...
Is the terrorist Organisation Greenpeace and the loony Green parties around the World hiring professional internet trolls? I have noticed a trend lately where if you post research, news articles or even comments that show the manmade climate change scam to be just that, you are immediately attacked, often within ...
Today is the first day of the global climate strike. Led by schoolkids, people all around the world are going to protest to demand action on climate change. New Zealand isn't doing it till next Friday (join us!), but if you want to get active early, there's plenty to do ...
The Herald has a story today about the 400 MW of wind power currently under construction. Good news, right? Except that none of it is being driven by policy (instead, its about replacing Contact Energy's Taranaki Combined Cycle gas-fired power plant, due to shut down in 2022), and most of ...
To Protect and Serve: When the Prime Minister finds herself enmeshed in the coils of a full-blown political scandal, her colleagues and party comrades have only one priority: to release her as swiftly – and with as little lasting injury – as possible. Is this what Jacinda Ardern’s colleagues and ...
When military leaders cover up and lie to elected civilian authorities, the foundation of democratic civil-military relations is undermined because it is those authorities who are entrusted to hold the military accountable to the public that they mutually serve. But this is only true if civilian political authorities take their ...
The Make It 16 campaign to lower the voting age is launching this afternoon, and they have already announced plans to challenge the law in court:The campaign, named "Make it 16" will launch at Parliament on Friday, with plans to take their case to the High Court, testing the rights ...
by Daphna Whitmore The long years of Netanyahu’s reign are drawing to an end. For years he has epitomized reactionary zionism as he oversaw hundreds of thousands of Jewish settlers seize land in the West Bank. There are now 700,000 settlers, putting an end to the myth that Israel was ...
BP, Z and Mobil all insist that petrol price hikes are temporary, “in a very literal sense.” The nation’s major petrol providers are trying to allay customer fears over prices, promising that they’ll move to lower them again “immediately” when the Middle East is returned to its formerly peaceful state. ...
South African coach Rassie Erasmus says he has no idea what they’re going to do about the boat. In a highly anticipated press conference this afternoon, All Blacks coach Steve Hansen has finally unveiled the team’s boat for its Rugby World Cup 2019 campaign. In a press conference that went ...
The Operation Burnham inquiry continued to question senior NZDF staff today, and their shoddy coverup over their knowledge of civilian casualties continue to fall apart. If you recall, first, we were asked to believe that it was all a series of "mistakes and errors": a senior officer with multiple degrees ...
The Local Government Act 2002 Amendment Bill (No 2) had part of its committee stage yesterday. its a generally tedious bill about the nitty-gritty of local government reorganisation. But it includes a clause making the Local Government Commission subject to the Ombudsmen Act, and hence the OIA. Great! Except of ...
Yesterday Ihumātao's mana whenua reached a consensus that they would like their land back, and asked the government to negotiate with Fletcher's for its return. The government's response? Try and undermine that consensus, while talking about how doing anything would undermine existing Treaty settlements. The first is just more bad ...
Its Suffrage Day, the 126th anniversary of women winning the right to vote (but not stand in elections) in New Zealand. And to celebrate, the government has bought Kate Sheppard's house in Christchurch:The government has bought Kate Sheppard's former home in Christchurch for more than $4 million. The Ilam villa ...
The UN climate summit is happening in new York next week, and unlike previous years, coal-burners and denier-states are not being invited to speak:Leading economies such as Japan and Australia will not be invited to speak at next week’s crunch UN climate change summit, as their continued support for coal ...
Get Back Jojo! The elation in Mayor Phil Goff’s camp may be easily imagined as they watched social media light up in indignation at challenger John Tamihere’s "Sieg Heil to that" quip. Just when JT’s notoriously right-wing, sexist and homophobic stains were beginning to fade back into his ‘colourful’ past, ...
Patrick Gower is good value when he's high. Not that I've ever, you know, got stoned with him. But in the second part of his documentary Patrick Gower on Weed, he does what you'd expect in a modern weed documentary and immerses himself – first with a doctor, then a ...
We surveyed candidates on their attitudes to issues facing the Western Bay Region, find out what they think: “Closing the Gap” Tauranga, one of the area groups of Income Equality Aotearoa NZ Inc., has surveyed all candidates in the three local body elections to discover attitudes to some basic issues ...
Please spread widely, and sign, to support science and rationalism over the new irrationalism sweeping universities and institutions. PROJECT NETTIE Sexual reproduction, the generation of offspring by fusion of genetic material from two different individuals, evolved over 1 billion years ago. It is the reproductive strategy of all higher animals ...
Just when I was thinking that Palmerston North's mayoral race (which includes a convicted child molester / public wanker and a convicted child beater) was the worst in the country, Auckland mayoral candidate John Tamihere opened his mouth:Auckland mayoral candidate John Tamihere is being slammed for using the words "sieg ...
We reprint below an article from the excellent website the Economics of Imperialism by Tony Norfield This is an update of the statistics for my Index of Power, using data for 2018-19 and discussing what a country’s ranking reflects. The major change is that China’s rank has shifted up and ...
The All Blacks have been, for more than a century, arguably the most successful International sports team in the world. But they are more than that; even for those Kiwis who are immune to the charms of rugby (and there are more than a few), the All Blacks are ambassadors ...
Alone, Alone, All, All, Alone: To argue that the Prime Minister is the victim of her advisers’ failure to keep her informed may offer Jacinda some measure of exoneration – but only at the cost of casting her as a hopeless political ingénue. A star-dusted muppet, whose only purpose is to ...
In times of hysteria about the “World coming to an end” and “rising sea levels” so-called ‘Journalists’ who can barely spell words longer than four letters are having a ball! Though the majority of the Public have worked out that manmade climate change is nothing short of pseudo-science, and the ...
I don't want to give pblicity to certain parts of the internet that are better left to fester in their own irrelevance (I know, a bit like this place) but the listing of Chris Trotter as a 'author' on Cameron Slater's spinoff website, the BFD requires some explanation.Now, I don't ...
The text below is a Twitter thread by Heather Heying that explains the essence of sexual reproduction and it long evolutionary history. She is an evolutionary biologist and a “professor-in-exile” after she and her husband, Bret Weinstein, stood up to supporters of an enforced “Day of Absence” for white staff and teachers ...
With crunch time for new Zealand climate policy approaching, most of the New Zealand media have got on board with a global reporting effort to cover the issue. There's one strand of stories today about polling and what it shows about changing public attitudes to the crisis, but the strand ...
Dangerous Foes: For those readers of Bowalley Road who feel disposed to dismiss any prospect of an Israeli destabilisation of New Zealand politics, the example of the United Kingdom repays close attention. Ever since the election of Jeremy Corbyn as leader of the British Labour Party, the Israelis have sanctioned, funded and ...
Make It 16, the youth-led campaign to lower New Zealand's voting age, is holding an official campaign launch at Parliament this Friday from 16:30. If you'd like to attend, you can register using EventBrite here. ...
by Don Franks It was a lovely sunny Wellington afternoon with blue skies above the beaches. In Courtenay Place, political activists packed out a stuffy upstairs room for an important meeting. The assembled pacifists, anarchists, communists and independent young radicals of Peace Action Wellington felt the need for a mission ...
