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6:00 am, January 11th, 2026 - 27 comments
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Open mike is your post.
For announcements, general discussion, whatever you choose.
The usual rules of good behaviour apply (see the Policy).
Step up to the mike …
Helen Clark expresses her concerns over the latest Trump initiated developments and the lack of comment from the top:
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/583707/former-pm-helen-clark-criticises-trump-for-pulling-us-out-of-international-organisations
Edit: I can think of some more forthright ways of expressing the frustration, and I know Helen can too, but she must stick with what is diplomatically acceptable.
In the global arena of competitive isms driven by memetics, there's another new entrant: neo-imperialism. Putin will claim he got there first. Xi will point out that China isn't doing it because Taiwan is part of China. Really, even if disconnected.
Trump is hitting his stride, so the senate slammed on their handbrake. That limits his executive capacity in a formal sense, so he will resort to informal arm-twisting. The EU must up its diplomatic game to cede US control of Greenland sufficient to satisfy T while saving appearances around Denmark's role and Greenland's status as much as possible.
Louis Quatorze said l'etat c'est moi and T may see himself as hegemon (even if tacitly), recycling that stance. Some journo may call him out on it… "Nah, I'm too old to be emperor. Just into making America great again."
If Trump takes Greenland would a wide spread boycott of US industrial production and the resulting job losses be enough for him to be forced out. Big oil is already nervous about the huge downside of sinking money into rebuilding infrastructure that is as vulnerable as refineries and port structures. Drone tech now makes a single combatant able to take out a refinery. It’s no wonder that the oil companies are shy.
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https://x.com/fakedansavage/status/2009734176338313611
For those needing holiday reading relevant to their future way of life, try the Environmental Defence Society paper on the government's two bills that will replace the Resource Management Act 1991: https://eds.org.nz/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/Replacing-the-Resource-Management-Act-Risks-and-Solutions-FINAL.pdf
Government propaganda paints the RMA as putting a handbrake on development (the implicit assumption being that all development affecting the environment is good). The RMA's other sin is to emphasise environmental protection over use.
One objective of the Natural Environment Bill is to enable primary sector growth and development (including aquaculture, forestry, pastoral, horticulture, and mining) at the same time safeguarding the natural environment and human health. In other words, we can have our cake and eat it too.
It's a safe bet that there is only one objective underlying all this – growth, growth and more growth.
One of the worst things people can do is demand the liberal left act non-partisan when criticising fascism because 'both sides are valid'. To not rally by coming to a conclusion because apparently the jury is still out.
To argue that publicly (progressively) funded institutions, liberal left organisations (like this one), and even privately funded NGOs whose remit is to help the oppressed should be required to appreciate and legitimise fascism as part of their argument or worse, remain silent altogether.
To not rally people against oppression because deserves to be heard.
[TheStandard: A moderator moved this comment to Open Mike as being off topic or irrelevant in the post it was made in. Be more careful in future.]
wut? who is arguing that?
Psycho did right here.
lol. He literally said that ICE were wrong, and the administration are fascists.
You appear to be making things up. For instance,
citation needed, make it specific with quotes and your own explanation. Which NGO, where is Milt arguing that said NGO has to appreciate and legimitise fascism.
This is another prelude to banning because someone has pissed you off for some reason.
Psycho does so here. He demands MSF should refrain from commenting on the theatres they operate in regardless of what the aggressor in that theatre is doing to their patients. In this case fascism is the continued occupation by Israel and the denial of rights and persecution of people under that occupation.
An occupation which is illegal according to the international community.
the easiest way for you to avoid a ban is to make coherent arguments and provide evidence as you go. You just grandstanded on another author's post, in a reply to me, about another commenter who you didn't name and you didn't bother to explain what you were even talking about.
Now it turns out you were referring to a conversation on a completely different topic under a different post from a week ago. How is anyone supposed to know what you are referring to.
Like I said, you use this forum to take pot shots at people whose politics you don't like, and you do it in such a way as to make it impossible to address. Of course you will get banned if you keep doing that.
