Defending the indefensible

Tariana Turia steps up to defend Te Wananga o Aotearoa's indefensible practice of giving out jobs and contracts to the director's relatives. According to Turia, it's not nepotism, but "whanaungatanga" [kinship], and done because the relatives can be trusted to do the job. But while this is perfectly acceptable in private business, it is not acceptable in a government funded organisation - firstly, because there are rules on how contracts and tenders are let, which require that they be given to the best bidder (rather than the one who is a relative), and secondly because we expect public institutions to give jobs to people on merit, not blood-ties or cronyism. The latter in particular is the basis of our professional and neutral public service, and is a fundamental principle of public service organisations all around the world.

What Turia is really defending is the "right" of publicly appointed managers to turn a public organisation into a private fiefdom, and run it for their own benefit. And that is something we should not tolerate. This is not to discount the good that Te Wananga has done - boosting the rates of Maori tertiary training has been of immense benefit - but I don't see any reason why that good must come at the cost of nepotism and cronyism.

Wasted votes and threshold distortions

Big News has a post on the "wasted vote". We all know - or we all should know - that under MMP, the number of seats a party wins in Parliament is determined by its proportion of the party vote. But it's a little bit more complicated than that, because if we simply applied the above rule, we would always have a Parliament of less than 120 seats, due to the distorting effects of the 5% threshold. In order to have a fixed-size Parliament, we therefore assign each party seats based on the proportion of the party vote of all parties eligible for seats. This isn't so much a reallocation of the wasted vote (as Dave mischaracterises it), but a way of ignoring it. Those votes are effectively not even counted in the final result.

(The exact number of seats is actually determined by the Sainte-Laguë formula, but this is really about who benefits from rounding)

If we are concerned about the "wasted vote", then there is an obvious way to solve it: elminate the threshold (or rather, reduce it 0.8%, the amount required to gain a single MP). While some parties will still fail to make this lower barrier, there will be far fewer wasted votes (only 20,023 based on last election's results), and therefore far fewer people disenfranchised. And in a democracy, that can only be a Good Thing.

New kiwi blog

Undead From Unzud: Thoughts From The Colonies. But contrary to his allegations, I don't delete comments. Blogger does mark comments deleted by the blog-owner differently from those deleted by the author, so I can only assume that (as he said) "this interwebtechnology thingy is beyond [gazzadelsud's] limited skills to comprehend"

Widespread and routine

The ACLU has released another treasure trove of documents as part of its investigation into torture and abuse of detainees by US forces. The documents - mostly reports from the US Army's Criminal Investigation Division - show torture and abuse are widespread and routine across US operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. In one case, a prisoner

claimed that Americans in civilian clothing beat him in the head and stomach, dislocated his arms, "stepped on [his] nose until it [broke]," stuck an unloaded pistol in his mouth and fired the trigger, choked him with a rope and beat his leg with a baseball bat. Medical reports corroborated the detainee’s account, stating that the detainee had a broken nose, fractured leg, and scars on his stomach. In addition, soldiers confirmed that Task Force 20 interrogators wearing civilian clothing had interrogated the detainee. However, after initially reporting the abuse, the detainee said that he was forced by an American soldier to sign a statement denouncing the claims or else be kept in detention indefinitely. He agreed.

An investigator who reviewed the signed statement concluded that "[t]his statement, alone, is a prima facie indication of threats." However, despite the medical report and testimony from other soldiers, the criminal file was ultimately closed on the grounds that the investigation had "failed to prove or disprove" the offenses.

That phrase - "failed to prove or disprove" - or variations on it crop up again and again in the ACLU's documents. Investigations into allegations that Iraqis were taken in the middle of the night and beaten in the back of a Humvee, into Iraqis who suffered permanant nerve damage as a result of beatings while handcuffed, and into indiscriminate assaults by Special Forces on villagers in Afghanistan which were witnessed by "senior Psyops officers" were all terminated due to "insufficient evidence", despite medical reports and witness statements. Even in cases where the abusers had been videotaped beating and kicking detainees, they were not prosecuted or punished in any way. Given this, you really have to question the commitment of the US army to enforcing its own rules against the abuse of prisoners...

