Here’s something potentially rather interesting. You know that 17 year old Dutch teenager whom an appreciably large proportion of just about everybody’s newsfeed and/or Letters To The Editor section is jumping up and down about? The one apparently legally euthanized, and therefore how terrible a thing legal euthanasia is we can’t have it here?
Well, apparently … that’s not actually what happened at all.
Another article, published today, is doing the rounds about the prospect of NZ being booted out of the ‘5 Eyes’ ‘security’ club, due to the alleged perforation of the heart of our politics by the People’s Republic of China.
Assange matters. Liking him or his behaviour doesn’t. He represents a bigger value that goes beyond his interpersonal failures. The inability of some to see this or understand it are limitations we shouldn’t allow to eclipse the issues of holding powerful states to account.
Over the weekend Europeans elected their new governments, turning in increasing numbers to parties at the ends of the political spectrum. Europe polarised in a three way retreat from the centre. Across Europe and in Britain support for the far-right, far- left and Green parties surge. The losers were centrist parties.
With Trump’s latest effort to smash Huawei the stakes are now much higher for New Zealand. To stick by Trump on this means that New Zealand will have little comeback if China takes counter-measures against us.
Electing a Prime Minister who once entered Parliament proudly holding up coal forces us in NZ to reconsider the open immigration policy we have with Australia before the climate crisis shit really hits the fan.
The parents of Nicky Stevens, who died in 2015 while in the legal care of Waikato DHB’s mental health unit,…
You can say many things about JT, lack of vision isn’t one of them.
Someone on 5% Preferred Prime Minister has a credibility issue.
RUBBISH AND CHURCHES. Grandeur and decay. Italy is an old place – and it shows. Rome, a world city, is full of skips and wheelie-bins overflowing with uncollected trash. Romans pass by these eyesores without so much as a second glance. It’s not desirable, they seem to say, but it’s the best we can do. Refuse collection, like so much else in Italy, is a racket. Somebody is making a lot of money out of Rome’s rubbish – but far too few people are being paid to collect it. And so, as is customary in the Eternal City, things pile up.