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April 30, 2004
Sugar: let's pull the plug
I wasn't going to comment on the $444 million federal assistance package the Prime Minister John Howard announced yesterday to compensate the ailing sugar industry for being locked out of the free trade deal with the United States.
but...
G. Niall
Apparently the industry wanted a package worth about $600 million. For not gaining access to the US market? It sounds more like a handout to me that has been given some window dressing.
True, the industry has been pounded by low global prices, a strong Australian dollar, fierce competition from Brazil, near insurmountable foreign trade walls and high freight costs. Yet the sugar industry has been propped up by governments for years, and it has done little to reform itself or stop polluting the Great Barrier Reef.
Time to pull the plug on the cane growers? Tim Colebatch argues otherwise:
"Yesterday the Government made the obvious choice, and the right one. The prime reason our sugar industry has become uncompetitive has been Brazil's currency plunge. It will become competitive again when Brazil's currency rebounds, and we all know how volatile foreign exchange markets are. Bunker down, restructure, investigate alternatives, and wait: this is sensible policy that deserves applause."
Not really. It is corporate welfare.
And where is the sustainability bit? Is that just window dressing too ? The Queensland cane farmers are not interested in sustainable agriculture. They never have been. If a sustainable agriculture is a policy objective, then where is the big pressure on the canegrowers to force them to clean up their fertilizer and pesticide runoff in order to protect the Great Barrier Reef? Should the canefarmers not be required to attend university to learn something about the way science works? To learn about the casual connections between the canegrower's agricultural pollution, river flow the outbreak of the Star of Thorns and the ongoing destruction of the Reef.
As Phil Dickie reports:
"Sugar's problem is that the crop has downstream effects out of all proportion to the land actually under cane. According to the CRC-Sugar study, in the Johnstone River, the roughly 10 percent of the catchment under cane is responsible for about 35 percent of the sediment, just over 30 percent of the phosphorus and nearly 50 percent of the nitrate load."
What the Howard Government has done is sideline the work of the reef research and administrative institutions; continue to mutter the mantra of scientific uncertainty while neglecting to invoke the precautionary principle; and do everything it can to reassure and protect the cane farmers and rural lobbies.
This is the use of agricultural subsidies just like in the EU, or the US under the Bush administration. And the Howard Government continues to say that they are good economic managers! They have turned their back on the free market and embraced old fashioned protectionism that encourages inefficient farmers to prosper on the basis of handouts. So much for Australia's Cairns Group credentials.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 3:53 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
April 29, 2004
Mitsubishi: let the factory close?
As Peter Costello, the Federal Treasurer pointed out the Mitsubishi crisis was a problem for the international car company not the South Australian plant. Mitsubishi's exit from South Australia will come from the decisions that will be made in Japan. I wouldn't expect too much by way of rescue of Mitsubishi Motor Corp though.
Mike Duffy, the Motoring Editor of The Advertiser, in an overview of the Mitsubishi crisis, says that we all should keep our opinions to ourselves:
"The best thing the so-called experts and the politicians can do is cease the debate until a decision is reached in Tokyo. Prolonged talk of doom at Mitsubishi can only be self-fulfilling."
The very opposite of closing down the debate should be what needs to happen. We should be debating the future of SA and the direction it's economy can and should go.
So what is going to happen?
Alan Mitchell, the economic editor of the Australian Financial Review, had an opinion piece in Wednesday's edition (subscription required). It addressed the economic modelling of the possible job loses from the closure of the local Mitsubishi plant. Alan rejected the input-output model with its 22,000 job losses used by John Spoehr as overstating the long term losses and for assuming that foreign car makers would capture Mitsubishi Australia's domestic and export markets. Mitchell argued that the Monash model was better than the Adelaide one. He went on to say that:
"....under the most pessimistic scenario in which the bulk of Mitsubishi's sales are lost to foreign producers, the Monash Model reduces Australian car industry output by about 7 per cent and cuts South Australia employment by 2 per cent or about 14,000 jobs."
As he observes, that would be a hefty blow to the South Australian economy. However, Mitchell goes on to say:
"...if it is assumed that Australian producers capture Mitsubishi's fleet sales, while imports take all its non-fleet sales, the initial loss of total can industry output is only 3 per cent, and this falls to less than 1 per cent after 10 years."
He acknowledges that even this would still be a significant set back for South Australia.
So what should be done here? Mitchell suggests the Commonwealth Employment Service setting up a centre inside the factory and special regional employment assistance package. However, his general point is a good one. The Howard Government should be generously pumping money into finding Mitsubishi worker's alternative jobs in the Adelaide area, rather than trying to keep the car plant going.
What we in South Australia should be discussing is not keeping the status quo going --but figuring how to start building on the initial step to a centre of excellence re manufacturing. We need to figure how how we can move away from being a branch office economy and having a vulnerable manufacturing sector. Moving away generally means developing "new age industries', such as IT, electronics defence, biotech and renewable energy.
As today's editorial in the Australian Financial Review (subscription required) said SA must drive its own future. If it does not then SA will continue to increasingly look like a retirement village in an industrial museum.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 10:16 AM | Comments (6) | TrackBack
April 28, 2004
the light at the end of the tunnel
Consider this:
Kathy Wilcox
The PM's dash to Baghdad indicates that the strategy is to use the war in Iraq to help win the election. It recalls the imperial presidents aircraft carrier shoot, where Bush stood below a banner proclaiming "mission accomplished", as US troops returned from Iraq. I heard the PM on the airwaves saying that Australia stays in Iraq until the job is done.
Now which job is that? Making Iraq a safe and secure democracy? Or ensuring that the alliance with the US remains everything? I reckon the job is all the way with the USA. It's our security blanket.
Now consider this:
Bill Leak
An election campaign is definitely under way.
Well, we knew that. It has been so for some time. It's all politics, politics, politics now.
Aah that sugar package. The sugar industry has been in crisis for decades.
The sugar package is being sold as helping the industry to restructure and diversify into new value adding activities. The politics? Given the failure of the Free Trade Agreement with the US to open new markets in the US for sugar, the sweetner is to prevent an electoral backlash in National Party marginal seats in Coastal Queensland. It's a dressed-up pork barrell.
The Howard strategy is to spend up big to win the election.
Does Treasury think that market subsidy and protection is a good thing? Surely Treasury officials must be questioning the Howard Government's creditionals as a good economic manager. This is all round protection and subsidy.
Why not help the industry by increasing the amount of renewable generated in Australia? Sugar millers can generate energy by burning waste sugar cane fibre. So lets increase the madatory renewable energy targets (MRET) to encourage wholesale electricity distributors to buy an minimium amount of power from environmentally friendly sources.
Not possible Why? Politics. The energy intensive industry (eg., coal and aluminium) is opposed to increasing the MRET target. So that's that. No shift from generating electricity from polluting coal-fired power stations can be allowed. The line must be held.
Hence the sweetners. It's all politics, politics politics.
Where's the light in all this?
Me? I'm standing in the tunnel. According to the Howard Government, I'm hanging out for the "sandwich and milkshake" taxcuts in the forthcoming budget. For them I'm just motivated by money in the hip pocket and self-interest. That is the light at the end of the tune.
Update
The Prime Ministers Press release on the sugar industry for those interested.
The Mayne boy over Crikey.com lets fly at the "great free marketers in the Howard Government throwing hundreds of millions of public money at a bunch of moaning and chronically inefficient Queensland sugar farmers."
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 9:14 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
April 27, 2004
Mitsubushi: a mess
The latest Mitsubishi news is not good for SA. Despite all the huffing and puffing from the Rann Government about making Mitsubishi's exit from SA as expensive as it could, the SA & federal Government have little say in the matter. They stand on the sidelines with the door firmly closed.
It would appear that the survival of Mitsubishi Motors is now in the hands of the parent conglomerate after DaimlerChrysler refused to put in any more capital into what was once seen as an easy entree into the Asian market. Why should they? Mitsubishi had to recall 2 million faulty cars in 2000, has continued to rack up huge losses, and its sales and market share have continued to decline in the US. Mitsubishi Motors is a liability for DaimlerChrysler's strategy to build a global car company
Mitsubishi Motors is in a bad way, with an uncompetitive product, poor credit ratings and damaged brand name. It is clearly a loser from the gradual deregulation of the Japanese economy and its opening to the global economy. Toyata, in contrast, is a winner.
