Public Opinion

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February 28, 2003

North Korea

I have been waiting for this to come out of Canberra. I am suprised that it has taken Canberra so long to echo the Washington script: that we need a defensive shield to counter the threat of missiles launched by North Korea. It is becoming rather predictable now: neo-con Washington speaks, neo-con Canberra echoes. Canberra has learnt its subservient role well.

For those who are sceptical about the nature of this threat to Australia, see this piece in the Washington Post called N. Korea Reactivates Nuclear Reactor. It argues that:

"While it would take years for the reactor at Yongbyon to produce enough spent fuel to provide a significant source of weapons-grade plutonium, North Korea's action is another indication that the Pyongyang government is pushing its nuclear program to increase pressure on the Bush administration to agree to hold bilateral security talks."

This is a Fortress Australia. Paranoid neo-cons scanning the world looking for threats; a scared population inside; the federal government playing the role of big daddy promise to keep us secure and safe; and increasingly alarmed nation-states in the region about the police actions launched by Australia as the Deputy Sheriff of the US.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 10:09 AM | Comments (0)

Unilateralism

This is a good essay by Tony Judt on American hegemony and power and the unilateralism in American foreign policy ( Link courtesy of The Agonist).

I introduce the essay as a counter to the new script of the White House. This script says that they are Wilsonian idealists at heart and their foregn policy core is to bring freedom, democracy and civilization to the rest of the world. The script of bringing democracy through war and military occupation appears to be accepted by Ken Parish in his Bush promises democratic Iraq post.

One countertone says Arabs in the Middle East, don't need to be civilized by the US as they are civilized; and they are fighting their governments to create a vibrant civil society themselves. In contrast, the countertone of Judt's article is a reminder of the unilateralist creed of the Bush administration and its supporters. This strategy instrument states that:

'We know who we are, and we know what we want. Foreign policy is about national interests. National interests are served by the exercise of power. Power is about arms and the will to use them, and we have both.'

The Washington Post columnist, Charles Krauthammer has articulated the new unilateralism:

'...we now have an administration willing to assert American freedom of action and the primacy of American national interests. Rather than contain American power within a vast web of constraining international agreements, the new unilateralism seeks to strengthen American power and unashamedly deploy it on behalf of self-defined global ends...[It involves] Intervening abroad, not to "nation-build" where there is no nation to be built but to protect vital interests.'

Tony Judt says that under unilateralism:

'Powell notwithstanding, the realist (some might say cynical) consensus in the administration was that since America's allies are irrelevant to its military calculations and have no political choice but to tag along, nothing is gained by consulting them in advance or taking their sensitivities into consideration.'

The strategy is one of "going it alone," and paying a minimum of attention to the wishes and interests of others. What does that mean in terms of the emerging post-Iraq strategy for the Midldle East. One account is given by Sean Paul at The Agonist. It states that:

'The goal of being in Iraq is to compel nations in the region to act in our favor. It puts pressure on the Saudi's, the Iranians, and the Syrians because we are there, patrolling the neighborhood.'

The Judt essay is a review of Joseph S. Nye Jr, The Paradox of American Power: Why The World's Only Superpower Can't Go It Alone. Nye is not embarrassed by the reality of American supremacy and he has written a strong critique of unilateralism in American foreign. Nye is also implicitly skeptical of "realism," the approach to international relations that disparages a priori concern with rights, transnational laws, or moral objectives and confines diplomacy to the advance of American interests by all appropriate means.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 12:57 AM | Comments (4) | TrackBack

February 27, 2003

War roundup

I have become a little tired of the war with Iraq and I wanted a break from it for a moment. But war is more or less the main game in town. So I have returned to it with a bit of a roundup.

For those who want some information on the Iraq's nuclear weapons program this piece by KENNETH M. POLLACK may be useful. It says that Iraq may be further down the road than is realised given the track record of underestimating the capacity of the Iraqi regime to push the program along and his ability to hide what is going on. Basically the article argues that Saddam must be toppled because he cannot be deterred from using weapons of mass destruction (WMD). It concludes with this:

"Given Saddam Hussein's current behavior, his track record, his aspirations and his terrifying beliefs about the utility of nuclear weapons, it would be reckless for us to assume that he can be deterred. Yes, we must weigh the costs of a war with Iraq today, but on the other side of the balance we must place the cost of a war with a nuclear-armed Iraq tomorrow."

I do not endorse this position because it pretty much reduces everything down to the individual psychology of a tyrant--Saddam is suicidal. Preventive war is necessary because Saddam is a madman. For a defense of the War option by the Washington Post in reponse to critical letters to the editorsaying tha the paper has been beating the drums of war, see this editorial.

For a view that counters the claim that Saddam Hussein is reckless, ruthless and not fully rational, and that he can be deterred, see this. It offers an structural account in terms of regional conflict, balance of power within the hegemony of Iran in the Middle East and strategic considerations of national security in the face of a history of Iranian expansionism. It argues for a strategy of deterrence and vigilant containment, which is the position of public opinion.

For an account of the almost one third of the British Parliament rejecting Tony Blair's war now position due to lack of evidence, see this acount of the rebel vote in The Guardian. This recalls the Australian Senate passing a vote of no confidence in the Howard Government.

And President Bush has given a big speech about a post-Hussein Iraq. In it he reinvents himself as a neo-Wilsonian committed to the cosmopolitan imperative to spread liberty and democracy in the world and an advocate of a truly democratic Palestinian state. Underneth this sits the view that the US position on war represents "the just demands of the civilized world" and that the history of the civilized world will now be written by the US.

And in Australia? Well Ken Parish has a go at lefty cliches on war in his it is our business post. It is based on Alan Dupont's review of the federal Government's latest strategic review of defence. This indicates the "seminal shift in thinking about the nature and immediacy of the threats to Australia's security, and foreshadows significant changes to defence strategy and capabilities."

However, Ken gives no arguments against the "cliched" view that Australian should not go to war with Iraq because our national interest is not threatened by Iraq. Nor do I see any persuasive argument in Alan Dupont's article. What I see is a general statement against Fortress Australia in which the defence forces are structured to defend the Australia against a conventional military attack from a regional state.

[The Review] "firmly repudiates the notion that Australia's security interests are determined by geography. International terrorism and WMD proliferation are sober reminders that security, like everything else, has become globalised. Since our national interests and liberal democratic values are demonstrably threatened by the tyranny of armed despots and transnational terrorist organisations, logic dictates that our responses ought not be proscribed by distance or bound by arbitrarily drawn lines on a map."

How is Australia's national interests and liberal democratic values demonstrably threatened by the tyranny of armed despot in Iraq? Where is the debunking of the left's cliches?

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 11:10 PM | Comments (2)

Parliament as family-friendly workplace?

So the Victorian Parliament throws out a women MP---Kirstie Marshall---because she was breast-feeding during 11-day-old Charlotte prior to question time. As an MP Kirstie Marshall is expected to be in the Legislative Assembly during question time. Its part of the job.

Will the Brack's Labor Government have the courage to modernize the institution of Parliament? Or will it allow itself to be crushed by the weight of tradition that recoils from female embodiment? Or will it draw a line in the sand and defend the indefensible in the name of reason----that 11-day-old Charlotte was "a stranger in the house" and that's not allowed when parliament is sitting.

Parliament can hardly be called a family-friendly workplace.

Does the Victorian Parliament have parenting rooms for nursing mothers and fathers looking after children?

I was told a story about the masculine culture of Old Parliament House in Canberra: it never even had toilet facilities for women. The fancy new one built as icon of Australian modernity does not have child-care facilities.

This does indicate that the Howard Government's third term agenda involving work/family matters has some limitations. Apparently John Howard presented to a cabinet strategy meeting possible new directions the Government could take to support mothers in balancing their work and family responsibilities.

Do these initiatives to encourage family-friendly workplace policies include child care facilities at Parliament House?

Me thinks such a reform is a big test for political reason. Or will it close off the prospect of conflict and tension between the ethos and principles of private and public life? Will it avoid dealing with a practical crisis of what are seen as two unpleasant alternatives.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 12:35 PM | Comments (6)

February 26, 2003

Great Barrier Reef

This report does not seem to have been picked up by the print media, or if it was it was not included in the online articles. It says that soil erosion and runoff of fertilisers and chemicals from coastal agriculture pose a significant threat to the Great Barrier Reef (GBR), particularly the inner reefs.

"Water quality in rivers entering the Great Barrier Reef (GBR) lagoon has declined because of diffuse pollutants, especially sediments, nutrients and chemicals from cropping and grazing lands in relatively small areas of the adjacent catchments. This diffuse pollution threatens inshore reefs and associated ecosystems."

The pastoralists and sugar farmers have great difficulty in acknowledging the consequences of their bad farming practices despite the science that is available. According to the greens (WWF what is needed to tackle the pollution are:

--An immediate and permanent moratorium of land clearing in the Great Barrier Reef catchment;

Urgent legislative protection for coastal freshwater wetlands;

All agricultural activities to be regulated under the Queensland Environment Protection Act 1994;

Fertilizer and pesticide use to be licensed;

Legislative discharge limits for acid sulphate soil to be set;

A major Great Barrier Reef catchment riparian revegetation and wetland restoration program that is properly funded.

In contras the economists at the Productivity Commission recommend voluntary changes to current land use practices. They really do have problems building market externalities such as the ongoing destruction of the Great Barrier Reef into agricultural production.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 9:40 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Carr Labor Government

What can reformist state Labor Governments in a modern, competitive reformed Australia that emerged out of the Hawke-Keating years? What can they do in a globalised world apart from keeping things ticking over?

One answer is provided by the Carr Government in NSW. The style is one of cautiously working within mainstream consensus, modernisation of public infrastructure, being tough on law and order and substantive public works. It is a style of whatever it takes to retain political power. Harmony resides in the centre because economics and justice have been reconciled. The disfiguring of social life is found in the outer suburbs, which are marked by ethnic conflict that requires police action to contain the disorder.

There is a promise to put the regional economy on a more ecologoically sustainable footing, but the Carr Government has backed away from putting in place two strategic natural resource management strategies with respect to the clearing of native vegetation and returning water to the state's rivers. So no cohesive statewide direction towards sustainability is discernable as the state election approaches. See here for an environmental eye on the state election.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 2:30 PM | Comments (0)

SA Government: Reform Shy

Well here we have the reason for why there will be little in the way of social democratic or ecological reforms in SA. The Rann Government is sending signals to the ratings agencies and international financial markets the "disciplined budget management will be the norm"; that it pursue a "tight fiscal policy" and this will be achieved through a "reduction of SA debt burden" and "cuts to spending" .
The Rann Government is reform and policy shy rather than being gradualist, cautious unimaginative and unremarkable.

And the Liberal Party continues to bled and provide a weak opposition to the lack of shift towards basing the economy on robust principles of sustainability. The Carr Labor Government in NSW is much further ahead in this respect. So we will see more in the way of a populist media strategy.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 12:51 PM | Comments (0)

A competitive market place?

There is an interesting paragraph in the Crikey.com newsletter of 21 Feb that is built around this article in The Age. The paragraph exposes the myth of Australia as the land of free market capitalism. It says:

"Is there another country which has so many dominant players in different
industries? Rupert has 70 per cent of the newspaper market, Westfield has 40 per cent of shopping centres, Telstra makes 90 per cent of the telco industry profits, the Big Four banks now dominate the entire financial services industry, Qantas has 70 per cent of the domestic aviation market and even Foster's and Lion Nathan have a duopoly over the beer industry."

I thought that the whole point of the neo-liberal mode of governance was to create competitive marketplace nor the concentration of economic power? Competition brings efficiency. Remember that mantra from the boosters? A competitive marketplace that had broken free from past constaints was to be the upside of globalization in that competition would deliver economic growth.

So where is the competition? Where are the bright, free-market economists calling for the bust up of the big companies in the name of competition between small, freewheeling, non-bureaucratic companies that maximize creativity and linked together in decentralised networks? Was not the creative, innovative entrepreneur who started off in his garage with nothing but his talents and self-confidence the big answer to poverty and inequality?

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 8:02 AM | Comments (3)

February 25, 2003

Political Metaphors

There is a good post at Lying Media Bastards on the use of political metaphor, such as 'appeasement', in political discourse. Its a great read. Oh, the appeasement metaphor is kicked in the nuts.

Wondered what life is like in Kabul these days? Too busy to search to find out? Then read this. (link courtesy of way down here) I hope that this is not a model for postwar Iraq.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 9:41 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

River Murray Forum

Blogging has been light today because I have been at a River Murray Forum in Old Parliament House in Adelaide. All the movers and shakers were there plus the usual clique of characters that turn up to such shows or events. I was there as an observer (in the gallery) but observers were given an opportunity to ask some questions.

The Forum was organized by the SA Government to achieve a consensus position by SA politicians on the River, which the Rann Government would take to the next CoAG meeting in October. It planned to bang the table with the communique to get some action on the 1500 gigalitres of environmental flows that the river requires for moderate health. It wanted urgent action to restore the health of the Murray, including an immediate additional flow of 500 gigalitres.

The Forum laboured passionately and mightly throughout the day. It argued about a national crisis caused by the River Murray no longer being a functioning river due to the over-allocation of water for consumptive use in the Basin. It was agreed that the restoration of any additional flow will require a substantial transfer of rights from consumptive users to the environmental uses; and that this would require a robust water entitlement and allocation system upon which a fexible water market could be built. Fervent speeches were made about co-operation, bipartisanship and resolute leadership.

What was produced was a damp communique that said very little apart from the usual motherhood statements. Though the SA Government wanted urgent action nothing was said about what SA would do as a basin partner to clawback water: all attempts to get some tough action into the document was resisted in the name of achieving consensus between the different political parties. All that the SA politicians could come up with was that SA 'would contribute to environmental flows, develop a water entitlement system for the basin and conserve water. ' Great leadership huh?

So the message that SA was sending to the basin states was that it was not willing to show leadership in terms of resolute action, that it expected the other states to make the first moves and that it is reform shy.

Great passion on the floor. Spin at the end. Consensus politics produced a document that was greeted with an embarrased silence when it was read out. 'All that work for this?', was the public feeling After a long 20-30 secs there was a few polite claps. Then a few minor adjustments, and off the pollies went for a group photo on the steps of Parliament House.

Nothing much happened. It was a talk fest. So there was little media coverage.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 5:58 PM | Comments (1)

February 24, 2003

Energy reform

There is a good story currently being put about the public policy world. The states are resisting the good reforms of the Howard Government's powerful third term agenda. One of these reforms is the establishment of a national electricity market. This is a good thing. All that matter is pushing on with the reform process in the face of reform fatique by the states. Its a familar story with new content.

Thus the Australian Financial Review in a recent editorial (20 Feb. 2003) said:

"...the federal government must secure an efficient national system of planning and regulation of the electricity grid to promote investment and competition. At the same time it must press the states to facilitate greater competition in energy at the production and retail levels."

The goal is investment and competition per se not lower prices for consumers or sustainability. The question to ask is why a national electricity market?

The AFR is in no doubt. It says:

"National planning and regulation for the electricity grid is a high priority because the present system has failed to generate adequate investment in interstate transmission. If Australia is to have a national and competitive market, there must be more investment in interstate electricity connections, and a change in the priorities of transmission investment within states."

It is just taken for granted that the private companies should do this not state governments. The job of the states is limited to boosting retail competition and improving efficiency by facilitating the reduction of costs. The state-owned utilities in NSW and Queensland should be broken down into smaller and more units. No mention of breaking down NRG, the US energy company that has a monopoly in South Australia, into smaller and more competitive units.

And the political fallout of the state creating a market for private companies to make a profit? Well, says the AFR, "the political dangers of these reforms are obvious". But there is no other way. The national economy requires it.

This is politics in the service of the free markets. Who said neo-liberalism was dead. The Rann Government is SA is on notice. It has to tack to the right because the winds are blowing from the right. It will be judged in terms of whether it does what the market requires:--- increasing the competitiveness of the Australian economy, not reducing social inequality or increasing ecological sustainability.

