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October 31, 2003
a defining political moment
I have been thinking about the events of last week associated with the fleeing visit of the imperial presidency who sees the world through a self-enclosed security bubble: 750 security agents and a 24-hour fly-over in Canberra skies of F/A-18 Hornet fighter jets.
At one level the spectacle was a political stunt organized by John Howard to gain electoral traction as the political ground shifts away from national security to health and education. At another level it was a taxpayer funded private party for John Howard's mates that excluded everyone else from any ongoing dialogue with the Americans. At another level it was the American Secret Service taking over Parliament and excluding the Australian media from documenting the event.
Personally, I think it's a defining political moment. It is symbolized by Brown confronting Bush and so a challnged to the conservative cynicism that comes wrapped in the flag.
And the Parliamentarians knew in their bones that the template of public opinion had shifted underneath all their spin about bad manners, stunts, lack of decorum, boorish behaviour etc etc.
The Parliamentarians knew the significance of the numbers in the polls. Hence their outrage and anger.
They knew that electoral support for the Howard Government was slipping, as socially progressive liberals were leaving a conservative Liberal Party. They were going to the Australian Greens and not to the Australian Labour Party. The hardline stance on issues such as border protection and security policy was not biting like it once did because these political issues were dropping in importance of concern.
They knew that support for Labor (ALP) was slipping and that it was going to the Greens, and not to The Australian Democrats.
They knew that electoral support for the Australian Democrats was slipping and it was going to the Greens. The Demcorats were no longer the socially progressive alternative. They facing the end of their 25 year old historyas a Third Force.
The Greens are now the Party of political protest that had become a powerful third force in Australian politics.
Hence the speech by the Government attack dog, Senator George Brandis. He called Bob Brown an ecofascist. The Australian Greens were engaged in crypto-fascists politics. Brandis drew parallels between the political techniques of the green movement and the Nazi's in that both used the form of democracy as a political cover for their jackboot politics.
Astoundly, Brandis' understanding of German history showed no understanding of the corporatism in fascism, the development of corporatism in Australia, or the way this corporatism is being shaped by the Howard Government.
Why the attack? Because the trajectory of the political shift is one of the Australian Greens controlling the fate of government legislation by possibly holding the balance of power in the Senate. That is of a major concern to the Howard Government. Hence the politics of fear and loathing that is part of a scare campaign. The teeth are barred. It is political ugliness not policy that is the order of the day.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 11:43 AM | Comments (6) | TrackBack
October 30, 2003
its easy to bring down the Internet
There is a good article in The Bulletin on the weakness of the Internet. It is brief but, it makes some good points about the Internet as a physical network of computers linked together by phone cables, optic fibres and communicaton satellites.
First, a decentralised and self-organizing Internet is vulnerable to terrorist hacker attack through viruses. As one commentator, John Naughton, an Internet expert at Britain's Open University, put it:
The way Windows is designed, once a rogue hacker or virus gets into a system, it can do all sorts of malicious damage....If I were Al Qaeda, I wouldn't waste time with nuclear weapons. I'd be going to Microsoft training courses."
Software is a problematic area. Once a malicious hacker or virus gets into a system they can do all sorts of damage. And Microsoft is not doing very much to make its flawed and junky software secure.
Secondly, another problematic area are the roots servers that could be taken out physically with bombs, as could the big traffic hubs of the Web.
So you could have a combination of bombs and viruses: a deadly combination. Things could really grind to a halt in an information society as the good links/conections between the various nodes disintegrate.
That's the end of the mythic cyber-utopia conception of the Internet as a globally shared network space. Their conception of a virtual community (a network of relationships) as a heavenly place, which was undermined by commercial spam, has been blown up the threat of cyber-terrorism.
Update
Scott Wickstein, writing over at White Rose links to this article by John Walker. John says:
"Over the last two years I have become deeply and increasingly pessimistic about the future of liberty and freedom of speech, particularly in regard to the Internet. This is a complete reversal of the almost unbounded optimism I felt during the 1994-1999 period when public access to the Internet burgeoned and innovative new forms of communication appeared in rapid succession."
Now he dreads a dark future. I've explored it here
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 6:30 PM | Comments (6) | TrackBack
screwing the customer?
There was a story in The Australianyesterday (no link) about the cost of energy in South Australia. It states what is well known: that South Australia has the highest electricity prices of any state, due to power bills jumping 25+% since the creation of the national electricity market on January 1.
At this point the deregulators intone their old mantra. They say that deregulation is better than regulatory compulsion. But it is not a case of either or.
The shift to market competition has meant higher electricity prices for consumers in South Australia. Is this because there is not enough vigorous competition to reduce power prices? What we know is that wholsale prices have decreased whilst retail prices have increased. What stands in the middle is AGL the power retailer. It looks as if they bear some responsibility for what is going on. It also looks as if the point of a deregulated energy market is to ensure new investment and boost profits.
Let us look at the South Australia gas market, which will be deregulated and opened up to competition next year. Guess what? A competitive national gas market will have the same impact on consumers as the electricity one. The Advertiser reports that the retail price of gas is expected to increase by around 20 per cent. How come, when SA has one of the dominant sources of gas in the Cooper Basin? This competes with gas from Bass Strait on a national market.
Why not have two gas pipelines from the Cooper Basin competing against one another.?
What we can infer is that competition means increased prices for consumers. They are being sacrificed to ensure more investment.
It would appear that national competition policy is not about reducing consumer prices. It is about increasing profitability for corporations at the expense of consumers. It is the consumers who are being screwed by the coporations so they can make a good return on their capital.
So much for competitive markets delivering choice, service and price benefits to consumers. Consumers, faced with 'take it or leave it' bundled contracts, are often blamed for the problems because of their desire for airconditioners during the high summer. Ignorant consumers, it is said, should learn to consume their electricity more wisely. We should adopt sophisticated risk management tools to turn on the lights and cook the evening meal. Reduced demand would reduce the price of energy.
Those sentiments are a joke. It is the market that needs refoming.
We should be thinking in terms of monopoly profits, threatened capital strike and corporate designed supply shortages. These corporations do not care about low value consumers because they do not generate enough profits for them.
We should also be thinking in terms of passive state governments who went along with, or initiated, the flawed processes of privatisation. They have failed badly, created a mess and continue to talk about competition at the retail level being the big solution.
What I see happening is that over a 20 year period the market pressures will favour a process of consolidation, that will lead to a duopoly in the energy market. The appropriate model here is airline deregulation: it is one of market failure. We shoulld accept that the free market ideal of many buyers and sellers competing vigorously in the energy market is a fiction.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 7:23 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
October 29, 2003
Telstra/environment
The full privatisation of Telstra is back. It's like a merry go round. There one minute, gone the next, then back again. The Howard Government expects things to be all sorted out by Xmas?
This time around there has been a shift. Andrew Murray, the rebellious Democrat senator, speaks out. He would find selling Telstra compelling if the government decided to invest a large part of the Testra sale proceeds on tackling salinity and land degradation. That's pretty much Meg Lees nation building position, that she put on the agenda a year or so ago. Nation building included lots of money for the River Murray.
The two Senators qualified this stance by adding that governance measures to rein in Telstra's market power and giving the regulator stronger competition powers are needed.
That starts to make cash for the environment the key to the sale of Telstra. Since the Howard government continues to talk in terms of using the Telstra sale proceeds to pay off the public debt the debate has shifted to how best to spend the money.
Cash is really needed to restore the health of the River Murray and the Murray-Darling Basin. It appears that the Howard government will not make in moves in clawing back water from irrigators for the 1500 gigalitres required for environmental flows. It talks in terms of outcomes for iconic sites (eg., Chowilla floodplain or the Coorong wetlands) and not environmental flows. It is also only talking in terms of a putting a few hundred million on the table, not the $1.5 billion that the 1500 gigalitres would require. These are nice and easy steps that would not put the irrigators off side. They are going to have to be put offside at some point since water has to be clawed back for environmental flows.
Meanwhile the hard line anti-green neo-liberals continue to talk in terms of the green religion overtaking science; or the green religion corrupting the policy debate; or the greens misleading the public with their gloom and doom stories; or the greens failing to back up their outrageous claims with hard data. They see themselves as radicals who have the courage to question the accepted wisdom on the environment by saying no to ecologically sustainable development. That mode of development places constraints on their profit making. The shift to sustainability is not required because the environment is on the mend in the basin.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 3:18 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack
October 28, 2003
Baghdad bombings
The news late last night and early this morning was full of reports about car bombings in Badghdad. These targeted a Red Cross HQ and three police stations in Baghdad in a coordinated attack spanning 45 minutes. 35-40 persons were killed and over 200 wounded. It follows on the heels of a rocket attack on the al-Rasheed Hotel, that came close to assassinating Paul Wolfowitz, the US. Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz.
The politics of aiming arrow at the US dominance of Iraq worked as the rocket attack lead to a whole bunch of American VIPs running out into the street in their underwear.
The US response to these events? Why, the security situation in Iraq is actually improving. President Bush is talking tough, if what I heard on Radio National during my breakfast is a guide.
As interpreted by Linda Mottram, President Bush said that the increasing attacks on U.S. personnel and supporters in Iraq are a sign of progress because the attacks indicate that the Iraqi opponents of the US are getting increasingly desperate.
There was little comment about these events on the Radio National AM program that I heard. No experts offering their pearls of insight into what is currently happening in Iraq. There is no substantial international division of peace enforcers in Iraq forthcoming. The US allies are dragging their heels apart from the Turks.
It is about time there was a bit of an indepth analysis on Radio National on the situation in Iraq. It does appear that the cycle of violence is becoming worse and the pattern of heavy handed foreign occupier and stubborn resistance is deepening and becoming ever more entrenched. I know that it is more complex and confusing than that, but we only have snippets of information to work from.
But some bits click into place. Such as Iraq had no nuclear bomb program. Or more accurately, "Iraq's nuclear weapons scientists did no significant arms-related work after 1991, that facilities with suspicious new construction proved benign, and that equipment of potential use to a nuclear program remained under seal or in civilian industrial use."
All that spin about aluminum tubes that were shipped from China. You know the ones that Iraq was going to use as centrifuge rotors to enrich uranium for the core of a nuclear warhead? Just spin. The Coalition of the Willing used whatever "evidence" it could to provide support for a course of action already decided upon. Spinning the public about the spectre of the mushroom cloud---was the political game.
Can we now say that the UN sanctions were pretty good?
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 9:06 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
October 27, 2003
Blog/Comment spam
In the last week or so I've started getting more than the usual e-mail spam . It is now spammer intrusions into the comment box at public opinion. This spam consists of links to other sites. I have been removing the advertisements individually, but it is time consuming. I dread the day when there is a flood of this stuff.
The BBC comments on this new form of spamming here. Link courtesy of Blog Herald.
Some more comments on comment spam can be found at Blog Herald
Spam----the sending of Unsolicited Bulk Email---raises the issue of how do we manage the electronic commons to control the spam gangs. A large number of libertarians think that things are fine, since the Internet governs itself in a self-regulatory maner. Thus Telstra's recent problems---clogged up and delayed emails--- were Telstras, not the Internet's. They were not investing in infrastructure. But spam is different. These polluters bear little or no share of the costs they inflict.
