We now face the issue of Hunt's relatives flying in from Oz and going into managed isolation and whether they will be allowed out.
Which at one level is easy – once there is a negative to the test. At another not so much because there are false negatives, and them infecting others at the funeral would be a new low.
What would reduce the risk would be if only Kiwis from Oz were on the plane and in the Rotorua hotel now. But if it was an onflight including those from South Asia and the UK less so.
In that regard, its about time to separate the Kiwis from Oz coming here from those in on-flights from other areas of higher risk.
There is no real reason why Kiwis in WA/SA/Queensland need to go into isolatiom at all and those from NSW/Victoria with no others in their home to go to self isolation (with phone tracking or bracelets).
So what? So he's framing Biden as China's candidate.
The Democrats could not have selected a worse candidate to make an argument to the American people than Joe Biden… I think 2020 is shaping up in the last 150 days to be just this classic counter of the globalism of Joe Biden and the Wall Street faction of the Democratic Party versus the economic nationalism and populism of Trump and potentially some slice of the Bernie [Sanders] contingent.
Why? Good/evil. The antique binary axis has ten times the moral authority of trad democracy (two millennia of moral hegemony versus two centuries).
I think that the government of China is a group of gangsters… I think what they’ve done as far as taking away the Chinese people’s freedom and what they’ve done with the Uighurs, the Tibetan Buddhists, the underground House Church Christians, the underground Catholic Church, the Falun Gong and the democracy movement is outrageous. And they should be confronted at every level by every government
Civilisation at stake thesis. Civil rights became a global scheme via UN adoption. Dragon mythos is ancient, but success on the geopolitical stage depends on the communist regime adhering to it in defiance of the civilised world.
The CCP is in a hot information/cyber war and a hot economic war against the United States. And they’ve been at that for a while. And President Trump’s the only president in American history that has stood up to the Chinese Communist Party. And I think now is the time to even take it up a notch. And I think you’re seeing this across the United States government. I think you’re seeing a whole of government approach led by people like Secretary [of State Mike] Pompeo. You can see now in Congress, you’ve got people like in the Senate, Marco Rubio, Tom Cotton, Josh Hawley. The American government and the American people are now engaged in this confrontation
Except now the chink electrogoons are targeting Oz, and ScoMo is trying real hard not to say so. He's authorised headlines about the cyber attacks, while carefully not specifying their source. Watch this space!!
NZ is studiously ignoring what is happening in Australia right now in the vain hope the contagion won't strike us. Well it has become a real issue there and we'd do well to start paying attention:
It’s not just about COVID-19. Or the 2016 US presidential election. Truth has been under constant and deliberate assault since the explosive rise of social media more than a decade ago.
It has been called a fire hose of misinformation. Truth decay. Infowars. An infodemic.
Local and federal politicians exploit it. Local, national and international corporations and lobby groups embrace it. Diplomatic corps deploy it.
And that’s where Australia has resolved to draw the line.
“As Prime Minister Morrison said in March this year … there are some who believe liberal democracies and free societies cannot cope with these sorts of challenges,” Payne said. “We will prove them wrong here in Australia.”
Here is an important point to keep in mind; the assault is a one way flow. The authoritarian states, primarily China and to a lesser degree Russia, are able to control their domestic internet. China in particular completely insulates it's own people from the West and tightly controls what they are allowed to see and say. By contrast the democratic West is almost completely open, and thus completely vulnerable.
Does anyone think asymmetry is not being exploited to our manifest disadvantage?
After the consequence of glasnost on the Soviet Union, China decided it was a weakness they would not have, but exploit in others.
Of course Russia under Putin, is on the same course – even adopting white race identity nationalism in both domestic politics and aslo as a way to connect to nationalists abroad – to take down the western multi-lateralist regime.
Given the left created identity politics, it's hard to understand the outrage when others learn the lesson and use it for their own purposes. But it goes a long way to explaining my decade long objection here to the whole damned idea in the first place. Identity politics is nothing if not a perpetual motion grievance machine.
Still this is a tangent to the point; the authoritarian states have seen this fatal weakness and are more than willing to use to intensify the natural diversity of the west into hopelessly bickering camps. So far it looks like it's working a treat don't you think?
Personally I have no problem with all the people not white race men becoming activist for those of their group becoming equal citizens in a democracy. Sure there is contention over some of it, as there was over mitigating any injustice. This process has been going on for centuries now.
The taking offence part is more novel, there its more the 1790's France, post 1917 Russia side to it. A form of PC vigilantism and group peer pressure.
As to who gains by it, it's a distraction from growing economic inequality, facing up to the need for monetary reform to sustain nation state capability and global collective action on planetary health. Well those who want to rebuild the fuedal order around capital and outside management of the underclass (high tech panopticon society regime – think China but Area 51 God rule style).
The major weakeness of the West, as to Russia and China, is not our own internal political divisions, but the greed within capitalism. That applies whether in its nationalist Trumpian form, or those who take access to China's market on their terms for the sake of short term shareholder profit.
damn, all those people who are not white, not male, not heterosexual and good 'christians' that want equal rights, equal opportunity, and equal safety.
Damn, those darn gosh dangly doo liberals. Don't they know their place.
Oh to be living in the good old times of 1850. Before all that jazz about voting rights, rights to bodily autonomy, and distaste of racially and sexually / gendered jokes.
Don't diss pre 1850. The French Revolution of 1789-1799 "Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité" established the notion of universal human rights and led to the abolition of slaves throughout the British Empire (1833). Which also meant that the Treaty of Waitangi (1840) was founded on similar principles.
It just took the USA a while to catch up (emancipation/civil war in 1863)
Personally I have no problem with all the people not white race men becoming activist for those of their group becoming equal citizens in a democracy.
Now let's imagine a nice little democratic nation that isn't white dominated. One where say Latino, Blacks or Asians run the show. And ask yourself if these places might not have considerable 'systemic bias' against minorities of other ethnic groups. It logically follows from your argument these groups would want to demand to be 'equal citizens'.
What if one of these minorities happened to be white, are they to be excluded from being equal citizens?
And then take this thought experiment one step further and try and imagine the outcome of the small white minority in China demanding to become 'equal citizens'.
Given the history of China is the expansion of the Han and assimilation of outer regions into their hegemony … and Russian security was premised on expansion of the Rus/Slav European across the continent to the Pacific … oh or colonial west aquiring American from sea to sea (including Mexican Texas and California) Aotearoa land to farm, there could be a brotherly self-recognition. Or maybe we are too alike, and have good reason not to trust each other. It being all so Darwinian.
The west sees itself as building a civilisation, post enlightenment. A new Greco-Roman age realising its period of colonialism/economic imperialism/global dominance. And China sees it as something to emulate to supplant western global leadership and Russia sees this as reducing its own economic and political isolation.
Ultimately making our own society more just does not change the global dynamics of power in play.
Or maybe we are too alike, and have good reason not to trust each other. It being all so Darwinian.
That really gets very close to the question I've been trying to address here for years.
Here is a thought going through my head this morning; unity does not mean uniformity. What it really means is the capacity to achieve common purposes across large groups of diverse identity. (Yes identity is real, it's making it the centre of power games is what I object to.)
It's that capacity, across the universality of all humankind which is what interests me. When we achieve it globally (and I think this is inevitable) we will unleash our true potential as a spiritual beings, we will astonish ourselves.
the elevation of human rights and recognition of the individual as a sovereign, spiritual being, is an Enlightenment ethic peculiar to Europe, not shared by other cultures, and certainly not by tyrannical rulers.
identity politics undermines that. western liberalism is in crisis because the capitalists (or other political forces) have weaponised division against the people.
No they didn't. Identity politics has been around in one form or another for a very long time but primarily saw it's birth after the industrial revolution and capitalism began separating people from the core sources of their identity.
I read your other comment regarding "truth decay" and want to address both comments together.
Firstly, what that article is referring to is called FUD – fear, uncertainty and doubt. Yes, it's a commonly used disinformation tactic used in sales, advertising, marketing, media, politics, religion and online in posts/social media; "a strategy to influence perception by disseminating negative and dubious or false information and a manifestation of the appeal to fear."
Not everyone who uses it knows they're using it however because it naturally exploits our biases so is seldom recognised as a strategy. It is very effective, especially in religion, politics and in social media.
It's also not new and has been around since the 1600s where it was a deliberate religious strategy to keep lay people dependent on priests for religious interpretation. This is an important fact to remember because the initial utilisation of a FUD-based strategy was by religious authoritative figures to control the masses. In that article you linked you'll find this quote which is a suggested 'remedy' to disinformation.
“Relying on clear and authoritative sources is one very important approach.”
And who can we trust these days with such a task? In whose hands would you be willing to place 'truth'?
To be clear, you are right to be concerned about disinformation. Jordan Peterson himself has dissolve the boundaries of truth down to a metaphor. More concerning is that he places metaphorical truth over and above scientific truth. Mind you, how else is he going to convince legions of lost boys to continue drinking the Kool-aid unless he can find some way of destroying the science getting in the way of his religion?
But, back to my point. My main contention is that you seem to think that there was some magical time in history where we had 'truth', where we were critical thinkers who smelled BS a mile away, where we weren't being manipulated by people in power. I'm guessing from your other comments that your come-back will be 'well, no but now the left have broken society into fragments which leaves us vulnerable'.
I'd agree that we're divided and vulnerable but disagree that you can place responsibility for that in the hands of the left.
What I noticed about your two comments is how you use the FUD article as a FUD strategy of your own to further your anti-left narrative. You've skipped right over the fact that the article calls for censorship via the authoritative control of information and instead presented it as a fallacious appeal to fear.
"When fear, not based on evidence or reason, is being used as the primary motivator to get others to accept an idea, proposition, or conclusion."
Identity politics is not new and wasn't started by the left although I'll agree they utilise it. But so does the right. The fracturing of society and flourishing of identity politics is very much the result of massive inequality which pitted the white male against the 'other' – not because white males engineered it to be this way but simply because they were the ones pried from their homes and sent off to work in order to feed the capitalist machine and it is this machine (or rather the breaking of it with govt bail-outs) that has caused growing inequality and the fragmented society we have now. To be clear, the white male is no more responsible for this than any other person or group of people.
So when you point at the left you're falsely diagnosing the fever as though it's the disease and not a symptom of it but worse than that you're perpetrating a FUD campaign of your own to drive home your point.
My main contention is that you seem to think that there was some magical time in history where we had 'truth', where we were critical thinkers who smelled BS a mile away, where we weren't being manipulated by people in power.
One of Peterson's arguments is that while post-modernism has a sound technical point that there are an infinite number of ways to interpret any text, he also posits that the purpose of metaphor, mythology and religion is to show us the relatively few interpretations which are demonstrably successful in real life.
And by success he means to reduce unnecessary suffering to the extent possible. He's quite anti-Utopian, which is why the left hate him so.
And for what it's worth the search for truth is something each one of us must independently undertake for ourselves.
Anyhow cutting through all of the rest, as far as I am concerned, the identity politics game, whoever plays it, is a bad one with only bad outcomes. Call that whatever you like. And if you'd been around here for the 14 years I have, you'd know that I've been copping shit for this position long before Peterson arrived on the scene.
"The ruse of re-defining the term when it gets used in a way you don't like is a pretty but transparent dodge."
That's a pretty bad faith position to take not to mention a strawman. It is easier to attack an argument when you can fit it in a box right? Consider the meme; it is an altogether modern term yet it has existed for ages, been redefined to better describe what it is and what it represents. Christianity, too, has been born again (a few too many times for my liking). So the fact that identity politics as an ideological term was coined at one point in time does not mean it hasn’t existed prior to that time and I'm not alone in my thinking on this. Francis Fukuyama says the politics of identity have been present in many countries at many times throughout history – sometimes grounded in religion, other times class. To deny identity politics it's heritage to make it easier to cut up is disingenuous.
"One of Peterson's arguments is that while post-modernism has a sound technical point that there are an infinite number of ways to interpret any text, he also posits that the purpose of metaphor, mythology and religion is to show us the relatively few interpretations which are demonstrably successful in real life."
Nothing in my comment is related to, in support of, or against postmodernism. My comment about truth is that JP believes something can be scientifically true and metaphorically false and so becomes categorically false. Furthermore, JP fails to acknowledge the role of environment; time and place in determining success. What worked in the 1800s or even the 1950s most likely will not give us success today. The guy is a nut-job with a saviour complex.
I do find it a little amusing how you've redefined your truth statement though. Whatever happened to "truth decay" and the desperate need to preserve 'it'?
"the identity politics game, whoever plays it, is a bad one with only bad outcomes. Call that whatever you like"
Well, I won't call it a game that's for sure. It's serious stuff that deserves serious consideration and discussion. I've learned so much of my own ignorance because of it. I literally cringe when I think of the shit I was spouting in my younger days. And whats more, I'm continuing to learn. I remember reading a quote that was particularly profound to me even though I'm an atheist.
“Enlightenment is a destructive process. It has nothing to do with becoming better or being happier. Enlightenment is the crumbling away of untruth. It’s seeing through the facade of pretense. It’s the complete eradication of everything we imagined to be true.”― Adyashanti
And I don't think identity politics is, in and of itself, bad in the same way that a fever isn't bad – it's an indication of serious imbalance and once you correct the problem of massive inequality you'll find it settles down on it's own. Arguments for ending the ideology itself are far more harmful because they conceal and naturalise the dominance of the right, and in so doing remove the rationale for debate.
I think this is something you're overlooking, Red. Identity politics and the grievance claims are empty chairs reserved for those who have been disenfranchised. My biggest fear is not that the ideological right will win, it's that we will all lose. It was never about white men vs the world per se, it was always and only about the haves and the have nots. As this economic cannibalistic carnival continues to grow so does the economic disparity.
"And if you'd been around here for the 14 years I have, you'd know that I've been copping shit for this position long before Peterson arrived on the scene."
I have no sympathy for you, Red. You've chosen to stand where you stand. You must like the climate.
Part of what I am reading from Red is the shift from us to I.
Society, in my lifetime, used to have many groups, institutions etc to which we belonged- sports clubs, church, community groups (Scouting, Lions) etc.
There was an aspect of service, working and belonging to something bigger than us. That has dwindled over the last few decades.
The rise of the impotance of the individual, helped along by billions of marketing dollars has changed our thinking.
Century of the Self is a fascinating look at the rise of consumerism (amongst other ideas).
Rushed, but I have to go or I will be late for work…
The most powerful words ever spoken to me, a short few words in reply to a clumsy question about our purpose in life, were these:
"We are a people of duty".
At the time I really didn't appreciate them as I should have.
PS. Yes I really enjoy Adam Curtis. Much of what the left regards as the adamantine evils of capitalism are perhaps better thought of as the unaware blindness of materialism. Just a thought.
Part of what I am reading from Red is the shift from us to I.
Yes, I've been thinking about this a lot lately. What I find fascinating is that, to me, it appears to be so paradoxical… but I'm still straightening out some thought noodles on this so will leave it there for now. I'm going to watch that doco now – looks interesting.
it was always and only about the haves and the have nots.
Thank you, a nice response. Your last section I entirely agree with.
Political truth was always malleable, it always shifted as the ground moved under us. But in order to be useful it has to be anchored in at least some empirical, objective facts.
The article I quoted, asks the question, what happens when political truth becomes un-moored from the facts, facts that no-one can even agree on?
Political truth was always malleable, it always shifted as the ground moved under us. But in order to be useful it has to be anchored in at least some empirical, objective facts.
The article I quoted, asks the question, what happens when political truth becomes un-moored from the facts, facts that no-one can even agree on?
Can you expand on your first sentence, please? I don't want to misconstrue what you're trying to say.
I don't know if I can go so far as to say there was ever a time of political truth, that anyone had it. It seems to me that once societies got bigger and more complex the need for structure and control also created exploitable power positions.
I don't think you can say that for political truth to be useful it needs to be grounded in empirical objective facts (even though I believe it ought to be) – well, historically anyway. Religion did a great job of controlling the masses for a while but required deceiving people, keeping them ignorant.
You have to consider the inherent difficulties of empirically studying human behaviour. It's not like we can grow a whole bunch of lab babies and raise them in certain environments to determine outcomes. It's in this fact that people such as yourself have levered their position yet, and ironically so, you're quite willing to flex away from empiricism when it comes to beliefs you're fond of. So why not extend the same flexibility to the left's ideology?
When shown massive amounts of data that prove systemic racism you dig your toes into research results like "no bias in cop shootings of black men" as proof of 'no racial bias'. You can't zoom in and zoom out to frame things to your liking and claim objectivity.
Take, for example, this comment of yours:
Now let's imagine a nice little democratic nation that isn't white dominated. One where say Latino, Blacks or Asians run the show. And ask yourself if these places might not have considerable 'systemic bias' against minorities of other ethnic groups. It logically follows from your argument these groups would want to demand to be 'equal citizens'.
What if one of these minorities happened to be white, are they to be excluded from being equal citizens?
And then take this thought experiment one step further and try and imagine the outcome of the small white minority in China demanding to become 'equal citizens'.
In this "thought experiment" you say that it's feasible that there would be systemic bias against a white minority (and I'm not saying I agree or disagree with you). You basically flip the racial divide to make a point about China but fail to grasp that you've described the situation Blacks and other minorities actually experience now.
How can you 'see it' here but not when we're talking about BLM? Would the Chinese not simply say to you all the same arguments you've posited because in the above scenario, they are the 'haves' and you as the white minority is the 'have nots'?
But I don't want to derail this conversation or make it about something it isn't so please understand I'm just offering that as an example.
My point is that the knowledge we have has always been subjected to a certain amount of bias due to a lack of diversity given that historically it's been men who've determined the course of knowledge to the exclusion of women and minorities. Consider that such great minds as Aristotle and Darwin both expressed unchecked bias in their work so the question must be if they made such mistakes how did their attitudes toward and beliefs about women shape the knowledge we have today? How did that bias limit or deviate to course of knowledge? What of other bias from other thinkers?
Whilst you can say well empiricism fixes that it doesn't really. It does help in some areas, like chemistry, physics and maths, but as we're discovering more and more there are so many nuanced ways in which bias can pervert outcomes – right from determining who we do research on, how we structure our research and how we interpret the results because much of our current research relies on old knowledge held as objectively true which may not be.
Consider that religion, culture and science have all been shaped by subjective beliefs first and foremost and whilst I hold science in the highest regard I don't think it's perfect or infallible – just the best tool we have and tool most frequently wielded in the hands of powerful white men.
For these reasons I don't think you can claim to be the one moored to objectivity whilst the left are 'adrift'.
Identity politics and the grievance claims are empty chairs reserved for those who have been disenfranchised … It was never about white men vs the world per se, it was always and only about the haves and the have nots.
Yeah, my heart absolutely bleeds for that cadre of former Boarding School Girls & Boys – emanating from some of the most privileged Establishment families – who dominate the Woke movement both in NZ & throughout the Anglosphere. They truly are The Great Oppressed.
Really quite emotionally moving to see an empty chair reserved for the disenfranchised of Remmers as they rise out of their subaltern slumber (in between cocktails) to Speak Truth to Power.
"He's quite anti-Utopian, which is why the left hate him so."
I think this is pretty dismissive and incorrect. JP is not anti-utopian at all – I just think he has a different idea of what constitutes a highly desirable or high quality society.
This attitude of dismissal, of scoffing at the silly left with their inability to be reasonable (which is prevalent throughout your comments) is the same attitude men had of women for a very long time. It proved foolhardy.
Because men didn't consider women to be anything other than pretty little women, children in adult bodies, they never considered that women had the potential to be just like them in the best and worst ways possible. (and no, I'm not saying there are no differences between men and women – we're obviously far better at breastfeeding!).
