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August 31, 2006
Steyn on the decline of the West
The journalist, Mark Steyn--- the current pin up boy of Australian conservatives---is a bit of a puzzle isn't he. This is what he says about why the West is in decline at the CIS Big Ideas Forum, which dealt with the challenges confronting the West:
...we’re losing the consensus within our populations on what it means to be a citizen of a pluralist society. Multiculturalism, I believe, was conceived by Western elites not to celebrate all cultures, but to deny their own and in that sense it’s the real suicide bomb. Islam and terrorism would not be a threat to the Western world if the Western world weren’t so enervated that it gives the impression that it’s basically just dying to keel over and to surrender to somebody.
The puzzle is this. Steyn's key thesis in the lecture at the IPA was demography is destiny. How do we connect the two---a lefty liberal culture that loathes the West and demography as destiny? If the cause of the rot and decay is the agenda of contemporary liberalism, then how does demographics fit in? A self-loathing progressive liberal culture causes the decline in birth rates in the West?
Secondly, Steyn says he is a conservative as opposed to a liberal. So what has happened to the traditional conservative perspective on the destructive consequences of capitalism; a mode of production that is melts all that is solid into air and so undermines the conservative values of stability, order and authority? Conveniently forgotten?
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 8:22 PM | Comments (5) | TrackBack
Solar cities
The recent 4 Corners program on global warming indicated that climate change is much more serious than most people think and that the adverse consequences of global warming are coming upon us much faster than we thought.
The program highlighted that the biggest single source of global greenhouse gas emissions is the burning of coal to produce electricity, Australia is the world’s biggest coal exporter, the Howard Government's resistance to using the power of the market to provide a "carbon price signal", and its falth clean coal technologies
What wasn't explored in the program was the capacity of solar energy to increase the Australia's energy efficiency, the first hesitant steps of which are being taken in the Solar Cities project. This would change electricity market arrangements so as to reward households or businesses that choose solar power, and reward consumers for better electricity efficiency and management. Solar power can address peak demand for electricity on hot days.
Under the Solar Cities project Sunny Adelaide has been chosen for a pilot project to encourage the installation of solar panels and electricity smart meters because of the massive increase in airconditioners which place the city's electricity supply in crisis over the summer. Eventually the project will be rolled across Adelaide's northern suburbs.
The term "solar (and sustainable) cities" is a broad term that can encapusulate many different initiatives, activities, and technologies. Generally, it implies renewable energy, energy efficiency, sustainable transport options, new urban planning methods or goals, architectural innovation, and environmental health.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 9:08 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
August 30, 2006
'keeping the bastards honest'
Don Chipp's phrase 'Keeping the bastards honest' is a good political slogan and program isn't it. It has become a key part of political culture and shapes how we think about Canberra. I guess that a lot of the commentary around Don Chipp's death yesterday will be about whether the Australian Democrats, the political party he founded in 1977, can arrest their own slide into political oblivion as a centrist force in federal politics.
I presume the consensus judgement will be that Chipp failed in his attempt to refashion the political landscape, given the slow fading of the Australian Democrats after they lost the balance of power and so their ability to negotiate better outcomes by taking the rough edges off either party's policies, as well as force inquiries and so put their own issues on the agenda. The Canberra press gallery has written off the party as a viable, centrist political force.
What should also be remembered in our reflections on the history of our political culture is that Chipp left the Liberal Party in the 1970s because it was becoming increasingly illiberal in its turn away from the progressive or social liberal tradition. The social liberals who are left are marginalised and under threat from the conservatives. If there is any committment to liberalism, then it is to a truncated market liberalism counterbalanced by a strong and heavy handed state.
Sure there is a gap on the political spectrum for a party appealing to the educated liberal-progressive middle class and, at this stage, it looks as if the Greens may fill it. At the moment they position themselves to the left of the ALP and not self-consciously sitting in the middle between the two major parties endeavouring to "keep the bastards honest".
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 2:05 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack
control orders in Australia
Control orders are one of the most controversial aspects of the new anti-terror laws passed last year. These laws were supported by the Federal Opposition and state premiers because of the threat of global terrorism. A control order has been applied to Jack Thomas, and this restricts Thomas' movements and contacts to protect the community from terrorism. Control orders are, in a sense, preventative justice.
Peter Faris QC, the former head of the National Crime Authority, says that control orders:
...are designed to protect the community in circumstances where criminal custody is not justified. It is a balance between the perceived need for the safety of the community and restrictions on an individual. Formerly, dangerous individuals could only be dealt with by criminal prosecution, conviction and jailing — that is, after they had committed the predicted offence.
Control orders relate to the fear of future criminal conduct, not punishment for past conduct. It is about future conduct in the sense of identify people who are thought to be dangerous. If so then the community has the right to restrict our civil liberties. Is Thomas a dangerous individual? Don't we judge future criminal conduct by past actions?
The control order against Thomas was initiated, even though the Court of Appeal quashed convictions against Thomas for receiving funds from al-Qaeda and travelling on a false passport. In the original court verdict, the jury relied on a confession that was to be ruled inadmissible on appeal. Even so, the jury acquitted Thomas of charges of training for and planning terrorism offences. Accordingly, Thomas cannot be deemed a terrorist, as Faris states, If this case is about national security and trying to protect the Australian public, then can Thomas be deemed a risk to the community? Has his liberty been restricted with just cause? Is a terrorist suspect? Is he risk to this country? That is for the courts to decide, is it not?
Faris acknowledges that control orders are an infringement of the rights of an individual which have been imposed outside the criminal process. As he rightly observes the issue to be debated is this: is it appropriate to infringe a person’s liberty when they have not committed a criminal offence but where it can be established that they are a risk to the community.
George Williams and Edwina Macdonald, writing in The Age, concur with Faris that this is the issue to be debated. They say:
Control orders....raise questions about how far we should go in the war on terror. They impose sanctions not for what someone has done or due to what they are preparing to do, but because of what they might do in the future. They remove the presumption of innocence and limit a person's freedom even where there is not enough evidence to convict them under one of our many new terrorism offences. A control order can regulate almost every aspect of a person's life, from where they work or live to whom they can talk to. A person can also be detained under house arrest. The order can prevent someone leading a normal life without the evidence against them being properly tested.
Where then are the safeguards to protect our liberty? Faris evades this. He says that whether you support such controls is not a matter of right or wrong or of legality or illegality. It is simply a matter of your own moral preference. I support control orders and detention. The Left opposes them for terrorists.Yet Australia does not have any human rights legislation that sets out the basic standards of liberty needed for a democracy and ensure that tough terror laws do not undermine the rule of law or the values we are seeking to protect.
Therein lies the problem. This leads to a second question. Is the law constitutional? That is for the High Court to decide.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 8:43 AM | Comments (6) | TrackBack
August 29, 2006
comment on Iraq
The passage below is a paragraph from an excerpt of the Epilogue to Perilous Power: The Middle East and U.S. Foreign Policy, by Noam Chomsky & Gilbert Achcar.The excerpt was posted on Juan Cole's Informed Comment Gilbert Achcar says:
Now, if U.S. forces in Iraq are to be compared to a firefighting force, the truth of the matter is that they are led by highly dangerous arsonists! Ever since the occupation started, the situation in Iraq has steadily and relentlessly deteriorated: This is the undeniable truth, which only blatant liars like those in Washington can deny, insisting that the situation is improving in the face of glaring evidence to the contrary. Iraq is caught in a vicious circle: The occupation fuels the insurgency, which stirs up the sectarian tension that Washington's proconsul strives to fan by political means, which in turn is used to justify the continuing occupation.
Achcar says that the only way this burning circle of sectarian violence is the immediate total and unconditional withdrawal of U.S. troops.
I cannot see this withdrawal happening, given that the imperial divide and rule tactics of the US are designed to foster the neocon's geopolitical strategy of achieving hegemony in the Middle East. So a low grade civil war and the disintegration of the Iraqi state will continue. The danger is that Iranian influence will increase as American influence wanes. Though we have the beating of the neo-con war drums against Iran the U.S. will have to accept the reality of Iran's geopolitical power even if Lebanon still remains under Israeli blockade by air and sea and Gaza remains under an intensified Israeli lockdown.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 9:43 AM | Comments (4) | TrackBack
August 28, 2006
Telstra: a mess
The Telstra privatisation is a mess despite all the talking up of its prospects around the T3 sale this morning:---- it is one of the world's top-rated telecoms; with its transformation it is going to be a great and growing world class company in two years time; and that we should trust Sol Trujillo to deliver higher revenue and greater profits etc etc. The Government is still left representing voters, being a regulator of the industry which needs increasing competition and finally, being an owner. Telstra remains a political problem. It's a quagmire.
Telstra is damaged goods. It is borrowing to maintain dividends at 28 cents a share and its share price is going to remain under pressure as it is faced with declining revenue, erosion of its margins and increased competition. So the share price still looks expensive, especially when the Future Fund starts selling its massive holding of $14.5 billion. Hence the sweetners to buy its stock to counter the negative outlook of the market based on the judgement that Telstra does not have sufficient high-growth business to offset declining revenues from its core copper telephone line business.
Nicholson
Australia's communications are not competitive and it doesn't look like becoming so in terms of competition in infrastructure investment. We need more firms and that requires restructuring Telstra. That is not going to happen. Telsta will not be broken up with privatisation. So we are going to have a highly regulated industry for some time.
