Bribing voters with their kids' money (and undermining your own policy objectives)

As a libertarian when a government cuts taxes I am pleased, even ones that are purportedly a user fee, because in fact so much of what is collected from those user fees is not directed to services consumed by the users - in this case fuel tax and road user charges.  It would, after all, be much better if the amount collected was what is needed to pay to maintain and upgrade the roads, rather than be directed to pet projects designed to "change behaviour" (subsidise transport modes you aren't willing to pay to use),.

However, it reeks of hypocrisy, as the Ardern/Hipkins Government proceeds to undermine a land transport funding system that once was seen as a shining example in a world where political pork barrelling is so often the order of the day (see Australia and the United States).  It's much more than that though.

Remember the "most transparent government ever"? Remember the commitment to (reducing) child poverty? Remember the belief that New Zealand taking action on climate change is meant to be a demonstrable commitment to values of environmental protection?

It's all bullshit of course.

Remember when Jacinda Ardern said tax cuts would STOP not cut, but stop investment (!) in health and education? This was when National proposed just to raise income tax thresholds, so inflation and wage rises wouldn't result in fiscal creep (when your increases in pay, to offset inflation) putting you into higher tax brackets.  

Remember when National proposed a cut in fuel excise, but Jacinda Ardern said it would mean the roads would fall apart?

"It maintains our roads and it builds our transport projects so if you were to remove excise, which every government has used, you basically remove your ability to maintain roads and build new roading projects," she told AM. 

It's all bullshit of course, because Labour did just that, it cut fuel excise and road user charges, and is paying for it by using "funds set aside for Covid" which are actually borrowings that are unspent.

Prime Minister Chris Hipkins is maintaining these cuts in tax through till the end of June 2023, not because fuel prices are high (they have been dropping for months), but because, he says, it relieves pressure on households.

Well it does, particularly higher income households. Infometrics research indicates that the highest income households save three times as much as lower income households.  That makes sense, as they pay the most fuel tax, because they drive the most and are likely to have the largest vehicles with the highest fuel consumption, but remember this is the Government that decried tax cuts "for the rich". 

Apparently it's ok to cut taxes for those that earn the most.... if Labour does it.

Transport Minister Michael Wood even said on Newstalk ZB that the tax cut was an "investment". Here's a clue, almost every single time a politician says something, that involves your money, is an "investment", it's a lie, because you'll never get anything back from it. In this case, Wood, known as a leftie in the Labour caucus, has helped us all out...

I agree with him, tax cuts are an investment - an investment in believing people know best how to spend their own money.  It was theirs in the first place. 

What's particularly hilarious is the contortion of the tax cut.  Ignore James Shaw bloviating that it is subsidising fossil fuels. 

It's bullshit.

For a start, it is cutting a tax, not subsidising the market price of fuel, secondly it is just one "fuel". Diesel doesn't carry excise tax, as diesel vehicles pay per kilometre to use the roads.  New Zealanders are still pay the market price for fuel, plus (for petrol) some fuel tax and GST.  However, you can rely on the Greens to exaggerate for hysterical effect.

After all fuel tax and road user charges do not raise money for general spending, but for the National Land Transport Fund, so that Waka Kotahi can spend money on roads, subsidising public transport and now Kiwirail and coastal shipping.  They are effectively user charges so there is some user pays, although it's worth noting what this government spends the money on, and how far it has undermined the system that was once deemed best practice by the World Bank.

(From the 2021-2024 National Land Transport Programme)

69% of spending is on roads, the remainder is mostly spent on subsidising public transport and Kiwirail (26%), 4% on upgrading footpaths and cycleways and the remainder on administration and subsidies for coastal shipping.

Setting aside the 20% which actually isn't spent by the government, but comes from local government rates (on average half of spending on local roads and a bit less of public transport is from local government), 56% comes from road use fees in the form of tax on petrol, and road user charges on diesel powered vehicles, plus motor vehicle registration/licensing fees. 24% already comes from general taxes (either current or future).