Update 1
It is difficult to regulate spam because the internet's decentralised architecture means that there is no central institution to coordinate activities. As Henry Ergas argues in todays Australian Financial Review (subscription required, p. 71) most of the network control is sourced with the user terminal. Governance of the Internet now becomes a problem since the lack of hierarchy makes it difficult to prevent the spam polluters, and to ensure a major shift in Internet protocol amongst ISP's.
Update 2
I see that the US Senate has just past a bill to regulate unsolicited commercial email, thereby moving the US a step closer to the first federal law regulating unwanted junk email. The House of Representative has yet to pass a similar bill.
What a good idea. Some form of governance to control free riding polluters is needed. I just had to eliminate more comment spam. According to Spamhaus spam now accounts for the majority (60%) of all Internet traffic. Spam should be seen as a crime.
Regulation could be counterbalanced by a commitment to open-source systems/software to provide some competition to Microsoft as a way to break its dominance.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 10:40 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
a dud deal?
The imperial president has been and gone. It was all very quick. Hello George. Bye George. And that's it for another decade.
The visit highlighted the image of Australia's Anglo-American alliance affiliations in security, intelligence and defence. Australia is now locked into the US. The Presidential visit reinforced the way the Howard government has set Australia apart from Asia. The image is that Australia is a Western country in, but not of, the Asian region. The subtext of the image is that supporting Anglo-American terrorism in Iraq has protected us from Islamist terrorism in our region.
So what do we have after all the backslapping, praise and media adulation has evaporated? Beyond the hype about Australia & the US being the best of buddies and the strongest of allies we have this reality:
Moir
Yep. Howard said to Bush that it was time for both sides to figure out their important issues and what they were willing to trade off. Bush accepted that.
Then Howard said that Australia was willing to make key concessions on core US demands. He said that he understood that the US needed big concessions on promoting investment flows, reducing bariers to serives, toughening Australia's intellectual property rules and boosting e-commerce. Bush agreed with that.
Now I have no idea what took place between Bush and Howard. I was not there. I'm just making an educated guess. But the signs for the proposed free trade deal do not look good for Australia.
The US is not putting anything substantive on the table by way of concessions in its farm policy; and Australia appears to be giving ever more ground on investment policy, intellectual property and the services trade issues, such as the media and entertainment industry. Since Australia is fairly open about free-flowing foreign investment, that leaves the film and television industry as the sacrifical lamb. The US is conducting these negotiations in their interest, not ours. And they have more power. So they are pushing big time over the prices the US pharmaceutical manufacturers recieve for their drugs and medicine under Australia's PBS scheme. Since the PBS scheme hindered the US comapnies from recouping their investment in research and development, so it has to be modified. I reckon that is what Bush told Howard.
Kenneth Davidson says:
"The much-touted Australia/US Free Trade Agreement (AUSFTA) hardly seems to involve any special favours for Australia. There is nothing so far that suggests Australia will get a better deal than Canada, which forms part of the North American Free Trade Agreement."
Will the film and television industry be sacrificed in the Government's bid to extract a reasonable farm trade? Does that mean Australia giving up its ability to make future cultural policy, especially for emerging media? Does easing local content rules for future media mean that Australia gives up its ability to tell its own stories about our way of life?
And we have not even got started on the issues to do with the public subsidy of the PBS medicines or the Australian regulation of the environment.
My judgement is that, as things stand at the moment, it sure looks as if the US is going to benefit far more than Australia from the Free Trade Agreement. As Davidson says:
"The American-Australian Free Trade Agreement Coalition (AAFTAC) put out a report in July that said...Recent analysis by the Centre for International Economics found that US exports to Australia would increase by $US1.9 billion ($A2.7 billion), compared with an increase in imports from Australia of $US1.2 billion."
Presumably that does not factor in the cost of the negative impact on Australia's other trading partners.
So why the desperation by the Howard Government to get the free trade deal done? Would we not be better served by letting the negotiations collapse? Why bother when the long term significance of the range of agreements signed between China and Australia is that China will become Australia's main trading partner, bigger than Japan or the United States? We now export more to China/Hong Kong than to the US and China is the growth engine for the Asian-Pacific economy.
The Howard government appears to think that Australia's destiny lies with the US. But it may very well lie with our relationship with China.
Update
Support for the above argument can be found in this article by Tim Colebatch. He says:
"Rather than the US becoming increasingly important to Australia, as the Government predicts, it is more likely that the US is now at the peak of its influence. In future, Asia will become increasingly important to us, as China and India emerge as drivers of the world economy, and their growth fuels the rest of Asia. This is the significance of ASEAN's decision to negotiate free trade agreements with both regional superpowers. China is positioning itself in a leadership role in the region, dispensing favours and expecting favours in return."
As Alison Broinowski observes Australia continues "to be perceived as indeed we perceive ourselves, as a Western country in, but not of, the Asian region."
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 12:40 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
October 25, 2003
Saturday Cartoon
Hassan Bleybel, 10/20/03
It used to be called great power politics. The game used to be called the balance of power.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 11:38 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
October 24, 2003
It's the economy stupid
The pundits seem to be falling over themselves lauding the imperial presidency's momentary presence in Australia. Great guy, full of warmth, looks you in the eye. All that sort of gushy stuff. The other side of the coin is serving up cold fish to the two Green Senators (Bob Brown and Kerry Nettle) for their political transgressions. "Self-serving egoists", says Gareth Parker dismissively.
Let me throw a bit a bit of cold water on the celebrations. It's the economy stupid. It's the economy. Bush has big problems. Remember the increasing deficit fuelled by tax cuts and military spending?
Here are some choice remarks by Joseph Stiglitz, author of Globalization and Its Discontents. That book argued that the IMF and its minders at the U.S. Treasury relentlessly pushed the items on Wall Street's business agenda -- such as capital market "liberalization" -- even when it led to disaster for the countries involved.
So what does Stiglitz say about the US economy under the Bush watch? He says:
"The huge tax cut in the US was very badly designed to stimulate the economy. And there has been a huge increase in mainly military spending. Yet what is remarkable is how little stimulus has been given. The US economy is still in a precarious state."
After that note of caution He says:
"Dealing with the deficit will absorb the US political economy for years to come. We're back to the Reagan era. The trade deficit has the underlying problem of what will happen when foreigners decide to stop funding the US deficit. On the private side there is a huge gap in private pension funds. Any other economy would be under water."
Then he sticks the boot in:
"The image is Adam Smith. The reality is Enron. But the really bad news is to come. What is likely to happen is more of a languishing malaise, with very weak job recovery."
That should help to cut the all powerful imperial presidency down to size.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 5:42 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
transgressing stage managed politics
It was all so stage managed. Right from the moment when the Imperial president's plane landed, the doors opened and there was Bush and Howard and their wives standing on the steps of Air Force One waving to all and sundry.
Did the imperial president's Air Force One land somewhere and Howard board it so they could make the big entrance together in Canberra for the cameras? It sure looks like it.
That set the theme for a series of set political pieces all of which were carefully stage managed. Bush arriving at Parliament in the long black car; Bush addressing Parliament; the protests down the road from Parliament; and Howard's cliched speech in the House of Representatives. It was all style and publicity that was very tightly controlled and choregraphed.
A dream visit opines Louise Dodson. It showed the political acumen of John Howard. It gave him---now the man of steel--- a big political boost.
Not quite. Rust never sleeps.
More seriously though, there was no democratic substance. The substance had to be forceibly pushed into the stylized set pieces by the Greens who interjected during the imperial president's spin of Washington generalities. That interjection was an act of political transgression. The reaction of the Canberra Press Gallery to the transgression was predictable. Michael Gordon said that "the high jinks of Green senators threatened to poison the atmosphere and demean the occasion".
It was the body language that was the key. The conflict over democracy in Australia could not be hidden from view. The Coalition acted like lackies before the power of the imperial presidency. Bootlickers one and all. Labor just looked uncomfortable, unwilling to defend democratic substance.
Crean's speech affirmed difference within an affirmation of the US/Australia alliance. It was a high note. The Coalition was more interested in physically stopping access to the body of the imperial presidency in our Parliament than ensuring free speech.
The two Green Senators who stood up and interjected were called unAustralian by the bully boys. After Bush left the Chamber, the Liberals looked a rabble inside Parliament, as elbows and abuse were thrown. The Liberals came across as thugs.
Nice image. Defending democracy inside the Australian Parliament is unAustralian by those acting as thugs. Hardly a dream visit.
Oh, it was thanks to CNN for defying orders from the Howard Government not to film in our Parliamentary chamber. We would not have seen the political transgressions otherwise. As Margo Kingston argues Howard went to great lengths to control the Australian media to ensure we saw only the image John Howard wanted us to see. And Alan over at Southerly Buster has more on media exclusion. The story he tells is one of the Australian media being excluded by the Americans.
Update
Here is a conservative attack dog foaming at the Greens. Andrew Dyson talks about Bob Brown in terms of "this vile Brown, this deflowerer of our hard-won national dignity, this despoiler of the restraint and courtesy that characterises the Australian parliamentary tradition." I read it as a parody at first. Alas, its not. Clearly you should not challenge the imperial presidency.
Not to be outdone Andrew Bolt says that Brown stands for chaos and mob violence that leads to totalitarianism. Bolt raises the spectre of fascism.
The violence that lurks beneath the conservative surface erupts with Adelaide radio announcer Andrew Reimer. He said:
"I’d like to grab Bob Brown for example, and just ever so delicately lift my knee into his face about five times. Smash his nose and his face in. That’s what I’d like to do."
The irony here is that the violence on the conservative side of politics is far greater than that shown by the Greens. The tragedy is that the conservative attack dogs are not aware of their bully boy violence, nor the way they project it onto the Greens.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 9:31 AM | Comments (4) | TrackBack
October 23, 2003
yawn television
The Chinese President Hu Jintao arrived in Australia yesterday. 
All we had were the brief television shots last night: Prime Minister John Howard and wife Janette greeting the arrivals President Hu being introduced to the waiting line of officials by the Governor-General Michael Jeffery and a waterfront lunch hosted by the Governor-General.
Today President Hu is engaged in a series of private business meetings in Sydney. The business leaders are expected to push for opportunities to take advantage of the growing Chinese economy. What would that be? Helping to build the Olympic infrastructure?
It's yawn television.
From these brief shots Hu Jintao appeared to be a competent but colorless technocrat; presumably anti-democratic given his record in Tibet. A suitable leader for a CCP concerned with stability in government, the market and society. The Chinese it would seem are more interested in making money than making revolutions.
So what is happening behind the pleasant television scenes? Are the Chinese on their way to replace the United States as the main power in Asia? Or is that perspective too simplified since the reality is that the United States and China together are dominating the region. Whatever, the Pacific is no longer an American lake. Those days have well gone.
We know that US politicians are now blaming China more and more for job losses in manufacturing and they are demanding the imperial presidency in Washington bring about a yuan currency devaluation (ie., eliminate exchange controls and float the yuan). APEC has taken China's side on the issue, saying that Asian countries probably aren't ready for severe currency revaluations.
We also know that more and more Australian manufacturing is moving to China. And that means job losses. But we--Quarry Australia---get to sell more gas and iron ore to fuel Chinese economic growth. Great. That means no knowledge-based manufacturing industry in the futurein Australia. China is one of the few growth centres of the world economy and it is becoming the epicentre of East Asian regional economic integration.
