Posts by Angus Robertson
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Bruce,
Thanks, its easy as piss though. All you have to do is disengage brain and make 3 to 6 correlations.
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You're channelling rightwingtalkingpoints.com right?
Noting the positive effect of reforms supported by, amoung many others, the Chinese Communist party, Congress of India and the ANC is very rarely seen as "channelling rightwingtalkingpoints.com". The reforms are international phenomena, widely supported because of the positive effects they confer.
How many time does the woman need to repeat that she's not against globalisation before her Sunday critics stop claiming that she is?
If she ceases descibing reforms toward free markets are an evil blight upon world driven by a cabal of war-mongering American corporate imperialists. In other words, not this month.
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Seriously, have you guys bothered to read her books?
I have read articles of her's online, not the books. They have a consistent theme.
The problem for Naomi is over 800 million people within developing nations have been freed from grinding hand to mouth subsistance poverty by themselves reforming to increase market participation. Naomi Klein's basic claim - this poverty reduction is a disaster.
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Naomi Klein - the Ann Coulter of the fundamentalist left?
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Naomi Klein has an angle and a customer base to cater to:
Chait writes that after the terrorist attacks of 2001, Klein, the author of No Logo, "went through the transition from intellectual guru of the movement against Starbucks to intellectual guru of the movement against the Pentagon, and came away as influential as ever."
Heh, technically true. Klein has been equally not at all influential in terms of slowing corporate expansion as slowing pentagon budgets. However she has sold a lot of books providing the "awareness" readers are being "exploited".
The Shock Doctrine, he says, "has a single, uncomplicated explanation for everything that ails us*.
* The "us" refers to the nice middle class American types who buy Naomi Klein's schtick, shop in whole grain stores and have been ailled by soy latte prices. It certainly does not refer to the 800 million third worlders who have been lifted out of subsistance poverty over the same time period.
It identifies the fundamental driving force of the last three decades to be the worldwide spread of free-market absolutism as it was formulated by Milton Friedman and the department of economics at the University of Chicago.
Except that free-market absolutism has not been applied anywhere within that time period. What has occured has been marginal reform in the direction of greater market freedom. However the most critical thing for Klein is not reality, but that marginal reform in the direction of free trade is favoured by Republicans (mostly nice middle class American types who do not buy Klein's schtick) who are couched in radical terms possible to create a threat or evil.
And yet, as he notes, the idea "that crises create fertile terrain for political change, far from being a ghoulish doctrine unique to free-market radicals, is a banal and ideologically universal fact.
Crises can be invented for all kinds of reasons - "if it bleeds it leads" is a cynicism said of TV, but also effective to sell books.
But she may have committed the fatal mistake of believing her enemies are far cleverer than they really are.
At worst she has extrapolated a competent, evil, fanatical enemy bent on world domination for nefarious ends from a few factoids gleaned whilst selectively ignoring contradicting evidence. This is hardly "fatal", quite the opposite - she sells well.
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Lets see if we can't restore some trans-Tasman balance by beating them tonight!
Amen to that, go the Magic.
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No, he had a crap game because he gave away the ball nearly every time he received it. Literally.
That was predestined.
He is a line breaker, but that isolates him from the support and it takes good loose forward cover to get to him to secure the next phase. They had far better loose forwards. He needed to either not charge the line, hold on in the tackle or look to pass - second two options give the ball away and the first is silly.
He had solid games against the Boks, made suitable impact. But their loose trio are less mobile and they played a more structured game.
Good player, wrong game.
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Why the...
Why was Braid replaced in the 50th minute?
Up until that point the game was messy with lots of turnovers which seemed to be a trend, because afterwards it was messy with lots of turnovers - pity we didn't have an openside.
Our refusal to kick it out meant multiple phases left forwards in the defensive line, so breaks occured in the midfield which could have been remedied by cover from the ruck - pity we didn't have an openside.
Our halfback was injured which removed our quickest ruck based player, we substituted off the second quickest.
Why did we not change "THE PLAN"?
We play a wide ranging game structured to incorporate a world class number 7 (which is great when McCaw plays). Unfortunately McCaw was not available and someone called G. Smith plays for Australia (Note to Graham Henry - he's quite good). We played a game plan ideally suited to the world's best (fit) number 7, who plays for Australia. This seemed stupid.
Stop bashing on Sione.
Sione Lauaki is a very good player, he is ideally suited to breaking structured defences and providing defence close to the ruck. He was asked to sub for openside flanker in a game where we did not take line-outs, they did not take scrums and their loose forwards turned the ball over too quickly for the defence to set. He truly had a crap game, because our coach put him on as a game breaker for a play structure that Did Not Exist.
Start bashing Graham Henry.
Seriously bad.
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someone needs to do a similar venn diagram for Labour and its acolytes and their scandals, and those of their support parties
Easy enough.
Substitute G.W. Bush with Tony Blair, Dick Cheney with Gordon Brown, Alberto Gonzales with Lord Goldsmith, Karl Rove with Tom Kelly and anglicise other names on whim. Change DOJ Firing to BAE Investigation, DOJ Hiring to Knighthoods, CIA Tapes to Dr Kelly/Yellowcake, but leave Wiretapping and Coercive Interrogation as is.
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A small tip to the Nats: to indicate how gravely you view the situation it might be useful to refer to the gentleman in question (as TV One News did) as “the Foreign Minister” rather than “Winston Peters“.
No, they need to keep this as Winston Peters because:
The latter suggests same-old same-old deja-vu blah-blah about controversial Winston...
...is now directly supported, loved and adopted by Helen Clark.
If National can frame the election as John Key vs Helen Clark/Winston Peters it becomes no lose and they will win in Tauranga.