Wow

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

More US torture

This time in Mosul:

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

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

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

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

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

And they wonder why Iraqis hate them...

What upset Gerry?

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

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

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

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

Not serious

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

Chain of Command

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

Murderers

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

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

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

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

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

Moving mountains

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

Competence

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

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

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

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

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

Sensible, my arse!

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

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

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

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

Comings and goings

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

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

Justice and terrorism

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Test?

Blast, Mushroom Cloud Reported in N. Korea

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

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

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

I'm sure that's Tui-able.

Taking their responsibilities seriously

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

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

Forgeries?

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

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

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

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

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

New Fisk

We should not have allowed 19 murderers to change our world

Casualties

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

New Kiwi blog

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

Ghosts

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

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

Consistency

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

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

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

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