Breaking Views Update: Week of 31.12.23

Saturday January 6, 2024 

News:
TVNZ removes mātauranga Māori article due to ‘racist’ backlash
An article about the maramataka Māori or Māori lunar calendar, has been taken down less than 24 hours after being posted on TVNZ’s digital platform, renews.co.nz.

It’s believed the item was removed due to the racist comments it generated online.

Guy Hatchard: Korean Studies Indicate What Our Government is Hiding

… and What the Whistleblower Wanted to Warn Us About—a Tsunami of Health Issues

The Korean National Health Insurance Service tabulates health data of the whole population, including vaccination status, which allows researchers to compare the ongoing health outcomes of the vaccinated with the unvaccinated. Precisely the information our government is hiding from independent researchers and public scrutiny—comparative data, which we have been requesting they release.

So what have they found in Korea?

Net Zero Watch: EU Net Zero target in doubt

 

In this newsletter:

1) EU Net Zero target in doubt as governments struggle to meet climate commitments
Euro News, 3 January 2024
  
2) Bangladesh triples its coal power output in 2023, easing shortages
Reuters, 3 January 2024

David Farrar: $3.7 million for a toilet block!

Stuff reports:

The construction of a toilet block in south Auckland set the council back more than $3.7 million.

Ross Meurant: Turbulence of Time

Politics is akin to a surging tide.  Each new wave presents a new challenge and too often, those challenges are not what we expected or wanted

Nelson Mandela was arrested for his role in the Defiance Campaign, launched 26 June 1952, and thus began his odyssey of opposing the Apartheid regime being implemented by the Verwoerd South African government. 

Although found, not guilty, of the 1952 rumbles and that he was initially committed to non-violent protest, in 1961 in association with a militant group he led a sabotage campaign against the government. He was arrested and imprisoned in 1962, and, was sentenced to life imprisonment for conspiring to overthrow the State.

Alistair Boyce: “So, how is the revolution going?” - Waitangi 2024

Simple question but a complex and confronting one, especially to answer. 

When Te Pati Maori hierarchy are confronted with the question a contortion of confusion ensues and they run for the hills and the relative safety of established post-colonial New Zealand institutions. 

Is it “noise, noise, noise”, an ongoing ‘revolution by stealth’ or a ‘disparate rebellion’? It is certainly an ongoing continuum of activist and elite Maori being emboldened, empowered and entitled by public institutions with only unsettling paths to solutions that can never be fully resolved as the shifting sands of historical revisionism persist. 

Oliver Wiseman and Bari Weiss: Claudine Gay, We Hardly Knew Ye…

Can Harvard be saved? 

Why did Claudine Gay step down yesterday as president of Harvard? In a letter announcing the bombshell decision, Gay wrote that it was in “the best interests of Harvard for me to resign so that our community can navigate this moment of extraordinary challenge with a focus on the institution rather than any individual.”

She also blamed racism: “It has been distressing to have doubt cast on my commitments to confronting hate and to upholding scholarly rigor—two bedrock values that are fundamental to who I am—and frightening to be subjected to personal attacks and threats fueled by racial animus,” Gay wrote in her email Tuesday.

Aris Roussinos: The world should fear 2024

When asked in 2020 to envisage the world after Covid, Michel Houellebecq proclaimed, accurately enough, that “it will be the same, just a bit worse”. It does not take a soothsayer to foresee that the same will hold true for this coming year. The year 2023 saw the greatest global resurgence of armed conflict since 1945: 2024 will be worse. 

We are living, if not through a World War, then a world at war, the great post-globalisation jostling to divide up the spoils of what was once America’s unipolar imperium. This will be as epoch-defining a period as the late Forties were for Britain, or 1991 for Russia.

Jeffrey A. Tucker: Consumers Are Rejecting the Great Reset

A friend got a rental of a Tesla over the holidays. It’s undoubtedly the industry standard for EVs and a complete blast to drive. The problem: It’s not a practical car at all. He was driving in the cold, and the car was nearly drained after two hours. Searching for a charge was no easy task. The first one didn’t work. The second one stated that it would be charged in 10 hours, which he didn’t have. The third one charged in one hour but that was a full hour wasted.

His conclusion: This is indeed a glorified golf cart designed to keep you at home and under the thumb of the manufacturer. And this is just a test. The repairs are worse. Keep in mind that this is the best the industry has to offer. The other manufacturers of these things make products not nearly as highly rated, which is why so many of them are sitting on lots unsold and why orders for the machines are plummeting.

Bryce Edwards: The Liberal Vs Conservative anguish over the direction of NZ politics

With the new conservative government well into its first 100 days, there’s been rising anguish from liberals about what all this means. As they come to terms with the various repeals and reforms, political commentator Liam Hehir suggests that liberal New Zealand is currently going through the “classic five stages of grief – denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance”.

