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September 30, 2010

Afghanistan as a folly

It is hard to believe but the Coalition has just proposed a major expansion of Australia's military role in Afghanistan, saying the nation should send in hundreds more troops as well as Tiger helicopters, Abrams tanks, mortars and artillery. It's a military solution to a political problem that looks like imperial nostalgia. It's folly.

This proposal by the neo-conservatives indicates that the Coalition has no intention to rethink the strategic stakes at issue in Afghanistan, to help them understand why the current U.S. strategy isn't working, and to outline a plausible alternative approach.

As Stephen Walt observes the situation in Afghanistan has gone from bad to worse since Obama took his advice from his military for a surge:

Obama began escalating the U.S. commitment in Afghanistan shortly after he took office, and since then we've had a fraudulent presidential election, an inconclusive offensive in Marjah, a delayed and downgraded operation in Kandahar, and a run on the corrupt Bank of Kabul. Casualty levels are up, and aid groups in Afghanistan now report that the security situation is worse than ever, despite a heightened U.S. presence.

So what is the point of the war? What we there for? Fighting, not for victory but to not to lose? In all likelihood the US will build up the Afghan army to the point where they think it has a reasonable chance of surviving on its own (albeit with continued and massive US support, including both air power and money to buy off local Taliban commanders), and will then declare victory and withdraw all or most US ground troops.

In all likelihood the US will build up the Afghan army to the point where they think it has a reasonable chance of surviving on its own (albeit with continued and massive US support, including both air power and money to buy off local Taliban commanders), and will then declare victory and withdraw all or most US ground troops.

European NATO governments, like the Australian government tell their populations that their troops are in Afghanistan because Afghanistan is a threat to them. That's nonsense. The only really important reason for sending troops to Afghanistan is to help maintain the alliance with the US because Australia, like the Europeans, is incapable of guaranteeing their own defence against a future resurgent China or Russia. This dependency-driven contribution is publicly called “saving NATO”, and in turn logically justifies Australians and Europeans doing the absolute minimum necessary in Afghanistan to keep the US committed to Australia and Europe.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 2:51 PM | Comments (11) | TrackBack

September 29, 2010

Tasmania: a silicon valley?

David Bartlett, the Premier of Tasmania, says that Tasmania is set to become the next Silicon Valley-style technology hub as the national broadband network is implemented over the next three years. It is envisioned that Tasmania will lead Australia in connecting to the global digital economy.

Tasmania, as a technology hub, is part of the Bartlett government building a dynamic and modernised economy structured around five priority sectors for innovation in the state’s economy:

• high-value agriculture, aquaculture and food
• renewable energy
• the digital economy
• a vibrant, creative and innovative Tasmania built on its lifestyle advantages, and
• further growing its tourism advantage.

This Innovation Strategy was first outlined in the New Economic Direction Statement (2008) which re-focussed the state’s economic direction on three key strategies: innovation, skills and infrastructure.

Most attempts at building the next Silicon Valley in other countries have failed. They thought in terms of "innovation in a box" that you can simply build overnight, unconnected to its surroundings, to the culture, to a moment in history.

Margaret O'Mara in Foreign Policy argues that Silicon Valley was based on substantive government contracts, a top-tier university (Stanford) as a research center and networking hub, a venture-capital model, a risk tolerance and meritocratic ethos of Silicon Valley financiers, and competitive amenities that provide a palce where creative, talented entrepreneurial people want to live.

O'Mara, the author of Cities of Knowledge: Cold War Science and the Search for the Next Silicon Valley, says:

The secret of Silicon Valley is that it wasn't a consciously planned silicon city. The Valley exists because of other big forces -- Cold War spending patterns, sustained GDP growth, and large-scale migration and immigration. It prospered because of unique local characteristics like risk-tolerant capital, entrepreneurial leadership, and good weather. It grew organically. It had room for happy accidents and lucky breaks. The not-so-good news for places like Shenzhen's University Town or Russia's Innograd, the high-tech corridor Medvedev wants to create in a woodsy area outside Moscow, is that this kind of ecosystem can't be built quickly from scratch. It takes time to grow, and success will depend on things its builders cannot control.

Even though globalization has changed the playing field, and the technologies that the Valley helped create have brought far-flung places and people together like never before, place still matters, and the right ingredients still make a difference.

It is not clear that Tasmania has the right ingredients to build a high tech hub or a city of knowledge. For instance, it is not clear that the University of Tasmania is like the American research universities that were at the heart of this formation of Silicon Valley: a university as an economic development engine, urban planner, and political actor.

In Silicon Valley universities and their administrators were central to the design and implementation of cities of knowledge, and successful scientific communities often depended upon the presence of an educational institution that not only had extensive research capacity, but was also an active participant in state and local political power structures.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 2:50 PM | Comments (7) | TrackBack

September 28, 2010

biffo

Parliament as the blood sport for political junkies returns after the pomp and ceremony today. The expectation is that things will get ugly. For many of them the biffo mode is the natural order of things. It is how they understand accountability.

What then of parliamentary reform? Will steps be taken to reducing the power of the executive by increasing the power of Parliament vis-a-vis the executive? Will the committee system be strengthened?

Instead of a hung parliament we need to think in terms of a power sharing parliament. This is what the Climate Change Committee --a cross-party committee to look for a way forward on a climate price--is. It is a parliamentary structure that provides a space to make serious attempt to find something workable around the pricing of carbon to begin moving to a low-carbon economy.

The assumption is that effectively reducing carbon pollution by 2020 will require a carbon price. Which mechanism to achieve this is what will be sorted through. Sophie Mirabella on Q+A in a biffo mode used the example of the committee to attack the Gillard government as undemocratic or “Marxist”!

The political reality is that firstly, this attack is another example of the Liberals choosing to deal themselves out of climate change policy. They are now on the outside looking in as the Greens influence climate policy and are now talking about "'the Greens' hand in the Gillard glove''.

Secondly, Australian politicians continue to take the slowly-slowly approach to tackling climate change and to the lack of coordinated national policies to scale the clean energy industry to secure jobs, manufacturing capacity, and research and development. The point of carbon pricing is to make the changes that will have the smallest impact on the economy, but the biggest impact on carbon pollution.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 9:00 AM | Comments (14) | TrackBack

September 27, 2010

National Broadband Network: backhaul

When I was down in Victor Harbor on the photo shoot last week I noticed that NextGen had begun the National Broadband Network's regional backhaul build to Adelaide. This part of the Regional Backbone Blackspots is due to be completed by March 2011.

I realise that backhaul for an FTTP is not sexy, but it is necessary. Currently, Telstra's stanglehold on backhaul means that everything slows down to crawl after 3pm, you cannot access ADSL 2+ due to the very high amounts of congestion. The download speeds really drop. Consequently, Suzanne finds it difficult to work from the weekender with a VPN connection when other devices are connected to the internet. Phone/video call’s are out of the question.

There must be thousands of businesses in regional Australia that have the same problems and if they are struggling, then they aren't competing properly, wealth generation is inhibited and job growth hamstrung. The internet is now intrinsic to media and communications, entertainment, politics, defence, business, banking, education and administrative systems as well as to social interaction. Telstra's efforts go into protecting its price gouging, legacy business rather than providing a modern, reliable service.

Australia’s NBN is the big daddy of public broadband plans around the world. Telstra, the incumbent, in principle, is now inside the tent.

The poor backhaul infrastructure is the consequence of market failure. Market failure is what News Ltd overlooks in its relentless attacks on National Broadband Network, its astroturfing of broadband wireless and its vested interest in a one way information delivery from them to us.

It is rather ironic that greater emphasis on the regional elements of the NBN was first promoted by people such as Barnaby Joyce, Fiona Nash and others within the National Party, but these people have now been totally silenced by the 'kill at all cost' attack from their Liberal partners who see it as an opportunity to wound the Gillard Government.

Yet, as the UN Broadband Commission for Digital Development Platform for Progress report highlighted, high speed broadband is essential infrastructure for the digital economy. It states:

To achieve the best results, broadband needs to be coordinated on a countrywide basis, as a national broadband network (NBN) — which, in order to optimize the benefits to society, can also be an open network to which service providers have access on fair terms, regardless of who owns the infrastructure. Eventually, this can lead to broadband being considered as highly advanced and essential infrastructure, similar to electricity and water distribution networks.

Broadband, in the form of an open-access fibre-optic network complemented by rapidly-evolving wireless infrastructure for convenience, is an enabler of economic and social development. It enables the provision of a wide array of services in areas as diverse as public health, education, commerce, smart electricity grid, and climate monitoring.

Knowledge is now the very engine of economic growth, public policy, business practice and the informed citizen, not to mention the sophisticated consumer, in a ‘knowledge economy,’ ‘information society’ and ‘media culture. We are experiencing a reordering of the field of knowledge as a whole--creative destruction--- and a questioning of older forms of knowledge.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 7:44 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack

September 26, 2010

Fox News: Glenn Beck

In the video below Glenn Beck cites a litany of cases as examples of how "choice architects have changed your life" through supposedly excessive regulation. This is Fox News, which says that it is fair and balanced. It is anything but fair and balanced.

These are rants not journalism.

Since its 1996 launch, Fox has become a central hub of the conservative movement's well-oiled media machine. Together with the GOP organization and its satellite think tanks and advocacy groups, this network of fiercely partisan outlets--such as the Washington Times, the Wall Street Journal editorial page and conservative talk-radio shows like Rush Limbaugh's--forms a highly effective right-wing echo chamber where GOP-friendly news stories can be promoted, repeated and amplified. Fox knows how to play this game better than anyone.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 10:05 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack

September 25, 2010

British Labor Party: internal democracy

I prefer the way the British Labour Party selects its leaders. Unlike the Australian Labor party's preference for knives and number crunchers the British Labour Party has a long tradition of internal democracy. Its leaders are chosen through a long drawn out process involving an electoral college but it is not based on one person one vote.

