I caught up with an old friend in London recently and he mentioned Once Were Warriors, the New Zealand film, as still being seared in his consciousness. His comment has been reinforced since I got back to NZ with the revelations of Tony Veitch and his violent assault on his previous partner.

Violence never seems far from the front pages over here. Whether it’s child abuse, domestic assault, late night bashings or just some good old biffo on the sports pitch, the modus operandi is the same: fists. Is Jake the Muss the deeply ingrained dark side of the NZ male? That’s not to present the UK as a country that doesn’t experience violence on a regular basis. It’s hard to remember a month in recent years where a teenager hasn’t been knifed to death.

The rise in violent crime in London was certainly one reason to move to NZ.

But there are differences. The two Deborah’s raise the issues of violence and anti-intellectualism as being embedded in NZ society. Deborah Coddington laments the violent culture that pervades this “Godless country” noting the desire to hand out “loving smacks” as an inviolate right. If one casts back a year and remembers the furore at the introduction of an “anti smacking” law here. The energy going into a repeal of this law is quite impressive. Regardless of the merits of the new law it is the desire to be allowed to hit that, for me at least, reflects a desire to sort matters out with brawn rather than brains.

This follows neatly onto Deborah Hill Cone’s piece on Jim Bolger and his new appointment as the “Fat Controller” for Kiwirail (will all the trains be black?). As she notes

“The only conclusion to draw is New Zealand’s anti-intellectualism is so acute we really feel most comfortable being governed by thick people or bullies”.

This point was reinforced by Robert Winston on his recent trip to NZ where he noted that cleverness was not valued. He also noted we are exporting our talented people in droves and under investing in research and education.

New Zealand is in some ways still primitive. We rely on our primary industries for the bulk of our economic performance. Perhaps that is still reflected in our base culture. Perhaps that is why the Auckland rugby league team was named “The Warriors”. Talk about embedding the brand!

The way the news is presented on TV One sometimes seems an extension of that silly programme “A Game of Two Halves” which makes “A Question of Sport” look like “University Challenge”. That the man in question is involved in both probably reflects the current malaise. On top of that the jocularity of the presenters leaves one to wonder whether it is the news or some mates gathering.

This story wont go away. At some point the violence, and its seeming acceptance, has to be addressed at a wider level.

I haven’t blogged for some time now. One reason is that I have been very busy and when you get busy sometimes the creative juices don’t run fast enough. Having said that what’s new to write about? It feels a little like groundhog day…….

I’m sitting comfortably at 39,000 ft on the new A380 heading for London. It’s a lovely machine. It’s amazing what we can build and the technology we can put together and yet………….

A dictator pounds along the well worn route to genocide, societal collapse and the ignominy of international tribunals and exile in some foreign land whilst the international community looks on in horror and wonders what to do.

The sad fact is that people like Mugabe will always appear. They are our shadow, our dark side. They come as saviours representing hope but become corrupted by power, insecurity and self loathing. Democracy is damned messy, it’s painful but one thing is for sure it gives space for us to address our shadow, to address our short comings, our weaknesses and our frailties. Nothing can be done for Zimbabwe now. The play has been written long ago and we are into the final act. Mugabe like Amin before him is unravelling in a paranoiac binge of violence. It’s painful to watch the people there suffer so much.

The Burmese catastrophe simply reinforces this never ending drama. It’s like Alice in Wonderland, curious and curiouser, as those generals walk around in their own fantasy creation. Is this really happening? Can you lock up the democratically elected leader forever? Are these generals real people or some kind of virtual reality?

I say carpet bomb the country with food parcels and emergency kit. Shower the place like a mid winter storm. Get Santa and his reindeers involved.

Invasion of national sovereignty they say wringing their hands with diplomatic concern.

Bollocks….we need an invasion of humanity. Now.

It’s tragic to see South Africa descend back into violence and disharmony. Necklacing, a one time favourite method of killing in the apartheid era, is back in vogue. As economic pressures mount in the townships rage has intensified towards the old maxim of “last in first to get it in the neck”.

The huge wage of immigration from other African states, such as Zimbabwe, has seen tensions rise at the same time that unemployment has risen to almost 4 million. Soldiers are out in the streets and even the prosperous Cape Town has been affected by unrest.

