Newshub reports:

Prime Minister Bill English will go to a reggae concert to celebrate Waitangi Day.

Newshub can reveal Mr English will attend the concert headed by reggae greats Black Slate from the United Kingdom and New Zealand’s Katchafire at the free concert at West Auckland’s Hoani Waititi marae.

Will he dance at it? 🙂

Organised by the Waiperiera Trust, it is a ‘smoke-free, drug-free, alcohol-free and violence-free’ day.

Sounds a good initiative.

The Herald has a number of short pieces by various people for International Holocaust Remembrance Day. The one by Chris Finlayson stood out forme:

Every Holocaust Memorial Day, people solemnly repeat the famous phrase “never again”. The World was so traumatised by the horrors of what happened in Germany in the years 1939 to 1945 that no one ever believed it could possibly happen again.

But look at the events of the past 12 months: all across Europe we see the rise of far-right parties who have anti-Semitism at their core; even the British Labour Party has had to hold an inquiry into anti-Semitism within its ranks. Extremism is infecting the politics of many societies.

The phrase “never again” rings hollow.

The lethal obsession with Jews changes its form every generation but the essential irrational hatred is still there.

An understandable response would be despair. That is unacceptable. The beast needs to be confronted by all decent people year in and year out, decade in and decade out. History has shown that anti-Semitism will never be defeated but it must always be challenged and contained.

It is sadly true that we will never defeat anti-Semitism, which is all the more reason we must challenge it when it occurs – to contain it.

Stuff reports:

Donald Trump’s administration plans to start vetting would-be immigrants and visitors to the United States based partly on their opinions and ideology.

His proposed ban on Muslims was abhorrent and awful. What he has now proposed is more reasonable.

The draft order instructs the US government to screen visa applicants for their ideologies.

“In order to protect Americans, we must ensure that those admitted to this country do not bear hostile attitudes toward our country and its founding principles,” or do not support the Constitution, the draft order reads.

The order says the United States should screen visa applicants to block access to those “who would place violent religious edicts over American law” and those who “engage in acts of bigotry or hatred” including “honour” killings, violence against women, and persecution on the basis of religion, race, gender and sexual orientation, a description that human rights groups say also appears to be geared toward Muslims, without naming Islam explicitly.

I don’t see those as unreasonable criteria.

Mike Yardley writes:

There is something nauseously disturbing about the far left’s duplicitous affection for the voice of democracy and free expression.

They only honour the central tenets of democratic expression when it falls into line with their ideological viewpoint, suits their cause or the vote in question favourably goes their way.

Belying their professed belief in diversity, tolerance and freedom of thought, is the fevered liberal uprising against the 45th US President.

Their cloth-capped refusal to accept the legitimacy of his victory crudely illustrates how nakedly self-serving and hypocritical their adherence to democratic values really are.

I wanted Trump to lose. But I accept he won and protesting against a democratic election outcome is a very bad idea in my opinion. Sure once he actually makes decisions, then protest against them all you want. But a protest against an actual election outcome (and that is what they were, despite the spin) is counter-productive. It will make his supporters even more inclined to back him.

But far from being a genuine grassroots outpouring of public anxiety at the inauguration of Donald Trump, the event’s Facebook attendance list read like a roll call of the usual rent-a-crowd suspects and oh-so-familiar activists from the Green and Labour parties.

Ditto, for the Auckland and Wellington events. Designed to exhibit solidarity with the women’s march in Washington DC, it is equally risible how blatantly agenda-driven that demonstration was too. …

Madonna shared her desire to blow up the White House, Miley Cyrus spouted some indecipherable twaddle about gender empowerment, in between twerking manoeuvres, while Scarlett Johansson got all worked up about Trump’s “Era of Tyranny”.

The over-heated rhetoric matched the hysteria that seems to have gripped the uber-liberal wing of the Democratic Party, prompting 60 House Democrats to spit the dummy like sore losers and boycott the inauguration.

Their two-fingered salute to the democratic process and the Office of President was feckless. But it will appeal to the hyper-ventilating battalion of Trump haters who choose to wallow in their vast collective vat of self-imposed victimhood.

What a pity the protestors, the Hollywood darlings and the no-show Democrats representatives didn’t take a leaf out of Hillary Clinton’s book, who exhibited grace, grit and dignity when attending the presidential inauguration “out of respect for the democratic process”.

Ditto for President Obama, whose political record was mixed, but will go down in history as one of the most likable and decent men ever to lead his country.

The irony is that everyone thought it would be Trump and his supporters who would refuse to accept the outcome of the election.

Stuff reports:

Wellington Mayor Justin Lester is shaken but unhurt after a truck ploughed into a council car head-on.

Lester was being driven by his chief-of-staff and former Wellingtonian editor Joseph Romanos on South Makara Rd when a truck crossed the centre-line and slammed into them on a sunny Friday afternoon.

Lester said all people involved were shaken but unhurt, though the crumpled electric car – with what appears to be a busted front axle, shattered windshield and wayward bumper, would likely be written-off.

The mayor was returning to Wellington City after speaking at a United Nations Holocaust Remembrance Day at Makara Cemetery.

“[Romanos] was driving us back into town through Karori when a big truck crossed the centre-line.

“It came heading straight for us – couldn’t stop – and hit us.

Very pleased Justin and Joseph are unharmed.

South Makara Road is one I know well and is quite dangerous. I’ve had one near miss myself years ago when a car towing a boat came over the centre line and we got pushed to within a couple of cms of going over the cliff. Justin and Joseph are fortunate to be alive – there are many sections on that road where a collision would push you over.

Without prejudging guilt, I’m appalled that a truck would be driving along there at anything but a very modest speed. There are some roads you can drive at the limit. This is not one of them. I normally drive it very slowly.

