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.
EDITORS NOTE: – By the way, here’s a list of shit that will get your comment dumped. Sexist language, homophobic language, racist language, anti-muslim hate, transphobic language, Chemtrails, 9/11 truthers, Qanon lunacy, climate deniers, anti-fluoride fanatics, anti-vaxxer lunatics, 5G conspiracy theories, the virus is a bioweapon, some weird bullshit about the UN taking over the world and ANYONE that links to fucking infowar.
We don’t want protesters diluting the flaccid energy of the PTB to repair the many gaps in our polity. We
also don’t want a McCarthy-style brouhaha cynically raised for personal political fame by ACT’s Seymour hoping to get votes from the suspicious and bewildered who need to be facing the problems of the burning times. How to get better politics and -icians?
This from Colombia is interesting and educational.
https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2022/05/10/1097570784/colombia-legalized-abortions-for-the-first-24-weeks-of-pregnancy-a-backlash-ensu
Colombia used to be a socially conservative country with an influential Catholic church. Women were not even granted the right to vote until 1954.
Until 2006 there was a total ban on abortion. But that didn’t stop women from interrupting their pregnancies in often dangerous ways.
“In the 1970s, abortion was the first cause of maternal mortality,” says Dr. Laura Gil, a Colombian gynecologist and abortion rights activist.
“Most of the abortions were carried out with traumatic procedures. It could be people that had no training at all and would try with knitting needles,” she says. “Many women would try to get abortions by injuring themselves, by falling down the stairs or by drinking poison. I can remember women with their internal organs totally destroyed and handcuffed to their beds and being interrogated by the police.”
But a number of things have changed over the years.
As Colombia became a more urban and educated society, church influence waned. Colombia’s long-running guerrilla war was also a factor. Partly to convince left-wing guerrillas to disarm and take part in legal politics, Colombian lawmakers in 1991 agreed to write a new, more progressive constitution.
The search for peace “was a very important factor in all of this,” says Arlene Tickner, an international relations professor at Rosario University in Bogotá.
Although the war continued, the 1991 constitution strengthened individual rights and laid the groundwork for landmark court decisions legalizing euthanasia in 1997 and same-sex marriage in 2016 and expanding abortion rights.
It seems to have taken the Gloriavale situation to expose the incompetence of the Ministry for Everything and its various agencies who spend most of their time pissing in each others pockets and protecting the various arses of senior management. It came out of left field in a way. I was thinking maybe the likes of UTU/Matt McC/, various Immigration lawyers and worker and immigration advocates might have caused enough embarrassment to expose the complete bugger’s muddle that is this Munstry. This is better because it has the well-considered opinion of a member of the judiciary (even though it was too diplomatic in its publicly delivered judgement.
Do we think it’ll contribute to any sort of change? Not sure. The gNatz are responsible for the creation of this complete fuckup of a Ministry in the first place with all its various conflicts of interest, and Labour appear to have carried on with it out of convenience. It can and has shirked its responsibilities with impunity and arrogance from the day the failed zoologist and his sidekick established it.
It can’t, and won’t ever be able to walk and chew gum at the same time.
It’s had everything from Cassons publicly calling people ‘scum’, with his colleagues apparently oblivious to the wanker’s attiude – they didn’t express any concerns; to repeated Immigration policy failures and implementation of those policies; to failing to enforce building standards; to a complete fuckuo over radio spectrum allocation and interference.
There are half a dozen people in that bugger’s muddle that have no business being public servants. The idea of public or civil service is apparently beneath them. Nor should they ever hold any public service role again. They probably more suited to clipping tickets at a job recruitment agency.
https://www.rnz.co.nz/national/programmes/ninetonoon/audio/2018841480/gloriavale-child-labour-ruling-a-wake-up-call-barrister
and various other exposes from the likes of GIll Bonnett, Michael Morrah and a few others.
@The hapless Munster for everything that’s gone wrong, and his enablers: Hashtag Shamelful!!!! including lil ‘ole NuZull that punches ablove it’s weight’s contribution to slavery and the creation of its own quota of refugees.
Woke as they may be (The term in and of itself has become fashionable), I sincerely hope the Gweens have some real bottom lines come ’23. “Red lines” even