The answer is, of course, social, economic and political mayhem. Thousands of ordinary middle-class New Zealanders would be ruined. The country’s leading banks would teeter on the brink of failure. Credit would dry up overnight. New Zealand would be plunged headlong into a deep recession. Thousands of “millennial” Kiwis would lose their jobs, closely followed by thousands of redundant Gen-Xers. Poverty would surge upwards to engulf layers of society untouched by deprivation for more than eighty years. In short order, shock and disbelief would give way to unrelenting political rage – and a lust for inter-generational vengeance.
Hickey’s plan has as much chance of being adopted by either main party as you have propelling yourself to the moon using only farts.
Like most people here I think he government should embark on a government funded house building spree AKA the 1950s and 1960s.
But they won't. Labour is all about technocratic woke neoliberalism – and in this country that is an election winning combination, since our technocratic elites are competent and our liberal middle class who runs everything is woke as fuck.
Of course, you CAN try and drain that swamp by voting for outsider candidates and get your revolution to cut house prices by 50%, but you are far, far more likely to end up with Donald Trump or Boris Johnson than you are with Che Guevara.
So really, if we want housing change we are all going to have to start getting real about what levers a neoliberal government under pressure might pull to get more houses built. And that is only, in NZ, going to be through the NGO housing sector.
Hang on there, are you actually claiming Trotter is right (a 1990s style recession eventuates from Hickeys housing policy) and that this is a political price worth paying?
More along the lines of implement Hickey's suggestions and reap the benefits.
As we have found, there are unintended consequences in radical times. After all, how many recent articles are there where economists have either got it totally wrong it didn't anticipate certain outcomes?
Would you like to elaborate on the benefits of the 1990s recession for us? I think Ruth Richardsons position was probably that the reforms getting passed justified the pain. But with 30 years of hindsight we might consider if the consequences were justified especially for those whose careers were interrupted by the high unemployment of that time.
However its not a zero sum game. Whatever the cause the general fall out from a major recession would easily be worse than the on going property price rises.
Of note, last year the government had an opportunity to run that experiment just by implementing lockdown without the accompanying wage subsidy (which was proportionally the largest in the world). This would certainly have landed the economy in a recession and quite likely would have prevented the latest price rises.
Unless you think that was preferable (Labour would have lost the election of course in this case) then the reforms must avoid such a recession or have a plan to mitigate it. Pertinently Trotter is asking the economist (Hickey) what that plan is because its widely known this is a likely consequence of such a price collapse. Its also what happened across multiple countries when their property bubbles collapsed, we have somewhat more evidence its a real problem than just recons. Its also the kind of advice being given to Ardern and why she is telling the country she doesn't want to cause a price collapse.
The surface dismissal of what Trotter is saying without either engaging with the argument (or even just to state their belief that property market collapse wouldn't cause a recession) doesn't endear.
This is incorrect, though a widely held myth. Soaring house prices are based on what the latest batch of house buyers are willing to pay for the houses they purchased. Often they borrowed to make those purchases, so also deposit and lending criteria, etc…
But in no way did government spending facilitate those decisions. The government could have funded itself in many ways including, normal DMO operations (though at higher interest rates) or OMF or if Grant Robertson found 60 billion down the back of the couch.
So how should the government have completed its deficit spending to avoid these recent price rises?
It seems to me Bernard Hickey is entirely unserious about solving the countries housing issues and instead he (along with a huge proportion of the vocal insolent left) prefers the high ground of oppositional politics. Why else would you propose a scheme which has zero chance of implementation?
Either Bernard Hickey wishes to be taken seriously on the issue or he does not. If he wants his views to be relegated to the background noise of a increasingly petulant twitterati left then he can carry on proposing such pie in the sky policy prescriptions. Or he can start coming up with some concrete ideas that might have a chance of actually being adopted.
As we have experienced a rise so meteoric in the last year – Part due to government action of quantitive easing and throwing $$ without taking action to counteract what this has done to property. The market has plenty of slack to allow for the market to drop to levels that we were experiencing this time last year. Problem is that our PM finds moderate increases as acceptable. To our PM: every period that rises are over and above disposable income increases guess what ? – It gets more difficult to buy a family home, or are many comfortable with a timid response ??
Less terrible than were we are now 🤫, but those who comment regarding aversions to see property prices drops forget that a return to where we were 6months. What other options are there ? stagnant property prices for many years to come as wage growth of 1% allows for an improving the house affordability trend ?
The point being that no-one wants to either buy or lend into a falling market, because of the risk of destroying all the equity and going underwater.
If there is one thing worse than a house that's too damn expensive (there is a chance you can work with that), it's a house you dare not buy regardless.
I mean, people who want a house rather than an investment with a capital gain might be interested, mad fools they are. Who just buys a house to live in it lol
Here's the missing reporting on the massive "stop the steal" protests at state capitols all around the US that the fake news media censored. (check the whole thread)
While the Democrats like to think they're the 'natural party of government' in the USA, the reality is that they only very narrowly won this election. The entire popular majority for the President resides in just three states, California, New York and Florida. The swings virtually everywhere else were tiny; the fundamental voting patterns have barely changed in decades.
And you may want to keep in mind, even when losing, Trump gained more Hispanic and Black votes this election than any Republican President ever. If it were not for the shambolic COVID response, Trump would have likely romped home.
In the meantime the Republicans are now composed almost entirely of right wing populists of various nutty flavours, and their traditional support base among the business, national security and social conservatives has been completely frozen out. A smart Democrat leadership will move toward these groups, representing as they do real money and large voting blocs.
Of course this analysis isn't intended to make you happy – it's a look at what is happening rather than what you might wish would.
Sure, the Dems need to actually win in order to get shit done. But they don't need to be as pathetic as Obama and pander to Wall St quite so obsequiously. 🤮
Maybe they think themselves as true Scythians where revolutions are infinite and in continuous turmoil (and continuous revolutions have a second law constraint) see Zamyatin.
The spiritual revolutionary, the genuine freeman and Scythian, is envisaged by Ivanov-Razumnik 1 thus: he “works for the near or distant future,” he knows that “the way of the revolution is verily a way of the cross.” We can almost agree with this defini- tion, but how often “almost” makes a world of difference. The true Scythian does not know of any straddling “or.” He works only for the distant future, never for the near future, and never for the present. Hence to him there is one way — Golgotha — and no other, and one conceivable victory — to be crucified — and no other. Christ on Golgotha, between two thieves, bleeding to death drop by drop, is the victor — because he has been crucified, be- cause, in practical terms, he has been vanquished. But Christ vic- torious in practical terms is the grand inquisitor. And worse, Christ victorious in practical terms is a paunchy priest in a silk- lined purple robe, who dispenses benedictions with his right hand and collects donations with the left. The Fair Lady, in legal marriage, is simply Mrs. So-and-So, with hair curlers at night and a migraine in the morning. And Marx, come down to earth, is simply a Krylenko . 2 Such is the irony and such is the wisdom of fate. Wisdom, because this ironic law holds the pledge of eternal movement forward. The realization, materialization, practical victory of an idea immediately gives it a philistine hue. And the true Scythian will smell from a mile away the odor of dwellings, the odor of cabbage soup, the odor of the priest in his purple cassock, the odor of Krylenko — and will hasten away from the dwellings, into the steppe, to freedom.
There's the newish dynamic prosperous urban centres of Portland and Seattle that attract a population that is young, progressive, diverse, energetic, possibly a little hot-headed, and they aren't going to take shit.
Then there's the older backblocks that aren't doing as well as they think they're entitled to and think they're still in the 1800s when the constitution of Oregon explicitly forebade non-whites. (Washington state didn't quite do that, but the vibe was still pretty clear).
So the regular rumbles between the various factions are now kind of a routine thing. Almost an expected ritual.
If there is one thing guaranteed to lose support in the USA it's political violence. not only is it morally wrong and dangerous at every level, supporting it politically as many Democrat leaders have been doing all year is monumentally stupid.
It's possibly the one factor that turned what should have been a slam dunk win over Trump into a nail-biter.
Democratic leaders have been condemning all violence for the entire last four terms. Suggesting they haven't is amplifying a right-wing smear.
In stark contrast to Darth Hater, who had been encouraging violence and dog-whistle cheering it on, with an occasional feeble hostage video repudiation when even his sycophants thought he had gone waaay too far.
At least 13 Biden campaign staff members posted on Twitter on Friday and Saturday that they made donations to the Minnesota Freedom Fund, which opposes the practice of cash bail, or making people pay to avoid pre-trial imprisonment. The group uses donations to pay bail fees in Minneapolis.
Biden campaign spokesman Andrew Bates said in a statement to Reuters that the former vice president opposes the institution of cash bail as a “modern day debtors prison.”
But the campaign declined to answer questions on whether the donations were coordinated within the campaign, underscoring the politically thorny nature of the sometimes violent protests.
Bates instead pointed to Biden’s comments that protesters have the right to be angry but that more violence won’t solve justice problems.
Note: not Democratic Leaders; their campaign staff, in an unofficial capacity; donating to a third-party that bails out protestors; and a statement by Biden calling out violence.
The fact that left wing protests regularly turned into violence of one sort or another virtually all damned year – and that protest leaders and Democrats did little but token hand-wringing to stop it is something the left owns now whether you like it or not.
BLM and other leftish protests regularly turned into violence (at a rate of about 4% to 6% of all protests) mostly because of police and white supremacists initiating violence.
The police had an obligation to ensure protestors could exercise their First Amendment right to peaceably assemble: the police abjectly failed, and indeed, were often the proximate cause of the violation of the protestors rights. In direct contravention of their obligations and oaths.
That RWNJs are now furiously gaslighting to deflect blame doesn’t change the facts.
edit: here’s just one link of many that are easily found just be googling police brutality blm protests.
So the link to the Antifa protest yesterday that sparked this thread, is a deep fake video? Or white supremacists reacting to police provocation?
And if BLM want to base an entire movement on the basis of less than 20 unjustified deaths per year (out of tens of million of police encounters), then your 4 – 6% of protests that turn ugly cannot be dismissed either.
The simple truth you keep dodging is that while I don't have to hassle any brain cells to rank the order of importance between the Capitol invasion and the the burning down of a Seven11 – the ongoing news clips showing political violence done either in the name of or under the cover of ostensibly left wing protests all year cannot be erased from the voters mind either.
And unless I've missed something, I have yet to see any pro-BLM/Antifa people here on this thread actually condemning the Antifa violence seen even yesterday. What we get instead are denial, minimising and deflection at every step.
The fact that you continue to misrepresent what your own links say, to demonise civil rights protests, makes clear the rabidity of your own partisanship, whether you like it or not.
So you want to reserve the option to both allow the left to condemn political violence for reasons of respectability, but at the same time cheer it on when it suits because 'racism'.
Of course I support violence when I think it's justified. Why would I oppose justified violence?
Does it extend to other people's idea of justification? Within reason. Individual circumstances are not always precise, nor is the level of violence chosen.
I'm a great fan of a "reasonable person" assessment. I know it doesn't fit with your desire for categorical imperatives that can be adapted as rules for your positronic neural network, but that's the difficulty of being human.
And as we previously discovered, what you count as "political violence" is not as categorical as you claim. Damaging property and threatening people with assault in order to protest materialism is fine, if it's "performative" enough.
Of course you can claim the 'cleansing of the Temple' was political violence because it suits your argument. I think it was a legitimate protest, disruptive yes, but not violent. (There is no evidence from the account anyone was hurt.)
That's my point, you think you're being reasonable, when I don't. So which one of us gets to define what is acceptable or not? It just becomes a matter of opinion, and the fucking nazis are just as free to have their opinion as Antifa.
My argument is simply that whenever there is any doubt, political violence must be out of bounds. The most watertight definition is the most reliable one.
That's my point, you think you're being reasonable, when I don't. So which one of us gets to define what is acceptable or not? It just becomes a matter of opinion, and the fucking nazis are just as free to have their opinion as Antifa.
Neither of us do. There is no central Decider who makes the determination. We are judged by our peers, voters, judiciary, and history. All of them get to change their minds at any time. You might despise that sort of ethical melieu, but the objective isn't a categorical line in the sand. The objective is to not go down in history as being too much of a dick. John Brown is another dude who I'd rather be like than someone who just frowned at slavery and did nothing.
My argument is simply that whenever there is any doubt, political violence must be out of bounds. The most watertight definition is the most reliable one.
Have you not been paying attention? There is always some shred of doubt. By your rules, anyone who tried to kill Hitler in the 1930s was wrong, as well. Bullshit.
solkta is now using a modern dictionary to parse events that took place 2000 years ago.
If you think that era was at all touched by the concerns of the modern woke, you really need to read some history.
Setting aside the historicity of the bible narrative here are some examples of the 'woke'-ness RL so derides:
How Jesus broke down racial barriers:
Jesus went to Samaria to save the Woman at the Well. Most Jews went around Samaria just to avoid “those people.” There was total segregation between them (Jn. 4:9), but Jesus had a divine appointment with a broken woman who desperately needed Him. The disciples were shocked that Jesus even spoke to her (Jn. 4:27), yet He took the time to reveal His Messiahship to her (Jn. 4:25-26). As a result, a two-day revival broke out in Samaria (Jn. 4:39-42).
Jesus healed a Roman Centurion’s servant (Mt. 8:5-13). There was much racial tension between Jews and Romans. The Jews despised them for occupying their land, controlling their lives, and overtaxing them. Jesus was willing to go to his house, but most Jews wouldn’t even consider going near the house of an “unclean” Gentile. The Centurion said Jesus could just speak the word only. He knew how the chain of command worked. Then Jesus commended his faith and healed his servant.
Jesus delivered the Syrophoenician woman’s daughter (Mt. 15:21-28). Jesus went beyond the borders of Israel to meet this Greek woman. At first, He ignored her (Mt. 15:23). Then, He excluded her—“I was not sent except to the lost sheep of the house of Israel” (Mt. 15:24). Next, it seems, He insulted her—“It is not good to take the children’s bread and throw it to the little dogs” (Mt 15:26). (Jews often referred to Gentiles as dogs.) She must have been a bulldog because she refused to take no for an answer (Mt. 15:27). Jesus was so impressed with her faith that He delivered her daughter from demons.
Jesus told the Parable of the Good Samaritan (Lk. 10:30-37). Samaritans were the “bad guys” to the Jews, but Jesus made one the hero of this story to show there is good in people we may not like. Notice the priest and the Levite (two “good guys”) did nothing to help the victim. Jesus redefined who is our neighbor is—not just the person on our same street, but any person of any race who is in need.
