The Battle that Saved Australia - or not

Further to today's discussion about Steve Barton and the Kokoda controversy, see these threads at Larvatus Prodeo and John Quiggin. See Barton's original Australian piece here, last night's Lateline interview here, and an older piece with some additional details here (looks like debunking the Kokoda 'myth' is an ongoing project of his).

No new Epoch in US-China relations

Cross-posted. For a different angle to the US MSM and blogosphere, see this running CHF thread.
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When not handing out propaganda at Melbourne's train stations, the Epoch Times folks keep busy heckling the Chinese president. It was shaping up as a bad day for Hu Jintao, what with being snubbed dinner at the White House and the MC announcing "the national anthem of the Republic of China." But official visits don't get much worse than being told "your days are numbered" before the world media, by an advocate of a sect your country persecutes, while standing next to the President of the United States.

Nor was it a great moment for the hosts. The Bush administration got things off on the wrong foot by not according this the status of a 'state visit', as Clinton did for Hu's predecessor. Then there was the small matter of confusing one's guests with their archenemies across the Taiwan Strait. But the ultimate gaffe was to let a Falungong practitioner not only slip security but abuse Hu for three minutes before the secret service hustled her off, leaving bureaucrats and thinktanks around the country to stress about how those inscrutable orientals will react (inside word says they're not happy).

Whoever was giving out press passes obviously didn't do their homework on the Epoch Times, a Falungong-linked paper with a prophecy fetish and a big chip on their shoulder called the Chinese Communist Party. The ET has disowned Dr Wang's actions, but the fact that she heckled Jiang Zemin in Malta five years ago should have tipped someone off. The State Department's woes didn't end there, however, with Bush and Hu later trying to hold dialogue over the chants of the Free-Tibet crowd across South Lawn. Clearly the event planners didn't watch how the Brits handled Hu's London trip last year, either.

Hu stayed all smiles, but used the occasion to teach Bush a lesson about negotiating with the Chinese that American businessmen learned long ago: expect much gilded language, but no progress unless you hand over something first. Faced with the high expectations held of this 'official' (not 'state') visit by a swathe of US lobbies, George also resorted to the fine art of using many words to say nothing, in which he is of course well practiced.

Bush said, "We would hope there would be more appreciation'' in allowing the currency to rise with market forces.

[Regarding Iran] the United States and China are in a position to ''work on tactics'' to achieve that goal, Bush said.

"We don't agree on everything but we are able to discuss our disagreements in friendship and cooperation,'' Bush told reporters.

So the bottom line is that noone's happy, least of all Hu Jintao. Having finally clawed his way to the top of the Fourth Generation leadership last year, when he eased Jiang out of the old man's last bastion in the state CMC, Hu doubtless felt entitled to 'state visit' recognition and a black-tie dinner at the White House. Instead he got a luncheon of halibut and dumplings to the strains of the Nashville Bluegrass band, after half an hour watching soldiers prance past in Continental Army uniforms.

No visiting head-of-state can have been this disappointed since the secret service ruled out Kruschev's trip to Disneyland.


Non Sequitur

I never thought I'd see an American columnist arguing the US would be better off under a parliamentary system. But then I, like Thomas Friedman, never thought I'd see a US administration determined to jump from an Iraqi frying pan into an Iranian fire.

Blogging in the End Times

The internet is a crowded place these days. Type in this blog's name wrong and you still end up somewhere: mupis.blogsopt.com. Or better, mupis.blogpsot.com, some of whose material I've extracted below. Sounds a lot like the stuff I was fed at church camps as a kid -

THE SOON COMING CLIMAX
(BIBLE PROPHECY—PROOF THE BIBLE IS TRUE AND
WE ARE NOW IN THE LATTER DAYS) and HOW TO BE SAVED
(A brief summary)

This message may be called a road sign of warning. Some may look at a sign that reads—THE BRIDGE IS OUT, and say, "Oh, someone is just trying to scare us into taking another road; let’s go on the same way." They go on and plunge to their death. The sign was not meant to scare people, but to warn them of impending danger. The sign was put there, because someone cared and didn’t want others to perish.
God wants you to know, WHEN YOU SEE THESE THINGS COME TO PASS (the prophecies from the Bible in this message), KNOW YE THAT THE KINGDOM OF GOD IS NIGH AT HAND-Lk 21:31.

• Will Russia and some Arab nations invade Israel and the U.S.A. become involved? Yes.

• Will 1/4^th of the world’s population die? Yes.

• Will there be a one-world system or global economy? Yes.

• Will diseases increase such as AIDS? Yes.

• Did you know the Bible tells us about what is happening?

Would you like to know more? Read on...

Containing Iran

Just further to the discussion in the meeting yesterday, here's one analysis of the Iran situation which pretty much sums up my position:

All the war games and simulations that I have seen have concluded that it isn't possible to disarm Iran by airstrikes. Learning perhaps from what happened to Saddam's nuclear plant at Osirak, the authorities have dispersed the program widely and put a lot of it underground. Nor can the Israelis be expected to do much by proxy: They would have to fly over Iraq this time, and it would be even more obvious than usual that they were acting as an American surrogate. Professor Edward Luttwak claims, in the Wall Street Journal, that selective strikes could still retard or degrade the program, but this, if true, would only restate the problem in a different form.
...
This means that our options are down to three: reliance on the United Nations/European Union bargaining table, a "decapitating" military strike, or Nixon goes to China. The first being demonstrably useless and somewhat humiliating, and the second being possibly futile as well as hazardous, it might be worth giving some thought to the third of these.
...
But they have a crucial vulnerability on the inside. The overwhelmingly young population—an ironic result of the mullahs' attempt to increase the birth rate after the calamitous war with Iraq—is fed up with medieval rule.
...
So, picture if you will the landing of Air Force One at Imam Khomeini International Airport. The president emerges, reclaims the U.S. Embassy in return for an equivalent in Washington and the un-freezing of Iran's financial assets, and announces that sanctions have been a waste of time and have mainly hurt Iranian civilians. (He need not add that they have also given some clerics monopoly positions in various black markets; the populace already knows this.) A new era is possible, he goes on to say. America and the Shiite world have a common enemy in al-Qaida, just as they had in Slobodan Milosevic, the Taliban, and the Iraqi Baathists. America is home to a large and talented Iranian community. Let the exchange of trade and people and ideas begin! There might perhaps even be a ticklish-to-write paragraph, saying that America is not proud of everything it is has done in the past—most notably Jimmy Carter's criminal decision to permit Saddam to invade Iran.

