Democratic transparency III

Don Brash has responded to my query regarding National party whips refusal to disclose who had voted which way on the recent Human Assisted Reproductive Technology Bill:

Your comment surprised me, and I have been investigating the matter. Individual votes should be recorded, and I will be endeavouring to find our why this is not happening. Thanks for drawing this to my attention.

Not much of a response, but it at least acknowledges the requirement for transparency. Hopefully he'll publish a list in a few days.

There has been no word yet from either Peter Dunne or Rodney Hide.

Wednesday's Hansard is now on the web, and it does not record who voted which way. Peter Brown's complaint about secret voting is near the end, directly above the debate on part 4 of the bill (click here and scroll upwards). From the look of it, the Business Select Committee recently agreed to abrogate democratic oversight and allow MPs to vote secretly without recording names. It's also interesting to note that Simon Power was very very careful to ensure that things were being done in secret before any voting actually took place. I guess he felt he had something to hide.

This is simply unacceptable - it is a deliberate attempt by our representatives to hide their votes from us so that they cannot be punished for them. It is simply untenable in an open democracy for an MP to say, as National Whip Lindsay Tisch said on Wednesday night, that:

We have written proxies from our members, which I hold here. I am not prepared to divulge who voted which way. I have cast the votes with the leave of the House for a split vote, and it is certainly not my intention to divulge the information about our members’ preferences.

Tisch's email is lindsay.tisch@parliament.govt.nz. Why not email him and ask him what he's trying to hide?

Dangerous minds

Last night I watched the documentary "Singer: A dangerous mind", about the controversial Australian ethicist Peter Singer. For those who aren't familiar with his work, Singer is most famous for his views on animal rights and euthanasia, both of which revolve around his theory of personhood. According to Singer, it is not enough to say "human life is valuable"; we must ask why. Investigating this question leads us to the idea that what makes human life valuable is that we are "persons" - we have the capacity to experience pain and suffering, but more importantly, we can conceive of ourselves existing over time, plan for the future, and experience pain when those plans are frustrated. It's a very compelling viewpoint, but it has the consequence that not all persons are human beings, and not all human beings are persons. To the extent that higher animals can also conceive of themselves as existing over time (and there is some evidence that at least some - such as our close primate relatives - do), then they too are worthy of moral consideration - which bars eating them or using them for medical experimentation. And to the extent that some human beings are unable to do this - if they are severely intellectually disabled, in a vegetative state, or simply very young - it allows them to be treated in the same way that we would treat an animal.

This is obviously a controversial viewpoint - it uses our desire for consistency to on the one hand challenge our treatment of animals, and on the other hand undermine our traditional assumptions about the value of human life. And it has attracted a great deal of opposition, not all of it intellectual. Singer has had trouble with the German government for advocating active euthanasia of the severely mentally retarded, and his lectures in the United States have met with protests and disruption. So I wasn't sure what to expect from a documentary on him - whether it would be a fair assessment of his views, or a hatchet-job from religious-fanatic Americans. Fortunately, it was the former.

"A dangerous mind" followed Singer to various parts of the world: to America, where he lectured his students and had them visit a hospital ward full of premature babies; to Britain, where he met with the family of a disabled boy whose doctors had tried to euthanise him without their consent; to Austria, where he researched the fate of his Jewish grandparents in the Holocuust and speculated on the merits of thinking with the head rather than "with the blood" or the gut; and to Australia, where he talked to medical ethicists and the family of an elderly woman who had committed suicide rather than suffer further cancer treatment. It also had comments from other ethicists, both supporting and opposed to Singer's viewpoint. It was a good, thoughtful piece of television, which is obviously why it was on at 11:30 at night.

One of the things that came across very clearly was that while Singer's critics abuse him for "playing god" and making decisions about the value of human life, these decisions are made all the time. Doctors faced with marginal cases - premature babies with little chance of a normal life, elderly patients with Alzheimers who are just a walking, breathing shell - disguise these decisions under the label of "medical futility". The perniciousness of making these decisions in this way was illustrated in his visit to Britain, where doctors had decided that a disabled boy did not deserve basic medical treatment, and in fact tried to kill him (and won a court case saying that they could override the wishes of parents and relatives when making this decision). What Singer does is bring this debate into the open, and provide us with clear criteria against which such decisions can be assessed. Those who don't like those criteria and their consequences really only have one option: to develop better ones. So far though they have been unable to present a credible alternative.

Desperation

Following his defeat in Auckland, John Banks is apparantly considering returning to national-level politics. Russell Brown is mystified at why Don Brash would be interested in such a move - Banks will bring the taint of a loser, and possibly be a potential challenger to Brash's leadership. However, it's much easier to see why ACT would be interested: desperation. ACT desperately needs an electorate, and however tainted, Banks is still far more likely than most of their existing MPs to bring them one.

Progress

The Campaign For Civil Unions now has a nifty progress-counter so you can see how well they're doing.

Good news from Afghanistan...

Many of the candidates who had earlier responded to fears of electoral fraud with a boycott have now decided to accept the results of a UN inquiry. This is definately good news. The allegations of fraud and the boycott threaten to tarnish the legitimacy of whatever government is finally elected, and undermine the whole project of moving to a democratic constitution. The candidates placing their trust in an investigation by international observers, in the process, in the idea of the rule of law rather than force makes it far more likely that democracy will stick.

...and good news from Tonga

The Tongan Supreme Court has overturned restrictions on freedom of the press. It remains to be seen how the Tongan establishment will respond to this - whether they will accept the ruling, pass further legislation in an effort to once again stifle public oversight, or ignore it and censor things illegally.

Long-lost cousins

Scientists claim to have discovered a new species of Great Ape in Nothern Congo, sharing characteristics of both chimpanzees and gorillas. If confirmed, it would be fantastic news, the discovery of a long-lost cousin. And it will be very interesting to see where they fit in in the primate family tree, and how their behaviour compares with that of our other relatives, such as chimpanzees and bonobos.

I guess I'll have to hunt down next week's New Scientist then...

The American Dream is dead

On Friday the US House of Representatives passed the inelligence reform bill 282 to 134. The bill restructures and reforms the US intelligence services in line with the reccommendations of the 9/11 Commission, but it also

• allows the Secretary of Homeland Security to order the indefinite detention of suspected terrorists, with no possibility of judicial review;
• allows the Secretary of Homeland Security to deport or remove suspected terrorists to any country in the world (even one where they have never visited or lived and do not hold residency or citizenship), again with no possibility of judicial review; and
• allows the US government to outsource torture, by deporting suspected terrorists to nations where they are likely to be tortured, provided that the recipient nation gives an "assurance" ("nudge nudge wink wink") that said suspects will not be tortured.

Obsidian Wings has a few things to say about the worthlessness of such assurances, as does Human Rights Watch.

The bill has not yet become law - it still has to go through a conference committee and be signed by the President, but hope is fading; I can't imagine Bush vetoing this bill simply because it grossly violates human rights and all standards of common decency. Which means the American Dream is effectively dead. In 228 years the United States has gone from being a beacon of freedom and hope for the world to being a nation which allows indefinite detention without trial and endorses (and actively promotes) torture.

Progress on the foreshore and seabed

The government is backing away from Crown ownership of the foreshore and seabed, in favour of a trusteeship model.

This is a good move. As I've said time and time again, any solution to this issue must be ultimately acceptable to Maori, otherwise it will simply be relitigated (either in the courts, or through the electoral system). A trusteeship model which recognises the burden of aboriginal title and allows for co-management or "ownership" limited by public rights of access and navigation where such title can be proved is far more likely to be acceptable than the current model. The problem is selling it to Pakeha, and particularly getting it through Parliament. National's latest attempt to stir up the rednecks - a speech by Brash explicitly opposing an almost-finalised Treaty settlement - isn't going to help.

It's also ironic that we may very well end up with a law which explicitly recognises the Ngati Apa judgement and provides a legal framework for its implementation, rather than overturning it.

Good news and bad

Good news and bad on the election front. Aucklanders got rid of John Banks. Australians decided to keep John Howard. Christchurch confirmed its reputation as a city of racists, with 1654 people voting for a nazi wannabe. And in Afghanistan the elections went off peacefully, but 15 of 18 presidential candidates joined a boycott after widespread allegations of fraud.

In my own neck of the woods, results seem to be few and far between. Red heather is mayor, Matthew Hodgetts missed out on the regional council, and other than that I have no idea. Unfortunately the Palmerston North City Council doesn't seem to think the internet exists on weekends.

Oh, and Aaron Bhatnagar was de-elected from the Hobson community board.

Update: Palmerston North election results are up, and unfortunately it looks like seven of eight shitlisted candidates have been re-elected. Bugger.

Democratic transparency II

Following my discussion with Peter Brown, I emailed the leaders of National and United Future asking them to publicise their MP's voting records on the HART bill:

I was shocked to read Peter Brown's press release about the attempts of certain parties to avoid democratic accountability for their votes during the committee stage debate on the Human Assisted Reproductive Technology Bill recently (viewable at http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/PA0410/S00132.htm). I was so shocked that I called him in order to find out which parties had attempted to hide their votes in this manner. He named three parties: National, United Future, and "maybe ACT".

In order to avoid any implication that members of your party are attempting to evade democratic oversight of their voting records, I'd hope that you will come clean and name those MPs voting for and against the bill in each vote.

(Rodney Hide got a slightly different version).

It will be interesting to see what (if any) response I receive.

Democratic transparency

Oh my god - I actually agree with New Zealand First on something! Politicians are trying to hide which way they are voting on controversial legislation:

"It is becoming more common for political parties in Parliament to cast split votes when voting on bills or parts of bills. Under that system a party whip simply announces the number of votes their party cast for the legislation and the number cast against it.

Mr Brown said that in the recent committee stage debate on the Human Assisted Reproductive Technology Bill several parties were splitting their votes on different clauses but refused, when requested, to provide names of members who voted which way.

[...]

Mr Brown’s request to the House on Wednesday that party whips be required to state who voted for bills and who voted against them when split party votes are cast was blocked.

I agree wholeheartedly with Brown - this attempt at secrecy just isn't on. Votes in Parliament must be conducted with the utmost transparency. The public has an absolute right to know which way our representatives are voting on legislation, and any politician unwilling to accept this should resign their seat immediately.

Oh, and which parties were attempting to hide their votes in this manner? According to Brown, it was National, United Future, and "maybe ACT". The full details (or rather, lack thereof) will be in wednesday's Hansard, and I'll be checking it when it goes online.

