Routing around censorship

Since Wikileaks started dumping America's diplomatic dirt, it has been subjected to an increasing number of attacks, both legal and illegal. Its servers have been taken down by DDOS attacks by "patriotic" hackers, and then its domain has been taken offline after being dropped by its (American) DNS provider. Those behind these attacks are obviously hoping that it would result in the suppression of Wikileaks and the information it is hosting. They couldn't be more wrong. Instead, it has had the usual effect, spawning a horde of mirrors. So now instead of the leaked material being in one place, its everywhere, and circulating peer-to-peer as well.

Its a classic example of the Streisand Effect. The net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it; attempts to suppress information instead help it to spread further. Even if the US does something catastrophic, and starts drone-bombing servers, the leaked data is already circulating as a torrent and has been downloaded thousands of times; all Wikileaks has to do is tweet a 256-bit key (about 32 characters of text), and it all goes public, without their redactions to limit the names of US sources who might be in danger.

This information - or anything else people choose to leak - cannot be suppressed. Those in power will just have to learn to live with a more transparent world. And if they can't, we're better off without them.

Against investment clauses

One of the worst features of modern free trade agreements are investment clauses. First emerging in NAFTA, these allow foreign companies to sue governments for profits "expropriated" by regulatory changes. Quite apart from the practical effects, which have seen the US government sued over its efforts to prevent the spread of BSE, the Canadian government sued for regulating dangerous fuel additives, and the Mexican government sued for demanding companies clean up their toxic waste, such clauses are also objectionable on principle. They basically say that democratic societies are not allowed to regulate where it might cause someone to lose money - even where such regulation is clearly in the public good. Such clauses freeze regulation and forbid us from acting on new challenges (or responding to old ones once the public will is there). The only people who win from them are sociopathic corporations who want to pollute, lie, and sell us unsafe products.

Last month, the Greens asked the government about whether they would permit such a clause in the Trans-Pacific Partnership. The government refused to rule it out, on the basis that it regarded the prospects of a challenge as "far-fetched" (despite all evidence to the contrary [PDF]).

Yesterday, they dropped the other shoe: evidence that tobacco giant Philip Morris intended to use any such clause to overturn any attempt at regulating tobacco, and specifically identifies moves to require plain packaging (law in Australia, recommended here) as "expropriation". And in case the government thinks that is "far-fetched", they're already doing it in Uruguay.

This shows that a TPP investment clause would be a clear and present danger not just to our sovereignty, but also to our health. We cannot allow it. The government must rule it out immediately. If not, we can only conclude they are on the side of the tobacco companies.

Time to end police chases

Two more people died over the weekend as a result of police chases. On Saturday night, a man died and two people were injured after being chased in a suburban area in Mangere. On Sunday, one person died and three were injured after a chase in Mangere. This brings the police's bodycount to 17 so far this year, its highest level ever. How many more do they have to kill before we cry "enough"?

The second chase was sparked by the car being identified as stolen. The cause of the first has not been identified, but it is unlikely to be anything serious. Police figures released last week showed that only one of nine recent fatal chases was initiated by criminal offending - in that case, shining a laser at traffic from an overbridge:

Police listed the other reasons for pursuit as manner of driving (in four cases), suspected drink driver (two), speed (one) and unspecified (one).

In English, this means the police are mounting highly risky pursuits over bullshit, in the process vastly magnifying the risks to the public. And of course they're killing people. I have no sympathy for speeders, or for drunk or dangerous drivers who put us all at risk. But this is a vastly disproportionate response. And I'm not alone; the Independent Police Conduct Authority has repeatedly demanded the police change their pursuit policy to ensure dangerous pursuits are only carried out when there is an immediate risk to public safety which outweighs the risk of pursuit, rather than simply a generalised suspicion and a sense of wounded "authority" on the part of police officers. They have been ignored. So much for the "watchdog".

But then, when the Minister backs police to the hilt and calls their victims "criminals", its no wonder. She's given them a blank cheque, and doesn't care how many people they kill. We can lay those 17 corpses squarely at her door.

Perhaps its time we did.