Hitchens is something of a hawk, being strongly in favour of the Iraq invasion and frequently critical of the "anti-war" left (I put that in scare quotes because it's his contention that many peace activists are actually in favour of war, when it's done against US/Israeli). But he's not at all in favour of a military attack on Iran. I think his analysis comes from a position of some authority and it accords with other analyses I've read.

To Get Rich Is Glorious

Chris Berg, one of our guest speakers at Pub Politics a few weeks back, was on last night's Insight program defending materialism as a road to happiness. Good libertarian that he is, his cumulative minute and a half of airtime can be picked out by the keywords 'choice', 'preference' and 'capacity'. Indulge yourself - read the transcript...

The Political Objectives Test

There are all sorts of interesting online tests of your political beliefs and ideology. A friend of mine, Daniel (or "Originaluddite") has composed a new test and it's worth a try. Check it out here.

This is how it described me, and I think it's a fair assessment:

Liberal-Conservative
You scored 21 Equality, 78 Liberty, and 64 Stability!

Your commitment to both liberty and stability puts you in the hazy area that exists between the Liberal and the Conservative. You value liberty particularly in economic life and embrace private enterprise. You also recognise the value of traditional culture and institutions. Occasionally your economic and cultural positions may clash but in general you will find practical ways to reconcile them.

Anyone else care to bare their soul in the comments section?

The Prime Minister on Whom the Sun has Set

Here's a take on Smiling Tony by Scott Cresswell, who's currently doing a polsci Ph.D thesis on the EU policy of the Conservative Party.

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Few British Prime Ministers since the Great Reform Act of 1832 have dominated British politics as has Tony Blair. Blair's parliamentary majorities have been unsurpassed (in normal circumstances at least) and his personal popularity has never quite gone through the troughs that dogged that other twentieth century Titan, Margaret Thatcher. There is a quite viable argument that Blair is the most successful British prime minister of the century, predicated on the size of his majorities and the lack of rancour he has inspired. And yet, Blair's premiership is over.

Blair is, to use words that haunted the Major premiership, 'in office, but not in power'. Reports in British newspapers have him definitely gone by Christmas; autumn (spring in Australia) looks more likely. Every piece of speculation brings the date closer. The Guardian, the staunchest of Labour newspapers, has bid him gone now. He will not go of his own accord, pushed out by his Chancellor, Gordon Brown, a dour Scotsman. Indeed, since the last election (2005) Blair and Brown have been in a sort of transitional phase, the two old rivals (dating from the 1994 leadership election) in an uneasy embrace termed the 'dual premiership'. Admitting the mistake of announcing his retirement prematurely (and yet annoying a twice jilted Brown by not naming a date), even his vaunted political judgment looks to have left him. The final years of his premiership, mirroring Thatcher's in many respects, have been a failure at best, at worst a farce. The mistakes of Iraq, the suicide of weapons scientist David Kelly, and the infamous weapons dossier do not bear re-telling. They have diminished him, his standing in the country, in the party, and, I think, the most important of all, history. His errors have emboldened the Labour left, once cowed into submission, into the rediscovery of its voice and its power. Editor of the Spectator Matthew d'Ancona writes in the Telegraph, "It is not simply factional warfare - bitter as that undoubtedly is - but full-scale fragmentation. Labour's National Executive Committee and parliamentary party are flexing their muscles recklessly. Last week's industrial action by council workers showed how emboldened the unions have been by the Government's travails."

This is crucial, as the whole 'New Labour' project was the transformation of Labour from an unelectable socialist rabble (its 1983 election manifesto, a grab-bag of socialist measure, was called by a Labour MP "the longest suicide note in history" and so it proved) into a modern, professional, ruthless, and centrist party. Power was shifted from the party and its institutions to the leadership.

This point bears expanding for those unfamiliar with British politics. On election day 1992, with the polls putting Labour by up to 10 points in front, the Murdoch owned Sun newspaper printed a front page, headlined "If Kinnock wins, will the last person to leave Britain turn out the lights?" Labour lost. Not because of the Sun ("It was the Sun wot won it" arrogantly appeared on the front page the following day), but because Labour was still struggling to throw off the vestiges of Tony Benn, the Militant Tendency, and every other loony left-wing organisation that had infiltrated it since Thatcher's win in 1979. Blair exorcised all of those ghosts and made Labour electable once more. It is worth noting that in 1997, 2001, and 2005, the Sun backed Labour, not the Conservatives. (Well, allegedly, anyway. I don't know if any Sun readers bother reading past page 3.)

(There's an old joke, with variants for each country. "People who read The Times think they run the country, people who read The Financial Times own the country, people who read the Mirror don't care who runs the country, people who read the Daily Telegraph [me!] think that the country should be run by another country [America], and people who read The Guardian think that it is." It is at this point in a 'Yes, Minister' episode where Hacker enquires about the Sun readers, to which Bernard replies, "they don't care, just so long as she has big tits!" Touché.)

This newly found confidence on the left has dismayed Blair and loyal Blairites. They are, in all honesty, less comfortable with the old Labour tradition, seemingly personified by the tax-and-spend Brown, than even with Thatcherism. With his departure announced and the left poised for control, Blair has spent much time trying to shore up his legacy. The civil (public) service, the health system, and the education system have all come in for Blair's newly found zeal for addressing the stuff-ups he's spent the last ten years ignoring. Why? Because Tony Blair, the great social democrat, has discovered 'the market'. 'Market-orientated reform' has become the Blairite buzzword of the moment.

It is personified in the attempt to reform the education system. A White Paper was compiled, under the auspices of the Education Secretary, Ruth Kelly, a Blair loyalist. But Blair, too weak to withstand a Labour left openly flouting his leadership and for whom the measure was too radical, was forced to neuter the bill. (It was reported in last week's Spectator that rebels are confident enough even to plot in front of party whips!) Yet not even that was enough for the rebels, who voted against the bill in droves. It passed, but only with Conservative votes. Blair being forced to rely on the Conservative leader, David Cameron, a Blair in the making (and seen as Blair's true heir by some Blairites and even the man himself reportedly), to shore up his legacy is indeed rich in symbolism. With Parliament due for summer recess and the scandal of the loans for peerages affair taking whatever lustre was left, Blair will go unfulfilled. And unloved. It is one of the ironies of British politics that when Thatcher left, she organized for the succession of John Major, thinking he would be a proper heir. He was not. She had to wait for Tony Blair, who was/is closer to Thatcher than either Major was or Cameron is. (Thatcher reportedly is very fond of Blair and he has reciprocated publicly.) Blair may get his serve of irony as he waits to see whether Cameron will be his heir.