By cutting fuel tax and RUC, Labour is substantially raising the proportion of money derived from borrowing from future general taxpayers, to around the same as fuel tax and RUC.  

Labour is now subsidising roads more than any government for decades.  Of course it is subsidising public transport like no government ever before, to the point that public transport users are now paying, on average, only around a quarter of the cost of paying for the bus driver and the diesel and maintaining the bus (or train). 

This is the same government that has an explicit target of cutting on average, 30% fewer km every year (50% if you live in a city) because it isn't just about climate change, it wants to mould you into a green citizen, that walks and bikes for most short journeys, rides public transport whenever it is available and just drive less. It's a centrally planned and controlled vision that doesn't respect people making the "wrong" choices, it is also supported by cutting speed limits, because it isn't just about safety, it happens to make driving less attractive compared to slower modes of transport.

However, Labour is now subsidising road use, and that includes road freight (note rail and shipping operators don't get any cut in fuel tax or road user charges, because they don't pay any, but they get subsidised anyway by other means).

So you have a Labour Government that says tax cuts (proposed by National and ACT) will threaten health and education.... but then implements tax cuts, completely blanking out the fact that this either means less money for other spending or it means more borrowing - for tax cuts.  How "sustainable" is that?

It says tax cuts will benefit the rich the most, and then implements tax cuts that do just that.

It says cutting fuel tax will jeopardise spending on transport, and then implements tax cuts on fuel.

Finally, it claims climate change is the great crisis that especially needs New Zealand, the country that emits 0.09% of global CO2 emissions  must radically change how it lives, by constraining private motoring, but then subsidises road use like no government in recent history.

Votes are much more precious that policy objectives though, as is leaving a fiscal bomb for the other side if the election is lost, although if it were up to me, the next government could think long and hard about whether it subsidises public transport and rail from general taxes anyway (assuming it wants to do that), and leaving fuel tax and RUC for roads only.

How to explain the hard-left's position on Syria

When a one-party state, led by a dictator, with a personality cult, who inherited his position from his father (who himself gained power by military coup), repeatedly uses chemical weapons against his opponents and the residents of areas governed by his opponents, you'd think there would be universal outrage and condemnation.  

But no.  Setting aside the regime itself and its foreign backer (Russia - which has used its airforce to quell dissent against the regime, with little apparent concern for civilian casualties), there have been two groups who tend to hold one (or even more than one) of three views of these events:

1.  The chemical attacks didn't happen (the "false flag" believers).  As such it was staged by one or more opposition groups, or the more ludicrous claims that it was a CIA, MI5, Israeli orchestrated charade.

2.  The chemical attacks did happen, but were undertaken either by an opposition group (which has no air power, given the Syrian Air Force is well equipped) or by the UK (says Russia), to discredit Assad and Russia.

3.  The chemical attacks did happen, but no one can prove it was the Assad regime, and besides any military action just "makes it worse", will "escalate conflict", will "benefit Jihadists", is "illegal", etc.

One group are non-interventionist libertarians, who at best simply oppose military action by governments on principle, unless it is for self-defence.  Some are conspiracy theory cranks who share a lot with the other group.  I'll discuss them all another day.  Suffice to say, while I respect high levels of scepticism over intervention, I am not a non-interventionist.  I think there is a considerable interest for us all, for those governments with some values of individual rights, rule of law and secular liberal democracy, to take steps to ensure that the treaty based commitment of state to not use chemical weapons, is enforced, with some urgency especially if that state is using it against civilians.  There is merit in arguments against such action, but this post is not about those arguments.

