us politics

Categories under us politics

Kamala Harris (2)

Please don’t go there America

Written By: Anthony R0bins - Date published: 11:56 am, November 20th, 2015 - 27 comments

Donald Trump won’t rule out “tracking Muslim Americans in a database or giving them “a special form of identification that noted their religion””. Brings to mind an F word.

Paris as an excuse for more useless surveillance

Written By: Anthony R0bins - Date published: 7:02 am, November 17th, 2015 - 67 comments

The Paris attacks are being used as an excuse for another ill informed debate about surveillance and encryption – which doesn’t address the communication channels that terrorists are actually using. The tools that our governments want can be used very effectively to spy on you and me though (as Key effectively acknowledges in passing).

Paris 3 – common sense from Democrats

Written By: Anthony R0bins - Date published: 8:32 am, November 16th, 2015 - 161 comments

The fallout from the Paris attacks continues. The American political reaction is as important as it is predicable.

30 Years after ANZUS (and we’re doing fine)

Written By: Anthony R0bins - Date published: 11:01 am, November 2nd, 2015 - 14 comments

nz-speaks-300

US ship visit and nuclear free NZ

Written By: Anthony R0bins - Date published: 6:05 am, October 31st, 2015 - 77 comments

The US has been invited to send a ship to NZ. One News has a headline about a “nuclear ship”. Explosive if true, but I think this is an error. There is some confusion on the matter, let’s hope it is cleared up fast.

Clinton opposes TPP

Written By: notices and features - Date published: 9:35 am, October 8th, 2015 - 103 comments

Associated Press: BREAKING: Hillary Clinton says she opposes Pacific Rim trade deal, breaking with Obama.

TPP roundup

Written By: Anthony R0bins - Date published: 6:34 am, October 7th, 2015 - 161 comments

A roundup of the best analysis of and reaction to the TPP. The gains are minor and delayed, the losses are real. In NZ we don’t have any democratic input into ratification, but the US does, and the deal may fall there.

The (gradual?) decline of American empire

Written By: Colonial Viper - Date published: 12:20 pm, October 6th, 2015 - 93 comments

Col. Lawrence Wilkerson was Chief of Staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell. And he says that the American empire is in decline.

TPPA agreement reached

Written By: mickysavage - Date published: 7:28 am, October 6th, 2015 - 163 comments

The TPPA has been agreed to. Dairy access improvement is minimal, there will be a cost hit on Pharmac and every industry but Tobacco will be able to access the investor state dispute resolution procedure.

Three minutes to midnight. John Key incoherent.

Written By: BLiP - Date published: 7:07 am, October 2nd, 2015 - 91 comments

Same ole, same ole. Except, this time, US neoconservative imperalism might have a problem. Russia.

What other countries are doing about climate change

Written By: mickysavage - Date published: 10:30 am, September 29th, 2015 - 27 comments

There is hope that the cumulative effect of all the international pledges for the Paris climate change conference may buy the world some time to prevent runaway global warming. Some countries are pledging to becoming carbon neutral. New Zealand’s pledge is pathetically weak in comparison.

Bugger the Truth – Getting elected means fooling the poeple

Written By: tracey - Date published: 1:15 pm, September 19th, 2015 - 34 comments

So, its is not that the voters are idiots, as some suggest the Left are claiming, it is that the Right deliberately lie and mislead to get a vote, on false pretenses. It is the Right who constantly treats voters as gullible idiots, And a media, strangled by shrinking budgets and reduced personnel with less and less time to research rather than regurgitate. Couple that with an increase in non-journalists hogging the space set aside for reporting and elucidating news events… what chance the voter?

Sanders leads Clinton

Written By: Anthony R0bins - Date published: 6:50 am, September 9th, 2015 - 44 comments

Sanders in America, Corbyn in England. If they both win, does this mark a resurgence of the political left?

Most allegations against Julian Assange dropped

Written By: Colonial Viper - Date published: 6:39 pm, August 18th, 2015 - 94 comments

Most of the allegations against Assange have been dropped but Swedish authorities still refuse to question him in London. And Assange still hasn’t been charged with a single crime.

Obama’s climate initiative – too little too late

Written By: Anthony R0bins - Date published: 11:39 am, August 5th, 2015 - 48 comments

Far too late in his presidency Obama is taking important action on climate change. But it isn’t enough, not nearly enough, as new research shows that we need to achieve “negative emissions” (i.e. carbon capture).

American oligarchy

Written By: Anthony R0bins - Date published: 10:14 am, August 5th, 2015 - 37 comments

american-oligarchy

John Key – Snake Oil Salesman

Written By: mickysavage - Date published: 12:33 pm, July 30th, 2015 - 42 comments

John Key has tried to suggest that we have nothing to worry about planned changes to Pharmac caused by TPP. But a recent further release by Wikileaks on the effects of the Trans Pacific Partnership on State Owned Enterprises makes you wonder if the implications of TPP on Pharmac are as limited as he says.

Go Trump Go!

Written By: mickysavage - Date published: 8:31 am, July 21st, 2015 - 41 comments

For entertainment purposes we could do no better than having Donald Trump as the Republican nominee for the US presidential election.

Sanders vs Trump

Written By: Anthony R0bins - Date published: 7:03 am, July 3rd, 2015 - 15 comments

It will probably turn out to be Clinton vs Bush of course. But wouldn’t Sanders vs Trump be more fun? And wouldn’t Sanders be a fascinating POTUS?

Australia where the bloody hell are you on gay marriage?

Written By: mickysavage - Date published: 8:00 am, June 28th, 2015 - 55 comments

Following on from New Zealand, Ireland and many other states the United States Supreme Court has recently ruled that banning same sex marriages is a breach of the 14th amendment’s right to life and liberty. It makes you wonder when Australia is going to institute change.

An open letter to Andrew Little

Written By: mhager - Date published: 6:08 pm, June 26th, 2015 - 433 comments

A respectful open letter to Andrew Little with suggestions for how to win the next election!

The NRA is a terrorist organisation

Written By: mickysavage - Date published: 8:50 am, June 20th, 2015 - 106 comments

In the land of the free and the brave the NRA is trying to say that the way to stop incidents such as the Charleston Church massacre is to have more guns. And the right are trying to dispute the reality that the incident was caused by racism.

Keep on rocking in the free world

Written By: mickysavage - Date published: 8:19 am, June 19th, 2015 - 25 comments

Donald Trump has attracted adverse comment for using Neil Young’s song “keep on rocking in the free world” during his campaign launch. There are a number of other examples, both local and in the US, where right wing candidates have misappropriated progressive musicians’ music for campaign purposes.