I 'm suprised by the ALP's response. It remains fixated on fighting privatisation tooth and nail, even though it's a lost battle. Why not concentrate on the future with a privatised Telstra, given its view that Australia will become a global communications backwater? At the moment they are backing Telstra in its regulatory fight with the Government. Isn't the ALP saying that the Howard Government has failed to address the national priority for investment in new broadband sevices? How should this be done, given that it is highgly unlikely that a future Labour government will buy back Telstra from shareholders
The current political and regulatory mess does result from the Howard Government's refusal to separate the retail and infrastructure arms of Telstra before selling the first tranche of the business in 2001. The ALP also backed away from that kind of separation. What we have now is operational separation: the company will be split into three operational divisions to control is basic network, sell wholesale service to competitors and sell retail services to customers. Each must keep offices separate from others and and employees from one division must not be able to to wander into the office of another. It's a joke.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 7:19 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack
August 27, 2006
the changing face of politics
Politics is changing isn't it. Many accounts of this change argue that ideology is no longer relevant and that the old distinctions of left and right have become fuzzy, if not actually become meaningless. These accounts are limited given the partisan nature of the Right these days, as expressed in the various culture and history wars, the war on terror, tough border security and social conservatism.
John Cain, a former Premier of Victoria, describes the changes in politics differently. He says:
The electorate now is about me, me, I and my. The electorate is much more ego-centric, focused on itself, reflecting the market economy and everything is seen in terms of what is in it for me." [voters think like this:] "I want to pay less tax, I don't want to be burdened with having to think about anything, I just want to go out there and enjoy myself. It is a consumer-driven, market-oriented society at a level we have never seen before. There is no ideology anywhere.They (voters) wouldn't know how to spell it.
Cain is right to highlight the deep effects of the market on politics which we have been witnessing for two decades.
However, Cain downplays the shift to conservatism in the electorate and both the major political parties that is increasingly expressed in the the mixing of religion and politics. The battleground between left and right is less about the economics and is more about culture and values. The culture of the ALP, for instance, is deeply socially conservative, despite its ongoing social democratic commitment to the welfare state (public education and health).
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 9:20 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
August 26, 2006
water woes in Queensland
In Queensland, though 'sustainable development' is used as a guiding principle for the formulation of public policy, development and growth remain the real priorities for the government. This is especially the case for the National Party, which is on a slow fade to its regional base in Queensland, where it is under threat from One Natioon and Family First as the mixing of religion and politics gathers pace. The National's ethos of development and growth is most clearly seen around water:
The Nationals want dams not alternatives such as recycling. The Nationals are strongly opposed to diverting water away from productive agriculture for environmental flows especially in the Murray-Darling Basin. The future of irrigation-based communities requires special protection is the Nationals position. What is not happening is the state government buying buying back water allocations and entitlements from willing sellers to increase environment flows.
According to the Queensland election focus group that was conducted by Graham Young at National Forum:
There are two gorillas standing in the room that no-one is talking about. One is the Federal Government's IR laws. A number of our participants mentioned them, and one in particular seemed particularly obsessed. The other is population growth. Many, if not all, of our participants saw increase in the size of our population as being the root cause of the health and water problems that we face.
That lets the Beattie Government of the hook doesn't it. The state government isn't responsible for the infrastructure problems----its the interstate migration, that is the problem. That reflects the spin from Team Beattie. And Beattie has taken personal charge of things to ensure that things get done.
The sooner water trading is properly introduced in Queensland the better.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 12:17 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
August 25, 2006
neoliberalism and the media
Georgina Born haas an article in the New Matilda policy section. It is entitled Birt's medicine has made the BBC ill and though it is about Britain a paragraph describes the changes in the media landscape. She says:
When we come to the late eighties, we encounter issues such as deregulation and the growth of new technologies. We can see from the end of the eighties on and gathering pace through the nineties a tremendously important change, which is that the balance of the broadcasting ecology in Britain shifted in this period quite rapidly from being primarily public service oriented with a highly regulated commercial public service broadcasting sector, to being primarily commercially oriented, with deregulation, a much “lighter touch” regulation and frantic competition among the commercial broadcasters and Channel 4 for profitable demographics (which means young men).
That shift to a neo-liberal mode of governance also applies to Australia and helps to explain the continual attacks (by the Murdoch Press) on the ABC as a public broadcaster in a predominantly market economy.
You can see the attack in a recent Quadrant editorial entitled The New Media and the (Same) Old Media. It says:
The ABC is of course the source of much of the criticism of current and any possible changes in media policy, along with other interests, such as those of actors and all others involved in the film and television industries professionally. These, together with the educated elites of the country, firmly believe that they have the right to employment in their industries, and to have the product provided at public expense or as a kind of tax on the commercial stations (as with prescribed local content rules). The supposed right to public entertainment by free-to-air television is deeply ingrained across the community, which is used to enjoying the fruits of advertising—tolerating which is the price we have to pay, more or less unwillingly (some people enjoy advertising in itself, as well as appreciating the opportunities for comfort breaks).
I'm not suggesting that the ABC does not have problems. It does, and they are similar as to those faced by the BBC. Born says:
The first is a cultural problem – a question about whether the BBC is committed to a kind of elitist model of cultural development or elevation. Is it overly homogenous?...And finally there is the economic problem: that is, how to justify public funding, the universal nature of the license fee given the inevitable imperfections of universality in the audience. That is, parts of the audience that do no use the BBC as much as others, notably working class, ethnic minorities, young working class women, a series of demographics that the BBC has been worried about for at least 15 yrs and tries to reach, but with limited success.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 2:59 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
August 24, 2006
building a world class telecommunications network
Telstra can't win a trick these days. Its strategy of attacking the regulatory regime, a policy of non-cooperation with the government and poor investment decisions has driven Telstra's share price to record lows. The stock doen't even look cheap at rock bottom price of $3.50, given the falling earnings caused by increasing competition. Yet the current mess---it's looking increasingly like a disaster for everyone---is not solely Telstra's fault.
Alan Moir
It is more than Telstra's case that regulations eroding profits. The Howard government continually put off confronting the need to address Telstra's dominant network structure, and even the fair terms and conditions for its rivals to gain access to the dominant network in an rapidly changing industry. It was obsessed by ownership---privatisation---and still is; even though the conditions for a sale are not good. It does not have any doubts that a privatised Telstra will provide Australia with a good and modern broadband service.
The T3 float beckons. Will there be a T3 sale or not? Telstra will be sold. It's just a matter of how and when. Sell it now is the call. Free Telstra says the market. The market analyists say that the longer the Government puts off making a decision, the more it weighs on the share price. The share market hates an overhang and there's around 6 billion shares to be sold. So what form will it take? A fire sale? The shares go into the Future Fund?The latter is not going to remove the overhang problem. So sell the whole lot and get it off the Government's hands.
You get the idea that the government just wants to toss all the problems to industry and let the market decide the best way for a modern telecommunications network to help secure Australia's future prosperity.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 6:01 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack
questioning the media
The Australia and New Zealand School of Government recently held a media conference. The talks are not online. So we have to rely on the fragments that are published by the old media. The Australian has published an extract of the talk by Tony Abbott, the federal Health Minister, which explores the relationship between politicians and the media. He says:
These days, many of the most important and difficult debates don't occur in parliament but in lengthy live media interviews where politicians are expected to have instant answers to every question and a single mistake can be disastrous.
Aren't these instant answers in live media interviews just parts of an ongoing public conversation within our political insitutions and in civil society?
Tony Abbott has been an active participant in the deabtes about biopolitics and in the debate about reproductive cloning-- or "cloning-to-produce-children"-- and therapeutic cloning--or cloning-for-biomedical-research. He has positioned himself as a conviction politician who sticks to his guns and the leading conservative voice against therapeutic cloning.
This is much broader debate than a few quips made by politicians during a live media interview as it is about the biotechnology and public policy that involves the regulation of biomedical technologies. The debate is much wider than the current narrow preoccupation with the "life issues" of embryo destruction, or the concerns over therapeutic cloning in the current public policy debate.
Abbott's central concern in this talk is the political bias in the media, by which he means the left-liberal bias of the mainstream media and its partisan stance towards conservative politicians. He says that:
It's true that there are now effective conservative voices in the Australian media, such as Piers Akerman, Andrew Bolt, Christopher Pearson, Janet Albrechtsen and Miranda Devine, with people such as Alan Jones on radio. That hasn't altered the dynamic of the newsroom and, if anything, has intensified the "give no quarter" attitude of the Left-liberal media mainstream. A media staple since the 2004 election has been the rise of the so-called religious Right. This motif testifies to the historical amnesia and cultural impoverishment of most younger journalists, in whose minds views that would have been orthodox a generation ago now seem odd or evidence of religious brainwashing.
This is onesided account. The conservative voices in the media are opinionated, politically partisan and is grounded in their prejudices. This right wing media, which has given rise to Fox News, has rejected the old liberal distinctions between fact and opinion, dumped truth and objectivity, and repudiated the ethos of the media as a fourth estate acting as a watchdog for democracy.
Secondly, the historical amnesia and cultural impoverishment of most younger journalists, is partly due to the failures of Australian conservatism to go beyond partisan journalism of ''the (academic) elites entrenched and conspiring against the best interests of the Australian people' and foster a more vibrant and diverse intellectual culture. You cannot blame the journalism schools for the intellectual poverty of the conservative culture in Australia.
