Troppo Armadillo

2003-02-18T17:44:00.000-08:00

Peripatetic Troppo Armadillo

This may be some sort of blogosphere record (although not one I urge others to emulate). I've just moved my blog for the 4th time since I started blogging almost exactly 6 months ago. The ongoing problems with Blogger (and more recently Haloscan commenting - which I see is now finally back in action, at least for the moment) have spurred me to expedite the big move to a Movable Type blog. The new blog isn't complete, in the sense that I've only copied across blog posts for the last few days, and I haven't done any customising of the template yet. Nevertheless, I've decided it's worth announcing the move now, and directing readers across there, so you can start using the new inbuilt commenting facility.

Change your bookmarks and blogrolls (yet again -sorry!) and migrate to the new Troppo Armadillo. No new posts will be made here, and comments posted here won't be answered (at least not by me). In fact I've just deleted the Haloscan code, so you won't be able to do it by mistake. I'll re-install the Haloscan code in a few days, so people can still view old comments.

PS Just in case anyone thinks I'm some sort of instant Movable Type guru for getting the new blog up and running in less than 24 hours, I have a confession to make. It was set up for me by new-ish blogger Mark Gallagher. Yes Virginia, there is a blogosphere Santa Claus, and his name is Mark! Mark runs a fascinating and eclectic blog called Cyberfuddle! (add it to your list for regular visits), and Troppo Armadillo is now a sub-domain of Cyberfuddle (which some will unkindly suggest is more than appropriate).

2003-02-18T15:51:00.000-08:00

Rats and the sinking ship

It seems the gloves are off in the war to decide who replaces Simon the Unlikeable as federal Labor leader. Genteel Labor foreign affairs spokesperson Kevin Rudd (who I thought was very impressive on the Nine Network's Sunday program a couple of days ago) appears to have leaked to Janet Albrechtsen (of all people) an email sent to him by the distinctly un-genteel Mark Latham, in which Latham addressed Rudd as "Hey, knucklehead". I can see this getting very entertaining. Of course, it won't do anything for Labor's presently non-existent electoral prospects, but them's the breaks. Anyway, if Iraq turns into a protracted bloodbath (which I think is unlikely), Labor will probably be able to win under the proverbial drover's dog. On the other hand, if Crean was a dog it would be a kindness to have him put down.

2003-02-18T15:17:00.000-08:00

Trading off copyright term extension?

Scott Wickstein (posting again, and about time) utters a heresy (at least John Quiggin and Kim Weatherall will certainly see it that way) about the possibility that Australian negotiators might trade off an extended copyright term of 70 years in order to win a free trade deal with the US:

"In doing free trade negotiations, it is necessary to do cost/benefit analysis on a regular basis. Is extending copyright protection for 20 years worth easy access to US markets for our farmers? Seems like a good deal to me."

Is this really a heresy, though? Certainly the concept of the IP "commons" on which copyright law is based is critically important to intellectual freedom and technological development. The Copyright Act attempts to strike a balance between the legitimate interest of the creator to be able to make a financial return on his/her creation, and the public interest in learning, freedom of communication, speech, comment, criticism etc. Giving the copyright holder absolute control would prejudice these equally important rights. Thus the rights holder can control copying for 50 years (for corporations), but even during that time anyone has the right to make "fair use" of the work. "Fair use" (or "fair dealing") includes copying a reasonable portion of a work for research or study; criticism or review; reporting the news; judicial proceedings or the giving of professional advice.

The much-discussed recent US Supreme Court decision in Eldred v Ashcroft, though mostly based on US constitutional arguments not worth reprising here, also rested on the express assumption that the "fair use" defences were adequate to protect the public interest in preserving the intellectual "commons"; extension of the length of protection did not undermine the fundamental nature of copyright as a limited bundle of rights. The argument by American constitutional law academic Larry Lessig (who led the team in the Supreme Court arguing against the validity of the US copyright extension) was essentially a "slippery slope" one. If an extension to 70 years is constitutionally possible, then logically an unlimited series of later legislated extensions would also be constitutional, so that Mickey Mouse (and all other works including computer programs etc as well as movies, music and the like) would potentially never come out of copyright protection.

Lessig's concern is a reasonable one. Major music/movie industry corporations certainly have the lobbying muscle to achieve further extensions if they see commercial advantage in it. On the other hand, the "fair use" exceptions do allow quite a bit of scope for using copyright works. Moroever, one of the most important genres of copyright "work" for commercial purposes is computer software. In that area at least, you can mount a respectable argument that the copyright term, whether it's 50 or 70 years, is almost irrelevant. At the software application level, software is usually completely out of date within 10 years at the most. Even at operating system level, Microsoft gains most of its power not from copyright protection of its Windows operating system, but from leveraging market domination and the fact that the range of available Windows applications is so much greater than for any other operating system that no-one other than a geek would choose anything else (even though arguably Linux is a better operating system).

In many ways, I think the continual expansion and increasing sophistication of electronic rights management systems (and ancillary legislative protection of them) poses a much greater threat to the intellectual commons than a 20 year copyright term extension, because rights management systems potentially allow rights holders to exercise de facto complete monopoly power over a work. If free trade agreement with the US just involved trading off a 20 year copyright term extension for free access to American markets, I think I'd be inclined to agree with Scott Wickstein. However, we're being pressured to bring all our IP laws into line with America, and that includes provisions which further enhance the ability of rights holders to leverage rights management systems into an effective perpetual monopoly. Laws of that sort potentially stultify intellectual and technological progress. In the long term, they may ironically turn the United States into an inward-looking intellectual backwater where innovation no longer occurs. It would be a really bad idea for Australia to follow suit: the short-term benefit of agricultural trade access to US markets would pale into insignificance beside the long-term damage.

2003-02-18T05:12:00.000-08:00

Don't tinker with the Senate

John Quiggin blogs an interesting short piece on the virtues of Australia's Senate and its proportional representation voting system. I agree 100% with John's observation that "the system we have evolved with a constituency-based lower house that can generally provide stable executive government, combined with an upper house, elected on the basis of proportional representation and having a veto on legislation is a pretty good compromise." In fact, I think the institutional legislative review role of the Senate, together with the High Court's constitutionally-entrenched judicial review jurisdiction over any decisions of the federal executive government, go a long way towards making up for Australia's lack of a constitutional bill of rights.

John suggests, however, that State-based Senate elections (i.e. electing 6 Senators from each State in an ordinary election and 12 in a double dissolution) are less than optimal. Although he thinks changing it would be more trouble than it was worth, John opines that a "proportional representation system with the whole nation as a single electorate would be preferable." I disagree. Constitutional design in this respect requires a careful balance between, on the one hand, fostering democratically diverse representation, and on the other, stable and workable government. I think Australia's existing system gets that balance just about right.

The quota for election of a Senator in an ordinary half-Senate election is 14.3%. That is high enough to ensure that we don't get huge numbers of ratbag fringe candidates elected (causing legislative gridlock and making the country ungovernable), but low enough to ensure that reasonably well supported minor parties (like the Democrats, Greens and One Nation) and Independents will get some candidates elected. The result is that governments rarely control the Senate, but will usually be able to enact most of their legislative program by intelligent compromise with minor parties and Independents. The outcome is invariably better legislation and more accountable government.

However, with a Senate elected by the whole nation as a single electorate (John Quiggin's suggested ideal) the proportional representation quota for election would be around 1%. Huge numbers of fringe candidates would be elected, and unstable government and Senate gridlock would inevitably result. I think tampering with the current Senate model in any major way would be potentially very dangerous for Australia's highly evolved and very successful democracy.

2003-02-17T21:14:00.000-08:00

Another Schaap reply

Rob Schaap has responded to my piece yesterday on purity and consequentialism in the context of the Iraq debate. It's a discussion that would have been more accessible in comment boxes, but that's a choice we don't have at the moment.

Rob assumes that my advocacy of a consequentialist approach (preferably utilitarian - this being a subset of consequentialist approaches) to the Iraq debate "seem(s) to imply (if I may try to lend coherence to all you have written on the subject) that a consequentialist outlook would recommend the invasion of Iraq." Leaving aside the gratuitously offensive remarks, I imply nothing of the sort. Certainly I would argue that a utilitarian assessment of the options would lead (though not conclusively) to that position, but I don't imply or assume it in any sense. What I was seeking to argue (but obviously didn't express myself clearly, because Rob failed to understand the point) was simply that a "just war" approach, involving inherently menaningless assertions about purity of motive, was a waste of time, and that we'd all be better off trying to assess likely/possible consequences of the various options.

Rob then proceeds to trot out the standard anti-war argument - gross exaggeration of likely consequences of the military option, while conveniently ignoring the consequences of inaction (=continued ineffective inspections):

"Rational consequentialist that you are, you're supporting the extermination of tens of thousands (by way of 'Shock and Awe' [PNACese for 'Blitzkrieg']) the starvation of millions when their oil-for-food rations are cut off for the duration, and a million-strong tide of refugees (by the UN's own reckoning) on the grounds that all involved will be better off afterwards than they would have been by a magnitude greater than this heinous cost (in 'units' of 'utility') of invasion. "

First, and as British Prime Minister Tony Blair eloquently pointed out, "tens of thousands" of deaths would be much less than Saddam has murdered, and will continue to murder on an ongoing basis if not stopped. That's the issue the peaceniks assiduously avoid confronting: - not taking decisive, efective action also has consequences in terms of human life and misery, so we're in the arena of assessing comparative consequences whether we like it or not.

Secondly, there is already a strong and ongoing refugee flow out of Iraq, and it's been going on for decades. No doubt there will be a much larger short-term "tidal" flow as the military action takes place but, as in Afghanistan, it will reverse itself when the country is liberated from tyranny (although Rob would bridle at that language, because he is determined to see the US and not Saddam as the real tyrant).

Higher-range estimates of likely civilian deaths are based on the proposition that there will be large-scale destruction of infrastructure (water, electricity etc) and a prolonged war creating mass starvation. There probably will be large-scale destruction of infrastructure (judging by some of the leaked tactical reports - although they may involve disinformation), but majority expert opinion says that the duration of war is likely to be short. If that proves accurate, then the high death counts being asserted by the Left simply won't occur, and aid agencies will flood in to help as soon as liberation is complete. Only US military planners are really in a position to make reliable assessments of probable war duration and casualties, and even they are necessarily dealing with a lot of uncertain variables. That's why I was interested in Hugh White's article (linked in a post earlier today). He gives a lucid account of some of the key factors likely to influence the duration of any conflict, and hence the number of casualties. It's those sorts of discussions and assessments that I think we need to have, rather than sterile philosophical debates about "just war". It's manifestly just to get rid of an evil bastard like Saddam and liberate the Iraqi people, if it can be done without mass slaughter. If the balance of sober, independent expert assessments (of which Hugh White's is one) suggested a high probability of a massive casualty count, I would oppose the military option on utilitarian grounds. So far, that's not the way the picture looks. As Hugh White observes:

"If Saddam tries to meet US forces in open country, or if US targeting intelligence is good enough to find him and his top commanders, or if new urban warfare doctrines give the coalition forces a decisive edge, or if Iraq's soldiers will not fight, then the war will be short. That is quite probable, but far from certain."

2003-02-17T19:33:00.000-08:00

Eternal childhood

Stewart Kelly has posted a thoughtful response to my recent rant about "black armband" history and the present day plight of Aborigines. Stewart plausibly observes that the reason why Aboriginal issues elicit little or no public response is that:

"That would actually require the broader public to truly give a shit and they clearly don't. This lack of interest is not a result of racism or because the people have no heart, it's simply that Aboriginal problems don't affect them on a day to day basis."

Stewart may be right, although Australians showed themselves able to get interested enough back in 1967 to pass one of the few successul referenda in Australian constitutional history, giving Aboriginal people citizenship and the Federal Parliament power to override racist state laws. More recently, similar numbers of people marched for Aboriginal reconciliation as turned out for world peace last weekend. Moreover, the reconciliation marchers included the Federal Treasurer and probable next Prime Minister Peter Costello.

I'm by no means defeatist about the prospect of getting reform on these issues. As I recently blogged, a 'stolen generations' apology need not be a 'black armband' exercise, and could serve as a catalyst for true reconciliation if handled intelligently. Similarly, issues surrounding treaties and recognition of traditional law are also capable of being handled in a constructive rather than divisive manner if the political will exists (as it might with Costello as PM).

On the other side of the ledger, there's also a need to confront gross, chronic and very widespread irresponsibility in Aboriginal communities, leading to huge levels of drug and alcohol abuse, community violence, and serious sexual and physical abuse of women and children. It's in that area where I think the exclusive focus of 'black armband' advocates is actually counterproductive for Aboriginal people. It encourages and perpetuates a "poor bugger me" attitude; an almost universal assumption that everything is the balanda's (white man's) fault, and that the answer lies in the balanda apologising, and atoning by handing over endless supplies of money and land. In fact, whatever injustices took place in the past (including the recent past), real improvement can never take place without Aboriginal people and communities themselves taking responsibility for their own choices and behaviour. That requires devolution of power by governments, with negotiated but clear accountability and performance benchmarks, involving real consequences flowing from continued irresponsible behaviour.

