Libya is different

Following on from Egypt, the protests in multiple other Middle Eastern countries demonstrate one simple point - politicians with absolute power corrupt absolutely.  Algeria and Yemen have long been wracked by insurgency and civil conflict, with dictatorial regimes challenged primarily by Islamists in both cases.  Algeria had a brutal bloody civil war following the election of Islamists in the early 1990s, but today, especially for a country with ample oil and gas reserves, life is fairly bleak there.   Yemen has not got the same resources, but it has become a base for a branch of Al Qaeda and has gotten progressively more dangerous in recent years.

In both cases there is a real risk that organised Islamists will take over.  Algeria is too close to Europe for comfort, whereas Yemen's location adjacent to the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden could hamper shipping in a strategic location.   However, both have been somewhat failed states since independence, run by either militarist or Marxist strongmen again and again, swinging back and forth between Western and non-Western supporters.

Bahrain is different, as an oil rich absolute monarchy with sectarian issues, it is a surprise that would send shocks through its autocratic neighbours.  Simply being a benevolent dictator dishing out the proceeds of being part of an oil cartel may not be enough anymore. 

Yet Libya is another story altogether.  Gaddafi has been a totalitarian dictator for over 41 years.  He runs a personality cult that has parallels with those in North Korea.  There is no semblance of freedom of speech, open political discourse or democracy in Libya.  He had published his own special political thoughts in the "Green Book" equivalent to Mao's "Little Red Book", in which he rejects liberal democracy and embraces socialism and "people's committees".

Gaddafi is an accomplished murderer and oppressor, he expelled the small Italian community shortly after gaining power.  He imposed an Islamic legal framework, banning alcohol and putting himself up as an authentic Muslim.  His police state includes thousands of informers, his family share in the abundant wealth he has taken for them, and live essentially outside the law.  Not quite Saddam Hussein's sons, but not that far removed.

Some of his achievements:

- Sending hit-squads to assassinate political opponents residing in other countries, nine were killed;

- Sent troops to protect Idi Amin's dictatorship from Tanzanian troops that were fighting Amin's attempt to annex part of Tanzania.  Gaddafi gave Idi Amin safe haven after he fled Uganda;

- In 1984, a gunman at the Libyan Embassy in London shot and killed policewoman Yvonne Fletcher as he shot at protestors outside the Embassy.  Ten other people were hit;

- The Chad-Libyan conflict as Gaddafi sought to annex the Aozou Strip.  He failed, but around 8,500 were killed in the war;

- Bombing of UTA Flight 772 in 1989, killing 170 people;

- Bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 in 1988 (Lockerbie), killing 270 people;

- Bombing of a West Berlin discotheque in 1986, killing 3 and injuring 230;

- Supplies of weapons, ammunition and bombs to the IRA in the 1970s and 1980s;

- Weapons and arms training to ETA in the 1970s;

- Weapons and funding for the Moro National Liberation Front (Islamist rebels) in the Philippines in the 1970s;

- Financing for the Black September Movement that murdered 12 at the Munich Olympics in 1972;

- Weapons to Iran after the 1979 revolution saw ties severed with the US and USSR;

- Support for the PLO during its terrorist phase, and subsequent expulsion of 50,000 Palestinians when the PLO started negotiating with Israel;

- 1200 prisoners killed in Abu Salim prison in 1996.

He thinks a lot of himself saying "I am an international leader, the dean of the Arab rulers, the king of kings of Africa and the imam (leader) of Muslims, and my international status does not allow me to descend to a lower level." at an Arab League summit in 2009. 

So he is quite a piece of work.  Whilst Libya has liberalised moderately in recent years, largely due to access to the internet being allowed, it is still one of the most oppressive states in the Arab world.   No organisations are permitted that are not state authorised.  Political parties are banned.  The media is severely restricted, with journalists prosecuted for criticising the regime.   

If Libyans can overthrow this murdering thug then good luck to them, it can only be a good thing, but it will be especially hard.  It is perhaps only more difficult to overthrow the Saudi autocracy or Syria's one party police state.

Though I have noticed a distinct lack of leftwing commentary cheering on those seeking to overthrow Gaddafi, who makes Mubarak look like an angel.  Maybe because too many of them miss the days when this mad anti-American thug would fund and arm them?   Bearing in mind that a handful of Maori nationalist thugs once visited Tripoli to learn about revolution - not that the New Zealand media at all holds people to account for having sympathies with murdering leftwing dictatorships.

