Nicky Hager - the agitprop agitator

Speaking of attention seeking pseuds, there is Nicky Hager.

Nicky is a poor little rich boy who like many others allegedly cares so much about poverty because he had none as a child.

He portrays himself as an "investigative journalist" but is no more impartial than Ian Wishart, but with a different point of view.  He is no journalist.  He is an agitprop activist, whose book is motivated, like his others, to help the Green Party at the election.   The way that his leftwing sycophants swallow his every word, and the Greens cheer him on, should make it clear that he isn't a supplier of objective assessment of evidence.   He writes propaganda designed to stir up opposition to the government, to push his own agenda, which is hardly difficult to follow.   His own far left activist history is hardly secretive, although most New Zealand reporters are either too lazy or too sympathetic to question him on his motives.

All of his books have been written from a perspective of far left anti-Western, anti-capitalist politicking.  His 1996 book (election year) Secret Power - New Zealand's Role in the International Spy Network raised nothing than anyone comfortable with New Zealand's place in the Western alliance of free liberal democracies would be concerned about.  However, Hager has had a long history in so-called peace movement, which always demanded the West disarm, whilst never showing much concern for its enemies.  

His 1999 book (election year) Secrets and Lies: The Anatomy of an Anti-Environmental PR Campaign again would not have concerned anyone who think state owned enterprises should pursue maximisation of the returns of their shareholder.  However, he wanted to scare people into thinking a government agency was advocating cutting native forests, something he thinks everyone right thinking should be opposed to.

His 2002 book (election year) Seeds of Distrust: The Story of a GE Cover-up again was much ado about absolutely nothing.  A technicality that had no material effect whatsoever, under a law that was practically unenforceable, was blown out of proportion, with unscientific scaremongering and hysteria.  Of course it is Green Party stock and trade to frighten.

His 2006 book (after the election) The Hollow Men: A Study in the Politics of Deception was an attempt to claim that because the Exclusive Brethren supported National, it was somehow a conspiracy because the Nats knew the church was spending money on campaigning in favour of a change in government.  Apparently National wasn't allowed to have a political campaign that wasn't fully transparent.  Hager hasn't written about Labour or the Greens and their political strategies, funnily enough.   Apparently only the National Party deceives about its agenda.

His latest attempt is another book to influence the election.  The book Other People's Wars naturally implies opposition to the overthrow of the Taliban in Afghanistan with support from New Zealand forces.  The claim is that New Zealand's "independent foreign policy" (something Hager wants and which means never supporting the USA) was compromised.   He, of course, used property that wasn't his to write his book, but like Assange  "that's ok"  as for him, the ends justify the means.

If New Zealand had effective reasonably balanced journalists, he would be questioned severely about his personal political allegiances and agenda, and asked why he doesn't do a book about Labour's campaign strategy, or about the internal divisions in the Greens.   He ought to be balkanised for what he is - a Green Party supporter and leftwing activist, who is all very well preaching to the converted, but who can hardly be seen as balanced.   Trevor Loudon wrote a little about his background.  It's about time he was treated as what he is - the Green's highest profile campaigner outside Parliament.

Peter Cresswell knows exactly how to treat him too.

Assange shows himself up to be a shallow attention seeker

The concept of Wikileaks has some appeal for a libertarian.  Government secrets can hide criminal behaviour, breaches of individual rights and can show up corruption.  It can also show up things that governments don't want you to know, because they are embarrassed or think they know best.

However, it is one thing to be concerned about governments misusing their power, and engaging in criminal activity.  It is another to think that absolutely everything governments do should be in the public domain.

Some time ago I wrote the post "What is the motive of Julian Assange?" where I noted that Assange tends to leak one side of the story on most things.  Relatively little has been revealed from Russian, Chinese or Iranian sources.  Probably because language is a barrier, possibly because Assange would rather not be in the firing line of authoritarian regimes who are known to not be too fussed about using murder to deal with opponents.    

I later noted:

As interesting as it is for Wikileaks to publish stolen communications from US diplomatic sources, are there not similar communications being made available for Wikileaks to publish from countries that are not Western liberal democracies?


Will it receive such uncritical coverage if it publishes British diplomatic communications regarding strategy with the European Union? How about New Zealand's diplomatic communications on trade access issues?  How about South Korea's diplomatic communications about north Korea defectors?


Would it not be at least as interesting, and indeed more valuable if Wikileaks also gained access to material from Russia, China, Iran, North Korea, Syria, Zimbabwe, Burma, Cuba etc?

Now we have seen things have gone down that path.  Wikileaks has inadvertently published quarter of a million stolen US diplomatic despatches, which includes names of informants in China, Iran and Afghanistan.  People who now have their lives in jeopardy because Assange wanted attention.  The story behind it is complex and described in Der Spiegel, but it has since caused one former Wikileak's staff member to resign, explaining it in the Guardian as follows:

By drawing attention to, and then publishing in full, the unredacted cache of documents, WikiLeaks has done the cause of internet freedom – and of whistleblowers – more harm than US government crackdowns ever could.

Before the first publication of carefully redacted cables, human rights activists, NGOs, and organisations working with victims of horrific crimes contacted WikiLeaks begging us to take steps not to publish any names. To be able to assure them details would be protected was an immeasurable relief.

These cables contain details of activists, opposition politicians, bloggers in autocratic regimes and their real identities, victims of crime and political coercion, and others driven by conscience to speak to the US government. They should never have had to fear being exposed by a self-proclaimed human rights organisation.

Wikileaks is no human rights organisation.  It is an activist organisation, driven by the political agenda of Assange, which is to undermine Western governments' interests and embarrass them. 
Wikileaks is no friend of freedom, as Kyle Wingfield writes:

This is not a studied neutrality, or allegiance only to truth. It is for all intents and purposes making a value judgment in favor of authoritarian regimes over democratic ones. To deny this is to deny reality. And second, Assange and his co-conspirators, rather than proving the merits of transparency, have simply demonstrated the danger of letting a small group of unaccountable people wield control over information. They are guilty of everything they accuse governments (but mostly the U.S. government) of doing, and more.

The road to hell is paved ... and all that.  Pardon my language, but Assange is an attention seeking little cunt.  He hasn't a clue about international diplomacy, international relations, human rights or politics.  His own egomaniacal belief in his own genius has been his undoing, as he acts outside the laws of countries and effectively writes his own.  Brave people under totalitarian regimes, that he doesn't dare visit, have their lives at risk, because he knew best in dealing with stolen documents.

He makes the allegations about phone hacking within News International look like a misdemeanor, for that didn't put lives at risk.  His leftwing mates should do some soul-searching before implying that somehow it is a set up (nice bit of wilful blindness you smug little man).  I can only hope no one is hurt by this, but I suspect this has just effectively made any dissidents or activists for political freedom in many countries fearful of ever working with the USA (or any Western governments).  A situation I expect most Wikileaks supporters probably didn't want, but which the cloyingly cliche'd anti-Western agenda of Assange created as an inevitability.

You see, most of the things embassies and consulates do are mundane, some are sensitive, and a few are about providing outposts of support and comfort for dissidents and others.   Over many years thousands of north Koreans have defected from their own embassies or from work, sport or artistic groups, or by simply escaping, through south Korean embassies.  In many authoritarian countries, embassies provide a place for privacy or implicitly providing support and security for political dissidents, or even just ordinary people who want to use a library, open internet access or to learn about a country more openly.   It isn't something Assange and his sycophants understand, because they have never lived somewhere like that.

There are plenty of organisations, from Reporters without Borders to the Global Internet Freedom Consortium and Freedom House, who work hard to promote free and open media across the world.  They know what they are talking about, they have freedom and openness as core values, not banners for publicity, and they believe in individual freedom, not that everything every says should be open to the world.

It is time to turn one's back on Wikileaks and Julian Assange as an experiment led by someone whose primary interest was not freedom of speech, but publishing diarrhoea.  He didn't have the values he purported to represent, but a political partisan agenda, that has picked favours, and has shown that he isn't the god and saviour he'd really like to imagine himself to be.

What went wrong on council estates?

An interesting programme on BBC 4 last night largely lauded the massive expansion in local government owned housing in the UK in much of the 20th century, driven partly by socialist beliefs that the state could supply people with better housing than they had, to the point where eventually 60% of the population lived in council housing.

However, it brought out some rather interesting points that showed both the dark side of the spread of council housing, but also what went wrong.

The dark side was how it was an excuse for slum clearances.  Large swathes of cities, populated by people in poverty, but living on otherwise empty land or in very cheap rental accommodation, were bulldozed to put in housing estates - for other people.  They were not built for the homeless or the needy, but were built for the employed, for couples and families and people had to pay rent sufficient to keep the place maintained.   

To get council housing, people needed to be vetted.  They needed letters of reference from their employer to prove that Mr. X was a fit and proper person, didn't have any criminal convictions and earned enough money to pay the rent.  Those on welfare alone, those without work and those who had committed crimes were not going to get homes provided by the state.  Indeed, their homes could be swept aside with aplomb so that the aspiring working classes could get homes.

The result was that even when the grotesque Corbusier style housing estates started popping up around the UK (many built by private investors with extensive state subsidies), their first generation of residents were proud aspirational people on relatively low to middling incomes.  

They were almost entirely couple or families.  Intact families, not single parent families.  They were almost entirely employed and as they were all people who aspired for a better life, instilled the work ethic they had into their children.  They lived as a community together, and instilled the same ethic in each others' children.  Most of all, because they had to be able to afford to pay rent, they treated these communal areas as their own, with some pride.  When a family gained such a flat, they had it until they wanted to leave as long as they paid up.  If they stayed, their children could inherit the right to remain tenants.

To a non-socialist it sounds absurd, the state providing permanent housing, but it was the state effectively providing housing on a similar basis to the private sector.  By renting to people who aspired, to people who gave a damn, and who had a stake in their new rental homes, it meant the social structure was of people who were not an underclass of criminal parasites, who did not vandalise and terrorise, and who did act as a community of voluntary interacting adults (and children).

What changed?

Some on the left would blame Thatcher and mass unemployment, because it left many families struggling and men in particular lacking "purpose" and motivation.   However, the change happened in the decade or so before Thatcher.

Some on the right would blame mass immigration.  Yet it was pointed out that quite a few residents of these estates WERE Afro-Caribbean or South Asian families, with the same aspiration and work ethic as the indigenous British.   Some would blame a change in the traditional family, as women did not stay at home to look after their children, but went out working.

One factor is certainly the social change in the 1960s and 1970s that saw the rise of divorce and single parent families.  Included with that is the cultural change from families that were tight knit, well disciplined and bound by a Judeo-Christian code of ethics that had hardened during the war, to a moral relativist attitude of "do what you like".   The breakdown of traditional families hit both indigenous British and Afro-Caribbean families the most, as migrants from India and Pakistan tended to retain close family ties.

However, the single biggest factor, explained by the programme, was the removal of vetting for council housing.  It was deemed "discriminatory" for people to be vetted based on income, so council housing was there for the poor, regardless of employment or indeed criminal history.  Council estates became the places were people went to live when they got out of prison, it became the place to live when you couldn't afford anything else or private landlords wouldn't rent to you.   The culture of hard work and aspiration was eroded by a culture of violence, thieving, vandalism and disregard for the property and lives of others.

It was exacerbated by the expansion of the welfare state into supporting single parents who had never been married, or de facto couples, into paying more for every child, and so rewarding fecklessness. 

Council estates moved from being places were having a home was a privilege, earned by meeting minimum standards set by the owner (the council) and paid for, to places where anyone could go.  The result was that they became the breeding grounds for the parasitical entitlement led mob that recently went on a rampage.  

It is what happens when you reward fecklessness and bad behaviour, whilst penalising frugality and hard work.  Consider that the British government is currently printing money and producing ultra low interest credit on a scale that means the average bank account owner LOSES 5% of his money every year, but still insists on adjusting welfare to that inflation (although few working in the private sector are having pay rises to match inflation).   

Consider that there is a debate only now about whether to deny convicted rioters and looters welfare, or to evict them from council housing (and of course the shrill cries from the left about how "unfair" it is and it will just make them do it again - as if their policies stopped it).

The socialism of the 1960s and 1970s saw council estates in the UK sink into the abyss of squalor, bad behaviour and welfarism, as the end of full employment, the breakdown of traditional families, the rewards of unconditional free money and housing, and the end of vetting council tenancies saw the worst of society being hothoused in what one old council tenant described as "holes".

It has failed.  It is time to sell out these estates, to stop building new ones, and to let the criminals, the feckless and the anti-social try their luck with charity.   Of course those who claim to give a damn about all of them rarely think it is right that they pay out of their own pocket voluntarily, for a charity to help house rapists, thieves and child abusers - but they want you to be forced to do so.

Annoy the Greens - support a road

OK, so this may be a bit of mischief making, but given that the Greens use public consultation processes as a chance to lobby and gain publicity, I figured that a few of you might want to respond in kind.  Especially since the Greens are telling enormous porkies in their anti-road campaign.

Whilst the Greens and Labour have hosted an anti-car, anti-road, pro-higher subsidies for public transport conference (Smart Transport is a euphemism for "you're not smart, but we are"), the NZTA is consulting on improving the highway from Wellington city to the airport.

Now this project basically involves completing the four laning of Wellington Road and Ruahine Street to a second Mt Victoria Tunnel, and a flyover from the existing tunnel to Buckle St so through traffic bypassing the city can bypass the crowded Basin Reserve roundabout.   The section to be fixed is the only remaining major bottleneck between the city and the airport, given half of the route has been a four lane 70km/h highway since the airport opened.  At the city end the one-way system the Greens were prepared to stand in front of bulldozers to stop, feeds the traffic to and from the motorway to the north of the region. 

All of the land involved in this project was designated for road widening or the tunnel duplication over 40 years ago, and much of it is held by the NZTA for this purpose. None of it should be news as it was envisaged by the De Leuw Cather report on Wellington transport in the early 1960s that proposed the Wellington Urban Motorway (fully built as far as Bowen St, half built to Vivian St then unbuilt) and an underground railway extension to Courtenay Place. However, the Greens (and its ginger group Campaign for Better Transport) are opposing it, because it is a road, and trucks and cars will use it.  They would prefer those going by car to catch the bus, or to spend a fortune of other people's money on their favourite totem - a rail scheme, which of course would lose a lot of money, to be paid for by other people's money, and wouldn't meet the needs of most of the road users.  

There is already a limited stop commercially viable bus service running every 15 minutes that bypasses the congestion from the airport to the city and the Hutt, with free wifi - so there isn't a lack of public transport.

Now you’d expect the Greens to focus their efforts on the most expensive (and permanent) part of the plan and to oppose the second tunnel because it will remove a major bottleneck that slows down car and truck traffic from the airport and eastern suburbs. The effect will be for buses to be less competitive, because many use a parallel one-way bus only tunnel to bypass the congestion. On top of that it doesn’t have a positive benefit/cost ratio, an argument used to oppose extending Auckland’s Northern Motorway to Wellsford, but curiously ignored whenever the Greens advocate rail based projects (unless the results are gerrymandered to suit the outcome sought).

However, the Greens aren’t opposing a second Mt Victoria Tunnel, not loudly anyway. They are opposing the Basin Reserve flyover – because it is a flyover.

The flyover is the part of the project with the best economic return and it will have the most positive impact on pedestrians, cyclists and public transport users. Why? Because reducing about a third of the traffic flow around the Basin will allow for longer crossing phases for pedestrians, and for cycle lanes to be established along with bus lanes. Buses coming from Adelaide Road towards the city wont face queues backing up from Buckle St. However, these facts get in the way of the ideological tunnel-vision of the anti-car, anti-road lobby.   The bridge is "ugly" and part of an “outdated vision” because apparently nowhere else in the world are cities building new roads – except everywhere of course. A few hundred metres of two lane one way road over a roundabout wouldn’t get people excited in Melbourne, Oslo, Vancouver or Paris, but it’s a road, so it’s evil.

Some are pushing for an alternative plan, which doesn't work because it rules out two current major movements (between Adelaide Rd and Mt Victoria Tunnel).

So if you want to show your support for the people who pay for state highways (the whole project is fully fundable from fuel taxes and road user charges), then put in a quick submission in support.  You can be sure the Greens will have rounded up a few thousand to oppose it - because it's a road.

There is an online form here.  So support a decent highway from Wellington airport to the city, indeed from the growing media and film sector based in Miramar to the city.

Oh and the deadline is today.

UPDATE:  See the Greens are already seeking you support their groupthink agitprop.

Some of the nonsense written by Gareth Hughes:

"Wellington needs urgent investment in public transport and safer cycling and walking".

Really? Beyond the hundreds of millions spent on brand new trains, extending electrification to Waikanae, upgrading the Johnsonville line for new trains, upgraded stations, new rail infrastructure, new trolley buses?  What's unsafe with cycling and walking? Missing a footpath? 

"It certainly doesn’t need an 8 metre high flyover that will deface much of Wellington’s heritage precinct including the war memorial, the Mother Aubert crèche and the Basin Reserve."

Much? You mean between Buckle Street and Mt Victoria Tunnel?  That's "much" of the heritage precinct? Deface by having a bridge skirt the northern side?  Hyperbole again.

"In particular, we support light rail from the CBD out to the airport."

Of course you do.  You have a religious passion for light rail.  Forget it would cost hundreds of millions, lose money, not relieve congestion, put a privately run commercial unsubsidised bus service out of business, and not meet the needs of freight or people travelling from outside the CBD to the airport - it's light rail, bow down and get excited, it's cool man.

"Wellingtonians do not need an uneconomic urban motorway that will take out dozens of homes, depreciate land value, reduce the town belt and increase air and noise pollution."

It isn't an urban motorway.  The homes are either state owned or on land long designated for road widening.  The effect on the town belt is derisory, and there isn't evidence it will increase pollution.


"Cities such as Seoul and Seattle regretted building flyovers in their cities and have replaced them with attractive and spacious urban design."

One in Seoul, plenty more remain.  In Seattle it was weakened by an earthquake and it is now being replaced with a tolled bored tunnel highway - exactly the type of bypass for Wellington you all opposed.   Such a conspicuous lie.


"There is no evidence to suggest there is a need for such a costly and imposing roading project." Several kilometre long traffic queues for 1.5 hours every morning from Mt Victoria Tunnel, and the same around Oriental Bay.  No, no evidence at all.  Long evening queues southbound towards the Basin holding up all traffic, including buses heading for Newtown.  No evidence.

"demand for better public transport is sky-rocketing".  Which is why the airport bus frequencies have improved.  More fare revenue, but then you don't really approve of anyone making money from transport.


"In the short-term, better traffic signalling and bus priority measures would largely mitigate congestion around the Basin at a fraction of the cost."

Says who? The architects who developed a "solution" that prohibits traffic movement between the tunnel and Newtown?  How would this mitigate the queue from Mt Victoria Tunnel

"Light rail through the CBD out to the airport is a cheaper and more sustainable option that would  alleviate congestion and offer commuters an affordable option in the face of future oil price rises."

