OnPoint: Sunlight Resistance
397 Responses
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BenWilson, in reply to
That's an excellent link, thanks Cindy. Much to think on there.
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This may be relevant: Pam Corkery on the "puffed up little shits". She gives some examples of truly unprofessional behaviour.
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Greg Dawson, in reply to
Maybe we can learn from baboons. Yes I’ve posted it before, but …..
Curse you for posting that before btw – I’m now halfway through a marathon watch of Sapolsky’s entire Human Bio 150 lecture series at Stanford. The guy is a great speaker, and the material is utterly fascinating.
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BenWilson, in reply to
No. I’m saying that if you don’t put a tick in a box every 3 years, then all the other democracy stuff you do is pretty much pointless.*
And you would be wrong about that.
Caveat: I didn't read your caveat. If I had I'd have answered
But trying to get other people to change how they vote is still less effective than being part of a heavily voting cohort that garners politicians’ attention for that reason alone.
That entirely depends on how effective you are at getting people to change their vote.
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Sofie Bribiesca, in reply to
In a column about the media and their effect on the election it is almost perfect irony.
And she has no idea. Doubt she reads her comments section or she would not have posted that here.Cortex=Speargun= Bollocks. Dumbing down the masses or is she really blinded by the Key and believes that rubbish? She'll be ramping up the TPPA soon cos Key wants her to. It's not like she knows anything about it,just that it's good for business but what business?
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BenWilson, in reply to
National nailed it. Perfect campaign, beautiful responses, glib brush-offs because their voters didn’t want to hear excuses and explanations (if you’re explaining, you’re losing, they know that). Dirty Politics still cost them a bunch of seats.
Yes, that does need to be remembered. It was an outside shot that power was going to change hands on Saturday, not just on polling data but on the simple fact that National has never had less than 3 terms. The voting public does move quite slowly. This "landslide" has delivered a small majority to National, and they now have a whole basket of fails that will only continue to stack up over the next three years.
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Have we started something here?First Pam ,now Dita De Boni lets loose.
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Ian Dalziel, in reply to
...now Dita De Boni lets loose
Ah well, there goes her welcome on RNZ's 'The Panel'...
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Katharine Moody, in reply to
The answer to the media question doesn’t lie in a return to honorable public broadcasting and increased regulation around the Official Information Act.I think Jon Stewart is a better model.
Brilliant commentary. Yes, but when the Jon Stewart watchers want substance over sensationalism for the rest of their viewing/listening week - an alternate outlet needs to be an available landing spot in the sea of propaganda.
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As much as I love Jon Stewart he does live in a media world where he has a lot more material to draw on to make 4 nights a week's worth of pointing out the foibles of others - NZ's a much smaller place, I'd (wildly) guess that there's maybe 1 night a weeks worth of politicians and media worth laughing at, maybe less.
John Oliver does one night a week and does one investigative report a week, any country probably has way more than one thing a week that needs looking at by TV media.
I think that a night a week of political satire, actual funny stuff, pointing the finger at stuffed shirts at their most stuffiness would go down well. But not as a replacement for something like Campbell Live (the only thing that brings me to TV3 or TV1 these days)
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Kumara Republic, in reply to
What a large proportion of New Zealanders want, in other words, isn’t ‘fairness’, it’s a war against the weak.
All the more so when the middle classes feel precarious and their dreams of making the 1% slip away. Then they start scapegoating the reds/greens/blacks/browns/yellows/pinks/rainbows or whatever colour a ‘hated minority’ symbolises. It worked for President Nixon’s Southern Strategy in the 1960s, at the height of the Civil Rights movement and the Vietnam War protests. And I’ve said it before, but the collapse of the Weimar Republic in 1933 took it to its logical extreme.
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I was involved in a conference in early August. Democracy, ethics and the public good was held at St Andrews on the Terrace in Wellington.