And that's not the half of it. In another incident revealed by the Associated Press, a "ghost" detainee was tortured to death by being suspended by his wrists with his arms behind his back (a variation on strapado known as "Palestinian hanging") and beaten. According to one witness,

the prisoner's arms were stretched behind him in a way he had never before seen. Frost told investigators he was surprised al-Jamadi's arms "didn't pop out of their sockets," according to a summary of his interview.

Frost and other guards had been summoned to reposition al-Jamadi, who an interrogator said was not cooperating. As the guards released the shackles and lowered al-Jamadi, blood gushed from his mouth "as if a faucet had been turned on," according to the interview summary.

The military pathologist who ruled the case a homicide found several broken ribs and concluded al-Jamadi died from pressure to the chest and difficulty breathing.

Two navy officers are currently facing charges over the murder - the other eight navy SEALs who initially kicked him and beat him with rifle butts having recived "nonjudicial punishment" - meaning "sweet fuck all" - for their actions. Meanwhile, the CIA interrogators who actually killed him have not been charged, and are nowhere to be found. It seems that serious torture is just business as usual as far as they are concerned.

New Fisk

Grass always covers graves, but the seas reveal the secrets of human folly

Resources

A while ago I toyed with the idea of making a searchable database of Parliamentary votes (and particularly conscience votes) so we could track MP's voting records. Unfortunately, I didn't have the time, but I see that NORML is including the information in its MPs database. While they're really interested in MP's opinions on marijuana decriminalisation, their positions on the lowering of the drinking age, prostitution reform, the death with dignity and civil unions bills are all included.

This will be quite useful when assessing electorate candidates, but at the same time I have to ask why Parliament isn't doing this itself? Surely making the voting records of our representatives easily accessable and searchable is precisely the sort of thing the office of the Clerk should be doing?

Retribution I: Taito Phillip Field

In my post on strategic voting, I suggested that Labour voters "express our displeasure for errant Labour MPs... by voting for other candidates, assuming better alternatives can be found". I was not expecting to be making recommendations for a couple of months yet - not until I'd actually assessed whether there were any better alternatives. But there's one electorate competition so clear cut that I can make a recommendation now: Mangere.

Mangere's current representative is Taito Phillip Field, who holds the seat with a majority of 15,375 - the second-largest in the country. His recently-selected opponent is Clem Simich (currently MP for Tamaki). Field voted against the Civil Union Bill, against prostitution reform, and against lowering the drinking age. Simich voted "yes" to every one. This makes the choice of who to vote for a no-brainer IMHO. Sure, Simich is from National, but at least he's not a bigot (unlike Field and most other National MPs). And backing him with only the electorate vote will not affect the overall outcome one jot, because that is determined by the party vote.

Given the size of Field's majority, I don't realistically expect him to be de-elected. But it would be nice to see that majority shrink, and for the Labour party to get the message and select a better candidate next time.

Tension in United Future

The Independent this week reports tension in United Future, as MPs grapple with the simple mathematical truth that with eight MPs and the party polling at only 2 or 3%, most of them are going to miss out. This has caused a certain amount of competition for the top three spots on the party list, which is also unveiling all the other tensions in the party. Such as the struggle to find a place for the now-affiliated Outdoor Recreation party, who polled 1.28% last election and therefore justifiably want some list placement payoff for delivering an MP's worth of voters. Or the tension over whether United Future is or is not a religious party; Dunne wants to be a broader, centrist and above-all mainstream party, while the fundamentalists and evangelicals who parasitised his party want a more Christian flavour.

It will be interesting to watch these tensions play out over the next few months. If we're lucky, we'll see some of the fundamentalists go off in a sulk, so that Dunne has another chance to build the sensible, mainstream, centre party that he wants, rather than simply being a vehicle for bigots and moralising loons.

Interesting

Searching library catalogues can be quite interesting; you never know what you'll find:

Title: The sedition trial of Bishop Liston / by Michael Brian Laws.
Main Author: Laws, Michael, 1957-

[...]

Publisher: Dunedin : University of Otago, 1980.
Description: 106 leaves ; 31 cm.
Notes: Thesis (Postgraduate Diploma) - University of Otago, Dunedin, 1980. Bibliography: 1. 104-106.

Yes, it is that Michael Laws.

New kiwi blog

Poster Child of Mediocrity

Strategic voting

In case you didn't know, there's an election coming up in the UK. And despite Tony Blair's best efforts - two official whitewashes and a non-apology in the House - the British public are refusing to "draw a line" under the Iraq war. Some are still so incensed that they have established a website, Backing Blair, urging people to do what they can under the UK's archaic simple plurality (first-past-the-post) electoral system to vote him out of office:

On election day, we want you to vote strategically. Ruthlessly. In 'safe' Labour seats and marginal seats we want you to vote for the candidate most likely to beat the Labour candidate.

Except this isn't strategic voting - it's mindless voting. Surely if you are trying to register a protest vote against the war in Iraq, a candidate's views on that war should be a consideration? Nick Barlow makes this point perfectly, using the example of a Labour MP who has consistently opposed both the war and the Blair government's overreaction to it:

And you think voting him out of the House of Commons will send a message to Tony Blair? I don’t know who his Tory opponent is, or what he or she may believe in, but what if you’re voting for someone like IDS who, in Matt’s words, would not only jump in a lake if asked to by George Bush, but would first drain it and then jump in head-first just to show much more committed he was than Blair?

Like Nick, I think the strategy expressed by John Harris in so now who do we vote for? (excerpt here)is far more effective: vote Labour where the candidate opposed the war or where the Conservatives have a serious chance of getting in - and not-Labour (and preferably one of the anti-war parties) everywhere else. The British Labour party needs to be punished for betraying its roots and supporting the unsupportable, and the best short-term strategy is to vote for the alternatives. The best long-term strategy, of course, is real electoral reform towards a proportional system - but that's not seriously on the UK radar at the moment.

A similar argument can be made about our own Labour government, of course. While their record on social, economic, and labour-market policy is good, on immigration and law and order (and human rights in general), it leaves much to be desired. But the answer to this is not to throw Labour out of office - the "alternative" is worse in every case - but to ensure that they pursue policies more in line with our preferences. Fortunately, MMP gives us a much easier time of this.

After the next election, Labour will almost certainly need the assistance of other parties to form a government. We must leave them in no doubt about our preference for forming a coalition on the left rather than in the centre (unless of course there is no other option). But more importantly, we must ensure that their left-wing partners have sufficient clout in internal negotiations to drag policy in the right direction. And the way to do this is to vote for the coalition partner rather than Labour. Both the Greens and Progressives have committed to backing Labour to form a government, so voting for them does not damage the left. But it will help shift the policy balance, both through internal coalition consultation and by making it clear to Labour that trying to outflank National on the right will be punished.

The electorate vote is another matter entirely. It's vitally important for small parties of course, but for the larger ones it is simply a way of selectively reordering the list. This leaves us free to express our displeasure for errant Labour MPs (such as Phil Goff for his hostile attitude towards human rights, David Benson-Pope for his outburst over Zaoui, or the traitors who voted against the Civil Union Bill) by voting for other candidates, assuming better alternatives can be found. It also leaves us free to vote for the most liberal credible candidate, so as to improve our chances on conscience votes. Neither of these will affect the overall outcome (that is ultimately decided by the party vote), but they may result in a Parliament which is more in line with our preferences.

Fitting right in

Bush has nominated John Negroponte to be the US's first Director of National Intelligence. For those who don't know, Negroponte is currently the US's "ambassador" (proconsul) to Iraq. But more importantly, his history should rule him out of any such position. From 1981 to 85, Negroponte served as ambassador to Honduras, where he oversaw the training and operations of the US-backed death squads who kidnapped, tortured and killed thousands of Honduran leftists (not to mention the odd American nun). He also helped run America's illegal secret war against Nicaragua, part of which involved funelling arms to the Contras in violation of US law and UN sanctions (those with unfashionably long memories may remember this as the Iran-Contra scandal). In all of this, Negroponte showed his disdain for a fundamental principle of democratic government: civilian oversight and control of the military and intelligence services. To appoint someone with these attitudes to head America's intelligence services is simply begging for the same abuses to occur again.

But is this really surprising? In an administration which has appointed torture-excuser Alberto Gonzales as Attorney-General, which runs a system of rendition and torture by proxy, and which has speculated about using death squads in Iraq, Negroponte fits right in...

Well, that worked II

More evidence of the "success" of the US's tough approach towards Iran: Iran and Syria have formed a mutual defence-pact against the perceived threat from the US and Israel. Which adds immeasurably to the security and stability of the Middle East...</SARCASM>

Setting the goal

Helen Clark wants us to be more like Sweden. It's an excellent goal, and finally provides a decent vision to back up Labour's electoral machine. Fully-funded universal healh and education, a welfare state that allows everyone to live a decent life and participate in society, a social infrastructure that provides people with real, practical (rather than merely formal) freedom, regardless of the circumstances of their birth or the vagaries of fortune - this is the goal Labour should have enunciated long ago. It will cost, of course, but I think it is a cost New Zealanders are willing to bear. People have repeatedly said they are willing to pay more to get decent health and education; what rankles so much now is that due to means testing, an increasing number of people are paying to insure others while not receiving any benefit themselves. If we want them to buy in to universal care, then that has to change.

But actually, I'd go further than Sweden. Rather than simply rebuilding the welfare state, we should replace it and implement a universal basic income system. This would pay an equal amount (ideally enough to live on) to every adult New Zealander, freeing us from (some of) the basic struggle to eat and giving us greater freedom to control our own lives. It would mean economic change, and some (shitty) industries would almost certainly be wiped out, while employers would have to get used to workers demanding greater flexibility - but it would be well worth it.

Thanks, America!

Further on the line of fundamentally counterproductive strategies, one of the pretexts given by the Bush Administration for its invasion and occupation of Iraq was to reduce the threat of international terrorism. In their fantasyland, all evils were one, and so Saddam was obviously in bed with Al Qaeda.

Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to have worked out too well. Today, CIA director Porter Goss said that the conflict had become a "cause for extremists". Worse, Iraq has become one giant terrorist training camp:

"Those jihadists who survive will leave Iraq experienced in and focused on acts of urban terrorism," he said.

"They represent a potential pool of contacts to build transnational terrorist cells, groups and networks."

So, rather than making us safer, the US has endangered us all. And rather than reducing either the number of terrorists or their ability to conduct attacks, the US has ensured that we have more and better trained terrorists with a new reason to strike against us. Thanks, America!

Prisoner compensation: underlying axioms

Today's Herald coverage of the select committee hearings into the Prisoners' and Victims' Claims Bill provides a perfect example of the underlying axioms of those who oppose compensating abused prisoners. Speaking before the committee, Ida Hawkins, the mother of murdered 15-year old Colleen Burrows, opposed compensating her daughter's murderer for the systematic abuse he suffered at the hands of prison guards because:

He murdered my daughter ... because my daughter refused to have sex with him. He ran her over and booted her and kicked her all over her body

To which my response is that that is precisely why he is in jail - and furthermore, that his conviction does not give others the right to do the same to him, or deprive him of the protection of the law generally against crimes committed against him.

As Tony Ellis said later on, there are not two classes of victims. Prisoners can also be victims of crime, committed by other prisoners, guards, or the state. And those crimes are equally deserving of punishment.

What those opposing prisoner compensation are saying is that we should establish a class of persons - convicted criminals - against which crimes can be committed with impunity. That people with criminal convictions should be allowed to be beaten, raped, abused, and subjected to psychological torture, without having any protection from the law. There are words for these sorts of underclasses denied legal sanctuary. "Helots" is one. "Niggers" is another. Is that really what New Zealand stands for?

If we wish to have any moral basis for punishing criminals, then we must ensure that the protection and sanction of the law applies to everyone. Otherwise what we have is not a system of law, but the depradations of an organised gang.

Correction: That is of course Colleen, not Coral, Burrows. Thanks to davidr for pointing this out.

"Possibly seditious"

Somehow I'm not particularly surprised to see that the Monarchist League thinks that debating the future of the monarchy is "possibly seditious". Monarchs throughout the ages have always relied upon sheer force to prevent people from asking the obvious questions - "why you?" and "what gives you the right?" - and our local cult of royalty is simply following this tradition.

It does however provide another proof of the dubiousness of the idea of sedition, and another reason to repeal this archaic law.

(Hat tip: Holden Republic)

New Fisk

The killing of 'Mr Lebanon': Rafik Hariri assassinated in Beirut bomb blast
Israeli spies, Syrian obsession and a peace that had to break

Now we are two

Today, No Right Turn turns two. It's been a big year - 61,109 unique visitors, and 1295 posts totalling 247,471 words. By comparison, in 2002 - 2003 I wrote less than half that; we're going beyond the short novel or overlong PhD thesis into serious wordage here.

In the past year I've tried to move towards longer posts, with more research and deeper analysis. I've also been syndicating the best of them through Scoop. This year I'll be continuing that trend. I've also been submitting on legislation and lobbying politicians and encouraging others to do the same, and I may experiment with using the blog as a tool in this area, for example by developing a submission online and getting people to sign up for it. And of course I'll be covering the election, producing a candidate survey, and recommending electorate votes accordingly (assuming anybody answers it).

That's a lot of work, and time constraints over the last few months have meant that I haven't been able to do all that I've wanted, but it looks as if I'll be getting my life back soon, so I'll be able to have another year of happy bloggage.

Cars and cows: reviewing Kyoto

With the Kyoto Protocol coming into force today, I thought I'd review the treaty and the policies implemented in response.

Firstly, the treaty itself. Under the Kyoto Protocol, New Zealand has committed to reduce its net emissions of certain greenhouse gases to 1990 levels over the period 2008 - 20012 (the first commitment period, or CP1). We must do this either by actual reductions in emissions, or by offsetting emissions with "carbon credits". The latter can be gained either by planting trees, which lock up carbon and act as "sinks"; by purchase from countries who are emitting less than they are entitled to; or by creating sinks or reducing emissions in Annex 2 (poor) countries (the "clean development mechanism").

Currently, our carbon emissions are about 20% over 1990 levels, with most of the growth coming from transport and farming. However, there's also been a lot of trees planted since 1990 - some by fools who believed that this would give them a right to carbon credits - and these more than offset the growth. Even with recent trends towards cutting things down rather than planting, New Zealand is still expected to be a net seller of carbon credits between 2008 and 2012, and to gain a small amount of revenue from this.

Policywise, then, the New Zealand government could afford to do nothing - except that this would go against the spirit of the agreement, and probably leave us in a very bad position if further emissions reductions are agreed for post-2012. So it has attempted to encourage emissions reduction - not by an outright ban, but through market incentives. A small number of projects, chiefly in the energy sector, are rewarded with carbon credits if they result in lower emissions than would occur under "business as usual". So far, this has rewarded energy efficiency measures, geothermal projects, microhydro, and most of New Zealand's windfarms. In addition, the government has also negotiated agreements with major industries to curb emissions growth.

However, the above is essentially tinkering around the edges. As Pete Hodgson pointed out in Parliament today, the energy sector is responsible for only 8 - 9 percent of our greenhouse emissions. Our main sources are actually transport and agriculture - "cars and cows". And in these areas they have done very little. The government has exempted farmers from any responsibility for their emissions (in other words, the farmers get their free ride - again), and is instead betting on changes in farming practices, fertiliser use, or animal feed to reduce emissions in this area (which is already bearing some fruit). In the transport sector, the government plans to impose a "carbon tax" - a charge on fossil fuel emissions - which should provide some incentive for change. However, it has not taken the simple, obvious step of setting minimum fuel-efficiency standards on new and imported vehicles, or even of requiring such information be made available to consumers (though it is considering the latter). Such policies would be worthy in their own right, and no more difficult to implement than vehicle safety standards, yet they do not yet seem to have been seriously considered. But if we want to actually reduce our emissions, then that has to change.

Will the protocol work? That depends on how you measure success. No credible climate scientist believes that the currently agreed reductions in emissions are anywhere near enough. However, it is a start. It will help get governments moving in the right direction, and help build trust for the next round of cuts. But more importantly, if backed by the right policies, it will help push the market in the right direction. We already have the core of a low-emission technological package which is compatible with modern western lifestyles - wind and solar power, smaller and more efficient cars, fuel-cell or hybrid engines, high efficiency gas turbines rather than low-efficiency coal, even nuclear power - all we have to do is make the switch. Kyoto will effectively create a market for these technologies (as it has already done for wind in New Zealand and Europe), and help push them towards ubiquity. And in the long run, that can only be a Good Thing.