AmeriNZ Blog

B is for Books

2012-01-25T09:23:00.000+13:00

I love books, and always have. I love having them around, looking at them and sometimes even reading them. Mostly, I like having them around.

I come by this naturally: My mother was a book lover, too. My father, on the other hand, could easily throw books away. My mother and I thought that was sacrilege.

Over the years, I built up a pretty good library—twice. First, when I was living in the US and helped by inheriting books from my parents, then again in New Zealand, where I helped add to the library Nigel already had—but with very few from my US library, most of which I left behind.

I used to say that I drew power from having books around, until I realised that sounded a bit quasi-spiritual, which wasn’t at all what I meant. Instead, I meant that books energise me. When I see all my books in front of me, I think of all the ideas and words within them and become inspired to keep searching for a few of my own.

But things are very different now. I still love having a library of books, but having packed and moved them many, many times now, I can definitely see the attraction of a small library. That’s going far too far for me, though.

Instead, my biggest shift in attitude has been nurtured by the Internet and all things computer. It began when I started downloading free “plain vanilla” texts of classic public domain books from Project Gutenberg. It was a great thing, I thought, but frankly a little hard to read on a computer screen. So, graphics person I am, I tried turning a couple into real books and found it was much harder than I’d imagined.

And so it stayed for many years until the Kindle was introduced. At the time, I thought it was too expensive and failed the “bathtub test”: Drop a book in a bathtub, and you’re out around $40; drop a Kindle, and at the time it was many times that price.

Nevertheless, in July of 2010, I downloaded my first Kindle edition of a book, which I read on my iPod Touch. I found it easier to read Kindle editions once I had a iPad, but the darn thing was heavy. Then, Nigel gave me a Kindle for my birthday, and so far I love it.

It turns out, I’m in good company. Yesterday, the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project released a report that found that over the holidays there was a huge surge in the percentage of Americans who have a tablet computer (like an iPad or similar) or an e-reader (like a Kindle, Nook, etc.): “The share of adults who own either device [nearly doubled], from 10% to 19%.” The overall percentages are still relatively low, but the rate of increase is impressive.

There are many things about them that are good, and they have many features that make them a great way to read books (chief among the benefits, in my opinion, is that readers can carry suitcases of books on the one device, which makes packing for trips much easier and with far less back strain).

Still, e-readers and tablet computers are not books. Books to me a special thing, far more special than merely a page displaying on an electronic device. I like having them around, after all. Turns out, I like having e-readers around, too.

Are you a book person? If so, is it ink-on-paper-only, electronic only or both?

The image at the top of this post is a Creative Commons licensed photo, “Old book bindings at Merton College Library” (25 August 2005), by Tom Murphy VII. It is available for download through Wikimedia Commons.

Three years ago today

2012-01-24T22:37:00.000+13:00

Three years ago today, we had our civil union and became recognised as a couple under New Zealand law—not that it mattered then or now to the US Government (it may now be different in my home state of Illinois, for strictly state matters, of course). Similarly, the civil union we had three years ago today was made possible by a Labour-led government; the current prime minister, John Key of the conservative National Party, voted against it and refuses to say if he’d vote for it if the vote was held now.

But that’s all backdrop, the behind-the-scenes stuff that doesn’t actually affect us. On that hot day three years ago, we formally and legally pledged our lives together, even though at that point we’d already been together thirteen years. Even so, it was nice to be able to stand in front of friends and family and make that long-term commitment formal and recognised under law.

Tonight we went out for a fancy dinner at a local restaurant. We were celebrating not just that event three years ago, but the fact that we’re as strong as ever. Sometimes, love really does conquer all—even politics.

Rep. Gabrielle Giffords Steps Down

2012-01-23T12:00:00.000+13:00

A sad video, but the correct move, I think. I’m not going to comment on her politics or the timing of the announcement or the incident that led to this result, except to note how remarkable her recovery has been. I hope she continues to improve to the point where she’s happy with the result.

However, I'd strongly urge that people don’t read the comments on YouTube—they’re filled with the usual anonymous Internet haters, some extremely vile and many outright deranged (like the one that said all the vile comments were being posted by Democrats trying to make Republicans look bad. Whatever.).

I get that politics in America are polarised, with an unbridgeable divide between Republicans and Democrats, but can’t there be at least some situations in which people just, you know, restrain themselves? It seems as if some people just haven’t learned the lessons from that fateful day, about how toxic and extreme rhetoric benefits no one, only making things potentially dangerous. I’m not saying people shouldn’t criticise their opponents and adversaries, just that a little common decency doesn’t get in the way of robust debate—and it sure would be a nice change.

Update January 26: Today Rep. Gabrielle Giffords officially resigned from the US House of Representatives. US Representative Debbie Wasserman-Shultz, head of the Democratic National Committee and a friend of Giffords, read the letter to the House (video below). Wasserman-Shultz was often tearful, as were other representatives. I thought that the way the House treated her was classy. If only they could be like that more often.

Not an indicator

2012-01-22T14:31:00.000+13:00

Probably the only thing that irritates me more than people having zero understanding of history is when people completely misunderstand history and read into it all sorts of nonsense, almost as if history itself is some sort of magic.

We’re seeing this right now with the South Carolina Republican Primary in which people are saying that because a pattern exists, it therefore predicts what always will happen. This isn’t about the politics of that election or the campaign generally, but the absurd declaration that in the years since Reagan won it, no Republican has won the Republican presidential nomination without first winning the South Carolina primary, and so, Mitt Romney is in trouble. What a load of codswallop.

To be sure, Romney has many problems—his elitism and the fact he’s a Mormon are chief among them—but losing South Carolina is not one of his problems. What’s happened in South Carolina since 1980 is a coincidence, possibly somewhat interesting, but nothing more than that.

For the meme to be true, it would mean that all Republicans in all the other states would have to say, “gosh, Newt won South Carolina, so we have to vote for him now.” That’s just absurd. Or, it would require some sort of magic spell, because nothing else could bring about something as absurd as having Republicans in more mainstream states vote according to the whims of South Carolina Republicans.

A meme we heard earlier was that in recent elections, the winner of the Iowa Republican Caucuses didn’t often go on to win the Republican nomination, a meme the news media quickly dropped when their anointed frontrunner, Romney, won. I suppose that now that the final votes have given the victory to Santorum it means that they’ll quote it again. I saw an AP story that said, “this the first time in history a different candidate has captured a win in each of the first three presidential nominating contests,” as if that is in itself a shocking fact, as if history’s magic spell is broken.

This sort of thing isn’t unique to politics. I’ve often seen sports commentators say equally absurd things, like, “Over the past 24 years, Team A has never won a game against Team B at Big Huge Stadium”. They forget to mention that the scenario they set up covers only 4 games over that time and the fact Team A lost all four isn’t weird at all.

I know that people can come back at me with longer streaks, ones that seem to defy probability, but human behaviour doesn’t always fit neatly within the laws of probability—which, by the way, also include the possibility of the improbable happening, like long losing streaks or historic “patterns” in election wins and losses.

Superstition can be fun—I always throw a pinch of spilled salt over my shoulder (in my case, to feel a connection with my superstitious ancestors). But superstition is no way to pick someone to vote for or to “predict” future voting behaviour. It is, no matter how long the pattern goes on, nothing more than irrational superstition.

Romney may not ultimately be the Republican nominee, and Newt might not be, either. But when whoever wins that nomination steps up to the podium of their convention to make his acceptance speech, I can absolutely guarantee his doing that will have nothing to do with who won the South Carolina Republican primary over the past three decades. Yes, the past is prologue, but it’s absolutely not an indicator.

The annual increasing number

2012-01-21T23:47:00.000+13:00

Today is my birthday, always a highlight of my personal year. I first talked about that back in 2008, when I was a mere lad of 49. That means, of course, that the next year was a rather big deal—so much so, apparently, that it used up my energy for the following year’s birthday post. Last year, I kind of rounded out what I said in that first birthday post.

I was thinking this morning that, technically, I’m just one day older than I was yesterday, even though I’m now also one year older. I suppose if you want to be super technical about it, I’m neither until tomorrow, when January 21 arrives in the place I was actually born. Whatever—though I do kind of like the idea of celebrating my birthday over two days!

Tonight we had pizza for my birthday dinner. In past years we’ve had a barbecue on the weekend closest to my birthday, and I’ve always thought that was kind of exotic, since I was born, my mother told me, during a blizzard. For the first 36 years of my life, cold and snow were the backdrops to whatever celebrations I had.

Still, even as a child in the wintry Midwest of the US, a bit of summery flourish on my birthday wasn’t uncommon. I remember one year when I was quite young my mother froze corn on the cob so she could cook it for my birthday dinner (I loved corn on the cob); at that age, I was still easily led by her. As I got older and started to choose my own dinner, none had, as far as I can remember, any summery treats.

That changed when I moved to New Zealand; with its upside down seasons, my birthday was suddenly in summer. All of which is why the idea of a barbecue on my birthday seems exotic. Still, variety is good, so some years we’ve gone to a restaurant and this year it’s one of my favourite foods, something that I don’t have very often.

The pizza came as a bit of a reward. Yesterday afternoon, Nigel and I started staining the deck we’d extended last winter. We’ve been waiting months for a couple stable days of weather at the same time we were free to do the staining—a seemingly impossible combination. Today, we finished staining the new deck and part of the old. Good progress.

So, we earned that pizza. However, I actually earned it mainly by managing to make it to another birthday. And the best part? Cold pizza for breakfast. Bliss.

The image accompanying this post is a detail from a Creative Commons-licensed photo by Babymestizo, taken in Joliet, Illinois in 2010.

Gift of reading

2012-01-20T23:26:00.000+13:00

I may be a slow reader, but I nevertheless enjoy the endeavour. Getting books, and affording them, are often a challenge in New Zealand, as any American expat will tell you. Today I took one step further toward solving those dilemmas.

Tomorrow is my birthday, and Nigel (the most wonderful husband in the world, by the way) gave me my present early: An Amazon Kindle (WiFi version). I’ve barely had a chance to do more than set it up and download all my purchases to it, but I already love it!

Last September, I wrote about the Kindle arriving in New Zealand. I think it was pretty obvious that I was smitten, and yet, I didn’t think I could “justify” it when I already had the Kindle software on my i-devices. I was wrong.

Even in the box the Kindle weighed a fraction of my iPad, and weight has always been a major issue for me with e-readers. No one device can yet do everything well, and if I was buying a content-rich multimedia publication (or even a magazine or book with lots of photos), I’d use my iPad.

But for ordinary books, especially ones that may change or that are horribly expensive in New Zealand (which is nearly every book on the New York Times bestseller list…), Kindle is the best way to go.

I’m absolutely NOT abandoning traditional books; there are some that are, in my opinion, absolutely required to be traditional ink on paper. But for the rest, there’s Kindle, one of the best birthday presents ever from the best husband ever.

Familiar activism

2012-01-19T21:54:00.000+13:00

Today several US-based Internet companies blacked-out their sites in protest of the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA-PIPA), a proposed US law that would, in essence, allow US media conglomerates to censor the Internet—or even wreck it completely. Above is a screen capture of the English-language Wikipedia.

This is all very familiar. Nearly three years ago, New Zealand Internet sites blacked out in protest over Section 92A, a truly vile piece of arse-licking for the US entertainment industry backed by former Labour MP and all-around useless political hack, Judith Tizzard. As a result, the National Party-led government backed down and abandoned Tizzard’s rubbish law. The new one is slightly better, though many of us are waiting for a Labour-Green government that will repeal this bad law.

The US protest seems to have worked, too, with the Los Angeles Times reporting that three Republican co-sponsors have seen sense and withdrawn their support. President Obama has also expressed his opposition, too.

One of the things that was remarkable about this opposition is that it came from people all over the political spectrum, from the left through to the “tea party” people. It just goes to show that there are, indeed, some issues on which all freedom-loving people can agree. Even some New Zealand sites joined the protest.

There’s been a trend over the past couple decades toward concentrating power in the hands of corporations, but every once in awhile people prevail. One day, perhaps, the people will prevail once and for all.

A is for Adventure

2012-01-18T23:14:00.000+13:00

I’ve always loved change—thrived on it, even. Sure bad change, like an accident or illness can be, well, bad, but change that involves moving forward is for me always a good thing. I’ve always thought of life itself as an adventure, and have thought the same about some specific things I may have been doing.

But, are they really adventures?

Adventure is usually properly defined as some bold, exciting, unusual and probably risky activity. Life in general may fit that definition sometimes, but day-to-day life probably seldom does. And yet, some of life’s most seemingly mundane tasks can, in my opinion, still be part of a larger adventure.

For a couple years, we lived in Paeroa, a small faming service town in the Waikato. We bought an older house and did it up. The whole experience was, for us, an adventure as we lived in small-town New Zealand and took on building/renovation projects that neither of us had ever done before.

I think most of us have those kinds of adventures. We’re all probably more Huckleberry Finn than Odysseus (probably with a bit of Bill and Ted [watch the trailer] thrown in), which also goes to show that our adventures, even when not the stuff of epics, can still be interesting.

Some of us have adventures when we travel, and if you’re talking about adventure tourism, there’s probably no better place than New Zealand, a country bounding with all sorts of activities. For me, of course, moving to New Zealand was the start of an adventure, so there’s really no need for me to engage in specific activities.

And that’s kind of my point: Adventure is where we find it. Even if we don’t choose to take ten years to sail around trying to get home, what we do can still be an adventure if that’s how we look at it—and I think we should. I love the adventure in change.

What do you consider to be an adventure?

Footnote: I’ve never done an ABC Wednesday blog post before, but thought I’d try it because the discipline involved in participation kind of intrigues me. Still, I thought I’d better keep it simple for the first post, to kind of ease in slowly. We’ll see how it goes. Be sure to check out this week’s posts on other blogs.

The public domain illustration at the top of this post depicts Sherlock Holmes in "The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes" from Stand Magazine (1892).

Please explain

2012-01-18T19:52:00.000+13:00

There was an odd incident that hit the news this week: New Zealand on Air, which funds the production of television programming, will forbid voter education. That’s what the political line was and, of course, it was exaggerated—but the truth is still worrying.

NZOA funded a documentary, “Inside Child Poverty: A Special Report” for TV3’s Inside New Zealand series. TV3 scheduled the documentary for shortly before the election and the board members of NZOA became “concerned”. Board member Stephen McElrea was the first to complain about the documentary airing so close to the election, and NZOA went on to claim the concern was about its own independence and impartiality being questioned because of the documentary screening close the election. The was the dubious excuse used for the board seeking legal advice on whether it could add a clause to funding contracts forbidding the airing of documentaries on subjects “likely” to be an election issue, during the weeks of the official campaign.

This was silly on its face. Had anyone raised an eyebrow, it would most likely have been about TV3 airing the programme close the election (even though TV3’s owner, Media Works, has close ties to the National Party’s powerhouse, Stephen Joyce). I seriously doubt that anyone would question the impartiality of the funding agency any more than they’d question the impartiality of advertisers during the programme.

So, if there’s no real threat to the perception of NZ On Air’s impartiality, what’s going on? Stephen McElrea, who first complained and led the fight, is also John Key's electorate chairman. It looks as if McElrea was concerned about the documentary because he thought it was unflattering toward the National Party-led government. If so, the story about NZOA’s image was merely a distraction.

Personally, I think the political interference of the NZOA board has done far more to damage its perceived impartiality than airing the documentary ever could have done, even if the news media hadn’t been too obsessed at the time with the “tea party tape” silliness to take any notice of it. NZOA ought to stick to what it’s set up to do—funding New Zealand programming—and leave the broadcasting decisions to the broadcasters, because that’s what being impartial both means and requires.

But there was another “controversary” that requires an explanation: Apparently the husband in the spokesfamily used in the TV commercials for the Countdown supermarket chain in New Zealand looks to be a bigamist! To be honest, this is far more entertaining than any lame politicians could ever be.

Worth quoting: Andrew Sullivan

2012-01-18T10:17:00.000+13:00

I don’t think I’ve ever mentioned Andrew Sullivan on this blog, much less quoted him. I often disagree with him, sometimes strongly, but when I agree with him, he puts things far better and more strongly than I could hope to do.

So here’s an excerpt from a piece he wrote for Newsweek, “How Obama's Long Game Will Outsmart His Critics”. Read the whole thing—it’s well-stated and a must for any Obama supporter, as well as those who suspect (correctly) that Republican propaganda, like that of some progressives, isn’t entirely correct:

“[Liberals] miss, it seems to me, two vital things. The first is the simple scale of what has been accomplished on issues liberals say they care about. A depression was averted. The bail-out of the auto industry was—amazingly—successful. Even the bank bailouts have been repaid to a great extent by a recovering banking sector. The Iraq War—the issue that made Obama the nominee—has been ended on time and, vitally, with no troops left behind. Defense is being cut steadily, even as Obama has moved his own party away from a Pelosi-style reflexive defense of all federal entitlements. Under Obama, support for marriage equality and marijuana legalization has crested to record levels. Under Obama, a crucial state, New York, made marriage equality for gays an irreversible fact of American life. Gays now openly serve in the military, and the Defense of Marriage Act is dying in the courts, undefended by the Obama Justice Department. Vast government money has been poured into noncarbon energy investments, via the stimulus. Fuel-emission standards have been drastically increased. Torture was ended. Two moderately liberal women replaced men on the Supreme Court. Oh, yes, and the liberal holy grail that eluded Johnson and Carter and Clinton, nearly universal health care, has been set into law. Politifact recently noted that of 508 specific promises, a third had been fulfilled and only two have not had some action taken on them. To have done all this while simultaneously battling an economic hurricane makes Obama about as honest a follow-through artist as anyone can expect from a politician.”

Tip o’ the Hat to Joe.My.God., the comments for which are, sadly, filled with the usual supposedly progressive/liberal Obama haters who prove Sullivan’s point by dismissing, disregarding and disrespecting the progress the country has made under Obama because it doesn’t fit their mental picture of what should have been done in their perfect world, or because it wasn’t done by whoever their perfect candidate was.

Useful clarifications

2012-01-16T20:05:00.000+13:00

Update January 17: As you can see from the screenshot above, the video I posted was taken down after the cry-babies at Focus on You Own Damn Family threw a tantrum. I put it like that because although I’m not a copyright lawyer, it seems to me that the video I’d posted fell well within “fair use” since it was for purposes of education and criticism, and the rightwing does the same thing all the time, usually without attribution, never with permission. So, what FOYODF engaged in was nothing less than censorship for purely political reasons—that, and they hated that someone dared to stand up to them and their hypocrisy. I’m leaving the rest of the post as it was because the larger points are still valid.

This video improves and adds clarification to an ad run by Focus on You Own Damn Family. It adds the context that the original ad failed to include, thereby showing the rank hypocrisy of FOYODF.

The rightwing group made the commercial because—well, I’m not sure why they were running it, actually. Obviously it’s proselytising Christianity, but I’m not sure why, exactly, they’re not leaving that to expressly religious groups. What? They’re not secular? I’m shocked!

Seriously, FOYODF spun off “Family” Research Council some years back because the latter group’s expressly political (and often partisan) activity threatened the charity status of FOYODF. Since then, of course, the “F”RC has become one of the US’ leading SPLC-certified anti-gay hate groups. Most recently, the “F”RC led a Klonvocation of “Anybody But Mitt” far-right Republicans who, not surprisingly, settled on “F”RC’s own favourite candidate, Rick Santorum.

What this all boils down to, really, is this: “Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.” FOYODF ignores the good works their big piles of cash could do for people who really need help, in order to stop two consenting adults who love one another from marrying. That’s pretty sick and twisted.

And if this sounds harsh in any way, consider that this is after I invoked the two-day rule. Some criticisms just don’t deserve to be softened.

Weekend Diversion: Bookshelf stop-motion

2012-01-15T20:09:00.001+13:00

There are some people with way too much time on their hands. This is fortunate for them, because it helps capture their boundless imagination, and that’s fortunate for us because it all provides hours of distraction. Well, maybe having hours of distraction available isn’t that fortunate for us, but still.

These two unusual videos are basically animated bookshelves. The one above was posted in July of last year, the one below about a week ago. To say they’re ambitious is a bit of an understatement.

The videos, the top one in particular, reminded me of the video for OMD’s “The History of Modern, Part 1”, which I posted in February last year. Then, in the wonderful world that is YouTube, I found a short video posted five years ago that was similar in some ways to the first video. That then led to the discovery that there are a lot of videos from people who conduct tours of their bookshelves, and a few who talk about how they organise their bookshelves. I didn’t watch all those. I don’t have that much time on my hands.

Romney's delusion

2012-01-12T22:22:00.000+13:00

From the news:

"I think it’s about envy. I think it’s about class warfare. When you have a president encouraging the idea of dividing America based on the 99 percent versus one percent — and those people who have been most successful will be in the one percent — you have opened up a whole new wave of approach in this country which is entirely inconsistent with the concept of one nation under God. The American people, I believe in the final analysis, will reject it."
Mitt Romney, frontrunner for the Republican presidential nomination, in an interview.

Fresh from telling America that he likes to fire people, Mitt Romney has now underscored how far out of touch he is with the needs and concerns of the 99% of Americans who aren’t as wealthy as him. It has nothing to do with “envy”, and everything to do with a sense of being screwed over by the rich corporate elites.

The chart above (and apologies—I have no idea where it originally came from; click to embiggen) shows the growth in average after-tax income since 1979 and adjusted for inflation. What it shows is that the folks like Romney in the 1% have done spectacularly well, and the other 99% did not. The lower the incomes, the worse people did, so that the bottom 20% saw basically no income growth at all for three decades, and for two-thirds of that time they were simply trying to get back to where they were in 1979. In stark contrast, folks in the 1% like Romney never actually lost income; their income growth declined in some years, but the income itself nevertheless continued to grow, and far faster than middle income earners.

