tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-68180514736338162392024-02-19T16:14:04.094+13:00NZ First YouthA decidedly unofficial repository of the news, views, and attitudes of some young people who quite like NZ First. Curwen Rolinsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09768637816927187968noreply@blogger.comBlogger490125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6818051473633816239.post-13289695806227370792023-10-13T06:16:00.000+13:002023-10-13T06:16:45.090+13:00On NZ First's Impending Return To Parliament - Both In The Mirror & Through The Looking-Glass <p>There's a quip often (and probably erroneously) attributed to Mark Twain which goes something like "History doesn't repeat itself - but it often rhymes." <br /><br />It's something I've occasionally had in my head as concerns NZ political history and various then-current events ... but rarely so pointedly than the present situation concerning my old party, New Zealand First.<br /><br />Which, for those assumedly living under a rock or <a href="https://www.nzonscreen.com/title/eyewitness-news-bob-jones-punches-reporter-rod-vaughan-1985" target="_blank">up a river somewhere in the South Island trout-fishing and trying to hide away from the media</a> ... <br /><br />... is that having been turfed out of Parliament three years prior following their not-terrible term as part of a Labour-led Government, they're now polling somewhere in the 5-6% range and looking like they'll return. <br /><br />You know - rather like 2011. <br /><br />Except it isn't.<br /><br />And before we go any further upon all of that score, I'd like to take a moment to do that most 21st century of things and ... clarify my pronouns going forward.<br /><br />You'll hear me say "We" a fair bit in the course of this piece. That's in reference to the Party I was part of, joined up in 2009, served on its Board of Directors for nearly half a decade (including through the 2011 Campaign), and was finally sent into exile from circa 2017 following my public statements of dissatisfaction as to how certain elements therein were conspiring for a long-term 'drift to the right'. <br /><br />I say "We" there - and I think, as applies commenting upon the 2011 Campaign, that I've earned that right.<br /><br />At other times, you'll hear me say "They". That, of course, refers to the Party ... after I was out of it (oddly enough, only in one sense to the term - very much clean-and-sober otherwise), and most especially as applies its present '<a href="https://www.dictionary.com/browse/heel-turn" target="_blank">heel-turn</a>' phase from late 2020 onward. <br /><br />I still voted for them in 2017 - and do believe that I made the right call going hard for them in the years prior to that, because we got a pretty decent Government from 2017-2020 thanks to NZF's coalition decision; but I would be highly, highly unlikely to do so again. <br /><br />And with that heaped helping of DISCLAIMER out of the way ... on with the show!<br /><br />Partially, this article has been motivated via the ... <a href="https://twitter.com/POLITIKwebsite/status/1710898938830827841" target="_blank">peculiar pronouncement made by NZ First to its membership over the weekend that it isn't "backed by big business", but instead "relies on our grassroots supporters for financial support"</a>. <br /><br />Because yeah - once upon a time, that was absolutely true. And it makes it all the more remarkable how <b><i>we</i></b> (as we were at that point) managed to pull off what we did circa 2011 - amidst a condition of media virtual blackout, no less! <br /><br />And that's why I must confess that I find this current chicanery to be so ... bad taste, because it almost feels like the 'Spirit of 2011' is being worn like a most macabre puppet. It's got all the overt signaling of an 'out-group' political insurgency against some unrepresentative 'elite' ... as funded by and working for the interests of some of New Zealand's wealthiest men. <br /><br />But let's go back to the (first) campaign in question, and take a look at some facts therein.<br /><br />In 2011, we campaigned off the smell of an oily rag (a dangerous thing to do with that many cigarettes smoldering at once!)<br /><br />The <a href="https://elections.nz/assets/2011-general-election/new-zealand-first-2011-amended-party-expenses-return.pdf" target="_blank">total spend for election expenses (advertising etc.) was $144,570.61</a>, with a broadcasting allocation from the Electoral Commission of $102,000. As you can see, the <a href="https://elections.nz/assets/Party-donations-and-loans/2012-returns/new-zealand-first-donations-2011.pdf" target="_blank">$48,534 from 551 donors </a>which the Party recorded in 2011 (as well as for the periods <a href="https://elections.nz/assets/Party-donations-and-loans/2011-returns/new-zealand-first-donations-2010.pdf" target="_blank">2010</a> & <a href="https://elections.nz/assets/Party-donations-and-loans/2010-returns/new-zealand-first-donations-2009.pdf" target="_blank">2009</a>) was pretty sorely needed and actively utilized. <br /><br />To put this in context - <a href="https://www.kiwiblog.co.nz/2012/03/party_spending_in_2011.html" target="_blank">David Farrar's analysis</a> (which uses the ~$155k figure which NZF had earlier submitted for its 2011 return - this was later amended <i>downward</i> by over ten thousand dollars in an amended filing) had NZF spending $1.06 per vote. <br /><br />Getting 6.59% as a result<br /><br />For <i>further</i> context, here's Farrar's full table for 2011:<br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgSPBgCOXEQyMw7FEmXu3ibiurZqtrnAJWPz-t0y4oisGggsUjmv8F0xEc5I-Op4W_dDY7UNnd4rnnTsLwPWlaD3OElRh6F-y9EZ_nCxdWVGo9ISM7wOAM-f_JzA-TbBkAiTjH9Y3J8eO9AUoKj23yr8fg-gad-GpGkeMuq30LO7K1bqh0-8kvB7TRROdK/s663/F64kN7lacAAQJ-v.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="663" data-original-width="587" height="586" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgSPBgCOXEQyMw7FEmXu3ibiurZqtrnAJWPz-t0y4oisGggsUjmv8F0xEc5I-Op4W_dDY7UNnd4rnnTsLwPWlaD3OElRh6F-y9EZ_nCxdWVGo9ISM7wOAM-f_JzA-TbBkAiTjH9Y3J8eO9AUoKj23yr8fg-gad-GpGkeMuq30LO7K1bqh0-8kvB7TRROdK/w519-h586/F64kN7lacAAQJ-v.png" width="519" /></a></div><br /><p>Which, as you can see, has NZF being <i>incredibly</i> 'efficient' when it comes to dollars-into-votes.<br /><br />You know how that happens? When you're actually campaigning hard because you can't afford to do it the rich way.<br /><br />Going into 2023, meanwhile, we find quite a different story. Namely - <a href="https://elections.nz/assets/Annual-Returns/2022/NZ-First-Annual-Return-2022.pdf" target="_blank">398,597.83 of donations & loans [from 122 donors; mostly in the 5k to 15k range] for 2022</a>; <a href="https://elections.nz/assets/2021-annual-returns-/NZ-First-Annual-Return-2021-amended-v2.pdf" target="_blank">307,125 [from 63 donors] for 2021</a>; and <a href="https://elections.nz/democracy-in-nz/political-parties-in-new-zealand/donations-exceeding-20000/" target="_blank">$600,000 from 11 donors declared for 2023 thus far</a> [plus a very large estate bequest from former candidate, Hugh Barr]. <br /><br />So, I'll rephrase that - they've gone from getting around less than $50,000 in donations over 3 years<b> total</b> and fighting an election on that [and much more than that - but by this I mean manpower & enthusiasm not dollars] ... through to hauling in 6x, 8x, 12x that [26x all up?] from an evidently <b>much</b> smaller donor pool. <br /><br />Something which, looking forward from our perspective back there in 2011, would have seemed rather surprising, I have to say - <a href="https://www.thepost.co.nz/a/politics/350080745/rich-lister-cash-rolling-nz-first" target="_blank">considering all the rich-listers usually better-known for backing ACT</a> who appear to have suddenly experienced manic bursts of patriotism over the past twelve months and thus opened their wallets for Winston et co.<br /><br />Although then again we also distinctly recall <a href="https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/in-depth/410299/concerns-over-secret-fisheries-donations-to-nz-first-foundation" target="_blank">Shane Jones bringing long-time backers, Talleys, to the party from 2017 onward</a> [$26,950 from 2017-2019 via the NZ First Foundation; <a href="https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/politics/2019/02/shane-jones-in-hot-water-over-support-for-talley-s-accused-of-illegal-fishing.html" target="_blank">$10,000 to Jones' own Whangarei campaign in 2017</a>] - which appears to have netted the fisheries company a decent return as applies the long-running advocacy (and/or policy road-blocking) <a href="https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/nz-first-mp-shane-jones-hits-back-at-any-suggestion-he-stopped-mandatory-cameras-on-boats/HSNSGD7W2YUG77KXDRMXCQJGQA/" target="_blank">from the self-described "industry apostle"</a>. <br /><br />And, for that matter, one Troy Bowker <a href="https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/in-depth/416012/foundation-donations-not-named-on-nz-first-electoral-return" target="_blank">who'd bestowed (via property company Caniwi Capital Partners) some $24,150 for 2019</a> - and who would probably have been rather pleased <a href="https://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/after-playing-tough-on-commercial-rents-did-new-zealand-first-get-played-by-labour/SO6JVGLFBGLCFQWUW5UKJ4552E/" target="_blank">when NZ First performed an abrupt volte-face on supporting the Government's Covid rent-relief proposal mid-2020</a> following what had appeared to be their earlier support. <br /><br />But let's get back to our core theme here.<br /><br />That being NZ First's 2023 efforts as ironic echo of 2011's insurgent gains. <br /><br />It's now a 'big money' campaign. In multiple senses to the term.<br /><br />Why do I mention that? <br /><br />Because if we run back to 2011, that Farrar figure of $1.06 per vote ... and 6.59% as an eventual result (with a pervasive clime of media blackout, I might add!) ; this contrasts rather heavily with NZF circa 2023 having spent most of the past year at between 2% and 4.5% - only in the last few weeks cracking the 5% threshold.<br /><br />This is in spite of: <br /><br />i) the fact that they've managed to have a significant run of advertisements in the likes of the NZ Herald (seriously, for weeks upon weeks now, literally every day I open my newspaper - physical newspaper, because I'm an old man like that - I am confronted with advertising for NZ First therein; I am sure it's much the same across other parts of the country); <br /><br />ii) what I anticipate to be a similarly ... pervasive / expansive suite of other advertising expenditure via other mediums (a family member had related seeing a full-on billboard in prime position out there somewhere, for instance - not a hoarding, a billboard; although I accept that that's anecdotal evidence);<br /><br />iii) the party (and Winston specifically) has been in receipt of a <i>much</i> more favourable media environment - by which, I should hasten to clarify, I don't mean that media outlets and journalists are giving him an easy time when talking about him or the party. They're often not. But more that <b><i>they're talking about him and the party at all</i></b> - and have been doing so for some time. <br /><br />And as applies that last point - in politics, that maxim of Oscar Wilde's (aptly enough, given our subject, from 'The Picture of Dorian Grey') that "There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about", is very much cross-applicable to politics. <br /><br />Now, of course, I don't know how much money NZF has spent on its campaign this year thus far (or, for that matter, its efforts in the past two years falling outside the count period) - but as I say, I don't think they're putting all them hundreds of thousands they're getting per year into playing the Auckland property market.<br /><br />And while, admittedly, it's certainly possible that they'll wind up with an Election Night result which is notably above where they're currently polling - say, in the 7% range; on the basis of where they're at now, it looks like they've spent a metric trucktonne (that's a technical unit of measurement) <b><i>more</i></b> cash (in a more amenable media environment) <b><i>now</i></b> to get <b><i>not as far</i></b> as we did 12 years ago.<br /><br />There are, of course, a few likely reasons for this (not-quite-yet-a-) result. <br /><br />One of which, somebody will say, is under-polling. Yet I don't know how apt that might actually be. After all - <a href="https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/politics/2020/10/nz-election-2020-newshub-reid-research-poll-shows-labour-with-slim-majority-as-national-makes-slight-gain.html" target="_blank">the last poll before the 2020 Election (a Reid Research)</a> actually <b>overpolled</b> NZ First (3.5% in the poll - versus 2.6% as the actual result), whilst <a href="https://static.colmarbrunton.co.nz/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/10-14-October-2020_1-NEWS-Colmar-Brunton-Poll-report-1.pdf" target="_blank">the two previous Colmar-Bruntons, at 2.4% and 2.6%</a> (the latter closest to the Election) were pretty much bang-on. <br /><br />Instead, I suspect there's a substantive reasoning to it: <br /><br />I don't think they've really recovered from their losses / alienation of support from the 2017 campaign onward. <br /><br />And I should, perhaps, clarify that by explaining what I'm referring to there. <br /><br />The 2017 campaign saw a marked tac 'rightwards' and loud noises about Maori issues ... a risky move considering i) the Party'd gotten back in in 2011 and then built its support further in 2014, through left-wing or Labour-protest-/tactical-vote support; ii) had strong Maori support (seriously - as a brief illustrative exemplar, up until 2017 some of the strongest-performing electorates for party-vote for NZ First percentage-wise have tended to be the Maori Seats ... even despite the Party not standing candidates therein).<br /><br />I gather that the objective with all of this was to actively court National / right-wing support; on the presumption that National was at its high-water mark, and that National sloughing off support would either lead to a bolstering for ACT / the New Conservatives (the latter .. at a much more microscopic scale), or could lead to NZ First's gain. <br /><br />This isn't merely speculation upon my part. I was actually told this quite directly - with a literal illustration being given in the form of the Party's 2017 'branding' and outreach materials. These featuring a new style of logo with chevrons pointing 'to the right', and in many cases with a pointedly 'blue sky' backdrop prominent thereupon. Subtle. <br /><br />The trouble being the presumption that the Party's membership and more especially voter-following was effectively 'locked in', despite not inconsiderable chunks of it having come from Labour / (anti-National) protest vote over the two elections previous. Or, at the very least, that they'd be able to 'trade' any 'left-ish' support for the anticipated gains from National (and, of course, the Conservative Party - having imploded - with its 3.97% showing in 2014). <br /><br />As for how they went with it ... well, ok, in fairness, I do distinctly recall them picking up a whole gaggle of ex-(New)Cons etc. into the membership. But it was, at best, treading water - and really, their vote went from 8.66% in 2014 through to 7.2% in 2017 [that being, in actual vote terms, 208,300 => 186,706 ... even despite turnout going <b><i>up</i></b>], so in reality they lost votes. <br /><br />And then proceeded to compound upon this in each of the 2017 coalition negotiations and then subsequently the 2020 campaign itself.<br /><br />The former, obviously, was where NZ First ultimately sided with Labour (which I do believe to have been the correct move - albeit handled escalatingly poorly as the term wore on) ... thus annoying the hell out of the very same National / (New) Con etc. support they'd just sought to sacrifice their more left-ish saliency for. <br /><br />The latter, meanwhile, was that curious episode wherein instead of playing the 'Elder Statesman' who'd enabled (and was integral to) probably the most popular government in living memory at the time ... Winston wound up endeavouring to run <b>against</b> the Government he was still serving in - winning over few, and losing further again. <br /><br />Personally, I find these recurrent twists and contortions rather eyebrow-raising - although probably not for the overtly obvious reason. <br /><br />Rather, it's because I well remember a conversation with Winston in early 2011 when we were headed down from Auckland into the Waikato for a day's campaigning. We'd been talking about - from memory - the newfangled discipline of 'political marketing', and its seeming insistence that parties go out of their way to chop and change (even wholesale reinvent themselves) in order to chase some no-doubt focus-group identified 'key demographic'. <br /><br />Winston was (to my mind quite rightly) dismissive of the whole concept. To his mind - at least at the time - that was the opposite of a good idea. And in order to illustrate the essential problem as to the proposition, he invoked that well-known fable of the man, the boy, and the donkey. <br /><br />For those unaware - ... you know what, <a href="https://sites.pitt.edu/~dash/type1215.html" target="_blank">I'll just quote the damn thing</a>. <br /><br />"A man and his son were once going with their donkey to market. As they were walking along by his side a countryman passed them and said, "You fools, what is a donkey for but to ride upon?" So the man put the boy on the donkey, and they went on their way.<br /><br />But soon they passed a group of men, one of whom said, "See that lazy youngster, he lets his father walk while he rides."<br /><br />So the man ordered his boy to get off, and got on himself. But they hadn't gone far when they passed two women, one of whom said to the other, "Shame on that lazy lout to let his poor little son trudge along."<br /><br />Well, the man didn't know what to do, but at last he took his boy up before him on the donkey. By this time they had come to the town, and the passersby began to jeer and point at them. The man stopped and asked what they were scoffing at.<br /><br />The men said, "Aren't you ashamed of yourself for overloading that poor donkey of yours -- you and your hulking son?"<br /><br />The man and boy got off and tried to think what to do. They thought and they thought, until at last they cut down a pole, tied the donkey's feet to it, and raised the pole and the donkey to their shoulders. They went along amid the laughter of all who met them until they came to a bridge, when the donkey, getting one of his feet loose, kicked out and caused the boy to drop his end of the pole. In the struggle the donkey fell over the bridge, and his forefeet being tied together, he was drowned.<br /><br />Try to please everyone, and you will please no one."<br /><br />As it happens, I was, of course, already in agreement with Winston's point all the way back there in early 2011 - with no need for him to then provide us with a tangible multi-year demonstration running from circa 2017 to near the present in order to really drive the point home. <br /><br />Although that said - it's not exactly accurate to say that NZ First has ended up 'pleasing no-one'. It just took awhile to find its 'new crowd'.<br /><br />Specifically, about four months. That being the approximate temporal distance between <a href="https://www.facebook.com/winstonpeters/posts/pfbid0dCZRKkLQCkgGpkF5g8XcyEdXr4RuWtoP4V2pGEcYtonxccEgSEi6XuvcdHDZCmJZl" target="_blank">this statement from Winston on the 4th of October, 2021</a>, wherein he demands a pretty serious (over-)extension of the vaccine mandate concept ...<br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhX0YYCZz-Nk4pErcysmaIxDh_PhXnTVx9e_Uw7U0us4xyxarYXaQnNRCI5thq_N2Ky0eDZvh8hh3r6KddPcGPvZLKe3P90c9Lh5yc13d_IwgmpUFVXKFNRBpEN6qi4J21_W9ST7Z0J-7ybInclluFaXutT5f8WxtBV-LPUy3aF_KDlaSaDLkBzgIZHTNKQ/s1009/winston%20vax%20mandate%20oct%202021%20fb%202.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="697" data-original-width="1009" height="328" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhX0YYCZz-Nk4pErcysmaIxDh_PhXnTVx9e_Uw7U0us4xyxarYXaQnNRCI5thq_N2Ky0eDZvh8hh3r6KddPcGPvZLKe3P90c9Lh5yc13d_IwgmpUFVXKFNRBpEN6qi4J21_W9ST7Z0J-7ybInclluFaXutT5f8WxtBV-LPUy3aF_KDlaSaDLkBzgIZHTNKQ/w475-h328/winston%20vax%20mandate%20oct%202021%20fb%202.jpg" width="475" /></a></div><p><br />... and Winston's visit some 141 days later on February 22nd last year to Thorndon's answer to Glastonbury centered on Parliament's front lawn. <br /><br />As it happened, that was also the point at which the occupation protest really got ugly. Not, you understand, due to Winston's unmasked appearance - but rather due to <a href="https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/politics/2022/02/nz-first-leader-winston-peters-tours-parliament-protest-camp-as-police-prepare-for-another-showdown-in-central-wellington.html" target="_blank">the bewildering spectacle of a protester speeding his car the wrong way down Molesworth Street</a> into a crowd in a bid to hit a row of police. <br /><br />That was a day before Winston's visit, and came hot on the heels (and/or other protester anatomy) of attempted-bombardments of police <a href="https://www.odt.co.nz/news/national/parliament-protest-7-arrested-human-waste-thrown-police" target="_blank">by protesters literally flinging human excrement at them</a>. <br /><br />All things considered, it was not perhaps the most obvious place I'd have anticipated a party which has often presented itself as pretty actively concerned about law and order issues to be going fishing for photo-ops at. <br /><br />Not least given that the gentleman who'd accompanied Winston upon that occasion, former NZF MP (and generally pretty sharp guy) Darroch Ball (more recently <a href="https://i.stuff.co.nz/national/300197863/former-nz-first-mp-darroch-ball-new-coleader-of-sensible-sentencing-trust" target="_blank">a co-leader of the Sensible Sentencing Trust</a>) had previously <a href="https://www.parliament.nz/en/pb/hansard-debates/rhr/combined/HansDeb_20181017_20181017_36" target="_blank">felt strongly enough</a> against assaults on first responders that he'd <a href="https://www.parliament.nz/mi/pb/sc/make-a-submission/document/52SCJU_SCF_BILL_78241/protection-for-first-responders-and-prison-officers-bill" target="_blank">successfully introduced</a> a <a href="https://www.legislation.govt.nz/bill/member/2018/0064/23.0/LMS43773.html" target="_blank">Member's Bill</a> to make the more serious of these a standalone offence under the Crimes Act (and, it should be noted, <a href="https://www.legislation.govt.nz/bill/member/2018/0064/23.0/LMS43795.html" target="_blank">extend</a> the <a href="https://www.legislation.govt.nz/act/public/1981/0113/latest/DLM53530.html" target="_blank">already-existing coverage under the Summary Offences Act</a> for assaults on police, traffic, and prison officers to <a href="https://www.legislation.govt.nz/bill/member/2018/0064/23.0/LMS43795.html" target="_blank">also encompass</a> both <a href="https://www.legislation.govt.nz/act/public/2015/0070/latest/DLM5977030.html" target="_blank">medical and fire service</a> first responder personnel as well). <br /><br />And while there are, no doubt, a great many further things which could be said about the ... piquant alignment of New Zealand's anti-vax and/or anti-mandate and/or anti-coherent-understanding-as-to-international-jurisprudence-pertaining-toward-crimes-against-humanity-carried-out-in-the-1940s movement around Winston et co - that isn't the purpose to this article.<br /><br />Besides which, I'm sure Andrea Vance <a href="https://www.thepost.co.nz/a/politics/350065882/voices-freedom-pro-whaling-lobbyist-and-links-nz-first" target="_blank">did a much better job</a> in her piece upon the subject published in the Sunday Star Times a few weeks earlier. <br /><br />I would, however, observe that this, too, is a case of one of those curious 'rhyming' leitmotifs for New Zealand First. <br /><br />In that in 2011 - it was, indeed, a voice for a severality of sectors of Kiwi society who felt they'd been marginalized via the rather radical socioeconomic 'experimentation' which had been foisted upon us for the preceding then-twenty seven years of onrushing Neoliberalism. <br /><br />Hence, you understand, why it was significantly so antipathic toward National. <br /><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjR2gl1eGhOeYkqwstoDNiGiH9FubxXb9VC7jwsVE-o9-OCVh0d8BM_8ZtaK8PyKyqL0JfLNm24WEYFFQe-gIjVk4vqzdfNOWOfY0NpXaDugDhKEXm8ulArhSlxgSBs-PbEP56Fb-VhQfNMCrgBT6HbScAEGIJymzNV_vl2ChcHth62qbiiwQuWhlSLbCax/s659/winston%202012%20national%20cloud.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="603" data-original-width="659" height="498" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjR2gl1eGhOeYkqwstoDNiGiH9FubxXb9VC7jwsVE-o9-OCVh0d8BM_8ZtaK8PyKyqL0JfLNm24WEYFFQe-gIjVk4vqzdfNOWOfY0NpXaDugDhKEXm8ulArhSlxgSBs-PbEP56Fb-VhQfNMCrgBT6HbScAEGIJymzNV_vl2ChcHth62qbiiwQuWhlSLbCax/w545-h498/winston%202012%20national%20cloud.png" width="545" /></a></div><br />Whereas come 2023, we find that there's another array of persons who insist that they've been marginalized by Government (specifically, the one the party they're now lining up behind was actively party to ... and which then sought to criticize for not going far enough in various measures which would have marginalized the anti-vax and anti-mandate sorts further) ... oh, and the whole thing's <a href="https://www.newsroom.co.nz/nzs-richest-man-backing-nz-first-again" target="_blank">backed by a billionaire</a> and is very explicitly proclaiming it intends to empower the National (and ACT, it seems) party back into Government. <br /><br />That is what I mean by a 'rhyme' rather than a mere 'repeat' - it is, as it were, a 'mirror image'. That's why everything is seemingly <b>exactly</b> the wrong way around. <br /><br />I contemplated opening this piece with <a href="https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1852/18th-brumaire/ch01.htm" target="_blank">that famous dictum of Marx</a> - that "Hegel remarks somewhere that all great world-historic facts and personages appear, so to speak, twice. He forgot to add: the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce."<br /><br />Yet I truly do not believe that New Zealand First's insurgent return to Parliament the <b>first</b> time around was a tragedy - although certainly, certain of the events and choices made in the decade-and-then-some since that occurrence could most certainly bear such a sobriquet descriptor.<br /><br />Indeed, it reminds one of the passage from <a href="https://www.online-literature.com/dostoevsky/brothers_karamazov/7/" target="_blank">Dostoyevsky's The Brothers Karamazov</a> (nothing should be read into the fact the chapter is, itself, entitled 'The Old Buffoon'):<br /><br />"Above all, don't lie to yourself. The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to such a pass that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect for himself and for others. And having no respect he ceases to love [...] The man who lies to himself can be more easily offended than anyone. You know it is sometimes very pleasant to take offence, isn't it? A man may know that nobody has insulted him, but that he has invented the insult for himself, has lied and exaggerated to make it picturesque, has caught at a word and made a mountain out of a molehill -- he knows that himself, yet he will be the first to take offence, and will revel in his resentment till he feels great pleasure in it, and so pass to genuine vindictiveness."<br /><br />But again we digress, and with it heading toward dawn on the day afore the Election, I really should hurry up and get this thing published. <br /><br />General Koechlin-Schwartz reportedly remarked to Patton that the poorer the quality of infantry, the more it needed artillery ... and that the American infantry needed all the artillery they could get . <br /><br />NZF's big-spend bombardment should seem to be covering for just such a gap.<br /><br />In closing, I should like to quote a great man, a politician who - whilst flawed - I genuinely admired, and was proud to serve under. <br /><br />He <a href="https://www.parliament.nz/en/pb/hansard-debates/rhr/document/48HansS_20071204_00000948/peters-winston-electoral-finance-bill-in-committee" target="_blank">observed the following</a>:<br /><br />"No one pays a million dollars to a political party without asking for something. Members should ask Michael Fay about that. He paid the National Party a million dollars, did he not? And this was the deal: “You bail me out from the BNZ and you get me into State asset sales, and I will get a return of three to one. I will put on that million dollars for you, and I will get, by the freedom of policies, $300 for every dollar I put down.” That is National; that is its record.<br /><br />Those ignoramuses can scream and shout, but I know about that. I was there, and I saw what was done. I saw how National was prepared to compromise some hard-working lady down in Gore or some poor guy in Kaitāia, who were making cakes, organising hoedowns, and picking up membership for the National Party. But National was prepared to put all those people aside for the sake of the few or the very few—or, as Roosevelt put it, those over-mighty subjects."