Those who can vote are Labour members of the House of Commons and the European Parliament, Individual members of the party and individual members of affiliated organisations, such as trade unions and socialist societies with each electorate or section contributing one third of the total votes. The candidate with the lowest vote will be eliminated and their voters redistributed until one candidate secures 50% of the vote in the electoral college.

The divided British Labour Party has come to a cross roads. Martin Kettle puts it this way in The Guardian:

Labour therefore faces a very big choice. It can either define itself for its core vote – as the party of the unionised working class, the poor and their middle-class allies – and delineate a philosophy of redistributive social democracy, which it believes will protect the core vote and the middle-class allies will be willing to support. Or it can define itself as a majoritarian party committed to social justice that recognises it will have to moderate aspects of those core values to become and remain the natural home of voters who do not fully share them – even in government.

An MP's vote is worth around 600 times the vote of an ordinary member. That is not one person one vote.

At least the two Milibands are the leading contenders of the five candidates battling for the Labour leadership ---David Milinand has been the frontrunner, but the new leader is likely to be Ed Miliband---- don't think that Coca-Cola or the City can save the planet.

Will they break from New Labour's 1990s preference for a light touch regulation in the private sector, the internal market in public services and a wanton disregard for personal liberty? Will the Blair-Brown era,with its fascination with making lots of money, be put behind? Will British Labour rediscover its social democratic roots in liberty and equality?

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 11:22 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

September 22, 2010

some humour

I'm on holidays down at Victor Harbor trying to do some large format photography. So postings will be light this week.

A little humor:

I notice that the Coalition would not support a paired Speaker, and that it has walked away from the parliamentary reform agreement that they signed when negotiating with the Independents to form government. It's not in the Coalition's self-interest to stick to the agreement, as the aim is to put as much pressure as possible on the minority Labor government. The Coalition's interest is in instability. So their tactics will be to foster it.

This is not going to be a parliament where legislation is improved by consensus and is reviewed by different parties on its merits through argument. What we will have is The Coalition's attempt to destroy the workability of the new parliament in order to paint a picture of Labor stuff-ups.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 5:37 PM | Comments (19) | TrackBack

September 21, 2010

‘Deficit mania’ now rules

The current arguments for ‘balanced budgets’ and seeing national economies as if they were household economies in our neo-liberal market order represents a return to the pre-Keynesian economic thinking of the 1930s.

John Buell in Beyond Budgetary Fundamentalism at The Contemporary Condition says that the deficit mania in the US has deep roots. A core within the business community, especially financial services, never accepted the New Deal. Social Security has always been especially offensive. It is a universal program that worked and became very popular. It constitutes the major reason poverty rates among the elderly declined dramatically. He adds that had George W. Bush privatized Social Security, the recession in the US would likely have become Great Depression II.

Unable to go after the program directly, conservatives attacked Social Security through fallacious arguments that the program, which its bipartisan trustees certify as fully funded through 2044, is a fiscal time bomb. As Baker points out, the real fiscal time bombs are exploding private sector dominated health costs, the bank bailouts, and war costs of a trillion and counting. Concern about deficits has never prevented the business press or our Senators from supporting these corporate behemoths.

The anti deficit mania has tangled roots both in immediate monetary interests and in the broader political culture. It has surprising support among some working class citizens, who stand to lose financially from its implementation. He suggests the reason for this support is that many of the white working class, confused and ever more insecure in the face of job loss and fierce cultural conflict, retreated to older conventions of self-reliance.

Whatever the cultural roots government deficits have become the main focus of economic debate across western democracies. ‘Deficit mania’ and ‘balanced budgets’ now rules. At a moment when massive market failure makes a stronger role for government, in regulation, investment and redistribution necessary, the neo-liberal counter-attack demands that the state should retreat, or rather should deploy its power mainly to attack the public sector of the economy.

This is about power and from this perspective would appear that Gillard Labor made a Faustian pact with the financial sector whereby the latter was encouraged to become the leading edge of the economy, while providing tax revenues to support public investment and welfare. Quarry Australia is not a wholly sustainable economic model even though Australia'’s competitive advantage in this sector is a fact of economic life that will not go away.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 11:41 PM | Comments (5) | TrackBack

September 20, 2010

an ideas -free zone?

According to Michael Stutchbury, the Economics editor at The Australian, the current power sharing Parliament is akin to a political circus concerned with simply dividing the spoils of power. He adds that so far, there is no sense of post-election policy direction from Gillard, such as how her rejection of Rudd's "big Australia" translates into a growth agenda.

Note the emphasis on the growth agenda--and not on sustainability. We can infer that Stutchbury is not in favour of sustainable development. He is, for instance, all for plain old economic growth as measured by GDP as an as an indicator of wellbeing, and he reckons that the absence of plain old economic growth is a social disaster. Stutchbury comments:

The complaints of the business and policy elite boil down to the sharpest such critique of the political class in a generation. Labor is gutless, Abbott's Coalition is populist, the Greens are anti-growth and the country independents are rural pork-barrellers. In short, the political system is failing to deliver the policies required to extend Australia's remarkable prosperity.

Who are the business and policy elite that Stutchbury refers to? What are the policies that will deliver prosperity? Do these policies move beyond growth as measured by GDP?

Stutchbury's policy elite are mainly those who are critical of the Gillard Government for a variety of differing reasons reckon the China boom won't repeat the prosperity gains of the past decade and that Australia is not making the most of our China boom. However, the impression gained is that what matters for Stutchbury is not the content of the criticism per se, but the criticism itself. It's another part of The Australian's kick the ALP meme.

If we dig beneath this meme, then we find the criticism from the Business Council of Australia president Graham Bradley. Bradley says that Australia faces losing its competitive benefit of cheap coal and gas energy, that Labor has provided no blueprint for Australia's future energy supply, and that the "excuse" of minority government should be rejected.

It is true that the solar energy industry has virtually given up on the federal Labor government to provide a mechanism for the roll-out of utility-scale solar installations across the country. What then is Australia's energy future? For Bradley and Stutchbury it is nuclear power, which could efficiently supply one-quarter of Australian electricity by 2050. And the subsides that are required to ensure that nuclear power is economically competitive? They are not mentioned. There is no mention of a cost benefit analysis either, even though this is demanded of the national broadband network.

Senator Scott Ludlam in Old-tech nuclear power is not the answer in The Australian says that:

In no deregulated energy market, anywhere in the world, is the private sector putting up its own money to build nuclear power stations. The industry remains on subsidised life support everywhere and is making headway only in a tiny handful of countries with state ownership of generators and command and control energy networks. The net effect, as researcher Mycle Schneider has graphed in stark terms, is that the nuclear industry flatlined in the 80s, began to decline in 2002 and is headed for steeper decline, or in the best case stagnation, for the foreseeable future.

He adds that the reasons are a complex mix of ageing reactors, formidable project costs, the unwillingness of insurance companies to cover the astronomical liabilities of reactor accidents and the 65-year unanswered question of what to do with radioactive spent fuel for the next quarter of a million years.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 11:24 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

September 19, 2010

BHP Billiton goes green?

I have to admit that I am rather wary of Marius Kloppers, the CEO of BHP Billiton, embrace of a hybrid carbon tax and suggesting that Australia take the lead on climate change policy. The record of this transnational on climate change and environmental protection is not good.

Kloppers' intervention into the climate change policy debate about putting a price on carbon is a hybrid because Klopper's suggestion involves both a levy on carbon with compensating mechanisms for industries affected, plus a limited trading scheme in order to reduce consumption of energy produced by coal fired station and to encourage low carbon alternatives.

Why this now? To take the lead and shape the climate change policy of the Gillard Government so that it favours BHP Billiton is my best guess. The ALP is not going to lead on this issue (it was on the backburner since Labor's old emissions trading scheme, the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme, was dead) and so the policy on climate change will be driven by both the Independents and The Greens after July 2011.

What we have is a preemptive strike by Kloppers. He is dealing BHP Billiton into the policy game on climate change at the early stage. The onus is now back on the Gillard Government, which was willing to bury the issue in a special committee.Kloppers' intervention means that the issue has to be resolved.

The Liberals continue to chant about a great big tax on business and consumers and completely reject any movement to setting a carbon price. Even though the ground has shifted Abbott still talks in terms of the great big tax on everything. Unlike BHP Billiton, is not looking beyond coal, and he looks to be increasingly at a odds with big business. His position remains one of ferocious opposition.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 3:11 PM | Comments (8) | TrackBack

September 18, 2010

The Australian's delusions

In an editorial entitled Embracing high-level analysis the Australian reflects on itself in the light of recent criticisms of its anti-ALP agenda and its stated goal to destroy The Australian Greens. The editorial states that:

While we have endorsed both sides of politics in pre-election editorials, this paper made it clear from the outset that it "is tied to no party, to no state and has no chains of any kind. Its guide is faith in Australia and the country's future." A perceptive reading of the news and commentary pages shows that the paper is less concerned about which party wins office than whether governments pursue policies and reforms geared to generate prosperity and enterprise.

The claim is at odds with The Australian's shift from a conservative broadsheet with a diversity of views to a campaigning partisan paper that is antagonistic to the ALP and the Independents and deeply hostile to The Greens.

The claim that its guiding principle is geared to policies that generate prosperity and enterprise is at odds with its deep seated social conservatism that has lead it to embrace climate change denialism in opposition to the research findings of natural science. So The Australian is opposed to both science and the ecological enlightenment.

The Australian's embrace of free market economics leads it to deny how the Keynesian use of government spending by the Rudd Government to counter the consequences of the global financial crisis generated prosperity and enterprise. This indicated an inability to understand high-level public policy.

The central delusion is that The Australian continues to understand itself in terms of what it was in 1964 when it has become Australia's equivalent to the "fair and balanced" Fox News in the US.