At present, virtually all bureaucratic and informal dealings with Aboriginal people are blighted by an automatic assumption that responsible adult conduct isn't to be expected or required. They assume we are dealing with eternal children from whom no better behaviour is possible. That assumption is born of long and frustrating experience (and in some cases, though only a few, may be generated by an overtly patronising attitude on the bureaucrat's part), but it's also self-fulfilling and self-perpetuating. I could recite scores of examples from my own long experience in Aboriginal affairs, but just one very personal one should suffice.

A few years ago, only weeks after her mother was murdered, my wife was assaulted by a nationally prominent Aboriginal activist (who was also a parent at the school where Jenny taught). The offender (without provocation) violently pushed Jenny against a wall, held her by the throat and called her a "white cunt". We were later told that the offender had a long history of low-level violence against colleagues and acquaintances, but had never been held to account for it. There were numerous witnesses to the incident, and all of them gave sworn written statements. A complaint was made to the school principal and Education Department. Nothing happened. A complaint was made to the teachers' union. Nothing happened. A complaint was made to the Anti-Discrimination Commission. Again nothing happened. Of course, if it had been Jenny attacking an Aboriginal parent and calling them a "black cunt", rather than the other way round, she would have been instantly (and justifiably) dismissed and probably charged with a criminal offence. No doubt the incident would also have made headlines given the prominence of the Aboriginal activist involved. Different standards, however, apply to the conduct of Aborignal people. Nothing better can be expected of them, it seems, even when they are highly educated and moderately wealthy (as the offender in this case was).

I'm not suggesting that Aboriginal people are in any sense a "privileged" class, or that "it's all their own fault". What I am suggesting, however, is that along with treaties, apologies, customary law recognition and adequate service levels, we must also address society's habitual failure to expect and demand of Aboriginal people the same mature, responsible behaviour we demand of everyone else. Our failure to do so is a prime cause of the seemingly intractable nature of Aboriginal disadvantage. The fact that we don't demand it, and that these issues are seldom publicly discussed, is in part due to a fear that one might be labelled a racist if any causative factors other than white guilt are even mentioned. When Haloscan is eventually restored, I fully expect a comment box reaction along those lines from the usual suspects.

Postscript - Enetation is still as hopeless as ever, and is slowing down the blog and causing error messages. I've deleted the code and re-inserted the Haloscan code. Any would-be commenters are welcome to send in their responses by email. I promise to post them as soon as Haloscan is working again.

2003-02-17T17:02:00.001-08:00

Iraq opinion roundup

Gerard Henderson has an interesting article in today's SMH highlighting the illogicality (not to mention lack of commonsense) inherent in much of the peacenik rhetoric.

Hugh White (also SMH) has a fascinating analysis of the sorts of contingencies that may dictate whether US victory in Iraq will be quick and clean or protracted and bloody. Obviously, the political consequences, both for the Middle east and the electoral futures of Bush, Blair and Howard, will depend in large measure on how close actual events come to one of those extremes.

American legal blogger Jack Balkin has an interesting piece suggesting President Bush might be better advised to plan for an October war instead of rushing in now. I'd been thinking about an essay along those lines myself, but Balkin has saved me the trouble. Here's an extract:

"Suppose instead that Bush called France's bluff and allowed for several more rounds of inspections to dog Saddam through the summer. Then, assuming that Saddam is still playing cat and mouse, he could press for an attack in October, when the weather turns cold. After six months of inspections, the other members of the security council might well be fed up with Saddam and Bush would have his U.N. support. This would keep the Atlantic alliance together, prevent NATO from unravelling, and bolster the idea of using the U.N. as an international forum for identifying, deterring and punishing rogue states like Iraq. And, one other thing, Bush could fight all fall and winter long without worrying about the weather.

Finally, although this has little to do with the geopolitical interests of the United States, the October strategy would also have political advantages at home. Bush could insist that he was not rushing to war, but gave inspections as much time as our European allies wanted. This would completely undermine Democratic criticisms that he is being unilateral. And he could begin the war in October 2003 and conclude it at the beginning of 2004. This would boost his poll ratings when they are needed most-- just before the 2004 campaign begins. Ending a successful war at the beginning of 2004-- instead of the middle of 2003-- could do wonders for his chances at reelection in 2004."

Finally, Tim Dunlop blogs an essay which expresses the widespread fear that American hubris could lead to a succession of imperial invasions of countries the US doesn't like. Frankly I think that's extremely unlikely, despite the bellicose rumblings of some Bush administration figures. Neither American public opinion nor the US economy could withstand that sort of campaign. On the other hand, it's very likely that the US will leverage the credible threat of force flowing from an Iraq victory to put much greater pressure on oppressive, dictatorial regimes like Iran, North Korea and Libya (not to mention Saudi Arabia) to moderate their behaviour. Personally I don't think that would be any bad thing.

Tim's position, like that of most thoughtful lefties, is primarily based on the conviction that it would be far better to have a credible security guarantee from an international body like the United Nations, with its inbuilt checks and balances, rather than rely on the goodwill and good judgment of US liberal democratic hegemony. I agree, but the trouble is that the UN has conclusively demonstrated that it simply is incapable of providing any such guarantee, at least in its present form. That incapacity is further underlined by the recent appointment of Libya to head the UN Human Rights Committee, and Iraq to head the UN Disarmament Committee. As I've argued before, we need to separate the question of whether (and when) military action in Iraq is the least undesirable option from the longer term question of how to secure credible international security guarantees and counterbalance US hegemony.

2003-02-17T14:57:00.000-08:00

Google buys Blogger

I see (courtesy Michael Jennings) that Google, the world's leading search engine provider, has just purchased Pyra Labs i.e. Blogger. Hopefully that will soon mean an improvement in Blogger's reliability, as all of its 1.1 million blogs are moved to Google's huge bank of servers. Apparently Blogger has been operating until now with just 5 employees, so it's hardly surprising they had trouble coping with the explosive expansion of the blogging phenomenon.

I suspect that the Google purchase won't mean any increase in attempts to charge for Blogger services. Google is the leading exponent of making a buck out of the Internet without charging ordinary consumers for using its services. Moreover, as others have already speculated, Google may well apply their aggregation technology (used in Google News) to make the blogosphere readily accessible to a much wider audience. A link from Google Blog News would make the hit "spike" generated by a mention on Instapundit look like a tiny blip.

Another possible downside some have already discussed is the possibility that Google might (whether deliberately or otherwise) discriminate against non-Blogger weblogs (e.g. Movable Type or Radio Userland). I suspect they won't do so in any extreme way, but they might well sell higher positioning in the Google search engine or premium listing in "Google Blog News".

Finally, I see Michael Jennings' wish list includes a hope that Google will create an easy-to-implement search engine for Blogger blogs. In fact they already have, and I'm using it on this blog. Anyone interested in following suit should go here and follow the prompts. It's very easy, and allows you to offer both a site search and web search on your own blog using the Google search engine. A slight downside is that Google only re-indexes comprehensively every 6 weeks or so, although if your blog gets lots of links from others it's likely it will in fact be re-indexed more often. My own wishlist would be for an integrated commenting facility. The lack of a reliable commenting facility is my main gripe with Blogger, and the factor that might still tempt me to move across to Movable Type. I regard commenting interaction as one of the most important aspects of blogging.
Update - Haloscan's website now carries the notation "We found that the cause of the recent problems was a hardware failure in the database server. We are currently working to replace the server and will have everything working by Tuesday at the latest. Sorry about the problems and thanks for your patience." As they're talking about US time, it looks like Haloscan commenting will out of action for at least another 24 hours. Consequently I've re-implemented the old Enetation commenting facility I used once previously. Feel free to post comments on current debates, because I promise I'll copy across all comments to Haloscan if/when it comes back online.
Update 2 - For some reason, inserting the Enetation code has made the drop down navigation menus work inconsistently. Sometimes you have to refresh the screen to get them to work. Sigh!! I suspect it's some sort of clash between the Enetation javascript and the one that makes the menus operate. Hopefully it will be fixed when I re-instal Haloscan tomorrow. Of course, in the long run it's another reason to consider the big MT move - it's an integrated package, so you shouldn't get these sorts of compatability and reliability problems.

2003-02-17T06:16:00.000-08:00

A mixed report for Media Watch

As Uncle from ABC Watch fearlessly predicted earlier today, the ABC Media Watch program conspicuously failed to make any mention whatever of ABC TV News' outrageous fabrication of a claim that the Indonesian government had warned Prime Minister John Howard that military action in Iraq would be seen as a war on Islam. It hardly inspires confidence in the program's self-proclaimed impartiality. On the other hand, the story only reared its head late on Sunday, which might have been running close to Media Watch's production deadline. If David Marr doesn't mention the fiasco in next week's program, however, I'll certainly draw the obvious adverse inference (namely that the ABC is "a festering pit of incompetence, malice and political bias", as Bernard Slattery succinctly puts it).

On other fronts, however, Media Watch ran a couple of useful items. First, there was a piece exposing blatant hypocrisy (if not outright dishonesty) by both Federal Communications Minister Richard Alston and the golden tonsils of radio John Laws in relation to their shared enthusiasm for payola.

Then David Marr ran an excellent item highlighting the disgraceful beat-up by Daily Telegraph journalist David Penberthy in falsely writing up Australia's immigration detention centres as 'five star hotels'. Blogwatchers may recall that Gareth Parker and Rob Corr had a heated debate about this very story 2 or 3 weeks ago. I made some comment box contributions at the time. The DIMIA-inspired characterisation of the centres as luxury hotels is anything but new. In fact, it's become so hackneyed that the Joint Parliamentary Committee on Migration published a report on detention centre standards a couple of years ago titled ?Not the Hilton?. It broadly confirms what I observed in Gareth and Rob's comment boxes, namely that the evidence showed that standards of centres were generally acceptable but a long way from luxurious. Here's a summary of the report's findings that I found at the Refugee Council's website (although I've copied it across to my own site and enlarged the font, because it nearly sent me blind trying to read it).

A not commonly known fact about asylum seekers is that illegal arrivals whose protection visa applications are unsuccessful generally have cost recovery charges levied against them of around $139 per day spent in immigration detention. It's not quite a 5 star hotel room rate, but then they're not exactly 5 star hotels. In fact the DIMIA cost recovery rate is exactly the same as my entire family paid to stay at the Novotel in Canberra a few weeks ago (generally classed as a 3.5 star hotel). It has gym, spa, indoor heated pool, sauna, inhouse video movies, minibar facilities, IDD telephones in all rooms etc etc. Woomera and Port Hedland don't!! Incidentally, in most situations the imposition of this extortionate daily charge for the privilege of being imprisoned is never actually recovered (because the debtors have no money and are deported). However, on the rare occasions when Minister Ruddock is persuaded to exercise his personal ministerial discretionary power to grant a humanitarian visa notwithstanding the failure of a refugee application, the $139 per day charge is imposed and enforced. These lucky people emerge from Woomera owing a fortune to the Federal government for the cost of their imprisonment, which they have to pay back over a period of years!

Finally, while I'm dealing with discretionary decisions to allow failed refugee applicants to stay, I'll take the opportunity to point out a further fairly unflattering comparative aspect of Australia's performance on asylum seekers. Regular readers will recall that I've often pointed out that Australia's performance in terms of percentage of asylum seeker applications approved is a very respectable one: around twice the European Union average and consistently better than any other western nation besides Canada. However, that's only part of the picture. Several European nations (including the UK) have a fairly extensive practice of allowing significant numbers of failed asylum seekers to remain in the country on an informal de facto basis (i.e. without any legal visa entitlement). Australia has no such program. Generally, just about all failed asylum seekers are deported, or kept in detention where their home country refuses to take them back. When you take the European de facto refugees into account, Australia's total performance is significantly worse than the UK, Sweden and Denmark (as well as Canada). Here's a bar graph showing the comparative picture. Thus, a fair assessment of Australia's overall refugee record is that it is respectable but not outstanding, and blighted by our imprisonment of children and arguably excessively harsh general detention regime.

2003-02-16T23:08:00.000-08:00

Purity of purpose

John Quiggin's stance on Iraq has until now been a relatively moderate and rational version of leftist opposition to military action. He has at least professed that military action might be justified, just not yet. However, John's latest post suggests he's been overcome by the chanting of "Kumbaya" and "Give Peace a Chance" at the peace rally he attended in Brisbane yesterday, not to mention the pungent gunja fumes (a greatly under-appreciated passive smoking risk). John seems to be trying to play Margo Kingston off an even break in the "away with the fairies" stakes. His latest preconditions, before he would even consider supporting military action in Iraq, are: ... Read more (another long-ish blog)

Update - John has responded promptly as an update of his original post. His rejoinder comes down to making the point that my consequentalist position leaves the US free to be the sole determinant of whether military action is justified. I agree, and that's why I recently raised the issue of how one could reconstruct some workable system of international checks and balances in the wake of what I see as the self-evident and seemingly terminal failure of the UN to provide any credible security guarantees at all. Given the length of this post, I'll have to chase that rabbit down its burrow at some later time.