<br /><br />His name was Winston Peters.<br /><br />I can't help but wonder what has happened to him since. <p></p><p> </p>Curwen Rolinsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09768637816927187968noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6818051473633816239.post-43361606534660920272023-03-24T03:25:00.000+13:002023-03-24T03:25:29.577+13:00A Cost To The City - On Mayor Brown's Most Recent Curious Initiative<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiFny3hYOT41qrAYGbtxmaaMMVGpU0ELOEoC8VNT3T6-49Zb2Jo1k3uaESOPAPVnYDmPkMwEgyvo31yR3Os1vRwudsIlCUDeD8_l416Pi5IAbfitc0V0tYsogUJxgp5VUzr6E6B7Xhz4v-WO67GXCcDzdlmkL_cWtMuNZoXCZO9nuxS5iGy6GSGMN-qGw/s613/HQ336HAGKCEU27HUQ4EB766OPA.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="613" data-original-width="576" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiFny3hYOT41qrAYGbtxmaaMMVGpU0ELOEoC8VNT3T6-49Zb2Jo1k3uaESOPAPVnYDmPkMwEgyvo31yR3Os1vRwudsIlCUDeD8_l416Pi5IAbfitc0V0tYsogUJxgp5VUzr6E6B7Xhz4v-WO67GXCcDzdlmkL_cWtMuNZoXCZO9nuxS5iGy6GSGMN-qGw/w602-h640/HQ336HAGKCEU27HUQ4EB766OPA.jpg" width="602" /></a></div><br /><p><br /><br />It's a curious thing watching Mayor Brown make efforts at 'cost-saving'. <br /><br />In the name of this slogantastic endeavour, he's recently managed to propel the Auckland Council to withdraw from Local Government NZ. <br /><br />He claims, apparently, <a href="https://twitter.com/tmurphyNZ/status/1638712396863913986" target="_blank">that this would save the city roughly $640,000</a>. Which might sound a fair bit of money - up until one considers that his target for savings is in the realm of roughly three hundred million dollars. <br /><br /><a href="https://twitter.com/RichardHills_/status/1638778060085563393" target="_blank">Councilor Richard Hills, by contrast</a>, suggests that withdrawing from LGNZ would instead spare us only $370,000 a year, made up of a population-based membership fee ($350k) and contribution to the annual LGNZ conference ($20k). <br /><br />Perhaps more importantly, he also points to a somewhat larger figure as constituting the monetary value of the benefits to Auckland from LGNZ membership that we'd be foregoing via withdrawal. LGNZ itself, perhaps predictably, concurs - <a href="https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/local-government/131587192/800-members-getting-pissed-and-dancing-wayne-brown-pulls-auckland-council-out-of-local-government-nz" target="_blank">suggesting we've just thrown away a million dollars a year in positive financial returns to our membership</a>. <br /><br />However it's not my purpose to get into that dimension of things. Others are, no doubt, going to present the relevant Numbers on such a score over the coming days. <br /><br />Rather, I thought I'd Do My Part for Auckland by seeking to help the Mayor in his cost-cutting agenda. <br /><br />Since a figure somewhere between $370k and $640k per annum is apparently a saving worth pursuing in such a manner ... we have no doubt that the Mayor will be positively thrilled that I've identified a miscreant who's already managed to cost the Council and the struggling ratepayer well more than that over a span of less than six months. <br /><br />An <a href="https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/local-government/130719437/auckland-mayor-wayne-brown-pays-four-staff-250k-a-year--as-did-his-predecessor" target="_blank">article run by Stuff back in November</a> had Brown staking out his intent to use far more ratepayer money than his predecessors in staffing his own office. Here's the quote:<br /><br />"Brown’s approach is in stark contrast to his famously frugal predecessor Phil Goff, who in the year to July 2021, spent only $1.8m of the near $5.2m available – frugality his staff once promoted to the media.<br /><br />But it appears Brown has a different approach.<br /><br />“Unlike my predecessor, I intend to make full use of the powers and resources available to me to do what the law demands,” Brown said."<br /><br />A little over two weeks later, <a href="https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/local-government/130719437/auckland-mayor-wayne-brown-pays-four-staff-250k-a-year--as-did-his-predecessor" target="_blank">the same outlet reported</a> upon some of those "full uses" in action. Various of these hires didn't serve out their full terms and so didn't cost quite so eye-wateringly much, but it nevertheless makes for ... an interesting running total via comparison to the LGNZ participation fees Brown is so vehemently opposed to. <br /><br />To whit - Matthew Hooton on a $135,000 contract for six months; Tim Hurdle and Jacinda Lean at $280,000 for the pair to act as chief of staff and deputy for six months (of which, they served seven weeks); ex-NZF MP, Jenny Marcroft, at $37,500 for eleven weeks as a 'Government and External Relations advisor' (and oh boy does he seem to need the 'advising'); and last, but most certainly not least, his legal advisor - Max Hardy, formerly of Meredith Connell - making a similarly seamless transition from Brown's campaign team to his Mayoral Office, being first an interim ... something at roughly $5,000 a week (so $260,000 annually), before taking over as interim chief of staff. A role in which <a href="https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/staggering-wayne-browns-big-spend-with-top-nz-law-firm-5k-plus-a-week-chief-of-staff-123k-in-legal-advice/SBJNMX66UBF2XKA5UXULF663YE/" target="_blank">the Herald reports Hardy had received $17,250 for three weeks' work</a> (for a yearly salary of $299,000).<br /><br />It's assumedly in that former position that he managed to tot up <a href="https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/staggering-wayne-browns-big-spend-with-top-nz-law-firm-5k-plus-a-week-chief-of-staff-123k-in-legal-advice/SBJNMX66UBF2XKA5UXULF663YE/" target="_blank">a "substantial" portion of the $123,000 ($61,500 a month)</a> worth of legal services which the Mayor received from Meredith Connell in the two months since his election, entirely separate to and over and above the Council's own contracted use of the firm.<br /><br />Insofar as it matters, we might also incorporate <a href="https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/local-government/131498148/wayne-brown-paid-topham-guerin-58k-for-postflood-logos-videos-and-advice" target="_blank">the $58,305 which he spent hiring PR firm Topham Guerin</a> for five weeks to help him handle the aftermath of the Anniversary Weekend floods and their ensuing cleanup. Few would disagree that our Mayor has had a bit of a communication problem, and that expert assistance would be justified - although with $12,000 of that going on a swift-draw campaign which appears to have produced a grand total of one logo and three shirts (two of which may have, ultimately, been ratepayer funded - <a href="https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/local-government/131498148/wayne-brown-paid-topham-guerin-58k-for-postflood-logos-videos-and-advice">Desley Simpson reportedly having bought hers off the council after taking it for its thus far only public airing, on February 7</a>), and another $7300 for a further "brand" ... well, a nebulous chunk of the remaining $39,005 seems a potentially rather high price to pay for the admittedly no doubt difficult task of managing to get the Mayor in front of a camera and sounding reasonably cogent upon this issue. <br /><br />Now before we go any further, I feel I need to clarify something here. <br /><br />I'm not for a moment seeking to suggest that the Mayor's Office should not have quality, competent staff - and be willing and able to pay to attract good talent to fill relevant vacancies therein.<br /><br />Quite the contrary. <br /><br />He evidently needs help - and there's no shame, as the man at the center of the city, in being prepared to put your hand up to bring in people able to enable you to do what needs to be done. (Although one can, perhaps, wonder aloud whether certain of those appointments really were the 'best' that our money could buy - at least, for the prices offered. There's one in particular in the above enumerations which, upon basis of observed past track record, I'm rather less than enthused at).<br /><br />Rather, my issue here is with both the priorities on show, and what it seemingly demonstrates about what our Mayor's approach actually is. Once we cut through the (at times rather considerable) rhetoric and bluster, I mean.<br /><br />Consider it this way - whether we take the $370,000 figure or the $640,000 figure (and leaving out, for the moment, what positive returns from the fee's payment Auckland gets as the result), those are relatively small numbers. <br /><br />If it were THAT necessary to make immediate and dire savings across the board to the point that a few hundred thousand dollars really would make all the difference, then figures of that kind could be not-all-that-uneasily found to be slashed out of<a href="https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/local-government/130547321/wayne-brown-could-become-aucklands-first-5-million-mayor" target="_blank"> the Mayor's own $5.2 million discretionary budget</a>. <br /><br />Perhaps <a href="https://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/AK1909/S00501/mayoral-office-saves-nearly-4-million-over-three-years.htm" target="_blank">the list of savings, adding up to well over a million dollars a year,</a> that his predecessor, Phil Goff, managed to squeeze out of the Mayoral budget not so long ago could serve as some rudimentary form of inspiration. <br /><br />And, as a case in point for What Brown Might Have Done Differently, even something as simple as actually using the Council's pre-standing agreement with Meredith Connell (and in-house counsel and other advisors in the relevant area) rather than duplicating services by hiring a flash former partner to report directly to the Mayor etc. etc. would have saved somewhere around a third of the lower figure through to a fifth of the higher one. <br /><br />So phrased another way, I really don't think this is actually about the money here.<br /><br />Instead, it's about sending a message. Two, in fact.<br /><br />The first one is obvious - it's to that pert portion of his voter-base who elected him to i) stick it to 'The Bureaucracy' ii) do likewise toward the general direction of Wellington. <br /><br />A move like this, which can be branded as Mayor Brown extricating (Brown-Exiting?) Auckland from a 'bureaucracy' that's umbilically tethered to 'Wellington' (whatever the relevant facts of the matter) ... is an unqualified win according to these optics. If you go in for that sort of thing, of course. <br /><br />But the second one is perhaps less so. <br /><br />In his live-tweeting of the Council meeting yesterday afternoon, <a href="https://twitter.com/tmurphyNZ/status/1638712396863913986" target="_blank">Tim Murphy quoted Brown</a> as proffering the rationale that withdrawal from LGNZ was desirable because "staying on our own it forces [ministers] to come and see us".<br /><br />Now, as it happens, Brown's been on about this before. Not long after his election, it came out that Brown's office had effectively sought to strong-arm the PM (at that point in time, Jacinda Ardern) into basically that. <br /><br />That is to say, they'd generated a press release to be distributed following Brown's first meeting with Ardern on the 20th of October, declaring that she'd agreed to a "group of senior ministers and the mayor and senior councillors" coming together as a working group ... with who, exactly, the Council would be putting forward (other than Brown, of course) being undetermined, as "the council's new committee structure and roles" were still up in the air. <br /><br />Or, phrased another way - Brown wanted to go directly in at the top with an appreciable chunk of the higher-power members of Cabinet; and considered the proposal so (effectively) fait-accompli that rather than negotiating it with the Prime Minister, he (or at least, his office) presented it to her before they'd met as an already-drafted press release ready to go out as soon as their meeting had finished. <br /><br />Seems a rather .. forward attitude to take for a man who'd literally only been in the job about a week and a half at that point - but, then, I don't suppose he viewed it as something he was terribly likely to have to 'negotiate' over. <br /><br />As things transpired, Brown didn't get his way. The press release wasn't circulated, there was no mention of a high-powered 'working group', and he's had to satiate himself with more conventional 'bilateral' engagements with various of the relevant Ministers.<br /><br />And, more recently, <a href="https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/131111844/the-minister-for-auckland-michael-woods-surprise-new-role" target="_blank">the (re-)creation of a specialized Minister for Auckland</a> by the fresh-faced Hipkins regime. Held by a man, Michael Wood, whom Brown described as an "excellent choice" at the time, as it happens.<br /><br />Yet lest I be misinterpreted, I don't for a moment mean to suggest that the local government of Auckland is illegitimate if it suggests it wants good, solid engagement with our national government. And that this be capable of occurring on a direct basis rather than having to go through Local Government New Zealand. <br /><br />It's just that I don't think that we had to go through Local Government New Zealand in order to engage with Ministers in Wellington prior to this point, anyway. It's certainly true that LGNZ represented a lobbying-arm for local bodies (including Auckland) to engage and interface with the national administration - as well as with each other, and with other bodies operative at that or more locally pertinent levels. <br /><br />And even notwithstanding that, the fact that Cabinet now has in amidst its lofty ranks a dedicated Minister for Auckland with an established working relationship with Brown (by his own ... perhaps somewhat begrudging admission) - this surely indicates that Auckland's importance (and 'sui generis' status in terms of local bodies), as well as the complexity of our issues, is appreciated by the current Government. <br /><br />Hence, I don't really buy that moving to withdraw Auckland from LGNZ was really about "forcing" the Government to actually engage with Auckland local government, either. <br /><br />Instead, I suspect something else may have been - at least somewhat - at play here.<br /><br />Brown, it seems, does not like to be thought of as 'one amidst many' - even if he's the (proportionately) biggest fish in the pond. You can see that with the otherwise peculiar choices made around racking up literally tens of thousands of dollars of unnecessary spending so as to furnish him with his own high-end legal advice piped direct into his office, rather than using the same firm that was <b>already</b> on speed-dial as part of the Council's pre-existing and paid for services agreement. <br /><br />And so, it seems, he's sought to cause a bit of a tantrum - withdraw Auckland from LGNZ under the potentially rather questionable belief that it'll somehow lead to greater engagement (for him) <b>directly</b> with Ministers ... over and above the direct engagement with Ministers which he and his office already undertake, including through the specifically created (for him to talk to) Minister for Auckland, apparently. <br /><br />Given his phrasing - "staying on our own it forces [ministers] to come and see us" - I somehow don't think he's quite forgotten feeling 'snubbed' following his questionably-congealed 'proposal' to the Prime Minister back in October not being taken up with enthusiastic earnest. <br /><br />In any case, whatever the ultimate truth as to his motivations with this gambit, I cannot help but feel rather unimpressed at his cost-cutting ('penny-pinching'?) pushes thus far. <br /><br />It seems overall to smack of the sort of gimlet-gaze who sees the costs-only of everything, and the value of precious little. <br /><br />In which case, perhaps we might suggest that he start by first looking into a mirror. <br /><br /></p>Curwen Rolinsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09768637816927187968noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6818051473633816239.post-34441857857945197832022-08-18T21:49:00.000+12:002022-08-18T21:49:12.955+12:00On The Curious Situation Of Business As Usual In Last Night's Labour Party - The Latest Sharma Gauntlets<p>The latest round of Sharma disclosures are, sorry to say, "politics as usual" on pretty much all fronts.<br /><br />It doesn't look good. And that's why it's <b>specifically supposed to not happen where anyone outside of politics can see it</b>. <br /><br />There is nothing especially unusual about MPs and Candidates being "coached" on how to keep information out of the public eye. <br /><br />I also don't think there's anything <b>particularly</b> unusual about a party's internal disciplinary processes turning out to be (or, at least, being presented as seeming to be) conducted on something decidedly lesser than a "Blind Justice" (or, for that matter, 'Natural Justice') basis - and instead being a strategic exercise first and foremost.<br /><br />But then - I'm rather biased on that front. <br /><br />Now I am not, for a moment, seeking to suggest that this kind of thing is 'just how it is' and shouldn't be challenged nor criticized.<br /><br />On the contrary. As a point of general (and genuine) principle - a certain distaste for top-down and seemingly cabalist party management was partially how we wound up with MMP.<br /><br />Because people decided - by and large - that they'd finally had enough of Government by fish-and-chip club. If only because said small coteries with control appeared to have a rather nasty habit of springing unpopular and unwelcome initiatives upon an unsuspecting body-politic in a fashion that, with deference to the circumstances of Ruthanasia relative to National's 1990 Election Campaign, say, appeared to have more than a 'hint' of "predetermination" there to them.<br /><br />Lest I be misconstrued upon this point - I am absolutely NOT seeking to suggest that the Parliamentary Labour Party purportedly convening a pseudo-'Star Chamber' meeting the night before a disciplinary proceeding for a 'rogue MP' ... is somehow tantamount to a re-run of the Neoliberal vandalism efforts of the 1980s and 90s. <br /><br />As I think I may have intimated above - all of this that's currently happening is just "business as usual". There's nothing out of the ordinary here. The only "crime" one could feasibly make out is that it's been done in such a fashion that various details and various elements to it are being conducted in something closer to public view than usual. <br /><br />And this is absolutely, most definitely NOT a "Labour issue". It's not even a "National" issue or a "Party of Governance" issue. It is - put quite simply - a Politics and Political Party issue. I can start going through and citing examples running right the way back to Ancient Athens and Republic-era Rome to further furnish the point there if it is absolutely necessary. <br /><br />Some parties, to be sure, are almost certainly markedly <b>less</b> prone to this kind of shenaniganry ... and other parties are probably markedly less prone to getting 'caught out' in what can be made to look like an unfair gambit. <br /><br />All in all, about the only thing I happen to think's a bit peculiar here is that Sharma has found himself in this state - on grounds that he's clearly a very bright guy.<br /><br />Who must surely, <b>surely</b> have had at least some inkling as to the nature of the iniquitous blood <b>team</b> sport that he was about to get himself up and embroiled within when he signed up for candidacy however many moons ago now. <br /><br />I'm not taking a position in who's right or wrong in all of this. I don't have the facts with which to do so. <br /><br />It's even vaguely possible that <b>neither</b> (major) side is actually 'in the wrong', really - and that some nefarious third party (within the party) has been winding up Sharma with a view to 'setting him off' in order to accomplish some particular, pertinent aim. Stranger things have most certainly happened in party politics over and down through the years. Who knows. <br /><br />Yet I can't help but feel that, whatever the ins and outs and rights and wrongs and timelines and white-board chicanery involved ... it's all a bit of a waste, really. <br /><br />The only figures who'll come out of this ahead are the (metaphorical) vultures. <br /><br />Or the Press Gallery. </p>Curwen Rolinsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09768637816927187968noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6818051473633816239.post-69211967750928457082022-08-09T05:54:00.000+12:002022-08-09T05:54:40.276+12:00On National's Uffindell And The Lack Of A Statute Of Limitations In Politics<p>So, in the wake of <a href="https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/300656643/national-mp-sam-uffindell-asked-to-leave-prestigious-kings-college-after-violent-nighttime-attack-on-younger-boy" target="_blank">last night's breaking news as to Luxon's man in Tauranga</a>, we of the Lumpen Commentariat that is Twitter (and, no doubt, just about anywhere else people gather to gossip and congeal outrage) came alive with the perhaps eminently predictable suite of condemnation. <br /><br />And, it has to be said - if we can't rally round as a loose-knit confederation of opinionated sorts to castigate a group of older boys ferociously beating up a 13 year old with wooden furniture-legs ... then there would, indeed, be something very askew with our respective moral frameworks. <br /><br />However, from where I'm sitting there's been a bit of a 'jump' here. Namely, that made by various of us from condemning something done by a 5th former, through to demanding that a sitting MP resign. <br /><br />Now that may be an entirely warranted 'destination' to have wound up at. Or it may not. But the issue here is rather bigger than just Uffindell. And that's why I think it matters to actually slow things down and think things through - and ensure if we're demanding a (figurative) guillotine or going in to bat for the guy, that we're doing so for the right reasons. <br /><br />Why is this a bigger issue than just Uffindell? Because, to put it bluntly - our MPs are, by and large, human. Humans have pasts. Some pasts are more insalubrious than others. I think we lose out, oddly enough, if we choose to insist that everybody in our 'Representative House' (not <b>quite</b> the same thing as a House of Representatives) absolutely <b>has</b> to have a squeaky-clean prior record. <br /><br />Don't believe me? <br /><br />John A. Lee, an MP I hold in rather high regard and who made a demonstrably positive contribution to our country in a dire time ... had prior convictions for theft, liquor-smuggling, and breaking and entering. He did a year in Mt Eden, and I don't mean as a constituency MP. <br /><br />Now, all of that got 'overwritten' by his subsequent backstory. He went overseas with the New Zealand Expeditionary Force during World War One, and came back a wounded war-hero. Blood - rightly or wrongly - does seem to wash out all sorts of other stains. <br /><br />Slightly closer to contemporary times, we have Metiria Turei. Now, it's difficult to escape the fact that she did, indeed, commit both benefit fraud <a href="https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/95393791/metiria-turei-faces-investigators-looking-into-her-admission-of-historical-benefit-fraud" target="_blank">and, curiously, electoral fraud</a>. In 1993, for the latter, and in the Nineties for the former. <br /><br />Personally, I think the main thing she was actually <b>guilty </b>of was perhaps unexpectedly poor political judgement. At least, in 2017 - twenty four years, just under a quarter of a century, after the thing which probably sank her. <br /><br />But this is all supposition for another time. <br /><br />Lest I be misconstrued (and pilloried in the comments-section) - I <b>absolutely am not</b> seeking to make the case that Sam Uffindell is some sort of latter-day Metiria Turei, nor the second coming of John A. Lee. <br /><br />I also fully acknowledge that every so often an MP with a 'background' issue comes along wherein either the sheer malevolence ... or the sheer bathos ... of the circumstance in question means they've fairly little choice <b>but</b> to resign. <br /><br />David Garrett would be the obvious emblematic exemplar for the latter. You just ... can't quite take seriously an MP (or the party which empowers them to speak for it) who makes a personal cause célèbre out of 'tough on law and order' and removing judicial discretion particularly for for violent offending - only to then turn out to have a rather ... <a href="https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/4124683/ACT-MP-David-Garrett-has-assault-conviction" target="_blank">relevant personal history</a>. <br /><br />Garrett's case is, however, instructive in another way. There was a man who went through the system and benefitted from notable leniency <a href="https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/political/57033/court-releases-details-on-mp's-passport-fraud" target="_blank">following his apparent effort to emulate a fictional hitman and steal the identity of a deceased infant</a>. If he'd internalized the lesson, and come out and up and then out again into politics advocating for a more 'nuanced' approach at the pointy-end of the judiciary, things might have played out differently. <br /><br />As somebody pointed out on Twitter yesterday evening - that's partially what they, personally, found galling about the current Uffindell scenario. Namely, that Uffindell had, quite clearly, benefitted from not being in receipt of a heavy-handed approach to his youthful assault of a younger kid. And yet had gone and joined a party that's often promoted itself as being 'tough' on youth offending. <br /><br />(Although as a brief aside on that - oddly enough, <a href="https://thespinoff.co.nz/politics/27-11-2019/nationals-youth-justice-policy-is-a-solution-in-search-of-a-problem" target="_blank">the National Party, last time it was in Government, actually <b>did</b> make some reform efforts for our youth justice system to reduce the number of teens going through the harder edges of our criminal justice apparatus</a>. They just seem <b>curiously recalcitrant</b> to claim credit for that kind of minor movement these days for some reason ...)<br /><br />All up, I think that's basically it.<br /><br />When it comes to a situation like this, we - the voting public (on or off twitter) - are probably looking for two things. First and foremost, 'authenticity'. That's a general rule and a given for politics. Hence the antiquated saying apt for the context - that once you can <b>fake</b> authenticity, you've got it made. <br /><br />And second (and heavily interrelated with the aforementioned) - something to have happened in response to the putative offending conduct in question. That probably means demonstrable personal growth so you<b> can</b> say you aren't the same guy who did X, along with actually taking ownership of the guy who <b>did</b> do X's actions and making appropriate effort to make things right with the victim / society at large / probably not just God. (I mention that last one due to the American political set-piece wherein pretty much exactly that form of 'repentance' of the 'performative' and barely-even-self-flagellating variety all too often seem something of a one-stop-shop for certain ne'er-do-wells caught-out whilst seeking office)<br /><br />Having things happen a lot further in the past definitely helps with all of that. Far easier to proclaim you've grown after a number of decades rather than a number of months and sound serious whilst doing so. <br /><br />All of this brings us to Uffindell. <br /><br />I think there's probably a general awareness - and a certain amount of grudgingly-tolerant leeway - out there in the Kiwi electorate that some people <b>may</b> do stupid, morally reprehensible things when they're younger and at an all-boys boarding school. <br /><br />And, much more overtly to the point - that twenty two years is plenty of time to grow and become a better man. At least, in theory. <br /><br />However, the corollary to that is that the onus is <b>decidedly</b> on National's newest MP to demonstrate that he has in fact done so. <br /><br />Which is where, I suspect, Uffindell is going to come rather unstuck. With an intriguing new spin on the ancient political maxim - "it's not the crime that gets you ... it's the cover-up". Or, in his case, and with deference to the rather recent timing of his calling up his victim to apologize - "it's not the crime that gets you ... it's the thing that makes the ethics look entirely performative". 'Authenticity', remember?<br /><br />Hence, he manages to go from his victim reportedly receiving the apology with a sentiment along the lines of (<a href="https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/300656643/national-mp-sam-uffindell-asked-to-leave-prestigious-kings-college-after-violent-nighttime-attack-on-younger-boy" target="_blank">to quote Stuff's reporting</a>): "he would never forgive the boy who hurt him, but forgave the man Uffindell had become." ... through to, once it became apparent just what Uffindell was intending on getting up to shortly thereafter:<br /><br />“But then a few months later I sat down to watch the news on the couch with a beer and there he was, running for Parliament,” the victim said. “I felt sick.”