30 March 2011

"Smartgrowth" is about trains

I've written extensively on this topic over the years - the crying waste of taxpayers' money being poured into little more than a dream, an ill-informed belief that Auckland's transport woes would be solved by an electric (now underground) railway.  It hooks into the same belief by planners that Auckland has to embrace the so-called "smartgrowth" or "new urbanism" philosophy, which is little more than a form of Soviet-style central planning and control upon the city - which has itself failed miserably in every New World city that has embraced it (and not delivered wonders for the old world ones either).

Not PC has been rightfully pointing out the fallacies behind this dogma, which at its essence is a belief that more people should fit into the same space, and that human aspirations for bigger homes, bigger gardens and more living space should be restricted ever increasingly, by stopping cities growing out, but encouraging them to grow up.  

I heard much propaganda around this when I was dealing with Ministry for the Environment and several planners in Auckland councils a few years ago.  They wanted in-fill development, they wanted high rise, they basically wanted less bedrooms and more people in residences.  Is that what you want?  It doesn't matter, because it is "good for the environment".  Why?  It almost entirely comes down to transport.

Planners in "new world cities" (cities outside Europe) have long bemoaned the predominance of the private car for most trips in cities and in particular most commuting trips.  Cars, you see, are bad because they clog up roads, emit nasty fumes and it is "unsustainable" to keep building new roads to meet demand (or new car parks).  (They ignore that cars today have the cleanest emissions than ever, but that is a diversion).   So do they ask questions as to why there is traffic congestion?  The simple fact that road use is priced the same regardless of demand, the fact that taxes collected from road users are frequently not allocated based on demand, but on politically driven imperatives?  No.  The planners are uninterested in economics, for they largely do not understand them.   They don't think that maybe peak time commuting would change if it cost more to drive then (and a lot less to drive at other times), they don't think that there could be innovative ways adopted by commercial road owners to get more capacity out of networks (e.g. intelligent systems for cars to operate in convoys in close formation).  No, they have a pet love affair with one thing only - mode shift - and it isn't to walking or cycling or even buses, it is trains.

You can see it in the Auckland Transport Blog, which has permeating throughout it this philosophy, a glorification of urban railways, a less interested concern in buses and a sneering hatred for the car and almost absent interest in roads at all or serious economics.   You see the blog administrator is a planner and he carries the philosophy he has been taught.

The main problem the railevangelists have is that one of the main reasons the car dominates is because with lots of people living in fully detached houses on sections, there aren't enough people within walking catchments to justify their pet dream - railways.   Railways need lots of people wanting to go to and from the same places at the same time.   New world cities don't have that, they have a lot of people heading in the same direction, but at both ends there are widely differing origins and destinations.   Urban rail projects in new world cities inevitably are not financially viable, because demand, especially off peak, isn't remotely enough to cover the costs of operating the services.

The planners want to change this.  They want you living on top of a railway station, or near it, or within walking distance at least.  With others.  So you might be in an apartment block, or in an adjoining block.  You see you need to live near lots of people doing that to make it "work" (not for you, the planners).   Want to build a new home outside urban limits? No.  That would be immoral, you might drive, you wont be supporting "your railway", and you never know where it might end, cities might sprawl forever!!

Of course it is nonsense.  The "smartgrowth" planners want you to have less living space, and consequently more noise, more shared spaces and to be near a railway so you drive less, then there will be less traffic, less pollution, less congestion and all will be better - except you wont be living where you want, because you can't afford the remaining low density homes (which are priced out of reach because supply is constrained), and traffic patterns wont have changed because you can't force businesses to locate where you want them.  They locate where it is best suited or they leave altogether or never start up.  Congestion wont have changed because the real issue is the price and supply of road space, which the planners have no interest in (other than a more recent interest in using road pricing to fund their rail fetish and penalise the bad cars). 

So yes, it is all about justifying the rail project.  It isn't about your needs at all.  If you want to see how effective it is in addressing transport needs you need look no further than Portland, the pin up city of the Smartgrowth evangelists, where public transport mode shares dropped.

So if it is about trains, wont they deliver wondrous dramatic improvements to travel around Auckland?

Well as I've said before:

- Only 12% of employment in Auckland is downtown.  The railway only exists on two main (plus one secondary and one small branch) corridors, more than half of those commuters wont be served.  On top of that the assumption is 28% of Aucklanders will live within 800m of a station by 2016, so maybe at best 4% of Auckland commuters will be served by the railway.  What about the other 96%?

- The average difference in travel time on roads will be less than 1km/h.  Whilst some rail users will transfer from cars, the effect will be hardly perceived by other road users. As a congestion busting strategy it will be an abject failure.  Largely because most people don't live near railway stations or work near them, which of course is why planners want to price you out of living away from them.

- Most of the trains will lie idle most of the time.  Over one billion in "assets" will be grossly under-utilised most of the day, and all weekends.  Only for two hours every rush hour will they all be used, mostly in one direction, for maybe three trips each, before being stabled to do nothing until a repeat performance in the evenings.

- Majority of rail users wont be motorists.  They will be existing rail users, existing bus users, people who rode with others in cars or people who wouldn't have travelled in the first place.  Maybe around a quarter would have driven, so it is a big subsidy to pay for people who would have used public transport anyway.

- Rail pushes out commercially viable buses.  Until the massive expenditure in rail, maybe half of bus  services in Auckland were unsubsidised and commercial.  Meeting the needs of those paying for them.  With heavily subsidised trains, these have been put out of business and the passengers ride trains without having to pay for more than a third of their operating costs.

- The money poured into the infrastructure can never be realised.  The Auckland rail network was valued by Treasury at a maximum of around NZ$20 million in 2001. It is having around NZ$1 billion poured into it.  Even if by some miracle it doubled in value, it is still a monumental destruction of wealth.  Even those who benefit directly from it are unwilling to pay fares to operate the trains, let alone contribute towards those mammoth fixed (and now sunk) costs.  

Right now, the railevangelists are demanding action on an underground rail loop because they believe Britomart will be congested after electrification, which hasn't even been completed yet.  They want planning for a North Shore railway when even the busway isn't remotely close to capacity.  

Electrification will happen, but it will prove to be a disappointment.  Yes rail patronage will go up, but so what?  Until rail passengers fully pay the operating costs of this dud, it will be a net economic drain on Auckland.  Parking, fuel and congestion charges shouldn't be used to prop it up.

However, roads do need to be treated differently.  The motorway network should be commercialised and sold, and the new owners allowed to charge whatever they like.  Then roads would not be so congested, money would be available to fix bottlenecks and maybe, just maybe, the rail network might prove some value.   Don't bet on the planners even considering this - for they are blinded by the lights of trains being good, not by achieving objectively determined results.

29 March 2011

Vandals and thugs are children of the Labour philosophy

UK Uncut, a radical leftwing protest group, has been exposed for what it really is - a bunch of young angry violence prone thugs who, as usual, misuse the term "peaceful protest" for "vandalism, trespass and intimidation".

It is they that formed the backbone to the breakaway protests in London on Saturday, and the cover for the so-called anarchists who went on a vandalism and trespass spree across London's West End.  I say "so-called anarchists" because if they really were anarchists, they wouldn't have wanted the Police to step in had the owners of the premises they trashed used force to defend their properties.

UK Uncut are an odd bunch, you see they want more government (not exactly aligned with anarchists then) and want more tax, so the government can spend more money, presumably on them. UK Uncut is waging war on successful British businesses because it wants to strongarm them to pay more in tax - not that any of them are alleged to be breaking the law - but UK Uncut doesn't think these businesses should arrange their affairs to minimise tax.  The philosophy being that when businesses make profits, the state is entitled to take part of that.

