Thanks to LPrent, weka, Ad, Incognito, Mickey, Bill and all the others that make this site possible. I value this community and it has been a great help in understanding news, politics and the challenges involved in trying to be progressive.
Surprisingly I feel compelled to acknowledge Countdown supermarket chain and First Union for their leadership. To have workers on $21.15 an hour after a years service is fantastic. This has to be directly linked to Labour coalition raising the minimum wage to the living wage.
Also Countdowns decision to only sell New Zealand pork. I know this is last years news but it bears repeating.
And.. 12 months ago we had three world cups to look forward to. If you were told we would only win one, how many would have picked the Silver Ferns? Congratulations Noeline Taurua for helping turn around the team.
Many educated and better off people around the globe are surreptitiously eyeing New Zealand as that last great safe bolt hole for them and their families to escape to when rising local temperatures and extreme weather events get too much to bear.
But if it could happen in Tasmania it could happen here.
December 31, 2019
For Australians looking to escape the scorching summer heat, Tasmania, the country's closest point to the South Pole, is usually a safe bet. But that wasn't the case on Monday (December 30) when temperatures in the icy cool island's capital Hobart soared to a devilish 40.8 degrees Celsius, or 105.4 Fahrenheit. That's the city's hottest day on record – double the average summer temperature and even higher than in some parts of the country's tropical north. Simon McCulloch is a senior forecaster at the Bureau of Meteorology in Tasmania.
Yes – I was surprised at just how representative the Democrat representation in Congress is of the US demographic. It is also saddening to see that the Republican Party takes 90% of its representation from just 30% of the Demographic.
Well yes But all white males – and indications are that the GOP ethnic representation after 2020 will be even worse. It is estimated that after 2020 97% of GOP representatives will be white.
This actually spell the death nell for the GOP as Black, Hispanic and other ethnicities are now now waking up to the need to vote against them.
eg
A majority of black Americans are more interested in voting in the 2020 presidential election than they were in 2016, according to a national survey of 1200 black voters and non-voters conducted by Third Way and the Joint Center.
Why it matters: Black voter turnout declined significantly in 2016 nationally and in key swing states, ultimately contributing to Hillary Clinton's loss to Donald Trump. New details from focus groups and polling suggests that the motivation to remove Trump from office is firing up black Americans to head to the polls next November.
Just two vendors — Election Systems & Software, LLC (ES&S) and Dominion Voting — account for eighty percent of US election equipment. Thus, corrupt insiders or foreign hackers could wreak havoc on elections throughout the United States by infiltrating either of these vendors.
Corrupt insiders?
ES&S and Dominion are both owned by private equity, which means we don’t know who funds and controls them. And what little we do know is concerning
This actually spell the death nell for the GOP as Black, Hispanic and other ethnicities are now now waking up to the need to vote against them.
I doubt it. They'll just gerrymander the electoral system so that their votes are deemed invalid for some preposterous reason, or they can't even get to vote at all.
Oh! they have tried. And if tRump gets his way they will do it some more – but their recent efforts have been stymied by the courts, and they have had to go back to drawing up fairer boundaries. The blue wave of 2018 wasn't just in the federal system it was overall and repugnants – apart from in the Senate don't have quite the sway they had in the past. tRumps huge influx of right wing judges however could have some influence in the future but at present the courts are holding back some of the bat shit extremes.
Further to my comment above – I was aware that this court action was in progress but it has just been finalised. Just one example of how the courts are holding back the disenfranchisement of some Americans at this stage.
So despite the total fire ban the RFS has decided the Sydney NY fireworks display can go ahead. This seems so very, very wrong especially after losing 80% of the Koala population along with everything else.
Very High to Extreme fire danger is forecast across parts NSW tomorrow , 11 areas have been declared under Total Fire Ban.
Operators wishing to undertake fireworks displays in an area where a Total Fire Ban has been declared MUST apply for an exemption (https://t.co/Ws3U9yvKld) pic.twitter.com/7meX0zAaiV
— NSW RFS (@NSWRFS) December 30, 2019
The world-renowned Sydney Harbour New Year’s Eve fireworks display has been approved despite the NSW Rural Fire Service declaring a total fire ban today for the city…..
Sometimes I wonder if people know what the word 'emergency' means
The struggle for leadership between the supporters of business as usual and the realists.
The display may have the green light from officials but a growing online campaign is fighting to cancel all fireworks demonstrations across Australia.
A change.org petition calling to “Say NO to FIREWORKS NYE 2019 – give the money to farmers and firefighters” has gathered more than 272,600 signatures from supporters, who don’t want to celebrate the start of 2020 with a fireworks display.
John Barilaro, Deputy Premier of NSW, yesterday expressed his support for shutting down the fireworks display, calling it a “very easy decision”.
The NSW leader of the Nationals said cancelling the display was about a show of unity, as Australia worked through the ongoing bushfire and drought crisis.
“Sydney’s New Year’s Eve Fireworks should just be cancelled, very easy decision,” Barilaro wrote on Twitter.
“The risk is too high and we must respect our exhausted RFS volunteers. If regional areas have had fireworks banned, then let’s not have two classes of citizens. We’re all in this crisis together.”
Many disagreed with the deputy’s comments, saying people were looking forward to the annual fireworks display. Others praised his comments.
The struggle for leadership between the supporters of business as usual and the realists.
The display may have the green light from officials but a growing online campaign is fighting to cancel all fireworks demonstrations across Australia.
A change.org petition calling to “Say NO to FIREWORKS NYE 2019 – give the money to farmers and firefighters” has gathered more than 272,600 signatures from supporters, who don’t want to celebrate the start of 2020 with a fireworks display.
John Barilaro, Deputy Premier of NSW, yesterday expressed his support for shutting down the fireworks display, calling it a “very easy decision”.
The NSW leader of the Nationals said cancelling the display was about a show of unity, as Australia worked through the ongoing bushfire and drought crisis.
“Sydney’s New Year’s Eve Fireworks should just be cancelled, very easy decision,” Barilaro wrote on Twitter.
“The risk is too high and we must respect our exhausted RFS volunteers. If regional areas have had fireworks banned, then let’s not have two classes of citizens. We’re all in this crisis together.”
Many disagreed with the deputy’s comments, saying people were looking forward to the annual fireworks display. Others praised his comments.
Should Sydneysiders enjoy their fire works display while the rest of Australia suffers?
Should Australia profit from coal while Pacific Islands are being destroyed?
Much like those who argue that the risk of an oil leak from deep sea oil drilling off our coasts is remote.
There will be commentators, (possibly even on this forum), who will argue that the chance of fire caused by the Sydney Harbour fireworks display is negligble. The display is on barges away from the shore line in the middle of the harbour, they will argue, the chance of things going wrong is very remote.
And they are right.
That is not the point.
The point is this:
The NSW leader of the Nationals said cancelling the display was about a show of unity, as Australia worked through the ongoing bushfire and drought crisis.
“The risk is too high and we must respect our exhausted RFS volunteers. If regional areas have had fireworks banned, then let’s not have two classes of citizens. We’re all in this crisis together.”
John Barilaro, Deputy Premier of NSW
John Barilaro's statement makes a very telling argument.
At a deeper level John Barilaro's statement speaks to the wider global divide over climate change. Those most badly affected by climate change are often the poorest and the least responsible for the crisis, the Pacific Islanders, whose lands are being devastated by rising seas and tropical climate change fueled super storms, and who pleaded that Australia ‘not open your coal mines’.
John Barilaro demands, "…let’s not have two classes of citizens. We’re all in this crisis together.”
John Barilaro's demand not to have two classes of citizens excorciates the likes of business as usual politician Australia's Deputy Prime Minister Michael McCormack who in reply to the Pacific Leaders Forum plea to ‘not open your coal mines’, said that Pacific Islanders can survive climate change by picking our fruit.
The Sydney display is off the bridge and barges and in an urban area (not much fuel) so I expect that the exemption was granted by the fire service because it falls below the threshold for risk.
Also, the calls for the cost of the display to be donated to the fire service are surely unrealistic as there will be a contract and the display takes many months to set up. People also need to be able to celebrate in their traditional way if possible and have some time out – this is especially important when you have been living in a state of emergency for a while. I hope it all goes off spectacularly well and people have a good time.
There will be commentators, (possibly even on this forum), who will argue that the chance of fire caused by the Sydney Harbour fireworks display is negligble. The display is on barges away from the shore line in the middle of the harbour, they will argue, the chance of things going wrong is very remote.
But as I also wrote "That is not the point".
Hi Pingao because you seem to have missed the whole point of my comment.
I will hammer it out so that you can't miss it.
The point is –
Are we all in this together, or are we not?
The point is –
Should we party up, while volunteer fire fighters are risking everything to save others?
The point is –
Should we celebrate the fact that climate change will soon provide us with a lot of desperate Pacific Islanders to pick our fruit?
The point is –
Should we have two classes of citizens, or should we not?
The point is –
Should we be ignoring the suffering of the firefighters?
The point is –
Should we be like the Australian Prime Minister who only belatedly after protests cancelled his fun holiday in Hawaii to come back and pass emergency legislation to address the dire financial needs of the fire fighters whose bills had been piling up?
The point is –
Should we be allowing new coal mines? (because it makes us money)
The point is –
Should we be allowing people to walk on live volcanoes? (because it makes us money)
The point is –
Should we just carry on with business as usual?
The point is –
Are we in a crisis, or are we not?
Should we acknowledge to the world that we are in a crisis by halting the Sydney fireworks display?
Or should we try to pretend that everything is normal?
Succinct like a Spring hailstorm damaging delicate sprouting crops and blossoms thereby destroying any hope for a rich Autumn harvest. A few more of those will result in fatal famine and utter despair.
Hi Jenny, my reply was to A. I'm not sure if your comment at 5.3.1 was up when I posted my comment.
While I probably agree with most of your points and don't give a stuff personally about fireworks displays in Sydney, I nevertheless think it would be a fairly weak gesture to cancel the Sydney fireworks – probably divisive as well.
My point is that people need these kind of events, particularly in times of crisis. The city of Sydney is not isolated from the fires and has been full of smoke for weeks. Also the money is spent already.
My apologies Pingao for the crossed lines of communication.
However I still disagree with your opinion that it would be a fairly weak gesture to cancel the Sydney fireworks display.
This display is broadcast and watched by millions around the world. To cancel it would be a major gesture, signalling to the world that Australia is in a major climate related crisis.
Personally I think you may have inadvertently admitted this when you wrote, "…it would be a fairly weak gesture to cancel the Sydney fireworks – probably divisive as well."
Not probably, it would be 'divisive'.
There are already divisions over this blatant flouting of the fire ban imposed on the rest of the city.
Canceling the Hamilton Rugby game over apartheid sport was divisive. Canceling nuclear ship visits was divisive.
Canceling the government subdivision of Bastion Point was divisive.
It is divisive precisely because it is not a weak gesture.
You may have read the for and anti cancellation argument, especially the powerful for argument by John Barilaro, Deputy Premier of NSW.
Canceling the fireworks display will cause immense and (and as you say "possibly divisive"), debate, possibly leading to a deep realisation by many that we are in a global crisis that is not being adequately addressed.
Instead we get a Potemkin village display of business as usual.
