The GOP currently has two very strong factions. One is made up religious conservatives, many would say ultra-religious, while the other might be best described as extreme economic libertarians. Together, they have transformed the political landscape in the States starting in the mid-1960′s.

Many before now have noted a certain hypocrisy in Christians that are also hard-core capitalists, but this issue has never gained much traction among Republicans, who are known for putting differences aside when it counts, closing ranks to present a unified front to the electorate.

But now it seems the issue is being aired within the GOP and publicly too, courtesy of Ayn Rand and in particular due to the recent feature-length film of her epic book, Atlas Shrugged. The film came out a few months ago and has become a must watch for Republicans. Right-wing media, including Rush Limbaugh and FOX presenters like Glen Beck are pushing it hard. Apparently the entire Republican leadership has nibbled popcorn while watching.

Ayn Rand is pretty well-known in the States, but many don’t know much of what she stands for beyond an extreme form of individual freedom. So maybe that’s why some religious Republicans, including a group called The American Values Network has chosen to publicise Rand’s very blunt views on religion. With statements like “I am against God” and “[religion] is a sign of a psychological weakness…I regard it as evil”, it’s not hard to see why these folks are finding the cult of Rand a bit hard to swallow. As Eric Sapp puts it:

She argued that people had to choose between following her teachings or those of Christianity and other religious traditions. Rand said religion was “evil,” called the message of John 3:16 “monstrous,” argued that the weak are beyond love and undeserving of it, that loving your neighbor was immoral and impossible and that she was out to undermine the idea that charity was a moral duty and virtue.

Enough said, you might argue. There is enough there to raise the hackles of both the religious and non-religious alike. The American Values Network thought so and released a short video putting this case and asking why Republican leaders think Rand is so cool.

Not being a religious frog, I don’t think morality must come from faith. But of course many Republicans do and though the GOP considers itself a broad tent, I can’t see how it can easily continue to carry this moral paradox.

Then again, stranger things have happened in politics.

Skip the first 5 minutes if you want to get straight into it.

Background to this video

According to Glenn Beck, universities are re-education camps and more dangerous than terrorist groups. Really.

It’s Sunday evening so I’m just going to brain-dump the links I’ve been reading this evening and come back to it tomorrow if I have time.

Amazing Photos Of The Deepwater Oil Explosion

Expert: Surface area of Gulf oil spill has tripled

Government fears Deepwater Horizon well could become unchecked gusher

Gulf oil spill swiftly balloons, could move east

A graphic explanation of the fight to shut off the oil leak

Bill is also a soft-spoken minister from Texas, with a reputation of always being respectful of both his guests and audience. Here, in his mild mannered way, he has pretty strong words for some crazy Americans, but also for Obama to get off his butt and win the charade that is the healthcare debate in the USA.

The interview he mentions with Bill Maher is much longer and can be found here.

“New Zealand is at serious risk of becoming an international Pariah over climate, and jeopardising its international standing and trade relations. The last thing we want is to become the equivalent of the French Government during nuclear testing in the Pacific.”

Yeap, it seems after years of carping about the importance of relations with the United States, Act’s climate denial stance and demands for a select committee to investigate whether the earth really does revolve around the sun will be moving us in exactly the opposite direction to closer friendship with the United States.

This warning follows a speech by American President-Elect, Barack Obama, to California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Global Climate Summit to which Obama pledges sweeping action to combat climate change but notes that the United States cannot meet the challenge alone:

Now’s the time to confront this challenge once and for all. Delay is no longer an option. Denial is no longer an acceptable response. The stakes are too high…

Anyone that is willing to join the cause of combating climate change will have an ally in the United States.

So, Rodney Hide, How about it?  Can you put aside the denialism, if not for science at least so we can stay cuddling up to that country with all the big shiny nuclear weapons?

The big story for little Aotearoa, is what this means for trade.  And Obama has been equivocal.  But occasionally he says things that can give us hope that for the first time in a generation at least US trade policy will be based on ethics rather than either protectionism or exploitation of other countries:

“It is absolutely critical that we engage in trade, but it has to be viewed not just through the lens of Wall Street, but also Main Street, which means we’ve got strong labor standards and strong environmental standards and safety standards, so we don’t have toys being shipped in the US with lead paint on them. There are also opportunities in our economy around creating a green economy. We send $1 billion to foreign countries every day because of our addiction to foreign oil. For us to move rapidly to cap greenhouse gases, generate billions of dollars that we can reinvest in solar and wind and biodiesel that can put people back to work.”

