The Daily Blog Open Mic – Monday 22nd January 2018

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

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7 COMMENTS

  1. TODAY’S MAJOR REPORT ON RNZ MORNING REPORT IS AGAIN WARNING COASTAL EROSION IS BECOMING A CLEAR HAZARD NOW. 22/1/2018.

    Monday 22 January 2018 Previous episodes
    On today’s show

    https://www.radionz.co.nz/national/programmes/ninetonoon

    09:05 Life on the Edge
    In June 2007, the coastal cliffs at Oamaru lost a lot of ground, including a conservation area for blue penguins and the factory seen here. In June 2007, the coastal cliffs at Oamaru lost a lot of ground, including a conservation area for blue penguins and the factory seen here. Photo: Murray Hicks.
    Local councils around the country are calling for a national strategy to help with financing and planning for the effects of coastal erosion, storms and flooding on communities and billions of dollars worth of coastal property and infrastructure. It follows a pair of NIWA reports last month revealing the country’s tendency to react to events rather than prepare for them, and a lack of coordination and agreed priorities. Kathryn Ryan discusses this with LGNZ president Dave Cull, report author and NIWA’s programme leader for hazards and risk Rob Bell, and Chair of Hawkes Bay Joint (councils) Committee on Coastal Hazards Strategy Peter Beavan.

    In this article last year the outgoing National government was quick to bury it’s head in the sand on this serious issue.

    https://www.stuff.co.nz/environment/climate-news/96433693/coastal-erosion-report-urges-immediate-action

    NZ needs to act now to protect people and property, leaked coastal erosion report urges

    Penny Madden’s home in Hector, on the West Coast of the South Island, has been flooded three times this year.
    ALDEN WILLIAMS/STUFF
    Penny Madden’s home in Hector, on the West Coast of the South Island, has been flooded three times this year.

    A leaked government report calls for immediate action to help protect thousands of people and $19 billion of property at risk from increased flooding and coastal erosion.

    The report, commissioned by the Ministry for the Environment, was delivered in April but has still not been officially released.

    It concludes that $19 billion worth of buildings, about 43,000 homes, 130,000 people, five airports, more than 2000 kilometres of road and 46km of railway face “higher levels of coastal risk exposure” as a consequence of rising sea levels.

    Granity on the West Coast is a victim of coastal erosion in New Zealand.
    ALDEN WILLIAMS/STUFF
    Granity on the West Coast is a victim of coastal erosion in New Zealand.

    “Sea level will continue to rise for at least several centuries, posing an ongoing challenge for managing the transition to more sustainable coastal communities, both globally and locally,” the report states.

    “Planning for adaptation at the coast needs to start now” and cannot wait for uncertainty about the exact impact of climate change to be resolved, it says.

    “Waiting until uncertainties are reduced before making decisions, or doing nothing, is usually not viable or acceptable to those most exposed to the risk”.

    It concludes that a modest sea level rise of about 40cm would mean that “present day, rare storm-tide” floods could occur on average once a year.

    The report was leaked to the Green Party this week. Co-leader James Shaw claimed the Government was deliberately keeping the report secret.

    “This is an extraordinary report. We need this information to be out there,” he said.

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    “By keeping this report secret, they are removing the opportunity for families and businesses to plan.

    “They want to pretend that climate change is not a big deal.”

    Shaw said the Government need to act now to help people and properties at risk before uncertainty over the impact of climate change was resolved.

    “There is too much risk and we can’t wait for the uncertainty to be resolved. It will have happened by then and we will have lost all those buildings.

    “The way to reduce the risk is to start planning and adapting now.”

    Penny Madden’s West Coast property has been flooded three times this year. The sea has been moving closer to her home in Hector for many years, eating away at metres of shoreline. She wanted the Government to help people affected by climate change.

    “I am not sure there is a lot they can do, but financial assistance to help people relocate would be nice, but I can’t see that happening.

    “Bill English says that global warming isn’t an issue in New Zealand, which is quite ironic. People on the West Coast know it is an issue and have seen it for years.”

    A second report on climate change commissioned by the Government will also not be released until after the election.

    Deputy Prime Minister Paula Bennett has received the first report produced by the climate change adaptation technical working group, tasked last year with presenting options for New Zealand to adapt to climate change.

    The group consists of 10 experts across science, academia, industry and governance groups.

    Bennett confirmed she had received ” some early advice from the group”, but the report would not be released until it was complete.

    “The draft final report is due in November and then the final report in March.”

    The documents would be released once the final one was complete.

    A spokesperson for Environment Minister Nick Smith did not immediately respond to calls for comment.

    – Stuff

  2. Not the mainstream media:

    ‘The Obama Administration’s ‘Brazen Plot To Exonerate Hillary Clinton’ Starting To Leak Out, According To Former Fed Prosecutor’

    http://dailycaller.com/2018/01/20/obama-administration-plot-exonerate-hillary/

    …”Joe diGenova, a former federal prosecutor, connects the dots on former Obama administration Justice Department and FBI officials who may have “violated the law, perhaps committed crimes” to politicize law enforcement and surveillance against political opponents.

