Israel is an apartheid state

That's the official conclusion of a report by the United Nations:

A new United Nations report accuses Israel of having established "an apartheid regime that oppresses and dominates the Palestinian people as a whole".

The publication comes amid renewed debate about whether, through its settlement policy and rejection of Palestinian self-determination, the Israeli government is creating - or even has already created - a de facto "one-state", which critics warn would constitute a form of apartheid.

It urged governments to "support boycott, divestment and sanctions [BDS] activities and respond positively to calls for such initiatives".

The report - Israeli Practices towards the Palestinian People and the Question of Apartheid - was commissioned and published by the UN Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA) and launched in Beirut.

Israel and their US supporters are upset, of course - but what else do you call it where one people are systematically discriminated against by the government, subject to arbitrary land confiscations, expulsions and home demolitions, and subject to a completely different set of laws?

This is not something the world should tolerate. It is illegal under international law and constitutes a crime against humanity under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. We didn't tolerate it from South Africa, and we should place Israel under the same sort of sanctions regime until it changes its mind and respects the human rights of all its citizens.

We need to protect our water

Another day, more water being sold to foreigners:

Questions are being asked after a lucrative water consent attached to a former wool scouring plant in Christchurch went on the market.

Newshub reported tonight the Kaputone wool scouring plant in Belfast is about to be sold off and, with it, a water consent allowing the extraction of more than 4.3 million litres of water a day - the equivalent of 50 one-litre bottles a second.

The only cost is $100 - if inspected - and the consent does not expire until 2032.

[...]

Meanwhile, Newshub reported those behind the sale of Kaputone - owner Cavalier Carpets and its shareholder Direct Capital - would not reveal who the prospective buyers are.

Several workers told the broadcaster they believed Chinese interests are involved.

The site is under five hectares and not considered sensitive land so it is unlikely the sale will need to go through the Overseas Investment Office.

Bottled water is one of the highest-value uses of water there is. Economicly, its worth far more and would be far better than pumping the same water through cows and then into the rivers as shit. But its value also highlights the fundamental unfairness at the heart of our current water law: this resource consent, to extract over 1.5 billion litres of water a year, is basicly a licence to print money. Even assuming that its the cheapest bottled water on the market and a 1000% markup from production to retail, it is still worth over $1.6 billion (NPV @4% interest). And we are giving it away essentially for free.

That's not acceptable. When someone extracts a profit from a public resource, the public deserves a return. We need to price water, so that the public gets its share, rather than it essentially being privatised by stealth.

Secondly, the fact that none of this requires OIO approval points to a very real hole in the Overseas Investment Act. Sensitive land and business assets are covered, but water isn't? That needs to be fixed. Fortunately, that looks pretty easy, and there's probably an MP working on a member's bill to plug it right now.

Will the UK Conservatives be prosecuted for overspending?

Last year the UK Conservative party admitted that it evaded national spending limits by failing to declare tens of thousands of pounds of spending in key marginal seats. Now, twelve police agencies have forwarded files on the matter for prosecution:

Twelve police forces around the country have sent files to the Crown Prosecution Service relating to general election expenses as an investigation into a Tory ‘battle bus’ scheme enters a new phase.

Officers have been looking into the Conservative Party’s battle bus campaign at the 2015 election to determine whether the party broke spending limits in target seats key to the party winning its narrow parliamentary majority.

[...]

A spokesperson for the Crown Prosecution Service said it had received files from Avon & Somerset, Cumbria, Derbyshire, Devon & Cornwall, Gloucestershire, Greater Manchester, Lincolnshire, the Metropolitan, Northamptonshire, Nottinghamshire and West Yorkshire police forces.

A spokesperson for Staffordshire Police said they had also provided files to the CPS.

Two dozen Conservatives are understood to be under investigation over claims that they did not include battle bus spending in their local campaign returns. The Electoral Commission is also investigating the allegations in parallel to the police.

