The Daily Blog Open Mic – Friday 2nd June 2017

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openmike

 

Announce protest actions, general chit chat or give your opinion on issues we haven’t covered for the day.

Moderation rules are more lenient for this section, but try and play nicely.

 

 

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14 COMMENTS

    • “Trump’s announcement of the withdrawal from the The Paris Accord, actually points out how fing stupid the Donald was in the first place.”

      There. Fixed it for you. 🙂

      • By the time corporates had pulled that agreement apart and minimised the effects and loosened the rules controlling their activities the press had by january 2016 declared it a dead deal anyway.

        TPPA and its sisters have corporate control of us now with this, so we need a new revolution to stop them now.

        http://isds.bilaterals.org/?62-new-investor-state-disputes-in&lang=en

        62 new investor-state disputes in 2016
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        Financial Express (Dhaka) | 27 May 2017
        62 new investor-state disputes in 2016
        In the past year, some 62 Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) cases were initiated by the investors against 41 countries.
        The cases were initiated in pursuant to the international investment agreements (IIAs), according to a review report of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD).
        Thus, total number of such arbitrations stood at 767 at the end of 2016. Most of the new cases were filed by the investors from developed countries.
        UNCTAD report showed that about two thirds of ISDS cases in the past year were based on bilateral investment treaties, most of them dating back to the 1980s and 1990s.
        The remaining arbitrations were based on treaties with investment provisions.
        In 2016, ISDS tribunals made 57 substantive decisions, 41 of which are in the public domain.
        Tribunals considered many issues that touch upon policy options identified in UNCTAD’s Road Map for IIA Reform and its Investment Policy Framework for Sustainable Development.
        UNCTAD’s World Investment Report 2017, scheduled to unveil the next month, presents and analyses the pros and cons of 10 policy options that countries can take to reform their old-generation treaties.

      • Frank ‘we’ are at nearly 1.6 c now, and rapidly heading for 2 inside of another year ish, what hope a bit of paper with a bunch of fuckwit signatures ??

        • If I was resigned to an “inevitable doom”, Robert, I wouldn’t spend hours of my time researching, reading, weighing information, and writing about issues and problems that confront us. I wouldn’t even bother posting here. (I’d be lying in a hot tub practicising drinking skills I haven’t used since my 20s…)

          Yes, I’m aware how dire the situation is. I even agree with you that things may get worse before they get better.

          But I am optimistic that common sense will prevail and that the next generation will learn from our f**k ups and will do better. The consumerist, hyper-individualised, Me-First culture fostered by neo-liberalism will prove to have been a short-term fad (like big hair, big shoulder pads, and the internal combustion engine) and people will demand alternatives.

          In a curious way, “Brexit” and the election of that anti-science buffoon to the White House, have been a warning to us all. We can either act collectively to make better choices or face a brutish future of demagogues promising easy consumerism-without-consequences.

          We survived the threat of extinction via Atomic War because saner heads in the world prevailed. I’m damn certain we’ll survive the threat of extinction via Climate Holocaust.

          If not… well… I’ll make sure my grave stone reads “Fuck it, I tried!”

  3. I’m with Derrick Jensen on the BS hope crap.
    https://orionmagazine.org/article/beyond-hope/
    But no matter what environmentalists do, our best efforts are insufficient. We’re losing badly, on every front. Those in power are hell-bent on destroying the planet, and most people don’t care.

    Frankly, I don’t have much hope. But I think that’s a good thing. Hope is what keeps us chained to the system, the conglomerate of people and ideas and ideals that is causing the destruction of the Earth.

    To start, there is the false hope that suddenly somehow the system may inexplicably change. Or technology will save us. Or the Great Mother. Or beings from Alpha Centauri. Or Jesus Christ. Or Santa Claus. All of these false hopes lead to inaction, or at least to ineffectiveness. One reason my mother stayed with my abusive father was that there were no battered women’s shelters in the ’50s and ’60s, but another was her false hope that he would change. False hopes bind us to unlivable situations, and blind us to real possibilities.

    Does anyone really believe that Weyerhaeuser is going to stop deforesting because we ask nicely? Does anyone really believe that Monsanto will stop Monsantoing because we ask nicely? If only we get a Democrat in the White House, things will be okay. If only we pass this or that piece of legislation, things will be okay. If only we defeat this or that piece of legislation, things will be okay. Nonsense. Things will not be okay. They are already not okay, and they’re getting worse. Rapidly.

    But it isn’t only false hopes that keep those who go along enchained. It is hope itself. Hope, we are told, is our beacon in the dark. It is our light at the end of a long, dark tunnel. It is the beam of light that makes its way into our prison cells. It is our reason for persevering, our protection against despair (which must be avoided at all costs). How can we continue if we do not have hope?

    Song for you Frank – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jFMyF9fDKzE

    • To start, there is the false hope that suddenly somehow the system may inexplicably change. Or technology will save us. Or the Great Mother. Or beings from Alpha Centauri. Or Jesus Christ. Or Santa Claus.

      Nope. None of those, Robert. I’ll rely on ordinary people to realise the folly of an unsustainable, out-of-control consumerist culture. Remember that only a few years ago very few people would contemplate recycling? Now entire communities demand it.

      Same when National wanted to mine Schedule 4 DoC land – over 50,000 people turned out to march against it;

      Thousands march against mining

      An estimated 50,000 marchers joined one of the biggest protests in Auckland for decades today, to give the Government a firm message to stay away from mining on conservation land.

      Marchers left the bottom of Queen St about 11am and by the time the first of them arrived at Myers Park, just below Karangahape Rd, they were still leaving the bottom of Queen St.

      The protest blocked most of Queen St for at least an hour, but it showed how passionate New Zealanders were about protecting conservation land from mining, said Green Party co-leader Metiria Turei.

      ref: http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/3647465/Thousands-march-against-mining

      My song for you, Robert; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e7qQ6_RV4VQ

    • Wat da? How do you know that?

      I could just as easily say they have meet and are on good terms and for very very good reasons. One reason is the threat of climate change which seems to have taken hold of every ones time in different ways. Some of the ways maybe picking up rubbish or sorting the cycling or sewyers and you can go down the list of public assets that sustain modern life.

      So its a choice. Would you rather stear at the stars or what weve got now? Personally I Choose the stars because telescopes are awesome

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