Secrecy equals betrayal

Tim Groser is attacking those calling for transparency over the TPP, saying that they want it to fail:

Campaigners against the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade negotiations want the negotiating texts made public to help ensure the process fails, says Trade Minister Tim Groser.

Think about that for a moment. What Groser is implicitly saying is that if the public knew what the government was signing away, we would never agree to it. That is government is acting against the interests of the public. That they are betraying us.

And this is precisely why we need transparency: to stop that from happening. The only thing secrecy enables is betrayal.

A big change in our foreign policy

New Zealand is now officially allied with Israel at the United Nations:

JUSCANZ (pronounced “juice cans” — really!) is UN-speak for a collection of non-European Union states that often form a negotiating bloc at UN bodies and committees. The acronym stands for Japan, United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, which were the original members. Over the years, its membership was extended to Norway, Iceland, Liechtenstein, Monaco, Andorra and Switzerland.

And now, JUSCANZ can add another member to its bloc at a key UN committee: Israel.

This is, of course, America's doing. But it has significant impacts for New Zealand and our credibility with the rest of the world. And to point out the obvious, being allied with a nuclear-armed warmongering apartheid state which practices torture, assassination and indiscriminate warfare is not going to assist us when we are arguing for peace, disarmament and human rights.

And as usual: we weren't consulted. Foreign policy is something our government does to us, not on our behalf. This has to change.

Climate change: The UK's future

[Image stolen from @CAGOxfordshire]

England is currently facing its wettest winter since records began, which has caused widespread flooding which will last until May. The insurance industry is looking at over a billion pounds in damages, and the government is looking at hundreds of millions more in hardship grants (the UK doesn't have an EQC) and improved flood protection. Meanwhile, climate scientists are pointing out the obvious: its climate change, stupid:

We have long been exposed to risk from flooding, but climate change is loading the dice.

Rising sea levels now takes less of a storm surge for coastal flooding to occur than it did a few decades ago. Warmer air can hold more water, and across many parts of the world we have seen more heavy rain over the past few decades.

Most projections of future climate across the UK suggest that we will experience wetter conditions in winter but it is difficult to predict exactly how flood risk will change. What we do know is that relying on historical records is no longer enough, and will likely lead us to underestimate risk.

This should be a warning for all of us: our governments have pissed around for too long. And so instead of paying to reduce emissions, we're paying far more in flooding and human misery.

For cop-cams

Judith Collins is suggesting that police wear cameras. Good. Quite apart from the evidentiary benefits, a US trial has shown that cop-cams reduce both violence by police officers, and complaints against them:

But Rialto's randomised controlled study has seized attention because it offers scientific – and encouraging – findings: after cameras were introduced in February 2012, public complaints against officers plunged 88% compared with the previous 12 months. Officers' use of force fell by 60%.

"When you know you're being watched you behave a little better. That's just human nature," said Farrar. "As an officer you act a bit more professional, follow the rules a bit better."

Video clips provided by the department showed dramatic chases on foot – you can hear the officer panting – and by car that ended with arrests, and without injury. Complaints often stemmed not from operational issues but "officers' mouths", said the chief. "With a camera they are more conscious of how they speak and how they treat people."

In other words, they're a useful way of keeping our police in check. The sooner we roll them out, the better.

One question I've seen raised is "who would have access to the footage?" The answer is "everyone" - because it will be official information subject to the OIA. While there are privacy concerns, the Ombudsman's ruling in a case about taser-cams is informative: suspects and anyone featured heavily in the footage will need to give consent for release, while bystanders should be pixelated. As for police officers, there is a strong presumption against them having privacy rights when exercising their official functions.

National hates transparency

Today Labour tried to put forward a Parliamentary motion calling on the government to release the draft text of the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement before signing it, on the simple democratic grounds that the public deserved to know what agreements were being made in our name.

National refused to.

The upshot: National hates transparency. It also hates democracy. Rather than negotiating openly and transparently with a clear and ongoing mandate from the public about what it is allowed to give away, it wants to do so in secret, so as to present us with a fait accompli, in the manner of a king.

Fuck that. A deal made in secret, on which we have no input, let alone opportunity to consent, is simply not legitimate. Its time we tore down this entire rotten way of doing foreign policy, and replaced it with a democratic one: open, transparent, and with ratification by the people, not Parliament. If the government can't convince us to endorce the deals its been making, then it has no business making them. It's that simple.

