Wishful thinking or outright deceit?

Hint to National: when making a coalition offer to another party which is predicated on the support of others, make sure those others actually support you. Alternatively, bury them in a dark dungeon somewhere, so no-one can find out otherwise. But for Cthulhu's sake, don't let them come out and say "huh?", because otherwise you'll look like you're (at best) suffering from a severe case of wishful thinking, or (at worst) a pack of deceitful arseholes.

But I see it's already too late for that:

NZ First leader Winston Peters will today be considering "a very brief letter" sent to his officeby National last Friday night, apparently suggesting National had the numbers to form a government with NZ First's support.

But the Maori Party and United Future have denied guaranteeing any such support.

[...]

But Maori Party co-leader Tariana Turia strenuously denied any arrangement had been brokered with National.

And co-leader Pita Sharples insisted last Thursday that the party was still open to supporting Labour on confidence and supply in return for policy concessions.

United Future leader Peter Dunne said his party was negotiating in good faith with Labour and would not be talking with National on the same basis unless Labour was finally unable to form a government.

"We haven't reached that point yet and [National] knows that. It is not the simple truth to say National has 57 votes locked up," he said.

Which raises the question: are National total amateurs, or are they simply trying to lie their way into power by trying to present themselves as a fait acompli? Though given their blind insistence that tax cuts are still affordable despite the Reserve Bank's warning, I'd go with the latter.

Starving them out

The UN has accused the US of using starvation as a weapon in Iraq. According to Jean Ziegler, UN special rapporteur on the right to food, US forces cut off food and water to insurgant-held towns in an effort to force civilians to leave the area. While militarily effective, this violates the Geneva Conventions, and commanders ordering such tactics could be held responsible for war crimes under international law.

The US has denied the charges, but it is worth noting that they have used such tactics before. During the Vietnam war, the US ran a "food denial program" targeting crops, with the specific aim of depriving hostile civilian populations of food and thus forcing them to relocate to US-controlled areas. Sounds familiar, doesn't it?

When show trials go bad

For the last few weeks, Uzbekistan has been running show trials for fifteen "militants" who led the protests in Andijan - the participants of which were subsequently ruthlessly slaughtered by government troops in the worst massacre since Tiananmen Square. Yesterday, though, thinks went wrong, when a witness refused to stick to the government's script:

Makhbuba Zakirova told the court that she saw soldiers shooting at people waving a white flag.

"Even Hitler did not do such things," she said.

[...]

Mrs Zakirova, 33, said she mingled with anti-government protesters in the city square while walking with her children.

She said she stayed out of curiosity when she heard Uzbek President Islam Karimov was supposed to talk with the protesters.

"There were people in helmets everywhere. I twice saw soldiers shooting from military vehicles. The shooting was intense," she said, the Reuters news agency reported.

She also seemed fully aware of what this entailed:

Mrs Zakirova was interrupted by the prosecutor, who asked: "Do you realise what you are saying? Are you sure?"

She replied: "Are you going to arrest me now? I was telling only the truth, and you yourself asked me to give a truthful testimony... I am only saying what I saw."

I salute her bravery in standing up to tell the true story of what happened at Andijan - but given the nature of the Uzbek regime, she'll probably soon be joining the others in the dock.

Going beyond Iraq

The Guardian today reports that Bush told Blair he planned to "go beyond Iraq" and target other countries he believed were developing WMD:

Mr Bush said he "wanted to go beyond Iraq in dealing with WMD proliferation, mentioning in particular Saudi Arabia, Iran, North Korea, and Pakistan," according to a note of a telephone conversation between the two men on January 30 2003.

The note is quoted in the US edition, published next week, of Lawless World, America and the Making and Breaking of Global Rules, by the British international lawyer Philippe Sands. The memo was drawn up by one of the prime minister's foreign policy advisers in Downing Street and passed to the Foreign Office, according to Mr Sands.

I guess we have the Iraqis to thank for stopping this from happening and preventing a wider war in the Middle East...

No defence

Saddam Hussein is scheduled to go on trial next week for the 1982 Dujail massacre, in which 143 people were executed and thousands tortured or imprisoned in reprisals for an attempt on the dictator's life. According to today's Herald, he intends to plead "sovereign immunity" - the idea that a current or former head of state is above the law and accountable to no-one for their (legal) actions - as a defence. According to the defence, what happened at Dujail was entirely legal and in accordance with Iraqi law at the time, and that the Iraq Special Tribunal's prosecution is a retroactive change of the law, contrary to fundamental principles of justice.

