Monday 13 December 2010

WikiLeaks, the NZ edition

As you might have heard by now, WikiLeaks has found a few, a very few, cables related to New Zealand—and the main thing to notice is that there’s really nothing to notice. Which must really annoy Messrs Hagar and Locke, et al.

Dim Post has a brief summary and a PDF of the cables. [Scoop is your back-up if that link is down.]

Highlights, such as they are:

  • The NZ/US intelligence relationship “was fully restored on August 29, 2009 (which should not be acknowledged in public.”
  • Americans find it “somewhat of a paradox” that a classical liberal and free marketeer could vote for the bill that decriminalized prostitution—which says more about American classical liberals than any kind of paradox.
  • No-one mentioned who mentioned “gone by lunchtime.”

2 comments:

American Extremist said...

"...which says more about American classical liberals than any kind of paradox."

I must dispute this statement. This says nothing about American classical liberals, given the American classical liberals don't generally believe that prostitution should be a crime. (I've never met one who did.)

What it does say something about is my government's complete lack of understanding of what classical liberalism is. The only paradox is in the minds of those people who can only think in terms of liberal-left/conservative-right and assume that everyone sprouts from a little statist seedling and grows rooted in those dirty, little red and blue holes in the ground.

There's no paradox here, nor is this statement any indication of American classical liberal beliefs. It's the equivalent of some jackass commenting knowingly on how odd it is that libertarians would talk so badly about such a great 'free-market guy' like Bush. Said jackass has, with one simple statement, succeeded in displaying an astonishing level of misunderstanding on an astonishing number of things. Simple as that.

Marcus said...

"A classical liberal and free marketeer could vote for the bill."

Who is that? I didn't know you had one. In NZ parliament, really?

Are things in NZ better than I thought?