David Bain, finally?

 

David Bain has been granted $925,000 by the government, not because they accept the court’s finding of not guilty and therefore agree he deserves compensation for being falsely locked up, but because they want his legal team to go away.

Not good enough.

David Bain is not important here. Respect for justice from the minister in charge of the system dispensing it should be. As I argued before…

The justice system is the best means humans have produced to determine the guilt or otherwise of someone accused of a crime – and it’s a whole lot better the a medieval ordeal by fire.
    The role of a court hearing held within the justice system is to decide on a defendant’s guilt.
    A court hearing reviewing a previous court hearing -- carried out as a properly constituted part of the process of the NZ justice system – overturned previous court hearings and found David Bain not guilty of the murder of his family and released him.
    Whatever you or I or the justice minister feel about that decision, the properly constituted court found him not guilty, and had him released.
    Seems to me now that there are only two responsible choices for the new minister considering compensation for what the judicial system determined was Bain’s wrongful imprisonment.
    She should either accept the decision of the justice system, which is what the justice system is for, and compensate him.
    Or, she should openly declare that the court’s decision is so unsafe it is prima facie evidence the justice system is broken.
    Those are the only two possible responsible actions. Either compensate the man, or accept the system is so lack-lustre that the decisions of its courts can no longer be trusted.
    Shopping around again for yet another extra-judicial legal opinion however, in the hope that this time the opinion might agree with the minister’s, suggests even the minister knows the justice system is broken but is too dishonest to admit it openly.
    Which just brings the NZ injustice system –and the irresponsible ministers who have made it that -- into further disrepute.

The justice minister has neither accepted the decision nor conceded her injustice system is broken. Her attitude deserves disrepute.

.

David Bain

It’s actually not complicated.

A retired Australian judge has just issued an opinion on David Bain’s guilt or innocence without the benefit of an actual trial. This makes his opinion about Bain’s innocence no more relevant than you and I.

And whatever else you and I might think about it (and your opinion may well be the same as mine), NZ’s legal system as it’s properly constituted (i.e., without backdoor reports by carefully-selected judges) belatedly found him not guilty of the crime, and therefore locked up wrongly.

And because he was locked up wrongly, he naturally does deserve compensation from the justice system for the injustice.

That is only justice.

So either pay him compensation, Minister, or say out loud that you think the justice system is flawed.

I dare you.

(In other words, my opinion hasn’t changed one bit since this time last year.)

Justice is broken: David Bain edition

The justice system is the best means humans have produced to determine the guilt or otherwise of someone accused of a crime – and it’s a whole lot better the a medieval ordeal by fire.

The role of a court hearing held within the justice system is to decide on a defendant’s guilt.

A court hearing reviewing a previous court hearing -- carried out as a properly constituted part of the process of the NZ justice system – overturned previous court hearings and found David Bain not guilty of the murder of his family and released him.

Whatever you or I or the justice minister feel about that decision, the properly constituted court found him not guilty, and had him released.

Seems to me now that there are only two responsible choices for the new minister considering compensation for what the judicial system determined was Bain’s wrongful imprisonment.

She should either accept the decision of the justice system, which is what the justice system is for, and compensate him.

Or, she should openly declare that the court’s decision is so unsafe it is prima facie evidence the justice system is broken.

Those are the only two possible responsible actions. Either compensate the man, or accept the system is so lack-lustre that the decisions of its courts can no longer be trusted.

Shopping around again for yet another extra-judicial legal opinion however, in the hope that this time the opinion might agree with the minister’s, suggests even the minister knows the justice system is broken but is too dishonest to admit it openly.

Which just brings the NZ injustice system –and the irresponsible ministers who have made it that -- into further disrepute.

What do David Bain and Kevin Rudd have in common?

So, a lot happened overnight, while I was otherwise engaged.

The wildest day ever ended at Wimbledon with favourites knocked out, honest journeymen injured on slippery grass and a spate of retirements right in the midst of games. Events never seen before in  London SW17.

One of the wildest days in recent memory ended in Canberra with the ALP shooting itself in the foot while stabbing itself in the back.¹ And Gillard went, bewailing her fate as a woman (“infamy, infamy, every misogynist had it in for me”) but gratifyingly just in time for everyone to switch over to Origin—a game where the enemy comes in from the front.

And back here at home? While Len Brown was probably out celebrating the National Party conceding him the election², it seems everyone else was glued to TV3 watching another wild theory about the Bain murders. A wild theory based on everyone having forgotten all that Robin Bain would have had to do to kill his family and yet be found clean and neat³ with just two dark lines on his thumb to show for it, right next to a rifle magazine in the most unlikely position possible.⁴

Danyl’s suggestion that debate about the case reminds him of the story of  The Umbrella Man is a good one.

So a lot happened.

