Posts by Neil
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And yet, none of this is directly linked to the Christchurch atrocity. The killer’s hate culture, as expressed in his pretentious manifesto (always, these people purport to be cleverer than they are, with their pseudoscience and idiot history) is an online one: it crosses national borders; it’s everywhere and nowhere.
I’m skeptical about the link. The actions of Peters and others are reprehensible in themselves and may well promote an environment where the less lethal forms of racism can occur but events like this appear to the product of a deeply insular world impervious to the outside. It prides itself on its outsider heroic martyrdom act.
That’s possibly more scarey as there’s less options to deal it.
I wonder if the chilling irony of that world is partly a result of a Red Queen race to avoid the moderator algorithms.
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One of the problems with even identifying a likely far-right terrorist is simply picking out his hate rhetoric from the background din of bigotry. They can, to some extent, hide in plain sight
Possibly what complicates things is the different forms of terrorist organisation. ISIS had an active program of on line recruitment with an organisation that was hierarchical. People with vulnerabilities were radicalised by others.
This form of white supremist terrorism is more self radicalisation within a peer to peer audience structure that feeds the narcissism. That may be harder to spot.
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I’ll hammer on again about the apartment issue as it’s a tsunami of pain heading our way soon and people considering buying an apartment should be very cautious.
1. NZ does not have a great deal of experience with apartment management and that shows in the the complete unfitness of the Unit Titles Act to provide for equitable and sustainable management of apartment buildings.
2. Apartment buildings that were not originally defective are becoming defective because of 1. above. Management companies are scrimping on building maintenance and not informing owners of the consequences.
3. Defective apartment buildings are still being built and developers are knowingly selling to unsuspecting buyers. That’s all on top of the 90% of previously build defective buildings that various parties are keeping quite about. Only 10% of defective buildings have been officially identified – but councils, developers and insurance companies certainly know there’s that tsunami of 90% looming over the horizon.
4. Ruthless people are able to sell defective apartments to unsuspecting buyers because current laws do not ensure that a buyer can get full disclosure from a Body Corp or management company about the true state of a building.
5. If you’re in central Auckland and look in any direction along your line of sight there will be at least one defective building.
There’s a few scoops there waiting for some journalist to pluck.
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Speaker: What almost everyone is missing…, in reply to linger,
By corruption I mean Corruption.
And that will be just the tip of the iceberg. More will follow.
What I expect a minister to do is to confront this rather than ignoring it.
What I expect a minister to do is reform the apartment governance laws that leave apartment owners at the mercy of corrupt management companies.
But I’m not surprised someone who tried to blame people with Chinese sounding names is incapable of dealing with the actual problems in the building sector.
And as I’ve said before - it’s not like there weren’t people trying to get the minister to pay attention.
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As well as complexities regarding treatment environment there are dilemmas already faced in acute mental health that haven’t been addressed at all in the recent review which will inevitably occur in any psychedelic treatment regime.
One example is if someone with a major depressive disorder receives psychedelic treatment but then goes on to complete suicide - will the treatment providers be held responsible?
If someone receiving psychedelic treatment wants to leave the treatment but remains at risk what duties of care would the clinicians have regarding preventing harm?
These are difficult and contentious issues which are hard to find solutions for and at present the government is not attempting to promote any public discussion in this area.
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Psychedelic therapy shows a lot of promise. Probably a large percentage could be done safely in community settings eg microdosing. But I wonder about rolling out facilities to cater for those who may need a residential setting eg people with major depression who may take some time to improve and whose risks may necessitate 24/7 supervision and when doses are large enough to generate risks by misadventure etc. And it’s well known that risk increases at the point when treatment for depression starts to take effect.
The government could set up a residential system in parallel to the curent acute mental health inpatient services but that would be expensive and to some extent duplicate resources and exacerbate an already dire shortage of mental health professionals.
Currently acute services wouldn’t be an ideal environment to have a psychedelic experience. The courts are sending very risky people to inpatient units when they should be going to the forensic services and because of under resourcing and increased illicit drug use staff and patient safety is placed at constant risk.
Ideally the govt would provide the resources to ensure that in patient settings would be appropriate for psychedelic treatment (many of those who would benefit are already being treated there) as well as just being safe for all which one would think would be a high priority anyway.
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Hard News: Cannabis reform is a serious…, in reply to Russell Brown,
Framing all drug use in terms of some sort of dystopian dopamine chase ignores a lot of the actual reasons that people take drugs, including social ones.
Those social reasons are themselves based on dopamine release and are follwed by a depletion period where peolpe are less pro-social. It’s the dopamine release people after and the downside comes on Tuesday.
I don’t see it as an argument against decriminalisation but I think Danyl’s central point is that we are creating new and disturbing was to get addicted and perhaps the classic harm reduction model has been overtaken by events.
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These problem buildings are still being built after 30 years. Still ruining peoples’ lives and will ruin a lot more peoples’ lives as the true extent of the dysfunction and corruption within the building industry and councils is slowly revealed.
What makes it even worse are the current laws dealing with apartment ownership which empower dishonest property management companies and make life even more traumatic for apartment owners.
Intensification is not going to work if these issues are not addressed.
Twyford has been made aware of this and chosen to do nothing about it. A new minister who listens is desperately needed.
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The government has finally had to admit what has been obvious for a while – their housing policy is not working.
The biggest problem is the building industry itself which is at best dysfunctional and at worst corrupt. Throwing money at it is only going to benefit the unscrupulous, not first home buyers.
Many people tried to bring this to the attention of Twyford but he chose to ignore it. Hopefully he’ll be replaced. Has anyone heard of the Minister for Construction recently? Seems a bad time to be MIA.
One thing a new minister could do with some alacrity is overhaul the laws governing apartment ownership. Nikki Kaye has already done most of the work on this. It’s hard to overstate how critical that is for successful intensification.
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Hard News: Cannabis reform is a serious…, in reply to BenWilson,
They don’t currently have plan to help the most at risk which sort puts the whole harm minimisation argument into the the middle class capture category.