Again very pleased the accident did not turn out worse.

The Herald reports:

One of the women jailed over the brutal child abuse death of Rotorua toddler Nia Glassie has been convicted of assaulting her partner.

Oriwa Terrina Kemp, 26, appeared in the Manukau District Court today and pleaded guilty to assaulting her now estranged partner Lindsay Wilson. Kemp was four months pregnant at the time of the assault.

Court documents released to the Herald stated Wilson is in his 60s and has been in a relationship with Kemp for about nine years. …

At the time Kemp had one child.

After her release she had three children with Wilson, the youngest now four months old.

All four of her children have been removed from her care by Child, Youth and Family.

In 2016, CYF confirmed to the Herald that Kemp’s youngest was taken shortly after birth.

It is understood that was also the case with her other children to Wilson.

What is the solution here? She knows that if she has children they will go into state care as soon as they are born. Yet she keeps getting pregnant. You now have four kids who are much much much more likely to have a very challenging life.

Being pregnant and giving birth is not fun. You do it so you get to raise a child at the end of it. When you know you won’t get to raise the child, why would you get pregnant?

On January 20^th, Barack Obama’s 2^nd term as US President expired and Donald Trump was sworn in as the 45^th President. This is the last in a 3 part series looking at the Obama Presidency after Part 1 – Electoral Legacy and Part 2 – Domestic Policy.

Israel

US policy towards Israel traditionally has focused on the possibility of a lasting peace via a two state solution between Israel and the Palestinians with almost every President since 1948 seeking this outcome. Thus the Obama Administration began its efforts against a back drop of long standing historical failure by his predecessors. However what separates out the Obama Administration is its barely concealed hostility to Israel compared to previous post war Presidents. This comes as no surprise given that Obama previously marinated in the university common room’s long standing antipathy to Israel. His formative advisors on Middle East matters come from a similar history of opposition or ambivalence towards Israel including Edward Said, one of Obama’s close friends and mentors in Chicago. The same was true for the Administration’s UN Ambassador Susan Rice, a person with a long history of favouring Palestinian positions over those of Israel.

This has led to a most aggressive stance towards Israel. It began with a ham-fisted attempt by Obama to stop apartment building projects in West Jerusalem (a portion of the city known to be Jewish occupied for centuries and quite some distance away from the hotly contested West Bank). Netanyahu responded by ignoring Obama. Things went downhill since then. Rather than pressure Hezbollah and Hamas into recognizing Israel and forswearing their desires to destroy Israel as a necessary precondition for peace, Obama has uniquely placed the onus of peace almost entirely on Israel’s shoulders and foolishly mused that Israel should retreat to its pre-1967 borders – a situation that places Tel Aviv and the heart of Israel’s industry and defense establishment within easy gun and rocket range of its hostile enemies.

Obama’s attempt at intervention in the last Gaza war made things worse and Obama’s antipathy to Netanyahu has been manifest in various ways including: slighting him at a March 2010 White House visit by abruptly ending an important bilateral meeting to have dinner with his family, his attempts to block Netanyahu’s address to Congress in 2015 regarding the Iranian nuclear deal, and his clandestine sending of campaign operatives to assist opponents to Netanyahu’s Likud Party in March 2015 Knesset elections.

But it was Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry’s actions in the dying days of the Administration where the most profound slight against Israel was delivered. Usually when anti-Israel resolutions are brought to a vote at the United Nations Security Council, the US vetoes them as they are normally a one-sided condemnation of Israel. On December 23^rd, Obama allowed his UN Ambassador to abstain from a resolution condemning Israeli settlements in the West Bank. This has caused outrage because not only does it depart from the long standing (at least since the Carter Administration) policy of the US vetoing controversial anti-Israel resolutions but because the resolution itself went so much further than mere condemnation of West Bank settlements by criminalizing Israelis in East Jerusalem (a location with centuries old Jewish roots) and effectively criminalizing any devout Jew who attempts to pray at the Western Wall of the Temple. Furthermore, it empowers the International Court of Justice in The Hague to try Israeli soldiers if engaging in acts of war against the Palestinians as war criminals. These are radical, extreme and manifestly unfair proposals that the US had no business standing back from and allowing to pass. New Zealand is caught up in this shameless act as it was the joint mover of the motion. Murray McCully, Obama and Kerry have all disingenuously tried to say that this does not represent any change in US (or even NZ) policy when clearly what was passed adds language never before passed by the SC.

Obama and Kerry managed one more pro-Palestinian zinger just as they left office; the State Department made an unauthorized payment of $221 million to the Palestinian Authority on Kerry’s instructions just hours before the Inauguration of Donald Trump last Friday, an action that was not only expressly forbidden by Congress but where the previously appropriated funds were frozen. The brazenness of this action speaks volumes for the Obama Administration’s attitude towards Israel. Fortunately the relevant Senate Committee Chair put a block on the transfer.

 Ukraine and Russia

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton kicked off an ignominious start to the Obama Administration’s Russia policy with the infamous Russian reset. What did this ‘reset’ result in:

• Scrapping the placement of US missile defense systems in Poland and Czech Republic to pacify Putin;Standing by while Russia annexed Crimea and invaded eastern Ukraine;
• No consequences for Russia despite the revelations that Russian backed Ukrainian separatists were identified as the source of the missile that downed Malaysian Airlines MH 17 over the Ukraine killing 298 innocent civilians (including a Belgian friend of mine who had previously been a long-time resident of Queenstown);
• Allowing Russia a free hand to expand its influence in the Middle East all the while letting Syria’s Assad off the hook.

