On Claims Of Christianity Being "Singled Out" Via Probing Of Luxon

 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'.

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. 

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.

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. 

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.

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. 

Nevertheless, there's some perhaps precedency value in the experiences of persons of other religions in other Anglosphere polities around the globe. 

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?"

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. 

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. 

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. 

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. 

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. 

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. 

In that circumstance - nobody really learns anything, and it just encourages a lack of transparency all around.

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. 

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. 

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. 

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.

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. 

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. 

On A Critical Comment Towards The Beatification Of Colin Powell

 

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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, seriously limited - it'd already occurred a long time aforehand.

And the legacy of that kind of conduct he'd lent his legitimacy to - well, that lives on long after its mortal standard-bearer no longer does. If and when that dies, there'll certainly be cause for quite some jubilation.

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 that element, and the 'hagiographizing' which post-mortem seemingly inevitably takes place these days ... is not necessarily incorrect to explore.

Which doesn't mean I agree with Trump - generally or otherwise.

But I do think that here, even jeeringly phrased, the guy's got a point. 

On Jacinda Being "Missing In Action" Apparently

 

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".

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.

Some might suggest it's a PR move. And to that I can only say an enthusiastic "Yes." It is literally a PR move. Public Relations. Going out there and engaging with a swathe of the public, in a bid to facilitate their engagement with a particular policy. That being the public health policy which is absolutely vital for them and us.

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).

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.

Yet as an exercise in comms, and something which is seemingly irreducibly Kiwi - having the actual Prime Minister turn up to personally do the Government Communication, in your street, neighbourhood, and community ... well, the only time I could see Judith Collins even attempting to do something like this and actually being 'on-theme' would be on October 31st after dark at your doorstep. 

On Brian Tamaki As Charismatic Frontman For The Commentariat's Anti-Covid Control Agenda

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. 

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. 

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, is actually listening and is frankly unimpressed through to outright aghast at what they may so happen to hear. 

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] ". 

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. 

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. 

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.

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 - as did Tauranga's wastewater this week) and how Auckland remaining at Level 3 is some kind of "political" conspiracy. 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. 

Collins going out to make herself look popular by just so happening to run into people who support her ... 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'. 

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. 

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".

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).

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. 

And that's why Tamaki is now useful. 

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. 

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. 

So with all of that in mind ... 

Here's what's going to happen.

A protest event which had "hundreds" at it, is going to be reported (indeed, is already being reported) as having "thousands" in attendance.

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.

The fact that the Police - rather sensibly - didn't 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!"

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.

This will all be channeled into escalating shrill shouty by certain commentators in the media in advance of next week's Alert Level decision.

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. 

You can just see the columnist-inches start to assemble right now !

Media Proclaiming 'Elimination Of Elimination' Are Attempting To Ignore / Rewrite Reality

 Mid-way through the week, Chris Hipkins [i.e. the Covid-19 Response Minister] said this:

"We are still doing this ... we are still pursuing elimination, it is still the right thing for New Zealand.

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."

Hold your nerve. Still pursuing Elimination. Still the right thing for New Zealand.

All pretty straight-forward stuff. And stated quite directly, some days aforehand. So why do I find this comment-worthy?

Because even after Hipkins had directly 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'.

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.

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 overwhelming) support for Elimination in the vast majority of the New Zealand public.

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.

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 being 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.

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.

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, especially for that matter - what the Government) says.

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.

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.

A Point On Public Health Measures In A Crisis - Whether Meth Addiction Or Covid Response

At present, it seems that the virus has moved into the Underworld - with several gangs reporting cases in the past week or so.

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.

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".

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.

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.

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.

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 for the public health provision are gang-members".

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?

Or do we recognize that rolling out intervention-strategies designed to protect all of us can occasionally mean working with some of us in particular ways as best befits their circumstances and all of our collective needs.

Why I'm OK With NZ Not Being In New Anglo Alliance

Look, I'm no fan of the PRC - but I can't help but recall how NZ's previous entanglement in ANZUS worked out.

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".

I'm not necessarily 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.

It's also definitely the case that we have good history together with all three powers in both multilateral and bilateral terms.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 still didn't quite get the message that really ... we're on our own.

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.

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 finally start to eventuate ... eventually ...

But I do resolutely believe that it's possible for us to continue to strengthen our friendships with them without 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.

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. 

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.