Jesus went out of His way to include the Gentiles and break down racial barriers. After all, He wasn’t just the King of the Jews. As the Samaritans testified, “We know that this is indeed the Christ, the Savior of the WORLD” (Jn. 4:42).
Well that of course is why Christ is remembered – he did challenge the norms of the era and set in place a moral framework that still informs the modern world.
But if you imagine the account of the 'cleansing of the Temple' would have stacked up as 'violent' in terms of how people thought in those quite different times, I think you and McF are suffering a quite bad dose of presentism.
Notably Christ's approach to the issues you list is based however not in identity politics and power struggle, but through the 'rebirth of the soul' within the heart of each individual. That's my problem with woke – it takes good causes and uses them to cloak bad actions.
By your rules, anyone who tried to kill Hitler in the 1930s was wrong, as well. Bullshit.
Well that's because we know what happened subsequently in the 1940's. Now how would you feel if someone had tried or even succeeded in assassinating Trump?
Now how would you feel if someone had tried or even succeeded in assassinating Trump?
Hmmm. In 2016? Probably would have been a bit ambivalent about it. Less ambivalent if I knew literally hundreds of thousands of lives might have been saved.
But then if Hitler had been assassinated in 1935 and I was reading about it in a history book, same deal.
RL, why can't you just admit that you were wrong? Why are you so incapable of that?
In the 14 yrs I've been commenting here I never thought to demand that of anyone.
My point is simple – if you are going to insist on reserving the right to use political violence in the name of your own cause, then you will have no defense when your opponents do the same.
Probably would have been a bit ambivalent about it.
I would have condemned it absolutely outright. As would indeed the vast majority of 'reasonable' people I suggest.
You've completely forgotten the very purpose of politics. It's to substitute dialog and negotiation for coercion and war.
When you allow violence to creep in through the cracks – you will inevitably find it betrays democracy and civilisation. Everything you thought worth saving.
I would have condemned it absolutely outright. As would indeed the vast majority of 'reasonable' people I suggest.
Yeah, his repeated early moves on race-based immigration didn't worry many people you'd regard as "reasonable". But they were pretty fucking strong portents of looming fascism.
I'd have been against it a bit because maybe he hadn't met the threshold of harm that warranted assassination, but for it a bit because he looked like he had a good chance of going there. Ambivalent. Hell, I'm still ambivalent about whether it would have been a good thing at the start of his presidency. Would Pence's Gilead have been worse than 400k covid deaths and open fascism? Can't say for sure.
What happens when the State claims a monopoly on violence, but then that State goes rogue, ignores the democratic will of the people, and indeed begins oppressing its own? From the Declaration of Independence:
But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.
@RL In the 14 yrs I've been commenting here I never thought to demand that of anyone.
Some people are able to admit when they are wrong about something and this enables them to learn new things. Others just want to prance around like a peacock.
Well compared to say Yeltsin using tanks to shell the Kremlin, how does the 'storming of the Capitol' stack up? Just a little singe?
My point I think is this; unless you have categorically ruled political violence out of bounds, then you (or anyone else) will always find a reason to justify it to suit themselves.
I don't think it was reasonable – but I'll bet the vast majority of people who went almost certainly thought it was. The accounts I've read support this.
So? They are unreasonable. Who decides that? People in general, over time.
What do we know, through careful examination of the facts? The insurrectionists got much of their plan wrong. They lacked reason. They livestreamed their crimes. Lack of reason. They had faith in dolt45. Lack of reason.
Yelstin: there was an attempted coup. Coup plotters had arrest lists and military forces. He organised resistance to the coup. Coup plotters didn't surrender, he shelled their position. All reasonable actions.
If you doubt your own ability to assess reasonable actions and arguments, that's your problem.
If you doubt your own ability to assess reasonable actions and arguments, that's your problem.
I'm not the one who is willing to commit violence in the name of your always reasonable cause, nor condone an assassination if it suits your political view.
I've assessed that violence represents the abdication of politics, the point at which you've plunged into the abyss.
You will be the good man who stands by and does nothing because you can't trust your mental faculties and you might therefore be wrong. Frowns don't stop nazis.
They are unreasonable. Who decides that? People in general, over time.
Which is why we reserve violence for the state; it alone has the capacity to make the collective determination you're asking for here.
And if the state has degenerated into an intolerable tyranny then it can be resisted by defying it courageously. Ghandi, Mandela and King showed how it’s done.
Actually, if you think Mandela was a pacifist then you're probably right to mistrust your judgement.
BLM protests aren't the riots you paint them as, but even if they all were, MLK said "riots are the language of the unheard". He didn't approve, but he understood. He didn't just fire off categorical imperatives as an excuse to dismiss the issue.
Gandhi was also not as categorical as you: "where there is only a choice between cowardice and violence, I would advise violence." Apparently also recruited Indians to serve as British soldiers in WW1.
Let's see: Mandela, Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr, Jesus… none of them lived up to Redlogix's pacifist ideals.
Yet each of these leaders are held in such high esteem precisely because they achieved their remarkable goals with the bare minimum of disruption and force necessary. Their primary leverage was a moral not physical.
The general trend of human evolution has been away from coercion and violence to resolve conflicts of interest, toward dialog and negotiation. In this process we have slowly ceded our right to personal forceful action upward to higher authority. First to the clan, the tribe, the warlord, the city state and now the nation state.
At each step we've gained increasing freedom in our daily lives from violence. At this point in time humans are probably the least violent we've ever been. Pinker has made this case very well.
This is not necessarily because our personal capacity for violence has diminished, but because we have created social structures that regulate and moderate it on our collective behalf.
Meanwhile, in the real world nobody lives up to your categorical imperatives, St RedLogix. Not even the people you list.
I agree, minimum force should be used. I worked under that rule for 20 years, always knowing any instance could be put to a test of reasonableness in court. But "never"? You're setting absurdly high goals for any movement, there, let alone one you seem to oppose.
And in my view the principle of non-violence must take precedence. There is no more excuse for individuals resorting to violence for a political purpose than there is for domestic violence.
It's the same logic, just taken to the next wider social level.
Yet manifestly they're all celebrated precisely for the success of their non-violent approach.
It's a very odd thing that you should now be consigning them to the same dustbin history along with all the assorted thugs, warlords and failed revolutionaries who only ever reached for violent means to prosecute their cause.
If that's your genuine take-away from the discussion, all I can do is be thankful that you have enough awareness remaining to doubt the reasonableness of your beliefs.
You may want to consider that what we think permissible, changes with time. My view is that the boundaries on violence are being gradually extended from virtually no limits at all – toward ideally a total prohibition in any form.
RL, your view seems not to correspond with reality. The difference between those engaged in violence in support of a fascist coup and others fighting oppression seems quite clear to other commenters. For one thing; the oppressors expect to get away with their crimes, whereas the oppressed expect to be harshly punished, but do it anyway.
This is the best I have seen it stated:
There's a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can't take part! You can't even passively take part! And you've got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels…upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you've got to make it stop! And you've got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it, that unless you're free, the machine will be prevented from working at all!
Everyone would want to see the correct legal outcome that most people considered just; but it would be a mob that went on a rampage afterward if they didn't like it.
… political violence. not only is it morally wrong and dangerous at every level, supporting it politically as many Democrat leaders have been doing all year is monumentally stupid.
Democratic politicians are outspoken supporters of the most extreme violence by insurrectionary mobs in Venezuela and by Israeli snipers against unarmed protestors in Gaza and the Occupied West Bank.
Where on earth do you get the idea that Democrats oppose violence?
I am not that familiar with twitter, but this Disclose.tv thread looks a bit dodgy there Poisson.
Hopefully, in the next few days, we will see some details about those eight arrested. I wouldn't be quite so quick to ascribe the actions to "Antifa", though I guess ICE is arguably fascist enough for people to be anti it. But Anarchist is not the same as Antifa, despite sounding similar, and sometimes sharing similar objectives. The J20 protests the previous 4 years have certainly seemed a bit larger, but also featured flag burning. From 2017:
The day's events began with a contentious American flag burning event that was organized by a small group of anarchists around 2:30 p.m. No arrests were made at that time, but Portland Police took several wooden poles and other materials from protesters that could have been used as weapons.
But it's not entirely clear if the group is the same as those of previous years with McKelvey, then leader of "Portland's Resistance" seeming to have moved to Atlanta in mid-2018. And there are no repeated names in the lists of arrested between the two years (can't be bothered hunting up 2016,18&19 details – have enough tabs open as it is). Also not the only protest in Portland that day:
Another demonstration involving a different group of people got underway at 4 p.m. at Northeast Portland's Irving Park.
Portland Police said they were aware of a third protest, set for 8 p.m. at South Portland's Caruthers Park.
The Global Disinformation Index seems to think that they know. Naming Disclose.tv as one of the top 10 biggest profiteers from publishing election disinformation in November 2020.
Looks like @adweek, mainstream media, and other groups are now going on a widespread witch hunt. None of the allegations are true.
None of our tweets have been flagged by Twitter and we have not retweeted a single tweet that has been flagged in the last three months. pic.twitter.com/Zw9fEgLw4p
Poisson, yeah – I should have been more specific about my search terms; "Antifa protest", was clearly insufficient, but quicker to type. The Seattle protest looks more minor, so only two arrests there.
I would apologize for derailing your thread, but seeing as you were doing that to Andre yourself, won't.
Pretty much. When the government got serious about child abuse and changed the law to allow uplift where the threat was clear Maori activists and leaders couldn't see past their reflexive sense of grievance.
Maori leadership has chosen not to see James Whakaruru as the victim of child abuse with painful questions about Maori culpability, preferring to focus on the easy portrayal of the likes of Te Rangi Whakaruru and Benny Haerewa as victims of colonisation. As you say, now they will get their chance to own the results.
The 2020 report found that moving Maori babies into state care happens earlier than it does for non-Māori – with the decision increasingly being made before the child is even born.
"There were eight times more concerns reported for unborn Māori babies in 2019, as compared with 2004. In that same time, reported concerns for non-Māori increased only 4.5 times.
In 2010 there were 36 approvals for unborn Māori children to be removed from their families at birth – by 2017 that had risen to 93, despite findings of actual abuse decreasing over that same period.
In 2019, 0.67 percent of pēpi aged three months or under were taken into state care, but only 0.13 percent of non-Māori.
Urgent decisions to remove pepi doubled over the last decade, but stayed the same for non-Māori."
Children's Commissioner Andrew Becroft had words to say about that.
"And 48 percent of pregnant women whose pēpi were taken into state care before birth had been in state care themselves at some point."
"From 2014 to 2017, the removal of Māori babies ordered into state custody before birth almost doubled."
Yes , the stats are difficult reading but that wasnt my point (and it may be premature in any case, the organisation is still state led)….I was suggesting that rather than Maori highlighting the failings of the state organisation, it is likely that the state (and certainly others) will highlight any failings of a Maori led response….and my concern is the objective is lost.
Though as already noted it would be difficult to do any worse than the existing structure
Professor Stephen Hoadley starts his talk about the state of democracy in the USA by stating that Venezuela is a third world county and implying that it's democracy and thereby it's elections are and where undemocratic.
Jesse I would have thought that you would have enough knowledge around world politics to push back on this false narrative Mr. Hoadley openly used, which is widely known as fake news.
If true (which I doubt) it says a lot about the IQ of the average voter in Venezuela, ie the ones that are left with half the county voting with their feet vs a fraudulent ballot box
The BBC, ( no right wing attack dog) The US state department all think it was a bit dodgy plus the millions who have left Venezuela just as a start Putin, China North Korea and Cuba said it was ok so that all helps to affirm it was dodgy
???!!?? You are obviously unfamiliar with their role of megaphone for the right wing British regime—most shamefully in the persecution of the dissenting journalist Julian Assange. The BBC's short-lived democratic deviation in 2003, when Andrew Gilligan went rogue and actually told the truth about Blair and Campbell's manipulation of documents leading up to the destruction of Iraq, was soon ended.
The US state department all think it was a bit dodgy
The Trump regime, that is.
plus the millions who have left Venezuela
They left a country under brutal, and illegal, sanctions. That shows what suffering has been inflicted on the country by the United States, the U.K., and Colombia; it does not imply they are opponents of their elected government.
just as a start Putin, China North Korea and Cuba said it was ok so that all helps to affirm it was dodgy
???? You have no evidence to back up your claim, other than the word of the Trump regime.
Well written, Adrian. Steve Hoadley is an extremely unsavoury commentator, not a lot different from the likes of Michael Bassett and Waikato's notorious Dov Bing. During the November 2012 escalation in Israeli terror against the citizens of Gaza, named with brutal sarcasm "Operation Pillar of Defense", Hoadley went onto Radio Rhema and expressed his support not for the victims, but the killers.
I fear that you're wasting your time trying to reason with Jesse Mulligan; he's one of the more susceptible and easily bamboozled broadcasters. He was, and presumably still is, a true believer in the Russiagate nonsense, as we can see in this 2016 interview with another dodgy academic, Al Gillespie….
JESSE MULLIGAN: Why do ceasefires break down, Al, if uh, if no one enjoys war? [snickers nervously]
PROFESSOR AL GILLESPIE: There’s no trust on the ground. No one believes that it’s safe to bring in aid, water, or food, and so unless you can get the most basic modicum of trust, you can’t build up.
JESSE MULLIGAN: So how do you CREATE it?
PROFESSOR AL GILLESPIE: You get the teams, well you need two things. One, people have to get tired of fighting, and neither side has to believe that they can WIN. At the moment, there’s so much money, men, and ammunition going into the fight, both sides believe that they still have the upper hand. And then you need to have confidence-building measures, and right now they can’t even achieve THAT.
JESSE MULLIGAN:[speaking very slowly, to convey thoughtfulness] Sometimes when I read this stuff I get the sense that Russia are L-L-L-LOOKIN’ for trouble, are L-L-L-LOOKIN’ to create tension with the U.S. Is that fair?
[This is another one of your comments that’s just a litany of ad homs and snide remarks about people whilst dearly lacking in content. To give it some appearance of realism and gravity, it is ornamented with one of those boring transcripts, which is no better than those puerile images that you’re so fond of. Lastly, it is about something utterly trivial that happened years ago.
