The police should not be above the law

In April 2011, Invercargill police apprehended a suspected burglar. During the arrest, one officer crash-tackled the suspect while he was already in custody, and another set a police dog on him. The victim was savaged for almost a minute, and required surgery for his injuries.

The Independent Police Conduct authority has just found that both of these actions were unlawful and constituted an excessive use of force:

An officer who allowed a police dog to bite an Invercargill man for almost a minute while he was dragged by several officers along the footpath acted illegally, an inquiry has found.

[...]

In its findings, released on Monday, the IPCA said the officer who tackled Taylor from behind acted prematurely and excessively and likely escalated the situation.

The IPCA said there was not enough evidence to determine if the deployment of the police dog was excessive but allowing it to bite for 50 seconds was.

"The continued deployment of the police dog by Officer A amounted to an excessive use of force given there were sufficient police staff present to subdue Taylor."

Which naturally raises the question: having acted illegally, will the officers involved be prosecuted? Are the police subject to the law they enforce, or above it? Sadly, the answer seems to be "no":

Southern police says it accepts the findings of the inquiry and admits some shortcomings.

"While our staff are well trained and strive to do their best in all situations, we acknowledge that in this case, after reviewing events, that some of our tactical decision-making was not as good as it should have been," Southern District commander, Superintendent Andrew Coster said.

Supt Coster admitted the actions of the officers exacerbated the situation rather than de-escalating it.

The officers involved have had the "opportunity to reflect on what occurred and learn from the situation", he said.

So: if a member of the public sets a dog on someone and allows it to savage them, causing serious injury, they'd go to jail (oh, and the dog would be destroyed). If the police do it, they simply "reflect on what occurred". Its one law for the police, and another for the peasants.

New Fisk

Sinister efforts to minimise Japanese war crimes and portray the empire as a victim must be exposed
The 1915 Armenian genocide: Finding a fit testament to a timeless crime

The inevitable republic

Some foreign inbreds are apparently visiting, which naturally means we have former politicians on TV telling us that a republic is inevitable:

It is "inevitable" that New Zealand will ditch the monarchy and become a republic, Sir Don McKinnon says.

Speaking on the eve of the royal visit by the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, the former deputy prime minister said the country has been moving towards republicanism "for a long time".

"I'm quite certain the royal family understands that completely," Sir Don said.

McKinnon is the latest in a long line of senior politicians (including John Key) to say this. And a poll from New Zealand Republic shows why:

A poll released today by New Zealand Republic, a body seeking a New Zealand head of state, showed 66 per cent of 18-30-year-olds wanted a homegrown head of state to replace the Queen, who is 87 and took the throne in 1952.

Prince William is second in line to the throne, after his father Prince Charles.

Overall, poll support for a New Zealand head of state was 44 per cent, 46 per cent favoured the status quo, with 10 per cent undecided.

The internals are here, but the upshot is that the monarchy is for old people. But while history appears to be on our sideTM, and the supporters of monarchy will die off quietly just as the supporters of religion are doing, we need to remember that in politics, nothing is "inevitable", and if we want something to happen, we actually need to make it happen. Otherwise we may find ourselves in twenty years time exactly where we are now: a monarchy, with politicians still saying that democratic change is "inevitable".

Why are we still working?

On his blog, SF author Charles Stross asks the big question about modern society: most jobs are bullshit, and many of them are disappearing due to technology. Meanwhile, as a society we're richer and more productive than ever before. So why are we still working?

We can still produce enough food and stuff to feed and house and clothe everybody. We can still run a growth economy. But we don't seem to know how to allocate resources to people for whom there are no jobs. There's a pervasive cultural assumption that people who don't work are shirkers or failures, rather than victims of technological change, and this is an enabler for populist politicians who campaign for support from the frightened (because embattled) working majority by punishing the unlucky, rather than admitting that the core assumption—that we must starve if we can't find work—is simply invalid.

I tend to evaluate the things around me using a number of rules of thumb, one of which is that the success of a social system can be measured by how well it supports those at the bottom of the pile—the poor, the unlucky, the non-neurotypical—rather than by how it pampers its billionaires and aristocrats. By that rule of thumb, western capitalism did really well throughout the middle of the 20th century, especially in the hybrid social democratic form: but it's now failing, increasingly clearly, as the focus of the large capital aggregates at the top (mostly corporate hive entities rather than individuals) becomes wealth concentration rather than wealth production. And a huge part of the reason it's failing is because our social system is set up to provide validation and rewards on the basis of an extrinsic attribute (what people do) which is subject to external pressures and manipulation: and for the winners it creates incentives to perpetuate and extend this system rather than to dismantle it and replace it with something more humane.