Current and former NZDF top brass are being publicly grilled this week by the hit and run inquiry over their public responses to allegations of civilian casualties. Previously, they've claimed there were no casualties, a position which led them to lie to Ministers and to the public. Now, they're saying ...
by Rafael D. Quiles (gender-critical gay man from Puerto Rico) The writing on the wall is right in people’s faces and people just don’t see it or don’t want to. What could actually possess a heterosexual male to want to feminize himself and claim that he is a lesbian? Because ...
From the Wall Street Journal:Inside a room of the ornately decorated Hotel du Palais during last month’s Group of Seven summit in Biarritz, France, President Trump awaited a meeting with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah Al Sisi. Mr. Trump looked over a gathering of American and Egyptian officials and called out in ...
by the Redline blog collective At Redline we are very saddened to hear of the death of Magdalen Burns who passed away on the morning of Friday, September 13 (British time). Magdalen was a great fighter for the rights of women in general and lesbian women in particular, a defender ...
The Brexit issue has certainly brought with it a series of apparently difficult constitutional issues, many of them concerning the respective roles of the executive and parliament. Most of them arise because of the unwillingness of MPs, despite their professions to the contrary, to be bound by a constitutional rarity ...
. . This blogpost is different to my usual format of reporting on issues… Since July 1011, I have blogged on a variety of political issues; near always political and/or environmental; mostly highly critical of the previous National Government. Other issues included Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands and repression of ...
Those close to the Police Minister believe the initiative may be the result of Nash “seeing a great deal” on AliExpress. In a move that comes seemingly out of nowhere, Police Minister Stuart Nash announced this afternoon that he expects all frontline staff to don bearskin hats, famously worn by ...
The government has released its Arms Legislation Bill, containing the second tranche of changes to gun laws following the March 15 massacre. And it all looks quite sensible: a national gun register, higher penalties for illegal possession and dealing, tighter restrictions on arms dealers and shooting clubs, and a shorter ...
Private prisons are a stain on humanity. Prison operators explicitly profit from human misery, then lobby for longer prisons terms so they can keep on profiting. And in the US, prison companies run not only local and state prisons, but also Donald Trump's immigration concentration camps. Faced with this moral ...
When National was in power, they were very keen on Public-Private Partnerships (PPPs) - basicly, using private companies to finance public infrastructure as a way of hiding debt from the public. They were keen on using them for everything - roads, schools, hospitals. But as the UK shows, that "service" ...
Moving And Shaking: There was a time when people spoke matter-of-factly about the “labour movement” – a political phenomenon understood to embrace much more than the Labour Party. Included within the term’s definition was the whole trade union movement – many of whose members looked upon the Labour Party as ...
by Philip Ferguson Much of the left, even people who formally identify as marxists, have collapsed politically in the face of postmodern gender theory of the sort pioneered by American philosopher Judith Butler. For Butler even biological sex is socially constructed. “If the immutable character of sex is contested, perhaps ...
The media is reporting that the (alleged) Labour party sexual assaulter has resigned from their job at Parliament, which means hopefully he won't be turning up there making people feel unsafe in future. Good. But as with everything about this scandal, it just raises other questions. Most significantly: why the ...
By Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern I am every bit as angry as you are. I am every bit as disappointed as you must be. The people with power, oversight and the ability to do something about these processes within the Labour Party should be ashamed. Whoever those people are, I ...
Property developers think there is an "oversupply" of houses in Auckland:High turnover rates and falling prices may be a sign that there are too many new houses going in to some parts of Auckland, commentators say. [...] Property developer David Whitburn said there was a "bit of an oversupply" in ...
Labour Party president Nigel Haworth resigned yesterday over the party's sexual assault scandal. But while that's good news, its unlikely to take away the stench of a coverup. Because according to Paula Bennett in Parliament yesterday, pretty much everyone in the Prime Minister's office was involved as well:I have been ...
Two-Faced? Labour insiders' commitment to the neoliberal status quo puts them at odds with their party’s membership; its trade union affiliates; and a majority of Labour voters, but this only serves to strengthen the perception they have of themselves as a special elite. Among the lesser breeds, they’ll talk up a ...
There has been a lot of talk about Boris Johnson wanting an election, and he has blustered with great gusto about 'chicken' Jeremy Corbyn refusing one, but I think there are many reasons why he is secretly glad he has been refused the opportunity:The Tories are an utter rabble,tearing themselves ...
Scottish appeal court judges have declared that Boris Johnson’s decision to suspend parliament in the run-up to the October Brexit deadline is unlawful. The three judges, chaired by Lord Carloway, Scotland’s most senior judge, overturned an earlier ruling that the courts did not have the powers to interfere in the prime ...
By Simon Bridges. The following is a press release from the office of Simon Bridges, leader of The National Party. Key ora, New Zealand. Happy Maori Language Week. Look, I’m writing to you today because I want to clear something up. There’s been a lot of kerfuffle around some things ...
I understand there's some stuff going round about how the SIS "was removed from the list of public offices covered by the Public Records Act in 2017". The context of course being their records derived from US torture, which will be disposed of or sealed. The good news is that ...
Dr. Christopher Labos and Jonathan Jarry discuss the recent Canadian fluoride/IQ research. They provide an expert analysis of the paper and its problems. Click on image to go to podcast. The critical debate about the recent ...
Australia is burning down again, and meanwhile its natural disaster minister is denying climate change:Australia’s minister responsible for drought and natural disasters, David Littleproud, has said that he doesn’t “know if climate change is manmade”. Clarifying earlier comments that the question is “irrelevant” when considering the Coalition government’s response to ...
Auckland Philippines Solidarity is excited to host Professor Judy Taguiwalo for a speaking tour of NZ in September. She is a well-known activist in the Philippines and was a political prisoner under the Marcos dictatorship. Professor Taguiwalo briefly served as a Cabinet member under President Duterte but was forced from ...
This open letter to the Green Party was penned after an opinion piece by Jill Abigail, a feminist and founding member of the party, was censored by the Greens’ leadership. (Redline has reprinted her article here).The intolerance of the Green Party leaders and their acceptance of the misogyny of gender ...
Today is a Member's day, and David Seymour's End of Life Choice Bill continues its slow crawl through its committee stage. They're spending the whole day on it today, though the first hour is likely to be spent on voting left over from last time. After that they'll move on ...
An ambitious plan to fly to Los Angeles petered out into a brief sight-seeing trip and a desire to return home and get some sleep before work tomorrow. Air New Zealand has confirmed a flight to Los Angeles last night was turned back about a quarter of the way into ...
There appears to be consensus – by omission – that the concept of indigenous futures should be accepted at face value. So I scavenged the internet to see if I could locate an academic descriptor or a framework around how we think about it as a concept, and whether it ...
Here’s another novelty chocolate to shove in your gob, New Zealand Cadbury could be seeking to make itself great again with a rumoured new release: Pineapple Trumps, a spin on its classic chocolate-encased pineapple treat and do-it-yourself tooth remover. The global confectionery manufacturer and bumbling “before” character in an infomercial, ...
During my time in the Pentagon I had the privilege of sitting down with military leaders and defence and security officials from a variety of Latin American nations. Sometimes I was present as a subordinate assistant to a senior US defence department official, sometimes as part of a delegation that ...
Kia ora, Aotearoa. It’s that magical time of year. Te Wiki o te Reo Māori. In English, the week that frightens talk radio. As you probably know by now, all your favourite media outlets are participating, some more successfully than others. Stuff has changed its name to Puna for the ...