2003-02-16T16:48:00.000-08:00

Still cactus

As readers may have noticed, while most (but not all) existing Haloscan comments have now reappeared, the commenting facility itself remains disabled. Thus you can't post any new comments. Please save up your observations and arguments, and add them when Haloscan eventually comes back into full operation.

I'd like to be able to tell you that the problem will soon be fixed permanently, but unfortunately I can't. Although I've had vague aspirations to switch over to a Movable Type blog for some time, a realistic appraisal of my commitments from now on suggests I'm just not likely to get time to set it up. I'm afraid I'll be sticking with Blogger and Haloscan at least for the immediate future. I hope commenters will continue feeling it's worthwhile making a contribution to the debate on issues raised at Troppo Armadillo. Recent discussions have been very interesting IMO.

2003-02-15T15:30:00.000-08:00

Warnie's Darwin connection

Like all parochial newspapers, Darwin's Murdoch-owned Northern Territory News and Sunday Territorian specialise in highlighting local links in just about any national or international story. Mostly the link is so trivial as to be just plain silly, but this item in today's 'Sunday Terror' is worth recording:

"Shane Warne's ignominious exit from South Afrcia was not the first time he had been sent home. In 1990, when the spin king was a 19 year old member of the AIS cricket academy side, he was ordered back to Melbourne from Darwin after using "inappropriate language and behaviour" to female Northern Territory University students who were sunbathing at the old NTU campus at Myilly Point. Warne made his test debut in 1992 and said after the match that being expelled from Darwin had shocked him into knuckling down."

The story is accompanied by a cartoon showing Warnie being interviewed by a reporter who's saying "What?! You got kicked out of the capital of inappropriate behaviour?!"

2003-02-15T14:04:00.000-08:00

Stroppy Strocchi

Jason Soon is hosting a fascinating debate on the ubiquitous Iraq invasion issue between guest blogger and economist Jack Strocchi and reader Tim Makinson. Jack has deployed some logical/philosophical tools to analyse potential Iraq options (coming up with a pro-war conclusion, which is predictable given that Jack has been a strong military option advocate in John Quiggin's comment boxes for months before graduating to full bloggerness). Tim argues (not without force IMO) that Jack is playing fast and loose with logic. Worth reading even if you're heartily sick of the interminable arguments on Iraq.

BTW it seems that Jack Strocchi is another Bunyip fan.

2003-02-14T22:32:00.000-08:00

Uncle on song

Just to add a bit of variety to my laudatory linking of right wing bloggers, I should mention that Uncle from ABC Watch has an excellent piece today on "Islamophobia", a nascent offence against political correctness apparently under development by the good folk down at the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission. I'd been idly contemplating writing something similar myself, but Uncle has done a better job than I ever could.

One of the things I'm still finding it hard to get my head around is how we can preserve our tolerant multicultural society when a significant subset of recent migrants is vehemently opposed to those values, and at least a few of them are sworn to overthrow that society by violence. It seems that if HREOC gets its way, we won't even be able to talk about such issues, let alone actually do anything to protect ourselves.

Maybe Uncle is an incognito senior academic as well, and I'm just currying favour again. Or maybe my judgment is just "clouded" by my bloodlust for war in Iraq. Being patronised by lefties is such a privilege. Then again, maybe I'm actually Uncle (as well as Bunyip)! It's mighty confusing being a political schizophrenic, but at least you're never lonely.

2003-02-14T16:09:00.000-08:00

Multiple realities

As I've mentioned before on this blog, every Saturday morning my wife gets up early and goes up to the local service station to buy the morning paper, preparatory to her weekly fix of lawn sales. A couple of weeks ago a white "gin jockey" had bled all over the forecourt of the servo, after being bashed with a blunt instrument by a young Aboriginal woman.

This morning the service station was closed and surrounded by police. The young counter attendant who always serves Jenny had been stabbed by a drunken Aboriginal woman. I don't know whether he's still alive. I'll keep you informed.

Gary, you may be correct that there are "multiple historical truths" with indigenous issues. But most of them are negative, and they pale into insignificance compared with the "multiple realities" of the present day. Moreover, musing about whether Keith Windschuttle is dodgier than Lyndall Ryan doesn't have much connection with any of them. Maybe we need to have some understanding of the "multiple historical truths" (at least if that means trying to gain insight into how indigenous people may have perceived and experienced events), and we certainly need to have a grasp of the "empirical history". But mostly we need to start a serious search for solutions, instead of metaphorically shrugging our shoulders and focusing on sterile historical debates.

2003-02-13T16:19:00.000-08:00

Saudis are the big threat

Bargarz blogs a timely piece about the ongoing activities of Saudi Arabia in brainwashing their children with almost unbelievably poisonous and ultra-violent anti-western propaganda. Moreover, the Saudis continue to fund "madrassa" (I'm not sure of the plural) which spread the same hateful Wahabbist message throughout the world. They are calculatedly creating the next Bin Laden and the next generation of obedient suicide bombers.

As the National Review article Bargarz extracts observes, the Saudis are continuing to deliberately turn children into anti-western terrorists despite American requests to cease and desist. The Americans have so far taken a low key approach with the Saudis, however we should all be hoping they take the gloves off once the immediate threat of Saddam is removed. Whether the prospect of greater freedom to deal resolutely with the Saudi threat forms part of US calculations on the desirability of forced regime change in Iraq (as I have previously speculated) is impossible to know, but it will certainly be a major collateral benefit.

Moreover, there is a direct and critical security link for Australia in this consideration. It's very likely that Abu Bakr Bashir's madrassa, where the Bali bombers were brainwashed and turned into terrorists, was partly Saudi-funded and inspired. The Financial Times reported that "Omar al-Faruq, an al Qaeda-trained Kuwaiti arrested in Indonesia in June, has told U.S. interrogators in Afghanistan that the spiritual leader of the radical Indonesian group Jemaah Islamiah, Abu Bakr Bashir, was given $74,000 by a Saudi to buy explosives from Indonesian army officers earlier this year." (link not available).

2003-02-13T15:15:00.000-08:00

Do Yourself a Favour

There's been a lot of poorly written, ill-considered nonsense written about the Iraq situation (conceivably even by me - although I don't really think that - I'm just striking a pose of mock humility). This morning's SMH, however, carries an article by Tony Horwitz that everyone should read. Several leftie bloggers have recently professed willingness to be persuaded that military action in Iraq is justified and necessary. If any of them were genuine (rather than just striking a faux rhetorical pose), they'd be persuaded by the case Horwitz puts.

Michael Costello in The Australian puts the obverse side of the coin. He acknowledges that the case for military action in Iraq is strong, but observes that the "Bushies" are their own worst enemies in terms of persuading the rest of the world. Their gauche, flag-waving jingoism grossly antagonises many non-Americans who are not necessarily lefties. No doubt that's part of the reason (along with half-baked calculations of domestic political advantage) why Labor frontbenchers were so scathing in their public comments about the US President. However, they need to be much more disciplined and restrained in their language because of the positions they hold (and that's putting it mildly).

2003-02-13T05:44:00.000-08:00

Lotts of support

Those who've been following the John Lott Jnr saga (as to whether he fabricated a 1997 survey on defensive gun use) will be interested in this item on The Volokh Conspiracy. I think it puts it pretty much beyond doubt that Lott did experience a major computer hard drive crash at that time. I still find it strange that no-one other than an extreme gun nut has come forward to provide any direct corroboration, and the Mary Rosh stuff is just plain weird, but confirmation of Lott's hard drive crash makes it significantly more likely that he's telling the truth. It's still badly flawed research, as are his concealed carry studies, but my best guess at this stage is that there was no fraud.

2003-02-12T18:41:00.000-08:00

They're both wrong

There appears to be a consensus (leaving aside predictable figures like Tim Blair) that American Ambassador Tom Schieffer acted in an ill-advised manner by giving an interview to The Bulletin's Maxine McKew in which he criticised the Federal ALP in fairly strong terms:

"Yeah, and you don't get the same feeling now. And we certainly didn't get this rank appeal to anti-Amercanism ... to anti-George Bush feeling. It's all gotten very personal in the last few days."

I think I agree that Schieffer spoke inappropriately, but I must say I hadn't realised, until I watched Red Kezza O'Brien interview Simon the Unlikeable on the ABC 7.30 Report last night, just how extreme and, yes, anti-American, Labor's rhetoric really has been. Here's Kerry trying (ever so gently) to get Crean to concede that his frontbenchers' language might have been just a tad more than ordinary robust political debate:

KERRY O'BRIEN: Lindsay Tanner, one of your senior frontbenchers, likened President Bush to Dr Strangelove -- a megalomaniac scientist in a film about nuclear madness.

Is that kind of terminology wise or necessary? ...

But perhaps it's another thing for your colleagues, for instance, in this country, like Martin Ferguson, one of your most senior colleagues, referring to George W. Bush as a "well-known warmonger", and Joel Fitzgibbon, another frontbencher, ridiculing the President for wanting to play cowboys and Indians.

SIMON CREAN: And one of the Liberals referred to President Bush as a clown. ...

KERRY O'BRIEN: Mark Latham -- "President Bush the most incompetent and dangerous president "in living memory". ...

Crean belatedly conceded that he had told his colleagues their language was "inappropriate", but it's much more than that. Crean doesn't appear to understand that there is a difference between ordinary backbench members slagging off at Australia's closest ally, and members of the Shadow Cabinet doing so. They are Australia's alternative government. They simply shouldn't have been talking in that way, and Crean needs to do a lot more to repair the damage. Crean says he's going to get Schieffer into his office when he (Schieffer) gets out of hospital, so he can protest at Schieffer's improper interference in Australian politics. Crean would be better advised to apologise for his Shadow Ministers' disgraceful and damaging behaviour. There are clearly ways to engage in vigorous political debate about whether Australia should be involved in military action in Iraq, without descending into ad hominem attacks on George Bush. That might be acceptable for bloggers or yobbos down at the local pub, but it's grossly inappropriate and irresponsible for members of Australia's alternative government. I never imagined I'd start thinking seriously that Kim Beazley should make a comeback, but the rest of them don't seem to have even an ounce of commonsense between them.

2003-02-12T14:53:00.000-08:00

Aussie! Aussie! Aussie! Oi! Oi! Oi!

Australia beats England 3 - 1 at soccer! Could this really be true? And they scored 2 of the 3 goals in the first half, when the Poms had their top team on the field. I can't help having 2 negative thoughts, though, along with the patriotic joy. Why couldn't it have been against Uruguay when it counted? And will this victory allow the hopelessly corrupted administration of Soccer Australia to avoid the wholesale reform the game so desperately needs?

2003-02-11T19:07:00.000-08:00

Another shot in the culture wars

Counter-revisionist historian Keith Windschuttle has an article in this morning's Australian, which appears to make some pretty telling points in the bitter argument about the extent of massacres of Aborigines in colonial Tasmania. One that may interest John Quiggin, who (like me) seems to agree that Windschuttle landed some very telling blows on Lyndall Ryan's academic reputation, is this:

"Ryan has had more than a year to answer my main charges, first made at the museum's frontier conflict conference, which she attended. Yet her published conference paper avoids them entirely. Her only substantive response (The Australian, January 4-5) has been to claim I left out one paragraph break in a passage quoted from her book. I plead guilty, but this trivial omission in no way distorted her meanings or the attribution of her footnotes to her text."

Both John and Rob Corr have expressly said we should give Ryan the benefit of the doubt until she has had time to go back and "check her sources" to see what evidence she did rely on in making her impugned massacre/genocide claims. Whatever other failings Windschuttle's work may contain (and there are many), Ryan has a serious case to answer. As Windschuttle observes:

"Ryan herself (The Australian, December 17) described these as "a few minor errors that can easily be rectified".

However, Ryan's book - and this refers to her 1996 second edition, which she claimed she had corrected - goes well beyond a few forgivable gaffes. There are at least 17 cases where she either invented atrocities and other incidents or provided false footnotes, plus another seven cases where the number of Aborigines she claims were killed or captured is either outright false or exaggerated beyond belief. Robson committed a similar degree of fabrication."

Even leaving aside the fact that Ryan has apparently known of these allegations for over a year, she has had well over 2 months since publication of Windschuttle's book to hotfoot it down to Tasmania and drag out her old notes and photocopied documents. If it was me whose reputation had been attacked in this way, I'd have been on the first plane down there. The fact that we still haven't heard a substantive defence from Ryan or any of her sympathisers rather suggests that she's simply been caught red-handed, and is hoping the controversy will somehow just die away. That's rather unlikely, I think.

2003-02-11T18:23:00.000-08:00

Asylum seeker rant

Tim Dunlop highlights a piece by another leftie blogger, which exposes a dastardly "secret" plan (covered in the Guardian) by the Blair government to deport most of its 100,000 or so annual flow of asylum seekers back to refugee camps in the region from which they came, to have their applications processed there. Appalling! Blair must have been listening to John Howard instead of reading Green Left Weekly. How could Tony have been so misled by a patently racist little man like Howard?

