Tag South Korea

Prefer more than a caricature of North Korea?

Look no fur­ther than Media Lens:

How much do you know about the increased polit­ical ten­sions on the Korean pen­in­sula? The answer, even for dili­gent read­ers of the main­stream press, is likely to be ‘not much’. In place of ser­i­ous, pen­et­rat­ing ana­lysis the pub­lic has been sold a car­toon ver­sion of events based on a well-worn pro­pa­ganda tem­plate. It is a tale spun by journ­al­ists who appear to know little of the real issues and who have inter­n­al­ised the key rules of ‘bal­anced’ report­ing: do not point the fin­ger of blame at your own gov­ern­ment (or its allies), and do not ques­tion your government’s demon­isa­tion of offi­cial enemies (learn noth­ing from the past).

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Free-market ideology is dead

Free-market ideo­logy is dead, and none too soon:

The pat­tern is clear: gov­ern­ments that respond to a crisis cre­ated by free-market ideo­logy with an accel­er­a­tion of that same dis­cred­ited agenda will not sur­vive to tell the tale.

I just hope the same can be said for New Zealand.