Freedom to be
We’ve just finished Freedom Week here in New Zealand, a campaign run by Amnesty International to raise money and awareness. Also MyAmnesty has been launched. Get online and participate.
Some 130 collectors braved the southerly on Friday to collect in Christchurch (yes i was one of them) so well done to all those and to those who donated and stopped for a chat.
Without basic freedom we have nothing. Freedom to be, to think, to speak, write, draw or blog!
Whatever your political persuasion it is hard to to look away from the constant abuses of personal security whether for reasons of censorship or war. It’s all the same.
We can’t have a functioning economy without personal security. We can’t have functioning communities without personal security and we most certainly cannot have a decent environment without personal security.
We wouldn’t be sitting here in the blogosphere expounding our thoughts and views on whatever we fancied.
We should be grateful for the life we have here in New Zealand. It’s pretty good.
Yep - you kiwis still seem to keep to the traditional ideas of rule of law, separation of powers, yada, yada, yada. Meanwhile here in Oz, we have a government riding roughshod over the judiciary (e.g. the Haneef case). As I’ve noted elsewhere, whenever the entire legal profession is at war with the executive, it’s never a good sign. But that’s Oz these days.
It’s interesting to see Oz become more US in its approach to government but after all it is a Federal system.
The government can do that here also, for example when they legislated the foreshore and seabed act to head off a challenge in the courts.
Governments don’t believe in democracy that much