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Open mike 28/06/2025

Written By: - Date published: 6:00 am, June 28th, 2025 - 21 comments
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For announcements, general discussion, whatever you choose.

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21 comments on “Open mike 28/06/2025 ”

  1. Todays Posts 1
    28 June 2025 at 6:00 am

    Today's Posts (updated through the day):

    National Wants to Increase Retirement Age to 67

    Reply
  2. Ad 2
    28 June 2025 at 6:20 am

    It's beginning to look like Xi Jinping has been placed in a concrete box that is shrinking rapidly.

    He's lost all the PLA regional allies he formed, and now lost his PLA ruling committee allies.

    How much power does he really have left now?

    Reply
    • Stephen D 2.1
      28 June 2025 at 8:06 am

      Link?

      Reply
      • Ad 2.1.1
        28 June 2025 at 9:09 am

        It was He Weidong in March, now Miao Hua even though the cold eye has been on him since late last year:

        https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jun/27/top-chinese-general-miao-hua-ousted-from-body-that-oversees-china-military

        True autocrats like Xi without succession plans unfortunately have to keep culling even their nearest and most loyal, because it gets too expensive to both control and reward all their vast phalanx of underlings who in turn hold them up.

        It's been happening for the last couple of years particularly with the dissolution of the regional command structure which was Xi's own plan.

        Which means instability in the greatest power concentration – the military – is definitely one to watch.

        Reply
        • Res Publica 2.1.1.1
          28 June 2025 at 10:02 am

          I wouldn’t read this as instability — not yet, anyway. Because as long as Xi holds the chair of the CMC, he's got an iron grip on the PLA.

          The ousting of people like He Weidong and Miao Hua looks dramatic, but it's actually consistent with a longer-term shift: Xi is dismantling the old semi-rotational, factional military leadership model and replacing it with a loyalty-based chain of command.

          That comes at a cost: but it's deliberate.

          What’s really worth watching isn’t instability per se, but the strategic contradiction at the heart of Xi’s military project. He’s trying to do two things at once:

          • Centralise personal political control over the PLA
          • Modernise and professionalise it into a cutting-edge fighting force to rival the US

          Those two goals clash. You don’t get operational excellence when senior officers are watching their backs more than the battlespace.

          So yeah, the turnover at the top is less a symptom of regime fragility and more a reflection of the internal tension in Xi’s dual agenda.

          It’s not crumbling, but it’s brittle. That’s the risk.

          Reply
    • SPC 2.2
      28 June 2025 at 2:11 pm

      Xi Jinping diminished the status of the former premier, but the current one is restoring the status of the position (in economic policy at least). The two worked together back in 2004-2007.

      https://foreignpolicy.com/2025/06/05/li-qiang-china-premier-economy/

      https://archive.li/zyZYd

      Reply
  3. Dennis Frank 3
    28 June 2025 at 6:29 am

    After a year, Starmer's cautious incremental style has emerged as insufficient for the times in Britain. It became clear to me, from reading his biography, that the guy is authentic, competent, and a relentless competitor. Clearly just what Britain needs. His performance in office suggests he needs a catalyst to help the inner man shine forth.

    Paul Ovenden, Sir Keir's strategy director, circulated a memo to Downing Street aides, which I've obtained. It called for a "relentless focus on the new centre ground in British politics". The crucial swing voters, Ovenden wrote, "are the middle-age, working class, economically squeezed voters that we persuaded in the 2024 election campaign. Many of them voted for us in 2024 thinking we would fix the cost of living, fix the NHS, and reduce migration… we need to become more ruthless in pursuing those outcomes".

    https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cm2l8ge86z7o

    Labour ruthless? A big ask. Too many Brits no longer have a clue what ruth actually is. Yet the lack of it always seems to be evident! If Britain still does politics in current affairs shows (unlike us) they will need to wheel out a linguist talking head to explain the nature of ruth. Labour's strategy director telling everyone that not having ruth is essential means that everybody will need to focus on that real hard!