Eighteen months ago, the government promised to strengthen the Bill of Rights Act, by explicitly affirming the power of the courts to issue declarations of inconsistency and requiring Parliament to formally respond to them. So how's that going? I was curious, so I asked for all advice about the proposal. ...
As the Brexit saga staggers on, the focus is naturally enough on the Prime Minister and his attempts to achieve Brexit “do or die”. But the role played by the Leader of the Opposition is of almost equal interest and complexity. The first problem for Jeremy Corbyn is that he ...
“Climate change is here - we all need to do our part.” Monday 23rd September 2019. Press Release: Citizens Environmental Advocacy Centre Climate change is happening. CEAC – compendium facts tribute to ‘Climate Change Week’ https://www.stuff.co.nz/science/115098866/exceptionally-rare-warming-above-antarctica-may-be-affecting-nzs-weather ...
Criminal law changes are now increasingly being used by politicians as a vote gathering tool pandering to lynch mob special interest groups. To look tough against crime, govts constantly increase penalties, create new crimes, and make it harder to get ...
It has been two years since Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern called climate change her generation's nuclear free moment. And on Monday, against a backdrop of global climate protest, she will give the opening speech at the United Nation's climate ...
Finance Minister Grant Robertson is under intense scrutiny. New figures show economic growth has slowed to levels not seen for six years. And he has chosen not to answer questions about when he heard about serious allegations of a sexual assault cover-up ...
NZDF Attends Commemorations to Mark International Mission in East Timor A New Zealand Defence Force (NZDF) contingent participated today in the 20th anniversary commemorations of the International Force East Timor (INTERFET) mission in Dili. The commemoration ...
They’ve only been up and running for a few months, but a New Zealand not-for-profit has already made a big impact on period poverty in New Zealand. ...
The allocation of money for publicly funded broadcasting for election campaigns should be turned on it's head according to Massey University professor of communication design Claire Robinson. ...
Disappointment expressed by Fletcher Building CEO, Ross Taylor, reflects the increasing frustration held by many with this Government’s failure to protect private property rights.[1] ...
The independent Interim Climate Change Committee today launched an eight-week, nationwide call for evidence on options available to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. ...
Social Credit has lodged a complaint with the Ombudsman over the way the Overseas Investment Office is handling its official information request for disclosure of documents on the sale of Westland Milk Products to Chinese company Inner Mongolian ...
This Friday in Solidarity with the Global Climate Strike All of the SodaStream’s e-commerce platforms and head office operations will be closed to kick-off the week-long event, and employees will march the #CLIMATESTRIKE in Auckland on 27 September. ...
Federated Farmers congratulates the Auditor-General’s office on its release today of its report Managing Freshwater Quality: Challenges and Opportunities. ...
Growth has now slowed to a 6-year low, and downside risks are dominating. June quarter GDP growth came in at 0.5%qoq, in line with our expectation, and slightly above consensus. Although there were a few sensational reports of the chance of a negative print. ...
Local Government New Zealand (LGNZ) is calling the release of the National Climate Change Risk Assessment (NCCRA) framework a good first step in balancing New Zealand’s response to climate change. ...
Family First NZ says that a new Colorado report compiled by the Rocky Mountain High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area finds marijuana-positive traffic fatalities, hospitalisations, marijuana use, and illegal market activity have exploded since marijuana legalization. ...
This year’s Ratepayers’ Report , local government league tables released yesterday, reveals which local councils owe the most and which owe the least. ...
Rachel MacGregor welcomes the decision released today by Justice Hinton. The key issue on which all the various litigation has been based is the question, did Colin Craig sexually harass Rachel. That question has been answered – he did. Justice ...
The Rail and Maritime Transport Union (RMTU) has today ratified a ground breaking pay deal with Dunedin Railways which will see all union members being paid a living wage and the lowest paid receiving an 18% wage increase. Higher paid RMTU members ...
Inclusion for trans women/men and non-binary peoples has today been announced as the cornerstone of a new resolution for the National Council of Women New Zealand (NCWNZ). ...
It took a testy Morning Report interview this week to remind me that Simon Bridges was still the Leader of the Opposition. Until then, he had been largely invisible as the events of recent weeks unfolded. ...
The National Council of Women NZ has today welcomed the news that the Government has purchased Kate Sheppard’s house in Christchurch, the base for the NZ suffrage campaign. ...
The Māori Party supports mana whenua of Ihumātao and acknowledges their coming together to reach consensus on the future of their whenua. “We also acknowledge the leadership of the Kīngitanga who have played an important role in supporting ...
The New Zealand Taxpayers’ Union is questioning why, for the second time, Jacinda Ardern has appointed a Crown-owned company Chief Executive to Chair her “Business Advisory Council”, following her announcement that Mercury CEO Fraser Whineray ...
Responding to the Government’s decision to give around $300 million to Amazon as a sweetener for filming a TV series in New Zealand, New Zealand Taxpayers’ Union spokesman Louis Houlbrooke says: “As a matter of simple waste, this is striking, ...
I am very pleased with Air New Zealand’s Decision to backdown and withdraw their application to trademark into a logo Kia Ora. I said at the time that it was an ill conceived idea and poorly thought out – more importantly it should never have been ...
NZEI Te Riu Roa members will be joining with others across the union movement by wearing black and white in support of pay equity on Suffrage Day tomorrow, and urging the Government to commit to a settlement for teacher aides this year. ...
Yesterday’s announcement from the Minister for Immigration, to improve temporary work visas for migrant workers, provides some positive changes but more detail is needed. The Council of Trade Unions fundamentally supports the principle of making ...
FIRST Union today welcomed Westpac’s public admission of the significant gender pay gap in its workforce and reiterated its call for employers to work with unions to close this disparity, arguing that this work must begin at the bottom of the pay ...
Changes to the work visa system announced by the Minister of Immigration are not all positive for employers or migrants, comments Ms June Ranson, chair of the New Zealand Association for Migration and Investment (NZAMI) , a leading voice in the ...
The Dairy Workers Union (DWU) has welcomed the announcement from dairy company, Synlait, that they will be boosting parental leave entitlements significantly for working parents. ...
In June, the Children’s Commissioner announced a thematic review into Oranga Tamariki’s policies, processes and practice relating to care and protection issues for tamariki Māori aged 0-3 months. Today the Children’s Commissioner has released the full ...
“Closing the Gap” Tauranga, one of the area groups of Income Equality Aotearoa NZ Inc., has surveyed all candidates in the three local body elections to discover attitudes to some basic issues of the Western Bay region. We believe that this is ...
In response to DairyNZ's attempt to dismiss an economic report that highlighted dairy's role in the New Zealand economy is only three per cent of GDP, Fish & Game New Zealand Chief Executive Martin Taylor says: "If DairyNZ wishes to reject a report ...
Kiingi Tuuheitia Pootatau Te Wherowhero VII has successfully guided the mana whenua of lhumaatao to reach a consensus on the future of their whenua. ...
Two activists disguised as shareholders interrupted the AGM of a gold mining company in central Auckland this morning to inform shareholders their plans to mine for gold in conservation estate in the Karangahake Gorge were unwelcome. ...
