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6:00 am, July 18th, 2026 - 37 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 …
An Australian journalist offers an alarming summation of the direction of the US as it heads towards its mid-term elections.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/world-news/361007861/trump-lays-groundwork-emergency-declaration-ahead-midterms
His vision is that Trump is preparing for these elections that threaten to disempower him and the Republicans by setting the framework for declaring an emergency that would affect the conduct of the elections. Congress would need a two thirds majority to over-ride such a declaration.
Folk's gonna get hurt!
Quote from the future:
"We had to cancel the elections to ensure their integrity."
Another version of a saying attributed to the destruction of Hué –
"It became necessary to destroy the town to save it"?
Another view of Trump’s moves. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jul/16/trump-address-us-elections?
If they reckon they can't win by the usual (but less visible) tactics of voter suppression and gerrymandering, then of course something is on the cards.
I can recommend the book Careless People by Sarah Wynn-Williams. Working as a young Kiwi in our diplomatic service at the UN, she is inspired by the power of social media in the Arab Spring mass movements. She approaches Zuckerburg's Facebook with a pitch for international relations, and ends up with the job of FB political consultant.
As we can guess in hindsight, her vision for a positive political use for social media ends up horribly corrupted by Zuckerburg.
This is now news because she has been relentlessly harassed by Zuckerburg since her whistleblower book came out. She has had to sit silent and unresponsive onstage at UK book festivals because of gag orders (great PR!) She is suing Meta in the US. The first chapter in her book provides a great insight into her stamina and grit, so I wish her well.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/jun/25/whistleblower-sarah-wynn-williams-sues-meta-attempts-to-silence-her-careless-people
I tautoko that recommendation. She is a very good story teller, mixing the personal with thc shocking behaviour of the senior heads at FB.
I ended up buying a hard copy as the threat of litigation stills exists and I didn't want an e version disappearing from the 'puter.
It’s very easy to scapegoat mobile phones and social media for all sorts of [negative] things. Often, this is [used] to suit a political/ideological/commercial narrative. Sadly, too many, IMO, appear to accept uncritically such narratives, strengthened by subjectivity and confirmation bias, and jump on bandwagons that are reminiscent of some of the idiocy associated with Covid-19 vaccination.
https://newsroom.co.nz/2026/07/17/banning-social-media-misses-the-real-crises/
Eschewing a mobile phone is akin to eschewing Covid vaccinations???
Could probably add that to Micky's list of dead cats. Gotta stop those woke kids talking to each other and organising more strikes
Tourism NZ and Louise Upston prefer sunny side up but may end up with egg on their faces. My feeling is that some of those Michelin stars will be gone by lunch time.
https://newsroom.co.nz/2026/07/17/starry-eyed-tourism-nz-buried-the-downside-to-fund-its-8m-michelin-gamble/
Pollies are just playing with us. What they do is connected with bright ideas to catch their funders' interest and praise, not to serve the people who provide their steady income. Their helmsmen are the mercantile mobility (taken over from the old nobility).
We think we matter in this demo-cracy and get out and demo-nstrate, and become part of the sideshow watched on-screen by minions to the rich who are planning moves and events affecting our lives while we are doing other things.
To be fair though the downside scenario was $8m cost and $46m additional revenue, which if you take as the benefit is still a 5.5 BCR which shows the folly of the RON(P)S programme.
I’m less interested in the exact figures, which will inevitably be ‘soft’, and more so in the highly selective communicating of only the best-case scenario by the powers that be of whom we might expect transparency and accountability, not smoke & mirrors. It’s tactics of snake oil sales people who sell us lemons and demand a ‘good review’ online afterwards.
Paul the Other One has a great 5 min rundown on Labour's health policy so far. Labour will ringfence income from a CGT to target public health initiatives. These include the three free health visits, and upgrading financial and technical support for GP practices and new graduates.
Overall, Labour state accessible public healthcare is a fundamental right for NZers, pushing back against the sneaky privatisation of our health system by the Coalition Government. The return on each $1 invested in the proposed preventative medicine aprpoach is costed at $18 savings in health costs downstream. Paul isn't a propagandist because he also discusses the downsides pointed out by critics.
Paul is producing concise, fact-packed analysis as a citizen journalist He gives us in-depth context that Big Media loses in the sound-bite infosphere. I support him with $5 per month because he is so worth it, even if I don't watch him every day.
I take it back, Paul's weekly news updates are funnily propagandist. This health analysis is still good journalism, though.
I appreciate your careful assessment tWig.
Clacton is safe.
Here is a superb clip showing Labour's Deborah Russell detailing in parliament all (?) of the climate destroying legislation this government has enacted. This clip really should be part of Labour’s election campaign….it might suit as an advert on TV but also should be across social media.
https://www.facebook.com/share/v/1GVYfUaikc/
Thanks. I prefer the written version: https://hansard.parliament.nz/hansard-transcript/2026-06-30/bills-climate-change-response-tort-liability-amend?sId=78c978d6ac7b147f3f539ec4daeb4d67.
