This is related to Assange's line, too: that leaks and the threat of leaks are a kind of curb on dishonest politicians, but in Assange's case he (rather more realistically I believe) says it will only stop incompetent dishonest politicians. It will always ...
One thing I thought remarkable was how the production of pro-Trump "fake news" was effectively outsourced to young Macedonian web entrepreneurs, who could justify backing Trump purely for the advertising revenue from Trump loyalist web "news" consumers, ...
I read your post and actually quite enjoyed it. Perhaps I should have said so to mollify you before quibbling about the detail in the footnote. Instead I made the mistake of thinking you'd be open to a civil discussion of anything in the post. That ...
Nice trolling! But in fact I'm a skilled programmer with over 30 years of experience, during which time I've written code professionally in -- off the top of my head -- at least 2^4 different programming languages; high level, low level, procedural, object...
You've obviously responded to my perfectly polite comment with indecent haste in a haze of hostility that's quite inappropriate. Why not take a deep breath, read what I actually wrote, and engage in a discussion, by explicitly addressing the points I made,...
Wow lots of abuse there but little in the way of engaging with the points I actually made. By the way, I'm well aware you're a programmer (I'm one myself)
Why do you say 'Assange is deluded'? Is it to do with his insistence that WikiLeaks acquired DNC emails not from Russian sources, but from an American in Washington DC, who claimed to be passing them on from a disaffected Democratic Party insider? If so, ...
Cheers, Incognito. FYI in Marx's economic analysis the concept of "use value" does include purely subjective and aesthetic value; anything which satisfies a person's desire has a "use value". Wikipedia has a good article on Use value that contrasts it with...
It may 'seem' that way to you from these few quotes about industrial automation, but if you read any of Marx's writing on finance capital you'll find he had a hugely sophisticated understanding of the (dominant) role of finance capital. His concept of ...
The 'inevitability' is that capitalist automation will continue to improve productivity and reduce the length of the necessary working week, and that this is inevitably a growing problem for capitalism as a system based on wage labour. That 'growing ...
By 'proper infrastructure' (for distribution) I take it you're referring to markets? But Marx's point would be that the labour market (whose role is to compensate workers for hours worked) would no longer be 'proper' when the wealth produced is not in fact...
Marx wrote some very interesting (and literally prescient) stuff about the evolution of industrial automation and what it would mean for capitalism and for wage-workers. There were some notebooks of Marx's which contained rough notes which he never ...
So what happened? Why was the Duterte post deleted?
What has happened to CV's post about US-Filipino relations? I saw the post in my RSS feed but when I clicked through to the site it was gone! All I can see is some cryptic references to CV being banned, but no official notice or anything. It all comes ...
Clearly the NZ Herald does not have sufficient "standing" to support "high end" journalism.
More a disaster for the Blairite faction though: their future post-split is written here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_New_Zealand Whereas the main part of the Labour Party will recover from the damaging effects of the Blairite split, because at ...
Yeah I totally agree Corbyn just has to hang in there and the dissenters will find themselves forced to shut up or ship out. I just think the "shut up" option isn't really a practical one since it would only get them as far as 2018, when the new electoral ...
“gaining the cooperation of a bunch of people who think that they can do a better job than you” ... and would rather die in a ditch than cooperate with you. “the ability to recognise the best way individuals can contribute to the team and persuading them ...
It does seem very likely to me that there will be a split. It seemed to me that the Blairite parliamentary rump of the party might have played nice and accommodated themselves to the leftward shift in the party which is catalyzed and exemplified by ...
Yes, it's remarkable how the Blairite MPs opposed to Corbyn justify their opposition with a circular logic (reproduced here by Ad): "We can't support Jeremy Corbyn because he's a failure as a leader" What does his leadership failure consist of? It consists...
Cheers AmaKiwi! I'm with you! We must be the kind of people Ad (who I understand is a pom) had in mind with his gratuitously offensive racist slur about NZers fainting at the sight of blood.
Labour's anti-nuclear policy was bitterly opposed by the National Party and yet it proved to be sustainable despite that, because it enjoyed popular support. Indeed, the policy was a major electoral strength to Labour. You can't, I think, make a fetish of ...
If I were some dictator of some country with the power to intervene in another country, I would use that power for self-defense, and not to commit war crimes, as you seem to be suggesting I should. I would not have overthrown and killed Gaddafi, as Nato ...
It looks like you missed the bit where I suggested we needed to support ALTERNATIVES to the World Bank, too. I'm not going to continue this thread, because I think (for whatever reason) you're reading what you want to read, not what I wrote.
I don't get the "cold" thing. Are you implying that it's lonely? The non-aligned movement has ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY member states. It's not like it's some fringe thing.
I humbly withdraw my sarcastic comment about the USSR, then. I agree with your comments about NZ's strategic position. We are not threatened by China and we have no real need for membership in any military alliance. I'd like to see us move on from being a ...
You know who else objectively protected NZ from absorption into Japans's "Co-Prosperity Sphere"? That's right, the Chinese Communist Party. And the Chinese never twisted our arm to ("triflingly") invade Vietnam, either. But what thanks do they get?
Exactly!
Assuming this is a response to my post above, since I did mention ANZUS. "Ceased to exist" is putting it a bit strongly. I would say it's in abeyance. But yes of course we're all aware that it is "suspended". I also mentioned the USSR and I'm grateful you ...
We don't need the sovereign right to manage aspects of our economy through non-market mechanisms? Well I can see how a neoliberal might think that, but the premise of this thread is that we should have a "left" foreign policy, and that does require a ...
I'm not against everything the US govt is up to, at all. I'm only opposed to their constant meddling in the internal affairs of other countries; weakening their democratic institutions, sabotaging their economies, bombing their infrastructure, disrupting ...
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