Gaddafi is now using snipers to take down protestors and has thugs storming homes of suspected dissidents according to the Daily Telegraph.  One report goes:

"The soldiers are vicious killers. People are so terrified of them that they've been doing everything possible to get away.  Women and children were seen jumping off Giuliana Bridge in Benghazi to escape. Many of them were killed by the impact of hitting the water, while others were drowned.
Fatih, 26, another Benghazi resident, said: "A lot of the thugs he's employing are not Arabic speakers. They're armed to the teeth and only use live ammunition. They don't ask questions – they just shoot. Buildings and cars have been set on fire here, and the situation is getting worse. The dead and injured are everywhere."

Nice.  However, am I wrong in thinking how remarkably quiet the left in the West is about Libya, simply because Gaddafi can't by any sane stretch of the imagination be seen as the result of Western interference?

I blame Roger Douglas

The retirement of Sir Roger Douglas is not surprising given he could be described as the venerable man of New Zealand politics, particularly since none of his generation remain in Parliament.   He has outlived his first finance nemesis, Rob Muldoon, for some years.  Outlived the man who led him into power (David Lange) by some as well, and all subsequent Prime Ministers bar Helen Clark have long left direct involvement in politics (as did his successors, David Caygill and Ruth Richardson).

Yet he had a profound effect that I blame him for.  He got me passionately interested in politics of principle not pragmatism.

See I was in my teens when Labour was elected in 1984, having remembered nothing other than Muldoon grumpily always being in charge, in an almost personality cult like perpetual presence on the news.  I remember, barring the exceptions outlined by Peter Cresswell (and voluntary unionism), Muldoon banning inflation, banning interest rate increases and directing the economy like someone who was always in control.

Yet all he did was fiddle and create unintended (but predictable) consequences.  Muldoon was known to get government departments like the Railways Department to hire people en masse in the year before the election, to soak up unemployment numbers, almost Maoist like to control politics.   Roger Douglas was something else.

David Lange's rhetoric about "consensus" and the banal anti-nuclear policy were the touchstones of the 1984 campaign, which was only made more exciting by Bob Jones and the New Zealand Party putting the boot into the insipidly spineless National Party.   However, behind the scenes Roger Douglas was ready to dish out the medicine New Zealand needed, to correct the gross distortions of many years of intervention, regulation, sclerotic state sector and stifling levels of taxation.

There is far far too much to recall about what life was like before the reforms started by Douglas, stifled by Lange, extended by Richardson and only slightly rolled back.   The left in New Zealand would rather forget about that era, because most were too blinded by the carrots of the anti-American anti-nuclear policy, the creation of the Treaty of Waitangi grievance industry, a bevy of new government departments (Women's Affairs, Pacific Island Affairs, Environment, Conservation), return to compulsory unionism and the hijacking of the education agenda.  You see whilst all of the things they liked were happening, Roger Douglas took a multi pronged approach, one which the economically illiterate left didn't understand, and which made the reforms of Reagan, Hawke and even to an extent Thatcher seem a bit wet.

Let's just briefly recall some of his biggest steps:

- Ending the wage, price and interest rate freezes, that had choked off credit and choked off any chance of prices and wages reflect demand and supply.  After a few years of intense pain, it all settled down;

- Floated the exchange rate, so the Reserve Bank wouldn't be pouring taxpayers money into propping up the NZ$, the immediate result was dramatic devaluation which eventually returned to somewhat higher levels;

- Tearing down the walls of import licensing, that gave a handful of businesses profitable monopolies to extract rents from consumers, whilst shutting out innovation, and dramatically reducing import tariffs so New Zealand would stop assembling TVs, telephones (and eventually cars) at prices several times that of other countries, and along with the acceleration of CER saw a wider range of food, clothing, shoes and other consumer goods at cheaper prices;

- Abolish umpteen statutory monopolies on market entry, and foreign investment restrictions which was visibly seen in new banks, domestic airline competition, new rental car firms, competing telephone companies for long distance and international calls (initially), new radio and TV stations, new service stations;

- Abolished subsidies for agriculture and most businesses, which saw many farms foreclose, but also the rise of diversification in agriculture.  The viticulture sector was able to take off, along with horticulture and the rise of more specialist producers.  The start of the phasing out of producer board saw exporters become more competitive, as they searched for new markets in Asia, South America and the Middle East, whilst Europe proved less and less accessible for agriculture;

