Righteous Espionage

Trust, But Thoroughly Verify

It’s looking as though the NZ government will get its amendments to spying legislation through the Parliament and into law.  There is continued opposition to the bill, despite substantial changes and amendments being made.  This continued opposition has begged a question: what changes to the bill would satisfy the remaining opponents?  The answer seems to be: nix spying completely.  In this view, espionage is wrong, period. 

This totaliter aliter opposition has two forms: a semi-strong form, and a strong form.  The semi-strong form makes a divide between spying on citizens and spying on non-citizens.  Spying on citizens is always wrong–in this view.  The strong form opposition has it that all spying period, regardless of the object, is wrong.  Neither the semi-strong or strong forms of opposition make much sense. 

In reality we have domestic spying going on all the time.  All forms of police surveillance constitute a form of spying.  Some require a judicial warrant.  Some don’t.
  When a police car goes down a street and observes an unruly crowd and the car parks up and watches what transpires, it is a form of spying–on citizens, no less.  Likewise, all undercover policing is a form of espionage.

It is axiomatic that even as we have criminals and would-be criminals in our midst, so we have those beyond our borders who would render harm to our people.  Knowing who they are and what they are likely to be up to, in order to protect and defend is essential.  It is an intrinsic and ethical duty of civil government.   This renders espionage an essential duty of state policing. 

The issue is not espionage per se, but the terms and conditions under which it takes place.  New Zealand’s tacit constitution has a separation of powers: parliament versus the executive; judiciary versus the executive,  the people versus the government, and so forth.  The appropriate controls over spying need to be set in law and they need to draw upon separate powers to provide sufficient checks, balances, and protections.  If that is the case, then we have no principial objections to espionage.   But, pre-meditated, planned espionage activities ought to have judicial oversight and warrant–to confirm that the activity is lawful.  Not capturing and storing unwarranted information upon citizens is an essential limitation, and so forth.  Judicial reviews of the overall spying “programme” are also necessary and a useful check and balance.  Reporting to a parliamentary committee according to the terms set forth by parliament is also a helpful check.  Sunlight is always the best disinfectant.   The bottom line is that no one governing power should implicitly trust the others.  All men are evil, and if left to their own devices, the evil of men will eventually predominate.

“Never trust the bastards” is a good maxim in these matters.  If men are allowed to arrogate power in secret they will do it.  Those that profess they won’t definitely should not be trusted.  Truly honourable men will insist upon limitations and checks and balances to, and scrutiny of, their powers.  

We need to be reminded that prior to our current Prime Minister, we were served by one Helen Clark.  Clark’s Jacobinish regimen was characterised by a general disregard for our tacit constitution and an ambition to make radical changes to the way our democracy is constituted for partisan political motives–as in trying (and failing) to ram through taxpayer funding of political parties. (Her own party, NZ Labour had run out of money due to declining membership.)  She was also alleged to have leaked privileged information to news media anonymously in order to get people she opposed dismissed.  It does not bear imagining what Clark would have done with an intelligence service empowered to spy on any or all New Zealanders without checks and balances.  The current Prime Minister appears naive and unaware of the risks.  He is a cheery, “hail, well met” kind of fellow.  Neither Clark nor Key–nor any other Prime Minister deserves our trust in such matters.  It has to be a “trust but thoroughly verify” regime if our liberties are to be properly protected.

It is disappointing that our current opposition political parties (NZ Labour, Greens) have failed to play a responsible role in the present spying legislation changes.  They could have had a very constructive role on behalf of us all, but they chose not to, intent on scoring partisan political points.  This amounts to a gross dereliction of duty and responsibility.  As it has turned out, we have had to rely on the contribution of one sole independent MP–Peter Dunne who negotiated some crucial amendments to the legislation.  Labour, the Greens and other blow-hearts such as Winston Peters have failed in their responsibilities and are beneath contempt in this matter.

Christians believe in original sin.  We believe in total depravity.  We believe in government instituted by, and responsible to God.  Therefore, we respect government, whilst being deeply sceptical of those who hold office. Power does actually corrupt.  It energises the latent corruption present in us all.  “Respect our government, but distrust our governors” is a thoroughly Christian maxim–all the more so, when secrecy and espionage are on the table. 

Lest We Forget . . .

Obsequious, Adoring and Useless

This is the state of the current NZ Labour Party, according to one of its stalwarts, Chris Trotter. 

Mr Shearer inherits a party in which rank-and-file members have sunk to the level of what one wit describes as “MP fan clubs”. At its upper levels, the party is caught in the grip of a sclerotic, self-selecting oligarchy based in Labour’s insular and largely unaccountable sector-groups. In effect, Mr Shearer’s Labour Party is rapidly disabling itself. His first and most urgent priority is to kick it back into life.

This, more than anyone else, is the legacy of Helen Clark.  She represented capture of the party by left-wing academics, career bureaucrats, homosexuals, and unionists. Most of them had never done a day’s work in the real world in their lives.
It recruits its MP’s through the “youth wing”.  It grooms them, soirees them, feeds them, sends them to various confabulations of  the Socialist International, and panders to their egos.  Then it selects them as MP’s and tries to ram them down the throat of the electorate.  They spend most of their time paternalistically telling voters how they understand them, feel for them, stand up for them–but failing to connect because the electorate senses the disingenuousness.

According to Trotter the Labour Party’s membership has consequently fallen to around 6,000–just slightly more than the Greens.  It has no money–not surprising really. 

Let’s never forget that this is why Clark pushed so hard–even to the point of breaking the law–to ensure state funding of political parties.  That move, had it been successful, would have ensured the Labour elite’s control of the party and possibly government in perpetuity, funded compulsorily through the taxation system.  It’s the only way Clark knew how to operate.  If money did not come via the state, she was totally at sea, lost, adrift.  It was all she and her cosseted colleagues knew and know.  Rarely–if ever–have we seen such naked self-interest pursued so ruthlessly and illegally. 

Thankfully, the common-sense of the “man in the street” found this kind of behaviour odious–which is why the “common man” was despised by Clark and her ilk as an ignorant, brutish bum. 

Can the new Labour leader, Shearer revitalize the Labour Party?  Unlikely.  He, himself, is a perpetuation of the same elite–having been employed by the UN for years.  He is an insider in culture, experience, and mentality.  It is highly unlikely that he will have the necessary perspective to take the axe to his own Party in order to revitalise and rebuild it.  Were he to attempt such a heroic task, his greatest enemies will be his cosseted parliamentary colleagues and their adulating staffs. 

Principled Assassination

“Good on ya’, Bro'”

Passing into the folklore of Western civilization is the heroic attempt by some, including the Desert Fox, to assassinate Adolf Hitler.  They failed.  But we have honoured their moral judgment and their courage.  All of which serves to prove that assassination, when attempted for right reasons and true moral principles, can be a worthy deed.

When John Key was first elected Prime Minister of New Zealand we were told his nickname was Smiling Assassin–earned from his time as an international currency trader with Merrill Lynch.  Three years have passed and and it is time to reassess the moniker.  We can testify to lots of smiling.  That much is true.  But not much assassination.  Definitely not true.

His predecessor, Helen Clark gave every indication that when it came to the “sense of humour” department she was a shingle short.
  But when it came to assassination she was prodigious and prolific, ruthless and quick.  Cross her once, and you had better make a will.  Cross her twice and you could write your own obituary.  Three times, and you would be dead before you finished reading it.  We suspect in part this was due due to Clark’s pique or spite.  John Key has neither.  He often shows himself as the kind of guy who takes a shot across the chops, grins, says, “Good one, bro’ “, whilst inviting his assailant to have another crack.

But one thing Clark had in spades was a steely commitment to an ideology that motivated much of what she did.  That is why the Labour Party now is in the doldrums.  Clark’s management style had much to do with command and control by ideological compatible allies.  She stacked the Labour Party with them and reshaped the Labour Party so that it became a cadre of its leadership–a top-down, ideologically rigorous, command and control fiefdom.  The subsequent problems are twofold: firstly, it could not survive Clark’s departure; secondly, Clark’s ideology was offensive and extreme to the lights of most New Zealanders.  Consequently, the Labour Party remains today a “gaggle of gays and self-serving unionists”–ideologically pure, but so out of touch with the public it risks becoming permanently irrelevant.

Clark’s ideological purity, however, has left another lasting legacy.  She also stacked every government department and every quango she could with people after her own image.  These people now fly below the political radar screen but continue to have an inordinate influence over the country.  Political correctness remains alive and well as a result.  Key, for whom ideology is a foreign idea, neither notices nor cares.  He appears not see it because he does not think in ideological categories.

As a result, he is doing the country a grave disservice.  Take the Human Rights Commission, for example.  This from Stuff:

Golliwog wrapping paper has appeared on the shelves of a popular chain store.  Race Relations Commissioner Joris de Bres said the paper, retailing for $2 at Look Sharp stores, was likely to cause offence.

“I would prefer if they withdrew products like that from sale,” he said. “Often in New Zealand we don’t realise what a controversial history they have in other countries.”

Controversy in other countries should control what a business sells to its customers in New Zealand.  Helen Clark continues to influence us from the political graveyard.  Because she made appointments based on ideology, her world-view continues to be imposed on us all.  The State continues to be our nanny.  We are continually lectured on how to dress, think, act, and behave correctly by the lights of a self-appointed elite who want to make the world in their own image.  We are smothered with their “good advice”.

How we long for some good old fashioned assassinations.  If you do it at the right time, for the right reasons it can be a very salutary thing–or so history would appear to tell us.  John Key has lived up to the smiling “bit” of his nickname.  How we wish the “assassin” part had proved true, at least a bit.  A big ideological clean-out is desperately needed in New Zealand.  But there’s the rub.  Key, being apolitical and non-ideological, is just not likely to see it. 

It would be salutary to have all those smothering government agencies that exist for the sole purpose of making us better people to be staffed by cheery, happy chaps in the image of the Prime Minister.  Having the Human Rights Commission led by people whose habitual response was, “Good on ya’ bro’.  Have another crack,” would be a breath of much needed free air.

Home Grown Jihad

Raggle Taggle Cowards

Chris Trotter has written a helpful piece on the Urewera 17, providing background and context.  The upshot: the Crown has had to drop charges against all but four of the “17” on technical legal grounds. 

For benefit of our overseas readers, the Urewera 17 episode involved secretive bush camps in the Urewera forest four years ago with a bunch of Tuhoe Maori and a raggle taggle assortment of fair weather, left wing extremists.  The camps were styled as “training camps” and involved practising with guns and explosives.  Four years ago, the NZ Police raided the area and arrested a gaggle of the raggle taggles. 

