Fresh Python

Terry Jones: A true land of opportunity

Just plain weird

This one is just plain weird: back in 1994 the US Air Force sought funding to create a "gay bomb" which would disrupt enemy forces by turning them all homosexual:

As part of a military effort to develop non-lethal weapons, the proposal suggested, "One distasteful but completely non-lethal example would be strong aphrodisiacs, especially if the chemical also caused homosexual behavior."

The documents show the Air Force lab asked for $7.5 million to develop such a chemical weapon.

"The Ohio Air Force lab proposed that a bomb be developed that contained a chemical that would cause enemy soliders to become gay, and to have their units break down because all their soldiers became irresistably attractive to one another," Hammond said after reviwing the documents.

Clearly they'd never heard of the Sacred band of Thebes.

I'm not sure whether this is offensive or absurd, but it does say rather a lot about the bigotry and neuroses of the USAF's "scientists" that they'd regard such an idea as either effective or credible.

"Large numbers"

Bill English, in an unguarded moment before the business community, has expressed his desire for massive tax cuts for the rich, saying that he would like to see "large numbers" of people paying a top tax rate of 20% a year.

But apart from being a sign that English wants to restart the Revolution if he ever sets foor in the Beehive, there's the simple fact that (as Just Left points out), large numbers of us already pay a top tax rate of less than 20%. Seventy percent of us earn less than the $38,000 threshold at which the 33% rate kicks in. So, when English talks about "large numbers" of people, he is in fact talking about large numbers of his rich friends and donors, rather than the ordinary New Zealanders whose votes he needs to take power.

But ignoring that and taking his desire at face value, what would it cost to see more people on the bottom rate? According to Treasury, increasing the middle tax threshold by $1,000 costs $125 million a year. So seeing 80% of us paying the bottom rate (requiring the threshold to be increased to $50,000) would cost $1.5 billion a year, while seeing 90% pay it (requiring the threshold to go to $70,000) would cost $3 billion. That's $3 billion a year we wouldn't have for roads, hospitals, schools, and insuring people against the vicissitudes of fortune - meaning that we'd either have to cut those services to compensate (and that amount of money means cuts of the level seen in the 1990's - despite national's hot air, there is not $3 billion a year of "waste" in the system, unless you regard providing education and health care and a welfare state as inherently "wasteful"), or borrow and indenture our children for the sake of the greed of the rich.

Needless to say, I do not regard either as a morally acceptable course of action.

Climate change: the lack of an interim policy

Parliament is back in session today, and Question Time looks like it will have an interesting question from Hone Harawira:

What response can he make to the Waiareka Valley Preservation Society’s claim that the "Holcim cement plant will release up to one million tonnes of CO2 per annum.", which "makes a mockery of the commitment by both leading political parties to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide."?

It's a question we should all be asking. A million tons a year is more than 1% of gross emissions (from one site), and will cost the New Zealand public at least $15 million / year (according to Treasury's lowball estimate), or $30 million / year (according to realistic expectations). And it will keep costing us that for the lifetime of the plant - at least 25 years. And while both parties have committed to devolving that cost and reducing emissions through emissions trading, they've also committed to gradual introduction which will see industrial emitters get a holiday for all of CP1. Which means there's no strong price signal telling Holcim to factor the price of emissions into their business model, and nothing telling them to reduce emissions now.

If this is giving you a sense of deja vu, its because we're about to repeat the same mistake we made in the 90's. For those with short memories, in the early 1990's, New Zealand signed up for the UNFCCC and made big promises to reduce emissions. We then completely undermined this by allowing the construction of a series of gas-fueled electricity plants - Taranaki Combined Cycle, Otahuhu B, Southdown - which saw electricity sector emissions skyrocket and created a lasting problem for the future. The then-National government ignored concerns about emissions on the basis that they'd be covered under the carbon tax voluntary reduction emissions trading policy they were designing. But apart from the fact that those policies never eventuated, the construction of those plants "locked in" those emissions as a permanent part of our profile. And we'll be paying for that mistake come January 1st next year.

In both cases, what is lacking is an interim policy, something to fill the gap and reduce emissions until the long-promised emissions trading regime begins. In the 90's, we were briefly able to use the RMA to do that, though the government put a stop to it very quickly. There's a bill before the House - Jeanette Fitzsimons Resource Management (Climate Protection) Amendment Bill - which would allow us to do it again. While the RMA was an imperfect tool for controlling greenhouse gas emissions, even an imperfect tool is better than nothing - and certainly better than letting emissions rise while you wait around for a perfect tool to come along.