Thanks Incog & BG – a damning list of the CoC's woeful CC choices in Hansard.
Good to know a Labour-led govt would repeal the Climate Change Response (Tort Liability) Amendment Bill, aka the Climate Polluters Get Out of Jail Free Bill.
https://www.1news.co.nz/2026/07/14/missing-climate-briefing-note-z-energy-boss-speaks-out/
From google headlines today and thanks to Times of India.
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/rest-of-world/a-spanish-company-built-a-bladeless-wind-turbine-that-sways-instead-of-spinning-turning-the-vibrations-caused-by-wind-into-electricity/articleshow/132455961.cms
We could look at the Spanish – they not only carried out an Inquisition, also the country had a Catholic priest that acted for the ordinary people leading to present business conglomerate that is co-operative called Mondragon*, now introducing this different new technology, so try out all sorts of things!
* https://www.mondragon-corporation.com/en/about-us/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mondragon_Corporation
Spain goes up in my estimation while France goes down as too connected with nuclear which has been one of their major interests. However facts overtake fancies – see chart in Wikipedia link. China is busy building more on an existing large base – what effect will that have?
Here is one of the major problems with nuclear power:
French energy giant EDF on Friday posted a record loss for 2022 after necessary repairs to its nuclear power reactors saw a serious decline in electricity output.
A company spokesperson said in a press release that in November last year just 30 of 56 reactors were operational but that this number has now risen to 43. It cited stress corrosion on 16 of its reactors as a key reason for its output decline, stating that 10 of these have been or are currently being treated.
https://www.utilities-me.com/news/french-energy-giant-edf-posts-record-losses-due-to-nuclear-reactor-outages
One wonders what happens if "stress corrosion" goes unnoticed.
Another problem are decommissioning costs, which are seldom if ever built into power prices generated from nuclear facilities.
Renewable energy* (23%) has overtaken nuclear energy (18%) in the USA. In the world renewable energy* generates 30% of power while nuclear generates 9%. It is very much out of fashion, and will become more so as solar plus battery storage gets cheaper and cheaper.
*including hydro
Of course they are.
In assessing the economics of nuclear power, decommissioning and waste disposal costs are fully taken into account.
[…]
Decommissioning costs are about 9-15% of the initial capital cost of a nuclear power plant. But when discounted over the lifetime of the plant, they contribute only a few percent to the investment cost and even less to the generation cost. In the USA they account for 0.1-0.2 ¢/kWh, which is no more than 5% of the cost of the electricity produced.
https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/economic-aspects/economics-of-nuclear-power
However, those costs apparently only refer to the 20-30 years it takes to decommision a plant, according to wikipedia. "The huge costs of research and development for (geological) longterm disposal of nuclear waste are collectively defrayed by the taxpayers in different countries, not by the companies."
The assertion is that decommissioning costs are seldom if ever built into power prices generated from nuclear facilities. They are.
Joe90 – The decommissioning is built into the initial estimates or whatever. All the same they are an estimate then.
As I don't believe assertions any more, especially when the future is unknown, then one can't be too critical with disbelief. This must be the Age of Scepticism; we all surely have reason.
Decommissioning here refers to safe disassembly of plant and medium-term (decades) storage of high-level waste.
' “The nuclear legacy stretches into the far future; it poses a risk to environments and human health for periods which extend well beyond our comprehension. Radioactive waste is the achilles heel of the industry,” 'Andrew Blowers, author of The Legacy of Nuclear Power.
And there is still no longterm storage solution for persistantly radioactive waste. That cost remains unaccounted for. Neither does it account for the cost of ameliorating crappier old systems (Sellafield costs the UK £2bi pa) or of accident sites (a $US1 bi shroud over Chernobyl Reactor 4 covers a site that will still be dangerous in a 100,000 years).
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/aug/01/what-should-we-do-with-radioactive-nuclear-waste
There’s a wide inter-generational gap between gen Z and baby boomers with regards to AI, which might feel counter-intuitive. For example:
https://theconversation.com/gen-z-is-pushing-back-against-ai-a-reminder-to-all-of-us-that-the-future-isnt-written-284955
The growing resistance against AI faces a strong neoliberal TINA narrative coming from boomer CEOs, their boomer investors/supporters, and similar boomer politicians who only want to see their (up-)side of AI.
Bottom likely to drop out of the US ai bubble. China's released its latest ai framework yesterday. It is open-source, has capacity similar to US frontrunners and is a fraction of the token cost.
https://finance.yahoo.com/technology/ai/articles/china-kimi-k3-hits-us-225728395.html
This will have a flow-on effect to associated data-centre builds that are being financed on spec.
If I ever ended up on ACC I would like doctors to have the right to speak up for me
Would you?
Senior doctors plan strike as ACC refuses rights to speak about concerns
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/health/739473/senior-doctors-plan-strike-as-acc-refuses-rights-to-speak-about-concerns
On the moral stupidity of a world where Palestinian suffering is visible, documented, and still ignored.
