Teach a man to fish...

So I was listening to the radio and heard a young woman talking about eliminating poverty in the Pacific, which included in her mind all the countries that boarded the Pacific. So full marks for ambition as that is quite a bit of territory to cover and I couldn’t help admiring the energy and enthusiasm she was bringing to her project.


At this point I would like to say she is doing a lot more to help in this area than I am ever going to and all efforts to help ones fellow humans should be applauded and encouraged but........ (bet you saw that coming right)

........ she was, in general terms, talking about giving poor people stuff as the solution to the problem, she spoke of hoping she could persuade governments and others to forgive debt so that these poor nations weren’t paying “crippling” interest costs instead of using the money to better themselves. She seemed to be oblivious to the fact that the countries had presumably spent the borrowed money on something which presumably didn’t help much, not sure why giving them more money would change anything.

She talked about an “army” of volunteers giving their time and skill to complete projects within the country like building a pharmacy, or a school or a hospital. Which is a great plan to a point given that presumably there is not pharmacy etc at the location that you choose, however this is just another variation on the give the poor people stuff view of the world, not to mention potentially naive about the cost effectiveness of such an idea.

Is it effective for me to ship myself to Cambodia (for example) for a period of time in order to deliver my skills to the local people. Either I deliver my specialist skills which are likely in low demand in an under developed country (just about no matter what your skills are unless you happen to be a builder or a farmer or a doctor) or for me to be an amateur builder etc where my main claim to usefulness is that I am a willing pair of hands. Frankly if willing to help is in short supply in the group you are trying to help then give up straight away.

So one idea that did resonate was of course the building of a school(s) and presumably the associated staffing and materials that a school needs. We see time and time again that education raises all manner of outcomes and is the foundation for progress. I don’t understand why this idea is so often over looked it is after all the whole basis for the success of the human race, it is because we learned “stuff” that we progressed.

One of the really huge things we learned to do was farm, and most importantly produce enough food in an efficient manner to allow us to turn our attention to other tasks like making better weapons to wipe out the other tribe we didn’t like, but ignoring that for the moment. This is something NZ does really well (farming) so as a focus we should teach the “poor” folk to be better farmers. Now I am aware that not all poor people are rural peasants but there sure are a chunk to be making a start with. We can leave the city folk to others there are enough poor folk for us all to have plenty.

Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day, teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime, not to mention his kids etc. So lets stop giving poor people stuff, lets trying walking beside them to help them out. Having said that the radio guest is still doing a lot more than most of us.

Hey Tiki

So it seems like a bad week for individual rights and freedoms, in the news has been the arrest of Tiki Tanne is a singer apparently of some renown, I say apparently as before he got arrested I had no idea he existed. I doubt he would be bothered by that as I don’t think I am his target demographic.

He was arrested for “disorderly behaviour likely to cause violence to start or continue” which is my first point, isn’t this a somewhat doubtful charge? The phrase “likely to cause” is a bit problematic for me as you appear to be arresting someone for something that might happen in the future. If the charge was “possessing a car likely to be driven above the speed limit” how would we feel about it. Should we be arresting someone for something they are “likely” to do.

The behaviour in question was singing a song which I believe is called and presumably has as part of the lyrics “F... the police”. Exercising what could only be termed as dubious judgement Tiki did this while some members of the police force were in the bar. Although unknown to me as I wasn’t there the likely sequence of events after that point is probably fairly obvious.

So what happened to Article 14 of the Bill or Rights? Which says, “Freedom of expression: Everyone has the right to freedom of expression, including the freedom to seek, receive, and impart information and opinions of any kind in any form.” What happened to Tiki’s freedom of expression?

Now as with all things there are limits to your right to Freedom of expression and although I don’t like the phrase you can’t go around spewing forth “hate speech” which is where the above charge comes in, not withstanding my disquiet about its drafting.

However the song in total is not a pleasant one and not my taste however it is talking about the experience of black Americans dealing with police officers and implies racism within the American police force and the line in question is an openly rebellious retort to what the writer perceives as injustice. In context that doesn’t really sound like something to be to bothered about. It isn’t after all even talking about the NZ Police force.

