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January 31, 2009
the cobwebs of history
A view not often heard in Australia, where the media generally follow the lead of the US media. Are things changing?
The dominant view is that of the Israel Lobby, which aims to marginalize and isolate Hamas, blocks the formation of a Palestinian state and fights Iran for regional hegemony.
Garland
A more realistic view that tries to find a way forward from the conflict by bringing Hamas in from the cold and beginning to negotiate with them.
An Ha'aretz editorial states that:
Israeli voters must know that the Obama government will be intolerant of construction in the settlements, as well as measures that hurt the Palestinians, such as closures and checkpoints. It will make every effort to bring about a two-state solution. Anyone for whom Israel's relations with the United States is important must vote for parties that support a peace agreement with the Palestinians, out of the recognition that the right-wing parties that support settlement expansion jeopardize Israel's international standing as well as its security, both of which are dependent on American support.
If the time is for some new thinking- (ie breaking from the outdated American strategy of dealing only with Fateh and its leader, Mahmoud Abbas), then it is going to have to deal with the way that the larger settlements now form an well established Jewish presence on Palestinian land. The settlements are there to stay. That is Israel's strategy. It points to a one-state solution.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 3:08 PM | Comments (6) | TrackBack
January 30, 2009
NSW health: broke
The deeply divided, conflict ridden NSW Government seems to go from bad to worse. Its health system--eight area health services and the Children's Hospital at Westmead--- is broke and unable to pay bills. There was $117.5 million in overdue invoices across the system at the end of this month. No worries the health Minister has got it all covered.
Despite the NSW Government spin the "service is so strapped for cash that it is not even paying doctors. Presumably this is the result of a deliberate neo-liberal policy of squeezing the health system.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 5:47 AM | TrackBack
January 29, 2009
solar power
Whilst south eastern Australia is caught up in a horrendous wave the political reality is that neither the states nor the commonwealth are interested in shifting the Australian economy to a low carbon economy by substantially investing in renewable energy. All that is being done is giving the appearance of being in favour of renewable energy whilst actually placing obstacles in the emergence of a renewable energy industry.
Coal is king. Mining companies call the shots. The Rudd Government and the various Labor states have been captured by the fossil fuel lobby. Economics in the form of protection of the old declining industry is what we have in Canberra coupled with lots of spin about they are doing such wonderful things for the renewable energy industry.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 5:54 AM | Comments (8) | TrackBack
January 28, 2009
Afghanistan: pressure builds
The pressure is building to do something about the forgotten war in Afghanistan. There is an increase in the flow of information through the media from the American talking heads about the "deteriorating situation" in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and idea of Australia sending more troops to Afghanistan. Will the "surge" strategy" in Afghanistan under Obama represent a new start? Or will it be the continuation of old policies even though Bush's "war on terror" has been displaced by liberal internationalism?
The Predator attacks over Pakistani territory will continue and there is ta doubling of the US troop level in Afghanistan to 60,000. This is what Obama said he'd do during during the campaign. It looks like more troops in Afghanistan is to make it easier to guard threatened supply-lines, while at the same time allowing more forces to be available in an effort to curb the extension of Taliban influence in the regions and their control over opium production.
Will Washington cut Afghan President Hamid Karzai adrift in the name of regime change? Or will Kabul try to get out of Washington's stranglehold?
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 7:20 AM | Comments (4) | TrackBack
January 27, 2009
China: an economic spectre looms?
The news out of China these days is bleak. It is bad news for 'the China will save us crowd' in the mainstream media. The signs say that the boom is over and it won't return for many years. That is not good news for Australia where, as Alan Kohler points out in Business Spectator the rise in unemployment is still in its infancy.
Economic growth is slowing. China's export markets have collapsed and its exports are down around 30%. People are saying that these export markets--the US primarily--- will remain depressed for 4-5 years. That leaves China with massive industrial over-capacity. China's domestic demand is not capable of absorbing overproduction. So there will a deep recession in China, with factory closures, bankruptcies, and surging unemployment. Surging unemployment means social unrest in China.
Therein lies the structural imbalance problem--too great a reliance on exports. When the United States gets sick so does China. China's proposed infrastructure stimulus package does not address that imbalance. It will create jobs for unemployed Chinese workers and boost the Chinese construction industry, but it won't replace the fall in export demand with increased domestic demand. Nor will the Government's old policy of boosting the Chinese export sector by making its products cheaper( through tax incentives, subsidies, lower interest rates and using its exchange rate regime as a de facto subsidy) increase consumer demand in the US or Europe for low value Chinese goods.
There is rising unemployment in the US and Europe. Until consumers in the developed Western countries start spending again, China's exports will continue to fall, no matter how heavily subsidized the export sector is.
So the optimistic scenario, that the economic growth in emerging economies (China, India, Brazil, Russia etc) would prevent a deepening global recession/contraction that has been caused by an implosion of Wall Street finance does not look plausible.
There is increasing anti-Chinese rhetoric in Washington. It is in China's national interest to reject the anti-Chinese rhetoric and to criticize the shift to protectionism in industrial economies.
Update
Business Spectator is conducting a national conversation about the financial /economic crisis in Australia. Good on them. Someone has to start talking plainly about what is happening now that 'the China will save us crowd' have been left naked.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 8:05 AM | Comments (5) | TrackBack
January 26, 2009
Coalition moves on climate change
The Coalition has finally moved beyond moving beyond denial and delay on climate change to understanding taking action on climate change as good risk management and insurance that could lead to economic benefits.
It's three part climate change policy would offset greenhouse gases by biosequestration capturing and storing large quantities of carbon in soil and vegetation, include measures to encourage improved energy efficiency in buildings where Turnbbull says 23 per cent of greenhouse gases originate and increase investment in new technologies such as clean coal.
The second strand, encouraging improved energy efficiency in buildings, is an area where the Rudd Government, has not done much about--ignored even. So they are back in the game; a game however, that is based on continuing to protect and subsidise coal and keep renewable energy at the margins.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 6:46 AM | Comments (4) | TrackBack
January 25, 2009
the fightback begins
Republicans in the US---both congressional and media---are saying that Obama's closing of Guantanamo Bay and bringing Terrorism suspects into the U.S. for real trials presents a clear and present danger to all Americans. Obama is not keeping America safe.
Peter Brookes
In the Washington Post Marc A. Thiessen says:
As the new president receives his intelligence briefings, certain facts must now be apparent: Al-Qaeda is actively working to attack our country again. And the policies and institutions that George W. Bush put in place to stop this are succeeding. During the campaign, Obama pledged to dismantle many of these policies. He follows through on those pledges at America's peril -- and his own. If Obama weakens any of the defenses Bush put in place and terrorists strike our country again, Americans will hold Obama responsible -- and the Democratic Party could find itself unelectable for a generation.
It's fear mongering disguised as commentary by a voice from the darker, more authoritarian strain of conservatism.
Thiessen is a former Bush aide and chief speechwriter. That's why he reckons "Obama is already proving to be the most dangerous man ever to occupy the Oval Office." The Republican campaign is designed to frighten Americans into believing that they must vest the Government with extensive surveillance powers to prevent themselves from being slaughtered by the Terrorists. As Andrew Sullivan observes this darker, more authoritarian strain of conservatism that is rooted in the cultural and racial conservatism of the South is:
partial to a near-dictatorial war-presidency, believing in American exceptionalism to the extent that it exempts America from the moral norms of the rest of the world, and rooting the legitimacy of the American constitution in only one religious tradition (narrowly defined).