The Capital and Coast District Health Board (CCDHB) has been labelled ‘NATO’ (no action, talk only) when it comes to child mental health, with just 0.6 full time staff (24 hours per week) for inpatient child psychology and just 0.8 full time staff ...
AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL has awarded three New Zealand climate youth groups with its Ambassador of Conscience award, its highest recognition for human rights work, previously given to the likes of Nelson Mandela, Ai Weiwei and Malala Yousafzai. ...
The New Zealand Taxpayers' Union , in partnership with the Auckland Ratepayers’ Alliance , has today published this year's Ratepayers' Report – online local government league tables – at www.ratepayersreport.nz . ...
NZUS Council executive director Jordan Small welcomes the news New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern will meet with US President Donald Trump in New York next week. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra Scott Morrison was frank, when quizzed at a news conference during his visit to Washington, on whether he would be seeking to travel to China in the next year. “Well, you have to be invited ...
By Michael Andrew Social media and tech industries have been replicating the ugliest aspects of capitalism from the 1800s, according to an AUT computer science lecturer. Associate Professor Tony Clear says that social media and tech executives are taking advantage of unregulated markets in a similar way as wealthy ...
Covering Climate Now: There’s a range of dairy-free ice creams available these days, but it’s a fair bet none will be as delicious – or satisfying – as making your own. The Spinoff’s participation in Covering Climate Now is made possible thanks to Spinoff Members. Join us here!If the latest stats ...
Covering Climate Action: Ahead of the UN’s Climate Action Summit, artist Joseph Michael and composer Rhian Sheehan teamed up to create Voices For The Future, a 30-minute installation projected onto the UN buildings.The Spinoff’s participation in Covering Climate Now is made possible thanks to Spinoff Members. Join us here!Joseph Michael is ...
New Zealand banning Huawei’s 5G network equipment won’t impact you nearly as much as the US’s recent moves against Huawei phones, writes Henry Burrell. Twenty years ago, you would have shown off your flash new Ericsson or Nokia. How times change. Now, those two entities exist only to provide mobile network ...
Op-Ed by Kaveh Zahedi, Deputy Executive Secretary of the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP)Kaveh Zahedi is Deputy Executive Secretary of the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP).In less than ten days world leaders will be ...
Grant McDougall reviews Kilgour’s new solo album, Bobbie’s A Girl, which sees him reflecting on the deaths of his friend and former bandmate, Peter Gutteridge and his own mother, Helen Kilgour. There is a passage in Shayne Carter’s excellent recent autobiography, Dead People I Have Known, in which he describes ...
New Zealand painter-poet Gregory O’Brien has just published a new collection of essays and art; pitched as a “field notebook … my whale survey”, Always Song in the Water drifts from his own front lawn in Hataitai, up to Northland and way, way across the Pacific. It’s the sort of ...
Ruby Porterlooks into New Zealand’s future when the sea level rises 10, 25 and 80 metres, and finds out how much of Auckland will be left.I grew up in Ponsonby, but the only bay I knew around here was Cox’s. It’s fed by a creek which was once a mahinga ...
Opening up a skid pad, create more housing for single people and make the central city dog friendly: policies from Christchurch's lesser-known mayoral candidates. ...
Josie Adams, Hayden Donnell, and Alice Webb-Liddall read thousands of policy statements to find the climate change deniers, fudgers, prevaricators (and believers) running in our local elections.The Spinoff local election coverage is made possible thanks to The SpinoffMembers. For more about becoming a member and supporting The Spinoff’s journalism click here.One of the problems ...
The paintings of Colin McCahon convey dissonance and uncertainty, writes Shannon Te Ao. So what does this say about us? And why are we maintaining this Pākehā male narrative at the expense of more inclusive representation?Colin McCahon would have turned 100 on August the 1st. If you keep one eye ...
Amanda Thompson spends a day with the New Zealand men’s roller derby squad as they prepare for next year’s world champs in the US.Let’s play a word game. Let’s list some contact sports and the top teams in those codes.Say rugby. Are you thinking about the All Blacks yet? What ...
Covering Climate Now:Dietary Requirements is The Spinoff’s monthly podcast in which we eat, drink and talk about it too, with special thanks to Freedom Farms. This month, we go crazy for crickets in a climate week special.The Spinoff’s participation in Covering Climate Now is made possible thanks to Spinoff Members. ...
To mark International Day of Peace, Dr Rebecca Dudley of the New Zealand Red Cross explores the role that New Zealanders play in the global story of war and peace. Personal stories about war almost always begin with a memory.A humid afternoon in South Sudan.A calm Wednesday evening in Beirut.A bustling ...
The history of tattoo art in Japan is deep-rooted and complex – and so is the cultural aversion to tattooed bodies, explains Brian Ashcraft, the author of a book on subject.Tonight, when the All Blacks take the field, they’ll be covering up. In order not to run afoul of Japanese ...
Covering Climate Now: Saying climate change is important is one thing. So why are we so incapable of having a real conversation about what actually addressing it will mean? Sam McGlennon investigates. The Spinoff’s participation in Covering Climate Now is made possible thanks to Spinoff Members. Join us here!Up until a week ago, ...
"This is what Wellington boy said, after he finished his quick and bloody deed. You know what your problem is? Once a slut, always a slut": a short story by Auckland writer Eileen Merriman. ...
Michael Mann, a climatologist and famous press critic, talks to the Columbia Journalism Review about the dangers of both understating and overstating the dangers of climate change. ...
Ahead of the All Blacks first game Trevor McKewen makes some his fanciful, fraught and some hopefully on-point predictions for the Rugby World Cup.Can you take one for the team? Could you cope with the All Blacks coming up short in achieving an unprecedented third straight World Cup if it ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra [embedded content]University of Canberra Deputy Vice-Chancellor Leigh Sullivan discusses Scott Morrison’s new family law inquiry with Michelle Grattan. They also speak of the developments in the Tamil family from Biloela’s case, and the UN barring ...
Analysis - Jacinda Ardern heads for the UN as the sexual assault scandal rumbles on at home, and Simon Bridges says he isn't going to ease off his personal attacks on the PM. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Dries Verstraete, Senior Lecturer in Aerospace Design and Propulsion, University of Sydney CC BY-NDClimate Explained is a collaboration between The Conversation, Stuff and the New Zealand Science Media Centre to answer your questions about climate change.If you have a question you’d ...
In this episode of our new tarot reading show Wild Card, The Spinoff’s resident psychic divines the outcome of the All Blacks’ opening match against the Springboks on Saturday.In the first and potentially only episode of Wild Card, we have a focus on sport. The Spinoff’s psychic-in-residence, Jo Sees, specialises ...
Recently-retired Sky TV chief executive John Fellet talks to Newsroom business editor Nikki Mandow about baseball, media, goldfish, accountancy - and more baseball. ...
The Real Pod assembles to dissect the week in reality television and real life, with special thanks to Nando’s.With Duncan enjoying a MAFS-style beach holiday in Bali, Alex and Jane are left to cover another crazy week in reality television. Shannon Ryan has gone full beast-mode in Celebrity Treasure Island, Married ...
Dr Bryce Edwards“Diversity” is a central theme of the current local government elections – with the common criticism that incumbent politicians are generally too “stale, male, and pale” (or variations on that). Numerous commentators and candidates have lamented the lack of women, ethnic minorities, and youth in local government. ...