Abboud Hamayel (Abdaljawad Omar)
@HHamayel2
In this essay, I examine the challenge of the intellectual in Palestine, both in relation to Western audiences, whose ears are often conditioned to turn truth into noise, and to a Palestinian community that remains skeptical of the power of words.
https://x.com/HHamayel2/status/2077688831990485330
Last year, the online magazine +972 revealed the existence of a specialised military intelligence unit known as the “legitimisation cell”. Its mandate is narrative management. “Whenever criticism of Israel in the media intensified on a particular issue,” the report said, the cell combed through intercepted calls and fragments of intelligence from Gaza to identify material that could be deployed to defend Israel on the international stage.
“If the global media is talking about Israel killing innocent journalists, then immediately there’s a push to find one journalist who might not be so innocent,” an intelligence source told the journalist Yuval Abraham. In one case, the cell misrepresented intelligence to frame a journalist in Gaza as a Hamas fighter. “They were eager to label him as a target, as a terrorist – to say it’s OK to attack him,” another source told Abraham. “They said: during the day he’s a journalist, at night he’s a platoon commander. Everyone was excited. But there was a chain of errors and corner-cutting. In the end they realised he really was a journalist.”
When Israeli air strikes killed Al Jazeera journalist Anas al-Sharif in August 2025, the cell released documents claiming that he had been in Hamas from 2013 until 2017 – even if true, long before the current war. More egregious still was the case of Ismail al-Ghoul, another Al Jazeera correspondent, who was assassinated in a drone strike that also killed his cameraman and a boy passing on a bicycle. The legitimisation cell then presented evidence from “a Hamas computer” claiming that al-Ghoul had joined its military wing in 2007, when he would have been 10 years old.
This strategic misinformation represents one side of Israel’s public relations campaign; the other is the monotonous uniformity of recycled denials and counter-accusations: the global media is antisemitic, the UN is biased, Israel’s army takes unprecedented care to avoid killing civilians. These arguments do not require evidence, because their purpose is to create conditions under which any evidence will be dismissed.
https://www.equator.org/articles/moral-stupidity-gaza-palestine-abdaljawad-omar
Apparently potential infotainment looms on our political horizon:
Long shot, too much of a. As for Aotearoa, it'll go for something different from NZ as usual, perhaps an experimental quest.
Here's a clue that he could shapeshift from conservative dork into counter-culture hero. Gypsy blood! Needs facial hair to cultivate marginal flair, large hoop ear-rings would help, plus a bandana. Could then claim that he'd like Chloe more if she wasn't so conventional, eh? A real leader re-arranges expectations of what will happen.
My advice is to wipe that Henry stuff carefully off the bottom of your shoes before stepping indoors. Chloe may be cloying, though not noticeably to me, but Henry and Laws are has-beens and should remain hicks in the sticks so the rest of us can try to progress to some sort of agreeable future unhindered.
Or as Maori have adopted, the taking off of shoes at the door is a good thing. Something about being 'noa'.
tRump $$$ for Jords and co?
Toby Young
@toadmeister
Earlier today a @Guardian journalist sent me this query:
Dear Toby Young,
I'm Aisha Down, a journalist at the Guardian. I'm getting in touch because we're planning to report that the US state department is considering a grant of $5m to Free Speech Union, your organisation, as part of a new grant-making scheme, and wanted to give you the chance to comment. We would appreciate receiving your comment by 14:30.
We are considering reporting the following:
– The grant to the FSU is part of a package to Maga aligned groups that former US officials have condemned as a misuse of public money to seek influence over foreign politics and interfere with democracy.
[…]
Aisha Kehoe Down
Senior Tarbell Fellow,
Guardian News and Media
I replied as follows:
It sounds like a pretty garbled story.
Free Speech Union International, which is the umbrella group that FSU UK, FSU Australia, FSU New Zealand, FSU Canada, FSU South Africa and FSU Brazil sit within, has expressed interest in applying for grant funding from the US State Department. This would be to promote the right to freedom of expression in those countries, which, far from being a partisan cause, is a universal human right. But it hasn't submitted a formal application and, consequently, has been awarded no grant from the State Department or any other branch of the US Government.
https://x.com/toadmeister/status/2078157821376336016
Donald Trump’s state department intends to allocate $12m to organisations in the UK founded by the prominent Conservatives Jacob Rees-Mogg and Toby Young, the Guardian can reveal.
The intended grants, revealed in US government documents, are part of a package of support for European groups viewed favourably by the Trump administration. Some former US officials have criticised the funding as a misuse of public money to seek influence over foreign politics.
[…]
The state department has also set aside $5m for Free Speech Union International, citing its work “promoting free speech and countering digital overregulation across the UK, Europe, and Australia”.
The group is an offshoot of the Free Speech Union (FSU), founded by the Conservative life peer Toby Young, and acts as an umbrella organisation for international sibling groups with similar goals.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jul/17/trump-administration-to-grant-12m-to-groups-founded-by-uk-conservatives-jacob-rees-mogg-and-toby-young