It is a conservative that opposes "liberalism" which it defines as unholy marriage of big government and fornication, not withstanding that liberalism basically stands for liberty under law, limited and accountable government, markets, tolerance, some version of individualism and universalism, and some notion of human equality, reason and progress.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 12:42 PM | Comments (6) | TrackBack
January 24, 2009
Israel's political strategy in Gaza is.....
So white phosphorous bombs were used by Israel in its destruction of Gaza infrastructure. My interpretation of the tactics of the militant Zionists in hitting the Gaza ghetto so hard is that this was attempt to destroy Hamas, end the armed resistance to its occupation of the Palestinian territories by turning Palestinians against Hamas, replace Hamas with a submissive Fatah and so bring bring stability to the region.
Steve Bell
This devastation was designed to create a more secure situation for Israel by degrading Hamas's capabilities and by re-establishing the credibility of Israel's deterrence. But what was the political strategy associated with the military campaign? What was it trying to achieve?
My inference from the devastation is that it was to bomb and starve the Palestinians into submission. My judgement is that Israel has ended in empowering an enemy in political terms that it defeated in tactical terms. Moreover, Israel’s actions have seriously damaged the US position in the region, any hope of peace, as well as moderate Arab regimes and voices in the process. Any peace process that seeks to marginalize, not integrate, Hamas is doomed to fail. Sooner or latter, the US and Israel are going to have to start talking to Hamas and begin to negotiate.
The political aim is to prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state and to prevent a discussion about the refugees, the borders and Jerusalem. This whole package--known as the Palestinian state--- has to removed from the agenda indefinitely. As Henry Siegman says in the London Review of Books Israel’s leaders are determined to destroy Hamas because:
they believe that its leadership, unlike that of Fatah, cannot be intimidated into accepting a peace accord that establishes a Palestinian ‘state’ made up of territorially disconnected entities over which Israel would be able to retain permanent control. Control of the West Bank has been the unwavering objective of Israel’s military, intelligence and political elites since the end of the Six-Day War....They believe that Hamas would not permit such a cantonisation of Palestinian territory, no matter how long the occupation continues. They may be wrong about Abbas and his superannuated cohorts, but they are entirely right about Hamas.
Israel will build more settlements and roads in the West Bank and the Palestinians will remain locked up in a handful of impoverished enclaves in Gaza and the West Bank. The two-state solution is probably dead.
Yitzhak Laor concurs. In the London Review of Books he says:
Israel is engaged in a long war of annihilation against Palestinian society. The objective is to destroy the Palestinian nation and drive it back into pre-modern groupings based on the tribe, the clan and the enclave. This is the last phase of the Zionist colonial mission, culminating in inaccessible townships, camps, villages, districts, all of them to be walled or fenced off, and patrolled by a powerful army which, in the absence of a proper military objective, is really an over-equipped police force, with F16s, Apaches, tanks, artillery, commando units and hi-tech surveillance at its disposal.
Tough words. Few could say that in Australia.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 11:47 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack
January 23, 2009
Adelaide's thinkers in residence: Genevieve Bell
I have a lot of respect for Adelaide's Thinkers in Residence program run by the Rudd Government. It is a good program: innovative, diverse and serious about ideas in the area where public policy meets every day live and there has been a long commitment to it. But it is so low fi in the global digital world that we live. What does that say about Adelaide? That we don't have a ‘broadband’ culture?
The latest person in residence is Genevieve Bell, an anthropologist and Director of User Experience in Intel Corporation’s Digital Home Group in the United States. She is is interested in the human component of technology, the importance of culture in the adoption and adaptation of technology and the digital home. The blurb says:
Genevieve will focus on the ways in which South Australians are using new technologies in their everyday lives. Through extensive research she will help to shed light on new opportunities for broadband and associated communication technologies in South Australia and beyond.
That's it. No links. No blog. No links to the research Bell has done or her lectures. No links to the public policy context for this project about our digital future.Not even links to links to Intel's technology blog, which Bell writes for.
No connection to the Creative Economy portal, which indicates that the internet is an evolving sociotechnical system, rather than simply a technology. No links to the relevant work being undertaken by the ARC Cultural Research Network. No mention of the urban informatics. We are presented with a digital vacuum.
All we have in the way of extra links is sharing stories So what happened on the first visit? We have no real idea apart from this public lecture entitled The Many Futures of our Digital Lives from November 2007. It refers to images but we have no access to the images. Yet we live in a mediascape where pictures dominate text. Even state politicians know that, given their strategies of media management.
See what I mean by low fi? It is ironic given that this Bell's project is about digital futures in Adelaide. We are not even given any idea about how the digital future of Adelaide is envisioned by this program, yet this program has been framed by a public policy context. What we can infer is that Adelaide is on the margins of a digital economy, and that there is little of a different way of thinking about one of the dominant technology infrastructures of this decade taking place here. We have no idea of the new opportunities for broadband and associated communication technologies in South Australia, even though Adelaide is a for- runner in free wireless hot spots in Australia----a wireless commons---thanks to Internode.
Paul Caica, the Science and Information Economy Minister in SA, says that:
Dr. Bell will identify opportunities, spaces and barriers for the further uptake of technologies for economic and social development. She will take into consideration a cross-section of the population, and in line with this, Dr. Bell will spend significant time working with regional and remote communities, Aboriginal people, and people from culturally diverse backgrounds.
Fair enough, but nothing about culture or the creative economy there. So how is this going to generate debate about our current and potential uses of broadband wireless technology in Adelaide?
Should we infer that digital users should not provoke and challenge assumptions that shape deployments and imaginings of wireless connectivity and internet use in Australia? Or to propose new ways to frame critical inquiry into the design, technology and culture of domestic contexts? I guess we have to make our own spaces.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 5:33 AM | Comments (4) | TrackBack
January 22, 2009
hard times
So the global slow down continues. The news from China is all about declining growth, rising unemployment, factory closures, and falling exports. The domestic banks are not lending. The foreign banks are pulling out of Australia. More bailouts of banks are announced, in spite of the them receiving billions of dollars of capital injections from the government. The heartfelt assurances from politicians in the US, UK and Australia that they've "fixed things" ring hollow.
The banks are sources of turmoil and painful contraction in economic activity as the historic consolidation of the banking system continues a pace. Schumpeter's concept of "creative destruction" in which market economy will incessantly revitalise itself from within by scrapping old and failing businesses and then reallocating resources to newer, more productive ones" needs to be tossed out.
This implies that governments need do nothing since the pattern of progress and obsolescence is the normal workings of the business cycles in a market economy. Isn't this account the triumph of ideology over science?
Isn't it time to stop viewing economic reality exclusively through the categories of neoclassical economics? For instance its a priori conception of markets and economies as determinate systems that by the action of individual agents alone tend toward an efficient and market-clearing equilibrium.
A vicious feedback loop now exists between falling asset prices and credit creation. As asset prices fall, banks are forced to hoard more and more cash to offset the potential write-down of more and more bad debts, secured against those falling assets. The intention of all the bail-outs globally has always been to allow the banks and the economy to take advantage of the government's credit quality, in return for a fee or shares, so that lending could be reignited.Yet in the absence of buoyant demand and recession credit is mere bad debt. Banks are "acting rationally by retaining their capital and curtailing lending".
