DIAF, Karzai

As seen at No Right Turn, The Hand Mirror, and Shakesville:

Afghanistan’s President, Hamid Karzai, has signed a law which “legalises” rape, women’s groups and the United Nations warn. Critics claim the president helped rush the bill through parliament in a bid to appease Islamic fundamentalists ahead of elections in August.

It gets even better worse:

Article 132 requires women to obey their husband’s sexual demands and stipulates that a man can expect to have sex with his wife at least “once every four nights” when travelling, unless they are ill.

Along with the usual grab-bag of “oh, and it’s harder for you to leave him after he DOES rape you, but if he wants to rape greener pastures it’ll be comparatively easy to dump you” in a country which I’m sure offers fantastic welfare packages to divorcees.

And of course it’s not even like Karzai supports this crap. He just wants to win a fucking election, and if women get raped and imprisoned in their own homes as a result, well, at least he stays in power, amirite?

And fuck you, The Independent. Fuck you and your “legalises” scare quotes to hell. Does this legislation make it legal for a man to fuck a woman without her consent? OH I THINK THAT’S RAPE. But Christ, I guess we can at least credit you with using the r-word at all, yeah?

On the other hand …

To borrow a more positive outlook from Julie, the fact that John Key’s first speech as Prime Minister-elect got cut off by TV3 can only bode well for the NZ comedy circuit over the next three years.

And Copeland and Field got thoroughly trounced.

No more Winston; that’s going to take some time to process. Won’t miss the man, will miss the theatre.

ETA: And of course (hurrah hangover-brainfarts) Officially Scum Stephen Franks is not my electorate MP! WOOT!

To quote various American celebrities …

VOTE!

Tomorrow is Election Day, New Zealand, and as worrying as the polls can be looking at the moment – no matter which team you’re batting for – what always comes to the fore in my mind is the concern that people just vote. There’s no shortage of polling booths and there’s no five-hour queues (holy shit, USA). I don’t care who it’s for, if it’s even serious (though I must admit to be interested to see what support Bill & Ben garner), I just want you to take a few minutes out of your day and participate in this fucking awesome democratic shindig we have going on.

Speaking of which, so far the hardest part of planning my own celebration of the day has been discovering that purple food colouring is really bloody hard to find. Red, blue, green, yellow, even black, no problem. Purple? It’s a clear indication God doesn’t want me to make United Future cupcakes.

Mmm, delicious linear time

This comment over at The Standard cites one of my favourite (or, really, least-favourite) bits of political bullshit often parroted in this country (and sorry, Standardites, it ain’t the one about y’all being a Machiavellian Secret Labour Party Front, that’s just lol-tastic).

It’s the, “Well you’ve had nine years to do suchandsuch, and you haven’t!” line, which gets brought up, almost invariably, any time the Labour Party have announced a radical new (and, let’s face it, vote-attracting) policy. Like universal student allowances, or tax cuts (and GOD did we hear it constantly when Cullen finally rolled them out).

And it’s always pissed me off, but I had a hard time explaining exactly why.  Last week? Lightning bolt!

This is not the declaration of war you’re looking for

When I was a wee thing, I thought Chris Trotter was pretty nifty. After all, he vowed to sing The Red Flag live on air if Labour won the election. But then over past years he’s failed to inspire.

Oh, and then, of course, he decided that people expecting Winston Peters to answer their questions (for once) was like a gang-rape.

And now he’s saying some pretty fucked up things about the Maori Party, as covered at No Right Turn:

If 70 percent of those availing themselves of the anomalous constitutional phemonenon of the Maori Seats do not unreservedly identify with the state responsible for preserving – and, indeed, augmenting – the institution of guaranteed Maori representation, then on what basis does that state sanction the Seats’ continued existence?

As NRT points out, the notion that Maori, by the simple act of identifying as Maori, are rejecting “New Zealander-ness” and therefore enemies of the state … well, it’s a bit fucking batshit, innit?

It gets better.

If it denies Labour a fourth term by negotiating a coalition agreement with National, that will amount to – and will be taken as – a declaration of war on the whole labour movement – brown as well as white.

Woooooooooooooooooow. Now, sure, on the one hand I can see a lot of Maori Party supporters being pretty hacked off if the Party entered a coalition agreement with National without gaining some bloody substantial policy concessions – and the same would go for the Greens, even. It could amount to political suicide on the Maori Party’s part.

But a declaration of war on the labour movement? Are you kidding?

