Posts by Craig Young
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And to lower the tone of this entire thread, CR, did you spot Michael Socha's comments about Russell Tovey's impressive attributes (...) in the Feb 2011 UK Gay Times...?
Craig Y ;)
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Sorry, but this has nothing to do with caffeine consumption:
Ugandan LGBT rights activist David Kato has just been murdered after winning a court battle against the Ugandan tabloid Rolling Stone, which had published the names of numerous LGBT Ugandans. For the last few years, Yoweri Museveni's corrupt regime has been trying to pass legislation that would institute the death penalty for repeated acts of lesbian and gay sex- National Resistance Movement David Bahati's "Anti-Homosexuality Bill".
Amnesty International, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and the European Union have all condemned this. It's time that all of us took action against Uganda's regime and forced them to abandon its homophobic extremism and drop this murderous legislation.
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Iran's regime is utterly vile and I fully intend to support its liberal contingent's battle for media freedom and against censorship.
Meanwhile, however, Ugandan LGBT rights activist David Kato has just been murdered after winning a court battle against the Ugandan tabloid Rolling Stone, which had published the names of numerous LGBT Ugandans. For the last few years, Yoweri Museveni's corrupt regime has been trying to pass legislation that would institute the death penalty for repeated acts of lesbian and gay sex- National Resistance Movement David Bahati's "Anti-Homosexuality Bill".
Amnesty International, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and the European Union have all condemned this. It's time that all of us took action against Uganda's regime and forced them to abandon its homophobic extremism and drop this murderous legislation.
Craig Young
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Here's a little look at Germany's version of MMP, courtesy of yours truly, published on Gaynz.Com in late December last year:
http://www.gaynz.com/articles/publish/31/article_9741.php
"What about Germany? In order to put this debate in focus, a short description of LGBT rights in Germany might be in order. It really didn't begin until the late sixties, when the New Left emerged, due to the Stalinism of East Germany's governing Socialist Unity Party and conservative Catholicism of the centre-right Christian Democratic Union. Fortunately, West Germany underwent the same social changes as most other West European democracies and a new Green environmentalist and peace-oriented party emerged within the Bundestag to provide greater democratic diversity in the eighties as a result. East Germany decriminalised in 1968, while West Germany followed suit in 1969, although there was repression of independent LGBT political organising until the fall of communism in 1990-91.
Thereafter, the Social Democrat/Green centre-left coalition that emerged in the federal Bundestag and some state legislatures implemented various social reforms. These have included LGBT-inclusive employment antidiscrimination laws, registered partnerships and legal recognition of coparent same-sex adoption responsibilities.What about the history of (West) German electoral representation since the end of the Second World War, however? How did this situation arise?
It might be objected that the German federal political landscape is the result of divergent political history from that of New Zealand, but such objections are spurious, as closer analysis will demonstrate.
Currently, Germany has a centre-right government, consisting of Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democrats and Guido Westerwalle's Free Democrats, akin to National and ACT. Westerwalle is an out gay man. Unfortunately for Westerwalle and the FDP, there are other similarities, such as plunging party poll ratings, which render the parallels uncanny.
On the centre-left, there are now three main players. The Social Democrats correspond to our Labour Party, while the German Greens are undergoing a tremendous surge in popularity, at twenty percent in current opinion polls. Like New Zealand in the nineties, there is also "The Left", which is roughly similar to the Alliance. Like the Alliance was, it is a coalition of two entities, the west German "Labour and Social Justice-Electoral Alternative" Party and the former east German Party for Democratic Socialism, which used to be the governing East German Socialist Unity Party (communists) during the days of Cold War partition.
However, the Left isn't a spoiler party. While it is undecided whether or not to align itself with the Social Democrats and German Greens, the latter could govern without it, given the Greens electoral surge. It isn't visibly splitting the centre-left vote, given that the Social Democrats have the largest share of that sector of public opinion.
What about German history, though, and its microparties. In the first three federal Bundestags, the Communist Party, far right German Party and (Catholic) Centre Party gained representation, which lapsed. The Cold War, German Party neofascism and Centre Party absorption into the Christian Democrat Union all ended independent representation, until the German Greens arose in the late seventies and early eighties.
(It should be noted that German federal MMP has stricter microparty entry criteria compared to that of New Zealand. Three constituency seats are required before a party is entitled to additional list representation if it doesn't cross the five percent threshold for list-only representation).
Outside the Bundestag, there are some unrepresented microparties. The "Pirate Party" campaigns for minimalist Internet content regulation, and has some LGBT supporters, while the neofascist National Democratic Party is what one would expect- racist, anti-Muslim and anti-immigration. Thankfully, the latter only have representatives in Saxony's state parliament. Apart from these, there are social conservative, green social conservative, other neofascist and animal rights parties, far below the threshold. Despite some local influence, apart from the Pirate Party and NDP, their national impact is minimal."Craig Y
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Just finished reading Nick Stuart's Rudd's Way (Scribe, 2010), which explains why the wheels fell off Kevin Rudd's ALP federal govt across the Taz. Basically, it was because of (i) the ALP's insane factionalism; (ii) its troglodyte rightist faction who couldn't put their own self-interest and extraction industry power base above the need to halt climate change (iii) Kev being an unaccountable martinet who centralised power while lacking strategic management skills, who then blamed his ministers for his string of policy disasters. Bloody Queensland, yes...
Craig Y.
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Hey, folks.
Dodgy webfilter time yet once again. In this case, it's Bluecoat, which runs MacDonald's website filtering in its new but censorious free wifi service inhouse. Anyhow, when they did the same for the Birmingham City Council, an almighty brouhaha arose due to its sectarian censorship filtering, as it blocked atheist and neopagan/alternative religious websites:http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/west_midlands/7530519.stm
Craig Y ;( -
Does anyone know whether one of the NZ networks has brought 'Christopher and His Friends,' the BBC feature that deals with Christopher Isherwood's Berlin phase and features Matt Smith (Doctor Eleven) as Chris I?
Craig Y
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Oh, and in case anyone's forgotten, there's the third electoral reform referendum next year. I've just posted an article on MMP and LGBT rights, including some discussion of how MMP operates in Germany, past and present:
http://www.gaynz.com/articles/publish/31/printer_9741.php
Craig Y
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And meanwhile, yours truly has just blogged on the Pirate Party phenomenon in Western Europe:
http://gaynz.com/blog/redqueen/archives/967
Enjoy...
Craig Y
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Does the Pirate Party phenomenon have any future in NZ, given that it is certainly relevant to the Wikileaks debacle in Sweden itself, where the anti-copyright movement in question was founded? It does seem to be increasingly popular in the Czech Republic, Germany, Switzerland and its country of origin, where it has actually elected MEPs.
Craig Y