And the Rann Government will tack to the right to achieve its destination. It knows exactly where it is going. Its destination? Being re-elected in 3 years. So it will outdo the Liberals in cutting expenditure and dumping social democratic programmes to retain the confidence of the financial markets. The Labor Party under Bannon was humbled by the economic constraints imposed by the market. They have no intention of bashing their heads against the market's structural constraints. They will prove that they can outdo the Libs at their own economic game.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 10:14 PM | Comments (0)

After the War: peace in our time?

The recent moral justification for war, advanced by those on behalf of the Coalition of the willing, is to liberate the Iraqi people from oppression by a tyranical regime. This justiifcation has been added onto Iraq possessing weapons of mass destruction and posing a threat to world peace. It means that the talk of endgame and regime change implies a liberated Iraq and the flowering of liberal democracy in the Middle East.

Is scepticism warranted? Is this a rosy scenario of peace through war a siren song designed for domestic consumption in the US, the UK and Australia? Nobody wants another Vietnam yet that spectre casts a long shadow that is a key reference point that enables us to get a handle on a very complex state of affairs.

The rosy scenario has been recently defended by Ken Parish Gazing into a crystal ball. Ken writes:

"The most benign outcome... is that the US will prevail with relatively low Iraqi civilian casualties, will immediately proceed to pour in massive foreign aid and rebuild the country's infrastructure, and move purposefully towards the establishment of the rule of law and, over 5 years or so, a complete handover to an indigenous democratically elected government....I believe the prognosis for the spread of liberal democratic freedoms in the third world is very good under a triumphant US hegemon."
Ken qualifies this but leaves the scenario on the table. Some scepticism about this rosy scenario was expressed by Paul Krugman in his latest New Times column The Martial Plan. Krugman says:

"On Tuesday Ari Fleischer declared that Iraq could pay for its own reconstruction — even though experts warn that it may be years before the country's oil fields are producing at potential. Off the record, some officials have even described Iraqi oil as the "spoils of war." So there you have it. This administration does martial plans, not Marshall Plans: billions for offense, not one cent for reconstruction."

And John Quiggin in his After the war post has expressed doubts about the democratisation bit. He says that "the implied position is one of indefinite occupation until the position of a pro-US government is secure, regardless of whether it has any democratic legitimacy." On this scenario, as suggested in an article in the Washington Post Full U.S. Control Planned for Iraq the US will govern Iraq as an American protectorate for some years, possibly in terms of a military governership. Its job would be to build a government that could be relied on to protect US imperial interests in the region.

Ken acknowledges this protectorate scenario and says that it means a 5 year interim administration period, rather than "negating earlier more general commitments to long-term democratisation by senior Administration officials like Powell and Rice." However, much scepticism is warranted here. for several reasons. A bit of crystal ball gazing identifies the following problems connected with the newly-formed US empire:

Keeping the peace would be a major problem given the ethnic divisions amongst the "Iraqi people". A possible scenario is insurrections from the Kurds in the north and Shi'ites in the south as they liberate themselves from the Sunni domination of the Hussein regime Sunni domination.

This internal liberation then feds into the concerns of Turkey in relation to the Kurds (no autonomy for the Kurdish people) and Iran gaining influence over the Shi'ite dominated south. Regional instability is the scenario here.

Ken's flowering of liberal democracy diagnosis means the imposition of an alien political culture with big qualifications on the democracy bit since a democratic constitution with a Shi'ite majority that come under the influence of Iran----an Axis of evil enemy the US that needs to be severely contained.

Going to war with Iraq means occupation and that means a lot of US troops stationed in Iraq. There will be an impact from a US presence as an occupying power in Iraq have on the domestic politics (Saudi Arabia and Egypt) other nation-states in the Middle East and on regional stability. What would the US imperative of cheap oil from Iraq do for the economies of OPEC?

All this is far cry from a rosy scenario. And the gloomy scenario has implications for Australia. If the US gets bogged in the Middle East then wil it intervene in southeast Asia to fight the war on terror?- Or would the hard headed muscular neo-cons running US global strategy expect Australia, as the deputy sheriff of the US, to respond to the crisis of a resurgent militant Islam in this region through a re-emptive strike?

Peace through war. It sounds good. But it looks more like a house of cards built on the foundations of fear and paranoia. It means that the interests of empire, as understood by the neocon hawkes in the Bush administration, dominate those of democracy.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 9:15 AM | Comments (8) | TrackBack

February 23, 2003

Christopher Pearson gets serious

In his latest article in the Weekend Australian (Feb. 22, 2003 p. 20) called, 'Security Bordering on farce, CP addresses national security issues. He paints the following scenario:

"About 18 months ago, analysts of international terrorism began using the media to expound alarming developments. The Middle East was becoming too volatile a base for terrorist organizations and they were infiltrating host nations in southeast Asia. Terrorism expert Rohan Gunaratna in particular identified Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand and the Philippines-all countries with border security problems---and militant Islamist minorities--and described Australia as a soft target for their operations."

So we have terror at our back door. This is the core of the national interest of the national security state in terms of the war on terrorism. That much we know.

The particular threat according to CP? The Indonesian military (TNI) and its support of various terrorist groups, such as JI and Laskar Jihad in West Papua, which had a common objective of territorial expansion into Papua New Guinea.

CP fails to detail the threats to Australia or what this means for Australia's relationships with Indonesia---he explores the impact of refugees and mass immigration of West Papuans to Australia's northern shores.

All he says is that the intelligence services are keeping a close eye on things whilst the political class supports and reassures the Indonesian Government in the interests of regional stability. CP makes no mention of the impact of Australia's involvement in the Iraqi war on regional stability and the war on terror.

Let us take it further.

Surely radical Islamic opposition to US and Australia's regional interests would increase; there would be an increase in the ranks of radical Islamic groups; the sleeper cells in southeast Asia would be activated; and there would be a rise in hostile activities towards Australia. The regime of President Megawati Sukarnoputri would have difficulties in containing the emotions of ordinary moderate Muslems from boiling over. Hence regional instability is the consequence of war with Iraq.

Why is Australia in the firing line? Remember the 'you are either with us or against us' of the good and evil script. Australia is a strategic dependent on the US. Australia has identified itself as the regional Deputy Sheriff for the US, which under the Bush administration, is now acting to ensure that it retains permanent military superiority over any and all of the nations in the world. The US will act to humiliate and intimidate any nation-state considering taking on the US or threatening its global supremacy.

Its strategic policies are structured around a hard unilateralist stance; the assumption that security can only achieved through overwhelming power against adversaries; and preemptive strike --or the first use of military might against the bad guys. Australia signed up to all of this at a moment's notice. on the understanding that allies have an obligation to support unilateral US actions.

The adversaries for the US? Iran, Iraq, North Korea, Syria Libya, China and Russia. For Australia? Indonesia is a potential adversary. Just as Iraq threatens the peace and stability of the Middle East so an Islamic Indonesia threatens the peace and stability of south east Asia. Australia's strategy towards Indonesia is pre-emptive strike using military power. Since Australia does not posess the military power to it will have to rely on the US to conduct the policing operation to ensure regional law and order.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 11:35 AM | Comments (3)

February 22, 2003

Good Journalism + some realism

This is an interesting piece by Robert Fisk on the relationship between the moral strance of the academic anti-war left and ordinary people. Conservatives will enjoy it immensely.

Is there an alternative narrative for the anti-interventionist option to the current moral one implicit in the above story? We non-interventionists need one given the PM's view, that though he respected people's right to demonstrate, protesters ought to understand the consequences of their actions. John Howard says:

"I mean, we are all accountable for the actions we take and people who demonstrate and who give comfort to Saddam Hussein must understand that and must realise that it's a factor in making it much more difficult to get united world opinion on this issue, which in the end is the best guarantee there is of finding a peaceful solution if there is a peaceful solution to be found".

The alternative narrative, which has been adapted from AirStrip One, would go something like this. From the point of view of Australia's national interest, there is no evidence that Saddam is a threat to Australia. Why not? Basically he doesn't have the means of delivery to land his missiles on Sydney and Canberra. So clear evidence needs to be provided of Iragi regime intention to threaten Australia, such as supplying al-Qa'eda with chemical weapons. No such evidence has been provided by the Australian Government to date.

So, from the point of view of Australia's national interest, we have no reason to attack Iraq. Crudely speaking , Iraq is not our business since Iraq's weapons can't reach us. If the Iraqis hate their oppressive regime then it's up to them to change it--- in assocaition with the governemtns of the neighbouring nation-states. It is not up to Australia.

So why is Australia going to war so far from home and for what purpose? Thats a question you can imagine an Iranian women asking an Australian journalist in Tehran. The journalist evades answering, mumbling to himself----its not an easy question to answer. (Tony Walker, 'Iraq: The View From Iran', Australian Financial Review, subscription required, Feb. 22., 3, p.22-23.)

The only national interest reason that I can find for going to war with Iraq is to stay on side with the Americans. They have a treaty obligation to defend us in the unlikely event we are ever attacked. It is the Americans who have strategic imperial reasons in the Middle East region and the interest of empire triumphs over national sovereignty. That strategic imperial interest targets Iraq and Iran as the enemy and aims to remake an Islamic Middle East in accordance with the global interests of an imperial US.

Is staying on side of the Americans the reason for Australia going to war with Iraq. We are fearful of a future militant Islamic Indonesia and we need them to come to our aidin such an event. Indonesia is the Other. If we do not help the Americans now they will not help us tomorrow. So the Howard Government is strident in its war talk and follows the lines of the neo-conservative hawks in the Bush Administration.

Is insurance a good enough reason? Or does that smack too much of a utilitarian calculation? Or is it simply realism: that the interest of empire triumphs over national sovereignty and Australia is being dutiful and compliant.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 1:12 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

February 21, 2003

They noticed

In an earlier post Have you noticed I mentioned that the rhetoric of the 'war now' crowd had shifted. After the big demonstrations last weekend the new rhetoric of the pro-war movement in Australia is now about liberation and democracy in Iraq. Those who oppose the war are therefore supporting political repression and totalitarianism. The spectre of the Gulag and the killing fields sits just behind this rhetoric.

The new rhetoric just slipped in quietly this week.

But these guys spotted it here and here. And they nailed it good.

What has happened to that long standing bargain: the US tolerance for Arab autocracy and political repression in return for oil and stability? What ever happened to the old strategy of containment and deterrence coupled to imperial divide and rule? It worked against the old Soviet Union. How come it cannot achieve achieve a similar result with a small regional Iraqi state?

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 11:14 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

At the National Press Club

this is not good news. It says that:

"A bleak picture of the nation was released today by the national statistician, showing Australians are getting wealthier but don't care as much about the environment as they once did, with water use and energy consumption increasing dramatically, and agriculture degrading soil and water quality....

...water use rose dramatically. Consumption of Australia's freshwater resources from lakes, rivers and underground rose to 23,300 gigalitres annually in 1996-97, from 14,600 GL in 1983-84."

That makes an interesting backdrop to the speech given by Mike Rann, the Premier of SA, at the National Press Club in Adelaide on Wednesday. The event is well organized and tightly run for ABC television with all question pre-planned. The sponaneity takes place at some of the lunch tables. Tim Flannery, the Director of the SA Musem, was the other speaker.

Rann's speech was a long but well crafted. Rann stated how bad things were for the River Murray from the perspective of SA He then argued for the need for the basin states and commonwealth to treat the illhealth of the River Murray as a national crisis at CoAG by cooperating on getting major environmental flows into the river asap.

What was SA going to do to pull its weight as an equal basin partner? Well it has a River Murray Act before State Parliament to control major developemnt along the River; it has announced its intention to proceed with a 20 year water-proofing Adelaide plan to recycling storm and waste water to cut Adelaide's dependence on River Murray water; and it is putting solar panels on the roof of the SA Musem.Water restrictions for Adelaide were dismissed as a gimmick in favour of substance.

Yet there was no healthy rivers strategy for the Eastern Mt. Lofty Ranges; no farm dams policy; no intention of clawing backwater from irrigators; no solar power desalinisation plant to take Whyalla and the other cities of the Northern Spencer Gulf off River Murray water; no intention of re voluntarily reducing the cap in its territory; no incentives to green production and increase water efficiency in the wineries; no intention to flood the River Murray's wetlands with topped-up water during a wet winter; no environmental allocation for wetlands including Chowilla and the Coorong.

It was the usual fingering the eastern states to claw back the water for environmental flows. SA plans to hold a big River Murray forum next week as a leverage to establish a consensus position to take to the next CoAG meeting. Cooperation not conflcit was the key to move things forward. The River Murray had to be treated like guns---as a national imperative that required immediate and resolute action.

SA's Third Way conception of the knowledge nation and the innovative networked state does not include ecological modernization, and its neo-liberal understanding of economic growth through opportunity does not include a commitment to sustainable development.

This is a state in the icy grip of the neo-liberal past; it is paralysed in a policy sense; and it is unwilling to buck the market. It is tinkering at the edges.

An essay on water dreaming and the Enlightenment can be here

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 3:38 PM | Comments (0)

Have you noticed?

There is a lot of hot air around the war on Iraq. Most of the pro-war crowd are saying that they are fighting the good fight in attacking Iraq. And some are developing the 'good' bit by advancing humanitarian reasons of liberating an oppressed people from a totalitarian regime. And the left are saying that they are fighting the good fight by trying to block the 'war now' course of action.

If you stand back a bit from the fray and let the words that are being used as weapons fly over your head, then you notice something else going on. The neo-con hawks 'for war' position focuses on the future danger that Iraq will obtain nuclear weapons. The Hawks worry that Hussein will use WMDs or give them to terrorists in the future, to be used against the west on their home soil. Hence the pre-emptive strike.

Then a switch is pulled and a lot of the neo-criticisms of the left and the protest marchers are really more a part of a war on the left than any war on terror. It is the culture wars under another name that are being fought here. Even old time social liberals are getting in the act. The left, in the words of Paul Kelly are on a Craven trudge to a moral morass. The protesting left, says Kelly, are blind to the moral consequences of their position of non-intervention and denying the legitimacy of US-led military pre-emption to liberate Iraq. The moral consequences are the consignment of the Iraqi people to a gulag of deprivation, decline and imprisonment.

Did I miss something in the din of the battle? I cannot remember hearing Howard talk about liberating Iraq when he graced Washington with his presence. All I remember is the PM talking the language of national security and national interest.

And then we get this from Kelly:

"Who do the peace-marchers represent? They represent only themselves. One serious mistake some of them make – including some of the Christian churches – is to claim to speak for the Iraqi people. Such claims have no foundation and are quite dishonest."

I seem to recall that public opinion which had formed was based on the argument that Australia should work through the UN rather than outside it. This argument is made from the within the tradition of H. V. Evatt, Australia's UN diplomat. We should support the UN whilst being a critic of the UN, the Security Council, the power of the founding big five nations within it and the use of veto power. On Evatt's reading of history the cataclysm of World War It meant that on such matters as military intervention in the affairs of a nation state the great powers needed to act as one. Hence the importance of veto power. France is quite right to use thsi power to slow things down.

It is clear that many are more interested in discrediting/destroying the left than in prosecuting a war on terror. They reckon that this rhetorical battle needs to be won in order to facilitate the war on terror.

Have you noticed the change in tactics? Tim Dunlop has in his Starting to crack post on John Howard saying that lefty protesting citizens are giving comfort to the enemy.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 9:06 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

February 20, 2003

The third way in SA?

Parliament is back in business in South Australia for a few days. It is here today and gone tomorrow. The Rann Government is still on a honeymoon, even though it keeps on sending out bulletins warning about tough budgets and ever more cuts to public services; the Liberals are still in disarray and the Democrats nowhere to be heard.

The Rann Government's tacit claim is to further the third way-- a green wash, the knowledge society, innovative entrepreneurism in the fields of biotechnology and bioscience---and releasing us from the burdens of our history. Does it represent the renewal of the left? A way forward from the traditional right (meaning neo-liberalism) and left (social democracy Don Dunstan style) that captures the best of both?

