« August 2006 | Main | October 2006 »
September 30, 2006
a barren country
I see that my understanding here was wrong. It is no longer a case of the Darling barely flowing. Those days have gone. The Darling has stopped flowing. The surrounding country in NSW is barren:
Tamara Voininski, Dry bore, 2002, AgenecVU
Henry Lawson's 1890s description of the country 'back-o-Bourke ' rings so true today:
The country looks as though a great ash heap had been spread out there, and mulga scrub and firewood planted — and neglected … a blasted, barren wilderness that doesn't even howl. It is said that the explorers gave the district its name chiefly because of the hunger they found there, which has remained there ever since. I don't know where the 'ford' comes in — there's nothing to ford, except in flood time. Hungerthirst would have been better.
When the Darling is not flowing that means irrigated agriculture is in crisis. Bourke, which rebuilt itself on a thirsty cotton industry, and depends exclusiely on irrigation, is now in decline and relies on welfare. The romance with the country has gone as it hasn't rained in years. Hope is beaten and battered.
The key issue is that Canberra did not think that Australia had a water problem even though CoAG decided to embark on an efficient and sustainable reform of the water industry in 1994 given the over-allocation by state governments doled out water licences as a form of political patronage. So why is reform proving to be so difficult, especially when water shortages is now linked to climate change. Why not admit the mistake and buy back the water licences from willing sellers?
Politics that is why. The states, who control water licences (now rights) fear a rural backlash if they start buying back water licences. And the Nationals are dead against buying back water licences. That option is seen as a last resort by Malcolm Turnball, and the Howard Government.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 2:27 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
September 29, 2006
Beyond Blair?
Sunder Katwala in an article in Prospect states that Blair's New Labour claimed the centre-ground by pushing rhetorically into Tory territory, and the Tories consistently fell into the trap seeking “clear blue water” out to the right. Three defeats later, they have worked it out. Just as Labour had to show it had a response to crime, Cameron seeks attention by addressing issues which Tories used not to talk about—the environment, social justice and global poverty. Labour must now test the Tory language on what are essentially social democratic themes: the key debate will be over what government should do in addressing them, exploring the tension between Cameron’s new concerns and the right’s core “smaller state” agenda, which he seeks to maintain in gentler language.
Since a socialist Jerusalem was not on the agenda New Labour has difficulty with the traditional Labour left. Katwala observes that:
Iraq now dominates all discussion of Blair’s legacy. There have been other failures--Britain’s European anxiety remains unresolved, there has been a retreat to headline-grabbing on crime and asylum. Still, for progressives, this has been by some distance the best British government for 50 years. (That there is so little historical competition is part of the point.) It has not only been more economically and electorally successful than its predecessors: it compares favourably on redistribution with Wilson and Callaghan too. But it is also a government which has visibly run out of steam, and which will likely be 12 years old when it asks the voters for another term.
He then asks: 'So how must Labour’s political narrative, its electoral strategy and its policy agenda evolve?' He answers by saying that 'a "progressive consensus" depends on Labour shifting the argument again, fusing the economic and social agenda with environmental sustainability and narrowing inequality.' How would social democracy fuse the economic and social agenda after Blair? What does that mean for health reform?
Katwala says that:
Labour is set to place education, rather than health, at the centre of its agenda for the next comprehensive spending review. Yet an incoherent education white paper and schools bill has made this the domestic issue over which the party is most divided. The dispute is over whether the current reform agenda will exacerbate inequalities or reduce them. What is needed is a reform agenda which addresses inequality explicitly: a policy approach to schools funding, inspection and targets which pays as much attention to narrowing the gaps in performance as to increasing average attainment—dealing with the long tail.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 6:11 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
September 28, 2006
Iraq: some honesty required
John Howard along with Tony Blair must be one of the few people left who do not think that the Iraq war has fuelled terrorism. Even the CIA now concedes that the invasion of Iraq has fuelled terrorism rather than curbed it. it acknowledges that the number of terrorists identifying themselves as jihadists "are increasing in both number and geographic dispersion".
Leunig
Iraq broke the link of trust between Blair and many Labour supporters in 2003. Tis time for the ALP to address the Iraq issue in an honest way.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 8:17 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
September 27, 2006
as the Darling dries up
I watched the ABC’s Two Men in a Tinnie last night. The poor old Darling. It is highly regulated and barely flows. It's not just the drought --it is corporatized irrigated agriculture taking too much water out of the river. It is highlighted by Cubbie Station in Queensland, in the headwaters of the upstream in the Darling-Murray system being surrounded by water, but over the border in NSW, downsteam from Cubbie, there are properties that once had floods every year for a 100 years, but now haven’t seen a flood in years. The Beattie government allowed the huge Cubbie station water harvesting scheme.
unknown Courier Mail
The establishment of a national Office of Water Resources is a good step forward to ensure a federal focus and co-ordination of water issues. Having Malcolm Turnbull running it is much better than some National Party hack who rants on about greenies, even though Turnbull's market approach (the price of water will rise, a water trading system, private investment in water infrastructure) will primarily benefit agribusiness. Water consumers have little say in this process and the market will not deliver environmental flows to the Murray-Darling system. Governments must intervene to ensure that.
We do have the COAG Water Reform Framework and the National Water Initiative (NWI), which outline the way forward for meeting our future water needs. This focuses on reforms to improve how we manage water including introducing trading options will allow water to move to its higher value uses. Yet t here has been little--no---progress on restoring environmental flows to the River Murray despite the Commonwealth putting in $500 million. There is still no sustainable water policy even though climate change means hotter temperatures and less water in the lower Murray-Darling Basin.
What we saw on Two Men and a Tinnie was that the rural regions are already facing extremely low levels of water supply--- eg. Wilcannia in western New South Wales. Similarly in central and southern Queensland, and in regional cities, such as Goulburn. That looks like the future. The state governments are relying heavily on demand management in the cities as a means of meeting future water needs, even though water restrictions and other demand management strategies can only help to constrain demand in the short term. Without additional supply, restrictions are ineffective in constraining water demand for the long-run. Though recycling water in the capital cities is one of the most effective means of reducing the amount of water drawn from our rivers, few state governments are committed to investing in that in any substantive way.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 10:44 AM | Comments (4) | TrackBack
September 26, 2006
Blair's last stand
As the tensions in No 10 Downing Street spill over into the public sphere the battered Labour government looks to be in a mess. New Labour is struggling to find a new policy vision, which will energize the party at a time when the government is faced with a 'its time for a change mood' in the electorate and the long shadow of Murdoch's Daily Mail with its roots in the old Tory working and lower middle class.
Does New Labour have any policy substance? Or is all style? Blair did have the ability to win over and hold middle-ground voters, but then the middle is progressive now.
New Labour faces some tough policy decisions in domestic policy: reforming the National Health Service and public schooling. More privatisation?What happens to social democracy and Old Labour's defence of the welfare state?
Ross McKibbin, writing in the London Review of Books, says that:
...the overwhelming influence of America on New Labour is inescapable: Blair’s foreign policies are merely their most dramatic manifestation. To Blair, and even more to Gordon Brown and his kitchen cabinet, America stands for ingenuity, dynamism, wealth and power. It is the model to which we should aspire. This view has always trumped Blair’s Europeanism and has effectively eliminated ‘Europe’ as a model for this country.But Blair’s attitudes to America differ little from those of the Conservatives....The Conservative Party, like Blair, clearly thinks that America alone has the strength and desire to shape the world, and that if you too want to shape the world you have to do it by America’s side. Standing literally by America’s side also suits Blair’s seemingly obsessive wish to be the centre of attention. What better way to do that than to stand shoulder to shoulder with the president of the United States?
