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July 31, 2003

Iraq: nice if this happened in OZ

Iraq does not figure on the Australian radar screen these days. When it does the level of debate in Australia is low as it remains caught up in the partisan polemics in which warriors yell at one another across the right/left divide. The lefty polemics do little more than demonize their opponents. This does not engage with individual positions or particular arguments. Likewise the righties. The characteristics of this culture are described by Joe Cambri in terms of "pettiness, snobbishness, selfishness, backstabbing — and even blacklisting. Perhaps worst of all, absolutely no sense of shame."

It is time to move on and do something different. How can this be done? The debate considered below is quite different from partisan polemics based on prejudice. I introduce it to show another way of debating.

On the one side of the debate we have Juan Cole. His position is:

"....I want the US to succeed in Iraq, just as I think all responsible Americans do. The war was not justifiable on grounds of an immediate threat to US security. But it still may have been a worthwhile enterprise if it really can break the logjam in the region created by authoritarianism, patrimonial cronyism, creaky national socialism in the economy, and political censorship and massive repression."

Juan says that success can be judged in terms of the:

"Iraqis replicating India's success in holding regular elections and in maintaining a relatively independent judiciary and press, they would pioneer a new way of being Arab and modern. (The earlier experiments with parliamentary governance of the 1920s, 30s and 40s were marred by the dominance of very large landlords, a class now largely gone, who did not permit genuine democracy).A little humility, [by the US] a little seeking of redemption, a little doing good for others. Those things could make a convincing rationale for the current project. But not a war on terrorism."

Unlike many Australians, Juan rightly acknowledges that the threat to the US (and Australia) by Saddam Hussen was not a sufficient justification for war. (The case is made with great clarity by George Paine over at Warblogging.com). Juan supported the war on Iraq because of the brutal way that Hussein regime treated the Shi'ites. The war is over and Juan now makes a case that rebuilding Iraq is a worthwhile enterprise.

This is a position one can engage with. Though I opposed Australia's involvement, (but understood that the US as a world power had geopolitical grounds for intevention) I too would like to see a free and democratic Iraq. There are positive signs. But I have great reservations that it will happen, because of incidents like this.

On the other side of the debate, we have Helena Cobban over at 'Just World News'. She engages with Juan by questioning the redemptionist undertone and asking him three questions. I will leave "redemptionist" undertone with its connection to guilt about past US betrayals to the Iraqi people---its a very American thing--- and turn to Helena's three questions. Helena says:

"So okay, here are some of my other questions for Cole:

He seems to be arguing that a state of affairs in which Iraqis can replicate India's success" would, for him, constitute a US "success" in Iraq. Does he have any reason to believe that that goal is the one that this US administration is actually pursuing there? In particular, does he have any reason to believe that the political empowerment of the Iraqis themselves is what the Bushites are aiming at?

How does he assess the considerable weight of counter-evidence that there is out there, regarding this administration's policies in Iraq, elsewhere in the Middle East (where "empowerment" of local pro-democracy forces seems nowhere to be on the effective agenda), or at home here in the US (ditto)?

Equally or even more importantly: How about the precedent set for Iraqis, for that 96 percent of the world's people who are not US citizens--and for the four percent of us who are US citizens-- if the US administration is seen as "successful" in imposing its will on the actions of a large and distant sovereign nation purely through the force of arms and the waging of a war that was quite unjustified by any criteria of "just war" or international law?"

These are good questions. Helen's first one puts the finger on an ambiguity. It is unclear whether the Bush Administration wants an independent democratic Iraq or a liberal Iraq that is a vassal state of the US. And the second one follows because the Bush Administration does appear to be limiting democracy to prevent the Shi'ite majority from forming a theocratic state. And the last question introduces the issue of breaking international law by the US's pre-emptive strike and the US then being seen to be imposing freedom by force.

Suddenly we are a long way from this polemical style of journalism. Though many journalists consider themselves to be little more than attack dogs, I suspect that many journalists do not know how to argue. Hence we can learn from how Juan responds to the questions.

Juan responds here by answering the questions in a way that enables a considered reply. On the first question he is clear about what is meant by 'success':

"...it is important that Iraqis aren't double-crossed yet again by the US. Americans, having caused the old order to collapse, have a responsibility to nurture a new one before they decamp. The new order should be a parliamentary democracy with an independent judiciary and press...It would be unfortunate if Iraq were just delivered to nouveau riche robber barons, as happened in post-Soviet Russia...It would be highly irresponsible for the US military simply to suddenly withdraw from the country at this juncture. I have called...for the US to get a UN mandate for its reconstruction efforts and to conduct them multilaterally."

Juan then says something that clears up my confusion and unease about the Bush Administration. He says the administration is divided on democracy. His judgement is that Bremer, Powell and Bush (but not Rumsfield and Wolfowitz) all favor Iraq having a parliamentary democracy in the short-term.

In responding to Helena's second question about the Bush administration limiting Iraqi democracy, Juan argues that the administration's Iraq policy represents a break with the past efforts to shore up regimes like the royal family in Saudi Arabia:

"The Washington elite has decided that those regimes are breeding Islamist terrorism that targets the US, and that they have to be reformed in the direction of parliamentary democracy...Of course, parliamentary governance can be more or less democratic. Domestically, the Bushies favor a form of it that melds it with plutocracy."

Okay. I can buy that. It makes sense of the Americans trying to limit democracy in Iraq. Juan then argues that the plutocrat card is a no goer in Iraq because there are no haute bourgeoisie and Iraq was a welfare state under Hussein. What then? Juan says that parliamentary governance is a good start, and it is a system that has the potential to become more democratic if the Iraqi's come to own it.

But will the Americans allow the Iraqi's to own it? I have my reservations on this.

In reponse to Helena's third question---about breaking international law through the use of a pre-emptive strike--- Juan says that:

"If the US acted illegally in international law, then the international community should punish it. (In fact, the refusal of India, Egypt, France and Germany to send troops despite US pleading is already a form of punishment). But the Iraqi people do not deserve to be punished, and the rebuilding of the country so that it ends up being a parliamentary democracy with a free press and an independent judiciary would be a good thing for Iraqis, the world, and even for the US."

I concur. It would be a good thing if the US helped the Iraqi's to build a democratic Iraq. It is a much better model that US occupation or Iraq being a vassal state of the US empire.

So what we have here are reasonable responses to good questions that allows for further responses. It is a pity we cannot conduct a debate like this in Australia. Though some journalists do not know how to argue, I suspect that many journalists have no intention of doing so. They see themselves as the attack dogs in the culture wars. Destroying the enemy is the reason they write.

Update

This piece by Michele Costello is about the best you get in Australia. What does it say? That democracy is hard and that the US is achieving some successes. Why bother to write if that is all you've got to say?

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The wall is a problem

The wall the Israeli's are currently building has an old fashioned aura around it. More like a modern day version of Hadrian's wall the Romans built.

The wall is proving to be a problem. The wall deepens the differences between Palestinians and Israeli's, rather than eases them. The politics is about land.

The wall stands in opposition to movement being made by the peace process associated with the roadmap.

Arab peace initiatives and the Israeli Land-Grab Fence (Amjad Rasmi, Ad Dustourl, 7/30/03).

Is Washington beginning to flex its muscle on this?

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 9:07 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

July 30, 2003

yuk & apologies to Tim Blair

This guy cruised our local Adelaide Festival of Ideas a while back. The Sydney conservatives yelled and carried on. I wondered what all the fuss was about, and I had a bit of fun at Tim Blair's expense. I had never heard of George Monbiot. I gather that he is a columnist for The Guardian. So I read the article in The Age with interest-(its been downloaded from The Guardian)

It's trash. The main argument is this:

"...we must first grasp a reality that has seldom been discussed in print. The US is no longer just a nation. It is now a religion. Its soldiers have entered Iraq to liberate its people not only from their dictator, their oil and their sovereignty, but also from their darkness....So American soldiers are no longer merely terrestrial combatants; they have become missionaries. They are no longer simply killing enemies; they are casting out demons."

Well, the US is a Christian nation and its domestic political discourse under the Bush Administration is full of religious imagery. But the US is still a secular nation committed to liberal democracy. But we have more:

"... Like all those who send missionaries abroad, the high priests of America cannot conceive that the infidels might resist through their own free will; if they refuse to convert, it is the work of the devil, in his current guise as the former dictator of Iraq."

That reminds me of Anne Coulter. But as great as Anne is, she is still not America. Remember all those treasonous liberals she hates so passionately?

George makes short shift of secular democratic liberalism and free markets that shape the American way of life as he says that:

"..the Americans had now become the chosen people, with a divine duty to deliver the world to God's dominion... It is not just that the Americans are God's chosen people; America itself is now perceived as a divine project....The US no longer needs to call upon God; it is God, and those who go abroad to spread the light do so in the name of a celestial domain. The flag has become as sacred as the Bible; the name of the nation as holy as the name of God. The presidency is turning into a priesthood."

Ye gods. And there is lots more. We eventually get to the terminal point: the US is fascist ;ie., similiar to fascist Japan. And we end on:

"Those who seek to drag heaven down to earth are destined only to engineer a hell."

Eh? Did not the Iraqi regime under Saddam Hussein engineer a living hell for the Iraqi people.

And this is taken to be serious journalism. What has happened to The Age. I used to read it once. I read it less and less these days. Its a similiar experience to Norman Geras and The Guardian.

So Tim I can understand why you pointed the finger at George. It is looney tunes. Sure, even a form of new fundamentalism.

If we keep George in mind, then what Janet Albrechtsen says in her recent Sinners and fanatics article on the new fundamentalism makes sense:

"A new fundamentalism is stalking the Australian political landscape. Often couched in the language of religion, it is in fact deeply rooted in politics.

Its adherents, like all fundamentalists, keep their politics of hate simple. Rejecting nuance, ignoring the complex, they present us with the world according to them. If we disagree with them on issues such as Iraq, illegal immigration, a republic or indigenous affairs, our motives are impugned or, worse, we are evil, shameful, depraved. And because there are so many of us who disagree with them, they preach that Australia is an evil, shameful, depraved place."

After reading George Monbiot on why the US is a fascist state I just have to agree.

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a part time uni

The Australian Financial Review has an article on the way students are juggling debts and studies. (no link, 30 July, p. 53)

The debt incurred in paying for their courses under the HECS scheme is reshaping their time at university. They spend less time on campus and more in paid work (permanent part-time work). Consequently, they cram rather than study, and they find themselves exploited by employers by being forced to work overtime or lose their jobs. They find that there is a decline in students services, increasing difficulties in accessing teaching staff, overflowing lectures snd tutorials ands poor library facilities.

Hence we have a disengagement by students from university life in order to chase the dollar to pay the debt and ensure they have the work experience to land a job after graduation. So they fail to turn up to classes and get their work done on time. Theyare enrolled in full time courses but are actually part-time students.

The tensions will only increase as universities keep raising fees. So tomorrow's graduates will be taking on a even bigger HECS debt than their predecessors, and so postpone buying a home and starting a family.

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lurching to a Mad Max world

I mentioned earlier that there has been little debate over the changes to Australia's foreign policy by the Howard Government.

One of the issues that has been raised is imperial overreach with the US donning the mantle of empire and running the world from Washington. Paul Kelly had mentioned three lines of criticism that had been made of the Bush administration's geopolitical strategy: its aggression provokes rogue states; it exaggerates what the US can achieve alone; and it downplays the importance of winning the battle of ideas.

Paul Keating, the former Australian Prime Minister, takes the imperial overreach in an article in the Australian Financial Review (subscription required, 29 July, p. 55) He addresses the unilateral American policy, which he says rejects any notion of co-operation and eschews resort to multilaterial frameworks. Keating is a liberal internationalist who hold that the world should be run co-operatively, and so he is critical of the unilateralism, the pre-emptive first strike doctrine and the militarism of US foreign policy.

Keating's criticisms are directed at the consequences of this foreign policy. He says:

"The really bad news in all of this is that by walking away from multilateral arrangements, such as the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, and the anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, and by their failure to live up to commitments made under the Non-Proliferation Treaty the Americans have given a signal to the rest of the world that they, too, can be part of a resumed nuclear arms race."

Keating then argues that others have taken this message to heart.

"Believe you me, this has well and truly begun. Not just in India or Pakistan, or Iran and North Korea or even Israel, but in lesser states which believe they need their pocket nuke to make the world deal with them respectively. I hope the Americans have not lead us into a Mad Max world--while they seek to shield themselves in the cocoon of national missile defence."

The Mad Max image is an appopriate one to express our fears and anxieties.

The other line of debate has been about the independence of Australia's foreign policy. Ross Garnet had argued that the new interpretation of the US alliance under the ANZUS Treaty, which represents a shift from the regional to the global, seems to allow no room for independent judgment. Garnett then illustrates what he means:

"This could have fateful consequences. At the Australia-US Leadership Dialogue in Sydney in 1999, Armitage, then a foreign policy adviser to candidate Bush, challenged the Australians present by asking whether they were "ready" for war with China. War may be necessary under a Bush administration, he advised, to secure Taiwan's interests in the event of conflict with the mainland. Some Australians present responded that they were not ready. Australia's response should depend on the circumstances that give rise to war."

Observa, in commenting on the earlier the lie of the land post, argued that by breaking with the previous Keating Government's multilateral foreign policy the Howard Government had shown independence. He says:

"Now you might criticise the policy of Howard, but it could well be said that it is the most in your face, like it or lump it foreign policy stance in decades. Perhaps this is a sign of maturity in Australian foreign policy now. We are not afraid to offend some countries in order to do what we think is right. That may be a sign of true independence."

So we have a tough, no nonsense foreign policy whilst we all lurch to a Mad Max world.

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tough choices

This is a very good and tough minded article by David Reiff in the New York Times Magazine. The link is courtesy of Abu Aardvark

It is about the 1990s in Iraq and the regime of sanctions put in place by the United Nations and the US. It argues that it is a modern tragedy.

