Labour attacks free speech - again

Having already suggested prohibiting third parties from funding political parties anonymously, Labour is talking about banning legal companies that produce products that save lives, from advertising. This is even though the products cannot be sold without a prescription from a relevant health professional.
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Labour has support from the Public Health Association, a left wing advocate of state funding and regulation of health care. Apparently the concern is that individuals – clearly too stupid in the eyes of the PHA and the Labour Party to decide what they put into their own bodies – are pressuring doctors to write out prescriptions for medication that may harm them. This ignores the fact that there are also plenty of individuals, who see an advert for medication that may relieve a complaint they have not bothered seeing a doctor about, and then go to the doctor to be checked to see if they are eligible for it.

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Banoholic Sue Kedgley has been pushing this for ages. "prescription medicines, when taken inappropriately, can cause severe illness and even death" she says. Well so can petrol, rat poision, water and "natural remedies".
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Gay Keating says “People may end up paying for medicines that they don't need, and that in the worst case scenario, may actually be harmful to them," well Gay, they might buy shoes they don’t need either, that may be harmful to them – or food, or a car. It is called choice for fuck’s sake.
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Let’s break down the situation simply – there is no force involved, just busybodies who think that consenting adults can’t be trusted to look after themselves. David Farrar says it is an attack on free speech - indeed it is and he takes the line that one should be cautious about restricting it. No Right Turn thinks you need protection from big bad pharmaceutical companies trying to sell you something you might no need - because you're so incompetent. Oops, I mean there are incompetent people, you're not - but hey the state can't make a separate law for you.

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Nevertheless, let's follow this chain of horror that Nanny State just has to stop:
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1. Pharmaceutical company spends its own money developing a drug that has a positive effect upon a medical condition in some way.

2. Pharmaceutical company tests drug to the extent that it can then go through the regulatory hoops to allow it to be legally available in New Zealand.

3. Pharmaceutical company starts selling drug through licenced pharmacists who are competent in dispensing drugs on prescription.

4. Pharmaceutical company uses its own money to pay for advertising on TV channels, radio stations, websites, print media etc. to promote the product. The broadcast advertising is regulated by the Advertising Standards Authority.

5. The product is regulated both as medication and in general contract law.

6. A sane adult sees the advertisement and is interested in spending her own money on the drug because it may have positive effects. She wants to ingest it in her body.

7. The sane adult visits her GP and requests the drug. The GP makes an assessment as to whether it is a good idea or not, and either chooses not to write out a prescription (adult then either goes to another GP or gives up) or to write on out.

8. Sane adult go to pharmacy and requests the drug on prescription, receives and pays for it.

9. Pharmacist dispenses the drug and provides advice on how to safely use it.

10. Sane adult uses drug.
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Who is forced here? What is going on except that failed head prefects want to interfere in stage 4.
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National has thankfully said it will oppose moves to regulate such advertising even more. Tony Ryall said, in a rush of blood to his head "This is another example of nanny state 'Labour-knows-best"
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"Consumers have a right to know that these pharmaceuticals are available, and can be accessed. Surely we want a health system where people can make choices and play a role in their own healthcare.”
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Stone the crows, he’s got something right!

North Korea's announces nuclear test as New Zealanders donate farm assistance

North Korea's press statement on nuclear tests is out on its official news agency website. So is a press statement on the NZ-DPRK society donating "vehicles and books on agricultural science and technology". The NZ-DPRK society is the apologist society for the North Korean dictatorship - it ignores the enormity of human rights abuses, the totalitarian Orwellian state of North Korea. It would rather donate vehicles and books and engage in dialogue - I doubt if it condemned the gulags where children of political dissidents are kept and worked like slaves 7 days a week. It issued a statement earlier this year condemning the US-South Korean joint military exercises saying:

"These joint military maneuvers are aimed at breaking the will of the Korean people to advance towards a peaceful future, rejecting interference of foreign forces including the U.S., the bulletin noted. "

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North Korea launched the Korean War in 1950 - the Kremlin archives prove it. What peaceful future is there when the state can arrest, detain, imprison, torture and kill you without a fair trial? What peaceful future is there when your relatives, including your children can also be imprisoned and tortured because you dared utter what might be construed as criticism of the "Democratic People's Republic"? However, the NZ-DPRK Society probably has the same view of North Korea's role in the Korean War as the Nazis have of Poland.