These considerations make the Mitsubishi's Australian operations precarious. Apparently, DaimlerChrysler's earlier rescue plan had involved the closure of the Australian plant. Keeping them going made no sense in terms of their global strategy and entry into Asia.
With the withdrawal of capital injection from DaimlerChrysler, any rescue plan for Mitsubishi Motors will now dependson a bailout from the parent conglomerate. Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Mitsubishi Corporation and the Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi have offered financial support. They say they plan to actively work with Mitsubishi Motors Corporation on a new mid-term business plan within a month. Would not that business plan involve closing down the Australian operations?
Lenore Taylor and Brendan Pearson in the Australian Financial Review(subscription required) say that bailing out Mitsubishi Motors involves restructuring, since Mitsubishi Motors is around one trillion dollars in debt. Where is that money going to come from?
And even if the hugh capital inflow ($9.7 billion) could be found, would Mitsubishi earn money in the future ? Do the company's prospects justify such a highup-front capital investment? DaimlerChrysler decided no: saving Mitsubishi Motors would cost too much money.
So the best that SA can hope is for is a phrased run down of the Australian manufacturing plant, following the completion of the new Magna model rollout. So Mitsubishi goes the way of Nisson, and withdraws from manufacturing in Australia.
As James Roberts comments in the Australian Financial Review (subscription required) the key problem is that the company is unable to survive in the competitive US market. Nor does it have a medium to long-term investment strategy.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 12:43 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
April 26, 2004
contradictions
Australia under the Howard Government goes all righteous about Iraq by saying that it is doing the right thing there. A big play is made of the ethics. Then the Howard Government puts the ethics to one side when it is dealing with East Timor-Leste over shared seabed resources. Australia is seen to be doing the wrong thing by some.
Bruce Petty
Of course, those who defend Australia's actions to limit East Timor-Leste's access to the oil and gas resources talk in terms of international law not ethics. But they continue to talk in terms of ethics not international law to justify the occupation of Iraq.
Funny the way that acting in the national interest is framed differently from issue to issue, isn't it? It makes you wonder if 'the national interest' is not just an empty container into which anything can be poured.
Some comments on the issue by Australian webloggers here and here.
Our foreign policy is meant to advance Australia's national interest. Conservatives talk about advancing the national interest; with the 'the' implying that there is only one real account of the national interest. For the conservative politicians that appears to mean economic security, border security and helping to shape a more secure world.
So we give East Timor-Leste a good kick to protect our economic security?
What does economic security mean? Getting the resources to ensure our economic growth? Is that what is meant by maximising opportunities to maximize our jobs, increase our standard of living and protect our way of life?Is the national interest framed in terms of a narrowly conceived utilitarian calculus of national welfare?Is it what the bean counters mean?
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 9:21 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
April 25, 2004
Iraq: bodies everywhere
It just keeps on getting worse. More at Juan Cole.
More at Baghdad Burning. Christopher Allbritton interviews Mohammed Baqr al-Najafi, Grand Ayatollah Sistani's representative in Los Angeles> Christiopher asks in relation to Muqtada al Sadr resistance tot eh Americans:
" How many people are joining in the fighting?
..we see duing the last few days that unemployment has risen, up to 70 per cent of the people. And the economic situation makes the people leave everything, even their own religion. When the people see that the American promises aren't being kept, and the economic situation is bad, and the Mahdi Army is paying salaries and gifts, we are not suprised to see people join them.Does the Ayatollah trust the Americans? Does he believe they have good intentions regarding Iraq?
I don’t think so. America until now hasn’t shown this care and good intention.
What does he think America’s intentions are?
It’s not clear to us, as I mentioned previously. When the Americans asked many times to see the Ayatollah, the Sayyid refused for many reasons. One of these reasons is that the intentions and goals of America are not really clear. How can we set a meeting if we don’t have something to discuss? We wish that America, who has great capability for helping people, to help Iraq, as is its duty when America promised to help."
The US is falling down on the job.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 10:26 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
April 24, 2004
SA: Mitsubishi woes
The loss of local or regional news from the rationalisation of the corporate media means that little in Adelaide makes the national news. Despite the onward march of satellite dishes, broadband and cable that give us hundreds of digital channels, what happens in Adelaide will be increasingly seen as insignificant and irrelevant.
An exception is the Mitsubishi car plant in Adelaide which is hanging on a thread. The threat of closure is a national story that is written around the SA economy nosediving if the plant closed. Around 20,000 jobs directly and indirectly would be lost. It would be catastrophe. Its a gloom and doom story.
That is why the SA and federal Government have continued to subsidize the outdated Tonsley car plant in southern Adelaide. It was only in 2002 that they came up with a rescue package based on the development of 2 new models and 900 extra jobs that was designed to save the plant from closure. Part of the money in that rescue package was tied to the development of a global R&D Centre being established by Mitsubishi in Adelaide.
The Tonsley carplant and Lonsdale engine plant hang on a thread because Daimler-Chrysler has refused to pump more money into the ailing Mitsubishi Motor Corporation (MMC) faced with a steep drop in sales in the United States, ballooning losses and recalls.
Mitsubushi in Adelaide is full of spin about the wonderful job they are doing--leadership, training and flexible work practices a quality product etc etc) against all the odds. The reality is that their petrol-powered vehicle range (Magna, Lancer, Pajero) is tired and old. There has been significant underinvestment in new model development, both domestic and export sales have fallen, and the Magna has been heavily discounted. The plant has few robots, the product run is only 30,000, and little work has been done on new technologies such as petrol-electric hybrid cars.
So argued Peter Roberts in the Australian Financial Review (subscription required) last Thursday. It's a bleak account. The only good news is that a new model Magna is on the drawing board with a new export version.
Will they go ahead? Is it time to pull the plug? We need to ask these questions because the Mitsubishi Group, once the mightest of Japan's keiretsu in Japan Inc. is in serious economic trouble. The Mitsubishi Group is faced with a tremendous task of restructuring. So it is not just a question of having a good industry policy in Australia as it was in the early 1990s, since global economic forces now come into play.
DaimlerChrysler's strategy was to expand the automaker's reach in fast-growing Asian markets. Mitsubishi was to serve as a source of low- cost, small-car engineering for DaimlerChrysler's US unit, the Chrysler Group. .Another element of the strategy was to have Mitsubishi and South Korean auto maker Hyundai Motors collaborate, starting with a big global engine-making venture that was to provide engines for all three companies.
Update
This story indicates that Daimler-Chrysler has finally abandoned MMC - in which its owns a controlling 37 per cent stake - stating it would not inject any more capital to help the company's reconstruction. Mitsubishi Motors Corp had been seeking a capital injection of as $9.94 billion as part of a plan to recover
Are Daimler-Chrysler pulling the plug? According to this report the refusal to invest didn't mean the German-American auto maker was prepared to abandon its 37 per cent stake in Mitsubishi. In Tokyo, Mitsubishi also said the announcement doesn't mean DaimlerChrysler.
However, shares in all the Mitsubishi group companies tumbled yesterday. The Mitsubishi Group is now on its own. Federal and state governments are powerless to ensure the survival of Mitsubishi's Australian operations. The three other members of the Mitsubishi group declared their "full support" for the struggling Mitsubishi Motors Corp.
The response from Mitsubishi in Adelaide is upbeat--as it always is. The reality is that a hugh shadow now falls over the future of Mitsubishi's South Australian operations.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 2:54 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
April 23, 2004
Health: reform on the way?
A CoAG ministeral meeting about health care took place in Canberra today. Mark Metherell at the Sydney Morning Herald has some comments. He says that an alliance of 22 national health groups will challenge the ministers to investigate proposals for a single funding system and report back by July, only months before the federal election. Some have been advocating such ideas for many a long time.
The Australian Health Reform Alliance have proposed the creation of a Central Australian Health Commission to end blame-shifting between States and Canberra. The new body would hold Australia's health budgets in a single account and be responsible for running hospitals and all facets of care. The plan mirrors South Australia's Generational Health Review, which mooted a joint Federal/State Commission.