Not wishing to derail your fascinating dialogue, but it prompted me to read up on JP (having previously ignored him out of ignorance). Rule 11 ("Do not bother children when they are skateboarding") suggests he doesn't get the relevance of context. Such as if they are doing on the road. Or at meal time. Perhaps his chapter consists of a sequence of caveats to finesse such practicalities??
I do agree with you about identity politics being around forever (part of social psychodynamics). Warriors identified each other by their helmets etc in the classical era, Roman senators by their togas, in the sense of tribe or class identity. But RL using it in an academic sense is also correct of course. Both/and logic applies.
Ethos is relevant, eh? If you share it, you identify with others who do. Thus I don't share that of the woke – yet I do share some of their values. How one uses values (to divide, or to include) seems the crux (praxis).
Re: JP. There's a running joke about JP where if you ask him a question his answer will invariably start with "Well, it depends on what you mean by X". He's a weasel speaker whose ambiguous language means you can't really pin him down on anything he says. If you pointed out his statement lacks the nuance of context he's say well it depends what you mean by context then launch into some ethereal waffle featuring religious symbology, evil feminine chaos dragons and lobsters.
I've read all his books, watched his videos. It was painful but necessary.
I do understand Red's position and where he's planted his flag in terms of identity politics. I am compelled by my inner brat to shake off all attempts to label and/or contain my beliefs to ideological boxes. I know that makes me sound like some uber edgelord but I'm not – in truth I'm about as edgy as a wet sandwich. My reluctance is more about the fact that common narratives tend to 'fit you up' – if you ascribe to one popular belief you're assumed to hold all the other beliefs commonly associated with that belief as well. I'm still figuring out what it is I actually believe and don't want to be fenced in. So, whilst I reference identity politics I do so conceptually rather than politically if that makes sense.
Ethos is relevant, eh? If you share it, you identify with others who do. Thus I don't share that of the woke – yet I do share some of their values. How one uses values (to divide, or to include) seems the crux (praxis).
This is interesting. You're gonna have to tell me what your definition of 'woke' is because as a politicised label it's quite loaded and I don't want to infer meaning.
I don't think people intentionally divide. I think perhaps people attempt to refine or define and in so doing can have divisiveness as a consequence but I think even that is a simplistic description of what's happening. I'm seeing a lot of paradoxical connections that I'm not sure what to make of. It's either that I'm misconstruing connections or there really is this whole other side that isn't divisive at all but rather about loss of democratic choices (something SPC said got me thinking). If I sound waffley it's because I'm not 'there' yet with the idea so I need to let it ferment a bit longer.
Perhaps you could expand on your point a bit more, let me see inside that head of yours? We've not engaged a lot so it's difficult for me to know what you're about to give your words context.
tell me what your definition of 'woke' is because as a politicised label it's quite loaded and I don't want to infer meaning
I don't define it – I've acquired a hazy sense of what it means. Politically-correct herding seems to be the mass psychology involved. I also see group narcissism there – a presumption that, having arrived at a consensus around social values, all those who haven't done so are wrong. So we get that projection of moral supremacy from them collectively.
Mature folks watching are liable to see this exhibition of syndromes as juvenile or puerile. Character is developmental, and it is unreasonable to expect anyone to figure stuff out simultaneously with others. We all have different social niches to form our values, we learn from different experiences and at different rates. It's a wonder we ever share culture at all!
So broad-mindedness & tolerance of diversity is opposed by woke narrow-minded intolerant preference for monoculture. Greens believe in biodiversity. Woke Greens are frauds!
Identity politics polarises. The future, for humanity, lies in the commons. Identifying common ground is real hard for a partisan. So possessed by group narcissism and the compulsive requirement of conformity to separatism, the woke activist will always shy away from the necessity of acquiring humanity. Yet doing so is a survival skill. Thus the woke will not survive as a social movement.
I understand your frustration with the current social movement. It can be incredibly destabilising to see established norms broken down and labelled as 'bad' or 'wrong'. Having our behaviour and beliefs pointed out in a critical way often feels like a personal attack because we're emotionally invested in them. This isn't a bad thing; it's actually necessary and the result of our successful biological evolution. As a social species being able to cooperate and have shared values is essential to survival as you rightly pointed out.
I think it's important to consider that other people are under the very same evolutionary influences, are subjected to the same evolved psychological tendencies. I'd like to make two key points here.
Firstly, it helps break the familial bond. As a child grows up their primary source of learning comes from the family unit which creates strong emotional bonds but in order to develop a healthy sexual appreciation for the opposite sex they must effectively break the bonded information from its emotional ties. So we see younger people start to value peer group sources for learning over familial groups. The added benefit of doing so reduces the chances of repeating 'stupid parent' mistakes by broadening his or her perspectives of "normal" and "acceptable" behaviour and beliefs.
Secondly, this dissolution of boundaries exposes the adolescent brain to greater influence from their peers with the end goal of learning how to say no to peer influence. Basically, the teen is forced into an environment full of temptation in order to develop the strength to resist it. This is essential in order to avoid falling into 'stupid group' behaviour at a time when they need to be stable and disciplined in order to be a good parent.
Because of these influences I think it's important we don't assume there are fundamental flaws in what they're doing but keep their behaviour in context. What's more, we can learn from their apparent destruction of social norms by considering the validity of things they're exposing.
Social norms are vital to group cohesion and success yet they must also be fit-for-purpose and given our environment changes so rapidly (especially since the industrial revolution) we must frequently test our norms to see if they're still relevant. I, for one, am grateful for these challenges because without them we might still be selling slaves and imprisoning women suspected of having STDs.
The other point I'd like to make is in regard to how we perceive the actions of others. Biases, of which we have over 200, are often alluded to as flaws in thinking or are pointed out as a means to discredit the perspectives of others. Whilst I acknowledge that I'm pointing out bias in your perspective I'm doing so with the caveat that I'm also biased as is everyone, always.
Wikipedia starts its page on cognitive bias with this statement: "Cognitive biases are systematic patterns of deviation from norm[al] or rational judgement" This statement suggests that rationality is the norm. However, if you go to the linked reference material you find the authors actually say cognitive biases are not deviations but rather the normal way we process information.
"The conclusion that many biases are not the result of constraints or mysterious irrationalities also speaks to the ongoing debate about human rationality. Our perspective suggests that biases often are not design flaws, but design features." (source:The Handbook of Evolutionary Psychology by David M. Buss, pg 725)
So everyone is subjected to the same biased thinking and we are all burdened with the responsibility of employing critical thinking when making judgments. https://youtu.be/AK0GYBTNx5Q
I think this is really important because if you consider your perspective from a rational POV you can see that what they're doing and pointing out has been done right throughout history – the challenging and breaking down of old social norms in order to test for relevance. Whilst you might say they're focusing on differences rather than commonalities they do so to break down the criteria for sorting, not to destroy sorting.
The old way was just as separatist in that men and women were relegated to strict and separate social norms, racial segregation kept whites and blacks apart as fundamentally different and religious separation kept Christians apart from "heathens". What's more, they're challenging the old sorting criteria in order to find better more reasonable ways of ensuring equal access to resources, fairer application of laws and legal protection and a more refined and nuanced understanding of what it is to be human first and foremost.
In this way, you can look at their behaviour as a sort of ethical spring cleaning and like spring cleaning, you often have to make a mess to clean one up.
Now, I'm not saying I agree with all of the outcomes or actions – certainly this 'cancel culture' is problematic but I argue that it isn't representative of the entire left nor is it the demands for firing or silencing opposition for a vocal minority that is problematic but how we're responding to it.
Why are companies and institutions bowing to public pressure so quickly and without proper due process? Could it be that in an age where being profitable is so highly dependent on popularity that we've exorcised critical thinking as dissension's bastard? Perhaps then this 'mess' we have is the consequence of the capitalist tendency to monetise everything which has left society vulnerable to the demands of an increasingly vocal & irrational leftist faction who are now no more representative of the political left than neo-Nazism is of the political right.
Thanks for that thoughtful response Maggie. Nothing there I'd dispute. I suspected it was a peer-group driven movement (primarily, with some traction of solidarity amongst those who went pc during the '90s).
And I'm aware of the emotional rooting that bias emerges from, having had to transcend various of mine in the past! I'm willing to tolerate the woke but may have to express irritation from time to time if the phenomenon persists – I suspect it is already waning.
And yes, conflating it with the left isn't sensible, except it regard to the critique that the left tend to be privileged (middle-class) nowadays whereas in the 19th century they were identified as lower-class (wrongly, I've learnt from reading about the activists of that era). Idealism in regard to the better world envisioned is widely shared, so any critique of the woke can't focus on that. It must focus on behaviour.
I appreciate the rational discussion Dennis. All to often I find myself caught up in conversations where I'm constantly having to say "I didn't say/mean that" and I admit my tone is often the cause of such misunderstandings. I'm not very good at predicting how others will take me as I tend to be blunt AF.
I've had to wrestle with my own bias and was a pretty radical feminist some time back. Whilst I still support feminism I've become far more moderate and have broadened my perspective by leaning in to MRA conversations and listening to their POV. This helped me understand that most people want the same things but tend to speak from their pain points in order to express those desires.
And I'll continue to wrestle my biases which flair up like a bad rash every now and again. Conversations like this one make that easier to do so cheers 🙂
When it comes to understanding true motivations of a person I never take a person at their word. Like, ever. Truth is found in between their words, in what they hide, not what they put in the shop window.
Everything about JP says to me that this guy is desperate to preserve an ideal culture in which he feels he has value. And that's not a criticism of him. It's something we all do to certain degrees.
We all write narratives in which we are winners.* Even if we cast ourselves as victims we do so to make a claim that redeems us from blame, we become survivors (and thus mythological heroes of our own history) by pointing out our victimisation. Those who’ve ‘succeeded’ in societal terms do the very same. What mightier hero is there than one who’s escaped their chains and slain sloth to rise above the mediocre.
The right point at the left and label them hysterical whilst comforted by their own “rational” narrative but if you read the majority of right leaning editorials and opinion pieces the “hysteria” is no less present. It just walks along to the monotonous nod of a well-scripted narrative; they just produce better arguments (but not truer ones). The right are the "lawyers" of political discourse – finders of loopholes, committed to winning, not truth.
*Note: I feel the need to clarify that these narratives don't invalidate any suffering or victimisation a person has suffered in their lifetime. This isn't about real life experiences and whether they're justifiably painful but rather the narrative construct – the fictionalised reality we cast for ourselves in our minds.
"So I provide three links where JP explains in detail one thing, and you assure us you know that he must really mean something else.
No wonder you didn't understand a word he said."
"us" Odd choice of pronoun there, Red. Is it a priest or psychiatrist you need because I'm pretty sure you're not speaking for a collective.
You, know, sometimes I just lurk and read the conversations on here. You learn so much about people by watching how they interact with others, when they get pissy, over what and with whom. It paints an interesting picture of the inner emotional and psychological world of the speaker. 🙂
This attitude of dismissal, of scoffing at the silly left with their inability to be reasonable
Don't conflate the irrational, uber-relativist Intersectional Cult with the broader Left movement it's trying to hi-jack.
Because men didn't consider women to be anything other than pretty little women, children in adult bodies
Gross generalisation that I'd expect from the more ideologically insular, historically-ignorant & dogmatic extremes of the Feminist Movement. Doesn't tally with the familial relationships of my forbears at all.
The irony being that the Woke of both sexes do tend toward – not so much children – as petulant teenagers in adult bodies. Narcissistic, demanding & controlling. Presumably a corollary of significant affluence & massive over-indulgence when growing up.
Perhaps a better education system for all that really emphasises critical thinking is the best solution.
the assault is a one way flow.
Oh come on ! Do you think we don't have outright propaganda directed at us via the Murdoch press for instance !!!
An example being the way the Murdoch press harps on about anti semitism whenever anyone crticises Israel ,while Murdoch himself has oil interests in the Golan Heights he'd be able to exploit if the GH were annexed.
The Dream Genie Team
President Trump has a direct personal interest in Genie energy through Ira Greenstein a Kushner family Lawyer and former President of Genie Energy who has worked for the Trump administration as a Legal aide.
"Genie Energy was founded by Howard Jonas a telecoms billionaire; staunch supporter of Netanyahu and long-time friend of the Kushner family. For a company anonymously located in a very shabby part of New Jersey, that few people have even heard of, It is probably the most influential on the planet, its strategic advisory board reads like a Who’s who of Geopolitical Puppet masters comprising some of the Western World’s most influential figures including Former American Vice-President and President/C.E.O of Halliburton Dick Cheney, Ex-CIA Director James Woolsey, Banking tycoon Lord Jacob Rothschild and Media mogul, Rupert Murdoch."
The way Syria is being represented in the Murdoch press is heavily influenced by Murdoch's interests .Just one example .We're not above being lied to by our media Iraq another
Well that is the exact point I linked to and quoted; propaganda is nothing new, pretty much everyone does it. But where do we draw the line?
Are we going to allow the authoritarian states … who's only goal is maintaining and expanding the power of it's leaders for life …. to openly undermine the ideals of the democratic west?
Just to put this into perspective. Of the 200 odd nations on earth, barely 30 truly count as developed and decent places to live, countries where the freedoms, rights and rule of law we take for granted are commonplace. Although partly as a consequence of these characteristics these nations are also very successful and prosperous, it's a mistake to imagine they are also invulnerable to internal damage.
Who counts them Red?
I wouldn’t personally be counting the US at the moment
Are these countries undermining democratic ideals or pointing to the deficits of those countries ?
Any democratic ideals in the UK are tarnished by the unbelievable treatment of Assange, and the media’s abdication of any responsibility towards free journalism
There is of course no binary distinction here; all the nations can be placed on a spectrum from best to worst. And then there are multiple dimensions of desirability we could use. But one way of measuring it was done by a recent Gallop poll (I've linked to it before) that showed some 750m people, 10% of the human race, would migrate right now if they could.
And almost all want to go to the Anglo/Euro nations of the developed world. That's called voting with your feet.
I'd certainly agree the US is by no means the best of this group, it was toppled from that position decades ago. And this is a deficit they certainly need to address; it will take a decade of turmoil to show results.
But let's not look any closer are why those nations are wealthy and desirable. It must be democracy most of them have had for less than a hundred years or so, can't possibly have anything to do with the three or four hundred years before that. Or anything they did while being so "democratic".
But let's not look any closer are why those nations are wealthy and desirable.
It's a very good question; one that I believe Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs and Steel gave a very good answer to. If you really want to understand modern geopolitics this book is the essential starting point. (It ain't perfect, nor complete, but it remains a solid foundation.)
Empire, exploitation, slavery and the oppression of minorities is nothing new. It probably dates back to at least when modern humans probably eradicated Neanderthals in Europe, and it has to be fully acknowledged that the intersection of this ancient paradigm, with the industrialised technologies of 17 and 18th century Europe, took it to a wholly new, intense and deplorable level.
But that colonial era came to a functional end at the close of WW2. Colonialism is no longer the sole or even best explanation for their ongoing success and desirability, at least compared to much of the rest of the world.
no, shh, it's totes just "democracy", right? Nothing to do with the geopolitical dominance the colonial powers maintained post ww2 (replacing "colonialism" with "hegemony") or geopolitical proxy wars and destabilisation campaigns.
Let's just leave it that "democracy" is the primary reason the colonial powers are still largely dominant (and desirable migration destinations).
The left likes to imagine the US got rich on the back of it's global security dominance in the post WW2 era.
Apart from the fact that it was the US manufacturing dominance that was a very large reason why the Allies won WW2 before they set up their security hegemon, it's also wrong on the data. In reality the US actually trades relatively little with the rest of the world as a percentage of it's GDP.
Indeed from the US perspective, if the rest of the world outside North and Latin America were to sink beneath the waves tomorrow, they'd barely notice, much less give a shit. Many would breath a deep sigh of relief and go back to being prosperous thank you very much.
Being world trade's default currency was no advantage at all.
An advantage that cuts both ways. If say Argentinians want to trade with Egyptian's … neither country has any use for each other's currency, so having one dominant hard currency that everyone could use was a tremendous benefit to everyone.
And providing a global security environment, freedom of trade and shipping for all nations, (even their enemies) came at no cost either?
I'm not arguing the post WW2 US led trade order was the ideal arrangement, or that it was without flaws. But it was almost certainly better than anything that came before. A fact that we are about to discover quite brutally as it disintegrates before our eyes over the next few years.
Look, stop the distractions, it must be the world's lack of democracy.
No need to bring up things like that multinationals don't necessarily patriate all their overseas income derived from CIA-backed dictatorships (although the value is reflected in their share prices), and the US leases for military establishments were routinely cheap because they were acquired from those dictatorships or countries they had just defeated (Rammstein, Subic, Guantanamo, Yokota), or the outright colonial possessions for their allies (in the case of Diego Garcia).
And then we have no need at all to mention the CIA practise of destabilising any government (no matter how democratic) that showed any effort to lower inequality in its population, because "communism".
You put your finger on it: the rest of the world is less desirable to live in only for the reason that it doesn't have (or only recently was gifted via B52) democracy. Any other explanation must be false (otherwise you might have to accept reality).
Indeed from the US perspective, if the rest of the world outside North and Latin America were to sink beneath the waves tomorrow, they'd barely notice, much less give a shit.
Its called going to where the jobs are, not necessarily because of democratic ideals .Why are the jobs there ..Empire and wealth accumulation were got not from democracy ,but military advantage and plunder going back generations .It's why Hondurans to this day go to the States
And a large proportion will be going where there is a common language..English…taught pretty well universally .Why?
Colonialism and Empire mean English became the language of trade.and therefore taught .
Empire and wealth accumulation were got not from democracy ,but military advantage and plunder going back generations
In that case why are Spain and Portugal, or the core nations of any of the historic empires not centres of world power to this day? The reason is simple and obvious, the passing of time has eroded away any advantage. The last empire of the type you are thinking of ended with WW2
It's why Hondurans to this day go to the States
Again the problem of having only one tool in the box. Honduras will always be poorer than the USA for a whole range of geographic reasons that have nothing to do politics. Similar to why Greenland will never be a wealthy nation. Geography matters.
English…taught pretty well universally
Well yes. The need for a universal language in a globalised world is so urgent and necessary that we defaulted to the one most at hand. It could have easily been Spanish or French but for a few accidents of history.
Esperanto was once considered a popular alternative for just this purpose. In an ideal world we might eventually arrive at a universal language acceptable to all.
Spain and Portugal lost the bulk of their colonial empires in the 19th century. The US and UK built the bulk of their empires in the 19th century. The Spanish and portuguese lost favoured trade relations with many of their former colonial powers. UK has the commonwealth, and the thirteen colonies gained much of North America in the same time period that Spain lost hers, and US only lost some of their richer dominions in the mid-late 20C (e.g. Cuba, Philipines) (and both expanded their systems of trade, until particular unpleasantries recently entered office in their respective capitals).
Additionally, modern imperialists exercise a more distant style of control that colonialism, but it is still imperial control. Look at Gough Whitlam or Allende if you want to argue about that. It's the dominance of the Roman Republic, not the dominion of the "United Kingdom" (yes, the roman republic differed from the empire because the roman empire had an actual emperor, but this is geopolitical terminology not classical studies).
But even so, I wonder how many ships get tied up at portuguese or spanish docks that were paid for by their own Colstons. I doubt that no advantages remain from their own days of empire.
Additionally, modern imperialists exercise a more distant style of control that colonialism, but it is still imperial control.
Again your reflexive bias against anything American means nuance becomes impossible. Just slap the word 'imperial' on it and job done.
The US hegemon is actually quite different from the British Empire that proceeded it. There are for a start no real colonies of any significance. Certainly there are military bases and a few small island nations, but absolutely nothing compared to the scale of the British.
