The Daily Blog Open Mic – 19th August 2022

1. Business is the one and only answer for neoliberals, even though evidence seems to show that it costs more and has unsavoury side effects!

   Also having Meth precursors as one of our biggest imports is not helping NZ.

   Motel owner caught in police sting sold drugs and let dealers stay
   https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/motel-owner-caught-in-police-sting-sold-drugs-and-let-dealers-stay/A7NNPWB5VQIUYOSLLULZ522FU4/?dicbo=v2-505db97aeb44ce651ca481e18849b6db&&ref=topbox

   “There were a number of people staying there who dealt in methamphetamine from the motel premises,” Judge Carter said.

   “You acted as a middle man using the dealers as a source to supply your own contacts and associates.”

   “The motel also offered social emergency housing through the Ministry of Social Development to vulnerable families.”

2. Saudi doctoral student Salma al-Shehab sentenced to 34 years in prison for tweets
   https://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/saudi-doctoral-student-salma-al-shehab-sentenced-to-34-years-in-prison-for-tweets/6CDWEICLKEJQZJB7JXSLVIKNUI/

3. Seeing some very suspicious moves from foreign lobbyist Deborah Hart to shut down the Tiwai Point smelter and kill more than three thousand jobs for New Zealanders.

   Why does this lobbyist want us to lose our jobs and pay more?

   • Why don’t you do some thinking for yourself about what is good for NZ before you come on here with your opinions. You seem to be a shallow thinker and a rightard. Tiwai Point is not something to be talked up on the basis of jobs alone, it is a more gnarly problem with much more to concsider about it.

4. More murders, ram raids and truck deaths. Too many incompetent managers and departments working in NZ, and now we are seeing the effects from poor policy and enforcement of existing laws….

   Man charged with murder after death in Auckland’s Ōtāhuhu
   https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/man-charged-with-murder-after-death-in-aucklands-otahuhu/LSEELYBC623KXVGMNAA3PRU4PQ/

   Manurewa homicide: Everything we know about the children found in the suitcases
   https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/manurewa-homicide-everything-we-know-about-the-children-found-in-the-suitcases/632MDNXAWS5LS7DGXNAKSR43HI/

   With regards to these deaths, questions need to be asked about disappearing children, especially after another appalling case.
   https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/auckland-teen-torture-case-girls-body-found-inside-a-rusty-drum-at-abandoned-state-house/DXT3NDUVEID3LZVMEY3AUVXURQ/

   Police still have failed to find out this case either.
   Baby Doe’s parents still unknown one year on after recycling facility discovery
   https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/baby-does-parents-still-unknown-one-year-on-after-recycling-facility-discovery/H577YN4KE2YTDBUUZ46OZPP5TM/

   I’m not knocking police, but maybe too much ideology at foot from the top, with woke, thought crime task forces and OT’s critical race theory https://thedailyblog.co.nz/2022/05/17/oranga-tamariki-critical-race-theory-dogma-in-reverse-uplift-trauma-highlights-perverse-ideological-outcomes/ becoming more important than keeping track on kids being murdered.

   Another dysfunctional department – transport.

   Two trucks collide, driver dies at scene in Pokeno
   https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/two-trucks-collide-driver-dies-at-scene-in-pokeno/C33SN6NI6547GRKPZDASI2ZKSU/

   “Four years after Waka Kotahi was slammed for not doing its job of keeping roads safe, a core unit of it has been labelled so ineffective it is being pulled apart.”
   https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/469495/waka-kotahi-unit-facing-restructure-deemed-no-longer-effective-documents-reveal

   Ram raids a growth industry in NZ.

   Spree of overnight ram-raids leaves multiple Christchurch businesses in clean-up mode
   https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/new-zealand/2022/08/spree-of-overnight-ram-raids-leaves-multiple-christchurch-businesses-in-clean-up-mode.html

5. This is long Martyn but can it go somewhere if not OM, it seems too long for that?
   I feel the ideas that arise in the blog must go out to the country in a different form, they are good but how to present them to a wider audience. I feel that now we are becoming too upset and cynical and losing our ‘mojo’. We could descend into spiteful and pointless jousts against each others’ ideas fracturing into warring groups. Divide and be conquered. So have to use all our brain cells to search for the gold that can emerge from those who are holding onto the values of the community good life with individual thinking.

   Today in stuff I was reading about the German director Wolfgang Petersen who made Das Boot, a good film telling the lives of submariners. His father had been a Naval man. Later he made a children’s fantasy film that was very popular called *The Never Ending story.

   I think we should start making films about our lives in New Zealand so that young people can see just what is happening here. The reach to the mind these days seems to be from the screen. We have exciting stories here as we try to cope with our world falling apart, and we sort of soldier on against the way that wonderful science is being used to wipe us out, like a drug that aids our appreciation of life but gradually destroys our natural capacities.
   We could write our own stories but a USA author Cynthia Voigt has written a series following a fictional family that have to overcome so many obstacles to find a haven, and living after they lose both parents. Cynthia Voigt’s Homecoming would be excellent as the basis of the story and we could make it a Kiwi story that is bi-cultural with multi-cultural aspects. A fil;m for cable tv was made in 1996 and nominated for a number of awards. So whether that would make it easire to make our own I don’t know. We are losing the ability to think for ourselves and understand our lives and world directions. A film of young people using their skills, loving family connection and wanting to work and keep together would be a powerful message for us now. At present he government wants to impose laws on us so that we are boxed in, fenced in, like animals; the laws take the place of thinking our way to good outcomes. We should be working towards adopting ways that are good for us now and into the future, also the planet with fewer laws. but more meetings of practical, visionary minds.

   It seems that at present all thinking is directed to mindless rejections of things we don’t want to do, like unreasoning children. It’s no way to participate in and enable a modern educated society. Something has gone really wrong in our methods of organising ourselves but we have the brains and the education and stores of wisdom to draw on. Are we too pathetic and feeble in our resolves to have a good, vibrant, inclusive and fair society to work out how we can achieve success, at the right level. That’s where we find the balance needed, or wr fall into following ranters, full of confidence who inspire us to give up our own minds, often undeveloped, and instead follow theirs. If they can get enough followers then they can force the thinkers to obey as well. Despots kill intellectuals, you may be on the future list! And the future is moving fast. My newspaper advises that 60 supersonic aircraft have been ordered. The industrial wastage of the planet continues apace, along with the shrinking of the intellect and less thought about humanity, in favour of science and money to be made from new findings.

   * The NeverEnding Story (film) – Wikipedia
   he book describes the fantasy world of Fantasia slowly being devoured by a malevolent force called “The Nothing”. The Childlike Empress, who rules Fantasia, has fallen ill, and the young warrior Atreyu is tasked to discover a cure, believing that once the Empress is well, the Nothing will no longer be a threat.

6. The Standard has an article saying ‘what to do with Sharma, perhaps he could audition for Shortland Street as they have a shortage of doctors and he is a natural actor. In return LABOUR could get a discount from their Nurses marketing bill, killing two birds with one stone.

7. The Standard has an article saying ‘what to do with Sharma, perhaps he could audition for Shortland Street as they have a shortage of doctors and he is a natural actor. In return LABOUR could get a discount from their Nurses marketing bill, killing two birds with one stone.

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