Monday, July 19, 2004
Sunday, July 18, 2004
Saturday, July 17, 2004
MI6 lied to the Hutton Inquiry
Things just aren't getting any better for Blair. He had hoped that the Butler Inquiry would finally allow him to "draw a line" under his handling of Iraq, but instead the revelations just keep on coming. Days before Lord Butler released his report, it was reported that MI6 had withdrawn the intelligence on which the war was based; now we find out that they deliberately omitted to tell the Hutton Inquiry about doing so, instead claiming that "intelligence from agents in Iraq was believed to be reliable".
Despite this, Downing Street is claiming that "Lord Hutton was not misled. He saw everything that was relevant to his picture". I think there's a popular advertising slogan which can be invoked here.
Sources close to the Hutton Inquiry are annoyed, as are various MPs from the two Parliamentary committees who have also investigated intelligence on Iraq. Blair will face a serious grilling next week in an effort to find out whether he knew and misled Parliament. As for MI6, it calls into question their commitment to democratic accountability. Their new chief, John Scarlett, was in on the deception; he should made an example of, to ram home to the intelligence services who is ultimately in charge.
"Prosecuting humanitarianism", part II
An Italian judge has released the captain and crew of the Cap Anamur from jail, but it is unclear whether the charges against them will be dropped. They had been charged with "aiding and abetting illegal immigration" after rescuing a group of African refugees from their sinking boat.
The organisation these people work for, Cap Anamur, does good work and has saved over 10,000 refugees from drowning at sea. You can email them messages of support here.
Unwelcome visitors
According to Sitemeter, the latest people to notice the NZ political leaders political compass graph are a bunch of neo-nazis. I've got that "I've just trodden in something icky" feeling again.
Poking around their forum reveals plans for a "National Anti Imagration March" [sic] in Wellington soon (no date though). Maybe people down there should start planning a counter-protest? Also, Kyle Champman's reaction to the desecration of Jewish graves in the Bolton St cemetery? "They prolly did it themselves so they could 'link' the events." Charming...
Friday, July 16, 2004
Effective tax-rates
The Grey Shade has written an effective tax-rate calculator, based around the definition used in countless National and ACT press releases of "total amount of your gross income that you lose as a result of direct income tax and loss or abatement of means-tested cash benefits". But where National and ACT are only concerned with marginal tax rates - how much is taken out of the next dollar - Grey Shade is concerned with the overall rate. In practice, this means comparing how much of your income you get to keep with how much you would get to keep if you were on the dole or DPB.
Unfortunately, it doesn't factor in the effects of student loans.
Is there life on Mars?
Mars Express has detected ammonia in the Martian atmosphere. This is significant because ammonia has a life-expectancy of only a few hours; for it to be present in the quantities detected, it must be being constantly replenished.
There are two projected means of replenishment: active volcanism, or life. So far none of the probes orbiting Mars have seen active volcanic hotspots (though detecting them would be a fantastic discovery). So does this mean there's life on Mars...?
The people's verdict
The British people have delivered their verdict on the Butler Report and Tony Blair's position on Iraq, with massive swings against Labour in two byelections.
Both electorates - Leicester South and Birmingham Hodge Hill - were considered safe Labour seats, but the former fell to the Liberal Democrats with a 21% swing, and the latter was held my a mere 460 votes, after a 27% swing. In both seats the Conservatives polled a distant third, in Birmingham Hodge Hill getting only half the votes of either the Labour or LibDem candidates.
The byelections represent a decisive rejection of both Labour and Tony Blair, in favour of the LibDems - the only major party untainted by Iraq. If these swings were repeated in a general election (and one is due next year), then Labour would be decimated. Both Blair and his MPs should be deeply worried.
Whingers and moaners
More evidence that our business leaders are simply whingers and moaners: New Zealand has maintained its third place ranking in the annual Economic Freedom of the World report. We share that equal ranking with such notably anti-business nations as Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States, and are ahead of both Australia and Canada.
Now, the report is little more than an index of what rich people need in order to enjoy their money, but it is the sort of thing our business leaders (as opposed to the rest of us) usually care about. Yet are they happy? No. This time round, they're complaining that our score is lower than it was in 1995 - a rather curious criticism given that a) fairly obviously, so is everybody else's; and b) they're usually whining about relative rankings rather than absolute ones - for example in their constant complaints that New Zealand is "less competititve" than Australia (in compiling the data for this report, the Business Round Table fairly clearly didn't think so), or the oft-quoted OECD "league tables".
But putting that aside, lets look at what the problem actually is. New Zealand scores particularly badly in one area: "regulation of labour markets". We score badly because
- we have a minimum wage;
- we have a welfare system;
- we don't allow employers to hire and fire at will, or impose grossly one-sided contracts;
- despite National's best efforts, we still have unions.
These are all "freedom for the pike" issues; regulation in these areas indeed detracts from the freedom of employers and business owners - but by doing so, it greatly enhances the actual freedom of everybody else. This is because we want a society where everybody is free, not just the rich, and where economic serfdom is outlawed.
I think that most of us would be quite happy with that. It's a testament to the moral bankruptcy of our business leaders that they are not.
Gutting the Electoral Integrity Act
Donna Awatere Huata has won her case to prevent ACT from using the Electoral Integrity Act to throw her out of Parliament - and been awarded costs to boot. The Court of Appeal ruled that Awatere Huata's conduct had not adversely affected proportionality, and that something more than simply being expelled from a party was necessary. In effect, they've removed much of the danger in the EIA - parties can't simply get rid of an MP because they're politically embarassing (which is what ACT was trying to do).
(Full judgement here)
ACT now gets to sleep in the bed it made for itself. Having expelled Awatere Huata, they can't really complain that they no longer receive funding for her - that's a problem of their own making, not hers. They'll just have to wait for the fraud charges currently proceeding through the courts to be heard, and hope for a guilty verdict. Though I suppose they could appeal to the Supreme Court - using institutions whose creation they voted against seems to be the ACT's hallmark of this case.
The Electoral Integrity Act was a bad law which gave far too much power to parties, and I'm glad to see it gutted in this fashion.
More ACT cuckoo-ing?
Having successfully cuckoo-ed Don Brash into the National party leadership, are ACT's business backers trying to do it again in Tamaki? National has rejected any deal to give ACT a vital electorate seat, but the article suggests that "a more pliable candidate is being sought who would step aside for Act's Tamaki hopeful, Ken Shirley, if necessary" - thereby ensuring a continued ACT presence in Parliament.
I guess we'll all just have to wait and see to find out.
Sentence and sanctions
Sentence in the Israeli passport case has been handed down. I especially like the $50,000 payment to the cerebal palsy association - it seems somehow fitting. So does the Herald's publication of Eli Cara's photo - hopefully he'll find it a little more difficult to work as a spy in the future (unfortunately we can't say the same about Uriel Kelman - he seems quite adept at hiding his face and at changing his appearance for the cameras).
Helen Clark's list of diplomatic sanctions to be imposed on Israel reads like we're treating them as a hostile power. Which, in a sense, they are - friends don't send their agents to fraudulently obtain passports. They've abused our friendship, and its entirely appropriate that they pay for it.
Thursday, July 15, 2004
Meet the new boss, same as the old boss
Via Daily Kos: at an ACLU conference earlier in the month, Seymour Hersh stood up and told people exactly what was in the material from Abu Ghraib that the US government refuses to release:
Seymour Hersh says the US government has videotapes of boys being sodomized at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq."The worst is the soundtrack of the boys shrieking," the reporter told an ACLU convention last week. Hersh says there was "a massive amount of criminal wrongdoing that was covered up at the highest command out there, and higher."
My disgust knows no bounds. After all the noise the US has made about Saddam's rape-rooms, and how that ended the day Iraq ws liberated - and then like the disappeareances and torture, they've simply replaced them with their own.
No charges, no prosecutions. The new boss really is the same as the old boss.
Whitewash
We all knew that Lord Butler - the ultimate "safe pair of hands" - wasn't going to rock the boat with his inquiry, and he didn't. The chief findings? Firstly, that the intelligence was "insufficiently robust" to justify the claim that Iraq was in breach of UN resolutions. In other words, that the war was unjustified. In an effort to paper over this, he adds a disclaimer that it would be "rash" to say now that no WMDs will ever be found, but this is just cover. The evidence wasn't good enough then, and with what we know now, it looks even weaker. The war was based on a lie.
But the most striking finding, and the reason why the report is a whitewash, is that that terrible mistake is nobody's fault. For example, Butler finds that while information passed by the intelligence services to the Joint Intelligence Committee was properly hedged and caveated, those careful qualifications mysteriously disappeared before it reached the Prime Minister - a "serious weakness" - but despite this, no-one is responsible. Not the PM or any of his staff (who pressured the JIC and told them what Blair wanted to see), not JIC chief John Scarlett (in fact, he's recommended for promotion), or any members of the JIC itself. Oh, there's some minor criticism of processes and procedures for handling intelligence within MI6, but when it comes to the biggie - how possibilities and potentialities were magically transformed into authoratative certainties for public consumption - no blame is assigned, nobody is accountable. It's the British establishment at its finest. No wonder the LibDems refused to have any part of it.
Fortunately, though, the ultimate judgement of whether Blair was right to go to war isn't in the hands of Lord Butler or the British establishment - its in the hands of the British people. Conservative leader Michael Howard, hypocritical though he is, asked the right question last night when he asked whether, if Blair stood up in the commons again and told everyone of an "imminent threat" that could only be countered by going to war, anyone would believe him. I think the answer is a decisive "no".
Wednesday, July 14, 2004
Down in flames
It looks like the Republican "hate amendment" barring any extension of marriage rights to gays is going to fall at the first hurdle. Not only will it fail to get the 60 votes required to pass a test vote, it may not even gain a simple majority.
I guess some of those Republican Senators wanted to be able to look at themselves in the mirror each morning.
Unemployment and welfare policy
A lot of pronouncements on welfare policy are targeted at unemployment - at getting people off the dole and into work. Right-wing solutions, such as those advocated by National and ACT, claim that they will achieve this by being punitive - by slashing benefits, imposing time-limits, and demanding participation in mandatory work and "job skills" schemes (which ironically may prevent people from attending interviews).
The problem with these policies is that they are based on a completely outdated view of our economy and the causes of unemployment.