I guess his lawyers didn't read up on Nuremberg. The International Military Tribunal responsible for trying the leaders of the Nazi regime established the principle that there was no sovereign immunity for crimes against humanity, and that heads of state could be held criminally responsible for breaches of customary international law. International human rights law was not well-developed in 1945, but even then, the IMT was able to find clear precedent that waging a war of aggression and violating the "laws of war" (both customary and those in the 1907 Hague Convention) were international crimes which could be punished by anyone. International human rights law has developed a great deal since then, and I think it is safe to say that in 1982, slaughtering a village in retaliation for an assassination attempt was outlawed, regardless of whether Iraq had signed a treaty explicitly saying so or not.

Enforcing the Refugee Convention

There's been a spat in the UK over the last few months over the issue of deportations to Zimbabwe. Despite accusing the Mugabe regime of serious human rights abuses, the British government insists that Zimbabwe is safe enough for failed asylum seekers to be deported there. One of them took them to court over this, seeking an order enforcing the Refugee Convention's bar on refoulement. Today, they won, with the Asylum and Immigration Tribunal ruling that even though the applicant had made a false claim, and been "fraudulent" and "deliberately dishonest", their presence in the UK had given rise to a well-founded fear of persecution if they were returned, and thus they should be allowed to stay. The Asylum and Immigration Tribunal also castigated the government in its ruling for showing an alarming lack of interest in how deportees were treated on their return:

Evidence from the Home Secretary suggested deportees were escorted onto planes and their papers handed over by UK officials to the air crew.

"At that point, it appeared to us that the respondent (the Home Secretary) ceased to have any very clear interest in what happened.

"We find the respondent's lack of interest in the process by which individuals that he returns to Zimbabwe are received by the Zimbabwean authorities rather alarming."

While the government had subsequently sent a "fact-finding" mission to Zimbabwe, the court stopped just short of calling it a whitewash:

"The way in which the investigation was conducted, and the way in which the results were presented to us, gives rise to the possibility - we say no more than that - that the investigators may have had existing policy in mind rather more than the discovery of new facts.

"Despite the facilities available to the investigation and the level at which it was conducted, it reveals nothing of the actual process which returned asylum seekers go through on their arrival at Harare airport."

(What actually happens is that returnees are treated as traitors by the Mugabe regime, and tend to be turned over immediately to the secret police. I'd call that "persecution"...)

The decision may influence a current judicial review of the entire policy of deportations to Zimbabwe, but it also spells trouble for Blair's proposed anti-terrorism legislation. The courts have signalled firmly that they will not relax the ban on refoulement and allow people to be deported to persecution, torture and death. I guess that the rules haven't changed after all...

A wasted opportunity

In the Dominion-Post this morning, Chris Trotter takes the Maori Party to task for failing to work out a confidence and supply deal with Labour, arguing that Tariana Turia's desire for utu and flirtations with National have wasted a tremendous opportunity:

What the numbers could have added up to, however, was a Labour-Progressive-Green centre-left government with Maori Party support on matters of confidence and supply. Such a government would have been of enormous benefit to Maori, whose life chances are determined overwhelmingly by their social class, not ethnic identity.

A Maori Party in constructive dialogue with a secure centre-left government would have been in a position to extract an impressive array of concessions. A Maori Party with enough confidence in its political future to think expansively and creatively could even have imbued that government with the energy and courage to initiate a genuine revolution in New Zealand's constitutional arrangements.

But instead of that, we're likely to get a Labour government beholden to Winston. Who, in case you need reminding, wants to tear the Treaty out of the law, disband the Waitangi Tribunal, and end the settlements process (which he dubs a "gravy train"). It's a perfect example of cutting off your nose to spite your face...

Nga korero o to wa makes essentially the same case here.

Trotter thinks this mistake will doom the Maori Party, and that the voters who split their votes between it and Labour on election night will go back to Labour rather than support politicians who so clearly put themselves ahead of their supporters. I'm not so sure - but its a very bad start for the party, and one it will have to work hard to overcome.

KeepLeft retires

Via Span, Keepleft have declared victory and retired to the bar for three years. Hopefully they'll be sober for 2008.

If you want to grab copies of their videos for posterity, there's still a few days before the site goes down.