Of even greater significance has been Russia’s stepped up cyber incursions into sensitive US government computer servers. Russian hacks into US military, intelligence and government servers have been extensive, ongoing and potentially damaging and yet the Obama Administration appears to have done little to prevent it or hold Russia accountable UNTIL it appeared that Russia was behind hacks into the Democrat National Committee computer (where emails showing the DNC skewered the Democrat primary in Hillary Clinton’s favor) and the leak of Clinton Campaign Chairman John Podesta’s emails (that showed high level Democrats dissing key parts of their base). Suddenly, these incursions were worthy of action with Obama announcing some sanctions and travel bans on Russian government official.

Iran

Obama has made a virtue of leading from behind. A great example of his passivity was his failure to back the Green Revolution in Iran in 2009. The Iranian regime was vulnerable and opposition forces pleaded for support from the US and got nothing: not even rhetorical or moral support as Obama seemed to want to keep the Mullahs in place to later cut a deal he could take credit for and so he stayed on the sidelines. This was an opportunity to possibly change the trajectory in the Middle East by backing regime change in Iran. Such a change likely would’ve ended the Iranian quest for nuclear weapons with a more moderate faction in power.

In January 2016, another offshoot of the Iranian nuclear deal became apparent and that was a hostage swap where 4 Americans in captivity in Iran were released simultaneous to the US returning 7 Iranians. What made the deal more suspect was the sight of the US shipping $400 million in US Dollars, Swiss Francs and Euro bank notes, some from the US Treasury, the rest from the central banks of nations like the Netherlands and Switzerland. Whilst the Obama Administration claimed it was the repayment of funds owed to Iran from funds frozen back in 1979, the fact that the payment was kept secret from Congress (the cash shipment being discovered by accident) AND the timing of the payment mere days after the return of the US detainees, gave the transaction the appearance of a cash for hostage release.

 Iranian nuclear deal

The Iranian nuclear deal is the perfect metaphor for Obama’s foreign policy and so it will merit more detailed attention. On July 14^th  2015 the Obama Administration announced that an agreement (known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action or JCPOA) had been reached with the Iranians regarding their nuclear programme. It was sold heavily by Secretary of State John Kerry and President Obama as a good deal that will constrain Iran’s nuclear ambition and bring ‘peace in our time’. The deal was quickly ratified by the UN Security Council but was the subject of much internal GOP Senate wrangling before it was approved by the Senate.

Since the Islamic revolution in 1979, Iran has conducted a large number of acts of aggression against enemies of its Islamic fundamentalist ideals beginning of course with the 444 day captivity of 56 of the staff of the US Embassy in Teheran. Iran has been an aggressive funder and provider of weapons for Islamic terror groups across the Middle East including Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in Gaza, Houthi rebels in Yemen and a number of attacks on Israeli or Jewish targets around the globe with the most devastating attacks being in Argentina. After the US led invasion of Iraq in 2003, Iranian Revolutionary Guards and Quds forces acted to foment Shia on Sunni sectarian violence in Iraq that was not quelled until the Petraeus led surge of US troops in 2006.

Iran cannot be considered as anything other than an extremist repressive theocracy. There are no free elections, no trade unions, no free press, an extensive and brutal secret police to stamp out opposition, woman are subservient as Islamic laws that treat them as second class citizens are enforced and homosexuals are routinely beaten, imprisoned and executed.

The whole purpose of the JCPOA arose from the long efforts of the Iranians to build a nuclear weapons capability. The entire sanctions regime that was under review was imposed on Iran because it continued to develop this capability despite UN Security Council resolutions and the original opposition of the US and its allies.

The Obama Administration entered these talks with several so-called red or bottom lines. As the negotiations wore on in Geneva, the US progressively caved on each red line:
* The closing down and dismantling of the underground facility at Fordow. Now it can continue to operate with nothing more than ineffectual Russian oversight.
* Inspections were initially going to be “anywhere – anytime”. These have been negotiated away to a farcical regime that gives the Iranians the ability to effectively police themselves.

In addition, a relatively toothless monitoring regime was put in place:
1^st – Known nuclear sites. Policing of these sites will be more rigorous under the JCPOA. For this reason, the Iranians will migrate the weaponization programme from these heavily policed sites that are the most talked about to secondary sites. These known sites are where the Iranians will very publicly reduce the numbers of centrifuges to give the impression of freezing their nuclear programme.
2^nd – Secondary suspicious sites. It is activity at these sites where the scope for Iranian flouting of the JCPOA will first occur. The regime for inspecting these sites is frankly pathetic. The IAEA, the US and allies have long suspected the facility at Parchin to be a nuclear weapons development site. But in a secret side deal between the Iranians and the IAEA (that the Obama Administration refuse to show to Congress) the Iranians are allowed to monitor themselves at Parchin. This agreement specifically makes Parchin off limits to US inspectors leaving Iran to ‘phone it in’.
3^rd – Unknown sites. The Iranians will cheat the most in small unknown sites. The inspections regime negotiated makes finding suspicious activity at these sites all but impossible. If suspicion arises, the IAEA must first provide evidence, a P5 + EU committee must approve of inspections (this will take months and the Russians and Chinese will delay and object) and only if the committee agrees, THEN the Iranians will be given 24 days warning of a formal inspection; enough time to clean up any nuclear material despite claims of technology to find even cleaned up sites. According to former IAEA inspector Ari Knownen the chance of catching Iranian breaches of the JCPOA at these sites is zero.

The Agreement makes no genuine attempt at permanently dismantling Iran’s nuclear bomb development capacity. It temporarily forces Iran to give up only SOME of its infrastructure (several thousand of the smaller, simpler centrifuges) for 10 years only to give it back. The Iranian regime has not been required to halt research and development of the faster centrifuges that will enable it to break out to a bomb more rapidly than is the case right now. The deal specifically legitimizes ongoing R&D under certain eroding limitations. Iran can commence testing on the fast IR-8 single centrifuge machines as soon as the deal goes into effect and can commence testing on an additional thirty IR 6 and IR 8 centrifuges in 8½ years’ time enabling it to race to the bomb even faster despite the give back of the uranium.