Potemkin village – Wikipedia
Potemkin village
In politics and economics, a Potemkin village is any construction (literal or figurative) built solely to deceive others into thinking that a situation is better than it really is.
Thanks for your reply Jenny. You may be right that a more radical response may be more effective although it is impossible to tell if more people will come round to accepting the AGW and its effects more quickly if loads of people get aggravated by the cancellation of this event … anyway it obviously somewhat moot at this point.
I do think (feel?) that the tide is turning in public acceptance of AGW which gives me a little hope (so long as I don't read comments in the media : / )
It can also be reasonably argued Infused that continuing with this fire works display despite a total city wide fire ban and in the midst of a bush fire emergency is a bit off vice signalling.
Virtue signalling – Wikipedia
Virtue signalling is a pejorative neologism for the conspicuous expression of moral values.[1][2] ….
….The phrase has been criticized by a number of journalists internationally as being hypocritical.[4][5]
….political theorist and economist Sam Bowman argued that the term is hypocritical in that calling out another individual's actions as virtue signaling is simply another form of virtue signaling, executed to heighten the perceived status of the accuser.[4]
…..Guardian writer David Shariatmadari says that while the term serves a purpose, its overuse as an ad hominem attack during political debate has rendered it a meaningless political buzzword.[22] Consequently, the antonym "vice signalling" has emerged to refer to blatant amorality.[23][24][25]
In my opinion we need more virtue signaling and less vice signalling.
Maybe then and possibly only then, enough people will wake up to the realisation that we are in a crisis to demand that immediate action be taken in numbers to big to be ignored by the policy makers.
Not really. The decade still has 366 days to run, otherwise there would have to have existed, somewhere in the CE (AD) period, a decade with only nine years in it; which, of course, is absurd.
"I’ll come right out and say it: as an economist I think endless growth is technically possible. The key word there is technical, because my reasoning is nerdy and economic. However, the more important point is that I believe this is a pointless topic of conversation."
Do you have anything to address Geoff's argument? Because it's the same argument I've made here many times. If you assume infinite simplistic growth, then yes logically it cannot be accomodated in a finite system.
But that is not what we actually do. For instance human population has increased by around 7 times since 1800, yet 200 years ago we struggled to feed even 1b people reliably. Now the top health problems we face are caused by an excess of food for many billions. Clearly the nature of our economic activity has changed dramatically in that time. This is the first part of Geoff's argument, and it's an obvious irrefutable observation.
The other flaw in 'eco-socialist' argument is thinking that we are inevitably on an exponential, unconstrained growth path. All the evidence suggests that we are not; most projections have us peaking at around 9 – 11b people and then declining. Indeed most developed nation populations are already declining. The sooner we develop the whole world, the quicker our total population will stabilise.
And the third flaw is assuming that the planet is 'finite', and that we are forever limited to it's currently understood resources only. Yet the reality is that we can discover new resource domains, unsuspected and untapped. Each one of these conceptual leaps opens up entirely new opportunities. The old aphorism 'the Stone Age didn't end because of a shortage of stones' applies illustrates this.
At the same time I've read my Jared Diamond. We do know that societies collapse, at least locally. The unprecedented challenge we now face is that for the first time in all of human history it's conceivable that we could collapse on a global scale; a truly dystopian prospect. I've alluded to this before, that all the really big problems we now face are global in nature, and therefore demand solutions at a global scale.
What is preventing this is a cultural inflexibility, our reluctance to let go the nation state as the apogee of politics, and evolve an authentic and effective global governance. Because while Diamond rightly points to examples of collapse, he makes the equally important point … that some societies avoid it if they can understand what is happening, and make the necessary cultural adaptions in time.
Declaring that someone 'has nothing' by producing nothing of substance yourself is always less than convincing. But maybe you have a killer argument up your sleeve … I'll await it with interest.
You think responding to an argument 'yet unmade' is impossible, yet somehow you find it very easy to declare it a 'nothing burger' sight unseen. Very odd.
Besides there are at least two obvious arguments in Geoff's article that you could address; much the same as the one's I made above.
My breakfast was homemade buckwheat pancakes with blueberrries and coconut cream yoghurt … my partner declared them “impossibly good”. Does this count?
GS names two paths of unlimited growth…productivity (efficiency) and inflation (financial)….in neither case does he support the assertions with explanation of its working, he does however state he will explain in a second article.
That will be interesting to see because neither address 'growth' , the former merely (potentially) slows it and the latter only changes the way we measure it without addressing the resources at its base. Both impact the allocation but not the need nor the finite nature.
Well here is Norman Smith outlining how NZ can achieve carbon zero by just 2050. (Only 30 years … you and I may well live to see this.)
Improved efficiency is the first and most accessible step. Implementing known renewable technologies is the mid game, and anticipating entirely new technologies to get us over the line.
A short article will necessarily be light on details to flesh out the model, but in my view none of them are unreasonable stages. And while these address themselves primarily to just one of the growth constraints we face, atmospheric carbon balance, the same basic idea is applicable everywhere.
Growth and carbon – can we really have one without the other?
I do hope, but don't believe that annual anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions will peak soon (enough) – admire (and genuinely wish that I could share) your optimism.
"Globally we emit over 36 billion tonnes of CO2 per year – this continues to increase."
"The world is not on-track to meet its agreed target of limiting warming to 2℃. Under current policies, expected warming will be in the range 3.1-3.7℃."
"Diamond himself has "repeatedly been sued, threatened with lawsuits, and verbally abused by scholars". His lecture hosts have been forced to hire bodyguards to shield him from critics, while one scholar concluded a published review of one of his earlier books with the injunction: "Shut up". These dispiriting phenomena, of course, are not completely absent in the UK either." https://www.stuff.co.nz/entertainment/books/112796232/book-review-upheaval-by-jared-diamond
Excellent news, eh?! Reduces the prospect of being bored to death in acadaemia considerably. 😎
I've got the book out from the local library, but only read the initial thesis & concluding chapters. Worthy, but dull. I own & have read Collapse & Guns, Germs and consider the guy worth reading. Too bad his latest comparative analysis seems a basically a waste of time. Case studies are really only worthwhile if you can deduce general principles and explain how they will shape the future…
Thanks for this; I hadn't spotted his latest book. I found How Societies Collapse better than Guns, Germs and Steel … although both are required reading.
The most interesting point he made in the former is that societies that avoided collapse all had two critical factors in common … they had insight at what was coming down the road at them, and they had sufficient social cohesion to make the necessary sacrifices and adaptations necessary.
We certainly have the former condition … but we clearly struggle with the latter. (The attacks on Diamond being a small yet signal symptom of this. How sad.)
Critical thinking, robust debate, and heated arguments are no obstacle to or for social cohesion. In fact, they are a critically necessary requirement and a hallmark of a well-functioning healthy and cohesive society IMHO. Obsequiousness, compliance, conformity and group think are not.
We've been through at least a decade of intense social and political polarisation that probably has yet to run it's course. Yet there are encouraging signs that I am absolutely not alone in wishing to shift this trend.
Social cohesion absolutely does not imply conformity. The salient question in any relationship is not the fact that you will disagree (sometimes passionately) … but on how you conduct that disagreement. The whole purpose of a discussion is to determine a course of action. If the debate is corrosive however, regardless of whichever party was 'right or wrong' … it undermines our ability to act. This is the salient lesson from the climate change debate, the fossil fuel corporates knew the science perfectly, so they intentionally set out to poison the debate so that we were rendered unable to act on it.
This principle applies everywhere. It is much less important to be 'right' than to be 'sufficiently aligned in order that we can collectively act in unity'.
yes Ad, I read that book a few years ago. One thing I recall from it was the importance of what they called 'institutions". Such as having a robust and well operating justice system, education system, police force etc. I hadn't given it much thought til then, but certainly failed states are characterised by corruption, the law of the jungle and failure of public services.
David Bowie later wrote a song about the Midwich cuckoos (Oh you pretty things). "All the women in the village of Midwich are impregnated in a single night by aliens. Nine months later, the women give birth to a race of children with golden eyes – strangely precocious children who are emotionally blank, band together against the villagers, and are soon perceived to possess formidable and horribly threatening powers." Adolescent me was very impressed!
"In Keys's startling thesis, a global climatic catastrophe in A.D. 535-536–a massive volcanic eruption sundering Java from Sumatra–was the decisive factor that transformed the ancient world into the medieval, or as Keys prefers to call it, the ""proto-modern"" era. Ancient chroniclers record a disaster in that year that blotted out the sun for months, causing famine, droughts, floods, storms and bubonic plague. Keys, archeology correspondent for the London Independent, uses tree-ring samples, analysis of lake deposits and ice cores, as well as contemporaneous documents to bolster his highly speculative thesis. In his scenario, the ensuing disasters precipitated the disintegration of the Roman Empire, beset by Slav, Mongol and Persian invaders propelled from their disrupted homelands." https://www.publishersweekly.com/978-0-345-40876-1
But that's merely one of several such! I've got plenty of books on the others too. Speculative means circumstantial evidence, not proof. It applies to all history really – historians speculate when they interpret or theorise. So-called historical facts are usually disputed by someone…
Very nice links Dennis. Yet the fact of collapse is not in debate; it's something we've done many times as a species. But we have one critical advantage the ancients lacked … we have far more insight into what is happening to us than they did.
It's our ability to go from informed debate to effective action at the required scale, that we struggle with.
…..they had insight at what was coming down the road at them, and they had sufficient social cohesion to make the necessary sacrifices and adaptations necessary.
We certainly have the former condition … but we clearly struggle with the latter. (The attacks on Diamond being a small yet signal symptom of this. How sad.)
Dennis Frank
The following headline is another small yet signal symptom that we struggle with having sufficient social cohesion to make the necessary sacrifices and adaptations necessary.
Decision made on Sydney New Year’s Eve fireworks display as Parramatta axes shows
The RFS has made a final decision on Sydney’s New Year’s Eve fireworks after a total fire ban led to displays being cancelled across the city.
Fair enough … and to take your metaphor to it's next step … if someone has their fingers firmly plugged into their ears, do you think yelling at them louder will persuade them to listen?
Capitalism is sold as a way of managing needs. Yet if we consider the rather simple analogy, that of a child on a park swing, their parent pushing harder and harder, their child screaming has altered tone from joy to fear, as the child comes closer to the tipping point. Daddy why are you adding more co2 every year? If capitalism is to smooth out risk, why isn't it? All economies have technical vaporware fixes, well until they dont because they kept waiting for them.
When we elect dutiful children who don't scream like Trump, Bossinaro, smomo… their duty first to god, then to big businesses, and lastly to whatever or spin they need to play to keep up their pretense of living up to their oath of office. We conceed our democracy to theology and the giant ponsi scheme capialism has been made into.
She’s so right about the 70s. As a public servant I didn’t dare become involved in the womens’ movement. It was bad enough being a member of the Labour Party. You would have thought I had committed a treasonable act by the way I was treated.
…… and re SK – about fucking time, and Marilyn Waring for that matter.
That said – it really shows what a croc of shit the whole thing is (and I say that with a bro who holds one, invested by a Guv who damn near lost his false teeth during the ceremony – well deserved btw – more to do with those that miss out, and those that get one). Sometimes you have to wonder what Madge (Her Indoors, HRH Liz) would think if she only knew their backstories – but then she's got her own shit to deal with that could very well knock her off her pedestal this year
Best not get all bitter about the PS though @ Anne – their time will come (SOME in the SENIOR ranks – the parachuted-in, the free-loaders, the Peter-Principled, the thoroughly egotistical bullies et al), and there are signs its already happened/ing.