Cut out the crap and stop the ad homs for the sake of it. Add some substance and contents to your comments, make it interesting and relevant, if you can, or keep quiet. This site is not a personal sandpit for you to indulge in your pet likes & dislikes. This is your warning – Incognito]
Yes listening to Mulligan (which I only do very rarely these days) is like listening to a slightly sophisticated teenage radio show…along with most of his music choices, morning report has pretty much sunk to that same level now as well. It seems like serious unbiased news is well and truly a thing of the past on RNZ now (with the rare exception of course)…lucky we still RNZ concert.
This is another one of your comments that’s just a litany of ad homs and snide remarks about people whilst dearly lacking in content.
Adrian Thornton made the comment about Prof. Hoadley's unfounded and politically incendiary claims about Venezuela—Adrian called them a "false narrative"—and he also expressed his disappointment at the quality, or lack of quality, in Jesse Mulligan's performance. I simply reinforced Adrian's points by providing evidence of even worse performances in the past by Hoadley and Mulligan. Both of the examples I provided were accurate; they were neither ad hominem nor snide.
To give it some appearance of realism and gravity, it is ornamented with one of those boring transcripts
I provided 14 lines of a larger transcript to illustrate my point about Mulligan's credulous and ill informed comments. It is indeed realistic, and any lack of gravity is entirely due to the two people involved in that awful conversation.
Add some substance and contents to your comments, make it interesting and relevant, if you can, or keep quiet.
I kept my comment rigorously to the point. It amplified the comment made by another poster. How was it not relevant?
This site is not a personal sandpit for you to indulge in your pet likes & dislikes. This is your warning – Incognito
You are wielding your hammer again, and threatening me, for what? My comment was directly relevant to the points made by another poster, I made nothing up, I used no foul language.
The poor suffering Venezuelans are more concerned with more basic commodores like dependable utilities and food A shortage of Oxygen is the least of their worries A bit of virtue signalling by Maduro and his henchmen that’s all this is ie a puff piece
I found this an interesting viewpoint from an USAn who is usually not too political (except where being trans in Trump's Amerika is involved – so yeah; quite political now I think of it). It's unscripted, and the second half is mostly about Star Trek; because that's a lens through which she finds the world makes sense (the; Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations, slogan certainly gets many repetitions). This quote starts at 5:39 and seems worth transcribing before the progression of the algorithm eclipses it:
…It is easier to radicalize a person on the right to the far left, than it is to take a person in the center to the left. Because… there is lot a similarity in that there is the recognition of a problem that this society is not working in the way it should… The only difference really is the solutions that have been offered.
Which got me thinking about some people who went from the (not too far) left to acolytes of conspiracy theories this year. Faith always seems to trump evidence (pun not intentional, but not removed either). Extremism's counter is not contrary extremism but centrism? Unfortunately the Earth's biosphere may not have time for a return to the status quo.
It's an interesting question isn't it. Before that incident, Gorbachov was in charge, but afterwards, it was Yeltsin. So realpolitik analysts consider that the real coup was Yeltsin's
Funnily enough, it's not that I actually doubt either claim, the link of his that was relevant to my comment seems reasonable. I just can't be bothered getting into a debate about whether it was right or wrong to [checks notes] assist in some small way to stop communist hardliners gaining power through military force.
The other link was quite sweet – I was almost tempted to be the fourth person to download the article just to see if what Adrian thought it said was actually what it said. But if I can't be bothered to debate a link that was relevant to what I'd said, I'm not going to go off on a tangent.
I'm working on just letting more bullshit go these days.
Surely you know Mcflocks's 'lol' was not brought on by his finding anything humourous but as attempt to ridicule the author of the comment he was replying to. I doubt he was laughing.
What I found slightly amusing was his need to further explain himself because he thought your 'lol' was similarly meant for him, and you further having to assure him that you weren't seeking to ridicule him.
This documentary has never been more relevant than it is today, and in the context of the last 30 years it's no wonder that Chomsky is still clinging to 'hope' for political change in the USA. The media's complicity in the political process has never been stronger. It used to be called propaganda but it's also called 'Manufactured Consent'
Produced in 1992, it runs for 2hr 47min and considers the propaganda model of communication and the politics of the mass-communications business, with emphasis on Chomsky's ideas and career. He's a brilliant communicator, and this alone makes watching and following this documentary quite easy despite it's length.
In the context of some of the discussion above quoting media sources, this is a must watch.
Perhaps it will be shown on the Maori Channel sometime, it's virtually the only NZ TV station to run intelligent and thought provoking programs that challenge the status quo.
Free Speech Union member Daphna Whitmore speaks with Dr. Bryce Edwards about the causes and manifestations of contemporary political polarisation. Edwards, a well-known political scientist, lecturer in Politics at Victoria University, and long-time supporter of free speech, copped a lot of flak for his coverage of the parliamentary protests which ...
Are our ethical standards in politics dropping? Recently there have been several appointments made by Government and related agencies that have raised questions about conflicts of interest or about whether correct procedures have been followed. However, not all scrutiny and criticisms are welcomed or embraced. Sometimes those that raise questions ...
Last week, Stuff asked Associate Education Minister Kelvin Davis about compulsory te reo Māori in primary schools. And as usual for Labour, he firmly rejected the idea, citing fears of a public backlash. Today, Stats NZ released data from the 2021 General Social Survey, showing us thatfears of that backlash ...
On The Horns Of A Dilemma: The essence of Maori Development Minister Willie Jackson’s problem is that he can neither withdraw, nor water-down, the Draft Plan for implementing the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples without exposing the Labour Government to the most withering political fire from Maori. ...
Spotify has to be one of the most interestingly futile mouse-wheels of 21st century capitalism. Run, run, run goes the Spotify mouse but it never, ever makes a profit. For reasons set out below, it maybe never will. But it won’t be for wont of trying. Reportedly, Spotify’s music library ...
The Right In Action: Nothing in politics is ever settled. The hands of History’s clock can go backwards, as well as forwards.IT REALLY WAS THE BEST OF TIMES. The brief recession of the late-1950s was over. The United States was led by a young, Harvard-educated war hero, with the dashing ...
Is New Zealand suddenly softening its more pro-Western foreign policy – and its tougher line on China? After months of inching towards the West, Jacinda Ardern’s set-piece speeches on her Europe trip last week seem to have been crafted to try and keep observers guessing. At the North Atlantic Treaty ...
Don Franks was interviewed by Dr Toby Boraman in December 2013 about his time working in the militant Ford car plant in the 1970s. In this first installment Don tells of some of the early organising that had been done before it became a site of significant industrial strength. (The ...
Picturesque Illusion: The early-Sixties’ picture-book tableau of cultural homogeneity wasn’t real. The values cherished by America’s and New Zealand’s fundamentalist Christians only appeared to be widely shared. Beneath the veneer of happy conformity, the trials and tribulations of ordinary men and women went on regardless. Occasionally their troubles were overcome by ...
Natter about the US Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade has reached even these distant shores, with much online ink being spilled about what our National Party Opposition intends to ...
Behavioural economics challenges our assumptions about the relevance of rational economic man.Paul Krugman tweeted that ‘behavoural econ[omics] is the best thing to happen to the [economics] field in generations’. For the last 150 years much economic analysis has been based on homo economicus, an ‘economic’ man who is rational and ...
There’s huge public concern about the potential for the wealthy to translate their economic power into political power. In particular, there’s a strong belief that governments in New Zealand tend to make laws to suit the interests of the rich. Whether it’s concern over Jacinda Ardern’s Government not implementing a ...
Metropolis George Grosz 1918A FEW HOURS AGO, I was sorting through a box of old papers when I came across these lyrics to a song I’d composed nearly fifty years ago, at the tender age of seventeen! I have decided to share it with the readers of Bowalley Road as proof ...
Last night the government concluded a free trade agreement with the European Union. I'm pretty meh about FTAs, largely because they seem to be a backdoor for pro-corporate irregulation than actual trade now, so I wasn't enthusiastic to begin with (though on the plus side this one does at least ...
Completed reads for June: 4.50 from Paddington, by Agatha ChristieNarrations, by CononThe Vampire (poem), by Rudyard KiplingProgress and Poverty, by Henry GeorgeA Modest Proposal, by Jonathan SwiftThe Horla, by Guy de MaupassantSupernatural Horror in Literature, by H.P. LovecraftTowards Zero, by Agatha ChristieHickory Dickory Death, by Agatha ChristieThe Lady of ...
Looking into a distant mirror The academic publishing process is notoriously stately. Events in the rest of the world happen at their own swift pace as a given article makes its way through the publication pipeline. In the case of Russian climate scepticism: an understudied case, authors Teresa Ashe & Marianna Poberezhskaya submitted their work ...
A ballot for one member's bill was held today, and the following bills were drawn: Sale and Supply of Alcohol (Harm Minimisation) Amendment Bill (Chlöe Swarbrick) Swarbrick's bill implements a number of past recommendations from government agencies and advisory bodies which for some reason (cough big booze ...
No Common Ground: The destructive and punitive impulses aroused by the abortion issue make a rational, let alone a civil, debate virtually impossible. Indeed, the very idea that those on both sides of the abortion issue might be decent and caring individuals, whose opposing positions are based on reasonable and ...
What Happened Next? After the Supreme Court of the United States, in 1954, overturned its earlier validation of “separate but equal” schools, hospitals, public washrooms, busses and trains for Blacks and Whites, and told the Topeka Board of Education that segregated education is in breach of the Fourteenth Amendment of ...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections by Neha Pathak When spring creeps around the corner, pediatrician Aaron Bernstein starts counseling his Boston-area patients and their families about extreme heat action plans. “The first heat wave of the year is routinely the most harmful,” says Bernstein, who also directs Harvard’s ...
On 7 December 1941, Imperial Japan launched a war on the American people. It would forever become a date of infamy, said then US President, Franklin D. Roosevelt, eightyone years ago.On 24/25 June 2022, conservatives launched their war on 166.24 million American women. That date, also, will forever live on ...
Stuff has a story this morning about the police juking the domestic violence stats, downgrading family violence crimes to "incidents" so they don't have to be investigated (and so Bad Number doesn't Go Up). That's appalling in and of itself, for the human consequences, and for what it says about ...
Today is a Member's Day, and it looks like its back to local legislation for a while. First up is the committee stage of the highly controversial Canterbury Regional Council (Ngāi Tahu Representation) Bill, which would allow unelected appointees (and a disproportionate number of them, at that) on ECan. This ...
Despite Christopher Luxon’s assurances to the contrary, there is no such thing as “settled law” in New Zealand. Apart from the six provisions that are constitutionally entrenched, legislation can always be amended or overturned by a simple majority vote within our single chamber of Parliament. Luxon’s repeated use of the ...
This is a re-post from the Thinking is Power website maintained by Melanie Trecek-King where she regularly writes about many aspects of critical thinking in an effort to provide accessible and engaging critical thinking information to the general public. Please see this overview to find links to other reposts from Thinking is Power. ...
What a week, month even of deplorable headlines and hysterics we’ve had as a country – and given 2023 is closing in on us (a mere 6 months until Parties shift some gears into election mode really, not that some of them haven’t started already of course), we need ...
Over the weekend, the US Supreme Court followed through on its threat, and overturned Roe v. Wade, effectively outlawing abortion in much of the United States. People were outraged, in America and around the world. And in Aotearoa, this meant a lot of sudden questions for the National Party, which ...
Nothing is evil in the beginning… #TheRingsOfPowerpic.twitter.com/XffZtqp8Yw— The Lord of the Rings on Prime (@LOTRonPrime) June 27, 2022 We have ourselves a new breadcrumb (not a leak!) out of The Rings of Power. It is a fifteen second collection of clips from the original teaser-trailer, together ...
The repeal of Roe vs Wade by the US Supreme Court is part of a broader “New Conservative” agenda financed by reactionary billionaires like Peter Thiel, Elon Mush, the Kochs and Murdochs (and others), organised by agitators like Steve Bannon and Rodger Stone and legally weaponised by Conservative (often Catholic) ...
A Dangerous Leap Backwards: A United States forced to live by the beliefs and values of the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries cannot hope to go on leading the “Free World”, or compete economically with nations focused fearlessly on the future. The revocation of Roe v. Wade represents the American republic’s most ...
Now that the right of US women to abortion (formerly protected by Roe vWade) has been abolished, the important role of medication-induced abortion will come even more to the fore. Already, research by the Guttmacher Institute reproductive rights centre shows that over half of US abortions are obtained ...
The government is finally moving to improve transparency over party finances, lowering the donation disclosure threshold to $5,000. This is a good move, though it doesn't go as far as it should. And of course, there's a nasty twist: The rules for larger donations are also changing. Presently parties ...
A rare exposure in Western media of the fact that many residents of the Donbass prefer Russian rule to Ukrainian ultranationalist rule. I don’t know why anyone would take advice from UK’s lame duck Prime Minister and well-known buffoon Boris Johnson seriously, but he ...
Jacinda Ardern will need to deploy every aspect of her starpower if she is to have any hope of rescuing New Zealand’s faltering free trade negotiations with the European Union (EU). The Prime Minister has branded each of her four foreign trips so far this year as ‘trade missions’ – ...
It was sometime in the late 1990s that I first interviewed Alan Webster about New Zealand’s part in a global Values Study. It’s a fascinating snapshot of values in countries all over the world and I still remember seeing America grouped with many developing countries on a spectrum that had ...
Today marks Matariki, the first “new” New Zealand public holiday since Waitangi Day was added in 1974. Officially the start of the Maori New Year, this is one of those moveable beasties – much like Easter, the dates will vary from year to year, anywhere from mid-June to ...
The takeaways from the just released data are:1. Any estimate of GDP is subject to error.2. The 0.2 percent decrease in the March 2022 quarter is not precise and will be revised, with the mild likelihood that it will eventually be higher.3. New Zealand has no ‘official' definition of a ...
Guided By The Stars? This gift of Matariki, then, what will be made of it? Can a people spiritually unconnected to anything other than their digital devices truly appreciate the relentless progress of gods and heroes across the heavens? The elders of Maoridom must wonder. Can Te Ao Māori be ...
The internet is a wonderful thing sometimes. Yesterday, I ran across an AI program that generates images via prompt: https://huggingface.co/spaces/dalle-mini/dalle-mini So I have been doing the logical thing with it. Getting it to generate Silmarillion characters in bizarre situations. Morgoth playing golf, and so forth. But one thing I ...