Obviously, its good for the people at the top to continue this way. But for the rest of us, trapped in jobs we hate and whose utility to society we doubt, which we'd give up in an instant if an alternative became available? Not so much.

There is an obvious policy solution to this, in the form of a Universal Basic Income. This would disconnect work from survival, and allow us to find a better balance between work and lesiure (and permanently removing the employers' boot from our neck would make those jobs which need to be done or which we choose to do much more pleasant). It's affordable, its better for us, and we already have one in New Zealand for over-65's.

I was going to say that none of our political parties are grappling with this problem that, none of them want to question the sacred cow that work, no matter how meaningless, is the only way. And for National and Labour, that's true - both are committed to the current orthodoxy, the ideology of work and brutally punishing those the economy does not work for. But a quick check shows that the Greens are different - they're committed to "investigat[ing] the implementation of a Universal Basic Income for every New Zealander". That's a cautious statement, but its still lightyears ahead of the other two parties, and shows they're looking at our actual problems, rather than committed to protecting the status quo regardless.

Australia exports lawlessness

Since 2012, refugees seeking asylum in Australia have instead been dumped on Nauru and Papua New Guinea in appalling and inhumane conditions. But in January, Papua New Guinea's Supreme Court ruled that those detained there could challenge their detention under the country's constitution. The PNG government's response? Change the constitution to strip them of their rights:

The Papua New Guinea government has amended the country's constitution to provide legal protection for the Manus Island detention centre.

The amendments effectively deny asylum seekers the constitutional right to personal liberty.

They came into effect last month after being certified by the Speaker of Parliament.

The audio is pretty clear that the amendment was made at the behest of Australia, which wants a lawless zone for its victims. And with over A$500 million a year in aid, they have an awful lot of leverage over their poorer neighbour.

A cost of doing business

Stuff reports that the Commerce Commission wants to fine a Swiss company $3 million for participating in a cartel:

The Commerce Commission is pushing for a fine of more than $3 million against freight company Kuehne + Nagel over "hardcore" cartel conduct.

Kuehne + Nagel is one of half a dozen companies prosecuted by the commission over a freight-forwarding cartel, which was separate to an air cargo cartel also taken to task by the competition regulator.

Both sides had agreed Kuehne + Nagel should pay a penalty of $3.1m, plus $100,000 in costs, the High Court in Auckland was told today.

At the penalty hearing commission lawyer Nick Flanagan said the behaviour of Kuehne + Nagel was "hardcore cartel conduct".

Which sounds great, until you start thinking about it. This cartel ran for five years. And you can bet they made more than a paltry $3 million out of the price-fixing. Which means that they profit despite the prosecution. The fine is nothing more than the cost of doing business.

If we want to end cartel behaviour, we need actual deterrents. Jail time for those who form cartels would be a start. So would forfeiture of cartel profits. And much, much bigger fines. We need to make it unprofitable for companies to break the law. Until we do, they'll continue breaking it, and laugh all the way to the bank while doing so.

Outlawing consumer choice

The public boycott has a long and honourable tradition in the struggle to make the world a better place. A sugar boycott helped end the slave trade. The Montgomery bus boycott helped bring about civil rights in the US. Boycotts are a powerful tool to mobilise the public, and in a world where governments are captured by corporations and routinely put money ahead of ethics, they are one of the few tools we have to bring about change.

So naturally, Australia's reactionary government wants to ban them:

Coalition MPs and industry groups are using a review of competition laws to push for a ban on campaigns against companies on the grounds that they are selling products that damage the environment, for example by using old-growth timber or overfished seafood.

The parliamentary secretary for agriculture, Richard Colbeck, said the backbench rural committee and “quite a number in the ministry” want to use the review to remove an exemption for environmental groups from the consumer law ban on so-called “secondary boycotts”.

“I do think there is an appetite in the government for changing these laws,” Colbeck said.

Freedom of speech? In Abbott's Australia, that's only for racists. Consumer choice? Sorry, exercising it publicly threatens the profits of Australia's dirty, unethical corporations, so it must be outlawed.

Time to see if the Ombudsman will keep their word

Last month, we learned that Judith Collins had taken time off a taxpayer-funded trip to China to endorse her husband's company - a company which had also donated significant sums of money to the National Party. The endorsement appeared to violate the Cabinet Manual, but John Key stepped up and claimed that the Cabinet Office said it was all OK. Then, just a few days later, he admitted that he'd lied about that:

Prime Minister John Key has admitted he misled reporters over Cabinet Office advice about a controversial visit by Justice Minister Judith Collins to a Chinese company associated with her husband while on an official trip to China.

