Now, I hesitate in the extreme to term The Herald’s John Roughan a “genius”. Yet every time I read one of his more “ideological” columns, that sort of sentiment seems to spring to mind. A sort of more-cynical/paranoid version of the famed ‘Hanlon’s Razor’ – “never attribute to malice, that which can adequately be explained by stupidity”.
On the one hand, attempting to blame every little thing on “The Clintons” and/or some other, further elite conspiracy efforts … as hilarious as it can be, is often overtly ridiculous. On the *other* hand … Jeffrey Epstein somehow managing to kill himself *while on suicide watch* following his previous attempt, allegedly via hanging, suggests that *at minimum* there’s been some almost unbelievable incompetence by his jailers.
Watching the course of developments around Ihumatao over the past few months, it is hard to escape the sensation that something extraordinary has happened. What would, some decades ago, perhaps have been written off as a “Maori” issue by much of New Zealand – and consequentially, disparaged, denied, and turned into a pit of talkback-radio excoriation – has in fact managed to attain broad support from across the community.
It has been said by political minds far more astute than my own [read: pretty much every candidate going into today’s 1st Democratic Primary debate] that a ‘win’ here is securing ‘cut-through’. Standing out from amidst the crowded, twenty-candidate field and managing to reach out through the television-camera’s silvery lense to make that all-important connection with the ordinary American voter on the other side of the screen.
You ever get the feeling that your news media’s attempting to push a particular narrative that’s … not really all that concerned with the truth?
Here’s something potentially rather interesting. You know that 17 year old Dutch teenager whom an appreciably large proportion of just about everybody’s newsfeed and/or Letters To The Editor section is jumping up and down about? The one apparently legally euthanized, and therefore how terrible a thing legal euthanasia is we can’t have it here?
Well, apparently … that’s not actually what happened at all.
So I see King Salman of Saudi Arabia’s kicked off Saudi’s chairmanship of the OIC by demanding that the world (and the Muslim world in particular), get tough on the supporters and enablers of terrorism. The country-level supporters, financiers, directors and enablers of terrorism.
So holdup … the National Party is attempting to make a big deal out of the person whose photo’s on the cover of 2019 Budget having moved to Australia at some point in the past few years, yeah?
Back in 2012, when the Ministry of Social Development made a whole swathe of highly sensitive information about its clients and operations (including case-notes, personal details of at-risk children, medical records, legal paperwork etc. etc etc.) available to literally anyone who walked off the street into a WINZ office and used a self-service kiosk, I don’t think I recalled Paula Bennett appearing behind the National Leader of the day to demand that the minister in question responsible resign forthwith?
The overwhelming impression one gets when looking over the Nats’ Budget pre-game, then, is very much the same as that which we’ve had by looking at them in Opposition these past eighteen months all up.