Stashing renewable energy Do a little internet sleuthing on renewable energy via your favorite search engine and you'll find some honest critique and much more dishonest misinformation (aka disinformation) to the effect that photovoltaic and wind generation are fickle energy supplies, over-abundant in some periods and absent in others. There's ...
The current New Zealand First Foundation trial in the High Court continues to show why reform is required when it comes to money in politics. The juicy details coming out each day show private wealth being funnelled into some peculiar schemes in an attempt to circumvent the Electoral Act. Yet ...
As in so many other areas of public policy, attitudes towards overseas investment in New Zealand – and anywhere, for that matter – boil down in the end to ideology. For proponents of the “free market”, there is really no issue. The market, in their view, must never be second-guessed; ...
Selwyn Manning and I discussed the upcoming NATO Leader’s summit (to which NZ Prime Minister Ardern is invited), the rival BRICS Leader’s summit and what they could mean for the Ruso-Ukrainian Wa and beyond. ...
New Zealand’s Most Profitable“Friend” Dangerous “Threat”: This country’s “Five Eyes” partners, heedless of the economic consequences for New Zealand, have cajoled and bullied its political class into becoming Sinophobes. They simply do not care that close to 40 percent of this country’s trade is with China. As far as Washington, London, ...
I have seen some natter around about how The Rings of Power represents the undue and unholy corporatisation of J.R.R. Tolkien. I won’t point out examples, but anyone who has seen YouTube commentary has a pretty good grasp of what I am talking about – the sentiment that ...
2017’s Queenmaker: Five years ago, Winston Peters’ choice ran counter to New Zealand’s informal, No. 8 wire, post-MMP constitution, which, up until 2017, had decreed that the party with the most votes got to supply the next prime minister. Had National not been in power for the previous 9 years, it ...
I've read some bad stuff about long covid recently, and Marc Daalder's recent Newsroom piece about what endemic covid means for Aotearoa got me wondering about whether the government was thinking about it. Mass-disability due to long covid has obvious implications for health and welfare spending, as well as for ...
Last year, a stranded kiwi criticised the MIQ system. Covid Minister Chris Hipkins responded by doxxing and defaming her. Now, he's been forced to apologise for that: Minister Chris Hipkins has admitted he released incorrect and personal information about journalist Charlotte Bellis, after she criticised the managed isolation system. ...
Gil-galad is an Elven Chad Gil-galad is an Elven Chad But Celebrimbor makes them mad Digesting leaks from Amazon Of Isildur and Pharazôn. The hair is short? The knives are keen. The beardless face of Dwarven Queen? With meteor and man-not-named The fandom temper is inflamed. Of Annatar ...
From the desk of Keir "Patriotic Duty" Starmer:“We have robust lines. We do not want to see these strikes to go ahead with the resulting disruption to the public. The government have failed to engage in any negotiations.“However, we also must show leadership and to that end, please be reminded ...
Has swapping Scott Morrison for Anthony Albanese made any discernible difference to Australia’s relations with the US, China, the Pacific and New Zealand ? Not so far. For example: Albanese has asked for more time to “consider” his response to New Zealand’s long running complaints about the so called “501” ...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections The Biden administration in April 2021 dramatically ratcheted up the country’s greenhouse gas emissions reductions pledge under the Paris target, also known as its Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC). The Obama administration in 2014 had announced a commitment to cut U.S. emissions 26-28% below 2005 levels ...
Something I missed: the Central African Republic has abolished the death penalty: The National Assembly of the Central African Republic (CAR) passed a law abolishing the death penalty in the CAR on May 27, 2022. Once CAR President Touadéra promulgates the bill, the CAR will become the 24th abolitionist ...
Walking On Sunshine: National’s Sam Uffindell cantered home in the Tauranga By-Election, but the Outdoors & Freedom Party’s Sue Grey attracted an ominous level of support.THE RIGHT’S gadfly commentator, Matthew Hooton, summed up the Tauranga by-election in his usual pithy fashion. “Tonight’s result is poor for the National Party, catastrophic for ...
Te reo Māori is Dr. Anaha Hiini’s life purpose. Raised by his grandparents, Kepa and Maata Hiini, Anaha of Ngāti Tarāwhai, Tūhourangi, Ngāti Whakaue descent made a promise at the age of six to his late grandmother, Maata Hiini. “I’ve always had a passion for Māori culture. My first inspiration ...
Dr Carwyn Jones’ vision is to see Te Tiriti o Waitangi and the law given equal mana. Carwyn who holds a PhD in law and society and currently teaches Ahunga Tikanga (Māori Laws and Philosophy) at Te Wānanga o Raukawa after 15 years at Victoria University of Wellington has devoted ...
Jacinda Ardern’s decision to attend the upcoming North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) summit in Spain – but to skip the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) in Rwanda – symbolises the changes she is making to New Zealand foreign policy. The Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) starts today in ...
The outlook does not look that promising. Forecasting an economy is a mug’s game. The database on which the forecasts are founded is incomplete, out-of-date, and subject to errors, some of which will be revised after the forecasts are published. (No wonder weather-forecasting is easier.) One often has to adopt ...
by Don Franks It seems that almost each day now another ram raid shatters someone’s shop front and loots the premises. Prestigious Queen street is not immune, while attacks on small dairies have long stopped being headline news. Those of us not directly affected are becoming numbed to this form ...
It’s hard to believe that when we created Sciblogs in 2009, the iPhone was only two years old, being a ‘Youtuber’ wasn’t really a thing and Instagram, Snapchat and TikTok didn’t exist. But Science blogging was a big thing, particularly in the United States, where a number of scientists had ...
For 13 years, Sciblogs has been a staple in New Zealand’s science-writing landscape. Our bloggers have written about a vast variety of topics from climate change to covid, and from nanotechnology to household gadgets.But sadly, it’s time to close shop. Sciblogs will be shutting down on 30 June.When ...
Radical Options: By allocating the Broadcasting portfolio to the irrepressible, occasionally truculent, leader of Labour’s Māori caucus, Willie Jackson, the Prime Minister has, at the very least, confirmed that her appointment of Kiri Allan was no one-off. There are many words that could be used to describe Ardern’s placement of ...
A Delicate Juggler? The new Chief Censor, Ms Caroline Flora, owes New Zealand a comprehensive explanation of how she sees, and how she proposes to carry out, her role. Where, for example, is her duty to respect and protect the citizen’s right to freedom of expression positioned in relation to ...
Good grief. Has foreign policy commentary really devolved to the point where our diplomatic effort is being measured by how many overseas trips have been taken by our Foreign Minister? Weird, but apparently so. All this week, a series of media policy wonks have been invidiously comparing how many trips ...
Where we've been Time flies. This coming summer will mark 15 years of Skeptical Science focusing its effort on "traditional" climate science denial. Leaving aside frivolities, we've devoted most of our effort to combatting "serious" denial falling into a handful of broad categories of fairly crisp misconceptions: "radiative physics is wrong,""geophysics is ...
Mercenary army of bogus skeptics on parade Because they're both squarely centered in the Skeptical Science wheelhouse, this week we're highlighting two articles from our government and NGO section, where we collect high-quality articles not originating in academic research but featuring many of the important attributes of journal publications. Our mission ...
In the latest episode of AVFA Selwyn Manning and I discuss the evolution of Latin American politics and macroeconomic policy since the 1970s as well as US-Latin American relations during that time period. We use recent elections and the 2022 Summit of the Americas as anchor points. ...
The Green Party is calling for urgent government action to ensure safe staffing levels in aged residential care facilities, as a new report today shows a strained workforce is under increasing pressure. ...
The Green Party backs the unions and community groups and Human Rights Commission calling for an urgent change in legislation to make pay gap reporting mandatory. ...
We’re incredibly proud to be celebrating the launch of Whaikaha – Ministry of Disabled People. Whaikaha – Ministry of Disabled People will put disabled people, their whānau, carers, and supporters first, removing barriers that existed when there was no single agency. The Ministry will also be the first in Aotearoa to ...
The Green Party is calling on the Government to scrap the Acceptable Standards of Health policy that discriminates against disabled migrants after former Minister for Disability Issues Carmel Sepuloni acknowledged the policy “disadvantages” disabled migrants on TVNZ’s Q&A this morning. ...
We’ve secured a major free trade agreement (FTA) with the European Union (EU) – a move that’s set to boost exports by $1.8 billion per annum, enhance our economic security, and enable New Zealand businesses to grow, by unlocking one of the world’s biggest and high value markets. The new ...
Our Government is committed to making sure that our health system works for all New Zealanders, no matter who you are or where you live. Transformation of our health system will take time, and the step we’re taking today – establishing Health New Zealand and the Māori Health Authority – ...
The Green Party is calling on the Government to announce its support urgently for a moratorium on deep sea mining under the high seas, after Pacific nations joined forces this week to demand change. ...
We’re committed to ensuring that there is every opportunity for women and girls to succeed in Aotearoa New Zealand, with fewer barriers. Since coming into Government, we’ve worked hard to support women and girls, by improving services like healthcare and tackling issues like the gender pay gap. Here are just ...
Political pressure from the Green Party has pushed the Government to supply free masks to kids and teachers in schools across Aotearoa New Zealand. ...
The Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand and the European Greens have published a joint statement calling for the NZ-EU Free Trade Agreement to support climate action, phase out fossil fuel subsidies, cut agriculture emissions, protect human rights, and uphold Te Tiriti o Waitangi. ...
The Green Party is calling on the Government to guarantee that it will complete light rail and improve walking, cycling, and bus journeys across Wellington before digging new high-carbon tunnels. ...
The Green Party is urging Oceans and Fisheries Minister David Parker to commit to stronger ocean protection around Aotearoa and on the high seas while at the United Nations Oceans Conference in Portugal this week. ...
A strong Green voice in Parliament has helped reduce the influence large secret money will have in future elections and finally ensured overseas New Zealanders will retain the right to vote even while stranded by the Pandemic. But, the Government needs to go further to ensure our democracy works for ...
A new poll shows that the majority of people back the Greens’ call on the Government to overhaul the country’s criminally punitive, anti-evidence drug law. ...
The US Supreme Court’s decision on abortion is a reminder that we must take nothing for granted in Aotearoa, the Green Party says. “Aotearoa should be a place where everyone, no matter where they are from, or who they love, can choose what is right for their body and their ...
We’re proud to have delivered on our election commitment to establish a public holiday to celebrate Matariki. For the first time this year, New Zealanders will have the chance to enjoy a mid-winter holiday that is uniquely our own. ...
Proposed new legislation to reduce the risk that timber imported into Aotearoa New Zealand is sourced from illegal logging is a positive first step but it should go further, the Green Party says. ...
On World Refugee Day, the Green Party is calling on the new Minister for Immigration, Michael Wood to make up for the support that was not provided to people forced to leave their home countries during the COVID-19 pandemic. ...
This week, we’ve marked a major milestone in our school upgrade programme. We've supported 4,500 projects across the country for schools to upgrade classrooms, sports facilities, playgrounds and more, so Kiwi kids have the best possible environments to learn in. ...
We’ve delivered on our election commitment to make Matariki a public holiday. For the first time this year, all New Zealanders will have the chance to enjoy a mid-winter holiday that is uniquely our own with family and friends. Try our quiz below, then challenge your whānau! To celebrate, we’ve ...
The Green Party says the removal of pre-departure testing for arrivals into New Zealand means the Government must step up domestic measures to protect communities most at risk. ...
The long overdue resumption of the Pacific Access Category and Samoan Quota must be followed by an overhaul of the Recognised Seasonal Employers (RSE) scheme, says the Green Party. ...
Aotearoa New Zealand is sending a medical team and supplies to Niue to help it respond to new cases of COVID-19, following the opening of its border to quarantine-free travel last week. Foreign Affairs Minister Nanaia Mahuta and Defence Minister Peeni Henare have announced a Medical Assistance Team will head to ...
More than 30,000 small businesses have participated in Government-funded digital training, which supports businesses to take advantage of digital tools and new opportunities through e-commerce, Minister for Small Business Stuart Nash announced today. “Over the last two years, many business owners had no option but to move to digital platforms ...
The latest Crown Accounts show a solid result, despite challenging international conditions – reflecting the Government’s careful management of the books. For the eleven months to the end of May 2022 the Operating Balance before Gains and Losses (OBEGAL) deficit was $7.7 billion, $5.5 billion below that forecast in May’s ...
New legislation aimed at tackling delays in the family justice system, will help improve the wellbeing of thousands of children caught up in Family Court disputes every year, Justice Minister Kiri Allan says. The Family Court (Family Court Associate) Legislation Bill will see a number of Family Court Associates employed ...
New Associate Minister of Local Government Kieran McAnulty is today beginning a series of visits to all of the 55 rural and provincial councils across the motu. “Local government plays a crucial role in our democratic system, ensuring people have a voice in the leadership of their community,” Kieran McAnulty ...
Minister of Foreign Affairs Nanaia Mahuta and Minister for Trade and Export Growth Damien O’Connor have announced that Aotearoa New Zealand will ban the import of Russian gold. “Today’s decision further signals Aotearoa New Zealand’s condemnation of Russia’s flagrant violation of Ukraine’s sovereignty,” Nanaia Mahuta said. “It underscores our intention of ensuring ...
The rollout of the new nationwide health system continued today with the launch of the country’s first national public health system to fight disease and promote healthy lives. The Public Health Agency will lead and co-ordinate population and public health policy, strategy and regulation, while the national Public Health ...
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern will lead a trade mission including over 30 New Zealand businesses to Melbourne and Sydney this week as part of the Government’s reconnection strategy to support export growth and the return of tourists post COVID-19. While in Sydney, Jacinda Ardern will also give an address to ...
Final stage of Accredited Employer Work Visa goes live today Offshore migrants can apply to work in New Zealand for an accredited employer Partners and dependents of work visa applicants can also apply for visas from today New Zealand has taken another significant step forward in our Reconnecting plan ...
Raising eligibility thresholds will provide a helping hand to more than 90,000 New Zealanders currently denied access to legal aid, Justice Minister Kiri Allan says. “The Government is committed to driving through legislative changes to strengthen our legal aid system. “Enshrining changes in legislation and regulations is necessary to give ...
Mihi Manawa maiea te pūtanga o Matariki Manawa maiea te ariki o te rangi Manawa maiea te mātahi o te tau! Thank you for the invitation to join you today. Unfortunately I can’t be there in person but I'm pleased that this is an opportunity for young Māori and ...