On the one hand:

"...Iraq sanctions may have contained Hussein, but they had failed at weakening his grip on his country. Brent Scowcroft is right that without the sanctions the American victory in the second gulf war might very well not have been as smooth. The embargo does seem to have achieved the goal subsequently advanced for it as a rationale; that is, to keep Hussein 'in his box' and to prevent him from developing weapons of mass destruction."

On the other hand a fundamental reason Iraq is in such terrible shape is not just because of Hussein's brutality to his own people. The comprehensive regime of economic sanctions, which the United Nations Security Council imposed on Iraq for almost 13 years, sharply restrictrd all foreign trade, and brought a once rich country to its knees.

Seen as strategically sound (it is either do nothing, military intervetion or sanctions). sanctions also exacted an appalling human toll. Rieff says:

"...there is little doubt that at least several hundred thousand children who could reasonably have been expected to live died before their fifth birthdays. The damage, according to those who fought against sanctions, was terrible."

Sanctions are an option with North Korea.(If that is rejected then its either do nothing or military intervention). Sanctions will result in ruined lives and the dead bodies strewn across the ruins of broken societies either. This will be the cost North Koreans will pay for Australian security. Another modern tragedy is looming.

Do read the article. You rarely see this sort of quality journalism in Australia.

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July 29, 2003

on the nose

This is one of the reasons why I dislike the America represented by George Bush. And Bush says that opening up wilderness areas to loggers is a fire-prevention plan. It's a knock down argument.

He's an oil man without the green wash. His agenda is to roll back green legislation that protects the environment. It's about chain saws in national parks.

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media wars

Webdiary has picked up this article by Jackie Ashley in Media Guardian that I had linked to here. Margo has juxtaposed the Guardian piece with this one from the Daily Telegraph.

The juxtaposition gives you the media wars: both a power conflict between government and public broadcaster and an attempt by the Murdoch Empire to kneecap the public broadcaster to make space for its expansion in the UK through owning television stations. Jackie Ashley decribes the media power play in the UK this way:

"This time, with the communications bill soon to become law - even as amended - Murdoch has a chance of getting into terrestrial British TV. If he was able to curb the BBC in its funding and its journalism, shoving it into a narrow little box, from which timid establishment- style reporting and dreary documentaries were all that trickled out, he would be in business."

Same in Australia. You can see this from the debates over the amendments to our media bill. The Bill aimed to extend the power of Murdoch and Packer, but was blocked by the Senate. It was a close call. The amendments are due to come back to the Senate for further consideration, and no doubt will be become part of the Howard Government's double dissolution trigger.

As Margo rightly points out, there is less media diversity in Australia, and it would get worse with the duopoly of Murdoch and Packer. She says:

"There are a large number of newspapers with different viewpoints and owners in the UK. There's only Fairfax in capital city Australia to balance Murdoch's dominance. Without an independent Fairfax, nothing like the Telegraph or Guardian pieces would ever be written in the mainstream press. As I keep repeating, the only real accountability is that different newspapers groups keep each other honest. With a partnership of Murdoch and Packer as owners, democracy is all over. Dismantling the ABC's role as independent, dynamic, courageous scrutineers of government would be too easy."

Hence the importance of the public broadcaster for democracy.. As Robert Sheer from the LA Times puts it, shooting the messenger---the public broadcaster-

"...is a denigration of the core ideal of representative democracy — rule by an enlightened public — as are vindictive attacks on journalistic watchdogs and whistle-blowers who keep our representatives honest."

Contrary to what Gerard Henderson claims, bias is not the issue here. Why doesn't the Howard Government acknowledge that the frightening claims made about Iraq amounted to little more than cherry-picked snippets from intelligence reports that generally regarded Iraq's threat to the world as modest and shrinking? Truth and bias is not the issue. Bias is the excuse, or the way to open a battle front through payback.

The strategic aim of payback is to cripple public broadcaster. Henderson is doing his bit iin the campaign.

Why is bias not the key issue? The answer is suggested by this article from the Wall Street Journal by Robert Bartley. He says that:

"I think we're coming to the end of the era of "objectivity" that has dominated journalism over this time. We need to define a new ethic that lends legitimacy to opinion, honestly disclosed and disciplined by some sense of propriety."

The old objectivity ethos has gone. It is not practised by Linda Mottram on the ABC's AM; nor by Andrew Bolt, Piers Ackerman or Fox News. we have entered the world of opinion journalism. As Bartley points out:

"... journalists can't have it both ways. Since they're increasingly dealing with subjective opinion, they should stop wearing "objectivity" on their sleeves."

And that applies to the ABC.

The neo-liberals have found the instrument to cripple the public broadcaster. It is either privatise the ABC or shove it into a narrow little box. This gives more room for Murdoch and Packer to acquire more media assets.

Ultimately, the power play can be seen as an attack on democracy. An enlightened public has got too noisy and uppity for the elites: they are questioning the elite's justification for war. So dissent and criticism need to be dampened down so the governing elites are not challenged or criticised in running the country their free market way.

Hence the media wars.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 1:14 PM | Comments (6) | TrackBack

July 28, 2003

the lie of the land

Robert Manne has an interesting account on why the Australia reaction to the spin and lies about the threat Iraq posed to Australia is much more muted than in the US and the UK.

War is a serious business:

And civilians get hurt big time:

So we need to remember that Australia went to a war with a country that has not attacked Australia, and no credible evidence of the intention of the Iraq to attack Australia was produced. We followed the US.

The reason for the US intervention was to ensure that the US was centered in the Middle East, that it could fundamentally reorder the strategic balance in the region, and that it could do so to defend Israel's strategic interests in the region. The rhetoric of war aimed to persuade public opinion, and it placed an emphasis on the WMD question and the links the Hussein regime had with Al Qaeda.

As Daniel Drezner points out the fallout has been on the ethical and practical implications of these tactics. This article and this one by Stephen den Beste in the Wall Street Opinion Journal reckon that the two level tactics of the rhetorical strategy to persuade public opinion were okay; Josh Marshall disagrees.

This debate has little resonance in Australia. Manne says that the muted response in Australia--ie., the lack of fallout---is a combination of:

---a weak Labor opposition that has adopted an electoral strategy of prioritising domestic issues over national security ones;

----the moribund character of the contemporary Australian parliamentary system which means that our parliamentarians are simply incapable of pursuing a matter of public interest where a government is vulnerable but an opposition leadership is weak.

---an acceptance by Australian citizens that it okay to lie in order to achieve a desirable end. If the Government needs to twist the truth a little, then this is a relatively trivial price to pay.

---and an acceptance that our support for the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq was nothing less than the insurance premium we are required to pay in return for the security we received from association with a great and powerful friend.

I think that Manne is right on this. There is an acceptance of US hegemony, of the way the neo-conservative Bush administration has defined good and evil in international affairs and the open-ended pre-emptive strategy. Australians have accepted Howard's linking Australia's national interest to that of an imperial US. Howard's judgements on national security are trusted by Australian citizens; as are the strategic shifts Howard has made in Australian foreign policy. Accepted here means judgement not passivity.

The implication of these judgements is that, unlike the US and the UK, the public debate in Australia has been very muted. As Glen Condell over at Blogorrhoea asks:

"Where is that debate? Our gloriously diverse media don't seem to be banging on about it."

They are not. But they should be calling the Howard Government to account, if they watchdogs for democracy.

So where to now? One option to to keep engaging in criticism to keep the embers of critical thinking alive in the public sphere.

If we adopt this perspective then we can discern a bit of debate in Australia. It has different concerns to the UK and US one. Thus Paul Kelly (no links) talks in terms of imperial overreach arising from a combination of open-ended pre-emptive strategy and substantial budget deficits. Kelly mentions three lines of criticism of the Bush administration's geopolitical strategy: its aggression provokes rogue states; it exaggerates what the US can achieve alone; and it downplays the importance of winning the battle of ideas.

It is more than a debate about the US as the new Rome. It is about the implications of the strategic direction of Australia's foreign policy under the Howard Government. Thus Ross Garnett says that:

"...two long-standing premises of foreign policy have been violated.

One is that close and productive relations with prominent Asian countries are critically important to Australian security and prosperity.

Another is that the ANZUS treaty has served Australia well and works best for both Australia and the US over the long haul if Australia exercises independent judgment about its national interest."

The debate---what there is --- is over these two issues in Australia. Is the Asian region of critical importance to Australia, or should Australia hitch its star to the US? Should Australia exercise independent judgement about its national interst or just go along with the US?

There has not been much of a debate so far.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 10:45 AM | Comments (4) | TrackBack

July 27, 2003

Another nail in the coffin

Here is another plank in the case against war with Iraq falling apart. This time it is the non-existence of the key link between Iraq and Al Qaeda that turned the possession of WMD by Iraq into an imminent threat against the US, the UK and Australia.

The Full Congressional September 11 report is here The summary of the findings and conclusions can be found here. Se this report from the New York Times the deletions about the involvement in Saudi Arabia in 9/11.

George Paine over at Warblogger.com has a good coverage on this for the US.

The public policy implication is the need to curb the power of political advisors, such as Tony Blair's Alastair Campbell. In Australia the power of ministerial advisors also need to be curbed. There is a Senate inquiry into Members of Parliament Staff going on at the moment.

In reporting on the submissions Tony Harris, in The Australian Financial Review (subscription required, July 22, p. 54), argues that curbing the power of Ministerial staff by setting limits to their power, making them accountable to Parliament and citizens, setting out expectations of their behavour through a legislated code of conduct, and mechanisms of reinforcement.

It is the Ministerial staff who distorted the intelligence to justify Australia's involvement in the Iraq war. And they continue to avoid accountability. As Harry Evans, the Clerk of the Senate observes in his submisison to the above inquiry:

"The role of ministerial personal staff in theory, if there is a theory, is that of advisers, assistants and agents of their employing minister. This theory has long been belied by the reality. Their role has long gone beyond advice and personal assistance. As active participants in the political process, they can:

control access to ministers;

determine the information which reaches ministers, particularly from departments and agencies;

control contact between ministers and other ministers, other members of the Parliament and departments and agencies;

make decisions on behalf of ministers;

give directions about government activities, including directions to departments and agencies;

manage media perceptions and reporting."

As Harry Evans points out, the politically partisan Ministerial staff can interpret the above functions along the following lines:

'ensure that those who would tell ministers what they do not want to know do not have access;

provide “deniability” by ensuring that ministers can profess ignorance of information which becomes politically inconvenient to know;

ensure that persons out of favour for political reasons are denied contact, and those in favour are provided with contact;

provide “deniability” for decisions which ministers may claim not to have made themselves;

browbeat and intimidate public servants to ensure that public service performance accords with political objectives;

put out misinformation and partial and selected information to ensure that the “right story” is reported, and ensure that journalists who recount the “right story” are favoured with further information, while those who do not are punished with lack of information.'

Neither Liberal nor Labor are willing to change the situation by making Ministerial advisors more accountable to Parliament. They both like this weapon of executive dominance. They have no intention of curbing the power that is currently played by the highly partisan and politically active "junk-yard attack dogs" on the Minister's staff. They are to useful since they are able and willing to do anything to assist the political cause of their minister and the government.

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Polemics: conservative fallout

The comments that run through public opinion from the right wingers are in favour of privatising the ABC. This is the position that Tim Blair advocates. As one of the comments at Tim's site said:

"Everyone agrees the ABC should be privatised, but the problem is that most of its employees are so immune to criticism that they couldn't function in a free market. "

Everyone?
Presumably all those in the rightwinger camp was what was meant. By rightwingers here I mean those who think that the free market – as represents an ideal type. It is the highest form of capitalism. It is to be celebrated for its efficiency, for its technological dynamism, and even for its capacity to deliver full employment – all free from the dead hand of governmental regulation and control. Righties imagine that the United States is close to the ideal type. It is one of their favourite myths.

The rationale for this battle over the ABC in the culture wars is that, as the ABC as a public broadcaster is on the lefty side of politics, so it has to be taken out. There can be, and should be, no legitimate challenges to the political rule by conservatives from a public broadcaster funded out of general revenue.

Privatising the ABC will ensure this. For the righties the sooner it is done the better. A privatised ABC can then be as biased as it likes. Consumer choice is then used to provide the intellectual backbone for the free market case.

The thread running through the comments is that conservatives now rule. They enjoy their power, they will do everything to maintain that power and they get their kicks out of knee capping their opponents in the ABC. They enjoy hurting lefty ABC people in the culture wars. It's called partisan politics.

The public policy implication of this thread is that there no need for a public broadcaster to act as the watchdog for democracy, since democracy is the free market. Hence, there is no chance of public reason developing through actually comparing and contrasting the arguments of both sides and then coming to a judicious judgement. We just privatised opinions that cluster together in mutual protection societies.

The other implications are that ignorance and prejudice is bliss, and that the righties' prejudices about public broadcasting are in harmony with the considered opinions of middle Australia.

Well, here is a conservative dissenting from the above. Miranda Devine is defending the ABC. And she characterises Senator Alston's attacks on the ABC as nebulous nitpicking, lacking finesse and smacking of bully-boy overreach.

How Senator Alston must disappoint the road warriors of the right. He lacks the necessary courage and valour to be a war leader vanquishing his opponents.

May I suggest that all those readers of Tim Blair currently sweeping through public opinion go read Miranda. Go to read her guys---they're nearly all guys ---because Miranda talks sense for once. Instead of hunting for opinions and information that reinforce your prejudices you may even come across information that begins to question those prejudices. Why you may even start thinking about your myths.

Guys read Miranda because she is on your side. And did you know that ex Thaterites, such as Norman Tebbitt among others are coming out to support the BBC against Blair, even though they acknowledge that the BBC is a natural home of British Labourism?

Update
Heres another consideration about what to do with the ABC from John McVey:

"...the ABC should not be eliminated, just remove all the news, editorialising, pseudo-watchdoggery, 'educational' programs and entertainment nonsense, busting the organisation down to a strictly-facts-only-and-ALL-facts government-reporter dealing strictly with the goings-on of the various governments in our country. In this manner, the political and cultural bias rampant in the current ABC will be put to an end while retaining those elements of the ABC that are legitimate."

That's worthy of consideration.