Well, for a start, it might have something to do with the fact that 100, 000 asylum seekers every year is an awful lot in a small densely populated nation like Britain, especially when they're overwhelmingly poorly educated, lacking in English language or employment skills, and have cultural and religious backgrounds that guarantee drastic urban social probems in British cities if effective action isn't taken. It might also be related to the fact that less than 20% of asylum seekers are found to be genuine, yet 70% of them abscond and disappear as soon as they're notified that their applications to stay in Britain have been unsuccessful. Crime, drugs, and unemployment-related violence are skyrocketing in British cities as a direct result. Still, I suppose the Poms could all move to upper middle class suburban Washington, where they would have the luxury of taking a much more compassionate view of the situation while dining with advisers to Condoleeza Rice (sorry, a low blow but this sort of sanctimonious crap really makes me angry).

Tim appears to label as "crap" a suggestion by British officials that their new plan will be presented to UN High Commissioner for Refugees Ruud Lubbers when he visits Britain next week. However, as I covered in detail back in September last year, this new British plan (and, for that matter, the Howard government's offshore 'Christmas Island solution' processing scheme) appears to coincide quite closely with Lubbers' own ideas for dealing with the massive challenges posed for western nations by the advent of large scale people smuggling. The UN itself estimates that people smugglers move more than 1 million asylum seekers annually, overwhelmingly to wealthy western countries, and make profits estimated at between 10 and 20 billion dollars each year. Not as profitable as drugs, but a lot safer (though not for the asylum seekers). That phenomenon was simply not foreseen when western nations negotiated the Refugee Convention back in 1951. Even so, the obligations they were prepared to accept were extremely limited. The reality is that no western government, whether headed by an "evil racist" like John Howard or a marshmallow faux-leftie like Tony Blair, can afford to fail to take effective action against a problem of the magnitude posed by people smuggling.

We need to keep in mind that promoting a system where asylum seekers are processed in refugee camps in countries adjacent to their homeland is nowhere near as unfair as Tim (and the blogger he links) makes it sound. The overwhelming majority of refugees have always been dealt with in that way, and that is what the Refugee Convention envisaged. It's only the (relatively) wealthy few who can afford to subvert that system and pay people smugglers to get them to a wealthy country with a cushy social security system and good job prospects. Moreover, research suggests that the vast majority of refugees need only temporary asylum, which can best be provided in a location where they can conveniently return home when it becomes safe to do so. Allowing those who can afford to pay people smugglers to absorb permanent places in western countries necessarily means that there are less places available for those who genuinely will never be able to return safely to their homeland. In that sense, Ruddock's demonisation of onshore asylum seekers as "queue jumpers" is perfectly true.

Lastly, most of the third world countries who host large refugee camps aren't actually complaining about it. Why? Because they provide the land for the camps, but not the money. Camps are funded by the world community (i.e. overwhelmingly the first world) and administered by UNHCR and overseas aid agencies. Having camps within one's borders is in many ways an economic benefit: supplies are sourced locally, and local jobs are generated through servicing the refugee camps. In some African countries, the money flowing in through hosting refugee camps represents a substantial proportion of national income.

2003-02-11T16:38:00.000-08:00

American legal bloggage

Eugene Volokh has an interesting piece about whether increasing State tobacco taxes has increased cigarette smuggling in the US, or whether decreased apparent sales are explained by buyers avoiding state taxes by purchasing ciggies via the Internet. One especially for the economists.

Jack Balkin muses about the increasing use of electronic voting machines in US elections. Many have seen them as a solution to the problems of "dimpled chads", "hanging chads" and the like which made the Florida US presidential election result in 2000 so problematic (because it was so close). Those issues arose because Florida used mechanical voting machines which punched a hole against the candidate for whom a person wanted to vote. However, Balkin says there are at least equally serious problems with their new electronic counterparts:

"What is being overlooked is that not all electronic voting systems are created equal. Some of the ones on the market, perhaps even most, have serious flaws that enable unscrupulous people to alter vote counts and commit massive electoral fraud. Some also are designed to leave no electronic backup or paper trail that would enable state officials to discover vote tampering or conduct recounts.

This, my friends, is a disaster waiting to happen."

We don't have this problem in Australia, because we don't use either mechanical or electronic voting machines. We remain totally unmechanised, and the American example tends to suggest that it's the right choice (even though it makes election day a very labour-intensive exercise). We also don't have the bizarre American system where even federal elections are governed by a different set of election laws in each state. Our Founding Fathers wisely gave the Commonwealth Parliament the power to enact uniform national electoral laws, which it did very soon after federation. Consequently, we have the Australian Electoral Commission, which ensures that federal elections are free and fair, conducted under uniform rules, and not besmirched by being potentially under the administrative control of allies (or relatives) of one of the candidates. Australia's system is manifestly superior in those respects.

One quibble with Balkin's piece. He implicitly perpetuates the Democrat myth that Dubbya stole the presidency when he says (for example) "As many of you know, I am a great critic of the Supreme Court’s decision in Bush v. Gore, which handed the presidency to George W. Bush through a particularly unpersuasive argument about when to grant a stay and about what constitutes an appropriate remedy for violates of the Equal Protection Clause." As blog readers (especially of Tim Blair) will recall, later research and notional recounts in Florida showed that Bush would in fact have won even if the US Supreme Court had allowed the actual recounts to proceed.

2003-02-11T15:45:00.000-08:00

Bravura bloggage

Tim Dunlop blogs on testimony given by Douglas J. Feith, US Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, before the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations. Apparently Firth indicated very clearly that the Bush administration is committed to (1) genuine nation-building in Iraq after any military action; (2) honouring the sovereignty of Iraq once a new government is established; and (3) accepting that sovereignty includes control of oil supplies.

Of course, that doesn't mean the US won't do everything it reasonably can to ensure that future Iraqi governments are favourably disposed towards American interests. Achieving that might require more than a bit of political skill, if the professed commitment to fostering free and fair elections is genuine, and if a bloody invasion ends up generating deep community resentment. However, I suspect the US is committed to fostering free and fair elections, and that this danger has not escaped US planners (it might have escaped George Bush, but that's another question). It tends to show that the US will take as much care as it can to minimise civilian casualties, and that leftie characterisations of a Dresden firestorm, or a Hiroshima-style nuking of cities are just silly. America is gambling that Iraqis will rapidly discover that life after Saddam's brutal tyranny is such a dramatic improvement that the predominant attitude will be pro- rather than anti-American. It might depend in part on just how much "collateral damage" ends up occurring. If worse comes to worst, I guess the US can always fall back on the old Cold War tactic of having the CIA rig elections or engineer a coup (they may be practising their skills in Venezuela as we speak). Hopefully, however, it won't prove necessary.

Professor Bunyip blogs on German hypocrisy. I don't give a bugger who he is; this guy can write. However, Bunyip's proxy outrage (on behalf of Aussie WWII Diggers) at some hapless (if hypocritical) German's invoking of "the American terror bombings of German cities during WWII and the mass slaughter of women, children and the elderly for years on end" is at best superficial. Many members of aircrews involved in saturation bombing of German cities were deeply troubled by the moral implications of the actions they were required to perform. They may have accepted that the Germans had done it first, and that the demands of total war required it, but most didn't feel at all comfortable about it. Of course, you'll always find silly old buffers like Bruce Ruxton prepared to fulminate against the "Krauts" and the "Nips" at a moment's notice, but Ruxton isn't typical. In my observation, the most one-dimensional warmongers are usually those who have never been to war. Come to think of it, I've never been to war (thank Gough). Hmmm!

2003-02-11T06:06:00.000-08:00

Last nail in activism's coffin?

American po-mo constitutional law academic Jack Balkin blogged an essay a couple of days ago whose subject matter is peculiarly timely as a springboard for this Australian public lawyer's bloggage. Today was the day the intellectually formidable big "C" conservative Justice Dyson Heydon took his place on the bench of the High Court of Australia. Yesterday, Justice Mary Gaudron officially retired. Justice Michael Kirby is now the only judicial "activist" of a liberal persuasion remaining on the Court.

I want to muse on how the High Court came to acquire a liberal activist majority for a short time in the late 1980s and early 1990s, and how it was progressively dismantled, half-heartedly by the Hawke and Keating Labor governments, but with ruthless determination by the current Howard conservative regime. Balkin's essay provides a useful starting point, because he identifies two principal ways in which a political or social movement can achieve its goals throught the judicial process ... Read more
(Another fairly long blog)

2003-02-10T18:54:00.000-08:00

Quiggers on the money

John Quiggin has just posted a piece linking an op-ed article he wrote late last year, where he advocated that Federal Labor should embrace the notion of a special purpose levy (like the Medicare Levy) to fund a more ambitious social expenditure program. I couldn't agree more. Labor has been a policy-free zone for years now, political rabbits caught in the spotlight, paralysed by fear of being labelled as "tax and spend" socialists.

Yet John Howard won an election while promising a new tax, and one whose benefits were complex and difficult to explain. An Education Levy fixed at (say) 2% of taxable income (except for the lowest tax bracket) would raise enormous amounts of revenue, allowing the ALP to promise an ambitious program to revitalise public education. As John points out, the Coalition would be unable to match those promises, and would have some difficulty arguing convincingly against the policy given its own recent reliance on somewhat similar levies. I'm certainly not advocating a huge increase in Australian tax rates. This proposal would only take our total tax take from 31% of GDP to around 33% (or a bit less, really), much less than the 40 - 50% on average that prevails in Europe. I think Australia is constrained in how much we can afford to raise taxes by: we need to remain globally competitive, and we don't have the Europeans' advantages of economies of scale or proximity to huge markets (which allow them to get away with relatively high tax rates without completely stifling economic activity).

As I've pointed out previously, I would even support a Liberal-style policy of allowing public universities to charge students "top-up" fees, as long as a generous government scholarship scheme was available to ensure that students of ability from poorer families were not disadvantaged. In fact, a scheme of that sort might well be an excellent way to get maximum "bang for the buck", and encourage Australians to invest in their own educations while not offending equal opportunity principles.

2003-02-10T17:55:00.000-08:00

Double jeopardy again

I see that NSW Premier Bob Carr has been suggesting abrogation of the double jeopardy principle in criminal law, as part of the usual pre-election "Laura Norder" auction in New South Wales. A couple of bloggers have posted items about it (Bargarz and Eddie Weston on Australian Libertarians blog). Both oppose outright any modification of double jeopardy. I disagree, and in fact I blogged about it a couple of months ago. See my essay One and a Half Jeopardy at the old Parish Pump blog. The issues are pretty complicated, but I think you can make a persuasive case that some watering down of the absolute double jeopardy prohibition is in the community interest and does not offend human rights or civil liberties values.

2003-02-10T16:32:00.000-08:00

Gummo's gentle sarcasm

Gummo Trotsky blogs a great piece this morning that takes the piss out of John Ray's increasingly silly "anti-leftism" rants on his blog "Dissecting Leftism". For those who never bother to read his blog (and I'm not suggesting you should change your habits), the monotonic theme is that anyone who holds opinions even marginally to the left of his own extreme right viewpoint is by definition suffering from some dire sociopathological disease of John's own invention. As Gummo observes, one of Mr. Ray's more entertaining recent "theories" was that young males gravitate to the political left because young female leftists are sluts, so that joining the Left makes it much easier to bury the pork sword! If you think I might be unfairly summarising John Ray's arguments (such as they are) feel free to go and read his blog for yourself.

Come to think of it, I reckon an extrapolation of John Ray's hypothesis provides a much more satisfying way to explain political orientation than Gummo's competing theory (that conservatism flows from being a spoiled brat as a kid). If we follow John Ray's theory to its ultimate conclusion, leftism is a symptom of thinking with your dick (as we males are wont to do in our youth, and sometimes rather later as well). Late onset conservatism is a symptom of dwindling testosterone reserves and a wilting willie. We centrists, on the other hand, can still manage to get it up from time to time, but we've come to realise that there are other things in life as well (including mental masturbation via blogging).

Getting serious (but only marginally) for a moment, I recall when I was in Year 12 at a state high school, the fairly nearby Sydney Church of England Girls' Grammar School (SCEGGS Redlands) was notorious for its enormous pregnancy rate. No less than 4 school captains in a row had been forced to resign mid year after getting in the family way. I don't imagine too many of them were bleeding heart lefties. Perhaps John Ray is just saying that he couldn't get a root when he was a young bloke. However, there are several possible explanations for that phenomenon.

2003-02-10T15:48:00.000-08:00

You won't get me, I'm part of the union

That arch neo-liberal commentator Alan Wood has an essay in today's Australian, in which he exhorts Federal Workplace Relations Minister Tony Abbott to emulate his predecessor Peter Reith and take to the building industry unions with a big stick. It makes a fascinating counterpoint to WA blogger Rob Corr's ongoing love affair with the unions, provoked by his current work experience stint with several of them.

