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With the best of intentions | Mar 25, 2004 11:22
Well, it's a while since any TV made me as angry and indignant as Paul Holmes' interview with Nick Smith MP did last night. Smith has, of course, been convicted in the High Court of contempt of court, along with TV3 and Radio New Zealand.
Yesterday's conviction stems from a Family Court custody dispute in Smith's electorate in Nelson. In 1999, a local family, suffering a crisis, sent its youngest child to live with a cousin. When the family later tried to retrieve the child, the cousin resisted, and won an interim custody order.
The case dragged on for three years, through between 15 and 20 hearings, until a judge decided, not long after Smith got involved, that it was in the child's best interests to remain with the cousin. In the course of making that decision, the judge heard from both a child psychologist and a lawyer for the child. At every stage of this long process, the Family Court agreed with the caregiver. There were accusations made both ways in this case, and it plainly was not clear-cut.
Smith thought differently. He issued press releases and told RNZ and TV3 that the case was "obscene", "state-sanctioned child stealing", a "travesty" and so on. He also personally phoned the cousin, told her she was "stealing" the child and informed her that "Parliament is the highest court in the land" (Smith denied saying any of those things).
The Solicitor General subsequently decided, in bringing the contempt charge, that by his actions Smith was seeking to exert pressure on one of the litigants, the cousin. But Holmes left his viewers in no doubt that Smith was a helper of those in need and a crusader for free speech. It was therefore, presumably, unnecessary to ask him about the improper phone calls he made to the caregiver, or about the fact that the court made it clear it did not believe the evidence he gave under oath about the content of those calls.
Smith, I am sure, was acting on the best of intentions, and I wouldn't like to see him lose his seat (although there might be advantages for him in resigning it and fighting a by-election). I don't doubt that this has been traumatic for everyone, including the original family. The Family Court is often like that. In the past year I have had experience of a particularly difficult and unpleasant Family Court case, through giving evidence for a friend. Early in that case, that friend was sorely let down by two court-appointed professionals. I really had my doubts, but chose to believe in the integrity of the process and the power of bearing witness. In the end, I think, the court vindicated that faith.
I think that the Family Court could be opened up more, if simply in the interest of its proceedings being better understood - it's currently quite difficult to discuss it at all. But at no point in the case with which I had contact would justice have been better served by open proceedings. Quite the reverse, in fact.
Of the other two defendants, I have some sympathy with RNZ. It is difficult, on a daily and hourly basis, to always know where the line is and to anticipate what an interview subject will say. TV3's 20/20, on the other hand, appeared to have framed the issue knowing exactly what story it wanted to tell. Changes are now being proposed to open the Family Court to further scrutiny. But whatever is allowed in future, it is highly unlikely to be anything like what went on here.
There was general murmuring and nodding last night about Holmes' helpful suggestion to Smith that the Family Court was chiefly concerned with its own reputation. But what I saw on TV appeared to be quite substantially about the self-interest of the participants in the interview.
Smith is taking advantage of the confidentiality of Family Court proceedings to convey a version of events that justifies his own actions. The woman he intimidated doesn't have the same advantage.
I had half expected Holmes to dance on TV3's grave. But he didn't, presumably because John Campbell wasn't involved (you may recall the same Paul Holmes loudly sermonising, only last month, about Campbell "destabilising judges" through his actions during TV3's High Court appeal over the Corngate findings). But, just as he did during his recent interview with David Tua's former manager Kevin Barry, Holmes coached his guest through an interview composed entirely of only one side of a complex story. He seems to be out of control.
So should the caregiver now go to the press with her story? Is that really what we want? Custody cases are decided by a judge who is experienced in the law and has heard all the evidence first-hand. Do we really want difficult and emotional family disputes to be adjudicated by TV current affairs programmes? Hell, why not go the whole way and turn it into a reality show? I'm sure it would rate.
PS: I should note that I am indebted to Steven Price for making clear some of the arguments above.