The conference report is being finalised but conference delegates identified three topics as crucial for future work to re-strengthen our democracy. One is the quality of our media. http://www.publicgood.org.nz/wp/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/securing-our-democracy.png
The intention is for St Andrews Trust and Public Good to be part of the work with others to scope a plan to improve our democracy. One small but useful initiative, signalled at the conference would be to crowdfund for summer research scholarships to investigate some of the issues that have arisen in the light of Dirty Politics. This would also need to find a sympathetic academic(s) to supervise the work and to frame up some ideas that would convert ideas into suitable research questions. Off the top of my head I had thought of the following topics but I’d welcome other suggestions.
Researching the relationship between right wing bloggers and the appearance of mainstream media stories.
The coverage by the media of parties and third parties investing significant amounts of money in the lead-up to the 2014 election. (In particular the contrast between the privately funded parties Conservatives and Internet-Mana whose treatment by the media was significantly different).
The coverage of stories that address collaborative action by citizens whether in coops, charities, NGOs or unions. These seem to be presented with increasing levels of disdain.I’d love to know the thoughts of commenters on whether this is the right approach but if you’d be interested in supporting this (or a similar effort) (crowd funding Keith perhaps!) I can be contacted on jan[dot]rivers<at>publicgood<dot>org{dot}nz
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Sofie Bribiesca, in reply to
3 months is becoming 12. Team Key may say not selling any more assets but what of vast tracks of land? Excuse, freeing up for much needed housing development. NZ assets? Not at all. If they start by changing the classification of National parks….. and then there will be Farms to subdivide. Just a thought.
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Katharine Moody, in reply to
And we already sold of half the electricity generation. So who knows where the government going to get the farm subidys from.
To pay the interest bill and to defend our int'l credit rating, the Government's only choice I suspect will be to sell more assets, as I doubt they can reduce outgoings or increase revenue (through expanding the tax base) fast enough.
Options are Landcorp and Conservation Estate lands, possibly the partial or full privatisation of ACC or alternately a cave in on the TPPA in exchange for US support on our dollar and borrowing?
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Katharine Moody, in reply to
Jan Rivers
Small organisations and trusts with these sorts of common objectives need to amalgamate under one banner. The key to any movement toward better democracy is to motivate, educate and enthuse those without vested interests – which means the young and the disenfranchised. This new organisation is to my mind the best I’ve seen in that regard;
http://www.actionstation.org.nz/
If I were you, I’d talk to them.
Many years ago in NZ when environmental interest groups began to form there was a state of similar small independent factions who recognised that one banner-one movement had a better chance of making an impact. A number of these joined together to form ECO;
That is the model to follow. A high level of on-going funding is critical and Action Station recently crowd-funded a full page ad in the NZ Herald calling for a Royal Commission into Dirty Politics .. so they have proven impact and potential. They are also the same people behind RockEnrol – again an initiative that brings with it a 4,000 odd people database (folks they newly enrolled for this year’s election).
They also did a blog post here about their experience in that regard.
Best of luck with the initiative – might come across you if you join forces with Action Station.
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Rob Stowell, in reply to
The intention is for St Andrews Trust and Public Good to be part of the work with others to scope a plan to improve our democracy. One small but useful initiative, signalled at the conference would be to crowdfund for summer research scholarships to investigate some of the issues that have arisen in the light of Dirty Politics.
Sounds good!
I'd like to see someone research how the 'modern political parties' use data. And what the different parties spent on PR advice, polling, and focus-groups.
All perfectly legal, except the 'black ops' stuff doesn't come out of nowhere. -
Sacha, in reply to
I suggest adding how journalistic ethics are being acted out, reflected on and maintained in newsrooms.
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Trevor Nicholls, in reply to
or alternately a cave in on the TPPA in exchange for US support on our dollar and borrowing?
What evidence is there of any resistance to the TPPA on Key's part at all?
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izogi, in reply to
If they start by changing the classification of National parks
Something to keep an eye on on this topic, all three major parties (Nat, Lab, Green) agreed before the election that there’s a strong need to classify NZ’s stewardship land, and they’ve all had an intent to give the process a kick after the election, especially after the PCE produced a report about the problem last year. That’s basically 30% of the Conservation Estate administered by DOC, or about 10% of NZ, which doesn’t currently have a clear status besides basic protection and being managed fairly generically.
