Wasteland?

The Dominion-Post has been running a series of feature articles (sadly not online) on the theme of "are we in a moral wasteland?" The first article looks at the the changes in New Zealand society over the past thirty years and suggests that our recognition of personal freedom has resulted in a less moral society. I vehmently disagree. We live in a far more moral society than we did in 1971, and it is precisely because we have recognised individual rights and freedom and substantially eliminated discrimination.

To see just how crazy this idea of a "moral decline" is, let's look at what we've "declined" from. In the New Zealand of 1971:

• it wasn't just legal to pay a woman less than a man for the same work - it was mandatory under most national awards
• it was legal for shopkeepers to refuse to serve Maori or Catholics - and many did
• beating your wife and kids was socially acceptable, and police would simply walk away from a "domestic"
• there was "spousal immunity" for rape
• homsexuality wasn't just illegal; juries would refuse to convict those who murdered gays (plus ca change...)

Compare this to New Zealand today: we don't allow discrimination, we protect women and children from abuse, "no" means "no", and the state does not care what happens in the bedrooms of consenting adults. That's not a "decline" - it's real moral progress. Those who do see it as a decline are either viewing the past though very thick rose-tinted glasses, or have a twisted sense of morality.

The second article in the series looks at the role of Parliament in bringing about that moral progress - and in particular at the 1986 homosexual law reform. Along the way there's the following interesting snippet:

If there was ever a moral dimension to the argument about gay sex, it was over what kind of society New Zealand would become if the Homosexual Law Reform Bill had failed, [Fran] Wilde says.

"It became increasingly clear we had to get it through because this hostility had been unleashed, this dark side of society, that, in fact, if they had triumphed would have been a huge setback for New Zealand. In the end it didn't end up being a debate about homosexuality being legalised, it was a debate about the sort of society we wanted in New Zealand. Did we want tolerance and acceptance of diversity. Or did we want an intolerant, legislative regime that reflected the bigotry of religious zealots?"

It draws the obvious parallel - we are facing exactly that sort of choice again today: between an open, tolerant and inclusive New Zealand, or one dominated by bigoted theocrats. Which New Zealand would you rather live in?

Horror stories

The Guardian is carrying the story of Huda Alazawi, a woman who was imprisoned for eight months in Abu Ghraib after refusing to be blackmailed by an informer. One of her brothers was sexually assaulted, another was beaten to death during his interrogation, and she had her shoulder broken by a US guard. And that's before she even reached the infamous prison. And the effects of this?

As Iraq lurches from disaster to disaster, from kidnapping to suicide bombing, from insurgency towards civil war, from death to death, what does she think of the Americans now? "I hate them," she says.

Can you really blame her?

Local bodies

Since everyone else is posting about local body elections, I thought I'd throw my oar in. Unfortunately, I live in a boring place: Palmerston North. Our mayor is most famous for loaning his car to the Mongrel Mob and for a past appearance on "Fair Go" over dodgy fertiliser. Our city council are the usual bunch of petty-minded small businessmen, trying to use the city council to cut their rates while boosting the value of their property investments. And then there's the pervasive feelings of small-town inadequacy which drives them to pursue ludicrous schemes to "put Palmerston on the map"... schemes like selling the council building at a loss so it can be turned into a casino (fortunately this fell through), building a recreational lake (because nobody else has one of those), or trying to wheedle the government into giving them Ohakea to use as a "regional transport hub". This doesn't exactly convince me of their sanity...

We'll start with who not to vote for. The resident's association has been running ads against mayor Mark Bell-Booth and his "team" of Gordon Cruden, Jim Jeffries, Jono Naylor, John Hornblow, Vaughan Dennison, David Ireland, Alison Wall, and Anne Podd. These are the people who voted for the council/IRD building fiasco, to cut down all the trees in the Square, and to rezone one of the city's parks and sell it to The Warehouse. They all need to go. As for positive recommendations, read on. Note that Palmerston North still uses FPP for local body elections, so I'm simply recommending boxes to tick rather than preference lists.

Mayor

Heather Tanguay all the way. She's left-leaning, has opposed the above projects, and has stood up for council services (especially pensioner housing). Of the others, Mark Bell-Booth is on the "forbidden list", Michael Feyen seems to have stolen his election material from United Future (full of "common sense"), Arshad Chatha has been arrested on fraud charges and is consequently telling people not to vote for him, and Michael Freeman is a joke candidate. Marilyn Craig will be dealt with below.

(Tanguay is the current frontrunner according to a recent poll, but that could change).

Ashhurst ward (1)

The incumbent, Marilyn Craig, has also come in for criticism from the resident's association, but a far better reason for not voting for her is that she runs a sweatshop - sorry, "human resources management company" - which provides casual outsourced labour to the local call-centres under fairly exploitative conditions. I don't think I want someone like that on the council, let alone as mayor. Of the other candidates, Lance Craig is her son, so is probably tarred by association - which leaves Tawhiri Te Awe Awe as the last man standing.

Awapuni ward (3)

No strong opinions either way here, though both incumbents (Peter Claridge and Pat Kelly) have avoided inclusion on the shitlist. Adrian Broad and Jenny Edwards are also good possibilities, being from Labour and the AUS respectively.

Fitzherbet ward (1)

Donald Kerr, the local Forest & Bird chairperson, is the obvious choice - he's an environmentalist with a good grasp of the RMA and strong ties to Massey and UCOL.

Hokowhitu ward (3)

All three sitting councillors are on the shitlist, so it's simply a matter of picking three from Julie Catchpole, Don Esslemont, Jonathan Godfrey and Chris Teo-Sherrell. I think the latter two are the best picks - Godfrey has an amusing wesbite setting out his views, and Teo-Sherrell seems to be a good left / green candidate. Neither supports the Square redevelopment.

Papaioea ward (4)

Phil Etheridge is an environmentalist candidate, Evan Nattrass is explicitly backing Tanguay for mayor, and (of course) Tanguay herself is standing in case she fails to gain the top job.

Takaro ward (3)

Again, no strong opinions here, other than not voting for either Vaughan Dennison, David Ireland, or Alison Wall.

Manawatu-Wanganui Regional Council (3)

Matthew Hodgetts looks good - another environmentalist, interested in democracy and sustainability. The fact that he's under 50 also helps. The other three candidates are all incumbents, and all focusing on flood protection. Roni Fitzmaurice might be worth voting for; as for the other two, flip a coin.

Midcentral DHB (7)

This is done by STV, but there's a large number of candidates none of whom seem to leap out. My advice is to give high rankings to those from the medical profession or associated health industries, and avoid anyone who looks like a bean-counter.

Zaoui bail decision

Media reports of the Court of Appeal's decision to deny Ahmed Zaoui bail or Habeas Corpus has focused on Justice McGrath's implication that immigration regulations should be changed to allow it. In the process they've missed the real significance of the decision. Reading through the rulings, all judges agreed that Zaoui's detention was initially lawful. One - McGrath - said that it was lawful no matter what, and that there was no right to bail or Habeas Corpus. One - Hammond - blasted the government, saying that the detention had already gone on far too long and had become arbitrary. The "swing voter" - O'Reagan - agreed that the detention was lawful for the time being, but

would expressly leave open a possibility that a grant of bail could be an available remedy if the review process is not able to be brought to a reasonably swift conclusion.

He didn't lay down a deadline, but the implication is clear: the Court's patience with the government is wearing thin, and if Zaoui goes back to court in six months time, he may very well be released.

Iraq had no WMD: the final verdict

Hell no, they won't go

In the wake of last month's open warfare in Najaf, the US wants to transfer its troops out and replace them with Poles and Bulgarians. But understandably, the designated cannon-fodder aren't so keen...

New Kiwi blogs

ObservatioNZ
Genius NZ
Temper Mental (Public Address's Che Tibby?)

Blasphemy and sedition

Generally I think of New Zealand as an overwhelmingly secular and liberal democracy. So I was shocked when a press release from the NZ Association of Rationalists and Humanists pointed out that blasphemy is still a crime here.

"Blasphemy" is speaking of god irreverently or "impiously". It is banned by section 123 of the Crimes Act 1961, which provides for a penalty of up to one year's imprisonment for anyone who publishes "any blasphemous libel". While it has a "good faith" defence, and requires the leave of the Attorney-General in order to prosecute, it still fundamentally seeks to punish people for expressing views on the subject of religion which offend or do not meet with the approval of self-appointed "religious authorities" (such as John Banks, for example).

This is an archaic law, which has absolutely no place in a modern, secular, liberal democracy. It is almost certainly inconsistent with sections 13 - 15 of the Bill of Rights, which guarantee freedom of thought, conscience, and religion, freedom of expression (the right to "seek, receive, and impart information and opinions of any kind in any form"), and manifestation of religion and belief. While it has only been used once (in 1921), and is unlikely to be used again (unless United Future becomes the government), its mere presence on our books is repugnant. It should be repealed immediately.

And while I'm on the subject of stupid, archaic laws which have no place in our modern, secular, liberal democratic state, check out sections 81 - 85, which define the "crimes" of "seditious conspiracy", "seditious statements", "publication of seditious documents" and "use of apparatus for making seditious documents or statements". These are all focused around criminalising speech which might

bring into hatred or contempt, or to excite disaffection against, Her Majesty, or the Government of New Zealand, or the administration of justice.

or which incites or encourages "violence, lawlessness, or disorder" (among other things). While there is again a "good faith" defence, the whole purpose of the law is repugnant. It is not about criminal acts, but about criminalising speech. Unless that speech is akin to crying "fire" in a crowded theatre, such laws cannot be justified. Our laws against sedition should join that against blasphemy in the dustbin of history, where they belong.

Democracy and stupidity

The Maverick Philosopher considers the democratic principle of "one man, one vote" to be "highly dubious":

Suppose you have two people, A and B. A is intelligent, well-informed, and serious. He does his level best to form correct opinions about the issues of the day. He is an independent thinker, and his thinking is based in broad experience of life. B, however, makes no attempt to become informed, or to think for himself. He votes as his union boss tells him to vote. Why should B’s vote have the same weight as A’s? It is self-evident that B’s vote should not count as much as A’s.

Philosophy, et cetera agrees, arguing that "democracy is only valuable to the extent that it tends to produce and preserve a liberal society" and that

in an ideal system, the opinions of those who are more intelligent and well-informed would count for more than those who haven't got a clue.

The problem here is that both are fundamentally mistaken about the purpose of democracy. Democracy is not about making good decisions - it's about making our decisions. It is not a system for aggregating information and reaching a rational decision about what we should do - it is a system for moderating conflicting interests.

Any moral justification for democracy rests on two assumptions: firstly, that people have interests, and secondly, that no-one's interest counts for more than anybody else's. The first is simply a recognition of fact. The second is a statement of fundamental moral equality, and can be taken as axiomatic or justified on the basis of consistency (if I want my interests to count, then I must agree that everyone else's do as well). Note that there's nothing in here about whether you are intelligent, rational, or well-informed - all that is important is that you have interests (and bother to express them). So "one man, one vote" is justified regardless of intelligence or ability on the basis that stupid people have interests too.

Those interests may be ill-informed, based on shoddy reasoning or false axioms, but none of that matters. An interest is an interest is an interest, and if we're committed to moral equality, then all must be counted.

(There's also a pragmatic justification for democracy, resting on purely Hobbesean assumptions that people have interests and are sufficiently equal in physical ability to make counting heads a quick and painless way of determining who will win should things come to blows. On this account, stupid people get to vote because otherwise they may try and kill us. This has nothing to do with morality or rationality, of course - it's all about power and force and violence - but as someone who seeks ultimately to ground political theory in facts about the world, it has a certain appeal).

While I'm not sure about Maverick Philosopher, judging from his suggestions regarding competency tests, Philosophy, et cetera's underlying concern seems to that stupid people may not know what their interests are or how best to advance them. There's a name for this - "false consciousness" - and it's extremely surprising to see a self-professed liberal espousing it. A core tenet of liberalism is that people are the best judges of their own interests, and this rules out any second-guessing.

If we are concerned about voter ignorance, then the answer is to educate them, both through public information campaigns (and vigorous media debate) at election time, and by using universal public education to give people better bullshit detectors and make them better judges of their own interests in the first place. But as liberals, the last thing we should do is try to look inside people's heads or presume to make their choices for them.

See also:
Liberalism, "false consciousness" and deception
Why not Kant?

Busy

I'm have other stuff to write today, some of which should eventually end up here, so to fill in here's something I wrote several months ago in response to Philosophy, et cetera and then never got round to posting.

Aquaculture and Treaty settlements

In response to my aquaculture post, Philosophy, et cetera reels out the list of standard responses to any sort of restorative justice for past wrongs. Since we've been seeing a lot of this sort of thing recently, and it's all in one spot, I thought I might as well do a detailed response.

1) Individuals are not morally responsible for the actions of their ancestors. "We" didn't steal anything.