The Brethren Again

According to this morning's Dominion-Post, the Exclusive Brethren are making a last-ditch effort to get a right-wing government, and have been trying to organise talks with NZ First to put together a coalition. I guess they've figured out that if god is to ordain the right government, they have to help things along a bit. But shouldn't they have done that by voting, rather than trying to play puppetmaster from behind the scenes?

New Fisk

The Ghazi Kenaan I knew was not the sort of man who would commit suicide

Backlinks

Thanks to Philosophy, Etc and Browservulsel, we now have backlinks, which is sortof trackback for blogger. It relies on Google Blogsearch to notice who is linking to who (rather than proper trackback), but this apparantly provides some insulation from spam.

As with comments, I'll see if it works, and if it doesn't - if for example I get a lot of "links" with surrounding text about fake degrees, herbal viagra, and cheap software - I'll turn it off again.

Lobbying the TEC

Last week, Victoria University used legal thuggery in an effort to prevent Salient from reporting on its plans for a 10% across-the-board fee rise. Their fear was that students would object. I suggest that people do their utmost to make this fear come true.

Left Field and Beyond has posted a form letter to send to the members of the Tertiary Education Commission, asking that they not grant VUW's request. It reads:

Dear Commissioners/[insert name]

I am writing in regard to a possible request by the Victoria University of Wellington Council to the Commission to allow a fee increase above the five percent prescribed in the Fee Maxima Scheme: that is, a fee increase for domestic students up to ten percent. I strongly oppose any move by the TEC to grant such a request. I believe it would be contrary to the Tertiary Education Strategy, statements by the Minister of Education and the goals of TEC to allow such a request by Victoria.

Requests for increases above the Maxima are only supposed to be granted in extraordinary circumstances. Victoria University is not in dire financial need, nor is it likely to be. It has consistently posted healthy surpluses, which are expanded when related bodies such as VicLink are included in the cumulative surplus. There are no circumstances in the situation of Victoria University that could be considered extraordinary.

One of the key changes identified in the Tertiary Education Strategy is to "Increase responsiveness to the needs of, and wider access for, learners". Allowing further increases in domestic tuition fees restrict access to tertiary education as is not at all responsive to the needs of learners. At a time when student debt has reached $8 billion, and not all students receive a student allowance, it is unduly harsh to allow such large increases in tuition fees. Subsequent to the increase of domestic fees at Victoria in 2004 (an increase of 4.7%) the Minister of Education, the Hon Trevor Mallard, stated that fees should not be increasing. For the TEC to then grant the request of Victoria University for a large increase would go against the public statements of the Minister responsible for the Commission.

TEC are focused on providing a high quality knowledge economy. However, regular increases in domestic tuition fees are making tertiary education, and therefore a knowledge economy, increasingly difficult to achieve.

For all these reasons, and many more, I would ask that any request by Victoria University for the TEC to allow a fee increase above the Maxima be denied.

Yours Sincerely,
etc etc.

Unfortunately, the TEC hasn't posted email addresses, so you'll have to use snailmail to one of the addresses here.

If you are annoyed at VUW over their actions, or in fact a student there, then I think that this would be a perfect way of voicing your displeasure.

Destroying freedom in order to "save" it

Tony Blair has introduced his new anti-terrorism legislation to the British Parliament amid a storm of criticism from human rights groups, the judiciary, and even his own anti-terrorism watchdog. And it's not surprising. The bill [PDF] includes:

• Allowing terrorist suspects to be detained for up to 90 days without charge. This amounts to effective internment of anyone the police don't like; all they need to arrest someone is "reasonable grounds for suspicion" - which is about the same standard of evidence they were exercising when they murdered Jean Charles de Menezes. There is simply no way this complies with the ECHR's ban on arbitrary detention, and Blair's own anti-terror watchdog, Lord Carlile, has said that he believes it to be "unlawful" and that it would fail any legal challenge.
• New offences of "encouragement" and "indirect encouragement" of terrorism. Combined with the definition of terrorism used in the bill of violence against people or property to influence a government or people for a political purpose, this amounts to a ban on voicing support for the overthrow of any government, anywhere in the world, no matter how repressive. People are already dragging out the Nelson Mandela comparisons, but I think there's a far better example: this bill would have criminalised anyone who, pre-war, expressed support for the idea of the Iraqi people overthrowing Saddam Hussein. It would also ensnare anyone who voices support for the students of Tiananmen, the Prague Spring, the Hungarian Revolt, the 1989 Romanian Revolution which led to the overthrow of Nicolae Ceau?escu, and the victims of the Uzbek regime in Andijan earlier in the year. Not to mention Guy Fawkes and Oliver Cromwell. The sheer breadth of this law (and the requirement for the Attorney-General to grant leave to prosecute) means it will be applied selectively to those the government does not like, rather than consistently - which is fairly abhorrent in and of itself.
• Criminalising the dissemination of "terrorist publications" - which includes anything "encouraging" terrorism or providing information "capable of being useful" in the commission or preparation of such acts. If this seems overbroad, it is limited; whether something is or is not a "terrorist publication" is to be determined in the context of its publication or making available for sale. So, a book may be a "terrorist publication" (and its owner liable for up to seven years in jail for making it available to others) in the context of a Muslim bookshop - but not in the British Library or on an MP's bookshelf. Wonderful. Note that this section allows summary conviction, though with a lesser penalty of "only" a year in jail - so in the UK they'll be jailing (some) people for posession of a banned book.
• Allowing the proscription of groups for "glorifying" terrorism, making their members liable to imprisonment. According to one columnist in the Guardian, one of the targets of this is Hizb ut-Tahrir - which while being Islamist and promoting the restoration of the Caliphate, comdemned the London bombings. The sole "evidence" of its involvement in terrorism is a refusal to condemn violence in Iraq or Palestine. Meanwhile, there are absolutely no plans to proscribe the BNP - an organisation which carries out actual violence within the UK.
• Allowing British citizenship to be removed from those with dual nationality.
• Allowing terrorist suspects to be deported to regimes where they risk being tortured. This section is also likely to fall foul of the ECHR (not to mention the refugee and torture conventions), and has sparked clashes with the judiciary over perceived pressure from the government to ignore international law in favour of a simple declaration from the Prime Minister in a press conference that "the rules of the game have changed".

As can be seen from the above, a constant theme in the bill is selectivity. While this is an aspect in any law - not every offence is prosecuted, and nor should it be - the sheer breadth of these provisions amounts to a deliberate strategy and raises the spectre of a return to pre-Enlightenment standards of justice. Under the ancien regime, crime was in the eyes of the monarch, and so law was essentially arbitrary. This simply removes things a step - everything is illegal, and it is prosecution which is arbitrary. But the effect is the same: arbitrary justice, with criminality decided by the whim of the powerful rather than the rule of law.

That aside, the bill rides roughshod over core human rights - including freedom of expression, the right to liberty, and the right not to be tortured - and erodes fundamental standards of justice, such as Habeas Corpus. In other words, Blair's plan is to destroy freedom in order to "save" it.

If Al Qaeda's goal is to destroy western civilisation, then they couldn't have dreamed of a better way of doing it in the UK.

The waiting may be over

It's looking like the waiting game is drawing to a close, and that we'll finally have a government tomorrow, or maybe today. The cost? A boost in superannuation - which while I don't mind it in principle, means money which can't be spent on other things (like, say, restoring the health system) and running higher surpluses in the long run (at least, if the government wants to be fiscally responsible). But such are the joys of negotiating the different spending priorities of different sectors of the electorate.

Of course, the whole thing could still go off the rails - the Maori Party certainly seems to be doing its bit to throw a last-minute spanner in the works, which again rather confirms people's suspicions about them as well as showing just how cynical National's race-baiting policies were.

Convenient

BBC is reporting that the Syrian Interior Minister - who had previously served as the chief of Syrian intelligence in Lebanon - has committed suicide:

"Interior Minister Brig Gen Ghazi Kanaan committed suicide in his office before noon," the Syrian Arab News Agency reported.

The authorities are carrying out the "necessary investigation" into the incident, Sana reported.

This is convenient for Syria. Kanaan had been questioned by UN investigators over the murder of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri; so far the evidence is pointing towards Syrian intelligence as being responsible. Now they won't have to go through the whole embarassing process of arguing over extradition when the report comes out...

Spotting Shenzhou

Heavens Above finally have a Shenzhou page up - and according to it, we have regular passes. There's a good one tonight, in fact, at about 5 past 9, and passing just below Venus and heading towards the Moon. Here's a map:

The upper line is for Invercargill, the middle for Palmerston North and Wellington, and the lower one for Auckland. If you're in between, it's in between. Note that southern watchers will need to go out a couple of minutes earlier.

Of course, this means that it is guaranteed to be cloudy, but if it is, there's another good pass on Saturday night. This one won't be visible from the South Island, but will be in roughly the same place for Palmerston North and Wellington viewers; Aucklanders will need to look just above the pointers to pick it up.

