Bomber's digital rag has become so enshittified, I can't even link to episodes of the Bradbury Group podcast directly. The best I can give you now is a direct link to an edition on the MediaWorks account on MegaPhone (owned by Spitify), like the latest edition here;
https://traffic.megaphone.fm/MEDIAWORKSRADIOLIMITED6312414888.mp3?updated=1773781668
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Or a JavaScript reference for the show on TDB;
https://thedailyblog.co.nz/#tbg
With a livecast date, so once the next show replaces it there, you can look for the older episode on YouTub (owned by Alphabet, owners of Goggle). As Bomber often likes to say; jesus wept!
The Bradbury Group is now a wholly owned subsidiary of MediaWorks (owners of Rova), Spitify, Goggle, and probably scAmazon or BorgSoft, as TBD is most likely hosted on AWS or Azure.
I take no pleasure in reporting this.
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I like the cut of Bomber's gib. I've always admired the bombastic, no-nonsense style, and I consider them independent media brethren. I commented regularly on TheDailyBlog while in China, trying to stay engaged in kiwi politics. I've even occasionally written guest posts for it.
I support what Bomber is trying to do, with both the site and the livecast show/ podcast. Which is why I find it so deeply frustrating that they're effectively owned by fascistern media:
https://berjon.com/fascintern-media/
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We are facing a coordinated international fascist movement that works with explicit backing from Moscow, Washington, and tech monopolies, and is propagating itself through its own media apparatus. Yet people who claim to side with democracy keep doing work to support Fascintern media because they misunderstand how it works. This needs to change.
As @robin puts it, in the conclusion of their piece;
"These are not times for political equivocation, these are not times for appeasement, these are not times for hapless bystanders who don't understand their own online behaviour. These are times for clarity and leadership. And anyone still working with Fascintern media today is failing to meet that standard."
https://berjon.com/fascintern-media/
As I said when I first linked to this piece, I honestly could not think of a better way to day this.
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We are facing a coordinated international fascist movement that works with explicit backing from Moscow, Washington, and tech monopolies, and is propagating itself through its own media apparatus. Yet people who claim to side with democracy keep doing work to support Fascintern media because they misunderstand how it works. This needs to change.
I'm happy to help Bomber figure out how to build TheDailyBlog a castle in their own kingdom;
https://howtomarketagame.com/2021/11/01/dont-build-your-castle-in-other-peoples-kingdoms/
Paid or unpaid, because I think this is *important*. I hope someone who has the ear of the decision-makers there can convince them of this.
Anyway, the reason I got into a huge rant about the enshittification of The Daily Blog, and the way the mana of The Bradbury Group is diminished by its participation in fascistern media, is that I had comments on the latest episode.
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Tuesday's edition of the Bradbury Group;
https://traffic.megaphone.fm/MEDIAWORKSRADIOLIMITED6312414888.mp3?updated=1773781668
... takes on, amongst other pressing issues, the vexed question of how to do international relations as a small country, when your traditional ally is now channelling fucking Stalin on a daily basis.
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Like his namesake, Orange Stalin's regime has been;
* Disappearing and murdering their own citizens in the streets
* invading their neighbours without provocation
* collaborating with actual fascists - in this case Likud and the modern Waffen-SS, the IDF - to seize resources that don't belong to them in illegal wars of conquest
I don't call the current US Curmudgeon-in-Thief Orange Stalin just for shits and gigs. It's not just a partisan jab. The historical parallels are right there!
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But you wouldn't think so if you took seriously the ludicrous political gaslighting of Bomber's 2 NatACT-aligned panelists.
Matthew 'Wormtongue' Hooten, and Minister Chris 'fiddle with it while Rome burns' Penk seem to think it's a bit silly to call a spade a spade. Eg by pointing out the obvious and undeniable parallel between Putin's invasion of Ukraine and the US attacks on Iran.
They don't have an argument, they just call it silly, move on quickly, and hope we didn't notice.
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In case it's not obvious, the NZ government *must* condemn the Orange Stalin regime's contemptible warmongering. For exactly the same reason it's condemned Putin's.
Not only must NZ *not* support a war started by Orange Stalin, they ought to initiate a Boycotts, Divestment and Sanctions strategy. Not against the US as a whole, but against any business owned by Orange Stalin and his technofascist enablers and appeasers. Luckily, arbitrary tariff slapping has given NZ a free pass for this.
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The Bradbury Group also discuss the damage done to Aotearoa's energy independence by the regressive fossil-fuel-centric policies of NatACT First. Again, Hooten and Penk engage in political gaslighting about how all these policies, and the deeply dopey billion $ LNG import terminal, are just fine actually.
I can see the infamous meme comic of the dog in the burning room reading the newspaper, with the twin heads of 1 reputation launderer, and 1 Nat Minister. Are they fucking serious?
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I swore loudly once again at my poor podcast app, when Hooten took the opportunity to wave the #nuclear energy flag. Promoting this at the best of times makes him an unserious person on energy policy.
There are many, *many* reasons why nuclear generation is impractical and dopey. It takes far longer to start generating than renewables. Nuclear also needs imported, finite, fossil fuels. It's a non-starter in a tectonically active country, already running short of waste disposal options.
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But on top of all that, at a time of growing geopolitical instability, launching a nuclear program is a great way to paint a target on our back. As Iran just learned the hard way.
Maybe the US wouldn't attack us (although nothing is off the table while Orange Stalin is in charge). But it could antagonise all sorts of other geopolitical Bad Actors.
If I had my way, every time Hooten says "nuclear" an arm would sprout from his chest and slap him repeatedly, until he comes to his senses.
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Hooten's 1950s gee whiz delusions aside (and those of any reputation laundering clients he might have from the nuclear industry), it's pretty clear that we need a wartime mobilization to get us off imported fuels. Pronto.
The US attacks on Iran have put us at risk of running out of refined fossil fuels within a few months, or even weeks. We need a govt who will act with urgency to address this existential crisis, not lie to our faces and tell us it's fine, and carry on with BaU.
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I'm not just using 'wartime mobilization' as a colourful metaphor. When the Syrian regime change linked the genocide in neighbouring Gaza with the proxy war in Ukraine, I said we would look back on it as the start of WW3, and now it's clearly underway.
Insulating ourselves from any dependence on imported energy is Cuban 'Special Period' urgent! Now would be a good time to revisit the 2006 doco The Power of Community, on Cuba's response to the loss of oil imports when the USSR collapsed.
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I recently posted a piece by Patrick Reynolds about navigating our own Special Period, in a just and equitable way. With policy for the short, medium and long term. Rather than rehashing it here, I'll just say please read it, and give it some serious thought;
https://www.greaterauckland.org.nz/2026/03/16/what-should-we-do/
Bandaid measures like 3 free tanks of petrol a year are not going to cut it in these circumstances. And parties pushing fluff like that will either grow up, or get overtaken by more serious parties.
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@strypey good waste of money we don't have, for problems we definitely don't need
unless it a nuclear powered cook strait ferry?
@airshipper
> unless it a nuclear powered cook strait ferry?
That one got a hearty belly laugh out of me. I had this mental image of a ferry with the iconic double cones sticking out of the top, cruising silent and deadly across the strait : P
@debe
> I'll happily have solar panels on my roof. I wouldn't want a nuclear plant there
I wouldn't want Matthew Hooten there either, even with his penchant for fiddling while Rome burns. A fiddler on the roof is the last thing we need ... : P
Strypey
downbeatdan
64 Islands Aroha Cooperative
Deb E.