Is the Rann Government the new centre? A southern spark of creativity that spills over into all manner of high-tech applications, communal brain trusts, and a self-confidence in its own smartness and capacity to enable innovation across a wide variety of different sectors and fields.

Thats an intoxicating vision---its that of Jane Lomax Smith who is Minister for Science and Information Economy. It is one that rejects an aping of Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane; one in which the social democratic left has learnt to love the market, is comfortable with the market and sees no need to manage capitalism in the time-honoured fashion. 'Cool new SA' is a creative response by a regional economy to the global market. It is about creating a dynamic knowledge eocnomy.

Is the image and gloss looking a bit thin; or a bit tatty and ragged with all the budget cuts, fear of the discipline of the global market and basic acceptance of neo-liberal economics. Does this mean that there is little room for manoeuvre for the Rann Government?

Do we see Thatcherism pursued by more softly softly means? Competition with compassion? Efficency and solidarity? Profit and community? Does this equate to a neo-con moral conservativism--tough on drugs, tough on law and order etc?
Do we see in the joining of economic liberalism with conservative social policies that is repelled by authoritarian populism?

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 10:40 PM | Comments (2)

The weapons of Tim Blair

Tim Blair says it himself. He hates idiots. And he laughs at them. He sees himself beset on all sides by the stupidity, ignorance and folly of his enemies. His stance of sanity in a world of madness implies that we cannot expect reason to triumph, because the idiots are in the majority. So the strategy is to show them as laughable.

The reason is a along these lines. The best that conservative pundits can do in such circumstances of being beseiged by idiots is to discomfort the left by wielding the weapons of ridicle, of deriding their excesses and sneering against their errors. So they draw their readers into a scornful alliance against the fanaticism of the left.

Like Miranda Devine Tim scoffs at his opponents, rather than making any attempt to argue with them. The weapons deployed on the crowd below are those of irony and civilized satire, whilst the tone is one of scorn. A good example can be found in Tim's latest column for The Bulletin (subscription required). Called, 'Bin of the Brave', he says this about the UN:

"Now that he has outsourced Labor's policies on terrorism to the bunch of third-world dictators, flyblown Europeans and doomed communists known collectively as the United Nations, Simon Crean has more time on his hands to complain about the unfairness of everything."

These classical, rhetorical weapons of scorn and contempt, which are designed to wound the enemy, are launched from a citadel of unimpeachable rationality and they are driven by hate.

I do think that our Tim fancies himself as a bit of a savant who can make his readers merry by provoking their laughter at the left. Gianna's post, The Bull,(thursday Feb.13) indicates that she sees through the mask of 'the savant' to the bully boy behind.

Is the latter another mask?

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 8:34 AM | Comments (5)

Miranda runs out of puff

I read Miranda Devine's latest piece this morning. It was so disappointing.

The protestors were a bunch of simpletons, whose beliefs 'require such a corrosive cocktail of ignorance and postmodern cynicism they soon rot whatever brain cells might have existed in the first place.' Our mindset is such that we 'forget Saddam understands only force and thrives on the weakness of his enemies. ' We are motivated by gut feelings, are ill informed and desire peace at any price.

The logical conclusion of such views leads to people becoming propanganda tools for the Iraqi regime.

All in all pretty feeble apart from this description of the irrational mob or the rabble---the beast stirring from its slumber; the lunatics clamouring below---the idiots is Tim Blair's term. The implication was that the conservative political elite were knowledgeable, operated in terms of reason and had a proper understanding of politics.

The lack of content was mixed up with a spicey spray about left-liberal views on refugees, the republic, reconciliation to give it the appearance of backbone--to give the appearance that Miranda is saying something. If we ignore the spice, then what is Miranda saying? Her text is little more than a dismissal of the protest marches as a sign of collective insanity.

The text is hardly the pleasant chiming of the bells--a worldly and civilizing rhetoric. Reading her text is akin to reading an amplifier, someone who falsifies experience because they boom it up so much that they distort it. It is watching a journalist self-destruct and dissolve into fragments, none of which have any authority.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 8:07 AM | Comments (6)

February 19, 2003

A Big Thanks to the war crowd

The 'lets wage war on Iraq now' crowd surged through public opinion for a moment, stopping by to drop some of their concerns in the comments box on the Anti-Democratic sentiments post. They took great exception to my gentle political teasing of the noble and witty Tim Blair, who is so witheringly scornful of the absurdities of the left.

Thanks folks. It was good of you to give up your precious time and energy in waging war against the enemies of the state to read my humble blog. You delivered far more than I ever dared hoped for -- an insight into the political unconscious of Australian conservatism. The fragments are there for all to see and interpret.

I had initially raised the idea of the conservative political unconscious in Anne Coulter & the US Gaze in relation to the US. There I mentioned the politics of blind fury as one pathway to understanding the deep drives of the lets go to war now crowd on the street. I described this politics as:

"what sits underneath the American patriotic narrative of innocence underseige by the Third World, the surge of patriotic pride and the going back to the basics. We can begin to get a grasp on this 'blind fury' if we see it as an aggressive stance of retaliation within Fortress America to the unspeakable Evil from the threatening Outside?"

I added that the politics of blind fury could also be "interpreted as a paranoiac acting out; a paranoia that refuses to include itself in the picture other than as an innocent gaze confronting a diabolical evil."

I had another go in a post on philosophy.com, called Absolute freedom and terror. By absolute freedom I meant a:

"blind fury that is willing to destroy what stands in its way. What it constructs as its opposite----that which has to be fought and destroyed ----is a negative, which is called terror. A war has to be unleashed on terror. Terror must be destroyed. What this gives birth to is a self-destroying reality. So we have a dialectic of absolute freedom and terror and this makes for dark times."

See the coments for the interesting and informed responses.

At the time I had no idea whether the political unconscious politics of blind fury applied to Australian conservatism. I did consider that it would be possible to map US and Australian political unconscious through the neo-con conservatives. But the comments to the Absolute freedom and terror post put paid to that. The political unconscious of conservatism took us outside the horizons of liberalism into something quite different.

Now I have some understanding of the political unconscious of Australian conservatism. What can I discern apart from the usual dualistic division of the world into goodies and baddies, the might is right conception of justice, and the critics of the war have no arguments on their side?

If you read the comments in theAnti-Democratic sentiments post you can see the politics of blind fury. My kind are the Other (grubby, disgusting,needing to be flushed down the toilet). The terror of the sword can be seen in the statement about my kind would have to be shot in the head if we gain any sort of power. You can see the absolute freedom in the reaction to my suggestion that the UN should act as a contraint on the power of a hegemonic US--there should be no restraint at all--that is statism and 'socialist junta of hostile foreign powers overwriting the US constitution. You can see the totalitarianism in the remark the 'your kind [inferior weaklings] are born to be slaves and lick the boots of the strongman.'

So thanks folks for allowing me to see the violence of your political unconscious. It is much appreciated as we have the beginnings of a political language, one that has yet to articulate its concerns in the language of rebellion, sedition and treason.

It is one that fails to understand that the lefty leaders/speakers, such as Pilger and Brown are sufficiently skilled in oratory and rhetoric to win over the people marching against the war. Are these persuasive speakers now seen as the architects of rebellion?

I reckon that these folks have a big problem with my kind being allowed to speak and act the way we do in our liberal democracy. That means they have a big problem with a liberal political order per se.

Since I need to do a bit more reading to overcome my ignorance of international relations I'll do a bit of digging around in Joseph de Maistre's politics of the inquisition and report back. I promise.

Meanwhile we could have some fun reading of the US street in Francestinks.com

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 8:43 PM | Comments (9)

Deregulated Electricity: a flop

I'm off to the National Press Club to hear Premier Mike Rann (SA) and Tim Flannery on Water Conservation, Drought and the Murray so postings are light. I will post on it latter.

I did want to mention this about the creation of a national electricity market. I have mentioned how it is a flop from the SA experience. Well the Australian Financial Review ran a story on Monday (subscription required, 17 FEb. p. 71) by Conor Wynn about it being a flop in NSW.

He says:

'Regulators and politiciains have bungled the introduction of full retail competition (FRC). What's the evidence? There are fewer retailers, very little switching and limited price competition.'

He goes on to ask:

'So whats the answer? Paradoxically, prices need to rise much higher before they can fall (through competition)....But there is a nasty problem with this approach. The short-term political fallout would be huge.'

So its just not a SA problem.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 10:09 AM | Comments (2)

February 18, 2003

The boy from the Adelaide Hills

I have been wondering how Alexander Downer, the local boy from the Adelaide Hills made good as the Foreign Minster of Australia, argues for why war now. And secondly, how does he engage with the critics of the Australian Government more or less signing up to go to war with Iraq.

We can find the answers in the Foreign Minister's Statement to Parliament on Iraq on the 4 February, 2003. This is a stage for the boy from the Adelaide Hills to be eloquent orator. The speech has a particular rhetorical style as Alexander is addressing the Australian people as someone who possesses authority, high virtue (wisdom and prudence) and long experience in government. Alexander is educating us ordinary citizens and to persuade us to adopt the course of action taken by his government.

Downer poses the problem sucinctly. He says: 'There is no greater threat to our common future than the spread of nuclear weapons and their budget counterparts, chemical and biological weapons.' He then poses the key issue: 'why we must be part of the international effort to deal with this problem, and why the international community must not fail.'

Alexander understands the need to give reasons for why we need to deal with the Iraqi regime. Two are given:

1. 'that stopping Iraq, and other countries, from acquiring weapons of mass destruction is a key to ensuring our security.If we allow countries in other parts of the world to develop weapons of mass destruction, then these weapons will turn up in our own neighbourhood.If Iraq is allowed to develop weapons of mass destruction, what message does it send to countries like North Korea?'

2. 'And do we really need to consider what might happen if these weapons fell into the hands of terrorists?We know from two unnecessary wars Saddam started – against Iran and against Kuwait - that he is malevolent. And we know he remains a strong backer of terrorist organisations. Can we really sit back and accept the risk that this threat poses?'

So far that pretty much boils down to there is a risk to Australia's nation security. We cannot afford to take the risk. Why not? Where's the evidence? Trust me on that one says the boy from the Adelaide Hills. Saddam has the weapons alright and that is a very big risk.

It's a big move this 'trust me'. If we accept this then we go along with rhetoric being disconnected from truth. It is the pathway of eloquence being divorced from public reason. This is a rupture with the classical rhetorical tradition that was grounded on finding out the truth (ratio) and eloquence (eloquenta) to make us hear it.

So why war with Iraq now? Downer says that we---meaning the government-- feels pretty strongly about this issue for two reasons.

3. 'Australia and the United States share alliance commitments and obligations, and we benefit greatly from the influence we have in Washington, which enables us to help shape international approaches. Moreover, we also share common values and interests – and we value US global leadership in defending and promoting them."

And the other reason is that Saddam is guilty of trying to hide his weapons of mass destruction and that this matters to Australia.

Okay, so we feel strongly about this risk. Alexander says 'The real question today is what we – the international community – are going to do about it.'

Okay. So why war then? Why not vigilant containment? Alexander now turns to his critics. He says:

'Critics portray the situation as being a choice between giving the inspectors more time – of "giving peace a chance" - or going to war against Iraq. But this is a false distinction. More time on its own does not give peace a chance. But it will give Saddam a chance -- a chance to renege again on his obligations to the Security Council, and a chance to keep hiding his WMD capabilities, until he again can threaten us.'

Alexander builds his case against his critics further. He says that Saddam is a threat to our national security and containment will not work. Saddam will no co-operate, and he keeps playing a game of deception and contempt for the UN. Alexander reminds us of previous threats from the storehouse of history. Saddam is monster like Hitler, Mussolini and Tojo, who commit acts of barbarism at home, and aggression abroad. We have learn the lesson history we have to say no and take steps to protect the victims of barbarity.

Its not a good history lesson. Saddam is guilty of barbarism at home yes. But where is the aggression abroad in 2002/3?

Never mind, the boy from the Adelaide Hills then introduces the appeasement bit in a soft kind of way. He says that 'many – particularly on the political left – shrug and say that the murder, torture, and rape of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis – by their own rulers – should go unchecked. And they would trust Saddam not to repeat his use of chemical weapons on his own people and neighbours.'

Oh yeah. Who says that? Most agree with Alexander that Saddam is a bad guy who has oppressed and killed his own people. Its a mantra thats all. The boy from the Adelaide Hills needs to re-read his Cicero about cultivating kindly feelings so that he can exercise liberality and generosity(humanitas), reread Seneca about the need for mercey and compassion in public life.(clementia)

Alexander then ends with a big ornamental flourish. He cannot in all conscience:

'ignore the record of Saddam Hussein is a ruthless tyrant who tries still - in the face of concerted international pressure – to retain and develop the most evil of weapons. As the Foreign Minister of our great country, I will not be remembered for turning my back on such evil and allowing the spectre of Saddam to haunt future generations.'

There you have the case for war now. At the surface level it goes like this: Saddam has not disarmed. He won't. He will pussy foot around with the UN. Saddam is a threat to our national security.Those who say otherwise are appeasers who defend the totalitarian gulag. Its war now. At the deeper more philosophical level it is a moral argument:----a dead simple one. No more Auschwitz.

But you have to admit its rhetorical machinery is big on working on stirring up the emotions by appealing to the historical emotional undertow and very short on argument to establish truth.

Alexander's wisdom looks a bit tatty really. He lacks the qualities of character to be the truly and completely civic man that he poses to be. We must ask: is the boy from the Adelaide Hills really fit to administer public affairs?

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 12:54 PM | Comments (11)

Anti-democratic sentiments

I noticed this entry on the Weekly James about the protestors marching against the war on Iraq at a moment when James THOUGHT BRIEFLY OF HEADING DOWNTOWN. James said:

'I even ran into a neighbor from up the street, his wife and three children in tow - a nice guy with whom I've shared an after-work beer over the fence.

"You going to The Walk?" he asked hopefully.

"Hell no! I'm going to Cole's!" I replied, laughing, having misread his question and assuming we would have a laugh about the great unwashed heading downtown.

"Oh, that's right! You're American!" he said, a roll of pennies clattering behind his eyes.

As if that explained the whole thing, and that my accent automatically meant that I was like some grinning, bloody-fanged Jewish caricature in an Arab newspaper gleefully eating Muslim children.'

No James, wrong call. Its calling those Australian citizens exercising their political rights ' the great unwashed' that is the issue. That language refers back to the dirty, uneducated proles of the nineteenth century. They were seen as the dangerous classes but they won their political rights through political struggle. The language indicates a resignation to that political reality of democracy, but it dismisses them as uneducated and ruled by emotion and instinct.

And the iconoclastic Tim Blair, who gets his rocks off deflating left triumphalism, quotes the above passage on his Monday post here without comment. So neo-con Tim thinks the protestors as the great unwashed. Tim, we are waiting for you to push things a bit. Why not call them the enemy within? Why not accuse those who marched against a war with Iraq of committing treason.

O, c-mon Tim. Don't disappoint us. Push that envelop beyond 'peace-lovin' idealists', 'Peace Mooks', 'chicken shits' etc. Transgress the boundaries by moving beyond comments like its the '' Iraqi people the crazy Left doesn't care about.' Move beyond being entertained by the absurdities of lefty life----the capering of the love pixies-----to scorning democracy. Let us see the neo-con snarl behind the entertainer.

We want to be entertained.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 10:57 AM | Comments (19) | TrackBack

February 17, 2003

Some call it treason

I am wondering what the 'peace through war' conservatives are making of the mass demonstrations against war with Iraq by the coalition of the willing. We know their frame of reference is the mob, giving support Saddam, and its a contest between good v. evil---or the new new order is divided into civilized and uncivlized nations according the delightful Peggy Noonan.

And treason? It has yet to be publicly mentioned in Australia. But it has been mentioned in the US; in this editorial by the The New York Sun.