That sounds like the framework for the type of international trade that the Greens could work with, rather than the current model that promotes unsustainable growth, destruction of local diversity and self sufficiency and a race to the bottom on labour and environmental standards.

No Right Turn’s discussion on how US election system falls over when turnout gets above 50% is worth reading:

The idea that people would have to queue for more than five minutes to vote in any advanced western democracy is absurd. The idea that they would be queuing out the door, for hours to do so is positively third-world. It speaks of an election apparatus so hideously under resourced that is simply not fit for purpose.

It makes me wonder if the USA’s low voter turnout is not due entirely to apathy.  It’s easy to be apathetic when voting requires an hour or more of standing in a queue outside on an autumnal Tuesday when many people should be at work.

If you’re in a queue on Saturday enjoy it and say hello to the people either side of you.  It’s your time to spend with other people taking their chance to participate in our democracy

I have a lot of sympathy with the Republicans who voted against the bail out arguing it would be an interference in the mechanisms of the free market.  It certainly would.

The financial markets could actually operate much more freely without a bailout that promotes completely the wrong behaviours, but instead with a government investment in protecting the people, rather than companies, that are likely to be most hurt by the financial crisis. The US government could be moving to finally provide free universally accessible health care and social welfare for all its people so that it knew no-one would be thrown into absolute poverty. It could invest in new sustainable businesses for the 21st century like renewable energies, rebuilding its public transport networks and local sustainable farming, instead of failed 20th century banks and lenders. US$700 billion could go a long way.

In the current crisis in the financial markets, even free market enthusiasts have had to recognize the string of bailouts and interventions in the financial sector for what it is, “Wall Street socialism.” We’re already in for a really, really big dime, let us taxpayers make some windfall money for a change.

And then what should we do with one of the world’ worst polluters, once we own it:

Once the company is nationalized, what do we do with it? By referendum or after debate by elected representatives we could liquidate its assets, sell off its chemical division, and its real estate and top off our strategic petroleum reserve, which has a capacity of 727 million barrels. Exxon Mobil’s own worldwide reserves total 1.6 billion. At least, we’d be taking on usable oil, not bad debt.

I can’t see the present US administration taking this course of action, or even the next one, whichever party it may be.  So maybe that leaves the door open for New Zealand to buy ExxonMobil. Could we afford it? Does anyone want to donate some pocket money?

Image credit: Mister Bisson

Australia is one of the few industrialized countries that have a deficit in its trade with the U.S., and that deficit has worsened significantly since the pact was enacted. During 2005, the first year of the FTA, U.S. exports to Australia increased to US$15.8 billion, up from US$14.2 billion in 2004. Yet Australian exports to the U.S. dropped slightly to US$7.3 billion, from US$7.5 billion in 2004. Last year, the deficit worsened, as U.S. exports to Australia grew about US$2 billion to US$17.8 billion, but Australian exports to the U.S. increased only to US$8.2 billion from US$7.3 billion a year earlier.

Anyway for a summary of the issue we now face in these upcoming negotiations you can’t go past No Right Turn’s succinct analysis:

Labour is patting itself on the back over the announcement that it will begin free-trade negotiations with the USA. Meanwhile, the rest of us might like to ask how much it will cost and what we will have to give up in order for New Zealand farmers to make a bit more money. Fortunately, the US Trade Representative compiles an annual report on “Foreign Trade Barriers”, which is quite informative on the issue. Here’s a list of New Zealand policies the US considers to be unacceptable barriers to trade, culled from its New Zealand report [PDF]:

• Restrictions on GM crops;
• Our current pathetically weak labelling scheme for GM products (informing consumers is a barrier to trade!);
• Import restrictions on potentially diseased food (stopping people from getting BSE is a barrier to trade!);
• Sane copyright law which recognises the rights of customers;
• Voluntary local content quotas for TV and radio (customer preferences are a barrier to trade!);
• The Overseas Investment Act (requiring that investment actually be beneficial is a barrier to trade!);
• Pharmac.

The question we should all be asking is how much, if any, of this we are willing to surrender so that farmers can get richer. My answer is “none”.