An example of this poverty is Abbott's claim that the Lockheart review proposed the potential creation of human-animal hybrids---even though this scary monster claim is a misrepresentation of what the report is proposing to do, and the regulatory regime opposed to the creation of hybrids. It is an appeal to fear not reason.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 9:49 AM | Comments (4) | TrackBack
August 23, 2006
carbon trading
Jeffrey David over at Oikos argues that the debate about reducing greenhouse gas emissions in Australia has shifted from the initial duality of ethical arguments in favour of reducing emissions versus economic arguments that support doing nothing. David argues that what has emerged in the debate is that there are good national economic reasons for taking strong efforts to start reducing our emissions.
The discussion paper by the National National Emissions Trading Taskforce carries this debate forward. It says:
A carefully designed emissions trading scheme could help minimise the costs of reducing emissions. Emissions trading is widely regarded as being flexible and efficient for some sectors, potentially including the energy sector. It lets the market establish the best ways of tackling the problem, rather than relying on traditional ‘command and control’ regulation.
Whilst it's clear there's a persuasive business case for a carbon-trading industry---there's money to be made from global warming with companies trading their pollution rights---the Queensland Premier Peter Beattie was sceptical. Queensland would bear the brunt of any price rises in electricity costs as a result of carbon trading.
The discussion paper argues that preliminary modelling work undertaken to date indicates that the proposed design can achieve significant reductions in emissions while maintaining strong economic growth.
This modelling suggests that effects on Australian GDP and community welfare associated with reducing emissions through the scheme are small, and in line with ‘business as usual’ projections, although the specific regional and industry impacts vary with some jurisdictions being more affected than others. Without taking steps to avoid this outcome, any policy to reduce emissions could affect the competitiveness of Australia’s trade-exposed, energy-intensive industries. A long-term free allocation of permits is proposed to offset the impacts of the scheme on the energy costs faced by these firms. This would help to maintain Australia’s international competitiveness without diluting environmental integrity.
Rosslyn Beeby in the Canberra Times argues that this carbon trading system is about keeping costs down, not investing in tomorrow's clever zero-emissions technologies. She says that by itself it does not:
...support the work of those who are trying to cut our dependence on fossil fuels by inventing smart solar technology that will suit Australia's climate and deliver remote rural towns and regions from the problem of unreliable or intermittent (or non-existent, in the case of many Aboriginal settlements) electricity supplies.
Carbon trading makes good business sense, but not quite so much environmental sense.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 9:58 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
August 22, 2006
therapeutic cloning
It was only after strong public lobbying by the Liberal backbencher Mal Washer that John Howard, the Prime Minister, agreed to allow a conscience vote on therapeutic cloning, thereby reversing a cabinet decision made in June. The former health minister and now backbencher Senator Kay Patterson will introduce a private member's bill to allow therapeutic cloning and it is expected to be passed by Parliament.
I am suprised by the need to bring political pressure to bear in order to have a public debate about therapeutic cloning--or “cloning-for-biomedical-research”. We need democratic deliberation about cloning-for-biomedical research as this is a subject about which the nation is divided, where there remains great uncertainty, and a coherent national conversation has yet to take place in full in our moral and political culture.
Isn't there is a real concern about where biotechnology might be taking us in terms of redesigning humanity? We are concerned ethically, about the harm to newborn children made of cloning, or about the embryos that might be lost in the process, but about what we might do to ourselves and to others when we start to use the powers biotechnology makes available for purposes beyond the treatment of individuals with specific diseases and disabilities.
Don't we citizens need to be presented, with the competing ethical cases for and against cloning-for-biomedical-research in the form of first-person attempts at moral suasion? Don't we need to recognize, and have outlined, the differences between legitimate therapy and enhancement, as well as the challenges and risks of moving from moral assessment to public policy?
Some argue that the Lockhart report, in which scientists recommend greater access to stem cells, is a long, complex and interesting document, provides the ground for public debate, and that with a brace of private members bills being prepared, the debate is upon us. Not quite. We need somrthing more than the assertions by Tony Abbott, the Minister of Health and Ageing, that endorsing Lockhart would set us on a "slippery slope"; that scientists were not arguing or putting a case, they were "peddling hope"; that "animal-human hybrids" would be on the agenda; and that "the science of therapeutic cloning is identical to the science of reproductive cloning". What is missing is a description of a range of general and specific public policy options in areas of biotechnology that touch on the beginnings of human life in the light of the number of serious problems may accompany the present and future uses of biotechnologies that touch on the beginnings of human life.
What we need in Australia is a National Ethics Council that advises the Parliament on bioethical issues that may emerge as a consequence of advances in biomedical science and technology. Such a Council would:
1. undertake fundamental inquiry into the human and moral significance of developments in biomedical and behavioral science and technology;
2. explore specific ethical and policy questions related to these developments;
3. provide a forum for a national discussion of bioethical issues;
4. facilitate a greater understanding of bioethical issues; and
5. explore possibilities for useful international collaboration on bioethical issues.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 7:56 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Beattie still rules
At a distance the Beattie Government looks to be returned with a reduced majority in Queensland, despite a falling popularity and the crisis in water, energy and health. The ALP's primary vote is up despite the forementioned crises coming from both a failure to invest in infrastructure as well as the continuing economic and population growth of the state.
There is little genuine voter choice in Queensland given the coalition sideshow in the form of the accident prone Queensland Liberal Party. The Coalition has become an issue, and there is only a few weeks for the Springborg-Flegg team to improve their performance and offer a convincing alternative.
It's an uphill battle for the conservatives as Queensland has billion dollar surpluses, fully funded public superannuation and no net debt. Cheerleader Beattie has ensured the diversification of the Queensland economy from its natural resources and tourism base by fostering smart state industries, such as biotechnology, aviation and export education.
Though Queensland is marked by a city/country divide the shift in popuation--those migrating from the south eastern capital cities to the southeast corner of Queensland in search of a better lifestyle are “tree changers” or “sea changers”. They more likely to vote for the ALP and Greens, rather than the Joh-era hardline conservatism of the Queensland Nationals with their development at all costs. The Nationals credibility in the metropolitan southeast corner would be on a downward slide, given their opposition to water recycling and their 'lets build more dams' ethos.
With no upper house there is even less accountablity in Queensland than in the other states. Though we are seeing a group of independents forming in the lower house, these are not enough to gain a balance of power and so put pressure on the Beattie Government. This pressure is sorely needed after Toowoomba's residents said no to their Lord Mayor's Water Futures proposal to return treated recycled wastewater to the city's drinking water. Beattie is now saying that southeast Queenslanders should pray that rain will fall to fill existing and proposed dams. So much for a long-term, cost-effective solutions to a water crisis caused by a lack of rain.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 9:18 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
August 21, 2006
wither the Israeli Right?
With a fragile ceasefire currently holding in Lebanon, there is now mass popular Arab support for Lebanon and for Hezbollah. The Tehran-Damascus-Hizballah axis has emerged more confident from the Lebanon War whilst the Shi'a community may now demand a greater say in the country's affairs.
Stavro,Lebanon after war, 2006
There is an intense debate in Israel about the outcome of the war and the meaning of the ceasefire with Israeli deterrence--‘unilateralism’ at a historic nadir. Writing in Haaertz Gideon Levy makes an interesting comment about the effect the war with Hizbollah in Lebanon has had on Israel.
He says:
The right won. The one clear result of this war is that the left suffered another fatal blow and the rightist camp was strengthened. The prevailing wisdom now is that not only is there nobody to talk to, there is nothing to talk about. Not only did we withdraw from Gaza and get Hamas and Qassams, we withdrew from Lebanon and got Hezbollah and rockets. The conclusion: no more withdrawals.
In other words the war proved the settlers right. The nation's heart has been broken by the failure to uproot the jihadist threat orchestrated by Iran-- 'the axis of evil'. Another and far more deadly round of war is to be expected in order to disarm Hizbullah and confront Iran given Israel's persistent attempts to secure its place in Middle East by military force and to utilize Lebanon as a battleground for regional conflicts and neighborly disputes.
Levy adds:
The right has to come up with some answers now..... What exactly is the developing right actually offering?....At most, the talk is about tomorrow. There's a reason for this: the Israeli right has no solutions. For the long term, there are only two real possibilities: transfer, or an end to the occupation. The sane right still rejects transfer, and ending the occupation is not its way. Since there is no other way, the right cannot offer anything beyond the next war.
Doesn't that mean eternal war against the Arabs with no willingness for concessions or dialogue with Arab nation states?
I would argue that the festering Israeli-Palestinian conflict is still the key. The occupation of the territories is still a millstone on Israel's neck because it continues to paralyze any attempt at normalization with the Arab states. How does Israel's capture and imprisonment of the deputy Palestinian prime minister, and the imprionment of other Palestinian cabinet and parliament members in an Israeli prison advance Israel's interests for security and peace? The big problems that afflict the region are not military but political.
Levy then adds:
Israel has always chosen the right's approach, through armament, settlement, and hunkering down behind a wall, clinging to the territories and their residents though brutal military force and taking pleasure in the graces of a failed and ephemeral American administration. Nothing endangers Israel's existence more than this approach.
