189 posts tagged “politics”

While I wouldn’t consider myself a “birther” (I am far too left-wing, relatively speaking, for that), there’s a part of me that wishes the American president would show his birth certificate, just to silence a good group of his critics and get them focusing on more important matters. I publicly said so at the time when the matter first came up and yes, it did seem odd, even if his challengers in the courts’ system had fairly ill-prepared cases.
   However, I remember how John Major, then PM of the UK, resisted showing his O levels, which he also had sealed, because he felt they weren’t important. Eventually, he released them, and his marks were unremarkable. They made absolutely no difference to his authority and it was a “nothing” story that the British media were good at pushing. Maybe President Obama is taking a lesson from a conservative politician: showing it would be a waste of time.
   I imagine in the US, things are so divisive politically that if President Obama were to show his (original, long form) birth certificate, there would still be people saying it was faked. I have read some comical criticisms even of his certification of live birth, pointing out the colour differences between ones they had seen and the one on the President’s campaign site. I guess those people have never used more than one scanner, or more than one digital camera.
   The political right, even if its case had merit, kept shooting itself in the foot with some of the less thought-out theories. I admit there is a question that could be easily cleared up, but Obama’s own critics are clouding the issue. While they’re doing that, then the President and his allies can sit back comfortably.
   Still, just to get a bit of closure as I potentially enter local politics, here’s a 37-year-old piece of paper (in fact, it is 37 years today that Dad had my birth registered):

   Queen Elizabeth Hospital is still there, as is 4 Victory Avenue, though we soon moved into the front apartment. Here is how the entry to the building looks these days:     Now, that should all check out, not that local politics gets as nasty as American national politics.

Like Facebook and Twitter, our company has been under DOS attacks for the last few weeks and, as I write, we are under one right now. As for the “Joe job” that the Russians are suspected of having done to a Georgian blogger, I’ve had them, too—just that last year, I had no idea that this was a targeted campaign aimed directly at me or our company. I always thought it was random: like I am important enough to have a coordinated email attack against me. Yeah, right.
   It makes me wonder about the motive. The latest attacks come from the US east coast, which is interesting. The Joe jobs last year emanated from servers in Russia, Poland, Greece, and the US, but the coordinator could have been anywhere.
   You don’t get to 22 years in business without pissing somebody off. The Twitter attack last week was, according to some of the media, from the Russian government, and I can’t think of anyone at that high enough a level to even give a darn about what I do.
   As you know, there are some nut bars out there who have accused me of quite a few far-fetched things (remember the posts about my being racist, against homosexuals, etc.) just because they are too stupid to read what is on the page and imagine I had written something against their point of view. Well, folks, your imaginations might be active, but they diverge too much from reality.
   And if their grasp of reality isn’t that great, then I somehow think they wouldn’t be clever enough to mount an attack.
   So, who would be that keen to waste time on me and has the brains to pull this off? Tongue firmly in cheek, here are the top 10, in no particular order.
   1. Red China. They may be after anyone who has descended from family members who escaped in 1949. Each time I dis Chinese companies about bad behaviour, I will get a negative blog comment, or even a series of them. Seems pretty well coordinated—considering I don’t attract that many blog comments. Never mind that I say nice things about other Chinese companies who don’t do stupid things.
   2. Technocrats and anyone else who wants to get their hands on New Zealand’s remaining state assets. But I am not alone on opposing them and there are more worthy targets.
   3. Sen. John Kerry. It’s to get back at me for my decision to stop buying Wattie’s products because of the company’s overseas ownership. And the occasional quip about how the Forbeses made money in the opium trade. The latest attack did come from Massachusetts. Hmm.
   4. Elle magazine. Its parent company had French defence contracts that were a little incompatible with the fashion image. (It still holds a percentage of EADS.) Folks, I find this funny—and it always gets a laugh in speeches.
   5. Labour leader Phil Goff. I think his latest brochure photo sucks. And it’s probably not cool of him to brag about a free-trade deal with Red China to a roomful of expatriates who left because of 1949. Related to (1).
   6. The ACT Party. Related to (2). Known for sending me spam in 2001 and on numerous occasions afterwards—so they’re definitely a tech-savvy bunch there.
   7. US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. I’m not the one who talked about being under sniper fire in Bosnia. But I blogged about this a lot last year.
   8. Toyota. So I bring up the war every now and then. However, I eat a lot of Japanese food.
   9. Angelina Jolie. I am living proof that not all heterosexual men find her attractive, keeping her from a perfect hotness score.
   10. Facebook. What I write about what is happening internally must cut pretty closely to the truth.

Anyone listening to National Radio today and the PM’s comments about the waste-of-time referendum we are having?
   Mr Key says he wants the referendum question to be ‘comprehendable’ (sic).
   Bushisms are not the exclusive province of Americans.