Secondly, the British model (and all others prior to it) compelled almost all trade to be directed to the centre, for the benefit of the centre. And they navy necessary to defend this trade, protected imperial trade and no-one elses. The American model has been quite the opposite in this respect, all nations are able with relatively few constraints to trade with almost all others. And remarkably enough the US Navy provided the 'freedom of navigation' for everyone to do this at no cost.
Throw in energy independence, and the USA has comparatively little need to trade with the wider world, beyond a few specialised raw materials they can easily manage to source if necessary. This is a key point that was overlooked by everyone, the USA hegemon was never about making the US wealthy in the old imperial 'suck all the resources in to the centre' model. The unique geography of the US made them so natively wealthy that it was never necessary.
The purpose of the hegemon was to defeat the Soviets in the Cold War. The Americans knew they did not want to fight the Russians on the ground, so they essentially bribed up a global alliance which said, "we will let you trade with anyone, protect your trade, provide the finance, get you out of poverty, get rich even, but you have to be on our side against the Soviets".
And so long as you played by their rules the Americans generally left you alone. With some exceptions of course, but for the most part they used the least force necessary to ensure everyone stuck to the bargain.
Am I defending this US model as ideal? Of course not, everyone is aware of the mistakes and disasters along the way. But the crucial point is that compared to anything that came before it, the Americans, almost accidentally, created something the world has never seen before. It took us in the direction of the ideal, of a truly federalised world of equal nations. And for all of it's shortcomings the US trade order has delivered an astonishing modest prosperity for billions …. for the first time in human history fully half the human race is middle class by local standards. (That's quite an achievement for something so half-arsed, imagine if we did it properly.)
I realise the far left hates this narrative, but if we are serious about the universal elimination of poverty it is deeply dishonest to discount it.
I wonder how many ships get tied up at portuguese or spanish docks that were paid for by their own Colstons.
The economic life of most fixed assets is around 50 – 80 years. So no, any economic advantage anyone gained from slavery is long gone.
And if you want to argue for some other less tangible advantage gained from slavery somehow passed down the generations, keep in mind that the briefest of overviews tells us that until the Industrial Revolution ended it, slavery in some form or another was ubiquitous. Where do you want to draw the line? Only when white people did it?
Actually, I wasn't just thinking of the yanks. As soon as limpet mines and assault rifles made revolutionaries near-peer adversaries for anyone with boots on the ground, the imperial model du jour moved back towards client states rather that outright occupation.That's why the yanks transitioned from occupying the Philippines until 1941 to merely having client dictators throughout most of the Cold War.
But aren't we lucky that the yanks only dominated clients to stop the soviets, and were in no way continuing their imperial expansion from before WW2. I mean, they found another excuse to keep the hegemony going after the cold war, too, so there's that.
You're so full of shit that the boots you lick so frequently must have been wading through it.
But tell us again how the yanks aren't an imperial power. It'll fascinate folks from Puerto Rico to Hawaii, the long way around.
Maybe you got confused when I said above:
"Certainly there are military bases and a few small island nations, but absolutely nothing compared to the scale of the British."
Absolutely every claim I've made I'm willing to back up in extensive detail. But I'm not wasting the effort on someone who can't even read the most elementary points without getting lost and losing patience.
The Philippines? Client regimes like Argentina, Greece, Iran, Iraq, and every other nation that received billions in military aid and advice on torturing political opponents?
Seriously – you believe that the post-ww2 US foreign policy consisted of a few islands and military bases (which would have been similar to any number of global outposts of the British Empire, even if that was the limit of similarity)?
The mainstream narrative of such movements of people often reduces the causes of migration to factors unfolding in migrants’ home countries. In reality, migration is often a manifestation of a profoundly unequal and exploitative relationship between countries from which people emigrate and countries of destination.
Yup, as I said above, the global US trade order was not without it's failures. I've never argued it was a perfect or ideal system; just better than anything that came before it.
The problem for Latin America, Honduras, Nicuargua and Cuba in particular, is that early century US business interests essentially undertook a proto-colonial foray into the region. A similar parallel can be found with say the British East India Company in India several hundred years earlier. But at the same time no US Federal govt was ever interested in going the next step of turning them into full territorial colonies.
This has meant the unfortunate peoples of these countries got the worst of both worlds, all the merchantile exploitation with none of the stable governance.
Then of course there was the Cold War, and we too easily forget the intensity of that period. The US repeatedly overreacted to perceived communist/socialist threats and footholds in their hemisphere. Their hugely advantageous security position was their big strategic advantage over the Soviets, and they were not going to relinquish it lightly.
Put these two realities together and yes Latin America is the zone where the US global trade order functioned badly. That is a legitimate objection, yet in many ways the contrast with how events unfolded elsewhere in the world where these factors did not apply … is instructive.
Also easily overlooked is that the USA itself is founded as an exercise in anti-colonialism, the great break-away from the British Empire, and this has always formed a large element of their foreign policy ever since. The fact that there are 200 odd independent nations in the world now, and no great imperiums of old, is largely due to the US imposing their own alternative reality on the ground.
What happens when the US fully stops imposing that reality over the next decade is the urgent question we should be thinking about.
Taiwan News said that "the communist regime is said to have noticed an authority vacuum in online multiplayer games, which enables people to socialize without monitoring freely. Local metropolises are scrambling to draft laws to expand the scope of online censorship in video games and even prohibit gamers from meeting and chatting with people on the other side of the Great Firewall."
Apparently, even allowing people to chat with the West is now frowned upon by the Chinese authorities.
Does anyone think asymmetry is not being exploited to our manifest disadvantage?
I'd hope not but there's going to be someone out there with the belief that, no matter what China does, allowing permanent residence with voting is all good and they simply won't believe that China will use this as a way to attack us.
In making your comment about Australia being targeted by a foreign nation's cyber goons, you seem to have channelled the language of an earlier time, when that nation ran a white population policy.
Of that earlier time pre Asian students (the first here may have been Chinese Malaysians under a Commonwealth programem back in the 70's when Malaysia began a Malay first into their universities policy) and changes to our own immigration policy (1986 or so).
Of course you may have been going for chink in the Oz cyber security armour, or noting how political campaigns of the Bannon type are nationalist in nature and returning us back to the past.
Or all of the above simultaneously. Literary references have ever been a minefield of controversy, eh? A standard method for ensuring that readers never die of boredom, even. And postmodernism has the upside of providing an ever so thick layer of icing on that cake. Readers can indulge their knee-jerk subjective reactions to their heart's content. An immensely satisfying recipe.
Nah, just habitual slang use from way back. No intention to traumatise. If the moderator gets freaked out, happy to see it corrected to Chinese or communist or both! The idea that folks get traumatised by slang usage is so wacky that it never enters my head. 🙄 And I will now investigate your link thanks…
Well, that was a waste of time. Some org that only wants to recruit facebook users. Terminally-shallow brainwashed army has been done many times previously, why bother??
But how significant? No evidence that any component of the US foreign policy establishment has adopted it as yet. The Council for Foreign Relations would be the one to watch for that. Could be a next Bilderberger conference topic… https://bilderbergmeetings.org/index.html
I think the time has come for the Prime Minister to seriously consider ceasing her weekly interview with Mike Hosking. This morning's performance was a litany of disrespect, misogyny, dishonesty and rudeness to the point of verbal abuse. He effectively called her a liar.
It is all very well maintaining a remarkable level of equilibrium in the face of such belittling attacks, but he is slowly but surely painting Jacinda as a PM out of her depth. It is part of the overall National Party attack strategy of course and their media puppets like Hosking know exactly the role they are to play within that strategy.
She has every excuse to bypass him with a pandemic in progress as well as leading the country out of the economic recession in its wake.
Bolton was recruited by James A Baker III, like McCain a Republican lion, Ronald Reagan’s chief of staff and George HW Bush’s secretary of state. To quote Baker, “John’s an extraordinarily bright guy.”
So what's happening is a battle for the soul of the Republican Party. Recall that George Will resigned from the party when it selected the huckster as candidate. Principled rightists may be a minority, but they've long been at the heart of the US political establishment. Ever tried to do a count of right-wing US think-tanks?? I once did and encountered so many I hadn't known about that I became mildly depressed.
According to whistleblower Christopher Wylie: “Bolton Pac was obsessed with how America was becoming limp-wristed and spineless and it wanted research and messaging for national security issues.” In his book, Bolton’s description is more modest: “In late 2013, I formed a Pac and a Super Pac to aid House and Senate candidates who believed in a strong US national security policy.”
Bolton as would-be dragonslayer. Trump as paper tiger. What to do? Last week Colin Powell went public, declaring he will vote for Biden. Other influential Republicans, similarly disaffected, are more likely to stay home than vote for Trump or his China stooge opponent.
Red storm rising seems somewhat melodramatic for a framing headline, but I guess media have to raise consciousness, and the contrast between Trumpian rhetoric and action follow-through has to be examined.
The concern expressed by Banks impressed me via his moderate, level, yet empathic tone. I hadn't seen Dobbs since he was fronting the money segment for CNN way back, but he's matured into less of a moron than he was.
Four breaches of Taiwan air-space in nine days is clearly a sustained attempt at forceful messaging. Banks told us Pompeo's meeting with the Chinese hierarchy in Hawaii was at China's request. Thus a two-pronged strategy by them.
Which may well be the primary question in their election. I can imagine zillions deciding to vote for Trump while holding their nose, if he puts that question into their heads in the final week or two of the campaign.
Which may well be the primary question in their election. I can imagine zillions deciding to vote for Trump while holding their nose, if he puts that question into their heads in the final week or two of the campaign.
Indeed, Dennis.
Furthermore, it is a question many around the world are asking while thinking what will it mean for them/us living in a China dominated world?
Those paranoid folks anticipating such a future need reassurance. The future is way more likely to be multipolar at the level of geopolitics.
The US foreign policy establishment is huge. If Biden wins and attempts to wimp out on his responsibilities to them, they will find a way to pull his plug. Expect him to die in office in that future (natural causes, due to stress, most likely). His VP, a black woman, will have been already primed on how to present as authoritative and persuasive. Velvet glove.
If you look around you'll find the paranoia is well justified. It has long been touted China is the model many of the global elite subscribe too. Hence, many of them helped China implement it while allowing it to become a growing global threat.
Anne, in some respects Hosking is turning people off by his extreme interviewing. I know several people who have lately commented they have been disgusted by him. I have never heard them previously make any comment.
I don’t know what editorial policy is in place for media to be balanced.
However, no wonder people so admire Jacinda for her stoic putting up with him. He is filled with hate and bitterness. It would not be so bad if he put the opposition through the same barrage. What a vile man.
Editorial policy about being balanced? The balance they're interested in is whether the books balance.
Last week a banner headline had it of a Mike Hosking interview, Hosking v Whomever. The whomever was the particular politician he interviewed that day.
When interviews are to be sporting fixtures and about winners and losers we need to get real and see them and the media presenting them for what they are.
We get the glib expressions about 'holding politicians to account.' We get those like Hosking and Peter Williams seeming to think they are doing God's work. It is a travesty that it has got to the stage that politicians have to appear in regular time slots on radio and tv. Surely they should be accessible and answer question but now people like Hosking has them over a barrel. Not doing so has them pilloried, and slammed for not fronting.
If during the time of pandemic Beehive pressers Ardern had said to Hosking she wasn't available to him how would he have performed? I can imagine him being one who slammed her for doing those sessions. If she'd said, "My availability is through that session, you're welcome to attend and ask questions," how would he have treated?
Of course Hosking should not chair any TV leaders sessions for the election. He is not a journalist, he is an opinion giver who has continually poured scorn on Ardern. He has an agenda.
Our glorious ex leader Mr Key refused to appear on RadioNZ for most of his first term, and few were too concerned, because they were tuned to ZB or the Edge where he did appear, to share his “shower urinating stories”.
Which is a round about way of saying the PM needs to be where people are. Figure out a better method of slapping down Maserati Mike perhaps rather than banning the ripped jean tosser.
Boris is being machiavellian: using leftists to eliminate wokeism. Are wokesters really such a deserving threat? I doubt it. Ordinary folk think they're a joke.
Munira Mirza, formerly of the Spiked website, a successor organisation to the Revolutionary Communist party (RCP), is urging him to rebuild his shattered popularity by launching a “war on the woke”.
Founded in 2001, as the UK’s first online only political magazine, we have carved out an international reputation as, in the words of the New York Times, an ‘often-biting British publication fond of puncturing all manner of ideological balloons’ — fearless in challenging orthodoxy and fighting for free speech.
Leftist believers in free speech were everywhere when I was young. Good to know a bastion remains in the UK. I wonder if they use a castle & moat?
Go for the libtards, the PC, the leftists and the bleeding hearts, the head of the No 10 policy unit urges. Use tiny threats to Winston Churchill’s statues to whip up your supporters’ cultural fear and divert their attention from a country ravaged by disease and descending into a slump. The presence of the ex-revolutionaries in a rightwing debate shows the distance from asinine far leftism to paranoid conservatism is nowhere near as great as the innocent imagine.
Political culture wars as mass entertainment is a looming trend, obviously, so we can expect things to get even more Alice In Wonderland for quite a while yet…
edit
Back to the future – some thoughts about climate change results written in 2015 – what we can look forward to – Covid-19 is part of the problems we have to adjust to. The anomic-atomic business world wished for 'disruption' as being good for business. They have got that, so what do they want to do with it?
The danger [from] one metre is mostly economic in that so much infrastructure will be lost that it will cripple the economy and also that of most countries around the world. My blog points to some of the city losses in NZ but a lot of Florida disappears, a huge amount of farmland in the UK and of course Holland.
The biggest worry is the displacement of hundreds of millions of people which will cause civil strife as families are displaced and will cross borders looking for a safe place to live. Worrying about the occasional flood is the least of your worries when you are sharing your property with twenty refugees and the economy is bankrupt.
This story says so much about National's scare campaign on quarantine. Their MPs (Kaye, Woodhouse) have sided with a small number of well-off residents at the Stamford Plaza in Auckland, and against the hotel staff who could lose their jobs as a consequence.
It's the same as Todd McClay in Rotorua, who is up in arms about the local hotels being used. Meanwhile National do want the hotels used for quarantine in Queenstown. They are all over the place.
Lisa Owen gave Kaye an easy ride on Checkpoint. Didn't even raise the charge of aiding and abetting nimbyism for the political advantage of claiming that things are 'chaotic'.
Abraham said at the weekend that concerns about those in residential parts of the complex mixing with quarantiners were based on false information.
"The hotel and the residences are separate and distinct components. Any common access points between the hotel and the residences will be closed during the applicable period, can be effectively locked to ensure that residents and the intended guest of Stamford are kept separate at all times," he said.
Entrances were clearly separated with no opportunity for the residents and the intended guests of the Stamford to interact, Abraham said.
Are we surprised that the residents of Stamford Plaza being advised by Woodhouse got the story wrong? This lead to the transfer of detainees to Rotorua instead which then was aired by Woodhouse as he claims, being so wrong.
Almost as if we need a profession whose job it is to take what panicked people say and check it out before passing it on. Used to have a name for that..
It’s normal for appartments like this to have covenants on their titles restricting the residents ability to object to anything the hotel does in their normal operations. The Hotel is rather pissed off and is threatening legal action against the residents.
After Tulsa, now Jacksonville. Less a dogwhistle, more of a human whistle:
President Trump’s planned convention speech in Jacksonville, Florida, on Aug. 27 falls on the city’s 60th anniversary of a brutal KKK-orchestrated attack on black activists known as “Ax Handle Saturday.”
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Bryce Edwards writes – It’s been a tumultuous time in politics in recent months, as the new National-led Government has driven through its “First 100 Day programme”. During this period there’s been a handful of opinion polls, which overall just show a minimal amount of flux in public support ...
Inspirational: The Family of Man is a glorious hymn to human equality, but, more than that, it is a clarion call to human freedom. Because equality, unleavened by liberty, is a broken piano, an unstrung harp; upon which the songs of fraternity will never be played.“Somebody must have been telling lies about ...
Tax Lawyer Barbara Edmonds vs Emperor Justinian I- Nolo Contendere: False historical explanations of pivotal events are very far from being inconsequential.WHEN BARBARA EDMONDS made reference to the Roman Empire, my ears pricked up. It is, lamentably, very rare to hear a politician admit to any kind of familiarity ...
It’s been a tumultuous time in politics in recent months, as the new National-led Government has driven through its “First 100 Day programme”. During this period there’s been a handful of opinion polls, which overall just show a minimal amount of flux in public support for the various parties in ...
Buzz from the Beehive Housing Minister Chris Bishop delivered news – packed with the ingredients to enflame political passions – worthy of supplanting Winston Peters in headline writers’ priorities. He popped up at the post-Cabinet press conference to promise a crackdown on unruly and antisocial state housing tenants. His ...
Ele Ludemann writes – The Reserve Bank is advertising for a Diversity, Equity and Inclusion advisor. The Bank has one mandate – to keep inflation between one and three percent. It has failed in that and is only slowly getting inflation back down to the upper limit. Will it ...
Last week former National Party leader Simon Bridges was appointed by the Government as the new chair of the New Zealand Transport Agency Waka Kotahi (NZTA). You can read about the appointment in Thomas Coughlan’s article, Simon Bridges to become chair of NZ Transport Agency Waka KotahiThe fact that a ...
Bryce Edwards writes – Last week former National Party leader Simon Bridges was appointed by the Government as the new chair of the New Zealand Transport Agency Waka Kotahi (NZTA). You can read about the appointment in Thomas Coughlan’s article, Simon Bridges to become chair of NZ Transport Agency ...
TL;DR: My top 10 news and analysis links this morning include:Today’s must-read: Gavin Jacobson talks to Thomas Piketty 10 years on from Capital in the 21st CenturyThe SalvoLocal scoop: Green MP’s business being investigated over migrant exploitation claims StuffSteve KilgallonLocal deep-dive: The commercial contractors making money from School ...
It’s a home - but Kāinga Ora tenants accused of “abusing the privilege” may lose it. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: The Government announced a crackdown on Kāinga Ora tenants who were unruly and/or behind on their rent, with Housing Minister Chris Bishop saying a place in a state ...
This is a guest post by Connor Sharp of Surface Light Rail Light rail in Auckland: A way forward sooner than you think With the coup de grâce of Auckland Light Rail (ALR) earlier this year, and the shift of the government’s priorities to roads, roads, and more roads, it ...
Note: As a paid-up Webworm member, I’ve recorded this Webworm as a mini-podcast for you as well. Some of you said you liked this option - so I aim to provide it when I get a chance to record! Read more ...
TL;DR: In my ‘six-stack’ of substacks at 6.06pm on Monday, March 18:IKEA is accused of planting big forests in New Zealand to green-wash; REDD-MonitorA City for People takes a well-deserved victory lap over Wellington’s pro-YIMBY District Plan votes; A City for PeopleSteven Anastasiou takes a close look at the sticky ...
Buzz from the Beehive Here’s hoping for a lively post-cabinet press conference when the PM and – perhaps – some of his ministers tell us what was discussed at their meeting today. Until then, Point of Order has precious little Beehive news to report after its latest monitoring of the ...
David Farrar writes – We now have almost all 2023 data in, which has allowed me to update my annual table of how labour went against its promises. This is basically their final report card. The promiseThe result Build 100,000 affordable homes over 10 ...
I’m a bit worried that I’ve started a previous newsletter with the words “just when you think they couldn’t get any worse…” Seems lately that I could begin pretty much every issue with that opening. Such is the nature of our coalition government that they seem to be outdoing each ...
Geoffrey Miller writes – Timing is everything. And from China’s perspective, this week’s visit by its foreign minister to New Zealand could be coming at just the right moment. The visit by Wang Yi to Wellington will be his first since 2017. Anniversaries are important to Beijing. ...