It leads to the recurrence of cycles of resentment, radicalism and resistance that now define much of the Arab-Islamic Middle East.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 4:38 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
economic temptation
Financial markets are predicting another increase in interest rates towards the end of this year. That prediction has been endorsed by Ian MacFarlane, the outgoing governor of the Reserve Bank of Australia, when he appeared before the House of Representatives economic committee on Friday. Hia acount is that the economy is running close to full capacity-- capacity constraints are everywhere (eg., skill shortages, infrastructure) ---whilst the underlying inflaton is just below 3%. The latter is being fuelled more by the Howard Government's consumption boosting tax cuts than the state's infrastructure spending.
However, it is not obvious that Howard and Costello will resist the temptation to spend extra revenue when it comes to the 2007 pre-election budget, despite the Reserve Bank's plan to slow the economy meaning higher unemployment in Sydney and Melbourne, which in turrn, forcing people to move to the boom states where labour is scarce. That means more mortgagee auctions in Sydney which spill over into the houses of the still-employed neighbours crashing in value.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 1:47 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
August 20, 2006
ALP: old strategy in play
Shaun Carney has an interesting argument in The Age about the ground federal Labor is making. He says:
In his second stint as leader of the ALP, Kim Beazley is producing a good news-bad news result for Labor supporters. The good news is that Beazley is performing at a better level now than during his first period as leader in 1996-2001. He has absorbed a number of hard lessons from that time; his messages are less diffuse, his approach to policy is more focused and less timorous.The bad news is that the new, improved Beazley is not necessarily improved enough to make a real difference come election time. The first two weeks of the spring session, which concluded on Thursday, encapsulated the story of the reborn Kim Beazley. Most of the first week was very good for him and for Labor — and then things fell to pieces. They fell to pieces because of Beazley.
Carney argues that during,the first sitting week since June, the Government was shaken by the Reserve Bank's decision to lift interest rates for the second time this year and that it lacked parliamentary firepower. Forced to concede to John Howard's vastly superior numbers, Peter Costello was flat. The ALP, by contrast, made headway in the economic debate. The only way Labor can take things up to the Government on interest rates is to highlight the extent of people's indebtedness and to exploit the vulnerability of families to monetary policy.
They then lost the plot. More interestingly Carney observes a the end of his op. ed. that it is more than Beazley's character. He says:
What's encouraging for the Government are the signs that Beazley and his industrial relations spokesman Stephen Smith appear to be lining up to cruise along on a wave of discontent over WorkChoices, a campaign that is chiefly the work of the ACTU. True, Beazley has said he'll do away with AWAs but there's so much more policy work left to do in this area and scant evidence that it's being done. In all of this there are echoes of Beazley's ill-fated faith in an anti-GST wave in 2001. Sometimes you have to wonder why Beazley wanted so badly to return to the leadership.
It's the old 'piss on them and piss off' strategy isn't that Mark Latham identified as characteristic of the Beazley camp.
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August 19, 2006
the UN in Lebanon
Will the UN marshall sufficient forces to dispatch to Lebanon to turn the fragile ceasefire into a lasting peace?
Alan Moir
Resolution 1701 is invoked under Chapter VI rather than Chapter VII, which means the more robust UNIFIL force - of up to 15,000 troops will continue to act as they have been since they first set foot in Lebanon in 1978, not as "peace enforcers" but rather as traditional peacekeepers.
Consequently, unless there is a Security Council revision of the underlying modus operandi for the new UNIFIL, it is fairly certain that the Israeli expectation of UNIFIL somehow forcing Hezbollah to lay down its arms will not materialize. The United States' pro-Israel biases precludes it from any direct peacekeeping role in Lebanon for the foreseeable future
After insisting that Israeli armed forces would depart from Lebanon "within 10 days", the bruised Israeli leadership is now revising its plans for withdrawal. Meanwhile, as refugees flood back to their war-ravaged villages, Hezbollah, which successfully stopped the Israeli attack on Lebanon, has flung itself to the front of the burgeoning reconstruction effort in southern Lebanon, funded with a deluge of petro-dollars from neighboring Iran. The Lebanese army, which sees Hezbollah as a group that is defending the country, will assist Hezbollah as best it can.
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August 18, 2006
Mark Steyn's question
In the 2006 CD Kemp lecture at the Institute of Public Affairs in Melbourne Mark Steyn says:
The question posed here tonight is very direct: “Does Western Civilization Have A Future?” One answer’s easy: if western civilization doesn’t have a past, it certainly won’t have a future. No society can survive when it consciously unmoors itself from its own inheritance.
What does he mean by that? Suprisingly, Streyn understands it in terms of demography. He presents a Dana Vale type of argument:
Much of western civilization does not have any future. That’s to say, we’re not just speaking philosophically, but literally. In a very short time, France, Belgium, the Netherlands and other countries we regard as part of the western tradition will cease to exist in any meaningful sense. They don’t have a future because they’ve given up breeding.
I guess you call it a materialist approach that counterbalances all the idealist emphasis on values.
The implication of this kind of demography is that:
...large parts of the western world are literally dying – and, in Europe, the successor population to those aging French and Dutch and Belgians is already in place. Perhaps the differences will be minimal. In France, the Catholic churches will become mosques; in England, the village pubs will cease serving alcohol; in the Netherlands, the gay nightclubs will close up shop and relocate to San Francisco. But otherwise life will go on much as before. The new Europeans will be observant Muslims instead of post-Christian secularists but they will still be recognizably European.
That implies multiculturalism is not a good thing, doesn't it? It means that Peter Costello’s le's have babies call – a boy for you, a girl for me, and one for Australia – is, ultimately, a national security issue – and a more basic one than how much you spend on defence. It's a novel way of looking at ciivlization and “family values”, isn't it.
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airport security
Airports are entitles unto themselves. They are becoming more like little self-contained shopping cities than mere transit lounges connecting you to other travel nodes. But shopping centres with a difference given the airport security. The security filters that escalate the hassle and work against the desire to travel, potentially dampening sales of tickets, at least to those traveling for pleasure.
Airport security is now a serious concern. The security surveillance is becoming ever more thorough and instrusive as airport security increasingly become a political issue.
You can see the beginnings of facial and racial profiling happening at the airports can't you.
Bill Leak
You cannot joke about racial profiling either. That is seen as having the wrong attitude and an example of wrong behviour by the national security state. Racial and ethnic profiling---security enforcement targeting suspects based on skin color-- is back. Profiling reins in costs by keeping the intensive searches down to a selective few. Whoever is paying the security costs pay less.
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August 17, 2006
a history summit in Canberra
So we are going to have a history summit in Canberra today. Why so? Sure history as a stand alone subject has taken a battering in the education system. It has been neglected. Do we need a summit to to revive the subject in our schools, give it a secure place in the curriculum and ensure that all students have the opportunity to learn about their country's past? These are good objectives but you don't need a summit to discuss them. Who would object to them? I cannot see much a debate about those objectives.
So what else is going on? Why a summit? The political context is the Prime Minister's address to the National Press Club lauding "The Australian Achievement", where he rejoiced that "the divisive phoney debate about the national identity" had been "finally laid to rest", called for "root and branch renewal" of the way history is taught and then stated that "a structured narrative" of Australian history should replace what he described as the present "fragmented stew of 'themes' and 'issues'".
So is Canberra saying that history can only be taught as a narrative and that the states should ensure that this is so? How then are the history wars launched by the New Right going to be negotiated?
In launching the history summit last night, federal Education Minister Julie Bishop stated that Canberra is not saying that it is trying to creating some form of an "official" history. Well, that is good to know. However, she does say that 'there is too much political bias and not enough pivotal facts and dates being taught' implying an empiricist understanding of history. Doesn't conservatism have a very political view of the past?
One of the summit's discussion papers is about narrative history. In it Gregory Melleuish rightly says that narrative is a tricky concept:
There is no single narrative into which all history can be placed but a number of narratives, some of which may conflict and others that may be complementary. Narrative is both about what we put into a story and what we leave outThere are as many possible narratives as there are historians willing and able to write them. This does not mean that all narratives are ‘subjective’ or ideologically motivated, but rather that different historians choose to emphasise different things according to the story that they are attempting to tell
So Canberra is saying let a thousand narratives bloom? Highly unlikely, as their preference is for a conservative narrative that celebrates Australia's achievement, not the black armed-band narrative, or an ecological history. Nor one from a multiple perspectives or even a value pluralist, perspective. That means postmodern, multiculturalism and moral relativism for the conservative warriors, doesn't it.
Julie Bishop's empiricist understanding of history holds that 'students develop a body of knowledge that is rich in dates, facts and events, and from which students can then draw their own opinions about historical events'. What has happened to interpretation and narrative? She adds:
"...there has been a tendency to downplay the overwhelmingly positive aspects of the Australian
achievement. We need to find a balance that constitutes an understanding of our nation's past and is made up of the essential facts, dates and events that every student should know when they finish their secondary schooling.
Shouldn't we teach students to evaluate the competing narratives? if so, what is the basis for evaluation since narrative knowing involves interpretation as well as facts?
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August 16, 2006
on Israeli identity
Yitzhak Laor's article on the Israeli military You are terrorists, we are virtuous in the London Review of Books is important as it comes to grips with Israeli identity. I'.m not referring to the right wing or neo-con Israeli's of the Israeli Lobby. It is Jewish identity per se that I find puzzling and difficult to understand.
This identity led Israeli's--- and the Jewish supporters of Israel in the Jewish diaspora--- to support the destruction of Lebanon and to remain indifferent to the suffering of the Lebanese. That identity is more than the standard account recently articulated by Philip Mendes in New Matilda: an idenity based on both history ---a high number of Holocaust survivors or children of survivors--and the fear that Israel is threatened by destruction.
