My point is that the magic wand's operations are obscure. You conjure up an alternative universe in which the Chinese have a global empire backed by the world's most powerful military ever, to make the point that ... well it's not actually clear what the ...
What country do you have in mind for your lefty policy, if not NZ?
The US is not, in a real sense, a democracy. Rather, it is an oligarchy, in which a tiny elite of super-wealthy citizens rule. The existence of an electoral system not withstanding. The electoral system is just (a part of) the mechanism by which the elite ...
May I humbly suggest that the use of a magic wand doesn't strengthen either the rhetorical force or clarity of your argument?
A leftist foreign policy has to be aimed at social justice on a global scale. It has to deal with hunger, climate change, exploitation, and inequality. If we are going to end wars, we are going to have to establish a much fairer and more egalitarian global...
... and then a policy of non-alignment and anti-militarism.
NZ is part of the Western, US-led, military bloc. Any "military intervention" that NZ makes will be following a US lead. The question then boils down to "what US aggression is worth supporting", to which my answer would be "none". Imperial powers always ...
"... he will, however, happily open a discussion on an extradition treaty that will allow China to execute their citizens currently resident in NZ if they so choose" Utter, utter, bollocks.
Jesus TRP - xenophobic much?
Let's be clear about the nature of the "problem"; kiwis living in Australia have had their civil rights restricted. Partly this is to save social welfare costs for the Australian federal government, and partly it's a racist measure to keep out NZers of ...
I love how everyone goes on about how the GCSB weren't breaking the law if they didn't spy on NZers. Did they break Samoan law? Did they break Tongan and Fijian laws? The question never even comes up. By that logic did Alain Mafart and Dominique Prieur ...
Troops are for killing people and blowing stuff up. If you just want to send a message, use Twitter. But yes, the government are indeed motivated to send a message; the message is to Obama and it reads "SIR, YES SIR!"
If Western intervention and war was the way to fix Iraq, then it would be the best place on earth by now. This absolutely nails it. How supposed leftists can think that further Western attacks on Arab nations are justifiable, given the results of all the ...
Wayne, it means allowing the Syrian army to defeat ISIS. Western policy has been to overthrow the Syrian government, and this is one of the main causes of the ISIS caliphate. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_involvement_in_the_Syrian_Civil_War#Support_...
Who is this "we in the West"? (as in "how do we in the West stop them, if not by taking them on militarily?") Does it mean anyone in the West at all? Does it include warmongers like Rumsfeld, Kissinger, GW Bush, Tony Abbott and John Key. etc? Does it ...
Why not let the Syrians, Iraqis, Libyans, etc. sort them out? Is it a coincidence that it's precisely these countries, targeted by Western imperialism under various humanitarian smokescreens, where ISIS has blossomed?
Exactly. What's implied by Shearer's comment? That if the Nats hadn't been distracted by the Dotcom corruption and spying scandal, they would have been done better on maintaining employment? That is so much bullshit, but it speaks volumes about Shearer's ...
Oh indeed! And yet, unless the world's economy can pretty much entirely kick the fossil fuel habit within the next few decades, we will face environmental catastrophe on a global scale. The Greens know this, but apparently Shearer's vision doesn't extend ...
The coal business has good long term prospects? Heaven help us. Coal mining has an almost mythic value to Labour nostalgics, but for God's sake! Get over it! Leave that shit in the ground where it belongs!
"Unless and until Huawei becomes a stand-alone widely held listed company with employees free to trade their shares and without a controlling shareholder, these suspicions and allegations will likely continue," Translation: Huawei is a socialist enterprise...
The Australian federal govt's decision has been widely derided here in Australia. I'm no fan of Key by any means, but he's quite correct not to buy into this Cold War paranoia, which is pure theatre, without technical merit.
With respect, I think you are splashing the term "the state" around quite loosely, and in an article like this you have to use your terms more scientifically. I don't want to get into a stupid argument about what terms "really mean" but I do think that ...
Barrio Adentro and other Venezuelan social programs are of course paid for out of the income of a very large, state-owned company: Petroleos de Venezuela. If the Venezuelan right were to get their hands on it again, turning off that money tap would put ...
Just a quick answer, from my perspective. I deliberately didn't give an opinion on the rights and wrongs of the Syrian uprising. I'm absolutely sure that the opposition has valid reasons for discontent with the Baath Party regime. No doubt about it. But ...
It's shocking alright. But to drag the topic of conversation back to this post about the Syrian conflict, I would argue that this kind of post is itself very much part of how Western aggression is allowed to happen. Western imperialists have learned from ...
Yes, because what I really want to do is to buy into a mirror image of the same simplistic and naive view presented here. This isn't "Cowboys and Indians", Blighty. [edit] whoops I think Blighty's snide comment was actually to someone else.
Yes It's interesting how completely this toes the official NATO line, albeit with a "left" tinge. It's not something isolated though; I've seen the same thing on social-democratic blogs a number of times, backing NATO against the governments of Yugoslavia ...
I can't help feeling that another motive for the rebel strategy was to provoke a decisive NATO intervention on their side as was done in Kosovo and Libya.
True! What's more, Abbott's attacks on the carbon price (the "toxic tax") have been ludicrously hyperbolic; this scheme is supposedly going to destroy the Australian economy. When the the price actually comes into force (this year), and the sky doesn't ...
It's not stupidity; it's cupidity. BTW admins this site's mobile theme is quite unusable in the default Android web browser. [lprent: On the list to either fix or replace this weekend. ]
I've never quite understood why David Farrar, who is after all paid to do statistical work, insists on performing transparent statistical tricks on his blog. Tricks are work - ask any prostitute.
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