Unsubtle nag

I've just zapped in a donation to the Campaign for Civil Unions for their ad-buy. If you support the Civil Union Bill, then why not put your money where your mouth is?

For those who were interested by my post on aboriginal title the other day, Holden Republic has an excellent piece explaining the landmark constitutional case Wi Parata v Bishop of Wellington.

Sage: sadism is necessary

SageNZ seems to think that rape, serious assaults, and systematic brutality and sadism are all necessary parts of military culture, and vital to the defence of the country. Ramming a broomstick up people's arses or beating them into unconsciousness gives them discipline, you see; it makes them "hard", "soldiers, not pansies". Which really says everything that needs to be said about his twisted neanderthal worldview.

Torture by proxy update

Last week I blogged about the Republican attempt to legalise extraordinary rendition and allow terrorist suspects to be shipped overseas to be tortured at America's behest. Since then there's been little real change. The Senate has passed their own version of the bill, sans the controversial provisions, and the President through his White House Counsel has declared that he "did not propose and does not support" the provisions - but he's not promising a veto, or making any effort to kick republican legislators into line. Meanwhile, those legislators seem to think that torture is an excellent election issue, and are daring the Democrats to vote against it on the eve of the election. And all the while the supine American press uses euphemism - "provisions on anti-terrorism, identity theft, illegal immigration and border security"; "civil-liberties and law-enforcement provisions" - rather than calling those provisions what they are: an attempt to legalise torture by proxy.

If this bill passes without amendment or veto, then the American dream will be dead. A country that once stood as a beacon of liberty will have descended to the depths of having people tortured (but not openly, and not in its name), just like a shitty third-world despotism.

What Garth George is defending

The latest allegation levelled at the Waiouru cadet school? Rape.

All part of learning "the ancient and honourable trade of soldiering", right?

Freedom from disrimination is a core human right

The Grey Shade considers whether anti-discrimination legislation should be viewed in the same light as "real" human rights:

I have long felt uneasy about the name we give the Human Rights Act and the Human Rights Commission. It's not that I disagree with the act or institution per se. I'm just not sure that the issue they deal with (unlawful discrimination) is really a "Human Rights" issue. Not at least compared to the rights to life, liberty, due process, freedom of expression, etc. Are we devaluing the currency in applying this term too liberally?

I don't think so. While you can produce a broad ranking of human rights from "fundamental" to "vital" to merely "important", and being forced to sit at the back of the bus is somewhat less important in the great scheme of things than being tortured or killed, it's not as if freedom from discrimination is not like the others. Anti-discrimination legislation protects a fundamental human right that is usually overlooked because it seems so obvious: the right to participate fully in society and to be treated as a full and equal human being. This right is affirmed in articles one and two of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, before any of the others, because it is the basic starting point of living together in a society. Like the rest, it is based on universal principles, and applies to all times and societies.

There is however one significant difference between freedom from discrimination and other human rights. Where freedom of expression and the right not to be tortured etc are primarily about how people are treated by their government, freedom from discrimination or the right to participate in society is really all about how people are treated by each other. This explains the different legal approach - while it's fine to lay down broad principles (such as those in the BORA) to guide and bind government action, law aimed at individuals and backed by possible criminal penalties needs to be a lot more specific. And so we get legislation like the Human Rights Act, designed to protect and enable a core right, rather than simply affirm it.

Finally, to turn to the issue which inspired Grey Shade: it is both right and proper to call civil unions a human rights issue, and the Civil Union Bill evidence of a "positive human rights culture". Like anti-discrimination legislation, it is aimed at upholding that core right of full participation in society. I agree that it is not the be-all and and end-all - the Zaoui case is an obvious blot on our record, and the current government is taking several retrograde steps at the moment - but there is no question that it is still a positive step forward.

Grassroots politics

Via Hard News: the Campaign for Civil Unions is seeking donors to buy a full-page ad in a national newspaper (that would be the Herald?). Twenty bucks gets your name on it. You can sign up and donate here.

This sort of grassroots, participatory politics has been used to great effect in the US election campaign by 527 groups such as MoveOn.org. I'm pleased to see it catching on here.

What is aboriginal title?

Maori claims to the foreshore and seabed rest on the common-law doctrine of "aboriginal title". But what is it?

Put simply, the doctrine of aboriginal or customary title boils down to two points: firstly, that indigenous peoples have some form of property rights, according to their own laws and customs; and secondly, that these property rights are not affected by a transfer or acquisition of sovereignty. The first is a matter of fact at the time an area is acquired. The second is a matter of long-standing precedents in English common law. According to these precedents, local property rights survive until they are relinquished or explicitly extinguished through purchase or statute. The common law also recognises that customary conceptions of property may not map to English conceptions, and therefore recognises lesser usage rights (such as hunting or fishing rights) as well as full ownership.

While the idea that property rights survive a change in sovereignty - that when Britain claimed New Zealand, it did not in fact end up owning it - may seem a little strange, it's common sense really. If New Zealand voluntarily joined Australia, it would not mean that the Australian government would suddenly acquire legal title to your house. The same principle applied to Maori in New Zealand in 1840. The fact that they signed a treaty surrendering sovereignty did not mean that they gave up their property.

In New Zealand, aboriginal title has been recognised since the early days of settlement. Article Two of the Treaty of Waitangi, which guarantees the chiefs continued possession of their "lands and estates forests fisheries and other properties" (or treasures, depending on which version you prefer), is an explicit recognition of existing property rights. The right of pre-emption or exclusive purchase in the same article was used by the Crown to lawfully extinguish Maori customary title and thereby allow alienation. Later, this was replaced by explicit legal mechanisms, such as the Native (now Maori) Land Court.

Aboriginal title has been recognised in New Zealand courts since the 1847 decision of R v Symonds, in which Justice Chapman said:

Whatever may be the opinion of jurists as to the strength or weakness of the Native title, whatsoever may have been the past vague notions of the Natives of this country, whatever may be their present clearer and still growing conception of their own dominion over land, it cannot be too solemnly asserted that it is entitled to be respected, that it cannot be extinguished (at least in times of peace) otherwise than by the free consent of the native occupiers.

(My emphasis).

Unfortunately, this approach was overturned in 1877 with Wi Parata v Bishop of Wellington, which denied that Maori possessed enforceable property rights on the basis that they were "barbarians" with no body of customary law. Despite higher precedent from the Privy Council (in Nireaha Tamaki v Baker (1901) and Wallis v Solicitor-General (1902-3)), Wi Parata held sway in New Zealand for the next century. However, Symonds and aboriginal title have recently been resurrected: Te Weehi v Regional Fisheries Officer (1986) resurrected the concept of usage rights (in this case to fish), while other cases have gradually reaffirmed the idea of customary title amounting to full ownership. The foreshore and seabed case, Ngati Apa v Attorney-General, simply follows in this tradition.

The world of Garth George

Sometimes, when reading Garth George's editorials in the Herald, I am truly disturbed. In today's one, for example, he despairs over the way police culture has changed so that now, instead of "looking out for one another", the police "dob in" their own over "minor misdemeanours". Lest anyone forget, the very attitude that George is praising is why we are now having to investigate a series of rapes committed by police officers in the 80's - which they covered up at the time by "looking out for one another" and refusing to "dob in" their own over a "minor misdemeanour".

Then he gets onto the army, and here it gets really disturbing. For a start, he seems to thik that the abuses were acceptable at the time:

What people like Mr Burton don't seem to understand is that the alleged physical, psychological and sexual abuse took place in an Army, a society and a culture far different from today's, and any attempt to judge the behaviour of a group of testosterone-charged young men in an Army camp of the 1970s by the PC mores and expectations of today is not just stupid but downright dishonest and unjust.

Contrary to George, those objecting to abuse in the army are not judging people by "the PC mores and expectations of today", and we have not criminalised serious assault in the last ten years out of "political correctness". The behaviour in question was criminal at the time, and was regularly prosecuted.

But the most surprising bit is that he accepts that the allegations are true, but doesn't think that it matters:

I have no doubt that much of what these whingers allege about the hazing and harassment is true. But so what? Even if 500 of the 5000 complained, it would still be only 10 per cent, which would seem to be a pretty light failure rate for a hard school such as the Army.

I'm sure that if even 1 per cent of the people in his neighbourhood were being treated in this way - beaten into unconsciousness, systematically brutalised, and sexually abused - or if it happened to him, George would be using his column to scream about it. Yet because it's the army, it's all OK, and those who object to being treated in this manner are just "whingers".

The sorts of excuses we are seeing from George and his ilk are truly disgusting. They seek to normalise and justify a sadistic macho culture in which those at the top of the pecking order can systematically brutalise those beneath them. This attitude should have died with feudalism, and the sooner George and friends die of old age and take their poison memes with them, the better.

Woman alleges police station sex attack

This is a perfect example of why we cannot hold remand prisoners in police or court cells. Untrained and unsupervised staff combined with overcrowding is simply a recipie for disaster.

No WMD

The Iraq Survey Group - the special US group that was supposed to find Saddam's hidden caches of weapons of mass destruction - has reported back today, and has said that there weren't any. That's right - 15,000 Iraqi civilians dead, and no WMD. None, zip, nada. Saddam's WMD capabilities were "essentially destroyed in 1991", and while there's no doubt he wanted to develop them again (who wouldn't, with Bush in the White House?), and was planning to restart his programmes when sanctions eased, he didn't have any.

The one fig leaf for the Bush administration is that Saddam was apparantly able to manufacture small quantities of chemical weapons for assassinations. But this can be done in any high school chemistry lab - or for those on a budget, in your kitchen. If we take this seriously as a reason for war, we'd have to accept that any country which includes science in its secondary education curriculum, or which possesses both electricity and running water, is in dire need of a bombing.

This makes it clear that the invasion of Iraq was unjustified. Iraq did not pose a threat to its neighbours, and it certainly did not pose a threat to the United States. Any doctrine of pre-emption must rest on certain knowledge of an immediate attack. Vague intent and the possibility of an attack at some far-off point in the future is simply not enough.

