American Overkill
The new Sheriff is patrolling the global street, pulling out his guns at every turn. Unconcerned about overkill, a more secure world through superior American firepower seems unlikely.
Christine Rose
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Common cause in civilian ‘collateral damage’ in Afghanistan or London
Nicky Hager and John Stephenson’s new book, Hit and Run, claims the NZ SAS carried out a revenge raid on an Afghani village which killed six and injured 15 civilians, including women and children. In response, the jaded and inhumane say ‘civilians die in war’, ‘human collateral damage is inevitable’.
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Industrial scale egg production is cruel, that’s the real problem
The fact that most of the billion eggs produced and sold in New Zealand are generated through the cruel mistreatment and industrial commodification of hens, is a greater issue than that a relatively smaller percentage of them were mislabeled as free range when in fact they were from cages.
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The whole world is burning
‘On the last day of the world / I would want to plant a tree’ wrote US Poet Laureate WS Merwin. Indeed, sometimes it feels like the whole world is burning, and to act in the spirit of hope is to plant a whole forest.
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Trump Wild Card a Modified Status Quo
Trump’s abrasive style and irreverence for established policies and protocols looks to be destabilising at global level. He has us thinking that he’ll be a real threat to the existing fragile international peace between nuclear capable superpowers. He’ll make a gaff, or a wrong statement, commit some diplomatic faux pas, and China or Russia will push the red button.
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Christmas is the opiate of the masses in a world that’s mad
If religion is the opiate of the masses, then it’s no wonder semi-religious consumerist celebrations like Christmas incite frenzied and irrational buying and eating. We’re addicted to modern Christmas rituals involving spending madly, as much as religious iconography.
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Damage control better for business than for dolphins?
After years of fishing industry denial that their practices pose any harm to Maui dolphins, this week two significant New Zealand fishing companies announced they were aiming for Maui-safe fishing methods on the North Island West Coast by 2022.
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The war machine rolls on while children beg for blankets
Have you thought about the children of Syria lately? Is it ‘so last season’s war’, a normal state of affairs, background in the news as a change from more current, closer crises? Do the battles of Homs and Mosul, the Kurdish Peshmergers and the ‘Coalition’, sound slightly theoretically and strategically intriguing, like chess, or ‘Risk’, using someone else’s real life army and someone else’s real life country as the playing ground?
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Tamaki’s ‘post-truth’ hate speech a cynical MO
Tamaki’s attitudes are so outdated and narrow minded they have no place in civil society. Who actually believes that shit? and who in their right mind takes it seriously. But there’s a worry that the media attention helps his cause. It’s exposure Tamaki probably enjoys. He’s certainly unrepentant.
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Dairy farm animal abuse part of the economic model
Dairy industry representatives, academics and the Minister for Primary Industries were full of denials this week as they all sought to explain, excuse, diminish or justify animal cruelty on dairy farms, exposed again by FarmWatch.