Remember all that crowing in Washington about the superiority of the free market vision of the US vis-a-vis Asia's paternalistic crony capitalism after the East Asian financial crisis of the late 1990s?(Link courtesy of Adam at PRC News).
It was all about state-led industrialisation and government directed development being a failure and that the future lay with the Western (ie., US) form of free market capitalism. That East Asian financial crisis was used by the US to assert its dominance over East Asia--keep them subordinate, by weakening Japan's regional construction efforts. Australia, of course, dutifully parroted the Washington line.
Well, that strategy has backfired. China has been empowered, trade and investment flows between China and the rest of Asia have boomed, and China is creating regional free trade areas with South and North East Asia. None of this wll go down well with the Imperial presidency in Washington. They---especially the neo-cons who arduously work for maximizing U.S. power---do not take kindly to their hegemony being challenged, especially by Asians.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 9:30 AM | Comments (4) | TrackBack
October 22, 2003
selling the imperial president
It is a bit difficult keeping up with public affairs down here on the South Coast of the Fleurieu Peninsula. The dial-up-internet keeps dropping out every few minutes and the server was down for about 12 hours yesterday.
It is pretty close to hopeless.
So I glanced through an old copy of The Australian and re-read an old article by Paul Kelly on the imperial presidency. You know, the one where he, along with Laurie Oakes, was hand selected by John Howard to interview President Bush before the latter's big imperial sweep through the Asia Pacific region.
What a snow job that article is in retrospect. Consider this:
"Interviewed in the Roosevelt Room adjacent to the Oval Office, Bush sat to one side of a portrait of Teddy Roosevelt on horseback, former Republican, president and warrior. George W is tanned and fit. He wears a light blue-grey suit, light-blue shirt with red tie. He is businesslike and friendly, looks you in the eye and engages like all good US politicians do. But wait for it - he's funny, he tells jokes and his body language is relaxed and confident. A long way from the wooden wonder of the silver screen."
I guess you do what you have to do to make a living. Kelly makes his living selling the imperial presidency by talking about fashion. Selling the imperial presidency is the politics of the Murdoch papers in Australia.
Kelly ends his puff piece ends on this note:
"When he visits, Australians should try to understand the source of his [President Bush] passion and the more complex character that he embodies - but then, they might see him only on television."
Of course we will only see the imperial president on television. I cannot see him address Parliament in person. I'm not allowed to. All I will be able to see is a stage managed affair in the form of a political spectacle.
All public affairs is now mediated by television. That is the postmodern reality we live. And the television stations are beginning to look more and more like their parodies. They appear like product, glossy wrapped.
The Bush visit is a stage managed political spectacle designed to celebrate Australian nationalism, conservative style. That means it is an authoritarian nationalism. Dissent is not welcomed. Scepticism is not welcomed. Critique is unpatriotic in this politics as spectacle.
Here is another snow job from The Age. The message that Tony Parkinson wants to send out is that Australia is a part of the US empire and that it is a good thing. Note the argument buried underneath all the stuff about hypocrisy:
"Massive disruption caused by terror attacks on the US mainland threaten calamity for all the markets in which Australia earns its living....if security is a collective good then it must also be a collective responsibility....These are the facts of life, and will be so for years to come.
Protesting against these facts of life may be a quaint intellectual pursuit."
Australia just has to align itself with the new Rome. It has no choice. The global market dictates that necessity.
Nothing is said about the imperial grand strategy of the United States to hold unquestioned power by acting to ensure the limitation of any exercise of sovereignty by states that might interfere with its global designs. The policy to achieve military and economic supremacy for the United States is assumed to be good. It is assumed right that the United States reserves the right to act unilaterally when necessary including unilateral use of military power to defend such vital interests as ensuring uninhibited access to key markets, energy supplies and strategic resources.
Hence it is right that the Middle East is a key area of strategic power, because of its “strategic position and resources and that US control over the region and its resources is a key policy imperative and that this region should be accepted as Washington’s “backyard.” No challenge to US control by other nation states in the region (Syria or Iran) can be tolerated.
According to Tony Parkinson this is not US arrogance or militarism. It is just the way the world of international relations is structured at its joints. The hegemony of the US is written into the order of things---it is a fact of life. It just has to be accepted. Questioning that power and its use is a quaint intellectual pursuit. It is a quaint intellectual pursuit to question the disdain of the Bush administration for international law and institutions and for arms control measures.It is a quaint intellectual pursuit to argue for U.N. rather than U.S. leadership in international crises; or that the U.N., rather than the United States, should direct reconstruction in Iraq.
That is how they sell the imperial presidency.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 10:08 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
October 21, 2003
jobs jobs jobs=cheap labour
I came across this old article about poverty in Australia by Denis Shanahan this morning. It is a little different to the crude "poverty is a natural part of life and/or is deserved" message, as it has a touch of compassion that is worn lightly.
The following sentences caught my eye:
"There is no harm in being rich and there is nothing wrong with being poor. Poverty in Australia doesn't mean someone has to live in a cardboard box and have a begging bowl....Too much of the fight for the poor has become empty rhetoric, envy and malice directed at the rich....There is no doubt that the strength of the economy is the basis for poverty reduction through helping everyone, not just the poor, in finding jobs and boosting tax revenue available to help those who need it, even during boom times.... now is the time to strike out against long-term unemployment and entrenched poverty. The answer of jobs, jobs, jobs, and a good economy, the backbone of the Coalition's re-election policy next year....
This is not just a defence of inequality being good for the economy that we often find amongst some economic liberals. Shanahan also says that there "needs to be a sign of compassion and a recognition that during the good times is the time to deal with the bad aspects of the bad times."
What Shanahan does not say is that the Coalition's answer of "jobs jobs jobs" through a deregulated market presupposes cheap-labour, not minimalist government.
We know the standard neo-liberal message to achieve jobs jobs jobs. The mantra goes like this:
Government regulation is unnatural interference in the free market; public service bureaucrats can't possibly make rational efficient decisions about things as pricing and distribution; and the allocation of scarce resources is best handled by the "hidden hand" of supply and demand. So the public sector and government services have to be cut to make room for the market to do its efficiency and competitive thing.
That cut back to public services is achieved by creating a budget crunch through placing universities and public health institutions on a financial drip feed; leave them there for a decade, then say that we cannot afford to fund these government services from the public purse. Since taxpayers are being squeezed by high taxes, we don't have any choice but to introduce the market via privatisation to solve an intractable problem. It's all about choice and consumer freedom versus welfare state socialism.
The other side of the coin to cutting public services is to change working conditions in the name of market flexibility. The aim is to force people to work cheap. This involves breaking the power of unions; rolling back the institutions of arbitartion and conciliation; keeping unemployment a low priority; reducing the mininum wage; work for the dole, unpaid overtime; doing more with less; increased job security.
The overall aim is to make Australia a low wage country. Why so? Here's
the justification. International competiton in a globalised world means that Australian companies have to compete on the international stage. Many nation-states in Asia have low wages; therefore Australia needs low wages to keep the jobs in the country. Otherwise they will be forced to go offshore. And that means rising unemployment .
Australia cannot compete with China on these grounds, as the Sydney Morning Herald points out. The better option is to take the high tech route into the knowledge economy through ensuring better education for the Australian people. This option shows the short sightedness of running down Australia's higher education system so that it becomes third rate.
Cheap labour. That's the key to the Coalition's economics. Conceptual Guerilla is right. Cheap labour is the core of the right wing's corner store economics.
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October 20, 2003
Seaside thoughts
Things are pretty quite down on the southern coast of South Australia apart from the spring winds that blow mighty strong. The news reaches here slowly and most of the spin from Canberra is filtered out by surf and cloud.
Here, amidst the wealth of the pockets of luxury holiday homes along the Victor Harbor-Goolwa coastal strip we have high rates of unemployment, high rates of welfare dependency, large numbers of working poor holding down casual jobs, low education, impoverished public resources, limited access to information, bad interenet connections and lots of pokies. What is strong though is the dense network of communal relationships that constitute civil society and give us our social identity and sense of belonging. Social values and relationships are important here. The values debate means something here.
Some Canbera news has filtered through. I gather that the imperial Presidency is making a quick touchdown in Australia to have a chat to a few hand selected politicians, military types and business men. They will be discussing guns and money as Margo Kingston puts it; not ways to inject some life into Australian democracy by transferring more power to the Australian people.
Howard and democratic reform? It jarrs. Howard, like Keating before him, stands for increased executive dominance.
From my perspective on the south coast I can see that most of the political/public policy debate in Australia comes from people living in the inner city of Melbourne and Sydney. They----righties and lefties---are political insiders who seek power and influence and they are somewhat reluctant to share it around. They are about the concentration of power and the preservation of the ruling power elites.
That elitism comes through so very clearly with the Wentworth Liberal pre-selection battle. Branchstacking has nothing to do with making a decentralized political space for people to have their opinions heard and for their activities making a difference. They are just numbers in an elite political strategy within an liberal political system with authoritarian currents. This transit-lounge politics makes it very difficult for ordinary citizens to take greater control over their lives in a globalised world.
A globalised world in the coastal struggle street with its suburban values means a world without borders and order. It means a sense that the anchors of our everyday lives----family, community and national identity---are being swept away by the movement of the global tide. Though people get by and, though they acquire a bit of wealth, they feel more powerless. They, along with a lot of Australian suburbia, are outside the political, economic and cultural elite concentrated in Melbourne, Sydney and Canberra. They desire a bigger say in decision making.
The conservative call for more law and order, security and patriotism resonate here with the lifstyle politics. They are seen to have a big edge in the values debate in our public culture.
You can see the way that politics is local.
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October 19, 2003
Sunday Cartoon
It's not how I see it but I couldn't resist.
Howard wants to walk tall on the world stage with a gun at his side. Though an Anglo-Australian he is a neo-con at heart. A regional cop ensuring security and stability with just a touch of imperial ambition. He is tickled pink when he gets an invite to the Bush barbecue at the Texa ranch. You can see him grooming himself in the presidential style.
Since he is an astute politician, Howard knows that being a regional cop doesn't go down well with our neighbours in the region.
So he softens the public image to manage international (and domestic) public opinion.
He needs the gun and badge because he knows that Australia is a credible terrorist target because it has allied itself so closely with the imperial presidency in Washington that Australia can stand as a proxy for the US for Islamic terrrorists.
Moir's cartoon in the Sydney Morning Herald is pretty good too.
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October 18, 2003
Saturday Cartoon
Stavro The US chasing terrorists and death chasing all.
I know that it doesn't really capture what is happening in Iraq, but it raises a wry smile.
What it misses is important, such as the fallout and conflict between the different strands of Shiite Iraqis. That was manifest in the bloody clash in the Shiite holy city of Karbala last Tuesday between the army of the radical Muqtada al-Sadr army and the militiamen loyal to the more moderate Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani. The former has announced shadow government but even the latter latter says the Americans should go.
Or that the Iraqi war---and it is a war---has breathed new life into al-Qaeda and swollen its ranks with recruits.