Once upon a time, we ran a social democratic economy, aimed at providing full employment. When the market didn't provide jobs, the government did, either directly by hiring more people, or indirectly through policy settings designed to protect and foster local industry and encourage employment. For much of the period, unemployment was low to nonexistent, and while the anecdotes about welfare ministers knowing everyone on the dole on a first-name basis are false, it's unquestionable that unemployment was far lower than it is today.
You can see how punitive measures against the unemployed make sense in such a setting. Jobs were plentiful, and more could always be created by the government (by building another dam, cutting down some more trees, or getting more people to work on the railways). Unemployment was, for much of the period, a matter of choice.
However, we no longer live in that sort of economy. Since 1984 (and in particular since the passing of the Reserve Bank Act 1989), we've given up on the old social democratic goal of full employment in favour of pursuing low inflation. The Reserve Bank manipulates interest rates to ensure that inflation stays in the range of 0 - 3% in the medium term (it was 0 - 2%). It's like an accelerator - when they lower interest rates, they're pumping more money into the economy and allowing it to grow faster; when they raise them, they're reducing the money supply, and starving it of fuel. The relevance of this is that
- raising interest rates tends to increase unemployment; and
- the Reserve Bank views low wages (or rather, low wage growth) as an essential part of low inflation. The wage increases that would naturally occur when the labour market is tight and businesses must compete for staff are "wage inflation" that must be stamped out.
Under such a system, it is simply unjust to be punitive towards the unemployed. In a very real sense it is not their fault - the individuals concerned have just got the short end of the statistical stick, and if it wasn't them, it would be someone else. Punitive measures to "encourage" them not to be unemployed is like picking someone at random and beating them for being picked. The injustice - not to mention sheer pointlessness - of that ought to be apparent to all.
If we are going to run a system where 5% of the workforce must be unemployed because it makes the economy as a whole "more efficient" (i.e. low-wage), then we have an obligation to provide for them. It's as simple as that. Otherwise we are building the happiness of the many on the suffering of a few. Utilitarians may like that tradeoff, but I think it is grossly immoral.
What about those who don't want to work? Well, what about them? I have no doubt that there are some who would rather spend their lives on the dole, but they are a small fraction of the total unemployed (certainly less than the 10,000 who have been unemployed for over a year), and the best solution is simply to let them. No-one is made happier by forcing someone who doesn't want to work into employment at the expense of someone who does. There's simply not enough jobs to go around (and never will be, as long as our monetary policies continue), so they might as well go to the people who actually want them.
Poverty and beneficiary bashing
Make tea, not war thinks a poor list is a good idea:
Some people beneficiary bash because they are callous, selfish and cold hearted. Some people beneficiary bash because they are cynically seeking to scapegoat a vulnerable sector of the population for their own political point scoring (these people make me wish I believed in hell) But there are other people who beneficiary bash because they are thoughtless and lack imagination. I think these people are saveable. Put a human face on poverty and their latent sense of compassion and fairness will come to the fore.
So, which category does David Farrar fall into?
Tuesday, July 13, 2004
Prosecuting humanitarianism
It seems that Australian attitudes to refugees aren't confined to our nearest neighbour. A boatload of African refugees rescued from their sinking vessel at sea has finally been allowed to land in Sicily, after a two week standoff reminiscent of the Tampa episode. But the Italian authorities have gone one better than the Australians - they've arrested the captain of the rescuing vessel, and are charging him with "aiding and abetting illegal immigration".
The message from the Italian government is clear: refugees must be left to drown. Basic human decency, not to mention obeying the Law of the Sea, is now a crime in Italy.
If you'd like to let the Italian government know how you feel about this, you can email their ambassador here.
Need, not wealth
The government's meningitis vaccine is suddenly wildly popular, with people offering hundreds of dollars for the injection.
Fortunately, we're not that sort of country. We're distributing it on the basis of need, not wealth. Unless they live in a target area, the rich will just have to wait their turn along with everybody else...
Equal time for the poor
John Darkin suggests in the Herald today that somebody match the NBR's annual publication of the Rich List with a Poor List:
Richly designed, an annual Poor List would be more than a who's who of the needy. Backed with pertinent statistics, such a list would be a sobering device for measuring the gaps between the rich and poor, and a dramatic expose in the fight against poverty.Published as a glossy, the Poor List would profile the 200 poorest people in the land. Potted biographies of the chosen subjects, including how little money they possess, their atrociously overcrowded housing conditions, poor health prospects and the social stigma they suffer as pariah members of a first world nation, would be intimately detailed, along with their reflections on their fiscal misfortunes and prospects for the coming year.
Photographs of despairing and grim-faced families outside their houses will remind us not to aspire to be like them.
While the actual 200 poorest people may be more difficult to track down - there's a reason why we say that poverty is "invisible" - it would be perfectly possible to publish the statistics and some representative interviews, and it would provide an excellent counterpoint to the Rich List. It might also show us the real, human cost of "growth promotion" policies which favour the wealthy, and help build support for policies aimed at lifting the quality of life of those at the bottom, rather than further lining the pockets of those at the top.
So, any volunteers out there among our political parties or social agencies?
Blair cried wolf
Just days before the Butler report into the handling of intelligence into Iraqi WMD is due to be released, two former intelligence officials have gone on record alleging that Tony Blair went far beyond what the intelligence reports suggested:
Dr Brian Jones, formerly of the Defence Intelligence Staff (DIS), told the BBC's Panorama programme that no-one on his staff had seen evidence of the scale of weapons capability being touted by Downing Street.John Morrison, former deputy chief of DIS, meanwhile said Mr Blair's claims on Iraqi WMD were met by disbelief in Whitehall.
"The prime minister was going way beyond anything any professional analyst would have agreed," he said.
How far? When we look at what the "dodgy dossier" should have said, it's clear that there was simply no case for war; if anything, the sheer lack of knowledge supported a continued policy of containment and a prolonged process of inspections to discover the final fate of Saddam's pre-1991 chemical arsenal. But the intelligence services' careful caveats on how little they actually knew were systematically removed by the Joint Intelligence Committee after pressure from Downing Street, in order to back Blair's claims that Saddam posed a clear and credible threat. It was simply more grist for the spin machine, to be rewritten and slanted to support the government's pre-determined course of action.
By doing this, Blair has undermined the essential trust between the intelligence services and the government. But worse, he has utterly destroyed the trust between the government and the people. The next time a British Prime Minister stands up in Parliament and says "intelligence reports show an imminent threat", they will find it a much harder sell. To the extent that this makes it more difficult for Britain to use military force for political advantage, this is a Very Good Thing - but there's a nagging feeling that one day it may actually be real, rather than a put-up - and Tony Blair's crying wolf could have some rather nasty consequences.
Flags
Lyndon Hood talks about flags, and how he doesn't like ferns. Which is fair enough; they do look a little silly. Personally, I think the best idea for a new flag is black, with our stylised version of the Southern Cross on it in white. Simple, stark, and effective.
Monday, July 12, 2004
Special Farenheit 911 screening in Wellington
Details here. You'll need to get in quick if you want tickets.
Irony
My post on the "Positive Energy" site made it onto Scoop, with an ad for the site right next to it...
iRaq
Apparently these eyecatching posters are popping up in all sorts of interesting places. It's certainly a good adbust on Apple's "iPod" advertising.
The designer's website is here.
"Positive Energy" is corporate spin
You may have noticed the ads for the "Positive Energy" site on TV or the web. The site purports to be a balanced presentation of information about New Zealand's future energy needs and how we might solve them. But on closer inspection, it's nothing of the sort.
The first warning that something is up is the "see-saw" metaphor used on the TV ads - that it's a matter of trading off price and environmental impact to achieve a balance. While this is true to some extent - you can cut costs by using "dirty" generation, and taking steps to preserve the environment will usually cost more money - it's not an absolute relationship, and doesn't really hold in New Zealand. To see why, just look at the Ministry of Economic Development's current estimates for generation costs:
| Generation option | Unit Price (c/kWh) |
| Gas | 5.7 - 7.7 (+0.8 for Carbon Charge) |
| SI Coal | 6.1 - 7.1 (+1.5 for Carbon Charge) |
| Geothermal | 6.2 - 8.5 |
| Wind | 6.2 - 8.5 |
| Hydro | 7.0 - 8.5 |
| NI Coal | 8.3 - 9.4 (+1.5 for Carbon Charge) |
| LNG | 8.5 - 10.6 (+1.0 for Carbon Charge) |
Our cheapest generation option, gas, is one of the cleanest - all we really have to worry about there is carbon dioxide. Our most expensive, LNG, is exactly the same - it's just the same gas, burned in the same power stations, but with a premium added for transportation costs. The filthiest, coal, is actually only marginally cheaper than the most environmentally friendly options, wind and geothermal, and the second most expensive if sourced from the North Island. The see-saw doesn't seem to hold on current energy prices; when the government's planned carbon charges are added in, it looks even less useful. So why is Positive Energy using it? To define the terms of the debate, and make us think that there is a tradeoff when there is not.
The second warning is that Positive Energy positively hates wind power, characterising it as "expensive" and "highly variable", and claiming that it does not boost security of supply. This is more than a little misleading. As can be seen from the above, the price of wind compares favourably with that of coal, especially when you consider carbon charges and the fact that we've only just begun to exploit the resource (meaning that prices are going to be at the low end of the range). With regards to variability, it's true, the wind doesn't blow all the time. However, both long- and short-term fluctuations can be forecast sufficiently far in advance to allow other generation to be scheduled or pick up the spot load, and variability can be balanced somewhat by spreading generation capacity across multiple sites. As for security of supply, there is a definite synergy between wind and hydro, in that hydro lakes effectively act as a storage mechanism; when the wind is blowing, you generate less with hydro, and leave that much more water in the lakes for a windless (or dry) day.
This is not to say that wind is the answer to our electricity problems; we're always going to need a mix of different generation types, including some thermal generation. But it's a much more desirable component of that mix than the Positive Energy site would suggest.
But the real kicker is with their interactive "create your own solution" game. Playing around with this gives some remarkably strange results: wind is the most expensive option available, while imported LNG seems to be priced cheaper than domestic gas, hydro, and even coal. Energy efficiency - a solution which has the potential to substantially eliminate our demand growth for some years - doesn't really get a look in. From tinkering, it is clear that the game is heavily tilted towards a gas/LNG solution, primarily by massively understating the cost of LNG and overstating the cost of other options.