I have highlighted some passages from Yitzhak Laor's important article.
This passage goes to the heart of the matter:
Israelis identify with the IDF, and even after the deaths of many Lebanese children in Qana, they think that stopping the war without scoring a definitive victory would amount to defeat. This logic reveals our national psychosis, and it derives from our over-identification with Israeli military thinking.
Laor says that the army is assigned the dual role of hero and victim. And the enemy? In Hebrew broadcasts the formulations are always the same: on the one hand ‘we’, ‘ours’, ‘us’; on the other, Nasrallah and Hizbullah. There aren’t, it seems, any Lebanese in this war.
Then we have this:
There is no institution in Israel that can approach the army’s ability to disseminate images and news or to shape a national political class and an academic elite or to produce memory, history, value, wealth, desire. This is the way identification becomes entrenched: not through dictatorship or draconian legislation, but by virtue of the fact that the country’s most powerful institution gets its hands on every citizen at the age of 18. The majority of Israelis identify with the army and the army reciprocates by consolidating our identity, especially when it is – or we are – waging war.
He says that the mainstream Israeli left has never seriously tried to oppose the military. The talking points--- that we had no alternative but to attack Lebanon and that we cannot stop until we have finished the job--- are army-sponsored truths, decided by the military and articulated by state intellectuals and commentators.
Military thinking has become our only thinking. The wish for superiority has become the need to have the upper hand in every aspect of relations with our neighbours. The Arabs must be crippled, socially and economically, and smashed militarily, and of course they must then appear to us in the degraded state to which we’ve reduced them. Our usual way of looking at them is borrowed from our intelligence corps, who ‘translate’ them and interpret them, but cannot recognise them as human beings.
Something sure has gone wrong when Lebanese civilians are not seen as human beings by Israeli's. Laor says:
The truth behind this is that Israel must always be allowed to do as it likes even if this involves scorching its supremacy into Arab bodies. This supremacy is beyond discussion and it is simple to the point of madness. We have the right to abduct. You don’t. We have the right to arrest. You don’t. You are terrorists. We are virtuous. We have sovereignty. You don’t. We can ruin you. You cannot ruin us, even when you retaliate, because we are tied to the most powerful nation on earth. We are angels of death.
Angels of death---it captures the contradiction in Jewish identity doesn't it.
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destroying nascent Arab democracy
It is clear that the Israeli action against Hizbollah was not far short of a joint operation designed to ease Israel’s security concerns and serve as a prelude to a potential American preëmptive attack to destroy Iran’s nuclear installations.
It is also clear that Israel's pre-emptive war failed to use the political and military support offered by the United States to decisively defeat Hizbollah. Hizbolla's position in the Middle East has been strengthened, whilst Israel's scorch and burn tactics causes ever more fear and hatred.
What I find amazing is that the US State Department saw the Israeli bombing as a way to strengthen the Lebanese government so that it could assert its authority over the south of the country, much of which is controlled by Hezbollah. Huh? This was a war on the Arab modernity that was beginning to emerge in Lebanon.
Lebanese democracy is one of the big losers in the war, As George Schöpflin, writing in Democracy Now, points out Lebanon is a democratic country on the verge of political modernity. Lebanon is a nation of a sovereign people ruled by a consensual government and possessing both political and moral agency. He adds:
The attack on Lebanon, it should be noted, may have genuinely begun as a move to inhibit Hizbollah, but very rapidly evolved into an assault on Lebanon's Christian and Sunni areas, which seems to support the argument that Israel's real target was or became Lebanon's nascent democracy.Should Lebanon or any other Arab state be tacitly accepted as a legitimate, modern democracy by the world at large, then its claim on the world for moral, political and potentially military support becomes stronger, as well as placing Israel's patrons in Washington in an awkward dilemma - does the US go with its democracy-building rhetoric to support a nascent Arab democracy or does it continue with its policy of backing Israel right or wrong?
The neo-cons in the Bush administration take the latter option. There is little doubt that the neo-cons, both within and outside the government - are champing at the bit about attacking Iran - the last major confrontational state to US hegemony in the region.
One positive to coem out of the war is that Israel's renouncing of the Zionist conception of a greater Israel will be affirmed as a wise decision.
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ACCC on media diversity
Graeme Samuel, chairman of the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, delivered the annual La Trobe University media studies lecture last Monday. It was entitled 'Australia’s changing communications and media landscape.' The context is the widespread concern that the Howard Government's proposed law changes will substantially worsen concentration of ownership in a heavily concentrated industry that is undergoing very rapid change.
Bruce Petty
What is the ACCC's perspective on this change? In his lecture Samuel argued that the media industries are changing, and the earlier focus on particular media, such as newspapers, television and radio, may no longer be as relevant as analysing who controls the "pipes". By "pipes" he means the way by which media material is distributed to people. The pipes have broadened substantially to include the internet, mobile phones and video games, as well as combinations of media forms.
Samuel states the new media realities clearly:
When we think of the media, we tend to think of it in very traditional forms---newspapers that we read in the morning over a cup of coffee, radio broadcasts that we listen to for talk back and coverage of the footy, and television that we watch for the evening news and our favourite soapies. We have generally considered these modes of delivery---newspapers, radio and TV---as distinctly separate and, consequently, defined them as different markets within the overall media sector. But those neat categories are starting to come under fire, principally from the internet but also from pay-TV and, more recently, other wireless media, most notably mobile phones. With the immense resources of the internet at their finger tips, consumers no longer have to rely on a limited number of information sources provided by the typical media gatekeepers such as newspapers or free-to-air television networks.
What is the significance of this shift? Consumers are starting to gain some choice control over how consuming media content; consumers are developing “user-generated content” for traditional media; formerly separate industries are converging; competition between media outlets that have traditionally been considered to occupy separate, complementary markets; audiences for traditional media platforms are declining; and increasing expenditure on internet advertising. We are in the first stages in a media revolution.
Samuel rightly says that the key regulatory issue is who controls the content delivered over the pipes:
...how people access the content they desire, and at what speed, will increasingly be determined by the control of the telecommunications networks--th e pipes --connecting homes and business. As the pipes are increasingly able to deliver a wide range of content to consumers, the question of who controls the content, especially premium content such as sports and new release movies, will become a key question in assessing competition...Given [the] cornucopia of possible networks, we can’t let ourselves become solely focussed on who controls the pipes, or indeed start picking likely winners between the different technologies...Rather, what may become more important is having content that people want to access; and having a variety of ways to deliver it to the customer across a communications network.
As traditional media boundaries blur, focus may shift from the way information is delivered to the actual products media companies offer.
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August 15, 2006
rethinking energy?
I watched John Howard deliver his energy statement in the House of Representatives yesterday. The energy package supports alternatives to petrol by encourage motorists to convert to LPG and service stations to install E10 ethanol blend pumps. The Government expects close to half a million cars to either convert to LPG or be sold new with a fitted LPG tank, whilst close to 1000 more service stations are expected to sell ethanol blends.
Any shift from fuel-inefficient cars is welcome. It shows that the resilence of the Howard Government and its ability to overcome its difficulties.
However, the problem goes deeper than shifting to cheaper fuel. The government's short term policy reaction is a problem. As Tim Colebatch points out in The Age Australia now has almost 15 million vehicles, so the majority will get no benefit from the LPG rebate. Australia has 6500 service stations, of whom only 260 currently sell ethanol blends; and so if 1260 sell it, 80 per cent of service stations would not.
Why my charge that this is short term policy?
Why the effort on increasing supply because underinvestment in exploration and refining capacity is the whole story? The big oil discoveries are not happening any more in Australia.
Isn't public transport the best way to address increasing petrol prices, rather than searching for more oil to increase supply so as to become energy independent? Our capital cities need to find ways to roll back the car and to enable people to move around the city cheaply and quickly. That means lessening urban spread in favour of urban consolidation. Better public transport was not mentioned by John Howard.
Yet we find Peter Costello, the federal Treasurer, talking in terms of the suburban block as "the great Australian dream" that "we should nurture" and calling for increased land releases to address the unaffordability of housing. Costello's extolling urban spread means more suburbs, more cars, clogged cities and expensive personal transport.
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August 14, 2006
war continues?
In an op.ed. in The Age Amin Saikal says that the key elements of the UN resolution call for an immediate end to Hezbollah's attacks on Israel and to Israel's offensive military operations in Lebanon, as well as the withdrawal of Israeli forces from Lebanon and the deployment of a UN peacekeeping force and Lebanese troops in southern Lebanon. The resolution also provides for the disarmament of Hezbollah and a final settlement of the Israeli-Lebanon border area.
It's a very hopeful resolution isn't it? Though the move to deploy the Lebanese army in southern Lebanon is a setback for Hezbollah, how will Hezbollah be disarmed. Though Hizbollah is a de facto instrumentality of the Lebanese Government, is disarnament cannot be done by the Lebanese army, nor the Lebanese government, or even the UN. Hezbollah needs to consent to its disarnament does it not?