Bill Barr: I Oppose Trump—and Any Efforts to Ban Him From the Ballot

The 2024 election will pose the gravest of challenges to our institutions. Unconstitutional measures will take us down far more dangerous channels.

In Colorado and Maine, state officials have decided to remove Donald Trump from the primary ballot, claiming the need to protect democracy. A number of other states, including Arizona, Nevada, Oregon, New Mexico, and New York, are considering taking the same step.

Many who oppose the 45th president hail these legal maneuvers as a neat way to stop Trump—who they view as an existential threat to the country—without having to beat him at the ballot box.

Tony Orman: Cabinet Minister Doug Graham had it wrong - anyone can love rivers/mountains

Former National government Treaty Minister in the 1990s Doug Graham once said that “Maori had spiritual feelings for lakes and mountains and rivers that Pakeha people neither shared nor understood.”

I would be surprised if Doug Graham had much to do with the outdoors and particularly with trout or salmon fishing and just going with the flow out there with the river. But those “spiritual feelings” he attributes exclusively to Maori are wrong and arguably racist.

Lindsay Mitchell: Cracking down hard ... on people with hangovers

A sneaking suspicion is crawling up my spine.

In a reaction to ram-raiding (which has now morphed into aggravated angle-grinding); to cold-blooded murders by a home detainee; to brazen trolley-filled supermarket shoplifting; to defiant silence from witnesses of child abuse deaths; New Zealanders voted for a crack down on law and order. The issue was second only to inflation on the list of the voter concerns in the run-up to the 2023 election. New Police Minister Mitchell has sent a public message to old Police Commissioner Coster - Quit with the tolerance of crime.

David Farrar: Stuff’s 2024 predictions

Stuff’s 2024 predictions

Below are Stuff's 10 predictions for 2024, along with my comments on them. They normally do 20:

JC: The Party of Big Blunders

If you were in a war, you wouldn’t want the Labour Party on your side: their physical abilities would probably be on a par with their mental abilities. After six years in government we know how seriously their abilities were found wanting. Their reign will be remembered for a succession of policy blunders which climaxed in an explosive election loss in October.

Karl du Fresne: An epic display of dummy-spitting

As a believer in free speech, I would never question John Campbell’s right to unburden himself of a long, whiny lament about where New Zealand is going under the new government.

I do object, however, when it’s published on the website of a taxpayer-funded broadcaster, TVNZ, which has an ethical obligation to observe editorial balance and political neutrality.

If you wanted proof that brazenly activist journalism is not only accepted but encouraged, even by state-owned media, there it is, right there. Clearly, TVNZ is untroubled by the fact that the man it calls its Chief Correspondent adopts an unashamedly political posture and sets himself up as an outspoken adversary of a democratically elected government. It’s a measure of his ego that he can take such a provocatively defiant stance and expect to get away with it.

Derek Mackie: New Year's dis-Honours List

Another year ended, another new year beginning, another New Year’s Honours List. 

Or perhaps it should be called the New Year’s “Honestly - you cannot be serious” List. 

The big standout this year is our ex-Speaker of the House. 

He of the blaring megaphone and parliamentary water sprinklers. 

He of the false sexual misconduct allegations. 

He of the bullying and general unbecoming behaviour for an MP and senior minister. 

He of the huge tax-payer funded personal legal bills. 

He of the half a million dollar parliamentary playground. 

Clive Bibby: Our Claytons Honours system

I have just finished reading the full list of the this Country’s New Year Honours recipients - you know, the one that was originally introduced to recognise those civilian role models who had, like the “Biblical widow” given of themselves beyond the call of duty. Sadly, that isn’t how it works these days.

During times of war, the awarding of medals is based more on acts of gallantry with the highest honours going to those who acted with selfless disregard for their own safety and more often than not, saving lives while, in the process, sometimes forfeiting their own.

John Raine: Ministerial Spring Cleaning and the Parable of the Rowing Eight

Matthew Hooton’s recommendation that Nicola Willis cut the cost of the Public Service by 25% (NZ Herald 22^nd December) reminded me of a story.

Years ago, the engineering community was getting fired up about new Japanese business and manufacturing efficiency methods, and “kaizen” (continuous improvement) and “just in time” were being bandied about. 

Graham Adams: Treaty principles debate takes off

Underestimating David Seymour is a mistake.

Anyone who followed David Seymour’s patient championing of assisted dying will have a sneaking suspicion that history may well repeat itself in the Treaty principles debate. As Winston Peters might put it, this is not his first rodeo.