The entire sanctions infrastructure has been shredded with almost no ability to re-implement anything quick or stringent for any Iranian bad behaviour. The so-called snap back provisions are far from that. It took many years to set in motion the previous sanctions. Whilst the US Congress could quickly re-impose restrictions on the flow of funds through US banks, without buy-in from the EU countries and Russia and China (two countries who opposed the sanctions in the first place and sought ways to circumvent them), there would not be nearly the same deleterious effect on the Iranian economy from what the JCPOA proposes would happen in the unlikely event that Iranian subterfuge is caught with the severely weakened inspections regime the Obama people caved on.

The agreement not only lifts the sanctions that had progressively become quite draconian and had severely constrained Iranian economic activity but the JCPOA provides for a massive financial shot in the arm to the regime of $160 Billion. The Iranians would like to have the West believe that this money will be spent on domestic improvements. A short glance at Iranian foreign policy tells us that plenty of this money will be spent by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards to further arm Iran’s Shi’ite proxies in Lebanon, the West Bank, Yemen and Gaza. Where else does Hezbollah get its huge arsenal of rockets to fire into Israel and Hamas the financial capacity to build its deep and sophisticated terror tunnels into Israel and its own arsenal of Israel-bound rockets? The IRG will also continue to prop up the Assad regime in Syria and its own vicious civil war with ISIS.

Obama was so desperate to do the deal that Iran got other bonuses it didn’t ask for.  First it got the lifting of the ban on conventional weapons. This means that the signing bonus money can be spent on perfecting medium to long range conventional missiles that can threaten not just Israel but Europe as well. Only a few days ago, Iran was caught testing these weapons in contravention of the agreement. And you can plan on any accelerated development of Iranian missile delivery of conventional warheads to have cross over applicability to its parallel pursuit of nuclear weapons.

Second, Iran got a guarantee from sabotage of its nuclear programme. It’s not sufficient that the US gave away its “anywhere anytime” inspections goal, the agreement requires the P5 to protect the arrangement from external manipulation.

Few recall Obama’s campaign promise in 2008 to negotiate with Iran without conditions, an approach that, at the time, placed him to the left of even his Democrat rivals. With his showcase domestic reform (Obamacare) faltering and proving to be both costly and unpopular, with his presiding over some of the most devastating electoral losses for his party at the national and state level in over 70 years, after several shambolic foreign policy catastrophes (Syria, Libya), Obama was hungry for a legacy building showpiece foreign policy achievement. John Kerry’s appeasing instincts were on display soon after he returned from active duty in Vietnam so he made the perfect negotiator for Obama. After Obama ignored his Syrian red line over chemical weapons, stood by idly as the Russians took the Crimea and made incursions into Ukraine unopposed by NATO and ramped up the rhetoric against Israel, the Mullahs in Teheran knew they were dealing with a weak, pacifist dilettante anxious to sign any big agreement with them. The US gave away pretty much all it previous bottom lines and prostrated itself before the savvy Iranian negotiators in Geneva.

Rise of Islamic State

The Obama Administration made no genuine attempt to re-negotiate the Status of Forces Agreement with the Iraqi Government after some initial pushback from the Iraqi Parliament. Disagreement was more over the size of the residual force with Obama favouring 10,000 and the Iraqis wanting about the same as were left in Korea (about 25,000). Whilst this was signaled by the Iraqi government to the Bush Administration, with some careful and patient negotiating, a residual force of US troops could’ve been negotiated (an equivalent was the amount of troops and length of time US forces remained in Germany post WW2 and in South Korea post the Korean War). Obama wanted all troops out and hid behind the supposed disagreement and let the old SFA expire.

The total withdrawal of all US troops from Iraq sent a signal to Islamic jihadist forces to do no more than wait out the US withdrawal. This vacuum and uncertainty allowed ISIS to take root and spread. Since ISIS’s expansion in Iraq and now Syria, Obama did the bare minimum to contain it almost going through the motions, his Administration has not been fully engaged in defeating ISIS. It ignored or downplayed intelligence that pointed to its rapid rise and Obama was foolish in his public dismissal of ISIS calling it the JV team (JV = Junior Varsity, the US equivalent of the 2^nd XV in rugby) not wanting to cast any shadow on his decision to completely exit Iraq and the good political optics of ending an unpopular war. Obama was handed a war that had been won (he said it, Biden said it, Petraeus said it), a reasonably pacified US ally and some good things were finally happening in Iraq. He ignored military advice that said that a total withdrawal would lead to an even more unstable and fragmented Iraq

Syria

Obama’s weakness in confronting rogue players was never more manifest than his dealings with the Assad regime in Syria. Obama’s failure to enforce his red line against Assad’s use chemical weapons has had catastrophic results. It sent a signal to allies and adversaries that US threats were bluster and commitments meaningless. His vacillation at doing anything like train and arm rebel fighters to overthrow Assad (before they were displaced by Islamic fanatics) has fueled a civil war leaving 500,000 dead and millions displaced and ISIS getting a foothold in Syria as well as Iraq. There were Syrian moderates, encouraged by CIA Directors Penetta then Petraeus and there was a moment that arming them would’ve helped but the window closed due to Obama’s vacillating; the good ones were killed, driven out and the only rebels left were easy for the extremist jihadist to recruit and coopt.

