Address correspondence to geoff.fischer @ veri.co.nz  (remove spaces)

 Bruce Jesson Bibliography

the republican is my personal (some would say idiosyncratic) contribution to political debate in New Zealand.  My aim in setting up the site was to provide a forum for radical republican commentary which had been largely absent from political discourse in this country since the demise of the republican magazine and the passing of it's editor, Bruce Jesson.    However Bryce Edwards (www.liberation.typepad.com/liberation) is now providing the kind of rigorously intellectual, articulate and courageous commentary which has been so sorely missed since Bruce left us.   I recommend his website to anyone who enjoys good, strong, objective political argument and analysis.  www.liberation.typepad.com/liberation

29 January 2012

More on Lewis Holden and RMANZ.

I was surprised to find that my article "Lewis Holden and RMANZ" (see below) appearing on the RMANZ website under the heading "Submitted by GeoffFischer (sic) on 27 January, 2012 -13:51".  I did not and could not post that the article to the RMANZ website.  One can only surmise that the article was submitted by Holden himself, assuming my name, which would be fresh evidence of just how damaging the"false oath" doctrine has been to general standards of honesty within RMANZ.

Holden may have felt it was necessary to respond to my comments somewhere, and may have decided that the RMANZ website, where he exercises total control over content, and can block any response from myself, would be the best place for him to do so.

In his response Holden

1. Accuses me of a "swipe at Savage's name".   That is ridiculous, and disingenuous.  I criticised Savage for his dishonesty.  My only reference to Savage's name was "Savage (who uses only one name)".  Savage uses only one name.  My  purpose was to indicate that I was not discourteously omitting Savage's first name (or last name as the case may be).

2. Claims he does not "regularly" delete comments.   Many comments have disappeared from the website for which Holden has blamed system failures.   I myself have had many posts rejected by theRMANZ "system" on the specious grounds that they are  "Spam", and the number of these rejected comments alone would justify the use of the word "regularly".  The fact remains that Holden does admit to deleting comments based on his own judgement of their political merits, and he believes that he should delete comments which he regards as "politically damaging".   That is really all we need to know about the matter.  The word "regularly" was superfluous, and I will withdraw it.

3. Says "I'm not intolerant of criticism.  I'm intolerant of individuals who having lost an argument try to relitigate them through different means, wasting time and energy to achieve the same result".  In a free society political differences are not subject to litigation.  All Holden has done here is confirm his presumptuous claim to be the final judge of any political argument.

4. Claims "There is no link between the Republican Movement and the New Zealand military - intelligence service axis".  Actually there is.  The Republican Movement, or at least Holden himself, acting as the public face of the Republican Movement lobbied for Lieutenant-General Jerry Mateparae to become Governor-General, and has since enthusiastically promoted Mateparae as a de-facto substitute for, rather than representative of,  the monarch.    Mateparae, it must be remembered,  occupied the two most senior posts in both the New Zealand military and the intelligence services.  The link is there for all to see.  There is nothing in RMANZ principles to require, or even justify, Holden's decision to support a particular individual as the Queen's personal representative.  Holden supports Mateparae because he supports what I describe as "the New Zealand military - intelligence service axis".

The monarchists do not expect that every republican who swears allegiance to the Queen will become a devoted royalist, and that is not their purpose in demanding an oath of allegiance.  Their purpose is to ensure that the republican opposition will be politically compromised and morally corrupted.   In the case of RMANZ, they have succceeded in that purpose.  RMANZ practices what it preaches: a policy of deceit and duplicity.   The RMANZ hierarchy have added to that a quasi-Stalinist determination to eliminate all politically incorrect or "damaging" ideas by cracking down on open public debate.

We have one hundred and sixty years of political censorship and lies courtesy of the British monarchy, and we do not need any more of the same from RMANZ.  The Republic of Aotearoa must stand on the hallowed republican principles of liberty, equality, and fraternity.  Nothing less will suffice.
 

23 January 2012

Lewis Holden and RMANZ.

The Republican Movement of Aotearoa-New Zealand, RMANZ, is ostensibly a broad based republican organisation comprised of individuals who hold to a range of political beliefs.  The organisation comprises people from the political right such as blogger David Farrar, former communist and Green Party MP Keith Locke from the left, and United Future Party leader Peter Dunne from the "centre" of the political spectrum.  There is also a certain level of support from self-proclaimed libertarians such as Matt Wilkinson.

The putatively "broad church" approach requires that the organisation restrict itself to quite limited objectives.  The RMANZ vision is for a "soft republic", in which the Queen would be replaced by a Head of State elected either directly by the public, or by a "super majority" in parliament.  Nothing else would change.  The New Zealand flag, with Union Jack in the top right quarter, would be retained.  New Zealand would remain a member of the Commonwealth of Nations, and the Treaty of Waitangi would retain its present status in law.  There would be no new constitution, and no change to the existing legal, economic or social order.  The powers of the monarch would devolve upon the Governor-General cum President.  The RMANZ plan is therefore a far cry from the radical transformation and de-colonisation of New Zealand proposed by the late Bruce Jesson, who championed the cause of a New Zealand republic in the late twentieth century.

RMANZ could be described as a fundamentally conservative organisation, even if its key objective, the establishment of a republic, has radical implications.  It is probably fair to say that it is dominated by those from the political right, who may be uncomfortable with the political beliefs of republicans of the Bruce Jesson persuasion.  However right-wing republicans, like those on the left, are handicapped by the fact that there is no widespread support for a republic within the political class as a whole.  On both the left and the right the dominant attitude is that a republic is "inevitable", that it might even be a welcome change, but that it is "not a priority" and should not be actively promoted.  RMANZ, therefore, feels obliged to seek, or at least accept, the support of leftwingers such as Keith Locke, in order to broaden its appeal among the general public.  Locke's involvement in the organisation is unproblematic, arguably because he is a political moderate who is, or has been, an integral part of the current system, and who has no radical political agenda of his own.

Even so, tensions do arise within RMANZ, if not over objectives, then over the tactics used to achieve those objectives.  RMANZ could allow those tensions to be worked out through internal debates, but instead the Chair, Lewis Holden, has opted to try to ensure that such debates are kept "out of bounds" for members of the organisation.  Holden censors comments posted on the public discussion forum of the RMANZ website www.republic.org.nz.   He removes or blocks comment which he judges to be "damaging" to the republican cause, or which originates from individuals who he judges to be monarchist  "trolls" or "plants" .  In practice, any comments which criticise or question RMANZ core strategy are deemed to be "damaging" to the republican cause.

Although not explicitly stated in organisational documents, the core RMANZ strategy is to work for change through the actions  of sitting members of parliament who are sympathetic to republicanism, while attempting to increase the level of public support for a republican system of government.

Late last year I posted on the RMANZ website a comment criticising republican parliamentarians who make false oaths of allegiance to Queen Elizabeth.   Holden took exception to this comment, but was uncharacteristically slow to delete it from the website.   He then wrote to me directly stating "I was going to delete your comment but then realised the damage was done" and went on to say "I'm not so surprised by the content of your comment. You've been pushing this line for some time....If you don't like any aspect of our strategy, please contact myself.   Don't post your complaints in a public forum where anyone, monarchists included, can read them".

As Holden himself points out, he has long known of, and rejected, my criticism of false oaths.  His mind is made up on the matter.  By then  insisting that I should address my criticisms to himself alone, he is really saying that I should not express an opinion at all.

Holden continued "In fact the way you've gone about this makes me wonder if you're not actually a monarchist plant" and "You've gone out of your way to attack RMANZ policy in a public forum..".

The problem is that RMANZ has only one forum for debate, which is the public website.  The website is not "out of the way".  It is the only place one can go if one wishes to criticise, or support, RMANZ policy. There is no other forum for internal debate, so once again Holden is effectively saying that I should not have expressed an opinion in any circumstances.  He has now blocked any further comment coming from my normal email address.

Unsurprisingly, none of the website censorship which goes on behind the scenes at www.republic.org.nz is apparent to the casual visitor.  In fact, Holden's colleague Savage (who uses only one name) strives to maintain the fiction that the website is an open forum for the expression of republican opinion.  Thus the duplicity and deceit involved in the swearing of false oaths by RMANZ aligned parliamentarians also becomes evident in the general conduct of the organisation.

The activities of RMANZ illustrate the dangers which would be posed to the people of New Zealand by any "soft republic" contrived by parliamentarians in allliance with conservative political forces which are intolerant of criticism and  possessed of a sense of entitlement to the instruments of power. The danger is exacerbated by connections which have been formed between the leading group in RMANZ and the New Zealand military-intelligence service axis.  Incongruous as it may be for an avowedly republican organisation to take a hand in choosing the Queen's personal representative in New Zealand, RMANZ was closely involved in promoting the successful bid by Lieutenant-General Jerry Mateparae for the office of  Governor-General, and sources within RMANZ have openly suggested that Mateparae should become "the last Governor-General and first President" of a New Zealand republic.

It is apparent that the rather misnamed "soft republic" promoted by Holden's RMANZ could easily degenerate into a Bonapartist state which would have  little respect for the rights and freedoms for which our people have struggled over the decades.  A "soft republic" would actually strengthen the forces which underpin the present monarchist regime, and it must therefore be countered by a popular movement for a radical republic as envisaged by Bruce Jesson, whether in the form of a unitary state or confederation of iwi.

26 November 2011

State asset sales - why they are opposed, and why they will not influence voting behaviour.

Prime Minister John Key has said that he will sell a share in New Zealand state assets to "Kiwi mums and dads", but will do no such thing.   While there are precedents for targeting state benefits towards those who have produced children (that is "mums and dads") there is no serious possibility that a Key government would favour those New Zealanders who have children over those who are childless.

It is also highly unlikely that he would exclude institutions - which are incapable by any definition of being "mums and dads" -  from joining in the share purchase.   Thus the promise that the sale will be restricted to "Kiwis" is also an empty one.  The initial public offering may be restricted to New Zealand citizens and residents, but restrictions on the right to onsell those shares to overseas interests would conflict with National Party principles, be contrary to normal practice, and, in any event, be unenforceable.

The public knows all this.  They know that the "kiwi mums and dads" slogan is a deceit. They know that most shares will end up in the hands of local financial institutions, the 10% of New Zealanders who already control 50% of the nation's wealth, and foreign investors.   They know that the immediate beneficiaries of a sale will be foreign brokers and bankers, and they know that the long term effects upon the government accounts will be negative, reducing the capability of the state to provide social services such as health, education, and welfare.  Therefore when asked, they will say that they do not approve of asset sales.

Yet many will vote for John Key and the National Party regardless.  They will not vote for the Phil Goff and the Labour Party which pledges to "Stop asset sales".  The are reasons for this apparently contradictory behaviour have to do with the changed reality of state enterprises, and changing perceptions of the role of government.

Thirty years ago state departments such as the Post and Telegraph, New Zealand Railways, the Electricity Department and the State Forest Service were representative of a certain culture.  They were not remarkably efficient or transparent.  They did not pay particularly high wages at any level in the hierarchy, and they provided goods and services to the public and industry which were either modestly priced or, in some cases, given gratis.  Perhaps most importantly, individuals knew that if the worst came to the worst, they or their offspring could find a job in the public service which would provide a modest living and on the job training which might lead to better things later.   Business people particularly in small communities saw the Ministry of Works, the Forest Service, the Railways, the Post and Telegraph and the Mines Department as a government investment in, and safety net for, small provincial and rural economies.

