Open Mike 26/12/2016

Written By: - Date published: 7:03 am, December 26th, 2016 - 63 comments
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63 comments on “Open Mike 26/12/2016 ”

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  1. Paul 1
    26 December 2016 at 8:37 am

    The big news.

    Arctic to be 20C hotter than average in-record breaking North Pole heatwave.

    The North Pole will be hit by an unprecedented heatwave this Christmas because of man-made climate change, scientists say.
    The centre of the Arctic will be 20 degrees hotter than average, at around 0C freezing, on Christmas Eve.
    Dr Friederike Otto, a senior researcher at Oxford’s Environmental Change Institute, said scientists are “very confident” that the weather patterns were linked to anthropogenic climate change.
    “In all our methods, we find the same thing,” said Dr Otto.
    “We cannot model a heatwave like this without the anthropogenic signal.”
    It follows sea-ice levels reaching record lows this year and the sea-water levels rising by almost 7.8 inches since 1870.
    Temperatures in the Arctic throughout November and December have been 5C higher than average.
    Warm air from the North Atlantic is forecast to fly over the North Pole, via the Norwegian island of Spitsbergen, on 24 December.
    “If the globe is warming, then the sea ice and ice on land [shrinks], then the darker water and land is exposed,” said Dr Otto, speaking to BBC News, who added that this heatwave could occur every other year.
    “Then the sunlight is absorbed rather than reflected as it would be by the ice.”
    North Pole 50 degrees hotter than usual in pre-Christmas heatwave
    Dr Thorsten Markus, chief of Nasa’s Cryospheric Sciences Laboratory, said the heatwave was “very, very unusual” and added that: “The eerie thing is that we saw something quite similar almost exactly a year ago.”

    • Draco T Bastard 1.1
      26 December 2016 at 12:37 pm

      Prince of tides: New Zealand’s shrinking coastline

      As Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment Jan Wright has noted in the report Preparing New Zealand for Rising Seas, with a 30cm sea level rise the damaging high tide that bashed Wellington during the “100-year-storm” in 2013 (photographed here) could be expected once a year. With a 70cm rise, these watery land-grabs would occur at every tide.

      Subsidence in South Dunedin, combined with sea-level rise, will result in so-called 100-year coastal flooding events happening several times a year by mid-century. And changes in sediment deposition and ongoing subsidence associated with the Christchurch earthquakes have massively increased the risk of coastal flooding for large parts of that city.

      Just in case people think that we won’t be affected by ongoing global warming.

  2. Paul 2
    26 December 2016 at 8:42 am

    Reported by the western media

    Christians in Mosul-area town liberated from Isis celebrate Christmas

    Not reported by the western media

    • Psycho Milt 2.1
      26 December 2016 at 8:49 am

      Two regime supporters blathering on about “the terrorists” weren’t reported by the western media? I’m shocked.

      • Paul 2.1.1
        26 December 2016 at 9:08 am

        Mosul?
        Fallujah?
        Yemen?

        US atrocities on an epic scale yet barely a word from the US, UK and NZ corporate media. Can’t you see the different way the same stories are reported totally differently reported?

        As to Aleppo. we now we have some interesting figures. Before the recent eastern Aleppo “moderate” headchoppers’ defeat around 150,000 people lived there, but ten times more, some 1,500,000 lived in Syrian government held parts of the city. Following the rebel defeat just over 30,000 decided to go and join the other jihadists in Idlib, but four times as many opted to stay in government territory – and yet to listen to the MSM you would still think that those 30,000 jihadists and their families were all of Aleppo!

        • Gabby 2.1.1.1
          26 December 2016 at 10:19 am

          Where are the casualties hidden? In the 30,000 or the 120,000?

          • garibaldi 2.1.1.1.1
            26 December 2016 at 10:30 am

            Dear Paul and PM,
            It would be really good if you two could accept that you are always going to disagree on the truth in Syria and both back off and leave well alone. You both have your points but, and I’m sure many will agree, your diatribes are not working.