The public health system has become increasingly dysfunctional, health care services are rapidly deteriorating, whilst the Canberra state divide has become a major barrier to reform. What is needed are fresh ways to end state-federal fights over funding that is based on divided responsibilities
We also need to address the divisions between hospitals and community care. Current funding is based on hospital bed use when the trend was towards reducing hospital stays. And there is a need to reduce dependency on hospitals and maximise preventive care by doctors and community-based services.
The background to this move for reform is this. It gave rise to this, which was based on the papers of the 1993 Health Care Summit
It was in this context that I read Julia Gillard's speech to the National Press Club. After saying that Australians want a world-class health system with a universal Medicare at its centre Gillard says that:
"Australians know our health system needs reform, real reform. The Howard Government knows that real reform is required - but instead they go for band-aid solutions, because deep down they do not want and are philosophically opposed to Medicare. They want to dismantle it, and they will - if they are re-elected. Saving Medicare and implementing real health reform can only be done - and will only be done - by a Latham Labor Government."
Most of the speech is political in tone and intent as it is concerned to paint a partisan picture of how the Howard Government promises a lot but delivers nothing eg., calling Medicare Plus Medicare Minus.
So what does Gillard propose by way of real health reform other than saving Medicare?
She mentions the ALP plan to get doctors bulk billing again, their Australian Dental Care plan to get half a million Australians off dental waiting lists and into dentists' chairs, and their plan to bring Medicare Teams of doctors and nurses to health hotspots around Australia.
That looks more like conserving Medicare to me than real health reform.
There is a commitment to the principles of primary health care, a recognition that burden of disease in modern Australia lies in chronic conditions such as mental health, and the end of cost shifting through a pooling state and commonwealth money.
Good ideas. Can the ALP deliver? Will the hard hearted straightners in the ALP stand aside for the reformers?
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 2:13 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
April 22, 2004
coffee and papers
I have the warm autumn day to myself so I decided to have morning coffee at the lawyer's coffee place and glance through Murdoch's Weekly Standard to see how the war had been going of late. I'd been a bit too focused on Australia and it was time to adopt an international perspective and catch up with the good news about the progress being made in Iraq.
You know the progress story: improving the free market economy, getting the electricity flowing, the roads built, the hospitals and schools running, and ensuring peaceful cooperation among Shiite, Sunni, and Kurds leaders. We are all familar with the Weekly Standard line ---nay Murdoch line--- about how a large majority of Iraqis say their future is promising, reject political violence, and support an ongoing American presence. The Weekly message is: Iraq remains relatively peaceful. Important progress continues to be made.
Whilst waiting for my long black and plain biscuit I eagerly turned the pages of the Weekly Standard for my hope fix; only to find this. The tone has changed. It is now realized that there has been:
"...failures in planning and in execution, failures that have been evident for most of the last year. Serious errors have been made--and made, above all, by Donald Rumsfeld's Pentagon. The recent violence in Iraq has confirmed that the level of American military forces has been too low to accomplish the president's mission ever since the invasion phase of the war ended last April."
Goodness me. There are too few troops to ensure success in the democratic flowering within Iraq. More troops are needed. Surely the neo-con's Iraqi venture is not floundering? Does not Iraq represent a direct American occupation of a Muslim nation and so help to recruit new young Jihadists unknown to western intelligence agencies?
My coffee came and I breathed in the aroma. It mingled with the irony of democracy coming from the barrel of a gun. Then I recalled seeing this. Progress is being made, though the Iranians are a problem, as is the lack of security over Iraq’s borders. But Ahmed Chalabi is such a whizz.
So why more troops? What could possibly have gone wrong? And so quickly too. I turned the pages of the Weekly Standard. Aaah. This tells us why. The Arab TV network's coverage of the Coalition is influencing opinion in Iraq. It's the bad Arab media. The irresponsible and hostile Arab media (al Jazeera and al Arabiya) are stirring things up amongst Iraqi's.
Bill Leak
Clearly these troublesome media guys needed to sorted by the military, Rumsfeld and the Defence Department, if the imperial president is to be re-elected.
For those who prefer Abu Aardvark has some good things to say on the Washington view and the lousy journalism. And for those who want something other than the Washington feed to the chooks there is Paul McGeough's judgements about the way US strategy and tactics is making things worse in Iraq.
I've finished my coffee. Time to move along and do some more work on the empire and anxiety post. I still had to do something about my weekly hope fix though. It is no use reading John Howard's speeches for moral uplift these days.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 12:12 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack
when news isn't news
It is strange isn't it. News is generally what the politicians say on an issue. When they don't say anything it is not news. Energy policy is a good example of this. The journalists covering this story are waiting for the Howard Government to make an announcement on energy and greenhouse. Until then there is no news. So you wait for the peg or hook for the story.
An example of this is the current vaccum of news on energy policy, apart from the energy intensive industry saying no to green energy and they need even more corporate welfare to keep them internationally competitive. They always get their spin in the media as they seek to create policy in their sectors favour. The sping advocates a "new realism" in energy policy, where priority is given to clean coal above wind and solar. Wind and solar are "special interests" whilst the coal industry represents the "community." The government should not pander to "special interests" at the expense of the "community."
To understand what is going on here I've been digging around looking for some commentary on the way the Australian media works. In looking for the critical reflection on the Australian media, I came across this by Antony Loewenstein. He says that "Australia is currently experiencing a divergence in information dissemination, and a lesser reliance on the printed work to get informed." Then we have some choice quotes from Margo Kingston over at the innovative Webdiary:
"[We] are under constant pressure to write what the powerful want written, and not delve into what they don't...the spin-doctors have got us by the short and curlies at the moment. They understand how our news judgement works and how decisions are made and exactly what form news stories take. Mainly because they've all worked in the media and they're all bloody traitors. So they understand that if they actually don't answer or don't take calls or blow shit of you and hang up, there is actually no story, you're actually relying on them to get the impetus or the peg for the story."
It's called media management inside Parliament House. Don Watson in Recollections of a Bleeding Heart describes it this way:
"Hungry journalists need feeding. The bigger ones need bigger serves and more. Friendly ones need occassional rewards, unfriendly ones inducements to come over. The food is stories. Stories contain varyign degrees of factr and interpretation. Many require modification, known as spin. Some require both spin and lunch."
Margo then makes another point:
"I don't blame the journalists because they're dealing with massive structural problems....The main one is the sheer lack of space. The space problem has been growing in the last 10 years. It's all supplements and advertising ratios. Their main thing is how much profit are we making a page."
The journalist covering energy issues is stuck. They have little scope to question the rhetoric and spin of the intensive energy industry. That is not news.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 9:39 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
April 21, 2004
SA: power crisis
I missed this event, as I was winging my back to Adelaide at the time. The report in the Advertiser does not give us much to go on by way of comment and analysis of the ongoing fallout from the privatisation of electricity in SA and the creation of a national electricity market.
The story does confim what many know: many low income familes in South Australia are struggling to pay their electricity bills. Some background material can be found here.
The Advertiser story says very little about the contribution by Professor Quiggin estimated the total loss of income to SA from privatisation will be around $3 billion over 10 years."
Why so? Silence from The Advertiser.
What we do get are the comments of John Spoehr, executive director of Adelaide University's Centre for Labour Research. He said there was "no choice but to consider the introduction of radical measures" such as price caps, the abolition of GST on essential services and government involvement in generation and distribution to control spiralling power prices.
What sort of government intervention does John Spoehr have in mind other than regulation (price caps) and the removal of GST on essential services? Is he suggesting that the states buy back the power plants and transmission lines? The Advertiser is silent.
The Advertiser report goes on to indicate the Rann Labor government's view that the emerging competitive market will sort things out.
What suprised me was the silence about the need to shift to sustainable energy. Is this just bad reporting by The Advertiser? Or did the social democrat commentators not address the issue of sustainability, given the large amount of investment in wind energy in SA?
Maybe John Quiggin will inform us of what happened at the fourm on his blog when he has a spare moment.