Or the recent UN Security Council resolution signifiying an admission of defeat by the US in Iraq; a moderation of the administration's unilateralist tendencies; and the repulsion of the virulent strand of American jingoism that says what we say goes and is right. However, Billmon over at Whiskey Bar reckons otherwise: the UN whimped out. It shoudl have said no to the Americans.
It misses the strategic US policy that makes Israel is a reliable US ally against the spread of Islamism; and the strategic US/Israel policy to destroy Iran and Syria, make Israel the dominant power in the region, and drive the Palestinians across the Jordan River. Thus we have the merging of the local struggle between the Palestinians and the Israelis with the international struggle between the United States and the Islamic jihadists.
The strategy unfolds like this. The merging of the Palestinian intifada and the US global war on terrorism advances the neocon/Likud strategy of drawing the US into "regime changes" in Syria and Iran, since these regime support the Palestinian resistance and habour Islamic terrorists. This regime change would squeeze the life out of the Palestinian resistance to Israeli expansionism. It would bring an end to the suicide bombings and enable the right wing Sharon Government to impose its own (colonialist) peace terms on the Palestinian Authority with tacit support from the imperial Bush presidency.
That's the strategy. The reality? Judging by Iraq, the US does not have the capacity to ensure regime change Syria and Iran. As Juan Cole points out the US is encountering over-reach in Iraq.
Still, the cartoon raises a smile.
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October 17, 2003
Australia's promotion
I see that the imperial presidency in Washington has upgraded Australia from Deputy sheriff to sheriff for the Southeast Asian region. We are no longer a part of the Texan's posse. We are the sheriff fighting the war on terror in our region with our own posse.
Why the promotion? The imperial presidency says that we have what it takes to do the job. I give you President Bush:
"The great thing about Australians is they're not afraid... When I go to Australia I'll be speaking to a country which does understand the consequences of sacrificing for something greater than themselves...No. We don't see it as a deputy sheriff. We see it as a sheriff. There's a difference ... Anyway, no, equal partners, friends and allies. There's nothing deputy about this relationship...the alliance in this relationship is going to be critical in the future because the war on terror goes on. ... John Howard understands that. It's important to have friends and allies who understand that the war on terror is a long-term issue that requires decisive action and close co-operation... He's a good guy, he's a very strong leader."
We Australians are willing to put our bodies on the line to ensure the American peace.
But who will be part of our posse? Indonesia? Philippines? New Zealand? Certainly not China, Japan or Malaysia.
I'm sure that Australia's new image/role will go down a treat in Southeast Asia. It will be interpreted as loaded with provocative connotations. It has the Texas cowboy imagery of riding tall in the saddle and shooting the non whites to enforce security and stability of Roman peace. Sheriff means that Australia has a dominant role. Australia is in charge of the war against terrorism region. It calls the shoots as the voice and arm of of law and order taking out the bad guys to ensure stability and security.
Howard will have to fog it, but that is his style: he will emphasis the equal partnership bit--- but that won't fool the other nation-states in the region. The Malaysian Government, for instance, quickly commented that Australia was really acting as a United States puppet dancing to George Bush's tune in East Asia.
Did they also mean a stalking horse for the US?
For all the neo-con fanatasies about Australia walking tall and proud on the world stage harboured by the hard boys in the Howard ministry Australia does not have the military muscle to walk the sheriff's walk. The sheriff is really the US. Maybe the role of Australia is put down the local flare ups on the edge of the boundaries/perimeter of the American world.
Politics operates through the effects of power. One of the ways it does this is through images which can have powerful affects and intensities that disjoin or rupture the normal flow of events, information and meanings. The image of 'Australia as sheriff' in Southeast Asia is one of those moments of disruptive effects.
Another one is identified by Margo Kingston and Geoff Kitney. It is Howard's decision to expel the public from their own parliament when the imperial president addresses our representatives. Now that we are the US President's sheriff in South East Asia, the:
"...symbolism is obvious. Democracy has no place in the world of Bush, supreme commander and Howard, sheriff. The world as fashioned by Bush - Howard as echo chamber - is too dangerous for democracy. They're creating a world in which they wield absolute power."
I would add absolute power in the sense that the imperial Rome had absolute power. Rome signifies something else: the imperium meant the hollowing out of the power of the Senate, the end of the republic and controlling the masses.
But the power effect sheriff inside Australia will be reassuring. As Geoff Kitney observes:
" We are more fearful of our neighbourhood and more convinced than at any time since the height of the Cold War that our physical security depends on the United States. We are also more fearful in our own communities of neighbours of different cultural upbringing and religions we do not understand. And, with our fear, we have become less comfortable with dissent and division of opinion."
We are worried and anxious because we are battling for our lives against the terrorists. From this perspective Australia's involvement in the war in Iraq has been justified by the credibility it has brought us with the US. Underneath that sentiment is the hope that this new credibility with the imperial power will buy us a stronger security guarantee in a mean and nasty world. In our hearts we know that supporting the US in Iraq means that Australia may have contributed to feeding the security threat it most fears: a radicalised, unstable Indonesia.
But never fear the war on terror will keep us all safe and secure.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 3:22 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
October 16, 2003
Turmoil in academia
Academics across Australia go on strike today. It is a historic occassion.
Andrew Norton over at Catallaxy Files says the NTEU's strike is pointless, as it will inconvenience students and achieve nothing. Ken Parish over at Troppo Armadillo says that the NTEU strike is grossly premature. In contrast, John Quiggin, though ambivalent, will go on strike. He says that what is:
"...really objectionable point is the government's attempt to push its industrial relations agenda on to the universities while maintaining the stance that the universities are the employers and that employees must bargain with them if they want wage increases or better conditions."
Jean Genie over at Creativity Machine was on strike without the ambivalence.
The Minister disapproves. He talks about the industrial reforms being designed to increase workplace flexibility and ensuring that universities were not offering excessive benefits.
Excessive benefits? The Minister means paring back entitlements, such as redundancy pay and maternity leave. The university staff have had it to good for too long. The fat has to be trimmed.
The staff are also protesting at the prescriptive interference in the affairs of universities (in the content of courses and research) by the Minister; the attempt by the federal Government to impose its industrial relations policies---individual contracts---on the universities; and the Government's desire to abolish limitations on fixed-term or casual appointments. There is a deep antagonism to this kind of state interference from people who are hurting.
As Graham McCulloch says:
"The real workplace issues confronting universities are the decline in teaching and research infrastructure, rising staff workloads and loss of professional autonomy. Intellectual life in universities is drowning in a sea of quality assurance processes, performance indicators, business plans and excessive managerialism. These problems are to be compounded by a new and punitive layer of government workplace regulation."
These issues primarily arise from the public universities being run down by the Federal Government during the 1990s. The strike is a sympton of a crisis in higher education institutions, which are being transformed by the increasing commercialisation of tertiary education.
The corporatized universities want to be free of the heavy hand of government control so they can extract competitive advantage over their rivals. The more free market educational corporations understand how global imperatives drive domestic competition.
However, the Federal Government rejects any talk of crisis in higher education. The standard line, "There is no crisis", is its way to manage public opinion. Things are under control and on the right track.
Now Brendan Nelson, the Minister of Education, or the person in charge of Australia's $4.2 billion education export industry as the Australian Financial Review, puts it, is warning that the universities are tettering on the edge and mediocrity is weakening Australian higher education. They are in danger of sinking into mediocrity with 5-7 yrears.
More symptons of a crisis? Surely not?
The Australian Financial Review thinks there is a crisis. Whether Australia is to compete with the best globally, or steadily slipping behind is crucial. And all those stories of overcrowding, inadequate teaching, diminishing quality and deserting graduate students indicate that Australia is slipping behind. The Australian Financial Review can see that such stories damage Australia's international reputation and the increasingly valuable export sales of education services to international students. They understand how domestic issues are driven by globalised markets.
And the students are rebelling at the proposed increase in course fees by 30%, and refusing to take up full fee-paying places. Middle class parents are apprehensive at the increasing debt levels incurred by user pays. And the ALP, Democrats and Greens in the Senate are opposed to the refoms. They want a large increase in public funding to avert a disaster. There appears be little hope of getting the Howard Government's reform package through the Senate by Christmas.
Remember, there is no crisis.
Not even when Minister Nelson says the universities won't survive unless the 4 independent Senators pass his reform package.
Remarks like that suggest the universities have deep wounds from a thousand cuts. They are close to being on life support.
Remember there is no crisis. There is only crisis management.
John Howard will have to cut a deal. His reputation is that he knows how to cut a deal when he has to. Does he reckon he has to?
See how the PM controls things.
Update
This fragment calls those academics who did not strike yesterday as scabs who "have a duty to sacrifice forever any wage gains attained for them by the union."
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October 15, 2003
so much for a flutter
Australians love to gamble. It gives them a lot of pleasure. Gambling is good fun. There is nothing wrong with it, since it is just a form of entertainment. That is the spin from the gambling industry.
I think so to.
Tattersalls is a conscious predator upon a small proportion of vulnerable Victorians who suffer gambling problems.
That was the judgement of the ABC's Four Corners programme by Jonathon Holmes last Monday night.
What is suprising, given the connection between pokies, addiction and crime, is how little the state governments in Victoria and SA are actually doing to miminize the harm being done by pokie gambling. Gambling addiction is not taken all that seriously. These Government's are raking in hundreds of million dollars a year from pokies, but they do little to prevent the predatory behaviour of the gambling industry. Nor are they doing much to effectively wind back gambling addiction in their states and the social and economic havoc caused by the recent explosion of poker machines in the hotels and entertainment industry.
What we have is state fostered gambling. Our state governments have shifted from role of governments from being watchdogs of gambling to becoming its leading promoters. They too are fixated by the dollar flashes of the machines and they go all glazy eyed.
Update
This is good news. The Salvation Army has rejected a $5 million donation from pokies giant Tattersall's. It said no to the offer because it didn't want money made from the misery of pokies. Good on them. Their reasoning was solid:
"...we would have been seen to be in partnership with a group that causes so much misery."How would we be able to face the people that we were seeking to help that were victims of Tatts? For that reason, it was rejected."
They've earned a lot in the credibility stakes with that judgement.
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US strategy in the Middle East #2
I want to pick up on the previous post about Juan Cole's article on American geopolitical strategy in the Middle East in the Boston Review. It addresses my understanding that the Imperial presidency is seeking to establish a Roman peace upon the world whilst confronting, and conducting wars with a fundamentalist Islam.
I ended my post mentioning Juan's view that the weakness of the neo-con plan for reconstructing the Middle East is the secular Iraqi Shiites as allies for the US in the region. Juan argues that this strategy wil founder on the rock of the powerful Islamic Shiite movement.
I will let Juan spell out the implementation of the neo-con plan for a stragetic shift in his own words. In the conclusion to his excellent article he writes:
"In removing the Baath regime and eliminating constraints on Iraqi Islamism, the United States has unleashed a new political force in the Gulf: not the upsurge of civic organization and democratic sentiment fantasized by American neoconservatives, but the aspirations of Iraqi Shiites to build an Islamic republic. That result was an entirely predictable consequence of the past 30 years of political conflict between the Shiites and the Baathist regime, and American policy analysts have expected a different result only by ignoring that history."
Juan then qualifies this:
"To be sure, the dreams of a Shiite Islamic republic in Baghdad may be unrealistic: a plurality of the country is Sunni, and some proportion of the 14 million Shiites is secularist. In the months after the Anglo-American invasion, however, the religious Shiite parties demonstrated the clearest organizational skills and established political momentum. The Islamists are likely to be a powerful enough group in parliament that they may block the sort of close American-Iraqi cooperation that the neoconservatives had hoped for. "
What does this setback mean in the short term? Juan says that:
"For now, the United States is back to having two footstools in the Middle East: Israel and Saudi Arabia. Iraq has proven too rickety, too unknown, too devastated to bear the weight of the strategic shift imagined by the hawks. And far from finally defeating Khomeinism, U.S. policy has given it millions of liberated Iraqi allies.....But what does seem clear is that the Iraq war has proved a detour in the War on Terror, drawing away key resources from the real threat of al Qaeda and continued instability in Afghanistan.... What really needs to be changed are U.S. support for political authoritarianism and Islamic conservatism, and acquiescence in Israeli land grabs on the West Bank. Those two, together, account for most of the trouble the United States has in the Muslim world. The Iraq war did nothing to change that."
This highlights the old contradiction in the US strategy in the Middle East: the rhetoric about democracy and freedom and the support for authoritarian regimes. So we have the blowback consequences of the imperial strategy---Muslem resistance to its hegemony--- that lead into a negative feedback loop for the US.
Juan's whole article is well worth reading. Nothing like it has been published in Australia, where there is little questioning and evaluation of that US geopolitical strategy in the Australian media.
There should be some questioning of the geopolitical strategy. Australian policy makers have lined up behind the US geopolitical strategy in the Middle East. That strategy ensures that the US will maintain regional hegemony and that any challengeto US hegemony will be blocked by force. Whatever the Americans do seems to be okay for Australia. That appears to be the official Canberra line. US policy in the region is the policy of Australia by default.
Consequently, Australia supports a unipolar world in which no state or coalition should be allowed to challenge the US as global leader, protector, and enforcer. What is to be protected in the Middle East is US power and the interests that it represents.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 8:44 AM | Comments (4) | TrackBack
October 14, 2003
US strategy in the Middle East
Juan Cole has a great article on American geopolitical strategy in the Middle East over at the Boston Review. It is big picture stuff and it pulls a lot of things together.
Juan says that:
The ambitious aim of the American war in Iraq—articulated by Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz, and other neoconservative defense intellectuals—was to effect a fundamental transformation in Middle East politics. The war was not—or not principally—about finding weapons of mass destruction, or preventing alliances with al Qaeda, or protecting the Iraqi population from Saddam’s terror.... In response to this challenge [the events of September 11] the Bush administration saw the possibility of creating a new pillar for U.S. policy in the region: a post-Baathist Iraq, dominated by Iraqi Shiites, which would spark a wave of democratization across the Middle East."
Juan then provides a historical context. He says that from 1970 until the end of the Cold War:
"U.S. policy in the Middle East was based on three principles and two key alliances. The principles included fighting against Communist and other radical anti-American influences; supporting conservative religious and authoritarian political elites; and ensuring access to Middle Eastern petroleum supplies. The two principal allies were Israel and Saudi Arabia. The centrality of the anti-Soviet pillar to regional policy...helps explain the others."
With the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union, Paul Wolfowitz and other national security hawks later grouped in the Project for a New American Century saw the principal security challenge to the United States to lie with the anti-American Middle Eastern states, including Iraq, Syria, and Iran. After some hesitation the Bush administration remained committed to standing behind Israel and acquiescing in the substantial expropriations of Palestinian land by the Sharon administration.
It was the other central pillar, Saudi Arabia that remained in doubt. Juan says:
"The hawks came to see an Americanized Iraq as a replacement for Saudi Arabia...The two key alliances were now to be with Israel and a Shiite-majority “secular” Iraq. Saudi Arabia would be marginalized and the allegedly pernicious effects of its Wahhabism fought... Iranian Khomeinism was still seen as an enemy, along with its allies, the Hezbollah in Lebanon and the remaining wing of the Baath in Syria. All three were seen as threats to Israeli expansionism, so their elevation in the firmament of evil dovetailed with the U.S. decision to acquiesce de facto in hard-line Israeli policies of settlement expansion. Iran and Syria were to be forestalled from developing biological or nuclear weapons, from cooperating in this endeavor with the East Asian Communists, and from interfering in a final settlement of the Palestine issue on whatever terms Israel found favorable. Fighting al Qaeda, which one would have thought would have the highest priority in the new policy, actually appears as a minor and subordinate consideration, relegated to a sort of police work. And mollifying outraged Muslims by pressuring Israel to return to the 1967 borders was out of the question."
The weakness of the plan is the secular Iraqi Shiites as allies for the US in region.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 2:57 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
Responses to Bali
I agree with Scott Burchill's descriptions of the two different responses to the Kuta Beach atrocity in Bali within Australian political circles.
First, we have the conservative 'clash of civilizations' response I have previously noted. Scott describes the conservative interpretation as arguing:
....'that cultural hatred is the only legitimate explanation for the current wave of Islamic militancy. Prime Minister Howard has repeatedly stressed that Australians are targeted by extremists "because of who we are, not because of what we have done. We are a western country and what these terrorists hate is western civilisation". According to this argument, no rational account of the behaviour of terrorists can be found and no dialogue with individuals willing to commit such heinous acts is possible.'
This rejects the view that there are reasons or social conditions for why terrorists act in the way that they do. Scott decribes it as follows:
.... 'Attempts to identify the sources of grievance which drive people to commit these crimes are, according to Mr Howard, "convoluted argument[s] about the alleged dispossession or prolonged disputes in other parts of the world" and constitute "obscene rationalisations that the apologists for terrorists have engaged in"'.
The central solution is the military one. Take out the terrorists and the regimes that support them in the name of pre-emptive strike. Become warlike. Such a view then gives rise to Australia's image problem in Asia. Australia is now seen to be both aligned with the US (its deputy sherrif) and being anti-Islam or anti-Asia.
The other response to the Kuta Beach atrocity in Bali is to connect the Islamic hostiility to the West to Washington's support for Israel's brutal occupation of Palestine, and to the range of venal and repressive client regimes across the Arab world. Scott says that this response seeks
.... "to understand and explain why such an attack took place does not condone it or imply in any way that it was deserved. To excuse is to defend, to justify and exculpate. To explain is to examine and to understand. They are very different responses, though since 9/11 and Bali they have frequently been conflated."
This second response is muted in Australia. It is frequently dismissed as condoning terrorism, when it is more a questioning of the confrontation of civilization thesis. It is the conservative one that is hegemonic as it taps into the unconscious emotional structure of the old yellow peril that forms so much of Australia's political unconscious. That unconscious is now being expressed by Andrew Bolt
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October 13, 2003
when a fence is a wall
I have been glancing through the online Australian Jewish News to see how they commenting on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. I came across this. It's a case for the Sharon Wall. It's a fairly simplistic case for a defensive fence:
It’s sad that those who criticise the security fence don’t pause to reflect on this simple question: why does Israel need such a buffer? International law recognises that every country has the right to defend itself against those wishing to destroy it. Putting up a fence to keep out murderers falls in every way within that right. The fence is a natural and understandable response to the hundreds of ghastly strikes that have emanated from the West Bank."
Palestinians are murders. Palestinians are not even seen to be fighting a war. They're simply criminals.
This is simplistic because there is no mention of Israeli occupation of Palestinian land, Israeli settlements, the Palestinian nation, Palestinians belonging to the land, or Palestinians trying to build a nation state. Just the one word---murderers. It denies that Palestinians also have legitimate historical grievances, that some settler Israeli's wanted to rule millions of Palestinians on the West Bank and the Gaza Strip and does not mention the substantial expropriations of Palestinian land by Israel.
It says that the terrorists--ie., suicide bombers---- are the problem. The implication is that they have to be dug out----with missiles and bulldozers.The words, "murderers, buffer and fence", denies that there is any connection between the proliferation of suicide bombings and the prevailing view in Palestinian society; which is that Israel, as a military and nuclear power, wants to squeeze a surrender out of the Palestinians that will legitimize the Israeli takeover of land in the West Bank and Gaza.
Put that Israeli land grab into the equation and you get this. Israel's "security fence" is a 25-foot concrete wall crowned by watchtowers at regular intervals. It is more than a fence. It is a visible and clear act of territorial annexation under the guise of security:
"Officially, Israel argues that the wall is being constructed for security reasons, but the structure's meandering path betrays underlying territorial ambitions. In places, the barrier dips over three miles into the West Bank, leaving on the "Israeli" side settlements, fertile Palestinian land and valuable water resources. While the form of the wall varies, everywhere its impact is to confiscate more Palestinian land, isolate Palestinian communities from one another and sap their social and economic viability."
That means you cannot just support Israel without apology or equivocation. Supporting Israel without equivocation means a refusal to allow different Israeli voices.
My judgement from reading the Australian Jewish News? That it represents right wing Israeli opinion. So is the Review published by the Australia/Israeli and Jewish Affairs Council. And what is their policy? It is more than supporting American tolerance for Israel’s expansionist policies in the Occupied Territories. It is support for the Sharon administration's efforts to prevent negotiations restarting and keep the Road Map in abeyance; its instinctive opposition to an internal Palestinian political bargain because it would strengthen the Palestinians; strategies to ensure the Palestinian Authority remains gridlocked and powerless; and breaking the Palestinians so completely that they can be cowed into accepting any political entity that Israel decrees.
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October 12, 2003
Boomtime in SA?
The pundits are beginning to crow in Adelaide. They are saying that SA is no longer a basket case because it's economic growth over the past year has been awesome.
Professor Richard Blandy from the University South Australia is one of the state boosters. He says that SA had become a basket case because of the national decision to move to free trade when SA was the most heavily protected state. It had taken a long, long time to downsize, increase productivity and efficiency in a global sense. But now, it seems as if rebuilding the economic basics is paying off. Blandy says:
'...the northern and southern suburbs were no longer "wastelands".These are the new economic heartlands of SA – due to growth in industries such as cars, wine, electronics and defence...The economic centre of gravity is moving towards the north.'
And it is all looking so bright for SA:
"Industries such as car manufacturing were doing "phenomenally while defence still had an undeveloped potential and wine was doing extremely well. Education and health are areas where we will have very large potential to develop, particularly in export areas. "
Investment is up, consumers are spending up big, the housing boom is moving along nicely and a crane can be seen in the CBD skyline. Optimism is the order of the day. The declining political influence of the state---indicated by the ongoing abolition of federal seats in the House of Representatives such as Hawker and Bonthyon ---is displaced by the economic news five minutes of economic sunshine.
The message says that the market is doing a great job in revitalising the state. So why my skeptical tone about the state boosters? Two reasons. Another newspaper report says that people are unable to pay their power bills. They are taking measures to reduce power use, such as watching tv in the dark, not baking, showering three times a week and using candles. However, the free marketeers don''t miss a beat. The trickle down of wealth created by the boom will sort that poverty out.
