One day in December, Kevin Rudd and I went to Queensland. Somewhere in the clouds after leaving Canberra and Melbourne, respectively, the newly elected Opposition Leader and I, in anticipation of landing, each turned back the clock. Watches and mobiles reconfigured for the absence of daylight savings time, we were both ready to land.
Rudd, with entourage, was going to Brisbane to begin his ‘listening tour’ in the state Labor must make inroads in at the next election. I, with entourage, set off by hire-car to the caravan park at Mon Repos Beach, north of Bundaberg, site of a sea turtle rookery, for a more typical tour. At 6.45 pm, according to my watch, it was getting dark. I stood surveying the place, the tents and caravans and cabins behind me, the beachside national-park ahead, irritated by Queensland recalcitrance on time, envying Rudd his Brisbane electricity.
‘Yeah, I been comin’ here forty years’, said Les, suddenly next to me. He was maybe 60, grey-haired, grey-stubbled. ‘Up from, ah, Maryborough’.
‘Yeah?…’ I said. Les stood with his arms folded staring out at the ghostly line of white waves in the blue-blackness to the east.
‘…It seems like there are a lot of places to see round here’, I said. ‘You don’t go to the Sunshine Coast or Fraser Island some years?’
‘Nah’, said Les. ‘…Nah, this place is good. Quiet. Beach for the kids. Good showers and all that’. He looked around. ‘Don’t fix what ain’t broke, y’know?’
I said, ‘We’re just up from Melbourne. Came here to see the turtles come up to the beach’.
‘Melbourne?’ Les said. ‘Ah yeah…Yeah, the kids scare ‘em off a lot of the time, the turtles, goin’ on the beach just before dark. They ban people from the beach after six o’clock, but…’
That was news to me. ‘They should really put up signs or have rangers around or something at that time. There were people all over the beach before’.
‘…Yeah’, he said, carefully and somewhat suspiciously considering my proposed change. ‘Maybe…’.
I discreetly analysed my new acquaintance. Probably his group, like mine, had left the lantern home and so couldn’t play Uno. And as he was a Queenslander, I figured I was very probably in the presence of a "Beattie-Howard voter". For ten years of elections, Queenslanders have opted for the combination of a John Howard federal government and a Peter Beattie state government.
Les, too, was watching me with an analytical gaze.
I said, ‘After this we’re gunna go down to Hervey Bay’.
‘Hervey Bay’s bloody horrible, said Les. ‘All developed. Was good once. We was there in ‘74. Wasn’t bad then,’ he said, pausing meditatively. ‘But ah, no, not anymore’.
We stood in silence, bar the rasping bush heartbeat of the crickets.
‘But this place’, said Les. ‘This place hasn’t changed. See, in the eighties they, ah, wanted to develop this whole stretch. Big complex right on the beach. Make it like Noosa. But those turtles, they can’t have artificial lights. Screws ‘em up somehow, I dunno exactly how, but, yeah, it does. So there was this huge fight, dragged on for years, and in the end they banned any sort of development, ‘cept for this caravan park, ‘cos it’s been here forever and it don’t interfere that much’.
Except that, surely, Mon Repos had changed in forty years. An hour ago I had strolled about, in the last of the light. An asphalt road that looked newly paved was bordered on one side by a sugarcane plantation, sprinklers chugging water over the green stalks. The road was dotted with flattened corpses of cane toads.
I inched Les towards the subject of politics.
‘Well, I liked Hawke until that thing with the air-traffic controllers. When he sacked the air-traffic controllers, well, that did it for me, I couldn’t vote for him again’.
I asked what he thought of Keating.
‘Keating! Him and the bloody Indonesians! Keating and Suharto were bloody buddies for Christ’s sake. The Indonesians don’t like us, don’t respect us; and Keating was just falling over himself to please ‘em. He had’ve won again we’d all be eatin’ with chopsticks’.
Whitlam?
‘Whitlam! He was just a fool. Just ploughed ahead with any change he could think of. Didn’t matter to him if it was good change or not or what else it stuffed up. And he didn’t explain half of it to his own Guvvamunt, let alone the rest of us’.
The inner-city Sydney-Melbourne perspective tends to see the Howard Government steadily eroding the painstakingly-formed mountain of progress, whether whittling away one hundred years of industrial relations safeguards through WorkChoices, or eight hundred years of the rule of law in its attitude to David Hicks. But another perspective, common in Queensland, is that it is ‘progress’ which is eroding the world as they like it.
I hoped that, down in Brisbane with his electricity, the new Labor leader, as he enjoyed drinks with Queenslanders (or, for all I know, played Uno with them), was receiving a similar serve. Les doesn’t mourn the ghosts of Labor past: one who didn’t see a need to announce his economic policy at an election prior to implementation; another who hardly bothered to explain and justify dictator-coddling to the electorate; another who crashed through with all the subtlety of the Looney Tunes Tasmanian Devil, and to hell with any collateral damage.
Too often, the ALP gives the impression of not realising, first, that not all change is inherently good, and second, that change should be articulated and explained to Maryborough. For too many, the Labor Party and its policy initiatives seem like legislative cane-toads hopping brazenly into backyards.
Howard, and also Beattie, buck the trend in the minds of many – in Les’s words, they’re ‘Alright’ – and are rewarded with the caravan park vote.
My watch said seven thirty. The sky was black, aside from pinpricks of stars. Almost time to go turtle-spotting. I said to Les, ‘What’s with this no daylight saving up here?’
Les said, ‘Mm. Yeah. Well, there have been referendums on it.’
‘Have there?’ I said.
‘Yeah. Beattie said just the other day, he reckons he’ll hold another vote on it soon’.
‘Really?’ I said.
‘Personally I think it’s a good idea’, he said.
‘Really?’ I said.
‘Well, yeah. Ya have daylight saving, ya get home from work, ya get an extra hour of light to, y’know, do the garden or whatever. Seems a good idea to me’.
‘So you’d support it if it were put to a vote?’ I asked him.
‘Well…’ he said. ‘I’d certainly consider it’.
Rudd, who is a Queenslander, even though he has taken to adjusting his watch in October and again in March, is a good candidate to perform a very necessary task, to reconcile the literal and metaphorical time difference between the states and peoples of Australia. If he achieved nothing else of consequence in government, it would in itself make him a successful Prime Minister; and it could serve as a useful platform for Rudd Labor to bring about permanent and popular-mandated change.
If he never becomes Prime Minister, Rudd will be a useful Labor leader if he makes the federal party realise that their long period in opposition is partly their own fault. Adolescent romantics aside, it is probably more sensible to ensure you will actually crash through and not simply crash. And, when skiing downhill, a full set of skis and poles are generally preferable.
Rudd may find inspiration from Les’s choice for State Parliament. Peter Beattie, member of a new generation of less tub-thumping Labor leaders at Premier’s desks, has paved the way to reconciling change-mongering with ‘relaxed and comfortable’, reconciling Les with the latte set, and maybe soon, Queensland with daylight saving.
In thongs we walked to the beach and joined the rangers, me with my tertiary-educated posse, Les with his grand-daughter. My watch and Les’s both said 10pm. It felt to me like 11, but as we all loitered and shivered on the deserted beach, awaiting prehistoric reptiles to materialise from the crashing waves, the clock’s importance faded. The wind whistled; the surf hissed; the moon was full. The hillside was pitch-black, development-free, just the way the turtles from South America, and Les from Maryborough – and I – liked it. Then, digging her flippers into the wet sand, humping awkwardly up the beach, was a green sea turtle.
The Queensland State Government has implemented a useful change at Mon Repos. A short way up the black hillside, behind the grassy sand-dunes, there is a tiny light. Without disturbing the turtles, it shows people, in the dark, the path to the caravan park. It is the light on the hill.
Tuesday, 23 January 2007
Tuesday, 16 January 2007
Afghanistan - an example of democracy
The war in Iraq isn't over yet, and the US is already longer engaged there than in World War II. The 'new strategy' the of US, trying harder to do the same things that caused this disaster, has just been confirmed. Condi Rice uses all her Unspeak skills to redefine the increase of invasion troops as 'augmentation'.
Obviously, an augmented sense of reality is needed to support the American efforts for world domination. War always yields incredible suffering among innocents, and depending on the weapons the suffering might never stop.
The quagmire in Iraq distracts attention from Afghanistan, but how does Afghanistan after democracy look like? The average life expectancy is 44 years for females, 45 years for males.
Outside Kabul warlords rule the country, rape women and children, abduct children to harvest and sell their organs, and the opium trade (which was stopped by the Taliban in areas they controlled) is at an all time high, supported and organized by American military.
But besides the lack of government, which creates anomy (not anarchy) and poses the daily threat of sudden death for most Afghan people, another legacy of the 'liberation' produces a creeping genocide.
Mohammed Daud Miraki, a social scientist engaged in helping people in Afghanistan, travelled during March and April 2006 through this country and collected photographic evidence of the long-term consequences of the use of DU ammunition. Following the link to his photos is nothing for faint-hearted persons, and I wish I hadn't done this myself.
But images of such 'alien babies' will probably appear in most areas where DU ammunition was used, though not everywhere will be people caring enough to publicise them. The half life of DU is about 5 million years, and it has been used abundantly in former Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon, Somalia, and the US forces considered using it in their Australian bases as well.