The electricity crisis was addressed by Mark Latham as his caravan swept through the marginal seats of Adelaide. He said that there was a need to create more transmission links between states to stimulate competition and help cut power prices. His "bolder, stronger national approach to electricity transmission" involves the creation of a national grid company, which would oversee development of more interconnector links from the eastern states into SA. The Rann Labor Government goes along with this.
The implication is that SA gets more electricity from Victoria that is generated by the dirty polluting coal-fired power stations in the La Trobe Valley. Not a hint of concern for sustainable energy by federal and state ALP.
They call that bold and strong?
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 11:05 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
political debate
Tim Dunlop has responded to this earlier post by suggesting that it implies that "political debate isn't about good guys and bad guys!"
I responded to this in Tim's comments box by linking to these posts here and here and here. These posts on Carl Schmitt suggest that political debate is marked by a conflict between friends and enemies.
Tim misses the way the media mediates the political conflict and debate. Let me illustrate this by quoting a passage from a book I'm currently reading, Don Watson's Recollections of a Bleeding Heart. In it he says that:
"Modern politics tends towards an ever-tightening circle. It may reflect a primitive fear--all that media, all that public opinion, all that baying for blood. There are savages out there and ravening wolves. Only a brave politician or a desperate one would try to break out because he is conditioned to fear that, even if he is not cut down, he will never get back in. The aim is to be still alive at the end of the day..... and the end of the day is usually about 6.15 p.m. when the commercial channels are finished with the political news and everyone can relax."
I subscribe to that view of politics. It is all about refusing to concede ground in the daily battle and being seen not to have lost at the end of the news day.
It is not that politics is a battle between friend and foe because the media represents it that way. At its core politics is a battle between friend and foe.
Update
As an example, consider the account given by Watson when sitting in a plane next to Ian McLachlan at the end of a week of parliamentary sitting. Watson says:
"I wondered whether I should speak to Mr McLachlan, the more so because that night I was having dinner with a mutual friend, the grazier and writer Jim Morgan....I felt not animosity to McLachlan, yet I thought I might give up something valuable by attempting a friendly exchange and decided to stay behind the political battlements. I said nothing. Better to remain the anonymous adversary, keep the animus intact, better not to risk the ardour of conviction. So not a word did I speak, even as I thought how crass and hollow it was, and what churls politics makes of us."
Battlements, animus and conflict are the core of politics. It shapes the participants views, personalities, perspectives and strategies. Paul Keating understood this. Watson describes Keating working the floor in Parliament in the spring of 1992.
"There were times...when in the House it seemed as if he [Keating] felt that he must destroy his opponents totally, physically; that he thought his duty would not be done until they were all strewn on the floor, or slumped across the benches massacred like Penelope's suitors and impaled on their flags. No one would be spared."
That makes contact with Schmitt's conception of politics as a conflict between friend and foe. It is a long long way from Tim Dunlop's interpretation of "political debate isn't about good guys and bad guys!"Political conflict is about blood on the floor, death and wounded opponents.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 5:00 PM | Comments (8) | TrackBack
April 19, 2004
lobby groups
You see the defensive blocking tactics of the energy intensive industries to the need for them to undergo a green modernization in this story.
The industry says that "without investment, the Victorian economy will fail to grow at the rate the Government wants."
True. But this lobby group is not referring to investment in renewable energy as that brings jobs and investment in regional Australia. The industry is talking about a particular kind of investment----theirs.
Who are they? The article says they are:
"Victoria's heavy manufacturing industries: car and parts manufacturers, the aluminium sector, electricity generators, paper and plastics manufacturers, petroleum, chemicals and the cement industry. All are big power users and big emitters of carbon dioxide....[Victoria's] strength in manufacturing is based on cheap power from brown coal generators in the La Trobe Valley. The generators are also the worst polluters."
This manufacturing sector says that it creates 15 per cent of Victorian jobs and 60 per cent of exports. They are concerned that Victoria's power generation capacity will run short by 2010. And if brown coal is penalised for its greenhouse emissions in the form of costs imposed on industry for pollution, then there will be no incentive to invest in a new power station.
A coal-fired power station using dirty brown coal.
Sounds like blackmail to me. You can sense it in the text. The states cannot lead the way in green modernization now that the Howard Government is stuck. and won't move on green energy. The surface of the text says that green means less jobs, less investment and less growth. The blackmail is unspoken: We will go offshore if you go green. Its a threat.
That is the big end of town speaking to make sure the forthcoming Victorian budget is pro-business. Pressing the Brack's government to knuckle under and reign in a too active environmental minister.
That is one hand. The other hand is a plea for evermore protection and subsidy.
The intensive energy industries say no to Kyoto; no to a carbon trading system introduced by the states; no to an increase in the Mandatory Renewable Energy Target (MRET) by Canberra; no to green modernization and sustainability; no to a carbon constrained world.; no to taxes on their greenhouse emissions. They should not be held responsible for helping to create a warmer world.
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April 18, 2004
ATSIC: end of an era
This was something that was wanted by the one nation conservatives for a long time. They saw their opportunity and took it.
Matt Davidson
The one nation conservatives saw self-determination as a symbol of separatism underpinned by racism. They reject the black Canberra bureaucracy and say nothing is better. Some do replace nothing with something to achieve better outcomes. They advocate that public policy from Canberra should insist on education and work, and letting people jostle up with the market place. "Everybody's got to work if they want to eat" is their principle.
Minister Vanstone's bland press release can be found here. The review of ATSIC can be found here. A brief round up of the debate in the corporate media can be found here.
Aden Ridgeway asks some good questions of both the Howard Government and the ALP.
Noel Pearson has been making some interesting remarks over the last couple of years.
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April 17, 2004
blogging in a media-driven culture
After listening to this story on blogging on Radio National yesterday, I came across this media manifesto this morning. That was after I had flicked through the pro-war pages of the Weekend Australian. It was filled with the rhetoric of 'we fearless warriors gotta fight the terrorists to the death, and we have to take out all those who dare resist US power.'
Like Rebecca Blood I am 'disappointed by press coverage of current events. Too often, journalists unskeptically accept whatever "facts" are given to them by authorities without verifying that they are true.' My disappointment is more than just that. Despite the many examples of excellent journalism, many journalists often do not understand the issues they write about, and most fail to deconstruct the political rhetoric of the day.
The Alternet manifesto says that we live in a media-driven, commercial culture, where it's hard to escape the ever-increasing waves of advertising, infotainment and spin. A lot of this, it says, can be attributed to the privatization and deregulation of the public airwaves. It has lead to media moguls like Rupert Murdoch of News Corporation. News Corp has turned journalists into attack dogs for a partisan (right-wing) political cause, defines the liberal media as an enemy and sees televison as a form of entertainment that has no need for ethics.
Consequently, the media has become a battlefield for those who hold that a healthy, participatory democracy requires noncommercial access to the tools of communication. This requires battling the free marketers who want to end all restrictions on media ownership and to privatise public broadcasting. The other strategy is to create spaces for independent media (eg., online media) to produce good quality civic or public journalism and for the deliberation about public policy by citizens.
Despite some bloggers seeing themselves as proto-journalists, many of us are writing against the established journalists in the corporate media. As Jay Rosen, from the New York University Department of Journalism says we bloggers are writers in the public forum who are using a democratic media tool to participate in the formation of public opinion and shape the public conversation on public issues.
We are critical readers of the media and we do not see ourselves as working within the institutional conventional standards of professional journalism. We are more like democratic citizens deliberating on public issues, engaging in public debates and decoding the political rhetoric of the day.
Blogging is not conventional journalism, says Jay Rosen and Rebecca Blood. Yet there is a lot of mix and match going on between these different kinds of writing, as JD points out over at New Media Musings. And a lot of journalism has little to do with the conventional understanding of journalism.
What is of concern to bloggers as active citizens is the quality of political debate in Australia. As Christopher Seith, writing over at Margo Kingston's Webdiary, points out:
"Debates which appear ultimately to bog down in finger pointing do little to achieve a better world. There is a tendency to characterise political arguments as some kind of Manichean struggle, “good guy” versus “bad guy”. We seek to prove how disconnected our opponents are from us and from reality, rather than seeking to understand the points of connection. We have turned both our political and intellectual processes into adversarial forums where both sides arm themselves with their own self righteousness. We are more intent on “I told you so” than analysis. Little wonder that our “analysis” leaves us feeling more scared and alienated."