I can't quite understand how anyone, particularly groups of students can get excited about getting businesses to pay more tax, like they worship the state as big mother, which has weaned them and gives them what they want.  It's so anti-aspirational as to be pathetically sad.

Tim Worstall of the Institute of Economic Affairs has fisked this lot with ease, showing the economic illiteracy of UK Uncut.   UK Uncut assumes bizarrely that British companies would remain if taxes were raised dramatically, it assumes that when companies pay more tax that somehow that means that "rich fatcats" lose - when many of the companies have shareholders which are pension funds and the like, with profits shared among thousands of shareholders.   Full details of the fisking here.

However, the mob who vandalised are more than just disenchanted idiots.  They vandalised the Ritz Hotel because they were "anti-rich", they occupied the exclusive department store Fortnum & Mason; Mason because it is upmarket (one wit said "Proper Tea is theft", as Fortnum & Mason has an excellent tea section).  Banks including ATMs were wrecked because they just oppose banks.  Didn't matter that the banks attacked in some cases were not bailed out.   In fact nothing mattered other than trashing the property of businesses they had an ill-conceived prejudice against.  Nice.

However desperate the TUC and Labour are to distance themselves from these thugs, there is a more fundamental underlying point.  Whilst neither entity provoked or encouraged the vandalism (and both are embarrassed by it), the simple truth is that they all share the same philosophy - a fundamental hatred of entrepreneurial success and a belief that the property of others is not sacrosanct.

Both Labour and the TUC perpetuate the myth that the recession is entirely the fault of "the banks" and that "the banks" must pay - they blame the budget deficit on the banks, when it is palpably not true.   Labour had been running large deficits for years, only the collapse in tax revenue has made it more rapidly unsustainable.   

Labour and the TUC want to tax banks more, vandalise them in a far more civilised way, without sticks and stones, and make Britain even less attractive for the financial sector.   They want more of your money, they want to give the money to those who haven't earned it, they want to spend it on monopoly state run health and education services, regardless of whether they meet your needs - because government is good, government always knows best.

They hold the same empty belief that capitalism doesn't really work, that the reason the world isn't the way they want it is because people trade, people make money, people produce goods and services and sell them to people who are willing to pay, employ people who are willing to work, and that life isn't fair!  They belief there aren't equal opportunities (there aren't, the Khmer Rouge tried to fix that), that everyone has a right to a job (a right provided by whom?) and that the "rich" make money off the back of the poor.

It is the same belief that other people owe you a living, an education or health care.  The idea that if other people have property or money, then you have a right to some of it.  It is moral cannibalism, the idea that the mere existence of someone gives them unchosen obligations to give the fruits of their labour, effort, exchanges and mind to others who demand them.   It is the Marxist myth - from each according to his ability to each according to his needs.  The cleverer you are the more of that is demanded from others, and what you get back is just 'what you need'.

The only way this can be imposed is by force, by violence.  The anarchist protestors are willing to do this directly, the politicians and unionists will use the state to do it (and already do).

The best response to this is an unashamed defence of capitalism.  A defence of the principle that people should be entitled to set up businesses, make money, hire who they wish and keep the proceeds, as long as they don't use force or fraud to do so.  It is more than just pointing out that waging war on capitalists means they will leave, with their money, Zimbabwe like, and the looters and vandals will have nothing left.

UK Uncut is ridiculously stupid - if it got its way, businesses would flee the UK and so would wealthy entrepreneurs rather than be taxed. 

Of course if you are weaned on a state education that teaches you how wonderful the things are government does, and to be envy and hate filled about those who have more than you, then you're going to concentrate on hating rather than creating.

That's what you saw on Saturday in London.

28 March 2011

Give us more of your money

That was, effectively, the catchcry of the 150,000-250,000 people who protested in London on Saturday. They all opposed government spending less of other people’s money, largely because most of them are beneficiaries of it. The Trade Union Congress initially said 250,000 turned up, more independent accounts indicated the figure was between 150,000-250,000 before the TUC started claiming 750,000.

Labour leader Ed Miliband liked to claim the people opposing cuts are in the majority, a claim that seems more credible than him comparing the protestors to those who opposed apartheid in South Africa or fought for civil rights in the US in the 1960s. Yes Ed Mandela, Ed Luther King. How pathetic and vile it is for this pitiful privileged Primrose Hill living Oxford graduate son of a communist to compare himself to two of the notable historic figures of the 20th century, when he will be but a footnote in comparison.

However absurd and disgraceful that comparison, his claim that the protestors are in a majority is almost as fallacious. The leading leftwing paper in the UK - the Guardian – has a poll showing quite the opposite view. A Guardian/ICM poll showed 35% think the spending cuts go too far, 28% think they are about right, but another 29% think they don’t go far enough. Yet if you read the details behind the poll there is an even more interesting story (PDF).

For feminists who think women are hard hit, well 32% of women think cuts don’t go far enough, 25% think they are about right – so women want MORE cuts compared to men.

How about young people? Don’t they feel betrayed about past generations living it up large and now they have to pay? No. A staggering 43% think cuts have not gone far enough, 36% think they have gone too far and 17% think they are about right.

So isn’t this just a mob of taxpayer funded (or rather future taxpayer funded) beneficiaries demanding that taxes go up and borrowing increase to sustain their dependence on the money of others? Well yes.

Bearing in mind that the cuts themselves are rather pitiful when you look at the big picture. Allister Heath at City AM today points out that the Conservative Chancellor George Osborne is only cutting spending by 0.6% in 2011/2012, and peaking in 2013/2014 with a 1.3% cut in spending. In other words, he is undertaking the minimum necessary to avoid a cut in Britain’s credit rating and to maintain confidence. Of course spending is being most dramatically cut in a number of areas, notably tertiary education, local government provided services and defence, but not health nor foreign aid.

So these aren’t “savage cuts”, the size of the UK state as a proportion of GDP within five years will have dropped, from around 50% to just over 41%, largely because the private sector will have grown.

In addition, the socialists and planners always demand to know where the new jobs are coming from, no free market advocate can tell because free market economies are far too complex for anyone to have a handle on new innovations or entrepreneurial opportunities. Compared to the final quarter of 2009, public sector employment is down 123,000, but private sector employment is up 428,000. You see you can’t predict where or how these jobs appear, but they do.

Those marching are mindless that the road they want is the one to lead to where Greece and Portugal have now head – where government can’t borrow money anymore because those with money see it as too risky, and demand ever higher interest rates. The government then engages in the barely disguised theft of the elderly and those on low to middle incomes, of inflation. Inflating the currency so that debts are devalued, along with the cash savings of those with too little knowledge and too little money to protect themselves from inflation. It hurts them more than anyone.

No doubt many marching don’t even understand what a deficit is ( it is spending over income, NOT debt) and somehow think that government can borrow ad infinitem, or pillage more money from taxpayers who will sit back and take it.   The current government is being so meek it will only be breaking even by the next election, the massive public debt will have grown by then.  However, the TUC sees the people receiving this money as children as seen by this video - adults should get pocket money.   Given the TUC throughout much of its history has been more closely aligned to Moscow than anywhere else, it should be ignored as it has spent so long advocating an attitude of get paid more for doing less and hire more people doing less.  It is a dinosaur that serves no purpose other than to be a rallying point for those too stupid to know better (you can't be too bright to have your interests represented by people who couldn't create a business if they tried).