New Fisk

Survival of the neutral - Ireland's Second World War

Positive transparency II

The leaks from Wikileaks just keep on coming. Today's news: China's infowar against Google, and the UK Tories promising to be good little suck-ups to America and buy lots of guns. Meanwhile, the US is stepping up its own infowar against Wikileaks, with PayPal cutting off its account for "illegal activity" (embarrassing the hegemon apparently being a crime), the US government warning its employees not to read secret leaked documents in the hope of getting them to ignore what the rest of the world knows, and the Australian police desperately looking for something to charge Julian Assange with so they too can show their loyalty to the US.

Meanwhile, while everyone is looking at Wikileaks, there's been another interesting leak close to home, of a New Zealand negotiating paper on the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership FTA. And surprisingly, this shows that our government is not selling us out, and that it is resisting US pressure to gut Pharmac and inflict US-style intellectual property laws upon us. This is reassuring, but it rankles that we have to learn about it via a leak. Shouldn't we be able to know that our government is not betraying us? Again, more transparency would be positive, both in reassuring us that our government really is acting for us, and in allowing us to hold it to account if it is not.

Good news and bad news

Back in October, I blogged about the case of Sital and Usha Ram, an Indian couple who were going to be deported from New Zealand, meaning that their New Zealand born children (who are citizens) would be forced to grow up in a slum, without healthcare or education, while facing pervasive caste discrimination.

The good news announced today is that the government has reversed its decision, releasing Mr Ram from prison (where he was held for 70 days while they made up their mind over whether to deport him - a clear case of imprisonment for bureaucratic convenience), and granting him and his partner 12-month work visas.

The bad news is that this means they'll just deport them in 12 months time. Worse, by then they will have passed the Citizenship Amendment Bill, a clause of which allows the Minister to waive the prohibition on children renouncing their citizenship "is in the best interests of the person to do so". Which means that next time, the government will respond to criticisms of the expected living conditions faced by these kiwi kids in India with a claim that "its their own fault", in that they could "easily" give up their citizenship - their birthright - in order to become citizens of India. But what it also means is that when their parents are deported, these kids will not just lose their residency, but be forced to surrender their citizenship as well - another example of the cruelty and evil of New Zealand immigration law.

This has to change. These kids are kiwis, and that means they have an absolute right to stay here. The government should not be able to force them to choose between a decent life in New Zealand, and their parents.

Cablegate: US stole Afghan aid

Today's big cablegate story is about an Afghan Vice-President who showed up in Dubai with US%2 million in cash. But the Afghan government aren't the only people stealing aid. Another piece, also in the Guardian reports on the US's handling of Afghan aid money. Back in 2007, they set up a "trust fund" to buy equipment for the Afghan army, and solicited donations from their NATO allies. They then transferred the money to the US treasury, sat on it, and charged a 15% "handling fee" into the bargain. Strangely, the Germans, who had donated 50 million Euro to the fund, weren't too happy about this...

(So, there's a question for kiwi journalists: did NZ donate to this fund? If so, is the government happy with being ripped off by our "very very good friend" like this?)

Compare and contrast

Two stories from today's Dominion-Post: Number one:Compromised official gets top job:

Months after former Mental Health Commission head Selwyn Katene resigned amid allegations of dishonestly misusing taxpayer funding, he got another top taxpayer-funded job.

Dr Katene resigned suddenly from his $150,000 job in December 2008 when a whistleblower alleged he made multiple claims for travel, accommodation and meals when he was on personal business. An investigation found that Dr Katene used taxpayer money totalling $1501.80 for personal use and the misuse was possibly dishonest.

[...]

Soon after his resignation, Dr Katene was appointed director of Manu Ao – an inter-university Maori academy launched by Associate Education Minister Pita Sharpleslast year with $2.5m of taxpayer funding.

Number two: Pansy Wong investigation finds minor breach:

National MP Pansy Wong and her husband have been told to repay $237.06 each for breaching the rules on Parliament's international travel perk.

The ruling follows an investigation ordered by Speaker Lockwood Smith after Wong resigned as a minister following revelations she had witnessed a business deal signed by her husband, Sammy, during a trip to China in late 2008.

[...]

