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6:00 am, July 30th, 2025 - 32 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 …
Today's Posts (updated through the day):
Queenstown as an exemplar of the limits to growth
Corbyn still draws a crowd – what’s new?
New Posts up:
Queenstown as an exemplar of the limits to growth
Corbyn still draws a crowd – what’s new?
Luxon’s New Zealand:
“Methamphetamine suppresses hunger and cold,” said Drug Foundation director Sarah Helm, making it attractive in the context of housing instability and food insecurity.
https://thespinoff.co.nz/the-bulletin/30-07-2025/how-did-the-meth-crisis-get-so-bad-so-fast
You’ve pushed people out of last gasp housing so this becomes attractive. Definitely one of many evil actions undertaken by this government. This is Luxon’s New Zealand. Growth in meth to offset cuts in safety nets.
So, what causes this rise in methamphetamine use? I'd have said loss of hope.
Here's what the internet says. "Addiction is not a property of the substance ingested or activity engaged in.
Instead, research indicates that it is more related to what else is, or isn’t, going on in a person’s life that makes the sensation a substance induces so attractive. Among the many factors that have been shown to influence the development of an addiction are feelings about oneself, emotional state, quality of family relationships, social ties, community attributes, employment status, stress reactivity and coping skills, physical or emotional pain, personality traits, educational opportunities, compelling goals and progress toward them, opportunities for and access to rewards in life, as well as physiological responses. While no factor predominates, each exerts some degree of influence."
And of methamphetamine itself? "
The synthetic stimulant methamphetamine is widely considered one of the most addictive agents. Often inhaled, it directly affects the dopamine and other neurotransmitter systems system to produce an extremely fast and intense—but short-lived—high, with an altered sense of energy and power. Further, by changing the responsiveness of dopamine receptors, methamphetamine blunts the experience of reward from normal sources of pleasure. "
https://www.psychologytoday.com/nz/basics/addiction/causes-addiction
How much of this is down to government action or inaction? How much do we care to address these issues? Change the government is one large component of change here.
+100%
It’s such a terrible drug. Despair would seem to be up there.
In line with yr comments about the factors involved in addiction, I recall a study done with mice.
A solitary mouse with adequate food, water and 'mouse heroin' available, the rodent would consume all three.
The same environment but with a wider family group of mice, the heroin remains untouched.
It's really tragic and unavoidable, but another horrible consequence of the undermining and loss of the family unit.
Is there any evidence that single adults use meth more than those in relationships (and or with children)?
I can only talk about my experience with drugs… speed and amphetamines have a similar effect on me as my now prescribed ADHD medications. The ADHD medications are far safer and more effective than the illegal alternatives.
I wouldn’t be surprised if many people who use P would be better off with ADHD medications like Ritalin, however they need to be diagnosed with ADHD first
Every day, and every new action of cruelty and stupidity by this government, and I'm more and more depressed. Not at the politicians, but at the significant amount of my fellow citizens who voted for this, and even agree with it.
I'm sure many will say 'we didn't vote for xyz policy' and 'we never thought they'd do that' but thing is, a RW government was always going to do that. Nothing they've done or are doing, or will do is a surprise. This is how they work, and they have form.
Hope you're enjoying those tax cuts and investing them wisely…
My bet is Ghislaine gets immunity and sentence commuted in exchange for testimony that stays sealed until Trump leaves office.
Trump can afford to burn a chunk of his base off.
And Ghislaine goes back into the family fold.
Trump is just trashing the idea of Presidential pardons, and already has immunity for deeds done in office.
What a USA this is.
Shane split himself into two for the occasion: https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/political/568388/last-minute-change-puts-oil-and-gas-cleanup-decisions-in-ministers-hands
I wonder if he recorded the interview. It would be an opportunity for sociologists to measure who managed to scale the heights of pomposity more impressively – interviewer or interviewee? Mind you, those folk would have to be Maori.
The reporter fails to specify who/what Labour had directed that responsibility too. Faceless bureaucrats? If so, are they any less likely to get it right? The reporter uses the bureaucratese jargon term "decommissioning" without explanation. Assuming readers are just as ignorant, presumably, and who cares anyway? If the capitalists were being forced to clean up their own mess by the law, everyone would drop dead in astonishment, so politicians and media must collude in carefully avoiding the facts.
Your response to Jones "interviewing himself" is way more considered than my puerile 10yr old South Park inspired reaction.
Support for the Nurses. Trained and not hired. Hired at low numbers, and overworked.
CoC MP's toil to ease the struggle of everyday Kiwis – hang on, isn’t Kiwi a Māori word?
Russian earthquake tsunami warning has been upgraded for NZ to include .3 – 1m along much of our coastline this evening.