Of course not. But no-one is accusing any living individual over past land seizures - they're accusing the Crown. Our government. Which has maintained a continuous legal existence for the entire period, and can certainly be held responsible for its past actions.

Now, ultimately the cost of any compensation paid will be borne by people who were not responsible in any way for those past wrongs, and had no say over them - but that's hardly unusual. Some of the tax I pay is going towards paying off debt that was run up before I could vote, but I don't see anyone screaming about principles there. And you cannot argue that the settlement program represents a crippling burden on current taxpayers - Treaty settlements accounted for only 0.109 percent of government spending in the lat five years.

2) I have a general distaste for legalistic obsession with 'property rights'. There exists no 'natural law' which gives first occupants an enduring metaphysical right to their land. It's irritating when libertarians get hung up over this, and no less so with lefty anti-colonialists who hijack these right-wing ideals. There are other considerations besides history.

You don't have to be a propertarian absolutist to recognise that the Crown has a moral burden here - not least because of their specific agreement in the Treaty to respect the "lands and estates, forests, fisheries and other properties" of the other partner.

Propertarian absolutists would demand the return of everything that was stolen - every square metre of land, every branch of every tree - and financial compensation for everything that had been destroyed. Plus over a hundred years of accrued interest, at market rates, of course. The government is doing nothing of the sort. For a start, privately-owned land is completely off the table, no matter how significant it is. The government may buy if it finds a willing seller, but it will not forcibly return your backyard to the local iwi. Secondly, the amount of land and compensation paid does not even begin to approach the value of what was stolen; Tainui received $170 million, which I suspect is substantially less than the real estate value of the entire Waikato. The settlements are mostly symbolic, but the symbolism (and the Crown acknowledgment of its past wrongdoing) is extremely potent.

Dubious use of corporate entities [...]

Or, as Margaret Thatcher put it, "society does not exist". Of course all references to groups are ultimately references to distinct individuals. It was distinct individuals who were harmed, and it will ultimately be distinct individuals who benefit from compensation (through the intermediary of some legal corporate body). This does not mean that we cannot generalise where appropriate.

4) Due to generations of interbreeding, there is no longer a clear-cut distinction between Pakeha and Maori. All Maori now have at least some European blood in them. [...]

Or, as they put it in talkback-land, "there aren't any real Maoris left anyway". But even if it were true (and its not), it simply doesn't matter.

What happens to your property when you die? It passes to your heirs and assignees. If you've got a will, then it goes to the people in it. If you don't, then there's a default setting. But regardless, property passes by inheritance, from you to (usually) your descendents.

Treaty settlements are the same. If property had not been seized by the Crown, it would have passed to the heirs and assignees of the original owners. And since land ownership was generally communal, this means from the past members of the iwi to the present ones. Some of those present members may not have very much Maori blood in them, but that doesn't matter - any more than the fact that you only have 1/8th of your great-grandfather's DNA matters when it comes to inheriting his pocketwatch.

5) Why favour the tribal elite, rather than urban Maori?

This is the part that I like the least. But the fact is that the Treaty was signed with iwi, as represented by their chiefs. It was iwi who were disposessed of their communally-owned land. It is therefore iwi who need justice and compensation for those wrongs.

Finally, I think it needs to be pointed out that Treaty settlements, such as the aquaculture settlement, are not any form of "affirmative action". They're not (primarily) about advancing disadvantaged Maori by granting them "special rights". They're about justice, about making some recompense for a past wrong so that we can move on.

Twisted wingnut logic

Two points for NZPundit.

• one post pointing out that those making much of the typography don't know as much as they think they know is hardly "arguing for days".
• Knox's claim is not that they must be forgeries because she didn't type them; it's that they are forgeries because she typed documents with the same content and the CBS memos are not those documents.

NZPundit's reaction to this is a perfect example of twisted wingnut logic. If Knox had only said "I was his secretary and I don't remember typing them", he would be screaming it to the high heavens and proclaiming it as proof positive that the documents were forged. But since she's said other things which cast Bush in a bad light, everything she says must be false, and anyone with the intellectual honesty to accept her statements because she was in a position to know must be derided.

Sheesh.

Names

We know the name of every victim of September 11th. We know the name of every US soldier who has died in Iraq. Both lists are regularly publicised in order to put a human face to events. But America's victims in Iraq, the civilian "collatoral damage" killed by American bombs, American bullets, or American neglect, have remained nameless. Until now.

Iraq Body Count, using information gathered from press reports and by the Campaign for Innocent Victims in Conflict, has compiled a list naming 3,029 of the approximately 14,000 Iraqis dead due to "Operation Iraqi Freedom". As IBC member Scott Lipscomb said,

every one of some 15,000 Iraqi civilians killed was a loved human being, whose loss creates heartbreak and bitterness among the bereaved families and communities.

This is the same reason we remember the names of Americans. But if they deserve to be remembered, then so do Iraqis.

You can read the full list here (warning: large).

And on a final note, the Pentagon's excuse for not making any effort to track civilian casualties is that they're "not fighting civilians". You could've fooled me.

Exactly what you'd expect them to say

America's allies in Iraq have reacted strongly to Kofi Annan's comments, calling them "outrageous" and defending the legality of their actions. Which is exactly what you'd expect them to say. After all, they can hardly admit that the war was illegal - that would be confessing their own guilt and exposing them to charges of waging a war of aggression.

Saying what we all knew all along

The war in Iraq was illegal and contravened the UN charter, according to Kofi Annan.

It's good to see him say it, but it would have been better if he had said it at the time.

Getting out

The New Zealand engineers in Basra are finally preparing for their withdrawl from Iraq. Good. With the mess the Americans have made, and the nature of the regime we are supporting, we should have got out long ago.

If we want to support Iraq, we should do it by funding Iraqi NGOs promoting human rights and democracy - not by supporting a corrupt government which tortures its own people.

Forgeries

The Killian memos have been proven to be forgeries - not by the partisan wingnuts who think that their ignorance of 1970's office technology is a virtue, but by Killian's secretary. The story is registration-required, so if you can't be bothered poisoning their database yourself, use "idiot@mailinator.com" and "foobar".

Marian Carr Knox, who worked from 1957 to 1979 at Ellington Air Force Base in Houston, said that she prided herself on meticulous typing and that the memos first disclosed by CBS News last week were not her work.

"These are not real," she told The Dallas Morning News after examining copies of the disputed memos for the first time. "They're not what I typed, and I would have typed them for him."

[...]

Mrs. Knox said she did all of Col. Killian's typing, including memos for a personal "cover his back" file he kept in a locked drawer of his desk.

Fair enough. As I said, the fact that they could have been produced on a 1970's typewriter does not mean that they are authentic. If Killian's secretary says she didn't type them, she didn't type them. At the same time, she raises some puzzling questions:

She said that although she did not recall typing the memos reported by CBS News, they accurately reflect the viewpoints of Col. Killian and documents that would have been in the personal file. Also, she said she didn't know whether the CBS documents corresponded memo for memo with that file.

"The information in here was correct, but it was picked up from the real ones," she said. "I probably typed the information and somebody picked up the information some way or another."

If we accept her credibility in saying that the documents themselves are forgeries, we should also accept her credibility in saying that the content is authentic. So who reconstructed it, and why weren't the original documents containing the information released in the White House's "full dump"?

CBS could resolve these questions simply by naming their source. Hopefully they'll have the honesty to do it.

More on US murder in Iraq

The Guardian's Ghaith Abdul-Ahad was there, and he tells his story. Thumbnails of his photographs of the incident are available here.

Shredded

Ariel Sharon has announced what we've all known all along: that he no longer intends to honour the "road map" peace plan. Which means that the killing in Israel and Palestine is just going to go on, and on, and on...

I don't like it at all

KiwiPundit is getting a little hysterical about Helen Clark here, but his basic point is sound. David Irving is being denied entry to the country on the basis of his views. While his deportation from Canada is the pretext, it is ultimately based on his conviction for Holocaust-denial in Germany. Our refusing entry on the basis of that deportation is an implicit endorsement of Germany's restrictions on free speech. That's not something a country which claims to take human rights and freedom of speech seriously should be doing.

It would help if Irving wasn't a Holocaust-denier, and it would help if he wasn't such a self-important arsehole who likes to play silly-buggers with immigration authorities (as he did in Canada, and as he seems to be trying to do here), but there's an important principle at stake. Freedom of speech is not there to protect popular people or views. If we take it seriously, we should ignore Irving's deportation as being based on a violation of his human rights, and allow him to enter. Then, we should take the opportunity to let him and the world know exactly how much we disagree with his views.

Class action

Human rights lawyer Tony Ellis has filed claims on behalf of another 18 prisoners who were subjected to the Department of Corrections unlawful and inhumane Behaviour Management Regime, and is seeking leave to represent up to 200 others in a class action. If successful, the claims could cost Corrections $4.5 million plus court costs.

No wonder the government wants to legislate to discourage claims from prisoners...

Tony Blair and climate change

So, Tony Blair has given a major speech on climate change, and said that he is "shocked" by the scientific evidence. So am I. A couple of weeks ago I finally got around to reading the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's 2001 Synthesis Report, and was, like Blair, shocked - shocked at how bad the future looked, shocked at how anybody could continue to deny the reality of climate change in the face of this evidence (which has only grown stronger in the past three years), and shocked that the governments of certain major industrial powers were continuing their policy of denial.

The short version of the IPCC report is that if we continue to do what we're doing, we're fucked. Blair was more polite, saying that

global warming... is simply unsustainable in the long-term. And by long-term I do not mean centuries ahead. I mean within the lifetime of my children certainly; and possibly within my own. And by unsustainable, I do not mean a phenomenon causing problems of adjustment. I mean a challenge so far-reaching in its impact and irreversible in its destructive power, that it alters radically human existence.

Climate change isn't a threat to the survival of humanity as a species, but it does threaten to make things uncomfortable for many of us for a good long time. And there's no question that it is happening. The global climate has warmed noticeably since the pre-industrial era, and according to the best models available, we are responsible (see fig SPM-2 in the synthesis report for the graphic version). The concentrations of major greenhouse gases have all increased over the last 200 - 250 years - CO₂ by 50%, methane by 150%, and nitrous oxide by 17%. The increase in CO₂ is highly correlated with the increased use of fossil fuels; the increase in the latter two gases is due to changes in land use and the dramatic growth of agricultural activity (they're also worse than CO₂, by 23 and 296 times respectively, and comprise around 50% of New Zealand's equivalent greenhouse gas emissions).

The precise effects of global warming are uncertain, and depend greatly on what assumptions are made about continuing emissions and the level at which the concentrations of greenhouse gases will stabilise. The IPCC estimates, for various scenarios, an increase in global mean temperature of between 0.4 and 1.1 degrees by 2025, 0.8 to 2.6 degrees by 2050, and 1.4 to 5.8 degrees by 2100. This is expected to lead to significant climate change, resulting in decreased crop yields as agriculture struggles to adapt, threats to low-lying islands from increased sea-levels and storm surges, an increase in extreme weather events such as hurricanes and droughts, and an overall detrimental effect on human health due to poorer nutrition and increased incidence of tropical diseases such as Malaria. There is also some possibility of what they call "large-scale, high-impact, non-linear and potentially abrupt changes in physical and biological systems" - melting ice-caps or a shut-down in ocean convection - which would have an even worse impact. However, one thing the IPCC is certain of is that:

the projected rate and magnitude of warming and sea-level rise can be lessened by reducing greenhouse gas emissions... The greater the reductions in emissions and the earlier they are introduced, the smaller and slower the projected warming and the rise in sea levels.

We can reduce the effects, if we have the global political will to do so - and that's where Tony Blair comes in. He has promised to make climate change the centerpiece of his presidency of the G8, and to use the position to secure a new agreement on the basic science and the existence of the threat. He'll also be pushing other G8 members (notably Russia and the USA) to ratify the Kyoto Protocol on cutting emissions. I'm doubtful that he'll succeed with the US - Bush is implacably opposed to any limitation on American's god-given right to drive big cars with shitty gas mileage, and doesn't do quid pro quo (so no payback for being a good little poodle over Iraq) - but at least Blair will be making the effort.

More importantly, he's also talking about the long-term. Kyoto is only the beginning, and the initial cutbacks it requires are insufficient. Worse, it doesn't include China and India, whose emissions are increasing as they industrialise and adopt a more western standard of living for an increasing number of their people. Dealing with climate change means bringing these two countries into the Kyoto system, and getting an agreement to lower their emissions path (meaning that they do not pollute as much as they otherwise would), with the eventual aim of a cap. This raises significant global equity issues (why should Indians and Chinese be made to walk while Americans continue to drive SUVs?), but it is conceivably achievable if linked to technology transfers and increased assistance for clean development (in other words, if the west pays part of the bill).