This is good if it goes anywhere - election laws need to be enforced, and the evasion of local spending limits is something that should result in prosecution (and, if convicted, ejection from Parliament). OTOH, this is basicly the British establishment being asked to police itself - and we all know how that turns out.

A day of backdowns

It appears to be a day of government backdowns, with the government agreeing to exempt sexual violence support agencies from its creepy demands for client data and from its pointlessly antagonistic efforts to remove the "whanau-first" clause from child protection law. Which is good news on the face of it, but not as good as it seems when you look closely.

On data collection, sexual violence agencies clearly have a very strong case for privacy. But its not just them at risk from the government's policy. As this article in the ODT highlights, the same concerns arise in a wide range of social agencies. People who use mental health, addiction support, parental support, suicide prevention, and family violence services all have very real and legitimate fears about what the government might do with their data and who might look at it. And if they believe e.g. WINZ will get their data and use it to cut benefits or steal children, then they won't interact with the service. MSD probably regards that as a success: lower demand means better PR and spending less money. But if people are afraid to seek help, that is a serious failure.

On child protection, the Māori Party had credibly threatened to withdraw its support from the government over this, so a backdown was inevitable. But while the media is reporting that the status quo will prevail and Maori children will be placed with their extended family where possible, Anne Tolley seems to be contradicting that on Twitter:

To be clear - we're not going back to the drawing board. Through the select committee process some of the wording of the Bill 1/2

— Anne Tolley (@AnneTolleyMP) March 15, 2017

may change but its intent won't. We will not be reinserting the whanau first principle. Safety will always come first 2/2

— Anne Tolley (@AnneTolleyMP) March 15, 2017

Which really doesn't suggest that the government is dealing with the Māori Party in good faith on this. In which case they'll likely find their bill voted down, and their budget along with it.

Priorities

Last year, the government announced it wanted to spend $20 billion on new toys for the defence force. Now, Labour is suggesting that that money could be put to other purposes:

A $20 billion Defence Force upgrade already underway could not be guaranteed under a Labour-led government.

Labour leader Andrew Little has refused to commit to following through on the 15-year modernisation plan if he became prime minister, saying spending on housing and education would always take priority.

[...]

"That's an area we'd have to look at and see what the commitment is about that $20bn.

"But I have to tell you when it comes down to a choice between doing stuff that's going to give people a chance to either get a roof over their head, get the kids set up for opportunities for the future, then that's got to come first," Mr Little said.

Good. As I pointed out last year, NZDF's gold-plated shopping list is aimed at status weapons, outdated cold war thinking, and "interoperability" - AKA "fighting other people's wars". And its doing that at the cost of just under a billion dollars a year - which is basicly a full year of paid parental leave, the elimination of student fees, a massive state house-building programme, or a reversal of National's stealth health cuts. And when you put it like that, it's crystal clear that Little is right and this money is better spent elsewhere.

Useless

John Key is leaving Parliament the moment he is able to without causing a by-election. But don't worry - because Labour is letting him do it without affecting the government's majority:

Former Prime Minister John Key will quit Parliament on April 14 after delivering his farewell speech next week.

The timing will allow Parliament to avoid a by-election in his Helensville seat, which can be left vacant if he leaves within six months of the September 23 general election.

Meanwhile Labour's David Cunliffe has also announced he is leaving early, with a final day of April 23 [during a recess - I/S] - ensuring the relative strengths of the Government and Opposition are preserved.

I have one question: why? Why would an opposition possibly want to do this? Especially when there's important legislation like the gutting of the RMA on the table? Why would an opposition want to let the government keep its ability to legislate at will, rather than gaining the ability to advance the aims of its members via an effective veto on government legislation?

I understand that Labour can't stop Cunliffe from resigning if he wants to. But this move, echoing the old FPP practice of pairing, seems to be sacrificing a real opportunity for diddly-squat. Its a reminder that when push comes to shove, Labour is just a bit useless really - and that's not a good message to be sending in an election year.