They were charged under the Terrorism Suppression Act–a hastily drafted, knee-jerk piece of legislation that Trotter describes as having “many and serious inadequacies”.
  For a start, when the Clark Government got the willies over the spectre of Islamic suicide bombers infiltrating and attacking New Zealanders, the focus was on “furrigners”.  Clark had ground to make up: she had infamously justified her evisceration of the NZ Air Force with the cavalier remark that she did not see any strategic threats to New Zealand on the horizon.  Then came 9/11 and Clark and her coterie decided that they needed to make up for lost time.  The frenzied passage of the Terrorism Suppression Act was one of the outcomes. 

One expects that never in a thousand years would Clark and her simpering attendants have thought that terrorism might be home grown and that armed insurrection might occur from within.  After all, Clark was riding high in the opinion polls and she had declared that the people loved her and regarded her as being a very competent Prime Minister. 

When the Urewera conspiracies came to the attention of the NZ Police–Trotter describes how this most likely occurred–the Police (after receiving legal advice) decided to proceed against the raggle taggle army via the Terrorism Suppression Act, which includes, amongst other things, an indulgence of lower standards of normal investigative procedures.  After the arrests, the Police found out they could not proceed under the anti-terrorism statute; they had to resort to the Arms Act.  Unfortunately, normal investigative procedures applied under that Act.  The upshot is that most of the evidence gathered against the raggle taggle army was rendered inadmissable. 

Consequently, what was really going on up in the bush will never be publicly revealed.  Trotter sums up:

New Zealand is one of the world’s oldest democracies: a nation committed to the rule of law. The Urewera 17 (or, at least 13 of them) have escaped prosecution and possible conviction because of that commitment. They have taken full advantage of the presumption of innocence, and have strenuously exercised their right to silence.

What they were doing up there in the bush, and to what end, remains hidden in the swirling Urewera mist.

This matter raises some interesting issues.  At first glance the idea that our home grown raggle taggles can be compared  with jihadi terrorism seems a very long bow.  After all, these folk have lived (most, if not all, of them) off the public purse for years.  They are upper middle class armchair revolutionaries, softened by years and years of living off the public welfare teat.  While they may have committed a few cowardly and deadly acts, as soon as they were faced with the business end of a police rifle they would have folded like the cowards they undoubtedly are. 

We believe this is the reason why the public immediately jumped to the conclusion that the police had overreacted.  These people were clearly not jihadis.  They were middle class grievance mongers in search of a cause. 

But maybe we should not be too hasty.  New Zealand is a socialist nation which has grounded its culture on grievance and grievance mongering.  “I have rights, and you are ripping me off” is the accepted dominant discourse of schools, unions, government, politics and media.  If everyone believes their particular cause for more of other people’s money is just then not to be receive the handout is ipso facto repression.  When people come to believe genuinely that they are victims of an unjust repression and begin to coalesce into groups dedicated to redressing their perceived wrongs, armed insurrection and domestic terrorist acts in New Zealand are not impossible. 

If, as Margaret Thatcher said, socialism eventually runs out of other people’s money, a nation nursed in grievance could easily take to the streets to commit violent atrocities.  As the recent riots in Britain show, it is not whether the rioters are relatively wealthy and comfortably provided for, but whether they see themselves as victims and oppressed.  Clearly most people in New Zealand do. 

There is a “saving grace” in this situation.  As long as most people believe they have grounds for grievance all groups tend to remain engaged in the political process.  Political parties seek to capture support by arguing that some grievances are more important than others.  People stay hopeful that they will be heard and eventually paid off.  But when the money runs out–as it eventually will–all bets will be off. 

We believe the best outcome would be for the government to take a comprehensive look at the Terrorism Suppression Act, and re-write it, far removed from the peculiar follies of Helen Clark, to incorporate the probability of home-grown, domestic terrorism and armed insurrection in the future. 

>Chris Trotter’s Take on Labour’s Languishment

>“We Don’t Like Them”

Chris Trotter reckons that the reason the (political) Left is in disarray in New Zealand is due to its socialism being occluded by a stronger commitment to trendy effete liberal social causes.

Now, (National’s) John Key, Stephen Joyce and Gerry Brownlee are all pretty likeable guys – but they’re not that likeable. For roughly 15 percentage points of electoral support to have vacated the centre-left camp something else has to be going on. Much as we hate to admit it, what seems to be happening here is not so much a case of people running to something, as it is of people running from something.
And what they are running from, comrades, is us – the centre-left.

They don’t like us and they don’t trust us. Why? Because long, long ago they got the very strong impression that we don’t like them.

We don’t like their values. We don’t approve of their culture. And we’re so infuriatingly certain that we know – so much better than they do themselves – what’s good for them.

We call them racists if they resist our bicultural programmes. We call them homophobes if they’re less than 100 percent supportive of queer culture. We call them sexist if they energetically celebrate all the delightful differences between men and women. We want their votes – you bet. But we would really rather do without the voters themselves.

Then, amazingly, we’re surprised and hurt when they turn away from us. In truth, what we should really be surprised about is how many ordinary Kiwis, in spite of our insufferable arrogance and condescension, still decide to stick with us!

And if you want to know why Phil Goff has become electoral poison it’s because he let these people down. For a moment there they thought he was going to turn Labour away from its effete social liberalism and back towards the robust proletarianism of yesteryear. But he didn’t. At the first sign of resistance from the social liberals in his caucus, he retreated. When push came to shove, Phil just didn’t have the balls.

Hat Tip: Keeping Stock(that bastion of down-to-earth common sense).

This is not the first time Chris has banged this particular drum. Remember his challenge after Labour’s defeat at the last election: he suggested that if Labour could not win the loyalty of “Westies”–characterised as ordinary blokes and blokesses–they would become electoral fossils? Helen Clark, the high priestess of feminism, homosexual deviancy, multi-culturalism, greenism, and classical music was certainly not a woman of the people. Phil Goff was supposed to be more close to the common kiwi bloke–but Phil has been a career politician. That’s all he has known since his university days. Despite trying to convince the electorate that “he is one of them” by a few photo ops riding Harley’s, he was long ago made a captive to the Beltway.

When we refer to “Westies” we really are talking about Polynesian culture. Labour despises most Polynesian cultural values. About the only thing they have in common is a joint commitment to government (the chief) dolling out money and goodies to the village. But the heart of Polynesian culture is offensive to Labour.

At the heart of it are no-nonsense family values, respect for parents and elders, tough-love when kids mess up, competitiveness–especially in hard contact sports, social conviviality with lots of food and social drinking, a deep respect for a traditional Christianity as found in the islands, a deep longing for the kids and their advancement and success, hard work, and economic entrepreneurship.

The current Labour Party presumes to represent Westies. Culturally, however, they inhabit another (distasteful) planet. To pinpoint the divide consider this: of the current crop of Labour MP’s, on average how many children Labour MP’s have each borne and raised? Compare it to the average Westie. That would powerfully illustrate the divide better than anything.

Not that we are champions of Westie culture. Far from it. Its Christianity has all too often been tarnished by cargo-cult ethics, an ideology of worldly “mana”, and an ungodly island socialism. Instead of reforming island culture around God’s Word it has all too often syncretised the faith with various non-Christian island beliefs. There is much work to be done. But Labour despises the things that are right and good about Westie culture. Therein lies its problem.

>The Dark Underworld of Sweden–Part I

>Corruption and Filth in High Places

We have become accustomed to Sweden’s portrayal as a social nirvana where high taxes are willingly paid to support a permanent welfare class, where social ethics are proudly loose, where the meatballs are perfect, and socialism has achieved its first paradise on earth. (We in New Zealand recall that the dominant feminist and homosexual wings of the Clark Labour Government openly modelled their view of the future of New Zealand upon Sweden and have sought to re-craft New Zealand into Sweden’s image.)

Recently we came across a couple of sources which call the Shangri-La image of Sweden’s bureaucratic libertinism into question. The first of these was a recent articlein the Sydney Morning Herald, entitled A Very, Very Dark Side. Apparently Sweden has a very sinister underworld indeed–but ironically it is not being exposed by the police or government actions, but by books of fiction, film and television crime shows. The film currently playing in New Zealand, Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, based on the Amazon Best Seller book by the late Stieg Larsson is an example of this new genre. http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=jtertullian&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=0307454541&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr Larsson wrote three volumes in the series, called the Millennium Trilogy, before a fatal heart attack. Why is his work significant? It attacks the Shangri-La stereotype of Sweden.

Another example is the Wallander series by Henning Mankell, which has now been adapted into a BBC series.

Larsson, as with . . . Mankell, spends much of the time pulling apart the stereotype of happy-ever-after, perfectly educated, socially democratic and joyfully tolerant Swedes enjoying wild sex lives and perfectly cooked meatballs. The Millenniumtrilogy tracks Blomkvist and Salander’s attempts to uncover murders by rich neo-fascist families as well as state-sanctioned sexual abuse, paedophilia and rape.

Larsson was a campaigning anti-Nazi journalist. Mankell was a well-established mainstream author before he created Wallander. He did so to investigate paedophile rings at the heart of Sweden’s security services and expose public and institutionalised racism.

Wallander and Blomkvist wade through some of the extremely unpleasant undercurrents beneath Sweden’s tranquil social order. In Larsson’s and Mankell’s stories, both characters encounter neo-Nazis and corrupt agents of SAPO, the Swedish security and intelligence service. In their version of Sweden, racism is rife, violence against women is commonplace and the trafficking of children for sex is facilitated by highly placed lawyers and doctors.

But the begged question is how close to reality these works of fiction are. When it comes to Sweden’s carefully coiffured image of socialist respectability it appears to be more a case of the elderly Doctor Cameron’s advice to tyro Doctor Finlay: “Things are not always what they seem, Dr Finlay.”

In 2007 the US State Department recorded 6192 cases of child abuse in Sweden by November of that year. It also reported homophobic crime was on the rise, and tens of thousands of rapes and domestic violence incidents in a population of just 9 million.

A report from the group Global Monitoring in 2006 on the commercial sexual exploitation of children found systemic faults in Sweden, including allowing child pornography to be viewed, although not downloaded, and failing to care properly for children caught up in sex trafficking.

We suspect that once the Shangri-La propaganda veil is torn off, ordinary Swedes will find they have been duped by the powerful for decades. The failing of ordinary Swedes is that they have been willingly and complicity duped by their government and its all pervasive bureaucracy. It is possible that these recent crime thrillers might startle them out of the soporific somnambulism.

The second article will look at how the Swedish apparatchik has chillingly silenced the Church.

>Helen Clark at Work

>By Their Fruits You Shall Know Them

On the 31st of March 2009, former Prime Minister of New Zealand, Helen Clark was appointed head of the UN Development Programme. She was made responsible for an annual budget of billions of dollars to spread around the world to help poor countries develop.

Along the way she has hit a few unfortunate speed bumps. One was in an impoverished Caribbean nation called Haiti. It came in the form of a devastating earthquake. Haiti is one of the poorest countries in the world, yet is shares a border with the Dominican Republic which is considerably better off. Same location.  Same natural resources.  Same climate.  Only the one, however, is listed as one of the world’s poorest nation.