It's not quite shoulder to shoulder is it.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 6:22 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
economic woes
Finally we have some concerns being expressed about Australia's the poor state of Australia's trade in the national press. Tim Colebatch, writing in The Age, says:
Until 1980, our trade was more or less in balance, and on goods, in surplus. Since then, we have run trade deficits in 22 of the past 26 years, and in the past four years they have averaged more than $20 billion a year.Our share of global exports of goods has shrunk from 1.12 per cent in 1996 to 0.94 per cent in 2004. Of the 30 OECD members, only three have had worse export growth in that time.
That would indicate poor economic management by the Howard Government. It covers up what has gone wrong by talking up the way the resource boom is bringing the trade deficit down. So there is no need to worry. Colebatch challenges this argument:
The manufacturing malaise has to be tackled because most of the world's trade---most of Australia's merchandise trade---is in manufactures. Last year we ran a staggering $92 billion deficit in manufacturing trade alone. We need reforms to stop that getting worse. And unless we want to trust in praying that global prices for our minerals stay high and volumes grow, we must identify ways to significantly cut that deficit, and get back in the black.
An opportunity for the ALP to broaden its emphasis on the skills shortage and declining labour productivity. The ALP used to be strong on policies about trade and manufacturing. It seems to have gone silent.
The Howard Government has been captured by the mining industry. They cannot see beyond Quarry Australia. Even though Australia is one of the world's sunniest countries and an innovator in solar research solar power is sidelined in the talk about clean and green. As Suzy Freeman-Greene in the Age says:
No single power source can replace our reliance on coal; we need diversity. Solar is not the panacea. But there's so much more we could do to foster an affordable, large-scale industry. Far from a fringe affair, the [Conservation] foundation says solar PV is the fastest-growing energy technology in the world, with growth rates of 60 per cent annually over the past five years.
Australia used to be a world leader in solar research but no more. Yet, the increase in temperatures through climate change and the inevitable growth of air conditioner demand on the electricity grid, indicates that the Federal Government should be moving from just setting up demonstration projects (Solar City) to looking at encouraging an Australian based solar energy industry. Freeman-Greene says that:
One effective way to encourage investment in solar power is to reward panel owners for the unused power they can feed into the electricity grid. Many in the local solar industry are calling for the introduction of a "feed-in tariff", where a small levy is added to all power bills. The money is then used to pay households or businesses for their excess solar power at a higher rate than that paid to dirtier sources.
A feed-in tariff would cost the typical power consumer the equivalent of one cup of coffee a year (presumably about $3).
The fifty percent cut back in solar subsidies to community organisations and the closing of the program in 2007 for residential rebates is a backward step. It removes an important incentive that pays back the community by lessening the demand on the electricity and public infrastructure. Instead of supporting genuinely clean forms of power the Howard Government boosts our coal and uranium industries.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 8:12 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
September 25, 2006
the decline of Crikey
I am a subscriber to Crikey's daily email and it has been worthwhile over the last 15 months. However, of late, the conservative political commentary by Christian Kerr has declined with his embrace of the Bush narrative of the West v Islam. This narrative is deployed by Kerr to target lefties as bad. Rarely is this kind of issue mentioned, let alone considered. What we have is the rhetoric of 'Chamberlain-like appeasers' used against the 'limp left' who question Bush's strategy of a full-frontal, global assault on Islam.
This is Kerr's effort on Friday:
It’s Friday, it’s been a long week --- so let’s wrap this up quickly. There’s been a lot of shouting in Crikey of late over the West and Islam ---yet I suspect that many of the people involved don’t really give a hoot about the issues supposedly invovled. I suspect that they’re simply anti-American. Ironically, one of the best recent wraps of this tendency comes from an Arab newspaper, Asharq Al-Awsat. It’s carried some particularly sharp thoughts on Gunter Grass’ confessions of his SS past to the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.
We are then treated to an account of Grass's well known Nazi sympathies and not noticing racism in Germany.
Kerr reaches this conclusion:
Living under Hitler for 13 years, and not having noticed racism? Grass must have been deaf and blind. Indeed. If America’s involved, it must be bad. That’s about the only remaining shred of ideology the tired old leftists have to cling to.
Huh? German fascists and Australian lefties are equivalent because they are anti-American? That's trash talk --there is no argument here about the Rumsfeld strategy in Afghanistan or Iraq, or the issues raised by the war on terrorism. It's just guilt by association. If we disagree with Kerr's conservative moverment, then we are by definition endangering the security of the country.
Kerr's trash talk indicates how he has become a shrill cultural warrrior who belongs on the dark pages of The Australian. He is travelling along with the other neo-cons banging the war drum. Presumably, the bizarre acts committed by the US in Guatanamo, Abu Ghraib and the CIA's secret prisons to bring more democracy in the Middle East can be written off as the crimes of a few bad apples. That's moral clarity for you.
Crikey's distinctive political voice has gone.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 5:57 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack
SA budget
The Rann government handed down its budget last week--several months late. It has been favourabley received as Treasurer Kevin Foley had emphasised increased spending in health, education and law and order ($1.56 billion), which is to be paid for out of costcutting---reducing the numbers in the public service (1600 over four years). This is at a time when the SA's revenue boom has peaked and the state faces economic growth lower (2.5 per cent) than the national average (3.25 per cent) over the next decade.
Atchinson
We have a global wine glut, an embattled car industry, manufacturing jobs going offshore, drought, a declining and ageing population despite SA being granted "regional status" for migration purposes. The economy is increasingly reliant on defence and the expansion in mining by BHP Billiton at its Olympic Dam operation at Roxy Downs. SA is still primarily a small business state and there were few measures for business.
The editorial in the Australian Financial Review says that:
Unless the state government creates conditions in which business can create jobs and lure people back, the outlook will remain ordinary...Like Victoria in the early 1990s SA has to pedal harder than the other states just to keep up. Unlike Victoria's political leaders of the 1990s SA Premier Mike Rann and Mr Foley are failing to see this.
Despite rising state taxes and increasing GST revenue the Budget failed to reduce payroll tax and neglected small business.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 8:00 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
September 24, 2006
the power equation in Iraq
As the Bush administration swings between bombing or engaging in diplomacy to deal with the crisis over Tehran's nuclear program and to contain Iran as a regional power Gareth Porter argues in Asia Times Online that US troops in Iraq are Tehran's 'hostages' . He says:
The underlying reality in Iraq, which the Bush administration does not appear to grasp fully, is that the United States is now dependent on the sufferance of Iran and its Iraqi Shi'ite political-military allies to continue the occupation.Three and a half years after the occupation began, the US military is no longer the real power in Iraq. the main threat to the occupation comes not from the Sunni insurgents but from the militant Iraqi Shi'ite forces aligned with Iran, led by Muqtada al-Sadr's Mehdi Army. The armed Shi'ite militias are now powerful enough to make it impossible for the US occupation to continue.
Now that's an inconvenient truth isn't it.
Clay Bennett, Now Playing, 2006
Muqtada has the strongest political-military force in the country. The Americans are not really in charge. What now? That's where Iran enters the picture.
Porter says that:
If Muqtada and his followers are already preparing for a showdown with the US occupation forces, the only factor that appears to be restraining the Mehdi Army now is Iran. After all, Tehran's interest lies not in forcing an immediate withdrawal of US forces, but in keeping them in Iraq as virtual hostages. The potential threat to US forces in Iraq in retaliation for an attack on Iran is probably Tehran's most effective deterrent to such an attack.
Will that give the Bush administration second thoughts about attacking Iran? Will the Bush administration put the reassuring lies to one side?
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 8:18 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
September 23, 2006
waiting for a techno fix on Greenhouse
The Howard Govenment looks increasingly isolated on global warming. It is being backed into a corner by events and it is increasingly being portrayed as struggling to cope with the external threat of global warming It is assumed by the Government that Australia still is the Lucky Country; that somehow the impact of climate change will bypass Australia; and it is not possible to wean the economy off its dependance on coal ands fossil fuels.