<br />[...]<br />"But seeing that - it made me feel his apology wasn’t genuine, he was just doing it to get his skeletons out of the closet, so he could have a political career.”<br /><br />But let's move forward.<br /><br />The thing that gets me about these skeletal-scandals is that they often seem to blow up far bigger, and give far more emphatic reason to dislike a public figure than anything they may have done (or are intending to do) that's more contemporary. That doesn't sit right with me.<br /><br />If we're <b>going</b> to dislike anybody, it should be the Nat MP <b>in</b> 2022 <b>for</b> things he's <b>doing</b> in 2022 (or thereabouts, plus or minus a year or two maybe)<br /><br />Not some idiot 16 year old that's now 22 years in the past and doesn't actually wield political power.<br /><br />Which doesn't at all men that this current scandal ought have no bearing upon that matter of public perception. Quite the contrary. <br /><br />Even leaving aside whether a teenage boy's actions considerably betray the character of the man in later life ... it can fairly be argued that not making amends earlier (indeed, until shortly before going for National Candidacy selection) doesn't speak well to his character, ethics, and judgement <b>as</b> the older man.<br /><br />Ultimately, of course, none (or, at least, very few) of us are Uffindell. We can't answer honestly what might (or might not) have been going through his head - either on a reportedly near-daily basis over the preceding years, or as he made the decision to front up to his victim as and when he did. <br /><br />Personally, and without intending to proffer this as either the definitive truth nor something innately defensible, I suppose I can see how a man might be significantly guilt-wracked by his previous conduct to the point that he has a genuinely hard time fronting up to try and make amends, for a span of years and then decades. Maybe. <br /><br />I'm not saying that to try and turn Uffindell into the victim, here, by any stretch of the imagination. I dare say that any queasy feeling Uffindell might have had about looking to engage with his victim should prove soundly eclipsed via many orders of magnitude by those emotions his victim has had to grapple with both over that same period of time, and in imminent anticipation of being contacted by his former tormentor. And that's <b>before</b> he saw the guy's face on a billboard or the 6 o'clock news as some sort of purported bright shining hope. ('Bright, Shining Hope' being a rather relative measure - and in the context of National's current concepts of 'adequacy', I mean ... ) <br /><br />It is not, perhaps, beyond the bounds of possibility that Uffindell actually <b>was</b> reasonably genuine with his apology - and was also, correspondingly, rather breathtakingly tone-deaf with how it would look to make such an approach and then some months later commence inserting himself into the public eye as a political aspirant. <br /><br />Certainly, I don't think anybody is going to be losing money swiftly by betting against National and various of its MPs proving to be <b>remarkably</b> short-sighted, lacking in strategic cogency, or that simple dimension otherwise known succinctly as 'E.Q.'. <br /><br />We can probably demonstrate the inherent truth of that by considering just how many MPs or would-have-been-MPs the National Party has (nearly) fielded over the past two years despite the people National actively entrusts to <b>be</b> aware and out ahead of issues or actively filtering for undesirables ... being aware of various of these guys' occasionally rather bizarre (or, if you prefer, <a href="https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/300322828/former-national-candidate-jake-bezzant-leaves-party-as-serious-allegations-emerge" target="_blank">Bezzant</a>) shortcomings and still deciding to wave them on through to candidacy anyway. <br /><br />That is to say - the National Party does not appear to have been positively selecting for perspicacity with either its party or parliamentary office-holders for awhile now. <br /><br />Although, in fairness - and yes, even in that most unforgiving of arms of our civic judiciary, the Court of Public Opinion, there is at least <b>some</b> scope for a 'duty of fairness' to yet prevail - that 'lack of perspicacity' and/or 'sense' can cut both ways. <br /><br />Uffindell's apology appears to have occurred in <a href="https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/300656643/national-mp-sam-uffindell-asked-to-leave-prestigious-kings-college-after-violent-nighttime-attack-on-younger-boy" target="_blank">July of last year</a>. That's probably just under eleven months prior to his election in June's Tauranga by-election. He almost certainly didn't plan for it to happen that way. After all, circa June last year, Tauranga's MP was still one Simon Bridges - who seemed very much to be anticipating sticking around for the foreseeable so as to be able to snatch back leadership of the National Party when Collins seemingly-inevitably imploded. There was no sign a by-election was to ensue. <br /><br />Which doesn't mean that Uffindell didn't have a candidacy in mind mid-way through last year - it just may have been mid-late 2023 that he was thinking of, rather than mid-way through 2022. <br /><br />Does that change things? I don't know. I'm not sure anybody really does. And besides which - it's rather immaterial, now, isn't it. <br /><br />Things happened as they have, and we (or, more likely, the Parliamentary National Party) have to work out what now to do to move forward from it (or through it) in earnest. <br /><br />Speaking of which - short of National deciding to do something rather unexpected and somehow keel-haul/waka-jump/whatever a freshly-minted MP out of a job in a safe-seat just won on by-election ... unless Uffindell himself resigns (which should surely result in a record turnaround time between by-elections for a seat), there's precious little to be done about the fact that said MP is now part of our public life.<br /><br />The only thing that the mass majority of us can really do in this situation is hope that said MP hasn't just learned the lesson of the 16 year old boy, but also the lesson of the truly adult man. Which is one not of Comms, but rather of Values. <br /><br />And spends the rest of his time in public life working <b>very</b> hard to not just 'show' us they're better, but to actually <b>be</b> better ; and, one hopes, somehow make a positive forward-proofing difference in exactly the area they came unstuck in in the first place.<br /><br />Now how they do <b>that</b>, of course ... well, I don't know.<br /><br />But he better be thinking hard in earnest.<br /><br />Because like it or not - as of yesterday evening, he went from having one victim who felt manipulated and misled through to having the best part of the entire country potentially feeling not entirely dissimilarly towards him. <br /><br />I guess we'll just have to wait and see whether he's better at convincing us that he's a changed and genuinely penitent man than he was the gentleman whom he sought to convince of all of this the first time around. <br /></p><br />Curwen Rolinsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09768637816927187968noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6818051473633816239.post-87928670296305071082022-06-12T07:23:00.000+12:002022-06-12T07:23:28.450+12:00On The Meaning Of Richard Prosser - A Saddening Post-Mortem<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiUl-p2MeLtamBhVub3wqFnCbf6suADyPVFj_wlqdIU8mtXJHV53wmhwLucpRAjLjCJqHWoFsfH9kKkTwS2FcnMSw_aj8GYTPlMcWjPaF2CJr4xAceaLV_pVmP-NznIerMt6_aksJIcwtaMlQO-FmpdnJ4BrPGU4qJ9RdPicSOFeFtXqokwGWlR86dk0g/s265/286919220_10166357884635574_7032857513789256169_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="265" data-original-width="200" height="265" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiUl-p2MeLtamBhVub3wqFnCbf6suADyPVFj_wlqdIU8mtXJHV53wmhwLucpRAjLjCJqHWoFsfH9kKkTwS2FcnMSw_aj8GYTPlMcWjPaF2CJr4xAceaLV_pVmP-NznIerMt6_aksJIcwtaMlQO-FmpdnJ4BrPGU4qJ9RdPicSOFeFtXqokwGWlR86dk0g/s1600/286919220_10166357884635574_7032857513789256169_n.jpg" width="200" /></a></div><p></p><p>I saw reporting (at first on twitter, and then in my personal messages) that Richard Prosser has died. I do not know the details, although the phrase "after a long battle with depression" seems to be mentioned, with clear purport.<br /><br />Another phrase which gets mentioned comes from a certain piece he penned in 2013. I shall not quote it here.<br /><br />Now I am most definitely not here to defend the remarks in question (and, hell, a younger me literally lead the charge internally to have something <b>done</b> about said remarks and their maker) ;<br /><br />But perhaps it is worth noting that he did not only apologize but actually change his mind after that occurrence. And I do not mean simply in the idle sense of merely issuing a press statement to that effect.<br /><br />If memory serves he went out in person to engage with the community he'd hurt through his commentary. Both to learn and to make some effort at restitution. It was, reportedly, a humbling experience.<br /><br />Now obviously, the whole thing shouldn't have happened - that much goes without saying; and while it was positive that some members of NZ's Muslim community were prepared to open homes & dialogue to help him see in an entirely different way .. again, they shouldn't have had to.<br /><br />Yet given the way that the conspiratorial fringe goes today - it's a rare thing to have somebody actually do that. Go out, meet what would be described as "the other side", and come away a changed man with changed views in consequence.<br /><br />It's a shame that what he'll be remembered for, it would seem, is the bad call he made (and it was abominable) - rather than the choice to repudiate that & grow.<br /><br />If we are to turn the death of somebody into a trenchant morality-tale (and it is the inexorable consequence of having been in the public eye with some prominence that this shall, indeed, occur) ... it seems to me that there is somewhat greater value to be had in <b>that</b> side to it.<br /><br />That rather than simply pointing and jeering at something done wrong near a decade ago, the ensuing subsequent effort at <b>doing right</b> and renouncing the thing is also at least mentioned.<br /><br />Otherwise, what's the point. Are all such circumstances merely to be 'cautionary tales' of what <b>not</b> to do, with no corresponding pathway showing what one <b>ought</b> to do where one has already done it?<br /><br />Which also does not mean I am here for a moment to pen a glistening and blemish-free hagiography for Richard Prosser.<br /><br />Quite the opposite, in fact.<br /><br />Something that, I'd like to believe, his personal vehemence in favour of 'truth-telling' in columnry (even if that 'truth' could be rather .. divergent from what the rest of us had thought) would mean he'd also appreciate such a principle for his own circumstance.<br /><br />He most definitely did go down other rabbit-holes both before and after the Wogistan episode. And yes, for the past two years there had observably been quite a bit of ... stereotypical takes about the pandemic situation etc.; (or, in other words, the underlying trait of personality which exhibited itself in the form of the adoption of rather ... fringe views such as the arguable necessity of South Island Secessionism, lay evidently unameliorated in some respects)<br /><br />Yet I must confess myself rather uneasy at the notion that that ought comprise the sum total to his recollection among us here today. The guy who wrote the 'Wogistan' piece, with various reporting or social media commentary no doubt quoting some choice words or a sentence or two from same to illustrate.<br /><br />Illustrate the man, that is, rather than merely the column they're drawn from in time.<br /><br />All up, I guess it's a bit of a curious feeling to see a man one's known for ... twelve years, reduced to a single half-a-sentence quote upon a page in such a manner.<br /><br />There's no doubt that it's a pertinent piece of verbiage.<br /><br />And, as I say, the only way that placing it in "context" changes anything even an iota is if it's the "context" of his own repudiation and growing forward from a previous state that should never have existed in the first place.<br /><br />But that definitely was not all there was to the man. And for a number of reasons I <b>do</b> think that deserves to be recognized. Even - indeed, outright <b>especially</b> - in death.<br /><br />It's the last time many if not most of us shall hear of him in the active sense. It deserves to be done rightly.<br /><br />Personally, I'll also remember the awkward-but-enthusiastic and genuinely warm-hearted man who even though I <b>vehemently disagreed</b> (and was quite open about this) with a <b>very large</b> quotient of what he said (and I should easily have fitted into several of the categories he'd condemn in print) - he would still go out of his way in his endeavour to help me.<br /><br />When I'd wound up in some tight spots - suddenly lacking a place to live etc. for instance, he'd reach out, whether to myself or to other persons around me and ask if I needed a place to stay.<br /><br />And that's <b>after</b> I'd lead an internal effort to have him excoriated / de-selected, had been quoted in media attacking his stuff, etc. (hence, in part, why one of those occasions was a reaching out to (or, should I say - 'through') 'other persons around me' - he presumably perhaps thought I'd be unlikely to pick up the phone from him directly given the way things were at that time).<br /><br />I'd like to think that something such as that is also relevant when we are coming to our general assessment as to the proverbial 'measure of the man'.<br /><br />Again, fully aware that my experience is very different from somebody who's had no engagement with him suddenly waking up to hear a sitting NZ MP had declared in print one shouldn't be allowed on an aircraft due to one's race / religion.<br /><br />I'll also remember, for what it's worth, that rather amusing incident in 2017 wherein he went into a BusinessNZ event held on that year's election campaign trail, <b>completely accurately</b> stated NZ First's policy of renationalizing part-privatized power-companies (at no more than price they'd been sold for) ...<br /><br />... and for his troubles wound up with <a href="https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/act-party-leader-david-seymour-blasts-nz-first-mp-over-contact-remarks/CMLYPBHBUMVP4MMYW3IH6EF2AM/" target="_blank">David Seymour declaring him to be "what a f^<king idiot" to the assembled doyens of business New Zealand</a> - this remark of Seymour's appearing, on video/audio on the 6 o'clock news etc. ...<br /><br />Followed by Winston making a statement about how that wasn't the policy, Prosser had been speaking gravely in error etc. ... despite the fact that the policy in question was, at the time, still <b>right there on the NZF website</b> for all to see.<br /><br />Events which, one can argue, appear to be at the very least heavily correlated with what had effectively brought his Parliamentary career to a close (insofar as the 2017 NZ First List which was announced a few days later had him dropping I think eleven places and rendering him significantly unlikely to return back to Parliament as a result)<br /><br />There is definitely something to be said for terrifying BusinessNZ and ACT about the specter of a socialist takeover of NZ through nationalization of industry.<br /><br />In any case, while he was still around and I'd seen him posting as of a few weeks back .. I have no idea how his personal life had gone. I do recall that he had previously had both wife and child, so my thoughts would also be with them at this time.<br /><br />Even if we vehemently disagree with people - to somebody else they're family. And it cannot be easy to see the name and features of one's father, say, occurrent in such a fashion about the place, especially given what appears to have happened.<br /><br />All up - I'm not here to put forward that pithy rejoinder about the impropriety of "speaking ill of the dead", even imminently following their departure from this globe and context of ours. People who genuinely believe in that principle can and shall adhere to it ... and those who don't, well, they shall no doubt do as they do instead.<br /><br />Yet men are rarely as simple as the two-dimensional caricatures that we seemingly endlessly re-manufacture of them in our heads.<br /><br />Acknowledging that fact - and presenting a somewhat broader view than just that singular half-sentence of his - does not mean bestowing an uncritical endorsement of a man, their words, deeds, and legacy.<br /><br />It simply means acknowledging them as human.</p>Curwen Rolinsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09768637816927187968noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6818051473633816239.post-32674712878908402052022-04-25T00:51:00.001+12:002022-04-25T00:51:07.901+12:00On The Alleged Tame-ing Of Luxon <p>I kinda feel like the sentiment about Luxon's apparent trainwreck of an interview with Jack Tame today is ... not going to play out the way people think.<br /><br />Yes, yes it's absolutely true and correct to state that Luxon wound up caught in a bunch of contradictions - between stuff he's talking about and claiming is a problem, with what he's actually prepared to do if he wins an election; between things he's said he intends to do, and how these actively feed into problems he has sought to pillory the government over ... you get the idea.<br /><br />Except here's the thing.<br /><br />Most people don't have a coherent view of the universe - let alone something as infinitely more internecine as the politics of a small island nation. Our world-views are awash as a morass of mutually contradictory preferences and outrage-inducing red-flag buttons. <br /><br />Some people take a look at politicians and their presumptive visions - maybe even read some policy manifestos (if anybody still does those) or commentary upon same - before they decide on who they want to vote for.<br /><br />Others go on whether they feel they can 'trust' someone with power - and that may, indeed, arcen back to whether they can put on a decent showing in front of a camera in answering reasonably simple, straightforward questions. (Answering ... does not necessarily mean answering <b>well</b> or <b>truthfully</b>, necessarily - but that is another matter)<br /><br />However, for an appreciable quotient of our body politik (as with many other modern, Western democracies) - what they're looking for is a simple resonancy with things they already either believe or can be reasonably prodded or coaxed into believing.<br /><br />And, as we have observed - that DOESN'T require an internally coherent worldview to be espoused by the politician courting them. Quite the opposite.<br /><br />It just requires being able to sound-off a veritable checklist of talking-points or hot-button stances - and then let the natural artifice of human cognitive filtering take care of the rest.<br /><br />People no longer 'hear' the contradictions, if the contradictions are things they're already subconsciously overlooking in and of themselves when it comes to their own personal preferential perspectives. <br /><br />Further, to add to all of this - it has long been known that New Zealanders tend to like an underdog, and will rally behind somebody who is perceived as 'not getting a fair go'.<br /><br />I have repeatedly observed that in 2014, for instance, the year of the Dirty Politics revelations ... National's vote actually went <b>up</b>, precisely because we automatically insistently minimized the impropriety at hand - at least partially because the media was perceived to be making a big deal out of it.<br /><br />It came across that John Key was being hounded by the press and was being beaten up upon - so people tuned out just what (and why) he was being hounded over, and considered him a more sympathetic figure.<br /><br />Helluva thing, really, to have a multi-millionaire incumbent Prime Minister of six years going up against a Labour party about to deliver its worst result since 1922 ... and somehow have said PM come across as being the 'underdog' or 'marginalized', but that's how it can so easily look from the outside.<br /><br />Tame's interview was interesting and entertaining; but a whole lot of people out there will, if anything, <b>double down</b> in their emergent support for Luxon.<br /><br />Not because anything Luxon said or did in that performance was 'smart' or visionary. <br /><br />But rather precisely because we've all had a situation of some younger guy coming in and asking us 'twisty' questions [which may, or may not, actually have been 'twisty' rather than reasonably direct and straightforward as various of Tame's were] and feeling unfairly put upon in fairly direct consequence. <br /><br />Exposing that Luxon is not, in fact, (yet) the man to be able to dethrone Ardern does not induce his following to abandon ship. <br /><br />Because they've already begun to 'buy in'. So pointing out that the would-be emperor is, it would seem, somewhat bereft of clothing ... just makes many all the more determined to dig in and declare they're definitely backing a winner here and never mind any purported 'evidence' to the contrary.<br /><br />One of the (many) things George W. Bush proved was that you can, indeed, 'flunk' your way to victory. </p><p><br /></p>Curwen Rolinsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09768637816927187968noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6818051473633816239.post-26835041498821215882022-04-15T12:50:00.000+12:002022-04-15T12:50:34.837+12:00On The Actual Lessons Of Russian Equipment Losses In Ukraine <p>It has been said that a frequent problem of Wars Happening To Other People is that one learns decidedly the wrong lessons to be drawn from them.<br /><br />This applies both to militaries - but also to other external observers. Particularly where there are 'propagandtastic' reasons for doing so. <br /><br />The present conflict in Ukraine is already producing quite the escalating pile-up of these. <br /><br />Yesterday's strike on the Russian flagship of the Black Sea Fleet - the Moskva - is going to be another one. <br /><br />Except here's the thing. <br /><br />There's been a lot of corresponding jubilance from Westerners (I am not going to say it's all Americans, but it has significantly seemed to be Americans) about this. That's understandable. Everybody likes backing the underdog. <br /><br />But the way some of it has been phrased, is as if this event indicates that there's a laughably bad trait to Russian military hardware. And that a "real" warship, a "proper" warship, an "American" warship, would be untouchable by comparison.<br /><br />Literally, the thing that sparked my mind here was seeing an American doing basically the above and attaching a picture of a current US aircraft carrier and declaring that if the Moskva was what the Russians thought a large warship was - well, this was what a REAL large warship looked like. <br /><br />Personally, I saw something rather different - a large target. <br /><br />And that's just the thing. <br /><br />The reason the People's Republic of China is currently festooning various atolls and islands throughout the South China Sea with missile-batteries is because they see the same thing. A large, expensive, and vulnerable asset that has to get 'lucky' quite a few times in fending off a missile bombardment - whereas the side carrying out said bombardment only has to get lucky a very few times to do significant damage (or, contingent upon payload, potentially even sink the beast - certainly, necessitate a withdrawal back to port for quite some time). <br /><br />Now, I am not going to suggest - as some have - that surface combatants are obsolete in modern naval operations. Quite the contrary. I think that there's definitely still a role for ships that only wind up underwater involuntarily in contemporary fleets - it just comes down rather heavily to what kind of environment they're operating in, and to what particular purpose they're being deployed. However that is an entire series of conversations for another time. <br /><br />What I AM going to state - is that the problem encountered by the Russians with the Moskva is not something that necessarily indicates that Russian military hardware is somehow intrinsically bad. Although at the same time, I do think that a 40 year old cruiser in a modern war is going to encounter difficulties. And that any warship being hit in the magazine is in for a rough time - especially in rough seas amidst a storm. <br /><br />The perilous situation of warships against guided missiles is not a novel one, either. During the Falklands War, the HMS Sheffield was hit by an Argentine-deployed Exocet missile - and while she did not sink as the immediate result of this impact (which may not have even featured the missile detonating), it did disable her, necessitate a complete crew evacuation, and lead to her having to be towed by another craft. It was this last action that actually coincided with the sinking (although it can be fairly argued that it was somewhat inevitable given the conditions and the rather prominent hole to her side from the missile impact). <br /><br />This latter detail concords with the situation of the Moskva per Russian reports upon the matter - that it did indeed sink, but while being towed and in heavy seas. <br /><br />As a point of interest, during the much-discussed 'Millennium Challenge' exercise carried out in 2002, which simulated an American invasion of a suspiciously similar to Iraq state, a US carrier battle group - nineteen ships - was virtually annihilated inside a few minutes by a single bombardment (which, to be sure, was comprised of not only missiles - but also an array of other attack-vectors, too).<br /><br />Now, to be fair and sure - there are a few ... 'issues' (to put it politely) with the degree of extrapolative value for 'Millennium Challenge' to events twenty years later elsewhere on the tides of war. Leaving aside the claims about "cheating" that got made toward the US general who'd been running the not-Iraqi side, or the commentary around 'design flaws' in the simulation that made some things more viable than they might otherwise have proven in practice - the fact is that in theory there's two decades of additional development of naval active protection countermeasures that should make such a scenario less immediately applicable to today or to the American navy. <br /><br />Of course ... how MUCH less applicable is a somewhat open question. And I would suspect rather thoroughly that few are eager to genuinely test it out in practice. Particularly as I also have little doubt that the weaponry and other such measures that would be deployed by the OPFOR in such a scenario would also have undergone some further development over the similar time-period. Something that's not just a matter for future potentially near-parity conflicts, like the People's Republic of China - but also a potent consideration as applies, say, the Islamic Republic of Iran today. <br /><br />The point is - it's very easy to laugh at the Russians potentially losing a warship and imagine that the Americans (or some other Designated Protagonist faction) would do inestimably better in a similar circumstance. Ignoring that if the Russian hardware in question is 'inferior', it may perhaps be because it's a Soviet-era ship designed and built in the 1970s and 'modernised' in an era of severely 'lean times' for the Russian military after spending a decade out of commission through the 90s. And ignoring that even the best warships of the largest and most powerful navy of the modern world are similarly vulnerable to similar threats - and themselves quite actively concerned about exactly this prospect. <br /><br />We could also speculate about the situation observed during Millennium Challenge pertaining to the actual simulated American invasion itself, in relation to the difficulties encountered by the Russians in their own real-life invasion of Ukraine.<br /><br />I won't go into the details, but suffice to say that in order to be able to carry out a successful invasion of what was supposed to be a weaker opponent (simulating Iraq, after all) - as the Joint Forces Command report itself observes: "the OPFOR free-play was eventually constrained to the point where the end state was scripted."<br /><br />I shall say that again: in order to carry out an invasion that didn't wind up producing a frankly embarrassing quotient of casualties and frustratingly slow progress, the Americans had to 'cheat' wildly and basically guarantee themselves a win. And that's against a theoretically much weaker (if, it would seem, very well lead) opposition. <br /><br />Now apply that observation to the Ukrainian invasion, with a functionally close-parity opposition that's being actively resupplied by NATO. All of a sudden, the Russian performance starts to look, perhaps, a bit less 'hillaribad' via comparison to how an American or other NATO force might do in a similar situation. <br /><br />But let us move back to hardware.