Fortunately a majority disagree, and either think the spending cuts are right or not courageous enough. I’m strongly in the latter category, although when it comes to policing the other story in London on Saturday shows a different story.  The more leftwing one gets the more violence is part of your bread and butter...

21 March 2011

The West is always wrong

You have to hand it to the so-called "peace" movement and the left.  They are as adept in chicaning their way around principle and consistency in position in all but one way - the West is always wrong.

Throughout the Cold War, both the West and the Soviet bloc (and China as much as it acted independently) all acted uniformly under the principle of realpolitik.  Interests were at stake, and each side supported allies as a bullwark against the other.  For the USSR and China, this never presented domestic problems because domestic problems were always resolved with the barrel of a gun so to speak.  Neither had to deal with protest marches, civil disobedience, bad press or the like, for they were (China still is to an extent) totalitarian prison camps.  Both happily backed, armed, clapped, funded and facilitated mass murder, torture, starvation and grotesque inhumanities in their own and many other countries.  Both had plenty of supporters in Western academia and a few in politics who were either taken in by the propaganda or simply were so anti-Western they embraced the obvious alternative.

The West didn't have such luxuries, for it had (and has) freedom.  Defence and foreign policy would be challenged, not only at the ballot box and within the political sphere, but with protests, free press and open civil society, its action would alway be open to scrutiny.  Quite right too.  However, those who would point the finger at the West on foreign policy and defence could not do so in the Soviet bloc.  Moscow knew this of course and helped fund several branches of the peace movement, figuring it could weaken the West by helping promote popular opinion in the West to disarm and withdraw - knowing similar calls in the Soviet block could be eradicated forthwith.

So it was simple - the peace movement and the left would, by and large, focus on what the West did wrong, because it was easy to report, and in fact it was seen as easier to change.  It was always far easier to point out the hypocrisy of Western realpolitik.  Our "interests" were in having allies that fought the allies of the Soviet bloc, yet these were on more than a few occasions inconsistent with the values people in Western countries saw as being the hallmark of superiority of Western liberal capitalist democracies over Marxism-Leninism.   Suharto, Marcos, Pinochet, Rhee, Somoza, Mobutu and others were often as bloodthirsty with opponents and as uninterested in free speech as their opponents.  The left in the West jumped on these and damned Western support for them.  This was the right thing to do, but they also turned a blind eye to the Soviet alternatives.

However, this philosophy of damning Western intervention in other countries remained after the end of the Cold War, although few noticed that suddenly more than a few non-Marxist dictatorships fell in relatively quick succession.  The end of apartheid in South Africa was partly facilitated by the end of the civil wars in Angola and Mozambique as the West withdrew support in parallel to the Soviet Union withdrawing support for their sides.  Chile, Zaire, Taiwan and South Korea all saw significant reforms with mixed success.   Then came Saddam Hussein.

Saddam Hussein was undoubtedly one of the nastiest dictators of the post war era (and he has plenty of competition).  He became important to both the West and the USSR when Iran fell to Islamist clerics, and was itself sabre-rattling against the US, USSR and Israel, so Saddam gained support from both sides in the Cold War, to take on Iran.  Pure realpolitik against a threatening enemy.  Yet it achieved nothing, except the spilling of the blood of hundreds of thousands, and a convenient target for the left - the West had backed another bloodthirsty thug, and Iran had not been contained.

Then Saddam attacked Kuwait.  There was a near unanimous international consensus in favour of ejecting him from Kuwait, yet the leftwing "peace movement" with the likes of the odious hypocritical Janus-like George Galloway condemning how the West attacked Iraq, after cossetting it for so long.  

You see with the peace movement, you can't correct your previous bad behaviour.  So whilst Saddam was expelled from Kuwait, subjected to two no-fly zones and extensive economic sanctions, in fact that was all wrong.  Because he had had Western backing before, he shouldn't be attacked now - the West is to blame for him.

Then after that, Saddam's continued breaching of UN Security Council resolutions and failure to allow the IAEA full inspection of all facilities it requested access to meant nothing.  Saddam should be left alone, even though he murdered Iraqis on a daily basis.  In fact, economic sanctions on Iraq, which hurt Iraqis not Saddam, should be lifted - not because it was Saddam's fault, but the West's fault for "killing Iraqi children" as Saddam used his population as propaganda.  

Remember the left warmly embraced economic sanctions against the South African racist regime, but for Iraq Saddam was now to be appeased.  Iraq was to be "left alone", for this wasn't a dictatorship that should face sanctions or military action.

Then, 9/11 happened.  The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan had barely caused a murmur in the "peace movement", but Western backing for the mujahideen did.  The Taliban winning power in Afghanistan also barely caused a murmur, except for its radical misogyny and destruction of some historic statues.  However, the attack against the Taliban regime, which had sheltered and supported Al Qaeda, was wrong.  It was wrong for the US to strike against those who harboured and supported those who attacked and killed thousands of people on its soil.   It was wrong to overthrow those who treated girls as chattels denying them education, banning music and executed anyone who didn't support their stone age theocracy.  

G.W. Bush attacked Iraq, in part because of Saddam's continued defiance of UN Security Council Resolutions, in part because of a belief that regime change and installation of a Western friendly democracy in Iraq would be positive for the region.  It was appallingly undertaken, but it gave backbone to the peace movement which saw it as death and destruction.  Saddam's overthrow was bemoaned by few, but the performance and behaviour of a few troops became a reason to damn the lot.  Furthermore, the rise of an Islamist insurgency, which at one point was peddling death on a daily basis through bombing, saw the peace movement attribute those deaths to the West.  After all, if Saddam hadn't been overthrown, Iraq would be peaceful (blank out Saddam's tendency to turn on his population randomly).   Little credit was given to overthrowing a tyrant the left had opposed in any case.   Less credit was given to fighting the Islamist insurgency with some even backing them.  

The Western leftwing "peace movement" support for Islamist terrorists in Iraq said so much about the belief in peace and human rights that they claimed - it was profoundly empty. What mattered was to oppose whoever the West supported, to oppose whatever the West did.

So Saddam was opposed when the West supported him.  Saddam was supported when the West opposed him.   The peace movement as hypocritical as the West it finger pointed at.   Note that never did the USSR or Russia get damned for their roles in any of it.

The recent revolutions in the Arab world have also had similar responses.  Tunisia and Egypt were both led by Western-friendly dictators, so the West was blamed for both of them.   Blamed for intervening to prop them up.  Except this time, the West did nothing of the sort.  It sat back and let things happen.

That was wrong though.   You see it should have "done more" to ensure the dictators it supported before were overthrown.  Um...

So along comes Gaddafi.  Avowedly anti-Western, a murdering tyrant if ever there was one.  Ronald Reagan bombed one of his palaces in the 80s after Gaddafi had a bomb go off in a West Berlin nightclub, but that wasn't acceptable to the left.   Gaddafi blew up an airliner, which certainly saw more opposition to him (George Galloway to be fair damned Gaddafi consistently after this).  However, beyond that his exploits were largely ignored by the left.   Then, after the overthrow of Saddam, Gaddafi put his hands up, said he was no longer pursuing WMDs, and sought friendly relations - which he got.

Now of course his own people, emboldened by events in neighbouring Tunisia and Egypt, have had enough.  Barack Obama has decided the US is now taking a largely isolationist stance, so it took France and the UK to lead efforts to introduce a no fly zone and undertake airstrikes against Libyan military targets that were threatening civilian.  Even the rather odious Arab League supported the No Fly Zone.  

