[Non-US] News That Makes You laugh/cry/neither...

[tussock]

Dunedin for the hotel, there's a couple groups keep turning up and offering to build the city a massive 5-star hotel, if only the city would fund most of it. But, the only place you can really build one is on a row of blocks just under the green belt that runs across the surrounding hills, and that requires substantial works to re-secure the rock after you cut into it for a flat space to build on. There's a few 20-year-old buildings up there and no one wants to do that again.

Dunedin is built in an ancient volcanic caldera. It's well eroded, but the hills are steep as and very close to the city proper. Most of the city was built on landfill made in the 1880's where they levelled the ridges into the mudflats between, during the local gold rush. Big buildings have to be built either on what's left of the natural ridge lines, or have to be piled down hundreds of meters. Rough cost of building anything large over the fill is about an extra $100 million, because we get massive earthquakes here, no one wants to do that either.

And the ridge remains themselves, are covered in large, historic buildings. In theory you could knock down First Church, but yeah, that's not gunna get resource consent. All the old shit they built in the gold rush was styled as gothic art, and it's completely beautiful and worth a tonne of tourist dollars through the summer, probably a third of the local economy.

So this latest plan, is to build out past the end of one of the ridge lines, in the harbour. They'll go mine some rock somewhere, pile it up on the relatively shallow rock floor after clearing away the mud, and with a few new roads, sewage lines, power lines, water lines, and so on, they'll be able to start building it. There is no space for roads, so lots of things will need purchased and demolished to make space for them. But they expect the council to build them all this shit on which they will then place a large hotel, which is promised to be complete no later than, yes, twenty years away, ... I don't know either.

I mean, to some extent, that's because the central govt is building a new regional hospital here, which will employ most builders in the city for a long-ass time, because the last one built in the early 80's is not fit to repair. Like, half the price to replace. The 80's were a very bad time for construction in NZ, no regulations at all, crazy govt.

And this particular plan got off the ground because central govt had a basket of money to dish out for regional development, and because the council is fucking broke after building the new stadium (which is slowly sinking into the fill, already) they didn't have any plans of their own, so just snagged some central govt funds by ... signing up for the latest and stupidest fucking hotel concept that someone had put across their desk.

In the gold rush they mostly filled to 5m above sea level. They removed inconvenient ridges that separated the various natural valleys, and widened and filled the valley bases. Some later waterfront fill is only 1.5m up. This hotel is basically trying to build at sea level, with a small wall around it, to save money. It is insane, and we are doing it, or hopefully just misappropriating the central funds and securing the sea wall a bit.

[Iduno]

Any news story is a potentially useful tool for creating a scenario in your game.

Some stories have more potential than others.

[Kaelik]

The US supported military coup has taken out Evo Morales in Bolivia, another in a long line of democratically elected socialists removed because elections are always undemocratic when socialists win, but not when the Supreme Court cheats you in or you get fewer votes or you bribe a corrupt judge to lock up your opponent or you have an inherently undemocratic system where votes don't matter or you suppress your vote. Only when socialists win.

Fuck life.

[Username17]

Evo Morales has had 11 years to groom a successor, and instead he refused to follow the constitution of Bolivia and allow a peaceful transition of power. This is self-inflicted.

If your socialist democratic uprising can't manage a peaceful transition of power after a decade, perhaps it isn't as democratic and socialist as you'd want it to be. Evo Morales did a lot of good for Bolivia, but he failed at what was arguably his most important task: the creation of a durable legacy and fucking retiring on time so that legacy could actually happen.

You either retire a hero or stay in office long enough to become the villain. Evo Morales chose the second path. He wasn't the first to fuck up in that particular way, and he won't be the last. The legacy of his failure will probably be militarized racist right wing rule, but it could have been a durable multi-ethnic progressive coalition. All men are dispensable, and movements fail when leaders forget that.

-Username17

[Kaelik]

Yeah we really should have had a military coup to unseat FDR. That's definitely the lesson to learn from this.

[Username17]

Yeah we really should have had a military coup to unseat FDR. That's definitely the lesson to learn from this.

FDR didn't require delegitimizing the constitution in order to run for a third term.

It's possible to support Mugabe in 1983 without supporting him in 1993. Castro was a force for progress before he was a force for stagnation. All the great kings died young, because if you stay in power long enough you eventually stop being great.

Morales needed to figure out a way to get out of the way and allow a new generation of politicians to build on the progress he made. He didn't. And now things are on fire and they will probably get a lot worse before any progress is made in the future.

-Username17

[Kaelik]

Yeah we really should have had a military coup to unseat FDR. That's definitely the lesson to learn from this.