While it may be tempting to wave, they won't be able to see it.

They have liftoff

This afternoon's launch of Shenzhou VI was a success. Unfortunately, it hasn't shown up on Heavens Above yet, so I can't tell if it will pass over NZ or not.

Of course they should

NZFirst's Ron Mark has suggested that the government send the Fire Service's Urban Search and Rescue Team to Pakistan to help dig people out of the rubble. It's a good idea, and one I wish he'd thought of earlier. Unfortunately, with the way these things go, by the time they get there, they'll be down to digging up corpses, with possibly one or two miraculous survivors to be dug out in front of the cameras. It'll still be helpful, but not as helpful as it would have been if we'd made the offer and sent them two days ago.

Which does rather raise the question of why the government didn't think of it two days ago. Surely the USAR team is on NZAID or MFAT's standard list of disaster recovery options they present to the government in a situation like this?

A few thoughts on the Greens

This week's Listener had an editorial entitled Endangered Greens, pointing out problems with the Green campaign and questioning the future of the party. This has spawned an interesting discussion on Frogblog (which the Herald today described as the "rank and file" talking "revolution" - despite few of the participants actually being Green Party members). So here's my two cents.

Firstly, the Greens "problem" is lack of votes, pure and simple. Yes, their campaigning could have been better. Yes, their billboards don't seem to have made enough of an impact (I prefered the earlier "give a damn" slogan myself). And yes, some of this may have been because of the lack of a big issue like GE to kick up a stink over. But IMHO most of it is due to an extraordinarily tight campaign, in which the minor party vote flowed to the majors in a way that we haven't seen before. The good point is that despite all this, they suffered the least of any minor party - demonstrating once again that of all the minors, they have the most solid core of support (though some of this "core" composes Labour voters who consistently vote Green to provide a coalition partner to labour's left - but its reliable nonetheless).

They shouldn't take this core for granted, and they should work to build it - but I don't think the future is as dismal as the Listener claims.

The Listener also had this to say on list selection:

Forget about Labour's quest for new blood, though. If the Green MPs were on a supermarket shelf, you would be studying their "use by" dates very closely indeed, since their line-up is virtually identical to what it was in 1999. The Greens' caucus is nearly 53 years old on average, and has just lost Nandor Tanczos, its main youth emblem and drawcard. Fresh talent may be waiting in the wings, such as Russell Norman. Yet the talent will always struggle to make it into the parliamentary arena without big changes occurring in how the Greens compile their party list – which does few favours to its more urban and more sophisticated candidates, and which has promoted the likes of Mike Ward in the past.

Not being a member, it's not really my place to comment on list selection - but as for the lineup being nearly identical to what it was in 1999, here the "problem" seems to too much talent, rather than people who are "past it" refusing to yield their places. Yes, the loss of Nandor is a tragedy - but a higher rank for him would have meant a lower rank for someone else, and I cannot think of a single one of those six MPs who I would like to see go. All work incredibly hard; all have excellent media profiles for minor party MPs - especially when compared with MPs from United Future or NZFirst. Every single one of them is an asset to the Green Party. Which is why I think the problem ultimately comes down to "not enough votes" and the two-party squeeze, rather than any lack of talent in the Parliamentary lineup.

The Greens do need to bring "new blood" in, but given the talent of the current lineup, this relies on either growing the party vote, or on retirements. Clearly, I'd rather it happened through the former, but as a list party, the Greens can always use the mechanism of a mid-term retirement bringing in the next available person on the list to renew themselves. But again, I can't think of a single MP I'd want to go in this fashion.

Fighting corruption in Iraq

Last month, we learned that corrupt officials in the US-appointed Iraqi Interim Government had pulled off one of the largest thefts in history, embezzling almost the entire military procurement budget - one billion US dollars all up - and in the process crippling the Iraqi military and setting back the date when American forces could leave. Now, the Iraqi government finally seems to be doing something about it. Arrest warrants have been issued for five former government ministers - at least one of whom is serving as a representative in the interim Parliament - as well as 22 other former officials. Almost all are believed to have fled the country, and the Iraqi government is seeking the assistance of Interpol in tracking them down. Hopefully they'll succeed; while I may not like what is going on in Iraq, or the nature of the present government, Iraqi money should at least be spent on the Iraqi people, not stolen by corrupt leaders.