Leahy, Virgin goes green
The standard Howard Government line is glum: even mild restrictions on greenhouse gases will be economically crippling. So we have to say no to strong regulations and wait for technology to come to the rescue in the next 20 years to help slow the rate of greenhouse -gas buildup. Regulations don't work. Nor do market based solutions---profit incentives to reduce pollution. It is not considered possible for corporations to be carbon neutral (add no new carbon to the atmosphere) or that entrepreneurs can make money by reducing greenhouse gases.
The fossil fuel industry provides corporate funding of lobby groups who deny that manmade climate change is taking place. These groups run a consistent message: that the science is contradictory, the scientists are split, most practice junk science environmentalists are charlatans, liars or lunatics, and if governments took action to prevent global warming, they would be endangering the global economy for no good reason. The aim of the professional denial industry is to create the impression of doubt about climate change; doubt undermines the scientific consensus on greenhouse gases.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 10:20 AM | Comments (6) | TrackBack
September 22, 2006
factionalism
Senator Robert Ray, in a recent blunt and honest address to the Fabian Society in Sydney, spoke some political truths about the consequences of the factions in the ALP. He said that the problem was not the factions themselves, as people will coalesce over issues, shared principles, and will work together to advance the interests of candidates they prefer. Rather the problem is with those running the factions.
Pryor
Ray says that the leaders were so obsessed with dominating every facet of political activity that:
....there was no opportunity for talented Labor Party members who have no factional allegiance. For every example we can cite of people getting through the system - Peter Garrett, for example - there will be many more examples of those who didn't and whose talents are now lost to us.
Ray adds that success at a federal level needed "a caucus brimming with talent" but that was being held back by what he called "the Stasi element".
This reference to communist secret police is spelt out thus:
A whole production line of soulless apparatchiks has emerged, highly proficient and professional but with no Labor soul. Control freaks with tunnel vision, ruthless leakers in their self-interest, individuals who would rather the party lose an election than that they lose their place in the pecking order.
He said that some of the factional leaders or powerbrokers ---fellow Victorian senators Stephen Conroy and Kim Carr are the equivalent of "factional Daleks--"robots from Doctor who screeched "EX-TER-MIN-ATE" and were hell-bent on world domination.
That's truth telling isn't it. It's not factionalism that is the problem. It's the politics of putting personal power ahead of electoral success.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 8:35 AM | Comments (8) | TrackBack
September 21, 2006
Krugman on President Bush and torture
In his latest op.ed. in the New York Times op. ed. Paul Krugman asks a good question: 'why is Mr. Bush so determined to engage in "torture?' He says:
Let's be clear what we're talking about here. According to an ABC News report from last fall, procedures used by C.I.A. interrogators have included forcing prisoners to "stand, handcuffed and with their feet shackled to an eye bolt in the floor for more than 40 hours"; the "cold cell," in which prisoners are forced "to stand naked in a cell kept near 50 degrees," while being doused with cold water; and, of course, water boarding, in which "the prisoner is bound to an inclined board, feet raised and head slightly below the feet," then "cellophane is wrapped over the prisoner's face and water is poured over him," inducing "a terrifying fear of drowning." And bear in mind that the "few bad apples" excuse doesn't apply; these were officially approved tactics - and Mr. Bush wants at least some of these tactics to remain in use.
So we come back to the question. Why is the Bush administration so determined to torture people?
Krugman's answer is along the lines suggested here:
To show that it can. The central drive of the Bush administration - more fundamental than any particular policy - has been the effort to eliminate all limits on the president's power. Torture, I believe, appeals to the president and the vice president precisely because it's a violation of both law and tradition. By making an illegal and immoral practice a key element of U.S. policy, they're asserting their right to do whatever they claim is necessary.
President Bush understands himself to be a war president, senses a "Third Awakening" of religious devotion in the United States and understands the US's struggle with international terrorists as a war between good and evil. The Administration is trying to make torture legal.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 5:37 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
citizenship test
The cartoonists have had a field day with all the political talk about Australian (common) values, formal citizenship tests and immigration, and they have been busy highlighting drinking , eating meat pies and playing cricket as Australian values and the politics buried in what Australian values mean.
Bill Leak
Australian values is mentioned in the new citizenship test proposed in the discussion paper, Australian Citizenship: much more than a ceremony, issued this week by Andrew Robb, the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Immigration and Multicultural Affairs. It says:
A key question, which arises in the context of a test for citizenship, is whether a prospective citizen should be required to demonstrate not only that they understand the details of Australian life identified in a citizenship test, but also whether they are willing to commit to and uphold Australian values and to fully participate in Australian life? What should the form of such a commitment be?
That places what is meant by Australian values centre stage doesn't it, especially when it is politically contested (assimilation versus cultural diversity). If we require that migrants respect and share 'our' values we must agree on what those values are. Egalitarianism, the fair go, and the rights of workers are more than the macho interpretation of the socially conservative NSW Right who still hanker for the White Australia Policy.
As John Warhurst points out in the Canberra Times:
While this week's discussion paper emphasises common [Australian] values ad nauseam, Australians actually disagree about many things. That is healthy. In fact, the right to disagree with each other and with our governments is central to our democracy. The preamble to the Australian Citizenship Act 1948, quoted in the discussion paper, does a much better job. In 1948, Australian citizenship is described as "a common bond, involving reciprocal rights and obligations, uniting all Australians, while respecting their diversity". Why not leave it at that?
Though that 1948 preamble also looks to be pretty good to me, Australian values are the new battlefield, in the runup to the next federal election.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 10:04 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
September 20, 2006
world trade
I see that we are approaching the 20th anniversary of the Cairns Group ---the lobby group of the developing countries in the World Trade Organization (WTO) that was formed in 1986. They are currently in Cairns to discuss agricultural trade reform in the face of opposition to such reform by Japan, the Europeans and the Americans who continue to protect their farmers by resisting cuts to domestic farm subsidies and tariffs. The failure to reach an agreement on cutting protection on agriculture remains the sticking point in the Doha round of world trade negotiations.
It's ironic isn't it. Farm interests, accounting for less that 4% of the employment in developed countries, can effectively block deals to open new markets for services and manufactures which account for more than 90% of employment.
The context is the suspension of the Doha round of the WTO since July; multilateralism in world trade is on a backburner these days, and it is being fractured by bilateral free trade agreements; and Australian farmers having had European agricultural protection in their sights for over 20 years. Australia increasingly looks to be supporting the US in this WTO trade negoitations.
The Cairns Group looks weak and the gathering in Carins looks more like a celebration of past achievements. It's pivotal role seems to be in the past as many of the developing countries shift to manufacturing, and China and India resist agricultural trade reform to protect their farmers. Prospects for the Carins group finding a way to kickstart the Doha round of trade negotiations don't look good, given the US refusal to cut domestic payments to its farmers.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 6:54 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
September 19, 2006
playing the values game
The values debate in an insular Australia is a curious one isn't it.Though it looks to be a superfical debate, it is central to political conflict these days, even more so than the economy. As inflation spreads through the economy the battle over values becomes ever more important and crucial.
Geoff Pryor
It was not so long ago that the ALP had a stranglehold on Australian values, which they defined as mateship, egalitarianism and nationalism. As David McKnight observes in the Sydney Morning Herald, These were once Labor's core identity and when large numbers of blue-collar workers voted Labor, they voted their identity as well as their economic interest.
