In lieu of the results of the small poll i’ve left up over the last week I’m going to start updating regularly. I’ll be updating once a week. Sundays AEST. Which tends to be a Saturday for North Americans.
That said, I may update with greater frequency if something comes up I just can’t wait to publish.
Thanks, I look forward to my next post on Sunday.
Tim.
One of the many problems we have faced in the modern day is the one that essentially, Cats are overpopulated and when they breed, it can lead to many strays, and many left in cages at the vets and other similar things.
However! The good folks have PETA have come up with a brilliant plan to save cats. I recently discovered thatCats actually live at sea! Yes! It is amazing really, who would have thunk it? These so called, sea kittens, are apparantly dying out too.
So here is my plan. We shall take the excess cats, and throw them out to sea! This shall solve our problems. The sea kittens can repopulate, and the land ones can find a new home away from the terrible cages at the vets, away from struggling to get by in the city as a stray.
Source: http://www.peta.org/sea_kittens/
Do your part to save the sea-kittens, and the cats, and dump a cat near you into a beach near you. PETA is counting on you!
That’s right. Wherever the individual may have come from, if they spend a length of time in forced sex slavery within the borders of another country they definitely deserve to be allowed to stay should they wish it.
The Australian published an article on it, here;
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,24757554-28737,00.html
So far the Department of Immigration, which often discovers the potential victims, has come across 258 women suspected of being victims of trafficking. But only 17 women have been granted temporary witness protection visas, which last for three years. After that, a permanent visa will be granted if the woman satisfies the Government’s criteria, including the belief that they would be in danger if returned to their homeland. Until now, none of those have been granted. Seven women have been granted other visas, including humanitarian visas.
The Howard government spent millions of dollars fighting trafficking and in 2004 introduced a new trafficking visa framework.
But as a policy proposal put to the Rudd Government by the Catalyst Advocacy Network earlier this year argues, the visa framework should be dependent on whether the woman is a genuine victim of trafficking, not on her ability to give witness evidence.
It is absolutely unacceptable that individuals who have suffered so much in our own country have such a small chance, seven in two-hundred and fifty-eight, to get a permanent visa. I understand that there are concerns, such as using it as a loophole to get into the country* or the background of the individuals who were slaves here before their time as a slave, and even the risk of them simply falling back into prostitution.
*One woman who had worked as a prostitute in Thailand for 10 years before coming to Australia to to work in the same industry, admitted that she had told lies about being locked up as a sex slave.
But, do we not owe these indivuduals some sort of compensation? No, we did not capture them, but we did let the smugglers get in. No, we did not force her to have sex against her will, but we did purchase her services. Then, when she gets out of the hell hole that is sex slavery, we kick her out unless she has the courage to prosecute the same men who spent who-knows-how-long beating and raping her?
Things like this are very, very unfortunate, and I hope that the Rudd government improves on Howards policy.
Also, I’d like to take the opportunity to applaud the following;
But in a significant win earlier this year, the High Court upheld the conviction of a Melbourne madam who became the first person in Australia found guilty of sexual slavery. It was a landmark judgment that defines the conditions of modern-day slavery. The decision meant former Brunswick brothel owner Wei Tang, 46, was returned to jail to finish the 10-year sentence she received in 2006 when convicted of keeping five Thai women as sex slaves.
Although, I feel ten years is far too little for sex slavers, I am glad that people will be brought to justice for such oppression.
First of all an apology for the late publish of my normally Sunday article.
What is the point of having a government?
Well, different people will tell you different things such as ‘promote equality’, ‘Protect the nation’, ‘Promote opportunity’, ‘Protect a culture’, etc. Personally, I would describe the purpose of government as having to unfailingly serve the people.
The reason the government should unfailingly serve the people is rather simple; The government receives all of its benefits, without exception, from the people. It exists through the support of the people, it protects itself with the help of the people, its economy grows thanks to the people, its successes and failures, inevitably, are tied to the status of the people. Thus it is in a permanent debt to the people.
So how do we create a government that unfailingly serves its masters?
This is achievable through a few methods. Importantly, I think one of the methods is democracy. If the majority of the people that serve the government want something, what right does the government, who owes the people to its existence, have to say ‘no’? Actually, I would go so far as to say that the only reason the government can refuse the desires of its people, is if the government is protecting other people that it owes a debt too. Which makes the supreme court absolutely imperative to responsible government.
Also, I’d like to add compulsory voting. A controversial subject, but in my experience as an Australian, and comparison to examples of voluntary voting (we could draw on the Gore-Bush 2000 election bungle as a prime example) we see that only through compulsory voting can a government successfully address the desires of the people, and be responsible to it.