Update
In Unfair and unbalanced: how News failed to fell government in the National Times Rodney Tiffen says that in Australia, News Ltd titles account for about two-thirds of daily newspaper circulation, far higher than any proprietor enjoys in any other established democracy. He adds:

The Australian has a much greater pluralism in its opinion columns, even if still skewed towards the right. But the paper's key feature is the way its news judgments are filtered through its political prism. There is little clear air for alternative views or developments to emerge. Look, for example, at its coverage of climate change over the past few years. Only Labor government stuff-ups - never government achievements - are deemed newsworthy.

He says that News Ltd were sore losers at the Liberals losing the election due to the Independents siding with the ALP, and that their anger accounts for their bizarre post-election behaviour.

That sour grapes behaviour increasingly looks like becoming payback. It takes the form of describing a power sharing Parliament as the farce of the Independent's manipulation of the hung parliament in pursuit of billions in spending for electorates and posts of power. The Independents are just out for themselves and they use the threat of going back to the polls or parliament facing a "Mexican standoff" if they don't get their way.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 9:52 AM | Comments (7) | TrackBack

September 17, 2010

The tea party rolls on

It would appear that the Tea Party movement in the US is on a roll within the Republican Party, in the US, as it continues to remove incumbents or establishment backed candidates in primaries to stand in the congressional midterm elections in November.

This upheaval in the Republican Party is in the context of millions upon millions of Americans slid into security-destroying poverty following the financial collapse and the anti-big spending movement that began last year is pushing the Republican party to the right. What we are witnessing is the death of moderate Republicans by the tea party express of rightwing populists.

Michael Tomasky asks:

..the historically situated question is this: is the Tea Party movement a flash in the pan, or is it a historic fulfilment of an urge that has been building for 230 years and is on the cusp, with the help of Rupert Murdoch's "news" channel, of becoming a permanent fixture in American politics?

I have no idea. In American Prospect Paul Waldmann says that:

The central divide within the right now, as it has been for some time, is between economic conservatives and social conservatives. The former are essentially libertarian, believing that government action is harmful almost by definition. The latter are quite happy to have government making decisions in people's lives, so long as it makes the right ones -- about whom you can marry, whether you can get an abortion, and what public schools will teach

This is similar to the composition of the right in Australia with economics always on top. That means a libertarian economic agenda: low taxes for the wealthy and corporations, looser and lighter regulations, and opposition to any legislation to address climate change.

Glenn Greenward says that the Tea Party extremism isn't an aberration from what the Republican party is; its representative of the GOP, and its politics is expressed in a less obfuscated and more honest populist form. It is plain speaking right wing politics. Greenward describes the Tea Party thus:

it is dominated -- in terms of leadership, ideology, and the vast majority of adherents -- by the same set of beliefs which have long shaped the American Right: Reagan-era domestic policies, blinding American exceptionalism and nativism, fetishizing American wars, total disregard for civil liberties, social and religious conservatism, hatred of the minority-Enemy du Jour (currently: Muslims), allegiance to self-interested demagogic leaders, hidden exploitation by corporatist masters, and divisive cultural tribalism. Other than the fact that (1) it is driven (at least in part) by genuine citizen passion and engagement, and (2) represents a justifiable rebellion against the Washington and GOP establishments.

This right-wing populism is an eruption that will shift the Republican Party further to the Right.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 1:36 PM | Comments (9) | TrackBack

September 16, 2010

Ross Garnaut: mining + the environment

Ross Garnaut has built an enviable reputation as one of Australia's leading public intellectuals.He is known for his key role in opening the Australian economy as part of the team that came into office with Bob Hawke in 1983, for his seminal 1989 book Australia and the Northeast Asian Ascendancy, and he is the Australian Government's chief adviser on climate change and carbon emissions.

Garnaut is currently in the news as a result of a critique by the ABC of his association with Lihir Gold Limited. This has operatesd one of the world's biggest gold mines on Papua New Guinea's Lihir Island under the under leadership of its founding chairman Professor Ross Garnaut. The ABC raised concerns over the environmental record of Lihir Gold Limited with respect to its use of Deep Sea Tailings Placement (DSTP) rather than land-based tailings disposal. Garnaut has defended his actions.

Garnaut has a long history in PNG, having helped establish the country's post-independence monetary and mining policies. He now sits on the Ok Tedi board and is chairman of PNG Sustainable, the mine's current majority owner. The key question is: do the externalised environmental costs of mining exceed the benefits of income earned from mining?

Garnaut puts it this way:

There are genuine dilemmas in resources development anywhere, including in poor developing countries. Mining inevitably generates waste and tailings. The disposal of waste and tailings inevitably involves some disruption of the natural environment—as does almost all human economic activity. The important judgements are always about making responsible choices between alternative means of managing waste and tailings, and about whether, when the best possible means of managing waste and tailings have been chosen, the benefits of a particular mine exceed the costs.

There is a growing reliance by Papua New Guinea on mineral exploitation for foreign direct investment, government revenues, and foreign exchange. The greater the insistence on environmental protection the less attractive a resource exploitation opportunity becomes. That resource exploitation and minimal environmental attention occur most commonly in developing countries is not coincidental.

Despite the public evidence of the damage to the environment and the ensuing affect on the people of Papua New Guinea by mining activities; and despite universal condemnation of these activities and the companies responsible; the companies continue to conduct these activities without official hindrance and with little apparent concern for the long-term ramifications of their actions.

BHP, the original owner of the OK Tedi mine, did not find a balance between the need to generate income and to protect sensitive areas and respect the wishes of indigenous populations. BHP's Ok Tedi mine over-relied on a tailings dam that proved unsustainable in that geology, and then sent the tailings down the Ok Tedi – Fly River system ( the waste is dumped into the Ok Tedi and Strickland rivers which are tributaries of the Fly River and form part of the Fly River system).

I remembered pictures showed tons of mud and mine waste polluting the river and the land around it, indicating that the company’s practices resulting in “severe environmental damage. The toxic river of waste killed the fish and crops, destroyed thousands of square kilometers of rainforest and caused terrible hardship for local people. Ok Tedi owner BHP agreed to pay more than $100 million in compensation to the local people for this eco-catastrophe after being taken to court to force it to adopt environmental management systems and to pay compensation.

In 1995 Garnaut said in defence of the Ok Tedi gold and copper mine mine in Papua New Guinea:

Take Ok Tedi - it's currently in the news, BHP being much criticised for the environmental impact. Without taking a view on the pros and cons of that current debate on the environmental issues, it is, I would have thought, a relevant part of the debate that the people of the Star Mountains, where the Ok Tedi mine is related, were some of the poorest, most miserable people on earth when this mine was first conceived, twenty years ago. Life expectancy of women was nineteen years. There has been a very substantial improvement in nutritional standards; in general health and welfare the opportunities for those poor and miserable people have expanded very considerably. That is part of the Ok Tedi history that is just as real as the environmental problems in the Fly River. There is no quick and easy solution to the task of development in a poor, underdeveloped economy. What I hope for Papua New Guinea is that there will be a gradual building, a gradual learning, over a long period of time, a gradual strengthening of institutions.

For Garnaut the economic benefits outweigh the environmental costs according to a utilitarian calculus. The standard way was to focus on the amount of money that was being invested in community rather than how the pollution problems were actually impacting on sustainability or long term sustainable development.

In 2002, BHP withdrew from the project and gave its 52 per cent share to the PNG Sustainable Development Program. With the transfer, BHP gained legal indemnity from PNG government action with respect to all the pollution and destruction it has already caused and will cause in the future. The PNG Sustainable Development Program is designed to provide long-term benefit to local communities, but whose income is dependent on the very mine killing the local environment.

PNG Sustainable was specifically set up to invest in projects on behalf of Papua New Guineans to help soften the impact when the mine closes in five years' time. Before leaving, BHP set up a dredging program to return the river to a safe state and avoid further destruction. For the past decade, this dredge has been sucking waste out of the river near Bige village and stock-piling it close by. The dredge has only removed a fraction of the amount of waste required to keep the river safe.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 10:15 AM | Comments (6) | TrackBack

September 15, 2010

SA: the politics of the axe

The politics of austerity has come to South Australia as we have feared due to the bit of softening up of public opinion for massive budget cuts that has been going on. This austerity is in the context of the chill of global recession, the pace of recovery slowing in developed western nations, and still dysfunctional credit markets.

The high-level leak (of a 300 page document) from within Treasury reveals the full extent of the Sustainable Budget Commission's recommended $1.5 billion cuts to all government agencies ahead of Thursday's horror state budget whilst superannuation contributions for new MPs will rise from 9 per cent to 15.4 per cent of their annual salary.

Martin Rowson

So we have learned that the document is classic wielding of the axe to thousands of program closures and spending cuts. It recommended closing schools and hospitals (country hospitals are earmarked for closure or a downgrade) including the Repatriation Hospital at Daw Park in Adelaide’s inner south and selling off the land, raising mining royalties, close police stations, cut the size of the government's ministry, thousands of jobs lost across the public sector and even to scrap taxpayer-subsidised cars for MPs.

The Treasurer Kevin Foley will tell the public that the (shaky) Rann Government, whose roots are those of social justice, really has their interests at heart. They have rejected "very ugly and seriously unpalatable" spending cuts recommended by the Sustainable Budget Commission due to the losses in government revenue from the ongoing effects of the global financial crisis. There was no alternative etc.

The spin is that the Rann Government, which dreams of a big mining future, will only make $1 billion of cuts across state government agencies and is only cutting hundreds of jobs; that the hard fiscal restraint is a road map to future surpluses so as save the state's AAA credit rating; and there will be no target cuts to major capital works. As they say in the publicity business "slash and burn" is a hard sell.

Those servants who lose their jobs -- estimates range from between 2000 and 5000 -- should take heart that Foley is getting the Rann Government's budget back to surplus as quickly as he can, that SA has a healthy economy, and that the deep cuts to state departments' administrative areas and not front line services. Any doubts they have should vanish when informed that Foley's politics of austerity is responsible economic management for South Australia. Foley is the right man for the job, the deficit hawks enthuse.