Pay attention and tell people who might not be getting MSM or social media comms.
Check local Emergency Management, this one is from
@NZcivildefence
CD advice on their front page,
https://www.civildefence.govt.nz/
AI
While global warming itself doesn't directly cause earthquakes, it can contribute to conditions that may increase the likelihood of earthquakes, particularly in specific regions. Rising sea levels and changes in weather patterns due to climate change can put additional stress on fault lines, potentially triggering earthquakes.
The earthquake occurred off the Kamchatka Peninsula's east coast, which runs parallel to the Kuril-Kamchatka Trench, the area where the Pacific and Okhotsk Sea plates converge.
Being older and therefore denser, the Pacific subducts beneath the Kamchatka Peninsula, which sits on the Okhotsk Sea Plate.
https://aje.io/rgz2l4?update=3864526
A 7.4 earthquake on 21 July.
https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/news/20250720_13/
9 or more.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1841_Kamchatka_earthquake
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1952_Severo-Kurilsk_earthquake
https://www.bbc.com/news/live/c3r4x9yrrg4t?post=asset%3Aa9e3e4f5-4ccb-45ce-b4a6-42bd24bbe469#post
Another business is not buying what Luxon is saying:
https://www.thepost.co.nz/politics/360772645/no-other-option-tears-tough-times-brings-lay-offs?cx_testId=10&cx_testVariant=cx_1&cx_artPos=1&utm_source=the_post_stuff_home&utm_medium=referral#cxrecs_s
Wasn't Luxon the CEO of a company that needed a govt bailout? The Market will sort it.
And has ACT's van Velden heard about this?
First left party to ask me for a donation under the new legal disclosure limits gets it.
Can't wait.
Match Appeal donations
Luxon worked for Air New Zealand from 2011 to 2019. He was CEO from 2013 until 2019.
Air New Zealand was financially very successful during his time there, and in particular during his time at the top.
They may have required an injection of funds from the taxpayer about 10 years before he worked there but there was certainly no need during the time he ran the company.
They also owned some 747-200s. They were also long before Luxon's time with the last on being disposed of in 2000. When they were bought Luxon was in his pre-teen and early teen-age years.
You really will have to get up to date. Your proposals are a little like suggesting that Helen Clark approved of apartheid because she was PM of a country that welcomed a tour by South Africa during its apartheid days. That is about as accurate as your ideas.
Yes, “no recollection” Luxon was CEO of Air NZ, a company that needed a government bailout – although not while he was CEO.
What am I proposing, alwyn, in your opinion
Last year Lancet mentioned war is followed by famine and then by disease and gave its estimate of a death toll measured by hundreds of thousands.
This year, after 11 weeks of no aid in the northern spring Trump mentioned the word starving.
And given the limited aid over the past 2 months, he has used the word starving again.
Some are calling it famine by design.
https://www.haaretz.com/middle-east-news/2025-07-29/ty-article/.premium/famine-by-design-how-israel-ignored-warnings-and-starved-gaza/00000198-553c-d669-a99d-7dbfe5170000
(someone with a free gift article can help out, or I will do this on 1 August)
The US army veteran below talks about how the US is complicit in setting traps, the food is the bait, to bring Palestinians from the north and explains that anyone who succeeds in obtaining aid and survives can't return home, and they're compelled to enter a camp in the south.
They're using famine as a tool to ethnically cleanse Northern Gaza.
The starvation is Gaza wide.
The Likud+ government wants the exit from the Gaza to the camp by the border to enable exodus from Palestine like in 1948.
Watch and rage.
"Designed as Death Traps”: Fmr. Green Beret Who Worked at Gaza Food Sites Reveals Rampant War Crimes
As more than 1,000 Palestinians have been killed seeking aid at militarized aid distribution sites run by the U.S.- and Israel-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, a former GHF security contractor tells Democracy Now! he saw U.S. mercenaries and Israeli forces commit war crimes by indiscriminately shooting at starving Palestinians waiting for aid. “What I witnessed in Gaza, I can only describe as a dystopian, post-apocalyptic wasteland,” says Anthony Aguilar, a retired U.S. soldier who worked as a subcontractor with UG Solutions in the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation aid delivery operation. “We, the United States, are complicit. We are involved, hand in hand, in the atrocities and the genocide that is currently undergoing in Gaza.”
https://www.democracynow.org/2025/7/29/anthony_aguilar_ghf_war_crimes
Audrey Young’s Herald story today ( paywalled ) about Luxon being worried is timely for all those criticising Chippie for “ not doing anything “ should just take heed of the old maxim… Do not interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake “. And boy aren’t they coming daily now.