What all of this means is that average, mainstream Americans see the obscene growth in the wealth of the 1% and they see themselves fighting hard just to stay afloat and not go backwards. They see the Republicans giving the 1% tax breaks and refusing to make them pay their fair share, instead burdening ordinary, mainstream Americans with heavy taxed that hold them back.

Mitt Romney likes to fire people, and as head of vulture firm Bain Capital he did that thousands of times as he destroyed jobs—and lives. So what people feel about the rich elites in the 1% like Mitt Romney isn’t “envy”—it’s disgust and anger. And deservedly so.

Rhetoric matters

2012-01-11T22:45:00.000+13:00

On Monday, I mentioned what appeared to me to be a new tactic used by a morals crusader, namely, suggesting that the word “gay” when applied to gay people is an offensive epithet. And then I saw a related, even synergistic, attack on the word.

First a bit of background. Time was, rightwing bigots used to decry the word, declaring in basso profundo, “there’s nothing gay about them!” The somewhat less dour bigots would simply complain about how we’d “ruined a perfectly good word”.

Times change, and apart from the deviation into the youthful fad of saying “that’s so gay!” the English-speaking world pretty much moved on and accepted “gay” in its modern usage. Well, the mainstream did: Hardcore rightwingers still don’t.

And that lies at the heart of all this. Fundamentalist religionists prefer the term “homosexual” precisely because it sounds so clinical. At best, it sounds like a disease (which they think it is), or perhaps a crime (which they think it should be), but they also know that most people hear only or especially the third syllable—sex—which is what the right wants people to think about, namely, that gay people are all about sex, sex, sex.

Personally, I think this is what was at the heart of the BSA complaint I wrote about on Monday: Remember that the campaigner first claimed that the use of the word “gay” instead of “homosexual” was not objective or impartial. Most of us focussed on the bizarre bit about “gay”, used correctly, being a slur; to the rightwing, however, it would be a slur since they think there’s hardly anything worse than being gay.

So then today I saw a post on Joe.My.God. quoting from a press release by the anti-gay hate group, Illinois Family Institute. The group was complaining about a public apology issued by Chicago’s Roman Catholic cardinal, Francis George, who apologised for comparing the city’s annual Gay Pride Parade to the Ku Klux Klan. George realised, finally, he was wrong to do that (after criticism from public officials and even the conservative Chicago Tribune) and sincerely apologised.

While agreeing George never should have used the Klan analogy (which frankly surprised me), the hate group said he should have described homosexual acts as “abominable”, “soul-destroying” and “detestable”. Well, that’s nice and friendly, huh? They went on:

“Cardinal George should not use the terms ‘gay’ and ‘lesbian.’ Those terms do not merely denote same-sex attraction and volitional acts. They connote biological determinism, immutability, and an inherent morality. What other groups would Cardinal George choose to identify by their disordered inclinations and freely chosen sinful acts? Rhetoric matters.”

And there, in the last two words, we see what their problem is: Rhetoric matters. If people refer to us by the correct name, gay, that will mean accepting us as full and equal citizens, deserving of equal rights and equality under law. The word “lesbian” is, of course, every bit as clinical a word as “homosexual”, so I can only assume this is a testament to the success lesbians have had in taking back that word.

Yes, rhetoric matters. Using “homosexual” instead of “gay” is intended to dehumanise gay and lesbian people, to make language itself do the bigots work for them.

On this blog, I often have fun turning the rightwing’s rhetorical tricks back on them, writing “Christian” when referring to protestant or catholic fundamentalists, in the same way they write “gay” when they can’t avoid the word. Similarly, I sometimes use the phrase “counterfeit Christians”, turning their slur against progressive Christians back on them. Whenever I do that, I’m laughing at them and their dour seriousness. It’s probably a bit naughty, but I just can’t resist. The difference is, apparently they don’t see what jokes they are.

Instead of worrying so much about rhetoric or semantics, maybe they should try and state simply and with no religious justifications whatsoever why it is, exactly, they think gay and lesbian people should be second-class (or worse) citizens. They can’t do that because without their religious appeals, they have no argument to make.

Rhetoric matters for that, too.

Primary elections explained

2012-01-11T21:30:00.000+13:00

Here’s something for my non-American friends (and probably a few American ones, too…): In this video, my favourite YouTube explainer, C.G.P. Grey, explains how the US presidential selection process works, including the differences between caucuses and primaries, and so much more.

Long-time readers may recall that in the run up to the New Zealand elections last November, I posted several of C.G.P. Grey’s videos explaining the various election systems we were presented with as part of our referendum on MMP. They were all very helpful.

But he does so much more than explain voting systems: Recent videos have talked about the end of the world, death to pennies, the real history of Santa Claus, and so much more. I love his videos. You can check them all out on his YouTube Channel.

The Tory Trifecta

2012-01-11T10:45:00.000+13:00

A few months ago, I took advantage of the “subscribe” function in Facebook to follow the postings of rightwing Auckland Councillor George Wood, who represents my Ward. I didn’t vote for him, so I had no desire to be “friends” with him, but I nevertheless was interested in what he was doing as my representative.

What I ended up with was a window on the worldview of Tories at the local level in Auckland. I can’t say I understand them any more than I did before, but I at least appreciate how they view the world, and nowhere has that been more evident than in the strike against the Ports of Auckland.

I won’t get into the specifics of the dispute, in part because even after all these weeks, I don’t think I understand it at all—and neither do most Aucklanders. This, of course, plays into the hands of conservatives, including in the newsmedia, who can slant the story to fit their agenda. And they did.

At first, the rightwing meme was that this was all the fault of the evil labour union, whose members, they declared, are without exception lazy, grossly overpaid, belligerent, selfish and myopic. Their rhetoric exceeded reality, of course (which is a nice way of saying they often lied, exaggerated or distorted in the nature of a lie), but the average Aucklander would have no practical way of knowing that. However, mainstream Aucklanders also probably didn’t really care, being more concerned with the holidays.

Enter meme 2: It’s all Auckland Mayor Len Brown’s fault. Tories hate Mayor Brown because he’s from the centre left (reason enough, in their view), so they look for things to blame on him. In this case, they insisted he should have personally intervened to end the dispute, but the fact that he didn’t meant he was a failure. Or something (their logic was difficult to follow).

The problem for them is that when Rodney Hide and the N’Act Party set up the new Auckland, they deliberately kept assets like the port at arms length from the Council, mainly to make it easier to sell off to private foreign investors (the port is currently owned by the people of Auckland). What this means is that the structure that the conservatives themselves put in place makes it virtually impossible for any mayor of Auckland to have a role in ending a strike, except, perhaps, a largely symbolic one. So, this meme didn’t stick, either.

Enter the third rightwing meme: The port’s problems would all disappear if it was privatised: The unions would disappear, profits would skyrocket and the sun would be shining all day. Their logic is that if the port is taken away from the people of Auckland and sold off, that will make the port “better” and operate “more efficiently” (meaning, apparently, with no unions), thereby delivering higher profits. Why, it’d be Tory Magic in action!

Their agenda-driven meme has major holes, the biggest of which you could drive a port-load of container ships through: WHO owns the port has nothing to do with profitability, “efficiency” or anything else. Such things are the job of management to bring about, and they alone are accountable. In the Holy Private Sector™, if a company does poorly, no one fires the shareholders—they sack the CEO and other top executives. It’s no different with Ports of Auckland. Unhappy with its performance? Then sack the managers!

This saga shows The Tory Trifecta of memes: 1. All unions are bad/evil and must be destroyed, 2. All centre-left politicians are incompetent by virtue of being centre-left and not from the National Party, the Natural Party of Government™, and 3. All problems facing society could be solved if only everything could be flogged-off to foreign buyers.

In my brief exposure to the Tory worldview of local government, I’ve seen one or more of these memes used for any topic they may be discussing (and there have been several), but this is the first in which I’ve seen all three Tory memes. It’s been fascinating to watch.

Much as I disagree with these Tories on asset sales and their anti-union, anti-Mayor Brown posturing, I do give them one thing: They generally don’t display the unhinged ravings of commentators on newspaper websites, and that leads me to think that maybe critics of the Internet are right: It’s the anonymous nature of most comment boards that leads to the vitriol and extreme rhetoric we so often see. On Facebook, after all, people can only comment using their real name (since most Facebook users don’t seem inclined to try and get away with a “nom de web”). All of this means they’re more likely to express honestly-held opinions, even when they’re extreme—but generally not too extreme.

There’s a saying that local government in New Zealand is for politicians who aren’t smart enough to make it in Parliament. There’s another that local government politicians and political activists are made up of the “mad, sad and unemployed”. This Facebook window has shown me why those sayings persist.

Related:
Someone finally went there - the last time I talked about George Wood.
My political secret - I referred obliquely to Tory commentators in this post.

A busy year for marriage equality

2012-01-11T08:45:00.000+13:00

Above is the latest Marriage News Watch video from Matt Baume. When I posted the first video of these videos for this year, it looked like it would be a busy year in the battle for marriage equality, and this video confirms that. What struck me, though, wasn’t how much is going on, but how much of it is good news.

There’s not just news in this video, but some real examples of why marriage equality matters—like the desperate situations created when the anti-gay Republican (isn’t that phrase redundant?) Michigan governor stripped away “domestic partnership” benefits for the partners of state employees. There’s even an item about a bi-national same-sex couple getting a temporary reprieve—subject to who wins the White House in 2012.

This will be a very busy year.

A new tactic

2012-01-10T10:12:00.000+13:00

Morals campaigners are a wacky bunch under the best of circumstances; so cock-sure of their own righteous superiority that they feel they have the right to dictate to everyone else how they should live their lives. I suppose everyone needs a hobby.

Usually, the objects of the tut-tutting, finger-wagging and stern lectures are people who are not social and/or religious conservatives—the vast majority of society, in other words. And, of course, the most frequent targets of these morals crusaders are GLBT people.

A few years ago, such crusading resulted in the Broadcast Standards Authority upholding a complaint against TVNZ’s Shortland Street soap opera for the first time ever—because of a gay storyline. Complaints are often made to the Advertising Standards Authority, too, whenever anything remotely GLBT-positive is advertised.

Recently, a morals crusader used a new tactic, one I’ve never seen before, and it again involved the Broadcast Standards Authority.

Hamilton man Leo Leitch complained about a news item broadcast on TVNZ’s One News. In their Decision Number 2011-118 (dated December 20), the BSA described the news report this way:

“An item on One News, broadcast on TV One at 6pm on 13 August 2011, was introduced by a newsreader who stated, ‘Our tourism industry is getting an unexpected boost as an influx of gay couples heads across the Tasman to tie the knot. Civil unions still aren’t legally recognised in Australia but pressure’s mounting on politicians to revisit the issue.’ A reporter introduced one such couple saying, ‘They’re gay and in their eyes, very much married.’”

Leitch complained that the item breached controversial issues, accuracy, fairness and discrimination and denigration standards because, he claimed, “the item’s use of the word ‘gay’ instead of ‘homosexual’ was not objective or impartial,” and “he considered that is was akin to using the words ‘fairy’, ‘poofter’ or ‘faggot’, which ‘would not be tolerated for a moment’.”

I have never heard a morals crusader make that claim before, and I find it hard to believe anyone would—or even could—take it seriously. Fortunately, the BSA thought it was absurd, too:

“In our view, the term ‘gay’ is commonly accepted and widely used in reference to homosexuals and homosexuality. It is not a derogatory term when used in this manner, and we disagree that it is in the same realm as ‘poofter’ or ‘faggot’, as alleged by the complainant. On this occasion, the item subject to complaint was a straightforward news report, and the reporter’s use of the term did not carry any invective or make any judgement on the item’s subject matter.”

All of which is simple common sense, which any sensible person would agree with. The BSA went further.

The BSA stated that no issue of broadcast standards were raised, and pointed out that since “Section 11(a) of the Broadcasting Act 1989 allows the Authority to decline to determine a complaint which it considers to be frivolous, vexatious, or trivial,” they therefore declined to determine Leitch’s complaint “on the grounds that it was frivolous and trivial.”

What this means, basically, is that the BSA refused to even take the complaint seriously. Ouch.

This is the one area of New Zealand life where the self-righteous will attempt to assert control over the majority, but their efforts usually fail. That’s as it should be. But it’s a pity so many of them still waste other people’s time and money with silly, self-righteous moralising.

The rest of us have more important things to do—and probably real hobbies, too.

22 months of US job growth

2012-01-07T10:24:00.000+13:00

While millions of Americans are still hurting, and the US economy, like that of many countries, still has a long way to go, good news is good news.

Said the Obama campaign:

"We shared this chart with you earlier this week, and we've updated it today with new numbers from the Bureau of Labor Statistics: the economy added 212,000 private sector jobs in December, for 22 consecutive months of job growth. While the news is encouraging, we've still got a lot of work to do to strengthen the economy, and President Obama remains focused on doing everything he can to get Americans back to work, from taking We Can't Wait actions to pressuring Congress to do their jobs."

It turns out that 2011 was the best year for private-sector job growth since 2005, and the second best since 1999, as documented by Steven Benen of the Washington Monthly. That's good news, and important.

The world economy needs the US economy to grow. News like this suggests that it is, however slowly. It’s a start.

Auckland squatters

2012-01-06T23:05:00.000+13:00

It shouldn’t have been like this.

Today Nigel had a meeting in the Auckland CBD, so I went along. I thought it was a good time to check up on the squatters at Aotea Square. The few folks remaining there are in open violation of a court order.

The photo at the top is what’s left of the squatters—roughly a third of the space they formerly occupied, but with probably about the same number of people actually staying there overnight. Those brown patches in the grass in the foregound of this photo were caused by the “occupiers”. We ratepayers will have to pay to repair this—after spending tens of thousands of dollars to establish the lawns before the occupiers ruined them. And we scarcely even got the chance to enjoy them before the occupiers took them away from us.

The photo below is of the damage the occupiers caused in one of the sections they finally left after the court ordered them to do so. This view looks back, basically, toward where I shot the above photo from.

I’m a good, old-time liberal. If the “occupy” people have lost me, and they definitely have, then they have lost their reason to continue, and that means it’s way past time for them ALL to go home.

What it comes down to is this: These people claim to be protesting on behalf of “the 1 percent”. Fine. But what they forget is that the 89 percent will be the ones who will have to pay for the “protests” by the—and I’m being generous here—bottom 10 percent. The 1% will never have to pay a cent, and neither will the poorest of the poor. The burden will fall, as it always does, on the vast majority who are between the extremes. We resent that, and the “protesters” fail because they cannot or refuse or understand that simple fact.

Damaged grass is a trivial thing for legitimate protest. But I don’t know a single mainstream Aucklander who sees the “occupy” people as in any way legitimate protesters. Instead, they are seen as spoiled, self-centred, naive and expecting to get a free ride through life with hardworking people paying for it. People who have to struggle to make ends meet really aren’t terribly interested in the self-important pontifications of a spoiled subset of this city.

And that, ultimately, is the worst thing of all: The people who call themselves protesters could have engaged all those shut-out by the ruling elites, they could have built a leftist movement that very well might have moved governments. Instead, they have alienated the very people who would be their support and natural allies, and in so doing have destroyed any chance for a broad-based leftist force. They have utterly failed, and they’re the only ones who don’t seem to know that.

Auckland’s “occupy” “protestors” have nothing in common with their American counterparts—the issues there are nothing like they are here, the objectives are totally different, and there is pretty much zero public support here. The vast majority of Aucklanders see them only as squatters—who we, the majority, have to pay for.

It shouldn’t have been like this.

Comedians

2012-01-06T16:01:00.000+13:00

Everybody loves comedians, don’t they? The funny ones, not the bad ones. And not clowns— some people are frightened of clowns. No, I mean the ones who are actually funny.

Like the US’ Republican politicians, pundits and preachers.

They say some of the funniest things I’ve ever heard! Take the latest one from those Republican politicians, pundits and preachers, the one about how President Obama is a “dictator” because he’s made “unprecedented” recess appointments to get around Republican obstructionism. They joke that it’s unconstitutional, which they know is funny because their deliberate defiance of their Constitutional duty really is unprecedented, and because the fact that their doing this in order to block the Executive Branch means their actions really are unconstitutional, and also because lots of presidents have made loads of recess appointments.

Wait, what? They meant that seriously? Hm, perhaps history can help us here:

President William J. Clinton made 139 recess appointments, 95 to full-time positions.
President George W. Bush made 171 recess appointments, of which 99 were to full-time positions.
President Barack Obama had made 28 recess appointments as of December 8, 2011, all to full-time positions.

Neither the US Constitution nor court rulings have specified how long the Senate must be in recess before a president can make a recess appointment. President Obama has made far fewer recess appointments than either of his two predecessors. So, there’s nothing even remotely “unprecedented” or “unconstitutional” about President Obama’s actions and saying so is a joke—well, apparently, it’s actually just a routine Republican lie.

And that’s an example of why I have zero respect for those Republican politicians, pundits and preachers: They say bald-faced, outright lies and think no one will bother to check. It’s bad enough that they scream whenever anyone has the audacity to quote their own crazy words back at them verbatim, but to think we’ll also ignore historical facts that they lied about or distorted is far too contemptuous of mainstream Americans to let them get away with it.

Republican politicians, pundits and preachers are serious even when they spout utter nonsense, and that makes them and their party a huge joke. The sad and scary part is that we must take them seriously instead of laughing them out of office.

Maybe they’re not really such great comedians after all.

The Canada-cy announcement

2012-01-06T08:44:00.000+13:00

This video is a joke. I shouldn’t have to say that, but some Americans don’t seem to get humour that pokes at them. Or, maybe they don’t choose to. In any case, I feel I need to point that out because one never knows who will find a post through a search. For the record, this video also takes a fair few swipes at Canada, too.

This video is a satirical look at the upcoming US elections and offers an alternative option: Let Canada run the US: “Canada Party. America, but better.” I thought it was really funny, because of the fun it pokes at both countries.

Tip o’ the Hat to Joe.My.God.

Nor long remembered

2012-01-05T22:04:00.001+13:00

A couple days ago, I had one of those Internet spirals: I went looking for one thing, which led me to another and on to another and—well, you know that goes: Too much time sucked into the Intertubes.

In this case, I was looking at the history of the town where I was born. That got me thinking about the larger issue of personal history and what we leave behind.

I was looking at big, beautiful Victorian houses that are now are gone, that led me to a couple other places until I ended up searching newspaper archives held by the local museum. I found that there were stories about my parents, one where my sister was mentioned and one where I was. These weren’t the stories themselves, just the catalogue numbers one could use to possibly order the photos for re-use in some way. It was all a bit vague.

All of that got me to thinking about what traces we leave behind. I don’t mean the specific things we leave behind—friends, family, maybe a tangible thing like a building, a business, whatever.

Instead, I’m talking about our broader stories. When I looked at those old houses, I was struck about how little they knew about them, and what wasn’t there: Who lived there? What were their stories?

It’s that way for most of us: Unless we’re famous or notorious, and sometimes even if we are, the harsh reality is that most people will never know anything about us. Here’s an example. During my years as a political activist, I did all sorts of things, engaged with all sorts of elected officials, but most of that work is stuff “the world will little note, nor long remember”. It doesn’t bother me that the things I did are unlikely to be even a footnote because I did it for the results, not the recognition. Besides, most of us are in basically the same situation with our life stories.

However, we bloggers have a great opportunity to document history and stories that would never be published normally, whether our own or those of others, and then to put them in a place where other people can find them. I think there are people who might like to know about some of those smaller stories, so I like seeing bloggers talk about such things.

I’ve already done some of that on this blog, and I’m going to continue doing it. That may even include documenting some of my activist past, something I’ve never really done before. If nothing else, I suppose it’ll give me some stuff to post about and, for a blogger, that’s reason enough, isn’t it?

Meme of the week: Birth Song

2012-01-05T20:45:00.000+13:00

I don’t often to Internet memes, but this one was kind of fun. It goes like this:

1) Find the #1 single the week you were born.
2) Find it on YouTube.
3) Post without shame.

I actually quite like this song, so there’s certainly no shame involved—although the #1 song before this one was “The Chipmunk Song”, which might have given me some pause.

If you want to do the meme, my suggestion is to Google “number one pop songs month year”, changing the month and year to when you were born; that’s easier than searching for the specific week because pop charts may end on different dates.

Anyway, just a bit of fun for this summer day.

Readin’ and writin’ stuff

2012-01-03T21:21:00.000+13:00

Summer is a time for kicking back and relaxing, and I’m no different. While I’ve done okay with publishing new posts on this blog so far (on day three of this new year), I bet there will inevitably be days when, for whatever reason, I just don’t have anything.

On such days, which are especially likely in summer, I’ll probably post YouTube videos or other links, as I’ve done in the past. This year, though, I also hope to write a few “evergreen” posts, ones with no time sensitivity at all that I can publish during my frequent busy times, or on those days when I’m just “not feeling it”. Roger Green recommended that idea to me.

I was thinking yesterday about one thing I simply don’t get: Folks who never interact with others on blogs, Twitter, Google+ or Facebook, places where I’ve commented on posts, but the person has never commented back, not to me or anyone else. What’s the point? A one-sided lecture may or may not be interesting, but it seems to me that the whole point of all this social media is that it’s social—people having conversations with each other, sharing ideas, information, etc.

We all get busy. I don’t always reply to comments on this blog, and I don’t know any blogger who responds all the time (those with huge numbers of comments obviously can’t reply much at all). On my podcast site, I almost never reply in writing to comments (I do that on the podcast itself). It’s not the frequency of the interaction I’m talking about, but the seeming disinterest in any interaction.

Does anybody else ever feel “what’s the point?” when they see a blogger, etc., who never responds? I promise that, this time at least, if you comment, I’ll reply.