Little will be said about the "human cost" that will result from draconian cuts in public sector spending. Unemployment leads to a loss of earnings that is both substantial and long-lasting, especially among younger people. The forced austerity hits them especially hard, as it is more difficult for them to enter the labour market. If you lose your job, you are more likely to suffer from health problems, or even die younger. If you lose your job, your children are likely to do worse in school. There will be more urban decay, few green jobs, the run down of public education and greater illegal economic activity.

What this indicates is a clear rejection of demand-stimulating macroeconomic policies and that neoliberalism is still the only language used by South Australian politicians to confront the crisis and to face the social conflicts that result. The language of responsible economic management is management of austerity measures and repression.The austerity politics risked a deflationary spiral and a deeper jobs crisis. So democracy has become subsumed under, if not quite yet identical with, capital and the state and democracy no longer present an outside to capital that provides a way to counter the market's invasion of all aspects of everyday life.

Treasury's underlying assumption is that South Australia could compensate for the fiscal belt-tightening by selling more goods and services overseas. Treasury assumes belief is that hacking away at public spending will create space for the private sector to flourish. South Australia will cease to be so dependent on consumer spending and the state for its growth; instead, resources will shift to manufacturing and exports, thus reducing both household debt and the size of the budget deficit.

However, there is no argument by the Rann Government as to how this "rebalancing" will happen or provide a new foundation for innovation and growth. South Australia does not have an economic development based on a technology platform; nor does it have many expats returning from Silicon Valley returning home to lay a new foundation for innovation and growth structured around a culture where the start-up ethos is pervasive, risk-taking is expected, and failure is accepted.

Update
The Sustainable Budget Commission had recommended 310 pages of cuts - including closing hospitals, schools and police stations, along with across-the-board cuts in ministerial offices and reducing the number of Cabinet ministers by three. The political reality was that the Rann Government would shy away from many of the tough proposals - especially closing hospitals, schools and police stations.

Foley will cut $1.5 billion out of public spending over four years. There are huge cuts in public sector workforce numbers, cuts to their long-held entitlements and a raft of increased fees and charges - along with the removal of a range of subsidies such as those for petrol products in the rural areas.

The public sector bears the brunt and is the centre piece of the budget. The target is 3743 public service job losses, including 138 senior executives across all departments over three years. Public servants will be offered an initial separation package of 20 weeks' pay plus three weeks per year of service - up to 116 weeks' pay. This will reduce after six months of redeployment to 10 weeks' pay plus three weeks per year of service - up to 88 weeks' pay. If the targeted numbers do not accept voluntary redundancy within a year the Government will resort to sackings.

Public sector long service leave rates will also be reduced from 15 days a year to nine days a year for each year of service beyond 15 years to save the budget $90.7 million and public servants will lose permanent tenure. Foley says:

We are ensuring that the pain of cuts, the pain of restraint is internalised as much as possible.The public sector will be more responsive, more efficient, more focused, better quality...if the conditions that apply in the private sector are consistent with what we have in the public sector.The changes were needed to modernise public sector, which was still governed by regulations suited to a "bygone era".

On the other hand, it will maintain infrastructure investment commitments--- Adelaide Oval redevelopment, railway upgrades, hospital improvements and the major South Road expressway project. Nothing to foster the information economy by doubling of the current internet 100-hot spot CityLan scheme.

Water bills will increase by 21% to pay for the desalinisation plant. More revenue raising by traffic fines. Not a word about safety. Extra revenue measures are $479m.

No doubt the deficit hawks will go on about public sector debt, fiscal discipline, the crowding out of private sector borrowing and investment, and reducing pressure on on long-term interest rates. More needs to be done in terms of austerity, as South Australia has become addicted to Canberra dollars.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 8:26 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

September 14, 2010

and that's it?

In response to the global financial crisis and the subsequent weak credit growth by Banks, the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision announced new capital requirements for internationally active banks.

The new rules will require banks to hold levels of common equity of at least 7% of their assets by January 1, 2019, up from 4% in the U.S. and just 2% internationally. Specifically, the minimum common equity requirement goes up to 4.5%, and banks will be required to hold a capital conservation buffer of 2.5% to withstand future periods of stress bringing the total common equity requirements to 7%. The new rules will be phased in over the next 9 years to allow banks to gradually build their reserves, because of the fragile ground banks currently stand on as they recover from the global financial crisis.

That is getting tough on banks? The reality is that a Basel III world will not look hugely different to the one from which the last crisis sprang. The systemic risks are the same as they were two years ago.In the view of the markets, the banks have won. They call the shots these days.

For the global bankers Wall Street is the economy. The wealth of a nation is worth whatever banks will lend, by collateralizing the economic surplus for debt service. If academic textbooks pretend that the economy is all about production and consumption – factories producing the things their workers buy, in Washington and at the Congress hearings into global financial crisis the economy is all about lending and debt, all about balance sheets.

The situation is that the various bank bailouts in Europe and the US depend on the economy at large being sacrificed (but not Wall Street) due to keeping the bad debt on the books. 'Sacrificed 'refers to the cost of a recession, austerity cuts in spending, and rising unemployment

The banks are not going to be broken up -- their casino arms hived off to protect the deposit base from the risk-takers---nor will they be cut down to size. They have become too powerful and do not need to co-operate with national governments.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 10:58 AM | TrackBack

September 13, 2010

Adelaide: urban sprawl

Currently, the politics of urban sprawl in Adelaide centres around Mt Barker. It used to be a little place of 2000 people in the Adelaide hills surrounded by farming. The dairying industry has dried up. The housing industry has taken over.

The Rann Government's 30-Year Plan for Greater Adelaide is fundamentally about strategic planning that delivers the best result for existing residents and future homeowners The impetus of the 30-Year Plan for Greater Adelaide is to fast-track business as usual urban sprawl on the fringes alongside slow progress on transit-orientated development in the inner-city.

So the probable consequence is the risk of creating disenfranchised communities with little or no access to services and public transport. New outer suburbs----eg., Buckland Park in Adelaide--- are by their nature car dependent and then you’ve got a long commute to the CBD on congested roads.

The proposed Mt Barker development will result in emptying its 70,000 commuters into Adelaide’s urban road network, which is becoming increasingly congested. This is due to a lack of urban infrastructure investment by state government's that were, and are, obsessed with budget surpluses and triple A credit ratings from the money market credit agencies.

The problem in Mt Barker is there was no call or support from the Mt Barker Council for such rapid growth, no pleas from local businesses or from existing residents. it appears that this development, in which 1,300 hectares of farmland is rezoned from rural to residential, is being driven by the developers with the usual lack of infrastructure planning.

For instance there is no provision for an alternative to roads that are becoming increasingly congested. No public transport. The access to transport for those people without access to a car is the bus not rail. What we have are the new motorways and better public transport’ rhetoric with the reality that this kind of development continues the legacy of extensive suburban development built on the premise of cheap and easy car use. The developers or the sprawl industry blame government planning policy and constraints for the problems of urban sprawl.

The Mt Barker Council, which is actually opposed to the Government’s mega-plan, and which is normally responsible for land zoning in that area, has its own plan for medium density housing on a smaller area of land. The desire is for orderly development that can actually deliver good services and good liveability in a community. What is not wanted is communities without services and infrastructure.

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September 12, 2010

US: policy paralysis?

In the New York Review of Books Robin Wells and Paul Krugman ask: 'The Slump Goes On: Why? Their concern is with the US.

They say that from mid-2009 many indicators have been pointing up: GDP has been rising in all major economies, world industrial production has been rising, and US corporate profits have recovered to pre-crisis levels.

Yet unemployment has hardly fallen in either the United States or Europe—which means that the plight of the unemployed, especially in America with its minimal safety net, has grown steadily worse as benefits run out and savings are exhausted. And little relief is in sight: unemployment is still rising in the hardest-hit European economies, US economic growth is clearly slowing, and many economic forecasters expect America’s unemployment rate to remain high or even to rise over the course of the next year.

The economic recovery has been too weak to generate enough new jobs. And as Americans fail to find good jobs, they cut back spending still more. What is more , the prospects for an immediate improvement in the labor market seem bleak: the nation will not get the fiscal stimulus required to put sufficient numbers of people back to work;

Wells and l Krugman say that most of the economic commentary is backward-looking, asking how we got into this mess rather than telling us how to get out---they don’t offer much guidance on the most pressing problem at hand, which is how to deal with the continuing consequences of the last one.

Why?

Their argument is that the relative absence of proposals to deal with mass unemployment is a case of “self-induced paralysis”---politicians, government officials, and economists alike have suffered a failure of nerve—a failure for which millions of workers will pay a heavy price.

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September 11, 2010

regional development + the Australian settlement

We know that the agreement struck between the Gillard Government and the regional Independents (Oakeshott and Windsor) focused on parliamentary reforms and a new deal for regional Australia. The principles invoked were that regions "have not been given their fair share" and that "equity principles" must prevail.

A new deal for regional Australia means regional development in a globalized world based on state intervention into the open market so as to advantage the people the Independents represent. What does regional development mean? How are we to understand that? How is it a break from the past attempts at regional development under the Howard Government.

I haven't seen the agreement, but Paul Kelly has. His position on minority government, if you recall, is that we have a weak minority national government, a parliament where reform will be more difficult and a group of "special interest" politicians controlling the cross-benches.

He says in The Australian that at the level of Government it involves a new cabinet-level minister for regional Australia and a new department:

There will be a regional Australia cabinet committee, a regional Australia co-ordinating unit in the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet, an office of northern Australia, a new House of Representatives committee for regional Australia chaired by an independent, a new government-funded regional Australia think tank, methodology to enable the Finance Department to better analyse spending by location, and a review of all rural and regional funding.