Depictions of Islam in Western popular culture have rarely been positive, even before 9/11. Five years on from the mosque shootings, this is one of the cultural headwinds that the Muslim community has to battle against. Whatever messages of tolerance and inclusion are offered in daylight, much of our culture ...
Last week Transport Minster Simeon Brown and Mayor Wayne Brown opened the new Auckland Rail Operations Centre. The new train control centre will see teams from KiwiRail, Auckland Transport and Auckland One Rail working more closely together to improve train services across the city. The Auckland Rail Operations Centre in ...
Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: Retiring former Labour Finance Minister Grant Robertson said in an exit interview with Q+A yesterday the Government can and should sustain more debt to invest in infrastructure for future generations. Elsewhere in the news in Aotearoa-NZ’s political economy at 6:36am: Read more ...
Timing is everything. And from China’s perspective, this week’s visit by its foreign minister to New Zealand could be coming at just the right moment. The visit by Wang Yi to Wellington will be his first since 2017. Anniversaries are important to Beijing. It is more than just a happy ...
TL;DR: The key events to watch in Aotearoa-NZ’s political economy in the week to March 18 include:China’s Foreign Minister visiting Wellington today;A post-cabinet news conference this afternoon; the resumption of Parliament on Tuesday for two weeks before Easter;retiring former Labour Finance Minister Grant Robertson gives his valedictory speech in Parliament; ...
New Zealand First Leader Winston Peters’s state-of-the-nation speech on Sunday was really a state-of-Winston-First speech. He barely mentioned any of the Government’s key policies and could not even wholly endorse its signature income tax cuts. Instead, he rehearsed all of his complaints about the Ardern Government, including an extraordinary claim ...
A listing of 35 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, March 10, 2024 thru Sat, March 16, 2024. Story of the week This week we'll give you a little glimpse into how we collect links to share and ...
A listing of 35 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, March 10, 2024 thru Sat, March 16, 2024. Story of the week This week we'll give you a little glimpse into how we collect links to share and ...
“I’ve been internalising a really complicated situation in my head.”When they kept telling us we should wait until we get to know him, were they taking the piss? Was it a case of, if you think this is bad, wait till you get to know the real Christopher, after the ...
Happy fourth anniversary, Pandemic That Upended Bloody Everything. I have been observing it by enjoying my second bout of COVID. It’s 5.30 on Sunday morning and only now are lights turning back on for me.Allow me to copy and paste what I told reader Sara yesterday:Depleted, fogged and crappy. Resting, ...
Happy fourth anniversary, Pandemic That Upended Bloody Everything. I have been observing it by enjoying my second bout of COVID. It’s 5.30 on Sunday morning and only now are lights turning back on for me.Allow me to copy and paste what I told reader Sara yesterday:Depleted, fogged and crappy. Resting, ...
Happy fourth anniversary, Pandemic That Upended Bloody Everything. I have been observing it by enjoying my second bout of COVID. It’s 5.30 on Sunday morning and only now are lights turning back on for me.Allow me to copy and paste what I told reader Sara yesterday:Depleted, fogged and crappy. Resting, ...
.“$10 and a target that bleeds” - Bleeding Targets for Under $10!.Thanks for reading Frankly Speaking ! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.This government appears hell-bent on either scrapping life-saving legislation or reintroducing things that - frustrated critics insist - will be dangerous and likely ...
“It hardly strikes me as fair to criticise a government for doing exactly what it said it was going to do. For actually keeping its promises.”THUNDER WAS PLAYING TAG with lightning flashes amongst the distant peaks. Its rolling cadences interrupted by the here-I-come-here-I-go Doppler effect of the occasional passing car. ...
Subversive & Disruptive Technologies: Just as happened with that other great regulator of the masses, the Medieval Church, the advent of a new and hard-to-control technology – the Internet – is weakening the ties that bind. Then, and now, those who enjoy a monopoly on the dissemination of lies, cannot and will ...
Been Here Before: To find the precedents for what this Coalition Government is proposing, it is necessary to return to the “glory days” of Muldoonism.THE COALITION GOVERNMENT has celebrated its first 100 days in office by checking-off the last of its listed commitments. It remains, however, an angry government. It ...
Bob Edlin writes – And what is the world watching today…? The email newsletter from Associated Press which landed in our mailbox early this morning advised: In the news today: The father of a school shooter has been found guilty of involuntary manslaughter; prosecutors in Trump’s hush-money case ...
Bryce Edwards writes – Is another Green MP on their way out? And are the Greens severely tarnished by another integrity scandal? For the second time in three months, the Green Party has secretly suspended an MP over integrity issues. Mystery is surrounding the party’s decision to ...
For the last few years, the Green Party has been the party that has managed to avoid the plague of multiple scandals that have beleaguered other political parties. It appears that their luck has run out with a second scandal which, unfortunately for them, coincided with Golraz Ghahraman, the focus ...
TL;DR: The six newsey things that stood out to me as of 6:46am on Saturday, March 16.Andy Foster has accidentally allowed a Labour/Green amendment to cut road user chargers for plug-in hybrid vehicles, which the Government might accept; NZ HeraldThomas CoughlanSimeon Brown has rejected a plea from Westport ...
What seemed a booming success a couple of years ago has collapsed into fraud convictions.I looked at the crash of FTX (short for ‘Futures Exchange’) in November 2022 to see whether it would impact on the financial system as a whole. Fortunately there was barely a ripple, probably because it ...
Anybody following the situation in Ukraine and Russia would probably have been amused by a recent Tweet on X NATO seems to be putting in an awful lot of effort to influence what is, at least according to them, a sham election in an autocracy.When do the Ukrainians go to ...
TL;DR:Shaun Baker on Wynyard Quarter's transformation. Magdalene Taylor on the problem with smart phones. How private equity are now all over reinsurance. Dylan Cleaver on rugby and CTE. Emily Atkin on ‘Big Meat’ looking like ‘Big Oil’.Bernard’s six-stack of substacks at 6pm on March 15Photo by Jeppe Hove Jensen ...
Buzz from the Beehive Finance Minister Nicola Willis had plenty to say when addressing the Auckland Business Chamber on the economic growth that (she tells us) is flagging more than we thought. But the government intends to put new life into it: We want our country to be a ...
The Transport and Infrastructure Committee has reported back on the Road User Charges (Light Electric RUC Vehicles) Amendment Bill, basicly rubberstamping it. While there was widespread support among submitters for the principle that EV and PHEV drivers should pay their fair share for the roads, they also overwhelmingly disagreed with ...
Peter Dunne writes – This week’s government bailout – the fifth in the last eighteen months – of the financially troubled Ruapehu Alpine Lifts company would have pleased many in the central North Island ski industry. The government’s stated rationale for the $7 million funding was that it ...
See if you can spot the difference. An Iranian born female MP from a progressive party is accused of serial shoplifting. Her name is leaked to the media, which goes into a pack frenzy even before the Police launch an … Continue reading → ...
Ele Ludemann writes – The government is omitting general Treaty references from legislation : The growth of Treaty of Waitangi clauses in legislation caused so much worry that a special oversight group was set up by the last Government in a bid to get greater coherence in the public service on Treaty ...
What was that judge thinking?Peter Williams writes – That Golriz Ghahraman and District Court Judge Maria Pecotic were once lawyer colleagues is incontrovertible. There is published evidence that they took at least one case to the Court of Appeal together. There was a report on ...
TL;DR: My top 10 news and analysis links this morning include:Today’s must-read:Climate Scorpion – the sting is in the tail. Introducing planetary solvency. A paper via the University of Exeter’s Institute and Faculty of Actuaries.Local scoop:Kāinga Ora starts pulling out of its Auckland projects and selling land RNZ ...
Wellington’s massively upzoned District Plan adds the opportunity for tens of thousands of new homes not just in the central city (such as these Webb St new builds) but also close to the CBD and public transport links. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: Wellington gave itself the chance of ...
It’s Friday and we’re halfway through March Madness. Here’s some of the things that caught our attention this week. This Week in Greater Auckland On Monday Matt asked how we can get better event trains and an option for grade separating Morningside Dr. On Tuesday Matt looked into ...
Something you might not know about me is that I’m quite a stubborn person. No, really. I don’t much care for criticism I think’s unfair or that I disagree with. Few of us do I suppose.Back when I was a drinker I’d sometimes respond defensively, even angrily. There are things ...
Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: The five things that mattered in Aotearoa’s political economy that we wrote and spoke about via The Kākā and elsewhere for paying subscribers in the last week included:PM Christopher Luxon said the reversal of interest deductibility for landlords was done to help renters, who ...
It was not so much the Labour Party but really the Chris Hipkins party yesterday at Labour’s caucus retreat in Martinborough. The former Prime Minister was more or less consistent on wealth tax, which he was at best equivocal about, and social insurance, which he was not willing to revisit. ...
Buzz from the BeehiveThe text reproduced above appears on a page which records all the media statements and speeches posted on the government’s official website by Melissa Lee as Minister of Media and Communications and/or by Jenny Marcroft, her Parliamentary Under-secretary. It can be quickly analysed ...
For forty years, Robert Muldoon has been a dirty word in our politics. His style of government was so repulsive and authoritarian that the backlash to it helped set and entrench our constitutional norms. His pig-headedness over forcing through Think Big eventually gave us the RMA, with its participation and ...
Bryce Edwards writes – Is the new government reducing tax on rental properties to benefit landlords or to cut the cost of rents? That’s the big question this week, after Associate Finance Minister David Seymour announced on Sunday that the Government would be reversing the Labour Government’s removal ...
Saudi Arabia is rarely far from the international spotlight. The war in Gaza has brought new scrutiny to Saudi plans to normalise relations with Israel, while the fifth anniversary of the controversial killing of Jamal Khashoggi was marked shortly before the war began on October 7. And as the home ...
Questions need to be asked on both sides of the worldPeter Williams writes – The NRL Judiciary hands down an eight week suspension to Sydney Roosters forward Spencer Leniu , an Auckland-born Samoan, after he calls Ezra Mam, Sydney-orn but of Aboriginal and Torres Strait ...
Ele Ludemann writes – Contrary to what many headlines and news stories are saying, residential landlords are not getting a tax break. The government is simply restoring to them the tax deductibility of interest they had until the previous government removed it. There is no logical reason ...
I can't remember when it was goodMoments of happiness in bloomMaybe I just misunderstoodAll of the love we left behindWatching our flashbacks intertwineMemories I will never findIn spite of whatever you becomeForget that reckless thing turned onI think our lives have just begunI think our lives have just begunDoes anyone ...
Michael Bassett writes – At first reading, a front-page story in the New Zealand Herald on 13 March was bizarre. A group of severely intellectually limited teenagers, with little understanding of the law, have been pleading to the Justice Select Committee not to pass a bill dealing with ram ...
How much political capital is Christopher Luxon willing to burn through in order to deliver his $2.9 billion gift to landlords? Evidently, Luxon is: (a) unable to cost the policy accurately. As Anna Burns-Francis pointed out to him on Breakfast TV, the original ”rock solid” $2.1 billion cost he was ...
TL;DR: My top 10 news and analysis links this morning include:Today’s must-read:Jonathon Porritt calling bullshit in his own blog post on mainstream climate science as ‘The New Denialism’.Local scoop:The Wellington City Council’s list of proposed changes to the IHP recommendations to be debated later today was leaked this ...
TL;DR:Prime Minister Christopher Luxon said yesterday tenants should be grateful for the reinstatement of interest deductibility because landlords would pass on their lower tax costs in the form of lower rents. That would be true if landlords were regulated monopolies such as Transpower or Auckland Airport1, but they’re not, ...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections by Tom Toro Tom Toro is a cartoonist and author. He has published over 200 cartoons in The New Yorker since 2010. His cartoons appear in Playboy, the Paris Review, the New York Times, American Bystander, and elsewhere. Related: What 10 EV lovers ...
The business section of the NZ Herald is full of opinion. Among the more opinionated of all is the ex-Minister of Transport, ex-Minister of Railways, ex MP for Auckland Central (1975-93, Labour), Wellington Central (1996-99, ACT, then list-2005), ex-leader of the ACT Party, uncle to actor Antonia, the veritable granddaddy ...
Hi,Just quickly — I’m blown away by the stories you’ve shared with me over the last week since I put out the ‘Gary’ podcast, where I told you about the time my friend’s flatmate killed the neighbour.And you keep telling me stories — in the comments section, and in my ...
The first season of Rings of Power was not awful. It was thoroughly underwhelming, yes, and left a lingering sense of disappointment, but it was more expensive mediocrity than catastrophe. I wrote at length about the series as it came out (see the Review section of the blog, and go ...
Buzz from the Beehive Workplace Relations and Safety Minister Brooke van Velden told Auckland Business Chamber members they were the first audience to hear her priorities as a minister in a government committed to cutting red tape and regulations. She brandished her liberalising credentials, saying Flexible labour markets are the ...
Chris Trotter writes – TO UNDERSTAND WHY NEWSHUB FAILED, it is necessary to understand how TVNZ changed. Up until 1989, the state broadcaster had been funded by a broadcasting licence fee, collected from every citizen in possession of a television set, supplemented by a relatively modest (compared ...
Bob Edlin writes – The Māori Party has been busy issuing a mix of warnings and threats as its expresses its opposition to interest deductibility for landlords and the plans of seabed miners. It remains to be seen whether they follow the example of indigenous litigants in Australia, ...
The Government has accepted Labour’s change to the Road User Charge (RUC) discount for hybrid vehicles, meaning there will still be some incentive for people to buy greener vehicles. ...
Kicking the most vulnerable people out of state housing and pushing them towards homelessness will result in a proliferation of poverty and trauma across our most vulnerable communities. ...
Te Pāti Māori co-leader and MP for Waiariki, Rawiri Waititi has penned a letter asking MPs to support his members bill to remove GST from all food. The bill is expected to go through its first reading in parliament this Wednesday. “I’m calling on all political parties to support my ...
This year is about getting real with Kiwis and discussing the tough issues, as the National Government exacerbates inequality and divides New Zealand, Labour Leader Chris Hipkins said ...
The Government adding Significant Natural Areas (SNAs) to its already roaring environmental policy bonfire is an assault on the future of wildlife that makes Aotearoa unique. ...
After 12 years of fighting to protect our moana we are finding ourselves back at square one and back at court. Today, the Environmental Protection Agency is sitting in Hawera to reconsider an application from Trans-Tasman Resources to dig up 50 million tonnes of the seabed in South Taranaki. This ...
Minister Shane Jones’ decision to step away from a seabed mining project is evidence of the murky waters surrounding the Government’s fast-track legislation. ...
The growth of Treaty of Waitangi clauses in legislation caused so much worry that a special oversight group was set up by the last government in a bid to get greater coherence in the publicservice on Treaty matters. When ministers first considered the need for tighter oversight in 2021, there ...
The growth of Treaty of Waitangi clauses in legislation caused so much worry that a special oversight group was set up by the last government in a bid to get greater coherence in the publicservice on Treaty matters. When ministers first considered the need for tighter oversight in 2021, there ...
The Coalition Government’s miscalculation saga continues as it has forgotten an eyewatering $90 million gap in its interest deductibility cost figures, say Labour Finance spokesperson Barbara Edmonds and Revenue Spokesperson Deborah Russell. ...
He Pou a Rangi Climate Change Commission has today released advice that says if the Government doesn’t act now New Zealand is at risk of not meeting its climate goals. ...
The Coalition Government has today confirmed it is abandoning first home buyers who are struggling to get ahead, says Labour Finance spokesperson Barbara Edmonds. ...
The New Zealand public voted for a change in direction at the 2023 general election and that is exactly what this coalition government has been delivering in its first 100 days. There was an immediate focus on the economy, easing the cost of living, cracking down on law and order ...
The Government has left the health system as an afterthought, announcing half-baked targets at the last minute of their 100-day plan, says Labour Health spokesperson Ayesha Verrall. ...
Kiwis are still waiting for their promised cost of living support after 100 days of a National Government that is taking us backwards, Labour Leader Chris Hipkins said today. ...
The National Government has spent its first 100 days stopping, cutting and reversing. They have scrapped stuff for stuff for the sake of it, without putting up any solutions of their own – and it’s hardworking New Zealanders who will pay for it. ...
100 days of National taking NZ backwardsThe National Government has spent its first 100 days stopping, cutting and reversing. They have scrapped stuff for stuff for the sake of it, without putting up any solutions of their own – and it’s hardworking New Zealanders who will pay for it. ...
The Government must commit to funding free and healthy school lunches, as thousands of people sign the petition to keep them, education spokesperson Jan Tinetti says. ...
If the Government was serious about moving families into public housing, they would build more houses so there is actually somewhere for people to go. ...
The free and healthy school lunches programme feeds our kids, helps them to learn, and saves families money – but it is at risk under this Government, education spokesperson Jan Tinetti said. ...
The Government’s proposed changes to Firearms Prohibition Orders (FPO) add almost nothing new and are merely an attempt to distract from its plans to loosen gun laws, police spokesperson Ginny Andersen and justice spokesperson Dr Duncan Webb said. ...
The great Victorian era English politician Lord Macauley stood in the British House of Parliament and said, "The gallery in which the reporters sit has become a fourth estate of the realm".He understood and outlined even way back then, the significant role and influence media have in a democracy. ...
The government’s attack on Māori health this week is committing tangata-whenua to a premature death, says Te Pāti Māori. “The government have begun their onslaught on Māori health with the abolishment of the Māori Health Authority and smokefree laws in the same day” said health spokesperson and co-leader, Debbie Ngarewa-Packer. ...
"The Government is moving quickly to realise an additional $46 million in tariff savings in the EU market this season for Kiwi exporters,” Minister for Trade and Agriculture, Todd McClay says. Parliament is set, this week, to complete the final legislative processes required to bring the New Zealand – European ...
New Zealand’s social workers are qualified, experienced, and more representative of the communities they serve, Social Development and Employment Minister Louise Upston says. “I want to acknowledge and applaud New Zealand’s social workers for the hard work they do, providing invaluable support for our most vulnerable. “To coincide with World ...
Cabinet has agreed to a reduced road user charge (RUC) rate for plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs), Transport Minister Simeon Brown says. Owners of PHEVs will be eligible for a reduced rate of $38 per 1,000km once all light electric vehicles (EVs) move into the RUC system from 1 April. ...
Minister of Agriculture and Trade, Todd McClay, says that today’s opening of Riverland Foods manufacturing plant in Christchurch is a great example of how trade access to overseas markets creates jobs in New Zealand. Speaking at the official opening of this state-of-the-art pet food factory the Minister noted that exports ...
Minister of Foreign Affairs Winston Peters met with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi in Wellington today. “It was a pleasure to host Foreign Minister Wang Yi during his first official visit to New Zealand since 2017. Our discussions were wide-ranging and enabled engagement on many facets of New Zealand’s relationship with China, including trade, ...
Kāinga Ora – Homes & Communities has been instructed to end the Sustaining Tenancies Framework and take stronger measures against persistent antisocial behaviour by tenants, says Housing Minister Chris Bishop. “Earlier today Finance Minister Nicola Willis and I sent an interim Letter of Expectations to the Board of Kāinga Ora. ...
Tēna koutou katoa. Greetings everyone. Thank you to the Auckland Chamber of Commerce and the Honourable Simon Bridges for hosting this address today. I acknowledge the business leaders in this room, the leaders and governors, the employers, the entrepreneurs, the investors, and the wealth creators. The coalition Government shares your ...
Minister Winston Peters completed the final leg of his visit to South and South East Asia in Singapore today, where he focused on enhancing one of New Zealand’s indispensable strategic partnerships. “Singapore is our most important defence partner in South East Asia, our fourth-largest trading partner and a ...