Changing that political culture in Australia is a big ask.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 11:34 AM | Comments (11) | TrackBack
April 16, 2004
Israel: a two state solution?
So it has come to this and this.
David Rowe, Peace Meal
Bush's support for Sharon will erode Arab support for an American agenda in the Middle East. You can kiss the Road Map goodbye. The neo-cons have achieved a major shift in US foreign policy, that had been in place since the 1960s.
The agreement does not bode well for a two state solution to the conflict.
Israel has actively fostered the spread of Israeli settlements throughout the West Bank in a pattern deliberately designed to prevent a viable two-state partition agreement. Sharon's strategy is to achieve a chain of Palestinian enclaves surrounded by Israeli settlements. It aims to compel the Palestinians to accept an autonomous entity mislabeled a "state", based on non-contiguous or barely contiguous enclaves in around 50 percent of the West Bank.
It is not a viable two-state solution. A state cannot be viable when it is made up of patches of territory with little political authority and control. Nor was the Sharon strategy ever intended to enable a viable Palestinian state.
The messsianic right-wing settlers and their supporters, claim the occupied territory as the Jewish people's legitimate and exclusive national heritage and completely reject the notion of Palestinian statehood in the territories. To achieve their Greater Israel, they have proposed a variety of ways to deal with the Palestinian inhabitants: "transfer" (in effect, ethnic cleansing), limited residency rights, Jordanian citizenship, and resettlement in Egyptian Sinai.
They, and their supporters such as Finance Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, see the growing Israeli Arab population (ie., Palestinian Arabs with Israeli citizenship who live within the State of Israel) as an undermining the two-state solution. This was seen as the way to preserve Israel as a democratic Jewish country. The Israeli Arabs who constitute the "real" demographic timebomb. The only realistic solution is the transfer or disenfranchisement of all Palestinians west of the Jordan River.
That right wing needs to be prevented from gaining control of the Israeli state.
A more fine grained analysis of the implications of Bush's letter can be found here. And over here Jonathan argues that Bush left himself lots of wriggle room, that Bush's support may help to isolate the settlers and Likud right wing, andthat more pressure would be placed on Sharon to withdraw from Gaza.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 1:10 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
April 15, 2004
vigorous competition
Sometimes I read the Australian Financial Review and shake my head in disbelief. Do they really believe that? My disbelief is usually not with the journalists. They do a good job. They are some of the best in the nation. It is the editorialists I am concerned for. The ones who see moonbeams in the noonday sun.
Today's editorial---'Latham must address reality', is an example (subscription required). I read it whilst having morning coffee at some newfangled coffee bar just around the corner from the apartment. It's where the lawyers hang out and so papers are provided as part of the service. Nobody reads the Financial Review. Tis The Australian that is fashionable. I guess the lawyer types haven't noticed the drop off in quality in the Murdoch stable these last six months. Or maybe they like that "stand up and salute 'em" type of journalism favoured by Murdoch.
The background to the Financial Review editorial is the misuse of market power and the recent Senate Economics References Committee report which unanimously concluded that the Trade Practices Act needs amending to protect small businesses from anti-competitive conduct.
The editorial is mostly about the competitive realities of the marketplace and whether the Trade Practices Act needs to be revised. The editorialist says that the Trade Practices Act is there to protect legitimate competition.
Fair enough. Then we have this paragraph:
"But no one has the right to succeed in business. This is the basis of our system of competitive capitalism. Large firms use their scale and financial power to lower costs and enhance service and product offerings in mature industries such as brewing, groceries, liquor and petrol trading, which is what most consumers want. Those that grow stale, decline and even fail. Small firms need to innovate, preferably in new markets, and to differentiate their products, service marketing or distribution to make inroads. Many--about 8.5 per cent of small foirms each year---fail or give up. Those that survive and prosper usually do so because they have offered something new to the marketplace.That is what Joseph Schumpter called creative destruction."
I read that and I thought about marketplace realities I knew from my brief sojourne in Canberra: Microsoft, Woolworths and Coles, then Telstra. These firms signify the lack of competition, the use of anti-trust legislation, and regulators disciplining them for anti-competitive behaviour. You could say the competitive market was not working as well the Econ. 101 textbooks said it should.
The question is: 'What constitutes acceptable competitive behaviour in the Australian marketplace?" The editorialist says that legitimate competition is unruly, vigorous, even brutal and calculated to damage rivals by winning customers from them. This brutalism is okay because it benefits consumers by delivering lower prices and more quality, range and convenience. Consumer welfare is the touchstone.
What I inferred from this editorial is that the AFR is tacitly defending the market dominance of the duopoly of Woolworths and Coles, by turning aside the need to change section 46 of the Trade Practices Act to give market regulators anti-trust powers. Should not these retailers be busted open?
We cannot have that sort of competition can we? We cannot be too radical in ensuring competition can we? We need to protect the big end of town from competition. There is no need to beef up s. 46 of the Trade Practices Act to provide powerful deterrents against the abuse of market power that harms small business, is there?
Does the Fin. Review actually see vigorous competition when it looks at Woolworths and Coles?
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 11:37 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
April 14, 2004
putrefaction in the intelligence body
This makes explicit what we had already suspected from the Tampa affair.
The Howard Government has systematically put foreign policy objectives ahead of intelligence; the Canberra defence bureaucracy (Defence Intelligence Organisation) has tailored its intelligence to be in accord with the policy of the national security state; and the Defence Intelligence Organisation has engaged in campaigns of retribution against those who spoke the truth.
In this particular case the assessments of Lieutenant-Colonel Lance Collins about the Indonesian military funding and supporting militia in East Timor never got through. The DIS blocked Collin's intelligence reports because it did not reflect the fundamental drivers behind the foreign policy relationship between Indonesia and Australia. This is tantamount to saying the military intelligence network had to consider political objectives of Australia's support for Indonesia's repressive occupation of East Timor. I presume the pro-Jakarta argument was that the independence of East Timor would lead to the break-up --- "Balkanisation" - of Indonesia and widespread instability. Australia supported state-supported terror.
For telling the truth Collin's name was listed on a federal police search warrant in August 2001 and the list of names of the warrant was leaked to the media, outing Colonel Collins as a spy. That effectively finished Collin's espionage career.
An internal report by naval barrister Captain Martin Toohey said the army's treatment of Colonel Collins had been disgraceful. Captain Toohey said that that a pro-Jakarta lobby existed in the Defence Intelligence Organisation. This distorted intelligence estimates to the extent those estimates are heavily driven by government policy. DIO reports what the Government wants to hear. Toohey's report has been buried.
Both the Toohey Report and Collin's letter to the PM need to fall off the back of a truck near the door of a media organization, which still has a commitment to the role of being democracy's watchdog.
It is the Bulletin (subscription required). We will now see government attempts to discredit the Collin's letter and the Toohey Report.
Update
The line of attack is the Government is clear. Colonel Collins received praise and the promise of a "courteous" response from the Prime Minister. The Government released advice from Colonel Richard Tracey QC slamming Captain Toohey's findings that backed Colonel Collins's grievances. The Toohey inquiry was "miscarried as it was conducted without proper jurisdictional authority and there was a lack of evidence to substantiate the findings".
The other line of defence is to block calls for a royal commission into the claims that foreign policy objectives systematically undermined the work of the intelligence services. What needs to be protected is the Government's political advantage in protecting national security. This cannot be allowed to be undermined by critical national scrutiny. Public scrutiny might undermine the support for US foreign policy, the US alliance and the military in Iraq.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 9:03 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
April 13, 2004
we will not cut 'n run
I often get my kicks from reading the favourite magazine of Republican conservatives over morning coffee: you know, the one that is read in The White House.
This habit is a little self-indulgence-I admit; but I deserve a little spoiling myself in the balmy autumn sun. That is what the adverts say anyhow. And one does tire of reading the commentary in the New York Times.
So I checked in this morning to see how the Republican hawks were taking the bad news from Iraq.