[Wong] hoped the findings would enable her to return to Cabinet and said she was looking forward to returning to Parliament.

So, steal $1,500 as a public servant, and you should never work again. Steal $500 by the same method as an MP, and you simply have to repay the money and expect to be back in Cabinet. The message is clear: its one rule for politicians, and one for everyone else.

One rule for politicians, one for the rest of us

The Speaker has reported back on Pansy Wong's abuse of her Parliamentary travel perks and effectively swept the whole thing under the carpet, finding that she abused it only for a single trip between Beijing and Lianyungang in 2008. As a result, she will only have to repay $474.12.

Note "repay". If a shop assistant stole that much from the till or in goods, or a public servant abused the departmental credit card to fly to Auckland for a private trip, they'd at minimum be sacked, and likely be facing charges. But those rules are for little people. Politicians, apparently, are above the law.

Unlike Lockwood Smith, I have zero tolerance for politicians who rip us off. Wong stole from us. She needs to be held accountable, and she should not be in our Parliament. The law should apply equally to all, not just to the weak and powerless.

Nominated

So, someone nominated me for Amnesty International Aotearoa NZ’s Human Rights Defender Award, The full list of nominees is:

• Imrana Jalal, Fijian human rights lawyer;
• Shahriar Asdollah-Zadeh, Contemporary artist;
• Chee Soon Juan, Singapore opposition leader;
• Tony Ellis, New Zealand civil liberties lawyer;
• Idiot/Savant, No Right Turn blogger;
• Michael Knowles, Defence lawyer for the ‘Waihopai three’;
• Maire Leadbetter of the Indonesian Human Rights Committee;
• Janet McIntyre, TVNZ Sunday correspondent;
• Naing Ko Ko, Burmese activist and refugee;
• Alyn Ware, peace and disarmament campaigner;
• Yan Christian Warinussy, West Papuan activist;
• Dolores Flynn-Edge, AINZ activist; and
• Elena Wrelton, AINZ activist.

While I'm flattered, its clear from the list that I do not belong on it. The other nominees are doing real work which changes the world for the better. All I do is mouth off on the internet.

The award will be announced on Human Rights Day, 10 December. I look forward to finding out who the winner is.

No freedom to protest in the UK

Yesterday saw another round of student protests across the UK, with students marching and occupying buildings from one end of the country to the other. In London, protestors led police on a merry chase across the city, breaking from their march route to avoid a police attempt to kettle them, but at the end of the evening a group ended up kettled in Trafalgar Square. At the end of the evening, the police arrested everyone present, ostensibly in reaction to a few people graffiting Nelson's Column (making it an indiscriminate response), but in reality to shut down the protest and force people to go home. Again, we see the ugly attitude from the UK police: protests are inherently a threat to public order, and must be suppressed. This attitude is simply not consistent with democratic government, or with the UK's obligations under its own Human Rights Act, the European Convention on Human Rights, or the ICCPR.

If people want to protest in a public space in the cold at nine o'clock at night, that is their absolute right. Freedom of expression and the freedom to protest are not confined to ordinary business hours, but operate 24/7. And if the police get bored of over-reacting after a long day of standing around in body-armour with batons drawn, that's their own problem.

Unfortunately, there's no effective comeback for this sort of abuse of power. Charges can be dismissed by the courts (or simply dropped by the police) - but the damage has already been done. Meanwhile, those who made the decision to conduct mass arrests to undermine the public's right to protest will keep their jobs, and will never face any charges themselves. In the UK, violating the public's rights is not a crime. And until that changes, the police will continue with this sort of abuse.

Consented

Contact Energy's planned Waitahora wind farm has been granted resource consent by the Environment Court. The project was rejected by the Tararua District Council in April last year on very dubious grounds; not surprisingly, the Court has overturned that rejection and allowed it to proceed with appropriate conditions to mitigate its low environmental impacts.

Contact had to reduce the number of turbines, and the modified size of the wind farm seems to be 160 - 170 MW. Coincidentally, that's about the amount of new generation we have to build every year to meet expected demand growth. Since 2000 or so, we've met that growth entirely through renewables; the fossil fuel plants that have been or are being built are backup generation or peaking plants, not intended for everyday use. While both Contact and Genesis have resource consents for more gas generation around Auckland, neither seems likely to be built in the near future. And hopefully they never will be. The planet simply cannot afford the environmental burden of fossil fuel generation, and we have much cleaner alternatives available.