And the other reason for remaining gloomy? A lot of the optimism is driven by a household debt binge supported by a never-ending rise in home equity rather than addressing unemployment by building new exporters. The Rann Labor Government is obsessed with pleasing the money markets and the international credit agencies, and is very unwilling to take the path of higher levels of public investment in strategic social and physical infrastructure projects. Modernizing and greening the infrastructure is needed.
SA pleasing the financial sector means accepting the policy prescriptions of this power bloc: cutting "unproductive" government expenditure; reducing the regulatory burden on business; speeding up the pace of labor market reform; reducing the top marginal rate of tax; budget surpluses and repaying public debate. The anti-egalitarian policy agenda of Finance is intrinsically hostile to social spending, repairing the environment and regulating the market for the sake of the public good.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 11:43 AM | Comments (4) | TrackBack
Sunday Cartoon
It states the case well. Few WMD's have been found. The initial justification for going to war with Iraq---that Iraq constituted an imminent threat to the national interest---looks threadbare.
So a reworking is needed to manage a sceptical public opinion. How does that go? In the US Condoleezza Rice now talks in terms of possibilities and might haves:
"We have no evidence that Saddam Hussein was involved in the September 11th attacks. Yet the possibility remained that he might use his weapons of mass destruction or that terrorists might acquire such weapons from his regime, to mount a future attack far beyond the scale of 9/11. This terrible prospect could not be ignored or wished away."
That "might" is a reworking of the old justification that Saddam Hussein posed a substantive threat to the US national interest, hence the pressing need for a pre-emptive strike to take his regime out.
The response by the Bush administration to the WMD cupboard is bare criticisms is this: a counter offensive. Dick Cheney attacks the critics by ridiculing their arguments against the war as naïve and dangerous. Cheney's speech to the Heritage Foundation can be found here. The quick comments by Abu Aardvark are worth reading.
Cheney's speech can be read as part of a counter-offensive by Team Bush that is directed at both the liberal elite and the softening of public opinion as reflected in the declining President poll ratings. The credibility of the Bush administration is now on the line, given the controversy over the administration's leak of the identity of a CIA operative who is married to a critic of Bush's Iraq policy. And international opinion? That, it seems, has been put to one side.
Bush's speeches in the publicity counter-offensive shift the emphasis from Hussein's alleged possession of weapons of mass destruction to Hussein's desire for such weapons and the general evil he represented. As I said it's a reworking.
Bush is now blaming the news media for the public's negative impression of current events in Iraq. I presume he means the liberal media?
Update
The counter-offensive in Australia is being conducted by Andrew Bolt. He re-reads the Statement by David Kay on the Interim Progress Report on the Activities of the Iraq Survey Group (ISG) before the US Congress. (Bolt mistakenly says that it is the Report.) He picks the bits that indicate that show "the pattern of Saddam's deception and evil intent is absolutely clear."
In Bolt's reworking "evil intent" now does the work for the old WMD's constituting an imminent threat (for the UK), a substantive threat for the US and a sufficent threat to Australia's national interest to justify going to war.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 10:49 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
October 11, 2003
Saturday cartoon
The Sharon Wall (Khaldoun Gaharaybeh, Al-Ra'i, 10/8/03).
That image will be seen as anti-Israel in Australia since it points the finger at the current Sharon Government. Australia pretty much lines up behind the US and Israel in relation to the Middle East.
The consequence is that the UN is deemed to be part of the problem not the solution. Or having symapthy for the Palestinians, being critical of 'the Palestinains are terrorists' or questionign the assumption that Palestinian terrorism gives Israel the right to do whatever it pleases is seen to be biased. In contrast, a pro-Israeli perspective is not seen to be biased. Israeli is represented as good oppopsing the evil of the Palestinians.
The Israeli-Palestinian politics is currently being played out in Australia in terms of a national inflexion. Australian Jewish leaders are opposing the NSW Premier Bob Carr's proposal to present Palestinian activist Dr Hanan Ashrawi with the Sydney Peace Prize next month. Dr Hanan Ashrawi, a human rights activist, is seen to be the voice that legitimates terror.
Update
A decription of the politics involved can be found here.
Let me speak plainly in the face of this one sided distortion. The impact of the Sharon Wall is to confiscate more Palestinian land, isolate Palestinian communities from one another and sap their social and economic viability. It's an apartheid wall constructed by a colonial power.
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Comments on Senate Reform
I see that Paul Kelly would like to skittle the Senate. His is an anti-democratic and anti-federal voice that disguises itself by wearing a democratic mask.
Speaking in the language of democracy is the only way that an anti-democratic voice can appear to be legitimate. The debate has to take place within the political form of democracy because the old class based aristocratic-conservatism, with its strong anti-egalitarianism and deep antagonism to democracy, has no purchase these days.
What has purchase is the anti-democratic hierachical business model of organization. Hence John Howard is the CEO of the government.
Kelly is quite hostile to the Senate. He talks in terms of the government:
"....pushing the public interest, against the special interests enshrined in the Senate voting system.... [Howard's] argument is well-based since the parliamentary system is too weighted against a government's mandate in favour of minority interests...Howard's critique of Senate obstruction....The Senate does pose a serious problem for Australian governance. The Senate as a chamber rejects any idea of a government mandate. Its voting system means no government is likely to control the Senate again. The bills the Senate has denied are substantial and Australia will need more of these sorts of reforms in the future, not less. The lawyers who reject Howard's reforms operate with total disregard for the national challenges Australia faces over the next generation."
This is an apologist talking. The Senate is without redeeming features on this account. Considerations, such as the Senate acting as a house of review of the Howard Government's and legislation or Australians voting to place roadblocks in the path of governments they have elected, are not even mentioned.
Why is Kelly's an anti-democratic voice? As Brian Costa observes:
"....'it is clear that a cohort of electors differentiate between the upper and lower houses in deciding which party to support. There is no doubt that the majority desired the return of the Howard Government in 2001, but a slightly different majority didn't want it to "control" the Senate."'
It is not just a case of the executive being peeved at not being able to bend the legislature to its will: it is the assumption that the Senate should be subordinated to the House of Representatives. Behind that assumption sits the view that, since the Executive controls the House, the executive should rule and democracy is limited to voting in elections.
Any deepening or broadening of democracy should be resisted because it is a constraint on the will of the executive.
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October 10, 2003
just a few porkies
In The Bulletin this week Maxine McKew has lunch with John Dwyer, who fronts the Australian Health Reform Alliance. Dwyer talks a lot of sense about the current health crisis.
It is a crisis. It cost Kay Patterson her job. She was cut loose. Health becomes a major debacle on several fronts for the Howard Government. Aged-care, remember, has already chewed up Judi Moylan and Bronwyn Bishop. That rising star, Julie Bishop, is the fifth minister responsible for aged-care since 1996.
The Australian Health Reform Alliance was formed when it seemed that the reform agenda had been lost. The Commonwealth and States and Territories had lost the plot on health reform as they started to squabble amongst themselves. Things were becoming dysfunctional in the health system.
Dwyer highlights a key reason for the overloading at public hopitals. He says that:
"... on any day, overloaded public hospitals (funded by the states) are dealing with emergency or geriatric patients who could otherwise be cared for in (federal-funded) GP health centres or nursing homes. An example: nearly every day during the past winter, the Prince of Wales was forced to turn away ambulances, including those carrying patients with life-threatening conditions, because of overflowing emergency departments."
He then mentions three ways in which the Howard Government has been consistently telling porkies when it comes to the public health:
"The first porky is that the government's changes to Medicare are designed to make the system fairer. That is definitely untrue."
It is untrue because the reform package, is designed to prop up bulk billing for the poor and elderly but effectively makes it easier for doctors to charge the rest of us more. That does not lead to equity of outcome. It is not a question of money. A $5 pay rise for an average GP consultation costs the taxpayer $500m. Recently there was $2bn spent on the 'hamburger' tax cut. This is about values not money.
The second porkie Dwyer mentions is
"....the bald-faced statement from the prime minister that the private insurance rebate is taking the pressure off public hospitals. If there was any blip of help initially, it's long since gone. What the PM is doing is confusing increased activity in the private hospitals and making an incorrect linkage. As we all know, lots of Australians, no matter how wealthy, are in public hospitals because that's where the sophisticated services are. All the health economists can demonstrate this to any impartial person's satisfaction. Equally, there are plenty of ways that we could better use the money that's now propping up private insurance to also help the public system."
Again, it's about values not money. The aim of using $2.4bn a year on federal finances is to faciliate private health industry and to run down public health system.
The third porkie? It is
is the PM's constant refrain that if the public hospitals are a mess, then it's a state responsibility. The message we've tried to get through for months is that what happens to primary care affects hospitals and vice versa. In health, integration is everything. If GPs in a certain area aren't earning enough money to operate an after-hours service then we'll immediately see increased numbers in emergency wards in hospitals. The same if there aren't enough nursing beds. This is not to let the states off the hook either. They need to be far more transparent about everything. The fact is it's totally irresponsible for either the federal or state governments to talk about the issues as if we're dealing with islands of health care."
What we can say is that the Howard Government is not commited to fixing a dysfunctional public health system. As we see with medical indemnity insurance it will endeavour to politically manage the situation to ensure its re-election by preventing an electoral backlash. It is more interested in buying time and de-politicizing the issue Ithan ensuring a vibrant and universal public health system. It's vision is one of a health system run by big corporations making a profit, whilst the public health system is transformed into charity hospitals run by nuns and volunteers.
The Howard Government would really like to get out of public health. If it could, it would repudiate the egalitarian heritage of social democracy. Its policies of more and more deregulation and less and less social spending indicate a continual retreat from egalitarianism, despite the community's support for most types of social spending through the provision of public services. This is particularly the case in health.
The papers from the Alliance's recent health summit can be found here.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 9:22 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack
October 9, 2003
Senate Reform
The Australian doesn't like democracy. It's editorial is full of animus towards the Senate:
"...the motley collection of minor party representatives and independents in the upper house....now the upper house is a chamber of rejection and delay....Proportional representation means candidates with very small primary votes can hold the government of the day to ransom..... It is time to end the power of senators to sabotage the government of the day – just because they can."
I should say the Murdoch Press not just The Australiansince their tabloid in Adelaide, The Advertiser, offers more of the same. It's editorial from Tuesday states that the Senate needs put its house in order. It says that the four independent Senators---Meg Lees, Len Harris, Brian Harradine and Shayne Murphy---
"...were elected with less than 10 per cent primary support in their respective states only to block the agenda of popularly elected governments...For a quarter of a century since [Malcom Fraser] Senate obstructionism has been a modern day political reality... A rebalancing of the Senate's power is needed to provide thoughtful checks and balances instead of blindly blocking the government's agenda."
This companion piece from The Advertiser's Canberra Press Gallery talks in terms of the above four Senators running the country! It's a rabid piece: Senator Murphy is a drunk; Senator Harris is ignorant; Senator Harradine is a renegade and Senator Lees is desperate.
Underneath the nasty polemic sits the firm view that the Senate, as the upper house, should be subordinated to the House of Representatives. However, the political reality is that Howard did not obtain a real majority in the Senate popular vote (43 per cent) and does not enjoy a Senate majority. As Geoff Kitney points out the talk about reducing Senate obstructionism comes from the politicians, not from the people. He says that the great complainers about Senate obstruction have always been the politicians, from both sides of politics. In contrast Australian citizens have acted to curb on the power for the governing party through the Senate.