Blair also puts his finger on the real long-term solution to the problem of global warming. Deniers seem to think that the only solution lies in significant reductions in our material standard of living (based in part on the statements of those green factions that advocate a romanticised peasant existence as the only sustainable way of life). This is simply false - technology provides us with another way out. It's therefore refreshing to see Blair demanding a "new green industrial revolution" to develop environmentally sustainable technologies and make them ubiquitous. We already seem to be in the beginnings of this - hybrid cars, wind turbines, cheap solar panels and energy efficient homes all offer some hope - but its currently in the bootstrap phase. But if we use government to push this trend - by funding research, tightening regulations, and creating a market through government procurement - then there's every possibility that we can reach a (far more) sustainable future.

Wow

According to Tim Barnett in Parliament today, the Civil Union Bill received 3,263 individual submissions and 2,907 form submissions. And predictably, 95% of them are from fundamentalist Christians...

More US torture

This time in Mosul:

Yasir Rubaii Saeed al-Qutaji describes how loud western music was played and cold water poured over his body; he said he was also threatened with sexual abuse.

"For the next 15 hours they tried to break me down by taking me frequently inside and repeating the stripping, cold water and loud music sequence," he says.

"Due to the very loud music," he adds, "they would talk to me via a loudspeaker that was placed next to my ears."

The beatings did not leave a mark on his body because his attackers wore special gloves, he says.

Mr al-Qutaji says he was a founder member of the Islamic Organisation for Human Rights. He claims that other prisoners were treated even worse. "Some were burnt with fire, others [had] bandaged broken arms."

And they wonder why Iraqis hate them...

What upset Gerry?

Metiria Turei reports that Gerry "Bruiser" Brownlee lost his cool a little in Friday's select committee hearing into the Foreshore & Seabed Bill:

The best today, I thought, were the guys from Feilding, Trustees of Poutapatate Marae. They gave thier submission almost entirely in the Reo, the first so far. And somehow,perhaps by being typical "provocatively reasonable" Maori they managed to ruffle the feathers of Gerry Brownlee. Gerry got into another huff (he's awfully sensitive y'know) and was so overcome that he just had to exclaim" Whadaya doing here then! and "Go away!" And these guys had travelled from Feilding to Wellington to make thier submission.

Having read their submission [PDF], I can't understand what Brownlee was upset about. They weren't making the sorts of wild claims seen from some Maori groups - they weren't claiming outer space or the seabed "all the way to Hawaikii", they weren't rejecting the sovereignty of the crown, and they weren't threatening civil war. Just calmly pointing out that the bill would extinguish common law property rights, denied due process of law, and was a contemporary breach of the Treaty which would almost certainly result in future claims. Maybe their oral submission was different. Maybe they went so far as to say that what the government was proposing was perfectly legal, but neither moral nor wise. But if it was anything like their written submission, there's nothing here deserving of abuse from a committee member.

It's also quite disturbing to read about an MP using his position of power to abuse people who have made a submission on legislation. You'd almost think he didn't want public participation or something...

Not serious

How serious is the US government about properly punishing those "bad apples" who commit torture? Not very, it seems. In June, Andrew Sting was sentenced to a year in jail and a bad-conduct discharge after pleading guilty to charges of assault, cruelty and maltreatment, dereliction of duty, and conspiracy to assault. He had applied electric shocks to a prisoner in his care. Yesterday, he was granted clemency, and will rejoin his unit. Total penalty for electroshock torture: four months. He wasn't even thrown out of the military. Do we really need any more evidence that the US isn't serious about properly punishing it's soldier's misdeeds?

Chain of Command

The Guardian has excerpts from Seymour Hersh's new book on Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, and torture here and here.

Murderers

From the BBC's report of this morning's violence in Baghdad, it seems that showing dislike for the Americans has moved up from being punishable by torture in Abu Ghraib to being a death-penalty offence:

A US armoured vehicle caught fire and its four crew members were evacuated with minor injuries.

An American helicopter gunship opened fire with missiles and machine-guns at a crowd swarming around the vehicle who were cheering and throwing stones.

Two children and a journalist for an Arabic TV news channel, al-Arabiyya, were among those killed.

I'd avoided commenting on this until I'd seen some TV footage to see whether it was as bad as it sounds, and it was. No US soldiers were in danger. There were no guns - just a crowd of Iraqis celebrating the destruction of a Bradley. No matter how unseemly, that's not a death-penalty offence in Iraqi law. The crew of that helicopter are nothing more than murderers, and ought to be prosecuted as such. There's no other way to describe people who massacre civilians from the air. If they were British, charges would already be being drawn up - but since they're Americans, I'd be very surprised if they even receive a warning. "Prosecute for killing Iraqis? It's not as if they're people..."

Moving mountains

Literally. North Korea's explanation for last week's explosion: "we blew up a mountain".

Competence

One of the arguments against allowing teenagers to make up their own minds on whether to have an abortion is that it's simply too big a decision for them, and that they're not really competent to make it. And I agree - but given the nature of the decision, it is one that no-one else has any right to make for them.

The decision to have a child is a fundamental question of sovereignty over your own body, and a decision that no-one else has any right to make. Forcing women to have children (or have an abortion, for that matter) is as morally repugnant as forcing them to have sex. In both cases, we must do our utmost to ensure that coercion is minimised.

That's the theory for adults, but what about teenagers? While we have age of consent laws, they're a legal abstraction. We don't ban parents from renting their kids out as prostitutes or forcing them to donate their vital organs against their will because we think rights come into being on your 16th birthday; we ban them because we think that there are some things that not even parents have any right to force their kids to do. It's clear from this that children have body-sovereignty as well. We may limit them from exercising it on the basis of incompetence, but we also deny others - even parents - the right to make those fundamental decisions for them.

Those in doubt should consider the case of a parent who uses their child as a brood-mare for third-parties through IVF or somesuch (it doesn't matter, the point is to seperate out the legal and moral issues surrounding sex). This would attract universal moral condemnation, on the basis that it's grossly invasive, an abuse of power, making a decision that is not a parent's to make etc. But a pregnancy that arises naturally is morally no different from one that arises through technology; if we deny the right of a parent to force a child to continue in one case, we must also deny them that right in the other.

Body-sovereignty having been established, it's simply a matter of how best to protect it. And as I mentioned earlier, given the enormous imbalance of power involved, confidentiality would seem to be obviously justifiable. In order for teenagers to avoid parental coercion in this area and ensure that their decisions are genuinely theirs (or at least as genuinely theirs as it can possibly be, given their age), they must be allowed to keep their decision to have an abortion secret.

Sensible, my arse!

David Farrar nods approvingly at Judith Collins' proposal to require parental notification before abortions can be performed on under 16's. After all, it's only a right of notification, not a right of veto or to refuse consent, and there's no harm in that, right?

Wrong. Given the powers of parents to restrict their children's movements, a right of notification is effectively a right of veto. Legal nicities of consent mean nothing when you cannot leave the house and when parents can use "reasonable force" to enforce their decision. That's the extreme case; more generally, parents have an enormous amount of emotional and financial power over their children, and can easily use this to force them to continue a pregnancy. That's why the present law leaves the decision to notify parents in the hands of the teenager - because there is simply too great a potential for coercion.

What about the judicial safeguard? I think it's illusory, for two reasons. Firstly, in the absence of evidence from other parties (which cannot be collected in the sort of process Collins describes), a judge will be no better qualified to decide how parents will react than the child themselves is. In these circumstances, they'll be nothing more than glorified counsellors - which is, in a way, the point. The sole purpose of this amendment is to increase the number of hoops teenagers must jump through to get an abortion, to force them to justify their decision (and their sexual activity) to a perceived authority figure - in short, to increase the emotional cost and the shame involved in the hope of putting them off. It's intended as a punishment, and teenagers will rightly see it that way and try and avoid it. And the consequences of that are fairly horrific.

This is not a proposal any liberal should support, and Labour should abort it as quickly as possible.

Comings and goings

Rob O'Neil calls it a day. Meanwhile, there's the arrival of SageNZ, a high-volume ranter who seems to be trying hard to be the new PNN.

The Sunday Star-Times has an excellent article about Progressive MP and former Corrections Minister Matt Robson.

Justice and terrorism

I've had an interesting email from Stephen Judd in response to my post on terrorism, arguing that justice is not sufficient. And he's right - it's not sufficient, but it is necessary.

Stephen argues that "it is far from clear that terrorists need public support to function" - neither the IRA or ETA had majority support; support from a small group within their communities was enough. And he's right here as well - you don't need majority backing to cause mayhem. But what's important is that justice will shrink that group of supporters, and make it progressively more difficult for a group to function effectively. People do not choose to shelter terrorists or look the other way for no reason, and political ideology alone usually isn't enough to get people to condone or support murder - you need outrage and hatred for that. And those emotions are usually a response to perceived injustice, both historical and personal. Ending the injustice shrinks the pool and starves the terrorists in the long run. This won't eliminate all terrorism, or protect us from isolated loonies like Timothy McVeigh or tight groups like Baader-Meinhof, but it will stop those groups from turning into anything larger.

(I should add that it's the personal injustice that really counts. Nothing drives people to terrorism better than seeing their loved ones killed, maimed, tortured, arbitrarily detained, humiliated, or dispossessed. Look at Palestine. Look at Iraq. Look at the way British torture drove people to support the IRA. If there's one thing we should take from this, it's that any "war on terror" has to respect human rights, otherwise it simply creates recruits and sympathisers for the terrorists.)

Unfortunately, as Stephen points out, there is a problem:

not every grievance can be met in a way that satisfies a community that has embraced terrorism as a strategy. Al Qaeda, for example, does not actually have a set list of grievances, other than the erosion of Muslim power since the middle ages. If all US troops left Saudi Arabia, and all the Jews in Israel left tomorrow, would that disempower AQ? Absolutely not. I think you might have hinted at this when you said "legitimate grievances", but in that case there may be a large class of illegitimate grievances.

Absolutely. Not every grievance is legitimate, and the desire of some Arab terrorist groups to drive Israel into the sea is a classic case in point. That said, we are going to have to find a way of living with those with such grievances in the long term, because they are not simply going to go away. The lack of open religious warfare between Catholic and Protestant in Europe shows that such accommodations can be reached; it's just a matter of getting there.

(Though I have to say that I think Stephen is mistaken about Al Qaeda. It's leaders may be motivated by a desire to restore Muslim glory and what-have-you, but the rank and file, the ones actually conducting the attacks and doing the dying, seem to be motivated by issues such as Iraq, Palestine, and America's support of tyrannical regimes. Justice in these areas would definately disempower them...)

Justice is not the sole solution to terrorism. It must be combined with law-enforcement and possibly military action, but without justice, those solutions will simply fail. If we want to deal with terrorism in the long-term, we need to address its root causes - otherwise we're simply bailing without plugging the hole.

Test?

Blast, Mushroom Cloud Reported in N. Korea

This could be a nuclear test, or it could be another accident similar to the one which levelled Ryongchon in April. We won't know until the CTBTO's international monitoring network picks up fallout.

Update: According to CNN, an unnamed US official has denied it was a nuclear test. His excuse though is a classic:

The U.S. official said the cloud could be the result of a forest fire.

I'm sure that's Tui-able.

Taking their responsibilities seriously

While the Americans are continuing to kill civilians in Fallujah and elsewhere, the British at least are taking their responsibilities to Iraq seriously. More than 40 British soldiers are now being prosecuted in civilian courts, for everything from assault and beatings to torture and murder. Looking at the descriptions of the cases, they're not just prosecuting for deliberate and calculated actions - people are being charged for deaths resulting from negligence (stray bullets during a firefight) and misunderstandings (a man shot while reaching into his jacket for his gun license) - things the Americans wouldn't bat an eyelid at. The clear intention is to send a mesage that civilian deaths are unacceptable, that Iraqis will receive the full protection of the law from their occupiers, and above all, that justice will be seen to be done.

The contrast with the American attitude that the lives of Iraqi civilians matter less than those of trigger-happy and panicked US troops, and with their denials, foot-dragging, and slap on the wrist sentences over Abu Ghraib couldn't be any clearer.

Forgeries?

I've spent far too much time today skimming the debate about the newly released documents from the Texas Air National Guard which show that Bush disobeyed a direct order to undergo a medical examination, resulting in his suspension from flight status, and that pressure was applied to prevent him from being kicked out on his arse or (worse) transferred to active service. My conclusions?

Firstly, no matter how obscure you think a subject is - say, the capabilities of 1970's-era electric typewriters - there will be some group of geeks on the internet who will know.

Secondly, KiwiPundit's sneering about people in 1972 using proportional fonts and superscripts on typewriters says more about his ignorance of the technology than it does about the authenticity of the documents.