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern met UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson in London overnight, and together took a number of steps to strengthen the already close ties between our two countries, and promote our common interests in the Indo-Pacific and beyond. “The UK is one of Aotearoa New Zealand’s oldest and closest friends and ...
Building a more secure, sustainable and prosperous future together: Joint Statement – Prime Ministers Jacinda Ardern and Boris Johnson 1. New Zealand and the United Kingdom are old friends and close partners. Our relationship rests on a bedrock of history, shared values, and deep people-to-people links, extending across almost all ...
Director Sir Robin Niblett, distinguished guests. What an honour it is to be back in London, and to be here at Chatham house. This visit represents much for me. The reopening of borders and resumption of travel after a difficult few years. The chance to bring life to the UK ...
Manawa maiea te pūtanga o Matariki Manawa maiea te ariki o te rangi Manawa maiea te mātahi o te tau! Introduction I’m pleased to join you for my second address at the 56th Annual Otago Foreign Policy School. The topic for this year is Space. Given that we are in ...
New Ministry will officially be called Whaikaha - Ministry of Disabled People Public Service Commission have appointed Geraldine Woods as Interim Chief Executive Office for Disability Issues to be folded into the new Ministry In what is a milestone day, the Government has launched Aotearoa New Zealand’s first Whaikaha ...
Nine new He Poutama Rangatahi programmes have been approved funding. These programmes will provide work-readiness, training and employment initiatives for over 820 rangatahi NEETS (not in education, employment or training), across Aotearoa New Zealand. "He Poutama Rangatahi has proven to be a very successful initiative which supports rangatahi to overcome ...
Minister for Māori Development Willie Jackson today announced the appointment of Crown representatives, Dr Charlotte Severne and Mr Bernie O’Donnell, to the Steering Committee that will determine the future of the Ihumātao land. “I’m pleased to have made the Crown appointments. Both Dr Severne and Mr O’Donnell have extensive ...
I begin by thanking each of you for accepting appointment to these boards. You’ve each been on the Ministerial committee that established Te Whatu Ora - Health New Zealand and Te Aka Whai Ora - the Māori Health Authority and I express my appreciation for the enormous task you collectively ...
Aotearoa New Zealand has reiterated its concerns over the continued erosion of rights, freedom and autonomy in Hong Kong. On the second anniversary of the introduction of the Hong Kong National Security Law, the Foreign Minister Nanaia Mahuta says developments in Hong Kong remain a cause for worry. “Two years ...
The Europol Agreement signed is a significant milestone for New Zealand and the European Union’s relationship, and reflects our shared principles of democracy, the rule of law, and respect for human rights, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said today. The Prime Minister attended a signature ceremony in Brussels, as part of ...
· New nationwide public health system · 20 district health boards disestablished and deficits wiped · 82,000 health employees directly employed by Health New Zealand · $24 billion health budget this year – up 43% since Labour took office in 2017 – in addition to separate funding for the new ...
Education Minister Chris Hipkins has announced appointments to the Teaching Council of Aotearoa New Zealand and the Board of Trustees of Te Aho o Te Kura Pounamu (Te Kura). “Robyn Baker ONZM has been appointed as the chair of the Teaching Council. She has considerable governance experience and is a ...
European Commission President von der Leyen and Prime Minister of New Zealand Ardern met in Brussels on 30 June 2022. The encounter provided an opportunity to reaffirm that the European Union and Aotearoa New Zealand are longstanding partners with shared democratic values and interests, aligned positions on key international and ...
Export revenue to the EU to grow by up to $1.8 billion annually on full implementation. Duty-free access on 97% of New Zealand’s current exports to the EU; with over 91% being removed the day the FTA comes into force. NZ exporters set to save approx. $110 million per annum ...
57,000 EVs and Hybrid registered in first year of clean car scheme, 56% increase on previous year EVs and Non Plug-in Hybrids made up 20% of new passenger car sales in March/April 2022 The Government’s Clean Car Discount Scheme has been a success, with more than 57,000 light-electric and ...
Police Minister Chris Hipkins congratulates the newest Police wing – wing 355 – which graduated today in Porirua. “These 70 new constables heading for the frontline bring the total number of new officers since Labour took office to 3,303 and is the latest mark of our commitment to the Police ...
Members with a range of governance, financial and technical skills have been appointed to the Reserve Bank Board as part of the shift to strengthen the Bank’s decision-making and accountability arrangements. The Reserve Bank of New Zealand Act 2021 comes into force on 1 July 2022, with the establishment of ...
New Zealand to remain at Orange as case numbers start to creep up 50 child-size masks made available to every year 4-7 student in New Zealand 20,000-30,000 masks provided a week to all other students and school staff Extra funding to schools and early childhood services to supports better ...
Aotearoa New Zealand will join Ukraine’s case against Russia at the International Court of Justice (ICJ), which challenges Russia’s spurious attempt to justify its invasion under international law. Ukraine filed a case at the ICJ in February arguing Russia has falsely claimed genocide had occurred in Luhansk and Donetsk regions, as ...
The Government has taken another step forward in its work to eliminate family violence and sexual violence with the announcement today of a new Tangata Whenua Ministerial Advisory Group. A team of 11 experts in whānau Māori wellbeing will provide the Government independent advice on shaping family violence and sexual ...
Te Mahere Whai Mahi Wāhine: Women’s Employment Action Plan was launched today by Minister for Women Jan Tinetti – with the goal of ensuring New Zealand is a great place for women to work. “This Government is committed to improving women’s working lives. The current reality is that women have ...
The food and fibre sector acknowledged its people and leadership at last night’s 2022 Primary Industries Good Employer Awards, a time to celebrate their passion towards supporting employees by putting their health, welfare and wellbeing first,” Acting Minister of Agriculture Meka Whairiti said. “Award winners were selected from an extraordinary ...
Kia ora koutou katoa. It is a rare thing to have New Zealand represented at a NATO Summit. While we have worked together in theatres such as Afghanistan, and have been partners for just on a decade, today represents an important moment for our Pacific nation. New Zealand is ...
Te Arataki mō te Hauora Ngākau mō ngā Mōrehu a Tū me ō rātou Whānau, The Veteran, Family and Whānau Mental Health and Wellbeing Policy Framework “We ask a lot of those who serve in the military – and we ask a lot of the families and whānau who support ...
Associate Minister of Foreign Affairs Aupito William Sio has been appointed by the United Nations and Commonwealth as Aotearoa New Zealand’s advocacy champion for Small Island States. “Aotearoa New Zealand as a Pacific country is particularly focused on the interests of Pacific Small Island Developing States in our region. “This is a ...
An estimated 100,000 low income households will be eligible for increased support to pay their council rates, with changes to the rates rebate scheme taking effect from 1 July. Local Government Minister Nanaia Mahuta has announced increases to both the maximum value of the rates rebate, and the income threshold ...
A long-standing physical activity programme that focuses on outcomes for Maori has been expanded to four new regions with Government investment almost doubled to increase its reach. He Oranga Poutama is managed by a combination of hapū, iwi, hauora and regional providers. An increase in funding from $1.8 million ...
The Government is progressing a preferred option for LGWM which will see Wellington’s transport links strengthened with light rail from Wellington Station to Island Bay, a new tunnel through Mt Victoria for public transport, and walking and cycling, and upgrades to improve traffic flow at the Basin Reserve. “Where previous ...
To Provost Muniz, to the Organisers at the Instituto de Empresa buenas tardes and as we would say in New Zealand, kia ora kotou katoa. To colleagues from the State Department, from Academia, and Civil Society Groups, to all our distinguished guests - kia ora tatou katoa. It’s a pleasure ...
Inside PNG News Forty-Two Papua New Guinea Defence Force staff have arrived in Kavieng for the national general election operations. New Ireland Provincial Police Commander Chief Inspector Felix Nebanat said this brought the total number of joint security forces up to 400 in the province. Papua New Guinea’s general election ...
RNZ Pacific The president of New Caledonia’s Southern Province Sonia Backès has been given a post in France’s reshuffled and enlarged 42-member government. The prime minister Elisabeth Borne appointed her as the secretary of citizenship within the interior ministry, which has integrated the overseas ministry. The reshuffle means that the ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Isaac Gross, Lecturer in Economics, Monash University Shutterstock There was no suprise in the board of the Reserve Bank of Australia lifting interest rates at its July meeting. The only question was by how much. Would it be a “regular” ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra As well as her interviews with politicians and experts, Politics with Michelle Grattan includes “Word from The Hill”, where she discusses the news with members of The Conversation politics team. Michelle and Peter ...
The state-subsidised mainstream media have been found wanting in their coverage of Three Waters governance arrangements. In this post, reproduced from his blog, BARRIE SAUNDERS exposes failings in the business press’s coverage of the nationalisation and property rights issues and their implications… IF THE GOVERNMENT gets its way, around $100 ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Vanessa Smith, Professor of English, University of Sydney Sydney Theatre Company/Prudence UptonReview: The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, directed by Jessica Arthur for the Sydney Theatre Company “You know when it’s the autumn of 1827, and you’re sitting in a ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Lisa Lim, Associate Professor in Linguistics, Curtin University Of the world’s 7,000 languages, it is estimated 50% to 90% will no longer be spoken in the next 50 to 100 years. The majority under threat are languages spoken by Indigenous peoples around ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Frank Beard, Associate professor, University of Sydney Shutterstock An unvaccinated toddler from the far north coast of New South Wales is in intensive care after catching respiratory diphtheria (diphtheria of the throat). A six-year-old close family contact is also infected. ...
On his Bowalley Road blog today, Political commentator CHRIS TROTTER says Maori Development Minister Willie Jackson’s problem is that he can neither withdraw, nor water down, the Draft Plan for implementing the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples without exposing the Labour Government to the most withering ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jamie Pittock, Professor, Fenner School of Environment & Society, Australian National University For the fourth time in 18 months, floodwaters have inundated homes and businesses in Western Sydney’s Hawkesbury-Nepean Valley. Recent torrential rain is obviously the immediate cause. But poor decisions by ...
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern will almost certainly have earned a bounce upwards in her party’s polling after her mission in Europe, where, as a result of her “Captain’s Call”, New Zealand has accepted the terms of the EU free trade deal. The outcome is positive for some sectors, though not ...
The New Zealand Law Society Te Kāhui Ture o Aotearoa has welcomed a new Bill that will work towards reducing delays in our Family Court system. Delays in Family Court cases are one of the biggest issues for families and children who experience prolonged ...
Buzz from the Beehive Amidst a raft of statements that crow about government achievements and/or bray about new initiatives, Point of Order found an oddity: a statement from the newly minted Associate Minister of Local Government who intends to meet local government leaders around the country to talk about this, ...
The MindTheGap campaign is applauding New Zealand Cricket for its decision to award equal pay to men and women players. New Zealand Cricket has closed the pay equity gap for women’s cricketers, with both men and women receiving the same pay for ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Adrian Beaumont, Election Analyst (Psephologist), The Conversation The US Supreme Court’s annual term usually finishes at the end of June, so late June is when the most important decisions are likely to be announced. On June 23, the Court struck down ...
Those entering the line-up for 2022 local body elections in the Wellington region must face the issue at the top of mind for sports club members and parents of children playing school sport. Will they allow sport to become more affordable, or will they ...
Financial Statements of the Government of New Zealand for the 11 months ending 31 May 2022 Please note the next Financial Statements of the Government of New Zealand to be released will be for the full year ended 30 June 2022. It is anticipated that ...
T wo travellers returning to New Zealand from tropical getaways have been fined for failing to declare protected corals and shells they brought back into the country. C o rals and some shells found in Pacific Island nations are protected by the Convention ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Murray Goot, Emeritus Professor of Politics and International Relations, Macquarie University What does “the average Australian” look like? After every census, this is one of the questions people like to see answered. Average on one measure or on several? If the ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Niro Kandasamy, Lecturer in History, University of Sydney When Sri Lankan Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe conceded ten days ago that the Sri Lankan economy has “completely collapsed”, his words would have come as no surprise to the island’s 22 million people. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By David Peetz, Professor Emeritus, Griffith Business School, Griffith University Shutterstock, CC BY-SA Uber Australia’s historic agreement with the Transport Workers’ Union, on the need to regulate the gig economy, is the first step in fundamental reform of gig work. It suggests ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michael David Barbezat, Research fellow, Australian Catholic University Netflix From Kate Bush to Russian villainy, Season Four of Stranger Things revives many parts of the 1980s relevant to our times. Some of these blasts from the past provide welcome nostalgia. Others ...
RNZ Pacific Voting in the Papua New Guinea general election begins today. Voters will elect 118 members of Parliament, including governors of the 22 provinces, from the 3600-plus candidates nominated. There are 6000 polling teams in the 22 provinces. There have also been reports that polling in the capital, Port ...
By Miriam Zarriga in Port Moresby A man was held by Papua New Guinean security personnel in Hela Province on Saturday after he was found to have in his possession K1.56 million (about NZ$715,000) in cash carried in a suitcase. The man, who police identified as a local, allegedly told ...
COMMENTARY:By Benny Wenda We celebrated the 51st anniversary of the independence declaration of the Free Papua Movement (OPM) at Markas Victoria on July 1, 1971. The declaration, signed by Seth Rumkoren and Jacob Prai — who sadly passed away last month — was a direct rejection of Indonesian colonialism. ...
Analysis - Geoffrey Miller poses the question: Is New Zealand suddenly softening its more pro-Western foreign policy - and its tougher line on China? ...
The SOS cries of under-pressure GPs hit close to home for the country's only MP and practicing doctor, Shane Reti, who suggests three vital steps to help. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kate Dooley, Research Fellow, Climate & Energy College, The University of Melbourne Nico Smit/Unsplash, CC BY Restoring degraded environments, such as by planting trees, is often touted as a solution to the climate crisis. But our new research shows this, ...
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern does not expect a resolution on 501 deportations from her trip to Australia this week, saying it will take time to work through. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Elodie Camprasse, Research fellow in spider crab ecology, Deakin University Julian Finn/Museums VictoriaAm I not pretty enough? This article is part of The Conversation’s series introducing you to little-known Australian animals that need our help. Every winter in ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Nina Lansbury, Senior Lecturer, School of Public Health, The University of Queensland In Australia, most states have introduced initiatives to provide people who menstruate with free period care products in public schools. The Queensland government’s recent announcement of free period care ...
