Month: January 2009

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Zaoui: the lessons

We’ve had comments around the Zaoui debacle on a couple of threads, so I thought I would try to pull together some things I think the government (public servants and politicians) should have learned from it:

  • “National security interests” must be publicly defined and open to public debate and influence
  • Secret evidence is unacceptable in all but the most unusual situations, when it absolutely must be used genuine checks and balances must be in place
  • Refugees should never be housed in prisons, and should be in secure facilities only in the most unusual situations (and that must be open to judicial review)
  • The immediate families of refugees should be allowed to join them as soon as possible.

What have I missed?

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RfP: Hate speech laws

Recently I’ve read a number of paired essays, one arguing strongly for something and one arguing against it. I really like the form and reckon the arguments are much better than those that have to pretend objectivity. I’m wondering if we can get the same thing going here – two posts on one subject arguing strongly for opposing views.

So, with no more ado, I’m looking for anyone who might be willing to write a brief strongly argued post for or against hate speech laws. It’s a fascinating topic as it involves competing rights, and NZ has (perhaps without thinking too hard about it) legislated against racial hate speech but probably allows hate speech against other groups.

If you’re interested either email us (kiwipolitico@kiwipolitico.com) or post in the comments and we’ll get in touch.

P.S. If you’re keen to do this but run your own blog please get in touch, I’m sure we can figure out cross-posting.

P.P.S. If you don’t run your own blog I can promise you writing a post would be more fun and easier than you think! :)

[Many thanks to Lew and Rich, we have posts for the case for and against hate speech laws]

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Inclusion: The Kevin Bacon Principle

I know someone who knows John Key. I know people (or know people who know people) who know all the party leaders, and who know each cabinet minister, the mayor, senior journos and public servants. Who else matters? Because I probably know someone who knows them too.

If I meet someone influential we’ll do that kiwi thing and figure out the connection, and in 5 mins we’ll know we have friends or family in common.

I know those people because I’m middle class, well educated and have lived in NZ my whole life. I expect most of you can make the same claims, it’s the beauty of being at the heart of a small connected country. 

That connectedness helps me in a variety of tiny ways; I can ring a friend and say “So, who do I need to talk to to get the promised traffic calming measures on my street under way?” if I ever needed something passed through a Minister’s office I’d have coffee with a mate and ask who’d be the best person to get the request to.  When a less connected friend was struggling with immigration rules I hooked him up with a friend who explained how it really works, and permanent residence was back on track.

More importantly it makes me feel connected and part of society, I know that the rules are made by people like me for people like me and I know people who know (and make) the rules. I’m confident that I can make my way through the maze, and that my friends will make sure I do.

New immigrants don’t have that connectedness nor do most beneficiaries. A kid from a working class background starting university doesn’t have the connectedness advantage I did.

The informality and friendliness that we love about New Zealand can also be insular and exclusive. From the inside we’re a classless level friendly society, from the outside we look a like a clique.

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Does New Zealand have Political Prisoners?

Anita’s thread on the failures of the 5th Labour government got me to thinking about the criminalisation of political dissent during its tenure. That in turn got me to wonder about whether there have been politically-motivated incarcerations in recent (since 1995) times. I can think of three, but since I am a relatively new immigrant (currently in economic exile of sorts) and new to the intimacies of New Zealand political life, I am not sure if there have been others.

Ahmed Zaoui was clearly a political prisoner. He posed no threat to anyone, much less the security of NZ. Yet he was incarcerated for over two years, including one year in solitary, because of what he represented–the face of political Islam that was not a lapdog of Western (read in this case French) interests. Right wing troglodytes and bigots may not like it, but he committed no crime in NZ and he never committed an act of violence against anyone, anywhere. Yet the Labour government saw fit to violate his civil rights in order to curry favour with the French and look good in the war on terror (at least in the eyes of the US, Australia and the UK). Shame on Richard Woods (SIS director general at the time), Lianne Dalziel (Immigration Minister at the time), and Helen Clark for orchestrating this farce–remember “lie in unision?” Praise Allah for Deborah Manning, Rodney Harrison and Richard McLeod for speaking truth to that abuse of power.(Note to retrogrades: Allah means God so chill on the pro-terrorist accusations).

Tim Selwyn spent more than year in stir having been found guilty of sedition. Continue reading “Does New Zealand have Political Prisoners?”

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Who took down Winston?

Winston Peters did not fall, he wasn’t even just pushed, he was dragged down by an effective tactical campaign. Some political operative got everything they needed – the evidence, the source, a couple of journos, a couple of commentators and a couple of politicians – and they went for it, and they won. 

It’s tempting to see it as a joint National-Act campaign with a disgruntled ex NZ First staffer feeding them information, but the idea that National and Act managed to work that closely together and completely shared everything seems really far fetched. Also the main source will have needed a single main contact.

So maybe it was a National campaign, carefully orchestrated, inviting Act in when needed. National had the biggest benefit from the end of NZF, so that counts for it. But… National ran a very low risk campaign and this was not a low risk strategy: imagine the fallout if the media had covered the strategy orchestration by the Nats, or if Peters really did have the material on the Nats he’d always claimed.

Ok, possibly an Act campaign which occasionally invited in National? Much more plausible from a risk perspective: Act could’ve withstood this going bad without any real difficulty. But… if you were a disgrunted ex-NZFer, would you go to Act? And how much did Act really get from the death of NZF? And does Act have the internal political infrastructure to pull this off?