On Monday Key told media the Cabinet Office had cleared Collins of a conflict of interest after translating comments on Oravida's website which stated that she had praised its products.

But today Key's office confirmed that the Cabinet office had only read the English language version on the website, which did not contain those references.

In the process, he implicitly raised serious questions about the quality of the Cabinet Office's advice.

The Ombudsman has previously ruled against the release of such advice, calling it "inherently confidential". But that ruling came with an important caveat:

I pointed out to the requesters and DPMC that if a Minister refers to Cabinet Office advice publicly in a way that is misleading or exaggerated, the countervailing public interest in disclosure is likely to outweigh the need for confidentiality

Once Key admitted misleading the public about the advice, I naturally requested it. And naturally, the Cabinet Office (one of our most secretive public bodies) refused my request. I've now complained to the Ombudsman. Let's see if they keep their word, or if they're just in the business of covering up for the powerful.

Dodgy

The endless saga of John Tamihere and the Waipareira Trust gets dodgier:

An urban Maori authority that gets most of its funding from the public purse paid $500,000 into and out of a lawyer's trust account controlled by chief executive John Tamihere on the day he settled the purchase of the family's $1.3 million Auckland home, according to documents obtained by the Herald.

The document recording the April 2008 transaction using money from the Waipareira Trust is headed Residential Land Purchase and gives the address for the family property.

It shows a "Te Whanu [sic] O Waipareira Trust advance" for $500,000 was paid into the "Tamihere Childrens Trust" held with Corban Revell lawyers on April 18, 2008. The money was paid out again the same day into an unknown BNZ account. That day was recorded as the settlement date for the house sale although the title did not change hands until May 7, 2008.

Mr Tamihere did not reply to messages about the payment and whether it was declared. Trust spokesman Joe Lose said emailed questions could not be answered "on legal advice".

Which is odd, unless they're hiding something. And it certainly looks bad - like senior management using a charity as their own personal piggy-bank. Which makes you wonder who this charity is really helping...

A cover-up

What a surprise! The Australian government is planning to cover-up the results of its investigation of the murder at their Pacific gulag:

The Abbott government is not planning to release the interim report of its inquiry into the death of one asylum seeker and injuries to more than 60 others on Manus Island in February.

It also intends to keep the final report under wraps, citing the practice of the former Labor government's inquiries into incidents at detention facilities on Christmas Island and Nauru.

Australia's contractors, G4S, are refusing to cooperate with the inquiry, and the Australian Federal Police have refused a request for assistance from their PNG counterparts. Its almost as if they want to sweep the entire incident under the carpet and pretend it never happened. Which sends a clear message: refugees are unpeople, and you can commit crimes against them with impunity. With this coverup, Australia is inviting a whole new level of horror in its gulags...

A backdoor in the US constitution

One of the core allegations of the NSALeaks is that the NSA has been unconstitutionally spying on Americans on a massive scale. And now, they've confirmed it:

US intelligence chiefs have confirmed that the National Security Agency has used a "back door" in surveillance law to perform warrantless searches on Americans’ communications.

The NSA's collection programs are ostensibly targeted at foreigners, but in August the Guardian revealed a secret rule change allowing NSA analysts to search for Americans' details within the databases.

Now, in a letter to Senator Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat on the intelligence committee, the director of national intelligence, James Clapper, has confirmed for the first time the use of this legal authority to search for data related to “US persons”.

Spying on people's communications without a warrant is a prima facie breach of the 4th Amendment. But when you have a private kangaroo "court" where no-one is legally allowed to represent your victims, I guess its easy to get approval even for this sort of abuse.

Officially terrorist in Saudi Arabia

Saudi Arabia is a medieval despotism, with a medieval approach to human rights and freedom of religion. So its sadly unsurprising that they classify atheism as terrorism

Saudi Arabia has introduced a series of new laws which define atheists as terrorists, according to a report from Human Rights Watch.

[...]

Yet last month further regulations were issued by the Saudi interior ministry, identifying a broad list of groups which the government considers to be terrorist organisations - including the Muslim Brotherhood.

Article one of the new provisions defines terrorism as "calling for atheist thought in any form, or calling into question the fundamentals of the Islamic religion on which this country is based".

Great. I'm officially a terrorist in Saudi Arabia. Maybe I should get a badge or something?

But snark aside: cuius regio, eius religio isn't a good way to run a state in a world where there is a diversity of religious views. Quite apart from moral considerations, its not even practical: when the only way you can exercise your religion in peace is to overthrow the government, that's what people will try to do. Which is why civilised countries have abandoned it in favour of freedom of religion and a neutral state.

