Posts by Kumara Republic
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Sativex has always come across as an example of big companies monopolising the market, with the full collusion of prohibitionist-leaning lawmakers.
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Speaker: Broadcasting and the Public Interest, in reply to Dylan Reeve,
I doubt there's any perfect solution to this... Ideally we'd have had a true public broadcaster for the last 50 years and it would have grown and developed in the way the BBC and ABC have over that time.
Sadly the ABC appears to have been corrupted.
https://newmatilda.com/2016/07/06/decades-of-conservative-pressure-on-the-abc-are-paying-off/
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Speaker: Confessions of an Uber Driver…, in reply to BenWilson,
Has parody turned to farce? We were joking about flying cars and Ubers last year as like the next level of ridiculous. Nek minnit, it’s what they’re claiming. Should we start a pool on the next technology? Add to this list:
-Uber Hover cars for competing with ferries
-Uber plus Rocket Labs = taking the international flight industry by storm delivering passengers via suborbital hops
-Uber Cryo – take a one way trip to the future by putting your body on ice
-Uber Tardis – why stop at only going forward in time?
-Uber Teleport – Transmit your body to your destination without even needing to pull out your credit carUber Hitman – if anyone's giving you trouble, dirty deeds really are done dirt cheap.
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Hard News: Burning down the house to…, in reply to Craig Ranapia,
As I’ve said to you many many times, Russell, I haven’t considered the GOP (or most of their supporters) anything but right-wing radicals for many many years. Conservatives conserve, Trumpets don’t even have a firm grasp on what they’re trying to burn to the ground.
Trumpsters and other alt-Reich fellas could be likened to those who loot during a riot. And how far can the GOP jump off the deep end, before someone in The Hague classifies them as a terrorist organisation?
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Hard News: Burning down the house to…, in reply to Farmer Green,
That's putting it mildly. The invective is stepping up, more than a notch:
Lest we forget that Kurt Schlichter outdid himself when he pulled a Godwin on pro-Obama/Kerry Jews, and the Auschwitz Memorial called bollocks on him.
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As I’ve noted previously, the Gallup and Pew studies of Trump voters leading up to the election found that they were, by and large, economically secure – and that their considerable unease with immigrants was cultural rather than economic.
I’m one of those experiencing genuine economic anxiety – as opposed to “economic anxiety” as an excuse for borderline neo-Fascism – and yet I’m fully aware that Brexit and Trump will likely make things worse by raising the drawbridges instead of putting a “New New Deal” on the table. The Fortress USA/UK approach refuses to acknowledge that if/when the jobs do come back, the jobs will probably be done by robots. Even in China it’s happening.
NZ Labour is making all the right noises about the “Future of Work”, now if they actually do manage to get their shit together and not pander to the lowest common denominator, I may have a chance to escape the dead end rut. Because the status quo is more of the same inspiration porn and motivational snake oil.
PS. US voters who are actually economically anxious still voted Hillary over Donald, though with a thinner margin than Obama in 2008/12. Much of the Rust Belt stayed home in disillusionment.
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Hard News: The next four years, in reply to Ian Dalziel,
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/feb/05/donald-trump-lies-belief-totalitarianism
Interesting article, but worth remembering that Nick Cohen clings to the increasingly outmoded 'radical middle'. He still justifies the 2nd Gulf War with little concept of blowback, instead continuing to bang on about 'self-hating Westerners' and other 'regressive Leftists'. And like other radical middle types, he seems to downplay the economic distress factor that's partly behind Brexitrump.
That said, Cohen has a point about Brexitrump "compulsive believers". Going by past history, it has often taken ruinous world events to de-program compulsive believers - Hiroshima and Berlin in 1945, Chernobyl in 1986, and so forth. The Great Recession could have been a chance to implement a 'New New Deal' of sorts, instead there was a Weimar-type leadership void that illiberal (but not yet Fascist) strongmen have been too happy to fill.
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Hard News: The next four years, in reply to BenWilson,
Comparisons with the rise of fascism in the 1930s are very premature. These people are not nearly as organized or powerful as the Nazis, nor is America anywhere near as angry as the German people were during that time, nor is ANY country actually belligerent towards them. They have not been vanquished in war and crushed under decades of sanctions. Everything that's happened to them, they did to themselves.
So far, American Rust Belt decline isn't the hyperinflation of Weimar Germany, and the Great Recession isn't the Great Depression... yet. At this stage, Trump's America is indeed more like Berlusconi's Italy, Erdogan's Turkey or even Putin's Russia at best. If Trump is comparable to any historical Fascist leader, it'd be either Mussolini or General Franco.
And Richard J Evans has his 2c on the Brexitrump political tsunami.
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Hard News: The next four years, in reply to Fen Tex,
As time goes by I am depressed to see many people do think they are. While I groan at every utterance of "Leader of the free world" quite a few people do seem to see the world in terms of a U.S led alliance they are citizens of.
And it seems to me in their minds it is a Anglo-Saxon alliance that has moral right to lead.
Remember that Newshub poll on NZers' 2016 presidential preferences? NZ Firsters' large-ish support for Trump is a given, but that poll didn't mention ACT or the Conservatives, who I suspect would have been right up there.
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Hard News: Taxpayers' Union: still…, in reply to Brian Murphy,
I see that for some reason David Farrar and Jordan Williams are reheating this.
How long will it be before they start playing the George Soros card?