This fighting in Iraq is not a finite event, though it is an iconic one. It is part of something much bigger.
In a strategic sense Iraq is a campaign, not a war. It is the second major campaign within George Bush’s “war on terror”. If Bush is serious about this war, there will be more campaigns.
Far from proving the United Nations’ irrelevance, the Iraq war is proving its relevance, Dr Ramesh Thakur, vice-rector of the United Nations University in Tokyo, said yesterday Wednesday.
“The more the United States protests that the United Nations is irrelevant, the more the world digs its heels in, saying the United Nations is relevant,” Dr Thakur, who has written a report on reform of the world body, said in a speech to the United Nations Association which will be music to the ears of Prime Minister Helen Clark.
Ramesh Thakur will be in Wellington next week for a conference on international affairs. He brings with him a subversive notion.
Thakur is a former Otago University political scientist who is now vice-rector of the United Nations University in Tokyo. He was a member of a Canadian-sponsored international commission on intervention and state sovereignty in 2001 which proposed a “responsibility to protect”.
The next time Rodney Hide inveighs against “perks” — if there is a next time — there will be a cacophony of “Pipitea Street, Pipitea Street” from opponents.
ACT says what it has been doing is legal, pooling its “electorate office” money for list MPs in a house near Parliament. But “legal” isn’t a defence in politics. Lawyerly niceties don’t wash in the court of public opinion.
It’s the money. We haven’t quite got the message yet, which is reassuringly quaint but is not up with the play.
I’m talking of “sport”. Sport used to be exercise, pitching skill and determination in non-lethal competition, helping make mind and body healthy.
“Play up, play up and play the game.” “Taking part is what matters.” “May the best man [sic] win.” You know the good old British sayings.
Within a week of each other in late January Bill English and Don Brash made speeches moving National sharply rightwards in Maori policy and economic and social policy. Is this the way to rebuild the right?
The logic was compelling: first, reconnect with the core vote; only then turn to contesting the centre.
“A benefit paid for this shirt.” That blunt fact of life from Whangarei Boys High head boy Dave Byrne prompted pause for thought at the “emerging leaders” forum at the Knowledge Wave conference.
The “emerging leaders” had been discussing cutting company tax and social welfare spending and had inclined towards both. Suddenly, the old notion of a “fair go” was on the table, a phrase given much air at the Knowledge Wave conference which followed the emerging leaders forum and incorporated them.
They talked for three days and went home. There were no remits or grand declarations. The government’s fears of dangerous recommendations went unmet. What was the point?
The Knowledge Wave’s second conference last week was a sort of national seminar.
It was a great place to network. Where else do you find in one room social entrepreneurs, bosses of big companies and small companies, government department grandees and workaday policy analysts, academics and scribblers, economists from left and right, lobbyists of all varieties? You could do business there, whatever your business was.
Colin James’s summing up at the Knowledge Wave Leadership Forum 21 February 2003
Kevin Roberts declared on Wednesday night that “nothing is impossible”. Another way I have heard that put in uplift speeches of Kevin Roberts’ sort is: “If you can dream it, you can do it”. Well, if that is true, right now you are looking at an All Black.
Into the shower of new books on globalisation stumps Mike Moore with his high-pressure garden hose and a tankful of nostrums, perceptions, anecdotes, life-experiences, quips, metaphors, sound-bites and serious proposals.
His new book, A World Without Walls: Freedom, Development, Free Trade and Global Governance*, wants to convert us to free trade, accept the globalised world and fix up the myriad imperfections in its governing institutions.