Their excesses don't go unnoticed forever. If we do get a repeat of the COL in 2020, AND they have a plan before going into the election that features actual transitional change and kindness with published policies that attract ya average bloke with a few unpublished in store of how they're going to get there – we might ekshully see all that hopey changey stuff happening.
Que sera sera. And if things have to get worse before they get better, it's not necessarily a bad thing ( in terms of gaining 'learnings' going forward, and with the wisdom of hindsight, 20/20 vision, and all that sort of kaka)
Feynman had a similar story about how he got an idea for calculating electron rotation from watching a spinning plate fly through the air at a college food fight.
1. After being publicly outed as a helium balloon rather than a sentient human being, Boris Johnson ascends into the stratosphere.
2. Labour announces that if they win the next election, two Brexit/remain referenda will be held consecutively. If the two results, averaged out, deliver less than a 5% margin for either side, there will be another referendum. [my prediction: Labour splitters will demand that this simplistic prescription be complexified, pronto, toot sweet]
3. ScoMo carries a large lump of kerosene-doused coal into the Australian senate. Setting it alight, he declares maniacally that there is nothing to be afraid of. Elected representatives are engulfed in flames as ScoMo escapes back to Hawaii.
4. Australian climate change refugees demand entry as early summer temperatures average 45°c and whole suburbs burn. Jacinda Adern’s re-elected coalition government announces that preference will be given to New Zealand expatriates
5. England defeat the All Blacks at Twickenham by a huge margin. Ian Foster and the coaching team upon return to New Zealand receive 24/7 police protection. A commission of enquiry is established to apportion blame and intensify national self-loathing.
In politics, does negative cancel out (neutralise) positive? I think the answer is “no”. They accentuate each other and create an energy field (polarisation). In some ways, we need this, to make things happen, i.e. use the ‘political’ energy wisely. Our democracy needs a properly functioning Opposition to hold the Government to account. We don’t want (or need) them to neutralise everything the Government does because that leads to stasis and apathy (AKA socio-political death).
Harari, in Sapiens, tells the story of the Apollo 11 astronauts training in the desert, encountering an old Native American, who asked what they were doing there, so they told him they were training for an expedition to the moon.
"When the old man heard that, he fell silent for a few moments, then asked the astronauts if they could do him a favour." They asked him what he wanted. "Well, the people of my tribe believe that holy spirits live on the moon. I was wondering if you could pass an important message to them from my people."
The old guy said something in his tribal language, then got them to memorise it, saying he couldn't explain the meaning to them. Back at base, they eventually found someone who knew the language, who burst out laughing when told the message: "Don't believe a single word these people are telling you. They've come to steal your lands."
Points to trust as being foundational to intercultural relations and peaceful coexistence. Therefore in the fraught times to come, politics must be driven by a trust-building agenda. Expertise in getting suitable results will be essential. If you know anyone leaving school looking for direction, tell them!
A murdered journalist. Shady offshore deals. A tiny nation in the grip of large-scale criminal interests.
These are the leading factors behind the selection of Maltese Prime Minister Joseph Muscat as the OCCRP 2019 Person of the Year in Organized Crime and Corruption.
Under Muscat’s leadership, criminality and corruption have flourished — and in many cases gone unpunished — in the small Mediterranean archipelago of Malta, creating an environment that led to the 2017 murder of investigative journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia, investigators and government critics say.
[…]
Other finalists for 2019 included:
US President Donald J. Trump, who is accused of breaking the law by pressuring Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, to investigate a political rival in the upcoming US presidential election. He faces a Senate impeachment trial on charges of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress.
Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s self-proclaimed personal attorney, who is under federal investigation into whether he illegally put pressure on Ukraine to pursue a conspiracy theory involving the president’s political rival.
Denis Christel Sassou Nguesso, the son of the longtime president of the Republic of Congo, who is accused in a corruption scheme that saw US$50 million siphoned off from the Congolese treasury. He was also implicated in a 2018 OCCRP investigation and accused — along with other family members — of accepting millions of dollars in bribes to unlock Congo’s oil fields.
Dude had a heart attack, lied about it and hid it from the public for several days, then promised to release his full medical records by the end of the year.
And now he pulls this tRumpian 50% higher than other men his age with a similar diagnosis stunt.
Most published medical records are written like this and usually from a single physician. An example:
"Vice President Biden is a healthy, vigorous, 77-year-old male, who is fit to successfully execute the duties of the Presidency, to include those as Chief Executive, Head of State, and Commander in Chief," O'Connor wrote.
It's obvious, he's just about dead. In comparison Donald J Trump is the healthiest, fittest president the USA has ever had and he has all the attribute of a 35 year old.
Oh, and that terminal illness which Hillary Clinton had some years back? I must have been away, I missed the death and funeral notices.
The advice might be meant well but some of the explanations come straight from the snake-oil department. For example:
According to the New Zealand Health Promotion Agency, it's best to choose alcohol with fewer congeners, those free radicals that disrupt your body's alkaline balance and sends it into fight mode.
Light alcohols are better than dark alcohols as they contain a lower concentration of congeners, so brandy, whisky and red wine may leave you with a bigger hangover than white wine, gin and vodka.
The fluid is actually a molecule in liquid form that scientists from Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden have been working on improving for over a year.
This molecule is composed of carbon, hydrogen and nitrogen, and when it is hit by sunlight, it does something unusual: the bonds between its atoms are rearranged and it turns into an energised new version of itself, called an isomer.
Like prey caught in a trap, energy from the sun is thus captured between the isomer's strong chemical bonds, and it stays there even when the molecule cools down to room temperature.
When the energy is needed – say at nighttime, or during winter – the fluid is simply drawn through a catalyst that returns the molecule to its original form, releasing energy in the form of heat.
Way to go!! I wonder if a but will emerge. If not, the thing to watch will be copyright licensing. Do the scientists have a contract with the university, and/or does the university own their creations, and if so, how soon will they license production? Those are the key questions, methinks.
So you put a tank of the stuff up on your roof, and run a wire to your in-house Tesla battery to keep it topped up. Bye bye grid.
Okay, so there will need to be a heat distribution network, I was over-simplifying. Perhaps local tech can do that easily.
Rob MacCulloch writes – Can’t remember the last book by a Kiwi author you read? Think the NZ government should spend less on the arts in favor of helping the homeless? If so, as far as Newsroom is concerned, you probably deserve to be called a cultural ignoramus ...
Eric Crampton writes – Grudges are bad. Better to move on. But it can be fun to keep a couple of really trivial ones, so you’re not tempted to have other ones. For example, because of the rootkit fiasco of 2005, no Sony products in our household. ...
A new report warns an estimated third of the adult population have unmet need for health care.Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāHere’s the six key things I learned about Aotaroa’s political economy this week around housing, climate and poverty:Politics - Three opinion polls confirmed support for PM Christopher Luxon ...
Today is May the fourth. Which was just a regular day when my mother took me to see the newly released Star Wars at the Odeon in Rotorua. The queue was right around the corner. Some years later this day became known as Star Wars Day, the date being a ...
Buzz from the Beehive Much more media attention is being paid to something Winston Peters said about former Australian Foreign Minister Bob Carr than to a speech he delivered to the New Zealand China Council. One word is missing from the speech: AUKUS. But AUKUS loomed large in his considerations ...
Is the economy in another long stagnation? If so, why?This is about the time that the Treasury will be locking up its economic forecasts to be published in the 2024 Budget Economic and Fiscal Update (BEFU) on budget day, 30 May. I am not privy to what they will be ...
The annual list of who's been bribing our politicians is out, and journalists will no doubt be poring over it to find the juiciest and dirtiest bribes. The government's fast-track invite list is likely to be a particular focus, and we already know of one company on the list which ...
In the weeks after the October 7 Hamas attacks on Southern Israel I wrote about the possible 2nd, 3rd and even 4th order effects of the conflict. These included new fronts being opened in the West Bank (with Hamas), Golan … Continue reading → ...
Peter Dunne writes – It is one of the oldest truisms that there is never a good time for MPs to get a pay rise. This week’s announcement of pay raises of around 2.8% backdated to last October could hardly have come at a worse time, with the ...
David Farrar writes – Newshub reports: Newshub can reveal a fresh allegation of intimidation against Green MP Julie-Anne Genter. Genter is subject to a disciplinary process for aggressively waving a book in the face of National Minister Matt Doocey in the House – but it’s not the first time ...
The Treasury has published a paper today on the global productivity slowdown and how it is playing out in New Zealand: The productivity slowdown: implications for the Treasury’s forecasts and projections. The Treasury Paper examines recent trends in productivity and the potential drivers of the slowdown. Productivity for the whole economy ...
Winston Peters’ comments about former Australian foreign minister look set to be an ongoing headache for both him and Luxon. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: The podcast above of the weekly ‘hoon’ webinar for subscribers features co-hosts and , along with regular guests on Gaza and ...
These puppet strings don't pull themselvesYou're thinking thoughts from someone elseHow much time do you think you have?Are you prepared for what comes next?The debating chamber can be a trying place for an opposition MP. What with the person in charge, the speaker, typically being an MP from the governing ...
The land around Lyme Regis, where Meryl Streep once stood, in a hood, on the Cobb, is falling into the sea.MerylThe land around Lyme Regis, around the Cobb that made it rich, has always been falling slowly but surely into the sea. Read more ...
Buzz from the Beehive Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters was bound to win headlines when he set out his thinking about AUKUS in his speech to the New Zealand Institute of International Affairs. The headlines became bigger when – during an interview on RNZ’s Morning Report today – he criticised ...
The Post reports on how the government is refusing to release its advice on its corrupt Muldoonist fast-track law, instead using the "soon to be publicly available" refusal ground to hide it until after select committee submissions on the bill have closed. Fast-track Minister Chris Bishop's excuse? “It's not ...
As pressure on it grows, the livestock industry’s approach to the transition to Net Zero is increasingly being compared to that of fossil fuel interests. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / Getty ImagesTL;DR: Here’s the top five news items of note in climate news for Aotearoa-NZ this week, and a discussion above ...
The New Zealand Herald reports – Stats NZ has offered a voluntary redundancy scheme to all of its workers as a way to give staff some control over their “future” amidst widespread job losses in the public sector. In an update to staff this morning, seen by the Herald, Statistics New Zealand ...
On Werewolf/Scoop, I usually do two long form political columns a week. From now on, there will be an extra column each week about music and movies. But first, some late-breaking political events:The rise in unemployment numbers for the March quarter was bigger than expected – and especially sharp ...
David Farrar writes – The Herald reports: TVNZ says it is dealing with about 50 formal complaints over its coverage of the latest 1News-Verian political poll, with some viewers – as well as the Prime Minister and a former senior Labour MP – critical of the tone of the 6pm report. ...
Muriel Newman writes – When Meridian Energy was seeking resource consents for a West Coast hydro dam proposal in 2010, local Maori “strenuously” objected, claiming their mana was inextricably linked to ‘their’ river and could be damaged. After receiving a financial payment from the company, however, the Ngai Tahu ...