Since 1996 it is John Howard who speaks the language of class, values and populism. He has made values the new battleground in Australian politics, and he has succeeded in getting mainstream Australians to embrace his version of Australian values. That version is family values with its subtexts of the authoritarian or paternalistic father who protects and punishes the nation-family, social cohesion, and the need for cultural diversity to give way to an emphasis on Australian values in the name of integration. Australia has a serious social cohesion problem because of Islam. We need political authority to ensure security against terrorism and a cohesive community. The nation is the patriarchal family write large. Fortress Australia rules.
The ALP has been marginalised in the values debate. It is struggling to get back in, and it is finding it difficult to articulate our desires and identity differently in a post 9/11 world. It is still haunted by the Coalition's 2001 election slogan: "We will decide who comes to this country and the circumstances in which they come."
One strategy adopted by the Beazley ALP to wrap themselves tightly in the flag is to link immigration and identity issues to industrial relations, under the banner of values---protecting Aussie jobs from foreign workers. This goes beyond loyalty to Australia and its people, respect for rights and liberties, upholding and obeying laws, sharing democratic beliefs, and freedom of religion and speech. In a globalised world this value strategy plays the politics of inclusion and exclusion, and speaks to the hostility in the elctorate to migrants and "foreigners"-- the ones who "do not fit in" and "do not share our values".
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 7:13 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
September 18, 2006
maximizing Presidential power
Tom Malinowski in an op. ed. in the Washington Post says that the Bush Administration is trying to legalize torture:
President Bush is urging Congress to let the CIA keep using "alternative" interrogation procedures -- which include, according to published accounts, forcing prisoners to stand for 40 hours, depriving them of sleep and use of the "cold cell," in which the prisoner is left naked in a cell kept near 50 degrees and doused with cold water.Bush insists that these techniques are not torture -- after all, they don't involve pulling out fingernails or applying electric shocks. He even says that he "would hope" the standards he's proposing are adopted by other countries.
It's a defining moment for the US. Will Congress find the political will and courage to block the President in his attempt to water down Article 3 of the Geneva Convention with its protections against prisoner mistreatment? The bill would also ratify the President's views on military commissions, restrict the ability of defendants to see the evidence used to convict them, eliminate the use of habeas corpus and the ability of an independent judiciary to inquire into the legality of the detention and treatment (or mistreatment) of human beings held at Guantanamo Bay.
Another bill before Congress would legalize the President's NSA domestic surveillance program and insulate it from judicial review. Will Congress stand firm against this bill? This is a real choice facing Congress and the American people. The first bill gives authorization to breach the Geneva Conventions by engaging in what is manifestly "cruel treatment" . . . and in some cases, to do what virtually anyone would consider, simply, "torture."
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 10:00 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
water crisis
It is not just water shotages in south east Queensland is it. Climate change is happening faster than expected in Kosciuszko National Park, with snow cover in some areas already reaching low levels that the CSIRO predicted were not likely to occur until 2020.
Yet for many polticians in NSW and Queensland water policy is to impose restrictions and pray for wet weather.They continue to act as if the drought and the current dry winter was an unexpected emergency.Yet state governments have acted to continue to defer investment in infrastructure, continue to do poor planning and to protect their dividends from water utilities. What is not being seriously considered in the aforementioned states is long term planning to transfer water from rural to urban areas, desalination, recycling and stormwater harvesting.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 8:15 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
September 17, 2006
Christianity vs. Islam
Despite the Israeli destruction of Lebanon in the second Lebanon war we have comments by Pope Benedict XVI that, as a religion Islam, is tainted with violence. It was part of a lecture delivered at the University of Regensburg in Germany, where Benedict was a professor and vice-rector in 1969-71. In the lecture Bendict argued for two positions: reason must be part of religion; and civilisation needs religion.
The comments about violence and Islam were made in the form of a criticism of the Prophet Mohammad by 14th century Byzantine Emperor Manuel II Palaeologus. The Pope quoted the following remarks without qualification and with apparent approval:
The emperor comes to speak about the issue of jihad, holy war. He said, I quote, 'Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached.
A Catholic saying that, given the history of Catholicism and its known hostility to Islam? To say that Islam is evil and inhumane overlooks that Islam is a big tent with many competing worldviews (eg., Muslim liberals and fundamentalists). Why not self-criticise Christianity's violent past and its forced conversions? Why not recall the time when medieval Christendom fought science the relationship between faith and reason in traditional Islam was a cooperative one. This, after all, is the political context of today:
Benedict 's rhetoric collapses the differences between Islam and terrorism, and sets up good Catholicism (genuine, reasoned faith) vs. evil Islam (the coercive demand for unreasoned faith). If Benedict's point was to illustrate the fundamental contradiction between religion and holy war, isn't spreading the Christian faith through violence also something unreasonable?
Still, the reaction in the Muslim world is over the top, and, ironically, illustrates the Pope's point about violence, reason and religion. Benedict has since apologized. The conservatives are going to have a great time reworking the reaction from the Muslim street into the meme about a violent Islam attacking western civlization. The subtext of the conservatives is that Islam and the Western democracies cannot live together peacefully. Violence is used to illustrate their case.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 5:49 PM | Comments (10) | TrackBack
September 16, 2006
infotainment
Free-to-air television may be a licence to print money but it's a brutal business overladened with mythmaking. Its a culture industry, whose reason for existence is making money by selling selling captive audiences in mass markets to advertisers. Alas, there is a downturn in advertising revenue as corporate advertisers drift to the internet. That means cost cutting, dumbing down programs, and going tabloid.
Geoff Pryor
The commercial free-to-air TV stations are in a mature market and they will decline during the next five to 10 years. As they face increasing competitive pressure from the proliferating new media, the networks continue to lobby to buy time and stave off the inevitable. The foundations on which the industry was built are crumbling with the shift to full-time digital streaming of any kind of programming on demand via the internet. What do they do?
Currently, they are making themselves subjects in their own soapie about themselves --- it's postmodern infotainment.
Nicholson
This Day Tonight and A Current Affair have become a parody of
Frontline.
Update:19 September
The cannibal saga of tabloid TV buys into, anbd recycles savage primitiveness as the other of Australian modernity. As Sarah Hewat points out in The Age:
Primitiveness" is, after natural resources, a prize commodity in Papua and tour operators have perfected the art of selling "first contact tours" while never naming them as such. I have known locals who have been paid a measly sum to take off their clothes, brandish spears and speak of a barbaric past to satisfy the voyeurism of white tourists, journalists or filmmakers seeking a close encounter with our ancestral past. The cash-strappedlocals who stage such performances are, unfortunately, adjuncts to people who get paid much more to bring Westerners to them.
She also points out that the savage primitve Korowai that appeared on the original 60 Minutes report wore shorts, were holding black plastic bags were speaking Bahasa Indonesia, rather than, as was claimed, an ancient dialect. 60 Minutes was selling primitiveness.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 2:36 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
September 15, 2006
Krugman on economic progress
Paul Krugman spells out the issue very clearly in his column in the New York Times.
Consider this: The United States economy is far richer and more productive than it was a generation ago. Statistics on economic growth aside, think of all the technological advances that have made workers more productive over the past generation. In 1973, there were no personal computers, let alone the Internet. Even fax machines were rare, expensive items, and there were no bar-code scanners at checkout counters. Freight containerization was still uncommon. The list goes on and on.
He's right. The Australian economy is much richer and more preductive than it was in the 1990s. Our everyday life is increasingly shaped, and transformed, by technology and we have incorporated more technological goodies into our lives. Krugman then makes a good point:
Yet in spite of all this technological progress, which has allowed the average American worker to produce much more, we’re not sure whether there was any rise in the typical worker’s pay. Only those at the upper end of the income distribution saw clear gains ---- gains that were enormous for the lucky few at the very top.
It's a similar situation in Australia is it not? A decade of growth has not spread the benefits widely as the shift to self-care in the market place deepens. Some argue that some sections of the middle class (public service) have been squeezed.
