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Today’s Daily Blog Watch Round-Up of matters that have attracted the attention, assessments, and articulations of this country’s leading bloggers…
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NZ Left Blogosphere
‘Truth, Justice, and the American Way‘ in 21st Century USA would bring Superman to his knees, in tears. In the Pundit, Jane Young writes about Force-feeding at Gitmo (Guantanamo Bay) of political prisoners from America’s War of Terror. Oops, I mean, War On Terror. Or whatever.
America’s detention of prisoners without trial or other due process of the law is a blight on that nation’s reputation (or what’s left of it) and shows itself no better than the Soviet Union in the 1970s. As Jane writes,
“In a letter from his hospital bed, Khader Adnan who was one of the first to stop taking food, cited the daily extremes of the occupation – the humiliations, beatings, senseless harassment and deprivation of the simplest human rights as his tipping point.”
Such is the value of America’s concepts of truth and justice.
Superman wept.
No Right Turn’s Idiot/Savant rails against undemocratic restrictions placed on West Coast man, Robert Frank Terry, who is facing various charges. The Court has restricted (ie, denied) Robert’s right to contact elected representatives. I/S charges that this is Going too far,
“People’s fundamental democratic rights should not be stripped from them simply because they are accused of a crime.”
The march of State Power continues…
Idiot/Savant reports National’s rush to privatisation with Meridian and Genesis, even before the Mighty River Power sales is concluded. He points out the bleedin’ obvious which National has failed to comprehend;
“… apart from the anti-democratic attempt to evade the expected referendum (which we should hear about by next Sunday), this is simply dumb. Flooding the market with electricity company shares is not going to result in the best return for the government.”
Personally, I suspect that the Tories are panicking. They are one by-election away from collapse, and with plummetting poll-ratings, will not fare well in such an electoral test.
The Nats are on their way out and they want to do as much damage neo-liberal reforms as they can get away with.
I/S also reveal that the GCSB’s Mastery of Cyberspace “does not extend to putting the correct email address on their website (and in fact they do not seem to understand the difference between an email address and a “website”. Yeah, we can have faith in these guys. Not).”
Just as well the Taliban don’t email their threats to us.
Imperator Fish’s Scott Yorke tells us about A day in the life of Aaron Gilmore, MP – referencing National MP Aaron Gilmore’s abuse meted out to a (very calm and professional) waiter at a Hanmer Springs hotel. Lest we need to be reminded, Tories have a born-to-rule attitude and that extends to serving them as much booze as their bloated guts will take (never mind the Liquor Act prohibiting serving alcohol to drunks).
Scott uses his natural talents for satire to lampoon Gilmore’s drunken behaviour to good effect.
Meanwhile Frank is somewhat more Frankly Speaking about Gilmore’s Booze-ups, brain-fades, and bullying, and shares his views with a letter to the editor at the Press. Frank links Gilmore’s booze-fueled misbehaviour with National’s abuse of workers since 2008. The Tory “born to rule” comes out when alcohol releases their inhibitions.
If, as the Radio NZ report is true, and Gilmore threatened the waiter with being fired, then perhaps he should reconsider his role as a Member of Parliament.
Pillock.
According to Whoar, “..Zuckerberg: Folks On Facebook Are Happy With All The Ads We’re Showing Them..”. He writes that,
“..A few things seem to hold true about Facebook users as a whole:
They’ll gripe about being friended by their bosses –
– they’ll be annoyed by baby photos – and they’ll complain about ads.”
But according to Zuckerberg, Facebook users are fine with that. Yeah, right. Off course they are.
Whoar also tells us that “..Robert Reich: The Fed – Apple – and Trickle-Down Economics..” and how big corporations are abusing the Fed’s pumping out of endless rivers of money.
On The Jackal we get a taste of John Key’s scare tactics, with the Green Party as the Bogey-man. Jackal writes,
“I often wonder how on earth we ended up with such a blatantly dishonest person as Prime Minister… I also wonder how we ended up with such a bad liar? The deluded John Key can’t even construct a decent lie these days, which makes him entirely pathetic!.”
He also wonders,
“If the Chinese Vice-Premier’s goons were about to shoot Russel Norman for holding up a Tibetan flag, perhaps we shouldn’t allow them into the country with guns in the first place.”
New Zealand allowed foreign visitors into the country armed with guns?
Or was Key lying again?
The Jackal also comments on Aaron Gilmore’s drunken buffoon binge-drinking and abuse behaviour to hotel staff, and doesn’t mince his words on this event.
As Jackal states, the hotel was following the letter of the law. Which is more than can be made to Gilmore’s threats to have a waiter sacked for not supplying more booze for the heavily intoxicated National List MP.
In Bizarreer and Bizarreer, The Dim Post presented a well-considered riposte to David Farrar’s criticisms of The Post’s previous rubbishing of Farrar’s fear-mongering over dropping share markets. Farrar – being a National Party apparatchik and general stooge of Big Business, doesn’t want the Labour-Green NZ Power plan to go ahead.
