Bye bye independent foreign policy

24 comments on “Bye bye independent foreign policy ”

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1. grumpy 1

   13 January 2010 at 2:59 pm

   Sad, but true.
2. Tigger 2

   13 January 2010 at 3:10 pm

   No, Key is going to save the whales. Diplomatically.

   http://www.stuff.co.nz/environment/3227549/Key-plan-to-end-Southern-Ocean-whaling
   • grumpy 2.1

     13 January 2010 at 3:13 pm

     Maybe if he gives them Stewart Island they’ll stop killing the whales?
     • the sprout 2.1.1

       13 January 2010 at 4:50 pm

       Maybe if he gives them the Sudetenland?
   • Bill 2.2

     13 January 2010 at 4:36 pm

     @ 37 sec

     “We’ve been working on a potential solution but whether that’s an acceptable outcome is too early to tell.”

     So he doesn’t know whether it’s acceptable to have a solution?

     Hmm. Yes, well.
3. Peter 3

   13 January 2010 at 3:28 pm

   I am astounded that the Nat’s and Key’s popularity is as high as it is…Yet they do nothing, my God if they do nothing till 2011 does that mean that they will win the election ? Or will NZ wake up and realise that we have been conned.
   • fizzleplug 3.1

     13 January 2010 at 3:33 pm

     Ah, the righteous indignant rage.

     So refreshing and apt.
4. snoozer 4

   13 January 2010 at 3:30 pm

   ‘Hey, Hillary, if you make some more non-commital comments about a NZ-US FTA, we’ll drop our opposition to Japanese whaling, hey presto, no more whaling conflict.’
   • grumpy 4.1

     13 January 2010 at 3:47 pm

     What opposition?
5. Bill 5

   13 January 2010 at 4:45 pm

   That last bubble might more accurately read,

   “No, that’s the latest [insert foreign policy here] policy of the US’s NZ government.”

   If you think that’s over calling it a tad, you might not want to read between the lines in the following article bearing in mind that the SAS is expected to be unaccountable to the likes of you and me.

   http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175188/tomgram%3A_engelhardt_and_turse%2C_the_cia_surges/#more
6. Brett Dale 6

   13 January 2010 at 7:45 pm

   Sometimes a picture doesnt say a thousand words.
7. Draco T Bastard 7

   13 January 2010 at 8:05 pm

   We never really had an independent foreign policy although, under the last government, we were developing one. National, though, has always brown nosed the US and that hasn’t changed.
   • prism 7.1

     14 January 2010 at 6:09 pm

     DTB The USA is Nats natural home, they send their professionals to Harvard etc. Like in Greece years ago their aspirational people went to France and tried for the Sorbonne.
     As far as NZs are concerned thinking about politics and Nats, we have hung a sign outside our door and are having our summer holidays, our winter holidays, our wage rise holiday etc. “Do Not Disturb” we don’t want to know!
   • felix 7.2

     14 January 2010 at 8:20 pm

     It goes beyond just brown-nosing the U.S.

     Authoritarians tend to look up to whoever they perceive to be in charge. In the geopolitical sphere today that’s the U.S. but there’s no specific moral or philosophical basis to their allegiance other than wanting to please the boss.

     In Caesar’s time they would’ve been brown-nosing Rome.
8. sk 8

   13 January 2010 at 9:48 pm

   This guy is full of complete shit, and the press lets him get away with it. Quote of the day:

   “”They [the US] are doing their best, along with others, but they obviously have a strong relationship with the Japanese and I am sure that is something that Mrs Clinton will put to play.”

   OMG, where has he been for the last 4 weeks, oh I forgot, the US. Does he not know that the DPJ wants the US base out of Okinawa, and that US-Japanese relations are headed for a bust-up? And then he proposes that the US will go into bat for NZ and the whales. Welcome to NZ in 2010
9. Armchair Critic 9

   13 January 2010 at 9:52 pm

   I expect the secret plan is to allow the Japanese to kill and eat all the whales. With no more whales, that will be the end of whaling.
   No, hang on, that’s as silly a DPF’s “the Greens want us to shoot all the cows” plan.
   • Pascal's bookie 9.1

     13 January 2010 at 9:55 pm

     A new treaty reclassifying whales as rully bug tuna fishes.
10. Barry B 10

    14 January 2010 at 1:16 am

    “I am astounded that the Nat’s and Key’s popularity is as high as it is Yet they do nothing, my God if they do nothing till 2011 does that mean that they will win the election ? Or will NZ wake up and realise that we have been conned.”

