Posts by Kumara Republic
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Really! I have found his criticism of Israeli policies at times strident and wrong headed but never thought he was an anti Semite.
I suspect much of the current mess came from the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin before he could see the Oslo Accords through. Bibi Netanyahu basically cashed in on it to cement his hold on power to this day.
* http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/10/26/shot-in-the-heart
And a paradox has emerged amongst parties and figures on both sides of the Atlantic with long histories of anti-Semitism:
* https://newrepublic.com/minutes/140079/donald-trump-strange-pro-israel-anti-semitic-dance
* http://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-1.777484 -
Hard News: Our own fake news, in reply to Russell Brown,
The other page, the account of the Pilger-to-Hitler person, was genuinely unnerving. Last time it was someone not bothered when I pointed out they were sharing hideous neo-Nazi cartoons – this time, full Hitlter. And they were both women who seemed to consider themselves sort of greenie-lefty. Buying the Assad-Putin narrative can lead to to really bad places.
Are they NZ or overseas-based? If US-based, they sound like Bernie-or-bust types who voted Trump out of spite. Some of them, like Cassandra Fairbanks, showed their true Pepe/Kek colours after Trump got in.
I unfollowed a couple of fellas on Twitter when they turned out to be "alt-Left" NWO types who are thinking out loud of NZ First on election day.
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Hard News: Our own fake news, in reply to R A Hurley,
Trump supporters know Trump lies. They just don’t care.
Or to put it another way: "If I can't have my whitebread 1950s America, then let it burn!"
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Hard News: Our own fake news, in reply to Dylan Reeve,
It’s amazingly visible with Trump stuff at the moment. Supporters see media stories about Trump as evidence that their belief in a compromised mainstream media is real. The more the media pushes, the more they are convinced that it’s a battle.
When conspiracy theorists are confronted with facts that contradict their ideas they classify it a government controlled disinformation, and the fact that the government is trying so hard to convince they world there’s no conspiracy is evidence that they are clearly onto something.
It’s fucking amazing!
Case in point: Trump's insistence the Central Park 5 should have been executed, even after they were acquitted and another man found guilty; and the Obama birther-ism.
If Trump does actually get impeached, odds are that it'll be a stab-in-the-back myth to his loyalists. What would be the Trumpist equivalent of invading Poland or annexing the Sudeten Mountains?
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Hard News: Barclay and arrogance, in reply to Dennis Frank,
When the structure of our government allows a member of parliament to retain their seat after breaking the law and lying to their local party colleagues to deny having done so, and lying to the media about what they told the Parliamentary Service, there's something fundamentally rotten in our democracy. That problem requires a permanent fix.
A Royal Commission would be just the starting point.
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Hard News: Grenfell: a signal moment, in reply to Bart Janssen,
The nanny state exists because things like this happened in the past and the only thing that stopped them then was the intervention of socialist governments. We know from history that businesses and unrestrained markets will be abused and people, usually poor people, will die.
As I mentioned upthread, Grenfell could well be British Thatcherism's Winter of Discontent moment.
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The Hillsborough Stadium disaster was the year after. Police fed false stories defaming the football fans to compliant media: most notably The Sun. It was only last year that a second coroner's inquest finally found that the crush had been caused by gross negligence on the part of the police and that supporters were not to blame at all. Ninety six people had died.
And as a result of the fake stories, Liverpudlians rightly declared The Sun persona non grata in their city.
This feels like a signal moment in the history of a country. I realise the Queen's not going to go over to Downing Street and relieve Theresa May of the keys to the nation. But Britain can not and must not go on like this.
It could well be the mirror image of the 1978-79 Winter of Discontent, where Britain's trade unions were seen to have pushed their luck. In the case of Grenfell, it's the British rentier class which has pushed its luck.
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I've only just noticed the UKIP vote was divided up between Jeremy Corbyn and Theresa May. I'm guessing the economically anxious wing of UKIP flocked to Corbyn while the culturally anxious went to May. The few who have both types of anxieties weren't enough to keep UKIP in the House of Commons - pity it's the same kind of dual-anxiety that's in the White House right now.
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Theresa May thinks she's Thatcher 2.0, but history might look back at her as Ted Heath 2.0. It may not be long before 1974 makes both of its presences felt again.
United Kingdom general election, February 1974
United Kingdom general election, October 1974 -
Hard News: Interesting Britain!, in reply to Rob Stowell,
It runs into two immediate problems: it clearly won't be accepted by many of the 'brexit means brexit' crowd. And it's far from clear the rest - or any - of the EU would go along with it.
But it is a position :) and possibly now the best hope.
[ets - lots here http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/politicsandpolicy/soft-brexit-soft-landing-interpreting-labours-brexit-strategy/ but I haven't time to read itThe Brexit vote can be roughly divided into 3 distinct camps:
D. Those rejecting the EU's prevailing economics but accepting, at least to some extent, the social dimension (many Laboure supporters)
E. Those rejecting both (quintessentially UKIP)
F. Those comfortable with many of the EU's economic provisions, if only they could easily exit the Social Chapter (Conservative)