- Reformed tax by abolishing the 66% top rate, flattening income tax rates, abolishing sales taxes that peculiarly penalised cameras and records at rates of up to 40%, replacing them all with a flat 10% on everything.  This simplification of the tax system killed all but the very high end tax advisory industry (H&R Block disappeared from NZ) and increased revenue;

- Drastically reformed and then privatised ailing state industries. From electricity generators to petroleum exploration, postal services, three banks, a steel company, television, state radio, land holdings, forestry holdings, coal mining company, the telecommunications company, two insurance companies, an airline, the weather forecaster, the air traffic control service, an international shipping company, a film company, a print works, a hotel company and a civil engineering company, were all either just restructured into commercial structures or sold.  Several subsequently went bankrupt, others had success (Peter Jackson bought the National Film Unit), but all dramatically improved performance.

Most of all he brought to politics a new honesty of principle and purpose.  In essence, New Zealand was going bankrupt and was so tied up in regulations and monopolies it was stagnating its way to developing country status.  New Zealand had dropped from being one of the three countries with the highest GDP per capita in the world in the 1950s to being ranked below Spain by the 1980.   He stopped the rot, and set the stage for a more service, export and dynamically oriented economy to emerge.

The magic of his approach was speed, he liked to say that he would aim at multiple targets at once, so at any one time those who might oppose would be split between multiple causes - causes of course based on spending other people's money, protecting monopolies or protecting failure.   However, it was the slowing down that started the failure to complete his "unfinished business".

What hamstrung him was the growth of the "new-left" public service that came with Labour, the reintroduction of compulsory unionism and the unwillingness to go further and faster with spending cuts, and cutting taxes (to a flat rate of income tax).  With the heavily unionised health and education sectors subject only to base level reform, it proved difficult to seriously address the underlying issues of those monopolies - and so it remains.

He didn't do what was popular, he thought of the long term, and I appreciated that.  I saw through the calls from those wanting their businesses protected, businesses that ripped off consumers and taxpayers by charging more than the excluded competition, and taxpayers by demanding subsidies.  I saw through the bleets of the worshippers of state owned trading departments, having experienced the ineptness of the Post Office, the extortion of its national phone service (the days when making a "toll" call required careful planning and was for birthdays or emergencies only), the infamous railways that lost freight, manufactured its own rivets, bought cheap and nasty underpowered buses and couldn't make a profit even while it had a statutory monopoly on most of its business!   

Roger Douglas rescued New Zealand's autarchic import substitution economy, that enriched a select few monopoly holders, kept tens of thousands in easy low productivity employment, inflated prices of everything from appliances to cars to shoes to records.   Only a tiny handful of Alliance retards would turn the clock back, prop up farmers with subsidies, have the Post Office run all of the phones and have a monopoly on delivery services, have Air NZ protected from "too much" foreign competition, and expensive locally produced clothes.

I supported Labour in 1990 because of Roger Douglas and the ongoing courage that government showed in doing what was unpopular in the face of a media that was consistently in favour of more state.  It sold Telecom months out from the election, whilst National gutlessly got elected on the back of a moaning public.  Of course after that Ruth Richardson carried the banner and did more of the good work for three years, till National's conservative gutless instincts took over, and reforms were stopped, reversed or slowed down.  Douglas wrote Unfinished Business, and it had a grand plan to move health, education and superannuation into personalised private accounts, with choice, and despite the mean spirited lies of the left - he wanted universal coverage.

You see Roger Douglas still believed in an element of socialism.  He wanted to retain the welfare state, funded from GST, with no income tax.  He wanted universal pensions, just provided with private accounts, topped up from GST for those who didn't save enough.  He wanted compulsory health insurance and education accounts for children, which would be topped up for those who didn't earn enough.  He believed in universalism, he believed in taxation, he even believed in ACC (just full competition between private providers that were compulsory to buy insurance from).  He simply believed that state providers are rather inept and monopolies deliver poor service inefficiently.

So while he is no libertarian, I am glad he got me fired up.  There is no compare between him and Bill English.  He is a giant compared to other MPs and it is a travesty of politics and New Zealand that he couldn't be a Cabinet Minister in the current government.

You see the revolution he started was, as Lindsay Perigo once said, not a revolution in the hearts and minds (although quietly most MPs wouldn't reverse what he did).  

