Putting their cards on the table

Over the weekend, Jeanette Fitzsimons of the Greens gave a "state of the planet" address on Waiheke Island. Media coverage has focused on the sensational aspect - the (rapidly approaching) demise of cheap oil and consequent need for change - and in the process missed something important: there is no mention whatsoever of the issue that divided the Greens and Labour last election, genetic modification. Instead, the Greens are signalling, both to Labour voters and their own, that they want there to be a left coalition (rather than a right one) after the next election:

we have to work with Labour. We have to encourage them in their infant steps to sustainability, convince them of the urgency of the energy issue, oppose them strongly when they panic and slip back to authoritarian and unsustainable ways. We will lose some of the battles. But we are asking you to give us the numbers and the power this year to give New Zealand, and the planet, a future.

And their silence on GE shows that they are willing to give up something significant to do it.

This can only be good news for the left. The Greens and Labour should be natural allies, not enemies.

Hikoi to the ballot box

Since the last year's Hikoi to Parliament it has been clear that the government will be facing a Maori backlash this election over its expropriation of the foreshore. And that backlash is looking larger and larger; the Maori Party has grown to 9000 members, which isn't too shabby for a party which didn't exist a year ago. Labour will be facing a serious fight in the Maori seats, with at least half of their Maori electorate MPs likely to be punished with de-election and the others having their majorities slashed. On current polling that isn't likely to threaten Labour's ability to form a government - but it is likely to establish the Maori Party as a possible coalition partner (especially if they get an overhang). Just think of the coalition negotiations that would cause...

Either way, it looks like the Maori Party is going to become a presence in Parliament - quite possibly for a long time to come.

New Fisk

How a flying carpet took me back in time - until I landed in Baghdad
’They put a hood on me, tied my hands and took me to Camp Fallujah’

A sickening Inconsistency

Here's an inconsistency: today, Specialist Charles Graner got ten years for abusing and torturing prisoners at Abu Ghraib. Meanwhile, the companies who provided the contract interrogators who ordered him to do it - CACI International and Titan - were rewarded with valuable new contracts by the Pentagon.

Between them, the companies provided half of all interrogators and analysts at Abu Ghraib. Several have been accused of serious criminal behaviour in the various investigations into what happened there. Steven Stefanowicz of CACI ordered people to physically abuse prisoners. John Israel of Titan is accused of lying under oath, while Adel Nakhla (also of Titan) raped a child prisoner. Other employees of these corporations were found to have beaten or ordered the beatings of prisoners, used unauthorised "stress positions", and used dogs to intimidate and maul prisoners. Both companies clearly have a problem with ensuring that their employees conform to military standards for running and working in a prison. Neither has fired anyone for these abuses. Yet rather than being banned from further contracts until they clean their act up, CACI has had its US$16 million contract for Abu Ghraib renewed, and Titan has been given US$164 million of new business.

US$180 million for perjury, beatings and child rape. I guess the Bush administration felt they were doing a good job...

Doing something about third world debt

Third World indebtedness is one of the great problems of our age. Developing countries struggle to pay off crippling levels of debt - often racked up by military dictatorships in exchange for guns to point at their own people - but because of extortionate interest rates, they never seem to make any headway. And of course the money going to overseas lenders as debt servicing is money that cannot be spent on economic development or on serving the needs of their own people. So it's good to see the UK doing something about it; they have forgiven their share of Mozambique's debt and will pay 10% of its debts to the IMF and World Bank. There is a string attached, but on that isn't too onerous: the money saved must be spent on health, education, and infrastructure - all things that help a country stand on its own two feet.

It doesn't end there, either - the UK is planning to do the same for the entire developing world. In other words, they are serious about the problem and want to do something real about it, rather than simply wringing their hands. The trick as always is going to be getting other nations to follow suit.

The right will probably decry this move as "setting the wrong incentives" and "encouraging financial profligicy" or similar, but no doubt the pentakosiomedimnoi said the same to Solon before the seisachtheia. And they would be defending exactly what the rich of Athens wished to defend: debt-slavery. The only difference is one of scale.

If the moral argument does not convince, then consider this: debts that can never be repaid provide an incentive for only one thing - default. If creditor nations do not take steps to lift this burden, then debtor nations may one day simply refuse to carry it any further. And as Argentina shows, the consequences of that are far worse for creditors than debtors. Better then to try and manage the transition smothly, and possibly get something (even if only good will) rather than holding out for a hundred percent of nothing.

Guilty

Specialist Charles Graner has been jailed for ten years on five charges relating to the torture of prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison. It's an excellent result, but at the same time some of those responsible for these atrocities seem to have escaped punishment entirely - notably the military intelligence and CIA personnel who seem to have given the orders (and committed abuses of their own in the course of their interrogations).

Not that acting under orders excuses Graner in any way, of course - the Nuremburg principle establishes that - but shouldn't everyone involved face justice?

The trial itself was in many ways a proxy trial of American right-wing pundits' (and their blogosphere parrots') attitude towards torture. Graner's defence lawyer tried to argue that the abuses pictured in the photographes were not torture, claiming fatuously that stacking naked prisoners in human pyramids was "a valid control technique" which could not be torture as cheerleaders did it - completely overlooking the aspect of voluntary consent (rather than fear of beatings) on their part. He also tried the same tactic in response to the famous picture of Private Lynndie England dragging a naked prisoner around on a leash:

"You've probably been at a mall or airport and seen children on tethers; they're not being abused," he argued.

"You're keeping control of them. A tether is a valid control to be used in corrections," he said.

"In Texas we'd lasso them and drag them out of there."

Which I think says more about the sadism prelevant in the Texas "corrections" system than it does about dragging people round on leashes.

But when it came to testimony from some of the Graner's victims, who reported being forced to masturbate for his amusement, being violently beaten (and in particular, being beaten on the site of a fresh bullet wound) and being forced to eat excrement, the defence had no response other than appealing to "patriotic" hatred:

"It was the face of the enemy. It's very clear that he hates America," he said.

I'm very glad to see that a court martial found these "arguments" unconvincing. But I doubt those pundits wil notice...

As for what hapens next, the Bush administration will claim that this means that the Abu Ghraib scandal is over - but this is no longer just about Abu Ghraib. Since then, the evidence that torture has been used in other US detention facilities (in Iraq, in Guantanamo, in Afghanistan and elsewhere) has become overwhelming. It will not be over until everyone responsible has faced justice. Charles Graner should be the start, not the end.

Further proof of failure

The CIA's National Intelligence Council is warning that Iraq could become a breeding-ground and a haven for terrorists, similar to Afghanistan under the Soviets. Rather than "flypaper", attracting terrorists which can then be killed, they see it as driving recruitment and providing training to a new generation, the survivors and leaders of which will then carry their training and skills around the world - again, as happened in Afghanistan.

One of Bush's excuses for his invasion was to make America (and the world) "safe from terrorism. But rather than making us safer, he has in fact increased the danger. On this count too, then, the Iraq war must also be considered a failure.

Three floppy disks

Like a mayfly, Huygens brief time has come and gone. Last night it descended through Titan's atmosphere and landed on whatever was under it, lasting for about seven hours against the cold. In process, it has shot about 750 images and collected enough data to fill three floppy disks. This sounds unimpressive compared to the prodigious output of probes like Viking or the Spirit rover, but it's a stunning success as far as the scientists are concerned - they were expecting to get only a single floppy from the whole exercise.

Now they get to pore over the data and find out what Titan - or at least that part of it that Huygens saw before it froze - is made of.

No pictures have been made available yet, but I'll be checking the ESA Cassini-Huygens site for details.

New Fisk

We won’t go home and we won’t vote, say refugees of Fallujah

Just depressing

Is there any other way to describe the prospects for the Iraqi elections? With just over two weeks to go until the poll, the interim regime has admitted that violence will prevent voting in some parts of the country. While they are downplaying the extent, the provinces they are talking about contain about 50% of the population of the country - and the capital. In other words, we are looking at an "election" where the majority of the population - and the majority of Sunnis, who are already hostile to the new order in Iraq - will not be able to participate.

Riverbend's latest report isn't exactly encouraging either. There's an open market in ballot papers and candidate names are being kept secret for their protection; with people being murdered right left and center, you can hardly blame them, but what sort of democracy is it when people are not allowed to know who they are voting for? The whole thing is turning into a farce, and people know it. If Riverbend's reaction is anything to go by, the resulting government won't be seen as legitimate by many Iraqis.

And on the other hand, 50% of an election is better than no election at all (or the sorts of "elections" practised under Saddam). Something may be able to be salvaged by providing representation for those who cannot vote, backed by the promise of local elections at the first available opportunity, but it will hardly be the shining pillar of democracy that the Americans promised. By this measure then (as with so many others), the war should be considered a failure. It's a testament to the ability of the Americans to fuck things up that they've managed to turn "elections" into a dirty word...