Thirdly, the fact that the memos could have been produced on a 1970's typewriter (and in some cases look as if they were mechanically typed rather than printed) does not of course mean they are authentic. But it does mean that they are not, as some would have it, "crude" and immediately impeachable on their face (unless you think anything which contradicts the President is by definiton false, that is). You can of course fake anything with sufficient technology; but personally I'd rather listen to actual forensic document experts than obviously partisan wingnuts who think the world began with MS-Word. Interestingly, CBS has a couple of those, and are standing by their story. And interestingly, the White House has so far acted as if they were authentic (which makes you wonder what sort of game they're playing if they think they're not).

Finally, none of the above matters. By screaming "forgery" at the top of their lungs, Bush's partisans have sufficiently muddied the waters to ensure that scant attention will be paid to the memo's contents, no matter how many specialists authenticate them. Which means that unless CBS can come up with some serious knockdown proof to show authenticity, Bush wins either way...

New Fisk

We should not have allowed 19 murderers to change our world

Casualties

At a time when everybody is noting the milestone in US casualties, Iraqis are wondering why nobody is counting their dead. A glance at the Iraq Body Count tally to my left shows that the best estimate is between 11800 and 13800; the reason it's only an estimate is because neither the US military or the Iraqi regime bothers to keep any records of civilian casualties; the regime went so far at one stage as to ban journalists from hospitals, to prevent any independent counts. It's inconvenient, you see. Especially when so many of the deaths are due to indiscriminate use of firepower by the occupying forces. As the Independent's Patrick Cockburn notes, "the Americans also have a much-feared practice of spraying fire in all directions when they come under attack". Then there's their habit of using overwhelming firepower in urban areas, seemingly without regard for civilian lives (vide Fallujah). "Trigger happy" seems to be an appropriate description here...

New Kiwi blog

Justice, Incorporated. "Left wing socio-political commentary, predominantly on NZ and Israeli politics."

Ghosts

We've known since June that the US had held at least one "ghost" detainee off the books and without informing the Red Cross, in violation of the Geneva Conventions. The recent US Army reports into Abu Ghraib and prison abuse (which I still haven't got round to reading) apparently mention another seven cases. But now it seems the total could be up to a hundred - but the US Army (responsible for running the prisons) doesn't know exactly how many because the CIA won't tell them. I guess they're busy trying to cover their arses - and that of Donald Rumsfeld.

As for where this is going, put it together: dozens, maybe a hundred "ghost detainees" held in secret. Outright torture. Orders from the top. CIA stonewalling. It's looking more and more as if Seymour Hersh was right.

Consistency

Running with the Devil accuses me of a "change of heart" over Tali Fahima:

He is no longer upset with Israel's reasons for arresting Tali Fahima (wonder what could have changed his mind?). He is now concerned with her "imprisonment without trial". Hey, I know this game. It involves throwing accusations at Israel and hoping one of them sits!

Hardly. The fact that she has been subjected to administrative detention rather than charged with any crime has always been my central concern in this case, though it may not have been entirely clear given the brevity of my original post. Detention without trial is something I have consistently opposed: I oppose it when it is done in Israel, I oppose it when it is done in Russia, I oppose it when it is done in the US and UK, and I oppose it when it is done right here in New Zealand. This is not a case of holding Israel to higher standards - I'm holding them to the same damn standards that I hold everybody else to: respect for fundamental human rights.

There's no question that Israel is better on average at respecting (Israeli's) human rights than it's neighbours - but that's setting the bar extraordinarily low, and in no way excuses any violations. If Israel wants to be regarded as a civilised nation, it must act like one - just like everybody else.

Labour and income inequality

JustLeft looks at the income inequality section of the Social Report, and concludes that

Labour's policy programme to date has not had a substantive impact on income inequality as defined by this data

While he doesn't intend it as such, that "as defined by this data" is an important caveat. As I point out here, the income inequality data in the Social Report is three years out of date. The reason Labour's policies don't seem to have had a substantive impact is because there are no data points since those policies have been implemented. The top tax rate was increased in 2000 - 2001, and looking at past data, the effects wouldn't show up until around 2002 at the earliest. The regular minimum wage increases will likewise take a while to feed through.

So, given the available data it is simply too early to tell whether Labour's policies have in fact reduced inequality. We'll get some indication when the next Household Economic Survey is released later this year, but we won't really know until someone takes a comprehensive look inside the data as was done in the Statistics Departments Incomes report, or tracks changes in decile shares historically, as seen in figure 4.5 in Brian Easton's The Whimpering of the State.

How the world feels about Bush

Who does the world want to win the US election? John Kerry by a mile, if the poll at BetaVote is anything to go by. Currently he's hovering on around 85% of the global vote, with support of around 90% in most western democracies.

Unscientific and totally meaningless, but very amusing all the same.

(Hat tip: Hard News).

Tali Fahima and imprisonment without trial

Running with the Devil thinks that Israeli peace activist Tali Fahima deserves to be detained:

Fahima seems to be deeply implicated in an attack at the Qalandiyah checkpoint on August 11. The attack left six Border Policemen injured - three seriously. Two Palestinians were killed and another 24 were injured in the incident.

These allegations were mentioned in the Guardian article, and my response is simple: if the Israeli government has evidence that Fahima has been involved in terrorism or any other crime, then they should charge her and put her on trial. If they are unwilling (or unable) to do that, they should release her. No state should be imprisoning anyone unless they have been found guilty in fair and open proceedings, or have been charged, are awaiting trial, and are a flight risk or significant danger to others.

Imprisonment without trial is a fundamental violation of human rights. It is also open to government abuse (as some suspect in this case). And that is why civilised countries forbid it.

The new style of terrorism

Fighting Talk talks about how Beslan symbolises a new style of terrorism:

Remember before September 2001, when hijacked planes always landed and were met by negotiators? When the whole purpose of hostages was that they were bargaining chips, and gave the dissidents a rare upper hand so long as they played their cards right? Remember how on the first three 9/11 planes no-one thought to fight back, because the automatic assumption was that the whole point of being a hijacked passenger was to shut up, hope that you weren't one of the token killings "to prove we're serious", and wait for your eventual release? Boy, has that theory ever gone out the window and down the inflatable slides. In Russia it was evident that the captured people weren’t really that important to the terrorists. No food or water, and no access to first aid, equals no value placed on keeping people alive. And this equals a brand new way of trying to get what you want.

Over the past thirty years the international community has responded to terrorism by playing hardarse. The rule was "do not negotiate with terrorists". Governments were shamed and strongarmed into this policy of sacrificing their citizens for the benefit of others, on the basis that giving in to one group of terrorists would simply encourage more. As a result, hostage takings generally became a waiting game for the inevitable bloody "rescue" by special forces.

The aim of the policy was to reduce terrorism by lowering the incentives. Terrorists would realise that they would gain nothing by terror, and therefore give up. Simon Pound likens this to training a dog not to beg at the table.

Unfortunately, the terrorists have taken a different lesson from it: they're cutting out the middle man. Governments won't negotiate, but in most countries governments are answerable to their people. The new tactic therefore seems to be spreading random mayhem while sending a clear message that it will not stop until there is policy change, then sitting back and letting public opinion take its course. While governments are sanguine about sacrificing the lives of their citizens "for the greater good", ordinary people are understandably less keen to have their friends and loved ones killed and maimed for the sake of others; to the extent that the government has the power to prevent this, it will attract blame and be pressured to give in. If it doesn't, it may eventually be de-elected and replaced with someone who will.

It's a long-term and uncertain strategy, and can only be used for broad goals rather than specific ones (freeing a country rather than a single person), but there is no real way of disincentivising it, except by governments becoming less responsive to their people - and that causes problems of its own. And other tactics - censoring media coverage, using propaganda campaigns to sow hate and manipulate public opinion, responding with savagery and brutality against the terrorist's perceived supporters - are themselves problematic and undermine a government's own legitimacy (and in the latter case may simply promote more terrorism to boot).

The only long-term strategy for truly defeating terrorism is justice. Terrorists do not come from nowhere. They have grievances, some of which are legitimate, and have resorted to force because other tactics to resolve those grievances have failed. Addressing those grievances (or preventing them from happening in the first place) will at the minimum deprive the terrorists of the public support they need to function, and rob them of their cause.

Bring 'em on

The US death toll in Iraq has reached a thousand.

Fourteen months ago, Bush challenged Iraqi insurgents, saying "bring 'em on". I hope he's regretting it now.

Clear and present danger?

What constitutes a "clear and present danger" to the state of Israel warranting administrative detention without trial? Talking to Palestinians, humanising them, and attempting to explain their side of the story.

New kiwi blog

Via Hard News: Number 60.

Misinterpreting the Bill of Rights Act

Ackbar blames the Bill of Rights Act for the government's decision to force students to be financially dependent on their parents until age 25:

That wonderful piece of legislation, empowered by Judges (ie: Judge-man law, very unconstitutional) the NZ Bill of Rights Act now appears to be setting government policy.

Unfortunately, it is clear from the above that he has no idea of what the Bill of Rights Act actually says or how it is interpreted. The BORA is not "empowered by judges" to set or constrain government policy. There is no "judge made" power to overturn legislation that is inconsistent with the rights and freedoms affirmed in the act - in fact, such power is explicitly denied. What influence the BORA has over policy and legislation comes purely from Parliament.

The BORA was always intended to guide government policy. That is why it requires that the Attorney-General bring any clause in a bill which is inconsistent with the BORA to the attention of Parliament. But it does not prevent such a bill from being enacted into law (and current interpretations of the doctrine of Parliamentary Sovereignty explicitly forbid such limitations).

In practice, this means that every cabinet proposal or piece of legislation must be scrutinised for inconsistency. Unfortunately, as the example of student allowances shows, this scrutiny is not always conducted in good faith. In this case the government is simply using the BORA as cover for a purely financial decision. Their current moves towards legal equality for de facto couples would have required them to recognise the financial independence of every student in a de facto relationship (just as they had done for married couples). They didn't want to pay for this, and so they concocted the fiction that the student allowance scheme discriminated on the basis of employment or marital status (it didn't - instead, it used marriage or employment as signs that an applicant was financially independent of their parents, a valid distinction in a means-testing regime). And so in the name of not discriminating on the basis of employment or marital status, they decided to discriminate on age instead.

Like any good lefty, I am in favour of universal student allowances. But if the government is going to means test, it should follow the logic and exclude (or rather, pay) those who are actually independent of their parents - not adopt a one-size-fits-all solution designed purely to save them money.

Blogging the foreshore

Via BlogGreen Aotearoa: Green MP Metiria Turei is blogging the foreshore & seabed select committee hearings. She also has a link to the public submissions on the Bill.

Public servants and politicians

Big News displays a certain ignorance when commenting on Nania Mahuta's "rebel submission" on the Foreshore & Seabed Bill:

If public servant Haami Piripi almost lost his job for doing the same thing, why then are public servants forced to be apolitical when Government MP's don’t even have to toe the party line?

Firstly, Piripi is not a public servant. Secondly, linking public servants and politicians in the above manner is simply a category error. The duty of public servants to be neutral and professionally serve the government of the day has nothing whatsoever to do with the activities of elected politicians. Big News might as well have asked why public servants are forced to be apolitical when there are opposition MP's in the House, and it would have made as much (or as little) sense. Thirdly, Nania Mahuta doesn't work for the government or for Helen Clark (despite what she may think), and is under no legal obligation to "toe the party line".

The role of politicians is to debate and decide policy. Nania Mahuta's submission is simply a part of that process. While it has been unusual recently for MPs to dissent so publicly from party positions, it was common under FPP, and it is something I'd like to see a lot more of.

By contrast, the role of public servants is to enact the policies of the government of the day. Because we want an experienced and professional public service, we also demand that they equally be able to serve future governments (the alternative is replacing much of the public service with every change of government). Hence public service neutrality.

Punishment and sackings

DPF points out another obvious flaw in Goff's proposal - it would establish some very bad incentives:

It would almost be encouraging prison guards to beat up prisoners, so that damages would be paid to the original victim.

He also points out that prison officers need some way of punishing misbehaviour within the prison and protecting themselves from violent inmates. But they can already do this under the present law - and such protection is a long, long way from making people live in their own filth under constant lighting with no wristwatches, clocks, or calendars. "Psychological torture" is a strong phrase, but there is a certain similarity between the Behavior Management Regime and disorientation techniques used to break people's will and soften them up for interrogation.

As for sackings, I've been curious about that myself. Surely running a prison that violates basic human rights standards and losing your employer half a million dollars seem to be good reasons for heads to roll? Unfortunately, the communications unit at Corrections has been singularly unhelpful, and so my Official Information Act request will be in the mail.

Staggered

The crown apparantly thinks that it would be acceptable to keep Ahmed Zaoui in jail without trial for five years.

I am simply staggered by this. Imprisonment without trial is about as fundamental a violation of human rights as you can get. Our earliest constitutional document - the Magna Carta - explicitly bans it:

No free man shall be seized or imprisoned, or stripped of his rights or possessions, or outlawed or exiled, or deprived of his standing in any other way, nor will we proceed with force against him, or send others to do so, except by the lawful judgement of his equals or by the law of the land.