Nobody would seriously call Saddam Hussein or the Taliban just rulers of their countries. However, it is embarrassing for the Western World that it managed to worsen the life of millions of innocent people by attempting to liberate them. And whereas people from Iraq and Afghanistan could look for asylum before their countries were invaded, they will now by send back to a fast death due to chaos, lawlessness and unexploded bomblets, or a creeping death by the intoxication by DU ammunition.
Let's just continue to close our eyes and support the biggest mass murderers of the 21st century, George Bush and Tony Blair. Let us not blame John Howard and Alexander Downer for going arm in arm with them, 100 victims of the superior Australian race in Bali easily justify such horrible retribution. Or not?
PS: You can see an interview with Mohammed Daud Miraki in Alex Ansary's Outside The Box public access TV show. In case the link doesn't show up, just search for 'Outside the box #84' on Google video, unless you're afraid of alternative media.
Obviously, an augmented sense of reality is needed to support the American efforts for world domination. War always yields incredible suffering among innocents, and depending on the weapons the suffering might never stop.
The quagmire in Iraq distracts attention from Afghanistan, but how does Afghanistan after democracy look like? The average life expectancy is 44 years for females, 45 years for males.
Outside Kabul warlords rule the country, rape women and children, abduct children to harvest and sell their organs, and the opium trade (which was stopped by the Taliban in areas they controlled) is at an all time high, supported and organized by American military.
But besides the lack of government, which creates anomy (not anarchy) and poses the daily threat of sudden death for most Afghan people, another legacy of the 'liberation' produces a creeping genocide.
Mohammed Daud Miraki, a social scientist engaged in helping people in Afghanistan, travelled during March and April 2006 through this country and collected photographic evidence of the long-term consequences of the use of DU ammunition. Following the link to his photos is nothing for faint-hearted persons, and I wish I hadn't done this myself.
But images of such 'alien babies' will probably appear in most areas where DU ammunition was used, though not everywhere will be people caring enough to publicise them. The half life of DU is about 5 million years, and it has been used abundantly in former Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon, Somalia, and the US forces considered using it in their Australian bases as well.
Nobody would seriously call Saddam Hussein or the Taliban just rulers of their countries. However, it is embarrassing for the Western World that it managed to worsen the life of millions of innocent people by attempting to liberate them. And whereas people from Iraq and Afghanistan could look for asylum before their countries were invaded, they will now by send back to a fast death due to chaos, lawlessness and unexploded bomblets, or a creeping death by the intoxication by DU ammunition.
Let's just continue to close our eyes and support the biggest mass murderers of the 21st century, George Bush and Tony Blair. Let us not blame John Howard and Alexander Downer for going arm in arm with them, 100 victims of the superior Australian race in Bali easily justify such horrible retribution. Or not?
PS: You can see an interview with Mohammed Daud Miraki in Alex Ansary's Outside The Box public access TV show. In case the link doesn't show up, just search for 'Outside the box #84' on Google video, unless you're afraid of alternative media.
Wednesday, 10 January 2007
Corporate social responsibility
The Age had an interesting article about declining sales of Australian produced cars. Due to some incompentent management decisions (neglecting the fact that more Australians favor more economical and fuel-efficient cars) their sales plummeted, and now they ask to
In 2006, the same car manufacturers axed 1000 jobs, which equals to one million dollar as bonus from the government for each slashed job. Somehow, this begging for money from the government for multinational corporations doesn't fit IMHO into the idea of free markets, a credo propagated by the Liberal Party.
On the other hand, a lot of education instutions suffer from under-funding. And as neither Holden, Ford or Toyota are Australian companies, I wonder why the government should even consider bailing out this companies, who drove themselves into problems.
A billion dollars invested in the education system might help growing an educated workforce, which isn't as much distracted from the market reality as the management of these companies obviously is.
How free is the Australian market, and can subsidies for multinational companies really do any good for Australians? There are certainly markets, where home-made products could be sold worldwide, like environmental friendly technologies that reduce CO2 emissions or alternative energy generating technologies.
But those emerging markets don't have the same lobbying power as established industries. And probably will never have, as they don't follow the paradigm of one size (of gas-guzzling status enhancing vehicles) fits all, but require providing solution that fit into local conditions.
Does corporate social responsibility mean the government has to reward incompetent managers of non-Australian (ie multi-national) companies for slashing 1,000 jobs?
pump an extra $1 billion into the car industry.
In 2006, the same car manufacturers axed 1000 jobs, which equals to one million dollar as bonus from the government for each slashed job. Somehow, this begging for money from the government for multinational corporations doesn't fit IMHO into the idea of free markets, a credo propagated by the Liberal Party.
On the other hand, a lot of education instutions suffer from under-funding. And as neither Holden, Ford or Toyota are Australian companies, I wonder why the government should even consider bailing out this companies, who drove themselves into problems.
A billion dollars invested in the education system might help growing an educated workforce, which isn't as much distracted from the market reality as the management of these companies obviously is.
How free is the Australian market, and can subsidies for multinational companies really do any good for Australians? There are certainly markets, where home-made products could be sold worldwide, like environmental friendly technologies that reduce CO2 emissions or alternative energy generating technologies.
But those emerging markets don't have the same lobbying power as established industries. And probably will never have, as they don't follow the paradigm of one size (of gas-guzzling status enhancing vehicles) fits all, but require providing solution that fit into local conditions.
Does corporate social responsibility mean the government has to reward incompetent managers of non-Australian (ie multi-national) companies for slashing 1,000 jobs?
Tuesday, 9 January 2007
Blood for oil?
Finally, Operation Iraqi Liberation, the original name for the invasion of Iraq by the Coalition of the Greedy, oops, Coalition of the Drillers, oops again, Coalition of the Willing (to sacrifice international and human rights) has shown its real purpose.
I'm not really surprised to catch the American government with yet another lie. Allegedly the most valuable resource of Iraq, oil, should help to finance the reconstruction of the devastated country. This was at least the spin from Cheney & Co to excuse incarceration of innocents in Guantanamo Bay, torture in Abu Ghraib, random slaughtering of civilians and raping of women and children by the occupation forces.
Now the puppet government in Iraq, which already had a favorable timing to sentence Saddam (just before the election) and killing him (just when about 3,000 US troops were officially killed), gave away its oil wells.
The Independent published a report detailing how the oil industry, which was nationalized in 1972, is handed over to the evil overlords, ooops, liberators of Iraq.
I wonder how long Australia will feel comfortable being in bed with the American war criminals, as all the myths that eased an Australian engagement in Iraq crumble away like castles made of sand. WMDs? No, none there. Al-Quaida connections? Not while Saddam was in power. Human rights? That's what the Military Commission Act officially got rid of, so that torturers working for the US can no longer be prosecuted.
What remains, is blatant corporate greed, and Australian soldiers, who engage in the robbery of oil in Iraq. And of course, Alex Downer, who just can't get enough of Australian involvement in this bloody, unjust occupation.
Trust your government, it wants just your best. Your blood, your life, your integrity and your money.
I'm not really surprised to catch the American government with yet another lie. Allegedly the most valuable resource of Iraq, oil, should help to finance the reconstruction of the devastated country. This was at least the spin from Cheney & Co to excuse incarceration of innocents in Guantanamo Bay, torture in Abu Ghraib, random slaughtering of civilians and raping of women and children by the occupation forces.
Now the puppet government in Iraq, which already had a favorable timing to sentence Saddam (just before the election) and killing him (just when about 3,000 US troops were officially killed), gave away its oil wells.
The Independent published a report detailing how the oil industry, which was nationalized in 1972, is handed over to the evil overlords, ooops, liberators of Iraq.
I wonder how long Australia will feel comfortable being in bed with the American war criminals, as all the myths that eased an Australian engagement in Iraq crumble away like castles made of sand. WMDs? No, none there. Al-Quaida connections? Not while Saddam was in power. Human rights? That's what the Military Commission Act officially got rid of, so that torturers working for the US can no longer be prosecuted.
What remains, is blatant corporate greed, and Australian soldiers, who engage in the robbery of oil in Iraq. And of course, Alex Downer, who just can't get enough of Australian involvement in this bloody, unjust occupation.
Trust your government, it wants just your best. Your blood, your life, your integrity and your money.
Monday, 18 December 2006
Trusting the government
Some heated debated we had lately in less formal PIS meetings revolved about the question, how trustworthy governments are and what they would or would not do to their people.
As an anarchist, I tend not to trust governments, and as Media&Communication student I learned already a lot about the quality of news.
Chomsky's propaganda model of the media provides a scientific account how media coverage was manipulated in several cases to justify wars. Understanding this model helps determining how much factual background the daily news yarn owns.
However, I noticed an apparent lack of critical thinking with some fellow debaters, which seem to assume benevolent governments axiomatically.
In my political science lectures I learned about the concept of the post-911 world, although I managed to score a H2A for an essay that claimed that 9/11 has hardly changed anything in global politics.
Nevertheless, 911 has been the prime excuse to illegally invade countries and to massively restrict civil rights. And whenever some myth are blown away, like the existence of WMDs in Iraq, the responsible actors claim to have been wrongly informed.