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North Korea's nuclear statement contains some odd remarks such as:

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"The DPRK was compelled to pull out of the NPT as the present U.S. administration scrapped the DPRK-U.S. Agreed Framework and seriously threatened the DPRK's sovereignty and right to existence. "

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It threatened withdrawal in 1993, but suspended it while the world tried to bribe it with aid and assistance to develop a light water nuclear reactor. It started breaching the Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty in 1992 by refusing permission for International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspectors to visit all the sites they wished, and has persistently lied about its intentions.

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It also said:

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"The U.S., however, abused the idea of denuclearization set out by the DPRK for isolating and stifling the ideology and system chosen by its people, while systematically disregarding all its magnanimity and sincerity"

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The fact that Bush senior announced the withdrawal of the presence of nuclear weapons from South Korea in the early 90s is ignored.

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It has now said:

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"The DPRK officially announced that it manufactured up-to-date nuclear weapons after going through transparent legitimate processes to cope with the U.S. escalated threat of a nuclear war and sanctions and pressure"

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The US is not going to attack North Korea and never was - because the cost is enormous. It is a shame that it is so - North Korea deserves to be overthrown. It tests missiles that overshoot Japan, it possesses nuclear weapons and it is a state of mass slavery.

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By the way, North Korea issued a press release congratulating Helen Clark on her re-election and Winston Peters on his appointment as Foreign Affair's Minister last year - nice to see how friendly we all are. MFAT's website says "It is difficult to get accurate information on the human rights situation in North Korea". Indeed it is true, although the website doesn't say it is dire. How dire it is can be seen in this book called the Aquariums of Pyongyang - a chilling story from a man who survived a North Korean gulag. If MFAT doesn't think this says enough to at least mention that human rights in North Korea are virtually non-existent, then it is a group of cold heartless bureaucrats.

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North Korea is a warmongering slave state that is inexplicably evil. The New Zealanders who are apologists for it deserve to be outed - and publicly explain why they turn their back to those murdered, tortured and imprisoned by this slave state.

Pregnant women smoking to reduce baby size

If the report in the Daily Telegraph is true, then it is repulsive. Some teenage mothers smoke to have a smaller baby to make labour pains easier. In other works, who cares if the child is damaged.

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Smoking, taking drugs or drinking alcohol when you know you are pregnant is child abuse if the pregnancy goes full term. Simple as that. Pregnant women who do this should lose custody of the child, as if they were giving it to the child after birth.

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If you don't want to be pregnant then you have three options:

- Don't have sex;

- If you do have sex, make sure you and/or your bonk use contraception - if that fails or you forgot to "take it" use the morning after pill;

- Have an early term abortion;

- Have a hysterectomy (probably the best idea for many).

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Of course none of this is very politically correct, because pregnant women who abuse their unborn children are seen as "victims" who aren't "understood". Well, it is rather simple - you have chosen to bring a child into the world - if you recklessly act in ways that damage that child it is abusive - it is violence of the same order as bashing its brain, except you are doing it chemically.

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On top of that if you are that careless or stupid, you are hardly going to be much of a mother are you?

North Korea to undertake nuclear test

Alarming? yes. Surprising? No. What can be done about it? Nothing much – just simply impose strict sanctions upon trading with the regime and maintain the current deterrence by the US and South Korea. If you want an example of a modern day government that entirely enslaves its population, has no regard for whether its citizens live or die, and which strips the entire dignity of the individual to be sacrificed for the state – it is North Korea.
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It is a hideous repulsive regime – one which should humiliated daily for being so utterly grotesque. If you think a nuclear test is bad, try the thousands in gulags – the men, women and children who work from dawn to midnight as slaves for this nightmare state. Try the public executions, the state promoted glorification of brutal violence against enemies of the state, the constant surveillance of work, street and home – the complete suppression of dissent.
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Military attack against North Korea would result in the deaths of millions in South Korea and Japan – this price is too high to pay to try to confront a regime that, albeit noisy, is unlikely to take military action itself. Kim Jong Il knows the US is formidable, and he also is not a religious nutter - he has no wish to undertake jihad - just a wish to deter attack. The bigger risk is him selling a bomb to those who DO wish to undertake jihad - but I'd be watching Pakistan before North Korea on that score!

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By the way, you might want to remember the $1 million or so of your money spent by current and past government to persuade North Korea to not develop nuclear weapons.