Have the courage of your convictions and make the damn arguments within the conventions of TS. Then even if moderators disagree with you, you will be respected and won't even register on mod radar.
You get the feeling the Minnesota ICE agent who killed Renee Good will himself turn up dead sometime in the not too distant future.
The Trump administration won't be able to keep a lid on this indefinitely and someone will eventually have to take the blame. Not saying there will be anything direct done, but there are a lot of powerful reputations to protect and the pressure will have to be released in some form.
British Labour finally gets radical:
They posed the question as a principle or option, I gather, presuming there's no public lobby group driving a campaign to switch to a particular form (like MMP was achieved in Aotearoa 30 years back).
There's some kind of sea-change, zeitgeist thingy going on in the UK:
Their report finds a tetrad of key dimensions:
Stopping immigrants arriving in boats requires sufficient political will and expenditure on logistics, which both left and right govts in the UK have lacked for many years…
Overshoot is nibbling at almost everyone's standard of living – some sorted excepted.
Kiwis cannot grow Grow GROW their way to long-term success – that way lies failure.
https://www.thepost.co.nz/business/360922409/cautionary-tale-australia-india-free-trade-agreement
crunch time approacheth.
"The short-term financial gains of expansive development often come at the expense of long-term social and environmental costs."
You can tell that to a NZ politician until doomsday but it'll make no difference (excepting perhaps the Greens). All they want is to maintain the illusion of economic growth so they can cling to power.
The ODT of 12 Jan has a story on an up-market Queenstown hotel charging up to $50,000 per night for a room. That gap between rich and poor is widening by the day.
To say we are a third world countries maligns third world countries. We are a shitty little "nation" at times.
NZ has a shameful essential ferry service.
This is like Einstein's equivalence principle. That there is no difference between the effects of gravity on earth and accelerating in free space.
So too there's no difference between demonising immigrants and attacking the left for not demonising immigrants.
[TheStandard: A moderator moved this comment to Open Mike as being off topic or irrelevant in the post it was made in. Be more careful in future.]
thanks for demonstrating again that you don't understand the argument 👏
No-one here is demonising immigrants, nor attacking the left for not demonising immigrants.
But if you favour open borders, and/or the neoliberal use of cheap imported labour to the detriment of wellbeing of existing citizens (including those who are immigrants and refugees), then by all means make the argument. It would be more honest.
If you claim I don't understand the argument then maybe you are at fault for not making an argument acceptable to me.
That is your continuing thesis critical of the left after all.
thanks, that’s what I thought. The point isn’t to make arguments acceptable to anyone, it’s to present arguments and hash them out. When someone like you insists on not hashing out the arguments, but instead wants to smear people, that causes problems. It’s getting tiresome.
Exhibit A,
You make a vague, unsubstantiated assertion that is meant to undermine me and is impossible to address without trying to drag some kind of coherent argument out of you. That makes you a troll.
There are many instances where you criticise the left for not understanding or being more like the right in policy. From gender politics to immigration. I mean that's just a fact and I don't know why you'd try to step away from that.
I see you are laying the groundwork for another ban because I have criticised you and your position.
That's fine, "I'm not mad at you"…
Of course I criticise the left, that's hardly unusual for critical thinkers.
What I objected to was you making some vague claim as a pot shot instead of addressing the issues.
Instead of addressing the argument that I made, you made it about me. And yes, if you keep doing that I will ban you. It's tedious as fuck and once the holidays are over we will be in election year and neither the main two mods has any patience for this sort of bullshit.
how it will go from now on is that each time you make a vague claim, I will ask you to back up the claim, until I get sick of asking, because why should any moderator have to hand hold you on this when you know damn well how it works here.
If you want to provoke me into banning you, have at it, but I've given you a clear way of staying here as a commenter.
You can't distinguish a racist from someone who placates and enables racists.
[TheStandard: A moderator moved this comment to Open Mike as being off topic or irrelevant in the post it was made in. Be more careful in future.]
[stop trolling. Three day ban – weka]