Theatre | Mar 24, 2004 10:55
So Helen Clark declined to appear on Holmes last night, and Don Brash wouldn't go on Havoc. I'm sure there's a gag in there somewhere. Clark, of course, was never going to allow herself to be summonsed onto television - between elections Prime Ministers virtually never agree to dignify their Opposition counterparts by directly debating them in the media. I might be missing something, but can't recall a New Zealand Prime Minister doing so.
Instead, Clark made much of Brash's absence from debate in the House yesterday, where he is reckoned to be weak. "Where is 'e?" she squawked in the background, while Gerry Brownlee and Nick Smith did their bit to shame her for declining to debate their leader on Holmes. She sounded like a somewhat peckish orc: "'E doesn't need 'is legses!"
It was all theatre, all round. They might be right about Brash's difficulty in thinking on his feet: he appeared to be in two minds on Holmes about whether we ought to have signed up for the Coalition of the Willing in Iraq, and didn't want to venture a view on the nuclear ships issue. It still probably did him good to appear. (Ironically, he probably did have more to lose by appearing irony-challenged on Havoc, although the letter from his staff saying he wouldn't do it seemed unduly sniffy.)
Regarding Iraq, this story from The Times is the most unnerving thing I've read about the region for a while:
The expanding networks led by foreign Islamic extremists are also using Iraq's porous borders to smuggle drugs into Saudi Arabia, using the proceeds to finance their operations, according to police in Karbala, the city 60 miles south of Baghdad which has this month suffered a devastating wave of bombings.
A year after the US-led coalition invaded Iraq to stamp out its alleged links to terrorism, fundamentalists are freely crossing the vast Saudi border and looting weapons from arms caches left by the former regime. "It's just God protecting the Saudi border," Colonel Karim Sultan, Karbala's police chief, told The Times. "The border is wide open. It's like a business fair, you can come any time and do your shopping."
The New Yorker's John Lee Anderson wrote brilliantly about the fall of Baghdad last year, and he's just been back.
Baghdad is a much more dangerous place than it was a year ago. A few days before the Mount Lebanon explosion, someone set off a bomb in front of a perfume shop in the same neighborhood—Al-Karrada, a predominantly Shiite section of the city. The target of the attack, who died, was the brother-in-law of Ibrahim al-Jaafari, a member of the Iraqi Governing Council. Jaafari's brother-in-law was not involved in politics, but he was presumably easier to get to than Jaafari, and killing him may have been worth it just to get a message across.
The fall of Saddam has improved the lives of many Iraqis, especially professionals such as doctors, engineers, and teachers, whose salaries have significantly increased. And the streets are clogged with traffic, which wasn't true before the war.
A great many Iraqis took advantage of the temporary suspension of import duties at the border with Jordan and bought cheap secondhand cars. The Internet, which was strictly controlled under Saddam, is available everywhere, as are a wide variety of computers, domestic appliances, and cell phones.
These life-style improvements notwithstanding, very few people venture out on the streets after dark, and almost no one I know dares drive after ten-thirty. This is because of the staggering increase in the number of rapes, murders, armed robberies, carjackings, and kidnappings.
Saddam emptied the country's prisons a few months before the war, and perhaps a hundred thousand criminals returned to the streets. Young girls are now walked to and from school by their fathers or brothers, for fear they might be snatched. Women generally dress much more modestly than they did before, wearing either baggy black abayas or helmet-like hijab head scarves.
Of course, not everywhere is as scary as Baghdad, but Iraqis' determined optimism about their future seems like a testament to their great fortitude.
Salam Pax is the Guardian's weblog editor for the week and, among others things, points us to Kurdo, the first Kurdish blog to be written from within Iraq.
Hard News readers were hugely out of sympathy with the record companies over the format-shifting issue. The most interesting comment came from Peter Payne:
I seem to remember that with the belated introduction of FM radio to NZ in the early 1980s, local music industry types campaigned against it also. This was on the basis that people would tape the superior quality audio and no longer buy LPs ... yeah right!