Privatization is theft

A government is carrying out a crash-program of privatization without a mandate. It is desperate to sell, so it sets the price of the shares artificially low, and loses $1.5 billion in a single day.

No, this isn't New Zealand (yet) - its the UK:

The government's desperation to sell Royal Mail cost taxpayers £750m in a single day, the National Audit Office has said in a scathing report into the privatisation of the 500-year-old national institution.

The public spending watchdog says the business secretary Vince Cable ploughed ahead with plans to float Royal Mail at a maximum price of 330p-a-share despite repeated warnings from City experts that the government had vastly undervalued the company.

[...]

Royal Mail's shares spiked 38% on their debut on the stock market on 11 October - the biggest one-day rise in a privatisation since British Airways in 1987 - as investors tried to buy up more than 23 times the number of shares available.

The audit office said the government could have made an additional £750m for taxpayers if it had priced the sale at the first day closing price of 455p rather than the maximum 330p starting price. Achieving an additional £750m from the sale could have covered the annual salaries of an additional 34,000 NHS nurses.

Cut to New Zealand: the National Party is carrying out a crash-program of privatization without a mandate. It is desperate to sell Genesis Energy before the election, so it has set the price of shares artificially low. Its pretty obvious what will happen next - but I'm sure their donors and cronies will be happy with the free gift of public wealth.

When governments in the developing world sell public assets to cronies at bargain-basement prices, we call it what it is: corruption and theft. The National Party (and the UK Conservative party) are no different. And its time we held them criminally responsible for their theft of public wealth.

Climate change: Making it worse

On Monday the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released its Fifth Assessment Report, showing the world facing war, famine and death (and New Zealand fire and flood) as a result of climate change. The government's response? More oil drilling:

The Government is opening up 405,000 square kilometres of ocean and land for oil and gas exploration around New Zealand.

Speaking at an industry conference in Wellington today, Energy minister Simon Bridges said explorers had "barely scratched the surface" in looking for oil and gas around New Zealand.

This isn't the action of a government interested in doing anything about the problem. Instead, its the actions of a government actively trying to kill us all. We need to get rid of them, and fast.

Climate change: "Adaptation"

Yesterday, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released its Fifth Assessment Report, showing the world facing war, famine and death. But rather than committing to reducing emissions, politicians have said "we'll adapt". In The Guardian, George Monbiot rips apart what that means:

When our environment secretary, Owen Paterson, assures us that climate change "is something we can adapt to over time" or Simon Jenkins, in the Guardian today, says that we should move towards "thinking intelligently about how the world should adapt to what is already happening", what do they envisage? Cities relocated to higher ground? Roads and railways shifted inland? Rivers diverted? Arable land abandoned? Regions depopulated? Have they any clue about what this would cost? Of what the impacts would be on the people breezily being told to live with it?

My guess is that they don't envisage anything: they have no idea what they mean when they say adaptation. If they've thought about it at all, they probably picture a steady rise in temperatures, followed by a steady rise in impacts, to which we steadily adjust. But that, as we should know from our own recent experience, is not how it happens. Climate breakdown proceeds in fits and starts, sudden changes of state against which, as we discovered on a small scale in January, preparations cannot easily be made.

While our past inaction means some level of adaptation is required, we need to be clear: it will be hugely disruptive, cost a fortune, and be driven by disasters. To use a local example: what do you think a metre of sea-level rise is going to do to Wellington? And what do you think that combined with a winter storm will do to the coast highway segment of SH1, the Hutt Road segment of SH2, the Hutt-Wellington railway line, Petone and Eastbourne? The latter already loses houses in severe storms; in the future it'll probably lose its road. Preventing this will cost a fortune - and given our politicians and their denial, it won't be done in advance. We'll have to wait until houses are flooded and transport links cut before they do anything.

This is the future our politicians have given us: one where we face large costs, because they were too lazy and selfish to act now. And when it happens, we should drag them from their retirement homes and hold them criminally responsible for their negligence.

The CIA lied about torture

Who'd have thunk it? The CIA lied about the effectiveness of its torture program:

A report by the Senate Intelligence Committee concludes that the CIA misled the government and the public about aspects of its brutal interrogation program for years — concealing details about the severity of its methods, overstating the significance of plots and prisoners, and taking credit for critical pieces of intelligence that detainees had in fact surrendered before they were subjected to harsh techniques.

The report, built around detailed chronologies of dozens of CIA detainees, documents a long-standing pattern of unsubstantiated claims as agency officials sought permission to use — and later tried to defend — excruciating interrogation methods that yielded little, if any, significant intelligence, according to U.S. officials who have reviewed the document.

“The CIA described [its program] repeatedly both to the Department of Justice and eventually to Congress as getting unique, otherwise unobtainable intelligence that helped disrupt terrorist plots and save thousands of lives,” said one U.S. official briefed on the report. “Was that actually true? The answer is no.”

This being America, of course, this is merely a point of argument in a bureaucratic battle between the Senate and the CIA. And prosecutions? They're off the table. Despite clear evidence and open admissions of torture, and despite torture being illegal under both US and international law, no-one will be held accountable for it in any way. the law? That only applies to peasants, not the government.

So much for America.

Why we shouldn't have an armed police force

Because they murder people:

Captured by a video camera on one of the officer’s helmets, the slaying by Albuquerque police of a homeless camper in the foothills outside the city two weeks ago apparently leaves room for interpretation. The city says it was justifiable self-defence. To others it looked like extra-judicial execution.

[...]

For James Boyd, the fury comes too late. With a long history of mental problems and episodes of violence, he was challenged by three officers on 16 March for camping in an unauthorised area near the city limits. They woke him from sleeping. A three-hour stand-off ensued until, at dusk, he is heard telling the officers he is done arguing and was “going to walk” with them. That is where the episode might have ended.

Instead, as Mr Boyd gathers up his things, one of the officers shouts “Do it”. A flash-bang device is fired at his feet. A startled Mr Boyd drops his bags and seems to take out a knife. He turns away from the officers, two of whom shoot multiple live rounds into his back. Mr Boyd falls, a dog is loosed to check he has been immobilised, the officers approach and cuff his wrists.

He was pronounced dead later in a city hospital.

There's a video of the murder here (no, I haven't watched it; the stills in the piece above are bad enough). The good news is that the people of Albuquerque finally seem to have decided that a police force which regularly murders them (in the past four years, they've shot more people than the NYPD, which polices a city 16 times bigger) needs to be policed. There have been protests directed at the killer cops, which have been met as usual with tear gas and batons. Which when its the police who are the focus of the protests, looks like an awfully self-interested use of force. The question though is whether this will actually produce change, or whether America's murderous cops are now effectively beyond any democratic control.

A question

If a politician brings defamation proceedings against another politician, bringing himself into "public hatred, ridicule and contempt" in the process, has he defamed himself?

Victory on whaling

Last night, the International Court of Justice ruled that Japan's "scientific" whaling program was illegal:

Activists are claiming victory after the International Court of Justice ordered Japan to stop its Antarctic whaling programme, but warn the fight may not be over.

Judges at the highest United Nations court have ordered Japan to halt their annual hunt in the Antarctic, rejecting the country's long-held argument that the catch was for scientific purposes and not primarily for human consumption.

[...]

The court concluded, in a judgment released overnight, that Japan's JARPA II programme was not "for purposes of scientific research" as allowed under Article 8 of the 1946 International Convention for the Regulation of Whaling.

[Former IWC chair Geoffrey] Palmer said the ruling was the strongest seen so far.

But the court could not rewrite the treaty, and Japan was technically able to continue whaling if it created a new programme that met the court's tests.

The latter is important: the court has stopped the whaling program in its present form. But Japan could revive it by killing fewer whales, or by actually publishing the results rather than simply eating the meat. Though we can expect any new program to come under intense scrutiny to see whether it is consistent with the court's ruling.

Meanwhile, the National government is trying to claim some of the glory from this, but its worth remembering: National originally didn't want to get involved in the case (because they value sucking up to Japan above the environment), and only intervened in it in late 2012. Strong opposition? I think not.

Blowback

The NSA's global panopticon hasn't caught any actual terrorists yet. But it does seem to be killing the cloud computing industry:

The vast scale of online surveillance revealed by Edward Snowden is changing how businesses store commercially sensitive data, with potentially dramatic consequences for the future of the internet, according to a new study.

A survey of 1,000 business leaders from around the world has found that many are questioning their reliance on "cloud computing" in favour of more secure forms of data storage as the whistleblower's revelations continue to reverberate.

[...]

The survey of 1,000 information and communications technology decision-makers from France, Germany, Hong Kong, the UK and the US was carried out by NTT Communications. It found that, following the Snowden revelations, almost 90% had changed the way they use the cloud – a storage service that allows data to be accessed from anywhere in the world but which is more susceptible to online surveillance.

The study also found that almost a third of those questioned were moving their company's data to locations where they "know it will be safe", and 16% said they had delayed or cancelled their contracts with cloud service providers.

I guess they worked out that giving their data to the NSA to be provided to their US competitors or snooped through at will would be bad for business...