At one point, it seemed Keeley Hawes was getting cast in receptionist roles. There was The Avengers movie with Ralph Fiennes and Sean Connery; and this pre-Tipping the Velvet Channel Five comedy, Hotel!, which had nothing to do with Arthur Hailey. Watch out instead for the stunning Lysette Anthony (who would be in her mid-30s at this point, but wow), Pakistani actor Athar Malik, better known as Art Malik, playing a terrorist again (he was a Mujahadin warrior in The Living Daylights and the villain in True Lies), and Lee Majors as the President (who probably doesn’t need much of an introduction). Some good sight gags, much in the vein of the Zucker movies.

I rather liked Craig Ferguson’s jokes at last year’s White House Correspondents’ Dinner. It was a shame that his fellow media colleagues didn’t know a good laugh when they heard it.
   I have found this with political humour in the United States. I have had political jokes fall well flat, and this is due to the politeness of Americans. Democrats don’t want to offend Republicans in the audience, and Republicans don’t want to offend Democrats in the audience. Net result: little laughter.
   The only times one can get a bit more extreme is in areas which are staunchly one way or another (e.g. then-Sen. Obama at the DNC and Gov. Palin at the RNC).
   He dissed The New York Times as much as Fox News, Vice-President Cheney as much as Sen. Clinton, Bill O’Reilly as much as Keith Olbermann, and he even had a go with the media in general. However, I loved his closing which was a great way to bring everyone together. Also notice that Mr Ferguson got a standing ovation.

This was made before the US presidential election, but Craig Ferguson’s sentiments about the media remain valid. And we shouldn’t need to be “sold” the fact that we live in democracies.

There are very few people who are all liberal or all conservative. I tend to find people are a mixture—it would be wrong to say there’s even a continuum between left and right. We tend to be a pick-and-mix people, coloured by our experiences and our hopes. We change our views as we age.
   Last year, I stood for a left-wing party but am one of the more centrist members in the Alliance.
   I tend to say I am Confucian, which some people have mistaken for socialist when in fact it is closer to libertarian. And some folks think libertarian is an inherently right-wing idea. Yet both the Alliance and the right-wing ACT Party here in New Zealand have incorporated libertarian ideas, if one defines that as maximizing personal liberty. There are areas where the two diametrically opposed parties agree as a result. They simply disagree on how that liberty is to be achieved: the Alliance believing in the necessity of some state mechanisms and nationalization of some industries for the sake of job creation. ACT is a monetarist, technocratic party.
   I love the ideals of patriotism and freedom, I believe more in Keynes than the technocracy, and I wish to put people first. When it comes to running this country I want to see locally owned businesses get better breaks than foreign-owned ones, whether at the local level or the national level. I want to encourage domestic ownership of international businesses, rather than the other way around. I believe in the innovative spirit of New Zealanders.
   So am I right-wing or left-wing, liberal or conservative? Other than economic theory I think both sides would agree that the majority of the last paragraph applies to them. If we have a sense of right and wrong, then I am not sure it is that important we belong in a “camp”.
   Fight corruption, support the good, build friendships, piss off the evil. Not a bad strategy to have through life.

I have heard so very little from the mainstream media that Murray McCully is New Zealand’s Foreign Minister.
   He is an improvement on his predecessor, who botched his US visit to meet Sec Rice and Sen McCain back in 2006, and had a rather vivid imagination.
   But then it wasn’t hard to improve on his predecessor.

In 2002, the Bush Administration declared that the detainees of the War on Terror were not eligible for rights under the Geneva Conventions. Do you agree with the Bush Administration’s decision? How might you have handled it differently?
Sponsored by “Inside Guantanamo” on National Geographic Channel. Premières Sunday at 9 p.m. ET/PT.

As I only got five hours’ sleep this will have to be brief. I did not agree with the Bush administration’s decision in 2002. The face of warfare has been changing for decades and I believed the Conventions could have been extended to enemy combatants. The Geneva Conventions are meant to be living, interpreted in line with modern needs.

Days after his inauguration, President Barack Obama signed into effect plans to close the Guantanamo Bay detention facility within the next year. What do you think should be done with its remaining detainees?
Sponsored by “Inside Guantanamo” on National Geographic Channel. Premieres Sunday at 9 p.m. ET/PT.

Goodness, this is a politically charged one.
   There was a reason many of these people were terror suspects when they were first arrested and detained. Some of them were good reasons, some of them lousy. If the President is to close Gitmo anyway, then there are only a few paths open to the US.
   The detainees should be charged and subjected to a fair trial under US law, based on the ideals and Constitution of that country, as soon as practicable—preferably on the sort of timetable that US subjects themselves are given.
   Those whose governments have requested extradition for trials in their own countries the US should consider on a case-by-case basis as to avoid clogging up the US justice system.
   They should not be denied counsel.
   I think the American people deserve to know what these people have allegedly done or are suspected of doing, so that the full impact of any terror plans are known.
   If they are people who will commit crimes if they are released, then it’s an incentive for the US Government to build airtight cases against them for conspiracy. If they still have any intelligence to give, there are other laws under which they can be detained, especially with some of the anti-terror legislation enacted since 2001.
   The War on Terror is not over so this should not be seen as an end, and I believe the President is aware of that.