For John Key to appoint him a Finance Minister would have required testicular fortitude that is scarce in the National Party, after all it was Jim Bolger who opposed Douglas in Opposition, and did nothing to reverse any of his policies as PM.   However, National just reflects the appalling inability of so many New Zealanders to understand their own history, in part because the minority who would turn the clock back have bulwarks in the media and education sectors.   National doesn't have it in them to defend Douglas - but he doesn't need defending.

With the exception of the economically illiterate socialist Greens, Jim Anderton, remaining Alliance retards (and the Alliance retard wing of Labour) and Winston Peters, Douglas's legacy is quietly acknowledged. 

His faults were real, for he was no libertarian, but I'm not going to dwell on those today.  For quite simply I blame Roger Douglas, for showing me that politics can include politicians brave enough to take on the braying mob, to not be a smarmy populist like Winston Peters, or a shrieking harpie like Pam Corkery, or a hand-wringing compromiser like Jim Bolger.  

I didn't always agree with Roger Douglas's principles, but I often agreed with his policies and he did far more good than harm in New Zealand.  Had his business not been unfinished, it wouldn't be quite what I would agree with, but I don't doubt New Zealanders as a whole would be a lot wealthier,  happier, healthier, better educated and have a far more vibrant and diverse economy.

The fact that we don't can be laid at the memories of David Lange, Margaret Pope, Jim Bolger, Jim Anderton, Winston Peters, Helen Clark, and the million or so New Zealanders who consistently vote for dependency, mediocrity and mundane fear driven politics of envy.

So farewell Roger, this government never deserved you and in some ways neither did New Zealand.   However, I'm glad I lived and grew through you being courageous and steadfast - and I know you don't need the endorsement, recognition and gratitude of others to know you were largely right.

Oh and Rodney? You are not even half the man he is, and you know it.

Laugh at Kim Jong Il day? (UPDATED)

Be glad you can, for around 24 million people who live north of the Korean DMZ, they can't because they are forced to celebrate his 69th (actually 70th) birthday on February 16.  They are forced to buy "gifts" to give to senior party cadres, in order to avoid being singled out, ostracised, criticised, punished and taken to a gulag to celebrate the birthday of the Great Leader and the boundless feats he has performed for the country.   Usually birthday includes extra rations, this year it appear they are not going to happen.

Kim Jong Il is short, apparently has a speech impediment that would have made King George VI seem confident, losing his memory, is ill from various chronic illnesses due to a life of alcohol, rich food and lazy living, and absolute hates the Team America movie.   Because it makes him look ridiculous.

So does this blog, which is simply called "Kim Jong Il looking at things", and is exactly what is says, and if it came from North Korea the person producing it would get executed.

So spare a thought for the folk who have to endure a public holiday, being forced to celebrate a man who they cannot hope to express their views about, who lives a rarified existence of sumptuous luxury paid for by the virtual slave labour of the prison state inherited from his murderous, megalomaniacal, mendacious, mediocrity of a father.

You see, the main trend of the international media is to ridicule and think absurd this prison state, with far too little attention given to the atrocious way of living they endure. 

Outside this place, you might like to ask a couple of questions.

First, consider this phrase from a North Korean broadcast and think how alike it seems from its unwitting intellectual companions in the West who share a hatred for capitalism:

"The youth of Eastern Europe, who were at the forefront of the destruction of socialism, were soaked in the rotten, sick culture of capitalism, and this resulted in the destruction of the fruits of the revolutionary war previous generations had accomplished...When the young became soaked in the ideology of a capitalism that knows nothing beyond money, they came to fall into a materialism that thought not of the Party and state’s benefits, not even the people’s benefits"

It takes little to see what an absolute absence of capitalism results in - mass starvation, totalitarian brutality, mass regimentation and an almost complete culture of reality evasion, suppression, denial and manufacturing.  Bear in mind this place provided inspiration for Nicolae Ceausescu and Mobutu Sese Seko.  What happens when you suppress capitalism?  It is fairly obvious.

Secondly, what gift were New Zealand taxpayers forced to give to Kim Jong Il, via Winston Peters, when the last government was the first Western country to improve relations with North Korea after the nuclear test? I'd like to know without having to visit the Kim Jong Il International Friendship Exhibition.

