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notices and features - Date published:
5:20 pm, September 26th, 2016 - 72 comments
Categories: Daily review -
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The current rise of populism challenges the way we think about people’s relationship to the economy.We seem to be entering an era of populism, in which leadership in a democracy is based on preferences of the population which do not seem entirely rational nor serving their longer interests. ...
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Tomorrow could decide who is president of the US…
http://www.wsj.com/articles/presidential-debates-will-be-a-major-influence-for-a-third-of-voters-poll-says-1474808400
Go Trump !!!!
Why?
Personal choice.
Yay for democracy !
Jill Stein for me….if I were American.
‘Democracy’ has nothing to do with it
Perhaps reexamine those ‘personal choices’ to see if you can identify the fallacy in your comment
Get the popcorn ready, it’s going to be all on like donkey kong.
I’d vote for Jill too, I hope many do, to get the Greens over 5% for next election and a piece of the funding.
Piece of what funding?
Why is 5% important in the US elections?
The US has federal funding of elections. Parties need to get a certain number of votes at each election, in order to receive funding at the next.
I don’t know what the thresholds are or how much the funding amounts to (just done some brief googling and didn’t immediately see the answer).
The libertarians will almost certainly get funding in 2020 due to how well they’re doing this year. Less clear on the Greens.
Once they hit the 5% threshold they are able to receive a share of millions in state funding for next election.
Once they hit the 15% threshold they are able to participate in presidential debates.
More info here..
http://www.voanews.com/a/finance-debate-rules-make-3rd-party-us-president-unlikely/3321360.html
OK thanks for the info, Cinny
A person could decide today.
Yay for democracy!
He Who Hesitates Is Lost And Russia Hesitated — Paul Craig Roberts
http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2016/09/24/he-who-hesitates-is-lost-and-russia-hesitated-paul-craig-roberts/
The world’s fixated on Trump. But Hillary could drag us ALL into a catastrophic war, writes PETER HITCHENS in America
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-3805989/The-world-s-fixated-Trump-Hillary-drag-catastrophic-war-writes-PETER-HITCHENS-America.html
And the western propaganda machine beat the drums of war…….
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/british-ambassador-walk-out-russia-syria-aleppo-war-crimes-un-matthew-rycroft-a7329626.html
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/sep/23/aleppo-residents-syria-russia-airstrikes
As does our PM
John Key: Syrian President has got to go
http://www.newstalkzb.co.nz/news/politics/john-key-syrian-president-has-got-to-go/
No surprise that the Western Colonial Powers would demand that both Russia and the Syrian Government Army stop attacking the Jihadist Head Choppers that the west backs.
Basically, Russia has given the Americans plenty of time to separate out “legitimate” opposition forces from Salafist jihadis like ISIS, Al Nusra, Al Sham, etc, but of course the USA cannot. Because there are no true moderate opposition fighters. They are all variants of Islamic terrorists that are backed by the west.
And our country has become a lickspittle for the US.
Those Hawaiian golf games have done the business.
Yeah I’m not too sure that Russia has any more business bombing Syrians than the yanks do. Assad seems to have come off his leash anyway.
Don’t believe everything you read in the western propaganda machine.
Yes, contrary to the despicable lies spread by the western propaganda machine, the Russian and Syrian air forces are really sprinkling magic pixie dust over Aleppo. The destroyed buildings and dead or injured people shown by western propaganda operatives are a mixture of CGI and hired actors.
I thought you wanted “big holes” put through all these Islamist fighters. Russia and Assad are simply delivering on this, unlike the USA and its allies Turkey/Saudi Arabia/Qatar who keep funding and rearming the Jihadists.
I thought you wanted “big holes” put through all these Islamist fighters.
Through people involved in Da’esh or in active terrorism against the West, yes. You seem to imagine that describes anyone who opposes the Assad regime, which is ridiculous.
Russia and Assad are simply delivering on this…
Russia and the Assad government are delivering indiscriminate mass murder to large sections of the Syrian population – currently the entire eastern half of Aleppo, among other places. You are an enthusiastic supporter and promoter of this war crime.
I don’t – but I don’t believe Putin either – and Assad doesn’t seem to be behaving like a poster child for enlightened rule. I think the US has just woken up to the fact that the cold war restarted the moment Putin took power.
No good for Syria – the scrap of flesh torn between a pack of rabid jackals.
Totally and utterly wrong. Where is your history man?
Putin took power when? 1999? He took over from, Yeltsin a smashed, decrepit state with plummeting life expectancy and exploding gang violence and lawlessness that was no more than 6 months away from completely imploding.
By that time the US had had a decade of dismembering the former Soviet Union and throwing it to the investment banks, the oligarchs and the capitalist jackals.