Alwyn Poole writes – “An SEP,’ he said, ‘is something that we can’t see, or don’t see, or our brain doesn’t let us see, because we think that it’s somebody else’s problem. That’s what SEP means. Somebody Else’s Problem. The brain just edits it out, it’s like a ...
Our trust in our political institutions is fast eroding, according to a Maxim Institute discussion paper, Shaky Foundations: Why our democracy needs trust. The paper – released today – raises concerns about declining trust in New Zealand’s political institutions and democratic processes, and the role that the overuse of Parliamentary urgency ...
This article was prepared for publication yesterday. More ministerial announcements have been posted on the government’s official website since it was written. We will report on these later today …. Buzz from the BeehiveThere we were, thinking the environment is in trouble, when along came Jones. Shane Jones. ...
New Zealand now has the fourth most depressed construction sector in the world behind China, Qatar and Hong Kong. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: These are the six things that stood out to me in news and commentary on Aotearoa-NZ’s political economy at 8:46am on Thursday, May 2:The Lead: ...
Hi,I am just going to state something very obvious: American police are fucking crazy.That was a photo gracing the New York Times this morning, showing New York City police “entering Columbia University last night after receiving a request from the school.”Apparently in America, protesting the deaths of tens of thousands ...
Winston Peters’ much anticipated foreign policy speech last night was a work of two halves. Much of it was a standard “boilerplate” Foreign Ministry overview of the state of the world. There was some hardening up of rhetoric with talk of “benign” becoming “malign” and old truths giving way to ...
Graham Adams assesses the fallout of the Cass Review — The press release last Thursday from the UN Special Rapporteur on violence against women and girls didn’t make the mainstream news in New Zealand but it really should have. The startling title of Reem Alsalem’s statement — “Implementation of ‘Cass ...
This open-for-business, under-new-management cliché-pockmarked government of Christopher Luxon is not the thing of beauty he imagines it to be. It is not the powerful expression of the will of the people that he asserts it to be. It is not a soaring eagle, it is a malodorous vulture. This newest poll should make ...
The latest labour market statistics, showing a rise in unemployment. There are now 134,000 unemployed - 14,000 more than when the National government took office. Which is I guess what happens when the Reserve Bank causes a recession in an effort to Keep Wages Low. The previous government saw a ...
Three opinion polls have been released in the last two days, all showing that the new government is failing to hold their popular support. The usual honeymoon experienced during the first year of a first term government is entirely absent. The political mood is still gloomy and discontented, mainly due ...
National's Finance Minister once met a poor person.A scornful interview with National's finance guru who knows next to nothing about economics or people.There might have been something a bit familiar if that was the headline I’d gone with today. It would of course have been in tribute to the article ...
Rob MacCulloch writes – Throughout the pandemic, the new Vice-Chancellor-of-Otago-University-on-$629,000 per annum-Can-you-believe-it-and-Former-Finance-Minister Grant Robertson repeated the mantra over and over that he saved “lives and livelihoods”.As we update how this claim is faring over the course of time, the facts are increasingly speaking differently. NZ ...
Chris Trotter writes – IT’S A COMMONPLACE of political speeches, especially those delivered in acknowledgement of electoral victory: “We’ll govern for all New Zealanders.” On the face of it, the pledge is a strange one. Why would any political leader govern in ways that advantaged the huge ...
Bryce Edwards writes – The list of former National Party Ministers being given plum and important roles got longer this week with the appointment of former Deputy Prime Minister Paula Bennett as the chair of Pharmac. The Christopher Luxon-led Government has now made key appointments to Bill ...
TL;DR: These are the six things that stood out to me in news and commentary on Aotearoa-NZ’s political economy at 10:06am on Wednesday, May 1:The Lead: Business confidence fell across the board in April, falling in some areas to levels last seen during the lockdowns because of a collapse in ...
Over the past 36 hours, Christopher Luxon has been dong his best to portray the centre-right’s plummeting poll numbers as a mark of virtue. Allegedly, the negative verdicts are the result of hard economic times, and of a government bravely set out on a perilous rescue mission from which not ...
Auckland Transport have started rolling out new HOP card readers around the network and over the next three months, all of them on buses, at train stations and ferry wharves will be replaced. The change itself is not that remarkable, with the new readers looking similar to what is already ...
Completed reads for April: The Difference Engine, by William Gibson and Bruce Sterling Carnival of Saints, by George Herman The Snow Spider, by Jenny Nimmo Emlyn’s Moon, by Jenny Nimmo The Chestnut Soldier, by Jenny Nimmo Death Comes As the End, by Agatha Christie Lord of the Flies, by ...
On February 14, 2023 we announced our Rebuttal Update Project. This included an ask for feedback about the added "At a glance" section in the updated basic rebuttal versions. This weekly blog post series highlights this new section of one of the updated basic rebuttal versions and serves as a ...
Have a story to share about St Paul’s, but today just picturesPopular novels written at this desk by a young man who managed to bootstrap himself out of father’s imprisonment and his own young life in a workhouse Read more ...
The list of former National Party Ministers being given plum and important roles got longer this week with the appointment of former Deputy Prime Minister Paula Bennett as the chair of Pharmac. The Christopher Luxon-led Government has now made key appointments to Bill English, Simon Bridges, Steven Joyce, Roger Sowry, ...
Newsroom has a story today about National's (fortunately failed) effort to disestablish the newly-created Inspector-General of Defence. The creation of this agency was the key recommendation of the Inquiry into Operation Burnham, and a vital means of restoring credibility and social licence to an agency which had been caught lying ...
Holding On To The Present:The moment a political movement arises that attacks the whole idea of social progress, and announces its intention to wind back the hands of History’s clock, then democracy, along with its unwritten rules, is in mortal danger.IT’S A COMMONPLACE of political speeches, especially those delivered in ...
Stuck In The Middle With You:As Christopher Luxon feels the hot breath of Act’s and NZ First’s extremists on the back of his neck and, as he reckons with the damage their policies are already inflicting upon a country he’s described as “fragile”, is there not some merit in reaching out ...
The unpopular coalition government is currently rushing to repeal section 7AA of the Oranga Tamariki Act. The clause is Oranga Tamariki's Treaty clause, and was inserted after its systematic stealing of Māori children became a public scandal and resulted in physical resistance to further abductions. The clause created clear obligations ...
Buzz from the Beehive The government’s official website – which Point of Order monitors daily – not for the first time has nothing much to say today about political happenings that are grabbing media headlines. It makes no mention of the latest 1News-Verian poll, for example. This shows National down ...
It Takes A Train To Cry:Surely, there is nothing lonelier in all this world than the long wail of a distant steam locomotive on a cold Winter’s night.AS A CHILD, I would lie awake in my grandfather’s house and listen to the traffic. The big wooden house was only a ...
Packing A Punch: The election of the present government, including in its ranks politicians dedicated to reasserting the rights of the legislature in shaping and determining the future of Māori and Pakeha in New Zealand, should have alerted the judiciary – including its anomalous appendage, the Waitangi Tribunal – that its ...
Dead Woman Walking: New Zealand’s media industry had been moving steadily towards disaster for all the years Melissa Lee had been National’s media and communications policy spokesperson, and yet, when the crisis finally broke, on her watch, she had nothing intelligent to offer. Christopher Luxon is a patient man - but he’s not ...
Chris Trotter writes – New Zealand politics is remarkably easy-going: dangerously so, one might even say. With the notable exception of John Key’s flat ruling-out of the NZ First Party in 2008, all parties capable of clearing MMP’s five-percent threshold, or winning one or more electorate seats, tend ...
Bryce Edwards writes – Polling shows that Wellington Mayor Tory Whanau has the lowest approval rating of any mayor in the country. Siting at -12 per cent, the proportion of constituents who disapprove of her performance outweighs those who give her the thumbs up. This negative rating is ...
Luxon will no doubt put a brave face on it, but there is no escaping the pressure this latest poll will put on him and the government. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: These are the six things that stood out to me in news and commentary on Aotearoa-NZ’s political ...
This is a re-post from The Climate Brink by Andrew Dessler In the wake of any unusual weather event, someone inevitably asks, “Did climate change cause this?” In the most literal sense, that answer is almost always no. Climate change is never the sole cause of hurricanes, heat waves, droughts, or ...
Something odd happened yesterday, and I’d love to know if there’s more to it. If there was something which preempted what happened, or if it was simply a throwaway line in response to a journalist.Yesterday David Seymour was asked at a press conference what the process would be if the ...
Hi,From time to time, I want to bring Webworm into the real world. We did it last year with the Jurassic Park event in New Zealand — which was a lot of fun!And so on Saturday May 11th, in Los Angeles, I am hosting a lil’ Webworm pop-up! I’ve been ...
Education Minister Erica Standford yesterday unveiled a fundamental reform of the way our school pupils are taught. She would not exactly say so, but she is all but dismantling the so-called “inquiry” “feel good” method of teaching, which has ruled in our classrooms since a major review of the New ...
Exactly where are we seriously going with this government and its policies? That is, apart from following what may as well be a Truss-Lite approach on the purported economic “plan“, and Victorian-era regression when it comes to social policy.Oh it’ll work this time of course, we’re basically assured, “the ...
Hey Uncle Dave, When the Poms joined the EEC, I wasn't one of those defeatists who said, Well, that’s it for the dairy job. And I was right, eh? The Chinese can’t get enough of our milk powder and eventually, the Poms came to their senses and backed up the ute ...
Polling shows that Wellington Mayor Tory Whanau has the lowest approval rating of any mayor in the country. Siting at -12 per cent, the proportion of constituents who disapprove of her performance outweighs those who give her the thumbs up. This negative rating is higher than for any other mayor ...
Buzz from the Beehive Pharmac has been given a financial transfusion and a new chair to oversee its spending in the pharmaceutical business. Associate Health Minister David Seymour described the funding for Pharmac as “its largest ever budget of $6.294 billion over four years, fixing a $1.774 billion fiscal cliff”. ...
Bryce Edwards writes – Many criticisms are being made of the Government’s Fast Track Approvals Bill, including by this writer. But as with everything in politics, every story has two sides, and both deserve attention. It’s important to understand what the Government is trying to achieve and its ...
TL;DR: Here’s my top 10 ‘pick ‘n’ mix of links to news, analysis and opinion articles as of 10:10am on Monday, April 29:Scoop: The children's ward at Rotorua Hospital will be missing a third of its beds as winter hits because Te Whatu Ora halted an upgrade partway through to ...
span class=”dropcap”>As hideous as David Seymour can be, it is worth keeping in mind occasionally that there are even worse political figures (and regimes) out there. Iran for instance, is about to execute the country’s leading hip hop musician Toomaj Salehi, for writing and performing raps that “corrupt” the nation’s ...
Yesterday marked 10 years since the first electric train carried passengers in Auckland so it’s a good time to look back at it and the impact it has had. A brief history The first proposals for rail electrification in Auckland came in the 1920’s alongside the plans for earlier ...
Right now, in Aotearoa-NZ, our ‘animal spirits’ are darkening towards a winter of discontent, thanks at least partly to a chorus of negative comments and actions from the Government Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: These are the six things that stood out to me in news and commentary on ...
You make people evil to punish the paststuck inside a sequel with a rotating castThe following photos haven’t been generated with AI, or modified in any way. They are flesh and blood, human beings. On the left is Galatea Young, a young mum, and her daughter Fiadh who has Angelman ...
