TLDR & TLDL: This week on the weekly ‘hoon’ webinar for subscribers to The Kākā, we bought in renowned expert on Russian and Soviet history, David Satter, to talk about the rise of Vladimir Putin and the war in Ukraine.
David is a fellow of the Foreign Policy Institute at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) and a senior fellow of the Hudson Institute in Washington, D.C. He wrote the definitive book on the circumstances around Putin’s surprising rise to power, The Less You Know, The Better You Sleep: Russia's Road to Terror and Dictatorship under Yeltsin and Putin, and his most recent book is Never Speak to Strangers and Other Writing from Russia and the Soviet Union.
Our conversation with David was a fascinating deep dive into how Putin operates and the awful circumstances around his rise to power. David gives many insights into the war in Ukraine and the mistakes the West made in dealing with Putin in recent years.
In the second half of this week’s podcast, Peter and I talked about the events of the week in geo-politics as seen from here in Aotearoa-NZ, including chats on:
Three Waters, He Puapua and David Seymour’s interventions on these issues;
the opening of Transmission Gully and the economics of land-banking that force the costs of the motorway onto the public and privatise the benefits for landowners; and,
the strange new plants growing in the gardens of Parliament.
Now here’s my summary of the main news events of the week and how I covered it for paid subscribers on the The Kākā, including links to the podcasts and articles emailed to subscribers.
Five things of note this week
The wholly inadequate benefit and WFF increases on April 1
Auckland Council unveiled its (no) parking strategy
This story didn’t make a huge national splash, but the launch of this strategy to remove parking from the curbs of over 240km of roads in Auckland will form the basis for almighty and sadly culture-warish clashes between motorists band public transport/climate activists in this year’s local elections.
Wayne Brown made his opposition to the strategy the centrepiece of his announcement of his Auckland Mayoral campaign.
Transmission Gully opened after 103 years of waiting
China’s unsettling deal to park its military on Guadalcanal
The Bank of Japan’s started a whole new round of money printing
Charts of the week
Inflation appears headed for 9%
Residential construction sector confidence collapsed in March
Consumer confidence also collapsed in March
My weekend reading on substack
Ka kite ano
Bernard
The week that was for the week's end