Krugman then argues that the US debate over whether the middle class is a bit better off or a bit worse off now than a generation ago misses the point. He says:
What we should be debating is why technological and economic progress has done so little for most Americans, and what changes in government policies would spread the benefits of progress more widely. An effort to shore up middle-class health insurance, paid for by a rollback of recent tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans ---something like the plan proposed by John Kerry two years ago, but more ambitious ---would be a good place to start.
We have economic growth but not necessarily happiness is the Australian argument. The insecurity of large mortgages, long work hours, troubled families, lack of free time, etc cause much unhappiness. Those who hold this position---eg. Clive Hamilton---question the neoliberal claim that economic growth and rising personal consumption lead to more happiness. It does not necessarily led to living a fully human life.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 9:33 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
mission creep in Afghanistan
The plan was for Nato (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) to take over from the Americans in Afghanistan in order to stablise the country. Stablisation means countering a resurgent Taliban in order to prosecute the 'war on terror'. Afghanistan is becoming the frontline in the "war on terror." Consequently, Nato is shifting from peacekeeping to conflict operations. So we have mission creep to protect President Karzai's government as disaster looms in Afghanistan.
The western strategy is to pursue Islamist terrorists into their breeding and training grounds instead of fighting them in their own country. The reason that the international force [has been in] in Afghanistan for the last five years is to make sure that Afghanistan will never again be a safe haven for international terrorists.
However, the Pakistan government has acknowledged defeat in Waziristan, and its consequent military withdrawal from the province, represents a grave blow to stabilising Afghanistan. The Taliban are now drawing increasing support from the Afghan population and these additional numbers have allowed them for the first time to conduct their own large-scale search operations against NATO troops in the south. Paul Rogers says that there are already 36,000 foreign troops in Afghanistan. 19,000 Americans are supported by special forces from Britain, France and several other countries in their long-lasting counter-insurgency campaign in the east of the country, and 17,000 NATO troops of the International Security Assistance Force (Isaf) are elsewhere in the country, including large contingents in the south. He says that solated garrisons face near-constant attacks and may well have to be withdrawn to secure bases. The British, Canadian, Dutch and other forces are forced repeatedly to call in air power to counter the determined and repeated assaults, not from small groups of paramilitaries but frequently from formations more than a hundred strong.
What is happening in Afghanistan has happened before, against the British many years ago and against the Soviets more recently. This latest battle against a foreign invader is being fought as a classic Afghan war. It appears that the Taliban have regained control over the southern half of Afghanistan and their front line is advancing daily. Disaster looms for the western forces.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 8:49 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
September 14, 2006
"media reform"
The Howard Government is introducing legislation, made up of four separate bills covering extra powers for the media regulator, digital switchover and changes to ownership rules, today. The bill will be referred to a Senate committee, which has been asked to report back by October 5. Legislation covering the digital licences will be introduced next month. My guess is that the dissident National Party senators will hold out for a while on a few issues and there will be some modification, but essentially the legislation is likely to pass.
As John Durie in the Australian Financial Review points out the key to media reform in Australia is still the protection afforded to the free-to-air television industry that is not known for its innnovation or diversity. It was only a little while ago that free-to-air was barred from investing in the new spectrum for in-home digital TV services (Channel A) and the spectrum for use in mobile phones (Channel B). But there has been a backflip by Communications Minister Helen Coonan. As of yesterday the heavily protected free-to-air television industry is barred from the former spectrum but not the latter, and it is the latter where the money is to be made, as they can provide up to 30 channels for mobile TV and other devices.
Pryor
The upshot of Coonan's media reform? Increased media concentration and a greater lack of diversity.
Those disadvantaged by the increased protection for free-to-air television industry are News Ltd and Fairfax---the print industry. And consumers. However, it is unclear what kind of services and content innovation News Ltd and Fairfax would bring to the table. Fairfax has pulled out of bidding in the auction for the mobile TV licence.That leaves News, Foxtel, Telstra, Seven, Macquarie Bank and PBL as likely bidders. Where does Fairfax move to now? It looks increasingly like being boxed in a corner. Murdoch has the option of TV takeover (so we have Fox Television) and News Ltd could end up being the most powerful single entity in the Australian market.
In an interview on Lateline Paul Keating, the former ALP Prime Minister, addressed his concerns from the consumers perspective. He said that it worried him:
...about the quality of our plurality, our democracy, the diversity of views. I mean, is there any case, any case, for any one of the free-to-air stations, Seven, Nine or Ten, owning say, the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age? If you're a policy maker, is there any case? You see the National Party talking about protecting communities, giving them some diversity in provincial centres. I'm very sympathetic to that view because you get the local free-to-air station in some country centre owning the local newspaper and that's pretty much it for the diversity of opinion coming your way....Now, if that station owns the newspapers or is allowed to own the newspapers, then that diversity is curtailed. Now, the National Party senators, not unreasonably in my opinion, are saying "this is not very good."
He then adds:
But I think they should extend the argument - it's not very good for us in the cities either. I mean, why should we, if you live if a provincial part of Australia and you want diversity, the Government's so-called five voices - I mean if you take Sydney. I mean if you take 2CH, dear old 2CH, you wouldn't call her much of a voice, would you? But she's one of the five, for instance. I mean, you know, I think there should be some consistency on the part of members and senators in treating the capital cities the same as the provincial cities. That is, we are all entitled to diversity.
He then asks:
how would it be living in Sydney, say, if the PBL squad at Channel Nine, Eddie and the boys, also controlled the Sydney Morning Herald and then down in Melbourne, the Nine Network had The Age? Or, alternatively, the Fairfax company owned Channel Seven? That is HSV7 in Melbourne, ATN7 in Sydney - would this be good for us? How could this be good for us?
Good questions. And surrpise suprise. The Nationals are listening to Keating--the old enemy.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 9:20 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
work-to welfare
The Howard Government's baby bonus---or maternity payment, which currently pays $4000 for each new arrival, rising to $5000 in 2008, is aimed squarely at the many thousands of suburban families the Government likes to call Howard's battlers. This is the new aspirational middle class--the new version of the old Protestant moral middle class-- who base their lives on the moral virtues of hard work and diligence and firmly believe in the moral benefit of work and its ability to enhance character.
Jenny Stewart, in an op.ed. in The Canberra Times, observes that:
There is one group, however, that the Government is hoping will not be receiving the payment, and that is sole parents. If you are a married woman and your partner is employed, Mr Howard wants you at home having babies. If you are a single woman, he wants you to put your kids in care and go out to work. Sole parents and their children are undoubtedly the Government's least-favourite form of family, particularly when they are receiving public benefits.
Many critics of the welfare state claimed that welfare bred a poor work ethic and a self-perpetuation "culture of poverty" in which ambitions focused on staying on welfare and avoiding productive work.The single female parents were seen to be in need of some discipline to break the welfare dependency by forcing them back into the workforce. So, under the new Welfare-to-Work provisions, single mums receiving Parenting Payment must start to look for a job when their youngest child turns eight.
Sharpe
The Government is trying to reduce welfare dependency (including the disabled) by reducing the number of people receiving pension payments. In doing so it is intervening in people's lives. So we have a social form of governance with a new political (neo-liberal ) rationality.This aims to extend the economic form to the social--the other side of welfare to work is deregulating the labor market and reducing the minimium wage. Welfare-to-work reform highlights how the neo-liberal shift to the market is both a political program and a reorganization or restructuring of technologies of government.
Stewart says that the welfare-to-work system refers not only to the role of Centrelink, but to the Job Network, the name given to the collection of private-sector organisations (including many not-for-profits) that deliver publicly supported employment services. She adds :
Overall, the Government's propensity for social engineering has created something of a monster. The welfare-to-work system is policed by Centrelink (itself overseen by the Department of Human Services), organised by the Department of Employment and Workplace Relations, and what social policy there is comes from the Department of Family and Community Services. Rather than being delivered by one organisation, as in the days of the Commonwealth Employment Service, the Government's interest in employment services is delivered under contract by more than 100.