Obama compounded his earlier errors by effectively washing his hands of any major US involvement in Syria by effectively sub-contracting the task of trying to deal with ISIS in Syria to the Russians who were more interested in propping up Assad and expanding their influence in the volatile Middle East. Obama’s inaction left a void into which Putin stepped.

Libya

Whilst no one had any time for Libyan strongman Gadhafi, one of the few benefits of the invasion of Iraq to topple Saddam Hussein was Gadhafi’s decision to voluntarily surrender his nuclear capability and shelve his nuclear ambitions. Libya was still a dictatorship but one of limited threat to its neighbours and to regional Middle East instability. Obama chooses to wage a limited air war designed to destroy Gadhafi with few options for a stable replacement government, all things he and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton were warned about. The allied bombings emboldened radical Islamist factions to overthrow and murder Gadhafi and Libya predictably collapsed and fragmented into a series of warlord controlled territories with several quickly becoming terrorist havens.

For months, the US Ambassador to Libya Chris Stevens had warned the State Department that the situation in Benghazi was becoming more and more violent and volatile and that the US Consulate there needed to be significantly strengthened and fortified if it was to remain. All other major western nations had taken out all their consular representation in Benghazi due to the volatile situation. Despite his numerous pleas, the security situation at the consulate and residence remained vulnerable and during a time when Ambassador Stevens visited, an al Qaida in Libya group overran the Consulate and ended up killing the Ambassador and three of his CIA security detail. Given the sensitivity of the date of the attack (anniversary of 9/11) and the proximity to the 2012 Presidential elections, the Obama Administration pulled out all the stops to try to minimize any electoral fallout over this devastating news. Apart from the lack of preparation for such an eventuality (no ready rescue forces close enough) and the repeated ignoring of Ambassador Stevens’ increasingly shrill security concerns, Obama allowed his Administration to perpetrate a lie about the source of the attack by saying that the unrest had been fomented by an obscure inflammatory anti-Islamic video posted by a crank on You Tube. On the night after the attack in Benghazi Hillary Clinton emailed her daughter Chelsea to say it was a jihadist terrorist attack and yet the next day Obama’s UN Ambassador Susan Rice goes on all five US Sunday TV and cable news talk shows to propagate the line that the attack was a spontaneous riot triggered by the video. Clinton perpetrated that lie in an even more insidious way by repeating it to the families of the four killed Americans when they met with her at the time their bodies were returned to the US. It took weeks before Obama would finally admit to the Islamic terrorist connection behind the attacks. The whole Libyan fiasco and the events at Benghazi remain one of the most shameless acts of dereliction of duty and subsequent deceit by a President in living memory.

Burgdahl swap

Bowe Burgdahl was a marine who deserted his post in Afghanistan and was captured by the Taliban in 2009. In May 2013, the Obama Administration blatently hid the details of Burgdahl’s capture and his ending up with the Taliban and negotiated a lopsided prisoner exchange releasing five known and convicted Taliban terrorists from the Guantanamo Bay detention facility into a 1 year custody arrangement in Qatar. Outrage erupted when the full details of Burgdahl’s desertion (that ultimately led to his court martial) and for the inordinately high price that the Obama Administration had paid to bring home someone so undeserving.

Far East/China

Emboldened by US global weakness and the deliberate Obama regime’s policy of shrinking in size of the US Navy, China has pressed ahead with a rapid expansion of its deep-water navy and assertions of sovereignty and aggression in key merchant ship seaways of the South China Sea leading to rising tension between China and Japan, South Korea, the Philippines and Taiwan. These tensions are exacerbated by aggressive Chinese expansion of the disputed Spratly and Paracel Islands by adding infill land onto coral reefs sufficient to build runways and an air force landing base within such proximity to threaten the vital shipping lanes.

Conclusion

Obama has been weak and ineffectual on the world stage. The world is infinitely more unstable and violent than it was at the beginning of his presidency. ISIS, whilst having lost some territory in Iraq, seems able to indirectly or directly inspire and/or coordinate terrorist attacks with increasing frequency especially on mainland Europe. The Middle East is in turmoil with Syria ravaged by civil war, Israel and the Palestinians no closer to a two state solution and traditional Arab allies like Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Jordan nervous about Iranian hegemony in the region and Libya a dangerous basketcase. Russia is flexing its muscles regionally with annexations, military incursions and a growing influence in the Middle East. China seems able to expand its ambitions with relative impunity. The US has shown scant regard for the security of its allies and has coddled the enemies of the US (Iran, Cuba) and has not stood firm against the terrorist tendencies of Hamas and Hezbollah. Obama gave a soaring speech at the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin and yet so little of his vision has ever come to pass. It was the perfect metaphor for his Presidency, powerful rhetorical flourishes not backed up by concrete action that has eroded US power abroad. Whilst many in New Zealand would view such constraints on US influence as a good thing, few would argue that Obama has left Trump a safer world.

Stuff reports:

Clark notified UN secretary-general Antonio Guterres that she would leave on April 19, at the end of her second four-year term. …

In a statement, Prime Minister Bill English said New Zealand “has every right to be proud of Helen Clark’s tenure as administrator of the UNDP”.

“This has been a very challenging role in which she has performed admirably and has earned her international recognition.

“I wish her all the best in her future endeavours.”

What will Helen do if she returns to New Zealand? Maybe she could become Labour Leader again!

Stuff reports:

Student loans are getting bigger and graduates are taking longer to pay back the money they owe.

Figures from last year’s Student Loan Scheme Annual Report show the median loan balance in this country grew from $10,833 in 2008 to $14,904 in 2016. 

The median repayment time for someone with a bachelor’s degree also lifted from just over six years, to eight and a half. …

New Zealand Union of Students’ Associations Jonathan Gee said students were worried they were not going to be able to pay back the loans they were accruing.

