Not-so-new Fisk

How the 19 billion 'dirty dinars' were quickly cleaned up

Sue the bastards

The police are grossly abusing their authority by continuing to keep registers of prostitutes, despite the fact that prostitution has been legalised. This is harassment, pure and simple. Now that prostitution is legal, they have no more reason to keep lists of prostitutes than of dairy owners. Unfortunately, it seems that some in the police just don't understand that, or are unwilling to accept that the law has changed. They need to be forcibly reminded that in this country it is Parliament that makes the laws, not the police.

Update (12 August 2022): And 18 years later, Blogger thinks this post - expressing a political opinion about the overpolicing of a legal activity - "violated our Illegal activities policy" (prostitution is legal in Aotearoa. As is freedom of expression). Fortunately the waybackmachine has a copy anyway.

Kay on WMDs

David Kay has gone from saying "I don't think they existed" to "they went to Syria" to "Saddam's scientists lied to him" to "The CIA got it wrong". Interestingly, he denies that the CIA was subject to government pressure to tailor intelligence to suit the White House's needs - which is frankly laughable. But it's the Official Republican Talking Point (because blame cannot rest with the President), so NZPundit is doing his best to spin it that way.

Lobbying

NZPundit thinks that my call to keep a closer eye on our politicians is all about class warfare. Well, no - it's about transparency and open government, and making it more difficult for our elected representatives to be captured by special interests post facto. While all parties have their preferred constituencies - "Labour works for the unions", "ACT is a pawn of big business" etc - I think that we would all benefit by knowing exactly how much sway these interests have, how much access they get, and who is whispering in our politician's ears.

Naturally, this goes for "unions, single-issue NGOs, Maori groups and law firms run by well-connected former Prime Ministers", as well as for businessmen, right-wing think-tanks, and consultancies run by well-connected former finance ministers.

Forcing our MPs to declare any gifts or hospitality received is no different from forcing them to declare political donations, or their financial interests. If there's a potential conflict of interest or improper influence, the public has a right to know.

As for the full-on American solution of registering lobbyists, I'd consider it, but I'm not sure that we need to go that far quite yet... especially when there are perfectly reasonable intermediate steps we can take first.

Moved

I'm still recovering from my move. My computer room just feels wrong, my books are still scattered in too many boxes, and I haven't yet caught up fully on the news. So here's some quickies:

• Malach has a good post on GE.
• An American visits New Zealand.
• Yuck.
• Who knew Evil Communist Cats could be so cool?

The world according to John Ashcroft

For people who don't understand US Attorney-General John Ashcroft's denunciation of Saddam Hussein for using "evil chemistry" and "evil biology", I've prepared the following helpful table:

	Good	Evil
Chemistry	Nicotine, ethanol	THC, Sarin
Biology	Plagues of locusts, Fusarium oxysporum	Botulinin, ricin, natural selection
Physics	Nuclear weapons (American)	Nuclear weapons (UnAmerican)
Mathematics	3	3.1415927...
Geology	Floods	Plate tectonics

Malach has moved

His Scoll of Emptiness is now here.

New Fisk

Revealed: The women who suffered Saddam's tyranny

Down and safe

Opportunity made it.

Moving

Not the blog, just the blogger. I will probably be offline for much of monday as I desperately stuff everything into boxes, and for at least some of tuesday (depending on whether anything distracts me from setting up the computer at the other end). Normal bloggage will resume by wednesday, assuming there is anything interesting to talk about...

Shouldn't they be declaring this?

Winston has revealed that he was frequently shouted to dinner by fishing companies while sitting on a select committee overseeing the industry. He casts it as "being briefed" on the industry, but the proper term we're looking for is "lobbying".

I know that US federal politicians have to declare every free meal and gift they get (well, anything over the value of about US$5). Isn't it about time we made our politicians do the same? If we believe in open government, and in not letting the wealthy leverage their economic power into political power, we need to keep a far closer eye on our politicians.

"I don't think they existed"

David Kay, the head of the US attempt to find WMDs in Iraq, has resigned, and said that there were no Iraqi WMDs. No large-scale production in the 90's, no remaining stockpiles, no meaningful nuclear program, no serious R&D into biological or chemical weapons, zip, nada, zilch, nothing.

Or, in clear, plain English: it was all based on a lie. Ten thousand dead Iraqi civilians, an unknown number of dead conscripts, a country in ruins with no power, water, or security - and all on the basis of what is charitably described as a collective delusion, and more accurately as a planned campaign of deceit on the part of the Bush administration and Blair government.

And the fuckers have the gall to just keep on lying. Now they're claiming that Iraq’s WMDs may have gone to Syria. How can they have, when they never existed in the first place?

Bush needs to be de-elected, ASAP. Semen stains on a blue dress? That's nothing compared to lying your country into a war and killing ten thousand innocent civilians (not to mention five hundred US soldiers) in the process. If this isn't a "high crime and misdemeanor" - or a "war of aggression" as defined in the Nuremberg precedents - then what the hell is?

Horrifying

Thought that child labour was something that happened in other countries, or in the dark past of the Industrial Revolution, and certainly not in New Zealand? Think again. Caritas Aotearoa surveyed nearly 5000 schoolchildren, aged 10 - 17. 40% of them worked, and 45% of the workers were paid less than the minimum youth rate for 16 and 17 year olds (depending on the age distribution of respondents, this could actually be quite a good statistic, meaning that the minimum youth rate is being extended to under-16s). Children as young as 12 pumped gas (illegal for under-15s), children as young as 13 served alcohol (illegal for under-18s), and one 15 year old worked full-time in manufacturing for $2 an hour, in addition to trying to go to school. Some worked in unsafe environments, operated heavy machinery, or were beaten at work.