    I think they are waiting for the New World Order” to come to the fore. Then the US will install them as dictators with electronic voting machines administered by corporations where the software is proprietory (patented) and no ones allowed to examine it,just like the current US system.

    Republican congressman of 40 years Ron Paul believes the writing will be on the wall by the end of Obamas 1st term around the time of our next election. After that I dread that NZ democracy will become history and National will get to do everything they have longed to do but would under a healthy democracy get booted out for.
    They will give bullshit excuses and say they didn’t know anything. Kiwis might believe it for a while but we will never go back once this happens. There will be no more socialsim or democracy in NZ. This is a worldwide phenomenom that is not being reported in the MSM.

    I am also a bit suspicious that National have amalgamated the Electoral offices. This makes it easier to put your own people in charge of elections. They have also replaced the government purchasing officers with private contract purchasing officers. Maybe they are planning to do what the right wing Irish government tried to pull off.
    They spent billions of taxpayer money on paperless electronic voting machines imported from the US without public consultation. Luckily the Irish press spoke out against them and the government were pressured to withdraw the machines before the election but they still have them and intend to use them.

    Our press has said nothing about this and will not report anything about the rigging of elections in the US via the electronic machines. Election officials have been convicted of rigging the 2004 Ohio recount which was paid for by the Green party. Technicians from the electronic voting companies turned up for the recount and posted cheat sheets for election officials as a way of making the figures match without actually recounting any votes and thats what they did.

    Germany has banned electronic voting on the basis that the scrutineers who watch voted being counted cannot see how a machine is counting votes.
    The system in the US is so corrupt now that they have a law in florida that states that a vote that has been counted by machine cannot be recounted by hand. There is much much more to this story. In Australia Electronic voting has been legalised by the Howard government but was not rolled out at the last election. In the Australian legislation they have decided not to have paper print outs of votes as they say that the paper and the printers are too expensive. Great if want to rig an election without a trace aint it.
    The BBC did a report into the huge discrepancies found in the Scottish trial of ballot scanners in their elections. Funny how cash machines made by the same corporations as evoting machines work fine but voting machines are constantly malfunctioning which of course leads to technicians constantly needing to sevice them in the middle of elections. If your inereted in finding out a bit more about whats been haopening in the US which our media will not report take a look here for some videos on the subject.

    http://nctv-electronic-voting-rigged.blogspot.com/
    • Draco T Bastard 10.1

      14 January 2010 at 4:12 am

      In the Australian legislation they have decided not to have paper print outs of votes as they say that the paper and the printers are too expensive. Great if want to rig an election without a trace aint it.

      Paper printouts aren’t needed and are incredibly wasteful. All that’s needed is for the voter to be able to check the record of the vote and be able to change it if it doesn’t match their vote. Yes, there would need to be some limitations for that to work as well but those would be cheaper than a hard copy of every vote.
11. Barry B 11

    14 January 2010 at 11:56 am

    So a receipt at a money machine or as proof of purchase is wastfull. You are either very uninformed thanks to the corporate media blackout or a working for these guys. Go talk to the people in America who believe they no longer have a democracy.
    Theyve lost their deocracy without a shot being fired.
    Obama only got through because hes actually working for the other side along witth a lot of blue Dog ( republican) democrats. At this moment Senator Rockerfella is working on a bill that will give Obama the ability to shut down the internet. O Bummer has already put Cybersecurity in the hands of the Pentagon.
    America not only has unmaned drones but also robots killing people in the middle east. Our media say nothing. We should all be very very afraid.
    And it looks like Labour were the forfathers of trying to bring in electronic voting here. The Irish and the Germans have rejected it and I will fight it with my last breath if any of our political parties attempt to bring it in.

    If the Labour party will not fight electronic voting we are truely doomed. Its another corporate con as the world moves towards a global facist dictatorship. A 12 year old should know that computer programs are capable of spewing out any damned result wanted. Go and find out what the anti electronic voting movement have to say.
    Anyone who is not interested in finding out whats really happening in the US with regard to elections and how it is spreading throughout the westen world unreported is not fit to be in government.
12. Draco T Bastard (mobile) 12

    14 January 2010 at 2:02 pm

    So a receipt at a money machine or as proof of purchase is wastfull

    Yes. When they are reliable electronic records that are observable by you and the other party why would you want a paper reciept?