Rob's uncritical leftie admiration for his building industry union comrades ignores (or glosses over) the fact that a lot of them are thugs, crims and standover merchants. However, by the same token Alan Wood's advocacy of doing a "Reith" ignores the fact that a lot of major building companies are no better. It's a "chicken and egg" question: did the unions adopt thuggish tactics to combat thuggish bosses or vice versa? In any event, de-unionising the industry and further disempowering the Australian Industrial Relations Commission is precisely the wrong answer, unless you think rorting the system to make sure one group of thugs wins is a great solution for Australia. Of course, that's not what ultimately happened on the waterfront. Stevedoring boss Chris Corrigan was forced to compromise and accept the continuance of a unionised waterfront, and the MUA was forced to abandon most of its rorted work practices. The positive effect on waterfront productivity was huge. Moreover, that positive result for Australia occurred in part because an activist leftie Federal Court judge (Tony North) prevented Corrigan and Reith from crushing the union, and an evenly (ideologically) balanced High Court upheld enough of the decision to force both Corrigan and the MUA to climb down from the barricades and sort out a rational solution.

2003-02-10T05:08:00.000-08:00

Hegemonic hubris

An article by Daniel Pipes in Tuesday's Sydney Morning Herald illustrates precisely the "power corrupts" syndrome that I referred to yesterday in relation to a United States with enhanced (and virtually unchallengeable) power in the wake of a successful Iraqi military campaign. Pipes advocates that America should extend its campaign of liberation, and impose liberal democracy on other Arab nations at the point of a gun!

Of course, Pipes' suggestion hasn't been taken up by the Bush administration, but you can bet that some of its more hawkish members have had thoughts along the same lines. Pipes cites US success in fostering democracy in Germany and Japan after World War 2. However, the crucial distinction he misses is that both those countries had engaged in an aggressive war of conquest, and imposed systemic reform was more than justified in the circumstances. Arab nations other than Iraq have been guilty of no such thing (well, if you leave aside the 1967 and 1973 wars against Israel, anyway). Imposing any form of government on them by force solely because they happen to have illiberal governing regimes, and in the absence of any justificatory act of prior aggression, is utterly unacceptable on any reasonable view.

Yesterday I referred to the "possibility that the US might choose to take action if it disapproves sufficiently strongly of them and its strategic interests are sufficiently engaged." Ron Mead picked me up on this point and argued: "Ken, I really think the US's position is a long way from mere disapproval. The Bush administration sees it as a logical flow-on from the Gulf War, and Iraq's non-compliance with the ceas-fire terms of that conflict. " That is, Ron argues that Iraq is a special case, and that we need not fear US bullying of other nations for less clearly adequate reasons. Pipes' article indicates that he at least already believes that the future American tendency much of the world fears would be an entirely proper way for the US to behave. That's why I think we need to start some lateral thinking about other ways to engineer workable constraints on hegemonic power, while still allowing enough scope for decisive action against tyranny in clear-cut cases. Of course, the question of who should judge whether a given situation is sufficiently exceptional to justify military intervention is a dilemma to which I don't have an immediate solution. A UNSC without any nation enjoying a veto might help, but the chances of any of the current permanent members (especially the US) agreeing to surrender their veto power is very remote.

Update - Rob Corr has taken up on his own blog my challenge to do some lateral thinking about constraining US hegemony in the event of successful US-led military action in Iraq. His essay is worth reading.

2003-02-10T04:33:00.000-08:00

Credit where it isn't due?

Maybe I spoke too soon in comparing The Age newspaper favourably with its Fairfax stablemate The Sydney Morning Herald. Professor Bunyip exposes a quite disgraceful piece of confected anti-American propaganda by Kenneth Davidson in today's Age newspaper. This is not just a matter of a strongly expressed opinion on which reasonable minds might differ. It's an outright factual misrepresentation, and you would expect any newspaper with pretensions to be a journal of record to have reasonably rigorous fact-checking mechanisms to pick up distortions of this sort. Of course, they may sometimes miss equally blameworthy distortions by right-ish columnists from time to time, as well. Maybe one or two left-leaning bloggers and comment box lurkers will take up the challenge of identifying some examples to disprove Bunyip's perennial leftie bias accusation against The Age. I won't even suggest anyone tries to prove the SMH isn't biased; that would be a hopeless task.

2003-02-09T05:56:00.000-08:00

Hyperpower

Hugh White has been having a buck each way on Iraq for a long time. His essay in Monday's SMH doesn't break the mould, but it broaches the real issue that explains French and German (and for that matter Russian and Chinese) resistance to the military option (leaving aside domestic factors):

"Politically, success in Iraq would swing the balance in America's permanent strategic debate away from isolationism and towards a bold vision of American engagement and leadership. Americans would be more and more willing to use their armed forces in future, and less and less tolerant of regimes of which they disapprove.

As a result, the rest of the world would see America in a new light. A country with the strength and will to invade major countries and remove governments that it dislikes would achieve a new, unprecedented level of influence, far exceeding what we have seen in the past decade."

Interestingly, White seems rather attracted by the prospect of even greater enhancement of American hegemony. He almost sounds like a smooth-talking version of our Jack Strocchi (who I note has been remarkably silent for the last week or so). Part of me reacts a bit like White and Strocchi - I find most US values very congenial. I'd rather not be an appendage of anyone's empire, but as citizens of a very small liberal democracy maybe we don't have much choice. On the other hand, New Zealand seems to have done okay without completely surrendering its independence.

I wonder how many opponents of the Iraq military option would actually support it if it weren't for the fact that they perceive (like Hugh White) that the major consequence (besides freeing Iraqis from an appalling tyrant) will be the semi-permanent entrenchment of the US as world hyperpower. That's why I posted the extensive extract about the US as "hegemon" yesterday. I was a bit surprised that it failed to generate any debate. Maybe we all think the point is so blindingly self-evident as not to be worth discussing. However, if we accept that a US-led invasion is now virtually certain, and that American success will indeed entrench US hegemony (as it clearly will), isn't it time we started really thinking about what that means? Attempting to force the US to swear allegiance to the UN as a way of constraining its power has met with predictable failure. What available alternatives are there? Apply for a Green Card? Join S11? The Strocchi option (see if they want us as the 51st state - or is it the 52nd)? Get used to endless repeats of Malcolm in the Middle?

2003-02-08T19:23:00.000-08:00

All his own work

Tim Blair writes to say that his move to The Bulletin was entirely of his own doing, that he will still write occasional pieces for The Australian, and that any further speculation on this issue will be countered with a nude protest in Byron Bay. As this threat is every bit as nightmarish as the thought of Margo Kingston behaving similarly (although not quite as appalling as the person with masturbatory fantasies about Saddam Hussein), I decided to post this message in great haste.

2003-02-08T17:54:00.000-08:00

Dear John (err, Joe)

Gianna, who is a welcome recent addition to the ranks of politically-oriented Australian bloggers, posts the following musing this morning:

"And Joe gets back next week. I haven't talked about him lately because I had sort of decided to break up with him when he returns, due to a prolonged hormonal panic about the whole concept of being in a full-on relationship (and, unfortunately, because there's a distinct possibility that I may have feelings for someone else in my life.) However I've decided to wait until we're face to face before making any final decision. I feel awful but what can you do."

I guess Gianna is assuming that Joe doesn't read blogs. If he does, their meeting next week could be very eventful. Then again, maybe she's actually decided (without quite admitting it to herself) that her feelings for "someone else" are rather more than a "distinct possibility". I hope she lets Joe down gently. I always thought I'd make a great "Dear Abby". BTW Gianna, don't just give Joe the "I'm not ready for a committed relationship" line. Even the most love-besotted fool can usually work out that what you really mean is "I want a committed relationship, but with someone else". Do readers detect a couple of very old but unhealed wounds here?

2003-02-08T06:46:00.000-08:00

Of babies and bathwater

This story from American legal academic Jack Balkin will sound disturbingly familiar to Australians who have been following the debate about anti-terrorism legislation in Australia. It's worth reproducing in full:

"The Center for Public Integrity reports that Attorney General John Ashcroft is considering new legislation to give the federal government even greater powers over domestic intelligence gathering, while limiting judicial review of government action and restricting public access to information about what the government is doing. The Justice Department has not yet announced the new proposals, but apparently early drafts have already been completed. One of the most disturbing features of the proposed Domestic Security Enhancement Act of 2003 is that American citizens could lose their citizenship and be expatriated if they provide "material support" to any group the Attorney General has designated as a "terrorist organization." The idea, apparently, is that one who provides "material support" to such an organization-- even if such support is otherwise lawful-- is presumed to have intended to relinquish citizenship (because his intent can be inferred from his conduct) and therefore may be expatriated.

This gives new meaning to the expression, "America-- love it or leave it.""

Without wanting to sound anti-American, I must say I find it really hard to grasp how you can defend freedom by taking it away, just as I don't understand how you teach a community that murder is wrong by killing people. The proposed US measures sound even more draconian than Australia's currently Senate-stymied ASIO Bill. Interesting that constitutionally entrenched rights to due process, equality before the law and so on apparently do little to restrain governmental excesses when the temper of the times dictates otherwise. It's one reason why Australia's Founding Fathers took a negative view of a constitutional bill of rights, despite strong advocacy by our Constitution's principal drafter Andrew Inglis Clark. During the 1890s (when Australia's Constitution was being drafted) the US Bill of Rights was being interpeted by the Supreme Court in a manner that made most of its protections illusory.

2003-02-08T06:14:00.000-08:00

Hegemon!

Usually when you find the word "hegemon" early in any essay, it merely signals that the author is a doctrinaire leftie about to embark on a standard anti-American diatribe. This article by William Wallace on the Social Science Research Council site, certainly contains some such elements, but it's mostly a balanced and thoughtful examination of the concept of hegemony in a contemporary context. It seems to have been written prior to the current build-up to invasion of Iraq, but after the Afghanistan operation. Nevertheless, some of the analysis is very relevant to the current situation. Here's an extract:

"The disappearance of the Soviet Union deprived the USA of its most-easily accepted rationale for global engagement, which also legitimized American leadership of the Atlantic Alliance and the broader 'free world'. Between the Gulf War of 1991 and the Afghan intervention of 2001, the visible hesitancy with which American policy-makers approached the deployment of US power, in Somalia, Bosnia, Kosovo, and the preoccupation with 'exit strategies' from the point of entry on, weakened the respect of America's allies for its military and political leadership. A further paradox of American supremacy is that what is perceived within the USA as 'resentment' at its liberty and prosperity, as 'anti-Americanism' from hostile outsiders, has partly flowed from the spillover of domestic controversies onto the international stage. The 'global' NGOs which demonstrated against US domination of the global economy at the WTO meeting in Seattle were largely American-led. The narratives of anti-globalization and the corruption of free market capitalism have drawn upon American critiques as well as on diatribes from other countries, and have been disseminated across the world through English-language media.

A yet further paradox is that the collapse of state socialism, with the apparent 'victory' of market democracy as the model for political and economic order, has led not to the 'end of history' that Francis Fukuyama proclaimed but to a greater emphasis on the differences among approaches to market democracy. The Malaysian Prime Minister and others laid great stress in the immediate post-cold war period on the claimed superiorities of the 'Asian model'. The most delicate and difficult dialogue on the values which underpin market democracy has, however, been across the Atlantic: between an American model which emphasises free markets and a limited role for government in social welfare and European 'social market' models which - in differing ways - lay greater stress on the regulation of employment and on the provision of welfare. American charges that European social democracy has led to 'Eurosclerosis' have been met by European charges that American-style capitalism carries unacceptable social costs. The symbolic importance of capital punishment as an issue in transatlantic relations is that it encapsulates the differences of approach: the American belief in a more vigorous culture of success and failure, of reward and punishment, against the European concern with social harmony and community as necessary components of a liberal economy. Here again, the division of opinion is partly a reflection of differences within the United States, as well as between the USA and other democratic states. The Republican attack on 'big government', which has in many ways defined the issues of American politics during the 1990s, attracted limited support within Europe. Most European right-wing parties remained closer to the traditions of Christian Democracy and state-centred conservatism; from the mid-1990s onwards, furthermore, the majority of European governments were centre-left rather than centre-right. The international spillover of the Republican attack on Democratic 'big government and Democratic 'internationalism' was that American 'values' have come to be rhetorically presented - by leading Senators and Congressmen, as well as by the Washington intellectuals who dominate the op-ed pages - as distinctive from those of America's partners and allies, rather than as universal. ...

The dilemmas European governments face in the aftermath of Sept.11th 2001 in responding to the expectations of their American hegemon are acute. They have to recognize that Europe as a region now matters far less to the United States than over the previous half-century, as American attention has turned to the Western hemisphere and Asia. They have to weigh up the arguments for greater investment in military power, partly in response to US expectations and partly as a means of counterbalancing US power. They have to pursue opportunities to influence the direction of US policy, in circumstances in which American tolerance for multilateral channels of consultation have declined. They have to respond to American requests for support and assistance, without having had the opportunity to share in formulating the policy which has set the context within which those requests are made.

There are, however, dilemmas for the USA as well. Hegemony rests on consent as well as on coercion, as has been argued above; and consent has to be generated and maintained, through the provision of persuasive leadership and through reference to a universal set of values. Liberal hegemony requires dominant powers to present the pursuit of their enlightened self-interest as being in the common interests of civilization as a whole. Explicit references to direct and immediate national interests, a rationale for foreign policy which stresses the exceptional and exclusive interests of the United States compared to those of its partners, resistance to multilateral regimes which diffuse American leadership within frameworks of shared rules and obligations, all weaken the 'soft power' of American prestige and reputation on which the informal empire of this hegemonic world order depends.