As for reading, I really, really want to be a better reader this year, and actually finish a few books. I’ve already talked a few times about being a slow reader, but it doesn’t help that I simply don’t make the time for it.

And speaking of reading, check out my friend Tim Drake’s fairly new blog, TEDrake Book Blog, where he offers “mini-book reviews and recommendations”. I particularly like it because he reads and comments on books I’d probably never even hear of otherwise (personal favourites: The mini-reviews of books that pleasantly surprised him).

Pardon me for now. I’m off to read a chapter or two before bed.

First Marriage News Watch for 2012

2012-01-03T20:21:00.000+13:00

Here’s the latest Marriage News Watch from Matt Baume, the first for 2012. Turns out, there’s already been a lot happening in the march toward marriage equality.

My political secret

2012-01-02T19:05:00.000+13:00

I’ll let you in on a little secret: I don’t actually dislike conservatives. In fact, in the specific, I get on quite well with conservative people. But when you talk about conservatives in the abstract, well, that’s when things get a little more complicated.

First complication: Are we talking USA or New Zealand? They’re very different. Similarly, voters and politicians are very different as well. This is why I try not to make blanket statements about “conservatives”, but instead try to be specific about what I’m talking about.

Take voters, for example. Conservative voters in the US confuse me. They must have huge cognitive dissonance to allow them to not only vote for politicians who will actively and openly work against their best interests, but to also think that sort of self-defeating voting is the right—even righteous—thing to do. Pretty weird, it seems to me. But, then, true conservative voters are a minority in the US—most are nearer the centre.

In New Zealand, only a handful of voters are dyed-in-the-wool (sometimes, it seems, literally…) conservative voters. Most New Zealanders who vote for conservative government are centrists simply voting for change. Then, when a conservative government goes to far—as they always do—Kiwis shift left. So, while I may disagree with their behaviour, there’s at least some level of rationality to their voting behaviour, unlike their conservative American cousins.

Conservative politicians in the two countries couldn’t be more different: Those in America are the champions of theocracy, oligarchy or both. In New Zealand, they tend mostly to champion the oligarchs, not all of whom in New Zealand are to be found among the super-rich. In NZ, the rest are just “go slow” advocates of little or no change (our only theocratic politicians are to be found outside of elective office, usually in pressure groups). I have little or no common ground with American conservative politicians, but there’s ample room for compromise with New Zealand’s elected conservative politicians. That’s probably the biggest difference of all.

So while US conservative politicians may rile me up (sometimes greatly), New Zealand’s conservatives more often than not just make me laugh at them (unless they’re really in a position of power, in which case they, too, can rile me up). What tends to make me laugh the most is the earnestness of their arrogant “born to rule” attitude—so many of them obviously truly believe that National is the “natural party of government”, the same as many Republicans in the US feel about their party. In both cases, it’s an unthinking, emotional response, largely irrational and completely uncritical (their party can never do anything wrong).

I’m fully aware that the centre-left can have politicians with the same hubris, but there’s one important difference between conservatives and liberals. Tell them they’re wrong, and they’ll both argue with you. But while the rightwinger will never back down, the true liberal will go away and think seriously about it all, wondering if, at least on some level, their critic may be right. I’ve yet to meet a partisan conservative who’s capable of that kind of introspection.

And that’s why I don’t dislike conservatives, elective or otherwise. Good liberal that I am, I always wonder if they might be right about something. So far, however, I’ve seldom found that to be the case.

But I guess that’s no secret, is it?

An experiment

2012-01-01T23:13:00.000+13:00

I’ve added a left-hand sidebar to this blog with “badges” for five of my main subject areas, using the labels (also known as tags) I’ve used to describe them: Life in NZ, New Zealand (which is general information), NZ Politics, Expat/Expatriate and US Politics. These badges do the same thing as choosing the label/tag from the drop-down list on my right-hand sidebar, but it only takes one click.

The idea is to make it easier and quicker for readers to get to some of my main subject areas, without having to wade through posts that don’t interest them. While there’s sometimes overlap (because most posts have multiple labels/tags), all posts with a certain label are at least loosely connected.

I originally came up this about the same time I considered spinning off US politics onto a separate blog. I realised that wasn’t the only subject area that didn’t necessarily fit well with others, and I thought maybe a visual badge for a subject area could help me get around that somewhat, making it easier for visitors to stick with the subjects they’re interested in.

Another idea I’d considered is putting the subject links on a separate page, but that would require readers to make at least two clicks. On the other hand, I could annotate those quick links to be more informative about what they are, something that’s difficult to do on sidebars without making it crowded and muddled. An advantage of the sidebar over a separate page is that sidebars appear no matter what page a reader is on, while a separate page is just that one page.

I’m going to leave the badges and left-hand sidebar throughout January as an experiment. If there are labels you think should be there, let me know in the comments to this post, or email me. Similarly, if you hate them, prefer the page idea or think the whole thing is unnecessary, feel free to tell me that, too.

At the moment, this is still just an experiment.

Surprise television

2012-01-01T22:07:00.001+13:00

Our New Year’s Eve was surprisingly sedate: Homemade burgers on the barbecue, some drinks—and a long wait for midnight. Turns out, most of us were a bit dubious about the effort, but most of us persevered.

I don’t think I’ve ever missed a New Year’s Eve midnight since I was a kid and was first allowed to stay up. This year, our young nieces were being allowed to stay up and ring in the New Year, so it seemed especially important to make it all the way to midnight.

Most years, we’ve watched something local on television, usually something bad, in the lead-up to midnight. However, we were surprised to find that there was nothing on.

I must admit a bias: I grew up with a New Year’s Eve countdown on television as far back as I can remember, right up until I left the US. I know that they’re still being televised.

So imagine my surprise at the spotty track record of television in New Zealand: Some years nothing, other years really bad entertainment programmes. This year was a nothing year—in oh, so many ways…

Here’s a rundown of the free-to-air channels:

TV One, our most-watched free-to-air channel, showed a Dave Dobbyn fundraising concert held after a flood ravaged a town in 2005. After that, they showed the 1989 James Bond film, Licence to Kill. Yes, seriously.

TV2 showed Hairspray followed by Dreamgirls.

TV3 had the 3,869,485th showing of Apollo 13.

Prime is basically just Sky TV’s overflow channel, and really has no original programming (unless you count the news, which is part Australia’s Sky News, so I don’t). I don’t remember what was on Maori TV, but it didn’t sound relevant.

Sky TV’s pay channels were no better. The closest was some sort of video countdown on “MTV Classic” (so-named because it actually shows music videos; funny idea, that…), but we found it loud and unwatchable as well as automated.

So, we watched the last 1½ episodes in the Glee marathon on Sky’s “Vibe” channel (which shows reruns of shows that have already been on free-to-air channels). Then, we switched over to the TV One Dave Dobbyn concert for the last song. As the final credits rolled, our clocks already showed midnight, as did the Sky decoder.

A big “10” popped up on the screen, followed by the other numbers in order until “1” (and it seemed slightly faster than 10 seconds to me…). Then, the screen went black, with Licence to Kill starting immediately afterward. We turned the TV off.

Now obviously this isn’t a big drama, and if we’d bothered to check in advance, we’d have known there was nothing on and we could have organised our own countdown. It’s just that it was such a surprise—well, first, that there was really nothing on relating to New Year’s Eve, and second, that what they did have on was so lame. Live and learn, I guess.

We were all in bed by 12:19, hearing the sounds of other people’s parties nearby. By that point, I know I really didn’t care about that.

And that was our New Year’s Eve.

Happy 2012

2012-01-01T00:01:00.000+13:00

It's now 2012 in New Zealand, so, Happy New Year!

Visual reminders

2011-12-31T20:30:00.000+13:00

Here are two videos, each presenting quick visual reviews of what was a remarkable year.

The video above, “2011: The Year In 100 Seconds”, is from Talking Points Memo. They do a series of these “in 100 seconds” videos to give a quick visual tour of a subject. They’re available on their tmptv Channel on YouTube.

The video below is from Google Zeitgeist. In a lot of ways, it seems like just an extended commercial for Google products—but when you consider the role those products played in the events shown (Google search and YouTube in particular), it seems strangely appropriate. I commented on the Google Zeitgeist for New Zealand a couple weeks ago.

I like both these videos, for somewhat different reasons, so I decided to post them both. But the thing I like best in both of them is the final line in Google’s video: We made it. Any time we can say that at the end of the year, it is, everything else aside, a very good thing, indeed.

Let’s see what we can do with 2012.

Changing things

2011-12-31T17:42:00.000+13:00

I like change. I think it’s exciting. So the one time of year when change is celebrated—New Year’s—is probably my favourite time of all. That makes it an especially good time for me to make changes.

A couple days ago, I mentioned changes, including some personal ones I may or may not talk about on this blog. Here now are the other changes:

I’ll begin with an epiphany I had recently: Politics is bad for me. Every time there’s an election, and things don’t go the way I want, even when I know in advance that’s what will happen, it gets me down. That’s not helpful. So, I’m re-evaluating how I approach politics both on this blog and in life.

Earlier this year, I talked about my “two-day rule”, a deliberate delay in posting about things that rile me up. This has been very helpful; in fact, quite a few would-be angry rants never even made it to rough-draft stage. I’m now applying that to electoral politics, too.

This means that I’ll seldom comment immediately about specific political incidents that anger me, so, more often than not, I won’t say anything at all. With luck, I’ll be more thoughtful and less emotive on the things I do comment on. We’ll see. But if that doesn’t work, I may yet split off US politics onto a separate blog, as I talked about doing last year (that blog still exists, but is set to private).

Related to that, I’ve also decided against getting personally involved in electoral politics apart, maybe, from being a financial member of the Labour Party again. This is actually a pro-Labour position: It’s time younger people took over the party from the old guard, and I’m as old or older than them. It’s because I want the centre-left to succeed that I’m staying out of the way.

However, this also means I’ll be freer to comment on New Zealand politics when I’m not feeling obligated to promote Labour, even when I think they’re wrong (and sooner or later, I probably will). My independence is important to me.

And that brings me to the next area of changes: This blog.

In the New Year, I’ll be linking this blog with my Google Profile, which means that it’ll be associated with my real name (and all the other Google products, like Google+ and YouTube). This actually isn’t a big deal, but it’s important.

When I started blogging, I wasn’t sure how hostile people might be, so I used my “brand” as an online identity. My intention was to maintain some distance, and also to reinforce the “AmeriNZ” brand. In the years since, I’ve been using my real name for most other things—for example, it’s on my podcast site and I mention it when I’m on Nigel’s “The Third Colony” show on FarpointRadio.com. This blog was the main hold-out.

I didn’t change it in part because of the history built-up over five years, but, if I’m truly honest, I left it alone mostly out of laziness. However, during that time I’ve seen politicians, pundits and even mainstream journalists attack what they like to call “anonymous bloggers”. While I’m arguably not truly anonymous because of all those linked places where I use my real name, there nevertheless is an inconsistency there.

I’m proud of much of what I’ve published on this blog, and there are only a few posts I could do without. But I stand behind all of them, even the ones where I’ve changed my mind or that perhaps I could’ve phrased better. That being the case, standing behind them with my real name is the only logical and intellectually honest thing to do.

The name “AmeriNZ” will remain, of course: I’ve put a lot of effort into building that as my personal “brand” over the years. But it will be just that—my personal brand—and I am the person behind the brand.

So that’s it: The main changes I’ve planned for the New Year. That is, that’s it until I come up with more. I really do like change.

The road from Damascus

2011-12-31T10:08:00.000+13:00

Recently, my blogging friend Roger Green took on a question I asked about irreligiosity (yes, I know that, technically, that’s not a word, but I think it should be). It was a fascinating post.

What struck me about it, though, were the similarities in our journeys. While his carried him back to Christianity, mine took me in the opposite direction—the road from Damascus, so to speak. So this post is, in a sense, a response to Roger’s.

I should begin at the beginning: I was, quite literally, brought up in the church, as I’ve mentioned before. My first decade (just under) was spent living next door to the church where my dad was the pastor. I was baptised there by my grandfather, also a Lutheran minister, who screwed up my name; maybe that should have been an early sign of things to come.

Just after Christmas when I was nine (I turned ten the next month), my family moved to a new town so my dad could take up a new position as pastor at another church. I was confirmed in that church and eventually taught Sunday School and was in charge of the acolytes (the kids who assisted at services—lighting and extinguishing candles, collecting empty communion glasses, those sorts of things). As a side point, I was in charge when for the first time girls were allowed to be acolytes; I was proud of that.

My dad had been diagnosed with diabetes toward the end of those years, and that and other problems led him to take early retirement for health reasons. The truth is, he’d also had enough of the crap of some of the parishioners who were in some cases going out of their way to make his life hell. There were a large number of people in that church who were, by any reckoning, “Christian” in name only. I was probably naive, but I never really knew such a critter existed until I saw it for myself at that church.

It was probably that experience that first made me pull the brakes a bit. At university, I attended the local Lutheran church a couple times, but they were extremely cold—even hostile—and not merely reserved as Lutherans so often are. The problem was that I was a university student and they were townies. The two did not mix. So, I gave up.

During my last full year, I experienced anti-gay discrimination for the first time, and at the hands of the religious. By that time I was part of what was then called the Gay People’s Union at my university, and we moved our meetings off campus (just) to the Methodist Student Union. This was a more comfortable venue for some of our more deeply closeted folks.

After we’d been meeting there for some time, the board of the facility expressed discomfort with us being there. They appointed a committee to talk to us before they made a decision, and somehow I found myself agreeing to meet with a relatively young member of their organisation (late 20s/early 30s, I’d guess). I had been out as a gay man only at most a few weeks (months at most) at this point, and mostly in the context of my university, but I found myself defending homosexuality as normal and natural and defending it as not being “sinful” or “against god”.

I apparently wasn’t very persuasive because the Methodists kicked us out. That was perfectly legal, of course: At that time, only the Illinois cities of Urbana, Champaign and Evanston banned anti-gay discrimination. The state wouldn’t follow suit for a generation. Still, I didn’t hold any real rancour against the Methodists, probably because I expected that kind of treatment from mainstream churches like them.

After university, I moved to Chicago to be somewhere where I could feel free and safe. I found a couple Lutheran churches that were “Reconciled in Christ”, which meant they welcomed gay people. And yet, neither church made me feel particularly welcome. So, I tried the gay Lutheran group, “Lutherans Concerned” (and that is such a Lutheran name!), along with other gay religious groups. They all left me cold, too, and I realised that whatever warmth I’d once had from religion was gone.

And that was it. There was no dramatic or sudden “de-conversion”, no crisis of faith, no dabbling with other religions—no event of any kind. For me, religion just faded away from disinterest. Meanwhile, my intellectual curiosity led me to read widely on religion, and much of that led me to doubt the historical accuracy of much of what I’d been taught and held to be true.

At the same time, the rightwing began to seize the name “Christian” only for themselves, and some Christian churches became openly embroiled in politics, fighting science, reason and even rationality (not to mention freedom and liberty). What little use I had for organised religion was killed off by the blatantly partisan and theocratic hubris of those people.

So today, I’m a strong secularist and usually refer to myself as a “non-theist”, which for me means that, based on the preponderance of evidence, there’s probably no god. I don’t consider myself an atheist, in part because I probably have more in common with agnostics, and because I’m open to being proven wrong through evidence. I’m certainly not an anti-theist, with the anti-religion fervour that implies (some atheists and anti-theists are inarguably aggressively anti-religion, and they annoy me as much as fundamentalist religionists do).

As I often feel compelled to say, I have no problem with people having religious beliefs or expressing them. However, I have a huge problem with them trying to force their religious beliefs on me. Similarly, because I don’t share their religious beliefs, I resent it when they try and force me to take part in a prayer or other religious ceremony or service in a public and secular setting, like a government meeting. To me, that makes no more sense than if we were all required to sing the national anthem of Benin before a public meeting here in New Zealand: That would be not only inappropriate, it would also be irrelevant and more than a little absurd.

In recent years, I’ve become a bit stronger in my language when discussing religion, and that’s largely because I’m just not willing to let the rightwing get away with their bullshit anymore. But in the past year or so, I’ve also called out the people who, in my opinion, are true Christians. Sometimes an outsider sees things those within cannot, and because of my background, starting with a childhood spent in the church, I consider myself amply equipped to form and express such opinions. Your opinion on that may vary.

The bottom line is that I’m not anti-religion, even though I have no use for it and often find organised religion to be a troublemaker or even my adversary. Similarly, I’m certainly not anti-Christian, and I can’t resist adding: Some of my best friends are Christian. Actually, that’s really true—why would I attack my friends?

I’ve never talked about all this on my blog or my podcast before, though I’ve mentioned bits and pieces. Truth is, I’ve always avoided it due to the unpopularity of the irreligious. It’s taken me several days to put this post together. But two things made me persist: First, this blog has been growing over the past year, and I believe honesty must be its foundation. I also admired Roger’s story in reply to my question, and I wanted to share mine, and how someone could end up heading in the opposite direction on that Damascus Road.

For anyone not steeped in Christian gospels (or mythology, if you prefer…), my mention of the Damascus Road is alluding to the story of the conversion of Saul of Tarsus, who became Paul the Apostle.

Remembering birthdays

2011-12-30T17:48:00.001+13:00

Today would have been my mother’s 95th birthday. It’s been on my mind for days, and this particular one arrives in a period during which both my parents have been on my mind a lot. These days, that’s kind of unusual.

Three years ago, I wrote about my mother’s birthday, how she felt about it and how I tried to respond to that. I didn’t specify back then, but I was mainly talking about how I acted when I was a kid. By the time I became a teenager, I’m not sure I was as thoughtful or concerned; I wish I could remember better, but a lot of those years are now a bit blurry.

The problem is arithmetic: Both my parents have been dead a very long time (I’ve never been a fan of euphemisms about death, like “passed away”, etc.; I think they just screw up our attitudes toward the inevitable end of life). I’ve lived some three decades without them, after only about two with them, so the number of years, combined with my own aging, means that memory fades, and the times I think about either one of them become rarer.

Last month, however, I was missing my parents, and the specific cause was, oddly enough, New Zealand’s election.

I remembered talking a lot with my parents, my mother in particular (at least until what turned out to be the final years of my father’s life), and as I got older those conversations were often about political issues or electoral campaigns. For example, I tried to convince my mother to stop buying Florida orange juice because their spokeswoman at the time was Anita Bryant, who was in the midst of her anti-gay hate crusade (I was a closeted teen at the time). My mother didn’t join the boycott because my father, recently diagnosed with diabetes, was on a strict diet and orange juice was part of it; I think she thought avoiding one state’s product was too difficult with all the other things she had to take into account, and I didn’t press the point.

However, neither my mother nor father ever dismissed what I had to say, or told me to be quiet, even though I had far less life experience than they did, and very little of my own. If they ever thought that I was naive or immature or my views simplistic, they never said so, even though some of my views had to be one or all of those things at least sometimes.

I eventually realised that by encouraging me to think, to discuss and to debate, they nurtured my growing interest in all things political, something that would lead first to my political activism and, ultimately, to this blog, my podcasting and continuing discussions.

Still, while I miss being able to discuss things with my parents, I’m grateful to them that I have the passion to talk about political things. Politics is part of who I am; clearly my parents recognised that when I was still quite young. No wonder I miss them.

So, today is my mother’s birthday and I’m talking about the gifts I got from her. That’s because I obviously can’t give her gifts anymore, so my remembering and noting what she gave me is the best I can do.

So, happy birthday mom—and thanks for the gifts.

Garth riddance

2011-12-29T23:29:00.000+13:00

Serial plagiarist Garth George has finally penned his last column for Granny Herald. It’s way past time.

Garth is a curmudgeon’s curmudgeon, often taking the negative viewpoint, apparently, just because it is negative. If not, it sure seemed that way.

Garth was anti-women, anti-gay—in fact, he was against anything that didn’t smack of a 1950s rigid white, Christian, male-centred world. The world moved on, but Garth never did. He alluded to that in his (thankfully) final column for the Herald, where he allowed that he wrote “from a standpoint at odds with that generally accepted by the populace.” In other words, he was hopelessly out of touch. No wonder the Herald fired him.

That final column also bemoaned the fact that modern journalists and news photographers don’t wear a suit and tie. That he should focus squarely on attire, not ability, and the attire of men alone, says pretty much all that needs to be said about how out of it Garth had become.

What was most offensive about his last column—and nearly every column had something offensive—was his talk about inequality as if it was only about economics. Garth tried to perpetuate legal inequality in New Zealand and was quite proud to do so—there is no other possible interpretation of his treating women like children in reproductive choice or his long anti-gay record.

Sadly, Garth will continue to have columns in a couple of the Herald’s provincial papers. The good news is that it’ll be off the main Herald website, the bad news is that provincial New Zealand will still be subjected to his sexist, homophobic and christofascist bile. With luck, this will only be temporary, a way to ease him out without summarily firing him, no matter how much he deserves it.

Still, at least Auckland and the parts if the country that read the Herald are rid of this loathsome troglodyte. Having him off the Herald website will spare New Zealand international embarrassment, which is also good.

To sum up, I will not miss his columns at all. Good riddance to bad rubbish.

Related: Dangerous Garth

2011 Marriage Equality Year in Review

2011-12-29T23:03:00.000+13:00

In this video, Matt Baume of the American Foundation for Equal Rights—who are leading the fight to have California’s Proposition 8 declared unconstitutional—lays out what was a busy year in the fight for marriage equality. And it certainly was a busy year.

The thing that struck me is how the momentum of the fight has clearly shifted in our direction, further evidence of which can be found in the increasingly shrill and strident tone of our opponents. The fact that polls are now in our favour bodes well for the future, and our success will come sooner, rather than later.

I think the struggle in Australia is a long way from success, however. The move by the Australian Labor Party to endorse marriage equality will go nowhere as long as the anti-gay Julia Gillard is Prime Minister or if Tony Abbott defeats her and the ALP in the next election as everyone expects. It will take a true Labor Prime Minister—or a Greens Prime Minister—for marriage equality to happen in Australia.

Meanwhile, here in New Zealand, we have only one party—the Greens—who have full marriage equality as party policy. In the last election, the New Zealand Labour Party promised a “review” of relationship laws, but only a partisan could see that as being anything other than small movement in the right direction.

So, in a sense, New Zealand is behind Australia on full marriage equality because our Labour Party doesn’t yet back full equality. It’s not yet known if the new Labour Leader, David Shearer, supports equality or not. For progress to be made, both the party and its leader must be pro-equality, and they must be in government. Yes, New Zealand has civil unions and Australia doesn’t, but separate is never equal.

Still, I like the optimism of this video, the assuredness that victory is inevitable. That’s what I believe, too.

A question on irreligiosity

2011-12-28T22:28:00.000+13:00

My friend Roger Green periodically asks for questions on his blog. It’s a bit like “Formspring” meets the real world. In any event, he invites readers to ask him anything, so, I did—the gist is, I asked how he deals with the irreligious.

Let me cut to the chase: Roger says that if we say of him, “he’s not so bad, for a Christian” that wouldn’t be a bad thing. In my opinion, as the son and grandson of Lutheran preachers, and now as a former Christian and non-theist, I say Roger is among the most Christian people I have ever encountered. When I imagine people who may yet rescue Christianity from the rightwing political drones who have captured it in the USA and elsewhere, Roger is the sort of person who I imagine may yet do it.

I strongly urge folks read Roger’s response, because it’s masterful, because it lays out completely where a non-troglodyte Christian is, and because he’s a great guy. I cannot recommend the post—or Roger—highly enough.

Hands down

2011-12-28T17:40:00.002+13:00

When I was an adolescent, guys’ hands fascinated me. Not in a creepy “there’s a website for that” kind of way, but in more of an aesthetic way. I blame reading.

I read the start of John Gunther’s Death Be Not Proud, where he went on and on about how beautiful his son’s hands were. Okay, that I thought was a little creepy, but it did make me notice other guys' hands.

I noticed how boyish younger guys’ (like me at the time) hands were, but older boys had blood vessels visible, probably the bones of their hands, too. I wanted mine to be like that, in the way that a boy wants to be a man, not a kid.

I eventually got there, and the fascination ended. Then, years later, I started worrying about dry skin. Yep—getting older. That’s what made me remember all this, actually: I needed to buy moisturiser to deal with the leathery skin I was seeing on my hands.

It’s not something I ever anticipated, though I probably should have: I remember my mother using moisturiser all the time, my dad occasionally, usually in winter. I should have realised it was my destiny, but I didn’t.

It’s turned out, of course, that there are a lot of things about getting older I didn’t know about and, like finding the right moisturiser, I’ve muddled my way through those, too. Maybe that’s how most people get through the changes brought about by aging.

Next year, I have to get serious about looking after myself as I just couldn’t seem to manage this year. That’s not some sort of New Year’s Resolution (because I don’t believe in those), but rather more of a fact.

I don’t know how much of that effort I’ll share on this blog, mostly because I don’t want to bore anyone, but it does occur to me that there may be readers who are slightly younger than me who are just starting to experience some of these—What? Issues?—and wouldn’t mind the advice (or a heads-up to avoid my failures, which, come to think of it, is probably a more accurate way to put it). We’ll see.

But those changes, no matter how vital they may to me personally, are only some of what I’ll be up to in the New Year. As this year closes out, I’ll talk about some of those other changes here on this blog, because they will affect it (actually, there will be a few blog-specific changes, too).

For now, the important thing is that, for me, change is a good thing. Hands down.

Holiday (observed)

2011-12-27T22:07:00.000+13:00

Today is Boxing Day (observed) because Christmas was on Sunday and its legal observance was transferred to Monday, which would have been Boxing Day, so its observance is today. Got that?

Actually, it’s simple: Whenever Christmas Day, Boxing Day, New Year’s Day or January 2 fall on a weekend, the statutory holiday is moved to the following Monday and also Tuesday (if needed). And yet the trading bans—which prohibit most commercial activities, including TV commercials—on Christmas Day, Good Friday, Easter Sunday and Anzac Day morning, don’t move. Okay, that bit gets confusing.

In New Zealand, Boxing Day is really nothing more than a day to go shopping (we didn’t go yesterday, but went today instead; we survived). Most big retailers have a “Boxing Day Sale” which lasts until New Year, when they begin—surprise!—New Year’s Sales. Still, the day (or two) after Christmas is traditionally one (or two…) of the biggest trading days retailers have all year.

I’m often asked if I think it’s weird having Christmas in summer, and that question comes from people who have it in winter—usually a real, icky winter of the sort that I left behind. People from warmer climates in the Northern Hemisphere don’t think mild Christmas holidays are so weird.

At any rate, the question has two answers. First, no: After 17 summertime Christmases in New Zealand, that seems normal to me. But the longer answer is that when I first moved to this country, it all seemed weird, not at all Christmasy—in fact, probably un-Christmasy. On the other hand, it also seemed a bit exotic, hot weather and barbecues at Christmas.

So, no, I don’t think having Christmas in summer is weird. In fact, I like it.

Boxing Day, on the other hand, with its uncertain etymology, seems to me a little weird as a holiday. I like the sales, though, and I like the assured day off, so it's definitely a holiday observed by me.

Keeping friends closer

2011-12-27T18:53:00.000+13:00

There’s that old expression, “keep your friends close and your enemies closer.” In politics, that often means doing deals with one’s enemies to keep them from causing trouble. But what about when your “friends” are sometimes the biggest threat?

After the election, John Key stitched-up deals with the lone MP from the Act “Party”, John Banks, and the lone MP from the United Future “Party”, along with the 3 MPs left in the Maori Party Caucus. He needed to do deals since, with only 59 seats, he needed three more seats in order to form government.

John Banks is an ex-National Party MP and former National government cabinet minister. He’s a Nat through and through, so I predict that sometime in the next three years he’ll defect to the National Party—unless some other former National Party “leader” steps forward to “save” the party again. Whatever happens, Banks’ will be John Key’s poodle—safe and reliable.

The same is true with Peter Dunne. The conventional wisdom often repeated by pundits is that Dunne is a Nat, but avoids joining the party because his wife is Labour. His support is almost as rock-solid as Banks, though he’s been known to dig his heals in sometimes.

The Maori Party’s natural home is in coalition with National because they are a conservative party. That’s a problem for them, because Maori voters are not typically supporters of National. If Hone Harawera’s Mana Party ever becomes more than a one-man band or, far more likely, Labour gets its act together, the Maori Party faces extinction, particularly with both its co-leaders leaving next election. Because their hopes for survival will rest on mostly untested candidates, the party isn’t a reliable partner for Key, no matter how friendly and pro-National they may be.

Things aren’t so very different on the left, with the two main parties often seeming to forget that one day they’ll probably need each other to form government. During the election campaign, there was far too much sniping between Labour and the Greens over "stealing" policies. It seems to me a good idea is a good idea and if both parties back a policy, that's twice as good. Who "owns" the policy only interests partisans—it bores voters.

Both parties also need to stop being so precious about their supposed political purity and embrace strategic voting as National has done so effectively, with National voters casting their ballots for non-National candidates to help their party. In Epsom, for example, 60 percent of National voters voted for Banks. 54% of Green voters voted for the National candidate in an attempt to get rid of Banks and Act, but a disgusting 35% of Labour voters did that. Put the other way round, 46% of Greens and 65% of Labour voters in Epsom helped John Banks win that seat. Smart—real smart.

Green voters also got it wrong in Waitakere where 13% voted for National’s Paula Bennett (a higher percentage than in 2008), handing her the win over Labour’s Carmel Sepuloni. Bennett was assured of a seat regardless, but by losing the seat Sepuloni was out of Parliament. No matter how much the left disliked Sepuloni, helping elect Bennett was just stupid.

Still, in general, Green Party voters were clearly smarter about tactical voting than were Labour voters, possibly because they were told the party was only seeking their Party Vote, leaving them free to vote for whoever they wanted to. But I wonder how much of the animus between the two parties affected Green supporters’ votes.

The bottom line, really, is this: A centre-left government will almost certainly require a coalition between Labour and the Greens. They don’t have to like each other, and they certainly don’t need to subsume their separate identities into one. But they do need to learn to work with each other, and especially to act more like friends than adversaries—even though that will probably keep each other closer than they would enemies.

The Queen’s 2011 Christmas Broadcast

2011-12-26T21:59:00.000+13:00

Above is the 2011 Christmas Broadcast from Her Majesty, the Queen of New Zealand (and other countries).

For more official videos of the Royal Family of New Zealand (and other countries), check out The Royal Channel on YouTube.

‘Banner’ year for GLBT people

2011-12-26T18:08:00.001+13:00

December, and particularly the last week of December, is often a time to look back on the previous year. All sorts of people do it for all sorts of subjects. MSNBC’s Thomas Roberts recently took a look back at what he called “a banner year” for the GLBT rights movement.

Overall, I think he’s right, and I think it’s important to note the positive things that happened. 2012 may have more challenges, but it could turn out even better than this year. I choose to hope for that.

Do they know it’s Christmas?

2011-12-23T23:53:00.000+13:00

In late 1984, there probably was no bigger song than “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” by Band Aid (video above). In October 1984, Bob Geldoff saw a BBC report by Michael Buerk highlighting the famine in Ethiopia. He contacted Midge Ure of Ultravox, and the two quickly wrote the song to raise money to help.

The record was made by a who’s who of popular American, British and Irish acts of 1984, and this video captures them in all their youthful glory. Then as now, what struck me about the video is how serious they all look.

I bought the 12" version, which included a lot of extra material, some of which I made fun of (a topic for another day). But among that extra material was an earnest plea from David Bowie that became the answering machine message in December 1984 for me and my then boyfriend.

It’s hard now to listen to it and its often naff lyrics and still remember how seriously we all took the song back in the day. Okay, that’s not true: For me, it’s not hard at all. One listen to the song and I’m transported back to 1984 and feel the earnestness with which it was presented and, if I’m really honest, I may even tear up. Such is the power of emotional memory.

The song and the “Live Aid” concert the following year did raise money, but the problems in Africa didn’t end. It turned out that a song couldn’t fix things, no matter how earnest and sincere the intentions—and they were both sincere and earnest. But for a very brief time, one song helped people to feel a little less powerless and also a little more connected to their fellow humans in dire straits. Whatever Band Aid and their famous song did or didn’t do, that one thing ought to be remembered: For short time, at least, we really did wonder: “Do they know it’s Christmas?”

~~And, just to update things, here's the Glee cast version. I like it, too.~~ The video "has been removed by the user".

Update: Writing on Salon, Tod Goldberg calls this "The most insufferable Christmas song ever." (Tip o' the Hat to Roger Green for the Salon article). The critique may be harsh, but it's not entirely unwarranted.

It’s not who we are

2011-12-22T17:17:00.002+13:00

This ad is from Standing Up for New Hampshire Families, “a bi-partisan, grassroots group comprised of residents and a leadership council of more than 200 civic, business, academic and political leaders” who have come together to try and stop the Republicans who now control the New Hampshire legislature from passing a bill to repeal marriage equality in that state. It’s a good ad.

Most of the organised promotion of the marriage repeal comes, of course, from out of state groups, particularly religious or pseudo-religious groups such as the catholic-aligned National Organization for Man-Lady Only Marriage, as well as fundamentalist protestant groups. While many of them try and hide their true religious agenda, the promotion of religious bigotry is at their core as they work to impose their narrow beliefs on everyone else.

Marriage equality is about freedom—ensuring that all citizens have the same rights and liberty as every other citizen. Opposing marriage equality is about denying freedom to some people and using religious beliefs to justify it. That’s not only not New Hampshire, it’s also not American and it’s not consistent with the values of freedom and democracy anywhere.

Freedom means nothing without freedom for all citizens. Just as religions are free to refuse to perform/solemnise/recognise/have same-sex marriages, and to speak out against them, so, too, should others be free to perform/solemnise/recognise/have same-sex marriages and to speak out in favour of them. The religious don’t get a free pass just because they claim to have their god on their side, nor do they have the right to force their beliefs on everyone else. That’s the opposite of freedom.

Freedom means freedom. It’s really that simple.

Midweek Diversion: Baby, It's Cold Outside

2011-12-21T21:07:00.000+13:00

Above is the music video of a duet by Mister Chase and Chris Salvatore. All proceeds from the sale of the song will go to “organizations to help our youth in need. Programs such as Crisis Intervention and Suicide Prevention, as well as furthering equal rights for the LGBT community.”

The first male duet of this song I saw as on Glee, appropriately enough, and I particularly like the idea of this song sung by two men. I also like their harmonies. Last year I posted another music video by Chris Salvatore, "It Will Get Better".

Only one thing: It’s certainly not cold outside here!

Marriage ins and outs

2011-12-21T10:16:00.000+13:00

Barely half of American adults are legally married, and those who do get married are waiting longer, according to a new study from Pew Research. And you know why fewer people are marrying, don’t you? It’s all the fault of Teh Gays™!

In a recent Tweet (pictured; the article he linked to is here), ex-Republican US Senator and current crackpot presidential candidate Rick Santorum said that this was “1 effect of changing definition of marriage”. Uh huh. While Santorum has never displayed even a passing familiarity with logic, this one is pretty bizarre, even for him. The people who are working and fighting so hard for the right to be legally married are responsible for the decline in marriage rates generally. Riiiiiiight…

The people who actually value facts, reason and logic, Pew Research, have said that there’s too little evidence to say what, specifically, is going on or “whether today’s young adults are abandoning marriage or merely delaying it.” They also note that fully 72% of Americans have been married at least once, and that a clear majority of never-married people—61%—would like to marry one day.

In other countries, marriage isn’t necessarily important. In New Zealand, for example, any couple—same sex or opposite sex—that has lived together for three years is automatically covered by the Relationships (Property) Act, which governs how property is divided in the event a relationship ends. Such couples—called de facto in New Zealand—have many of the other rights and privileges of registered couples, though only marriage and civil unions gives full family status to partners.

But even in the US, a couple being married is no longer a social requirement and more people are choosing to live alone or as an unmarried couple, and those who do marry wait longer to do so. Isn’t freedom of choice something conservatives ought to be cheering? They would be if they weren’t so hellbent on forcing their religious beliefs onto everyone else.

What this and other research clearly shows is that marriage still has value to people. What’s changing is not the “definition” as Ricky and his cronies think—it’s still legally defined as the union of two consenting adults—but the way people approach it, when they become married and what they expect from it. Normal people, in other words, have a far more mature and rational view of marriage than does Rick Santorum.

Actually, come to think of it, normal people have a far more mature and rational view of everything than does Rick Santorum. We don’t need any research to underscore that point.

The story behind the story

2011-12-20T22:44:00.000+13:00

Last month, I posted a video called “It’s Time”, which was made in support of marriage equality in Australia. I think it’s the best video on this subject yet made—it’s so good, in fact, that a version for the United States is in the works.

Yesterday, the team that made the video for GetUp, Motion Picture Company, posted a video on the making of “It’s Time”. It talks about the decisions that went into making the video, how it was created, and so on. I thought it was quite interesting.

And anything that helps promote the “It’s Time” video is, to me, a good thing.

Real enough

2011-12-20T21:55:00.000+13:00

This past Sunday, I blogged about a stunt by a rightwing catholic and his group and, because of Poe’s Law, I wondered if they might be parodies. Sadly, it turns out they’re real.

Arthur Skinner, the guy who slashed the billboard, apparently attended a Marist school, which could explain his fixation with Mary. Perhaps as a result, he has a long history of belligerent confrontation promoting rigid catholic orthodoxy:

In 1998, he organised protests at Te Papa in Wellington over the museum displaying “Virgin in a Condom”, an artwork that I personally thought was stupid and provocation for its own sake, but I also remember that because religious conservatives were demanding not only that the exhibit be removed, but also that museum director be fired, I sided with the museum. As I would.

In 2000, Skinner led extremist catholics in a demand that Auckland catholic bishop, Patrick Dunn, be fired by the pope if he didn’t recant something he said about contraception. Acknowledging that edicts of the Roman church applied only to church members, he said that while, like the Roman church, he was completely opposed to artificial contraception, he nevertheless thought that non-catholics who were “sleeping around” should protect themselves and use contraception.

Dunn’s position in 2000 was sensible, reaffirming Rome’s orders to catholics, while recognising that non-catholics weren’t obliged to obey. Nowadays, of course, the Roman church has become virtually indistinguishable from fundamentalist protestants in that it feels it can not only tell non-catholics how to live, but that it also has the right to use everything at its disposal—money, captive audience at masses, instructions from church officials—to try and force their views on everyone through promoting or opposing legislation or public officeholders.

What this means is that while Skinner was completely outside the mainstream in 1998 and partly outside it in 2000, he’s now just somewhat more conservative than the church generally.

On Sunday, I praised Auckland’s catholic church for saying the correct things about the billboard defacement. I spoke too soon. It turns out the same spokeswoman said, “Once again, St Matthew’s shows us that they have moved away from traditional Christianity, even though their hearts might be in the right place.” Condescending, much? It’s also only a milder version of Skinner’s calling them a “church—so called”.

St. Matthew’s resisted the temptation to rise to the bait, and declined to press charges. The church noted that Skinner was taking his action in order to gain publicity, and in the hope he would be arrested. Basically, St. Matthew’s wasn’t going to give him the attention he sought. Wise move.

Still, there is a bright spot in this stupid saga, something familiar: As is almost always the way when rightwingers seek to curtail other’s freedom of expression, St. Matthew’s billboard ended up being seen by far more people than could ever have been possible otherwise, and the message they were trying to convey was reported throughout the world. Good work, Skinner!

So, yeah, it turns out that Skinner is real, and his group is, too (more or less, at least). Considering how much he’s done to further the work and message of those he opposes, it’s easy to see why I could’ve thought he was a parody. The joke, however, is apparently on him.

Catholic parody?

2011-12-18T20:05:00.000+13:00

Every time I read or hear about some crazy fundamentalist person or group doing something crazy, which is generally why they’re called “crazy”, I think of this:

“Without a winking smiley or other blatant display of humour, it is impossible to create a parody of fundamentalism that someone won't mistake for the real thing.”

That’s called Poe’s Law, and it refers to things on the Internet, but it seems to me it applies equally to real life. The essence of Poe’s Law is that because extremism is extreme, any parody must also be extreme, making it impossible to tell the two apart. More instructive, in real life in particular, is its corollary: Legitimate fundamentalist action or belief will often be mistaken for parody.

So I’m unsure whether Poe’s Law is in play in Auckland.

St. Matthew-in-the-City, a progressive Anglican church, put up another billboard that the religiously precious find challenging. This year, that appears to include Roman Catholics, who until recent years have not been thought of as being very similar to protestant fundamentalists.

The church said of the billboard, pictured above:

This billboard portrays Mary, Jesus’ mother, looking at a home pregnancy test kit revealing that she is pregnant. Regardless of any premonition, that discovery would have been shocking. Mary was unmarried, young, and poor. This pregnancy would shape her future. She was certainly not the first woman in this situation or the last.

As in the past it is our intention to avoid the sentimental, trite and expected to spark thought and conversation in the community. This year we hope to do so with an image and no words. We invite you to wonder what your caption might be.

Although the make-believe of Christmas is enjoyable—with tinsel, Santa, reindeer, and carols—there are also some realities. Many in our society are suffering: some through the lack of money, some through poor health, some through violence, and some through other hardships. The joy of Christmas is muted by anxiety.

I’m including so much of the church’s explanation because I doubt many people—and certainly not its critics—would bother to go to their site to look it up, and context always matters. They describe their intention by saying, “Christmas is real. It’s about a real pregnancy, a real mother and a real child. It’s about real anxiety, courage and hope,” and they sum it all up: “In this season we encourage one another to be generous to those who suffer…” That sounds to me like traditional Christian values.

Some Roman Catholics seem to have disagreed: They vandalised the billboard, held a “service” in front of it, and promised to vandalise the billboard again, if it should be replaced. Are they for real, or are they doing deep cover parody?

Let assume for the moment that this was done by real rightwing catholics whose catholic extremist group, “Catholic Action Group”, is also real (although, I’ve never heard of it before today, so I have no idea if it’s real or not). If they’re real, then it’s really pretty hilariously stupid. Said their spokesman, Arthur Skinner:

"This particular church—so called—is run by a gay, feminist-type lobby. They claim to be Christian and yet they put up a blasphemous image of the Blessed Virgin, attacking her virginity and the fact that she was the mother of Christ, the God-Man." [in fact, the poster says nothing whatsoever about how Mary came to be pregnant and doesn’t “attack” anyone—there are no words].

Fundamentalists of all stripes are adamant that they alone have the sole, exclusive and inarguable right to define who is and is not of their religion. Still, wacky though it may be, it’s not too far to the right of what mainstream Catholics might think.

And yet I wonder if it might all be performance art. Skinner said Anglicans are "basically heretics", and apparently left phone messages at the church declaring that those at the church behind the poster would "certainly burn in hell" if they didn’t “repent” (whatever that means in this case). Skinner spelled-out his claim of Anglican heresy by saying: “There's only one faith—the Roman Catholic Apostolic Faith—because we go right back in our papal line to Christ.”

I don’t know, do extreme rightwing Catholics really think like that? I’ve never known any, so I can’t ask, and I seem to have misplaced Mel Gibson’s phone number. Still, even if they do really think that, it wouldn’t in any way make them correct: There are billions of people in the world who aren’t part of the Roman church, after all.