In conservation terms it’s often very valuable land (or not) and was meant to be classified since 1987, but DOC’s never had the resources or inclination to get around to determining and formalising its status. Classifying it properly is a good thing in principle, because most recently the ambiguous status on Stewardship Land has been at the centre of a bunch of controversies, in part caused by even the applicants for conservation land use not being clear on how significant the values are on land which they’re interested in using.
Anyway, this term and after there will probably be recurring announcements about new blocks of public land being more strongly protected. Some will go into more National Parks, more Conservation Parks, or more Reserves, which is always going to reflect warm and fluffy karma back to the government of the day. The critical detail will be in the fine print of what’s allowed under that “protection”, and in the exceptional cases of what continues to not be protected beyond the basic level which it is now. I wrote more about it over here.
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Greg Dawson, in reply to
What evidence is there of any resistance to the TPPA on Key’s part at all?
None whatsoever. Our best bet on dodging this particular bullet remains Japanese resistance. Long may it continue.
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Rob Stowell, in reply to
Our best bet on dodging this particular bullet remains Japanese resistance.
Plus, even if the US trade negotiators get everything they ever dreamed of, getting TPPA through Congress isn’t assured. Republicans in Congress could kill it just because they don’t want to give Obama anything.
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@nzlemming, #renting, thanks. I'll have to find a better line for how good people like money for valid and morally sound reasons next time.
@48% #notamajority, I guess, if that's what helps y'all sleep at night. Imagine how much of "not a majority" of voters they'll have after specials. Sweet. Barely 47%. Yeh, I know, I'm not counting Conservatives, but it's because we don't actually count the Conservatives' votes for seats on account of them being Nazis, or something, I forget.
@izogiWe might as well just do away with all the other laws and processes which protect the rights of everyone, even when they voted for someone else.
Well, no, not at all. But really, there are no such protections against the assent of Parliament in New Zealand. They casually removed the vote from thousands of people a couple years back and no one even blinked.
They didn't like who people voted in for ECAN, so they scrapped ECAN and appointed some dictators instead. No one even cared, their vote went up in Canterbury. People ironically want the rivers down there protected and also want a government who doesn't let them vote for that.
They made Gerry Brownlee an absolute dictator in Christchurch. He's literally above the law down there, or anywhere that he cares to say would aid the earthquake recovery. He uses his power to ... basically prevent the rebuild from going ahead in every way that is politically advantageous to the National party. Makes it all look like the fault of the RMA, because they're going to gut the RMA and need an excuse.
Those things, and any other thing, including retrospective immunity from prosecution, can just happen because Parliament assents to it. We have a constitution act and a bill of rights and they can just change them if they feel the need at any time. If they write a new law which just says "this law overrides the bill of rights" then it does. They did that for the family caregivers of disabled people just recently.
Compared to them ignoring the cabinet manual, which is not a law and instead just a set of guidelines they update all the time to reflect their current behaviour, or abusing the hell out of the OIA for political gain, they've done worse. Much worse. By just writing laws that say they can. Welcome to NZ, take care with your vote.
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Sofie Bribiesca, in reply to
Anyway, this term and after there will probably be recurring announcements about new blocks of public land being more strongly protected. Some will go into more National Parks, more Conservation Parks, or more Reserves, which is always going to reflect warm and fluffy karma back to the government of the day.
A Government that hasn’t given a toss before. We’ll see, I hope you are the correct one here.
Let's see what next weeks conference with big oil and Gas in Auckland brings also. Is it safe? I see the online Granny story has disappeared since this morning. -
Trevor Nicholls, in reply to
Republicans in Congress could kill it just because they don’t want to give Obama anything.
Fancy finding myself cheering on the GOP. Scum. But in this solitary circumstance, useful scum.
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TPPA - US gets to write our law
(apologies if it's been linked to earlier)
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