Written By: lprent - Date published: 8:54 am, January 11th, 2021 - 21 comments
Reading the effect of the Wednesday riot at the US Congress has been interesting. The Trump position has as usual been as infantile and self-adsorbed as all of his disaster of a presidency has been. The Republican politicians have been been more nuanced. But it looks to me like they would like to not rely on cheeseburgers to stop Donald Trump running again in 2024.
Sanctuary 2.1.1
Yes, and the state of our Navy ought to be a national scandal and a matter in urgent need of remediation.
High attrition and chronic skills shortages means we have two aging frigates with barely enough sailors to fully crew one of them to combat readiness, ships spending long periods in harbour due to manning issues, while the RNZN s poor spending of limited funds (Politicians in NZ largely leave the purchasing decisions to public sector technocrats. The NZDF has a very poor procurement record, look at the EH-101 helicopters, the P-8 purchase and the money wasted on the LAVs) means that the four inshore patrol vessels that only came into service in 2009 have basically been a giant waste of public money, pretty much just swinging on the anchor since around 2012.
Non-resident Scholar
Originally from Aleppo, Syria, Dr. Karam Shaar has lived for 12 years in Saudi Arabia, Malaysia, and New Zealand, spending four years in each. He is particularly interested in Syria’s political economy. His writings on the subject have been published in the Middle East Institute, The Aleppo Project, Carnegie Middle East Center, and the Atlantic Council. He has been quoted by Syria Direct, CNBC, PRI-BBC, Forethought and Al-Arabiya. Karam was active in his support for democratic reforms in the first year of the Syrian uprising (2011-12), but he later fled the country and continued his activism from abroad.
millsy 2.2
Muldoon refused to devalue the NZ Dollar under the instructions of the incoming Labour government, instead proposing a joint statement ruling out devaluation. However he backed down after his cabinet or caucus threatened to, in the case of the former, resign en masse/ask the GovGen to sack him and in the case of the latter, remove him as leader of the National Party. There are conflicting rumours. He was fine with going, he just didnt want to devalue.
Adrian 3
I very much doubt that Trump has the codes. In his last unhinged weeks Nixon’s red button or phone ( I can’t remember which ) was apparently hooked up to a cupboard in the WH kitchen, it could ring but nobody could hear it. As I recall it was in a book or interview with a senior military person about 20 years ago. The American military might be a lot of things but the very senior people are not stupid.
From breaches of the movement control order to theft of public funds, the general feeling among Malaysians is that the well-heeled and well-connected seem to get away with such offences easily.
IT may be a cold, wet start to 2021 but the heat is rapidly rising in our ever-sweltering political scene amid the unveiling of a sizzling new scandal involving the smuggling in of questionable quality meat and labelling it as halal.
The well-connected syndicate has allegedly been bribing senior officers from the Customs Department and several government bodies to import meat from non-halal certified slaughterhouses in China, Brazil, Bolivia, Canada, Colombia, Spain and Mexico.