<br /><br />One area where there has been quite a lot of internet guffawing in recent weeks is, perhaps understandably, Russian armour. <br /><br />The reasons for this are obvious. Social media has been saturated at various points with images of Russian tanks blown up, abandoned, being towed away by tractors, bogged down in mud, and so on and so forth. <br /><br />We want to believe, in essence, that the only way they work is the same way various of the Germans insistently told us they work some eighty years ago - by swarming low-quality men and low-quality machines until the proverbial pack of hyenas has somehow managed to overwhelm the very few in number lions. <br /><br />Except that's not really the case. <br /><br />The (frequently encountered) German post-WWII historiography was, as others have pointed out, a rather ... self-serving situation. Part-explaining away their own shortcomings with an insistent bias (hence why the Soviets are simultaneously both overwhelming and somehow 'inferior'); part-telling their English-language (and particularly American defence establishment) audiences what they wanted to hear in relation to the then-current Soviet threat. Again, we won't go into all of that, but suffice to say a more sober analysis tended to show that the Red Army on the offensive wasn't just doing well because it had an awful lot of men and machines ... but also because these were men and machines of a rather better quality than their opponents would easily care to admit. And also capable of engaging in complex efforts of strategy and strategic deception that likewise weren't commensurate with the stereotypes their opponents insistently affixed to them. But more upon all of this some other time.<br /><br />The point is - we have 'inherited' this kind of pop-pseudo-militaria analysis and run with it. And the idea is that because something is 'Russian' (or ex-Soviet), it therefore axiomatically HAS to be of inferior quality and a laughingstock. <br /><br />In some cases, there may be some level of truth to this - but not in the manner one might initially think. <br /><br />Soviet armour was designed in a very different way to various of its Western counterparts. The operational doctrine it was built to adhere to had different requirements. It really is one of those 'apples and oranges' situations to a certain extent. <br /><br />However, it's also the case that when people start insistently comparing Russian armour losses in Ukraine to modern American military hardware to try and make out the former to be intrinsically terrible ... they're similarly being rather wildly unfair.<br /><br />Why? <br /><br />Because this often means discussing a tank built in the 1980s and with questionable modernization efforts in the intervening decades since - as compared to the latest, top-of-the-line ultra-modern hardware from, again, the most powerful nation upon this earth. <br /><br />Of course the American vehicle is going to come out on top.<br /><br />Except here's the thing.<br /><br />What's destroying Russian vehicles in Ukraine? Man-portable anti-tank weapons. Modern, NATO-produced ATGMs.<br /><br />Why does this matter? Because the truth is, once again, not that the experience in Ukraine around these demonstrates a 'Russian' problem - but rather, that it points toward a general problem <br /><br />One that also afflicts other nations, and which cannot be easily handwaved away by declaring "oh, those are Russian tanks so they're inferior - it won't happen to us" (whomever the 'us' or 'US' / US-client in question might so happen to be). <br /><br />I shall quote something brief I'd written about exactly this a few days ago:<br /><br />"One significant issue is that the 'balance' between armour/maneuver (offence) and ranged-killing power (defence) has been severely disrupted. In a way, it's kinda reminiscent - to use a *very* loose example - of World War One. [and yes, i am deliberately massively oversimplifying with the labelling i'm deploying earlier in this paragraph]<br /><br />Doctrine and hardware hasn't adapted to this change on one side, I mean.<br /><br />So, what you're seeing is 3rd generation MBTs that were already rather outmoded in various ways - like, in service from the 1980s with various modernization efforts since ... being destroyed in significant numbers by ATGMs that are ... well, some are contemporary with their targets, others are much *much* more recent.<br /><br />Now, the reason that this is worth noting is quite simple.<br /><br />Turkey, as I have pointed out a few times elsewhere, managed to lose modern(ish) tanks in Syria. There's some controversy as to the purport of this, as the Turks were operating Leopard II A4s - and it hasn't been settled how much better more modern refits of the vehicle might have proven in the situations in question.<br /><br />What did they lose them to? Many of the same threats that the Russians are losing hardware to in Ukraine. Indeed, not even 'the same threats' so much as older Russian / Soviet versions of such. It's not a good endorsement.<br /><br />A similar situation is occurring in Yemen - wherein the Saudis are fielding (and losing) notable numbers of M1A2S American-made tanks. There's, again, something of an open question as to just how qualitatively different the M1A2S is from the M1A2 SEP when it comes to armour etc. ... but the point remains the same: it's relatively modern armour, being lost to potent anti-tank weaponry. Which is a helluvalot more concealable.<br /><br />Now, none of this is presented as evidence of axiomatically 'bad' or 'weak' or 'stupid' American or German military or military design institutions. Partially because it doesn't suit a narrative to do so. And partially, to be sure, because it appears in the Saudi case in particular that poor doctrine and tactical employment - in ways that leave Western observers "wtf"ing - is responsible for placing armour in such situations in the first place.<br /><br />But all up - it's long been apparent that in order to actually have armour assets playing a role on a battlefield where there's .. a profusion of these kinds of threats, it's simply not enough to have ERA bricks or even relatively advanced plating. Pending some truly revolutionary advances in the latter sphere, we're currently at a place wherein it's not easily possible for an armour platform to carry enough weight of armour on itself across enough of its body to protect against ATGM (or even, in various cases, RPG) threats.<br /><br />What does this mean? Until there's broader uptake of active-protection measures - against reasonably well-equipped infantry, armour assets are 'out of balance' quite significantly.<br /><br />Now, to be fair and sure - the Israelis *have* been very pointed in their exploring and deployment of exactly these kinds of countermeasures; and the Americans have been following suit. It is an interesting question whether they'd be in a similar position to the Russians currently were they faced with a similar 'hedgehog'.<br /><br />While there's some debate as to how effective 'kamikaze drones' might be at getting through active protection efforts, I think it's a start."<br /><br />In short - it's easy and evidently emotively satisfying to ascribe various occurrences to 'uniquely' terrible Russian hardware. <br /><br />I do not dispute that equipment designed and built and haphazardly modernized over a course of several decades prior to the conflict it's being employed in is often going to encounter difficulties. <br /><br />But the key thing is that many of the problems that have eventuated are decidedly not 'uniquely' Russian problems. <br /><br />We are simply observing them as such because: <br /><br />i) they're the ones currently putting forces into the field in an attempted invasion (and so they are occurring to them); <br /><br />ii) the Ukrainian informational warfare effort has been a resounding success, and highlighted as much as possible both these difficulties and that it is Russians experiencing them. <br /><br />Of course, it is certainly possible to argue that how the hardware in question has been employed has significantly contributed to these various losses. In many instances, I would not seek to disagree. <br /><br />But that is quite a different argument from saying something is intrinsically shoddy simply because it is Russian. <br /><br />And it also doesn't quite account for the fact that for various of these elements - even employing them at all has become significantly more hazardous than it was only a few years afore. <br /><br />All things considered, whenever I see some of the more outlandish guffawing from social media (and even regular media) commentators of the sort outlined above and proffering American or NATO hardware as seemingly impervious to similar challenges ... my thoughts go to the following line - I forget where it is from, but the latin verse it is rendering is from Horace:<br /><br />"The poet has Tantalus, unable to satisfy his hunger or his thirst, turning on the spectator and demanding, Quid rides? Mutato nomine, de te fabula narratur: why do you laugh? Change the names and the story is about you."</p>Curwen Rolinsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09768637816927187968noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6818051473633816239.post-75251570547368522212022-03-14T00:22:00.001+13:002022-03-14T00:22:48.280+13:00Are We Heading For A "Comical Ali" Situation As Applies (Social) Media Sentiment Upon Ukraine? <p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhfwsaRCB7Agd1QuaU7EFiVvh4z8LuXupwgVi1CsjW-2pxVT-64uaAq6aALXrwVY4jm1zMC8Q_knEbR9kKfc_rNyZNpOwAn4B3LzyJ09SVXKeXZFeJ4Q1qSw3AxlvP0CK3NR_Fo_GqkX4Iz-h9A1mEgXaNDck3MI91nq8xB1YN4mAIwDp-MlwCOGAT8YA=s452" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="329" data-original-width="452" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhfwsaRCB7Agd1QuaU7EFiVvh4z8LuXupwgVi1CsjW-2pxVT-64uaAq6aALXrwVY4jm1zMC8Q_knEbR9kKfc_rNyZNpOwAn4B3LzyJ09SVXKeXZFeJ4Q1qSw3AxlvP0CK3NR_Fo_GqkX4Iz-h9A1mEgXaNDck3MI91nq8xB1YN4mAIwDp-MlwCOGAT8YA=s16000" /></a></div><br /><p></p><p>Something which many have observed is that there is a bit of a .. dysjunction between what we might tactfully term 'enthusiasm' about Ukraine 'driving back' Russia, being able to 'win' the war, etc. etc. ... and the actual facts of the conflict as they become apparent day to day.<br /><br />That is natural. People have a side that is the underdog - and everybody likes an underdog, especially if it has been attacked.<br /><br />We also have a natural desire to believe 'Good News'. The Ukrainians have weaponized this (and to be sure - this is not something unique to them. Pretty much every power or group in history has done something similar even where they are winning), and put out some very, very "would make for an excellent movie" style 'information' that has later turned out to be almost unbelievable ... precisely because it actually was, as it happened, blatantly false.<br /><br />Some of that may even not be deliberate - but the result of that much-invoked concept 'the fog of war'. But much of it almost certainly is, at best, 'willfully' ignorant of the actual realities being avoided in the process.<br /><br />And, as I say - this is not a specific thing to the Ukrainians, it is not meant as some sui generis moral injunction against them alone. If I or anybody else was in a position of my country being invaded, and all I could do to try and keep the fire alive and enlist desperately needed foreign assistance was entirely artificially manufacture a narrative of 'we're already unbelievably winning!' - well, it is not hard to see how these things take hold.<br /><br />However, as the Russian advance continues to grind from East to West, as Cities fall or are encircled in areas that were supposedly victoriously retaken by the Ukrainians - and as contemptuous remarks about Russian troops behaving like WWII Soviet Pulp depictions and/or Orcs as cannon-fodder [i.e. incapable of complex thought, tactics, and therefore victory] ... give way to what appears to be a rather impressive operational double-envelopment which cuts off Ukraine's biggest concentration of forces in the East ...<br /><br />The question is left hanging: how are the people who are currently still enthusiastically cheering on Ukraine as the 'plucky little country that could!' going to react to all of this?<br /><br />At present, people sharing facts about the Ukrainian military situation are easy to dismiss as 'puppets' of Putin - as Kremlin-sponsored bots, and all the rest of it. If you don't like what you hear, you simply say that it is false and malicious propaganda.<br /><br />However, sooner rather than later, this conflict is going to produce its own spectacle of a 'Comical Ali' (also known as 'Baghdad Bob' - and more accurately as Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf, the Minister of Information under Saddam Hussein in Iraq).<br /><br />Apparently, many are too young to recall this person - but we remember well the circumstances in 2003, wherein this Governmental mouthpiece would give the most outlandish briefings. Boldly declaring that American troops were dying, defecting, deserting in the hundreds if not the thousands - and that they were nowhere near cities or strongpoints which had, in fact, fallen or become the subject of fierce fighting earlier in the day or week aforehand.<br /><br />This reached apexes of ridicularity when he tried the *same thing* in Baghdad - continuing to insist that the city was safe and that the invaders were / had been repulsed ... even as you could begin to see American armour appearing *literally in the background* of where he was standing.<br /><br />This is where we are heading with Ukraine and the 'piquant' informational picture coming out of various people speaking about it now.<br /><br />Then, as now, the side getting invaded had a very ... piquant propaganda engine dedicated to convincing people they were winning.<br /><br />The major difference now is that instead of Comical Ali being ridiculed every time he gets up to speak - people are enthusiastically buying into that narrative.<br /><br />We are, as it were, on the 'other side of the glass' from where we used to be.</p>Curwen Rolinsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09768637816927187968noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6818051473633816239.post-83164106016882797462022-03-11T00:19:00.000+13:002022-03-11T00:19:31.871+13:00On Recent Unwarranted Excitement About Estimated Russian Losses In Ukraine <p>Earlier today I saw some excitement from people in response to <a href="https://www.defense.gov/News/Transcripts/Transcript/Article/2960227/senior-defense-official-holds-a-background-briefing-march-8-2022/" target="_blank">a US DoD assessment that the Russian military in Ukraine was, and I quote, "95% still intact" as of yesterday</a>. This was taken by some of those commenting on <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/95-putins-forces-intact-plan-surround-kyiv-pentagon/story?id=83317142" target="_blank">the article</a> as their having suffered 5% losses - and seemingly, thousands of Russian KIAs as a result.<br /><br />The inference people drew from the headline was, perhaps understandably, that the Russians were going very badly.<br /><br />Except here's the thing. That's not at all what any of this indicates.<br /><br />We'll start with the obvious one - the presumption that "95% still intact" means one man in every twenty that the Russians had sent in is now dead or severely wounded. That is not the case.<br /><br />Measuring the combat power of formations has never simply been an exercise in calculating how many men you've got left as compared to when you started. And the increasing saliency of hardware over the millennia has added significant complexity and nuance to proceedings.<br /><br />Indeed, speaking of equipment - it is not even necessary for a tank, say, to be destroyed for it to be removed from the tally of 'intact' elements. A perhaps (un)surprisingly high quotient of Allied armour in the later Second World War was rendered combat-ineffective via mechanical problems or damage to other systems such as the main gun.<br /><br />This obviously meant that it would be less- or even un-able to participate in its intended role, and therefore in that sense, sure, combat power of its parent unit is degraded.<br /><br />Except there is quite a difference between a tank being destroyed outright - and a tank not being present for a phase of operations due to something which is repairable and which sees it back at the front in the not-too-distant future.<br /><br />So no, no 5% of Russian combat power no longer being "intact" does not mean one in twenty Russian troops deployed to Ukraine are currently dead or wounded. Although I have no doubt that in some formations there will indeed have been significant casualties.<br /><br />In fact, that's one of the things which is probably distorting the overall picture people are drawing from all of this.<br /><br />Russian VDV operations in the early days of the conflict saw ... very high losses of men and material - and were, as we had remarked at the time, frankly bizarre that they had been attempted in the manner involved.<br /><br />The losses during the ultimately unsuccessful attempt to seize Antonov airbase (Hostomel) at the start of the invasion are unconfirmed, but near-certain to have been significant given its recapture by the Ukrainians. A similar pattern appears to have played out at Vasylkiv; and this is before we consider the Ukrainian claim of having downed two Russian Il-76 transports, at least one of which was reportedly carrying a full contingent of paratroopers.<br /><br />Why I say that these may have been 'distortionary' - is because those are ... not insignificant losses, entailing several hundred men and associated equipment, suffered in the first two to three days.<br /><br />Which, if you're just looking at total figures overall, may lead to unwarranted presumptions as to how things have gone subsequent to that.<br /><br />Now, the other point which is vital to make is that a 5% loss of combat power over fifteen days of intensive military operations for an attacker is ... not unexpected. Particularly given many of the current battlezones are located in and around urban areas, terrain where offensive operations are notoriously costly.<br /><br />Hence, of course, the frequent preference of modern militaries to engage in sustained aerial, artillery and/or missile bombardment of such places prior to - or even in lieu of - a direct ground assault.<br /><br />In this regard, the Anglo-American lead Coalition's efforts during the 2003 Invasion of Iraq may prove interestingly instructive - with, at its height, an oft-quoted figure of <a href="https://irp.fas.org/eprint/bradley.pdf">1,700 aerial bombing and missile strikes in a single day</a> carried out largely against urban-proximate targets; and sustained use of both conventional and cluster munitions persisting for days after that.<br /><br />Of course, the British, American, Australian, etc. actions must be contextualized - the idea having been to minimize Coalition casualties not so much through simply producing a flattened battlespace, as both breaking the Iraqi will to resist (the crux of the<a href="https://www.airforcemag.com/article/1103shock/" target="_blank"> so-called "Shock And Awe" doctrine</a>) and carrying out destruction of particular targets (potentially including <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/meast/04/08/sprj.irq.media.hit/" target="_blank">one Al Jazeera office in Baghdad</a>) in ways which did not therefore (at least .. in theory) necessitate the direct involvement of ground troops.<br /><br />The reason that these instances are instructive, is because they represent a fundamentally different approach to what we have seen from the Russians in Ukraine - thus far.<br /><br />There have most certainly been both aerial and artillery bombardments of urban areas carried out by Russian forces.<br /><br />However, these have not been at the scale and scope anticipated of them for a hypothetical 'full scale' war. Which is not to suggest that these attacks are not serious nor highly destructive - only to emphasize that the Russians would doctrinally be almost expected to be far more so in these regards (particularly in terms of the usage of artillery as a primary force vector).<br /><br />One explanation which has been advanced by some Western analysts is that the seeming low scale of Russian aerial bombardment sorties is due to some alleged incapacity on the part of the Russian air force to actually carry out complex and frequent combat air operations.<br /><br />This is clearly incorrect, as the relatively recent Russian record in Syria (<a href="https://www.cna.org/CNA_files/PDF/COP-2018-U-017903-Final.pdf" target="_blank">which featured in some cases over a hundred sorties a day, and an average in the 40s</a>) amply demonstrates.<br /><br />It might be tempting to presume that the smaller involvement of Russian air power in Ukraine as compared to Syria may be due to concerns about the relative strength of Ukraine's remaining anti-air capacity - however this, too, does not feel like the full answer.<br /><br />Instead, I would contemplate whether the seemingly 'scaled back' deployment of Russian air power might stem from the same reason that their use of artillery has appeared likewise to be less prominent (although steadily increasing).<br /><br />Namely, that their initial invasion approach was something of an opposite one to the American-led 'Shock And Awe' ethos. Albeit, it would seem, still possessing a certain element of that same "we'll be greeted as liberators" <b>decidedly</b> wishful thinking.<br /><br />Whether due to their own observation of the fairly direct consequences of Western militaries' enthusiasm for bombardments (i.e. - a marked uptick in the ordinary people who now have a very, very good reason to choose to become insurgents, considerably frustrating a long-term occupation effort) or out of a desire to avoid the overwhelmingly negative PR which comes with utilizing highly destructive weaponry in built-up civilian-inhabited areas, the Russians appear to have 'held back' [a very, very relative term indeed] somewhat on these approaches, in favour of the direct application of ground assets.<br /><br />Something which seems to have cost them a fair amount of that 5% we started out this piece discussing, partially explicating their seeming shift toward greater employment of artillery currently.<br /><br />In closing, I feel it is useful to draw attention to the two tables that I've attached here as an image. They're from relatively outdated (but still useful) US Army internal documents, and as you can see they discuss anticipated losses (both combat and otherwise) in various types of engagement and over relatively short (up to five days) and longer timescales - measured in daily and monthly casualty rates respectively.<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgaOzw6d5eYE-AAt_MJHpEJk2-iZAd7g4PbCd1St0kbbWaHAJ5qfnNfBp8D-weYwsbprsExpOYWUesZDvGCUD3E_0obrjuM_4RFHoHvUrBIBc_bBk7XuyEzdqJoYpzxCHWKipaDeKCtRLmC2KpAlV6iPk_tVW7WeVbvcoeAnH1h-uFL3sYaz8ItYJbs8Q=s945" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="851" data-original-width="945" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgaOzw6d5eYE-AAt_MJHpEJk2-iZAd7g4PbCd1St0kbbWaHAJ5qfnNfBp8D-weYwsbprsExpOYWUesZDvGCUD3E_0obrjuM_4RFHoHvUrBIBc_bBk7XuyEzdqJoYpzxCHWKipaDeKCtRLmC2KpAlV6iPk_tVW7WeVbvcoeAnH1h-uFL3sYaz8ItYJbs8Q=s16000" /></a><br /><br /><br />Now, 1959 (when these were published) is a long while ago, and it can be fairly argued that warfare's changed in a number of ways over that time (in particular, improvements in battlefield medicine improving survivability ... as weighed against ever more lethal weaponry).<br /><br />Further, these figures were likely the result of US analysis of the then relatively recent experiences of World War Two and the Korean War - that is to say, conflicts often characterized by 'parity' or 'near-parity' opponents ... even if <b>specific</b> engagements within either could be decidedly otherwise.<br /><br />Yet while it can definitely be asserted that at the strategic level, Ukraine and Russia are decidedly <b>not</b> 'parity' opponents - in terms of the forces that were sent into Ukraine, the relative disparity in various areas between them and their opponents is arguably much smaller.<br /><br />I therefore suspect that, as a <b>very</b> rough guide, there may yet be some probative value for its utilization here.<br /><br />So, assuming that the American Department of Defense is reasonably accurate in their assessment that Russia had 'only' retained approximately 95% of the combat power it has brought to bear in Ukraine ... after fifteen days of offensive operations, I am not sure that a 5% reduction in overall combat power - which, again, does <b>not</b> equate to a 5% figure for casualties amidst the invaders - is actually that unexpected.<br /><br />Indeed, juxtaposed against the sentiment which has seemingly taken root in some areas that Ukraine might somehow actually win this war based on how things look from tiktok videos shared to social media, it may seem seriously surprising to some that the figures are not much higher.<br /><br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhKtvYbvg0cFi0WcK1EtcTzZk0tgODrfVoJAdq1gvWRgtmL6PZDt4mq3S4Vj9a9fEwQvXHiWuTj9_r2t_KYBFxrzBzqe9i5r_b69crGmzFVNjSRkcUe6xnshJ7dd1Y21_4NoBne1eESgubJgTL4L12Qjx6n6jaAUZGXBporynSAKHkBSNltZVYECW9zcQ=s960" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="960" data-original-width="960" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhKtvYbvg0cFi0WcK1EtcTzZk0tgODrfVoJAdq1gvWRgtmL6PZDt4mq3S4Vj9a9fEwQvXHiWuTj9_r2t_KYBFxrzBzqe9i5r_b69crGmzFVNjSRkcUe6xnshJ7dd1Y21_4NoBne1eESgubJgTL4L12Qjx6n6jaAUZGXBporynSAKHkBSNltZVYECW9zcQ=w400-h400" width="400" /></a><br /><br /><br />Concordantly, given the serious scale of the Russian invasion force, some might also suggest that even 5% of that being out of the fight (one way or another) should present a truly staggering amount of manpower and material to have been lost or incapacitated over just over a two week period.<br /><br />From our individual human perspective, it almost unquestionably is.<br /><br />Yet that is what modern, conventional warfare regularly entails - and more.<br /><br />I would say "it is well that it is so rare, then" - except given current events both there in Ukraine, as well as the numerous smaller-scale conflicts also going on elsewhere (Yemen, for example), it is worth noting that the 'rarity' is a <b>decidedly</b> localized phenomenon. </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><br /><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><br /><p><br /></p>Curwen Rolinsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09768637816927187968noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6818051473633816239.post-34930010659153251782022-03-07T20:55:00.000+13:002022-03-07T20:55:21.345+13:00On Luxon's Muscovite Specter Speech Purportedly Haunting The Nation <p>Like various recent National Party leaders before him, Christopher Luxon appears to have a bit of difficulty Reading The Room. <br /><br />It's a remark of general application, however in this specific case the room in question is "a modest Moscow flat". <br /><br />Confused? So's he. Why? Because The Numbers Don't Add Up. <br /><br />Luxon found himself in that modest Moscow flat at some point after he joined Unilever, and was touring the world meeting "management" of that company as he slowly edged his way up the soapy pole. It's possible that I (<a href="https://www.patreon.com/posts/but-who-are-you-63460453" target="_blank">and David Cormack</a>, whom I note beat me to the idea for this piece) am in error about this, but I somehow don't think that Luxon was in Moscow during the era of anything which might feasibly be termed "Socialism". <br /><br />Most likely, considering he joined the company in 1993 and spent the first few years based in Wellington (where, to be sure, he may have wandered down Cuba Street and felt a bit lost in both time and space), he probably ventured over to Moscow when he was based out of London from 2000-2003.<br /><br />Now if that's the case, then I can certainly agree that he likely encountered quite the swathe of "misery" in that town - however, with somewhere between ten and thirteen years since the fall of the USSR, and up to a decade since the associated dismantling of the Soviet economic system ... is it really fair to say that the "misery" in question was "created" by "socialism"? <br /><br />I'm not so sure. I suppose it comes down to how much you blame the Soviet system for existing - and therefore providing the opportunity for undoing said system in a really, really damaging way. Which, perhaps not uncoincidentally, also saw a fairly massive-scale transfer of wealth from the state to a very small number of private citizens - whilst for ordinary Russians life got significantly worse. A bit of an interesting thing given Luxon's major theme in yesterday's speech was the apparent 'necessity' of several billion dollars of tax cuts which will only benefit the wealthy (that is - <a href="https://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL2203/S00017/on-luxons-tired-tax-plan.htm" target="_blank">the top 3% of income earners</a>), and which we can fairly assume to be accompanied by constraints in state support and spending. <br /><br />In the five years from 1989 to 1994, average Russian life expectancy went <b>backwards</b> by nearly five years - that is to say, Russians died, on average, five years earlier under that phase of the Market's unfurling as compared to under the previous Soviet system. Life expectancy wouldn't recover to pre-1990 levels in Russia until 2011 - almost a full generation after the Market began to be rolled out in earnest. This compares rather unfavourably, it must be said, with the situation of the USSR from, say, 1950 to 1965 - where life expectancy relatively shot up from just over 50 through to just under 68 ... and, I suppose, comparing either of those numbers to the average <b>pre</b> Soviet Union, which appears to have never made it past the early 30s.