Poison fruit of a poison tree, part II

Time and time again, whenever allegations of abuse and torture by US troops appear, we are told that it is just the actions of a few "bad apples", and that such treatment "does not reflect the nature of the American people".

Bullshit.

A survey by the Pew Research Center in October showed that 15 percent of Americans believe torture is “often” justified, and another 31 percent believe it is “sometimes” justified. Add to that another 17 percent who said it is “rarely” justified, and you have two out of three Americans justifying torture under certain circumstances. Only 32 percent said it is “never” justified, while another 5 percent didn’t know or refused to answer.

So, two-thirds of the American public (and slightly more Catholics) are sadists - and we they wonder why we see scenes like this or this or this when they go to war. I don't think there's any reason to wonder: American torture is the poison fruit of a poison tree, the result of toxic social attitudes which tell people that it is acceptable.

Meanwhile, I think that the differential religious results - Catholics are significantly more likely to approve, "secularists" significantly less - ought to put paid once and for all to those Christian myths about religion, morality, and the valuing of human life.

It's going to be a long three years...

I tuned into The Panel [audio] on National Radio yesterday afternoon just in time to hear Chris Trotter opine on the reason for the current viciousness in Parliament: frustration from both parties at not being able to do anything. Labour is crippled by its dependence on Winston and United Future, and is unable to enact positive progressive policy. National came tantalisingly close to power, but lost out in the end and is likewise unable to impose its agenda. Which makes for a lot of frustration and anger on both sides, which can only be relieved by getting nasty and vicious and personal on each other in the debating chamber. Jeanette Fitzsimons is entirely right to point out that we really do have more important things to talk about - like the $11 billion a year we're shipping overseas to the foreign owners of our banks and other major companies, or what we are going to do to try and meet our Kyoto target, or how we can convince business-owners to ditch the "low wage, low skill, hire another warm body" paradigm in favour of actually investing in their businesses to improve productivity, or why food-bank usage is high even at a time of record low unemployment. Unfortunately, barring a Parliamentary realignment which either gives the government a clear legislative majority, or topples it, I don't think the current frustration-inducing situation is going to go away. Which means its probably going to be a very long three years...

Good news from Iraq

Harmeet Sooden has been rescued! He's now in hospital somewhere in Iraq, but at least he's alive. Now, provided the Americans don't shoot him on the way to the airport...

US military jury endorses abuse

What was that I was saying about having to wait for the sentence? Sgt Michael Smith, the Abu Ghraib dog handler who was convicted of maltreatment, dereliction of duty, assault and indecency, was sentenced to a mere six months prison for threatening prisoners with his dog, and having a competititon with his partner to make them shit themselves. His excuse?

"Soldiers are not supposed to be soft and cuddly"

But neither are they supposed to be monsters - and this one clearly is. He is absolutely unrepentant about what he did - and with his sentence, the jury has essentially endorsed his position. Abusing Iraqis just isn't a real crime worthy of serious punishment as far as they're concerned.

As with the verdict in the Mowhoush case, this makes it crystal clear that rather than being "bad apples", America's torturers are the poison fruit of a poison tree, the natural consequence of an administration and now a military culture which endorses torture and does not care what is done, provided it is done to non-Americans.

Climate change: even failure is better than nothing

There's an interesting - and pointed - question scheduled in today's Question Time:

Hon Dr NICK SMITH to the Minister responsible for Climate Change Issues: Which elements of the Government's climate change policies covering new taxes, restrictions on deforestation and energy efficiency would he describe as a success?

There's only one policy that I'd call an unmitigated success: the waste strategy. This has seen emissions from waste fall by 30% since 1990. Unfortunately, waste makes up only a small part of our emissions profile, so it hasn't had a large effect.

According to his answers to Jeanette Fitzsimons in Question Time yesterday, Hodgson thinks the Projects Mechanism has been a success, albeit a small one. Last year's Review of Climate Change Policies disagreed, finding that it was unclear whether there was actually any net reduction in emissions. The Projects Mechanism has helped "kick-start wind energy in this country", though only in a minor way; arguably the real push for wind has been from worries about future gas supplies and the cost of carbon tax, coupled with difficulties in getting other projects through the RMA process. The electricity sector is very much heading in the right direction in terms of what new generation it is building (with the notable exception of Marsden B), but the government has been lucky more than anything else. And with the demise of the carbon tax, we may see that progress disappear.

While the government has made some moves to push for energy efficiency, they have generally been hamstrung by their reluctance to intervene in the market. The building code has been tightened, but not enough, and steps to improve insulation in existing houses and fit solar water heaters have been limited by funding. Obvious steps - such as fuel efficiency standards or differential registration fees for cars to gradually improve the overall fuel efficiency of our transport fleet - have not been taken.

Negotiated Greenhouse Agreements (the "voluntary approach" favoured by big business and National) haven't resulted in any real savings. which is what you'd expect; business will never agree to voluntarily reduce its profits. They need to have their arms twisted.

The carbon tax didn't even get a chance to get off the ground. Still, according to the review, it would have resulted in emissions reductions of 13.45 MtCO₂e over CP1. The subsequent cabinet paper undersold this as "approximately 3 percent of New Zealand ’s total greenhouse gas emissions projected over CP1" - but it was fully a third of our then estimated deficit. It would have made a real difference, but has now been canned. And OTOH, the policy was flawed from the outset by having its introduction delayed until 2007. This sort of economic instrument takes time to have an effect, particularly on large-scale emitters (where the investment cycle tends to be about twenty years), and the longer the lead-time, the better. If we'd introduced the carbon tax back in 2004, the market would have had more time to adapt, and we'd be looking at lower industrial and energy emissions than we are now. And if we'd introduced it back in 1997, when National first planned to, we'd be a hell of a lot better off.

(It's ironic that the tax has been canned largely because of concerns about the popularity of sticking less than 4c/L on the price of petrol. Meanwhile, thanks to George Bush's Middle Eastern madness, we've seen a rise in petrol prices of around ten times that, which is shifting behaviour quite nicely. Again, the government has been lucky - though its a perverse kind of "luck" bought with a lot of dead Iraqis).

The enormous area of failure has of course been forestry policy. Since the beginning, our climate change policy has centred on offsetting almost all of our emissions with forest sinks. Unfortunately, we didn't take any real steps to ensure the necessary trees were planted; in the 90's, the government myopically believed that the market would provide, largely as a result of basing future projections on the last two points on the graph, and more recently policy has created a perverse incentive for deforestation (though low timber and high dairy prices coupled with pure spite on behalf of forest owners hasn't helped). we've also been bitten twice by reassessments of the figures; once in 1996 when we discovered we'd wrongly estimated our 1990 baseline, and then again last year when a further error and a rules clarification meant that a large amount of our post-1990 forest plantings didn't count as they'd been planted on scrubland. As a result, we've seen our projected carbon balance decline from a surplus of 34 MtCO₂e (1999) to a deficit of 36 (2005) and now 60 MtCO₂e (2006). And given the growing time of trees, its now probably too late to do much about it.

This is a fairly bleak assessment - a lot of failure, with most of the successes really down to luck. But its important to consider what the alternative is: nothing. National would withdraw from Kyoto, and make no real efforts to reduce emissions. Worse, their policy of gutting the RMA and their support for building coal-fired power stations to ensure cheap electricity (effectively an environmental subsidy) would ensure a large rise. Labour's policies have generally been a failure - but even that failure is better than nothing.

What does it mean for the portfolio?

One of the things that has been overlooked in the departure of David parker is what it means for his portfolios - and particularly (because I'm interested in it) the climate change portfolio.

For those who haven't been following it, climate change policy is currently undergoing a major review, sparked by a reassessment which saw our projected balance of units during CP1 plummet from a healthy surplus (allowing us to sell carbon credits on the international market) to an estimated 36 MtCO₂e deficit. Since then, further worries about deforestation have seen that deficit grow to around 60 MtCO₂e. This caused the government to throw out its entire climate change policy (and notably the carbon tax) and effectively start again with a blank sheet of paper.

Officials were supposed to report back to their Ministers on March 3rd with new policy options, and these were supposed to be hashed out into a coherent whole by a Ministerial Reference Group consisting of the Ministers of Finance, Agriculture, Forestry, Energy, Transport, Environment, Economic Development and Climate Change. The core of the resulting policy was supposed to be presented to Cabinet on April 3rd - less than two weeks away. Parker's sudden departure is likely to have thrown this whole process up in the air. And while the portfolio has been reassigned to Pete Hodgson, who has handled it before, his responsibilities as Minister of Health (a very heavy workload portfolio) may prevent him from paying it the attention it deserves. The change in Ministers may also result in a change in policy; previously, Parker had indicated a willingness to explore some new options (notably, using the RMA in the place of a national-level economic instrument, and actually doing something to promote efficiency gains in transport for once). The first of these was rejected during Hodgson's tenure, and the latter never really considered - and they may now fall by the wayside again, leaving us with no effective policy whatsoever to reduce or limit emissions just two years out from the start of CP1.

Buried

According to the latest list of bills before select committees, Sue Kedgley's Employment Relations (Flexible Working Hours) Amendment Bill has been effectively buried in committee, the reporting date having been pushed back by a whole year to 30th April 2007. This can really only happen with Kedgley's consent, and the reason seems to be that while the bill passed its first reading with the support of Labour, the Greens and Progressives, its majority disappeared with the election. In order to progress further, the bill needs the support of either the Maori Party or NZ First - both of whom voted against it originally.

It's disappointing to see this happen, but its better for the bill to be delayed than see it voted down. Meanwhile, perhaps someone would like to ask the Maori Party exactly why they oppose it...

Justice for the Caravana de la Muerte

In the aftermath of the Chilean coup of 1973, a death squad known as the "caravan of death" roamed the country, murdering socialists, communists, and other opposition figures, and burying the bodies in unmarked graves. It was a small but notorious part of Pinochet's oppression - and now it looks like there will finally be some justice for it. A Chilean judge has ordered the arrest of thirteen former army officers who participated in the killings; they will join about a dozen other officers on trial for murder. The message to former servants of members of the Chilean junta couldn't be clearer: one by one, they are going to pay for what they did.

New Fisk

The Iraq War: Three Years On

Nice conviction; what about the sentence?

Sgt Michael Smith, the US Army dog handler whose antics at Abu Ghraib shocked the world, has been found guilty on six charges relating to detainee abuse, including maltreatment, dereliction of duty and assault. This is good news, but we should wait to see the sentence before celebrating. In the last trial for detainee abuse - that of a US Army interrogator who suffocated a prisoner to death by stuffing him into a sleeping bag and sitting on him - the defendant was duly convicted, and then "sentenced" to a reprimand and a fine - for sadisticly killing someone. It will be interesting to see whether this contempt for justice is repeated, or whether the US military manages to effectively hold itself to account in this case.

Drawn

Today's special ballot has been held, and Dr Jackie Blue's Human Tissue (Organ Donation) Amendment Bill has been drawn. I've discussed the bill here, and its one I generally approve of and would very much like to see passed.

For those wondering, today's ballot had 31 bills in it: 6 from the Greens, 2 from United Future, 4 from New Zealand First, 2 from ACT, 2 from Labour and 15 from National. While the latter seems large, it is only a third of the bills they could be putting up. Meanwhile, Labour is scandalously underusing their potential to legislate, and while they can pursue change through government bills, they really shouldn't be wasting their opportunities. As for the Maori Party, they're nowhere to be seen...

Of the 31 bills, only four had not been discussed in an In the ballot post:

• Health and Safety in Employment (Limitation of Duties in Relation to Farm Land) Amendment Bill (Shane Ardern)
• Conservation (Net Conservation Gain) Amendment Bill (Chris Auchinvole)
• Local Electoral (Repeal of Race-Based Representation) Amendment Bill (Tony Ryall)
• Land Transport Management (Public Private partnerships) Amendment Bill (Judy Turner, fronting for Gordon Copeland)

I actually have a copy of the last one, and am waiting for enough other bills to make a post. As for the first three, I've made repeated requests and haven't got anywhere yet. Still, 85% coverage isn't bad for a small project like this, and hopefully it'll grow as further ballots are held.

The politics of personal destruction

Brian Easton's Listener column this week has a snippet which is interesting in light of David Parker's resignation. After pointing out that oppositions frequently don't have coherent or concrete policies (as generally speaking, they don't need them), he goes on to say

The way of covering the policy deficit is an unremitting string of personality attacks, often based on thin allegations, punctuated by feeble calls of "resign", no matter how distant the Cabinet minister was from the alleged problem. It is surely enough to make a decent person shun a career in Parliament.

It's a point echoed by The Dominion this morning, in asking Who'd want to be an MP? Most people are not saints, and as Easton point out, these sorts of attacks undermine good governance, by both undermining faith in government as an institution, and by discouraging talented people from entering politics for fear that their personal lives will be dragged through the mud for political advantage.

Now, calling on Ministers to resign is what oppositions do. But you really have to wonder whether the dirt-grubbing of the current opposition (and its underpant-sniffing allies in ACT and Investigate) are getting a little over the top. It is one thing to hold the government to account for malfeasance or incompetence in office (as with Taito Philip Field, Lianne Dalziel, or going back further, Tuariki Delamere and Murry McCully) or personal failings while actually in Parliament (Ruth Dyson and Dover Samuels), or serious allegations which call into question their suitability to be a Minister (David Benson-Pope, before he dug himself a hole by lying to Parliament). It's quite another to dig up and inflate minor offences from long ago, as in this case. David Parker has behaved honourably in resigning, and he should have as Attorney-General simply to maintain credibility, but at the same time the Companies Office has pointed out that these offences are on the level of traffic offences, and only very rarely result in prosecution. If that's the new bar for holding a Ministerial warrant, then I think we'll find very few people able to be Ministers.

Or, to give this a concrete form, Don Brash admitted on live television last night that he had, at some unspecified time in the past, broken the speed limit. I don't think that makes him unsuitable to be Leader of the Opposition or Prime Minister - but by the Opposition's own standards, it does.

That's the problem with the politics of personal destruction - eventually it destroys everyone. And I think that National and its friends had really better watch out, because the precedent they're setting is really going to come back to bite them when its them on the Ministerial benches.

Special ballot and interesting motions

Remember the Human Rights (Gender Identity) Amendment Bill? For most of the past year, it has been hanging around at the bottom of the Order Paper, "below the line", having been postponed by its sponsor before ever receiving its first reading. This has taken up one of the slots for Member's Bills and prevented quite as many being introduced and debated. I have now heard from one of my spies that there is going to be a special ballot today so that four bills are available next Members Day. It will be interesting to see what gets drawn...

Also today, Parliament will be debating two rather interesting government motions relating to the Intelligence and Security Committee, the body which supposedly oversees the SIS. The first would add three new members - Michael CUllen, Winston Peters and Rodney Hide. The second would provide for the Committee to examine bills, petitions, financial reviews, estimates, supplementary estimates, treaties and any other matters relating to the SIS and GCSB - in other words, for it to act like a real select committee rather than a rubberstamp. Though I guess the proof of that will be whether it meets for more than 45 minutes a year...

Of course, this being the government on an intelligence matter, they were effectively moved in secret, appearing at the bottom of the Order Paper (the bit no-one checks) at 11pm last night, and they're likely to be rushed through today using the government's power to alter its own order of business. While I think both are positive steps, it would have been nice if they'd been handled in an open, democratic manner rather than blitzkrieged behind everyone's back...

An interesting side effect

Writing in the Herald, international recruitment consultant Alan Charman argues that the government's tightening of immigration requirements has had an interesting side-effect: rather than being motivated primarily by better economic opportunities, the current crop of immigrants identify strongly with New Zealand's ideals - our independent foreign policy, commitment to human rights, and anti-nuclear policy:

There are Brits who see our society as colourful and integrated, there are Zimbabweans moved by equality, and Arabs by peace.

The attraction is no longer wholly economic but what the migrants believe about the nature of our society.

And these people will wait any amount of time to be allowed to move here, because this is genuinely where they want to live.

It's a nice side-effect, and its nice to know that we're seen in that way, but at the same time it would be nice to have a system that wasn't so unfair to non-English-speaking (meaning: non-white) immigrants, and which allowed the poor as well as the rich the chance to share the kiwi dream. Egalitarianism is after all one of the things that dream is all about.

Belarus: As expected II

The OSCE has condemned the Belarusian elections [PDF], citing a widespread climate of intimidation and harassment, significant restrictions on campaigning by the opposition, pressure and threats to force people to vote for the incumbent, serious polling irregularities, and a counting process which was not transparent and frequently directed by officials of the ruling party. Their summary:

It is clear that this election did not meet OSCE commitments and international electoral standards. The arbitrary abuse of state power, obviously designed to protect the incumbent President, went far beyond acceptable practice. The incumbent President permitted State authority to be used in a manner which did not allow citizens to freely and fairly express their will at the ballot box.

Both the EU and US have condemned the poll and called for new elections. Meanwhile, Russian observers have said it was "free, open and transparent". Which really makes you wonder whether they actually know what a free and fair election is supposed to look like...

Not raised

The issue of the US's arbitrary detention of suspected terrorists and "enemy combatants" in its Caribbean gulag at Guantanamo Bay is, as Keith Locke says, "an acid test of whether you really stand for justice and human dignity". So you'd expect a New Zealand government which claims to stand for those things to raise the issue with visiting US officials, right? Think again. At a press conference yesterday afternoon, Scoop asked visiting US Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs Christopher Hill whether the New Zealand government had raised the issue of human rights in Guantanamo. This is how the exchange went (from the MP3, beginning at around 5:25 in):

Scoop: The UN recently issued a report on human rights abuses in Guantanamo Bay criticising the United States quite heavily for the conduct of operations there. Was this raised at all in discussions with the New Zealand government, and do you think this is the sort of issue that should be discussed between very very good friends?

Hill: Well, first of all I think any friend has a right to bring up any issue they want, I have no problem discussing any issues. I must say our talks focused with the New Zealand government today on issues and areas we're going to try and cooperate more together in the future.

Scoop: So it didn't come up at all?

Hill: We did not discuss the issue of Guantanamo.

I think this shows exactly how much our government cares about human rights. Their policy really is one of shameful silence...

A landmark day for international justice

Thomas Lubanga is the leader of the Union of Congolese Patriots, an armed militia from the Democratic Republic of the Congo which is accused of widespread human rights abuses, including the torture, murder and rape of civilians and the use of child soldiers. Today, he made history as the first person to go on trial before the International Criminal Court in The Hague, on charges of "conscripting and enlisting children under the age of fifteen years and using them to participate actively in hostilities".

He's a monster fully deserving of prosecution and punishment for his crimes, but he's also a little fish. But hopefully his trial will lay the groundwork for the ICC to start going after some of the bigger fish as well.

No freedom of religion in Afghanistan

Four years ago, the US invaded Afghanistan and toppled its theocratic Taleban government. While primarily done as a means to an end (the end being getting Osama bin Laden - something they have spectacularly failed to do), the invasion was sold to the world partly on the promise that the new Afghanistan would be better than the old - free, democratic, and not run by theocrats.

Unfortunately, there's a contradiction between the last two - which is why there's currently a man on trial in Kabul for the "crime" of converting to Christianity. If convicted, he faces execution.

This is simply wrong. It's not wrong because he's a Christian and his oppressors are Muslims, or because he is facing execution (though that adds another layer of wrongness to it), but because religious belief is a fundamental expression of individual autonomy, a core part of who we are, and therefore something which no-one has any right to interfere in.

There's a strong argument that freedom comes from freedom of religion. Unless you're willing to accept that what people believe is their own business (or alternatively, between themselves and whatever gods you happen to believe in), then nothing else really follows. Freedom of thought and conscience is just freedom of religion writ large. Freedom of speech depends on an acceptance that being wrong is at worst stupid rather than sinful, and that therefore it is not a crime to disseminate "untruths". And once you accept that people have the right to think what they want and say what they want, it becomes progressively more difficult to deny them the right to do what they want as well. Unfortunately, by denying the freedom of religion, Afghanistan won't be able to tread this path. They may be able to find another way to freedom, but I'm not sure its one we can help them with.

Doing the honourable thing

Well, that was quick: allegations in the morning, and a resignation just in time for the six o'clock news. David Parker's decision to resign from the position of Attorney-General was very much doing the honourable thing, and entirely justified given the nature of the office. And by doing so he's preserved his future political ambitions and other Cabinet positions - at least unless he is prosecuted. I don't understand company law, but according to Investigate's press release the offence could carry a penalty of up to five year's jail - which under s55 (4) of the Electoral Act 1993 would be enough to force Parker to resign from Parliament if convicted, regardless of any actual sentence imposed. The reason this is relevant is that, while coming clean, he also seemed to be doing his best to dig himself a deeper hole on both Campbell Live and Close Up this evening.

It would be a shame if he was forced from Parliament; Parker is one of Labour's up and comers, and relatively talented at that (compare with Taito Philip Field or George Hawkins). But this is what happens if you fuck up in politics.

Meanwhile, the contrast with David Benson-Pope (both in his behaviour and the PM's handling of it) couldn't be any clearer...

Belarus: As expected

Things are going as expected in Belarus. According to preliminary results, Alexander Lukashenko has won a landslide victory, gaining 82.6% of the vote, compared with 6% for the leading opposition candidate. The opposition is already crying "fraud" and demanding a new, free and fair poll - and they have some evidence of electoral violations, though we'll have to wait a few hours until the OSCE election monitors report to find out just how widespread they are.

Despite threats that protestors would be treated as terrorists, there has been a large protest in Minsk, with about 40,000 people gathering in October Square. Further protests are scheduled for tomorrow night. If this election campaign has achieved anything, it has shown people that they can stand up to the government - a lesson they will hopefully be able to put to good use next time round.