Summing up Blair's legacy is not for me, I lack the in-depth familiarity with the period to nail my trousers to any masts. But one point is, I think, illustrative, sticking with the Thatcher – Blair theme. When leaving London I was given a going away present by the hippie playwright mother of a friend of mine, a kilt of MacDonald tartan, in recognition for my numerous (and good natured, of course) jokes about Scotland and her Scottish-ness. In return, I left her a copy of Thatcher's Downing Street Years (she positively despises Tories, I am merely tolerated). Apparently, it's going to get thrown at me next time I'm in the general vicinity. Whether for better or worse, I can't see anyone throwing Blair's memoirs about (except Gordon Brown…)

The Universality of Human Rights

Following up the 'Asian values' debate at the last meeting, here's a not-so-old essay of mine - minus footnotes, introduction and conclusion - on drawing the line between human rights and culture. This issue happens to be getting the media glare right now, with the impending execution of an Afghan citizen for converting from Islam to Christianity.

I'll try to follow this up with something more specific on 'Asian values', assuming I have any energy left to think after homework, job applications and LSS tutes.

Cross-posted, as usual.

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Human rights must have legitimacy if they are to be realised within a given community. The widespread perception in Muslim countries that human rights are ‘un-Islamic’ or a tool of western imperialism, for example, makes it difficult for governments to implement human right or for rights advocates to gain social and political traction. In developed states like the US, opposition to judicial enforcement of economic and social rights stems more from perceptions that they are not bona fide ‘rights’ than from persuasive separation-of-powers arguments. Attempts to give human rights an objective basis, for instance by linking them to economic development, have met little success; implementation of human rights depends on a cultural choice by the community in question, a choice that can only spring from cultural legitimacy.

The basic problem faced by the global human rights movement is that the very concept of human rights, defined as inalienable claims by an abstract individual upon society, lacks legitimacy outside the western world. If one attempts to ground human rights in religion or moral philosophy, they appear as a western cultural construct. Even accepting that numerous belief systems recognise the inherent human dignity on which human rights are founded, many manifest practices that are inconsistent with ‘international’ human rights norms; certain principles in Islamic jurisprudence, for example, conflict directly with the rights to freedom of belief, freedom of speech and equality before the law. A strong argument can be made that other key concepts underpinning human rights – the individual’s autonomy from society and the cosmos, for instance – are specifically western cultural developments. As such, their introduction into non-western societies presupposes that these societies are either culturally deficient or on an evolutionary path that will turn them into facsimiles of the contemporary west.

Nor have positivist approaches to human rights given non-western peoples the sense of cultural ownership that grounds legitimacy. The core of international human rights, expressed in the Universal Declaration, was articulated by western states in the context of the ideological struggle with communism. On an ongoing basis, Western states are perceived to serve vested commercial interests by promoting civil and political rights over economic and social ones, abandoning even the former when inconvenient (take Australia’s reservations to the ICCPR regarding federal implementation and juvenile detention). Non-western governments stand accused of using communitarian conceptions of human rights to justify internal repression. In this context, the non-western world at large has unsurprisingly developed a cynical understanding of human rights.

Yet despite the rhetoric of cultural distinctiveness from their elites, non-western societies are taking an evolutionary path similar in many respects to that of the west: industrialising, evolving powerful bureaucracies, developing market economies. In this changing social context, human rights are necessary to shield ‘authentic human life’ – whatever cultural expression that life may take – from the corrosive effects of modernity. Freedom of speech and association, for example, may be needed to protect traditional social structures or cultural practices from exploitative employers, corrupt bureaucrats and callous state policies.

Critiques of human rights as exclusively ‘western’ also employ an excessively static notion of culture. Muslim rights advocates have argued that the Shari’a provisions referenced above are a historically contingent interpretation of Islamic texts, which should be reinterpreted consistently with contemporary conditions. Torture and poverty were once considered legitimate by virtually all societies (including western ones) but are now widely rejected, at least in theory. These are instances of a global cultural evolution towards recognition that certain practices and conditions diminish human personality in any cultural context. Critics of the universal rights discourse correctly assert that ‘personality’ is culturally defined, but miss the point that it attaches to a universal ‘individual’ who is the subject of human rights. If the individual’s integrity is compromised, for instance through torture or poverty, personality cannot be fully realised. Pace Douzinas, the ‘human’ in human rights signifies a physical and mental core on which all cultures operate.

Human rights thus have a universal moral basis, notwithstanding their initial conception in the west, and as such are universally applicable. The global human rights machinery serves a legitimate role in monitoring adherence to human rights within all states, including their western progenitors; consider the Human Rights Committee’s (HRC’s) declaration of a US reservation to ICCPR subordinating that treaty to the US constitution as invalid, or the UN High Commissioner’s finding in 2002 that Australia had breached the ICCPR and the ICESCR. However, the precise content and means of enforcement of human rights must correspond to social organisation and conditions, which differ between nations and cultures. The right to freedom from arbitrary interference with privacy or family, for instance, may need to countenance traditional forms of community supervision and authority (for example the role of village elders in regulating social relationships).

Implementation of human rights should therefore take place as locally as practicable, for instance through national or regional human rights commissions, rather than via international treaty mechanisms such as the HRC’s individual complaints mechanism. Localised implementation avoids the charge of western cultural imposition, and allows rights to become ‘foundations for actions and policy’ rather than meaningless abstractions. It is only through such ‘concretisation in the [local] context’ that human rights will acquire the legitimacy needed to take root in a particular community.

Another take on Labor's woes

Here is my take on Labor's woes, as ignored by Op-ed editors from The Age, The Australian and the Sydney Morning Herald:

A glance at the Labor caucus reveals a depressing site. Amongst its ranks are a chorus of those in the 'political class', whose professional lives have been spent mostly or entirely within the Labor party or the labour movement. Whilst their political opponents might boast of lawyers, entrepreneurs and a variety of other white collar professionals, the same cannot be said of the Labor Party. According to a Parliamentary Library research note (no. 24 2005-2006), 34% of Labor parliamentarians had as their previous occupation ‘party and union administrators and officials', whilst just 7% worked in the law and 11% as business managers. Amongst the coalition, only 2% were in this first category.