Cablegate: UK lied to Parliament on cluster bombs

The Cablegate archive isn’t just good for showing us the hypocrisy and deceit of the US government; they also show us that our governments are engaging in the same behaviour. The Guardian has uncovered an excellent example today, with its discovery of a secret deal between the US and British governments to bypass the Convention on Cluster Munitions.

The Convention on Cluster Munitions prohibits its parties from using, producing, developing or stockpiling cluster bombs, or assisting anyone else to do the same. The UK was a major supporter of the Convention during its development, and this support reportedly convinced many other states to sign. But it was all a lie. At the same time as the UK was moving publicly to outlaw cluster bombs, it was cutting a secret deal with the US to ensure they could still be stored at and deployed from US bases on UK soil.

The relevant cable is here. It shows that the US and UK had agreed that a "temporary exception" (not supported by the Convention) would be invoked every time the US wanted to use cluster bombs from a UK base. It also shows that the UK government deliberately misled Parliament about this during the debate over ratification of the Convention:

it would be better for the USG and HMG not to reach final agreement on this temporary agreement understanding until after the CCM ratification process is completed in Parliament, so that they can tell Parliamentarians that they have requested the USG to remove its cluster munitions by 2013, without complicating/muddying the debate by having to indicate that this request is open to exceptions.

The junior ministers responsible for the debate didn't know this, and were arguing in good faith. But their boss, Foreign Secretary David Miliband, did. Aren't you glad he didn't become Labour leader?

The British government, both the politicians (who are now in opposition) and the bureaucrats (who still have their jobs) need to be held to account for this. But it also shows that hosting US bases is deeply destructive of British democracy. Its long past time they went.

Danger in Tonga

Things seem to be going off the rails already in Tonga. Last week, the people voted overwhelmingly in favour of the Democratic Party, giving them 12 of the 17 popularly elected seats. But now it looks like there's a real danger of the nobles, who have nine seats to represent 36 people, vetoing the people's choice and supporting another people's representative as Prime Minister to keep the democrats out of power.

The damage to Tongan democracy from such a move would be enormous. Tongans have fought for twenty years for democratic government, and seemed to be on the verge of achieving it with these elections. To have victory snatched from their grasp by the unequal voice given to a clique of 36 privileged inbreds would be absolutely intolerable, a sign that peaceful reform had failed. And the results of that might not be pleasant.

"Separate but equal" in Illinois

The Illinois state legislature has passed a civil union law. While this is a step forward, in that it will improve the practical situation of gay couples, its also very explicitly "separate but equal"; it does not grant the same rights as marriage, and the relationships will not be recognised by the federal government. Even gay rights advocates recognise that it may ultimately freeze progress rather than being a stepping stone to equality. But I guess in such a virulently homophobic country as the US, you have to take what you can get (and keep on demanding more).

A waste of police resources

The Herald reports that AC/DC drummer Phil Rudd has been convicted of cannabis possession in Tauranga and fined $250:

The court was told that on October 7 when police executed a search warrant at Witschke's launch, Barchetta, berthed at Tauranga Bridge Marina they found a total of 25g of cannabis on board.

Witschke told police it was for his personal use.

A search warrant requires significant police resources - evidence has to be collected, statements sworn, and the warrant itself signed off by a judge or JP; executing it probably required three or four officers for a couple of hours. The idea of doing that for a trivial possession case simply beggars belief; the idea that they're going around looking for people to bust for possession even moreso.

Surely our police have better things to do than this...?

Better late than never

The government released its new Animal Welfare Code today, which will outlaw sow crates from 2015. Good. Sticking pigs in tiny cages, where can't move or socialise is barbaric and cruel, and something that should have been outlawed long ago. And while I would prefer to see it done sooner, better late than never.