Cheaper?  How?  Don't have a price do you?  Loses how much money?  Where in the world have new light rail schemes alleviated congestion?  How is it an option for freight, or people going to/from the airport from the rest of the region?  How is it affordable when you need to increase rates or other taxes to pay for it?

Just loads of empty vacuous spin, worshipping the altar of new subsidised railways, freight is invisible, as are any people not travelling to and from the CBD.

They are even so backwards in thinking that they don't push congestion charging, bit too much "user pays" and high tech for a party that loves trams?

What's really pathetic is that the Greens have stopped arguing against new roads because of them not being economic, but chooses to lie about what they will do and the basis for them.

Democracy is not freedom

I'm not as pessimistic as Peter Cresswell over Libya, because the country has never itself been a hotbed of Islamism, and there has been only scant evidence of Islamist involvement in the rebel movement.  Indeed, the loudest claims about Islamists have come from the Gaddafi regime, keen to scare its erstwhile Western friends into supporting Gaddafi.  Libya has had over 40 years of a regime that embraced Islam, but also pushed a secularist agenda based on Gaddafi's erratic Green Book.   Libya neither has the history of Islamism that Egypt has had, nor the poverty and sectarianism that have bolstered Islamism elsewhere.  Of course, I hope I am not wrong, yet there is a window of hope for Libya emerging.

I believe Libya will have a better future without Gaddafi, but let's not pretend that "liberation" of Libya means Libyans will be free - they will simply be less oppressed and have some freedoms that were denied them under Gaddafi.  For the oft-repeated statement "the Libyan people will now be in control of their destiny" or "the Libyan people will not determine their future" has been said in some form or another by the likes of Obama, Cameron, Sarkozy and others.

However what does that mean?

At best what they mean is that Libyan can become a democracy, and that Libyans can then vote for their government.  

However, ticking a box on a ballot is not being in control of your destiny.

A functioning liberal democracy (bear in mind that in the Arab world only Iraq can be said to come close to this) has to have certain core freedoms to function.  Freedom of assembly and association, so that political parties can be formed and operate, and for people to organise politically outside parties, are rather essential.   Freedom of the press and freedom of speech are essential for a proper contest of ideas to occur.   Almost as important are for the core functions of the state to operate objectively, so that when laws are enforced they do not target based on political belief, or when elections are held, the counting or management is not subject to corruption.

It would be a bold presumption to say that Libya is about to get all of that.  For even some ostensibly liberal democracies in Europe have struggled to manage this 20 years after the end of the communist bloc.

However, even if Libya appeared to have all of that, would Libyans really have control of their own destiny?

Unless Libya's future government is constitutionally constrained to protect Libyan's individual freedom, then all democracy will do is put their destiny in the hands of the largest number of hands.   You don't have control of your destiny, when your rights are up for a vote.

For example, will Libya protect apostasy?  It hasn't been a crime so far, but it is a serious criminal offence in much of the Muslim world, including Egypt (with the death penalty in many countries).

Will Libyan private property rights be protected?  Human rights advocates rarely care at all about this, yet it is about protecting the products of people's minds, which is essential for survival.

Will Libyans be entitled to live their lives in peace as long as they respect the rights of other Libyans to do the same?  Or will they face restrictions based on politics or religion?

The only way Libyans will have control over their own destiny, is when the word "they" means "each and every individual independently deciding how to live their lives" in peace with each other.

That could only come if Libya gained a government that existed not to initiate force against them, but to protect them from the initiation of force.   To ensure that under a liberal democracy, it would need a constitution to protect that.   I doubt that in the wildest dreams of most of the rebels that such an idea is in the minds of many.

Eliminating a totalitarian dictatorship, particularly one that was so outwardly aggressive towards other countries (though funnily enough you rarely heard the so-called "peace" movement decrying Libyan imperialism), is positive.  It is likely Libyans will have more freedom than they have had for a long time, but let's not pretend that they will have "control of their destiny".  

At best they will have a very small say in the government that will control their destiny.   It is like asking the slaves to vote on who will be their master.