            • Paul 2.1.1.1.1.1
              26 December 2016 at 10:48 am

              Happy to agree to that
              🙂

            • Jilly Bee 2.1.1.1.1.2
              26 December 2016 at 2:22 pm

              Thank you garibaldi – I’m finding it extremely irritating. I want the truth to come out but my immediate concern is for the innocents trying to survive, i e the children and their parents and other civilians and also the hospitals and doctors and staff trying against all odds to do their vital work. Whoever is bombing them into oblivion needs their collective heads read. I’m sorry I can’t come up with a better idea because suggesting an eye for an eye simply won’t be a solution.

        • Psycho Milt 2.1.1.2
          26 December 2016 at 10:53 am

          US atrocities on an epic scale yet barely a word from the US, UK and NZ corporate media. Can’t you see the different way the same stories are reported totally differently reported?

          US atrocities in Mosul, Fallujah and Yemen? As far as I can see, the media isn’t reporting them because they aren’t happening. And they have reported on what the Saudi regime’s doing in Yemen.

    • Jenny 2.2
      26 December 2016 at 6:00 pm

      Don’t support fascism

      (It really shouldn’t have to be said).

      Which means don’t support genocidal regimes and their foreign allies committing mass murder from the safety of the sky. A crime against humanity not matched in scale and ferocity since the bombing of Guernica and Warsaw by fascist airforces in WWII, nor indeed since the Allied Forces aerial genocide carried out against German and Japanese civilian cities with firestorm and nuclear weapons.

      • Paul 2.2.1
        26 December 2016 at 6:37 pm

        I do not support fascism.

        • Jenny 2.2.1.1
          26 December 2016 at 6:53 pm

          “I do not support fascism.”

          Paul

          I didn’t mention your name Paul, but you obviously feel that my criticism above applies to you.

          Are you are feeling the pin prick of conscience for being a supporter of the Assad regime?

          • Paul 2.2.1.1.1
            26 December 2016 at 7:03 pm

            Your comment was a reply to my post at 2. Therefore I assumed it was directed at me.

            Garibaldi requested that folk leave off making their points about Syria. Out of respect to her, I have desisted from making further comments.

            I choose to disagree with your view and do not like your assertion that I support the Assad regime, but shall leave it alone.

            However if you continue to post the links you do, I may put forward the views of independent journalists who disagree with the points you make.

            • Jenny 2.2.1.1.1.1
              26 December 2016 at 8:21 pm

              “….if you continue to post the links you do, I may put forward the views of independent journalists who disagree with the points you make.”

              Paul

              Very well, since you decry anything that comes from the MSM media as being biased against the regime, let us start with this:

              http://litci.org/en/rami-makhlouf-a-corruption-poster-boy/

              “The Panama Papers have revealed what all Syrians fighting for freedom and the coherent sector of the Left already knew: the Assad regime is not only dictatorial, bloody and extremely repressive, it is also deeply corrupt and a great defender of neoliberalism.
              That is the first and most established face of imperialist policies in the country, not the people in arms! Unfortunately, there is still a sector of the “Left” that persists in ignoring reality.”

              • Jenny …
                26 December 2016 at 8:45 pm

                Paul the childishly simplistic and erronous narrative, (that you now seem to be backing away from); maintains that Syria has been invaded as part of a planned “regime change” by the Western powers, and not primarily a mass democratic revolt by the Syrian people against the oppressive dictatorship of the Assad regime.

                What do your stable of ‘independent journalists who disagree with the points I make’, have to say about the following, which shows that Bashar Assad is very far from being an enemy of imperialism and instead as my previous post points out, is more a partner with imperialism in ripping off his own people, than its opponent.

                http://www.democraticunderground.com/10023538868

                That the dictator now seems to fallen out of favour with the West is more to do with a recognition of the power of the popular revolutionary movement against him, than any genuine support for the struggle of the Syrian people to rid themselves of tyranny.

                • Paul …
                  26 December 2016 at 9:41 pm

                  I am not backing away from my view that we have been lied to about the events in Syria by the western media. I agree with the views of the independent journalists I have referenced over the past week. I respect the work of experienced reporters like Patrick Cockburn, Robert Fisk, John Pilger and Peter Oborne.

                  I am merely trying to avoid a flame war.

                  • Jenny …
                    27 December 2016 at 1:43 am

                    So according to you Paul your sources are so ilustrious that you (and they) don’t have to address the facts.

