Mugabe and North Korea

Two articles came to my attention that paint the awful brutal history behind Robert Mugabe's alliance with North Korea.

ROK Drop "Faces in Korea: Robert Mugabe"
National Post (Canada) Pyongyang's man in Harare

The murderous antics of Mugabe in Matabeleland are well known:

"Using North Korean terminology, Mugabe explained that "The people there had their chance and they voted as they did. The situation there has to be changed. The people must be re-oriented."

Some 20,000 people died in the resulting campaign of torture and murder, but it was not just repression pure and simple. What the villagers grew to fear most was the dreadful all-night singing sessions in which they would have to sing ZANU songs with cheerful enthusiasm at the same time that they were savagely beaten; when they would not only have to watch as friends or family members were tortured or shot but would themselves have to assist in the process -- the emphasis always being on achieving their utter humiliation and incrimination so that they could re-emerge at the end as Mugabe loyalists."

What remains inexcusable is how so many in the West, like Chris Laidlaw, thought so highly of Mugabe in the 1980s - he has always been a murderous thug - he remains so - and it is a tragic consequence of decades of appeasement that this vile little man remains at large, and embraced by so many who should know better.

Latest Green outrages

Environment Court appeals

It starts with the moans about how the filing fee for Environment Court appeal applications is being increased from NZ$55 to NZ$500, hardly a big deal for anyone with a serious concern about an Environment Court decision, but clearly a deal for the interfering busybodies who want to dictate to others what to do with their land. The Greens are outraged according to the NZ Herald.

The claim is "The fee increase will particularly hurt the small environment groups, residents' associations and voluntary community project groups who work on behalf of the public." says Russel Norman. Sorry Russel, the groups you describe work for themselves NOT on behalf of the public. The "public" does not belong to them, they are lobbyists with special interests. None of such groups ever speak for me - unless I explicitly authorise them to do so.

Hopefully the fund that Labour set up to subsidise environmental group appeals to the Environment Court has also been abolished.

Anti-nuke hysteria

Dr Kennedy Graham, (one of the new intake) says New Zealand should be "anti-nuclear all of the time". He is upset NZ did not support a UN resolution for a treaty banning nuclear weapons.

Nuclear weapons kept the peace in Europe from 1949 to 1989, Dr Graham would prefer to keep his head in the sand about this saying "NATO countries rely on nuclear weapons. New Zealand does not. NATO believes that their retention of nuclear weapons keeps the peace. New Zealand does not. It is time that New Zealand acted consistently with its stated policy of rejecting nuclear deterrence and supported the UN call to ban the use of nuclear weapons".

Actually Dr Graham nuclear weapons DO keep the peace. They have kept Israel from full scale attack since 1974, they have kept North Korea at bay since 1953, they have kept India and Pakistan from fighting over Kashmir since the 1970s. "Banning nuclear weapons" is childishly naive. Russia and China, both authoritarian states with designs on their neighbours, wont abandon nuclear weapons, so why should the US/France and the UK?

Despite the naive wishes of the "anti-nuclear movement", the world has states which are militaristic and threaten their neighbours, some of these are nuclear powers. While there remain such countries with nuclear weapons it would be counterproductive to remove any Western deterrence of them (and Israel would be mad to surrender the nuclear option whilst Iran talks of wiping it off the map).

Foreign investment North Korean style

Green MP Kevin Hague is xenophobic about foreign (ew) investors because "dividends from a locally-owned business are considerably more likely to be reinvested locally" (fine but why restrict foreigners from investing too? or should New Zealanders not be allowed to invest overseas?), Local owners of a business are more likely than foreign owners to have some sense of identity and common purpose with local people and environment (you can say that about truly local owners, like Auckland for Aucklanders, or should it be Parnell for Parnellians?

Then the pièce de résistance "Economic power translates in part to political power. Greater foreign ownership of businesses in New Zealand thus generally weakens national sovereignty." Nonsense. If the role of the state simply was to protect individual rights, you wouldn't care.