So a popular revolution in Libya is being supported in the air, by Western forces.  No ground troops and no sense of occupation.  It is all about protecting civilians.  While the West was not taking action, it was criticised.  Now it is taking action.

It isn't good enough though.   The left is damning it because Libya has oil and gas, so a side effect of getting rid of Gaddafi will be to have a regime (hopefully) which is a democracy that will sell oil and gas.  That of course is a good thing, unless you are part of the left/peace-movement/environmentalist faction that thinks consumption of oil and gas kills babies, destroys trees and impoverishes continents.  Apparently the West shouldn't intervene when it suits its interests.

Beyond that, the intervention is damned by conspiracy theorist Robert Fisk because there can be no guarantee the replacement of Gaddafi will be squeaky clean.   Well yes.  If you don't want an invasion and occupation, that's the risk.  The intervention so far is just to protect Libyans from air and naval strikes, and major ground force attacks.   If it was more, the West would be wrong again.   Fisk also recalls a civilian victim of the US attack in 1986, but interestingly it is noted that the woman's mother supports Gaddafi being overthrown - not quite as simple as it first seemed.

George Galloway, who has long damned Gaddafi appeared on Sky News damning the attacks, not because of the effect on Libyans, but because the West hadn't also intervened in Bahrain, Yemen or Saudi Arabia.

Well no.  There is no obligation to intervene, at all.  However, the opportunity exists and it is in Western interests, so the decision is made to intervene.  That is quite morally justified.

It would be morally justified to intervene in Bahrain, Yemen and Saudi Arabia as well, although in Bahrain there is the issue of the US Navy Fifth Fleet being based there.  A major decision would need to be made on relocating it if it was decided to turn on Bahrain's murderous monarchy.   Yemen's insurgents include a substantial outpost of Al Qaeda.  Intervention there would be wholly justified, but the unintended consequences could be far worse.   Saudi Arabia is another story.  It would be a formidable foe, the economic impacts alone of Saudi turning off oil supplies would be catastrophic, and would directly harm millions in the West, it would not go down without a fight, and as the home of Mecca, a Western attack would undoubtedly instigate substantial Muslim support against it.

In short, intervention in Libya is low cost, relatively high gain and positive.  The other cases don't stack up.

However, that doesn't matter.  The West is always wrong.

It was wrong to damn Gaddafi for so long, despite his record for murder and terrorism. 
It was wrong to respond positively when Gaddafi stopped engaging in terrorism and pursuing WMDs - he is a tyrant.
It was wrong to sit by and do nothing while Libyans fought Gaddafi (because of the relatively positive relations the West had with Gaddafi since 2002).
It is now wrong to intervene to protect Libyans fighting Gaddafi - because it should intervene elsewhere.

No doubt if the West actually did intervene in Bahrain and Saudi, it would be bad because the claim would be it is about oil.  If it intervened in Yemen, the claim would be that it is the "war on terror", which the left rejects.

Which is why the so-called "peace movement" can and should be ignored.  It has only one principle, opposition to the West.  It isn't seriously interested in peace, or human rights, or democracy, or anything it claims.  

Watch them now defend Gaddafi - once more - and pretend it is about opposing war.

17 March 2011

Fear, Fascism and isolationism

Those are the three themes that I am getting from the stories that should be most shaking up New Zealanders.

Fear

The greatest publicity has been for the trifecta of emergencies in Japan.  The earthquake, which was largely survived in its own right, thanks to technology, vigilance by property owners and compliance with strict laws.   The tsunami, which demonstrated how powerless people are with little warning, once again.  Now the nuclear emergency, which is a mix of genuine concern and fear, and ridiculou hyperbole.  New Zealand is only affected by the harm to Japan's economy, not the spread of isotopes.  However, environmentalists will dine out on this for some time to demand lower electricity consumption and "investment" in expensive forms of electricity generation.   There will be scope for post-mortems of the nuclear emergency, but for now two other matters should be of higher priority.

Fascism

First is closer to home.  It IS fascism, a term overused perhaps by some libertarians, but it is plain and simple in Christchurch.  Private property has been appropriated, not to protect the public, but because central and local government are applying the thumping hammer of blunt authority to clear away the damage as quickly as possible.

Not PC puts it beautifully in describing how a pin-up for vapid womens' magazines gets more access to central Christchurch properties than the people who, without which, the damned businesses (damned indeed) wouldn't be there in the first place.

Like a panzer division of wreckers, the state has authorised demolition squads to go in and destroy what is NOT theirs.

Eric Crampton's list of outrages should send shivers down the spines of property owners throughout New Zealand.  This could happen to you.  THIS is what central and local government think of you - it isn't the warm friendly collectively helpful image that the morally bankrupt left claim - it is the "we know best, get out of our way" approach that says a great "fuck you" to the people who create the wealth, who pay the wages of public "servants".

Meanwhile what do you get from politicians? A blind eye.  You should all be furious, because they are scum for not standing up for Christchurch property owners.

The government of course is complicit.  There is now no shred of belief that the National Party believes in property rights or business, its true colours have been shown here, and it is disgusting.

Not one fucking press release demanding that property owners have the right to access their properties, that properties should not be destroyed without the consent or even  notice given to the owners.  Nothing.  If you still vote National after this, then I DO hope you face the same situation one day - because frankly you're complicit in endorsing these useless inert nobodies in just accepting what their bureaurats tell them.

Instead, John Key thanks the pin-up and his consort for their "support" in getting a taxpayer supported piece of disaster tourism (2 sites in one country).   Not that it is their fault that they get the privileged access to Christchurch, it is the government's.

Of course along with National is the Maori Party (which only believes in property rights for part of the population), Peter Dunne (who as Minister in charge of legalised theft is uninterested) and ACT.  What's ACT said?  Fuck all of course.  Rodney Hide is setting up a new bureaucracy to enable councils to borrow through central government instead.  Given ACT has effectively endorsed the Labour/Alliance/Green vision of local government powers, who should be surprised?

The left, naturally, regards property rights as something that applies to them when someone wants to mug them in the street and that's about it.  The state can (and should) run roughshod over such rights in the "public good" as it sees it from that point of view.  The Greens, Labour and Jim Il Sung are contemptuous about business, employers and property rights, and ever trusting of government agencies.

However, what about you?  Are you going to tolerate a fascist style demolition of buildings without even advising the owners?  Are you going to tolerate zero accountability for those looking after the "protected area" of central Christchurch? Are you going to tolerate it being ok for the pinup from the UK and his consort to gain access to Christchurch that the people who fucking build and make Christchurch alive don't have?

Of course you are - you're New Zealanders - you'll vote for John Key again because you're not discontented enough and because Phil Goff is about as inspiring as a pair of socks.  You'll trust local government again because you're fearful of actually having power in your own hands, but most of all you'll do nothing because you're not personally affected.

Isolationism

There couldn't be a clearer message to dictatorships in the past few weeks from the United States, it is "We don't intervene anymore".
Despite the vapid generalisations from some quarters.  The dictatorships in the Middle East all vary by degrees and kinds.  The Tunisian one was easy, he rolled over quickly.  Egypt took more time, but ultimately the fact the US bankrolls the regime was significant, and Mubarak eventually rolled over as well.  Gaddafi is different, not just in degree, but nature.  He is despicably evil, a murdering megalomaniacal thug.  At worst he is unhinged and merciless.   His record of intervening in other countries is extensive, although he withdrew from this primarily because he observed the US invasion of Iraq and toppling of Saddam Hussein - an act that would be far simpler to do in Libya.