This mode of social governance, is judged by those on the social democratic left to be wrong. It is held that discipline is bad and domination should be condemned. Thus Mark Bahnisch points out over at Larvatus Prodeo that what has been created by the big government conservatives is 'an intrusive and paternalistic bureaucracy which obsesses about turning people into compliant ‘work ready’ citizens.'
Where to now? Don Arthur over at Club Troppo looks at some basic income options. It's not easy spelling out the options ---human capital development programs for the jobless is another ----as we live in a time characterized by a weak and sceptical left, the departure from class politics, and the failure of progressive visions that could represent alternatives to the contemporary order.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 3:19 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack
September 13, 2006
a cheap shot?
It's not just politicians super is it, where the biff and bash of politics gives way to matey consensus. It is also around national security, as illustrated in Beazley's proposal that immigrants and tourists pledge allegiance to "Australian values" .
I understand the strategy--it is designed to negate the wedge politics of Muslim bashing being practised by the Coalition. But it comes close to embracing integration as assimilation. Which values are to be included in the pledge to abide by Australian values? Multiculturalism as equality? Hardly. It's only respect for different religions and cultures. How are we to understand 'respect'? Why in terms of a mateship visa. See what I mean? More of an analysis is given here.
If Australian values are to include respect for women, then Shane Warne cannot enter the country can he? Or is just Muslims that have to respect women? If so, then the Beazley-ALP comes close to dog-whistling on Muslim-bashing.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 9:00 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
September 12, 2006
Al Gore's argument
Al Gore, who is in Australia to promote his an art house documentary An Inconvenient Truth, said the following on ABC Radio this morning:
Australia in many ways is more at risk than any other nation. You have climate extremes now because of your latitude and your place in the middle of the ocean, an island continent and those extremes are predicted to get worse ... You have, here in Sydney, in Brisbane, in Perth and elsewhere, shortages of drinking water. You have more fires, you have threats to the Great Barrier Reef, you have more Category Five cyclones and, most importantly of all, the soil moisture is being threatened as scientists have told us it would be. Australia is the driest of the inhabited continents and you’ve ingeniously created this magnificent civilisation in a place where the water is marginal and yet global warming threatens that. We can solve it but in order to avoid that harm we have to see it as a moral issue and discharge the responsibility we have to those who come after us.
Sounds a reasonably persuasive account doesn't it. The reasonable voice of liberal Enlightenment reason, rather than the preaching of a lefty moral guardian. Addressing this should be our top priority is the inference.
So reasonable even The Australian drops its stirring the anti-intellectualism of the populist right in Australian politics, and accepts the case. It says in an editorial that In the film, Mr Gore successfully challenges the thesis that global warming is a part of a cyclical weather pattern rather than a man-made phenomenon. So global warming is real and it is caused by carbon dioxide. The problem for the editorialist is the real cost of tackling climate change. But this is not spelt out with respect to Australia. The editorialist dances off into talking about the developing world needing to industrialize to overcoming poverty and it being more important to ensuring clean drinking water, sanitation, basic healthcare and education for everyone.
The editorialist just recycles the arguments of Lomborg's The Sceptical Environmentalist that we are better off improving the lives of poor people in the developing world instead. What is not mentioned is the cost of the Australian's proposal:
Instead of criticising John Howard for failing to sign the climate protocol, Mr Gore would be better advised to put his weight behind the Prime Minister's Asia-Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate, an intitiative that brings the US and the Asian tigers inside the tent to develop solutions such as carbon sequestration, geothermal power and clean coal technology.
Doesn't the cost of carbon sequestration need to be addressed? Will not that increase the cost of electricity---double it on some accounts?
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 11:40 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
selling off Medibank Private
So it looks as if the privatisation of Medibank Private is going to be deferred until 2008. The Howard Government has justified the sale in three ways. Firstly, that there is no good reason to retain Medibank Private in government ownership. Secondly, it would being good for the private health insurance market. This means that it would ensure more competition in the private health insurance market. Competition means lower premiums for consumers is the inference. Thirdly, Medibank's customers would benefit from greater efficiency with a privatised fund delivering lower management expenses. Private is good public is bad is the philosophy of Nick Minchin, the Finance Minister.
True, there would be increased competition, if other private health insurance companies were prevented from owning it through carving Medibank up. However, a privatised Medibank Private would need to make a profit for shareholders. Wouldn't Medibank Private then be run to maximise profits, as Julia Gillard claims? Doesn't that mean increased premiums for consumers?
You can see why there is growing public opposition to a major float of Medibank Private. The postponement measns that the proposed sale as an election issue. Labor would oppose the privatisation of Australia's biggest health fund and argue that a for-profit fund would fuel premium rises.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 9:06 AM | Comments (6) | TrackBack
September 11, 2006
9/11: 5th anniversary
There is a lot of rewriting of history going on in the media commentary around the anniversary of 9/11. A lot of the commentary centres on the disconnect around the planes crashing into the World Trade Centre and the invasion of Iraq. The disconnect jars and so it has to be constantly layered with political meaning by conservatives and the war party.
I prefer to remember differently.
James Natchwey, Ruins of World Trade Center, New York, 2001
Some images do capture the horror.
We do need to figure out the historical meaning of 9/11. The world has changed, and 9/11 is up there with the collapse of the Berlin Wall in terms of historical significance. We need to remember that there are many narratives currently being woven.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 11:56 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
Questioning 9/11
The Bush Administration's war narrative is based on a campaign of fear, likening any who dare to criticise its policies to the appeasers of Hitler. It warns that Americans that it may be necessary to confront "the enemy" in the aisles of their supermarkets. The strategy seems to be one of it being necessary to bomb the village to save it.
Paul McGeough's conclusion in the Sydney Morning Hearld to his series The War of Ideas contains somegood insights on this war narrative. He quotes the response by Michael Scheuer, a 22-year CIA veteran who headed the agency's bin Laden unit to the question: Is the US safer or more vulnerable to terrorism?
More vulnerable, he [Scheuer] says. "Billions have been spent to stop the dumb-head who tries to come into the country ... [But] we're not safer because we're still operating on the assumption that we're hated because of our freedoms, when in fact we're hated because of our actions in the Islamic world. From the standpoint of democracy, Saudi Arabia looks much worse than Iran. We [the US] now use the term 'Islamofascism' - but we're supporting it in Saudi Arabia, with Hosni Mubarak in Egypt, and even Jordan is a police state."
McGeough asks: just who is the enemy of the US becomes more complicated by the day, especially as Americans try to wrap their heads around the emergence of Tehran as a regional power in the Muslim Middle East, at a time when the US-led invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq have reignited the Sunni-Shiite schism that is at the heart of Islam?
Bush and Rumsfeld now hector a non-specific entity they call the "Islamofascists". But who are they - the Shiite-controlled Government of Iraq, which, nominally at least, is a US ally but also increasingly an ally of Iran and is dependent for political support on murderous militias? Or are they the mad mullahs of Tehran, who also are Shiite? Or are they the West-friendly Sunni House of Saud, which controls Saudi Arabia's huge oil wealth and has for decades funded the propagation of the virulent Wahabi strain of Islam that underpinned the Taliban in Afghanistan and al-Qaeda? And what of Washington's other ally, Pakistan? Does the distribution of nuclear know-how and parts to rogue states or the provision of shelter to al-Qaeda fugitives make it Islamofascist?