FDR didn't require delegitimizing the constitution in order to run for a third term.

Neither did Morales. The Supreme Court ruled that term limits violated human rights. You can certainly say that you disagree with the ruling, but to say that whenever the Supreme Court rules in a way that contradicts your preferred ruling the constitution is being "delegitimized" is to say that all constitutions are always illegitimate.

You can high mind about how he should have been able to wrap up the complete process of turning a white supremacist colonial neoliberal hell into a functioning plural democracy that could move forward without him in 11 years all you want, but FDR couldn't manage that in 12 years and he wasn't even trying to end racism just the liberal hellscape part.

The phony bullshit about "term limits" is every bit as phony as the "Allende is being authoritarian" or "Chavez cheated in every election" or "Maduro cheats in every election" or every time the OAS threw out a Haitian election. In fact, doubly so this time, since it's not even the argument that rich racists are going with to justify their protests, the OAS made up to declare the election doesn't count, or the Military used to take control and start rounding and and murdering indigenous leaders.

The official party line that you want to go with when justifying the military coup according to the people doing it is that the election was cheated because he got more rural votes than urban votes so that the numbers are too different from the first several hours of counting into the later counting where he won by a larger percentage.

Which should tell you that this has nothing to do with Evo specifically being the candidate, and that if his designated successor had won on a platform of nationalizing Lithium mines they'd trump up whatever bullshit they need to do their coup on that result too.

[Username17]

Neither did Morales. The Supreme Court ruled that term limits violated human rights.

For fuck's sake. Morales appointed the Supreme Court guys who ruled that. The ruling is patently absurd and is simply Morales declaring the parts of the constitution he doesn't like to not apply to him and then have his own appointees rubber stamp it.

There are obviously reasons and methods to go about dismantling parts of the constitution. I'm not some kind of originalist or anything. But people rioting in the street over the president announcing that he's overturning fucking term limits is not unreasonable.

If the Roberts court ruled that Trump could stand for a third term it would be delegitimizing the constitution. This is exactly like that. Not 'hyperbolically like that except different in really important ways' but like literally exactly like that.

I supported Morales for many years. I still think he was the best thing for Bolivia for a long time. But he's obviously past his sell-by date and the faster he gets out of town the less damage is going to be done to the country. An endless, increasingly corrupt and unrepresentative Mugabe-like regime is literally the actual Bolivian future if he stays in after using the constitution as toilet paper in that way. Nothing ever good ever comes from someone going from President to President for Life.

-Username17

[Kaelik]

For fuck's sake. Morales appointed the Supreme Court guys who ruled that.

They were elected. Morales didn't appoint them.

The ruling is patently absurd and is simply Morales declaring the parts of the constitution he doesn't like to not apply to him and then have his own appointees rubber stamp it.

We can argue about the merits of the specific ruling of the court if you would like, but I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest that since you didn't even know that they were elected and your primary complaint is that they were Morales "appointees" rubber stamping his decision that you don't have strong specific knowledge of the ruling of the case.

But people rioting in the street over the president announcing that he's overturning fucking term limits is not unreasonable.

Except of course, that this is not in fact, what is happening or in any way related to the current fucking coup which is allegedly according to "the people" who are rioting in the streets, is about whether he won by 7% or 10% and whether that means he cheated in the election.

And of course, the coup is not about that at all, since he agreed to have new elections with all the conditions the OAS requested, and only then did the military announce they were going to start murdering leftists.

If the Roberts court ruled that Trump could stand for a third term it would be delegitimizing the constitution. This is exactly like that. Not 'hyperbolically like that except different in really important ways' but like literally exactly like that.

Well it is different in that Morales appointed zero of the members of the Supreme Court to Trump's two. But it's also not like that in that there is a state of conflict within the constitution being alleged that is not unfounded, and unlike the US constitution, the Bolivian constitution has rules on how to adjudicate conflicts within the text, which the US lacks.

But he's obviously past his sell-by date and the faster he gets out of town the less damage is going to be done to the country. An endless, increasingly corrupt and unrepresentative Mugabe-like regime is literally the actual Bolivian future if he stays in after using the constitution as toilet paper in that way. Nothing ever good ever comes from someone going from President to President for Life.

See, here you go! Now you aren't pretending it's about the term limits you absolutely don't care about and you are accusing him of cheating in the election just like the racists currently engaged in rounding up indigenous leaders right now that you think are better than the guy who won the election.

I knew we could get you to full support of fascism if we just tried hard enough.

Hey, what if it wasn't bad that FDR was a "President for life" because he won four elections, and it wasn't bad if Evo was "President for life" because he kept winning elections, just like how it's not actually that bad that Trudeau or Merkel is "Prime Minister for life" because they don't have term limits.