Protestors and rebels in Libya have been encouraged, verbally, by Western powers and others, demanding that the Gaddafi autocracy go.  However, in terms of action, little has been done since Westerners were evacuated.  The Obama regime has been silent, and so Gaddafi has been acting with impunity to take back the country he has run as his own fiefdom.   The cartoon like view Gaddafi gives of himself may amuse some, but it comes with blood and death.

So a no-fly zone over Libya is obvious, it would cost little and help to ensure Gaddafi did not act with impunity.  The UK and France have been pushing for it (the latter ironic given France's history of warmth towards dictatorships), but Germany has resisted  - as if Germany really is able to exercise moral authority given its past performance in resisting action in the Balkans.  The UK and France have led efforts at the UN Security Council for a resolution.  Not the US.  Of course Russia and China are likely to oppose, or at best abstain. However, neither have any credibility when it comes to dealing with dictatorships, for obvious reasons.   So for that, I believe airstrikes and a no fly zone should be applied anyway, because the value in containing and disposing of the Gaddafi regime is worth it.   His regime lost legitimacy when it participated in Lockerbie and sponsoring terrorism in Europe and elsewhere.  There should be no legal or moral barrier to intervention from the air (ground intervention would be unwise though).

However, as much as I want Gaddafi removed, there is a more disturbing concern.  Obama's withdrawal of the US from the world says that other dictatorships can act with impunity, despite his words.  Syria has had protests that have been put down - another regime that has regularly disregarded international law by invading a neighbouring country - Lebanon.  Yet what is the Obama administration saying to the likes of Iran and North Korea by being so shy of doing anything?  It is saying that there are no consequences for all sorts of actions against their own people, but also that the US is relatively uninterested. 

You see the world the left wanted, with the US pulling out of other countries, and leaving civil conflicts to themselves, is happening more and more.  The result is that dictatorships feel less threatened, more emboldened and more powerful than they were under previous Administrations.

Obama has declared his hand on foreign policy.  It is progressive isolationism.  Withdrawal from Iraq will be followed by Afghanistan, and then where?

and if rebels in Benghazi are crushed by the efforts of the Gaddafi army and air force, all on TV, what will that say about the US interest in freedom in other countries?

10 March 2011

Evil in action

Whilst the world focuses on Libya, another dictatorship is mistreating families for propaganda purposes in a way that is undeniably despicable and outright evil.   It is yet another story of south Korea vs north Korea.

In early February, a DPRK (Democratic People's Republic of Korea) fishing boat drifted across the military demarcation line that unofficially marks the line of control between the ROK (Republic of Korea) and the DPRK.  The boat was intercepted by the ROK navy and the 31 people questioned.  The ROK determined quickly that the boat was genuinely lost and was not part of any covert military mission, so they were all given the option as to whether they wished to return to the DPRK or not.  27 chose to return, 4 chose to defect to the ROK. 

The ROK decided that on 4 March, the 27 people who wished to return would be handed over to the UN command at the Korean De-Militarised Zone (DMZ) at Panmunjom, to be handed over to the DPRK authorities.   The DPRK refused to accept them, demanding that all 31 people be returned.

So it began.

The ROK view was fairly simple.  The ship innocently drifted into southern waters in bad weather, and those aboard would be given a choice about where they wanted to go.  Freedom.  As simple as that.   

Of course, the DPRK doesn't make it quite that simple.   For the people who choose to stay in the south, their families face intense difficulties.  They will be labelled as being related to politically unsafe individuals, which will mean they too are unsafe.  They can face being forcibly relocated, losing their employment and homes, and being interrogated about their defecting relatives.  They are put under constant suspicion, for the fear is that they too will defect.   Some face imprisonment as a result, and a north Korean gulag is sheer hell.

Even those who return face difficulties.

According to Daily NK:
One defector who used to work as an NSA agent explained, “The NSA will accuse them of responsibility for the defection of the other four, demanding to know why they didn’t persuade them otherwise,” adding, “There must be at least one Party cell secretary among the 31. Those people will definitely be targets for criticism.”.  Such interrogations generally take around a month. After that, the repatriated individuals have to sign a written oath not to disclose what they have heard and seen in South Korea, and will then be allowed to return to their homes, in this case in Hwanghae Province.

Defectors unanimously agree that the fishermen will thereafter be closely monitored by agents of the NSA, People’s Safety Agency, and chairmen of their local people’s unit on the basis that the authorities think they could cause ideological unrest after being exposed to South Korean society.


Damned either way of course.

The DPRK view naturally is different.  The idea the regime could ever countenance that people could defect from a perfect society is ludicrous.  So it says

"It is sheer nonsense for the south Korean authorities to talk about "defection" and the like by four of them.

The unreasonable attitude of the south Korean authorities is touching off bitter anger among the people in the DPRK. The families and relatives of the inhabitants now under custody there are eagerly waiting for them to come back as early as possible.
"

On top of that, the DPRK Red Cross, which has always been completely in collusion with the regime (not disowned by the ICRC), has even been threatening according to the Korean Central News Agency:

The detained citizens have made clear their stand to go back to the DPRK from the outset and demanded their early repatriation. Nevertheless, the south side claims that it will not send some of them, talking about "defection" and "respect for freedom of will." Such attempt can never be allowed as it is a very unreasonable and rude act contrary to humanitarianism and international usage. 


Worse still, the south side has resorted to a sinister "defection operation", taking those citizens to different places all the while. This fact is arousing anger of everyone.


Their repatriation is an important matter related to the north-south relations rather than a humanitarian issue, the message said, warning:


If the south side does not comply with this just demand of the DPRK, it will be held wholly accountable for the consequences arising therefrom. 
Next time the Red Cross asks you for money (and given that almost everywhere it does remarkably good work), ask the representative about whether any of it is going to the north Korean Red Cross and explain why it shouldn't.

So a stalemate has emerged.  The DPRK has demanded that there be a face to face meeting between the families of all of the people, and the men themselves, at the Neutral Nations Supervisory Committee meeting rooms at Panmunjom.   The idea being to get the four people who wish to defect to be weakened by seeing their distressed family members, as well as to produce propaganda to paint the ROK in a bad light.

So the DPRK has instead released a video showing the family members reading out prepared statements, and clearly terrified.  Their statements go along lines as follows "She grew up in a good system where she had no real worries and could enjoy learning" and

"My husband is not that kind of person; I trust in this because he is someone who got a scholarship from Han Deok Su Industrial University, studied, has the honor of being a Party member and became a cadre, always working faithfully for the fatherland, people, Party and Suryeong" (Suryeong means "Great Leader").

This brutal prison state cannot conceive of how people may choose, even knowing the consequences for their loved ones, to leave it and live somewhere where their lives ARE their own.  A place where your home, employment, relationships, travel, reading and activities are not decided, monitored and controlled by the state.  So it cynically uses the families of those who wish to defect, to emotionally plead with the defector to return to the prison state - the defectors knowing too well that if they don't return, it will mean being hassled, possibly imprisoned and certainly materially deprived because of "guilt by association".

That's the difference between freedom and sacrificing your life for the "greater good". 

The ROK government gave all of the people on the fishing boat the choice to stay in south Korea or return to north Korea, patently without coercion.  It has forced no defections, as is seen by most willing to return to the DPRK - simply because family ties are too important, and for fear of what would happen to them.   Those who choose to stay in the south have done so because presumably they believe their lives will be better as a result, and it would be hard to imagine why that would not be true.