About time is my response. This has to be done properly given the complexity of economic and environmental problems in regional Australia. Done properly means economic growth and supporting regional communities whilst shifting to a sustainable Australia

Kelly's interpretation of this approach to regional development is that:

The name of the game is redistribution. With invocations of that ageless Australian narrative of the bush in its fight against "drought, floods, fires and cyclones" the document endorses notions such as "place-based thinking" and "localism". It is notably weak on the economic adjustments and productivity challenges facing the regions....This resurrects an old Australian instinct described in the immortal words of historian W.K. Hancock of the state as "a vast public utility whose duty it is to provide the greatest happiness for the greatest number" (along with winning votes for several political generations).

I have little problem with "place-based thinking" and "localism", and I accept that Australia's public philosophy has been utilitarianism, and that this moral philosophy underpins neo-classical economics' conception of cost benefit analysis. Good public policy is that which produces the greatest happiness for the greatest number.

Now there was a substantial shift in the economic policy regime in Australia in the 1980s as market liberalization (open to foreign competition, and largely de-regulated and privatized) was deemed to be a desirable response to the changed external economic environment (a global economy). Kelly's interpretation links regional development within those political traditions that have never accepted the post-1983 pro-market reform era of Hawke and Keating ---and we should add the neo-liberal mode of governance.

Kelly says regional development represents a return to the Australian Settlement that was set out in his book The End of Certainty (1992, 1994).

There have been two influential political traditions that never accepted the post-1983 pro-market reform era that delivered Australia recession-free from the recent global financial crisis. They are the unreconstructed rural interventionists that often mock the Nationals as sellouts and the ideological Left, once strong in the ALP but now at home in the Greens and sections of the education establishment where the Greens draw much support.It is tempting to see the current crossbenchers as embodying these two throwback movements, but dressed up in the fashion of caring environmentalism.That raises the heresy that the coming parliament, far from constituting an exciting new politics, is actually a reversion to the discredited past.

Why cannot there be regional development and an open economy? Why isn't this a possibility? If state developmentalism, a central plank in Australian Settlement, refers to the state playing a substantial role in promoting and regulating economic development, then there can be diverse threads in this weave.

For instance, Geoffrey Stokes points out that Kelly reduces state developmentalism to protection and tariffs. Referring to Marian Sawer's The Ethical State? Social Liberalism in Australia, Stokes says Kelly overlooks another dimension and rationale for state developmentalism that extends beyond the economic:

the tradition of social liberalism evident in Australian parties of both the Left and Right encouraged them to adopt an interventionist state ideology for reasons associated with giving citizens a ‘fair go’. Through implementing a wide range of social and economic policies, the role of the state was to ensure that all citizens were given the opportunity to develop their potential fully. The intersection between the economic and the social is especially evident in the requirement for equal opportunity in education policy, but it is also apparent in other policy areas.

Instead of Kelly's interpretation of a throwback dressed up in the fashion of caring environmentalism, we have the possibility of regional development as the intersection between the economic and the social and the environmental.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 12:23 PM | Comments (12) | TrackBack

September 10, 2010

is regional Australia an economic ghetto?

We know The Australian's opposition to the national broadband network is because it sees it as the most politically rewarding pork barrel of all. We also know that News Ltd has commercial interests here, as Foxtel is threatened by the emergence of internet television (IPTV.) Hence their line that the future is mobile wireless and Telstra, which part owns Foxtel.

So what is the Coalition's argument against the national broadband network? Paul Fletcher, the Liberal member for Bradfield and ex-Optus executive, says that Coalition scrutiny will apply forensic scrutiny to the $43 billion national broadband network. Fair enough we need an opposition to keep an eagle eye on government mismanagement and waste for us.

However, the Coalition's opposition goes deeper than that--as it is directed at the national broadband network itself, not the way it is implemented. Fletcher says it is the business case:

The business case was already fragile: Labor's implementation study predicted a paltry 6 per cent to 7 per cent return, and even that requires highly optimistic assumptions about the number of people who take up services on the new network.It is even harder with Gillard's new commitment to build first in rural and remote areas - where building a network costs much more and the number of customers is much lower.

And that is it. The Government's rate of return on its infrastructure investment is too low! The immediate response is why should the rate of return be 15% and not 7%. Fletcher doesn't say. He just assumes that it should be because this is the industry standard.

Kevin Morgan in his Deal turns NBN into shameless pork barrel in The Australian avoids the 'why a commercial investment'? issue. He says that the national broadband network:

is not a visionary nation-building project but little more than a pork barrel the government can dip into whenever it has a problem, in this case the need to cling to power....the fragile economics of building a national fibre-to-the-home network can be prejudiced if it suits the government because in assuring the independents that rural and regional areas will get priority for the fibre rollout the government has turned the business case for the NBN on its head....This commitment to a rural first rollout will mean the government will have to put more equity into the NBN or raise more debt on its behalf in its initial years, meaning the NBN cannot be considered a commercial investment but will have to come on budget.

So why should the National Broadband Network be understood as a commercial investment and not a nation-building infrastructure project? Morgan just assumes it should be; ie., that government should be run as if it were a business delivering a high return for its shareholders. Why should we adopt that business approach to policy making? He doesn't say.

The elephant in the room is neo-liberalism, as we can see from Henry Ergas' argument in Bush subsidies a romantic folly in The Australian that much of the spending by governments on the bush is ineffective:

By and large, people do not have few skills because they live in country areas; rather, they live in those areas because they have fewer skills. Were their skill levels higher, many would not remain where they are; rather, they would move to the main centres. This is because human capital is far more productive in cities....The unpalatable truth is the farther one lives from our large urban centres, the lower are likely to be one's human capital, lifetime earnings and life chances. Poorer prospects translate into riskier behavioural choices, including a significantly higher incidence of smoking, problem drinking and poor diet, and more widespread antisocial behaviour, which reduce life chances ever further.

Isn't this the inequity that the regional Independents raised? So what can be done? Ergas says move to the city because those handouts are a poisoned chalice:

Locking the bush into a culture of welfare dependency, and transforming country towns into economic ghettos without sustainable sources of wealth, will merely ensure large parts of regional and remote Australia die, leaving only pockets of economic and social viability.

But why not raise the skill levels in the regions and provide the necessary infrastructure for regional businesses to do take advantage of their opportunities? Ergas' response is:

Much of this spending is ineffective. To believe, for example, that computer use in country areas is low because networks are unavailable is wrong. As for believing digging optical fibre into the ground will solve the problem, that defies common sense. Moreover, the efficiency cost of the subsidies is high...And protecting the cross-subsidies from competitive entry will require entrenching NBN Co as a monopoly.

The proper solution is to remove the remove unnecessary imposts and distorting subsidies and the onerous regulations on the bush (land use regulation) that are so burdensome.

So why is the argument that computer use in country areas is low because networks are unavailable wrong? It is because those in regional Australia have fewer skills--eg., regional areas are attractive for retirees and people on government benefits---and those with more skills move to the cities because the regions are economic ghettos.

So why not provide the infrastructure that would enable regional Australia to avoid becoming an economic ghetto? Isn't that the reason for government intervention in to the market to build the national broadband network? In arguing that case the regional Independents are tacitly saying that neo-liberalism is deeply flawed with its market only approach to policy making.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 8:56 AM | Comments (38) | TrackBack

September 9, 2010

Murdoch's way of doing business

The phone hacking scandal at News of the World, which is owned by Murdoch's News International, refers to the great number of people---hundreds of celebrities, government officials, soccer stars---whose mobile phones were hacked by Murdoch's journalists. Hacking the phones of anyone whose personal secrets could be tabloid fodder gives us an insight into how Murdoch empire operates.

It's an old story given fresh impetus by the New York Times under pressure from Murdoch's New York-based Wall Street Journal.

As Will Hutton points out in The Guardian in the UK News International's ambition and strategy is to shrink the BBC, entrench Sky's power into a de facto monopoly, further to make itself the arbiter of British politics while using the profitability of its UK operation to support its global ambition. Murdoch, as an info capitalist, has built a self-reinforcing networks of business and political power by owning the production of information and knowledge. In Australia, as in Britain, Murdoch unabashedly uses his papers to advance a generally conservative, pro-business agenda.

The News of the World, with its roots in Britain's working class culture is a newspaper that works the time-worn formula of misbehaving celebrity kiss-and-tells and intrusive investigations. At its muck-raking best, it performs a public service in exposing crooks, cheats, hypocrites and liars--eg., the sting operation into the corruption of the Pakistan cricket team.

Andy Coulson, the prime minister's press secretary, was the deputy editor and then editor of the News of the World, the flagship Sunday tabloid of the News International stable, during the phone hacking in 2006. It was on his watch that a reporter, Clive Goodman, went to jail after admitting conspiring with a private detective, Glenn Mulcaire, to hack into the mobile phone messages of the royal family. The defence by News of the World's and News International was that the two individuals were rogues. No one else knew what was going on.

It is now being claimed that phone-hacking and other illegal reporting techniques were rife at the tabloid during 2000-2006. It also claimed that Scotland Yard's "close relationship" with the News of the World had hampered the inquiry. It also seems that in the face of continuing revelations both the previous Labour government, and now the Cameron/Grieg coalition, have been all too ready to accept police assurances that their inquiries have been as thorough as possible.

The implication is of police and politicians being deeply fearful of, and subservient to, the media, especially the Murdoch empire. News International has paid large amounts of money to get the dirt on people in public life – including in the police, the military and politics – and that it has paid huge sums (£2m and counting) to suppress the truth from coming out.

What this event suggests is that the world taking shape around us, and giving new shape to even familiar processes, institutions, movements and values, has to be increasingly understood in communicational and cultural terms. What is different from the industrial 20th century is the increasing shift of culture and communication to the centre; a shift that can be understood as a network of interconnected nodes.