Minister of Internal Affairs and Workplace Relations and Safety, Hon. Brooke van Velden, will travel to the Republic of Korea to represent New Zealand at the Third Summit for Democracy on 18 March. The summit, hosted by the Republic of Korea, was first convened by the United States in 2021, ...
ICNZ Speech 7 March 2024, Auckland Acknowledgements and opening Mōrena, ngā mihi nui. Ko Andrew Bayly aho, Nor Whanganui aho. Good morning, it’s a privilege to be here to open the ICNZ annual conference, thank you to Mark for the Mihi Whakatau My thanks to Tim Grafton for inviting me ...
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and Lead Coordination Minister Judith Collins have expressed their deepest sympathy on the five-year anniversary of the Christchurch terror attacks. “March 15, 2019, was a day when families, communities and the country came together both in sorrow and solidarity,” Mr Luxon says. “Today we pay our respects to the 51 shuhada ...
Speech for Financial Advice NZ Conference 5 March 2024 Acknowledgements and opening Morena, Nga Mihi Nui. Ko Andrew Bayly aho, Nor Whanganui aho. Thanks Nate for your Mihi Whakatau Good morning. It’s a pleasure to formally open your conference this morning. What a lovely day in Wellington, What a great ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters held discussions in Jakarta today about the future of relations between New Zealand and South East Asia’s most populous country. “We are in Jakarta so early in our new government’s term to reflect the huge importance we place on our relationship with Indonesia and South ...
Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs Winston Peters has announced that the Foreign Minister of China, Wang Yi, will visit New Zealand next week. “We look forward to re-engaging with Foreign Minister Wang Yi and discussing the full breadth of the bilateral relationship, which is one of New Zealand’s ...
Transport Minister Simeon Brown has today opened the new Auckland Rail Operations Centre, which will bring together KiwiRail, Auckland Transport, and Auckland One Rail to improve service reliability for Aucklanders. “The recent train disruptions in Auckland have highlighted how important it is KiwiRail and Auckland’s rail agencies work together to ...
The Government is proud to support the 10th edition of Crankworx Rotorua as the Crankworx World Tour returns to Rotorua from 16-24 March 2024, says Minister for Economic Development Melissa Lee. “Over the past 10 years as Crankworx Rotorua has grown, so too have the economic and social benefits that ...
Legislation implementing coalition Government tax commitments and addressing long-standing tax anomalies will be progressed in Parliament next week, Finance Minister Nicola Willis says. The legislation is contained in an Amendment Paper to the Taxation (Annual Rates for 2023–24, Multinational Tax, and Remedial Matters) Bill issued today. “The Amendment Paper represents ...
Associate Environment Minister Andrew Hoggard has today announced that the Government has agreed to suspend the requirement for councils to comply with the Significant Natural Areas (SNA) provisions of the National Policy Statement for Indigenous Biodiversity for three years, while it replaces the Resource Management Act (RMA).“As it stands, SNAs ...
Agriculture Minister Todd McClay has classified the drought conditions in the Marlborough, Tasman, and Nelson districts as a medium-scale adverse event, acknowledging the challenging conditions facing farmers and growers in the district. “Parts of Marlborough, Tasman, and Nelson districts are in the grip of an intense dry spell. I know ...
The Government is helping farmers eradicate the significant impact of facial eczema (FE) in pastoral animals, Agriculture Minister Todd McClay announced. “A $20 million partnership jointly funded by Beef + Lamb NZ, the Government, and the primary sector will save farmers an estimated NZD$332 million per year, and aims to ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters has completed a successful visit to India, saying it was an important step in taking the relationship between the two countries to the next level. “We have laid a strong foundation for the Coalition Government’s priority of enhancing New Zealand-India relations to generate significant future benefit for both countries,” says Mr Peters, ...
Cabinet has agreed to provide $7 million to ensure the 2024 ski season can go ahead on the Whakapapa ski field in the central North Island but has told the operator Ruapehu Alpine Lifts it is the last financial support it will receive from taxpayers. Cabinet also agreed to provide ...
Health Minister Dr Shane Reti says the launch of a new mobile breast screening unit in Counties Manukau reinforces the coalition Government’s commitment to drive better cancer services for all New Zealanders. Speaking at the launch of the new mobile clinic, Dr Reti says it’s a great example of taking ...
Health Minister Dr Shane Reti says the launch of a new mobile breast screening unit in Counties Manukau reinforces the coalition Government’s commitment to drive better cancer services for all New Zealanders. Speaking at the launch of the new mobile clinic, Dr Reti says it’s a great example of taking ...
Unlocking economic growth and land for housing are critical elements of the Government’s plan for our transport network, and planned upgrades to State Highway 29 (SH29) near Tauriko will deliver strongly on those priorities, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says. “The SH29 upgrades near Tauriko will improve safety at the intersections ...
Unlocking economic growth and land for housing are critical elements of the Government’s plan for our transport network, and planned upgrades to State Highway 29 (SH29) near Tauriko will deliver strongly on those priorities, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says. “The SH29 upgrades near Tauriko will improve safety at the intersections ...
Lower fruit and vegetable prices are welcome news for New Zealanders who have been doing it tough at the supermarket, Finance Minister Nicola Willis says. Stats NZ reported today the price of fruit and vegetables has dropped 9.3 percent in the 12 months to February 2024. “Lower fruit and vege ...
Tēnā koutou katoa and greetings to you all. Chair, I am honoured to address the sixty-eighth session of the Commission on the Status of Women. I acknowledge the many crises impacting the rights of women and girls. Heightened global tensions, war, climate related and humanitarian disasters, and price inflation all ...
Tēnā koutou katoa and greetings to you all. Chair, I am honoured to address the 68th session of the Commission on the Status of Women. I acknowledge the many crises impacting the rights of women and girls. Heightened global tensions, war, climate related and humanitarian disasters, and price inflation all ...
The coalition Government is supporting farmers to enhance land management practices by investing $3.3 million in locally led catchment groups, Agriculture Minister Todd McClay announced. “Farmers and growers deliver significant prosperity for New Zealand and it’s vital their ongoing efforts to improve land management practices and water quality are supported,” ...
Good evening everyone and thank you for that lovely introduction. Thank you also to the Honourable Simon Bridges for the invitation to address your members. Since being sworn in, this coalition Government has hit the ground running with our 100-day plan, delivering the changes that New Zealanders expect of us. ...
Recommendations from the Climate Change Commission for New Zealand on the Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) auction and unit limit settings for the next five years have been tabled in Parliament, Climate Change Minister Simon Watts says. “The Commission provides advice on the ETS annually. This is the third time the ...
The coalition Government is beginning its fight to lower building costs and reduce red tape by exempting minor building work from paying the building levy, says Building and Construction Minister Chris Penk. “Currently, any building project worth $20,444 including GST or more is subject to the building levy which is ...
Proposed changes to tax legislation to prevent the over-taxation of low-earning trusts are welcome, Finance Minister Nicola Willis says. The changes have been recommended by Parliament’s Finance and Expenditure Committee following consideration of submissions on the Taxation (Annual Rates for 2023–24, Multinational Tax, and Remedial Matters) Bill. “One of the ...
Assalaamu alaikum. السَّلَام عليكم In light of the holy month of Ramadan, I want to extend my warmest wishes to our Muslim community in New Zealand. Ramadan is a time for spiritual reflection, renewed devotion, perseverance, generosity, and forgiveness. It’s a time to strengthen our bonds and appreciate the diversity ...
Former Transport Minister and CEO of the Auckland Business Chamber Hon Simon Bridges has been appointed as the new Board Chair of the New Zealand Transport Agency (NZTA) for a three-year term, Transport Minister Simeon Brown announced today. “Simon brings extensive experience and knowledge in transport policy and governance to the role. He will ...
Good morning all, it is a pleasure to be here as Minister of Science, Innovation and Technology. It is fantastic to see how connected and collaborative the life science and biotechnology industry is here in New Zealand. I would like to thank BioTechNZ and NZTech for the invitation to address ...
Regional Development Minister Shane Jones says he is looking forward to the day when three key water projects in Northland are up and running, unlocking the full potential of land in the region. Mr Jones attended a community event at the site of the Otawere reservoir near Kerikeri on Friday. ...
Associate Finance Minister David Seymour has today announced that the Government has agreed to restore deductibility for mortgage interest on residential investment properties. “Help is on the way for landlords and renters alike. The Government’s restoration of interest deductibility will ease pressure on rents and simplify the tax code,” says ...
Sport and Recreation Minister Chris Bishop will travel to Switzerland today to attend an Executive Committee meeting and Symposium of the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA). Mr Bishop will then travel on to London where he will attend a series of meetings in his capacity as Infrastructure Minister. “New Zealanders believe ...
Pacific Media Watch Ismail al-Ghoul, an Al Jazeera Arabic correspondent who was held for 12 hours at Gaza’s al-Shifa hospital, says Israeli forces rounded up Palestinian journalists at the facility and made them kneel on the ground for hours, while naked and blindfolded. “The occupation forces handcuffed and blindfolded us ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tony Wood, Program Director, Energy, Grattan Institute chinasong, Shutterstock Electricity customers in four Australian states can breathe a sigh of relief. After two years in a row of 20% price increases, power prices have finally stabilised. In many places they’re ...
Chumbawamba have reportedly issued the deputy PM a cease-and-desist notice after he used their song 'Tubthumping' before his state of the nation speech. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Deborah Lupton, SHARP Professor, Vitalities Lab, Centre for Social Research in Health and Social Policy Centre, and the ARC Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision-Making and Society, UNSW Sydney kitzcorner/Shutterstock The assertion from Queensland’s chief health officer John Gerrard that ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Peter Martin, Visiting Fellow, Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University Shutterstock Why are musicians so keen to get played on the radio? It can’t be because of the money. In Australia they are paid at rates so low they ...
"Farmers make a point not to tell our urban cousins how to live, yet Chlöe from central Auckland is hell-bent on having her say about farmers," says ACT Rural Communities spokesman Mark Cameron. “On her first day in the House as Green ...
Analysis by Dr Bryce Edwards – Democracy Project (https://democracyproject.nz)Political scientist, Dr Bryce Edwards. It’s been a tumultuous time in politics in recent months, as the new National-led Government has driven through its “First 100 Day programme”. During this period there’s been a handful of opinion polls, which overall just ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tim Curran, Associate Professor of Ecology, Lincoln University, New Zealand Getty Images/Gerald Corsi In the latest move to reform environmental laws in New Zealand, the coalition government has introduced a bill to fast-track consenting processes for projects deemed to ...
Uber has argued it does not have as much control over drivers as the unions suggest, and wants a judgment ruling that drivers are employees and not contractors set aside and sent back to the Employment Court. The 2022 ruling followed a three-week hearing in which four drivers sought to ...
What can and can’t be purchased by disabled people or their carers has been slashed in an effort by the Ministry of Disabled People Whaikaha to save money. The purchasing guidelines, a set of rules that sets out what can be purchased using the various streams of Government disability funding, ...
The Treasury has published today a new Analytical Note by Tod Wright and Hien Nguyen, Fiscal incidence in New Zealand: The effects of taxes and benefits on household incomes in tax year 2018/19 . Analyses of the distributional impact of taxation and government ...
The Treasury has published today a new Analytical Note by Cory Davis, Boston Hart and Benjamin Stubbing, Household cost-of-living impacts from the Emissions Trading Scheme and using transfers to mitigate regressive outcomes . This Analytical Note ...
A coalition of public transport and climate organisations, united as ‘Transport for All’, is actively opposing the government’s transport proposals. The draft Government Policy Statement (GPS) includes plans for higher fares for public transport, ...
Greater Wellington is inviting feedback on proposed changes to its Revenue and Financing Policy. The Revenue and Financing Policy covers the Council’s various sources of funding, and how the cost of services is shared across the region. This includes ...
Labour has conceded it could have done more to deal with disruptive state housing tenants while in government but says the current coalition is going too far. ...
The band has asked their record label to issue a cease and desist to stop the NZ First leader using their 1997 hit to support his ‘misguided political views’. “I get knocked down, but I get up again,” blared through the speakers on Sunday as Winston Peters took the stage ...
By Lydia Lewis, RNZ Pacific journalist Food rationing is underway in remote areas in Papua New Guinea’s Highlands following torrential rain and flash flooding. More than 20 people have been reported dead in Chimbu Province. In nearby Enga Province, the centre of last month’s massacre, a 15-year-old boy has been ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Andrew Hughes, Lecturer, Research School of Management, Australian National University After months of debate and intrigue, the AFL’s 19th and newest team, the Tasmania Devils, finally launched its jumper, logo and colours in Devonport this week. The Devils will wear green, ...
Brannavan Gnanalingam reviews the debut novel by Saraid de Silva.One of the most baffling things for children who move to a new country is what their parents’ (or grandparents’) lives were like prior to moving – for kids in particular, they’re too busy trying to fit in in their ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Stephen Gaunson, Associate Professor in Cinema Studies, RMIT University Narelle Portanier/Binge “If you don’t know who your mob are, you don’t know who you are,” Detective Andrea “Andie” Whitford (played by Leah Purcell) is told early into the new crime ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Elise Klein, Associate professor, Australian National University It’s commonly accepted that women do the vast majority of caregiving in Australian society. But less appreciated is that Indigenous women do larger amounts of unpaid care than any other group. Working with the Aboriginal ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Adrian Beaumont, Election Analyst (Psephologist) at The Conversation; and Honorary Associate, School of Mathematics and Statistics, The University of Melbourne Joe Biden and Donald Trump have both secured their parties’ nominations for the November 5 United States general election by winning a ...
Comment: There has been a striking contrast in trans-Tasman interest about Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi’s visit to New Zealand and Australia. While the Australian press has been full of articles about the visit – including his curious decision to meet with former prime minister and China booster Paul Keating ...
After years of pressuring banks and other institutions to stop investing in fossil fuels, climate campaigners are making some progress. So how does divestment work?For years, climate activists have been pushing banks and other big institutions to divest from fossil fuels. New research from climate advocacy group 350 Aotearoa ...
For Boba, Ethan and Ashley, K-pop is a place to belong, a way to express themselves, and a bridge to connect with others. The three young Polynesians are part of a K-pop fan community in Tāmaki Makaurau. It’s one of many that have sprung up worldwide as K-pop has gone ...
For Boba, Ethan and Ashley, K-pop is a place to belong, a way to express themselves, and a bridge to connect with others. This one-off documentary presents three intimate portraits of young Polynesians who are pulled into a Korean cultural phenomenon. K-POLYS is directed by Litia Tuiburelevu, Produced by Hex ...
There’s ample evidence demonstrating free school lunch programmes provide wide benefits across schools, households and communities according to public health researchers. ACT Minister David Seymour wants to reduce the spending on Aotearoa New Zealand’s ...
By Wata Shaw in Suva Fiji is facing an exodus of Fijians as many are leaving for overseas seeking employment and education and others are migrating, says Opposition MP Viliame Naupoto. Speaking in Parliament, he said: “His Excellency’s speech (Ratu Wiliame Katonivere) comes after a little over one year of ...
The Taxpayers’ Union is welcoming comments from Christopher Luxon this morning recommitting to ‘no new taxes’ as part of Budget 2024. “Mr Luxon’s refusal at the Post-Cabinet press conference yesterday to repeat the ‘no new taxes’ promise ...
SAFE is urgently calling on the Environment Committee to reject the Government’s Fast-Track Approvals Bill, and is urging New Zealanders to rally behind the call. The proposed Bill, currently under consideration with the Environment select committee, ...
Teammates who spend all their time picking fights with spectators are only helpful for the other team, writes Madeleine Chapman. Anyone who has ever played a team sport competitively, particularly as a child and particularly, for some reason, basketball, will know that there’s a lot of politics involved. While there ...
The long-running Wellington music festival is too focused on the Jim Beam-ness and not enough on the Homegrown-ness.There is something about Homegrown that’s difficult to place. A barely perceptible-ness. Like feeling a ghost is watching you from the corner of the room but when you look, there’s nothing there. ...
The latest Ipsos New Zealand Issues Monitor reveals that fewer New Zealanders believe crime / law and order is one of the top issues facing our country. In 2018, Ipsos New Zealand started tracking the key issues facing New Zealand. In this wave ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kate Griffiths, Deputy Program Director, Budgets and Government, Grattan Institute Australia’s political donations rules are woefully inadequate, but donations reform is finally on the agenda. The federal government has signalled its interest in reform and will soon begin briefing MPs on its ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Mark Patrick Taylor, Chief Environmental Scientist, EPA Victoria; Honorary Professor, School of Natural Sciences, Macquarie University Naiyana Somchitkaeo/Shutterstock A recent study published in the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine has linked microplastics with risk to human health. The study ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Albert Van Dijk, Professor, Water and Landscape Dynamics, Fenner School of Environment & Society, Australian National University Global climate records were shattered in 2023, from air and sea temperatures to sea-level rise and sea-ice extent. Scores of countries recorded their hottest year ...
As part of our series exploring how New Zealanders live and our relationship with money, a teacher explains why he and his partner are in frugal mode – and how they’re making it work. Gender: Male Age: 35Ethnicity: Pākehā Role: I am an intermediate school teacher and my partner is ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sarah Bendall, Senior Lecturer, Institute for Humanities and Social Sciences, Australian Catholic University Binge Mary & George, the new British television drama series, depicts the real-life story of Mary Villiers and her son George, and their social climbing at the ...
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The finance minister is denying that there’s a $5.6b shortfall in paying for the government’s campaign promises, including tax cuts. At his post-cabinet press conference yesterday, the PM refused to rule out new taxes to pay for the cuts, writes Anna Rawhiti-Connell in this excerpt from The Bulletin, The Spinoff’s ...
Kāinga Ora tenants abused by their neighbours are doubting the government's crackdown on disruptive tenants will make a difference on their behaviour. ...
Kāinga Ora is New Zealand’s biggest residential landlord, housing more than 180,000 vulnerable people in more than 67,000 properties. Yesterday the government announced a crackdown on its tenants who fall behind on rent. One longtime Kāinga Ora tenant shares her experience.For 18 years I lived in a 1960s standalone ...
Why does this myth persist, and what’s the real reason our skin is suffering?It’s one of the biggest international grievances New Zealanders hold, up there with the sinking of the Rainbow Warrior and 1981’s underarm incident. We’re quick to tell international travellers that the world’s pollution led to the ...
Auckland Council is opposing a fast-track development backed by Sir John Kirwan and Spark NZ, because it doesn’t meet stringent new climate adaptation requirements The post Surf-data centre faces new 3.8C climate warming rules appeared first on Newsroom. ...
When the Criminal Proceeds (Recovery) Act was introduced in 2009 it was firmly targeted at gangs and drugs. The legislation means police no longer need a conviction to seize assets that criminals can’t prove were paid for legitimately, as long as their alleged offences are punishable by more than a ...
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Bob’s relationship with certain members of Lincoln’s academic staff continued to deteriorate in the 1990s. Others supported him publicly, though articles such as Roland Clark’s 1993 piece in Growing Today cannot have pleased the university management. Clark wrote that Bob was selling onions from the Biological Husbandry Unit to a ...
SailGP’s races feature in-your-face action, with agile, hydro-foiling catamarans tacking and jibing for the title over several days. However, public comments ahead of the global series’ return to New Zealand have left this past year’s controversy in the shadows, as a key appointment attracts criticism from dolphin advocates. A year ...
Opinion: We are fast approaching a fundamental change in prisons. As the number of people on custodial remand looks set to overtake the number of sentenced prisoners, the main function of prisons in New Zealand may become incarcerating un-sentenced people who may not be guilty of offending. We have already ...
A huge seven months lies in store for the White Ferns, beginning this week with the visit of England and culminating with the T20 World Cup in Bangladesh in September and October. Starting on Tuesday in Dunedin, the world ranked No. 2 visitors will play five T20s and three ODIs, ...