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July 25, 2003

Govt v Public Broadcaster

In the UK the Blair Government and the BBC continue to go hammer and tongs at one another over the way the Iraqi war was reported and commented upon. In Australia the Howard Government and the ABC are also in conflict. Both conflicts have the hallmarks of a war that involves the nature of public broadcasting.

Bargarz links to this article by Denis Boyles at National Review Online. It is worth a read for the detail and the links, but it is rather light on the big picture.

Bargarz's own take can be found here It is informed by Andrew Sullivan's claim that "the BBC decided to launch a propaganda campaign against the war against Saddam and to tarnish, if not bring down, the premiership of Tony Blair." More Sullivan here.

It's a while since I've read Sullivan. Re-reading him I can see that he defines the framework/perspective on current events for the Tim Blair's to work in. Other Australian accounts of ABC bias are Andrew Bolt and Piers Ackerman.

For the big picture on the Blair Government versus the BBC, try Jackie Ashley's article in the Media Guardian. The conflict is about power. The Blair Government wants to bring the BBC to heel. So does the Howard Government with the ABC. The public broadcaster's need to be kneecapped.

My sympathies lie with Jackie Ashley's account. Two points are made by her:

"The BBC's prime crime has not been sloppy reporting or an anti-war agenda. Its crime is to have pointed the finger at gaping holes in the government's case for going to war to disarm Iraq of weapons of mass destruction."

And:

"The BBC has done what good journalism ought to do: probing and questioning insistently - things that the government would rather not discuss. During the war it reported and commented about what was happening in the sand and cities of Iraq. It did not do what some US broadcasters - notably Fox - did, and act as a patriotic national cheerleader."

For a diferent tack see Jesse Walker's 'Beyond David and Goliath' over at Reasononline. She talks in terms of "a series of past conflicts that lend form to these dueling narratives."

From my perspective both the ABC and BBC have engaged in critical journalism in the form of commentary. These public broadcasters were acting as watchdogs for democracy and furthering the formation of public opinion. That watchdog role is why public broadcasting needs to de defended from those, such as Tim Blair, who want to privatise the ABC.

In Australia, it is Senator Alston who has launched the attack on the ABC.He has done so in terms of bias, by which he means that the ABC has failed to meet its charter of being balanced and impartial. What does balance and impartial mean here?

Some, including ABC Watch still understand it in terms of the old distinction between journalism as news and comment as editorials.(Nostalgia, July 13). However, the distinction between news and analysis on AM is generally agreed upon between the central antagonists in this debate.

Consider this exchange on the ABC's Media Report.Thus:

Catherine MCGrath: "News is the straight presentation of facts, without analysis, Current Affairs, typified by the ‘AM’ program, and indeed the ‘PM’ program, is there to analyse, to give listeners the broad view of information, to explain, to provide a context."

Senator Alston: "I don’t think I’d quarrel with anything of what you’ve said, Catherine, but what I would say is that none of that exempts the ABC from an obligation to be balanced and impartial in that coverage."

Alston is right. The ABC has that obligation as a public broadcaster. So what does balance and impartial mean? It is spelt out in this exchange on the ABC's Media Report. The topic under discussion is the possibility of Senator Alston laying a complaint about the ABC's bais in its commentary with the Australian Broadcasting Authority.

Mick O’Regan:... "So what we’re looking at here, and correct me if I’m wrong, obviously, is the degree to which in the opinion of the ABA, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation had met the conditions of its Charter, its obligations for the nature of comprehensive, balanced, unbiased reporting."

David Flint: "Yes, and I would assume that the core part of the code is this:

‘Every reasonable effort must be made to ensure that programs are balanced and impartial. The commitment to balance and impartiality requires that editorial staff present a wide range of perspectives, and not unduly favour one over the others, but it does not require them to be unquestioning, nor to give all sides of an issue the same amount of time.’

So there is a need to present a wide range of perspectives and not unduly favour one side of the other. Alston's charge is that the commentary worked from a particular perspective, one he calls anti-Americanism. Unlike many pro-many righter wingers he does not want pro-American bias. He wants balance and impartiality, which he assumes means having no perspective. The ABC should be above perspective.

How do you have no perspective? How do you stand outside being situated in a a particular way of looking at things without pretendign to be God? David Flint gives us a clue by mentioning what the Act says:

David Flint then goes on:

"And further on they say, and I think this is important to bear in mind:

‘Balance will be sought through the presentation as far as possible, of principal relevant viewpoints on matters of importance. This requirement may not always be reached within a single program or news bulletin, but will be achieved as soon as possible.’"

It is all about an interpretation of what is involved in the presentation of "principle relevant viewpoints" over a number of programs. The ABC is presenting the different relevant viewpoints but it is not doing so in a neutral way. It is making interpretations and judgments about the debate. Hence it situates itself as a participant in the public debate. The objection is that public broadcasters should not be a participant. That is what they mean by not having a perspective.

My own view is that the ABC"s perspective comes from its role as the watchdog of democracy.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 12:59 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

July 24, 2003

trying to do a sneer

Until the PHP pathways code of public opinion are given a good reworking by an expert designer, postings will be limited. The front page will remain messy until then. I feel like this when confronted by rejigging snappily designed PHP include pathways.

This post is a bit of a roundup. It's also a bit self-reflexive. I'm trying to loosen up the dreary academic style I learnt in the taxpayer-funded university dominated by tenured radicals who think that Australia is a sewer of evil. I thought I'd do so by reading some of those conservative journalists who see journalism as a weapon in the culture wars.

I wanted to learn how to have fun on a weblog.

First up is Miranda Devine. She advises conservatives to ensure they have some attitude in dealing with the enemy. Don't write journalism just sneer. Tim Blair shows how it is done. Why sneer? It's all about revenge and sneering is the best way to get it.

Reading them reminds me of hagfish. You know, the ones whose face looks like their anus.

Just trying to do a sneer. Not that good eh?

But this is fun. It means that I don't have to do Tim Blair Watch (here and here) anymore.

So maybe I could learn a few tricks from this sneerer

You don't learn much sense I admit. This is a guy who thinks that building more dams is the solution to the water crisis. And he is not going giving to give up his lawn. But you can start writing lines like "Getting Melburnians to suck the juice of the pigface?"

Then I'd be able to do more than sneer. I would be able to swim upstream in urine just like the candiru catfish.

And this one could teach me the weapons of "ridicule, labelling and branding". You get the feeling he wants to eat your liver. And all I can come up with by way of a sneer is this.

Not good huh. To be honest I cannot do the sneer. I much prefer this style of journalism.

This is what happens when you try to copy a copy of a sneer. You start talking about frying the maggots.

But this one is my favourite by a long shot. Anne Coulter sets the pace. She has the looks, the fashion sense and the attitude. She sets the standard by which all the other bottomfeeders are measured.

Do you think I've managed to achieve a lighter tone? Even had a bit of fun?

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 9:16 PM | Comments (13) | TrackBack

July 23, 2003

Iraq: How about this?

In the light of this news from Iraq about the death of Saddam Hussein's sons, this old report from Debkafile makes some sense.

It gives an account of the organized military resistance to the US occupation in Iraq that confirms the view that the continuing attacks are both organized and the work of professional assailants, loyalists of Saddam Hussein and terrorists who have had military training.

Debkafile says that:

"....the forces mustered by Saddam Hussein as consisting of elements of the Special Republican Guards, Fedayeen Saddam suicides, Baath militiamen and thousands of Syrian fighters arriving in a constant stream. It is more than probable that Saddam and his two sons are very much present in underground fortresses built after the 1991 Gulf War and conducting the current campaign against US troops in person, assisted by officers who commanded the Special Republican Guards Divisions in the March-April War...

...The 10 to 15 daily attacks mounted against US troops every day by the Iraqi resistance attests impressively to military professionalism. Their objectives are clear: To dampen American troop morale by building up the casualty score and, more importantly, to repel American military incursions into an enclave beneath whose surface Saddam and his allies lurk in their underground fortress cities."

The implication? The subterranean bases constitute the Samarra enclave and it poses a burgeoning military threat it poses to US forces in the country.The deposed Iraqi regime is fighting a guerilla campaign against the US occupation from this base. Here is Bill Safire from The New York Times on Saddam Hussein's comeback strategy.

This military resistance is quite different from the demonstrations organized by the some of the Shi'ites, such as the supporters of Muqtada al-Sadr against the US presence in the Baghdad. This form of resistance is analyzed by Julian Cole over at Informed Comment.

If you find it heavy going, then here is a puff piece from Jim Hoageland of the Washington Post on Paul Wolfowitz in Iraq for light relief.

I guess the death of Saddam's sons will be a circuit breaker to the political pressure currently building in Washington over politicized and cooked intelligence. The neocons at the Weekly Standard---Irving Kirstol and Fred Barnes---think it's all a big beat up. Here's the background, and it indicates that Iraq cosntituted a nuclear threat was run to the very end. No doubt a media counter offensive is on the way.

Why don't the conservatives just come out and say that the lying by Bush, Blair and Howard is okay and necessary because the war was in the national interest? The end justifies the means line. It would be a more effective to this critique.

Given that the US is talking about allowing greater UN involvement in the rebuilding of Iraq here is the UN Report {S/2003/715 Report of the Secretary-General pursuant to paragraph 24 of Security Council resolution 1483 (2003)}. The link is courtesy of Abu Aardvark.The report is on the contribution the UN could make to the rebuilding of a democratic Iraq. What comes through is that democracy should come from within and not be imposed; and that there is a need to ensure Iraqi ownership of the process of creating democratic institutions. Sensible advice.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 11:29 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

July 21, 2003

a note on academia

In the light of this post at philosophy.com on the contemporary relevance of the classics, this interview in the Sydney Morning Herald about life in the humanities' coal face in Australian universities is interesting. The interview is conducted by John Wojdylo with Albert Brian Bosworth, a Professor of Classics and Ancient History, University of Western Australia, and a world expert in his field. It is about the future of classics (and by implication the humanities) in Australia. Brian describes the negative side of the economic restructuring of the universities.

There needs to be more of this being said in the public sphere to counter the spin of the Vice-Chancellors and Ministers.

Several points are made by Brian in the interview:

1. university library funds all over Australia are being starved to the point where the University of Western Australia (a sandstone university) no longer has a basic research library. There goes scholarship.

2. resources are inadequate for undergraduate teaching. Teaching loads keep on increasing. More stressed out academics in teaching only regional universities.

3. though the senior faculty have done okay from ARC research funding, the classics department has become a 'disciplinary group' because of small staff numbers. The upshot? It is facing extinction.

4. the academic labor situation indicates the negative impact of casual employment on young scholars working in the humanities. 3 year research positions at the postdoctoral level are very hard to achieve and they are strictly limited in time. Even 5 year senior research fellowships provide no security. At a lower level talented scholars have to exist on short term contracts and causal employment which can take them into their forties. At that point it is very hard for them to retrain and change careers. Upshot? Unemployment.

5. there is an over-production of PhD's for which there are no jobs and so the graduate students are forced to leave the academy after struggling to get their foot in the door for several futile years. (For the US experience on this see this post by Invisible Adjunct.) Upshot? More unemployment.

I've interpreted the points a bit by reading between the lines in the context of the work done by Invisible Adjunct on the fate of the history discipline in the US.

My judgement? It is pretty clear that the future of the classics "department" is downhill. In the absence of substantive private endowment (not realistic in Australia) the classics "department" has no future. As the senior faculty retire they will not be replaced by bright young academics.

Philosophy is in a similar situation to classics.

Why? Why the devastation? Why is a whole generation being lost? Why all the wasted lives?

The most immediate cause is the current shift from the Menzies-style liberal university serving the national interest to a business corporation in knowledge economy. Tim Dunlop has comments on this with good comments by others. As this shift speeds up, the humanities fail to generate the cash flow they need to survive. They are not money earners because they do not attract lots of students, dues to a humanities degree do not offering good career prospects. So the humanities are seen as marginal, a distraction, or an ornamentation.

Hence they are cut back again and again and again until there is nothing to cut back. The devastation all seems so rational in an economic sense. It is a matter of shifting resources to where there is most demand.

In his own longer post John Wojdylo calls a spade a spade in place of all the fog that hides the devastation. He rightly talks in terms of an intellectual catastrophe in Australian universities and the decimation perpetrated at ground level in philosophy, history, classics and music, where Australia has lost world leaders in these fields, and is in serious risk of losing most of the rest. He describes the way the devastation explained away as a necessary step in the path towards future salvation through the market; and the failure to publicly fund the humanities, the pure or basic sciences and mathematics in the name of the public good.

The transformation of the university into a business corporation is a result of the neo-liberal cultural revolution. John describes this as requiring the private sector and universities to be both educated to view things differently and to change their practices; with the universities required to move closer to industry to ensure the closer interaction between the private sector and universities. Despite the failure failure of the private sector to invest in research in the universities John argues that the cultural revolution aims to permanently entrench neoliberal ways of thinking and values into everyday university life so that the liberal university becomes little more than a corporation selling a product in the global maket place.

If we step back to the broader public policy picture we can see that the current funding crisis of the universities has been engineered by the state. The neo-liberal state has engineered this crisis as a way to create pressure to shift to a full market model as the only rational solution.

John is dead right. The future of higher education in Australia is one of ever more deregulation and user pays, with an increasing shift to full fees in some courses in prestige universities to recoup the big cuts in public funding. As the American free market model is being imposed through a wearing down of resistance the more prestigious univerisites are using their market position to grab the cash.

Spare a thought for the personal cost of this pathway to unemployment and career change. So why do people keep doing PhD's in the Humanities when there are no jobs and they face the situation of overeducated unemployability? As Amanda over at Household Opera puts it, we have a very strange sort of denial going on. (link via Rana at Frogs and Ravens). Amanda describes this position as:

"...well, there are no jobs, you're going to be poor and anxious and overworked, and you'll have very little choice in where you end up living -- but the immaterial rewards of a life of devotion to learning make it all worthwhile!"

Like Amanda I find this scholarship/moral education stuff depressing given the grim reality of poverty and underemployment. The ship is going down in the stormy seas and the passengers are singing happy tunes about poverty and the lifelong benefits of a humanities education!