No sunlight, no disinfectant

Newstalk ZB's Felix Marwick writes about the failure of his efforts to uncover the details of John Key's "briefings to bloggers" using the Official Information Act:

The Office of the Prime Minister has consistently refused to release any of the details I have sought. Its position, via Chief of Staff Wayne Eagleson, has been the information sought fell under the Prime Minister’s position as Leader of the National Party so the information was not subject to the Official Information Act. Mr Eagleson’s position has also been that to provide the information, in the case of interactions with blogger and party pollster David Farrar, it would require the searching of a large volume of correspondence. In a nutshell, any information the Prime Minister’s office held, it was not willing to disclose.

On this point the Ombudsmen have accepted the view of the Prime Minister’s Office with Chief Ombudsman Peter Boshier’s view that the threshold for him to check the communications in question has not been met.

Matters have also been further complicated by John Key’s departure from the office of Prime Minister. The Chief Ombudsman did approach Mr English’s office last December to see if he adopted the position of his predecessor. Mr English, via his chief of staff Wayne Eagleson, backed the position of his predecessor and also made the point that given Mr Key’s departure, and that of many of his staff, he couldn’t be certain in what capacity Mr Key made the communications and whether they were official information or not.

Add to this the fact that when a Minister or official ceases office, information that they alone hold stops being official information at that point, and it becomes immediately apparent any formal attempt to use the OIA to elicit details is a lost cause.

I'd made the same request, with the same results. If you're curious about the details, the Ombudsman's most recent letter is here. The core problem with the process though is simply how long it took: the requests were filed in July 2014, and yet the Ombudsman's Office didn't bother to act on them until 1 September 2016, two years after the complaints were received. If they'd acted sooner, then it would have happened before Key resigned, he would not have been able to play the hat game (because information is official by default), and there likely would have been some form of answer. Instead, the slow action on the complain has let him get away with it.

Marwick's conclusions are clear: firstly, that the OIA is fundamentally useless for getting information which politicians don't want to give you, and that real stories are going to come from leaks. And secondly: "the most senior politician in the land probably had something to hide".

England and Wales to decriminalise abortion?

Abortion law is back in the news, thanks to Bill English's claim that our 40-year old law, which criminalises abortion and effectively requires women to declare themselves mentally ill to access a basic medical procedure, has "stood the test of time". But looking overseas, it seems that not everyone thinks that. England and Wales have a near-identical law, which is a decade older. And there, MP's have just voted to decriminalise abortion:

MPs have voted to decriminalise abortion in England and Wales.

MPs have backed a bill by 172 votes in favour, versus 142 against.

The bill, which was introduced as a Ten-Minute rule bill, will now go to a second reading on 24th March, before it can be passed into law.

There are other stages too, and the majority for change is only 10% of the number of MP's who didn't bother to turn up (again, England's "democracy" is broken), but its a good start, and a good sign that change is coming. And England isn't even a particularly fast mover on this - the Australian state of Victoria completely reformed its abortion regime nearly a decade ago. We should follow suit.

Scotxit is on

The UK Parliament is currently playing ping-pong between the Lords and the Commons over a Brexit enabling act. Meanwhile Brexit pre-negotiations are already turning into a mess, with the EU demanding that the UK accept freedom of movement as a condition of market entry, and Theresa May threatening to walk away from a "bad" deal (i.e. one which doesn't let her have a racist immigration policy). Faced with the very real prospect of being stuck in a lifeboat with cannibalistic England, the Scottish government has taken the obvious course, and has demanded another independence referendum:

Nicola Sturgeon has triggered a fresh constitutional battle over Scotland’s future after announcing plans to stage a second independence referendum within two years.

Accusing Theresa May of thwarting Scotland’s desire for a special deal with Europe, the first minister confirmed she plans to hold the vote between autumn 2018 and spring 2019 unless the UK government offers substantial last-minute concessions.