Whilst watching CNN last night in a hotel room I learnt that, the Lebanese government on Sunday morning had accepted the UN security council resolution. Though Israel indicated that it will abide by the UN resolution, it has nonetheless continued its military operations and broadened its ground offensives to seize territory up to the Litani River, 30 kilometres inside Lebanon.This last minute attempt to gain advantage before hostilities are obliged to cease, means that Hezbollah will not hold back its fire for as long as Israel maintains its offensives. Moreover, I cannot see that a UN peacekeeping force, or for that matter the Lebanese Army, will be able to disarm Hezbollah totally.
Saikal comments that:
Israel's objective is clear. It is to depopulate southern Lebanon, weaken and push back Hezbollah as far north as possible so that its rockets will not reach Israel, and then to allow Israel to make a phased troop withdrawal from a position of strength rather than one that could be viewed, by its own population and by the region, as one of vulnerability. Behind this objective lurks the wider shared Israeli and US aim: to remove Lebanon from Syrian and Iranian influence through Hezbollah, and thus also to redress a strategic imbalance that the Iraqi fiasco has produced in favour of strategically strengthening Iran and Syria in the region.
Israel is continuing to talk up how it is winning this war and chalking up victorious achievements even though there are deep divisions within the Israeli government over the conduct of the war.
Sami Moubayed in Asia Times says that one way to disarm Hizbollah is through Iran.
Only Iran has the ability to disarm Hezbollah with minimal damage to Lebanon and the entire Middle East. Only Iran can command Hezbollah, and only Iran will Hezbollah obey. Yet Iran will only do so if it is given carrots - big carrots - by the US administration. Thus, by seeking a UN resolution, the Americans and the French are actually looking in the wrong direction....If indeed Israel and the US want an end to the war, they should look for answers in Tehran, not at the UN.
I suspect that the Bush administration knew about the planned Israel air attack in advance, gave it the green light, and supported Israel's attempts to diminish Hebollah. This war was of Israel's choosing, long in the planning and preparation. The US supported it to reduce the threat of possible Hizbullah retaliation against Israel should the US launch a military strike against Iran. It is all about Iran for the Bush administration.
Bush sees the enemy as is a "totalitarian ideology" Islamo fascism--- and he sees all violent Muslim opposition to western interests everywhere in the world as part of a single conspiracy, and defines this opposition in terms of an existential enemy of the United States. 'We' are at war with a hydra-headed and barbaric enemy that has not a shred of humanity that is at least as brutal as the Nazis and communist enemies of the past is the talking point.
What is not said by Bush is that Israel is the primary means by which the US has exercised its hegemony over the region and it uses the classic imperial device of divide and rule. Iran challenges that regional hegemony.
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August 11, 2006
echoing Washington
The central narrative of the Bush administration and the Howard Goverenment is that terrorism springs from intrinsic evil, and that it is so powerful a threat to western nation states that Americans and Australians must now give up our traditions of free speech and dissent to defend the homeland. Those who dissent from, or question, this narrative are seen as unAmerican or unAustralian. The Howard Government echoes the Bush line.
If Hezbollah is defined as a terrorist organization it is intrinsically evil, therefore it needs to be crushed. Israel's position will not be secure until Hebollah is eliminated. Therefore there is no point in arguing for an immediate ceasefire, or to condemn Israeli attacks on Lebanese civilans and civilian infrastructure. The Howard Government backs the destruction of Lebanon so that the Lebanese Government will put pressure on Hizbollah.
How does that play amongst Lebanese Australians? Badly, I would have thought. And Labor's response? There can be no peace in the Middle East until Israel's right to exist and right to security is respected. So says Robert McCelland, the ALP's defence spokesperson. Nothing is said about Palestinian rights or Lebanese sovereignty.
So the ALP buys into the Bush administration's central narrative even though Kim Beazley argues that Australia should be an ally of of the US rather than being the ally that any particular American adminstration might want. Hell, the ALP could at least call for the US to act as an honest broker in the Middle East rather that just provide cover for Israel .
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Question mark over the Liberal Party
Is this what is happening to the Liberal Party in Australia in the light of this event? It is unbecoming being liberal?
Alan Moir
Being unliberal generally means turning your back on the Menzies tradition of the Liberal party. Is this what is happening? Conservatism has taken over from liberalism, which has been reduced to a market liberalism?
It does look like it when 4 Liberal rebels have to put their political careers at risk to defend human rights and the importance of international law in relation to assylum seekers.
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August 10, 2006
the ALP's silence on Lebanon
I watched the debate the House of Representatives on the Howard Govvernment's decision to send more troops to Afghanistan yesteday. I wasn't suprised by Beazley's strong support for fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan or his argument that the Howard Government should not have withdrawn troops from Afghanistan in 2002, and as a consequence, it had allowed for the revival of al-Qaeda and the Taliban. This is all about the War on Terror and creating democracy in Afghanistan.
I am suprised though by the way the ALP continue to remains silent about Israel's "creative destruction" in Lebanon and the 1000 civilian deaths and displacement of another 750,000 civilans from their homes. The Lebanese Government did not authorise or support Hezbollah's attacks on Israel. Canberra, like Washington, remains largely a bipartisan, criticism-free zone for Israel and the US providiong sipport and cover for the Israeli's destruction of democracy in Lebanon
The ALP's silence about Lebanon suprises me given its critcisms of the American neo-con quest for an impregnable defense and military supremacy. Does the ALP see the Israeli bombing of Lebanon as defensive war, a mere Israeli reaction to Hezbollah attacks? Does not the ALP's silence breach the fundamental principle of the right of people under occupation to resist? Does the ALP accept that it is right for Israel to drive out most of the population of south Lebanon? Is the ALP willing to legitimize the violent partition of the sovereign democratic state of Lebanon?
Republican Senator Chuck Hagel of Nebraska gave a speech in which he was blunt in predicting the consequences of the Israeli military actions:
"Extended military action will tear apart Lebanon, destroy its economy and infrastructure, create a humanitarian disaster, further weaken Lebanon's fragile democratic government, strengthen popular Muslim and Arab support for Hezbollah, and deepen hatred of Israel across the Middle East. . . . The war against Hezbollah and Hamas will not be won the battlefield."
Cannot the ALP say that force is not the only effective solution to problems in Lebanon as Israel launches an grround invasion of southern Lebanon all the way up to the Litani river and beyond?
I presume the pro-American faction of the ALP (led by Bomber Beazley) is following the dominant Anglo-Israeli narrative that Hezbollah is a terrorist organization that threatens Israel, and that Israel has a right to defend itself. Yet Hezbollah, which is an anti-Israeli Lebanese Shia group, does not pose a direct threat to the security of Australia, nor that of the United States. Since when has Israeli security been an essential component of Australia security policy? The impression is that the ALP is condoning Israeli military action resulting in the death of hundreds of innocent Muslim civilians, and that it does not value the lives of innocent Muslims.
Israel is now seeking a major rearrangement of the Lebanese domestic scene that will crush resistance not in Lebanon. As Ahmad Samih Khalidi observes in the Guardian:
If Hizbullah, as many have argued, is indeed the people of south Lebanon and the voice of Shia Lebanese empowerment, then the Israelis seem to believe that the best means of defeating them is to disperse them, uproot the communities in which they thrive, and destroy the infrastructure that sustains them and provides them with their means of livelihood.
Is depopulation and the purposeful destruction of the social and economic structure of southern Lebanon what the ALP supports?
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Pat Buchanan on the Israeli blitz of Lebanon
This quote is from an entry in Pat Buchanan'sCreators Syndicate column. He questions the dominant narrative that Israel is simply fighting terrorism of the sort represented by Hezbollah (which is nothing more than a Shi'ite version of al-Qaeda) and that U.S. interests are identical with Israel's. He says:
Hebollah ignited the hostilities. But it was Israel that escalated to rain destruction on a people and nation that had not countenanced or condoned Hezbollah's provocation, but condemned it. Think back. Had Ronald Reagan done to Lebanon, when half a dozen Americans were seized as hostages, what Israel has done, when two soldiers were taken hostage, Democrats would have denounced Reagan as a war criminal. Conservatives would have begged him to ease up. Yet, almost to a man and woman, US politicians are falling all over one another to express their 100 per cent support of what Israel has done to Lebanon. Even Israelis must feel a measure of contempt for this kind of grovelling.
The other side of this in the context of U.S. policy towards Israel and the Middle East, is playing the anti-Semitism card against the dissent of Israel's shock and awe military strategy---the Israeli blitz of Lebanon. This card demands that everyone accept the basic premise that criticism of Israel, the country, must equal hostility towards Jews, the ethnic group. Media newscasts, more often than not, lead off with reports of Israeli casualties, even though the damage done to the Lebanese is usually far greater that day.
What continues to suprise me is that Canberra accepts that America's enemies (now identical with Israel's enemies) represent the ultimate in evil ("terrorists as evildoers" or murderous religious fanatics) and so sanctions the 1,000 civilian deaths in Lebanon caused by Israels use of overwhelming force. Somehow the practically defenseless Lebanese and Lebanon just don't matter.
The neo-con war party in Canberra don't even sense the ground shifting beneath their feet. Iran and Syria are deemed to be villains for their support of Hezbollah, even though they are a key to the regional balance of power. Canberra does not recognize that, though it sees Hezbollah as a "terrorist organization", this is not so in Lebanon. Hezbollah is an anti-Israeli Lebanese Shia group with seats in the Lebanese parliament. Hezbollah is seen as a legitimate political group by the Lebanese. It provides the basic social-service infrastructure in the neglected Shi'ite areas of the country - hospitals, schools, construction projects, welfare programs and a well-trained, highly disciplined militia for protection. Hezbollah is seen to be defending Lebanon's sovereignty, even by the Druze and Christian leadership who have condemned the Israeli destruction of their country.
