Category: Everything Political

[Starting to get back into the groove of life. There may be blog.]
This one I got wrong: “There is a moral dimension to the Olympics, and I expect it to come to the fore in Beijing. It won’t be the first time there’s been a memorable protest under the five rings.”
There was barely a murmur of political protest from the athletes during this Olympiad. I am still surprised, given the massive conflicts that raged over the torch run, and the widespread awareness and popularity of the Tibet cause if nothing else. It was as if everyone who turned up just wanted to do their sporty and enjoy the atmosphere in the Olympic village! (Cue the usual run of media stories about how everyone is shagging everyone else in athlete-town.) Where, I ask, was their political consciousness?
In retrospect it isn’t so surprising. It is absolutely clear that China put on a wonderful Games, and the athletes were entirely caught up in it, with helpful people everywhere and a massive enthusiasm from the locals to show off their country to the world and win many, many medals. It was a brilliant games to watch, as well – any games that gives you both a Michael Phelps and a Usain Bolt is one to be cherished. Like so many other people, I don’t really give a toss about 99% of the Olympic sports at any other time, but the festival nature of the Olympics and the sheer global commitment to excellence gets me every time.
So I can understand any athlete with a political mission letting it slide in the face of this excellent welcome. For an athlete at this level, the politics can only ever be distantly second to the sport, and its easy to see that distant second fading away into obscurity. So it turned out to be a happy games, despite the occasional sour note that reverberated with deeply unpleasant power – the lip-synch little girl for one. Media in the UK didn’t shy away from hinting at China’s political failings, but also never went beyond insinuation. Everyone walked away exhilirated and smiling, and in fact there is something deeply encouraging in the embrace of the Chinese by the world when so often they are vilified or even feared in other countries.
This, then, was China’s coming out party into the 21st century world with a new social prominence to match its economic and political prominence. The Beijing Olympiad shows, unnervingly, just how functional a massive oppressive state can be when it marries itself to global capital. This is a model of the future; unlike Soviet Russia, whose communism was probably destined to collapse in upon itself sooner rather than later, China shows no cracks and I can fully believe it will be standing strong with this exact model of state management in a century’s time, or longer. It has embraced the systems in the rest of the world that don’t care about human rights, and in so doing has immunised itself from those systems that do care. It has had its coming out party, and it won’t be going inside again.

In December 2006, the United Nations adopted a major new human rights treaty aimed at preventing and punishing enforced disappearance.
New Zealand didn’t sign it.
You can help change this.

NZ political blogger Idiot/Savant of No Right Turn has launched a short, sharp campaign to petition the government to sign.
Unsurprisingly, given my affection for Amnesty International as a favoured charity, I support this goal wholeheartedly. I would really appreciate it if you download a copy of the petition, walk it around your workplace and get folk to sign it.
If you’ve never felt entirely up to speed on political disappearance and “the disappeared”, there’s a good overview on wikipedia. The list of places with well-known incidents includes Iran, Nazi Germany, Chechnya and Northern Ireland. It is a practice that undermines the most basic aspects of being human, let alone its terrible consequences for freedom and human rights. I believe the government should become a signatory to this new treaty.
I/S has set up a page for the campaign with further information.

More from the amusing circus that is NZ politics and media: front page of the newspaper of our capital city, The Dominion Post, is this article by Phil Kitchin. Key quote:

Contacted for comment yesterday, Winston Peters said: “Phil, I told you I’m not talking to a lying wanker like you. See you.” He then hung up.

Foreign types might ask, who is Winston Peters? He is our nation’s Foreign Minister. He is the dude we send to meet the dignitaries. He shakes the hand of your President or Prime Minister, he is that guy, and that is how he rolls here. Ooh yeah.
New Zealand is very proud.

Many Wellingtonians will now have heard that friends-of-this-blog Dave and Urs were at the Knoxville, Tennessee church that was attacked by a man with a gun a few days ago.
The man wrote a letter claiming that he was attacking the church because liberals and gays were destroying the country. While there is certainly more to the story, it is clear that the rhetoric of the right-wing media provided him with a structure and a rationale for his attack.
It seems to me that this is the inevitable result of a media environment in which it is okay to joke about assassinating a liberal candidate for the presidency, in which an extreme bigot is called kind and decent by the President and venerated in the media after his death, where a high-profile media figure explicitly identifies liberals as internal enemies, where countless slurs and attacks on left-wing views are broadcast and repeated daily.
There is a huge media machine working feverishly to create hatred towards liberals. How then can this violence really be any kind of surprise?
Dave, Urs, much love.

Its Maori Language Week again, and as always its a pleasure to see our second (of three) official language get some time in the sun. Dutiful shout-out to Maori TV, which continues to pump out great homespun programming on a ridiculously tiny budget, and has become both part of the furniture and a respected and appreciated channel even for us Pakeha. Nice one.
Student mag Salient has run its traditional issue almost entirely in Maori (next week, like every year, will be a dozen letters abusing the editors for this) and it includes a little gem of an interview with the Maori Party’s bovver boy in Parliament, Hone Harawira. (Quote sanitised so it isn’t blocked by the autofilters at some folks’ workplaces.)

It’s different here. The reason why it’s different here is that there’s not an indigenous person in the world as stroppy as your f===in Maori. Dare anybody try and ignore us mate. You know what it’s like aye? Anybody blink badly in your… f===in pound them… when I was marching aye we just wouldn’t stand for it. I’ve been to Hawaii… they’re a lovely people the Hawaiian people. I see them accept things that we wouldn’t stand for over here aye. I say, ‘…F=== me! If anybody tried that to me at home I’d f===in drop him…’

I love the New Zealand Parliament under proportional representation, I really do.
Also this week, Google is adding Maori to its display languages, alongside such other native tongues as “Klingon” and “Elmer Fudd”. I just tried to change my preferences in honour of the week but it isn’t live yet. Neato.
(And maybe next year I’ll even try to learn some reo. That’d be good.)

The UK papers and the rightysphere are all talking about David Cameron’s big speech in which he says we need to stop making excuses for fat people and poor people and criminals and recognise that they have made choices to be the way they are.

“We as a society have been far too sensitive. In order to avoid injury to people’s feelings, in order to avoid appearing judgemental, we have failed to say what needs to be said. We have seen a decades-long erosion of responsibility, of social virtue, of self-discipline, respect for others, deferring gratification instead of instant gratification.
“Instead we prefer moral neutrality, a refusal to make judgments about what is good and bad behaviour, right and wrong behaviour. Bad. Good. Right. Wrong. These are words that our political system and our public sector scarcely dare use any more.”

There’s so much packed into these short paragraphs that its quite impressive. Its a very well-crafted speech that repackages all the talkback shibboleths as if they were something statesmanlike. I could write for ages about the way these ideas are packaged so shrewdly – note the sleight of hand in this next excerpt that equates “risk of obesity” to “risk of poverty” as if these were equivalent.

Refusing to use these words – right and wrong – means a denial of personal responsibility and the concept of a moral choice.
We talk about people being ‘at risk of obesity’ instead of talking about people who eat too much and take too little exercise. We talk about people being at risk of poverty, or social exclusion: it’s as if these things – obesity, alcohol abuse, drug addiction – are purely external events like a plague or bad weather.
Of course, circumstances – where you are born, your neighbourhood, your school, and the choices your parents make – have a huge impact. But social problems are often the consequence of the choices that people make.

The biggest problem with this emphasis on individual choice and individual responsibility is simply this – it doesn’t get you anywhere. If we conceive of social problems through a lens of personal choice, then right out of the gate we’re drastically limiting our ability as a society to respond to them. Instead of interrogating circumstances and environment and contributing factors, we focus on choice, and the incentives and disincentives that act on it.
And this even though we know full well that choices are made in ways far from the rational. To pretend otherwise is to deny what it is to be human. If we focus on social change in terms of choice we are doubly hampered, firstly because we are limiting our range of responses to “provide incentives” and “provide disincentives”; and secondly because the incentives and disincentives we can provide are profoundly weak. Our choices, when they are the product of reflection and weighing up of incentives and disincentives, will pay little attention to external impositions by the state. Far more important are influences from friends, neighbours, parents – the people you live among whose opinions will affect you each and every day. To believe that ASBOs have had any impact on the behaviour of your typical disaffected yoof goes so far beyond wishful thinking it lands in the realm of ritualised sympathetic magic. (Failed magic, I might add.)
Cameron likely made this speech to put his “hug a hoodie” comments behind him and to make a pass at populist intolerance while Labour support has collapsed too much to benefit. It will certainly give him a big bump in his popularity, and it is entirely in step with the overall project of the right. And it’s a shame. This is basically a retreat from the complexity of the real world into a deeply naive social science. These unhelpful ideas are already virulent enough without being dignified with this kind of high-profile promotion.
(I feel I should note, in case of misunderstanding – yes, personal choice plays a role in behaviour, and yes, incentives and disincentives can affect personal behaviour. My point is, that is an incredibly narrow understanding of the complexities of why a person, or a society, behave the way they do.)