The reasoning goes like this. First, 'There can be no question at this point that Saddam Hussein is an enemy of America. Iraq was the only Arab-Muslim country that did not condemn the September 11 attacks against the United States.' Then, 'And there is no reason to doubt that the “anti-war” protesters — we prefer to call them protesters against freeing Iraq — are giving, at the very least, comfort to Saddam Hussein.' Saddam has said so.

Then the inference that there 'So the New York City police could do worse, in the end, than to allow the protest and send two witnesses along for each participant, with an eye toward preserving at least the possibility of an eventual treason prosecution.'

Okay so its a bit tongue in check. The New Police Department would not have the manpower to put the advice into action. Just the Sun being provocative and stirring the liberals says the WSJ online Best of the Web column. And they suceeded, judging by the reaction of those aim to counter rhetoric with reason.

But they document the history of this since 9/11. Behind the joke is a serious charge. It is made explicit by David Horowitz. In his, The march to save Saddam, he says the those marching aagains the war with Iraq are the enemy within.

'Today's "peace" movement -- the innocent-intentioned along with the malevolent rest -- is a fifth column army in our midst working for the other side. Already their leaders have warned that if the United States remains determined to oppose this totalitarian evil and stay its intended course, they will act within our borders to "disrupt the flow of normal life" and sabotage the war. This is ultimately the most ominous threat Americans face. Abroad we can conquer any foe. The real danger lies at home.'

No having a bit of fun there. Horowitz means every word.

And Australia? My judgement is that the prowar conservatives in Australia are thinking this but they not saying it publicly, yet.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 11:11 PM | Comments (1)

Authoritarian logic

Australian citizens are now marching against John Howard's war with Iraqi. The rainbow expressions of the carnival have been counterposed to the authoritarian logic of the US war machine.

The Prime Minister rejects the claim that it is his war. He was quoted on Radio National this morning as saying that he still does not believe those citizens who marched represent the majority view.

Mr Howard's account of the events, as has told Channel 9's 60 Minutes is that most Australians realise the need to deal with Iraq. In this interview John Howard says:

"The one constant in all the polls is that people think that Saddam Hussein has got dangerous weapons. They don't believe him and they think something ought to be done," he said.

"I don't think the mob, to use that vernacular, has quite made up its mind on this issue and it can't really make up its mind until we know what all the alternatives are."

The 'mob' Prime Minister? A Freudian slip? Democracy as the mob? That conservative language sits up a collision between the Australian government and Australian citizens. John Howard reinforces this when he adds that, "If my critics are listened to, the world will turn its back on the problem."

Really? Aren't the critics saying that the UN inspectors should be given more time and resources to do their work?

And those nation-states who are not convinced of the need for war by Secretary of State Colin Powell's February 5 presentation to the National Security Council? What are they? Appeasers?

The Prime Minister says that we have to act on our obligations under the Anzus alliance even though the US is not attack. Why? Because 'there is only one country that can help with us to guarantee our security and that is the US.'

Prime Minister, are you saying that we ought to go to war with Iraq for the sake of a special (insurance) relationship between Australia and the US?.

I thought that we go to war when Australia's security threatened? Now it is threatened by the threat of violence and terror that is borderless. But how does Iraq fit into this?

It is based on a series of risks---what ifs---says the Prime Minister:

"....when you know that a country has chemical and biological weapons and wants nuclear ones, when you know it is like Iraq, when you know that, if they are not disarmed, others will aspire to do the same, and when you know that the more they have them, the more likely it is that terrorists will get hold of those weapons, you've got to do something and, if you don't, I think you could end up paying a much greater price further down the track."

This is authoritarian logic. That is why there is only a faint hope for peace in this mantra. It is the sheer mediocrity of the arguments that is what is most amazing. And the evidence presented is unconvincing according to the standards of presenting evidence in a court of law.

Why? Why the poor script?

Howard has locked himself into the trajectory of the war machine and he has no control over it. He has little choice now. So he is forced to ride the groundswell of public opinion and confront it with the closed universe of an authoritarian logic. That logic now sounds like a crazy parody in the hands of some of our media commentators. In contrast, the D'hage report's 'View from Istanbul' has its feet grounded in a conversation in civil society.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 10:59 AM | Comments (13)

February 16, 2003

Just war theory is out of date?

I read Christopher Pearson's, 'Give them graces under fire', column in the Weekend Australian (no link, Feb.15-16, 2003, p. 20) with interest this morning. It is a neo-con engagement with the anti-war position of some of the Archbishops in the Anglican Church (Ian George, Peter Carnley & P. Jensen) and Catholic Church (George Pell and Pat Power). It looked to have a bit more substance than his past columns which have been somewhat light weight.

Maybe, CP. would enlighten us to the Anglican Church's understanding of a just war I thought. I was a bit vague about all that and I was in need of a bit help. I presume that a lot of those marching against the war around Australia would base their actions on the just war doctrine rather than simple anti-Americanism.

The column started off okay. It picked up on the remarks about a just war by Ian George, Adelaide's Anglican Archbishop in an Australia Day sermon. George had said that John Howard's dispatch of troops and ships to the Middle East was "the first time Australia has ever acted in a bellicose way without reference to the principles of a just war".

Good opportunity for CP to say what those principles are. He avoids that completely as he concentrates on 'deployment' bit. So we are left with no idea of what the just war case is. CP says this about 'deployment':

'Plainly this is a forward deployment designed to put pressure on Saddam Hussein to comply with UN resolutions long-breached. The time for debating the principles of just war and whether they are relevant is now, before war becomes inevitable and realises that the jig is up.'

Lets give CP his claim about forward deployment and turn to the just war bit. What are the principles and are they relevant now. CP evades addressing the issue once again. He introduces a wit to undercut their Graces anti-war position:

'As one gallery wit remarked: " Just imagine what they'd made of of the battle of Lepanto, which saved Christian Europe, or when the Turks were at the gates of Vienna," What indeed.'

This is a big point for CP! His column includes a large image this event. The caption says 'the combined forces of Spain, Venice and the Vatican at the Battle of Lepanto, saved Christian Europe from the Turks'.

I have no idea of the relevance of this apart from invoking the clash of civilisations thesis. Saddam Hussein is not planning to invade Europe, the US or Australia. The US, UK and Australia are planning to invade Iraq!

Having made his big point CP then moves to tackle the Arcbishop's argument that UN endorsement is critically important to the just war case.

'Their Graces argument would be more compelling if they paid greater attention to the UN Security Council and the national interests involved. I've heard of no mention of French oil concessions in Iraq (Elf Q Aquitaine) France's trade in supplies of chemical and other arrms or Russia's similar role. The UN is primarily a forum for negotiations. In what circumstances do the French have the right to oppose collective action to recitfy Iraq's internal problems and those it poses to world peace?'

So much for the UN---destroyed by selfish national interest. For the answer to the relevance bit about 'right' we need a bit of help about what the principles of just war would say. See the work on just war theory by Gummo Trotsky. We are not going to get that from Cp because CP is tacitly saying that the just war principles do not apply.(Its a load of old rubbish is what he is really saying). And he makes thsi case with his 'what indeeds' and rhetorical questions---smoke and mirrors.

CP does make his rejection of just war explicit:

'There is a strong case for saying that "just war" [note scare quotes] arguments are irrelevant because the situation is not a conventional war but a matter of international crisis management or police action in circumstances that classical theological argument could not have envisaged or its latter exponents refined with the speed of developing law and technology.'

Australia is a Deputy Sheriff in the US police force. The US is the global cop acting to enforce the law when it is broken by rogue states. I am sure that the US global strategists would understand the US as a global cop. CP reckons he has no need to defend that claim. He moves on:

"A more appropriate starting point might be with St Thomas Aquinas and Grotius, the father of international jurisprudence. Its foundation is the principle of jus cogens---a common understanding of what's right and wrong. Its latter day equivalent is Kant's notion of categorical imperatives.'

That basically means a common understanding of right and wrong universalized for all situations as a sort of moral law which we must abide by. CP then says that this moral law is embodied in legality:

'The concept of legality, as it applies to war, is largely a post World War 11 phenomenon that developed with the Nuremberg trials. In the US, the process of military law derives from international treaties. These are detailed and prescribed terms of engagement, supervised by the US Advocate-General.'

And that's CP's case: displace 'just war' for US military law and global cop.

CP ends by saying that their Graces have little relevance to the ethical case for war with Iraq since, 'their minds are so attuned to chivalrous, premodern solutions.' They are out of date.

My problem with all this is not CPs position per se. It is the way he makes his case for his postion. There is no argument that the just war theory is flawed. It is just pushed away as irrelvant through smoke and mirrors. There needs to be an argument since the US has sent Michael Novak, a conservative Catholic scholar, to Rome to persuade the Vatican that it is pursuing a just war with Iraq. Instead we lots of the rhetorical techniques of ornamentation designed to persuade the reader emotionally without the backbone of an argument.

Thats why it comes across as flim flam.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 10:47 AM | Comments (1)

February 15, 2003

Light relief

Here is a bit of light relief from all the war talk. Its about that old chestnut, 'Why are there no good men left?' And this unites the two big ones, truth and love. I reckon that it's romantic love that is the problem.

Many, of course, firmly believe that the rot set in with romanticism because it praised imagination over reason, emotions over logic, and intuition over science. This was the cancer within the liberal civilization and it had to be cut out of the social body through using the razor-sharp weapons of scientific reason.

Well, that's what I was taught at university. My counter understanding was that Romanticism was largely structured defined by its opposition to industrial capitalism in the name of pre-capitalist values.

Well romanticism lives on in a very diffuse way. My understanding of romanticism is that, it is a discourse with broadly cultural tendencies that are in flux and retain a recognizable consistency.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 2:16 PM | Comments (0)

February 14, 2003

Beyond the Australian media

For those who want a world roundup of the journalist comment to the main events of the week check this. It takes us beyond the American centred view that we get in Australia. It highlights the narrow media universe in Australia.

For a good criticism of the Saddam=Hitler and the critics of the war=appeasers, see this. The pro-war commentary is close to war propaganda as it endlessly recycles the cliched script without any attempt to engage with the criticism of the Bush adminstration's pre-emptive approach and the intellectual framework and strategic thinking behind this approach. It works within the rigid limits of the narrow nationalist agenda of the neo-conservative Bush administration and the liberal internationalists who seek to go beyond the nation-state with their global governance and conception of international law as a kind of superior law above the state.

You want a bit of dirt on the US in relation to the UN? See here. (Link courtesy of wood s lot). It is increasingly clear that the US basically rejects any global constraint on its actions. Its hegemonic power rests on a pax americana structuered around persuasive military threats accompanied by tough arm-twisting amongst the allies. It has the military power and technology to go to war alone war can be won without lasting political repercussions in the US itself. Britain and Australia are basically there for political dressing--- to indicate to the American public that there is soem world-wide support for Bush administrations actions. John Howard played his part well when in Washington.

Sorry:wrong target rejects the Bush administration's view of Old Europe as a bunch of appeasers. It indicates the commonality of reasons for the opposition to the Bush adminstration's war with Iraq between the European and Australian people. These reason lie:

"... in a deep rooted mistrust of US President George W. Bush: of his methods; of the rough way he handles his allies when they do not bend; of the misunderstanding, or the lack of interest in what those allies have to say; and of this cold war motto, ‘Either you are with us, or you are against us!’

They are not cowards or traitors this European majority; nor are they unable to understand what’s at stake.... They just don’t believe in the new US doctrine of pre-emptive war or its black and white quasi-fundamentalist vision of the outside world."

What is deepening the rift between the US and European and Australian people is the rough way the Bush administration handles its allies: a touch of bullying; coercing instead of convincing; and antagonising their friends instead of building a consensus around their strategy. The consequence of these tactics is that the Blair and Howard Governments are now at odds with a majority of their own citizens.

And for something different? Try a weblog by an American in Baghdad MidEastLog. (Link courtesy of Eve Tushnet.) I couldn't track done Al Jazeera English website. Its coming nzoom.com. In the meantime we have to make do with Aljazeera.netin Arabic and translate; or this and IslamOnLine.net

We are now beginning to step beyond the horizons of the Australian media.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 9:47 PM | Comments (0)

Moveable Type upgrade/ virtual culture

Moveable Type has announced an upgrade here to MT 2.6 This promises to make nano-publishing---small, highly-targeted online publications and weblogs---more successful and help to make business ventures built by publishing content on the web more successful. Thats their blurb.

It is the absence of the media gatekeepers that makes the Internet so attractive, plus the flattening of the value hierarchies that are notable in the older systems of communication. It has resulted in a multitude of new sites for communication, interaction, information and political organization, which are creating a network/information society.

Tools, such as MoveableType, will certainly facilitate the development of both a more independent virtual culture and community in the face of an inward-looking and complacent media; and a digital culture based around a mixture of text, image and sound with different mode of storytelling---nonlinear with a multipath narrative. This is already happening with hypertext and weblog. Here we have blocks of texts connected by electronic links which offer different pathways to users; and an arrangement of information in a non-linear manner due to the computer automating the process of connecting one bit of information to another. The results are interesting.

From a public policy perspective it is the digital divide based on the inequality of access that is worrying--- since access to computers and the Internet is becoming increasingly important for full participation in economic and political life. (See Benton Foundation).

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 1:47 PM | Comments (0)

February 13, 2003

Tim Blair & others

Sorry. Nothing much to say about Tim's Bulletin column this week(subscription required). No real crevices for me to get my finger nails into.

The signs of a continuing crisis in Australia that are noted by Tim are: nudity for peace in Bryon Bay NSW; Carmen Lawrence MP not being able to board an American ship berthed in Perth; Victorian Premier Steve Bracks slurring his speech at a sports event; and John Valder, a Liberal wet, being confused when he was seven years old.

These are the signs of the absurdities of Australian life. Little humorous details that show the meaninglessness at the heart of life. Light relief from the blanket media coverage of the Iraqi war.

Miranda Devine's column War-wary will not weary them does not disappoint. Its in Anne Coulter territory. Miranda has been in the US and, upon returning to Australia, she was quickly:

"...struck by the infantile level of debate here over Iraq. Just for starters, there has been the nude peace protest in Byron Bay, the sneering tone of the anti-Bush letters to the editor, the gross anti-Americanism exhibited by federal Labor and fellow travellers, the "gotcha" reaction to Bush's unremarkable "coalition of the willing" remarks and the wacko campaign to persuade people to send their anti-terrorism packs back to the Government as a war protest."

That about it. Lots of the usual neo-con stuff about anti-Americanism ('the anti-US bilge that permeates so much of what passes for Australian debate'; lefty sneers ('sophisticated people everywhere who sneer about Howard's and Bush's binary morality"'); a quick dismissal of France and Germany ('who cares what France and Germany think' and the left sneering because they no longer know what is right.

Tim Dunlop blogs on this piece by asking:'Why does Miranda Devine hate Australia so much?' I can affirm a key point he makes, that Miranda's own text contributes to the infantile level of debate. Miranda does not address the Australian commitment to the United Nations; the concern about the impact of the war on the region Australia is in; the lack of evidence that Australia's national interest is threatened by Iraq; a preference for a policy of vigilent containment etc. She does what she accuses other of doing: exhibiting 'a profound lack of seriousness and understanding of the issues which face Australia and the world'.

Janet Albrechtsen is more circumspect. She addresses the vitriol of Howard's ALP opponents and says that Howard is a conviction politician:

"Whether you agree with Howard or not, at least he believes in his own position. Voters respect that. And that drives his detractors to distraction. It drove them crazy in 1996 when voters preferred the dull, boring Howard to the clock-collecting Mahler-loving P. J. Keating. And it's driven them to Olympian heights of vitriol ever since. But people want leaders with convictions. On that score, Howard's history says he's way out in front of the conviction-challenged Crean."

What Janet does not say is that many Australian citizens who oppose the Bush administrations war are also conviction politicians. But they are abused by the neo-cons because they are peace-niks and appeasers. Once again there is a failure to engage with the issues such as these raised by Graham Edwards MP about not forgetting the lessons of Vietnam, the accusations of treason levelled against those who question a unilaterial strike against Iraq the long-term ramifications of the war in his speech on 5th February (House Hansard p. 225.)