This is about the much larger and vocal "other lot", the so-called "peace" movement on the left.  It's view, as exemplified by the far-left hypocritical "Stop the War Coalition" in the UK, is fairly simple.  It opposes absolutely all Western military action of all kinds, and happily cheers on military, terrorist and other insurgency action by any entities confronting the West or its allies. Loud on US intervention, silent on Russia.  Most of the libertarian non-interventionists are fairly consistently opposed to both, but the far-left are much more obviously hypocritical.

With a Hat Tip to Dave Rich on Twitter I thought his explanation of the hard-left worldview of these events, alongside the Skripal poisoning and indeed many foreign policy issues is as applicable to the NZ Green Party as it is to the UK Labour Party, and to equivalent far-left movements in other countries. 

A short thread about what links Corbyn’s position on the Douma gassings, Skripal poisonings, Gaza violence and antisemitism in Labour. Seemingly unconnected events but a thread links Corbyn’s responses: his view of power /1

— Dave Rich (@daverich1) April 15, 2018

For Corbyn, Stop The War Coalition & others in their part of the left, all the problems of the world are due to the unequal distribution of power & wealth. Sort that out and war, poverty, terrorism, racism etc will all disappear /2

— Dave Rich (@daverich1) April 15, 2018

This is why he will never support any use of military force by the UK, US or any other Western country. They have power therefore it is not legitimate for them to use it. Instead they should give it up /3

— Dave Rich (@daverich1) April 15, 2018

Corbyn in the Morning Star, 2004: “The wars of the 21st century are crude fights for oil or power and emanate from glittering boardrooms in Western capitals.” Iraq & Palestine show “all that is wrong with the world's power structures.” It’s that simple /4 pic.twitter.com/07zvktNefW

— Dave Rich (@daverich1) April 15, 2018

Ideology, identity, culture, local power dynamics: all missing from this narrative of why wars happen, because it is all about the globally powerful exploiting & oppressing the powerless /5

— Dave Rich (@daverich1) April 15, 2018

Unequivocally condemning Russia for Salisbury or Assad for Douma would involve taking the side of the powerful (UK & US) against the powerless (Russia & Assad). I know, the flaw in this ‘logic’ is so obvious a child would spot it. But that’s the thinking /6

— Dave Rich (@daverich1) April 15, 2018

It’s not pacifism. STWC supported the “resistance” in Iraq & Palestine when that resistance was definitely violent. Here’s STWC in Dec 2003 supporting “military struggle” against UK & US forces in Iraq and “armed struggle” in Palestine /7 pic.twitter.com/HP1Lrq9HkC

— Dave Rich (@daverich1) April 15, 2018

It’s not about Parliament or the UN either. Parliament supported the 2003 Iraq War. Afghanistan was invaded under the UN Charter. Does anyone seriously think Corbyn & STWC would drop their opposition if Parliament or the UN backed the Syria strikes? /8

— Dave Rich (@daverich1) April 15, 2018

Israel is seen as part of the Western power network so its use of force can never be justified either. This is why Corbyn can be so certain he knows what is happening on the Gaza border. The powerful are shooting the powerless. Simple /9

— Dave Rich (@daverich1) April 15, 2018

But when Assad gasses Syrian children it doesn’t fit the paradigm so he calls for investigations, he condemns both sides, he talks in generalities about political solutions and diplomatic processes that don’t exist /10

— Dave Rich (@daverich1) April 15, 2018

Similarly, a lot of people on the left don’t take antisemitism seriously because Jews are seen as wealthy and powerful. This means Jews can’t really experience racism, because racism is what you get when rich powerful white people oppress poor people of colour /11

— Dave Rich (@daverich1) April 15, 2018

The next step is thinking that because Jews are rich and powerful, they are part of networks of power in Western states & therefore Jews (not just Israel) are oppressors. Not everyone on the left takes this step – but it’s easy to find, especially if you call them “Zionists” /12

— Dave Rich (@daverich1) April 15, 2018

It’s a simple way of viewing the world: the West has all the power and everyone else has suffered from the West’s power. Follow that paradigm and you can work out what to think about any issue. It has the benefit of certainty but the drawback of being wrong. /End

— Dave Rich (@daverich1) April 15, 2018

The deafening silence of the "peace" movement on Syria

Russia arms the Syrian government, as it has done so for 11 years (and for decades before that as the USSR) and so is profiting from the current war being waged by the Assad Ba'athist dictatorship against Syrians who oppose him.