The Australian rejects the view that Australian citizens use the constitutional powers of the Senate as a way to counter the hegemonic power of the executive. It is the checks and balances of federalism at work. The tacit argument is that the John Howard as the CEO cannot govern the country like a CEO can govern a corporation because of democracy. So let us clip the wings of democracy by reducing the powers of the Senate. More efficient governance is achieved by giving more power to the executive.
What is the argument to justify the power grab? As Malcom Mackerras says the Howard Government's argument is this:
..."the gist of [the PM's Senate reform] document is that the House of Representatives is a fully democratic body truly representing the people while the Senate is "unrepresentative swill". All true democrats, the argument goes, should believe in the assertion of the supremacy of the house over the Senate."
All true democrats should oppose federalism is the inference. This is not that far removed from what Paul Keating once called the "swill" in the Senate.
Is the proposed Senate reform a power grab by the executive? Harry Evans, the Clerk of the Senate, states the reality of power in Canberra bluntly. Referring to John Howard he says:
"He has the House of Representatives in his pocket, he has the sole power to appoint and dismiss the governor-general, and he can appoint whomever he likes to the High Court. That just about wraps up control of all the major institutions of government. The only one he doesn't control is the Senate, and now he wants to do that."
This is a recent speech Harry Evans gave to the national press club on April 24 on the agenda behind most politician's "reform" ideas for Parliament and the need for "reformation" instead.
There is lots more material on this issue by Margo Kingston over at Webdiary. She points out that Senate is vital to protecting Australia's democracy and ensuring that good, considered law is passed by the Federal Parliament.
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October 8, 2003
a new political wind blows
One achilles heel of the Howard Government is its attempts to undermine the public health system through a drip feed. Why spend good money on something that is bad?
Clearly, self-reliance was the way to go. The democratic mass needed to be toughened up. They had been sucking on the welfare tit for far too long and had gotten used to it. What was needed was to reduce bulkbilling to only the deserving poor, and then use the money to subsidize, and prop up, the private health funds.
The politics was to keep just enough blood flowing to the public heel via the old drip feed to prevent gangrene and keep the system on its feet. That would keep the masses quiet long enough to retain power. Hopefully, the private health system would grow in a globalized world with massive corporate welfare. Gee, maybe even the American corporations would take things over. Why, a free trade agreement would help to keep the health reforms ticking along.
The proposed reforms to public health had no chance of getting through the Senate in their current form. The Senators understood that more money was needed to be pumped into Medicare, and that a higher Medicare rebate was needed for doctors to encourage them to bulk bill. Equity in health care still meant something in the Senate: it meant a just health care system, one in which all people have the right to be treated equally by government policy and financial assistance schemes.
In the process of holding the pro-market, anti-governmental line the Howard Government has taken a PR hit-----big time. It was seen to actively creating a two-tier health insurance system, with bulk-billing retained only as a safety net for the poorest Australians. Despite the rhetoric of creating ‘a fairer Medicare’, whilst restricting access to health care (with financial barriers for a significant proportion of the Australian population) the Howard Government was seen to be politically opposed to a public system of universal cover for sickness. The future was a going back to the philosophical principles of the pre-Whitlam health care system.
Are we are now seeing a change in tack? Just like we did in early 1991 first half of 2001 when a spooked Government went on an expensive exercise in vote buying. In late 1993 in steps Tony Abbott, the new man from the Government with a conciliatory tone, a big smile and buckets of cash to save the day. The new Liberal hero and future Liberal PM.
I reckon we are seeing a change of political tack. A new political wind is blowing. Health is a crucial issue in the forthcoming federal election.
Michelle Grattan thinks so too. Don't you love the image. Tony Abbott as the pest control man knocking off the democratic voices. That's political conservatism for you: govern through the free market and keep squeezing democracy to ensure that citizens are passive outside elections.
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October 7, 2003
Where to now?
The WTO Cancum meeting failed. We know that it to do with the Singapore issues - investment, competition policy, government procurement and trade facilitation.
And we know that the Cairns group of agricultural free traders, of which Australia is a member, were deeply disappointed. Hence the stock take about the future of the corporate-style global trading system.
There is a big doubt hanging over this system because of the double talk. The US claims to support the Cairns group agenda of liberalization of agricultural trade; but it is more concerned to get Europe and Japan to reduce their level of domestic support for their farmers; ensuring that developing countries open their markets up to US exports by removing tariffs and quotas; dragging its heels on controlling the dumping of subsidized exports in developing countries markets; and stonewalling on fair terms of trade for developing countries' exports.
Somehow developing countries opening their markets to dumped produce from the US and Europe is intrinsically good for developing countries---according to the neoliberal catechism. And there is the blatant hypocrisy: protection is deemed OK for the US, Japan and the EU whilst market openness is deemed good for developing countries.
The free trader's dream of an effective multilateral free trade system is now being replaced by a series of bilateral free trade agreements: Australia with the US; Brazil with the US; Japan with Singapore etc.
Why this path for Australia? Why not a regional trading system with East Asian economies? An open regionalism in the Asian-Pacific region? Or is that trade policy favoured by Ross Garnaut amongst others now history after the Asian financial crisis?
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 9:43 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
October 6, 2003
Just a one off?
I caught up on the news today about Israeli bombing bombed a target inside Syria that it claimed was an Islamic Jihad training base as a retaliation for a suicide bombing on Saturday that killed 19 Israelis. That Israel could do that with impunity indicates that it is the hegemonic power in the region. Syria must be pretty weak to allow Israeli jets to fly into its sovereign territory.
Is this an escalation of the war by Israel? It breaks with the normal practice of the past three years of the Palestinian intifada, when Israel its reprisals to the assassinations of the leaders and military commanders of Islamic Jihad and Hamas to the West Bank and Gaza.
The Bush administration has singled Syria out for hostile attention for some time. They see Syria as an obstacle to the hegmony of US/Israel power in the region, have identified Syria as suitable for an American-engineered regime change and told Syria to stop supporting terrorist Publicly the Bush administration offered no criticism of the attack. organizations. Is the Israeli air attack an indication that Syria is now the battleground in the US neo-con Middle East policy conflicts? Is the Israel-Palestinian conflict flowing over into a war between Israel and its Arab neighbours?
Or is the Israeli airstrike a one off as Billmon over at Whisky Bar argues.
It appears to me that it is a continuation of the vicious circle of reprisal and counter-reprisal that increases the casualty toll and escalates the conflict. At some moment in the conflict a point from which there can be no return will be reached.
Update
This article is of interest. It indicates that America's support of Israels pre-emptive strike confirms the view that the US is aligned with Israel in the Middle East; and that Israel is now utilizing its strategic 'gains' from the American occupation of Iraq by initiating a game of expanding the confrontation in the region.
Some more commentary can be found here. A regional red line has been crossed. What next? Impending American sanctions followed up by other measures to “tighten the noose” against Syria and push the country into a corner?
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 8:37 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack
money talks
It is a public holiday today in Australia. I'm down at Victor Harbor this October long weekend beginning to paint the seaside shack. So I have very little time to write a post.
From the perspective of a seaside resort where people are enjoying the sunshine after a long wet winter, it appears that our politicians moving into election mode. Talk about tax cuts on the way is filling the airwaves. So is talk about the road to prosperity being one of getting the government off our backs and consumers not appreciating public services unless we pay for them.
This image caught my eye.
Martin Davies
Plutocracy is more obvious in the US. You have to be well financed to be able to make your way to Capital Hill.
But the bags of cash and the favours that then need to be repaid also play a crucial role in Australian elections as as well. It is not just about being up to your armpits in blood and gore.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 1:45 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
October 5, 2003
Sunday cartoon
Steve Bell 2003
Let's face it. Spin is an integral part of political life. There are different kinds of spin.
Can we include in spin what Paul Krugman calls the right-wing slime and defend machine.
Or is that something quite different from spin?
You can find an example of slime/spin on the Plame Affair decoded by Billmon over at Whiskey Bar
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October 4, 2003
Nothing new here
Stravo
I could not find the Kay Report on the existence of Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq online. This was the best I could find.
As Juan Cole observes:
"David Kay reports a failure to find any weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and asks for $600 mn. to allow him to go back with a team and look more. The old American saying, no use throwing good money after bad, applies here. Kay says he has evidence of the "intention" of the Iraqi regime to pursue WMD in future. But in military strategy, you don't worry about your enemy's intentions, you worry about his capabilities. Saddam had no capability to harm the US or the UK in March of 2003."
Saddam Hussein had programs of biological WMD, clandestine infrastructure, a small, covert capabilities that could be activated quickly to surge the production of biological and chemical warfare agents, a missile programme But the regime had no capability to harm Australia.
Update
EvilPundit advises that The Kay Report can be found here
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Saturday Cartoon
The Israeli Segregation, Land-grab Wall, dividing Palestinian neighborhoods, villages, and towns. (Khalil Abu Arafeh, Alquds, 10/3/03).
I recall a discussion with the former US ambassador to Israel, Martin Indyk,
on the Israeli/Palestinian conflict on the ABC's 7.30 Report last week. It addressed the problems on the Palestinian side and what the Palestinians needed to do. The wall, the settlement and the land grab were not mentioned once. It was all about the Palestinians.
How is that for bias?
Even Israel's acknowledge that what what was once What was once a legitimate defense against murderous terror attacks has become a lever for land-grabbing.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 6:31 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Higher education: another perspective
I found these remarks by Observa in the comment box to this post on education. They are too good to be left there. So I'm bringing them forward as a post by Observa.
This is what Observa says:
"By the early 70s with the advent of 'free' university entry the Left had seemingly broken the stranglehold, the sons and daughters of the privileged had previously enjoyed in higher education. To what extent this was the true case, I have my doubts. It may well have been the case, that the inexorable demographic blip of post-war baby boomers, was the real impetus for the plethora of new CAEs and Universities. Simply an idea whose demographic time had come.
This same demographic was to produce the rapid urban sprawl to the north and south of my city Adelaide, as they wed and formed new households. By the time a State govt. was prepared to address the problem with the new city of Monarto, the demographic problem had passed and Monarto became a costly zoo and woodland.
What of the expanded tertiary education sector? Well it suffered some inevitable amalgamations, but with a vocal supplier lobby group, jealously guarding its expanded role, it fared much better. These new polo-necked defenders of the faith, fought tooth and nail any attack on their empire. They happily enlisted the new converts entering their portals, to the idea that tertiary education was the answer to all societies ills, or at the very least, a bulwark against the chill winds of globalisation. Mind you it didn't mind opening its doors to globalisation, with international students, when it began to grow a bit short of local demographics. Never let it be said that the polo-necked left and their converts, were not against a bit of good old market pragmatism, when their tenure was on the line.
It could also create a few new courses in basket-weaving to drum up more business, or lower the academic bar if the numbers were getting a bit thin. If the market woke up to the increased number of lower grade graduates, you could always satisfy them with the increasingly necessary Honours or Phd grads. It would even acquiesce quietly with its favourite Labor govt.on a usually, morally repugnant HECS scheme, if financing the punters through the doors, was getting to be a bit of a problem. Overall, a very flexible and pragmatic sniffer of the winds of change.
