Open Mike 28/12/2017

Written By: - Date published: 6:00 am, December 28th, 2017 - 15 comments
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15 comments on “Open Mike 28/12/2017 ”

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  1. Ad 1
    28 December 2017 at 10:57 am

    Nicholas Cage does Mr and Mrs Smith and Zombies. Like.

  2. joe90 2
    28 December 2017 at 11:54 am

    Salt in the wound.

    Israel plans to name a train station near the Western Wall in Jerusalem after U.S. President Donald Trump, Transportation Minister Yisrael Katz told the Yedioth Ahronoth daily on Wednesday.

    https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/1.831466

    • Ad 2.1
      28 December 2017 at 11:58 am

      They are well overdue to get a direct line from the main airport to right into Jerusalem. Sure hope our own government can get rail contracts signed inside a term for our own humble extensions.

    • Wensleydale 2.2
      28 December 2017 at 12:01 pm

      Way to go, Israel. You just don’t know when to stop digging, do you?

  3. SPC 3
    28 December 2017 at 12:02 pm

    In the museum at Constantinople there was/is an inscription upon an old stone. It was by King Naram Sin (Akkadian) and it said,

    “We have fallen upon evil times and the world has waxed very old and wicked. Politics are very corrupt. Children are no longer respectful to their parents.”

    This ancient complaint does not depend upon decline, but is just a common observation from those older people who see change as change for the worse – the only really good times being the days of their youth.

    This can be from those like Don Brash, concerned about the proliferation of the Maori language in public space, cultural change with demographic change and the urbanisation of society with a growing population (not to be confused with concern about the environment which is common amongst the younger generation also).

  4. Morrissey 4
    28 December 2017 at 2:00 pm

    Let’s hope that Lorde shows a bit more tenacity and courage
    than Selena Gomez and Rihanna did when THEY faced a storm of abuse

    In 2014, as the number of victims of an Israeli massacre of the civilians in Gaza climbed steadily, two pop stars had the temerity to actually speak out against the killings. However, when the “friends of Israel” hurled abuse at them in the usual way, both of them quailed under the onslaught. Let’s hope Lorde has a bit more intestinal fortitude.

    https://www.billboard.com/articles/columns/pop-shop/6168905/selena-gomez-on-controversial-pray-for-gaza-instagram-post-i-am

    The so-called “friends of Israel”, who support Israel automatically and blindly: this has nothing to do with friendship. They are enemies of Israel—they corrupt us. The Jewish establishment in Australia kept saying to me: “Israel right or wrong.” Well, Israel is wrong and they need to stop supporting it. Continuous support by Western governments and by the Jewish establishment is anything BUT friendship.

    —-Israeli journalist Gideon Levy, speaking in Auckland, 3 December 2017

    http://morrisseybreen.blogspot.co.nz/2017/12/unbelievable-brutality-day-after-day.html

  5. joe90 5
    28 December 2017 at 4:14 pm

    Oh, so it does work.

    FYI @TurnbullMalcolm @JoshFrydenberg @Barnaby_Joyce Tesla’s enormous battery in Australia, just weeks old, is already responding to outages in ‘record’ timehttps://t.co/rlN6IACGfS— Ed Hunter (@EdwardJWHunter) December 26, 2017

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2017/12/26/teslas-enormous-battery-in-australia-just-weeks-old-is-already-responding-to-outages-in-record-time/?utm_term=.ed7376fdb0aa

    19,000 homes in QLD left without power after a blackout following a massive and sudden storm. When this happened in SA, the Fed Govt and conservative commentariat piled on, blaming renewables. In QLD of course, there's massive amounts of fossil fuels, so they're silent.— Alexander White (@alexanderwhite) December 25, 2017

    • Macro 5.1
      28 December 2017 at 4:44 pm

      Thanks for the link Joe – excellent! I was hugely impressed at the extent of wind and solar in SA while visiting there a couple of years back. They don’t have as much hydro as we do to back them up, but the immediacy of the battery is impressive.

  6. joe90 6
    28 December 2017 at 5:23 pm

    McClatchy – Russian imprisoned for his part in lifting more than $50 million from Russian bank accounts reckons he left a digital signature to prove his assertion that he hacked the DNC computers on the request of the FSB.

    (watch out for umbrellas, dude)

    # Konstantin Kozlovsky

    The alleged hacker posted to his Facebook page in December a transcript and an audio recording of his confession during a pre-trial court hearing. He also confessed online to having hacked investigators looking into the crash of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17, brought down in July 2014 by a missile near the disputed Ukrainian border with Russia.

    In written answers from jail made public Wednesday by RAIN TV, a Moscow-based independent TV station that has repeatedly run afoul of the Kremlin, Kozlovsky said he feared his minders might turn on him and planted a “poison pill” during the DNC hack. He placed a string of numbers that are his Russian passport number and the number of his visa to visit the Caribbean island of St. Martin in a hidden .dat file, which is a generic data file.

    http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/nation-world/national/article191857354.html

  7. greywarshark 7
    28 December 2017 at 5:25 pm

    Interesting post –
    https://firstwetakemanhattan.org/2017/12/27/maori-health-and-education-models-can-work-for-everyone/

    And good news. Single parents are not going to be forced to name the father or else (so that they can be punished for being immoral and so the father can be chased up for payments for maintenance). It is good that mothers are not going to be punitively faced with benefit cuts of the already inadequate benefit.

    If the government gets off its arse and provides them with assistance, workshops with other parents so there is no stigma, advice when the going gets touch, incentives to live quietly with opportunities for socialising, and skills education and part-time work as soon as they can get it, minimal hours but so they aren’t separated from mainstream of their peer group….

    That would cut problems down to just a few more than all young people and new parents have.

  8. Ed 8
    28 December 2017 at 5:36 pm

    Max Rashbrooke.

    ‘Wealth and income inequality is rife in New Zealand but agreement on what it looks like is in short supply.
    “A lot of people in middle New Zealand think there is a lot of inequality around, but they are the ones suffering from it,” researcher and author Max Rashbrooke says.
    “People in middle New Zealand are struggling. They are working very hard, and just staying afloat.”’

    https://i.stuff.co.nz/business/money/100211825/unfair-wealth-divide-hurting-middle-nz

    • Macro 8.1
      28 December 2017 at 5:50 pm

      A lot of people in middle New Zealand think there is a lot of inequality around, but they are the ones suffering from it,” researcher and author Max Rashbrooke says.
      “People in middle New Zealand are struggling. They are working very hard, and just staying afloat.

      The new class (in NZ’s “classless” society) are the JAMI’s – those who are “Just About Making It”.

    • gsays 8.2
      28 December 2017 at 8:37 pm

      While not belonging to the group highlighted, I reckon they have a fair bit in common with the precariat, I group I do feel affinity with.