Opinion: In a move that has shocked road safety advocates across the country, the new Minister of Transport, Simeon Brown, is poised to abandon the previous government’s speed limit reduction policy, particularly around schools. Even more alarmingly, he wants school speed limits to be variable rather than full-time, arguing ...
The letters, which were published last week, were addressed to Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) Chairperson Megawati Sukarnoputri, National Democrat Party (NasDem) Chairperson Surya Paloh, National Awakening Party (PKB) Chairperson Muhaimin Iskandar, Justice and Prosperity Party (PKS) President Ahmad Syaikhu and United Development Party (PPP) Chairperson Muhammad Mardiono. In ...
Evicting more people from state housing is ignorant to the consequences of poverty, the Greens say, but the Housing Minister says it's a privilege that can be taken away if abused. ...
Evicting more people from state housing is ignorant to the consequences of poverty, the Greens say, but the Housing Minister says it's a privilege that can be taken away if abused. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Emerald L King, Lecturer in Humanities, University of Tasmania IMDB Between Netflix’s 2023 live-action version of One Piece, and its latest take on Avatar: The Last Airbender, fans are once again asking: why are live-action anime adaptations so tricky to ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Emerald L King, Lecturer in Humanities, University of Tasmania IMDB Between Netflix’s 2023 live-action version of One Piece, and its latest take on Avatar: The Last Airbender, fans are once again asking: why are live-action anime adaptations so tricky to ...
The government says it still intends to deliver tax cuts by July, but will not lock them in until they have got them past their coalition partners. ...
Kiingi Tuheitia Pootatau Te Wherowhero VII has hosted members of the Green Party Caucus at Tuurangawaewae Marae in Ngaaruawahia. The audience follows the King’s Hui-aa-Motu on 20 January, where more than 10,000 people gathered to discuss national ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Dr Rachael Potter, Research Associate and Lecturer in Work and Organisational Psychology, University of South Australia Ground Picture/Shutterstock Pregnant women and workers with children are often unfairly treated by their bosses and colleagues, despite laws to protect against workplace discrimination ...
We now face the issue of Hunt's relatives flying in from Oz and going into managed isolation and whether they will be allowed out.
Which at one level is easy – once there is a negative to the test. At another not so much because there are false negatives, and them infecting others at the funeral would be a new low.
What would reduce the risk would be if only Kiwis from Oz were on the plane and in the Rotorua hotel now. But if it was an onflight including those from South Asia and the UK less so.
In that regard, its about time to separate the Kiwis from Oz coming here from those in on-flights from other areas of higher risk.
There is no real reason why Kiwis in WA/SA/Queensland need to go into isolatiom at all and those from NSW/Victoria with no others in their home to go to self isolation (with phone tracking or bracelets).
Drink up, Donnie
https://twitter.com/pixelatedboat/status/1274534505185808386
So what? So he's framing Biden as China's candidate.
Why? Good/evil. The antique binary axis has ten times the moral authority of trad democracy (two millennia of moral hegemony versus two centuries).
Civilisation at stake thesis. Civil rights became a global scheme via UN adoption. Dragon mythos is ancient, but success on the geopolitical stage depends on the communist regime adhering to it in defiance of the civilised world.
Except now the chink electrogoons are targeting Oz, and ScoMo is trying real hard not to say so. He's authorised headlines about the cyber attacks, while carefully not specifying their source. Watch this space!!
NZ is studiously ignoring what is happening in Australia right now in the vain hope the contagion won't strike us. Well it has become a real issue there and we'd do well to start paying attention:
Here is an important point to keep in mind; the assault is a one way flow. The authoritarian states, primarily China and to a lesser degree Russia, are able to control their domestic internet. China in particular completely insulates it's own people from the West and tightly controls what they are allowed to see and say. By contrast the democratic West is almost completely open, and thus completely vulnerable.
Does anyone think asymmetry is not being exploited to our manifest disadvantage?
After the consequence of glasnost on the Soviet Union, China decided it was a weakness they would not have, but exploit in others.
Of course Russia under Putin, is on the same course – even adopting white race identity nationalism in both domestic politics and aslo as a way to connect to nationalists abroad – to take down the western multi-lateralist regime.
even adopting white race identity nationalism
Given the left created identity politics, it's hard to understand the outrage when others learn the lesson and use it for their own purposes. But it goes a long way to explaining my decade long objection here to the whole damned idea in the first place. Identity politics is nothing if not a perpetual motion grievance machine.
Still this is a tangent to the point; the authoritarian states have seen this fatal weakness and are more than willing to use to intensify the natural diversity of the west into hopelessly bickering camps. So far it looks like it's working a treat don't you think?
Personally I have no problem with all the people not white race men becoming activist for those of their group becoming equal citizens in a democracy. Sure there is contention over some of it, as there was over mitigating any injustice. This process has been going on for centuries now.
The taking offence part is more novel, there its more the 1790's France, post 1917 Russia side to it. A form of PC vigilantism and group peer pressure.
As to who gains by it, it's a distraction from growing economic inequality, facing up to the need for monetary reform to sustain nation state capability and global collective action on planetary health. Well those who want to rebuild the fuedal order around capital and outside management of the underclass (high tech panopticon society regime – think China but Area 51 God rule style).
The major weakeness of the West, as to Russia and China, is not our own internal political divisions, but the greed within capitalism. That applies whether in its nationalist Trumpian form, or those who take access to China's market on their terms for the sake of short term shareholder profit.
damn, all those people who are not white, not male, not heterosexual and good 'christians' that want equal rights, equal opportunity, and equal safety.
Damn, those darn gosh dangly doo liberals. Don't they know their place.
Oh to be living in the good old times of 1850. Before all that jazz about voting rights, rights to bodily autonomy, and distaste of racially and sexually / gendered jokes.
Nicely put Sabine 🙂 Love this bit…. darn gosh dangly doo
Don't diss pre 1850. The French Revolution of 1789-1799 "Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité" established the notion of universal human rights and led to the abolition of slaves throughout the British Empire (1833). Which also meant that the Treaty of Waitangi (1840) was founded on similar principles.
It just took the USA a while to catch up (emancipation/civil war in 1863)
Personally I have no problem with all the people not white race men becoming activist for those of their group becoming equal citizens in a democracy.
Now let's imagine a nice little democratic nation that isn't white dominated. One where say Latino, Blacks or Asians run the show. And ask yourself if these places might not have considerable 'systemic bias' against minorities of other ethnic groups. It logically follows from your argument these groups would want to demand to be 'equal citizens'.
What if one of these minorities happened to be white, are they to be excluded from being equal citizens?
And then take this thought experiment one step further and try and imagine the outcome of the small white minority in China demanding to become 'equal citizens'.
Given the history of China is the expansion of the Han and assimilation of outer regions into their hegemony … and Russian security was premised on expansion of the Rus/Slav European across the continent to the Pacific … oh or colonial west aquiring American from sea to sea (including Mexican Texas and California) Aotearoa land to farm, there could be a brotherly self-recognition. Or maybe we are too alike, and have good reason not to trust each other. It being all so Darwinian.
The west sees itself as building a civilisation, post enlightenment. A new Greco-Roman age realising its period of colonialism/economic imperialism/global dominance. And China sees it as something to emulate to supplant western global leadership and Russia sees this as reducing its own economic and political isolation.
Ultimately making our own society more just does not change the global dynamics of power in play.
Or maybe we are too alike, and have good reason not to trust each other. It being all so Darwinian.
That really gets very close to the question I've been trying to address here for years.
Here is a thought going through my head this morning; unity does not mean uniformity. What it really means is the capacity to achieve common purposes across large groups of diverse identity. (Yes identity is real, it's making it the centre of power games is what I object to.)
It's that capacity, across the universality of all humankind which is what interests me. When we achieve it globally (and I think this is inevitable) we will unleash our true potential as a spiritual beings, we will astonish ourselves.
Otherwise yes, a thoughtful comment SPC.
the elevation of human rights and recognition of the individual as a sovereign, spiritual being, is an Enlightenment ethic peculiar to Europe, not shared by other cultures, and certainly not by tyrannical rulers.
identity politics undermines that. western liberalism is in crisis because the capitalists (or other political forces) have weaponised division against the people.
(cribbed from Peterson/Paglia)
That moment when someone is so close……
When did 'the left' invent identity politics then?
"Given the left created identity politics"
No they didn't. Identity politics has been around in one form or another for a very long time but primarily saw it's birth after the industrial revolution and capitalism began separating people from the core sources of their identity.
I read your other comment regarding "truth decay" and want to address both comments together.
Firstly, what that article is referring to is called FUD – fear, uncertainty and doubt. Yes, it's a commonly used disinformation tactic used in sales, advertising, marketing, media, politics, religion and online in posts/social media; "a strategy to influence perception by disseminating negative and dubious or false information and a manifestation of the appeal to fear."
Not everyone who uses it knows they're using it however because it naturally exploits our biases so is seldom recognised as a strategy. It is very effective, especially in religion, politics and in social media.
It's also not new and has been around since the 1600s where it was a deliberate religious strategy to keep lay people dependent on priests for religious interpretation. This is an important fact to remember because the initial utilisation of a FUD-based strategy was by religious authoritative figures to control the masses. In that article you linked you'll find this quote which is a suggested 'remedy' to disinformation.
“Relying on clear and authoritative sources is one very important approach.”
And who can we trust these days with such a task? In whose hands would you be willing to place 'truth'?
To be clear, you are right to be concerned about disinformation. Jordan Peterson himself has dissolve the boundaries of truth down to a metaphor. More concerning is that he places metaphorical truth over and above scientific truth. Mind you, how else is he going to convince legions of lost boys to continue drinking the Kool-aid unless he can find some way of destroying the science getting in the way of his religion?
But, back to my point. My main contention is that you seem to think that there was some magical time in history where we had 'truth', where we were critical thinkers who smelled BS a mile away, where we weren't being manipulated by people in power. I'm guessing from your other comments that your come-back will be 'well, no but now the left have broken society into fragments which leaves us vulnerable'.
I'd agree that we're divided and vulnerable but disagree that you can place responsibility for that in the hands of the left.
What I noticed about your two comments is how you use the FUD article as a FUD strategy of your own to further your anti-left narrative. You've skipped right over the fact that the article calls for censorship via the authoritative control of information and instead presented it as a fallacious appeal to fear.
"When fear, not based on evidence or reason, is being used as the primary motivator to get others to accept an idea, proposition, or conclusion."
Identity politics is not new and wasn't started by the left although I'll agree they utilise it. But so does the right. The fracturing of society and flourishing of identity politics is very much the result of massive inequality which pitted the white male against the 'other' – not because white males engineered it to be this way but simply because they were the ones pried from their homes and sent off to work in order to feed the capitalist machine and it is this machine (or rather the breaking of it with govt bail-outs) that has caused growing inequality and the fragmented society we have now. To be clear, the white male is no more responsible for this than any other person or group of people.
So when you point at the left you're falsely diagnosing the fever as though it's the disease and not a symptom of it but worse than that you're perpetrating a FUD campaign of your own to drive home your point.
While identity is extremely ancient and has always been core to politics, "Identity Politics" in the modern context is a specific term with a specific meaning, clearly associated with far left, post-modernist thought. The ruse of re-defining the term when it gets used in a way you don't like is a pretty but transparent dodge.
My main contention is that you seem to think that there was some magical time in history where we had 'truth', where we were critical thinkers who smelled BS a mile away, where we weren't being manipulated by people in power.
One of Peterson's arguments is that while post-modernism has a sound technical point that there are an infinite number of ways to interpret any text, he also posits that the purpose of metaphor, mythology and religion is to show us the relatively few interpretations which are demonstrably successful in real life.
And by success he means to reduce unnecessary suffering to the extent possible. He's quite anti-Utopian, which is why the left hate him so.
And for what it's worth the search for truth is something each one of us must independently undertake for ourselves.
Anyhow cutting through all of the rest, as far as I am concerned, the identity politics game, whoever plays it, is a bad one with only bad outcomes. Call that whatever you like. And if you'd been around here for the 14 years I have, you'd know that I've been copping shit for this position long before Peterson arrived on the scene.
"The ruse of re-defining the term when it gets used in a way you don't like is a pretty but transparent dodge."
That's a pretty bad faith position to take not to mention a strawman. It is easier to attack an argument when you can fit it in a box right? Consider the meme; it is an altogether modern term yet it has existed for ages, been redefined to better describe what it is and what it represents. Christianity, too, has been born again (a few too many times for my liking). So the fact that identity politics as an ideological term was coined at one point in time does not mean it hasn’t existed prior to that time and I'm not alone in my thinking on this. Francis Fukuyama says the politics of identity have been present in many countries at many times throughout history – sometimes grounded in religion, other times class. To deny identity politics it's heritage to make it easier to cut up is disingenuous.
"One of Peterson's arguments is that while post-modernism has a sound technical point that there are an infinite number of ways to interpret any text, he also posits that the purpose of metaphor, mythology and religion is to show us the relatively few interpretations which are demonstrably successful in real life."
Nothing in my comment is related to, in support of, or against postmodernism. My comment about truth is that JP believes something can be scientifically true and metaphorically false and so becomes categorically false. Furthermore, JP fails to acknowledge the role of environment; time and place in determining success. What worked in the 1800s or even the 1950s most likely will not give us success today. The guy is a nut-job with a saviour complex.
I do find it a little amusing how you've redefined your truth statement though. Whatever happened to "truth decay" and the desperate need to preserve 'it'?
"the identity politics game, whoever plays it, is a bad one with only bad outcomes. Call that whatever you like"
Well, I won't call it a game that's for sure. It's serious stuff that deserves serious consideration and discussion. I've learned so much of my own ignorance because of it. I literally cringe when I think of the shit I was spouting in my younger days. And whats more, I'm continuing to learn. I remember reading a quote that was particularly profound to me even though I'm an atheist.
“Enlightenment is a destructive process. It has nothing to do with becoming better or being happier. Enlightenment is the crumbling away of untruth. It’s seeing through the facade of pretense. It’s the complete eradication of everything we imagined to be true.”― Adyashanti
And I don't think identity politics is, in and of itself, bad in the same way that a fever isn't bad – it's an indication of serious imbalance and once you correct the problem of massive inequality you'll find it settles down on it's own. Arguments for ending the ideology itself are far more harmful because they conceal and naturalise the dominance of the right, and in so doing remove the rationale for debate.
I think this is something you're overlooking, Red. Identity politics and the grievance claims are empty chairs reserved for those who have been disenfranchised. My biggest fear is not that the ideological right will win, it's that we will all lose. It was never about white men vs the world per se, it was always and only about the haves and the have nots. As this economic cannibalistic carnival continues to grow so does the economic disparity.
"And if you'd been around here for the 14 years I have, you'd know that I've been copping shit for this position long before Peterson arrived on the scene."
I have no sympathy for you, Red. You've chosen to stand where you stand. You must like the climate.
Good thread, thanks Maggie and Red.
Part of what I am reading from Red is the shift from us to I.
Society, in my lifetime, used to have many groups, institutions etc to which we belonged- sports clubs, church, community groups (Scouting, Lions) etc.
There was an aspect of service, working and belonging to something bigger than us. That has dwindled over the last few decades.
The rise of the impotance of the individual, helped along by billions of marketing dollars has changed our thinking.
Century of the Self is a fascinating look at the rise of consumerism (amongst other ideas).
Rushed, but I have to go or I will be late for work…
The most powerful words ever spoken to me, a short few words in reply to a clumsy question about our purpose in life, were these:
"We are a people of duty".
At the time I really didn't appreciate them as I should have.
PS. Yes I really enjoy Adam Curtis. Much of what the left regards as the adamantine evils of capitalism are perhaps better thought of as the unaware blindness of materialism. Just a thought.
Thanks Gsays.
Yes, I've been thinking about this a lot lately. What I find fascinating is that, to me, it appears to be so paradoxical… but I'm still straightening out some thought noodles on this so will leave it there for now. I'm going to watch that doco now – looks interesting.
it was always and only about the haves and the have nots.
Thank you, a nice response. Your last section I entirely agree with.
Political truth was always malleable, it always shifted as the ground moved under us. But in order to be useful it has to be anchored in at least some empirical, objective facts.
The article I quoted, asks the question, what happens when political truth becomes un-moored from the facts, facts that no-one can even agree on?
Can you expand on your first sentence, please? I don't want to misconstrue what you're trying to say.
I don't know if I can go so far as to say there was ever a time of political truth, that anyone had it. It seems to me that once societies got bigger and more complex the need for structure and control also created exploitable power positions.
I don't think you can say that for political truth to be useful it needs to be grounded in empirical objective facts (even though I believe it ought to be) – well, historically anyway. Religion did a great job of controlling the masses for a while but required deceiving people, keeping them ignorant.
You have to consider the inherent difficulties of empirically studying human behaviour. It's not like we can grow a whole bunch of lab babies and raise them in certain environments to determine outcomes. It's in this fact that people such as yourself have levered their position yet, and ironically so, you're quite willing to flex away from empiricism when it comes to beliefs you're fond of. So why not extend the same flexibility to the left's ideology?
When shown massive amounts of data that prove systemic racism you dig your toes into research results like "no bias in cop shootings of black men" as proof of 'no racial bias'. You can't zoom in and zoom out to frame things to your liking and claim objectivity.
Take, for example, this comment of yours:
In this "thought experiment" you say that it's feasible that there would be systemic bias against a white minority (and I'm not saying I agree or disagree with you). You basically flip the racial divide to make a point about China but fail to grasp that you've described the situation Blacks and other minorities actually experience now.
How can you 'see it' here but not when we're talking about BLM? Would the Chinese not simply say to you all the same arguments you've posited because in the above scenario, they are the 'haves' and you as the white minority is the 'have nots'?
But I don't want to derail this conversation or make it about something it isn't so please understand I'm just offering that as an example.
My point is that the knowledge we have has always been subjected to a certain amount of bias due to a lack of diversity given that historically it's been men who've determined the course of knowledge to the exclusion of women and minorities. Consider that such great minds as Aristotle and Darwin both expressed unchecked bias in their work so the question must be if they made such mistakes how did their attitudes toward and beliefs about women shape the knowledge we have today? How did that bias limit or deviate to course of knowledge? What of other bias from other thinkers?
Whilst you can say well empiricism fixes that it doesn't really. It does help in some areas, like chemistry, physics and maths, but as we're discovering more and more there are so many nuanced ways in which bias can pervert outcomes – right from determining who we do research on, how we structure our research and how we interpret the results because much of our current research relies on old knowledge held as objectively true which may not be.
Consider that religion, culture and science have all been shaped by subjective beliefs first and foremost and whilst I hold science in the highest regard I don't think it's perfect or infallible – just the best tool we have and tool most frequently wielded in the hands of powerful white men.
For these reasons I don't think you can claim to be the one moored to objectivity whilst the left are 'adrift'.
Yeah, my heart absolutely bleeds for that cadre of former Boarding School Girls & Boys – emanating from some of the most privileged Establishment families – who dominate the Woke movement both in NZ & throughout the Anglosphere. They truly are The Great Oppressed.
Really quite emotionally moving to see an empty chair reserved for the disenfranchised of Remmers as they rise out of their subaltern slumber (in between cocktails) to Speak Truth to Power.
"He's quite anti-Utopian, which is why the left hate him so."
I think this is pretty dismissive and incorrect. JP is not anti-utopian at all – I just think he has a different idea of what constitutes a highly desirable or high quality society.
This attitude of dismissal, of scoffing at the silly left with their inability to be reasonable (which is prevalent throughout your comments) is the same attitude men had of women for a very long time. It proved foolhardy.
Because men didn't consider women to be anything other than pretty little women, children in adult bodies, they never considered that women had the potential to be just like them in the best and worst ways possible. (and no, I'm not saying there are no differences between men and women – we're obviously far better at breastfeeding!).