                    But as the saying goes, ‘Facts are stubbourn things’.

                    Just because you or your arrayed stable of illustrious experts refuse to address them, doesn’t mean that they will go away.

                    So what do your stable of experts have to say, about the 19,000 Syrian troops that Bashar Assad supplied to George Bush Senior’s “Coalition Of The Willing”?

                    What do your experts have to say about the Arab Spring, the single greatest uprising, by sheer weight of numbers, in human history. Dwarfing the numbers involved in the French and Russian revolutions combined. At one time 20 million Egyptians were in the streets protesting against the regime of Hosni Mubarak.

                    Are you and them of the opinion that this was all a CIA conspiracy?

                    What about the dictatorship itself, how come all the heads of government in Syria seem to be directly related to the ruling family directly or by marriage. And what do you have to say about the ruling elite around Assad letting the world bank into privatise all the state assets while coruptly taking a cut for themselves?

                    You refuse to address any of these questions with the lame excuse that you don’t want to start a flame war.

                    The truth is your support for mass murder and destruction wrought by the regime and its allies against the Syrian people which the whole world is witness to, has no moral or ethical basis, which you can openly defend. And you know it.

      • Paul 2.2.2
        27 December 2016 at 11:02 am

        Don’t support fascism.
        The head chopping Jihadis of Aleppo have left evidence behind of how they treat their opponents.
        Cheerleaders for the ‘rebels’ need to be aware of the vicious authoritarian criminals they are aligning themselves with.
        Assad is a dictator -(Once the war ends, I sense the Russians will retire him) yet his opponents are so awful, most Syrians prefer his regime to a gang who would impose a barbarism is becoming more evident by the day.

        ” Russian troops have found mass graves in Aleppo with bodies showing signs of torture and mutilation, the Russian defence ministry has claimed.

        Major General Igor Konashenkov said the Russians “found mass graves of several dozens of Syrians who suffered atrocious torture and massacre”.

        In a statement, he said some of the bodies had been mutilated and some had gunshot wounds.”

        http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/aleppo-syria-mass-graves-russia-claims-rebels-torture-mutilation-massacre-a7496066.html

    • GregJ 2.3
      26 December 2016 at 10:21 pm

      It was reported in a number of Western media sources:

      http://www.reuters.com/video/2016/12/22/celebrating-victory-in-aleppo?videoId=370787914

      France 24 showed footage a few days ago.

  3. AsleepWhileWalking 3
    26 December 2016 at 8:51 am

    Snopes…yet another site with political bias that isn’t obvious at first.

    http://www.naturalnews.com/2016-12-25-snopes-fact-checkers-actual-whores-david-mikkelson-elyssa-young-presstitutes-fraud.html

    (Article above implies that sex acts make you somehow inappropriate to have opinions or a life in general. Apologies for that. You should know that Mike Adams battles with his own beliefs. Think he is either a Scientologist or JW, either way both are cults imo)

    • AsleepWhileWalking 4.1
      26 December 2016 at 10:23 am

      http://financialsurvivalnetwork.com/2016/12/chris-martenson-fake-news-and-the-demise-of-the-legacy-media/

      Did you know that audio and video disengage your critical thinking? Apparently so.
      Key message: Read your news, avoid radio and TV. Ugh.

    • Andre 4.2
      26 December 2016 at 10:37 am

      That looked interesting, so I went looking for more information. While it seems to be all over the kook and crank websites that live by gathering clicks from the gullible, there’s a definite lack of sober fact-checking analysis raising concerns about the legislation.

      So for now, it looks to me like it probably belongs in the “fake news” basket. Fortunately it’s less likely to result in people harming each other than that “pizzagate’ bullshit you sprayed all over the place.

    • Fisiani 5.1
      26 December 2016 at 12:15 pm

      I too am concerned about the plight of the 1% of the population who still struggle despite living in the best country in the world. That would be 47,000 people out of 4,700,000. There is no simple solution given the multiplicity of situations but as Hamilton has shown the answers are local and I reckon we could aim to abolish homelessness in NZ within three years. This is not politics. This is community concern. The other 99% can make it happen.