    A paper reciept may be useful to prove a deposit into an ATM but, WTF uses an ATM these days? WTF uses cash?

    Go talk to the people in America who believe they no longer have a democracy.
    Theyve lost their deocracy without a shot being fired.

    They’ve lost their democracy because of corruption not due to electronic voting per se. Basically, the electronic voting was hidden (people couldn’t check to see if their vote was correctly recorded) and the corrupt people were in control of it. The laws around “commercial sensitivity”, patents and copyright were used to prevent the US people being able to check the actual voting.

    …I will fight it with my last breath if any of our political parties attempt to bring it in.

    That’s possibly because you’re stupid. There’s no reason not to use electronic voting as long as the right checks and balances are in place none of which the US has or even has a chance of putting in place.
13. Barry B 13

    14 January 2010 at 5:21 pm

    There are no checks and balances that can protect the vote from hacking. Why don’t you see what Stephen Spoonamore who is an IT security expert for the banking industry says. He says there is no system in the world that cannot be hacked. Give him the team of his choice and he will get any piece of information anywhere in the world within a week.
    He has spent a good part of his life trying to reduce credit card fraud but even with huge resources they can only keep the percentage of fraud down. They cannot eliminate it.
    Its like antiviral software. Have internet viruses been prevented. NO Bew ones are being developed on a daily basis and the public pay a big premium to antivirus companies to provide protection. The cost of trying to do this with elections is massive. So why not keep the method that is cost effective.
    One NZ company have been telling people that they will be able to see their votes on the internet. Well the system could show you your vote but that doesnt mean you can see how the computer has counted that vote. It is no replacement for scrutineers at elections watching the votesd being counted one by one. Germany agrees with me on this one and then Irish agree so you must be saying they re stupit to.

    We might develop a seemingly good electronic system with good checks and balances but the checks at the end are too easy to rig.
    Its much harder to rewrite millions of ballots 1 at a time than to change the numbers in a computer.

    Americans were told repeatedly that their sysstems could not be hacked and that no one would do such a thing but they did.

    I think our polititians are pretty corrupt. The only reason we haven’t had rigging is because its just too difficult to do with millions of paper ballots to alter. However I think if it became a little less cumbersome like the press of a button and you’ve won the election then we would have quite a few willing participants here in NZ as happened in the USA and is starting to happen in other western countries.

    As I said

    I
    • Draco T Bastard (mobile) 13.1

      14 January 2010 at 7:09 pm

      There is one way to prevent vote hacking – making the record of that vote available to the voter. Then, if it’s recorded wrong, they can have it changed. The fact that it will be checked by the voter removes any possibility of actual hacking as any request to change it initiates an inquiery as to why it wasn’t correct.

      Well the system could show you your vote but that doesnt mean you can see how the computer has counted that vote. It is no replacement for scrutineers at elections watching the votesd being counted one by one.

      Open Source Software. it is possible to scrutinise the count. And there’s no guarantee that the scrutineers haven’t been bought.

      Americans were told repeatedly that their sysstems could not be hacked and that no one would do such a thing but they did.

      No, Americans were told by the people who made the machines that they couldn’t be hacked. Everyone in the actual IT security industry said it wouldn’t take more than 5 minutes and proved that.

      The problem in the US and elsewhere was that no one was allowed to see the code or the votes as recorded and so it was possible to change the result. Have all that in the open and it becomes impossible (or as close as we can do in reality) to change the vote.

      You’re catorgorically dismissing the technology without thinking about how to make it work and that’s why you’re stupid.
14. Barry B 14

    14 January 2010 at 8:31 pm

    “The problem in the US and elsewhere was that no one was allowed to see the code or the votes as recorded and so it was possible to change the result. Have all that in the open and it becomes impossible (or as close as we can do in reality) to change the vote.”

    Being able to see the code does not prevent viruses being inserted during the actual election process. According to computer programer Clint Curtis. Viruses can eat themselves and remove all evidence of hacking.

    So far no company or country has been able to create hack proof internet or anthing.
    We all still need antivirus software and their are new threats every day. We’d be fools to risk our democracy so a NZ company can make money out of this and I know there is one who is advocating this system. It can most likely be hacked. the stakes are too high. Men died for our democracy and risking it for such trivial reasons is foolish beyond measure.

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