Equality is coming to Nevada

Nevada is giving up on defending its constitutional ban on same-sex marriage in court:

Attorney General Catherine Cortez Masto, in a motion filed with the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, said Nevada’s legal arguments defending the voter-approved prohibition aren’t viable after the court’s recent ruling that potential jurors cannot be removed from a trial during jury selection solely because of sexual orientation.

“After thoughtful review and analysis, the state has determined that its arguments grounded upon equal protection and due process are no longer sustainable,” Masto said in a statement.

The case in question is Sevcik v. Sandoval, which is attempting to overturn the constitutional ban. It was defeated in Federal Court on the basis of a 1972 case, and has been appealed. In the meantime, the Supreme Court has overturned the Federal Defence of Marriage Act as well as California's state constitutional ban on same-sex marriage. The writing is clearly on the wall for this sort of legal bigotry, and Nevada has recognised this and decided to be on the right side of history. It may take a few weeks for the court to recognise that the appeal is uncontested and give in, but equality is coming to Nevada.

NSA participates in war crimes

Glenn Greenwald has launched a new news site, The Intercept, "to aggressively report on the disclosures provided to us by our source, NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden". its first major story? The NSA's secret participation in drone-murders:

The National Security Agency is using complex analysis of electronic surveillance, rather than human intelligence, as the primary method to locate targets for lethal drone strikes – an unreliable tactic that results in the deaths of innocent or unidentified people.

According to a former drone operator for the military’s Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) who also worked with the NSA, the agency often identifies targets based on controversial metadata analysis and cell-phone tracking technologies. Rather than confirming a target’s identity with operatives or informants on the ground, the CIA or the U.S. military then orders a strike based on the activity and location of the mobile phone a person is believed to be using.

...which is why these drone murders turn out to be utterly indiscriminate and kill civilians: they pay no attention to who is nearby (or simply assume that they are "terrorists" too), and just target a phone rather than a person. Which is why the UN considers these strikes to be war crimes.

Meanwhile, the US government is currently considering murdering one of its citizens without charge or trial by drone strike. This is where their "war on terror" has taken them: back to a feudal power of a monarch to murder their subjects. So much for American being "a nation of laws, not men".

This should not happen in New Zealand

Welcome to National's New Zealand, where people are being forced to live in tents because HousingNZ doesn't give a shit about them:

Housing New Zealand has apologised to a family of seven who lived in a tent for five weeks as they waited for a house to become available in Tauranga.

The family, including five children aged from 2 to 11, have been living in a two-bedroom tent next to the Wairoa River, just outside Bethlehem, since December 13. They have had to use the public toilets across the bridge and bathe in the river.

Housing New Zealand yesterday offered them a home after Maori MP Te Ururoa Flavell intervened.

Housing New Zealand exists to stop this from happening. But they cared so little about their job that they didn't even visit this family in desperate need for seven weeks, and only got involved when an MP kicked their arse about it. Heads need to roll for that failure. But beyond that, Housing New Zealand needs to be properly resourced so it can actually do its job. National has gutted the state housing system, reducing it to providing crisis housing (to avoid bad PR about waiting lists) - and as we've seen above, even that doesn't work. We need Housing NZ to return to its core job of ensuring that every kiwi has a roof over their heads - and we need it to be funded to do that job.

An unlawful violation of freedom of movement

Yesterday we learned that John Key had responded to the "threat" of people travelling to Syria to participate in its civil war by cancelling their passports. This was done without any sort of due process or review, let alone threat of criminal charges; Key has said explicitly that those travelling "may not have broken the law" and that all the government can do if they return is watch them. But while it may have been effective at preventing these people from travelling, there's a problem: its illegal.

Why? First look at the clause in question: the Minister can cancel someone's passport if they "reasonably believe" that the person intends to engage in or facilitate:

(i) a terrorist act within the meaning of section 5 of the Terrorism Suppression Act 2002; or
(ii) the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction; or
(iii) any unlawful activity designed or likely to cause devastating or serious economic damage to New Zealand, carried out for purposes of commercial or economic gain

Only the first is really applicable here (otherwise the government would be talking about charges under the Chemical Weapons (Prohibition) Act 1996 and boasting about how it had disrupted a major international proliferation plot). So what's a terrorist act? Killing people or blowing stuff up for a "ideological, political, or religious cause", basically. But there's an important caveat:

However, an act does not fall within subsection (2) if it occurs in a situation of armed conflict and is, at the time and in the place that it occurs, in accordance with rules of international law applicable to the conflict.

