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Armed intervention for unilateral geopolitical reasons, without any long-term coherent gameplan eg: Russia in Chechnya, the Cuba and South Africa in Angola, the US in Iraq, etc ad nauseam, DOESN”T WORK!
It’s like treating TB or Typhus by bleeding the patient with an unsterilised knife. It’s a new century folks. Let’s stop with the gunboat diplomacy and get a little smarter here.
Nabakov

Eye on Politics & Law Lords: The rise of the independents
To IMAGINE politics without parties is like trying to imagine Australian football without teams. Politics just is the game played out by rival parties, and anyone who tries to play politics in some way entirely independent of parties consigns herself to irrelevance. That situation had undoubtedly changed by the time of the 2001 federal election, which was contested by no fewer than 29 registered political parties – only three of whom secured representation in the House of Representatives – but which saw three independents elected, the largest number to succeed at a single federal poll for decades.
· 2004 shaping Hung Parliament [ via Mr Oakeshott, MP for Port Macquarie and a defector from the Nationals]
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