Executing the wounded in Fallujah

I've just been emailed by a friend in the UK, who informs me that just a few minutes ago, BBC was showing

film and sound of US Marines shooting, i.e: executing wounded Iraquis who had already surrendered. And they did it in a Mosque.

BBC reporters are saying this is "worse than Abu Grahib" and their primary anchorman is saying the words "war crimes".

The BBC story is here:

The images were taken by an NBC reporter embedded with the US troops in the Sunni city under assault.

[...]

[They] show a group of marines, armed with rifles, entering a building near a mosque.

The mosque had been used by insurgents to attack US forces, who had stormed it, killing 10 militants and wounding five.

At least three severely wounded men are seen in a room inside the building - two are slumped against one of the walls, partially covered with a blanket.

The NBC's Kevin Sites says the wounded men had been left in the mosque after marines had fought their way in on Friday and Saturday.

According to Mr Sites, one of the soldiers points his rifle at the head of one of the injured, an old man. The sound of a shot is then heard.

The Marine has been arrested, and may face charges, but his actions have endangered the lives of every single US soldier. The Geneva Conventions and their rules for the treatment of the captured and wounded exist for good reason, as John McCain can testify. But if the US treats injured Iraqis like this, they can expect no mercy whatsoever if they are ever in a similar situation.

Update: More from Yahoo. I'd add that this is exactly the sort of thing you'd expect when your president and his White House Counsel (soon to be Attorney-General) don't believe in the Geneva Conventions.

Not a serious party

National has rejected the constitutional stocktake. Having raised the question of the role of the Treaty, they are now refusing to sit down with other New Zealanders and look at possible solutions. These are not the actions of a serious political party interested in long-term solutions to our country's problems, but those of a gang of desperate opportunists. It speaks volumes about their position that the only party which shares it that led by Winston Peters.

Just Left has more thoughts here.

The Supreme Court and international law

SageNZ responds to my pointing out the cultural cringe inherant in those wanting to retain the Privy Council by comparing my views on a Supreme Court and multilateral institutions such as the WTO:

So as far as international trade is concerned world law is good. As far as Supreme Court of New Zealand is concerned it is better that we abandon any formal link we have with the advance of jurisprudence in Europe. What a buffoon.

The obvious error in the above is that the Privy Council does not represent a link with any sort of international law. The role of the Privy Council was always to interpret New Zealand law - something that we are now perfectly capable of doing for ourselves. While it also interpreted the law for Britian, Canada, Australia, Nigeria, Jamaica, and various other jurisdictions, their rulings on these matters were not binding precedent within New Zealand. That does not mean they were ignored - common law jurisdictions regularly notice and apply each other's decisions to analogous cases - but they were applied only insofar as they were relevant to New Zealand's needs. Again, that judgement is one we can now make for ourselves.

I do support international law in general, but there is no contradiction between that and the principle that New Zealanders should be the ultimate arbiters of our own domestic law - for the simple reason that they cover different spheres. New Zealand law governs relations between people in New Zealand (and, in a few cases, the actions of New Zealanders abroad). International law governs relations between nations, sets minimum standards for national legislation, or creates specialist jurisdictions for the hearing of certain cases (such as war crimes). These are two different areas, and if Sage cannot recognise that, it says far more about his lack of knowledge about legal systems than it does about my consistency.

No civilian casualties?

The US is claiming that there have been no civilian casualties from their massacre in Fallujah. They've been able to do this because almost all journalists are embedded and subject to military censorship, and because they have specifically targeted hospitals and medical clinics as "propaganda centers" to be captured (propaganda in this case being any report of civilian deaths or injuries). Fortunately, not all journalists were under US control; an AP photographer was staying with his family in the city. He recounts the story of his escape:

In the hours and days that followed, heavy bombing raids and thunderous artillery shelling turned Hussein's northern Jolan neighborhood into a zone of rubble and death. The walls of his house were pockmarked by coalition fire.

"Destruction was everywhere. I saw people lying dead in the streets, wounded were bleeding and there was no one to come and help them. Even the civilians who stayed in Fallujah were too afraid to go out," he said.

[...]

Hussein moved from house to house - dodging gunfire - and reached the river.

"I decided to swim ... but I changed my mind after seeing U.S. helicopters firing on and killing people who tried to cross the river."