Or the issues raised in this speech by Graham Edwards (Matter of Importance, House Hansard 6th Feb, p. 366) about the Commonwealth Government, that so quick to send someone else's kids to war, but is so very slow to fairly compensate serving men and women of the ADF and their families in the event of death or injury.

Its time to move away from the Canberra political hothouse to the common life of the nation and the concerns of ordinary Australians who will bear the brunt of this war. As Graham Edwards points out, it is always other people's sons whom the politicians send off to an overseas war to defend the security of the nation.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 2:32 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Executive Dominance

John Quiggin says it very well in this article, "No alternative for Telstra', in the Australian Financial Review (subscription required ) column. (Feb. 13, p.62), The article is about burying the Telstra parliamentary inquiry. John says:

"What was unprecedented, as far as I know, was the decision of the majority on the committee lead by Christopher Pyne, and acting on the orders of Communications Minister Richard Alston, to kill the inquiry altogether. No evidence was taken and submissions were cut off, marking another milestone in the growth of executive contempt for parliament, and in the decline of the committee system."

So true John. So true. So executive dominance has to checked and balanced?

The ALP has the same executive contempt for the Parliament, the Senate and the committee system when it has its hands on the levers of power. Parliament needs to be reformed to strengthen its power vis-a-vis the executive, increase the power of the Senate and make the committee system more authoritative. This would deepen the federal underpinnings of a liberal-democratic institutions.

Which major political party is going to do that? Don't hold your breath for a deepening of Australian federalism.

Now a case can be made. As Jacob Levy at The Volokh Conspiracy (9.58am February 10th) accurately observes:

'....in practice, the U.S., Australia, and Germany seem to show that an upper house in some way dependent on federalism is a pretty stable solution that can offer real counterbalancing to the lower house and/or the executive.'

In a latter post that day( 2.03pm) he seem to backtrack from a federal understanding of the Senate. Jacob notes the recent 'no confidence' motion passed by the Australian Senate in the Howard Government. He says:

'I've never heard of a motion of no confidence even being introduced into the House of Lords or the Australian Senate or the Bundesrat; because "no confidence" from such a body is just venting. It lacks the constitutional significance of "no confidence" from the house to which government is responsible.'

Venting? This is more than venting. That institutional rebuke is giving expression to a faultline that is developing in the body politic about the Howard Government's handling of a war that a majority of Australians will not consent to without a UN mandate. Venting implies being powerlessness. However, the Australian Senate is a powerful political institution and the political significance of Senate's "vote of no confidence" is more than being just a form of rebuke that has no constitutional meaning, but sounds mighty fancy.

In a federal system a motion of no confidence does mean something-- even if it is not the rejection of the ministerial government by the parliamentary body of the House of Representatives as it is in a purely Westminister system. In a federal system the House of Reps is not the sole arbiter of the approval or disapproval process. In a checks and balances federal system the Senate acts to check the power of executive dominance, that is currently being deployed by the Howard Government to run the war. Its the checks and balances that goive the action its constitutional meaning.

Michael Jennings differs from this account. He has some background material here (scroll down to Monday, February 10). His latter comment on the Senate's no confidence motion here (Tuesday Feb.11) acknowledges that 'the senate does actually have the power to bring a goverrment down, if it really wants to flex its muscles'. He then quickly qualifies this:

"The present government is a right wing government. The people in the senate who voted their "motion of no confidence" the other week are typically from the left. While they could conceivably bring down the government by withdrawing their consent for money bills, they are committed to never do this for historical reasons. Whereas they could in theory withdraw their actual parliamentary confidence in the government and bring it down, this is for them unthinkable. Therefore, instead, they pass completely spurious "motions of no confidence" that are not really what they claim to be."

I would not be too sure of that. Political conventions do change. What is mor elikely to happen is that Howard will trim his sails & go for war with a UN mandate, rather than have a collision with the Senate.

More power to the Senate I say. We need more checks and balances not less. And this may be what is happening behind our backs, due to the war with Iraq. Contrary to the recieved wisdom of most journalists in a federal system the Senate is the place to watch, not the House.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 12:16 PM | Comments (8) | TrackBack

More Budget Cuts in SA planned

More indications of the Rann Government is in slash and burn mode. Treasury has asked the Art SA the State Government cut its budget this year by 7% on top of the 3% of last year. Libraries, art galleries, the Festival Centre, Adelaide Symphony Orchestra, Australian Dance Theatre, Tandanya, Jam Factory, and major festivals are all going to be targeted.

Yet another example of the Rann Government placing obstacles in the way of regional development----cutting the toes of a dynamic sector of the state's economy insead of the state government playing a faciltating role in development strategy to overcome a depressing scenario of low economic grwoth.

Lets face it. The neo-liberal pundits (eg. John Stone) see SA as not being the place where those major export projects that are the key drivers for Australia in the global economy will happen. For from it. For these economic pundits SA is the place of a strong anti-growth mindset that is fostered by the Australian Democrats and Greens who see economic growth as dirty and cause such political mayhem. Adelaide may be a pleasant place to live, but SA is in decline, is boring, provincal and inward-looking.

This slash and burn of SA's arts and cultural institutions is another indication of the stranglehold of neoliberalism on state policy makers. The key to long-term success is to make the government machine small, lean and men, put trust in leading private corporations to get economic growth going and have Economic Development Boards exhort us to increase our individual effort to break the SA mindset, work harder and pull together towards achieving common goals.

Big business, competition and the free market will see us right.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 7:39 AM | Comments (4)

February 12, 2003

America targets ALP

First it was Europe that was targeted.

Now its the Australian Labor Party, and by implication, the majority of Australian citizens who are critical of the Bush administration's desire to bomb the daylights out of Iraq with a bit of 'shock and awe'.

The charge? We are anti-American. So says Tom Schieffer, the US Ambassador to Australia. He charges the ALP under Simon Crean as making a rank appeal to popular anti-Americanism in Australia and engaging in bashing President Bush during the debate on Iraq in federal Parliament. Maxine McKew's Bulletin interview with Tom Schieffer can be found here.

For the interview it is clear that the Bush Administration and embassy officials have been told over a long period of time that ALP support for any war in Iraq is conditional on a United Nations mandate; and until this happens it won't support the deployment of Australian troops. This is not seen as a reasonable position for Washington. Washington interprets this as going soft on Iraq".

Doesn't the US Ambassador understand? That was the ALP trying to undermine John Howard's creditibility with Australian citizens. Howard's way is beginning to look a bit tattered, and the ALP grabbed a much needed opportunity to get a political toehold and some political air.

Doesn't the US Ambassador understand that the Howard Government had started the debate over war with Iraq from a position of disarming Iraq by force without a UN mandate, called the ALP an appeaser and a Saddam Hussein sympathiser, and talked about pre-emptive strikes on terrorists in Indonesia. Due to the pressure of Australian public opinion and disquiet within the Liberal Party the Howard Government has shifted to arguing for the need for a second UN resolution. Yet he continues to repeat the Bush administration's script on the war with Iraq, especially when he is in Washington.

But it is that earlier hawkish position which resonates with public opinion and
Howard is seen as politically cynical in his re-invention as the defender of the UN. What remains is a public indifference to the regional fallout from the war and an intolerance of political dissent and different political opinions.

I reckon the US Ambassador does not understand Australian culture all that well. He interprets its critical public current as a mixture of trash talk, betrayal, alienation and active opposition. So he is willing to intervene in domestic political debate, thereby breaking a lot of Australian political conventions.

Why? well, Stephen Den Beste at USS Clueless (Stardate 20030211.0959) gives expression to this public American feeling when he says that from the perspective of American culture:

"...friends don't talk like that. If someone says horrible things about you, in public, then they're no longer a friend, especially if they do so in a crisis. In a period in which we fully expected our friends to rally to us and support us, what we are seeing instead is what looks like active opposition. Europeans may think this is nearly meaningless banter. Americans see it as deep betrayal."

Den Beste is referring to the dissenting Europeans (France and Germany) but his account applies to the Australian public opinion and the ALP as well. The Americans have been deeply wounded by 9/11 and they fully expect us Australians to "rally to their side and support them in their hour of need. From an American point of view, that is how friends behave. Nothing else is acceptable", says den Beste.

Australia hasn't delivered in full. Only the Howard Government delivered on the unquestioned fealty required by Washington. Den Beste says, the "Americans don't really expect the Europeans [and Australians] to become American toadies' but they dam well did expect us to join with them in their attempt to blast Saddam Hussein from power.

The problem is the Howard Government's position of unquestioned fealty does not speak for majority public opinion of Australian citizens. Consequently, the Americans see the ongoing criticism of Howard (and Bush) as deeply offensive----it is virulent anti-Americanism. So they move to defang it, thereby deepening the cultural divide.

The Ambassador seems to have forgotten that Australia is a democracy where citizens can express their views about matters of deep concern to them. That should not be too difficult for a US Ambassador to understand surely? Is not the US fighting the war with Iraq for liberal freedom and democracy?

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 4:01 PM | Comments (5) | TrackBack

February 11, 2003

Rift Between Europe & US Widens

The rift between 'Old Europe'----Russia, France and Germany--- and America over the war with Iraq continues to deepen. The first wedge was over the threat posed by Iraq to the international community; then we had the France-Germany plan to increase the role of the UN inspectorate to avoid an early war favoured by the US; now the fallout is over an American request for defensive equipment from NATO for Turkey in anticipation of a possible war against Iraq.

For the New York Times editorial see Divisive Diplomacy With Europe. Chris Bertram has some comments on the rift within Europe.

Why the increasing divide? Why the increasing prospect of Moscow, Berlin and Paris collectively opposing Washington? The view from Washington is that it is due to anti-Americanism. See Sneers From Across the Atlantic: Anti-Americanism Moves to W. Europe's Political Mainstream; or Rabid Weasels: The sickness of "old Europe" is a danger to the world; or The Rat That Roared.

This neo-con stuff all starts to get a bit hard to take after a while. Anything critical of the US neo-con Republican position, no matter how worthy or considered, has to be blasted away. Europe becomes the Other. Something a lot more considered, and which rejects the 'its strongly held anti-Americanism' is given by Stephen Den Beste at USS Clueless (Stardate 20030210.1415), where he argues that, "like France the reality is that what Germany really opposes is this particular war, by the US and UK, which will remove Saddam from power."

You work the way through this post only to come to the neo-con conclusion that Anne Coulter had got to earlier---France is an enemy. This is Den Beste:

'For all practical purposes, both nations [France and Germany]are now enemies. Or rather, their governments are not acting like "allies". They're acting like enemies.

There is no alliance, and there is no friendship. This is no longer a deep difference of opinion between friends; it is fullblown opposition. They are actively opposing us and actively supporting our enemies, and there's no other way we can consider them now except as active cobelligerents against us. Their reputations and their influence are now direct threats to us, and we will need to damage them. This is, effectively, war now between the US/UK and France/Germany.'

So what needs to be done? Den Beste is quite clear on this point. He says:

'And it has now reached the point where we (the US, the UK and nations who are allied with us) will actually need to damage France and Germany. They are now revealed as being dangerous to us as long as their diplomatic influence remains at current levels. They must be defanged.'

Not that much different from Coulter's Attack France!

Why the increasing divide between American and Europe? Paul Krugman offers one acount in his The Wimps of War. He says the Europeans do not trust the Americans and for good reason:

"And though you don't hear much about it in the U.S. media, a lack of faith in Mr. Bush's staying power — a fear that he will wimp out in the aftermath of war, that he won't do what is needed to rebuild Iraq — is a large factor in the growing rift between Europe and the United States.

Why might Europeans not trust Mr. Bush to follow through after an Iraq war? One answer is that they've been mightily unimpressed with his follow-through in Afghanistan. Another is that they've noticed that promises the Bush administration makes when it needs military allies tend to become inoperative once the shooting stops — just ask General Musharraf about Pakistan's textile exports."

An alternative account centres around the underground current of fear and distrust of American power, policies and motives arising from the Americans pushing their weight around; and doing it with a rhetoric that goes down well in some parts of the U.S. but rubs Europeans and Australians up the wrong way. This resentment is caused by the rise in American power and the decline of European power --see European Arrogance and Weakness Dictate Coalitions of the Willing.

For a good ongoing discussion of the recent state of play in international relations see Airstrip One. It has a realist orientation, is English, and critical of the Australian preference for working through the UN. For example:

".... any state primarily exists to preserve the security of its subjects and that its role in foreign policy should therefore be to preserve the state's security and independence. This war in Iraq will not improve our security one jot, and will degrade our military, cost us lots of money and increase the likelihood of terrorist action against us. In short all minuses and no pluses. No mystical invocation of the Anglosphere or vapid equations of Saddam to Hitler will change this calculation. We don't need to hate America, or worry about whether she will get a de facto Empire (too late chaps) just as we don't need to hate non-Belgian Europeans or worry about whether the EU will develop into a superstate (again, too late). All we need to do is keep out of those spheres of influence, which surely is not too hard a feat for the next largest economy in the world."

It is refreshingly different. If we accept this realist account of the relations between nation states then why do France and Germany oppose this particular war, by the US and UK to remove Saddam from power?

Is it, as Den Beste suggests, a case of the French and German opposition to the US being motivated by a desire to dominate the EU, or by fear of damaging revelations coming out of post-war Iraq about the support their companies have provided the to current Iraqi regime?

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 11:12 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Electricity Crisis in SA

Little bits of evidence indicate that energy companies use a shortage of energy to raise prices and make a killing. We have connected what is happening in SA to the California energy crisis to get a perspective on what is happening.

This article, How Reliant Energy Withheld Power from California Consumers gives some background to the Californian energy crisis. It indicates that we should not expect great things from the regulators of the national electricity market in Australia. Nor from the Federal Government. Their hands will be very light on.

So I read Allan Mitchell's article on the Parer Report into the National Electricity Market in the Australian Financial Review (12 Feb. p.62; subscription required) with interest. Entitled,"All Power to the Parer Report", it opens with:

"...we know from experience that energy reform is great when we get it right and disastrous when it goes wrong. California got it wrong. In Australia we have got it two thirds right. Householders in Sydney paid less in real terms for their electricity last financial year than in 1997-8, householders in Adelaide and Brisbane would have paid less if not for the GST, and business and farmers were ahead in most states."

Say that again about Adelaide? We have just had a 30-35% increase in electricity prices and rolling blackouts. How is that getting it right? Oh, because we are talking about the last financial year not the current one. Isn't that sooo so convenient. And note that Mitchell gives no reason for why California got it wrong, or whether California has anything to offer us in Australia.

What is it with these economists? On the one hand they say that economics is a science; on the other hand they ignore empirical evidence.

Now Mitchell does say that it is easy to spot the basic weaknesses of the present national electricity market. These are:

---not enough competition between generators;
---inadequate capacity in moving electricity within states;
---a failure to build enough interconnection capacity between the states;
---lack of investment at the point where the interstate interconections meet the state transmissions systems;
--at the retail end there is not enough competition and no real price signals;
---pollution--ie., the production of greenhouse gases.

Rest assured folks. The Parer Report has the solutions and so all be well. The Federal Government will get the competitive market to work efficiently in next to no time. Then things will flow smoothly.

Of course what is rejected iby Mitchell is sutainable energy---that trendy new technology stuff about wind & solar power and so on. These are uncompetitive. All that is necessary is a system of greenhouse emissions trading. The new renewable technologies can be left high and dry.

Thats the blueprint for the Rann Government. They will not have the political courage to break out of the neo-liberal straitjacket of the Parer Report.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 3:47 PM | Comments (0)

The cat is out of the bag

I missed this article by Paul Sheehan when it was first published in the Sydney Morning Herald. It is an important piece in both a negative and positive sense.

Negatively this text works within the conventional terms of the debate: between Howard's position of we have to go it alone with the US and its allies and Crean's we will go to war with the UN mandate. What Sheehan says is that the majority of Australians who oppose the Bush Administration's war should not congratulate ourselves about our moral superiority.

"All those offering a variety of peaceful, patient, reasonable and bloodless options should at least have the honesty to acknowledge that if Saddam Hussein retains power in this stand-off with George Bush, the anti-war movement will have delivered a de facto victory for a psychotic, genocidal tyranny. And not for the first time."

Paul, only a minority of those Australians who oppose the Bush Administration's war are, as you put it, 'moral virgins in this debate who pronounce themselves "against war", and who rail against American arrogance' and avert their gaze from the horrors of the Iraqi regime. The denigration of "prudent, peace-loving people who are against military interventions and American imperialism"---they have blood of the Iraqi victims of Saddam Hussein's repression on their hands----is unwarrented.

Why not? Well, there is a third way that trangresses the narrow limits of the public debate. It is vigilent containment of Iraq under a UN mandate because the Iraqi regime is not a substantive threat to Australia. It is vigilant containment to keep Saddam Hussein in a Box. It has its advocates in Australia There may be other ways, Mr Howard.

And the positive bit? Its the cat that was let out of the bag---Indonesia has been targeted by the Howard Government as a militant Islamic state hostile to Australia and may need to be taken out with the help of powerful friends. This has been gestured to in public debate. eg in Laurie Brereton's interesting Shroud over Guernica speech in the Iraq debate in federal parlaiment. Brereton says:

"Australian involvement in a longer-term US-occupation of Iraq has the potential to cause significant international and regional problems for us. Adverse reactions will likely follow in both the Middle East and South East Asia."

This 'regional problem' is what Sheehan starts to spell out. He says:

'Don't think the Prime Minister is not caught by this dilemma. He knows his political capital is leaking away. As one of his closest advisers told me this week: "The PM is losing sleep over this. He knows this policy doesn't have the feathers to fly with the public. But he thinks it's the right thing to do. He's thinking long-term. If one day we ever have to face a militant Indonesia, we've only got one ally who can do the job."'

Sheehan then adds:

'As if on cue, Indonesia's Foreign Minister, Hassan Wirajuda, speaking to the ABC on Tuesday, warned: "You know, it's very easy for the masses in the Islamic world to conclude that this war against Iraq is, in the end, a war against Muslims."'

For the Howard Government it is a clash of civilizations.

In the light of that insight into the Australian Government's geopolitics we should treat Howar'ds claim thathe US has a very strong case with a grain of salt. Kim Beazley put his finger on it: the strategy of the Howard Government in our region is a military one when it should be a political one.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 11:19 AM | Comments (2)

February 10, 2003

Why cannot this happen in Australia?

This should also happen in Australia. It is Tony Blair being quizzed about his views on the war on BBC Television, and seeking to engage with, rather than manipulate public opinion.

John Howard should appear on National Television where he can quizzed by an experienced and highly skilled journalist and a panel of citizens about his position on the war with Iraq and his political handling of that issue.
It will not happen in Australia will it? A genuine Socratic discussion over the war between our political representatives, the media and citizens. We don't have such a healthy political public sphere in our liberal democracy.

For the American reaction see Calpundit; and Interesting Times

Keiran Healy has an extended post.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 9:19 PM | Comments (8) | TrackBack

Iraq: Regional blowback

If liberal capitalist modernity is indeed the powerful freight train of history, as Francis Fukyama maintains, then there are a lot of people want to derail the US verison.

That freight train is an amoured one. Those driving it are very angry indeed. They feel vulnerable and fearful as the armed train of modernity travels the road to Baghdad. But they are determined that justice has to be done for the terrorists attacks of 9/11. They have been deeply wounded and they have wrapped themselves in their flag.

A state of emergency exists on the train and the passengers have given little time for figuring how to support a new regional architecture for regional cooperation and dialogue in Iraq or the Middle East. They seem hostile to the United Nations playing a major role in managing the transition to a new set of political strutures in Iraq; and they appear to have cast aside the Palestine/Israel issue as not being part of the main game. Justice has to be done for the terrorists attacks of 9/11.

So the war against terrorism is basically a military operation. How is that supposed to work in the South East region where Australia belongs? Is the military solution the right way to address the regional issues close to our home, and to the threats to our security to those who want to derail our version of liberal modernity?

There is no response from those Australians helping to drive the train. Not even a 'no comment'. The messages being sent from the train are tighly focused. Saddam must be taken out to save us from international terrorism.

To his credit Kim Beazley, the former leader of the ALP, raised the regional issue in his speech on the War with Iraq in federal Parliament on February 4th. He said that the Prime Minister was "under an awesome obligation to ensure that he so commended Australian diplomacy to the South-East Asian region that there would be no blow-back from the policy that was being pursued in relation to Iraq."

Beazley adds that one way to do this would be to talk to other regional leaders, reassure them about our objectives and to understand their views & concerns.

"We could have expected a routine and regular visit by the Prime Minister to the nations in the South-East Asian region.

What did we get from the Prime Minister? Fatuous rubbish about pre-emption. It was fatuous rubbish because he knows darn well that, if we decide to intervene in any South-East Asian nation, we have to do it with the permission of the power itself...

...We have interests in this region. Australian lives have already been lost in it; Australian lives and interests continue to be threatened. We have to be able to have people in the region as allies to deal with a terrorist threat. We have to be able to balance what we do in Iraq, what we do to support the United Nations in Iraq and what we do to support the United States in Iraq with what we do to commend ourself to the region around us.

I do not think this has penetrated anywhere in the prime ministerial mind. I just do not think it has. I cannot believe that the Prime Minister has become so complacent that he cannot see this and, if he saw it, would not act on it. It is too late to turn up to Megawati now, I am afraid."

Beazley has not fled from history that points in the direction of regional collaboration.

So we can ask where is the train going? What is the purpose of the journey? Simply to 'polish off' Saddam Hussein and his cronies as quickly as possible?

And where does the freight train go next?

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 10:18 AM | Comments (0)

February 9, 2003

Its more than fear Luke: its death

Luke Slattery has replaced Philip Adams on the back page of the Weekend Australian Review. Philip was getting bit tired, and the content was pretty thin at times. I have to admit that I mostly yawned and nver read much of it. But he was still able to stir the local neo-cons into a bit of a frenzy. Still, it was all pretty much froth and bubble.

All I know about Luke Slattery is that he hates postmodernists; thinks that Derrida says there is ‘no reality outside of texts’; ran a trite thesis that 9/11 put postmodernist relativism in its grave; used to edit the Higher Education pages of The Australian and then disappeared from public view. Now he's reappeared.

I put all this together and come up with conservative who dips into high culture. But who cares about labels. Its the writing that matters. So what is Luke saying in his piece, 'I lost it at the movies'?

He is talking about about fear unleashed by 9/11 war--the day the world changed---and panic that can lead to madness at a time when we citizens are being requested by the federal government to be alert for anything suspicious but not afraid. Well fear rules, judging from Luke's little story about the response to strange noises in his bag at the movies on New Years Eve in 2003.

He says we should not worry too much. We develop a sort of tentaive immunity to fear ---eg. the bombing in WW2; or Israel today. Horror becomes routine-- -he mentions the banality of evil of the Nazi's, but he hopes that we never become inured to catastrophe.

So we get fear and a coping with fear from all that. Not much really. A lot more happened. The Americans dumped their liberal triumphalism, as their self-confidence and existential security was shatttered by 9/11. They felt vulnerable and fearful, realized that there was no effective deterrent against international terrorism, quickly placed their nation on a war footing, and set about to take out a fundamental Islam that had challeneged liberalism.

We can start to go wild at this point. Luke does start to go wwwwwild. He approvingly mentions Montaigne saying that fear deftly unseats reason; only he then backs off and ends lamely:

"When fear and politics mingle, courage, of course is tested--and intelligence too."

The immediate reaction is, can this be all?

Slattery appears to lack the courage to take Montaigne on board: fear is a subset of madness that unseats reason. Too close to the abyss for the national newspaper? It would not sell newspapers? So we have resignation.

Montaigne is pretty reasonable as he gives us a reason/unreason scenario. Thus the federal government culitvates fear among citizens through security alerts about terrorism threats then promises us national security in the name of reason so that it can retain an electoral advantage over the ALP.

We can crank the wildness up at this point. Heres a suggestion to mullover with morning coffee.

Its a death metaphysics at work in the national security state of Bush and Howard Our lives are now lived with a heightened risk from dying at the hands of sleeper-cell Islamic terrorists armed with chemical and biological weapons. That is what the Bush administration and the Howard Government are saying to us---it is a metaphysics of death.

Have we aborbed this new reality----that we are going to die a terrifying death? All I know is I get the historical shudders from fearing death due to the convolutions of history. Death and history are hand in glove. How can you hope when everything is nothing? How can you be positive when daily life is a void? Is it still possible to hope when mired in fear and despair?

Now we are starting to go wild. But that sort of negative stuff about metaphysical experiences in the national security state does not sell newspapers.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 10:54 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

February 8, 2003

Colin Powell's UN Speech

Did Colin Powell's presentation at the United Nations convince doubting US liberals about the need to go to war wth Iraq even though there was no "smoking gun"?

One indication is given by the posting of disgusted liberal called Colin Powell lays out the evidence. They say that:

"The Secretary's evidence on Iraq's continued pursuit of nuclear weapons wasn't as convincing as the material on chemical and bioweapons, but in our view Powell's presentation was more than enough to place the burden of persuasion firmly on those -- including the French, Germans, Russians, and Chinese -- who claim that Saddam Hussein can be contained without military action. That proposition -- which in the DisgustedLiberals' view has long been dubious -- is now looking entirely unsustainable."

The New York Times appears to be shifting ground judging from Endgame and The Case Against Iraq

For a point by point analysis of the claims in Colin Powell's speech, see href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,889846,00.html">Powell's evidence against Saddam: does it add up?

February 14th now becomes a key date. That is when Blix and EL Baradei are due to report back to the Security Council on their work as inspectors. In the meantime expect more concessions from Iraq to buy time; more pressure on the United Nations to both back diplomacy with the use of force and to use force when Iraq fails to comply; and more neo-con criticism from journalists such as Charles Krauthammer of the UN for being captive to small nation states wanting to thumb their nose at Washington's power.

And hopefully more material like this that discredits the standard Bush, Blair Howard claim that here are substantial current links betweenIraqi President Saddam Hussein's government and al Qaeda.

For the sounds of media silence on congressional oppositional voices, see Lisa English's posting "WE DECIDED NOT TO RUN IT..." And courtesy of Lisa there is a good analysis of the different positions on the Iraq war in Douglas McGill's A GLOBAL CITIZEN THINKS ABOUT WAR; in a weblog--- McGill Report structured around the cosmopolitan ideals of global citizenship.

Douglas says that there ' are four basic perspectives on this possible war. Two of them are held by supporters of the U.S. president’s efforts to forcibly oust Saddam, and two are held by those who are opposed to his plans."

He says that: "The war’s supporters define the goal of the war as:

A. To liberate the Iraqi people from tyrannical rule in order to establish a beachhead of liberal democracy in the Middle East;

B. To ensure the long-term stability of the global economy in order to protect the long-term prospects of the U.S. economy;

The war’s detractors meanwhile define its purpose as:

C. Foreign adventurism in the affairs of a brutal regime which nevertheless controls only a small portion of the world’s oil and poses no immediate threat to U.S. national interests;

D. An imperial land grab orchestrated by a handful of scheming oligarchs and fat cats whose goal is to preserve their grip on power, boost their oil company stocks, and protect their lavish lifestyles.

Douglas concurs with the judgement of public opinion that the U.S. Bush administration is pursuing the war to maintain global economic stability (B) whilst publicly justifying the aggression in terms of traditional American ideals (A). He also concurs with out judgement that George Bush has changed his vision of America’s role in the world in the world of nations form; being an isolationist when he was candidate to being aggressively internationalist under the banner of the war on terror as a President. The Republicans are walking the US down the path to being an empire.

Meanwhile, in Australia, the ALP has clearly defined its position: it is standing for something---it will only support a military attack if the UN Security Council votes for it. This has been widely welcomed in Labor ranks.and received the seal of approval from the liberal media commentators. This is the ALP differentiating itself from John Howard's Government, but does so by mining a latent anti-US sentiment and a popular dislike of George Bush, rather than a defence of the role of the UN.

The ALP disappoints. It should be mounting a strong case to see that the UN inspection system works, and that it work in a way that represents a triumph for the UN. Why don't they argue to support a UN war to enforce inspection in opposition to Howard's support for a U. S. led-war for "regime change", for a US-style US "National Security Strategy" and for its doctrine of preemptive war? The ALP could then argue that the Iraqi regime needs changing and so differentiate those on their left who are part of a peace movement and unwilling to acknowledge the brutality of the Iraqi regime or the dangers posed by its weapons of mass destruction.

While the ALP appears to be losing its way, our national newspaper continues to thunder about the appeasers of tyranny and how Saddam cannot save Crean. Its depressing the way public debate in Australia is conducted in cartoon images.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 1:24 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

February 7, 2003

Once the war is over, what then?

Whilst I was having breakfast and doing the washing this morning I heard on Radio National that people (experts?) are saying that the Iraq war will be over in 10 days or 100 days. I didn't really hook into the media bite and grab it because most of the media flow was about the responses to Colin Powell's speech at the UN. For those interested in Robert Fisk's response it can be found here.

The media bite stayed with me. Once the war is over what then? What is going to happen to the rebuilding of Iraq after regime change? Is Iraq the same as East Timor for us in Australia---involving a long process of rebuilding?

Remember, the war is not just about geopolitics and oil. It is also about making the world safe for democracy and freedom.

What does the process of democratisation and free market capitalism mean in Iraq and the Middle East? We don't hear much about this in Australia. Well, I reckon that democratisation and free market is an explosive mixture in the Middle East.

Someone giving this a bit of thought is d-square digest. Its a bit tongue in cheek but it is also deadly serious.

Maybe Afghanistan is the model of what could happen? Was not the Afghan war the the "successful" role model for America's forthcoming imperial adventure across the Middle East? Here is R. Fisk:

".... the near-collapse of peace in this savage land and the steady erosion of US forces in Afghanistan – the nightly attacks on American and other international troops, the anarchy in the cities outside Kabul, the warlordism and drug trafficking and steadily increasing toll of murders – are unmentionables, a narrative constantly erased from the consciousness of Americans..."

You don't like Fisk and so won't read him?

Well we have to start thinking about after the war sometime. This history of civil society in Iraq can help; as can this voice on a journey to a liberated Iraq or this account of inside looking out and Waiting.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 11:18 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

February 6, 2003

Nukes Dump/Space Industry

The story on the nuclear waste dump in SA continues to break. The angle now is the conflict between the needs of the nascent space industry in the Woomera Prohibited area and the Commonwealth's proposal to build a radioactive waste dump next door to the missile testing range.

What is being sacrificed by the Commonwealth in pursuing this nuke dump is the possibility of SA's regional development being partly clustered around a space industry. SA's regional growoth is to be sacrificed.

Rebecca DiGirolamo writing in The Australian here states that the space industry has concerns. These concerns undermine the claims by Peter McGauran, the federal Science Minsiter, that future space projects would not be affected by the location of the nuke dump at site 52a.

One of the space industries is National Aerospace Laboratory of Japan. NAL have invested $6 million in upgrading the infrastructure in the Woomera Prohibited Area, and they want to use the area until 2005. NAL's tests, which involve firing a massive rocket carrying a model jet, are part of a Japanese government-funded project to develop a supersonic passenger jet.

NAL is quoted Rebecca as saying that the boundary of the proposed nuclear repository---site 52a---is less than 1km from it plans to land a model jet in trials in 2002 and 2003. Kimo Sakata, NAL's project director, said that the repository was too close to their landing area and added that the landing area could not be easily changed.

And Allan Paull of the University of Queensland said that their HyShot project, which tests high-speed scram jets in the Woomera Protected Area, would be hindered by the federal government's nuke dump proposal.