In terms of our foreign policy - I genuinely believe that we're far better served by pursuing just exactly that: our foreign policy, not someone else's.

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).

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.

By remaining outside 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 inside said tent where it would clearly be both principled and of use to do so.

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.

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.

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.

The Re-Start Of History: 9/11 20 Years On

Something that comes up on the anniversary of 9/11 is that question: "where were you when...".

I find that slightly remarkable because the previous "Where were you when..." question for a previous generation - that of our parents - was "Where were you when the Moon Landing ..."

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.

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 ...

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.

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.

9/11 meanwhile - it was a "low-budget, high-concept attack."

It precipitated a "high-budget, low-concept response."

(and that duality observation is also not mine but rather lifted from somebody's friend via twitter)

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.

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.

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'.

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.

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.

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 some measure of clarity through retrospectives en-aided and availed through temporal distance.

I don't know that Hunter S. Thompson actually said 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.

A place where, to quote Thompson again, we can perceive a "high-water mark - that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back.”

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.

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.

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.

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.

In its place?

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.

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.

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.

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:

"The lamps are going out all over Europe, we shall not see them lit again in our life-time."

That chilly morning in mid-September, 2001, which everybody seemingly recalls where they were upon ... we witnessed something similar, I think.

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.

Messy, Bloody, Confused, Telos-Less History.

Which had never truly gone away. Even despite our comforting pretentious delusions to the contrary.  

Why Israel Demonstrates That Fortress New Zealand Must Stand Strong

 

[image/information source: Reuters Covid-19 tracker]

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.

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.

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!"

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

It is, seemingly, an approach which continues to be vindicated on a day-in day-out basis.

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. 

NZ Herald Poll On Pursuing 'Elimination Til Vaccination' Is Thin End Of 'Learn To Live With It' Wedge

 

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.

Now, this is interesting, because it suggests that the "learn to live with it" vote is a lot 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 that benighted position, will now go into attempting to sway as many people as possible from Elimination through to Elimination Til 70%.

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).

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.

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.

The trouble with this is obvious, and doesn't even require looking at NSW to see. We had one 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 days.

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 hoping that any and all outbreaks become very small ones by the time they're detected and can be fully ringfenced .. without "elimination".

So what are we seeing here instead?

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'.

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.

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. 

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. 

Now, as it happens, we've been both down this road and around this block, before. 

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. 

It was a curious choice of phrasing and of framing. Why? 

Well, here's what I wrote at the time - 

"So here's something strange.

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.

Here's the actual split:

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.

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.

That's three-to-one support for the lockdown. And yet somehow this is a serious degree of "division".

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.

Technically a 3-1 majority for Lockdown means "divided" , sure - as does a 4-1 majority.

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"

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. 

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.

A shrill, staccato drum-beat shall crescendo out across the airwaves, the newspaper column-inches, etc. etc. demanding not a debate, but a defeat - and an entirely unnecessary one - for our successful (thus far, and subject to current exigencies) Elimination Strategy.

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). 

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 vacuuming their Ferrari when they could be sunning it up in the tropics somewhere. 

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. 

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.

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'. 

We are eminently lucky here in New Zealand - and by 'lucky', I also mean we chose well (broadly speaking). 

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.

This has afforded us something which other countries most dearly lack - i) perspective, and ii) the ability to choose. 

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. 

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 back toward 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. 

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.

We can't easily afford to do anything else. 

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. 

You might live longer. 

What To Make Of National Making A Fool Of Itself Over Demands For "Tactile" Democracy - And Its Subsequent, Spurious Suspension Suggestion

Odd Day: National / Michael Woodhouse demands that Parliament sit in person rather than virtually because, and I quote: "Democracy is a tactile thing, it needs to be a physical presence".

Even Day: National / Michael Woodhouse demands that Parliament be Suspended from sitting in person because, and I quote, "it is not safe" and the Government should therefore "use the tools available to them".

Now, it can be pointed out that Woodhouse is actually saying that it's the Government's perception 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.

But here's the thing. National demanded that Parliament sit in this manner. Labour - against its better judgement - went along with this.

National is now complaining that Labour compromised and allowed National to have what National claimed it wanted.

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 well past his prime.

Labour hasn't given them the satisfaction - not only rolling out an eminently reasonable proposition for a virtual Parliament which we know works based on previous experience from last year ... but then going even further and actually just accepting National's demands here.

Are they satisfied? No, of course they're not.