The Government is again adding to New Zealand’s growing unemployment, this time cutting jobs at the agencies responsible for urban development and growing much needed housing stock. ...
With Minister Karen Chhour indicating in the House today that she either doesn’t know or care about the frontline cuts she’s making to Oranga Tamariki, we risk seeing more and more of our children falling through the cracks. ...
The Labour Party is saddened to learn of the death of Sir Robert Martin, a globally renowned disability advocate who led the way for disability rights both in New Zealand and internationally. ...
Labour is calling for the Government to urgently rethink its coalition commitment to restart live animal exports, Labour animal welfare spokesperson Rachel Boyack said. ...
Today’s Financial Stability Report has once again highlighted that poverty and deep inequality are political choices - and this Government is choosing to make them worse. ...
The Green Party is calling on the Government to do more for our households in most need as unemployment rises and the cost of living crisis endures. ...
Unemployment is on the rise and it’s only going to get worse under this Government, Labour finance spokesperson Barbara Edmonds said. Stats NZ figures show the unemployment rate grew to 4.3 percent in the March quarter from 4 percent in the December quarter. “This is the second rise in unemployment ...
The New Zealand Labour Party welcomes the entering into force of the European Union and New Zealand free trade agreement. This agreement opens the door for a huge increase in trade opportunities with a market of 450 million people who are high value discerning consumers of New Zealand goods and ...
The National-led Government continues its fiscal jiggery pokery with its Pharmac announcement today, Labour Health spokesperson Ayesha Verrall says. “The government has increased Pharmac funding but conceded it will only make minimal increases in access to medicine”, said Ayesha Verrall “This is far from the bold promises made to fund ...
This afternoon’s interim Waitangi Tribunal report must be taken seriously as it affects our most vulnerable children, Labour children’s spokesperson Willow-Jean Prime. ...
Te Pāti Māori are demanding the New Zealand Government support an international independent investigation into mass graves that have been uncovered at two hospitals on the Gaza strip, following weeks of assault by Israeli troops. Among the 392 bodies that have been recovered, are children and elderly civilians. Many of ...
Our two-tiered system for veterans’ support is out of step with our closest partners, and all parties in Parliament should work together to fix it, Labour veterans’ affairs spokesperson Greg O’Connor said. ...
Stripping two Ministers of their portfolios just six months into the job shows Christopher Luxon’s management style is lacking, Labour Leader Chris Hipkins said. ...
Tonight’s court decision to overturn the summons of the Children’s Minister has enabled the Crown to continue making decisions about Māori without evidence, says Te Pāti Māori spokesperson for Children, Mariameno Kapa-Kingi. “The judicial system has this evening told the nation that this government can do whatever they want when ...
It appears Nicola Willis is about to pull the rug out from under the feet of local communities still dealing with the aftermath of last year’s severe weather, and local councils relying on funding to build back from these disasters. ...
The Government is making short-sighted changes to the Resource Management Act (RMA) that will take away environmental protection in favour of short-term profits, Labour’s environment spokesperson Rachel Brooking said today. ...
Labour welcomes the release of the report into the North Island weather events and looks forward to working with the Government to ensure that New Zealand is as prepared as it can be for the next natural disaster. ...
The Labour Party has called for the New Zealand Government to recognise Palestine, as a material step towards progressing the two-State solution needed to achieve a lasting peace in the region. ...
Some of our country’s most important work, stopping the sexual exploitation of children and violent extremism could go along with staff on the frontline at ports and airports. ...
The Government’s Fast Track Approvals Bill will give projects such as new coal mines a ‘get out of jail free’ card to wreak havoc on the environment, Labour Leader Chris Hipkins said today. ...
The government's decision to reintroduce Three Strikes is a destructive and ineffective piece of law-making that will only exacerbate an inherently biased and racist criminal justice system, said Te Pāti Māori Justice Spokesperson, Tākuta Ferris, today. During the time Three Strikes was in place in Aotearoa, Māori and Pasifika received ...
Cuts to frontline hospital staff are not only a broken election promise, it shows the reckless tax cuts have well and truly hit the frontline of the health system, says Labour Health spokesperson Ayesha Verrall. ...
The Green Party has joined the call for public submissions on the fast-track legislation to be extended after the Ombudsman forced the Government to release the list of organisations invited to apply just hours before submissions close. ...
New Zealand’s good work at reducing climate emissions for three years in a row will be undone by the National government’s lack of ambition and scrapping programmes that were making a difference, Labour Party climate spokesperson Megan Woods said today. ...
More essential jobs could be on the chopping block, this time Ministry of Education staff on the school lunches team are set to find out whether they're in line to lose their jobs. ...
Te Pāti Māori is disgusted at the confirmation that hundreds are set to lose their jobs at Oranga Tamariki, and the disestablishment of the Treaty Response Unit. “This act of absolute carelessness and out of touch decision making is committing tamariki to state abuse.” Said Te Pāti Māori Oranga Tamariki ...
The Government is trying to bring in a law that will allow Ministers to cut corners and kill off native species, Labour environment spokesperson Rachel Brooking said. ...
Cancelling urgently needed new Cook Strait ferries and hiking the cost of public transport for many Kiwis so that National can announce the prospect of another tunnel for Wellington is not making good choices, Labour Transport Spokesperson Tangi Utikere said. ...
A laundry list of additional costs for Tāmaki Makarau Auckland shows the Minister for the city is not delivering for the people who live there, says Labour Auckland Issues spokesperson Shanan Halbert. ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters discussed the need for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, and enhanced cooperation in the Pacific with German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock during her first official visit to New Zealand today. "New Zealand and Germany enjoy shared interests and values, including the rule of law, democracy, respect for the international system ...
The Minister Responsible for RMA Reform, Chris Bishop today released his decision on four recommendations referred to him by the Western Bay of Plenty District Council, opening the door to housing growth in the area. The Council’s Plan Change 92 allows more homes to be built in existing and new ...
Thank you, John McKinnon and the New Zealand China Council for the invitation to speak to you today. Thank you too, all members of the China Council. Your effort has played an essential role in helping to build, shape, and grow a balanced and resilient relationship between our two ...
The Government is modernising insurance law to better protect Kiwis and provide security in the event of a disaster, Commerce and Consumer Affairs Minister Andrew Bayly announced today. “These reforms are long overdue. New Zealand’s insurance law is complicated and dated, some of which is more than 100 years old. ...
The coalition Government is refreshing its approach to supporting pay equity claims as time-limited funding for the Pay Equity Taskforce comes to an end, Public Service Minister Nicola Willis says. “Three years ago, the then-government introduced changes to the Equal Pay Act to support pay equity bargaining. The changes were ...
Structured literacy will change the way New Zealand children learn to read - improving achievement and setting students up for success, Education Minister Erica Stanford says. “Being able to read and write is a fundamental life skill that too many young people are missing out on. Recent data shows that ...
Trade Minister Todd McClay says Canada’s refusal to comply in full with a CPTPP trade dispute ruling in our favour over dairy trade is cynical and New Zealand has no intention of backing down. Mr McClay said he has asked for urgent legal advice in respect of our ‘next move’ ...
The rights of our children and young people will be enhanced by changes the coalition Government will make to strengthen oversight of the Oranga Tamariki system, including restoring a single Children’s Commissioner. “The Government is committed to delivering better public services that care for our most at-risk young people and ...
The Government is making it easier for minor changes to be made to a building consent so building a home is easier and more affordable, Building and Construction Minister Chris Penk says. “The coalition Government is focused on making it easier and cheaper to build homes so we can ...
New Zealand lost a true legend when internationally renowned disability advocate Sir Robert Martin (KNZM) passed away at his home in Whanganui last night, Disabilities Issues Minister Louise Upston says. “Our Government’s thoughts are with his wife Lynda, family and community, those he has worked with, the disability community in ...
Good evening – Before discussing the challenges and opportunities facing New Zealand’s foreign policy, we’d like to first acknowledge the New Zealand Institute of International Affairs. You have contributed to debates about New Zealand foreign policy over a long period of time, and we thank you for hosting us. ...
From today, passengers travelling internationally from Auckland Airport will be able to keep laptops and liquids in their carry-on bags for security screening thanks to new technology, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says. “Creating a more efficient and seamless travel experience is important for holidaymakers and businesses, enabling faster movement through ...
People with an interest in the health of Northland’s marine ecosystems are invited to a public meeting to discuss how to deal with kina barrens, Oceans and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones says. Mr Jones will lead the discussion, which will take place on Friday, 10 May, at Awanui Hotel in ...
Kiwi exporters are $100 million better off today with the NZ EU FTA entering into force says Trade Minister Todd McClay. “This is all part of our plan to grow the economy. New Zealand's prosperity depends on international trade, making up 60 per cent of the country’s total economic activity. ...
There are heartening signs that the extractive sector is once again becoming an attractive prospect for investors and a source of economic prosperity for New Zealand, Resources Minister Shane Jones says. “The beginnings of a resurgence in extractive industries are apparent in media reports of the sector in the past ...
The return of the historic Ō-Rākau battle site to the descendants of those who fought there moved one step closer today with the first reading of Te Pire mō Ō-Rākau, Te Pae o Maumahara / The Ō-Rākau Remembrance Bill. The Bill will entrust the 9.7-hectare battle site, five kilometres west ...
Energy Minister Simeon Brown has announced 25 new high-speed EV charging hubs along key routes between major urban centres and outlined the Government’s plan to supercharge New Zealand’s EV infrastructure. The hubs will each have several chargers and be capable of charging at least four – and up to 10 ...
The coalition Government will not proceed with the previous Government’s plans to regulate residential property managers, Housing Minister Chris Bishop says. “I have written to the Chairperson of the Social Services and Community Committee to inform him that the Government does not intend to support the Residential Property Managers Bill ...
The Government has announced an independent review into the disability support system funded by the Ministry of Disabled People – Whaikaha. Disability Issues Minister Louise Upston says the review will look at what can be done to strengthen the long-term sustainability of Disability Support Services to provide disabled people and ...
Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith has attended the Universal Periodic Review in Geneva and outlined the Government’s plan to restore law and order. “Speaking to the United Nations Human Rights Council provided us with an opportunity to present New Zealand’s human rights progress, priorities, and challenges, while responding to issues and ...
The Government and Rotorua Lakes Council are committed to working closely together to end the use of contracted emergency housing motels in Rotorua. Associate Minister of Housing (Social Housing) Tama Potaka says the Government remains committed to ending the long-term use of contracted emergency housing motels in Rotorua by the ...
Trade Minister Todd McClay heads overseas today for high-level trade talks in the Gulf region, and a key OECD meeting in Paris. Mr McClay will travel to Riyadh to meet with counterparts from Saudi Arabia and the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). “New Zealand’s goods and services exports to the Gulf region ...
Education Minister Erica Stanford has outlined six education priorities to deliver a world-leading education system that sets Kiwi kids up for future success. “I’m putting ambition, achievement and outcomes at the heart of our education system. I want every child to be inspired and engaged in their learning so they ...
The new NZ Transport Agency (NZTA) App is a secure ‘one stop shop’ to provide the services drivers need, Transport Minister Simeon Brown and Digitising Government Minister Judith Collins say. “The NZTA App will enable an easier way for Kiwis to pay for Vehicle Registration and Road User Charges (RUC). ...