Sturgeon said the prime minister’s refusal to discuss full Scottish access to the single market and to threaten heavy restrictions on the new powers for Scotland after Brexit made a second referendum all but inevitable.

The latter is particularly important - Westminster is trying to use Brexit to undermine Scotland's autonomy and seize back devolved powers. And faced with that sort of bullshit, who wouldn't leave? Better to be master of your own destiny than slave to London.

There will now be the usual fight about whether Scotland is "allowed" to have a referendum (of course they are, and it would be unconstitutional for Westminster to refuse), and about timing. Westminster will of course fight tooth and nail on them - and in the process they'll probably make the case for independence even stronger. Because every time some Westminster Tory says "no", or sneers at the idea of an independent Scotland, they make it clearer and clearer what this is about: respect. London does not respect other parts of the UK and treats them as peasants. Fortunately, Scotland is in a position to actually do something about it and leave.

Britain funds concentration camps in Libya

Britain's racist, anti-refugee government is bankrolling refugee concentration camps in Libya:

British-funded refugee camps in Libya are implementing the indiscriminate and indefinite detention of asylum seekers in the conflict-riven country, the UK government’s official aid watchdog has warned.

In a report published on Friday, the UK’s Independent Commission for Aid Impact expresses concern that UK aid to Libya risks causing unintended harm to migrants and could prevent them from reaching a place of safety. It also criticises ministers for apparently decided on the funding plan without studying the human rights implications in a country struggling to contain its long-running civil war.

“In Libya, where the operating environment severely constrains choices, the UK has identified some programming options with the potential to improve some of the conditions for migrants in detention,” it finds. “However, we are concerned about the risk that UK aid is contributing to a system that prevents refugees from reaching a place of safe asylum.”

[...]

“While reducing the number of deaths at sea is vital, we are concerned that the programme delivers migrants back to a system that leads to indiscriminate and indefinite detention and denies refugees their right to asylum,” the report says.

The latter is the point. The UK - and other racist EU nations - do not want to fulfil their obligations under the Refugee Convention. But they can't publicly repudiate it without damaging their reputations, so instead they quietly fund people in other countries to run concentration camps on their behalf. Its immoral and hypocritical. But that's what the UK (and EU) apparently stand for now.

About time

Industrial dairying has destroyed the Selwyn River sucked it dry. So finally ECan is looking at restricting farmer's irrigation takes:

Measures to restrict, suspend or revoke water take consents in a catchment which feeds the ailing Selwyn/Waikirikiri River will be investigated.

The river has had record low flows this summer and has dried up along large stretches, including at once popular swimming spots such as Coes Ford.

Environment Canterbury will look into two possible options to help address the situation and report back to the Selwyn Waihora Zone Committee.

The best option is to do both: a water shortage direction, renewed indefinitely to allow the river to recover, coupled with a longer-term review of all water takes in the vicinity to reduce them to sustainable levels. But as ECan is gerrymandered in favour of farmers by government-appointed dictators, I suspect they'll simply go for a review while letting the river die completely. Because we couldn't possibly interfere with the "right" of farmers to make money by using public water and destroying a public river, could we?

The doctors win

Junior doctors have won their industrial action for safer hours:

Doctors are crediting public support for helping them strike a new deal on working hours.

After more than a year of negotiations, including strike action, resident doctors and District Health Boards have agreed on a change to working conditions.

The new agreement includes doctors not having to work more than 10 days in a row, and having a total of four days off in a fortnight.

They won't be rostered to work more than four 10-hour night shifts in a row, and will be given recovery time after night shifts.

A new provision will mean doctors could work back-to-back weekends, but to make up for it, rostered days off will be attached to other weekends to allow meaningful time off.

This is very definitely progress, but its still pretty bad. Doctors make life or death decisions, and contract conditions which require long hours and limit rest are not going to help with that. While they've reduced the shift time to "only" ten hours and allowed recovery time, that's still a long day (or night) and could result in impaired judgement. But I guess returning to an 8-hour day is a fight for another time.