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.

If they don't, then pushing the line that things aren't as bad, aren't as dangerous as the Government's claimed.

And even where they haven't, 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.

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).

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!

Quis Custodiet Ipsos Custodes For Commentariat Under Covid

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). 

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. 

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.

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. 

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, only the bits we were supposed to see. Those 'Gotcha' moments, and little via way of context or the meandering, maladroit, would-be manipulative maneuverings that preceded them. 

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. 

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. 

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. 

In her Sunday Star Times column the week before last, Andrea Vance wrote a few rather poorly received lines. Now, to give her her due credit, her column also 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. 

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. 

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)

She further didn't help herself by doubling-down on the "Roadmap" commentary by favourably invoking Scott Morrison in comparison to our own Government. 

Now, I raise that last point, because she did. Not in her column of the week before last - but rather, in her last week's column (earlier today at time of writing). 

There, she phrased it thus:

"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."

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? 

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. 

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." 

"Us being the ‘team of five million’ and ‘them’ anyone who dares criticise the Government’s approach."

Getting the picture?

She appears to harbour some concern for "freedom of expression" being abrogated - specifically, her own. As she puts it in the next line: 

"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."

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 Loyal Opposition (which can be sensibly distinguished from the National Party, as viewed last year, going around demonstrating flaws in security etc. by being the security-flaws and disseminating confidential patient-lists, making up homeless men, etc. etc. etc.).

It's just that I really really 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 this recent Sydney Morning Herald piece (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. 

Now again, to be fair to Vance, she's not being anywhere near as ... unprintable, as the Westland mayor who recently demanded that we listen to business leaders instead of health experts. And also 'learn to live with it', I kid you not, like "Polio". 

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. 

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."

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).

Hence, the scrutiny of the Government's Covid-19 response is also something which can, should, and must merit 'scrutiny' of its own. 'Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?' as the ancient Latin maxim goes. 

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. 

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 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) ... 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. 

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. 

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 instantly to mind - and then there's Mike Hosking. 

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. 

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. 

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.

Ultimately, as applies that 'Quis custodiet ipsos custodes' maxim - the answer isn't really 'The Media'. 

It's us. 

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.

And not merely because we're "watching" it in the sense of being passive consumers of same. 

It's YOUR headspace they're putting all of this into. Take back control! 

Afghanistan: Trump's Art Of The Deal Inaction?

 

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.

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".

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.

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:

"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!"

And, in a certain way, it is.

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?

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.

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.

And what did the Taliban have to do in exchange for all of that?

*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.

What have they emphatically done over the past week?

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.

It's Win-Win.

And the best part?

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?" 

Against Self-Isolation For International Returnees

The thing about this self-isolation trial - and, for that matter, broader-scale self-isolation rather than MIQ facilities all up - is that people are GOING to do daft things.

I don't care if you put home detention style ankle-bracelets on them. You'll get people leaning over the fence to talk to their neighbours, people having visitors at home (who aren't ankle-braceleted), people attempting to block the anklet using tinfoil, people working out ways to get it off their ankle or 'spoof' the system so that it looks like they're still where they're meant to be, even as they're off down the shops, and of course - people who decide that whatever reason it is they've got for leaving their self-isolation locale is so important that it doesn't matter they're still tagged in the first place.

Over the past few months, we've witnessed all manner of curious behavior inside proper and military-run managed isolation facilities. We've had a security guard arranging an illicit liason with an MIQ guest (and apparently quite a few of these in Australia as the er .. root of some of their outbreaks over there); we've had a guy (who later turned out to have Covid-19) escape through a fence to go buy toothpaste at a supermarket; we've had people desperate to attend a loved one's funeral breaking out of MIQ facilities en-masse; we've even had one intrepid Australian-deportee manufacturing an escape-rope using the bedsheets from his hotel suite and climbing down the side of the building to go for a walk all the way from the central city to Onehunga and then back via Mt Albert.

And these have ALL been things that have taken place from Government-sanctioned, security-guarded and even military patrolled MIQ facilities. That is to say, with multiple 'barriers' and protections up exactly to discourage this kind of behavior.

The proposal to move towards self-isolation is, quite simply, that by REMOVING all of these safeguards ... we won't become significantly less safe.

Which presupposes that people won't start acting stupidly more frequently. Or, rather, that the various safeguards currently around them when they fairly inevitably DO try and do something the rest of us would consider to be daft - are just as effective when they're NOT there as when they actually are.