Whānau with tamariki growing up in emergency housing motels will be prioritised for social housing starting this week, says Associate Housing Minister Tama Potaka. “Giving these whānau a better opportunity to build healthy stable lives for themselves and future generations is an essential part of the Government’s goal of reducing ...
Racing Minister Winston Peters has paid tribute to an icon of the industry with the recent passing of Dave O’Sullivan (OBE). “Our sympathies are with the O’Sullivan family with the sad news of Dave O’Sullivan’s recent passing,” Mr Peters says. “His contribution to racing, initially as a jockey and then ...
Assalaamu alaikum, greetings to you all. Eid Mubarak, everyone! I want to extend my warmest wishes to you and everyone celebrating this joyous occasion. It is a pleasure to be here. I have enjoyed Eid celebrations at Parliament before, but this is my first time joining you as the Minister ...
Associate Health Minister David Seymour has announced Pharmac’s largest ever budget of $6.294 billion over four years, fixing a $1.774 billion fiscal cliff. “Access to medicines is a crucial part of many Kiwis’ lives. We’ve committed to a budget allocation of $1.774 billion over four years so Kiwis are ...
Hon Paula Bennett has been appointed as member and chair of the Pharmac board, Associate Health Minister David Seymour announced today. "Pharmac is a critical part of New Zealand's health system and plays a significant role in ensuring that Kiwis have the best possible access to medicines,” says Mr Seymour. ...
Hundreds of New Zealand families affected by Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (FASD) will benefit from a new Government focus on prevention and treatment, says Health Minister Dr Shane Reti. “We know FASD is a leading cause of preventable intellectual and neurodevelopmental disability in New Zealand,” Dr Reti says. “Every day, ...
Regional Development Minister Shane Jones today attended the official opening of Kaikohe’s new $14.7 million sports complex. “The completion of the Kaikohe Multi Sports Complex is a fantastic achievement for the Far North,” Mr Jones says. “This facility not only fulfils a long-held dream for local athletes, but also creates ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters’ engagements in Türkiye this week underlined the importance of diplomacy to meet growing global challenges. “Returning to the Gallipoli Peninsula to represent New Zealand at Anzac commemorations was a sombre reminder of the critical importance of diplomacy for de-escalating conflicts and easing tensions,” Mr Peters ...
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The coalition Government is delivering on its commitment to improve resource management laws and give greater certainty to consent applicants, with a Bill to amend the Resource Management Act (RMA) expected to be introduced to Parliament next month. RMA Reform Minister Chris Bishop has today outlined the first RMA Amendment ...
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By Stephen Wright and Stefan Armbruster of BenarNews Fiji’s ranking in a global press freedom index has jumped into the top tier of countries with free or mostly free media after its government last year repealed a draconian law that threatened journalists with prison for doing their jobs. Fiji’s improvement ...
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Former Olympic swimmer James Magnussen has already started training for the Enhanced games, though says he won’t start taking performance enhancing substances until about nine months out from the competition. The Australian world champion was the first athlete to be announced by Enhanced, but he says the organisation has had ...
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Political parties have now fully disclosed the donations they received last year - with National getting more than double the cash of any other party. ...
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Loading…(function(i,s,o,g,r,a,m){var ql=document.querySelectorAll('A,DIV,A[data-quiz],DIV[data-quiz]'); if(ql){if(ql.length){for(var k=0;k<ql.length;k++){ql[k].id='quiz-embed-'+k;ql[k].href="javascript:var i=document.getElementById('quiz-embed-"+k+"');try{qz.startQuiz(i)}catch(e){i.start=1;i.style.cursor='wait';i.style.opacity='0.5'};void(0);"}}};i['QP']=r;i[r]=i[r]||function(){(i[r].q=i[r].q||[]).push(arguments)},i[r].l=1*new Date();a=s.createElement(o),m=s.getElementsByTagName(o)[0];a.async=1;a.src=g;m.parentNode.insertBefore(a,m)})(window,document,'script','https://take.quiz-maker.com/3012/CDN/quiz-embed-v1.js','qp'); Got a good quiz question?Send Newsroom your questions. The post Newsroom daily quiz, Friday 3 May appeared first on Newsroom. ...
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In the spirit of the New Years honours list:
Thanks to LPrent, weka, Ad, Incognito, Mickey, Bill and all the others that make this site possible. I value this community and it has been a great help in understanding news, politics and the challenges involved in trying to be progressive.
Surprisingly I feel compelled to acknowledge Countdown supermarket chain and First Union for their leadership. To have workers on $21.15 an hour after a years service is fantastic. This has to be directly linked to Labour coalition raising the minimum wage to the living wage.
Also Countdowns decision to only sell New Zealand pork. I know this is last years news but it bears repeating.
And.. 12 months ago we had three world cups to look forward to. If you were told we would only win one, how many would have picked the Silver Ferns? Congratulations Noeline Taurua for helping turn around the team.
I haven't posted on here as much as I used to, but I always drop in on here throughout the day and read the chatter going on.
Cheers Gsays and a happy new year to you and your whanau.
Many educated and better off people around the globe are surreptitiously eyeing New Zealand as that last great safe bolt hole for them and their families to escape to when rising local temperatures and extreme weather events get too much to bear.
But if it could happen in Tasmania it could happen here.
Sometimes I wonder if people know what the word 'emergency' means.
Freakin' heck…this pic pretty much defines it
https://twitter.com/danbakes/status/1211850190132367360
Let's see if that impressive photo embeds for me ..
https://twitter.com/danbakes/status/1211850190132367360
Tassies the best bet if you want to remain within Oz. The mainland’s an oven bruce.
44deg wind in melb was burning the eyes the other week. Only go out if totally necessary shite.
Hold tight to that Kiwi passport, it might become the most important thing you own.
For those who think there is no difference between the Republican and Democratic Parties in the US:
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ENCtPlrX0AA_cL0.jpg:large
Wow!! Those plots are striking, but not a surprise I guess.
Yes – I was surprised at just how representative the Democrat representation in Congress is of the US demographic. It is also saddening to see that the Republican Party takes 90% of its representation from just 30% of the Demographic.
lol probably closer to 1% if you count their pre-congress incomes
Well yes But all white males – and indications are that the GOP ethnic representation after 2020 will be even worse. It is estimated that after 2020 97% of GOP representatives will be white.
This actually spell the death nell for the GOP as Black, Hispanic and other ethnicities are now now waking up to the need to vote against them.
eg
https://www.axios.com/black-voters-motivated-2020-election-trump-dae9583e-44d2-4d0c-8fdd-f0d9b3966064.html
The GOP can't lose.
The centralization of America’s election system.
Just two vendors — Election Systems & Software, LLC (ES&S) and Dominion Voting — account for eighty percent of US election equipment. Thus, corrupt insiders or foreign hackers could wreak havoc on elections throughout the United States by infiltrating either of these vendors.
Corrupt insiders?
ES&S and Dominion are both owned by private equity, which means we don’t know who funds and controls them. And what little we do know is concerning
https://medium.com/@jennycohn1/americas-electronic-voting-system-is-corrupted-to-the-core-1f55f34f346e
I doubt it. They'll just gerrymander the electoral system so that their votes are deemed invalid for some preposterous reason, or they can't even get to vote at all.
Oh! they have tried. And if tRump gets his way they will do it some more – but their recent efforts have been stymied by the courts, and they have had to go back to drawing up fairer boundaries. The blue wave of 2018 wasn't just in the federal system it was overall and repugnants – apart from in the Senate don't have quite the sway they had in the past. tRumps huge influx of right wing judges however could have some influence in the future but at present the courts are holding back some of the bat shit extremes.
Further to my comment above – I was aware that this court action was in progress but it has just been finalised. Just one example of how the courts are holding back the disenfranchisement of some Americans at this stage.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jan/01/north-carolina-voter-id-law-blocked-discriminatory
So despite the total fire ban the RFS has decided the Sydney NY fireworks display can go ahead. This seems so very, very wrong especially after losing 80% of the Koala population along with everything else.
A. From your link
Sometimes I wonder if people know what the word 'emergency' means
Sums up the political leadership in Oz nicely. I expect many expat kiwis eyeing off a return now the stark reality of living in a tinderbox sinks in.
The struggle for leadership between the supporters of business as usual and the realists.
The struggle for leadership between the supporters of business as usual and the realists.
Should Sydneysiders enjoy their fire works display while the rest of Australia suffers?
Should Australia profit from coal while Pacific Islands are being destroyed?
Much like those who argue that the risk of an oil leak from deep sea oil drilling off our coasts is remote.
There will be commentators, (possibly even on this forum), who will argue that the chance of fire caused by the Sydney Harbour fireworks display is negligble. The display is on barges away from the shore line in the middle of the harbour, they will argue, the chance of things going wrong is very remote.
And they are right.
That is not the point.
The point is this:
John Barilaro's statement makes a very telling argument.
At a deeper level John Barilaro's statement speaks to the wider global divide over climate change. Those most badly affected by climate change are often the poorest and the least responsible for the crisis, the Pacific Islanders, whose lands are being devastated by rising seas and tropical climate change fueled super storms, and who pleaded that Australia ‘not open your coal mines’.
John Barilaro demands, "…let’s not have two classes of citizens. We’re all in this crisis together.”
John Barilaro's demand not to have two classes of citizens excorciates the likes of business as usual politician Australia's Deputy Prime Minister Michael McCormack who in reply to the Pacific Leaders Forum plea to ‘not open your coal mines’, said that Pacific Islanders can survive climate change by picking our fruit.
https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/world/2019/08/pacific-islanders-can-survive-climate-change-by-picking-aussie-fruit-deputy-pm-michael-mccormack-says.html
Let's not have two classes of global citizens. We're all in this crisis together.
The Sydney display is off the bridge and barges and in an urban area (not much fuel) so I expect that the exemption was granted by the fire service because it falls below the threshold for risk.
Also, the calls for the cost of the display to be donated to the fire service are surely unrealistic as there will be a contract and the display takes many months to set up. People also need to be able to celebrate in their traditional way if possible and have some time out – this is especially important when you have been living in a state of emergency for a while. I hope it all goes off spectacularly well and people have a good time.
How about that?
Just as I predicted.
But as I also wrote "That is not the point".
Hi Pingao because you seem to have missed the whole point of my comment.
I will hammer it out so that you can't miss it.
The point is –
Are we all in this together, or are we not?
The point is –
Should we party up, while volunteer fire fighters are risking everything to save others?
The point is –
Should we celebrate the fact that climate change will soon provide us with a lot of desperate Pacific Islanders to pick our fruit?
The point is –
Should we have two classes of citizens, or should we not?
The point is –
Should we be ignoring the suffering of the firefighters?
The point is –
Should we be like the Australian Prime Minister who only belatedly after protests cancelled his fun holiday in Hawaii to come back and pass emergency legislation to address the dire financial needs of the fire fighters whose bills had been piling up?
The point is –
Should we be allowing new coal mines? (because it makes us money)
The point is –
Should we be allowing people to walk on live volcanoes? (because it makes us money)
The point is –
Should we just carry on with business as usual?
The point is –
Are we in a crisis, or are we not?