Not wishing to derail your fascinating dialogue, but it prompted me to read up on JP (having previously ignored him out of ignorance). Rule 11 ("Do not bother children when they are skateboarding") suggests he doesn't get the relevance of context. Such as if they are doing on the road. Or at meal time. Perhaps his chapter consists of a sequence of caveats to finesse such practicalities??
I do agree with you about identity politics being around forever (part of social psychodynamics). Warriors identified each other by their helmets etc in the classical era, Roman senators by their togas, in the sense of tribe or class identity. But RL using it in an academic sense is also correct of course. Both/and logic applies.
Ethos is relevant, eh? If you share it, you identify with others who do. Thus I don't share that of the woke – yet I do share some of their values. How one uses values (to divide, or to include) seems the crux (praxis).
Re: JP. There's a running joke about JP where if you ask him a question his answer will invariably start with "Well, it depends on what you mean by X". He's a weasel speaker whose ambiguous language means you can't really pin him down on anything he says. If you pointed out his statement lacks the nuance of context he's say well it depends what you mean by context then launch into some ethereal waffle featuring religious symbology, evil feminine chaos dragons and lobsters.
I've read all his books, watched his videos. It was painful but necessary.
I do understand Red's position and where he's planted his flag in terms of identity politics. I am compelled by my inner brat to shake off all attempts to label and/or contain my beliefs to ideological boxes. I know that makes me sound like some uber edgelord but I'm not – in truth I'm about as edgy as a wet sandwich. My reluctance is more about the fact that common narratives tend to 'fit you up' – if you ascribe to one popular belief you're assumed to hold all the other beliefs commonly associated with that belief as well. I'm still figuring out what it is I actually believe and don't want to be fenced in. So, whilst I reference identity politics I do so conceptually rather than politically if that makes sense.
This is interesting. You're gonna have to tell me what your definition of 'woke' is because as a politicised label it's quite loaded and I don't want to infer meaning.
I don't think people intentionally divide. I think perhaps people attempt to refine or define and in so doing can have divisiveness as a consequence but I think even that is a simplistic description of what's happening. I'm seeing a lot of paradoxical connections that I'm not sure what to make of. It's either that I'm misconstruing connections or there really is this whole other side that isn't divisive at all but rather about loss of democratic choices (something SPC said got me thinking). If I sound waffley it's because I'm not 'there' yet with the idea so I need to let it ferment a bit longer.
Perhaps you could expand on your point a bit more, let me see inside that head of yours? We've not engaged a lot so it's difficult for me to know what you're about to give your words context.
tell me what your definition of 'woke' is because as a politicised label it's quite loaded and I don't want to infer meaning
I don't define it – I've acquired a hazy sense of what it means. Politically-correct herding seems to be the mass psychology involved. I also see group narcissism there – a presumption that, having arrived at a consensus around social values, all those who haven't done so are wrong. So we get that projection of moral supremacy from them collectively.
Mature folks watching are liable to see this exhibition of syndromes as juvenile or puerile. Character is developmental, and it is unreasonable to expect anyone to figure stuff out simultaneously with others. We all have different social niches to form our values, we learn from different experiences and at different rates. It's a wonder we ever share culture at all!
So broad-mindedness & tolerance of diversity is opposed by woke narrow-minded intolerant preference for monoculture. Greens believe in biodiversity. Woke Greens are frauds!
Identity politics polarises. The future, for humanity, lies in the commons. Identifying common ground is real hard for a partisan. So possessed by group narcissism and the compulsive requirement of conformity to separatism, the woke activist will always shy away from the necessity of acquiring humanity. Yet doing so is a survival skill. Thus the woke will not survive as a social movement.
Thanks for that, Dennis.
I understand your frustration with the current social movement. It can be incredibly destabilising to see established norms broken down and labelled as 'bad' or 'wrong'. Having our behaviour and beliefs pointed out in a critical way often feels like a personal attack because we're emotionally invested in them. This isn't a bad thing; it's actually necessary and the result of our successful biological evolution. As a social species being able to cooperate and have shared values is essential to survival as you rightly pointed out.
I think it's important to consider that other people are under the very same evolutionary influences, are subjected to the same evolved psychological tendencies. I'd like to make two key points here.
Firstly, the minds of young people – those aged 12-25 are in a state of developmental flux. Puberty and its associated hormones triggers a shift in how the brain perceives barriers and boundaries – this is important for two main reasons.
Firstly, it helps break the familial bond. As a child grows up their primary source of learning comes from the family unit which creates strong emotional bonds but in order to develop a healthy sexual appreciation for the opposite sex they must effectively break the bonded information from its emotional ties. So we see younger people start to value peer group sources for learning over familial groups. The added benefit of doing so reduces the chances of repeating 'stupid parent' mistakes by broadening his or her perspectives of "normal" and "acceptable" behaviour and beliefs.
Secondly, this dissolution of boundaries exposes the adolescent brain to greater influence from their peers with the end goal of learning how to say no to peer influence. Basically, the teen is forced into an environment full of temptation in order to develop the strength to resist it. This is essential in order to avoid falling into 'stupid group' behaviour at a time when they need to be stable and disciplined in order to be a good parent.
Because of these influences I think it's important we don't assume there are fundamental flaws in what they're doing but keep their behaviour in context. What's more, we can learn from their apparent destruction of social norms by considering the validity of things they're exposing.
Social norms are vital to group cohesion and success yet they must also be fit-for-purpose and given our environment changes so rapidly (especially since the industrial revolution) we must frequently test our norms to see if they're still relevant. I, for one, am grateful for these challenges because without them we might still be selling slaves and imprisoning women suspected of having STDs.
The other point I'd like to make is in regard to how we perceive the actions of others. Biases, of which we have over 200, are often alluded to as flaws in thinking or are pointed out as a means to discredit the perspectives of others. Whilst I acknowledge that I'm pointing out bias in your perspective I'm doing so with the caveat that I'm also biased as is everyone, always.
Wikipedia starts its page on cognitive bias with this statement: "Cognitive biases are systematic patterns of deviation from norm[al] or rational judgement" This statement suggests that rationality is the norm. However, if you go to the linked reference material you find the authors actually say cognitive biases are not deviations but rather the normal way we process information.
"The conclusion that many biases are not the result of constraints or mysterious irrationalities also speaks to the ongoing debate about human rationality. Our perspective suggests that biases often are not design flaws, but design features." (source:The Handbook of Evolutionary Psychology by David M. Buss, pg 725)
So everyone is subjected to the same biased thinking and we are all burdened with the responsibility of employing critical thinking when making judgments. https://youtu.be/AK0GYBTNx5Q
I think this is really important because if you consider your perspective from a rational POV you can see that what they're doing and pointing out has been done right throughout history – the challenging and breaking down of old social norms in order to test for relevance. Whilst you might say they're focusing on differences rather than commonalities they do so to break down the criteria for sorting, not to destroy sorting.
The old way was just as separatist in that men and women were relegated to strict and separate social norms, racial segregation kept whites and blacks apart as fundamentally different and religious separation kept Christians apart from "heathens". What's more, they're challenging the old sorting criteria in order to find better more reasonable ways of ensuring equal access to resources, fairer application of laws and legal protection and a more refined and nuanced understanding of what it is to be human first and foremost.
In this way, you can look at their behaviour as a sort of ethical spring cleaning and like spring cleaning, you often have to make a mess to clean one up.
Now, I'm not saying I agree with all of the outcomes or actions – certainly this 'cancel culture' is problematic but I argue that it isn't representative of the entire left nor is it the demands for firing or silencing opposition for a vocal minority that is problematic but how we're responding to it.
Why are companies and institutions bowing to public pressure so quickly and without proper due process? Could it be that in an age where being profitable is so highly dependent on popularity that we've exorcised critical thinking as dissension's bastard? Perhaps then this 'mess' we have is the consequence of the capitalist tendency to monetise everything which has left society vulnerable to the demands of an increasingly vocal & irrational leftist faction who are now no more representative of the political left than neo-Nazism is of the political right.
Thanks for that thoughtful response Maggie. Nothing there I'd dispute. I suspected it was a peer-group driven movement (primarily, with some traction of solidarity amongst those who went pc during the '90s).
And I'm aware of the emotional rooting that bias emerges from, having had to transcend various of mine in the past! I'm willing to tolerate the woke but may have to express irritation from time to time if the phenomenon persists – I suspect it is already waning.
And yes, conflating it with the left isn't sensible, except it regard to the critique that the left tend to be privileged (middle-class) nowadays whereas in the 19th century they were identified as lower-class (wrongly, I've learnt from reading about the activists of that era). Idealism in regard to the better world envisioned is widely shared, so any critique of the woke can't focus on that. It must focus on behaviour.
I appreciate the rational discussion Dennis. All to often I find myself caught up in conversations where I'm constantly having to say "I didn't say/mean that" and I admit my tone is often the cause of such misunderstandings. I'm not very good at predicting how others will take me as I tend to be blunt AF.
I've had to wrestle with my own bias and was a pretty radical feminist some time back. Whilst I still support feminism I've become far more moderate and have broadened my perspective by leaning in to MRA conversations and listening to their POV. This helped me understand that most people want the same things but tend to speak from their pain points in order to express those desires.
And I'll continue to wrestle my biases which flair up like a bad rash every now and again. Conversations like this one make that easier to do so cheers 🙂
JP is not anti-utopian at all
Well I tend to take people at their word when they say so.
Here.
Here.
and here.
When it comes to understanding true motivations of a person I never take a person at their word. Like, ever. Truth is found in between their words, in what they hide, not what they put in the shop window.
Everything about JP says to me that this guy is desperate to preserve an ideal culture in which he feels he has value. And that's not a criticism of him. It's something we all do to certain degrees.
We all write narratives in which we are winners.* Even if we cast ourselves as victims we do so to make a claim that redeems us from blame, we become survivors (and thus mythological heroes of our own history) by pointing out our victimisation. Those who’ve ‘succeeded’ in societal terms do the very same. What mightier hero is there than one who’s escaped their chains and slain sloth to rise above the mediocre.
The right point at the left and label them hysterical whilst comforted by their own “rational” narrative but if you read the majority of right leaning editorials and opinion pieces the “hysteria” is no less present. It just walks along to the monotonous nod of a well-scripted narrative; they just produce better arguments (but not truer ones). The right are the "lawyers" of political discourse – finders of loopholes, committed to winning, not truth.
*Note: I feel the need to clarify that these narratives don't invalidate any suffering or victimisation a person has suffered in their lifetime. This isn't about real life experiences and whether they're justifiably painful but rather the narrative construct – the fictionalised reality we cast for ourselves in our minds.
So I provide three links where JP explains in detail one thing, and you assure us you know that he must really mean something else.
No wonder you didn't understand a word he said.
"us" Odd choice of pronoun there, Red. Is it a priest or psychiatrist you need because I'm pretty sure you're not speaking for a collective.
You, know, sometimes I just lurk and read the conversations on here. You learn so much about people by watching how they interact with others, when they get pissy, over what and with whom. It paints an interesting picture of the inner emotional and psychological world of the speaker. 🙂
Don't conflate the irrational, uber-relativist Intersectional Cult with the broader Left movement it's trying to hi-jack.
Gross generalisation that I'd expect from the more ideologically insular, historically-ignorant & dogmatic extremes of the Feminist Movement. Doesn't tally with the familial relationships of my forbears at all.
The irony being that the Woke of both sexes do tend toward – not so much children – as petulant teenagers in adult bodies. Narcissistic, demanding & controlling. Presumably a corollary of significant affluence & massive over-indulgence when growing up.
Perhaps a better education system for all that really emphasises critical thinking is the best solution.
the assault is a one way flow.
Oh come on ! Do you think we don't have outright propaganda directed at us via the Murdoch press for instance !!!
An example being the way the Murdoch press harps on about anti semitism whenever anyone crticises Israel ,while Murdoch himself has oil interests in the Golan Heights he'd be able to exploit if the GH were annexed.
https://www.irishcentral.com/opinion/others/irish-troops-peace-line-trump
The way Syria is being represented in the Murdoch press is heavily influenced by Murdoch's interests .Just one example .We're not above being lied to by our media Iraq another
Well that is the exact point I linked to and quoted; propaganda is nothing new, pretty much everyone does it. But where do we draw the line?
Are we going to allow the authoritarian states … who's only goal is maintaining and expanding the power of it's leaders for life …. to openly undermine the ideals of the democratic west?
Just to put this into perspective. Of the 200 odd nations on earth, barely 30 truly count as developed and decent places to live, countries where the freedoms, rights and rule of law we take for granted are commonplace. Although partly as a consequence of these characteristics these nations are also very successful and prosperous, it's a mistake to imagine they are also invulnerable to internal damage.
Who counts them Red?
I wouldn’t personally be counting the US at the moment
Are these countries undermining democratic ideals or pointing to the deficits of those countries ?
Any democratic ideals in the UK are tarnished by the unbelievable treatment of Assange, and the media’s abdication of any responsibility towards free journalism
Who counts them Red?
There is of course no binary distinction here; all the nations can be placed on a spectrum from best to worst. And then there are multiple dimensions of desirability we could use. But one way of measuring it was done by a recent Gallop poll (I've linked to it before) that showed some 750m people, 10% of the human race, would migrate right now if they could.
And almost all want to go to the Anglo/Euro nations of the developed world. That's called voting with your feet.
I'd certainly agree the US is by no means the best of this group, it was toppled from that position decades ago. And this is a deficit they certainly need to address; it will take a decade of turmoil to show results.
But let's not look any closer are why those nations are wealthy and desirable. It must be democracy most of them have had for less than a hundred years or so, can't possibly have anything to do with the three or four hundred years before that. Or anything they did while being so "democratic".
But let's not look any closer are why those nations are wealthy and desirable.
It's a very good question; one that I believe Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs and Steel gave a very good answer to. If you really want to understand modern geopolitics this book is the essential starting point. (It ain't perfect, nor complete, but it remains a solid foundation.)
Empire, exploitation, slavery and the oppression of minorities is nothing new. It probably dates back to at least when modern humans probably eradicated Neanderthals in Europe, and it has to be fully acknowledged that the intersection of this ancient paradigm, with the industrialised technologies of 17 and 18th century Europe, took it to a wholly new, intense and deplorable level.
But that colonial era came to a functional end at the close of WW2. Colonialism is no longer the sole or even best explanation for their ongoing success and desirability, at least compared to much of the rest of the world.
no, shh, it's totes just "democracy", right? Nothing to do with the geopolitical dominance the colonial powers maintained post ww2 (replacing "colonialism" with "hegemony") or geopolitical proxy wars and destabilisation campaigns.
Let's just leave it that "democracy" is the primary reason the colonial powers are still largely dominant (and desirable migration destinations).
One vote feeds a whole family..
The left likes to imagine the US got rich on the back of it's global security dominance in the post WW2 era.
Apart from the fact that it was the US manufacturing dominance that was a very large reason why the Allies won WW2 before they set up their security hegemon, it's also wrong on the data. In reality the US actually trades relatively little with the rest of the world as a percentage of it's GDP.
Indeed from the US perspective, if the rest of the world outside North and Latin America were to sink beneath the waves tomorrow, they'd barely notice, much less give a shit. Many would breath a deep sigh of relief and go back to being prosperous thank you very much.
Being world trade's default currency was no advantage at all.
Being world trade's default currency was no advantage at all.
An advantage that cuts both ways. If say Argentinians want to trade with Egyptian's … neither country has any use for each other's currency, so having one dominant hard currency that everyone could use was a tremendous benefit to everyone.
And providing a global security environment, freedom of trade and shipping for all nations, (even their enemies) came at no cost either?
I'm not arguing the post WW2 US led trade order was the ideal arrangement, or that it was without flaws. But it was almost certainly better than anything that came before. A fact that we are about to discover quite brutally as it disintegrates before our eyes over the next few years.
Look, stop the distractions, it must be the world's lack of democracy.
No need to bring up things like that multinationals don't necessarily patriate all their overseas income derived from CIA-backed dictatorships (although the value is reflected in their share prices), and the US leases for military establishments were routinely cheap because they were acquired from those dictatorships or countries they had just defeated (Rammstein, Subic, Guantanamo, Yokota), or the outright colonial possessions for their allies (in the case of Diego Garcia).
And then we have no need at all to mention the CIA practise of destabilising any government (no matter how democratic) that showed any effort to lower inequality in its population, because "communism".
You put your finger on it: the rest of the world is less desirable to live in only for the reason that it doesn't have (or only recently was gifted via B52) democracy. Any other explanation must be false (otherwise you might have to accept reality).
So, how does ~5% of the world's population use ~25% of the world's resources?
https://www.americangeosciences.org/critical-issues/faq/which-mineral-commodities-used-united-states-need-be-imported
https://www.pnas.org/content/115/16/4111
https://www.census.gov/prod/2/gen/96statab/natresor.pdf
Seems to me that the US is totally dependent upon trade.
Its called going to where the jobs are, not necessarily because of democratic ideals .Why are the jobs there ..Empire and wealth accumulation were got not from democracy ,but military advantage and plunder going back generations .It's why Hondurans to this day go to the States
And a large proportion will be going where there is a common language..English…taught pretty well universally .Why?
Colonialism and Empire mean English became the language of trade.and therefore taught .
Empire and wealth accumulation were got not from democracy ,but military advantage and plunder going back generations
In that case why are Spain and Portugal, or the core nations of any of the historic empires not centres of world power to this day? The reason is simple and obvious, the passing of time has eroded away any advantage. The last empire of the type you are thinking of ended with WW2
It's why Hondurans to this day go to the States
Again the problem of having only one tool in the box. Honduras will always be poorer than the USA for a whole range of geographic reasons that have nothing to do politics. Similar to why Greenland will never be a wealthy nation. Geography matters.
English…taught pretty well universally
Well yes. The need for a universal language in a globalised world is so urgent and necessary that we defaulted to the one most at hand. It could have easily been Spanish or French but for a few accidents of history.
Esperanto was once considered a popular alternative for just this purpose. In an ideal world we might eventually arrive at a universal language acceptable to all.
Spain and Portugal lost the bulk of their colonial empires in the 19th century. The US and UK built the bulk of their empires in the 19th century. The Spanish and portuguese lost favoured trade relations with many of their former colonial powers. UK has the commonwealth, and the thirteen colonies gained much of North America in the same time period that Spain lost hers, and US only lost some of their richer dominions in the mid-late 20C (e.g. Cuba, Philipines) (and both expanded their systems of trade, until particular unpleasantries recently entered office in their respective capitals).
Additionally, modern imperialists exercise a more distant style of control that colonialism, but it is still imperial control. Look at Gough Whitlam or Allende if you want to argue about that. It's the dominance of the Roman Republic, not the dominion of the "United Kingdom" (yes, the roman republic differed from the empire because the roman empire had an actual emperor, but this is geopolitical terminology not classical studies).
But even so, I wonder how many ships get tied up at portuguese or spanish docks that were paid for by their own Colstons. I doubt that no advantages remain from their own days of empire.
Additionally, modern imperialists exercise a more distant style of control that colonialism, but it is still imperial control.
Again your reflexive bias against anything American means nuance becomes impossible. Just slap the word 'imperial' on it and job done.
The US hegemon is actually quite different from the British Empire that proceeded it. There are for a start no real colonies of any significance. Certainly there are military bases and a few small island nations, but absolutely nothing compared to the scale of the British.
Secondly, the British model (and all others prior to it) compelled almost all trade to be directed to the centre, for the benefit of the centre. And they navy necessary to defend this trade, protected imperial trade and no-one elses. The American model has been quite the opposite in this respect, all nations are able with relatively few constraints to trade with almost all others. And remarkably enough the US Navy provided the 'freedom of navigation' for everyone to do this at no cost.