A moment's consideration reveals the effective flaw with that scheme.

Now to be fair and sure, in a certain proportion of MIQ-jumping cases - the people at the center of them aren't acting rationally, because they're in circumstances wherein very few of us ARE up to acting rationally.

The two women mid-way through last year who were granted an exemption to leave MIQ early (and who later turned out to have the virus) - they did so because their mother was about to die (and, in fact, sadly died the same day that their exemption was granted). I think any of us in such a scenario would be rather more desperate to go and see our moribund mother on her deathbed in person - and much less interested in whether our actions might unwittingly transmit the virus out into the rest of the country.

The solution to that, was a simple one. Namely - not have the decision-making power as to whether to go out into our community vested in the people who were so emotionally bound up with the situation.

The risk with a move to self-isolation, even where it's ring-fenced with additional safety precautions like ankle-monitoring or only being available to travelers from "low" or "medium risk" countries, is that it places the onus of decision-making on the individual.

And as we saw with, for instance, that Australian veterinary nurse earlier this year who basically attempted to turn her time in an NZ MIQ facility into a Covid-"truther" stunt ... well, there is no surefire guarantee that an individual is going to behave reasonably simply because they're from what was, ostensibly, a 'lower-risk' state.

Indeed, given what we've earlier seen - it almost seems the opposite. People from 'lower risk' places may correspondingly presume that they themselves are lower risk or even 'no risk' of having, let alone transmitting the virus. People who've been vaccinated - never mind what the science shows about their still being Delta transmissible - may act as if they, and our community, are impervious to both the virus and therefore to a quick walk down to the shops.

I'm sure that there are other details to the Government's transition to self-isolation plan; and that it's not simply doing what we did fifteen months ago, and pretending that police overloaded with bail-checks can also find the time to go around door-knocking addresses people are supposed to be staying at.

But as it stands, I'm not in favour of self-isolation - on a trial basis, or otherwise.

It seems all too much like the travel-bubble with Australia. Something that many if not most New Zealanders didn't want - yet which was foisted upon us following a months-long campaign of Media and Opposition pressure upon the Government to roll it out anyway in the vague notion that it'd be "necessary" for the economy and/or certain people's travel-plans on holiday (looking at you, Mike Hosking - who earlier seemed to suggest it was somehow Jacinda's fault that his planned extended vacation in New South Wales couldn't go ahead recently).

And then when it all tumbles down and somewhere winds up under a Level 4 Lockdown again, it'll all be thrown back as JACINDA'S FAULT, and everybody'll be very very quiet about any previous advocacy they may have done for exactly the thing that's gone wrong in the first place prior to its occurrence.

Much easier, I think, just to not bother.

We are comfortable behind our Walls here in New Zealand. With the Covid-19 situation changing almost by the day out there in the virus-ravaged hinterlands of civilization (by which I mean America and the UK, inter various alia), it is far too soon to speak convincingly about how we might open up in such a manner - and with such confidence that there is viability to self-isolation as part and parcel of same. 

The Pegasus Proclivity - On Recent Revelations Of Israeli International Espionage

By now, news of the Pegasus spying scandal has made its way across the world. And I think that, rather than the Western-oriented outcry which is currently also sweeping the media-sphere, taking a look at India's situation is quite instructive here in order to garner a more true picture of what's actually been going on.

In Indian politics at the moment, there is a bit of a scandal because it appears that the government used Pegasus to spy upon the lead Opposition leader.

That's .. well, that's understandable to cause outrage in a democracy (we had some degree of experience with this here in New Zealand - although then it was domestic intelligence rather than a foreign actor which was employed).

Except then it turned out that also under surveillance via Pegasus .. was the Indian Government's own IT Minister.

Now, I do not think - although I shall have to check - that it was his own government spying upon him.

It has also emerged that among Pegasus' list of users are ... quite an array of states, including Pakistan. Is Pakistan using the same service to spy upon the Indian Government as the Indian Government is using to spy on the Indian Opposition?

About the only thing we can say for sure is that the Israeli company which runs Pegasus - and which, contra to their assertions, appears to have had full access to all material collated through its service - has been working with quite an array of regimes, including regimes that are against other regimes it is also working with ... and is effectively spying upon everybody, and being paid to do so by those who are also, it would seem, its targets.

A truly masterful setup!