Is it a case of
"unwarranted happy thoughts only serve to lighten the emotional load as they make their merry way down the path to academic proletarianization"?, as Invisible Adjunct puts it.

I also find it very disconcerting that senior academics, such as Brian Bosworth, continue encourage humanities students to do PhD's, when they know that the graduate students will go into debt and not get a full time job in academe. I find that irresponsible. It is not just a case of pointing the finger at the neo-liberal policy makers. Many of the senior faculty have been irresponsible in their ethical responsibilities of care for their students and adjuncts.

By doing so they have expressed the hollowing out of the ethical values of the humanities. The humanities are a shell of their former self, as it is no longer the case that a humanities education makes you a more ethical person.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 11:07 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

July 19, 2003

nice to see some sense

In the Inquirer section of the Weekend Australian there is an article entitled The Vanishing by Bob Drogin (not online but obtainable at the New Republic Online (July 2003 but subscription only). It argues that Iraq probably did not have weapons of mass destruction at the time of the Iraqi war and that Hussein was bluffing because if he admitted that the UN containment had worked, it would have weakened his power in the region.

And check this as backup. (Link courtesy Tim Dunlop who has an extended discussion.

Nice of the Australian to run such material. But there is no acknowledgement that this undermines its own justifications for the war. That is too much too expect. But the circulation of such material it is the reason why Bush Blair and Howard talk about WMD programs these days. They cover the shift in position by pretending that they are saying the same thing prior to going war with Iraq. No honesty there either.

But The Australian has shifted further away from the Bush administation was absolutely right on everything.

An editorial on North Korea in the Weekend Australian (not online) acknowledges the rationality fo the Left vis-a-vis the Iraqi war. The editorial says that further to the left of the ALP:

'..we see the old habit returning: blame the Americans. Democrat's leader Andrew Bartlett says that Australia's participation in an interdiction force would only be "bowing to the US again". But wasn't the whole argument of the left against the war in Iraq that we should focus our resources on threats in the region?'

That is quite different to the standard 'appeasement and support Saddam' line that was run at the Left by the 'it's time for war now' crowd.

What The Australian does not say is that beating of drums of war with North Korea is not necessary either. Negoitations and diplomacy is a better way to go.

Whilst Australia and the US beat the drums of war on the domestic front (Howard, of course, talks a different language when he is visiting the Philippines, Japan and South Korea), it is China who is quietly doing the negotiating.

This acquiring a bit of sense does not apply to Christopher Pearson, Adelaide's homegrown neo-con, who favours pre-emptive intervention in foreign policy and the US acting as global cop keeping law and order. His column in The Australian (no link) is about one the ALP left for being critical of the US and the benefits accruing to Australia from being the deputy sheriff of the US. Pearson fails to address what pre-emptive intervention means for a North Korea that the ne-cons define as a rogue state posing a big threat to Australia's national security. Pearson evades the issue. He hides behind an attack on the ALP and boosting John Howard.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 3:40 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

July 18, 2003

pardon me

I have just come across Greg Sheridan's article on North Korea in The Australian. This paragraph caught my eye:

"Understand this first of all. North Korea and the problems it poses are not the invention of George W. Bush or John Howard, or a monstrous cabal of neo-conservatives plotting by sinister candlelight in some basement of the Pentagon. It was as much a problem for Bill Clinton."

Well not quite. The Bush Adminstration broke with the Clinton policy of giving aid to North Korea in return for giving up its nuclear programme. The Republicans opposed this in the Senate; identified North Korea as a part of the Axis, and took an aggressive (supported by Australia) to North Korea that is designed to provoke Pyongyang and back it into a corner.

And to claim that North Korea will be raining missiles down with nuclear warheads on the west coast of the US and the north east coast of Australia is a bizarre joke. North Korea does not have the capacity, whilst building thermonuclear weapons is probably beyond the country's scientific knowledge and financial reources. It is nearly bankrupt and is unable to provide enough food for its people.

Sheridan plays along with whipping up fear with his talk of "so much destructive capacity in such a dangerous and at times mad regime" and that "Australia, with its tiny population densely clustered in six isolated centres, is almost uniquely ill-equipped to survive, as a nation, any nuclear exchange."

Sheridan speaks on behalf of the neo-conservatives in Washington. He is their voice in Australia and seems to get most of his copy direct from John Bolton, the US Undersecretary of State.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 12:08 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Reality dawns

This statement acknowledges what is going on in Iraq. The new head of US Central Command, John Abizaid, said that the United States forces in the Gulf face a "classical guerilla war". A welcome break from the rhetoric that has been coming out of Washington. Consider this gem of revisionism by Bush:

"The larger point is, and the fundamental question is, did Saddam Hussein have a weapons program? And the answer is, absolutely. And we gave him a chance to allow the inspectors in, and he wouldn't let them in. And, therefore, after a reasonable request, we decided to remove him from power, along with other nations, so as to make sure he was not a threat to the United States and our friends and allies in the region. I firmly believe the decisions we made will make America more secure and the world more peaceful." (my emphasis)

Its a macabre joke. I recall watching Hans Blix & the boys from the UN in Iraq prior to the war assessing how far Iraq had complied with its obligations to declare its weapon of mass destruction.

Courtesy of Juan Cole over at Informed Comment we have this article by Col. Dan Smith, entitled, Descending into the Quagmire: The Occupation of Iraq, from Counterpunch. It gives the background on the guerilla war scenario.

It ends by saying that:

'Having dislodged the previous regime by force, the U.S. increasingly is caught in the quagmire of depending on force to control the Iraqi people in the name of national and regional "peace."'

That seems to be a good description of what is currently happening. The geo-political strategy behind the realist's regional peace is to secure Israel's interests by ensuring Israel's continued regional supremacy.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 9:24 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

July 17, 2003

Governing the country

Canberra is in winter recess and many of the politicians are taking a break. This space from the political hurly burly gives us a moment in which to reflect on governing the country in relation to the Murray-Darling Basin in the light of Ticky Fullerton's 4 Corners piece on the River Murray. That program was about governance--ensuring social change and water reform--- even if the issue of governance was not directly addressed.

It strikes me that the current mode of governance is a dead end as it is unable to perform the changes required to save the Murray-Darling River system that is now locked into the global economy. The current mode of governance is not delivering. There is a lot of talk, plans and meetings but the river's health continues to worsen.

I do not think that more of the same with tinkering at the edges (eg., reforming the Murray-Darling Basin Commission or its Ministerial Council), will give the necessary governance capacities.

And the view that markets, civil society and non-governmental organizations can compensate for, or fill this lack, strikes me as pie in the sky.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 2:18 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

"Fixing" the Murray

I see that John Quiggin has a post on River Murray. His argument is about the cost to fix the Murray. Many of the current proposals, he says, are outlandish in terms of the amounts involved. So he has a quick look. It is good to see economists getting involved in the issue.

John says:

"I thought of the following as a back-of-the-envelope exercise in cost estimation. Suppose the government bought back 1500GL of water at $40/ML/year, this would be an annual payment of $60 million, which could be financed from a capital sum of $1 billion at 6 per cent interest. I'd guess that increasing natural flows would solve about half the problem, which would imply a total cost of the order of $2 billion. This is incredibly crude, but I'd think the order of magnitude $1 billion - $10 billion is about right, and that we are likely to end up spending something around the low end of this range."

I have some queries.

First, this seems to imply that governments enter the water market each year and buy the 1500 gigalitres required for enviromental flows. Why that option? Why not reduce the cap by 10-12%. Why not buy back water licences permanently? Why not take farm land out of production--pay the farmers to leave?

Secondly, we have $1 billion for environmental flows and $1billion for the other half of the problem. What is the other half of the problem? Land restoration? Reducing water consumption? Shifting to sustainable agriculture?

Thirdly, how do we go from $2 billion to $10 billion? Is this an insurance for the rapid rise in the cost of water due to increasing shortage?

Fourthly, I appreciate its back of envelope calculations but John does talk in terms of "fixing" the Murray. It is not clear what 'fixing' means in this context. It is often suggested that the "fixing" problem is about the demand of the domestic consumers, who are unwilling to pay a higher price for their vegetables.

This was implied by Ticky Fullerton in her 4 Corners Sold Down the River. Sure those living in the cities need to change their habits in the use of water, and we need to redesign our cities to make them more sustainable. But the centre of the "fixing" problem is the unsustainable agricultural practices of farming systems (eg., the wine industry) that are now geared to exporting their products to overseas markets.

The queries are offered in the spirit of dialogue and debate.

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

July 16, 2003

The US/Israeli tango

This is a very good article on the Middle East. It is a review of Warren Bass, Support Any Friend: Kennedy's Middle East and the Making of the US-Israel Alliance, (Oxford University Press, 2003) by Patrick Searle, who uses the review to spell out his ideas on how the US/Israel alliance structures what is going in the Middle East. It is well worth reading since the ideas are good ones and they deal with strategy.

I came across the review in the typical weblog way-----via Juan Cole Informed Comment via Walter over at Idols of the Marketplace.

Searle makes several points that are relevant to the argument of public opinion about neo-con geo-political strategy. First, the National Security Strategy of September 2002, which proclaimed:

"...that containment and deterrence were now stone dead; that the U.S. had to achieve and maintain total military supremacy over all possible challengers; that any "rogue states" which might be tempted to acquire WMD would be dealt with without mercy by means of preventive or preemptive war."

Secondly, the confluence of the Israel and US foreign policy to the point "that American and Israeli interests are identical, even inseparable";that America's Middle East policy - and America's military power - is "harnessed in Israel's interest by succeeding in getting the US to apply the doctrine of preemptive war to Israel's enemies"; and this is done "to ensure Israel's continued regional supremacy".

Thirdly, the U.S.-Israel strategic relationship involves "a multimillion-dollar annual business in cutting-edge weaponry, supplemented by extensive military-to-military dialogues, security consultations, extensive joint training exercises, and cooperative research-and-development ventures."

The Howard Government stands firmly behind this American Israel strategic relationship and so US foreign policy in the Middle East. Where the US goes we go.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 10:40 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

swings and roundabouts

North Korea has more relevance to Australia's long term strategic interests than Iraq ever did. It is all about ensuring regional stability and the balance of power by preventing civil war on the Korean Peninsula and ensuring that Japan and China are not threatened.

First we had the tough talk on the "rogue" North Korea about the possibility of nuclear war and military intervention; then the backpedalling by Alexander Downer when a North Korean spokesperson said if you bring the interdiction on we'll nuke ya; today the Iraqi-style war rhetoric has been replaced by the diplomacy through China and the despised United Nations.

In the backdown Alexander Downer, the gungho warrior posing as a diplomat, was reported as saying on Melbourne radio station 3AW that:

"We don't believe for a minute North Korea would launch some kind of nuclear attack against Australia, or have the capacity to fire nuclear missiles that sort of distance... "That's if they have any capacity to fire nuclear missiles at all."

Meanwhile in the US the war talk is about the US and North Korea drifting towards war, with an imminent danger of nuclear explosions in American cities.

Another tangled web is being woven, even if one agrees with Hugh White's argumentthat "Australia is right to support American plans for international co-operation to intercept exports of weapons of mass destruction."

I heard the American Ambassador on Radio National this morning stirring the fear factor by saying that Australia is threatened by missiles from North Korea.

This is more than the Howard Government being all over the place in their rhetoric. Blowing hot and cold on war is a familar pattern from Iraq to create the new bogeyman to shape public opinion.

Underneath the twists and turns the neo-con strategy is to allow provocative actions by US forces to destabilise and topple the dictatorial regime of Kim Jong-il. It is deploying aggressive military tactics to back the regime into a corner. Its the first steps in the new doctrine of pre-emptive strategy in which the US will respond to a belief that its security may be under threat.

"Belief" and "may be" are pretty vague terms, so the spin doctors create the image of the world beign a very dangerous place. So they talk in terms of rogue states, invading missiles, imminent threat, nuclear war for domestic consumption, security umbrellas, and ballistic missile defence programmes. On the domestic front the strategy is one of using national security issues to out manoeuvre their political opponents.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 11:59 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

July 15, 2003

Foreign policy matters

Margo Kingston has posted an article from Geoffrey Barker from the Australian Financial Review, called Let loose the dogs of war on her Webdiary. (Scroll down the page).

Barker opens with this:

"Australia under the Howard government is drifting dangerously towards aggressive military adventurism and the establishment of a repressive national-security state."

I think so too. It is what this weblog has been arguing. Barker continues:

"The most dramatic manifestation of this trend is the federal government's enthusiasm for military deployments to meet what it perceives as its obligations under the US alliance and to deal with regional and domestic security issues."

Spot on. There has been a fundamental rupture with the foreign policy of the past. It is a retreat from Australia's commitment to multilateral diplomacy, international law and working through the UN. It is a turn to joining coalitions of like-minded nations willing to fight to achieve outcomes with or without UN backing.

As Hilary Charlesworth observes such a policy "asserts the right to intervene in other countries on the basis of Australia's own assessment of its national interest, and rejects the constraints of the collective views of the international community."

It's might equals right. As Scott Burchill notes Bush, Blair and Howard decided to invade Iraq then hunted around for the justifications:

"Bush, Blair and Howard assembled arguments to support a case for war after they had decided to attack Iraq. They did not arrive at a conclusion after a judicious evaluation of the evidence. Like barristers, they selected and highlighted material favourable to their argument and ignored anything that undermined it."

The justifications selected were the ones most likely to persuade public opinion and they were ones based on arousing fear.

Barker then introduces a new theme. He says:

"Most disturbingly the drift is occurring with little comment, little debate and apparently unconstrained by the countervailing pressures that limit policy extremes in fully functional liberal democracies."

No doubt about it. Few care about foreign policy in Australia. And you can see what passes for debate here. with Piers Ackerman 's response to Malcom Fraser's criticism of the Howard Government's foreign policy. And you don't hear much from the academics.

Barker finishes on this note:

"With independent public service advice compromised, academic criticism muted and much media inquiry limited, the Howard government's remaking of military and human-rights policy is a cause for grave democratic concern."