Editor’s Note: Here below is a list of the main issues currently under discussion in New Zealand and links to media coverage.New Zealand Parliament Buildings, Wellington, New Zealand.Today’s content by Dr Bryce Edwards.Climate change, environment Paul Gorman (Stuff): How would you spend an unlimited war chest for ...
A review into the Ministry for Culture and Heritage will look into the relationship between a staffer and the external developer responsible for a massive data breach. ...
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Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Roger Crisp, Professorial Fellow, Dianoia Institute of Philosophy, Australian Catholic University As world chiefs and youth leaders gather in New York at the United Nations Climate Action Summit, many of us as individuals are feeling powerless and overwhelmed. Making big personal changes ...
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The only published and available best-selling indie book chart in New Zealand is the top 10 sales list recorded every week at Unity Books’ stores in High St, Auckland, and Willis St, Wellington.AUCKLAND1 The Testaments by Margaret Atwood (Chatto & Windus, $48)Obvs. (Read our review by Pip Adam here)2 Three ...
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Open mike 19/09/2015 
Open mike is your post.
Reprinted from Jacobinmag by Jane Slaughter and Chris Brooks Almost 50,000 UAW workers are on strike against GM and a two-tier labor system that undermines worker solidarity. But members may need to wage a battle on two fronts — against the company, but also against their own union leadership. Forty-nine ...4 hours ago
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The worm has turned in the latest Roy Morgan Poll!
RM polls are too ‘bouncy’ for a single one to mean much. The trend is encouraging though.
Kia ora all,
Conference Invitation
People who are in, or can get to Wellington on the weekend of 9 & 10 October – 3 weeks away would enjoy Information, ethics and the public good.
Conference info at http://bit.ly/whocanwetrust
The mini-conference will be held at St Andrews on the Terrace church and conference centre. It follows on from one held last year titled democracy, ethics and the public good when Sandra Grey, Bronwyn Hayward and Jane Kelsey were amongst the speakers. 2014 Conference report
This years conference has come directly out of the recommendations of last years which were that the lack of reliable information and problems with information flows to and from the media were amongst the most important challenges to NZ’s democracy. Like last year the focus is as much on participation as listening.
If you’d like to support this but can’t come you can donate to help us cover the costs of videoing, facilitation and some of the speakers travel costs.
The conference is part of the programme of lectures and seminars put on by the St Andrews Trust for the Study of Religion and Society and also Public Good whose kaupapa is to defend strong public services and a good quality democracy.
Jan Rivers
Thanks for the heads up on that conference. I hope you will get good numbers and help with donations. It is good that there are meetings for thought and discussion in other places than Auckland. I hope people will be able to go. You can get cheap hotels in the weekends in Wellington when the political tide is out. Myself I have another project on just now but will try to get to Wellington from Nelson. There are lots of airlines available for from here to there now.
Greyrawshark,
It would be lovely to meet you. I’m sure we can find places to stay in Welly for anyone coming from out of town, We’ll be videoing parts of the conference as per last year. To get a sense of what happened last year here’s a href=”http://www.publicgood.org.nz/wp/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/Democracy-conference-summary.pdf” title=”summary report “ with links to video presentations by Jane Kelsey, Bronwyn Hayward, Lloyd Geering and Michael Macaulay and Sandra Grey and Charles Sedgwick’s report on their research on NGOs amongst others.
Anyone’s who’s needs somewhere to stay can text or email the address on the public good website – http://www.publicgood.org.nz
There’s a couple of feel good stories on rural delivery this am (will be on tv1 delay at 8) one’s a young orchard grower that employs local and pays a living wage the other one is for Draco T B about growing pine nuts on hard country.
Noms Pine nuts! A crop we should be growing instead of importing the korean ones. Theres many years wait before the tree is mature enough to harvest, but those little beauties are worth the wait. Once you’ve had a NZ grown pine nut you’ll never go back.
Buy NZ grown walnuts too. Support our local growers (lots of walnuts come from Canterbury) and wow yourself with their superior taste and freshness
Is the show about pine nuts on tvnz on demand?
Sometimes country calendar has good news shows about sustainable agricultural and cropping practices. Nice antidote to the horror stories about pollution, unsustainable irrigation and farmed animal cruelty.
This one:
https://www.tvnz.co.nz/ondemand/country-calendar/22-08-2015/series-2015-episode-21
🙂
It’s yourself!
Thank you Robert. I missed that show. I’ve watched a few minutes and put it in a file to watch the rest later.
I love what you both have done with your land. The food forest and native forest look’s like it’s bursting with life as a result of the methods you’ve used for cultivation. What an achievement!
Lowers my blood pressure just to see all that green and hear the bird song. I live on a wasteland of a development and really do feel the loss of connection to nature. You actually feel it almost as a physical loss, because the psychological loss is so great.
Look forward to watching the rest of the show when chores are out of the way.
I had a look today. Once traversed the TV1 On Demand (!)it was an inspirational program. Thanks Robert.
Great to see your picture on promo on TV on Demand. Sounds great what you have done but don’t want to get on TV1 list of addresses. So can’t get access to this public service. I don’t need their sort of service, just would like to catch up on occasional archives.
Dotcom case sets Crown back $5.8m
– More corporate welfare – if the big 4 media companies were so sure he was guilty (Unlike Sony who kept out of it) why is the NZ taxpayer paying this legal tab. Shouldn’t the overseas media companies be paying the bill as this is a civil claim! Of course to make the corporate welfare work they had upgrade the charges. Hmmm – this is a good way to waste NZ taxpayers money on red herrings for the movie industry. They have the money to fight, but why should they, when John Key will get the NZ public to pick up the tab to get back at him.
Did he even get compensation when the GCSB illegally spied on him?
ISDS; privatized justice system, conflicts with human rights, rubbished in
UN report published 17 Sept 2015
UN expert: UN Charter and Human rights treaties prevail over free trade and investment agreements
GENEVA (17 September 2015) – United Nations Independent Expert Alfred de Zayas today urged the UN system and Governments across the world to radically reform the international investment regime by putting an end to free trade and investment agreements that conflict with human rights treaty obligations. In his full-length report* to the Human Rights Council, he also called on States “to conduct human rights, health and environmental impact assessments before and after entering into bilateral and multilateral investment agreements.”
“In his report the expert deplores the paradox resulting from assuming conflicting treaty obligations. “States that ratify human rights treaties also enter into agreements that prevent them from fulfilling their human rights obligations. Revision of the investment treaties must ensure that in case of conflict, human rights prevail,” he noted.
“In the light of widespread abuse over the past decades, the Investor-State Dispute Settlement mechanism, which accompanies most free trade and investment agreements must be abolished as contra bonos mores, because it encroaches on the regulatory space of States and suffers from fundamental flaws including lack of independence, transparency, accountability and predictability,” he stressed.
In his report, the expert observes that: “This dispute settlement mechanism has mutated into a privatized system of ‘justice’, incompatible with article 14(1) of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, whereby three arbitrators are allowed to override national legislation and the judgments of the highest national tribunals, in secret and with no possibility to appeal. This constitutes a grave challenge to the very essence of the rule of law”.
http://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=16439&LangID=E
This.
It is this that pretty much rules invalid all of the present FTAs.
TPPA developments – we need to keep the pressure on PM John Key and Trade Minister Tim Groser!