Moir
I sort of knew I'd find a drop the hammer line at The Weekly Standard. But I thought I'd check it out anyhow, just to see the find the phrases the Howard Government spinners would be boning up on. And I wasn't disappointed. I loved this paragraph from William Kristol on Falluja:
"In any case, the alternative to inaction on March 31 did not have to be a single tank. We could have sent many tanks, along with air support, to disperse the mob, kill those who didn't disperse, intimidate onlookers, and recover the bodies of the dead Americans. And we could immediately have put a price on the head of the killers and those who desecrated the bodies."
The pattern of passivity needs to be broken. More muscle is needed to make Iran accountable for sheltering al Qaeda leaders and pressuring Saudi Arabia. But back to exercising military muscle to solve the Falluja problem:
"We trust that U.S. troops will soon move to uproot what seems to have become a kind of terrorist sanctuary in Falluja, and to ensure that those who seek to drive us from Iraq are thwarted and indeed routed. If the atrocities in Falluja lead to a deepening of the U.S. commitment to victory in Iraq, and to a sharpening of the Bush administration's sword in the war on terror, then we will have properly honored the sacrifice of those who died March 31 in Falluja."
I drank my coffee and turned back to the New York Times. The neo-con mind set was summed up well by Paul Krugman as tough-guy posturing and wishful thinking.
So why did it all go bad so quick. Why, its due to the Arab media "ratcheting up sectarian strife in this war-torn country." They are provocateurs and need to be closed down. Now that policy would result in lots of blowback about democracy and freedom.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 8:42 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
April 12, 2004
historical footsteps
Conservatives are probably right to say that Iraq is not Vietnam and the Iraq/Vietnam analogy does not hold up. However, the neo-American rhetoric of liberating the country to bring freedom and democracy to Iraqi and then to the rest of the Middle East has taken a beaten these last few days. A democratic political arrangement that depends on counter-insurgency tactics and soldiers has little shelf life.
Allan Moir
The "democratization" talk of Rumsfeld and his neccon associates in Washington and Baghdad looks increasingly hollow. Democracy in Iraq is not about electing representatives to office on a one-person, one-vote basis. Democracy in Iraq for the US means the US--ie., the Pentagon---trying to set up a client regime based around Iraqi exiles, notably around Ahmad Chalabi. The Pentagon is intending to ease Chalabi into power in Iraq. He and his militia are not considered a threat to democracy. The Shiites are.
In the face of the evidence to the contrary, the Howard Government continues to maintain that those driving the opposition in Iraq are former Baathist leaders and secret police who are trying to defeat those who want a better way in Iraq. The Shiite insurgency is quietly ignored. Remember, it was the US military who decided to pick a fight with the radical Shiites. As an editorial in the Washington Post points out the quagmire the US is walking into is one of its own making.
The standard conservative line of the war hawks--that criticisms of the US signifies "either wishful thinking by an obsessively anti-American faction of politicians, journalists and academics, or an abysmal ignorance of history" is rather cliched.
Anti-American? The criticisms of the British military in Iraq are anti-American? Would not the sledgehammer-to-crack-a-nut approach fuel Iraqi resistance and insurgency because of its high civilian casuality rate?
The history is one of occupation of Iraq by a foreign power that in turn creates a movement of resistance by Iraqi nationalists. Though the Americans have a different strategic objective to the British (the core strategic objective is to ensure United States military superiority across the world), they are walking in the historical footsteps of the British imperialists.
The other standard hawk line is that those who criticise the US occupation of Iraq are trucking with isolationism. What is conveniently overlooked is the commitment to the internationalism of the UN, as opposed to the Bush doctrine of unilaterial action and pre-emptive strikes. Or the committment to an engagement with Asia.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 9:28 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
Internet: lousy service
This is yesterday's post, which I could not make because dialup internet is absolutely hopeless at Victor Harbor.
Take yesterday as an example.
It took me many attempts to access and keep a connection. I kept on being dropped out every 5 minutes. The speeds were slow (down to 2.57 KB/sec) I could not load up papers such as The Washington Post. I could not even access the weblog to post. I tried to download new anti-virus software yesterday--it was to take around 4.5 hours at the 2.57kP/sec internet speed. I had several attempts at downloading the software but the connection dropped out before the 4.5hrs was up. Hopeless, absolutely hopeless.
That was yesterday. I could not even post. It's a joke. Things just seem to get worse not better in terms of the infrastructure. Electricity blackouts are a regular occurrence; the water mains springs a leak about every weak, and the council spraying activities (for weed control on roadside curb) poisons the garden.
This not rural Australia. It is tourist town an hours drive from a capital city. It has a rapidly growing population from the seachange --the shift from the city to the coast. The properties around here are listed from .5 to 1.5 million.
As an aside, the Christian heritage is very strong down here. Alas it is conservative culture. Conservative in the sense of family values, being against abortion, stem cell research and lowering the age of consent for homosexuals, strong religious views, and "faith-based programs to address social welfare issues. God wears a dour face in this neck of the coastline, and he smiles favourably on conservative federal politicians in NSW, such as Tony Abbott, Ross Cameron, Helen Coonan and Bronwyn Bishop who have young Christian right-wingers on their staff.
Back to telecommunications. You can only access broadband in Victor Harbour if you are 3k from the town centre. As we are more than that, we are stuck with dialup. Since that does not work the internet is not really accessible.
So much for the heavily marketed idea of working from the seaside house a few days a week whilst working in town the other three. I've tried it. It is just not possible because the telecommunications infrastructure is not there to enable it.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 8:15 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
April 10, 2004
Murdock quits Australia
So the Murdock's exit Australia for domicle in America. Well gone are the days when the foundation stone of the media empire was a now defunct afternoon tabloid in Adelaide.
News Corp is a local company that became global, shed its original nationality and reinvent itself as American. athe strategy makes sense. Most of News Corp's income comes from the US--It is a $60 billion global heavyweight with a global pay TV network.
So what does that mean for media ownership on Australia? That Murdoch judges that there will be no lifting of the media ownership rules in the near future? That Murdock will offload the Australian arm (News Ltd|) of News Corp? Or make News Ltd a separate entity? That it will buy out the Fox partners?
That it will loose favoured status in Canberra? No more special deals for an American-owned News Corp? No more looking sideways as News Corp buys Telstra out of Foxtel? NO more helping News Corp acquire a fourth televison licence. No more watering down the anti-siphoning laws in favour of pay TV.
Will the Murdoch papers continue to savage a Latham-led ALP?
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 7:01 PM | Comments (5) | TrackBack
April 9, 2004
it's an upside down world '
The problem faced by the national electricity market is that the generation of electricity from brown coal in a highly polluting process.
This method of generation produces a lot of CO2 gases which contribute to global warming.
Paul Harris, The Loy Yang power station in Traralgon, La Trobe Valley, Victoria.
The Federal Government's response to the sustainability issue? It refused to sign the Kyoto Protocol and is defending the coal and aluminium industry at all costs. The Australian renewable energy sector has no government funds for research and development, whilst millions is now going into carbon storage technology--geosequestration--- that will bury CO2 gases underground.
It's a subsidy for an unsustainable industry. Melissa Fyfe says that:
"The technology cannot be attached to existing power stations, such as those in the Latrobe Valley. It is also expensive. The Paris-based International Energy Agency (IEA) has estimated putting CO2 underground could cost between $US45 and $US50 ($A57-$A63) a tonne. This may make coal-based electricity more expensive to produce than wind-powered electricity, one of the more pricey renewable options."
So much for the Howard Government's commitment to market efficiency and competitive markets. It is really about market protection and corporate subsidies
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 5:19 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
April 8, 2004
Iraq: it is civil war
Juan Cole puts it simply: "A two-front struggle against radical Sunnis and Shiites has arrived." What was potential a few day ago is now actual. the Wall Street Journal. says that it is crunch time in Iraq, says What is needed is a "reassertion of U.S. resolve". The US announces US that its resolve was "unshakable" and that it will "prevail."
