Ryan Bridge: Is the work of activists making a difference?

Regular listeners will know, when it comes to free speech, I'm into it.

How else do we get smarter but to debate ideas, put them through the ringer, shout and scream and reason and argue?

We've been doing it since we could talk - which is, well, a long time.

Lushington Brady: The Activists Will Always Be with Us

In his Intellectuals and Race, Thomas Sowell points out that one of the most destabilising forces a modern society can be afflicted with is a growing pool of newly educated ‘intelligentsia’: the vast bulk of these are university-educated graduate from ‘soft’ fields, rather than the sciences. With no marketable skills and limited employment opportunities, these people form a class of ‘over-educated and under-employed’.

JC: 86,834 Trampling on the Wishes of 2,894,486 Million

The Maori Party MPs are once again showing their petulance, contempt and childish behaviour for anything that they don’t like. They’re throwing their taonga takaros (toys) out of the moenga (cot). They have made it very clear that they are going to try and make the Guinness Book of Records for ‘Spitting the Most Dummies in a Parliamentary Term’. What they would like to achieve is akin to ‘Mission Implausible’. These people are nothing more than a stain on our democracy and our system of government.

Welcome to my country??

This guy is 100% correct - and this applies to New Zealand too.

Ramesh Thakur: Beware Catastrophizing Climate Models and Activists

All true believers of The Science™ of climate change have taken careful note of the lessons offered by the coronavirus pandemic during 2020–22 for managing the ‘climate emergency.’ The two agendas share nine items in common that should leave us worried, very worried. 

The first is the revolting spectacle of the hypocrisy of the exalted elites who preach to the deplorables the proper etiquette of abstinence to deal with the emergency, and their own insouciant exemption from a restrictive lifestyle. Most recently we witnessed the surreal spectacle of Britain’s Parliament interrogating disgraced former Prime Minister Boris Johnson on allegations that he serially broke the lockdown rules he had imposed on everyone else—but not questioning the anti-scientific stupidity of the rules themselves. Possibly the most notorious American example was California Governor Gavin Newsom and his cronies dining maskless in the appropriately named French Laundry restaurant at a time when this was verboten, being served by fully masked staff. 

Dr Tim Ball: Two Lies Make A Truth In Green and Liberal Views on Climate Science

In the world of green and liberal politics, where they practice extreme environmentalism, nothing bears examination: two lies make a truth. We now learn that Bjorn Lomborg, who was never a climate skeptic, has magically disavowed that status. As the entire mockery of human induced global warming collapses, it is a convenient conversion.

Mike Butler: Tribe slams no ownership

The Ngati Kahungunu tribe wants ownership of the foreshore and seabed put into “Tipuna Title, activist and lawyer Moana Jackson said in Napier last Thursday. He put his tribe’s proposal to Attorney General Chris Finlayson at a meeting at Napier’s Pukemokimoki Marae meeting, which attracted 150 people, according to a report in the Hastings Mail, published today.

Frank Newman: Activists on Council Payroll

While I have done my utmost to ignore the local political scene since retiring as a councillor in 2004, I could not resist the temptation to call in on a local community consultation meeting last week. The meeting was called to receive community input on “Sustainable Futures 30/50”, an ambitious plan which purports to have the objective of asking people what they would like our district to be like in 2050. The exercise raises a number of interesting issues.

David Round: Reflections on Avatar

Have you seen the film Avatar? Simply everyone is talking about it.

I have seen it, but am not sure if I should recommend it or not. The special effects are amazing, of course, but I have to say that the plot leaves a little to be desired. It is not so much that the plot is shaky ~ it is a perfectly reasonable, tried and true story, pretty predictable therefore, but tried and true precisely because it is true to real life, where such changes in attitude do actually happen. No, the plot is unsatisfactory not so much because of its lack of surprises as because of its superficiality. While keeping the story, action and special effects exactly as they are it could have explored issues more deeply and become an opportunity to dwell on some of human life’s eternal perplexities and tragedies.