The DPRK government wants its slave subjects all back, it will harm the families of those who do not return, and if they all return it will hail that it was because of the indomitable strength and indefatigable will of the leaders, party, army and state that the "south Korean puppets" submitted to the will of the people who wanted to return to their beloved socialist motherland, after witnessing the degradation and depravity of life in the "US-occupied south".  

So for now, the DPRK is refusing to receive those who want to return home, because it is using the families of those who don't, as political footballs.  If it cared one jot for the people concerned, it would allow the families of those who want to stay in south Korea to follow them, and then allow those who wish to return to do so, in full knowledge that they also could bring their families south.

However, in a socialist totalitarian prison state, it isn't about the people - it is about the system.  The people are cogs in the wheel of a system ostensibly about people, but which is as distant from human compassion as you could possibly be.

27 February 2011

Vogue felches another dictator

The world of fashion presents itself as being about aesthetics.

This week Vogue magazine has shown itself to be so skindeep as to be sickening.


Assad is President because his father was.  He inherited it from his delightful father Hafez al-Assad.  Hafez al-Assad established a police state under rule of the Ba'ath Party combining Soviet style socialism with the brutality of an ethnic minority (he was Alawite) seeking to dominate a majority that might otherwise be less enthused about his rule.

The Syrian police state detains without trial and executes political opponents.  There is no independent media or political dissent permitted in Syria.   One of its techniques of extracting information from dissidents is the "Syrian chair" which carefully bends ones back backwards until vertebrae break one at a time.

Vogue didn't mention that though.

Neither did Vogue mention the at least 17,000 people massacred at Hama in 1982, as Assad senior sought to wipe out the Muslim Brotherhood, but essentially shelled and bombed the city for days on end to clear the population.   

However it did mention how Bashar Assad won the 2000 election with 97% of the vote - no questioning of that at all.   Not a mention of how free and fair Syrian elections are not.

Yet the article is mostly about his wife.  A London born Syrian girl, daughter of a cardiologist who was working with JP Morgan when she started "dating a family friend" who was Bashar.  As if that was just like anyone dating the son of a dictator.  What a world!

The rest of it is gushing sycophancy.  All the good work she does, how "normal" their life really is, and how she is part of the effort to modernise Syria and build a civil society in a Middle East full of Islamists.

Yes.  

No difficult questions asked about torture, extrajudicial executions and political prisoners.  Nothing about the suppression of speech and political discourse.  Nothing about alliances with Iran, nothing about invading Lebanon.  Nothing about overthrowing its elected government.  Nothing about chemical and biological weapons. 

Foreign Policy says:

It's hard to imagine that a Vogue editor woke up this morning and decided it wouldn't be hugely embarrassing to publish a puff piece today, at the moment of the greatest upheaval in the Middle East in two generations, about Syria's ruling family. But that appears to be exactly what happened. 

The article does not once mention the protests currently under way in the Middle East, including scattered evidence of demonstrations in Syria. Instead, the article focuses on Syrian first lady Asma Assad -- the "freshest and most magnetic of first ladies," endowed with "[d]ark-brown eyes, wavy chin-length brown hair, long neck, an energetic grace." At a time when other Middle Eastern first ladies, notably Tunisia's Leila Trabelsi, have been the target of protesters' wrath, this may not be the wisest moment for Asma to flaunt her glamour.

Vogue.  Not just vapid and intellectual fodder with those with the depth of a teenage groupie, but instrumental in providing succour and good publicity to dictatorship.   Then again, Naomi Campbell's brainlessness in her dealings with dictator Charles Taylor was simply more evidence of an industry built on making money from being clueless.

Daily Telegraph's offence to New Zealand

I'm livid, beyond livid.

The Daily Telegraph being one of the serious UK newspapers, and one of the only two remaining true broadsheet format newspapers (the FT being the other) is one of the great newspapers of the world.  Yes, it tends to side with the Conservative Party,  but this political slant is well known and understood.  In the UK you know the politics of your papers, but they write for a broader church than that.  The Daily Telegraph exposed the ridiculous expenses claims of MPs from all parties before the last election, and did not hesitate to expose Conservative MPs as well.

One of its writers is Geoffrey Lean.  He is considered an "environmental correspondent" having previously been environmental editor for the more left leaning  Independent.  His Telegraph blog is here, but his insult is not located here.

It is this headline:

"New Zealand earthquake : the vengeance of Mother Nature".

Yes, the implication being that some anthropomorphised entity has inflicted vengeance on New Zealand.  For what? Why?

He goes on:

"as the people of Australia and New Zealand have been the latest to find out, she also has a nasty and highly destructive temper."

The female is "mother nature", so again he implies this is a cognitive being who is angry.  I am sure he doesn't really believe this but he goes on...

"And she's getting more irritable as the years go by. The devastating earthquake in Christchurch, and Queensland's cyclone and floods, which have so tumultuously ushered in 2011, follow the second worst year for disasters on record."

The end is nigh.  So what?  What have people done to reap this?

"Munich Re says that 90 per cent of last year's disasters were due to the weather, providing "further indications of advancing climate change". Sceptics disagree, and certainly no particular disaster can be attributed to global warming. But the increase is what most scientists have long predicted would happen as the world warms up."

So a reinsurance firm is making a link, but he naturally say no disaster can be attributed to global warming, but the increase is what would happen as the world warms up.

Sound like he is blaming the earthquake on global warming.  He goes on talking about droughts, floods, storms and hurricanes and then says:

"And, of course, earthquakes, like the disaster that has hit Christchurch, have nothing to do with it."

Whew, thank goodness for that, except hold on. What the hell is that headline about?  Why write about it now?  Why the fuck say "New Zealand earthquake: The Vengeance of Mother Nature" unless you are making some link?

"But whatever the cause of the increase in disasters, humanity has made their impact far worse."

He then says buildings make things worse, which of course implies we should live in caves or tents, a rather inane comment really.

He backs out of linking the earthquake to anything:

"Christchurch aside, maybe Mother Nature sometimes has reason to be annoyed."

Who?  Aren't you the annoyed one?

Not as annoyed as me.  You see he didn't mean anything, but he did try to get attention because of the earthquake.  He had a headline that is vile, as if Christchurch was the result of nature's "anger" at humanity, he did it while corpses are still being pulled out of the rubble.  Even ignoring his hatred of humanity in treating nature as if it is a living being that emotes, it was in appalling bad taste.

Even worse bad taste was that this article was one of the "Editor's choice" on the website.

For shame Daily Telegraph.  For shame!

Hitchens damns Obama's impotence

Writing in Slate, Christopher Hitchens shares my disappointment at Obama's complete failure to show any kind of leadership on Libya.

He writes:

it became the turn of Muammar Qaddafi—an all-round stinking nuisance and moreover a long-term enemy—and the dithering began all over again. Until Wednesday Feb. 23, when the president made a few anodyne remarks that condemned "violence" in general but failed to cite Qaddafi in particular—every important statesman and stateswoman in the world had been heard from, with the exception of Obama. And his silence was hardly worth breaking.

Meanwhile as I have already said, Hugo Chavez and Fidel Castro have placed themselves with Gaddafi.  China and Russia's authoritarian leaders have naturally sat on the fence, hoping their own people don't get any bright ideas or that anyone looks in their own blood splattered back yards.  Obama acts similarly.

It is an outrageous withdrawal from world affairs, one that would put no pressure at all on Russia or China to relent on a resolution at the UN Security Council.  Yes, in Egypt it was difficult for the US to be at the forefront in a revolution that deposed an erstwhile ally, when it both feared the instability but welcomed the call for freedom and democracy. Yet, with Libya it should have been different.

Hitchens continues pointing out the bravery of those without the world's most potent military on their side.

