Sunday Reading

Written By: - Date published: 9:30 am, September 30th, 2012 - 17 comments
Categories: food, interweb, john key, uk politics, us politics - Tags: , , ,

My regular Sunday piece of interesting, longer, deeper stories I found during the week. It’s also a chance for you to share what you found this week too. Those stimulating links you wanted to share, but just didn’t fit in anywhere (no linkwhoring).  This week: Obama the Tory, fish, Planet Key and the UK’s hit political single.

I’m off overseas for a couple of weeks again, so it’s another short one.  First up, British commentators are wondering if Obama is a Tory – a Disraeli figure, who’s pragmatic and conservative in the way he attempts change.  Others disagree, although the left of US politics generally is about where the right is in other countries.  And their left-right schism is hardening: the BBC also ask how did the US get so divided?

Although we’re currently cosying up to the Americans, there’s one thing we’re disturbingly far from them on – protection for the oceans.  Fresh from being the only country in the world to vote against protecting incredibly rare dolphins, and not that long since we bowed into US pressure to stop near-slavery in our fishing vessels, we’re resisting their efforts to create an effective Ross Sea Marine Protection Area.  Once again clean green Aotearoa is holding the world back.  It’s worth looking at how over-fishing may mean that we’re the last generation to hunt fish in large numbers.  85% of global fish stocks are currently in trouble – we’re plain running out of fish.

For a bit of amusement there were a couple of great pieces on Planet Key at the start of the week – from Steve Braunias and Toby Manhire.

Finally, following Anthony’s Nick Clegg subtitled for honesty, here’s the remix that’s going up the UK charts (for charity):

17 comments on “Sunday Reading ”

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  1. weka 1
    30 September 2012 at 11:45 am

    Braunias is very good again.

  2. kiwi_prometheus 2
    30 September 2012 at 1:18 pm

    New Scientist article on nanobubbles used to restore toxic lakes. Nanobubbles aren’t even suppose to exist, and “questions about how they form and stay stable remain ‘awkward'”.

    10 nanometer oxygen bubbles in clay sprayed on to a biologically dead lake in China – energy efficient, non polluting, using only soil from the lake edge. In a 50000 meter squared test area the 1 cm thick algae bloom was gone in 1 hour, ammonia and nitrate levels plummeted within 24 hrs. 4 months later plant life was rampant and plankton thriving.

    Now the Brits want it for their Lake District, and the Canadians for their tar extraction mess.

    At least there are some good news environmental stories.

    • BloodyOrphan 2.1
      30 September 2012 at 1:54 pm

      Awesome info, thanks Bud! :-).

      This kind of tech is our best answer too all the pollution problems of the world.

      But as a science it is a very slow process, with Edison it was …
      “1000 ways not to make a lightbulb” , with those cats it’s “10,000+”

    • Jokerman 2.2
      30 September 2012 at 4:24 pm

      hope yet

  3. Draco T Bastard 3
    30 September 2012 at 3:51 pm

    The World Bank and the development delusion

    In other words, structural adjustment programmes were not designed to reduce poverty (in fact, they specifically preclude poor countries from using the basic strategies that Western countries used to develop their own economies). Rather, they were designed to pull wealth from third world governments into first world banks, allowing the US to transfer the crisis of capitalism abroad for a while without having to solve its contradictions at home.

    But what’s most interesting is this paragraph:

    In addition to forcing economic liberalisation, the Bank’s other key method of dispossession is privatisation. As part of its tactic for recouping loans, the Bank requires debtor nations to sell off telecoms, railroads, banks, hospitals, schools and every conceivable public utility to private companies.

    And we seem to be doing this “Accumulation by dispossession” voluntarily.

    • Jokerman 3.1
      30 September 2012 at 4:25 pm

      been aware of this for over a decade D; may be that you are younger than moi

      • Colonial Viper 3.1.1
        30 September 2012 at 4:28 pm

        I only began to figure this out properly 4-5 years ago…damn you’re good.

