asia knowledge

i've got an early morning start tomorrow, so just a few bits and pieces tonight. a new website to promote knowledge about asia to our schoolchildren can only be a good thing. one reason is because our future is more likely to be tied up with asia than it is with europe in the coming years, especially if the environmental cost of transporting goods long distances becomes more of an issue. asians are our closest large market.

another reason is that increased knowledge and understanding of others reduces discrimination. there's a strong hope that for this new generation of kiwi kids, racial discrimination will be a historical anachronism - not just towards asians, but all around.


good news for labour in south auckland. looks like support is still strong within the pacifika community. as this group probably don't feature large in political polling, they may well have a large impact, not taken into account by our current media. what i did hate after the 2005 election though was the nasty comments from some on the right about south auckland voters - as if their vote somehow wasn't as valuable as, say, the rural vote.


on the collapse of the doha round, i can see how that would be bad for nz. on the other hand, i'm glad to see that developing countries are holding out for a level playing field. i wonder if things will change with the new administration in place in US by the end of the year, but somehow i don't think so. the democrats, if they get in, are not into free-trade deals (in order to protect local jobs), and if the republicans were serious about this, it would have been signed off already.


and finally, i can't believe i'm agreeing with something family first have put out - that money and effort put towards banning gang patches should instead be put towards fighting drugs (although i know a lot of serious effort is already going in to this area). but i would have thought FF would have been right behind michael laws and chester borrows. but it seems not. of course, the call for more police does show that they aren't shifting too far towards the left just yet.