A state or armed conflict currently exists in Syria. In and of itself, participation in that conflict cannot therefore be assumed to be an act of terror. Unless the government has more specific information that these people were specifically travelling to Syria for the purpose of blowing up hospitals etc, then it has exceeded its powers (and in that case, needless to say, it should be prosecuting). Those whose passports have been cancelled under this arbitrary, feudal law should be challenging it in court.

Privatision is a scam

Who'd have thunk it? The UK government's privatisation of Royal Mail turns out to have been a massive wealth-transfer to the rich, thanks to a bargain basement price:

Vince Cable is facing further accusations of selling Royal Mail "on the cheap" after it emerged that 21 City banks estimated its sale could have been done for £1.5 billion more.

The Business Department revealed in response to a Freedom of Information request that the average valuation for Royal Mail by the 21 investment banks was between £4 billion and £4.8 billion, significantly above the £3.3 billion price tag decided upon by ministers when floating 60% of the business on the stock market in October.

After Royal Mail's stock market entry at 330p in October, the business' shares made the biggest one-day gain of any privatised company. Last night they closed at 585p, with the share price at £6 billion.

When this happens in the third world, we call it what it is: fraud and corruption, an elite pillaging the state for its own profit. The people who presided over this massive theft of public assets should be going to jail. This being the UK, they'll probably be getting peerages instead.

A restoration of democracy in Canterbury?

Good news: Canterbury may get its democracy back:

Momentum is growing for mid-term elections at Environment Canterbury (ECan) that could result in some elected members being back there in the first half of next year.

Prime Minister John Key yesterday confirmed Cabinet was considering options and would "make that call relatively soon".

He was conscious people wanted democracy returned at ECan.

"People should be entitled to elect their officials and have them carry out their work."

Of course, Key didn't think that when he was stripping Cantabrians of the right to elect officials accountable to them - but pointing that out probably means I hate democracy. As will pointing out that the government is only considering this because their handpicked dictators have given away all of Canterbury's water to farmers, so the dictatorship has fulfilled its purpose.

And even then, it may be a "democracy" in name only: rural mayors want a council stacked with government appointees to ensure that the will of the people (who live overwhelmingly in Christchurch and have a rather different perspective on freshwater management than rural farmers who make money by poisoning other people's water supply and sucking the rivers dry) is kept in check. Which suggests some rather troubling attitudes to democracy in farmville.

Meanwhile, Labour's local government spokesperson, Su'a William Sio, likes the idea of elections, but won't go so far as promising them. Which shows you how weak Labour is on what should be a fundamental.

GCHQ's dirty tricks brigade

The weekend's NSALeak: GCHQ has a specialised "dirty tricks" department:

British spies have developed “dirty tricks” for use against nations, hackers, terror groups, suspected criminals and arms dealers that include releasing computer viruses, spying on journalists and diplomats, jamming phones and computers, and using sex to lure targets into “honey traps.”

Documents taken from the National Security Agency by Edward Snowden and exclusively obtained by NBC News describe techniques developed by a secret British spy unit called the Joint Threat Research and Intelligence Group (JTRIG) as part of a growing mission to go on offense and attack adversaries ranging from Iran to the hacktivists of Anonymous. According to the documents, which come from presentations prepped in 2010 and 2012 for NSA cyber spy conferences, the agency’s goal was to “destroy, deny, degrade [and] disrupt” enemies by “discrediting” them, planting misinformation and shutting down their communications.

Both PowerPoint presentations describe “Effects” campaigns that are broadly divided into two categories: cyber attacks and propaganda operations. The propaganda campaigns use deception, mass messaging and “pushing stories” via Twitter, Flickr, Facebook and YouTube. JTRIG also uses “false flag” operations, in which British agents carry out online actions that are designed to look like they were performed by one of Britain’s adversaries.