It’s poignant that Mbeki has been propping up Mugabe’s regime of fear which has accelerated the flow of Zimbabweans fleeing the violence and impoverishment in Zimbabwe.

It seems in their efforts to erase colonialism and restore their rightful sovereignty they have developed a high level of tolerance for violence and repression. This is the same story in Burma.

It’s a sad time for South Africa which has made such progress in recent years. One can only hope the Zimbabwe situation is resolved soon and the post-Mugabe rebuilding process can begin.

That should take the pressure off the situation is South Africa as the situation calms.

Another of nature’s incredible creations, the cyclone, has wreaked havoc on Burma with the loss of life expected to be upwards of 100,000. Living around the Bay of Bengal can be a dangerous business with Bangladesh a regular guest of tragedy and Thailand more recently with the Tsunami of 2004.

Numbers of this magnitude tend to overhwhelm causing a certain numbness to appear. 90,000 or 120,000, it’s a big number. But I don’t want to dwell on that aspect of the disaster but more on what this means for Burma.

A period of searching and mourning followed by rebuilding will take place, following a similar pattern to these events, but in what framework? The miltary junta, bunch of decrepid bovver boys, has no choice but to allow the world in as it has no hope of handling this on its own. Repression yes! reconstruction nah.

If ever a message was to be heeded this is it. The Saffron Revolution was just the beginning, creating a force of energy which some might say has manifested in this terrible way. It is surely no coincidence that just 2 days away is the proposed referendum on a new constitution. A referendum where you can vote but not against it.

It’s been interesting watching the warlord generals and how they look shellshocked and dazed as the cameras focus in on them. But more than anything they look very human. Sure they have plenty of vicious thugs to carry out their torture and murder but now they look weak as they are exposed to the world.

It’s time for the world to really put the hammer down on these dictators and try and bring about some kind of change. Just being able to live without fear of being carted off to prison or a labour camp would be a good start but this may be the point at which birth, although painful, can be given to a new Burma.

I’ve been watching developments in Zimbabwe with a mixture of hope and resignation: hoping that Mugabe would step aside and retire somewhere cosy and resigned that he would never be able to relinquish power.

It was nearly a year ago that I wrote this post on him. Coincidentally I saw the Last King of Scotland again recently and was struck by something very clear: all these dictators want one thing and that is love. Yes I’m serious they want to be loved, to be accepted and they will do anything to get it. However, they end up not getting it and lash out destroying anything in their path and so the descent in sociopathy begins.

Mugabe has tried so hard to make the Motherland love him, no not Zimbabwe but Great Britain. But that love never came and so he reacted with violence against his own people, with suitable groups identified as the enemy. We’ve seen it all before.

Like Amin, he’d love to go out on top….loved not loathed but his end was written many moons ago. Like all the others before him he will die miserably in some place of exile surrounded by a few loyal servants who have long resigned themselves to his fate.

Amin went to Saudi Arabia but it’s hard to know where Mugabe will end up. Maybe with his mate Mbeki in South Africa? I think not.

I like the quote from Reed Brody at Human Rights Watch, “If you kill one person, you go to jail; if you kill 20, you go to an institution for the insane; if you kill 20,00, you get political asylum.”

As they say in New Zealand, sweet as.

What will the U.N. do? What will South Africa do? The time has come to act before the killing really gets into gear.

Following a huge campaign the death sentence on Pervez Kambaksh was lifted and we finally heard from him about his experience at the hands of the Afghani justice system.

Stories about the Taliban’s treatment of women and those who try to help them are legendary in their barbarism.

Now we hear about the treatment of women in Saudi Arabia. It’s one thing to treat women with violence (we have plenty enough of that terrible behaviour in the non-Islamic world) but the dis-empowerment via lack of rights and education is really unacceptable at the most basic level. It means there really is no escape from a life of slavery.

This extremist form of Islam does a dis-service to mainstream Islam and shows how vast and wide that congregation is in terms of beliefs and practices.

You wont hear anyone in power being critical of Saudi Arabia because their strategic position is so important and of course they buy a lot of weapons and sell a lot of oil. The hypocrisy of human rights and trade is summarised nicely here.

This year it’s the 60th Anniversary of the UN Declaration on Human Rights. The UN better start pulling its finger out before it gets done under the trades description act.