————————————————————————————–
Last ditch TPPA Ministerial in 10 days
Press Release – Professor Jane Kelsey (17 September 2015)
Last ditch TPPA Ministerial in 10 days – is Groser preparing to swallow the rat? Canadian officials have confirmed rumours that the trade ministers from the twelve countries negotiating the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPPA) plan to meet …Last ditch TPPA Ministerial in 10 days – is Groser preparing to swallow the rat?
Canadian officials have confirmed rumours that the trade ministers from the twelve countries negotiating the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPPA) plan to meet in Atlanta, US at the end of the month in a last ditch attempt to conclude the deal. The chief negotiators are set to meet on 26 September to try to clear the ground for the politicians.
The ministers’ meeting coincides with the UN Sustainable Development Summit when their political leaders will be together in New York, giving US President Obama the perfect opportunity to pressure John Key and the others to accept US demands, according to Auckland University law professor Jane Kelsey.
Of the three big outstanding issues – market access on automobiles and dairy and longer monopoly protections biologic medicines – autos is the only one where there have been public moves to settle the differences.
Mexico and Canada object to a deal on autos reached by the US and Japan. The four said progress was made at a meeting this week and will meet again early next week in the US.
‘Whether the Atlanta ministerial would proceed without agreement on autos remains to be seen’ Professor Kelsey said. ‘Another failed ministerial would doom the negotiations. But they are between a rock and a hard place, as the controversial deal is now hostage to the US presidential election cycle and this is really their last chance to conclude it under Obama’.
The market access issues are especially sensitive for Canada, which has an election in a month from now, but the details of the deal would not be released until after that date.
‘In contrast to autos, there has been no noise about dairy at all,’ Kelsey said. ‘This lends support to the view expressed to me by informed people in other countries that autos is the bigissue and once that is settled dairy is not expected to delay a final agreement.’
‘Put another way, Groser is expected to swallow the rat, rather than hold up the deal, and wear the flack at home by saying New Zealand couldn’t afford not to be part of the TPPA. The details of the final deal won’t be available for another 30 days so he can talk up the benefits without any facts to get in the way.’ *
Professor Kelsey called on Minister Groser to ‘abandon his carefully ambiguous language and set out some real bottom lines on pharmaceuticals, investment, state-owned enterprises, and dairy so New Zealanders know where he stands before the secret deal-making resumes in Atlanta.’
* New Zealand officials have confirmed inevidence to the Waitangi Tribunal that no substantive changes can be made after the negotiations are concluded. The US Fast Track law then drives the timetable. The President must give 90 days notice before signing the TPPA and the text must be made available 30 days after that – but too late to change anything in the text.
————————————————————————–
or http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/PO1509/S00215/last-ditch-tppa-ministerial-in-10-days.htm
Could not resist reposting this for a LOL on a cold, wet Saturday.
So – many – ponytails …
Lol. Thanks. Needed that today. That twitter thing is funny all the way through.
National still a pack of obdurate ideologues:
http://www.stuff.co.nz/business/money/72167422/consumer-nz-calls-for-incandescent-bulbs-to-go
Of course the government needs to get involved – inefficient lighting shouldn’t be on the shelves.
It happens that if you are very short of cash, had $5, and need to buy a light bulb, some bread and stuff for sandwich lunches, you will buy a bulb for $1, some white bread for $1, and have $3 for a couple of bananas and some other fillings. Buy a long-last bulb and you are lucky to have any of that $5 left. They are too dear for poor people, and will lead to a rise in candle use.
Interestingly enough the solution to that is to get the cheap, inefficient light bulbs out of the market pushing demand for the efficient ones and thus shifting the resources used for the bad light bulbs to efficient light bulbs.
BTW, if I had $5 and had to buy a light bulb and food I’d go hungry for a meal or two to get the efficient light bulb because I’d save more money and thus be able to get more food.
Of course, in reality I plan it so that I don’t get into that position.
DTB
You are so wise, objective, efficientand with a touch of austerity.. Why can’t we all be like that. It’s a puzzle.
/facepalm
People need to do what they can – not try and do what they wish.
In the mean time we try and change the system so as to eliminate poverty.
I think the point is that not everyone has the same choices you do.
btw, have the pollution issues been solved with CFLs? If not, it’s just swapping one set of problems for another. What we should have done is worked towards transitioning to LEDs and then we wouldn’t have wasted all that industry on tech that too many people didn’t want to take up and that was always going to cause environmental problems. I agree with you that the govt should have regulated this process.
edit, myself, I’d rather we had a choice, and I’d choose incandescents where appropriate and save power in other ways. But really the whole notion that we would increase efficiency via light bulb change when we ignore conservation and sustainability in almost every other area kind of makes a mockery of the conversation.
Nope because we still don’t have proper recycling processes. That said, it was never really that much of a problem. A concern that should have been addressed, yes, and now that LEDs are available it probably means that we should be banning CFLs but watch as National and other idiots scream blue murder over that one.
Shifting over LEDs would also give us the excellent excuse to shift house lighting over to 12v DC as well thus improving safety there.
I’m happy for people to have that choice – as long as we get to charge for the extra power that they use. I suggest a selling price of $20 each with $19 of that going to lower power prices for everyone else.
Or perhaps we could have it so that the price per kilowatt went up with the more you used on the basis of supply and demand. You demand more (use inefficient light bulbs) you get charged more.
Or, the better option, is to just ban inefficient light bulbs (it is possible to get efficient light bulbs that look like incandescent bulbs and even have similar colour).
And then read this article to find out why you’d never, ever buy an incandescent light bulb ever again if you were smart:
Going hungry for a day is worth it to buy an efficient light bulb so that you’ll eat better for years to come.
Interesting DTB about DC lighting. Going hungry to afford a better light bulb is making a sacrifice for the future public good. Austerity touch.
But when each day there is something one has to sacrifice food as a gesture of public good, rational choice for the future you can end up with a starving child and a parent with insufficient energy to even think and cope with today. That’s the reality.
Going without now to make a better future is only possible if you are in the precariat and managing your way through the present with time to think and hope for a future that’s better.
There is a lot we don’t know about the new lighting, its effects on the human brain through changing light levels and spectrum, then there is the extra bulb cost, noticeable for multiple lights. There is a lack of information and effective regulation with new lighting being placed into old fittings some of which can be a fire hazard,
And not overlooking that there may be extra energy and resource required to make these bulbs. Is there a sufficiency of the raw materials for them? Will the gas in them add to greenhouse gases, or mix with other gases resulting in another problem. Perhaps we should start burning rushes again, be collecting fat from meat eating households and making old fashioned tallow candles?
Then there are the manufacturers statements about their efficacy. How many people know how long their bulbs last? I have marked the base of my incandescent ones and get about 6 months. How many people do that with their new bulbs, said to last four years, actually much less – who would remember, who would note the placement date?
And the lightness comparison doesn’t seem correct. Supposed to be 75 watt equivalent, it seems more like 60watt. I fear that we will never get a true statement of equivalence on the packets and we will end up disagreeing with scientific findings presented to us and have to go by our own findings. This could be like television advertisers saying that ads are not louder, they just sound that way because of compression (whatever that is. And don’t anyone bother to tell me –
I will just accept that and put my time into thinking about the news and information about the world falling to pieces round our ears.)
Actually, it was for your own personal good. And I did point out that people should plan these things so that they’re not in that position. It is possible to do that.