<br /><br />We often do not quite adequately appreciate that for all its (numerous) faults, the USSR did manage to take an expanse of what would barely be Third World conditions today, and not only put a man in space less than 40 years later but also manage to make meaningful improvements in quality of life for its citizenry as well. We often fall into something of a trap of choosing to measure Soviet (and Russian) achievements in these spheres relative to a yardstick derived from the (theoretically) most materially abundant society on the planet - America; rather than appreciating just what kind of a 'dirt floor' the USSR built itself up from. In fact, not just a 'dirt floor' - but a floor on fire, when the immense devastation of the Second World War is taken into consideration.<br /><br />The point is, by the late 1990s, it had become abundantly clear that the Market had not brought the fabled prosperity promised by the modern Western economics textbook. For many it was quite the opposite. Shortly before Luxon likely arrived in Moscow, for instance, unemployment was in double-digit figures - <a href="https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/RUS/russia/unemployment-rate" target="_blank">around 13% in 1999</a>. Going back a bit further, we'll just quote <a href="https://www.bmj.com/content/319/7208/468.2" target="_blank">this paper from the British Medical Journal</a> verbatim:<br /><br />"The report Transition 1999 stated that suicide rates have climbed steeply too, by 60% in Russia, 80% in Lithuania, and 95% in Latvia since 1989.<br /><br />But behind the self destructive behaviour, the authors say, are economic factors, including rising poverty rates, unemployment, financial insecurity, and corruption. Whereas only 4% of the population of the region had incomes equivalent to $4 (£2.50) a day or less in 1988, that figure had climbed to 32% by 1994. In addition, the transition to a market economy has been accompanied by lower living standards (including poorer diets), a deterioration in social services, and major cutbacks in health spending.<br /><br />“What we are arguing,” said Omar Noman, an economist for the development fund and one of the report’s contributors, “is that the transition to market economies [in the region] is the biggest … killer we have seen in the 20th century, if you take out famines and wars. The sudden shock and what it did to the system … has effectively meant that five million [Russian men’s] lives have been lost in the 1990s.” Using Britain and Japan with their ratio of 96 men to every 100 women as the base population, the report’s authors have calculated that there are now some 9.6 million “missing men” in the former communist bloc. “The typical patterns are that a man loses his job and develops a drinking problem,” said Mr Noman. “The women then leave and the men die, first emotionally and then physically.”<br /><br />So that's what Luxon was in amidst when he "[remembers] sitting in a modest Moscow flat with a couple in their late 40s on a dark and snowy afternoon."<br /><br />Sure sounds like "actually created misery" - although other than the weather (it's probably a bit hard to be cheery on a "dark and snowy afternoon"), there seems a curious lack of any mention for any then-<b>contemporary</b> causations for the malaise Luxon observed there at the time. Probably because it wouldn't fit his narrative today. <br /><br />What's that narrative? A proverbial red flag. That Labour, having steered us remarkably well (if not, it must be said, always perfectly - they are human, as are we) through a global pandemic (which we are still traversing) through the judicious use of the powers of state effectively unprecedented in peace-time ... are somehow "Socialists". In fact, more than that ... Soviet Socialists. Via inferency, aligned to "Moscow" - which, given events of this past week and a half, is a toponym which carries quite some additional 'dark' (and perhaps 'snowy') connotations to it.<br /><br />Perhaps he wants to pick up from his previous big speech (curiously enough, <b>also</b> on the 'state of the nation') - the one in which he set out his belief that we ought to "<a href="https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/politics/2022/02/christopher-luxon-s-full-a-divided-society-speech-as-protests-continue-at-parliament.html" target="_blank">sympathise with some of the issues being raised by protesters on Parliament's grounds without being framed as condoning illegal behaviour or siding with anti-science conspiracy theorists.</a>" I'm sure he could borrow <a href="https://thedailyblog.co.nz/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/Screen-Shot-2021-07-18-at-6.56.17-AM-696x522.png" target="_blank">a "Cindy Stalin" hammer-and-sickle adorned placard</a> from some of his friends-of-friends from the fringier bits of Groundswell if he gets sick of trying to do the subtle thing with his rhetoric. <br /><br />In any case, Luxon ought be careful about basing his 'reckons' for Middle New Zealand off one conversation in a Moscow flat. Polling has fairly consistently shown that a majority of Russians ... actually think the Soviet system being dismantled was a <b>bad</b> thing. This isn't some heavily manipulated and unreliable propaganda survey, either - other than <a href="https://www.russiamatters.org/blog/polling-suggests-soviet-nostalgia-isnt-going-away" target="_blank">the Levada annual polling on the question</a>, you've also got <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2019/10/14/political-and-economic-changes-since-the-fall-of-communism/" target="_blank">the well-regarded Pew Research Center findings</a>. In fact, especially according to the latter, the number of Russians who view the transition to the market system as being a good thing has been steadily declining year upon year - hitting about 38% in 2019 per Pew. Of additional interest is another pattern in the figures - it's the people who actually grew up and lived under the Soviet system that are chiefly driving the numbers there. The young generation who had no experience of the Soviet system are the ones that are most likely to say they think the new market economy was a good move - as they've never known anything else. <br /><br />But we are not here to make the case for (or, for that matter, against) the Soviet Union. It was a faraway country, with a culture and a system that bore little resemblance to anything we might find here in New Zealand - even the famed 'Dancing Cossacks' of a previous National election campaign are simply a two dimensional caricature. Much like Luxon's rhetoric here, and no doubt pertaining to a great many things. <br /><br />The point is a simple one. If Luxon wants to audition for the role of Prime Minister of New Zealand, he'd do a better job if the concerns he sought to represent were those of regular New Zealanders. Not 40something Muscovites some twenty-ish years ago who, as it turns out, may not have been all that representative of ordinary Russians even then. <br /><br />There is a certain segment of the New Zealand body-politic - the armpit of democracy, we may perhaps call them, after the sounds they seem to make for jocularity-value upon talkback radio for puerile self-amusement purposes - who probably do, either genuinely or reasonably enthusiastically facetiously, believe that New Zealand 'runs the risk' of becoming some sort of "Communist" state. Or that there's some meaningful coterminity to be evinced between Putin rolling armoured vehicles into Ukraine and the NZ Police deploying riot shields and a fire-hose against a protest featuring a literal dumpster fire last week.<br /><br />Some of those were the sort of people so unduly concerned about "Communism" here in New Zealand and a creeping surveillance state with Orwellian characteristics, that they immediately chose to go and set themselves up a commune, in public view and with extensive round-the-clock live-streaming of their every move whilst attempting to redefine reality to fit on an hourly if not minute-by-minute basis. Often whilst boldly declaring their vigorous intent to defend our democracy ... by 'temporarily' overthrowing it and potentially holding some very Soviet-Stalinist seeming Show-Trials into the bargain.<br /><br />Luxon was quite rightly pilloried not all that long ago for attempting to wade into that particular 'debate' and designating 'Well Both Sides Have A Point' as an attempted 'wedge politics' against not only our Government, but also the broad majority of the people of New Zealand heartily unimpressed with that sad opposition-for-opposition's-sake spectacle recently occuring in Wellington (I mean the protest-camp here, not the National Party for a change). <br /><br />He's probably - or, rather, his focus-groupers - identified a bit of a seam of disgruntlement out there in the electorate, one which is currently extant effectively as a few embers, but which his handlers hope could be blown upon to get it to grow and inflame into a more American-style political combustion with enough effort and spurious soundbitery. Something somewhat availed, for rhetorical-symbological purposes by the fact that the past week and a half's developments in geopolitics appear to have put us squarely back in the 80s in various regards. <br /><br />Expect, over the next year and a half, Luxon to continue to needle along exactly these lines in various subtle (or not-so-subtle) hues. <br /><br />How effective will it be?<br /><br />Well, that's over to you. </p>Curwen Rolinsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09768637816927187968noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6818051473633816239.post-84015465300019280542022-02-22T06:25:00.001+13:002022-02-22T06:25:30.344+13:00On Coster's Covid Convoy Strategy <p>Over the weekend, I tapped out the following:<br /><br />"In what's going to be my most controversial take this month ... I actually think that Police Commissioner Andrew Coster's apparent strategy of "this'll go down easier if we just let the whole thing implode of its own accord rather than go in swinging" might be entirely (if painfully - for Wellington) correct."<br /><br />At the time, it seemed a statement against the grain. Hashtags demanding Coster's resignation were trending on Twitter. Wellingtonians (even the ones <i>not</i> on Twitter) seemed almost as aggrieved at the police for a lack of action against the protest as they were against the protest itself. The sentiments advanced by some of the commentariat in the Sunday (and Saturday) papers seemed to suggest they weren't alone in this - except, of course, for the curious fact that various of those media mouthpieces seemed to be sotto-voce cheering on the protest specifically because it was causing optics difficulty for the Government and our Covid-19 public health response. <br /><br />However, I had cautious cause for optimism on Coster's behalf. Saturday had seen a rather dramatic occurrence - the revelation that some ... unthinking protester had chosen to turn the nation's Cenotaph into an impromptu ablution block for the protest campsite. This was received in pretty much all quarters about as well as one might expect - as if there is one thing pretty much every New Zealander not of some sort of Anarchist proclivity tends to agree upon, it's the sacrosanct status of the ANZAC legacy. <br /><br />I sensed, therefore, that this was likely a bit of a turning point in terms of the 'momentum' (in)surging into the mainstream of the protest narrative. <br /><br />And also noted that it seemed plausible Coster's strategy had been drawn from that of Napoleon - who famously remarked one should "never interrupt your opponent when he's in the middle of making a mistake." <br /><br />Subsequent developments seem to have confirmed this - <a href="https://www.1news.co.nz/2022/02/19/we-want-to-feel-safe-say-wellingtonians-whove-been-attacked-by-protesters/" target="_blank">with news stories out about the same time discussing how a citizen-media team who'd gone to visit and film the protest in order to show them to be non-violent ... had been assaulted and "beaten to a pulp"</a>; whilst <a href="https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/300522626/convoy-protest-protest-leaders-suggested-they-couldnt-clear-streets-if-they-wanted-to" target="_blank">the next day brought an extended press release from the groups at the center of the Convoy effectively stating that they had little actual control over the protest (to the point that they couldn't even ensure access for trucks to service the portaloos at the site), and that movements toward 'negotiation' were a "deflection"</a>. <br /><br />Monday continued this trend, with the 'moral high ground' almost certainly not being held by <a href="https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/politics/2022/02/protesters-even-less-likely-to-get-audience-with-prime-minister-jacinda-ardern-after-throwing-human-waste-at-police.html" target="_blank">the side throwing its own excrement about the place</a>. <br /><br />However, while it's certainly one thing to observe the 'momentum' of the movement seemingly fizzle in the harsh glare of public scrutiny of <i>what they're actually about and like </i>(at least, on the 'fringes') - this isn't quite the same thing as doing something meaningful about the escalating sprawl of tents, cars, and placards which have been steadily encircling further and further around both Parliament and Wellington's key central city governmental locations. Particularly in light of the shuffling around of cars and other potential obstacles which had been taking place toward the end of last week by the protesters in order to entrench themselves further against anticipated towing action.<br /><br />That, instead, was provided via the rollout of a series of concrete barricades pre-Dawn on Monday Morning. <br /><br />Which we may surmise to be a rather interesting development for the 'Non-Violent Enforcement' approach. One of simply giving the protesters what they want. <br /><br />"We've barricaded ourselves in!"<br /><br />"Yes. You're barricaded in."<br /><br />"HEY! YOU CAN'T JUST BARRICADE US IN LIKE THAT!"<br /><br />"You barricaded <b>yourselves</b> in - we're just agreeing with you."<br /><br />As it happens, this concords rather well with something I'd been thinking about a few days earlier - namely, what one does when one finds one's self having to raise a siege in more conventional conflict terms. <br /><br />I'll spare you the extended military history discursions that conjured in my mind about this point and just skip straight to the answer I'd arrived at - you place the siege, itself, under siege. <br /><br />Now at this point, we are going to sidestep for a moment into discussing just how this whole 'Protest' ethos appears to have come into being. Via a handy metaphor provisioned for us through the realms of physics. Which, yes, also helps to explain what's going to happen next and why Coster's strategy is likely to work. <br /><br />My general typology for what's been going on both politically and physically is ... a gas. Now, gas differs from liquids and solids, insofar as it can be compressed into a smaller area - which raises pressure as the molecules go pinging bouncing off the walls faster.</p><div><div>The situation we've witnessed in NZ politics over the past year and a half - has seen the 'space' various people or political forces feel they occupy .. reduced quite markedly. Because Labour and Labour-support(ish) has expanded so massively - along with a seriously impressive degree of support for the accompanying Covid-19 public health measures they've presided over. </div></div><div><br /><div>While some have adapted to this by effectively 'splitting the difference' and attempting to co-occupy (er..poor choice of words) space Labour is perceived to hold - others have adapted to a self-perceived shrinking habitat by going gas - and pinging off walls with escalating speed. <br /><br />A good example of this is probably to be found by looking at the National Party from time to time. After a number of 'false starts', they realized that attempting to carve meaningful votes off Labour by pushing for 'business as usual' to resume as swiftly as possible, or for that matter, by heading into conspiratorial territory ... was not really a good starter. And so they instead shifted to a general attack strategy (as exemplified by Chris Bishop) of taking something the Government was going to do eventually, and complaining that it hadn't been done faster or better in some fashion. <br /><br />That's that 'splitting the difference' and 'co-occupying space' approach. <br /><br />The <i>other </i>avenue, however, is exemplified by former National MP Matt King, who's effectively become a billboard for 'the path not taken' by going from <a href="https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/politics/2020/05/i-m-no-sheep-national-mp-matt-king-rubbishes-government-s-covid-19-distancing-rules.html" target="_blank">overtly opposing in both social media post and deed, the personal distancing rules that were in place in 2020 while he was still a Member of Parliament</a> ... through to quitting National in order to return to Parliament in a decidedly other capacity a few days ago as a would-be leader of the Convoy movement, following a rather piquant interview with the NZ Herald about some of his more curious beliefs in related areas. </div></div><div><br /><div>Phrased another way and more succinctly - a lot of these guys feel like they're increasingly marginalized, and so they're 'acting out' precisely because of it.</div><div><br /></div><div>Now all of that's utterly uncontroversial in the <i>political</i> sense .. but it gets interesting in the <i>physical</i> sense.<br /><br /><div>Because at present, there's apparently 30+ groups involved in this thing, plus a lot of people who aren't part of one. I have no idea how many 'factions' there might be, but we <b>do</b> know various of these don't like each other & have confronted each other from time to time.</div></div></div><div><br /><div>Provided the protest had significant space it could 'move into' and expand, that presented less of an issue. You could set up another semi-hub for your particular crew of people just by pitching a tent somewhere less congested or parking up down the road.</div></div><div><br /><div>However, by significantly restricting the available area for this kind of activity to, effectively, that which has <b>already</b> been claimed ... it introduces a resourcing constraint (one of several if doughnut-trucks can't get in, figuratively speaking) for an already overpopulated habitat. </div></div><div><br /><div>What does overpopulation in a resource / territory constrained zone produce? Conflict. <br /><br />What was there already? Conflict. <br /><br />What has the revelation one protest-leader (former NewCons leader Leighton Baker) was aware of and engaged with by the police about the barricades going in ahead of time contributed to? Conflict.</div></div><div><br /><div>What will likely cause protesters to feel 'it isn't fun' and pack up? Conflict.<br /><br />Internal conflict. Replacing that joyous sense that you're all part of some big movement swimming in the same direction, with the sense that instead you've somehow found yourself in amidst three-to-three-dozen mistrustful camps that spend almost as much time sniping at each other as they do at the Government. </div></div><div><br /><div>So, to quote me some Sun Tzu - "Your opponent is Choleric - Irritate Him".</div><div><br /></div><div>Or, with these guys "Your opponent is likely really keen on Conspiracy Theorizing. Give him a reason to distrust the hell out of his neighbour / establishing leadership".<br /><br />The concrete barricades are also good for another purpose. <br /><br />The protest-groups' press-release on Sunday indicated they were already having notable difficulty ensuring that vehicles were able to come and go to carry out essential things like servicing the portaloos. The rather radical solution of physically disposing of the human waste in question by flinging it at Her Majesty's Constabulary evidently proving inadequate to the task of shoveling sufficient quotients for the hundreds of people on site. <br /><br />Vehicles looking to get in to the Convoy's occupation space are now no longer going to be able to come-and-go as convenient. The police control the access-points in. Those are <b>their </b>barricades. As an associate observed - that means they now have 'Leverage'. <br /><div><br />Up to the Weekend, Coster's strategy was what appeared to be a valiant (if flawed) effort at what I call the coke-bottle analogy. <br /><br />You know the one.<br /><br />When confronted with a coke bottle that's been shaken up, there are two ways of handling the problem. <br /><br /><div>You can twist off the lid completely - resulting in a sticky mess everywhere. All the pressure that's built up explodes outward all at once. Or - you twist off the cap a bit at a time - allowing pressure to come out gradually.<br /><br />Coster had resiled from the level of force required to twist the cap off all at once, quite understandably, because apart from the possible question as to whether he had sufficient resources in place to actually forcibly evict the occupation once it got past the first day or two ... such a spectacle would almost certainly just have lead to a bigger problem elsewhere or elsewhen. The protesters themselves overtly pointed to the 120+ arrests on the Thursday (the 10th of February) as an effective 'galvanizer' of their own internal cohesion and a useful recruitment tool through footage of same going up online. <br /><br />In other words - their 'narrative' had found its ogre, its antagonist ... and continuing to play that role would be continuing to play into both their hands and that narrative position, strengthening same. <br /><br />His preference, it would seem, when it became clear how well the previous approach was going (i.e. insufficient force being deployed to clear the protest, very sufficient force being deployed to look antagonistic in so doing) - was to go for the latter option. The gentle and delayed release of pressure through smaller cap-twists. <br /><br />Except it ran into the obvious issue that pressure wasn't actually being decreased. People continued to arrive at the protest, and as mentioned above, it would seem that a semi-deliberate strategy of moving to encircle Parliament and various important sites in the area had gotten well underway. <br /><br />To return to our metaphor - it does little good to gently twist the cap of the coke-bottle part-way around if somebody is still shaking the coke bottle the whole time and somehow adding more coke into the mix as well. </div><div><br />The barricades - those of the Police rather than those of the protesters - are, therefore, a welcome 'breathing room'.<br /><br />They are not, in and of themselves, a full-scale solution. However they <b>do</b> facilitate a gradual de-escalation by hopefully helping to constrain the mean level of 'new coke' flowing in; whilst also creating internal conditions that will potentially encourage some people inside to start flowing back out at their own pace. <br /><br />And whilst it's very easy to cast a baton-equipped police officer as an 'antagonist' in one's own preferred flavouring of post-modern morality play ... it's a lot harder to vent the same kind of animus toward an inanimate cement block. <br /><br />At every stage of this pandemic, New Zealand has somehow managed to come out the 'least-worst' (indeed, in various cases, actually rather well - our life expectancy going <b>up</b>, for one example; unemployment hitting an absolute historic low, another) of much of the world with what we've attempted and accomplished. <br /><br />It hasn't been through luck (although yes, most certainly, that's helped in places and in parts), but rather through the people making decisions making decent and well-informed ones. Eventually, in some cases, but eventually nonetheless. <br /><br />Andrew Coster came to national prominence not for being appointed Police Commissioner - but rather, <a href="https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/124329506/national-party-mp-simon-bridges-lashes-out-at-wokester-police-commissioner-andy-coster" target="_blank">for being attacked by the Opposition as some sort of 'Wokester'</a> and adhering to a doctrine (apparently known in the Anglosphere and practiced in various forms since the 1800s, not that you'd know it) known as 'policing by consent'. <br /><br />For the longest time, it had seemed that he was a man whose prevailing principles had seemed prospectively ill-fitting for the circumstances he had found himself in. Or maybe that's just what the media-political spin sought to suggest. <br /><br />Yet Cometh The Hour, Cometh The Man - it <b><i>may </i></b>just be that he and his approach might prove the unexpected exact right instrument for handling this current Covid Convoy quagmire. <br /><br />He would appear to have already headed off the kinds of escalation which some overseas countries have experienced with their own local 'Convoy' occurrences (or other anti-Governmental pseudo-uprisings) - and for that, I think we should be grateful. <br /><br />Will he be the man to preside over what brings about the Convoy's further withering into wittering obscurity and eventual disapparation? </div></div></div></div><div><br />Well, we'll just have to wait and see what tomorrow (and the next day) brings.<br /><br /><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div>Curwen Rolinsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09768637816927187968noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6818051473633816239.post-72875819584610213902022-02-15T01:39:00.001+13:002022-02-15T01:39:38.444+13:00On The Impending Media Push To Present Parliamentary Protesters As Ordinary<p>The excerpt in the image below comes from part of the lead story in the weekend's Sunday Star Times. <br /><br />It paints a picture of the protesters currently occupying Parliament's lawn in decidedly more nuanced terms than the protestors often seem to believe the media interested in doing. <br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhe9HkoI3ZXUFyApbRRkxCM8P8IY0lYvOuxr_Wchu_Oegi_vB1PYx9ET4PM7-rXngkDNQ-UEt7rz0xQnVMOKPlFchCwssdD8ol62_8QeNhWF89hLUbnL77uh7Qr6pq0j9qaTYDeUnxO9dyoIL5aoSA067FPhzCg42w7wYLZSW9lFV6yIXbECo2dWl2H8A=s2048" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1536" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhe9HkoI3ZXUFyApbRRkxCM8P8IY0lYvOuxr_Wchu_Oegi_vB1PYx9ET4PM7-rXngkDNQ-UEt7rz0xQnVMOKPlFchCwssdD8ol62_8QeNhWF89hLUbnL77uh7Qr6pq0j9qaTYDeUnxO9dyoIL5aoSA067FPhzCg42w7wYLZSW9lFV6yIXbECo2dWl2H8A=w480-h640" width="480" /></a><br /><br /><br />Now, the reason that I find this interesting is because of the context of this presentation. Both in terms of where it was in that day's newspaper, but also how it represents a bit of a 'crystalization' of a trend for media portrayal of the protest. <br /><br />What do I mean by this? <br /><br />Well, we'll start with the second point first. Over the past few days there's been a definite emphasis on the part of some commentators to push the line that the protesters, while they might <i>appear</i> to be a rambunctious rabble of general conspiracy-theory toting ne'er-do-wells ... "actually have a point". <br /><br />Just what that "point" is may vary somewhat from mouthpiece to mouthpiece, but effectively seems to boil down to "the Government's done the wrong thing", with a specific flavouring of "vaccine mandates, Traffic Light Settings, and other Omicron-era control measures are too restrictive / actively harmful", and a side-order of "time to start Learning To Live With The Virus". <br /><br />Except, of course, not 'learning to live with the virus' in the way that we'd been intending to, nor in the way that Singapore et co are attempting to manage it. You get the idea. <br /><br />Now how <i>much</i> of said 'flavouring' depends quite strongly upon the individual columnist or commentator. Some basically just want to go for the 'lightly seasoned' option of presenting it as being a Government comms issue that's 'legitimate' to voice opposition to - others want to go rather further.