This is considered so important that it is the only section of the Magna Carta which has been retained in New Zealand law (through its confirmations in 1351, 1354, and 1368). For the crown to suggest that it is acceptable to keep someone in jail without trial for five years is pissing on our most fundamental laws and values. That's the sort of thing that goes on in shitty despotic regimes like Burma, China, North Korea, and Algeria - it should not be happening in New Zealand.

If the government cannot guarantee Zaoui a fair and speedy trial, then it should release him while the lawyers do their work. We grant that much to suspected murderers; surely we can grant it to a refugee who has not been charged with any crime.

Ploughing on regardless

Phil Goff is going ahead with his law to prevent prisoners being paid compensation by the government. The law will apparantly cover any compensation payment by the state to an inmate and give it to the prisoner's victims. There's an obvious problem in that this seems to be far too broad. Compensation cases can take years to progress through the courts; is Goff really trying to say that people should be denied justice on a years-old ACC or police brutality payout dating from before conviction (and having nothing to do with any criminal activity) because they happen to be in prison at the time? There's also an obvious loophole, in that prisoners may complete their sentences before filing or seeing a judgement - several of the BMR claimants had been released, as had Andrew MacMillan). Plugging this would require effectively saying that no prisoner can ever receive compensation for something done to them while in prison - which will give our prisons carte blance to violate the law and victimise and brutalise prisoners with impunity. Don't think it doesn't happen here, because this case proves it does, and there are far worse.

No society should single out a section of its population as ineligable for justice. But that is exactly what Goff is trying to do here. Not explicitly, of course - that would be a little too blatant, even for him - but by denying incentives. And that is bad enough.

National has become the National Front

National has really come a long way from being the party of Jim Bolger, Doug Graham, and historical reconciliation - as illustrated by this extraordinary press release from Gerry Brownlee:

National Party Maori Affairs spokesman Gerry Brownlee says the rise of Tariana Turia's Party should force Labour to come clean on its agenda for Maori and its plan for race relations should it win the next election.

"The Maori Party has made it clear that it plans to work with Labour after the next election and that it plans to be uncompromising in its pursuit of bottom-line policies.

"Their presence, with significant support from Maori, will mean the political debate takes a different shape and direction.

"Labour can no longer sit on the fence. The Government must now make it clear where it stands on Maori issues and the place of the Treaty - so the public can make an informed choice about our country's direction.

Brownlee is demanding that Labour choose between Pakeha and Maori. And he has the gall to call them "divisive"?

Once upon a time National purported to govern in the interests of all New Zealanders (or at least in the interests of all the rich, regardless of race). Now by demanding that other parties choose which race they represent (and choosing itself to represent only Pakeha interests), it has degenerated into simply being a larger version of the National Front.

Critiques

JustLeft talks about the Market Society and its fallout. It's good reading, illustrating many of the problems that arise from a monomaniacal focus on markets. Along the way, he comments

The left has not had a persuasive critique of market extremism that has been well trotted out, mainly because it involved levels of nuance that are beyond the media's ability to understand or articulate.

To the contrary, I think the left critique of market extremism in the early 90's was both extremely persuasive, widely reported, and very simple; all people had to do was look at the simultaneous growth of foodbanks and unemployment, the falling wages, and the taint of corruption surrounding various privatisations to see the obvious flaws. The problem was that both major political parties ignored this critique, and the stacked electoral system prevented minor parties from voicing it effectively, despite their gaining significant support.

The modern critique is just as simple. The market is simply a tool. It's an extremely useful tool, but it's not the only one at our disposal, and it's not the best solution to every problem. Most importantly, it serves us - we do not serve it. The problem with the 80's and 90's was that policymakers forgot this; they became obsessed with their shiny new market tool, applied it to areas where it really don't work, and increasingly substituted its goals for their own. It was a classic case of someone who only has a hammer thinking that every problem is a nail.

As an aside, JustLeft also comments on the importance of the next election:

National still thinks it can govern with its old extremist ideas. A third consecutive election defeat at the hands of a mildly left-wing government might help hammer home the fact that they're wrong.

Third? The people of New Zealand have already rejected market extremism in five successive elections (every election since 1987). It's only due to the undemocratic nature of FPP and the vagaries of Winston that they managed to hold sway for so long. If National doesn't understand by now that people don't think that the market is the answer to every problem, then they're completely deaf to public opinion.

Equal rights for all couples

Having previously railed against confusing the Civil Union and Relationships (Statutory References) Bills, Big News now seems happy to deliberately conflate them in the service of bigotry. Using the example of a lesbian couple who have been together for two months, he asks "should this couple have equal rights as married couples now, later, or not at all?", and points out that "Michael Cullen has said that the Civil Union legislation is designed to recognise those in long term relationships", not short-term ones. But what rights are acquired by de facto couples and when are questions about the Relationships (Statutory References) Bill which have very little to do with civil unions or gays.

I've previously agreed that there are valid questions to be asked about the rights of de facto couples, and that in some cases a threshhold time (as used in the Property Relationships Act) may be appropriate. But what is absolutely clear is that a) the rules should be completely blind to the gender of a couple; and b) that the rights of de facto couples should (after some period of time) be substantively equal to those of married and civil unioned couples unless there is explicit "contracting out". Relationship rights do not come from god - they exist by virtue of the relationship and its implied consent. Marriage and civil unions simply make this consent explicit and concrete. If people don't want to have the ceremony and the piece of paper, that's fine - but it should not adversely affect their legal standing with respect to one another and the community as a whole.

Given the increased prelevance of de facto relationships, we would need the Relationships (Statutory References) Bill anyway to tidy up their legal situation (and some of this work has already been done in other legislation). And if it had not been coupled to the Civil Union Bill, I expect it would have been fairly uncontroversial (or no more controversial than the amendments to the Property Relationships Act). Unfortunately, because the two bills have been presented together, it is now being tarred by the religious right as a gay attack on the institution of marriage and attacked as a way of limiting the rights and status of civil unioned couples. We should not allow this to happen. While the bill itself may need tweaking, its goal of substantive equality for all couples is something that deserves support.

As for Big News, his obsession with gays and lesbians says more about him and his backward attitudes than it does about the bill in question.

Market culture

I've spent the last few days writing an assignment on New Zealand's climate change policies, and specifically on the "projects mechanism" of reducing emissions (and promoting renewable energy) by incentivising the market with carbon credits. This is only a temporary system, with the ultimate aim being to have emitters pay the full cost of their emissions through a carbon tax (thus allowing the market to effectively incetivise itself).

I was struck when looking at what other countries are doing on the same issue by how far New Zealand is from the international mainstream. Good old social-democratic Germany has set a renewable energy target and supports it with direct subsidies. Both the UK and Australia have followed suit on the target, but are enforcing it by regulation and a quasi-market mechanism; electricity suppliers must purchase a specified percentage of electricity from renewable sources (or tradable certificates saying that such electricity has been produced) or face legal and economic penalties. By contrast, we have adopted an extreme market route: New Zealand electricity companies are expected to provide renewable generation themselves, and it is only when this would not happen under "business as usual" that the government will step in to provide support (though in practice this means supporting projects that would properly happen anyway, to ensure that they happen sooner).

Partly this is for historical reasons; due to the unequal way in which generation assets were distributed during the reforms, a British/Australian style scheme would be seen as unfairly targeting the only significant privately-owned player in the market, Contact Energy (who got most of the gas plants on the basis that they were highly profitable). Partly it's due to the structure of the New Zealand electricity sector - the market framework makes market solutions the path of least resistance. But mostly, it's a matter of culture - Roger Douglas' lasting legacy has been to alter the thinking of policymakers, making them turn to markets and incentives first instead of regulation (alternatively, credit or blame could be assigned to Roger Kerr instead)

And on the other hand, markets are simply tools, to be assessed by their effectiveness in achieving the desired goals. Seen this way, New Zealand's efforts to reduce emissions can be seen as using the market as a tool to pursue green ends, with an obvious parallel to "third way" social policies (which use markets as tools to pursue social democratic ends).

And on the third hand, the problem of emissions reduction needs to be addressed from the demand side as well as the supply side, by promoting energy efficiency. And here it seems that politicians are taking a more traditional route, with the government openly speculating about promoting energy efficiency by tightening the building code to require double-glazing or solar water heaters. The problem is that it will only affect new houses - most of New Zealand's housing stock is old, uninsulated and draughty, and if we want to seriously improve our energy efficiency stats then something needs to be done about them. While demolishing Wainuiomata and rebuilding it from scratch has a certain appeal, realistically this means encouraging homeowners and landlords to install insulation. There are already some pilot projects to do this (some funded through the health budget on the basis that better housing will reduce health costs), but if we want to seriously reduce demand (and stop people from suffering from third-world diseases), then they need to be dramatically broadened. But then what would they look like? A market incentive, of course...

If you haven't already seen it

Greyshade has another excellent post on the role and interpretation of the Treaty of Waitangi.

His side of the story

Having been refused permission to interview Ahmed Zaoui in prison, the Herald is giving the Corrections Department, the SIS, the judge, and the politicians a right good bollocking on the matter. And from the look of it, they really deserve one. There's no issue here with security - Zaoui has been in jail for almost two years now, and is not considered at all dangerous. There's no question of poisoning a jury pool, because Zaoui hasn't been charged with anything and will never face a jury. The only reason to prevent him from speaking is that the officials responsible for his unjust detention are afraid that he will give his side of the story, and that this will (rightly) cause the public to ask nasty pointy questions about how he is being treated.

They see it differently, of course. Zaoui could use an interview to gain public sympathy (with the implication that he does not deserve it) resulting in a "trial by media" and increased political pressure for a fair trial or release. And of course the secret nature of the allegations against him means that the government could not properly respond to any publicity.

Bollocks. The secrecy has in fact worked the other way, with the government putting about lurid allegations of terrorist connections, while Zaoui has been powerless to respond. Denying him direct access to the media is simply an effort to perpetuate this imbalance. As for a "trial by media", Zaoui's case involves issues of fundamental human rights of concern to every New Zealander, which are deserving of the highest level of media scrutiny. But I guess our official's "right" to cover their own arses from public scrutiny and political flack is more important than that.

A state of their own

MusiCal wonders why people are willing to fight for "a state of their own":

What's this thing about separate states? What am I missing? Why can't you share a state with other (different?) people?

Well, you can - if they respect you and treat you equally, and if your interests are properly taken into account. But where that doesn't happen - where the law is unequal, where you are treated as a conquered people "in your own land", or where your local concerns are essentially ignored by central government, then running things yourself begins to look appealing.

Most separatist campaigns are driven by perceived injustice. Remove the injustice, and separatism becomes unnecessary.

Paying the bill

The government could have to pay up to $4.5 million to prisoners imprisoned under the Corrections Department's "Behavioural management Regime". This is what happens if you run an unlawful and inhumane system of imprisonment, and if the government wants to avoid such payouts, it should put its fucking house in order.

As for the Sensible Sentencing Trust's position that "it was absurd for the inmates to claim they had been psychologically tortured by the strict solitary confinement after the way they had treated their victims", it is simply wrong. Inhumane and degrading treatment in prison is wrong. So is murder. Being a murderer does not remove your fundamental human rights, and it does not mean that you can be victimised at will because crimes against you "don't count". The Sensible Sentencing Trust and Phil Goff would obviously disagree, but by doing so they are not standing for justice - they are standing for the Hobbesean war of all against all.

The bigger picture

Predictably, JustLeft accuses me of "losing sight of the bigger picture" over my post attacking Phil Goff. I guess it depends on whether you think the "bigger picture" is all about the Labour Party - or about advancing the progressive values for which it purportedly stands.

Phil Goff's record as Minister of Justice speaks for itself. At every turn he has done his utmost to compete with National and ACT to be ever more vindictive, merciless, and "tougher" towards criminals. He has increased sentences, proposed chemical castration for sex offenders, shifted the burden of proof in asset forfeiture to "guilty until proven innocent", introduced majority verdicts on juries to make gaining a conviction easier, and repeatedly opposed any compensation for those mistreated by the state on the grounds that criminals are scumbags - even in the most egregious circumstances. These are not liberal or progressive positions, and they are not worthy of our support. And thanks to MMP, we don't have to support them.

Contrary to JustLeft's implication, you can take a principled stand on human rights without risking a National-party government. Both of Labour's "wing parties" take human rights seriously; both have repeatedly expressed their opposition to Goff's excesses. Voting for them rather than Labour will shift the balance of power within the left, and increase their ability to restrain Goff's authoritarian impulses. Because it's quite clear that his fellow Labour MPs, despite their impressive individual records on human rights issues, are unwilling or unable to do it themselves.

