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Cake day: July 2nd, 2023

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  • I’m not very familiar with how things work in NZ, but I started reading about this story in another post yesterday and found it very intriguing.

    The Treaty Principles bill isn’t expected to pass in the current Parliament, although it could eventually head to a referendum. But it’s just one part of a broader right-wing backlash against the significant gains that Māori have made in recent decades to win back stolen land and secure better representation and co-governance of government agencies.

    Smith sees the measure as an effort to play upon the fears of the non-Māori population and make it easier for private interests to profit. “It’s an indicator that they want to stomp on Māori rights and philosophies and worldviews. It’s an indicator that they just are refusing to fight the challenge that climate change and the global biodiversity crisis demands of us,” he said.

    “This is not just about Māori interests and rights. This is about the protection of all that we hold dear,” said Māori activist Tina Ngata, who has been hosting online education sessions about the bill. “Indigenous rights have been one of the strongest roadblocks to corporate exploitation.”

    This article seemed to make it sound like the set up for a big cash grab by the NZ gov to tap into natural resources and nationalize things like water rights. With Maori being around 1/5 of the population, that sounds like it still gives them strong voices in a parliamentary system. The existing balance in how the terms of the treaty are being applied, while not ideal for Maori, still gives them some additional leverage in a government they’re not necessarily thrilled with being there at all as they still see themselves as the true people/leaders/government (not sure on what descriptor is appropriate here).

    While this parliamentary vote is likely to bomb, this is still building momentum for a referendum. To pass that, does that simply require a majority vote, or is there more to it? Can they just sell this to the majority non-Maori population as a get rich quick scheme to get them to pass it?

    Forgive my ignorance on anything I may have gotten wrong, I know there is a lot more complexity to this issue, I just don’t know which direction to go to get deeper into learning about this. If anyone wants to explain any of it better or point me to some accurate resources to read more, I’d appreciate whatever you have to share!


  • This particular instance is sounding more malicious as it seems they have the same ship at the right location to have caused the damage on 2 occasions now. I haven’t gotten to read any updates since they were pinning down the ship’s location data yesterday to see if they’ve found even more showing this was intentional.

    We have had recentish events though where we have had extreme disruption caused by ships with the Ever Given in the Suez and the Dali collapsing the bridge to the Baltimore ports due to human error. The Baltimore incident has a nice write up on the investigation, going through the ship maintenance, questioning different people, and going through the ships’s black box data.





  • My miss was somewhat intentional, as I felt you both had some validity to your arguments, and I had wanted to acknowledge you both without looking like I was here to take one side or another, more to try to touch on the similarities you both had to your positions.

    Not bringing production of things back to Europe in the current climate I agree would be foolish. Much like with the US trying to secure a future for chip production in our country due to our relations with China be touchy. In that way, it is a positive thing as you say. But it also brings a loss in relations with who we’re guarding ourselves against. I’d rather the US improve Chinese relations than put up new walls, and I’m sure at least to an extent, you’d like your country to be able to count on the US more than you can right now. If we succeed in securing domestic production for our respective countries, I still feel we’re losing something important, and I think that is what the other commenter was trying to get at, but not doing a great job of putting it into words.

    I’m also aware I’m on an EU instance, and especially lately, I know some are tired of hearing opinions from Americans even if we don’t support what our pending government wants to do, so I try to tread lightly as possible now while still sharing my thoughts. I want to be respectful and not come off as a know-it-all. There have been so many times America has relied on Europe, I hate to see things getting to the point they’re at. While I can’t make up for what my government has done or will do, I still want to make and hold onto bonds between us where I can.



  • I work for a UK based company in the US. We also have scientists from all over the world working together. I think everyone working together for common goals is the ideal situation. Communication with people across the globe is one of the things that rocketed humankind forward in learning and technology. We don’t have pockets of people making the same mistakes and wasting the same time and resources trying to come up with all the new ideas; we get to collaborate. If we start hoarding knowledge and tech, we kick ourselves back to a worse point than where we are now.

    I was watching a video this morning talking about China’s advancements in space exploration. It was talking about China offering to work with other countries, including the US, but there was a bill passed (2011?) that forbid space work with China without congressional approval. That seems like something that will hurt the US space program. The creation of the bill was due to the thought that China was doing mainly “taking” from the US and not giving back, which I don’t know enough to speak on, but now that China is in a position to “give,” we’ve already pulled back our hand and tied it. We can’t learn from China, and they can’t learn from us, at least by legal/above the table means.

    It’s frustrating to see knowledge get locked away. I get there are valid and logical reasons to do it sometimes, but it is still sad to see. Most people here seem to be for or at least supportive of free information in almost every form, but then in situations like this, we fall back to nationalism for some reason or another.

    It is good for countries to provide for themselves and their people, but when it starts to hinder another group is when we enter moral grey zones. When does it go from looking out for one’s own interest to hurting another group? Everyone will have a different answer to that, but I hope most individuals would prefer to collaborate and work things out with each other. I think that is common among individuals. Most of us are probably annoying at about half the things our countries are doing at any moment, and potentially cutting ourselves off from equally dissatisfied people that could help us from other places feels like a net loss for all parties.



  • Thank you for the article. It really feels like the future is unpredictable right now. It feels like it’s come out of nowhere, yet this has also been the endgame of a large group of people that have worked on this for decades.

    As a modestly educated American, I understand it would be tone deaf to tell you what you should do in this thread, so I will just give you a first hand account of what it is like here.

    1 - As an American, I no longer trust America to keep me safe. This goes doubly true as a liberal and as someone whose best friends are LGBT.

    2 - The proposed Republican agenda includes dismantling our education system and rebuilding it as more ethnocentric. I can confidently state that already, probably half my fellow citizens could not point out any continental EU country, possibly besides Italy since it is on half the pizza boxes. If people here can’t even point out France or Germany on a map, how much do you think they really care about you?

    Treating us as anything you can rely on with any certainty right now seems insane to me. If you think we’ll be anything more than someone that only bothers to call you when they want something from you but then is always too busy when you need something from them, then you are going to be in for a bad time.

    If anything, the sane ones here may even need to rely on you again In the near future, depending on how bad things actually get.