Actually, I think he might be right there. I'd forgotten that. There was further hilarity over on the nzradio mailing list, where a little bird listed the RIANZ council members who own and operate those sexy little iPod things. There is, of course, currently no legal way to use an iPod until the law change they're opposing comes to pass. Surely there's some mistake here?
And shouldn't there be more of a panic over Keith Stewart's wine column this week?
Joy at the Park | Mar 23, 2004 09:20
One of the joys of being a self-employed knowledge worker is that when you want to go and do something, you go and do it. So When the ninth South African wicket fell at Eden Park yesterday, Fiona and I decided we'd get down there and witness a historic victory.
There were not, as the press have been pointing out, a great many people at the park, and quite a few of those there - hello Hugh Sundae and Jeremy Wells! - were other people without proper jobs. We caught a couple of overs before lunch, then popped down to Dominion Road for a panini, returning in good time to see the deed done. I got vox-popped by Alan Perrott from the Herald, but it doesn't appear to have made the paper. Shame. I gave good quotes and everything.
Stephen Fleming's innings was a tremendous act of captaincy. Papps and Richardson had been eking out the runs - and being progressively intimidated by short-pitched bowling while they were at it.
Eventually, Richardson was out, caught with his periscope up as he just about went into the foetal position to a short one from Ntini that stayed low. It looked pretty naff.
Fleming strode out and cracked 31 runs in 11 balls, all around the wicket, to finish it and re-establish just who was boss here. Nice.
The Herald is hailing the victory this morning with an editorial headed Victory hints at greater yet to come - which, oddly enough, appears almost exactly three years after an editorial headed Time for Fleming to quit. Funny old world, innit?
But what to make of the other codes? The ones we used to refer to as "winter" sports? The Warriors showed a diabolical lack of purpose on Saturday, and we'll be lucky to get even one team in the Super 12 semis given the start we've had. I blame Don Brash.
Now, I think that the people who run the major record company branches here are a generally good bunch who seek to balance the demands of their corporate head offices with the needs of the local industry. But the current flap about a long-overdue amendment proposed for the Copyright Act is becoming ludicrous.
As the law stands, it is illegal for you to make a tape to listen to in your car, to make up a playlist on your computer, to make a party compilation on CD or to use a portable digital music player such as an iPod in accordance with the manufacturer's instructions.
In a useful December 2002 position paper, a group of MED lawyers recommended a number of changes to the Copyright Act to bring it into line with what actually happened in the modern world. Among other things, it proposed "a limited format shifting exception [to] provide certainty where the practice is already common and thought by many consumers to be legal."
Format-shifting is the lawyers' phrase for making a personal copy of music which you already own. The paper noted that copyright owners have "raised concerns about the economic loss that such an exception would cause" and quite effectively dismissed them:
A music consumer would be unlikely to purchase the same work in a variety of different formats. Thus, if the user owns a legitimately purchased copy of a sound recording, the ability to format shift would not appear to substitute a legitimate sale from which the copyright owner would receive an economic benefit.
In other words, you're not going to buy another copy of your new favourite album on cassette so you can play it in your car - in fact, you're not likely to even be able to. The anachronism becomes more acute every time a new iPod is sold in New Zealand. You can't yet use the iTunes Music Store from New Zealand. And yet you can't legally copy your favourite songs onto your iPod. You can't, apparently, use the damn thing at all. It's just that everybody does.
Even the promise that major-label music will eventually be made available for purchase online - which per se involves copying - doesn't fix the problem. It makes no sense whatsoever for the purchaser of a $35 CD to have more limited rights to make personal use of music than someone who has spent $1.50 on a single track. An unreasonable law invites only contempt.
And yet the industry is fighting tooth and nail against any move towards a law that could reasonably be observed by consumers, on the basis that it would "open the floodgates" to unrestricted copying. Terence O'Neill Joyce demands in today's Dom Post to know: "How on earth are we going to stop things like copycat kiosks springing up around the country?" Exactly the same way as you do now, Terence. By using the law.
The irony is, of course, that some of the same people campaigning against change themselves own and operate iPods. And one or two of them have privately admitted to me that the law is an ass. They would all do well to, just for a moment, think of themselves as consumers of music.
Ill wind? | Mar 22, 2004 10:48
Looks like it's going to be another interesting round of polls. The odd thing about last night's One News Colmar Brunton poll, which saw National jump to 49% support, is that apart from the obvious - running a stark 10 points behind its rival - it's not all bad news for Labour.
Labour's party standing rose one point to 39%, suggesting that it might reasonably consider the high 30s as its bedrock support. Helen Clark's support as preferred Prime Minister was up a point to 35% too, with Don Brash narrowing the gap to six points. Approval of government performance was steady at 44%, although disapproval was up a couple of points to 42%.
And perhaps most significantly, there appears to be huge public support - 69% in favour and 24% against - for the proposed inquiry into the Treaty of Waitangi, which National has spurned. This is so going to happen now, with knobs, bells and whistles for yo' mama. Labour will be quietly delighted to have found some way through this issue that meets the public sentiment.
Less happy will be the small parties, all of which are now polling below the 5% MMP threshold, with the most prodigious fall from grace being that of New Zealand First, whose fairweather supporters continue to lurch back over to National. It's less clear what has happened to the Greens' support: down three points to only 2%. I have wondered all along how wedded the party's support base really was to its Treaty and foreshore policies, but this seems a prodigious collapse.
The political wisdom, of course, is that at election time - still 18 months away - the small parties enjoy greater exposure and their support rises. Then question then, of course, is whose support will give up those votes - will Winston's traditional grumpy vote be as flighty and volatile as ever? You can be sure that Labour won't be preening around talking about running things on its own this time. Coalition-building will be the buzzword from here on in.
Another oddity of the current climate is how much talk there is about something everyone seems to agree is trivial - Don Brash's historical marital infidelity. Diana Wichtel considered it in the Weekend Herald, as did Gordon McLauchlan, while John Roughan returned to the serious business of Maori-Pakeha relations. In the Sunday Star Times, Rosemary McLeod concluded a lengthy story on adultery by deciding that marital fidelity hasn't gone out of fashion altogether, and Finlay Macdonald declared that affairs of the heart weren't the right character issue for New Zealanders to be voting on.
The SST even devoted an editorial brief to it, concluding … well, it was hard to say, actually, although, apparently "Nobody thought the National leader had it in him". Now, I'm tolerant of most forms of human interaction, especially, but not exclusively, where they involve love and commitment (unlike National's deputy leader Gerry Brownlee, I'm not inclined to lump in same-sex civil unions with child prostitution). I'm in a long-term non-married, monogamous, child-bearing, home-and-business-owning relationship, but I wouldn't be judgemental of those who do stray - people do things for all kinds of reasons.
But the idea that Brash would become more attractive to voters because he deceived his wife (and, it would appear, the readers of North and South, who got a different account of events than his ex gave to the papers last week) seems a bit odd.
Anyway, it might be another bad-hair week for the Bush administration, with former White House security advisor Richard Clarke among those due to spill this week to the 9/11 special panel. Just to make it stick, Clarke is appearing on 60 minutes to say things like this:
"Frankly," he said, "I find it outrageous that the president is running for re-election on the grounds that he's done such great things about terrorism. He ignored it. He ignored terrorism for months, when maybe we could have done something to stop 9/11. Maybe. We'll never know.
"I think he's done a terrible job on the war against terrorism.
And then this:
"Rumsfeld was saying that we needed to bomb Iraq," Clarke said. "And we all said ... no, no. Al-Qaeda is in Afghanistan. We need to bomb Afghanistan. And Rumsfeld said there aren't any good targets in Afghanistan. And there are lots of good targets in Iraq. I said, 'Well, there are lots of good targets in lots of places, but Iraq had nothing to do with it.
"Initially, I thought when he said, 'There aren't enough targets in-- in Afghanistan,' I thought he was joking.
"I think they wanted to believe that there was a connection, but the CIA was sitting there, the FBI was sitting there, I was sitting there saying we've looked at this issue for years. For years we've looked and there's just no connection."
What was that about the War on Terror again?
Petrolheads | Mar 19, 2004 11:47
There are many ironies to the Auckland City Council's mad-headed bid to stage the V8 Supercar Championship Series around Victoria Park: not the least of them that a council that has aggressively pursued any kind of noise made in pursuit of culture is apparently happy to subject its residents to something much louder, whether they like it or not.
The noise is not, of course, the craziest thing about the idea - that honour goes to the implications for Auckland's roading network. For those of you not familiar with the lay of the land, the proposed route cuts off the main access route between the city and the North Shore, leaving just the already jam-packed viaduct over the park and one single-lane off-ramp in Herne Bay.
By cutting off Nelson Street from the TVNZ complex down, it will also screw up access to downtown from both the Southern and Northwestern motorways. The route will be completely closed for three days, including a Friday, and there will be "disruption" while the course is being set up for an additional 17 days. It's unclear exactly how spectators from the Shore would get to the race. On boats, according to council events committee chairman Scott Milnes …
Among other concerns: the council agreed without reference to ratepayers to lodge a joint bid with its prospective partner IMG which would involve the council making an interest-free loan to IMG that would cost the council a net $900,000 over seven years. Hang on. IMG is the largest sports marketing and management company in the world, with 66 offices in 38 countries. Why on earth would Auckland ratepayers be giving it an interest-free loan? [Local readers may recall previous issues with CitRat bunnies on the council offering interest-free loans during the Britomart I saga.]
In an impressive bit of rationalisation, Milnes also said that there was no point in consulting with the local community until such time as the council had successfully bid to host the event. By which time, of course, the council will be locked into a seven-year contract …
The council has been so busy totting up the prospective financial benefits of staging the race that it doesn't appear to have had time to properly count the costs. I'm all in favour of events - the city needs them - but Auckland seems to be so badly suited to seven years of V8 racing that I really, really hope the CitRats are saved from themselves and somebody else (Wellington would seem to fit) gets it instead.
There have been two interesting polls to mark the first anniversary of the launching of the Iraq war. The first, conducted for the BBC's Newsnight programme, is a testament to the optimism and pragmatism of the Iraqi people. Their respect for the coalition forces is negligible, but they are realistic enough to recognise that they need troops there for now to maintain security. As many Iraqis consider the invasion a "humiliation" as a "liberation" and, worryingly, nearly one in five believes it is acceptable to attack coalition forces. It's a quite complex picture worth studying in full.
The other poll is the latest from the Pew surveys, which indicates that the American leadership's progressive loss of hearts and minds virtually everywhere else in the world is continuing. Worringly, support for the war on terror appears to be ebbing everywhere. Unsurprisingly, the US is the only country surveyed in which a majority of people expresses a favourable view of President Bush. Again, worth reading in full.
Meanwhile, something we can all laugh about: the US media's panic reaction on "decency" issues since Janet Jackson's breast moment. It seems that just about everything live and unpredictable, from basketball games to kids' request shows, will soon be slapped with a delay. Doesn't there seem to you to be something pathetic - something un-American - for there to be some sweaty standards guy hanging there on the button, day in day out, in case something happens that might displease those in charge?
Network dramas have begun to self-censor. With FCC fines raised 18-fold overnight, attorneys are now warning broadcasters to excise any content they even suspect might be risky.
Thank goodness for George Carlin. As John Gorman says, it's getting pretty stupid out there.
Still, it's not all one-way. The Oklahoma legislature is has passed a bill exempting breastfeeding women from public indecency laws. But only if they do it in a a "discreet and modest way" …
Party off | Mar 18, 2004 12:06
So the Expert Advisory Committee on Drugs meets tomorrow to decide the fate of the legal party pills trade. But if the comments in today's Herald story on the subject are any indication, it would be a little difficult to have great confidence in its expertise.
There are some odd and surprising things in this story. Take this paragraph:
They contain benzylpiperazine and trifluromethylphenylpiperazine, substances derived from pepper plants which can also be produced synthetically, says Dr Bob Boyd, the chairman of the advisory committee and the Food Standards Australia-New Zealand Authority chief medical adviser. Pills with these pepper-derived chemicals have been illegal in the United States since 2002 and are illegal in two Australian states
Dr Boyd doesn't know what he's talking about. For one, the chemicals in the party pills are not derived from pepper plants, although it suits the vendors to imply that is the case. And they are not even the same thing, produced synthetically. Piperazines do not occur naturally.
Then there's this:
The head of the police national drug intelligence bureau, Detective Inspector Gary Knowles, a member of the committee, has been quoted as saying that it is of "grave concern to me that these pills are being labelled as a natural high, when people taking them have no way of really knowing what's in them and what they could do to them".
No, they're not "natural", or "herbal" (or as Nandor once notoriously ventured "similar to having some 'V' or a decent coffee"). But to call for them to be outlawed on the basis that their contents are uncertain is spectacularly counterintuitive.
The whole point of legitimate sale is that people can be relatively sure of what they're buying - far more so than is the case with any illicit chemical, especially bootleg amphetamines, which might be tainted with a number of chemicals - from red phosphorous to paint thinner - which have actually caused fatal poisonings.
All the pills, whatever the brand, contain either BZP or a mixture of BZP and TFMPP (the formulations differ in the additional vitamins and amino acids they contain, at least one includes a diuretic aimed at avoiding the very slim risk of over-hydrating - see below) . The former produce wakefulness and elevated mood, the latter a more sensual effect. They both induce a hangover, especially as dosage increases.
BZP isn't especially good for you: the major risk being to those with a problem with high blood pressure (the same applies, of course, to tobacco and even caffeine). But there is only one recorded death ever, anywhere related to its use - and that was a dry-drowning (the victim drank 10 litres of water in a short period) associated with ecstasy use.
The problems reported in this country seem to relate almost exclusively to overdose, and, possibly, gross overdose. The problem is that the overdosers you might legislate to protect are the very users who would simply switch to an illicit alternative. If they don't listen to advice on dosage, they're hardly likely to heed the law on the other stuff. And you can't legislate to stop people wanting to stay up late.
These products are clearly very popular (two million doses sold in the four years they've been on the market, apparently), so much so that if they were intrinsically very dangerous we'd expect to have heard of more problems. And it's worth considering the circumstances of the Dunedin case: five young people, having deliberately overdosed, get themselves to hospital where they explain that they feel terrible. When was the last time you heard of an alcohol overdose victim doing that? Would you rather have your 18-year-old daughter crashed out on alcopops at a party, or fretting because she can't get to sleep?
Of course, it's not that simple. People will, for example, drink alcohol with them - although any danger there would seem to rest more with a misguided feeling that you can drink more alcohol than usual, rather than a toxic reaction.
Options short of a complete ban might include mandating the full disclosure of all ingredients, better public health advice and prevention of after-hours operations like Wellington's Cosmic Corner, which encourage repeat dosage at a time when the judgement of users is not all it might be. A ban on marketing is another potential option. They should be removed from corner dairies immediately. I suspect that the authorities will take the easy path of simply banning these substances, but one would hope they first consider the real consequences of doing so. Among them, that organised crime will be delighted with a ban.
Anyway, Salon has an excellent backgrounder on the Spanish election result, which makes clear the extraordinary lengths the Aznar government went to manipulate public perceptions of the bombing. Governments that lie in such a way deserve to be thrown out. And Jonathan Freedland has a good column in the Guardian.
After Aznar | Mar 16, 2004 10:09
The right-wing blogosphere is up in arms about the Spanish election result. With Aznar's rejection by an electorate that apparently swung against him in the days following last week's murderous bombings, they believe, the terrorists have won.
This is certainly a matter of concern; particularly with elections coming up this year in two of the "coalition" countries, Australia and the US. But the response has been obtuse, patronising and, at times, unpleasant.
Instapundit, the one most of them cop their opinions from, was beside himself yesterday, declaring: "It never ends. Unless, that is, you stand up to it," and quoting sundry fellow travellers declaring that this just goes to show that multilateralism is an even worse idea than we all thought. That we just can't trust those lily-livered Europeans. Or anyone, presumably.
He carries on by wagging the finger at Spain's new Prime Minister, Zapatero.
Let's hope that the "tough line" expectation is met, in deeds, not just words. Zapatero is promising a tough line: ("'My most immediate priority is to beat all forms of terrorism,' said Zapatero, asking for a minute's silence in honour of the 200 people killed in the bombings on four packed commuter trains.") Let's hope.
And on it goes: always with the bluster. "Stand up to it", "kill them" "get tough", as if bluster (profoundly idle, in the case of those expressing it) were the only acceptable response. But the Spaniards did not respond to the horror that way. They took to the streets with dignity and in their millions. To patronise them from across the Atlantic because of what they did next, as individuals - and that's what's really being said - isn't very smart.
Conservative columnist David Frum - the former Bush speechwriter who devised the fateful phrase "Axis of Evil" - wrote that "terrorism has won a mighty victory in Spain", and then got really insulting.
People are not always strong. Sometimes they indulge false hopes that by lying low, truckling, appeasing, they can avoid danger and strife. ... And this is what seems to have happened in Spain.
Those Spanish cowards, eh? Frum and his chums presumably wish to apologise for inadvertently giving the impression last week that Spaniards were brave and noble people who filled their streets to declare "No Pasaran!" to the terrorists. Always knew brave America couldn't trust Europeans. Or, well, anyone really …
But when we've finished with this self-serving tosh, did some Spaniards perhaps wonder why they had 1300 troops risking their lives in Iraq when, as it presently appears, some people came out of Morocco, thousands of kilometres away from Iraq, and did this? Did they perceive that Aznar's government had tried to manipulate public perception by blaming ETA when some evidence pointed to Islamic terror? Did events (as it appears) draw out those who might not otherwise have voted, tipping the result? Were people supposed to line up for more of the same? To return a governmwent in which they had lost confidence, to flee to authority, purely to teach nameless terrorists a lesson?
But where the bombings may have done for Aznar's Popular Party is simply in restoring Iraq, terror and the coalition of the willing to the national agenda. According to last year's Pew survey, Spaniards were actually less keen than Germans or Italians on a foreign policy that closely aligned their country with the US. Sixty two per cent, many more than voted for the Socialists, believed that Western Europe should pursue "a more independent relationship with the US on diplomatic and security affairs."
On a similar theme, Calpundit advances the theory that the Aznar foreign policy wasn't going to survive without Aznar (who was retiring after the election) anyway.
The Christian Science Monitor has a very useful roundup of reports from Spain and reactions from elsewhere. Worth reading.
Meanwhile, in Iraq, The Nation has the disturbing story of al-Jazeera journalists being picked up and imprisoned by occupying forces, and Riverbend tells the (apocryphal?) story of yet another arbitrary detention. And Bush's approval rating amongst the families of US military personnel has fallen to 36%. Cowards too, presumably ...
Back home, what on earth has happened to Don Brash? I used to credit him with some decency, but a leap in the polls appears to have brought out a streak of arrogance - either that, or he's being coached into it. Whatever, his letter to the Dean of Christchurch Cathedral, Peter Beck, declining an invitation to speak, following Helen Clark's recent speech there, seemed unnecessarily aggressive, his comment about Clark to a third party ("atheist … indifferent to the institution of marriage …unholy alliance") unduly personal. He fully deserved to get tagged for lecturing other people about marriage having broken up his own first marriage by having an affair. Ironically, as the Herald pointed out, Brash has also declared his lack of belief in a conventional God. He would have been on sure ground criticising Clark for having a crack at a judge last week. But this? What is he thinking?
Anyway, there won't be a blog from me tomorrow morning because I'll be getting things together for my return to current affairs radio. I begin hosting the Wednesday Wire, 12-2pm on 95bFM tomorrow, and, having made the decision, I'm quite excited about. First guest up will be Roger Kerr of the Business Roundtable, who I trust will be sufficiently "pro-business" for the thought police. I will continue with Mediawatch and I don't expect the two to clash at all. You can listen to 95bFM online here.
Defending democracy | Mar 15, 2004 11:49
The stories of the so-called Guantanamo Five - the five Britons returned to their home country after two years at Camp X-Ray last week - haven't been big news here, but they make for extremely disturbing reading.
Britain's Daily Mirror paid £65,000 for the exclusive story of one of the men, Jamal al-Harith (nee Ronnie Fiddler) who said he had originally been arrested and imprisoned by the Taliban, as a suspected British spy, near the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. Ironically, he was then taken by US forces and accused of being a terrorist. His stories from Guantanamo involve beatings, forced injections, arbitrary punishment and some strange psychological torture, all conducted outside international law.
But it is a series of interviews in The Observer with three of the men - covering events in Afghanistan that seem truly shocking. They claim, among other things, that as many as 35,000 men and boys were rounded up and put under the control of the Northern Alliance after the major fighting ceased in Afghanistan - and that more than 30,000 of those taken were killed or died of thirst, heat or existing injuries. Even if they are exaggerating - say, doubling the numbers - it is hard to conceive of this as anything other than mass murder.
The most horrifying part of the story involves the men being packed into sealed metal containers, where they began to die of heat exhaustion:
"When I woke up I didn't know where I was. I'd lost consciousness at the side of the container, but when I woke up I was in the middle - lying on top of dead bodies, breathing the stench of their blood and urine.
"They'd herded maybe 300 of us into each container, the type you get on ordinary lorries, packed in so tightly our knees were against our chests, and almost immediately we started to suffocate. We lived because someone made holes with a machine gun, though they were shooting low and still more died from the bullets. When we got out, about 20 in each container were still alive."
All these men deny supporting either terrorist organisations or the Taliban. Presumably, if there had been any evidence against them, they would not have been released, or would have been re-arrested by British police. They were accused, on the flimsiest of evidence, including the false confessions of others, of having close links to al-Qaeda. But even after their alibis were verified, they continued to be held by the US. As they point out, they were lucky.
The Bush administration has flouted all international norms in holding and abusing these men, and the belief, even were it true, that they are "enemy combatants" is no excuse for that. You cannot defend democratic principles by denying them to others.
Meanwhile, around 10,000 men and boys (as young as 11) remain, uncharged but in detention in Iraq. The manner of their capture appears to have largely been arbitrary. Teachers, who by the nature of their job were obliged to join the Ba'ath party, appear to have been particularly popular targets for detention.
The response of the Spanish people to last week's murderous bomb attacks has been inspiring. They have peacefully taken to the streets, in their millions, and said, no. They have also seen fit to remove the centre-right Popular Party, which offered Spain's backing for war in Iraq, against clear public opinion.
And just one more thing: Hugh Sundae asked Helen Clark this morning whether the government would be stumping up the $4 billion for the Eastern Transport Corridor, on top of the $6.5 billion already budgeted for other projects. Her answer: highly unlikely. It is a long way down the list of priorities. So Mayor Banks' fond declaration that the taxpayer would wade in and pay for his project appears to be worthless. It is increasingly unclear just who will pay. Forgive me if I can't help but regard it as a fantasy.
PS: If you didn't catch Pat Snedden's speech on Public Address last week - and lots of people appear to have been moved by it - you can still read it here.
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