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You can help New Zealand children live in better quality rental housing!  – CPAG

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CPAG has teamed up with ActionStation, Unicef, NZCCSS and Sustainability Trust to create an easy and simple way for you to make a submission with your views on what the minimum housing standards in rental properties should be. So together, we can make sure children will be protected from harmful, unhealthy housing. Submit on minimum housing standards here. Read more background information on the CPAG website.

Last year CPAG ran a housing campaign with a focus on healthy and affordable housing. Together with AAAP, Unite and First union, we walked on a Hikoi for Homes with the message that everyone has a right to access to decent quality, affordable and safe housing

Right now we are putting the pressure on once again in the lead up to the Residential Tenancies Amendment Bill submissions due 27 January.

We are calling you to act by making a submission on this Amendment Bill  either as an individual or organisation. It’s a really easy and simple submission process, so please submit now! 

The focus of the CPAG submission is on certain small changes which, if made, could improve the outcomes for children significantly.
Key points included in the CPAG submission:

  • CPAG commends the Government for proposing this legislation for installation of smoke alarms and insulation in residential tenancies but urges that the July 2016 time requirement include all residential tenancies.
  • That compliance with existing legislation that requires homes to be free of dampness, to be secure, to not leak, to have safe wiring, and to have proper sanitation, be vigorously enforced.
  • That a tenant will be able to apply for a retaliatory eviction notice to be quashed up to 42 days after it is given.
  • That a full Warrant of Fitness be a requirement for all residential tenancies, with a significant fine imposed for non-compliance.
  • That fair rental regulations be introduced.
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Lockout, dismissals, intimidation at New Zealand meat company Talleys/AFFCO

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Lockout, dismissals, intimidation at New Zealand meat company Talleys/AFFCO

Two hundred workers at AFFCO, the New Zealand meat company owned by the anti-union Talley family, have been locked out since June last year for resisting the company’s brutal push to replace negotiated collective agreements with individual contracts. Talleys/AFFCO is also punishing union members and workplace representatives with suspensions and dismissals. SEND A MESSAGE TO TALLEYS/AFFCO!

Throughout 2015, the New Zealand Meat Workers Union (NZMWU) attempted to negotiate an agreement with AFFCO to replace the collective agreement negotiated only after a lengthy lockout in 2012. Last June AFFCO began pressuring employees on seasonal layoff to give up their union-negotiated pay and conditions by insisting that employees could only continue working at the company on individual employment contracts. Two hundred workers at the company’s plant in Wairoa refused to do so and have been locked out of their jobs ever since.

The New Zealand Employment Court has determined that, by compelling the workers to sign individual contracts and undermining the union, AFFCO has acted illegally, but the court-ordered mediation process has been unable to deliver a solution owing to the company’s fundamental refusal to negotiate.

AFFCO stepped up its anti-union aggression in the week beginning December 14, when three workers at the Talleys plant in Rangiuru were suspended for wearing union shirts to and from work. On December 23, two Rangiuru workplace union leaders were dismissed on bogus breach of health and safety charges after going to work before their normal shift time to talk with union members in need of support.

AFFCO/Talleys are trying to destroy collective bargaining and union representation with a lockout, dismissals and intimidation, even dictating to employees what they can wear to and from work. CLICK HERE to tell Talleys to end the Wairoa lockout, reinstate the workplace union leaders, fully respect trade union rights and engage in good faith negotiations for a collective agreement!

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TheDailyBlog.nz Top 5 News Headlines Tuesday 19th January 2016

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5: Iran vice-president hails new era after removal of sanctions

The lifting of sanctions on Iran on Saturday marks a new era in bilateral relations between Tehran and Washington, one of the country’s vice-presidents has said, adding that further rapprochement is contingent on how the US goes about fulfilling its commitments under last summer’s nuclear accord.

In an interview with the Guardian, Masoumeh Ebtekar warned against what she said were new attempts in the region to create a sense of “Iranophobia”, though she did not single out by name Tehran’s regional rival, Saudi Arabia.

The Guardian 

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Here’s the Most Detailed Picture Yet of How Much the World’s Oceans Are Warming

When talk turns to global warming, most of the attention is on rising temperatures on land and the impacts already being seen like historic droughts and melting ice sheets.

But to truly understand the remarkable ways in which human emissions are altering Earth’s climate system, scientists need to find out what is going in the world’s oceans. That was difficult until the past decade, when better technology like that of Argo, a network of 3,200 robotic floats, allowed them to get temperature and salinity data across the globe at depths of 6,500 feet below the sea surface.

The results have been a revelation.

Now, researchers have published one of the most detailed pictures yet of how much heat is going into the oceans.

Scientists from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Princeton University, and Penn State University found that half the global ocean heat content since 1865 has occurred in the past two decades. And contrary to an early study that found the deep oceans were barely being touched by global warming, the researchers found as much as 35 percent of that was being taken up below 2,300 feet.

Vice News

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Leaked Recording Upends Case of ‘Rogue Trader’ Convicted of Losing Bank Billions

New evidence has surfaced in the case of Jérôme Kerviel, a French trader accused of having cost the French banking giant Société Générale nearly 5 billion euros ($5.3 billion) in one of history’s biggest trading scandals, and convicted of fraud in 2010.

The massive loss resulted in 2008 from trades made by Kerviel that the bank described as “rogue” and unauthorized. Kerviel insists that his bosses were aware of his trades, and that they share responsibility.

French news outlets 20 Minutes and Médiapart have now leaked a secret recording of a lead prosecutor on the case that appears to discredit the bank’s assertions that Kerviel was acting alone.

The timing of the leak is ideal for Kerviel, who appeared Monday before the Court of Revision in a bid to overturn his conviction. In France, you can only ask for a case to be reviewed if new evidence casts doubts on the guilt of a convict.

Leaving the hearing today, Kerviel told reporters who had gathered outside the court that he was “disgusted with the content of the recording,” and that he was “ashamed for the justice system.”

Vice News

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Southern Africa’s drought leaves millions hungry

About 14 million people in Southern Africa are facing hunger because of last year’s poor harvest, caused by the El Nino weather pattern, the World Food Programme says.

In a statement released on Monday, the WFP, which is the UN’s food-assistance branch, gave warning that the number of people without enough food is likely to rise further in 2016, as the drought worsens throughout the region.

“Worst affected in the region by last year’s poor rains are Malawi (2.8 million people facing hunger), Madagascar (nearly 1.9 million people) and Zimbabwe (1.5 million) where last year’s harvest was reduced by half compared to the previous year because of massive crop failure,” the WFP statement said.

Aljazeera

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Grandparents call in lawyers to get terminally ill child medical cannabis
The grandparents of a five-year-old with terminal brain cancer have called in a lawyer after doctors refused to consider medical cannabis to treat the child.In August last year the child was given nine to 12 months to live after being diagnosed with an inoperable tumour on her spinal cord.

RNZ

 

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The Daily Blog Open Mic – Tuesday 19th January 2016

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Announce protest actions, general chit chat or give your opinion on issues we haven’t covered for the day.

Moderation rules are more lenient for this section, but try and play nicely.

 