    Reply
  4. Dennis Frank 4
    28 June 2025 at 7:46 am

    The CFR has a report on Trump's AI strategy in geopolitics here: https://www.cfr.org/article/trumps-ai-gamble-gulf-reshapes-us-tech-strategy

    The rule sorted the world into three camps. Tier 1 countries, including core U.S. allies such as Australia, Japan, and the United Kingdom, were exempt from restrictions, whereas tier 3 countries, such as Russia, China, and Iran, were subject to the extremely stringent controls. The core controversy of the diffusion rule stemmed from the tier 2 bucket, which included some 150 countries including India, Mexico, Israel, Switzerland, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates. Many tier 2 states, particularly Gulf powers with deep economic and military ties to the United States, were furious.

    Trump seems not to have proclaimed this triad, so it will only be apparent to readers who can count to 3. Here's the relevance:

    In May, the Trump administration killed the diffusion rule, days before it would have been set into motion, in part to facilitate the export of these cutting-edge chips abroad to the Gulf powers. This represents a fundamental pivot for AI policy, but potentially also in the logic of U.S. grand strategy vis-à-vis China.

    Reliance on AI as an organising scheme for state defence depends on how cleverly the chips are configured into operating systems. So it will still be a chess game on the global board, only difference is cleverer chips. All players will face uncertainty: the rules don't define relativity between chip configurations. What a piece on the board is capable of is unknown until it operates in context, at which point the wave function collapses. Until then the balance of power is totally conjectural, speculative, mere basis for bluster…

    Reply
  5. Bearded Git 5
    28 June 2025 at 9:54 am

    This is what the current Israeli government and its supporters want:

    • “All of Gaza’s infrastructures must be destroyed to its foundation and their electricity cut off immediately. The war is not against Hamas but against the state of Gaza,” said May Golan, minister for social equality and the advancement of the status of women of Israel on 7 October 2023.
    • “Flatten everything [in Gaza] just like it is today in Auschwitz,” David Azoulay, council leader for the northern Israeli town of Metula, said in an interview with an Israeli radio station, December 2023.
    • “[I]t’s an entire nation out there that is responsible. it’s not true this rhetoric about civilians not aware not involved, it’s absolutely not true …” Isaac Herzog, Israel’s president, said at a press conference on 13 October (in English).
    • “Now we all have one common goal – erasing the Gaza Strip from the face of the Earth” Nissim Vaturi, deputy speaker of the Israeli parliament, wrote on X 7 October 2023. Vaturi also wrote: “The war will never end if we don’t expel everyone.” (2 November 2023) and “To wipe out Gaza. Nothing else will satisfy us … Don’t leave a single child there, expel all the remaining ones in the end, so they have no chance of recovery.” (9 October 2023)
    • “The children and women must be separated and the adults in Gaza must be eliminated. We are being too considerate,” Vaturi said during an interview with Kol BaRama radio in February 2025, when he also called Palestinians “subhumans” and said the West Bank would be turned into Gaza next.
    • “The Gaza Strip should be flattened, and for all of them there is but one sentence, and that is death,” Yitzhak Kroizer, a member of national security minister Itamar Ben Gvir’s far-right Otzma Yehudit party, said in a radio interview. This did not get much international coverage but was cited in the letter sent to the attorney general at the end of 2023 accusing the country’s judicial authorities of ignoring incitement to genocide.
    • “Gaza won’t return to what it was before. We will eliminate everything,” Israeli defence minister Yoav Gallant, said October 2023. (Gallant was in this position at the time of the statement but is no longer in government)
    • “I’m not sure you’re speaking for us when you say we want to treat every child and every woman. I hope you don’t stand behind that statement either. When fighting a group like this, the distinctions that exist in a normal world don’t exist,” said Likud parliament member Amit Halevi in the Knessest, in response to a statement from an Israeli doctor saying suffering children should get painkillers, May 2025.
    • “The children in Gaza have brought this upon themselves,” said Meirav Ben-Ari from Yair Lapid’s opposition party Yesh Atid in response to a Palestinian lawmaker bemoaning the loss of civilian life on 16 October 2023.
    • “There should be 2 goals for this victory: 1. There is no more Muslim land in the Land of Israel … After we make it the land of IL, Gaza should be left as a monument, like Sodom …” said Likud member of the Knesset Amit Halevi on 16 October 2023.
    • “They [the children] are our enemies,” said Simcha Rothman, a member of the Knesset for the National Religious party, part of prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition. Rothman was responding to a question from a Channel 4 (UK) interviewer asking “the children are your enemies?”

    https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/jun/27/israel-gaza-propaganda

    Reply
  6. SPC 6
    28 June 2025 at 2:02 pm

    The ACT party is shameless.