The founding fathers recognized that 'a decent respect for the opinions of men' outside the North American continent required them to frame the rationale for independence in terms which foreign as well as domestic audiences might accept."

2003-02-07T20:10:00.000-08:00

Fairfax schism?

The Fairfax group is a very strange corporate organism, as Professor Bunyip never ceases to point out. Indeed Bunyip has another go this morning, highlighting a lurch to the Right by Age staff journalist Pamela Bone on Iraq.

However, what fascinated me about this weekend's offerings from the Fairfax stable was the complete contrast between The Age and Sydney Morning Herald. The Age had a roughly balanced spread of op-ed articles on Iraq, with Shaun Carney and Hugh Mackay taking a predictably leftie anti-war stance, but Pamela Bone and Jeff Jacoby taking a strongly pro-military intervention position. Tony Parkinson focused on the idiocy of Labor's Mark Latham's remarks about George Bush, and the generally difficult position Simon Crean finds himself in (again).

The SMH, by contrast, devotes every single op-ed article to the Iraq issue, and every one of them adopts a leftie anti-war position: Hugh Mackay (whose column is duplicated in The Age and SMH - God knows why; once is more than enough); Alan Ramsay (who reckons Crean is gutless and not anti-war enough); Mike Carlton ("Noble America lost in space and propaganda"); Adele Horin ("Pity the poor recipients of regime change"); and Richard Glover (who takes the piss out of the Federal Government's anti-terrorist kit - albeit deservedly).

I can't help harking back to the bad old days of the Murdoch and Packer presses, before Hawkie sucked up semi-successfully to those crusty media barons. The mainstream newspapers would make a vague semblance of maintaining editorial and op-ed balance most of the time, but as soon as it got close to an election the coverage would switch to relentless anti-Labor propaganda. The Herald seems to exemplify the same tendency, albeit in an opposite ideological direction. I suspect, too, that it's unlike the Packer and Murdoch situations because the ideological slant is dictated by the journalists themselves rather than management (who seem to think that letting the hired help do whatever they like is a great way to run a newspaper). The Fairfax share price (which Bunyip also regularly links) suggests otherwise. The SMH staff orientation also seems relatively unrelated to electoral cycles. They only prostitute their journalistic ethics and flick the switch to "brainwash" when a current issue they deem of sufficient ideological importance arises. In this case it's the sacred leftie "give peace a chance" (or rather, several hundred chances) principle, and the even more fundamental "the Great Satan is always wrong and evilly motivated" principle.

2003-02-07T19:23:00.000-08:00

Dumping on Dawkins

Gummo Trotsky blogs an interesting musing about a Richard Dawkins article advocating GM foods and labelling opponents as Luddites. Dawkins, of course, is the doyen of science (and especially evolutionary theory) popularisers, now that Stephen Jay Gould has carked it. Gummo is dubious about Dawkins' analogy with computer programming, but one of his comment box contributors is downright dismissive. Scott Martens posts a link to an even more interesting article by Barry Commoner from Harper's Magazine called Unravelling the DNA Myth - The Spurious Foundation of Genetic Engineering.

2003-02-07T04:35:00.000-08:00

Peace Train 'a Comin'

What with Tim Blair's seemingly obsessive uncovering of the "Disrobe to Disarm" campaign, I thought the least I could do was to draw attention to a rather more private form of peace protest. I'll leave all the obvious lines to your imagination. Make sure you read the poetry page; it's truly awful. Expect warbloggers to retaliate with "Cunnilingus for Combat" any moment.

2003-02-07T03:42:00.000-08:00

A REAL centrist on Iraq

Several bloggers and comment box lurkers have recently cruelly suggested that I'm a "faux-centrist". On the question of military intervention in Iraq, they're quite correct. I've certainly lurched decisively to the right on that issue, because I've become convinced there's just no viable alternative. However, that isn't to suggest that it's impossible to maintain a "fence-sitting" position on Iraq. Timothy Garton Ash has written a classic centrist essay in today's Guardian. I disagree with numerous of his points, but he certainly presents most of the arguments for and against in a cogent way.

2003-02-06T20:06:00.000-08:00

Saddam DID gas the Kurds

This article in MSN Slate lays out the definitive (and overwhelming) evidence that Saddam did bomb his own Kurdish population at Halabja (and elsewhere too, it seems). So much for the impartiality of Kerry O'Brien's great "independent" Iraq expert Dr Pelletiere. As Ron Mead points out in a comment box, this episode brings back unsavoury memories of the ABC's equally egregious use of Dr Robert Springborg as its resident "expert" during the 1991 Gulf War. What makes me particularly angry is that this sort of blatant bias by 7.30 Report simply plays into the hands of all the Tories who just can't wait to abolish the ABC, flog it off to private enterprise, or cut its funding so drastically that it will only be able to afford to make children's programmes and nature docos. We actually need an independent public broadcaster, given the extraordinary concentration of private ownership of Australian media. However, the emphasis is on "independent", a word whose definition in my Macquarie Dictionary doesn't include "willing captive of the socialist left of the ALP" as an alternative meaning.

2003-02-06T17:05:00.000-08:00

Abuse an Armadillo

I'm going to be working for the rest of the day on trying to finalise the web design for NTU Law School's new website. The reason we're putting all this time and effort into creating a large, well-designed site (and using an academic lawyer to do it) is that the Law School is offering the law degree for the first time this semester to students in Alice Springs and elsewhere in the NT. Lecturers (including yours truly) will be travelling down to Alice Springs regularly to deliver blocks of lectures. However, students will also need various forms of electronic and other support to ensure that learning outcomes aren't prejudiced. Probably early next week, I'll post the URL of the draft Law School website here at Troppo Armadillo and invite constructive criticism of my web design efforts (both from an esthetic and functionality viewpoint).

In the meantime, one of the other technologies I want to test is "voice chat" Internet chat systems. The one I'm particularly looking at is called "Paltalk". If you have a multi-media-enabled PC and a microphone (preferably a headset mike), you can use this system to talk with one or more people anywhere in the world (and for free, or as much as it costs you in ISP charges anyway). I want to test the system's suitability for conducting online tutorials and other remote interactions with distance learning students like those in Alice Springs. Paltalk has lots of publicly accessible "voice chatrooms" (although they can also be "locked" to allow only particular entrants). I've opened my own chatroom under the category "Social Issues" (there are lots of different categories including porno ones etc if that's your bag). My "room" is called (predictably enough) Troppo Armadillo. I'll leave it open for the rest of the day, in case anyone wants to join it and chat (or abuse me for my outrageously right wing views on military action in Iraq). All you need to do (if you have a mike) is go to the Paltalk website and download and install their voicechat software (it's free). Then navigate to the Troppo Armadillo room and talk away. Note that I may be absent from time to time due to other commitments (although I won't check out of the room because there has to be at least one person there for it to stay open). So if I don't answer when you arrive, try coming back later.

Update - I've closed the chatroom for the afternoon (other commitments). The Yobbo was very helpful with assisting me to test out Paltalk's capabilities. At the moment it looks like it does pretty well everything I want. However, both "Yobbo" and I have 512k ADSL connections, which is a lot faster than most people. It's a fair bet that most uni students will only have access via a 56k dialup modem. So what I'm looking for now is someone with a microphone and soundcard etc, and a 56k dialup connection, so I can test how useable the Paltalk service is in that situation. If you're prepared to give up 15 or 20 minutes of your time one day or evening chatting idly to me on the Internet, please email me and we can work out a mutually suitable time.

2003-02-06T16:05:00.000-08:00

Statement of the Vilnius Group Countries

This article from the Bulgarian news agency Novinite.com (link via Patrick Hynes) is worth setting out in full:

"Statement by the Foreign Ministers of Albania, Bulgaria, Croatia, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Macedonia, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia in response to the presentation by the United States Secretary of State to the United Nations Security Council concerning Iraq:

Earlier today, the United States presented compelling evidence to the United Nations Security Council detailing Iraq's weapons of mass destruction programs, its active efforts to deceive UN inspectors, and its links to international terrorism.

Our countries understand the dangers posed by tyranny and the special responsibility of democracies to defend our shared values. The trans-Atlantic community, of which we are a part, must stand together to face the threat posed by the nexus of terrorism and dictators with weapons of mass destruction.

We have actively supported the international efforts to achieve a peaceful disarmament of Iraq. However, it has now become clear that Iraq is in material breach of U.N. Security Council Resolutions, including U.N. Resolution 1441, passed unanimously on November 8, 2002. As our governments said on the occasion of the NATO Summit in Prague: "We support the goal of the international community for full disarmament of Iraq as stipulated in the UN Security Council Resolution 1441. In the event of non-compliance with the terms of this resolution, we are prepared to contribute to an international coalition to enforce its provisions and the disarmament of Iraq."

The clear and present danger posed by the Saddam Hussein's regime requires a united response from the community of democracies. We call upon the U.N. Security Council to take the necessary and appropriate action in response to Iraq's continuing threat to international peace and security."

Hear! Hear! France and Germany are looking awfully isolated in Europe.

2003-02-06T15:22:00.000-08:00

Volokh sums up

American legal academic Eugene Volokh summarises an excellent article by William Saletan in MSN Slate about UN Security Council members' reactions to US Secretary of State Colin Powell's address. Volokh then provides his own summing up of the apparent position of the UNSC:

"(1) Iraq has or is developing weapons of mass destruction, in violation of Security Council resolutions.

(2) Iraq is grossly failing to cooperate with the inspectors, in violation of Security Council resolutions.

(3) The inspectors are not stopping Iraq from developing weapons of mass destruction, because of Iraq's failure to cooperate.

(4) But the solution to all this is to have more inspections, for the indefinite future -- inspections that will not be cooperated with, and under which Iraq will continue to try to develop weapons of mass destruction."

In the circumstances, British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw's explicit comparison of the UN with the pre-WW2 League of Nations is peculiarly apt:

"The United Nations' prewar predecessor, the League of Nations, had the same fine ideals as the United Nations, but the League failed because it could not create actions from its words; it could not back diplomacy with a credible threat, and where necessary, the use of force. So small evils went unchecked. Tyrants became emboldened. Then greater evils were unleashed. At each stage, good men said, "Wait, the evil is not big enough to challenge." Then, before their eyes, the evil became too big to challenge. We slipped slowly down a slope, never noticing how far we'd gone until it was too late. Mr. President, we owe it to our history, as well as to our future, not to make the same mistake again."

Of course, the implicit (but hardly subtle) threat in Straw's speech is that the US, Britain and others will simply treat the UN as moribund and irrelevant if it continues to fail to take effective action against Iraq. Lefties will seek to portray this as outrageous, high-handed flouting of an imagined impartial system of international law. Trouble is, that conception is a myth. The UN was a post-WW2 attempt to create a more successful international institution than the old League of Nations, but it was built equally upon expedient political compromises. The veto power ceded to the 5 permanent UNSC members is the most obvious example. The fact is, while the UN has a passable (though hardly outstanding) record on humanitarian works, its track record on anything relating to international security has been abysmal. Take, for example Bosnia, Rwanda, Cambodia, and now Iraq. Or, for that matter, East Timor, until Australia belatedly (but to John Howard's eternal credit) put together an emergency international coalition and got the UN to rubber-stamp it. The UN is on its last chance just as much as Saddam Hussein.

The UN experiment was essentially a Hobbesian social contract. Thomas Hobbes postulated that people, most notably (in those days) feudal nobles, cede part of their autonomy to a sovereign monarch, even though the more powerful are quite capable of defending themselves. However, it's a two-way bargain. The nobles' allegiance to the monarch is dependent on the monarch delivering on his promise to maintain peace, security, stability and rule of law, so that all may better prosper through peaceful commerce and intercourse. If the monarch fails to honour his side of the bargain, the nobles rebel. The UN has welched on the deal, and the US and others capable of defending themselves will inevitably in those circumstances re-assert their autonomy. For lefties to invoke an effectively non-existent international moral order is simply missing the point. However, they have a point themselves. The obverse side of Hobbes' hypothesis was that the alternative to a system of rule of law, where autonomy was ceded to some central authority, was the law of the jungle where life would be "nasty, brutish and short". That is especially so for countries like Australia who aren't large and powerful enough to defend themselves without kowtowing to great and powerful friends/ warlords.

In that sense, maybe John Howard has simply cut to the chase, implicitly accepted the reality that the UN is moribund, and covered Australia's bases by pre-emptively sucking up to the biggest warlord of them all. His judgment may well prove correct, but I'd like to think the UN still has one last chance to prove that it isn't the League of Nations re-incarnated. Although an all-powerful United States, without the check of the UN, would (at least initially) be a mostly benevolent despot for a country sharing its central liberal democratic capitalist values (like Australia), in the long term Lord Acton's dictum will hold true: "Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely".

John Locke also knew a thing or two about securing freedom: the essence of liberal democratic constitutionalism is checks and balances on excessive power, and that applies as much in constructing and maintaining an international order as it does to the constitutional structure of a nation state. However, those checks and balances are not ends in themselves, they're just means to the end of maintenance of peace and freedom. Where the principal institution charged with acting as that check and balance fails to fulfil its role, individual states able to do so and who feel vulnerable (as the US manifestly does in the wake of September 11) will resort to self-help.

