Four Rhymes Inspired By “Hit & Run”
Four Rhymes Inspired By “Hit & Run”
Chris Trotter
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Us and Them: The Fatal Divisions of Exploitative Culture
OURS IS NOT JUST A RAPE CULTURE: it’s a Kill Culture, a Rip-off Culture and a Lie Culture as well. But, rather than attempting to reconcile ourselves to living in a multiplicity of malign cultures, it is probably more helpful to think of ourselves as inhabiting a single Exploitative Culture. One in which human-beings are consistently treated as means to another’s end – not as ends in themselves.
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Nothing To Them. Tim Keating hits back at “Hit & Run”
In the words of Jon Stephenson: “Is [NZDF Chief] Tim Keating really saying there were two raids using identical aircraft, in identical places with identical commandos, that left behind identical munitions in that one village, then [in] a village two kilometres south? Seriously?”
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Not Being Venezuela: The Political Logic of the Labour/Green “Budget Responsibility Rules”.
FOR THOSE WHO THINK Labour and the Greens are being too cautious, economically-speaking, I have only one word: “Venezuela”. Andrew Little may not resemble Hugo Chavez in the slightest. Nor are Labour and the Greens, by any stretch of the imagination, Bolivarian revolutionaries. But, to hear the Right tell the story, New Zealanders are being courted by dangerously left-wing political parties.
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New Zealand’s First “Revenge Raid” – Surafend, Palestine, 1918
The shocking events described by Nicky Hager and Jon Stephenson in Hit and Run: The New Zealand SAS in Afghanistan and the Meaning of Honour are not without precedent in the history of New Zealand’s military engagements overseas. In the tiny Palestinian village of Surafend, in the final days of 1918, New Zealand troops participated in what was indisputably a serious war crime. The parallels with the SAS “Revenge Raid” of August 2010 are striking.
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“Once Was Enough, Gareth.” – Why I won’t be voting for TOP
Fuck it, I’ve seen enough. Morgan’s shown himself to be just another latter-day Procrustes*. If the TOP man has his way, New Zealand and New Zealanders will, once again, be “restructured” to fit the ideologically-determined dimensions of Morgan’s Procrustean bed.
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NZ’s “Non-Negotiable” Mythology: Deconstructing The Dairy Industry’s Latest Propaganda Campaign
NEW ZEALAND’S DAIRY INDUSTRY was recently compared to the NRA. A better comparison would be the United States oil industry. Like the National Rifle Association the US oil industry’s lobbying power is legendary. To set one’s face against either group is generally considered to be career suicide – especially if you’re a career politician.
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Why is the Neoliberal Establishment so Pissed-Off with Bill English?
IT’S DIFFICULT TO AVOID THE IMPRESSION that the neoliberal establishment is very pissed-off with Bill English. His handling of the NZ Superannuation issue has been an unmitigated disaster from beginning to end. The media wasn’t briefed. National’s surrogates in academia and the business community weren’t primed. The public was not prepared.
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A Gut Feeling
AM I GUILTY of wishful thinking, or are the times really a-changing? If I still took any notice of opinion polls, the answers, respectively, would be “Yes” and “No”. There is, as yet no empirical evidence of a major shift in electoral allegiances. Unfortunately, in these times, that sort of data only seems to become available after the electoral picture has been radically defaced.
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Dorkland, Dorkland Über Alles!
PLEASE NOTE: This is satire. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or to real events, is entirely accidental.