Transparency is the final major issue I’d like to bring up as the purpose of government. Apart from issues of serious national security and each individuals’ right to privacy, it is absolutely necessary that a government remain as transparent as possible. This means that the people will truly know what is going on with their powers, and furthermore, holds the government accountable to all of its actions.
So, what then is the ideal government? It is a democratic one, with compulsory voting and a high degree of transparency. Only through this will the government be truly a servant of the people. Lacking even one of these gives it routes and ways to overcome or ignore the desires of the population.
Yet, pragmatism is required. For when the government answers the people, and as the people listen to the media, the media then has total (as opposed to substantial) control over the government. For this reason, I question my ideal in the current world context.
Read on another blog, here: http://ourcognitivesurplus.com/2008/11/25/no-bipartisan-support-for-internet-censorship/
and they also link to the Liberal Party website, here: http://www.liberal.org.au/news.php?Id=2155
That Conroy’s plan to censor the internet will almost certainly either fail, or be reduced to something negligible (say, opt-in) thanks to Senator Minchin settling on opposing the plan.
So in this I celebrate. Forgive this blogger for the self-reference.
Slightly old news, but I decided to give my piece on this particular development in British politics.
Indeed the exposition of British National Party membership lists has caused a lot of controversy, including here in Australia, and led to the sacking of a British Radio host, and it also became known British MX1 motocross champion Billy McKenzie was a member.
Now, I’m no supporter of the stench of racism that surrounds this party, nor am I a supporter of the far right by any stretch of the imagination, yet I find the public witch hunt absolutely tasteless.
In free speech countries, that is, truly free speech countries, people are accepted of any denomination. As unfortunate as it is that an angry, anti-immigration party like the BNP not only exists, but thrives as a major player in Britains third tier of political parties, it is none the less evident of serious troubles facing the Western Nation, and probably the world. To condemn the BNP and kick them to the backwaters because they have skinhead positions is to commit the same crime they wish to; to discriminate.
The perhaps best comment I could find on the story was by The Australian newspaper, a preferred source of mine, here: http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,24686179-2703,00.html
Here, the information provided suggests that Gordon Brown is going to legally allow unions to ban BNP members from their organisations because they belong to the BNP. It’s frightening, disgusting, even, that someone in a modern western nation faces persecution for belonging to the far right.
So, joining in the public condemnation of the paranoid policy of the BNP, I must instead side with it on the case for its place in politics. For even if it is trerribly, terribly wrong, the British National Party deserves to exist in a nation of free speech.
So today I’ll try and tackle one of those big and messy issues. I do so because this was one of the questions on an exam I had recently (Solving world poverty 
) and it got me thinking, this is the fruits of my research and formulation of opinion. This happens to be especially long, but I invite anyone to read any or all of it and respond accordingly, I’d like to have this position fleshed out well before I start throwing it about whenever the topic gets brought up.
Overview & Introduction-
First of all, can I say that I am of the opinion that though noble, charity organisations can often find themselves squandering money on pointless things, or things that only benefit the poor temporarily, or losing money to corruption (especially when it is simply given to a target poor nation). Also, I am of the opinion that though noble, the microfinancing organisations, Grameen bank being the key leader, it is essentially a for-profit organisation, and many families that take the microfinance option often find themselves in debt traps. The best example of this opinion I could find is perhaps Sudhirendar Sharma who takes this position here: http://www.hinduonnet.com/businessline/2002/09/25/stories/2002092500810900.htm
He articulates well the troubles faced by the Grameen Banks clients.
On to the solution. Now, it may seem blatantly obvious, however, countries with the least poverty are actually ‘rich’ countries. Countries that have a high GDP (e.g. the United States), countries whose citizens are richest (e.g. Norway) and the like, are countries whose population are least suffering of poverty, and have the highest living standards alike. Following with this theory, countries that are poor (African nations, especially Zimbabwe) and Corrupt (Zimbabwe again serves as an ideal example) as well as lacking a free market (USSR until collapse, North Korea, etc) are the highest in poverty.
So why then have the main efforts to reduce world poverty been intrinsically tied to the grassroots of the perverse world. Charities, who provide on-the-ground relief, onl provide the poor with the food to survive, not the intellectual property to prosper, or the money to invest, and microfinance only consolidates the debt that the poor recieve.
Instead, the best option to tackle world poverty would be the elimination of corruption and the opening of free trade. Yes, the worlds poorest nations have a funny problem, most of them rely on the infamous, and heavilky protected agriculture industry. The only country I can think of which relies heavily on its agriculture and still made it to the first world is the rather uniquely positioned Australia, Perhaps you could also count the USA.