Postscript - this essay is partly a response to a couple of Gummo Trotsky's blogs: starting here (another multiple part episode of Gummo's "just war" series) and here. Although I disagree with a fair slice of it (for reasons set out above), Gummo makes some good points. In particular, I agree that John Howard should (a) have been honest about commitments he's made to the US (although the downside of that is that we would have been deprived of watching the very funny spectacle of Alexander Downer ducking and weaving like a punch-drunk fighter in fish-net tights); and (b) have facilitated a full and open Parliamentary debate before making that commitment or deploying troops.

2003-02-06T14:25:00.000-08:00

The Left Speaks

Here's the definitive leftie take on Colin Powell's UN address, from Neale Pollack. What a witty, intelligent, incisive chap (not).

2003-02-06T05:41:00.000-08:00

Kerry's Komedy Kapers

Australia's "premier" political interviewer Kerry O'Brien really excelled himself on this evening's ABC TV 7.30 Report. As the program's sole intelligence expert (in fact sole expert of any kind) on Iraq in the wake of Secretary of State Colin Powell's address to the UN Security Council, which was widely seen elsewhere as presenting disturbing if not conclusive evidence of Saddam Hussein's deceit and duplicity, Kerry chose to interview one Dr Stephen Pelletiere. Pelletiere had no difficulty dismissing all Powell's evidence out of hand. "I wasn't very convinced at all," he said. "Within the community they [satellite tapes of Iraqi conversations] are not regarded very highly because they're so easy to fabricate." And so the 'interview' went on:

KERRY O'BRIEN: What about the evidence that Colin Powell quoted of an interrogation of a senior captured Al Qaeda operative?

DR STEPHEN PELLETIERE: There you're dealing with detainees. Detainees and defectors are notoriously unreliable sources.

Pelletiere even made the following extraordinary statement (which went completely unchallenged by Kerry): "You know, I want to agree with you except that there have been inspectors in that country for quite a long time and they claim that they cleaned him out once already." Strange, that's not what Richard Butler says. Where did Kerry get this man? Pelletiere was described by Kerry as a "man who spent eight years as the CIA's senior political analyst on Iraq". It didn't take US Ambassador Tom Schieffer long to demolish Kerry's credibility:

TOM SCHIEFFER, US AMBASSADOR TO AUSTRALIA: The first thing I'd say is I don't know where you found that gentleman, I never heard of him.

I don't know if he ever worked at the CIA.

I think the Secretary -

KERRY O'BRIEN: I'm sorry, we did check his credentials and read his papers.

TOM SCHIEFFER: When was the last time he worked at the CIA?

KERRY O'BRIEN: 1988.

However, if Schieffer had known a little more about Pelletiere, he would have had even less trouble working out where and how Kerry found "this gentleman". Pelletiere is the bloke who's been peddling the story that it was really the Iranians who gassed the Kurds at Halabja in 1988, and not the Iraqis! His propaganda was most recently recycled in the New York Times on 31 January. No doubt that's how he occurred to Kerry's Kommunards as the ideal man to approach as their chosen "expert". A man of unimpeachable objectivity. Pelletiere's claims about the gassing of Kurds by Iran have, as I pointed out last week, been totally discredited (which may be why Kerry didn't mention them). However, that's not Dr Pelletiere's only claim to fame. Pelletiere was described by Daniel Pipes in 1992 in the following glowing terms in a review of his book The Iran-Iraq War: Chaos in a Vacuum:

"Pelletiere's writings have won for him the little-disputed title of Saddam Husayn's chief apologist in the United States. He retains that dubious honor in The Iran-Iraq War. Saddam threw Ahmad Hasan al-Bakr, his predecessor, out of the presidency in 1979, then stripped him of all titles; who other than Pelletiere would characterize Bakr as having been "anxious to step down"? Who else would deny Samir al-Khalil's contention that Saddam rules through fear? Or write about the invasion of Kuwait as though it were a lapse of judgment, "Saddam ought to have had better sense than to invade his neighbor"?

The examples go on and on. Strange logic leads Pelletiere to conclude that the rapid suppression of the southern rebellion in early 1991 means the Iranians, not Iraqi Shi'is, must have organized the uprising. His eccentric reading of Desert Storm permits him to confirm his pre-1991 assessment that the Iraqi army was "professional and of a high caliber."

Pelletiere reads the Iraq-Iran war no less oddly. In place of the conventional understanding of the war's end-that Iraq won through bloody attrition and poison gas-he sees victory resulting from a far-sighted Iraqi strategy and "superior fighting prowess." This, in short, is not the place to find out what happened in that eight-year struggle ..."

Unquestionably a perfect choice as the ABC "independent" analyst of Colin Powell's address to the UN. Good one, Kerry!

2003-02-05T22:25:00.000-08:00

Haloscan sucks

However, having just tried 2 other alternatives which seem to be even worse, I think I'll put up with it unless/until I can implement PHP commenting. Pity! I see John Quiggin has just posted a message saying he has received an email from Haloscan advising that they're working to repair their server, and that everyone's existing comments are safe and will be restored. I certainly hope so.

On the other hand, it's not all downside. I've tweaked the template a bit so you can see more of the most recent post without scrolling down. More importantly, I've replaced the crappy Freefind search facility with a Google search. You can search either the Web or just Troppo Armadillo, and Google is without doubt the premier search engine. Note, however, that Google only re-indexes every 4-6 weeks, so you won't necessarily find the most recent posts (although it had already indexed Troppo Armadillo, even though it's only been up for 2 weeks). Anyway, you may need to scroll down or check the most recent archived page to find a specific post, but it's worth trying a Google search first.

2003-02-05T15:35:00.000-08:00

Powell comes up with the goods

I suppose readers won't be surprised that I found Colin Powell's presentation of evidence to the UN Security Council to be a convincing indictment of Saddam Hussein and his Iraqi regime. I have to say that I really can't understand how anyone other than an absolute pacifist could now fail to conclude than that there is no other sensible choice than military action to disarm Saddam and effect regime change.

I suppose those who are determined to find any excuse to keep opposing military intervention will simply choose to doubt the veracity or persuasiveness of US intelligence information. The problem is, Bush administration officials know that everything they produced will be carefully scrutinised by highly trained intelligence operatives from countries not necessarily inherently sympathetic to the US position: Russia and Germany, for instance. We can reasonably assume, unless one of those countries fairly quickly debunks the material, that it is kosher. In those circumstances, how could anyone possibly retain any level of belief at all in the efficacy of weapons inspections, in the face of all that evidence of ongoing Iraqi duplicity and deceit?

2003-02-05T15:22:00.000-08:00

Tim toddles off

Tim Blair announces that he has moved across to the Packer group's Bulletin magazine. And indeed there is a column by Tim at the Bullie site. Unfortunately, it's accessible by subscription only. I won't be forking out the brass, I can tell you. I read the Bulletin when I'm at the doctor or dentist (which means they're usually 6 months old), and I certainly don't find the content sufficiently compelling to be bothered paying for it on a regular basis.

I suspect many have the same view, which means Tim's readership is about to fall dramatically. I can't help wondering whether Tim's move was voluntary or part of an even-handed culling exercise by the Oz that also included Tim's alternate bete noire (when he gets sick of Margo) Phillip Adams. Anyway, I'll miss Tim's column. Maybe the Bulletin will allow him to post his columns on a personal site a month or so in arrears, the way the AFR does with John Quiggin.

2003-02-05T03:35:00.000-08:00

Blogging musings

As you may have noticed, Haloscan commenting has been buggered for most of the afternoon and evening. It's beginning to irk me. Thinking about it, Blogger itself has actually been reasonably reliable in the short time I've been using it again (except that the archives keep disappearing and re-appearing, but I think I can live with that). It's the commenting facility whose reliability is at unacceptable levels. Bailz and Gareth Parker tell me that there are PHP commenting scripts you can instal on your own web host server to host your own commenting function. That might be the solution. Only trouble is that I've looked at a couple of sites that offer PHP commenting scripts, and I can hardly understand a word they're saying. I think I'll be emailing the lads for help.

Meanwhile, Rob Corr thinks he's been appointed blogging commissar, presumably by Trades Hall where he's doing work experience. Rob reckons you're not allowed to use the word "blog" to describe an individual post; only to describe your entire site. Personally, I use the word for both purposes and I'm going to continue doing so. It's convenient and I prefer it. I was never very good at obedience, I'm afraid. If I'd been born in Stalinist Russia I would have been up against the wall before I left primary school.

2003-02-05T03:23:00.000-08:00

Wisdom on crime

Criminologist Adam Graycar has an excellent article about crime, its incidence and crime prevention strategies in Online Opinion (link via Angela Bell). In fact the monthly feature in OLO is on issues relating to crime and punishment. There's lots of good reading. I found a statistical study by the "evil" Peter Saunders and Nicole Billante especially interesting. Here's the conclusion:

"The evidence reviewed here is consistent with Charles Murray's view that a weakening in the willingness to use prison as a punishment has been strongly associated with an explosion of crime rates. All the countries we have reviewed saw their crime rates rise dramatically as they eased off on imprisonment. Those countries (notably the US) that subsequently increased their use of imprisonment have seen their postwar rise in crime rates stopped, and then reversed. In Australia, where use of prison has not been increased to the same extent, the crime rate has not been curbed with the same success. While not proving Murray's thesis, these patterns are certainly consistent with it. Whether by taking offenders out of circulation, or by deterring people from committing crimes in the first place, the evidence does seem to support the view that prison works.

But this is not the whole story. The economic theory of crime suggests that the risk of getting caught is likely to be as, or more, important in deterring crime as the anticipated severity of the punishment. In Australia, it does seem that the spiralling crime rates of the 1970s and 1980s had as much to do with declining detection and conviction as with declining use of imprisonment. This suggests that penal policy is an important element in the fight against crime, but it is only part of the solution. As economists have been telling us for more than 30 years now, increasing the probability of getting caught appears no less important than increasing the severity of the punishment that follows."

Saunders does not contradict mainstream research showing there is little correlation between length of sentence and crime rates. The correlation is between the certainty of detection and then imprisonment (for whatever period) and crime rates. Of course this contradicts the "bleeding heart" school of advocacy championed by criminal lawyers and still mostly accepted by judges. I can feel some public stirring coming on.

Personally, I've always thought Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim had it all pretty well worked out in West Side Story way back in 1957 (Gee Officer Krupke). Incidentally, when I get around to listing Ten Reasons to be Pro-American, the American musical is going to be fairly high on my list.

2003-02-05T00:36:00.000-08:00

My G-G-G-Generation

Jason Yat-sen Li is a very bright, promising young man with strong and liberal political views; a lawyer and deputy chairman of the Australian Republican Movement. He wrote an op-ed piece in this morning's Sydney Morning Herald, however, which rather suggests that it might all be starting to go to his head just a tad. Jason's article asserted that Generation X (to which he belongs) will soon rouse itself from its apolitical torpor and, when John Howard retires, embrace left-of-centre causes. Jason also lists several causes that he claims Gen Xers did rouse themselves about: "Pauline Hanson, ecological disaster, reconciliation and our treatment of asylum seekers."

Of course, what Jason really means is that these were the issues he got passionate about. It must be a wonderfully comforting feeling to be able to equate the political opinions of an entire generation with your own personal viewpoint. I'm not even sure I agree with myself half the time!

Peter Kerr puts it much more succinctly, saying only "Get your hand off it Jason! ".

2003-02-04T20:37:00.000-08:00

Stolen Generations?

Australian film maker Phil Noyce is a popular target for the Right. He makes movies with an intensely political slant, and undeniably takes more than a little poetic licence with the factual background. Gerard Henderson sought to re-establish his tarnished right-wing credentials yesterday with a disparaging op-ed piece in the Sydney Morning Herald on Noyce's film version of Grahame Greene's Vietnam-based novel The Quiet American. Uncle at ABC Watch blogged on Henderson's article.

However, not all faux-rightists are so disparaging of Noyce. Robert Manne wrote a (somewhat belated) laudatory review of Noyce's Rabbit-Proof Fence in yesterday's Washington Post. Noyce's previous film, it dealt with the so-called "Stolen Generations" issue, and was an adaptation of a book about the childhood experiences of a 'half-caste' Aboriginal girl Molly Craig and her 2 sisters, written by Molly's daughter Doris Pilkington.

Herald-Sun journalist (and Quadrant clique member in good standing) Andrew Bolt has written an apparently quite devastating critique of Rabbit-Proof Fence, pointing out a large number of significant factual errors and distortions. Manne's article seeks to downplay the extent of those distortions in Noyce's film, but Manne also makes some much more telling points of his own. As with his reaction to Keith Windschuttle's exposure of errors in the work of historians Henry Reynolds and Lyndall Ryan, Manne seems to place a fairly low premium on factual accuracy. On the other hand, you can argue that absolute veracity is less critical in a work of dramatic "faction" than when writing academic history, as long as the work gives an overall accurate sense of events. I certainly think Manne is correct in suggesting, in effect, that Bolt's criticisms of Noyce's poetic licence in many respects miss the forest for all the trees. ... Read more
(Warning - another long-ish blog)

2003-02-04T14:05:00.000-08:00

Cordon bleu fisking

Now, I'd have to admit that Margo Kingston is hardly a surprising target for Tim Blair. In fact if Margo ever got sacked Tim's blog would have lots of large blank spaces. However, today's fisking of Margo is a vintage example of the genre. Do yourself a favour and read it (even lefties might manage a smile - though probably through gritted teeth). I wonder if Me No No will accuse me of "brown-nosing" Blair as well? Funny he never suggests I'm "brown-nosing" lefties or centrists when I agree with them (as I frequently do).