There isn’t. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if they ended up using less.
Yes – once we get recycling going properly.
No, because the gases used in them are inert.
Occasionally you’ll get a bad one. I’ve personally had one last for more than ten years. The one in my bedroom is more than two years old.
It’s correct. The problem seems to come from the fact that a lot of modern ones have a lot of blue light in them which looks darker to many people. If this is true for you then look for ones that have more yellow light in them (usually advertised as warm).
Probably somewhere between zero and none.
Long term good.
Short term not-so-good.
That’s actually one of the prisons of poverty – you end up paying more because you can only afford to pay less at the time.
It’s like stocking up on cheap specials on groceries, or buying good quality (as opposed to just plain expensive) clothes, or paying the power bill early to get the discount, or getting the vehicle serviced regularly to avoid breakdowns – richer people can afford to do that, so end up spending less than poor people.
Remember the stated reasons for the establishment of the United Nations?
If the underpinning ‘Purposes and Principles’ were actually PRACTISED – would there be such an international refugee crisis happening now?
As New Zealand is currently a member of the UN Security Council – what steps are being taken to advocate, promote, implement and enforce the following underpinning ‘Purposes and Principles’ of the UN Charter?
—————————————————————————
CHAPTER I: PURPOSES AND PRINCIPLES
Article 1
The Purposes of the United Nations are:
To maintain international peace and security, and to that end: to take effective collective measures for the prevention and removal of threats to the peace, and for the suppression of acts of aggression or other breaches of the peace, and to bring about by peaceful means, and in conformity with the principles of justice and international law, adjustment or settlement of international disputes or situations which might lead to a breach of the peace;
To develop friendly relations among nations based on respect for the principle of equal rights and self-determination of peoples, and to take other appropriate measures to strengthen universal peace;
To achieve international co-operation in solving international problems of an economic, social, cultural, or humanitarian character, and in promoting and encouraging respect for human rights and for fundamental freedoms for all without distinction as to race, sex, language, or religion; and
To be a centre for harmonizing the actions of nations in the attainment of these common ends.
Article 2
The Organization and its Members, in pursuit of the Purposes stated in Article 1, shall act in accordance with the following Principles.
The Organization is based on the principle of the sovereign equality of all its Members.
All Members, in order to ensure to all of them the rights and benefits resulting from membership, shall fulfill in good faith the obligations assumed by them in accordance with the present Charter.
All Members shall settle their international disputes by peaceful means in such a manner that international peace and security, and justice, are not endangered.
All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations.
All Members shall give the United Nations every assistance in any action it takes in accordance with the present Charter, and shall refrain from giving assistance to any state against which the United Nations is taking preventive or enforcement action.
The Organization shall ensure that states which are not Members of the United Nations act in accordance with these Principles so far as may be necessary for the maintenance of international peace and security.
Nothing contained in the present Charter shall authorize the United Nations to intervene in matters which are essentially within the domestic jurisdiction of any state or shall require the Members to submit such matters to settlement under the present Charter; but this principle shall not prejudice the application of enforcement measures under Chapter Vll.
‘Obama’s Syria’
https://www.rt.com/shows/crosstalk/315495-syria-war-isis-rise/
“Ending Syria’s horrific civil war is possible, but the political will to do so remains elusive. Over the years the facts on the ground have changed in Syria – with the rise of the Islamic State being the deadliest new reality. But Washington and its regional allies remain focused on an illegal regime change in Damascus. The west is fighting the wrong war and will surely lose the peace.
CrossTalking with Kapil Komireddi, Scott Bennett, and Richard Murphy.”
A message to talleys.
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/PO1509/S00256/global-food-unions-watching-talley-affco-bargaining-closely.htm
Sigh. I take it some developer or other has their eye on Jollie St in Christchurch. McGehan Close, Madeline Ave, now the whole of Glen Innes – the list goes on. The subtext is always the same – this place will be lovely once we remove the scary poor people. They could basically have a standard form newspaper article ready for download and just change the street name as each one becomes ripe for middle class/developer colonisation:
http://www.stuff.co.nz/the-press/news/72095461/life-in-jollie-st-you-wouldnt-last-a-week
What makes you think that they don’t?
Creepy
Sounds Rachmanish.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Rachman
” In the annals of the London underworld, few names cast as long a shadow as that of slum landlord Peter Rachman, a racketeer and pimp who ran a squalid empire of overcrowded properties in the run-down Notting Hill area in the post-war period.
His speciality was “sending in the schwarzes” which is a disparaging Yiddish term for Blacks. Rachman would put West Indians and their prostitutes into his London properties to drive out rent-controlled White neighbours with their outrageous and disgusting behaviour. To ensure stubborn tenants got the message, a crew of thugs with Alsatians doled out threats, intimidation and worse.”
The link is not a balanced one so no address.
Some Brit housing and speculation links.
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/aa1c9dfa-30ea-11e3-b478-00144feab7de.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buy_to_let
http://www.icij.org/offshore/secret-london-real-estate-speculators
Peter Rachman sounds like a regular old racketeer, without the veneer of respectability given to our lot. And where he was into rack-renting, our lot seem to be more into ethnic or class cleansing. But the get-the-money-and to-hell-with-the-people principle seems to rule in both cases.
The Allure of an Ad-Free Internet
Bold mine.
Can’t say I’m surprised by Apple’s tactics there. It’s pretty much the end of ‘competition’ where each ‘player’ is out to destroy the others rather than working together to develop better products.
I use ad blockers. I’m paying for my bandwidth and not the advertisers. I’m also against ads anyway as I view them as psychopathic manipulation of the people and thus think that they should be banned. There has got to be a better business model than manipulation.
hi draco
“I’m also against ads anyway as I view them as psychopathic manipulation of the people and thus think that they should be banned. There has got to be a better business model than manipulation.”
amen brother.
minutemen “fuck advertising,
psychological methods to sell,
should be destroyed.
let the products sell themselves.”
and don mcglashan re ads,
“with their enticements and their threats.”
i feel the same as you have described, and that is partly why i have kicked the habbit of ugly fm,newspapers and most tv.
And where does iOS force you to use that news app? I have used iOS for around 7 years and never used it.
Have you removed it from your homescreen?
But to answer your question: I didn’t say anything about force did I moron?
It has always been there. However it has become mandatory on iOS9 which got released some time last week. It was a bloody nuisance as I was direct updating an inhouse app (that I’d fixed bugs in) on a pile of iPod touch. That useless behemoth iTunes kept prompting me for each of them about an upgrade to the iOS.
Takes about 4 minutes to boot a iPod, update the app, check that it works, and shut it down. Takes about 15 minutes to update the iOS.
One of the problems with the Apple ad blocker is that it also blocks trackers like google analytics, sitemeter, and wordpress stats.
We depend on those for figuring out loads. I can tolerate robots that do that because I have many mechanisms to limit their access and cut them off. At present the only limits on humans are the numbers of pages per minute and no cutoff, just a throttle. The reason that works is because trackers allow the databases for not-humans to be updated automatically. They don’t execute the JavaScript. If we lose the trackers, then we lose that ability.
To keep loadings under control, I will probably set up a JavaScript feedback system that looks like a tracker and eliminate anything that doesn’t use it apart from google, natlib, and wayback.