As the American former Labour Secretary, Robert Reich, said it is "socialism for rich bankers and capitalism for everyone else". The banks want their losses paid for. Many lost so much money on toxic subprime mortgage-related derivatives that they have been essentially insolvent for more than a year.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 4:51 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack
January 21, 2009
goodbye Bush
Two million people gathered in Washington to Obama's inauguration and listen to Obama put the boot into the Bush neo-cons as they left Washington to live in the shadows of public life:
As for our common defence, we reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals. Our Founding Fathers, faced with perils we can scarcely imagine, drafted a charter to assure the rule of law and the rights of man, a charter expanded by the blood of generations. Those ideals still light the world, and we will not give them up for expedience's sake.
Steve Bell
The Bush-Cheney Republicans subjugated the constitution and civil liberties, at home as well as abroad, to the cause of an endless, elastic, global "war on terror".
Obama mentions he achievements of previous generations who faced down fascism and communism not just with missiles and tanks, but with sturdy alliances and enduring convictions. Then he said:
They understood that our power alone cannot protect us, nor does it entitle us to do as we please. Instead, they knew that our power grows through its prudent use; our security emanates from the justness of our cause, the force of our example, the tempering qualities of humility and restraint. We are the keepers of this legacy. Guided by these principles once more, we can meet those new threats that demand even greater effort - even greater co-operation and understanding between nations.
Lets hope that Americans do not remember Obama more for their disappointment in him rather than his achievements.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 2:22 AM | Comments (10) | TrackBack
January 20, 2009
a new dawn
The first African-American presidential nominee is giving his acceptance speech 45 years to the day that Martin Luther King Jr told the world of his dream. King's I Have a Dream speech is regarded, along with Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address and Franklin D. Roosevelt's Infamy Speech, as one of the finest speeches in the history of American oratory.In the speech King paints a picture of an integrated and unified America.
The dream had a radical edge. As King said:
The purpose of our direct-action program is to create a situation so crisis-packed that it will inevitably open the door to negotiation... We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.
He advocated collective refusal to be oppressed; a movement using non-violent resistance to end racial prejudice and oppression of black American citizens in the United States.
From the 1967 speech:
I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin the shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.
What will Obama's inauguration speech say? Will it reprise King? Or go back to Roosevelt's 1933 speech delivered when the nation was already in the grip of depression with 40 percent of the work force unemployed?
Update
The transcript is here whilst the video is here.
It is very much in the tradition of we at the crossroads but if we take the right measures then we can once again be a great country, and a beacon for the world. It's about confidence. Thus:
That we are in the midst of crisis is now well understood. Our nation is at war, against a far-reaching network of violence and hatred. Our economy is badly weakened, a consequence of greed and irresponsibility on the part of some, but also our collective failure to make hard choices and prepare the nation for a new age. Homes have been lost; jobs shed; businesses shuttered. Our health care is too costly; our schools fail too many; and each day brings further evidence that the ways we use energy strengthen our adversaries and threaten our planet .... Today I say to you that the challenges we face are real. They are serious and they are many. They will not be met easily or in a short span of time. But know this, America - they will be met.On this day, we gather because we have chosen hope over fear, unity of purpose over conflict and discord .... The time has come to reaffirm our enduring spirit; to choose our better history; to carry forward that precious gift, that noble idea, passed on from generation to generation: the God-given promise that all are equal, all are free, and all deserve a chance to pursue their full measure of happiness.
A sobering speech from a President of the US that calls for service and responsibility. It is of the moment and implies reshaping governance on behalf of the public.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 6:38 AM | Comments (6) | TrackBack
America’s self-renewal?
Josh Marshall from the innovative and ever broadening Talking Points Memo decribes the current public mood in the US:
Though the phrase is endlessly overused, tomorrow is genuinely a new day in American politics. A new Democratic president, expanded Democratic majorities in the House and the Senate no longer encumbered by its earlier dependency on incumbency and legacy of solid South. And all of this beginning in a climate of genuine national crisis. We want to understand it. And we believe we are uniquely placed to chronicle the story.
A new day for health care in America as well? Will Americans get a better health care system? A basic health-care system for everyone---Medicare-for-All rather than just strengthening the private insurance market? Along with addressing the rocketing unemployment, exploding deficits, failing cities and improving social security?
Kal
Huge amounts of public money is being spent in bailing out Wall Street. So what about Main Street? What help do they get in the economic bad times? They lose their jobs and houses. They get sick. They desire good education for their kids. So where is the new deal for Main Street?
No doubt the Republicans will block any reform of health care system along the lines of Medicare for all, even though they are nationalizing the banks. Not to is their battle cry.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 6:08 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
January 19, 2009
hope
Clive Cook's piece in the Financial Times spells out what the Obama administration needs to do to address the US economy’s perilous condition:
Here is what needs to be done, starting in 2011, but to be announced and enacted as soon as possible. First, raise the retirement age. Second, phase out income tax relief on new mortgage loans. Third, introduce a carbon tax. Fourth, introduce a national value added tax, tied to healthcare reform.
There is lots of advice being offered to the apostle of hope filling those presidential shoes:
Meanwhile, the Republican's have lots of fears about the Democrats ramming the liberal agenda through Congress, as they celebrate Bush's achievements.
Cook's advice implies sacrifice by the American people and the Obama administration ensuring that the short-term stimulus will not be too small and the long-term structural consolidation is not too slow. Cook, however, fails to mention the need to reform the financial system that keeps capital flowing through the economy. That means doing something about the "bad banks"---those with heaps of toxic assets.
That means addressing Wall Street's power in Washington. As Robert Reich points out:
The first $350 billion bailout of Wall Street -- so-called "TARP I"---did not go to small businesses, struggling homeowners, students, or anyone else needing credit, which was the major public justification for the bailout. In all likelihood, on the basis of the skimpy evidence we now have, the money went instead to bank shareholders in the form of dividends; to bank executives, traders, and directors as compensation (directors of major Wall Street banks continued to pull down an average of $350K each in 2008 merely for sitting in on a handful of board meetings at which they obviously didn't oversee very much); to some holders of bank debt; and to platoons of lawyers, accountants, and other financiers who have advised the banks about other places to park the rest of the money in the meantime.
Wall Street is back for more bailout money--an additional $350 billion the second tranche of the Bush bailout.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 6:07 AM | TrackBack
January 18, 2009
Obama's inauguration
In an extract from his Down to the Crossroads: On the Trail of the 2008 US Election published in The Age Guy Rundle says:
In a capital city designed to both ape Rome and, with its weird monuments, its secret and occult measurements between buildings, to suggest a mysterious and hidden order to things, the inauguration ceremony has grown from a simple swearing-in ceremony, to the quasi-religious passage of a mortal man to some sort of divine status.In America's Civic Religion, published in 1967, the sociologist Robert Bellah noted that founding a society on the separation of church and state had simply created a process whereby the political system of the nation in question filled the spiritual vacuum with a sacralisation of political processes.
Well, that makes some sense of the inauguration spectacle surrounding the emperor god, or in Rundle's words the American God King , who is taken down the cheering avenues to the palace he will occupy for the next four or eight years. The old emperor has gone. Long live the emperor.
The Americans tend to see Obama's inauguration as opening a new book, not a new chapter in American, nay world, history. Robert Kuttner says in American Prospect:
As in 1933, the [economic] crisis is the direct result of free-market ideology and conservative misrule, which once again stand disgraced. This creates a once-in-a-century opportunity for Obama to redeem American progressivism as the nation's majority philosophy, with government playing a far more active role in the economy -- not just to produce a recovery but to restore a more egalitarian and secure society.
Their hope is that Obama and his people will use an activist government to spare American's a depression. It's a big ask. There's a lot of hope being carried by Obama
I see continuation where many see rupture--eg., Afghanistan where the Obama crowd talk in terms of victory. Or the ongoing decline of the US as an imperial power caught up in a financial and economic crisis. Or the continuing bailout of Wall Street (Citigroup, Bank of America) at the expense of Main Street in order to kick start the American economy. The new politics is the continuation of the old.