And, would anyone but deep cover parodists actually say such silly things about the poster? This was my favourite: "This is Satanic, this is the ultimate Satanic attack, when Lucifer attacks his worst enemy, the Blessed Virgin.” I always thought their god was Lucifer’s worst enemy, having cast it out of heaven and all that. Who knew?

Clearly the real Roman Catholic church thinks the group is for real: Their spokesperson told the Herald on Sunday that the supposed group had absolutely nothing to do with the real Catholic church. To her credit, she added: "I have been critical of the poster, but the last thing we would want to do would be anything destructive." I take her, and her church, at their word on that.

As was the case with a more provocative billboard St Matthew’s put up two years ago, some people are so hyper-sensitive to any sort of imagined offence that they’ll lash out and resort to property damage to try and protect their particular self-image. Some self-described Christians loudly complain about and condemn fundamentalist muslims putting death decrees on people for writing books or publishing cartoons, but are Christians who destroy billboards really any different except, obviously, in degree? Attempting to violently suppress views that make us feel uncomfortable or offended isn’t supposed to be part of democratic western societies—is it? Freedom of expression does not carry with it freedom from being offended.

And that for me is the crux (so to speak) of the whole thing: Offence is an entirely subjective thing. I have been offended in the past, and some of those times I’ve over-reacted. But I’m trying to do better, to be better, about not being easily offended. Something I said earlier this year about another billboard controversy with the same church I think is apt here, too:

“The fate of the universe will not be determined by the existence of these billboards… If we freak out every time someone says something we don’t like, pretty soon we’re in permanent freak-out mode and eventually no one will take us seriously about anything.”

That’s why I can’t tell if those people were real rightwing catholics or parodists: Their words and actions are so outrageous, so out of proportion to their imagined offence that I simply can’t take them seriously. Until and unless I see inarguable facts, I’m falling back on Poe’s Law: It’s impossible to tell if those loons are real or not.

Related: Another reason I'm hesitant to believe this is real and not parody is that I've fallen for deep cover parody in the past.

Update: It turns out they're real, and I've done a follow-up post about them.

Christopher Hitchens

2011-12-17T22:08:00.000+13:00

This new video by The Thinking Atheist is a tribute to Christopher Hitchens. I thought the video’s final lines were particularly effective.

I used to subscribe to The Nation back in the late 1980s/early 1990s, when Hitchens was writing for it, and that’s how I came to know of him. Back then, I always found him interesting, though sometimes I thought his language was overly dense.

I eventually stopped reading The Nation, particularly after I moved to New Zealand, where copies were imported and very expensive. So I was basically unaware of the fire breathed on him by the left for his support for the “war on terrorism” and his positions that many on the left thought were Islamophobic.

The same positions and beliefs that infuriated the left didn’t endear him the right because of one thing that trumped everything: His atheism or, as he called it, antitheism. That is something that neither America’s left or right approves of, but the right has no tolerance for it at all.

Somehow, I managed to remain largely unaware of his antitheism until relatively recent years, but that’s not surprising: Until YouTube came along, and the Internet in general grew, I really had no way to know about Hitchens stridency on religious matters.

Stridency: That’s a loaded term, isn’t it? People use it to emphasise their disagreement with another because it implies a level of aggression. And yet, Hitchens often was strident, and I think that in this case it’s the most appropriate word.

Personally, I think his stridency was justified in a political landscape that had already become polarised. The right has legions of strident polemicists, the left has very few. Was he of the left? I think he was, the whole Islam-as-fascism thing notwithstanding. It seems to me that the left is often just like the right, demanding uniformity of belief and conformity with orthodoxy, even though few people are absolutely left or right. For me, it’s the totality of belief and opinion that determines where someone is on the ideological spectrum, not some arbiter of “proper” ideology.

Reading him in The Nation demonstrated to me the power of Hitchens’ intellect. He left no one under any illusions about what he thought about the issues of the day, or where he stood. He was, simply, one of the best polemicists of modern times.

Yet for many people it was his antitheism that defined him. Even though I agreed with his criticism of organised religion, I didn’t find him particularly persuasive in presenting atheism (the two are not the same issues, after all). There his stridency sometimes got in the way for me.

I like people who display passion for their subject matter—as long as it’s intelligent passion, based on intellectual enquiry and not on mere emotion, hunches or the stories in a holy book. Those other things make have their places, but they don’t carry the argument for me.

So ultimately, that’s why I admired Christopher Hitchens. I didn’t always agree with him, and sometimes I thought he was too strident for my tastes, but his intellectual heft was palpable. He will be missed by many folks who love intellectual enquiry and debate based on facts and reason.

New Zealand’s Zeitgeist

2011-12-17T19:03:00.000+13:00

Google has long chronicled what people search for, calling the ranking of searches “zeitgeist.” One of my favourite German words, zeitgeist means “spirit of the times”. As the end of the year approaches, Google has (somewhat prematurely, I would’ve thought) posted its Zeitgeist 2011.

Their overall top ten list for 2011 globally was: 1. Rebecca Black (I had to Google her, and I still don’t know who she is), 2. Google Plus, 3. Ryan Dunn (Googled him, too, and didn’t really know who he was, either), 4. Casey Anthony (Googled her, but then realised I did know who she is), 5. Battlefield 3, 6. iPhone 5, 7. Adele, 8. 東京電力 (Tokyo Electric Power), 9. Steve Jobs and 10. iPad 2.

This list is usually dominated by American stuff or interests—people, places and things—but I think it’s notable that this year one of them was in Japanese, apparently from Japanese people looking for information about the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant.

The American overall Zeitgeist list is, not surprisingly, similar to the global list, but with some differences: 1. Rebecca Black, 2. Google Plus, 3. Hurricane Irene, 4. Pinterest (a site I’d never heard of), 5. Ryan Dunn, 6. iPhone 5, 7. Casey Anthony, 8. Adele, 9. Osama Bin Laden, 10. Steve Jobs.

The New Zealand list is quite different: 1. Rugby World Cup, 2. Japan Earthquake, 3. iPhone 5, 4. Pippa Middleton, 5. Adele, 6. Nek Minute (refers to a phrase in a New Zealand viral video), 7. Google Plus, 8. Amy Winehouse, 9. Steven Tyler and 10. Ken Ring (who claimed he could predict earthquakes based on the moon or something; he couldn’t, of course).

While only two of America’s list could be described as non-American, New Zealand’s is much more international. America’s two non-American searches refer to US interests—war and pop culture—while New Zealand’s refer to technology, pop culture and actual news. The Rugby World Cup arguably falls into several categories—New Zealand, international interest and news.

The number one image that Kiwis searched for was Sonny Bill Williams (I can understand that…), but he was followed by Justin Bieber. All but three of the searches (“New Zealand” at 4, “All Blacks” at 5 and “Christchurch Earthquake” at 10) were about pop culture. One could say that all of Americans’ image searches were about pop culture, except, maybe, “Planking” at one and “Royal Wedding” at 10, but to me those are more about pop culture.

People say these lists probably tell us something about the “spirit of the times”, but I think it’s not entirely clear what, exactly, they tell us. Still, I do find them kind of interesting.

Ending the marriage muddle

2011-12-16T09:18:00.000+13:00

This video from Second City skewers Newt Gingrich as a defender of “traditional” marriage. I think it’s bloody brilliant! How in the name of Jeebus a thrice-married serial adulterer (with other serious ethics issues, too) can be taken seriously as a legitimate commentator on “traditional moral values” is beyond me. There’s some mighty powerful cognitive dissonance on the right, I guess.

This video was written and directed by Andy Cobb, the same guy who did that brilliant anti-Rick Perry video. I’ve subscribed to The Second City Network channel on YouTube so I don’t miss any of their ridicule of the ridiculous Republicans (Andy Cobb also has a related channel called The Partisans, which is more overtly political).

Dangerous Garth

2011-12-15T21:59:00.000+13:00

I’m going to say something positive about Garth George, one of the rightwing columnists at The New Zealand Herald: He’s the best grumpy curmudgeon currently writing for any New Zealand newspaper. Seriously, that IS a compliment: Many newspaper columnists are grumpy, some all the time, and others are sometimes curmudgeons. But only Garth manages to be both all the time.

Because of this, Garth also provides unintentional hilarity as he expresses opinions that are often so far beyond the pale that they come across as downright unhinged. He probably wouldn’t like the idea of raucous laughter caused by his columns, but folks like Garth who write such puerile drivel are probably used to that reaction.

Today, he struck yet again—although this time his column veered more into the repulsive category than funny.

Garth "wrote" a column entitled, “Beware the other policies of dangerous Greens”, which contained this gem:

“The Greens are dangerous. They are more than a polite group of tree-huggers, slug-savers and water samplers but you rarely, if ever, hear of the more sinister planks of their policy, which are frightening to say the least to those of us who care about what really matters.”

Scary, right? Why, the Greens must be advocating eating the rich, or banning cars or something, right? Nope: They dare to stand up for human rights. Can't get more sinister than that, eh?

Garth copied almost verbatim—and without attribution—a press release from an NZ rightwing extremist group called “Right to Life” (who I wrote about before), and pretended it was something a “mate” had told him. Garth then lays out what he sees as the sins of the Greens—in Australia. Garth didn’t bother to look up the position of the New Zealand Greens on any of the issues he hates—it was just easier to use a rightwing pressure group’s press release unattributed and unverified.

The blog No Right Turn called this regurgitation of rightwing press releases, “churnalism”. As the post notes, Garth has done this before, most notably to present climate change denial views. He was caught out then, too.

Garth is a far rightwing religionist who hates the Greens because they support marriage equality and adoption reform, both of which are a matter of policy for the Greens. They’ve also supported death with dignity and abortion rights, though, as NRT notes, neither is policy for the Greens in New Zealand. Garth’s particular personal religious views condemn all these things and, being a zealot, he of course thinks he’s got the right to force his religious views on everyone else.

But Garth’s peculiar religious obsession isn’t the issue; he’s entitled to hold rightwing views, no matter how wacky and extreme they may be. Scaremongering, however, is beneath any real journalist, and so is plagiarising other people and passing those views off as his own original thinking, or pretending he had a conversation with someone when all he did was read a press release.

Garth should fully retire if he’s so past it that he can’t even write an original column anymore, or else he should be fired because the Herald clearly isn’t getting its money’s worth from a serial copyist.

There are plenty of credible conservative writers who could take Garth’s place, people who even hold many of the same views, but who would express them using original thought, a little energy, some journalistic integrity and without being deliberately offensive for its own sake (even the Herald is aware of problems caused by this column, finally posting today: “Note: Due to an increasing amount of unpublishable postings, the 'comment' functionality of this article has been disabled.”)

The title of my post is merely a play on Garth’s “Dangerous Greens” declaration—which, of course, instantly became a trending hashtag on Twitter (#DangerousGreens) as people gleefully mocked Garth. He deserved that.

Obviously Garth isn’t really dangerous; “pathetic” would be a better word.

Star peace

2011-12-14T14:42:00.000+13:00

In this video, George Takei, who worked in both Star Trek and Star Wars, tried to broker peace between William Shatner and Carrie Fisher to end their “my star franchise is better than your star franchise” Internet spat. He did so by identifying what he considers a mutual threat.

I just thought the video was funny and has something that fans from any of the camps mentioned can laugh at. It’s just a joke, after all.

With my year-end projects wrapping up, normal blogging will resume soon.

Tip o’ the Hat to Joe.My.God.

Xmas and beyond

2011-12-12T17:54:00.001+13:00

This new video from The Thinking Atheist takes a look at Christmas, how the traditions modern Christians think are theirs are pretty much exclusively pagan in origin, how there are major holes in the Christian story of the birth of the person they call Jesus, as well as several contradictions within the Christian Gospels themselves. The point is, Christmas isn’t what most Christians think it is.

Does any of that matter? Clearly not to believers. As a sceptic, I was already aware of all this, but I don’t think it should matter to us, either. The holiday our culture calls “Christmas” is great for enjoying good, relaxing times with friends and family, regardless of whether one is Christian—or any other form of religionist—or not. In New Zealand, Christmas is a largely secular holiday, anyway, even among professed Christians, so this isn’t a unique viewpoint.

As for the word “Xmas” in the title, this video points out how one could argue that, despite what some think, it’s not disrespectful of Christianity at all, but instead entirely respectful. The reason I disliked the word wasn’t because of any alleged disrespect, but because I just think the word looks ugly (of course I do—typography is part of my profession, after all).

The bottom line for me is that we’re all free to have a Merry (or Happy) Christmas (or Xmas). Or not. Freedom of belief is a wonderful thing.

Weekend Diversion: The Christmas Rush

2011-12-11T06:59:00.000+13:00

Last year I posted a video by Mike Tompkins, who did an a cappella cover of Taio Cruz’ Dynamite. I thought it was remarkable because Tompkins made all the music—vocals and instruments alike—by voice and mouth.

A few days ago, Tompkins released the video above of The Christmas Rush, an original song he co-wrote. He again makes all the sounds by mouth. The YouTube description has the lyrics, and a link for buying the song through iTunes, all of which is good.

Personally, I just like fun videos, especially at this time of year.

MMP was the winner

2011-12-10T20:46:00.000+13:00

Today the final election results were announced, and MMP received 57.77% support, so it will be retained. I hope that this is the last time that the rightwing tries to dump MMP, because this is a pretty resounding defeat for the anti-democracy forces.

Still, it didn’t stop the public face of the rightwing coalition fighting to dump MMP from saying that if the vote had been held after the election—after people saw that Winston Peters and his motley band of misfits got into Parliament—the results might have been different. What a stupid thing to say—pure speculative nonsense, no more valid than any other “what if” scenarios one could think of.

Some people have noted with alarm that among those voting in Part B of the referendum, 42.23 percent voted for the anti-democratic First Past the Post system. There are several reasons for that. First, many people had no idea what those other systems were and chose the alternative they recognised. But a number of people who supported MMP also chose FPP because they felt it would be the easiest to defeat if there was another referendum. Apparently, a lot of people cast no vote at all in Part B.

One criticism of the referendum was that there wasn’t enough information, particularly about the alernatives. That’s one of the reasons I spent so much space talking about them. But, to be honest, if people didn’t understand the alternatives—and why, precisely, MMP was the best of all the systems—it’s their own fault. The information was readily available if they spent a couple minutes looking for it, as I did. Democracy, in my opinion, imposes certain obligations upon citizens, and among them is the necessity that voters inform themselves and not wait around for someone to spoon-feed information to them. I know that’s harsh, but really, people need to take some responsibility for themselves and their democracy.

In any case, MMP won, and I'm very happy about that.

Government by gays & infidels

2011-12-09T08:05:00.000+13:00

When Rick Perry released his anti-gay, “war on religion” Iowa campaign ad, I frankly couldn’t be bothered commenting on it. It smacked of panicked desperation on his part as his campaign visibly dissolves away. I thought the ad was more pathetic than anything.

Still, it’s a bad ad, merely craven anti-gay, far-right religious pandering—though other Republican politicians had already set that bar pretty low. But because it’s so typical of the modern Republican Party, responding to it just wasn’t worth my time or energy.

Comedy comes to my rescue once again. The response video above is by Andy Cobb of The Partisans from the Second City Network on YouTube. It parodies Perry’s ad while pointing out the hypocrisy of the message in it. I think it’s the best response yet (the YouTube description adds even more comedy, like “Honestly, if kids ‘observed’ Christmas any harder in schools than they already do, they would be elves.”)

The Perry ad is clearly comedy gold: George Takei pointed out on Twitter that Perry’s coat looks the same as that worn by Heath Ledger in Brokeback Mountain, leading Takei to ask, “Perry, why can't you just quit us?”

Perry’s an ignorant, arrogant buffoon, and as his campaign falls apart, all that will be left is Perry as the butt of jokes. The tragic part is, Texans still have to live with that joke.

Related: Think Progress has posted a video of Perry displaying his anti-gay, religiously bigoted dumbassery as he tries to defend his Iowa ad. Lies and distortions just ooze from that man.

Also related: Parody—entity?—Mrs. Betty Bowers' channel on YouTube has posted a response in which "Jesus" responds to Rick Perry. Perry's ad is becoming something like that silly "gathering storm" ad of a few years ago—just made for parody and ridicule.

Tip o’ the Hat to Joe.My.God. for posting the video.

All they want for Christmas

2011-12-08T21:12:00.000+13:00

I first head about this video on ABC News (USA), of all places, and I liked the idea of it (I also have to admit that, despite myself, I like Mariah Carey’s version of this song, too, and she reportedly loved this video).

The video was made by the crew of the HMS Ocean after they learned they’d be home for Christmas. This is no small thing: They’d been sent on a seven week deployment, but then Libya (among other things) happened, and they ended up unexpectedly being away from home for 7½ months—225 days, 176 of them at sea. I can imagine how happy they were to find out they’d be home for Christmas.

They also reported in the video's description the realties of their deployment as:

15 babies born while the ship has been away (fathers did get home to see mum and baby)
5 people were sent home so they didn't miss their own weddings.
1 sailor whose son's third birthday is on homecoming. Family meeting ship

Yep, I’m really sure they’re glad to be heading home. I think it shows.

An extraordinary and good day

2011-12-07T21:23:00.001+13:00

Today the Obama Administration did one of the most remarkable things I’ve seen the US government do in my lifetime: It put the US Government fully on the side of the human rights of GLBT people around the world. There was a time I thought I’d never live to see such a thing.

To be sure, other administrations have done good things for GLBT people within the USA: The Hate Crime Statistics Act was signed by the first President George Bush. Despite severe setbacks, the Clinton Administration nevertheless also made progress. The Obama Administration had previously denounced Uganda’s “kill the gays” bill, along with similar heinous acts of other countries.

Yet until today, the prestige of the United States had never been put behind the struggle of GLBT people to achieve their full human rights. That’s why today is so extraordinary.

President Obama issued a Presidential Memorandum that directs US federal agencies to:

Combat the criminalization of LGBT status or conduct abroad.
Protect vulnerable LGBT refugees and asylum seekers.
Leverage foreign assistance to protect human rights and advance nondiscrimination.
Ensure swift and meaningful U.S. responses to human rights abuses of LGBT persons abroad.
Engage International Organizations in the fight against LGBT discrimination.
Report on progress.

A Fact Sheet issued along with the Memorandum lists some of what the State Department is doing, noting:

“Even before today’s memo, U.S. agencies have been working to protect and promote the rights of LBGT persons around the world. Since January 2009, Secretary Clinton has directed the Department of State to champion a comprehensive human rights agenda—one that includes the protection of LGBT people.”

Then, at the Palais des Nations in Geneva, Switzerland, Secretary of State Clinton made remarks in recognition of Human Rights Day and elaborated on this subject, declaring “gay rights are human rights, and human rights are gay rights.” Her remarks were the strongest and clearest statement in support of the human rights of GLBT people I’ve ever heard from a US Government official (the link to the speech text, above, also has video of her speech).

Secretary Clinton acknowledged that the US has been guilty of the some of the same abuses of human rights she urged other countries to abandon. She advocated an open and honest dialogue so that it can lead to the change she advocated, and that has helped the US move forward.

To me, the most moving part was when she declared:

“To LGBT men and women worldwide, let me say this: Wherever you live and whatever the circumstances of your life, whether you are connected to a network of support or feel isolated and vulnerable, please know that you are not alone. People around the globe are working hard to support you and to bring an end to the injustices and dangers you face. That is certainly true for my country. And you have an ally in the United States of America and you have millions of friends among the American people.”

When I began my activism on GLBT issues in the Reagan years, I wouldn’t have believed it was possible for a US Government official to make such a speech. I never would have believed we could have a strong advocate in the White House. I never would have believed that the US would be declared our ally. To put it more simply, I never would’ve believed that the US would start to honour its promise of freedom and liberty to GLBT people, too.

There is much work to be done, in the US as well as around the world. Everyone knows that. The vitriolic venom spewed by the bigots of the US’ anti-gay industry in reaction to today’s events demonstrates how far we have yet to go.

Even so, we should celebrate world leaders who got something so very, very right. We should also imagine what might be possible over the next thirty years if we all, as the Obama Administration does, recognise that “gay rights are human rights, and human rights are gay rights.”

Others may continue to dwell on the negatives, on all the incomplete work or on the hate-filled bigots who stand in our way. But this was an extraordinary and good day for human rights, and we mustn’t lose sight of that.

And we must never give up the fight.

News Bloopers

2011-12-06T19:10:00.001+13:00

Dan News, who I follow on Twitter, posted the above video recently. The bloopers and funny bits are mostly from New Zealand and Australian news programmes, with a few others, too. Many of them are flat out hilarious, and I even talked about one segment on this blog.

I’m too busy for a real blog post, but no matter how busy we get, we can all use a laugh from time to time, can’t we?

Aussies rally for equality

2011-12-03T22:34:00.001+13:00

Shortly after the Australian Labour Party voted to endorse marriage equality, over the objections of Prime Minister Julia Gillard, thousands of people took part in a previously scheduled march to Darling Habour in Sydney, and rallied outside the convention centre where the ALP was holding its meeting.

Several of the New Zealand Labour Party people I follow on Twitter have been attending the ALP conference as international observers. One of them, Jordan Carter—who ought to be a Labour MP right now, and almost certainly will be in 2014—Tweeted some photos, which he allowed me to share here. The photo below was taken inside the convention centre.

Jordan has gone on to post the first of a series of posts on his blog, talking about “refounding Labour” in New Zealand. It’s an excellent post and well worth reading.

A win for the Aussie good guys

2011-12-03T14:56:00.001+13:00

Today the Australian Labor Party (ALP), the current party of Government, made marriage equality a part of that party's policy platform. The vote was at their national conference in Sydney, and came after the adoption of another amendment promoted by Prime Minister Julia Gillard to make it a conscience vote in the Australian House. That means that ALP Members of Parliament will be free to vote as they choose, and won't have to vote the way the party tells them to.

The Opposition, meanwhile, may not allow a conscience vote among its MPs and, if they don't, it almost certainly means the measure won't pass the Australian House. Still, this is historic progress for Australia and is a major step toward full equality.

New Zealand adopted marriage-in-nearly-every-way-but-name civil unions in 2005, and last week Queensland became the first Australian state to follow suit with its own civil unions, but there's no federal law allowing civil unions or marriage—yet. That's why the ALP's vote matters—it's moving Australia as a nation toward equality.

Progress toward equality is always a good thing and should be celebrated. So, well done, Australian Labor Party! Now, make it law!

Sit on Santa’s lap

2011-12-02T22:17:00.000+13:00

This video from Improv Everywhere is of an imaginary musical. In a mall. In New Jersey. I think it demonstrates how much better life would be if it was a musical—especially at Christmas.

Actually, another reason I’m sharing this—and to wear the metaphor entirely too thin—is that I could use "a little Christmas, right this very minute" because I’m so swamped with work that I don’t have time for blogging or podcasting (or much else). At times like these, being able to post a little diversion is a welcome thing.

That whole life-as-a-musical thing is just a bonus.

Tip o’ the Hat to Joe.My.God.

World AIDS Day 2011

2011-12-01T22:10:00.001+13:00

Because it isn’t over yet.

Previous years’ blog posts:

World AIDS Day 2010

World AIDS Day 2009

World AIDS Day 2008

World AIDS Day 2007

World AIDS Day 2006

Summer begins

2011-12-01T20:48:00.000+13:00

Today is the first day of summer in the Southern Hemisphere. Unlike our Northern Hemisphere cousins, apparently, we don’t pay attention to the solstice in a few weeks.

As it happens, today turned into a gloriously bright, sunny and even hot day. I was too busy working to take much notice, but it was nice to look at outside my window. Soon, I’ll get to enjoy the summer, which is, after all, my favourite season.

Yay.

Day 1: First broken promise

2011-11-29T19:46:00.003+13:00

It’s only the first working day for the current National-led Government and already they’ve broken a promise. Is Day One too early to say “I told you so”?

John Key’s government promised that the New Zealand public would have a say on any significant mines on conservation land, but they’ve decided to allow an open-cast coal mine on the Denniston Plateau without the promised public consultation. Not surprisingly, Forest & Bird, New Zealand's leading conservation group, is not impressed.

Forest & Bird Conservation Advocate Nicola Vallance said, “It is very cynical that [the government] waited until the first day back in office before telling the public they will be shut out of standing up for their natural heritage.” She’s right, of course, but it’s only the first of many such broken promises we’ll see over the next three years.

Vallance noted this move “will allow Australian-owned Bathurst Resources to dig up over 160 hectares of the Denniston Plateau without an opportunity for the public to have a say about conservation concerns. This would be the biggest open-cast coal mine on New Zealand’s conservation estate.” Let’s see: Mining on conservation land, enriching foreign corporations—yep, ticks two of National’s highest priorities, all while ignoring the people of New Zealand, as they prefer to do.

This will be a very long three years.

Canadian heritage

2011-11-29T09:15:00.000+13:00

The above video isn’t particularly new, but I just saw it this morning. It commemorates a moment in Canadian history—July 20, 2005—when civil marriage for same-sex couples became legal in Canada. It was—and is—a very important moment that should be remembered.

Watching it, I wondered how many more years we’ll have to wait for the same fairness and equality in New Zealand? How long will the wait be in Australia? The United States? We’ve already waited far too long.

The message of the video I posted a couple days ago sums up my attitude: It’s time.

Tip o’ the Hat to Joe.My.God.

End ‘Occupy’

2011-11-28T22:59:00.001+13:00

It’s time to pack up the tents and go home: “Occupy Auckland” has gone on long enough, with no hint that the protesters will ever leave. That may change soon, with or without their consent.

Today Auckland Council issued the “occupy” encampment with a trespass notice and they have gone to the Auckland District Court asking for a court order prohibiting further breaches of council bylaws, which includes their occupation of public space to the exclusion of all others, damage to council property and camping in a public space not set aside for that purpose, among other things.

The trespass notice is the first step toward forcibly removing the protestors. The New Zealand Police had earlier indicated a reluctance to remove the protestors, even with a trespass notice, due to the free speech and freedom of assembly issues raised. But if the Court issues an order, it will have to be enforced.

The known costs to council so far are around $180,000, not counting electricity or water used by occupiers, extra refuse collection, etc. In a worst case scenario—with damage to the waterproof membrane protecting the roof of the carpark underneath Aotea Square and the irrigation system under the encampment site, we’d be looking at a bill several times larger—all paid by the ratepayers of Auckland who can’t even use the space because of the illegal occupation. No wonder they’re pretty much fed up with this whole thing.

The “occupiers” knew this was coming. Just under two weeks ago, Auckland Council asked occupiers for the date of their departure. They didn’t provide that date, but scrawled defiant responses instead. The "occupiers" also claimed there’d be no eviction before the elections this past Saturday because they believed it would become a national issue.

At the end of last week, Council again asked them for the date of their departure before issuing the trespass notice today. Naturally, the “occupiers” aren’t pleased. One of them said he believes this action by Auckland Council as “wholly inappropriate”. Really? Inappropriate like their occupation and use of a public space in violation of several bylaws, and then expecting ratepayers to fork over hundreds of thousands of dollars for repairs? That kind of “wholly inappropriate”? Another called it “provocative”—does that mean “provocative” as in implying a never-ending occupation?

Now the “occupy” folks have issued “an emergency call to mobilise”, saying: “We have mandated at tonights [sic] emergency GA [“general assembly”] to Silently protest inside the hearing as well as out side [sic]”. Now, who was being provocative again?

I’ve read minutes of their “general assembly” gatherings and it’s become increasingly clear to me just how deluded they are. They really think they speak for “the 99%,” little realising that they themselves are another “the 1%”, but the one made up of the protesters and their supporters, not the one they’re supposedly protesting against.

I’ve also become convinced that they want a violent confrontation. Their occupation has no point and can’t accomplish anything, so the only thing that could give the whole thing any meaning is if they’re beaten. Trouble is, New Zealand Police aren’t stupid and won’t rise to the bait. And, in any case, the New Zealand news media has shown almost no interest in the whole thing. The “occupiers” call it a “media blackout,” but most New Zealanders would call it ignoring something that simply isn’t news—or even interesting.

If the “occupiers” had left a couple weeks after they arrived, they would have taken a lot of sympathy with them, and people would’ve been supportive of their message. As it is, the vast majority of Aucklanders can’t wait to see the back of them, and that includes me. Whatever natural sympathy I had for them is long gone.

It’s time for them to pack up their tents and go home.

Update 29/11/11: Auckland Council's request for an interim injunction requiring the protesters to leave Aotea Square was denied tonight on the grounds that the protesters supposedly didn't have enough time to prepare a defence. The hearing on the permanent injunction will be heard next week. It's true that justice must not just be done, it must also be seen to be done, so in that sense alone, it seems reasonable to side with the judge. But to be honest, the antics of the protesters in court showed disrespect for the entire legal process, so we'll see if they're better next week.

The way forward

2011-11-27T22:15:00.000+13:00

I’ve had more than my share of election losses. In New Zealand, my side won the first three elections I could vote in, and it’s now lost two in a row. At the electorate level, it’s worse: My side won the first two times I could vote, then lost the next three.

Add to that my experience in the US, where I can count my victories on one hand and still have fingers left over for jewellery. Okay, slight exaggeration, but not by much.

The point is, I’ve known victory and defeat and, if I’m truly honest, the thrill of the first doesn’t ease the pain of the second. But it’s in defeat that I rediscover both my energy and my determination. That’s a common thing.

When the National Party went down to its biggest defeat ever in 2002, it returned to its roots and re-emerged stronger than ever in 2005. It went too far to the right and scared voters, but if it hadn’t veered so far right, it would’ve won that year.

I think Labour needs to return to its social democratic roots to fight again in 2014. We saw glimpses of that this year, but the public perception of Labour as too similar too National persisted. It needs to stand for something.

It’s not enough for folks to carp from the sidelines, either. Folks who care passionately about New Zealand and about Labour working for us all cannot sit on the sidelines and moan that the party isn’t one thing or another, or that it should do this or that. Instead, they must roll up their sleeves and get to work.

Toward that end, I’m going to try doing exactly that at the local level of the Labour Party. I have no idea whether I’ll be welcome, let alone whether my ideas will be embraced, but if I don’t try, who then can I blame?

This may be my last gasp with the Labour Party, or it could be the start of something else. In either case, I have to try.

I challenge every other disappointed centre-left voter to do the same, whatever their party. Together, we can win—literally, for a change.

Election this and that

2011-11-27T20:18:00.001+13:00

One of my biggest sources of laughter—and some anger—has been the rightwing spin on the election results. I think that they actually do know what the truth is, but they’re in perpetual campaign mode and maybe can’t help themselves.

National Party pundits have claimed that the Conservative Party denied John Key an outright majority, but that’s old-fashioned First Past the Post thinking (maybe that’s all their pundits, being old timers, are capable of). National got less than 50% of the vote, so under MMP they should have less than 50% of the seats in Parliament. Colin Craig being there or not doesn’t change that in the least—particularly because there’s no reason to think all those votes would have gone to National. Not every conservative is a Tory, after all.

And, if you want to be technical about it—Tories love facts and figures, right?—roughly one third of eligible voters supported National. So, if only one third of eligible voters backed National, why is it again they should be able to govern alone? LOL, as they say.

Tories hate MMP—they can’t help it, it’s in their DNA. They can’t accept that people unlike themselves should have a voice, or that the majority should rule if it disagrees with them. They believe we’d all be better off if we just shut up and did as they say. So the fact that MMP did exactly as it was supposed to do makes me as happy as it makes Tories grumpy (which makes me happier still). MMP governments are always coalitions, so far, and the power of the largest party is checked by smaller parties. But, then, having read my posts on the electoral system, you already know the inherent superiority of MMP, right?

The bottom line is that I was ecstatic to see the New Zealand public support MMP, even as it handed power to its most strident enemies. There’s a justice in that.

However, since they won, the Nats weren’t my source of happiness this year. Instead, it was the teacup caper. Months ago, when the hapless has-been, Don Brash, took over the Act Party in a coup, he declared that the party would win 15 MPs. Never has schadenfreude been filled with more freude (joy) than this, seeing Don Brash crash in flames. He deserves it. One of the most reviled men in New Zealand politics is now gone—surely one of the best results of the night. Sadly, though, it could be three years until we’re rid of loopy John Banks, but by then not even a cup of tea will save him.

For 2014, I think that Green and Labour voters have to get over themselves and not be so friggin’ prissy about strategic voting. Together they could have rid New Zealand of both the useless “Act Party” (which is, honestly, dead) or the insufferably pompous Peter Dunne. But they were far too pure to be sullied in that way. Whatever, tossers: It’s you’re fault those has-beens are in Parliament.

Okay, those are my random thoughts for this year. We’ve had enough of this campaign—or, I have, anyway. Now it’s time to look forward.

Thresholds

2011-11-27T14:57:00.002+13:00

The one thing that’s clear about this year’s election is that MMP was the victor: It worked as it’s designed to and delivered what it always does: Governments with shared power. This is all very good news, indeed.

But once again the five percent threshold came up for debate. In 2008, it was New Zealand First, which got more Party Votes than Act, but still didn't get any seats because it didn’t get 5% of the Party Vote and didn't win an electorate as Act did. This year, it was two other parties who were left out of Parliament. Again pundits are asking, should the threshold be eliminated so there are almost no “wasted” votes?

As things stand at the moment, subject to change when the special votes are counted, the NZ National Party only needs the two one-person rightwing parties (United Future and Act) to have a majority. If they lose a seat after the specials, they’ll need the Maori Party’s three seats more than they do now, but in the unlikely event they lose two seats, they’ll need the Maori Party to govern.

The “Act Party” is only in Parliament because John Banks won Epsom. Banks is not an Act Party person (he’s a dyed-in-the-wool Nat) and, like Peter Dunne, he isn't a party any more than Jim Anderton’s Progressive Party was in the last Parliament. Yet they all received seats in Parliament because they won electorates.

At Public Address, Graeme Edgeler has crunched the numbers and worked out what Parliament would look like if there was no threshold (apart, I’m guessing, from having enough support for one whole MP). Here are his results (keep in mind that all these numbers will almost certainly change once the special votes are counted):

National would have 57 seats (instead of the 60 they appear to have won), United Future and Act would both still have one seat and the Maori Party would still have 3 (because they all won electorates, but their Party Vote wasn't high enough for any more MPs), for a total of 62 seats for the government in a 121-seat Parliament. That’s a bare majority, but a majority.

The Opposition would be Labour 33 (down one), while the Greens would still have 13, New Zealand First would still have 8 (both won no electorate seats) and Mana would still have one (they did win an electorate seat, but had low Party Vote).

Those four seats taken off the two main parties would go to Colin “God Bless” Craig’s Conservative Party (3) and the Aotearoa Legalise Cannabis Party (or ALCP, 1).

Would we want that? On the one hand, if enough people vote for a party that their share of the Party Vote would entitle them to one MP, why shouldn’t they be in Parliament? MMP is about proportionality, ensuring that Parliament matches the support parties have. As things are, the 5% threshold—which is an entirely arbitrary number—means thousands of voters are effectively disenfranchised.

On the other hand, entertaining though it might be, clearly the vast majority of New Zealanders don’t want the ALCP in Parliament, so maybe it’s not so unfair to have a threshold. If MMP, and it’s encouragement of coalition government, works to put a brake on the party that forms government, should we not have a brake at the other end—stopping single-issue or activist parties?

I simply don’t know; in fact, I can see merit in both arguments. But the system the way it is not only disenfranchises those who vote for tiny-to-small parties, it also effectively suppresses their support because voters won’t want to waste their vote on a party they perceive as not being able to win a seat in Parliament (usually due to public opinion polling). Who’s to say that Act and United Future wouldn’t have had more Party Votes if those votes weren’t wasted? And National’s self-interested deals in Ohariu, Epsom, New Plymouth, and so on wouldn’t have been needed.

Also, much as I am totally opposed to Colin Craig’s fundamentalist Christian-aligned Conservative Party, if they can win so many votes, do they not deserve to be represented in “the people’s house”? Doesn’t the ALCP? Is democracy not better served by more democracy, more representation, not less? Or, is a “gatekeeper” function also important? Honestly, I’m not sure.

Assuming that MMP’s lead holds and it is retained, as seems likely, then the independent review that follows may help us work out what’s best. I can’t decide how I feel about the threshold; I hope the review helps us all clarify our thinking about it.

It’s time

2011-11-26T23:57:00.000+13:00

I’ve watched this video several times, and I’ve ended up with tears every time. It’s not just because it’s so well made—and it is, maybe even the best video like this yet made—but because the message is so powerful: It’s time to end marriage discrimination.

This video is intended to call Australians to action, and I hope it does. Marriage equality is bizarrely stalled in Australia (despite popular support) due to the weird, inexplicable—and did I say weird?—personal opposition of Prime Minister Julia Gillard. That must change.

But we’re only slightly better in New Zealand, with our similar-but-separate civil unions. Here, neither of the two main parties endorses marriage equality, and that’s just plain wrong. While this issue wasn’t a deal breaker for me in 2011, in 2014 it very well might be. In any case, I have no intention of letting up on any party that doesn’t openly and honestly embrace the full equality of all citizens, and that includes marriage equality. The reason is obvious: It’s time.

I first saw this video last night, but couldn’t post it because it was after midnight. Since then, the views have skyrocketed. It’s not hard to see why. I’m posting it now because after tonight, many of us can use something positive.

Not surprised

2011-11-26T23:37:00.000+13:00

I’m not surprised by the election results—not really, anyway. The result was tighter than the polls indicated, as I said it would be. I hadn’t counted on such a low voter turnout, which will be maybe 68% at most, when all is said and done. Apparently it’s the lowest since the 1880s. That’s disgusting in its own right, but it’s probable that most of the voters who stayed home were Labour’s. Just like 2008.

In fact, the results overall are very similar to 2008: The split between the centre-left and the centre-right was pretty much the same, but the resurrection of Winston Peters and his New Zealand First Party, along with the surge of the Green Party, rearranged things.

The important thing is that National did not get enough seats to govern alone, and there’s a huge part of Parliament that opposes National’s plans to sell state-owned assets to foreigners. Whether the opposing parties can collectively stop National or not can’t be known right now, but it’s at least possible; if National had won enough seats to govern alone, there would have been no chance of stopping them.

Tomorrow, after a good night’s sleep, I’ll offer my full take on the results, along with a more in-depth discussion of what the results mean. I’ll also talk about what the centre-left, Labour in particular, needs to do over the next three years.

But tonight there are some sad people, some happy people and—apparently—a huge number of people who just don’t give a shit. That’s the nature of democracy.

To comply with the law

2011-11-25T23:11:00.003+13:00

I have temporarily turned on comment moderation on this blog. You can still leave a comment, but it won’t be posted until after 7pm Saturday NZDT (1AM Saturday EST), after the polls have closed. I’m doing this to comply with New Zealand election law, which apparently mandates that I turn off comments (even though the law was enacted in 1993…). I’ll update this post after I’ve re-enabled un-moderated comments.

Also, I won't be posting anything here until after 7pm tomorrow. Apparently a new post might draw eyes to my previous election posts. Or something.

P.S. Two ticks Labour and vote to Keep MMP!! (I can say that because I’m posting this before midnight…)

Update 26/11/11: Now that polls have closed, comments are once again unmoderated, so they will post immediately. Thank you for your patience.

How I will vote

2011-11-25T09:40:00.001+13:00

After months of thinking about the election, hours reading party policies and no small amount of agonising over my vote, I’ve reached my final decision for election day: I’ll be giving Two Ticks to Labour.

When I say I was agonising, I’m not kidding in the least. As I said yesterday, “I’ve been voting for 34 years, and I have never been this conflicted.” In the end, it all came down to one basic point: The purpose of the Party Vote is to vote for the party I want to form government, and that is and always has been, Labour.

I admire the Greens—a lot. I want them to be part of Government—a Labour Government. I considered giving them my Party Vote because of how well they ran their campaign, but that was only possible because they—from my point of view—have matured as a party, drafting policies that middle New Zealand can support. Their party list includes many capable and talented people who would be a credit to Parliament.

But my “home”, if you will, is Labour: I’ve voted “Two Ticks Labour” since 1999, the first New Zealand election in which I was eligible to vote. But my support, while probable, is never a certainty and Labour has to continue earning my vote. I’ll admit that there have been times over the past three years when they really pissed me off. At other times I’ve cheered them. Those times have been more frequent.

Labour has, on the whole, run a good campaign. If we’d seen the Phil Goff of the last few weeks during the past three years, I think the poll numbers would be very different. New Zealanders agree with me on that, too: Goff’s polling as preferred prime minister has been rising steadily in recent weeks.

National never had a chance of getting my vote. There is a fundamental divide between us that I just can’t see being bridged (I don’t say “never”, but the phrase “highly unlikely” springs to mind). I don’t like John Key and I can’t understand why anybody else does (apart from Tories). On this blog, I’ve highlighted many of the things I vehemently disagree with Key about (my opposition to his idiotic plan to sell off state owned assets to foreigners is probably the most widely shared), but the one thing I can’t get past is him telling GLBT voters that National is “pro-gay” because they didn’t take away any of our rights in their first term. Gee, thanks, John.

GLBT issues are not my sole criteria, or even my main ones, but I certainly take then very seriously. I’m keenly aware that nearly all of the legal progress for GLBT New Zealanders has happened during Labour governments. Labour brought many GLBT people into their Parliamentary caucus. Labour Leader Phill Goff—unlike Key—is a clear supporter of fairness and justice. While both Labour and the Greens support adoption reform, only the Greens clearly support marriage equality. As I said a long time ago, this is not a deal-breaker for me, and I will continue to urge Labour to take a clear, unequivocal stand in favour of marriage equality. They eventually will, and we all know it.

So why did I consider the Greens? It wasn’t just an effective campaign or good party leaders and candidates. Part of it was that I wanted a strong Green caucus to pull Labour back leftward after years of the party crossing the centre line to the rightwing side too often. In recent weeks, with the poll numbers looking so abysmal, I looked to the Greens as the best shot at stopping National’s insane plans to sell off state owned assets. But this only works if National has trouble getting the numbers to form government. Also, it means, ultimately, supporting a National-led government, and I do not want that at all.

A quick aside on polls: The final election results are unlikely to mirror the polls. I’ve never seen an election campaign where poll numbers haven’t moved: The breathless, incompetent reporting of the newsmedia aside, support levels have all been pretty much within the margin of error all along, meaning little or no movement. Either something is wrong with the polls this year, or this is something I’ve never seen before. I’m betting on the former.

My electorate vote for the Labour candidate was decided a long time ago, not coincidentally because it’s also my only vote that doesn’t matter: National will win this electorate easily, probably with a large majority. If we could vote for our electorate MP using Preferential Voting, as I think we should do, it might be different. But, for now, this is a very Tory electorate.

I’m not going to rehash all the things I oppose about National, or the things that I support in Labour, though many of both are highlighted in the Labour videos I’ve posted on this blog. We had a whole campaign season to talk about those issues.

In the end, it all came down to the same thing I started out with: I want to change the government and I want a Labour-led Government. That’s what matters to me, and that’s why I’m going to Party Vote Labour.

