29 August 2014

Libertarian Christians?

Now I'm not religious, I'm an atheist objectivist. However, it is worth noting that being a libertarian does not necessarily mean one is an atheist (and certainly not objectivist).  

I do believe that people can be both, quite simply the state can leave free people alone, some of them can be Christians and live lives according to Christianity, as long as they don't initiate force. Indeed, if people of all religions could simply grasp that, we would live in a far better world, albeit one that would still face debates about science and ethics, education and the like - but for these to be determined through persuasion not force.  

Well known libertarian oriented Conservative MEP Daniel Hannan has a strong faith, and in NZ, the hard-working and outspoken Tim Wikiriwhi is a Christian libertarian, as is Richard Goode a libertarian standing for the ALCP.  Their blog has their own perspective, and it's safe to say that while we'll agree on much politically, when it comes to matters spiritual, we part company.  Evangelical Christian bloggers Matt and Madeleine Flanagan likewise, are libertarians.   There are hundreds of thousands if not millions of Americans who would claim the same.

However, that is how a free society works.  People can proselytise their religion or atheism, they can live their lives according to religious teachings and rules, as long as they respect the right of others to do differently.  As long as the religious do not break fundamental individual rights of others (that includes ensuring children are not subjected to physical and sexual abuse or neglect), they can live their lives in peace.  

The key is for Christians to not want laws passed that break the crucial "non initiation of force" principle, which has tended to be a weakness of many Christian politicians keen to regulate what people do with their bodies.   That means not wanting the law to regulate consensual adult sexual behaviour or artistic depictions of it (I use artistic to include any media depictions at all).  The tricky area comes into what is one of the most fraught issues - abortion.  Libertarians differ on abortion, some believe that the foetus has no rights, some believe they do have rights.  This is a fertile area for debate, as it should be, but as long as it is debate based on objectively defined factors - i.e. where life begins, what sort of entities should have rights, what rights and why - then debate can be rational.  That's where I fear it gets difficult for some Christian libertarians.

Yet if only we could get to that debate.   There may be libertarians from other religious faiths, I'm keen to meet Muslim libertarians for fairly obvious reasons, but it would appear that Christianity has offered more scope than most religions to "live and let live" and grant adults the freedom to choose to believe and then to respect the right of non-believers to live their lives, as long as they do the same to others.

So whilst I'll happily argue against religion generally, and argue against some of the key tenets of Christianity, I do respect the fundamental right of Christians to hold and to disseminate their beliefs.   Moreover, Christian libertarians are allies in the wider push for individual freedom.   I'd like Jewish (as in religious not merely ethnic) libertarians and Muslim libertarians as well as Hindu and Buddhist ones. Yet, rather sadly, there doesn't appear to be too many of any of them.

28 August 2014

Forgotten posts from 2009 : Banning smoking in public places

The Standard reports, disapprovingly, that Western Bay of Plenty District Council is banning smoking in public places. One of the rare occasions I agree with the Standard.

However, it is clear it isn't actually a ban - you see I don't believe any council has the clear legal authority to do this. It can put up signs saying "no smoking", but by what power can it do this?

Bylaw making powers of local authorities are quite constrained. The Local Government Act 2002 grants many (though not all) bylaw making powers to councils. Section 145 grants apparently wide ranging general powers, but then Section 146 is more specific, and Section 147 is very specific, around alcohol. Given the similarities between how alcohol and tobacco are treated legally (both controlled drugs) it is likely Parliament did not intend to give councils power to ban smoking in outdoor locations, it may have granted them power to very specifically ban smoking in circumstances clearly applicable in Section 145, but NOT across beaches or across parks. You see bylaws against nuisance, public health and offensive behaviour are seen as about regulating berrant behaviours. This includes excessive noise, unhygienic activities or behaviour more akin to the Summary Offences Act, than smoking. Bear in mind smoking does not, per se, create a nuisance, public health problem (to others) or offence.

So, quite simply, I don't think any such bylaw is legitimate.

What IS legitimate is using property rights to ban smoking, which works in buildings of course, but on public land the question is whether the council should have the rights of any other property owner? A private park or beach should of course, ban what it sees fit, but not public space.


27 August 2014

Rotherham Council more concerned about causing offence than stopping rape

What was the first response of child protection officers and Police in Rotherham, UK, when facing evidence of organised gangs of Asian men raping, brutalising and otherwise abusing young girls of various background?

"Better be careful, we might be accused of being racist".

That's one of the damning findings of an inquiry published today which found that 1400 children were sexually exploited in the borough between 1997 and 2013, a third of whom were known by child protection officers.

It is a wanton failure by the state to do its job as

"Within social care, the scale and seriousness of the problem was underplayed by senior managers.
At an operational level, the Police gave no priority to CSE (Child Sexual Exploitation), regarding many child victims with contempt and failing to act on their abuse as a crime"

but what is particularly galling is how the embrace of the doctrine of Identity Politics and fear of being found to be politically incorrect closed down enquiries.

By far the majority of perpetrators were described as 'Asian' by victims, yet throughout the entire
period, councillors did not engage directly with the Pakistani-heritage community to discuss how
best they could jointly address the issue. Some councillors seemed to think it was a one-off problem,
which they hoped would go away. Several staff described their nervousness about identifying the
ethnic origins of perpetrators for fear of being thought racist; others remembered clear direction
from their managers not to do so.

In other words, they couldn't cope with the perpetrators being from an ethnic group they had deemed to be "vulnerable", "disadvantaged" or "subject to racism", so they themselves were racist in dismissing or minimise the crimes that included:

There were examples of children who had been doused in petrol and threatened with being set alight, threatened with guns, made to witness brutally violent rapes and threatened they would be next if they told anyone. Girls as young as 11 were raped by large numbers of male perpetrators.
By applying collectivist Identity Politics thought to crime, they ignored reality.  Individuals had together, with a toxic cultural attitude to young girls particularly of non-Asian backgrounds, raped and brutalised victims with impunity.  Effectively protected by those too scared to call them out on it or act decisively, because they didn't want to be accused of being "racist".

It's the consequence of embracing post-modernist structuralism.  The philosophy that there is no such thing as objective reality, only power structures that need to be broken down, and which public policy and politics should reflect. 

The result is that real victims were neglected and not protected, real violent sex offenders were treated with hand-wringing anxiety and appeasement, because what mattered most was that nobody should be offended (except of course the victims who were treated as inconvenient or at worst, culpable).

Rotherham Council has been run by the Labour Party since it was created in 1974.

25 August 2014

Can civilisation confront evil?

When Francis Fukuyama said the end of the Cold War was the "end of history" (a claim that no doubt will plague him for the rest of his life), the great hope was that the world was turning back from a blood soaked century of both war and tyranny.   However, just as the Holocaust was not the final word on genocide, the end of the Cold War was not the end of tyranny.

What we are now seeing unfolding in Iraq and Syria, with the self-styled "Islamic State" is the latest incarnation of the philosophical embrace of the idea, common to all tyrants, that human beings do not exist for their own purposes, but are subordinate to the purposes dreamed up by others - to be slaves to a "greater" ideal, that involves the sacrifice of their time, property, passions, morals, beliefs, bodies, families and 

"Islamic State" has goals which are common to that of other eliminationist totalitarians:

- Impose its totalitarian law on areas it occupies, with brutal punishment for transgressions;
- Demand all residents of those areas embrace its ideology;
- Kill those who reject it or who are deemed to be "inferior";
- Enslave selected numbers of those it controls (in this case women it selects for sex slaves);
- Enforced breeding to grow its own numbers and dilute/weaken those it occupies.

It has parallels throughout history.  The Khmer Rouge (which dispatched between 1-2 million by execution or starvation), the Croatian Ustashe (who famously enforced one third of Serbs to be converted to Catholicism, one third deported and one third executed), militarist Japan, Nazi Germany and numerous Marxist-Leninist regimes once embraced by one of Nicky Hager's heroes.

Some may say it's not "our problem", although it is clear that some of the "Islamic State's" murdering hoards hail from the UK, Australia and other Western countries, and it is also clear that the "Islamic State" is getting funding from individuals in a wide range of countries, both Western, but also the hereditary dictatorships that the West has friendly relationships in the Persian Gulf.   It would appear the idle rich in Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar, Bahrain and the like are quite keen on funding those who behead children and impales their heads on sticks.  

Yes, just consider that, pause for a minute and think about a "militant group" (as is the accepted euphemism nowadays) that executes young children, impales their heads on sticks in a town, to warn of what happens if people do not embrace its totalitarian form of Islam.   Now consider that there are people in your country that are not only not offended by this, but willing to go and help out the killers.  
Furthermore, the Islamic State does not simply want a Caliphate over Iraq and Syria, but across the entire Middle East and seeks to wage jihad against the United States and Britain.  It doesn't just want to "peacefully" impose Shariah law (you know a bit like how the Taliban did in Afghanistan or the Khmer Rouge turned Cambodia's calendar to Year Zero), it wants the world to become a caliphate.

Be clear also that it is very well funded from selling oil from Syrian oil fields and if it gained control of more in Syria and Iraq, it could acquire weapons and have levels of funding the Taliban could only have dreamed of.