        • Draco T Bastard 3.1.1.1
          30 September 2012 at 4:45 pm

          Started to work it out in about 2k3 after two years of actually watching politics and economics. Before then I was supportive of this free-market BS that was/is being peddled.

    • BloodyOrphan 3.2
      30 September 2012 at 4:32 pm

      I.E. Don’t regulate and we will own you soon 🙂
      Anyone that signed that “Free Trade” agreement, should resign and let the world recover properly.

      Governments are meant to feed their people, not let their hard earned TAX dollars vanish in an accounting oversight/screwup/burglary

      If we have a zero bank balance and another 30% of the world has a 0 bank balance, what are all those banks that syphoned off our hard earned money gonna do? …… Laugh M8!

      It’s not like their budgets allow for paying it back, by definition they are “Valid” transactions.

    • Jokerman 3.3
      30 September 2012 at 4:52 pm

      Team, Guys. Good on you both and et al; keep up the good work, “there must be some way out of here, said the Joker to the Thief, (j to John the thief)
      Emancipate ourselves

      (slow typing dedicated to The Standard, and all who sail her; Rock On Diversity)

  4. Jokerman 4
    30 September 2012 at 4:47 pm

    well here goes, hope it is helpful cos i am a freakin slow typer (might hold off dementia and arthritis)

    I am not yet born; O hear me.
    Let not the bloodsucking bat or the rat or the stoat or the
    club-footed ghoul come near me.

    I am not yet born, console me.
    I fear that the human race may with tall walls wall me,
    with strong drugs dope me, with wise lies lure me,
    on black racks rack me, in blood-baths roll me.

    I am not yet born; provide me
    With water to dandle me, grass to grow for me, trees to talk
    to me, sky to sing to me, birds and a white light
    in the back of my mind to guide me.

    I am not yet born; forgive me
    For the sins that in me the world shall commit, my words
    when they speak me, my thoughts when they think me,
    my treason engendered by traitors beyond me,
    my life when they murder by means of my
    hands, my death when they live me.

    I am not yet born; rehearse me
    In the parts I must play and the cues I must take when
    old men lecture me, bureaucrats hector me, mountains
    frown at me, lovers laugh at me, the white
    waves call me to folly and the desert calls
    me to doom and the beggar refuses
    my gift and my children curse me.

    I am not yet born; O hear me,
    Let not the man who is beast or who thinks he is God
    come near me.

    I am not yet born; O fill me
    With strength against those who would freeze my
    humanity, would dragoon me into a lethal automaton,
    would make me a cog in a machine, a thing with
    one face, a thing, and against all those
    who would dissipate my entirety, would
    blow me like a thistledown hither and
    thither or hither and thither
    like water held in the
    hands would spill me.

    Let them not make me a stone and let them not spill me.
    Otherwise kill me.

    -Louis MacNiece

  5. Draco T Bastard 5
    30 September 2012 at 4:48 pm

    How Nazis progress

    The Greek state is falling apart. It is fragmenting, unable to perform its normal functions. It cannot exercise control of the territory or the population. The governing parties are barely cohesive, parliament isn’t really functional. The policies imposed by the ‘troika’ can’t be implemented, and the attempt to implement them will not be rewarded by the EU bosses. This is creating chaos.

    • BloodyOrphan 5.1
      30 September 2012 at 4:53 pm

      Evil, lets hope good civilised people can shoot them down b4 it gets even more out of control.

    • Jokerman 5.2
      30 September 2012 at 5:02 pm

      bit of a Sunday ‘troika’ here today it appears; human history is a wheel.
      synchronicity D and Viper; SOCIAL ARCHAEOLOGIST-MASTER OF TOMB
      (that is why He is my master; he read the scrolls)

    • kiwi_prometheus 5.3
      30 September 2012 at 5:39 pm

      They should have done what Iceland did. Default and make the German bondholders eat it.