But ignoring all of that a bigger question for me is how we have ended up with a society that finds this sort of material acceptable. No matter how you dress it up it is at the very least disrespectful or impolite to be singing such a song, but I suspect it represents at least to a part of our society a disenfranchisement from the main stream as represented by police officers and other society authority figures. Isn’t that the real problem, because if they don’t respect the police who have powers I will never have then what’s the chance that the rest of us will be respected by this group. And this disconnected group is growing and not simply represented by those that listen to Rap music. This is the social ill, societal fracture and it won’t be fixed by throwing Rap singers into Jail.

To prove that we are not the only ones looking at symptoms rather than causes, France has this week outlawed Muslim women covering their faces in public. Hands up any one who can thinking of something wrong with that idea. Anyone without a hand up, I don’t think you are paying attention.

Libya-rate us please.

So what’s the story with the “coalition of the willing” bombing Libya?


Yes I know what the UN resolution said, that it was to protect civilians from being killed by Gaddafi’s armed forces, but really is that what is going on here?

So I would be the first to admit that I don’t know much about Libya or about Colonel Gaddafi except what I have read over the years in the media. Their biggest claim to fame seems to be sponsoring the terrorists who conducted the Pan Am bombing over Lockerbie.

A brief review of the history of the country is typical of countries in the area, given that it borders on the Mediterranean it has been tied up with Greek and Roman conquest and all that sort of stuff but more latterly has been a colony of Italy, when African colonies where popular with European powers and then when they got bored with the place they put in place a king who was then the subject of a coup by our old friend Colonel Gaddafi in 1969.

Then with a volatile mix of Muslim fundamentalism and a socialist agenda of some sort he set about being the world’s pain in the butt. Usually such behaviours are short lived but with the handy backing of oil revenues, which I cynically observe the west never deprived him of, Colonel Gaddafi kept up this adolescent acting out for some 30 odd years.

But of recent years he has been behaving and the West has slowly welcomed him back into the old boys club with Britain famously finding an excuse to release the Lockerbie bomber because he was dying of cancer, later miraculously cured by the fantastic medical system in Libya (shouldn’t they send him back now he is better?) And including Libya serving on the UN security council in 2007 and the USA deleting Libya from its list of terrorist states.

However old times appear not to be forgotten, faced with a “popular” uprising (meaning one that is large enough to attract media attention from the journalists that missed out on the Tunisia and Egypt scoop) the “coalition of the willing” has joined in on the side of the “rebels”.

So this is where I come a bit unstuck, yes we know that the government in Libya is unelected, mind you they have never ever had an elected government so I am not sure how that is such a big deal. The country was being reformed through contact and trade etc and Colonel Gaddafi had renounced the use of violence and seemed to be sticking with that, hence the thawing of east west relations. Then because some of the citizens started shooting people (we seem to overlook the fact that although they are poorly organised and not much of a fighting force we are not talking about the rebels being a bunch of peaceful demonstrators) and the government decided to use force to sort them out, the west suddenly took sides and started bombing things and people.

If I were to hit the streets in NZ brandishing a weapon or otherwise making a pain of myself, I too would meet some force. Firstly in the form of the boys and girls in blue and if I and my mates were being too much trouble I may even meet the green crew. Because trying to overthrow the government by force in this country is considered to be treason, much the same as I suspect it is in Libya. Yes, yes I remember they are unelected and so there is no other method of getting rid of the Libyan government, but we aren’t very consistent here are we.

What about Fiji, don’t see any one bombing them. What about the IRA? not too many US jets supporting them (Libya did so that might be the problem). And others besides

And what do these “rebels” stand for? There is no cohesive leadership structure and no one is guaranteeing that they will hold elections either. Some Muslim states don’t have a great track record of supporting freedom of opinion and with or without the Colonel Libya is still a muslim state.

But I guess it is time he got his just deserts for all that trouble he caused for all those years, pity about the peasants that get killed while their leaders play international chess.