Of course, admitting outright lies means political suicide, even though the voting sheep don't care too much about the integrity of their rulers.
Here is an account about the knowledge available to British MPs before they send their soldier to die, spread death, torture and devastation in Iraq, or, to use the Unspeak terms of the media propaganda, to liberate Iraq and spread freedom and democracy.
The lies of the American president are legion, the UK government knew how harmless Iraq was, and Tony Blair spun the same lies than his American collegue. I'm sure, John Howard is innocent, maybe a bit too gullible, and sent Australian soldiers in the battle just to protect his homeland.
As an anarchist, I tend not to trust governments, and as Media&Communication student I learned already a lot about the quality of news.
Chomsky's propaganda model of the media provides a scientific account how media coverage was manipulated in several cases to justify wars. Understanding this model helps determining how much factual background the daily news yarn owns.
However, I noticed an apparent lack of critical thinking with some fellow debaters, which seem to assume benevolent governments axiomatically.
In my political science lectures I learned about the concept of the post-911 world, although I managed to score a H2A for an essay that claimed that 9/11 has hardly changed anything in global politics.
Nevertheless, 911 has been the prime excuse to illegally invade countries and to massively restrict civil rights. And whenever some myth are blown away, like the existence of WMDs in Iraq, the responsible actors claim to have been wrongly informed.
Of course, admitting outright lies means political suicide, even though the voting sheep don't care too much about the integrity of their rulers.
Here is an account about the knowledge available to British MPs before they send their soldier to die, spread death, torture and devastation in Iraq, or, to use the Unspeak terms of the media propaganda, to liberate Iraq and spread freedom and democracy.
The lies of the American president are legion, the UK government knew how harmless Iraq was, and Tony Blair spun the same lies than his American collegue. I'm sure, John Howard is innocent, maybe a bit too gullible, and sent Australian soldiers in the battle just to protect his homeland.
Friday, 15 December 2006
Undergrad Reflections
A quick bit of auto-trumpet on my part. After six years at Unimelb, next Wednesday I finally graduate. To mark my transition from student to ex-student, I'm writing my Undergrad Reflection on my modest little blog. You might like to have a read, and better yet, leave a comment.
Here 'tis.
Here 'tis.
Wednesday, 6 December 2006
Just some short wrap ups
The PIS is alive and kicking, and even though only four of us remained on topic, our noise level nearly emptied the pub. A cornucopia of ideas spilled across the room, which should probably inspire some articles for the next AAP.
But to keep it up short, I just like to throw in some missing links. One of our topic was Depleted Uranium, an environmental hazard and toxic legacy that is increasingly used all over this planet.
While taking about war segueing into the evil overlords comes natural. Ari had not heard about the Bilderberg Group, which might come closest to be something like the secret rulers of this planet. I started investigating the mysterious group myself, and tried to research the participants. It's definitely work in progress, yet global politics and events appear already in a different light.
The last referral is to the background of ubiquitous terror theme. Somehow, links to Google Video seem not to work here, so simply search for terrorstorm and enjoy an alternative analysis of events of global events.
And the club website got a small makeover to create a bit more of corporate identity for our advertising efforts. Hope you like it, because you have live with it :)
But to keep it up short, I just like to throw in some missing links. One of our topic was Depleted Uranium, an environmental hazard and toxic legacy that is increasingly used all over this planet.
While taking about war segueing into the evil overlords comes natural. Ari had not heard about the Bilderberg Group, which might come closest to be something like the secret rulers of this planet. I started investigating the mysterious group myself, and tried to research the participants. It's definitely work in progress, yet global politics and events appear already in a different light.
The last referral is to the background of ubiquitous terror theme. Somehow, links to Google Video seem not to work here, so simply search for terrorstorm and enjoy an alternative analysis of events of global events.
And the club website got a small makeover to create a bit more of corporate identity for our advertising efforts. Hope you like it, because you have live with it :)
Tuesday, 28 November 2006
Four More Years
There are two ways for people who care about state elections to spend polling night. You can watch the numbers roll on TV while blogging, trying to beat the professionals to some unique insight on the unfolding drama. Or you can watch them in a pub drinking beer with fellow politics wonks. Going with option 2 proved an inspired choice, since it helped break the blogging drought I've had since the last legislative horse-race. So here I am, competing with a hundred other desktop psephologists to dissect Victoria's Choice.
It's not the thrilling stuff of US mid-terms. Granted, 'modest swing to the Liberals' doesn't have the same ring as 'Republicans get their asses handed to them on a plate'. But I'd hoped for something more than a mirror image of the 2004 federal election, with the opposition kept two cycles from a realistic bid and the incumbents left with a wafer-thin majority in the upper house. The foretold Day of the Minor Parties was a non-starter, with the Greens failing to come through, the Democrats consigned to oblivion and People Power nowhere in sight. Family First's relatively respectable polling just shows that other groups are waking up to the 'values' niche that Howard has been working for a decade. All told, the LegCo results were an uninspired outcome for the biggest constitutional shakeup in the state's history. Instead this election's 'historic' nature was pinned to it being the second time Victorian Labor has won three consecutive terms. My heart beats faster...
More noteworthy was Labor's ability to hold regional Victoria, or rather the Libs' inability to gain traction there. It's the latest instance of a much-remarked trend that sees country voters drifting from the traditional conservative parties, while battling suburbia becomes Liberal heartland. The driving factor? Reaction against change - neoliberal economics on one side, multiculturalism and 'political correctness' on the other. You want tariffs and subsidised services? Don't vote Coalition. You want government that will roll back black-armband history and lock up the Muslims? Then do.
Taking this further, perhaps the state-federal divide really is hardening into a fixed feature of the nation's political landscape. The major parties have staked out their territory, and a party trying to climb the other hill has to struggle either against urban masses fearful of their identity and lifestyle being eaten away by globalisation, or a hinterland resentful at being cut adrift by coastal metropolises increasingly linked to the outside world. It can't be coincidence that in the face of the Bracks' government's failures, country Victorians confirmed their 1999 decision to throw out the party which sank tax dollars into Melbourne landmarks pitched at city sophisticates and tourists.
Admittedly the parties aren't helping themselves, with their penchant for eleventh-hour dumpings of seasoned leaders in favour of glamorous neophytes (think Quinn-Flegg and Beazley-Latham). Yet another lesson driven home on Saturday; Baillieu's song-and-dance routine was fun for a while, but it proved what US Republicans learned earlier this month - dominating the campaign doesn't translate into votes. It certainly can't blot out this litany of errors:
- Refusing to shave your share portfolio, when your nickname is already the Toff from Toorak.
- Refusing to discuss a coalition that your party needs to govern.
- Promising to scrap the state's renewable energy scheme while the federal Libs scramble to deal, or be seen to deal, with global warming.
- Promising a river-killing dam, in lieu of said renewable energy scheme.
- Promising free public transport for the age-group that is so pleasant to be around on trains and trams.
- Trying to outbid an incumbent, in-surplus government on tax cuts.
- $285 million costing holes.
etc.
The Libs definitely seem to be getting the worse of the talent drought, having turned over management in 7 of 8 states and territories within the past half-year (all 8, if you go back a full year). Coming so soon after the Queensland rout, Saturday's outcome and the Bracks-Costello sniping that followed shows what to expect from Australian politics over the next decade, assuming that Canberra and the High Court don't bludgeon the states into irrelevance: federal-state jousting as a substitute for policy differentiation. It might be a healthy balance, but for COAG's inability to get work done on health, water or indeed anything.
Small wonder that the only cheering in the James Squire on Saturday night was for 'Four More Beers!'.
It's not the thrilling stuff of US mid-terms. Granted, 'modest swing to the Liberals' doesn't have the same ring as 'Republicans get their asses handed to them on a plate'. But I'd hoped for something more than a mirror image of the 2004 federal election, with the opposition kept two cycles from a realistic bid and the incumbents left with a wafer-thin majority in the upper house. The foretold Day of the Minor Parties was a non-starter, with the Greens failing to come through, the Democrats consigned to oblivion and People Power nowhere in sight. Family First's relatively respectable polling just shows that other groups are waking up to the 'values' niche that Howard has been working for a decade. All told, the LegCo results were an uninspired outcome for the biggest constitutional shakeup in the state's history. Instead this election's 'historic' nature was pinned to it being the second time Victorian Labor has won three consecutive terms. My heart beats faster...
More noteworthy was Labor's ability to hold regional Victoria, or rather the Libs' inability to gain traction there. It's the latest instance of a much-remarked trend that sees country voters drifting from the traditional conservative parties, while battling suburbia becomes Liberal heartland. The driving factor? Reaction against change - neoliberal economics on one side, multiculturalism and 'political correctness' on the other. You want tariffs and subsidised services? Don't vote Coalition. You want government that will roll back black-armband history and lock up the Muslims? Then do.
Taking this further, perhaps the state-federal divide really is hardening into a fixed feature of the nation's political landscape. The major parties have staked out their territory, and a party trying to climb the other hill has to struggle either against urban masses fearful of their identity and lifestyle being eaten away by globalisation, or a hinterland resentful at being cut adrift by coastal metropolises increasingly linked to the outside world. It can't be coincidence that in the face of the Bracks' government's failures, country Victorians confirmed their 1999 decision to throw out the party which sank tax dollars into Melbourne landmarks pitched at city sophisticates and tourists.