Doing it properly

The government's policy on prisoner compensation is an ill-thought-out, knee-jerk reaction which encourages further abuse and violates international human rights standards. It is clearly aimed primarily at limiting the government's future liability for abuses by preventing and discouraging claims. This is a long, long way from ensuring that the victims of crime are compensated. Can we do the latter without doing the former? Of course we can - and quite simply too. The law already allows judges to award compensation; we simply need to encourage them to do so more often. This has been opposed by Phil Goff as it "doubly victimises the victim" by raising false hopes of receiving payment. But the answer to that problem is to take steps to ensure that victims will be paid. GreyShade suggests one such method:

Under current law the judge often declines to make such an award because the accused lacks the means to pay. This law could easily be changed and the victim would then have the same right as any other creditor (we could even make them a preferred creditor) if the prisoner subsequently receives money from any source. This debt (and other debts) could be protected by amending the insolvency act so that bankrupts going to prison would not be eligible for automatic discharge until three years after release (ie the period of bankruptcy would be "frozen" while the bankrupt was incarcerated). This seems much preferable to overriding a statute of limitations. It also removes any element of retrospection since the compensation order is made by the trial judge at the time of original sentencing.

Alternatively, if the government wants to be more proactive, it could establish a scheme to extract reparations payments similar to that used for the student loan scheme.

Neither of these options violates human rights standards, and yet the government has dismissed them out of hand. And it's hard to see any reason other than the fact that they would not limit the crown's financial liability for its inability to ensure that it runs a decent, humane prison system rather than a zoo.

International commitments

The government seems to have realised that our long-standing commitment to international human rights instruments limits their policy options on prisoner compensation. Yesterday in parliament, Justice Minister Phil Goff cited Article 14 of the Convention Against Torture and the same article in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights as preventing us from denying prisoners access to the courts. For those who aren't familiar with these conventions, the relevant article of the ICCPR states:

All persons shall be equal before the courts and tribunals. In the determination of any criminal charge against him, or of his rights and obligations in a suit at law, everyone shall be entitled to a fair and public hearing by a competent, independent and impartial tribunal established by law.

Article 14 in the Convention Against Torture reads:

Each State Party shall ensure in its legal system that the victim of an act of torture obtains redress and has an enforceable right to fair and adequate compensation, including the means for as full rehabilitation as possible. In the event of the death of the victim as a result of an act of torture, his dependants shall be entitled to compensation.

(Interestingly, New Zealand has a reservation on this article which allows us to award compensation to torture victims "only at the discretion of the Attorney-General". This is because we have generally replaced the right to sue with no-fault ACC)

While Goff didn't mention them, Articles 8 and 10 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (affirming the right to "an effective remedy by the competent national tribunals" and "a fair and public hearing by an independent and impartial tribunal" for human rights violations) are also relevant.

This led to predictable wailing from the right, with United Future denouncing the government for "putting international treaties ahead of the interests of justice in our own country", Tony Ryall displaying appalling ignorance of our international commitments, and Stephen Franks effectively demanding that we withdraw from them to "restore our sovereign right" to treat prisoners like animals (strangely, he's very silent on "sovereign rights" on other matters). Which I think tells you everything that you need to know about those parties. These treaties define the minimum standards of justice in any legal system - fairness, equality under the law, due process, rights to appeal etc. They are not an imposition on our sovereignty, but an affirmation of our fundamental values.

Unfortunately, I can't help but feel that the government is viewing the prisoner compensation issue through the wrong lens here. Yes, due process and the right to sue the government is a part of it - but more importantly, the government's proposals are effectively a post-facto increase in the sentance of everybody currently in prison. This violates numerous human rights instruments, as well as fundamental decency, and (dare I say it) "common sense". It is a long-standing principle of justice in a democratic state that sentances are handed down by independent judges, to prevent political interference. It is also a long-standing principle, affirmed in section 25 (g) of the BORA, that criminals are liable only for the sentance that applied at the time an offence was committed. Suddenly declaring that for 12 years after release criminals will effectively not be allowed to own substantial property violates both of these principles. And more practically, punishment has to end at some points. If it does not, and if criminals will continue to be punished for their crimes no matter what they do, they have no incentive to change their behaviour. By dramatically increasing punishments and making them last long after formal release from prison, the government is inviting criminals to earn that punishment. That's not the sort of thing a decent - or sane - society does.

New kiwi blog

Random Contributionz

Informative responses

The Whig seems to be a little sensitive about the Deborah Coddington - Roger Kerr thing (perhaps because it's the latest in a long line of bad news about his declining party). Unfortunately, in his despair and outrage, he's missed the thrust of my post entirely. I'm not interested at all in the details of Coddington's - or anybody else's - private life. I am however interested in the response of the ACT Party, because it is quite revealing about their attitudes and hence likely policy positions. And that response doesn't look too good.

Coddington was sexually harassed. ACT's response is that she shouldn't have made a fuss or complained, for fear of damaging the party. That's not explicitly sexist, but at the same time it speaks volumes about their attitude towards such matters, and it is certainly something that women voters - or women thinking of working for ACT - will find informative.

Excuses

The Dom-Post asked National Front leader Kyle Chapman about those photos. His response?

"I didn't even know there was a guy behind me with a friggin' Nazi armband on.

"Those guys had only showed up in a car and wanted to take some photos and that. I only realised those guys were saluting when I turned around."

I was expecting him to claim it was all a Jewish plot...

No shame

From today's question time:

Keith Locke: Is the Labour Government not somewhat ashamed that rather than advancing democratic rights it is taking court cases to stop human rights being taken into account, to keep Mr Zaoui in prison after 22 months, and to stop him having access to the media; and what possible reason is there for the Minister not to free Mr Zaoui now, so that he can live in our society with his family?

Hon PAUL SWAIN: No.

This is another reason not to vote Labour: they simply have no shame about their attacks on human rights. This is a government which has attacked rights of judicial review and Habeas Corpus, which thinks it is acceptable to imprison people without providing them even with a summary of the evidence against them, and has argued that it is acceptable to keep a man in prison for five years without trial. These are things any government with a sense of decency would be ashamed of. It speaks volumes about Labour's political priorities that they are not.

The National Front like to claim they're not Nazis - which is why of course they stand around giving Nazi salutes...

Answer the question

I'm with David Farrar on this one: it is absolutely outrageous that the government is evading Parliamentary questions with spurious claims about costs. Parliamentary questions are a vital way of holding the government to account, and the government-of-the-day should not be able to escape oversight in this manner.

Blame the victim

What should a political party do when one of its MPs is subjected to stalking and harassment by a significant donor? In ACT, it seems, the answer is to haul them onto the carpet and demand an "explanation":

Act will today seek a full explanation from MP Deborah Coddington over her allegations that she was the subject of abusive behaviour from the head of the Business Roundtable.

Party leader Rodney Hide said yesterday that he had rebuked Ms Coddington for not telling him she had gone to the Diplomatic Protection Squad over her alleged troubles with Roundtable executive director Roger Kerr.

And next week ACT MPs will no doubt be scratching their heads and asking puzzled, hurt questions about why women don't vote for them...

US$10 Million

Spaceship One has completed its second suborbital flight and won the US$110 million Ansari X-Prize.

So, I wonder if they're going to offer more cash for putting three people into orbit?

The same problems everywhere

Britain's law lords are today hearing a challenge to the British government's anti-terrorism policies - specifically, their use of indefinate detention without charge or trial for foreigners suspected of terrorism. If this sounds familiar, it's because it's the same sort of treatment our government is dealing out to Ahmed Zaoui. Like Zaoui, the British internees have been kept in solitary confinement, denied access to the evidence against them, and have not been charged with any crime. Unlike Zaoui, they may be being imprisoned on the basis of evidence extracted under torture. The law lords will also be deciding on the legality of this practice, and hopefully they'll see fit to extinguish that particular atrocity as well.

Calm like a bomb

Having read the government's policy announcement on prisoner compensation, I could talk about a number of things. I could talk about its terrible thinness, how it's not so much a policy as a flag to say "see, we're doing something". I could point out that their talk about extracting reparations from those who win lotto or publish books is simply hot air, and how almost anything other than an award from a court judgement can be protected by a few hours with a cheap lawyer. I could talk about the government's dangerous penchant for changing the law and undermining the jurisdiction of the courts to prevent claims against it (as it did over the foreshore, and as it is planning to do here), and how this is grossly unconstitutional. I could point out that by limiting access to the legal system, the government is encouraging prisoners to seek their own justice by other means. I could quote Locke on how excessive and cruel punishments constitute a declaration of war against the punished, and provide a moral justification for violence every bit as valid as that which we would claim against a thief or a murderer, or talk about how the purpose of an organised criminal justice system is not to protect us against criminals, but to protect them from our lust for revenge. But instead I'll say this:

This is a policy founded on spite and vindictiveness. Neither is a proper basis for public policy. It violates article 11 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, article 15 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and section 26 (2) of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act, all of which ban additional punishment being heaped on a prisoner after conviction. The attempt to deny damages for claims and to limit their filing is at root an attempt to prevent prisoners from suing the crown for mistreatment, violating the right to justice affirmed by section 27 of the BORA, while the attempt to establish an "independent body" to hear claims by victims smacks of stacking the legal deck in their favour (ordinary judges being too likely to pay attention to the concerns mentioned above).

These are not "legal technicalities", they are the very core of what makes us a decent society and distinguishes us from places like China or Burma or Zimbabwe. We abandon them at our peril.

And I'll also say this: those who support human rights should not support Labour. If you believe that justice and human rights apply to all, and not just to some, or that our justice system should not be based on spite and vindictiveness then you should support a party which actually promotes those values - such as the Greens or the Progressive Coalition. As long as Phil Goff is Minister of Justice, Labour is unworthy of our votes.

Prisoner compensation

The government is set to reveal its plans on "fixing" prisoner compensation at Cabinet today. Unfortunately, the media doesn't seem quite so sure on what exactly is being revealed. According to Stuff, the government will reintroduce the right to sue, at least for victims of criminals who have received compensation. The Herald, on the other hand, thinks that it will involve giving judges discretion to award some or all of any compensation paid to victims. I guess we'll either have to wait and see or watch the Knowledge Basket bills archive for the details.

Something both media outlets agree on is that the rules change will apply from the date the bill is introduced into Parliament. But unless it is passed on the same day, this will be retrospective legislation, no matter how they fudge it. While it's not illegal to pass retrospective legislation, it is generally unconstitutional (tending as it does to breach natural justice), and until the bill is actually passed, it cannot be used to prevent claims being filed or cases being progressed.

A slip of the tongue

Via Orcinus: US House Republican leader Tom DeLay on gay marriage:

Insisting that "Peter and Paul cannot be mothers, and Mary and Jane cannot be fathers," DeLay argued in an emotional closing statement that such marriages would destroy the nation.

"This country will go down," DeLay warned...