A student loan is the best investment you can make. The median balance is just under $15,000 and the average increase in earnings from having a degree is $1.6 million.

The Herald reports:

Controversial claims made by former Internet Party leader Laila Harre about her resignation from the Green Party are false, one Green MP says.

In a spat on Twitter, Green MP Julie-Anne Genter said she had lost respect for Harre because of Harre’s account about why she left the Greens in 2014.

The former Internet Party leader had also wrongly accused the Greens of leaking sensitive information, Genter said.

The first tweet from Genter is below:

I used to have a lot of respect for Harré. But her story about quitting Greens doesn’t stack up. She quit AFTER announcing Internet party. https://t.co/svb7VlQQb0

— Julie Anne Genter (@JulieAnneGenter) January 25, 2017

That alternative left wing Government is looking really stable, isn’t it!

Also of interest the Herald reported:

Laila Harre says the so-called Warner Bros email which alleged Prime Minister John Key was involved in a vast conspiracy to get Kim Dotcom could have been proved genuine if it had been properly tested.

She said she could not rule out that the email was real, even though the existence of it and the content of it was denied by every party referenced in it.

The claim has been backed by Dotcom, who told the Herald today he was “100%” convinced it was genuine.

Delusions and lies.

If Dotcom thought for a second it was genuine he would have included it in his court battle against extradition. Why didn’t he? Because he knew he would be in jail for perjury if he did. If he included it as evidence, then evidence could be produced that it is false. Remember US law requires all corporate e-mails to be externally archived.

Harre saying she can’t rule out it was real is like saying you can’t rule out Pluto is made of cheese as we’ve never landed there.

For all her doubts about the party, she said “things would have been very different” if there had been an inquiry into the so-called email.

If there was any chance it was not a forgery, it would have been included in court papers which would have allowed a court to determine if it was real or not.

The Spinoff’s Toby Manhire said to Harre the email “was almost certainly not authentic”.

Harre replied: “I can’t say that it was almost certainly not authentic.”

Yes you can. Just as one can say the moon landings were almost certainly not fake.

She said “if the provenance of it had been able to be tested in a kind of environment where people weren’t at legal risk, then I think things would have been very different”.

You mean if people could testify to it without threat of perjury?

Harre claimed Key had avoided directly denying the meeting mentioned in the “email” was genuine.

“Even if you go back to John Key’s reaction at the moment that came out was not to deny that this had taken place. It was to say you need to talk to my chief of staff about what happened at meetings.

“There was never a denial. And then the more powerful people, I guess, within the reporting class decided that this was something to go for, just to say it’s not authentic.”

Wrong. John Key has explicitly said that there were no private meetings with Kevin Tsujihara. To quote:

“All the meetings that I had with Mr Tsujihara were in public, with other people being there.”

I guess we are seeing some alternative facts.

Stuff reports:

Rangitata MP Jo Goodhew will not seek re-election, saying her time of “rising through the National ranks” is over.

Her announcement came on the heels of her demotion from her ministerial roles in Prime Minister Bill English’s Cabinet reshuffle in December.

The news means that, come election time, the Rangitata electorate will elect a new MP for the first time since 2005.

In a press release on Wednesday, Goodhew said she had taken the opportunity over the summer break to think about her future and had decided not to seek a fifth term.

“I have loved every minute I have been an MP. It’s been an interesting, challenging and fulfilling career but it’s now time for me to look at new opportunities.”

Sad to see Jo go – a very decent person. Has been a great MP for Rangitata.

The majority in Rangitata is 14,107 which makes it on paper a very safe seat. However still one worth keeping an eye on with Goodhew retiring. Her opponent last time was Steve Gibson who effectively got unendorsed by the Labour leadership for his anti-Semitic statements about John Key. The candidate this time is Jo Luxton, who seems far more sensible.

The Government has donated $7.7 million of taxpayer money to an affiliate of the Clinton Foundation. So the Taxpayers’ Union has asked some taxpayers whether they would personally donate to the Clinton Foundation and what they think of the Government doing so. The results are in the video.

You can sign a petition against the MFAT funding here.

The Herald reports:

The Maori Party and Mana Movement have made a symbolic joint appearance at the first big political event of the year in Ratana.

Maori Party co-leaders Te Ururoa Flavell and Marama Fox and Mana leader Hone Harawira walked onto the Ratana Pa near Wanganui side-by-side this afternoon.

The two parties are in talks about working together at the general election, possibly by formally merging or by making agreements to step aside in some Maori seats to give the other party a clear run. Labour, who will be welcomed on to the pa tomorrow, holds six of the seven Maori electorates.

There was bad blood between Flavell and Harawira after Harawira left the Maori Party in 2011 in protest at its support agreement with National. That is clearly in the past. Before the two men walked onto the pa grounds at Ratana, Harawira embraced Flavell in a bear-hug in full view of media.

I’d say the chances of an alliance, which at the very least is a do not compete policy, is strong.

The full report is here. It looks at median house prices as a multiple of median incomes in 406 cities in nine countries.

The 11 most affordable cities are all in the US. They are:

1. Rochester, NY 2.5
2. Buffalo, NY 2.6
3. Cincinnati 2.7
4. Cleveland, OH 2.7
5. Pittsburgh, PA 2.7
6. Oklahoma City 2.9
7. Saint Louis, 2.9
8. Detroit 3.0
9. Grand Rapids, MI 3.0
10. Indianapolis 3.0
11. Kansas City 3.0

And the ten least affordable are:

1. Hong Kong 18.1
2. Sydney 12.2
3. Vancouver 11.8
4. Auckland 10.0
5. San Jose 9.6
6. Melbourne 9.5
7. Honolulu 9.4
8. LA 9.3
9. San Francisco 9.2
10. Bournemouth & Dorset 8.9

So Auckland is pretty appalling for affordability, but so is Sydney, Melbourne and Vancouver. They all have various property or capital gains taxes, so this strongly suggests the real solutions lie more with supply side – freeing up land.