So think 9/11, 7/7 and think a level of danger that betrays the head in the sand "libertarians" who think this is a problem in the Middle East that can be ignored.   Even if Israel and the Palestinians signed a peace treaty tomorrow that finalised the "two state solution" (even if Israel was wiped off the map), the "Islamic State" would not hesitate, unlike its brethren Hamas.  Even if all of the Muslim world was run by a Caliphate, it would not hesitate, unlike its brethren Al Qaeda (who disowned it for being "too violent").

These are killers that, unlike the Nazis, unlike the Khmer Rouge and unlike the Rwandan gangs of blood thirsty murderers, gloat over their brutality.  Yes, it isn't just a surreptitious dark eliminationism, it is a loud and proud campaign of slaughter.

22 August 2014

Forgotten Posts from the Past: What I thought of Gordon Brown's administration in 2009

The rats are leaving a sinking ship, a ship that has let its tentacles grow the state in the UK in the past 12 years, run near constant budget deficits in a time of prosperity, promote speculation in the property market to support largescale lending by the populace, and pour buckets into an unaccountable and inept NHS, build up an assembly line education system, woefully limp wristed criminal justice system and a radical environmental agenda (crippling the economy), whilst wanting to implement an identity card system and increase surveillance of private citizens.

Miliband Labour looks little different.


20 August 2014

UK porn laws ban some comics

The death of Sir John Mortimer, barrister and writer, best known for writing the Rumpole of the Bailey radio play and subsequent television series, brought memories about his great fight for freedom of speech. His battles were many, the album "Never Mind the Bollocks" wouldn't have the word "bollocks" if he hadn't defended Virgin Records in court against accusations of obscenity. Mortimer famously engaged in a debate with well known moral evangelist Mary Whitehouse, and John Howard (then future leader of the Conservative Party) on free speech, citing how basically those who call for censorship think those who censor wont be harmed, but they are protecting the mass of the population, who are considered imbeciles.

However, the UK doesn't learn. As two pieces of legislation have taken it further.

The Criminal Justice and Immigration Act has make it illegal to possess "extreme pornography". What is that then? It is extreme images which were produced solely or principally for the purpose of sexual arousal.

Que Horreur! Sexual arousal? How dare THAT happen - not in BRITAIN.

19 August 2014

Let's end child poverty say the Reds

Well so say the Greens, with their enormous "give free money to the parents of poor kids" electoral bribe, to be paid for by a tax hike.

It's classic dyed in the wool socialism and its central premise is that it is somehow caring to take by force from a small proportion of the population to give people money because they have children they can't afford to raise properly.

That's it.

When Russel Norman says:

Proud to pay 7c more income tax on every $1 over $140k so 200,000 kids can have food in their bellies 

It defies description.  What's he doing with the money now if he believes so much that it would be better helping poor kids?  Couldn't he just spend that money now on charities to help them?  Couldn't he convince others to do the same?  What's the mentality that says "if only the government took more of my money I could be helping the poor more"?


18 August 2014

Tough on law and order?

It's always an easy one for parties to trot out. I've seen it time and time again. Jim Bolger did it in 1990 with the slogan "A Decent Society". At the time it called for a referendum on capital punishment, which was quietly shelved.   ACT and National have both gone down this path in the past, but I'd take a more nuanced approach.

For me, a good law and order policy comprises several dimensions. It isn't merely "hang the bastards", it is a balance - as follows:

1. Recividist violent offenders should be kept from committing further crimes: It's simple, you have one chance if you are a violent (including sexual) offender, to do time, to rehabilitate and live a life of peace, but if you repeat you are deemed a threat to others, and detention is preventive. It is about protection of future victims, punishment coming second. Preventive sentences could be for a decade or for life, depending on the threat to the public. 

2. Rehabilitation for the first time offender: At the non-violent end of the spectrum, people make foolish, damaging mistakes. However, it is not a reason to write them off. The criminal justice system must exist to deter and punish, but for those entering it the first time the best efforts need to be made to make it the last time. That means not throwing young foolish men into dank prisons where they learn to be "staunch" and can learn how to be a tougher, harder criminal. It's more clever than that.  It deals with issues of literacy, teach useful skills, anger management and therapy if needed, in short it is a concerted effort to turn people around.

3. Protect the presumption of innocence: Our criminal justice system is built upon a simple presumption. You're innocent till proven guilty. That should never be watered down.  It must remain central to the criminal justice system.

13 August 2014

Dirty politics?

Nicky Hager's book, which of course like the healthcare, housing, education, incomes, public transport and much else of what Hager wants from government, should be free.

Kim Dot Com should be letting one of his "customers" copy it and spread it widely amongst the public if he was true to his belief in "freedom".

However, my first reaction was to notice how Russel Norman, who like the Green Party more generally, escapes a lot of serious scrutiny, bleating on about "negative attack politics"


The same Russel Norman who once decided to engage in name calling against me on the Green's Frogblog, as a response to my criticism of the scaremongering over EMR from cellphone towers, yet no such scaremongering over radio broadcast towers.  I wrote about it here.   It's hardly a big deal, but this is how politics is.

You see, attack politics are actually normal.  It's the norm for many politicians to be pejorative.  The left's primary pejoratives are to claim policies are "racist" and "sexist", or that those on the right "hate the poor" and are only in politics for the money (they of course, donate most of their salaries to charity), and finally there is the anti-semitic attacks on John Key and the childish "fuck John Key" contribution to intelligent discourse.

What is apparent is anger.  Anger from those who think they are entitled to spend other people's money without their consent, anger from those who want to tell other people what to do with their property, anger from those who don't like foreigners, or foreigners buying things they themselves can't or wont buy, and conversely anger from those who are fed up with being told they owe others a living, fed up with being told that some people are entitled to be listened to more, because of some aspect of their background.   The anger in politics is due to polarisation.  Those on the right are becoming more clearly cynical of answers that involve more government, while those on the left are less inclined to compromise with business, with those arguing to be left alone, and those who offend and upset them.

People are angry because most of them don't understand a lot about the complexities of modern economics or societies, and want simple answers, they also want politicians who will pander to their own prejudices about why things are as they are.  Conspiracies attract the feeble minded, and those who think governments have all the answers to block individuals doing things they don't like, don't like people saying no.

The real answer is that politics do not provide good answers for most problems in the world, but human initiative does.  By releasing people's ability to create, produce, organise themselves and to build, share and help each other, there are ways of resolving problems.  Government's don't do that, they use force.  Hager embraces the use of force, and is rather upset at there being a government that doesn't do it enough to the right people.

Hager's book from what little has percolated out simply seems to report that some bloggers are affiliated with the National Party.  Who knew?!?  Hager wont write a book about those affiliated with the Labour Party, or the Greens, or heaven-forbid the Kim Dotcom/Alliance Revival/Harawira Whanau First Party, because they are who he wants to have in power.  He talks about how bloggers deliberately try to get media attention to support one political point of view, yet he is guilty of exactly the same tactic when he puts out his books.

Hager's biggest problem is that what he purports others to do, is exactly what he is trying to do himself.  Pass himself off as "independent" and dedicated to exposing secret political deals, but he is anything but independent, and completely ignores anything going on on his side.

12 August 2014

Carpe Diem... make your lives extraordinary

and he did.

The lessons from one of his greatest films.

As poignant as ever, given so much news from those who are the utter antithesis of these ethics and this philosophy, and the tragic taking of his own life.

Embrace life...


Reject conformity, be yourself, find your own way...


Most men lead lives of quiet desperation, don't resign to that...


Poetry, beauty, romance, love, these are what we stay alive for






10 August 2014

Childrens' heads impaled on sticks

That is what is happening, now, in areas ISIS has taken over in Iraq.

Among others, children are getting executed with their entire families, for not converting to Islam, and then getting their heads removed and impaled on sticks placed in towns to warn of what happens to those who do not embrace the "religion of peace".  Apparently 500 women and girls have been taken by ISIS, as rape booty, but I doubt most Western feminists will demand anything be done about that, they'll be worried that there aren't enough women in the board rooms of banks.

That's why it is morally right for the US, indeed for any military force that wishes, to eradicate ISIS.

The Western allies that overthrew Saddam Hussein owe it to Iraq to step in, over the heads of the weak sectarian Shi'a government, and use air power to curtail ISIS, then to fund and arm new Iraqi armed forces, consisting of Shi'a, moderate Sunni and those from other backgrounds, to eradicate this menace.

Meanwhile, the anti-Western, anti-capitalist Amnesty International demands Israel faces an arms embargo, for defending itself against the only part of the Palestinian territories that is attacking it.

Meanwhile, the tens of thousands of supporters of Gaza, march give moral approval to aggressive Islamism, albeit that comparing Hamas to ISIS is like comparing the Green Party to the Khmer Rouge.

If ISIS is not contained and takes control of sufficient oil and gas fields to fund endeavours elsewhere, make no mistake the price of appeasement will be high.

So ISIS must be kicked out of Iraq and, in spite of all that he is, a deal must be struck with Bashar Assad and the secular Syrian opposition, to do the same in Syria in exchange for a truce between Assad and the opposition as a prelude to a federal settlement, elections and his standing down as President.  

and to the appeasing peaceniks who oppose?

Ignore them.

Your intellectual forebears would have had us in a communist one-party state, and before that would have demanded peace with Hitler.  You are not defenders of freedom or civilisation, but appeasers to barbarity, dictatorship and slavery.  

This is a battle between civilisation and barbarity. 

Barbarity that is disowned by Iran (primarily for sectarian reasons), but also disowned by Al Qaeda itself.

There can be no compromise with such evil.  There wasn't with the Nazis or with militarist Japan.

That is the moral clarity behind the fight.  It should be NATO, it should be Arab allies, it should even be Russia, China and India in support (for both dictatorships are themselves threatened by the brethren of ISIS).

However, assuming that little is done, watch and see the world that isolationism brings.

PS: I was going to write a piece critiquing the Green transport of people in cities policy, but that's not remotely important.  

08 August 2014

Does Russel Norman want Israel to disappear?

It's not clear, after all Russel Norman could just have been too quick to use the wrong language here but look at this:


"Palestine"...

...not Gaza (which Israel did withdraw from and Hamas subsequently used as a base to attack Israel - i.e. not occupied territories - the internationally recognised land of the state of Israel).  

.. not "the occupied territories" (which still respects a two state solution)...

but "Palestine", which implies the end of the state of Israel completely.  It is the Hamas solution.   Russel is wanting Israel to withdraw and disband according to that tweet.

but then this is contradictory:



So it looks like he accepts a state of Israel here, but how can we be sure?  His tone is so one-sided as to be virulently anti-Israel.  It's so evasive of the facts.

Israel withdrew from Gaza, completely.  

It dismantled Jewish settlements in their entirety, it told the Palestinians they could govern their own affairs. So they elected Hamas, which vowed to destroy Israel and institute an Islamist theocracy (and has not held an election since).  Hamas started shooting rockets into Israel, supplied by Iran (completely ignored in all of the "America arms Israel" rhetoric).  Israel imposed a blockade to stop the rockets getting into Gaza.


06 August 2014

The Greens - nationalising children so you can pay for everyone else's

So the Greens are cleverly pulling at the heart strings, with images of children and landscapes. You're meant to vote for them, yep, someone else's kid, because the Greens think we all belong to everyone else.   It's the antithesis of individuals living their lives responsibly and interacting freely with one another, but rather the heavy hand of the #lovenz state taking your money out of "love" to pay for other people who at best don't care about where it came from, and at worst hold you in contempt (you rich c*** you, probably with Pakeha and male privilege that you inherited from your thieving racist/sexist ancestors, go on feel the guilt). 

People who breed and barely raise kids at all, who then go on to repeat the cycle, maybe bullying your kids in the process, or (the Greens hope) become angry political activists who go on to talk to the hilariously named Child Poverty Action Group (so named because it undertakes the minimal possible action to address child poverty by simply demanding the state do something about it with other people's money).  

04 August 2014

If the Press gets this wrong...

No doubt executives in newspapers wonder how they can stop the inexorable decline in business, the drop in circulation and how to stem the competition from online media.

Air NZ official photo of its first Boeing 787 arriving 
I submit Exhibit A as a reason why this continues to happen.  It isn't about a particularly serious news topic at all, more a travel feature, but it demonstrates clearly the slip in standards.  

It is from The Press and the article is meant to be a review of Air NZ's latest plane, the Boeing 787-9 "Dreamliner", because the airline took it on a training trip down to Christchurch last week before it starts commercial service. 

Quite simply it is an article that would fail a high school student, which may be why there is no name put to it.  It may well be a high school student who wrote it.  It's as if the writer didn't even though there was something called the internet, and research isn't difficult to undertake on it.

It's a shocker that is up there with the Gareth Morgan words of wisdom on North Korea in terms of not only saying nothing new, but actually being so inaccurate as to be misleading.

Contrast it to the excellent articles on the website Australian Business Traveller, which frankly has better information about air travel for New Zealanders than any New Zealand source.  Aussie Business Traveller wrote three articles in detail about the plane (one on each cabin, Business, Premium Economy and Economy).  Now I don't expect that level on a newspaper, but I do expect accuracy.  This was a slapdash lazy effort by someone who didn't only know nothing, but didn't even try to find out anything beyond what was seen.

My point with the article title is, that if the Press can get this so wrong, what else does it get wrong that I don't have such knowledge about?  Is it really any wonder that people are abandoning newspapers?

What did the Press get wrong? (I did submit a comment online but it has presumably been too embarrassed to publish it)

01 August 2014

One law for all?

Jamie Whyte's "one law for all" speech was disappointing.  Not because of what his end goals are (which are largely ignored by his critics because he gave them so much else to aim at), but because the rhetoric was clumsy and in my view, counter-productive.

One of the most corrosive elements in New Zealand is the widely held consensus amongst most political parties and indeed the bureaucracy and media, that there remains a strong element of racial determinism around the lives people lead, at least for Maori.  This being the idea that the reason Maori on average perform worse in terms of a wide range of social indicators compared to individuals from other ethnic groups, is due to a mix of the legacy of what happened to their ancestors (which seems not to hold back refugees from genocides from living memory) and a system that doesn't "meet their needs". The latter because "the system" is "designed for Pakeha" (not because state provided services aren't necessarily very tailored to individual need).

It is post-modernist structuralist theory which posits that because Maori are (the descendants of) the indigenous people of a land that was colonised (and then gained independence), they are structurally disadvantaged.  With this thinking you can conveniently blank out individual cases that prove how flawed all of this is, like the young Maori woman I once met who got a government scholarship to pursue her law studies, a scholarship open only to Maori - she was proud, because her parents were lawyers.  Not exactly a scholarship that was lifting someone from a below average background.

The view perpetuated by the Greens, Labour, Mana/Internet/Opportunist, Maori Party and much of academia is that she is inherently disadvantaged because she is a Maori woman (doubly disadvantaged).

Forget that her family easily had an income several times that of the average household (so one can argue that her family long ago climbed out of disadvantage), that gets blanked out - the system structurally disadvantages her against a young man from a single parent household with no family history of tertiary education.  Her race was deemed to transmit disadvantage in a system that "creates" it.  The same quackery justifies all sorts of affirmative action programmes, which when government funded (I couldn't care less if private companies run them) are picking winners on the basis of race, out of a sense of "fairness", as if treating individuals differently on the basis of race somehow "redresses collective unfairness".  That is, of course, nonsense.  There is no collective brain or life, just individuals living their lives, and if the state decides that one individual on the basis purely of characteristics she can't choose, deserves privilege over another, then it is simply engaging in the unfairness it is purporting to address.

Unfortunately Jamie Whyte's rhetoric hid the real point, which was I think a major strategic error for those of us who want to move on from racial determinism and neo-Marxist structuralist interpretations of power, capitalism and society.  The mistake many have jumped on is misconstruing a detail around educational quotas (which is not where the debate should lie) and the pre-revolutionary France comparison (which was historically wrong), but I think his two biggest mistakes were:

- To not focus on how the current system privileges a few Maori over everyone else (including other Maori);
- To not sell the optimistic case for individual empowerment and diversity.

28 July 2014

Forgotten Posts from the Past: Planning transport

Yes Labour and the Greens always share a grand plan for transport that wont be met of course, because the targets bear little resemblance to what transport users want.  You see you can take two views about what transport users want.  You can take what they do, in response to their own demands and the price to meet those, or you can ask them what they want, and they'll usually want to pay less for a lot more.  It is the latter approach that guides what is the eco-socialist view of transport - which is that the system should be driven by what planners think is good for everyone, not by responding to demand according to what people are prepared to pay for.

Labour's 2008 transport policy had a range of goals which pretty much sums up the banal attitude to this:

- Cut km travelled by single occupancy vehicles in urban centres by 10% by 2015.  In other words, too many people are driving in their own cars in cities, and they should either not do so, or take someone else with them (it doesn't mean empty buses).  A target to reduce congestion would be to meet something people want, but no it is a statement that driving in your own car, on your own, is inherently bad, even if you bought the car, paid for the petrol, insurance etc (including the tax to pay for the road).  Too many people are being bad by driving themselves unnecessarily!

 - Increasing the movement of freight by ship and rail to 30 per cent and 25 per cent respectively. Whatever THAT means, because it could just be an increase in freight tonne km, which could happen anyway with a booming economy. However if it is about mode share, then there is no chance this could happen without taxing others to subsidise freight movements by more expensive modes.  The assumption is that moving freight by sea and rail is better, because of less pollution, but it ignores that the reason it doesn't happen as much as planners want, is cost. It simply costs more.  There is no quantification of the benefits of this mode shift, given it will cost money to achieve it, it is simply part of the quasi-religious belief that sea and rail transport is "better" than road transport, not anything based on evidence.
- Increasing walking, cycling and other active forms of transport to 30 per cent of trips in urban areas. You unfit slobs, walk! I tell you walk! Of course a good way of doing this would be to eliminate public transport subsidies, then more people would walk and cycle, as the main competition for public transport is walking and cycling. Yet Labour wants to double subsidies (euphemistically called "funding") for public transport.   Why 30% of trips?  It's a planning target.  It would improve physical fitness yes, it would also reduce demand for public transport so there could be savings there and delays in expanding road capacity, but how do you "increase" this?  Does pouring taxpayers' money into infrastructure make a difference?  Who knows, as it isn't evidence based.

 The truth is that the government cannot predict transport demand, technologies or geographical changes in demographics and businesses. The government's biggest influence is owning infrastructure it could see free through commercialisation and privatisation, but no, it wants to specify the "right level" of funding when it doesn't know where demand is heading.

25 July 2014

Forgotten Posts from the Past : Residents Action Movement (sic)

The "Residents Actions Movement" (or Residents Action Movement, the website doesn't appear to be sure) is now a registered political party.

Hilarious. It doesn't even have a grammatically correct name - perfect party for the imbeciles and retards who used to vote Alliance because it promised everything would be free, and those mean old lazy rich people who do nothing all day would happily remain in the country and pay for it from their money trees. I wonder if the name was registered without the apostrophe? Moreover, maybe there isn't an error! It's all a bit post-modernist to mess with your mind.

Yes RAM is quite a group. Besides being an "action movement" (you know like rotating a shoulder), I'm unsure what the residents are all about, since they clearly have nothing to do with the action movement (given the name).

I have to laugh at them, really I do. Take this from the website:

"Stalls are being organised all over the country every week, with particularly strong activity around Whangarei, Auckland and Wellington. Every week hundreds of people are joining RAM on the stalls."

Lots of activity organising stalls around Auckland, Wellington and Whangarei! Bless! Hundreds of people joining RAM on the stalls - big stalls they must be to have all those people on them!

RAM has 10 commandments, again plenty of scope for humour here:


1. - Remove GST tax from all our food (in bold maybe because it is the only policy that may work, somehow. Anyway look forward to the Caviar being GST free. Though I'd abolish GST altogether, but anyway it's policy for simpletons).

2. - $2,000 'baby bonus' to every mum (of COURSE. Well done, you got knocked up and we'll make everyone else pay you for being so damned clever. I mean, you must have thought so carefully about how to do something the species has been doing for hundreds of thousands of years without a "bonus". Yes good on you mums, RAM will go from house to house to take money off others

3. - Offer first-home buyers a 3% interest state loan (Yep, let them printing presses fly Cletus, then sons and daughters of wealthy people can buy their first homes cheap too, after all nothing like lending money that doesn't exist right? Smart!).

4. - Lift minimum wage to $15 per hour (Of course the price of uneducated manual labour should go up, there is such a shortage, and it will put up prices to everyone else. Celebrate manual labour!).

5. - Free lunches in schools serving poor areas (Yay free stuff, yay. The government money tree working again. Go to school son, means you can get a feed right? Those parents breeding without us realising how much we owe them for producing children that we have no control over!).

6. - Free tertiary education plus a student living allowance (Free yay again. Can't imagine why more things aren't free. Yes nothing like students spending their lives studying and not earning a dollar).

7. - Free and frequent public transport in our main cities (We're free, I mean we're not because we'll be forced to pay for all these things we wont use, but they will be free. The roads will remain jammed up though - nobody has made this work).

8. Offer cheap solar panels to homeowners (Cheap, not free? Well subsidised anyway, those printing presses will be working hard though wont they? Money can just be printed after all!)

9. - Restore to workers their free right to strike (Yes, poor oppressed sods. Ridiculous to expect them to work for being paid and to not go off when they like striking for reasons nothing to do with their jobs. How fascist is that, requiring people to follow their contracts!)

10. - Enshrine the Treaty of Waitangi in a new constitution to guarantee the mutual rights of Maori and non-Maori (ohhh identified as a "non", those "non" people need rights too. Enshrine the Treaty will make everything better, of course take Stephen Franks's view of the Treaty and this means private property rights!).

24 July 2014

Forgotten Posts from the Past : "Peace" supporting politicians are hypocrites

More missile tests and nope- nothing from the usual suspects.

Guess it is ok for the murderers of rape victims, secularists, homosexuals, and the advocates of complete integration of religious and state, who enforce with violence laws demanding women and men dress how they want, who fund and train suicide bombers - to have missiles, and weapons capable of destroying a country they want destroyed.

Not those evil Americans with separation of church and state, civil rights for women, homosexuals, atheists and those of any religion, the right to dress pretty much as you want - so no need to protest.

"Peace movement"? Well I think that's been shown up for what it isn't.

The "peace movement" is a fraud, as it is more than happy to turn a blind eye to states acquiring aggressive military capability if they are opposed by the West and its allies.

The "peace movement" is fundamentally anti-Western, anti-capitalist and is a tired vestige from the Cold War, as it then was a Soviet backed front that was led by hardline Marxist-Leninists gleaning wider support from the naive, well-meaning and good-natured, for a strategy of disarming the relatively free world.

You see it in protests against attacks on Gaza that are silent on Gaza attacks on Israel.

Peace, unless of course, it is fighting against governments they don't like very much.   You can be sure that if there ever was a WMD attack on Israel, Israel would get the blame, although Israel wouldn't hesitate to respond in kind - and the hypocrites would cry foul.