And we couldn't have that now, could we?

New kiwi blog

Bob Carver

"Enormously valuable intelligence"

That's how Donald Rumsfeld has described the results of interrogations at America's Carribean gulag at Guantanamo. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to be the case. According to a former senior Pentagon intelligence official, information from Guantanamo has failed to prevent a single terrorist attack, and the interrogations are a waste of time.

Why? Essentially because the prisoners there don't know anything. There have been several well-publicised cases of taxi-drivers and people who were clearly in the wrong place at the wrong time being held and interrogated there, and most of the rest are simply footsoldiers and spear-carriers. Why have these people ended up being flown halfway around the world to be interrogated and possibly tortured? Because the soldiers screening them in Afghanistan were

new recruits who had almost no training, and were forced to rely on incompetent interpreters. They were 'far too poorly trained to identify real terrorists from the ordinary Taliban militia'.

But it gets worse. Even the Al Qaeda captives don't know anything - they're low level proles from the training camps, whose "knowledge" is so limited and general that it is practically useless, or is simply fabricated to avoid further maltreatment. Assuming the translators get it right, that is. According to a second story on the subject, the contract interpreters are "of very poor quality", and their translations are not even recorded or checked:

In early 2003 [...] a group of Pentagon intelligence staff became so concerned about the Gitmo interpreters that they submitted a memorandum to their civilian bosses, recommending that interrogations should be taped and spot-checked as a means of verifying their work. Vehemently opposed by Miller, it was rejected.

Why didn't General Miller want any recordings of interrogations? There's an obvious answer: because they'd be solid evidence that detainees are tortured and abused. There's really no other explanation for it.

Scenes from another world

Via Charles Stross: a photo from the Mars Global Surveyor orbiter of the Spirit rover exploring Mars. The resolution of the image is about 1m / pixel; there's a 50cm / pixel version here (warning: large).

Another victory for freedom of expression

The police have dropped disorderly conduct charges against the three men who burned the New Zealand flag on Parliament's steps after receiving legal advice that the prosecution was unlikely to succeed. It's not as good as another precedent, but a victory al the same.

New kiwi blog

I hate socialism (hat tip: Holden Republic)

The most important victory yet for Ahmed Zaoui

Ahmed Zaoui has won another battle in the Court of Appeal, making it two-and-a-half out of three. But reading the full judgement, this may very well be the most important one of all.

Briefly put, the court decided that the Inspector-General of Security and Intelligence must take Zaoui's human rights into account when reviewing the security risk certificate. But it goes further than that - a lot further than that. The decision

• affirms wide-ranging rights of judicial review;
• affirms the independence of Inspector-General, and that he must conduct a real review of the evidence upon which the security risk certificate is based, rather than interviewing the Director of the SIS and applying a rubber stamp:

  the Inspector-General is to come to his own view about the nature, credibility and relevance of information said to be classified, and to his own view as to whether a person in question is properly covered by a relevant security criterion. The Inspector-General’s review is not in the nature of that type of judicial review which examines another person’s decision for rationality. It is a process of independent assessment by the Inspector-General.

• The one loss for Zaoui is that the Inspector-General should not consider questions of what will occur if he is deported - those questions are for the Minister.
• Despite this, the Inspector-General must take the Refugee Convention into account, as it has been imported into New Zealand Law through Immigration Act, and must take human rights and the international jurisprudence into account in its interpretation. Regard must be had for the freedoms of association and expression affirmed in the Bill of Rights Act.

It's the latter that makes this case the most important one for Zaoui so far. S. 129X of the Immigration Act 1987 bars the deportation or removal of any refugee "unless the provisions of Article 32.1 or Article 33.2 of the Refugee Convention" allow it. Article 33.2 is the relevant one, and it allows deportation or removal of a refugee only where

...there are reasonable grounds for regarding [them] as a danger to the security of the country in which he is, or who, having been convicted by a final judgment of a particularly serious crime, constitutes a danger to the community of that country.

There's a fair bit of international jurisprudence on what exactly this means, and what it comes down to is that there must be (to quote Justice Glazebrook)

objectively reasonable grounds based on credible evidence that Mr Zaoui constitutes a danger to the security of New Zealand of such seriousness that it would justify sending a person back to persecution. The threshold is high and must involve a danger of substantial threatened harm to the security of New Zealand... There must be a real connection between Mr Zaoui himself and the prospective or current danger to national security and an appreciable alleviation of that danger must be capable of being achieved through his deportation.

Furthermore,

It is also important to remember that the term used is "security". Concerns about New Zealand’s reputation can be taken into account only if they impinge to such a serious extent on national security that they could fairly be said to constitute a danger to national security. In this regard it must be stressed that the granting of refugee status cannot be seen as an unfriendly act, either on the part of the State where there is a risk of persecution or by any other State

Given that the core of the SIS's "case" against Zaoui is that allowing him to stay may offend other nations and undermine our international reputation, the above effectively constrains the Inspector-General to revoke the Security Risk Certificate. The Court of Appeal may just have written Zaoui's release papers.

Occupations

Writing in the journal International Security, David Edelstein considers why occupations succeed or fail. Examining 24 historical occupations since the Napoleonic Wars, he concludes firstly that military occupations usually succeed only if they are long - at least five years. This requires not only convincing the occupied people to accept extended foreign control, but also maintaining interest in the face of nationalist reaction and a desire for the occupying power to cut its losses and leave. Secondly, successful occupations are all about "hearts and minds" - about convincing the occupied population not to resist:

Establishing law and order, supplying basic staples, and refraining from the abuse of occupied populations are initial necessary steps toward winning hearts and minds. Such steps signal that the occupying power is dedicated to rebuilding the occupied territory, not just plundering it for valuable resources

Score three massive failures right there.

But the bulk of the article is taken up with an analysis of the three criteria for an occupation to be successful: a recognition by the occupied people of the need for occupation, the perception of a common threat to the occupied territory which the occupier can be seen as defending against, and a credible guarantee to withdraw and turn over power. Judged on these three criteria, the prospects for the occupation of Iraq do not look good:

Whereas war-weary Germans and Japanese recognised the need for an occupation to help them rebuild, a significant portion of the Iraqi people have never welcomed the U.S.-led occupation as necessary. Further, the common analogy between the occupations of Germany and Japan and the occupation of Iraq usually undervalues the central role that the Soviet threat played in allowing those occupations to succeed. Whereas Germans, Japanese, and Americans mostly agreed on the compelling nature of the Soviet threat, there is no similar threat that will enable Iraqis and the U.S.-led coalition to coalesce around common occupation goals. Finally, the Bush administration has had difficulty convincing significant segments of the Iraqi population that it intends to return control to a truly independent, indigenous government that will represent their interests, not those of the United States.

Could the occupation of Iraq still succeed? It depends on how you define "success". But looking at this analysis, the odds are against it.

(Edelsteins data set and selection criteria are available on his home page for those who think he's "cooking the books").

Checking out the Free Ahmed Zaoui site, I see that Scoop's Selwyn Manning has co-authored a book on the Ahmed Zaoui case. Another one to add to the reading pile...

Blinkered

National has decided that the economy isn't a good election issue. So what are they going to fight the election on? In the story, they talk about taxation, welfare, and gutting the RMA - core economic issues. It seems that they have such a blinkered view of reality that they can't talk about anything else, even when they desperately need to.

Aren't Maori allowed to make a profit?

After decades of being forced to charge lower-than-market rents, a landowner uses a long-forseen review to bring things more into line with market reality, resulting in large rent increases to leaseholders. Ordinarily, they'd just have to lump it, right? Not, it seems, if the landowner is Maori. In that case, you send your MP off to the Maori Affairs Select Committee to petition for "rent relief".

The underlying assumption here is that Maori are not entitled to behave like Pakeha landowners. They are not entitled to a market return from their property, and must be restrained by law from pursuing one. And they must sell their land when asked to, even if they don't want to. The racism in this assumption ought to be apparent to all.

There's a clear case here for "one law for all". Maori leasehold land should be treated no differently from land leased from Pakeha. It should be brought into the normal system, and then those complaining about rent increases can do what everybody else does, and fight it out through the courts.

Rant

Morgue does his nut about Tony Blair's non-apology at the Labour Party Conference.

War and consequences

GreyShade has responded to the call for the left to develop a clear position on when intervention is justified and why with a typically thoughtful piece examining some of the key models and applying them to Afghanistan and Iraq. One of the models he considers is a consequentialist approach of "justification by outcome" - that a war is justified "whenever the outcome after the war is better than it would have been without the war". He points out that this very quickly runs into problems with countries being judges in their own case, and suggests the UN is a less partial judge (but also a far from perfect one). But there's a bigger problem, shared by consequentialism in general, of what Dan Dennett in Darwin's Dangerous Idea called "computational intractability": in many cases, we don't know what weight to assign to particular outcomes in our calculations of consequences - or even what sign we should give them - not because of uncertainty about possible consequences, but because of uncertainty about how those consequences should be morally interpreted. Dennett illustrates this with the example of Three Mile Island:

How could Three Mile Island have been a good thing? By being the near-catastrophe that sounded the alarm that led us away from paths that would encounter much worse misadventures - Chernobyls, for instance. Surely many people were fervently hoping for just such an event to happen, and might well have taken steps to ensure it, had they been in a position to act. The same moral reasoning that led Jane Fonda to create the film The China Syndrome (a fictional near-catastrophe at a nuclear plant) might lead someone rather differently situated to create Three Mile Island

If we are to use a consequentialist analysis, we need to know at minimum which column to put things in. But even with hindsight we just don't know yet whether Three Mile Island has had good or bad consequences. And foresight is much more difficult.

I think this significantly counts against consequentialism as a war of determining whether a war is justified (and against consequentialism in general). Fortunately, we have other options.

The Russians get on board

Russia is going to ratify Kyoto. The Russian cabinet has approved the decision and sent it to the Duma for formal ratification. If they approve it (and there aren't expected to be any problems - the Duma is pretty much a rubber stamp in Putin's Russia), it will finally allow the protocol to enter into force, despite the USA. There's a quid-pro-quo, of course - the EU will be supporting Russia into the WTO - but I don't see any real problems with that.

As for the consequences for New Zealand, it means that in all likelihood we will be getting a carbon tax in 2007. In the long term, if we want to meet our emissions targets (which are expected to get tougher), we will need to do some combination of a) making a substantial shift away from burning fossil fuels for electricity; b) finding a way of making cows burp less; and/or c) planting a lot more trees. A carbon tax should provide some incentive for the market to work towards the first, but we'll need to do a lot of work on the other two.

