Posts by Kumara Republic
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Polity: Bridges swims in troubled waters, in reply to Sacha,
not McCarten’s role. Labour do have a political advisor and a comms advisor now, but seem to be deluded that they can stay quiet until a year before the election like in the old days.
Indeed. Like it or hate it, politics is now a 24/7 cycle like news media.
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Polity: Bridges swims in troubled waters, in reply to Sacha,
The meme has been deliberately pushed on advice of CrosbyTextor and other backroom operators – and has not been resisted by the equivalent people on the left. Strategic comms seems to have eluded Labour in particular for many years and i have no idea why they have done nothing to rectify that.
Maybe it’s a ‘nice guys finish last’ thing?
Matt McCarten is the only name that comes to mind, but even then he’s not exactly a Lynton Crosby of the Left. If one even exists in the first place. And Godwinning aside, 'Red Ken' Livingstone had a point when be compared Crosby with Goebbels.
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Envirologue: Swamp Monsters – the…, in reply to Lilith __,
I don’t know if cute publicity stunts work against flagrant corruption though. I’m freakin scared.
Something Yes Men or Chasers-grade?
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Envirologue: Swamp Monsters – the…, in reply to Katharine Moody,
Anarchist activism – it’s the only way when those supposed to uphold the law refuse to do so. There’s even a new academic journal devoted to it;
Does that include monkeywrenching? There are times when pitchforks simply aren’t enough.
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Envirologue: Swamp Monsters – the…, in reply to tussock,
And it’s not like you can really complain when the chief beneficiary is a senior minister of crown, and favorite of the police. I mean, was that man even assaulted? It’s not like anyone was charged.
It’s not far removed from how Sir Joh operated when he ran Queensland in the 1970s & 80s. And it took an investigation into police corruption to bring him down. The way things are going, Justice Fitzgerald – the man who headed the inquiry against Sir Joh – might have to be dragged out of retirement and flown here to investigate. And while we're at it, we might need Justice Leveson of Britain as well.
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Polity: Bridges swims in troubled waters, in reply to izogi,
I think after the last election I’m just resigned to a realisation that stuff like actual genuine integrity and honesty, or lack of it, doesn’t affect elections on its own.
Unless of course, power, corruption and lies cause some kind of Chernobyl or Fukushima to happen, whether it's with nuclear reactors or financial institutions. The one good thing to come from the original Chernobyl was that it was far too big for the Kremlin to spin, and proved to be the knockout blow for the Soviet Union. For us, it may or may not be a housing bubble burst.
And I suspect that a lot of people who do care have given up altogether, because they feel it's not making a difference. It's even more the case in countries where the dominant choices are either centre-Right (including social democrat parties that have had to go Blue to stay relevant) or hard Right, like in the States or Britain.
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Environmental factors aside, this is the kind of stuff we expect to see in banana republics. It's reminiscent of what Shell Oil and the Abacha military junta was doing in Nigeria's Ogoni Delta.
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Polity: Bridges swims in troubled waters, in reply to Matthew Hooton,
But pretty much nobody cares.
Or if they do care, do they only care about corruption if they’re missing out on the gains?
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Polity: Unity, success: Chicken, egg?, in reply to Marc C,
The smart arses that preach about “hard work”, about “saving”, and about them having made it a few decades ago, they conveniently ignore, that we have a totally different situation on the real estate market. It was not that hard to climb the housing ladder in the 1960s, 1970s and even 1980s, as there was largely only LOCAL demand, by then less unequal working and earning New Zealanders and less migrants.
They forgot to tell us, "Terms & conditions may apply."
In a genuine free market system, honest hard work is the key to success. But with apologies to James Shaw, we no longer have a free market system - it's mutated into a neo-feudal system, where the keys to success are connections, inherited wealth and narcissism.
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I can see the headlines now: "Bridges burns bridges over bridges"