Billy and the Baroness
In an extraordinary coincidence, the Attorney-General in the UK is about to lose her job for pretty much the same rort as Bill […]
International
Pup on the pull-aside
Two stories from today’s Dominion give a hint as to what might be muttered under their breath as Key and Obama pose for […]
Clueless
John Key has admitted he didn’t bother to get detailed briefings before sending our SAS to kill and possibly die for a corrupt regime in Afghanistan: […]
Michael Laws, ambassador
From The Guardian: It used to be loony left local government that attracted ridicule. Now it is the outpourings of mad mayors. …[UK mayoral […]
Political debate done right
The last video I posted had Democratic Congressman Barney Frank taking the fight to a woman in the audience of a townhall meeting […]
The mire
Last month’s Time magazine has an article that starts “to understand why the United States is losing in Afghanistan…” It’s a bombshell phrase, […]
More votes than voters
The Economist has an article on the recent election in New Zealand’s current region of conflict – Afghanistan. The title of the article […]
The F word
It probably isn’t possible to have rational discussion about the F word. It has been trivialised by overuse as a meaningless term of […]
First they came for Spongebob
One of the most powerful conservative Christian fundamentalist groups in America is Focus on the Family. This group has an impressive organisation, income, […]
Pwned
This just in from a reader… Constituent: [On Obama’s healthcare policy] “Why are you supporting this Nazi policy?” Barney Frank: “On what planet […]
Bridging the Big Ditch
Mr Key is off in Australia this week promoting further measures to bind the two countries into a single economic market, and slash […]
Phil Goff speaking on the SAS deployment
Goff’s speech on deploying the SAS
Apart from when it’s customary, at maiden speeches, valedictories, and the Budget, it’s a rare speech that warrants a standing ovation in Parliament. […]
More National sleeze
There’s been an attempt to force Peter Goodfellow, the brand new President of the National Party, to step down. The move came from […]
New Zealand’s global shame
Well, there goes our clean, green image. After Key announced the pathetic 10-20% emissions reduction target, we were declared ‘fossil of the day’ […]
Afghanistan for the Afghanistanians
It was a bit strange listening to Key’s interview on RNZ yesterday morning about deploying the SAS to Afghanistan. He kept on awkwardly […]
Citizen journalism
Evidently just as fed up as I am with main-stream-media “news” – which increasingly seems to consist of shallow, sensationalist stories broken up […]
What price citizenship?
“What price citizenship?“, asks Heather Roy. “$10 million“, says Jonathan Coleman.
What are we fighting for?
A reader sent through this article from the Guardian by Malalai Joya, who was the youngest woman to enter the Afghan parliament before […]
Truly ambitious for America
America faces a hell of a lot of problems at the moment, but if there’s one man with the ability to inspire and […]
Our traditional allies
It seems the US want us to commit our elite SAS troops to Afghanistan. I’m not a big fan of the Taliban but […]
‘Green-shoots’ wither in UK
Like New Zealand, the UK has had a deluge of ‘green-shoots’ news from the corporate media and the financiers desperate to jawbone the […]
Sunday reading: Life in sub-prime America
Exiled Online, a US site, has excellent coverage of the recession and the sub-prime crisis from a ground-level view. Yasha Levine moved to […]
The power of images in politics
The shots above are small versions from this site where you can find other great images from Obama’s first 167 days in office. The […]
Greenpeace to Obama: Show some leadership
From Greenpeace USA: Greenpeace climbers hung a banner on Mount Rushmore challenging President Obama to show real leadership on global warming. The banner […]
Seriously, there are better uses for $10 mil
Why are we giving $10 million a year in aid to Niue with a population of 1600? It’s $6250 per person each bloody […]
Climate change, passing the pain.
The US has finally managed to pass a bill through the house of representatives dealing with climate change (sort of). It is laden […]
Go the Yanks!
So we’ve got a government of incompetents, ideologues, and sloths. At least things are going better in America. The Democrats now have a […]
Six years – for what?
Six years ago the Neocon Bush administration invaded Iraq, on the pretence of looking for “weapons of mass destruction” (that were never there). […]
Justifying the unjustifiable
Spending time with DC neo-cons must be going to Farrar’s head. I thought better of him than supporting the Honduran military’s overthrow of President Manuel […]
The scandal that wasn’t there and the one that was
The Herald really really wants to uncover an expenses scandal like in the UK. Think of the fun they could have. But they’re […]
Democracy in Iran? Not yet
The Iranian election was clearly rigged. Formerly quite democratic by Middle East standards. Iran’s been going backwards fast. There have been violent protests […]
The Tank Man
It was remiss of me not to post on this last week. June 4 marked the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre. […]
The crisis of credit visuali[s]ed
I just came across this. It’s the first part of a video by a US organisation called A New Way Forward. They’re organising […]
The Defence Act is a dead letter
No Right Turn wrote a post on an important point of governance that needs more discussion. Reproduced with Idiot/Savant’s permission. Last week, we […]
Whatever it takes, except anything
A reader has spotted that Hide wasn’t the only minister telling porkies in Parliament yesterday. Fortunately for Bill English, he’s too smart to […]