What many may not be aware of is Haiti has already been the recipient of billions of dollars of international aid for over twenty years. Things have just got worse. How could this be?

Clark’s PR machine has always framed her as fiercely intelligent, clever, smarter than the average bear. In other words her PR coterie and the Lame Stream Media saw a mirror image of themselves when they gazed upon her.

Now that Clark’s legendary fierce intelligence would be put at the helm of the UN Development Programme which had already wasted billions in Haiti, maybe things would change. Or, not. The “nots” have it.

According to a recent report, two-thirds of peace-keeping aid in Haiti is going to UN personnel.

The United Nations has quietly upped this year’s peacekeeping budget for earthquake-shattered Haiti to $732.4 million, with two-thirds of that amount going for the salary, perks and upkeep of its own personnel, not residents of the devastated island.

The world organization plans to spend the money on an expanded force of some 12,675 soldiers and police, plus some 479 international staffers, 669 international contract personnel, and 1,300 local workers, just for the 12 months ending June 30, 2010.

Some $495.8 million goes for salaries, benefits, hazard pay, mandatory R&R allowances and upkeep for the peacekeepers and their international staff support. Only about $33.9 million, or 4.6 percent, of that salary total is going to what the U.N. calls “national staff” attached to the peacekeeping effort.

Amongst the expenditure is a very necessary piece of equipment dubbed the Loveboat.

Presumably, the budget also includes at least part of some $10 million that the U.N. has spent on renting two passenger vessels, the Sea Voyager (known to some U.N. staffers as the “Love Boat”) and the Ola Esmeralda, for a minimum of 90 days each, as highly subsidized housing for some of its peacekeepers and humanitarian staff. The tab for the two vessels, which offer catered food, linen service and comfortable staterooms and lounges, is about $112,500 per day.

Now, last time we checked Haiti had not been at war. Why a peacekeeping budget?

The Haitian peacekeeping budget is relatively unique among U.N. efforts, because there was no civil war or widespread bloodletting to inspire the original peacekeeping force, which arrived in 2004. Instead, the mission has mainly been intended to bolster political order in a society crushed by hurricanes, political turbulence, and grinding misery.

And just so we get the complete picture. The “peacekeeping” budget, most of which is circulating straight back to UN personnel, is only the tip of the iceberg of aid which is supposedly floating  Haiti’s way.

The revised peacekeeping tab is over and above the roughly $15 billion in short- and long-term aid that the international community — led by the U.S. and European Union — pledged to Haiti at an international donor’s conference last month.

Our expectation is that when all this money has been “dumped” on Haiti, it will be left worse off than it is now. Most of the money, which represents exaction of taxes upon ordinary human beings by their soft-despotic governments, will have been expended upon UN elites. The “beneficent” iceberg will have melted away.

Sitting astride it all will be the fearsomely intelligent Helen Clark. But at least we can acknowledge her consistency. All her life Clark has held the peculiar view that the ultimate and most profound solution to any human problem is more government and more government money. She will no doubt be convinced that wonderful and great things are being done in Haiti. There are no limits to the fearsome stupidity of Clark and her ilk.

To Clark, whose god is government, and who believes its worship requires never-ending illicit exactions of property from citizens, intelligence is indeed the stuff of myth and legend. She will go down in history as one of the human races most notorious wastrels.

>Property at the Pleasure of the State

>Begging To Be Left Some Crumbs

New Zealand has a shockingly bad history of property rights. It stems, in part, from the arrogant hubris of wanting to lead the world in applying Fabian socialist doctrines–socialism without violent revolution–since the end of the nineteenth century. The political and religious culture of the country has looked to the gummint as the solution to all problems, and has welcomed the gummint expropriating property from citizens to pay for it. It’s all part of the Faustian bargain.

Couple this with a strong streak of egalitarianism, where I am as good as my neighbour by dogmatic creed. In a materialistic culture (the established religion of New Zealand, where the only reality that matters is, well, matter), being “as good as my neighbour” can only be measured in a materialistic sense–that is, in terms of property. It’s the only “currency” that is meaningful.

Materialistic egalitarianism creates a drive for having the same house, car, income, wide-screen TV, health care, and education as others. This leads to a universally held belief in the gummint needing to take property of some and redistribute it to others to make things more equal. Virtually without exception, all people in New Zealand believe in this doctrine–from raving greenie socialists right through to the hardest hard-core of right wing ideologues. The only debate is one of degree or extent. To all intents and purposes, New Zealand is a socialist country by the willing consent of the governed.

“So, what’s the problem, then?” we hear you say. If people want it, it must be OK. It has achieved a certain legitimacy, has it not? The problems are legion. Right up at the head of the queue is an inevitable overreaching, smothering, controlling, nannying and smothering government. The arrogations of its power expand gradually and ineluctably: there is no stopping it until the State dominates everything. In the end, the government will tell us how to raise our children, how we are to eat, what we are to think, how we are to spend our time, and what level of private income and property it will tolerate. In a word, the State will progressively decide the value to be imputed to our lives.

Now, it is a truism that such a state will succeed to incompetence; grounded upon greed, envy, and theft, wrapped up in ever expanding corruptions and injustice, the fruit rots from within. Need it be this way? No, but it is inevitable as long as the established religion of secular materialistic humanism remains regnant.

Years ago we were participating in a discussion amongst Christians on creeping apostasy and unbelief amongst certain churches and Christian denominations. One of the protagonists asserted that, like his whiskey, he preferred getting Unbelief straight. Rather the wolf, than the wolf in sheep’s clothing. This is a fair point.

There is something sneaky and dirty about a so-called “property rights” political party such as National speaking out of both sides of its mouth. It continues to borrow over $250m per week to keep the government afloat and sustain its egalitarianistic redistribution of wealth. But, of course, it is politically unpalatable to pay for this largesse by putting taxes up. So, it prefers to push the burden and expropriation out into the future. Our children, many yet unborn, will have to pay for it. They will come into the world in debt–born into slavery to the self-indulgence and self-gratifying covetousness and envy of our generation. For the rest of their lives they will have to pay for our indulgence. Slavery indeed.

By “moving to the centre” John Key and his National hucksters have become more than Labour-lite. At least Labour had the “courage” of its socialist convictions and was prepared to tax “rich pricks” to fund its egalitarian madness. Key and his mob have cowardly decided that they would rather tax the silent, the yet unborn, for they can’t vote.

But egalitarianism and Fabian socialism is the established religion that grips the hearts and minds of almost all in the country. So, all governments in the foreseeable future will continue to act in disregard of the freedom rights of individuals, will continue to expropriate and steal, and will continue to appeal to envy to garner popular support.

Bring back Helen Clark and Michael Cullen. At least with them we got the poison straight up. There was a modicum of integrity there, non?

>Spineless or Astute

>Top Brass and its Government Masters

Probably the most fundamental duty of government is to judge its people justly. Of course this means that it must ensure appropriate punishment is levied upon murderers. This, in turn, means that it is a fundamental duty of government to defend its people against military attack, punishing those who seek to take control of the country by force. Punishment includes the use of deadly force. This is undoubted Christian teaching.

Therefore it is understandable that many, not just Christians, have ridiculed and lampooned the decision by our top military commanders to punish NZ soldiers who were photographed alongside ammunition in Afghanistan which had “greetings” painted on it for Al Qaeda and the Taliban.

But we need to put this in context. There are a number of possible explanations for the disciplinary action by the top brass. You can take your pick.

Firstly, it may be that the brass are way ahead of the average bear, or reader of blogs. They have grasped that Afghanistan is a counter-insurgency war: it is well established military doctrine that you have to fight such wars appropriately–and the tactics are very different from conventional wars. Essentially the core tactic is to appear non-bellicose to the population: mingle with them, help them, smile at them, take off your dark glasses, wave to them when you pass, and demonstrate that you are on their side, caring for them and protecting them. Then, be real belligerent against the actual insurgents when you have found them, identified them, and isolated them. The more you win the “hearts and minds” of the population, the more likely the enemy will be isolated and exposed.

On this account the top brass would be disciplining their errant soldiers not for painting slogans on to bombs, but for being seen and photographed. Such antics could easily be seen by the local population as a slur against them (“these infidels laugh and mock at us Afghans”) and so undermine the war effort.

Now, if the brass are thinking this way they have a point. The top US commander, General McChrystal is trying to reshape the whole US war effort in Afghanistan along these lines. It could be that the NZ armed forces brass are just way ahead of the pack.

Another explanation is that the top military brass remain deeply influenced by the Clark military doctrine. It may come as a surprise to some that former Prime Minister, Helen Clark had a military doctrine. But she did. It was her view that the NZ military faced no strategic threat and that it should function primarily as a global peacekeeping force, basically under the aegis of the United Nations. The Clark Doctrine always saw the NZ military not as a national force, but as our contribution to an internationalist military force. Its role was not to protect people in New Zealand, but to bring peace to the world in our time.

Shots fired in anger were never part of this doctrine. As a peacekeeper you may have to fire the occasional shot, but always with tears in the eyes, and with great reluctance. According to the Clark Doctrine it would be utterly unacceptable for NZ military personnel deployed offshore to write mocking messages on bombs about to be dropped on people. That is not what the NZ military is all about.

A third explanation is that the military brass in NZ have never bought into the deployment in Afghanistan–it was always and ever a token gesture. It was simply diplomacy by other means. Essentially, it was to keep the US onside to try to get traction in free trade talks–and, if the worst came to the worst, secure US aid if the country were ever under actual military or terrorist threat. If deployment were a message for wider diplomatic reasons, then it would make sense to go through the motions, engage in token military activity, but stay away from actual combat as much as possible.

This is essentially the position of Germany in its Afghani deployment. Painting messages on bombs is just a bit too gung ho for this kind of strategy, and so the brass have sought to send a message to kiwi soldiers to tone things down and chill out. Discretion is very much the order of the day if the real point is a token gesture for diplomatic leverage.

A final explanation of the brass’s decision would be that they understand that a new military doctrine now applies in New Zealand. We will call it the Key Doctrine. This doctrine holds that the war in Afghanistan is a war without borders and that to fight in Afghanistan is really to defend the homeland against terrorists. If we don’t fight them in their mountains, we will end up fighting them on our beaches. Much better their mountains than at the Mount, as it were.

Now the cruel reality is that we have no intention to prepare for a terrorist attack on our soil–the government has no resolve to prepare and no money to fund such preparations. All government funds, and then a considerable some, are committed to such essentials as the DPB, the state education system, and thousands of advisory boards giving us essential expert advice on how to eat, sleep, and put our pants on in the morning. So, better to fight them (at least in a minimal token way) in Afghanistan than here, and hope that it will be enough to ensure that the “others” strategy stays valid. (The “others” strategy is the real defense strategy which has applied in New Zealand for over fifty years now: the expectation that other nations will put their sons in harms way to defend us if ever we are attacked. All offshore military activity is designed to ensure that other nations will feel obliged to defend us if attacked–and that it the real objective in Afghanistan.)

But pictures, offensive and provocative pictures in this viral electronic world can be broadcast everywhere. The kind of pictures of NZ soldiers sending mocking messages to Islamic jihad fighters runs the risk of inflaming hatred and calling attention to ourselves in jihadist circles globally. That simply marks us out for a well planned revenge terrorist attack which may take five to seven years to bring to fruition. Since we have no meaningful defence against such terrorist activity, it is stupid to provoke it.

OK. So which explanation of the decision by the NZ military brass to discipline the artistic soldiers is most likely? You be the judge.

For our money, only the first possible explanation would honourable and worthy. The others all involve a gross dereliction of duty on the part of our government. They all mean that whilst New Zealand may be a paradise, it belong to fools and is ruled by fools–different shades and strips of fools to be sure, but fools nonetheless.

>Camille Paglia on Her Political Party

>The Democrats have Become Elitist

Recently, one of our left-wing political commentators, the redoubtable Chris Trotter had the temerity to suggest that Helen Clark and the parliamentary Labour party lost the election when they became increasingly elitist. They knew best. They began to tell ordinary New Zealanders what was good for them.

It appears as though the same syndrome is afflicting the Democratic party in the US. But, as in New Zealand, it apparently takes a fellow-left winger to make the point. Consider Camille Paglia’s assessment of her party.

What a difference a month makes! When my last controversial column posted on Salon in the second week of August, most Democrats seemed frozen in suspended animation, not daring to criticize the Obama administration’s bungling of healthcare reform lest it give aid and comfort to the GOP. Well, that ice dam sure broke with a roar. Dissident Democrats found their voices, and by late August even the liberal lemmings of the mainstream media, from CBS to CNN, had dramatically altered their tone of reportage, from priggish disdain of the town hall insurgency to frank admission of serious problems in the healthcare bills as well as of Obama’s declining national support.

But this tonic dose of truth-telling may be too little too late. As an Obama supporter and contributor, I am outraged at the slowness with which the standing army of Democratic consultants and commentators publicly expressed discontent with the administration’s strategic missteps this year. I suspect there had been private grumbling all along, but the media warhorses failed to speak out when they should have — from week one after the inauguration, when Obama went flat as a rug in letting Congress pass that obscenely bloated stimulus package. Had more Democrats protested, the administration would have felt less arrogantly emboldened to jam through a cap-and-trade bill whose costs have made it virtually impossible for an alarmed public to accept the gargantuan expenses of national healthcare reform. (Who is naive enough to believe that Obama’s plan would be deficit-neutral? Or that major cuts could be achieved without drastic rationing?)

By foolishly trying to reduce all objections to healthcare reform to the malevolence of obstructionist Republicans, Democrats have managed to destroy the national coalition that elected Obama and that is unlikely to be repaired. If Obama fails to win reelection, let the blame be first laid at the door of Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, who at a pivotal point threw gasoline on the flames by comparing angry American citizens to Nazis. It is theoretically possible that Obama could turn the situation around with a strong speech on healthcare to Congress this week, but after a summer of grisly hemorrhaging, too much damage has been done. At this point, Democrats’ main hope for the 2012 presidential election is that Republicans nominate another hopelessly feeble candidate. Given the GOP’s facility for shooting itself in the foot, that may well happen.

This column has been calling for heads to roll at the White House from the get-go. Thankfully, they do seem to be falling faster — as witness the middle-of-the-night bum’s rush given to “green jobs” czar Van Jones last week — but there’s a long way to go. An example of the provincial amateurism of current White House operations was the way the president’s innocuous back-to-school pep talk got sandbagged by imbecilic support materials soliciting students to write fantasy letters to “help” the president (a coercive directive quickly withdrawn under pressure). Even worse, the entire project was stupidly scheduled to conflict with the busy opening days of class this week, when harried teachers already have their hands full. Comically, some major school districts, including New York City, were not even open yet. And this is the gang who wants to revamp national healthcare?

Why did it take so long for Democrats to realize that this year’s tea party and town hall uprisings were a genuine barometer of widespread public discontent and not simply a staged scenario by kooks and conspirators? First of all, too many political analysts still think that network and cable TV chat shows are the central forums of national debate. But the truly transformative political energy is coming from talk radio and the Web — both of which Democrat-sponsored proposals have threatened to stifle, in defiance of freedom of speech guarantees in the Bill of Rights. I rarely watch TV anymore except for cooking shows, history and science documentaries, old movies and football. Hence I was blissfully free from the retching overkill that followed the deaths of Michael Jackson and Ted Kennedy — I never saw a single minute of any of it. It was on talk radio, which I have resumed monitoring around the clock because of the healthcare fiasco, that I heard the passionate voices of callers coming directly from the town hall meetings. Hence I was alerted to the depth and intensity of national sentiment long before others who were simply watching staged, manipulated TV shows.

Why has the Democratic Party become so arrogantly detached from ordinary Americans? Though they claim to speak for the poor and dispossessed, Democrats have increasingly become the party of an upper-middle-class professional elite, top-heavy with journalists, academics and lawyers (one reason for the hypocritical absence of tort reform in the healthcare bills). Weirdly, given their worship of highly individualistic, secularized self-actualization, such professionals are as a whole amazingly credulous these days about big-government solutions to every social problem. They see no danger in expanding government authority and intrusive, wasteful bureaucracy. This is, I submit, a stunning turn away from the anti-authority and anti-establishment principles of authentic 1960s leftism.

How has “liberty” become the inspirational code word of conservatives rather than liberals? (A prominent example is radio host Mark Levin’s book “Liberty and Tyranny: A Conservative Manifesto,” which was No. 1 on the New York Times bestseller list for nearly three months without receiving major reviews, including in the Times.) I always thought that the Democratic Party is the freedom party — but I must be living in the nostalgic past. Remember Bob Dylan’s 1964 song “Chimes of Freedom,” made famous by the Byrds? And here’s Richie Havens electrifying the audience at Woodstock with “Freedom! Freedom!” Even Linda Ronstadt, in the 1967 song “A Different Drum,” with the Stone Ponys, provided a soaring motto for that decade: “All I’m saying is I’m not ready/ For any person, place or thing/ To try and pull the reins in on me.”

But affluent middle-class Democrats now seem to be complacently servile toward authority and automatically believe everything party leaders tell them. Why? Is it because the new professional class is a glossy product of generically institutionalized learning? Independent thought and logical analysis of argument are no longer taught. Elite education in the U.S. has become a frenetic assembly line of competitive college application to schools where ideological brainwashing is so pandemic that it’s invisible. The top schools, from the Ivy League on down, promote “critical thinking,” which sounds good but is in fact just a style of rote regurgitation of hackneyed approved terms (“racism, sexism, homophobia”) when confronted with any social issue. The Democratic brain has been marinating so long in those clichés that it’s positively pickled.

>Coming Out of the Closet

>It Ain’t Pretty

Fairfacts Media has pointed us to a remarkable article in Spiegel. The whole piece is worth reading, but the introduction gives us the gist of the whole.

In an excerpt from his new book, SPIEGEL editor Jan Fleischhauer describes his childhood in a typical West German liberal family, with parents who wouldn’t let him eat oranges because they were grown in countries ruled by dictators, and his coming out as a late conservative.

I can say with confidence that I know my way around liberals. I’ve spent half of my life in their company. My parents were on the left, as were my schoolmates and the majority of my teachers, my fellow students at university and, of course, all of my professors. Most of my colleagues are still liberals today.

It isn’t as if I have suffered because of it. I had a very sheltered childhood; it’s just that I was sheltered by liberals. I saw my first Disney film together with my own children. When McDonald’s opened a restaurant in our neighborhood, my father gave me a serious talk about the corruptive influence of American fast-food culture. The enjoyment of my first burger was an act of adolescent rebellion, and to this day, I still feel slightly guilty on my occasional visits to McDonald’s.

I am part of a generation in Germany that knows no other reality than the dominance of the left. Everyone was a liberal where I grew up. This isn’t entirely self-evident, because the neighborhood in which I grew up would generally be described as an exclusive residential area. My parents’ friends — and their friends, of course — all voted for the left-leaning Social Democratic Party (SPD), and later for the Green Party.

There are a few things that immediately stand out here. Firstly, let’s bear in mind that Helen Clark and the Sisterhood have long set their caps towards Europe as their preferred model for New Zealand. They have had an objective to turn New Zealand into a South Pacific version of European social democracy. They have played a strategic and patient hand to bring this about. Clarke has gone on to continue the fight on a bigger stage. But let’s be in no doubt that she and her coterie will not have given up their ambitions for this country. They play a long game, and they will be back. As we read Fleischhauer’s description of the Germany he grew up in and in which he lives we also see the picture and model of what has been the Clarkist vision for this country.

Now, consider the following paragraph from Fleischhauer, describing the mindset of his mother:

My mother joined the Social Democrats in 1969, because of her enthusiasm for (former SPD Chairman and Chancellor) Willy Brandt. She always took her obligations as a party member very seriously. She could become extremely passionate when the conversation turned to politics, which meant that discussions with her sometimes lasted so long that you would simply give up, out of sheer exhaustion. In all those years, I never heard her say that the party had erred on an important issue. There were certainly tactical weaknesses, she said, but nothing fundamental. The other side, in her view, was constantly in the wrong, making one faulty decision after the next, or it was so deeply corrupt that it was deliberately leading the country astray. It was astonishing, under these circumstances, that the Social Democrats had such a difficult time staying in power. But, in my mother’s opinion, this simply proved that the other side was using dirty tricks.

Change times and places. Is this not a profoundly accurate description of Clarkist rule in New Zealand. The other side constantly in the wrong, deeply corrupt, making one bad decision after another, leading the country astray. Her political opponents were dirty tricksters. This one eyed extremism Fleischhauer describes in his mother is almost a word-for-word parallel with how Clark and the sisterhood see the world.

Germany is a predominantly leftist country–as indeed all the continent of Europe is. One of the cultural characteristics of that culture as described by Fleischhauer is its abstemiousness and extreme political correctness. Even food becomes morally reviewed and tested. Food is political. One is reminded of the extreme otherworldliness (and ugliness) of the Stylites–those semi-pagan christian extremists who desperately wanted to escape from contact with anything evil.

There is nothing wrong with growing up in a household in which the national origins of fast food are turned into a political issue, one that sheds light on correct awareness. From an early age, one is trained to be on the lookout for moral snares. In our family, as in all good leftist families, seemingly ordinary, everyday decisions were imbued with a momentousness difficult to comprehend for anyone but the politically initiated. Every item purchased at the supermarket was subjected to an assessment of not only its freshness and flavor, but also its moral quality. Organic oatmeal was clearly superior to industrial muesli, even if it tasted like bran, because we were always suspicious of major brands and supported small cooperatives.

Naturally, my mother was fundamentally opposed to buying Pepsi (because of its associations with the United States, big industry and Republicans) or Coca-Cola (USA, big industry, Democrats), except for children’s birthday parties or when we were sick and nauseous. Then we were given small amounts of the ice-cold beverage, which is why I still associate Coca-Cola with sickness today. When the papers reported that children in Africa had died after consuming Nestlé powdered milk, Nesquik immediately disappeared from the breakfast table. When a friend told me that Smarties candies were also made by Nestlé, I prayed ardently that my mother would never find out.

Does this not remind us of the Clarkist foodista police?

Now, we may be tempted to think that Fleischhauer’s childhood was extreme. However, he argues that it is typical of growing up in today’s Germany. Even “conservatives” are so far left that they are over the next hill and out of sight.

After seven years under an SPD/Green Party coalition government, the country is now being run by the CDU and its chancellor once again, and most states have a conservative governor at their helms. But that doesn’t change the fact that conservatives are practically nonexistent wherever decisions are made on how we look at and evaluate things.

Go to any theater, museum or open-air concert, and you’ll quickly realize that ideas beyond the mindscape of the left are unwelcome there. A contemporary play that doesn’t critically settle scores with the market economy? Unthinkable. An artist who, until George W. Bush left the White House, could associate anything with America other than Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib and the Washington’s refusal to sign the Kyoto Protocol? Out of the question. Rock concerts against the left? A joke.

The left has won, across the board, and has become the happy medium. When we search for a definition of what left means, we can draw on an impressive array of theories. Leftism is a worldview, as well as a way of explaining the world and how everything is interconnected. Most of all, however, it is a feeling. A person who lives a leftist life is living with the appealing awareness of being in the right, in fact, being right all the time. In Germany, leftists are never truly called upon to justify their views. In fact, their views have become the dominant views, not within the population, which stubbornly adheres to its prejudices, but among those who set the tone and in circles where they prefer to congregate.

Somehow, somewhere along the way Fleischhauer became a conservative. He is not sure how or when it happened.

I missed the connection at some point. I don’t know when it happened. There wasn’t a specific day or incident that turned me off to the left. I cannot even claim that I consciously distanced myself. It just happened. Suddenly I no longer found it amusing to listen to constant jokes about the physiognomy of (former Chancellor Helmut) Kohl. I realized that I was relieved when my sons converted the puppet theater my father-in-law and I had built for them into a parking garage. When the discussion turned to the uselessness of marriage and family, I was the one who was secretly rooting for every married couple, hoping it would last as long as possible. Once, at a party, I even dared to put in a good word for nuclear energy during a conversation about climate change. It immediately put a damper on the evening.

I tried to suppress my conservative tendencies at first. I convinced myself that they would eventually pass, like adolescent hot flashes. The next time I heard a joke about Kohl, I laughed more loudly than usual, hoping not to be noticed. In other words, I behaved like a 40-year-old married father who suddenly realizes that he’s gay, and doesn’t know what to do.

Priceless! But now that he is out of the closet, he has decided it is better to go on the offensive.

I have since learned to go on the offensive with my conservatism. In fact, sometimes I even have the courage to address prejudices head-on. We recently invited a couple we have known for a long time, but with whom we had fallen somewhat out of touch, over to our house. He became a law professor at a university in eastern Germany not too long ago, and she promotes golf courses. The conversation quickly turned to the last Michael Moore film, and our friend suddenly claimed that the film could not be shown throughout the entire Midwest of the United States. He made it sound as if Moore were some French auteur filmmaker who was finally holding up a mirror to the Americans, which they couldn’t abide.

I had a pretty clear idea of how the conversation would continue, and I knew that I would be upset with myself afterwards, once again, because I hadn’t challenged him decisively enough. “To make it brief, because we’ll get to this point anyway,” I heard myself saying: “No, I don’t believe that the CIA was behind the Sept.11 attacks, and yes, we liked living in America.” He was quiet, we drank our tea, and the two said their goodbyes before long. I was shocked by what I had said, but also a little proud of myself.

This is the post-Christian west. This is where we are all headed so long as we idolise Man and his inerrant reason. It is a world full of moral abstemiousness, self-righteousness, and priggishness. It is a world which presumes a divine right to wealth and prosperity, while finding the whole business of commerce distasteful. It is a world of mindless and hateful elitism. It is a world where, in the end, human beings are the enemy.

It is the world of Shelob, bloated, and feeding in the dark.

Hat Tip: Fairfacts Media

>Mid-Week Miscellany

>The Glenn Phenomenon

The NZ Herald has an Editorial on last year’s phenomenon of Owen Glenn. The Herald ends up seeking to place the Glenn saga on a wider canvass extolling the benefits of hundreds of thousands, if not millions of Kiwi ex-pats prowling the globe, most of whom carry a deep affection for this country.

Well, maybe. To our mind, the real significance of the Glenn saga is something the editorial also focused upon. It was Glenn’s striking candour and willingness to tell the truth.

But one element of the saga has gone too little noted and the year should not pass without it being observed. The lengths to which Owen Glenn went to ensure the truth became known were a testament to a commitment to this country that is truly remarkable . . . .

Mr Glenn did not sound like a vindictive man when he took steps to straighten the record. He answered reporters’ questions in an open, candid manner, sometimes too candid about casual conversations with Helen Clark. He did not seem to hold a grudge against her despite the disgraceful way she had snubbed him at the opening of the business school. But he was clear and straightforward on the questions that mattered: who asked him for money, how it was to be paid, where it went.

When his word was challenged before Parliament’s privileges committee he cared enough to come back to the country with telephone records and allow us to compare his candour and consistency with that of Mr Peters. It was no contest. He probably does not appreciate the full scale of the good he has done for New Zealand’s public life.

It is an indictment upon public life in New Zealand in 2008 that a candid, truth-telling man, seeking to maintain his public reputation and integrity by telling the truth should appear to us as a radical and rare phenomenon.

Booker Announces the Exposure of Global Warming for What It Is

Christopher Booker, writing in The Telegraph, suggests that 2008 might just prove to be the year when the world will look back and realise that it was the year the hoax was exposed. He writes:

The first, on May 21, headed “Climate change threat to Alpine ski resorts” , reported that the entire Alpine “winter sports industry” could soon “grind to a halt for lack of snow”. The second, on December 19, headed “The Alps have best snow conditions in a generation” , reported that this winter’s Alpine snowfalls “look set to beat all records by New Year’s Day”.

Easily one of the most important stories of 2008 has been all the evidence suggesting that this may be looked back on as the year when there was a turning point in the great worldwide panic over man-made global warming. Just when politicians in Europe and America have been adopting the most costly and damaging measures politicians have ever proposed, to combat this supposed menace, the tide has turned in three significant respects.

First, all over the world, temperatures have been dropping in a way wholly unpredicted by all those computer models which have been used as the main drivers of the scare. Last winter, as temperatures plummeted, many parts of the world had snowfalls on a scale not seen for decades. This winter, with the whole of Canada and half the US under snow, looks likely to be even worse. After several years flatlining, global temperatures have dropped sharply enough to cancel out much of their net rise in the 20th century.

Ever shriller and more frantic has become the insistence of the warmists, cheered on by their army of media groupies such as the BBC, that the last 10 years have been the “hottest in history” and that the North Pole would soon be ice-free – as the poles remain defiantly icebound and those polar bears fail to drown. All those hysterical predictions that we are seeing more droughts and hurricanes than ever before have infuriatingly failed to materialise.

Even the more cautious scientific acolytes of the official orthodoxy now admit that, thanks to “natural factors” such as ocean currents, temperatures have failed to rise as predicted (although they plaintively assure us that this cooling effect is merely “masking the underlying warming trend”, and that the temperature rise will resume worse than ever by the middle of the next decade).

Secondly, 2008 was the year when any pretence that there was a “scientific consensus” in favour of man-made global warming collapsed. At long last, as in the Manhattan Declaration last March, hundreds of proper scientists, including many of the world’s most eminent climate experts, have been rallying to pour scorn on that “consensus” which was only a politically engineered artefact, based on ever more blatantly manipulated data and computer models programmed to produce no more than convenient fictions.

Thirdly, as banks collapsed and the global economy plunged into its worst recession for decades, harsh reality at last began to break in on those self-deluding dreams which have for so long possessed almost every politician in the western world. As we saw in this month’s Poznan conference, when 10,000 politicians, officials and “environmentalists” gathered to plan next year’s “son of Kyoto” treaty in Copenhagen, panicking politicians are waking up to the fact that the world can no longer afford all those quixotic schemes for “combating climate change” with which they were so happy to indulge themselves in more comfortable times.

Suddenly it has become rather less appealing that we should divert trillions of dollars, pounds and euros into the fantasy that we could reduce emissions of carbon dioxide by 80 per cent. All those grandiose projects for “emissions trading”, “carbon capture”, building tens of thousands more useless wind turbines, switching vast areas of farmland from producing food to “biofuels”, are being exposed as no more than enormously damaging and futile gestures, costing astronomic sums we no longer possess.

As 2009 dawns, it is time we in Britain faced up to the genuine crisis now fast approaching from the fact that – unless we get on very soon with building enough proper power stations to fill our looming “energy gap” – within a few years our lights will go out and what remains of our economy will judder to a halt. After years of infantile displacement activity, it is high time our politicians – along with those of the EU and President Obama’s US – were brought back with a mighty jolt into contact with the real world.

The Lust for Glory

Steve Maharey has written a piece (hattip, Whaleoil) lamenting our apparent passing up an opportunity to lead the world. He is disappointed about the government’s decision to reconsider the Emissions Trading Scheme and regards it as a lost opportunity to inspire the world.

The new government’s climate change policy is killing innovation, undermining science and abandoning our role as an inspiration to other countries

One night in 2007 I found myself at an official dinner in Brussels seated next to a man who advised the German government on climate change. We chatted about the role countries could play in the shift to sustainability.

He noted that what New Zealand did would have little impact on the overall problem. Our small size, however, did not excuse us from making a practical contribution. In addition, he said, New Zealand had a very special and more important role to play. “You”, he argued animatedly, “need to be a symbol to the rest of the world of what is possible”.

This small statement goes straight to the heart of what was (and is) so wrong with the left wing in New Zealand. Firstly, it is elitist. It has an abiding aspiration to “be somebody” on the world stage through leading the world. The Left in New Zealand grew up on the mythology of New Zealand being the most “progressive” country in the world at the end of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. They dream of recapturing that place in the van of global enlightenment. Maharey evinces it perfectly: he would want us to be an “inspiration” to the rest of the world.

Secondly, the Left is willing to do untold damage to the lives of ordinary New Zealanders in pursuit of its mad ambition. It may speak about compassion and concern–but these are empty and clanging cymbals. It will gladly and willingly impose a heavy burden upon the most vulnerable in pursuit of its mad ambition. The poor are so much cannon fodder along the way to sweeping the enemies of its vaunting ambition aside.

The Emissions Trading Scheme was (and is) economic treachery. When the economy is weakened and constrained through taxes for reasons of propaganda–trying to inspire the rest of the world–it is the poor who suffer. The elitism of the Left is cold, detached, impersonal, calculating, and remote.

Thirdly, the Left is riddled with utopian utilitarianism where the end justifies the means. The greatest good will be served by mankind escaping the perils of man induced global warming. Sacrificing New Zealand along the way is a small price to pay.

Remember how Helen Clark went through a period where she was seeking a defining cause, an aspirational symbol. She alighted upon climate change as the issue that would define her world leadership. She spoke gravely about achieving carbon neutrality. The world press noticed. And the Left noticed that they noticed. From that point on, New Zealand, its people and economy, became a mere beast of burden to be flogged to death in the mad rush to be an inspiration to other countries.

This fanaticism in search of a cause results in a discreditable ignorance and blind prejudice. Maharey cannot avoid displaying his cant, when he laments that New Zealand is going to have to hear from those who do not agree with the speculative theories of man-made global warming. He writes with all the condescension of an arrogant, superior, Left winger:

Those who advance the position that human activity is contributing to climate change are to be set against those who oppose this view – as if they are equals.

Of course they are not. The overwhelming view of the science community is for the former view. A tiny minority oppose this view. They may be right – minority views can be right – but in this instance they will have to work very hard if they are to be taken seriously given the depth of the evidence they are seeking to question.

The “depth of the evidence”, huh. Sorry to be the little boy crying out about emperor’s lack of clothes, Steve, old boy–but what evidence? When fanatical idealism overtakes hard headed scientific inquiry; when elitist politicians try to use scientific issues to fuel their own vaunting ambition, the end result is a Gorish embarrassment.

Thankfully the scientific community appears to be getting tired of being the propaganda playthings of arrogant politicians. Increasingly scientists are returning to professional, self-respecting scepticism.

>A New Political Black Beast?

>Conviction Politicians Emerging

Roger Douglas has returned to Parliament. Helen Clark’s alleged worst nightmare is about to unfold. Clark’s invocation of a monster to frighten little children in the dark is having its effect. There are grumblings and warnings from both Labour and National over allowing Roger Douglas too close to the “levers of power.”

For example, according to once-a-journalist David Beatson, John Key should avoid Douglas like the plague because when Finance Minister in the 1980’s he “was prepared to see a government destroyed rather than compromise on a free-market ideology that no longer commanded support among his political colleagues.” From Beatson, of course, this is shameless. Either he has fallen into dotage and his “recollectory” has gone walk-about, or he is deliberately dissembling.

For Beatson knows that Douglas did not destroy the Lange government. Douglas did the honourable thing—with the support of the majority of the Cabinet, he stood up to David Lange over principle, then gracefully submitted to Lange’s decision to fire him as Finance Minister. Far from destroy the government, he left it intact, and submitted to his colleagues. The destruction, when it came was very much due to Lange’s dithering.

In other words, rather than destroy a government he acted with integrity—such as is very rarely seen in our modern political world. His position, of course, was taken over by one David Caygill—and the Labour government went merrily on its way to electoral destruction, taking the country down with it: fiddling the books, creating false surpluses, misleading the voters, and leaving Ruth Richardson to attempt to right the sinking ship. All of which sounds like deja vu all over again.

Let us have lots more politicians of integrity such as Douglas. For what did he manifest? In Douglas we have had a rare politician—one who puts beliefs and convictions above personal ambition, status, or power. If he commanded the support of his colleagues he held fast; yet he submitted to the ignominy of being fired by a leader who had himself lost the support of his cabinet colleagues. What is wrong with that? Absolutely nothing.

That is precisely the kind of integrity we must demand from all our politicians. Our nation desperately needs politicians who disclose who they are and what they stand for. Or, does Beatson and his ilk really think we are better served by politicians who say one thing, then merrily go on to do the opposite? We do not care whether anyone agrees or disagrees with Roger Douglas’s views on this or that. At the end of the day, with Douglas we know who we are dealing with, and we can decide accordingly.

Is Beatson really suggesting we are better served by a Helen Clark who declared that she would do “whatever it takes” to gain and maintain a hold over the Treasury benches, regardless of how much our fragile constitutional fabric was shredded in the process? Is this the new, better way Beatson would applaud? Or, would Beatson think it much better for the body politic to have politicians like the Greens deliberately cloaking their extreme centralist and radical political ideologies in vacuous environmental slogans, thereby deceiving the electorate?

Or are we better served by politicians such as Winston Peters whose understanding of the Great Game was to brand himself as the relentless opponent of money buying politicians and policies, only to be clandestinely on the take himself? Is this part of the “fresh solution” that Beatson hails?

The one character trait we must have in our elected leaders—and over which there can be no compromise—is integrity. That means we have to demand that all our politicians are conviction politicians. The electorate has a duty to demand that those standing for public office tell us what their convictions are; once elected they need to be held accountable to those convictions, for good or ill.

The Beatsons of the world will tell us that such a state of affairs would be unworkable. It would lead to unstable governments. Vacuous rubbish. Instability only occurs when politicians demand, “my way or the highway.” It does not occur when a conviction politician says, “if I cannot persuade you on this matter, I will return to the back benches, leaving you to govern as you see fit.” Such humility is laudable for it sacrifices personal ambition on the altar of the public good. If those who are left bumble, stumble, and fail it is not the fault of those departing.

We believe that if we had more honourable conviction politicians, the days of expansive, hoodwinking promises to seduce and entice a venal electorate would pass. If we had more conviction politicians, political debates and discourse will be far less ad hominem and far more about policies, principles and issues of weight. Parliamentary debates would be much more weighty and grave affairs.

Therefore, we are pleased that incoming Prime Minister, John Key appears to be making a genuine effort to keep his word, and to carry out what he said he would. That is change we can believe in.

>Subversion

>If Good Men Do Nothing

The alacrity and resolution of the FBI in tracking down the person who hacked into Sarah Palin’s e-mail account (which is a federal offense in the US) must seem remarkable to all New Zealanders. So efficient, so quick, so decisive.

We are left comparing the slowness, turpitude, and uninterested desultory activities of the NZ Police Force in conducting its investigation into the theft of Don Brash’s e-mails. Maybe the parliamentary computer system was far more complex. Maybe it was a much much more sophisticated operational theft. But still one suspects a complete lack of vigour, resolution, commitment and drive on the part of the NZ Police to be the real cause. Why might this be?

Contrast this with the vigour of their prosecution of Shane Adern for driving his tractor up the steps of Parliament Building during a protest on behalf of his constituents. Then contemplate the completely disgraceful poodle-like behaviour of the Commissioner of Police, one Howard Broad, dutifully distracting Parliament during an important Question Time recently when the government was under attack, with a completely disingenuous request to gauge the advice of Parliament over his decision to introduce Tasers.

The Labour Party has used many times the tactic of trying to run interference when it is under pressure. It may be leaked stories to the media. It may be creating a breathless announcement of something ostensibly important just as some major damaging report is coming forth. It may be the manipulation of Parliament. It has done it many times. But to use the NZ Police for these tawdry political purposes is unheard of.

It underscores just how much the NZ Police have corrupted themselves to become an extension of the partisan political machinations of the Labour Government. This is a sinister development in our country.

We hear the term “politicisation” a lot in these times. It has become a term of opprobrium, but few really stop to think what it represents. What it represents is subversive activity by the government of the day against the people of New Zealand. It indicates that the government of the day—in this case Helen Clark—using and manipulating the organs and powers of the State for one’s own political ends. It is an egregious abuse of power.

In the previous century we saw the most terrible regimes emerge. What they all had in common was a more-or-less complete subjugation of the powers of the state to the ruling political party or group. When the organs and institutions of government become the extension of a political party’s power, tyranny follows in the wake.

In New Zealand it is the police force which has been captured and controlled by the current Prime Minister. This is a sinister development indeed.

It is not without significance that the President of the New Zealand Police Association (a union representing sworn police officers), the day after the Police Commissioner toadied to his political masters with his fake parliamentary question, fulminated publicly stating that the Commissioner’s action constituted positive public proof of the politicisation of the NZ Police Force.

How shameful for the NZ Police. How threatening for the country. How disgraceful for the Government.

We at Contra Celsum call upon the NZ Police Association to do their duty on behalf of all true sworn police officers and go public, exposing the corrupt capture of senior police management to their political masters. Such subversive activity must not be allowed to continue.

>Ian Wishart Asks Some More Embarrassing Questions

>Sauce for the Goose

Two months ago, we blogged on Helen Clark’s hyperventilation over John Key’s share trading. We pointed out that the self-righteous Prime Minister was in fact also potentially guilty of conflicts of interest in that she is a substantial landlord, holding a well-above average number of properties in her investment portfolio.

Ian Wishart is alert to this hypocrisy and in our view he is right on the money in this regard. He has recently asked some embarrassing questions of the Prime Minister. We do not think they will be answered.

These questions have just been filed with Kathryn Street, the PM’s chief press secretary, at 9.30am today:

Has the Prime Minister, or any other Minister in her government who owns investment property, ever excused themselves on the basis of a conflict of interest from discussing cabinet papers or legislation, or voting on legislation, that deal in any way with taxation issues on investment properties?

Has the Prime Minister, or any other Minister in her government who is any kind of beneficiary of a family trust, ever excused themselves on the basis of a conflict of interest from discussing cabinet papers or legislation, or voting on legislation, that deal in any way with taxation issues on family trusts?

Regards

Ian Wishart

TGIF Edition

>The S-Files

>Crossing the Line

Contra Celsum nominates the following political parties for an S-Award: the Maori Party, the United Future Party, the Greens, ACT and the National Party.

Citation:

It is a sad, sad day in the life of our nation. Yesterday, the Privileges Committee of Parliament voted to censure the suspended Foreign Minister for lying to the House and for knowingly filing a false financial return. In the face of overwhelming evidence of corrupt behaviour on the part of the Foreign Minister, the parties named above voted to censure the Foreign Minister. The doubly sad aspect is that the vote was not unanimous.

Two parties did not vote to censure: the Foreign Minister’s own party (NZ First—an unbelievably cynical name, given his self-serving unethical behaviour) and the Labour Party, which has deliberately and overtly placed party political advantage above considerations of ethics and morality in government.

As we have argued consistently, Mr Winston Peters has been a destructive and cancerous influence in our nation for many years. Further, it is likely that he will face criminal charges in the future over even worse corruption, and that he will likely end up in jail.

What is sad beyond any of this is the spectacle of the Prime Minister and her party clinging to Peters and supporting him, thereby approving his lying and unethical behaviour. Such approbation can only mean that the Prime Minister of this country believes his behaviour is acceptable for a Minister of the Crown.

The Privileges Committee has required that Mr Peters provide corrected and accurate returns declaring all gifts he has received over the past several years. There will be many. It will likely turn out that some of these gifts came from businessmen he has subsequently “thanked” by bestowing monetary favours upon them—tax payers money.

The Prime Minister has a duty to approve such gifts–otherwise they must be returned to the donors. The Privileges Committee said the hiding of the gifts was deliberately and knowingly done. She will, of course, give approval—or more likely, she will simply ignore them, thereby giving tacit approval.

If the Prime Minister has such a low ethical standard for her ministers; if she believes that the interests of the nation are thus well served; if she believes that bribery has a place in government; if she believes that partisan political posturing is more important than the vital fabric constitutional government; if she is willing to aid and abet lying and deceit, then she is truly beneath contempt.

The public (unwisely) will tolerate for a time political gamesmanship on the part of our representatives. We say unwisely, because such things ought never to be acceptable in the processes and responsibilities of government. Ultimately governments deal in justice, however that might be conceived, and justice is too weighty a matter to be manipulated or used for the playing of personal games.

But politics and government in our age of the glorious flowering of secular humanism has been allowed to devolve into perpetual gamesmanship. But generally this has been restrained by an understanding on the part of representatives and government officials that there is a line—albeit invisible—but a line nonetheless which must not be crossed. That line has to do with the genuine interests of good government, the structures of good government, and the good of the overall country.

In the past there may have been debate from time to time over where exactly that line fell. But crossing that line for the sake of political posturing was unacceptable. But over the past ten years we have seen a different kind of politician emerge. These are people who deny that there is such a line at all, and that all government consists in gamesmanship and posturing for personal advantage. At root, such politicians believe that the country can be damned—or more accurately, they come to believe that their desperate venal grip upon power is conterminous with the true interest of the country. They, themselves, have become the line. Government has become feral and personal.

The Soviet Communists used to speak about the cult of personality. They meant by this a governmental condition where the person of the leader was all determinative. The Prime Minister of New Zealand has now descended into the cult of personality. She has determined that the political risks prevent her from joining other political parties in censuring Mr Peters for unbecoming conduct. The damage done to the rule of law and to the fabric of government are mere collateral damage. The country be damned: the career of Helen Elizabeth Clark is more important.

We continue to believe that the nine years of successive Clark administrations will eventually be judged by history to have been the most corrupt, venal, self-serving, and mendacious government that New Zealand has ever had the misfortune under which to suffer.

We hope that in our lifetime, and that of our children and grandchildren we will never see the like again.

The Maori Party, the United Future Party, the Greens, ACT and the National Party: S-Award, Class I for actions in the course of duty that were Smart, Sound, and Salutary.

>Helen Clark’s Doppelganger

>The Prime Minister That Might Have Been

It has been said repeatedly that governments change not because opposition parties win elections; they change because governments lose them.

In the forthcoming election, imagine, in a parallel universe, a doppelganger of Prime Minister Helen Clark is running for an historic fourth term in power. Like all long term governments it has been struggling to come up with fresh new policy. The major opposition party, National, newly revitalised under the leadership of the personable John Key, has released nearly 50 policy documents, and the current Clark administration has not been able to release one.

So, essentially, the election is turning around the quality, credibility, morality, ethics, and honesty of the Prime Minister. She is due to give the most important speech of her political career—a kind of hastily organised State of the Nation speech in which she will present her credentials for being elected to an historic fourth term in office. Here is the speech:

My fellow Kiwis. I am standing before you tonight to ask you, once again, to put your confidence in me and my government, and re-elect us in this forthcoming election. I realise that you have already entrusted me with leading you now for nine years. This is something which has humbled me deeply—it is not to be taken for granted for one second. And I never have.

We live in difficult times and I would be misleading you if I were to give the impression that I have all the answers. I simply do not. You only have to look back at the past nine years to see many false turns, many mistakes, and many errors—many of them made by me. You know this. I have never resiled from telling you the truth, or from acknowledging my mistakes.

In case you have forgotten—and I am sure you have not—let me remind you of some of my gravest failings in holding the highest office in the land on your behalf. Firstly, there was Paintergate. You know how I signed a charity work of art as if it were my own when it was actually done by one of my staff. I explained at the time that it was not seriously meant—and that I was actually cutting corners to support charitable work.

But on reflection I acknowledged that there was something far more important at stake. Dishonesty, “spin”, gilding the lily, white lies—these things might be tolerated in every day life, but they are absolutely not acceptable in government. If a people cannot trust that their government is telling them the truth, in what can they trust? I was wrong to sign that painting. I acknowledged it at the time. I learnt one of the most important lessons of my career through that mistake.

It actually helped me a great deal, I believe. I resolved at that time that henceforth my leadership and administration would be marked by the highest ethical standards—that honesty and transparency would be the watchwords of government. Actually, this led to significant cost savings, because as a result of my own failings in Paintergate, and the resolutions that came out of it, I instructed the State Services Commission and all departments of government that all public relations positions were to be disestablished—including in—indeed starting with—my own department. There was to be no room for gilding the lily with spin and weasel words in any administration I led. I believe that as a result government has become more honest, more transparent—but also, as a result, all the warts of my administration have become more public. I believe that this is a good thing—although acutely painful at times to me and my colleagues.

I also instructed the State Services Commission that all state servants with salaries of $70,000 and above had to have a clause written into their contracts that if they ever acted in a manner which knowingly or deliberately misled their colleagues, their minister, or above all the public, it was to be a dismissable offence.

But I am sorry to have to say that my errors and mistakes did not stop there. You will well recall the day I was driven in motorcade in Canterbury in which we broke the speed limit for no good reason. While I was not really paying attention at the time, that is not the point. The law was broken, and I was the most senior person in the motorcade. The buck stopped with me. I took full responsibility at the time, and I do to this day.

We could go on. I have not been a perfect Prime Minister. I have not served you as well as I might. But what I have done is always to strive to remember that above all else that I am your servant and that I am always going to put your interests first.

You will recall how I voted against Sue Bradford’s Anti Smacking Bill. My own beliefs on this subject are well known, and I will not canvass them again here. They are not important. What was important is that I had already told the electorate at the previous election that I would not support a law change, and that to outlaw reasonable physical discipline of a child was would be a vain attempt to change what is human nature. Having made that commitment, I was not going to back off. I know that I offended many supporters by this action—but I believe keeping the trust of the people is more important.

Further, you will know that I believe one of the biggest threats we face as a nation arises out of Climate Change. I have long pushed for concrete action and we finally put the Emissions Trading Scheme Bill before the House. However, I believe this far reaching Bill did not have sufficient support, either from the smaller parties, nor from the National party—although they have said they support the concept in principle. I decided to withdraw the Bill until after the election. If you support me to a fourth term, I pledge that I will work with all parties in the House on this important legislation. If I do not win a fourth term, I pledge that I will work constructively with the government of the day on this issue. It is just too important. We must get it right for ourselves and the future of our children and grandchildren. Once again your interests are more important than mine.

Now, there has been controversy over tax cuts. History may show we have got this wrong. Maybe not. But we thought it important at the time to proceed cautiously and carefully. It is all too easy to act and live as if the good times will last forever. Clearly they do not. I do promise that if elected I will bring you tax relief as fast as I can responsibly do so.

In recent days our country has been troubled with allegations of one of the parties in coalition with the Government having been involved in financial misdealings. This has vexed and troubled me deeply—as I know it does you. There is simply no place for even the hint of financial impropriety in government. Let me assure you I have given instructions to the relevant investigating authorities (the Police, the Serious Fraud Office and the Electoral Commission) that they are to follow through their investigations with thorough rigour. There is too much at stake to do otherwise. I have also instructed all the members of the Labour Party on the Privileges Committee to act in good faith, without any hint of partisan behaviour. It is the truth that matters, not politics.

There remain many other unsolved problems and issues in our country. We have made good progress in many areas; in others we have not. In some areas things have actually got worse. I take no satisfaction from this. The people of New Zealand deserve better. There is always more to be done.

I pledge to you, that if you elect me to a fourth term, the hallmarks of my leadership will not change: honesty, integrity, accountability. I am not going to promise to you that I will always get things right. That would be stupid indeed. I instead promise to you, that I will continue to lead you as I have endeavoured all along to do: that if we ever go down blind alleys again, I will be the first to acknowledge the error, and will strenuously work to see that things are turned around. Meanwhile, let’s finish together what we have started.

A few weeks later the Helen Clark doppelganger was elected to an historic fourth term, with an increased majority—despite the harder, more difficult economic times.

Political pundits acknowledged that this proves once again that the most important political attributes are those of character: integrity, honesty, and humility. Once trust is won, people will give you the benefit of the doubt. Once trust is lost, all is lost.

>Peters is Nothing But a Pawn

>The Legacy of Helen Elizabeth Clark

Several months ago, we argued that Winston Peters was a corrosive and corrupting influence on New Zealand national life. He was, and is, necrosis in a flashy suit. Today, it is widely reported that he will be removed as Foreign Minister of the nation. Over recent weeks, his unorchestrated litany of bellicose lies has become nauseous. Peter’s mendacity has become automatically reflexive. Exposing each falsehood, painful.

Behind all this, however, is a much deeper and broader issue. Exposed, now, to open shame is one Helen Elizabeth Clark. We have now suffered nine years of Clark’s style of government. Our considered view is that she will be judged by history to have been one of our most ignorant, naïve, superficial, and venally self-serving prime minister’s of all time.

For most of her tenure, Clark has been a virtual demi-god. She could do no wrong. She was portrayed as larger than life. She was idolized by the media as supremely intelligent. We were repeatedly told she was politically astute and masterful. Media, overwhelming left wing in this country, saw in Clark a mirror of themselves: they consequently lauded and lionized her because she reflected their own self-glory. They saw in Clark a reflection of themselves.

Women have disproportionately supported her because of her reported integrity and honesty. They trusted her. We know that society loves to have heroes—even in our envy ridden, tall-poppy-hating society. When it comes to heroic political leaders they are quickly made out to be demi-gods. By her own testimony, Clark has been a “popular and competent Prime Minister.” The nation applauded her self-assessment.

Unfortunately, the reality is far from the image. Clark has been an archetypical hollow man. For years she has nursed a secret agenda, one born out of sixties and seventies radical left-wing feminism. She has kept it carefully screened from public view, but then, when opportunity presented itself, she struck. A classic example is her volte-face on the ridiculous and failed attempt to stop parents disciplining their children by corrective smacking.

For public consumption she stated her view that any such ban would be against human nature. Then, when Bradford’s Bill presented itself, she threw her full weight behind it, but in a deceitful, clandestine fashion. She quietly ordered that for her government the issue would be “whipped”—a rather ironic term in this instance—which meant that although officially it was to be a non-party, free conscience vote—she required that all Labour MP’s voted for the Bill, regardless of conscience, beliefs, or representations from the electorate. Thus, Bradford’s notorious Bill was shown up to be Clarkian policy all along. Bradford was just the willing tool.

Clark has done more than any previous Prime Minister, Robert bete noir Muldoon notwithstanding, to shred our tenuous, but vitally important, constitutional fabric. She unilaterally abolished the Privy Council as the highest court in the land. She has deliberately politicised the police force, making it an extension of government influence and power. Her sacking of the incumbent Police Commissioner, Peter Doone was achieved by some of the most corrupt and Byzantine behaviour ever seen in this country, requiring a disgusting awful abuse of power. Using a supine media, she clandestinely leaked falsehoods about Doone being guilty of drink-driving—then, when her lies were published, used the “scandal” as a reason to fire him.

She then replaced him with a more compliant Police Commissioner, one Howard Broad, whose puppy-dog pavlovian like response to the Prime Minister and Minister of Police was evidenced no more clearly recently when the Labour Party used him, against constitutional and parliamentary convention, in a vain attempt to manipulate parliament itself.

We have lost count of the number of times prima facie cases of criminal activity on the part of her Labour MP’s have not been investigated by police, despite complaints made. Yet, superficial trivial complaints against political opponents have been investigated and prosecuted with alacrity. These are the kind of things which happen routinely in a police state.

The fact that Clark has been prepared to pervert and undermine one of our most vital constitutional bulwarks—the independence of the police from government interference—for her own venal political advantage, without thought to the damage she is doing to the nation, is evidence of just how dangerous and damaging she has been as prime minister.

A second constitutional convention torn to shreds under Clark’s watch has been the deliberate politicization of the civil service. She has turned it into another arm of government advocacy, promotion, and political bias. There is a long standing constitutional convention that the civil service is to be a check and balance upon the government of the day, giving advice without fear or favour to ministers. When decisions would then be made contrary to advice this gives the public the opportunity to make a more independent assessment of the particular merits of both policy and advice. This is why the civil service is called the public service, not a government service.

Clark has deliberately subverted this constitutional convention and has filled senior and middle management positions within the civil service with political appointees who will give the “kind” of advice which promotes and advocates policies and programmes which reflect Labour policy. She has deliberately used public departments as organs of government propaganda and self-promotion. The damage has now been done. It will take years, if not decades to repair—and it may be irreparable.

Finally—and this list is representative, not exhaustive—we have seen Clark lacerate the constitutional convention that electoral changes must have broad, bi-partisan support. Her Electoral Finance Act is one of the most draconian restrictions upon free speech ever seen in modern political history in the West. It was pushed through for her own partisan political advantage, with no attempt at consensus or good faith consultation. It was, “my way, or the highway.”

Now, in recent days, we have heard that Clark has known for seven months that her Foreign Minister, Winston Peters, allegedly received a solicited donation from one Owen Glenn. Then she allowed him to grandstand publicly denying that he knew anything about it, or that he had ever received the money. All of this is now publicly revealed to have been lies.

Clark’s defence for this defalcation on her part is that it was a “conflict of evidence”, but that she chose to believe her Foreign Minister. Bollocks. She has a duty prescribed in the Cabinet Manual to ensure that all Ministers of the Crown conducts himself/herself with the highest ethical standards, particularly with respect to conflicts of interest (Section 2.58, Cabinet Manual). This is a most vital and important duty, for it is aimed at preventing corruption in government. This sworn duty she casually laid aside—once again, to prosecute her own political advantage.

It will turn out that Helen Elizabeth Clark—far from being the demi-god as portrayed in her press—was a small-minded, nasty, bitterly envious person who would not think twice about weakening the fabric of the nation for her own petty advantage. Truly, a third world tinpot leader.

>The S-Files

>Corrosive and Cancerous

Contra Celsum feels compelled to nominate Winston Peters for a second S-Award

Winston Peters is leader of the political party, New Zealand First and currently serves as New Zealand’s Foreign Minister.

Citation:

During the last general election (2004) Prime Minister, Helen Clark character assassinated the person of her opponent, Dr Don Brash by accusing him of having a corrosive and cancerous effect on the body politic.

We believe this indictment reflected a punchy line supplied to her from her PR political minders and push pollsters. However, it begs the question as to what behaviour or actions or policies would actually make such an extreme allegation fair and reasonable. What would one have to do to corrode the body politic or to become its carcinogen?

Contra Celsum believes that the actions and career of Winston Peters are so offensive and amoral that “corrosive and cancerous” has now come close to being a reasonable indictment. Surely, this is what Dr Michael Cullen, Finance Minister was alluding to, when he characterised Mr Peters as the “blowfly of New Zealand politics”.

For most of his populist political career, Mr Peters has attacked and slandered “big business” under the cloak of parliamentary privilege. In earlier years his target was Sir Ron Brierley and his colleagues. In later years, it was Sir Michael Fay and David Richwhite. Mr Peters painted a dark and foreboding vista where monied forces conspired to line their own pockets at the expense of the little guy, the ordinary Kiwi battler.

When it was deemed appropriate, Mr Peters went on to the issues of race and immigration. He played on the fears of the xenophobic, telling them that our way of life was being threatened by the Asian hordes. Such outbursts generally occurred every three years, co-inciding with the electoral cycle.

His worst venom has been reserved for political opponents—usually the National and Act parties—whom he regularly lambastes as venal creatures who are little more than willing tools of “big business”.

Now some e-mails have come to light (ironic that emails would the the medium of exposure, given his claim that he was in possession of confidential emails stolen from Don Brash, which he used to taunt his opponents) which appear to substantiate that Mr Peters was the recipient of what amounts to a political bribe.

This bribe was no ordinary bribe such as “vote for me and I will ensure that you get an upgraded hospital”, but a bribe from an offshore plutocrat, someone who has all the hallmarks of a latter day robber baron, the very kind of person Peters has spent his whole career vilifying. It appears as though, despite Peters’s energetic and emphatic denials, one Owen Glenn has confirmed that he donated a large sum of money to Mr Peters, at the very time he was lobbying Mr Peters to appoint him as an honorary consul to Monaco.

Mr Glenn appears to be an honest broker. There is no subterfuge in his actions. He is an archetypical robber baron capitalist who openly and overtly seeks to use money to buy his preferred outcome. He has been the Labour Party’s largest donor. That corrupt Party deliberately created a loophole in the current Electoral Finance Act which would have allowed it to continue to receive undeclared donations from Mr Glenn, while forcing everyone else to disclose and declare. (Oh, yes, the same Labour Party that accused its opponents of having wealthy American bagmen funding the Party from offshore—yet, when challenged, could not deliver a scintilla of confirmation. Yes, the same Party which admitted Mr Glenn to the New Zealand Order of Merit for his donation to Auckland University.)

We are sure that Mr Glenn would not care two hoots whether the thing was disclosed or not. It appears he also tried to bribe the Maori Party with a large sum of money if they would join Labour in coalition after the 2004 election. To their credit, the Maori Party showed great integrity, and declined. Consequently, the donation never materialised.

Now Mr Peters appears to have accepted a bribe, even while strenuously denying that it was proffered or accepted. Mr Glenn appears to have been the leaker of the emails which confirm his involvement. Presumably, he has grown tired of having paid over “good money” only to have Peters fail to deliver the sought after honorary consulship to Monaco. Mr Peters has so far declined to deliver the sought-after bauble to Mr Glenn, but the public outcry at the time would have made such an appointment odious indeed.

Mr Peters continues his strenuous denials of receiving money from Mr Glenn, but his list of allies is now growing short. Plausible deniability is what is required now; it appears to be in short supply.

Such actions and behaviour would indeed be corrosive and cancerous upon the body politic. Receiving secret donations which intend to manipulate the decisions and actions of politicians (that is, bribery) is a manifestation of terrible corruption. Mr Peters would have been right to spend a good deal of his career attacking such behaviour, assuming he could back it up with verification. Unfortunately, this was rarely the case. So, it was largely hollow and false.

False accusations made for pure political advantage have a corroding influence on the body politic. But accepting bribes for favours in kind would be truly cancerous. Mr Peters has now been exposed prima facie to have lied over the receiving of money from a foreign plutocrat, even while that same plutocrat was lobbying Mr Peters for a favour. As long as Peters continues to deny, without offering sufficient proof and evidence that his denials are plausible, the damage he is doing to the body politic is considerable.

Winston Peters, NZ Foreign Minister: S-Award, Class II, for actions that are Stupid, Short Sighted and Stupefied

>Gushing Hypocrisy

>When Greenism Meets Realpolitik

Further to the previous post on the unsustainability of greenism as a political movement, we refer to an interesting essay by Robert J Samuelson in Newsweek. It is a frank assessment of the realpolitik concerning greenism and global warming, entitled “Don’t Hold Your Breath: Global Warming Promises to Become a Large and Gushing Source of National Hypocrisy”.

Samuelson, having talked with both with believers and sceptics, notes the things no-one knows for sure with respect to global warming:

1.We don’t know by home much or if temperatures are going to rise in the next one hundred years.
2.We don’t know what the effects of warming might be.
3.We don’t know how to prevent warming.
4.We don’t know if global warming will be a calamity.

But, he argues, politicians can be expected to adopt two “faces” towards global warming. Firstly, they will fulminate against it, warn of its dangers, hector everyone who will listen. They will want to be seen to be engaging with the people and the issue. Secondly, they will do precisely nothing. Politicians know that there are all sorts of unintended outcomes waiting in the wings if action is taken to combat global warming. It would be political suicide to do anything about it.

This analysis highlights the political madness of New Zealand’s Prime Minister. She actually does want to do something about it. Worse, she wants New Zealand to lead the world in doing something. She wants New Zealand to set a moral example to humanity. No wonder the Wall Street Journal opined that quixotically New Zealand would be likely to set an example to the world—but a negative one, demonstrating to the world the true price of such madcap policies. Trying to steer the economy to produce less carbon involves one thing and one thing only: more tax. Plenty more. Which means poorer people.

According to Samuelson smart politicians the world over have worked out that the “do nothing” option is the most prudent course. We note that Australia appears to be taking a much, much more cautious approach, highlighting the enormity of the changes required and the extent of the effects and costs. If Samuelson is right, Australia will talk up a big game, but will end up doing nothing. Thus far, the portents suggest Samuelson to be right on the money. Clark has yet to realise this. Prudence appears to be no longer her long suite. The caution for which the media have long lauded her has departed. Why the madness?

No doubt the causes are complex. It is of little relevance to spend time analyzing them because all the indications are she will soon be gone.

Samuelson’s account of greenist realpolitik, however, is a salutary example of the unsustainability of greenism. It is a great relief to know that such realpolitik is equally at work in New Zealand, albeit in our case amongst the voters, who increasingly appear to believe that the Prime Minister is from another planet.