You'd think that the so-called "peace" movement would be protesting.  That Russian embassies worldwide would face pickets, that Russian flags would be burned, led by the Westerners who did just that against US embassies and flags when the US intervened in Iraq.  

Syrians are doing so, but the "peace" activists are strangely uninspired.  Why?

A visit to the "Stop the War Coalition" (STWC) website says it all.  A big focus on backing Iran, that great harbinger of non-intervention, as if a state murdering citizens is less important.  It does have an article about Syria where it opposes Western intervention, but neglects to mention Russian intervention.  Why?  Well STWC doesn't like the West very much.  It would have preferred Muammar Gaddafi massacring Libyans from the air than NATO stopping that and assisting his overthrow.  Why?  What interests did he serve?  Wasn't he waging war against his people, like he did quietly for decades by suppressing dissent?  What is really telling is the STWC goes on about Western sales of arms to the Saudi and Bahrain dictatorships, but is silent about Russia and Iran's intervention in Syria.  You see Russia, Iran and Syrian dictatorships are ok, or at least better than Saudi and Bahrain, and indeed far better than the US, France and the UK intervening.   Its wilful blindness to what Russia and Iran does in Syria, like its wilful blindness to what Syria did in Lebanon, speaks volumes.   STWC is not anti-war, it is anti-Western, anti-liberal democracy, anti-secularism, anti-freedom and anti-capitalist.  It is a Marxist front organisation that provides succour for tyrannies, as long as they aren't Western backed.

Stop the War Coalition is actually "stop the war against those waging war against their own citizens".  Hardly surprising, given its chairman is a friend of the Orwellian cult of dead personality regime in Pyongyang.

Greenpeace?  Silent. 

Iran has sent naval ships to Syria.  Russia continues to sell arms to the Syrian dictatorship.

The arguments against Western military intervention remain compelling, and are primarily about being bogged down in a conflict where no side is an angel and there is an overwhelming risk of civil war being a sectarian battle.   Yet there is a case for blocking Russian and Iranian ships from entering Syrian waters and imposing a no-fly zone.  That, at least, will minimise malignant intervention on the side of Assad.

However, the so-called "peace movement" will likely oppose that, because to them peace within countries, particularly regimes that are not Western friendly and not the result of Western intervention, isn't that important.  It's just another leftwing group that opposes the West that gives them the freedom and wealth to function.

There are no solutions to Syria coming from the "peace" movement or the left.  The conservative right has been burned by Iraq and Afghanistan and has neither the fortitude nor the capacity to support a similar intervention in Syria.   The only way Syria will get better is if Syrians will fight for freedom, if more Syrian soldiers fight against Assad than for him and if Syrian embrace values of secularism, freedom, mutual respect and tolerance for each other.   The best way that can be encouraged is by hindering malignant intervention and by good people being mercenaries and supporting factions in Syria that allow people to defend themselves and fight for a free Syria.

Neither the "peace movement", nor the UN, nor the Arab League can be expected to support let alone do much for any of that.

Veitch vs Harawira

So whilst John Key gets excoriated by the left for engaging in an interview with convicted violent criminal Tony Veitch.

The stony silence about Titewhai Harawira.  

What's the difference?

Veitch was a man abusing a woman, Harawira was a woman abusing people of both sexes.

Veitch is a New Zealander of European extraction, Harawira is a New Zealander of Maori extraction.

Veitch's crime was in the context of a private relationship, Harawira was contracted and paid by the taxpayer to provide care.

