Posts by Angus Robertson
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Hard News: Media3: The Maori Media Man, in reply to Craig Ranapia,
And don't forget when two men disagree they're public intellectuals.
Huh, really?
When two atheists disagree it is definitive proof of the majesty of God.
When two anti-war activists disagree it is proof that appeasement will always fail and we can't lets the terrorists win.
When [feminists] do, it's a bitch-slapping cat fight over feminism's zombie corpse!
Same shit generic meme, different channel.
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Hard News: "Because we can", in reply to Sacha,
The 1% succeed when they privatise profits and socialise risks.
This article deals with only half the problem.
Stiglitz puts it this way, "We've been shaping our society to create people who are more selfish." Increasingly, policies are created by the richest 1%, and for the richest 1%. Their interests are placed first, through globalization, privatization, deregulation and insanely expensive political campaigns.
Stiglitz fails by ignoring the problems of socialism.
In the past 5 years the world has socialised $trillions upon $trillions of bad losses made by mega rich too-big-to-fail banking conglomerates, because - according to apologists - they "must prosper for us to prosper".
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Salman Rushdie was pretty good on last night's Daily Show with Jon Stewart. Defend their right to make a movie, while calling them an arsehole for doing it.
Salman Rushdie has provoked the killing of a lot of people.
He was great. It’s a shame he couldn't speak for longer.
Yeah he is.
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Hard News: "Because we can", in reply to DexterX,
The motherjones link is a hidden camera sting of Romney talking to a bunch of very wealthy donors where he is telling them what thay want to hear, like any politician does. Its a smear of the type normally used in the last few days of a campaign, when it can't be mitigated - by the time the election rolls round this will mean nothing.
The only reason it has come out this week is that Obama's foreign policy needs a distraction now. The Libyan military intervention has been so unsuccessful that the people of Benghazi spent a day dragging the corpse of the US ambassodor around the streets.
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Well, that explains how the government might help. It doesn't answer the moral question of why it's proper to threaten beneficiaries with financial sanctions for the good of their children, but not WFF recipients. It would be no more difficult to make WFF support conditional in the same way as the benefits will be now. It would simply be vastly less popular.
If you are getting WFF you are not in regular contact with social welfare and you have independent sources of income, the government can't easily find out what you are doing or effectively threaten your income.
It would be much more expensive and vastly less effective.
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The advice from Minister Guy, at the end of the story, is almost laughable. We've not had this problem but we need to be prepared for it. Precisely why?
Have you seen the boats used for people smuggling?
The boats are crap, the owners know the boats are going to be confiscated on arrival and so use a least cost possible approach. These boats have difficulty making the sub-100 nm journeys from Indonesia to Australia.
Its a good idea to get this kind of draconian law in place, because we emphatically do not want people to undertake 3000 + nm boat trips here in unseaworthy tubs.
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Hard News: We ... WHAT!?, in reply to Russell Brown,
Now that I have a moment, can I just say that I am very glad the PM didn't say what he was officially alleged to have said? Phew.
Supporting American run conflicts is a longstanding strategic interest for NZ. Doesn't matter if the politicians say it or not, we can look forward to being supportive next time.
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Done the way it has been in various US states, medical cannabis does, undoubtedly (and as its critics point out) weaken prohibition overall.
No, what it does is make it really easy for the prohibitionists to imprison people. The paperwork is all there and the criminals are gauranteed not to be dangerous.
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You don't regulate social sanction, you do so by empowering people (and disempowering those who actively harm). Those kinds of conditions can be created under prohibition, but they're not created by prohibition.
The social sanction is are prevented from occuring by prohibition.
Cannabis is a low priced, discretionary purchase that causes an enjoyable effect and is potentially harmful. Its the sort of product that is naturally appealing to young adults and older teenagers.
Under prohibition sellers go to the people who find their product most appealing, because there lie the biggest profits. And because teenagers are really unlikely to be cops there is another reason to target them even more than adults.
Only if a floor of 18 years old was put in place could we start to see the positive social sanctions we want. Sellers would be able to profit only if they didn't target teenagers and policing would be geared the same way.
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The police in Colorado appear to raid illicit marijuana operations with some gusto -- but they have to be careful to only take a little leaf for testing, in case it's claimed that the crop is being legally grown for medical use.
The "state legal" drug dispensaries aren't legal under federal law and they are being shut down.