That is no longer the case.  Those among the working class who can't find a job have a much better chance at McDonalds than they would have in, say, Genesis Power, Air New Zealand or TVNZ.   The remaining SOEs are linked to an elitist culture, with extravagantly paid managers, often foreign nationals.   They are as often as not inherently socially irresponsible (TVNZ being  a classic case) and they charge whatever fees the market will bear.

From a practical point of view, the mass of voters no longer see any potential personal advantage in the retention of state owned assets.  They see no jobs, no training, no affordable services, no egalitarian culture and no promotion of social values.   They realise that the loss of state assets from the government accounts may mean reduced social services in the future, but they have no confidence in the ability or willingness of the political system to deliver those benefits in any case.   Therefore, they will maintain  that state asset sales are not in the public interest, even while effectively voting for their introduction.

Very few New Zealanders have a vested interest in retaining state assets.  Even the employees of the state owned enterprises can see no personal advantage in remaining under state control.   While the asset sales programme may be contrived, misguided, and deceitful,   "Stop asset sales" will not wash as a flagship policy.  Consequently the Labour Party is on a hiding to nothing.  Like the pledge to remove GST on fresh fruit and vegetables - items which the poor cannot afford, and which they could not afford even if 15% cheaper - the asset sales policy is evidence that the party has little connection with the present reality of life in New Zealand.

17 October 2011

A realm on the reef: the failure of government.

Last century the state regimes of the Soviet bloc vainly attempted to maintain their power over the people of eastern Europe through covert surveillance in homes and workplaces, an unaccountable police force, a docile legislature, an emasculated judiciary, and a totalitarian government.

Let's look at some of the things that the New Zealand government has been doing over the past couple of years.... A Realm on the Reef.. click here to read more

12 October 2011

Will capitalism survive this crisis?

Will the political institutions of capitalism survive the current economic crisis?  That is the question which many of us are being asked.  The simple answer is that those institutions (states or governing parties)  which preside over social systems in which wealth is evenly distributed are best fitted to survive, while those which preside over divided, unequal societies face extinction.

So where does New Zealand stand?...   Will capitalism survive this crisis? ... click here to read more
 

18 September 2011

What is wrong with the left?

Not a lot of people know that one Vince Seamer has been sentenced to prison for publicly revealing some of the background facts to the regime's persecution of the "Urewera 15".  The reason why so few people are aware of Seamer's predicament is that all facts of the case has been suppressed by the regime's mass media organisations - press, radio, and television.  But what may seem particularly surprising is that the left, which is the most immediate beneficiary of Seamer's commitment to transparency, has been complicit in the regime's attempts to keep the case out of the public eye.

Seamer's cause is a just one, from the normal leftwing perspective, but he has two problems.  He is a politically active and he is not a conventional leftist.  The left is happy to support its own (although even there the support often amounts to no more than lip service) when they are victimised by the state and in similar circumstances it will also support apolitical individuals, particularly those who can be categorised as "working class", gay, female or belonging to an ethnic group.  But when a politically vocal person who is not of the left  is victimised the left falls silent and even becomes complicit in oppression.

The left has been infected with this meanness of spirit by the colonial regime which in the final analysis it supports.  Mean-spiritedness goes hand in hand with the left's fundamental stance of subordination to the regime.

Those who perceive the left as constantly complaining to government, the political parties, and the organisations of capital might fail to see how the left can be classed as subordinate to the colonial regime.  Yet the evidence is actually there in the left's standard mode of action, which is to continually nag the regime to make changes, concessions, or compromises which will advance the political interests of the left and its constituency.   The left in general lacks the rigorous independence of thought and action which is necessary to make fundamental social changes, let alone a revolution.  On the "centre left" the Labour Party depends  upon the state and the organisations of capital to implement its political programme, and on the "far left"  various socialist parties and groups effectively rely upon the Labour Party to implement their own slightly more radical policies.  This lack of independence, and the spirit of subordination which it engenders, reduces the left to a motley crew of "naggers", "complainers" and "losers" - pretty much as they are characterised by their antagonists on the right.

Ideologically, the left's subordination to the colonial regime takes its justification from the philosophical doctrine of pragmatism, which is closely linked to secularism.   Leftists are often under the illusion that their fundamental beliefs are "Marxist" or "Socialist", but their conduct reveals that it is actually secular pragmatism which has driven the politics of the broad left, from the Social Democrats to the Bolsheviks and Maoists, through the last century.   The left will have no serious impact upon the political direction of this country until it forsakes pragmatism and  subordination to the colonial regime, in favour of moral principle, independence and self-actualisation.  When, or if, the left is able to create a revolution within its own ranks, it will then be able to create a revolution in  the nation, and, incidentally to give people like Vince Seamer the support that they deserve.
 

4 September 2011

State broadcaster as Ministry of Truth?
How Radio New Zealand massages the news.

In the past week two instances of news reporting on Radio New Zealand  demonstrated how far the organisation has moved from the standards of journalism that are the norm in most other nations.

The first had no immediate political implications, but was none the less disturbing because it showed how Radio New Zealand has adopted a cavalier attitude to the truth when the interests of New Zealanders are involved.  New Zealander Valerie Adams, the network told its listeners, had equalled the world shot put record at a world championship event.  The broadcaster then went on to gratuitously observe that the existing world record was "set in the nineteen eighties when doping was rife", thus insinuating that the previous record was fraudulently set.  Apparently Radio New Zealand had no evidence to support this insinuation, and was careless of besmirching the reputation of the world record holder in a despicably dishonest attempt at national self-aggrandizement.

The second instance arose out of the release of Nicky Hager's book "Other People's Wars", where the political interests of the regime are more directly involved.  Radio New Zealand reported "former defence chiefs rubbish claims in Nicky Hager's book" and "defence chief flatly denies claims".  The truth is that the Hager claims were not "rubbished".  In the common parlance, to "rubbish" is to provide evidence to discredit or refute a claim.  Yet the defence chiefs have provided no such evidence.  They have not even categorically denied the allegations.  Their reponses have been along the lines of "I was not aware.." or "to the best of my knowledge", words which deliberately fall short of a "flat denial".

Similarly, the Governor-General, Lieutenant General Mateparae, responded to the suggestion that military officers may have subverted government policy by saying that the notion was "abhorrent".  Again, Mateparae was not issuing a denial. He was just implying that the allegation should not have been put to him.

Radio New Zealand, however, has set out to create the impression of a "flat denial" and claims that have been "rubbished", thus making making itself a willing accessory to the regime's longstanding campaign to obscure the activities of New Zealand troops in Afghanistan and the Persian Gulf.

This was also the week in which disgraced Labour MP Chris Carter was appointed to head a United Nations "anti-corruption" team in the Afghan capital of Kabul.  We are told that "It takes a thief to catch a thief" and that "reformed poachers make the best gamekeepers" but this appointment beggars belief.  Above all, it is a gross insult to the people of Afghanistan, who already have enough corrupt politicians of their own.  They do not need one of ours to swell the numbers.
 

12 August 2011

12 things we should know about imperialism, and how it affects our people.  Including How did New Zealand become associated with imperialism? Is imperialism racist?What is the connection between imperialism and democracy?  Under what conditions will a democracy transform into an empire? Don't empires encourage global commerce?Don't empires keep the peace between peoples?  click here to read more
 

27 July 2011

Slaughter on the left.

New Zealand and Norway have much in common.  Both are small monarchies in the European tradition, both are an integral part of the western military alliance, both have been active participants in the modern day western crusade against Islam, and both  both have in the past supported strong social-democratic Labour movements.   Therefore it is unsurprising that the New Zealand Labour Party should be publicly mourning the massacre of so many young members of their fraternal Labour party in Norway.

However, it is remarkable that the NZLP has apparently failed to analyse the circumstances of the massacre.   Labour Parties in both countries have flirted with the mainstream right.  They have honoured its institutions, accepted its ideology, and joined in its crusades.   They have turned a blind eye to its excesses, its mendacity, and its geo-political obscurantism, but they have done so without real conviction, and they have tried to balance their involvement in the brutal western onslaught upon the Muslim world with a compassionate approach towards individual Muslims of a "moderate" persuasion.

This "moderation", "appeasement" and "compromise" has in turn aroused the ire of those on the extreme right who are deceived by the propaganda of the mainstream right, but who, for various reasons, remain outside its control.   Thus in the United States there are koran burnings and throughout the world there have been many random acts of violence against Muslims and Muslim sympathizers, often perpetrated by lone gunmen.

The powers that be do not welcome or in any way sanction these acts of random violence.   They are a complicating factor with which the political authorities would rather not have to deal, but they are an inevitable consequence of the programmes of deceit and the institutional violence which mainstream parties - including the Social Democratic Labour Parties - have unleashed throughout the world.

Religiously motivated extremists take the logic of the western crusade to its conclusion, and their anger has turned against the secular liberals from their own communities who they see as being "soft on Islam".  The idea that one can run with the left wing hare and hunt with the hounds of the right is the common fallacy of Social democrats around the world.  It lead to the slaughter of social democracy in Germany, in Indonesia, in Chile and every other nation where this fatal strategy has been adopted.  In New Zealand, which does not possess Norway's strong neo-Nazi tradition, or the over-powerful military establishments that were the nemesis of the left in Germany, Indonesia and Chile,  it may lead to nothing worse than the electoral slaughter of the Labour Party.  In the final analysis that may be a very good thing.  Social democracy  in alliance with the extreme right is a not only a danger to itself.  It is a threat to all those other innocents who may get caught up in the bloodletting.
 

26 July 2011

Timothy O'Donnell

The "findings" of the New Zealand Defence Forces "investigation" into the death of Timothy O'Donnell  - that New Zealand troops need more training in :"handling foreign weapons", "driving foreign vehicles" and "calling in air support (from foreign forces)" -  had nothing to do with the causes of  O'Donnell's death.    The Chief of Defence Forces,  Richard  Rhys Jones, has cynically used the death of a soldier under his command to advance a treasonous political agenda. of closer integration between the military forces of  New Zealand and the United States.   O'Donnell was sent to die in an unjust war which his political and military masters have always known would end in defeat.   His death was therefore a great and criminal waste of a young life.  That is the only finding into the death of Timothy O'Donnell which would have been honest and to the point.
 

21 July 2011

 Replies to The Way Ahead - click here

19 July 2011

The Way Ahead

Tuesday 2 August, when the New Zealand Parliament resumes sitting in Wellington, will be a defining moment in our nation's history, even if it goes relatively unnoticed.   Hone Harawira, elected representative of Tai Tokerau, will confront Lockwood Smith, the Speaker of Parliament, over the requirement for an oath of allegiance to the British crown.

If both men stand their ground, Hone would not be permitted to take up his seat in parliament at this time, but the final outcome would be different.   Eventually parliament would be forced to accept representatives of the people who are not in allegiance to the British crown.  It would only take the refusal of one elected member to have the requirement of allegiance to the Crown finally repealed from New Zealand law, for the simple reason that this is a regime which claims to honour freedom of opinion, democratic process, and cultural diversity.  If the regime does not allow the people of Tai Tokerau to send it a representative whose allegiance is to his own people, it would sacrifice the moral ground on which it bases its claim to political legitimacy.  Sooner or later - probably within six months, almost certainly within three years - the regime would remove the test of allegiance to the British Queen as a requirement for citizenship and political office.  It would be obliged to do so because with every day of delay its claim to legitimacy would be slowly and surely eroded.