<br /><br />This brings us to my second point - the first one I'd mentioned, around where this charming excerpt was to be found within the context of Sunday's Star Times. <br /><br />Elsewhere on the page was a story about how, surprise surprise, the Government's Covid-control measures had allegedly 'gone too far' and were now actively 'counterproductive'. <br /><br />The 'meat' of this piece was provided via perspectives from two people representing rather different groups: somebody from the hospitality sector, lamenting the manner in which 'fear' was contributing to people not patronizing restaurants and the like; and a doctor, talking about how understandable caution from people about going out into the community with Omicron circulating had lead to a rather significant reduction in the number of people making appointments to see their GP. <br /><br />Predictably, the front page highlight talking about the article lead with the picture and soundbite from the doctor - a public health perspective, and a not unwarranted one. And then spent only a smaller portion toward the end of the actual article itself on what he had to say - instead giving over its mainstay to the unrelated commentary around the retail sector suffering due to people not wanting to go out and socialize in the midst of a pandemic. A classic bait-and-switch - and attempt to conflate a commercial issue with a public health one (because yes, people not engaging with primary healthcare providers can contribute to rather more important problems than a bar being underpatronized). <br /><br />Now, we've been down these styles of cycleway many, many times before over the course of the pandemic. <br /><br />This is partially why we so frequently find heads of business associations, and prominent figures of the hospitality industry given such prominence in media pieces talking about the pandemic response. Because it's one of the areas where you can actually point to and say "see all this saving lives? It's got a Cost Attached." <br /><br />Various media have also been very keen to try and present the situation in more 'popular' terms - not as something between small and sectorally interested groups against the dominant public will, but rather as the general public being divided in amidst itself. <br /><br />You can see this in the reporting in the Herald from 2020, for example, discussing our then second lockdown. They'd declared Auckland to be seriously "divided" over the decision to extend the Level 3 phase. <br /><br />Except when you looked closer at it ..., <a href="https://thedailyblog.co.nz/2021/09/04/mediawatch-nz-herald-poll-on-pursuing-elimination-til-vaccination-is-thin-end-of-learn-to-live-with-it-wedge/" target="_blank">and as I said about the time</a> - <br /><br />"You might be forgiven for thinking that this meant somewhere around a fifty fifty split of opinion on the matter.<br /><br />Here’s the actual split:<br /><br />75% of Aucklanders thought that the extension of lockdown was “appropriate”. This was made up of 56% who were simply fine with the extension – and a further 19% who wanted the lockdown to go longer.<br /><br />Meanwhile, that 25% of opponents was made up of 14% for a shorter lockdown, and 9% for the lockdown shouldn’t have been initiated at all.<br /><br />That’s three-to-one support for the lockdown. And yet somehow this is a serious degree of “division”.<br /><br />Meanwhile, New Zealanders overall supported the most recent Lockdown by a ratio of more than four to one – 62% in favour of the lockdown we had, 19% in favour of an even further extended lockdown, 10% for a shorter lockdown, and only 6% for no lockdown at all.<br /><br />Technically a 3-1 majority for Lockdown means “divided” , sure – as does a 4-1 majority.<br /><br />But it sure does sound rather different when you phrase it like that, frame it like that, rather than OVERWHELMING MAJORITY SUPPORTS THE GOVERNMENT’S COVID-19 MANAGEMENT”.<br /><br />So how does all of that pertain to this description of the protestors on Parliament's front lawn?<br /><br />Simple. <br /><br />At the moment, the protestors are a very vocal 'battering ram'. They won't, by themselves, force the Government to abandon sensible Covid-19 control measures. What they <b>can</b> be 'weaponized' to do is exactly the same thing that the Brian Tamaki MC'd 'freedom rally' shenanigans of a few months ago can be co-opted for - attempting to make very strident opposition to said "let's actually live like we're in a pandemic" measures seem like something that's an ordinary person perspective. Not one that's effectively relegated to a few hundred people on a patch of grass who are outnumbered by an order of magnitude every day by the number of Kiwis choosing to get a Booster. <br /><br />Why? <br /><br />Because, as the Sunday Star itself told you on the very same page - New Zealanders continuing to take the virus seriously is imposing an economic cost on some business owners. <br /><br />It's also continuing to considerably buoy the Labour party's popularity - and keep National down in the low 30% range. People remember. <br /><br />So, if you want to 'circuit-break' Labour seeming a champion of ordinary New Zealanders, our health and welfare ... presenting some very ordinary New Zealanders in amidst the very-hard-to-ignore decidedly abnormal ones at the Parliament protest is an ideal way to do this.<br /><br />The mind extrapolates on its own, and places things in their own kind of order - conveying a sense that there's some broad 'consensus' of both ordinary people and ordinary business-owners gradually coalescing in unity against the Ardern-led Government, mask requirements and vaccination mandates and a 'climate of fear' about going out for dinner etc.<br /><br />It doesn't have to be true. It just has to <i>look</i> like it might be plausible. And then the hope is that events start taking on the characteristics plotted out for them all of their own accord. <br /><br />Because the previous approach, of media and media-platformed talking heads, basically shrilly scolding the general public for taking the pandemic too seriously and being too keen on Labour in significant consequence of that, has not worked. <br /><br />And in the absence of a genuine mass movement to overturn the Government or its Covid-control measures ... you make do with what you've got instead.<br /><br />A few hundred people who've managed to 'Annoy Wellington', most definitely ... and suitably 'airbrushed' to highlight the less odious elements within the general protestor milieu. <br /><br />Will it work?<br /><br />That remains to be seen. <br /><br />However, even though it is situated in amidst nearly half a dozen more 'actively empathizable' vox-pops, the guy claiming that Covid-19 was some sort of "worldwide scam directed by the United Nations" does somewhat undercut the notion that "we're not crazies", as another protestor tearfully sought to emphasize. <br /><br />But I would cautiously suspect that over the next few weeks, and one hopes that won't be how long the occupation of Parliament's lawn drags on for, we'll see an escalating tide of media and commentariat 'contributions' which seek to equivocate the <b>other </b>side of the protest (you know, the ones intimidating and even <a href="https://www.newstalkzb.co.nz/news/national/covid-19-convoy-protest-mask-wearing-17-year-old-egged-by-aggressive-convoy-protesters/" target="_blank">egging schoolgirls in masks</a> and <a href="https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/127772637/it-shakes-you-wellington-bus-driver-spat-on-and-yelled-at-by-protesters" target="_blank">spitting at bus-drivers</a>) in favour of claiming it's 'ordinary New Zealanders' just seeking to do entirely ordinary things. And who have a 'right to be heard'. <br /><br />A right to eat out at hospitality venues, too, one presumes. <br /><br />Or maybe that's going to become presented as more of a 'duty' - something mandatory for the rest of us, whether we feel particularly comfortable going out at this time or not. <br /><br /><br /></p><br />Curwen Rolinsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09768637816927187968noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6818051473633816239.post-62572546950277255132021-12-02T01:12:00.001+13:002021-12-02T01:12:05.779+13:00On Claims Of Christianity Being "Singled Out" Via Probing Of Luxon <p> There is currently some conversation around whether Luxon is being 'singled out' for his Christian faith. Or, rather, whether Christianity is being singled out - and is an 'acceptable target'.</p><p><br /></p><p>It's an issue, sure - a religion is, implicitly, a set of values and adherence is resculpting the world around one to be in some measure more in accordance with same. Whether that's just in our own personal life, or out more broadly in the lives of others and society, the nation, as a whole. </p><p><br /></p><p>However, here's the thing. The rhetorical question posed by at least one Nat is whether we think Luxon would be getting the same critical probing if he were Muslim. The implicit claim, as I say, is that it's 'acceptable' to 'pick on' Christianity - and would not be so to similarly scrutinize a 'minority' religion.</p><p><br /></p><p>Which leaves aside, for a start, that the particular rather evangelical flavouring of Christianity that Luxon's previously been affiliated with is, itself, a minority religion on our shores. </p><p><br /></p><p>And second, the very strong probability that *were* Luxon somehow a Muslim, the overarching level of potentially harsh scrutiny would, if anything, likely be worse. If, perhaps, 'worse' significantly because of those other quarters it would now be coming from at greater heat.</p><p><br /></p><p>As somebody pointed out, though, the prospects of the National Party acquiring a Muslim leader in the near or even intermediate term future are ... not exactly high - and in no small part because the cultural values of National (and a reasonable swathe of the rest of the country) are much more comfortable with a Christian leader than one of any other proclivity of faith. </p><p><br /></p><p>Nevertheless, there's some perhaps precedency value in the experiences of persons of other religions in other Anglosphere polities around the globe. </p><p><br /></p><p>Close observation of certain of these means that I can genuinely state that if either major party had a prominently Hindu leader, I believe they'd get a pretty heavy grilling over it. It'd start out with "So, do you support Hindutva Fascism And Modi" and work out to "you oppose eating cows. Surely, for a beef exporting nation such as New Zealand, this is unpatriotic due to farming?"</p><p><br /></p><p>It would be accompanied by commentary in some quarters about how we shouldn't have "Demon-Worshipping" figures leading our nation. If you think I'm joking about this - it literally happened to Tulsi Gabbard during her electoral campaign efforts to represent Hawaii (a reasonably tolerant state) in Congress. Editorial cartoons would be making Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom references. </p><p><br /></p><p>Meanwhile, closer to home - about a year ago, then-newly minted NZ Labour MP Gaurav Sharma was attacked by a journalist who claimed he was giving voice to Hindu "fascism" ... by speaking Sanskrit in our nation's Parliament. </p><p><br /></p><p>So as I say - if we wound up with an overtly Hindu MP leading one of our major political parties, I feel pretty confident in asserting that they'd get at least as much of a 'going over' as Luxon is about his particular shade of Christianity. </p><p><br /></p><p>Something which, again, probably isn't much to do with Luxon being Christian in general terms - as the specific sort of Christianity which he's previously been associated with. </p><p><br /></p><p>To be clear about this - I think it's perfectly reasonable for the electorate to want to 'get to know' the values and beliefs of somebody they might consider voting to support in the future. There's ample room for probing questions about a whole host of viewpoints. </p><p><br /></p><p>The issue arises when instead of 'probing questions' that seek to give us out here in the Cheap Seats an opportunity to understand what the elected representative may or may not do if given (further) power ... we're instead treated to a televised turkey-shoot wherein 'questions' are merely veils for invective and jeering. </p><p><br /></p><p>In that circumstance - nobody really learns anything, and it just encourages a lack of transparency all around.</p><p><br /></p><p>With somebody like Jami-Lee Ross being probed on his and his party's Covid-19 attitude, it's arguably a different story - there, it was reasonably plain that a grift was on, and in that rather prominent post-Election interview, Tova O'Brien's ditching of the usual journalistic standards / approach effectively came across as expressing much of a nation's boiled-over frustration with the man and his sidekick. </p><p><br /></p><p>But that's a door hitting a man on the way out. Something which, to be sure, with National's 'revolving door' leadership scheme of late, may be a somewhat relevant concept for some of its lineup. </p><p><br /></p><p>Luxon's on his way in - as National Party Leader, at any rate. Enquiring about something that's obviously very significant to him and which may have some bearing upon his political behavior in that role isn't 'singling out' and victimizing a man for his faith ... or, for that matter, engaging in a witch-hunt of anybody of avowed Christian proclivity in our nation's politics. </p><p><br /></p><p>Having said that, it's certainly possible to do this in better and/or worse ways - but the evident claim that this is 'just' a Christian thing ... and that no other person of faith would find themselves facing some (potentially rather severe) level of scrutiny simply doesn't hold up.</p><p><br /></p><p>Luxon's Christianity is being probed not because it's Christianity - nor, to a point, because it's a smaller and more forthright branching thereof. Rather, it's because it's Luxon's. If it were Luxon's Islam, or Luxon's Scientology, or other expressions of faith he'd lived ardently by - it'd be the same. </p><p><br /></p><p>But, of course, it's very convenient to claim there's an Inquisition going on to unfairly single out Christians for drumming out of public life with as a pre-emptive distraction just in case some ... unpalatable responses come up to the aforementioned probing of Luxon's beliefs in question. </p>Curwen Rolinsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09768637816927187968noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6818051473633816239.post-42850548029756356932021-10-20T14:15:00.001+13:002021-10-20T14:15:32.386+13:00On A Critical Comment Towards The Beatification Of Colin Powell <p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiu4ETIE9eGl0teO_n_Pk5duR3_VZRMZD7tasn56n37ZaZbz-bsGMG_DdeIRWIRYkmDeDNItfBvskaFwF-SykjFsYuX1Gockp4mmY1VwFvefo9piGY0JC_B_KvN3afoiCYy9O7fJ-6Y17Ma/s686/246167799_10165668801515574_4299076960446293250_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="420" data-original-width="686" height="392" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiu4ETIE9eGl0teO_n_Pk5duR3_VZRMZD7tasn56n37ZaZbz-bsGMG_DdeIRWIRYkmDeDNItfBvskaFwF-SykjFsYuX1Gockp4mmY1VwFvefo9piGY0JC_B_KvN3afoiCYy9O7fJ-6Y17Ma/w640-h392/246167799_10165668801515574_4299076960446293250_n.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><p></p><p>Look, I don't like Trump. There are quite a long list of reasons why. But this kind of thing is a large part of why he won significant support in various places. Because he isn't fettered by a Consensus like everybody he was up against. And sure, that manifests often as crass if not outright offensive stuff. And "offensive" here also means up to and including the laws of physics and reality itself, upon occasion.<br /><br />Yet you see this sort of thing happen fairly frequently in American politics and the trickle-down therefrom which we get out here in the rest of the Anglosphere and thence World at large.<br /><br />Somebody who ... did some fairly dramatically wrong things (and it's not just about Iraq - take a look at Powell's "investigation" of Mai Lai, for instance) - and in death, all of that is insta-washed away. A beatification occurs.<br /><br />It's a process we all see happen - and, rightly or wrongly, any criticism of as it's happening usually gets shut down by the perhaps understandable dictum that we do not speak ill of the dead.<br /><br />Some take that further, of course, and you get Ireland issuing an official telegram of condolence when a certain German leader died, but that is another matter for another time.<br /><br />Now I'm not saying that it's right to suddenly start cheering and celebrating when a man in his eighties dies of Covid-19 related complications and a compromised immune system. It isn't. Any harm he could have inflicted was, by this point, <b>seriously</b> limited - it'd already occurred a long time aforehand.<br /><br />And the <b>legacy</b> of that kind of conduct he'd lent his legitimacy to - well, that lives on <b>long</b> after its mortal standard-bearer no longer does. If and when <b>that</b> dies, there'll certainly be cause for quite some jubilation.<br /><br />Yet I do suggest that given epitaphs and eulogies appear to 'set the consensus' for how history is going to treat somebody for the near- or even medium-term future ... well, some 'critical appraisal' of <b>that</b> element, and the 'hagiographizing' which post-mortem seemingly inevitably takes place these days ... is not necessarily incorrect to explore.<br /><br />Which doesn't mean I agree with Trump - generally or otherwise.<br /><br />But I do think that here, even jeeringly phrased, the guy's got a point. </p>Curwen Rolinsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09768637816927187968noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6818051473633816239.post-54809148703146283232021-10-11T10:45:00.002+13:002021-10-11T10:45:37.071+13:00On Jacinda Being "Missing In Action" Apparently <p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEizpKk5mvvzL54M0IrYCiBQGZY0HVR-_j3t-yCJe8ZTJwE__4azAPApP5NZ2UiZ1d1w1iL7GHeDvwIda4UGK33hMD9qPnQAHxyeSM72B2TAul68wOgVn66-86jF3e_c7N9hUVM_aloru4A6/s960/245338517_10165643112795574_5055282819145694971_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="720" data-original-width="960" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEizpKk5mvvzL54M0IrYCiBQGZY0HVR-_j3t-yCJe8ZTJwE__4azAPApP5NZ2UiZ1d1w1iL7GHeDvwIda4UGK33hMD9qPnQAHxyeSM72B2TAul68wOgVn66-86jF3e_c7N9hUVM_aloru4A6/w640-h480/245338517_10165643112795574_5055282819145694971_n.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br /><p></p><p>It occurs that Judith Collins' attack on Jacinda for being "missing in action" yesterday due to not being inside the Beehive Theatrette at 13:00 ... could use some punctuation. Specifically, a comma. Should read "Missing, In Action" - or perhaps even a dash: "Missing - In Action".<br /><br />Because instead of dropping everything to front a press conference several hundred KM away, the PM was continuing her sustained effort at bolstering vaccination rates on the East Coast. In areas that have been underserved by previous health investment, and which have been worrisomely under-covered by the vaccine rollout thus far.<br /><br />Some might suggest it's a PR move. And to that I can only say an enthusiastic "Yes." It is <b>literally</b> a PR move. Public Relations. Going out there and <b>engaging with</b> a swathe of the public, in a bid to facilitate <b>their</b> engagement with a particular policy. That being the public health policy which is absolutely vital for them and us.<br /><br />If it's a "PR move" then it is the best kind of PR move - one which is actually done for the public, in public, and both for and in the public interest rather than being purely theater (Beehive -erette variety, or otherwise).<br /><br />I have been - I feel rather understandably - critical of the Government's communications this past week, and some of their apparent decision-making as well.<br /><br />Yet as an exercise in comms, and something which is seemingly irreducibly Kiwi - having the actual Prime Minister turn up to <b>personally</b> do the Government Communication, in your street, neighbourhood, and community ... well, the only time I could see Judith Collins even <b>attempting</b> to do something like this and actually being 'on-theme' would be on October 31st after dark at your doorstep. </p>Curwen Rolinsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09768637816927187968noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6818051473633816239.post-85506488900253039932021-10-02T23:04:00.000+13:002021-10-02T23:04:10.850+13:00On Brian Tamaki As Charismatic Frontman For The Commentariat's Anti-Covid Control Agenda<p>Yesterday, everybody's favourite opportunity for a Monty Python title-drop, Brian Tamaki, held a jamboree in Auckland's Domain. On one level, it was an anti-Covid-19 control measure protest, clearly inspired by efforts in Melbourne over the past few months. On another level, it was another opportunity for those more broadly disdainful for our Government to get together and have a bit of a tractor-in-lieu-of-traction fest. Replete with an actual tractor and a trailer-load of the agricultural output that was apparently somehow under threat. I assume from something other than Covid, and probably not potato-blight. <br /><br />Now, don't get me wrong - on one level, the whole thing's pretty impressive. Tamaki's political fortunes have never been especially potent ... he's always managed to take a potentially salient starting-point and then over-egg himself in the face to the point that the outreach into broader New Zealand seemingly-inevitably comes to naught. That might sound silly on my part - but cast your mind back to mid-2019, when you had any number of people coming out and saying that they couldn't believe they were saying this but they agreed with Brian Tamaki on x hate-speech or other gesture going a bit far. Up until, of course, Tamaki himself took things too far ... and that potential support-vector evaporated handily. <br /><br />A large part of the reason why Tamaki (and, to be fair, Mrs Tamaki) comes unstuck is because what he says runs into the fact that most of New Zealand either isn't listening - or, more to the point, <b>is</b> actually listening and is frankly unimpressed through to outright aghast at what they may so happen to hear. <br /><br />What he needs, in short, is an 'interpretation service' in much the same manner that various American right-wingers often seem to benefit from in certain sectors of their domestic media over there. A commentariat ready, willing, and fable to stand between him and the actual body politik, filtering out the more extreme stuff and presenting an 'acceptable' version of events ... which also, at the same time, does him the handy additional PR service of turning things like "he got several hundred of his ultra-loyal Church members to turn out somewhere on a Saturday for a stunt, just as he has done on numerous previous occasions in the past" into "Tamaki managed to motivate thousands of Aucklanders to brave rain and threat of arrest to come together and declare they wanted [whatever it is this time] ". <br /><br />Now, hitherto this hasn't tended to happen, for a few reasons. One of which being that bolstering Brian hasn't really aligned too terribly well with what various politically motivated media mouthpieces wish to do. Usually, that's because any talking up of Tamaki in such terms means that whatever cause he's associated with ... becomes that much more of just exactly that - a "cause he's associated with" - running the risk of toxifying it for other parties looking to capitalize upon it for anti-government momentum, and simultaneously diverting support from said other parties into whichever incarnation of Destiny's ill-fated political ambitions is running this time. Or, at the very least, softly away from the side lining up with him on the same side of whatever issue. <br /><br />Except this time, it's different. National (even with ACT) are in a situation which can't really be termed a 'death-spiral', because that would imply the moment of mortality had yet to occur. They're not so much pushing up daisies as slowly realizing that Judith Collins' tenure has put the 'psychotic' back into 'metempsychotic' for them. There's fairly little to lose by making much out of a Tamaki stunt - it might actually manage to do what National was seeking to stab at in the weeks prior to this current outbreak via its 'Groundswell' initiative ... that is to say, give the impression (Potemkin or otherwise) of there being a popular anti-Government wave of sentiment out there amongst the electorate. <br /><br />And handily, Tamaki had the ... 'enthusiasm' to do what most of the more regular political actors couldn't bring themselves to. Judith Collins might talk a big game in enthused tones about how she thinks Aucklanders will 'take back control' and move themselves (ourselves) down to Level 2 regardless of the public health consequences ... Tamaki's actually gone ahead and directly contravened the law. <br /><br />Collins can 'jaw-jaw' about how the country outside of Auckland being under Level 2 is some sort of fear campaign (and even though I should perhaps defer to her superior expertise in the subject of psychological terror-tactics ... I disagree -<a href="https://www.stuff.co.nz/bay-of-plenty/300418379/dr-ashley-bloomfield-urges-more-tauranga-testing-for-covid19-after-positive-wastewater-result" target="_blank"> as did Tauranga's wastewater this week</a>) and <a href="https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/political/452651/auckland-boundary-likely-to-remain-even-if-alert-level-drops" target="_blank">how Auckland remaining at Level 3 is some kind of "political" conspiracy</a>. Tamaki actually goes out and puts on the performative show of pledging resistance and 'rallying the partisans' to invite the 'heavy hand of the state' to ostensibly reveal itself. <br /><br />Collins <a href="https://www.newsroom.co.nz/a-low-point-on-ponsonby-rd" target="_blank">going out to make herself look popular by just so happening to run into people who support her</a> ... has all the depth of a two-dimensional painted backdrop, or the Hapsburg gene-pool. Tamaki, by contrast, at least manages to get a larger crowd together - and one that's quite overtly and obviously not significantly comprised of suit-wearing National apparatchiks. Indeed, a lot more 'normal' looking in various regards, an actual facing which - had it not driven up in convoy through Drury - could perhaps be regarded as looking like a spontaneous gathering of 'Waitakere Man'. The quintessential 'Ordinary New Zealander'. <br /><br />In other words, he's everything she's not. Except in charge of a major political party and constrained by the law and public health notices. <br /><br />It's telling that various of the media mouthpieces pushing for an Elimination to our previously successful and broadly popular Elimination strategy have moved from championing Collins to enthusiastically pointing to, as the Lord High Executioner put it - seemingly "All centuries but this / and every country but his own". <br /><br />Mike Hosking, for example, has spoken enthusiastically about Sweden (some time before Sweden wound up ratcheting up its domestic restrictions), about New South Wales (about a week or two before its current Delta nightmare began in earnest), about how Jacinda Ardern should be more like NSW now-former Premier Gladys Berejiklian (we assume he didn't mean "forced out of office for corruption" - although he'd no doubt now suggest that that's exactly the sense that is relevant with a hopeful tone), and most recently about Singapore (immediately prior to Singapore having to roll back its re-opening under escalating pressure to its health system from burgeoning Covid-19 cases, in a situation exacerbated by its domestic economic inequality). <br /><br />One could say he has predictive form in this area - but that is not my point in raising this seeming cavalcade of catastrophe. Instead, it's to merely observe that the lackluster state of Collins' leadership has left those who want to roll this government and overthrow our Elimination strategy by hook or by crook ... with few domestic figures they can utilize in support of their craven cause (with the apparent exception of evidently current National Party leader John Key). Even the 'Plan B' guys have largely had to go to ground following the escalating bizarreness of some of their claims. <br /><br />And that's why Tamaki is now useful. <br /><br />Because he turned up, possibly hoping to inspire a direct confrontation with the Police, and actually did the thing which many of these mouthpieces wouldn't dare to. Providing a bunch of photos of hundreds of people gathered together in direct challenge to the Government and to the vocally expressed will of much of the rest of the country. <br /><br />It's a 'useful' enough spectacle that you can viably expect a lot of his more usual 'eccentricities' to be consciously 'toned down' by media all-too-eager to act as that aforementioned 'translation' service - perhaps we ought suggest a 'transmogrification' service. <br /><br />So with all of that in mind ... <br /><br />Here's what's going to happen.<br /><br />A protest event which had "hundreds" at it, is going to be reported (indeed, is already being reported) as having "thousands" in attendance.<br /><br />The fact that Destiny Church is actually really good at corralling large numbers of people to come together for Church campaign events ... is likewise going to be studiously erased, to again make it seem like a broad and spontaneous explosion of popular discontent. <br /><br />The fact that the Police - rather sensibly - <b>didn't</b> attempt to re-enact Melbourne a few weeks ago by actively trying to confront and arrest a rather larger number of attendees than they have easy holding capacity ... will be turned into "well if the Police aren't going to enforce the law by charging several hundred people right there on the spot, we may as well just abandon Covid-19 elimination measures entirely!"<br /><br />The Government ... will be blamed for allowing the whole thing to go ahead, by virtue of not cracking down on it like the authoritarian state the people who'll blame the Government for allowing it to go ahead, have been breathlessly proclaiming the Government to be this entire time. <br /><br />This will all be channeled into escalating shrill shouty by certain commentators in the media in advance of next week's Alert Level decision. <br /><br />The whole event will be deliberately spun into some sort of would-be Cause Celebre, wherein an American-style televangelist without the broadcast rights, preaching to an audience of his nationwide congregation gathered on the steps of the Museum rather than throwing money toward him in a converted warehouse somewhere, will be presented as a Voice of Reason speaking for most of the city, and a protector of something something liberal freedom against the heavy hand of the no-doubt pseudo-Stalinist state. <br /><br />You can just <b>see</b> the columnist-inches start to assemble right now !</p>Curwen Rolinsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09768637816927187968noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6818051473633816239.post-46902519091161451072021-09-25T10:27:00.002+12:002021-09-25T10:27:32.777+12:00Media Proclaiming 'Elimination Of Elimination' Are Attempting To Ignore / Rewrite Reality<p> Mid-way through the week, Chris Hipkins [i.e. the Covid-19 Response Minister] said this:<br /><br />"We are still doing this ... we are still pursuing elimination, it is still the right thing for New Zealand.<br /><br />We are of course looking forward to the future - it won't always be this way. So, my request of people is just hold your nerve, hold on." <br /><br />Hold your nerve. Still pursuing Elimination. Still the right thing for New Zealand. <br /><br />All pretty straight-forward stuff. And stated quite directly, some days aforehand. So why do I find this comment-worthy?<br /><br />Because even <b>after</b> Hipkins had <b>directly</b> said we were still engaged in Elimination - we had voices in the media proclaiming the exact opposite. In the case of Mike Hosking, actively attempting to celebrate an alleged 'end' to Elimination and seemingly suggesting that there'd been some manner of official Government 'admittance' of 'defeat'. <br /><br />So what's happening here? Evidently, the same thing that has repeatedly manifested in certain other democracies over the past few years - a moment wherein the media (or at least, certain portions of same) are in their own little 'bubble' and have effectively wound up talking right past both the facts and much of their own actual audience. <br /><br />Some of these guys out there in the commentariat have decided that Elimination's got to go - and that, in fact, Elimination has somehow already gone. Even despite vocal and repeated statements to the contrary from the Government, and widespread (indeed, I'd suggest actively <b>overwhelming</b>) support for Elimination in the vast majority of the New Zealand public. <br /><br />So instead of reporting on reality, they've chosen to endeavour to quite literally 'rewrite' it - proclaiming an Elimination of Elimination as an effort at brow-beating all the rest of us into seeing the premature end to the policy as something of an already-decided-upon fait accompli. <br /><br />Now I mentioned occurrences in other democracies earlier, because that's somewhat what this reminds me of. Snooty journalists or self-anointed 'opinion-shapers' declaring that there was no way Brexit could win or Hillary Clinton lose - because it didn't fit into their own personal preferences and as it turned out (mis)perceptions as to reality. They were so used to their incipient words <b>being</b> reality that it came as quite a shock to find out that neither the facts nor the people they proclaimed they spoke for actually shared their view. <br /><br />To be fair and sure, I have little doubt that it's not simply a matter of journalists or 'commentators' interviewing their own keyboards. There's a definite enthusiasm out there in certain portions of the business community in particular for Elimination to be itself Suppressed - and a general weakening of our Covid-19 response overall. <br /><br />There's also a small but shouty sector of political and talkback opinion (and looking at the current leadership of the National Party, it's increasingly difficult to meaningfully distinguish the two in practice) which seemingly demands likewise. And never mind what the science (or, for that matter - indeed, <b>especially</b> for that matter - what the Government) says. <br /><br />Yet I am struggling to think, offhand, of a previous occurrence in our politics and media wherein there's so much abject and outright 'denialism' of clearly visible and easily checkable reality - namely, the insistence that, against all appearances and substances to the contrary, the Government is to have 'abandoned' Elimination.<br /><br />Then again, and with perhaps deference to a compulsion associated with a seeming personality trait of a few of these voices ... even a mirror shall not show you your own face if you are determined not to see it.</p>Curwen Rolinsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09768637816927187968noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6818051473633816239.post-58923567184824508362021-09-24T05:09:00.001+12:002021-09-24T05:09:59.568+12:00A Point On Public Health Measures In A Crisis - Whether Meth Addiction Or Covid Response <p>At present, it seems that the virus has moved into the Underworld - with several gangs reporting cases in the past week or so. <br /><br />This is a different kind of challenge from a public health point of view - because it's a different kind of environment, with people who are more effectively reached with different approaches than the conventional.<br /><br />Hence why as soon as that Mongrel Mob gang pad out South turned out to be a Covid-19 hot-spot, the Ministry of Health didn't just go "oh, well we'll pick them up with the testing facility elsewhere in the community and regular contact tracing". <br /><br />Rather, as I recall, a pop-up testing facility was deployed near their front gate, and specialist liaison-work was undertaken with the gang to actually do contact-tracing for the movements of the Mobsters concerned. <br /><br />I'm given to understand that some elements of this approach are also being employed with the more recent Black Power and Hells Angels situations.<br /><br />Now why is this rather useful to note? Because it demonstrates that when you're in an epidemic - a public health emergency - you can get hung up about who the Government "shouldn't" be working with ... or you can observe that working with some groups and individuals, whatever their reputation, may actually be rather important for the public health outcome's success.<br /><br />The Government wound up with a lot of malaise a few months ago when it turned out that it had approved Proceeds of Crime money to fund a certain meth-rehab programme. The purported degree of connection to the Mongrel Mob was, of course, breathlessly shouted by voices keen to pre-emptively declare the whole thing a fiasco - because, even leaving aside how limited it actually was, the core message from the opposition appeared to be "you can't involve gangs in public health provision - even where the people who actually need to be reached <b>for</b> the public health provision are gang-members".<br /><br />Would those who decried thus apply similar logic to the Ministry of Health taking a purpose-based and bespoke approach to Covid-19 control measures outside that gang-pad eight days ago? <br /><br />Or do we recognize that rolling out intervention-strategies designed to protect <b>all</b> of us can occasionally mean working with some of us in particular ways as best befits their circumstances and all of our collective needs.</p>Curwen Rolinsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09768637816927187968noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6818051473633816239.post-15525507603343319362021-09-16T21:29:00.001+12:002021-09-16T21:29:45.747+12:00Why I'm OK With NZ Not Being In New Anglo Alliance <p>Look, I'm no fan of the PRC - but I can't help but recall how NZ's previous entanglement in ANZUS worked out. <br /><br />That is to say - we got pressured into fighting in Vietnam, and then left high and dry over the Rainbow Warrior attack because "France is more important than you".<br /><br />I'm not <b>necessarily</b> opposed to a good working relationship with the Americans (or the UK, or the Australians) - in fact, quite the contrary, I'm very much in favour of diversifying both our trade and diplomatic links precisely to avoid the consequences of National's over-egging of the Chinese-held basket. <br /><br />It's also definitely the case that we have good history together with all three powers in both multilateral and bilateral terms. <br /><br />But at the same time, we've seen some pretty unimpressive behavior from all three over the past few decades - and I remain to be convinced that being part of a military alliance with them would avoid being tangled up with more of the same.<br /><br />I'm not even talking about Australia's attitude toward sending us 501 and/or ISIS-linked Australians unannounced. I was more thinking about things like the Americans, circa 2003, attempting to put the economic screws on us in order to compel us to join the so-called 'Coalition of the Willing' that was to undertake their illegal invasion of Iraq. <br /><br />We've also seen, just this past year, how even through the relatively loose intelligence sharing network that is the Five Eyes, considerable pressure can seemingly be put upon New Zealand to march in absolute lock-step with these other countries .. even where our policy, preferences, and principles don't exactly agree. <br /><br />It wasn't enough for New Zealand to issue separate declamations of purported PRC conduct - we had to sign up to the 'collective' statement or risk the wroth of foreigners up in arms about us being "New Xi-land". And who knows what was waved about behind the scenes. <br /><br />New Zealand's foreign policy independence has been a hard-won thing. Both in terms of external factors - yet also, importantly, in terms of convincing our own population that it's actually a worthwhile thing to have. Once upon a time, after all, "Where She Goes, We Go" was the watchword. And even after we were betrayed by Britain some two decades later, people here <b>still</b> didn't quite get the message that really ... we're on our own. <br /><br />It took, as I say, the tangible and irrefutable demonstration of these things over several decades to really get most New Zealanders on board with the notion that NZ foreign policy being run in New Zealand's interests rather than Washington's or London's or even Canberra's ... was the ideal way for us to go.<br /><br />It's great that we've got improving relations with the US and UK - and I'm vaguely hopeful that maybe, just maybe, those long-dangled trade-deals with each of those spheres might <b>finally</b> start to eventuate ... eventually ... <br /><br />But I do resolutely believe that it's possible for us to continue to strengthen our friendships with them <b>without</b> tying ourselves to their ankles as the proverbial third (or in this case, fourth) wheel in a three-legged race which occasionally seems to lurch cliffward with reckless aplomb. <br /><br />As for the Australians, as we so often like to say on both sides of the Tasman - "we're family". Even if it occasionally feels like they reckon us to be rather more distant cousins than close-relations. <br /><br />Having a positive and co-operative regard for each others' interests does not mean we have to be bound into approving of every single thing they might so happen to do. <br /><br />In terms of our foreign policy - I genuinely believe that we're far better served by pursuing just exactly that: <b>our</b> foreign policy, not someone else's. <br /><br />We recognize that some certain states are both something to be wary of - and an opportunity for useful engagement. As, funnily enough, do the Australians when they are being honest (seriously - check out the sheer size of their trade with China if you don't believe me).<br /><br />And we also recognize that merely because one is powerful does not necessarily make one right or wise - as proven, again, via the Americans' (and UK's and Australians') previous enthusiasm for the invasion of Iraq. <br /><br />By remaining <b>outside</b> the formal 'tent' of AUKUS (a name which, I noted earlier, is apparently phonetically equivalent to 'Orcus' - perhaps ominously for a figure of Oaths, Pacts, and the Nether Regions) we do not lose the ability to co-operate and engage productively with those who are <b>inside</b> said tent where it would clearly be both principled and of use to do so.<br /><br />We don't stop being friends (and/or family) with various of these polities simply because we've not chosen to join the group-marriage. <br /><br />It simply means - we don't give up our freedom to do the right thing as we perceive it, when we perceive it to be so.<br /><br />A situation and scenario wherein, both in our own terms and in broader terms than ours, I do suspect that New Zealand's critical judgement has proven rather more reliable than certain other powers of far greater heft from time to time.</p>Curwen Rolinsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09768637816927187968noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6818051473633816239.post-61352281833952987922021-09-12T14:51:00.003+12:002021-09-12T14:51:58.656+12:00The Re-Start Of History: 9/11 20 Years On<p>Something that comes up on the anniversary of 9/11 is that question: "where were you when...". <br /><br />I find that slightly remarkable because the <b>previous</b> "Where were you when..." question for a previous generation - that of our parents - was "Where were you when the Moon Landing ..."<br /><br />Now, think about that for a minute. Each of these were, in essence, epochal-transition points. Critical, symbolic junctures wherein something which had been bubbling beneath the surface of the preceding few years, burst with irrepressible force into the mainstream and left our realities forever fundamentally changed as a result. <br /><br />Except wherein one ushered in the 'Space Age' in full force - a seeming surmounting of mankind's potential to really 'rise above and beyond' in the most literal possible sense through the transformative energies of human scientific aspiration and human indomitable will ... <br /><br />Well, 9/11 was, of course, a far darker mirror image. There, as somebody put it, it was willpower married with low-tech and on the part of - ostensibly - a small-ish group of non-state actors against a superpower. <br /><br />Quite the opposite to the Moon Landing - which was, after all, a superpower acting somewhere between 'against another superpower' in the context of the space-race .. but also, in its better moments and in its better rhetoric, acting not 'against' anybody. "We came in peace for all mankind", indeed. <br /><br />9/11 meanwhile - it was a "low-budget, high-concept attack." <br /><br />It precipitated a "high-budget, low-concept response."<br /><br />(and that duality observation is also not mine but rather lifted from somebody's friend via twitter)<br /><br />If the Moon Landing precipitated a resurrection of that feeling of surety in the West ... 9/11 precipitated a serious helter-skelter away from anything like the same in the West in fairly direct reflection. <br /><br />I recall where I was that Wednesday morning. Mum was driving me to school (I was 11), we had the radio on in the car as we usually would, and there was a New Zealander at the UN being interviewed just ... describing events as he saw them and as they were happening. We pulled up at my intermediate, and whereas usually I'd have gotten out with my violin to head across for orchestra practice at the neighbouring Auckland College of Education, as it was then, and Mum would have driven off to continue on her way to work ... that morning, we just sat there, listening. It was all you could do. <br /><br />The picture which emerged was unclear. Hardly even really a picture. Just some clearly worried guy on the other side of the globe talking about what little he knew through his own eyes to his countrymen down here on the bottom of the world. Some shapes emerged through this mist, sure - but it was clear far bigger forces were at play than could be congealed through a single interview, a single sitting, especially as they were still then 'in motion'.<br /><br />In the hours and days to come, some harder perceptions - I hesitate to state 'facts' at that early juncture - began to emerge. I recall discussion in class about some guy named Osama bin Laden. I recall pretty immediate - like, same day - realization that War Was Coming. <br /><br />I also recall, somewhat to my amusement now, a student teacher then working with our class printing out some prophecy purportedly by Nostradamus talking about ... well, the events of 9/11 and spooking us a bit about that. I say "spooking", but when you're 11 it's not quite the right emotion - it's a sparking of curiosity in different direction. I managed to track down a book of Nostradamus' prophecies in our home library after school and was rather ... disappointed at the dysjunction. <br /><br />The Ending of Eras rarely coincides precisely with some human-imposed calendrical dating system. And those who live through them are rarely possessed of the clarity that that is what is occurring - at least, not until the rear-view mirror is far enough away from the events in question to invoke <b>some</b> measure of clarity through retrospectives en-aided and availed through temporal distance. <br /><br />I don't know that Hunter S. Thompson actually <b>said</b> that the Sixties came to an end with the riots in 1968 at that year's Democratic National Convention in Chicago (certainly, he explicitly posited the Ali vs Frazier fight in 1971 in such terms), but between that and how he described the Rolling Stones concert at Altamont in December of 1969 - "where the sharks finally came home to roost" - we have just such an epochal-transiting event. <br /><br />A place where, to quote Thompson again, we can perceive a "high-water mark - that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back.”<br /><br />Such it was, I suspect, for The Nineties - and the vibe of penchant promise for what the New Millennium and Y2K excitement-as-an-ethos was meant to mean. <br /><br />Francis Fukuyama's "End of History" concept is often mis-invoked by those looking for an easy point-score. He didn't mean that 'history' in the sense of noteworthy events was at a permanent ending following the cessation of overt hostilities in the Cold War and the seeming triumph of the West over its major 'competitor.<br /><br />However, his central thesis that the Hegelian procession of history was at an end, and Liberal Democracy had 'won' ... well, those planes going into those towers most certainly marked the 'Wave of History' breaking most messily upon New York, upon America and in a way the Liberal West itself. <br /><br />And what rolled out with the tide was a faux-'Innocence' (much talked about, very rarely actually demonstrated prior to this point), various commitments to Liberty in any but the rhetorical sense, as well as the comfortable satiation of having been "the only game in town" and untouchable as the summation of a Whiggian conception of history. <br /><br />In its place? <br /><br />Not just the specter of Terrorism (which was, after all, not at all a new phenomenon) - but of Terror Laws. Not just armed Interventions - humanitarian or otherwise in other countries (again, not at all a new phenomenon ... the USSR had been intervened in Afghanistan only twelve years before) - but a seeming restoration of the kinds of ... blatantly self-interested neo-colonial conquests as applies the War in Iraq which seemed more a relic of the 1800s than the 1980s. <br /><br />Speaking of the 1980s - if that was 'Morning In America' (and, via extension, for the West overarching), per Ronald Reagan's campaign rhetoric upon the subject as of 1979 ... then the 1990s were its noon-day Zenith and the early 00s , the so-called "Noughties" (an interesting pun in light of the flagrant disregard for international law which eventuated at this point - the flagrancy rather than the disregard being the truly novel feature) a sort of premature Twilight.<br /><br />Yet what blotted things out was not, I do not think, clouds of ash and debris from a financial center burning one mid-week morning in New York. But rather, the human actions, the state-level actions, undertaken in - not always unnecessary - trenchant response. <br /><br />Just prior to the outbreak of the First World War, then-British Foreign Secretary, Sir Edward Grey, uttered the immortal words in succinct summation of the situation:<br /><br />"The lamps are going out all over Europe, we shall not see them lit again in our life-time."<br /><br />That chilly morning in mid-September, 2001, which everybody seemingly recalls where they were upon ... we witnessed something similar, I think. <br /><br />And as the ensuing events over the next twenty years have demonstrated - in that dark, it's back to Business as Usual and History 'Pon The March.<br /><br />Messy, Bloody, Confused, Telos-Less History. <br /><br />Which had never <b>truly</b> gone away. Even despite our comforting pretentious delusions to the contrary. </p>Curwen Rolinsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09768637816927187968noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6818051473633816239.post-87827379417228812342021-09-09T22:46:00.000+12:002021-09-09T22:46:31.037+12:00Why Israel Demonstrates That Fortress New Zealand Must Stand Strong <p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgXfSdD6wy4T2PcLK-Igtn3qSbWsIBfJjSl31_KdvbpZjI8aA4UT90gEsKI30ZGC3Hr2kTkNDSO7quBga5ScJXMO92_UfSAreQvotBkgGxtlkry0VTGgexKiMN1sPd2yMeIt5BmZTjtaLn9/s1342/241311951_10165556196035574_8858967562582839026_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="688" data-original-width="1342" height="328" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgXfSdD6wy4T2PcLK-Igtn3qSbWsIBfJjSl31_KdvbpZjI8aA4UT90gEsKI30ZGC3Hr2kTkNDSO7quBga5ScJXMO92_UfSAreQvotBkgGxtlkry0VTGgexKiMN1sPd2yMeIt5BmZTjtaLn9/w640-h328/241311951_10165556196035574_8858967562582839026_n.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><span style="font-size: x-small;">[image/information source: Reuters Covid-19 tracker]</span><p></p><p>Over the past few months, I've heard multiple people pushing Israel as a model for where they want New Zealand to go - big vaccination campaign, followed by prominent rollback for lockdown and other restrictions, getting back toward Old Normal relatively swiftly.<br /><br />There's no denying that Israel was pretty impressive in its efforts to get vaccines, and get vaccines into its citizenry - that's partially how it secured the access it did, by agreeing to be a 'human trial' of sorts.<br /><br />However, with nearly 70% of their population vaccinated ... this is what their situation looks like at present. Daily new infections are significantly *up*. Now, you'll be told "oh yeah, that's now what we expect .. so stop focusing on the daily new infections - hospitalizations and deaths will tell a different story!"<br /><br />So handily ... daily deaths are on the right. They're down, sure. But still *well* into the double-digits (55 yesterday, for instance). And both infections and deaths have taken a slight dip in response to Israel *rolling back out* various restrictions.<br /><br />Personally, I'm looking forward to the end of Lockdown here - however, that's something made possible by an Elimination strategy which has proven its effectiveness time and time again.<br /><br />It isn't something guaranteed by vaccination - although vaccination is still very useful and to be encouraged as an additional firebreak for if and when something goes awry at the border.<br /><br />If we HAD adopted "the Israeli model", and were as well vaccinated as they are - we'd not be living as freely as we have been for most of the past year, nor as freely as we're going to be in a few weeks' time.<br /><br />And the same columnists currently demanding that we imitate New South Wales or wherever, would be baying for the blood of our Government, claiming that they'd personally been responsible for the deaths of several dozen people plus yesterday alone.<br /><br />Permanent sealing off of New Zealand from the rest of the world isn't what I'm advocating for here - although honestly, the more one sees of how dire things are out there, the less unappealing an option it would appear to be, relatively speaking.<br /><br />But while we wait for science to come up with better and more enduring solutions than those presently available to us ... I think that Fortress New Zealand must continue to stand.<br /><br />It is, seemingly, an approach which continues to be vindicated on a day-in day-out basis.<br /><br />Regardless of what certain talking-heads overseas desperate for us to descend down to their level of failure may so happen to shriek in our general direction. </p>Curwen Rolinsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09768637816927187968noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6818051473633816239.post-4000301416904340922021-09-03T07:06:00.003+12:002021-09-03T07:06:52.022+12:00NZ Herald Poll On Pursuing 'Elimination Til Vaccination' Is Thin End Of 'Learn To Live With It' Wedge<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh1lIywbb7IIyYILntPZ03ve8XYf4Gvr7RuqvS44Y5P5XnaKurDOGT4ef4SPEjw_qnmIXt3JLAPnJ4v4P0gt0SS2hu9tYSurbm1po-4gQsCLQSrj2tXOdwYuOZiTvA-f6bS36674IBZJ1xK/s1079/241138026_10165534658410574_2804657528733592916_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="717" data-original-width="1079" height="426" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh1lIywbb7IIyYILntPZ03ve8XYf4Gvr7RuqvS44Y5P5XnaKurDOGT4ef4SPEjw_qnmIXt3JLAPnJ4v4P0gt0SS2hu9tYSurbm1po-4gQsCLQSrj2tXOdwYuOZiTvA-f6bS36674IBZJ1xK/w640-h426/241138026_10165534658410574_2804657528733592916_n.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br /><br /><p></p><p>Yesterday's Herald included the above polling figures, pertaining to what proportion of Kiwis want to do what about the virus from here on out. Forty six percent in favour of ongoing Elimination, 39% in favour of Elimination, until such time as we hit a seventy percent of the population vaccination rate, and thirteen percent wanting to 'learn to live' with Covid-19. Presumably not personally. <br /><br />Now, this is interesting, because it suggests that the "learn to live with it" vote is a <b>lot</b> smaller than you'd be forgiven for thinking. But also that a huge quotient of effort which had formerly been going into trying to push <b>that</b> benighted position, will now go into attempting to sway as many people as possible from Elimination through to Elimination Til 70%.<br /><br />Except here's the thing. 70% is a completely arbitrary number. The only relevancy it has to New Zealand is that it's come off Scott Morrison's teleprompter ... and from there somehow downloaded itself into certain right-wing brains as a talking point. I don't even think it's really supported by Australia's modelling - much less our own domestically generated modelling for where Herd Immunity thresholds (or nearabouts, in a Delta environment especially) actually lie (a figure in the high 90% range).<br /><br />The Australian model being embraced at the Federal level is also often misunderstood. It's not built on 'live with the virus' in a lasseiz-faire sense once the population is 70% or even 80% vaccinated - instead, it's built on using contact tracing and ring-fencing of outbreaks so they can't grow to overwhelming size and break-through infect significant numbers of vaccinated people. <br /><br />Therefore, as I understand it, the Doherty Institute's model is effectively built around having virus presence in the community already at a functionally near-eliminated level to begin with - so that contact tracing and containment can actually be done within the 'breathing space' thusly provided.<br /><br />The trouble with this is obvious, and doesn't even require looking at NSW to see. We had <b>one</b> case of Delta ... which then became very swiftly, half way to a thousand cases of Delta. Including via 'breakthrough infections'. All within a matter of <b>days</b>.<br /><br />It's just simply not viable to contact-trace that scale of spread even with most of the population vaccinated; so effectively you're left <b>hoping</b> that any and all outbreaks become very small ones by the time they're detected and can be fully ringfenced .. without "elimination".<br /><br />So what are we seeing here instead?<br /><br />Simple. The beginning maneuvers of an effort to affix an end to Elimination to a pretty swiftly attained goal - 70% vaccination; no doubt to be followed-up with a repeated bombardment of claims that this was 'always' what the plan was 'supposed to be'.