How will the emerging civil war play out? Juan Cole says:
"It seems inevitable to me that the US military will pursue a war to the death with the Army of the Mahdi, the Sadrist movement, and Muqtada al-Sadr himself. They will of course win this struggle on the surface and in the short term, because of their massive firepower. But the Sadrists will simply go underground and mount a longterm guerrilla insurgency similar to that in the Sunni areas."
As the Americans move to crush the forces of Muqtada al-Sadr the Shiite insurgency will have tacit popular support.
As an editorial in The Ashai Shimbum says:
"The demonstrators who turned on members of the occupation forces were ordinary citizens, not members of al-Qaida nor holdovers of the Saddam Hussein regime.....to lump repeated attacks on the occupation forces and new Iraqi police stations as acts committed by particular groups of terrorists seems to defy logic. Rather, these attacks should be understood in the context of anti-American and anti-occupation sentiment on the part of a wider public. "
Hence the analogy with Vietnam suggested by Mark Latham in his speech to the Lowy Institute.
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April 7, 2004
Iraq: civil war brewing?
If there is a civil war emerging in Iraq then it represents a turning point.
One conception of a potential 'civil war' is that it would probably result from the antagonisms between the Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds. That was the view of public opinion last year. It suggested a federal kind of democracy to contain the different ethnic voices since Iraq is a cobbled together nation state.
That was last year. It looks different now. An emerging civil war looks as if it tmay result from being provoked by the U.S. occupation authority, and waged by its forces against both Sunni's and the growing number of Shiites who support Muqtada al-Sadr. A civil war that has the potential to become a war of national resistance to a foreign occupying power. That means a black hole.
In that context this article by William Safire from the New York Times makes for sobering reading. His line is crack down harder.
"But now that the Saddam restorationists and Islamic fundamentalists have made their terrorist move on both fronts, we can counterattack decisively."In war, resolution." Having announced we would pacify rebellious Baathists in Falluja, we must pacify Falluja. Having designated the Shiite Sadr an outlaw, we must answer his bloody-minded challenge with whatever military force is required and with fewer casualties in the long run.
But we must impress on the minds of millions of Shiites that there is no free ride to freedom."
There is more:
"We should couple this with a temporary increase in troop strength, if necessary: we will pull alongside, not pull out or pull alone. We should take up the Turks on their offer of 10,000 troops to fight on our side against two-front terror. The Kurds, who have patched things up with Ankara and know which side of the two-front war they and we are on, would withdraw their ill-considered earlier objection."
That reads like a receipe for increased conflict to me. Safire is advising the US to bring it on. Military muscle will solve a political problem.
That may well draw the Americans deeper into the abyss by triggering an enormous backlash. This is argued by Christopher Layne:
"...the coercive use of US military power is bound to trigger an enormous backlash. US military power won't stop armed Iraqi opposition to the occupation – it will fuel it. Here, the US finds itself facing the classic dilemma of colonial powers when indigenous populations challenge outside rule. Repression does not stop anti-colonial nationalism, it just creates an upward spiral of violence. And colonial powers always reach a point where the costs of staying exceed the risks of withdrawing."
Layne goes to say that:
"... Iraq is not going to be stabilised any time soon, least of all if the US remains as a colonial power. Iraq is not going to become a Western-style democracy (and, if by some miracle it did, it would be an anti-American, anti-Israeli democracy). "
Layne says that the time has come for the US to cut its losses and disengage from Iraq as quickly as it can because colonial powers don't win wars of national resistance.
Staying on will not make things better. The resistance to the US-led occupation will grow and Iraq will become a magnet for Islamic fighters who want to take on the US.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 5:07 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
April 6, 2004
Ironbar cracks again
He is at it again. Having a go at placing barriers to hard won public policy shift to a sustainable Australia that would boost the river flow of the River Murray by just 3%.
Last time it was Canberra, national parks and bushfires. This time it is the Murray-Darling-Basin and water.
He, of course, is Wilson 'Ironbar' Tuckey. The deposed minister has led a bankbench revolt against the Howard Government's policies to restore health to the ailing River Murray.
The form the revolt has taken is the publication of the interim Federal Parliamentary committee report, Inquiry into Future Water Supplies for Australia’s Industries and Communities, being undertaken by the House of Representatives Standing Committee of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry. Since the committee is dominated by Coalition MPs' it's report represents a revolt within government ranks.
The report comes out against CoAG's decision to restore 500 gigalitres of water to the Murray by reducing the amount available for irrigators and to use the water to help restore six iconic Murray sites. It says that the money is better spent on conducting an audit of water resources and uses within the river system.
The justification? The ecological science upon which the CoAG decision was based has knowledge gaps. The committee appears to have relied on work such as this and this. This work lies behind the politics of saying that we should delay putting water back into the river to nurse it back to health because we do not know enough. Their argument is that the gaps mean inaction.
We do know that the redgums in the Chowilla floodplain in SA are dying:
Andrew Tatnell, dying River red gums in the ‘Garden of Eden’, Chowilla
They are dying from the twin effects of lack of flooding and rising groundwater salinity. They desperately need a drink.
We have met some of these anti-green politicians before and engaged with some of their arguments. Their rearguard action is being argued in SA by Patrick Secker in South Australia, whose electorate of Barker incorporates the lower Murray. He is going around the state saying that we haven't got enough evidence to make decisions about environmental flows and that we haven't really thought about what we are trying to achieve. He says nothing about the need to ensure the sustainable management of the resource base.
That photo of dying river gums in the Chowilla floodplain would indicate otherwise. As does the hypersaline conditions in the southern Coorong, which have resulted from a lack of river flow.
John Baker
In both cases it is the biological communities and the riverine habitat that suffer from lack of water. So more water is needed.
Update
The scientists who point this out as part of their research are accused of advocating the environmental cause by National Party Ministers. They are not dispassionate obervers. Do these these Minsiters have good reasons for saying that a positivist science is better than an ethically-informed and politically engaged science?
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 4:22 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
April 5, 2004
Iraq: cut and run
They do have lots of problems in Iraq.
Bruce Petty
The Shiites are calling for Australia's withdrawal from Iraq. A reasonable suggestion since Iraqi nationalists hold that Iraq is an Arab country under American occupation and Iraqis have the right to fight back. Meanwhile the Australian chickenhawks strut around the country saying that Australia will never cut and run. Those who suggest withdrawal are appeasers.
The protests have turned bloody in Iraq. There has been a dramatic escalation of fighting in Iraq between US soldiers and the supporters of local Shiite cleric, Moqtada al-Sadr. It is difficult to get a clear idea of what happened.
Is it armed troops firing on demonstrators? Or is it armed conflict? Have the Shiites decided to fight the US occupation? It appears to be the latter as the radical Shiites have attacked coalition bunkers and taken control of Iraqi police stations, checkpoints and other government buildings. It was the Iraqi police and civil defence services that cut and run.
Juan Cole says that it would appear that the Coalition decided to pick a fight with Muqtada al-Sadr. The CPA closed down his newspaper al-Hawza, on the grounds that it was publishing material that incited violence against Coalition troops. It also issued arrest warrants. That's a deliberate provocation.
Juan Cole says that this represents a new level of resistance to the US occupation. Previously, the US military was directed at the Sunni triangle; currently a major operation in Fallujah is underway as the US moves to round up those behind last week's bloody attacks there. Now the Iraqi Shiites, who were initially grateful for the removal of Saddam Hussein, have turned against the United States. The US is now fighting dual Sunni Arab and Shiite insurgencies simultaneously. That means the US is potentially facing a two-front war against the Sunni radicals in the center-north and Shiite militias in the South.
Why is the US is doing this when it says it is turning over sovereignty to an Iraqi government on June 30? In picking a fight, are they not increasing the possibility of turning Iraq into an endless cycle of atrocity and retaliation?
Abu Aardvark suggests that the US strategy is that "Sadr's forces represented a time bomb that would eventually have gone off anyway, so the US might as well confront him militarily now rather than closer to the handoff of power."
On the other hand, the Islamist forces in Iraq could see the June 30th handover as the US doing a cut and run in the face of insurgency, violence and chaos. In the Middle East that would be interpreted as undercutting the triumphalist mentality embodied in the Bush administration's rehabilitation of empire.