As consumers receive their winter power bills, many are puzzled and some are incensed that they are so high. There is a simple answer: wholesale prices are elevated (they have been very high for some time and reached $215 a megawatt/hour last week). And there’s a not-so-simple answer: The latter ...
New guidance published by the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE) today advises most seismically vulnerable buildings are not imminently dangerous and can remain occupied while seismic remediation work is planned, funded and undertaken. ...
Buzz from the Beehive Measures to raise eligibility thresholds to help more than 90,000 New Zealanders that currently are denied access to legal aid were announced today Changes to the Legal Services Regulations 2011 and the Legal Services Act 2011 will give effect to $148.7 million of funding in Budget 2022. The ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tomas Fitzgerald, Lecturer in Law, Curtin University A brainy machine? Shakey, the world’s first AI-based robot.SRI International It is a truth, universally acknowledged, that the machines are taking over. What is less clear is whether the machines know that. Recent claims ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Brian Robert Cook, Associate professor, The University of Melbourne In the aftermath of destructive floods, we often seek out someone to blame. Common targets are the “negligent local council”, the “greedy developer”, “the builder cutting corners”, and the “foolish home owner.” Unfortunately, ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Paul Rae, Associate Professor, English and Theatre Studies, The University of Melbourne Julio Donoso/Sygma via Getty Images I can take any empty space and call it a bare stage. A man walks across this empty space whilst someone else ...
Crombie Lockwood today announced a new partnership with Trees for Survival. Trees for Survival is a charitable trust which works with over 150 schools and local communities across New Zealand to grow and plant native trees along waterways and on erosion ...
Labour shortages, supply chain disruption and climate change are expected to be among the topics of discussion on the Prime Minister's Australian trade mission. ...
The New Zealand Council of Trade Unions is pleased to support the #NotAnotherWinter campaign, which calls on the Government to take urgent action on pay transparency. The campaign, which was launched by Mind the Gap this week, calls on the Government ...
Aaron Martin, Principal immigration lawyer, New Zealand Immigration Law The Job Check has been introduced to ensure that there are no suitable New Zealanders who can do a job before it is offered to a migrant worker. But it comes with a requirement ...
“New Zealand needs to make up its mind if it is open for business and remove any barriers to make it easy for people with the skills we need to come here to keep our schools, hospitals, hospitality and tourism ventures running,” says a frustrated ...
Responsible Campers Association has today announced they will seek a change to the law that allows defecation in public if a person believes they would not be observed doing so. Spokesman for the group, Bob Osborne explains; “At the moment section ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Phil R. Cummins, Professor, Geoscience Australia Brendan Esposito/AAP Earthquakes can be especially devastating for developing countries, where competing priorities can stymie resource allocation towards earthquake resilience. Even in tectonically active areas, where tectonic plates meet and scrape against one another, ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Frank Bongiorno, Professor of History, ANU College of Arts and Social Sciences, Australian National University ‘Peace for our time’: British prime minister Neville Chamberlain displaying the Anglo-German declaration, known as the Munich Agreement, in September 1938.Wikimedia, CC BY-SA Can historians influence ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Paul Glasziou, Professor of Medicine, Bond University Engin Akyurt/Unsplash Since Australia’s first Omicron wave after borders opened late last year, the pandemic has largely faded from the news and public perception. Gone are the daily briefings with updates on the ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Julianna Santos, PhD candidate, The University of Melbourne David Mariuz/AAP About 100 of Australia’s unique land mammals face extinction. Of the many threats contributing to the crisis, certain fire regimes are among the most pervasive. In a new paper, we ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Maryanne Macdonald, Lecturer, Indigenous Education, Edith Cowan University Floods, fires and droughts in Australia devastate lives, destroy wildlife and damage property. These disasters also cost billions of dollars through loss of agricultural and economic productivity, environmental vitality and costs to mental health. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Meena Jha, Course Coordinator, Information Communications Technology (ICT), CQUniversity Australia Shutterstock While face-to-face classes are back after the COVID disruptions of the past two years, our research suggests at least some Australian universities intend to continue with fully online assessment. ...
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Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Dale Dominey-Howes, Honorary Professor of Hazards and Disaster Risk Sciences, University of Sydney Mick Tsikas/AAP Again, thousands of residents in Western Sydney face a life-threatening flood disaster. At the time of writing, evacuation orders spanned southwest and northwest Sydney and ...
By Hayden Donnell, RNZ Mediawatch producer Some said the US Supreme Court’s controversial ruling on abortion was none of our business, because we don’t have the same legal or political set-up, let alone its religious cleavages and cultural conflicts. Opinion leaders in our media didn’t agree — and provoked a ...
By Theckla Gunga of Inside PNG Papua New Guineans, your future is in your hands, vote wisely. As the campaign trail wound up its last hours at the weekend, voters were being urged to keep their future in mind when choosing and voting this election starting tomorrow. Alvin Gia Huk, ...
By Stephen Forbes, Local Democracy Reporter Manukau Urban Māori Authority (MUMA) is welcoming the government’s health reforms as an important first step to improving Māori and Pasifika health in south Auckland. But some in the health sector say the jury is still out on what will be achieved in Counties ...
Power Play - The Prime Minister travelled to Brussels with two speeches prepared - one detailed a historic trade deal, the other why she would leave Brussels without one. ...
Green Party candidate for Wellington's Motukairangi-Eastern Ward Luana Scowcroft is launching her campaign at Hataitai Centre (the former Hataitai Bowling Club) at 7pm tonight, Saturday July 2nd. Luana says that council's short-term thinking, and ...
The government has just announced the conclusion of a free trade agreement with the European Union. One Māori entity operating in the trade space, Ngā Toki Whakarururanga, is not celebrating. “We are aware that New Zealand negotiators genuinely sought ...
Buzz from the Beehive Down here on Earth – more particularly, in Ihumātao – progress on doing whatever is going to be done to that disputed patch of land has been glacial. Newsroom drew attention to the dawdling in an article in April which noted that Māori Development Minister Willie ...
PNG Post-Courier Today is officially the last day of campaigning in Papua New Guinea’s 2022 National General Election. Count tomorrow until Monday as rest days, but in politically charged PNG, anything is possible, including illegal last-minute clandestine campaigning. Polling is set to begin Tuesday, July 4, when millions will exercise ...
Asia Pacific Report newsdesk Greenpeace Aotearoa has condemned New Zealand for “standing by” while “deep wounds are inflicted on its Pacific neighbours” by silence over deep sea mining. Greenpeace’s seabed mining campaigner James Hita made the critical statement today after a dramatic shift at the UN Oceans conference in Lisbon ...
Buzz from the Beehive Numbers, quotas and ratios have been high in ministerial considerations over the past 24 hours or so. Export revenue to the EU will grow by up to $1.8 ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Susan Harris Rimmer, Professor and Director of the Policy Innovation Hub, Griffith Business School, Griffith University Prime Minister Anthony Albanese admitted at the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) Public Forum that some Australians may not understand why he’s at a NATO meeting ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jared Mondschein, Senior Research Fellow, US Studies Centre, University of Sydney When colonial Americans declared their independence on July 4 1776, they rejected more than British rule. They explicitly denounced the British form of government and the unlegislated norms, traditions and conventions ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra University of Canberra Professorial Fellow Michelle Grattan and Emma Larouche, from the University of Canberra’s Media and Communications team discuss the week in politics. They canvass the crossbenchers’ stoush with the Prime Minister over ...
"Aotearoa New Zealand remains concerned by the steady erosion of rights, freedoms, and autonomy that has occurred in Hong Kong as a result," the foreign minister said. ...
Download the 6 page housing build 'plan' announced yesterday: https://www.hud.govt.nz/community-and-public-housing/increasing-public-housing/public-housing-plan/
From the sidebar, Colonel Trotter dons a straw hat to defend us all against the consequences of that Bernard Hickey chap's revolutionary incitements about housing prices. http://bowalleyroad.blogspot.com/2021/01/the-economic-consequences-of-mr-hickey.html
Small price to pay to address one of the major drivers of inequality, third world health outcomes for some and mental ill health.
Hickey’s plan has as much chance of being adopted by either main party as you have propelling yourself to the moon using only farts.
Like most people here I think he government should embark on a government funded house building spree AKA the 1950s and 1960s.
But they won't. Labour is all about technocratic woke neoliberalism – and in this country that is an election winning combination, since our technocratic elites are competent and our liberal middle class who runs everything is woke as fuck.
Of course, you CAN try and drain that swamp by voting for outsider candidates and get your revolution to cut house prices by 50%, but you are far, far more likely to end up with Donald Trump or Boris Johnson than you are with Che Guevara.
So really, if we want housing change we are all going to have to start getting real about what levers a neoliberal government under pressure might pull to get more houses built. And that is only, in NZ, going to be through the NGO housing sector.
Following a recent BBQ, I stood a chance of said propulsion, with the effects of the paua fritters I had consumed the night before.
hahahaha go easy on the garlic powder!
NGO social housing seems to be the 'answer' both our centre parties can agree on. Yay.
Hang on there, are you actually claiming Trotter is right (a 1990s style recession eventuates from Hickeys housing policy) and that this is a political price worth paying?
More along the lines of implement Hickey's suggestions and reap the benefits.
As we have found, there are unintended consequences in radical times. After all, how many recent articles are there where economists have either got it totally wrong it didn't anticipate certain outcomes?
That's actually a yes then.
Would you like to elaborate on the benefits of the 1990s recession for us? I think Ruth Richardsons position was probably that the reforms getting passed justified the pain. But with 30 years of hindsight we might consider if the consequences were justified especially for those whose careers were interrupted by the high unemployment of that time.
Sorry, I could have been clearer.
I have as much faith in Trotter's reckons as any economists predictions i.e. very little.
We do need a correction, a shift or a radical change. BAU doesn't cut it- wealth accumulating into fewer and fewer hands.
However its not a zero sum game. Whatever the cause the general fall out from a major recession would easily be worse than the on going property price rises.
Of note, last year the government had an opportunity to run that experiment just by implementing lockdown without the accompanying wage subsidy (which was proportionally the largest in the world). This would certainly have landed the economy in a recession and quite likely would have prevented the latest price rises.
Unless you think that was preferable (Labour would have lost the election of course in this case) then the reforms must avoid such a recession or have a plan to mitigate it. Pertinently Trotter is asking the economist (Hickey) what that plan is because its widely known this is a likely consequence of such a price collapse. Its also what happened across multiple countries when their property bubbles collapsed, we have somewhat more evidence its a real problem than just recons. Its also the kind of advice being given to Ardern and why she is telling the country she doesn't want to cause a price collapse.
The surface dismissal of what Trotter is saying without either engaging with the argument (or even just to state their belief that property market collapse wouldn't cause a recession) doesn't endear.
I feel we are talking past each other.
Politically, you seem to be saying we must not frighten the horses. I am of the opinion they need a jolly good rark up. Maybe a gate or two left open.
Plus the the other part of housing affordability is the income/wages side of it. Incomes/benefits/wages need to rise.
Well I didn't have a sense of talking past each other, but if you want to move the discussion onto stables then we certainly are now.
Soaring house prices are from govt QE poured into the banking sector, not wage subsidies. Trickle-down nonsense again.
This is incorrect, though a widely held myth. Soaring house prices are based on what the latest batch of house buyers are willing to pay for the houses they purchased. Often they borrowed to make those purchases, so also deposit and lending criteria, etc…
But in no way did government spending facilitate those decisions. The government could have funded itself in many ways including, normal DMO operations (though at higher interest rates) or OMF or if Grant Robertson found 60 billion down the back of the couch.
So how should the government have completed its deficit spending to avoid these recent price rises?
And a calculated assumption that the poor, the homeless , the disenfranchised will not
rise up or indeed be championed by the same middle class with property portfolios.
It seems to me Bernard Hickey is entirely unserious about solving the countries housing issues and instead he (along with a huge proportion of the vocal insolent left) prefers the high ground of oppositional politics. Why else would you propose a scheme which has zero chance of implementation?
Either Bernard Hickey wishes to be taken seriously on the issue or he does not. If he wants his views to be relegated to the background noise of a increasingly petulant twitterati left then he can carry on proposing such pie in the sky policy prescriptions. Or he can start coming up with some concrete ideas that might have a chance of actually being adopted.
As I've pointed out a few times in the past, the one thing worse than a housing market that's too hot, is one that's dropping.
As we have experienced a rise so meteoric in the last year – Part due to government action of quantitive easing and throwing $$ without taking action to counteract what this has done to property. The market has plenty of slack to allow for the market to drop to levels that we were experiencing this time last year. Problem is that our PM finds moderate increases as acceptable. To our PM: every period that rises are over and above disposable income increases guess what ? – It gets more difficult to buy a family home, or are many comfortable with a timid response ??
https://www.interest.co.nz/property/108601/2020-capped-19-rise-house-prices-year-despite-sharp-jump-volumes-sold-prices-were#:~:text=New%20Zealand%20house%20prices%20rose,gain%20rate%20to%20%2B%24422.
So even if they dropped 20%, house prices would be back to the terrible times of… last year.
Less terrible than were we are now 🤫, but those who comment regarding aversions to see property prices drops forget that a return to where we were 6months. What other options are there ? stagnant property prices for many years to come as wage growth of 1% allows for an improving the house affordability trend ?
The point being that no-one wants to either buy or lend into a falling market, because of the risk of destroying all the equity and going underwater.
If there is one thing worse than a house that's too damn expensive (there is a chance you can work with that), it's a house you dare not buy regardless.
"No one".
I mean, people who want a house rather than an investment with a capital gain might be interested, mad fools they are. Who just buys a house to live in it lol
Do the Trotsker's vapours owe anything to his own house holding status?
It’s a beautiful day in Auckland. Nice feeling to know that the USA is not completely crazy and liable to start WW3 any minute
Here's the missing reporting on the massive "stop the steal" protests at state capitols all around the US that the fake news media censored. (check the whole thread)
Still sleepless in Seattle.
The far left in the USA has been dumped by TeamBiden and will not be happy.
They’ll be even less happy when the US business faction gets into bed with the Dem party leaders.
The “far left” being those who want the basics of a civilised democracy as opposed to the current oligarchy
While the Democrats like to think they're the 'natural party of government' in the USA, the reality is that they only very narrowly won this election. The entire popular majority for the President resides in just three states, California, New York and Florida. The swings virtually everywhere else were tiny; the fundamental voting patterns have barely changed in decades.
