Should NZ & Canada forge a new leadership for the West?
Beyond all the domestic challenges Jacinda faces is an International platform for genuine global leadership begging for her to step up to.
Is it time with Australia’s disgraceful treatment of New Zealander’s and their grotesque refugee solution and rampant racism to look for new mates in what has become a toxic and dysfunctional relationship?
While England retreats within itself and risks self implosion over Brexit and with an Orange Fascist in the White House for the foreseeable future, is it time for New Zealand to seek a new relationship and partner to lead the cause for liberal progressive democracies?
When there is so little hope, how symbolic and powerful would a brand new economic, cultural and political relationship with Canada be?
We have so much in common with our indigenous populations, our progressive politics and our role in 5 Eyes.
Annual cultural events in both countries seeking to connect deeply with one another, free trade agreements and a partnership of co-operation. Jacinda and Trudeau could champion refugee rights, cannabis reform, indigenous rights, environmental rights and social justice rights at a time when the planet has lost leadership because Trump has abdicated it.
NZ and Canada have a lot in common, we are both neighbours to a larger country who is an arsehole and whom we get mistaken for, we have similar dynamics and mutual cultural elements.
If we won’t champion for the progressive West, who will?
Is it time for Jacinda and Trudeau to step up?
This plan will only work if it is run by Expert Age of Empires 3 players?
Well, the world is now a bit different place than Pre colonial America was so I’m not sure that’s a good analogy but cement, Lumber & Steel will make our nations great again. Problem is, how would factories remain competitive while paying workers a decent wage, keeping in line with all the safety and environmental regulations, coming up with a non political alternative to Canadian tar sand oil mining *cough*, and making a profit with the major players of that market manipulating that market for their benefit and competing for market share. It can work, provided that the right areas are chosen, the right industry and the right level of support.
Its pretty much evolution of the mind. The best ideas are input into a system and individuals are rewarded for novel ideas. This is how the world works and any leader that wants success for their country must keep this in mind. 90% of all new businesses fail, and entering super competitive fields with people that have no experience in it, limited military capacity, New Zealand still bludgers off of the Australian security umbrella and Canada still bludgers off the American security umbrella.
Undercutting America would work if they didn’t have a financial system that could absolutely crush New Zealand. But if for example the goal of increasing production capacity wasn’t to make a profit per se, but its goal was maximizing production funded by deficit borrowing. Sure, building productive capacity isn’t unique, but I think it adequately conveys the scale in which underhanded and secret activities are conducted by governments across the globe, with impunity. We don’t just want to respect Canada, as far as treaties go there isn’t much else to be squeezed out of a revised prenuptial between Canada and New Zealand.
Canada has an appalling environmental record -particularly that relating to the extraction of pseudo-oil from tar sands- which has been made a lot worse by the Trudeau administration. If it is not the worst directly-man-made global environmental disaster on Earth, it certainly ranks extremely highly. What was once a life-filled verdant forest is now a gooey moonscape of sludge and toxins. And pipelines this muck (diluted with imported solvents) are thrust across the landscape -with government backing- against the wishes of indigenous people.
https://www.bing.com/images/search?view=detailV2&ccid=FSbNxHUj&id=CB603D58283C24556ECF49E7894CC25CAD94787A&thid=OIP.FSbNxHUjMAsOCMBMYrw_DAHaE-&mediaurl=http%3a%2f%2fwww.ctstbm.com%2ffile%2f2016%2f09%2f31.jpg&exph=615&expw=914&q=tar+sand+extraction&simid=607991668815825623&selectedIndex=16&ajaxhist=0
And it is worth noting, yet again, that trade is very much part of the problem -all those diesel-powered ships going back and forth transporting stuff most people do not need, and spewing CO2 and toxins into the atmosphere, or aircraft spewing directly into the higher atmosphere- and can never be part of the solution to our numerous woes.
Sounds like a good idea.
The Canadians even have Pukeko’s !
Moorhen team building a nest in Canada Water – YouTube
Video for canadian moorhen you tube▶ 1:20
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pWO0f3spbbU
I’ve seen Trudeau described as being representative of “true-blue free-trade neoliberalism with a dash of socially progressive measures”.
Which sounds very familiar.
https://www.jacobinmag.com/2016/09/justin-trudeau-unions-environment-arms-saudi-arabia
as for Trudeau and Israel, I’m sure if it was Trump making these statements we’d all be tut tutting and drawing hilarious cartoons..
https://twitter.com/justintrudeau/status/1001631577363959809?lang=en
https://pm.gc.ca/eng/news/2018/04/18/statement-prime-minister-israel-independence-day
Make the dolls play kissy kissy eh martyn. Inspiring stuff
Yay!
I’m old now, which means any ‘solutions’ you halfwits try will be irrelevant to me.
Dying words?
“Suck on it morons”…
“New leadership”? Not by staying in 5 Eyes!
I don’t see New Zealand getting out of 5is unless Russia can be brought into Europe. The first U.S president ever to want to do that is being accused of colluding with Russia so fuck. What ever.
totally agree Lois
Trudeau a “progressive”?
only as far as cost free LGBT,gay marriage and abortion goes.
He’s just as wedded to backing up the US/Israel hegemony and market fundamentalism as any of them
…yeah give it a go…they do look like brother and sister.
very weird.
I would not put much faith in a neoliberal Trudeau and soft neoliberal Jacinda coalition ‘leading’ a new western leadership.
It is BS, they are both appeasers and compromisers, they have little clout, an Trump can trump them with a Twitter tweet any time, and ignore them, so can any other leader in the west or elsewhere.
If you want a lesson on how brutal politics is, look at the Liberals in Australia right now, it is dog eat dog, and kill your enemy while you are at it, while using nice, diplomatic language.
The world is a nasty place, and the ‘leaders’ we have all over the show, they are mostly in it for their own vanity and arrogant projects, they care little about honesty, decency and the true well being of human kind.
Even Trudeau and Jacinda work with the corporations and business lobbies, they are NO change makers at all, just a nicer label on the same old stuffy good called capitalism.
Ah the darlings of liberalism all lines up to bugger working people right and proper. What a truly wonderful time we live in. When the left are right, and the right are all as crazy as bat shit.