"A pale shadow of what I said at Orewa"

Don Brash's words (quoted in the Herald) pretty much sum up NZFirst's new Treaty of Waitangi policy. With his promises to disband the Waitangi Tribunal and remove "Treaty clauses" from legislation, it's clear that Winston is trying hard to recapture the redneck vote. At the same time, closer examination of the actual policies shows that there's more than a trace of rhetoric involved - his "disbanding" of the Tribunal amounts to little more than a name change, and much of the rest is minor administrative tweaking. And there's even some good in it - increasing funding to both the Tribunal and the Office of Treaty Settlements to allow claims to be processed faster (something that was strangely left out of the policy announcement). However, the whole policy is tarred by Winston's desire to remove any legislative reference to the principles of the Treaty of Waitangi (or indeed to the Treaty itself) and impose a deadline for filing historical claims. I've argued here that "Treaty clauses" are essentially the sole way of giving the Treaty any legal force, and an important mechanism for preventing future breaches. While they may need to be reworded and refined, removing them would send us back to the days when the Treaty was "a simple nullity", and Maori rights were dependent on "the conscience of the Crown". As for a deadline, as I've said before, having a goal is good, but having an arbitrary date for the express purpose of refusing claims is fundamentally incompatible with justice. And that's what the settlement of historical claims is supposed to be all about. We should do what we can to speed up the process (though the biggest bottleneck seems to be the government's Orewa-induced reluctance to spend too much money on it), but we absolutely should not impose a cutoff.

But what's most disturbing is the sheer amount of historical revisionism which pervades and underpins Winston's policies in this area. "The treaty was not about property rights ... it was about citizenship"? Only if you ignore Article Two. The principles of the Treaty are not and cannot be defined? They've been defined by the courts (notably in NZ Maori Council v Attorney-General (1987)), by the government (in its 1989 Principles for Crown Action on the Treaty of Waitangi), and by the Waitangi Tribunal (who are legally the definitive source, having "exclusive authority to determine the meaning and effect of the Treaty"). The latter body has a useful summary here. They were not inserted at the request of Maori? The original Treaty clause in the State-Owned Enterprises Act 1986 was inserted at the last minute precisely because Maori feared the effects of corporatisation and privatisation on Treaty claims. Treaty clauses have not tangibly benefitted Maori? I think Ngai Tahu and those iwi whose former lands were under threat from privatisation would beg to differ.

When a political party deliberately sets out to lie about history in this manner, you have to seriously question their fitness to govern or influence policy.

By Toutatis!

The sky isn't falling on our heads, but it's getting close. Toutatis - a 5km long asteroid - missed the earth by a mere 1.6 million km today. It's orbit is well known, and this is the closest it will come for at least 500 years, but it is a reminder that there are plenty of similar-sized rocks out there whose orbit is not known, and which could pose a danger even in the near future. While a rock the size of Toutatis doesn't pose a threat to the existence of humanity (we and our technological infrastructure are too widely dispersed to be taken out in one hit), it could make things very difficult for quite some time.

Lembit Opik takes the opportunity to call for an early-warnng system to track asteroids and warn us of any danger.

Per ardua ad astra

I've just been glued to Fox News (!) watching the takeoff of Spaceship One for its attempt on the X-prize. The actual aerial launch should be in about 30 - 40 minutes. I guess it's going to be a late night...

Torture by proxy

From Obsidian Wings: under the guise of implementing the recommendations of the 9/11 commission, the US House of Representatives is moving to legalise the practice of extraordinary rendition, thus allowing terrorist suspects (or anybody else) to be sent to foreign countries specifically for the purpose of being tortured:

The provision would require the Secretary of Homeland Security to issue new regulations to exclude from the protection of the U.N. Convention Against Torture and Other Forms of Cruel, Inhuman, or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, any suspected terrorist - thereby allowing them to be deported or transferred to a country that may engage in torture. The provision would put the burden of proof on the person being deported or rendered to establish "by clear and convincing evidence that he or she would be tortured," would bar the courts from having jurisdiction to review the Secretary's regulations, and would free the Secretary to deport or remove terrorist suspects to any country in the world at will - even countries other than the person's home country or the country in which they were born. The provision would also apply retroactively.

(Original emphasis).

It's actually worse than it sounds there. In the comments section, the post's author, having read the text of the bill, notes that

terrorism suspects seem to be excluded from the deportation provisions of the Convention Against Torture entirely, even if they could do the impossible and prove by clear and convincing evidence that they would face torture.

Article 3 of the UN Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment specifically bars this practice:

1. No State Party shall expel, return ("refouler") or extradite a person to another State where there are substantial grounds for believing that he would be in danger of being subjected to torture.
2. For the purpose of determining whether there are such grounds, the competent authorities shall take into account all relevant considerations including, where applicable, the existence in the State concerned of a consistent pattern of gross, flagrant or mass violations of human rights.

While the US has entered a reservation on how this article will be interpreted (interpreting "substantial grounds for belief" as "more likely than not"), the above still clearly violates even their lax interpretation - thus necessitating the (constitutionally questionable) bar on judicial oversight.

I am simply sickened by this. The US is supposed to be a beacon of human rights and freedom, and here it is adopting a "nudge nudge wink wink say no more" attitude towards the worst possible violation of its ideals. If you are an American, please contact your representative and tell them you will not stand for this.

Stupid, stupid, stupid

What sort of democracy does Bush want in Iraq? The same sort there is in Florida! After months of talking about how Iraq would have free and democratic elections, he ordered the CIA to begin a covert operation to support pro-US candidates. Yeah, that's going to give Iraqis faith in the process and help them see the resulting government as legitimate...

Juan Cole has more...

Homegrown

For those who continue to be in denial and claim that Iraq's problems are all the fault of "foreign fighters": the US military thinks that the insurgency is homegrown and that most militants are Iraqis:

Foreign militants such as Jordanian-born Abu Musab Zarqawi are believed responsible for carrying out videotaped beheadings, suicide car bombings and other high-profile attacks. But U.S. military officials said Iraqi officials tended to exaggerate the number of foreign fighters in Iraq to obscure the fact that large numbers of their countrymen have taken up arms against U.S. troops and the American-backed interim Iraqi government.

"They say these guys are flowing across [the border] and fomenting all this violence. We don't think so," said a senior military official in Baghdad. "What's the main threat? It's internal."

But of course US politicians and the Iraqi regime can never, ever admit that.

I like New Zealand

Jews and Muslims denounce hate mail campaign

Leaders of Wellington's Muslim and Jewish communities have joined forces to denounce the racial hatred that has surfaced in the city.

[...]

The community leaders issued a joint statement yesterday saying Muslims and Jews were "People of the Book" and had lived together in peace for hundreds of years in many communities throughout the world, including Wellington.

"Together, we denounce all acts inciting hatred as they are contrary to our religious, ethical, and civic beliefs. Let us work together, with all of New Zealand, to build a healthy society where everyone respects each others' beliefs ... ," the statement said.

I guess they'll be marching together against the National Front on Labour Weekend then...

Bush was warned

The Bush admininstration's foreign-policy can be summed up as "faith-based". They set their minds on a particular view of reality (for example, that Saddam has a vast array of WMD, or that Iraqis would greet invaders with flowers and rosewater), and act on that view, regardless of the facts on the ground or any evidence to the contrary. So it's really no surprise to learn that Bush was warned that Iraq would go to hell in a handbasket and that the only winners would be Al-Qaeda, but ignored that warning and invaded anyway:

The same intelligence unit that produced a gloomy report in July about the prospect of growing instability in Iraq warned the Bush administration about the potential costly consequences of an American-led invasion two months before the war began, government officials said Monday.

The estimate came in two classified reports prepared for President Bush in January 2003 by the National Intelligence Council, an independent group that advises the director of central intelligence. The assessments predicted that an American-led invasion of Iraq would increase support for political Islam and would result in a deeply divided Iraqi society prone to violent internal conflict.

One of the reports also warned of a possible insurgency against the new Iraqi government or American-led forces, saying that rogue elements from Saddam Hussein's government could work with existing terrorist groups or act independently to wage guerrilla warfare, the officials said. The assessments also said a war would increase sympathy across the Islamic world for some terrorist objectives, at least in the short run, the officials said.

And the rest, as they say, is history.

Nameless horrors

Crooked Timber blogs about Charles Stross' "A Colder War". I read this a few years ago when it featured in a Dozois Year's Best anthology, and it grabbed me immediately. It starts out ordinarily enough - just a soulless CIA analyst looking at some files - and then before you know it you're down the rabbit hole and reading about shoggoth gaps and an exchange of weakly godlike entities. It has everything - Auschwitz, Chernobyl, Oliver North and Stephen J Gould; a fantastic cross between the Mythos and the Cold War.

Like many, I was struck by the similarities between Stross' vision and Delta Green - except that it seems too overt. The world of Delta Green is supposed to be indistinguishable from our own; the horror is hidden behind the curtain, glimpsed out of the corner of the eye (or, if you're unlucky enough, it swallows you whole in the middle of the night). Having shoggoths paraded through Red Square like SS-20s, or nameless horrors imprisoned under the Pentagon as a final deterrent (a more insane form of MAD) would spoil that aspect. Besides, no-one in Delta Green would be mad enough to see the Mythos as a weapon... would they?

North Korea says it has the bomb

In a speech to the UN General Assembly, the North Korean Vice Foreign Minister said that they had reprocessed all their spent nuclear fuel into nuclear weapons to provide a deterrent against the US.

"We have already made clear that we have already reprocessed 8,000 wasted fuel rods and transformed them into arms," he said.

Asked if the fuel had been turned into actual weapons, he replied "We declared that we weaponised this."

Yet another example of how Iraq was an enormous foreign-policy mis-step for America.

Jam tomorrow

After yesterday's marathon effort on fascism, it occured to me that I'd just written as many words as I need to complete the latest piece of non-blog writing which is gnawing on my conscience. So, no posts today - I'm writing other things.

Anger

The Whig disapproves of my calling the Allawi regime "unelected torturers". But this isn't chutzpah, and it isn't morally bankrupt - it is a simple statement of the truth. The Allawi regime is indeed unelected, and they are indeed torturers. I cannot in good conscience support any government that uses such tactics. I didn't support Saddam, I don't support Mugabe, and I'll be fucked before I support Allawi. The fact that The Whig feels that I should speaks volumes about his attitude towards fundamental human rights. He is nothing more than an apologist for torture.