To some extent this is unsurprising - spies have always played their silly little spy games against each other. The problem is that their targets aren't just spies, but also include the media and hackers. The first is no business of any government agency in any democratic society. As for the second, quite apart from intruding on the territory of law enforcement (and thus raising some nasty totalitarian spectres), there are also problems of proportionality and discrimination. Their method of attacking Anonymous, for example, involved a DDOS attack which

also interrupted the web communications of political dissidents who did not engage in any illegal hacking. It may also have shut down websites with no connection to Anonymous.

This is the internet equivalent of carpet-bombing an entire neighbourhood, with the freedom of speech of innocent bystanders as collateral damage.

But apart form that, its also simply illegal - as the original article notes, "GCHQ has no clear authority to send a virus or conduct cyber attacks". When hackers do this, they go to jail. Shouldn't the same apply to the spies? Or is the law really only to keep the peasants in line?

New Fisk

The number of women sentenced to death across the Middle East has very little to do with justice

Challenging the "Pacific solution" II

Since 2012, refugees seeking asylum in Australia have instead been dumped on Nauru and Papua New Guinea in appalling and inhumane conditions. The refugees are kept as prisoners, detained at the request of Australia. The constitutionality of this is already being challenged in Papua New Guinea, and now it is being challenged in Nauru as well:

Australia's most respected human rights lawyers have launched a constitutional challenge in Nauru to have 10 detained asylum seekers released from its detention centre, claiming it is unlawful, inhumane and degrading.

In documents obtained by Fairfax Media, four prominent lawyers - George Newhouse, Julian Burnside, David Hicks' lawyer Dan Mori and Jay Williams - allege the detainees have been held unlawfully and in ''indefinite detention'' since September 2012, without access to lawyers or a fair hearing, which they say is unconstitutional.

Mr Burnside said the detainees - men from Iran and Sri Lanka - had been held for an unreasonable amount of time, according to rules set by the United Nations High Commission for Refugees that stipulates it should take four to six months to process a refugee claim.
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The lawyers argue that lengthy detention without asylum claims being processed is arbitrary and therefore unlawful under Nauru's constitution.

Unfortunately, this is Nauru. While the refugees may have a strong legal case, the government will simply deport the lawyers, sack the judges, and ignore any court orders to keep the Australian blood money flowing (and accuse any international critics of bullying and racism to shut them up). And all with the tacit support of Australia, which seems happy to turn one of its neighbours into a dictatorship if it helps them appear to be "tough on refugees".

The racist Herald

Yesterday was Waitangi Day, and to celebrate it the New Zealand Herald stuck a white-power logo on its front page and declared itself to be a "protest-free zone".



[Photo by @AniOBrien; I'm stealing The Standard's copy until Flickr solves its security-certificate problem]

As I pointed out yesterday, this is pretty much par for the course for the Herald. The newspaper was founded by a racist to promote the theft of Maori land. And I expect there's a rich vein to be mined in Papers Past and in more recent archives digging up their history of racism.

But there's another issue here. The Herald purports to be our "newspaper of record", and yet it has taken an editorial decision to erase one side of our national debate about who we are as a country completely from the conversation. That's deeply troubling for our democracy and a failure of their duty as a media organisation. Its also quite likely a breach of basic press standards, notably those of balance and non-discrimination. If you'd like to do something about that, you can complain to the press Council here.

A very British injustice

Last year, a group of British police officers accused the Conservative party's chief whip Andrew Mitchell of claling them "plebs" in an argument over a bicycle, causing his resignation. Today, one of them was jailed for a year for it:

A police officer who lied about witnessing the Plebgate row was sentenced to 12 months in jail today.

Keith Wallis, 53, of West Drayton, west London, sent an email to Conservative deputy chief whip John Randall, who was his MP, wrongly claiming that he had seen what happened as Andrew Mitchell left Downing Street on September 19, 2012.

Wallis had not been present during the altercation, but his email to Mr Randall alleged Mr Mitchell had called the officers “plebs” and undermined the Prime Minister’s support for Mr Mitchell, contributing to his eventual resignation.

To make it clear: lying and giving (informal) false evidence is not something any police officer should do. But this wasn't in court, or as part of any prosecution. Its certainly sackable, but a year in jail? It's overkill, an act of political vengeance against someone who had annoyed the powerful, pour encourager les autres.