Of course, given his ludicrously over-the-top response to criticism about the gang-rape comments (and cheers again to Craig Ranapia for doing the follow-up there):

How incredibly sad, that women who have the temerity to call themselves feminists are so blinded by their own self-righteousness that they actually feel more comfortable directing their outrage against the use of a simple literary metaphor, than in calling to account the person or persons responsible for tormenting and humiliating a fellow human-being.

… I think the truth’s out: Chris Trotter is that most feared of things – a real-life troll.

Well there goes my desire to vote for a major party ever again

Clark and Key refuse televised debate with other leaders

Via No Right Turn, who categorizes this as nothing less than a conspiracy against democracy.

We have been working under MMP for a very long time now.  Certainly, there’s been a fairly stalwart denial on the part of National, Labour, and the mainstream media to pretend that it isn’t so, and that The Major Parties are still the most important part of NZ politics, the ones that matter, the ones that get to make the real decisions about where our country goes.

And this is probably a big part of Major-Party-Supporter Conspiracy Alpha, “MMP gives minor parties (read: whackjobs and extremists) too much power“.  Because when you’re living in total denial about the fact that MMP will almost never deliver a clear majority for a single party, being hit with the fact that actually, you do have to work with minor parties, and that will entail doing some things they want you to do, is probably a bit of a shock.  And given that the minor parties are most likely going to want things that aren’t exactly core Major Party policy, but the media will continue to pretend they don’t exist, the perception builds up that Major Governing Party is doing totally out-of-left (or right)-field things, with Minor Party X as the demonic imp on their shoulder.

But here’s the problem:  neither National nor Labour are likely to get clear majorities, even if they do intend to spend the entire campaign pretend the Greens, the Maori Party, ACT, New Zealand First, and United Future don’t exist.  What they will do is look a bit fucking stupid when the day after the election they have to go cap-in-hand to a group of smaller parties who have the power to make or break the next Government and no particular reason to like either of their options.

It’s going to be a long election campaign …

First up, happy Suffrage Day, Kiwi-folk. Ain’t the best for me as I am well crook and now, thanks to this post at The Standard, thoroughly fed up with political “debate” in this country.

The post states that a young activist was protesting as an entourage of National Party 4WDs approached. One struck him, albeit at low speed. Steve Pierson reminds us of the case of Christine Clark, who died after being run down at a picket.

Now, I certainly wouldn’t expect everyone who regularly comments at The Standard to instantly believe every detail of the story, or instantly decry the actions of the driver, or totally side with an anti-National Party activist.

On the other hand, it really pisses me off how quickly the traditional primary-school retorts started flying.

1. But he was IN THEIR WAY OMG!!!
2. But Trevor Mallard hits people TOO!!!!
3. But the guy hit by the car IS A MEANIE!!!

And finally someone called “Go The Right” decides this is the perfect time to say “BUT HELEN CLARK IS A LESBIAN OH MY GOD.”

Seriously, did none of these people ever get the, “It doesn’t matter who started it” speech as a kid?

And people wonder why I’m so fucking cynical.

Positive, on-message and really, really confusing

I think I’ve struck on National’s super-secret strategy: make their “message” so baffling it defies parody.

I’ve been thinking about it for whole minutes now, and the brain refuses to get any further than, “So … tagging is a huge problem … but your art department doesn’t know what it looks like?”

And they say politics is a dirty business…

Whoever wrote this press release regarding Maurice Williamson’s comments about National’s roading “policy” was clearly in a ludicrously charitable mood.

Because where they say,

Embedded formatting left in an email sent out by National to ‘clarify’ its $50-road tolls policy has deepened the mystery.

I’d be more inclined to go with,

Someone in the National Party is too fucking thick to even notice the fonts are different fucking colours, HOLY SHIT these morons want to run the country, WHISKEY TANGO FOXTROT, PEOPLE?

Maybe I’m speaking from a position of privilege as a part-time typist, but forget the “policy” wank, that is just godsdamned embarrassing.

(h/t: The Standard)

Give ‘em the death penalty I say

The Trust is absolutely committed to reducing violent crime through community awareness, education and research

… and breaking the law.

IrishBill at The Standard:

My first response to this was to wonder what kind of onerous administration “things” are involved in filling in a form and sending it to the the electoral commission? But then I had another thought: registered third parties need to declare donations and expenses.

Concered of Linwood:

So a pressure group with the express interest in making this country safer and more law abiding is going to break the law to suit their own needs, because they see fit to do so.

Stay classy, wankers.