Shloky on the decline of the state, and the rise of the empowered individual:
As individuals are progressively empowered, which is to say progressively accentuated as humans, large scale collective movements - like nationalism - die. This is the divergent nature of multiple empowered decision cycles. This is what is termed “a sapping of national will”. […]

4GW, Non-state actors | No Comments »

Blognor Regis - apologies to Mark, thought I’d linked this last year!
State Failure -h/t ZenPundit, this scholarly blog looks fascinating.
FutureJacked - creative thinking on future threats.

The usual disclaimers apply, of course
One more: Statisfy. Track our hits in real time. A fun tool, free and easy to put on your own site.

Linkage, Meta | No Comments »

The budget delivered today was outstanding. It immediately delivered tax cuts without defaulting on obligations to taxpayers and citizens, while featuring increased spending in such vital areas as defence, policing, law and justice, and comprehensive reforms to increase the effectiveness of health and education.
Wait, what budget did you think I was talking about?.. […]

Quotable, Libertarianz, Labour, New Zealand | 1 Comment »

Yesterday Parliament passed the Amendment to Section 59 with 113 in favour and 7 against.  This is a bill which criminalises parents by making the correction of children a criminal offense, a subset of assault, worth as much as two years in jail.
One of the key features of the bill is specifically denying the use […]

Smacking, Domestic Violence, Culture, Politics, New Zealand | 3 Comments »

FOR CENTURIES, the sovereign state has been the dominant form of political organization in the Western world. The most successful variant of the state was the nation-­state, which harnessed the power of nationalism and was eventually exported around the world. Today, there are more than 200 nation-­states. But, as I will […]

Politics, Mercenaries, Black globalization, Resilience, Empire, Terrorism, Non-state actors, 4GW, Failed states, World | 11 Comments »

Intelligentsiya reports that a Fijian businessman was arrested, detained and mistreated by the Fijian army, who suspected him of writing blog posts:
Ulai Taoi, the president of the Fiji Indigenous Business Council, was arrested by soldiers on Friday at about 2pm and was released this afternoon after undergoing interrogation at the Queen Elizabeth Barracks.He has reportedly […]

Free Speech, Technology, Pacific | 14 Comments »

His Majesty Malietoa Tanumafili II died in hospital today, aged 95. Malietoa had been the world’s third longest-reigning monarch, after the Queen of England and the King of Thailand. My sympathies for the Samoan people - they are mourning a man who has led Samoa for 45 years, since independence was achieved in […]

Politics, Pacific | No Comments »

My on-and-off hobbies, apart from blogging, include woodworking and cooking. In this post I’m going to show you some of the things I’ve bashed together out of wood over the last few years.

Personal, Art, Technology | 14 Comments »

PORT MORESBY: Riot police have been sent to a remote mountainous village in Papua New Guinea after a gun battle between police and members of a cult involved in human sacrifices, local media reported.
The National newspaper said several people were killed and many injured in the fighting last week in the Finschhafen area of Morobe […]

Religion, Development, Culture, Black globalization, Empire, Pacific, Failed states, Non-state actors | 3 Comments »

A Christchurch man has been jailed for two years after using an unregistered shotgun in self-defense. The gun actually belonged to the man’s friend, but when he heard three intruders breaking into a house where a grandmother, mother and a baby were sleeping, he didn’t think twice before grabbing the weapon and firing it […]

Police, Politics, New Zealand | No Comments »