There is a bright space industry future in South Australia. For instance, the Japanese Institute of Space and Astronautical Science plan to use Woomera to recover a small re-entry capsule containing sample material from a distant asteroid. NASA may test the future X-38 prototype crew return vehicle for the International Space Station

It all makes you wonder. Should not the federal government be facilitating the development of a nascent space industry, rather than trying to close it down by placing obstacles in its way.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 5:16 PM | Comments (3)

Tim Blair's Howard paradox.

I glanced through The Bullettin today and came across noted Aussie weblogger Tim Blair. Tim now has a column (link by subscription only) on the absurdities of life plus his weekly take on local and international issues. The column is called The Continuing Crisis ... with a phot of Tim scratching his head with a bemused smile on his face. This weeks column is entitled, 'The roar of Babylon' and it has a good go at Carmen Lawrence for her anti-war stance.

My eye was caught by this paragraph called, The Howard Paradox. It is a mixture of Tim's weekly take on national issues and the absurdity of life. According to Tim, The Howard Paradox is:

"...an Australian political phenomenon in which the prime minister [John Howard]is vilified by commentators when he follows popular opinion (in the case of the asylum-seekers) and condemned when he opposes public opinion (in the case of a war against Saddam Hussein). The Howard Paradox is out of play only when the majority of commentators agree with him (in the case of gun laws)."

Clever and witty. Shoves it up the pompous left liberals good and proper. It makes them look such mugs. The journalist as gadfly firing arrows at the left liberal hatred for John Howard. And all done in a paragraph.

Too clever by half Tim. You need to slow down, take time out and give some energy to pondering the national issues you pick up. Its not a paradox. John Howard is not being criticized for opposing public opinion in the case of the war with Iraq.

The Prime Minister is being criticized for the way he is handling the Iraqi war issue across the broad spectrum of public opinion, including from within his own party. The judgement is that he is not managing it well because he is seen to have overstepped the mark. He is seen have both signed up to Bush's war long ago, and for Australia to go to war with Iraq without a UN mandate. But he is pretending otherwise. So he is seen to be untrustworthy on this issue. It is a question of trust

There is a whole story on this by Laurie Oaks called 'Wedge of Reality', and unfortunately for Tim, it is on the opposite page to Tim Blair's column. Oaks tacitly undermines Tims' Howard Paradox.

What Oaks argues is that Howard has a credibility problem. This is it in a nutshell:

"Part of Howard's credibility problem hinges on his insistence that, although he has sent Australain forces to join the Americans in the Gulf, no final decision has been made to join an attack on Iraq. The Americans know it is a fiction, and hardly bother to pay lip service to it. Australian voters are not fools: they know it is nonsense too. The idea that Howard would say, "Sorry George!' and bring the troops home again is simply risible."

So much for Tim Blair's paradox.

What we have is a contradiction in the Prime Ministers position. Howard needs the UN to give a mandate to war with Iraq to regain his credibility. But Howard and his Ministers have spent most of the year attacking the authority of the UN--bashing the UN. They have done so in the name of Australia's sovereignty and Australia making its own decisions on national security issues.

As I noted earlier Tim Blair is being too clever by half. The voices speaking about war with Iraq are anything but the roar of Babylon.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 2:43 PM | Comments (9) | TrackBack

Very confused neo-cons

The Australian neo-cons have realized that they need to both defend their views on the war with Iraq through public debate, and to publicly address the issue of why the UN should be bypassed in particular.

Peter Reith, a former Defence Minister in the Howard Government, has intervened and an edited version of his speech is published in The Financial Review called, "No more games, Hussein, your time's up', (subscription required). After saying that 'the US has bent over backwards to work cooperatively with the international community and through the UN', Reith says:

"But the UN cannot be the final arbiter of what is rght and wrong. A simple vote cannot determine what is right or wrong. There are some moral absolutes that go beyond numerical accounting. Australians have their own values and their long traditions of basic political and economic rights. These are values and traditions we share with both the US and the UK, which is why have similar views on the issue of Iraq."

Reith is confused. Moral Absolutes are in conflict with a tradition of basic political and economic rights since a tradition is something that has historically evolved. Reith seems to say understand this, because he acknowledges that we share the rights-based values and traditions with the US and the UK. So the Absolutes are quietly shuffled off stage to be replaced by the Anglo-American rights version of the liberal democratic West. Thats a long way from Absolutes.

Nor do Australia, US and the UK have similar views on the issue of Iraq. There governments do but not the public opinion of the body of citizens of these nation-states. A sleight of hand is performed here: the nation state is reduced to the government of the day.

Reith continues:

"As a democracy Australians will be never give up the responsibility, right and privilege to determine such values for ourselves. And certainly, we will not be delegating our assessment of values to the UN."

The implication is that the UN is dictating to Australia its values ---ie., telling Australia what it should believe. Funny, I thought that the UN was committed to western rights and democratic values just like Australia.

The context is that the UN has criticized Australia for not upholding its rights based values and traditions in terms of refugees, mandatory sentencing and indigeneous peoples. This criticism is what is rejected by neo-cons, such as Reith, in the name of national sovereignty.

Here we have the Absolute reappearing in a new guise. National sovereignty is the Absolute. There can be no international authority that stands in judgement of a nation-state.

Of course Reith doesn't really hold this Absolute position either, since he accepts the authority of such internationaal bodies as the IMF, the World Bank and the WTO in governing the global market and even in intervening to discipline particular nation states in the name of good governance.

As I said above Reith is confused--just plain confused.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 12:14 PM | Comments (1)

Rann Govt in slash mode

this says it all. The Rann Government is beholden to neo-liberalism. It had already cut deeply into health and education when it first came to power in 2002, thereby breaking its election promise that it would guarantee that health and education would be quarantined from budget cuts.

Now it aims to make more cuts in the forthcoming budget. Kevin Foley the Treasurer, says:

"We are still some way from balancing the books and it will be a hard tough Budget and there willl be spending cuts."

Balancing the books is the key policy goal. The Rann Government is shackled by the constraints of a neo-liberal mode of governance. It is looking more like the a Liberal government each day. This is a state government that is scared of the market and haunted by the State Bank debacle of a decade ago.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 11:21 AM | Comments (6)

February 5, 2003

Neo-cons join public debate on Iraq

Opinion polls show that a majority of Australians are willing to go to war with Iraq with a UN mandate. Around 75% of Australians do not support a war with Iraq without UN approval and so they are opposed to John Howard's unilateral stance. John Howard and his neo-conservative supporters are definitely out of step with public opinion.

This places the neo-cons on the defensive, as they are 100% behind the US, Britain and Australia bypassing the UN and going to war with Iraq alone. Neocons are conservatives who work within the horizons of realpolitik that gives primacy to the national interst, emphasize the geopolitics, and see international relations as the inevitible struggle of warring states. They see the cosmopolitan support for the UN as the first step to a federated world government.

What neocons do when faced with the above situation? They attack public opinion with all guns blazing. Thus Janet Albrechtsen says Australian citizens have a Misinformed trust in a toothless tiger. We shy away from unilateral action by the US & allies because the UN told us to; our argument is based on a 'lack of logic to say nothing of moral abdication.' There is a blog on this article by Gummo Trotsky who just cannot resisting commenting on articles by his favourite hero-columnist. And a very fine blog it is too.

The obvious inference of Albrechtsen's sweeping criticism is that we Australian citizens who place our trust in the UN are just a bunch of fools. Since it would be too difficult in Australia to do an Anne Coulter and charge us with treason neocons such as Albrechtsen have to argue their case. To her credit this is what does. She argues against liberal internationalism. Her case is that the UN is a fundamentally flawed body. (I will spell it out because the links will go).

Albrechtsen says:

"We have ourselves to blame for the UN's crippling credibility problem. The UN was a grand vision of nation states adhering to an objective body of international law. This vision was unrealistic. More than that, it was a dangerous delusion."

Albrechtsen then sets out the position of the liberal internationalists who support the UN.

"The UN's founders pre-supposed that nation states would set aside self-interest for universal values. An international community would emerge. World citizenship would replace national sovereignty. And they assumed countries would agree on what collective security meant and how it should be maintained. They also assumed Article 43 of the UN Charter, which gives the UN "teeth" – the ability to use force – would ensure the UN succeeded where the League of Nations failed."

Albrechtsen's criticism of this liberal internationalist /cosmopolitan position is then outlined:

"Each assumption proved not only wrong but dangerous. It lured the world into a false sense of security. Iraq shows that the UN's utopian idealism is easily manipulated by the world's most oppressive regimes."

Her argument for the structural flaws of the UN has several prongs. Firstly,

"When countries enter UN headquarters, they do not leave national interest at the door. And so the UN is driven not by common interests but by each member's self-interest."

Secondly,

"Article 43 is not the UN's saviour. Iraq has exposed how the UN's power to use force to maintain international security is meaningless when countries fail to agree on when and how to uphold that security."

Thirdly, consensus is difficult since:

"Even smaller groups of countries have problems reaching agreement."

Albrechtsen draws these together to say that "the UN's structural flaws often translate into paralysis. The UN's politics of inclusiveness mean it would rather avoid offending than expose evil."

Now, Albrechtsen does concede that the "UN has a useful role in humanitarian work, peacekeeping (once others have created a peace to keep) and providing a forum to exchange views." But she quickly adds, the UN "can't guarantee world peace. The UN's prevarication over Iraq shows how it can hardly become more than its members permit."

She finishes by saying: "Yet still most Australians defer to the UN. Go figure."

It is easy to figure. Albrechtsen's neocon argument does not allow for the UN, as an institution of global governance to act as form of constraint on, or regulation of, national self-interest and hegemonic political power. Though the UN is committed to universal human rights and the duties that go with those democratic rights, it can be seen as a way to provide some checks and balances to the primacy of the West in international affairs. Of course, Albrechtsen would not accept that the West should be constrained.

Be that as it may. What is crystal clear is that Australian citizenshave trust in the UN. As the East Timor intervention indicated, Australians are committed to the global humanitarian project: we intervened in East Timor in order to protect the rights of the powerless East Timorese in response to the intimidation, violence, oppression and terror by the Indonesian military and its client militia.

Liberal internationalism may be deeply flawed--I for one think that it is and so stand on the ground of the nation-state against the world citizenship ideas of the cosmopolitans. But I accept that the conduct of nation-states should be checked and balanced through global governance.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 1:14 PM | Comments (8) | TrackBack

Breaking news

Finally The Advertiser discovers that it is a newspaper that should comment on what is happening in the state.

It has said nothing at all for two days about the commonwealth proposal's to construct a low level nuclear waste dump within the Woomera Prohibited Area that is a missile site and space launching pad. Today it runs this story by political reporter LEANNE CRAIG.

True, it is only yesterdays news repackaged around a media release by Premier Rann, which states that the proposed radioactive waste dump at Woomera will jeopardise South Australia's burgeoning space research industry. But it is something.

The Premier, to his credit, is running hard on the issue, even though he knows that the Commonwealth has the power to roll himin his opposition to the location of a low level nuclear waste dump in SA. By contrast, The Advertiser is barely walking on the issue. There is no investigative journalism on this issue.

Clearly, The Advertiser has forgotten that newspapers have a responsiblity to the democratic process and the formation of public opinion. It must be very difficult for a concerned reporter, who takes the ethos of the journalism profession seriously, to work at The Advertiser.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 11:19 AM | Comments (3)

February 4, 2003

Trust and terrorism

There is an extended weblog on trust, politicians, and the war on terror at philosophy.com for those interested in the philosophy behind the news.

It is called, 'In the politicians we trust?"

Philosophy.com has just moved to Moveable Type. It has acquired an austere look.

Have a look and tell me what you think.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 11:09 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

Danger Zone

You would think that one of the last places that a federal government would bury radioactive waste is next door to a military bombing range. Good public sense would say that burying 5.7 million litres of low-level radioactive waste inside the defences forces testing ground at the Woomera Prohibited Area in South Australia would not be considered the best option.

Especially, when the alternative sites to site 52a (called 40a and 45a) are located east of the Woomera Prohibited Area and in the same geologically favourable conditions as site 52a.

Well the Commonwealth is deadly serious. Site 52a is the preferred option. And it is going to spend up big on a public relations campaign to convince South Australians that it makes good sense. South Australians are basically saying not in our backyard.'

Does it make good sense?

Consider this story by Rebecca Di Girolamo in The Australian-(no link). This is carrying the story. As a heap of junk for code has pointed out the story is being ignored by the South Australia's tabloid newspaper, The Advertiser

Rebecca quotes the Commonwealth Department of Defence as saying that it does not make sense. It's position is that the proximity of the ballistics weapon site at Woomera leads to a potential risk for accidental explosion that is suprisingly high. It argued its case in a submission to the draft Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) statement.

Australia's space and science industries concur with this judgement. Philip Teakle of Australia Space Research Institute (ASRI) says:

"Why would you site Australia's national radioactive repository in an area where you have the probability of a big bomb hitting it? Is this not asking for trouble? Either the site will get hit or range activities will have to be curtailed."

BAE Systems, the company contracted by the Department of Defence to provide support services to the nearby Woomera township, argue that any chance [of the repository being hit], however minimal, is not just not good enough. Site 52 a is 'illogical and dangerous' and fraught with unnecessary that have been 'ignored, undermined and miscalculated.'

The draft EIS statement accknowledged that there was a potential for 42 weapons penetrating the protective cover of the repository each year. It then said that the risk of the repository being hit was 'remote' and, even if it were hit, the environmental consquences would be 'minimal'.

This is the claim that is disputed by ASRI, Defence and BAE Systems. The Defence Department's submission to the draft EIS has not been released.

Why site 52a rather than sites 40a or 45a? One suggestion is that it is the cheap option. The federal government would save millions of dollars in road, water and electricity services as these are already established at site 52a. It is a case of short-term savings over the long-term wealth of the Woomera Prohibited Area.

Is this a case of bean counter mentality disguised as science and bureaucratic rational planning?

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 4:44 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Anne Coulter on Liberal Treason

Media Whores Online has a concise summation of Anne Coulter's position on treason in the US here.

It simply says that liberals who didn't clap for Bush at the SOTU speech are traitors.

Media Whores Online also mentions that Paul Begala at CNN's Crossfire, addressed Coulter's claim by asking whether those Americans who had helped the Iraqi's were also traitors. The transcript of the show can found here with Coulter coming on towards the end.

This is the question asked:

BEGALA: Let's check out another -- just to test your definition of treason. Take a look at this from "The Washington Post."

"According to oil industry executives and confidential United Nations records, Halliburton held stakes in two firms that signed contracts to sell more than $73 million in oil production equipment and spare parts to Iraq while Cheney" -- that would be Dick Cheney, now vice president -- "was chairman and CEO of the Dallas-based company. Two former senior executives of the Halliburton subsidiary say that as far as they know, there was no policy against doing business with Iraq."

Is that treason too?"

Good question huh? Takes us to the heart of the matter don't you think?

And Coulter's defense?

It was that the Cheney connection (and presumably other US companies doing mutually-beneficial business with evil dictators in the axis of evil) is too complex to grasp----America was not at war with Iraq in 1998.

Whereas, her own charge of liberal treason (liberal nonclappers) stands for itself. It is crystal clear. This is the reasoning. George Bush announced that his administration will deploy a shield to defend America from incoming ballistic missiles. But only only one side of the aisle stood up and gave that a standing ovation. The Democrats don't stand for defending America from incoming missiles. Therefore they are committing treason.

The assumption here is that Iraq can threaten the US by sending in ballistic missiles. That assumption is questionable on the available public evidence. Even if the current Iraqi regime is playing hide and seek games with the UN inspectors and is not disarming, that does not mean that it has the military capacity to land ballistic missiles on the US homeland.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 8:54 AM | Comments (4) | TrackBack

February 3, 2003

Radioactive Idiots?

a heap of junk for code mentioned that SA is to become the dumping ground for low level radioactive junk. The proposed repository, site 52a, would store almost 6 million litres of waste buried in a buffer zone.