<br /><br />The same interests which were pushing for "learn to live with the virus" and "COME ON, OPEN UP THE TRAVEL BUBBLE! YESTERDAY!" are very concerned about how popular Elimination has proven, and shall continue to prove on into the future.<br /><br />So they are going to do exactly what they did with both of those (especially the Travel Bubble incessant whining demands) - try and manufacture an entirely artificial groundswell of support for changing course from something which actually works and has a broad consensus of Kiwis behind it ... to something that'll prove a near stick of ACME Dynamite held fizzing in all of our collective hand. <br /><br />A hand which, of course, shall be found to be the Government of the day's, rather than the greasy palm of whichever shrill voices attempted to cajole them into it. Because that's how these sorts of things work, apparently. <br /><br />Now, as it happens, we've been both down this road and around this block, before. <br /><br />To utilize a case-study in miniature, the Herald about a year ago this week ran a piece declaring that Auckland was "divided" over our then (second) Lockdown to deal with the August cluster. <br /><br />It was a curious choice of phrasing and of framing. Why? <br /><br />Well, here's what I wrote at the time - <br /><br />"So here's something strange. <br /><br />The Herald reports that Auckland is seriously "divided" over the extension of Level 3 lockdown last week. You might be forgiven for thinking that this meant somewhere around a fifty fifty split of opinion on the matter. <br /><br />Here's the actual split:<br /><br />75% of Aucklanders thought that the extension of lockdown was "appropriate". This was made up of 56% who were simply fine with the extension - and a further 19% who wanted the lockdown to go <b>longer</b>. <br /><br />Meanwhile, that 25% of opponents was made up of 14% for a shorter lockdown, and 9% for the lockdown shouldn't have been initiated at all. <br /><br />That's three-to-one support for the lockdown. And yet somehow this is a serious degree of "division". <br /><br />Meanwhile, New Zealanders overall supported the most recent Lockdown by a ratio of more than <b>four to one</b> - 62% in favour of the lockdown we had, 19% in favour of an <b>even further extended</b> lockdown, 10% for a shorter lockdown, and only 6% for no lockdown at all. <br /><br /><b>Technically</b> a 3-1 majority for Lockdown means "divided" , sure - as does a 4-1 majority. <br /><br />But it sure does sound rather different when you phrase it like that, frame it like that, rather than OVERWHELMING MAJORITY SUPPORTS THE GOVERNMENT'S COVID-19 MANAGEMENT"<br /><br />I'm frankly almost surprised, in this light, that they didn't try and present yesterday's polling as showing New Zealand was "divided" over whether to persist with the Elimination strategy. They probably - prudently - sensed that they'd be playing to the 13% with that one if they had. <br /><br />However, I suspect that with time - there'll be a steady shifting of emphases. Things shall go from talking about x percentage of New Zealanders supporting Elimination until y percentage of vaccination (or other arbitrary measure - including a date, perhaps), through to simply speaking of x percentage of New Zealanders wanting to 'open up' and abandon Elimination once y percentage of vaccinations is hit. And never mind whether it's an epidemiologically sound number or other such considerations. <br /><br />A shrill, staccato drum-beat shall crescendo out across the airwaves, the newspaper column-inches, etc. etc. <b>demanding </b>not a debate, but a <b>defeat</b> - and an entirely unnecessary one - for our successful (thus far, and subject to current exigencies) Elimination Strategy. <br /><br />No doubt considerably emboldened by Victoria seemingly joining New South Wales in edging toward throwing up hands in semi-surrender on that front (and never mind those other Australian states that have declared their resolute intent to do the opposite, having successfully eliminated Delta themselves already - to the point the Australian Federal Government is now threatening to withhold funding from them if they don't get with Morrison's programme of enforced reopening). <br /><br />We are going to be escalatingly bombarded with mask-wearing hot-air from self-appointed experts expressing their boredness at having to stay at home <a href="https://twitter.com/David_Cormack/status/1368785931365273600/photo/1" target="_blank">vacuuming their Ferrari</a> when they could be sunning it up in the tropics somewhere. <br /><br />Will it make any difference? Maybe. After all, 'manufactured consent' is something our media has become quite adroit at over the years - albeit often through simply applying direct pressure on the Government rather than, as has more traditionally been the case, influencing the people at large out there in the polis to do so. <br /><br />But I think that it may play out more like the situation perhaps around a year and a half ago - wherein the voices that were so eager to sneer at taking something allegedly no more serious than the flu, quietly shut up as time passed on and more and more reports came in from friends and whanau overseas as to what conditions over there really were like in reality.<br /><br />If you've noticed, we're also being buttered with a steady diet of material pertaining to "Life Normal Returns" stories from elsewhere in the world - occasionally, to be fair and sure, with small-print rejoinders about how yes, there is a rather notable death-rate 'tax' attached to this eminently faux 'normalcy'. <br /><br />We are eminently lucky here in New Zealand - and by 'lucky', I also mean we chose well (broadly speaking). <br /><br />Even though we are currently in Lockdown, we have been remarkably successful with our ongoing Covid-19 control measures precisely because we have resolutely committed to Elimination in the past.<br /><br />This has afforded us something which other countries most dearly lack - i) perspective, and ii) the ability to choose. <br /><br />We've been able to take a more measured approach, seeing what other countries are doing and how things are going for them - the perspective; something which requires time in order to be useful, to see how things properly play out. And then choose what we are going to do, coloured by those experiments undertaken at the cost of other countries and contexts elsewhere on the globe. <br /><br />Attempting to mad-dash toward the elimination of Elimination simply because Australia's doing it, or because Boris Johnson's declared his umpteenth "Freedom Day" amidst "bodies pile[d] high" - that is not taking advantage of our prospective situation. And given that various countries like Israel and Iceland with relatively high vaccination rates have then had to move<b> back toward</b> more intrusive and restrictive measures due to unforeseen developments with the virus ... I again state it plainly that there is little to be gained and much to be placed at risk by 'go hard go early' as applies rolling back (rather than rolling out) our protections. <br /><br />Going off the past year and a half's dominant experience - we can easily afford to take more time, ensure that what we're doing really is the right course of action ... and right for US rather than certain members of the commentariat or overseas climes that long to see us fail precisely because it'll make them feel more vindicated in never having really tried at all to begin with.<br /><br />We <b>can't </b>easily afford to do anything else. <br /><br />Keep that in mind the next time you see a columnist filling up their inches with shoveyness about how we ought be more like New South Wales or wherever. <br /><br />You might live longer. <br /><br /><br /><br /><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p>Curwen Rolinsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09768637816927187968noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6818051473633816239.post-4617145551654318992021-08-30T05:36:00.000+12:002021-08-30T05:36:07.691+12:00What To Make Of National Making A Fool Of Itself Over Demands For "Tactile" Democracy - And Its Subsequent, Spurious Suspension Suggestion<p>Odd Day: <a href="https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/300394240/covid19-nz-parliament-to-sit-this-week-after-national-and-act-reject-virtual-option" target="_blank">National / Michael Woodhouse demands that Parliament sit <b>in person</b> rather than virtually because, and I quote: "Democracy is a tactile thing, it needs to be a physical presence"</a>.<br /><br />Even Day: <a href="https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/300394240/covid19-nz-parliament-to-sit-this-week-after-national-and-act-reject-virtual-option" target="_blank">National / Michael Woodhouse demands that Parliament be <b>Suspended</b> from sitting in person because, and I quote, "it is not safe" and the Government should therefore "use the tools available to them"</a>.<br /><br />Now, it can be pointed out that Woodhouse is actually saying that it's the Government's <b>perception</b> that having Parliament physically (rather than virtually) sit is "unsafe" - although given that Parliament sitting requires MPs flying in from all over the country, presumably including Auckland, to then sit in an enclosed environment shouting at each other ... I think that that's a pretty fair presumption.<br /><br />But here's the thing. National demanded that Parliament sit in this manner. Labour - against its better judgement - went along with this.<br /><br />National is now complaining that Labour compromised and allowed National to have what National claimed it wanted.<br /><br />National never wanted it at all. What they WANTED was a fight. A grand ole opportunity to make it look like the Government was attempting to shut down democracy, and that National was standing up against this. Get that Winston Churchill painting out of the attic - not for Dunkirk Spirit, but the sort of "silly-buggers" which caused Anthony Eden to have a nervous breakdown in the mid-1950s when the former was <b>well</b> past his prime.<br /><br />Labour hasn't given them the satisfaction - not only rolling out an eminently reasonable proposition for a virtual Parliament which we <b>know</b> works based on previous experience from last year ... but then going even further and actually just accepting National's demands here.<br /><br />Are they satisfied? No, of course they're not.<br /><br />Instead, they're upped the stakes. Basically DARING Labour to actually roll out the virtual option - which Labour (and the Greens) would be entirely within their rights and democratic mandate-(super)majority to do.<br /><br />If they don't, then pushing the line that things aren't as bad, aren't as dangerous as the Government's claimed.<br /><br />And even where they <b>haven't</b>, still getting in that magic "UNILATERALLY" word to make it seem like Order Sixty Six is being executed by our beloved PM riding 'cross the Rubicon on an armoured vehicle and/or ute.<br /><br />This is playing politics, pure and simple. It's gone beyond "Opposition For Opposition's Sake" and into outright opposing what they were up in arms about a mere five minutes ago (literally, last week they were vigorously opposing any suspension of in-person Parliament as an abuse of the Prime Minister's power - now they're demanding she in fact do it).<br /><br />If they look this inept, and this bad when they're coming down to us through a media headline - how on EARTH do they think they'll look better in front of the collective nation repeatedly embarrassing themselves during Question Time!</p>Curwen Rolinsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09768637816927187968noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6818051473633816239.post-74240910449635854212021-08-30T05:12:00.000+12:002021-08-30T05:12:43.043+12:00Quis Custodiet Ipsos Custodes For Commentariat Under Covid<p>Something I recall from last year's Lockdown experience was the press conferences. Not, you understand, because they were pretty decent exemplars in political communication (although they were also that). <br /><br />But rather because they were the first time most of the general public had ever seen a live and uncut press conference first hand. Specifically, the manner and the mechanism via which some journalists would seek to try and 'Gotcha!' our elected leaders and/or their ministerial appointees. To call it a "melee" is an insult to swordsmanship. It's really more of a meatgrinder - and springs instantly to mind Otto von Bismarck's famous remark about how those who enjoy laws (politics) and sausages ought never behold either being made. <br /><br />This lead, predictably - to everybody but some of those journalists - to a fair few ordinary New Zealanders expressing their disquiet, their distaste, and their disgust at what they were witnessing. Not so much in the direction of the political figures under the proverbial microscope (or, should that be 'sniper-scope') - but rather, at some of the journalists pushing spurious, curious, and outright obnoxious lines of questioning in pursuit of that evening's fifteen-second soundbite scoop. <br /><br />It all seemed a distraction and a waste of effort - especially when people who'd tuned in for the 13:00 briefing could see for themselves just how different the presentation of the same event looked, cut down and spliced for (de-)context on the 18:00 televised news or in the next day's papers. <br /><br />This lead to demands from some of those journos asking the aforementioned questions ... that the broadcasts of the press conference portion of proceedings be, in effect, censored. That only the address from the Minister and Ministry of Health mouthpiece (usually the Prime Minister and Director-General of Health) be presented where we could see it - and everything else come filtered through the six o'clock news, newspapers, or whatever else. Or, in other words, <b>only</b> the bits we were <b>supposed</b> to see. Those 'Gotcha' moments, and little via way of context or the meandering, maladroit, would-be manipulative maneuverings that preceded them. <br /><br />The reasoning for this was simple. Journalists asking 'hard' questions of demonstrably hard-working public servants could look pretty ugly. Especially when those "hard" questions weren't really questions at all, and were instead just obvious fishing for make-you-look-bad soundbites. We couldn't be trusted to tell the difference between useful scrutiny and spurious snarkyness. And the people dispensing the latter felt pretty unfairly victimized when the public they purported to serve started siding with those with power instead of the notional scrutineers. <br /><br />Now that's not to say that journalists didn't do some pretty significantly good work during last year - or, for that matter, this year. We've had numerous issues with various organs of government being questionably across everything in their relevant areas of operations pertaining to the pandemic response - and both them and us benefitting capaciously from having exterior scrutiny to help to call them to account. <br /><br />However, if history's supposed to repeat and/or rhyme - it's therefore no surprise that we appear to be seeing a re-rub of these last year's developments all over again. <br /><br />In <a href="https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/126133484/failings-that-were-foreseeable-and-unforgivable-let-delta-loose" target="_blank">her Sunday Star Times column the week before last</a>, Andrea Vance wrote a few rather poorly received lines. Now, to give her her due credit, her column <b>also </b>contained some useful and important points of critique for the Government and some of its ongoing decisions pertaining to the pandemic - things like the low availability of rapid saliva testing, for instance. <br /><br />But she phrased and she framed all of this in inopportune fashion - opening with what amounted to a "poor me" paean about how she couldn't fly "home" to Ireland, because our Government hadn't gone as hard (or as prematurely) on a "roadmap" to re-open the country and facilitate two-way border traversing as she'd have liked. <br /><br />It wasn't as bad as Mike Hosking's frankly bizarre column some weeks prior again, wherein he'd seemingly sought to blame Jacinda for New South Wales' disastrous overrunning with the virus meaning he couldn't travel there for an extended holiday. But it seemed to sound a bit similar in some parts. (Although, again to be fair to Vance - I don't for a moment think it really came from the same place; with Hosking, the air of self-centeredness and 'Government Can't Do Anything Right' is a 'feature' not a 'bug', and quite deliberate and played up about as far as one can possibly manage without morphing into Judith Collins. With Vance, she just opened her column badly and it coloured everything which then ensued)<br /><br />She further didn't help herself by doubling-down on the "Roadmap" commentary by favourably invoking Scott Morrison in comparison to our own Government. <br /><br />Now, I raise that last point, because she did. Not in her column of the week before last - but rather, <a href="https://www.stuff.co.nz/opinion/300393391/if-the-government-is-making-the-right-decisions-on-covid19-it-will-withstand-scrutiny" target="_blank">in her last week's column</a> (earlier today at time of writing). <br /><br />There, she phrased it thus:<br /><br />"Why shouldn’t we hear from Scott Morrison? He’s dealing with the same pandemic, his experiences, and more importantly his mistakes, make him more than qualified to comment."<br /><br />Why is Vance putting a rhetorical question-and-answer like that in her column the week after the column which took aim at the NZ Government in unfavourable terms relative to Morrison? <br /><br />Well, I suspect it's because she's probably had a small avalanche of New Zealanders writing in to angrily riposte at her attempted-invocation. To suggest that her criticism was unnecessary, unwarranted, unpatriotic, whatever. And presumably, that the only reason we'd want to hear what ScoMo was up to pertaining to pandemic response, was so we could then do something approaching the diametric opposite thereto. <br /><br />The theme of Vance's last week's column is quite simple - that she feels there is, and I quote, an "‘us vs them’ group think mentality." <br /><br />"Us being the ‘team of five million’ and ‘them’ anyone who dares criticise the Government’s approach."<br /><br />Getting the picture?<br /><br />She appears to harbour some concern for "freedom of expression" being abrogated - specifically, her own. As she puts it in the next line: <br /><br />"Government supporters aggressively insist critics should shut up and trust the experts. That anyone questioning the prevailing approach is recklessly anti-science, undermining the response or indifferent to a higher death toll."<br /><br />Now for what it's worth, I don't entirely disagree. There's definite scope for a multiplicity of voices involved in all of this. It's certainly possible to point out the flaws and the shortcomings in the Government's ongoing response - and do it in the spirit of what was once termed Her Majesty's <b>Loyal</b> Opposition (which can be sensibly distinguished from the National Party, as viewed last year, going around demonstrating flaws in security etc. by <b>being the security-flaws</b> and disseminating confidential patient-lists, making up homeless men, etc. etc. etc.).<br /><br />It's just that I really <b>really</b> don't think that Scott Morrison is a good example of somebody we ought be listening to. If you don't believe me on this, take a look at <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/national/even-berejiklian-is-fed-up-with-the-pm-who-she-privately-regards-as-an-evil-bully-20210827-p58mde.html" target="_blank">this recent Sydney Morning Herald piece</a> (in fact, even if you DO believe me uncritically - always a risky thing to do - take a read of it anyway, it's excellent to illuminate the true character of the man leading our closest ally) looking at some of Morrison's recent curious Covid-19 conduct. <br /><br />Now again, to be fair to Vance, she's not being anywhere near as ... unprintable, as <a href="https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/new-zealand/2021/08/coronavirus-westland-mayor-bruce-smith-sick-of-hearing-from-health-experts-about-covid-19-wants-business-leaders-to-have-more-say.html" target="_blank">the Westland mayor who recently demanded that we listen to business leaders instead of health experts</a>. And also 'learn to live with it', I kid you not, like "Polio". <br /><br />However I nevertheless can't quite shake the feeling that the sort of sentiment Vance speaks to - even if she may not, herself, mean for it to come across in this manner - is a bit hypocritical. <br /><br />She's not incorrect when she suggests that, as the headline to her piece puts it: "If the Government is making the right decisions on Covid-19, it will withstand scrutiny."<br /><br />The issue we have is that the scrutiny which is being applied in various corners of the commentariat (both foreign and domestic) to our Covid-19 response ... is of questionable overall quality. There's a lot of very strange, very spurious stuff out there mixed in with it, from people with their own agendas or barrows to push (and/or fill - and I mean 'barrow', there, not necessarily in the 'wheeled' sense, if you get my drift).<br /><br />Hence, the <b>scrutiny </b>of the Government's Covid-19 response is <b>also </b>something which can, should, and must merit 'scrutiny' of its own. 'Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?' as the ancient Latin maxim goes. <br /><br />This is something which doesn't just apply to political (or, for that matter, any other kind of) journalists, though. It also applies to our own local Opposition. Who, quite frankly, are not nearly so "weakened" by "The 1pm briefings [which] skew the discourse in favour of the Government, at the expense of Opposition voices" as Vance claims - as they are by their own ridiculous internal situation and peculiar over-enthusiasm for pursuing 'Culture War' issues that most New Zealanders have repeatedly indicated that they really do not care very much for at all. <br /><br />Indeed, what's "Weakening" Chris Bishop this week, I wonder (this being National's Covid-19 response spokesman). Is it that he's not physically sitting in Parliament (yet - his replacement as shadow Leader of the House <a href="https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/300394240/covid19-nz-parliament-to-sit-this-week-after-national-and-act-reject-virtual-option" target="_blank">has fought to get National bums on seats in the House again for the, and again I am quoting .. apparently vitally necessary "tactile" sensation of democracy</a>) ... or is it that he just had his career cut off at the knees by his own leader for daring to exercise some of that candid "freedom of expression" Vance is understandably keen on prevailing in other areas of our nation's politics. <br /><br />In any case, it's not that I disagree - in principle - with what Vance is propounding here. It's of course eminently logical that people seeking to help the government - and, ultimately, all of us - via providing reasoned, measured commentary on what could conceivably done better ... should be given a fair hearing and not shouted down nor crowded out. We're quite fortunate that various luminaries of our local academic sphere are already very much 'part of the furniture' when it comes to both commentary and the official consultative process for that very reason. <br /><br />But a significant issue we seem to have is that many of the 'alternative voices' which come springing up around the place are ... not so great. The "Plan B" guys spring <b>instantly</b> to mind - and then there's Mike Hosking. <br /><br />Some people in the media, for reasons best known to themselves (although easily adequately guessed at), have occasionally chosen to pursue the platforming of these sorts of perspectives precisely because it helps to drive controversy-oriented clicks; or maybe, in some cases, simply because they want to try and make our current response seem unnecessary, in favour of pursuing questionable if not outright illusory 'overseas models'. You know how it goes. <br /><br />That absolutely should not be immune from critique, simply because the people who've elected to propel these viewpoints into our collective mindscape and mediasphere are part of the Designated Official Commentariat of the day. <br /><br />Nor should, to phrase it admittedly somewhat indelicately, media elements who get observed to be playing silly-buggers , especially during a time of national emergency, be exempt from castigation merely due to their holding swipecards which give them Parliamentary Press Gallery access.<br /><br />Ultimately, as applies that 'Quis custodiet ipsos custodes' maxim - the answer isn't really 'The Media'. <br /><br />It's us. <br /><br />And that applies not only to the Government (whom the media would quite like to mediate your watchful relationship with ... no doubt entirely benevolently) , but also to the media.<br /><br />And not merely because we're "watching" it in the sense of being passive consumers of same. <br /><br />It's YOUR headspace they're putting all of this into. Take back control! <br /><br /><br /><br /></p>Curwen Rolinsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09768637816927187968noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6818051473633816239.post-27623861710800908562021-08-18T07:44:00.001+12:002021-08-18T07:44:49.717+12:00Afghanistan: Trump's Art Of The Deal Inaction? <p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgHLKvjym8krG87-rHa6WQ5eLYyzOie7gZLrusghdICTp0DD1b4IhLQgz6DtPpZ5zzbJpup-3ueh2TNrGfVsvPLKTQrdxCM5ckJIHrAb5ydNcJMWkgIlix0z3ty3J6x-Fm1Q88rJL8yuR2B/s849/CIA+taliban.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="849" data-original-width="751" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgHLKvjym8krG87-rHa6WQ5eLYyzOie7gZLrusghdICTp0DD1b4IhLQgz6DtPpZ5zzbJpup-3ueh2TNrGfVsvPLKTQrdxCM5ckJIHrAb5ydNcJMWkgIlix0z3ty3J6x-Fm1Q88rJL8yuR2B/w566-h640/CIA+taliban.png" width="566" /></a></div><p></p><p>I'd say this was a conspiracy theory ... but evidently, it is quite out in the open. What if ... events in Afghanistan over the past few weeks weren't some horrid surprise - but something the Trump Administration was fundamentally OK with. <br /><br />Think about it. Trump's a business-man. He maybe saw the ongoing investiture of American forces in Afghanistan as a significant cost ... and for what objective? Well, the official purpose of it, was somewhere between "Keep Al Qaeda / ISIS Out Of Afghanistan", and "Nationbuild". <br /><br />The latter purpose was .. not going that well, and in any case, wasn't something various portions of the US state have been hugely interested in, in comparison to that *other* objective. <br /><br />Now, if the Taliban have actually been pretty pro-active in fighting ISIS (with, interestingly, American support - it turned out that America was running airstrikes *for* the Taliban in this regard, of late) ... well, a businessman's mind might see it like this:<br /><br />"We can keep expending money and manpower to fight these guys AND keep a lid on ISIS etc. .. OR, we can subcontract out - get these guys we're fighting to actually do the expenditures FOR us TO fight the guys we both don't like, and all we have to do is stop dying in their land. Win-win!" <br /><br />And, in a certain way, it is. <br /><br />It's an acknowledgement that unless the US was prepared to actually restore troop-levels and active-investment in Afghanistan *in the long term*, that the Taliban *were* going to wind up significantly powerful and able to enforce themselves as a government (or, at the very least, as 'part' of a government) - so may as well cut them a deal, right?<br /><br />And, as icing on the cake .. the CIA gets to continue to do CIA things in Taliban held territory, to make sure that Al Qaeda or Iran don't do whatever it is the CIA wants you to believe Al Qaeda or Iran gonna do. Hell, they might even manage to subcontract out torturing people at black-sites to the Taliban, kinda like the cozy relationship they had with Gaddafi's guys in Libya in the mid-00s.<br /><br />We might even get a resumption of small Cessna-style aircraft taking off from local airports laden with 'high-value imports' going the other way again ... you know what I mean.<br /><br />And what did the Taliban have to do in exchange for all of that?<br /><br />*Not* kill any American servicemen for awhile (and they were *scrupulously* good at that last year), and make some vague declarations about how they were going to respect the rights of women and minorities .. broadly speaking.<br /><br />What have they emphatically done over the past week?<br /><br />Made vague declarations that many people understandably don't *at all* believe, about how they're going to respect the rights of women and minorities. <br /><br />It's Win-Win.<br /><br />And the best part? <br /><br />The collapse happened after Trump was no longer President, so the same guy whose administration negotiated to make all of this possible in the first place... gets to point the finger at his successor for sticking to *his plan* and be like "Miss me yet?" </p>Curwen Rolinsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09768637816927187968noreply@blogger.com0