Why would it be stacked in this way? Well, the "Positive Energy" site was set up by Contact Energy - a generation company with a large sunk cost in gas power plants and a significant chunk of the natural gas retail sector. Their future profitability depends on our continuing to burn gas; if we meet our future energy needs primarily from a green mix of wind, hydro and efficiency gains, Contact's assets will be "stranded", and they'll lose a lot of market share. Instead, they'd like to tie us into their preferred technology, even if it means importing fuel at huge cost to meet our basic energy needs.
Unfortunately, the facts don't really support their case, and so they have to fudge a bit. Rather than being a useful source of information for New Zealanders contemplating energy policy, Positive Energy is nothing but corporate spin.
(Contact's response is that it depends what end of the price range you use, and that the Ministry of Economic Development has been "unduly optimistic" about renewables and "unduly pessimistic" about thermal generation. Which is fair enough - everything is contestable - but if they want to argue that, then they should show us their figures, so we can judge for ourselves...)
Howard gives National tips on how to win election
I guess we'll know who to thank if Brash starts telling stories about criminal Maori beneficiary families throwing their children off boats...
Haven't we seen this somewhere before?
National continues its beneficiary-bashing policies, this time announcing that it will cut the benefits of parents whose children skip school. As with all of their "tough on welfare" policies, it's difficult to see how this would actually fix things. One of the expected consequences of these sorts of punitive measures will be eviction... which is coincidentally one of the chief causes of children falling through the cracks in the education system. And its difficult to see how starvation is going to motivate kids to go to school rather than, say, take more direct action through crime.
But if it seems familiar, it's because we've seen it all before. The above is simply Jenny Shipley's "Code of Family and Social Responsibility" tarted up in a new dress. Likewise the rest of National's "new" welfare policies: "parenting classes", work for the dole, benefit cuts (sorry, "a review of benefit levels")... the same policies the electorate overwhelmingly rejected five years ago. But rather than recognising that New Zealanders really don't want to live in that sort of society, National seems to think that the problem was that it wasn't harsh enough the first time round. How many electoral defeats will it take for them to get the message?
Sunday, July 11, 2004
Threats to national security
Bad, wannabe authors are now eligible for inclusion on the Department of Homeland Security's "watch list".
Submit!
Now that everybody's got their submissions on the Foreshore and Seabed Bill out of the way, it's time for the next one. The Justice and Electoral Committee is soliciting submissions on both the Civil Union Bill and the Relationships (Statutory References) Bill. 25 copies by Friday, 6th August to:
Helena Strange
Justice and Electoral Committee Secretariat
Select Committee Office
Parliament Buildings
Wellington
(No postage required)
A submission dosn't have to be complicated. It can be as simple as a letter saying "I support / oppose this bill" and why. There's an online guide to the process here.
Remember, it's participate or perish. If you don't advocate for your interests and in consequence get walked all over by people who do, then you have no-one to blame but yourself.
Tear down the wall
The International Court of Justice has ruled that Israel's "security barrier" (a giant concrete wall akin to that which used to divide Berlin) is illegal and contravenes international law.
It's not binding, and the Israelis will simply ignore it, but its an important moral victory for the Palestinians. And perhaps it will encourage some governments to adopt a more critical attitude towards Israel. There is no question that Israel has a right to exist and a right to defend itself, but the wall is a significant annexation of territory and seems designed to drive almost 300,000 Palestinians from their land.
If the Israelis were building only on their own side of the Green Line, then there would be no question of legality - but they're building on stolen land. And as long as that is true, we must send a clear message to the Israeli government: tear down the wall
Saturday, July 10, 2004
Name that invertebrate
Agenda's "50 words or less" question this week:
"What sort of mollusc is Don Brash?"
Update (11/07/04): Having thought about this, I have the answer: he's a clam. It's the way that, when pressed for actual policy details, or about the factual basis of his claims, he clamps his jaws tightly shut and emits an "nnnnnnnn" noise.
Friday, July 09, 2004
Electricity price regulation
The government is intervening in the electricity market to require all electricity retailers to offer an alternative pricing plan with a low fixed daily charge. This is a good thing.
The way the right is reacting, you'd think this was an introduction of Muldoon-style price controls. Hardly. The electricity companies are free to set the usage charge component of the plan, and given the way these things work, it will be higher. And of course they're free to offer other pricing plans (as they already do). This isn't price control, it's mandating consumer choice. Isn't that supposed to be what the market is all about?
The politics of fear
Bush is down in the polls, so the Department of Homeland Security is cranking up the fear again and warning of further "large-scale" attacks...
Beyond mere theft
It seems that David Farrar can't tell the difference between enriched uranium and medical isotopes any more than the Americans can...
The removal of medical isotopes from Iraq is a particularly vile act of looting, no different from the infamous removal of incubators (sans babies) from Kuwaiti hospitals by the Iraqi army in 1990. Except that unlike the incubator incident, this has actually happened. People are going to die because of it, and the US has as good as murdered them.
Stealing medical supplies is bad enough, but it goes beyond mere theft. The US has abrogated to itself the right to rob an entire country of a vital form of modern medical treatment in order to protect its own security. The certain deaths of Iraqis from cancer matter less than the possible deaths of Americans from a "dirty bomb". The racism implicit in this equation ought to be clear to all.
What next? Taking food from the mouths of the starving on the basis that one of them might grow up to kill an American? It's the same logic at work...
Thursday, July 08, 2004
The correlations of crime
While reading around the subject of crime statistics over the past few days, I stumbled across an interesting report from the Ministry of Justice: Interpreting Trends in Recorded Crime in New Zealand. It performs a multiple regression analysis on 33 years of data to extract social, economic and demographic factors that are statistically correlated with the overall crime rate. To avoid the problem of any old upward trend correlating with the upward trend in crime, it looks at the fluctuations - whether changes in those variables (lagged by a few years, even) correlate with changes in the overall crime rate.
(The aim of the study was to use those factors to forecast future crime rates, so you can see how this appeals to my inner geek...)
Unfortunately, lack of data on some of their possible variables (such as household income levels) and worries about reporting rates make the study less useful than it could have been, but it still managed to extract some rather interesting conclusions.
- Increases in dishonesty offences (fraud, burglary, and theft) were strongly correlated with decreases in business confidence.
- Violence and property crime are correlated with GDP growth, increasing two - three years after a trough.
- The raw unemployment rate does not appear to be a significant factor (this seems to vary from country to country; arguably its underlying variables such as social exclusion and the desperation of people on the bottom of the heap which are the real problem, but some of them are hard to measure)
- Increased female employment was the most powerful factor correlated with dishonesty offences, particularly with burglaries (there's a very obvious explanation for the latter).
- "Family factors" (as measured by the divorce rate, numbers on the DPB or births out of wedlock) did not seem to be significant.
- "The political party in power was not significant in any model" (apparently it matters in Australia)
- Clearance and conviction rates matter for theft, but not for much else.
- And finally, for Don Brash's benefit: "no significant deterrent effect was associated with the severity of punishment ... No relationship was found between changes in the number of people in prison and the recorded crime rates."
There's plenty more there, and it's quite interesting reading.
As for their forecasts, they suffer from the expected problems with trying to predict multiple input variables five years in advance. As a result, the forecasts rapidly begin to diverge from reality. It would be interesting to see how the models performed on more recent historical data, and they may be useful for short-term (one - two year) predictions.
Wednesday, July 07, 2004
The price of American security
The US removed almost 2 tons of radioactive material from Iraq last month:
The 1,000 "sources" evacuated in the Iraqi operation included a "huge range" of radioactive items used for medical purposes and industrial purposes, a spokesman for the Energy Department's National Nuclear Security Administration told AP news agency.
What this means in English is that they stripped the hospitals of radioactive isotopes used in cancer treatment. The price of American security is that Iraqis will be left to die of cancer.
Now, the Iraqi public health system isn't anything to write home about at the moment - they have trouble with things like water and electricity, let alone radiotherapy - but once upon a time it was fairly decent, and it could be again if Iraq manages to get back on its feet. Except that now they won't be able to treat cancer effectively - something they have rather a lot of now, thanks to the Americans and their depleted uranium.
But hey, American lives are more important, right?
Oh, it's that easy?
I've been distracted from writing my submission on the Foreshore & Seabed Bill, and feeling somewhat intimidated by the whole process. Do I really have to do a clause-by-clause analysis in hyper-anal lawyerspeak? According to the Greens, it's not that difficult:
"Many people think a submission has to be a weighty document written in legalese," said Metiria. "It doesn't. A simple letter is fine. If you feel strongly, just write in today to make sure your views aren't ignored."
I feel less intimidated already.
(Infor on how to make a submission and where to send it is here)
Speaking of Bowling for Columbine
TV One is screening it on sunday night. I can hear NZPundit screaming already...
Perceptions
How can we reconcile the fact that crime rates have been falling for the past seven years with the current perception (targetted by Brash) that it is increasing? The answer is right there in Brash's speech:
Every day, the media carry stories of horrendous crimes...
Our perception of crime is shaped primarily by the media. The problem is that the media's presentation does not nexcessarily reflect the facts. Michael Moore touched on this in Bowling for Columbine, where he noted that, in a period when crime had fallen by 20%, media stories about crime increased by 600%. Sociologist Barry Glassner pins this on the television editor's maxim of "if it bleeds, it leads". Crime coverage is both exciting and cheap - all you need is a scanner and a camera to get hours of flashing lights, sobbing relatives, perp-walks and grim-faced police officers. No investigation required.
This isn't just happening in America. A recent study compared newspaper crime reporting in 2001 with coverage from 1992, and found that:
[i]n 2001 crime news (as a proportion of ‘hard news’) had risen to 21.6% in The Dominion (compared with 15.79% in 1992), to 18.83% in the (then) Evening Post (compared with 13.90%), to 24.24 in the New Zealand Herald (21.05%), to 15.17% in The Otago Daily Times (13.79%) and to 21.37% in The Press.Professor McGregor notes that the general increase in media coverage of crime occurs at a time when recorded crime is at its lowest rate for over a decade, dropping by 12.7% since 1996-7 (Department of Police Annual Report 2000/2001).
I haven't seen any similar studies for TV - any of our media geeks know of any? - but the same trend seems to be operating there.