By the time of Obama's empty speech, even the notoriously lenient Arab League had suspended Libya's participation, and several of Qaddafi's senior diplomatic envoys had bravely defected. One of them, based in New York, had warned of the use of warplanes against civilians and called for a "no-fly zone." Others have pointed out the planes that are bringing fresh mercenaries to Qaddafi's side. In the Mediterranean, the United States maintains its Sixth Fleet, which could ground Qaddafi's air force without breaking a sweat. But wait! We have not yet heard from the Swiss admiralty, without whose input it would surely be imprudent to proceed.


Quite, it is so feeble as to be embarrassing.  Americans should be embarrassed and mortified at how far their country has fallen in international affairs.   It could take relatively painless steps and gain enormous goodwill and support in the region, and do more to generate friendship and pro-Western feeling than anything else could.   Though this is the same President cutting broadcasts by the Voice of America to China.

It is rather straightforward Mr President:

- Libya has long had a history of being an arch-enemy of the US and your allies;
- Gaddafi's history has been one of unashamedly shedding blood of innocents and supporting those who do so;
- The USA is, despite your inept efforts, still by far the world's largest economy and military superpower.

I even think Hillary Clinton would do more.

Dubya certainly would have.

26 February 2011

Chavez and Castro side with Gaddafi

Pinup boy of so many in the left, from Ken Livingstone to Matt McCarten, Hugo Chavez, is siding with Gaddafi as is Fidel Castro (Spanish reports).

Who is surprised?

The international left has long been sympathetic to this thug, a thug who has chemical and biological weapons, admits it, who has engaged in terrorism against civilians whether by plane or by nightclub.  

They are all murdering thugs, all of whom happily use force against those who they disagree with, all part of the transnational community of tyrants.  The only difference with Chavez is that he is an elected one who has not been completely unhindered in his pursuit of power.

At what point will the lowlives in the West who have lauded the likes of Chavez and Castro admit they got it wrong?  That they, like the legions of useful idiots who denied the mass slaughter under Mao, who denied the mass slaughter under Stalin, some who even denied the Khmer Rouge's genocidal scale rivers of blood, who constantly apologised for regimes that are as bloodthirsty as the anti-Marxist military dictatorships and thugs who they targeted.

Those of us who actually do believe in individual freedom have been consistent, called a spade a spade.  Called Castro, Chavez, Pinochet, Gaddafi, Mubarak, Assad, Suharto, Kim Jong Il, Ahmadinejad, Bokassa, Mobutu, the lot, all dictators.  All vile, all despicable, all inexcusable.  Some are worse than others, but none deserve to be celebrated or supported.

So what's wrong with some people?

25 February 2011

Half mast in London

New Zealand High Commission, Haymarket, London














It's all terribly sad, and the TV news has stories from Christchurch every bulletin.

However, some may find some humour that just two blocks up from the High Commission was the loss of much beer...

It's a hill, and it's a sloping ramp, but some learn from doing

NZ friends of the Gaddafi regime - Part 1 - Helen Clark

In her role as UNDP Secretary General, Helen Clark has to be diplomatic with all sorts of regimes as she flies around the globe in first class staying in five-star hotels showing concern for global poverty by not experiencing anything remotely close to it.

However, does she have to provide succuour, support and titles to relatives of dictators?  Apparently so.

Muammar Gaddafi's daughter was, until yesterday, a Goodwill Ambassador to the UNDP.   She has been removed, and rightly so.  However, why was she appointed in the first place?  Why is UNDP having a positive relationship with the Gaddafi dictatorship at all.

However, UNDP's relationship with Libya goes back to 1972.  Gaddafi was well established in power even then.  UNDP even now has a dedicated website showcasing how taxpayer money from across the world has been funnelled into projects in this oil rich dictatorship.  To be fair Libya also throws in some money to the projects, not that this makes it better.

The direct Aisha Gaddafi relationship also started before Clark in 2006, with this document formalising a relationship between Gaddafi's charity (Watassemo Charity Society) and UNDP.  Now anyone with an eye for how dictatorships work knows there could never be any transparency behind charities run in such regimes, which would make any such relationship questionable even without it being run by the daughter of a mass murdering tyrant.

It even has multi-year plans AGREED with the regime to help develop the country.

Now Helen Clark is only the latest in a long line of UN bureaurats to suck from the UN tit and be a party to this, but a party she certainly is.

You see whilst UNDP has been in Libya for almost 40 years, the Gaddafi relationship has been solid throughout.  The most recent move was only in 2009 to appoint Aisha Gaddafi as the goodwill ambassador of Libya on July 24, 2009 to address the issues of HIV/AIDS and violence against women in Libya, according to the Times of India.   So Helen Clark must have endorsed the appointment of the dictator's daughter to such a role.

Furthermore, the UNDP has also provided a facade for the nonsense of quality governance in Libya.  Its three year report states:
"Democratic governance. A new initiative on the automation of national courts, with a view to increasing public access to justice, was started in 2008 with completion expected by 2010."

Excuse me?  "Increasing public access to justice" in a Police state, where secret police forces routinely arrest people without trial.  The Human Rights Watch report says:

Hundreds of prisoners are detained by the Internal Security Agency without any legal basis. Over the past few years, an unprecedented confrontation between the General People’s Committee for Justice and the General People’s Committee for Public Security has developed over the failure of Internal Security to implement the decisions of Libyan courts.  The Internal Security Agency continues to refuse to release from Abu Salim and Ain Zara prisons, prisoners who either have been acquitted by courts or who have already served their court- imposed sentences.

Yet Helen Clark's UNDP talks of "democratic governance" and "access to justice" without ever mentioning any of this.  

Or this:

"The practice of enforced disappearance by Internal Security continues in Libya. Over the past decades, Internal Security agents have regularly detained individuals incommunicado in prisons or in Internal Security offices.  Libyan groups estimate that Libyan security officials have disappeared thousands of individuals over the past three decades"


Libya has no independent nongovernmental organizations. The only organizations that can do human rights work, the most sensitive area of all in Libya, derive their political standing from their personal affiliation with the regime.  The main organization that can publicly criticize human rights violations is the Gaddafi International Charity and Development Foundation (Gaddafi Foundation), chaired by Saif al-Islam al-Gaddafi.  A second organization, Waatasemu, is run by Dr. Aisha al-Gaddafi, Mu’ammar al-Gaddafi’s daughter, and has intervened in death penalty cases and women’s rights issues.

In other words, unless you can plead to the Gaddafi family, you have little chance at justice.

What does the UNDP focus on?

The overarching goal sounds innocuous, if Libya was not an authoritarian police state:
"National institutions strengthened towards improved public service delivery and strengthened national data management systems"

Nothing like having a police state better manage its data!

Then within justice, the goals are more asinine.  It is nothing about real justice, more about making a police state operate more effectively!

"Within the justice sector, UNDP will support the ongoing automation process of courts, conducting capacity assessments, and implementing specific capacity development activities. A specific focus will be on ensuring greater access to justice for women."

So Helen Clark's UNDP is focusing on ensuring greater access for women, which appears to mean automating the courts and developing the capacity of the justice sector - in a police state.  The programme includes in its goals "Civil society organizations actively engage in development efforts, notably related to gender issues, and provision of services" yet Human Rights Watch notes:

There is no freedom of association in Libya because the concept of an independent civil society goes directly against Gaddafi’s theory of governance by the masses. Law 71 still criminalizes political parties, and the penal code criminalizes the establishment of organizations that are “against the principles of the Libyan Jamahireya system.” Law 19, "On Associations," requires a political body to approve all nongovernmental organizations, does not allow appeals against negative decisions and provides for continuous governmental interference in the running of the organization.

