Open Mike 21/03/2026

Written By: notices and features - Date published: - 23 comments
Categories: open mike


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23 comments on “Open Mike 21/03/2026”

Comment numbers have changed to permanent references. Older quoted numbers may no longer identify the same comment.

  1. 1

    It's tragic how we have enabled the President of the United States of America to unrestrainedly kill, at scale, whomsoever he chooses, whenever he wants, The dam has broken and the waters are gushing. We must move to higher ground.

    1. 1.1

      Who is "we"?

      How have we enabled Trump, unless you are talking about Trump adjacent political commenters like every NZME employee who certainly do enable Trump.

      I didn't enable Trump.

      1. 1.1.1

        Our culture. The one that has embraced the beliefs and behaviours that have resulted in this situation. Each of us may think we "have not enabled Trump", but there he is, surrounded and supported by a culture, our culture, of money and authority-adorers and one that has made its way in the world through colonisation. Trump is what we get and got.

  2. 2

    Nate Hagens of The Great Simplification, offers this:

    "This week’s Frankly marks a turning point in the work of The Great Simplification. Having spent twenty years articulating the more-than-human predicament, I shift from diagnosis to direction as current events – including conflict in the Strait of Hormuz – accelerate the timeline. Today I share a first-pass framework for action and response that’s organized around what to do now, which could be applied to various places and at multiple scales.

    The framework begins with a personal foundation of inner work: stabilizing the nervous system, recapturing a sense of agency, doing grief work, and cultivating inner calmness as a precondition for effective action. I also emphasize the need to build trusted networks and shared language so that when disruptions arrive, communities aren’t starting conversations from scratch. These two layers set the foundation for six broad fronts of intervention: infrastructure and physical stock-and-flow planning, poverty and displacement, ecological defense and regeneration, civic resilience and governance, culture and meaning, and economic transition toward commons-based and post-growth models. I stress that these fronts are interdependent and not contingent on a single scenario – they hold across various possible scenarios for the future."

    https://www.thegreatsimplification.com/frankly-original/132-what-to-do-as-the-world-falls-apart"

  3. 3

    Hey, master plan here – let's build a 2.7billion dollar LNG terminal in Taranaki, and charge every electricity user in the country for its cost, and dangle a mythical $50 a year power saving as justification.

    The Qatar Energy CEO confirmed the attack destroyed 2 LNG production units. The damage could take between 3 and 5 years to repair. The losses are estimated at $20 billion annually.

    3 to 5 years. Not weeks. Years.

    “European benchmark natural gas prices surged 16.7 percent, having soared 25 percent at one point earlier in the session. European gas has now doubled since the war began on February 28.”

    https://ifloz.substack.com/p/iran-doesnt-give-a-single-fuck?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=pr9pu&triedRedirect=true

    Some colourful Aussie language in this post!

    1. 3.1

      "Make it hurt."

      That Aussie is dead right.

      Meanwhile Luxon cannot bring himself to mention the USA or Israel as having any part of this disaster for New Zealand the the world in this latest statement. Gutless.

      That’s why we have joined the United Kingdom and other countries in condemning Iran’s attacks in the Gulf. Iran has forced the effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz to ships carrying fuel and other critical goods to places like New Zealand.

      https://x.com/chrisluxonmp/status/2035095540929896955

          1. 3.1.1.1.1

            My favourite is Starmer saying that the UK is allowing the USA to bomb Iran from UK bases but only for "defensive" purposes.

            Yeah right.

            1. 3.1.1.1.1.1

              The UK pose their involvement as defensive.

              The mountains beside the Strait of Hormuz are the ones that contain the missiles and drones for attacking shipping.

              Otherwise

              Those nations signing the statement said they would contribute to appropriate efforts to ensure safe passage through the Strait

              “We condemn in the strongest terms recent attacks by Iran on unarmed commercial vessels in the Gulf, attacks on civilian infrastructure including oil and gas installations, and the de facto closure of the Strait of Hormuz by Iranian forces."

              “Consistent with United Nations Security Council Resolution 2817, we emphasise that such interference with international shipping and the disruption of global energy supply chains constitute a threat to international peace and security.

  7. 7

    Maybe Trump is secretly deliberately closing the Strait of Hormuz to sustain oil over $100US a barrel which forces everyone to transition away from oil …

    … so rhe war is secretly saving the planet.

    😀

  9. 9

    Fitch wants Enzed to demonstrate that there is a path to either budget surplus or lower debt to GDP.

    Given this was the government objective once the COVID impact on the economy came to an end (this was not until inflation returned to a somewhat normal 3% last year).

    It is now clear the coalition will not achieve the goal in this term, nor in any second or third term: given its own forecasts.

    Given Gulf events Fitch simply noted it was time for the (future negative) downgrade.

    The question for the next government will be twofold, can they change the rating or should they even try.

    Well being and resilience may be deemed more important. And once realised, would increase both political stability and economic standing (albeit with debt levels higher than in recent decades).

    https://www.1news.co.nz/2026/03/21/credit-ratings-agency-downgrades-new-zealands-outlook-to-negative/

  10. 10

    I have put the keywords for the wikipedia link so people can look it up themselves – easy. Surely this is sensible. There seems no reason to be moderating on this. I was trying to make it better for you. This is like being at school not a place for intelligent discussion.

    [2 day ban – weka]

    [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.]

    2. 10.2

      we just don’t have time to hand hold you on this. If you want to comment here, there are rules. You don’t have to like them, but they exist for good reasons, reasons which have been explained many times.

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