Admittedly the parties aren't helping themselves, with their penchant for eleventh-hour dumpings of seasoned leaders in favour of glamorous neophytes (think Quinn-Flegg and Beazley-Latham). Yet another lesson driven home on Saturday; Baillieu's song-and-dance routine was fun for a while, but it proved what US Republicans learned earlier this month - dominating the campaign doesn't translate into votes. It certainly can't blot out this litany of errors:
- Refusing to shave your share portfolio, when your nickname is already the Toff from Toorak.
- Refusing to discuss a coalition that your party needs to govern.
- Promising to scrap the state's renewable energy scheme while the federal Libs scramble to deal, or be seen to deal, with global warming.
- Promising a river-killing dam, in lieu of said renewable energy scheme.
- Promising free public transport for the age-group that is so pleasant to be around on trains and trams.
- Trying to outbid an incumbent, in-surplus government on tax cuts.
- $285 million costing holes.
etc.
The Libs definitely seem to be getting the worse of the talent drought, having turned over management in 7 of 8 states and territories within the past half-year (all 8, if you go back a full year). Coming so soon after the Queensland rout, Saturday's outcome and the Bracks-Costello sniping that followed shows what to expect from Australian politics over the next decade, assuming that Canberra and the High Court don't bludgeon the states into irrelevance: federal-state jousting as a substitute for policy differentiation. It might be a healthy balance, but for COAG's inability to get work done on health, water or indeed anything.
Small wonder that the only cheering in the James Squire on Saturday night was for 'Four More Beers!'.
Monday, 6 November 2006
Like Sheep Among Wolves
The GOP ascendancy has spawned an anthropological smorgasboard on the strange creatures who populate the American right. The latest offering is Andrew Denton's God On My Side, in which Australia's least-flappable journalist tours an NRB convention to discover how these infamous Evangelicals really think. After sitting through this 90-minute parade of nice people explaining with absolute conviction that we're living in the End Times, that Islam is the devil's counterfeit and that separation of Church and State is not part of America's constitutional heritage, born-and-bred progressives may think that Denton has done Al Gore one better on the 'scariest film you'll see this year'.
Having been raised in an offshoot of this culture, I didn't learn much from Denton's suave but somewhat bland feature-doc. I would have liked to see more time spent on the relationship between faith and politics, which is what really concerns those who aren't offended by what evangelicals believe per se but do care once it starts affecting the rest of us. Australians haven't yet had to deal with drives to bring creationism into classrooms or amend state constitutions to ban gay marriage. But with federal money earmarked for chaplains in state schools and a church-based party holding the senate's balance of power, we ought to start thinking about the use of worldly power to advance God's Kingdom.
It's surprising that Denton didn't push his subjects on this question, given the mounting evidence that faith and politics haven't mixed well under the evangelical presidency. David Kuo's expose of the GOP party machine's real attitude towards its Christian base has been followed by scandal upon scandal among the leaders pledged bring morality back into government. Throw in the run-of-the-mill misgovernance that has pissed off the non faith-based community, and one would expect a hint of disillusionment on the religious right with the Bush administration and the Republican congress.
Indeed, one can discern in the polls a growing sense among 'moral conservatives' that they've been led by the nose - that the Republicans of '94 and the 'Compassionate Conservative' of 2000 have proved devoted to nothing more than the political (occasionally sexual) bottomline. Concerns have been raised that Christ's elect have gone sheeplike into the wolf-infested den of politics without heeding His caveat, viz. to be shrewd as snakes while doing so (Matthew 10:16 - as said, I was raised on the Word). We're now hearing the old refrain that the Church's lack of spiritual grounding has led it to follow wolves in sheep's clothing, who talk the talk of values while walking the political lowroad, which currently involves painting Democrats as pro-paedophile or as miscegenating Playboys.
So the average Republican strategist has reason to fear David Kuo's call for Christians to take a 'sabbatical from politics'. One can picture their party's base walking out through the various -Gates (Abramoff, Foley, Haggard) that have opened in the GOP edifice over the past year. The danger is not that these people will morph into Democrats on Tuesday but that they won't turn out to vote Republican, at least not in the numbers that clinched victory in 2000 and 2004.
And yet, 48 hours out from D-Day, word has it that the Master Strategist sleeps soundly. You don't have to be Karl Rove, or to indulge in conspiracy theories about his perfidy, to understand why the GOP can still depend on the constituency that Bush staffers reportedly mock with four-letter expletives. It's fun to watch partisans of the 'moral majority' tie themselves in knots defending each new impropriety - to the point of extolling hypocrisy as a virtue - but at the end of the day the values crowd is unlikely to accept the alternative, whatever the intellectual arguments. The tribal character of US politics is what got the GOP into power and it's the only thing, under current circumstances, that will keep them there. Just listen to the House Speaker, he of the cybersex-coverup:
It's surprising that Denton didn't push his subjects on this question, given the mounting evidence that faith and politics haven't mixed well under the evangelical presidency. David Kuo's expose of the GOP party machine's real attitude towards its Christian base has been followed by scandal upon scandal among the leaders pledged bring morality back into government. Throw in the run-of-the-mill misgovernance that has pissed off the non faith-based community, and one would expect a hint of disillusionment on the religious right with the Bush administration and the Republican congress.
Indeed, one can discern in the polls a growing sense among 'moral conservatives' that they've been led by the nose - that the Republicans of '94 and the 'Compassionate Conservative' of 2000 have proved devoted to nothing more than the political (occasionally sexual) bottomline. Concerns have been raised that Christ's elect have gone sheeplike into the wolf-infested den of politics without heeding His caveat, viz. to be shrewd as snakes while doing so (Matthew 10:16 - as said, I was raised on the Word). We're now hearing the old refrain that the Church's lack of spiritual grounding has led it to follow wolves in sheep's clothing, who talk the talk of values while walking the political lowroad, which currently involves painting Democrats as pro-paedophile or as miscegenating Playboys.
So the average Republican strategist has reason to fear David Kuo's call for Christians to take a 'sabbatical from politics'. One can picture their party's base walking out through the various -Gates (Abramoff, Foley, Haggard) that have opened in the GOP edifice over the past year. The danger is not that these people will morph into Democrats on Tuesday but that they won't turn out to vote Republican, at least not in the numbers that clinched victory in 2000 and 2004.
And yet, 48 hours out from D-Day, word has it that the Master Strategist sleeps soundly. You don't have to be Karl Rove, or to indulge in conspiracy theories about his perfidy, to understand why the GOP can still depend on the constituency that Bush staffers reportedly mock with four-letter expletives. It's fun to watch partisans of the 'moral majority' tie themselves in knots defending each new impropriety - to the point of extolling hypocrisy as a virtue - but at the end of the day the values crowd is unlikely to accept the alternative, whatever the intellectual arguments. The tribal character of US politics is what got the GOP into power and it's the only thing, under current circumstances, that will keep them there. Just listen to the House Speaker, he of the cybersex-coverup:
"If I fold up my tent and leave," Dennis Hastert [said], "then where does that leave us? If the Democrats sweep, then we'd have no ability to fight back and get our message out."
It's depressing that this bankrupt, purely partisan appeal may underpin another Republican victory. But that's the only way by which America's evangelicals will stem the tide of other-people's-choices threatening their self-conception, and fight their war against the judiciary and sundry other organs of atheistic government, notwithstanding all those Biblical verses about obeying authorities that the Lord puts over you and rendering unto Caesar what is Caesar's. To paraphrase the elderly Texan speaking to a polite but mystified Andrew Denton, they know what they know what they know, and no number of scandals or mismanaged wars is going to change that.
So while half of America will treat Tuesday's vote as a referendum on Iraq, the other half is likely to view it as just another battle for the soul of God's own country (did you think that was New Zealand?). With the row over Family First preferences still smouldering, Australians could observe and learn a thing or two. But in true national character, most of us will be watching the races instead.
Postscript
Of course, not everyone approves of how we Aussies spend the first Tuesday in November.
(cross-posted)
Tuesday, 31 October 2006
A Fireside Blog Post From Your PIS President
My dear friends,
In a mere eight sleeps, it will be the politically interested Melbourne Uni student's version of Christmas Day: the United States elections. All of the House of Representatives and one third of the Senate is up for the grabs, and George W Bush's Republican Party is bracing itself for disaster. After Wednesday week, the Democratic Party may have the capacity to block Bush administration legislation and to launch investigations into Iraq, Katrina, and so on.
The Political Interest Society is offering election coverage on Foxtel, good company, alcohol, and food all in the one place…
The PIS Watches The American Elections
When: Wednesday, November 8th, from 12 midday onwards
Where: James Squire Brewhouse, Cnr Little Collins and 115 Russell Street, CBD
Now, I realise that it is the official beginning of exam season for most people in a tad less than ten sleeps (not me, however: I am on "working vacation" at my Eltham ranch, clearing brush, playing catch with my two-headed dog, Fala, and enjoying being deferred). But invariably, you will all need a break at some point: Wednesday week is as good a day as any. And from an educational standpoint, I guarantee you'll learn more from watching BBC World than you will studying for some bloody Derek McDougall subject.
Hope to see you there,
Yours not-up-for-re-election-this-November,
President Dave M Fettling
In a mere eight sleeps, it will be the politically interested Melbourne Uni student's version of Christmas Day: the United States elections. All of the House of Representatives and one third of the Senate is up for the grabs, and George W Bush's Republican Party is bracing itself for disaster. After Wednesday week, the Democratic Party may have the capacity to block Bush administration legislation and to launch investigations into Iraq, Katrina, and so on.
The Political Interest Society is offering election coverage on Foxtel, good company, alcohol, and food all in the one place…
The PIS Watches The American Elections
When: Wednesday, November 8th, from 12 midday onwards
Where: James Squire Brewhouse, Cnr Little Collins and 115 Russell Street, CBD
Now, I realise that it is the official beginning of exam season for most people in a tad less than ten sleeps (not me, however: I am on "working vacation" at my Eltham ranch, clearing brush, playing catch with my two-headed dog, Fala, and enjoying being deferred). But invariably, you will all need a break at some point: Wednesday week is as good a day as any. And from an educational standpoint, I guarantee you'll learn more from watching BBC World than you will studying for some bloody Derek McDougall subject.
Hope to see you there,
Yours not-up-for-re-election-this-November,
President Dave M Fettling
Thursday, 12 October 2006
How did the towers collapse?
I did something probably considered to be politically incorrect, which might happen easier during the after hours of club meetings.
I aired my some questions about 911, and was thus very fast classified as conspiracy nut. Stephen had at least the fairness to refer me to wikipedia to find out why how the WTC tower collapse, and why and how WTC 7 collapsed.
In fact, there is a wikipedia entry for the Collapse of the World Trade Center, but it doesn't answer the question I raised.
According to the NIST report, which is part of the 9/11 commission report, it took WTC 1 and 2 ten resp. eleven seconds to collapse. This is about the time it takes for an object to drop from the top of each tower to the ground, obstructed in its path just by the resistance of air.
Physically seen, this implies that about 70 floors, which carried uninterfered the same load they used to carry since the buildings were constructed, had effectively the same resistance like thin air.
One of the basic laws of thermodynamics is called conservation of energy. You need energy to transform a physical object, this means energy is transformed while the WTC is obliterated to bits.
The only energy source available, however is gravity. Given just air resistance, it'll take 11 seconds for the top of the tower to hit the ground. The destruction of the lower floors requires energy, and would therefore transform the gravitational energy. The collapse would have to be slowed down.
However, we know that the more than 70 floors build by steel, filled with desks, chairs, computers, cabinets, maybe even safes, posed no resistance at all to the collapse of the building.
The account given by NIST offers no explanation for the speed in which the Twin Towers collapsed, and it avoids offering any theory at all when it comes to WTC7.
WTC7 collapsed on the afternoon of 911, and too smaller fires and no apparent impact from debris were visible. This 47 storey building collapsed in less than 7 seconds, without any plane hitting it.
Today a plane hit a NY building, and even though you had 50 storey building, hit by a plane and with raging fires, it didn't collapse. WTC7, not hit by a plane, with less raging fires, fell neatly in its footprint, in less than 7 seconds.
I'm not too sure about the amount of science students in the PIS, but anyone with sufficient background knowledge can earn 1 Million US$ by proving the feasability of the theories in the NIST report.
However, the only conclusion I draw from the knowledge that the 911 commission report told some bold lies is that a more thorough investigation about this event is required.
It took the Bush regime more than a year to start any investigation of 911, and before the report was published two wars were already waged. I could make up a nice conspiracy theory up for you, but I'm only interested how the building collapsed.
The available evidence, as for example scrutinized by Scholars for truth, suggests strongly the use of explosives to bring down the building. This surely raises a bunch of other questions, and none of them offers to many reassuring answers.
However, I don't mind if you prefer labelling me as a conspiracy nut rather than trying to convince me (or make up your mind). Yet, the last tyranny on German soil ended just in 1989, and a way too familiar stench is wafting over from the US.
But I'm really curious if you manage to come up with an explanation, how the buildings collapsed so fast without the use of explosives.
I aired my some questions about 911, and was thus very fast classified as conspiracy nut. Stephen had at least the fairness to refer me to wikipedia to find out why how the WTC tower collapse, and why and how WTC 7 collapsed.
In fact, there is a wikipedia entry for the Collapse of the World Trade Center, but it doesn't answer the question I raised.
According to the NIST report, which is part of the 9/11 commission report, it took WTC 1 and 2 ten resp. eleven seconds to collapse. This is about the time it takes for an object to drop from the top of each tower to the ground, obstructed in its path just by the resistance of air.
Physically seen, this implies that about 70 floors, which carried uninterfered the same load they used to carry since the buildings were constructed, had effectively the same resistance like thin air.
One of the basic laws of thermodynamics is called conservation of energy. You need energy to transform a physical object, this means energy is transformed while the WTC is obliterated to bits.
The only energy source available, however is gravity. Given just air resistance, it'll take 11 seconds for the top of the tower to hit the ground. The destruction of the lower floors requires energy, and would therefore transform the gravitational energy. The collapse would have to be slowed down.
However, we know that the more than 70 floors build by steel, filled with desks, chairs, computers, cabinets, maybe even safes, posed no resistance at all to the collapse of the building.
The account given by NIST offers no explanation for the speed in which the Twin Towers collapsed, and it avoids offering any theory at all when it comes to WTC7.
WTC7 collapsed on the afternoon of 911, and too smaller fires and no apparent impact from debris were visible. This 47 storey building collapsed in less than 7 seconds, without any plane hitting it.
Today a plane hit a NY building, and even though you had 50 storey building, hit by a plane and with raging fires, it didn't collapse. WTC7, not hit by a plane, with less raging fires, fell neatly in its footprint, in less than 7 seconds.
I'm not too sure about the amount of science students in the PIS, but anyone with sufficient background knowledge can earn 1 Million US$ by proving the feasability of the theories in the NIST report.
However, the only conclusion I draw from the knowledge that the 911 commission report told some bold lies is that a more thorough investigation about this event is required.
It took the Bush regime more than a year to start any investigation of 911, and before the report was published two wars were already waged. I could make up a nice conspiracy theory up for you, but I'm only interested how the building collapsed.
The available evidence, as for example scrutinized by Scholars for truth, suggests strongly the use of explosives to bring down the building. This surely raises a bunch of other questions, and none of them offers to many reassuring answers.
However, I don't mind if you prefer labelling me as a conspiracy nut rather than trying to convince me (or make up your mind). Yet, the last tyranny on German soil ended just in 1989, and a way too familiar stench is wafting over from the US.
But I'm really curious if you manage to come up with an explanation, how the buildings collapsed so fast without the use of explosives.
Monday, 2 October 2006
Enemy at the Woodward-Gate
Cross-posted.
______________________________
It's a rare journalist who can claim credit for two national scandals, the second of which carries his name. Five weeks out from Mid-Terms and with the ink on the leaked NIE barely dry, Hurricane Woodward is shaking the administration to its roots, despite the Bush PR team's best efforts to look blase and spin furiously at the same time. The book has already sold a million copies on the promise of insider gossip, some of it old meat (George believes in himself more than good advice), some red (everyone from the generals to Laura wanted Rumsfeld fired). With Baghdad under lockdown and Condi asking the Saudis for help, Bush needs some inspiration from the last successful Republican war president, or at least a stoic quip - 'if there is a place worse than Hell, I am in it'.
The difference between Bush and Lincoln in hell, of course, is that Bush put himself there. As far as one can tell from media blitz on a yet-unpublished book, State of Denial confirms what I've suggested is Bush's flaw as president -
It's bad enough that the US is being run by a man convinced his job is to lead and not think, at least not when things start going wrong. But when he creates an institutional culture in which no one else wants to think, you end up with self-muzzling, dysfunctional government. No one in this 'MBA presidency' seems to do anything under delegation, whether managing hurricane relief or the War On Terror. Perhaps the most disturbing of Woodward's insights is into how the generals running the mightiest military machine in history ended up too cowed to do their jobs -
Put these tidbits with a raft of other anectodal evidence - like Eric Shinseki's treatment - and you're left with an eerie image of Stalin purging independent-minded generals from the Red Army before June 1941. Stalin took about six months to recognise his errors, twelve to put his house in order and another thirty or so to win the war. Bush is approaching the same length of time and hasn't yet resolved to sack the guy whom everyone in the know seems to blame for Iraq.
Inevitably, a book that shows Bush improvising war and dissembling to the public has brought out the lynch mob. When Woodward wrote nice things about the White House, he was feted by everyone right of Ted Kennedy and Atrios. Now he has an 'agenda', just like the 'agenda' to leak the NIE and the 'agenda' of the ex-Bush officials whom Woodward interviewed. At the next press conference, someone should ask Tony Snow how many ex-Clinton officials have come forward to denounce their administration's incompetence. Not that it would make much difference. By this point, I doubt the Bush cheersquad will ever accept that smoke means fire and not just a reason to close your eyes.
After all, the administration has been coming clean over Iraq, albeit by lowering the bar for communication -
______________________________
It's a rare journalist who can claim credit for two national scandals, the second of which carries his name. Five weeks out from Mid-Terms and with the ink on the leaked NIE barely dry, Hurricane Woodward is shaking the administration to its roots, despite the Bush PR team's best efforts to look blase and spin furiously at the same time. The book has already sold a million copies on the promise of insider gossip, some of it old meat (George believes in himself more than good advice), some red (everyone from the generals to Laura wanted Rumsfeld fired). With Baghdad under lockdown and Condi asking the Saudis for help, Bush needs some inspiration from the last successful Republican war president, or at least a stoic quip - 'if there is a place worse than Hell, I am in it'.
The difference between Bush and Lincoln in hell, of course, is that Bush put himself there. As far as one can tell from media blitz on a yet-unpublished book, State of Denial confirms what I've suggested is Bush's flaw as president -
John McCain was asked whether Mr Bush had ever asked him for his views on Iraq. "No, no, he hasn't... As a matter of fact, he's not intellectually curious.'
It's bad enough that the US is being run by a man convinced his job is to lead and not think, at least not when things start going wrong. But when he creates an institutional culture in which no one else wants to think, you end up with self-muzzling, dysfunctional government. No one in this 'MBA presidency' seems to do anything under delegation, whether managing hurricane relief or the War On Terror. Perhaps the most disturbing of Woodward's insights is into how the generals running the mightiest military machine in history ended up too cowed to do their jobs -
Abizaid's old friends were worried sick that another Vietnam or anything that looked like Vietnam would be the end of the volunteer army. What's the strategy for winning? they pressed him.
"That's not my job," Abizaid said.
No, it is part of your job, they insisted.
No, Abizaid said. Articulating strategy belonged to others.
Put these tidbits with a raft of other anectodal evidence - like Eric Shinseki's treatment - and you're left with an eerie image of Stalin purging independent-minded generals from the Red Army before June 1941. Stalin took about six months to recognise his errors, twelve to put his house in order and another thirty or so to win the war. Bush is approaching the same length of time and hasn't yet resolved to sack the guy whom everyone in the know seems to blame for Iraq.
Inevitably, a book that shows Bush improvising war and dissembling to the public has brought out the lynch mob. When Woodward wrote nice things about the White House, he was feted by everyone right of Ted Kennedy and Atrios. Now he has an 'agenda', just like the 'agenda' to leak the NIE and the 'agenda' of the ex-Bush officials whom Woodward interviewed. At the next press conference, someone should ask Tony Snow how many ex-Clinton officials have come forward to denounce their administration's incompetence. Not that it would make much difference. By this point, I doubt the Bush cheersquad will ever accept that smoke means fire and not just a reason to close your eyes.
After all, the administration has been coming clean over Iraq, albeit by lowering the bar for communication -
Since late last year, Bush has spoken more openly and directly about the nature of the enemy in Iraq and the scale of the challenge in building a peaceful and democratic nation. Snow himself quoted Bush at length at a press conference in Chicago in July saying, “We’ve lost obviously a lot of lives here in the homeland, and we lost lives overseas.” Snow added that Bush had been telling the American people that “it’s a war that’s going to outlive his presidency.”
Well, that makes it all better.
Down under, the Cole Inquiry's final day was another victory for truth in government, with our new Trade Minister leaping into his portfolio and contracting an instant case of AWB-related amnesia. In fairness to Warren Truss, a bribe-greased trade policy review was the least of the day's misdemeanours, if you thought concentration-camp jokes were reserved for South Park -
the extent of the scandal was revealed in the email by executive Daryl Borlase, who said Iraq wanted to build 2000 concrete bunkers, ostensibly to store grain, but "the bunkers will have cement walls and floors so they are actually designed for burying the Kurds -- under the cement?"
"They intend to build them with fumigation capability so the mind boggles as to whether they are fumigating insects or any other pest that pisses them off," the email says.
It continued: "On a serious note, they will have cement flooring ..."
Saddam is currently on trial in Iraq for the genocide of 182,000 people in a 1987-88 campaign against the Kurds.
And if you remained an optimist through that choice revelation, you would have been treated to the sight of AWB's (ex)MD crying in the witness box.
As they say, the truth ain't pretty...
Addendum
Tim Dunlop has an interesting take on the media' cognitive dissonance over politicians.
Monday, 18 September 2006
Pontifex Tactlessness
(cross-posted)
The latest uproar over a perceived slight to Islam isn't going quietly into the night. One week on it's spawned its own wikipedia entry, a slew of rants throughout the wingnut blogosphere and obssessive mainstream media coverage. A speedy resolution hasn't been helped by Muslims round the the world again deciding that the appropriate response to barbs about their faith's peacefulness is to bomb churches and issue death threats.
The latest uproar over a perceived slight to Islam isn't going quietly into the night. One week on it's spawned its own wikipedia entry, a slew of rants throughout the wingnut blogosphere and obssessive mainstream media coverage. A speedy resolution hasn't been helped by Muslims round the the world again deciding that the appropriate response to barbs about their faith's peacefulness is to bomb churches and issue death threats.
Nor by the fact that this time the offending observations came not from a Danish newspaper but rather the head of the Catholic Church, albeit wrapped in a theology lecture (full text here). It's unfortunate that the Pope couldn't make a point about faith and reason without a reference to jihad. And he couldn't even do that without quoting that bosom buddy of medieval Catholicism, the Byzantine emperor -
Naturally the emperor also knew the instructions, developed later and recorded in the Qur'an, concerning holy war... [he] addresses his interlocutor with a startling brusqueness on the central question about the relationship between religion and violence in general, saying: "Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached". The emperor, after having expressed himself so forcefully, goes on to explain in detail the reasons why spreading the faith through violence is something unreasonable.
The decisive statement in this argument against violent conversion is this: not to act in accordance with reason is contrary to God's nature... But for Muslim teaching, God is absolutely transcendent. His will is not bound up with any of our categories, even that of rationality.
This passage amounts to the following claims: a) spreading faith through violence is irrational; b) Islam teaches violent conversion; c) Islam teaches an irrational approach to faith. The Pope's speech has to be read as tacit endorsement of all these propositions. You don't use quotes to illustrate a point unless you believe the quotes to be true in substance, even if you find their expression 'startlingly brusque'. And you can't seal yourself off from controversial assertions by putting them in the mouths of medieval monarchs, or by protesting that the statements were tangential to your main point.
The issue here is not whether the claims about Islam are true. The Pope is an official figure and as such doesn't have the freedom that he enjoyed as Joseph Ratzinger, Professor of Theology, to comment on the teachings of other religions. He has the right to say what he wants, but also responsibility for the consequences, especially when pointed observations about the religion in question have a history of generating violence. This isn't 'political correctness', it's political common sense. The pontiff can no more wash his hands of this than politicians who accuse foreigners of stealing jobs can divorce themselves from a xenophobic backlash in the electorate.
Pope Benedict would have done better citing the example rather than the ideas of the said Byzantine emperor. Manuel II may have argued that Islam is disposed to violence, but he and his Muslim interlocutor were debating the issue with words rather than swords (not that Manuel had much choice, at a time when the Turks were tightening the noose round his beleagured 'empire'). One might have expected some progress on interfaith relations over the intervening six centuries. Instead they seem to be heading back to an era captured by the opening scene of Alan Savage's Ottoman, in which Manuel II's son is presented with the severed, uncircumcised penis of a Hungarian knight as proof of the fate of the last crusade.
Pope Benedict would have done better citing the example rather than the ideas of the said Byzantine emperor. Manuel II may have argued that Islam is disposed to violence, but he and his Muslim interlocutor were debating the issue with words rather than swords (not that Manuel had much choice, at a time when the Turks were tightening the noose round his beleagured 'empire'). One might have expected some progress on interfaith relations over the intervening six centuries. Instead they seem to be heading back to an era captured by the opening scene of Alan Savage's Ottoman, in which Manuel II's son is presented with the severed, uncircumcised penis of a Hungarian knight as proof of the fate of the last crusade.
Tuesday, 12 September 2006
Thirty Years On
(cross-posted)
_____________
The 30th annivesary of Mao Zedong's death has come and gone in China much as the 40th anniversary of the Cultural Revolution did four months ago - with a deafening silence, at least from the organs of state. But politics aside, perhaps we really don't yet have the distance for a discriminating appraisal; as one of Maos' colleagues remarked about the consequences of the French Revolution, it's too soon to tell. And as for any historical giant, a just verdict would require a book, preferably in several volumes. So here I'll just sketch some thoughts on the man whose face will always dominate 20th century China.
_____________
The 30th annivesary of Mao Zedong's death has come and gone in China much as the 40th anniversary of the Cultural Revolution did four months ago - with a deafening silence, at least from the organs of state. But politics aside, perhaps we really don't yet have the distance for a discriminating appraisal; as one of Maos' colleagues remarked about the consequences of the French Revolution, it's too soon to tell. And as for any historical giant, a just verdict would require a book, preferably in several volumes. So here I'll just sketch some thoughts on the man whose face will always dominate 20th century China.
Westerners, accustomed to think of Mao in terms of a totalitarian trilogy with Hitler and Stalin, are baffled by the status that he still commands within China. We resort to conventional social science explanations - China's lack of anything comparable to the 'de-Stalinisation' that the USSR went through under Kruschev, nostalgia for the simpler and less unequal society that Mao supposedly presided over, etc. It's easier than conceding that, beneath the official bombast about kicking out the imperialists and allowing China to stand up, there flows a stream of genuine emotion. Foreigners still don't grasp the depth of humiliation and suffering inflicted on China during the century 1840-1949, and the credit accrued by the Communist Party and Mao specifically in bringing that century to an end.
Despite what was said above about hindsight, Mao was clearly the man for the hour. Steeped in traditional education and raised in the hinterland - barring one short trip to Moscow, he never left China in his entire life - Mao had an empathy with the country that the foreign-educated Sun Zhongshan and Jiang Jieshi seemed to lack. As a young man he was scholar enough to disdain the unwashed masses, but he matured to tap what's been called the deep-seated chiliastic impulse of the Chinese peasantry: that fiery underground river ready to burst forth and consume the old order. All it needs is a messiah, and in Mao it found one par excellence, a man who said that the People could achieve anything and who sought continuous revolution until the promised earthly paradise was achieved.
Small wonder that two and a half decades after his cult was officially disowned, Mao has been inducted into the folk pantheon that still flourishes at the roots of society (despite the best efforts of Communism). Mao built his political philosophy on social contradictions, yet was himself a contradiction, a product of the 'feudal culture' he spent his life trying to destroy; a man who quoted Chinese history and literature as much as Lenin or Marx, and spent his last bedridden days poring over the Chinese equivalent to Pride and Prejudice.
In material terms, Mao's record was less benighted than popular myth holds. His aversion to Soviet-style centralism preserved China from the worst of the economic distortions that brought down its superpower neighbour. Collectivisation and the Great Leap Foward were unmitigated disasters, but a balanced assessment must note that a) there is a dearth of evidence to prove the scale of mortality, in particular textbook claims about the 'worst famine in history'; b) the experiment coincided with some of the worst natural disasters of the century; c) the degree of economic damage is ambiguous, especially given that it's unlikely any strategy could have maintained growth in China's circumstances in the late 1950's. Nor should the overall failure of Maoist developmentalism obscure its achievements, such as the vast improvements in general health or the creation of an industrial base from virtually nothing.
It's safe to say that Mao had no small opinion of himself or his place in history, as apparent in this oft-quoted poem from his Yanan years:
But alas! Qin Shihuang and Han Wudi
Were lacking in literary grace,
And Tang Taizong and Song Taizu
Had little poetry in their souls;
That proud son of Heaven,
Genghis Khan,
Knew only shooting eagles, bow outstretched.
All are past and gone!
For truly great men
Look to this age alone.
Thus he came to commit the deadly sin of conflating his personal vision with the good of those he governed, or (worse) with the shape of history. This exagerrated sense of self led Mao to inflict greater misery on the laobaixing than any god-potentate of old. It led him to destroy men of greater integrity than himself, or who had at least as much legitimacy as Mao did - Peng Dehuai, Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping come to mind - and to strip millions of their humanity on the basis of arbitrarily-defined 'class'. It led ultimately to the apocalypse of the Cultural Revolution, tearing apart China's social fabric while the Americans were putting men on the moon.
For very large numbers of Chinese for the foreseeable future, Mao will remain a flawed hero. But for me at least, the final judgment on the Great Helmsman must be that he steered China onto the rocks.
Tuesday, 8 August 2006
1421 and All That
(Cross-posted.)
Australia's history wars may take on a whole new dimension. While the education minister was writing her speech about bringing Captain Cook back into our classrooms, Four Corners was busy exploring the claim that the Chinese got here first. Last Monday's program was nothing new to afficionados of 15th century history, but for most viewers it would have been a startling introduction to Gavin Menzies and his notorious book 1421: The Year China Discovered the World.
Not that it's first time this revisionist tsunami has reached the local news. Hu Jintao's announcement to federal parliament during his 2003 visit that Australia was discovered by his people didn't escape notice. More recently, Melbourne University's decision to fete Menzies in April drew a fair amount of comment. Overall though it's provoked surprisingly little discussion for a theory that, if accepted, explodes the traditional narrative of antipodean history (as usual it's fallen to New Zealand to take the lead). Especially given that Menzies' claims go beyond discovery to encompass Chinese colonies from Port Philip Bay to Darwin and miscegenation of the Aboriginal population.
It's these sort of assertions that have sent experts worldwide into apoplexy, in one case to the point of dragging Menzies' publisher before the UK's Consumer Complaints body for marketing the book as 'non-fiction'. Menzies' Melbourne lecture featured an extraordinary tirade from the head of the university's history department, who read from a prepared list of points to show that the man is a fraud (the MC cut him off after number one). Four Corners tactfully declined to broadcast that part, but they did interview the professor in question as the local rep in a string of academics striving to outdo each other in disdain for Menzies' theories and, in most cases, for the man himself.
Both lecture and program gave salutary insights into why academics often lose in the court of public opinion. At the lecture, Professor Wheatcroft's bluster fared badly against Menzies' poise and the array of presentation technology used to make his case. But that's why we have investigative journalism, which probes through the stage management with which Menzies has (by his own admission) cloaked this pseudo-academic enterprise.
Four Corners revealed the dapper ex-Royal Navy commander as a charlatan, who conveniently forgets blackmail threats against his critics, admits that he doesn't check evidence and defends himself by citing the number of books he's sold. The program was denounced by Menzies as a hachet-job, an accusation that may sting with the stench of Forest-Gate still in the air. But given the chance to defend himself, Menzies managed to appear not merely a crank but a fraud and a white-collar thug, traits born out by his tactics against critics and presence on the English vexatious litigant list. Any hope that he makes up for this with academic rigour is dispelled by a visit the official 1421 website. 'Sophomoric' is a generous description; it would certainly never have passed my VCE history class.
Australia's history wars may take on a whole new dimension. While the education minister was writing her speech about bringing Captain Cook back into our classrooms, Four Corners was busy exploring the claim that the Chinese got here first. Last Monday's program was nothing new to afficionados of 15th century history, but for most viewers it would have been a startling introduction to Gavin Menzies and his notorious book 1421: The Year China Discovered the World.
Not that it's first time this revisionist tsunami has reached the local news. Hu Jintao's announcement to federal parliament during his 2003 visit that Australia was discovered by his people didn't escape notice. More recently, Melbourne University's decision to fete Menzies in April drew a fair amount of comment. Overall though it's provoked surprisingly little discussion for a theory that, if accepted, explodes the traditional narrative of antipodean history (as usual it's fallen to New Zealand to take the lead). Especially given that Menzies' claims go beyond discovery to encompass Chinese colonies from Port Philip Bay to Darwin and miscegenation of the Aboriginal population.
It's these sort of assertions that have sent experts worldwide into apoplexy, in one case to the point of dragging Menzies' publisher before the UK's Consumer Complaints body for marketing the book as 'non-fiction'. Menzies' Melbourne lecture featured an extraordinary tirade from the head of the university's history department, who read from a prepared list of points to show that the man is a fraud (the MC cut him off after number one). Four Corners tactfully declined to broadcast that part, but they did interview the professor in question as the local rep in a string of academics striving to outdo each other in disdain for Menzies' theories and, in most cases, for the man himself.
Both lecture and program gave salutary insights into why academics often lose in the court of public opinion. At the lecture, Professor Wheatcroft's bluster fared badly against Menzies' poise and the array of presentation technology used to make his case. But that's why we have investigative journalism, which probes through the stage management with which Menzies has (by his own admission) cloaked this pseudo-academic enterprise.
Four Corners revealed the dapper ex-Royal Navy commander as a charlatan, who conveniently forgets blackmail threats against his critics, admits that he doesn't check evidence and defends himself by citing the number of books he's sold. The program was denounced by Menzies as a hachet-job, an accusation that may sting with the stench of Forest-Gate still in the air. But given the chance to defend himself, Menzies managed to appear not merely a crank but a fraud and a white-collar thug, traits born out by his tactics against critics and presence on the English vexatious litigant list. Any hope that he makes up for this with academic rigour is dispelled by a visit the official 1421 website. 'Sophomoric' is a generous description; it would certainly never have passed my VCE history class.
I knew that both Menzies' claims and his academic method were dubious, but to see the man himself articulate them on Four Corners was surreal. I think he lost me with the claim that the Chinese fleet sailed up the Thames and presented Henry V with a set of underwear, an event that has left no surviving records (at least, none discovered yet). Or maybe it was when he waxed lyrical about Marco Polo touring Hudson's Bay in the 1200's. Or maybe it was one of his converts enthusing about the remains of 45 junks washed up on the New Zealand coast by a tsunami, itself caused by a meteor. The same meteor that wiped out Chinese settlements around the New World, leaving it free for the Europeans to colonise a century later.
Four Corners pertinently observed that since 1421's publication the claims have steadily ratcheted up, from the 'discovery' of the Liu Gang map early this year through to the Henry V and Marco Polo revelations. Not surprising, since by Menzies' own admission this has been a marketing exercise from day one.
"[I] hoped that there would be lots of critics there, and they'd all lambast it, and it would make excellent publicity. And therefore, I'd be able to clinch a sale for my book. So, really, it was a public relations exercise on my part, to hopefully create a lot of controversy and sell literary rights."
Of course there's nothing wrong with hyping revisionist history, so long as it's not bunkum. But the fact that Menzies' case is an academic sieve raises serious ethical questions about his PR spin, especially given the lengths that his publisher went to in bolstering his credentials to write on Chinese maritime achievements (like incorrectly claiming on the dust jacket that Menzies was born in China).
The irony is that this marketing blitz targets the very demographic that ought to be most sceptical, and with great success. I knew about the criticisms of Menzies and his book before I bought it, but priding myself as a world history buff I felt a need to have it on my shelf. In other words, my intellectual ego drove me to subsidise the quack history that I've been denouncing in this post. Lest I be further hoist by my own petard, I should stop wasting time on things like blogging and sit down to dissect Menzies' 'evidence' for myself. I've yet to get past the book's third chapter, despite the army of editors provided by Bantam Press to make his manuscript readable.
Further pontification -
1421 Exposed
Debunking Gavin Menzies
China History Forum
Salon
Friday, 14 July 2006
There Should Be An Amendment To The United States Constitution Forcing Republican Populists To Read 'The New Yorker'
For the love of God, click on the link and read 'For Which It Stands' by Hendrik Hertzberg, who was a speechwriter for Jimmy Carter and now writes for The New Yorker, talking about the proposed amendment to the United States Constitution banning flag-burning. Wonderful writing, superbly articulated argument...
http://www.newyorker.com/talk/content/articles/060703ta_talk_hertzberg
http://www.newyorker.com/talk/content/articles/060703ta_talk_hertzberg
Thursday, 29 June 2006
So Why Did That Chicken Cross the Road? - Uncut
For light holiday reading, here's a chicken-joke special I did for the 2005 summer edition of AAP, including those that failed to escape the editor's space-saving buzzsaw. Some of them are a little dated by now, but not too much.
Why did the chicken cross the road?
Philosophy major: To get to the other side.
Adam Smith: The comparative advantage of chickens lies in crossing roads.
John Kerry: The chicken crossed because this President was fighting the wrong war, at the wrong place, at the wrong time.
Steve Bracks: The impact of the chicken’s road-crossing on the state's finances meant the Government had to make a difficult decision. The decision to fund the road by a toll was not made lightly, but it is the responsible decision for the future.
John Howard: In a world where chickens cross roads, who do you trust to manage the economy and keep interest rates low?
Lee Kuan Yew: The chicken’s behaviour illustrates the moral breakdown of western society.
John Stuart Mill: So long as the chicken’s action does not harm others, it is at liberty to cross roads.
Michel Foucault: This was the chicken’s journey of self-actualisation, an act of mapping its own external reality in resistance to the hidden normative. By crossing the road the chicken shows how power is socially constructed, bottom-up and inherently diffuse.
Ralph Nader: Our two-party system left the chicken no other choice.
Dan Rather: After extensive additional interviews, I no longer have the confidence in the fact of this chicken crossing the road that would allow us to continue vouching for it journalistically.
Deng Xiaoping: Black chicken, white chicken – if it crosses the road it’s a good chicken.
Thucydides: What made the crossing inevitable was the growth of the farmer’s power and the fear which this caused in the chicken.
Noam Chomsky: The chicken’s action is another step in the expansion of the
Rush Limbaugh: I mean, before we even get a proper report about this chicken, naturally
Franklin Graham: I believe that road-crossing is a very evil and wicked religion. I don’t believe chickens are evil because they cross roads – I personally have many friends who are chickens – but I decry the evil that has been done in the name of road-crossing.
Osama bin Laden: It is a sacred duty of all Muslims to kill chickens that cross roads.
Thomas Hobbes: Because life for chickens is nasty, brutish and short.
Mark Latham: Chickens cross roads because they don’t have a ladder of opportunity. There are two types of chicken on this road, slackers and hard workers, and we need to ease the squeeze on them and practice democracy in the raw.
Pentagon spokesman: We can neither confirm nor deny that a chicken crossed the road.
Donald Rumsfeld (1): It’s a misunderstanding to see that image over and over, of a chicken crossing the road, and say ‘You didn’t have a plan’. Freedom’s untidy, and that chicken is free to make mistakes and cross roads.
Donald Rumsfeld (2): The Army leadership is sensitive to the fact that not every road is as clear of chickens as would be desirable, but you go to war with the Army you have. It’s essentially a matter of physics.
Lenin: Any act of the chicken was justified, if it advances the revolution.
Homer Simpson: Mmmmm, chicken.
Chinese Communist: This chicken was clearly taking the capitalist road, as part of a hypocritical imperialist effort to split the sovereign Chinese nation. The Chinese People will never bow to such blatant aggression but will resolutely pursue the Four Modernisations along the scientific materalist path of socialist spiritual civilisation, adhering steadfastly to the Four Cardinal Principles and the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence while fortifying their minds with the unshakeable dictates of Marxist-Leninist-MaoZedong Thought!
Team
Sunday, 25 June 2006
Return Of Ozone Man
Follow the link below to a very good article by one of the Guardian's top writers, Jonathon Freedland, interviewing a previously ridiculed US Democrat - American comedian Bill Maher said he ran in the 2000 campaign "on a platform of ending charisma as we know it" - who is very suddenly back in vogue as a presidential candidate for 2008.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/climatechange/story/0,,1786438,00.html
Saturday, 17 June 2006
Abolish full-fee places…and raise HECS
Universities need money. To be world-class, as the University of Melbourne aspires to be, requires lots of money. And government is steadily decreasing the amount of money it supplies. That means, inevitably, this shortfall will have to be filled, at least in part, by the students who attend.
I see nothing particularly evil about this. Why should education be free, or even cheap? Education sets you up in life: most courses more or less guarantee you a relatively prosperous career path. And the fact that in Australia, students are not charged while they are studying and hence impoverished, but take on a no-interest loan until they are earning enough to pay it back, sweetens the deal further.
But it’s simply wrong to lower academic standards to get money, as is the current situation. Students, international and domestic, with lots of up-front cash, can get into uni with lower qualifications than those with more smarts but less money.
I say, all remaining hold-outs should reach the conclusion that the basic formula, of students having to pay their university more money to ensure its quality, is the only realistic one. But instead of a double-standard of entry to unis, a more equitable solution is to progressively phase out full-fee places, while significantly raising HECS fees - doubling or tripling them, probably - to make up the shortfall.
I see nothing particularly evil about this. Why should education be free, or even cheap? Education sets you up in life: most courses more or less guarantee you a relatively prosperous career path. And the fact that in Australia, students are not charged while they are studying and hence impoverished, but take on a no-interest loan until they are earning enough to pay it back, sweetens the deal further.
But it’s simply wrong to lower academic standards to get money, as is the current situation. Students, international and domestic, with lots of up-front cash, can get into uni with lower qualifications than those with more smarts but less money.
I say, all remaining hold-outs should reach the conclusion that the basic formula, of students having to pay their university more money to ensure its quality, is the only realistic one. But instead of a double-standard of entry to unis, a more equitable solution is to progressively phase out full-fee places, while significantly raising HECS fees - doubling or tripling them, probably - to make up the shortfall.
Affirmative action for public schools?
I don’t actually agree with the Labor Party that funding for private schools should be slashed and put into public schools. It’s reasonable to think government schools need more money – very reasonable – but this should come from elsewhere in the coffers. The only immediate effect of taking funding away from independent schools would be to cause their fees to rise, and so drive away everyone except the rich. The only major effective change, then, would be to make some worse off without making anybody much better off, as there’d be no real improvement in school quality from the cash redistribution in the short term.
For a better way of redressing the ugly imbalance that is a two-tiered school system, why not affirmative action for government schools? Defenders of private schools and the taxpayer money that sustains them are always banging on about how parents who make the private ‘choice’ are not actually trying to buy a high ENTER score. They say it’s much more than that: better facilities, better students and staff, and, of course, ‘values’. Well, let’s test it. Let’s start adding, say, five, even ten percent to the ENTERs of students from government schools, as a way of addressing the obvious inequality, fixing the skewed entry to uni, without reducing the (supposed) quality of private school education.
It wouldn’t damage the goal of a meritocratic education system, either. The old analogy comes to mind about two sports players, one fully fit, the other recovering from illness, and both seem relatively even in ability at training. The coach, having to pick a single player for the upcoming season, chooses the one not fully fit – the one with potential to get better.
For a better way of redressing the ugly imbalance that is a two-tiered school system, why not affirmative action for government schools? Defenders of private schools and the taxpayer money that sustains them are always banging on about how parents who make the private ‘choice’ are not actually trying to buy a high ENTER score. They say it’s much more than that: better facilities, better students and staff, and, of course, ‘values’. Well, let’s test it. Let’s start adding, say, five, even ten percent to the ENTERs of students from government schools, as a way of addressing the obvious inequality, fixing the skewed entry to uni, without reducing the (supposed) quality of private school education.
It wouldn’t damage the goal of a meritocratic education system, either. The old analogy comes to mind about two sports players, one fully fit, the other recovering from illness, and both seem relatively even in ability at training. The coach, having to pick a single player for the upcoming season, chooses the one not fully fit – the one with potential to get better.
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