On The Manufactured Outrage Against The Government's Covid-19 Communications Budget

I must confess myself slightly perplexed at the "outrage" that the Government put $250,000 into working out how to do comms for its Covid-19 strategy. I mean, think about what was involved at every step - what New Zealanders were being asked to do.

You're asking 5 million people to lockdown, then social distance/mask up/scan/vaccinate .. all new behaviors at a national level and requiring outreach to quite a range of communities across the country. It's not just communicating what to do but why it's necessary.

And hopefully actually encouraging the vast majority of New Zealanders, regardless of political preference, to buy into that response and actively help carry it out.

I'm sure somebody out there is muttering about how "could have just stuck Jacinda in front of a camera to say any old thing and people'd have bought it" - but that's simply not the case.

I'm also not sure how far people think $250,000 really goes as far as political communication and education is concerned.

The referendums staged last year cost more than ten times that in terms of comms - and that was for something as simple as two ticks in boxes on one day.

The National Party alone spent more than $250k on just its party facebook advertising for the last Election (i.e. not including individual candidates buying ads on the platform, or anything else, anywhere else).

The inference opponents of the Government seem to have drawn on this issue is that spending money is held to be necessary in order to secure some form of unfair advantage in communication - because, of course, it's "unfair" if we co-ordinate a successful public health strategy...

They - still - feel 'crowded out' by the Government's ability to put out crisis messaging during a crisis which, quelle horror, actually gets listened to and acted upon by a reasonable swathe of the population (even people who don't then go on to vote for said govt in election).

Seymour has a slightly different tac on it, of course - that being the general opposition to taxpayer expenditure , but also loudly proclaiming that this 'proves' that the Government's Covid-19 response hasn't been based on science but rather on sentiment.

Now that's doubly curious - because first and foremost, interviews with leading scientists in the relevant fields in the Herald today had said scientists supporting using public money to craft and hone a decent public communication effort.

It's literally listening to science.

Yet second, Seymour has set up an implicit duality between "following the science" and "listening to New Zealanders". He is opposed, in a democracy, to the democratic will of the people guiding Governance. I'm not sure how else to put it.

Now, we're going to hear a LOT more of that kind of thing going forward, for the simple expedient that various portions of our right-wing commentariat have realized that what THEY want to do ("learn to live with it", "open the border", "roll the Government", "kill an orca", etc.) ...

... is pretty heavily unpopular with much of the electorate and won't fly democratically. Most of it won't fly scientifically, either; meaning that a comms strategy which listens to the electorate and is scientifically valid MUST be attacked as somehow neither of these things.

Instead, we get what's tantamount to declamations of the World's Most Cost-Efficient Brainwashing Campaign. A mere $250,000 to hoodwink (indeed, to congeal) the Team of Five Million - twenty cents per person in and of this fair land to establish the JacindaRaj.

Although what REALLY sticks in their collective craw is the deep and abiding knowledge that even were they to spend ten times that amount themselves, they'd be unable to beat the Government and its tangible track-record of both communicative and Covid-related success.

Hence - what we have here is an attempt to generate well more than a quarter million dollars in outrage ... for free - fact-free and otherwise. 

"There Is No Mental Health Funding In New Zealand"

Over the past few weeks we've seen a heightened level of scrutiny for the seeming non-spending of public money on an escalating public health crisis. Or, if you're the National Party, public health money instead being spent on financing the phantasms of organized crime rather than Mike King's Gumboot Friday initiative. Now, leaving aside the ins and outs of that escalating series of brouhahas (wherein it doesn't appear that anything untoward has happened with $2.75 million dollars going toward methamphetamine rehab, and Mike King doesn't appear to have applied for Ministry of Health funding for his project) ... we're nevertheless left with a pretty important question.

Namely, if everybody seemingly agrees that mental health in New Zealand is at a bit of a crisis point - why isn't the Government 'Doing Something' about it?

Does Mike King have a point when he proclaims to all and sundry that the Government is one of inaction here?

Part of the trouble is that what he's protesting about ... isn't really addressable via funding increases. They certainly help and are vitally necessary - but we're finding out right now that the Government can literally make available tens of millions of dollars in additional mental health funding ...

... yet only expand total capacity by a few beds across the entire country. This is something  that recently happened and they've been castigated for it.

Except that's ... the problem.

There's an old English saying "if you want a good longbowman, start with his grandfather". It's not quite so dire with this sector, but basically to get more mental health workers, it takes several years for people to go through training and qualify as such - particularly if they're becoming highly skilled and more specialized, which is what's needed for the high-needs stuff.

It also obviously takes awhile to build facilities that are fit for purpose; and while in the old days, the Before Times prior to 2020, the skilled labour input issue could be semi solved via importing people with the relevant qualifications and experience

... that's uh ... that's not really much of an option right now. In part because - and this is a broader medical sector problem - we're apparently not able to offer hugely competitive wages relative to cost of living for people who might want to come here (and also because, you know, the border's mostly closed to non-citizens/residents), and we're also losing workers to Australia etc.

The trouble is that the whole "we can't offer hugely competitive wages relative to cost of living" thing is that people only hear the former, and - justifiably - think the Government should pay nurses and mental health workers more. I agree.

Except unless cost of living across the board is somehow addressed, it doesn't actually make that much difference. It's simply much cheaper to live in many other countries, regardless of wages, so you're still further ahead.

Additionally ... private sector mental health support is basically either unaffordable / inaccessible for a lot of people to meaningfully engage with (seriously, counselling's like $80 an hour-long session and goes up from there, and I'm not sure how many people with pretty intractable problems manage to sort what ails them inside only a few of those; for actual more specialized psychology it's .. hundreds of dollars for even a half-hour) - so it's a bit difficult to pay them more, unless I suppose, we start rolling out broader subsidies so that many more Kiwis can basically go through the private system rather than the public one, part-paying themselves and part-paid-for by the taxpayer.

Which isn't a bad idea at all.

Except for the slight issue that it's already rather difficult to get expeditious appointments a lot of places precisely due to demand relative to supply, which leads us back to point number one.

All up, we're seeing the net impacts of a rather massive under-investment and under-support of the health sector in general , and mental health specifically , for ... many many years now; and because Labour indicated they were keen to doing something about it, they've come under a lot of pressure for not having sorted the entire thing out inside a single Parliamentary term.

It's totally understandable - and even, I'd argue, justifiable - to feel frustrated with the pace things have been going at.

However, I'm not entirely sure how much faster or more efficient things could actually really be - in the short term, anyway.

The simple, lamentable truth is that there is no Golden Bullet in this situation. If there were, I'd like to imagine that the Government would have fired it already.

Unfortunately, delays in this sphere can quite literally be lethal. However, I'd also have to question whether making a politicized hot-button issue out of an impossibility - that is to say, hammering the Government for something they don't necessarily have a huge degree of control over - is really the best use of anybody's time or mental-psychoemotive bandwidth.

I leave it for other, more informed minds to let us know what could be feasibly done in the short or even medium term to change this situation for the better. Whether there's some easy institutional fixes to expand accession and capacity, make it more affordable for people to get into what's already out there perhaps.

The point is - it's not such a black-and-white situation as people either want to believe, or have been lead to believe. We don't really do very well with communicating complex, nuanced issues through either our adversarial politics or our often 'gotcha-' oriented commentariat/media. And that can lead to - as in this case - a misimpression that the Government is being callous (rather than cautious, or constrained by circumstance). A perception most definitely fostered by those either genuinely passionate about attempting to prod and/or bull-whip them into doing more, more quickly (i.e. King), or some certain other voices who are basically just looking for any excuse to attempt to dent our Government. Potentially so that they can then have themselves a go of presiding over non-action instead.  

"They Are Not Us" - On The True Meaning Of An Impending Filmic Catastrophe

By now, many of will have seen the latest tranche of revelations from the leaked script for 'They Are Us'. They give new meaning to Marx's famous aphorism that history occurs the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce. 

I shall not say that it gets worse following the opening massacre. But the escalating tide of malfeasance certainly becomes more perplexing in its scope and ambit. We can understand intellectually - even as we disagree with - the logic of putting a reconstruction of the tragedy onto celluloid. It is supposed to be a film about the response to that atrocity, after all. Although that does not make it compassionate or in good taste to include said scene - and nor does it justify the 'liberties' taken with the dying moments of cherished loved ones for tawdry dramatic impact. 

Yet it is these subsequent scenes of which we have heard today which serve to illustrate the true purpose of this film's production. 

In it, we hear Simon Bridges - or, rather, an actor playing a character called Simon Bridges, who appears to be but loosely based upon the real man - making statements like, and I quote "Come for our guns, you might get bullets." Or, in case you hadn't quite got the undercurrent - "If one of those worshippers had one of these they could have stopped this tragedy in seconds."