In addition, the US spent that entire time pushing NATO eastwards.
The US restarted the Cold War after the fall of the USSR, plain and simple, and intended to keep Russia on her knees bent and broken.
Yes, your enthusiasm for the murderer is certainly pronounced.
There is some truth in what you say – but many of Russia’s wounds were self-inflicted. And, it’s resurgent militarism does it no credit.
NATO was always bound to march east because Russia’s former colonies did not enjoy the experience – the occupiers were crude, backward, exploitive, racist and corrupt, and many of them still are. Small wonder if their former vassals want support to keep the tyrant out.
So now the cease fire in Syria has ceased and Assad and his Russian enablers are treating it like a free fire zone. That napalm does not smell like victory to me.
This is a new Vietnam – a stage for a proxy war that will probably make Syrians envy Iraq before it’s done. And Russian involvement is by no means innocent.
The US agreed that it would not move NATO one inch further east. It almost immediately broke its promise to Gorbachev.
As for the “free fire zone”. You miss one small point. Russia is now helping the Syrian government eradicate the Islamist proxy armies that the west’s allies funded and armed and were being used to regime change Assad.
The US incoherancy over Syria is being exposed over and over again. Their continued support of Al Qaeda in the Levant (now known as Al Nusra) speaks volumes.
Your ignorance of the damage that the west’s neoliberal advisors and banksters did to Russia through Yeltsin is staggering. Millions of Russians died as a direct result. For you to then victm blame Russia illustrates once again the hypocritical farce that is “western liberal values.”
Are Nato’s promises to Russia for some reason more important than former satellite states rights to self-determination? Because you know they will not vote for re-occupation.
The banksters are transnational – and many are Russian. They are not a biddable arm of US foreign policy, but predatory free agents. There was considerable cooperation between oligarchs and such organisations as they looted former state possessions. But Putin could still afford a genocidal war in Chechnya that killed almost every male over the age of 16.
Russia and Syria are explicitly breaching the cease fire and firing on all and sundry. They are making a case against themselves on responsibility to protect.
Yes, the US has been incoherent on Syria – they didn’t realise the cold war was back on in force and have only just woken up. That would be because this conflict has been chosen by Russia as a vehicle for its ambitions. And it’s ambitions are not confined to a brief and surgical eradication of problematic radical islamists.
Key will be offering more of our troops shortly – just watch.
1) The globalist neoliberal system always uses and rewards members of the local 0.1% to carry out their plans to privatise and dismember. You know this. To blame ordinary Russians for the backstabbing greed of Russian oligarchs is beyond bullshit from you.
2) Yes NATO’s and the US’s promises are critical because if they are not kept, Russia will act accordingly. BTW you tried to conflate being a member of NATO with being an independent state.
3) There was no ceasefire. The US never identified and separated the radical terrorists from the moderate terrorist groups it was supporting, and which was one of the conditions of the various ceasefires. Instead, the “ceasefires” were used by the terrorist groups to rearm and regroup. Now, Syria and Russia have had enough of the west’s ploys and broken promises, and are acting accordingly. See 2) above.
3) As I explained to you the Cold War had never ended, and the US had planned and carried out the systematic implosion of Russia and the destruction of the Russian peoples and its civilisation through the 1990s.
Your pretending that somehow Russia started the conflict in Syria or that Russia somehow started the (not so) Cold War mk 2 is really disingenous.
The other fucking arsebackwards notion you have is that the job of NATO is to somehow worsen the security situation of its existing members.
It is doing exactly this by pushing further and further eastwards to court little countries which have zero importance to the welfare of the original NATO members, and which are utterly undefensible in any way shape or form.
This is NOT NATO’s mission.
NATO is supposed to be a SECURITY ORGANISATION. It is supposed to help assure the security of its member states, not ratchet up tensions and increase the risk of a massive war in Europe by trying to romance the Baltic States and place foreign battalions just kilometres away from Russia’s borders.
Again you forget your history. From Napolean to Hitler it has always been the West trying to invade Russia, not the other way around.
I’m sure the Poles will be relieved to hear it.
And the Finns.
And so many others.
The Finns happily played their part in helping the Germans in fucking the Soviet people over.
If it wasn’t for the USSR the Poles could have spent the rest of the 20th century under Nazi rule.
Neither scenario was that inviting.
” Yes, your enthusiasm for the murderer is certainly pronounced.”
If you want a discussion with me try not to be such a petty shit head.
I for one haven’t worked using my intelligence, my qualifications and my career enriching misogynist terrorist supporting Takfiri training witch executing Salafist exporting countries like Saudi Arabia.
Just saying.