And you may want to keep in mind, even when losing, Trump gained more Hispanic and Black votes this election than any Republican President ever. If it were not for the shambolic COVID response, Trump would have likely romped home.
In the meantime the Republicans are now composed almost entirely of right wing populists of various nutty flavours, and their traditional support base among the business, national security and social conservatives has been completely frozen out. A smart Democrat leadership will move toward these groups, representing as they do real money and large voting blocs.
Of course this analysis isn't intended to make you happy – it's a look at what is happening rather than what you might wish would.
Sure, the Dems need to actually win in order to get shit done. But they don't need to be as pathetic as Obama and pander to Wall St quite so obsequiously. 🤮
Maybe they think themselves as true Scythians where revolutions are infinite and in continuous turmoil (and continuous revolutions have a second law constraint) see Zamyatin.
The Russians write like no-one else.
That's how they roll in that part of the world.
There's the newish dynamic prosperous urban centres of Portland and Seattle that attract a population that is young, progressive, diverse, energetic, possibly a little hot-headed, and they aren't going to take shit.
Then there's the older backblocks that aren't doing as well as they think they're entitled to and think they're still in the 1800s when the constitution of Oregon explicitly forebade non-whites. (Washington state didn't quite do that, but the vibe was still pretty clear).
So the regular rumbles between the various factions are now kind of a routine thing. Almost an expected ritual.
If there is one thing guaranteed to lose support in the USA it's political violence. not only is it morally wrong and dangerous at every level, supporting it politically as many Democrat leaders have been doing all year is monumentally stupid.
It's possibly the one factor that turned what should have been a slam dunk win over Trump into a nail-biter.
Democratic leaders have been condemning all violence for the entire last four terms. Suggesting they haven't is amplifying a right-wing smear.
In stark contrast to Darth Hater, who had been encouraging violence and dog-whistle cheering it on, with an occasional feeble hostage video repudiation when even his sycophants thought he had gone waaay too far.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2020/08/13/fact-check-democrats-have-condemned-violence-linked-protests/3317862001/
https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-factcheck-biden-condemn-violence/fact-check-joe-biden-has-condemned-violent-protests-in-the-last-three-months-idUSKBN25V2O1?edition-redirect=uk
Democratic leaders have been condemning all violence for the entire last four terms.
So cheerfully paying bail monies to arrested 'protesters' is somehow consistent with this?
From your link:
Note: not Democratic Leaders; their campaign staff, in an unofficial capacity; donating to a third-party that bails out protestors; and a statement by Biden calling out violence.
The fact that left wing protests regularly turned into violence of one sort or another virtually all damned year – and that protest leaders and Democrats did little but token hand-wringing to stop it is something the left owns now whether you like it or not.
BLM and other leftish protests regularly turned into violence (at a rate of about 4% to 6% of all protests) mostly because of police and white supremacists initiating violence.
The police had an obligation to ensure protestors could exercise their First Amendment right to peaceably assemble: the police abjectly failed, and indeed, were often the proximate cause of the violation of the protestors rights. In direct contravention of their obligations and oaths.
That RWNJs are now furiously gaslighting to deflect blame doesn’t change the facts.
edit: here’s just one link of many that are easily found just be googling police brutality blm protests.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-06-07/police-brutality-caught-on-film-black-lives-matter/12330672
So the link to the Antifa protest yesterday that sparked this thread, is a deep fake video? Or white supremacists reacting to police provocation?
And if BLM want to base an entire movement on the basis of less than 20 unjustified deaths per year (out of tens of million of police encounters), then your 4 – 6% of protests that turn ugly cannot be dismissed either.
The simple truth you keep dodging is that while I don't have to hassle any brain cells to rank the order of importance between the Capitol invasion and the the burning down of a Seven11 – the ongoing news clips showing political violence done either in the name of or under the cover of ostensibly left wing protests all year cannot be erased from the voters mind either.
And unless I've missed something, I have yet to see any pro-BLM/Antifa people here on this thread actually condemning the Antifa violence seen even yesterday. What we get instead are denial, minimising and deflection at every step.
A lot of those spnosored bail bonds will be to people who were victims of police violence, but apparently it's still all the fault of the "left wing".
You got it McFlock.
The fact that you continue to misrepresent what your own links say, to demonise civil rights protests, makes clear the rabidity of your own partisanship, whether you like it or not.
If them antifa folk would stop running headlong into police batons and redneck fists, peace would descend. Saw it on Faux News so it must be true.
Just in case it's not clear.
Four of the five permanent members of the Security Council all began their modern states with bloody revolutions.
All four founded those revolutionary states on principles that they thought were universal.
So if or when the trial of Derek Chauvin fails to deliver the outcome the mob wants, do you think the USA should burn?
It's a bad faith form of debate to use loaded questions to force opinion.
So you want to reserve the option to both allow the left to condemn political violence for reasons of respectability, but at the same time cheer it on when it suits because 'racism'.
Does that cover it off?
As we all know, the springbok tour in '81 was called off because people frowned pointedly at it.
@McF
Does this mean you support political violence when you think it's justified?
And does this extend to when other people think it's justified?
Of course I support violence when I think it's justified. Why would I oppose justified violence?
Does it extend to other people's idea of justification? Within reason. Individual circumstances are not always precise, nor is the level of violence chosen.
I'm a great fan of a "reasonable person" assessment. I know it doesn't fit with your desire for categorical imperatives that can be adapted as rules for your positronic neural network, but that's the difficulty of being human.
The category of political violence is absolute; it's either allowable or not.
And even Uncle Joe thought he was being reasonable.
Did he really? Or was he just a bastard?
And as we previously discovered, what you count as "political violence" is not as categorical as you claim. Damaging property and threatening people with assault in order to protest materialism is fine, if it's "performative" enough.
Of course you can claim the 'cleansing of the Temple' was political violence because it suits your argument. I think it was a legitimate protest, disruptive yes, but not violent. (There is no evidence from the account anyone was hurt.)
That's my point, you think you're being reasonable, when I don't. So which one of us gets to define what is acceptable or not? It just becomes a matter of opinion, and the fucking nazis are just as free to have their opinion as Antifa.
My argument is simply that whenever there is any doubt, political violence must be out of bounds. The most watertight definition is the most reliable one.
(oxford)
No need for hurt.
So if nobody is hurt it's not violence? The dude made a whip, ffs. Not sure anyone was hurt (by protestors) in the "violence" at portland yesterday, either.
Neither of us do. There is no central Decider who makes the determination. We are judged by our peers, voters, judiciary, and history. All of them get to change their minds at any time. You might despise that sort of ethical melieu, but the objective isn't a categorical line in the sand. The objective is to not go down in history as being too much of a dick. John Brown is another dude who I'd rather be like than someone who just frowned at slavery and did nothing.
Have you not been paying attention? There is always some shred of doubt. By your rules, anyone who tried to kill Hitler in the 1930s was wrong, as well. Bullshit.
This is where these discussions usually end up, with RL making up his own definitions for words.
solkta is now using a modern dictionary to parse events that took place 2000 years ago.
If you think that era was at all touched by the concerns of the modern woke, you really need to read some history.
Setting aside the historicity of the bible narrative here are some examples of the 'woke'-ness RL so derides:
https://mountaineagle.com/stories/how-jesus-responded-to-racism,26438
RL:
Because we're using English, not Latin or Aramaic.
Violence, violentiam, βία: it's the same in any language from any era.
Well that of course is why Christ is remembered – he did challenge the norms of the era and set in place a moral framework that still informs the modern world.
But if you imagine the account of the 'cleansing of the Temple' would have stacked up as 'violent' in terms of how people thought in those quite different times, I think you and McF are suffering a quite bad dose of presentism.
Notably Christ's approach to the issues you list is based however not in identity politics and power struggle, but through the 'rebirth of the soul' within the heart of each individual. That's my problem with woke – it takes good causes and uses them to cloak bad actions.
By your rules, anyone who tried to kill Hitler in the 1930s was wrong, as well. Bullshit.
Well that's because we know what happened subsequently in the 1940's. Now how would you feel if someone had tried or even succeeded in assassinating Trump?
My copy of the bible is in English.
RL, why can't you just admit that you were wrong? Why are you so incapable of that?
Hmmm. In 2016? Probably would have been a bit ambivalent about it. Less ambivalent if I knew literally hundreds of thousands of lives might have been saved.
But then if Hitler had been assassinated in 1935 and I was reading about it in a history book, same deal.
RL, why can't you just admit that you were wrong? Why are you so incapable of that?
In the 14 yrs I've been commenting here I never thought to demand that of anyone.
My point is simple – if you are going to insist on reserving the right to use political violence in the name of your own cause, then you will have no defense when your opponents do the same.
Or indeed any other form of violence.
Probably would have been a bit ambivalent about it.
I would have condemned it absolutely outright. As would indeed the vast majority of 'reasonable' people I suggest.
You've completely forgotten the very purpose of politics. It's to substitute dialog and negotiation for coercion and war.
When you allow violence to creep in through the cracks – you will inevitably find it betrays democracy and civilisation. Everything you thought worth saving.
Yeah, his repeated early moves on race-based immigration didn't worry many people you'd regard as "reasonable". But they were pretty fucking strong portents of looming fascism.
I'd have been against it a bit because maybe he hadn't met the threshold of harm that warranted assassination, but for it a bit because he looked like he had a good chance of going there. Ambivalent. Hell, I'm still ambivalent about whether it would have been a good thing at the start of his presidency. Would Pence's Gilead have been worse than 400k covid deaths and open fascism? Can't say for sure.
What happens when the State claims a monopoly on violence, but then that State goes rogue, ignores the democratic will of the people, and indeed begins oppressing its own? From the Declaration of Independence:
@RL In the 14 yrs I've been commenting here I never thought to demand that of anyone.
Some people are able to admit when they are wrong about something and this enables them to learn new things. Others just want to prance around like a peacock.
A little singe now and again.
The focus of BLM had gained good impact in the new administration already. They generated massive marches and some fires on the streets.
Whereas attacking the Senate has massively damaged the Republicans. Hopefully it splits them and there's a nice new splinter party formed.
So you do need the sense to put your sights on the right target if you're going to set fires.
A little singe now and again.
Well compared to say Yeltsin using tanks to shell the Kremlin, how does the 'storming of the Capitol' stack up? Just a little singe?
My point I think is this; unless you have categorically ruled political violence out of bounds, then you (or anyone else) will always find a reason to justify it to suit themselves.
But not the other guys.
Wasn't Yeltsin putting down a coup, not fomenting one?
Well most of the people at the Capitol thought exactly the same; they were there to defend the Constitution not overthrow it.
Do you think that this belief was reasonable?
I don't think it was reasonable – but I'll bet the vast majority of people who went almost certainly thought it was. The accounts I've read support this.
So? They are unreasonable. Who decides that? People in general, over time.
What do we know, through careful examination of the facts? The insurrectionists got much of their plan wrong. They lacked reason. They livestreamed their crimes. Lack of reason. They had faith in dolt45. Lack of reason.
Yelstin: there was an attempted coup. Coup plotters had arrest lists and military forces. He organised resistance to the coup. Coup plotters didn't surrender, he shelled their position. All reasonable actions.
If you doubt your own ability to assess reasonable actions and arguments, that's your problem.
If you doubt your own ability to assess reasonable actions and arguments, that's your problem.
I'm not the one who is willing to commit violence in the name of your always reasonable cause, nor condone an assassination if it suits your political view.
I've assessed that violence represents the abdication of politics, the point at which you've plunged into the abyss.
No dude.
You will be the good man who stands by and does nothing because you can't trust your mental faculties and you might therefore be wrong. Frowns don't stop nazis.
They are unreasonable. Who decides that? People in general, over time.
Which is why we reserve violence for the state; it alone has the capacity to make the collective determination you're asking for here.
And if the state has degenerated into an intolerable tyranny then it can be resisted by defying it courageously. Ghandi, Mandela and King showed how it’s done.
Resorting to mob violence is the cowards way out.
Actually, if you think Mandela was a pacifist then you're probably right to mistrust your judgement.
BLM protests aren't the riots you paint them as, but even if they all were, MLK said "riots are the language of the unheard". He didn't approve, but he understood. He didn't just fire off categorical imperatives as an excuse to dismiss the issue.
Gandhi was also not as categorical as you: "where there is only a choice between cowardice and violence, I would advise violence." Apparently also recruited Indians to serve as British soldiers in WW1.
Let's see: Mandela, Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr, Jesus… none of them lived up to Redlogix's pacifist ideals.
Yet each of these leaders are held in such high esteem precisely because they achieved their remarkable goals with the bare minimum of disruption and force necessary. Their primary leverage was a moral not physical.
The general trend of human evolution has been away from coercion and violence to resolve conflicts of interest, toward dialog and negotiation. In this process we have slowly ceded our right to personal forceful action upward to higher authority. First to the clan, the tribe, the warlord, the city state and now the nation state.
At each step we've gained increasing freedom in our daily lives from violence. At this point in time humans are probably the least violent we've ever been. Pinker has made this case very well.
This is not necessarily because our personal capacity for violence has diminished, but because we have created social structures that regulate and moderate it on our collective behalf.
Meanwhile, in the real world nobody lives up to your categorical imperatives, St RedLogix. Not even the people you list.
I agree, minimum force should be used. I worked under that rule for 20 years, always knowing any instance could be put to a test of reasonableness in court. But "never"? You're setting absurdly high goals for any movement, there, let alone one you seem to oppose.
And in my view the principle of non-violence must take precedence. There is no more excuse for individuals resorting to violence for a political purpose than there is for domestic violence.
It's the same logic, just taken to the next wider social level.
A view not shared even by more than half the folks you name-dropped to support it.
Yet manifestly they're all celebrated precisely for the success of their non-violent approach.
It's a very odd thing that you should now be consigning them to the same dustbin history along with all the assorted thugs, warlords and failed revolutionaries who only ever reached for violent means to prosecute their cause.
If that's your genuine take-away from the discussion, all I can do is be thankful that you have enough awareness remaining to doubt the reasonableness of your beliefs.
Now I'll have to generate a post on revolutions.
You may want to consider that what we think permissible, changes with time. My view is that the boundaries on violence are being gradually extended from virtually no limits at all – toward ideally a total prohibition in any form.
Which direction do you want to take?
RL, your view seems not to correspond with reality. The difference between those engaged in violence in support of a fascist coup and others fighting oppression seems quite clear to other commenters. For one thing; the oppressors expect to get away with their crimes, whereas the oppressed expect to be harshly punished, but do it anyway.