As for the "bigger picture": it is not about the Labour Party or its internal membership; it is about us, the voters, and how we can best advance our values. Labour is simply a vehicle for doing this, to be judged on its effectiveness, and it is not the only one. We - and they - should keep that in mind.

Those who support human rights should not support Labour

So, Phil Goff finds it "personally offensive" that prisoners can go to court and win damages from the crown when they are grossly mistreated by the Corrections Department?

Well, fuck it, I find it personally offensive that Phil Goff thinks that keeping people in solitary confinement for extended periods of time and forcing them to live in their own filth is acceptable treatment. I find it personally offensive that he believes that there is a group of New Zealanders who are not entitled to equal justice under the law or to the fundamental protections enshrined in the Bill of Rights. And I find it personally offensive that he wants to "solve" this "problem" by trying to retrospectively punish these people for the crown's crimes.

What the Department of Corrections did to these prisoners was unlawful, and it was wrong. They are therefore deserving of compensation. If the government believes it is appropriate for violent offenders to pay reparations to their victims, then it should give judges the option to impose such at sentencing. But to impose them post facto, in an unlimited fashion and without the oversight of a judge is grossly unjust (not to mention a fairly transparent effort to insulate the crown from liability for future misbehaviour). If justice is to mean anything, it must apply equally, to everyone - even prisoners and criminals.

As for Goff, he symbolises everything that is wrong with the Labour Party today. He has compromised on its fundamental values of human rights in favour of arbitrary state power and pandering to the vicious vindictiveness of the "hang 'em high" brigade. As long as he holds his ministerial warrant, those who support human rights should not support Labour.

Six years

Former Malaysian Deputy PM Anwar Ibrahim has had his conviction for sodomy overturned and will be released later today. The Malaysian Federal Court found that the lower court had "misdirected itself" and that Ibrahim should have been acquited. It's a victory for justice, but a rather late one - noone should have to spend six years in jail on trumped-up charges, especially for a bullshit "crime" like sodomy.

Advocacy is not terrorism

I'm constantly appalled by the right's eagerness to fling charges of "treason" at anyone who disagrees with them, and sadly our local right-wing bloggers are no exception. In response to last week's comments by Margaret Mutu, MyRight suggested that she be prosecuted for terrorism, under the Terrorism Suppression Act 2002. I suggest that he should actually read the legislation. While he has correctly quoted section 5 (2), which says that terrorism is about inducing terror or compelling governments, he seems to have missed the part where it says that a terrorist act must be "1 or more of the outcomes specified in subsection (3)". What are those "outcomes"? Subsection 5 (3) is fairly specific:

(3) The outcomes referred to in subsection (2) are -

(a) the death of, or other serious bodily injury to, 1 or more persons (other than a person carrying out the act):

(b) a serious risk to the health or safety of a population:

(c) destruction of, or serious damage to, property of great value or importance, or major economic loss, or major environmental damage, if likely to result in 1 or more outcomes specified in paragraphs (a), (b), and (d):

(d) serious interference with, or serious disruption to, an infrastructure facility, if likely to endanger human life:

(e) introduction or release of a disease-bearing organism, if likely to devastate the national economy of a country.

So unless she kills people, blows stuff up, or poisons sheep, Mutu isn't a terrorist. But I guess MyRight didn't bother to read that bit.

But what about threats? Didn't Mutu threaten to do some of the above? This is covered by subsection 5 (5):

(5) To avoid doubt, the fact that a person engages in any protest, advocacy, or dissent, or engages in any strike, lockout, or other industrial action, is not, by itself, a sufficient basis for inferring that the person -

(a) is carrying out an act for a purpose, or with an intention, specified in subsection (2); or

(b) intends to cause an outcome specified in subsection (3).

The law explicitly states that advocacy, by itself, does not constitute terrorism. There must be evidence of actual participation in a conspiracy, not just protests or vague threats. I guess MyRight didn't bother to read that bit either.

But what if, for the sake of argument, we granted MyRight's underlying contention that advocacy is terrorism and changed the law to suit? This would certainly allow Mutu to be prosecuted - but the second person into the dock would be Don Brash. His comments in Australia can certainly be seen as a deliberate attempt to cause "major economic loss" for political gain, and as a former Governor of the Reserve Bank, there is no question that he knew exactly what he was doing. What's good for the goose is good for the gander, after all; if Mutu should be prosecuted, then so should Brash.

Strangely, I don't think MyRight will be so keen on adopting a consistent stance on this matter...

No matter how cynical I am, it's never enough...

In relation to yesterday's post on money and MMORPGs, a correspondent has informed me that there are already online games which have incorporated the admin's ability to create stuff from nowhere into the revenue model, and which explicitly sell in-game stuff to players. Apparantly the online CCG Star Chamber works like that. I should have known...

Moral arguments

The chief reason for opposition to the civil union bill is an underlying belief that homosexuality is wrong. The two most common justifications given for this belief are that a) homosexuality is "unnatural", or b) that God (through the Bible) says it is wrong. However, both of these attempts at justification fail to provide an ethical basis for the conclusion that homosexuality is wrong (or any other ethical conclusion, for that matter).

The view that homosexuality is "unnatural" runs into an immediate problem if applied literally, in that it is simply mistaken about the "natural order" it claims to look to for moral guidence. Homosexual behaviour is widespread in the animal kingdom, and humans seem to be unexceptional in that regard. Shifting to a telelogical claim that "the purpose of sex is reproduction" and that something is immoral if it does not serve its purpose suffers from the same flaw, as it seems that in nature sex is not used solely for reproduction. Bonobos, our second-closest primate relatives, use sex as a greeting, as a form of bonding, and during food sharing (in fact, according to Frans de Waal, "anything, not just food, that arouses the interest of more than one bonobo at a time tends to result in sexual contact. If two bonobos approach a cardboard box thrown into their enclosure, they will briefly mount each other before playing with the box"). In humans, sex seems to be used most frequently for pair-bonding. A further shift could be made to claiming that the purpose of an organism is to propagate its genes (and that homosexuality is therefore wrong as it interferes with this), but this completely ignores the fact that homosexuals frequqently do have children - and that many hetereosexuals do not (that's quite apart from objections based on the vehicle / replicator split, or from the liberal pluralist position that the only "purpose" for a person is that which they define for themselves).

But there's also a more general problem with this claim, and that is that it purports to derive a moral conclusion (an "ought" statement) from facts about the world ("is" statements). But David Hume pointed out long ago that this is troublesome:

In every system of morality, which I have hitherto met with, I have always remark'd, that the author proceeds for some time in the ordinary way of reasoning, and establishes the being of a God, or makes observations concerning human affairs; when of a sudden I am surpriz'd to find, that instead of the usual copulations of propositions, is, and is not, I meet with no proposition that is not connected with an ought, or an ought not. This change is imperceptible; but is, however, of the last consequence. For as this ought, or ought not, expresses some new relation or affirmation, 'tis necessary that it should be observ'd and explain'd; and at the same time that a reason should be given, for what seems altogether inconceivable, how this new relation can be a deduction from others, which are entirely different from it.

What Hume is saying (in his eighteenth-century English) is that there can be nothing in the conclusion which is not already in the premises; if all you have are "is" statements, you can't derive an "ought". In practice, this means that any argument from nature needs an explicit linking premise to provide the moral content. The most common linking premise is a simple definition: natural = good, and unnatural = bad. The problem is that this immediately founders on the fact that nature is red in tooth and claw; rape and murder are both natural, as is cannibalism (just look at all those animals where the male eats any unrelated offspring), but we don't want to regard any of those as being good. The second most common link is to invoke god, which is dealt with below.

What about the argument that homosexuality (or anything "unnatural") is wrong because God (through the Bible) says so? This is known as the Divine Command Theory of ethics, and its flaws can be seen the moment you pause to think. If things are wrong solely because God says so, morality is essentially arbitrary, a game of divine "Simon says" only with the possibility that rape, torture and murder would actually be good if God decided that they were. We're left with the "morality" seen in Genesis 22:2 (in parody: God commanded Abraham to sacrifice his only son, and it was good). What's being promoted here is not morality, but blind obediance to authority - something that is very definitely not good.

(The Divine Command Theory also reduces claims that God is good to a vacuous tautology - God is good only in the sense that he does whatever he wants to. Four-year-olds do whatever they want to too; does that make them good?)

Neither of these common arguments provides a proper basis for believing that homosexuality is wrong. If opponents of civil unions wish to rely on a moral argument against homosexuality, then they will have to look elsewhere for justification.

Random thoughts on money and online games

What is money?

A common answer is "anything that can be used as a medium of exchange". Money is a symbol for the value of goods, a kind of shorthand for "three pigs" or "one chicken". Such symbols have included precious metals, shells, giant stone wheels, and the current paper and electronic data. But on this definition, money isn't just the stuff issued by governments as legal tender - to the extent that they can be used to purchase goods and services, it also includes limited and private currencies such as air points, book tokens, and McDonald's cheeseburger vouchers.

I've often wondered what prevents the owners of these private currencies from simply "printing more money" - for example, what stops Air New Zealand from paying its debts with airpoints, or PayPal from paying people by tweaking its database? The obvious answer is self-interest. The owner of a private currency is frequently also its backer, so every voucher or airpoint created is effectively a contingent liability which must later be repaid. Air New Zealand must provide travel in exchange for air points, and PayPal must ultimately provide US Dollars in exchange for money stored on their system. But interestingly, in the latter case PayPal may not actually need to provide those US dollars - its widespread acceptance means that fewer people need to take their money out of the system and into the real world, effectively reducing PayPal's liability. And so, to some extent they can simply "print money" (tweak their database) to pay their bills.

A more interesting example is online games. Most MMORPGs (Massively Multi-plyaer Online Role Playing Games) include an in-game currency, used for various purposes in the game world (buying cool stuff and as a kind of score), and they all have in-game goods (magic weapons, artefacts, or simply the characters themselves). It didn't take long before people started trying to convert their in-game wealth into "real" money - first through one-off auctions on EBay, and now through the GamingOpenMarket (an online currency exchange enabling funds to be transferred from one in-game currency to another, and into US Dollars). This has effectively set an exchange rate for these currencies, and given them a real value. This is kindof cool (I've heard of people who are trying to make a living by building then auctioning MMORPG characters), but also dangerous - because what the MMORPGS are effectively doing is printing money. Most of it stays within the game-world, but to the extent that it can be transferred into real currencies and represents a claim on real goods and services, it is as if they were printing US or NZ Dollars. This raises some interesting issues:

• How long will it be before the MMORPG companies notice this and incorporate it into their revenue model? They'd still need to produce a game, attract players and collect fees, but if a game became popular enough to create a secondary market, the company could start creating in-game money and goods specifically to sell for real money. While this would undoubtedly cause in-game inflation and alter the balance of character power in a way that (probably) detracted from the game, many MMORPGs have a limited lifespan and the problems may take long enough to show up for the company to reap a healthy profit in the meantime.
• This is inflationary - a private organisation is effectively increasing the money supply. Banks do this all the time when they issue credit, but their power to do so is tightly regulated by the government. This is mostly a theoretical problem, because of the relatively low rate of transfer - the GamingOpenMarket has only exchanged about US$350,000 of real currency for virtual, and transfers are limited by the number of people who want to gain in-game wealth without jumping through all the hoops - but its still interesting nonetheless. And what happens if transferring virtual money into real, whether from MMORPGs or a similar online form of entertainment which seemingly creates wealth ex nihilo, really takes off?
• On the third hand, you can view an MMORPG through the lens of our existing foreign exchange system as just another country (though a virtual one). Normally what happens if a country just prints money to pay people overseas is that the exchange rate drops; however MMORPG exchange rates are really a matter of popularity rather than anything to do with their economies or trade balance. Conceivably, a game could sustain large inflows (could keep on transferring wealth from the game world to the real one) as long as there are players willing to pay for it. And in a way, this is no different from the current US practice of funding enormous defecits by selling bonds to the Chinese; the significant difference being that a really good game could be self-sustaining, wheras eventually the US's creditors will want their money back.
• And on the fourth hand (how many hands do I have anyway?), what the MMORPGs are doing is really no different from making spoons, or giving a musical performance. They're producing goods which other people value and are therefore willing to pay for. It doesn't matter that those goods are virtual and cost practically nothing to make at the margin - neither does an autograph or a trading card, and people are willing to pay outrageous amounts of money for those (though usually not from the people actually signing things).

But while MMORPGs are fascinating, I think they are mostly of intellectual interest; it's things like PayPal which are important. Traditionally, currencies have been the domain of the nation-state and its sovereign power - but now we're seeing the beginnings of totally privatised currencies without ties to any government (and while PayPal is within US legal jurisdiction, it need not be; you can run a website from anywhere). As more transactions move online and are conducted in these private currencies, it will increasingly break down the barriers between economies and undermine the ability of nation-states to operate monetary policy. Our ability to (say) control inflation will depend not just on the actions of our government, but also on the decisions of private corporations beholden to no-one but their shareholders, who will be running their monetary policy for private profit rather than any sense of the public good (and no matter how twised you may think current monetary policy is, they still appeal to the public good to justify it).