As for the effects, a 1999 survey by the Ministry of Justice (Attitudes to Crime and Punishment: A New Zealand Study) found that the public
tended to have an inaccurate and negative view of crime statistics and to underestimate the lengths of sentences imposed on offenders. Survey respondents perceived there to be higher levels of crime than national figures suggest. The overwhelming majority (83%) of the sample wrongly believed that the crime rate had been increasing over the two years prior to the survey.Survey respondents substantially overestimated both violent crime and property crime statistics. Two-thirds believed that at least half of all the crime reported to the police involved violence or the threat of violence, yet police statistics show that the figure is nearer to 9%. Two-thirds of those surveyed overestimated the likelihood of a New Zealand household being burgled. Only 15% came close to the actual figure of approximately one in every 14 households burgled annually.
Generally speaking, it is a bad idea to base your policy prescriptions on misinformation. Unfortunately, Don Brash and his friends in the Sensible Sentencing Trust are advocating exactly that.
Robert Lord Winston, presenter of The Human Mind and various other educational pop-science ("pop-medicine"?) programmes will be talking in Palmerston North tomorrow...
Tuesday, July 06, 2004
Dishonest fearmongering
Plenty of people are attacking Don Brash's recent law and order speech in which he demanded that our criminal justice system treat its subjects with even more savagery. The attacks have focused on the policy prescriptions - the cost of building more prisons, the stupidity of eliminating parole - but since that ground seems well-covered for the moment, I thought I'd start from the other end. Brash's argument for those policy prescriptions is built on the idea that crime is out of control, that the government is failing in its basic duty to protect its citizen's lives and property, and that nothing is being done about it. He goes out of his way at the beginning to establish a picture of a society wracked by violent crime, in which "women and older New Zealanders are forced to significantly modify their behaviour because of the threat of violence", "our children are much less safe than they should be", and
appalling family violence, resulting in death and disfigurement for women and children; random killings by drug-crazed criminals out on parole; brutal muggings of young tourists visiting our country; dangerous and often drunk drivers, many with numerous previous driving convictions, killing people on the roads
are all everyday (and highly frequent) occurrences.
The problem is that none of this is really borne out by the facts. There's a reason Brash says that he doesn't "intend to recite a lot of statistics" to make his case: it's because the statistics don't support his case at all. Rather than relying on the facts, he is engaging in dishonest fearmongering.
Are we a more violent society than, say, the United States? Don Brash is certainly trying to create that impression - but a like-for-like comparison of our rates of violent crime, using the same definitions of each offence, shows that our per-capita rate of murder, robbery, rape and aggravated assault is around a quarter of that in the Land of the Free:
In 2000, America had more than double the rate of forcible rape per capita than New Zealand, more than three times the rate of murder and non-negligent manslaughter and robbery than New Zealand per capita, and over four times the rate of aggravated assault per capita than New Zealand. The rate of total violent crime for America in 2000 was 506.1 per 100,000 population; almost four times the rate of 132.6 for New Zealand.
The report notes that we should be cautious when comparing different jurisdictions due to the different ways in which statistics are recorded, but by international standards new Zealand errs on the high side - we count every crime, rather the most serious, and count reports rather than suspects. Unless you believe that the reporting rate for violent crime is between two and four times higher in the US than it is here (and approaches 100% in every category), then the trend is clear: we are far less violent than the US, and not a violent country by international standards.
(Hat-tip to Russell for this link)
So much for international comparisons. But what about our own standards? Firstly, as shown in the graph below, the overall crime rate is at its second-lowest level in fifteen years:
What about the specific examples used by Brash? Family violence? Offences under the Domestic Violence Act have remained constant over the last four years. Random killings? The murder rate fluctuates significantly from year to year - 2003 was a low, with only 46 murders; 2002 was a high, with 66 - but the overall trend has remained constant, as has that for homicide (murder plus manslaughter) in general. Brutal muggings? Robberies have been up the last two years, but are still about the same as they were in 2000, and lower than in 1998. Homicidal drunk drivers? As can be seen from the LTSA's statistics, deaths and injuries in alcohol-related crashes have decreased significantly.
As a caveat to the above, violent crime - assaults and intimidation - is up - but not substantially so, and certainly not sufficiently to justify the level of public panic. It hasn't doubled; it hasn't even increased by 10%. Instead, the last three years have been up by around 6% over the post-1994 average. If we take a longer view, then rates of violent crime have increased since the 80's - and the culprit is fairly clear. It's no accident that the baseline jumped 50% in the early 90's, when "screw the poor" policies had produced massive social dislocation and poverty and created an underclass. Like so many of the problems in modern New Zealand society, the current high trend rate of violent crime (compared with the 80's) can be laid squarely at the feet of Ruth Richardson and Roger Douglas.
And as a caveat to the caveat, our violent crime statistics do not include sexual offences such as rape and sexual assault. They're down - at their third lowest level in fifteen years. New Zealand is certainly a safer place for women and children than it was last year, or five years ago (when sexual offending was 25% higher than it is now). The crimes ordinary people are most likely to be victims of - burglary and car theft - are both down significantly, as are dishonesty offences in general. Contrary to Brash's assertions, you are not more likely to be a victim of crime now that you were last year, or five years ago.
What about the claim that nothing is being done about crime? Hardly. Over the past five years, the government has responded to falling crime rates with harsher sentences and increased use of preventative detention. And on a more everyday level, clearance rates - the percentage of crimes resolved by police - are up across the board. In the case of burglaries and car thefts, they're up significantly (the clearance rate for burglary jumped by 50% in 2000 and has stayed up since). The police are "doing something".
So, where does this leave Brash? I would say that it rather reduces the "urgent" need for his policy prescriptions. But it also once again exposes his tendency to disregard the facts when they are inconvenient. Like the infamous Orewa speech, his law and order address is aimed at creating and manipulating public perceptions and public fear. The Orewa speech made sweeping claims about "Maori privilege" and "race-based policies", based of course on "what we all know" and "what we see on TV" - and when the underlying facts were examined, those claims turned out to be (to use the technical term) bullshit. This is more of the same. Don Brash isn't interested in discussing crime with an eye to extracting sensible policy options which will address the problem; he is interested in stirring up public fear to get votes. It was despicable when he did that with race relations; here it is merely dishonest.
(Appendix: If you want to look at the underlying facts, check out the police crime statistics. The reports include historical data, and I've used the 2000 and 2003 reports to compile 15 year trend info here (Excel 97 format). Longer-term data is available from Statistics New Zealand).
Monday, July 05, 2004
Spot the difference
After reading this story in the Herald, I was struck by the similarity in the policies of the National party and the Destiny New Zealand.
Here's a quick table to summarise:
| DestinyNZ | National |
| Opposes the Civil Union Bill because it "undermines marriage" and is destructive of "family values". | Allowed a free vote, but most MPs oppose the bill because it "undermines marriage" and is destructive of "family values". |
| Would require beneficiaries to work 30 hours a week in return for the benefit, and review invalid and sickness beneficiary cases to determine their justification. | Would reintroduce "work-for-the-dole". Think all beneficiaries are dope-smoking layabouts. |
| Would lower taxes and gut the RMA. | Would lower taxes and gut the RMA. |
| Would strengthen ties with traditional allies such as the United States and Australia. | Would strengthen ties with traditional allies such as the United States and Australia, and support them "without reservation". |
| Would hold referendums on letting nuclear-propelled ships back into New Zealand ports, and on nuclear power plants. | Would let nuclear-propelled ships back into New Zealand ports, if they thought they could get away with it. Are talking about a referendum as cover. |
Don Brash isn't Brian Tamaki (or his political stand-in, Richard Lewis) by any stretch of the imagination - he's a social liberal, not a fundamentalist conservative. But many of the core policies pursued by his supposedly mainstream party are indistinguishable from those advocated by a bunch of religious wingnuts. And that is deeply, deeply worrying.
Karpinski knows too much
The finger-pointing over Abu Ghraib continues. Last month, Brig. Gen Janis Karpinski (former commander of the prison), pointed the finger at her superiors, claiming that abuses had been directly authorised by generals Sanchez and Miller. Now she's also fingering Rumsfeld:
Brig-Gen Janis Karpinski, who commanded the 800th Military Police Brigade, which is at the centre of the Abu Ghraib prisoner-abuse scandal, said that documents yet to be released by the Pentagon would show that Mr Rumsfeld personally approved the introduction of harsher conditions of detention in Iraq.[...]
During inquiries into the scandal, she has repeatedly maintained that the treatment of Iraqi detainees was taken out of her hands by higher-ranking officials, acting on orders from Washington.
"Since all this came out," she replied, "I've not only seen, but I've been asked about some of those documents, that he [Mr Rumsfeld] signed and agreed to."
Asked whether the documents have been made public, Gen Karpinski replied "No" and went on to describe the methods approved in them as involving "dogs, food deprivation and sleep deprivation".
Rumsfeld's response has been to deny everything and blame people lower down the food-chain - particularly General John Abizaid. I wonder what he thinks of that?
As I've said before, none of this gets Karpinski off the hook - she was at the very least grossly negligent for allowing torture to occur "on her watch" - but it does tell us who else should be in the dock with her. Except that she's not in the dock - she has been suspended, but not charged with anything. Why not? Because if she was charged, she would be entitled to a defence, to demand documentary evidence and call witnesses under oath. And from what she's already said, that would be deeply damaging not only to her superiors, but to the Bush administration. She simply knows too much...
The market in action
What does the Reserve Bank mean when it talks about "counteracting wage inflation"? It means adjusting the economy to stamp out things like this. If the rich use good economic times to reap larger profits and scam even higher executive salaries, it's fine, but heaven forbid that ordinary workers should use them to gain any real improvement in pay and conditions.
What is the point of having a market if its a one-way street?
A little rich
National is complaining about AgResearch's plan to close its Wallaceville facility and transfer people to Palmerston North and Dunedin. As with previous CRI reorganisations (such as LandCare), it looks likely to result in significant staff losses. Apparently, no-one wants to live in Palmerston North (no, really...?)
What makes this all a little rich is that the re-organisation is a direct consequence of AgResearch's legal requirement to "operate in a financially responsible manner", i.e. to generate "an adequate rate of return on shareholders' funds". This requirement is laid out in the Crown Research Institutes Act 1992. Three guesses as to who passed it...