UPDATE: Funny how today the NZ Parliament has been debating whether students should be allowed to choose whether they belong to student unions.  No issue in New Zealand today quite so starkly exposes the hypocritical empty hatred of individual freedom, the craven self-interested desire for power and control and the mealy mouthed "wider interests, greater good" excuses the left can roll out.   It boils down to whether individuals have freedom of association.  If you can't get that, then you can't talk about human rights or anything of the like, when you think it is ok to make people belong to and pay for an organisation that they do not agree with, and for that organisation to persistently claim it somehow is representative.  It is immoral, it is fraudulent, and Kim Jong Il would approve.

Forgotten Eritrea

Eritrea is mostly known as the part of Ethiopia where some of the worst famines happened in the 1980s as a result of the socialist collectivisation and forced relocation policies of the Mengistu dictatorship.   It gained independence in 1993 following a referendum, and then the rot really set in.

Eritrea has a constitution proclaiming multi-party democracy, shame it is ineffective.

Eritrea is in truth a one-party police state.  No other parties are allowed to exist.  No independent media is permitted.  In 2001 all independent newspapers were closed down.  Critics of the government are arrested and imprisoned without trial.  There are no foreign correspondents in Eritrea, resulting in Reporters without Borders rating it as less free than North Korea (which does at least allow foreign journalists in sporadically).   Eritrea only recognises Catholic, Orthodox and Lutheran Christianity, persecuting other faiths and Christian sects, prohibiting private meetings of worship of other faiths. 

20% of Eritrea is under control of rebel forces of various groups, including Islamists.

It has shut down the limited internet access it had.  Banned satellite TV because of the news in Egypt.

There was a lot of support for Eritrea getting independence from Ethiopia given the mistreatment of Eritreans by the socialists who were in power in Ethiopia.

However today it is virtually ignored.  Yes, once again, Mubarak might have been a murdering thieving dictator, but he was a lover of freedom and virtue compared to the People's Front for Democracy and Justice.

Northern Gateway should be sold

The news that the New Zealand Transport Agency (NZTA), which if you haven't been keeping up is the result of Labour merging Transit NZ with its funder  Land Transport NZ (because the then government was tired of one government agency holding another accountable), has not prosecuted a single toll evader on the Northern Gateway toll road is not surprising.

Quite simply NZTA has not a smidgeon of experience in running toll roads as there have been no state highway toll roads (the Tauranga ones have been council owned) since the Auckland Harbour Bridge.   On top of that, the decision to toll a road once called ALPURT B2 and before that the Orewa Bypass, was very political, as Transit NZ wanted to prove it was competent as a tolling authority under the Land Transport Management Act - a child of the Labour, United Future and the Greens during the last government's second term.

The rate of evasion at 4% of trips is good by international standards, but reports such as those in the NZ Herald today undermine this significantly.   I know about good practice with toll roads, I have designed business rules for them, and one of those is to pursue repeat recividist non-payers with prosecution.  You see, in effect, non payment is trespass.

All of the net toll revenue is used to service and repay debt used to pay half the cost of the road (the rest has been funded through fuel tax and road user charges, so motorists effectively half pay for the road without the toll).  If there was a private owner, you can be sure that it would pursue prosecution and seek court costs from motorists who continue to not pay.  

Moreover, a private owner would likely run the tolling operation more efficiently than the government.  The reported NZ$0.75 transaction cost is rather high by international standards, it should be around a third less.   Why is it high?  For starters it is being run by a long established government bureaucracy called the Transport  Registry Centre.  Sure it does the best job it can, but it is not commercially driven, so is unlikely to be able to be as efficient as foreign counterparts.  Secondly, the sheer volume of transactions is pitifully low.  Thirdly, without the experience it is unable to adopt best practice easily or automatically.  Finally, unless it goes offshore it cannot get decent professional advice on these things, given the lack of experience in the country at all.   

So why not sell the Northern Gateway?  There is an alternative route after all, the original highway through Orewa (and even SH16 off to the west).  It would showcase how no one should fear privately owned highways.  Given many French and most Japanese motorways are privately owned, it shouldn't be a big deal, but the New Zealand left is rabidly irrational about such things.

Indeed, selling it ought to pay off the debt and some and it might mean the Tauranga Eastern Motorway is run better (that should be privately funded as well).   It might also mean the NZ Herald writes no more editorials that have involved the complete absence of research or journalism on the topic.   Given the NZ Herald somehow links this to regional fuel tax, when Labour approved tolls on the road in the first place, shows once again how incredibly shallow and nearly useless the media can be.