Veitch's victim was a woman, clearly unable to defend herself against his strength, Harawira's victims were mentally ill, clearly unable to defend themselves.

Veitch is never forgiven by those who claim to oppose violence in all its forms, Harawira's past is conveniently forgotten.

Nothing is quite as empty as the hypocritical judgment of the pseudo-liberal, "violence is ok when it suits us", peace loving "except when fighting for human rights" left.  Titewhai Harawira is as guilty and as violent as Tony Veitch, but to condemn a Maori woman just wouldn't be on would it?  After all, it is not about judging the content of people's character or their actions, but judging them on their ancestry and their genitalia.

Individualism means judging every person on their actions, and leaving race and sex out of it.   Leftwing collectivism means judging the same actions as different, according to who does them.

That's how a Maori woman can violent abuse mentally ill people, and be forgiven. Because she is a Maori woman.

Only we can stir up bigotry and hatred

Once walking down a Wellington alleyway I saw a piece of graffiti which depicted Nandor Tanczos saying "everything you do is political".  A similar philosophy has seemed to have gripped some on the political left in a manner that is both inexplicably vile and hypocritical at the same time.  Even the Secretary of State claims that the murder was by "an extremist".  I'll leave aside thay apparently only the shooting of the Congresswoman is significant here, and that the shooting of a child and several others are hard to connect to any political motive at all - but then it would be inconvenient to even consider that.  Malcolm Harbrow doesn't even mention those killed in his own unhinged diatribe of bigotry.

The killer in question is clearly rather disturbed, with possible psychoses.  What about his politics?  Well as much as can be gleaned from evidence seen so far, it would appear they are as deranged and incoherent as his behaviour.  Some on the left have grabbed his hatred of the government, concern for the constitution and embrace of a gold standard as evidence he is a Tea Partier, yet conveniently ignoring his appreciation of The Communist Manifesto and Mein Kampf.  Him being an ardent atheist wouldn't exactly align him with most Republicans either.  Then there is a report that he believed he could fly.  There were signs he was interested in the occult, but he also loved animals.  Time to point fingers at similar people?

Yet this transcript of his Youtube posting shows even less coherency, with random obsessions with the currency (he wants a new "third" currency), literacy and that the government engages in mind control and brainwashing.  He burned an American flag on Youtube, an act frequently seen committed by leftwing protestors (and one they defend as free speech, yet decry burning the Koran).

How could anyone say this nonsense has any credible link with the Tea Party, Republican party, Libertarian Party or whatever?   He hated the government, but then those on the far left, religious extremists of Christian and Muslim hues and white supremacists all share this.  He liked the Communist Manifesto too apparently.

To make such an accusation is itself an act of hatred and bigotry, to tar a whole political group with the brush of blame for inciting the murders of a disturbed young man. 

The Tea Party itself has three core values:

- Fiscal responsibility;

- Constitutionally limited government; and

- Free markets.

Quite how that can be blamed for inciting murder is a stretch.  So the philosophical and political agenda of the Tea Party can hardly be said to be responsible.

However, those on the left cite the map with crosshairs as incitement to murder.  It isn't the politics, but the dialogue and the way it is expressed.

There are two problems with this leap of "logic". 

First, it applies the very same logic that the conservative right (and the feminist left) uses to justify censorship, on the basis that it incites people to commit crimes.  Media should be devoid of violence and sexual imagery, because it might "raise the passions to a height at which a weak willed man could not resist".  It has been used to claim that nudity incites rape, that young women wearing short skirts and revealing tops incite rape.  It carries the implication that criminals are not responsible for their acts, but rather "society" is to blame for creating an environment that incites them.  Some on the left claim that "society" is to blame for why someone might torture an infant after all.  This disconnect between actual events and actions of an individual and any sort of choice or responsibility is a dangerous form of determinism, and one that has long justified the actions of totalitarians who believe all must be controlled to ensure people act "responsibly".

