Archive for the ‘Politics’ Category

Let the words of the Big Brother spread

Chinese Media yesterday reported that China is planning to invest 45 billion yuan to raise it's "International images" through foreign broadcasting, possibly to open a "CNN" style news channel.

I always believe that to domestic market, CC's CCTV (lots of CCs, if you can guess what the first two Cs stand for:)) strongly  reassembles a lot of characteristics of the telescreen. Xinwen Lianbo would be an obvious example, every night at 7, if you want to watch TV, that's pretty much the only thing available as it is simulcasted in every major Chinese TV channel.

So will this new channel become an International Edition of the telescreen? I don't know, aren't we already got CCTV 9?

I tried to watch CCTV 9 a while but it's just got too boring eventually, BBC WORLD offers a much wider perspective, more up to date news. What CCTV 9 really amused me is that, no matter what kind of news programme you are watching (like "Asia Today", "World Wide Watch", or "BizChina"); no matter what happened to the World,  the headline almost always stay the same, usually involving a high ranking government official or communist party boss meet foreign visitors, or their words on various issues.

Clearly, to be a respected and trusted world new channel, you must got both global perspective and an editorial independence. Global perspective ... can be possible but I don't expect it from CCTV, but editorial independence? I guess we got another hundred year to wait.

Facism ... and Communism

Excerpts from Obama's inauguration speech:

Recall that earlier generations faced down fascism and communism not just with missiles and tanks, but with sturdy alliances and enduring convictions.

Most of us should have no problem with this kind expression, but let me remind you that in Asia, there's a hyper-sensitive country with fragile feelings, which its regime still insists that communism is the only way forward

China's state television, CCTV actually broadcasted Obama's inauguration live on its news channel. If my memory serves me right, this is the first time they have done such thing, and I think CCTV should be praised for that.

However, its hyper-sensitivity eventually kicked in. The live pictures were cut moments after Obama mentioned "Communism". The relative paragraph in Obama's speech is also removed in the "full text" of the speech published on most Chinese websites.

Even as a Chinese, I have great difficulty of understanding where this hyper-sensitivity comes from. When he mentions communism, he clearly means Soviet Union. Well, we all know China is more of a capitalist country anyway. If Ministry of Truth has problem on how Obama weights communism and facism as kind of the same thing ... if you can read Chinese,have a look on how Minitrue finds an "appropriate place" for the CCP.

Despite the hyper-sensitivity thing, I think Chinese media generally did well this time. Yes they removed parts from the "full text" of the Obama's speech, but most of them were forced to do so. But look at the brighter side, Obama's remark made to the public airwave tells me that Live pictures on CCTV probably are in fact, live pictures and not delayed - now that's quite rare, especially for political events.

Yay, McCully's holiday is finally over

Few days ago I blogged in my Chinese Blog on Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade(MFAT)'s slow reaction to the Crisis in Gaza. New Zealand was like one of the very few Western countries which didn't have a offical response to the crisis there. It looked like that all MFAT people were enjoying their summer holiday and forgotten there was a war going on. Some even attributed MFAT's silence to the fact that John Key is a half Jewish, which I don't agree and many right wing bloggers fiercely attacked that suggestion.

But finally, Foreign Minister Murray McCully, issued a response today:

"New Zealand is deeply worried by the mounting humanitarian crisis in Gaza as a result of the continuing Israeli ground offrensive," Mr Murray McCully said.

"We call for Israel to immediately cease military attacks and for Hamas to immediately cease rocket and mortor attacks.

"New Zealand also supports the intensive efforts of world leaders, including President Sarkozy of France, to halt the fighting.

"It is imperative both sides -- Israel and Hamas -- focus on the mounting humanitarian situation for the civilian population of Gaza.  Both sides have obligations to avoid putting civilians in danger."

Given the fact on the nature of the governing party we have, I wasn't surprised on this kind of the response at all, and I have to say, it's fairly balanced as both sides are responsible for the large amount of civilian casualties.

Emissions Trading Scheme review now calling submissions

My position on climate change is that it is happening, and it is not as some said, "just a recovery from the little ice age" - human activities are at least partially responsible. There are uncertainties on how worse it would be, but there should be no doubt that it is happening.

So I feel very unease to talk about a "balance" between combating climate change and accommodate economic growth.  Environment, the global weather system is still something that we don't fully understand how it works and when it will strike, yet it is so closely connected with  the future well beings of  mankind. Nature should be something that every one of us respect, not something that you can do "trade and exchange" or mess up with. Our survival solely depend on environment, not economic development.

For this review, any significant change that denies the existence of the climate change will send a wrong message to the world(yes, I'm talking about Rodney Hide). This looks unlikely for now, but there are still chances for surprises in the final select committee report, for example, extracted from the terms of references:

• identify the central/benchmark projections which are being used as the motivation for international agreements to combat climate change; and consider the uncertainties and risks surrounding these projections
• consider the timing of introduction of any New Zealand measures, with particular reference to the outcome of the December 2009 Copenhagen meeting, the position of the United States, and the timetable for decisions and their implementation of the Australian government

Well, what you say? The submissions close on February 13 - it's shorter than usual, but hey, at least they didn't sneak it through the system before the Christmas.