Happy Thanksgiving

2011-11-25T08:20:00.002+13:00

I’d like to wish a Happy Thanksgiving to all my friends and family in the US. It was always one of my favourite holidays. Here in New Zealand, it’s mostly a curiosity: People are curious about the traditions and about the food, and ogten want to experience it.

I often make a smaller version of Thanksgiving Dinner, mostly because today is just another Friday in New Zealand (apart from this being the day before Election Day this year), and because it’s almost summer, so it tends to be warm (some years even hot), so a massive cook-a-thon is a bit much.

So, from this more or less ordinary Friday, I wish a Happy Thanksgiving to everyone in my homeland!

Still an undecided voter

2011-11-24T23:22:00.001+13:00

Above is the closing broadcast for the New Zealand Labour Party, and below is the closing broadcast for the Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand. Both of these, along with the closing broadcasts of other parties, will be shown on television tomorrow night.

These are the only two parties that could get my Party Vote. Both have run strong campaigns. Which one should I choose?

During the course of this election campaign I’ve swung back and forth between the two parties, sometimes sure I’d party vote one, other times certain it would be for the other. This is why I haven’t posted anything about how I’m voting in the general election: I simply can’t make up my mind.

I’ve been voting for 34 years, and I have never been this conflicted before. Nevertheless, time’s running out and I need to decide—somehow—how to cast the most important of my two votes in the general election.

And so I remain stuck: These are the only two parties that could get my Party Vote. Which one should I choose?

Final thoughts on the referendum

2011-11-24T16:53:00.000+13:00

Just over a month ago, I wrote that I was going to vote to keep MMP. I said:

“Of all the decisions I’ve had to make about voting in the election this year, one was never in doubt: I’ll be voting to keep MMP. Naturally, I hope all other New Zealanders will, too.”

Since then, my desire to see MMP retained has only strengthened aided, if I’m honest, by more in depth study of the proposed alternatives. I basically knew how they all operated, but after looking into them more deeply, I became not just committed to keeping MMP, but an ardent advocate. I know I convinced at least one other person to change their position and support MMP.

All the NZ elections I’ve personally seen have been under MMP. The last one under the old First Past the Post system was in 1993—18 years ago. MMP was selected because of the huge unfairness of FPP, that it delivered minority governments, like the autocratic rule of Robert Muldoon, which was replaced by the only alternative, Labour, which itself had been taken over by neoconservatives because they couldn’t take over National under Muldoon.

Meanwhile, third parties got nowhere, and ordinary New Zealand voters were unrepresented, frustrated and often disenfranchised. MMP was the antidote.

MMP is the most fair and democratic voting system I’ve seen. Its proportionality ensures that the make-up of Parliament mirrors the will of the people. It has encouraged the growth of many smaller parties, increasing the representativeness of Parliament. That’s been strengthened even more by the huge increase in diversity: More woman, more Maori, Pacific Islanders and other ethnic minorities, more GLBT representation—in short, it’s created a Parliament that looks much more like New Zealand than anything FPP would ever have delivered.

No system is perfect, of course, and if MMP is retained, an independent review will look at ways of improving it. So, if we vote to keep MMP, we can make it even better.

I wrote a lot about the alternative voting systems because I think it’s important to explain fully why I support MMP and reject the alternatives (also, I did spend a lot of time studying them…). Here’s a reminder of what I think about the alternatives, along with links to the complete posts:

First Past the Post – it’s unfair, undemocratic and unrepresentative. It’s a total non-starter. MMP is vastly superior.

Supplementary Member – It’s just FPP in fancy-dress: It has all the problems of FPP, with none of the benefits of MMP, the truly proportional system.

Preferential Voting – This is a good alternative to FPP, but only for electorate votes. Because it’s not proportional, it’s not any more representative than FPP. When it comes to deciding the make-up of Parliament, it pales in comparison to MMP.

Single Transferable Vote – While it’s somewhat proportional, it’s far less so than MMP, and it tends to concentrate power in the hands of the main parties. So, STV is far less representative than MMP. It’s also really complicated. MMP beats it easily.

There is a discussion among some of my leftie friends about how to vote in Part B of the referendum: “If New Zealand were to change to another voting system, which voting system would you choose?” Some lefties are saying we should vote for FPP because MMP already beat it and would easily do so again. I’m not convinced. After 18 years, do people remember how undemocratic FPP is? I’d guess not, because it’s polling highest among the alternatives; maybe voters just don’t know what the other systems are.

The government has produced some brilliant resources for explaining the alternatives, but most voters have no idea they’re there, because the public awareness part of the campaign hasn’t been big enough. So, maybe people choose an alternative they already know.

If voters vote to keep MMP, the alternative chosen won’t matter, of course. And even if MMP loses, there may not be a second referendum, anyway. Still, I’m not sure that it’s a good idea to take the chance that a non-proportional system might win.

For me, as I’ve said all along, STV is my very distant second choice. I will probably select it in Part B, unless between now and Saturday I see a really convincing argument to do otherwise. That doesn’t seem likely.

The bottom line is, as I said in my post about STV, “For me, the best system is one that’s democratic, proportional, representative, fair and easy to use and understand. MMP ticks all those boxes.”

Indeed it does. I hope we all vote to Keep MMP and make it even better.

For official information on the referendum, go to www.referendum.org.nz
For information from the campaign to Keep MMP, go to www.keepmmp.org.nz

STV is a distant second choice

2011-11-24T13:23:00.000+13:00

The final MMP alternative Kiwi voters will be offered on Saturday is Single Transferable Vote, or STV (the official video is above). It’s the only one of the alternatives that’s a proportional system, but it’s vastly inferior to MMP. It’s also inarguably the most complicated of all the systems, and difficult for most voters to fully understand.

Like Preferential Voting (PV), STV has voters rank candidates, but there are a lot more to contend with than in any of the other systems. Rather than having many single-member electorates, STV has fewer electorates, each of which would have between 3 and 7 MPs.

Voters would rank individual candidates in their order of preference, like in PV, and could choose them from among many parties. Or, they could vote for the ranking chosen (and published in advance) by their party. In Australian Senate elections, they call this voting “above-the-line”.

To be elected, a candidate needs to win a certain minimum number of votes, but unlike PV, this won’t be a majority. The threshold is called the “Drood quota” and is determined by taking the number of voters in the electorate and dividing that by the number of seats plus one. One is then added to the result and that number is the quota.

So, for example, take an imaginary electorate with 100 votes and three candidates. It would be 100 divided by 3+1 (four), which is 25. Add one to that, and the quota is 26—the number of votes a candidate must win to be elected. Eyes glazed over yet? Any candidate who had 26 votes as first preference would be elected. If not, or if there are more candidates to elect, they eliminate the lowest polling candidate and that candidate’s votes are redistributed to the candidate ranked second by each voter of the removed candidate. This continues until all the available seats are filled by candidates who reach the quota.

I did say it was complicated!

In places where STV is used, the number of seats a party ultimately wins in Parliament are usually similar to their share of first preference votes, that is, the people who rank them number one, which is why this is a proportional system. However, this is not guaranteed, and it tends to encourage dominance by the larger parties, which is also a weakness of PV. Also, it’s not necessary for any candidate to have majority support, or even for them to be anywhere near majority support.

In its favour, the multi-member electorates means specific geographic regions have several advocates, which can be good for regional representation. However, under our version of MMP, parties usually try and balance their party lists not just geographically, but also including many other factors. So, MMP party caucuses end up more representative of the country as a whole, and in far more ways than by geography alone. People who value regional representation more highly than representativeness overall would prefer STV. Those who want a Parliament that looks like the people who elected it would prefer MMP.

I truly believe that the greatest drawback to STV is its complexity. I have a bachelor’s degree in political science and I only now understand how it works, after studying it intensely as I considered my vote in the referendum. Because of my educational background, I’m probably more inclined to want to study the system and to have the patience to learn how it works. If after 15 years many Kiwi voters still claim that they still don’t know how the much simpler MMP works, how likely is it that they’ll understand STV?

For me, the best system is one that’s democratic, proportional, representative, fair and easy to use and understand. MMP ticks all those boxes, STV only a few. So if, under pain of death, I was forced to choose an alternative to MMP, it would be STV, but it such a distant second choice as to not really be a choice at all.

I’m voting to Keep MMP.

For official information on the referendum, go to www.referendum.org.nz
For information from the campaign to Keep MMP, go to www.keepmmp.org.nz

PV has some merit

2011-11-24T08:37:00.001+13:00

Yesterday I talked about the two worst alternatives to MMP in Saturday’s referendum: First Past the Post (FPP) and FPP’s fancy-dress cousin, Supplementary Member (SM). Today, in separate posts, I’ll talk about the two alternatives that have some merit. First up, Preferential Voting (PV).

The video above is the official explanatory video for the Preferential Voting system, also known as “Alternative Voting” and “Instant Run-Off Voting.” The video at bottom is CGPGrey’s explanation.

Preferential Voting is a vast improvement on FPP, but unlike SM, there’s no proportionality at all. The two main ways PV improves on FPP are that winners have majority support and it removes the spoiler effect. However, it’s only somewhat more likely to elect small party or independent candidates than is FPP.

It’s important to remember that PV is not intended to be proportional, but merely a fairer way of electing representatives. As such, it is a good replacement for FPP in places where proportional representation can’t be implemented, like the United States. If the US were to switch to PV, it’s probable that over time small party candidates could be elected, and it’s also likely that even candidates of the two main parties would be more representative and would pander less to their party base (this is especially true for Republicans).

By eliminating the spoiler effect, voters in PV can vote for the candidate they really want in their first preference without worrying that doing so might accidentally elect the candidate they least want. In PV, no vote is truly “wasted”, which is again different from FPP in which votes for minor party candidate are usually wasted votes.

Here in New Zealand, PV is no substitute for MMP—but they’re apples and oranges. In my perfect world, we would elect our electorate MPs using PV, while Parliament as a whole would be elected under MMP. To me, that would play to the strengths of both systems: The improvements PV makes to FPP are significant, and when combined with the proportionality of MMP, it would be a hugely fair, representative and democratic system.

But that’s not the question before us, and, dealing only with the one that is, I would not choose PV to replace MMP, which is a vastly superior system because of its proportionality. That leaves only one other possible alternative, and that’s in my next post on voting systems.

But, still, I’m voting to Keep MMP.

For official information on the referendum, go to www.referendum.org.nz
For information from the campaign to Keep MMP, go to www.keepmmp.org.nz

Election bites

2011-11-23T20:45:00.005+13:00

There are always things that I want to comment on that don’t warrant a full blog post. Elections have such things in abundance. Here are a few.

Journos should go back to school

I know I harp on this a lot, but that’s because it annoys me so much: Journalists should not report on poll results unless they understand elementary statistics. Here’s an example from today: Tracy Watkins, reporting a new poll from Fairfax Media, opened her story with: “National has soared over the teapot tape saga and strengthened its grip on the election in the final days of the campaign.” Only trouble with that is that it’s utter bullshit.

National’s polling went up 1.5 percentage points, which is well within the margin of error. Put another way, National is still polling in the same range as it was in the last poll. National didn’t “strengthen its grip” and they certainly didn’t “soar”—in fact, it could be said that not only did they not go up, they may very well actually have gone down.

I’m not saying that Tracy Watkins deliberately misled readers in a way that would benefit National (because of the bandwagon effect, among or things)—even though that’s what she did. Instead, I’m saying that she doesn’t have even the most basic understanding of statistics and so isn’t qualified to report on opinion polls. She needs to go back to school, or at least start with Marcus Wilson’s post on poll statistics. Or, she could always cover garden tours or other less challenging topics.

Another debate: New Zealanders lost

TVNZ’s One News held their last leaders’ debate tonight. Smug Mr. Key showed up again. He looked irritated that he was even there. His answers were more slogan than anything else, but part of the blame for that lies with the open-ended questions that didn’t challenge either party leader.

The two most shocking bits were John Key being forced to admit that if re-elected, National would put a freeze on police recruiting—something they hadn’t planned on telling New Zealanders until after the election. John also expressed support for Supplementary Member voting system. As I said earlier today, it’s the system Tories think they could get (they won’t), so this wasn’t a surprise. But he outrageously claimed that SM would lead to more women and minorities!! How, exactly, would that even be possible in a system designed to stifle proportionate representation and so, diversity?

The losers were New Zealanders who had to endure the hapless and hopeless moderating of Guyon Espiner and frequent long commercial breaks (including the extended one for the Lotto draw!). We need a public service broadcaster, but we’ll never get that while National is in power.

Put out the Feelers

This is totally unimportant, but it’s something that baffles me. A segment of the active left seems to absolutely loathe The Feelers, the band whose song “Stand Up” National uses in their campaign ads, and the use of the song stiffens their dislike for the Tories. The thing is, I have no idea why people seem to hate the group so much. Okay, their song “Venus” is pretty vile (you’d be forgiven for thinking the refrain is “cum my little penis”), but most of their music is just bland and largely forgettable, so why the hatred?

Supplementary Member is FPP dressed up

2011-11-23T12:39:00.001+13:00

Another voting system proposed as an alternative to MMP is Supplementary Member, or SM (official explanatory video above). It’s nothing more than First Past the Post (FPP) dressed up to look like a proportional system. It isn’t.

Under SM, the two main parties, Labour and National would dominate Parliament, almost always governing alone, just like FPP. Unlike FPP, small parties would have some representation in Parliament, but it would be a tiny fraction of their level of support among voters.

SM’s party vote would go to determine a party’s share of the 30 seats in Parliament (one quarter of all seats) set aside for that—regardless of how many electorate seats they’d won. So, if a party won 10% of the party vote, but no electorate seats, they’d get only three seats. That’s only 2.5% of the seats in Parliament, despite having 10% support of the voters. That’s just nuts.

Under MMP, the proportion of seats in Parliament is determined by the party vote. If a party has 10% of the party vote, it has 10% of the seats, and any electorate seats won are included in that total.

So, SM is slightly more democratic than FPP, but it is a pale, pale imitation of the real proportionality of MMP.

Pragmatic rightwingers like National Party leader John Key favour SM because it would give them one-party rule, which they want, while keeping a thin veneer of proportionality so as to sneak it by ordinary voters. The rightwing hopes that ordinary voters won’t notice that the Parliaments SM would deliver would be about as unrepresentative as the ones under FPP were. Basically, Key and the other conservatives know that the public doesn’t want FPP, so hope they’ll go for the FPP-lite that is SM.

So, just like FPP, I completely reject SM as an option. That leaves two other options, both of which have some merit, but I’ll discuss them in another post. Regardless, I’m voting to Keep MMP.

For official information on the referendum, go to www.referendum.org.nz
For information from the campaign to Keep MMP, go to www.keepmmp.org.nz

What’s wrong with FPP

2011-11-23T08:40:00.006+13:00

Like all Illinoisans of my generation, I had to pass an exam on the US Constitution before I could graduate from high school, and again at university. The classes leading up to it were all based on the implicit assumption of the superiority of the US system of governance. Over time, I came to realise it’s all built on a lie, because the US election system is not democratic.

At nearly every level, the US uses a system called “First Past the Post” (FPP) to elect people to office. Basically, whoever gets the most votes, wins, which I grew up thinking was perfectly fair and reasonable—until I learned better.

At the top of this post is the official video explaining FPP, the system in place in New Zealand before MMP was adopted, and the system that conservatives most want to return to. The video actually highlights why: Dominance by one party and the improbability that small parties or new parties can win seats in Parliament.

New Zealand’s conservatives and business elites want FPP because any party that wins government will govern alone, without coalitions, and it’s almost certain there will be no small parties (unless a sitting MP quits one of the two main parties). This makes a right-leaning National Party government highly probable and a centrist Labour Party government unlikely most of the time. That’s the way conservatives and the business elites want it.

There are more problems with FPP, as are outlined in the video below by CGPGrey. First, FPP almost always elects a candidate with minority support. Since small parties and independents can’t win, their supporters will vote for the party they dislike the least, but not who they want. In New Zealand under FPP, there were years in which parties won substantial percentages of the popular vote, but no electorate seats. Not only were those people totally unrepresented in Parliament, the “winner” of a seat often had a small minority of votes. FPP encourages this.

CGPGrey also points out what I think is FPP’s biggest flaw: It leads to an “inevitable, unavoidable two-party system “ because, as he says, “it’s math.” This is at the core of the political problems in the US: No one but a Republican or Democrat can be elected in most places, so there’s never an opportunity for any real change, nor any incentive for the two major parties to respond voters’ demands. This is why hardly anything in Washington, DC ever changes—the system makes sure it can’t.

In New Zealand, FPP would mean rule by Labour or National. Small parties almost certainly could not win seats, and so, couldn’t force change. The two main parties would “stay the course” and nothing much would change and problems would go unsolved. Just like the US.

CGPGrey also talks about the “spoiler effect”, which almost always causes the most similar major candidate to lose, as most famously happened in the 2000 US presidential election in which Ralph Nader’s spoiler candidacy helped make George W. Bush president (although Republican vote fraud and a corrupt US Supreme Court ultimately sealed the deal, Nader made it possible for that to happen). Fear of this is one of the reasons small parties get nowhere in FPP elections—nowhere except helping to defeat the most ideologically similar candidates.

So, FPP is not truly representative because winning candidates usually have only minority support, and because FPP suppresses full representation by inevitably favouring a two-party system. In so doing, it disenfranchises many—often the vast majority—of voters. In short, it’s the most undemocratic system a country can have while still being at least nominally a democracy.

All of this is why I oppose FPP and favour other systems in its place. More on that in another post. But in addition to the huge advantages of MMP, all these problems with FPP are why I’m voting to Keep MMP.

For official information on the referendum, go to www.referendum.org.nz
For information from the campaign to Keep MMP, go to www.keepmmp.org.nz

The deception of Key and National

2011-11-22T19:25:00.001+13:00

It turns out that John Key and the National Party deceived New Zealanders when they declared that the assets they're going to sell off would remain in NZ hands. I’m shocked, I tell you, shocked!!

A report from TVNZ’s One News shows that while Key and National have always claimed that as much as 90% of the state-owned assets National will sell off would remain in Kiwi ownership, they pulled the numbers out of their collective arses. As most people at least suspected.

So, John Key and National plan to take assets—things the people of New Zealand already own—and sell them off to foreigners. This isn’t just Tory lunacy, it’s also a massive fraud. And if John Key and National have been deceiving New Zealanders about these assets sales, what else are they being dishonest about?

In last night’s leaders’ debate, Key claimed that Kiwibank will not be sold while he’s prime minister. Putting aside the fact he could be rolled or quit next term, before the last election he also promised not to raise GST, but he did it, anyway. We know they’ve looked into selling-off Kiwibank, so can Key really be trusted on anything he says about asset sales?

On Saturday, I’m voting to change the government.

About MMP

2011-11-22T08:53:00.007+13:00

As I’ve previously said, I’m voting to keep MMP (Mixed Member Proportional) as the electoral system for New Zealand. The official video above explains how the system works. I’ve also posted CGPGrey’s video on MMP below, which I think is really good. I’ll be doing this same thing with other systems in other posts this week. Between these two videos, most people should get how MMP works.

The most important point is that MMP is proportional, something that none of the other systems can claim. That makes it the most representative system and, in my view, by far the fairest and most democratic.

The electorate seats are elected in a first past the post (FPP) system, and I think that should change to Preferential Voting (more about that in another post). It’s not relevant for this referendum. The size of Parliament is also irrelevant because that’s not at issue in this referendum, contrary to the distortions of the rightwing Vote for Change group.

If MMP is retained, it will trigger a review to look at possible changes. If it loses, however, it may face another referendum against the most popular alternative—however, contrary to popular belief, this second referendum is NOT automatic, and Parliament must still approve it.

In future posts over the next couple days, I’ll talk about the alternatives to MMP and why they’re all inferior. In the meantime, I say as I have all along:

Let’s keep MMP and make it even better.

For official information on the referendum, go to www.referendum.org.nz
For information from the campaign to Keep MMP, go to www.keepmmp.org.nz

Labour ad - Facts about National's record

2011-11-21T21:54:00.000+13:00

I saw this Labour Party ad for the first time tonight while we were watching the TV 3 Leaders’ Debate (which I thought Labour’s Phil Goff clearly won). John Key was, yet again, economical with the truth and deceptive. What surprised me, though, was how distracted he seemed. Overall, it was a far different performance—for both—than in other debates.

A brickbat: What the hell was 3News thinking with that post-debate panel?! At one point I was going to put things under the end of my TV because it was leaning so far to the right. I hope the election night coverage is more balanced that that was!

Final week

2011-11-21T20:33:00.002+13:00

We’re now in the final week of New Zealand’s 2011 election campaign, with the big day on Saturday. We have a family event to go that day, but we’ll have plenty of time to vote before we go, and we’ll be back in plenty of time to watch the results come in. Both are very important to me, actually.

Over the course of this week, I’m going to go into some detail about how I’m voting and why, but all of that will be done by Friday to ensure that I don’t run afoul of NZ election law. The Electoral Commission has issued a series of rules—well, reminders about rules—for handling the election in the online world. One part was especially relevant to bloggers:

"News stories posted on websites before election day can remain, as long as the website is not advertised on election day. Comment functions should be disabled on all websites, including social media sites, until after 7pm on election day to avoid readers posting statements that could influence voters."

I asked Lew of KiwiPolitico what he was going to do, and he suggested enabling comment moderation, and I thought that was brilliant: Folks can still make comments, but the comments won’t show up until we approve them, after 7pm Saturday. Turning off the comment function completely would mean people would have to come back to comment, and how many people will do that? So, by midnight on Friday, I’ll enable comment moderation on this blog and turn it off again after the polls close on election day (though in my case it’s mostly symbolic, since I’m unlikely to get many comments on election day).