Meanwhile, over in South Africa, a man who ended an apartheid state without bloodshed is slipping away as peacefully as the transition he inspired. The world was a better place for his existence.

So, in answer to my headline what do David Bain and Kevin Rudd have in common apart from everyone wanting to talk about them today?

Kevin Rudd wants compensation from voters for the wrong done to him (in his mind) by Julia Gillard, in the form of another long kick at a job he’s already been evicted from. And David Bain wants compensation from taxpayers for the wrong done to him by the courts in having found him guilty several times before releasing him.

Does either deserve it?⁵

UPDATE: Brendan O'Neill reckons the remarkable Rudd/Gillard bitch-fight tells a bigger story about the death of Labourism.

The deposing of Gillard by the substanceless, personality-free Rudd should worry us all, for it suggests that the managerial wing of modern politics, with its grey, autocue-reading, principle-dodging spouters of bland platitudes, is truly in the ascendant. They're now even launching coups…
    Anyone who cares to look closely at what has happened … might see more than a story of two Labor politicians at loggerheads; they might also see that the entire project of Labourism is now gasping for breath, dying slowly, finished off by the loss of purpose and growth of bitchiness in these old parties of the working man.

1. Yes, in the absence of anything more intelligent to say myself, I pinched the line from Barclay Anstiss. Thanks Barclay.
2. Not a U-turn but a loop, says Brownlee. And yes, this line was pinched from Tim Selwyn.
3. Summarised at The Dim Post: “I’ve always thought that David Bain was guilty – mostly because the defence counter-factual in which Robin Bain killed his family, took off all his blood-stained clothes, put them in the wash, put on some different clothes then committed suicide – didn’t really make any sense…”  Not to mention the contortions Robin would have to pull to shoot himself in the back of the head with a rifle.
4. Best summarised by Tim Selwyn: “Problem is the same photo that shows the correspondence does so as if it were posed for the purpose, as if it were staged by someone especially to demonstrate the marks go with the magazine clip. The magazine is on edge about a centimetre from the fingers of the hand with the marks outward… A clip sits on edge and on carpet only 1cm away from the hand of an adult male who has fallen dead to the floor (from shooting himself). Wouldn't the thud jolt the clip over, esp. on carpet? The chances of that happening like that in the photo are so remote. In the scenario I paint the planted clip is pressed into his hand by David and stood on edge to complete the story as a sure alibi…”
5. Whatever your view of David’s guilt or innocence or taste in woolly jumpers, a jury finally found him innocent not guilty—and the way justice is supposed to work after that decision is that compensation for the injustice committed by being wrongly locked up is then paid. Justice wouldn’t be served if it wasn’t. 
But there is nothing in justice that Kevin deserves more than a decent kick in his arse sending him out the door he came in. I expect Australian voters will give that to him swiftly, and deservedly.

Judith Collins is talking bullshit

It’s reported that former local tax lawyer Judith Collins reckons the internationally-respected former Canadian Supreme Court judge’s report on compensation for David Bain is wrong on law, contains assumptions based on incorrect facts, and "lacked a robustness of reasoning used to justify its conclusions.”

I say that’s bullshit.

I say the reason she won’t make Justice Binnie’s report public is because it will be patently obvious everything she says about it is bullshit.

I say the reason she’s not taken the report's recommendation to grant compensation—the only reason—is nothing to do with Justice Binney’s alleged errors in law, and everything to do with the public’s overwhelmingly negative reaction to David Bain getting compensation.

She’s a politician. She couldn’t care less about the law. But she does care about the public.

But the public should get over themselves. The public, who overwhelmingly mistrust David Bain, should realise nonetheless that a jury in our highest court of law found him not guilty after thirteen years in prison for a(nother) case the police bungled, and he’s entitled to compensation for wrongful imprisonment.

And she should say that.

And she should stop impugning someone who I have no doubt knows the law vastly better than she does.

Bain compo

Like it or not—and many of us don’t—but David Bain was found not guilty of murder in his long-delayed retrial.

Not guilty. Not innocent, no, because courts can’t determine that, but not guilty. That was the jury’s verdict: not guilty of murder.

And imperfect as it is, the court system we have is still the best we have to determine guilt in criminal cases—and the jury on the case heard far more of the evidence than we did, who had to rely on a headline-hunting media for our soundbites.

So given his years in prison, given the verdict, given what seems to be the verdict of an independent judge brought over from Canada to assess the evidence on a civil standard of proof—which seems to be that David Bain is “innocent on the balance of probabilities” and therefore deserves compensation from the justice system for the system having failed him—why then shouldn’t he get it?

That’s what justice would be, wouldn’t it?

Robin Bain

I didn’t see last night’s doco on Robin Bain—the one that has David Bain’s lawyer “absolutely disgusted”—so I can’t really comment about what was said, but if you did see it what did you think?