The only way to prevent this is some form of global regulation. But I can't really see that happening any time soon.

Catching up

On sleep, and on the news. Despite buying the Herald in hardcopy every morning, I still feel completely out of touch with what's been going on in the world the last few days.

Silence

Why the silence? I'm currently in Auckland, and (mostly) AFK. Normal bloggage will resume Wednesdayish.

A blow for justice

Chile's Supreme Court has stripped former dictator Augusto Pinochet of his immunity - allowing him to finally be put on trial for the torture, murders, and disappearances committed by his regime.

No wonder I feel so tired

In my first year of blogging, I wrote just short of 110,000 words. A quick glance at my blogger profile today shows that I've written that much again in the six months since. Is this what addiction feels like?

Iona has a few thoughts on the sanctity of marriage and Dail Jones' anti-intellectualism...

Dunne on freedom of speech

Peter Dunne stands up for freedom on speech in the Herald today, with explicit reference to David Irving. There's an obvious question of why it has taken him a month to speak up on this - a skim of Scoop's archive of United Future press releases shows nothing but tuneless whistling and foot shuffling on that front. But the real reason quickly becomes apparant: Dunne is trying to tar those who oppose fundamentalist Christian opponents of the Civil Union Bill as intolerant and opposed to freedom of speech. This is simply mistaken - no-one is saying that people like Maxim or Destiny Church have no right to speak. What they are doing is calling bigotry by its name when they see it, and turning out into the streets to oppose it. But this is simply an example of answering speech with more speech - the very freedom that Dunne praises!

What Dunne fails to acknowledge is that tolerance of a view does not mean giving it a free ride. Destiny Church and their bigoted friends have every right to speak - but they have no right to expect the rest of us to remain silent about it.

A rat notices the rising water

Stephen Franks has indicated that he will consider moving to National next year if ACT continues to languish in the polls. This wouldn't involve a straight-out switch, which might invoke the Electoral Integrity Act; rather he would resign from Parliament before the election then stand as a candidate for National.

It's difficult to see this as anything other than a calculated attempt to undermine Rodney Hide, and his reaction will be interesting. But more interesting will be the reaction of National party members and MPs. They've already seen Don Brash cuckoo'ed into the party and then the leadership, and he seems to making it clear that MPs who do not share his extreme free-market views, such as Lynda Scott and Roger Sowry, are no longer welcome in National. If Franks jumps ship and gets a high list placing, things begin to look like a fully-fledged takeover...

Saving the Americans from their own stupidity

Grand Ayatollah al-Sistani returns from London, marches on Najaf with thousands of his followers, and within a few hours has a peace deal. This is an overwhelmingly positive step for Iraq - it allows both sides to back down from the standoff while saving face, and more importantly saves the Americans from their own stupidity.

For all the time the US military spends studying Clausewitz, they seem to have failed to absorb his most basic lesson: that war is ultimately just an expression of politics, whose success and failure must be measured in the political, rather than military realm. And looked at this way, there was simply no way they could win in Najaf. Back off, and lose face. Invade the shrine and martyr al-Sadr, and he becomes more powerful in death than he ever was in life. The last three weeks have been a futile exercise in American stupidity, driven by their desire to play hardarse, which has gained them precisely nothing, and killed a lot of people in the process. No doubt they'll proclaim a victory on the grounds of having killed hundreds of militamen, but those people are replaceable (and are being replaced even now by their brothers and cousins, all hellbent on revenge). The loss of goodwill with the Shi'a population isn't.

Morality, law, and cynicism

Philosophy, et cetera has a good post on the relationship between law and morality. He notes that there is an obvious connection - "why would we outlaw rape and murder if they weren't wrong?" - and tries to analyse it. Unfortunately, he fails to recognise that there are really two questions here: one about the actual relationship between the law and morality, and one about what that relationship should be. The first is entirely a matter of power and practical politics, to be answered by psychologists, sociologists and historians in the context of a particular society (though a quick and cynical answer is that the law will reflect the morality of the lawmakers). The second is itself a question of morality, to be debated endlessly by ethicists and political theorists.

As for domains, there are great chunks of the law that seem to have very little to do with morality. Food regulations, for example, or those governing weights and measures (or road rules, for that matter). These are practical considerations, not moral ones, and so the law cannot simply be a subset of morality . We outlaw things which are perfectly morally permissible, such as selling bananas by the pound rather than by the kilogram (at least in the EU).

The second approach - viewing the issue through the lens of folk-psychology - explains the actual relationship quite well. I've been thinking similar things when trying to build a political theory from cynicism and game theory - law is a tool for influencing behaviour by changing payoff matrices, based on a power-mediated compromise of the moral values of a society's members - but laid out like that, it simply seems trite and uninformative.

Media freedom in Iraq, part III

Having failed to deter the international media from covering the fighting in Najaf by repeatedly threatening to kill them, the Iraqi authorities have upped the ante, dragging them from their rooms at gunpoint to attend an impromptu press conference:

Correspondents in the Najaf Sea hotel said around a dozen policemen, some masked, stormed into the rooms of journalists and forced them into vans and a truck.

The Independent's Donald Macintyre reported that the police, some masked, "shouted threats and abuse at the reporters, along with their Iraqi drivers and translators, and fired about a dozen shots inside and outside the hotel before taking them before the police chief, Major-General Ghaleb al-Jazaari, to hear his emotional complaints about media coverage and the sufferings of police officers during the present crisis".

And the Daily Telegraph said today that its correspondent, a translator and a driver had been forced into a bus and two lorries before being subjected to a "tirade against the press".

The Iraqi Police, it seems, do not like the fact that the world is watching. But more importantly, they do not like the thought that their fellow Iraqis are watching - watching them doing the Americans' dirty work.

Impeaching Blair

My god! Somebody is actually doing it! After watching discontent simmer on for the last year over the way Tony Blair lied, manipulated, evaded and spun to gain support for the war in Iraq, it has all come to a head. A pair of academics have spent the last six months going over Blair's statements in public and to Parliament, comparing them with what he knew at the time, and concluded that there is a case to answer. Their report (update: - available here) argues that Tony Blair repeatedly lied and breached the responsibilities of his office. And it suggests a solution: impeachment.

Yes, impeachment - the same process that was used against Bill Clinton for rightly regarding his sexual indiscretions as nobody's business but his own. The Americans didn't get it from nowhere, they inherited it from the British Parliament - where it is still on the books despite not having been used for 150 years (having been replaced by the convention of Ministerial responsibility).

The impeachment procedure begins with one MP making an accusation and presenting his or her evidence. If the Commons agrees that there is a case to answer it appoints a committee to draw up articles of impeachment and notifies the House of Lords. If the articles are agreed, prosecutors are then appointed to try the case before the Lords, who are the judges. The Commons decides the sentence if the accused is found guilty.

Eleven MPs have risen to the challenge - sadly none from Labour - and that is more than enough to force a debate. Plaid Cymru MP Adam price makes his case here. I have no illusions about their ability to actually win the vote - but the mere fact that charges are being brought and debated will make it nigh-impossible for Blair to continue as Prime Minister. Hopefully the unctuous little weasel will get the message and resign.

Today is a beautiful day to be alive...

There is power in a union

In response to my post pointing out that lump sum payments to union members are simply the fruits of collective bargaining power, Capital Pundit stupidly asks

why can't teachers seek to secure economic benefits for themselves?

Because there is strength in numbers. Teachers are more powerful together than there are individually, and this allows them to extract greater benefits.

God, I know that we now view the world through the lens of atomised individualism (and as an individualist I think this is generally a good thing), but I didn't think it had gone so far as to blind people to this simple fact.

More good news

Crime is down to its lowest level since 1983. Even National will be hard pressed to find something to complain about in this, given that it is an absolute as well as a per-capita decrease - but I'm sure their spin-doctors will find something with which to contine their tactic of dishonest fearmongering.

We don't need your "civil war"

So, Professor Margaret Mutu makes some stupid remarks about warnings of "civil war" over the foreshore and seabed bill "not being hyperbole", and the far north being wracked by "the sorts of things... that happen in Palestine and Israel", and the right is frothing about it. National's Wayne Mapp immediately brayed "treason!", while ACT has seemingly joined them in calling for Professor Mutu to be fired from her position at the University of Auckland. This is a telling reminder of the ugly authoritarian attitude towards political dissent underlying National and ACT's brand of "freedom" (for wealthy supporters of the status quo only), and frankly paying Mutu far more attention than she deserves. As David Farrar said,

It is rather sad that a so called academic has so little substance in their submission, they have to rely on threats instead of rational persuasion.

The thing is, in the long term, Mutu is right. If we cannot live together with mutual respect for one another, and if one side continually uses its political advantage to reinforce its own privilege while seeking to reinforce the inequalities produced by disposession, then there is no option but to return to the Hobbesean war of all against all. But even with the current dispute over the foreshore, we're a long, long way from that. It is to the great credit of Maori that despite all that was done to them, they have consistently eschewed such tactics, instead preferring a strategy of tireless, patient advocacy. They have argued their cases before the courts, the Waitangi Tribunal, Parliament, and even the monarch, often over the course of decades and in the face of conscious foot-dragging by successive governments (one case took fourteen years for a single reserved decision to be released - during which many of the original claimants had died). That's far more patience than most societies get, and far more than I think we have any right to expect.

Fortunately, the tide is flowing very much against Mutu and those threatening violence. While it may not look that way, the process of settling historical Treaty claims is well on the way to completion; talk of ten of fifteen years is almost certainly an overestimate, and one informed person I've talked to expects it to all be wrapped up by the end of the decade. Absent that source of historical grievance (which will disappear if the truth is told and the settlements are just), there's not nearly as much to fight over.

Dubber vents his spleen at the anti-immunisation wackos...

Refugee quotas

National and ACT are using yesterday's appalling statistics on the failure of New Zealand society to embrace refugees to call for cuts to the refugee quota. According to Richard Prebble, we shouldn't be admitting "illiterate Afghani camel drivers". Which tells us more about Prebble's prejudices about non-europeans than it does about the people who seek refuge here. I'm surprised he didn't call them "sand niggers"...

But National is right about one thing: we should be doing more to help refugees settle in and ensure that they can participate fully in our society. This means english language lessons, assistance with finding work, having overseas qualifications recognised or gaining new ones, and above all, changing the racist attitudes of New Zealand employers. Something you see time and time again in stories about refugees and immigrants is the difficulty they have with finding work (see this week's Listener for the latest example). A New Zealand accent is an unspoken requirement of many jobs, and this needs to change. Until it does, refugees will continue to be overrepresented in the welfare rolls, and highly-qualified immigrants will continue to drive taxis.

De facto marriages

Submissions on the Relationships (Statutory References) Bill are critcising the way it changes the rights of de facto couples, effectively "marrying" them without their consent. On the one hand, most of this is right and proper - the very purpose of the bill is to grant de factos legal equality with married couples. But on the other hand, some rights probably do require some sign of consent and commitment beyond simply shacking up. The existing Property (Relationships) Amendment Act 2001 resolves this with respect to property rights by imposing a three-year time limit, after which a couple is treated as effectively married for the purposes of disposing of property on a dissolution. Incorporating similar provisions into parts of the omnibus bill would be perfectly acceptable.

And on the third hand, these are exactly the sort of questions the select committee process is designed to resolve. The bill will almost certainly be amended in response to submissions, and the balance of rights will almost certainly shift. Hopefully those amendments will be reasonable, rather than simply an attempt to entrench privilege and deny rights to de factos out of spite.

A suitable first case

Huata v. Prebble seems to be an excellent first case for the Supreme Court. Unlike the other cases that have been put to it, it deals with an issue of vital constitutional significance: the relationship between Parliament and the courts.

ACT's case relies on a clause in one of our most fundamental laws, the Bill of Rights 1688, which demands that

the freedome of speech and debates or proceedings in Parlyament ought not to be impeached or questioned in any court or place out of Parlyament

This clause establishes Parliamentary privilege, but it also makes Parliament master of its own affairs. What the court will have to decide is whether who sits in Parliament is part of Parliament's internal affairs, or is an issue of wider public concern. Like the Herald, I hope it chooses the latter path. Our MPs should be chosen by the electorate, not their fellow politicians.

Interesting

Backdraft: How the war in Iraq has fueled Al Qaeda and ignited its dream of global jihad.

"Freedom to discriminate" is not freedom for all

Yesterday morning on National Radio, Stephen Franks announced that he would be willing to vote for the Civil Union Bill if he can use it to gut the Human Rights Act. In Franks' view, the state should be neutral, but individuals should be allowed to discriminate on the basis of race, gender, sexual preference, religion, or anything else they desire, as a simple matter of freedom.