A rather cheap and foolish shot – I was not training such people. I taught Saudi employees in the carbon plant of the aluminium smelter at Ras El Khair – they neither formed policy around nor participated in any such activities.
Putin is persona non grata in progressive circles because he murders progressives like Politkovskaya. Her friends will not forgive him anytime soon. And she is by no means his only victim. You should not swallow his agitprop quite so enthusiastically.
So you were using your expertise to increase the industrial and economic capacity of Saudi Arabia?
Good on you mate, good on you for doing your part to help Saudi Arabia grow stronger, what a force for progressiveness in the Middle East they are.
The Russian slave ships were much worse. But my faults are mine.
Your endorsement of Putin is yours.
Firstly, progressive circles in Russia make up about 2% of the population. They are generally disliked by Russians as soft headed enemies of Russia and collaborators of foreign forces.
Secondly, Politkovskaya was killed by whom? Where’s your proof that Putin ordered anything? How do you know that some local thug, police sargeant, or FSB trainee didn’t go off the rails and commit the killing.
On the other hand, we do know that Obama ordered Chelsea Manning tortured, sexually humiliated, and then put through a kangaroo court leaving her in prison for 30 years to rot.
Oh do fuck off. I don’t “endorse” Putin. I’m just pointing out that there are reasons why Putin is far more popular with his citizens than any bankster beholden military industrial complex toting western leader is with theirs.
In understanding Putin it helps if you speak Russian – he often makes little threats or ‘jokes’ that establish provenance of such acts. You have much to learn about the man – but clearly you will not learn it from me. Goodnight.
Pfffft what utter fairytale tripe.
You’ve lost the plot if you think that a former KGB foreign services specialist would be that unprofessional and that blatant in his conduct.
And a good evening to you.
So now we are to deny the evidence of our senses?
Your unhealthy embrace of Putin’s regime and uncritical repetition of his propaganda does you no credit whatsoever.
One could say that Russia has “more business” in Syria than the Americans, British and French forces.
The reason being that the Russian military presence has been authorised by the Syrian Government in Damascus in accordance with international law.
The other western militaries are operating in Syria completely illegally.
Not sure these folk are that informed about the war in Syria.
Guess that’s what happens when you swallow propaganda hook, line and sinker.
The Islamist head chopper terrorists in Syria would be defeated in several weeks if NATO member/US ally Turkey sealed its borders and stopped men, supplies and arms going to the terrorists.
It’ll never happen of course, as NATO/US intend to keep this fight going right down to the last Syrian, in their efforts to end Assad.
One could say that Russia has “more business” in Syria than the Americans, British and French forces.
Damn right – it has a very expensive investment to protect. Unloading phosphorus incendiaries on various towelheads is a small price to pay for that.
Towelheads? Grow up ffs
The term describes the Russian government’s assessment of the locals, not mine.
I’m inclined to think that bombing civilians struggles to find legitimacy whoever signs off on it.
I’m not sure if you recall our discussion about MH17 – I told Russia would try to bomb their back to credibility.
They are nothing if not consistent.
Why do you insist on looking at Russia’s actions so one dimensionally? Even if you were Russia’s deadliest enemy you would want a sounder analytical framework to determine what Russia is doing and why, so you could more effectively oppose them.
” I told you Russia would try to bomb their way back to credibility.”
Geeezus. Are. You. This. Fucking. Stupid.
But Russia is bombing it’s way back to credibility. Its initiatives are entirely military. And you approve. Perhaps a little reflection is in order.
lol this is NOT true; Russia is working every diplomatic and economic angle that it can simultaneously.
Is the picture at top of page ironic or does some celler thinker actually believe it to be ‘true’?
There are still a bunch of pathetically naive Lefties hanging around who think that after 8 years Nobel Peace Prize winning Obama’s advertising campaign “hope you can believe in” actually meant something.
To be honest I held out hope for Obama for the first 12 months or so. Then it became obvious that he was just another Wall St corporate tool.
On the upside for the identity politics that Obama championed – West Point military college has now made boxing mandatory for women cadets as well as male cadets, as US women will soon be assigned to fight and die on the front lines of foreign US wars of regime change in dirt poor countries along side US men.
God bless gender equality.
With Clinton as President, those US troops are going to be busy.
Yep. I believe that Trump will trend the USA towards a more isolationist foreign policy, and spend those military $$$ at home instead of in useless backfiring foreign Clinton-style wars of regime change.
I tend to agree with you.
Dollars to donuts a Trump presidency will signal an end to the current continuing resolution situation, a partisan roadblock to spending on projects like The European Reassurance Initiative.
https://www.csis.org/analysis/european-reassurance-initiative-0
Don’t Ask Don’t Tell was abolished.
Millions of Americans now have health coverage thanks to the Affordable Care Act.