Should we acknowledge to the world that we are in a crisis by halting the Sydney fireworks display?
Or should we try to pretend that everything is normal?
Succinct like a Spring hailstorm damaging delicate sprouting crops and blossoms thereby destroying any hope for a rich Autumn harvest. A few more of those will result in fatal famine and utter despair.
Hi Jenny, my reply was to A. I'm not sure if your comment at 5.3.1 was up when I posted my comment.
While I probably agree with most of your points and don't give a stuff personally about fireworks displays in Sydney, I nevertheless think it would be a fairly weak gesture to cancel the Sydney fireworks – probably divisive as well.
My point is that people need these kind of events, particularly in times of crisis. The city of Sydney is not isolated from the fires and has been full of smoke for weeks. Also the money is spent already.
This link explains the NYE fireworks in Sydney.
https://www.smh.com.au/national/how-do-the-new-year-s-eve-fireworks-work-20191209-p53ibb.html
My apologies Pingao for the crossed lines of communication.
However I still disagree with your opinion that it would be a fairly weak gesture to cancel the Sydney fireworks display.
This display is broadcast and watched by millions around the world. To cancel it would be a major gesture, signalling to the world that Australia is in a major climate related crisis.
Personally I think you may have inadvertently admitted this when you wrote, "…it would be a fairly weak gesture to cancel the Sydney fireworks – probably divisive as well."
Not probably, it would be 'divisive'.
There are already divisions over this blatant flouting of the fire ban imposed on the rest of the city.
Canceling the Hamilton Rugby game over apartheid sport was divisive. Canceling nuclear ship visits was divisive.
Canceling the government subdivision of Bastion Point was divisive.
It is divisive precisely because it is not a weak gesture.
You may have read the for and anti cancellation argument, especially the powerful for argument by John Barilaro, Deputy Premier of NSW.
Canceling the fireworks display will cause immense and (and as you say "possibly divisive"), debate, possibly leading to a deep realisation by many that we are in a global crisis that is not being adequately addressed.
Instead we get a Potemkin village display of business as usual.
Potemkin village – Wikipedia
Thanks for your reply Jenny. You may be right that a more radical response may be more effective although it is impossible to tell if more people will come round to accepting the AGW and its effects more quickly if loads of people get aggravated by the cancellation of this event … anyway it obviously somewhat moot at this point.
I do think (feel?) that the tide is turning in public acceptance of AGW which gives me a little hope (so long as I don't read comments in the media : / )
Low risk is not no risk.
Lots of people go to Sydney for this. Many people would be pissed.
These fireworks impact the current fires in Australia 0%
There is no reason to cancel these except a bit of virtue signaling.
It can also be reasonably argued Infused that continuing with this fire works display despite a total city wide fire ban and in the midst of a bush fire emergency is a bit off vice signalling.
Virtue signalling – Wikipedia
Hi Infused,
In my opinion we need more virtue signaling and less vice signalling.
Maybe then and possibly only then, enough people will wake up to the realisation that we are in a crisis to demand that immediate action be taken in numbers to big to be ignored by the policy makers.
you lot are so far removed from reality it's crazy.
In other words, you have nothing. Why then do you even bother commenting?
Woah, that decade was quick.
Believe me. The next one will be even quicker
Albert Einstein once wittily remarked, "Time is natures way of stopping everything happening at once"
Get ready and brace yourself for everything happening at once.
Not really. The decade still has 366 days to run, otherwise there would have to have existed, somewhere in the CE (AD) period, a decade with only nine years in it; which, of course, is absurd.
"I’ll come right out and say it: as an economist I think endless growth is technically possible. The key word there is technical, because my reasoning is nerdy and economic. However, the more important point is that I believe this is a pointless topic of conversation."
https://www.interest.co.nz/opinion/103140/top-leader-geoff-simmons-argues-eco-socialist-claim-we-cant-we-cant-keep-growing
Hope the second article has something of substance or TOP may have just consigned itself to the history book of NZ politics (a one line entry)
Do you have anything to address Geoff's argument? Because it's the same argument I've made here many times. If you assume infinite simplistic growth, then yes logically it cannot be accomodated in a finite system.
But that is not what we actually do. For instance human population has increased by around 7 times since 1800, yet 200 years ago we struggled to feed even 1b people reliably. Now the top health problems we face are caused by an excess of food for many billions. Clearly the nature of our economic activity has changed dramatically in that time. This is the first part of Geoff's argument, and it's an obvious irrefutable observation.
The other flaw in 'eco-socialist' argument is thinking that we are inevitably on an exponential, unconstrained growth path. All the evidence suggests that we are not; most projections have us peaking at around 9 – 11b people and then declining. Indeed most developed nation populations are already declining. The sooner we develop the whole world, the quicker our total population will stabilise.
And the third flaw is assuming that the planet is 'finite', and that we are forever limited to it's currently understood resources only. Yet the reality is that we can discover new resource domains, unsuspected and untapped. Each one of these conceptual leaps opens up entirely new opportunities. The old aphorism 'the Stone Age didn't end because of a shortage of stones' applies illustrates this.
At the same time I've read my Jared Diamond. We do know that societies collapse, at least locally. The unprecedented challenge we now face is that for the first time in all of human history it's conceivable that we could collapse on a global scale; a truly dystopian prospect. I've alluded to this before, that all the really big problems we now face are global in nature, and therefore demand solutions at a global scale.
What is preventing this is a cultural inflexibility, our reluctance to let go the nation state as the apogee of politics, and evolve an authentic and effective global governance. Because while Diamond rightly points to examples of collapse, he makes the equally important point … that some societies avoid it if they can understand what is happening, and make the necessary cultural adaptions in time.
"Do you have anything to address Geoff's argument?"
when he makes one I'll respond…theres nothing in that first article to support his contention hence the comment about his proclaimed second
Declaring that someone 'has nothing' by producing nothing of substance yourself is always less than convincing. But maybe you have a killer argument up your sleeve … I'll await it with interest.
lol…you challenge me to contest an argument as yet unmade…how many impossible tasks do you perform before breakfast?
You think responding to an argument 'yet unmade' is impossible, yet somehow you find it very easy to declare it a 'nothing burger' sight unseen. Very odd.
Besides there are at least two obvious arguments in Geoff's article that you could address; much the same as the one's I made above.
My breakfast was homemade buckwheat pancakes with blueberrries and coconut cream yoghurt … my partner declared them “impossibly good”. Does this count?
GS names two paths of unlimited growth…productivity (efficiency) and inflation (financial)….in neither case does he support the assertions with explanation of its working, he does however state he will explain in a second article.
That will be interesting to see because neither address 'growth' , the former merely (potentially) slows it and the latter only changes the way we measure it without addressing the resources at its base. Both impact the allocation but not the need nor the finite nature.
Well here is Norman Smith outlining how NZ can achieve carbon zero by just 2050. (Only 30 years … you and I may well live to see this.)
Improved efficiency is the first and most accessible step. Implementing known renewable technologies is the mid game, and anticipating entirely new technologies to get us over the line.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/environment/climate-news/118485011/the-three-stages-to-zero-carbon-success
A short article will necessarily be light on details to flesh out the model, but in my view none of them are unreasonable stages. And while these address themselves primarily to just one of the growth constraints we face, atmospheric carbon balance, the same basic idea is applicable everywhere.
thats wonderful and I may have a look later…but net carbon neutral by 2050 in NZ bears no relationship to unlimited growth
Growth and carbon – can we really have one without the other?
I do hope, but don't believe that annual anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions will peak soon (enough) – admire (and genuinely wish that I could share) your optimism.
"Diamond himself has "repeatedly been sued, threatened with lawsuits, and verbally abused by scholars". His lecture hosts have been forced to hire bodyguards to shield him from critics, while one scholar concluded a published review of one of his earlier books with the injunction: "Shut up". These dispiriting phenomena, of course, are not completely absent in the UK either." https://www.stuff.co.nz/entertainment/books/112796232/book-review-upheaval-by-jared-diamond
Excellent news, eh?! Reduces the prospect of being bored to death in acadaemia considerably. 😎
I've got the book out from the local library, but only read the initial thesis & concluding chapters. Worthy, but dull. I own & have read Collapse & Guns, Germs and consider the guy worth reading. Too bad his latest comparative analysis seems a basically a waste of time. Case studies are really only worthwhile if you can deduce general principles and explain how they will shape the future…
Thanks for this; I hadn't spotted his latest book. I found How Societies Collapse better than Guns, Germs and Steel … although both are required reading.
The most interesting point he made in the former is that societies that avoided collapse all had two critical factors in common … they had insight at what was coming down the road at them, and they had sufficient social cohesion to make the necessary sacrifices and adaptations necessary.
We certainly have the former condition … but we clearly struggle with the latter. (The attacks on Diamond being a small yet signal symptom of this. How sad.)
Critical thinking, robust debate, and heated arguments are no obstacle to or for social cohesion. In fact, they are a critically necessary requirement and a hallmark of a well-functioning healthy and cohesive society IMHO. Obsequiousness, compliance, conformity and group think are not.
We've been through at least a decade of intense social and political polarisation that probably has yet to run it's course. Yet there are encouraging signs that I am absolutely not alone in wishing to shift this trend.
Social cohesion absolutely does not imply conformity. The salient question in any relationship is not the fact that you will disagree (sometimes passionately) … but on how you conduct that disagreement. The whole purpose of a discussion is to determine a course of action. If the debate is corrosive however, regardless of whichever party was 'right or wrong' … it undermines our ability to act. This is the salient lesson from the climate change debate, the fossil fuel corporates knew the science perfectly, so they intentionally set out to poison the debate so that we were rendered unable to act on it.
This principle applies everywhere. It is much less important to be 'right' than to be 'sufficiently aligned in order that we can collectively act in unity'.
In the same vein I'd recommend:
Why Nations Fail.
yes Ad, I read that book a few years ago. One thing I recall from it was the importance of what they called 'institutions". Such as having a robust and well operating justice system, education system, police force etc. I hadn't given it much thought til then, but certainly failed states are characterised by corruption, the law of the jungle and failure of public services.
Re collapse theorising, there's excellent analysis/commentary here: https://philosophicaldisquisitions.blogspot.com/2019/02/the-collapse-of-complex-societies_1.html
Yes, I also liked Jared's Collapse more than the one that made him famous. Related to the collapse genre is the catastrophe genre – much older. I got addicted to it when I discovered scifi in early 1963: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2012/jul/05/jane-rogers-top-10-cosy-catastrophes
David Bowie later wrote a song about the Midwich cuckoos (Oh you pretty things). "All the women in the village of Midwich are impregnated in a single night by aliens. Nine months later, the women give birth to a race of children with golden eyes – strangely precocious children who are emotionally blank, band together against the villagers, and are soon perceived to possess formidable and horribly threatening powers." Adolescent me was very impressed!