But the bit about social media is just daft. I can avoid posting anything to Facebook, Google+ and Twitter, but I have NO control what others do. There’s no way to disable comments/re-posts on those services short of deleting my accounts. Since we’ll be away, I won’t have a chance to post anything that day, anyway, but I’m also not going to worry if someone comments something partisan. It’s possible the Commission means things like news organisations’ forums, but they didn’t say that, so I have to assume they simply don’t understand how social media works.

I’m going to be extra cautious and probably won’t post anything about the campaign on Friday, and I won’t post anything at all on Saturday until after the voting ends (I can’t do anything to draw eyes to my blog on election day, and a new post of any kind, no matter how unrelated it was, might possibly do that). Again. I won’t really have a chance to post anything, so this isn’t a burden.

But I hope that this is all better thought-out for 2014.

Update 22/11: Russell Brown over at Public Address is taking a different approach.

Weekend Diversion: Coffee – The Greatest Addiction Ever

2011-11-20T20:12:00.000+13:00

In this video, CGPGrey, one of my favourite—what’s the word?—explainers on YouTube talks about coffee, which he calls the greatest addiction ever. I agree. One of things I like about his work is that his blog goes into more detail about the subject of his video, as he did with this one. It’s more detail than many YouTubers go into, and as a stickler for accuracy and transparency, I appreciate it.

I posted another of his videos as a Weekend Diversion back in February. He’s also produced some really good videos on voting systems, at least one of which I’ll post later this week (I wish his video on STV was done already!).

This particular video is fun as much as it is interesting. Oddly, I really wanted a coffee after watching it…

Making Aunt Betty feel awkward

2011-11-20T10:02:00.000+13:00

Sometimes, it’s the simplest ideas that are the best. GLAAD (the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation) is promoting a simple campaign for the US’ Thanksgiving holiday this Thursday, one I think could be adopted anywhere.

“I'm Letting Aunt Betty Feel Awkward This Thanksgiving” is designed to encourage GLBT people who feel safe to do so to talk about their lives openly at the Thanksgiving family meal:

“We've all had those Thanksgiving dinners where Aunt Betty decides this is the perfect time to discuss a year's worth of ailments and medical treatments. Well, you know what? If she can talk about her polyp, you can talk about your partner.

“The fact is, while you're scarfing down mashed potatoes and staying silent while everyone else at the table is freely speaking their minds, you're missing a golden opportunity to make real, honest progress by talking about your life, and the things you care about. It's okay if Aunt Betty feels a little awkward at first, it's important for her to know that someone she loves cares deeply about LGBT equality. And the more we all talk about what's important to us, the less awkward those conversations will become.”

The point of all this is that familiarity breeds support: Poll after poll after poll has shown that those who actually know GLBT people, especially people they like, love or merely respect, the far more likely they are to support GLBT equality or—equally important—oppose those who would deny us our equality under the law.

In fact, GLAAD itself did a study of people who said their opinions on GLBT issues had become more favorable. Of those who had become more supportive of GLBT equality, 80 percent said that personally knowing a lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender person was a primary reason for their shift in attitude.

Polls have also demonstrated that younger people have far less difficulty accepting GLBT people and supporting GLBT equality than do older people. If people in our own families don’t know the realities of our lives, how can we expect strangers to view us as anything other than cartoons or caricatures?

Thanksgiving in the US is the perfect opportunity for GLBT American’s to bring their extended families into their lives. Christmas is another such opportunity, and it’s one I hope my fellow GLBT antipodeans will take advantage of. We, too, have unfinished work.

Having said all that, to me this isn’t really about a political agenda at all. Instead, it’s about ending the silence, opening up families to their full potential. Not every GLBT person will feel safe to be open in their own families. But as those who do feel safe embrace themselves and their families openly, the day in which all GLBT can be open will arrive more quickly.

That would be something to be very thankful for, indeed.

Correcting Obama

2011-11-18T22:28:00.010+13:00

I know we Americans are geographically challenged, but really, couldn't the President of the United States have a fact-checker on staff? In a speech to the Australian Parliament, President Obama said:

"…women in this country demanded that their voices be heard, making Australia the first nation to let women vote and run for parliament and, one day, become prime minister."

Except, that wasn't Australia—it was New Zealand.

In 1893, New Zealand became the first nation in the world to grant women the right to vote, an effort that had been underway under various premiers since 1878. The right to vote granted to women included Maori women.

While South Australia gave women the right to vote in local elections in 1894 (having given women with property the right to vote in local elections in 1861), all the women of Australia didn’t win the vote in national elections until 1902, the year after federation (which created the nation of Australia). However, indigenous women in Queensland, Western Australia and the Northern Territory didn’t win the right to vote until 1962.

By comparison, women in Canada won the right to vote nationally in 1919 (though Quebec didn’t grant it until 1940), women in the United States won the right to vote in 1920 and in the United Kingdom, while women got some voting rights in 1918, they didn’t win full voting rights until 1928—35 years after New Zealand women.

Australia was technically ahead of New Zealand when it comes to running for parliament, so that part of Obama’s speech was sort of true: The same Act of the Australian Parliament that gave (white) women the right to vote in Parliamentary elections also allowed them to run for Parliament, and that was 17 years earlier than in New Zealand. Women didn’t get the right to serve in New Zealand’s now-abolished upper house, the Legislative Council, until 1941 (it was abolished in 1951).

However, in both New Zealand and Australia, having the right to run for parliament came well before a woman was actually elected but, again, New Zealand was first: The first Australian women elected to their House of Representatives and their Senate were both elected in 1943. The first woman elected to the NZ House of Representatives was in 1933. In 1946, Labour appointed the first woman to the Legislative Council, which was unelected.

New Zealand also had a female prime minister well before Australia. New Zealand got its first female Deputy Prime Minister—Helen Clark—in 1989. She became our first female Leader of the Opposition in 1993. We got our first female Prime Minister—Jenny Shipley—in 1997. We then elected Helen Clark Prime Minster in 1999. By contrast, Julia Gillard became Australia's first Prime Minister only in 2010.

Again for comparison, the United Kingdom got its first female Leader of the Opposition, Margaret Thatcher, in 1975. She went on to become the country’s first female prime minister in 1979. Kim Campbell was Canada’s first female prime minister, but she never sat in Parliament as prime minister, so it’s a bit of a technicality. Similarly, Deborah Cleland Grey became Canada’s first female leader of the opposition, serving for some six months in an acting capacity until the permanent leader was chosen. The current Leader of the Opposition, Nycole Turmel, is officially the second woman to hold that post, but the first to actually be the leader.

The United States is not directly comparable to the Westminster-style parliamentary systems of these other countries, but it has never had a female president or vice president. Still, from 2007-2011 it had a female Speaker of the House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, a job that’s actually comparable to prime minister in the NZ system, except for executive power. She’s currently Minority Leader, which is kind of like Leader of the Opposition in the NZ system. Pelosi became the first female Minority Leader in 2003.

That’s the full story that President Obama’s speech muddled up, but he’s not the first president to mess up history that relates to New Zealand: Bill Clinton said the US was the country that split the atom, when that’s credited to New Zealander Lord Ernest Rutherford, who was working in Britain. There was irony, too, that Obama should mess up a discussion of Australian and New Zealand history in a speech lauding the ties of the ANZUS alliance, a defence pact New Zealand was effectively expelled from when it went nuclear free (we’re the NZ in the treaty name, for goodness sake!!). Out of sight, out of mind, I guess.

This isn’t exactly an international incident, and Kiwis are used to this sort of thing. But it would be nice if the White House—under any president—employed someone who knows something about history, or at least someone who knows how to find things out. We really don’t need presidents of any party reinforcing the common belief that Americans are geographically challenged and lacking an understanding of history. We have the Internet, after all: Looking stuff up is easy.

The Sydney Mardi Gras

2011-11-17T22:01:00.000+13:00

The video above is about the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras, which has been going through a bit of reorganisation. I think it’s a good introduction for folks who don’t know much about it, so that’s one reason I’m posting this. The mean reason, however, is the last spoken line: “Because, fuck it! We’re all fabulous!”

Olbermann on Bloomberg

2011-11-17T12:55:00.002+13:00

In this “Special Comment” on New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Keith Olbermann basically rips Bloomberg a new one. He deserves it. The billionaire Bloomberg—who is not part of the 1%, but rather the .01%—ordered the police to clear away “Occupy Wall Street” protestors, and has no doubt unleashed a huge number of unintended consequences.

Olbermann compares Bloomberg to George Wallace and Joe McCarthy, among others, who acted to suppress democracy. While to me that seemed a bit over the top at first, I think Keith is on to something.

The “Occupy” movement was by all reports running out of gas and was becoming an occupation for the sake of itself, and not a movement. By clearing the protestors and dumping everything—including over 5,000 books—into the rubbish, Bloomberg has inadvertently breathed new life into the “Occupy” movement. Oops.

Keith’s comparison of Bloomberg to anti-democratic demagogues is even more apt considering that the newsmedia was deliberately prevented from covering the police action and police actually arrested several journalists (including a cameraman working for TVNZ’s “One News”) to prevent them from doing their jobs. That’s not the action of someone who respects democracy, liberty or the rule of law—it is the action of a despot eager to suppress all three.

The brutality of the repression of the “Occupy” movement in some places has been breathtaking, but the fact that the corporate elites are doing it is not surprising: The last thing the corporate elites or their minions in government are willing to tolerate is any sort of real challenge to their oligarchy. Bloomberg simply acted as he was always going to do: Repression.

The US Supreme Court has given a lot of room for free speech, and it has frequently reaffirmed the right to symbolic speech, even when it’s not popular (like flag burning, for example). Bloomberg is on very shaky legal ground in ordering the park cleared. I’m sure he knew that, and I’m also sure he wouldn’t have cared: Sin in haste, repent at leisure, and all that.

I hope we don’t see anything similar here in New Zealand when the “Occupy Auckland” even is brought to an end, but we very well may. While the issues of class, income distribution and the influence of corporations are very different in New Zealand than in the US, and the “Occupy Wall Street” movement isn’t really relevant here, we nevertheless may see a similar end.

Thanks to Michael Bloomberg, the “occupy” movement, including that in New Zealand, has been reinvigorated. No wonder so many people think he’s an idiot.

A scrawled reply

2011-11-16T15:47:00.002+13:00

I posted an uncropped version of this photo yesterday on Twitter and Google+, but after a jury service day, I was too tired to post it here last night. Here’s what I said on Google+:

Yesterday, Auckland Council took the first steps toward removing the "occupy Auckland" folks: They asked what date the folks planned to leave. The "protestors" apparently answered via chalk. The photo (above) shows the message in front of both entrances to Council's Civic Administration bldg. this morning. The building is right by the "camp", the photo is of the doors facing Aotea Square. I think forcible removal may now be inevitable.

I snapped the photo at 8:15am yesterday morning. When I went past today, there was nothing; it had been raining a lot, so I don’t know if it was cleaned off or just washed away in the rain.

With the occupation at the original site in New York City cleared, it’s hard to imagine that Auckland’s will last much longer. As I see it, this is now just a question of whether it’ll happen before or after the election.

Occupation ending soon?

2011-11-14T22:54:00.002+13:00

The photo above is of Occupy Auckland at 8:15am this morning. As it happens, Auckland Council today took the first steps toward removing the protestors, apparently by preparing the groundwork for court action. The New Zealand Police have said they won’t enforce trespass notices issued by councils because of what they call “serious Bill of Rights implications”. They would be obligated to enforce a court order.

I think that the sympathy some people originally had for the protestors is all but gone. This has been going on since middle of last month, and the majority of people are frankly sick of it. The new grass area where their tents are has been ruined, and it will take tens of thousands of dollars to replace. That’s on top of the tens of thousands of dollars spent on extra security during their occupation.

At first they seemed an inchoate movement, or potential movement, made up of individuals with wildly different agendas. But over time, that lack of focus has left them seeming like mere malcontents, not genuine protestors. After all, most of the issues that protestors in the US are taking on simply aren’t relevant for New Zealand. I know I don’t endorse all the agendas evident among the occupiers, and I’m not at all unique.

I still want to see a peaceful resolution, but a resolution all the same. It’s time for this occupation to end.

Jury service

2011-11-14T19:47:00.001+13:00

This week I have jury service for a trial that’s expected to be completed by Wednesday, at which point I should be released for two years minimum. I can’t comment on the specific case, even after it’s finished, but I’ll certainly have some general comments about the experience once it’s all over.

In the meantime, I may not be posting much the next day or two.

Media mayhem

2011-11-13T14:12:00.000+13:00

Every day there’s something in the newsmedia that makes me shake my head or my first, and every once in awhile, something makes me smile. This weekend, I’ve had all three.

The image above is a Tweet from TVNZ’s One News reporter Garth Bray, who was attending the campaign launch of the neoconservative Act Party. It’s the kind of detail that wouldn’t normally get reported, but it provides a picture of what goes on before the cameras start rolling.

Of course, Act isn’t unique in trying to present itself in a flattering, TV-friendly way—all political parties do this. But Act perhaps needs to do this more than other parties, given that it’s dominated by, er, um, “late middle-aged” white guys. Bray also Tweeted that they had brand-new slick brochures with a photo of John Key and John Banks having their cup of tea, and that Act also handed out teabags. Hm, not even a bevy of pretty girls can save those “late middle-aged” white guys from their most naff instincts.

My shaking fist is waved at the New Zealand Herald for betraying the voting public in order to advance the interests of the National Party in the upcoming election. The facts—as reported by the Herald itself—are that during the publicity stunt “cup of tea” between John Key and John Banks, Key’s security entourage wouldn’t allow a cameraman to retrieve a device he inadvertently left on the table, and that device transmitted audio of the conversation to the cameraman’s equipment, which recorded it.

The Herald obtained legal advice that it could publish the recording, but John Key inexplicably refused permission citing “privacy” and the Herald gladly went along with that. This is bullshit. The event was not in any way “private”: Not only was it held in a public place where someone might reasonably be expected to overhear, it was a staged media event! If they truly wanted a private conversation, that was the wrong place, the wrong time and the wrong circumstances for it, and John Key and the Herald damn well know that.

The public absolutely has a right to know what the potential next prime minister and a man who may hold the balance of power after the election were talking about IN PUBLIC and at A PUBLICITY EVENT ATTENDED BY THE NEWSMEDIA.

The Herald said the publicly-held “private” conversation included talk of “Act's future and its leadership, New Zealand First's electoral chances and the percentage of the vote the National Party would secure.” What is John Key afraid of? Is he really THAT much of a coward?

I’m disgusted that the New Zealand Herald, obviously biased toward the National Party, would be willing to betray all journalistic ethics—as well as the New Zealand public—in order to promote the election chances of the National Party. I’m disgusted, but not really surprised.

My shaking head goes toward The Age, which headlined a story “Stabbed 300 times by room-mates in sex-fuelled satanic ritual: police” (and who wouldn't check out a story with such a headline?). The story, however, never makes that "satanic" claim at all. In fact, it’s based on one of the accused allegedly claiming that a co-accused was "possibly involved in satanic or occult activities." On that flimsy basis, The Age, possibly re-publishing the original AP headline, has gone beneath the level of gutter tabloids, fabricating a story out of nothing more than one weird girl’s claim. Also, it was actually cutting, not stabbing, as that word is normally understood.

The issue really is that by publishing this sensationalised outright falsehood, The Age/AP are perpetuating the myth of rampant “satanic rituals” as the cause of much crime, when it’s simply not true. They should be ashamed of themselves—and maybe they should go back to first-year journalism classes for a refresher.

Actually, in their own ways, each incident made me smile; the last two were accompanied by rolling eyes, though.

111111

2011-11-12T22:56:00.001+13:00

11/11/11: This is the penultimate listing of date numbers like this for the 21st century. I like these particular alignments because they work regardless of whether the date is month or day first: 11/11/11 is the same wherever it is.

This is in contrast to sequential dates, such as, 09/10/11. That date was September 10, 2011 in places like the US, but October 9, 2011 here. Not quite the global thrill, really.

I’m not superstitious or into numerology, but I find numeric sequences oddly pleasant (odd for whom, or from whose perspective, I’m not sure…). Maybe I just like a little order in an otherwise chaotic world.

I spent my 11/11/11 at a family wedding in Thames where I had truly rotten Vodafone coverage—often none at all. This meant no access to the Internet, either, and I’d planned to post a photo from Thames on that day. Oh well, as I write this it’s still 11/11/11 in Hawaii.

So, one more date like this to come, a year and a month from today. I’ll just have to look for patterns elsewhere.

Here are posts from previous years:

070707

090909

101010

My post for August 8, 2008 was pre-empted by family events.

Epsom’s bitter cup of tea

2011-11-12T20:24:00.000+13:00

The New Zealand news media was all-abuzz when National Party leader John Key sat down and had a cup of tea with ex-Auckland Mayor John Banks, who is now the neoconservative Act Party’s candidate in Epsom. This was, the media declared, an indication of a tacit endorsement of National Party voters giving their electorate vote to Banks in order to keep Act in Parliament.

That’s nonsense—nothing but Act Party spin, and some media pundits’ wet dreams.

Key, who lives in the Epsom electorate (even though he’s the MP for the Helensville electorate…), said that he would not personally vote for Banks because, as leader of the party, he’d vote for the National candidate, Paul Goldsmith. He also said that he wouldn’t tell New Zealand voters how to vote—even though, as a candidate for political office, that’s precisely what he does every single day.

This is the best of both worlds for Key. If John Banks wins, it will be seen and reported as being only because Key and National gave Banks, defeated ex-National Party leader, and now leader of the Act Party, Don Brash, as well as their current political vehicle, the Act Party, a lifeline. If Banks loses, Key can claim he never really tried to help Act, anyway, so his prestige won’t be on the line. It’s a pretty sweet deal, really.

Well, sweet for Key, bitter for Epsom’s National Party voters, who have to decide whether to vote for the man twice dumped as Mayor of Auckland, a man known for being racist, homophobic and sexist, and in so doing, putting the truly vile Don Brash in a position of power, or should they should stick with their own principles and vote for the National's Paul Goldsmith? Even John Key described Brash as an extremist—and yet he's angling to get him into Parliament?

For Labour and Green voters, it’s a clear no-brainer: They would be absolutely insane to vote for anyone other than National’s Paul Goldsmith. If John Banks loses Epsom, Act is gone from Parliament—a worthy goal in itself. But if Banks and Brash are critical for National to form government, then National’s “partial” asset sales will be gone: Together, John Key and Don Brash, National and Act, will sell off the lot. Neither Labour nor the Greens want assets sold and one of the best ways to ensure that doesn’t happen is to make sure Act loses Epsom. So, if I lived in Epsom, I’d vote for the National candidate, Paul Goldsmith. It’s the only rational choice for any centre/left voter.

John Key seems to be preparing for the great John Key/Don Brash fire sale of New Zealand assets or, at least, it sure looks that way: I’ve counted at least three different things on which John Key has promised to spend the money he’d get for selling off New Zealand’s assets.

And as for Banks, well, a leopard seldom changes its spots. I saw one rightwing apologist claiming that since Banks supposedly had a gay chief of staff, that therefore meant he wasn’t homophobic. It doesn’t work like that and, in fact, sounds like the “some of my best friends are…” defence: Empty and self-serving. His racism is still current, as can be seen in the clip above. The man should never be allowed back in Parliament.

It’s disgusting that John Key would even consider a deal to get the gruesome twosome of John Banks and Don Brash into Parliament, but the right is calling that a “strategic vote”. Fine, then if it’s good enough for the right, it has to be good enough for the centre and left, too: Paul Goldsmith must be elected MP for Epsom.

Numbers and reality

2011-11-09T21:15:00.001+13:00

One thing I’ve been consistent about when talking on this blog about polling is that to be believable, pollsters must report all their data, not just the headline result. This means not just their margin of error, but also their confidence level. They also must release their polling questions, methodology and sample size. If any of these details are withheld, we cannot be sure whether the poll is accurate or reliable.

This is true for all polls, whether on issues, attitudes or elections. While we can evaluate a polling organisation’s reliability by looking at their track record, full disclosure removes doubt—especially because past performance is not necessarily an indicator of future accuracy.

All of this is especially relevant here in New Zealand. Political polling has consistently shown that the ruling conservative National Party has around 50-53% popular support, the Opposition, the Labour Party, has around 30-35%, the Greens around 10-12% and the other parties dividing the rest.

Will it hold—is the election over? Of course not.

History is relevant here. First, polls always tighten up when the election happens. Part of the reason for that is that most New Zealand polls exclude undecideds, even if they’re strongly leaning toward a party. In 2008, the final result was reasonably close to the average of polls, but there was also low turn out, particularly among Labour voters.

And that’s the danger in this election: With the newsmedia constantly saying that National is polling highly enough that it can govern alone, Labour voters may stay home, or vote for the Greens. This is why the reliability of the polls is so important—if the polls are wrong, they may nevertheless become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

There’s also no way to be sure that something won’t happen in the final two weeks that could change what the polls seem to indicate. In 2005, the polls were showing that National was on track to defeat Labour, but their campaign collapsed in the final stretch when their collusion with a secretive far-right “Christian” cult was revealed. So, reversals of polling fortune telling do happen.

But with the newsmedia pretty much uniformly declaring the election all but over, and many of them clearly favouring and all but openly promoting John Key (the New Zealand Herald and Fairfax being the worst of the lot), Labour has a tough job ahead of it—certainly not impossible, but difficult.

The New Zealand newsmedia have made a switch from reporting the news to leading it (not creating it, which is different), and that’s a serious threat to democracy. I don’t know that anything can be done to impose ethics and balance on the newsmedia, but one thing the newsmedia can and must do is to be completely transparent about their polling. Until and unless that happens, we have no alternative but to assume there is a wide gulf between their numbers and reality.