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The Man Who Sold the World

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This week, the world mourned the passing of one the greatest artists of our era. David Bowie, masterpiece of sound, vision, fashion and fame, turned 69, released a new album, appeared across the internet looking a million dollars in a dark suit and hat (no socks: ever stylish) and then…and then…he was dead. Major Tom. The Thin White Duke. Ziggy Stardust. Dead. 
How I wished it was a hoax. But no. It was The Guardian website I was reading, reporting confirmation from Bowie’s son. Nearly a week on, it’s still hard to comprehend. He moved through time and space with such otherworldly grace that loving him was like loving the alien. Because he seemed immortal, his mortality shocked. It wasn’t that he died young like Elvis or Lennon. It was that he…well…died at all.  Planet Earth was blue with tears and the international outpouring of grief revealed a scale of honour and respect few can inspire.
Of course, that didn’t stop them trying. Like this headline from the NZ Herald: “Editorial: TPP signing an honour, let’s respect it”.  After flat out local denials, the (Chilean) Government announced that the Trans Pacific Partnership will be signed in Auckland on 4 February. It seems we are “about to have the honour of hosting the formal signing of the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement by trade ministers from 12 nations of the Pacific rim. And it is an honour. This is the most comprehensive and far-sighted economic agreement the world has seen in our lifetime, possibly of all time.” 
The Herald concedes “it is too much to hope any fears now assuaged will reduce the scale of protest at the signing. But it should not be too much to ask that those philosophically opposed to free trade respect the views of those who disagree with them, and let this country host the occasion with dignity and pride”.
Respect? Honour? Dignity? Pride? Remember, we’re talking about TPP not David Bowie. 
A couple of days later in the same paper, John Key’s biographer John Roughan did his best to assuage the fearsome, whose “ only remaining concern may be investors’ rights to sue for compensation in independent international tribunals if a government’s action unreasonably reduces the value of an investment. But that is not new, disputes tribunals were part of post-war international trade rules, and the principle is perfectly reasonable. It is unlikely any government New Zealanders would elect, whether led by National or Labour, would need to be taken to a tribunal. They would expect to compensate an investor for a policy change the investor could not reasonably have foreseen. I don’t know what kind of government protesters have in mind when they call the TPP’s dispute provisions a threat to “democracy”.
How could it be that the most comprehensive, far-sighted economic agreement the world has ever seen pose a threat to democracy? Here’s my take and I’d be interested to hear where I’m going wrong:
  • If you are an investor under TPP, you have new, secretly negotiated, supra-legal, far-reaching, irreversible, unappealable, unlimited RIGHTS to protect your investment from a government if it acts against your financial interests, including the right to sue for compensation for potential (not just actual) loss of earnings.
  • If you are NOT an investor under TPP, you have new, secretly negotiated, supra-legal, far-reaching, irreversible, unappealable, unlimited LIABILITIES to recompense investors if your government acts against their financial interests, including exposure to be sued for compensation for potential (not just actual) loss of earnings.
The issue then is (and this for you John Roughan), is it is a function of democracy to provide a two-track judicial system: one for investors and one for non-investors, which provides unlimited irreversible, unappealable rights for one side and unlimited irreversible, unappealable liabilities for the other?
In short, do you believe investor rights trump human rights? If you think they do, if you think this proposition is reasonable, you should support TPP. If you think they don’t, if you think this proposition is treasonable, you should oppose TPP. So far, I’m sold on the latter proposition.
And it’s not just me. On 10 January in The Guardian, Nobel Prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz expressed his hopes that 2016 would be a better year for trade agreements – and “the death of TPP”, which he described as the worst trade agreement in decades (let’s face it, Tim Groser was our negotiator).
According to Stiglitz, “the problem is not so much with the agreement’s trade provisions, but with the “investment” chapter, which severely constrains environmental, health, and safety regulation, and even financial regulations with significant macroeconomic impacts. In particular, the chapter gives foreign investors the right to sue governments in private international tribunals when they believe government regulations contravene the TPP’s terms (inscribed on more than 6,000 pages)”. He continues: “Obama has sought to perpetuate business as usual, whereby the rules governing global trade and investment are written by US corporations for US corporations. This should be unacceptable to anyone committed to democratic principles.”
With TPP, America sets the rules. In his final State of the Union Address this week, Obama said it himself: “With TPP, China does not set the rules in that region; we do.” Sound like a partnership to you?
Stiglitz concludes that” those seeking closer economic integration have a special responsibility to be strong advocates of global governance reforms: if authority over domestic policies is ceded to supranational bodies, then the drafting, implementation, and enforcement of the rules and regulations has to be particularly sensitive to democratic concerns. Unfortunately, that was not always the case in 2015. In 2016, we should hope for the TPP’s defeat and the beginning of a new era of trade agreements that don’t reward the powerful and punish the weak.”
So when John Roughan disingenuously ponders on what kind of government protesters have in mind when they call the TPP’s dispute provisions a threat to democracy, Stiglitz gives us the answer: the kind of government that would “reward the powerful and punish the weak”. Sound familiar?
Respect? Honour? Dignity? Pride? Not for these men who sold the world.
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GUEST BLOG: Comrade Dave Brownz – Mediating Marx

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There is a big debate, including on TDB, on the bias of the corporate media, and the need for an independent media to correct this bias. Marxists have long debated the role of media in capitalist society, so what do they have to add on top of the usual corporate blah blah and radical alternative arguments?
If you google the internet there is plenty of commentary from all of these perspectives. But there is a singular lack of critical analysis of what the Marxists offer over the radical standpoint. This is not made easier when most Marxist commentators miss what is essential to Marxism and end up as no different from radicals. To get to the root of things radicals have to find the roots, right?
So inevitably it comes down to what one claims are the ‘roots’ of Marxism. It’s easy to see differences between say Hayek,  Chomsky and Gramsci. Hayek leaves everything to the market. Individuals win or lose. So what, let Murdoch rule. Chomsky wants citizens to rise up and replace the corporate media with a popular press to realise democracy. Gramsci says the ruling class uses its intellectuals to create a culture of ‘common sense’ to gain hegemony over the masses. Hayek was a (neo) liberal, Chomsky is a liberal anarchist, and Gramsci was a Marxist. Or was he?
Gramsci was very influential in Marxist media studies because he saw media as the product of class struggle. Yet that struggle was not in the workplace but in the sphere of ‘culture’. Academic Marxism took its cue from this and turned Media Studies into the analysis of the ‘cultural class struggle’ over ideas. In his favour Gramsci held that the battle would be won by worker intellectuals organised in a communist party.  In that he was at least a revolutionary. There were other ‘Marxists’ who watered down Marxism further like the Frankfurt School of Adorno and Marcuse and who claimed that the working class was no longer a revolutionary class and the battle for ideas had been won by a hegemonic bourgeois intelligentsia. To that extent these Frankfurters were not even radical.
My point is that if Gramsci who was true to Marx in much of his writing yet failed to get to the root of the class struggle, then there is much lost that has to be made up. We have to start at the roots and Marx’s point that “being determines consciousness.”
By “being” Marx means working to produce what is needed to reproduce human life. Under capitalism that “being” is alienated since labor it is expropriated by the class that owns the means of production. Instead of labor being seen as the creator of value commodities appear as the repository of value. As Marx says production relations appear as exchange relations which he calls “commodity fetishism”. This inverted representation of “being”  is the basis of “consciousness” under capitalism and is spontaneously created at work each day without the intervention of bourgeois cultural agents or a “cultural class struggle”. Since workers do not see that their labor is alienated, they are alienated from themselves as bourgeois individuals defined only by their capacity to buy and sell in the market.  I buy therefore I am!
Now if we backload Marx into Gramsci we get a better analysis of the media. The media is premised on capitalist alienation unless it penetrates the causes of alienation. The media mediates capitalist hegemony. Of course the corporate media revels in this hegemony so long as even the most radical, independent media does not challenge capitalist social relations. We need to turn Gramsci back on his roots and promote him from the theoretician of  ‘cultural class struggle’ to the theoretician of alienation and commodity fetishism.
So how would we turn this Gramsci loose on the media today? We rip into the corporate media not merely as owned by bosses and serviced by tame intellectuals as if we were Chomsky calling for an ‘independent’ media. We critique the fake independence of all media under capitalism that does not start with investigating “being” and “consciousness”. We don’t go in for fancy analyses of the new media as the new weapon of organic intellectuals, we promote the street level media representation of “being’ in the workplace and in the public squares where our alienated labor is reproduced by the bosses thugs and mercenaries. Live streaming and video uploading mediates the true reality of the ruling class as destructive and fatal to human existence.
This representation of “being” brings with it an escalation of “consciousness” that explodes the ideological subterfuges of capitalism hiding being “democracy”, “human rights” and individual “freedom”.  We rescue from the academic Marxists the Gramsci who from prison spoke of the ‘Prince’ as the communist party of the worker intellectuals that had the power to overthrow capitalism.
Better believe it!

 

Comrade Dave Brownz is a NZ socialist blogger asking hard questions of global capitalism. 