There are differences of course. The Obama administration will not continue the Bush administration policy of authorizing, ordering and practicing torture at Guantanamo. But it does look as the Obama administration will not launch investigations and prosecutions against the torture crowd in the Bush administration. Or those who spied on Americans without the warrants from 2001-2006, without legislation from Congress and when warrantless eavesdropping was a felony under FISA.
As Paul Krugman points out it’s probably in Obama's short-term political interests to forgive and forget. But at his inauguration he’s going to:
swear to “preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States.” That’s not a conditional oath to be honored only when it’s convenient.And to protect and defend the Constitution, a president must do more than obey the Constitution himself; he must hold those who violate the Constitution accountable. So Mr. Obama should reconsider his apparent decision to let the previous administration get away with crime.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 10:04 AM | Comments (7) | TrackBack
January 17, 2009
thinking of the children
Given a limited amount of funding and asked to choose between two options, I wonder whether the public would choose to fund ISP filtering or child porn policing?
Last year Lateline did a story on Operation Achilles, a cooperative investigation between Queensland police and the FBI which successfully tracked down more than 20 people actively involved in producing and distributing child pornography. Among the more disturbing points the story raised was the fact that, in tracking these people over long periods, investigators were seeing the same children, over and over again, growing up in the material they were seeing.
Some of the kids could be identified and rescued, but plenty more could not be found without catching the perpetrators. Tracking these people down takes time, during which, the abuse continues and police bear witness to the process. It's hard to imagine how those doing these investigations cope with the stuff they see all day every day. How do you adequately compensate someone for doing that job?
The FBI were full of praise for Queensland police who have gained a world wide reputation for success stories in this field, and they've done it again in another joint exercise with the UK, Germany and the US, which can't be an easy thing to organise. It's one of a string of such casesover the past couple of years to make headlines, so you'd imagine the various bodies involved, the AFP and specialist state police units, would be awarded with appropriate funding. Wouldn't you?
While the AFP are the main players in these things they have cooperative arrangements with state and international policing bodies, but it just so happens that the Queensland police are better at it than pretty much anyone else, so when the AFP can't handle a case and it's to do with a state other than Queensland you have problems.
According to Stilgherrian's latest Crikey (paywall) piece :
$2.8 million, which the Howard government allocated to expand the Australian Federal Police’s Online Child Sexual Exploitation Team (OCSET), was instead used by Rudd to help create Conroy’s $44.5 million Rabbit-Proof Firewall.
The argument here takes on the Won't Somebody Please Think of the Children set, Conroy's early ammunition of choice against clean feed opposers. This emotive meme has since given way to a less coherent string of emotionally weaker dot points about the vaguely sinister 'unwanted content' and parental technological ineptitude. It's even generated someone strongly resembling a Conroy sock puppet (see comments at Stilgherrian's place).
From Verity Pravda's blog:
Finally, a little note because onroy's line about the purpose of the filter being about "protecting children" has been interpretted as being about protecting children from seeing the images - it isn't. It is about protecting the children who are the subject of the images.
No it's not. Go have a read of the Lateline transcript. The children who are the subject of the images are being tormented by people who won't be bothered one whit by ISP filtering. The main reason they're so hard to track down, and why police have to spend so much time bogged down in their horrors, is that they're technologically light years ahead of little annoyances like filters. The images they swap, which are of actual living children, are heavily encrypted. They've developed their own linguistic codes to avoid detection.
Maybe you're talking about the practice of grooming, but again, refer to the Lateline transcript. Plenty of the subjects of those images are the perpetrators' own kids and others they have easy access to in meatworld. Grooming is among the riskier approaches taken by relative amateurs. I can't be the only parent in the world to have heard kids discussing weirdos pretending to be other kids in chatrooms and on MSN, and teaching one another how to spot them. It would be easier for sickos to wait nine months to get their hands on their own kids than groom a savvy child.
Meanwhile, what does ISP filtering do for the kids police are watching grow up in these images? Precisely nothing. Those kids don't need 'protection', they need more police with the expertise required to rescue them. From Libertus:
In addition, Labor's Budget has delayed the former Coalition Government's planned increase of an “additional 90 staff” members of OCSET by 2009-10 until 2011. The Labor Government claims that its budget will result in “91 additional AFP members dedicated to online child protection by 2011”. However, it is entirely unclear how that could be achieved with a budget of $2.8 million less than the Coalition Government had budgetted for 90 members by 2009-2010. It appears Labor intends that officers be paid less, which would further exacerbate the existing difficulties of retaining technologically skilled detectives and other staff members from hijacking by private enterprise (see Parliamentary Joint Committee 2007 report below).
By accident or design, Australia has some of the best resources in the world for dealing with the serious end of the problem. Yet while we pump squillions into sporting bodies and kiddie health campaigns we redirect funding from the effective to the token. These guys deserve medals and accolades, but we give them Conroy.
So much for evidence-based policy.
Posted by Lyn Calcutt at 9:18 AM | Comments (5) | TrackBack
trust an economist?
So consumer spending over Xmas was better than expected, even though unemployment for full time work continues to rise. Not that you'd trust the economists, given their appalling track record in recognizing and explaining the global financial and economic crisis.
None of the economist in Australia foresaw the October crisis. After "no one saw the housing bubble" coming we had the no one saw the insolvent Wall Street Bank problem." Moreover, recall how quickly the economists anti-inflation rhetoric (higher interest rates, budget surpluses and reduced government spending) was dumped in favour of deficits, huge government spending, job creation bailing out banks to stave off recession.
Recall how the neo-liberal economists objective is to push public policy in the direction they prefer.This means that all policies much fit within the ideological/behavioral framework that underlies their belief system then everything must be made to conform.
The worst is yet to come apparently since the banks continue refuse to lend money.What will that do for Australia's brand as the land of sunny opportunity. In the US the federal government says it has had no choice but to put more money into banks and other financial institutions if it had any hope of reviving the paralyzed credit markets.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 7:50 AM | TrackBack
January 16, 2009
"war on terror"
I see that the British Foreign Secretary, David Miliband, has argued that the war on terrorism was misconceived and that the West could not "kill its way" out of the threats it faced. He says:
Since the events of that September, the notion of a war on terrorism has defined the terrain. The phrase had some merit: it captured the gravity of the threats, the need for solidarity, and the need to respond urgently - where necessary, with force.But ultimately, the notion is misleading and mistaken. The idea of a war on terrorism gave the impression of a unified, transnational enemy, embodied in the figure of Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda. The reality is that the motivations and identities of terrorist groups are disparate.
Well it has taken a long time for that to be said. How about disassociating the UK Government from the use of torture and rendition?
Leunig
He adds that the war on terrorism also implied that the correct response was primarily military.That could apply to the Gaza strip could it not. After the ceasefire Hamas is still left standing as the democratic government of Gaza.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 5:23 AM | Comments (4) | TrackBack
January 15, 2009
A global entertainment industry
Angela Ndalianis, who is Head of Screen Studies at Melbourne University, argued in one chapter of her book, Neo-Baroque Aesthetics and Contemporary Entertainment, that:
Since the 1980s....the transnational effects of globalization have expanded the film industry’s economic interests, shifting economic concerns to the global market ... In addition to the general global expansion that occurred in the 1980s, changes specific to the entertainment industry were nourished by a transnational climate. As Wasko observes, the deregulation of previously regulated media markets, including cable, the development of new computer technologies and the computer game industry, and corporate mergers that integrated companies with diverse media interests contributed to the emergence of an entertainment industry that not only thrived on investment in multimedia forms but aimed at dispersing multimedia entertainment products to a global market.
