Written By:
- Date published:
6:00 am, March 21st, 2026 - 23 comments
Categories: open mike -
Tags:
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 …
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.
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.
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.
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"
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.
“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!
"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.
https://x.com/chrisluxonmp/status/2035095540929896955
I don't look at x but I assume it's this one?
https://www.stuff.co.nz/nz-news/360954222/nz-joins-host-countries-condemning-iran-attacks-vessels-energy-infrastructure
So this whole mess is purely and soley Iran's fault, right?
That's what Luxon & Co want us to believe.
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.
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.
Luxon doesn't condemn Israel's attack on Iran largest gas-field . Rules for one but not the other.
https://theconversation.com/why-middle-east-gas-field-attacks-could-send-energy-prices-soaring-278777
The guy is basically a clown.
Timely reminder about what's to come.
Free Ukraine 🇺🇦
@ukrainolution
You're only flirting with bad economic fallout right now. Wait until it's three times worse and fully baked in.
https://x.com/Ukrainolution/status/2034990586302701679
From casinos to countries: ETTD
Justin Wolfers
@JustinWolfers
The Pentagon said the Iran war cost $11 billion in the first week.
But it's way way way more than that. Hundreds of billions more.
Your family's share is thousands of dollars. And I've got receipts.
Lemme youtubesplain:
https://xcancel.com/JustinWolfers/status/2034743018536780097
Donkeys running the shop.
//
https://www.fitchratings.com/research/sovereigns/fitch-revises-outlook-on-new-zealand-to-negative-affirms-at-aa-20-03-2026
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.
😀
Russia is being served by the idol of those wearing RED MAGA caps, their agent krasnov.
Like the way you are thinking Ad accentuate the positives out of a very ugly situation.
The only man who could have re-opened Hormuz by himself.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/culture/360954239/sylvester-stallone-jean-claude-van-damme-lee-majors-and-more-react-death-chuck-norris
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/
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.]
mod note.
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.