This isn't "justice" - its Wallis' petty spite magnified a thousandfold through the courts. Allowing the legal system to be used like this brings the entire system into disrepute. But isn't it so very, very British?

Ten kiwis died for this

Afghanistan is going to let men beat their wives and children without penalty:

A new Afghan law will allow men to attack their wives, children and sisters without fear of judicial punishment, undoing years of slow progress in tackling violence in a country plagued by honour killings, forced marriage and vicious domestic abuse.

The small but significant change to Afghanistan's criminal prosecution code bans relatives of an accused person from testifying against them. Most violence against women in Afghanistan is within the family, so the law – passed by parliament but awaiting the signature of the president, Hamid Karzai – will effectively silence victims as well as most potential witnesses to their suffering.

[...]

Under the new law, prosecutors could never come to court with cases like that of Sahar Gul, a child bride whose in-laws chained her in a basement and starved, burned and whipped her when she refused to work as a prostitute for them. Women like 31-year-old Sitara, whose nose and lips were sliced off by her husband at the end of last year, could never take the stand against their attackers.

"Honour" killings by fathers and brothers who disapprove of a woman's behaviour would be almost impossible to punish. Forced marriage and the sale or trading of daughters to end feuds or settle debt would also be largely beyond the control of the law in a country where prosecution of abuse is already rare.

Ten kiwi soldiers died in Afghanistan. And this is what they died for: for a barbaric patriarchy utterly at odds with kiwi values. Our government threw their lives away for nothing. And its time they were held accountable for it.

Ending the persecution of the Waihopai Three

Back in 2008, three peace activists broke into the GCSB/NSA spy base at Waihopai and deflated one of the satellite domes. They were subsequently prosecuted for criminal damage, but acquitted by a jury. The government, in an act of petty vindictiveness, has since been pursuing them for $1.2 million of damages. It knows they can never pay, so the sole object is to drive them into bankruptcy as punishment for standing up to the spies.

But now the government seems to have come to its senses and is ending this persecution:

The Crown has dropped its civil lawsuit against the three men who caused more than $1 million in damage to a spy base in Marlborough.

In 2008, Dominican friar Peter Murnane, farmer Samuel Land and teacher Adrian Leason entered Waihopai and punctured an inflatable dome covering a large satellite dish.

The three peace protesters believed the base was being used to further the Iraq war.

Good. The government had its go at them with criminal charges, and they failed. Anything else is simply persecution. Meanwhile, I'm wondering how much this pointless and petty act of vengeance has cost us. One million? Two? How many school lunches could that have paid for? Hopefully some enterprising journalists will find out in the next few days.

How convenient...

Earlier in the week the Australian Human Rights Commission launched an inquiry into the welfare of children in Australia's refugee gulag in Nauru. The inquiry would require visiting the camps in Nauru to investigate the conditions there and their effects on child detainees. But the Australian government has vetoed the plan:

The President of Australia's Human Rights Commission says she has been barred from entering Nauru to visit children detained in Canberra's asylum seeker camps.

The Commission has launched an inquiry into the impact of detention on the health, well-being and development of children in the camps.

But Professor Gillian Triggs says her jurisdiction doesn't extend to other countries, which is the reason Australia's immigration minister, Scott Morrison, has given for not letting her go to Nauru to investigate.

How convenient. You'd almost think the Australian government didn't want them to investigate what it was doing to children. But while they've succeeded in limiting the ability of the HRC to investigate, they've done so at the cost of fatally undermining its independence and credibility - and by extension, their own credibility on human rights issues. Now Australia looks like Soviet Russia on human rights. Tony Abbot and his racist, abusive government might not care about that - but hopefully Australians will.

42,000 out of work under National

The latest Household Labour Force Survey was released today, showing a drop in unemployment to 6.0%. But there are still 147,000 people out of work - 42,000 more than when National took office (plus 88,000 who have simply given up and left the labour force). They've had six years to fix this problem, and done nothing, preferring to leave it to the market. And as a result, they're forecasting that it will take another four years for unemployment to drop another percentage point.

We deserve better than this. Unemployment ruins lives; its not something the government should just sit on its hands and leave to the market to decide (while putting the boot even harder into its victims). But I forget: high unemployment keeps wages low, which is the way National's donors and cronies want it. So National is sacrificing 147,000 people to keep their friends the 1% happy.