Trigger-happy

BBC reporter John Simpson (the one who got bombed by the USAF) has some harsh words on the trigger-happiness of American troops in Iraq.

A more likely target

NZPols, which NZPundit has denounced as "a bit lefty". Glad to see that there are non-libertarians out there in the NZ section of the blogosphere.

Another NZ blog joins the fray

I Loathe Helen, dedicated to

vitriolic criticism of Our Dear Terrible Leader, Helen Clark, and her disgusting buddies.

Not much there yet, but maybe they'll have some amusing vitriol tomorrow.

Edit: This now seems to have disappeared (or at least its content has). Maybe it'll be back sometime.

Like rolling in your own excrement

ACT is accusing the government of having "conflicting policies" over utilisation of coal. I don't see any conflict here at all. Burning coal for energy is like rolling in your own excrement, and is the sort of thing we should discourage in the long term. The government agrees, which is why it's planning to charge coal-burners a carbon tax.

As for the issue of mining within the conservation estate, the idea that companies should be allowed to do this is simply ludicrous. The point of conservation estate is to conserve. Digging dirty great holes in the ground clearly runs contrary to this aim. Maybe someone should buy Ken Shirley a dictionary?

Still, I'm glad to see this press release from ACT, because the more they spout crap like this, the more they show how far their ideals differ from those of mainstream New Zealand. Ordinary New Zealanders place a relatively high value on conservation. ACT clearly does not, and the clearer they convey this message to the electorate, the better.

Buying back the track

The Greens have been agitating for this for a while, and the government has finally seen the light and bought back the track. Full details can be found in the government's press release on Scoop. The quick version:

• The government will take a 35% shareholding in TranzRail
• TranzRail will sell the rail network for $1, the nominal price it paid when it was sold way back in nineteen-ninety-whenever.
• The government will also buy other assets necessary for maintaining the track for about $50 million.
• The government will invest $100 million in upgrading the infrastructure, then lease it back exclusively to TranzRail. If they don't meet agreed targets for freight volume, the line will be opened up to competition.

The whole thing is subject to shareholder approval, of course, and if that isn't granted then TranzRail effectively get a $44 million loan at commercial interest rates for a year.

Is this a bad thing? I don't really think so. While Toll seemed interested in buying TranzRail, there was concern over whether they would make the necessary investment in infrastructure or continue to run it into the ground as the previous owners had. And of course there were concerns about monopoly pricing. This solves both problems - it returns a natural monopoly to crown control, where it is less likely to be abused (meaning we can vote the abusers out of office at election time), and it ensures that the infrastructure will be there. If Toll wants to run a railway, then I don't see anything here that stops it from acquiring the rest of TranzRail, and then focus on the core business of moving passangers and freight.

Old Fisk

While Mr Blair talks of victory in Iraq, troops are afraid to go out at night

Class Warfare in America

Michael Kinsley has an excellent article this morning: The Return of Class War: Bush and the new tyranny of the rich. It starts by pointing out the essential tension between the two pillars of democratic capitalism:

Democracy presumes and enshrines equality. Capitalism not only presumes but requires and produces inequality.

Western societies resolve this tension with a truce. We set a balance between the two, where we limit both the inequality the market can produce and the ability of the majority to redistribute wealth to create equality, thus allowing us to benefit from both. Kinsley describes this as

...an unspoken deal, a nonaggression pact, between democracy's political majority and capitalism's affluent minority. The majority acknowledge that capitalism benefits all of us, even if some benefit a lot more than others. The majority also take comfort in the belief that everyone has at least a shot at scoring big. The affluent minority, meanwhile, acknowledge that their good fortune is at least in part the luck of the draw. They recognize that domestic tranquility, protection from foreign enemies, and other government functions are worth more to people with more at stake. And they retain a tiny yet prudent fear of what beast might be awakened if the fortunate folks get too greedy about protecting and enlarging their good fortune.

He then goes on to point out that, in America, this truce is breaking down. The affluent have long used their wealth to leverage political power, but now they are using that power to grant themselves greater and greater tax cuts, undermine social programs, and shift the burden of paying for society onto the less affluent. In other words, the rich are waging class warfare on the poor.

The application to New Zealand? Down here we've traditionally favoured democracy over capitalism, and our truce has included a progressive tax system and a strong welfare state. In the 80's and 90's, Douglas, Richardson and friends shifted the balance in the other direction, and there is still a faction of the affluent (currently being courted by National) who advocate an even more extreme shift towards inequality. The American example shows what this actually means, and IMHO gives us good reason to resist such changes.

Freedom of the press, part II

And while we're on the topic, the US occupation authority is trying to impose a "code of conduct" on the newly freed Iraqi media. For their own good, of course:

Coalition officials say the code is not intended to censor the media, only to stifle intemperate speech that could incite violence and hinder efforts to build a civil society. The country is just too fragile for a journalistic free-for-all, they say.

"There's no room for hateful and destabilizing messages that will destroy the emerging Iraqi democracy," Mike Furlong, a senior adviser to the Coalition Provisional Authority, told The Associated Press. "All media outlets must be responsible."

Just like they are in America, right?

Any Iraqi with a half-decent education (or an internet connection) can see the hypocrisy here. The US media is protected by the First Amendment, and can say whatever the hell they like. Yet the Americans - who claim to be bringing "freedom" to Iraq, remember - are denying that same right to the Iraqis. It's a perfect case of the unstated American axiom that there is one law for them, and another for subject peoples.

Fortunately there are plenty of educated Iraqis, and they are already raising a stink about it.

We've been blogrolled!

Another blog milestone: our first blogrolling by another blog: KiwiPundit.

(I knew mentioning them would get me some attention :-)

We said they were "right wing, but nowhere near as Redbaiter-esque as NZPundit"; they think we "seem rational, except for the repeated links to Robert Fisk". I guess I'll have to try harder...

Freedom of the press

It's good to see official criticism from the government of the King of Tonga's attempts to stifle freedom of the press and punish criticism of politicians. It's also good to see the Progressive Coalition and Greens weighing in. But where are the other parties?

Hmmm.... maybe we should ask.

KiwiPundit has an excellent article on Popper's critical rationalism. It's been too long since I've done phil of science...

Salem Pax's first column in The Guardian.

Selling out?

Both Peter Dunne and Ken Shirley are accusing the Greens of "selling out" over their decision to support Labour at the next election even if the GE moratorium is lifted. Dunne sees this as the Greens "selling out their bottom line", and buying themselves a new one. He's wrong.

The Greens have always multiple, competing principles. In addition to their strong beliefs about genetic modification, they have equally strong beliefs about social justice. It's quite clear that once the GE moratorium is lifted, noone is going to reimpose it - the best the Greens would be able to get would be a vote, which they would lose to a combination of the other parties. And so it all comes down to the social justice angle - and it's quite clear that Labour better serves that interest than National.

Far from "selling out", the Greens are sticking to their principles. They're simply being realistic about what is achievable and what is not.

Storywatch

Bruce Simpson's plans to build his own cruise missile have made it onto BBC.

"Liberating" Iraq, part II

The common response to rants like the one below about the appalling way the US is handling post-war Iraq is to claim that "anything is better than Saddam Hussein". The obvious response is to ask "But is it 5000 dead civillians better?"

Bloggers will debate that question from the safety of their computer chairs, trading off unexploded cluster bombs and depleted uranium against secret police and torture. But if we ask the people whose opinion really matters - actual Iraqis - we find that out some of them are already nostalgic for Saddam. And it's not difficult to see why: no power, no water, no law, no security, and a bunch of foreigners and their stooges running the show. It's a long, long way from what they were promised. Sure, the Iraqis now have their "freedom", but they see that the new boss is the same as the old boss, and in the meantime someone has stolen their VCR.

Either the Americans should get serious about building a decent democracy in Iraq - commit the necessary resources for rebuilding; engage in serious consultation to build a truly representative government rather than a bunch of unelected puppets - or they should get out.

Bruce defend New Zealand

Bruce Simpson is building a cruise missile, just because he can. But who will he be aiming it at?

New Fisk

...and the truth the victors refuse to see

"Liberating" Iraq

One of the reasons given by the US for the war was the liberation of the Iraqi people. The US army was going to free them from an unelected dictator, and install a genuinely democratic Iraqi government.

Unfortunately, those plans have now been shelved. The Americans are no longer planning on holding a political conference to build an interim government acceptable to the people of Iraq; instead they're just going to appoint whoeever they feel like. Democracy? Sorry, the Iraqis might elect someone the US doesn't like if they're allowed to genuinely express their political will.

Those who backed the war on the grounds that it would liberate the Iraqi people should be appalled. There is no "liberation" here; this is simply the substitution of one unelected prick for another. Getting rid of the Ba'ath and Saddam's secret police? Great - but not if you replace them with hyperaggressive US soldiers with twitchy trigger fingers, who kick in people's doors, search their houses, and machine gun anyone who looks at them funny.

So, they lied about WMD, and it looks like they lied about liberation as well. This was an unjust war, and the sooner the Iraqis rise up and start trying to kick the Americans out, the better.

In Australia this week, a former Governer-General Sir William Deane launched a stinging attack on the Howard Government and its handling of human rights, social and environmental issues.

Sir William said the Government had shrunk from the "challenge of justice and truth" and instead "sought advantage by inflaming ugly prejudice and intolerance." He went on to say that Australia would "surely lose its way" if future leaders ran the country as badly as the present Government.

In particular he singled out Australia's treatment of refugees at its Woomera detention centre, Howard's flat out lies in the run up to the 2001 elections about refugees throwing their children into the water and the Government's failure to safeguard the rights of two of its citizens who are being held in detention indefinately by the American Government without legal charge or process at Guantanamo Bay.

He also rapped the government over the knuckles for failing to sign the Kyoto agreement on greenhouse gasses and for failing to address the growing gap between the haves and the have nots in Australia.

Why is this relevent to us I hear you ask? Because these are the policies of a conservative government, one that the likes of National, ACT and NZ First would like to emulate should they get into power. In fact National recently sent a number of members of its shadow cabinet on a fact finding mission to Australia to look at how the government there does things. I'm fairly open to the idea of free trade and all that, but I think these policies are one Australian import we can do without.

Yesterday's Fisk

Baghdad: The true picture