When you create empires, you must ensure every sandstone foundation is in place. The Secondary schools are your feedstock, unless of course they consist of Technical schools which are of no use to you. You will inculcate a whole generation of educationalists that 'education is for life' and to stream some children away from academia and into physical skills training is heresy. You will happily condemn a generation of working-class kids to the unemployment scrap-heap for a rounded education and the greater good of society.
When Goodwood Tech, the last technical high school in Adelaide closed its doors some 12 years ago, I was told by the staff that every final year student had a job to go to. I personally apprenticed one such work experience lad, who was previously failing at Westminster private school and now topped his class at Goodwood. Can you imagine the crass troglodytes who ran that school? They used to get the students to clock on and off school each day and mark them down for absenteeism or lateness.
You could see the same occurring in the nursing profession as in-hospital trainig was commandeered by one of Adelaide's burgeoning new universities, Flinders. A new breed of tertiary educated nurses was put through the halls of academia, many of them to give up their profession soon after graduation, because it all got a bit mucky and demanding in the wards. The result, like the demise of the Technical schools, a serious shortage of nurses, plumbers, electricians, fitters and mechanics and the list goes on.
Where are we now? Well we have a large glut of academic graduates in many fields and a serious shortage of skilled technicians. The universities are on borrowed time with only the demographic echo effect of the baby-boomers to sustain their large claim on the community's scarce resources. Their time in the sun is up and is it any wonder the barbarians are at the portals with their talk of accountability, vouchers and life grants for consumers. Still, it is an articulate empire, even if it has fiddled too long. It remains to be seen, if an educated community will still dance to its tune, when there are not enough plumbers or nurses to attend to its drips."
This is a different perspective on the higher education to my own which adopts a writing from within the liberal university.
In response to Observa's comments to would add that the concern of many participants at the Senate Inquiry was that SA was in a very vulnerable position. A slow growing economy meant a declining university sector and a lack of income to pay for the increased fees. SA's universities were vulnerable because the SA economy was equivalent to a depressed region.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 4:53 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack
October 3, 2003
Electricity Blackouts & the Internet
Despite its apocalyptic tone this article usefully connects the recent electricity blackouts in the US and Italy to the Internet. The link is courtesy of Relevant History
The article highlights how dependent we have become on electricty and the national transmission grid in the digital age.
".... it lays bare the Achilles Heel of our digital era as our "information society" is wholly dependent on the electricity grid. Without electric power, public transport can't run, businesses can't operate, and people can't communicate. Whereas in the pre-digital days people were still able to go about their business during a blackout, albeit not very easily, it's near impossible nowadays as simple over-the-counter transactions are all handled by "smart" machines and computers. And as everyone gets use to living in a "cashless" society, when the ATMs don't work and your wallet is empty then you are really cashless."
And so things just grind to a halt.
The article then draws attention to the lack of investment in the national electricity grids:
"Our increased use of energy in conjunction with moves by governments to "privatise" or "liberalise" everything that once had belonged to a community or society as a whole has led to a dilapidation of public infrastructures. In terms of the the energy sector, governments have given over a key element public infrastructure over to giant corporations which, in turn, have failed to invest in alternative energy sources and to upgrade the systems."
So our society ends up depending a weak and dilapidated energy infrastructure that is a heavy polluter in Australia. Aspang over at Relevant History says that big blackouts are built into the very design of a national grid. The argument is is that when demand for power exceeds a network's total capacity, the only way the network can cope is by 'load shedding'. As power demand shifts onto generators that are still working, this can overload other transmission lines, causing a sudden avalanche of load shedding as many lines fail.
It's a good argument for centralised renewable energy, since the effort to build a national foolproof electricity grid may well be a fool's errand.
Is a similar process is happening to the communications infrastructure? I raise it for consideration. The article says that that the Internet once belonged to the public commons and is being privatised by business. The interest of big business is to secure "cyberspace" as a new place to shop and advertise, and this will be pursued at the expense of network stability and interoperability. The consequences is that:
"The Internet has crawled to a halt on a number of occasions due to technical failure and simple network overload."
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 1:16 PM | Comments (5) | TrackBack
October 2, 2003
a politically charged atmosphere
I attended the hearings of the Senate inquiry into the funding and regulatory legislation of higher education yesterday afternoon. I heard submissions from the University of South Australia, the student unions of the three universities in Adelaide, the Flinders University of South Australia and part of the submission from the South Australian Government.
That paragraph captures the surface tedium of a Senate inquiry. It presents itself as being pretty low key and just routine administration. Most people give inquiries such as these a miss. Yet it was a very politically charged atmosphere in that conference room in Adelaide University. You could feel the heavy action political power----something that is quite alien to a university, for all its academic politics. The politically-charged atmosphere signified a common understanding: that the people present understood the Senate to be where the political action is. They tacitly knew that the battle lines had been drawn up and the combat was in progress. All those present in the room---including the SA Government---grasped that they were engaged in combat.
Outside the room of federal democracy in action, the media continued to circulate the messages from the Howard Government about a hostile Senate. They produced their commentary on various proposals by the Howard Government to clip the wings of an obstructionist Senate in the name of more efficient governance. The Howard Government sees itself as the CEO of Australia UnLimited trying to get things under control.
Now it was not the Vice-Chancellor's supposed opposition to the shift towards market governance, and away from education as a public good, that made the Senate hearings so politically charged. That shift was accepted on pragmatic grounds. The politically charged atmosphere was partly due to the conflict between Senators Carr and Tierney and the hostility between Tierney and the Student Unions. But above all it was because the vice-chancellors had to be very careful in what they were saying in response to the senator's questions. Being too critical of the Howard Government's tabled legislation would invite payback. Few in the room had any doubts about the payback. So the Vice-Chancellors had to quietly slice up the legislation whilst appearing to do otherwise. Everybody understood what was what and some performed the task better than others.
What came through the question and answer sessions was that Nelson's reform package---entitled Our Universities: Backing Australia's Future--- would increase the market mechanism in higher education, was a short-term injection of funds and would increase the financial burden on students. It would also cause a deepening of the institutional divide, based on the universities' ability to compete in a deregulated market. And it would increase the coercive control over the universities by the state.
I presume that the libertarians would welcome the greater shift towards market mechanisms as a step in the right direction towards complete deregulation and the universities beginning to respond to price signals. But they would have to be critical and deeply opposed to the instrusive and heavy-handed control by the state over these public institutions.That obsessive control is very much at odds with the centrality of institutional autonomy and localised knowledge.
And they are critical.
The level of micro-management intrusion---the Minister can disallow individual academic courses---is a classic example of the conservative central control system. Though no doubt, the libertarians will probably fog things by calling it the old socialist command and control system run by the Politburo.
Whilst sitting there listening to the Senators questioning the Vice-chancellors, I thought about the deep desire for central planning by a government that talks the language of the free market. The conservative command and control seems to be on the increase behind all the government talk about the excessive and restrictive regulations and heavy centralized bureaucratic arrangements that stifle the education sector and prevent it from maximising its potential.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 3:19 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
China Celebrates
Looks impressive.
And so they should celebrate. They have built a modern nation in a century.
We Australians should celebrate with them. And remember their history of becoming a modern nation state through having to toss out the foreign invaders.
By contrast, we Australians are the heirs of colonists. We became a modern nation through agreement not warfare. Nor did the Japanese seize control of part of our sovereign territory last century.
They have a lot to celebrate as they change from a planned economy of the Maoist past into a market economy.
The CCP has still to appreciate the difference between treating people as subjects and citizens. And Peking doesn't take too kindly to the democratic movement in Hong Kong.
A free market economy may be developing but not liberal democracy. The convergence theories (between East and West) of the 1980s looked a bit shopworn these days.
Chairman-Meow was fortunate to be able to go and experience the fireworks. It looks as if it were a great show.
At least we Australians are no longer talking about defending our shores from the approaching Red Menace. The politics of fear has taken a different turn. It's now Islamic terrorists.
Another kind of celebration of China.
As we know the Chinese aren't too good on the human rights stuff.
As as Peking Duck reports the underside of the Chinese economic miracle is China's impoverished rural regions:
"...as the economy of the coastal cities soars, that of the countryside disintegrates, forcing more and more rural citizens with no hope to become prostitutes, thieves and streetsweepers."
The countryside pays the price for China to join the modern world, become a member of the WTO and host the next Olympics?
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 9:08 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
October 1, 2003
The Plame Affair
Brad deLong has a good summary of the issues involved in what the Americans are now calling the Plame affair.
It's a legal issue not a publicity issue ias it a violation of law for officials to intentionally disclose the identity of a covert operative.
Billmon, over at Whiskey Bar makes a call: the CIA are gunning for the Rove machine in the White House.
I dare say that the imperial presidency in the White House will endeavour to sidestep the issue of Bush staffers retaliating against a critic of his foreign policy by ruining his wife's career. What Bush should be doing is calling for the leaker(s) to come forward and resign. After all, they broken the law.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 1:50 PM | Comments (0)
Arab intellectual debates
This article about intellectual debates in the Arab world is interesting and worth looking at. (It is courtesy of Abu Aardvark) It usefully maps the debates in terms of a duality of reformers and conservatives; useful because Islam is generally equated with the conservatives in Australia.
It describes the conservatives thus:
"...conservative authors repeat familiar accusations against the West: the pursuit of a brutal policy of defending their own interests, the protection of authoritarian leaders that are considered useful or acceptable and, consequently, the prevention of democratic development. By employing the rhetoric of the eternally cheated Arab nation, it is possible for them to embed their views in the impenetrable spheres of the collective memory. All of a sudden, analogies loaded with negative connotations such as the crusades and the colonial period are drawn between the current situation and previous encounters with the West. Apocalyptic visions of the possible final battle between the Occident and the Orient are once again held up as a potential scenario for liberation from a state of continual humiliation."
This is the anti-western Islam that is refracted in Western media as Anti-Americanism. It is what Islam stands for in the rightwing Murdoch newspapers, such as The Australian. Islam is the categorical rejection of American ideas as bad. Hence we have the easy slide into Islamic terrorists (eg., Jemaah Islamiah) threatening Australia's national security from the outside and the inside.
What is pushed into the background and made invisible by the constant repetition of this Islamic sterotype in the The Australian is the movement for reform in the Arab world by Islamic and secular liberals. They favour social change, democratic reform and economic liberalisation, the improvement of educational systems and the empowerment of women and a continual dialogue with America as being feasible and desirable. They criticise the conservative Arab tirades of hatred against the USA, whether it be for reasons of their supposed responsibility for the creation of Israel or for their continual support for America-friendly dictatorships.
We do not hear about this aspect of Arab political culture in Australia. It is one that criticises :
"...the obvious eurocentrism of the [American] proposals, which consider a complete transfer of the western liberal democratic model to the region to be the primary condition for reform. They are of the opinion that both the historical and cultural uniqueness of the Arab-Islamic region makes it necessary to adapt every imported body of thought to suit the local situation."
The reformers hold that key ideas highlighted by the Americans are essentially correct; that democratic ideals of the USA and/or the West now constitutes an important pillar of reformist thought; and that the impetus for democratisation and transformation projects initiated by civic society---human rights organisations, women’s movements and youth associations---not the nation state.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 11:31 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack