Posts by Tom Semmens
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Clinton's VP pick is dull. Trump's odds just shortened.
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Speaker: Darkness in New York, in reply to Rich of Observationz,
The Electron wouldn’t make a very good ICBM – it uses liquid O2 as its oxidant and thus has to be fueled
You weak peacenik! We’ll just keep the first strike option on the table. Our slogan will be “making NZ great in it's last twenty minutes”!
Being serious though, the point of my post is the possibilty of a fascist America and an authoritarian and lawless China both equally bent of murderous adventurism makes for deeply unethusiastic options for allies. If Trump wins, that has serious implications for NZ. The New Zealand public would be extremely unlikely to support getting involved in any conflict between the USA and China. Trump has made it clear treaties are not worth the paper they are written on if he decides one partner isn’t sufficiently pulling its weight.
The implications for NZ’s options are worth thinking about. Armed neutrality is one option, but that will cost a fortune and almost certainly require universal CMT.
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Speaking of wierd NZ links, this guy loves NZ and loves Trump.
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So when push come to shove in the South China sea we’ll have the attractive option of taking sides with Trump’s America or the lawless butchers of Beijing?
Time for CMT, a hundred billion on defence, putting a nuke on top of Rocket Labs electron rocket and declaring a bristling, heavily armed neutrality????
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Anyone who saw the anti-Dalai Lama, pro-Beijing rally in Aotea Square several years back would have realised then that unchecked Chinese immigration poses a considerable security risk to New Zealand. The fact is our government needs to be using it’s state media assets to counter Chinese government propaganda and ensure our new migrants become loyal citizens, rather than potential inmates of interment camps. But they won’t, because the invisible hand is stupid like that.
I bet the GCSB and SIS don't even have Chinese speakers, but then you don't need to speak Chinese to spy on Greenpeace and Kim Dotcom.
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Anyone who saw the anti-Dalai Lama, pro-Beijing rally in Aotea Square several back has already realised that unchecked Chinese immigration poses a considerable security risk to New Zealand. The fact is our government needs to b
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The PLP plotters seriously sem to think they can get a legitimate result by going to court to keep Corbyn off the ballot, by trying to stack the voting rolls in their favour, by constantly smearing their opponents as anti-semites, by playing the poor little rich kid victim whenever they are criticised and by trying to arrogate to themselves the name and assets of the Labour party… basically every dirty, undemocratic trick they can think of in their ongoing tantrum of entitlement thawted. The Blairite PLP in the UK is now officiallly completely insane, they’ve gone troppo in the heat of the luxury resort that is Westminster la la land. The UK Labour party is heading for it’s greatest internal crisis since since Ramsay MacDonald’s great act of treachery in 1931.
It seems the hard right of Labour is determined to force the issue and would welcome a schism in the belief that taking the bulk of the PLP and securing the funding of elite donors like Assem Allam, owner of Hull City football club and an admirier of Blair is a viable political option. They would be the very definition of an establishment elite cadre party representing nothing except exisiting to corruptly manipulate the electoral system to deny popular change. Given the rise of UKIP and the nature of FPP elections it seems the right of Labour would rather split the Labour vote and see UKIP or Tory candidates come through than see a socialist Labour party.In effect, if they are going down, they are going to try and take all of Labour with them. Then they’ll head off to well paid jobs as consultants, directors and PR people.
They are stark raving mad both in method and purpose.
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Hard News: The war is still with us, in reply to Rich of Observationz,
My view is Blair became increasingly messianic over time. Wikipedia’s entry on Blair contains a useful entry on this, and I think the timelines of his growing sense of his religious mission are significant. IMHO, the entire current PLP Blairite movement displays behaviour that can only be best described in terms of having a messianic self-belief. But if that is the why, what about the how?
I recently finally finished reading Christopher Clark’s “The Sleepwalkers.” Reading in Chilcot of the systemic failures of numerous key officials to understand – let alone their reluctance to take responsibility for and act upon – their roles in the checks and balances of democratic government is depressingly resonant of 1914. Just as then, we see a parade of officials and politicians at various levels testing a system whose workings are seemingly beyond their comprehension. The machinery of the British ruling class is exposed – as in 1914 – as little more than a shambolic collection of amateur and mediocre actors with no single logic or master narrative to help them understand their purpose. In such a vacuum of purpose it was easy for the one man who was sure of his mission to over-ride the vaunted “checks and balances” of Westminster democracy.
The consistent failure of the British governing class to do it’s proper constitutional job in times of crisis has much wider implications than just Iraq. Britain is a leading member of NATO and an independent nuclear power. Reading Chilcot, who can have any faith in the British ruling class being able to cope with a crisis in the east with Russia?
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none of the MSM have picked up on the fact.
Maybe they should have put it on outbrain as "New Zealand sent some sheep to Mecca. You'll be amazed what happened next."
t seems though that nowadays no one will report someone elses story, because you know, ego and money.