Update
Murdoch's way of doing business in the UK is explored by Henry Porter and Will Hutton in The Guardian. Porter says:

British society is far from perfect: we are sometimes harsh, jeering, vulgar, indolent and lacking in compassion and it is to these traits that Murdoch's tabloid newspapers and much else in his media empire appeal. But look at Britain before Murdoch bought the News of the World and you see a nation that was a good deal less derisive. Murdoch has undoubtedly contributed to the coarsening of British society and also to an erosion of values, which now sees a society where the outrageous practices of his – and other – tabloid journalists are expected, if not quite accepted.

Hutton refers to the danger of the kind of media dominance News International is now developing in Britain. Will there be an inquiry into the activities at the News and the World and News International in relation to hacking in particular, its news-gathering techniques in general and the police's shortcomings? Or are the politicians too scared to take on Murdoch?

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goodbye to the dictatorship of the executive

Leunig is right about the theatre of politics. We can now draw the curtains on the previous act, interesting as it was. In the next act things are going to be different for the House of Representatives, because the politics by necessity will be one of consulting, negotiation and compromise around a varrety of policy issues, as opposed to just ramming the legislation through the House as was routinely done in the previous act.

How then are to understand the action in the new act? Arthur Sinodinos, John Howard's former chief of staff, states in The Australian that Gillard:

is in office but not in power. The new parliamentary processes tilt the balance back towards the legislative arm at the expense of genuine leadership. Collective decision-making robs parties and leaders of individual responsibility and accountability. Who will stick up for anything remotely difficult now?

That gives the game away. Sinodinos is all for a strong executive ('genuine leadership') and opposed to strengthening the power of the legislature against the executive. In the previous act that meant the House of Representatives was a rubber stamp for those who controlled the executive (ie., the inner cabinet).

So how do things in the new act look for those who defend the dictatorship of the executive as being good for the country? Not good. Sinodinos sees a more deliberative House negatively:

More parliamentary scrutiny of contentious legislation may help build consensus but compromise is not an end in itself. It is only worthwhile to pursue consensus that improves outcomes and furthers the national interest. It is easy to get consensus if you aim for the lowest common denominator.Some of these new parliamentary exercises could descend into a dialogue of the deaf. The terms of reference of the new parliamentary committee on climate change make it clear that only true believers need apply. And that is meant to give us consensus on climate change?

In other words it's all talk and nothing much can get done. You can only get things done with a dictatorship of the executive. This is the position of News Ltd as well.

The problem with this argument is that Howard and Sinodinos had to negotiate and compromise with the Senate over their legislation, since for most of the decade they were in power they did not control the Senate. When they did gain control in 2004 they overreached themselves, hollowed out the way the Senate conducted its business of improving legislation, and got tossed out for their Workchoice efforts.

For all their talk about being Burkean conservatives they showed no reverence for the established political institutions, trashed convention and tradition, dumped the accumulated wisdom of established institutions and allowed the power of dictatorship to go their heads. Behind the mask of conservatism stood Hobbes, Leviathan and the sword. In other words effective government must be undivided and unlimited sovereign power.

Liberal democracy in Australia is structured on checks and balances on sovereign power (its divided and limited), and it is premised on debate, negotiation and compromise rather than the bully boy in the schoolyard approach. Many in the ALP are going to find that hard to accept--eg., the power brokers of the NSW Right---and they will have to be kept in their box.

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September 8, 2010

the conservative noise machine cranks up

My my. The bitterness, anger and resentment in the conservative side of politics this morning over the formation of a minority Labor government supported by two regional Independents is something to behold. Is this a sign of what is to come?

The wing nuts are on the rampage in the comment threads of the mainstream press with their partisan rancour about traitors. The conservative noise machine is being cranked up. The smell of blood is in their nostrils and you can hear the sound of their gnashing teeth as they hunt down their limping prey.

Greg Craven, writing in the National Times, says that the result is a mess:

Whichever way you look at it, this is a first-class parliamentary mess... This is no triumph of participatory democracy for Australia. This is a Parliament that looks like an upturned jigsaw puzzle...The fundamental question is, how long can it all last?...with a double and diverse minority in the Senate and the House, this is an exceptionally vulnerable government. Its mid to long-term prospects are not strong...Is government really worth having at this price and in these circumstances?

The partisan op-ed commentators are hostile. For some it is wrong that a third of the infrastructure funding should go to regional Australia.

Others are in a more toxic mood. Consider Janet Albrechtson in Games powerful independents play in todays Australian

Politics does not get more elitist than what happened yesterday. The independents use fine rhetoric of grassroots politics, respecting their constituents, supporting their electorates, improving our democracy.Windsor and Oakeshott revealed that independents play raw politics just as toxic as either of the political parties that independents like to scorn. Their game has been one of self-interest clothed in the tricky language of stability and longevity. Backing the party less popular with voters does not improve democracy. It diminishes and devalues democracy.

Windsor and Oakeshott used their power to get a better deal for regional Australia. Their argument was that regional Australia's concerns had been sidelined over the last decade and that this was inequitable. Such a strategy, they have said, works better for regional Australia than that pursued by the Nationals, which is aligning with the Liberals and having the concerns of regional Australia ignored.

Albrechtson is not interested in engaging with such an argument. What matters is undermining the legitimacy of the Independents. She continues:

Their holier than thou positioning is a pretence. Oakeshott and Windsor have been playing some pranks of their own.There was always a sneaking suspicion that Windsor and Oakeshott were enjoying their moment in the sun far too much.The transformation from irrelevant backbenchers to media tarts playing kingmakers was too quick. Now we know that their singular focus on stability has been a singular focus on making sure they remain in the spotlight for as long as possible.

Yep, they remain with the balance of power for as long as they can to ensure the inequity issue for regional Australia is addressed as much as possible. They've probably got three years max before majority government returns.

For Albrechtson the credibility of the Independents must be destroyed. Hence the talking point that what they are doing that they doing has a great deal to do with self-interest and very little to do with national interest. For Albrechtson the last election was a sham. It was undemocratic.

The conservative strategy is to bring on the next election as soon as possible by whatever means. Attack, attack, attack. Destroy, destroy, destroy. The national broadband network has already been marked (huge cost blowouts; a minefield of waste and incompetence) as this was 'the broadband election'. The NBN was a result of market failure and it addresses the issue of poor net access in rural areas, because it is uneconomical.

The talking point of the Abbott-led Coalition campaign against Gillard Labor is already clear: Gillard's minority government is without legitimacy. Labor faces an antagonistic media that will take delight in both jabbing Labor's wounds and supporting an aggressive Coalition who will have fun pulling out the stitches in Labor's wounds.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 9:34 AM | Comments (15) | TrackBack

September 7, 2010

minority government + the media

I'm finding the responses by the horse race journalists in the Canberra Press Gallery's and their fellow travellers to a hung Parliament, the three regional Independents, the reforms to Parliament and the negotiations to decide a minority government increasingly obnoxious.

In defending the two party system in spite of the fracturing of the body politic they target the Independents (the "Three Amigos",m ) and consistently fail to take their policy concerns about regional Australia seriously.

The Australian's general response, for instance, is to hell with parliamentary reform, another election has be to called right now so that the people get it right this time. Getting it right means a strong executive in a conservative government to reform society so that Australia is an open, pro-business economy. Minority government is simply a recipe for reform paralysis.

Others say the decision needs to be made now. There can be no more delay--even though it is actually the two major parties who are dragging their heels on addressing the policy issues the regional Independents have raised.

One of the more vitriolic responses is Niki Savva's Shackled with a few rogue fence jumpers in The Australian. This is what Savva means by rogue fence jumpers:

There is no misty-eyed rainbow coalition in the making here but one weakened bloc relying on a bunch of misfits, oddballs, rebels, megalomaniacs and ideologues to cling to power. Take your pick which is which.The cocky independents did not care about who had the most seats, who got the most votes, who was ahead in the opinion polls or the fact most people in their electorates voted anyone but Labor. They veered from anxiety attacks to power surges as they tried to decide, and tried to decide on what would make them decide.

Her argument is that with minority government nothing will get down because the three Independents will be overwhelmed.

Every piece of legislation will have to be negotiated through the cocky independents, Andrew Wilkie and or the Greens' Adam Bandt. We could end up with better outcomes. In our dreams. More realistically, nothing much will happen because no agreement can be reached, or we will end up with an even bigger plague of camels. Everyone will have to be around and on the ball all the time, especially the three cockies.

Yet 80% of legislation is passed on a bipartisan basis. The debates and negotiations occur on the contested legislation, which has gone through the committee system that is based around public consultation. None of the regional independents, Andrew Wilkie or the Greens' Adam Bandt had a problem withe national broadband network. They were all in favour of it as they were for more renewable energy.

Update
Bob Katter has decided to support Abbott and the Coalition. He added that if the Coalition did form government he would not be accepting any positions such as a ministry or the Deputy Speaker's position. He has indicated that he may retract his support for the Coalition should Tony Windsor and Rob Oakeshott decide to go with Labor. If Windsor and Oakeshott go ALP, then Katter stays as Independent in effect.

Another possibility to the one Katter mentioned is Rob Oakeshott lining up to support Gillard Labor, whilst Tony Windsor stays as an Independent supporting supply and only good confidence motions. That would make things nice and tight (75-74) with little room for slippage. Another possibility is for Windsor + Oakeshott to decide to back Gillard (76-74), which is what I reckon will happen because of the stability criteria.

Update 2
Tony Windsor goes for Gillard ALP because of the national broadband network and more renewable energy (in relation to the climate change) for regional Australia. So does Rob Oakeshott. The Gillard Government offered a better deal for regional Australia--a $10 billion regional package and the history of inequity re regional Australia was crucial for both Windsor and Oakeshott. So the national broadband network will go ahead, and we can expect substantial fibre roll-outs to occur around the country over the next 3 years.

The Independent's strategy is to leverage this political situation to address that inequity. The Independent's support is for supply and confidence motions only. Oakeshott appears to have been offered a ministry by Gillard--most likely a regional development ministry.

It is going to be a difficult three years for Gillard Labor --a minority government that is internally fractured; and squeezed between the Greens on the Left and continually firebombed from Abbott + News Ltd on the Right. The Nationals will self-destruct when it is realized that the Independents have gained more for regional Australia in two weeks than the Nationals have in a decade.

The News Ltd narrative will be that Labor will implode and they will be doing everything they can to undermine the Oakeshott and Windsor's support for a minority Labor Government. The talking point for the News Ltd hacks will be that the Greens are the problem. The News Ltd judgement would be that the Coalition would win am majority if there was an early return to the pools.

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US decline + Tea Party gatherings

China’s astounding economic development of the last generation poses a huge problem for American hegemony. Giovanni Arrighi in his Adam Smith in Beijing argued that the outcome is clear: the American Century of global dominance is in terminal crisis. China is bound to resume its historic place as the eastern pole of (economic) civilization and America’s day in the sun is sure to be eclipsed, both by virtue of China’s deep well of human and cultural resources and by the geographic logic of historical capitalism.

One symptom of this decline is the effect of the financial crisis in the US on the economy---a recession and a a jobs crisis. And so we have the political backlash:

The bottom has fallen out of the economy, Americans have continued to lose their jobs and houses in droves and they face declining job security and dwindling earnings. There a public mood of fear that feeds into, and reorders, the culture war so that it becomes about the role of government and the very meaning of America.

Paul Krugman opens his 1938 in 2010 with this account:

Here’s the situation: The U.S. economy has been crippled by a financial crisis. The president’s policies have limited the damage, but they were too cautious, and unemployment remains disastrously high. More action is clearly needed. Yet the public has soured on government activism, and seems poised to deal Democrats a severe defeat in the midterm elections.

Obama's stimulus program was too small and too short-lived. The stimulus raised growth while it lasted, but it made only a small dent in unemployment — and now it’s fading out. Krugman says that it’s slightly sickening to realize that the big winners in the midterm elections are likely to be the very people who first got us into this mess, then did everything in their power to block action to get us out.

Krugman points out that austerity is self-defeating: when everyone tries to pay down debt at the same time, the result is depression and deflation, and debt problems grow even worse. Added to that is the hollowing out of the middle class. Consumers no longer have the purchasing power to buy the goods and services they produce as workers.

The traditional response, acquiring more education to respond to a world with more technology, is being undercut by more debt-fueled education to prepare Americans for millions of jobs that only require moderate on-the-job training. These are low wage jobs.

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September 6, 2010

so much spin on political representation

The Australian finds academics who argue that the role of Independents should simply reflect the majority views of their electorate. They quote Edmund Burke to justify their claim that representatives are delegates who simply follow the expressed preferences of their constituents.

This ignores that Burke holds to the trustee conception of representation and he defends o the independence of representatives, on the grounds that individual conscience provided the best basis for political judgment. In his Speech To The Electors Of Bristol At The Conclusion Of The Poll (1774) Burke says:

Parliament is not a congress of ambassadors from different and hostile interests, which interest each must maintain, as an agent and advocate, against other agents and advocates; but Parliament is a deliberative assembly of one nation, with one interest, that of the whole… You choose a member, indeed; but when you have chosen him he is not a member of Bristol, but he is a member of Parliament.

The delegate conceptions of representation require representatives to follow their constituent's preferences, while trustee conceptions require representatives to follow their own judgment about the proper course of action. Representatives should think of the common good and not be primarily concerned with the narrower interests of their particular constituents.

The Coalition fills in the detail on the delegate conception of political representation. Since the Independent's electorates are conservative so the three regional Independents should support the Coalition. It would be ''inconceivable'' for the rural trio to side with the ''most left-wing government'' in the nation's history. As they are maverick National Party MPs rather than true independents, so they should come home to the conservative homeland.

The spinners (eg., Parker and Partners) say that:

The community appears frustrated that the government is being so publicly held hostage by a handful of vested interests, and the risk for the independents is that they are now perceived to have overplayed their hands.

Which vested interests are these?

The Independents work with a delegate conception of the nature of political representation. It is being made very clear by them that, apart from parliamentary reform, their central concern is to embed the power of regional Australia for the long term in the context of globalization. Tony Windsor has stated that their mechanism to achieve this is through changes to the structure of government: they want a minister for regional development; beefing up Regional Development Australia so that it has more money and clout; and a parliamentary committee to monitor what is done.

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September 5, 2010

What is the role of finance in a good and just society?

In his review of several finance books at National Interest Daniel W. Drezner asks a dam good question: "What is the role of finance in a good and just society?"

It's a good question given the hegemony of market fundamentalism or faith in the power of markets to correct themselves, the history of asset bubbles and financial crises and the shift to minimal regulation of finance capitalism. He doesn't directly answer it. it needs to be answered given the current conflict between Wall St and Main St in the US arising from the bursting of the housing/ financial bubble.

Drezner says that:

The trouble is that finance now permeates not only the economic but also the political and social fabric of our world. No one can talk about Big Finance without talking about the power of capital in politics. At the same time, Goldman Sachs now possesses all the cultural cachet of a tobacco company. And no matter how Washington attempts to curb the excesses of an industry whose core purpose is the making and reallocation of money, the future of global financial regulation remains unclear.

The financial sector has been entirely transformed since the mid-1970s. The changes are evident: rapid growth, deregulation, widespread introduction of new technology, profound institutional transformation. The weight of the financial sector has grown markedly in developed capitalist countries in terms of employment, profits, size of institutions and markets. Finance now penetrates every aspect of society in the developed world, and has also grown rapidly in the developing world.

The thesis of financialization depicts the shift in the center of gravity of the capitalist economy, from production to finance. In response to the bursting of the financial bubble, the main strategy of the advanced capitalist states has evolved from an immediate financial bailout, involving tens of trillions of dollars, to a much more concerted attempt, for which there are no real historical analogies, to reinstate financialization as the motor force of the capitalist system.

The growth of international capital markets limits the power of states to regulate them, forcing them to give way to financial market forces.Hence, although new regulations may be put in place, they will not, in the end, constitute effective restraints on financial institutions and markets.

Update
In Bad Money: Reckless Finance, Failed Politics, and the Global Crisis of American Capitalism Kevin Philips says that:

My summation is that American financial capitalism, at a pivotal period in the nation's history, cavalierly ventured a multiple gamble: first, financializing a hitherto more diversified U.S. economy; second, using massive quantities of debt and leverage to do so; third, following up a stock market bubble with an even larger housing and mortgage credit bubble; fourth, roughly quadrupling U.S credit-market debt between 1987 and 2007, a scale of excess that historically unwinds; and fifth, consummating these events with a mixed fireworks of dishonesty, incompetence, and quantitative negligence.

Phillips compares the 21st century United States with the late stages of three great imperial powers before it -- the Spanish, Dutch and British empires to argue that the once mighty U.S. is no longer master of its own manifest destiny.

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September 4, 2010

Tony Windsor's maiden speech

In Roots of the rural revolt in The Australian Gabrielle Chan says that the

2010 episode of "bush leverage" is a result of a backlash by conservatives against a conservative government because rural voters feel that John Howard failed to protect them from the disruptive changes of a deregulated economy.

Chan's argument is that the regional backlash is a rural revolt against neo-liberal economics and policies pursued by both the Liberal and Labor parties.

Many interpret this rural revolt as a reaction to modernisation and as a heritage of the past based on tradition and on refusal of modernity that needs to be negated in the name of ongoing economic reform. It is a revolt that expresses itself in a highly emotional and simplistic discourse that is directed at the ‘gut feelings’ of the people and advocates simple solutions to complex problems.

What Chan calls a rural revolt has emerged into the formation of regional populism. This populism, as I argue in philosophy. com can be understood as an appeal to ‘the people’ against both the established structure of power and the dominant ideas and values of Australian politics and society. The context of this emergent populism from the heartland is the political collapse of the two ideological camps represented by Labor and Liberal.

Tony Windsor, the member for New England, show why populism should not be dismissed as a pathological form of politics that deserves to be mocked. He recently pointed out that a hung Parliament presents country Australia with a very real opportunity to lay a platform for future generations.

In his maiden speech in 2002 Windsor spelt out his approach to a better deal for regional Australia:

We are in a unique situation politically, and have been have been for the last decade... where the basic policy framework that the nation is operating under has been by way of agreement by both sides of the parliament. We have had the Labor Party, the Liberal Party and the National Party agreeing with a basic policy framework. I take issue with that agreement taking place over this last decade, and take issue with some of the patchy benefits of that economic framework, particularly, but not only, for country people.

He highlighted that country Australia has the potential to have the balance of power—irrespective of who is in power in this chamber—and influence the political process far more than it has in the past. There has been a lack of flexibility. The only way to influence that is through the federal chamber.

Windsor's populism is a critique of the democratic limitations within liberal democracies. He says:

Some of the rules applying to competition policy, with its economic rationalist approach on many of these issues, have no flexibility in regard to smallness, distance and remoteness. The very policies that are emanating from this place, whether they be fuel policy or aged care policy—even policies relating to country doctors, or the lack thereof—are emanating from that basic policy framework, which has not delivered equity to country constituents in particular...If that policy is not changed to recognise distance, smallness, remoteness and some degree of social equity, you will continue to see a shrinkage of regional Australia, something which should be abhorred.

He says that the message a neo-liberal mode of governance sends to country communities is to proceed to your nearest major regional centre, go to the coast, go to Sydney or go to buggery.

Populists like Windsor aim to 'give power back to the people' and it calls for more political participation. So this populism can be interpreted as a political logic which aims at attacking the centre of the democratic system, by giving a different interpretation of the principle of the sovereignty of the people.

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September 3, 2010

yet another fear campaign

The Australian's attacks on the Labor-Green alliance continues to gather pace. Mostly it's a fear campaign whose narrative is that the Labor-Greens coalition could be the most left-wing government since the days of Gough Whitlam. The political reality being constructed by News Ltd is that such a government would destroy Australia in the name of the gospel of sustainability.

The latest bullet comes from Robert Carling, a senior fellow at the Centre for Independent Studies in his Tax policy devised by party that is green with envy. Behind the material on tax lies an economics.

Carling says that the Greens would back-pedal on the economic reforms that have helped deliver 18 years' uninterrupted economic growth and greatly enhanced living standards. He adds:

The Greens' tax policy, if taken literally, paints them as a party of "tax and spend" and as a party that is more interested in redistributing wealth than encouraging its creation. Their tax policy is green from envy. The main parties should be very cautious in courting Green support to form a government. Those 1.25 million voters may or may not have voted for less economic growth and lower living standards, but we can be confident the others did not.

So the Greens are part of the social democratic tradition that has been traditionally premised on equality and the welfare state. Carling stands for personal income tax be cut to with a top rate of 35% that is indexed. This would reduce government revenue. But that can be offset by gains to revenue from cutting back on selective tax breaks and by imposing a tight rein on government spending. So Carling is low tax and small government man.

It's a fear campaign based around the talking point of anyone who earns a reasonable quid in Australia would be made to pay big time so the Greens could introduce more energy-efficient industries and turn their backs on the conventional mining sector. These are dangerous hands to be holding holding the balance of power. Carling's assumption of less economic growth and lower living standards is not plausible because he ignores the possibility of wealth creation from the emergence of green industries as Australia makes the shift to a low carbon economy.

How then is infrastructure investment in renewable energy going to take place with small government? The invisible hand of the free market (meaning spontaneous order) of course with the standard appeal to Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations, even though Adam Smith did not credit the invisible hand metaphor with the importance that authors, from the mid-20th century onwards, give to it.

Gavin Kennedy in his Adam Smith and the Invisible Hand: From Metaphor to Myth at Econ Journal Watch says:

Significantly, and contrary to the assertions of the modern consensus, he [Smith] gave the invisible hand no role in his theory of competitive markets in books i and ii of Wealth of Nations. such roles given to it since the 1950s rely solely on assertions and interpolations by modern economists...modern benign invisible hand explanations from the second half of the 20th century elevated the metaphor into ‘principles’, ‘theories’ and ‘paradigms’ of markets, which do not correspond to anything written by smith and neither do they explain anything.

Could we not, in the context of climate change, imagine a spontaneous order in which people were led as if by an invisible hand to promote a perverse and unpleasant end--eg., the tragedy of the commons? Self-interested actions are not necessarily always socially benign.

Surely, ‘the desirability of the market order that emerges as the unintended consequences of human action depends ultimately on the kind of rules and institutions within which human beings act, and the real alternatives they face’ ? It is the rules and institutions that are crucial for understanding how markets function, not metaphors like "the invisible hand."

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September 2, 2010

so much hot air

The Canberra Press Gallery do go on about a hung Parliament. They cannot seem to accept that the vote in the general election was pretty well 50-50, that the number of seats in the House of Representatives reflects that, and that the politicians need to work with what they've got to form a workable minority government. What is difficult to understand?

Forming a workable minority government means forming coalitions for the right of centre and the left of centre parties in the context of emerging problems. It means different political voices to the two old dogs driven to barking and desire to one eat one another other, by their political unconscious.

Somehow, for many in the Canberra Press Gallery, forming coalitions is bad. According to Peter Hartcher at the National Times:

Labor's primary aim must be to win over the three rural independents to give it the numbers to form a government.Yet by formally embracing the left-leaning Greens in a power-sharing agreement, Labor has now made it harder for the trio to justify to their conservative constituencies such a deal with Labor. Labor's economics are good. Its politics are woeful.

Hartcher claims this, even though Tony Windsor says it is not a consideration for him; Andrew Wilkie has said that the Labor/Greens deal does not influence him either; two of the three country independents have said they supported a price on carbon before they were voted back in; and each party in the Labor-Greens coalition or alliance would maintain its own agenda. Hartcher is spinning hot air not arguing.

Meanwhile, The Australian continues to rage on and on about the anti-mining Greens sinking the mining sector with their push for an increased mining tax and a high price on carbon. This is part of News Ltd's partisan campaign to delegitimise both Labor and the Greens, and to demand another election.

Update
Wilkie has decided to support Gillard Labor. Labor offered him modest government investment in upgrading the Royal Hobart Hospital through proper process, federal action on pokie reform and bringing forward the proposed investments in public hospitals.

Wilkie is supporting Gillard Labor in a minimal sense for supply andf or reckless no confidence motions in the government. On everything else he would vote issue by issue. Wilkie in practice, a ''prickly'' supporter of Gillard and the ALP, because of his strong concern for ethical government. Does Gillard Labor have any idea what ethical government means? If not, then storms lie ahead.

Gillard's decision to tackle problem gambling won't go down well with the NSW Right who have strong links to the pokies lobby hostile to a system of mandatory pre-commitment in which every player is mandated to register for a non-transferrable USB stick pre-set with a maximum loss of $50 day per day. This will use a smart card technology in all pokies, which will allow gamblers to control how much they spend before starting.

What we have currently is the Productivity Commission's estimate that there are 160,000 problem gamblers nationally who generate about $4 billion of the $10 billion in annual losses.

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Mark Thompson on Murdoch's media dominance

One strand of Mark Thompson's McTaggart lecture at the Edinburgh International Television Festival was his reply to James Murdoch's lecture the year before in which he attacked the BBC (for its dominance) and public broadcasting.

Thompson, the BBC director general, pointed out that with News Corp's likely purchase of the 61% of BSkyB it doesn't already own, it would own and control close to 50% of the national press (Sun, Times, News of the World and Sunday Times) and Britain's biggest commercial broadcaster – Sky would have created a concentration of media ownership across newspapers, TV and publishing more significant than anything to be found in any other major market. As Thompson pointed out, this would not be allowed in the USA or Australia.

Dominance is what Australia's existing cross-media ownership rules were designed specifically to prevent. No one company is to be allowed to have significant press holdings and a major stake in Australia's major commercial broadcaster. After the shakeout in free-to-air commercial television the laws now function to prevent a Murdoch empire with the run of the press and a commanding position in commercial TV.

The context is that BBC is fighting on a number of fronts---fending off commercial rivals, political detractors, Treasury cutters, newspaper axe-grinders--whilst being dependent on public funding, in the form of the licence fee. The BBC is fighting for its survival (a reduced licence fee) and it is being forced to do some cost cutting in the context of the austerity economics of the Conservative Cameron Government.

The BBC, like the ABC in Australia, is sufficiently popular and successful that it is impossible to imagine scrapping it as an institution. It will be cut down because it is seen as too big. On the other hand, Murdoch's acquisition of Sky News opens up the possibility of turning Sky News into a British Fox News. That shift to an ashamedly right-wing British television news with attitude requires the removal of Britain's impartiality laws.

So we have a threat to democracy which occurs when journalists collude with politicians---when they find themselves on the same side rather than on opposite sides... when journalists decide to be cheerleaders rather than act as watchdogs on politicians based on the commitment to public interest.

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September 1, 2010

Iraq: what was the point

The United States has announced that it is ending combat operations in Iraq. Obama is delivering on a campaign promise to wind down America's involvement in Iraq. That war was based on lies about the threat from weapons of mass destruction. The result was rendition, arbitrary detention and torture and catastrophe in Iraq.

So what was achieved by the neo-con invasion of Iraq that has cost the US around $700 billion or more, and resulted in the hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths, 2 million internally displaced Iraqis, more than 4,500 coalition deaths, a dysfunctional Iraqi government, few basic services such as electricity and water, and bombed out urban centres?

Juan Cole says:

How many Iraqis were killed in all this violence is controversial. It should be remembered that hundreds of thousands also died because of dirty water and lack of medical care, since many physicians and nurses fled the constant clashes. Surely the total death toll attributable to the US invasion and occupation, and the Iraqi reaction to them, is in the hundreds of thousands. Millions have been wounded. Some 4 million Iraqis were displaced, some 2.7 million of them inside the country, and most remain homeless. Iraq is a country of widows and orphans, of the unemployed and the displaced.

Iraq is not stable or democratic and its survival as a united and functioning state is now in question with the total US military withdrawal from the country by the end of 2011.

What was the purpose of the war when Iraq did not pose security threat to the US to justify an Anglo-American invasion that flattened the country and dismantled its entire political order?

In the New York Times the former Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz says the US should stay in Iraq just like it did in Korea to ensure that Iraq us a stable country. Who is going to be contained by a semi-permanent military presence in Iraq? Containing a nuclear Iran?

The threat to regional security has more to do with the prospect of the prospect of a nuclearized Iran and the possibility of Israel endeavouring to stop Iran before it goes nuclear by a strike designed to cripple the Iranian nuclear program. This would involve bombing the uranium-enrichment facility at Natanz, the formerly secret enrichment site at Qom, the nuclear-research center at Esfahan, and the Bushehr reactor, along with the other main sites of the Iranian nuclear program.

Update
Obama professes to believe that he can “turn the page” on history. In the shadow of two towers, the United States declared a new kind of global war, a war that it has been fighting for nine years with little end in sight. The pages of American history indicate that war is now the American way. Whilst Obama tries to extricate the US from the war in Iraq the guns blazing in a war in Afghanistan. Presumably “combat operations” in Iraq become “stability operations” in an enduring war in which the main danger to the US is “terrorism.”

There is no talk in Washington of closing the hundreds and hundreds of bases, large and small, that the US garrisons around the world? No one is saying that the US should dismantle its empire and came home. There is no debate about what would happen to the US if it were no longer the "sole superpower" or the world's self-appointed policeman. These are the kind of questions being asked by Chalmers Johnson in his Dismantling the Empire: America's Last Best Hope (American Empire Project)

America's official "century" of being top dog (1945-2045? ) is coming to an end. Whether the US dismantles its empire or not, China will become the world's next superpower.

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