Three transnational oil companies – Shell, BP and Exxon Mobil – were all expected to complete deals by the end of June 2008, but none has yet been finalised. Instead, it is China that has made the running, and concluded what the Wall Street Journal report calls “the most significant foreign-investment commitment in Iraq’s vast but creaking oil industry in years”…

All this, moreover, is being achieved without China having to contemplate sending military forces to the region or facing widespread popular hostility and armed resistance. It is a further example of how the international balance of political and economic power is shifting.

The rest of the article highlights the now well known failure of the US invasion of Iraq and the difficulty the next US President may face extracting his country from the mess that has been created.

Rogers concludes:

China’s oil-deals, in a region that the United States had come to consider as firmly under its strategic control, represent something that from Washington’s perspective was simply not meant to happen. But it is happening. After years of endemic insecurity and war against insurgents in Afghanistan and Iraq, the shape of a loose axis between China, Iran and Iraq can be discerned.

Realistically, as peak oil continues to show its effects, no country is going to be able to peacably ‘control’ oil supply in the way that the US must have envisioned when it set out on this ‘mission’.  Countries that find ways to limit their oil consumption are not only responding sensibly to climate change and peak oil, but vastly improving their international security and safety.

At one [poultry] plant, inspectors had found paint from the ceiling “on the table used for edible product,” while workers at another facility wiped down meat-handling areas with dirty cloths. Parts of a third factory, designated for sanitary operations, were contaminated with “grease, blood, fat, pieces of dry meat, and foreign particles.”

The amount of food involved is huge;

Chinese food exports to the United States have nearly quintupled in the past decade, from roughly $880 million to more than $4.2 billion, and the People’s Republic, after Canada, has become America’s second-largest seafood supplier. China’s pharmaceutical exports to the US have more than quadrupled in the past five years, and some 3,000 Chinese firms now sell medical devices in the States. Such is China’s reach that American consumers would be hard pressed to find certain items, including vitamin C tablets or heparin, manufactured anywhere else.

It’s pertinent to remember that we have just signed a preferential trade agreement with China that includes provisions that make it easier and faster for China to get its goods through our our customs and biosecurity.  Provisions such as Article 57 (Release of Goods) which guarantees that New Zealand will release Chinese imported good from customs within 48 hours of their arrival..

The US has similarly been green lighting the process for Chinese food imports to make their way unimpeded into US stomachs.  Constantly both here and in the states the issue is portrayed by regulators as one of trade rather than consumer safety and consumer choice.

So for instanc,e despite ongoing concerns about food safety:

In some cases, oversight has even been outsourced to China. In June 2007, responding to an epidemic of Chinese seafood containing carcinogenic chemicals and banned antibiotics, the FDA announced that certain products would be held until cleared by lab tests, but allowed Chinese labs—notoriously unreliable—to do the testing. Six weeks later, the Associated Press reported that at least a million pounds of the targeted seafood had hit American plates and stores untested, despite the agency’s directive.

It would be relevant at this point to ask what protections consumers do have here in New Zealand from imported food?  How much food is tested at the border and how thoroughly is it tested?  Remember, we as consumers currently have no guaranteed way of knowing if food comes from New Zealand or not because the government refuses to introduce country of origin labelling for food, so we can’t make the decsion for ourselves.

Of course, if you were to follow Citizen Kate’s directions at the end of her video for getting on the roll to vote you would accidentally end up registering to vote in the USA, so you are probably better going here to enrol. (If you do end up accidentally enrolled for the US elections, you might want to vote for the hip-hop politician Rosa Clemente, and her running mate Run Cynthia Run McKinney)

The biggest factor that doomed Clinton, from day one, was Iraq. Her vote for the war and subsequent lack of apology cost her the support of a huge segment of the party that flocked to Obama (and, early on, Edwards) and tarnished her brand from the very beginning…

Obama was able to convincingly argue, “When I’m your nominee, my opponent won’t be able to say that I supported this war in Iraq; or that I gave George Bush the benefit of the doubt on Iran.

The rest of the world’s view of the US election is often skewed by the importance we place on foreign policy compared to Americans’ obvious emphasis on domestic policy. So it is fascinating to read that a principled stand against war could have played a key role in Obama’s seemly unassailable lead in the democratic primary.