I look forward to the elections, and hope that Iraq gets a better government out of the process - one that shows respect for human rights rather than resurrecting Saddam's tactics. But until then, the Allawi regime is not worthy of my or anybody else's support.

The bar is now closed

Billmon has closed the Whiskey Bar. So, let's raise a glass to the memory of his informed cynicism, bitterness, and cold fury at the state of the world.

Fascism: left or right?

Genius NZ asks "what is Fascism?" and attempts to debunk the "illusion" that fascism is a right-wing ideology. In the process he reaches the fashionable right-wing conclusion that fascists were socialists. Since I've been reading Kevin Passmore's Fascism: A Short Introduction recently, I thought I'd throw in my two cents.

Firstly, definitions of fascism vary. Traditional Marxist definitions see fascism solely in terms of class. An example of this can be seen in Reading the Maps' recent post on whether Destiny Church are fascists:

Fascism occurs when a capitalist class, or a section of the capitalist class, is unable to control an insurgent section of the working class using the normal insitutions [sic] of the state. Fascist leaders often come from the petty bourgeoisie or military, and they are called in because they can mobilise a section of the petty bourgeoisie and/or working class to smash organised labour and the left.

Fascist leaders also destroy bourgeois democracy (ie multi-party parliamentary democracy), because it is a luxury capitalism cannot afford in a revolutionary crisis. Fascist leaders also frequently rein in the 'free' market, using a 'corporate state' state to commandeer economic resources and to force puppet unions and a cowed bourgeoisie to cooperate 'in the national interest'.

The problem with this approach is that it puts too much weight on what is almost certainly a matter of historical accident. There's no question that early twentieth-century fascist movements rose to power with the collusion of wealthy conservative factions who feared the influence of communists. German conservatives made Hitler Chancellor in 1933 and helped pass the Enabling Act; Italian conservatives responded to the March on Rome by handing Mussolini the reins of power. But what about our own National Front? They're a group of criminal losers without any wealthy backing, but at the same time they're fairly clearly fascists. It also makes it difficult to distinguish between fascism and a standard right-authoritarian dictatorship (like that of Pinochet in Chile), and indeed difficult to distinguish what a fascist actually is (other than a pawn of capitalism). What it is good for is talking about causes (fascism does seem to be a response to crisis), and for placing fascism in its historical context.

A second approach is that adopted by anti-Marxist American scholars after WWII. Being anti-Marxist, they couldn't talk about class, and in any case their intent was to discredit communism by linking it with fascism, so they defined fascism as a form of totalitarianism. A checklist definition was provided by C. J. Friedrich (as quoted in Passmore):

1. A single mass party, led by one man, which forms the hardcore of the regime and which is typically superior to or intertwined with the governmental bureaucracy.
2. A system of terror by the police and secret police which is directed against the real and imagined enemies of the regime.
3. A monopolistic control of the mass media.
4. A near monopoly of weapons.
5. Central control of the economy.
6. An elaborate ideology which covers all aspects of man's existence and which contains a powerful chiliastic [messianic or religious] moment.

On this analysis, fascism is distinguished from communism by the ideology - fascists pursue an extreme form of nationalism which suborns all other interests to "the nation". Fascism is therefore the totalitarian pursuit of a nationalist utopia. There's some advantage here in that firmly fingers extreme nationalism - the belief that all interests must be suborned to that of the "nation" (usually defined in exclusivist and racial terms) - as being the core of fascism. It also points at the radical aspect of fascism - fascists seek to remake society and sweep away the old, corrupt one. But there's a danger of overstating the case. Fascists seem to be quite comfortable with existing structures and interests if they are not perceived as being incompatible with nationalism. There's also the weakness, shared with the Marxist analysis, of trying to push all enemies into the same box.

A third definition is that given by Umberto Eco in his essay Eternal Fascism: Fourteen Ways of Looking at a Blackshirt (itself part of a larger essay entitled "Ur-Fascism"). This identifies fascism as an irrationalist, ultra-traditionalist movement characterised by action for action's sake, a fear of difference, and contempt for the weak, born of a sense of frustration, humiliation, and feelings of being beseiged by a vast conspiracy (traits some may notice in a few of our local right-wing bloggers). It's an excellent picture of the psychology of fascism, but puts too much emphasis on the traditionalist aspects and not enough on the revolutionary ones.

Finally, there's Passmore's definition, which draws on some of the above. He identifies fascism as being essentially about ultranationalism, and the core goal as creating a "mobilized national community". He identifies it as reactionary - anti-socialist and anti-feminist - because those "isms" put class or gender above the nation, and as being of the extreme right, chiefly because of its extreme hostility to the traditional left. He also stresses fascism's radicalism, as it seeks to overthrow and replace existing elites who are perceived as having betrayed the nation, and because it will override traditional conservative and right-wing interests (such as private property) in pursuit of this goal. Finally, it is characterised by paramilitarism and a willingness to use violence, thuggery, and intimidation in pursuit of its goals.

Is this "socialist"? No. The hard core of fascism is nationalism - something traditionally associated with the traditional right - and this trumps any conceptions of class. Socialist-style policies may be pursued insofar as workers are identified as important to (or even defining) the nation, but they are not the goal, and woebetide any workers who put their own interests above the perceived interests of the nation (by e.g. striking for higher wages). While some historical fascists started out as socialists (notably Mussolini), this ultimately gave way to nationalist concerns (Mussolini ditched the socialists in 1915, and his movement waged a paramilitary war against them). Genius NZ is correct to say that fascism is not "a classic right of the political spectrum position in the modern sense", because the right is traditionally conservative, while fascism is radical and revolutionary. But it is of the right nonetheless. There are a great many similarities between fascist regimes and Stalinist ones, but that is due to the authoritarian nature of fascism - not because it is of the left.

As for US Republicans, there are some disturbing similarities which become apparent on reading the Eco piece, and they score a couple of ticks on Friedrich's definition. Worse is the growing influence of extreme right-wing elements. Orcinus has spent a great deal of bandwidth on the way that the Republicans' reaching out to gun-nuts and extreme fundamentalist Christians over the last decade has fed those extremist's memes back into the mainstream of the party, notably in his Rush, Newspeak and Fascism. And there's certainly a great deal of fascist-style psychology in the "conservative movement" at the moment. But they're not fascists - yet. What's scary is that they could quite easily go that way. One of my great fears over Iraq is what happens when the Americans lose. Because they're going to lose if they keep doing what they're doing - you simply cannot defeat that sort of popular insurgency with the current tactics - and then they will have a toxic combination of wounded pride, embittered veterans, and serious economic troubles. The parallel with post-Versailles Germany and Italy is striking, and some in America are already complaining of a liberal Dolchstoss (as they did after losing Vietnam). So while the Republican party isn't fascist yet, a loss in Iraq could tip some parts of them over. And then we should all be very, very afraid.

More liberal internationalism

The Sock Thief replies to JustLeft's post on Dichotomies, accusing him of conflating two points when he characterises the underlying dispute as a question of whether the western way of life should be imposed by force. He begins by pointing out that

there probably are those that want the West to "dominate" but they are a very small minority

They may well be, but unfortunately they include some of the world's most powerful people - such as the current President of the United States and his closest advisors. The chief exhibit of this is the US National Security Council's September, 2002 National Security Strategy, which opened with the bold statement that there was

a single sustainable model for national success: freedom, democracy and free enterprise.

It goes on to advocate for the imposition of this model around the world - for the US to use its "position of unparalleled military strength and great economic and political influence" to

extend the benefits of freedom across the globe.We will actively work to bring the hope of democracy, development, free markets, and free trade to every corner of the world.

In other words, an explicitly Rousseauean project of "forcing people to be free", with a peculiarly American definition of "freedom". That isn't democratic by any stretch of the imagination, and it sure as hell isn't liberal.

The problem is that these people have been able to wrap their undemocratic and illiberal goals in the cloak of humanitarianism, democracy and liberalism - at least with regards to Iraq. As for real humanitarian crises, like Darfur, they don't give a shit.

Sock Thief's second point is to make a lot of noise about humanitarian intervention, but this is missing the point. There is widespread agreement on the left as to the desirability of democracy and freedom, and that military intervention can sometimes be justified in pursuit of these goods. What's in dispute is whether it was justified in the case of Iraq, and what else comes along for the ride. Intervening to help people is unquestionably a Good Thing; intervening to help people and totally remake their society without any pretence of their consent is another question entirely.

Finally, as a way of moving things forward (and in response to a Nick Cohen article in the Observer), JustLeft suggests that:

[i]n the current situation, the left should be engaged in a debate about when and how intervention should be done, to protect people's human rights from totalitarian governments. Once a clear position is worked out, it should apply that analysis wherever it is relevant.

I think that Human Rights Watch have given us exactly the sort of clear analysis that is needed, and I've been using it as the basis for my thinking on the matter.

Whitewashing war-crimes

A while ago I blogged about the difference between British and American attitudes towards crimes committed by soldiers. The British prosecute in open court whereever possible, pour encourager les autres; the Americans seem happy to give their criminals a slap on the wrist - even for torture. Today there's more startling evidence of this disparity. While there are honourable exceptions,

by more than a 2-to-1 ratio, military officials have handed down administrative discipline rather than pursue criminal punishments for service members accused of prisoner abuse or sexual-assault crimes in war zones, according to records obtained through the Freedom of Information Act and a Pentagon source.

"Administrative discipline" means

reprimands, fines, rank reductions, bars on Internet use and "Chapter 10" agreements, which allow some soldiers who admit guilt to leave the military under less-than-honorable conditions but without being prosecuted.

The examples quoted in the story should give an idea of the ludicrous injustice of this approach. Murder a prisoner? Resign. Rape a fellow soldier? Resign. Beat and abuse POWs, resulting in broken bones? Resign. Oversee that as an officer? Resign. This isn't justice. These people should be facing trial and imprisonment, not a plane-ticket home to civilian life.

As for those who want to continue to claim that this is "just a few bad apples", this sick parody of justice is condoned at the highest levels of the US military. Local commanders cover up for their men by declining to prosecute, and their superiors rubber-stamp the decisions - all the way up to General-officer level. And the incentives it sets? Abuse or kill Iraqis, and you get to go home. Now that's a discouragement.

This process simply has no credibility, and it will not have any until the decision on whether to prosecute is placed in completely independent hands. Until then, the US military can rightly be accused of protecting its own, and of whitewashing war-crimes.

New Fisk

Dramatic plea from al-Qa’ida suspect

The Sunday Star-Times has as interview with Iraqi PM Iyad Allawi today (sadly not online), in which he doesn't come across too well. But more interesting is his comment quoted in the story about the safe return of the New Zealand engineers from Basra:

Meanwhile, Iraq's interim prime minister, Iyad Allawi, has called on New Zealand to do more to help his country fight terrorism.

In an interview with the Sunday Star-Times, Allawi said Iraq was now the centre of an international war.

"Frankly, here (in Iraq) we are defending you in New Zealand . . . They (the insurgents in Iraq) will go back to New York, they'll go to London, they'll go to New Zealand. . . they'll go everywhere."

This is simply Tui-able; the primary motivation for the insurgants in Iraq is nationalism - kicking the Americans out. They are overwhelmingly locals fighting for a local cause. While we may have a preference as to who wins, there's simply no way that it can be construed as defending New Zealand.

And OTOH, can we really blame a guy who was put in power by the Americans and who is utterly dependent on outside assistance from trying to get others to help keep him in power and prop up his regime of unelected torturers?

Thugs seek legitimacy

The National Front wants to start "security patrols" in low income neighbourhoods. To "protect the elderly", of course - it's nothing to do with them looking for people to beat up and intimidate while cloaked in authority, oh no.

Those who pay attention to my CBIP will have noticed that I'm reading Kevin Passmore's Fascism: A Very Short Introduction at the moment. According to Passmore, one of the defining characteristics of fascism is that it embraces paramilitary violence and vigilantism in pursuit of its objectives. Historically, fascist parties have sought to legitimise this by having their paramilitary wings (such as the SA, SS and Blackshirts) take over some or all of the functions of the police. Our own National Front seems to be no different.

Zaoui update

Zaoui's lawyers are taking his bid for bail to the Supreme Court. It certainly raises some important constitutional issues relating to how long the government can keep people in prison without charging them, but I'm not sure about their chances of success. A number of Habeas cases were appealed to the Supreme Court early on, but none were granted leave.

New Fisk

The worse the situation in Iraq, the bigger the lies that Tony Blair tells us

Indisriminate slaughter

When a car-bomb goes off in Iraq, US officials are quick to condemn the indiscriminate slaughter of innocent civilians. Unfortunately, it seems that US forces are killing twice as many of those civilians as the resistance...

Liberal internationalism

JustLeft has an excellent post on the growing ideological rigidity surrounding the war in Iraq, in which he identifies the "unspoken core of the debate" as two dichotomous worldviews:

Should the West dominate the world, and seek to make it over in its own image? Or are other ways of life - economic, social, political, religious - allowed to coexist with capitalist liberal democracy?

Like Jordan, I am in the second camp - there's more than one way to run an acceptable society. While I generally approve of "the western model" (give or take a few questions about distributive justice) as generally delivering a high level of freedom and wellbeing to (most of) its inhabitants, there are other ways to pursue those goods, and how a society is run should be decided by its members and not by faraway people motivated by profit or ideology.

This raises the obvious question of what we should do when a society fails to meet minimum standards of acceptability; when it starves, tortures, murders or just generally oppresses its members. What should liberal internationalists do about the Iraqs, the Zimbabwes, the Uzbekistans and the Sudans? Or about the shitty, undemocratic, and oppressive, but perhaps not quite so terrible regimes like Saudi Arabia, China, Belarus or Iran?

The answer is that of course we should help - we should try and give people the four freedoms Roosevelt identified as necessary for human flourishing, as well as the freedom to determine the structure of their own society. But we should generally avoid trying to deliver those freedoms at the barrel of a gun. Timothy Garton Ash summed it up well in his article Beyond the West:

both in principle and in practice, it's better that people find their own path to freedom, in their own countries, in their own time and, wherever possible, peacefully. But should we help these people as they fight freedom's battle? Most emphatically we should, by every non-violent means at our disposal.

(My emphasis). This means linking trade and investment to respect for human rights, it means applying sanctions and international pressure to abusive regimes, and it means providing support and the benefit of our experience to those countries which are working towards freedom. But what it does not mean is using force. Military intervention can sometimes be justified, but only in the most extreme cases (e.g. ongoing genocide). Iraq failed to meet that standard. A much stronger case can be made for intervention in Darfur, but the more I read about it, the more I despair that it would actually do any good. So when we do consider force, it must be with a sense of realism about our chances of success, with humility, and in the knowledge that often the "cure" is worse than the disease - rather than swaggering arrogance and a belief that bombing children will make things better.

Don Brash's moral bankruptcy

Fighting Talk's Lyndon Hood has a throwaway paragraph which exposes Don Brash's moral bankruptcy over human rights:

And while there’s a lull in proceedings I’d like to mention that Dr Don Brash helped set up the Freedom Foundation, a group of New Zealand business types supporting Amnesty International (its other patron is the deputy chairman of Transpower). Recently in question time this same Don Brash was taunting the Government for not immediately taking up his offer to help remove prisoners’ entitlement to compensation for human rights abuses.

Is there any belief that Brash won't sell out for political advantage?

How bad is Iraq?

Daily Kos has posted a daily security bulletin (distributed to civilians, not military) which paints a pretty scary picture. One of his commentators likens it to "the weather report for Hell and its suburbs"...

And for more scariness, check out this map (courtesy of Juan Cole):

The red areas are those where the US is completely unable to provide any sort of security. The purple areas are those where there has been recent heavy fighting. The white areas are "peaceful" - though given that Baghdad is classified as such, it's a rather generous definition of "peace".

Half the country is effectively in rebel hands. And the US think they can win this?

Surplus

National has reacted to the larger than expected budget surplus by (of course) calling for tax cuts. Can anybody say "broken record"...?

Meanwhile, JustLeft has an excellent post on how big a surplus we should be running, informed by considerations of intergenerational equity regarding capital expenditure. It's unfair that today's taxpayers pay the full cost of things like roads that will be used by future generations, and funding through debt seems justified in order to fairly allocate the cost. Looked at this way, we should be running a much smaller surplus - about half the current size, in fact.

Like National, JustLeft sees the surplus as an opportunity. But rather than being an opportunity to redistribute wealth to the already rich, he sees it as an opportunity to restore and rebuild public services to ensure greater equity today. His picks? Student loans, the working for families package, and health. I favour the latter myself: despite the intergenerational atrocity of the student loan system, slashing waiting lists and rolling back usage charges on primary health care so that people can actually see a doctor when they're sick (rather than showing up at A&E later needing a hospital bed) seems to be the priority. Health has a tremendous impact on people's ability to fully participate in society and on life satisfaction; guaranteeing it (or rather guaranteeing rapid treatment) is one of the foundations of a decent society and a core duty of any government.

Must read

Abu Ghraib: The Hidden Story, by Mark Danner.

While in the guise of a review of the two recently released reports into Abu Ghraib (the Schlesinger and Fay reports), this is really a detailed and perceptive exploration of what went wrong and why. I'm still working through it, but it looks very good so far.

Breaching the Electoral Act

The anonymous anti-Hubbard hatchet job flyers currently being distributed in Auckland in breach of the Local Electoral Act 2001 have reminded me that some of my posts (and some of my plans for the next general election) may fall foul of our electoral regulations.

S. 113 of the Local Electoral Act restricts the publication of "any advertisement that is used or appears to be used to promote or procure the election of a candidate" to either that authorised by the candidate or that from ratepayers or residents groups. In either case, you have to stick your full name and address somewhere on it (note that ordinary citizens need not apply; local government is a one-way democracy). S. 221 of the Electoral Act has similar language for general elections. While both Acts have a provision allowing "news or comments" (the more recent one even mentions the internet), endorsements of specific candidates or parties could be considered illegal (it may not be; I should stress that I do not know the case law on this).

Not that this is going to affect my behaviour in any way whatsoever, but it's nice to know what laws I may be skirting.

Southland local body elections just became important

Solid Energy is working on plans to build a coal-fired power plant in Southland. It would burn locally mined lignite coal - the dirtiest, filthiest sort, with the lowest energy content, producing particulate pollution, sulphur dioxide, and acid rain. While it doesn't have to be dirty - gasification allows for cleaner burning and for gases to be seperated out at source - burning it cleanly is more expensive. If we want to ensure that business takes a cleaner route, rather than dumping their costs on us as lung cancer and acid rain, we need to subject them to suitably tough resource consents. And this means electing people to Environment Southland who will set sufficiently tough air-quality standards and not simply rubber stamp whatever proposal is eventually put forward.

Queue jumpers

The government is offering to review the immigration status of the over 2000 Zimbabweans who have fled their country for New Zealand. Those who can will be given permanent residency under existing rules; others will be given special dispensation.

Despite the title, I actually think this is a Good Thing. It's a great example of us doing our bit for people in need, many of whom have used their temporary refuge to start rebuilding their lives. But at the same time there's no question that these people are getting special treatment and "jumping the queue". Other refugees fleeing similarly shitty regimes and whose need is no less are not given this sort of red-carpet treatment; they are denounced as "queue jumpers" and treated as criminals. What is the reason for the difference in treatment? Simply that refugees from Zimbabwe are overwhelmingly white. Suddenly, this isn't looking like something we should be particularly proud of after all...

Extortion

Yaser Hamdi, a US citizen classified as an "enemy combatant" and held without charge after being captured in Afghanistan, is to be set free - on the condition that he relinquishes his US citizenship and accepts deportation to Saudi Arabia.

This is simply monstrous. Hamdi is as American as President Bush - he was born in Baton Rouge, Lousiana. He has not been convicted of any crime. He has not even been charged. Yet the government, having arbitrarily detained him for two years, is coercing him into giving up his citizenship by the threat of further arbitrary detention. That's not even a pretence of justice - it's extortion, pure and simple.

This is precisely why we have limits on government action - why we have courts, lawyers, appeals, and public oversight. But the Bush administration has managed to evade or neuter all those limits, and is now exiling one of its own.

America's status as a "beacon of freedom", already flickering, has just grown a little bit dimmer.

Charge them or release them

The US government's response to the Supreme Court ruling three months ago that Guantanamo detainees had recourse to US courts has been to drag their feet. Unfortunately, it seems the courts are losing their patience. A US federal judge has ordered the US government to justify why it is continuing to hold prisoners in Guantanamo and to explain for each one why they should not be released. While it's not made explicit in the article, if the government fails to convince the court, a writ of Habeas Corpus will almost certainly follow.

The message to the US government is clear: they must either charge the detainees or release them.

Putting Iraq in perspective

Juan Cole has a scary post which puts the carnage in Iraq into perspective by asking the simple question of "if America were Iraq, what would it be like?". The answer isn't very pleasant:

Thus, violence killed 300 Iraqis last week, the equivalent proportionately of 3,300 Americans. What if 3,300 Americans had died in car bombings, grenade and rocket attacks, machine gun spray, and aerial bombardment in the last week? That is a number greater than the deaths on September 11, and if America were Iraq, it would be an ongoing, weekly or monthly toll.

That's just the beginning, and it's bad enough. But there's a lot more there, and putting it all in one place and putting it in a US context makes it possible to truly grasp the scale of what is going on in Iraq. The situation is simply terrible, it is not improving, and the US seems powerless to do anything about it. They can kill more people, of course, raze neighbourhoods or even whole cities, but that doesn't actualy resolve the problem - it simply results in more recruits for the resistance.

Clausewitz said that "war is merely the continuation of policy by other means", by which he meant that military force is used to achieve political objectives. But it's hard to see what objectives are now being pursued in Iraq. The US cannot create the necessary stability for democratic government to emerge, it cannot protect the current unelected regime or its staff, and it cannot even keep the electricity and water (let alone the oil) flowing. All of the US's stated objectives are now unachievable, and have been for quite some time; all they seem to be fighting for now is to avoid "appearing weak" by admitting defeat. But is that really worth 1200 dead Iraqis and around 60 dead US soldiers every month?

New kiwi blog

Generation Y not?

Inherit the media?

Bloggreen Aotearoa looks at the current influence of the blogosphere in US politics, and speculates that bloggers will inherit the media in New Zealand:

But what I'm looking forward to seeing is the local analysis of us political bloggers on the New Zealand political scene. There are a number of MPs who I know are regular readers of some blogs and a number of parliamentary staff or former staff members are running high profile blogs. It's also funny to see that a trend in Question Time is to table printed out copies of articles on Russel Brown's Hard News as a way of demonstrating 'coolness'.

I think the next election will be quite telling in terms of the influence of the blogosphere. If more and more people are turning to independent commentators for their political information, how much do we as bloggers have influence on a) general public opinion and b) politicians impressions of public opinion. It makes you think ;) or write more...

While it may be tempting to adopt a triumphalist tone ("history is on our side", and all that), realisticly I don't think we're a significant influence on general public opinion. Our combined readership is simply too small. From half-remembered stats published in stories about the kiwi blogosphere, Hard News gets around 15000 visitors a month. NZPundit I think claimed 50000 - but only about 20% of them are actually New Zealanders. I get 4000 going on 5, and from looking at those sites that make their stats public, most kiwi political blogs are smaller. Turning these monthly stats into daily figures (dividing by 25 should get an average weekday total), and we're talking daily readerships in the hundreds. And many of them will be regulars, or junkies who read more than one blog. The upshot is that the total number of eyeballs looking at the NZ political blogosphere is truly tiny - a few thousand people at most - so we're certainly not directly influencing the general public.

What about indirect influence? What gives the US political blogs their teeth are reliable transmission mechanisms to funnel stories to the general media. Journalists and political operatives watch the biggest sites, and are quick to propagate any interesting material. So wingnuttery about typewriters goes from PowerLine to Drudge to the mainstream media, and pointyness about "you bought it, you own it" goes from diaries on Kos to John Kerry's speeches. But apart from some bagging of Ticketek, I don't see a lot of that happening here. Partly that's because our news media doesn't suffer from ADD and isn't so driven to scoop the competition (because there really isn't much competition), but mostly it's because NZ political bloggers (and political bloggers in general) aren't exactly fountains of originality. Most of what we say is entirely predictable and fairly banal - the usual hype, namecalling, and "is not"/"is too" of everyday politics. There's plenty of sources for this, and the media don't need to turn to the net to find it. What gets picked up in the US is original material - the research that undercuts some claim, the devastating point that no-one else has noticed, the close reading of official reports which reveals some lie - or specialist knowledge. We don't really do very much of either.

Where I think we may have some influence is in politician's impressions of public opinion - blogs are like letters to the editor in tracking the public's reaction to political events, only faster. On the other hand, I'm sure that our politicians - or their advisors - know exactly how tiny we are (and if they didn't, they do now).

Overall, claims that NZ bloggers are going to "inherit the media" are almost certainly overstated. If we want influence, we're going to have to earn it. Producing better material that it is actually worth pillaging would be a good start.

Homeland Security jumps the shark

Really, is there any other way to describe their diverting a plane 1000km because former musician Cat Stevens was on board?

Democracy and national sovereignty

Here's something Maverick Philosopher would definately regard as a reductio of the democratic ideal: Jonathan Freedland, writing in the Guardian, suggests that we should all have a say in the US elections. And he makes a very good case: America's hegemonic power is so great that their decisions affect everybody on the planet. But by the very principles their revolution was founded on - people having a say in the decisions which govern their lives - non-Americans should now have a say in their "internal" elections.

No-one for a moment expects this to happen. But it's a nice idea how the ideals behind democracy - of everyone's interests counting equally, and having to be taken into account in any decision which affects them - undermine the Westphalian doctrine of national sovereignty.

Fionnaigh has an excellent post on the National Front and what they stand for.

Local body roundup

Several blogs have posted guides to their local body elections, so here's a list of links all in one place:

Auckland:

• Span

Christchurch:

• Metcalph on Christchurch City Council & Banks Peninsula District Council, Environment Canterbury and Canterbury DHB, the Christchurch mayoralty, and more on the Canterbury DHB.

Wellington:

• David Farrar on Wellington City Council, Wellington Regional Council, and Capital Coast Health)
• BlogGreen

Palmerston North:

• No Right Turn

Obviously, evey single one of us has our own political views, and the guides should be read with our particular biases in mind.

If anybody else has any other contributions, let me know and I'll add them in.

Goff at the UN

Phil Goff's speech to the UN General Assembly is here. Nothing groundbreaking - just the usual appeals for reform of the Security Council, the elimination of agricultural subsidies, support for international action on Darfur and for the ICC as a means of bringing errant governments to justice, and for a just solution in Palestine.

The fly in the ointment is an announcement of support for the Interim Iraqi Authority. Yes, we've gone on the record as supporting a regime which uses torture. We shouldn't be doing that; we should be pointing out that their human rights record isn't a great improvement on Saddam's, and hoping that the upcoming elections (if they happen) will see them replaced with a better regime. Undiplomatic, but someone needs to be saying it.

Interesting reading

Harpers magazine has an interesting article this month on the rise of the right-wing spin machine in America. The "mighty wurlitzer" of right-wing think-tanks and media outlets didn't come from nowhere, and it didn't evolve from grassroots pressure to represent popular interests. Instead, it was created by some very wealthy conservative Americans with the explicit purpose of manipulating public opinion.

Not that I'm saying that there's anything wrong with this. All's fair in love and politics, and vigorously waging memetic warfare is simply good tactics. But it's interesting nonetheless, for two reasons: firstly, the American left was left behind by this strategy, and has not managed to restore the balance of power; and secondly, it's been happening here - witness the Business Roundtable, Maxim Institute, and all their single-purpose glove-puppet spinoffs like the Education Forum and Local Government Forum. The lesson the for the New Zealand left is clear: we need to create our own think-tanks to provide memetic ammunition, otherwise, in the long-term, we will be outgunned.

New kiwi blog

The Everlasting Man (hat tip: Big News)

Arbitrary

Britain has released a prisoner from it's "mini-Guantanamo". While it's great that he's been released - imprisonment without charge cannot be justified - it also underlines the essentially arbitrary nature of the internment process:

D was among the first foreigners to be held under the emergency measures passed within weeks of the 11 September atrocities, and has been in prison since 17 December 2001. Just 11 weeks ago D was being described by an independent commission as a terrorist supporter and a threat to national security, yet the Home Office was unable to reveal why he was now a free man.

What changed? The government will not say. But this refusal taints the entire process, leading to either a suspicion that they have unjustifiably imprisoned an innocent man for the past three years on dubious secret evidence, or that they have released a still-dangerous terrorist. This underscores the need for open justice. Suspected terrorists must be charged, rather than simply imprisoned, and tried in ordinary courts under ordinary standards of evidence. Otherwise, we can have no faith in the verdict.

Democracy and stupidity II

The Maverick Philosopher responds to my post on democracy and stupidity. His chief criticism?

If all interests must be counted equally, then I wonder if this doesn't entail that voting privileges must be extended to all mentally competent people who can read and write.

This would entail extending the vote to children and criminals, something he regards as a reductio ad absurdum. While I agree that it creates pressure for the widest possible franchise, I don't think that it necessarily requires giving children the vote, and I have no problem with inserting a tacit arbitrary restriction to adults if it makes him happy.

(At the same time, the inability of modern democratic systems to properly represent the interests of children and young people is a well-known flaw. Because they cannot vote, they have no effective voice, and it is particularly easy for their elders to pursue policies which unfairly impose costs on them. Running deficits, using finite resources, and allowing pollution are three general examples. More specifically, there's the American policy of conscription during the Vietnam War (which targetted people who could not then vote), and New Zealand's own student loan scheme, which imposed costs on future tertiary students so that their parents could enjoy lower taxes. Recognition of this fact has led to a general downward trend in the voting age, and it looks to go even lower in the future...)

As for criminals, there's nothing at all absurd about them voting - as Maverick points out, they have just as much a stake in society as anybody else. Civilised societies recognise this. Sadly, the United States does not.

Reading on, Maverick shares the same concern as Philosophy et cetera - that people may not necessarily know their own best interests, and that

injudicious and misinformed people could easily vote against their own best interests.

Indeed they might - but that is no reason to deny the validity of their choice. Fallibility is a part of being human, and people's mistakes are theirs to make. Denying this and arrogating to yourself the right to second-guess people's choices on the grounds that they may make a mistake not only strips their lives of meaning, but it invites us to supplant their interests with our own. More importantly, it is the first step on the road to the gulag and the re-education center. "People don't know what's best for them" is the underlying justification of every totalitarian government.

Finally, Maverick raises the idea of the "common interest". This is ontologically dubious - all interests are ultimately personal - and inasmuch as people vote against it, it cannot truly be said to be "common". But even if it were, it would still be no reason to limit political choice. As Mill said,

if all mankind minus one, were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind.

This goes for voting as much as speech.

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