This is the best I have seen it stated:
The difference between those engaged in violence in support of a fascist coup and others fighting oppression seems quite clear to other commenters.
It's a remarkable conceit to imagine that you're always on the side of the angels and the other guys are always the oppressors.
It's the idea that the left can never do any wrong that doesn't correlate with reality.
You think that only "the mob" wants justice in the Chauvin case?
Everyone would want to see the correct legal outcome that most people considered just; but it would be a mob that went on a rampage afterward if they didn't like it.
… political violence. not only is it morally wrong and dangerous at every level, supporting it politically as many Democrat leaders have been doing all year is monumentally stupid.
Democratic politicians are outspoken supporters of the most extreme violence by insurrectionary mobs in Venezuela and by Israeli snipers against unarmed protestors in Gaza and the Occupied West Bank.
Where on earth do you get the idea that Democrats oppose violence?
I am not that familiar with twitter, but this Disclose.tv thread looks a bit dodgy there Poisson.
Hopefully, in the next few days, we will see some details about those eight arrested. I wouldn't be quite so quick to ascribe the actions to "Antifa", though I guess ICE is arguably fascist enough for people to be anti it. But Anarchist is not the same as Antifa, despite sounding similar, and sometimes sharing similar objectives. The J20 protests the previous 4 years have certainly seemed a bit larger, but also featured flag burning. From 2017:
https://katu.com/news/local/portland-protests-large-crowd-begins-to-gather-at-pioneer-courthouse-square
But it's not entirely clear if the group is the same as those of previous years with McKelvey, then leader of "Portland's Resistance" seeming to have moved to Atlanta in mid-2018. And there are no repeated names in the lists of arrested between the two years (can't be bothered hunting up 2016,18&19 details – have enough tabs open as it is). Also not the only protest in Portland that day:
https://katu.com/news/local/protesters-at-j20-demonstration-march-through-southeast-portland
https://katu.com/news/local/portland-organizer-gregory-mckelvey-accepts-job-in-atlanta-living-room
but this Disclose.tv thread looks a bit dodgy
Who knows? I mean look at this dodgy old codger in Mittens.
The Global Disinformation Index seems to think that they know. Naming Disclose.tv as one of the top 10 biggest profiteers from publishing election disinformation in November 2020.
https://disinformationindex.org/about/
BTW Demonstrating that they are willing to photoshop Sanders for the lols doesn’t really help your case does it Poisson?
Hopefully, in the next few days, we will see some details about those eight arrested.
Stop spreading disinformation,the link was to Seattle NOT Portland,it is also in the mainstream media
https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/protesters-march-through-downtown-seattle-arrests-made-for-property-damage/
I hope you will do better in this years NCEA comprehension exams.
Poisson, yeah – I should have been more specific about my search terms; "Antifa protest", was clearly insufficient, but quicker to type. The Seattle protest looks more minor, so only two arrests there.
I would apologize for derailing your thread, but seeing as you were doing that to Andre yourself, won't.
No police in sight so they're probably snofwake trumpkins.
Grainne Moss has just stepped down as boss of Oranga Tamariki.
Sir Wira Gardiner is the new Acting.
All fine to get the scalp of a senior public servant if that's the game you hunt.
But now the Maori leadership who hunted her will be owning the results.
Pretty much. When the government got serious about child abuse and changed the law to allow uplift where the threat was clear Maori activists and leaders couldn't see past their reflexive sense of grievance.
Maori leadership has chosen not to see James Whakaruru as the victim of child abuse with painful questions about Maori culpability, preferring to focus on the easy portrayal of the likes of Te Rangi Whakaruru and Benny Haerewa as victims of colonisation. As you say, now they will get their chance to own the results.
It is highly probable that all roles will be reversed….hopefully not to the detriment of those the organisation is expected to protect.
The report on this from last year is pretty hard work:
https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/new-zealand/2020/01/increasing-numbers-of-m-ori-babies-being-removed-from-families-despite-falling-rates-of-abuse-report.html
The 2020 report found that moving Maori babies into state care happens earlier than it does for non-Māori – with the decision increasingly being made before the child is even born.
"There were eight times more concerns reported for unborn Māori babies in 2019, as compared with 2004. In that same time, reported concerns for non-Māori increased only 4.5 times.
In 2010 there were 36 approvals for unborn Māori children to be removed from their families at birth – by 2017 that had risen to 93, despite findings of actual abuse decreasing over that same period.
In 2019, 0.67 percent of pēpi aged three months or under were taken into state care, but only 0.13 percent of non-Māori.
Urgent decisions to remove pepi doubled over the last decade, but stayed the same for non-Māori."
Children's Commissioner Andrew Becroft had words to say about that.
"And 48 percent of pregnant women whose pēpi were taken into state care before birth had been in state care themselves at some point."
"From 2014 to 2017, the removal of Māori babies ordered into state custody before birth almost doubled."
Yes , the stats are difficult reading but that wasnt my point (and it may be premature in any case, the organisation is still state led)….I was suggesting that rather than Maori highlighting the failings of the state organisation, it is likely that the state (and certainly others) will highlight any failings of a Maori led response….and my concern is the objective is lost.
Though as already noted it would be difficult to do any worse than the existing structure
Even though it is a low bar, surely things can only improve with new management. Less of the corporate/'market' driven focus.
email to RNZ…
Professor Stephen Hoadley starts his talk about the state of democracy in the USA by stating that Venezuela is a third world county and implying that it's democracy and thereby it's elections are and where undemocratic.
Jesse I would have thought that you would have enough knowledge around world politics to push back on this false narrative Mr. Hoadley openly used, which is widely known as fake news.
Ecumenical observers declare Venezuela’s elections transparent and efficient
https://www.presbyterianmission.org/story/ecumenical-observers-declare-venezuelas-elections-transparent-and-efficient/
Venezuela's Maduro invites UN, EU observers to December elections
https://www.france24.com/en/20200903-venezuela-s-maduro-invites-un-eu-observers-to-december-elections
International Observers Back up Venezuela's Elections Results
https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/International-Observers-Back-up-Venezuelas-Elections-Results–20201208-0006.html
Please read a correction on this matter to correct the record for RNZ listeners.
Best
Adrian
Hawkes Bay
If true (which I doubt) it says a lot about the IQ of the average voter in Venezuela, ie the ones that are left with half the county voting with their feet vs a fraudulent ballot box
What evidence do you have that it was fraudulent, Red? You sound like Trump.
The BBC, ( no right wing attack dog) The US state department all think it was a bit dodgy plus the millions who have left Venezuela just as a start Putin, China North Korea and Cuba said it was ok so that all helps to affirm it was dodgy
"The BBC, ( no right wing attack dog)"you are quite right, the BBC are Liberal free market attack dogs, so have a common enemy in Venezuela.
The BBC, ( no right wing attack dog)
???!!?? You are obviously unfamiliar with their role of megaphone for the right wing British regime—most shamefully in the persecution of the dissenting journalist Julian Assange. The BBC's short-lived democratic deviation in 2003, when Andrew Gilligan went rogue and actually told the truth about Blair and Campbell's manipulation of documents leading up to the destruction of Iraq, was soon ended.
The US state department all think it was a bit dodgy
The Trump regime, that is.
plus the millions who have left Venezuela
They left a country under brutal, and illegal, sanctions. That shows what suffering has been inflicted on the country by the United States, the U.K., and Colombia; it does not imply they are opponents of their elected government.
just as a start Putin, China North Korea and Cuba said it was ok so that all helps to affirm it was dodgy
???? You have no evidence to back up your claim, other than the word of the Trump regime.
Well written, Adrian. Steve Hoadley is an extremely unsavoury commentator, not a lot different from the likes of Michael Bassett and Waikato's notorious Dov Bing. During the November 2012 escalation in Israeli terror against the citizens of Gaza, named with brutal sarcasm "Operation Pillar of Defense", Hoadley went onto Radio Rhema and expressed his support not for the victims, but the killers.
I fear that you're wasting your time trying to reason with Jesse Mulligan; he's one of the more susceptible and easily bamboozled broadcasters. He was, and presumably still is, a true believer in the Russiagate nonsense, as we can see in this 2016 interview with another dodgy academic, Al Gillespie….
[This is another one of your comments that’s just a litany of ad homs and snide remarks about people whilst dearly lacking in content. To give it some appearance of realism and gravity, it is ornamented with one of those boring transcripts, which is no better than those puerile images that you’re so fond of. Lastly, it is about something utterly trivial that happened years ago.
Cut out the crap and stop the ad homs for the sake of it. Add some substance and contents to your comments, make it interesting and relevant, if you can, or keep quiet. This site is not a personal sandpit for you to indulge in your pet likes & dislikes. This is your warning – Incognito]
Yes listening to Mulligan (which I only do very rarely these days) is like listening to a slightly sophisticated teenage radio show…along with most of his music choices, morning report has pretty much sunk to that same level now as well. It seems like serious unbiased news is well and truly a thing of the past on RNZ now (with the rare exception of course)…lucky we still RNZ concert.
See my Moderation note @ 3:29 PM.
This is another one of your comments that’s just a litany of ad homs and snide remarks about people whilst dearly lacking in content.
Adrian Thornton made the comment about Prof. Hoadley's unfounded and politically incendiary claims about Venezuela—Adrian called them a "false narrative"—and he also expressed his disappointment at the quality, or lack of quality, in Jesse Mulligan's performance. I simply reinforced Adrian's points by providing evidence of even worse performances in the past by Hoadley and Mulligan. Both of the examples I provided were accurate; they were neither ad hominem nor snide.
To give it some appearance of realism and gravity, it is ornamented with one of those boring transcripts
I provided 14 lines of a larger transcript to illustrate my point about Mulligan's credulous and ill informed comments. It is indeed realistic, and any lack of gravity is entirely due to the two people involved in that awful conversation.
Add some substance and contents to your comments, make it interesting and relevant, if you can, or keep quiet.
I kept my comment rigorously to the point. It amplified the comment made by another poster. How was it not relevant?
This site is not a personal sandpit for you to indulge in your pet likes & dislikes. This is your warning – Incognito
You are wielding your hammer again, and threatening me, for what? My comment was directly relevant to the points made by another poster, I made nothing up, I used no foul language.
A 'third world' country that sends oxygen to it's extremely rich neighbour. Simply because people need it.
https://www.reuters.com/article/healthcoronavirus-brazil-venezuela/venezuela-to-send-oxygen-to-brazil-for-covid-19-treatment-idUSL1N2JQ0T4
The poor suffering Venezuelans are more concerned with more basic commodores like dependable utilities and food A shortage of Oxygen is the least of their worries A bit of virtue signalling by Maduro and his henchmen that’s all this is ie a puff piece
'shortage of Oxygen is the least of their worries'
I think your knowledge of Venezuela is minimal, and that your bigotry drives you to simply makes things up to support what you opine.
' poor suffering Venezuelans '
As if you really cared a jot about Venezuelans.
I found this an interesting viewpoint from an USAn who is usually not too political (except where being trans in Trump's Amerika is involved – so yeah; quite political now I think of it). It's unscripted, and the second half is mostly about Star Trek; because that's a lens through which she finds the world makes sense (the; Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations, slogan certainly gets many repetitions). This quote starts at 5:39 and seems worth transcribing before the progression of the algorithm eclipses it:
Which got me thinking about some people who went from the (not too far) left to acolytes of conspiracy theories this year. Faith always seems to trump evidence (pun not intentional, but not removed either). Extremism's counter is not contrary extremism but centrism? Unfortunately the Earth's biosphere may not have time for a return to the status quo.
@McFlock
Wasn't Yeltsin putting down a coup, not fomenting one?
It's an interesting question isn't it. Before that incident, Gorbachov was in charge, but afterwards, it was Yeltsin. So realpolitik analysts consider that the real coup was Yeltsin's
lol I suspect it was more that the coup destroyed the Soviet Union, but left Russia intact. But fair call, he did walk out on top.
And so did the KGB. Nice thing about being the greasy eminince is that you can switch favourites when things look bad, I guess 🙂
Yep, just another case of good ol' fashioned US election meddling…(1996 election)
Overriding Democracy: American Intervention in Yeltsin’s 1996 Reelection Campaign
https://journals.librarypublishing.arizona.edu/uahistjrnl/article/id/622/
US agents helped Yeltsin break coup
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/us-agents-helped-yeltsin-break-coup-1436470.html
lol
k whatevs.
lol
Funnily enough, it's not that I actually doubt either claim, the link of his that was relevant to my comment seems reasonable. I just can't be bothered getting into a debate about whether it was right or wrong to [checks notes] assist in some small way to stop communist hardliners gaining power through military force.
The other link was quite sweet – I was almost tempted to be the fourth person to download the article just to see if what Adrian thought it said was actually what it said. But if I can't be bothered to debate a link that was relevant to what I'd said, I'm not going to go off on a tangent.
I'm working on just letting more bullshit go these days.
A good exercise in not getting drawn into pointless time wasting adventures.
Sometimes it's just easier to laugh, especially when it involves the usual half dozen russian defence squad.
Surely you know Mcflocks's 'lol' was not brought on by his finding anything humourous but as attempt to ridicule the author of the comment he was replying to. I doubt he was laughing.
What I found slightly amusing was his need to further explain himself because he thought your 'lol' was similarly meant for him, and you further having to assure him that you weren't seeking to ridicule him.
Dare I suggest a room?
If you really want to interpret my motives for commenting, try considering whether I am more inclined to interact with Al1en rather than Adrian.
Open Mike is a handy enough "room", thanks.
This isn't a text chat room for teenagers you two, at least try to speak like grown ups.
ok boomer.
And using the reply button. You pesky kid lol
This documentary has never been more relevant than it is today, and in the context of the last 30 years it's no wonder that Chomsky is still clinging to 'hope' for political change in the USA. The media's complicity in the political process has never been stronger. It used to be called propaganda but it's also called 'Manufactured Consent'
Produced in 1992, it runs for 2hr 47min and considers the propaganda model of communication and the politics of the mass-communications business, with emphasis on Chomsky's ideas and career. He's a brilliant communicator, and this alone makes watching and following this documentary quite easy despite it's length.
In the context of some of the discussion above quoting media sources, this is a must watch.
Perhaps it will be shown on the Maori Channel sometime, it's virtually the only NZ TV station to run intelligent and thought provoking programs that challenge the status quo.