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Oh and don't blame Bush - this started in 1994 when Clinton was President. Anyone who defends this murderous regime should wonder why they don't defend Hitler in 1938, and blame the rest of Europe for provoking him!

Clark hates Brash - but why?

Following the cancerous term and the continued attacks by Labour on Brash, the bottom line is that we now have, for the first time for some years, genuine hatred by one political leader for the other. I don't think it goes the other way. If it does, Brash is too smart to make it show.
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If you go back through recent history you wont find these level of enmity between:

Clark and English (Clark thought English was lightweight, English was fearful of Clark)
Shipley and Clark (They weren't friends, but had some level of respect)
Bolger and Clark;
Moore and Bolger (though it came close, Moore didn't like Bolger one bit);
Palmer and Bolger;
Lange and Bolger;
Lange and McLay.
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or even Muldoon and Lange. Muldoon thought Lange was a buffoon and didn't respect him, but didn't hate him.
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Muldoon was the same towards Rowling. He saw Rowling as a bit of a joke, and voters did as well - at least voters in marginal electorates.
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Clark's hatred is visceral, almost tribal. It goes back to her prejudice against the National Party, which she sees as the party that didn't advance women's rights, Maori self-determination, the fight against apartheid, gay rights, peace and disarmament - all of the big passionate issues that she cut her teeth on at university and beyond.

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Clark sees National as backward looking, as being the party of businesses that don't care about workers, conservative men who sneer at powerful women, who denigrate people about being gay/lesbian and who don't invite differently coloured people around for dinner. She sees it as the party of people who cared more about the All Blacks playing rugby than life under apartheid - as a party that secretly thought apartheid wasn't that bad. She sees National as a party that, until Doug Graham came along, saw Maori as fodder for factories and not much more, who believed in integration and ignoring indigenous culture. She sees National as the party of dawn raids on Pacific Island families, and the party that bought in to ANZUS, the nuclear deterrence and the Western alliance. These are things she has a deep personal philosophical loathing for.
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Clark, unfairly, sees Don Brash as the personification of much of that. He is, after all, an older man, heterosexual, caucasian, economic rationalist - exactly the type of person Clark sees as having "ruled the world" when everything was so much worse, so much more conservative and bigoted - the type of man she thinks likes keeping women down making muffins and cups of tea, while the men sit around smoking cigars talking dismissively about how the dark skinned people don't behave and don't do so well at school. The type of economic rationalist she had to keep her mouth shut about when she was in Cabinet in the 4th Labour government, and privatisation and deregulation were the order of the day - except the Rogernomes let a parallel leftwing agenda go forward too (nuclear ships, environment, women's affairs, Treaty of Waitangi).

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Politics is, for people like Clark (and others across the political spectrum) a deeply held set of views about what is right and wrong.

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Unfortunately, no matter how she paints it, Brash is enough of a classical liberal that he would be comfortable in ACT. He is no social conservative, and deeply repulsed by racism and sexism. She thinks he is behind or supports those trying to dig dirt on herself and Peter Davis regarding sexuality - he isn't, but she can't believe it to be true -and she knows the public don't tolerate such dirt digging. Brash knows this too, and wont be drawn into what is an irrelevant issue.
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Bolger was far closer to the sort of man Clark dislikes than Brash, but Bolger sold his soul for power (1996) and could be the compromising "statesman" (hey he sold his soul to Kiwibank). English was a minnow and didn't threaten Clark or the politically correct status quo.
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Brash does threaten it - he doesn't accept the power structure based post-modernist new leftist politics, and he is no old fashioned conservative either. She essentially called the first Orewa speech racist and had to recoil from that when many NZers responded by saying "are we now?".
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She fears the reality that the majority of the NZ public are not in her ideological, political world view - something she has been careful to cultivate. The majority don't share her view on race relations, and don't believe in the political correctness she supports. However a majority do support the centre-left agenda of more money for health and education. Her desperation to sling mud to defend herself has backfired, and now she is hoping that there is time on her side - time for this issue to become history.
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The public have short memories, and the political zeitgeist in 2008 could have moved considerably from where it is now - which is exactly what Clark wants. She will temper her hatred in the coming months so that the public don't see this nasty side in a couple of years.

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However, she will need to take some chill pills - a lot - especially if Brash is not rolled as leader before the next election. Which is why she wants him to be ousted. He has made National a genuine threat and she hates him - and voters don't respond well to nastiness. The polls are showing this.