Posts by Angus Robertson
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When it is changed to Whanganui does the other Whanganui have to revert to being Westhaven to avoid confusion?
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Cut super or extend minimum age out to 75 for women and 70 for men.
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You've jumped from "had the opportunity to prepare" to "were prepared" without any proof. The fact that Hizbollah knew that a military reaction was likely, isn't proof that they were pre-prepared to deal with the consequences of that reaction on the civilians.
Sorry for not making it clear, I am assuming Hizbollah to have more than two working braincells and be capable of forward planning.
My key point is we should aim to get emergency aid more directly to those affected and let those people make the decisions about what they most need. It really follows on from principles behind longer development such as the Grameen Bank, headed by Nobel Peace Prize winner Professor Yunis, where poor people negotiate loans of cash to improve their lives.
Better example. Thanks.
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The Israeli bombing campaign did not simply target Hizbollah. It was aimed at the entire infrastructure of Lebanon. So perhaps not such a bad example after all.
Hizbollah fires thousands of rockets at Israel, Israel drops bombs on Lebanon = easily predictable within short time frame. Hizbollah easily able to make detailled advance planning for soon to be required reconstruction, its efforts hailled as "remarkable" by an oppostion MP in NZ.
Undersea volcano incrementally gains internal stress over several million years, stress released in earthquake = predictable but within much, much longer time frame. Contingency planning given priority it is relatively due, but is criticised for lacking effectiveness of Hizbollahs by same opposition MP in NZ.
Within a remarkably short time, building materials arrived, labour had been hired and basic needs met. Politics aside, [Hizbollahs action] was the most efficient and most accountable means of delivering aid to those who need it.
They had at least 5 years to plan for a military conflict they would have to concede they were going to lose, so there is absolutely nothing remarkable about the speed with which they were able to offer reconstruction assistance. Such action would have to 100% at the forefront of their thinking even before they launched their rocket attacks.
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One of the most effective aid operations I’ve seen – after nearly 20 years in the aid business – was in southern Lebanon in 2006 after the Israeli bombing flattened Lebanese Shia towns. The Lebanese organisation, Hizbollah, moved around distributing US dollars directly to people whose home had been destroyed or damaged.
There some are blatant and obvious differences between a tsunami and a military assault.
Hizbollah were able to predict that those towns were going to be targetted years in advance of the bombing, because they had prior knowledge that a certain militant group (called Hizbollah) was going to use those towns to launch several thousand missiles at Israel. So during the entirely predictable Israelli response they were able to move in with reconstruction aid in a very timely manner. Hizbollah probably had arrangements sorted out prior to the very first rocket attacks it launched. Apparently whatever PR pre-planning Hizbollah did worked out very well for them, easily able impress the local UN staffers.
Prediction of earthquakes and tsunamis is not accurate. One might or might not occur over several centuries in the Pacific Islands. No group in Samoa, Tonga or NZ is ever going to be able to provide a seamless response (unless the Ministers really do have a direct line to God), because we could not know beforehand.
Please come up with a better comparison.
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How do we change an exploitative dominance-prone xenophobic not-fully-rational homonim- with a severely limited life span - into
something else?
Or accept that this human nature thing is actually human nature and work with it to save the planet.
Perhaps we could tax rich people more than poor people. Taxing consumption not emission.
A radical departure from our ETS agenda of a worldwide flat tax, which apparently all Greens know is the only totally fair way forward.
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I don’t know how these (mainly) old sods can sleep in their bed knowing that such irrational, ignorant ramblings serve to feed the greatest barrier to getting on and finding a solution to our problems. I wondered whether they had grandchildren… but I realise now that they do. Their delusions have extended to the point where their selfishness and desire to protect some imaginary god-given right to a motor car and a filament light bulb has overridden their love for their children.
In Copenhagen a lot of rich world, white, same old dominating pricks (culturally us) who have shat all over the planet for the past 200 years are proposing a "solution" to climate change. We are delusional on a societal scale if we think we can convince the world of an honest intent to save the planet, when all they have to do is look at our proposed solution.
Us lot have a solution called Cap and Trade, as in you cap emissions and then buy allowances on our markets that give you access to air. It is a solution designed to protect right of consumer societies to consume. It is a solution that if implemented would garner us advantage over the poor world. It is abject arrogance.
This is currently the largest barrier to progress, not the skeptics.
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It disgusts me.
Deniers disgust me too, but they're a minor annoyance and easily dealt with by presenting evidence to the general public.
And now these old bastards are trying to do it to us again:
Some rich old bastards are trying to do something, some psychotics would use climate change to profit off.
Take the G20s (and NZs) "solution" to climate change the global ETS, how it works:
- a worldwide flat tax on the planet (or if the Danish Memo is to be believed tax poor people twice as high as the rich).
- use this to force adoption of higher tech solutions (costed to the poor world by the UN at $500 billion per year) whilst providing the poor world with $40 billion in oh-so-generous aid to assist. Thus ensuring a $440 billion market for rich world high tech industrial design.
- set up a carbon futures market, to be run in the rich world.
- reward industries that out-source production, like the rich world industries have been doing for 30 years.If adopted such a solution could indeed save the planet from climate change, however it would make the rich world richer and the poor world poorer. Compared to exploitative opportunists like these (our government included), denialists are positiviely sainted.
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Put it another way.
If David Bain becomes a parent he is more likely than most to be prosecuted for any smacks.
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Assuming that means you don't agree with this state of affairs, then that would require every case, not just the one you cited, to go to trial so the judiciary can decide on the facts. That would seem somewhat impractical.
"Require" stripping discretion off the police? No, what is objected to is the police having sole discretion.
If both the police and the courts had right to decide upon the inconsequentiallity, that would also alleviate this state of affairs.