And few seem to be guarding democracy.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 7:41 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

a husk of its former self

This article makes for sad reading. It is an insider's account of the stranglehold that factional politics now have over the ALP. The ALP has been become a factional machine.

Chris Schacht, a former ALP Senator from the ALP, makes two good points. First,

'...in the past 15 to 20 years market research in the ALP has become almost an end in itself. Labor Party policy presented at election times is now designed after being "market researched"'.

Secondly, a sucessful career is measured in terms of years served for th faction. All the energies in climbign the ladder are devoted to furthering the faction. Chris says:

"Faction always comes before party or community. After several years of faithful factional service you may be promoted to the front bench because your faction has been allocated a certain percentage of positions. Again, merit is secondary. You keep out of trouble, serve several years as frontbencher, retire to the back bench, and then after a term or two retire from parliament."

So we cannot expect much from the ALP as a reform-based party. As Chris observes, the factional system produces:

"...a new breed of factionally bred and trained ALP officials, are technocrats whose aim is to win elections as an end in itself - not the means to introduce policies that have a coherent vision for a better society."

Is there anything more to be said?

Well, its a tragic life for a young, bright MP who wants to make Australia a better place. Obviously they have misunderstood the point of politics and are in the wrong career.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 1:33 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

how things turn around

I see that Gareth Parker supports those, such as science blogger Aaron Oakley, who characterise the environmental movement as fanatical and as having abandoned science and reason. Gareth's position is that green policies encourage reactionary and backward looking governments to adopt anti-development policies.

This anti-green position that denies its opponents any form of rationality has great insight. Its has depth. It opens up new ways of looking at national politics. It helps us to understand what eludes us in terms of public policy.

Why, it was only the other day when I was in Canberra that I heard John Howard the Prime Minister talking about green policies on water and salinity. The big plan was announced with much fanfare, and water reform has now become a central part of the Howard Government's third term agenda.

And it was only last night on national television that I saw John Anderson, the Deputy Prime Minister, saying that the Murray-Darling Basin needed environmental protection and water reform.

As I understand it, John Anderson has been placed in charge of water reform. And big things are expected of him. I hear around the traps----the corridor gossip you know--- that John will deliver before he retires to the farm. It's an obligation thing he has with the nation.

I have to admit that I never had considered the Howard Government to be reactionary, backward looking, fanatical and abandoning science and reason.

But there you go. Its a new perspective on conservative politics.

No doubt we can expect dire consequences from the imposition of the forthcoming anti-development policies on irrigators. Make no mistake folks. Its dire. It will leave the country sterile and bankrupt, with no future for us. If the Howard Government continues on its current path of ill-considered and irrational decisions, then Australia will be exporting people soon. Our destiny, it seems, is to become a banana republic.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 12:18 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

July 14, 2003

its the ministerial staff

The unravelling of 'the selling the Iraqi war' continues to unfold in Washington and London It is becoming increasingly clear that the Coalition of the Willing invaded Iraq on the false pretences of overplaying the nuclear card.

Who cares is the response in Australia. It is history. We have moved on. The intelligence agencies have taken the rap for their mistakes. They slipped up. The politicians built their case on the intelligence reports they received and they continue to have full trust in the politicized intelligence agencies.

And what a case was built. The sublimal message was that Saddam was going to nuke or poison us. It tapped directly into our fears. We had to go to war. No ifs or buts here.

Of course, Saddam never was going to attack Australia. Nor were the spinners simply sexing up the facts. They were creating a fiction about the threat to national security. The fiction enabled Bush, Blair and Howard to control the national security agenda by boxing those opposing the war into a corner. and charging them with appeasement.

But what is rarely mentioned in this is the role of the ministerial advisor vis-a-vis democracy. The advisors would have known the nuclear hand was a poor one---as they would have been briefed. The advisors are political appointees and they sift the information to shape public opinion to control the domestic politics for the Minister. It is the Minister's office that would have reworked the intelligence information into a case to persuade public opinion.

But the advisors are not accountable to Parliament for the deceptions they spin. There are currently treated as if they are an extension of the minister. Another fiction. Hence the advisors are an unacountable instrument through which the executive uses to increase its dominance over Parliament.

What is shocking is the conduct of the ALP in this affair. As the federal opposition the ALP lacks the political courage to take a stand on the fire wall between the bureaucracy and the Minister. The ALP is not willing to fight to make the ministerial staff accountable to Parliament. It backed off in the Tampa affair, when it refused to force the issue to make the ministerial advisors appear before the Senate inquiry. It is backing off over Iraq now.

It too wants executive dominance when it returns to the Treasury benches. So it acts like a government in waiting not as an opposition. No challenges will be made to defend democracy.

And so Howard continues to play the nuclear card to drum up anxiety and fear. He is now playing with the spectre of nuclear war with North Korea to the delight of the warmongers who hunger for another war. And the ALP continues to look weak and feeble on national security.

Which is what Howard's domestic tactics and strategies are designed to do: use national security to kneecap the ALP and starve it of oxygen.

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hard not to agree

In this article the ex-Liberal Prime Minister Malcom Fraser addresses some concerns raised at public opinion. Addressing the David Hicks case (ie; the detention and military trial in the US of the alleged al-Qaeda member David Hicks, who is an Australian citizen) Fraser says:

"It is clear the Australian Government has determined that Australia's interests will be best served by avoiding any argument with the US and supporting its policy. This change in Australian foreign policy is even more fundamental than the Government's announcements some weeks ago would indicate. They go to the heart of what we are about as an independent nation. They raise more starkly than ever the question of identity and purpose."

He then asks:

"Are we indeed able to stand for Australians who may need the protection of their nationality?"

And he answers:

"The present answer is clear. Not if such actions cut across relations with the US. Some would believe that we are now a completely subservient ally. It is time Australians started to ask what additional interests are we going to forsake in our support of this current American administration."

Clearly and rightly spoken. Why? Fraser is very clear:

"Great powers have a history of pursuing their own interests to the exclusion even of the interests of states that have been close friends and allies... I do not believe that America, however benign the exercise of its current power, would necessarily use that power for Australia's protection. It has, in fact, become a fundamentalist regime believing fervently that what it judges to be right, is in fact right, and that others do not have anything much worthwhile to contribute. Such an America will not make friends."

It is hard not to agree with Malcolm Fraser on this. I can't wait for the attack dogs to snarl and snap.

Update

One attack dog has come forth. Piers Ackerman from the Daily Telegraph. Its quality work, as we have come to expect from Piers.

Ackerman sets the scene with a personal attack on Fraser. Thus

Fraser lost his trousers in questionable circumstances in a sleazy Memphis hotel; is a discredited figures of no standing who champions intellectually meagre views and has predictable opinions. Fraser "regresses into a state of immaturity where hysterical criticism and an irrational apportioning of blame is offered as an excuse for reasoned argument."

Then we engage with Fraser's argument. Ackerman describes it as the view 'that the Howard Government is endangering the integrity and independence of Australia's foreign policy by making the nation a "completely subservient ally" of the US.'

Then we have the "knockout" punch. Ackerman says that Fraser's remarks seem exceptionally stupid. Why? Because completing the negotiation of a free trade agreement with the US would guarantee the economic stability of Australia well into this century.

After considering Fraser's argument that Australia is losing friends in Asia under the Howard Government, Ackerman comes back to the personal abuse to wind up the attack. Thus:

Fraser "clearly carries a huge grudge against Mr Howard"; Fraser "has always held an exalted view of his own abilities and place in society";and the "world in which he was a figure of some importance has passed him by leaving nothing but an image of a bitter, ageing trouserless figure wandering in the dark."

Apart from one killer line about Free Trade Agreement "refuting" the subservience to US argument the article consists of paragraphs of personal abuse.

Thats conservative journalism. It is not an example of reasoned argument, which is the criterion Ackerman uses to judge Fraser's remarks.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 11:43 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

July 13, 2003

Trying to implode North Korea

This old article from the Japan Times makes two interesting comments in the light of the Howard Government saying that a planned international operation to intercept its vessels could be a precursor to "other action" against the rogue state. This opens up the option of Australia going to war against North Korea.

The first comment is that North Korea is not as much of a military threat as the hawks have made out. It military machine has pretty rudimentary training. It is unlikely the regime has a large arsenal of usable modern missiles that are capable of presenting a long-term threat to regional peace.

And the second comment is that the aim of the hardline, neo-con strategy (that Australia has just signed up to) is to implode North Korea. The result would that the North Korean people would starve to death. But it would also achieve the required regime change.

Japan is quite nervous about the trip wire strategy. Reasonably so.

It seems to me that economic aid is what is required, coupled with dialogue and economic development. It is better than beating the war drum in response to North Korea playing the nuclear card for international assistance.

Update

As Glen Milne asks:

"What's wrong with North Korea's offer to de-nuclearise in return for US guarantees of its sovereignty? Why is Australia supporting Washington's refusal for bilateral talks aimed at defusing the growing crisis in the Korean peninsular?"

Reasonable questions.

Beating the war drum on North Korea by the Howard Government involves raising the spectre of nuclear war. The spin is to let Australians know that in Howard's judgment, nuclear war in our region may happen, and that Australia may be involved. The ante on the 'world is a dangerous place' script for domestic politics keeps on getting raised. Nuclear war is a long way from Tampa.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 10:51 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

July 12, 2003

Yet another war to fight

Its like a rerun off an old movie. Alexander Downer has begun to make the case for Australia's next war as Australia joined up to a US-led plan to intercept North Korean ships and aircraft suspected of trafficking in weapons of mass destruction in international waters. Urgent action is necessary against the menace of maverick states.

And the menace? There is a beat up about North Korean nuke missiles falling on Darwin or Cairns. The very possibility is enough for Australia to agree to the US plan to stop North Korean ships and planes carrying nukes, missiles, drugs with military force.

With Downer and Howard we have a new foreign policy based on overt hostility as a response to security threats. It is one that works outside the UN and as it premised on a dismissal of the UN. And the security threat to Australia? Here is Downer:

"We need to send an unambigous message to proliferators: acquiring and pursuing weapons of mass destruction violates basic standards of responsible international behavior and will not be tolerated. We have a shared responsibility to hold cheats to account."
(no link AFR, July12-13, 2003, p. 48)

There needs to be a qualifier here. Downer's 'we' is the interantional community. However, it is 'basic standards of responsible international behaviour' as interpreted by the US. After all there is no suggestion of holding Israel to account. Or Pakistan or India.

Downer's statement, that the "international community must work together to reinforce adherence to non-proliferation norms---take firm action to counter proliferation whenever and wherever it ocurs" has to be taken with a grain of salt.

Would not North Korea see the blockade of its ships on the high seas and the forcing down of aircraft in airspace as a threat to its national sovereignty? I cannot see Japan, South Korea and China going along with this military adventurism. (subscription required, AFR)

No matter. Australia's security interests are now identical with those of the US. Australia's participation in US military operations around the globe is the price Australia must pay to preserve the US alliance. Australia now sings Washington's tune. So we have to expect lots more song on the airwaves about needing to protect Australia from missiles with nuke warheads. The chorus will be about the missiles falling on us coming from northern Asia.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 4:39 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Tim Blair Watch

I see that Tim Blair says that "I’m fine with simply getting rid of a WMD-lusting dictator" in reference to Iraq. And in another post he says "Murdering lunatic deposed, people. This is a good thing."

Tim's foreign policy is pretty simple. Take out murdering lunatic, WMD-lusting dictators.

Well, Kim Jong-il in North Korea is one of these, as he has an extensive gulag system in place with its beatings, torture, hunger, slave labour and executions plus a reconstituted WMD program.

So lets go to war with North Korea. It is necessary.

How do we convince the Australian people to support another war? Easy.

Just talk about fearing a possible attack by North Korea, the need to boost regional security and developing the capability of missile interception that will give us the potential to engage in a broader missile defence.

Its a harsh and nasty world full of rogue states that threaten the Australian way of life. Lets take out the evil regime of North Korea in the name of freedom.

And while we are at it lets take out the Sydney Morning Herald.

And if China protests? No problems. Take them out as well. They are a threat to the USA as a Pacific power are they not? So Australia needs to step up and help defend the west coast to the USA. Thats what loyal allies are for. They stand firm when the going gets tough.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 2:28 PM | Comments (9) | TrackBack

a bit of a vacuum

This old article is quite interesting. It says that Liberals are not really interested in the world outside the US, but conservatives are. Michael Totten says:

"It's easy to find writers on both the left and the right who lack historical knowledge. But I find this far more often on the left. This is not a partisan point I'm making. I've been on the left forever, and I have no reason whatever to shill for the right."

However, Totten says that in the US liberal intellectuals are less interested in the history of foreign countries than conservatives are. My interest is not the US but Australia.

Its all a bit different here. There is hardly any interest at all in foreign countries----not even in the Middle East where we went to war twice. We are happy to have events there refracted through the American media. There is little to no concern about the history of the different nations in the region.

In Australia Liberals are basically idealists. They believe in international law and the United Nations. Conservatives are generally realists and so foreign policy is to further the national interest.

So what is the national interest? Conservatives go vague, apart from muttering something about national security. Consider the Iraq war. It was held that we supported the US because it was in the national interest to do so. And the national interest was what? What were we defending considering Iraq did not pose enough of a significant threat to Australia for us to invade the country?

Silence. There things pretty much end. Polemics then generally start in terms of good and bad with the old appeasment/hairy chested script that is rolled out to cover up the emptiness of "the national interest."

So let us probe a bit. How about the Solomon Islands? For instance, why are we intervening in the Solomon Islands? Conservatives would answer that we did so because of national security reasons. It sounds good. Nice and strong.

So what is Australia's national interest then?
Well the Solomon Islands is a failed state. Criminal gangs are rampaging out of control on the Solomon Islands.
How does that affect Australia's national security?
Well, you know........its aaah unstable there. There have been years of ethnic violence leading to a state of lawlessness.
Why is that is bad for Australia?
You know, it's got to do with international terrorism. The intervention is related to the war on terrorism or the invasion of Iraq. Its all the one and the same.