Christchurch has a median multiple of 5.9 and Wellington 5.7.

Brendan O’Neill writes in The Spectator:

It happened because you banned super-size sodas. And smoking in parks. And offensive ideas on campus. Because you branded people who oppose gay marriage ‘homophobic’, and people unsure about immigration ‘racist’.

Because you treated owning a gun and never having eaten quinoa as signifiers of fascism. Because you thought correcting people’s attitudes was more important than finding them jobs. Because you turned ‘white man’ from a description into an insult. Because you used slurs like ‘denier’ and ‘dangerous’ against anyone who doesn’t share your eco-pieties.

Because you treated dissent as hate speech and criticism of Obama as extremism. Because you talked more about gender-neutral toilets than about home repossessions. Because you beatified Caitlyn Jenner. Because you policed people’s language, rubbished their parenting skills, took the piss out of their beliefs.

Because you cried when someone mocked the Koran but laughed when they mocked the Bible. Because you said criticising Islam is Islamophobia. Because you kept telling people, ‘You can’t think that, you can’t say that, you can’t do that.’

Because you turned politics from something done by and for people to something done to them, for their own good. Because you treated people like trash. And people don’t like being treated like trash. Trump happened because of you.

I especially like the parts I have bolded.

Gerald Hensley has an insightful article in The Listener on how the three decade stand off with the United States might never have occurred, if Lange had kept his word.

Basically Lange and the US had come to an agreement that while they would not officially confirm nor deny which ships were nuclear powered and armed, they were happy for NZ to invite a ship which obviously was neither. Both sides would be satisfied and our law would be respected, as would the US policy. A win-win.

The key to getting the right ship was the US Commander-in-Chief in Honolulu, Admiral William Crowe, and in mid-November, Lange sent Chief of Defence Staff Ewan Jamieson to talk to him. They were personal friends and Jamieson stayed at his house. The admiral offered him a choice of three conventionally powered ships; Jamieson chose an elderly destroyer, USS Buchanan, because it was not operationally equipped for nuclear weapons. The admiral was punctilious about giving no hint of its armament, but he was as aware as the New Zealanders of the significance of the visit and the need for the ship to be “clean”.

Lange seemed comfortable with this choice. In December, he told the US ambassador to submit a formal request for a visit by Buchanan for the Cabinet to consider early in the New Year and said he saw no difficulty. The Secretary of Foreign Affairs was optimistic enough to tell Bill Rowling, our new ambassador to Washington, that whatever else happened in his term, he would not have to worry about ship visits.

This proved to be a substantial under-estimate. Word of an impending visit, though not the name of the ship, leaked out of Washington after a visit there by Helen Clark, then chair of Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Select Committee, who reportedly telephoned her fellow activists to say, “Push the button.” Across the country, the machinery of protest was set in motion: the telephone trees, networks, haunting of newsrooms and demonstrations that distinguished the left when it was energised by a hot issue.

A brilliant public relations campaign caught the Government unprepared. There had been no Cabinet consideration of the Buchanan visit; no minister knew anything about it. It had all been held closely by Lange. When he had earlier been offered a draft Cabinet paper to brief his colleagues, he declined, saying he preferred to do it his way. His way turned out to be not to say anything at all, not even to his deputy.

I knew Lange was not very good at the day to day duties of the Prime Minister, as in leading the Government, but I didn’t realise quite how dysfunctional he was. He didn’t build any sort of internal coalition or agreement for the deal, and it got turned down by Palmer while Lange was away.

The US felt Lange lied to them, and that is why things turned toxic. We could have had our anti-nuclear policy and stayed in ANZUS, if Lange had been competent.

He was a funny sincere man, who was a great orator. But he was not a good Prime Minister.

Simon Wilson writes:

For several years now English has been driving a profound reform programme in the delivery of social services. It’s far from finished; in fact, even some of the ministers involved seem barely to understand it. But welfare reform is happening. And at its heart is a thoroughly 21st century idea: we’ve got the data, now to tell us where to spend the money.

Conservative governments worldwide are watching, fascinated, not least because social investment inverts the usual conservative approach to welfare. Which is to sit back, moan about bludgers and pick up the pieces when they have to. Social investment, as English told the conference, means “spending money now to save money later”. In National terms, it’s practically a revolution.

Good to see Simon has realised what a change this is. The goal is still the same – to have fewer people reliant on the state, but the method is to spend more now to help them become independent.

Social investment presents a serious challenge to the centre-left – to the Greens as well as Labour. This is the National-led government doing nothing less than redefining the paradigm of the welfare state, not by undermining it but by making it more fit for purpose. That’s the left’s job, or it used to be. It used to be a central purpose of the left in government.

And yet it’s the right that now offers a systematic, determined and evidence-based effort to break inter-generational cycles of poverty, crime and ill-health. Welfare that is both more effective and more affordable. Who would be opposed to that?

Labour?

And mark what it means: welfare is here to stay. Its purpose, now, is to produce citizens who will stay in work, out of jail, out of hospital and away from the need for expensive long-term care. Yes, the irony is staggering – the National government is engaged in a level of “social engineering” unprecedented in history. But forget about that. The goals are excellent.

High praise from the former Marxist 🙂

Social investment has the potential to be so constructively powerful that if National gets it right, it could stay in government for another generation.

The article goes on to detail some of the ways he thinks National isn’t getting it right, but he concludes:

There are many on the centre-left who say it can’t be done. Social investment is another neoliberal plot, all that tired old hogwash. If they’re right, we need to hear an alternative and more compelling narrative for welfare.