That might mean cheaper electricity prices for people.
And we can’t have that now, can we???
After all, share investers might lose their profits from our privatised SOE powercos.
And we can’t have that now, can we???
As Danyl writes in response to our little Tory gnome,
“The other point to be made here is that Labour and the Greens argue that the share-value of these companies is over-inflated because their profits are artificially high – because the current policy settings allow them to price-gouge. So changing the policy settings isn’t wealth destruction, but rather wealth-transfer from the shareholders to the customers.”
Message to Mr Farrar: you can keep paying high power prices for your electricity.
We’ll take the cheaper option.
Everyone is happy.
Danyl also writes that Maurice Williamson’s “rainbow” speech was Publishable, but worth it to elect him as mayor of Auckland? As Danyl points out,
“Being a good speaker counts for a lot in politics, but I don’t think it’s going to convince Auckland to vote for a libertarian who thinks that the leaky homes debacle was an act of nature and who will want to privitise every park and swimming pool in the city.”
Thankfully, the public’s John Key-like short-term memory will deny Williamson any lasting ‘brownie points’ from his well-received speech over marriage equality.
Marty at mars2earth refers to corporate predators to whom Key has exposed our throats. Key’s secretive dealing with deep-sea oil drilling outfit, Anadarko, does not bode well for our country.
Remember that Anadarko was involved with the Gulf of Mexico oil spill in 2010 – and tried to evade responsibility for the worst environmental oil-disaster in the history of human civilisation. And these are the predators that Key has invited into our country.
The Civilian addresses the binge-drinking session at the Hanmer springs hotel, and reports that it wasn’t Aaron Gilmore responsible for threatening the waiter. Instead, the Taliban claim responsibility for rude hotel comments. The Civilian states,
“In a video released to a number of extremist websites today, the Taliban said that the attack was a retaliatory action against New Zealand for its involvement in Afghanistan. They promised that if New Zealand continued to offer aid to the U.S. in battlefields around the world, more faux pas were likely to take place in the future.”
Well, that explains everything.
Ok, Mr Gilmore, you’re off the hook. No stocks for you…
And the Civilian reports that the Roache arrest puts new spin on Ken Barlow preschool storyline. *ouch!!!*
The Labour blogsite rebutts the whinge/threat letter sent by vested business interests to persuade Labour-Greens that the proposed single buyer-desk for electricity is a bad thing. Because, well, shareholders might be affected. Or the sky will fall. But Phil O’Reilly’s open letter is wrong on many counts, replies David Parker.
After all, as we all know, Big Business is really interested in our well-being, and not their own vested interests, right?
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Over at The Standard,
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Why Brian Gaynor wants you to keep paying too much for power –
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Networks of influence: Key & Anadarko Petroleum – ith their record of falsehood and misinformation, we cannot trust anything said by Anadarko people“. She refers to a complex web of dodgy companies all connected with Anadarko and their apalling track record. Karol points out that “Anadarko made false claims about their years of experience in deep sea drilling. They falsely claimed their role in the Deepwater Horizon (BP/Gulf of Mexico/Macondo) disaster was that of “passive” investor“.
- The Standard does a semi-regular feature call “Caption This“. Tonight’s is pretty damned funny. Have a squizz, and leave your own. First prize is a new progressive government. (Booby Prize; a Third Term of Dear Leader and his drunken MPs.)
And allied to Karol’s piece on Anadarko is Gordon Campbell’s excellent Risky Business on Werewolf. Gordon gives us a full picture on Anadarko’s track record and our total inability to mount a response should we have a Gulf of Mexico-type spill of out coast,
“New Zealand’s isolation makes it particularly vulnerable to a Gulf of Mexico-style oil spill, marine pollution experts say…..In the Gulf of Mexico, where there are more than 3800 oil and gas platforms, towing in a relief operation was relatively easy….In New Zealand…help could take longer to arrive with potential rescue platforms a long distance off…A similar leak [to Deepwater Horizon] at Montara oil field, in the Timor Sea, took 79 days to shut off.” – Dominion –Post, 23 June 2010
“Access to well containment gear – capping stacks – was compulsory in the United States and they were deployed around the world in industry centres, the closest of which [to New Zealand] is in Singapore.” – New Zealand Herald, April 30, 2010
This is must-read stuff. (And share via Facebook! Get the message out!)
If disaster strikes, will John Key take responsibility for the consequences?
Sure he will.
And I’m the Pope.
Or Superman.
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Blog Post of the Day
Imperator Fish writes about Taking a wrong turn down Memory Lane, and compares his memory with that of John “Brainfade” Key. It’s a rip-roaring hoot and be warned: do not be drinking anything when you read this – not unless you fancy your drink sprayed all over your monitor and keyboard!
Scott – expect threats of lawsuits; massive publicity; and skyrocketing hits on your website.
Well played.
Aaron Gilmore – expect to be seen as the Village Drunk from now on.
Not well played at all.
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Thought for the Day
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~oo~