If it were true there would be justification for controls on speech to limit language, given the danger that could arise from that.  Of course, the US has constitutionally protected free speech that has only few limits, which are around defamation and production of recordings of actual violent and sexual offences.  So any call to "tone things down" wont be about legal limits, it will be about "being polite".  Yet should political discourse be limited just because someone unstable could misinterpret it?

The second problem with this approach is the failure to look in the mirror.  You see the left doesn't mind using violent rhetoric itself, especially when George W. Bush was President. For years it used the same inflammatory rhetoric, in depicting George W. Bush as a terrorist, akin to Hitler and that the 9/11 attacks were a conspiracy between the Administration, Israel and the military-industrial complex.  This even includes a frequently quoted mainstream journalist.  The Guardian's TV critic Charlie Brooker wrote a review calling for the assassination of Bush ("John Wilkes Booth, Lee Harvey Oswald, John Hinckley Jr - where are you now that we need you?") , culminating it the text being removed from the website.  Jeff Jacoby of the Boston Globe outlined multiple examples of those on the left using extreme inflammatory language, such as an NPR leftwing journalist saying it would be "retributive justice" if the then Senator Jesse Helms or his grandchildren got AIDS.  More recently, plenty on the left put up placards that call for violence against bankers, or jokingly then seriously suggest it online. 

So the idea that rhetoric that could be interpreted as violent is a "Tea Party" "right wing" trend is sheer nonsense, when the left uses the same language, pure and simple.  Pot-kettle.

Indeed, if you want to stir up hatred and bigotry, then what do you call smearing a political movement with blame for a multiple murder?  What does that do to lift standards of discussion and debate?  In fact by pointing the finger so ridiculously at the Tea Party for the actions of an unstable young man, it is doing precisely what the left is accusing the Tea Party of - engaging in bigotry, hatred and viciousness.

The strengh of rhetoric from some libertarians (not the "right" as the Republicans in the US have been part of the problem) is because many are fed up with politicians borrowing and spending money that is not theirs, they are fed up with their own peaceful activities being taxed to pay to boost business, social or other interests that get listened to in government.  They are fed up with property rights being eroded and new laws being developed for the latest problem.

To end it, Jeff Perren's excellent post at Not PC has two very useful points.

Firstly, to reinforce the point that the reason some express political anger is because they want change to less government.  Not something many on the left (and some on the right) understand.   As long as there are politicians who want to spend more, tax more, borrow more and regulate more, there will be those standing up to say no, again and again.

Secondly, he links to the excellent Michelle Malkin piece showing explicitly violent rhetoric used by the left against the right in the US.  Then again, it's hardly surprising that the left has long excused violence used in its name to justify political action (e.g. threats and intimidation of so-called "scabs" at pickets), given it so warmly embraces state violence to accomplish its goals.

You see, when someone commits murder, with no clear motive, then the appropriate political response is, in fact, exactly what President Obama has done so far.  It was a crime, there was some courage shown by those who confronted the gunman, and the bigger concern is for those who have lost a loved one.

Let those who want to occupy the fetid sewers of hatred, bigotry, blame and hypocrisy wallow, and be shown up for the shallow opportunists they are.

North Korea's winter of starvation, discontent and being ignored

While the usual suspects hop on the trendy bandwagons of embarrassing the USA, there remains a story of horror, death and misery they largely ignore. 

Oh and by the way, she's dead now.  

If this has upset and angered you then go tell Professor Tim Beal, who takes the North's side on the recent attack on Yeonpyeong Island, and claims that his own observations of how well things look in Pyongyang (which is true) are representative of the whole country.  He is closely associated with North Korea's useful idiot in New Zealand, the Reverend Don Borrie who has visited the country frequently and given glowing paeans about Kim Il Sung.   This NZ-DPRK Society campaigns in favour of the US withdrawing from South Korea, against New Zealand supporting the liberal democratic capitalist South Korea in the event of a military conflict and for the full legitimisation of this slave state at an international level.  