Canberra seems to be living in some kind of bubble.
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August 9, 2006
Canberra Watch
I watched Question Time in the House of Representatives yesterday. The session was mostly about interest rates and petrol prices.It's an explosive mix as petrol prices are feeding through the economy causing inflationary pressures.
I was suprised by the change in tone in the House. The Howard Government was defensive, subdued, and nervous. In contrast the ALP was upbeat, jolly and feisty. They were confident and enjoying themselves! What a change in atmospherics. It was more akin to a carnival created by the ALP.
Question Time was about the economy, economic management and economic credibility. The old Coalition line of the 17% interest rates under the governance of Hawke/Keating started looking a bit thin given the increase in the proportion of debt being carried out by households.
The ALP has a good position: mortgages are costing households more now than in 1989 when interest rates were 17%.
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Jewish diaspora
Norman Birnbaum's op. ed. in The Age raises some good questions about the Jewish diaspora's relationship to the policies of the Israeli government in the context of the Israeli lobby. His op.ed. can be seen as part of the miniscule oppositional voice to the Israeli lobby in Australia.
Birnbaum asks:
Is it the supreme duty of American Jews to use our considerable influence to align US policy with that of Israel? There is, the Jewish organisations tell us, no conflict of loyalties and responsibilities; the two nations have common values and common ends. The assertion is nonsensical, but its repetition does negate one stereotype about Jews, our supposed intelligence. It is often accompanied by the claim that there is no Israel lobby, only ordinary US citizens spontaneously expressing opinions to their elected representatives and government.
The latter claim is not persuasive, even in Australia given the tactics of the Australia/Israel and Jewish Affairs Council and the Australian Jewish News. As Anthony Lowenstein points out 'the Zionist lobby, through aggressive and counter-productive tactics, is undermining the Jewish community and the wider community view towards Israel.' As Lowenstein argues some of those tactics include suppressing debate. And the aggressive bellicosity of much of the Zionist section of Australian Jewry is counter productive.
Evan Jones over at Alert and Alarmed asks a good question:
Why do significant sections of the divergent Jewish communities around the world support Israel? And not merely support Israel in their bosoms but passionately in the media, with Jewish organisations actively pressing media outlets to inhibit coverage critical of Israel, and actively lobbying national governments to take stances favourable of this foreign power’s interests.
Birnbaum says that American Jewry's enjoyment of its success has been troubled by a bad conscience over their inability to help European Jewry during the Holocaust. That experience, and the inexpungible memory of genocide itself, is a primary component of an American Jewish identity that now centres on unconditional defence of the state of Israel that assumes the role of US enforcer in the Middle East.
Is that the same for Australian Jewish identity? I don't know the answer to why there is the uncconditional support for the aggression and militarism of Israel's political culture amaongst the Australian Jewish community.
Birnbaum goes on to say that:
American Jewry might serve Israel better by eschewing total identification with Israel to take a more reflective position... A Jewish state was supposed to protect the Diaspora, but now it is the Diaspora that protects the Jewish state. The American Diaspora, however, is living well beyond its political means.
Is the Australian Jewish diaspora living beyond its political means? Maybe for the Zionist section with its attribution of ‘anti-semitism’ to gentile criticisms of the actions of the Israeli government and the attribution of self hatred to Jewish criticisms.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 8:50 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
August 8, 2006
UN draft resolution
As noted below the United States and France have produced a United Nations resolution of sorts aimed at ending the Israeli-Hezbollah conflict. It does not look promising:
This resolution puts some constraints on America's apparent willingness to allow the conflict to run its course - under the belief that it is only a matter of time before Israel destroyed Hezbollah. But the resolution is willing to sacrifice Lebanon. So what does the draft resolution say?
It expresses:
...its utmost concern at the continuing escalation of hostilities in Lebanon and in Israel since Hizbollah's attack on Israel on 12 July 2006, which has already caused hundreds of deaths and injuries on both sides, extensive damage to civilian infrastructure and hundreds of thousands of internally displaced persons
That makes the destruction equivalent. Isn't the destruction caused by Israel more than that by Hizbollahl? The bias implicit in that paragraph becomes more explicit in the next:
Emphasizing the need for an end of violence, but at the same time emphasizing the need to address urgently the causes that have given rise to the current crisis, including by the unconditional release of the abducted Israeli soldiers
What about the Lebanese and Hizbollah prisoners held by Israel? Yet Hizbollah is saying that it would only release the 2 Israeli soldiers in return for Lebanese prisoners. Are only Israel demands to be recognized? The UN acknowledges this as it says it is mindful of the sensitivity of the issue of prisoners and encourages the efforts aimed at settling the issue of the Lebanese prisoners detained in Israel.
The bias towards Israeli in the words 'sensitivity ' and 'settles' compared to 'unconditional release' gets worse. The next paragraph:
Calls for a full cessation of hostilities based upon, in particular, the immediate cessation by Hizbollah of all attacks and the immediate cessation by Israel of all offensive military operations
So Hizbollah lays down its arms but not Israeli. As there is no mention of Israel withdrawing or retreating from Lebanon , so the Israeli army can be seen as an army of occupation. A full cessation of hostilities would allow the Israeli army to take 'defensive military operations' against Hizbullah. I would have thought that the departure of Israeli forces is the main hurdle to the United Nations security council adopting a ceasefire resolution. Whilst Israel is occupying Lebanon, Hezbollah is not allowed to take any military action against this occupation. If it does, the resolution draft allows Israel to defend its occupation militarily.
This resolution waives the moral and internationally accepted legal principle of the right of occupied peoples to resist occupation. That implies Lebanon accept its role in the new regional order – that is, to submit to Israel's superiority and give up its South. How can that be acceptable to Lebanon and to Hezbollah? The latter has said that it would not accept any deal that leaves Israel occupying southern Lebanon.
The resolution is so weighted towards Israel that it risks destabilising Lebanon's moderate democratic government Hezbollah then becomes the only effective force fighting Lebanon's partition. The UN draft resolution is less a papering over the cracks and more a political way to help the Israeli government claim victory over Hizbullajh and to legitimate the Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 2:45 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
August 7, 2006
Telstra pulls the plug
I've just returned from my holidays in Robe to the news that Telstra has pulled the plug on its high speed fibre-to-the-node broadband network. It has suspended long-running talks about the regulatory environment within which such a network could be built with the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC ) even though it appeared that Telstra and the ACCC had resolved 98 per cent of the issues surrounding the regulations governing the project.
It's a political standoff, isn't it. Was Telstra's plans a device to leverage a light regulatory regime? It looks like it. Does that mean the so-called group of nine or G9 consortium continuing to talks with the ACCC on its detailed plans. If the G9 model goes ahead will it provide open access to all who are willing to pay an access charge approved by the ACCC? Will the Howard Government take the policy initatiive and encourage alternative infrastructure investment by helping a rival telco construct a fibre network? They should put $3-6 billion aside from the sale to ensure that Australia has a good high speed public broadband network that people can access. With Telstra pulling the plug we can concentrate on the more important business of entrenching competition in the ADSL broadband we are now using, and extending the access of ADSL2.
My judgement is that the G9 will not build their own fibre network. Governments in Australia won't build telecommunications infrastructure anymore, no matter how sensible it might be. Telstra will rollout ADSL2+ services in Australia, and the copper wire network will remain with the current regulatory framework. Telstra will quietly build a fibre-to-node network that ensures it has monopoly control---ie., no sharing with competitors. That is what the telcos achieved in the US. Telstra's aim was to lock competitors out of its next generation fixed broadband network. The FttN network would not support the current wholesale arrangements and Telstra had hoped that, under the pressure of the T3 sale, the Howard Government would give them some kind of FttN monopoly.
That political play has just come to an end.
Update: August 8
Crikey points the policy finger directly at the commonwealth government:
Thanks to federal government inertia and ignorance, Australia is hobbling along the information superhighway in a dilapidated horse and buggy. Not only do Australians have limited access to broadband internet (the basic platform for the information revolution that is unfolding across the globe), but the speed and bandwidth of our broadband is among the slowest in the developed world.Today Telstra announced it won't be building the national high-speed internet network that Australia needs in order to leave its buggy. So? The responsibility for ensuring that Australia resides in the 21st century of communications lies with the federal government, not with Telstra. It's the government that has been elected to provide the infrastructure that paves our roads, ensures our security, maintains our health ... and delivers modern communications.
That's to the point and bang on target. What should have happened is the separation of Telstra the competitive communication services company from Telstra the national infrastructure network company before selling the former off to investors. It's to late for that now.
Kenneth Davidson in The Age writes:
Upgrading the [copper wire] network, which is the enabling technology of the 21st century, is being sacrificed to the illusion of competition. While broadband of sorts might work over the copper network while it attracts 30 per cent of customers, by the time the broadband share reaches 60 per cent, interference and cross-talk will severely degrade the service even if the copper is well maintained.
The illusion of competition? ADSL2+ is a lot better than Telstra's slow speeds. What will happen is that the ACCC will facilitate Telstra's competitors installing multiplexers in Telstra's exchanges to create their own networks with its interim decision on ULL pricing. This is expected to lower the price for wholesale access to the unconditioned copper wire in capital cities. As Alan Kohler argues in the Sydney Morning Herald 'broadband internet business in Australia will become something like the mobile phone market with its competing networks driving prices lower with capped plans and lower call rates.'
