Category: Everything Political

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:

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.

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.

“Why is it… some people buy 20 properties a year and others only buy 1?”
There’s an ad in the ‘entertainment’ section of Wellington freebie the Capital Times this week: “How to profit from property!” It’s advertising an upcoming seminar and, cod-socialist that I am, every word in the advertisement makes my hackles rise.
“NZs Largest Propety Success Program to Property Climbers!”
“Learn the secrets ONLY 6% of investors know that gives them success where many others fail!”
“You will never win the race of wealth riding on a donkey!”
The seminar is from a “Richmastery“, a property investment services company based out of Auckland. Their website promises a long and costly process of induction into their secret techniques, culminating in the slightly spooky inner circle:

STEP 8. Presidential Inner Circle
The Presidential Inner Circle is a unique and exclusive opportunity that is strictly limited to fifty serious members worldwide who will experience a range of privileges, access and discovery that is unattainable outside of this selected private group. This group is about Fun, Discovery, Learning and Access at the Highest levels.

They even have their own website: http://www.presidentialinnercircle.com/. There are some great photos of last weekend’s “Ferrari and Porsche day”.
Anyway. I don’t have any grand purpose here other than saying “Look at that!” and pointing. If it reminds you of Amway or Landmark or even Scientology, that’s no mistake, this is just another iteration of the same tried and tested techniques for sucking people in. And I surely don’t have to remind anyone in NZ of the havoc wreaked socially by the rise in investment property.
“Imagine how much faster your personal wealth accumulation could be with this information!”
Bah, humbug. I’m going to catch the bus to work now.

I’m going to the UK in August. 24 hours in a flying tin can for me (each way). And yet. I worry about climate change. I esteem George Monbiot, who says not flying is the single most significant thing one can do to help avert climate change. My moral heuristic is Kant’s categorical imperative: do as you would have everyone do. I even co-ordinate a teaching programme about the gap between attitudes and behaviour in the environmental context.
All this, and I fly to the UK.
I’m going over for the wedding of one of my oldest and closest friends. If there is ever a reason to travel the world, surely this would be it? But on the other hand, I know my friend would understand if I didn’t go. If our friendship means anything, it is respect for one anothers’ principles. Besides, I have a lot of very close friends all around the world. There will always be events of significance out there.
But there are flights going all the time. What’s one seat on one flight going to do? It’s not like they’d cancel the flight if I wasn’t on it, right? But any decision anyone makes has social consequences. If I didn’t go, then that would contribute to social perception of air travel. Me not going might nudge a few other people closer to thinking, yeah, if I’m serious about climate change I’m not going to make that sort of trip. And if they made similar decisions, so it would spread further. Me going has the opposite effect – someone whose conscience is nagging them, like mine did me, can think “well morgue always talks about climate change but he flew around the world just the same”. And maybe that will hold them back.
The big problem in climate change is corporate and government activity, individual carbon output is just a sideshow and worrying about it is useless. But corporate and government activity happens in the social matrix. All the stuff about social influence above applies here as well. The big powers will only change when there’s a mass of public sentiment demanding it, and if I believe that then isn’t it incumbent on me to be part of the demanding public?
Well, just buy come carbon offset and consider yourself in balance. Maybe. I’m suspicious of carbon offset schemes because of the time lag – they promise to pay back your carbon output in the future, but the problem is worsening now and timescales for change are short.
So am I a hypocrite? Yeah, I think I am. And there’s not much I can do about that except acknowledge it. So bear it in mind whenever I talk about this stuff – I’m just an ordinary hypocrite like everyone else. And I’m sure looking forward to the UK.

Glenn Greenwald (18 March) on Barack Obama’s “A More Perfect Union” address:

The entire premise of Barack Obama’s candidacy is… that Americans are not only able, but eager, to participate in a more elevated and reasoned political discourse… But in Obama’s faith in the average American voter lies one of the greatest weaknesses of his campaign. His faith in the ability and willingness of Americans to rise above manipulative political tactics seems drastically to understate both the efficacy of such tactics and the deafening amplification they receive from our establishment press.

The Times of London (21 March):

Polls show Barack Obama damaged by link to Reverend Jeremiah Wright
Barack Obama has been significantly damaged by the controversy over his pastor’s inflammatory remarks and the issue has become a serious threat to his presidential ambitions, polls suggest.
The surveys released yesterday point to an erosion of Mr Obama’s support among independents, a bloc that has previously backed him in overwhelming numbers, and particular alienation among white, working-class voters who will be critical to the general election in November.
They appear disturbed by the Illinois senator’s refusal to disown the Rev Jeremiah Wright in a keynote speech he delivered on Tuesday…

Kiwi equestrian gold-medal winner Mark Todd’s comments that if he went to Beijing he’d make some kind of protest against China’s abhorrent actions in Tibet are a sign of an undercurrent of concern that athletes around the world must be feeling.
It would be wrong to take Todd’s comments as too much of a sign – he’s an atypical case, an older athlete making an unexpected comeback at the twilight of his career and already with some gold in his closet – surely he has less to lose from official censure than the vast majority of young competitors. Additionally, it’s plain from the article that his comments were dug out by an enterprising reporter, rather than something Todd had intended to say. Still, Todd knows about the media and knew what he was doing. And the questions he answered will keep coming, everywhere around the world.
The current violence in Tibet, where an absence of free information flow is apparently concealing brutal state repression and perhaps the murder of citizens, is already casting a shadow over the games. For us in the West, Tibet is China’s greatest PR disaster, and the Olympics its greatest PR coup. The appeal to draw these two storylines together will prove irresistible to the world media.
China has already put pressure on governments to ask their athletes to sign a pledge not to speak about politics at the game. A number of athletes have spoken out saying they don’t intend to engage with politics at all. But that’s only to be expected; it would be an athlete with poor survival instincts, or a special case like Todd, who announces now their intent to cause a stir in Beijing.
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.

Padraig O’Bama
Hillary calls herself “the mutant candidate.” As in, the X-Men.
From The Morgue: Being Informed, So You Don’t Want To Be.

Two Palestinian gunmen have opened fire in a Jewish religious school in Jerusalem, killing at least eight people and wounding 20.
A school? I have no words.