No justice for Folole Muliaga

The police have announced that they will not be laying charges over the killing of Folole Muliaga. This is disappointing, but given their treatment of the Muliaga family, hardly surprising. From the outset, the police displayed little interest in the case (despite a murder or at least manslaughter charge being sustainable), and seemed to regard the investigation as a distraction from "real" police work (like raping women, or beating prisoners in their cells). We've seen this attitude before, over electoral crime; it didn't look good then, it doesn't look good now, and it does nothing to restore public faith in the police.

So much for Ethiopian "democracy"

Two years ago, fixed elections in Ethiopia led to a series of violent public protests, in which government forces massacred almost 200 people. Now, 38 senior opposition leaders have been convicted on charges ranging from armed rebellion to "outrages against the constitution" for supposedly instigating the protests. Some of them could face the death penalty, for nothing more than speaking out against an increasingly authoritarian and brutal government.

So much for Ethiopian "democracy".

And turkeys don't like christmas

Stuff reports that the government's climate change policy has been dealt another blow. Except when you read the story, it turns out that this "blow" is a letter from the Greenhouse Policy Coalition, a collection of New Zealand's largest emitters, complaining about the government's push to have policy in place by the end of the year. And if they could write, Turkeys would be writing letters complaining about christmas too - but I doubt anyone would consider it was news.

A spanking

"Journalist" Deborah Coddington has received a serious spanking from the Press Council over her infamous "Asian Angst: Is it time to send some back" article in North & South. The press council found that the article was inaccurate, discriminatory, and that its use of statistics to back claims of a gathering tide of Asian crime was misleading. Tze Ming and Keith are deservedly gloating, meanwhile Coddington is spitting tacks over being held to the basic standards of her profession (which I think rather proves the Press Council's point). But what I'm wondering is whether this will mean the end of Coddington's attacks on "crazed bloggers". After all, she's just demonstrated a clear lack of any professional or intellectual standards - something that is not true of those she criticises - and it would seem beyond hypocritical for her to complain that other people are not meeting a standard she has so clearly failed to meet herself.

Objectionable

The Office of Film and Literature Classification has banned Philip Nitschke & Fiona Stewart's Peaceful Pill Handbook on the grounds that it promotes criminal behaviour. This means that it is now an offence even to own it, carrying a penalty of a $2,000 fine - or five years imprisonment if you know it is objectionable. And its an offence to import it, carrying a $10,000 fine, or ten years imprisonment if done with knowledge. So it might be a mistake to try circumventing the ban by ordering it over Amazon. While I don't know whether our border security arrangements are really up to checking whether anyone is Reading The Wrong Books, it might not be worth taking the risk.

The censor's specific objections are in the full decision:

Parts of the book go beyond advocacy and advice and give instruction in how to get away with committing crime, thereby promoting or encouraging criminal acts in terms of s3(3)(d). Specifically, these parts of the book instruct in how to smuggle Nembutal into the country without detection, how to manufacture pentobarbital in contravention of the Misuse of Drugs Act 1975, how to manufacture and use cyanide in violation of the Agricultural Compounds and Veterinary Medicines Act 1997 and the Hazardous Substances and New Organisms Act 1996, and how to conceal one’s involvement with the commission of a suicide, exposing one to prosecution under ss113, 116 and 179 of the Crimes Act 1961. The delivery of most of this information by means of first-person testimonials, and the tone of advocacy throughout the publication, contribute to the promotion and encouragement of the criminal activities the book describes in such detail.

By all accounts, Nitschke & Stewart's advice on how to manufacture pentobarbital is a bit of a fizzer, and if anything would discourage people from pursuing that path. As for the rest, I'm struck by the absurdity of the censor trying to ban knowledge which is either widely available, or not exactly rocket science. It's no secret how you get pharmaceuticals into the country without detection: you hide them in plain sight, as other pharmaceuticals, and rely on the inability or unwillingness of customs staff to inspect every single pill. It's also no secret how you manufacture cyanide: the principles are in any chemistry textbook, but I'm not sure why anyone would bother given that you can order it in 5 kilo jars over the net from chemical suppliers in New Zealand (just remember to download the safety sheet). As for concealing criminal involvement, I don't think people really need to be told that if you don't want the police to think someone helped a dead person to get the poison which killed them, you make it look like they got it themselves. None of this is a secret, and I doubt anyone reading it will be convinced to go on a drug-smuggling, barbituate-manufacturing, evidence-concealing bender resulting ultimately in their taking their own life using a home-built guillotine which uses heavy jars of cyanide as counterweights, unless they had already determined that course of action and were going to do it anyway - but that is what the OFLC is essentially arguing in banning Nitschke & Stewart's book. It's a very medieval idea, which treats knowledge as a pathogen which can infect people with undesirable behaviour, and people as automotons who mindlessly perform whatever actions are suggested to them. I prefer to think we have a little more agency than that.