She argues that in an industry driven by cross-media extensions and cross merchandizing the dynamism and the multicentered narratives that characterize entertainment forms of recent years are paralleled by a serial economic rationale that is concerned with self-promotion.
Late-twentieth- and early-twenty-first-century seriality is the outcome of a marketing strategy that aims at squeezing from a product its fullest marketing potential. Financial risk and gain is reduced or amplified by promoting serial variations based on previously successful formulas in the hope of reproducing their success in sequel or cross-media format. At times this entails affiliations with companies beyond the cor- porate fold. Ideally, however, major economic benefits are to be reaped when a corporation owns subsidiary companies that can serialize a story franchise and thus extend potential profits across the corporation’s multiple investment interests.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 5:52 AM | TrackBack
January 14, 2009
Gaza, blogs, pictures
The Israeli government has banned the media from the Gaza Strip war zone so that it can manage the news in order to win the propaganda war. Their brief is to counter the inevitable images of bloodied children and tiny, dismembered bodies by saying that Operation Cast Lead is Israel acting in self-defence against Hamas rockets.
Thus the conflict in Gaza is being presented as as a "war"in the sense of a "Gaza conflict" between two sides engaged in "fighting", rather than a one-sided violence in which the Israeli military machine and blockade of Gaza directly targets the civilian Palestinian population. It is then added that this is simply another episode of a regional conflict between Israel and its mortal foe, Iran. Hamas is a “proxy of Iran”.
This ban means that traditional journalism has no role to play other than patriotic journalists embedded with the Israeli army. What we have is commentary in the Israeli media or The Electronic Intifada on the Palestinian side.
I've turned to the blogs in order to gain access to information, pictures and voices out of the war zone. Another one and one with a blogroll to explore. I'm interested in finding more Flickr streams by Palestinian produsers. An example. A video blog.
The other concern is find the voices of dissident Israelis and anti-Zionists, especially those in Israeli. My starting point is here and here.
This "Bomb a Ghetto, Raise a Cheer" video is from the recent demonstration of pro-Israel Jews in New York that shows the craziness of behind the Jewish response to Gaza:
Towards the end a girl says it's the second Holocaust, and that the Jews are being persecuted all over again!
This violence against the Palestinian people is the end note to the failed Bush Administration-Israeli strategy to overthrow Hamas. The alternative to war, ignored by Israel but patently obvious, is simple: It will have to negotiate with Hamas, an a option made difficult by Israel is moving steadily to the right politically and the settlements on occupied land expanding at a steady rate.Avi Shlaim, an Oxford professor of international relations, concludes his historical account of the conflict thus:
This brief review of Israel's record over the past four decades makes it difficult to resist the conclusion that it has become a rogue state with "an utterly unscrupulous set of leaders". A rogue state habitually violates international law, possesses weapons of mass destruction and practises terrorism - the use of violence against civilians for political purposes. Israel fulfils all of these three criteria; the cap fits and it must wear it. Israel's real aim is not peaceful coexistence with its Palestinian neighbours but military domination. It keeps compounding the mistakes of the past with new and more disastrous ones.
It increasingly looks as if the cap fits.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 7:36 AM | Comments (8) | TrackBack
January 13, 2009
suburbia
In Australia, suburbia has been mythologized as a site of homogeneity and conformity (the conservatives white picket fence), planned and structured as bedroom communities serving urban centers, and built around subdivisions, shopping malls, and retail strips of suburbia, with poor public transport and limited services and entertainment.
During the last decade conservatives have played off the "common sense" of battlers in suburbia against the gentrified, inner city cosmopolitans whilst talking market prosperity to those living in the three-car-garaged McMansions.
Aerial #65″ by Sarah McKenzie.
Is this going to change now with the global financial and economic crisis? Not the suburban sprawl, as that is being actively fostered by state governments who talk about urban consolidation in doughnut cities. But the economics of suburbia in a warmed up world; the energy inefficient houses, the car dependency, the traffic jams etc.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 6:58 AM | Comments (26) | TrackBack
January 12, 2009
They've gone
Well nearly. Howard has long gone. After the 20th January 2009, George W. Bush’s disastrous reign will be over. Everyone is waiting for Obama's inauguration. Washington is getting ready to party. It's a new era and all that. So these conservatives celebrate themselves for using words --torture--that means just what they choose it to mean, neither more nor less.
All eyes are on Barack Obama’s efforts to deliver a fast fiscal stimulus (an US $800bn two-year package, split roughly 60:40 in favour of spending increases not tax cuts), which is designed to kick start the US economy. This is going to take a lot of time and energy to get through Congress.
The recession in the US appears to be accelerating and the implications for unemployment look dire.That is the fallout from the current collapse of the Thatcher-Reagan model of self-regulating market capitalism with finance in the driver’s seat. The US has an external primary deficit (the external current account deficit plus US net foreign investment income) was running at around five or six percent of GDP. The US was also a net external debtor. Its net external investment position is somewhere between minus 20 percent and minus 30 percent of annual GDP.
Is Obama is faced with the decline of the US economy and its international economic hegemony --similar to that of Britain's decline of its international influence in the 1950s? William Buiter at the Financial Times observes:
The past eight years of imperial overstretch, hubris and domestic and international abuse of power on the part of the Bush administration has left the US materially weakened financially, economically, politically and morally. Even the most hard-nosed, Guantanamo-bay-indifferent potential foreign investor in the US must recognise that its financial system has collapsed. Key wholesale markets are frozen; the internationally active part of its financial system has either been nationalised or underwritten and guaranteed by the Federal government in other ways. Most market-mediated financial intermediation has ground to a halt, and the Fed is desperately trying to replace private markets and financial institutions to intermediate between households and non-financial operations. The problem is not confined to commercial banks, investment banks and universal banks. It extends to insurance companies (AIG), Quangos (a British term meaning Quasi-Autonomous Government Organisations) like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, amorphous entities like GEC and GMac and many others.The legal framework for the regulation of financial markets and institutions is a complete shambles. Even given the dismal state of the legal framework, the actual performance of key regulators like the Fed and the SEC has been appalling, with astonishing examples of incompetence and regulatory capture.
Buiter says that in between two and five years from now there will be be a global dumping of US dollar assets, including US government assets. If old habits die hard, and the US dollar and US Treasury bills and bonds are still viewed as a safe haven by many, this will not always be so.
So who is going to rescue the US? As Martin Wolfe oberves in the Financial Times the US rescue efforts need to be big enough not only to raise demand for US output but also to raise demand for the surplus output of much of the rest of the world.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 6:28 AM | Comments (7) | TrackBack
January 11, 2009
humanitarian relief --Israeli style
The Palestinian death toll has climbed toward 850. Israel shelled a UN school that had been turned into a refugee centre near Gaza city, killing 42 people who had fled the fighting. The International Red Cross broke its usual silence over an attack in which the Israeli army herded a Palestinian family into a building and then shelled it, killing 30 people and leaving the surviving children clinging to the bodies of their dead mothers. The army prevented rescuers from reaching the survivors for four days.
Martin Rowson
Meanwhile, the Bush Administration in its dying days continues to support Israel's action. The current occupants of the White House still see the struggle in neocon terms of the Middle East as a Manichean struggle between an embattled democracy and Islamic terrorism. The Israeli Government has rejected the UN cease-fire proposal and it presses on with the 15-day-old offensive in the Gaza Strip.