Even when as I point out the USA actually trades remarkably little with the wider world. Imports are only 15% of GDP and at least half of this is within NAFTA. ie Canada and Mexico. (Incidentally Mexico is now their biggest trade partner, not China.)
Throw in energy independence, and the USA has comparatively little need to trade with the wider world, beyond a few specialised raw materials they can easily manage to source if necessary. This is a key point that was overlooked by everyone, the USA hegemon was never about making the US wealthy in the old imperial 'suck all the resources in to the centre' model. The unique geography of the US made them so natively wealthy that it was never necessary.
The purpose of the hegemon was to defeat the Soviets in the Cold War. The Americans knew they did not want to fight the Russians on the ground, so they essentially bribed up a global alliance which said, "we will let you trade with anyone, protect your trade, provide the finance, get you out of poverty, get rich even, but you have to be on our side against the Soviets".
And so long as you played by their rules the Americans generally left you alone. With some exceptions of course, but for the most part they used the least force necessary to ensure everyone stuck to the bargain.
Am I defending this US model as ideal? Of course not, everyone is aware of the mistakes and disasters along the way. But the crucial point is that compared to anything that came before it, the Americans, almost accidentally, created something the world has never seen before. It took us in the direction of the ideal, of a truly federalised world of equal nations. And for all of it's shortcomings the US trade order has delivered an astonishing modest prosperity for billions …. for the first time in human history fully half the human race is middle class by local standards. (That's quite an achievement for something so half-arsed, imagine if we did it properly.)
I realise the far left hates this narrative, but if we are serious about the universal elimination of poverty it is deeply dishonest to discount it.
I wonder how many ships get tied up at portuguese or spanish docks that were paid for by their own Colstons.
The economic life of most fixed assets is around 50 – 80 years. So no, any economic advantage anyone gained from slavery is long gone.
And if you want to argue for some other less tangible advantage gained from slavery somehow passed down the generations, keep in mind that the briefest of overviews tells us that until the Industrial Revolution ended it, slavery in some form or another was ubiquitous. Where do you want to draw the line? Only when white people did it?
Actually, I wasn't just thinking of the yanks. As soon as limpet mines and assault rifles made revolutionaries near-peer adversaries for anyone with boots on the ground, the imperial model du jour moved back towards client states rather that outright occupation.That's why the yanks transitioned from occupying the Philippines until 1941 to merely having client dictators throughout most of the Cold War.
But aren't we lucky that the yanks only dominated clients to stop the soviets, and were in no way continuing their imperial expansion from before WW2. I mean, they found another excuse to keep the hegemony going after the cold war, too, so there's that.
You're so full of shit that the boots you lick so frequently must have been wading through it.
You're so full of shit that the boots you lick so frequently must have been wading through it.
What exactly do you think you are doing?
losing patience with someone whose blinkers cause them to blatantly misrepresent history.
But tell us again how the yanks aren't an imperial power. It'll fascinate folks from Puerto Rico to Hawaii, the long way around.
But tell us again how the yanks aren't an imperial power. It'll fascinate folks from Puerto Rico to Hawaii, the long way around.
Maybe you got confused when I said above:
"Certainly there are military bases and a few small island nations, but absolutely nothing compared to the scale of the British."
Absolutely every claim I've made I'm willing to back up in extensive detail. But I'm not wasting the effort on someone who can't even read the most elementary points without getting lost and losing patience.
Vietnam was a small island nation or a few bases?
Korea?
The Philippines? Client regimes like Argentina, Greece, Iran, Iraq, and every other nation that received billions in military aid and advice on torturing political opponents?
Seriously – you believe that the post-ww2 US foreign policy consisted of a few islands and military bases (which would have been similar to any number of global outposts of the British Empire, even if that was the limit of similarity)?
Red, a case study of how Honduran wealth and the ability for peasants to survive in their own land was stripped by the US and their banana companies https://theconversation.com/how-us-policy-in-honduras-set-the-stage-for-todays-migration-65935
Yup, as I said above, the global US trade order was not without it's failures. I've never argued it was a perfect or ideal system; just better than anything that came before it.
The problem for Latin America, Honduras, Nicuargua and Cuba in particular, is that early century US business interests essentially undertook a proto-colonial foray into the region. A similar parallel can be found with say the British East India Company in India several hundred years earlier. But at the same time no US Federal govt was ever interested in going the next step of turning them into full territorial colonies.
This has meant the unfortunate peoples of these countries got the worst of both worlds, all the merchantile exploitation with none of the stable governance.
Then of course there was the Cold War, and we too easily forget the intensity of that period. The US repeatedly overreacted to perceived communist/socialist threats and footholds in their hemisphere. Their hugely advantageous security position was their big strategic advantage over the Soviets, and they were not going to relinquish it lightly.
Put these two realities together and yes Latin America is the zone where the US global trade order functioned badly. That is a legitimate objection, yet in many ways the contrast with how events unfolded elsewhere in the world where these factors did not apply … is instructive.
Also easily overlooked is that the USA itself is founded as an exercise in anti-colonialism, the great break-away from the British Empire, and this has always formed a large element of their foreign policy ever since. The fact that there are 200 odd independent nations in the world now, and no great imperiums of old, is largely due to the US imposing their own alternative reality on the ground.
What happens when the US fully stops imposing that reality over the next decade is the urgent question we should be thinking about.
True:
Apparently, even allowing people to chat with the West is now frowned upon by the Chinese authorities.
I'd hope not but there's going to be someone out there with the belief that, no matter what China does, allowing permanent residence with voting is all good and they simply won't believe that China will use this as a way to attack us.
In making your comment about Australia being targeted by a foreign nation's cyber goons, you seem to have channelled the language of an earlier time, when that nation ran a white population policy.
Of that earlier time pre Asian students (the first here may have been Chinese Malaysians under a Commonwealth programem back in the 70's when Malaysia began a Malay first into their universities policy) and changes to our own immigration policy (1986 or so).
Of course you may have been going for chink in the Oz cyber security armour, or noting how political campaigns of the Bannon type are nationalist in nature and returning us back to the past.
Or all of the above simultaneously. Literary references have ever been a minefield of controversy, eh? A standard method for ensuring that readers never die of boredom, even. And postmodernism has the upside of providing an ever so thick layer of icing on that cake. Readers can indulge their knee-jerk subjective reactions to their heart's content. An immensely satisfying recipe.
Is deliberate use of ethnic slurs wise, in praxis? Maybe it just slipped out/up?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chink
Seems unlikely, but not impossible that it was your intention to cause offence.
I do hope the dancing cossacks bogeyman mentality doesn’t get a firmer foothold in NZ – lately ‘Eyes on China’ has been promoting ‘its concerns.
http://eyesonchina.org
Nah, just habitual slang use from way back. No intention to traumatise. If the moderator gets freaked out, happy to see it corrected to Chinese or communist or both! The idea that folks get traumatised by slang usage is so wacky that it never enters my head. 🙄 And I will now investigate your link thanks…
Well, that was a waste of time. Some org that only wants to recruit facebook users. Terminally-shallow brainwashed army has been done many times previously, why bother??
Why bother indeed, Dennis – you have spotted a chink in their thesis.
You resort to language like "freaked out" or "traumatised". So it's somebody else's fault, the familiar tactic of the non-apology.
The word "sorry" is a lot quicker to type. Try it.
Like the N word, then..
Just a sly little fishing expedition.
Covering your butt?
Literary references should probably be put in italics to make the writer's stance a little clearer
Literary references should probably refer to literature. Maybe that's expecting too much?
Speaking of Bannon, have you seen this?
https://youtu.be/P7eC5kHHXoc
No I hadn't. I try not to spend too long online so probably miss lots of interesting stuff. That plan has clearly got significant traction: https://www.foxbusiness.com/lifestyle/what-is-the-new-federal-state-of-china
But how significant? No evidence that any component of the US foreign policy establishment has adopted it as yet. The Council for Foreign Relations would be the one to watch for that. Could be a next Bilderberger conference topic… https://bilderbergmeetings.org/index.html
Interesting. The CCP is in a much weaker position than it likes to project. All the internal repression is a projection from weakness not strength.
The India/Australia military pact is news to me.
So Bannon's still full of shit, good to know, good to know.
Except now the chink electrogoons are targeting Oz,
What the hell Dennis!!
I haven't heard the word chink since we were a bunch of ignorant primary schoolers
Yes Francesca. Well out of order. Moderator should delete or at least Dennis withdraw the comment
agreed
Yes, been so long for me i had to think about it.
Agree with Francesca and the others.
I think the time has come for the Prime Minister to seriously consider ceasing her weekly interview with Mike Hosking. This morning's performance was a litany of disrespect, misogyny, dishonesty and rudeness to the point of verbal abuse. He effectively called her a liar.
It is all very well maintaining a remarkable level of equilibrium in the face of such belittling attacks, but he is slowly but surely painting Jacinda as a PM out of her depth. It is part of the overall National Party attack strategy of course and their media puppets like Hosking know exactly the role they are to play within that strategy.
She has every excuse to bypass him with a pandemic in progress as well as leading the country out of the economic recession in its wake.
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=12341670
I loved the bit where Ardern left him defending essentially his position which was "I don't get it".
Hosking: That doesn't mean anything.
Ardern: I have made my point – you continue to make yours.
Nah the hosk would scream like a baby if she didn't attend like the presumptuous born to lecture everyone twat he is.
Ardern gets to be classy while rantyboy vents his spleen. Pure theatre for red neck radio rantland.
So what's happening is a battle for the soul of the Republican Party. Recall that George Will resigned from the party when it selected the huckster as candidate. Principled rightists may be a minority, but they've long been at the heart of the US political establishment. Ever tried to do a count of right-wing US think-tanks?? I once did and encountered so many I hadn't known about that I became mildly depressed.
Bolton as would-be dragonslayer. Trump as paper tiger. What to do? Last week Colin Powell went public, declaring he will vote for Biden. Other influential Republicans, similarly disaffected, are more likely to stay home than vote for Trump or his China stooge opponent.
Speaking of Pompeo, Lou Dobbs was fuming with him the other day.
https://youtu.be/47TRbbM6Otg
Red storm rising seems somewhat melodramatic for a framing headline, but I guess media have to raise consciousness, and the contrast between Trumpian rhetoric and action follow-through has to be examined.
The concern expressed by Banks impressed me via his moderate, level, yet empathic tone. I hadn't seen Dobbs since he was fronting the money segment for CNN way back, but he's matured into less of a moron than he was.
Four breaches of Taiwan air-space in nine days is clearly a sustained attempt at forceful messaging. Banks told us Pompeo's meeting with the Chinese hierarchy in Hawaii was at China's request. Thus a two-pronged strategy by them.
China's breaches of Taiwan air-space are just part of China's growing aggression raising global concern.
The up and coming US elections raises the question who will stand up to China if Trump fails to win?
Which may well be the primary question in their election. I can imagine zillions deciding to vote for Trump while holding their nose, if he puts that question into their heads in the final week or two of the campaign.
Indeed, Dennis.
Furthermore, it is a question many around the world are asking while thinking what will it mean for them/us living in a China dominated world?
a China dominated world
Those paranoid folks anticipating such a future need reassurance. The future is way more likely to be multipolar at the level of geopolitics.
The US foreign policy establishment is huge. If Biden wins and attempts to wimp out on his responsibilities to them, they will find a way to pull his plug. Expect him to die in office in that future (natural causes, due to stress, most likely). His VP, a black woman, will have been already primed on how to present as authoritative and persuasive. Velvet glove.
Who's that?
Susan ( the russians did it ) Rice.
https://twitter.com/aaronjmate/status/1267185493176877057
Ta. Not been paying much attention.
If you look around you'll find the paranoia is well justified. It has long been touted China is the model many of the global elite subscribe too. Hence, many of them helped China implement it while allowing it to become a growing global threat.
If Bannon the liar is to be believed, which he isn't.
Anne, in some respects Hosking is turning people off by his extreme interviewing. I know several people who have lately commented they have been disgusted by him. I have never heard them previously make any comment.
I don’t know what editorial policy is in place for media to be balanced.
However, no wonder people so admire Jacinda for her stoic putting up with him. He is filled with hate and bitterness. It would not be so bad if he put the opposition through the same barrage. What a vile man.
hosking, is a bitter, angry has been, desperate for attention.
Have been impressed lately with both Jack Tame and Ryan Bridges, either of them would be fantastic as an adjudicator for the leaders debates.
That's because they are both fanboi's of JA with a big chip on their leftwing shoulder
Balance doesn't exist in mediaworks / radio works empire. It's agenda driven, always has been.
Editorial policy about being balanced? The balance they're interested in is whether the books balance.
Last week a banner headline had it of a Mike Hosking interview, Hosking v Whomever. The whomever was the particular politician he interviewed that day.
When interviews are to be sporting fixtures and about winners and losers we need to get real and see them and the media presenting them for what they are.
We get the glib expressions about 'holding politicians to account.' We get those like Hosking and Peter Williams seeming to think they are doing God's work. It is a travesty that it has got to the stage that politicians have to appear in regular time slots on radio and tv. Surely they should be accessible and answer question but now people like Hosking has them over a barrel. Not doing so has them pilloried, and slammed for not fronting.
If during the time of pandemic Beehive pressers Ardern had said to Hosking she wasn't available to him how would he have performed? I can imagine him being one who slammed her for doing those sessions. If she'd said, "My availability is through that session, you're welcome to attend and ask questions," how would he have treated?
Of course Hosking should not chair any TV leaders sessions for the election. He is not a journalist, he is an opinion giver who has continually poured scorn on Ardern. He has an agenda.
Our glorious ex leader Mr Key refused to appear on RadioNZ for most of his first term, and few were too concerned, because they were tuned to ZB or the Edge where he did appear, to share his “shower urinating stories”.
Which is a round about way of saying the PM needs to be where people are. Figure out a better method of slapping down Maserati Mike perhaps rather than banning the ripped jean tosser.
Boris is being machiavellian: using leftists to eliminate wokeism. Are wokesters really such a deserving threat? I doubt it. Ordinary folk think they're a joke.
Spiked: "we cover current affairs from a radical, democratic, pro-freedom and humanist perspective." https://www.spiked-online.com/about-spiked/
Leftist believers in free speech were everywhere when I was young. Good to know a bastion remains in the UK. I wonder if they use a castle & moat?
Political culture wars as mass entertainment is a looming trend, obviously, so we can expect things to get even more Alice In Wonderland for quite a while yet…
BOYCOT ZB BOYCOT HERALD until they remove hoskins
why stop then?
fair point! but got to give them something to aim for
edit
Back to the future – some thoughts about climate change results written in 2015 – what we can look forward to – Covid-19 is part of the problems we have to adjust to. The anomic-atomic business world wished for 'disruption' as being good for business. They have got that, so what do they want to do with it?
I thought this was thoughtful about 1-2 metre level of sea rise expected this century: http://hot-topic.co.nz/the-encroaching-sea-new-nz-sea-level-rise-maps/
Bob Bingham says: April 13, 2015 at 4:38 pm
The danger [from] one metre is mostly economic in that so much infrastructure will be lost that it will cripple the economy and also that of most countries around the world. My blog points to some of the city losses in NZ but a lot of Florida disappears, a huge amount of farmland in the UK and of course Holland.
The biggest worry is the displacement of hundreds of millions of people which will cause civil strife as families are displaced and will cross borders looking for a safe place to live. Worrying about the occasional flood is the least of your worries when you are sharing your property with twenty refugees and the economy is bankrupt.
Also – http://www.climateoutcome.kiwi.nz/
Covid-19:
9 million cases globally*. The most recent million took just 7 days. The previous million took 8 days. The million before that took 9 days.
(*reported by countries – some more honest than others)
Yes. This idea that COVID is over just because most of us are a bit bored with it will be news to the virus.
Thrives on ennui.
This story says so much about National's scare campaign on quarantine. Their MPs (Kaye, Woodhouse) have sided with a small number of well-off residents at the Stamford Plaza in Auckland, and against the hotel staff who could lose their jobs as a consequence.
Herald report here
It's the same as Todd McClay in Rotorua, who is up in arms about the local hotels being used. Meanwhile National do want the hotels used for quarantine in Queenstown. They are all over the place.
It sounded like McLazy's whinge was about lack of training for hotel staff. Not sure how valid that is.
Lisa Owen gave Kaye an easy ride on Checkpoint. Didn't even raise the charge of aiding and abetting nimbyism for the political advantage of claiming that things are 'chaotic'.
Are we surprised that the residents of Stamford Plaza being advised by Woodhouse got the story wrong? This lead to the transfer of detainees to Rotorua instead which then was aired by Woodhouse as he claims, being so wrong.
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=12341855
Almost as if we need a profession whose job it is to take what panicked people say and check it out before passing it on. Used to have a name for that..
It’s normal for appartments like this to have covenants on their titles restricting the residents ability to object to anything the hotel does in their normal operations. The Hotel is rather pissed off and is threatening legal action against the residents.
https://www.rnz.co.nz/national/programmes/checkpoint/audio/2018751732/kaye-confronts-stamford-hotel-over-legal-action-threat
This could get a bit messy for the residents, and anyone who has been advising them to kick up
https://twitter.com/Anthony_Wiggle/status/1274839548271267841
The NSW Premier has just advised against all non-essential travel from the NSW to Victoria.
https://www.smh.com.au/national/coronavirus-updates-live-cases-worldwide-almost-at-nine-million-australian-death-toll-stands-at-102-20200622-p554t7.html
What happens in the states, we copy eventually. This is from a few years ago, on US community policing practises.
Very clear definite Press conference from Jacinda and Woods on now. Well done over the essentials.
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=12341923
After Tulsa, now Jacksonville. Less a dogwhistle, more of a human whistle:
https://www.thedailybeast.com/trumps-convention-speech-in-jacksonville-coincides-with-anniversary-of-kkk-orchestrated-ax-handle-saturday
Kia Ora
The Am Show.
I think it's is correct to charge people who go into quarantine in Aotearoa.
People don't like being stuck in the 12 hours a day treadmill just to stay afloat in Aotearoa.
That's Global Warming.
That's is good Ethiopia planting billions of trees.
Conserving is the best way forward for Aotearoa all resources should be used wisely.
Ka kite Ano
Eco Maori
Kia Ora
Newshub.
It will be cold in Te Waka A Maui.
That's is good NCEA credits for learning about personal finances for students one of the most important subjects for one's prospeary.
Ka kite Ano.
Kia Ora
Te Ao Maori News.
It would be awesome to see more Tangata whenua owning horticultural enterprises like Back in the day.
That will be great when Kapa Haka resumes.
It is good to see that times have changed so it is no longer acceptable to mispronounce Maori names.
That Te reo is like waiata to my ears.
Ka kite Ano.
Kia Ora
The Am Show.
If you're not using The 21 century communication devices to market your goods or service you will not be reaching the highest heights of your busines.
That's is cool the bonsai small forest being planted around Europe trees do much more than just sequester carbon.
Electric cars are improving all the time in time they will be cheaper than gas guzzlers.
Ka kite Ano.
Kia Ora
Newshub.
Times are changing.
That's awesome the fishing bans to protect our Maui and Hector's dolphins.
The lost of Glacier Brewsters ice is a big problem Global Warming 50 to 100 years is not that long and most Glaciers will be gone
Ka kite Ano.
Kia Ora
Te Ao Maori Marama.
Ka pai to Iwi investing in Whare it is a great investment to secure Te Mokopuna futures.
It would be good to have statue and Carving telling Te tangata Whenua stories around Aotearoa.
Awsome A Maori based education game that educates about our environment. That's the future Internet.
Te puia opening again is good.
Ka kite Ano
Kia Ora
The Am Show.
A Dry July sounds good alcohol causes so many negative effects its not funny.
Ka kite Ano.