Nitschke is apparently planning to rewrite his book to comply with New Zealand law. He shouldn't have to - but if he does, I hope he will stick a honking great URL in it, pointing to a website hosted in a suitable overseas jurisdiction, on which his original material is available. The internet is a great tool for circumventing the dictates of repressive government, but it is equally useful for circumventing stupid laws and giving the finger to authority. And in this case, that's exactly what I think people should do.

New Fisk

Lies and outrages... would you believe it?

The new, "free" Iraq

When the Americans invaded Iraq, they said they were bringing Iraqis freedom. But apparently that "freedom" does not include the right of workers to organise and strike:

Arrest warrants have been issued for Iraqi oil workers, union leaders say, as they end the third day of a strike that has cut production.

According to a statement released by numerous international solidarity groups working with the oil workers in and around Basra, in southern Iraq, the workers were charged with "sabotaging the economy" and Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki said Tuesday he'd meet "with an iron fist" those who threaten Iraq's oil production.

ManFromMiddletown has an excellent background on European Tribune, here.

Proudly nuclear free

Twenty years ago today, Parliament passed the New Zealand Nuclear Free Zone, Disarmament, and Arms Control Act 1987. The law did more than just ban the manufacture, deployment, or use of nuclear weapons in New Zealand, or the entry of nuclear powered vessels into New Zealand waters - it was also a decisive statement of our principles, our independence, and our commitment to a world free of nuclear weapons. For people of my generation, it was the struggle to be nuclear free, rather than the massacre of Gallipoli, when New Zealand really came of age.

Twenty years on, that statement of principle and that coming of age are well worth celebrating. It's also worth protecting. A couple of years ago, Tony Milne floated the idea of holding a referendum on entrenching the anti-nuclear legislation to prevent it from being sold out from under us by future politicians who owe greater allegiance to Washington than Wellington. After twenty years of being proudly nuclear free, i think it is an idea whose time has come.

Sedition: we have a bill

The government has finally introduced its Crimes (Repeal of Seditious Offences) Amendment Bill. It won't be online until Parliament reconvenes next week, and I'll post a link then.

Guess I'd better get working on a submission...

Fiji: nothing has changed

Last week, Fiji's military regime officially ended its six-month long state of emergency. This was expected to see an end to military involvement in law enforcement and their habit of taking people to the barracks for "questioning" (torture). Unfortunately, as the Fiji Sun reports, nothing has changed:

Villagers yesterday told how armed soldiers came at night and took them to a spot where they were forced to crawl on thorny bushes for hours.

And the men of Naqia Village in Wainibuka, Tailevu, said the soldiers tried to take the wives of men they could not find in the village. “The women were ordered on to a truck and only released when their children came crying after them,” said one of the 11 villagers that was taken by the soldiers, Lekima Koro.

[...]

He said when the truck reached the Nayavu Bridge they were told to crawl on their elbows down to the river bank and around thorny bushes.

“As we crawled on our elbows on the thorny bushes, we suffered cuts and scratches on our elbows and stomach. The soldiers told us to take off our clothes and repeat that,” he said.

Mr Koro said the soldiers then forced them to swim in the cold river and go under whenever they were ordered. “On of us did not want to go under the water because of the cold and one of the soldiers threw a stone at him,” he said.

“Once we were put inside the truck, we were warned not to say any word or try to escape or we would face the butt of the gun,” he said.

He said soldiers also used wooden rods to beat them and kicked them while they were crawling around.

And given the military spokesperson's dismissive response, this abuse is considered entirely acceptable. if anyone is looking for a reason to exclude the Fijian military from UN peacekeeping, that's one there: because as an institution they clearly have an unacceptable attitude towards violence against the civilian population.

(Hat tip: Hyde n Ceek)

Madness

The Christchurch City Council has approved a million dollar loan to continue development of the Central Plains Water irrigation scheme. This is madness. Quite apart from the immediate environmental impact of flooding Malvern valley (something the residents aren't too keen on) and draining the Rakaia and Waimakariri rivers dry, the project's goal of massively increasing dairy farming on the Canterbury will see those cows poison the water table with their piss and shit. And in the long-term, Canterbury - already one of New Zealand's driest regions - is expected to become even drier due to the effects of climate change. Promoting dairy farming there when that is right around the corner is simply insane.

But hey, there's a chance for some farmers to make a buck by raping the environment (while incidentally not paying a cent for it - yet another example of an externality that needs to be plugged), and that is apparently what we do in New Zealand.