 

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GUEST BLOG: David Cunliffe – In a land of plenty

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Like many Kiwis I spent part of this summer camping. A mate had a patch of dirt where I could pitch a tent and he let me use the old hut nearby to shelter when it rained six inches in three days. My sturdy tent https://www.globosurfer.com/best-pop-up-tents/ held up well, but sick of the wet I bugged out in the end.  I had a choice.
While I was play-camping reports surfaced of people living rough in the bush in my electorate of New Lynn.  These young people have far fewer choices than most of us.  No backup shelter when it rains. No sturdy tent.  And no home to go back to when playing bush gets uncomfortable.
Young and mostly male, the New Lynn homeless are a visible part part of the bigger tragedy of high youth unemployment.  If you are under 25 you are twice as likely to be out of a job. If you are young, brown and male, make that at least four times.
The misfortune of these young people is that they have no steady income to pay the rent.  Let alone the four weeks bond, four weeks rent in advance and agent’s fee every single time they have to move.  They have no leeway to catch up or pay off debt.  No way to keep up with, let alone get ahead of Auckland’s crazy property market.
Their story happens to be in my area, but most Auckland and urban MPs are facing the same sad issues.
This is a Government failure.  The solutions to the housing crisis are pretty obvious.  Build more affordable houses, fast.  Give renters decent rights and make landlords do what is necessary to have safe, healthy rental accommodation. Restore Housing NZ to be a community provider not a profit-raker.
Don’t outsource the problem offshore.  Manage offshore speculation in our homes.
This Government’s so-called economic growth is not delivering for everyone. It is relying too much on unrestrained offshore money flows to keep the sagging boat afloat.
The truth is there are just not enough jobs, and even fewer for those in our community who lack the skills increasingly needed in a tech-driven economy.   It is a tragic failure of this Government to have cancelled adult and community education.  And it is Labour, not National, who is driving new ideas on the future of work.
Instead, National just throws people off welfare – driving them to desperation – and the bush in my electorate.  Punishing those on the bottom might work for redneck focus groups, but it does not solve the job or housing crises.   Sowing the seeds of a social underbelly that in the end indicts and damages us all. No wonder National’s spin doctors are in overdrive and ministers have belatedly sent Work and Income in to “see what can be done”.
Meanwhile the people of New Lynn have been picking up where the Government has failed and delivered food parcels and blankets and tents.
I know the people in my electorate are pretty special people. But I also know the are representative of most of New Zealand: they have a strong sense of community; they value work; they want their kids to get ahead; and they also want their neighbours to be OK too.
In other words – they understand much better than this Government that having the filthy rich living cheek by jowl with abject poverty is not sustainable – for anyone.
We all benefit from a society where all can do well, where there is a safety net when misfortune strikes and a hand up to get back on your feet.
Just ask the homeless bushies of New Lynn.  It is past time for a change.
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Third Term Temptations

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THE THIRD TERM in Opposition is always the most dangerous. It’s the time when sticking to one’s principles is hardest, and when the blandishments of “professionals” promising easy victories are at their most persuasive. The prospect of another three years in opposition: of feeling powerless and useless; looms ahead of Opposition MPs like a prison sentence. They’ll do anything to escape. To win.

In 2016 Labour is in its third term of opposition, and it’s easy to imagine how desperately its caucus is looking for a way out. The party is heading into its hundredth year without a charismatic leader, shorn of just about all of the policies it campaigned on in the 2011 and 2014 elections; and as close to broke as any major party should ever be. What Labour needs is reinvigoration – reinvention even. Otherwise it risks being rejected by the electorate as too old and too irrelevant to make a difference. Yesterday’s party, filled with yesterday’s politicians.

Labour’s been here before – most recently in 1998. That, too, was the middle year of a National-led government’s third term, but it’s there that the similarities end. The government of Jenny Shipley was a government of rebels and turncoats and it was deeply unpopular. It was also a government made up of politicians elected under a radically new and different electoral system – MMP.

The Bolger-led National Government’s opponents had split their votes between three parties: Labour, NZ First and the Alliance; and most of them expected a government composed of all three. Winston Peters confounded those expectations by throwing in his lot with Bolger – a decision which inflicted near-fatal damage on his party. NZ First’s generosity notwithstanding, however, by December of 1997 Shipley had rolled Bolger and split Peter’s parliamentary ranks in two.

The Shipley Government never took. Lacking democratic legitimacy it was widely regarded as a political “dead man walking” towards the 1999 electoral gallows. It’s only hope of survival was the bitter enmity between Labour and the left-wing Alliance, led by Jim Anderton. If these two parties were to contest the 1999 election as rivals, and the Left presented to the voters as hopelessly divided, then there was a chance – a very slim chance – that National could come through the middle.

Would Labour risk it? Could Helen Clark beat Anderton’s Alliance into a poor third and win power in its own right? There were those in Labour’s caucus who believed it could, but following the Alliance’s surprisingly strong showing in the Taranaki-King Country by-election of May 1998 (Labour polled 17.53 percent to the Alliance’s 15.46 percent) Helen Clark opted to accept the olive branch offered by Anderton and publically announced Labour’s readiness to form a loose coalition government with the Alliance following the 1999 general election.

The rest, as they say, is history.

In 2016, is the Labour leader, Andrew Little, also faced with Clark’s 1998 predicament? Is he, too, confronted with the prospect of a National Party Government only too willing to repeat its propaganda victory of 2014, when the Labour/Green/NZ First/Mana opposition (not-to-mention Kim Dotcom) were successfully portrayed as a ship of fools, with everyone rowing in opposite directions? And, if so, does he really have any other option except to follow Clark’s 1998 example and announce Labour’s readiness to form a coalition government with the Greens in 2017?

That is certainly the option progressive New Zealanders are hoping Labour will take. Their not unreasonable assumption being that a coalition with the Greens will anchor Labour firmly on the Centre-Left, and decisively weaken the right-wing faction of Labour’s caucus. There are, however, a number of problems with this analysis.

First and foremost is the undeniable fact of the Prime Minister’s – and his government’s – still astonishing levels of popularity. John Key is no Jenny Shipley, and his government certainly isn’t cobbled together from rebels and turncoats. Far from being a “dead man walking”, Key’s government shows every sign of robust political health and is more than ready to make a successful bid for a fourth term. It’s a level of confidence that’s likely to keep National’s election war-chest full-to-overflowing (and Labour’s empty). It also serves as a warning to the all-important news media that, as things now stand, changing sides would not be a good idea.

In this gloomy context, the recent statements from Grant Robertson make bright and sunshiny sense. With his eyes not on 1998, but 1983, Robertson is readying the Labour Party for another bid to win the backing of big business. Like Roger Douglas before him, he is inviting his party to become, once again, New Zealand’s great political facilitator. Last time it was the Free Market Revolution of 1984-93 that Labour facilitated. This time it will be what the one-percenter luminaries gathering for the World Economic Forum at Davos are calling “The Fourth Industrial Revolution”.

It’s an extraordinarily clever move on Robertson’s part. The NZ Herald’s “Mood of the Boardroom” revealed that, while appreciated as a canny election-winner, Key is not regarded as the political and economic innovator New Zealand so desperately needs. With his radically innovative and politically transgressive “Future of Work” policy package, Robertson should be able to pass the hat around New Zealand’s major enterprises with every hope of collecting more than polite refusals.

Nor will he be alone. The Greens’ James Shaw is perfectly placed to act as Robertson’s seconder in the nation’s boardrooms. With his assurances that the Greens, too, are committed to developing a whole new political and economic paradigm – one equal to the enormous challenges of the 21st Century – the business community’s fears about the Greens can be sufficiently allayed to make the announcement, at Labour’s 100th annual conference, of a Red-Green Alliance something big business can welcome – rather than condemn.

Will it be enough to defeat the Third Term Blues? Possibly. But it will certainly be enough to render Labour electorally competitive in ways the New Zealand electorate has not seen for 18 – maybe even 33 – years.

 

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GUEST BLOG: Douglas Renwick – An explanation of the atrocities in West Papua with a broad context

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West Papua has been under a brutal occupation by Indonesia for over fifty years. This article tries to explain why this is, and why so few people know about it. In order to understand why, we must understand the lies of the media, and of our educational system. I claim both of these institutions have actively justified the crimes of Indonesia in the following two ways: One, the media have downplayed our own crimes and the crimes of our ‘ally’ states, and do not consider them to be acts of terrorism, even though they are by definition. Two, the educational system tells the lie that our foreign policy was guided by humanitarian values in East Timor, this is not true, and lies told about the past prevent people from understanding the present situation in West Papua. I start by trying to understand the true aims of the most powerful nations, those that are called the “West” that includes: America, Britain, a good part of Europe, Japan, Australia and New Zealand. A good place to begin would be with the world’s most powerful nation.

 

The goals of Western foreign policy

The goal of American foreign policy following the events of world war two was expressed by George Kennan, a policy adviser. He said that “We have 50 percent of the worlds wealth, but only 6.3 percent of the worlds population. In this situation, our real job in the coming period. . .is to maintain this position of disparity. To do so, we have to dispense with all sentimentality. . .we should cease thinking about human rights, the raising of living standards and democratisation.”[1] In order to “maintain this disparity”, it was recognized that the poor nations (that is, those in Latin America, Africa and Asia) would need to have “a political and economic climate conducive to private investment”, so that the US can have “access to vital raw materials”.[2]

The Council on Foreign Relations is the most powerful think tank in the world, it’s had an important role in planning America’s foreign policy and its membership has included Presidents, Secretaries of State, CIA directors, rich people, professors and media commentators. There are two good books written about the history of the council by Laurence Shoup and William Minter. The first one, called ‘Imperial Brain Trust’ shows how the Council shaped policy on South East Asia during world war two until the mid 1970’s. By as early as 1943 it was seen by the council that South East Asia, and in particular the Indonesian archipelago (which includes West Papua) was a “cheap source of vital materials”, such as tin and rubber, and that “placing the political and economic control in hands likely to be friendly to the United States” was essential.[3]

Indonesia was part of this group of poor nations who according to the US state department records, which in a report from an ambassador to president Johnson in the 1960’s said that “the avowed Indonesian objective is to stand on their own feet in developing their economy, free from foreign, especially Western, influence.”, while being unified under president Sukarno who characterized the West as “representative of neo-colonialism and imperialism” and will ensure that the economy is designed in a way so that “It is probable that foreign private ownership will disappear and may be succeeded by some form of production-profit-sharing contract arrangements to be applied to all foreign investment”.[4]

Well, there were some people that were opposed to organizing the world in the way that open up the poor nations to foreign investors. Those people happened to be the large majority of the world’s population. This was recognized by the US state department. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, in private conversation with his brother Alan, the director of the CIA, deplored the Communist “ability to get control of mass movements,”

“Something we have no capacity to duplicate.”

“The poor people are the ones they appeal to and they have always wanted to plunder the rich.”[5] A few years earlier, John Foster Dulles stated in a cabinet meeting that “We are confronted by an unfortunate fact. Most of the countries of the world do not share our view that Communist control of any government anywhere is in itself a danger and a threat.”[6] So this presented two problems which a large effort was put into solving. The first problem was the majority of the world not sharing the values that the rich should plunder the poor instead of the poor plundering the rich, and the second was the rational view from third world peasants that the Russian and Chinese threat was not as large as it had been exaggerated to be.

It’s of great interest to find out how these problems were solved, at least partially. In Indonesia it was solved with Nazi style bloodbaths against the left. In the rich nations these problems were understood and solved near the end of world war one, which I will now give some background on.

 

The Usefulness of Propaganda

The use of fear ideology to achieve political goals is as old as political theory itself. In Aristotle’s Politics, he came up with the view that “States are preserved when their destroyers are at a distance, and sometimes also because they are near, for fear of them makes the government keep in hand the state. Wherefore the ruler who has a care of the state should invent terrors, and bring distant dangers near, in order that the citizens may be on their guard, and, like sentinels in their night-watch, never relax their attention.”[7] That was the understanding of the usefulness of propaganda and in particular fear ideology in classical Greece and since then it’s become much more sophisticated.

The use of propaganda became an essential part of liberal democratic societies during the end of world war one. There were some intellectuals who studied this phenomenon of ‘propaganda’, as they called it, and came to some conclusions. One was Harold Lasswell, a leading political scientist. In a short essay he said that “conventions have arisen which favor the ventilation of opinions and the taking of votes. Most of that which formerly could be done by violence and intimidation must now be done by argument and persuasion.”[8] In other words, as the general population won rights against the use of state violence, the state could no longer resort to the use of violence to control the population. So it was seen as necessary to resort to the use of propaganda instead to control the minds of the population, as Lasswell put it.

The basic theory behind this, which Harold Lasswell wrote, was that “The public has not reigned with benignity and restraint. The good life is not in the mighty rushing wind of public sentiment. It is no organic secretion of the horde, but the tedious achievement of the few.” Thus, it was necessary once finding the “good life”, that the role of the propagandist, was to “make up the public mind to accept it.”[9] This was a common view, similar theories were given by other intellectuals during the time, including Edward Bernays and Walter Lippman. I should say that the word ‘propagandist’ is longer in use for propaganda reasons. According to Edward Bernays it was replaced by ‘public relations’ after world war two, because propaganda got negative connotations from the Nazi’s.

Following world war one there were two liberal intellectuals that made a common observation. One was the aforementioned Harold Lasswell, the other was Bertrand Russell. Both made the observation that within any country the educational system is going to present a favorable picture of the world towards its own state and the allies of that state simply because of the natural psychological predispositions of those living in the same society.[10] Bertrand Russell thought then that a solution to this would be for the educational system to “enable people to acquire knowledge and form sound judgments of themselves.” Harold Lasswell had the opposite solution. He said that the propagandist should exploit and increase these irrational biases and the self-deception of the educated class. As he put it, he could count on “a battalion of honest professors to rewrite history”, while the “propagandist is content to accept aid from his allies”, that he should busily “multiply the evidence of the responsibility of the enemy.”[11] Bertrand Russell’s ideas weren’t that popular among elites having just come out of prison, but Harold Lasswell’s would become the essential element of democratic governance, now global in scale.

We can look back at history and see that from 1917 onwards, that a cold war ideology adopted by the West exaggerated the threat of communism towards the rest of the world, which was used as a pretext for every single post world war two US intervention up until 1990. After 1990 there needed to be new justifications invented, so two big ones that replaced the fear of communism were “terrorism”, and “humanitarian intervention”

My focus here will mainly be on how New Zealand international relations scholars remember East Timor, and exposing that particular lie. I should note that there has been some very good academic scholarship on it, and I don’t think the university is 100 percent subservient to state power. There are exceptions. I will also comment on how the New Zealand government financed state terrorism in West Papua, though I have read little on the scholarship of the topic of terrorism so I will limit to criticizing the media and the governments perception of terrorism here. I do not claim these scholars are insincere, rather for the most part I agree with Harold Lasswell’s proposition that they are self-deceptive but “honest professors rewriting history”. I don’t know how to give evidence for this, but that’s what I think.

 

The Media’s subservient role in reporting crimes of Indonesia

The CIA had wanted president Sukarno removed from power ever since he held the Bandung conference in 1955, where third world nations got together to strategise on how to make their economies independent from either the Western powers or the Communist powers. Over time the West had built up ties with the right wing Indonesian military and finally got their chance in 1965. General Suharto came to power in a bloody coup, with the CIA giving him a list of roughly 5000 people to kill, but he went a lot further and killed at least half a million. The CIA described it as one of the worst mass murders of the 20th century, and compared it to the worst crimes of the Nazi’s, Stalin and Mao.[12]

After Suharto seized power the multinational corporations came in to divide up Indonesia. The Freeport- McMoRan company got their hands on the world’s most profitable copper and gold mine located in West Papua. One of the board of directors on the Freeport McMoRan company is the former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, who along with President Gerald Ford, had given permission to Suharto for him to invade East Timor.[13]

The reaction to these mass slaughters from Western leaders and the capitalist media was one of great enthusiasm. Time magazine called it “The West’s Best News in Asia”. A headline in US News and World Report read: “Indonesia: Hope. . . where was once none”. A New York Times columnist James Reston celebrated ‘A gleam of light in Asia’. The Australian Prime Minister Harold Holt said approvingly that “With 500,000 to a million communist sympathizers knocked off, I think it’s safe to assume reorientation has taken place”.[14] The New Zealand media reaction has been studied recently. Before he was removed from power, President Sukarno had pursued a policy of aggression trying to unify the Indonesian Archipelago, annexing West Papua in 1962. He also pursued a ‘confrontation’ with Malaysia, which New Zealand sent troops to help defend the pro Western Malaysia and the foreign investors.

The reaction to this from the New Zealand media, according to a recent MA thesis written by Andrew Lim, was that “Sukarno was seen as another dictator like Hitler or Mussolini, whose fraternization with the Communists only damned him.”[15] But after Suharto removed Sukarno from power, media coverage of the Suharto coup was scant, with little discussion of the coup attempt, the mass killings, or the rise of the New Order. However the Otago Daily Times welcomed the Army’s takeover as the end of the “troublesome” President Sukarno’s political career. With a subsequent editorial stating that Suharto’s political ascension as the beginning of a new era in New Zealand-Indonesian relations.[16]

If one compares the indignation expressed at the enemies crimes compared to the crimes of an ally, you will find the capitalist media have overwhelmingly, at any reasonable comparison, always expressed more indignation for the enemy’s crimes while either ignoring or glorifying the crimes of ally’s or themselves. But those that write history portray the exact opposite image, that the media are cantankerous in their opposition to power and that the universities are training left-wing radicals. An Australian academic economist H. W Arndt wrote in 1979, during the peak of atrocities in East Timor, that the Australian media was blanketed with “virulent anti-Indonesian propaganda”, with “extreme left academics” in the universities who “even before 1975 [The invasion date of East Timor], were unsympathetic towards Indonesia under the present regime.”[17]

When Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky documented US media coverage of East Timor during the period in the late 1970’s, media press coverage dropped to zero in 1978 as atrocities increased and western arms were shipped to General Suharto. While in Cambodia, there were comparable killings happening at the same time by a regime opposed to western elite interests, the Khmer Rouge. This received a large press coverage, furious indignation from the western media with some denouncing Pol Pot as ‘another Hitler’, as well as fabrications exaggerating the numbers killed.[18] I won’t go into detail, but that’s a very short account of an otherwise voluminous study given in their various books about it.

During an important massacre in East Timor in 1991, where 270 people were killed including one New Zealander, it was witnessed and recorded by Western Journalists, so the event got reported around the world in the Western media. But one New Zealand journalist David Robie (now a professor of journalism at AUT) was offered a ‘kill fee’ for a story he wrote about it, which was suppressed from the Dominion post at the time.[19] I don’t want to exaggerate that this normally happens, it is an extremely rare form of censorship. According to a study of Australia media coverage of the 1991 Dili massacre by Geoffry C Gunn, Not one word from the capitalist media reported the fact that Australia had been supplying Indonesia with arms and training. [20]

 

NZ’s history with East Timor

East Timor was invaded by Indonesia in 1975. The invasion had been given the green light by former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and his president Gerald Ford, who asked Suharto not to carry out the invasion until they had flown back to America, so that they could be distanced from the crimes.

New Zealand, along with other major Western powers, supported the invasion of East Timor right up until a few days before the West intervened to stop atrocities. According to a CIA desk officer Philip Liechty in an interview with the journalist John Pilger, “we sent the Indonesian Generals everything that you need to fight a major war against somebody who doesn’t have any guns…they got it direct, straight to East Timor. Without US military support, the Indonesians might not have been able to pull it off.”[21] New Zealand itself, gave military support to Indonesia throughout the whole occupation, including training pilots for skyhawk’s (planes used for bombing and napalm).[22] We also gave diplomatic support, abstaining from initiatives put forth at the UN by Algeria, Cuba, Guyana, Serria Leone and Trinidad Tobago which ‘strongly deplored’ the actions of Indonesia.[23] Then after a visit to East Timor from a New Zealand diplomat during the atrocities in 1976, our policy from then on until 1999 that the situation was ‘irreversible’.

Over this period, international activism grew against the occupation. The Western powers supported the atrocities right up until the last minute, when outrage from the Australian population put pressure on the government, and probably the social cost for western powers of supporting the occupation became too high. A US senior official responded by saying We have don’t have a dog running in the East Timor race, but we have a very big dog running down there called Australia and we have to support it.” [24] Thus an international peace keeping force was set up to intervene in Indonesia, with President Bill Clinton adding a small contingent to this force, just enough to let Indonesia know that these orders came from Washington. Indonesia backed off without a fight. That’s the very short history of East Timor during that period, now let’s look at how these international relations scholars handle it.

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Propaganda terms in foreign policy doublespeak

In the political discourse of politicians, the media and academic scholarship, you have to decode various terminology before understanding what it actually means. Key terminology always has two different meanings. One of the meanings has a propaganda function, while the other meaning has a technical function.

One is the concept of ‘stability’. The propaganda meaning of stability means something like ‘law-abiding society without any violent internal conflict’. The technical meaning of stability is more along the lines of the following: ‘Anything that New Zealand and the West in general does in foreign policy.’ There’s a corollary from this definition, which is that: ‘A poor country that obeys the western powers is also by definition contributing to stability.’ This follows since a third world country obeying the rich nation’s means it’s obeying a policy which contributes to stability.

For example, the establishment journal ‘The New Zealand International Review’ recently had an issue on New Zealand and the ASEAN region, in which a scholar Paul Sinclair claims that “New Zealand’s defense relationship with ASEAN has its genesis in the history of our commitment to the security and stability of South East Asia”.[25] He gives two examples, East Timor in which the New Zealand government supported a genocide of 200,000 people from 1975-1999, and Cambodia, in which New Zealand gave diplomatic support of the genocidal Khmer Rouge from 1978-1990.[26] But Paul Sinclair doesn’t focus on these phases of New Zealand history, instead choosing to ignore that part and focusing only on aid we gave to Cambodia in the 1990’s and the intervention in East Timor which stopped the atrocities.

An Auckland University political scientist Stephen Hoadley commentating on New Zealand’s stance it took on East Timor in a book called ‘South East Asia and New Zealand’, that “New Zealand idealism with regard to self-determination of colonized peoples was tempered by ‘realist’ concerns about regional instability, outside meddling, and incapacity for self-governance.”[27] Now, Indonesia carried out a policy of aggression towards East Timor, so this might seem like it contributes to instability of the region. But it doesn’t, since East Timor was another colony trying to creating a sort of nationalist social democracy it was opposed to stability, and since Suharto obeyed the interests of the west, he is by definition contributing to stability by invading the country. One may also comment on the use of the term “outside meddlers”. Suharto is not seen as an outside meddler in his aggression, again, by the principle that the Western powers own the world and he was their servant.

When Suharto invaded East Timor, the New Zealand Minister of Foreign Affairs said that “stability in the Indonesia archipelago would most likely be assured if Portuguese Timor was integrated into Indonesia”[28] An Australian position referred to in a Ministry of Foreign Affairs briefing paper was stated as “supporting self-determination while maintaining stability in the region,” then honestly adding “with an additional interest in maintaining an equitable share of the substantial oil deposits in the north-west shelf.”[29]

Another concept is that of the ‘national interest’. Its propaganda term is something like: “the interests of the general population”. The technical use of the term ‘national interest’ is “whatever the elite interests of that country want.” So for example, in a poll 9% of New Zealander’s accepted their government’s contention that integration of East Timor was irreversible. But this was never considered to be the national interest.[30] What was considered to be the national interest was the near opposite, and was stated in a briefing paper by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. “The crux of the problem of East Timor is to reconcile New Zealand’s opposition to the incorporation of East Timor by force, the subsequent human rights violations and repugnance at the sometimes brutal methods of the Indonesian army with the very considerable national interest in maintaining good relations with Indonesia…”[31]

Also in a poll, more than 75% of Australians supported the right of West Papuan’s to self-determination, even if it meant independence from Indonesia. Prime Minister John Howard replied by saying that it is in “Australia’s interests that we keep a unified Indonesia”.[32] It seems like a contradiction but it isn’t, since “Australia” means the elites within the country, and not the population.

 

How East Timor is remembered by International Relations Scholars.

According to Professor Hoadley, and Auckland University political scientist writing on the history of New Zealand’s foreign policy in East Timor “New Zealand can claim its policies are untainted by commercial interest. Its initiatives sprang from a desire to be a good international citizen and contribute to a UN effort; they were motivated also by humanitarianism and justice, and spurred by domestic public opinion. If there was self- interest amongst this idealism, it lay in an enlightened perception of common security…” Similarly, the textbooks that are prescribed in school portray it as a “humanitarian intervention” from the west. But the evidence shows that the Western powers. There is only one thing correct about Hoadley’s statement and that is that yes, it was spurred by domestic public opinion.

Let’s assume for the sake of argument, that a humanitarian intervention does not require noble intent. Then by this assumption the East Timor intervention was humanitarian, as it stopped the killings and was welcomed by the Timorese population. But if we were to ask whether the New Zealand government was in principle in favor of this kind of humanitarian intervention, then we could try to find out how they reacted to other cases of humanitarian interventions. Like for example, the Vietnam invasion of Cambodia in 1978, which stopped the Khmer Rouge atrocities, and was welcomed by the population.

The major western power, the US, allied with China and Thailand decided to go from denouncing the Khmer Rouge to supporting it as a punishment of Vietnam’s intervention, by the “my enemy of my enemy is my friend” principle. According to the former national security advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski “I encouraged the Chinese to support Pol Pot. I encouraged the Thai to help the D.K. [Khmer Rouge government-in-exile of Democratic Kampuchea]. The question was how to help the Cambodian people. Pol Pot was an abomination. We could never support him, but China could.” New Zealand was part of this alliance with the US, China, and Thailand, and gave key diplomatic support to Pol Pot. When asked by the media why New Zealand was supporting Pol Pot at the UN, the Foreign Minister Brian Talboys replied that “that the approval of the DK’s credentials was mainly an expression of disapproval by ASEAN, New Zealand and the others involved, of Vietnam’s actions.” According to the historian writing on the topic, this was “a fine point of diplomacy that was doubtless lost on those appalled by the genocidal nature of the Khmer Rouge while in power.”[33]

Later on when Pol Pot’s forces were repackaged with other ASEAN allies, Talboys commended the policies of the ASEAN grouping, which had showed itself to be ‘a constructive force and positive force for regional peace and stability’. The Khmer Rouge’s Vice President Khieu Samphan sent a telegram to the Minister of Foreign Affairs thanking us for our “unswerving support given by New Zealand to our struggle for national liberation, survival and independence is of vital importance.”[34] So, in my view this whole argument of “humanitarian intervention” by Stephen Hoadley and a good part of academic opinion has no evidence to back it up.

 

West Papua and the ideology of Terrorism

West Papua was annexed by Sukarno before he was thrown out of power by Suharto. Suharto set up an “Act of free choice” in 1969, but the West Papuan’s call it “An act of no choice”. 1025 Papuan’s were rounded up and told to vote for integration with Indonesia or be killed. Since then at least 100,000 Papuan’s have been killed, along with other various acts of violence that were similar to those in East Timor. After East Timor gained independence and everything was back to normal, the Western powers started to re-establish military support. In a visit to a university in Jakarta, Helen Clark somehow held a straight face while praising Indonesia as a “peaceful and tolerant nation”.[35] One could wonder what the reaction would be if she said the same about ISIS.

I haven’t read much literature on terrorism, so I’m going to stick to the principles given by the government, which I will accept. I’m going to talk a little bit about the Terrorism Suppression Act and how I think it relates to West Papua, since that’s the main fear ideology that’s been used since the end of the cold war.

Terrorism is defined in this act as “the purpose of advancing an ideological, political, or religious cause”, and with the several intentions, including “to induce terror in a civilian population”, where “terror” is has several outcomes, including “the death of, or other serious bodily injury to, 1 or more persons”. Between 2009-2014 New Zealand spent $6.3 million financing Indonesian ‘community policemen’, but they were really “killing teams” in West Papua, which beat up Papuan’s and threatened to bury them alive. We also educated a captain at one of our universities in ‘security studies’, so he could go back to West Papua and torture more effectively. To their credit, the capitalist media reported this.[36]

By the principles of the Terrorism Suppression Act and Clark and Key governments, this is a typical example of financing terrorism. But you won’t find anyone in the capitalist media saying this obvious truth, or even being able to think about this truth. The definition of terrorism is one that is only ever applied to the enemy.

 

How can West Papua gain Independence?

One way would be for the media to focus on the crimes of our own leaders, instead of focusing on the crimes of other nations while ignoring our own crimes. Another way would be to tell the important and critical parts of history on East Timor and how our government supported the atrocities, and that they were only forced to intervene from public pressure, not on humanitarian values. Both the media and academia largely fail at these roles. If we are to prevent the crimes of terrorism in West Papua, and in other places from happening again we must also punish our leaders in accordance with the law, otherwise they will play the same game they did with East Timor and do it all over again. These would be key steps towards having a civilized foreign policy in general.

 

[1]P101 The New Rulers of the World: John Pilger.

[2] NSC 5432/1, 1954

[3]P255 Imperial Brain Trust: Laurence H. Shoup and William Minter.

[4] Foreign Relations of the United States, 1964-1968 Volume XXVI, Indonesia; Malaysia-Singapore; Philippines, Document 121.

[5]Eisenhower to Harriman, quoted in Richard H. Immerman, Diplomatic History (Summer 1990). John Foster Dulles, Telephone Call to Allen Dulles, June 19, 1958, “Minutes of telephone conversations of John Foster Dulles and Christian Herter,” Eisenhower Library, Abilene KA.

[6]P124 Killing Hope: William Blum

[7]P209 Politics: Aristotle

[8]The Theory of Political Propaganda, The American Political Science Review, Vol. 21, No. 3 (Aug., 1927), pp. 627-631

[9]P4-5 Propaganda Technique in the World War: Harold Lasswell

[10]P53-54 Propaganda Technique in the World War: Harold Lasswell. For Bertrand Russells observation see P21 of Free Thought and Official Propaganda

[11]P54 Propaganda Technique in the World War: Harold Lasswell

[12]P71 Indonesia 1965 -The Coup that backfired

[13]P62 Negligent Neighbour; New Zealand’s Complicity in the invasion and occupation of East Timor: Marie Leadbeater

[14]P35 The New Rulers of the World: John Pilger

[15]P113 The Kiwi and the Garuda: New Zealand and Sukarno’s Indonesia, 1945-1966: Andrew Lim

[16]P114 Ibid

[17]December 1979 Timor: Vendetta against Indonesia, Quadrant

[18]The full record is documented in The Political Economy of Human Rights, volume 1 and volume 2.

[19] P229 Don’t Spoil My Beautiful Face: Media, Mayhem and Human Rights in the Pacific: David Robie

[20]P175 A Critical View of Western Journalism and Scholarship on East Timor: Geoffrey C. Gunn

[21]P63 Negligent Neighbour; New Zealand’s Complicity in the invasion and occupation of East Timor: Marie Leadbeater

[22]P127 ibid

[23]P64 ibid

[24]P195 The Independence of East Timor: Multi-Dimensional Perspectives-Occupation, Resistance, and International Political Activism: Clinton Fernandes

[25]2015 volume 4 New Zealand International Review New Zealand’s Defence Relationship with ASEAN: Paul Sinclair

[26]P265 Manufacturing Consent: Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky reference a study carried out by the Finnish government.

[27]P127 South East Asia and New Zealand; A History of Regional and Bilateral Relations: Edited by Anthony Smith

[28]P65 Negligent Neighbour; New Zealand’s Complicity in the invasion and occupation of East Timor: Marie Leadbeater

[29]P28 ibid

[30]P130 South East Asia and New Zealand; A History of Regional and Bilateral Relations: Edited by Anthony Smith

[31]P127 ibid

[32]Reluctant Indonesians; Australia, Indonesia and the future of West Papua: Clinton Fernandes

[33]1999 volume 2, The Devil You Know The New Zealand Journal of History: Anthony Smith

[34]P111 South East Asia and New Zealand; A History of Regional and Bilateral Relations: Edited by Anthony Smith

[35]19 July 2007 PM Clark lauds RI’s move to democracy: The Jakarta Post

[36] Jan 25 Kiwis accused of providing ‘aid that kills’ New Zealand Herald

 

Douglas Renwick is an anarchist and an undergraduate student at Victoria University studying mathematics and philosophy. He spends half of his life reading  voraciously about politics. His interests in politics include the history and political economy of corporate propaganda, western imperialism, and intellectual history. As well as this he is critical of neoclassical economics and neoliberlism in general. He can be contacted at renwicdoug@myvuw.ac.nz

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We’ve Got A Schlong Way To Go With How We Talk About Women In Politics

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Being in the public eye especially as a female politician has never been a walk around Albert Park, The Central Park or what have you. No matter what your personal record, every debate has the very real potential to turn into a disparaging commentary on your gender and you. The way you look, the way you dress, crude questions over whether your biology’s unduly influencing your decision-making suddenly becomes “legitimate” areas for exploration by your opponents and commentators.
And while we’ve yet to see a New Zealand political candidate seriously plumb the depths of Trump’s audacity. For example, his ascribing a female interviewer’s conduct to her having “blood coming out of her … wherever”. This past Parliamentary term has given us such sad spectacles as Labour MP Jacinda Ardern’s political worth being correlated with her physical attractiveness as well as Greens Co-Leader Metiria Turei coming under fire from certain National MPs for her dress-sense and wardrobe.
Older political stalwarts will remember similar gender-derived jibes at Helen Clark about the supposed masculinity of her deep voice and her refusal to perform a traditional gender role by remaining childless (an attack which, interestingly, has also been recently lobbed at Jacinda Ardern).

This is all part of a pernicious trend in Western politics over the past year. Some politicians seem to make a regrettable habit of making craven rhetorical tools out of the essentialized and stereotyped characteristics of certain groups. We’re looking at you, Trump and Key.

We’ve seen it with Muslims, we’ve seen it with drug addicts and the poor – and increasingly, it seems, we’ve also seen it with women. This last trend is particularly concerning, as it represents the direct undermining and reversal of more than a century’s progress towards female political inclusion and emancipation.

Mid-way through last week, Donald Trump engaged in an exercise in projection. He referred to another hopeful Presidential candidate’s conduct as “disgusting”. “Too disgusting”, in fact, for him to “want to talk about it”.

What was the abhorrent act or behavior which his presumptive rival had engaged in so self-evidently heinous that Trump had felt compelled to call her out via allusion on the campaign trail to a packed rally?

Why, she’d used the rest room. How shameful for a 68 year old human female to have to go to the bathroom once in awhile.

Not content with one outburst of genderized biological shaming for the day, Trump then went on to describe Clinton’s 2008 loss in the Democratic Primaries to a male opponent as her being “schlonged”. Now typically this word has grossly misogynist connotations. Just to be clear: it is to be cockslapped by a man with a large penis. Even if we were to give this term a charitable interpretation; there’s a clear and uncomfortable undercurrent of meaning to what Trump said and why he chose to use that particular expression. Think about that for a minute. Take all the time that you need.

The reason why we’re talking about this is deeper than just our disgust and annoyance at Trump’s remarks (and the apparent “win-at-any-costs” mentality which goes with them). This incident deserves commentary, because it’s not just a Trump phenomenon – instead, the regrettable habit of attempting to win votes by objectifying-through-vilification political women is a widespread and repugnant trend that’s highly worth calling out.

We’ve already seen examples of this sort of conduct carried out in New Zealand politics, for instance, wherein beleaguered or bloke-courting politicians from across our political spectrum have sought to do likewise. The apotheosis example in our own politisphere is probably former Labour MP and Minister John Tamihere going on an extended discursive rant about so-called female “front-bums” unfairly dominating the Labour party.

When it’s being consciously employed, this rhetoric represents a deliberate and divisive tactic designed to reach out to what fellow former Labour Minister Shane Jones terms “the blue-collar tradie, blokey voters” which, for some reason, have become something of a holy grail for electioneers and political strategists to attempt to woo.

The trouble is, fallaciously making hay out of alleged female biological weakness and unsuitability for office is not just outright offensive and antiquated. It’s done at the cost of sidestepping genuine and serious issues into the bargain.

Witness then-Employers and Manufacturers Association chief Alasdair Thompson’s unfortunate flailing about women allegedly taking ‘monthly sick days’ as an excuse for the gender pay gap in New Zealand.

By reducing complex political issues down to biological “facts” (which often aren’t really “facts” at all, but instead jaundiced and prejudicial “opinions” with an air of “truthiness” to them), the opinion-makers and regulators of the day get to avoid genuinely engaging with them. In the above example, it’s an extraordinarily convenient lie to claim that the gender pay gap is effectively due to period-derived sick leave – i.e. women’s biology, and also something men often find “too disgusting to want to talk about” a la Trump – because that means there’s no genuine need for systemic, egalitarian change. In this view, there is no “unfairness” in the system. And as such, that old canard about “reverse discrimination” rather than “reversing discrimination” begins to ominously gain traction. For a less genderized example of much the same rhetorical device in action, consider John Key’s recent clanger about child poverty being due to drug addicts rather than neoliberal-fostered economic inequality.

As applies Clinton, the direction of Trump’s attack is especially sad. There are many and highly legitimate reasons to criticize Clinton, her record and her campaign. Her gender – or, for that matter, her taking a little longer to navigate back to her podium at a debate due to the women’s toilets at the venue being located rather further away than the men’s – is not one of them. Also, can we pause here to decide if the distance between the women and men’s bathrooms from the podium is an uncanny symbolism for women having to go an extra mile to prove their suitability for office?

On issues such as the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement, for instance, Clinton’s position deserves especial scrutiny – no least because she seems to have done a complete one-eighty degree turn on the trade deal since presiding over its negotiation as Secretary of State. Trump would have been ideally placed to land such a blow. His opposition to the TPPA, for remarkably sane reasons, has been a long-term salient point in his campaign.

Infantilizing political debate and the Republican Primaries works well for Trump. As the old saying goes, trolls will always tend to try and drag a debate down into the gutter – and once they’ve brought you down to their level, it’s far easier for them to win by virtue of greater experience.

But it’s not a good outcome – either for the political arena he competes in, or, we’d argue, for democratic engagement all up. And not just because it means voters are forced to engage with insults rather than policy positions, personalities and philosophies.This sort of gladiatorial baying and braying at one another does little to drag people outside of the core demographic it targets to the polling-booths, despite the way politicians’ reprehensible antics increase awareness by coming to dominate the headlines. Partisans love it, precisely because they’re already fired up and vitriolic about the opponent. Regular, non-aligned voters (or would-be voters) just see grandstanding which isn’t even aimed at the grandstands, but instead right past them and out into the parking-lot.

The other issue is that what public-figure talking heads come out with almost invariably directly influences the opinions and beliefs of first their followers, and then some swathes of the wider community. Even a few years after the Tamihere debacle, his narrative around a bloke-marginalizing female conspiracy which has taken over the Labour Party remains depressingly common in some circles. These things don’t go away. Given the near-Messianic fervor with which Trump appears to be regarded by a not insignificant number of Americans; it doesn’t seem unreasonable to ask what sort of impact his broad promulgation of female inferiority-due-to-biology might have over there. It lingers like a bad odour.

These are all good reasons to call out this kind of conduct and rhetoric whenever it rears its ugly head. But there’s another reason, of course. It’s offensive. Disgusting, in fact. Too disgusting not to talk about.

Curwen Ares Rolinson continues to find new and horrifying reasons not to be too upset about a putative US travel ban. Every time Trump turns up on the news, in fact. 

Khyati Shah can be found reading Foucault and dancing to T-Pain. Occasionally, at the same time. 

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Government stealthily returning to failed market approach to health – ASMS

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“The Government appears to be sidling back to a market-drive approach to the provision of public hospital services,” says Ian Powell, Executive Director of the Association of Salaried Medical Specialists (ASMS).

“It’s all happening in the background and largely below the radar, which is of concern, and it really warrants active scrutiny,” he says.

“For example, when we look at the Ministry of Health executive restructure announced recently, we note that the functions of the apparently disbanded National Health Board appear to be reduced but there is an increased emphasis on market mechanisms such as tendering through commissioning, and the language of the market – clients and customers.”

Details of the Ministry of Health restructure are available here.

Mr Powell says there are also signs of a return to the failed market health experiments of the 1990s in the updated draft New Zealand Health Strategy.

“The Government’s health funding review, whose controversial recommendations were leaked to the media last year, underpins the draft updated health strategy.  This strategy document clearly points to a competitive market model of health service provision and opens the doors to more involvement of multi-national health insurance companies.

“Proposals currently being considered by the Government include opening up DHB services to competitive tendering, with indications that funding will be dispensed only if planned ‘milestones’ are achieved.  If they’re not, then funding will go to another public or private provider. A leaked document from the funding review suggests that these milestones will include tighter financial targets.”

He says proposals also suggest separating DHBs’ funding and providing roles, with the funding role eventually being carved off and given to some other unidentified organisation.  This was tried and failed in the discredited market experiment of the 1990s.

“Doing that would be all about creating a structure more suitable for market mechanisms.  It’s not about providing the best care for patients and a decent clinically-led working environment for people employed in public hospitals.  It’s about awarding contracts to the lowest bidder.

“Multi-national companies can afford to make loss-leading bids to secure a contract, with the aim of making a profit over the longer term by cutting costs.  As a country we really don’t want to be going down that track, especially under the deeply flawed Trans Pacific Partnership Agreement.  The wrong move could prove very costly for New Zealand because once multi-national companies get their hooks into our public health service contracts, they may be very difficult to dislodge.”

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GUEST BLOG: Barry Coates – Whose rules rule? Democracy vs TPPA

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The campaign against the TPPA is gearing up for opposition to the planned signing of the TPPA in Auckland on 4th February. It’s time to stand up and be counted.

In recent years, Kiwis have turned out in huge numbers to say that this government has no mandate to sign the TPPA. A majority of Kiwis reject the TPPA according to a TV3 Reid Research poll, but the government is planning to sign it anyway. They have responded to concerns over the TPPA with secrecy, arrogance and spin.

We need to make it clear that this lock-in of failed liberalisation policies and the transfer of our democratic rights to multinationals is not acceptable. Civil society campaigns have defeated pro-corporate global rules in the Multilateral Agreement on Investment in the 1995-1998 and in the WTO in 1999-2003. We now need to defeat the TPPA and its clones.

This is not our last chance to stop the TPPA – governments still need to get it ratified, and it is looking very shaky in the US – but this is the time to mobilise, build our movement and get commitments from all political parties that they will reject the TPPA. We need a strong enough movement so that, even if it does pass, a future government will defy the pressure and ditch the TPPA.

There will be a TPPA Don’t Sign tour of public meetings, starting at 7pm in Auckland Town Hall (26/1), Wellington St Andrews Centre (27/1), Christchurch cardboard cathedral (28/1) and Dunedin Burns Hall on 26-29 January, with Lori Wallach from Public Citizen and Jane Kelsey. They will be joined by a political panel in Auckland, including several party leaders. Please spread the word. We need to fill these venues. It’s free but we need donations to pay for the costs.

A number of local TPPA coalitions are organising a protest/alternatives events in public spaces in the weekend of 30-31 January, with music, performance, workshop, kapa haka and speeches, including an event in Auckland. The aim is to make it clear we reject the TPPA but also reach out and mobilise our allies from across society, in social justice, environment, workers rights, health, education, iwi, faiths, artists, musicians and others.

We plan a media blitz to publicise the Don’t Sign speakers tour and weekend events. This means supporters swamping the airwaves, social media and print media with a call for the government not to sign the TPPA and publicising the ‘Don’t Sign’ petition that has already reached 22,000 signatures in less than a week.  

The government is obviously worried about protests and kept the signing secret, even after other governments had confirmed it is going to be in Auckland on Thursday 4th February. They are still not revealing the venue for their meeting. There will be a peaceful, visible and powerful march down Queen St, gathering in Aotea Square at midday to leave at 12.30. It’s a great way to spend your lunchtime! There will be other actions on the day.

There is anger and frustration over the government’s secrecy and arrogance on the TPPA, and the give away of our democratic rights. But the kaupapa of It’s Our Future is non-violent civil disobedience, and we call on all who might take action to respect those principles. We have strong support for the campaign and actions that turn off members the public are likely to focus media attention on public disruption, rather than on the TPPA. We call on all those who take action to do so in ways that will meet our common aims.

 If the government ignores our voices again and does sign that’s not the end of the campaign. The government then needs to ratify the deal. We will work with our partner ActionStation to swamp the Select Committee with submissions, and we plan a speakers’ tour across NZ to support local campaigners. This will also publicise the expert peer reviewed research papers that counter government spin about the TPPA and expose the dangers of the TPPA to our environment, our health, human rights and our economy.

Political opposition to the TPPA is crucial.  The Green Party, NZ First and the Maori Party have given assurances they are against the TPPA but there have been mixed messages from the Labour Party. Our campaign will let political parties know that votes at the next election will depend on them rejecting the TPPA. The Waitangi Tribunal will hold a hearing in mid-March.

The TPPA campaign is entering its crucial phase. We have public support, committed activists, local organisation, research and international allies on our side. But John Key and this government are desperate to get the TPPA. We need to make it politically impossible to for them to ratify the TPPA, or if they do, build a united opposition that will be strong enough to walk away when they get into government. We can and must win this campaign.

Thanks to the hundreds of thousands of Kiwis who have taken action on the TPPA, and especially to the group of key activists across Aotearoa who have been leading the campaign. Kia kaha!

Barry Coates, It’s Our Future spokesperson; http://itsourfuture.org.nz/; itsourfuturenz@gmail.com  

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GUEST BLOG: Kevin Hester – Public seminar to discuss Copout 21 and the threat of Methane

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Renowned climate scientist  and ominously, Nuclear Power advocate ( watch this space for John Key advocating nuclear)  James E Hansen described  Cop21( Copout21) as “a Fraud” .

We have now been thrown under the abrupt climate change bus with the dominant culture of cowboy capitalism which,  if you have been paying attention to the stock market, is already in terminal collapse and is  indifferent to our unfolding catastrophe.

Many of us have been watching carefully the exponential rise of carbon, past the symbolic 400ppm mark but little attention has been paid to the ever increasing discharge of methane from the Arctic permafrost and submarine clathrates. Methane is of an order of 25 to 100 times worse a climate change gas than carbon over varying time frames.

Embedded here is a recent post from Robertscribblers blog  on methane; Jennifer Hynes , myself,  Professor Guy McPherson ( guymcpherson.com ) and hopefully a member of the Arctic Methane Emergency Group, possibly Paul Beckwith from the University of Ottawa, will be discussing the enormous threat this poses to our bio-sphere and all complex life forms on February 14th at Laila Harre’s sea food restaurant and venue, IKA  Seafood Bar and Grill  in Auckland. 

Entry will be free but I suggest you bring enough fiat currency for delectable tapas and a stiff drink to wash down the sobering information we have to impart.

I have embedded numerous links from both Jennifer Hynes and related information in the Facebook Event link here;

Please invite anyone you know with specific focus on young people as this predicament and the information we will be discussing   will change the perspective and aspirations of every young person who hears it. Sharing in student forums will be much appreciated.

Time is short, information is king, the youth of today have a right to know what is coming and the global “ Presstitutes” as Paul Craig Roberts refers to them, are never going to tell the truth about this disaster.

Please come and join us in person , via live-streaming or watch after when  the discussion is uploaded to You Tube.

“Never be afraid to raise your voice for honesty and truth and compassion against injustice and lying and greed. If people all over the world…would do this, it would change the earth.” 
― William Faulkner 

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Police take a year to disclose secret search of activists’ home

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A Takaka couple, Rolf and Ute Kleine, had to wait a year to find out their home had been covertly searched by Police who took various items and copied their computer drives.

The search took place in January last year, but the Kleine’s have only just received a letter from the Police disclosing it.

At the time, January 2015, the Police were trying to find the author of a letter threatening to contaminate infant formula if New Zealand did not stop using 1080 poison for pest eradication.

While the Police are to be commended for tracking down the blackmailer – an Auckland businessman has pleaded guilty – the way the Police went about the investigation is concerning.

Anti-1080 activists like the Kleines were treated in an unnecessarily heavy-handed manner.

Not only was the Kleine’s home searched without them knowing in January 2015. They were raided again in March. Four unmarked cars pulled into their drive at 7am with search warrants, one for their home and one for Takaka Infusion, their vegetarian teahouse. Rolf was taken to Motueka Police Station and interrogated for six hours. Ute was taken separately to Takaka station and interviewed for four hours. They returned home to find the Police had left their place in a mess.

How many of the 60 “significant persons of interest” the Police talked to during the inquiry had experiences similar to the Kleines? Such behavior was not the way to encourage cooperation from anti-1080 activists to help identify the offender.

Unfortunately, under the Search and Surveillance Act the Police don’t have to provide much justification for covert searches. All they need to do is tell a judge that to disclose the search would “endanger the safety of any person” or “prejudice ongoing investigations”.

The use of this provision against political activists does sound alarm bells.

Even though technically the Police can wait 12 months to inform people their home has been secretly searched there is absolutely no excuse for the Police to wait 12 months in the Kleine’s case. At the very least the Kleines should have been told about the covert January search when they were raided a second time in March and carted off to Police stations.

Not only is it spooky to think your home might be raided without you knowing. If the Kleine’s experience is anything to go by you might lose valuable items without even knowing they are gone. Some time after the March raid Rolf Kleine noticed a five-year-old newspaper clipping was missing from his home. He contacted the Police, and yes they had it, but hadn’t told him they had taken it.

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5 Broken cameras filmmaker in NZ in February

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7pm Saturday 27 February
Mangere Arts Centre
Bader Drive, Mangere
Free Entry, Koha welcome

Nominated for an Oscar, 5 Broken Cameras is a deeply personal first-hand account of life and nonviolent resistance in Bil’in, a West Bank village where Israel is extending its apartheid wall/ security fence.

Palestinian Emad Burnat, who bought his first camera in 2005 to record the birth of his youngest son, shot the film and Israeli filmmaker Guy Davidi co-directed.

The filmmakers follow one family’s evolution over five years, witnessing a child’s growth from a newborn baby into a young boy who observes the world unfolding around him.

The film is a Palestinian-Israeli-French co-production.

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