An investor from Australia in Auckland is no different from an investor from Auckland in Dunedin, or an investor from Takapuna in Penrose. They are all "foreign", it's just the Greens think national boundaries matter because of a peculiar geographic phobia of auslanders.

Self sufficiency is the basis for the North Korean philosophy of juche which is:

1. The people must have independence in thought and politics, economic self-sufficiency, and self-reliance in defense.
2. Policy must reflect the will and aspirations of the masses and employ them fully in revolution and construction.
3. Methods of revolution and construction must be suitable to the situation of the country.
4. The most important work of revolution and construction is molding people ideologically as communists and mobilizing them to constructive action.

I'm sure the Greens would reject the fourth point, but the rest?

20 years since Hillsborough

20 years ago today 96 people were killed at the Hillsborough football ground in Sheffield.

The story behind it is on Wikipedia. In essence, an influx of fans crushed those already in the ground, the Police opened a gate to try to ease pressure at turnstiles, causing the crush. The Police kept a cordon around the Liverpool fans, preventing some of them escaping to carry the injured, because they wanted to separate groups of fans of rival teams. The Police turned away ambulances that had been called to deal with the injured.

It was a horrible appalling tragedy, one that saw an inquiry undertaken by Lord Taylor of Gosforth, which recommended an end to standing accommodation at football grounds. The Police did not apologise or ever admit any mistakes in their handling of the tragedy, the families of the dead today booed Culture Secretary Andy Burnham at a gathering at Anfield today to commemorate the death.

That weeping sore has not yet been healed.

London Met Police investigated again for brutality

The BBC reports two incidents recorded on video of the London Metropolitan Police lashing out at G20 protestors. In one incident, a woman slapped in the face, then whacked by a baton on her legs. Another shows a policeman using the edge of his shield to hit protestors.

Now I'm no supporter of the protestors at all, I despise their violence and vandalism. However, it is core to the state that the Police behave with restraint. It plays into the hands of protestors to do otherwise, and is frankly criminal.

The job is difficult, intensely so. They have to put up with abuse, and have to protect people and their property, as well as allowing angry people to protest verbally. However, they also have to ensure they do not initiate force - they exist to use force to protect themselves and others, and their property. Having this privileged use of force, police must always be under scrutiny, and those who go beyond the reasonable use of force in protecting the rights of others, should be held accountable and removed.

Be glad NZ avoided the Human Rights Council

Why? Because New Zealand would never have the gravitas or the courage to confront the barely mitigated evil contained within it.

Peter Singer in The Guardian writes about how the UN Human Rights Council adopted a resolution that considers defamation of religion a human rights violation. This resolution was sponsored by the Organisation of the Islamic Conference. The likes of Iran and Saudi Arabia, governments that completely reject the concept of individual rights, promoted this vile non-binding resolution.

UN Watch describes it as "an Orwellian text that distorts the meaning of human rights, free speech, and religious freedom, and marks a giant step backwards for liberty and democracy worldwide."

Quite.

Germany bravely spoke against it saying it "rejected the concept of "defamation of religion" as not valid in a human rights context, because human rights belonged to individuals, not to institutions or religions."

Which is of course the key point.

Now assuming the US sits on the Human Rights Council, it should use that role to stamp on the morally wanting states who want to treat rights as subservient to the state, or religion. However, don't blame me if I think that a US Administration with Secretary of State Hilary Clinton is hardly going to be a strong fervent supporter of individual rights.

Individuals have a freedom of religion, and a freedom to believe in no religion, and no state should interfere with that free choice. Sadly, most of the Muslim world retains laws on apostasy (Muslims changing religion or becoming atheists).

However, it is the UN that puts all governments on a level playing field - treating New Zealand, Iran, the United States, North Korea, Germany and Turkmenistan as each having equally valid points of view.

New Zealand is best standing to one side from the debates between those who have some respect for individual rights, and the murdering, torturing, thieving bullies that sadly govern the majority of the world's population.