The other thing is that this won't take effect until February next year. Long hours are a pressing safety problem which potentially costs lives, and the most the DHB's will do is fix it next year? Clearly they're putting their budgets (and the government's tax cuts) ahead of people's lives here, and we should vote them out for it.

If we want better abortion laws we need to change the government

In its latest report, the Abortion Supervisory Committee - the statutory body tasked with overseeing our abortion laws - called for the law to be updated to reflect modern healthcare methods and modern society. But the (Catholic) Prime Minister is clear: not on his watch:

Any review of abortion law is code for "liberalising it", says Prime Minister Bill English, and that's not going to happen on his watch.

The Abortion Advisory Committee is calling for an update of New Zealand's abortion laws, which are still part of the Crimes Act 1961.

But the committee's recommendations are unlikely to make any headway under a National government, as staunchly Catholic English says it's a "law that's stood the test of time".

I disagree. The law is an absurd relic which effectively requires women to declare themselves mentally ill to access a basic medical procedure. It fails to respect the fundamental right of women to control their own bodies. It was never fit for purpose even in the illiberal 70's, let alone now.

This law needs to change. If Bill English says his government won't do it, then we need to change the government. Alternatively, someone needs to bring a member's bill - but Labour has shown that it is too chickenshit to do so (notably by demanding Steve Chadwick pull her bill on the subject). Hopefully the Greens will put their ballot spaces where their mouth is.

Ending a sham collaboration III

Earlier this week Forest & Bird quit the government's sham "Land and Water Forum". Now another environmental group has bailed as well:

Another group that promotes improving water quality has resigned from the government's Land and Water Forum.

The Federated Mountain Clubs, which has 20,000 members, has written to the Environment Minister Nick Smith saying it is pulling out.

Forest and Bird quit the forum this week and Fish and Game left in 2015, along with Environment and Conservation Organisations of Aotearoa New Zealand (ECO).

Forest & Bird said it was leaving the forum after its recommendations had been largely ignored by government, and Fish and Game said it was being muzzled and stopped from speaking out on environmental issues.

So who does that leave? Whitewater NZ and the Environmental Defence Society, apparently. And their days are probably numbered too.

Far from being a collaborative body, the Land And Water Forum is a PR scam aimed at enhancing the legitimacy of the government's pollution plans while suborning and silencing critics. Environmental groups should refuse to legitimise such a body by their participation.

New Fisk

Trump has opened his arms to immigrants, but only if they’re white Canadians

EPA head denies climate change

Trump's new head of the Environmental Protection Agency thinks carbon dioxide doesn't cause climate change:

Scott Pruitt, Donald Trump’s head of the US Environmental Protection Agency, has dismissed a basic scientific understanding of climate change by denying that carbon dioxide emissions are a primary cause of global warming.

Pruitt said on Thursday that he did not believe that the release of CO2, a heat-trapping gas, was pushing global temperatures upwards.

“I think that measuring with precision human activity on the climate is something very challenging to do and there’s tremendous disagreement about the degree of impact, so no, I would not agree that it’s a primary contributor to the global warming that we see,” he told CNBC.

“But we don’t know that yet ... We need to continue the debate and continue the review and the analysis.”

Actually, we do know that. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a collection of the world's top climate scientists, found in its Fifth Assessment Report that carbon dioxide levels were increasing as a result of human activity and that

Total radiative forcing is positive, and has led to an uptake of energy by the climate system. The largest contribution to total radiative forcing is caused by the increase in the atmospheric concentration of CO₂ since 1750

In English, that's "we're getting hotter because we're burning too much coal and oil". Pruitt is simply wrong. But hey, what would scientists know?

Will they be prosecuted?

The Independent Police Conduct Authority has found that a police officer unlawfully used a taser:

A Counties Manukau police sergeant's use of a taser on a mentally unwell man while he was held down was "excessive and unjustified", the Independent Police Conduct Authority (IPCA) has found.