I like to think it is an endorsement for politicians taking a stand based on firmly held principles, rather than triangulating their way towards the middle ground. At the time Obama became famous for opposing the war it was still a risky political position, but it was the right one. Others who took the same stand were squashed under the criticism. It will be interesting to see if the same momentum for peace continues when the election become a true presidential election rather than just a democratic primary.

In a nutshell the story goes something like this. The US dollar is the world’s default currency. Most US dollars no longer reside in the US, but in other countries as part of the US’s international debt. But the US dollar is not tied to anything – it stopped linking to gold reserves 40 years ago. Now it floats along on the shared assumption that it is worth something. Part of that assumption draws from the fact that most of the world’s economy is based on oil and oil is traded in US dollars. But possibly not for much longer.

As the US dollar falls many oil mining nations (as Celsias says ‘people talk about oil ‘production’, but it’s not produced, any more than gold is produced. It is mined.’) are trying to transition towards trading in much healthier euros. The danger for the US economy if this happens is that the US dollar could collapse like a New Zealand cricket team middle order.

What is standing in the way of that happening is all those other countries that have an interest in the US economy not collapsing. The most obvious of these is China, who manufactures huge amounts of US imports and thus holds huge amounts of US dollars in the form of debt owed. If the economic balance shifts too far though it becomes a better economic decision for China swap its US dollars for Euros. If that happens the New Zealand tail order are up to bat.

Celsias argues that The US has two options; it can continue along its path with the increasingly tricky job of juggling its currency against the pressures of peak oil and massive overseas debt (a strategy which will require further military spending and pressure to keep other countries in line), or it can start to move immediately towards being a post oil economy before the crunch comes:

It is said that “direct US investments in the war, to date, could have paid for 100% of the renewable energy investments required for the coming 25 years to deal with global warming…” and “The $600 billion in direct appropriations for Iraq could have built over 9,000 wind farms of 50 mw capacity, with the total capacity to meet 25% of US electricity loads.”

The sun has risen at the North Pole after six months of darkness, and now the season for human extremophiles has begun — with a motley array of marathoners, ski trekkers, sky divers, climate scientists and tourists preparing frantically for various polar projects.

I guess that means it’s probably time to say good night to the South Pole too.

Now, look, I understand stereotypes are hard to defeat. People get an image planted in their head, and sometimes it causes them not to listen to the facts. But America is in the lead when it comes to energy independence; we’re in the lead when it comes to new technologies; we’re in the lead when it comes to global climate change — and we’ll stay that way.”

Normally I’d be lining up with other environmentalists to express some combination of outrage, hysterical laughter and bemusement at this comment. But then I thought how, closer to home, we have a leader saying things like this:

How to act effectively is a major focus for the Labour-led Government.

We believe that it is in New Zealand’s interest to be at the forefront of those developing a comprehensive response to climate change…

Taking the moral low-ground has never been the New Zealand way. We like to be leaders.

Shame about the slew of reports showing our carbon emissions getting 25% worse rather than better between 1990 and 2005. This week’s World Economic Forum’s Travel and Tourism Report ranks NZ 95th in the world for carbon emissions.

Keith has already pointed out the government’s willingness to trade anything, including our international integrity, in order to score a free trade deal with either China or the USA. This is the sort of thing that once traded away in an international agreement it is nigh on impossible to get back.

I say let our athletes speak their minds, within the reasonable limits set by the IOC. The NZOC and the government should hang their heads in shame. Cosgrove, you had the opportunity to make Mallard’s wrong a right and you blew it.

The UN is clearly worried that things sit in the balance:

“The situation is so desperately serious that any delay could push us past the tipping point, beyond which the ecological, financial and human costs would increase dramatically,” United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.

“We are at a crossroad,” he said. “One path leads to a comprehensive climate-change agreement, the other to oblivion. The choice is clear.”

But it appears three nations are failing to rise to the challenge.  The USA, Japan and Canada are blocking a global plan for a binding agreement on targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

Jeanette Fitzsimons is calling on New Zealanders to email the embassies of these countries and plead with them to join the global consensus:

“The opposition from these three countries is likely to scuttle any hope of including binding emission reduction targets into any road map for future talks on climate change.

Climate change is not something that will affect just a few countries. It will affect us all and we all have to pull together, put aside politics, and get on with doing everything we can to reduce its impact.”