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 4:20 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
September 10, 2006
Queensland elections
So Queenslanders have given Peter Beattie a fourth consecutive term as Premier and a third straight landslide win. The ALP has done much better than was expected----far better given the smell of incompetence. After all this was an eight year old state government going for re-election with a history of big scandals. It was looking ragged.
The big protest vote that was evident in the electorate's disaffection with the Beattie Government was not captured by the conservative parties. Presumably, a strong regional economy and a divided Opposition --one not ready to govern --played their part. The Liberal Party remains a rump in what should be its heartland in metropolitan Brisbane. So despite being dogged by scandals Team Beattie retains a big majority whilst the Liberal/National Opposition is still not capable of doing its job of making the Beattie Government accountable. Never fear, Beattie has made lots of assurances about openness and transparency and he will continue to blame Canberra for the things that continue to go wrong.
Beattie says that he will use his mandate to fix the health and water problems. It looks like being another hot summer, and that means tightening water restrictions in south west Queensland. Beattie's fix is a 'water grid' to ensure adequate water supply into the future by damming the Mary River at Traveston, between Brisbane and Gympie. By all accounts the Mary's flow is pretty low.
Jane Fynes-Clinton, writing in the Brisbane Sunday Mail questions Beattie's way of 'fixing ' the water problem. She says that:
...you would be hard-pressed getting your kneecaps wet, let alone immersing yourself in the chilly, clear water. This is the water source that is being promoted as the answer to quenching the thirst of the state's southeast...The only time there is a lot of water around is when the Mary floods every decade or so, and then she pours out enough water for everyone. But surely a dam is not being built – with all its financial, environmental, emotional and physical costs – on the hope of an infrequent flood? Surely a freak of nature is not what those who make decisions pin their hopes and build a plan on?
She goes on to say that the site is a mess of various forms of rock, gravel and slushy shale which will cause enormous engineering complexity in the dam construction. Bedrock is hard to find. During flood, silt washes thick and fast and would pile up against a dam wall.
It doesn't look that smart to me.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 10:03 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
September 8, 2006
war narratives
Michael Vlahos in his The Long War: A self-defeating prophecy in Asia Times explores the narrative of war. He says that a war narrative provides an interlocking foundation of "truths" that people easily accept because they appear to be self-evident and undeniable. The current war narrative is one of the "long war", or "long, global war".
Rocco, Checkmate, 2006
Vlahos goes on to say that:
.... the "global war on terrorism" has had three distinct "stories". Or perhaps it would be better to say that the story of this war has been twice transformed. Its initial incarnation as a "war against terrorism" was a simple story of righteous retribution: kill the terrorists in their mountain lairs...The second began with US President George W Bush's declaration of an "axis of evil". This represented a metamorphosis from a "terrorist" enemy to the image of an evil league of enemy powers, and thus the entire significance of the war was elevated....It is the collapse of this enterprise that has birthed yet another story. This third incarnation is a tortured response to the debacle in Iraq, where messianic goals and millenarian promises went south. Thus the "Long War"..... "The United States is a nation engaged in what will be a long war."
So it has been five years since the jihad against Western civilisation was confronted by the long war on global terrorism. This war is now seen as "the unfolding of a global ideological struggle, our time in history", the subetext is a war of civilizations, and we are explicitly fighting "Islamo-fascists" and opposing everyone who supports or even sympathizes with Muslim resistance.
Of course, the other side has their war narrative as well. Here the United States is seen to be great evil and it becomes Islam's enemy, opposition becomes a resistance to US occupation and Iran is seen to be the only nation-state that stands up to US power.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 9:25 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
September 7, 2006
freedom of information
The High Court 's judgement to uphold the decision of the Administrative Appeals Tribunal against the Freedom of Information appeal by The Australian came as a shock. The Australian's editor Michael McKinnon had sought to obtain information on matters including personal taxation bracket creep and the number of wealthy Australians claiming the first home buyer’s grant.The High Court decided that the Howard Government's (ie., Peter Costello's) reasons for issuing conclusive certificates were reasonable and rational.
I had naively expected a ruling in favour of increased freedom of information, as it is a foundation of informed citizenship and deliberative democracy. On the surface it looks as if the High Court's 3 (Hayne, Heydon and Callinan JJ) -2 (Gleeson CJ and Kirby J) decision has given support to the practices of governments to suppress information that is simply embarrassing or politically inconvenient in the name of it being contrary to the public interest. It has effectively killed off FOI applications that seek information on substantive matters of public policy.
Pryor
Governments--both state and federal---have become very skilled at managing the information flow. That means a reform of the 1982 FoI Act is now necessary to place accountibility constraints on the capacity of federal and state government secrecy and information tampering. Previous reform proposals, as well as reports recommending change, to make FOI work have been ignored. What should be removed, in light of the High Court's decision, is the right of ministers to issue conclusive certificates for internal working documents.
Is the federal ALP up to the task? It promises reform but its track record is otherwise.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 3:56 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
September 6, 2006
the Blair era draws to a close
I see that Tony Blair is limbering up for the last great battle of his political life---regaining the initiative to delay his forced departure from being Prime Minister of the UK as much as he can. He is damaged goods---he has lost credibility from supporting the Bush administration in the Middle East. The Lebanon crisis highlighted the way Blair's nailing the UK to the mast of George Bush's foreign policy has sapped his moral authority beyond recall.
As the Blair era draws to a close Blair is fighting to protect his legacy. Blair is unpopular and the New Labour PR spin machine is not very effective, due to the constant sniping between the Brown and Blair "camps" continues to divide the party. The enduring tussle betwen Tony Blair and Gordon Brown has become the central conflict in British politics. Hence Blair's need for an Exit strategy. Even though Blair has won three general elections in a row he does not have the power to choose the timing of his departure.
The demands from within his own Labour Party ranks are that he name the day now. Plans for a lengthy and ambitious farewell parade now sound absurd. The play-acting and posturing are over as the knives are poised for real blood.
The talk is about Labour’s renewal of people and policies so that Labor can pull off the difficult feat of securing a fourth term against the challenge of a resurgent Conservative party. The conflict within Labour is over whether the Blairite drive for an “enabling state” of the "social entrepreneurs" -- one that hands the public more power over government-funded services --will be abandoned, and that a Brown-led Labour will revert to the bad habits of the “controlling” social democratic state of the "traditional Fabians"
A large policy gulf separates the two men around the role of the market in the public sphere. Brown hopes to set clear limits in health and education; Blair wants to push back the boundaries.The conflict is most intense around health care reform. Patrick Wintour, writing in The Guardian, uses Robert Peston claims in his biography of Gordon Brown to describes the conflict:
In a passage that presages possible disputes over the Labour manifesto, Mr Peston claims "Mr Brown wants to limit the private sector to simply fill gaps in the capacity of the NHS. When there is a severe constraint on the ability of an NHS hospital to provide a certain kind of operation, then Brown is happy for the private sector to step into the breach."But what he opposes on principle, is Blair's plan that the private sector should be a provider of core services to the NHS in competition with public sector providers."
Peston claims Gordon Brown fears that a two-tier health system will be created by Tony Blair's plan, with those on lower incomes having access only to a very basic service.That is one of the battle lines of contemporary British politics.
Yet we need to remember that Blair and Brown are the joint architects of Labour's extraordinary success and are responsible for all manner of "New" Labour policies that seemed necessary at the time. They are joined at the political hip in spite of their policy differences.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 10:44 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
the planet is going to get hotter
Kurt Lambeck, the president of the Australian Academy of Science, recently addressed the National Press Club on the topic of climate change. He was a lead author of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's 2001 report, and in the speech reflected on this report. He said that :
Where the 2001 IPCC report probably erred was (i) not to be sufficiently critical of the various model predictions, for clearly some were based on more complete science than others, and (ii) not to be sufficiently clear in separating out uncertainties in scientific knowledge and modelling from uncertainties arising from the future scenarios. By bundling all combinations of models and scenarios together the result gave an impression of far greater uncertainty than actually is the case.