How come?
Well, failed states are a haven for international terrorists are they not?
You mean Muslem fundamentalists, such as Jemaah Islamiah? Is there any evidence of these setting up a base in the Solomon Islands to justify a pre-emptive action?
It is bad for Australia because it upsets the balance of power.The Islamic fascists reject out of hand a secular liberal state in favour of a Islamic theocracy, just like Iran.

What's wrong with upsetting the balance of power?
Stability from balanced relations between the great powers is good. It cannot be achieved through the pursuit of dominance.
Is not Australia acting as the dominant power by acting as regional cop?
It is necessary because the Solomon Islands is a failed state.

It is an imaginary conversation that goes around in circles. The reality is that foreign policy in Australia only gets talked discussed when it is personalised. See the excellent post by Gummo Trotsky on this. Apart from the personalization foreign policy is seen in the simple terms of fighting the good fight in the war against international terrorism. That has become the prism through which everything is now viewd.

Is it possible to give a different account of the national interest? Is not Australia acting offensively to gain regional hegemony and to eliminate the possibility of regional imbalancing? Is it not taking action in the region to counter Chinese power in Oceania? China is becoming a major Asia-Pacific power. So is not Australia acting more as the deputy sheriff of the US in Oceania, and less as an independent power with an independent foreign policy?

Is that not what Howard's close embrace of the US as the hegemonic power really implies? If so then we can ask: whose national interests is the Howard Government serving?

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 12:19 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

July 11, 2003

I suspected as much

I have been watching the twists and turns with the Free Trade Agreement (FTA)with a bit of interest and growing unease. In terms of power politics of unequal nation states it struck me as being loaded in favour of the US. Australia would become an economic province of the US, and it would be required to dismantle a lot of its regulations to grant the US greater access.

Just to forestall the 'anti-Americanism' shout from those who equate Australia with America, here is an article by two free trade economists that conforms my unease. Jagdish Bhagwati and Ross Garnaut say:

"The US has been actively using FTAs, where they bargain with smaller powers such as Mexico, Chile and Jordan, to introduce templates on non-trade issues such as intellectual property protection, restrictions on the use of capital controls even in times of crisis, labour standards and diverse environmental issues of peripheral relevance to trade. The US has turned the bilaterals into a game of pursuing agendas that reflect the agendas of their trade-unrelated lobbies and increasingly the ideology of the present administration."

In this game it is best to see Australia as a Mexico. Free trade is a misnomer given the exceptions made for threatened industries in the US; eg., – the protection of US agriculture and the huge subsidies paid to agriculture from the proposed FTA with Australia. If we are Mexico then the GDP may increase but the quality of life decreases as inequality deepens.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 12:15 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

but no one told me

The Iraq weapons story continues to leak through the wall of secrecy, disinformation and spin that has been thrown around the war by the war mongers selling war on behalf of the national security state.

In Britain it is no longer WMD per se, it is now WMD programs. Programs are not weapons. And the White House is backtracking on its claims that Iraq tried to purchase uranium (yellowcake) in Niger.

From Canberra we have a case of deja vu. The Sydney Morning Herald reports that:

"The Office of National Assessments (ONA) yesterday revealed it knew American agencies in January had doubts over claims Iraq had sought to buy uranium from Africa but did not pass the information on to Prime Minister John Howard."

And in another report

"The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) admitted last night that it knew intelligence on Iraq's nuclear program was questionable shortly before the Prime Minister, John Howard, presented it to Parliament to build a case for war....The department claims it did not tell Mr Howard or the Foreign Minister, Alexander Downer, of information from the American State Department in January that cast doubt on claims that Iraq was seeking uranium from Africa."

Of course they knew. They would not be doing their job if they did not know about the dodgy information. It is their job to sift and sort.

What we have here is the second wall of defence being deployed. It was deployed in the children overboard affair. It requires the public servants to take the rap, to be the fall guys. It enables to Howard to say that he is not for turning and to keep his political mystique intact.

Of course, we do have to allow the possibility that ONA is also incompetent. After all, some of it's intelligence in the children overboard was based on previous ministerial press releases.

I plumb for the public servants taking the rap and the politicians then defending them by saying they have complete confidence in them and protecting them from any inquiry. Whilst we watch the defence being played we can have a bit of a laugh at the gyrations of these kind of warmonger journalists.

Update
If you buy Honest John Howard's story that the Niger yellowcake scenario was an insignificant one sentence buried in an annex to a big report, (a minor detail as it were), then have a read of this old article by Seymour Harris in the New Yorker. (Link courtesy of Crikey.com email service.) Harris argues that the British spy agencies were peddling falsehoods as part of a deception program, and that the yellowcake scenario was treated as highly significant in Washington.

On this account, the possibility exists that both ONA and the Department of Foreign Affairs were peddling falsehoods. Were they too engaged in a deception campaign? Are they engaged in one now?

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 11:30 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

July 10, 2003

That white picket fence

The white picket fence does not go away does it? It's reference to the work/family divide continues to haunt political life.

Now the white picket fence stands for domestic bliss and a simpler home life. We have not eagerly embraced the high-tech lifeof digital tv and phone/camera moblies. We recoil from the drudgery of our mothers daily routine, but long for something more meaningful----the old things that once made home life so comfortable and relaxed.
Knitting is so in fashion.

Is it just on '50s sentimentality and nostalgia? Or is it a case of traditions in our commoin life being used to critique the mode of life of the free market?

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 11:46 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

a man of constant compassion

There is an article in yesterdays Australian Financial Review by Tony Harris called. Minister a law unto himself (subscription required). It refers to Philip Ruddock, the Minister of Immigration, sending home those Afghans (3800) & Iraqis (4200) temporary protection visas when their visas expire.

But an exception will be made for those East Timorese (1600) on temporary protection visas. They can stay in Australia. They will be treated exceptionally. Ruddock will use his discretionary powers to override the requirements of law.

Why the compassion?

Would it have anything to do with the Iraqi's and Afghans being sent home because of their Islamic religion, and so they are not one of us? Or are the East Timorese be allowed to stay because they are Christians and so one of us?

Do the national security state conservatives see the clash of civilizations in this stark way?

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 10:05 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

easy solutions?

There is an article in Tuesday's Australian Financial Review(subscription required, p. 55) by Robert Booth on the national electricity market. He argues that serious reform of the electricity distribution market has not even begun.

He then says that the solution to many of the problems lies with the role of the regulators. These need to be sorted out to ensure that an efficient and effective energy market delivers reasonably priced energy.

There is nothing about sustainability at all. It is not considered to be a problem.

Should we expect anything different from an independent energy consultant, who is also member of Energy Reform Task Force of the Business Council of Australia? The BCA does have a thin understanding of sustainable development.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 9:52 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

July 9, 2003

a different voice

This is the voice of American paleoconservatism. It is Pat Buchanan from The American Conservative. The full article is here. I have linked to this article before

Not how different this voice is from Australian conservatism. Buchanan says:

"Iraq, in retrospect, was no threat whatsoever to the US. We fought an unnecessary war, and now we must rebuild a nation at a rising cost in blood and treasure."

You do not hear Australian conservatives saying that. They do not say that Iraq, in retrospect, was no threat whatsoever to Australia. You do not hear them questioning the US engaging in an imperial war.

In contrast to Buchanan, Australian conservatives are happy for Australia to go along with whatever the US does. The US policy in Iraq is Australia. The US policy on North Korea is also that of Australia. There is little questioning by Australian conservatives of the Howard Government's embrace of US neo-con strategies as their own.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 9:57 AM | Comments (5) | TrackBack

July 8, 2003

Strategic shifts in OZ foreign policy

This article by Paul Kelly is good. It is a lot better than the US conservative junk now floating through our media circuits.

Kelly successfully outlines the shift in Australia's foreign policy under John Howard. Kelly argues that Howard has reshaped Australia's role in the world and done so in opposition to the orthodoxy and conventional wisdom of the foreign policy establishment.

Public opinion has worked from this tradition in its criticisms of the new foreign policydeveloped by Howard. I will summarize Kelly's argument.

Kelly says that orthodoxy, which was built over 50 years, was about Australian independence. It broke with the old 'All the Way with the USA" of the 1950s and 1960s. What Kelly calls the foreign policy orthodoxy defined the conditions of Australian independence.

"Our independence was linked with three big ideas: a successful engagement with Asia, a constructive role as multilateralist middle power and less dependence than before on our great and powerful friends."

This was then unpacked in the following way. Engagement with Asia, which was seen as integral to Australia's rise to maturity as a nation state, stood for a:

"...reformed and open national economy, the need for a liberalising multilateral global trade system and a comprehensive integration between Australia and its region. It was a path to prosperity and a new destiny."

A constructive role as multilateralist middle power was developed in terms of a bilateral security agreement with Indonesia that was seen as a statement of shared interests and political trust. As Paul Keating put it, 'Australia now sought its security "in Asia, not from Asia".'

And less dependence than before on our great and powerful friends meant displacing the US alliance as the priority in Australian polity in favour of backing the UN, not the US in the name of protecting the international rule of law.

Kelly then says the Hawke-Keating-Beazley strategy in the 1980s and 1990s was to exploit the alliance to promote an independent Australia, and "realise our goals of defence self-reliance, global free trade and regional engagement." Australia's foreign policy "was no longer to be shaped by US imperatives or its world view."

Howard rejected this strategic shift under The Australian Labor Party. As Kelly said Howard did so instinctively. He

".. excused [the paleoconservatism of] Hansonism, endorsed the deputy sheriff [of the US] line, implied he would pre-empt threats within the region and presented as an Anglo-Saxon cultural champion."

But then 9/11 came. Howard accepted the US position that the world had changed. Howard's response to September 11, 2001 was to state:

"... that it was equivalent to an attack on Australia. How could this be? Simple – because we shared the same values. So, like the US, we were at war."

Howard's strategic shift highlights Australia's cultural distance from Asia and our cultural unity with the US and Britain; rejects Australia's economic future lies solely or even largely in Asian terms and so undermines the multilateral system in support of a bilateral deal with Bush; and sides with the US over the UN.

And the criticism that public opinion has developed of Howard's strategic shift? Like the orthodox foreign policy establishment, it holds that the Bush administration's geopolitical strategy is to reshape the world to its own advantage. Howard, by following Bush under the cover of fighting world terrorism, will leave Australia exposed and vulnerable in the Asian region.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 1:00 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

best to ignore

More American conservative junk downloaded into The Australian. Dinesh D'Souza's full article can be found here

All we have in this snippet is the good side of the ledger of US foreign policy. The bad side has been granted by D'Souza. So where does that leave us with good and bad resting in our hands?

D' Souza leaves us in no doubt.

"Ultimately America is worthy of our love and sacrifice because, more than any other society, it makes possible the good life, and the life that is good."

I for one ain't going to die for America. It is not my country. I'm an Australian citizen

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 12:27 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

July 7, 2003

Discontent with electricity

I have mentioned in the past (here and here) that SA has not done too well from the neo-liberal creation of a national electricity market. (NEM) A tottering NRG has pulled the plug on some plants and consumer prices have skyrocketed (30% increases). See this submission in Energy Market Review

The story the neo-liberals continue to tell is still upbeat: ---teething problems with the creation of a national electricity market and the states suffering from reform fatique. The market can do wonderful things. Governments are a disaster. The neo-liberal vision was one of a national market with a host of privately owned generators, distributors and retailers competing fiercely and a deep and sophisticated market for power. Well, you know the economic catechism. If there were any negatives these would be overcome through pushing ahead with more reform.

So I started reading up on the Californian electricity crisis to understand what was going on. I had big doubts that the national electricity market was working as it was supposed to, or that it could work to ensure greater sustainability.

Stephen Mayne reports of a shakeout in electricity in the electricity market through power industry asset shuffling. Many of the big overseas firms that got in on the privatisation splurge are now getting out. Some are taking enormous losses in selling the generator plants (eg. $1.4 billion on the Loy Yang A power station in Victoria).

And Stephen Bartholomeusz in The Age confirms my doubts about the national electricity market is working as a free market system. He says:

"The reality of the national electricity market is that there are a series of thinly connected regional markets, with significant private ownership and competitive intensity really only apparent in Victoria and, to a much lesser degree, South Australia."

So we have market imperfections; a hybrid market of private and public ownership (in NSW and Queensland). Stephen Bartholomeusz's judgement is that:

"It is unlikely that those imperfections in the market will disappear any time soon, if ever - although the growing number and capacity of interconnection arrangements, the emergence of new peaking capacity and an underlying excess of capacity over supply - which could prevail for some years - provide some constraints over volatility and market distortions."

What is rarely stated in public is that most of Australia's electricity is generated from coal, the industry produces over one third of Australia's CO2, and there has been an increase in the CO2 production. See the supplementary Bardak submission (p. 8).

On top of that South Australia, unlike Victoria, has not received a net benefit from the creation of a national electricity market. The flaws of the market ( lack of interstate interconnectivity, lack of competition between generation of power and retail, and lax market rules allowing vulnerability to bidding practices) are concentrated in SA (p. 12). It all means that consumers in SA are being screwed.

So we have both an electricity crisis and a political crisis. And very little by way of incentives for harnessing renewable energy for public power generation.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 12:06 PM | Comments (5) | TrackBack

Green Debate

You rarely see a debate about the causes of unsustainability in the mass media in Australia. What you do see is neo-liberals repeating their lines of the Washington consensus that sustainability can be achieved through a competitive and efficient market shifting water usage from low value to high value irrigators. Or you hear neo-liberals denying the need of environmental flows for the River Murray.

So this article in The Australian by William Lines comes out of the blue. It is an extract from People and Place (no link to full article). Lines' case his simple. The Australian Greens have sold out their greennness. They are more red than green.

"The Australian Greens no longer speak for conservation in Australia. Why? Because of their increasingly left-wing pose and their rejection of population growth as a cause of environmental decline. In 1995, the party called for stabilising Australia's population and reducing immigration. By 2002, the Greens had not only abandoned this guiding principle but had reversed it. Today, they openly encourage immigration."