I also find it interesting that National is once again advocating direct ministerial interference in the day-to-day management decisions of (legally independent) crown entities. The reason we stopped doing this was because ministers had a nasty habit of using those entities as job-creation schemes and putting large projects in marginal electorates. I guess the spirit of Muldoon lives on in the National party after all...
Restaurant Review: Zibibbo
"Mediterranean-style", which is great if you like that sort of thing. But I think a better idea is to skip the tapas, skip the mains, and have two desserts and a chocolate martini.
Sunday, July 04, 2004
Lange on nukes and self-perceptions
The Herald has a long and detailed interview with David Lange, where he talks about his election and time as PM, Helen Clark, the Treaty "partnership" and various other things. One of the more interesting bits is on our anti-nuclear policy. Lange thinks that the idea that our nuclear ban is an impediment to better trade relations with the US is a gross misconception. The real problem is that we've already given the Americans everything they wanted on that front:
they can sell anything like here, they can invest anything here, they can have airlines here til it comes out our ears. They can own land. Why would the Americans give us anything?[...]
Look, we could get a nuclear weapon and put it on hire trailer and take it around A and P shows all around New Zealand, and it wouldn't give us a free trade agreement. It is absolutely irrelevant.
And he's hit it right on the head. Because of our strong free-trade position, we have nothing to give them, and therefore they have no reason to give anything to us - especially when doing so would have significant domestic political costs.
There's also a few interesting comments on our attitude towards the larger powers. We no longer seek validation from a pat on the head from the hegemon. The uphevals of the 70's and 80's - the perceived betrayal by Britain when it abandoned us for the EEC, and outright bullying by the US in response to our desire to run our own country - coincided with what Michael King called "the indigenisation of Pakeha culture", and led to a new perception about our place in the world. Rather than being subserviant, we would be independent, and pursue our own values rather than those of whoever was biggest on the block. And we're comfortable with being small; we have no need to swing our dick on the world stage. To the extent we pursue national greatness, it is in sport, in our diaspora, and in being a country that people want to live in.
Some people are not happy with that - witness NZPundit's passing comment that we are "a silly little self-absorbed country of no importance and no influence" - but for most of us, it's enough.
Saturday, July 03, 2004
Express is right
Big News objects to Express's labelling of opponents of the Civil Unions Bill as homophobes.
Well, what else are we supposed to call them?
Opposition to the bill is rooted in the belief that gay relationships are inferior, and therefore undeserving of formal legal recognition. This is homophobia. It's an ugly word, but those who object to being tarred with it have a simple solution: don't be homophobes. It's that simple.
Friday, July 02, 2004
It may be "divisive", but its democracy
The National party's "born to rule" attitude seems to extend even to matters within their own party, with Clem Simich objecting to fighting a selection battle for his safe Tamaki seat as being "divisive for the party".
Simich is one of National's better MPs - he's experienced, doesn't make a fool of himself by braying about "communism" every time he opens his mouth, and voted for the Civil Unions Bill. But none of that should provide him any immunity against a selection battle. The core idea behind democracy is that our rulers should have to justify themselves to us. If National has any commitment to internal democracy, then it should apply that principle. I have no doubt that Simich can justify himself - like I said, he's one of National's better MPs - but he should still have to do it.
Is this "divisive"? Only if they let it be. But the principle of democracy is more important. If Simich is unwilling to face even the scrutiny of his own party, then it says a great deal about the attitudes of that party to the rest of us.
Ahmed Zaoui update
Ahmed Zaoui is back in court, this time asking for bail. Eighteen months in prison without charge is affecting his psychological state, and his lawyers argue that he should be released to the Mangere Refugee Centre. The core of the case is about the interpretation of the law - whether section 114(O) of the Immigration Act 1987 requires that a person covered by a Security Risk Certificate be detained in a prison - but the lawyers are also going for Habeas Corpus, and asking the government to justify Zaoui's continued detention without trial.
(Scoop has a pair of excellent background pieces here and here.)
Meanwhile, true to form the National party is saying that the case is vexatious and "an absurd waste of time and taxpayer money". The idea that the government must justify detaining someone without trial or charge for eighteen months seems absolutely foreign to these born-to-rule pricks.
About bloody time
The Immigration Service has officially ended its policy of demanding pregnancy tests from Tongan women coming to New Zealand.
About bloody time. The policy was an affront to our values and a needless insult to our friends. The people who established and implemented it ought to be ashamed that they ever considered such a thing.
Getting it right the second time
You may remember that last year the government amended the Electoral Act to avoid a byelection after Harry Duynhoven technically vacated his seat by having his Dutch citizenship restored. The kludge - the Electoral (Vacancies) Amendment Bill - was to legislate so that the change of citizenship clauses did not apply in the current parliamentary term. This was "intended as a temporary measure pending a full review" of those sections of the Act.
The review has now been completed, and the result - the Electoral Matters Bill - was introduced to Parliament last week. The primary purpose is to fix the citizenship clause so as to explicitly allow MPs to maintain dual citizenship acquired before they entered the house, or acquire it if the reason is solely due to descent or country of birth (citizenship acquired by marriage was exempted in 1981). It also makes it clear that an MP vacates their seat if at any time they cease to be a New Zealand citizen.
This is a good change, and one that deserves support. The old rules are archaic and fail to recognise our generous views on dual citizenship; it's well past time they were updated. It's just a shame that we needed a mess like the Duynhoven affair to point out that they needed changing.
(The rest of the bill amends the rules governing free election advertising, but it's rather technical and I don't think I can be bothered wading through it all at the moment).
Thursday, July 01, 2004
Why not Kant?
Some of you are probably wondering why, in my post on rights and autonomy, I didn't just fall back on Kant and his second formulation of the Categorical Imperative as acting so as to treat people "always as an end and never as a means only" as a grounding for valuing autonomy and hence rights. There are two reasons for this.
Firstly, because the Categorical Imperative is based on just such an assertion of value: the intrinsic worth of human freedom. So it doesn't really get us anywhere, except maybe providing moral support from one of philosophy's biggest names.
But more importantly, it's because Kant is only interested in rational autonomy. Autonomy is about self-determination, being free from external influences and governed by one's own mind. But according to Kant, this means being governed solely by rational thought. Our wants, goals and desires are all "external influences" which enslave us. This is really a peculiar form of incompatibalism about free will, one which identifies the self solely with the rational faculties.
I disagree vehmently with this conception. Quite apart from the fact that it leads to the nightmare of second-guessing and "false consciousness" and opens the door to totalitarianism (as laid out by Berlin in "Two Concepts of Liberty"), it is simply mistaken. Our wants, goals, and desires are not an external influence; they're part of us, a vital part of who we are. Just as decisions made in accord with and in pursuit of them are free despite the universe (and more importantly, our brains) being generally deterministic, decisions made in pursuit of our goals are free despite their not being the sole product of reason. Our ability to reason is simply another part of us, a tool that evolved to help us better navigate our world and achieve our goals.
Because of his conception of autonomy, I'm wary of using Kant. If I'm trying to provide a grounding for liberalism, then the last thing I want to do is open a backdoor to second-guessing. Far better to use a conception of autonomy where people's choices are not valuable by virtue of being rational, but by virtue of being their choices, and freedom includes not just the freedom to be right, but also the freedom to be wrong.
A satisfying conclusion
Saddam Hussein went before a judge today. He'll be back tomorrow for a formal filing of charges, and will apparently be charged with "ordering the 1988 massacres of Kurds, the 1990 invasion of Kuwait and the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war" (shouldn't the Iranians get a crack at him for that?)
While its traditional for unsuccessful ex-dictators to be torn apart by a mob or strung up with piano wire, putting them on trial is a lot more satisfying.
A landmark day for New Zealand
The Supreme Court opens today, marking our full judicial independence from Britain. The first case to be heard is over whether ineffective assistance of counsel constitutes a miscarriage of justice, which seems to fit the bill for a substantial constitutional significance; details of other cases under consideration can be found here.
There's also a lovely piece of understatement relating to the failure of the opposition's attempts to gain a referendum on the matter:
Today's ceremony will also mark the failure of a citizens initiated referendum launched last year by National, New Zealand First and Act to gather enough signatures for a referendum on the court.To succeed, it needed about 310,000 signatures by tomorrow; it appears to have fallen short by about 300,000
Or, to put it in English: despite National, ACT and NZFirst's best efforts to raise a stink about "fundamental constitutional change without a mandate", nobody else cared.
Wednesday, June 30, 2004
Isn't it beautiful?
(Image stolen from NASA/JPL)
After seven years and 3.5 billion kilometers, Cassini is about to enter Saturn orbit.
More spaceporn is available here.
Rights and autonomy; contracts and games
Philosophy, et cetera has been revising for his exams, and so has a pair of excellent posts on "political fictions" and John Stuart Mill.
The "political fictions" post is about the problems with natural rights and the social contract - two things I seem to talk about a lot. I say "seem" because I'm not a natural rights theorist (despite rights being a central plank of my ideas about relations between citizens and the state), and I don't think that there was ever a historical social contract where everyone sat down and signed a piece of paper laying out their mutual rights and obligations (except maybe in Scotland). Despite this, I think they're both very useful ideas which touch on something important, so maybe its worthwhile to elaborate a little more on my thinking in these areas.
Firstly, natural rights based in natural law don't exist. They are, as Bentham put it, "nonsense upon stilts". Quite apart from the ethical arguments against natural law theories (see Hume's "is-ought" distinction), if we adhere to any sort of scientific worldview then we have to accept that the universe does not give a shit about what we do. Facts about morality have to come from reason, or (somehow, and I know exactly how hard it is) from us and what we value.
Despite this, I think that the idea of rights is a good one. Laying down a list of things the government just can't do to you, or that you're entitled to receive from it seems to be a relatively good way of managing the relationship. And the commonly accepted lists of human rights (large and small) generally encapsulate how I want people to be treated by governments (or by each other). The problem is providing them with a moral basis.
Fortunately, there are other options besides natural law here. You can ground a system of rights in rule-utilitarianism, or in personal autonomy. I prefer the latter - rights exist to protect our autonomy and allow us to exercise it without interference - but I'm not exactly hostile to the other option. There's a great deal of overlap between respect for personal autonomy and preference-based utilitarianisms - both are ultimately about people pursuing their own goals - and a system of rights grounded in rule-preference-utilitarianism would be virtually indistinguishable from one grounded in a simple respect for autonomy.