"In Keys's startling thesis, a global climatic catastrophe in A.D. 535-536–a massive volcanic eruption sundering Java from Sumatra–was the decisive factor that transformed the ancient world into the medieval, or as Keys prefers to call it, the ""proto-modern"" era. Ancient chroniclers record a disaster in that year that blotted out the sun for months, causing famine, droughts, floods, storms and bubonic plague. Keys, archeology correspondent for the London Independent, uses tree-ring samples, analysis of lake deposits and ice cores, as well as contemporaneous documents to bolster his highly speculative thesis. In his scenario, the ensuing disasters precipitated the disintegration of the Roman Empire, beset by Slav, Mongol and Persian invaders propelled from their disrupted homelands." https://www.publishersweekly.com/978-0-345-40876-1
But that's merely one of several such! I've got plenty of books on the others too. Speculative means circumstantial evidence, not proof. It applies to all history really – historians speculate when they interpret or theorise. So-called historical facts are usually disputed by someone…
Very nice links Dennis. Yet the fact of collapse is not in debate; it's something we've done many times as a species. But we have one critical advantage the ancients lacked … we have far more insight into what is happening to us than they did.
It's our ability to go from informed debate to effective action at the required scale, that we struggle with.
The following headline is another small yet signal symptom that we struggle with having sufficient social cohesion to make the necessary sacrifices and adaptations necessary.
A clear victory has been handed to the deniers.
Fair enough … and to take your metaphor to it's next step … if someone has their fingers firmly plugged into their ears, do you think yelling at them louder will persuade them to listen?
Human adaptability works just fine thanks.
The animosity is particularly fierce among anthropologists who produced less cogent work, according to a couple of my students.
PUBLISH, n. In literary affairs, to become the fundamental element in a cone of critics ~ Bierce
Capitalism is sold as a way of managing needs. Yet if we consider the rather simple analogy, that of a child on a park swing, their parent pushing harder and harder, their child screaming has altered tone from joy to fear, as the child comes closer to the tipping point. Daddy why are you adding more co2 every year? If capitalism is to smooth out risk, why isn't it? All economies have technical vaporware fixes, well until they dont because they kept waiting for them.
When we elect dutiful children who don't scream like Trump, Bossinaro, smomo… their duty first to god, then to big businesses, and lastly to whatever or spin they need to play to keep up their pretense of living up to their oath of office. We conceed our democracy to theology and the giant ponsi scheme capialism has been made into.
A New Year present for Lynn; this may well stroke your sense of humour
https://youtu.be/P-hUV9yhqgY
Reminds me of some Standard 'discussions'.
@ 8.1
Oops… not a dig at any specific male commentators. Just a side salad of friendly humour.
And while I'm here;
Congratulations and thank-you to Sue Kedgley for 50 years of service to women and the environment:
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/406444/new-year-honours-sue-kedgley-made-officer-of-the-new-zealand-order-of-merit
She’s so right about the 70s. As a public servant I didn’t dare become involved in the womens’ movement. It was bad enough being a member of the Labour Party. You would have thought I had committed a treasonable act by the way I was treated.
🙂
…… and re SK – about fucking time, and Marilyn Waring for that matter.
That said – it really shows what a croc of shit the whole thing is (and I say that with a bro who holds one, invested by a Guv who damn near lost his false teeth during the ceremony – well deserved btw – more to do with those that miss out, and those that get one). Sometimes you have to wonder what Madge (Her Indoors, HRH Liz) would think if she only knew their backstories – but then she's got her own shit to deal with that could very well knock her off her pedestal this year
Best not get all bitter about the PS though @ Anne – their time will come (SOME in the SENIOR ranks – the parachuted-in, the free-loaders, the Peter-Principled, the thoroughly egotistical bullies et al), and there are signs its already happened/ing.
Their excesses don't go unnoticed forever. If we do get a repeat of the COL in 2020, AND they have a plan before going into the election that features actual transitional change and kindness with published policies that attract ya average bloke with a few unpublished in store of how they're going to get there – we might ekshully see all that hopey changey stuff happening.
Que sera sera. And if things have to get worse before they get better, it's not necessarily a bad thing ( in terms of gaining 'learnings' going forward, and with the wisdom of hindsight, 20/20 vision, and all that sort of kaka)
Happy New Year
And Happy New Year to you too OWT.
Yes, I did think of Marilyn Waring but the linked item was about SK.
Two women who did so much and one of them at such personal cost. Now don't anyone get me started on Muldoon. Grrrr.
Feynman had a similar story about how he got an idea for calculating electron rotation from watching a spinning plate fly through the air at a college food fight.
Similar, yet very different…
This one obviously did not get hacked 😉
https://dpmc.govt.nz/publications/new-year-honours-list-2020
Apocalypse 2020 has Wayne Hope's predictions… https://thedailyblog.co.nz/2019/12/23/apocalypse-2020/ Highlights worth recycling:
1. After being publicly outed as a helium balloon rather than a sentient human being, Boris Johnson ascends into the stratosphere.
2. Labour announces that if they win the next election, two Brexit/remain referenda will be held consecutively. If the two results, averaged out, deliver less than a 5% margin for either side, there will be another referendum. [my prediction: Labour splitters will demand that this simplistic prescription be complexified, pronto, toot sweet]
3. ScoMo carries a large lump of kerosene-doused coal into the Australian senate. Setting it alight, he declares maniacally that there is nothing to be afraid of. Elected representatives are engulfed in flames as ScoMo escapes back to Hawaii.
4. Australian climate change refugees demand entry as early summer temperatures average 45°c and whole suburbs burn. Jacinda Adern’s re-elected coalition government announces that preference will be given to New Zealand expatriates
5. England defeat the All Blacks at Twickenham by a huge margin. Ian Foster and the coaching team upon return to New Zealand receive 24/7 police protection. A commission of enquiry is established to apportion blame and intensify national self-loathing.
The size of the problem is huge but this is a small step in the right direction.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/property/118523315/new-state-houses-for-richmond-as-waiting-lists-reach-record-highs
Don’t expect miracles overnight.
The local Nat MP is bound to declare "But we have been waiting a decade already! Time this do-nothing govt got on with it!"
Their caucus must have been passing around one of those memory zappers from Men In Black. Shame the rest of us are still sentient.
In politics, does negative cancel out (neutralise) positive? I think the answer is “no”. They accentuate each other and create an energy field (polarisation). In some ways, we need this, to make things happen, i.e. use the ‘political’ energy wisely. Our democracy needs a properly functioning Opposition to hold the Government to account. We don’t want (or need) them to neutralise everything the Government does because that leads to stasis and apathy (AKA socio-political death).
I welcome them coming up with bolder plans to tackle the problem – or go back to denying there is one. #antithesis
White man, him speak with forked tongue, as the old saying goes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forked_tongue
Harari, in Sapiens, tells the story of the Apollo 11 astronauts training in the desert, encountering an old Native American, who asked what they were doing there, so they told him they were training for an expedition to the moon.
"When the old man heard that, he fell silent for a few moments, then asked the astronauts if they could do him a favour." They asked him what he wanted. "Well, the people of my tribe believe that holy spirits live on the moon. I was wondering if you could pass an important message to them from my people."
The old guy said something in his tribal language, then got them to memorise it, saying he couldn't explain the meaning to them. Back at base, they eventually found someone who knew the language, who burst out laughing when told the message: "Don't believe a single word these people are telling you. They've come to steal your lands."
Points to trust as being foundational to intercultural relations and peaceful coexistence. Therefore in the fraught times to come, politics must be driven by a trust-building agenda. Expertise in getting suitable results will be essential. If you know anyone leaving school looking for direction, tell them!
Not so much winning.
A murdered journalist. Shady offshore deals. A tiny nation in the grip of large-scale criminal interests.
These are the leading factors behind the selection of Maltese Prime Minister Joseph Muscat as the OCCRP 2019 Person of the Year in Organized Crime and Corruption.
Under Muscat’s leadership, criminality and corruption have flourished — and in many cases gone unpunished — in the small Mediterranean archipelago of Malta, creating an environment that led to the 2017 murder of investigative journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia, investigators and government critics say.
[…]
Other finalists for 2019 included:
https://www.occrp.org/en/poy/2019/
Dude had a heart attack, lied about it and hid it from the public for several days, then promised to release his full medical records by the end of the year.
And now he pulls this tRumpian 50% higher than other men his age with a similar diagnosis stunt.
WTF is he hiding?
https://twitter.com/ccadelago/status/1211729914245918720
Well Yeah! But what about this! 🙄
https://www.newsweek.com/republican-vp-trends-americans-react-biden-saying-he-would-consider-gop-2020-running-mate-1479765
It's the "with a similar diagnosis" that's the real fudge lol.
Most published medical records are written like this and usually from a single physician. An example:
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/biden-medical-records-reveal-heart-condition
It's obvious, he's just about dead. In comparison Donald J Trump is the healthiest, fittest president the USA has ever had and he has all the attribute of a 35 year old.
Oh, and that terminal illness which Hillary Clinton had some years back? I must have been away, I missed the death and funeral notices.
The advice might be meant well but some of the explanations come straight from the snake-oil department. For example:
https://www.stuff.co.nz/life-style/food-wine/118528840/how-to-start-2020-without-a-new-years-eve-hangover
In this context, a good journalists would have changed the wording from “light” to light-coloured, clear, or pale even.
The “free radicals” sounds great but it is absolute nonsense.
Same thing about sending the body “into fight mode”.
None of these statements are backed (up) by the Health Promotion Agency's alcohol.org.nz as far as I can tell.
Turns out this is a cut & paste job from a similar article that appeared on Stuff four years ago: https://www.stuff.co.nz/life-style/christmas/75064270/how-to-pre-emptively-handle-an-epic-hangover
As far as I can tell, the ‘original’ source of this ignorant mis-information might be this article on 10 Dec 2012: https://bengreenfieldfitness.com/article/nutrition-articles/how-to-get-rid-of-a-hangover-as-fast-as-possible-with-the-best-natural-hangover-cures/
Rant over; need drink.
very good
https://twitter.com/goodoldcatchy/status/1211580238662160384
Someone agrees..
https://twitter.com/AoDespair/status/1211727638039089157
Now this is pretty damn cool.
https://twitter.com/CNN/status/1211205471790665728
The fluid is actually a molecule in liquid form that scientists from Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden have been working on improving for over a year.
This molecule is composed of carbon, hydrogen and nitrogen, and when it is hit by sunlight, it does something unusual: the bonds between its atoms are rearranged and it turns into an energised new version of itself, called an isomer.
Like prey caught in a trap, energy from the sun is thus captured between the isomer's strong chemical bonds, and it stays there even when the molecule cools down to room temperature.
When the energy is needed – say at nighttime, or during winter – the fluid is simply drawn through a catalyst that returns the molecule to its original form, releasing energy in the form of heat.
https://www.sciencealert.com/scientists-develop-liquid-that-sucks-up-sun-s-energy
Way to go!! I wonder if a but will emerge. If not, the thing to watch will be copyright licensing. Do the scientists have a contract with the university, and/or does the university own their creations, and if so, how soon will they license production? Those are the key questions, methinks.
So you put a tank of the stuff up on your roof, and run a wire to your in-house Tesla battery to keep it topped up. Bye bye grid.
Okay, so there will need to be a heat distribution network, I was over-simplifying. Perhaps local tech can do that easily.
lucky we don't live in OZ.
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2019/12/30/1908659/-Thousands-celebrating-New-Years-Eve-in-Australia-flee-into-the-ocean-to-escape-raging-wildfires?utm_campaign=trending
The smoke drift is moving onto the SI .
Realtime satellite imagery here.
https://himawari8.nict.go.jp/
The future is not amused.
https://twitter.com/StrikeClimate/status/1211957822717456384