      • Paul 5.1.1
        26 December 2016 at 12:30 pm

        Bryan Bruce’s Facebook post on the December 24th is the best riposte to your hateful lies.
        I have put in bold the statistics that would shame you if you had a conscience or some empathy.
        You come over as the Ebenezer Scrooge of 2016.

        The Ghost of Poverty This Christmas.

        In 1843 ( three years after the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi) Charles Dickens released his classic tale A Christmas Carol.
        Creatives are like sponges. They soak up what’s happening in society before unleashing their commentary through their work.
        Dickens was a master of it.
        A year earlier he’d read a British parliamentary report on the condition of children working in mines for 10 hours a day – naked,starving and sick.
        The cause of this misery, he recognised , was greed – a few people getting very rich at the expense of the many.
        (Sound familiar?)
        So, in that magical way it takes a genius to do , Dickens poured all of Victorian Britain’s mean -spiritedness into his fictional character Ebenezer Scrooge – the miserly old man who hates Christmas.
        Until, that is, he is visited on Christmas Eve by three Ghosts (Of Christmas Past and Present and Yet To Come) who reveal to him how giving can be much more rewarding than taking.
        173 years on a lot of Kiwis have got that message. They help their friends and neighbours whenever they can, they run food banks, free used clothing and furniture outlets , and open their maraes to the homeless.
        But none of these things would be necessary if the meanness of Scrooge had not become institutionalised into the neoliberal economic policies successive New Zealand governments have promoted over the last 30 years.
        Yes it’s true that children no longer work in factories or down mines – but that’s simply proof ( if proof be needed) that things can change if we vote to alter them.
        What I suspect, however, is that if Dickens could return like one of his ghosts to visit us today, he’d look in dismay at the long lines of poor outside the City Missions this Christmas and tell us that we are going backwards towards to the selfish society he railed against – where the poor were dependent on the goodwill of strangers for food and the essentials of life.
        That we have lost sight of what is really important is clear….
        . 85,000 of our children are living in severe hardship
        (Think the entire population of Palmerston North)
        •14 % of our kids (155,000) are experiencing material hardship which means they are living without seven or more necessary items for their wellbeing.
        (Think – almost the entire population of Hamilton)
        • 28% per cent of our children (295,000) are living in low income homes and experiencing material hardship as a result.
        (Think – the entire combined populations of Hamilton,Dunedin, Wanganui and Timaru )
        So thank you to all of the good people throughout our country who know this widening gap between the have and have-not isn’t right and do so much to help those less fortunate than themselves.
        But let’s also make a new year’s resolution – to encourage our friends and families and everyone we know to vote for a better deal for all our children next year.
        10% of New Zealanders now own 60% of the wealth of our country while the bottom 20% own nothing of worth at all.
        Let’s make the scrooges of New Zealand pay their fair.
        My very best wishes to all of you this Christmas Eve.
        Take care.

        share.me.https://www.facebook.com/www.redsky.tv/posts/1208889542526729:0

        • fisiani 5.1.1.1
          26 December 2016 at 2:51 pm

          Do you really believe than more than 1 in 4 children in NZ are experiencing material hardship? There is an issue of course but that sort of hyperbole is unbelievable.

          • Paul 5.1.1.1.1
            26 December 2016 at 2:54 pm

            You will find everything you want to know here.
            http://www.childpoverty.co.nz/

            • fisiani 5.1.1.1.1.1
              26 December 2016 at 5:13 pm

              Do you believe that report is truthful? False news.

              • Paul …
                26 December 2016 at 6:33 pm

                There is no point discussing issues with you.

                • James …
                  26 December 2016 at 8:37 pm

                  He’s asking a pretty basic question – what’s the harm in answering it – or does answering it truthfully it back up your links ?

                  • Paul …
                    26 December 2016 at 9:43 pm

                    The harm is that fisiani spends a lot of time trolling on this site.
                    I am not interested in discussing the views of people who deny climate change or poverty/inequality. I have better things to do.

              • Pat …
                27 December 2016 at 8:43 pm

                false news??…a study and report from Otago Uni, NZs highest regarded University ….supported by a further report by the gov funded office of the children”s commissioner…..trip, trap.

                man, I hope they pay you well.

  6. Paul 6
    26 December 2016 at 11:45 am

    Interesting reading.