(While you can also ground rights in a social contract as resulting from mutual restraint of our practical liberty, that's more a matter of pragmatics than ethics; there's really nothing moral about it. Still, if you want to build a political theory that broadly supports liberalism, is compatible with a scientific and naturalistic worldview, and avoids the pitfalls of dependence on a particular ethical theory, that's the way to go...)
Of course, grounding rights in utilitarianism or personal autonomy simply pushes the question back another level, from "why are rights valuable" to "why is autonomy (or happiness or preference-satisfaction) valuable?" And the answer to that is that you have to start somewhere. In any moral system, you eventually have to pick something and say "this is what we value". And while you can often make persuasive arguments as to why a particular value should be preferred, usually rooted in moral psychology or theories of human nature, these tend to run into Hume's is-ought problem again. The fact that we want to be happy or that we have goals and the ability to choose between them, and get frustrated when other people presume to make choices for us doesn't actually give us reason to place moral weight on those things. So at some stage, you just have to say "fuck it", assert something as an axiom, and hope for the best.
Secondly, social contracts. What social contract theories are good for is showing us why we have some government rather than none at all, and firmly establishing the idea that society exists by mutual restraint and government by consent. I don't think anybody seriously disputes either of these points. Instead, quibbles tend to focus on questions of historicity and how people can be said to consent to an agreement they were never personally party to. But both these problems are because people are focused on the word "contract", implying a one-off, legally binding agreement which imparts obligations on its parties. I think that this is missing the point a little.
The core of social contract theory is a game-theoretic argument that we are all better off by exercising mutual restraint. If I don't kill you, and you don't kill me, then we can both go about our business without too much trouble. Those with a passing familiarity with game theory will recognise this as a giant multiplayer form of Prisoner's Dilemma. But rather than being played only once, sometime in the distant past (as those arguing over consent seem to think), it is played constantly, every minute of every hour of every day, by everyone. As a practical matter, we are every bit as free as those Hobbes imagines in the State of Nature; each of us can kill, steal, rape, or rob. Every time we refrain from doing that, we reaffirm our commitment to the social contract and each other. It's not just government which is a perpetual referendum, but society as well.
Isn't this just tacit consent in a poor disguise? Not quite - because if we view it as a game, rather than a contract, questions of consent become irrelevant. It's not binding, it's just a good idea. We should play the game and practice mutual restraint not because we agreed to and should keep our word, but because it's in our own best interests to do so.
But isn't it the case that sometimes it may not be in our best interests to play? That sometimes we may in fact benefit from lying, cheating, and killing people? Certainly. Each of us is of course free to choose not to honour the social contract, to become a defector in the game. The problem is that if you do, the rest of us will hunt you down and punish you (if we can catch you, and if you have too few friends to back you up).
This is why I said above that there was nothing moral about social contract theory. It's pragmatics, not ethics, rooted in power and violence and force. The State of Nature is always with us - we've just papered over it.
Despite that nasty, brutal fact, I think that we still need to worry about consent. Why? Because while the social contract gives us government, it doesn't give us legitimacy. To get that, we need consent, not mutual intimidation and a balance of terror. How do we get that consent? Philosophy, et cetera hints at the answer - we should build a government and society worthy of people's consent, one they will freely support irrespective (rather than because) of the big stick lurking in the background.
Comfortable margin
The Omnibus Bill, the "other half" of the Civil Unions Bill which does all the legal spadework, has passed its first reading by a comfortable margin of 77-42. Less overt bigotry in the speeches, it seems, though there is this curious bit from Nick Smith:
In Labour's eyes it just makes no difference whether a couple is two men, two women, or a man and a woman, it is all the same.
You mean it's not?
Seriously, those opposing the two bills on the basis that "not all relationships are equal" should front up and explain exactly how relationships differ in moral status on the basis of the parties' gender. If they can do it without relying on underlying axioms of homophobia and bigotry, then I'll eat my hat.
The limits of Iraq's "sovereignty"
The new, "sovereign" Iraq isn't even a day old, and it's running into the limits on its "sovereignty" already. Yesterday, the US-established Central Criminal Court acquited a prisoner on cahrges of attacking US troops and ordered his release. The US response? Ignore the verdict and throw him straight back into Abu Ghraib, of course.
The US was happy enough to respect the court's authority when it issued an arrest warrant for Moqtada al-Sadr. It should also respect it on matters of guilt or innocence. Iraqi sovereignty and the rule of law demand nothing less.
Tuesday, June 29, 2004
"A state of war is not a blank check"
In a sign that perhaps all is not lost in America, the Supreme Court has taken a firm line on human rights, ruling that both Yasser Hamdi and the Guantanamo detainees enjoy the full protection of the US courts and may challenge their detention.
Skimming the Hamdi decision, it's striking how strongly the courts oppose the government's position. Eight of the nine justices argued that Hamdi was entitled to counsel and due process, though they disagreed on exactly how and on whether his detention was legal (the plurality believed that it was, but that it must be able to be challenged; Justice Scalia took a hard line, arguing that the government must release Hamdi, suspend Habeas Corpus or charge him with treason). The only justice to dissent from this overwhelming view was (of course) Clarence Thomas, who buys into the administration's claims of un-reviewable war powers hook, line, and sinker. Fortunately, the majority of the court recognised the danger in such thinking - though they avoided tackling it head on, and instead decided the case on other grounds.
Supreme Court decisions on human rights usually contain some strong statements on the matter, and this one is no exception. The core of the court's ruling lies in these two sentences:
We reaffirm today the fundamental nature of a citizen's right to be free from involuntary confinement by his own government without due process of law[...]
[A] state of war is not a blank check for the President when it comes to the rights of the Nation's citizens.
The Guantanamo case is less interesting, being primarily concerned with the question of whether the US has legal jurisdiction over the base there (it does), and some previous precedents relating to captured enemy soldiers (which were found not to apply). Like Hamdi, they will get to challenge the factual basis for their detention in court, and force the government to justify it to the satisfaction of a judge. Hopefully that means that a few more taxi-drivers will soon be released.
A third decision was issued in the case of Jose Padilla, finding that his appeal for Habeas Corpus was invalid on jurisdictional grounds. Some have dismissed this as cowardice by the court, but its not really. The issue has been effectively decided by the Hamdi decision, and when Padilla's lawyers refile in the appropriate jurisdiction, there's little question that he'll also get his day in court.
Update: KiwiPundit's comments are here.
The weight of history
There are days when you should feel the weight of history, and today is one of them.
June 28th (European time) marks 90 years since the assassination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife in Sarajevo. The assassination was the beginning of the great tragedy of the twentieth century: the blind stumble into war, the mass-slaughter of the trenches, the humiliating "peace" which guaranteed the renewal of hostilities twenty years later (itself driven by a desire for revanche for a French defeat forty years earlier), the Russian Revolution, the Cold War... we're facing the consequences even now, in Iraq - a country born from the ruins of the Ottoman Empire in the post-war settlement - and in Palestine, a patch of land promised by Britain to both Jews and Arabs in exchange for their support against the Turks.
The fatal shots were fired by Gavrilo Princip, a young Serb nationalist. He had hoped to spark a nationalist revolution which would free Bosnia-Herzegovina from Austria-Hungary; he had no idea that he would start the greatest slaughter humanity had yet seen (ironically, he was too young to be executed, and spent the war in prison before succumbing to Tuberculosis).
It took just thirty-six days to go from two pistol shots to a Europe-wide war. The Austrians waited almost a month, then issued a humiliating ultimatum to Serbia. The Serbs unexpectedly complied with almost all of it, but the Austrians wanted a war, and used the Serbian refusal to allow Austro-Hungarian participation in the inquiry into the assassination as the excuse to start one (students of recent Balkan, or indeed Middle Eastern history may find this tactic familiar). Serbia appealed to the Tsar, who mobilised his troops against Austria-Hungary; mutual fear of troop mobilisations led to a series of ultimatums which brought in Germany, then France, and eventually Britain. Apart from Austria-Hungary, none of the participants wanted a war - all allowed themselves to be trapped by pride, fear, miscommunication, and (as von Moltke explained to the Kaiser) train timetables. Once the stone was set rolling, it was impossible to stop, and so ten million people went to their deaths.
The socialist intellectuals of the Second International resisted the war, believing that the international working class should refuse to fight for their rulers. But when push came to shove, the workers chose nationalism over socialism, and gladly marched off behind the aristocrats thinking that it would all be over by Christmas. It wasn't, but a consoling thought is that the war devastated the European aristocracy, directly causing the collapse of three dynasties (the Hapsburgs, Romanovs, and Hohenzollerns). And the virtual extermination of the minor nobility "officer class" led to meritocracy by necessity, without a single guillotine being erected.
When he heard that it was to be war, the British Foreign Secretary, Sir Edward Grey, commented that
the lamps are going out all over Europe; we shall not see them lit again in our lifetime.
Or indeed his children's lifetime. It is only in the last ten years, now that we are free of the Cold War, that the lamps have begun to shine again. Europe is united, from Ireland to the Polish border. The only area left out is, ironically, the Balkans, where it all began. War between France and Germany is now as unthinkable as war between Australia and New Zealand, or Canada and the US - they are both now too interdependent for it to be a real possibility. In a way, the War to End All Wars has achieved its purpose - eighty years too late.
How different would it all be if Princip had missed? Ninety years on, its impossible to know. But we know that it would be vastly different, and looking at the death toll - ten million in the first war, forty-five million in the rematch, it's practically impossible not to think that it would have been better.
Early handover
The US has handed over sovereignty in Iraq two days ahead of schedule.
In a real sense, this changes nothing. The interim government has been de-facto sovereign since the dissolution of the IGC earlier in the month. The violence will no doubt continue. And the "sovereignty" will be highly contrained by 135,000 well-armed American soldiers, who will continue to wage war on the Iraqi people with or without the new government's approval. But despite all this, it's impossible not to feel happy for Iraq. While I'm pessimistic, there's some chance that things will turn out OK, and that the new democracy won't be stillborn into martial law, a security crackdown, and endlessly "postponed" elections.
And in other good news, they will apparently be arresting and formally charging Saddam Real Soon Now. The Iraqis get first crack at him, and while I disagree violently with their plans to execute him, there's no question of jurisdiction. At the same time, the fuckers who propped him up, and turned a blind eye to his abuses because he was a useful tool against Iran should be in the dock too. Hmmm - I guess that's another foreign jurisdiction Rumsfeld won't be able to visit.