G8: Some "deal"

The big news this morning is that the G8 have managed to reach a deal on climate change. Except, when you look at it, it's not much of a deal. No targets are set, beyond a vague and obvious statement that emissions must stop rising and then reduce, and there's no agreement even on what baseline to use to measure commitments against (unsurprisingly, the US wants to use this year, giving themselves and other climate cheats a free lunch). And the heart of it - the agreement to keep negotiations within the UN framework - was something everyone had already agreed to (even the US; they were simply trying to renege on it). In other words, they've agreed to nothing more than what they had agreed to do anyway. And this is presented as "progress"?

Fiji: time to put our money where our mouth is

In response the the Fijian coup, the Pacific Islands Forum established a Joint Working Group on the Situation in Fiji. Back in April, they commissioned an independent assessment of an election timetable for Fiji. Now that group has reported back. While there's a lot of work that needs to be done before Fiji can hold free and fair elections - most notably, a census needs to be taken and electoral boundaries adjusted - they believe that, with the right assistance, an election could be held as early as November 2008.

The New Zealand government has responded by asking the Fijian government to commit to report's proposals, but I think we need to do more. Specificly, we should make it clear that if the Fijian regime commits to holding early elections, we will provide the funding necessary to make them happen. It's not the optimum solution - ideally I'd like to see the junta prosecuted for treason - but it may be the best way to peacefully restore democracy.

Fiji: the disease is spreading

Earlier in the year, the Fijian military beat two mean to death while "questioning" them. Nimilote Verebasaga, a suspected thief, was beaten to death while being questioned at the Queen Elizabeth barracks in January, while Sakiusa Rabaka died a month after being brutally beaten while being questioned about drug dealing. The military has successfully impeded the investigations, and no-one has been held to account for the killings. And now, the disease seems to be spreading: the police have beaten a suspect to death:

Tevita Malasebe, 30, was taken away by from his Nasinu home by a group of police officers late on Monday night, according to the Fiji Times.

His family was told he was being taken away to a police station for "minor matters" and he was led away in handcuffs, the newspaper said.

Malsebe's mother Anisa Nakuila travelled to the station about an hour later but was told her son had not arrived.

The next day family members were asked to go to a local hospital, where they were told Malasebe was dead.

Nakuila says she saw her son's body in the morgue and he was badly bruised from the neck down.

This is what happens when you have a government of lawless thugs who regard themselves as being above the law: it spreads down from the top.

It goes without sayign that I think this should be thoroughly investigated, the the officers responsible prosecuted to the full extent of the law. Fortunately, the Fijian police are at least making the right noises about it.

Something we like to hear

BBC: Removal men arrive at Downing St ahead of Blair's departure.

Unfortunately he's still got another twenty days to go.

Small on SOE's

There's an interesting piece in the Dominion-Post this morning by Vernon Small on the role of SOE's. Small points out that, contrary to Gerry Brownlee's assertions, the SOE model was not just a halfway house for privatisation. Instead, it is a way for the public to retain political control over vital infrastructure:

So why do we, the voters, want to retain assets, including non- monopolies? Is it for the dividend stream? It is significant, and it can be spent on other social priorities, or as an offset for taxation revenue. Is it for a sense of national sovereignty, or because we are worried that selling assets overseas would further damage the current account? Maybe. Partly.

Surely the strongest motivation is having these big and important entities within reach through our political representatives, so we can tweak them and lambast them and cajole them – and even sack their boards – if they do not do right by us.

That is the seed that grew into the requirement for SOEs to exhibit a sense of social responsibility.

So it is perverse in the extreme to call for our politicians to remain "hands off" – or even not to politick – when Mercury cuts off the power over a piddling bill or Solid Energy calls in some spooks to spy on its small-p political enemies.

We want them to be subject to our opinion and control.

(Emphasis added)

To that, I'd add that we use the SOE-framework of arm's-length control because we know that direct control by Ministers can be abused, as it was under Muldoon, with projects directed to marginal electorates and prices kept artificially low for political reasons. So, we want to be able to jerk the chain on these busineses, but at the same time we want it to be difficult enough for the government to do so that they exercise the power responsibly.

Generally, I'd say that the SOE model has worked. The businesses are profitable and return large dividends to the government. At the same time, the ones kept in government hands have avoided the poor management and harmful asset stripping behaviour we have seen in e.g. Air New Zealand, TranzRail and Telecom. Unfortunately, rather than political abuse, we have to worry about these businesses behaving too much like the private sector. But fortunately, we have the structure we need to remind them of who they ultimately work for - something we would not be able to do if we'd flicked them off for a song to National's cronies in the 90's.