And what if it's definitely way better that the guy who won a democratic election and has presided over the greatest time in the history of Bolivia winning an election and getting to be President is actually WAY BETTER than a white minority using the police to round up people after a military coup.

[Whatever]

For fuck's sake. Morales appointed the Supreme Court guys who ruled that.

They were elected. Morales didn't appoint them.

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/americas ... 58951.html

The opposition had urged voters to abstain from voting or cast blank ballots in the first election to directly select the country's top judges.

They contended that the election would erode the independence of the judiciary and strengthen Morales because the 114 candidates were chosen by a Congress dominated by his governing MAS movement.

So, sure, technically these were elected judges. Voters chose them from a list. But his party controlled the creation of the list!

It's not correct to say that he appointed the judges. But neither is it correct to imply that the judges were freely elected.

[phlapjackage]

Bernie Sanders has this take on the Bolivia situation (he calls it a coup)
https://twitter.com/BernieSanders/statu ... 0696229889

It's oddly...interesting? reassuring?...that people here have expressed opinions that line up with previous political statements and support/dislike of Sanders

[Kaelik]

So, sure, technically these were elected judges. Voters chose them from a list. But his party controlled the creation of the list!

It's not correct to say that he appointed the judges. But neither is it correct to imply that the judges were freely elected.

1) So it's actually an illegitimate court if the President appoints them. But it's also an illegitimate court if the Legislature presents a list to the people and then the people vote without the President getting a say because.... that also makes them toadies of the president. Good to know that 100% of Supreme Courts in the entire world are illegitimate. But this one has less control to Evo than every other system in the world where he has no legal say.....

2) You get that "actually the method outline in the 2009 constitution for selection the justices is illegitimate and the 2009 constitution is itself therefore illegitimate" doesn't really do much for Frank's argument that it was a ruling of the Court that somehow made the constitution illegitimate?

3) it is not so much that I am implying they were "free and fair" elections, since Frank is perfectly willing to imply that evo cheated in all or the most recent election when it facilitates his left punching.

It is that I am saying that a conversation on the merits is possible but that if your first complaint about the case is that you believe they were appointed by Morales then you probably didnt read a decision and the relevant constitutional articles (or an accurate summary thereof)

[DSMatticus]

The Bolivian presidential line of succession:

1.) President Evo Morales, political party MAS, whose legitimacy was in question as a result of the conflict between a 2016 constitutional referendum and a 2017 Supreme Court ruling.

2.) Vice President, political party MAS, whose legitimacy would also have been in question as a result of the conflict between the same 2016 constitutional referendum and 2017 Supreme Court ruling.

3.) President of the Senate, political party MAS, whose legitimacy is not in question.

4.) President of the Chamber of Duties, political party MAS, whose legitimacy is not in question.

5.) Vice President of the Senate, opposition political party MDS.

We are currently at spot 5 because the military said "we have the guns and we would prefer to skip to 5."

Turns out it's not a constitutional crisis that resulted from the conflict between a constitutional referendum and a Supreme Court ruling, it's a fascist* coup with a really shitty transparent pretense.

Mystery solved.

*I'm going to add that maybe I'm using fascist a little too liberally here for mainstream discourse, but all right-wing movements are just fascism in disguise and I'm really not interested in quibbling about it anymore. I've seen that Scooby Doo episode too many times, the dude under the mask always has the Hitler moustache, we all know where this shit goes.

[Kaelik]

The Bolivian presidential line of succession:

1.) President Evo Morales, political party MAS, whose legitimacy was in question as a result of the conflict between a 2016 constitutional referendum and a 2017 Supreme Court ruling.

2.) Vice President, political party MAS, whose legitimacy would also have been in question as a result of the conflict between the same 2016 constitutional referendum and 2017 Supreme Court ruling.

3.) President of the Senate, political party MAS, whose legitimacy is not in question.

4.) President of the Chamber of Duties, political party MAS, whose legitimacy is not in question.

5.) Vice President of the Senate, opposition political party MDS.

We are currently at spot 5 because the military said "we have the guns and we would prefer to skip to 5."

Turns out it's not a constitutional crisis that resulted from the conflict between a constitutional referendum and a Supreme Court ruling, it's a fascist* coup with a really shitty transparent pretense.

Mystery solved.

*I'm going to add that maybe I'm using fascist a little too liberally here for mainstream discourse, but all right-wing movements are just fascism in disguise and I'm really not interested in quibbling about it anymore. I've seen that Scooby Doo episode too many times, the dude under the mask always has the Hitler moustache, we all know where this shit goes.

Well yes and we also know it isnt about some fake concern about term limits because literally no one doing it says it is.

The "protestors" kidnapping family members and torturing government officials in the street dont say it is about term limits, the white supremacist minority party now in charge rounding up "subversives" don't say it is, the us controlled oas dont say it is, amd the military leaders declaring they will murder leftists dont say it is.

They all claim it is because of a change in trendline between early votes in the quick (unofficial) count and late quick count votes.

[DSMatticus]

A change in results that would have been the difference between Morales' first round victory and a run-off, to be clear.

And the OAS had already formally adopted the position, before any results were announced (preliminary or otherwise), that the election should be forced to go to a run-off regardless of whether or not Morales secured the 10pt margin necessary to prevent it, because they actually do not give a fuck about the integrity of Bolivian elections, they just wanted Morales to lose and securing a run-off was a necessary part of having a chance to make that happen.

Which, again, is very obvious, because the Bolivian military has completely erased the presidential line of succession to install a president they consider politically acceptable (i.e. right-wing), that is a blatant military coup regardless of any misconduct or non-misconduct by Morales or the legitimacy of his presidential run, and the OAS doesn't give two shits about that. They wanted a particular outcome (right-wing control of the government) and a military coup gave them that outcome so everything's okay now no need to make any fuss.

And fascist coups don't actually happen because the left-wing goes too far!!1! They happen because fascists build power intra- and inter-nationally until they can assert their agenda by force and then they do that. The international community decided they would put their lot behind the fascists on this one from the outset and that was sufficiently empowering that they got to do the thing they wanted to do regardless.

Bush v. Gore. There are angry people in the streets! We have to put a Republican in the White House for the sake of the nation's stability! Phew, now that we've stolen the White House, let's just put all that ugliness behind us and pretend things are business as usual.

[Kaelik]

Also the oas demanded a new election with a bunch of conditions including literal police powers for election supervisors from other countries and then evo agreed to a new election with all those conditions, and THAT is when the military decided to coup, because of course Morales would have won another election and they wouldn't be able to add new conditions and declare that one fraudulent so they just skipped to coup time to put the white supremacist party in charge.

Can't wait until we get the military coup in Germany to install AFD because Merkel has been serving too long.

[Whatever]

So, sure, technically these were elected judges. Voters chose them from a list. But his party controlled the creation of the list!

It's not correct to say that he appointed the judges. But neither is it correct to imply that the judges were freely elected.

1) So it's actually an illegitimate court if the President appoints them. But it's also an illegitimate court if the Legislature presents a list to the people and then the people vote without the President getting a say because.... that also makes them toadies of the president. Good to know that 100% of Supreme Courts in the entire world are illegitimate. But this one has less control to Evo than every other system in the world where he has no legal say.....

2) You get that "actually the method outline in the 2009 constitution for selection the justices is illegitimate and the 2009 constitution is itself therefore illegitimate" doesn't really do much for Frank's argument that it was a ruling of the Court that somehow made the constitution illegitimate?

3) it is not so much that I am implying they were "free and fair" elections, since Frank is perfectly willing to imply that evo cheated in all or the most recent election when it facilitates his left punching.

It is that I am saying that a conversation on the merits is possible but that if your first complaint about the case is that you believe they were appointed by Morales then you probably didnt read a decision and the relevant constitutional articles (or an accurate summary thereof)

Yeah, fair enough.

Any defense of this coup on the grounds that it's somehow good for democracy is appalling.

[Kaelik]

So, sure, technically these were elected judges. Voters chose them from a list. But his party controlled the creation of the list!

It's not correct to say that he appointed the judges. But neither is it correct to imply that the judges were freely elected.

1) So it's actually an illegitimate court if the President appoints them. But it's also an illegitimate court if the Legislature presents a list to the people and then the people vote without the President getting a say because.... that also makes them toadies of the president. Good to know that 100% of Supreme Courts in the entire world are illegitimate. But this one has less control to Evo than every other system in the world where he has no legal say.....

2) You get that "actually the method outline in the 2009 constitution for selection the justices is illegitimate and the 2009 constitution is itself therefore illegitimate" doesn't really do much for Frank's argument that it was a ruling of the Court that somehow made the constitution illegitimate?

3) it is not so much that I am implying they were "free and fair" elections, since Frank is perfectly willing to imply that evo cheated in all or the most recent election when it facilitates his left punching.

It is that I am saying that a conversation on the merits is possible but that if your first complaint about the case is that you believe they were appointed by Morales then you probably didnt read a decision and the relevant constitutional articles (or an accurate summary thereof)

Yeah, fair enough.