    He says former FBI Director James Comey conducted a fake criminal investigation of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton as they “followed none of the regular rules, gave her every break in the book, immunized all kinds of people, allowed the destruction of evidence, with no grand jury, no subpoenas, no search warrants. That’s not an investigation. That’s a Potemkin village. It’s a farce.”…

    • “He says former FBI Director James Comey conducted a fake criminal investigation of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton as they “followed none of the regular rules, gave her every break in the book, immunized all kinds of people, allowed the destruction of evidence, with no grand jury, no subpoenas, no search warrants. That’s not an investigation. That’s a Potemkin village. It’s a farce.”…”

      That seems utterly unlikely, RB.

      It was former FBI Director Comey’s announcement on 28 October 2016 – where he told Congress that he was re-opening the Bureau’s investigation in Clinton’s emails – that most likely cost Clinton the Presidential election.

      If Comey was a puppet of Clinton, he would not have torpedoed her presidential campaign in such spectacular fashion. Most likely he would have announced a FBI investigation into Trump, when rumours first began circulating about his closeness to Putin.

      Joe diGenova’s assertions simply do not stack up.

      • Time will tell:…but Comey’s previous associations with the Clintons and background gives one pause for thought …also there were rumours he had considerable opposition from within the FBI , even a walk out, that forced his hand to re-open the investigation into Clinton

        http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/james-comey-fired-fbi-director/story?id=40361245

        ‘How the Establishment Undermines American Democracy’

        https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2018/01/18/how-establishment-undermines-american-democracy.html

        …”Formerly intelligence and law enforcement agencies acted under the direction of the White House but without any political bias. Transitions from Democratic to Republican administrations were consequently seamless for the employees of CIA, FBI, DIA and the NSA, but this has changed. In the 2016 election a line-up of retired senior officers from those organizations openly supported the Clinton campaign and even went so far as to construct elaborate conspiracy theories regarding Trump and his associates, including the claim that Donald Trump is actually an agent of Russia.

        The desire to discredit and ultimately delegitimize Trump even involved some active duty senior officers, including John Brennan, Director of CIA, who exploited Agency relationships with foreign intelligence services to develop information on Trump, and James Comey of the FBI who initiated an investigation of Trump’s associates. Both were involved in the later surfacing of the notorious Steele Dossier, a collection of fact mixed with fiction that sought to destroy the Trump presidency even before it began…

        • Chris’s Trotter wrote in Langley with Love:

          “At the time it seemed reasonable to speculate that the FBI’s New York Office was a hot-bed of Trump supporters gone “rogue”. But, as Glen Greenwald’s recent posting on The Intercept makes clear, the true motivation for the New York Office’s political intercession was very probably the CIA’s own political interventions on behalf of the Clinton campaign.

          It’s a good read and highlights the civil war raging between the FBI & CIA for supremacy over the Washington consensus: https://thedailyblog.co.nz/2017/01/13/from-langley-with-love/

          Actually, as more and more of this unmitigated clusterfuck to end all political clusterfucks (at least for this century) continues, it seems that the GOP and DNC is willing to sacrifice everything -including the nation- to maintain power. Even a little bit of time to get the ball sufficiently rolling is enough to get any Chamberlain analogs swept into the rubbish bin. Not only that, we’ve known since December16 that the GOP representatives in the meetings all but blackmailed Obama that if he went public with what the CIA and FBI had, they’ll put it through the partisan ringer while making an unmitigated disaster to end his presidency with.

          The ‘both sides are bad’ narrative has to fucking die in the deepest levels of hell -probably being right next to Judas- at this point… because it isn’t actually real. It’s just some narrative the media keeps bringing out to get clicks -and thus money- and more.

  3. MSD’s late OIA response showing so called ‘Mental Health Employment Services’ (short MHES) trials failed abysmally:
    https://nzsocialjusticeblog2013.files.wordpress.com/2017/11/msd-oia-rqst-mhes-spes-waa-other-services-01-10-14-further-rel-hi-lit-anon-22-11-17.pdf

    This was information withheld for about three years, as MSD had not provided all the asked for info, which ended in an OIA complaint to the Ombudsman.

    See a link to the original post here, on data provided and not so:
    https://nzsocialjusticeblog2013.wordpress.com/2015/04/10/mental-health-and-sole-parent-employment-services-msd-withholds-o-i-a-information-that-may-prove-their-trials-a-failure/
    https://nzsocialjusticeblog2013.files.wordpress.com/2017/12/mhes-spes-msd-withholds-o-i-a-info-that-may-prove-trials-a-failure-post-nzsjb-14-04-15-upd-04-12-17.pdf

    More has happened since then, and word says, a new post on the final outcome of an Ombudsman complaint is due for publication soon.

    So Paula Bennett, Anne Tolley and their bosses told us a lot of BS about the great successes they claimed to be having in getting people with mental health issues into jobs.

    Even the SPES (Sole Parent Employment Services) did not deliver as they claimed. See the figures in the new release of 22 Nov. 2017 above, and enrolments far outnumber ’employment outcomes’.

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