Fallacies

I have to confess that I learnt nothing about logic during my school and university years because there's no education on this topic (well unless you do philosophy in University). You can sort of argue "critical thinking" encouraged in universities share some similarities with logical thinking, but I think they are still two different subject.

However, thanks to Wikipedia and university library, people like me can get a chance to browse through the subject.

I personally think logic is an extremely useful subject as it can be applied to nearly every aspect of real life. If you can keep yourself as a rational and clear thinker, which means to know at least the most common type of fallacies,  the world is suddenly a totally different place through your eyes - you realise that fallacies that are designed to trick you to buy products or vote for a party are just everywhere. Now you sort of understand the lack of education on logic among the general public, otherwise nobody can sell anything.

I was discussing about common logic fallacies with my friend. We were discussing fallacies in the last election, below is just a summary of our ideas in the conversations, they are quite interesting, but may not be necessarily right - and I just sort of copy and pasted from the chat, changed a bit, but this entry my not look like a blog, I apologise for that.

Appeal to fear is the most common type of fallacy politicians like to use. Fear, for us mankind, is a very natural instinct, any fear card played by politicians are usually quite useful, especially for the minor parties.

A classic example of this is Winston Peters - fear of immigration, particularly appealing to mid-aged and senior voters. Proven to be successful in last few elections - not so well to neutralise the bad publicity as the result of his corruption scandals in the last election.

Another not so well known fear card player is Rodney Hide - I'm not sure whether I judged him right or not, but he has a tendency of manipulate public's fear of crime.

But Helen Clark is the worst player of fear I've ever seen - her attack on the credibility of John Key has proven to be disastrous. She just got no skills on how to logically trick the general public - still remember the "two national party guy" ad? It basically means, "John Key is untrustworthy, so Helen Clark must be trustworthy" - a classic example of play on a combination of fear and false dilemma.

So how about National Party? They just didn't need to do anything as they were already on the road to victory. However, you can still trace some of their plays ...

• "a change for a brighter future" - does a change really necessarily mean a "brighter future"? This statement looked more real after Obama's victory, apart from people like to follow the majority in America for a "change" , why?
• "communism by stealth" - not a election slogan, but good a mention as it is a classic example of name calling -  how much you know about communism, apart from USSR? Is it necessarily bad?

Green party is quite clever compare to others. Instead of manipulate your fear, they appeal to your emotion. Still remember their ad? A cute kid looks like she's about to cry, because you didn't vote for Green.

"Good for our children" is a fairly common type fallacy used widely by politicians,even the Wikipedia got an article on it. If you are a The Simpsons fan, Remember Helen Lovejoy's gag? "Won't somebody please think of the children!"

About MMP...

Now I understand how the left in New Zealand survived over the last century.

National was the ‘natural party of government’, and Labour's time in power was usually short. But there's something unique for the left in New Zealand, a tradition of strong grassroots movement that keeps the spirit alive.

Here's the first one I'm aware of since the election night:

The Campaign to Save MMP

We respect National's desire to hold a public referendum on the issue. A second referendum on the issue is not something to fear, but an opportunity for New Zealanders to show they believe in fairness in their electoral system. The Campaign to Save MMP will be an independent, non-partisan effort to inform voters of the benefits of MMP and show them the downside of other electoral systems.

Well, good luck.

However, I'm also aware of the weakness of MMP demonstrated in the last election, the case of NZ First and ACT:

• ACT: 3.72% of the vote, 5 MPs
• NZ First: 4.21% of the vote ...  no MPs.

That's all because Rodney had won the Epsom seat.

I acknowledge the fact that 5% threshold is needed to keep extremists and idiots out of the parliament, and I think that kind of threshold should be in place because there are really idiots out there.

But ACT's (and United Future, Progressive ... ) case just exposed an if scenario -  lets assume that 1% of eligible voters are idiots(Sure I don't mean people who voted ACT are idiots), and 50%+ of them live in one electorate?

Well I mean, if the local idiots want one of their kind to represent them in the Parliament, I have no problem with that, that's what local representation is all about.

But does that mean other 50% of the idiots who live in other parts of country should also be represented, given the fact that they only make up 1% of total voters?

Well, your call.

It can happen. The case I can think of (just for fun) is if I'm an extremely rich cult leader and I call half of my idiot followers to move to the same electorate, it won't require a lot of money from me as those idiots will pay for themselves.

I think we should make the current 5% threshold a concrete one. Village idiots can still be represented as the electorate seats still count, but winning an electorate seat should not release any party from that rule.

To compensate minor parties the threshold can be reduced to 4 or 3 per cent. Or it can be like, for every one electorate seat a party had won, remove 0.5% or 1% of the threshold requirement.

I don't quite understand why some people found MMP 'confusing'.  What part of "Everyone has two votes, one for party and one for local representation" they don't understand so they want to dump it?

The system does need a bit of change, but I failed see the need to dump it, well unless there are real alternatives that are both simpler for some ... well ... to understand and yet still fair to everyone else. I don't know what that alternatives can be, but clearly FPP is not one of them.