Any defense of this coup on the grounds that it's somehow good for democracy is appalling.

Sure, although, I will mention, that according to the OAS (60% funded by the United States, and the preminent "election authority" used to justify overthrowing all socialists in Lating America but never any neoliberals) specifically called the judicial elections "free and fair expression of the popular will" so it seems like the judiciary was a representative of the peoples will and not Morales toadies right up until that made a ruling they the United States didn't like.

[Iduno]

Any defense of this coup on the grounds that it's somehow good for democracy is appalling.

Apparently, there was no coup.

Seeing an astorturfing job on this makes me more curious about what happened and why.

[Whatever]

https://thegrayzone.com/2019/11/11/boli ... o-camacho/

When Luis Fernando Camacho stormed into Bolivia’s abandoned presidential palace in the hours after President Evo Morales’s sudden November 10 resignation, he revealed to the world a side of the country that stood at stark odds with the plurinational spirit its deposed socialist and Indigenous leader had put forward.

With a Bible in one hand and a national flag in the other, Camacho bowed his head in prayer above the presidential seal, fulfilling his vow to purge his country’s Native heritage from government and “return God to the burned palace.”

“Pachamama will never return to the palace,” he said, referring to the Andean Mother Earth spirit. “Bolivia belongs to Christ.”

[Kaelik]

The officially Frank Trollman sanctioned better than Evo fascists have committed their first of many massacres.

[MGuy]

Didn't the Supreme Court in America just put Bush in office despite known tampering and Bush losing the popular vote? Didn't we just all gloss over that? From what I'm hearing everywhere this guy WAS voted in legally and even offered a redo on the vote. Why are liberals, even David Pakman who I thought was better on these things, painting a narrative suggesting that Morales was some kind of dictator?

[Kaelik]

Didn't the Supreme Court in America just put Bush in office despite known tampering and Bush losing the popular vote? Didn't we just all gloss over that? From what I'm hearing everywhere this guy WAS voted in legally and even offered a redo on the vote. Why are liberals, even David Pakman who I thought was better on these things, painting a narrative suggesting that Morales was some kind of dictator?

I'm sure the reasons why some people have bad opinions are legion, but there's a very real realm in which american leftists try to "I'm not bad like those dictator socialists" almost everything, and certainly don't know anything about Latin America, so they end up saying shit like that. That's probably the reason for Pakman specifically, but as far as other people, who knows.

[Koumei]

So we've had worse bushfires than ever (again. Pretty much every year we break the record set just one year earlier), and as usual the coal industry and its representatives (also known as "The Liberal-National Coalition" or "the current government") wheel out the usual things:

• Shut up
• It's just a myth
• We're not responsible for it
• Australia always burns down, it's natural and GOOD for the forestry, I read a book once
• The Greens are to blame because they prevent backburning and hazard reduction*
• It's only inner-city leftie hippies who care about this stuff

However we've now had two BONUS ones. Here is the first, from national embarrassment and disgraced (former?) deputy PM, Baaaaaaaahnaby Joyce (not to be confused with Joyce Barnaby from Midsomer Murders):

"The people who died were probably Greens voters."

Now if someone in the public eye were to say "The people who died were probably the exact [EDITED] who help this happen by voting Nationals, there's a self-solving problem" they'd throw an absolute fit about it - the Liberals, the Nationals, the Climate Skeptic Party (yes we have one of those, no really), every flavour of fuckwit, the media in general. But he can just say that and basically get away with it.

Here's the next one. People die in bushfires that are basically caused by the global warming humans are causing, then the PM went around doing a photo opportunity with locals and pretending to care. Someone asked if he's ready to address climate change, and the dictator of Queensland** said "It's not time to talk about that" and we shouldn't "politicise" the deaths.

I think the Americans on the Den might be familiar with those words. So... yeah, we have our own equivalent of "the tricky gun situation", down to the exact same phrases being used.

*This is an impressive feat what with the Greens not actually being in power. They actually support these things, when done at the right times such that backburning doesn't just become "more fire starting", but at any rate you would need to fund fire services to do this sort of thing, and it's not the Greens who have been cutting funding for that.

**That's all Queensland ever has, different flavours of dictator. Currently, the former evil overlord Joh Bjelke-Peterson has risen as a wraith to possess the lifeless husk known as Gladys Berejiklian for that role.

[Thaluikhain]

Barnaby Joyce also said it was magnetic fields on the sun causing bushfires.

And Israel Folau (a rugby player who seems determined to stop being a rugby player by being fired as a homophobic embarassment) said it was due to gay marriage and abortions, and even PM Scott Morrison had to half-heartedly tell him to shut up.