According to Lines, the Greens have embraced a Left agenda, as they have replaced their traditional concerns with population and environmental degradation with a social justice platform. They have done so to increase their electoral vote to win more seats. This means that instead of being "neither Left nor Right but in Front", the Greens are now solidly aligned on the Left.

'Replaced' is too strong. Supplemented their environmental concerns would be more accurate, since Bob Brown continues to talk about stopping landclearing in Queensland and protecting old growth native forests in Tasmania. But it is accurate account of the transformation of the Australian Greens.

Lines' chief concern is with population numbers because he sees this as the chief cause of environmental degradation. He accurately describes this degradation:

"In recent years, a succession of government and non-government reports has highlighted the growing human impact on nature in Australia. We now know more than ever about the deteriorating conditions across the continent such as declining biodiversity, fading vegetation cover, failing rivers, advancing salinity, collapsing marine ecosystems, and the subversive spread of exotic species."

True. But it is not obvious that has been caused by population growth--too many people on the land. The carrying capacity of the land has been exceeded in the Murray-Darling Basin. However, this has been caused by developmentalism in the form of irrigated agriculture. That mode of agricultural production is not only unsustainable in terms of current water use & landclearing; it is also the way agricultural producion system uses water. That use is unsustainable because its leakiness (ie., water flowing down to the water table) causes the saline groundwater to rise. So we have salinised grapes. That is not good news for the Australian wine industry.

What we have is dryland salinity and a wine industry that is unsustainable with its current practices of going for volume and exports through irrigation. Eventually the grapes become too salty for high quality wine. As the wine tasters taste the salt in the wine so Australian wines will start being rejected by upmarket overseas distributors.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 10:47 AM | Comments (4) | TrackBack

July 6, 2003

Conservative Commentary

I see that The Australian is now informing us about events in the US by downloading material from The Weekly Standard into the Weekend Inquiry.

There is no problem with introducing conservative commentary since the Australian variety is close to junk. And the Weekly Standard is one Washington's most influential political magazines for the politically obsessed inside and outside the Beltway.

If conservative commentary is going to be downloaded by the Murdoch corporation, and Australia becomes a cultural appendage of a conservative US culture that valorizes militarism, then how about some decent stuff?

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 1:25 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Iraqi troubles

Alan over at Southerly Bluster has a good post on the resistance to the US shift away from a democratic Iraq. It is not a few Baath Party remnants.

That shift, and the Shi'ite resistance to it, is happening as more and more U.S. troops are being killed and injured in liberated Iraq. And the response by President Bush? To issue a challenge to the hit and run attackers.

"My answer is: Bring them on. We have the force necessary to deal with the situation.”

The Onion gets imaginative on that cowboy imagery.

Oh well, we can expect more hit-and-run style guerilla attacks. More US reprisals. More confrontation and escalating violence. And US will look more and like an occuping power. Thus Paul Bremer says:

"We are going to fight them and impose our will on them and we will capture or... kill them until we have imposed law and order on this country...We dominate the scene and we will continue to impose our will on this country."

Do we have the replay of the traditional logic of 19th-century empire being in the 21st century: protecting one conquest requires an indefinite extension of conflict? Or is this still a case of a foreign, invading army having liberated the Iraqi people from oppressive rulers, then making the Iraqi people free?

It is understandable that American, such as Cobert King in the Washington Post, are now calling for a road map out of Iraq.

But here is an audit of what is going one in Iraq behind the headlines to help retain a sense of balance.

For the Iraqi's the struggle for their own democratic Iraq will be a long, slow and internal fight, in which they, as a divided people, will have to fight for their own rights and freedoms.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 12:19 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Telstra: the right idea

Helen Dickie, National Party federal president, has the right idea on Telstra. They've rolled over on privatising Telstra and gone belly up. So the question now becomes one of what to do with the proceeds from the sale.

It's an issue.

Dickie rightly insists that a significant amount should be spent on infrastructure renewal rather than used to retire debt.

It is about time the Nationals found some political courage.They should stand up for their own political interests rather than always meekly subsuming them in the Liberal line to protect the Coalition. They should contest the standard Liberal line that the Telstra proceeds have to be used to retire debt.

The proceeds should be spent on restoring the Murray-Darling Basin to ecological health.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 11:07 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

spin & publicity on family/work

Anne Manne is right. John Howard promises a lot to help ease the tensions and stresses in the family/work relationhip. Just like water reform, it is all done with lots of fanfare. Then Howard fails to deliver anything of substance.

Anne says:

John Howard has declared the struggle to balance work and family the great Australian "barbecue stopper". His third term began with large promises of reform. It looked like he would set a new family policy agenda. Hopes were raised on paid maternity leave and on new, generous allowances for a child's first year.

Yet the kudos he derives from such policy floats - as a modern and progressive leader - is wildly in excess of actual delivery. Apart from popping up here and there, wiping away a metaphoric tear, making concerned fatherly noises about the struggles of parents with the time crunch, Howard has done very little."

It is spin and publicity to keep the white picket fence voters on side by talking about a compassionate conservatism.

And Anne is spot on with putting her finger on the problem in the work/family relationship.

"The problem is simple enough. Women have long absorbed the vicissitudes of everyday life - the care of the young, the sick and the elderly. By and large they still do. But many also work. Men, too, whether through our enhanced understanding of the importance of fathers, or via women's changed role, are under greater pressure to do more at home.Yet our workplaces, by and large, are still based on the 19th century principle that for every worker there is a wife at home providing a "haven in a heartless world".

The economists have said the market is the solution. Let us create a family market. Buy all the services that the household needs to function well--child care, aged care, nursing, cleaning, laundry and gardening. You name you can buy it and continue with making your career moves by working even longer and harder.

It is not a very successful pathway since only the wealthy can afford that option. And I cannot see work changing. The emphasis is on making people work harder with longer hours, less holidays and more unpaid overtime. That leaves you with a family policy for the white picket fence.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 10:44 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

July 5, 2003

more good news

I meant to mention this yesterday. It says that the Bracks Labor Government in Victoria has announced that:

"All new Victorian homes will have to have solar hot water or rainwater tanks under building regulation changes to be announced today."

The report says that the "changes are part of the State Government's mandatory five-star energy standards to come into full force in July 2005."

And the old homes? Should not they be encouraged to convert?

It should be South Australia leading the way on shifting the policy compass to sustainability, not dragging its heels.

Libertarians will dislike the mandatory bit. They will see the heavy hand of the environmental state crushing human freedom to do as we please. But the mandatory bit is required for the sake of the common good.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 5:21 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

blocking 'development-at-all-costs'

This is very good news. Ningaloo Reef on the seaward side of North West Cape in Western Australia has been protected from 1980's developmentalism. This development Coral Coast Resort--- by Coral Coast Marina Development Pty Ltd was in the form of marinas, hotels, private villas and shops being built near the reef at Mauds Landing. The development has been rejected by the Gallop Labor Government due to Ningaloo Reef being an environmental icon of international significance.

The pro-development lobby would reject the decision as another example of disintentives to investment and weath creation. They see it as anti-development rather than sustainable development.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 4:45 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

July 4, 2003

a catechism of doom?

The debate over environmental flows for the River Murray has been picked up by Alan Moran of the Institute of Public Affairs. Moran has written an article in The Australian Financial Review (no link, Wednesday, 2 July, 2003, p. 55) entitled 'Go with the flow on river management.'

The article is one strand in a political campaign to convert irrigator entitlements to access to River Murray water into property rights to ensure ongoing wealth creation and prosperity. The article is pretty bad when you look at the arguments. I am suprised the AFR has printed something close to junk journalism from a high profile public policy institute.

Moran's argument is that there is little evidence to justify a need for drastically curtailing productive agricultural uses of the river to bolster environmental flows. What needs to be protected is the prosperity of farming communities in the Basin.

He starts by addressing the Wentworth Group's recent text Blueprint for a Living Continent' as part of the campaign to save the Murray. Moran says the Blueprint text:

'....proclaimed our land management was causing our rivers to die and our topsoil to blow away, threatening our future capacity to farm. [The Wentworth Group] is the spearhead of a high-powered campaign calling for action to "save the Murray". The crux of the campaign is a catechism of doom about salinity in the Murray (sic) Basin.'

This is a catechism of doom, says Moran, because the evidence does not support the Wentworth Groups' thesis that bad land management practices have negative environmental consequences. Moran argues this case by trying to show that the green arguments about river flow, salinity and habitat do not stand up to scrutiny.

1. on the issue of natural flow Moran acknowledges that the River Murray is a working river system that has been radically changed since European settlement. But:

'...it remains swimmable and fishable.... it is even flowing now, in the middle of a "one in a hundred-year" drought.'

The River Murray is not flowing. There is river flow over the Blanchetown lock, but there has been no river flow over the Goolwa Barrages for some time. That is why the Murray Mouth is closed and the Murray-Darling Basin Commission is dredging the tidal inlet . The Murray is a series of irrigator pools not a flowing river.

2. On the issue of salinity Moran argues that the threat of salinity is being overplayed. He says that:

"..careful management and impressive engineering levels have restrained the river's salinity. Upstream of Morgan in South Australia, salinity levels have been reduced over the past 29 years and are now at the levels observed in 1938. Hence, for 1500 kilometres the river's agriculture has not adversely affected salinity, which is evident for the last 200 kms in South Australia."

True, the 10 year Salinity and Drainage Strategy did reduce irrigator induced salinity and remedied water logged land.

However, Moran ignores dryland salinity in which leaky modern agriculture and grazing agricultural systems has been causing groundwater tables to rise in many areas. As the water rises, it brings with it natural salt stored in the soil. The 1999 Salinity Audit indicated that the salt mobilisation process across all the major river valleys in the Murray-Darling Basin is on a very large scale. This Salinity Audit predicts that during the coming 100 years the annual movement of salt in the landscape will increase two to three times. The salt load exported to, and through the Basin's rivers will double. Consequently, average river salinities will rise significantly, exceeding the critical thresholds for domestic and irrigation water supplies. Salinity is already impacting on the wine industry in South Australia, throwing its future into doubt.

3. on the issue of the ecological habitat of the river Moran says that:

"...there is no data to support claims that river usage is threatening to eradicate native animals and plants. In fact, the Murray-Darling Basin Commission has only recently embarked on a systematic appraisal of the environmental health of the system."

The black and white photo of dead river gums that accompanied the article suggests otherwise. Moran should visit the Chowilla floodplain in the Riverland for a holiday. The agricultural use of the River Murray has meant that this floodplain has not received a decent flood for around a decade. Consequently, all the redgums are dying. This report indicates that there is compelling need for further action.

Contrary to what Moran claims, the status of native fish in the Murray-Darling Basin (MDB) is alarming. Native fish are estimated to be at 10 per cent of their pre-European settlement levels and are still on the decline. Native species have also become extinct in some areas of the Basin whilst in others it is recommended that aquatic ecological communities in the Lower Murray be listed as endangered. Even the Murray cod, that iconic fish, has been declared a threatened species.

Moran's argument, that the green case on river flows, salinity and habitats does not stand up to scrutiny, fails badly. Since all that information is publicly available Moran presents a shoddy case built on distortions and misinformation. Why? Because he is primarily concerned to defend the policy to "turn southern Australia into the supermarket of Asia." He sees the environmental flows program as undermining the "affluence of the region's towns" and "undermine incentives to invest in increased productivity."

It is either wealth creation or environmental protection for Moran. He has no conception of ecological sustainable development or sustainable farming. The environmental groups must be rolled back to make way for property rights. Further reductions in water entitlements to irrigators will be a disaster is the gloom catechism that Moran is defending. The Living Murray Initiative is seen as the greatest threat rural communities currently face.

For instance, The National Party of Victoria says that there is:

"...a lot of emotional talk about the Murray mouth closing. We are in a drought and inflows are at their lowest level ever. In a totally natural state, the river would have stopped flowing a long time ago and sea water could have backed up to Renmark as it used to."

The National Party of Victoria says that the tidal wave of emotional sentiment is driven by metropolitan environmentalists whose solution of putting more environmental water back into the river is idealistic and simplistic. The River Murray is a working river and you cannot turn it back to what it once was. Whole communites, such as Mildura, are founded on irrigation.

THe National Party of NSW concurs. The 1500 gigalitres of environmental flows for the River Murray that was recently proposed by the Federal Labor Party is illogical.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 11:09 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

July 3, 2003

hit and run for fun

I've noticed a tendency amongst Oz bloggers and their readers to stick to their own political circles. Some do cross the horizon and argue with the other side, but by and large they are content to inhabit their own circle. And when they do cross it is more a hit and run attack than an argument.

So I was interested to read this by Eugene Volokh:

"I think it's a mistake to demand that bloggers be evenhanded in their criticism. Blogging is something that people do for fun. It has to compete with other things -- family, work, reading, sleep. And usually it's more fun to criticize your adversaries than to criticize your friends. I wish this weren't so, but I think that (at least for most people) it is. Sometimes one might do it out of a sense of duty, a feeling that people in each movement should police their own .... Blogging about something -- taking time out of one's day to write something for free -- shouldn't be seen as an obligation. And while I expect each post to be accurate and fair to its subject, I don't expect bloggers to be evenhanded in their choices of which subjects to harp on."

You can on what on what you will and there is obligation to be evenhanded in one's criticism. Daniel Drezner (permalinks screwed, Tuesday June 24, 3.12pm) disagrees. He says that:

"....for scholar-bloggers, I don't think it's that easy to dismiss the notion of obligation altogether. This doesn't affect the choice of what scholar-bloggers write about (Eugene's point), but it should affect the content of their posts. No one can rebut every opposing argument, but the good ones demand acknowledgment and a good intellectual wrestle."

And, adds, Daniel because the scholar bloggers have a higher standing in their blog hierarchy, there is an obligation on them to acknowledge the points made on the other side of the debate.

I would broaden the obligation. An obligation for evenhandedness with one's opponents exists for public policy blogs, due to their explicit connection to democratic citzenship. In contesting the opinions of their opponents, citizens should treat the arguments against their own position with respect, rather than just dismiss them. The obligation for active citizens is to the institutional forum that enables the public conversation, the development of a conversation to ensure that there is shifting and winnowing of our prejudices and to play a role in the formation of public policy.