The only comment I’d make is that the Bain murders are a rare example of a “binary” case, one in which the guilty party can only be one of either Party X or Party Y, and therefore proving the guilt or innocence of one has a reciprocal impact on the other.

The power of suggestion [updated]

Apparently if you play Donny Osmond’s ‘Puppy Love’ backwards it sounds like he’s singing ‘Kill for the Devil, sinners,’ if you play the Beatles’ song 'I’m So Tired’ backwards it tells you Paul is dead.  And if you play Led Zeppelin’s ‘Stairway to Heaven’ backwards (which, let’s be fair, could hardly be worse than playing it forwards), it is supposed to say “Here's to my sweet Satan. The one whose little path would make me sad, whose power is Satan. He'll give those with him 666. There was a little toolshed where he made us suffer, sad Satan."  Or something like that.

Some people, frankly, will hear something in anything.

Which brings us to the lastest attempt to hear something out of nothing: the David Bain “heavy breathing” tape.  I have it on good authority from some of the world’s most highly-paid experts (i.e., this bloke down the pub told me) that if you play it backwards it sounds like he’s quoting the words to the Macarena.  Or is it the Birdy Song.  Either way, this bloke swears it’s true.

Which, to be blunt, all makes about as much sense as the theory that he’s saying “I shot the prick”  in between hyperventilating.  The idea is about as dumb as the decision to exclude it from the trial.

UPDATE: Leighton Smith was asking on his show this morning a question that’s occurred to many people: How come the defence was allowed to present frank speculation about Robin Bain, about Laniet Bain, about her supposed sex life their supposed relationship, but the prosecution appears to have had so much of their evidence ruled out – evidence such as this tape, for example, and the evidence of school mates that a young David had devised a plan to use his paper round as an alibi.

I think the difference here is the rule on “hearsay evidence,” which is that assertions about what someone else might have said are generally inadmissible for the very good reason that what they report as being said was not presented as evidence was not made under oath, and is unable to be cross examined.  Witnesses therefore are enjoined to deliver evidence only on what they know directly – as a High Court judge once explained it to a witness, “Is it something you saw, or something that you’ve read.” If it’s neither, then it’s out.

It’s on this basis presumably that what David was supposed to have said when he was a youngster is ruled inadmissible, since it’s a direct example of hearsay – and may be just one reason that David was reluctant to go into the witness box himself, since this is the sort of thing the prosecution could question.

Now, much of the speculation presented by David Bain’s defence team falls into this category too – most of it being evidence of what Laniet told friends, or “work colleagues,” or dairy owners, or people she passed in the street.  But since Laniet is what’s called “an unavailable witness” – one whose testimony can’t be presented since they’re not around to answer questions – then the stuff she’s supposed to have said falls under the “hearsay exception” and can therefore be presented to the court.

It’s said that dead men tell no tales. But it could also be said that any defence lawyer worth his salt can easily fix that.

"Say it ain't so, Joe"

Am I the only one who thinks there's something wrong with Joe Karam dunning you and I for more than one-third of a million dollars for the last two years?

Am I the only one who understood that Karam had put up his own money to back David Bain, instead of taking ours to pay himself? Turns out however I was completely mistaken.

Mr Karam has just lost several hundred points in my estimation.

David Bain jokes

• So David gets out and is asked what he plans to do first - "Go to Kentucky Fried," says he, "I could murder a family pack."
• Apparently Joe has got a job lined up for David. As a photographer, specialising in family shots.
• David Bain should play for the All Blacks in the vacant number ten spot.  He’d the leave the other first-five for dead.
• What do David Bain & Dick Hubbard have in common? They’re both cereal killers.
• Joe Karam got awfully scared when David Bain said he was starting to see him as a father figure.

Add your own in the comments.  :-)

Would you rather hug a lawyer?

Jonathan Krebs of the Law Society is bleating this morning about two former jurors on the Bain case who hugged David Bain after the trial, and then joined Team Bain’s after-match party back at the Bain HQ.

This is "a bad look"  says Mr Krebs. Asked to explain what’s actually wrong with it, Mr Krebs could only say that it is "all about appearances" (and I feel obliged to point out that much the same might be said about lawyers’ honesty).

But in fact this is not “all about appearances” at all.  Whatever Mr Krebs or I or anyone else thinks about the jury's decision, they had all the evidence in front of them to make their decision and we did not. 

And once that decision is made their job is done. At that point they become former jurors and are free to do whatever they like, with whomever they like, at whatever time they like – without having to ask Mr Krebs whether or not it looks okay to him.

And if it really were all about appearances, then I feel obliged to point out that this is the same Law Society that decided after Clint Rickards was sacked by the police that if he was unfit to be a policeman then that he was at least of sufficiently "good character" to pay his dues to the Law Society. The same Law Society continually demanding that taxpayers be dunned even even more to make up their members’ already vastly inflated legal aid bills.

Not a good look at all, Mr Krebs. 

UPDATE:  Obviously short of a headline, Labour’s Lianne Dalziel joins the Krebs chorus about the honesty or otherwise of former jurors.

Ironic, really, since the appearance of the Labour Party’s honesty over both the Pledge Card and the Electoral Finance Act – over more specifically, the obvious lack thereof – was what eventually brought the last Labour Government down.  Ms Dalziel would be well advised to pay attention to what does matter, not what doesn’t.

David Bain [updated]

I haven‘t commented on this case up until now since I was out of the country when the first trial took place, so didn’t know enough to talk about it.  Now that the jury is out this time, however, I think I’ve seen enough to make a call (based, to be fair, only on media reports of the trial, never a completely reliable thing to do).

One thing about this case is that the usual rules of “beyond reasonable doubt” don’t apply.  This is a unique situation in which one of two people did the job, either David or Robin, and one of those two is dead.  Which means that if you prove one did or didn’t do it, then the reverse holds true for the other.  No other possibility exists.

And for any jury to believe that it was Robin who killed the family, there’s a list a mile long of things you would need to believe that simply defy reality – and fortunately for me, David Farrar has done the hard work summed them all up beautifully.

To me it looks as conclusive as it’s possible to be.  It can’t have been Robin, not unless you can believe thirty-five impossible things before breakfast.  Which means it must have been  the other guy. David.

I think Joe Karam has wasted his money, and his devotion.  And I think, despite the munted police evidence, that the juries got it right before.

UPDATE: In relation to the question of beyond reasonable doubt, Justice Panckhurst’s summing up is worth noting.

    Was it Robin or was it David? . . .
    It can in fact be refined in this way: is it proved beyond reasonable doubt that David killed all five members of his family, including Robin, [or to put it another way, has] the Crown proven beyond all reasonable doubt that this was not a case of suicide?

“There is simply no place for emotion,” said Panckhurst, referring to the frankly odd summing of Bain’s defence counsel, who invited jurors to bring in a ‘not guilty’ verdict on the basis that David is “a nice guy” and must have found it hard to sit through all this evidence again.  In the end they have to answer four questions:

• Did Robin Bain commit suicide?  My answer: It’s not in any way realistic.
• Whose bloody footprints were found in the home? My answer: Inconclusive.
• Who typed the message: “Sorry, you are the only one who deserved to stay.” My answer: It could only have been the bloke who thought he was.
• And who had the violent fight with Stephen? My answer: Well, only one of the two had injuries consistent with such a fight.

So in short, was it Robin or was it David?  That is the basic question.  And my answer: David.

"Nothing to hide"?

Tame Iti returns home to the plaudits of a fawning media and announces " I have nothing to hide."

Fine then, let's take him at his word -- except we can't. It would mean ignoring the efforts of his lawyers, his co-defendants and his supporters to shut down and suppress the evidence of what he was up to with his 100 trainees in those six camps with all those munitions.

If he truly has nothing to hide, then instead of patsy interviews with braindead interviewers eager for nothing more than a pat on the head and a signed photo with their hero -- the same sort of braindead fawning these same analysts did with David Bain -- let's see him instead agreeing to the release of all the evidence that's been compiled of his and his co-defendants' actions over the last two years.

Then we might be able to agree he has nothing to hide. Until then, then you know his word is worth as little as John Minto's.

UPDATE: Speaking of Iti's lawyers and milking the gullible, as I was, Annette Sykes, "the woman who clapped and cheered when the World Trade Center was attacked and destroyed is now running to an international body that treats North Korea, New Zealand, Syria, Sweden and Burma as moral equivalents." Notes Liberty Scott in 'The Immoral Plead to the Amoral,'

Sykes (who for some inexplicable reason can still command some respect in the media) is going to go to the United Nations Working Group on Indigenous Peoples. A body which has as its full time, Western taxpayer funded job, to criticise Western governments for treatment of Indigenous peoples, whilst treating the corrupt ridden tinpot quasi-democracies of Africa as being great models of decolonised empowerment. You know, the type of body that throws stones at New Zealand but ignores Zimbabwe, because (after all) Robert Mugabe is indigenous...

How do you spell 'opportunism'?

Justice seen to be done

Excellent decision to retry David Bain. Justice to those five people who were brutally murdered would not be served in any other way.

And I support the idea of showing the trial on live TV so we at least have the opportunity of seeing justice done, even if most of us won't be able to watch every minute as it happens -- with TV On Demand, if we're of a mind to, we'll be able to catch up on the internet with whatever we missed .

Which suggests something: Given one of the important principles of justice is that it should not only be be done but be seen to be done, why not put all trials on the net, leaving each session archived for perhaps a week or more?

That would help open up the justice system, wouldn't it?

A weekend ramble through religion, history, illiteracy and Wikipedia... and more. Enjoy!

Another Saturday morning ramble through links, sites and titbits that caught my eye over the last week as I waded through the interweb.

• The US Center for Public Policy Research is turning Greenpeace's insistence on climate skeptic organisations revealing their funding back on Greenpeace, "challenging Greenpeace and its affiliates to disclose the sources and amounts of its 2006 donations exceeding $50,000," and revealing some of those donors.
  

  Greenpeace - perhaps based on its own behavior - assumes that donations influence the stands groups such as ours take. They do not. So that the public can judge for themselves, we're challenging Greenpeace to complete transparency through disclosure of major gifts... If Greenpeace expects its call for public disclosure of grants of other groups to be taken seriously, they should lead by example. If not, they're the real "denial industry."

  If Greenpeace agrees, says The Center, then they will do the same. See Think Tank Challenges Greenpeace to Meet Transparency Standards.
  
  
• John Stossel makes a point, which as usual is a point worth making:

  Whenever someone is hurt in an accident, people say, "There ought to be a law!" Politicians rush to oblige them and then take credit for all the lives they saved. But shouldn't they also accept blame for the lives lost because of those laws?

  Lives lost? Yes. A joint study by the Brookings Institution and American Enterprise Institute found that government regulations that are supposed to save lives actually end up killing more people. Why? Because safety laws almost always have unintended bad consequences.

  See John Stossel: Hazardous Safety Regulation.
  
  
• Hate Crime. Ed Cline has the real oil on so called "hate crimes," and here's the nub:

  The first and most crucial thing to grasp about what can be deemed a “hate crime” is that it is, essentially, a political crime.

  He's right you know. Read Ed Cline: The Genesis of Thought Crime.
  
  
• And read Ed too on Jamestown -- the first successful American colonial outpost -- and Why Jamestown Matters,.a letter correcting a politically correct account of the colony that appeared in a national newspaper. As you'll see, Ed's account has relevance both to New Zealand colonisation, and to recent arguments about politics and religion. Historian Eric Daniels fleshes out Ed's response in a more detailed exposition of the Jamestown colony. Jamestown, he says, was The Birthplace of America's Distinctive, Secular Ideal.
  
  
• David Bain is the new David Beckham, or so you would think from all the media coverage he's received this week. When will he be on Dancing With the Stars? Notes the Kiwi Pundit,

  The 'miscarriage of justice' referred to in the [Privy Council] decision is not that the verdict was likely to be wrong. The point is that justice requires that the defendant be convicted by a jury that has seen all the evidence. The Bain jury didn't see all the evidence, therefore there is a miscarriage of justice. There is no inference that the jury would have, or should have, decided the case differently based on the new evidence.

  It's too easy to forget that David Bain is still a suspect -- one of only two suspects in a multiple murder -- and as such he needs a proper trial to either clear his name or determine his guilt. Guilt in this case should be easier to prove than in many other cases, since there are only two suspects, and for the other one to have "done it," then you have to be able to show that he subsequently suicided -- a difficult job by all accounts. Meanwhile, Falufulu Fisi reminds us of the leading evidence against David Bain in this comment.
  
  
• Increasing illiteracy is not unique to the products of NZ's factory schools -- it's a worldwide failure due to the signal failure of a leading literacy theory, the stupid "whole language" method of not teaching reading -- a method that "teaches children to memorize and guess at words, using pictures and other clues, instead of using phonics skills to sound them out." It's worth reminding ourselves that "the experts" responsible for this abject failure still rule the roost at the world's teachers' colleges, pumping out new teachers to teach illiteracy to new generations of students every year.
  
  Martha Brown names names in this article, pointing out some of those responsible for both introducing and maintaining a method of teaching that has ensured that in New Zealand a staggering 66.4 percent of Mäori were below the minimum level of “ability to understand and use information from text,”and an equally tragic 41.6 percent of non-Mäori, and "that the United States, like Haiti, is among the seven out of 39 Western Hemisphere nations entering the third millennium with a literacy rate below 80 percent."
  
  Why do we face this elementary problem? Read Brown's Poor Reading-Instruction Methods Keep Many Students Illiterate to begin finding out, and to see what part "NZ's own" Marie Clay has to play in the whole scam. Have a look at this local page for a brief introduction to the difference between whole word, whole language and phonics, and read some of Patrick Goff's articles at this index to get some of idea of how phonics really does works for reading. Brown's conclusion is worth quoting in full. Explaining why Marie Clay's Reading Recovery programme still continues despite both research and practical experience of failure that discredits it, she concludes:

  Writing separately, [literacy researchers] Groff and Lyon both speak of poor teacher preparation and (in Lyon's words) of "the tendency for educational practices and policies to be guided by philosophical and ideological factors rather than scientific factors." Groff notes educators' ignorance and distrust of "what experimental research actually indicates about reading instruction."
  
  He adds, "There has been no easy or regular accommodation for grievances from the courts for the malpractice in reading instruction that has taken place. The monopoly over teacher education that is now held by university departments of education has allowed them to train reading teachers wrongly with impunity. Ideology about reading teaching thrives in this hothouse of irrationality."

  Burning down the teachers' colleges is long overdue.
  

• While Syrian and Iranian sponsored terrorists are blowing up people in Iraq and Israel, Condoleeza Rice looked the other way and went to the Middle East to talk to those who train, arm and supply the terrorists. What did she think she was doing? According to Dr. Yaron Brook, executive director of the Ayn Rand Institute,

  Talking will not convince the Iranian theocrats to give up their support for terrorism and their feverish quest for nuclear weapons. Quite to the contrary, any such 'dialogue' will only demonstrate America's weakness and encourage the Iranians to sponsor even more terrorism, especially against Americans in Iraq.

  He's right, isn't he. When one side is saying "Death to America!" and America responds by "seeking dialogue," aren't you just inviting more of the same? See Yaron Brook: Iran Sponsors Terrorism, US Seeks Dialogue.

• In fact, when it comes to the threat of Islamic Totalitarianism, as John Lewis says There is No Substitute For Victory. Hear Lewis make the argument in a controversial presentation at George Mason University: a link page is here. (And here, just to remind you, is his fantastic article on the same topic.)
  
  
• But surely the threat of Islamic Totalitarianism isn't a real threat, I hear some of you say? This isn't a real war? Well, perhaps you need to understand a different way to declare war. In the modern world with only one major superpower, there is more than one way to declare war. James Joyner lays out in detail the reality of so-called Fourth Generation War, a new kind of war in which we are presently engaged, and which is as difficult to fight as it is for many people to identify.
  

  We now face a foe that cannot be defeated with a few guided missiles, smart bombs, or shock and awe. We’re not simply fighting “terror” or “terrorists,” but, as Barnett puts it, “those who want to isolate large chunks of humanity.” These people are, quite literally, enemies of freedom and of its underlying values. The global economy, its rules, and its attendant culture threaten their way of life, and they will stop at nothing to cut themselves off from the reach of Western values.

  The good news is that this enemy doesn’t have the ability that the Soviet Union had to wipe out the planet. The bad news is that this enemy may be harder to defeat. And remember: the Cold War lasted more than forty years.

• But isn't it easier to just put your head in the sand about the threat and just blame others for imagined vices? Well, maybe. It's certainly something that's going around. In fact, there's even a leading psychiatrist who's identified it as a syndrome. University of Michigan psychiatrist Pat Santy suggests that the phenomenon of "displacement" is at work.

  Displacement is the separation of an emotion from its real object and its redirection toward someone or something that is less offensive or threatening in order to avoid having to deal directly with what is frightening or threatening...
  [
  This pyschological manouever disguises obvious self-delusion or self-deception]: It is, for example, behind most of the more vicious attacks on President Bush for anything he does; and for anything he doesn't do. He is behind every evil like some modern-day Moriarity, a criminal and godlike genius who is simultaneously a moron and incompetent. We are not talking about a mere dislike of the President; nor is this simply "politics as usual". Rather, it is an unreasoning and implacable, visceral hatred of George W. Bush for the sin of existing.
  

  Visit "Dr Sanity" here: More Displacement, Less Reality. [Hat tip Orson at SOLO]
  
  
• Meanwhile, Lubos Motl at The Reference Frame has news of what looks to be a fabulous book by Czech president Vaclav Klaus, Blue , Not Green Planet -- including a great interview and reaction from climatologists. Klaus views the environmental movement and specifically the global warming hysteria as a Green "revolt of mobs." From the interview (translated from the Czech):

  Could you please tell our readers who obviously haven't yet read your book why you wrote it?
  Because I am very worried about some people's far-reaching attempts to reconstruct the world and revolutionize the behavior of the society. These people use some highly questionable data and hypotheses to deduce what is happening today and what will be happening in the world. And I view it as a threat for freedom... this issue has the capacity to mobilize larger groups of people: that's why I say that environmentalists are able to initiate a "revolt of the mobs".
  
  This topic is likeable and understandable for most people. Catastrophes are always sold well and the extrapolated catastrophicity is now even higher than it used to be in the context of Marx. I don't think that the goal of these people is to reduce freedom deliberately. When I am going to talk to Al Gore, he will deny it. But I insist that what he proposes does suppress freedom. And it is sad he is not thinking about the consequences.
  