Bye bye new safari users and a whole lot of bots. It lowers my costs and eliminate a browser that just became threatening to the net – safari heads off to extinction.
I couldn’t give a damn if apple eliminates ads. But when they start eliminating something useful for our site, then they can get stuffed.
“the Apple ad blocker … also blocks trackers like google analytics, sitemeter, and wordpress stats.”
Ridiculous. Richly deserve your response.
There was a Radionz report on what it is like on a small poor Greek island getting an influx of refugees whose bags and their resources have been thrown over the side by their ferry masters – to fit the maximum people in without sinking.
I have just put $20 into helping through Give-A-Little. I have some big bills to pay but thought I’d keep feeding money in to various money ports set up by communities to go direct to their needs, toilet paper, feeding bottles, food, footwear, probably spades to dig graves, drinking water bottles, sanitary pads? You name it the refugees will need it – except clothes they have plenty. It is better to give money at this time from here. And Greece is still trying to run a country and may have to charge duty on gift parcels which no-one will be able to pay.
http://www.radionz.co.nz/audio/player/201770839
09:05 New Zealander on front line of refugee crisis in Greece
As Europe fails to reach an agreement over how to share the burden of the massive flow of asylum seekers out of Syria and Iraq, we meet Christchurch woman Anne Tee, who has lived on the tiny Greek island of Leros for 25 years. Leros has been inundated by refugees, mostly from Syria, and Anne is co-ordinating volunteer aid to them.Just yesterday a boat from Turkey sank off the nearby island of Farmakonisi – the BBC are reporting that 34 people drowned, amongst them four babies and 11 children.
Give a little: Help a Kiwi care for Syrian refugees in Leros, Greece
From the What you already knew but were too afraid to believe file:
Secret Pentagon Report Reveals US “Created” ISIS As A “Tool” To Overthrow Syria’s President Assad
Newly-Declassified U.S. Government Documents: The West Supported the Creation of ISIS
Apparently our troops are over there to help stop the allies that the US built up to topple Assad.
I’m so slow – I was sent this a couple of days ago.
Are people seeing this?
Not, bad. Not bad at all.
https://leapmanifesto.org/en/the-leap-manifesto/
Like the tobacco companies and their research, the oil industry knew decades ago about the potential for disaster.
At a meeting in Exxon Corporation’s headquarters, a senior company scientist named James F. Black addressed an audience of powerful oilmen. Speaking without a text as he flipped through detailed slides, Black delivered a sobering message: carbon dioxide from the world’s use of fossil fuels would warm the planet and could eventually endanger humanity.
“In the first place, there is general scientific agreement that the most likely manner in which mankind is influencing the global climate is through carbon dioxide release from the burning of fossil fuels,” Black told Exxon’s Management Committee, according to a written version he recorded later.
It was July 1977 when Exxon’s leaders received this blunt assessment, well before most of the world had heard of the looming climate crisis.
http://insideclimatenews.org/news/15092015/Exxons-own-research-confirmed-fossil-fuels-role-in-global-warming
A survey of 2,000 people found that Mr Corbyn’s election as Labour leader has made one in five people who voted for his party at the May general election more likely to vote Conservative next time. Some 37 per cent of Labour voters say they are less likely to back the party at the next election.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/jeremy-corbyn-loses-a-fifth-of-labour-voters-with-critics-already-plotting-to-oust-leftwinger-10508584.html
Oh, Happy Happy Happy Lost Sheep I guess……
good therre obviously sheep gd work lost sheep
A long but interesting review of a book by Kevin M. Kruse
‘One Nation Under God: How Corporate America Invented Christian America’
The secret history of the 1950s Christian right and its zeal for capitalism.
http://www.democracyjournal.org/38/laissez-prayer.php?page=all
Apologies in advance folks for being a prick but just talking on phone with a right-wing-ish mate in Aux (not by philosophy or considered application…….by default really) – prosaic Aux media type if you know what I mean.
Me: “Donald Trump reminds me of one of those blow-up plastic fuck dolls……mouth all circular and ready for use.”
My mate (belly laughing): “You’re right you’re right !”
Anyone else ?
I’m afraid that even if I was a coiffed, silver-haired, Viagra spruiked, Mid-West, GOP arsehole…….like the fruit loop who told Old Fuck Mouth that Obama’s a Muslim, that vision would haunt me……
So the EU don’t like the current ISDS setup and have proposed changes.
Will the TPPA be rushed through with the existing ISDS system (with its faults pointed out in the link in my comment #5) or will they take the time to look at alternatives, like those proposed below.
European Commission publishes draft investment chapter for the TTIP, including investment protection provisions and the establishment of an International Investment Court
“The proposed new Investment Court system
The Commission proposes the establishment of a new court system to resolve disputes under the TTIP, to be comprised of a Tribunal of First Instance (to be called the “Investment Tribunal”) and an Appeal Tribunal.
The Investment Tribunal would consist of 15 judges appointed jointly by the EU and US governments, with 5 EU nationals, 5 US nationals and 5 nationals of other countries. This standing body of judges would be appointed for a six-year term, renewable once. Tribunals would be appointed at random from the 15 members with no party influence over who would hear any case, although always comprised of one EU, one US and one third party tribunal member (with the third party member as chair). However, the disputing parties could agree on a sole arbitrator (to be appointed out of the 5 nationals of third countries). Once appointed, the tribunal would resolve the dispute under the rules chosen by the investor in the case in question from the ICSID rules, UNCITRAL rules or “any other rules agreed by the disputing parties”.
The permanent Appeal Tribunal would be comprised of six members, each appointed for a six year term, with two EU and two US nationals, and a further two nationals of third countries. The Appeal Tribunal would have a President and Vice-President selected only from the nationals of third countries. The composition of each Appeal Tribunal would be “random and unpredictable” (albeit that each tribunal would need an EU, US and third country national). The Appeal Tribunal would be there to ensure that there (to quote the Commission) “could be no doubt as to the legal correctness of the decisions of [first instance] tribunals“. There would be strict time limits for the parties to appeal an award (90 days from issuance) and for the appeal proceedings themselves (usually not to exceed 180 days from notification of appeal to decision, but subject to a longstop of 270 days).
All judges of the Investment and Appeal Tribunals would be required to have high technical and legal qualifications, including having demonstrated expertise in public international law. They would also be subject to strict ethical rules under Article 11 and a Code of Conduct under Annex II. In particular, Article 5 of Annex II requires that they “shall not be influenced by self-interest, outside pressure, political considerations, public clamour, loyalty to a Party or disputing party, or fear of criticism“. They would be prohibited from taking on work as counsel on any investment disputes under the TTIP or any other agreement.”
http://hsfnotes.com/arbitration/2015/09/18/european-commission-publishes-draft-investment-chapter-for-the-ttip-including-investment-protection-provisions-and-the-establishment-of-an-international-investment-court/
This is the way an agreement should be attained- by openly discussing the terms and rules of the agreement in the way that the European Commission has published this draft investment chapter for discussion.
The secrecy of the TPPA has been a total abuse of process. Sure, there are some aspects that needed to be treated in a confidential manner, but the blanket secrecy and shutting out of any public input (as if the public are not stakeholders when their sovereignty is being threatened) is downright shameful.
Walkom in the Toronto Star.
http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2015/09/18/canadas-election-and-the-return-of-activist-government-walkom.html