    It is the international corporate personified as a man bending over and shaking his buttocks at the sensibilities of nation state society (and whatever civilisation values it has built up over generations).

    It exists to glorify capital (local and foreign) as the centre of our world, a veritable Atlas Network is established to serve its cause and here, it is called ACT.

    https://www.stuff.co.nz/politics/360738217/verity-johnson-david-seymours-greatest-strength-may-also-be-his-greatest-weakness

    It is no longer a joke, it might be what drives us to become the 7th state of Australia to escape its capture of our realm.

    Reply
    • Drowsy M. Kram 6.1
      28 June 2025 at 5:23 pm

      The ACT party is shameless.

      yes ACT MPs are self-serving arseholes – neoliberalists nay-saying the common good. They toil tirelessly is pursuit of greater freedom to accumulate (much more) money.

      ACT = Defend Division by Wealth

      Regulatory Standards Bill under fire for limiting Parliament’s sovereignty
      [19 June 2025]
      “In a lake stocked with minnows and minnow-eating pike, freedom for the pike means death to the minnows.” Isaiah Berlin was warning us to be wary of occasions when the rich [sorted] and powerful seek greater freedom. They already have a great deal of freedom, usually a lot more than the rest of us.

      Reply
  7. Ad 7
    28 June 2025 at 5:49 pm

    So what I can't figure out is why the oil price has stabilised around US$70 a barrel despite the attacks on Iran by Israel and the United States.

    OPEC hasn't militarised its pricing or its production or its supply contracts, unlike the 1970s.

    The Arabs aren't uniting, again unlike …

    The Abrahamic Accords are unbelievably held though everyone is condemning the attacks themselves. …

    Totally illegal attacks on all sides, just generating more terror …

    Why have Trump and Netanyahu won?

    Reply
  8. Anne 8
    28 June 2025 at 6:04 pm

    That famous New Zealander, Peter Thiel is building an "AI Driven Mass Surveillance State" see The Jackal's latest on the side feed.

    Excerpt:

    What we're witnessing is the methodical construction of a technological police state where artificial intelligence serves as judge, jury, and executioner of social acceptability. The algorithms don't just collect data, they make decisions about who gets flagged, investigated, harassed, or worse. And once this infrastructure is complete, rolling it back will be virtually impossible.

    Be assured it already exists. Not AI driven, but the ability to dig into people's lives at the push of a button (so to speak) has been operating on a massive scale for many years and most importantly… it is not confined to just American citizenry. Anyone, anywhere can be – and has been – investigated, harassed and intimidated by the Americans on the flimsiest of evidence or false evidence provided by a third party.

    How do I know? Because it happened to me.

    Reply
  9. Craig 9
    30 June 2025 at 4:20 pm

    The suits are at it again, proposing to increase retirement age. My mum and dad were victims of the first fazed in age increases to retirement age. They had their own house but little in savings, dad had been a freezing worker and mum a bank employee. My dad like me had worked a physical job 30+ years and it had taken its toll. At 63 he got to receive super annuation and in 5 years he was gone due to various cancers. At 59 I'm already struggling with back injuries and joint problems from accidents and live on pain killers to get me through the days self employed workload. It's infuriating to me that after working two jobs and high overtime hours paying extra in taxes all my life just to provide for my family and get ahead, my reward is to have to work longer if indeed the proposition to increase retirement age goes ahead and gets passed. My back hasn't got 6 years left in as it progressively gets worse let alone an extension.

    Reply

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