• I've just discovered and enjoyed a 2005 speech from Alan Greenspan, a quick walk through American economic history of the last two-hundred years, concluding with hs view of the health and resilience of the contemporary economy, which is changed fundamentally he argues by the ability of crucially important price signals to be disseminated so rapidly by your new information systems, and by a new flexibility in the economic system. It's worth quoting a substantial part of it since it explains the value of economic freedom so succinctly:
  

  Whether by intention or by happenstance, many, if not most, governments in recent decades have been relying more and more on the forces of the marketplace and reducing their intervention in market outcomes. We appear to be revisiting Adam Smith's notion that the more flexible an economy, the greater its ability to self-correct after inevitable, often unanticipated disturbances. That greater tendency toward self-correction has made the cyclical stability of the economy less dependent on the actions of macroeconomic policymakers, whose responses often have come too late or have been misguided.

  It is important to remember that most adjustment of a market imbalance is well under way before the imbalance becomes widely identified as a problem. Individual prices, exchange rates, and interest rates, adjust incrementally in real time to restore balance. In contrast, administrative or policy actions that await clear evidence of imbalance are of necessity late.

  Being able to rely on markets to do the heavy lifting of adjustment is an exceptionally valuable policy asset. The impressive performance of the U.S. economy over the past couple of decades, despite shocks that in the past would have surely produced marked economic contraction, offers the clearest evidence of the benefits of increased market flexibility....
  Most recently, the flexibility of our market-driven economy has allowed us, thus far, to weather reasonably well the steep rise in spot and futures prices for oil and natural gas that we have experienced over the past two years. The consequence has been a far more stable economy.

  Flexibility is most readily achieved by fostering an environment of maximum competition. A key element in creating this environment is flexible labor markets. Many working people, regrettably, equate labor market flexibility with job insecurity.

  Despite that perception, flexible labor policies appear to promote job creation, not destroy it...Although the business cycle has not disappeared, flexibility has made the economy more resilient to shocks and more stable overall during the past couple of decades.

  Read the whole speech, starting here: Alan Greenspan speech, Oct 12, 2005.
  
  
• As many readers will know, Alan Greenspan was an enthusiastic admirer of Ayn Rand. Which links nicely to this post at the Leitmotif blog, answering this question: Why is Ayn Rand Respected More in India?

  Ayn Rand is rather well-known in India, though of course not as widely known as she is in the US; however, it can be argued that Rand is certainly viewed more respectfully and with admiration here in India than in the US.

  The reasons for that are probably not quite straightforward: it’s not just because Rand’s reputation in India has escaped the lies, mischaracterizations, and attacks of the intellectual and academic elite in the US...
  

  And one might say the same of the lies, mischaracterisations, and attacks of the intellectual and academic elite here in New Zealand. One might, but one wouldn't.

  In my opinion, the main reason for this is that the Indian people who read her actually understand the truth of her arguments, for the most part. Because Indians live in the collectivist, pseudo-statist, tradition-bound, mystic society that India is, the readers grasp the validity of Rand’s ferocious criticisms of these states and agree with her description of life under these conditions.

• Speaking of Rand, if you've never seen her sparkling appearances on the Phil Donahue Show in the last decade of her life, then you should. YouTube has them, starting here: Ayn Rand - Donahue Interview (Part 1).
  
  
• "Powdergate." Like a zombie emerging from our dark pre-1984 past, the recent trial of business executives for selling milk powder -- a product over which the government had decreed that the Dairy Board should hold a monopoly -- serves as a reminder that the gains and economic freedoms so well addressed in Alan Greenspan's speech above should not be taken for granted. Our Muldoonist past is not so far away.
  

• What about them Scientologists, huh? Yeah, they're fruit cakes for sure, but Alexander Cockburn argues they're no more nuts than are most religious fruitcakes.

  There’s probably more psychic oppression in every ten seconds of the life of the Roman Catholic Church (or — let’s be ecumenical — the Mormons, Lutherans, Baptists and Methodists) than in the career of the Scientologists since L. Ron Hubbard got them launched. Last time I heard, the Vatican (which has to OK every deal) was settling sex abuse cases against priests in the U.S. at about $1 million per.

  He points to the dangers of the political demonisation of religionists. (Think Exclusive Brethren.) See Alexander Cockburn: Scientologists Take Offense in Reich Land. As always, this blog will continue to personally demonise religionists insead.
  

• "Why is it okay to make fun of Christians but not Muslims?" asks Jim Woods. Well, he says for a start, "every adult that talks to their imaginary friends are either a prime candidate to be the object of humor, or institutionalized if they are a direct physical danger to themselves or others. "

  This includes Muslims, Christians, and all other devoted followers of the Invisible Sky Daddy. Fortunately, it generally isn’t necessary to make the effort to make up jokes about them as they do that themselves when they open their mouths.

  Making fun of people who actually respond verbally to your ribbing is always far more fun than making fun of people who blow up your transport.