And whilst we are on the topic an aside. Corporations are not a citizen of the republic .They are an artificial entity created by the state for economic purposes and which are endowed with massive public benefits, from limited liability and perpetual life to bankruptcy protection.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 11:44 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack

Tim Blair watch

This is Tim on media diversity. Privatise the ABC. In his weekly column The Continuing Crisis in The Bulletin Tim says:

"Hot topic of the week: media diversity. Easy to see why, too; one Australian media organisation has media outlets in every state, plus additional networks that broadcast nationally. This Orwellian empire presents an almost complete lack of diversity. For the sake of Australian democracy, the ABC must be broken down and sold off."

Tim is not venting his spleen here. That is what his weblog is about. In this guise Tim is playing at being one of the avant garde. He is trying to provoke and shock us out of our complacency with public broadcasting.

Trouble is the arrows are directed at the Howard Government for not having the political courage to privatise the ABC. It does not stand enough for political principle. Too caught up in expediency.

Privatising the ABC would make for yet another double dissolution trigger would it not? It would help Howard to get the political edge over the ALP. Help to trap Labor.

Is that the politics of the media avant garde?

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 1:19 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

designed for the cameras

I briefly mentioned in an earlier post that one aspect of the fog of war in the Middle East was Israel creating the impressions of peace to persuade public opinion. I had in mind the dismantling of the odd outpost and the quiet return of the settlers. It was image creation for the US road map.

Here is an article by an Israeli that spells out in detail what is going on. Its a stage manged affair for the cameras. Showtime. Yet another example of the aesthetics of war.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 1:01 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

July 2, 2003

one to avoid?

Here is an interview with Anne Coulter. I gather from the tone of the interview that she is doing the media rounds promoting her new book. (Link courtesy of Jason Soon over at Catallaxy Files.)

Coulter is into continuing the crusades as she wants to invade Arab states, kill their leaders and convert Muslems to Christianity.She would also like to affirm her patriotism by bombing the New York Times building and take out the editors and journalists. Is Coulter picking up the old program of the now defunct avant-garde in its effort to shock the bourgeoisie?

I haven't read Treason: Liberal Treachery from the Cold War to the War on Terrorism Nor will I for some time. When I see it remaindered in a bookshop in Adelaide I may pick it up. Or if the local public library happens to get it. Or if someone lends me a copy. I am interested in the political unconscious of the American Christian Right.

However, if you are desperate, and reckon that Anne has the good oil, then you can get a free copy of Treason here.

Here is a liberal response to it. Needless to say it is not complimentary. The hostility is to be expected since she does charge liberals with treason.

I take it that this is the political voice Christian Right in full throttle. My judgement is that this is mixed with a muscular arrogance that turns away from many aspects of the Enlightenment tradition.

You can get whiff of the vitriol in the Coulter text from this column. on Senator Joe McCarthy. You can see the charge in this text: the Democrats invoke a lie in order to shield their ongoing traitorous behavior.

The traitorous behavior? Democrats were communists, betrayed their country and undermined America's belief in the virtues of sacrifice, heroism and bravery.

Note the use of "fat oleaginous mug" to describe President Clinton.

You can find more at Eschaton

I take it that this will be the flavour of the forthcoming CoulterGeist. An event not to be missed for lefties.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 10:17 PM | Comments (5) | TrackBack

Foreign Policy in the Age of Terrorism

This is the text of John Howard's foreign policy speech that was given to the Sydney Institute last night.

Here is the big picture. What Howard says does nothing to challenge the concern that Australia has become Washington's stalking horse. His speech reinforces it.

A key theme of the PM's speech was that we in Australia are faced with a shadowy enemy who is everywhere and nowhere.

"Today the most fundamental challenge facing Australia and the world at large - especially those like us who value openness, who value freedom – is how to protect our citizens and our society from a shadowy enemy, who is closed to negotiation, who has no fixed base and no transparent political structure."

The enemy is identified by the PM as "those who seek to destroy and debase our way of life – the global terrorists and the transnational criminals who capitalise on human misery, trading in people, drugs and weapons."

The enemy of Australia seeks haven in rogue and failed states. These "become the base from which terrorists and transnational criminals organise their operations, train their recruits and manage their finances. If we want to be secure, we need to work with other nations to ensure collective stability. And sometimes we will be called upon to take action."

How does Australia do that?

"In this ‘age of terrorism’ it is essential in our national interest that we further build and strengthen Australia’s links with all the major centres of global power and influence. Achieving this will be greatly aided by the unique intersection of history, geography and culture occupied by Australia."

Howard is with the USA. He turns away from the UN in favour of being loyal to,and dependent upon, the USA as global cop. We back the global cop up and as a deputy cop in the Asia Pacific region defending the security concerns of the national interest.

Why these security concerns? Presumably, we defend Australia because Australia is worth defending. Why? Because Australia stands for openess and freedom in the international order. Thus the security concerns are the core of national puposes defined in terms of promoting openness and freedom.

Openness? Why if you criticise this account of our foreign policy because it means following the US wherever it takes us (eg.,the United Nations, the Israel-Palestine conflict, the Anti Ballistic Missile treaty, Kyoto, strategic pre-emption etc), you are said to be anti-American.

Freedom? Sorry. That has to be curtailed to ensure security at home from eunseen shadowy enemy within.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 2:44 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

a bit of a rant

I had though the Institute of Public Affairs was a reasonable policy institute. Right wing for sure, but willing to argue its case in public. But this piece from Mike Nahan, its director, is bad. Its main argument is okay:

"PROFESSOR Allan Fels' legacy is that of a populist technocrat who promoted the popularity of the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission at the cost of public support for market-based competition."

There is something to argue about. Now consider the language used in the next paragraph:

'His central flaw was to succumb to the lure of populism. He read the tea leaves of popular dissent and seldom let pass an opportunity to demonise big business, particularly those of a multinational nature in "political incorrect industries"'.

The whole article has phrases such as "instead of praising the workings of the market, he took cheap shots to pander to populist sentiment"; and "sought the political support of the so-called consumer movement".

Fels played politics as he saw the public demand for a competition tsar and interfered too often.This was bad because he should have pursued the task of assisting market-driven competition to the advantage of the consumer.

What can we make of this? We consumers should accept the benign workings of the competitive market, nor stir up dissent about the need for tough regulators to deal with the fallout of the market or uncompetitive behaviour. Our proposals as citizens amount to populist sentiment (prejudiced emotion) and should be dismissed as undemocratic. So we should allow, and accept, that the big corporations should rule our lives through the market whilst trusting the markets to do their thing.

That is politics in favour of keeping the lid on popular dissent and crushing the consumer movement and not public policy.

Gareth parker appears to be supportive of the man from the IPA.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 2:00 PM | Comments (9) | TrackBack

Seeing Iraq through the prism of Vietnam

In an earlier post on Iraq I had suggested that things were not going too well for the Americans. From my lefty perspective the events there looked more like a case of an occupation and guerilla resistance, rather than a sowing the seeds of liberal democracy. Even pro-war Americans are concerned about what is beginning to increasingly appear like a deeply bitter and unstable peace.

Without thinking too much about it I tacitly worked with the historical image of Vietnam to try and make sense of what was happening on the ground. It was a counter image to the US claim currently circulating through the media that there were only “little local difficulties” facing US troops in the context of an occupation. Otherwise all was going very well. Paul Rogers describes this position:

"In military terms, the problem was presented as one of isolated and uncoordinated remnants coupled with small numbers of terrorists moving into the country from elsewhere in the Arab world. In no way were these representative of the mood of Iraqis as a whole; and even the Sunni people of central Iraq were said to be, for the most part, neutral about the US presence."

I supect otherwise when I heard about extensive US military campaigns in the Sunni heartlands north of Baghdad and various excursions into Syrian territory.

David Adesnik over at Oxblog questions this Vietnam mindset. He quite rightly points out the key differences:

"In Vietnam, the United States was supporting a brutal regime that showed total disregard for its citizens' lives, economic welfare, and political rights. In contrast, the Viet Cong demonstrated an impressive concern for the people of Vietnam despite committing some appalling atrocities.

In Iraq, the United States has brought down a regime that strongly resembles the one its supported in Saigon. The occupation forces are also doing far more for the people of Iraq than even the Viet Cong did for the people of Vietnam."

It is a good point.

But is it just the Ba'athist remnants---meaning Saddam diehards----that are resisting through the guerrilla attacks? Or is the resistance more widespread? What are the religious groups doing? What are the Shi'ite fundamentalists up to? Is there a groundswell of opposition to US occupation?

If Vietnam is the wrong historical image maybe the situation in Iraq overlaps with Afghanistan. Consider this Debkafile report that says:

"...American troops hold the centers of main Iraqi towns – or more realistically their military headquarter compounds and quarters as well as Iraq’s few main highways - but not the interior."

It sounds awfully like Afghanistan to me.

But do go and read the excellent discussion over at Tacitus. It is very good----a working through the issues.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 11:44 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

the fog of war?

The newspaper headlines about the road map between Israel and Palestine are upbeat for a change. That makes it the second or third day running.
This is an interesting post on the US role in the Israeli/Palestinian road map vis-a-vis the US in Iraq. It is written from a perspective that is sympathetic to Israel.

I do think that we should question the assumption that Israel and Palestine are on the road to peace.

A more realistic scenario is that it is ongoing war---from my perspective a guerilla war being fought against an occupying force. There may a temporary ceasefire in military terms at the moment but the war of words and the different agendas conflicting agendas continues. The atmosphere continues to be one of mutual distrust and suspicion.

Behind the fog of war---creating the impressions of peace to persuade public opinion----we have the usual on the ground activity with respect to the settlements

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 10:29 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

July 1, 2003

Paleocons and neocons

Public opinion has often been criticised for using neo-con all the time for everything that I do not like. And to make it worse I am pretending to know what it means. Pretending, because I cannot know anything at all since I am a despised postmodern irrationalist.

Fair enough. This is the way public debate is engaged in Australia. You ignore discussing the ideas about Australian conservatism. For an early attempt at characterising Australian conservatism, see here and here.

Well here is an authority. I give you Christopher Pearson, ex-editor of the conservative policy mag The Adelaide Review (It has now become a lifetsyle magazine). Christopher, a former speech writer for John Howard, defines himself as a conservative. I repeat. A Conservative, not a liberal pretending to be a conservative.

Christopher had a piece in the Weekend Australian (no link, June 28-9, p. 18) on the subject of conservatism. Here are some of his thoughts.

Neoconservatism is on the ascendent and it works. But the local intelligenstia in Australia are stil in denial about what the people want and the policies that give them that, despite the success of over the last decade. However, 10-15 years is the shell life for neo-conservative as a dominant paradigm.

(Excuse the big words. But Christopher is an intellectual. I guess you'll have to look up paradigm. But try this or this for staters.)

Christopher has good news. Paleoconservatism is the corrective to neconservative triumphalism. They prefer an isolationist foreign policy, are not so keen on unwavering support for the Israeli state, and take a strong line against immigration. See Pat Buchanan and The American Conservative. We can add to Pearson's account here by saying that paleoconservatism is also deeply patriotic, nationalistic, protectionist and populist.

Public opinion has traversed this territory arguing in terms of a faultline in conservatism that opens up into two strands of of conservatism. At the moment neoconservatism is seen to be primarily a political agenda focused on military strategies for an aggressive US foreign policy ithat creates an empire---"Pax Americana". See here and here.(Links courtesy of Eschaton).This American is a generally accepted to be a neocon, as is this Australian.

I had previously linked neocon to Australian conservatives here. I see paleoconservatism in Australia as a Hansonite populism, which is what John Howard incorporated and amalgamated to his economic liberalism during the late 1990s. This provides some philosophical background to American conservatism.

Now I have taken Pearson to be a neocon, given his argument that the US should be the global cop keeping law and order in a Hobbesian world. And he concurs with this judgement. He says he is not an isolationist since wars of liberal imperialism are necessary. (eg. Iraq)

But Pearson also says that he is a fellow traveller of paleconservatism. Why? It is necessary to ask why because Christopher says that paleoconservatism is seen by many to be little more than a quaint, new brand of nostalgia with limited application to the way we live now or to domestic politics. He responds to this by saying that:

"It [paleoconservatism] is useful in accounting for the general listlessness of conservative intellectual engagement in Australian politics and journalism since the 1950s, with a few honourable exceptions, such as Quadrant magazine. Coalition governments coasted along, attracting more than their fair share of crooks and aimable boofheads, uninterested in ideas, their own own parties' history and distinctive contributions to political philosophy."

I could not have said it better myself. What is lacking in Australia is any engagement with these tough ideas by conservatives such as Leo Strauss.

Pearson says that paleoconservatism is a useful corrective to the neo-liberalism of the Coalition and the ALP Right because it is sceptical about economic rationalist dogma and has a pragmatic 'if the facts I change my mind", tendency. But paleoconservatism still has a subversive glamour and has yet to become academically respectable.

Pearson then gives two example of showing the relevance of paleoconservatism. Criticising Brendan Nelson for threatening tio use federal funding to impose a uniform secondary curriculum on the grounds that this was Canberra hubris. So we have a gesture to regionalism. The other example is that it can justify the defacto re-colonisation of unstable Pacific states. However, it would seem to me that Pearson's second example is more a neo-con stategy of defending the national interest in an anarchic and insecure Hobbesian world. (See here as well).

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 9:56 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

a light moment

Okay. A bit of humour to start the morning and the month. It is courtesy of Lambert over at Eschaton

We all know that our intelligence organizations have not been doing too well. If you find that judgement a bit sweeping then, recall the intelligence gathered for the Iraqi war, catching Islamic terrorists trying to set an Islamic state in Australia and uncovering all the terrorist sleeper cells across the nation.

Clearly the intelligence organizations need to become more efficient. So lets privatise them.

Not convinced? Here is the knockdown argument. Private enterprise can do a better job that governments. Nothing more need be said.

The money raised from selling of the intelligence organizations could be used to save the River Murray.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 9:24 AM | Comments (1)