Will the ongoing military action cause the collapse of Hamas rule in Gaza? And bring about the end of Abbas' rule in the West Bank? Israel appears to be on a pathway of killing and destroying indiscriminately whilst also trying to come out looking good, with a clean conscience.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 12:51 PM | Comments (12) | TrackBack
January 10, 2009
digital Adelaide
Although I live in Adelaide I am not that connected with the regional digital social media My excuse is that, despite the existence of an free wireless hotspots that is much more extensive than other capitol cities, the creative industries do not appear to have a very strong presence in Adelaide.
In this one newspaper town--its tabloid infotainment the digital mediascape is rather sparse and political blogging is rather light. The creative industries are seen as not a real industry sector as they produce only ephemera and rhetoric unlike the agriculture, biotech and educational industries. They are understood in terms of their non-market value, and market failure in the provision of public goods by economists.
So it is interesting to see the public relations/ webdesigner /marketing crowd moving online----eg., Simon Small commenting on the digital mediascape in Australia Maybe they were always online and I never knew? My assumption was that they were resistant to the evolution of the media space into the digital and social media world.
When online they have a different perspective to that deliberative democracy and creative culture, since the produsers work in the digital public sphere with their keen eye centred on both branding -- eg.,Thoughtfactory is a media brand in the marketplace competing with a lot of other brands--and communication.
So what is disclosed by reading Simon Small? Well, the new media are all about connections that undermine--- remove--- the assumption held in most political-economy accounts of media that there is a one-way flow of causation along this ‘value chain’, from (active) producer via text-distribution to (passive) audience. In a social network all are engaged in the mutual enterprise of creating values, both symbolic and economic
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waging the info war
Richard Silverstein of the Guardian reports on Israel's foreign ministry attempts to turn the tide of public opinion, which hasn't been going its way recently.
Now, we know that the Israeli foreign ministry itself is orchestrating propaganda efforts designed to flood news websites with pro-Israel arguments and information.A reader of my blog has received the following email which documents both the efforts and the agency that originated them. The solicitation to become a pro-Israel "media volunteer" also includes a list of media links which the ministry would like addressed by pro-Israel comments:
Damn those pesky blog readers and their wicked email-sharing ways.
Over at LP commenter Marks says:
When both sides in this conflict tell such blatant falsehoods so often, they lose credibility....I put it that the situation is now one that there are two sides so deep into propaganda and with almost no credible independent commentary, that the rest of us have no choice but to give it up as a bad job.
True enough, but it's not as though the two sides and their friends in the media are the only sources any more.
Medecins sans frontieres and the ICRC are more likely to be trustworthy sources than politically motivated organisations of any description.
The Israeli propaganda attempt is interesting on a few levels.
It's another (dodgy?) attempt by a government body to make use of web 2.0 - Propaganda 2.0, as MB calls it, that fails to understand how these things work or anticipate unwanted consequences like a blog reader passing an email on to a widely read publication.
It obviously seeks to influence public opinion by creating the impression that it has more public support than it does.
World governments are still patient with Israel's justified operation in Gaza. The [sic] public opinion, on the other hand, is impatient, to say the least. This gap will soon close – it always does.It is our goal to shift the public opinion, as conveyed in the internet; avoiding, or at least minimising, sanctions by world leaders. We need to buy the IDF enough time to achieve its goals.
The suggestion here is that internet comment reading members of the public will be influenced by the opinions of other commenters, rather than media which is not cooperating. "We hold the [sic] military supremacy, yet fail the battle over the international media."
If they're under the impression that commenters on this issue can be swayed by commenters on the other side, they haven't been paying attention. And as commenter OneTooMany on the Silverstein piece points out, "The dead speak louder than spam."
The campaign offers participants a series of dot point talking points, which another commenter, AverageJosph, at Silverstein's points out is also a mistake.
I remember this tactic backfiring on a CIF thread during the Israel/Lebanon War. The first two comments on the thread by two different pro-Israel posters were completely identical, the lazy buggers had just cut'n'pasted the talking points without bothering to individualise them.
Oops.
We're in interesting times when the old communications channels have so obviously broken and the various powers that be are having trouble figuring out how the new ones work. It's just so much harder to maintain the illusion that people are sheep when they have the opportunity to speak.
Posted by Lyn Calcutt at 11:55 AM | Comments (13) | TrackBack
January 9, 2009
Quadrant, biotechnology hoax
So Keith Windshuttle and Quadrant have experienced a bit of cultural jamming in the form of hoax about biotechnology by freelance journalist and activist Katherine Wilson, a former editor of Overland.
Her article ---purporting to be by “Sharon Gould”, a Brisbane based New York biotechnologist---claimed that inserting human genes into animal stock and crops to give immunity to human consumers of those products.
Keith Windschuttle is a target because his reputation as a warrior in the history wars was based on scouring footnotes of historians for errors and then accusing their authors of fraudulence and political bias. His tactic was to use empiricism to attack social constructivist view of science. Quadrant's support for biotechnology is surprising given its roots in Catholic and Christian conservatism, which would normally would have opposed the utopian claims of biotechnology.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 6:26 AM | Comments (10) | TrackBack
January 8, 2009
suburban blues
In the Sydney Morning Herald Elizabeth Farrelly makes a good point. She observes that the smog in Sydney and in other capital cities in Astralia will be
remembered as one of the great ironies of modern planning, that the system we call suburbia, whose main promise was sunshine and fresh air for all, ended up destroying those things for everyone. Even now, people - thinking people who should know better (and do, in fact, but somehow choose not to) - defend suburbia on the basis of how nice it is to wake up with birds and trees outside the window. And it is nice. There's no denying it. I like. You like it. We all like it. And that's the point, really. Because just as one binge is fine but every weekend means you're an alkie, or one house among the gum trees is fine, but millions? Millions of suburban houses means millions of cars, millions of smog-belching passenger kilometres and millions of kids with chronic asthma and bronchitis.
The states have basically given up in rolling back the car to make our cities more liveable. The Rann Government in South Australia, for instance, does not have the will to close down small streets to the car in the areas of the inner CBD where people gather in public spaces.
As Farrelly points out everything now depends on Infrastructure Australia providing the funds for better public transport and a decent rail system. Don't hold your breathe.
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January 7, 2009
Middle East: defeating Hamas
So long as Hamas survives in Gaza, there will be no ceasefire based on the closure of tunnels because that would amount to the elected administration's unilateral disarmament. Signing its own death warrant. Israel has maintained control of access to the territory, denying Gazans the chance to run their own affairs.
Israel's imposition of sanctions on the elected Hamas government is designed to ensure the end of Hamas. Built a cage and then make life intolerable for those living inside.
Martin Rowson
The Bush administration has given unconditional endorsement to Israeli action. Despite the intensity of the bombardment and Israel's overwhelming military superiority, Hamas is unlikely to surrender or be destroyed. Resistance forms the basis of Hamas' ideology and if it can simply survive the attack it will claim victory over its mighty enemy.
In Conflict In Gaza at Chatham House Robert Lowe says:
International diplomacy is currently stuck over which side must climb down first. The basic question is whether Israel's economic blockade of Gaza or Palestinian rocket attacks on Israel must cease first. At present neither side is prepared to climb down first.The Israeli attack offers no remedy, rather it is a symptom and cause of the open-ended Israeli-Palestinian conflict and it is seriously harming a civilian population already enduring great hardship. Israel has tried and failed to defeat Hamas and other Palestinian groups before and it has no clear plan for ending the conflict with Hamas or its occupation of Palestinian territory. Israel cannot impose its will by force and one day it will need to talk to the people it is currently punishing through bombardment and blockade.