But are they right? Social investment, to repeat, is the means by which many more of our most-marginalised citizens will be able to hold down jobs, stay out of jail and out of hospital and away from the need for expensive long-term care. It offers a systematic, determined and evidence-based effort to break intergenerational cycles of poverty, crime and ill-health. A welfare state that is fit for purpose in the 21st century: both more effective than the 20th-century version and more affordable.

Its champion, when it works, will truly earn the right to be the natural party of government. Do either or both of Labour and the Greens want that role?

They both seem very unenthusiastic on it. I’m not sure they want to reduce the number of people dependent on the state.

The Herald reports:

New Zealand has reclaimed its ranking as the least corrupt country in the world in an international survey.

Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index for 2016 gave New Zealand a score of 90 points out of 100, placing it first-equal with Denmark out of 176 countries.

The index draws on up to 13 surveys “covering expert assessments and views of businesspeople” to compile its rankings.

Among the criteria used to determine rankings are press freedom, public access to official information, fundamental rights and the absence of corruption.

A very good survey to come top of. Doesn’t mean we are perfect or can be complacent, but it speaks well to New Zealand society.

The top 10 are:

1 = New Zealand
1 = Denmark
3 Finland
4 Sweden
5 Switzerland
6 Norway
7 Singapore
8 Netherlands
9 Canada
10 = Germany
10 = Luxembourg
10 = United Kingdom

The bottom five are:

176 Somalia
175 South Sudan
174 North Korea
173 Syria
172 Yemen

By continent some interesting variations:

Americas – Canada, US and Uruguay top and Venezuela, Haiti and Nicaragua bottom

Asia Pacific – NZ, Singapore, Australia, Hong Kong top and North Korea bottom

Europe – Nordic countries top and Greece lowest in Western Europe

Middle East – UAE and Israel top and Syria bottom

Africa – Botswana top and Somalia bottom

Stuff reports:

President Donald Trump tweeted early Wednesday that he is ordering a “major investigation” into voter fraud, revisiting unsubstantiated claims he’s made repeatedly about a rigged voting system.

The investigation, he said, will look at those registered to vote in more than one state, “those who are illegal and … even, those registered to vote who are dead (and many for a long time).”

Depending on results, Trump tweeted, “we will strengthen up voting procedures!”

Trump has been fixated on his loss of the popular vote in the election and a persistent frustration that the legitimacy of his presidency is being challenged by Democrats and the media, aides and associates say.

His exaggerations about inauguration crowds and false assertions about illegal balloting have been distractions as advisers’ have tried to launch his presidency with a flurry of actions on the economy.

He won the election but lost the popular vote. It was an amazing win against all expectations. So why is he so obsessed over trying to claim he won the popular vote also, when he clearly didn’t.  It’s a distraction that his narcissism fuels.

The Herald reports:

The news that billionaire investor and Trump supporter Peter Thiel has acquired New Zealand citizenship has triggered questions in Parliament.

The surprising news of Thiel’s Kiwi citizenship, first broken by the Herald yesterday, has drawn international attention with the New York Times, Mashable and Gizmodo noting the development.

Labour Party immigration spokesman Ian Lees-Galloway said the revelation – that Thiel’s 2015 purchase of a 193 hectare estate on Lake Wanaka didn’t require Overseas Investment Office approval because the buyer was a citizen – raised more questions than it answered.

Lees-Galloway said another wealthy North American import – film director James Cameron – had drawn considerable notice when living in New Zealand, raising questions over why Thiel didn’t attract attention.

“I can’t imagine someone of Thiel’s stature and wealth and not being noticed for five years, it just doesn’t seem very likely,” he said.

This morning Lees-Galloway said he lodged written questions in Parliament with Minister of Internal Affairs Peter Dunne seeking to know when Thiel was granted citizenship, under what grounds and whether the venture capitalist billionaire was a resident for tax purposes.

I am amazed that anyone from Labour has the temerity to speak out on citizenship issues after their near corrupt behaviour around Bill Liu getting citizenship.

Let’s compare the two cases

Thiel has actually been a citizen since 2011. He has been coming to New Zealand for over 20 years since the mid 1990s. Then Internal Affairs Minister Nathan Guy says he doesn’t even recall Thiel’s application but the files show that DIA were in favour of his being given citizenship.

Yes it is unlikely Thiel spent eight months a year here from 2006 to 2011. But he probably argued that the nature of his job as a founder and director of global Internet companies such as Paypal and Facebook made such a requirement near impossible to ever achieve.

I regard it as a great thing that globally successfully people want to live in New Zealand and be citizens of New Zealand.

Stuff reports:

British Prime Minister Theresa May must give parliament a vote before she can formally start Britain’s exit from the European Union, the UK Supreme Court ruled on Tuesday (Tuesday night NZ Time), giving lawmakers who oppose her Brexit plans a shot at amending them.

By a majority of eight to three, the UK’s highest judicial body decided May could not use executive powers known as “royal prerogative” to invoke Article 50 of the EU’s Lisbon Treaty and so begin two years of divorce talks.

There will be riots if Parliament doesn’t follow the will of the people. But I think they will. What will be interesting is how Labour votes. Corbyn tried to institute a strict three line whip for the vote, but has backed down after a backlash from Labour MPs. This means that no one knows how Labour MPs will vote on the most important issue in a generation.

However, the judges did remove one major potential obstacle for the British government, saying May did not need the approval of the UK’s devolved assemblies in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland before triggering Brexit.

That would have been near impossible, if required.

Labour have now been in Opposition for 3,000 days. In those 3,000 days have they learnt enough to look like a credible Government in Waiting as National did in 2008?