He watched horrified as a family of five was shot dead as they tried to cross. Then, he "helped bury a man by the river bank, with my own hands."

"I kept walking along the river for two hours and I could still see some U.S. snipers ready to shoot anyone who might swim. I quit the idea of crossing the river and walked for about five hours through orchards."

How will the US explain away these civilian deaths? Their answer is simple. Any male of "military age" is an insurgent. Any female or old man is probably an insurgent. And children are potential insurgents ("nits make lice" redux). In other words, they deny that there are civilian casualties by denying that there is any such thing as a civilian. There's a name for people who refuse to make any distinction between soldiers and civilians: "terrorists". But isn't that what the US is supposed to be fighting against?

Civil Union Ad

The Campaign for Civil Unions' ad will finally be appearing in the front section of the Sunday Star-Times this weekend. It will carry the names of over 900 people who are speaking out for equality - including my own.

This ad is in the very best spirit of liberalism - of people standing up and speaking out for the values of freedom, equality, and tolerance which make our society worth belonging to. I'm proud to have been a part of that, and so should all of you who contributed.

Stillborn

And so it has eventually come to this: the Iraqi interim regime is hinting that elections will be "delayed" due to the security situation. But can you really imagine things getting any better at this stage...?

Iraq's future is dark. Elections will be delayed, and delayed, and delayed, allowing an unelected regime of torturers to entrench themselves. And in the end, after at least 14,000 civilian casualties (and between 8,000 and 194,000 total deaths), Iraqi democracy will be stillborn, and Iraq will be no better off than when it started.

Those who supported the war can claim that they acted in good faith to depose a monstrous dictator - but the road to hell is paved with good intentions. And the US's failure to plan for the occupation, its resistance to holding free elections at the earliest stage, and its brutal tactics and racist attitude towards the Iraqi people more or less ensured that that road would not lead to a brighter future for Iraq, but only to a compliant despotism keeping its people subjugated with Saddam's people and Saddam's methods.

I have said before that the war was not worth it. There was however some small hope that if the Iraqi people got a real democracy offering real choice between candidates, then something worthwhile could have been salvaged from it. Now even that small hope is dead.

"Jumping the shark"

KiwiPundit thinks I've "jumped the shark" with my comments on there being no non-coercive solutions to the "problem" of beneficiaries having children. DPF agrees.

To which I think it's fair to ask "what non-coercive solutions has the right actually suggested"?

Looking at DPF's comments, it's all about using benefit cuts (starvation) either as a punishment for those beneficiaries who have the temerity to breed, or as a lever to "encourage" (meaning force) mothers to give their children up for adoption, or to "not have them" - which as not every pregnancy is by choice, ultimately means abortion. There is no concern for the welfare of any child which is born (in fact one poster essentially says that they must be victimised to maintain the credibility of the threat), and there seems to be no consideration of the centrality of children to ordinary life plans, or of the sheer invasiveness of what is being proposed.

For people who claim to care so much about "freedom", this is a little odd, to say the least. But, then, theirs is the "freedom" of Spencer and Hayek - a freedom that belongs only to the rich.

What non-coercive solutions are available? Liberal solutions that respect freedom would focus on giving people the tools to control their own lives - such as universal free contraception. Make Tea, Not War also suggests an informational campaign, aimed at informing people that parenting is actually expensive and hard work ("A baby is for life, not just for Christmas"?). If this is done without demonising poor parents, then it's perfectly acceptable. The problem is that these solutions are not 100% effective, and are therefore likely to be regarded as insufficiently "tough" by those complaining about "subsidising other people's kids". Which brings us right back to coercion...

If the right are truly concerned about children being raised in poverty, then GreyShade suggests a better solution: "get rid of the poverty, not the child". If OTOH they are concerned about beneficiaries having children per se, then they represent a very ugly strand of right-wing thinking indeed.

Are National a serious party?

Winston has announced that NZ First will be snubbing the upcoming constitutional stocktake, calling it "a road to nowhere". Which isn't much of a surprise really. While NZ First talks about the role of the Treaty on occasion, their policies on the matter are so ridden with historical revisionism and sheer untruth that it is clear that they're really only interested in using it as a stick to stir racial tension. The last thing they want is for people to sit down and develop a consensus which would limit their ability to do that.

The real question is whether National will sign up - and their answer will determine whether National is a serious party with an actual interest in debating the issues they've raised in the last year, or simply a group of racial stirrers like Winston.

New Fisk

The dreamer who relied on emotion and failed to protect his own people
In Egypt, it was as if Arafat was as dangerous in death as in life

Torture by proxy - the evidence mounts

For some time the US has been accused of using "extraordinary rendition" to transfer terrorist suspects to despotic regimes so that they can be tortured. There have been several documented cases of this occuring - for example, that of Muhammed Al Zery and Ahmed Agiza who were rendered from Sweden in 2001. According to a Swedish TV report, they were arrested by Swedish police, then driven to the airport, where they were handed over to masked US agents:

The two prisoners have their clothes cut from their bodies by scissors, without their hand- and footcuffs being loosened. The naked and chained prisoners have a suppository of unknown kind inserted into their anus, and diapers are put on them. They are forcibly dressed in dark overalls. Their hands and feet are chained to a specially designed harness. On the plane, both men are blindfolded and hooded.

They were then hustled into a plane, and flown to Egypt - where they were tortured.

The TV report identified the plane - a Gulfstream jet with the tailnumber N379P, leased to the US government - and linked it to another prisoner transfer, from Karachi. And it mentioned at least two other similar cases of prisoners transferred into US custody and then flown to Egypt or Jordan for torture. The program has since resulted in attention from Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and other human rights advocates.

Now the Sunday Times has acquired the flight logs of the aircraft involved, and they make interesting reading.

Movements detailed in the logs can be matched with several sightings of the Gulfstream at airports when terrorist suspects have been bundled away by US counterterrorist agents.

Analysis of the plane’s flight plans, covering more than two years, shows that it always departs from Washington DC. It has flown to 49 destinations outside America, including the Guantanamo Bay prison camp in Cuba and other US military bases, as well as Egypt, Jordan, Iraq, Morocco, Afghanistan, Libya and Uzbekistan.

They torture people in Egypt and Jordan - and they boil prisoners alive in Uzbekistan. In fact, the British ambassador to that country was recently sacked after saying that Britain was "selling our souls for dross" by accepting "intelligence" from the CIA that originated from Uzbek torture chambers. He at least could not stomach what was going on, and chose to speak out.

Transferring prisoners to another jurisdiction so that they can be tortured is banned by the UN Convention Against Torture. It is also simply monstrous. For the US to stoop to such levels signifies a total abandonment of that countries values, and a desecration of the promise America holds out to all nations. The only way America can regain its soul is to identify those responsible, drag them kicking and screaming into the light of day, and prosecute them to the full extent of the law. Until then, the United States should be treated in accordance with its actions, as a pariah nation.

These Christians are crazy

Big News attacks the Family Planning Association on the grounds that almost half of the abortions performed last year were on women who were using contraception at the time. Because obviously we'd have far fewer abortions if people didn't use contraception at all...

Disturbing

Two incidents that highlight a disturbing trend in America: the growing intolerance of political opposition to President Bush, and the criminalisation of political dissent.

First, from Orcinus: those who voted against Bush are being told to "move on" - with violence. Take this example, of someone who still had pro-Kerry bumper stickers on his car after the election:

On Saturday, Gary Jimenez discovered two tires slashed on his Volvo station wagon with its four anti-Bush bumper stickers. Lest he miss the point, the vandals left a note on the windshield that said: "We voted . . . Now you can either move to another country (maybe France, Germany, Iran or Pakistan will take you) or stop your whiney belly aching. This country was founded by righteous God-fearing men of integrity like George W. Bush. Now, take off these bumper stickers. We don't want to see them again."

"Bush won, so shut up" is a popular meme on the American right, but it's a gross misrepresentation of democracy. In a democracy, the only thing entailed by winning the vote is respect for the legitimacy of the outcome - Bush won, and so he gets to be President and exercise the powers of the office. But there's no requirement that people cease or forswear political opposition. That's the sort of attitude you get in a monarchy, where everyone supposedly has a duty to loyally line up behind "their" king. But then, the American system has been characterised as an "elected monarchy", and this is an example of why it is so toxic.

Secondly, from Kevin Drum: high school students protesting against the war is now a matter for the Secret Service. While no-one was arrested (the Secret Service having apparently heard of Bob Dylan), the fact that they were even called is symbolic of an attitude that opposing the President's policies is in some way a crime.

These are just the latest in a long line of examples highlighting the move away from democracy in America under Bush. The President's supporters like to say that "September 11th changed everything". Unfortunately, one of the things it seems to have changed is America's nature as an open and democratic society. And that represents a far greater victory for the terrorists than the deaths of 3000-odd people.

"Flypaper for innumerates"

Crooked Timber's Daniel Davies has a comprehensive review of critiques of the Lancet study, which he calls "flypaper for innumerates". His conclusion?

The bottom line is that the Lancet study was a good piece of science, and anyone who says otherwise is lying. Its results (and in particular, its central 98,000 estimate) are not the last word on the subject, but then nothing is in statistics. There is a very real issue here, and any pro-war person who thinks that we went to war to save the Iraqis ought to be thinking very hard about whether we made things worse rather than better

He also notes

It is notable how very few people who have rubbished the Lancet study have shown the slightest interest in getting any more accurate estimates; often you learn a lot about people from observing the way that they protect themselves from news they suspect will disconcert them.

Maybe our local "pro-Iraq" study rubbisher should take that to heart?

The police are doing a Cambridge High

The Herald reports that police in some parts of the country are being ordered to ignore P-labs and gangs because their commanders do not want to make crime statistics look bad. While National will no doubt claim this is a government conspiracy to hide the true impact of crime, the real explanation is buried deeper in the story. According to the Police Association, district commander's performance (and hence bonuses and promotions) is measured by their district's crime statistics.

The problems with this form of performance measurement are well-known. While using solid and clear performance metrics makes managers pay attention to them, the danger is that they will refuse to pay attention to anything else. The solution to this is to ensure that your performance metrics are in fact a complete description of the task, so that managers have to pay attention to everything. But this still creates problems where some measures are easier to influence than others; managers will pay disproportionate attention to these, in the hope of boosting their measured performance. And that is exactly what has happened here: cleaning up P-labs is hard, and expensive, and even saying that you busted one makes you look bad because it was there in the first place. Far easier to ignore them and focus on offending that is cheaper and easier to reduce. There's also an obvious incentive to focus solely on crime reported by the public, rather than "making trouble" by actively seeking it out.

If this all seems dreadfully familiar, it's because its exactly the same problem which led to the mess at Cambridge High. And the solution is the same: use some "fuzzier" metrics to ensure that police managers act like policemen, and principals like educationalists. Until then, they'll continue to manage by statistics, and focus on gaming the numbers to their advantage to the detriment of the wider goals of their profession.

New kiwi blog

Left Wing Nutter.

"Mostly free and fair"

That's the OSCE's judgement on the US elections. Which is actually a fairly strong condemnation, given that this is the United States we are talking about. Any first-world democracy should easily meet proper standards of freedom and fairness - there should be no "mostly" about it.

Cultural cringe

SageNZ on the Supreme Court:

The very recent evidence of the Labour party in constitutional change is appalling. Margaret Wilson and cronies abandoned our highest court and 800 years of judicial interpretation in favour of stacking the judges in the pipeline to the NZ supreme court with her politically correct appointees.

I challenge anyone to explain how it is better for New Zealand to have lost the link to the European courts of Justice through the English privy council. whilst my opinions of their pronouncements on indivdual matters may reflect a contempt for their sometimes nauseating bias, it is a larger body of law that a country of four million people shguld have thought longer and harder about abandoning. The laws governing 400 million people require a level of judicial expertise and specialisation that it is just not possible for our country to access. Dropping the appeal to the privy council was a matter of petty nationalist self aggrandisement.

Behind the reverence for traditional authority (which is quite strange coming from someone who thinks that government should be starved of revenue, preventing it from actually doing anything) there is something else: an enormous cultural cringe. New Zealanders, it seems, are simply too stupid and ignorant to be able to interpret our own laws properly; instead, we must go offshore. It's an embarassingly colonial attitude, and one that I am hoping the Supreme Court will eradicate.

Ahmed Zaoui: And now, we wait

The Supreme Court has completed its hearing into Ahmed Zaoui's appeal for Habeas Corpus, and reserved its judgement. Now there's nothing to do but wait. The court's judgement will determine whether we are a civilised country which upholds human rights, or one which endorses and uses arbitrary detention. I just hope that they make the right decision.

The government has continued to claim that "mere passage of time" does not make detention arbitrary, and continued to hide behind secrecy (prompting the Chief Justice to suggest questioning Helen Clark). I find this to be a less than compelling case. The very basis of our justice system is the idea that imprisonment must be justified, either as a punishment, or (in the case of remand) by a substantial risk to the community. Detention on the grounds of secret "evidence" flies in the face of this, and is precisely the reason we have human rights law. One only has to think of the words "star chamber" to see why we should not allow it under any circumstances.

What "trade in services" actually means

The WTO has ruled against US laws banning cross-border gambling, judging that they harm the economies of online gambling havens and are an impediment to "trade in services". While I don't have much against gambling (other than thinking its a tax on stupidity and hope, and that casinos are precisely the sorts of things we have planning laws to prevent), the ruling is still troubling. The WTO panel refused to apply the "public morals clause" - meaning that they viewed the issue solely as a question of whether someone could make more money without the laws than with them. But there are other cross-border trades, in intangibles, even, which people could make money off if they weren't illegal, and which this ruling could be applied to - child pornography, for example. In fact, the ruling is a perfect example of how the free market is blind to (and thus erodes) any values other than the pursuit of profit.

What's also troubling is that the ruling is unenforceable. The case was brought by the tiny Caribbean banking haven of Antigua and Barbuda, where the casinos reportedly employ almost 5% of the population. According to WTO rules, and adverse ruling eventually entitles the injured party to impose trade sanctions equal to the value of the trade lost. Antigua and Barbuda is simply too small for this to be an effective threat, and the US can hurt them significantly if they even try. In other words, it confirms once again that the WTO is a forum by which the rich nations enforce their rules on the poor, but refuse to reciprocate.

This latter problem at least can be fixed. The WTO mirrors early legal systems in using private prosecution to resolve disputes. Ancient Athens introduced the idea that certain crimes were crimes against the community, where suit could be brought by anyone on the public's behalf. Punishment was also enforced by the public in these cases. This is what needs to be done with the WTO. If our framework for international trade is to be fair to small countries as well as large ones, it must permit public enforcement of judgements. Otherwise, we simply have the law of the jungle.

Eleven Eleven

Today, Armistice Day, we commemorate the end of the First World War, misnamed "the war to end all wars". Others have commented on the ceremony in Wellington today, where we laid to rest an unknown victim of that war as a monument to all New Zealanders who have died serving their country. But rather than talking about that, I'd like to talk about the war itself.

While Britain (including New Zealand) fought to defend its allies, the First World War cannot truly be said to be a "just war". There was no great cause worth dying for, no "crusade for freedom" as in the war which followed it a mere twenty years later. There was simply pride, greed, and immense stupidity. While the war began with two shots in Sarajevo, the tensions underlying it had been brewing for years. Austria wanted to subjugate its Balkan neighbours. Germany wanted to seize its moment in the sun. France was hungry for revanche, and Britain cynically played its neighbours off against one another to achieve a "balance of power". A network of alliances ensured that a minor scuffle would turn into a Europe-wide conflagration. Deliberate ambiguity and "Chinese whispers" diplomacy allowed the great powers to misjudge each other's intentions. Pride encouraged them to take the risk of military action, and to further misjudge each other's will to fight. And stupidity, sheer stupidity, meant that they did not see the trap that they had laid for themselves. Backing someone into a corner is not the best way to get them to back down, and once one country had decided to fight, everyone else was inevitably dragged in. The resulting war was a pointless slaughter, four long bloody years of mud and murder - and about as "moral" or worthwhile as the petty dynastic struggles of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

This is not to say that we should condemn or forget those who fought in the war - they have nothing to be ashamed of, and their sacrifice deserves to be remembered. Instead, it is the leaders of that era who deserve our condemnation. The politicians, the generals, the monarchs, all those whose cynical greed triggered it, and whose "honour" demanded that they not back down (while demanding - and believing - that the other side would) - all deserve to be reviled. They were not heroes. They did not win a "glorious" victory. Instead, ten million people died for their pride and their stupidity - including the man we buried today in Wellington.