Most people in the Muslim world view Israeli actions as US actions. It is dealing with the aftermath of a strengthened Palestinian determination to continue to resist Israel that will prove much more difficult for Israel and its Arab allies to deal with.
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January 6, 2009
Garrett gives Gunns the green light for pulp mill
How do we interpret Garrett's statement on Gunns multibillion-dollar pulp mill at Bell Bay in the Tamar Valley in northern Tasmania? He has withheld final approval for the project's environmental impact management plan for a further 26 months.
My interpretation is that Garrett gave the logging giant Gunns the go-ahead for the project, and then gave the appearance of toughening the Government’s stance on effluent outfall in Bass Strait ( 64 million litres of effluent) by adopting a precautionary approach required by the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act. That toughening, in effect, was giving Gunns Ltd another extension.
The conditions Garrett placed on the go-ahead require the company to provide detailed environmental data on the effect of effluent runoff into Bass Strait before the mill will be allowed to begin processing woodchips and to impose fines of up to $1.1 million if Gunns exceeds environmental limits. Garrett has given two years to Gunns to provide effluent data through hydro dynamic modelling.
So Gunns can go ahead and build the mill and muddle along on the modelling. All the modules except for the effluent disposal are approved. Isn't that a green light? isn't that a blow to the tourism, wine-making and fishing industry groups in the Tamar Valley? Why invest given the threat posed by the mill?
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 5:47 AM | Comments (13) | TrackBack
January 5, 2009
drugs, doctors, disease
In Drug Companies & Doctors: A Story of Corruption in the New York Review of Books Marcia Angell, a former editor of the New England Journal of Medicine, highlights a disturbing trend in modern medicine. She says:
No one knows the total amount provided by drug companies to physicians, but I estimate from the annual reports of the top nine US drug companies that it comes to tens of billions of dollars a year. By such means, the pharmaceutical industry has gained enormous control over how doctors evaluate and use its own products. Its extensive ties to physicians, particularly senior faculty at prestigious medical schools, affect the results of research, the way medicine is practiced, and even the definition of what constitutes a disease.
The conflicts of interest in medicine are deep and pervasive given the dependence of the medical profession on the pharmaceutical industry.
The redefining of disease refers to the way that drug companies have perfected a new and highly effective method to expand their markets. Instead of promoting drugs to treat diseases, they have begun to promote diseases to fit their blockbuster drugs. The strategy is to convince as many people as possible (along with their doctors, of course) that they have medical conditions that require long-term drug treatment.
Some of the biggest blockbusters are psychoactive drugs. The theory that psychiatric conditions stem from a biochemical imbalance is used as a justification for their widespread use, even though the theory has yet to be proved. Children are particularly vulnerable targets. What parents dare say "No" when a physician says their difficult child is sick and recommends drug treatment? The consequences is that:
physicians learn to practice a very drug-intensive style of medicine. Even when changes in lifestyle would be more effective, doctors and their patients often believe that for every ailment and discontent there is a drug. Physicians are also led to believe that the newest, most expensive brand-name drugs are superior to older drugs or generics, even though there is seldom any evidence to that effect because sponsors do not usually compare their drugs with older drugs at equivalent doses. In addition, physicians, swayed by prestigious medical school faculty, learn to prescribe drugs for off-label uses without good evidence of effectiveness.
Angell says that breaking the dependence of the medical profession on the pharmaceutical industry will take a sharp break from an extremely lucrative pattern of behavior. But if the medical profession does not put an end to this corruption voluntarily, it will lose the confidence of the public, and the government will step in and impose regulation.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 7:28 AM | Comments (4) | TrackBack
US: dealing with torture
One of the issues the US needs to come terms with is its use of torture in the wake of the terrorist attacks of September 11. Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo, the CIA's secret "black sites, the policy of rendering and the Geneva Conventions not applying to the conflict with al-Qaeda signify the decent into torture.
In this review in the New York Review of Books David Cole says that Philippe Sands in Torture Team: Rumsfeld's Memo and the Betrayal of American Values paints the following picture:
Through his interviews, he tells a story about how ordinary human beings, all working within an institution designed to fight by the rules, felt tremendous pressure to bend the rules—and in most cases did so without apparent concern or self-doubt. A narrowly pragmatic ethos guided virtually all actors. The real arguments were for the most part not about whether coercive tactics were legally or morally acceptable, but about whether they worked. But with the courageous exception of Navy General Counsel Alberto Mora, few argued that coercive tactics were wrong because they were immoral and illegal, whether or not they worked.
A reckoning is due since complicity in the torture policy reaches the very top of the Bush administration. The United States has never taken full responsibility for the crimes its high-level officials committed and authorized. However, there will be no prosecution since Congress, in the Military Commissions Act, granted retrospective immunity to officials involved in the interrogation of al-Qaeda suspects in the wake of September 11.
Cole cals for an independent bipartisan, blue-ribbon commission to investigate and assess responsibility for the United States' adoption of coercive interrogation policies. Will this happen?
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January 4, 2009
technolitics
There's been a mounted of stuff like this from Mark Pesci written about Obama's use of new technologies for campaigning and now for what looks like a reasonable stab at some kind of participatory excercise with change.gov. It's literally a world away from Kevin07, the 2020 Summit and the fleeting glog, none of which suggest serious, sustained levels of engagement with the great unwashed.
Via Cam, there's an interesting series of coversations going on among American conservatives, Republicans, the GOP, the right, whatever you want to call them, over how best to make use of the net in view of Obama's success.
In Reinventing conservatism, one tweet at a time, Julian Sanchez has a bunch of links and interesting thoughts on an ongoing, networked converstation which appears to have started with RedState's Erick Erickson. Among other things, Erickson says "Duplicating Obama's technology effort is not the solution for the right and those who say it is are the first people not to hire." There are two reasons for this. "The left and right use the web in different ways":
RedState is unique among sites on the right in that most of our readers do not consider themselves bloggers or blog readers. RedState readers are, trusting in surveys of our readership, much more like the average conservative in what Rush Limbaugh calls “fly-over country.” This is one reason RedState diarists do not generally engage in the “meta-conversations” between blogs. Our readers read RedState, two to three news sites, and sports websites. Seventy percent of RedState readers read five or fewer blogs. RedState’s readership is much more in line with the general right of center activist’s level of engagement.
The second is to do with the demographics of the right's support base. Facebook won't do much good for the stereotypical Palin supporter.
These observations send the whole question back to square one, which is where Sanchez comes in with the same obvious points currently plaguing the coalition here. There's no point trying to use the net to mobilise support for your product when even you don't know what your product is.
At RedState the comments thread is looking at solutions to the tech problems, while the comments at arstechnica illustrate why solving the tech problems won't change anything. There are a lot of would-be Republican supporters complaining about the Guns, God and Gays brigade, suggesting that the Republicans' biggest problem is their support base. How do you go about solving a problem like that?
Erickson suggests that conservatives need to come up with something brand new, the next big thing, the conservative killer app.
Just say you do invent some fabulous new techno beast and potential supporters flock to it. You'd have the GGGs and the Wall Street suits gathered in one spot. They'd actually meet each other. Is that really such a good idea? Do you really want to give your working class sporting shooters the opportunity to crack a tinnie and put their boots up on the minimalist furniture of your private health insurers and telco CEOs?