If the Republicans didn’t control the house/senate, he would have been able to get a lot more done.
Millions of Americans now have “health coverage”?
You mean, millions of extra Americans now have private health insurance. With high deductibles and complex exclusions, what good actually gets done for their healthcare is another question altogether.
The republicans gutted what would have been a more comprehensive bill.
Not sure why you’re blaming Obama for the actions of republicans.
Trump wants to repeal the entire thing (and not replace it), btw.
Lol what a weak effort. Time will show your head doffing to the don to be the biggest joke out, ibut nice shot against the left in your dribbly diatribe. Hypocrites always lash out and you lash a lot mr 5ppm.
Hillary’s not fit to lead the USA, in more ways than one.
But trump is? Don’t worry I already know your answer. It isn’t in any way aligned with me thank the gods. And btw that does not mean I think Clinton is all that but she is a million times better than trump imo. I hope he balls up the debates just to read what excuses you come up with.
Trump is a novice on the Presidential campaign trail. Hillary has been on multiple Presidential campaigns.
But, he is a quick learner.
Save them up for tomorrow
“A million times better..”
No, she really is not!
They are as awful as eachother but only one of them has a history for a guide to probable future actions…
The other involves complete speculation
So why bother with the hyperbole and or emotional investment?
Thank you for your fine effort tonight CV. Well done.
What NZ could learn from Singapore’s housing crisis
http://www.newshub.co.nz/business/what-nz-could-learn-from-singapores-housing-crisis-2016092418
Trolls are like the venereal disease of the internet …….. ugly unpleasant infections.
Unlike most disturbing and offensive things on the internet trolls come searching for people to upset and flaunt their sickness ………. They are like diseased dick pics that send themselves to sites with the purpose to offend derail and disrupt.
Treat them with the due contempt they deserve …..but do not let them get you angry because they are a venereal disease with malice and enjoy upsetting people.
I have mental images of them which make me smile and helps me mock these defectives with humor ………….. trolls hate being laughed at….
Here’s how I picture them ……… behind their keyboards tap tapping
maninthemiddle
http://www.freakingnews.com/Alfred-E-Newman-Hitaman-Pictures-104921.asp
BM
https://monstermoviekid.files.wordpress.com/2015/05/immortan-joe.jpg
puckish rouge
https://www.scifinow.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/Mason.jpg
srylands
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_T4SgHuH2m8I/SV1fgY13_sI/AAAAAAAAAL0/uw54m4Omi40/s1600/14.+Golem.jpg
David Farrar .. doing filth while hiding it .. until ‘Dirty Politics’
http://wpmedia.news.nationalpost.com/2014/05/neil.jpg?quality=65&strip=all&w=620
Alwyn
http://beatlephotoblog.com/photos/2010/09/53.jpg
Henry Filth ….
http://images.cdn.filmclub.org/film__3972-monty-python-s-life-of-brian–detail.jpg
cameron slater the lost sole
http://solemngroup.com/commodities/images/fish/sole1.jpg
Wayne mapp
http://assets.nydailynews.com/polopoly_fs/1.453744.1314603807!/img/httpImage/image.jpg_gen/derivatives/article_1200/alg-resize-klu-klux-klan-jpg.jpg
john Key in his sub prime …..https://static2.stuff.co.nz/1397098000/599/9926599.jpg
Have I nailed it 😉 ? mmm
My other advice is to use the troll …….ignore derails and ask them questions or talk about things they hate discussing ie when BM starts wanking on about handouts or people on welfare ask him about Tax havens where the rich get to steal from poor children ………… and $2.2 billion attempted bank robberys by an accountant and pofit gouging Aussie banks results in no jail time for anyone ……despite being 100 times larger than ALL welfare fraud prosecuted in that year with the figures being 2.2 billion versus 22 million…. its the solo mums and poor people who get all the attention and all the jail time…….
With Shit filled toxic rivers, judith collins and lots of other horrible things in New Zealand there is no shortage of nact garbage to dress them up in ….
Love Alwyn. 😀
Thanks Anne ……… he got of lightly with “Angry from Mayfair” representing his character 🙂
Here’s chuck ….. http://sandrarose.com/images23/emesis-550×303.jpg
Fine work!
CEO in the annual knobs of busyness voted with their hearts and chose an opposition dream team.
Jacinda Ardern came out preferred PM.
I’d like to think it wasn’t sexist, based on gender, attractiveness. I’d like to think they are professionals and chose on performance and skill, both of which she has, beauty and brains.
It’s just I think I’ve seen to many stereotypes on TV/films of dirty executives chasing secretaries around.
But good on them for recognizing that this government obviously doesn’t have the answers, the opposition does, this is a big deal really.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=11716868