And on the other hand...

While Tim Barnett is right in labelling Brash's call for more referenda "desperate", his general objection to referenda is a little over the top:

He said Dr Brash was floating a "very different kind of democracy" where decisions could end up being made by a version of "mob rule".

That very much depends on what sorts of safeguards there are and the balance of power between Parliament and popular votes. The chief worry with referenda is that they could erode the rights of unpopular minorities. A secondary concern is that they could result in contradictory entrenched budgetary demands (as has happened in California). A third is that without spending controls they could simply become a tool for monied interests able to afford expensive publicity campaigns. But on the other hand the Swiss have managed to do them properly with no significant problems for over a hundred years.

I think there's definitely a role for citizen's initiated referenda, either as a direct legislative mechanism or as a "people's veto" on unpopular legislation. The question is how we implement it, not whether we should do it - and it's in that complete and utter lack of detail that Brash's "proposal" really falls down.

Brash's desperate populism

In the Herald this morning, Don Brash argues that MMP has led to a decline of accountability and consensus, and pushes for a referendum on the electoral system and greater use of referenda generally. Just Left has already pointed out that this is little more than insincere populism on his part; Brash voted for the Prostitution Reform Act and supported the Civil Union Bill on its first reading. He seemed quite happy at the time to impose his will on the public, despite not having campaigned or sought a mandate on either issue. For him to turn around now and say that there should have been a referendum is simply hypocritical on his part. He is also being dishonest in claiming that these changes were made without a mandate; both civil unions and the Supreme Court were part of Labour's manifesto at the last election (here and here respectively), while prostitution decriminalisation was a private member's bill, not government policy. But as the post-Orewa "race debate" showed, dishonesty is hardly unusual for Brash, and he seems quite happy simply to make shit up if the facts are inconvenient.

This move to populism show's Brash's desperation: he has one shot at becoming Prime Minister, after which he is likely to be rolled in favour of a younger, more electable candidate. And as the Civil Union debate showed, he will adopt any political position that he thinks will improve his chances - even those violently at odds with his claimed principles.

What about the substance? Unfortunately, on the referenda front, there isn't any - which is why I dismiss Brash's position as empty populism. At least Winston went to the effort of developing a (deeply flawed) legislative framework when pushing for referenda; Brash hasn't even bothered to do that. When National comes up with a proper referendum scheme, I will take them seriously on this issue - but until then, they're simply appealing to the grumpy vote.

On electoral reform Brash has more concrete proposals, echoing National's long-standing desire to make Parliament less representative and restore the executive dictatorship. He also plumps for the supplementary member system - the "salmonella" option in the 1992 referendum, which combines the worst features of MMP and FPP: party lists without proportionality and majority government without restraint. And the reason for this is quite obvious: Brash can't win an electorate seat (he went down to Social Credit twice in the early 80's), and thus needs a list to get into Parliament.

But what about the "problems" a return to a less representative electoral system is supposed to fix? Parliament has been more consensual this term, with bills generally attracting wider support than under FPP, and the newer parties displaying a more constructive rather than oppositional culture. While there are "back-room deals", they are more open than under FPP, when they happened within parties rather than between them. As for accountability, we will have a chance to hold our representatives accountable for their votes later this year. And with his voting record, Don Brash should be worried.

Keeping our promises

One of the biggest worries about aid is that promises made today may be forgotten tomorrow when the disaster or crisis drops off the TV. The 2003 earthquake in Bam, Iran, is a case in point - a hundred million dollars was pledged by donor nations, but less than US$20 million has actually been paid out. So it's particularly good to see that the New Zealand government has already paid most of the $10 million it has pledged to the victims of the asian tsunami.

However, the general problem remains: how do we make sure our governments live up to their promises, rather than simply exploiting claims of generosity for political gain? Freedom of information and open government laws are particularly useful here, allowing us to watch our governments and make sure they deliver. All we need to do is remember to submit the requests, and publicise the results.

So, here's a promise: over the next year I will be using the OIA to keep an eye on the government's progress in this matter. I hope that some of you in other jurisdictions with freedom of information laws - the US and UK in particular - will do the same.

Shrinking coalition watch

Ukraine is out.

So, is this torture?

Or simply murder?

a prisoner under interrogation by the CIA was abused in October 2003 by two or three SEALs. On another occasion a month later, the witness said he watched as SEALs punched, choked and poked their fingers in the eye of Iraqi Manadel al-Jamadi, who also was punched by a CIA official when he did not answer questions.

Mr. al-Jamadi, a suspect in the bombing of a Red Cross facility in Iraq, died a few hours after he was captured during a joint CIA-special operations mission in November 2003. He died while being interrogated by CIA personnel in the shower room of the Abu Ghraib prison.

One of the men involved - a US Navy SEAL Lieutenant - may be facing assault charges, but no-one has been charged with murder, or even negligent homicide. I think that shows more than anything how "seriously" the US takes its human rights obligations. A group of men beat a prisoner to death - and yet no-one will be held properly responsible for it.

New Fisk

Fear stalks city where the police hide behind masks

Ending the pretense

The US has stopped even pretending to look for WMD in Iraq. I guess they got sick of not finding anything.

So, what was that war all about again?

Sleep and evolution

Over at Philosophically Made, Stephen Cooper asks:

Is it in human nature to be rational? If one takes an evolutionary stance, then one thinks that evolution thins out irrational points of view.

But then, we get all sorts of behaviour that really isn't conducive to survival.

If I sit on the couch watching TV, how is that good for survival? Am I contributing to human extinction this way? Some might say humans need to rest, to recouperate and give more the next day. But then, wouldn't evolution provide us with a human that doesn't need to rest?

The simple answer is that it's just not energetically efficient to do so (or rather, wasn't in the evolutionary situation in which the strategy of sleeping evolved, way back in the depths of the animal phyla). While there are fairly obvious opportunity costs to sleeping (including the risk of being eaten), they fairly obviously do not outweight the extra expense of being active all the time.

But there's also a great deal of confusion in Stephen's post. Evolution doesn't act on "points of view". It acts on the genes, through their vehicles, individual organisms. Rationality is not necessarily desirable in an evolutionary sense; all an organism needs is the ability to solve common problems in its environment, and as digger wasps show, it need not do this by thinking. And if an environment is sufficiently unchallenging, you can get by without thinking at all - look at trees. In such circumstances, having a brain is simply a waste.

There's also a trace of the biggest confusion surrounding evolution: conflating its values with those of people. Evolution may "judge" behaviour by whether it is "good for survival" (or rather, reproductive success), but we can - and should - have other standards. Rape, murder and cannibalism may all be "good for survival" (if you can get away with them), but it does not follow that we should act that way.

Energy: the growth of wind

There's an interesting article in the Dominion-Post this morning on the growth of wind power in New Zealand. Between them, TrustPower and Meridian are planning to install 450 - 500 MW of turbines in the next two to three years, and there are many other projects being pursued by smaller players. In all, it looks as if we will be able to meet our energy demand growth from wind alone - which has to be good for our long-term sustainability.

Why such intense interest? One reason is the ease of gaining resource consents. While some object to windfarms on the basis of noise and visual pollution, others find them quite beautiful, and public support for new projects is generally strong. Meridian's Te Apiti windfarm near Palmerston North reportedly took just three days to get its resource consent, and their planned farm near Mossburn took only eight. Compare this with the expensive multiyear struggle over Project Aqua...

But the real reason is even simpler: generating electricity from the wind is now economically viable in New Zealand. Good wind resources mean that New Zealand wind farms are over twice as productive as those in Europe - and almost approach hydro in terms of capacity (Trustpower's Tararua farm generates 45% of the time, Te Apiti approaches 50%. Hydro averages only 58% due to variable rainfall). This means that wind electricity is cheap - Meridian thinks it can generate for less than 6 cents per kWh, even cheaper than gas. And while the government is providing carbon credits to promote clean generation, these are "icing on the cake"; these projects are being pursued because they are commercially viable on their own terms.

It is interesting however to note which of our electricity companies are catching the wind and which are not. Wind seems to be being pursued by generators with most of their assets in hydro, because of the obvious synergy (you can generate with wind and save water for later). Those companies with large sunk investments in gas, OTOH, seem to be ignoring it and betting everything on imported LNG. The latter, I think, are setting themselves up for an expensive fall in the long run. With the price of gas set to rise as Maui runs out, and rise further to pay for LNG infrastructure, there will be a definite incentive to conserve at peak times rather than risk exposure to the spot market. And this is going to decrease the demand for gas even further. It won't disappear, but it will almost certainly play a smaller role in our national grid than it does at present.

New Fisk

Deputy of Baghdad police assassinated in car with his son