Apparently I'm spiritually bankrupt
Well, I do my best.
Others have already commented on the irony of the head of an organisation which conspired to cover up child sex abuse presuming to lecture the rest of us on morality, but there is a bigger problem with Cardinal William's essay. Namely, that the whole thing rests on a gross misperception of the role of government.
Contrary to Williams, government does not exist to legislate virtue. It exists to provide a basic framework to keep people from one another's throats. The aim is not to force people to be good (except in a minimal sense of refraining from killing or otherwise harming one another), but to leave them free to pursue their own vision of the good.
Underlying this is a core belief in personal autonomy - that people are the authors and "owners" of their own lives, and are therefore uniquely privileged to make decisions on how they should live. Liberals regard personal autonomy as valuable, and want it to be respected. Liberal toleration follows from the Golden Rule, or from Hobbesean mutual restraint: if I want my own autonomy to be respected, then I must also respect the autonomy of others. The sole reason for interference in people's autonomy is self-protection, to prevent direct harm to others.
None of this is incompatible with Christianity. What is is incompatible with is the desire that everybody believe and behave exactly as you do. Hence the constant hysterical warnings from our self-appointed "moral guardians" about "spiritual bankruptcy", "moral decline" and such. The "problem" is that their preferred modes of behaviour have failed to compete on the memetic battlefield; they therefore call for legislative intervention to force people to behave according to their preferences. This would be unjustified even if they were right, because it would fail to respect people's autonomy. Freedom includes the freedom to be wrong, and unless there is direct harm to another, there is no justification for intervention. Harm to oneself, or the "harm" of doing or believing the wrong thing, are insufficient.
If Cardinal Williams believes his traditional values and Judaeo-Christian ethic are worth living by, then he will have to convince us, rather than relying on his supposed moral authority. And if he cannot, well, an idea that cannot survive without the backing of the dungeon and the stake deserves to perish.
Monday, June 28, 2004
The Whig asks "how do you get sick from food that's "contaminated" with antibiotics?!"
Two words: antibiotic resistance. You don't get sick (yet...), but it's an exceedingly dumb idea in the long term.
Delusion, disrespect, and dignity
Over the weekend, Bush gave a rare sitdown interview with Radio & Television Ireland [video]. During which he said
Most of Europe supported the decision in Iraq. And, really, what you're talking about is France, isn't it? And they didn't agree with my decision. [...] But most European countries are very supportive and are participating in the reconstruction of Iraq.
Which I guess is a perfect example of the delusional worldview you get from not reading the newspapers (Doonesbury pointed out the other obvious problem last weekend). Most of Europe? Very supportive? Just France opposed? He really is on another planet.
Meanwhile, the interviewer's tactic of actually asking substantive questions hasn't gone down well. Apparently it's "disrespectful" for the media (or indeed, the public) to expect the President to defend his views. Can you imagine this bullshit being tried in any real democracy? Properly elected leaders expect to have to regularly front up to the press to have their views vigorously probed - not give an interview every couple of years and then complain that its not about fashion.
(BTW, what's the point of submitting questions in advance? Why not just interview the President's speechwriter instead?)
And while we're on the subject of Ireland, is anyone else amused by the reaction to Bush being photographed peering out his window in his underwear? The embarassing pictures were censored immediately as damaging to the dignity of the President. Why, the thought that he might wear underwear like everybody else! Next people will be saying that he eats, breathes and shits too!
And people say the US isn't a monarchy...
Unpersons
Another example of the Orwellian nightmare the US is becoming: their latest terrorism suspect was stripped of his identity while in federal custody:
Attorney Mahir Sheriff said in an e-mail to The Associated Press that after Nuradin Abdi's arrest last November, he was booked into an immigration jail under the name "John Doe.""His jailers addressed him as John Doe and any correspondence he received was addressed to John Doe," Sheriff said. "His family ... and all other relatives were not allowed to see or visit with him despite their efforts to do so."
What purpose did this denial of identity serve? To dehumanise the suspect, make them what Orwell called an "unperson". It's also a piece of calculated psychological torture - you're not a person, you don't exist, they can do anything they like to you. Traditionally, this is done by replacing the prisoner's name with a number - but I suspect that even Americans would have noticed the totalitarian symbolism in that.
As for the effectiveness and cruelty of such tactics, after six months of being nothing, Abdi is a completely broken man. He may not even be mentally fit to stand trial - though that's never stopped Americans when vengeance is on their mind.
But he's only a terrorist, right? There are two answers to that: firstly, this tactic is incompatible with any semblance of human dignity. It is deliberately treating a person as a thing. If you think that people have any worth at all, or if you want to be treated as a person yourself, then you ought to oppose this. Secondly, Adbi is only a suspected terrorist. Once upon a time, the United States used to have a principle of "innocent until proven guilty". Now that seems to have been replaced by the infliction of cruel and unusual punishment before you even get to trial.
Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, Jose Padilla, and now this. Do we really need any more evidence that the War on Terror has eaten America's soul?
"Speak English or die"
That's essentially what one Auckland employer is telling his employees - and he's threatening them with dismissal if they don't stop speaking "Indian", even in their lunch break.
NZPundit and the propertarian absolutists would no doubt approve, but the rest of us should be asking ourselves exactly how much we are selling when we go out to work each day. Selling our labour - physical, emotional or intellectual - is one thing. But how much more is an employer entitled to? Can they demand crawling obeisance as well as basic civility? Thinking only "good thoughts" about them, and an end even to private and unspoken cynicism and doubt? The supplanting of our conscience and values with theirs?
No. None of the above are consistent with human dignity, and neither are general bans on which language is spoken in the lunchroom. This isn't treating employees like human beings, it's treating them like slaves. And its clear that the only reason the ban exists is because of Massa's insecurities that people are being rude about him behind his back.
Unless there's something in the job requiring that a particular language be spoken, then this demand is an unwarranted intrusion. I hope this guy gets taken to the cleaners, as he so richly deserves.
Friday, June 25, 2004
Post-vote thoughts
The Herald has a list of the ayes and nays on the Civil Unions Bill here.
People have commented that it looks grim; the prostitution bill got 86 votes on its first reading, and only passed by one, so if this has the same degree of falloff it will fail. Fortunately I think the core support is harder here - there probably won't be that many Labour MPs who are going to switch sides, and that plus the core liberal support from the Greens and Progressive Coalition gives a solid base of at least 50 votes to work from (plus probably 4 from ACT). The swingers are likely to be those 2 NZFirst and 5 National MPs, plus ACT's Stephen Franks and Gerry Eckhoff (who voted against prostitution refom, remember). These are the people to target.
Meanwhile, I'm pleased to see that ACT are acting more like a liberal party, and that Stephen Franks' illiberal attitude towards prostitution and flag-burning doesn't seem to extend to civil unions. But why the hell are Deborah Coddington and Muriel Newman even in the party? This is a matter of fundamental freedom and equality - the freedom to choose who you spend your life with, and to live with them free from unjustified discrimination from the state. It's also about people's freedom to choose their own social arrangements, rather than being subjected to government "social engineering". How can a member of ACT - a party which brands itself as the "party of freedom", and which ails constantly against "social engineering" - possibly oppose that?
I'm also pleased to see that Don Brash stuck to his principles and voted "for". I'm not fond of him, but at least he's a social liberal. Unlike most of the rest of his party. Jesus, where do they get those knuckle-draggers from? If we needed proof that National needed new blood so it could catch up with the rest of us and join the 21st century, we just got it today.
As for other opponents of the bill, I think that the bigotry and hatred displayed during the debate neatly proves Metiria Turei's point. When people start describing extending equality to others as an "abomination" or talking about the Imminent Demise Of Society As We Know It, then you know you're dealing with bigots and homophobes.
Other comments: Big News, David Farrar, Justleft, KiwPundit.
Thursday, June 24, 2004
66-50
According to pointy-head radio, the Civil Unions Bill has passed its first reading by 66 to 50, and is off to select committee. I'll post a list of who voted for and against as soon as I find one.
While it's a victory, it's by a relatively narrow margin, and there's a long way to go yet. We need to keep the pressure up to ensure that those currently supporting it don't waver.
The accompanying Omnibus Bill is unlikely to be voted on until next week.
But what's the point?
Scientists have discovered a strain of arabica coffee plants that do not produce caffeine. They plan to propagate them to produce naturally decaffeinated coffee.
I think this is missing the point somehow...
A victory for the rule of law
The US has withdrawn its resultion to renew its immunity to ICC jurisdiction while participating in UN-sanctioned operations, after it became apparent that it could not muster the nine votes required to pass. This represents a victory for the rule of law - and a low point for the US's influence at the UN. Even with all their arm-twisting, they couldn't bully enough countries into bowing to their demands. The world stood united against the US - and won.
As for the consequences, the US has said that they will "need to take into account the risk of ICC review when determining contributions to UN authorised or established operations" - but this is a hollow threat. As I pointed out earlier, all their troops are either in Iraq, coming home from Iraq, or preparing to return to Iraq. They don't have any troops to contribute to UN operations anyway, and its likely to remain that way for the foreseeable future.
Crunch day
It's crunch day for the Civil Unions Bill. Parliament will vote later this afternoon on whether to send it forward to select committee, or whether to kill it dead. Stuff thinks the bill will pass, and they're probably right - with the votes that have been announced so far, there'd need to be an unusually high number of Labour defections for it to fail.
I'm disappointed to see that there are ACT MPs planning to vote against, though. For a supposedly liberal party, they have an awful lot of traditional social conservatives among the ranks...
If you're looking for people to lobby, try Maurice Williamson. He's undecided, but not sure whether gays should be treated the same as everybody else...
Update: OK, Williamson isn't undecided - he plans to vote against on the basis that "some gay couples want to be able to join heterosexual institutions such as marriage". So focus on asking him why they shouldn't be allowed to, and force him to examine his underlying assumptions.
I hate Garth Nix
I stayed up too late last night reading Lirael, got to the last hundred pages or so and realised that as this wasn't a Robert Jordan novel, there was no way that he could resolve the plot in the remaining space. And sure enough, he didn't - it's half a book, intimately tied to Abhorsen, and my copy is currently out on loan and unavailable till the weekend.