Scott over at The Eye of the Beholder has picked up the story on the proposed nuclear waste dump. In his post on the Commonwealth proposal for radioactive junk to be dumped near Woomera he asks:

"But what idiot came up with the idea of putting this dump just 1km away from where they test rockets and missiles?"

There was nothing in The Advertiser about site 52A. Great newspaper huh? Would they know what investigative journalism is? The Australian has--Defence officials oppose nuke dump. Apparently, Defence officials have warned Senator Hill the EIS drafted by DEST was misleading, failed to adequately consult Defence and misjudged missile impact risks and radiation exposures.

Defence officials advised the radioactive repository would threaten the safety of testing because it sat beneath safety templates – areas set aside to enable the safe crash-landing of a projectile that is off-course. Sources say the officials are "violently opposed to 52a" and made a " scathing attack on the people who did the (EIS) assessment".

And a Japanese rocket last year crashed spectacularly just 8km from site 52a.

What does that say about The Advertiser for failing to follow up the story?Have their journalists read the submissions to the draft EIS. Or are they waiting for a Rann Government media release?

Well this is the DEST webite dealing with Radioactive Waste Management in Australia.

The full draft EIS (Environmental Impact Statement ) Report can be found here.

For the consultation process, submissions and discussion papers see here

The supplementary report, which responds to the issues raised by the public on the draft EIS, is to found here

Thats the process of how the Commonwealth got to propose that a radioactive dump would be just 1km away from the Range E Target Area, where defence and commercial companies frequently test missiles. I wonder what the Defence Department says? What did it say in response to the draft EIS?

General information on waste disposal of radioactive material can be found here. This is the US based International Atomic Energy Agency, but 'international' does not include Australia it would seem. There is no information on what is happening in Australia that I could find. It is all about Iraq.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 2:47 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

A bit of cheek

For those readers who think that our elected politicians deserve a bit of stick from time to time for the silly things they often say, there is a post on Wilson Ironbar Tuckey's comments on the recent bushfires in Canberra at a heap of junk for code called 'BushFires: Fear and Loathing'.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 1:17 PM | Comments (0)

Going back to Ann Coulter

In a previous post, called 'Anne Coulter & the US Gaze', on the old Public Opinion weblog here, I observed that I did:

".... not understand the emotional drivers of the Republican Party's foreign policy. Oh I know that this is centred around 'us & them; fighting a war with an enemy that is variously defined; and needing to destroy the enemy. But I cannot comprehend the political unconscious that surfaces in the expressions of hate in the texts of the attack journalists, such as Anne Coulter."

I said that the neo-con political unconscious sees politics as blind fury and that it has a political logic of, 'if you are not with George Bush, then you are against him, and so you are with the enemy.' In passing I noted that such a political logic makes the Democrats (I mentioned Al Gore) traitors, if they question what Bush is doing in his foreign policy.

Then I thought no more of it because I was focused on the consequences of the political logic in the sphere of international relations in relation to those Islamic European nations were who were critical of US foreign policy. So did those disgusted liberals here

Since that post I have read Anne Coulter's response to President Bush's State of the Union speech here called 'War-Torn Democrats'. The charge of treason figures prominently in it. This is a whole different ballgame to regime change in Iraq.

Here is the reasoning behind the introduction of treason. Coulter says:

"There's a rallying cry to unite the Democrats! If there has been a material breach "by everybody's standard," then and only then, we can boldly ... go to the United Nations! This is the fundamental problem of the anti-war movement. They can't bring themselves to say it's a mistake to depose Saddam Hussein, and "don't hurry" is not really a call to arms.

But why not hurry? Democrats claim they haven't seen proof yet that Saddam is a direct threat to the United States. For laughs, let's suppose they're right. In the naysayers' worst-case scenario, the United States would be acting precipitously to remove a ruthless dictator who tortures his own people....

Either we're removing a dictator who currently has plans to fund terrorism against American citizens or -- if Bush is completely wrong and Eleanor Clift is completely right -- we're just removing a dictator who plans to terrorize a lot of people in the region, but not Americans specifically."

Now let us grant that Coulter has given a reasonable statement of the public debate over the war with Iraq in the US. This form of public agitation is what you would expect in a liberal democracy that presupposes the American naton: ie vigorous political debate over a course of action amongst those who belong to the nation. After all these are two of the three big ideas of the liberal conception fo the nation--the third idea is collective enactment of general policies by democratic means.

What then does Coulter's neocon political unconscious do with this very liberal idea? It makes a big jump to treason. I kid you not. She ends by saying:

"The Democrats' jejune claim that Saddam Hussein is not a threat to our security presupposes they would care if he were. Who are they kidding? Democrats adore threats to the United States. Bush got a raucous standing ovation at his State of the Union address when he announced that "this year, for the first time, we are beginning to field a defense to protect this nation against ballistic missiles." The excitement was noticeably muted on the Democrats' side of the aisle. The vast majority of Democrats remained firmly in their seats, sullen at the thought that America would be protected from incoming ballistic missiles. To paraphrase George Bush: If this is not treason, then treason has no meaning."

Coulter's unconscious leap is hard to grasp in Australia where a majority of citizens oppose the US going it along with a band of allies. The UN and global governance still have a big following in Australia.

What then is the significance of this leap by the neo-con political unconscious? Well, its national imaginary is based on unity of the nation. For this unity to exist those who belong to the American nation must concur instinctively on the fundaments of Christianity and its role as an authoritative source of public morality that unifies the nation. Those who differ, by questioning the understanding of good and evil, threaten national unity and wholeness; and so they form an internal constituency that must be marginalised in public life. The unity of the (Christain)moral nation at a time of crisis requires the state to be re-nationalised and massive violence to be wrought against dissent.

And what does this mean now? (It used to mean dispossessing Amerindians).

Well it takes us way beyond the Wall Street understanding of politics. The Wall Street Journal's image of neocons as 'conservatives [who] have offered policies that emphasize freedom, market solutions, and the dangers of big government' is too concerned with the market. This is both misleading and self-delusional. That understanding merely attaches the label 'conservative' to market liberalism. Conservatism is far more than a fashion label. We are, after all, talking about treason here, not market regulation.

What the blind fury of Anne Coulter's political unconscious shows is the neo-con repudiation of a liberal social order. National unity overrides a liberal order based on individuality, tolerance and the agitation of public opinion. A liberal political order has to be sacrificed to ensure national unity. National unity is required for war and this justifies intolerance. So political liberals---with their rights, freedom of expression, set of procedures, public deliberation, seperation of church and state etc ---have to be disciplined in the name of unity and order.

Liberals have every right to be disgusted with what is happening in Bush's America---do they not? They thought that the very idea of an American nation was founded on the classical tenets of liberalism. Seeing this trashed in the name of restoring the vital essence of a unified Christian nation would arouse the big disgust.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 10:51 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Goodbye UN?

An example of the intense dislike in the US for liberal internationalism and its attempts at global governance through the UN can be found in this piece by Charles Krauthammer in The Washington Post called, 'U.N., R.I.P'.

Krauthammer's piece goes beyond the weaknesses of the UN policy of containing Iraq to wanting to do away with the UN. Krauthammer lists some of the shortcomings of the UN arising from the struggle for power and national advantage, and after giving a serve to the French, he finishes with this:

"The United Nations is on the verge of demonstrating finally and fatally its moral bankruptcy and its strategic irrelevance: moral bankruptcy, because it will have made a mockery of the very resolution on whose sanctity it insists; strategic irrelevance, because the United States is going to disarm Iraq anyway.

Having proved itself impotent in the Balkan crisis and now again in the Iraq crisis, the United Nations will sink once again into irrelevance. This time it will not recover. And the world will be better off for it."

This tone has no time for multilateralism or liberal internationalism. It assumes that US hegemony, not international governance, is the principle source of the maintenance and management of the liberal world order. It assumes that, as the UN as an international institution does not function in the interests of the US, so the UN is irrelevant.

What really matter is power politics and the historical struggle for relative national advantage, not global governance. It is hard power---military muscle and economic might---not the soft power of cooperation and negotiation that really matters.

Such a view sits in tension with the US commitment to a liberal world order based on free trade, unhindered capital flows and the global institutional architecture of the IMF and the World Bank. This order is primarily a product of of US power or hegemony, even though its continuance depends upon the consent of the other G7 powers.

Its make wonder. Are the Bush neo-con republicans opposed to the liberal social order? Or is it more specific: they don't they like the use of checks and balances on the exercise of US power through the United Nations?

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 8:56 AM | Comments (4)

Waiting for the River Murray to Collapse

In his Heritage Matters column entitled 'State drained by the lavish use of water, (no link) in The Advertiser Tim Lloyd speaks simply and plainly about the state of the River Murray.

There is no doubt about the lavish use of water in the Murray-Darling Basin as exemplified by the current practices of flood irrigated cotton and rice and pastures for cattle need to be changed. And little is being done to reduce this wastage other than enabling the market to slowly increase efficiency in water usage.

Tim says:

"When the river finally becomes unusable--to salty to drink and too toxic to enjoy--something will be done. Perhaps it won't be this year, and the perennial crisis will drag on through a few more, wetter seasons. Meanwhile we console ourselves with a growing understanding of the immensely complex ecology and poltics of river systems.

But dithering at the bottom of the river system waiting for it to collapse is not a viable option. We need to keep pushing for efficiency and environmental sustainability in the water flows that eventually come from our side of the border."

And for the first time we have a criticism of SA's conduct in the politics of the river from within South Australia. Lloyd acknowledges that SA has been a leader in efficient irrigation and is also best at recycling waste water. Tim then adds a criticism rarely heard from within South Australia:

"But SA is far from able to claim the moral high ground on water efficiency. On too many farms, orchards and vineyards water is used wastefully. Water is used by industry and homes on a lavish scale given SA's epithet as the driest state in the driest continent. Premier Mike Rann's recent promise of River Murray water for Clare Valley vineyards seems particularly ill-timed."

Does this article mean that South Australians are no longer being taken in by SA's position. SA is basically two faced about the Murray. On the one hand it draws attention to the Murray's poor health and denounces the other states for not doing enough. On the other hand, it does very little within its own borders about ensuring healthy rivers in the Eastern Mt Lofty Ranges, water recycling, reducing dependence on River Murray water by Whyalla through using solar-powered desalinisation plants and fostering new water efficient industrial processes.

It is not simply a case of good (SA) and bad (eastern states), as SA makes out under its various Lib/Lab regimes.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 6:51 AM | Comments (2)

February 2, 2003

Good Quote

I do not normally find much to agree with when I read Michael Duffy, a conservative journalist writing in the tabloid Daily Telegraph in Sydney.

But in this story Exposing fools: what a rank idea I have. Duffy says in passing that:

"State politics is not about ideas, it is about the ability to run things. This means it is much harder to be in the state Opposition than its federal equivalent.

At least Simon Crean can take positions on matters, such as war with Iraq. But how can Brogden show that he could run NSW Inc better than Bob Carr, which is all that matters – particularly as he has never run anything in his life?

It is not Brogden's fault – who else in the NSW Coalition has ever managed anything of significance? The underlying problem is that people of experience and talent are rarely attracted to state politics.

What person of energy and achievement wants to spent eight years in Opposition, much of it on the back bench?"

The link to the above article is courtesy of THE BITCHIN' MONARO GUIDE TO POLITICS

I concur wholeheartedly that state politics in a federal Australia is basically about the ability to run things. I would add, with an eye on the Rann Government here in SA, that it is about running things with a firm hand on media management to ensure re-election.

What I also want to add is that in a globalised world state politics, can and should be about ideas. Ther is room to move in a globalised world with the constraints on the conduct of nation-states by the global market.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 5:11 PM | Comments (0)

Bush: SOU Speech again

There is a very good analysis of the domestic side of the President Bush's State of Union Speech Bush Strikes Out then Hits Home Run.The domestic agenda is governed by the compasionate conservatism which we heard so much about during the Presidential campaign. I didn't take this compassionate conservatism side of things very seriously, as I read Bush as a Big Oil man into hard line neo-liberalism + national security state + moral conservatism-Christian style.

When I initially read Bush's State of Union Speech I found the big budget expansion scenario hard to take seriously---tax cuts, welfare spending, environment and military expansion for the war on terror=a whopping budget deficit with sluggish economy, declining consumer spending and a stock market on the skids. I didn't pay any more attention cos it was very much a guns and butter budget I just skimmed it.

I thought this is political dreaming designed to shore up domestic support for the Bush administration on domestic issues---it's supply side economc policies going to get the economy moving and unemployment down. For a liberal New York Times account, See Paul Krugman's A Credibility Problem.

For more favourable responses to G Bush's State of Union speech see the admiring Andrew Sullivan.com, who says that Bush's

"...domestic concerns seem to me motivated by a decency and a compassion I cannot but respect. As someone with HIV, I listened to his words about AIDS and found my throat catching. This is a Republican president, and yet he sees the extraordinary pain and anguish and death that this disease has caused and is still causing....I was also gratified and relieved by his proactive moves on the environment. A pro-growth, technologically-driven environmentalism should be a central plank of modern conservatism. Bush went some way toward establishing that. He needs to do more. But there was something else here - the glimmers of a real core of compassionate conservatism".

For another favourable conservative reaction, see the piece by Peggy Noonan in The Wall Street Journal Online called The Right Man. Noonan says:

"It was the speech of a practical idealist, practical in that it dealt directly with crucial and immediate challenges and addressed them within a context of what is possible, and idealistic in that it applied the great American abstractions--freedom, justice, independence--to those challenges. The speech was held together by a theme of protectiveness. We must now more than ever, and for all the current crisis, continue as a uniquely protective people. We must protect the vulnerable and troubled--the young with parents in prison, the old with high prescription costs, workers battered by taxes, victims of late-term abortions, a continent dying of AIDS. In foreign policy we must protect ourselves and the world from those who would harm us with massive, evil weapons.

The theme held both halves of the speech together, and so they cohered and supported each other....The speech was unrelentingly serious, and assumed a seriousness in its audience. It assumed also a high degree of personal compassion and courage on the part of those watching. And so it was subtly rousing without being breast-beating, flag-waving or cheap. It was something."

As I said, I skipped the compassionate conversatism and went straight to the foreign relations part of the speech----the case for war. It was the assumptions underpining the national security side of things that I was interested in, not the case for war with Iraq per se. I have little concern with that anymore. The US is going to war. It wants the war. It is going to get the war. And it says that God is on its side as it represents the forces of good fighting the forces of evil.

I was concerned with what the new pax America in the 21st century would like:the way it repudiated international liberalism that has been concerned to help bring about a more cooperative world order based on the profound impact of globalization. The concern has been with global governance to regulate world affairs to ensure a secure, just and democratic world order--- as exemplified in the report by the Commission of Global Governance Our Global Neighbood. The global ciivc ethic of this international liberalism is instinctively repudiated by Bush-style Republicanism in the name of a world of self-seeking nation-states seeking power and control in an anarchic world.

For a New York Times liberal response to this Hobbesian view of the international affairs where might is right, see Flogging the French

So my interpretation of Bush's State of Union Speech did not bother to work through the speech and connect the two parts. But, of course there are two faces to a superpower: the domestic and the foreign and both have enormous impacts on small, regional nation-states such as Australia.

Why did I so quickly dismiss the speech on budget grounds the first time round? Economics 101, of course. As everyone knows Economics 101 teaches you that, as we live in a world of scarce resources, so we cannot have guns and buter. There has to be a tradeoff: a choice has be made. What Bush was saying was that America does not need to make choices: it is beyond the simplistic economics of 101.

Is this the first glimmering of the new America as an imperial power?

For a savage, ironic connecting of the domestic and the foreign parts of Bush's State of the Union Speech see Bush Admits Invasion Plans Driven by Hydrogen This is a long way from Andrew Sullivan's Bush reworking a Kennedy-style liberalism into a compassionate conservatism as a way of governing the country.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 7:06 AM | Comments (1)