What's wrong with this view? Simply that it is deeply confused, both about discrimination and freedom. If we take freedom seriously, if we want it to be substantive rather than purely formal, then anti-discrimination legislation is both justified and necessary.

Contrary to Franks, the evil in discrimination does not lie in who is doing it; it is inherant in the act itself. Some discrimination punishes people for characteristics which are no fault of their own (such as race, gender, or sexual orientation). This is grossly unjust. Other discrimination (such as that on the basis of marital status or religious or political belief) seeks to supplant the choice of the victim and replace it with that of the perpetrator. This is coercion, an usurpation of personal autonomy, and deeply destructive of human freedom. Both types of discrimination prevent people from participating fully in society, and therefore constitute a denial of our fundamental moral equality. But if these are reasons to bar discrimination by the government, they are also reasons to bar discrimination by individuals. Injustice does not cease to be injustice, or coercion cease to be coercion, simply because it is done by a private person rather than the state.

But what about freedom? As a pluralist who values personal autonomy, I believe that freedom is both necessary and valuable because it allows people to live lives of their own choosing. "Freedom to discriminate" interferes with this; it allows those with economic or social power to victimise those without, and force them to abide by their arbitrary whims. That is freedom for the pike, and we are entirely justified in limiting it. Like limits on the use of force, limits on discrimination do not diminish freedom, they enhance it. They help ensure that freedom can be enjoyed by all, rather than just by the rich and powerful.

Fraud is better than force

There's an interesting story in this week's New Statesman about the upcoming elections in Afghanistan. It seems that democracy is catching on like wildfire over there - voter registration has been so successful that the number of registered voters is greater than the eligible population. In some areas there are twice as many registered voters as adults, and tales of people with multiple voting cards abound (one taxi driver had five).

It is clear then that the elections are going to suffer from widespread fraud. But OTOH, that seems to be a lot better than the alternative of settling things with guns. They will be far from perfect, but if the results of the elections are accepted by the people, then the Afghan elections will represent a real and positive step towards democracy. In this case at least, fraud is better than force.

Human rights and hurt feelings

There's been a lot of moral outrage over the case of Andrew MacMillan, a convicted murderer who was awarded $1200 in damages by the Human Rights Review Tribunal after he was denied access to a letter of complaint written about him to the prison. The outrage is driven both by the Tribunal's reason for awarding damages - "injury to his feelings, loss of dignity and humiliation" - and the feeling that MacMillan is a scumbag who doesn't deserve the money, but unfortunately it misses the point. This is more than just a matter of "hurt feelings".

The letter of complaint did not just go into a file somewhere to be ignred. It was used against MacMillan. He was told about it by prison officers, with the implication that it would affect his treatment. It was given to the parole board, where it could play a part in their decisions. It was not just a letter, it was evidence.

The letter was used as evidence by the parole board and it was used as evidence within the prison. In both cases, MacMillan was denied the right to view and challenge it. That violates accepted rules of judicial procedure, the Privacy Act, and ordinary standards of fairness and decency - all of which still apply to convicted murderers. Denying MacMillan the right to view and correct information held about him - to put his side of the story - is a very real harm, especially in a context where the information seemed to be known by everybody but him, and where people who had power over his life could act on it.

Those outraged about this are missing a very important point. If we want the right to be able to challenge evidence against us, or to tell our side of the story to government departments, banks and credit agencies, then we must extend this right to everyone. Even Andrew MacMillan.

Kangaroo court

The US has held its first military tribunal for an "enemy combatant" at Guantanamo. Salim Ahmed Hamdan of Yemen is being "tried" on charges of conspiracy to commit murder before a panel of five senior US military officers. He has no right to challenge his "judges" for pre-existing bias, no right to select his own counsel, no right against self-incrimination, and no real right of appeal. The rules of evidence permit hearsay and secret evidence, some of which he will have no right to hear, let alone challenge. This is not a fair process; it is a kangaroo court, dispensing victor's justice.

This is destroying America in order to save it. It compromises one of America's essential values: the right to a fair trial. The only way to avoid this compromise is to prosecute terrorism suspects in an ordinary court, in front of an ordinary judge, with ordinary rules of evidence. Otherwise, by forcing America to betray the very values that make it great, the terrorists will win.

Plugged

Oh dear - Russell plugged me during his national radio session this morning.

Guess I'd better write something then.

Backlash for tolerance

Check out the results of today's Stuff poll! The question was "does the way Destiny Church is protesting against the Civil Union Bill make you uncomfortable?"; A hefty 75% of respondents agreed.

I'm quite aware of the limits of internet polls. They're self-selected and therefore unrepresentative. That said, it's a good result. My gut feeling on yesterday's hatefest is that it will have driven people to support civil unions, simply because the opposition is so damn ugly. All we need now is for Bill "abomination to all mankind" Gudgeon to open his mouth again, and things should be set.

Dropping out?

Span has an insider's view of the Alliance's announcement that they won't be contesting the list, and she's not very happy:

So I've got back in - started going to meetings again, having my say, raising funds, and through no fault of my own found myself subbing for the youth rep on the Alliance Council this weekend. Of course what happened in that room is not for consumption outside the membership, but suffice to say the media line that was agreed is NOT what has been put out by the Leader in the last two days.

Oh dear. Does this mean a public retraction, or will they be stuck with what has been announced?

While it seems to be good tactics (absent a miracle a vote for the Alliance is a wasted one, and so they might as well direct them somewhere useful), not contesting the list will almost certainly result in the final demise of the party. But maybe they can salvage a decent left-wing think-tank from the ruins...

"Bribing" unions

NZPundit's fill-in denounces the government's lump-sum payments to PPTA members as "bribery". He's wrong. It's simply the fruits of union collective bargaining power.

To put it bluntly, the purpose of a union is to use its collective power to secure economic benefits for its members. Normally, this takes the form of improved wages and conditions - but it doesn't have to. In cases where the employer wishes to maintain a unified pay-scale and not to have to distinguish between union and non-union staff on a day-to-day basis, a lump sum is entirely appropriate. And that is exactly what has happened here - the Ministry of Education simply doesn't want the hassle (administrative and otherwise) of paying PPTA members more per week than non-union staff with identical duties and experience, and so it has opted for a one-off payment instead.

This is obviously annoying to teachers not receiving the payment, but there's a simple solution: join the union.

Constitutional issues IV

Greyshade has weighed in with another hefty post on constitutional reform; The Holden Republic has already responded. I don't have much to add at the moment (having already vented my spleen about the threshhold), but both posts are well worth reading.

Dropping out

The Alliance has decided not to contest the party list next election, for fear of robbing votes from the Greens and the Maori Party and driving them beneath the threshhold:

"Given the Alliance does not have parliamentary representation, the Alliance supports Labour coalition partners to be the Green Party and the Maori Party as opposed to the NZ First and/or United Future," the council resolved.

It's a smart choice for people who want a nominally left-wing government, but at the same time it illustrates the greatest flaw in MMP: the threshhold. This entirely arbitrary, all-or-nothing barrier distorts voter preferences, distorts party behaviour, and makes elections turn on which smaller party doesn't make it (which then encourages large parties to actively try and eliminate smaller ones and ensure that their supporters go unrepresented). It works directly counter to the purpose of a system predicated on greater democracy and enhanced representation.

If we want every vote to count and as many people as possible to be represented in parliament, we must eliminate the threshhold. In practice this means reducing it to 0.83% - the amount required to gain a single MP. This would allow people to vote honestly rather than tactically, and remove the incentive to cut deals over electorate seats (something voters don't seem to like at all, despite it making perfect tactical sense).

As for how it would look, if the 2002 election had been conducted on this basis, there would have been three additional parties in Parliament: the Alliance and Outdoor Recreation with one seat each, and Christian Heritage with two. The 1999 election would have given us a one-seat ALCP and Future NZ, and a three-seat Christian Heritage. Of course, both these elections were distorted by the presence of the threshhold - voters tended to see support for a minor party as a wasted vote if it had no chance of making 5%, and a large number of parties have in consequence ceased to contest the list. But the overall effect is likely to be a handful of smaller groups with one or two MPs each.

No matter how much we may dislike them, the fundamentalist Christians, Libertarians, and ACT are as deserving of representation as you or I, and a system which systematically prevents them from gaining it is fundamentally unjust.

Progress

The Israeli government has altered the route of its security barrier so that it encroaches less on Palestinian land. This is certainly better than before, but still not good enough. If the Israelis want to build a wall, they should be building it on the Green Line - any deviation from that must be negotiated with the Palestinian people. Otherwise, they're simply using "security" as an excuse to steal land and perpetuate injustice.

Unfortunately, at the same time they're expanding their settlement program, in violation of the freeze they'd agreed as part of the "road map". Give with one hand, and take away with the other...

The third world

Not Yorkshire, but the Wairarapa. Masterton's sewage system is apparently leaking 890,000 litres of treated sewage into the local water table. It could be worse - it could be untreated, but it's still not exactly good.

Isn't this the sort of thing the government should be doing something about? If local bodies cannot afford basic sewage systems that don't endanger people's lives, then shouldn't central government step in to ensure some minimum standards?

Responses

What can progressives do in response to today's fundamentalist hatefest outside Parliament? Lobby, of course! Remind MPs that those blackshirted bigots are not a representative voice, and that most New Zealanders support equality and human rights rather than hatred and bigotry.

As for who to target, I think the Labour, Green and Progressive Coalition votes are probably fairly stable. The people to target are those MPs from National, NZFirst, and ACT who supported the bill. They're the ones who may change their minds or chicken out. It would also be an idea to contact the four Labour MPs who did not vote the first time round and encourage them to vote in favour.

• Don Brash
• Katherine Rich
• Clem Simich
• Lockwood Smith
• Pansy Wong
• Brian Donnelly
• Ron Mark
• Gerrard Eckhoff
• Stephen Franks
• Rodney Hide
• Richard Prebble
• Heather Roy
• Ken Shirley
• Ashraf Choudhary
• Winnie Laban
• Janet Mackey
• Tariana Turia

If you don't know what to say, the Campaign for Civil Unions has some sample letters here.

Guilt

I really should have jumped a train to Wellington to stand up for Civil Unions against Tamaki's blackshirts - but instead I have to read about the knowledge economy.

Update: Reports on how the protest actually went from Justleft, DPF, Chinashop and Scoop.

Update 2: More from Beautiful Monsters, Dorking Labs, and Russell Brown.

The Social Report

The Ministry of Social Development released its annual Social Report over the weekend. It's a grab-bag of statistics aimed at helping to pin down the rather fuzzy concept of "social wellbeing" (defined as "those aspects of life that we as a society agree contribute to our individual happiness, quality of life, and welfare"). There's both good news and bad news in it, and predictably political parties are picking the areas they care about and trumpeting the results accordingly. I've spent the morning skimming it, and here's my interpretation of the results.

Firstly, it's generally positive. As Stuff pointed out,

We rank in the top half of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development for two-thirds of the indicators where data can be compared with other countries

which isn't anything to be ashamed of. More importantly, the satisfaction ratings - with work/life balance and with leisure - were very good. If you think there's more to life than work and money, then these are very positive statistics. Stuff labels it "complacency", but there is nothing wrong with feeling satisfied about your life - and anyone who thinks differently is trying to sell you something.

Most of the criticism from National has focused on the per-capita GDP/GNI data, and our low relative ranking in the OECD "league table". This completely ignores the fact that there has been a very positive trend in that area for the past few years, with growth well above the OECD average. It also ignores the fact, made tellingly by Greyshade, that league tables don't matter.

Their criticism of average wages suffers from the same problem - criticise the level, ignore the very positive trend (average wages have grown by 10% after inflation since 1999, with much of that growth occuring between 2002 and 2003). Their criticism of adult literacy rates suffers from a different problem: old data. The literacy statistics date from the 1996 International Adult Literacy Survey. Which makes Judith Collins' juxtaposition of the two and claim that "[y]ou would expect an improvement in some of these indicators in the current economic environment" more than a little disingenuous - one area has improved significantly and the other hasn't been remeasured for eight years. Either she hasn't read the report herself, or she thinks that nobody else will. Neither is a very good look, especially for someone with ministerial aspirations.

Old data is also the cause of the Greens' criticisms on income inequality. The data there is based on the 2001 Household Economic Survey, which is conducted every three years. Again, the reason we haven't seen progress recently is because we haven't bothered to look. IIRC, the next HES will be conducted in September 2003, so next year's Social Report may finally have something new to say.

(In fact, looking at the explanatory notes, 17 of the 43 indicators could not be updated this year. Surely MSD can do better than that?)

What the Social Report is good for is compiling a variety of data from numerous areas to give a broad overall picture - and that picture is generally good. The real black mark is in the area of child abuse, and the government needs to do a lot more to fix that, but overall things are moving in the right direction.