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 7:48 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack
a ceasefire?
The draft resolution proposed by UN Security Council is a ceasefire resolution and is ready to go onto the diplomatic table. That sure took some time.
Will the proposed ceasefire stop things from getting worse. Will it be accepted?
Since it is a ceasefire resolution--- not a political mopping up operation by the US after the successful Israeli military destruction of Hizbullah as was initially envisaged---the ceasefire indicates how the political landscape has changed. Hizbullah has not been neutralized by the Israeli's with support from the US. Hizbullah has gained legitimacy as a credible deterrent against any Israeli aggression in Lebanon.
Meanwhile the war will go on for a while.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 5:49 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
the economy: a question
On the one hand, the Howard Government dishes out $9.5 million in tax cuts. On the other hand, the Reserve Bank raises interest rates because of underlying inflationary pressures. Doesn't the former contribute to the latter? Isn't the Howard Government's tax cuts at odds with the Reserve Bank's tightening monetary stance in the light of strong commodity prices, a tight labour market and rising global inflation.
The Howard Government denies the contradiction. The tax cuts were justified--they help ordinary Australian battlers to afford the increasedl price of petrol says the PM. But the Howard government would not have known the current price of petrol when it handed down the tax cuts package last year at Budget time. The Reserve Bank says that state and commonwealth governments were contributing to demand pressures by running stimulatory budget policies. The states were doing so because of capital spending plands and the commonwealth was doing so with its tax cuts.
I reckon this looks to be a case of bad economic management. The left hand is at odds with the right hand in economic policy.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 3:43 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
August 5, 2006
reality dawns in Washington
The commander of American forces in the Middle East bluntly warned a Senate committee on Thursday that sectarian violence in Iraq, especially in the capital, Baghdad, had grown so severe that the nation could slide toward civil war. Asked by Senator Carl Levin of Michigan, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, whether Iraq risked falling into civil war, General Abizaid replied:
“I believe that the sectarian violence is probably as bad as I’ve seen it, in Baghdad in particular, and that if not stopped, it is possible that Iraq could move towards civil war.”
So they are finally beginning to acknowledge what is going on in Iraq---Iraq is a basket case. However, more needs to be acknowledged doesn't it. The invasion of Iraq has failed to create a stable state, let alone a democratic one. Instead, it has produced chaos and civil war, strengthened Iran, and endangered Israel. In turn, Israel's war in Lebanon has failed in its goal of significantly weakening Hezbollah, whilst the Sunni now support Shi'ite Hezbollah.
Despite these failures Washington is not rethinking its strategy. It has yet to understand the horror of injustice no matter who is the victim.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 4:04 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
different perspectives
The conflict in the Middle East is supposed to be about the benefits of democracy, free markets and the rule of law-- a sort of secular holy war. That is what being modern means, according to Tony Blair. It's all about values. Presumably bombing Lebanon to rubble will strengthen Lebanese democracy by uniting the country's various ethnic groups and political factions and then turning them against Hizbullah. What we are witnessing is the birth pangs of a new Middle East.
A more skeptical view of what Israel is up to this----a de facto annexation of southern Lebanon. It does help to explain the overreaction of Israel to a border incident with Hezbollah. Is that what the Bush administration is providing diplomatic cover for?
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 12:26 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
August 4, 2006
a Judaic critique of Israel
Andrew Benjamin's op. ed on Israel in the Sydney Morning Hearld shows some courage. Writing as a Jew, as a synagogue memberI and one whose academic work continues to move through questions of Jewish identity and the legacy of the Holocaust he rejects Israel speaking in his name. He says:
The Jewish community in Sydney and elsewhere insists on identifying themselves with Israeli actions. These acts are part of a tradition in which the state of Israel has set the measure for being Jewish.
This is done by those who have linked and continue to link being a Jew to Israel and thus to those who conflate Judaism and Zionism. He adds:
The consequence of this is that a critique of Zionism or a disagreement over the policies of Israel are taken at best as a criticism of Jews and, at worst, as anti-Semitic. The evidence is clear. Attacks on synagogues in Seattle and Parramatta underscore the results of this. These attacks are the result of the politics of a nation state.
Rightly said. Is there a Judaic critique of the actions of the Israeli nation state?
Benjamin says that it would be one that one that would allow some Jews to undo the project that continues to identify the policies of a state with both a culture and a religion:
...what endures for many as an outrage is Israel hijacking the Holocaust for its political ends: the Holocaust is used to sustain a specific geo-political situation.The other night in Sydney at the Great Synagogue a speaker defended the incursion into Lebanon on the grounds that it would prevent a further Holocaust.Understanding the Holocaust, tracing its impact upon how we think today, is a project that endures. Moreover, it is a project that resists easy summation. The idea that it can figure as an element of state policy is both an intellectual and ethical scandal. This needs to be said.Well said.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 11:08 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
August 3, 2006
economic reform, foreign debt, health
I don't have tme to read the OECD's 2006 Economic Survey of Australia whilst I'm on holidays on the Limestone Coast. However, Kenneth Davidson has an op.ed. in The Age that addreses the Coalition's long term economic policies.
He says that whilst the OECD's 2006 Economic Survey of Australia is the formal provenance is the OECD's economics department, it is very much the work of the Australian Treasury working according to the dictates of the Howard-Costello Government. It spells out the neo-liberal agenda of the Government to the next election and beyond.
His comments on Treasury's agenda are to the point.
It is most significant for what it doesn't mention: the foreign debt that is now equal to more than 50 per cent of GDP and, in proportion to the economy, almost twice as big as the foreign debt of the United States. The reason? The foreign debt is the elephant that is now so large that it can't be removed from the room without wrecking the house. The Government cannot acknowledge the extent to which economic growth over the past decade has been financed by foreign debt, or why the debt has been used to finance a real estate and share price bubble rather than new export and import replacement industries that could repay it.
Davidson says that recognition of the problem would require the admission that it is the Government's fault that interest rates are rising because foreign lenders are demanding bigger and bigger risk premiums to finance the debt.
Davidson adds that the Treasury's brief warns that long-term fiscal pressures will come from rising Government health spending, particularly through the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme. He adds that:
Nobody could argue with the proposition that "an increased focus should be placed on preventive health measures to minimise future growth in health care costs and reduce long-term fiscal pressures", but it is meaningless except in the context of the contribution that public health programs such as Medicare or PBS contribute to preventive medicine and understanding the contribution that social and economic policies contribute to health outcomes.
Morbidity is a socioeconomic issue and the main way to improve the health of the community is through more egalitarian income distribution and greater security for low-income groups that have worse health outcomes than the rich. However, the brief argues for more inequality and less security in the workplace and the interface between welfare and work despite the adverse impacts on productivity.
Treasury proposes to deal with increasing inequality and the working poor not with minimium wage but with other social policy instruments such as changes in tax rates and thresholds at lower incomes or an employment-conditional tax credit.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 10:36 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
August 2, 2006
an image war
The few images that I've seen on TV indicate that the Israeli/Hizbollah conflict is is a propaganda war as much as a shooting one, and in such a conflict to lose civilians on your own side represents a kind of victory. So whilst Qana was a propaganda disaster for Israel, it was a boon for Hizbullah. The Israeli government want the war to be seen as a victory, not a draw.
Israel is keeping up the offensive, resuming the air assault and initiating a ground assault to push Hizbullah northward to the Litani river.The Israeli hawks are now arguing that Lebanon - from which Israel withdrew six years ago - proves the folly of giving back so much as an inch of conquered territory. But that ground assault isn't going to put Hizbullah out of business is it? Won't an Israeli occupation of Lebanese territory vastly strengthen Hizbullah politically. Will not an Israeli occupation free Hizbullah's fighters to return to fighting a guerrilla war?
Isn't it about time the Howard Government broke with the US and the UK and publicly argued that the Israeli offensive was counter-productive, and that the government favours a call for an immediate ceasefire?
Is the ALP critical of Israeli policy? Does it say that Hezbollah is the source of the problem? Or does the ALP say that Hezbollah is a derivative of the tragic conflict over Palestine that began in 1948? Dos it go along with Tony Blair's narrative of a black-and-white battle between retreat and modernity (between between open values and closed ones) which in this instance Blair describes as "reactionary Islam and modern Islam"? Does it continue to go along with the way that the US, the UK and Australia hide from the reality that the way Britain, America and their allies have dealt with the Arab world since 2001 has provoked the conflict they now want to win? Is the ALP was coming up with any coherent alternatives to the Israeli call for NATO ) to do their occupation work for them?
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 11:22 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
OECD's reform agenda for Australia
I'm on holidays in Robe on the Limestone Coast and it is difficult to obtain internet access. I notice that the OECD has prescribed an aggressive and contentious reform agenda for Australia that looks to be very neo-liberal in its orientation at a time when Australian manufacturing faces stagnation in output and job losses and the Reserve Bank has raised the benchmark interest rate by a a quarter of a per cent to its highest level in more than five years. This rise in interest rates is the second in three months and reflects the surge in commodity prices that has delivered a major income boost to the nation.
The proposed OECD reforms include extending the GST to fresh food, indexing personal income tax rates, phasing out industrial awards, extending welfare to work changes to all people on government handouts, giving states their own income taxes and completing outstanding national competition policy changes
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 10:16 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack