A contempt of Parliament?

Back in July, Professor Anne-Marie Brady warned Parliament about foreign interference in New Zealand elections. Now, her employer is attempting to punish her for it:

Canterbury University China expert Professor Anne-Marie Brady has been gagged by her employer while a review into her research proceeds.

The review conducted by two academics and two members of the university’s council began in August after Brady’s paper – Holding a Pen in One Hand and Gripping a Gun in the Other – sparked complaints from two New Zealand universities and several individual academics.

The paper outlined how universities, academics and businesses could be inadvertently helping the Chinese Community Party by collaborating with Chinese agencies in hi-tech research.

[...]

Brady, whose research into the Chinese Government’s efforts to influence Western democracies has won her international recognition, presented the paper as a supplementary submission to Parliament’s justice select committee earlier this year.

[Emphasis added]

If this paper had simply been published in a journal, this would just be an example of academics and universities dependent on Chinese funding trying to ruin the career of someone critical of their foreign patron. That's shitty enough, but the fact that the paper was presented as a submission to Parliament - and the review is explicitly about that submission - makes this far more serious. McGee is crystal clear about this: attempting to punish a parliamentary contribution in any way constitutes contempt of the House. The classic example is TVNZ, which told its chief executive that their evidence to a select committee was "misconduct"; they were fined and forced to apologise. If the University of Canterbury continues with its "review", they may find themselves in a similar situation.

Trumpistan

One of the hallmarks of the Soviet regime (continued under Putin, of course) was their political use of psychiatry to detain their critics as "mentally ill". Sadly, its already taking off in Trump's America:

A college professor who criticised online Donald Trump and his plans for America, said he was arrested and detained after campus police claimed he was a threat.

Kevin Allred, who teaches Women’s and Gender Studies at Rutgers University, New Jersey, said officers detained him after deciding his comments on the campus, and on Twitter, were dangerous. He said he was forced to undergo a psychiatric evaluation before before being released.

[...]

In one of his tweets he referred to a comment he made about the 2nd Amendment, the addition to the US constitution which gun rights activists says gives them the right to bear arms.

His actual "crime"? He talked about burning the American flag - constitutionally protected free speech - and asked if conservatives would care about the 2nd Amendment so much of guns killed more white people. This isn't "threatening" by any stretch of the imagination. But its clearly now politically unacceptable, and US police can see which way the wind is blowing.

If you're a liberal American, you should get out while you still can.

A victory for academic freedom

Last week we learned that the police had "blacklisted" a leading crime researcher from accessing police data under a "research contract" which lets them rewrite findings or veto publication at will. Today the police backed down and apologised to Dr Gilbert for blacklisting him. More importantly, they'll be revising that oodious (and quite possibly illegal) research contract;

As a result, Police is amending guidelines around vetting of researchers, including high-level oversight and more detailed case-by-case consideration on vetting checks on researchers which are negative.

Police will also be updating the research agreement, including removing any language that may be interpreted as restricting the independence of academic research.

Good. And now maybe they can focus on fighting criminals rather than massaging their public image.

Free Sayed Kambaksh

Sayad Parvez Kambaksh is a journalism student at Balkh University in Afghanistan. Last year, he downloaded a paper criticising Islam off the internet and discussed it with his lecturers and classmates. And for that, he has been sentenced to death. The death sentence has since been endorsed (in a stunning violation of judicial independence) by the Afghan Parliament's upper house.

Currently, the Independent is running a petition urging the UK government to put all possible pressure on the Afghan government to prevent Sayad's execution. You can sign it here. But it's worth remembering that New Zealand also has troops in Afghanistan and is propping up the theocratic government which is doing this. We too should be applying all possible pressure - including the threat to withdraw support - to get the Afghan government to abide by basic human rights standards such as freedom of speech, freedom of religion, the ban on the death penalty and the right to a fair trial. So, it might be worth dropping an email to the Prime Minister or Foreign Minister as well.

Supporting theocracy in Afghanistan

Sayad Parwez Kambaksh is a journalism student at Balkh University in Afghanistan. Last year, he downloaded a paper criticising Islam off the internet and discussed it with his lecturers and classmates. And for that, he has been sentenced to death.

So much for the idea that the Karzai government is a modernising force which will guarantee basic human rights. Rather, it's clear that Afghanistan has no freedom of speech, no freedom of religion, and no freedom of academic inquiry, which stages unfair trials and imposes draconian sentences for spurious "crimes". And we're supporting that. Currently, New Zealand has a Provincial Reconstruction Team in Bamiyan Province, which is indirectly helping NATO to prop up this government.

We simply shouldn't be doing this anymore. We'd never send troops to prop up Iran's theocracy (quite rightly, too), and we shouldn't send them to prop up Afghanistans. Instead, we should bring them home.

(Hat tip: JimBobby)

New Fisk

Fear and loathing on an American campus