Update
In this report Paul McGeough says that:
"The Shiite revolt is the single worst development to face the US occupiers. Until now they have presumed that the threat came from a persistent but minority Sunni and foreign-assisted insurgency, but just over a year since the fall of Saddam Hussein they are forced to contemplate having to put down the 60-plus per cent Shiite majority on which they had reckoned for support....A spokesman for the spiritual leader of the Shiites, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, called for calm. But significantly, he also told reporters that the demonstrators' cause was "legitimate" and he spoke out against "acts waged by the coalition forces."
It looks as if the US has lost broad community support within Iraq.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 5:13 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
April 4, 2004
Palestine: Darkening horizons?
This report is a good account of the way the western media currently represents the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. It highlights the difficulties of reporting from the Palestinian side, and it says that most of the critical insights rely on the critical voices in the Israeli media.
We need to distinquish critical insights or criticism from anti-Semitism. As Dershowitz says in his book, The Case for Israel, not all criticism of Israel is anti-Semitic. As Dershowitz points out there "is a difference between mere criticism of Israel and signaling it out for unique sanctions such as divestitture or boycott." To say otherwise, he says, is to engage in the big lie.
Given the difference between criticisms of the Israeli state and a singling out the Jewish people based on ancient sterotypes and bigotry, we can outline the above report. It says that there seems to be:
..."three major paradigms that appear in the opinion pages or programmes of the western media with regard to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict:
a) Israelis have the right to security and Palestinian violence against Israel is illegitimate;
b) the conflict represents a vicious circle of violence that has to be broken down through negotiations and mediation;
c) the conflict is essentially one between an unlawful occupation and an occupied, unprotected people. "
The reports says that "most western opinion...can be placed, with fluctuations, within the continuum between a and b, whereas opinions on the continuum between b and c are less available, especially in the US."
Public opinion is located on the bc continuum. At the moment it does not hold much chance of success for b. Hence the polarization of a & c, and the erosion of the common ground of the two state solution. Yet a Palestinian state does need to be established to preserve a Jewish majority in Israel.
The media prism makes this report by Helena Cobban important. After a visit to the occupied territories she says the outlook for Palestinian-Israeli peacemaking over the next twelve months is extremely grim, and that this does not bode well for Palestinian independence.
Helena comments on Ariel Sharon's withdrawal strategy as follows:
"I think his main goals have been to destroy all of the PA's capabilities; and beyond that, to stamp out both any possibility of the emergence of governance institutions for the Palestinians of the West Bank and Gaza that are independent in any way from the will of Israel, and any hope the Palestinians might have that they could ever have such institutions. Obviously what he does not want to do is to stamp out the PA, only to have it replaced by a far better organized, far better motivated Islamist leadership. I think he probably now feels that he has Yasser Arafat where he wants him, holed up and becoming increasingly isolated and delusional inside the muqata. So he may well feel it is time to move on to battling the Islamists-and the place to do that is in Gaza."
This is not a strategy designed to bring about a two state solution or Palestinian self-governance. Why?
Helena says that Sharon's strategy keeps open the possibility that once the Gaza settlers have been removed to "safety" elsewhere, then Sharon might well hope to be able to treat Gaza in 2004-2005 like Beirut in 1982.
Maybe Helena has got this wrong? Maybe Ariel Sharon is genuine about pulling the Jewish settlements out and not treating the West Bank and Gaza as he did Beirut. We can only watch and see and listen to critical Israeli voices.
And maybe the Palestinans will be able to rebuild their civil institutions that would support the re-emergence of citizen-based, mass nonviolent actions and help build a genuine coalition between the secular and Islamic wings of the national movement? It is a tough ask.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 6:38 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack
April 3, 2004
Parliament & the media
The fray over the Leader of the ALP opposition saying that he would withdraw troops from Iraq before Xmas on a radio interview caused a political storm in the Canberra hothouse. By the weekend the storm had pretty much blown itself out.
The after image from the storm is this:
Nicholson
Of course, that is how the conflict looks from the outside looking through the media prism; the broken window onto a despised breed of men behaving badly. Inside the institution the conflict is experienced quite differently. What the public see as real from the outside when it is but the theatre of political combat. And Don Watson adds, thanks to the short carefully edited grabs of the media, the public just see the theatre when it is real combat.
The media must now be rubbing their hands with glee. When the oomph is back in politics, it means increased ratings for the networks. They have something to sell in an election year. The media prism is increasingly turned onto politics. Profits will flow from reshaping the political combat as spectacle and tapping into, and feeding the public's loathing of politicians behaving badly.
Hence the media's focus on Question Time in the House of Representatives and ignoring the good second reading speeches in the Senate. The consequence of the media's prism is the evacuation of meaning of the combat and less and less understanding of the political traditions that inform and give the substance tot he combat. All the media shows us is the drama and the spectacle.
The media now determines the form, and increasingly, the content of the political debate.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 9:31 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack
Climate Change
This is an interesting article on climate change, the US Republicans and John McCain as an unlikely champion of global warming legislation to curb climate-change.
It asks a good question: How did the party of Theodore Roosevelt become so anti-environmental? It says that the rejection of global warming comes from a kind of worship of the market–---a deep belief that there's never any good to come from interfering with the free operation of laissez-faire economics--- and the notion that economic prosperity is tied to the consumption of fossil fuels that they simply refuse to let go of it. So they reject any argument that postulates that fossil fuels have downsides and that there are good reasons to accelerate the transition to renewable forms of energy. Republican environmentalism---thoise who actually accept that global warming is a problem needing to be addressed---is almost a contradiction. The Bush administration's energy policy is written by the oil, gas, and coal industries.
You have a similar story in Australia. The coal industry is opposed to any environmental regulation makes industry competiveness central and maginalizes any research outside cleaning up coal.
Australia's high energy emissions are a legacy of two main factors: the high dependence on cheap domestic sources of fossil fuel, especially coal, and recent energy market reforms which have seen electricity generation based on the highest carbon-content fuels become the most price-competitive in the new deregulated market.
The electricity market reforms are producing negative greenhouse outcomes. As the Senate Report into Australia's greenhouse future observes. the micro economic reform of the electricity market does not directly create an environment where emissions are minimised. It actually creates an environment where the lowest cost of generation is developed. The competitive wholesale electricity market drives purchasers of electricity, who in the first place are the retailers of the electricity, to pursue the cheapest available electricity. The cheapest available electricity by and large is coal-fired, and that is why in the recent past in Australia there has been an increase in the use of coal and, therefore, of course, an increase in greenhouse emissions.
Clearly, Australia has an energy problem. The competitive market is not producing sustainable outcomes. Another case of market failure?
Where is Treasury?
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 12:03 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
April 1, 2004
Abuse of government power
I've run out of time to do anything major on the current misuse of political power. Let me link to a number of articles about the misuse of political power.
This one by Paul Krugman in the New York Times where he says that "George Bush's America has become a byword for deception and abuse of power."
And this statement by Senator Daschle in the US Congress on the Republican tactics of character assassination of its critics.
This has a resonance in Australia within the current shrills and yells in Federal Parliament about national security, credibility over the war in Iraq, the use of intelligence services and bringing the troops home. Of course, it was not a substantive debate. Private briefings to an Opposition Leader by public servants are made public by the Government in an attempt to destroy the credibility of the Opposition Labor Leader.
The parliamentary hostilities may ended in a draw with the issue becoming little more than a 'who said what to whom'; but the conflict has not stopped the erosion of trust between Howard and the electorate. The erosion of trust is happening because though Howard is strong on national security and is seen to deliver security, the father of the nation is seen to be dissembling to keep us safe. He has dirty hands.
The abuse of government power refers to the politicization of the public service and the history of government dissembling from Tampa to Iraq. The erosion of trust is difficult to stop as it is a slippery slope.
So it is not just a case of Howard needing to land blows on Latham. The far more difficult task is to re-establish trust between the government and the electorate in the absence of a Tampa or terrorist bombing to exploit fear and anger.
Fear elicits a legal response by the national security state. So we have a wade of new terrorism laws of surveillance, interception and detention that quietly go about limiting privacy, circumventing the independence of the courts and undermining the separation of powers.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 11:23 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack