Announce protest actions, general chit chat or give your opinion on issues we haven’t covered for the day.
The Editor doesn’t moderate this blog, 3 volunteers do, they are very lenient to provide you a free speech space but if it’s just deranged abuse or putting words in bloggers mouths to have a pointless argument, we don’t bother publishing.
All in all, TDB gives punters a very, very, very wide space to comment in but we won’t bother with out right lies or gleeful malice. We leave that to the Herald comment section.
EDITORS NOTE: – By the way, here’s a list of shit that will get your comment dumped. Sexist abuse, homophobic abuse, racist abuse, anti-muslim abuse, transphobic abuse, 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.
Introducing a new supermarket competitor won’t address the practice of New Zealanders paying high global market prices for our exported products sold locally
Right on there The Chairman.
Mike Smith
14 February 2025 at 7:03 pm
“This war [in Ukraine] is just the latest in what the long march of history shows is another failed attempt to plunder the resources of Russia,” Mike Smith
https://thestandard.org.nz/as-long-as-it-takes/#comment-2024897
And here I was mistakenly thinking that it was Russia that attacked Ukraine in 2022, to plunder the resources of Ukraine.
RUSSIA SETS WORLD RECORD DUE TO STOLEN UKRAINIAN GRAIN
#DefeatRussia
January 18, 2024
……The PRIME Russian Economic Information Agency previously reported that Russia began breaking records for gross grain harvest in 2022 – that is, after the invasion of Ukraine. Occupiers harvested nearly 160 million tons of grain in just 2022. The second-largest record for gross harvest was set in 2023.
In December, the National Resistance Center reported that the Russians were exporting Ukrainian grain to Syria and Iran through the ports of occupied Crimea….
https://www.ukrainianworldcongress.org/russia-sets-world-record-due-to-stolen-ukrainian-grain/
If I was to ask Mike Smith if he thought Russia was an imperialist nation, I wonder what his answer would be?
But if I asked Mike Smith, if he thinks the US is an imperialist nation, what would that answer be?
This superficial binary bullshit doesn’t get down to the root cause and nature of the dispute between these world powers.
And so we have these endless debates about whether my imperialist aggressor, is better than your imperialist aggressor.
The evidence is overwhelming that these imperialist powers are just as brutal and genocidal as each other
But imperialism is a topic we are not allowed to discuss because, y’know, it’s ‘propaganda’.
But if imperialism was a subject that we could discuss. might we start by asking what is imperialism?
‘Is imperialism an economic and political system that has to exploit every possible human and natural resource, could this imperialist imperative to exploit every possible human and natural resource, be behind the reason for nation to attack nation, and nations to attack the natural world and climate?’
Could imperialism be the reason that nations organise themselves into rival competing economic and military blocs?
Could this organisation into rival competing military and economic blocs make global war inevitable?
What would this possible realisation mean for a small country at the bottom of the world?
No one reads the fucking Standard, and those who do are irrelevant to the debate.
Inflation is on the rise
Higher prices were widespread, with about two-thirds of the goods in the food basket more expensive than a year ago.
“The proportion of the food basket that increased by over 5 percent in price was the highest in five years,” Stats NZ prices spokesperson Nicola Growden said.
Higher prices for grocery food contributed the most to the January 2025 increase
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/business/541909/inflation-on-the-rise-for-new-zealand-households
I appreciate how TDB maintains such an open space for discussion, but it’s good to see the moderation in place to keep the conversation respectful. It’s hard to find forums that balance free speech with accountability.
Respect for others opinions is necessary but being able to disagree not too respectfully is also essential when there are some vile attitudes and strangely inhuman memes about. Everything in balance eh; dilute something too much and life loses its zest.
Next time you hear some long-term planned innovation or expensive works that mean nothing can be afforded at once – think of this giant unplanned earthworks coming. Here is a collection of pieces advancing through recent years that give us a pretty good picture of our problems.
Grandiose nature, and we clever dicks need to watch and learn, and practice good schemes. (Someone mentioned the Dutch being very capable – think of how they coped with being the Low Country with their earthworks, their dikes etc. And I think one Chinese leader utilised their knowledge.) Perhaps we should get some Dutch input here instead of the overwhelming USA suctional effect on us drawing our money and land out of our hands.)
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/542031/researchers-find-links-between-swarms-and-slow-slip-earthquakes 16 February 2025
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/530530/clues-left-by-the-alpine-fault-s-last-big-quake-reveal-its-direction-this-will-help-nz-prepare-for-the-inevitable-next-rupture 11 October 2024
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/516720/earthquake-disaster-risk-from-nz-s-hikurangi-subduction-zone 14 May 2024
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/514982/significant-shortcomings-in-nz-s-emergency-management-system-inquiry 23 April 2024
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/511984/scientists-warn-new-zealand-risks-losing-top-researchers-due-to-research-funding-gap 18 March 2024
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/511648/callaghan-innovation-wants-to-cut-staff-focus-on-money-making-projects 14 March 2024
…In a statement, Minister of Science, Innovation and Technology Judith Collins said: “As Crown companies, Crown Research Institutes (CRIs) have not been directly asked to make any cost savings. CRIs are required under the Crown Research Institute Act 1992 to operate in a financially responsible manner to maintain financial viability.
“CRI board directors make decisions regarding finances and operating models and are accountable to shareholding ministers for acting in a financially responsible manner.
“Responsible management of assets and finances, including careful control of debt, capital expenditure and investments, are part of prudent fiscal management.”
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/495960/nz-s-biggest-quake-maker-scientists-peer-inside-hikurangi-subduction-zone 17August 2023
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/379859/hikurangi-fault-emergency-response-project-rolls-out 10 January 2019
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/361015/kaikoura-earthquake-research-details-scientific-rarity 4 July 2018
https://www.rnz.co.nz/national/programmes/ourchangingworld/audio/2018644982/understanding-new-zealand-s-largest-fault 17 May 2018
Send the planners back to their skyscrapers. They are the lucky ones that weren’t in the World Trade Centre. But like burgeoning germs and mice and cockroaches they spread and acclimatise in a suitable climate. And mate we are very suitable here, they say.
Get useful scientists and engineers working for public good – some PPP but do stuff that is well thought out, then implement it to serve a required and needed purpose.
This from Ben Morgan’s post. It encapsulates exactly what we need to do going forward, which when it is worded in ‘non-military jargon’ will give us a laser line through all the complexities and incongruities.
The first principle of war is ‘Selection and Maintenance of the Aim,’ or in non-military jargon, the key to success is deciding exactly what you want to achieve, before you commit to a course of action. Then to pursue that objective single-mindedly, testing every decision or change of plan against it.
https://thedailyblog.co.nz/2025/02/09/ben-morgans-strategy-lesson-from-antiquity/
Having been in some community committees and listened to the fluttering bilgewaters that can emerge from the group quite vehement and unhelpful I swear by this proposition. And that is from someone who admits to being a trifle discursive which
I see as a minor fault, drawing in semi-related matters, if noted and put aside.
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