If Hone stands firm, and Smith allows him to do so, the way would be opened to small but significant reform of the political institutions of the New Zealand state and the regime would be able to assert its claims to inclusiveness, tolerance and respect with rather more credibility than it can at this present moment.  That would be the politically simple and sensible way for the regime to move forward.

The third and most widely anticipated possibility is that Hone Harawira submits to the demands of Lockwood Smith.  For those in the regime with seriously impaired and short range vision (perhaps the majority) this is also the preferred option, because it would seem to finally settle the matter on the basis of the status quo.  Smith would have his authority upheld.  Harawira would lose mana.  However it is not only Harawira's mana that would suffer.  The mana of the regime would decline with it, as the people of Tai Tokerau, and the people of the motu as a whole, would lose faith in the pretensions of the regime to be diverse, inclusive, democratic and tolerant of political differences.   Denied a voice in the formal institutions of democracy, the people will  find their political voice in institutions and organisations of their own making.  The point of view expressed by Hone Harawira when he last met with Lockwood Smith would not go away.  It would go underground.  That much should be apparent to even the most myopic regime.

17 July 2011

Will Hone stand firm?

Hone Harawira has gone further than any other politician in refusing to submit to the demand of Parliament's Speaker, Lockwood Smith, that he give his allegiance to the British queen, Elizabeth Windsor.

Smith hides behind the claim that Hone must "follow the law of the land", which is to say the law made by Smith himself and others of his ilk.  In fact, Smith's demand that Maori Members of Parliament give allegiance to the British Queen is a blatant attempt to re-assert British racial dominance.

The story of the Swiss struggle for independence from Austria recounts how the Austrian tyrant Gesler placed his hat on a pole in the market place and demanded that the people of Switzerland bow before before it.  After the patriot William Tell refused to bow to a hat on a pole he was seized by Gesler's troops and ordered to shoot an arrow into an apple which Gesler had placed on the head of Tell's son.  This story may be apochryphal but it contains at least two important truths.  The first is the importance of symbols in a people's struggle for freedom.  The second is that freedom is always hard won, and the struggle for freedom brings with it sacrifice and risks for those dearest to our hearts.

For one hundred and seventy years British monarchs have placed their Crown on a pole, and demanded that the people of Aotearoa pledge allegiance to it.  When in 1860 the tangata whenua of Tuakau peacefully refused to do so, they were driven out of their homes and off their land by British troops.

Now Lockwood Smith says that Hone Harawira must pledge allegiance to the British Queen, or suffer the consequences.  He says it is "the law of the land".  It is not the law of the land.  It is the law of the British crown, and it is sheer wickedness.   No human being should be bound in allegiance to any other.  Our duty as a people is not to the British Crown, but to truth, justice, and human dignity. If Hone decides to stand his ground in two weeks time, he must not stand alone.
 

What is the "law of the land"?

In English jurisprudence the phrase originated in the Magna Carta, which established the rights of the English citizen against the Norman kings.  The literal meaning of "law of the land" is the "law of the people of the land" that is the English common law which had existed for centuries  prior to the Norman invasion.  In later centuries, royal courtiers argued, for their own purposes, that the phrase "law of the land" included statute laws made under the authority of the king. However this claim  does not stand up to scrutiny.  The context of the Magna Carta, and the words themselves, make it clear that the "law of the land" is the common law, the law of the people,  distinct from, and frequently in opposition to, laws made under the authority of the monarch.

Here in Aotearoa the phrase  "law of the land" can only refer to the customs, traditions, and rules of the people of the land, the tangata whenua.  When Lockwood Smith invokes the "law of the land" to justify excluding Hone Harawira from his seat in parliament he is perpetrating a falsehood.  There is nothing in the customs of the tangata whenua to justify excluding a rangatira from a congress of tribes on the basis of his tribal affiliations or loyalties and nothing which require a member of one tribe to give formal allegiance to the leader of another tribe.  Lockwood Smith's requirement for an oath of allegiance to the British Queen is therefore strictly opposed to the "the law of the land" as it actually exists in Aotearoa.
 

29 June 2011

The BBC Connection

The New Zealand state broadcaster, Radio New Zealand National, relies on foreign broadcasting services, particularly the British Broadcasting Corporation, for much of its news and comment.  The common explanation for RNZ's dependence upon the BBC is that New Zealand lacks the financial resources to produce its own news reports and commentary. The "limited resources" argument strains credibility when the internet is filled with New Zealanders offering all manner of political comment, and some actual reportage, free and gratis.  But even if financial limitations provided an explanation for the dependence upon the BBC, the question must arise "Why the BBC?  Why not, say, Al Jazeera?".

The common response to that question would be that the BBC is a credible, objective source of news, where other providers have a bias, are openly partisan, or are mere instruments of propaganda.  The two fold problem with this defence is that, first, agencies such as Al Jazeera are now widely recognised as being objective, credible suppliers of news, and second that the BBC has become more a propaganda instrument of the British government, receiving a portion of its funding from the British Ministry of Foreign Affairs specifically to promote the state interests of the United Kingdom in the rest of the world.

The political agenda of the BBC is particularly evident in BBC reports of Middle Eastern affairs re-broadcast by Radio New Zealand.   For example the BBC has provided New Zealand with extensive  coverage of the British war against Libya and of Colonel Gaddafi's arraignment before the International Court of Criminal Justice.  There is no mention of the fact that identical crimes are currently being perpetrated by the pro-British regime in Bahrein.  There is no consideration of the fact that Colonel Gaddafi's crimes were never "discovered" while he was a close ally of Britain, just as New Zealanders were kept in the dark aboput the crimes of Saddam Hussein while he also was a staunch British ally.

British propaganda, like all propaganda, has become recognisable as much by its style as by its content.  There is a certain low, slow manner of speaking, a hushed solemnity which we once associated with reports of royal and state occasions, but which is now distinctly associated with BBC reports of the alleged crimes of foreign states with which Britain happens to be at odds, or at war.  We first noticed this in the solemn tones of Orla Guerin reporting on the Israel/Palestine conflict.  We then realized that other reporters were using the same intonation in their reporting of other theatres of war, or serious political dispute which directly involved British interests.

To give credit to the BBC, it was effective.  The low, measured tones gave an impression of authenticity,  veracity, and reliability.  But now this contrived style of speech has become a give-away, even something of a joke.  New Zealanders instantly recognise it as an indication that they are not being told the whole unvarnished truth.  The recognise it for what it is - an attempt to convey the impression of truthfulness while avoiding its substance.

So why does the New Zealand state broadcaster persist with this nonsense?  For the same reason that the New Zealand persists with the nonsense of the British monarchy; because the interests of a certain class of New Zealanders remain bound to the interests of the British state, through the social and political institutions of the colonial regime in New Zealand.
 

24 June 2011

Pike River and Canterbury revisited.

On 29 November 2010 I commented "In the weeks to come New Zealanders will be hearing much about the heroism of the Pike River miners, and much less about the incompetence, greed and recklessness of their managers.   There will be talk of how the disaster has brought New Zealanders closer together, and taught lessons for the future.  But ..there will be no accountability for the disaster"   I think I can say that I fairly judged the response of the politicians and the media.   Since both the major political parties were complicit in the decisions which lead to the 29 deaths, there has been a concerted effort to conceal the true facts from the public.  But the truth will out, and yesterday the state broadcaster was in the unfortunate position of having to lash out in  anger against workers representatives for revealing what the media had assiduously attempted to conceal.

The Royal Commission is a key part of the Pike River coverup.  Its purpose is to provide a pretext for suppressing any public discussion of the causes of the tragedy until the event has faded from public memory, and an excuse for taking no immediate action to avert future disasters.   Unfortunately for the regime, the people of the west coast already know  that their menfolk were sacrificed in the interests of a supposedly "business-friendly" economic environment which in truth is anything but.   "New Zealand Inc's" economic environment is only "friendly" to cynical charlatans and callous crooks.  The small business people of Christchurch have had their noses rubbed rubbed in the wreckage of their lives.   New Zealanders as a whole, both workers and business people, have been remarkably quiescent in the face of the outrageous hypocrisy of the regime, but their patience and their forebearance has its limits.  On boths sides of the Alps we have seen acts of defiance.

On the eastern side of the main divide, the agony of the people of Canterbury drags on, with no serious response from the government.   The unspoken government policy since 4 September 2010 has been "self-evacuation" - in other words, waiting for the survivors to become so desperate that pack up and they leave.   Even now, the state's "best offer" is to position itself as a middleman between earthquake victims and their insurers - assuming that they have one.   In a truly civilised society, the state would accept a duty to re-establish devastated communities, and to provide homes, jobs, schools and medical facilities, and all the necessities of life.   But the colonial regime has tacitly decreed that New Zealanders must shift for themselves.   To add insult to injury, it trotted out that privileged child of the House of Windsor,  Prince William, to placate the Pike River families, and console the people of Canterbury, or, more bluntly, to be there and to do nothing - an apt symbol of the colonial regime..

So what can we do?  We can take up the challenge of the regime.   We can provide for ourselves the necessities of life.   We can see to our own safety, and provide our own security in our communities, homes, and places of work.  We can take upon ourselves the responsibilities abdicated by the state.
 

On Sovereignty

2 June 2011

The conflict between the monarchy and the republic in Aotearoa centres on the concept of sovereignty, yet sovereignty is rarely the issue of debate.  Instead of talking about sovereignty, we talk about democracy, nationhood and national identity which are all subjects that touch on the issue of sovereignty, without getting to the heart of the matter.   This is understandable, because sovereignty is a rather abstruse concept, and it is also fraught with political peril in New Zealand because of the Maori claim to sovereignty or tino rangatiratanga.  So instead of talking about sovereignty, which is the ultimate source of authority in the state, and therefore the basis of its claim to legitimacy, we talk about the mechanics of the state and its institutions, and the way in which we believe that the various state office holders should be selected.   On Sovereignty - click here to read more ...
 

13 May 2011

The Left and the  Mana Party

I was critical of moves by the radical left to associate themselves with the political fortunes of Tai Tokerau MP Hone Harawira, and I was also  sceptical that Hone would want to embrace the support of the radical left.   I was, apparently, very wrong on the second count.  Veteran left activist Mike Treen reports that sharing the platform with Hone at the launch of the Mana Movement were  "John Minto (leader of the anti-apartheid movement in the 1980s and spokesperson for Global Peace and Justice Auckland) and Sue Bradford (unemployed workers rights leader in the 1980s and 1990s and former Green Party MP)".  He adds that "most groups that describe themselves as socialist, such as Socialist Aotearoa, the Workers Party, Socialist Worker and the International Socialist Organisation, have also generally greeted the emergence of this new party positively".

That is enough for me to acknowledge that my prediction that Hone would not be particularaly interested in support from the pakeha left was plain wrong, but I do not withdraw my criticism of the decision by some leading leftists to shack up with Hone.

It is not so many years ago that in quite similar circumstances the left rallied about Sydenham MP Jim Anderton to form a new left political party, New Labour, which later became the Alliance. That marriage ended in a messy divorce even though Anderton, a traditional left-Labour politician, was arguably a better match for the radical left than Hone Harawira.  It is said that second marriages represent the triumph of hope over experience.  The Harawira connection is actually the third time in as many decades that the left has entered into political matrimony with an eligible parliamentarian.  After the messy dissolution of the marriage to Anderton, the left jumped into bed with the Green Party.  That relationship ended more or less amicably only during the current term of parliament, and now the left is looking to build a future with Hone Harawira.

Despite the vicious press he receives, Harawira is no worse than any other parliamentarian.  He is upfront, he represents his constituency, and he keeps close to his people.  I never considered Russel Norman to be a likeable character, but I do like Hone.  The problem for the left is that he is a Maori nationalist with left leanings rather than a socialist with sympathy for Maori nationalism.  When he was prevented from speaking at Auckland University Law School yesterday, he blamed "pakeha students".   He may be right, but in choosing to blame "pakeha students", rather than "a group of bigoted students" or "a few prejudiced students", he does nothing to close the racial divide in this country.

These early days of Harawira's honeymoon with the left leaves me thinking that it may all end in tears again.  However, it is possible that this problematic match between Maori nationalism and pakeha radicalism could produce a marvelous offspring which will lead our peoples out of the shadow of privilege and colonialism and into the light of nationhood and social egalitarianism.  Let's hope so.

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29 April 2011

The Royal wedding

The imminent marriage of Prince William, second in line to the throne of New Zealand, to Miss Kate Middleton has set the state broadcasting service and the privately owned media empires into a frenzy of excitement.   The coverage by the New Zealand media has been remarkable for the virtual absence of social context and historical memory.

There has been no mention of the monarchy's association with social privilege and deprivation, no mention of its essentially racial character, and no mention of the connection between the British monarchy, Anglo-American militarism and the imperial wars currently being fought throughout Africa, Central Asia and the Middle East.   The critical social and political context is simply ignored by the colonial regime.

Neither has there been any serious reference to historical parallels - most obviously the marriage of William's father, Charles, to Lady Diana Spencer.   Charles of course is out somewhat out of favour with the monarchist political establishment, which does not want to remind us that at the time of his own first marriage he was hailed by the monarchists as the "Prince Charming" and "future king" who was marrying "the world's most beautiful woman".   The eulogies offered up for Charles at the time were every bit as extravagant as those now being made in honour of his son and heir, William.   Charles, however, is now derided as  a silly old git, an eccentric environmentalist, a stick in the mud traditionalist, and a tragi-comic adulterer.   His real problem, however,  is that he no longer fits the profile of one who would act as the figure head for a revanchist Anglo-American imperialist new world order.  William, with his token service in the British military, and his apparent freedom from the restrictions of strange moral principles, is considered a better prospect for the job.   However there is no saying how William himself may end up in two or three decades.  While he is unlikely to follow in the mindtracks of his father, there is no reason to assume that he will distinguish himself as a head of state.   More probably he will end up like his grandfather Phillip - a usually irrelevant, sometimes embarrassing denizen of the royal houses and estates.   History does not always repeat itself, but it does follow patterns, and there are no good grounds for supposing that William will significantly depart from the past history of the heads of the House of Windsor.

The unvarnished truth is that William is an unremarkable young man.    He has given no indication of great intellect, political insight, moral courage, or religious sensibility.   More particularly, he knows little of New Zealand or its history.   He can do nothing to help resolve economic problems, restore social equity, or ease race tensions in this country.    He is simply not qualified to provide the kind of leadership that one would expect from a head of state, and he has never demonstrated any potential in that direction.   The courtiers and courtesans of the monarchist regime are reduced to asserting that his very ordinariness is an extraordinary virtue, sufficient to make him a worthy head of state.   Jane Clifton, in the normal course no one's fool, took three pages worth of the "New Zealand Listener" to advance this strange argument.   She presumably did so  because she was obliged or compelled to join the regime's "united front" in defence of the institution of the monarchy.

This artificially induced wave of monarchist sentiment is actually a sign of an understandable crisis of confidence within the colonial regime.   Over its one hundred and seventy year history, the British colonial regime in New Zealand has re-invented itself a number of times, on each occasion adopting a more egalitarian stance domestically, and a more independent posture internationally.   The first major change came under the Liberal government at the turn of the nineteenth century, the second under Labour before the Second World War, and the third began, haltingly, under the administrations of David Lange and Jim Bolger, with the adoption of a more independent foreign policy, the end of knighthoods for New Zealand citizens, removal of the right of appeal to the British Privy Council and tentative moves towards the eventual formation of a republic.

The third re-invention of the New Zealand state has now stalled under the bland administration of John Key.  Key has faltered on the road to national independence because the regime recognises that the problems facing New Zealand are now very serious indeed.   The grounds for optimism which were present in the earlier and mid twentieth century no longer exist, and the instinctive response of the regime is to retreat back upon its colonial past.    In many ways, the regime has become a victim of its own ideology.   It has become increasingly sychophantic in its relations to external powers, superficial in its analysis of domestic circumstances, unable to find a way out of never-ending ethnic divisions,  and unable to adequately address structural problems in the economy or growing social inequality.   Much of this can be put down to the monarchy which has encouraged craven attitudes to power, moral anomie, and the abandonment of critical intelligence and political principle.

The overarching role of the British monarchy in New Zealand has given rise to a sense that the nation itself is incapable of providing its own leadership and solving its own problems, up to the point that the perception has become the reality.   "Official" society in New Zealand has been reduced to a hollow shell by centuries of colonialism.  It is a scenario whichd bodes ill for the longterm survival of the regime, yet is not without hope for the future of our people.   The future of this country does not belong with those who are fawning over the future king, Prince William and his bride, Kate Middleton, an unremarkable couple whose capacity to lead our people is not even on a par with that of Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie.   The future lies with those who have abandoned the ideology and institutions of the colonial regime, and are getting on with the job of building an independent nation.

11 March 2011

A military Governor-General   The appointment of Lieutenant-General Jerry Mateparae as Governor-General of New Zealand is an interesting departure from the normal practice of appointing a member of the judiciary to act as the personal representative of the monarch.  Among western nations there has been a longstanding reluctance to involve military personnel in the business of government.  The convention has been that the military should be subordinate to the civil authority, and not the other way around... A military Governor-General - click here to read more..

3 March 2011

The February 22 earthquake  has tragically demonstrated that the much admired colonial structures of Christchurch could not withstand the geological stresses encountered in Aotearoa.   The political structures of colonialism face a similar fate, and the earthquake itself may serve as a catalyst for the eventual collapse of the colonial administration.  The New Zealand economy, always fragile, has sustained a series of blows in recent years (see Pike River and other disasters below), but the Christchurch earthquake is a magnitude of order greater than any single event that has gone before.  There has been damage to property in the order of $20 billion and tens of thousands have been left with no jobs, no houses and no schools, in an event which has directly and savagely impacted on one tenth of the population of New Zealand.

Some are pointing to the so-called "Giuliani effect" according to which a society in crisis rallies behind those who have authority.   They suggest that this particular crisis may actually strengthen the state, and in particular increase the popularity and political influence of its present administration.  That is an optimistic view.  The "Giuliani effect" only works in favour of a state which has the strength, resilience, and resources to mitigate and restore the damage from war or natural disaster. States which lack the capacity to quickly restore normalcy, or suffer from fundamental inherent contradictions of their own, are more commonly brought down by economic or social catastrophes.     At this point in its history the New Zealand state belongs in the latter category.   There have been too many shocks, both man-made and "natural",  for the state and society to easily sustain.

People working together will replace the political structures of colonialism with those of their own making - less ornate, not so grand, low to the ground, but strong and resilient.   While politicians are solemnly addressing the television cameras, and carefully choosing the right words for the assembled microphones, the people of Christchurch are giving material help to their neighbours, providing the necessities of life and beginning the work of repair and restoration.  Once the dust has settled on Christchurch, it will be instructive to compare the standing of the Student Volunteer Army with that of the Office of  Earthquake Recovery.
 

Pike River and other disasters

29 November 2010

While trying to cope with the fallout from the financial collapse, the "Leaky houses" crisis, and the Canterbury earthquake, New Zealand has been hit in quick succession by the Southland snowfall, the PSA crisis in the kiwifruit industry, and now the Pike River coal mine disaster.   With the exception of the earthquake, the common themes in this catalogue of disasters are greed, recklessness and incompetence causing disaster, timidity and procrastination in addressing the consequences, and a total lack of public candour in the aftermath.   The most obvious responses have aimed to protect and enhance the powers of the very institutions which have been responsible for the disaster.  On past performance, we can expect greater powers and privileges to be granted to the mining corporations as a direct result of the Pike River tragedy.
 Pike River - click here to read more

22 October 2010

The Hobbit and Aussie rules.   Deputy Prime Minister Gerry Brownlee jumped into the Peter Jackson/Actors Equity row over "The Hobbit" film project by attacking the alleged intervention of "Aussie unions" in New Zealand industrial relations.   It would be strange indeed if Australian labour organisations did not have some interest in industrial relations in this country.   Australian capital controls the mass media, retail trade, finance, banking  and steel production in New Zealand, and has significant interests in transport, commercial property and manufacturing.    Australian labour will follow where Australian capital has gone, even if only to protect its own interests.   If Australian capital can employ New Zealanders on lower wages, capital will cross the Tasman to New Zealand, thus undermining the wages and conditions of Australian workers, and Australian unions can be expected to respond to protect their own interests.

In criticising the intervention of  "Aussie unions" while accepting the dominant role of Australian capital in the New Zealand economy, Brownlee is standing on shaky ground.   It is difficult for him to employ the charge of "xenophobia" against those who attack foreign capital, at the same time that he is attacking labour organisations on the ground that they are domiciled in Australia.   It also becomes difficult for the National government to pursue its stated objective of obtaining "wage equality" between New Zealand and  Australia while resisting the efforts of Australian unions to enforce trans-Tasman parity of wages and conditions.

Brownlee's problem is that the regime has no coherent and workable political strategy.   To achieve pay equity with Australia, it will need to allow Australian style industrial relations.   But if it has Australian style industrial relations it won't attract Australian capital.   To reassure Australian investors it needs to keep a lid on anti-Australian sentiment, yet crude xenophobia is the only weapon it has to deal with the "threat" from Australian unions.

Thirty five years ago, another New Zealand Prime Minister, Robert David Muldoon, was berating "British unionists" with "Clydeside accents" who he claimed were inflaming industrial relations and disrupting the New Zealand economy.   At the time Muldoon was engaged in a last ditch effort to defend the privileged and  dominant position of British capital in New Zealand.  He needed to convince British investors that New Zealand offered all the advantages of Britain, without the drawback of militant British unionism.   That was not the case, and could not be the case, because New Zealand had recruited large numbers of skilled (or not so-skilled) British migrants to work within the enterprises established by British capital.   These workers naturally and predictably brought with them the attitudes and practices of British trade unionism.   That was the conundrum faced by Muldoon, and the same dilemma now presents itself to the Key-Brownlee government.   Even if indigenous New Zealanders can be induced to accept inferior terms and conditions of employment under the rule of foreigh capital, the huge numbers of recently recruited foreign workers will not, and foreign labour organisations will support them in the struggle for equity.

The only economic strategy the colonial regime has ever had is based on a continual influx of foreign capital, whether in the form of state or private borrowing from  foreign capital markets, or direct foreign investment.   When the sources of foreign capital start to run dry, that strategy falls apart, and the regime is forced into adopting contradictory and self-defeating political positions.   The Paul Henry/Anand Satyanand incident, the Crafar-farms/Natural-Dairy debate, and John Key's protestation that "New Zealanders should not be tenants in their own country" are evidence of how the regime's commitment to the principles of economic globalism is being undermined as it is forced to resort to populism and racism in a doomed attempt to shore up the political support which has been steadily eroded by failures in the economic realm.    Because he has the support of privileged classes and the mass media, Brownlee thinks he is on to a winner.   In fact he is on a hiding to nowhere.   If he succeeds in arousing public anger against "Aussie unions", he will,. despite himself, strengthen the case against Australian capital, at the same time that  he undermines his own regime's (rather silly) objective of "pay equity with Australia".  On the other hand, every time he flirts with nationalist and populist sentiment, he inadvertently opens up the possibility of a truly radical, nationalist and popular reform of the New Zealand state and society.

The regime's position is rich with irony.   After accusing "Aussie unions" of intervening in New Zealand industrial relations, Brownlee now proposes to change New Zealand employment law to suit the demands of the United States film studio Warner Brothers.   The man that Brownlee champions, knight of the realm, "Sir" Peter Jackson, is a New Zealander who directs puerile Hollywood movies.  His work embodies on celluloid the values of a crass and degenerate colonial regime.   Unlike Gaylene Preston, Taika Waititi, or Vincent Ward he has not directed a single move which reflects the New Zealand condition.  He has not directed a single good movie.   Jackson's departure would be no loss to this country.  There would be more immediate cause for concern if he was allowed to remain in New Zealand on the basis of exemptions from New Zealand tax and employment law being demanded by Warner Brothers.   In that eventuality however, the regime would suffer a further loss of credibility.   In the longer run, the colonial regime has nowhere to go.   With every action it digs the ground away from under its own feet.
 

12 October 2010

The Right Honourable John Key and Paul Henry: the remaining questions.

Why was the Prime Minister "taken aback" by Paul Henry's racist remarks?  Why did he not immediately dissociate himself from them?   Why did he not want to see Henry sacked?  Why does he now insist that the affair is "closed"?

John Key would not have been taken aback if Henry's comments had been completely unexpected.   He would have responded by criticising Henry's assumptions.   And Henry would not have made the comments if he had anticipated a hostile reaction from the Prime Minister.

The explanation for the comments and the reaction is that both Key and Henry knew that the question of a replacement for Anand Satyanand would be raised in the TVNZ "Breakfast" programme.    Both Key and Henry knew that Key would respond by giving notice that the next Governor-General would be someone more representative of "typical" or "mainstream"  New Zealanders.

But Henry got it wrong by crossing the line between nationalism and racism.   Key was then "taken aback" because the question came in a form  for which his mentally prepared response would have been inappropriate.   Normally Key could have handled a question from left field while standing on his head.   On this occasion he was caught flat-footed because he was facing the wrong direction.   He was expecting the ball to come from another quarter, and was unable to turn himself around fast enough to respond as he should have.

Once the damage was done, Key was obliged to stand behind Henry as a matter of honour.  Henry had got it badly wrong, but Henry had been serving the political interests of the Prime Minister.   Therefore Key continued to insist that Henry was still the right man to run the Breakfast show.    He now wants the matter to find early closure, because anyone digging deeper may discover that Key's role in the affair was rather greater than appears on the surface.

The office of Governor-General has always been an instrument of race (and gender) politics in New Zealand.   Through most of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries it was a way of asserting the right to rule of the British aristocracy.   In 1977 the appointment process was used to anoint New Zealanders of British descent, in the person of Keith Holyoake, as the heirs and successors of the British aristocrats.   Then in 1985 it was used to signify the inclusion of Maori in the person of Paul Reeves, and in 2006 as a mark of political respect to the Indian community in the person of Anand Satyanand.   Paul Henry's mistake, and his undoing, was that he did not gloss over the matter with the requisite degree of finesse.    The appointment of a Governor-General is all about race, but one of the rules of the game is that race must not be mentioned.
 

8 October 2010

The Struggle for the Raj

The row over Paul Henry's disparaging attitude towards Indian immigrants is a reflection on the particular way in which people of Indian descent have been incorporated into New Zealand society.   Aside from those who work in the retail trade, banking and engineering, a significant number of Indians have been employed in central and local government. . Anand Satyanand as Governor-General, and Rajen Prasad as Race Relations Commissioner are the most prominent examples, but they are the tip of a small iceberg of Indians who help fill the lower ranks of the state service. Indians have made their way into government because they are familiar with the English language and the principles of British law, and they are generally comfortable with the political systems which British imposed throughout the empire.  As the inheritors of the British raj, they are well-positioned  to take a place within the very similar governmental structures which exist in New Zealand.

However this has given rise to resentment among some European New Zealanders.   TVNZ was almost right to claim that Paul Henry's outburst simply expresses what many New Zealanders have been thinking, but were afraid to say.  Until the end of the twentieth century, the political system operated on the simple principle that the British ruled, and other races - including Maori - were treated in ways which the ruling race considered to be fair and reasonable.  In the twenty first century, New Zealand society remains race-based, and racial minorities are demanding a part in government, and a share in the spoils of power.  The most obvious consequence has been the rise of the Maori Party.  That has been accompanied by the increasing influence of ethnic Indians within the New Zealand Labour Party, and will probably be followed at some time in the not too distant future by the formation of a Chinese political party.  All these developments, while natural and even unavoidable within the context of the present constitution, are actually destabilizing.

It is no answer to say that this is a time of change, and that eventually European New Zealanders will get used to the idea of an Asian Governor-General, Asians occupying senior positions within the state service, and ethnic parties which can have a decisive influence over government policy.  New Zealanders, and not just European New Zealanders, are feeling insecure.  They have largely forsaken the spirit of egalitarianism, the Christian faith, and the comforting notion of a benevolent state, along with the confidence that came from being an integral part of the British empire.  Those structures which have been retained, such as the Treaty of Waitangi,  have no relevance to relations with Chinese, Indian and other ethnicities, and do little to maintain good relations between Maori and Pakeha.  New Zealand society is becoming confused and unstable as the ties which once bound contending races and classes together are progressively relaxed, leaving social and ethnic  "diversity" as the  defining characteristic of New Zealand society.

In a nation state which is comprised of contending tribes the power of the state will be appropriated to the interests of individual tribes, and "tolerance" will not withstand the ensuing social tensions.   Paul Henry's racism is symptomatic of the collapse of social tolerance in the face of "diversity" within the institutions of a state which has lost its way.   This was the pattern of Rwanda and Yugoslavia, where radio and television "shock jocks" lead the way to anarchy and genocide.   More pertinently it is the pattern followed by many small "ethnically diverse" societies created under the British empire - for example Fiji, Sri Lanka, Cyprus, Palestine and Malaya - where failed attempts to "manage" ethnic diversity culminated in ethnic violence which has left still unresolved problems.   "Diversity" and "tolerance" is not enough to assure the survival of a social order.   More positive values, and unifying principles, are required.   The tragedy is that the New Zealand state has largely abandoned those positive values - such as egalitarianism and commitment to the common good - which provided a solid social foundation for the tolerance of diversity.
 

What makes a New Zealander?

Because I don't usually watch television, I was unaware of the close and mutually beneficial partnership between Prime Minister John Key and television presenter Paul Henry.  That,special relationship, and the way in which Key responded to Henry's racist remarks, raises suspicion as to whether  Key knew of  what Henry intended to say before he said it.  Henry is not a maverick individual who "stepped over the line".  He continues to be protected by people in high places.  He was immediately suspended without pay for two weeks, not as a punishment, but  so that he could not subsequently be sacked under the rule against double jeopardy.   The TVNZ PR machine has rallied around him, TV1 has run another one of its spurious phone polls which falsely implied overwhelming public support for Henry, and Prime Minister Key continues to defend him as an appropriate person to represent the values of the New Zealand state.

I could not argue with that.  Henry is an appropriate representative for the monarchist state.  Apart from being a staunch monarchist and urepentant racist, he is shallow and silly.  Rating a person on the basis of how he or she "looks" and "sounds" is what one might expect from the superficial  world of media personalities and monarchist politicians.  But the Prime Minister, ingenuously suggesting that a New Zealander is "anyone who loves New Zealand", does not much better.  Rating a person by how much they "love New Zealand" is what  one would expect from the spoilt and self-indulgent.  If you own a mansion in Parnell and a lifestyle block on the Kaipara, you naturally "love New Zealand".   If you are confined to a poky New Lynn apartment, or a live in a rundown house in Ford block, you might not love New Zealand in quite the same way, because the New Zealand of your experience will be different to the New Zealand of John Key's experience.

So how should one decide who is a real "New Zealander"?   The answer is "One shouldn't bother".  Honour courage, wisdom, honesty and compassion in any human being.  Accidents of birth, good looks and good fortune do not come into it.
 

Regime shows its racist colours

In the course of an interview with Prime Minister John Key on the state television network TVNZ, presenter Paul Henry, a self-confessed monarchist, remarked that Governor-General Anand Satyanand "doesn't look or sound like a New Zealander".   Key allowed Henry's racist  remark to pass.   One reason for Key's failure to respond appropriately is that Satyanand, of Indian ethnic origin,  was appointed on the recommendation of the previous Labour government, and the Indian population of New Zealand is generally supportive of the Labour Party.   Another is that Key himself has been courting European racial sentiment.   His suggestion that "New Zealanders should not be tenants in their own country" in the context of the Crafar farms sale was designed to stoke European fears of large-scale Chinese ownership farms, forests, and residential accommodation in this country .   There is no evidence that Key is concerned for the millions of New Zealanders who right now are "tenants" of European landlords, corporate farmers  or forestry companies.

Satyanand was appointed because of his ethnicity.  But his ethnicity is no ground on which to judge him.  Satyanand is a man of evident personal integrity who has allowed himself to become the  instrument of a corrupt regime.   He has no democratic credentials, no popular support, and no moral authority.   He has no right to rule over us.   He has no right to make laws through Orders-In-Council.

So why has the regime that he serves so viciously turned against him?  The nub of the matter is the extraordinary powers which parliament has granted to the executive through the Canterbury Earthquake Act.   As it rules by decree, the regime wants to be represented by a person who "looks and sounds like a New Zealander".   Expect John Key to follow Paul Henry's suggestion by appointing a European or Maori with some public standing as the next Governor-General.

21 September

The very model of a modern Governor-General.  A striking departure from tradition and convention occurred in 1977, when National Party Prime Minister Robert Muldoon recommended the appointment of former National Party Prime Minister Keith Holyoake to the post of Governor-General.  Although he managed to sound like one, Holyoake was not a British aristocrat, as most previous Governors-General had been, and neither was he New Zealand-born but British-resident, like some of his more recent predecessors.   He was a New Zealand-born New Zealand-resident, New Zealand citizen whose entire career had been spent in farming and politics in New Zealand.   After Holyoake, all Governors-General would be New Zealand citizens, and most would be New Zealand-born.  Governors-General - click here to read more

Stephen Wilce, appointed Chief Scientist to the New Zealand Defence force, "told people that he had served in the Royal Marines and had worked for the British secret services MI5 and MI6" and that he "had been in the British Olympic team" .    Wilce has now been exposed as an imposter.    It is not the first time  the New Zealand Defence Forces and the New Zealand government  have been taken in by a fraudster claiming connections with the British military or intelligence services.   Other foreign nationals face fairly rigorous investigations  into their background and loyalties, but "Brits" continue to be accepted into the highest echelons of the New Zealand military and intelligence community without even the most cursory vetting.   As with Nigerian internet scams, one cannot help but think that the victims of this particular fraud are as much to blame for their predicament as the perpetrator.  Corruption in the military

17 September 2010

The Canterbury Earthquake Response and Recovery Act  On the evening of Tuesday September 14 the New Zealand Parliament voted unanimously in favour of a bill (The Canterbury Earthquake Response and Recovery Bill) which gave the administration the right to suspend all New Zealand law with the exception of the Bill of Rights and the Electoral Act.   The purported justification was to provide the means to promote reconstruction in the province of Canterbury which had been struck by a major earthquake on the morning of Saturday September 4, causing much damage to property and infrastructure, but no loss of life and few injuries.   During this experience order has been maintained, and the immediate needs of the public have been met through a variety of institutions.  So why did the government feel it necessary to give itself the power to suspend the rule of law in this situation, and why did the parliament agree? click here to read more

26 August 2010

A republic by evolution?  The call for an elected Governor-General The Republican Movement of Aotearoa New Zealand (RMANZ) has proposed that the Governor-General of New Zealand should henceforth be elected by a three quarters majority of parliament. At present the Governor General is the British monarch's personal representative in New Zealand, appointed by the Queen on the recommendation of the Prime Minister. The post of Governor-General was established in the early colonial era because the British Crown wanted  to control the colonial administration through an official who was answerable to neither natives nor colonists. Circumstances have changed.  The British Crown no longer seeks to govern New  Zealand.  So the Governor-General is practically redundant, but is retained to carry out the ceremonial duties of a head of state while serving as a permanent reminder of New Zealand's continuing association with the British crown.

The RMANZ proposal implies that the office of Governor General could, by stages, transform into the office of President of an independent republic.  The RMANZ proposal is a gradualist approach to the establishment of a republic, which would easily fit into the conventional New Zealand way of doing things.  No drama, no barricades and no blood in the streets.  If at some future time, it was deemed that the Governor-General-cum-President-cum-Tumuaki should be the representative of the nation, rather than the representative of the monarch, then New Zealanders could wake up one day to find that they were living in a fully fledged independent republic... A republic by evolution? click here to read more...
 

16 August 2010

The Empire Strikes back: Arguments in favour of the monarchy.

Noel Cox, Chairperson of Monarchy New Zealand, is a lawyer by trade, and so could be expected to produce some cogent arguments in favour of retaining the monarchy.  In an interview on the website of the Victoria University student newspaper "Salient" he asserts that the primary advantage of the monarchy is "political stability and political neutrality".   That argument is inherently contradictory.  If the monarchy promotes political stability, then it is a conservative political force.  If it is politically conservative, then it cannot be politically neutral. The Empire Strikes Back - click here to read more ...
 

1 August 2010

"Our dairy farms".

Political rhetoric frequently employs the first person plural ( "we" and "our")  to imply a social, ethnic, local, or national community of interest.  When Green Party politicians speak of "our national parks" they are implying that the people of New Zealand have the rights and responsibilities of ownership of parklands, including the right to use and enjoy, and the responsibility to protect and maintain.   Strictly speaking the institution of the state holds title to the national parks, and the state exercises those responsibilities through its various agencies such as the Department of Conservation, but there is a common expectation that the state acts on behalf of the people, and cannot use, or dispose of the national parks in ways which conflict with the popular will.   Our dairy farms... click here to read more ...

30 July 2010

Crafar farms

The dodgy background of the Chinese prospective buyers, and the eminent status of the  New Zealanders who they have employed to argue their case, namely former National Party Prime Minister Jenny Shipley, and former broadcasting chief  Bill Ralston, are interesting features of the Chinese "Natural Dairy" bid for the Crafar farms .

If New Zealanders are concerned that "their" most productive dairy farms might be sold to the Chinese, should they not be even more worried when "their" politicians and media personalities are for sale to the highest bidder?

It is people like the Crafars, Jenny Shipley and Bill Ralston who constitute the real problem for New Zealanders - not the Chinese, or any other foreign investors.   Foreign control has become endemic thanks to the greed, stupidity, and corruption of the colonial regime.   The Crafar farms saga - click here to read a previous post...
 

Afghan war.

Labour  Prime Minister Helen Clark had a raft of reasons for taking the country to war against the Afghan Taleban.    She wanted to show solidarity with New Zealand's traditional allies, Britain and the United States of America, at a time when Tony Blair's Labour Party held power in Westminster while her own New Zealand Labour  Party sat on the Treasury benches in Wellington.   As a staunch feminist and secularist,  she was also ideologically committed to the Afghan war.   She perceived the Taleban to be religious fundamentalists, male chauvinists and social reactionaries.   As such they were anathema to Clark and the feminist/gay wing of the Labour Party.    The right-wing of the party, represented by current leader Phil Goff were, was equally enthusiastic.   Goff proudly announced that a member of his family was serving in the US forces in Afghanistan.   Even the Green Party, which is generally to the left of the Labour Party on matters of war and peace, was equivocal in its approach to the conflict, being critical of US actions, while maintaining that "our" (meaning the regime's) forces were doing a "good job".   Only a small segment of the left - such as John Minto's Global Peace and Justice Association, and the Ploughshares group of Waihopai fame - opposed the war on principle.

But now the Afghan war is inexorably drawing to a bloody conclusion.    In the shock of eminent defeat, troops sent to "save Afghan women from the tyranny of the Taleban" are machine-gunning Afghan village girls in cold-blooded reprisals for Taleban attacks, while the architect of New Zealand involvement, Helen Clark, after declaring that she would have the top job in New Zealand or none at all, absconded to New York where she now enjoys a lucrative career as a United Nations bureaucrat.   Secular feminism, as represented by Clark, has been debased by its association with the monarchist regime, to the point where it only functions to excuse the personal ambition and selfishness of a privileged elite, while the Taleban, who know too well the meaning of humility and self-sacrifice are gaining support amongst all sections of Afghan society.    The score in this last round of the West's "great game" will be Secular feminism 0, Islamic fundamentalism 1.
 

22 July 2010

Corruption in the military.

Following disclosures that New Zealand military personnel had corruptly misappropriated United Nations funds,  New Zealand's Minister of Defence has publicly admitted that corruption is a "cultural problem" in the armed forces of the Realm.   He is not far off the mark.   Corruption has taken root in the New Zealand Defence Forces  for much the same reason that it has become firmly established within the Immigration Service, whose role is to administer immigration policies under which New Zealand citizenship is effectively on sale to the highest bidders, no questions asked.   It is a situation designed to undermine the integrity of any person who takes up a career in the Immigration Service.    The role of the military is to support and assist corrupt foreign governments like that of Hamid Karzai in Afghanistan, and New Zealand troops will almosts inevitably  be corrupted by the very nature of the job.    Where will it end?   Watch this space...

20 July 2010

Claim of right

The "provocation" and "claim of right" controversies are part of a wider trend within the regime as it seeks to limit accountability in some areas of society, to impose ever greater restrictions in others, and to reduce the role of the judicial system as arbiter and judge.  Proposed changes to employment law remove a crucial area of employment relations from the jurisdiction of the courts, and make employers unaccountable for their actions.   click here to read more...
 

19 July 2010

RMANZ

Over the years I have disagreed with the Republican Movement of Aotearoa New Zealand on a number of issues, and those differences persist.  However I must now acknowledge the willingness of the present editor of the Republican Newsletter to give space to my opinions in the latest issue.    The decision of the editor, Savage, to open his columns to contrary opinion is in the best tradition of New Zealand  republicanism.

My recent experience is that Savage does not give carte blanche to contributors, but works pro-actively to ensure that any case is as clearly reasoned  and succinctly expressed as possible.   I commend his editorial approach to others.   It augurs well for the progress of the republican movement.

RMANZ confines its political aspirations to the abolition of the monarchy in order to achieve the broadest possible political backing,  which means that the organisation can only have an indirect influence upon the detailed design of a future republic.  But  that indirect influence, when used to foster vigorous  intellectual debate combined with a spirit of  friendship towards those of contrary opinion, can put heart and soul into the Republic of Aotearoa.
 

14 July 2010

The Crafar Farms saga

The Green Party is publicly proclaiming that "highly productive" land in New Zealand should not be sold to foreign buyers.  Statements by Green Party leader Russel Norman come hard on the heels of his tussle with Chinese security men on the steps of parliament, and were made in the context of the proposed sale of the "Crafar" dairy farms to the Chinese company "Natural Dairy".   It would appear that Norman is particularly concerned by the prospect of Chinese ownership of New Zealand farms, and particularly concerned by the sale of "highly productive"  (read "dairy") land....   The Crafar farms saga - click here to read more...
 

21 June 2010

Russel Norman’s protest on behalf of Tibet

When political activists become Members of Parliament, they change their way of doing things.   They are expected to act with more decorum than the typical radical activist.   They issue press statements, where in a previous life they might have joined in rowdy demonstrations or acts of civil disobedience.   They avoid activities which may lead to physical confrontation, or risk arrest for some real or alleged breach of the law...   click here to read more...
 

22 April 2010

The regime's retreat from democracy.

It comes as no surprise that Keith Locke's  Head of State Referenda Bill, which would have given New Zealanders the right to vote on whether the British monarch should remain as Head of State in New Zealand, was voted down at its first reading in the New Zealand Parliament.     This is one sign of the regime's increasing unease with democratic institutions.  Among the others: In Auckland, democratically elected local governments have been abolished to make way for a larger, more powerful regional government which has been modelled along the lines of the fascist Italian corporate state.   And in Canterbury, central government has sacked the elected members of the regional council, and replaced them with its own appointees, headed by Dame Margaret Bazley, who not only boasts a royal honour, but pleads the same moral justification as the Queen for her "right to rule" over the people of Canterbury.

Bazley states that she is "just doing a job" and therefore should be allowed "to get on with it".   Like most committed fascists, Bazley sincerely believes in her own vision, political prowess, right to rule and personal destiny.   She believes that she is good for New Zealand.   But the need to keep power and authority in the hands of  unelected leaders like Elizabeth Windsor and Margaret Bazley exposes the fundamental weakness of the regime.   Despite controlling the mass media and all the machinery of government, it has been unable to exert effective control over the political attitudes of ordinary folk.   Its response has been to retreat from democratic process.   As that retreat progresses, the regime will be left with no solid political ground upon which to make a final stand..
 

The non-binding declaration on indigenous rights.

There are some New Zealanders who believe that words only have value when they are used to express a truth.   And there are others who believe that words can be used formally, in ways which have no association with the truth, as a shibboleth to open the way to a personal or political promised land.

The Maori Party pledges allegiance to the Queen for reasons that have little to do with loyalty to the institution of the British monarchy.   The National Party government signs the non-binding declaration on indigenous rights for reasons which have nothing to do with giving or restoring rights to Maori.  No one makes any serious attempt to either expose or obfuscate these sham declarations.   The National Party is content that the Maori Party have made a false oath of allegiance to the Queen, and the Maori Party is content that the National Party has made a false commitment to indigenous rights.

The regime is not only in retreat from democracy.  It is also in retreat from the truth.

31 March 2010

The Waihopai verdict: a blow for the regime.