We have long passed the point in Labor history when representing the party in parliament was a reward for achievements in the outside world. Instead it is merely a logical continuation of work within the labour bureaucracy.

The starting point for this "career", from want of a better word, are our university campuses. On campuses across the country, young, talented left-leaning students are sucked into the world of political machinations. For some this means playing the game of student politics, whilst for others it involves a plumb appointment as a staff member of a state or federal member of parliament. The idea of seeking to achieve things outside of the Labor machine is frowned upon.

Plenty has been said about the total lack of perspective held by many inside student politics. To its participants, student politics is a life or death struggle for power where every possible advantage is sought over one's opponent. To those watching from the outside, though, it's a remarkably silly battle of little consequence. Regardless of which perception is closer to the truth, the bearpit of student politics is considered a training ground for the real thing.

It's doubtful, though, that it's teaching the skills that are worth learning. Rarely does student politics involve serious policy discussion or a nuanced understanding of different points of view. Rarely does it involve the art of persuasion. Rarely does it involve the tricky business of reasoning and rational argument. Instead, it's a bombastic power struggle. Participants are encouraged to count numbers and stack their way to success whilst intimidation and deception are commonplace. Student politics involves the worst elements of the real thing, and that's just why it's such an unfortunate training ground, but one that lives on nonetheless.

It's also worth remembering that in student politics, the battle is rarely between Liberal and Labor. More often, it is between different factions of the Labor Party, who operate completely independently and consider each other to be their arch political enemies. The animousity between the left faction (Australian Labor Students and National Organisation of Labor Students) and the right faction (Student Unity) is the stuff of legends. In must be quite jarring for these junior pollies to leave university and find themselves shoulder to shoulder with fellow Labor members that they previously despised. There's little wonder, then, that the factional divide lives on.

All this is not to say, of course, that Liberal-minded students aren't engaged in the same shenanigans. To some extent they are, although the lack of a political gravy train of student political and union jobs prevents Liberal students from venturing further down this path. (Perhaps, ironically, the introduction of Voluntary Student Unionism will help the Labor Party by reducing the number of cosy political positions within the student union movement.) There's also a clear realisation amongst aspiring young liberals that their path to Parliament House must invariably go via another profession. This realisation is part of the reason why the Liberals have managed to avoid the same malaise the Labor Party currently finds itself in.

There's no suggestion that factional warfare in the Labor Party is the result of factionalism in junior politics. The problem, though, is that the shallow gene pool of participants in junior politics seem to be the major source of future parliamentarians in the Labor Party. This depressing situation will continue so long as the caucus is filled with career politicians who spend their younger days wallowing in the pettiness of student politics and then make no attempt to learn skills or establish their credentials elsewhere. This trend is not unstoppable. The preselection of entrepreneur (and, incidentally, former student politician) Evan Thornley to a state Labor seat in Victoria and the preselection of lawyer Mark Dreyfus in the federal seat of Isaacs are steps in the right direction. What is necessary is that these preselections be the rule rather than the exception, in order to send a message out to aspiring young hacks and hackettes that they must broaden their skill base if they are to be successful in politics.

If Labor is to make a serious attempt at entering government, it will need to work hard to change the composition of its party room. Rewarding talent ahead of loyal service would be a good start. These hackneyed Labor groupies are surely not the basis of the next Labor Government.

Ari Sharp is a Commerce/Arts student at the University of Melbourne.

Iran's nuclear threat

It seems so incredibly obvious that Iran's current struggles with the IAEA mean that Iran dearly wants to develop nuclear weapons to destroy some of its archenemies like Israel or possibly even the US. What else would you expect from a head of a state that openly airs his desire to attack his neighbor Israel?

For me it seems suicidal to even plan attacks on Israel, one of the nations not caring about the NPT, because they officially not own nuclear weapons, even though they most likely do. Nevertheless, taking a strong stance against Israel is incredibly popular amongst the islamic oriented nations surrounding this country, and thus might be nothing more than a rhetoric figure to get acceptance for the Iranian government, no matter how determined and evil it might sound to foreign ears.

The current media coverage of Irans nuclear facilities, and the correlated spin of the threat imposed to World Peace (as if it ever existed in modern times) reminded me of the situation just before the invasion of Iraq. I got inspired to compare these two events by an essay of Georg Meggle, professor for philosophy at the university of Dresden, Germany.

Furthermore, I read an article about potential economic reasons for the US to start the 'Iran belongs to the axes of evil and needs to be incapacitated' spin, and to coerce international organisations into activity. The article I'm referring to is written by Krassimir Petrov and was published on 18. January 2006 on Energy Bulletin. Krassimir Petrov has received his Ph. D. in economics from the Ohio State University and currently teaches Macroeconomics, International Finance, and Econometrics at the American University in Bulgaria.

To cut a long story short, what we think to 'know' about the 'evil intentions' and the 'belligerence' of Iran is certainly more related to assertive propaganda than to hard facts. Irans society is so unwestern that we cannot easily rely on polls and media reports like we could with for example European countries. So I hesitate to simply assume than Irans plans focus on and intend nothing else than 'having the bomb'.

As yet, there is as much evidence of the development of nuclear weapons in Iran as there was evidence for the development and existance of WMDs in Iraq three years ago. Surely, I would appreciate some facts indicating that I'm (and more important, and Meggle and Petrov are) entirely wrong, and that the most belligerent nation since the 2nd world war, the USA, is right in assuming that the Iran (like the Iraq some short time ago) poses an unacceptable threat to the rest of the world.

More O-Week photos

Following on from John's post last week, here are some more fun-filled photos from the PIS O-Week table on 23 February:

Bringing competition to politics

It's preselection time again, and the intensity of the battle seems a little stronger than usual. Here in Victoria half a dozen sitting Labor MPs (Corcoran, Crean, Jenkins, O'Connor, Sercombe, Vamvakinou) are facing carefully orchestrated challenges. There are plenty of commentators tut-tutting it, dismissing it as a source of disunity and observing that many of the challenges are merely the result of the shifting sands of faction politics.

I, for one, would like to stand up for the challengers.

Free markets are wonderful things. Healthy competition keeps all players on their toes and requires them to strive for quality and innovation to survive in a Darwinian marketplace. The same is true of members of parliament. Without the threat of competition, MPs can become self-absorbed, slothful and lazy and do little more than, quite literally, occupy a seat. It's bad for them, it's bad for their constituents, and it's bad for their party.

Given that many Labor MPs find themselves in seats with such healthy margins that they face no realistic challenge at the ballot box, it is necessary for them to have some internal challengers before they get there. One of the reasons for the ALP's malaise over the past 10 years has been the substandard performance of many of its MPs. Check out this list here, and keep a straight face while you tell me it's a galaxy of stars. The Liberals have done much better in recent years and have attracted a more talented selection of backbenchers, which has put upward pressure on the performance of members further up the hierarchy.

There's nothing inherently meritorious about the challengers. Some of them will no doubt end up being just as lame as those seatwarmers they seek to replace. But the mere fact that the incumbents have had their chances and done little with them is reason enough to think positively about the challenger.

Rather than trying to limit the number of preselection battles, the interests of democracy says we should be encouraging more. At the moment it is mostly factionally-fuelled battles in one party, in one state. Let's open up debate nation wide, across parties. Solid, hardworking MPs should be left alone, but there are plenty of others who would benefit from some healthy competition. Though the US Primaries perhaps a tad too divisive, they do offer a glimpse of what could happen here if we encourage democracy and competition in party preselection.

This time around, some of the challengers will get up and some of the sitting MPs will survive, but you can be sure that the mere threat of a challenge will force whoever gets the nod to improve their performance over the next three years. And for that, we should be thankful.

Club BBQ, Thursday 23 Feburary

One more reason to be in this club...



Would you like AAP with that?


More pics coming shortly...

Of Wheat and Weasel Words

Continuing our venerable tradition of cross-posting from members' blogs (original post here).
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One month in and it's already been a great year for political scandal. Overseas the GOP is on the back foot over Abramoff and unwarranted spying on US citizens, while in Australia we've been treated to internal backbiting over party preselections and defecting senators. Now it's emerged that the country's monopoly wheat exporter was defrauding a UN trust fund to underwrite Saddam Hussein's regime. But the red meat is the growing evidence of the federal government's role in this sorry affair, which each day looks less like a wink-nod arrangement and more like application of strategic pressure to keep the grain flowing.

It's settled ground that AWB inflated sales to Iraq under the Oil-for-Food program to cover $300 million of kickbacks to Saddam's government, disguised as transport fees and laundered through a Jordanian trucking company. Apart from the fact that this scheme was cooked up before AWB was privatised, we now know (inter alia) that in 2002 DFAT officials accompanied an AWB mission to Iraq ending in a $2 million bribe; that this mission followed correspondence between AWB execs and the Prime Minister; that DFAT was aware in 2003 0f a pervasive kickback culture surrounding oil-for-food contracts; and that Australia's Washington ambassador helped scuttle a US congressional probe into AWB's Iraq deals in 2004.

The right's counterattack has run a national interest line, examples of which can be found in the comment threads here and here. The argument boils down to claims that a) everyone else was rorting oil-for-food and b) this was no different from greasing business in any third-world country. Even if one accepts that bribing government officials is legitimate under normal circumstances, this was no ordinary squeeze. Iraq bought this wheat via a UN fund set up to allow purchases of humanitarian necessities. Every cent that went to Hussein's regime as a kickback was a cent denied to Iraq's citizens, who were otherwise blocked from buying such goods by international embargo.

Our government's probable complicity in the swindling of a UN program designed to relieve child-killing sanctions is a matter for public concern, pace the Herald Sun and the RWDB crowd. Commissioner Cole should get an expansion of his terms of reference, because if this goes where it's heading then the implications are far direr than an ALP or Fairfax beatup. Our elected leaders, going right to the top, made decisions to undercut a sanctions regime justified by the charcter of Hussein's government and its failure to come clean on WMDs - the same justifications for invading Iraq in 2003. And it's a fair bet that some of that $300 million was squirelled away in private bank accounts that now fund the Iraqi insurgency.

Leftie conspiracy-theorists will see this as more evidence of a grand Western design to squeeze blood out of the third world. We centrist joes see opportunism and moral bankruptcy on the part of our government.

But a large number of Australians, judging from newspaper op-ed pages and blog posts, see nothing wrong at all.

Hamish Malcolm

I was devastated to learn this morning that a friend of mine has passed away. Hamish Malcolm died of cardiac arrest a week short of his 26th birthday. I came to know Hamish this year as a friend, and occasionally rival, within the Political Interest Society. Hamish was a passionate lefty who believed strongly in justice and tolerance, but always managed to keep a sense of humour, often richly sarcastic. Having spent most of his life in Britain, that was where his heart lied, although he was rapidly becoming an honourary Australian after settling in Melbourne to continue studying.

Hamish had a significant on-line presence. You can read his blog Omission of Mercy as well as his lively blogger profile.

Here is the email recieved from the Melbourne University Debating Society explaining of Hamish's death and the events to celebrate his life:

Dear VCs Cuppers,

MUDS has recently received some very sad news regarding one of our members, Hamish Malcolm, who you may have met, chatted to and debated with or against during the VCs cup. He passed away on Wednesday, following a cardiac arrest, aged 25. Hamish was extremely friendly and always keen to be involved with MUDS and he will be sorely missed.

Hamish's funeral will be held this Monday, Oct. 31st 1:00 pm (please arrive early) at Lilydale Cemetery & Memorial Park 126-128 Victoria Rd.

His family has requested that the dress for the funeral be very casual (ie: jeans, cargos, etc.) and that no flowers be brought as the family is providing one floral tribute.

The following night Hamish's good friend Ali Lemer has organised to celebrate Hamish's 26th Birthday which would have been that day. So on Tuesday, Nov. 1st 7:30 pm at 6/48 Leicester Street (between Victoria and Queensberry, opposite Queen Vic Market) Carlton please join us to remember the good times. If any of you have photos of Hamish, Ali was making a slideshow for Tueday and would greatly appreciate any help in this regard. If you can help or need to contact Ali her phone number is 04xx xxx xxx and email a.lemer@pgrad.unimelb.edu.au.

If any of you would like more information regarding either of these events please contact us.

We hope you are all well,
and best of luck with assessment period,

MUDS

Rest in Peace, Hamish.



Hamish Malcolm, 1979-2005

Election week thoughts

Crossposted from Ari on the Web. What did other people make of election week?:

As election week 2005 at Melbourne University comes to an end today, it's worth reflecting on one of the more peaceful campaigns in recent years. Having seen the skullduggery of the 2003 election in the State of the Union (the official website even refers to it with the adjective 'skullduggerous' - nice work, lads), one expects all sorts of silliness to be going on. To the casual observer, though, there was little smoke nor heat.

The most visable presence on campus was the Left Union ticket, who were out in force last week and again during the election. Combining the considerable resources (oh, the irony) of Socialist Alternative and the left wing of the Labor Party, Left Union were the well organised voice of the left. In what was a real trademark of the entire election, there were few issues of substance raised by the Left Union folks. Apparently, they're really truely absolutely positively opposing VSU. And the war in Iraq. Still, these guys in their suave red t-shirts are an electoral force to be reckoned with.

The rival on the left were Activate, replete in Green. These guys are the non-aligned left, without a formal politial affiliation but their hearts in the right place (shit that sounded patronising). These guys were running on many of the same issues as Left Union, although with slightly less Stalinist zeal, which is most definitely a good thing. Given the connection with Students for Change, a worthwhile group trying to inject some integrity and transperancy into a union which desperately needs it, these guys were focused on life on campus as well as off it. For a fence-stradling centrist student like AOTW, Activate was the lefty ticket I could vote for with confidence.

Surprisingly disorganised this time around was the right wing (yeah yeah 'a broad cross-section of students' and whatever other spin they might want to try) coalition of Labor Right, Liberals and AUJS, under the banner of Fusion. Completely unsighted on campus until election week, they were later hard to miss in their camp bright pink t-shirts. Fusion were pushing a rather populist message during the campaign, promoting its completely unviable 'free gym membership' policy. Yawn. Still, the last thing that the union needs are a bunch of mad lefties wasting money and breaking stuff, so there's some merit in getting some Fusion folks elected.

Rounding out the Melbourne (Uni) Cup field were the Liberals, who made a sad sight prostituting the party brand name to act as a preference funnel for the Fusion ticket, where the Liberals had scored themselves some juicy positions. Old hack candidates, no real message beyond the oh-so-hilarious "You know we're Right" slogan... the only thing going their way was the superslick full colour leaflet thrust into my hand. Obviously the campaign was not quite as anorexic as it could have been.

Honourable mentions of course must go to the chilly-loving Kung Fu Banditos, Ken Courtis, the committee-loving, afro-wearing Josh Cusack, and of course the wonderfully dedicated Farragon of Virtue Farrago ticket. But the question must be asked, where was everybody's favourite nutter, Menachem Gunzberg? His absense was disappointing.

Predictions. For those whose memories extend back far enough, a left wing dominance of Union House is business as usual. Without a strong incentive to vote, turn-out is slack, usually dangling in single-figure percentages. Those who do vote are the highly motivated, politically aware students, and overwhelmingly these are on the left. Headstrong socialists are much more likely to cast a vote than lazy conservative engineering students, if only because they have no shame being caught within range of the ballot box. Incentive voting distorted the balance for a couple of years, bringing otherwise apathetic students out to vote if only for the promise of an $8 food voucher. Without this, we're likely to see a big swing back to the left.

Most likely, the Left Union guys will sweep the pool when it comes to Office Bearer positions. With resources, their roughest edges smoothed, and a hard core of lefty arts students, it's hard to see LU falling short of union dominance. Committees will be a little more finely balanced, with the 7 positions on each likely to be around about a 4-2-1 split (Left Union-Fusion-Activate), although there are enough minor parties and indies to upset the balance. In the battle for Farrago, Farragon are in with a chance although will be hampered by the momentum other candidates will recieve through running a full slate of candidates. As for turnout, the look of complete and utter boredom on the face of the four polling booth staff sighted on Wednesday, as well as the absense of a queue, suggests that the campaign has failed to ignite the imagination of most students. Look for a turnout between 5 and 10 per cent. Sad but true.

Disclosure, disclosure: I got links to just about everyone, so I suspect I'm biased in all directions. I'm a member of AUJS, scrutineering for Lib member Ken Courtis, wrote an article for the left-wing Farragon guys, am mates with one of the ALP guys. So get over it.

The Great Debate

I've put up some of the pics from last week's debate on my blog. Thanks again for a great semester, everyone, committee in particular. ;)

PIS Trivia Night

The PIS trivia night is coming!!!

Tuesday, 18 October, from 6:30pm @ Deep Dish $5 per person, with great prizes guaranteed

Plenty of food provided, and drinks at bar prices

RSVP to polintsoc@gmail.com by 16 October

Test your knowledge of the arts, sport, history, pop culture, religion,horticulture, numismatics, philately, aeronautics, molecular biology,deontelogical philosophy and yes, politics as well.

This is the ultimate test to see just who in the PIS is the biggest
smartarse of all!!

New Orleans 2005: microcosm of modern America

Hurricane Katrina hit the US Gulf Coast on Monday. As it did, twenty thousand-odd people huddled in New Orleans’s sports stadium, the Superdome. Over the succeeding days they lost air-conditioning, food and water. Lawlessness took over. Hygiene disappeared. While there was a suitable similar facility to house the refugees just one state over – the ‘Astrodome’ in Houston, Texas – this was only grasped days after the event, when the Governor of Texas announced it could be used. It’s an episode indicative of government handling of the disaster.

Three pieces appeared in Saturday’s Age on Katrina. All focus on what is emerging as a central issue – the clear, damning, failure of the United States government.

Paul Krugman: ‘It was already clear by last Friday that Katrina could do immense damage along the Gulf Coast. Yet the response you’d expect from an advanced country never happened…the evidence points, above all, to a stunning lack of preparation and urgency in the Federal Government’s response.

Gerard Wright: ‘Beyond the destruction of houses, lives and infrastructure, something disturbing has been revealed about the United States and its various levels of government…unable to take care of their own, unwilling to make even the most elementary preparations to protect a historic and beloved city’

It was an incompetent short-term response, but one grounded in long-term American belief, and it has brought to the surface shameful problems with America that that belief doesn’t deem to try and fix. 2005 New Orleans, more than 2001 New York, is the defining symbol of modern America.

There’s a simple narrative of breathtaking incompetence here. Thousands of the poor, elderly and sick were left in their slums, retirement homes and hospitals. Nobody from the government sent buses to help them get out, either before or immediately after. It was days before even close to adequate amounts of troops, food, water and medicine started to trickle into the city. Jesse Jackson commented that the response to the Asian tsunami was superior to America’s response to Katrina. But we have to interpret ‘federal government failure’ more broadly. The short-term response of the authorities to Hurricane Katrina is symptomatic of bigger problems, as Krugman seized on:

‘at a fundamental level, our leaders just aren’t serious about some of the essential functions of government.’

We can link the non-activist response from the Bush Administration to its broader ideology about government. The Bush administration’s failure to deal adequately with Katrina isn’t limited to being slow off the mark in the last few days. For years they have, through doctrinaire (albeit massively selective) ideas on the role of government*, been hampering the nation’s ability to respond to a major disaster. The Federal Emergency Management Agency, FEMA, has been starved of funds and purged of quality officials in the post-Clinton years. The Army Corps of Engineers, too, has been badly compromised: its use compromised in terms of troops and equipment for the war in Iraq. Repeated warnings that authorities were unprepared for a major hurricane on New Orleans, and that the government should do something about it, were, like the warnings of a terrorist attack pre-9/11, ignored. The Bush administration views government’s task as being entrenching tax cuts and doling out pork at home, and periodic wars abroad. For these objectives the basic business of governing within America has been neglected.

We can see the lack of, and need for, American activist government not simply in the response to New Orleans, but also in the disaster itself: the stories and photos coming from the city have brought to the surface continuous deep-set problems in American society and culture. The simple presence of people in New Orleans after a mandatory evacuation order shows the huge problem of income inequality and poverty in America: these people simply couldn’t afford to get away. That those in poverty and abandoned are almost universally black highlights America’s problem of race inequality. The sick retirees that waited for days in a retirement home, the hospitals floundering under colossal demand, the fact that infectious disease may spread due to widespread lack of immunization, all highlight America’s astonishing lack of national interest in health-care: most of the faces on TV have no public health insurance. The stories of guns and ammunition being taken from Wal-Mart stores in New Orleans and used to take pot-shots at police officers and murder fellow citizens highlights the – incomprehensible to the rest of the Western world – gun control problem in America: what are guns doing in a Wal-Mart? If that isn’t an issue that needs government attention, what is?

The prism of New Orleans – problems unsolved and government slow to get its hands dirty – conforms to the prevailing view throughout American history of the role of government, from the American Revolution, at a basic level about getting government out of people’s everyday lives, to Ronald Reagan’s message of government being the problem, not the solution, backed up by colossal tax cuts and slashed funding for most government programs. We can see it in the anti-government militants from the heartland in the 1990s: the Unabomber, Timothy McVeigh, David Koresh and the Waco siege. We can see it in many people of the rural South, even those now affected by the hurricane, who grumble about the ‘feds’ and Washington intervening in their affairs, as they grumbled about during Civil Rights; as they fought over in the Civil War.

The great paradox is these are all deeply patriotic Americans. The obvious question for an outsider to ask is: why can’t the American Dream be pursued, and American values entrenched, through government and not just individuals?

America has had its periods in which people and politicians viewed government as a tool to help improve society, an instrument to make people’s lives better. The most spectacular abandonment of the ‘small government’ ethos came with Franklin Roosevelt and the height of the Great Depression: the bleak times led people to a fundamental redrawing of federal government responsibility.

The most recent truly ‘activist’ American President leads me back to the Houston Astrodome example. Post-Katrina America will do well to remember another Texas President, Lyndon B. Johnson. LBJ would be flabbergasted at the idea that a fellow Lone Star President, let alone not being driven to sleepless overdrive by the plight of thousands of Americans, didn’t even comprehend that his home state’s resources could be used to help a neighbouring state. Growing up around extreme poverty in Depression-era Texas led Johnson to spend his political career and presidency attempting to put the federal government’s resources to work curing national ills: fixing poverty, enhancing the prospects of African-Americans, improving justice’s relationship with law and order, instituting health-care and welfare for the lower-classes. Bush and those around him, in contrast, have no interest in using government to address fundamental problems with society. The current White House prefers tax cuts, pork, and war.

New Orleans raises an important issue, for all of us but particularly Americans: what is the role of, use for, government? Surely it is to, even in minor ways, manage and regulate society? Katrina makes obvious a minimum role for government. It should organise buses for starving, dying people to be transported out of a disaster zone. It should marshal what resources it can to prevent levees bursting. It should keep order in the streets and prevent or punish theft, murder and rape. It should preserve cities and human lives. It should join the dots between states and regions of the country, dots so simple as shifting people from a sports stadium in a disaster zone to a sports stadium away from one.

The question then is, will Americans ‘join the dots’ between the chaos in the Gulf and the ideological attitude in Washington? It’s a question writers in The Age focused on too:

Krugman: ‘after 9/11, hard questions were deferred in the name of national unity, then buried under a thick coat of whitewash. This time, we need accountability’

Howell Raimes: ‘the sacrifices of New Orleans need a kind of national reckoning that would enable our people to see the President Who Forgot to Care for what he is’

Krugman: ‘America, once famous for its can-do attitude, now has a can’t-do Government that makes excuses instead of doing its job. And while it makes those excuses, Americans are dying.’

Pretty strong stuff, even for the decidedly anti-Bush New York Times. It’s been suggested elsewhere that this may be the beginning of the end for Bush’s popularity and prospects.

Let’s return once more to LBJ. Americans initially embraced his initiatives. They were persuaded in large part of the need to reform their society in the wake of another national tragedy, the Kennedy assassination. What sunk him was domestic overstretch, coupled with Vietnam and a failing economy. What that proves is American’s attitude to government fluctuates. They have, on multiple occasions, been convinced of the need for an active role for the federal government. Perhaps the post-Katrina period will mark a return to ideas of, if not big government, at least bigger government than currently, with a more proactive focus, that sees problems coming and tackles them. Prospective Democratic Presidents looking to 2008 may do well to launch their campaign in, and frame their liberal politics around, New Orleans.

This was originally posted on my blog, davidfettlingbycharlesdickens.blogspot.com, where I expect to pen some more thoughts on Katrina and America that the PIS will be spared.


* It must be said that considerable evidence paints Bush as diverting somewhat from this path. ‘Compassionate conservatism’ was about utilising government resources to drive the conservative agenda. Bush is the highest Presidential spender in forty years, funneling money into various departments, some noble, like education, and some dubiously ‘porky’, like prescription drug benefits. His central constituency of religious conservatives sometimes leads him to get government on to people’s backs, e.g. gay marriage and, possibly, abortion. In major respects, however, Bush very much subscribes to the minimal government mantra. The Bush tax cuts are infused with ideology; so too his Social Security reforms are grounded in a belief in weaning people off state dependence. The term that I’ve heard that best sums Bush up is ‘contradictory conservative’.

Bu…ye…gija

This is the maiden edition of what I hope will be a staple of the PIS blog, ‘Bu…ye…gija’, where all the half-formed thoughts that never quite collected in my head before two o’clock, all the proposals and dismissals and rebuttals I had on the tip of my tongue when the discussion swung in another direction, are instead imposed on the PIS community via the blogosphere.

‘…Bu…’: The clash of civilisations

To refresh our memories, Samuel Huntington claimed in 1994 that, post-Cold War, the world would be reconfigured with ‘fault lines’ between cultures replacing political and ideological boundaries as the sources of crisis and bloodshed. He claimed globalisation would lead to greater conflict, not less, because greater proximity means greater friction. He claimed Western civilisation is in decline and under threat, and that consequentially, the West ought to focus on enhancing its cohesion and protecting its own interests, restraining its universalist pretensions, which are immoral and dangerous, not interfering with other civilisations.

The Clash of Civilisations seems to come up in every second Arts subject and most lecturers are contemptuous of it. That attitude seems to me pretty valid. That’s not to say that Huntington doesn’t make any good points or truthful observations. Here are some:
– That China and South-East Asia (‘Confucian civilisation’) are an emerging economic and most likely political center and that their system will likely differ to some extent from purely Western liberal democracy, Fukuyama-style.
– That people are starting to think of themselves as civilisations: we can see that trend before the end of the Cold War, in the EU, the Pan-Arab movement, the Pan-African movement.
– That after the Cold War ethnic nationalism has made a significant return.
– That there are some fundamental antagonisms between some different world groupings or ‘civilisations’. There may well be something irreconcilable between the West in its current state and substantial parts of the Arab world in their current state. When one ‘civilisation’ has a post-Enlightenment worldview times 200 years, and the other civilisation has a pre Enlightenment worldview times about 200 years, amounting to one side practicing the rule of law and the other carrying out stonings of adulterers on Friday nights, it’s plain wrong to write off the language of ‘clash of civilisations’.

Huntington’s problem is simply that he got carried away. He does make some decent general points about the state of the world. He started out with a sound sensible idea, but sensationalism and fame got the better of him and led him to contort it and expand it into a spectacular all-encompassing Nostradamusesque prognosis of the future. It is predominately extremely simplistic stuff. Dividing the world up into seven civilisations is an extremely tidy way to describe the world, and it shows e.g. according to Huntington, Greece, the cradle of Western civilisation, is not considered part of the West. Huntington claims there are four torn countries. Surely every country is torn in a hundred different ways in terms of its imagined national identity. Surely every country within a civilisation is not exactly the same. As was said in the meeting, there are huge rifts within civilisations that are not going to disappear in a hurry.

‘…ye…’ Cindy Sheehan

I believe it’s a highly positive development that Americans are beginning to criticise Bush over the Iraq war. The administration has evaded accountability both over justification for the war itself, and its inept aftermath. For the good of the country that needs to change, and a critical public discussion needs to permeate the cognitive insulation and groupthink of the Bush White House and force a rethink of strategy.

Precisely because of this, Cindy Sheehan makes me a tad uneasy, because the debate she has prompted seems to not be about these things. It instead seems to be largely emotive. The Iraq war was wrong because Cindy Sheehan’s son died. The Iraq war is wrong purely because it is costing American lives. Maureen Dowd contributed to this the other day in the Age (reprinted from the New York Times) claiming that a bereaved parent’s moral authority was ‘absolute’. Let’s calm down and think about that. Nobody’s moral authority is ever ‘absolute’. And the ‘authority’ of certain citizens who comment on an issue often has to be taken with a substantial grain of salt e.g. does anyone argue that the family of a crime victim has ‘absolute’ authority when it comes to commentary on the criminal justice system? Rather, it’s recognised that they’re in no position to make a judgement on the nuances of policy. Their view is distorted. The same applies to the families of war dead.

I sympathise with Cindy Sheehan’s situation. I admire her courage. She is entitled to her opinion that all US troops should be immediately withdrawn. But she is in no position to put forward ideas on where America should go with regards to Iraq. If someone argues that invading Iraq was counterproductive foreign policy, incompetently implemented, they deserve all the media attention they can stomach. But the Cindy Sheehan movement seems to be simply saying that eighteen hundred deaths makes Iraq wrong. Not the type of Iraq debate America needs.

‘…gija…’ Teachers, left-wing bias and the fostering of scepticism in students

An interesting batch of education-related issues were discussed at Wednesday’s meeting: Peter Costello’s comments on anti-American left wing bias among teachers, the federal Government’s ideas on testing performance in government schools, Brendan Nelson’s ideas on values teaching etc. At the PIS meeting this all fused into a debate about how school-kids are taught, and what is important for them to learn.

The debate on classroom bias is the same as media bias. Does classroom bias exist? Of course it does. It’s unavoidable. And, like media bias, it’s not undesirable. All you have to ensure is that there is a diversity of different biases in a school. This means encouraging engaged, interested students. One of the best ways of encouraging engaged, interested students is to have engaged, interested teachers – left-wing or otherwise – who provoke them to think and debate issues. A majority of my school-teachers were left-leaning. Sometimes I fought with them, sometimes I agreed with them. But I came out of Year 12 engaged and interested. Do you know how I can prove that? When I got to uni, I was taught about constructivism and deconstructivism and postmodernism and all the allegedly scepticism-producing stuff we mentioned in Alice Hoy, and I sat and I listened, and after the lecture I emerged into the sunlight, and I said to myself, ‘what a heap of hooky shit’, and I went to a PIS meeting instead.