Elimination of Corruption-
When you ask people how to correctly establish a transparent, honest government into power, you will mostly get two groups. The Cold War dubbed these groups ‘Hawks’ and ‘Doves’, people who provide War as a solution, and people who provide peace as a solution.
The residual Hawks have dominated the US government since they claimed victory against the Doves for Reagans toughness policy collapsing the USSR, and the modern ‘Hawk’ is perhaps the Neo-Conservative, or at least the individual who supports either or both Afghanistan and Iraq wars. It is this plicy which attacks corruption with brutal force, followed up by the installation of a new government friendly to the army that installed it. Yet this policy has proven rather fallacious. We can see that forcefully installed governments lack popular support and often find themselves in dire straights. That is, if we look at Soviet Hungary, or Yugislavia for that matter, we can see unpopularly enforced regimes tumbling down thanks to the Hawk-like nature of their establishment.
So what’s wrong with Doves? Doves, unlike Hawks, advertise negotiation and the application of soft power in order to promote the goals of the nation the Dove supports. Doves brought about Nuclear Proliferation treaties, Doves brought about cease fires during wars, but when do Doves actually remove a corrupt government? Dove solutions make inroads, but eliminating world poverty does not require inroads, Dove solutions require concessions too, and making concessions to corrupt governments is not the best way to appear like the infallible good guy. If the North Korea experiment taught us anything, it was that concessions are not always adhered too, either.
So here is an idea. An idea neither dove nor Hawk, though arguably Hawkish in nature.
As history has proven, the most successful governments, the ones found most popular, most supported, and most likely to work for the good of the people, are the ones backed by the people. Albeit Marxist, the best solution for eliminating world corruption, is to let the corrupt governments topple when their people revolt. The astute United States President does not need to trample down the doors of Hussein’s fort while heroically yelling ‘I’ll save you!’, and nor does it need to timidly ask for the right to inspect the corrupt governments institutions or elections. When the people, the population within the borders of the corrupt government get sick of being stomped on, sick of the Orwellian style oppression, they will inevitably mass together and rebel. This is the chance for the USA, for the UN to act. Capitalise on the peoples movement and fund them, back them, even provide troop support for them (if they want it and only if) but there is absolutely no need to start the war for them. We can see how these revolutions work. The Georgian Rose Revolution, the East Timor rebellion, the collapse of the Berlin Wall, the establishment of the United States after civil war. All of them were inevitably successful thanks to the popular backing of the people, all were distinctly lacking in corruption (Though Georgia admittedly has its own significant problems). So why should we not adopt a strategy not of ‘Push the domino’ but ‘help it fall’.
Note though, that the most troublesome aspect of this policy is that ideology is a risk. When governments choose to back or counter a popular revolution for ideological reasons, trouble always ensues. The Nicaraguan Contras vs Sandinistas civil war is an ideal example of this. The ‘Contras’ which means ‘Counter’ in English I believe, committed as many atrocities as their popular opponents. So ideally, but it is probably well beyond any reasonable expectation, it would be the responsibility of the honest governments to support the popular movement, and not become the ideological warrior.
Further, casting ideology-based embargoes around like there is no tomorrow does not work either. Popular leaders Hugo Chavez and Fidel (now Raul) Castro have4 proven the resilience of popular governments, no matter how significant the economic pressure is. Thus, when adopting this strategy, the applicant must be patient, focussing punishment on unpopular governments only.
Post-Corruption-
After the despotic governments are removed, there is a significant development to acknowledge. When a new government is formed, they will always succeed if they are backed by the most powerful governments, no matter who surrounds them. Israel is the perfect example of this. So, every time a revolution is undertaken and succeeds, whatever the popular movement replaces the corrupt previous government with, reward them. Lift agricultural trade barriers, open them up to offers of forgetting debt, etc, and the new government will thrive. It’s proven to work. This leads to a richer country. A richer country, when not corrupt, as logically concluded earlier, is less in poverty.
Thus Free Trade arrives as the next step. We, as people, need to lift trade barriers to the new, non-corrupt nations with popular backing, thus allowing the new nation, or new government to thrive in its existence.
Conclusion-
Ultimately, I find this to be the best way to solve world poverty. Focussing on the core functions of soft and hard power and using them only in tandem with popular movements rather than either busting down doors, or timidly approaching the corrupt individuals, and opening up trade only after corruption is eliminated, rather than offering lowest-level support which does nothing, or offering them even greater albeit consolidated debt cycles.
For those who are not painfully aware, the newly elected Australian Labor Party government has a platform. The platform of course, is ‘introduce a global, unavoidable internet censorship filter to Australian Internet’. The Labor party, which censors its own members from publicly speaking out against the party, has decided that its policy might work on Australia as a whole, I suppose.
Like all who strip freedoms from people, Conroy and Rudd have hidden behind the morals card, saying that Child Pornography is the basis of the filter, yet even as the Greens question him in parliament he has to qualify this with ‘and other undesirable content’.
Senator Conroy, what is ‘undesirable content’ ?
An interesting article was brought to my attention, and serves to illustrate just how pointless this idea of ‘internet filtering’ is. This is from the Sydney Morning Herald, and is referring to Managing Director of iinet Michael Malone.
Link Here: http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2008/11/11/1226318639085.html
Michael Malone, managing director iiNet, said he would sign up to be involved in the “ridiculous” trials, which are scheduled to commence by December 24 this year.
…
But Malone’s main purpose was to provide the Government with “hard numbers” demonstrating “how stupid it is” – specifically that the filtering system would not work, would be patently simple to bypass, would not filter peer-to-peer traffic and would significantly degrade network speeds.
“They’re not listening to the experts, they’re not listening to the industry, they’re not listening to consumers, so perhaps some hard numbers will actually help,” he said.
“Every time a kid manages to get through this filter, we’ll be publicising it and every time it blocks legitimate content, we’ll be publicising it.”
Malone concluded: “This is the worst Communications Minister we’ve had in the 15 years since the [internet] industry has existed.”
That’s right, consumers, experts, and the industry are telling Conroy to bugger off, telling him it will slow the internet down by as much as 83%, telling him that tax payer money is going to be wasted, that the filter is unworkable, flawed, telling him to let us opt in if we want rather than not be able to opt out at all, telling him that the Australian internet has more important problems to fix. Yet senator Conroy every day speaks out in favour of this plan, ignoring the criticism, ignoring the opposition, the facts, the people, the experts. What has happened to the so called working class party, the so-called Labor Party?
Disaffected with them, I turned to the only man who can stand in this bills way now. Senator Nick Minchin. I sent him an email that implored, nay, almost begged him to oppose it. In typical Liberal style, and with the populist strategy adopted by the Liberal party in mind, Senator Minchin uttered this feeble dodging response:
Thank you for your email in which you express your views in relation to the
Federal Government’s plans to introduce a mandatory internet filtering
system in this country.
There are many concerns in the community both about the effect of this
measure on system performance and the manner in which a blanket arbitrary
determination about web content will be imposed by the Government.
Internet Service Providers are also understandably concerned about the
impact that Labor’s scheme will have on business.
The Coalition fully supports guarding our children from being exposed to
inappropriate internet content, and is of the firm belief that parental and adult
supervision and guidance should be front and centre of all efforts.
We also believe that in relation to criminal conduct online, our nation’s law
enforcement bodies should be adequately resourced to monitor and
investigate unlawful activity.
On 28 July, the Government announced it was seeking expressions of interest
for participants in a live pilot trial for its filtering concept after conducting
limited laboratory tests.
The Coalition will monitor the progress of this trial with great interest and
make a considered assessment based on its outcomes. This will include
analysis of the specifications and performance of the filtering methods tested.
Thank you again for taking the time to express your views on this issue,
which will be taken into account when the Coalition makes its final
assessment of the Government’s plan.
Yours sincerely
NICK MINCHIN
This was the Minchin position as of the 24th of October. Today, I sent another email to Malcolm Turnbull, who no longer has just emerged as leader and can no longer simply disregard my queries as too early for him to say due to his newly attained position. I fear however, he is more interested in hammering the Labor party for the blank-cheque support it gave to Australian Banks rather than a meagre internet censorship policy.
All I can do now, all the Australian people can do now, is wait for these ‘tests’. Wait for Minchin to put his glass of water down and speak up. I can only hope he isn’t in the pockets of some evil anti-freedom group, like say the Australian Christian Lobby, who decided that ‘illegal hard-core material’ needed to be removed by restricting the Internet.
Source: http://www.acl.org.au/national/browse.stw?article_id=25174
Bah. At least the Greens have spoken up about it. That means Labor will only pass the bill if the Liberal Party passes it. I hope it fails, and I hope the resounding message ousts Conroy at the next senate elections. I hope.
As mentioned in the previous post, the leader of the New Zealand National Party, and now the Prime Minister-Elect, made a curious statement in a televised debate with his predecessor. He said “What is the point when New Zealand is such a tiny part of world emissions, point four percent”.
Link is here: http://nz.youtube.com/watch?v=NiOQupvP8wE (cited statements at 6:00)
First of all, can I say that 0.4% of global carbon emissions is huge for New Zealand, also can I point out that minutes earlier Mr. Key decided that New Zealand emissions were terrible and rising rather than stabilising.
New Zealands population is four million one hundred and fifteen thousand (4,415,000). The worlds is Six Billion, six hundred and two million, two hundred and twenty-four thousand people (6,602,224,000). So what’s the percentage of the population that New Zealand accounts for?
0.06%.
Zero point zero six percent.
That means New Zealand is punching out emissions almost seven times it’s population weight.
John Key. New Zealand must reduce emissions.
The resounding results of the New Zealand election were against the New Zealand Labour party.
The Party’s of Helen Clark and John Key clashed in feeble silence while the US election raged. Yet one got a certain sense of urgency within New Zealand. The people of the Internet were eager colour Helen Clark with attacks, I found this especially true while watching Youtube debates between the leaders. Few dared hold up the Clark banner in the face of the angry kiwi public.
Now, I am not one to side with either the left or the right of politics in a dogmatic or devoted sense. I am a person who prefers to identify as a centrist. Yet, on light research I could find few reasons to actually vote for John Key if you consider the status of the National party.
This is a National party whose so called ‘immigration spokesman’ managed to accuse Polynesian people of not knowing how to use the toilets, and be inferior at picking Grapes to Asians. (Sourced at bottom). This is a National party who has on their website, a small list of valus important to them:
• Loyalty to our country, its democratic principles and our Sovereign
as Head of State
• National and personal security
• Equal citizenship and equal opportunity
• Individual freedom and choice
• Personal responsibility
• Competitive enterprise and rewards for achievement
• Limited government
• Strong families and caring communities
• Sustainable development of our environment
Please note the bolded part. Limited government. Now I’m not sure if the National party are liars, are playing populism, or if their values have been misconstrued and altered by the power of factionalism within the party but on investigation, the party advertises a whole range of blatant increases in government size. This coming from the party who dubbed the Clark government as a nanny state.
Here are a few:
-Establishment of a bureaucratic environmental authority.
-Establish a Minister for Infrastructure despite the desire of the transport and electricity industry to expand on its own.
-Maintain the State media although some conservatives have called to sell it (TVNZ, NZ on Air).
-Maintain the Telecommunications Ministry (National opposed the creation of this minister in the first place).
-Hang on to Kiwibank (National a so called limiter of government, wants to continue to spend tax payer dollars on a national Bank? Even Australia dumped theirs).
-Establish a ‘Cabinet Expenditure Control Comittee’ (Yet, just lines before announcing this Key’s website says “We have previously announced we will put a cap on the size of the core bureaucracy to allow a re-balancing to occur as available resources are moved to the front line.)
There are more, too, but these were the choice ones.
So how can we call National fit to rule? No less fit than the Labour party was when it first took office in 1999 after fractures and in fighting I suppose.
There are some good, positive policies from National though.
Focus on Asia
• Develop bilateral relationships with Asia.
• Ensure that when choices are made about embassies and trade posts, we concentrate on Asia. Review our network of overseas posts to ensure there is a focus on key countries and markets.
• Make sure Asian New Zealanders are consulted on our relations with the region.
I especially like what they have to say about Asia-based foreign policy, although am dissapointed to see yet another conservative government choose Bilateralism over Multilateralism. It seems the League of Nations and United Nations experiments have scared the right-wing of more-than-two nation agreements so much that the mention of the word Multilateral makes them loosen their collar and take a drink of water. A dissapointing development seeing as well operated multilateral groups undeniably strengthen the economies of all involved nations, such as the European Union.
I look forward to the National party following up on their promise to refocus their Aid to the South Pacific, and analysing where money is being lost to corruption and rectifying the problems. I look forward to the National Party push for reform and modernisation of the UN. I look forward to the intelligent foreign policy, I only wish our conservatives were so intelligent in their foreign policy.
I’m going to end this post here, because it’s getting on the long side. However I have a message to New Zealand; Don’t forget what Helen Clark did. She was the leader who gave New Zealand a chance. She did have an obsession with expanding government, but it was a fair price to pay in return for a consistent economy, greater environmental policy (Rather than John ‘why should we be leaders on the Environment?’ Keys, and I think i’ll address this in my next post) and an array of services to the benefit of New Zealand.