A Wellington jury's decision to acquit Adrian Leason, Peter Murnane and Sam Land on charges of burglary and wilful damage, arising out of their attack on the Waihopai spy base, has sent shock waves through the regime.   From the verdict, we may  safely infer that the jury accepted that the three accused genuinely believed that their action would help to save the lives of innocent civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan.   And it is not unreasonable to infer that the jury must have had some sympathy with the defendants and their professions of faith in order to find them credible.   It also follows that the jury must have doubts about the justification for the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan, and for the regime's military alliance with the United States and the United Kingdom.

The panel of twelve jurors was selected more or less at random from the population of Wellington city, which is the heart of government in New Zealand.   And all twelve jurors would have agreed to the verdict.  That extraordinary result provoked a storm of impotent fury from the regime's mass media organisations and from sources that speak for the United States government.    It also lead to mutterings within the regime that the freedom of juries to convict or acquit as they see fit may be curtailed.  But such moves to limit popular influence within judicial or political processes would be self-defeating.   The regime is clearly out of step with the people.  It will not be able to impose its will in perpetuity.

The APN vendetta against Brian Tamaki.

The APN media empire is currently devoting considerable resources to a vendetta against the Destiny Church and Bishop Brian Tamaki.   As National Radio's Mediawatch has observed, in the normal course a newspaper or any other journal of record will report, comment upon, and analyse events of public significance.    But in the present case, there is no recent news event which APN can use to justify its anti-Tamaki campaign.  There have been no surprising revelations, no fresh scandal, and no allegations of criminal wrong doing by either Brian Tamaki or the Destiny Church.

Brian Tamaki has been particularly criticised for requiring a personal oath of allegiance to himself as Bishop of the Destiny Church, and a tithing system.   But the regime itself demands an oath of personal allegiance to the monarch, Queen Elizabeth.    And where Tamaki persuades his followers to pay tithes, the state compels even its poorest subjects to hand over a much higher proportion of their income in taxes.  Tamaki has also been reviled on account of his ambition and perceived vanity.   Yet  material ambition and the cult of celebrity are among the core values of the colonial regime, which is in no position to claim the moral high ground over the likes of Brian Tamaki.

In these circumstances it is fair to ask "What motivates APN?"   The similarity between the current campaign against  Brian Tamaki  and the equally baseless 2008 vendetta against  Winston Peters  is suggestive.   Tamaki and Peters are both charismatic and socially conservative Maori whose appeal and  aspirations extend beyond the boundaries of Maoridom.   They are challenging the political establishment for the hearts and minds of the population as a whole, and enjoying a fair measure of success, in contrast to more or less exclusively ethnic organisations like the Maori Party or the Ratana Church, which can be effectively incorporated as a "minor support party" or "ethnic religious movement" within the existing power structures.   APN is worried by the implications of Tamaki's religious fundamentalism, just as it was worried by the implications of Winston Peters' economic nationalism.   To be specific, APN is worried that their respective movements may not be successfully contained within marginal population groups, and safely directed along paths that are acceptable to the regime.

And they have reason to be concerned.  Since the days of imperial Rome,  nationalism and religious fundamentalism have been the two most potent forces undermining the foundations of  empire.   The same phenomenon brought the Soviet empire to its knees, presently threatens the integrity of the Peoples Republic of China, and is wreaking havoc for the Anglo-American empire throughout central Asia.   The Iranian revolution and the ongoing insurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan has demonstrated that the combination of nationalism and religious fundamentalism constitutes a more intractable threat to western imperialism than any secular ideology.

To this point Tamaki has not challenged New Zealand's political subordination to Anglo-American imperialism. He accepts the argument that New Zealand should remain in a military alliance with the United States of America, and that the British monarch should remain as New Zealand's head of state.  But the Tamaki/Peters  attempt to blend social conservatism, economic nationalism and imperialist politics will be unsustainable in the longer term.  Economic and cultural nationalism will eventually and inevitably find expression in authentic political nationalism, and the chances are that religious fundamentalism in New Zealand will take a radical turn, as it already has throughout the margins of the Anglo-American empire..

The Destiny Church is a relatively easy target, reflecting the human weaknesses of its founder.  But the regime should be careful what it wishes for.   It remains on relatively safe ground with a man like Brian Tamaki who palpaby enjoys his good suits, comfortable house, and his luxury yacht.   A truly ascetic and charismatic religious leader, in the mould of Mullah Omar or Ruhollah Khomeini, would bring the fire of revolution.   And that is something which the regime can do without.

1 March 2010

Gareth Hughes is a Green Party list Member of Parliament who has pledged allegiance to a royal family which he himself describes as comprising "an old lady and her quirky kids who live on the other side of the world".   On his own admission he has done so in order "take my seat in the House of Representatives".  Right now it suits Gareth to make a show of allegiance to "an old lady and her quirky kids".   At some future time, he suggests, it may suit him even better to make an oath of allegiance to "the people of New Zealand".   But why would any one believe his profession of allegiance then, if they cannot take him at his word now?  to read Gareth's statement click here...
 

10 February 2010

Why is the Australian-owned APN media empire all of  a sudden telling us that New Zealand needs a new national flag which would signal  the end of the colonial relationship with Great Britain?  ... The flag debate - click here to read more ...
 

12 November 2009

Two prominent Maori - Bishop Brian Tamaki and Hone Harawira MP for Tai Tokerau -  have stirred up media storms in recent weeks.   Tamaki had the temerity to require an oath of allegiance from members of the Destiny Church which he heads, while Harawira gave offence by his use of profane language in an email in which he criticised "white people" for "raping" the land.   The regime's mass media organisations have made a meal out of these events.   But while Tamaki and Harawira are both deserving of criticism, the regime's response amounts to an  extraordinary display of hypocrisy.    Tamaki and Harawira - click here to read more...
 

21 October 2009.  Nandor Tanczos writes in the Waikato Times
"I would love us to become a republic
Watching some historical films about the English monarchy and the parasites that surround them has re-inspired a powerful republican sentiment in me.
It is not that I dislike the Windsors, but they are the result of more than a thousand years of in-breeding and (sometimes fatally) hostile family dynamics.
Who on earth would want them as our Head of State?"   to read more from Nandor Tanczos click here

24 September 2009.  Lizards.
From So long and thanks for all the fish by Douglas Adams:
'No' said Ford '...On its world the people are people.  The leaders are lizards.  The people hate the lizards and the lizards rule the people.'
'Odd,' said Arthur, 'I thought you said it was a democracy.'
'I did,' said Ford.  'It is.'
'So,' said Arthur, hoping he wasn't sounding ridiculously obtuse, 'why don't people get rid of the lizards?'
'It honestly doesn't occur to them,' said Ford.  'They've all got the vote, so they can all pretty much assume the government they've voted in more or less approximates to the government they want.'
'You mean they actually vote for the lizards?'
'Oh yes,' said Ford with a shrug, "of course.'
'But,' said Arthur, going for the big one again, 'why?'
'Because if they didn't vote for a lizard,' said Ford, 'the wrong lizard might get in.  Got any gin?'

11 August 2009.   SAS deployment to Afghanistan- in a brief diversion from the dispute in Rotorua, in which I am pretty well fully engaged at present, I address the issue of the deployment of New Zealand SAS forces to Afghanistan.   Looking beyond Afghanistan to the end of colonial rule in New Zealand, a republican constitution for Aotearoa will have to specify that the military forces of the state shall  never be deployed beyond the shores of these islands. ...
 SAS deployment to Afghanistan - click here to read the text

23 July 2009.   the republican is going into recess for an indefinite period, during which time I will be in Rotorua, where the District Council is in the process of building a new international airport and is claiming the right to destroy the trees on my half acre of land at Te Ngae without compensation or restitution, so as to allow larger  commercial airliners to fly at low altitudes over the eastern suburbs.  Reports on the dispute will appear on the website www.TeNgaeTrees.com (all lower case).

The Iranian presidential election.  The republican normally has little to say about the domestic politics of foreign states.   However I make an exception for the "disputed" Iranian election  both for personal reasons (I  spent a couple of months seconded to the Iranian Jihad e Sazandegi in 1998) and because the fate of the Islamic Republic of Iran has implications for republicanism everywhere...  The Iranian election - click here to read more

Richard Worth MP is on the way out of parliamentary politics.  It is now evident that Worth  sought sexual connections with female Asian immigrants in exchange for providing them with jobs on government boards.   His is a pathetic case, about which one would not normally give a second thought except for the fact that it exposes how cynically New Zealand political parties exploit ethnic minorities... Richard Worth - click here to read more

Honour Bound:  How the honours system is used as a method of social control.  Most New Zealand politicians approach the "honours system" with circumspection.  Or, to be blunt, they beat around the bush.   Labour Party leader Helen Clark abolished knighthoods because they were reminiscent of an English class society which New Zealanders had chosen to leave behind them.   National Party leader John Key reinstated knighthoods for the same reason... Honour Bound - click here to read more ...

“The War on P”   By all accounts, both statistical and anecdotal, New Zealanders rank high among the world users of mind-altering drugs.  At the present time crystal methamphetamine, or “P” is a particular worry because of its association with extreme and unpredictable acts of violence.   There is also concern about other illicit drugs, such as cocaine and marijuana, and licit drugs, such as alcohol and tobacco.  But does the public discourse address the real issues behind drug use?......... The war on P - click here to read more ...

Is Melissa a Racist?  When the National Party list Member of Parliament Melissa Lee blurted that the State Highway 20 motorway would stop “criminals from South Auckland” targeting homes in Mount Albert, she was making a claim that was at best contentious, and at worst silly.    But was it racist?  ..... Is Melissa a Racist? click here to read more ...

The “Siege of Napier” : It’s just anthropology. Young males roam in packs.   Older males settle down and become territorial.    Successful societies develop effective ways of sublimating or containing these instinctual behaviours, but in dysfunctional societies they become a source of violence and social instability.   Jan Molenaar was one of the young men whom the New Zealand state enlisted into its military forces and  trained to use firearms. ...  The Siege of Napier - click here to read more

The Royal Commission on Auckland Governance was an anti-democratic means to an anti-democratic end.  The “three wise men” of the Commission have proposed a major centralisation of government in the Auckland region which will concentrate power in fewer hands, and greatly increase the political influence of the mass media, large corporations and centralised business organisations.   It is a change which will have repercussions not only for the  working classes of Auckland (who are already severely marginalised politically) but also for the multitude of local lawyers, accountants, doctors, small business people and other worthies of the regime who have traditionally enjoyed the status and responsibilities of local government office click here to read the full text

A letter to the Queen of the Realm of New Zealand, Elizabeth Windsor  "..... I address you now as the Queen of the Realm of New Zealand, as a fellow human being, and a person of  conscience.   The New Zealand Oaths and Declarations Act is an evil which has been designed to prolong your unpopular rule...." click here to read the full text

A letter to the Governor-General of New Zealand, Anand Satyanand.    ...the House of Windsor will not be able to permanently entrench itself at the head of the Realm of New Zealand by such a crude legal device.....I suggest that it is in your interests to capitulate as swiftly and as gracefully as you are able.  If the Crown continues to restrict membership of the House of Representatives in ways which violate the sensibilities of moral and patriotic New Zealanders, then it will forfeit any claim to legitimacy and will be deposed all the sooner...."  click here to read the full text

A Blast from the Past.    From the republican archives dated November 1996, five years before the September 11 attack on the World Trade Centre in New York, six years before the Anglo-American invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, and before the Arabic word "Al Qaeda" became familiar to the mass of westerners, comes the warning:  "When a new millennium dawns .... we shall see the West absolutely committed to a rational, secular and liberal economic and social system and its armies ranged up against the comprehensive moral absolutism of Islam." .  To read more archived material from last century click here

The Oath of Allegiance   At the opening of the 49th New Zealand Parliament all elected members were required to swear an oath of allegiance to Queen Elizabeth, and her heirs and successors according to law.    As has been the case with previous parliaments, some of the new members of New Zealand’s purportedly “democratic” legislature baulked at being required to swear allegiance to the hereditary monarch of a foreign state...  The Oath of Allegiance - click here to read more ....

The property fetish and other forms of deviant economic behavior.  In 2008 the price of residential property in New Zealand began to decline after having risen sharply for nearly a decade.   The change in fortunes will be seen as a vindication for successive governors of the Reserve Bank of New Zealand who have moralised about New Zealand’s  “poor savings record” while deploring New Zealanders’ enthusiasm for investment in residential property.   The objection to residential property investment is a valid one.  Housing is not a productive form of capital, in the manner of farms and factories.  ...  The Property Fetish - click here to read more...

John Key and the Maori Party  National Party leader John Key's invitation to the Maori Party to join a National Party government has been seen as an act of political grace and wisdom.   The Maori Party's acceptance of his offer, on the other hand, has provoked surprise and criticism from the left, apparently based on the mistaken premise that the Maori Party is a party of ideology, which it is not. John Key and the Maori Party - click here to read more...

Race problem?  What Race Problem?  Three months ago the Chinese community in Auckland staged a mass demonstration  in implicit support of China's right to rule over Tibet.    A month back they demonstrated in even larger numbers under the auspices of the Asian Anti-Crime Group against a perceived crime wave directed against the Asian community.    These unprecedented, but entirely predictable, demonstrations of Asian discontent, have roots which go deeper than the immediate and stated causes.   Race Problem? click here to read more...

On Freedom and the Nanny State  Fashions change within the political institutions and propaganda organs of the regime, but, as the saying goes, the more things change the more they remain the same.    A year or two past, the stock political epithet was "politically correct".   Such a term can not withstand close analysis, and while the regime has its ways of obstructing or avoiding serious political analysis, as time passes, like water dripping on to stone, reason tends to prevail over silliness....    On freedom and the nanny state - click here to read more

Why buy New Zealand made?  “Economic nationalism” is the idea that the citizens of a nation, either individually or collectively, should own and manage its economic assets.   It is normally an adjunct of political nationalism, which assumes that all who dwell within a defined geographic area share a common interest, and are subject to political institutions which are unique to, and make exclusive claims over, the particular territory.  By this definition, political nationalism in New Zealand is compromised ....   Why Buy New Zealand Made? click here to read more ...

A Presidential Election? In a rather presumptuous political stunt the Republican Movement of Aotearoa is running an “electoral process to select a suitable President for a New Zealand Republic”.   Lewis Holden, Chair of the RMA, announced the five top candidates for the presidency (in alphabetical order) as: Professor James Belich, Jim Bolger, Dr Claudia Orange, Dame Kiri Te Kanawa, and Sir Wilson Whineray..... A Presidential Election - click here to read more...

Winston Peters: A Political Obituary. "Peters the political outsider".....  "New Zealand First a socially conservative and nationalist party"  ......   "It’s not about Asia. It’s about Australia".....  "the progress that Winston Peters has made towards improving relations with the United States has only exacerbated the anger of the pro-American Australian-owned mass media"..... Winston Peters: A political obituary... click here to read full text

Herald Columnist Offers his Life for Our Freedoms. New Zealand Herald columnist Paul Thomas suggests that society should measure a person’s worth according to whether “they accept Voltaire’s formula: “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it”.   This proposal will be well received by the considerable number of bloggers and political poseurs who proclaim Voltaire’s supposed dictum  as their guiding principle in life... Herald Columnist - click here to read more

The Green Party and the Emissions Trading Scheme.  Before the 1999 parliamentary election I asked a Green Party candidate why she wanted to be a Member of Parliament.   Her answer (“Because I’m tired of being poor and I’m tired of being powerless”) revealed her fundamental misapprehensions about the nature of poverty and power....
The Green Party and the Emissions Trading Scheme - click here to read more

"You can't have it both ways" says Greg O'Connor of the Police Association, the man who has the unenviable job of justifying every questionable killing, every brutal assault and every case of misconduct by the New Zealand Police.    O'Connor was trying to make the point on Radio New Zealand that you can't have a New Zealand Police that refrains from using violence New Zealand Police - click here to read more

Media pap.  Four articles in last week's New Zealand Listener which provided nothing of substance never-the-less combined to show what is wrong with the Listener, what is wrong with the APN media empire, and, from a broader perspective, what is wrong with New Zealand.  The Listener's cover story was about a young man with dual New Zealand citizenship who died fighting for the armed forces of a foreign state.... Media pap - click here to read more

Democracy under threat is the slogan under which the APN media empire, publishers of the New Zealand Herald and New Zealand Listener have campaigned against the New Zealand government's Electoral Finance Act, and, implicitly, against the New Zealand Labour Party's attempt to secure a fourth term on the Treasury benches. Democracy under threat - click here to read more

Correction and apology: [14 June 2008]:   Lewis Holden, Chairperson of the Republican Movement of Aotearoa, states that contrary to what I wrote in my article on the RMA he is not a salaried state servant   The reference to his being "financially dependent" on the New Zealand state is therefore also incorrect.   I therefore withdraw and apologize to Lewis.

“Tribute 08" was one of those extraordinary occasions when all elements of the regime come together in a common cause - in this case by “honoring” the New Zealand government’s Vietnam war veterans.   One dissenting voice was that of Chris Trotter who argued bravely, and forcefully, on Radio New Zealand National that the Vietnam war was unjustified and that the veterans should be held morally accountable for their role in the conflict... Tribute 08 - click here to read more

Ploughshares action at Waihopai  The Ploughshares activists who launched a courageous and well-executed assault upon the Waihopai spy base deserve to be congratulated on their efforts.    Nothing can change the fact that the Waihopai facility has been constructed and is operated for purely evil purposes.    The base is there to collect information on any threat to Anglo-American hegemony, and the information so-gathered is used to identify those who will be targets for punitive action by the imperial regime. Ploughshares at Waihopai - click here to read more

Chinese imperialism versus British colonialism Last week's demonstration in support of their homeland by thousands of Chinese New Zealanders seems to have come as a rude shock to the regime.   It should not have.   The only explanation for the surprise was that the government and the media had fallen victim to their own propaganda. Chinese imperialism - click here to read more

Anzac Day  Notwithstanding the adolescent handwringing by New Zealand journalists and politicians over the "quest for a national identity" there are two days in the calendar which they solemnly promote as celebrating the supposed basis of that "national identity" which they are otherwise at a loss to define.   Those days are February 6, the anniversary of the day on which there was an act of cession of sovereignty to the British crown (Waitangi Day) and April 25, the anniversary of the day on which, in concert with Australian and British forces, New Zealand colonial troops invaded the territory of a people living on the other side of the world  who had never by the wildest stretch of imagination constituted a threat to New Zealand's security or legitimate national interests.... Anzac Day - click here to read more

The Oaths Modernisation Bill For more years than I can remember, the New Zealand Parliament has imposed an oath of allegiance to the British crown as a test of fitness for citizenship, election to political office, service in the judiciary, the police force, the legal profession and the education system.   This oath consisted of the words "I swear that I will be faithful and bear true allegiance to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth the Second, Queen of New Zealand, her heirs and successors according to law.."  The Oaths Modernisation Bill - click here to read more

The Republican Movement of Aotearoa  The "Republican Movement of Aotearoa" claims to be the only genuine republican political organisation within New Zealand.   Perhaps surprisingly, it seems to draw a certain measure of support from Members of Parliament who do not take their oath of allegiance to the crown all that seriously.   But the support of Parliamentarians comes at a price, as I discovered when at the suggestion of RMA Chairperson Lewis Holden I wrote a piece for the RMA Newsletter on the Oaths Modernisation Bill...  The Republican Movement of Aotearoa- click here to read more

Why do I oppose the Crown?  I am opposed to the Crown not just because it is anachronism, or because it is an alien, intrinsically racist, sexist and sectarian institution.   It may be all of these things.   But there is a much more fundamental reason for my opposition to the Crown.   I am opposed to the crown because it is the model for a culture of moral irresponsibility that has had an insidious influence within New Zealand society...  Why do I oppose the Crown? - click here to read more

Can "eminent persons" really "manage the process of change" in New Zealand? One-time New Zealand Prime Minister  and former World Trade Organisation head Mike Moore has publicly raised the banner for a "managed" process of constitutional change in the country.    Both National Party leader John Key  and Labour Party Prime Minister Helen Clark say that New Zealand will "inevitably" make the transition from a realm of the British monarchy to independent republic "at some stage".    But it is a change which neither of the leading political parties are willing to champion or in any way to encourage...
Can "eminent persons" really "manage the process of change" in New Zealand? click here to read more

Moore political knavery  Former New Zealand Prime Minister and ex-World Trade Organisation boss Mike Moore, who now enjoys the dubious honor of being a regular New Zealand Herald political columnist, has plumbed the depths of political hypocrisy with an article in praise of "political dissent". ... Moore political knavery - click here to read more

Who has the right to bear arms? Everyone has the right to take measures to defend themselves, their families and their community against external threats, aggression, or oppression.    That right of self-defence extends to the right to bear arms.  On that basis, the people of Aotearoa, whether Maori or Pakeha, have a natural right to possess and bear arms....
Who has the right to bear arms?- click here to read more

The Ruatoki Raid In the uproar that has been generated over "military style training camps" in the northern Urewera, the first point to be made is that Ruatoki based Tuhoe activist Tame Iti has not assembled any kind of serious para-military force.   Ruatoki, at the end of a long "dead end" road from Taneatua lined either side by the homes and villagers of Tuhoe loyalists, could have been relatively easily defended by any reasonably well armed militia..   The Ruatoki Raid - click here to read more

A Solemn Oath  (from October 1996)   This year a change took place in the requirements for the naturalisation process which transforms an immigrant into a "New Zealand citizen".    It had nothing to do with the "points" system which ranks prospective citizens by their wealth, existing family connections in New Zealand, occupational skills, state of health and so on.    And from the government's point of view, it was not a change at all, but rather a correction of an "anomaly" which had existed for as long as New Zealand has been under the authority of the British crown.    A Solemn Oath - click here to read more

On Democracy  (republished from the Islamist website RevertsAloud  2006)  An article by David Warren, which first appeared in the Ottawa Citizen, February 01, 2006 rhetorically asks "Can Islam and democracy co-exist?".    Warren believes that coexistence between Islam and democracy is not possible because in his view,  “Democracy is not just voting. Democracy is a whole bourgeois way of life, and a method for resolving disputes peacefully. It is not essentially compatible with millenarian religious schemes.” .... On Democracy - click here to read more

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

The case against pragmatism   Click here

The purpose of  the republican website is to provide a forum for serious analysis and discussion of New Zealand political economy.   I welcome comment or criticism, and invite submissions from readers.   Should I decline to publish a submitted article, I will publish a brief note explaining why publication was declined.
 

"The New Zealander leads a two-fold life: the sporting life in which he considers himself to be a patriotic being, and the economic life, in which he acts as a private individual, regards other New Zealanders as a means, degrades himself into a means, and becomes a plaything of alien powers..."  Karl Marx "On the New Zealand Question"   : )