Now, these are not lines the real Simon Bridges - dare I say "our" Simon Bridges - has ever, to my knowledge, uttered. Quite the contrary in fact. National, despite some criticism from some of its more traditional support base, supported the changes in firearms legislation brought in following the massacre. One could fairly suggest, as journalist Henry Cooke did, that Bridges might almost have a case for defamation in terms of how inaccurately he is portrayed here. It's so bad that the lefty-liberal sector of Kiwi twitter is up in arms defending Simon Bridges. 

And nor is this calumny confined exclusively to the then-Leader of the Opposition. 

David Seymour appears to have been transmogrified into a Christian evangelical up in arms about Ardern on a religious basis. Now I don't deny that Seymour can come across as something of a fundamentalist - but he is a free market fundamentalist, not a Christian one. And nothing like the figure they're put in his place - who is so sufficiently divergent that at least the writers chose to rename him as 'Solomon Marsh'. 

Winston, meanwhile, has ... an array of appearances within the leaked material, including uttering a Maori proverb in Te Reo during the course of a crisis meeting. And while I absolutely don't disagree that Winston could certainly intone something resonant during a big event, having seen him do it with my own eyes ... it's always been European 'high culture' (or, in one case, admittedly, Star Wars) or something from the Old Testament. Presumably the writers felt that an older Maori politician in a key supporting role would make for an admirable opening for some sort of "Magical Native American" / "Noble Savage" style trope. 

Although that's partially because I'm not sure an American audience would know what to make of, nor how to handle Winston. He isn't Trump. He can occasionally sound like Trump. But he's the wrong colour (neither orange nor white) to actually be Trump in their own domestic political narrative even before we get to both his role in the story and his actual politics in years previous. 

But you see, that's the key to what's going on here - indeed, why this film has somehow been green-lit in the first place.

It's been billed as based on (recent) history - a retelling, perhaps, or an exploration. In truth, it is neither.

What it's actually based on is American politics. What it actually seeks to explore is their own domestic situation - or, rather, how some over there would assumedly quite like their domestic situation to perhaps (one day) be. 

We have become, collectively, a dramatic device. We, in this film at least, from the greatest to the least of us - We Are Not Us. We are just window-dressing, staging-props, a veneer of Kiwiness to be draped over more audience-familiar American set-pieces congealed and carved out precisely for that decidedly foreign (to us, to these events, at any rate) 'domestic' market. 

It is an appropriation and an exploitation wherein anywhere and everywhere and anything becomes nowt but a tawdry bowdlerized morality-play setting for the Americans' own domestic circumstances.

The only story they are interested in telling is their own one, endlessly re-garbed as from somewhere else.

Hence why we have Simon Bridges, who in real life supported the government's firearms law change, being reduced to a mouthpiece for NRA style memetic talking-points. Because there has to be a 'villain' - and instead of the actual criminal of March 15 in such a role, we have a pantomime political pastiche.

In truth, this is not a novel experience in some ways. Authors and dramatists have done this sort of thing for centuries. Shakespeare wrote plays notionally set in Ancient Rome yet treating issues much more immediately relevant to Elizabethan England - and featuring his actors anachronistically garbed in pantaloons and hearing clocktowers chime, to boot. Although I do not seek to compare those works to "They Are Us". The former are, unquestionably, works of great literature whatever their inaccuracies. The latter, shall only prove memorable precisely due to the egregiousness of its inaccuracies and outright foundational insensitivity to various of its notional subjects.

Effects which can have us all legitimately up in arms about how our country, our people, and our politics are being downright vandalized in their disfigurement for entertainment-educative purpose. Because the "Us" of "They Are Us", as we can quite clearly demonstrate, are not in fact "Us" at all.

Now this should not be read, of course, as an attempt to impute that the various political figures "portrayed" in this script are the most salient victims in all of this. They have unquestionably been unfairly mis-represented, in some cases to quite ludicrous extent. Yet that pales in scope to what the victims of March 15 have found themselves in for as the result of this clumsy co-option of their story in order for the Americans to tell themselves something about themselves with the availment of popcorn and a cinematic score. 

Should this film somehow still manage to go ahead, it shall prove to be not only a 'farce' but also a tragedy and a travesty into the bargain.