Bastard. Bastard, bastard, bastard. I hate Garth Nix. But in a good, "keep on writing stuff like this, please" kind of way. Because my disappointment is not because it's bad, but because I've got to wait two whole days to start the next one...
Wednesday, June 23, 2004
More non-denial denials
NZPundit is making a lot of noise about Bush's latest "denial" of torture - unfortunately it's just another non-denial denial. And it will remain so until Bush stands up and tells us exactly what he means by "torture" - whether, for example, he's using the commonly accepted definition, or the absurdly tight one used in the legal advice he's received on the matter. Sadly, the media are not pressing him exceptionally hard on this point.
If Bush wants to appear serious and escape the shadow of the torture memos, then there's a simple thing he can do: order a serious investigation into the allegations of the use of "water-boarding" against "high value" captives. Drag it out into the light of day and prosecute those involved. Make an example of them, so that the whole world can see that the US does not condone such behaviour. But I won't hold my breath.
Lobbying
With the Civil Unions Bill seeming much dicier than it did last week, supporters should pull out all the stops to make their voices heard. MP's email addresses can be found here; it is probably best to concentrate on those Labour MPs named in the story, and the ACT MPs who betrayed their supposedly liberal principles by voting against the Prostitution Reform Bill (if you need to know who voted against that Bill and is therefore likely to vote against this one, there is a full list here).
To save you some effort, here's a list of priority targets with email addresses already added. Just click on the link to send them an email.
- Clayton Cosgrove
- Harry Duynhoven
- Taito Phillip Field
- Janet Mackey
- Damien O'Connor
- Dover Samuels
- Paul Swain
- John Tamihere
- Gerrard Eckhoff
- Stephen Franks
- Donna Awatere Huata
- Muriel Newman
- Richard Prebble
I have no idea whether they actually listen to us, but its worth making the effort. So go off and make your voice heard!
Update: Simon Power is undecided. Email him as well.
Doing the decent thing
New Zealand is accepting the last 21 of the Tampa boatpeople still languishing on Nauru. It's the decent thing to do, but there's still a nagging feeling that our humanitarianism is bailing out Howard. Have we inadvertantly allowed ourselves to become part of the "Pacific solution", a final destination for refugees out of sight and mind of the Australian electorate?
Not that this should deter us in any way from doing what is right, but we should make damn sure the Australians know our views. We shouldn't be complicit in allowing Howard to treat people as a political problem whose suffering must be covered up and kept out of sight and out of mind.
Unjust and stupid
I normally ignore any sort of sports news, but the story of the boxer whose Olympic spot is threatened by past convictions raises some interesting issues.
In 1995, Soulan Pownceby killed his baby. He was convicted of manslaughter, and sentenced to four years jail. After his release he gained several more assault convictions. However, he since seems to have turned his life around, having kept out of trouble for the past four years and built a career as a boxer.
People are now demanding that Pownceby be kicked off the Olympic team because of his past crimes. This is both unjust and stupid. Unjust because it is continuing to punish him after he has served his sentence, and stupid because such treatment gives criminals no incentive to change their behaviour. After all, if you're going to continue to be punished regardless of whether you continue to offend or not, then you might as well continue offending.
The Prime Minister's suggestion of an apology is helpful, but it should not be necessary. Pownceby has done his time, and paid his debt to society. He should be left alone to get on with his life.
Creepy distinctions and social engineering
In the post below, I mention the Maxim Institute drawing a distinction between "preferred" and "tolerated" relationships. I must admit that I find this distinction rather creepy - it smacks of the "social engineering" the Maxim Institute so decries.
As a liberal, I believe that the government should not be preferring or legally privileging any relationship between consenting adults. It should not be trying to use the law to "guide" people into particular social arrangements. These matters are for individuals to decide, not the government; the latter should step back, provide a neutral legal framework, and leave people to choose their own social arrangements. Anything more is theocracy - or, as Lyndon Hood put it:
[T]he further the goals of government get from the material wellbeing of its people, the closer it gets to the gas chambers. Trying to make people behave according to particular moral standards is the spiritual equivalent of making the Trains Run on Time
The Civil Unions and "Omnibus" bills may not take us all the way, but they're an enormous step in the right direction - away from government social engineering and towards a truly neutral, secular and liberal state.
Tuesday, June 22, 2004
"Love the fundamentalists, but hate their fundamentalism"
Ouch. Metiria Turei of the Greens has delivered a stinging attack on the opponents of the Civil Unions Bill, calling a spade a spade and pointing out that opposition to the bill is rooted in simple bigotry and homophobia:
"All this talk about upholding the sanctity of marriage is just a PC way of masking rampant homophobia," said Ms Turei, the Greens' Associate Spokesperson on Justice.
And she's right. The underlying assumption of many opponents is that same-sex relationships are "defective" or inferior in some way that makes them unworthy of legal recognition. The Maxim Institute makes this explicit when it draws a distinction between "preferred" and "tolerated" relationships, with only the former worthy of state sanction. You can guess which category they put gays in. Like it or not, "bigotry" is the appropriate word here, and if opponents of the bill don't like it, then they shouldn't be bigots.
But best bit of is a neat play on the homophobe's "love the sinner, but hate the sin" line:
"I urge all supporters of the Civil Union Bill to be tolerant. We should love the fundamentalists, but hate their fundamentalism," she said.
Beautiful.
This is why I love the Greens. Despite their perceived fluffiness about tree-hugging and spiritual values, they have been consistent advocates for a secular and liberal society which allows people the freedom to follow their own vision of the good. And they've been the most outspoken defenders of human rights in the present Parliament, opposing government legislation on principle unless it conforms to international human rights standards (though to be fair, Matt Robson has been giving them a run for their money, and gets the No Right Turn stamp of approval as well). No matter what you think of their positions on GE or TV advertising, they can't be faulted on this front.
Civil unions in churches
Opponents of the Civil Unions Bill are getting outraged at the prospect that same-sex civil unions may be held in churches. A couple of liberal Wellington ministers have announced their intention to become civil union celebrants and make their churches available. Judith Collins and Peter Dunne think that this is proof that CU's are "gay marriage under another name" - which is a colossal non sequitur that shows the depth of their ignorance about the Marriage Act.
What makes a marriage a marriage in New Zealand? Dunne and Collins would have you think that its something to do with being married in a church, but that's not what the law says. What makes a marriage a marriage is that both parties say something like "I AB take you CD to be my lawfully wedded husband" in front of a government-recognised celebrant, and then sign a bit of paper. Venue is irrelevant - you can hold your wedding underwater, in a hot-air balloon, in an abbatoir if you so desire. All that matters is that you say those words and sign that bit of paper in front of an official of Births, Deaths and Marriages.
The Civil Unions Bill is the same, except that instead of "lawfully wedded husband", you say "partner in our civil union", and the bit of paper will have some different words at the top. And that's it, as far as proceedings are concerned.
Some couples may well choose to celebrate their civil unions in a church, in front of a minister - and why shouldn't they? It's a private arrangement between the couple, celebrant and venue, and no concern of the government. And it certainly says nothing about whether its a "marriage", gay or otherwise - to think that it does is to conflate the ceremonial trappings with the thing itself.
(I happen to think that civil unions are "gay marriage under another name" - but that doesn't excuse Dunne's or Collins' shoddy reasoning in any way)
"I think I'll back off a little bit now and ride my bike"
SpaceShipOne has become the first privately-owned manned spacecraft to leave the earth's atmosphere.
Next stop: the X-prize.
The New Zealand political spectrum II
DeepRed has updated his political compass scores for NZ's political leaders (by way of comparison, the original is here):
He's added a lot more politicians so you can get some idea of the political "range" of at least some of the parties. Interesting points:
- ACT's Muriel Newman is the third most authoritarian on the chart, after Winston Peters and the National Front's Kyle Chapman; and
- Don Brash is more Libertarian than either Rodney Hide or Richard Prebble.
Update (25/06/04): DeepRed has updated the graph, adding a number of former Prime Ministers. Robert Muldoon was practically a Stalinist, and Don Brash is more extreme than Roger Douglas. Actually, the latter ought to scare us all...
Monday, June 21, 2004
Two concepts of marriage
In discussions around the Civil Unions Bill, it has become apparent that there are two concepts of marriage - a secular one and a religious one. The debate about Civil Unions is really about which of these concepts should have pre-eminence in our society.
The secular conception sees marriage as a voluntary partnership - essentially a contract - recognised by the state and conveying certain legal rights.
The religious conception sees marriage as a sacred union blessed by god.
Two things are immediately apparent: firstly, there is nothing in the secular conception which says anything at all about the gender of the parties involved. It is thus inherently liberal (the religious conception may or may not be, depending on the whims of your deity of choice). Secondly, the religious conception is a moral relationship, whereas the secular conception is merely a legal one. While there are moral issues involved (for example, surrounding adultery), the secular conception sees them as being purely between the parties involved, rather than any concern of the state.
Needless to say, I think that a modern, secular state like New Zealand should not be encoding religious conceptions of marriage in its laws. We should be providing a neutral legal framework, not trying to legislate for a particular conception of virtue.
Positive side-effects
When the Treaty of Rome creating the ICC came into force, the US threatened to end its participation in and funding of UN peacekeeping operations unless that body granted them a blanket exemption from ICC jurisdiction. The UN reluctantly agreed. Now that exemption is up for renewal - and thanks to Abu Ghraib, it looks as if the motion doesn't have sufficient votes to pass. Nobody is going to veto, but enough nations look to be abstaining that the vote will fail. This doesn't mean that the US will suddenly be subject to the ICC - rather that the normal jurisdiction of countries playing host to UN troops and officials will be restored.
This is a positive side-effect both of Abu Ghraib, and of the US's unilateralism. The former has driven home the necessity of a framework for international law allowing torturers and human rights abusers to be prosecuted. The latter has destroyed the goodwill that would normally have resulted in the exemption being renewed (its already been renewed once).
The US will probably throw a hissy-fit and threaten to withdraw from UN operations, but I suspect the reply will be "withdraw what"? All the US's troops are in Iraq, coming home from Iraq, or preparing to return to Iraq. They have none to spare, and so wouldn't be directly in participating anyway (besides, they think it's beneath them). Or they could threaten to withdraw funding, but from a country which routinely didn't even pay their membership dues, that's a rather empty threat.
Noticed
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