Posts by william blake
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This was brought to my attention by Auckland photographer Allan McDonald, the Mercer War Memorial. A wee concrete soldier mounted on the turret of the Waikato River gunboat, used during the Waikato land wars.
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We tend, further, to forget the complexity of Maori participation in the first world.
Paging Dr Freud..:)
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Sorry I just said something verry silly. Selfie redact.
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Citizens who do not vote presumably feel disenfranchised, even in an MMP system, for a raft of personal reasons. I think it is a difficult argument to win over a voter to cast their vote for the least damaging candidate.
Meanwhile the enfranchised majority vote for the same old spanners who are dismantling our country nut by bolt, creating further disenfranchisement.
Perhaps a committed viable party who would look after the most vulnerable in our country as their first priority in all areas; health, education, work, retirement, houses etc. would give the non voters something to go to the polls about.
The current politics of the centre is a fiction which protects the better off in society at the expense of the poor. It creates an environment that changes humanity into extremism in the minds of voters.
"The most powerful tool of the oppressor, is the minds of the oppressed" Mandela.
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http://psychoactives.health.govt.nz/industry/how-get-product-approved
Alcohol products certainly wouldn't get approval under the testing regime.
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In the mid eighties we lived in a remote part of West Auckland and the only form of communication was the red phone box by the ford. We didn't use it that often but it was a vital safety service as there was a low tide boat ramp there for the manukau harbour. I recall our local Vietnam vet putting the phone out of order by trying to 'tap' through to the CIA , he didn't break the phone, he just couldn't get through and stayed in there with a six pack and an ounce, for nearly two days. Tragic in hindsight.
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Envirologue: The Agony of Vanuatu and…, in reply to Ian Dalziel,
Locusts are edible.
Only if dipped in honey. -
http://www.un.org/en/events/desertificationday/background.shtml
A major part of desertification comes from changes in the weather patterns. The consequences will be diaspora of hundreds of millions of people needing food and water. This is bound to cause strife.
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Envirologue: The Agony of Vanuatu and…, in reply to Amanda Wreckonwith,
Sorry to Wiki a reply but it's a reasonable look at mass extinctions on Earth.
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Yes climate change. Yes much to do.
The population of Tuvalu in 1950 was less than 5,000. Global population growth is implicated in spiralling consumption based on petrochemicals, which increase climate change but also demand that people live in greater vulnerability. Both economically and literally, with poor housing in places exposed to the full force of the elements.
Two solutions are obvious both requiring revolution. One would be a dramatic redistribution of wealth the other a one child policy. Both of these have been tried and have some very bad side effects, neither is likely to happen without authoritarian governance.
I think it will need a cyclone of Pams' magnitude to rip through Auckland, Sydney, Tokyo, Shanghai and many other powerful population centres before the majority will willingly start to change their behaviour on a meaningful, world population scale.
Force is required to effect behaviour change on this scale either from an authoritarian state of by reaction to the simple force of nature. Neither option is palatable but if left alone nature will reduce the worlds population until it is back in balance, as it has done before.