Final option, someone on the right but outside both parties – relationships and trust with both parties, but not beholden to either. So no political risk to either party, more plausible deniability for journos (it’s not coming straight from a party operative) and the ability to co-ordinate across and beyond party lines. But… there are only a few right operatives that skillful who aren’t in parties and surely someone’s checked them out.

So, who did it? Who had the skill, ability and connections to take down Winston Peters?

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Hillary Reinvents the Wheel

The Senate confirmation hearings on Hillary Clinton’s nomination as Secretary of State went remarkably well for her. She showed all of her moxie, knowledge and intuition to great advantage. She is a shoo-in as the next Secretary of State, the third female in the job and the first ex-Senator in ages. But it is what she said about the conduct of US foreign policy in the Obama administration that was most interesting.

Clinton talked of the need to use “smart power,” as opposed to hard or soft power. She made it seem that “smart power” was the judicious mix of soft and hard power in the approach to foreign policy. One would have thought that when using the coercive disincentives of the threat and use of force embodied in “hard” power concepts, or the economic, diplomatic and cultural incentives of the “soft” power construct, the US would be “smart,” to say nothing of judicious and nuanced, in their application. It goes without saying that under the Bush 43 administration it did not. But is the notion of “smart power” really a new conceptualisation of how to conduct foreign policy, or is it merely rebranding something tried and true (and perhaps found wanting in the past).

I argue the case for the latter. “Smart” power is no more than the 21st century recycled, renamed approach know as Wilsonian pragmatism. Wilsonian pragmatism is the (uneasy) meshing of principled idealism and realism in the conduct of US foreign policy. The idea is to push democratic capitalist ideals as a moral imperative, but deal with thorny foreign policy issues from a realist baseline. Realist baselines are based upon pragmatic self-interest, which is value neutral and power-oriented. When idealism and pragmatism clash, pragmatism always wins. When ideology meets realism, realism holds sway. Realism, a term derived from the German realpolitik and first enunciated by Metternich, simply posits the thesis that nations have interests, some of which are essential to national survival and some which are not. Nation-states use all aspects of national power (political, economic, diplomatic, cultural) to advance core interests, and leave non-essential interest pursuit to times of plenty or peace. Otherwise, there is no room for idealism in international politics or foreign policy. Now is not a time of peace or plenty. Continue reading “Hillary Reinvents the Wheel”

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Freedom?

The right-wing fringe think-tank, the Heritage Foundation, has scored NZ slightly higher on its yearly Index of Economic Freedom. NZ comes in at number 5. Rankings here.

This despite a Labour-led government being in charge at the time the data were collected.

According to the Heritage Foundation, the increase–from 80.6% to 82%–was due to improvements in trade, investment and property rights. The Herald notes that, “Freedom from corruption declined but remained high at 94 per cent, and labour freedom fell but was also high at 89.65 per cent”, but doesn’t tell us that the “labour freedom” score declines with higher minimum wages, protections against arbitrary dismissals, etc. It doesn’t mean freedom for workers. Still, with December’s stripping of low-end workers’ protections against arbitrary dismissal (barring provable discrimination), NZ should score even higher on this “freedom” next year.

Interestingly, NZ came in just behind Hong Kong, Singapore, Australia and Ireland, and just ahead of the United States and Canada. What do all these countries have in common? A clue… Britain came in at number 10. Yep, the English-speaking, common law countries–all ruled by Britain at some point– share a predilection for light regulation of business. (This is borne out in the rankings of the right-wing Fraser Institute as well.)

It will be interesting to see how the Anglo-American economies and their Asian cousins fare compared to the rest of the world over the next couple of years.

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Women are agents of their own political and military destinies

Yesterday morning I read Maia’s excellent post about the “women and children” rhetoric being used about Gaza in which she reminds us it’s not just the innocent who deserve protection. Later I walked past a pro-Israel rally outside Parliament in which someone held a banner saying “Hamas uses women and children for terror!”

The point about the phrase “women and children” is that they’re implicitly helpless. Women and children are people things happen to, bombs fall on them, soldiers shoot them, men rape them – they are powerless in the face of others.

In reality there are many women in the world who choose to engage in political or military struggle. There are women fighting for both Palestine and Israel, then there’s Rwanda, Eritrea and Iraq. There are women politically involved in determining their own destiny in every corner of the world. 

I take no pleasure, no pride, no secret feminist joy in reading those articles or watching those videos. But my horror is not because they are women, it is because they are human. When I see stories of women killed in bombings, women raped in ethnic cleansing and women forced to be soldiers my horror is because they are human – nobody of any gender or age should have those lives. 

Women, like men, can be victims of violence, and women, like men, can be be agents of their own destiny: they can fight for armies and they can struggle for peace. We are not the epitome of helpless, powerless vulnerability.

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Quoting: better or worse?

In response to some questions about quoting, and some pretty hard to read comments, I’ve just installed the clickquote plugin and would like some feedback about whether it’s made things better or worse.

Now if you click on a paragraph in a post or comment it will magically appear in your comment box all wrapped up in a blockquote. You will still need to type in who you’re quoting and add some of your own words too :)

So, is that better or worse? Anything else you’d like?

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Act says: solve everything by privatising everything

Roger Douglas was on Morning Report this morning, once again banging on about how we should privatise more stuff to save ourselves. I was interested to hear him complaining that National led government isn’t doing what he said they should, given that they clearly are. They have plans for

  • privatising more health provision
  • private prisons
  • increased funding to private schools
  • private competition in work accident insurance
  • privatisation of many local government services
  • private provision of social welfare services

Exactly what is Douglas concerned National is unwilling to privatise?