It is a farce, but worse of all it is actively complicit in pretending that it NOT a farce.  In creating civil society organisations, that are actually tools of the regime to present an image of civil society.  It is no surprise that two bodies, run by Gaddafi's offspring, are the only ones that can discuss human rights.  It is beyond absurd, and any credible Secretary General of the UNDP would not tolerate this.  

I would be surprised if Clark knew the details, but therein lies the UN problem.  A behemoth under which the UN does not simply remain quiet about evil, but actively works with it and becomes part of its propaganda to sustain itself.  

Yet, this Libyan UNDP office has an explicit goal of "democratic governance" in a country that has absolutely none of it, led by a philosophy that is actively opposed to it.  

The UNDP Libya website says the following, which is about as cynical as one can be.   Talking of democracy, then about Libya "strengthening institutions" in a police state.  That would actively do the opposite:

"The critical importance of democratic governance in the developing world was highlighted at the Millennium Summit of 2000, where the world's leaders resolved to "spare no effort to promote democracy and strengthen the rule of law, as well as respect for all internationally recognized human rights and fundamental freedoms, including the right to development. A consensus was reached which recognized that improving the quality of democratic institutions and processes, and managing the changing roles of the state and civil society in an increasingly globalised world must underpin national efforts to reduce poverty, sustain the environment, and promote human development.
In Libya, UNDP is working with the national government to enhance the capacities of state institutions and staff, particularly in regards to the access to justice.   It is also working towards providing General People’s Committees with policy advice and technical support in different fields, utilising its network of over 166 offices, and its global partnerships with democratic governance institutions."

It would be hilarious, if the UNDP wasn't using your taxes, and is led by a former New Zealand Prime Minister to basically grant a degree of respectability and a facade of progress upon a dictatorship and his family.  Strengthening the Libyan dictatorship does not enhance democratic governance, it undermines it.

Effectively, Helen Clark is just leading a body that does little about Libya, which in that position one may forgive, but rather leads a body colluding with the Gaddafi regime.  Furthermore, I would be surprised if Clark did not endorse making Aisha Gaddafi a Goodwill Ambassador for UNDP.   A position she earned because daddy has been running Libya as his personal fiefdom for forty years.  Should Bashar Assad have got one for being son of his dictator dad, or Kim Jong Il (and now Kim Jong Eun)?  

So Helen Clark is the first New Zealander I claim as a friend of the Gaddafi regime, through her actions as leader of the UNDP.  The removal of Aisha Gaddafi's status is a bit after the fact, and a bit "oh we better do that given the population are being slaughtered".
Although maybe Helen Clark simply has the UN disease, the same disease that allows Libya to sit on the UN Human Rights Council, with China, Cuba, Russia and Saudi Arabia.

UPDATE:  Credit to Fairfacts Media for picking this up before I did, making the same point.  I wait to read the condemnation of Clark's actions from the leftwing blogosphere, as much as Tony Blair will be criticised rightly for his appeasement.

24 February 2011

Obama opts out of the world (UPDATED)

Isn't it rather odd, than when Libya's dictatorship has used fighter aircraft to attack its own citizens, when it is difficult to engage evacuations deep into Libya (only Tripoli airport and Benghazi appear accessible), that the USA has such a low profile?

The appropriate response is clear:

- Declare a "no-fly zone" over Libya, that NATO will take control of Libyan airspace for the purposes of preventing use of military aircraft against civilians, and to allow for evacuation and aid missions to fly in unhindered.
- That means being willing to warn and shoot down Libyan air force aircraft if necessary, or escort them if they wish to defect.

However Obama has given up, he has withdrawn from the world.  The US as superpower is absent, if you see the White House website there is nothing at all about Libya.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has said she is "watching" with concern.

It's a fairly clear lesson, Gaddafi was scared of Bush sufficiently that he stopped sabre rattling and his WMD programme.   He isn't scared of Obama.

So that's it people.  The Obama Administration was more vocal about Egypt, because of Israel and because it was so obviously a key ally of the US.  Libya, an arch enemy, is almost irrelevant now.

Have a guess at what governments are quietly taking comfort from that, they have capital cities beginning with T, D and P. 

UPDATE:  Even the New York Times agrees.

"It took President Obama four days to condemn the violence. Even then, he spoke only vaguely about holding Libyan officials accountable for their crimes. Colonel Qaddafi was never mentioned by name....There is not a lot of time. Colonel Qaddafi and his henchmen have to be told in credible and very specific terms the price they will pay for any more killing. They need to start paying right now."

23 February 2011

A country united except for... (UPDATED)

two things that I have seen.

First are the looters.  "Inevitable" one may say, scum most would say.  Rats who demonstrate how damned useful it would be for people to have adequate means of self defence to deter and deal to those low lives who want to pillage those who have lost.   May the justice system do what it must and may your find your fellow inmates treat you as they tend to treat child abusers, for those are the few who wallow in the sewer beneath you.

Second is The Standard blog.  At a time when politics should be a distant second to compassion, concern, assistance and the ongoing spontaneous expression of human benevolence at times like this, it hosts a thread that is a barely concealed political statement called "In Praise of the Bureaucracy" claiming that people say emergency services staff are "often described collectively as a block to progress".   The earthquake is a chance for the Standard to celebrate bureaucracy, celebrate an idea, not the people who together have made this tragedy far less traumatic than it would have been.  It would be too easy to note that the people who have helped are from many backgrounds, and the Standard could simply have noted the bravery and hard work of all people who have helped from the police to ambulance, fire, civil defence, military and health professionals.  Who thinks this is a chance to score points?


"Hey hobbit, if you’re reading – this is what you pay your taxes for. And if you and your family are incredibly lucky in your lives, you may never meet nor need any of these selfless people and the limit of your involvement will be to occasionally stick your hand in your pocket."

A boot laid into the private sector, claiming they are mean spirited and helpless (those whose mobile phone networks are being used?):
"The champions of industry are helpless in these situations and they are eternally grateful for the skills of the emergency services and systems that are in place. However, they have an inordinate amount of influence when it comes to the negotiating remuneration for todays public service heroes and you can bet they will not be backward in suggesting a tight rein on any rewards."

A semi-illiterate beat up of Rodney Hide with a lie,  whilst glorifying the student union:

"i see the Canterbury Uni students assoc are lining up to move in and assist again.
Good thing they are still around before scum Hyde has shut them down
"

"a good solid and effective public service was always the backbone of New Zealands society and employment scene – that is until the neo-liberal dark lords of the sith fucked it over and reduced it to a shadow of its former self... Johnny, Maxie, floosie and Bronagh can bugger off to Hawaii and then wait to go to the UK for the wedding … i mean shit happens – but hey i’ve got shitloads of money and the polls say people love me"

Of course if John Key didn't go there, he'd be accused of not caring, if he goes he is politicking.  Not that Helen Clark would have faced such damnation.

I can only agree with Sonny Blount's comment:

"This thread is the lowest class thing I have seen in NZ in the last 24 hours.
Short of the looters."

Quite.

Especially when so many wait to hear of who are those crushed to death.


UPDATE:  The Greens have joined in.  What do they see it as?  A chance for a new tax on who they think are "rich" to "pay for the damage".   Nice.  An earthquake means all earning over NZ$41,000 should pay a levy.  The appropriate response to that is "fuck off you state obsessed bastards, people are mourning, put politics and your new taxes away".