This represents a problem for both left and right. They both assemble their support from disparate groups which would be unlikely to reach consensus on an awful lot if they found themselves in the same room together.
If Erickson's right about the way conservatives use the net, and assuming that liberals get around a bit more, then the left has a natural advantage, which doesn't bode too well for the right.
Posted by Lyn Calcutt at 12:26 PM | Comments (14) | TrackBack
Israel escalates war
Things continue to get worse in the cycle of violence that is the Israeli Palestinian conflict. Israeli tanks and troops have entered Gaza after a week-long air force offensive has claimed more than 460 Palestinians.
Aniel Barenboim says:
Palestinian violence torments Israelis and does not serve the Palestinian cause; Israeli retaliation is inhuman, immoral and does not guarantee security. The destinies of the two peoples are inextricably linked, obliging them to live side by side. They have to decide if they want to make of this a blessing or a curse.
Hamas has consistently rejected a ceasefire in Gaza until Israel agrees to end its three-year blockade of the territory. Israel continues the blockade and the military until Hams stops firing Qassam rockets at Israel. It is a toxic catch 22 situation.
The Israeli blockade tactic appears to be that, if Israel starved Gazans, than that will force Hamas to stop the attacks. That tactic hasn't worked since the siege that has only served to strengthen the Islamist Hamas group. The US-Israeli strategy on Hamas in Gaza has been a spectacular failure because it is fatally flawed (by its inability to relinquish the goal of reversing the results of the 2006 Palestinian election by anti-democratic means). The fundamental flaws in Israel’s policy over Gaza is its refusal to recognise political reality and there is little chance of it militarily eliminating Palestinian resistance.
Despite this the Mubarak government in Egypt and the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah have actively colluded with Israel, first to unsuccessfully overthrow Hamas from Gaza through force, and then to choke the Palestinians in Gaza by denying them basics such as food, clean water, medical treatment and a decent education.
Since the Oslo Accords were signed in 1993, the 15 years of collaboration with Israel has yielded more settlements, thousands of house demolitions, kidnappings and massacres in the Palestinian territories. Hamas still stands firm in Gaza. Why would Hamas settle for a cease-fire that removed the threat of Israeli bombs, but did nothing to relax Israel’s chokehold on its economy?
Tony Karon observes in Rootless Cosmopolitan about Zionism (contemporary Jewish nationalism):
Zionism rationalizes conquest and colonization as “redemption” of Jewish territory on behalf of the world’s Jews. It treats the Palestinians only as an obstacle and threat to its own purposes, not as people with the same rights as Jews and with legitimate claim to the land on which they were born....The end of the Zionist moment leaves Israeli Jews facing — although in many cases not necessarily facing up to — the reality that the people with whom they’re going to share the Holy Land are not the rest of us Jews, who have no intention of moving there, but the Palestinians, who they found there and displaced and dispossessed, and continue to rule over — supposedly in our name, but without our consent.
The common Israeli view is still Zionist---it sees the Arabs and Iran as pits of Islamic terror and anti-Semitic savagery that want only to kill Jews and annihilate Israel.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 11:49 AM | Comments (16) | TrackBack
January 3, 2009
welcome back
This is the first cartoon by Bill Leak since he was hospitalised from falling off a balcony and hitting his head. It nicely captures the topsy-turvey world we now live in after the collapse of the fantasy of the eternal resource boom in never never land.
Bill Leak
I do expect to see some finger wagging at us consumers for not spending enough and not maxing our credit cards, even though unemployment looms and our investment wealth has been halved. 'Tis a contradiction in neo-liberal Australia isn't it. No mention of the (former) masters of the universe, who said they seen the future and knew how it worked, mainlining on global speculation. No suggestion of the neo-liberal dream of the fusion of Canberra and corporate power.
The biggest contradiction is the benefits of globalisation” would enable vast fortunes to be made with the benefits “trickling down” to the rest of us. Instead we are experiencing a wave of misery, cutbacks, foreclosures and job losses amongst the middle and working classes in the developed nation states, where economic elites are being bailed out by governments they constantly said they despised for intervening in the market.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 10:38 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
January 2, 2009
the economic road ahead
The economic consensus is that 2009 will be worse than 2008 for Australia but that things are basically fine. They could have been worse. There is no place for pessimism. As an editorial in the AFR said:
Yes, the road ahead looks difficult. But this is no time to abandon our faith in the capacity for enterprises and markets free of oppressive state intervention to reinvent ourselves and bounce back. Human ingenuity will prevail, confidence will eventually return and the wheels of commerce will spin again. There is too much evidence that the world, despite periodic setbacks, continues to progress
Interesting isn't it. The defence of free market capitalism now depends on faith not on reason. Reason cannot do the job any more given the global financial crisis and its aftershocks on the economy. So faith is called in to plug the gaps whilst the progress narrative provides the justification for the faith.
Farr, capitalism
Were the reasoning any more contorted it would be a circus act by aged mime artists. What needs to be pushed into the background is the idea of equilibrium: that market activities would balance themselves out and generate positive-sum outcomes all round.
So what of 2009, the immediate future? The AFR says:
Climate change is the challenge of the 21st century, daunting but hardly insurmountable. We have the means and must will the end. But overcoming the financial crisis is the immediate challenge.
It's all faith and will isn't it. We will survive etc. What ever happened to hard edged neo-liberal economics? What does the end mean in "willing the end"?
There is no hint of contradiction in this account: ---the bailing out of companies and banks to save capitalism by the state is statism, which undermines the bottoms-up innovation by entrepreneurs that is suggested by the phrase "human ingenuity".
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 8:50 AM | TrackBack
January 1, 2009
Frost/Nixon
I saw Ron Howard's Frost/Nixon filmic adaption of Peter Morgan's play about the back story of the David Frost television interviews with Nixon in 1977 yesterday. Only a hint of the theatrical origins are still visible. in this Hollywood adaptation. The film juxtaposes political power with media power through a series of interviews in which the two match wits for money in a kind of poker game played out on television.
It is a study in media and political character as both the grinning TV personality and the conniving ex-president hope to revive their careers by outfoxing their onscreen partner.The interviews are important because Frost got Nixon to admit that he had let down the country down.
Sean McCabe
The core of the film is Nixon's drunken phone call to Frost before the final interview on Watergate about Nixon's involvement in the Watergate scandal, for which he would have certainly been impeached had he not opted to resign. This is Hollywood and Frost gets Nixon to admit in the Watergate interview that nothing the president does could be considered illegal---"When the president does it, that means it is not illegal” a view that justifies any measure taken by a president, whether break-ins, pre-emptive strikes, torture or unauthorized surveillance.
The reality is different--Nixon's statement occurred during the discussion of the Huston Plan that lead to the illegal wiretapping of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Elsberg#Fielding_break-in">Daniel Elsberg. The Huston Plan related to domestic terrorism and the Ellsberg wiretapping was in response to Ellsberg's leaking of the highly-classified Pentagon Papers.
President Bush’s view of executive power, and the limits of executive authority in a democratic society, is not at all different than Nixon’s But Bush, unlike Nixon, shows no remorse. Frank Langella's representation of Nixon discloses the arrogance, the doubt, the self-loathing, recriminations and torment. This representation of Nixon is that of a tragic character haunted by the existential terror and horror at the heart of politics, which so damages people and causes them to act in ways they consider to be wrong.
In this case it is Nixon's abuse of executive power that so damaged his political reputation. The damage haunts him, eats away at him. He seeks to restore that reputation and desires redemption. The former drives him, the latter surfaces with Nixon's admission that "I let the American people down and I’ll live with that for the rest of my life".