Mana Party etc

Hone Harawira says his Mana party is the party of/for intellectuals.

 Thats as may be but its a lazy intellectual grammar.

 When the "values" party started in Auckland in the 70s I said to some of the founders that the title begged the question "which values"?
 You cant just assume that compassion, equal opportunity, feminism, racial-equality, anti-imperialism etc are
 "natural" values which are automatically understood and agreed with.

 NOTE that "etc" - I put that in deliberately. Its a very loaded word. We also can't assume that the rest of the list is automatic. I suggest eliminating the term "etc" when we put forth a list of good things. Otherwise its code for "You 'all know the list". Which is an admission you're preaching to the choir.  The interesting task is to convert those with different lists of good things.

 As a Socialist since I was literate, I have a set of "values" but I dont assume I can say "etc" and have instant alignment with Mana party, or Green party etc (nb this is a legitimate use of "etc")

"Intellectual" ... Don Brash may well consider himself one. I guess hes got a bunch of University years behind him. His "intellectual"  position may be "hail to the individual, accumulate without limit, the devil take the hindmost, progress comes from clever bankers. poverty is natural, strip mine the earth for RioTinto ... ",,, whatever.... it would be hard to Prove conclusively that he ought not to claim the title. Exploitation, appropriation of labour value, repression, oppression   etc (!) might be pursued with intellectual rigour.

I consider political"Science" barely a science.  As a Systems Analyst I note that CentralPlanning with State or Commune hirelings notably fell behind Capital in the production of food.
This is a process still changing.
Capital  gives loans to small farmers, seizes their land upon poor harvests.
Good harvests may depend on diesel or electric irrigation, Cargill seeds and hefty  Monsanto biocide drenchings. (is Cargills still extant?)
Up to now in eg Mekong Delta, the rice output is great.
The Mekong may power waterwheels to lift itself onto the Paddi.


Capital also backs a process of centralization. Bigger and bigger farms. In USA 2% of the (working?) population are working on farms.
So far this has produced a lot of grain.

 Capital surpasses CP in the production of200 m² luxury suburban houses  for a middle class ... which may have peaked at 60% of 10% of the worlds population? ( who still dream of 400m²)
Urban communities can rather readily make a waterproof hollow block (breeze , cinder block) 50m² house for around 1/100 the cost, with local labour, local design, local blocks.

Only Capital could have produced 500 million 100kWatt chariots. Was it a good idea? It sure was exciting to zoom off down the highway at 100kmph.

My "intellectual" concern is in the flexibility , the ability of systems to change. In evolution this is often the "failure' mode. Competition red in t & c.  Thousands of sycamore seeds spinning.  Does failure include Lehman directors slinkng off with billions in bonuses? Does "too big to fail" negate the flexibility of Capital?  How does a CentralPlanning organization fail?   However much you like a President, after 40 years they can seem a bit stale. And when their  son appears to be the successor, you have to ask: Why him?

Back to the Mana party.
One person with whos "etc" I would likely agree to some considerable degree is John Minto.
A staunch struggler in the cause of human liberation. Yet one with the integrity to recognise ANC RSA as an IMF/gangster State from which an award was not worth the trip.

I also suspect my "etc" list would agree for a good length down the Mana party "etc" list.

My republicanism, my anti-aristocracy ideals, might clash with IWI aristocrats.  I hold no fealty to "SeaLords" with their ship-based offshore non-union labour, (sustainably?) gutting the fish from "our" waters.
I consider rentiers to be a drain on productivity. Many others would wish to be rentiers, or would relish the opportunity to enjoy respecting land "Lords", cheering at their carriages, admiring the shiny swords of their guards.

Many say our bright weatherboard bungalows are due to ever climbing ½mill$ realestate prices.
Some say without State building codes they might leak.

I have a venacular tendancy, some might say anarchic. My house was built with no paper plans, let alone permits. So far its Typhoon proof.

I would prefer to see 5000 released from prison rather than 500  joining an elite.

Back to Hone Harawira... He gave as an example employment law : the Brashites would reduce the "90 days  to 60 then 15.. "   - er... Honi.... that would constitute a benefit to new workers: ... fewer days would mean a shorter period within which firing with no cause could occur. As one suffering under rolling 30-60 day employment I live under this every moment. My hire is renewed every month or so.

I think Honi is great, I welcome the Mana party. I just hope that while claiming the cloak of the "Intellectuals" party, they get their arithmetic right.
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GreenHouse -PoorHouse?

Recession drove industrialized nations' greenhouse gas emissions down 5.6% in 2009 ..may be a brief, misleading sign of progress in slowing climate change.

Emissions by 40 nations fell to the equiv of 16.5 E9 Ton CO2 in 2009 from 17.4 E9 in 2008, and were a record 11.6% below 1990, a Reuters compilation showed.

The 2009 data comprises all industrialized nations except Canada, t
scientificamerican
228

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..Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets lost a combined mass of 475 gigatonnes a year on average. That's enough to raise global sea level by 1.3 mm..

The pace at which the polar ice sheets are losing mass was found to be accelerating rapidly. Each year over the course of the study, the two ice sheets lost a combined average of 36.3 gigatonnes more than they did the year before. In comparison, the 2006 study of mountain glaciers and ice caps estimated their loss at 402 gigatonnes a year on average, with a year-over-year acceleration rate three times smaller than that of the ice sheets.
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Syria

Syrian Sunnis, as much as Saudi Wahhabis, deeply resent the Alawite sect - an offshoot of Shi'ism - controlling a great deal of the wealth of the country while representing only 12% of the population. It's no wonder the House of Saud and the Muslim Brotherhood - rabidly anti-Shi'ite - have been trying for decades to get rid of the Alawite-controlled Syrian regime.
atimes

Libya
BRICS nations - top emerging powers Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa - have officially condemned the bombing
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Classic example of "psychologising" of resistance.


Eight US troops and a US contractor have been killed by an Afghan air force pilot at Kabul airport in an apparent argument, US officials say.
[apparent argument?? ya think??? like he was slightly irritated??]

..
A senior Afghan security official told the BBC the pilot's name was Gul Ahmad..
He was suffering from "mental illness", and either got into a fight with his foreign colleagues or planned the attack after being recruited by the Taliban, the official said.

[now its 'self-evidently' a "mental illness' to want to resist invaders...]


There is a key tactical reason why AlQ attcks in groups. You can try to call a group "brainwashed" or "fanatical" but you cant actually call a group of 4 or more "psychotic" or "suffering from a mental illness"
- this is a major reason why AlQ is so terrifying - they dont fit into the solitary madman accusation that paralyses the isolated individuals in the West.


What is the actual term?  Would John Travolta know?



bbc