Most of this work is unproblematic - teenagers taking an after-school job in a supermarket, corner dairy, or working in a family business. But its clear that something needs to be done about the more egregious cases. There's nothing wrong with an after-school job, but it shouldn't interfere with education, expose children to danger, or be grossly exploitative. Introducing a minimum age of employment, limiting the hours that may be worked by children, and extending the youth rate down to that minimum age would all help to curb abuses and discourage those who seek to exploit children for financial gain.

Hopefully the government will be sorting this out if they adopt the ILO Minimum Age Convention.

Americans aren't the only ones with a stake in their election

Gwynne Dyer points out that Al-Qaeda has one too, and that they will do whatever it takes to ensure Bush is re-elected:

Terrorists generally rant about their goals but stay silent about their strategies, so now we have to do a little work for ourselves. If the real goal is still revolutions that bring Islamist radicals to power, then how does attacking the West help? Well, the U.S. in particular may be goaded into retaliating by bombing or even invading various Muslim countries -- and in doing so, may drive enough aggrieved Muslims into the arms of the Islamist radicals that their long-stalled revolutions against local regimes finally get off the ground.

Most analysts outside the United States long ago concluded that that was the principal motive for the 9-11 attack. They would add that by giving the Bush administration a reason to attack Afghanistan, and at least a flimsy pretext for invading Iraq, al-Qaida's attacks have paid off handsomely. U.S. troops are now the unwelcome military rulers of more than 50 million Muslims in Afghanistan and Iraq, and people there and elsewhere are turning to the Islamist radicals as the only force in the Muslim world that is willing and able to defy American power.

It is astonishing how little this is understood in the United States. I know of no American analyst who has even made the obvious point that al-Qaida wants Bush to win next November's presidential election and continue his interventionist policies in the Middle East for another four years, and will act to save Bush from defeat if necessary.

It probably would not do so unless Bush's number were slipping badly, for any terrorist attack on U.S. soil carries the risk of stimulating resentment against the current administration for failing to prevent it.

Certainly another attack on the scale of 9-11 would risk producing that result, even if al-Qaida had the resources for it. But a simple truck bomb in some U.S. city center a few months before the election, killing just a couple of dozen Americans, could drive voters back into Bush's arms and turn a tight election around. Al-Qaida is clever enough for that.

I really hope she's wrong. OTOH, a competant US President - one who understands that the war on terror is not about force, but ideas - would be a disaster for Al Qaeda, and they might be willing to do something to prevent it.

More on prison labour

The Department of Corrections has responded to the questions on prisoner's employment rights posed in my previous post with a few answers and a PDF outlining their general policy. This bit sums up their position quite nicely:

The provision of employment for inmates by the Department does not constitute a formal employment relationship. Rather the employment is part of skill acquisition and should be regarded as a training initiative. Inmates do not have, therefore, the same access as free workers to wages, rights and other remedies. They do have protections under Corrections legislation and regulations. Inmates are not employees of the Department and are not, therefore, subject to the Health and Safety in Employment Act 1992. However, the Department will observe the provisions of the Act for all inmate employment activities...

(My emphesis; no link, because its not on the web, however there's a FAQ on inmate employment here)

This isn't so bad when prisoners are working on community schemes, or even on "internal self-sufficiency" activities such as cooking and cleaning; it's easy to see these tasks as training and a way of giving prisoners something meaningful to do (both of which are laudable goals). The problem comes when they are working in a commercial enterprise which competes with the private sector (which Corrections claims to try not to do, but clearly does), or (worse) are rented out to private enterprise as part of a cooperative venture (something Corrections wants to do a lot more of). In both cases they not only displace ordinary workers, but also exert downward pressure on pay and conditions. And then there's that troubling aspect of slavery again - the workforce is literally captive, paid less than $1 an hour, and while they are technically volunteers, only a Libertarian would regard the choice as being free. If a private employer did this, they would be prosecuted for running a sweatshop, if not for kidnapping and slavery. Is it really any better if the government is doing it?

Trial by media

TVNZ flubbed it last night, and ended up looking like a bunch of muppets. But rather than back down, they've decided to wage a full-on trial by media instead. Winston certainly came out looking worse after tonight, but I still don't think there's anything there more than it looking bad. But politically, that's probably enough to have him hauled before the privileges committee, so that his numerous enemies can savour the feeling of being on the other end of a corruption allegation for a change.

Dismissed

Police have dismissed their charge against Bruce Hubbard because they weren't able to make their case. He will be applying for costs, and I hope he wins them. This case has been a farce from start to finish. It was clearly politicly motivated, pushed by a US embassy which equated criticism (or maybe just bad spelling) with threats. The police's response should have been to tell them that this is a democracy, where citizens enjoy free speech (maybe the US has heard of that?), and that New Zealanders have a right to express their views, no matter how much it annoys the US. Instead they bowed to pressure, charged Hubbard, and wasted time and money trying to prosecute him. This at a time when they are so underresourced that they can't investigate burglaries properly.

It would be nice to know how much this farce has cost the New Zealand taxpayer, and how many actual crimes could have been investigated with the money.

Spirit is down, but Opportunity arrives Sunday (NZ time).

Slaughtered

MediaCow has gone to the great slaughterhouse in the sky. Which is a shame, because I'm sure they would have had an interesting slant on the Peters-free dinner scandal...

Canada takes pointers from Mugabe

Looks like the Canadian government isn't too hapy with the flack they've copped over Maher Arar (the guy who was deported by the US to Syria to be tortured - allegedly on information provided by the RCMP) - they've raided the home of a journalist who has criticised the government's role in the affair.

The "war on terror" is deeply corrosive of human rights and democratic values. Now we have Canada acting like Robert Mugabe...