Left-wing politics lost the working man the moment it started caring about women and minorities.
In talk about Obama/Hillary I’ve seen the above claim a few times, never spelled out, but sitting there under the text. And I have to confess, it has a certain explanatory appeal.
But I am not a history expert, and I am suspicious of this claim that seems to imply that prejudice is endemic among working-class white men. I don’t think that’s true.
So, people who read this blog. Is that claim in italics nonsense? Or is there enough truth in there that it is of some value?
(Dastardly is a tremendously good word. I want to use it more often but the opportunity rarely presents itself.)
Category: Everything Political
Those Darn Extremists!
The Sunday Star-Times continues its delicate balance of being 95% useless and 5% exceptional, this time with a followup to the Thompson & Clark (TCIL) spying-on-protesters revelations of a few months back. (You may recall the glee with which I greeted the news that Gavin Clark had been outplayed at his own game by a complete novice.)
This article discusses one of the outputs of TCIL, a monthly report on activist comings and going named “National Extremism”. Of course, it’s just a compilation of public domain knowledge about environmental activists and the like. The example given in the article is hilariously indicative:
One item, for example, says “bio-diesel bus carrying the Be the Change Climate Rescue Tour arrives in Palmerston North fronted by environmental activist and Auckland Save Happy Valley member Jo McVeagh”. The tour, sponsored by Greenpeace, Oxfam and Forest and Bird, “aims to encourage individual New Zealanders throughout the country to make a personal contribution to combating climate change”. This “intelligence”, for which Maf had been paying $1000 per monthly report, was taken straight from a “Be the Change” press release. Thompson and Clark’s contribution was a comment about the bus’s bio-diesel a by-product of meat production “not [being] the smartest of choices for someone like McVeagh who wants to take the moral high ground” (presumably a reference to her assumed vegetarian beliefs).
As ridiculous as this all is, it would be a mistake to dismiss it. The spin the article takes is “look at your tax dollars being wasted”, and it is indeed an example of this, but that’s a sideshow to the real concerns here. What this report shows is the exercise of (capitalist) power to demonise those who are campaigning for a system that values something other than money.
Look at the title of the report for an example: environmental activists are, by definition, “extremists”, and the word “National” suggests how the interests of the coal industry (for example) are conflated with the good of the nation.
It would be unwise to assume that all the customers of this report endorse its aggressive framing of activist elements; I’m sure many, if not most, take it with a generous helping of salt. Nevertheless, they find enough value in it to purchase it, and that framing of ‘national extremism’ pervades the surrounding discourse. (For example, AgResearch and Genesis Energy, as mentioned in the article, put enough stock in TCIL to parrot their prepared lines to the media when questioned over the report.) In a wider context, the TCIL ‘national extremist’ frame is reflected in whole Urewera 8 ‘terrorist cell debacle.
In short, the problem is this: Those in power see those who question their actions as dangerous, not just to the powerful institutions themselves, but to the nation as a whole.
Luckily, New Zealand is small and heavily interconnected. It is hard to effectively demonise an Other when everyone is only a couple degrees of separation apart. The TCIL report reveals part of the hidden discourse of power but also shows how vulnerable it is to ridicule. Heck, our Powerful aren’t even that Powerful. While this problematic tendency has real and horrible consequences (again, look at the Urewera arrestees for an example), I suspect it is not strong enough to truly become widespread in the assumptions of those in positions of power. Other, larger, countries cannot be so confident.
In any case, TCIL are to be condemned, and their reports and the ludicrous framing they perpetuate must be held up for the nonsense they are. These frames don’t just misrepresent their subjects, they pervert the discussion of vital public issues and thereby the functioning of democracy itself. Thompson and Clark are buffoons, but they are buffoons who must be held publicly accountable for the consequences of their foolishness.
(see also No Right Turn on this)
(and also Mundens)
Act Party: Mostly Just Sad
The changeover of all Parliamentary offices so waste is sorted at peoples’ desks (into recyclable and non-recyclable) has met heavy resistance from, you guessed it, our party of personal responsibility, ACT New Zealand.
ACT office staff are in full revolt after being told by parliamentary bosses that they must take part because it is Government policy.
ACT leader Rodney Hide said it was an example of the “nanny state gone barking mad”…
In a show of defiance, some ACT staff have turned their recycling cubes into pen holders and are ignoring the instruction to sort their waste.
Full story, with dramatic photo of ACT leader Rodney Hide not recycling some paper
I guess in this case ACT figure that personal freedom trumps personal responsibility, right? Because that makes hella sense.
And they’re pushing the NZ political return of Roger Douglas to solve our economic ills, blithely ignoring that the man’s radical free market reforms in the 80s did incalculable damage to the country from which it’s only now starting to recover… See also Gordon Campbell’s excellent review of ‘Working With Lange’, Michael Bassett’s book on the Lange years that paints the Rogernome as a misunderstood genius held back by selfish fools… Michael Bassett is not much loved by me and this review just gives more confirmation that he’s vile and self-deluded, and we can apparently add ‘virulently misogynist’ to the list as well.
It’s all so very, very sad.
Obama
I used to think that there were no differences of substance between the Right and Left of U.S. politics, per Nader and John Ralston Saul. The election of Bush Jr. showed me that I was wrong.
Obama’s secured the Democratic party candidacy. Good. It is nice to see that the most powerful democracy in the world won’t spend nearly a quarter-century with presidents alternating from two dinner tables – twenty years is quite long enough.
Obama will be working with Elizabeth Edwards on healthcare. Good. Healthcare is a huge mess in the U.S., concerns about healthcare cross partisan lines like no other issue. Obama’s weakness on healthcare also sent many voters to Clinton, who was stronger on this issue (e.g. ).
The election will be messy and nasty. The Republican strategists were ready to go mean on Clinton – they’ve been building ammo on her for years. Obama is much trickier, a relative naif with little dirt in his backstory, and what dirt there is has been played out in the dem primary. They’re left with all the dogwhistle stuff – he’s black, his name’s Hussein, he’s a secret muslim. There will be a lot of this crazy insinuation coming through until the election hits – witness this astonishing Fox News characterisation of a standard-issue fist bump as a terrorist fist jab.
The election should be a walk for Obama. It won’t be, though, because the U.S. is not a sane environment and its political culture has been thoroughly debased. Nevertheless, I eagerly anticipate the first president of the U.S. who’s not a white dude. He can’t be any worse than the current office holder.
Roll on the new era.
Israel announces willingness to bomb Iran
Israel warns it will attack Iran:
“If Iran continues with its programme for developing nuclear weapons, we will attack it. The sanctions are ineffective,” Transport Minister Shaul Mofaz told the mass-circulation Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper. “Attacking Iran, in order to stop its nuclear plans, will be unavoidable.”
The strategy is not to actually start another war – there is no resource to invade and conquer Iran, and Iran’s not in a position to move outside its borders – but to create a diplomatic situation that will allow Israel to conduct a bombing campaign on Iran without censure from the rest of the world.
Israel is champing at the bit to do this, and they know there’s not a thing Iran can do to stop them or retaliate against them. But the diplomatic costs would be huge, still. A bit more fearmongering around Iran is necessary before this option really becomes viable.
Drinking Liberally 2
The second Drinking Liberally in Wellington happened last night. Michael Cullen, Finance Minister, came to talk on the back of his electoral-fighting budget – he spoke well about his background and the principles of social democracy, then took a bunch of questions which challenged him on his claims to being a Keynesian and asked about the Treaty resolution process, among other things. Before and after Cullen was mingling, and I was pleased to see a fair few faces there who were also at the one before, even though once again I couldn’t stick around much past 7pm.
It all felt a lot more sure of itself this time, it seemed that the mingling and conversation which was so hesitant at the first one was pretty engaged this time out. All as it should be – the concept is a perfect fit for a small capital city with a strong liberal base and plenty of bars… It was promising, and I’ll be along again, hopefully to get some solid chatter time in for a change.
Our Public Discourse
This profile of a persistent tagger generated over 100 comments. The first 100 break down into the following general response types:
- Serious punishment (imprisonment, deportation or direct violent retribution)
- Other punishment (cutting off benefit, etc.)
- Insulting the tagger with no other comment (waster, moron, loser, etc.)
- Looking for a positive way of working with him
Merging the “other punishment” category with the “insults” category (to represent negative affect without any specific demand for serious punishment) gives this distribution:
On Wednesday, briefly
Wednesday gave me much to post about but I didn’t post about it because Thursday was a dog of a day, by which I mean, it was very busy, in the way that dogs are busy, with their sniffy noses and waggedy tails and the bounding.
Briefly then:
I went to Drinking Liberally – the debut get-together of liberal-type people to drink and chat and network and so on. I found it to be full of potential, even if most people there were clearly devoid of the right social script to go to. Anyway, mundens has the overview, go check his account for more. Fortnightly on Thursdays from now on, worth a look if you’re that way inclined.
And I went to the 48 Hr Film Fest heat to see the premiere of our Jenni’s Angels film, Borkhard Hates You Too. It was fun. And VISUALLY AWESOME. Again, mundens has the scoop.
And I did other stuff that was busy but not blog-interesting, so I’ll spare you.
Food Prices and NZ Politics
There’s a global food shortage right now. A bunch of reasons, many of which were discussed here in a Nov 07 Guardian article – according to a UN statement at that time, the shortage is due to oil price increases, demand for biofuels, weather effects and increased demand from India and China.
It’s an election year in New Zealand, and there’s definitely a mood for change – a fourth 3-year term with Labour leading the government has never been likely. The food shortage here is being framed as a domestic issue as much, if not more, than a global one – Labour is failing to keep the price of cheese to an acceptable level!
What I want to know, and have been unable to discern, is how the specific NZ situation relates to the global situation. Does our government bear some responsibility for the food price increases here? If so, what aspects, and how do they interact with the global environment?
I’m genuinely asking, because I genuinely don’t know and this seems pretty important to me. Maybe there has been media discussion of this very topic – but if so, I haven’t seen it.
Rob Gilchrist: Respect, That Man
The headlines should read “Arrogant Private Eye Outspied By Novice.”
More genius journalism from Nicky Hager, whose reputation and wide net of sources continue to do him proud. The Private Investigation firm Thompson and Clark Investigations (TCIL) is rightly in the firing line for again trying to recruit a spy in activist circles (I wrote about the last instance of this too). It seems likely Solid Energy is again involved, against direct instruction from the government, so there’s going to be some chaos out of this.
The best bit is how it went down. Rob Gilchrist, a Christchurch guy with some links into these groups, was approached by Gavin Clark and a pitch was made for him to start spying for TCIL. Gilchrist played along, set up a second meet, and brought along a tape recorder. He then recorded Clark’s recruitment attempts on three separate occasions, feeding the info to Hager who broke the story on Sunday.
Ordinary guy Rob Gilchrist outplayed professional PI Gavin Clark at his own game. That fills me with glee.
Clark, as quoted in Hager’s article, trying to butter up Gilchrist and ending up chumping himself:
I can see exactly where you’re coming from, and I think it’s good you’ve got social values; you know, things that keep things in check. But sometimes people’s ideas are so extreme that, you know, I don’t know if the world could sustain a population of all vegans. We’d be overpopulated.
Oh, my, I’m laughing again. What a buffoon. If it wasn’t a reprehensible action by a determined resident of the ethical sewer, sourced in the large-scale villainy of Solid Energy’s reactionary culture, and continuing despite every possible ordinary restraint, then the hilarity wouldn’t taste so damn bitter.