Our corrupt royal family

Yesterday, Wikileaks released a US diplomatic cable about a meeting between Prince Andrew - who has "gainful employment" as a British trade ambassador - and a group of British businessmen in Kyrgyzstan, which revealed the prince's support of corruption:

Having exhausted the topic of Kyrgyzstan, he turned to the general issue of promoting British economic interests abroad. He railed at British anti-corruption investigators, who had had the “idiocy” of almost scuttling the Al-Yamama deal with Saudi Arabia. (NOTE: The Duke was referencing an investigation, subsequently closed, into alleged kickbacks a senior Saudi royal had received in exchange for the multi-year, lucrative BAE Systems contract to provide equipment and training to Saudi security forces. END NOTE.) His mother’s subjects seated around the table roared their approval. He then went on to “these (expletive) journalists, especially from the National Guardian, who poke their noses everywhere” and (presumably) make it harder for British businessmen to do business.

But it gets worse - it turns out that he had been using his position as a member of the royal family to demand special briefings from the UK Serious Fraud Office on their corruption investigation into BAE:

The head of the SFO, Richard Alderman was summoned to Buckingham Palace shortly afterwards, on the morning of 13 May 2008, according to a palace spokesman.

Asked if Andrew had discussed the BAE case at that meeting, the spokesman said: "I would be surprised if he didn't." But he said: "The director of the SFO didn't report to him anything other than publicly available information."

After his return from Kyrgyzstan, Andrew accepted an invitation to tour the SFO's headquarters in Elm Street, London on 9 December 2008.

According to the palace, he again discussed the state of the BAE case, which was still probing secret alleged payments to clinch arms deals in several other countries.

There is no conceivable honest reason for this. The only reason for someone in his position to demand such a briefing is to obtain secret information which could then be passed to BAE or the Saudis and used to undermine the investigation.

If Windsor was an elected politician, he'd be drummed out of office for this. But that's the problem: he's not elected. And so the UK - and New Zealand - are stuck with him, and his support for corrupt business practices. Unless, of course, we declare a republic...

Massive ECE fee hikes on the way

When National ripped $400 million out of ECE funding, Education Minister Anne Tolley tried to pretend that it wouldn't hurt anyone, and that it wouldn't result in lower quality education or in parents having to pay higher fees to make up the shortfall.

Bullshit:

A new survey, conducted by the Labour Party and released exclusively to the Herald, shows most centres facing the cuts plan to compensate by making staff redundant, passing costs on to parents or a combination of both.

The survey, which questioned 435 of the centres facing cuts, found 89 per cent planned to pass costs on to parents by increasing fees.

Those increases varied from $2 to $80 per child per week. In Auckland just over half of the centres indicated fees were likely to increase by $15 to $30, 14 per cent were $40 to $50 and 5 per cent were planning on increases of more than $50 a week.

There are about 2,000 early childhood education centres nationwide, so this is a fairly comprehensive survey. And what it clearly shows is that parents will be paying more due to National's cuts. The equation of working to pay for childcare so you can work is already tenuous enough, and the inevitable result will be people (mostly women) pushed out of the workforce as they can no longer afford to work. It will also utterly hamstring National's proposals to force solo parents back into the workforce - you just can't do that without access to cheap, affordable childcare. But worse than all of that, it will undermine the educational opportunities (and future prospects) of an entire generation of kiwi kids.

As I have said before, early childhood education is one of the best investments a society can make. It leads to smarter, better educated, healthier kids, who have higher average incomes and are less likely to go to jail. It also increases social mobility, and decreases inequality. But National isn't interested in any of that. All they care about is tax cuts now, for their rich mates - and the rest of us can go to hell.

Sedition in India

In October, Indian author Arundhati Roy gave a speech [PDF] in New Delhi in which she said "Kashmir has never been an integral part of India". Thanks to those words, she has been charged with sedition, and is potentially facing life imprisonment.

Its important to note that it is not the government doing this. The charges have been filed at the behest of militant Hindu nationalists, who went to court to force the police to accept their complaint. Which shows you how disreputable the whole idea of sedition is: an instrument used by those with strong views (in this case nationalists) to persecute anyone who disagrees with them.

Such a law has no place in a civilised democracy. New Zealand repealed its sedition law in 2007. If India wants to take its place as a respected world power, it must do the same.