  In addition, especially outside of this country, Muslims live in cultures where Aristotle is now completely absent. To find something similar in this country you would have to go to a Protestant church or a university faculty lounge. No wonder they act illogically, they don’t even know that logic was invented. Humor would go right over their heads; non-contradiction, what is that?

• The danger of mixing politics and religion is highlighted over at Thrutch, with a post on the worrying rise of religiopolitics in Europe, and news of a limited atheist fight back.

  Passive indifference to faith has left Europe's churches mostly empty. But debate over religion is more intense and strident than it has been in many decades. Religion is re-emerging as a big issue in part because of anxiety over Europe's growing and restive Muslim populations and a fear that faith is reasserting itself in politics and public policy...
  
  ..."The battle over religion is restarting. It is going to be a difficult one," says Terry Sanderson, president of Britain's National Secular Society... The most potent force driving activist atheism is concern that Islam, Europe's fastest-growing religion, is jeopardizing the principles of the Enlightenment -- and emboldening other religions to raise their voices, too, and re-fight old battles... Such faith-based agitation, says [University of London professor Anthony] Grayling, threatens a "dark ages for free enquiry and free speech."

  See Theocracy Watch: The Re-emergence of Religion in Europe.
  
  
• Some of you might have seen the recent issue of Time magazine which baldly stated as fact many myths about global warming that your average tin foil hat wearer would reject as too outlandish, including for example the bald claim about so-called "climate refugees," people -- "about 25 million" -- displaced by global warming-induced disasters, "such as those in the Papua New Guinean Carteret Islands, who have been forced to relocate due to a rising ocean level." Trouble is, that's just not true. It's just as untrue as a similar claim in Al Bore's film about "climate refugees" flooding into NZ (have you seen them?). The problem in the Pacific, such as it is, is not rising sea levels but sinking islands.
  
  
• And finally, if surgery was like Wikipedia, here's how little surgery would get done. Hilarious!.
  

Enjoy your weekend!

A necessary obsession with justice

I wasn't in New Zealand when the Bain family was killed or when David Bain was convicted, and I know too little of the details of the case to form an opinion myself on that verdict ... but with last night's decision from the Privy Council, it's a strong reminder that if you do want to get justice in New Zealand that you need to be as single-minded as a Joe Karam -- a single-mindedness that goes almost beyond reason and into an obsession -- an obsession that last night was triumphantly vindicated!

But is it a justice system worthy of the name when it takes such an obsession -- an obsession reportedly costing former All Black Joe Karam (right) in the order of $4-5 million to receive it on Bain's behalf -- the same sort of single-minded devotion that drove someone like Karam to be the outstanding All Black full back that he was? As Karam said this morning, his dozen years of single-minded devotion to justice is not something he'd recommend to others, but without others like Karam with obsessions like these, where and how and when do people like David Bain get a fair hearing?

And what does this decision from the Privy Councillors say about the Clark Government's decision to abandon our link with the Privy Council and introduce instead a local Supreme Court, a Court on which now sits two members of the Court of Appeal whose decision the Privy Council so derisorily dismissed. Speaking then I said,

the Privy Council isn't just a medieval relic leftover from the dusty days when common law still protected people's rights (though it is that) it also gives New Zealanders who are eager for justice access to some of the world's best legal minds. Further, having the Privy Council as our supreme court means there is a clear separation of powers between New Zealand's legislators and its supreme court - in this case 12,500km of ocean worth of separation!

... But surely, I hear you cry, [government]-appointed judges wouldn't just be tame poodles, rolling over whenever called to? Well, they don't have to. Despite being overrun with lawyers in shiny suits, the talent pool from which judges are chosen in New Zealand is remarkably small - everybody knows everybody else, and legislators and judiciary are often separated by no more than a restaurant table and a bottle of chardonnay.

It's not too late too reopen that debate.

UPDATE: Stephen Franks launches a salvo in that debate. "The Privy Council decision," he says, "is a catastrophic affirmation of the size of our loss when we abandoned our right to neutral international referees."

Joe Karam called this morning for the resignation of the two Supreme Court judges who refused an appeal while on the Court of Appeal. That kind of erosion of confidence in the quality of justice in New Zealand was inevitable from the moment the “indigenisers”, led by Hon Margaret Wilson, got their hands on the tiller...

The right of appeal to neutral outsiders was a priceless assurance of integrity for our otherwise unhealthily small hot house legal cabal...

Our legal profession thinks its privileges are justified by their championing of the the rule of law, of the rights of the citizen against the state. Some individual lawyers do that... [b]ut to me as an MP their advocacy as a ‘profession’ was marked by cowardly group think, often self interested, and suffusing political correctness.

This last Privy Council case is a sad measure of our exposure to that group think.

Read Franks' full piece here.