    Climate disruption Nature needs our help

    An excerpt….

    New Zealand’s ecosystems were once resilient. But this resilience has been undermined by the dramatic changes people have made to the landscape. Forests have been burnt and felled, wetlands drained and coasts built on. Many of New Zealand’s once widespread native plants and animals are restricted by development and pests. Once extensive and interconnected, lowland forest now exists in isolated pockets. Pests roam the land, and weeds choke regenerating forests. All of this makes nature vulnerable to climate disruption.
    New Zealand has 985 species that are threatened with extinction and a further 2,772 at risk. New threats from climate disruption could push up to 70 of them over the edge to extinction by the end of the century

    • Tinfoilhat 7.1
      26 December 2016 at 12:04 pm

      Pointing the finger at the Ukraine with no evidence if only as a hypothesis is not thought provoking, it is however, both daft and mischievous which is what one would expect from that website.

  8. Paul 8
    26 December 2016 at 12:06 pm

    A clip from Good Will Hunting that will make you think.

  9. ropata 9
    26 December 2016 at 12:11 pm

    Steve Braunias : 2016 – The way we were
    An apocalyptic vision, deep, loved it
    http://nzh.tw/11771632

  10. Paul 10
    26 December 2016 at 12:14 pm

    An elegy for America…and New Zealand.

  11. Paul 11
    26 December 2016 at 12:24 pm

    Another musician has left us.
    George Michael
    53.
    R.I.P.

  12. ropata 12
    26 December 2016 at 12:46 pm

    This Christmas, Don’t Forget That Jesus Was A Socialist

    http://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/13854296

  13. Glenn 13
    26 December 2016 at 4:24 pm

    Heaven must be getting rather crowded with singers, musicians and actors not to mention the Red Army Choir. 2016 has been a rough year on them all.
    Hopefully Carrie Fisher will beat the odds and stay on this side of the turf.

    • mpledger 13.1
      27 December 2016 at 8:44 am

      I’m in the generation after the Baby Boomers and I’m beginning to think that my generation is going to be the “grief generation”. With such a large cohort of people entering old age than the generation behind them is going to know many more people dying than would be usual (outside of war).

  15. GregJ 15
    26 December 2016 at 10:05 pm

    Just a general inquiry – why are comments taking so long to appear? Is there some form of moderation in place or a change in the system software or…?

    I used to post a comment and it would appear within 30 seconds. Now it takes a lot longer (at least 10 minutes sometimes even longer than that).

    [lprent: There are a lot of security systems in place on this site to prevent spamming, impersonations, trolling and other annoying and moderator time consuming behaviours. They usually work pretty well and save the volunteer moderators an awful lot of time.

    One is that if you enter your handle or email differently, then you get treated as being a new user to the system. That means you have to have at least one comment released by a moderator before you can automatically have comments appear. This is pretty common, especially when people don’t watch their caps or punctuation or spelling.

    At present a more sophisticated security system is having a conniptions about certain people and/or machines. Probably on the basis of IP numbers and/or the the reported locations and/or people using VPNs and/or ’email’ addresses it perceives people as coming from. You and a few others are getting hit by it.

    I haven’t managed to pinpoint what security system is doing it as the dratted things don’t log and I don’t have the energy (or time) to watch in real time. So comments caught in auto-spam like yours tend to sit there until one of the moderators releases them.

    Another separate issue (that doesn’t affect you) is due to people with logins not using them. The system views that as being a probable impersonation.

    A simple solution to the first and second problems may be to have people just get logins. However I haven’t had time to reactivate and test the security on that system. Last time it was running it caused a lot of work for me dealing with non-human bots and the silly trolls. I don’t have that time to expend. ]

  16. GregJ 16
    26 December 2016 at 11:36 pm

    To follow up on my earlier post it’s nearly 1.5 hours later and it still hasn’t appeared.

    [lprent: Holiday time. Personally I didn’t get out of bed until midday after binge watching the last episodes of The Good Wife with Lyn until 0400 last night. What do you expect for the cost of the service? ]

    • GregJ 16.1
      27 December 2016 at 5:39 pm

      Thanks Lprent – no criticism implied – more a test for me to see when it appeared.

      Enjoy your break.