The IPCA said the tasering of the man while he was in a small cubicle at the Counties Manukau Police station was contrary to policy, which said that a taser must only be used on a person who is assaultive.

[...]

At the station, he refused to be strip-searched and was in a tear-resistant gown, so police attempted to cut his clothes off him.

During this attempt, a sergeant entered the cubicle and used his taser twice on the man while he was being held down by two officers and had his back turned to the sergeant.

IPCA chair Judge Sir David Carruthers said the man's behaviour had not met the threshold needed for use of a taser.

"There were other, less violent, options available to the officers. They could have continued communicating with the man or have asked the officers who were outside the cubicle for assistance," Sir David said.

Police are allowed to use reasonable force to make an arrest or to search someone on arrest. But this force was unreasonable, which makes it assault (with a weapon, no less). Which leads to the obvious question: will the police officer who needlessly assaulted someone with an electrical torture device be prosecuted?

Sadly, I think we all know the answer.

Intergenerational warfare II

On Monday, Bill English announced superannuation cuts for everyone under 45. Meanwhile, according to the Herald's Claire Trevett, he's gearing up to offer election-bribe tax-cuts:

So the tax cuts will be the exception to the Not Today philosophy.

Yes - the same taxes that could have been put aside to pay for Gen X to have jam tomorrow will instead be used to provide jam today.

The tax cuts will be National's self-saucing pudding and they will be hoping voters have forgotten all about the plate of offal by the election day.

Some of that pudding may come in the Budget. National has hinted at 'family packages' aimed at lower and middle income familes.

We may see further changes to Working for Families and benefits targeting struggling families - changes that will also effectively bind Labour because it could hardly unravel them having declared poverty and struggling Auckland families as its own priority.

But Middle New Zealand may not be sated until a bit later if National opts to hold its main tax cuts programme over for the election campaign.

If she's right, we're going to see the spectre - again - of National cutting taxes now to reduce services later. And where will the generational benefit of the bulk of those tax cuts fall? Squarely on the Boomers. So they'll get tax cuts, and we'll get screwed - again.

Drawn

A ballot for three member's bills was held today and the following bills were drawn:

• Education (Teachers’ Code of Ethics) Amendment Bill (Ruth Dyson)
  
• Arbitration Amendment Bill (Paul Foster-Bell)
  
• Youth Employment Training and Education Bill (Darroch Ball)
  

So, nothing especially interesting. There were 72 bills in the ballot this morning. The full list can be found here.

Spies are a threat to our security

Wikileaks strikes again!

WikiLeaks has published a huge trove of what appear to be CIA spying secrets.

The files are the most comprehensive release of US spying files ever made public, according to Julian Assange. In all, there are 8,761 documents that account for "the entire hacking capacity of the CIA", Mr Assange claimed in a release, and the trove is just the first of a series of "Vault 7" leaks.

[...]

In publishing the documents, WikiLeaks had ensured that the CIA had "lost control of its arsenal", he claimed. That included a range of software and exploits that if real could allow unparalleled control of computers around the world.

On the one hand, the Snowden files already made clear that the NSA and other intelligence agencies are actively pursuing and hoarding security flaws to achieve their covert aims. But by dumping them en-masse, Wikileaks has both ensured that they will be publicised and patch rapidly, and crystalised the core problem with this sort of activity. Spies are supposed to "keep us safe". But by hoarding these security flaws and ensuring they go unpatched, they in fact endanger us all. Because its not just the spies who know of and use these flaws, and the longer something is left unpatched, the greater the chance it will be used by criminals, hostile corporations, other states, or even the illusory (but highly lucrative for spies) "cyber-terrorists".

An agency responsible for keeping us safe would be immediately notifying software developers of these flaws so they can be patched, not keeping them secret for future exploitation. And we need to make sure our spies do exactly that. There's a spy bill currently going through the House, and an easy SOP that could be done to require the GCSB to notify companies of any security flaws it identifies or learns of. Is there an MP willing to stand up to our deep state and push it?