23 July 2014

Forgotten Posts from the Past : In 2009 had Obama gone conservative?

Yep, having been accused of being on the left, he's decided that the old politics of flip flopping and appealing to whoever can get him more votes is exactly what he wants to do.

According to the Times he has flip flopped on a whole host of issues:

"He told a cheering crowd of Israel's supporters of his fervent commitment to the security of the Jewish state and added, for good measure, that an “undivided” Jerusalem should be the nation's capital." So like Bush then?

"He said that he likes free trade after all, and that his primary campaign pledge to dismantle the North American Free Trade Agreement was a case of “overheated rhetoric”. " Well he still voted for more agricultural protectionism, and has done virtually nothing to restart a WTO trade round.

"Last week he expressed support for a Supreme Court decision that struck down a ban on handguns and opposition to another that outlawed the death penalty for rape of a child. " Hold on, so what party is he from again? Defending handgun ownership? Supporting executing child rapists? 

"This week he promised to expand President Bush's faith-based organisations initiative, a programme that channels funds to religious groups so that they can deliver social welfare services" say what? So church and state are separate, but funding religious groups (not mentioning non-religious) is a change?

Was it just the case that Barack Obama, far from being the "change" candidate, was the "I want power" candidate?

21 July 2014

Cheering on religious theocracy

We should live in a Christian theocracy.

Those who are not Christians can live in peace, but the laws they live under will be Biblical.  However, Muslims shouldn't expect much tolerance, for they are the enemy.  They will be driven out and should not expect mercy for they have long been oppressors of Christians. 

Christians can expect punishment if they reject Christ.  They will be discriminated against in employment and education, and if they spread their atheist heresy, they face arrest.

Women will live in their proper God-specified roles.  They wont be allowed to wear any provocative clothing, and be chaperoned by their husbands, fathers or brothers before they meet the right man to marry and have children.  Some may aspire to careers, but the new regime will favour mothers first.  Deviants who are homosexuals or lesbians will be arrested.

All children will be taught bible studies and that the literal biblical view of history is true.  This will include learning about the oppressors from other religions.  They will learn about the glory of the crusades and that dying for Jesus is a sacrifice that God understands and glorifies.

Peace and human rights activists from other countries will protest against those who do not appreciate the beauty of our society.  They will march opposing the aggressors who regard our rocket attacks on their legally recognised territory as a provocation that deserves attacks on our own people.  For once we have driven our those heretics from their "state" we will reunite our peoples under the banner of God.

You see we want a society of peaceful respect for God's laws.  We will not tolerate blasphemy against God, and will imprison those creating images of God and Jesus that are offensive, or making offensive remarks about our beliefs.  We will ban photos, movies, TV programmes, music and internet websites that are contrary to the teachings of the Bible.  We will ensure women know their place, and good Holy men are in charge of our government, our courts, our prisons and our schools.   We will ensure elections and democracy do not compromise our land of God, and ensure always there are governments under the guidance of the Bible, which we will consider to be a document alongside the constitution.

We are heartened by global peace activists and human rights activists who support us, in spite of our obvious differences in what we think are human rights.  We think women's place is specified by holy scripture, they let women be harlots and arrogantly think they can rule, or lead men.   We think homosexuals are filthy abominations, yet there are plenty of them supporting us.  We think atheists need re-education and help to find God, but many of them are atheists too.

Still, we are thrilled that the activists of the new-left peace movements across many countries don't think their heretical world view should be imposed upon our people.  Their solidarity with us, emboldens us to fire more rockets at the heathens, sacrifice more of our people for God and demonstrates to our people how righteous it is for us to defend and seek to expand our theocracy, God Willing, throughout our lands to the north and east.   They know that there cannot be peace unless others submit to the word of God, and we trust that when our friends and allies come to their lands, they too will call for understanding and dialogue, rather than oppression of our world view.

Their moral relativism, whereby the so-called "rights" of "religious freedom", "sexual equality" "gay rights" and "freedom of speech" they argue for, are not deemed applicable to our people, is perplexing, but I will leave it to my brothers in their lands to argue the soundness of absolute adherence to the Bible against the moral depravity seen in their lands.

We are willing to sacrifice men, women and children for our state of God, we are always glad to get support from others who will cheer on when our theocracy is complete, God Willing.

PS: Does all this mean there isn't a deep sense of horror and despair at what has been happening in Gaza? Of course not.   Does it mean unwavering support for Israel's policy towards the Palestinians?  No.  What it is, is a belief that they deserve freedom and basic individual rights too.  The worshippers of the death cult of Islamism not only lead away from that, but they want to bring us all down with them.