Who knows if these men are simply useful idiots, incapable of understanding the fundamental evil and vileness of a regime that complete and utterly destroys individual thought, initiative and goals, whilst sucking up enormous resources into a combination of empty lie-infested personality cults and a futile partly racist ultra-militarism towards the south, USA and Japan.  Maybe they are themselves sucked into the propaganda and the thin veneer of niceness that pervades and surrounds what North Korea presents to outsiders.

By the way this is one reason I no longer give any financial support to Amnesty International.   Its website almost ignores North Korea.  It campaigns against many things quite rightly, but virtually ignores North Korea.  A search of its website shows it campaigns in FAVOUR of more UN agency based aid going to North Korea despite extensive evidence of such aid being co-opted by the state for the army and party.  It's only press release about North Korea this year was about the health system collapsing and the need for the regime to get help to save it.  Why would it nearly ignore a country that is second bottom in press freedom according to Reporters Without Borders and ranked in the bottom country by Freedom House?  How hard is it to get around your heads that this country imprisons small children for the political "crimes" of their parents?  

What sort of human rights organisation campaigns for aid that assists a totalitarian dictatorship the likes of which is almost unparalleled in human history for its Orwellian enslavement of an entire people?  Would Amnesty have said, in response to the Killing Fields of the Khmer Rouge, that the UN should provide aid to the regime's "health system"?  Would Amnesty have said, in response to the Holocaust, that there should be aid to help ease the plight of the Jews?

So ask yourself this?  Why is this starving, murdering slave state continuing to be treated with kid gloves by the left-oriented supporters of human rights (the same ones who damn Burma to hell and damn China far more now than they ever did when Mao was in power)?  I don't believe any of them embrace the Juche Idea or the North Korean regime (although some do like the UK based Stop the War Coalition), but their continued unwillingness to actively campaign against it speaks volumes .  Is it because virtually no foreign companies (the true evil in their heads) have a commercial presence there?  Is it because damning North Korea would appear to put one on the side of the relatively free, open and capitalist South Korea and the US?

BNP kiwis so what about communists?

The NZ Herald has used the leaked list of BNP members to call on New Zealanders belonging to the party to "explain themselves".

The BNP is odious, but quite why people should be contacted and harangued by a journalist is questionable. Any cursory look at white supremacist forums will find New Zealanders posting on them, and the same with communist forums, or indeed most political persuasions.

However, would the New Zealand Herald do the same if it found New Zealand members of the far-left RESPECT Coalition, led by the odious George Galloway (who misses the Soviet Union and has publicly approved of both Saddam Hussein and Bashar al-Assad)?

Would it seek to find out if there are New Zealand members of the pro North Korean Revolutionary Communist Party of Great Britain (Marxist-Leninist?)

How about New Zealand's own Communist Workers' Party?

If not, why not? Isn't it the same issue Not PC pointed out here?

Whoopi Goldberg's excuse for Polanski

Just when you thought you'd heard everything, Whoopi Goldberg, who one would think of as being a feminist and someone who would embrace protecting young people from violence says:

"I know it wasn't rape-rape. I think it was something else, but I don't believe it was rape-rape", according to the Daily Telegraph.

Hmm drugging then telling a minor to submit to having sex with him is what then? So when a 13yo girl doesn't struggle and fight, then it's what?

Oh that's right, it's the entertainment industry. You're special, you do so much for us, it's not so serious when one of you rapes a young girl right?

You pontificate about politics, judge so many other sectors, yet far too many of you give excuses for your friends to do violence to others.

The ONLY person with any right to say anything about this case is the victim, who happens to want it all to be left alone. That is the only mitigating factor as to how it is treated now.

Oh and she isn't the only one making excuses. Here is a petition (in French) signed by more than a few famous people, appeasing the man's forcible rape of a young girl.