The global warming sceptics and energy intensive industries played on those uncertainites to block any action.
In the speech he also discussed the panel's upcoming 2006 report and its prediction about global warming. He said that:
I anticipate that the 2006 report will predict that global temperatures continue to rise up to the end of this century and that they will begin to plateau out at about this time only if present rates of CO2 and other emission are significantly reduced early in this century. A scenario with strong commitment to markets, an affluent world with high energy and materials demands, will only be able to keep this increase below about 2.5-3º C if it is accompanied by a technology-aggressive approach that would have to include more efficient generation, distribution and use of energy, clean coal technology and the permanent isolation of greenhouse gases, and new energy technologies including nuclear, renewable energy, fuel cells, etc.
That is no cause for celebration is it. Sea levels are expected to globally rise by about 0.4 m by 2100, depending on the contribution from the melting of the large ice sheets.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 10:21 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
September 5, 2006
Steve Irwin--in memoriam
I was rather harsh in this previous post about zoos, conservation and tourism---too harsh perhaps? Steve Irwin used the money gained from being a celebrity in the US through the Discovery Channel to preserve wildlife habitat in Australia. He understood about living with animals, even if he got too close and personal on occassions.
Irwin, judging from the replayed interview with Andrew Denton on Enough Rope, sure broke down the big divide between animals and humans that has been erected, and defended by, humanists. As an environmentalist Irwin was respected by David Suzuki, David Bellamy and Ben Cropp for bringing respect for animals, such as snakes and crocodiles that are often "demonised" as the baddies of the wild world.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 11:58 AM | Comments (7) | TrackBack
September 4, 2006
Iraq: controlling information
Things must be bad in Iraq if, as the Daily Telegraph reports, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the influential moderate Shia leader in Iraq, has abandoned attempts to restrain his followers, admitting that there is nothing he can do to prevent the country sliding towards civil war.Shias are ignoring his calls for calm and are switching their allegiance in their thousands to more militant groups (such as those of Muqtada al-Sadr in the Shiite south) which promise protection from Sunni violence and revenge for attacks.
The core conflict in Iraq has changed from a battle against insurgents to an increasingly bloody fight between Shia and Sunni Muslims, creating conditions that are leading to low level civil war. Meanwhile the rightwingers in Washington continue to play Churchill, denounce "appeasement" and talk in terms of grand ideological struggles.
An editorial in The SeattleTimes says that the Bush administration it has a mania for secrecy, its obsessive need to control what, when, how and why democratic citizens learn about its activities:
Anyone who doesn't see a pattern here has not been paying attention. From its 18-hour blackout of news that the vice president had shot a man, to its paying a newspaper columnist to write favorable pieces, to its habit of putting out video press releases disguised as TV news, to its penchant for stamping top secret on anything that doesn't move fast enough, this administration has repeatedly shown contempt for the right of the people to know what's going on. At a time when information is more readily available than ever, this government is working like 1952 to enforce ignorance.
Enforcing ignorance implies mass deception.The Bush administration is now selling Iraq as an integral part of the larger "war on terrorism", which as now an historic struggle against "fascism" – or "Islamo-fascism". The conflict faced by Washington in the region is now situated in the context of the rise of fascism and Nazism in the 1930s.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 11:58 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
September 3, 2006
a cynical moment
If climate change a decade ago was conjecture, then today we are living with global warming caused by human activities. There is disappearing Arctic ice and permafrost, lethal storms and floods, disappearing glaciers, forest fires and fatal heat waves. The future is unfolding before our eyes.
Nicholson
If rainfall has increased over the last 50 years over northwestern Australia, it has decreased in the southwest of Western Australia, and in much of south-eastern Australia, especially in winter. The changes are consistent with an observed decrease in water supply to the reservoirs supplying the capital cities since the 1990s and near-record low water reserves.
Conseqently, farmers will be increasingly vulnerable as interannual droughts occur more frequently or are more intense in the future. Less secure water supplies would accentuate competition between users and threaten
allocations for environmental flows and future economic growth. Little is being said about needing to being cautious about investment in those exposed coastal regions that are increasing vulnerability to tropical cyclones, storm surges and rising sea levels.
An editorialist in The Australian notes that a draft report the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has projected a rise of 3C in average daily global temperature by the end of the century, assuming greenhouse gas emissions remain stable. It narrows the band of predicted temperature rises and all but eliminated the possibility of a 5.8C average temperature increase mooted when the group last met in 2001. In other words, according to the IPCC, the planet is heating up -- but nowhere near as much as once thought or feared. The Australian comments:
The report is particularly valuable as a rebuke to that radical and disproportionately loud fringe of greenies and leftists who treat environmentalism as a religion for whom humanity's sinful, decadent ways threaten to bring down the wrath of nature or the gods and must be changed. It is also further evidence that such alarmist scenarios such as the "hockey stick" theory (so named for the shape of the line on the graph it is taken from) are, well, overheated.
No worrries says The Australian. An increase 3 C is not the end of the world. All that required is water trading, encourage industries to develop technology such as geosequestration and clean coal to cut emissions at home, and develop a uranium fuel export industry to help nations such as China and India cut their own, much larger, greenhouse gas contributions. Those who suggest that the best course of action is to quickly and radically cut emissions ignore the economics and impact of such a move. History shows that the best way to help the environment is to encourage the prosperity that will finance the development of newer, cleaner technologies.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 11:39 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
September 2, 2006
fighting climate change
The Guardian reports that California Senate passed legislation requiring the state's major industries, such as utility plants, oil and gas refineries and cement kilns, to reduce their emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases by an estimated 25% by 2020. A market programme allowing businesses to buy, sell and trade emission credits with other companies is among the key proposals designed to drive the reductions. The legislation is expected to be passed by California's Democrat-controlled Assembly.
As in Australia, the absence of federal action in the US has meant that much of the effort to combat climate change has been taking place in individual states. They are beginning to realize that the effects of climate change will probably be abrupt and violent.
Anyone who watched the recent ABC's Four Corners program on climate change last Monday would have seen that John Howard is out of touch with reality on climate change. He said that while he broadly believed climate change was occurring he was sceptical about the effects and still had a "wait and see" attitude. Isn't he seeing images of the retreat of glaciers?
Howard wasn't even willing to concede that Australia's embrace of clean coal technology as the solution-- technology that produces electricity with low to zero emissions--- would be more expensive than dirty technology of today. He sounds as if he is spinning for the coal industry.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 10:08 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
September 1, 2006
which way Labor?
So the ALP is finally undertaking a policy review--ten years after being in opposition. Apparently it is getting rid of the last vestiges of its old left thinking, much of which dated from the 1970s. Beazley says that its new big theme is that it wants to fight on industrial relations and we want to fight on a nation-building agenda. They want to talk about Howard's 10 squandered years. Lindsay Tanner has a slightly different story - the theme that's emerging is that it's about what sort of society we are building for our kids.
What does that mean?
Julia Gillard gives some indication in the Annual Earle Page Politics College Lecture at the University of New England. Michelle Grattan in The Age interprets the ALP['s big health idea-- a radical reform --as dramatically extend Canberra's power over public hospitals which are run by the states. So how does that break with the 1970s and Whitlamesque centralism? Shouldn't the long-term reform shift be to an increased focus on primary health care?
Grattan says that the ALP 's "big bang" reform embraces the Podger single funder model. In this model:
the Federal Government would (1) lay down health policy objectives (2) set the conditions within which health care services would be purchased and provided and (3) establish the framework for reporting on performance. While policymaking would be national, administration would be at a regional level.
Why centralization when thre can be better co-operation between the commonwealtrh and the states?
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 8:57 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack