Jack Yan on Vox

Why it’s still the American century

nobody@vox.com(Jack Yan) — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 22:56:48 +1200

In the spirit of July 4, I thought it would be interesting to explore the idea of the United States retaining its influence in the 21st century.
   What many see is dire. Beyond the anti-war types’ opposition to the War on Terror, there are corrupt institutions, political and corporate, impeding progress on so many things, from innovations to ways society can function more progressively. The same institutions have led to a financial crisis. Economic management has led to a weak dollar, to the point where some reject it for the euro.
   So with the rise of India, and less so of Red China, where is the United States in all of this? How can I be so bold as to say it will remain the American century?
   Because of Americans. Individuals. Those who have access to their own speaking platforms, highlighting what they see is wrong with their country, and having a nation that protects their free speech as sacrosanct.
   The country that has championed individuality may well be saved, karmically, by individuals themselves.
   No anti-American I know stands firmly in his or her country and disses individual Americans. They spit their venom at the government or their corporations. The Iranian blogs that I visited, to see where their root cause of anti-Americanism lay, targeted abuse through globalization. Maybe they have a point, because Americans themselves are not too happy about outsourcing.
   And because many Americans have the skills to put their words across, in what remains the internet’s lingua franca—English—and because they can identify the sources of their problems, they can address them.
   What we, in the rest of the world should be doing, is engaging this dialogue. Putting forth our point of view.
   It’s frightfully easy for people to either have a case of nation envy or tall poppies, dragging down the richest country on earth and pointing out its problems for a short-term feeling of superiority. This is childish at best. While I do not deny the US has its faults—and Americans themselves would be the first to admit that—we should give each other perspective.
   I talk about our healthcare system: not the best in the world, but I would rather be sick here than in the US, because of universal coverage. And if we chat to our friends in the US about this, it will give them ideas on how they might accomplish it—or avoid it, if they see faults in our model. The idea of the internet is a beautiful one, even if spammers and pornographers threaten its sanctity: the ability to have a small world where we can have one-on-one discourses, and better ourselves.
   That free speech has to be defended at all costs, because even if the United States restricts the movement of people and the movement of capital, it needs to at least allow the movement of ideas.
   It is something to be guarded jealously and taught in its schools.
   It is, meanwhile, denied to many in Red China, unable to grow through dialogue. Instead its economy grows from the influx of capital, going in on growth figures that have been verified by none except a communist dictatorship, or from the misappropriation of intellectual property. Red China understands the latter cannot continue and has put up some restrictions—but until the opportunities for growth are open to all, then it will not have the support of its citizenry in the way the United States does. Red China can only become a great nation if all of China rethinks the republic, perhaps a commonwealth, but certainly one based around the principles of Confucius and Sun Yat-sen. It can happen as suddenly as the collapse of the Soviet Union, or it may take many more years than we imagine.
   Till then, the nation that may yet benefit is one that has great dialogue with the United States, and embraces it, seeing it as a blending of cultures and an opportunity for growth.
   That nation is India and while its opportunities have not flowed through to everyone, and it, too, has its internal problems, it is poised to rise through the freedom of people, capital and ideas. The Indian century may follow the American century, but it may take a familiar form. Not far from now, if current trends continue, the Indian middle class will grow. It will form the basis of a strong national infrastructure. And the Indian century, too, will be based around freedom and liberty.
   However, in the immediate term, provided the United States can unite itself around its real values, those principles that, in reality, are not uniquely American after all, I see no reason for the American century not to continue.
   It is fortunate to have a holiday like the Fourth of July, a chance to remind everyone that freedom and justice are not buzzwords. That these principles really do mean something to the rest of the world—and that they need to be honoured. And that the power rests with everyone, because everyone has a voice.

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A follow-up on the gay marriage post

nobody@vox.com(Jack Yan) — Wed, 28 May 2008 17:55:00 +1200

The following is a comment in response to the exchange from my earlier blog post on gay marriage in California. I believe it is important (for my own ego!) to address charges that I am prejudiced against gays or am a bigot. It is a pity that while I am open to seeing the other side of the argument in favour of gay marriage in California, as a heterosexual man I am already labelled (prejudged) as being incapable of that.
I am going to Lawcrawler to see if I can find this controversial judgement and will give my thoughts on it later.

T. G. C., I am reading your extract short of seeing the full judgement, and I find it somewhat unconvincing.
   Let me address one point: the article I posted is an article I posted. Simple. I do find it somewhat offensive that you and Madonna would attribute its position to me when even I have not done so. Yes, you may feel it has a personal endorsement by its mere appearance here. In that case your opinion of me is forgiveable. I can understand that the article inflames certain passions. However, it is my opinion that if the article were fair, then the judges in this case do not understand their jobs.
   A bit about my history, so at least we can get on the same page here. I have a fairly good grasp of the law as I am qualified with an LL B. I live in a country that was an early pioneer in homosexual law reform and has a proud tradition of embracing lifestyles that traditionalists would be appalled at. I could probably even find you two gay couples who would attest to my views on the subject that I would say most gays (here) would believe are reasonable and fair.
   My posting an article is for promoting understanding, certainly my own, and certainly, too, to contrast the way your country handles legal positions against the way my one does.
   Let me take one of your highlighted points:

we disagree with the Attorney General and the Governor to the extent they suggest that the traditional or long-standing nature of the current statutory definition of marriage exempts the statutory provisions embodying that definition from the constraints imposed by the California Constitution, or that the separation-of-powers doctrine precludes a court from determining that constitutional question

   Obviously without reading the statute I am less informed, but this is fairly true: in general, in most common law jurisprudence, courts to interpret laws in line with (state or federal) constitutions.
   Then, however, we have a conflict if the definition of marriage is codified, and this is perhaps the stem of the conflict more than anything.
   Traditionally, even when legislation is interpreted in the spirit of a constitutional document—a familiar argument here given the Treaty of Waitangi—it is not done by completely violating the wording of that legislation.
   To you and Madonna, it may be an issue of what the public wants, but if you have a Governor who keeps vetoing such bills, then I find it unconvincing that we rely on those bills in legal interpretation. In fact, this fact alone illustrates the law’s insufficiency at this present stage for those supporting gay marriage.
   The judicial task when faced with wanting to respect the will of the people and equal-rights doctrines in a constitution is to find third ways, clever exceptions that provide citizens with what they want without violating the legislation before them. This is a given in common law.
   While this means that gay marriage will take far longer to be recognized if this is the prevailing trend, law is something that takes decades to remould, but it should not be short-circuited.
   The law of negligence is a classic example in tort: probably most law students will recall this took decades before the landmark Donahue v. Stevenson case in 1928 and Lord Atkin’s classic judgement.
   Laws are slow, they are often reactive, but it is the system we are laboured with. An ideal world would be one without laws and with self-regulation between people acting with their complete free wills. I hold this to be an ideal and it matters, at the end of the day, little what definitions state about this word or that—but it does matter to me that while we have our current system, it is conducted fairly until the people decide on another system again.
   You bring up Perez v. Lippold. You are right that this is actually highly convincing and I thank you for reminding me of it. I do know a little about this case but there are some distinctions based on religion, the Fourteenth Amendment and constitutional interpretation, and these really helped the couple there. The respondent also presented some heavily biased opinion that the court saw through.
   There was indeed a law written in statute that barred the marriage of the couple in that case, one that was, admittedly, steadily eroded by the courts as it expanded the definition of marriage to increasingly more races.
   The court held (inter alia) that the sections in that legislation were too vague especially when it came to racial classifications—which was how ultimately it got around the interracial ban.
   You see, there was no legislating from the bench: the judge in Perez showed how lacking the legislation was, how it offended the basic tenets of the requirements of American law, and it was effectively a challenge to the legislature that: if you want to block us, revisit the law and redraft it if you dare. This I accept as this fight goes on all the time in a democracy.
   This is why I asked you and Madonna to find me the judgement, though since I haven’t heard back, I’ll have a trawl through Lawcrawler myself in a sec.
   Without clever methods of finding a way around fairly strictly worded statutes, I do believe from what little I know (yes, maybe I shall accept the ignorance charge) the judges crossed the line here.
   Contrary to your and Madonna’s biased views of me, I retain an open mind.

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Gene Hunt is a law unto himself—even in real life

nobody@vox.com(Jack Yan) — Sun, 11 May 2008 11:50:18 +1200

The first time I read about Philip Glenister getting his driver off for speeding (35 mph in a 30 mph zone) I chuckled, as he adopted his Gene Hunt persona. The cop saw the actor and said, according to Glenister, ‘I’m terribly sorry about this sir, I’ll let you off this time if you don’t mind.’
Glenister had apparently said to him prior, ‘Yes, I’m the one on the booze, not him. Go and catch some proper criminals.’
Then I found the earliest article on the incident in the Daily Mail tabloid which contrasted this with others in the UK:

Earlier this week it emerged that Sydney Duffy was fined for doing 35mph in a 30mph area when he tried to leave the road quickly as his wife had an epileptic fit. The 63-year-old has appealed against the fine from Cumbria police and will appear in court.
And Stephanie Cornwall was issued with a £60 fine after rushing to hospital when her six year-old son Alfie was mauled by a dog. The mother, 40, from Leicestershire, was travelling at 37mph in a 30mph zone.

   One law for celebrities?
   The Met should have more sense than to fine people like Mr Duffy and Ms Cornwall.
   At least here the traffic cops allow for some speedometer error and that humans cannot be expected to constantly monitor their speed when traffic safety is at issue. If you kept staring at your speedo, you might get involved in an accident!
   It is worse here in New Zealand than it was 30 years ago but by and large, 5 mph is not something for the cops to get that upset about.
   I know there are exceptions but I am talking in a general sense. As we work in metric, 5 mph is roughly 8 km/h.
   The second incident probably would have been frowned on more today, less so 30 years ago: 7 mph goes past that 10 km/h leeway that some cops have as a rule of thumb.
   I tend to drive at the legal limit but realize that due to speedometer error I can be anywhere between 5 km/h over or under.
   The ‘Your speed is’ digital signs around some parts of New Zealand are helpful as a means of calibrating my own speedometer—so why do so many of them have their displays closed?
   They tend to show that my car’s 50 km/h is actually 47 km/h so I tend to go closer to 55 km/h on my speedo.
   The problem is that speeding here is governed by legislation that brings strict liability, which basically means “no excuses”.
   But I would think a Kiwi copper would have been able to judge in both cases somewhat better than his or her British counterpart.
   I am not sure if we would distinguish between celebrities and everyday folk. Any stories? I know of one incident told to me by an eyewitness (the passenger) where a rich driver was let off because of the car he drove, and the officers wound up going into macho mode to discuss the vehicle and neglected to issue a fine for excessive speeding. I cannot reveal more since I am not permitted to, and I would hope it is exceptional rather than commonplace.
   If a flash car could get me off a fine, I would have really opened up the Astons and Porsche 911 I have driven, but I prefer my clean licence (knock on wood) and was much more careful.

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Ten murders so far in 2008—remember when we had three a year?

nobody@vox.com(Jack Yan) — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 18:13:05 +1300

We’ve ended January 2008 here in New Zealand with 10 murders. The government is saying this is an anomaly, but is it?
   Crime has been rising in New Zealand steadily since I have been observing the numbers and for older New Zealanders, the latest figures are a disgust.
   I am not overly surprised, given the rising gap between rich and poor, suggesting a mismanagement of the economy and an absence of jobs, while values and education have suffered at the same time.
   Those older New Zealanders who can remember back to the 1950s remember a country with roughly half the population and 18 convictions for murder between 1951 and 1957.
   I realize actual murders and successful convictions are different, but assuming that there were a couple of murders in this period that didn’t lead to a conviction, then we’re still looking at 20 over a seven-year period from January 1951 to December 1957.
   That’s roughly three per annum. If there’s double the population now, then we should expect statistics to show that there are six per annum for 2008.
   Remember that medical science wasn’t as advanced, so if we adjust for that, then maybe this estimate isn’t actually that far off.
   In this election year, I wouldn’t buy any party line that says things are all right. I wouldn’t even buy policies that talk about tougher sentencing. Because neither of these address the root problem.
   We need policies in New Zealand that say: we will address this rich–poor gap.
   How? Well, how about recognizing what’s going on instead of kowtowing to multinational corporations operating here?
   Since the end of Muldoonism, New Zealand has become the poster boy of the technocracy, doing everything that the economic experts said should work: privatization, free markets, the ending of tariffs.
   Ask yourself, even in the last five years, can you afford more or less of the things you want in your life? I don’t care if you are a student or a wage-earner or even a small business boss. The answer is probably no.
   When will we wake up and realize that these policies have driven a wedge between the rich and poor in a nation that once prided itself on being a fair, just, middle-class country?
   Since Labour sold off so many state assets in the 1980s, something National continued doing in the 1990s, we now have a lot of things in the hands of foreign corporations.
   Now, if these corporations were running these assets more efficiently, logically the government should be able to increase its tax take, which leads to more money for hospitals, schools and social services.
   But the idea of being a private corporation that spreads its activities across different countries is the ability to minimize the tax you pay, by writing some of it off with the operations you have in other places.
   So the opposite has happened. Meanwhile, these corporations have shed staff so the people who used to work there wound up on the dole, and there’s less money to pay out.
   The rich in cahoots with the big companies have done well while everyone else has suffered.
   To make up the shortfall in government coffers, the Labour Government introduced Lotto and basically became the biggest attraction for gamblers. Now we are reporting a rise in calls to gambling helplines.
   The other idea behind liberalizing our markets was so New Zealanders could go and compete globally. But how were we expected to make that leap? Even the richest New Zealanders of the 1980s didn’t survive the decade in good financial shape.
   We need to innovate and create and start new businesses but the support, as any entrepreneur will tell you, is not there.
   Yet New Zealand is a place of great, novel ideas that often stay dormant, unless that Kiwi goes offshore and has a foreign company become interested.
   I have repeated this example many times: if TradeMe was really that successful, it would have bought Fairfax, not the other way around.
   The solution must be to have New Zealanders own New Zealand businesses, so that New Zealanders have jobs and taxes and profits stay in New Zealand.
   This is not about putting the barriers back up. The multinationals have embedded themselves too much into New Zealand.
   We can only hope to create global businesses that do for us what the multinationals have done here. We also need to encourage entrepreneurship at the small- to medium-sized business level so that everyone can have a chance to get his or her idea off the ground, beating the world. We are still blessed with a fairly good internet infrastructure that can become a useful tool for New Zealanders.
   We need to consider tax policies that help the poor and penalize the sources for the inequity in New Zealand. The next government needs to play, essentially, Robin Hood. It needs to create policies for the middle class of New Zealand and what makes them happy wage-earners or self-employed business people, because that is where the majority of the tax will come from. ‘Teach a man to fish and he will eat for life.’ Time to stop handing the fish out and pretending it was a conjuror’s trick. (It was only cool when Jesus Christ did it with the 5,000, anyway.)
   And while I am a globalist at heart, this economy is too small at this point to allow technocratic policies to have free reign, without someone seeing to the interests of the Kiwis that need the most help. I want to see food banks disappear in five years because everyone has a job.
   An innovative government that might create new businesses itself can be a useful agent in the business community. In the 1970s and 1980s, New Zealand’s dual-fuel natural gas infrastructure is still a dream for most countries. Yet a huge percentage of the nation’s cars ran on natural gas back then, able to fill up at the majority of stations across New Zealand.
   Government participation in a modernized Keynesian model could just work in 2008 and one only needs to look at Singapore and Malaysia for nearby adaptations of the very policies New Zealand had only 30 years ago.
   No one can claim they are paupers, and Malaysia itself did find, in 1997, that the technocratic way of thinking didn’t work for them. Having a strong man as a prime minister worked in its favour as Dr Mahathir bin Mohamad was able to say what he thought of the corporations wreaking havoc on his country’s financial markets.
   And with relatively little corruption in New Zealand, government innovation is not a bad idea, provided these state enterprises do not get overmanned to the levels they were at in years past.
   Remember, Absolut, the people who make the vodka, is a government-owned enterprise. No one seems to urge the Swedish Government to divest for the sake of the technocracy.
   Then, those who might find themselves in similar situations to the 10 murderers won’t suffer from envy, depression or rage.
   In the 1950s, New Zealand had about nine people unemployed. In the 2010s, we should be looking at 18. Full employment is key and the policies we are following now—policies which Labour and National predict they will essentially follow—won’t lead to any change in our rising crime rate or the widening gap between rich and poor, which neither party has even mentioned in the lead-up to the 2008 elections.

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E-court: the web can clean up the legal profession

nobody@vox.com(Jack Yan) — Wed, 03 Oct 2007 18:18:03 +1200

I love it. Dr Jay Parkinson of Brooklyn, NY, has gone online with his practice:

http://www.inter-actions.biz/blog/2007/10/is_there_a_doctor_in_the_house.html

That means you can reach him via electronic means and he will do diagnoses accordingly, even after hours for emergencies.
   Now, I would love to see lawyers do this. Even an e-court. Parties or their attorneys feed in their evidence to a site with limited fields and a judge decides. No emotion, no BS. The decision comes swiftly. Any mitigating factors can be fed in, but lawyers would be encouraged to write everything briefly. They would be unable to hide extra charges. And if they think anything’s been missed, then the process could go to appeal before a live court.
   It would lower the price of getting justice because the system would no longer need to support a live District Court, and appeals would be at the current price of the original claim. It would also make things faster.
   Best of all, the legal profession, branded as shysters even in Shakespeare’s day, would appear more transparent. It would start going up the ladder in people’s minds.
   I would love to see a country like Singapore, or even New Zealand, give this sort of thing a shot. Singapore prides itself on e-governmental processes and this would be an ultimate test. New Zealand’s system is far too entrenched but I’d love to see a party adopt this idea.
   It’s far too radical for Labour, and certainly would be gobbledegook for National.
   Greens? United Future? The Alliance?

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Bruce has been granted bail

nobody@vox.com(Jack Yan) — Thu, 15 Feb 2007 10:39:06 +1300

Good news, from the Robinson family on my answerphone: Bruce Robinson was granted bail 5.30 p.m. Polish time. For all those who sent their prayers or signed the petition, thank you. He’s not out yet: the prosecutor can still appeal and had originally expected to be able to keep Bruce in jail till June, so conﬁdent he was of his situation. However, it seems a fair judge may have heard the pleas for bail.
Despite our government’s inaction, hold your breath for the Foreign Minister-outside-Cabinet taking credit for all our hard work. Now we have to make sure he gets a fair trial, so I’ll still be active on it.

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Richards and the Juice: a week where being anti-Semitic is worse than being anti-black

nobody@vox.com(Jack Yan) — Sat, 25 Nov 2006 02:22:14 +1300

I keep wondering if Michael Richards would have gotten as bad a rap in New Zealand for his racist comments last week, or would we have moved on? He seems to avoided the press here, but strangely, Mel Gibson did not for his anti-Semitic tirade. Given how race is a contentious issue in the US—for instance, most Americans still have not seen the old BBC documentary about O. J. Simpson and the Nicole Brown–Ron Goldman murder (likely conclusion: O. J. didn’t do it)—I would have expected the use of the n word to have made the American-driven news more substantially.
   The fact that it hasn’t outside the US suggests that being an anti-Semite is more serious than being anti-black.
   So are blacks disadvantaged more Stateside? I mentioned O. J. purposely above. His new book, If I Did It, as many Americans know, was pulled by Rupert Murdoch during the week. The belief was that he should not be allowed to profit from his estranged wife’s and her friend’s murders, even if he was innocent in the criminal trial.
   However, most whites—not just American whites—believe that O. J. did it. Most blacks believe that justice was served in the criminal court and that O. J. didn’t do it.
   After seeing the BBC documentary and learning about Jason Simpson’s (O. J.’s son) tendency to violence, his accessibility (as a chef) to the very type of knife that killed her and Goldman, information about a plot to kill Nicole, and the way the police investigated the case, then it is very easy to come to the same conclusion as most African–Americans. British experts believed that most of the evidence submitted in the Simpson trial would never have been accepted in the UK: that the crime scene was heavily contaminated and that vital blood samples were not taken.
   But the white view seems to have got its way with Murdoch; never mind that an American court of law found the elder Simpson not guilty.
   I personally do not know any racist Americans. So the above is totally conjecture based on how the Michael Richards item was treated by the international press, and the public outcry over O. J.’s attempts to earn dollars off his story—as so many others have done.
   No, I don’t find what Michael Richards said acceptable at all. Nor do I find the murders anything but despicable. However, outside the United States, these items make for very interesting viewing, especially how they travel through the wires. I personally found Richards’ tirade as bad as (possibly worse than) Gibson’s, and question how one race’s viewpoint can so greatly affect whether a book written by a member of another race—yet the powers-that-be in the US, with its constitutional presumption of innocence, don’t seem to agree with me.

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