He doesn't know

Glenn Condell on blogorrhoea asks what the difference is between the left and the right. His answer? Doubt...

Bucket of Fisk

Al-Jazeera accuses US of harassment in row over 'bias'
American agents are blamed for raid that became a massacre
American troops step up searches as death toll rises (mirror1, mirror2)
"I tell my wife I'm OK, but we all wonder who's next"

Israeli apartheid

The Israeli government has introduced a law to prevent Palestinians - and only Palestinians - from gaining Israeli citizenship through marriage. Those affected (and it will affect mostly Arab-Israelis) will be forced to either seperate or leave the country.

The parallels with South African apartheid, or the anti-miscegenation laws of the US South should be obvious.

NZ Herald: How MPs voted on the Death with Dignity Bill

Voting for pain and suffering

Peter Brown's "death with dignity" bill has been voted down rather than sent to select committee.

Hopefully the voting records will be published so we can see who voted for pain and suffering...

BTW

ACT's position on foreshore claims is another stunning example of their hypocrisy. Their position on things like taxes and the RMA is that people have an absolute right to their own property. But here they are supporting the expropriation of land by legislative fiat. Maybe they should change their slogan to "property rights for everyone but brown people"?

Winding up race hatred

I see that DPF is complaining about Michael Cullen calling Bill English a "racist" - which is interesting, given that that's not what Cullen actually said. Even a cursory glance at the stories on Stuff or the Herald would show that Cullen's actual words were "winding up race hatred", which is something rather different. Rather than accusing English of being an ignorant bigot, Cullen is accusing him of exploiting ignorant bigots for political gain - and pointing out that the solution is going to have to be a bit more complicated than National's simplistic call to legislate the possible pre-existing property rights of Maori out of existence.

I have a lot of sympathy for National's position. Their beaches for all website says that:

It's the birthright of every New Zealander to go to the beach, to walk the coast, to throw a fishing line in the water - it's part of what it means to be a New Zealander.

Even though I'm not a beach person - I don't like the sun, I don't like the sand, and saltwater does bad things to my hair - I think that they're right. Free and public access to nature is part of what this country is all about; this is not a country where you can own the beach.

The fly in the egalitarian ointment is of course the Treaty. Under it, we have to recognise the pre-existing property rights of Maori to "their lands, villages and all their treasures" (those who want to ignore international law and use the English version will find that this clause is even stronger: "full exclusive and undisturbed possession of their Lands and Estates Forests Fisheries and other properties"). The Maori Land Court has recognised that these lands and estates may include beaches and foreshores, and they seem to have a prima facie case... or at least they do if you think that there has been even one justified land claim under the Treaty.

And therein lies the true problem: there is a segment of New Zealand society which refuses to accept that the Treaty is relevant, or that any claim could possibly be justified (or that some might have been, once - for cases where we took land with guns and cannon - but these have all been settled and modern claims are baseless). And it's this segment - the old, white, "bloody Maori - how dare they!" bunch that were out in force in Nelson over the weekend - that National, ACT and United Future are trying to attract with their calls for legislation.

It's to the government's credit that they've since realised - after their initial panic promise of legislation - that things are a hell of a lot more complicated than that, and that simply denying that Maori have pre-existing property rights, as National and friends seem to be doing, is not going to be a lasting solution which leads to harmony.

About bloody time

According to a story in yesterday's Herald, the government is threatening to regulate the gas industry. As someone who works in that industry and has a passing familiarity with the issues in questions, my opinion is that its about bloody time.

Scoop has a speech from the chairman of NGC, which calls the planned regulation "unnecessary" because the industry is making "very significant progress" on regulating itself. This is pure bollocks - the gas industry has spectacularly failed to provide any sort of usable enforcement mechanism for its self-regulation scheme, making it completely toothless. They need a Leviathan, and if they can't provide one themselves, the government should provide it for them.

New Fisk

US Troops Turn Botched Saddam Raid Into A Massacre
What are Iraqis to make of this theatre of the macabre?

Another NZ blog

NZ newsgroup regular David Farrar (aka "DPF") is now established at KiwiBlog.

The US is taking hostages in Iraq

Col. David Hogg, commander of the 2nd Brigade of the 4th Infantry Division, said tougher methods are being used to gather the intelligence. On Wednesday night, he said, his troops picked up the wife and daughter of an Iraqi lieutenant general. They left a note: "If you want your family released, turn yourself in." Such tactics are justified, he said, because, "It's an intelligence operation with detainees, and these people have info." They would have been released in due course, he added later.

The tactic worked. On Friday, Hogg said, the lieutenant general appeared at the front gate of the U.S. base and surrendered.

This marks a new descent in the tactics of the US military in Iraq - and as Atrios has noted, it is against the Geneva Convention (the taking of hostages is specifically outlawed in Protocol 1, Article 75). But hey, the US doesn't commit war crimes, right?

New Fisk

What Iraqis will think about the photos of Uday and Qusay

(The power of death in the Herald is a significantly different version, and may be two articles glommed together)

The descent of America

After September 11th, the US government set up a national "do not fly list", of people who weren't allowed on a plane because they might be terrorists. Now, the ACLU has discovered through a FOIA request that there is a second list of "selectees" who are targetted for searches at airports before being allowed to board an aircraft. Who is on this list? Activists, journalists, and opponents of the Bush regime...

This what the United States has come to: secret lists of political opponents targetted for harassment, with no oversight and no judicial review. Remind you of anywhere yet?

Telemarketing and positive liberty

It occurs to me that the second part of yesterday's freedom from telemarketers post - the bit about who is entitled to balance the interests of the conflicting selves - is a really good example of the difference between negative and positive liberty. It's also an excellent example for Alan Henderson of why "legal protection of property rights" is a positive rather than negative liberty.

First, definitions. Isaiah Berlin introduced the idea of negative and positive liberty in his landmark paper "Two Concepts of Liberty". Negative liberty is generally understood as freedom from outside interference; it's also related to questions of "what may I do". Positive liberty, OTOH, is generally characterised as "freedom to", and is related to the question of "who rules me", or who (or what) is qualified to make decisions on my behalf, and with concepts of the good life. Positive liberty is also related to questions of providing the means by which other liberties may be exercised... the rights to education, healthcare and basic welfare are positive liberties because they are seen as necessary to lead any decent human existence.

The basis behind a "do not call" list is that people have a right to privacy, or a right to their own time, uninterrupted by phone-spam. However, absent some form of legal protection, that right means nothing - people can violate it at will, with no comeback. In order for the right to be meaningful and useful, it needs some form of legal protection to enforce it and allow those who violate it to be punished. Hence, a "do not call" list.

The same argument applies to private property rights, which Henderson characterises in terms of freedom from theft. Absent a stable legal environment which both enables proof of ownership (via titles, deeds, receipts and what have you) and punishes thieves, your "freedom from theft" is worth precisely nothing. Again, the legal environment is what makes it meaningful and useful - which is why the Cato institute pays attention to it when handing out points on its freedom index.

(The same argument applies to sound money and a (negative) freedom from fraud, BTW - though Crooked Timber has a few things to say on this as well...)

More on telemarketing

Tyler Cowen has posted a followup to his telemarketing post, the core of which is this:

I still think many people on the list are afraid they will get calls, respond, and buy something. Frankly I am not convinced by all of you who say "I don't want this stuff." Sure, you don't, but what about the market as a whole?

Well, what about it? The fact that the market as a whole "wants" to receive unsolicited calls doesn't mean that any individual who is part of that market wants to receive them. To think otherwise is to commit the fallacy of division. There's also an inconsistency with the usual Libertarian argument against taxation (in which individuals cannot morally be forced to pay taxes even if society as a whole wants to), but given that most Libertarians are only interested in drugs, guns and taxes, that's hardly surprising.

Agendas

According to Kiwipete in a comment on NZPundit, I have an agenda.

Since I'm not too sure what I'm doing here, maybe he should spell it out for me?

(Oh, yeah, to address Craig's post: I guess this shows how much your worldview depends on what you read. The folks at NZPundit prefer to get their news from Murdoch; I get mine from quality British media. For analysis of the situation in Iraq, I also turn to Steve Gilliard's posts at Daily Kos. No doubt Craig will shortly be coming up with amusing little nicknames for any of these news sources which are currently lacking one).

Burned books: I smell a rat

Part II of Dr Fudge's suppressed article.

The main thrust of it seems to be that the committee of investigation set up by the university to look into Joel Hayward's thesis was one-sided and biased, and the subsequent endorsement of it by the history department a rubber-stamp by people who didn't want to offend the university. It's obviously highly critical - which may be why the university didn't want it published - but the more I look at it, the more I smell a rat. Googling around shows that Fudge has been at Canterbury since 1995¹, which means he was probably involved in the very events he is reporting on. Needless to say, this puts a substantially different cast on things. Instead of "PC university suppresses truth-seeking academic", the whole thing - the article and its suppression - is part of one of those bitchy little intra-departmental fights which is so common in academia.

That doesn't make the article's suppression any better of course - criticism of university authorities is also covered by academic freedom - but with the way academic egos work, it makes the university's excuse of fearing a libel suit substantially more plausible. I guess the university didn't feel that it was necessary to mention that any such suit was likely to be brought by one of its own staff...

Of course, all of this is pure speculation - but if any of you readers down there at Canterbury want to fill me in on the details, please drop me a line.

¹ There's a throwaway reference in this article, at the end of the ninth paragraph. Canterbury's departmental bios are rather uninformative, unfortunately.

New Fisk

Guerrilla war in Iraq is out of control
Americans fail to disclose all attacks on troops in Iraq

Why Uday and Qusay didn't matter

NZPundit equates not thinking the death of Saddam's sons is a big deal with not caring about their crimes - which is par for the course over there. Since he obviously didn't get the point of my post, I'll spell it out for him.

Saddam's reign over Iraq is over; it ended four months ago when the US took Baghdad. Neither he nor his sons are relevant to the situation anymore - sure, they're still around, but contrary to the myth propagated by the Americans, the Iraqis aren't resisting the occupation because they want Saddam back. Quite the contrary - if the US withdraws and Saddam pops up again, he'll be strung up quicker than Mussolini. No, the Iraqis are resisting because they want to control their own destiny, rather than be dictated to by a foreign occupier.

Proof? Just look at what happened in Iraq when the news was announced. After a brief celebration, they went right back to killing Americans. And that is why killing Uday and Qusay makes no difference.

It took them long enough to notice: According to the Guardian, Britian is now a client state.