Update - Oh dear! The Professor's blog for this morning is brilliantly funny as well. My fate with Me No No is sealed. Maybe Rob Schaap is correct for once - maybe I am a "faux centrist". Then again, maybe I'm just crediting good blogging when I read it (although I'd have to admit yesterday's piece on Bunyip's slag of Anne Summers was something of a misjudgment). I blog, you decide.

2003-02-04T05:47:00.000-08:00

Grisham bashes plaintiff lawyers

The following is a straight copy and paste from The Volokh Conspiracy:

"John Grisham is known for penning page-turning legal thrillers. I think it's also fair to say that he is also known for his hostility to corporate America. In many of his books, the heroes are noble trial lawyers while the villains are sinister corporations and the lawyers who agree to defend them. Grisham is hardly the legal writer one would expect to assault the plaintiff's bar in print -- but it seems that is what he has done in his latest book, The King of Torts. According to this review, Grisham has shifted his sights from duplicitous insurance companies, greedy corporate developers, and tobacco executives to ambulance-chasing plaintiffs lawyers. Assuming this account is accurate -- and I have no reason to suspect otherwise -- it is nice to see that Grisham can be even-handed in his depictions of villainy. There is no doubt many corporations do many blameworthy things --but much the same can be said of the plaintiffs' bar. Not every mass tort civil action is a noble endeavor. "

Here's a short extract from the Washington Post book review linked by Volokh Conspiracy:

"John Grisham's new novel is several things -- a great read, a love story, a parable of sorts -- but above all it is a scathing attack on the lawyers who have amassed great wealth by winning class-action lawsuits against the tobacco industry, pharmaceutical companies and other corporate malefactors. These mass tort boys, as Grisham calls them, are presented as shameless, greed-crazed ambulance chasers who enrich themselves off the misery of others and whose only real interest is acquiring ever-larger yachts and ever-younger women. I can't think of a bestselling novelist since Sinclair Lewis who has so relentlessly bludgeoned a particular segment of our society. ...

Grisham's view of the tort lawyers is summed up by an honest old lawyer: "Class actions are a fraud, at least the way you and your pals handle them. Mass torts are a scam, a consumer rip-off, a lottery driven by greed that will one day harm all of us." To support that thesis, Grisham stacks the deck in various ways. When he shows us the plaintiffs in a class action, they are grossly obese women from a trailer park whose health problems clearly derive from gluttony, not from the diet pills they took."

Leaving aside Grisham's pulp fiction caricatures, there is a critical distinction between class actions in the United States and their Australian counterparts. In the US (or at least some parts of it) plaintiff lawyers can enter into contingent fee arrangements with their clients to take (say) 30% (or perhaps even 50%) of the damages awarded. In a large product liability law suit, that amounts to very big money indeed. The Julia Roberts movie Erin Brockovich (based on a true story) depicts such a situation. In Australia, legislation, court rules and legal ethics all prohibit arrangements of that sort. Lawyers can enter into a "no win no fee" agreements, but they are only permitted to charge a relatively modest "uplift" component on the fees that would normally be allowable. Typically it might allow the lawyer to charge fees of (say) $750,000 in a reasonably sizeable case instead of $500,000. It makes it worthwhile for lawyers to underwrite a promising case by "punting" on the result to an extent, but you certainly wouldn't run completely hopeless cases on an outside chance of winning the big jackpot (which is what happens in some parts of the US). Australian law tries to avoid the worst excesses of ambulance-chasing by keeping the possible rewards within vaguely reasonable bounds. Strange, however that US Republicans, who mostly profess a neo-liberal commitment to "free" markets in other respects, tend to be very averse to the freewheeling activities of ambulance-chasing plaintiff lawyers. No doubt it has something to do with the fact that the plaintiff lawyers' targets are the major corporations who bankroll the GOP.

2003-02-03T22:42:00.000-08:00

Ruddock crashes and burns in High Court

Today's decision (or rather decisions plural - there were actually 2 separate judgments) in the Baktiari case is the reverse side of the coin to a "win - win" situation. It was a "lose - lose" situation: both the Minister and Mrs Baktiari and her 5 children lost comprehensively. Only the lawyers won. Mrs Baktiari was awarded 75% of her costs, so my academic colleague Professor George Williams (who argued the case for Mrs Baktiari along with others) will get paid! It's also a joyful day for academic public lawyers like me in general, because the High Court's decision is delightfully complex, subtle and convoluted. I'll be able to torture students with it for at least the next couple of years!

The bottom line, however, isn't all that difficult to convey. The Baktiari family lost because the Court found that the Refugee Review Tribunal had made no judicially reviewable error in holding that Mrs Baktiari and her children were not entitled to a Protection Visa. Even if the Court had found an error, it would have been only a temporary respite for the Baktiaris, since it's now very clear that they are Pakistanis and not Afghans as they had claimed. However, that ultimately fatal problem played no immediate part in the High Court's decision handed down today. Mrs Baktiari's counsel had argued that the RRT (and earlier the Minister's delegate) had failed to notify Mrs Baktiari of a material fact, namely the fact that Mr. Baktiari had already been granted a Temporary Protection Visa and had applied for a permanent one. Now, leaving aside the fact that Mr Baktiari had obtained that visa by fraud, and that one suspects Mrs Baktiari probably already knew that her husband had a visa anyway (whatever she may claim), the Court found that the Minister and RRT were under no legal obligation to notify Mrs Baktiari of something they simply hadn't taken into account in making their decision. In addition, the Court held that the fact of Mr Baktiari having a Temporary Visa was not a sufficiently relevant consideration as to make the Minister's decision invalid for having failed to take it into account.

As far as Minister Ruddock was concerned, the Court found in a separate judgment that the Howard government's amendments to the Migration Act passed (with panicked ALP support) immediately after the Tampa affair, were almost completely legally ineffective.

First, the so-called "privative" (ouster) clause, which Minister Ruddock hoped would drastically restrict the available grounds for judicial review of migration decisions before the High Court and Federal Court, didn't have that effect at all. On a proper reading, the Court held, the privative clause (section 474) did not protect migration decisions from review where a "jurisdictional error" had been committed. Since the High Court has progressively redefined administrative law over the last decade or so in a way that makes almost every legal error a "jurisdictional" one, the net result is that the privative clause has almost no practical effect. In fact, ironically, the effect of today's decision is that the new privative clause has even less effect in restricting the scope of judicial review than the previous section whose replacement Mr Howard bludgeoned Kim Beazley into supporting by labelling him as "soft on asylum seekers".

Secondly, the Court held that the government's attempt to limit review by imposing a 35 day time limit for filing review applications (section 486A) was also almost completely ineffective. On its face the time limit only applied to "privative clause decisions". A decision affected by "jurisdictional error" was not a "privative clause decision". In fact it wasn't a decision at all. It was a nullity.

Despite the fact that the Minister in essence lost comprehensively (as evidenced by the fact that 75% of the costs were awarded against him), the media mostly seems to have portrayed the case as a win for Mr Ruddock and the government! See, for example, the Sydney Morning Herald's coverage. Even the ABC accepted the Government's blatant, misleading spin on the result and reported that it was a win for Ruddock. Admittedly the reasoning is very complex, but surely it shouldn't have been beyond their wit to get reasonably early expert legal analysis instead of blindly accepting the government's spin. I heard Duncan Kerr (former Labor Minister who also argued part of the case) interviewed about the result on the ABC's World Today program, and he gently tried to explain to the reporter that Ruddock had lost in a big way. Nevertheless, the message doesn't yet seem to have sunk through. The World Today story remains headlined on the ABC website as "Wins for both sides in High Court's "Tampa" decision." As I commented above, the opposite is the case. It's a safe bet that Mrs Baktiari and her kids don't give a rat's arse about the technical rulings on the meaning of amendments to the Migration Act: they're getting deported from Australia because they lost. Similarly, it's a safe bet that Mr Ruddock "despite PR spin" doesn't care one way or the other about succeeding in defending the individual decision: the Baktiaris were going to be deported in due course anyway; this decision just speeds the process up a bit.

Lastly (and immodestly) I should point out that I accurately predicted today's result on this blog back on 5 September. I didn't, however, predict the extent of the Minister's defeat. Ruddock lost 7 - nil!! Even Justice Callinan found against the Minister. So much for stacking the High Court bench with ultra-conservatives. Even conservatives have this uncomfortable habit of thinking independently, and deciding cases on their merits, once they're appointed to the High Court. On the other hand, as I also observed back in September:

"Privately, however, both he [Minister Ruddock] and John Howard will view a High Court loss as an acceptable price to pay for winning an election that might otherwise have been very close."

2003-02-03T14:40:00.000-08:00

The forensic Bunyip

Professor Bunyip has cast his jaundiced eye over the Anne Summers article on which I blogged yesterday, and discovered that significant parts are, if not plagiarised, certainly quite close to it. You have to be careful in making such accusations (and the Professor is), because we're all dipping into the same well of ideas in the same thoroughly ploughed field (now there's a scrambled mixed metaphor for you), but at the very least Summers' failure to acknowledge sources and encase lifted passages in quotes (instead of lightly paraphrasing them) makes her deeply suspect in a wider sense.

Bunyip also advances a less tenable argument: that Summers' biographical background (e.g. the fact that she is Greenpeace International Board Chairperson and a former senior Whitlam government apparatchik) should be disclosed at the foot of articles she writes, so readers can self-assess her ideological biases. Trouble is, how do you select which biographical facts should be regarded as relevant? Obviously Bunyip regards the two affiliations he mentions as terminally typecasting Summers. However, other readers might regard other aspects of her CV as more interesting and relevant. You'd end up with a CV at the end of every op-ed article that was longer than the article itself.

Finally, an interesting sidelight on this point is that Bunyip's apparent belief that a writer's curriculum vitae is relevant and even critical in assessing his or her ideas parallels a similar argument the far more left-wing John Quiggin made not so long ago. The flint-hard right and the soft left make common cause! Quiggers' immediate target was Nazi-sympathiser philosopher Martin Heidegger, but he indicated that he intended eventually to zero in on some more contemporary right-wing targets (he never did as far as I recall, although he did make passing swipes at a couple of anti-global warming scientists who, John opined, should have discolsed their right-wing think tank affiliations at the end of their articles). Of course, the po mo crowd argue that text and meaning are independent of authorial intent once written: they should be read and judged on their own terms (and even judgment is a problematic concept). I think I'll keep a foot in both camps here (what a surprise!). I certainly think it's useful to know what political axes an op-ed writer is attempting to grind (in the ploughed field, while wetting the blade with water from the well), because it puts us on alert for "spin". What facts are being omitted, how is she selecting the ones to use, and are they being accurately presented? But equally we shouldn't simply dismiss the opinions of those whose ideological background we find suspect, especially without reading them. In some ways, a text does stand on its own feet (in the ploughed field) and mean what it means (to each of us). A text doesn't need to be written by Shakespeare to have a range of instructive connotations not intended by the author; and even if the messages were intended, sometimes our opponents actually do make good points that enrich our understanding. Even Anne Summers for Bunyip. Even Bjorn Lomborg for Quiggers.

BTW - I'll be tied up in a meeting for the rest of the morning. I'll try to finish "Ten non-political reasons to be pro-American" at lunchtime.

Update - I've concluded on closer examination (after extensive debate in the comment box) that whatever inference Bunyip may have sought to convey that Anne Summers' article contained paraphrases of a Washington Post article verging on plagiarism is wrong and unfair. In fact Summers was quite careful to acknowledge the sources of her article. Bunyip's other argument, that she has been selective by omission in the bits of the Post story she used, has more substance IMO (although, on the other hand, the complete Post article is quite long and contains other material adverse to the US that Summers also chose not to use).

2003-02-03T05:34:00.000-08:00

Tim unmasked as secret Margolian

Margo Kingston's Web Diary has just published a list of the top 5 referrers to her site (which Tim Blair, as we know, loves to hate) for the month of January. The top 5 are:(1) Instapundit, (2) Fortean Times ( a site whose subtitle is "The Journal of Strange Phenomena", so you can see why they'd link to Margo), (3) whatreallyhappened (which seems to be a leftie pro-Iraq, peacenik, anti-Israel site from a quick glance), (4) timblairblogspot and (5) Bowling for Columbine!!!! Fancy Tim being a more effective promoter of Margo than Michael Moore!

2003-02-03T05:22:00.000-08:00

Cancel the Zimbabwe match

Australia's High Commissioner to Zimbabwe has warned of likely Opposition demonstrations during Australia's forthcoming World Cup cricket match there, and stressed that there is a significant probability of Mugabe's security forces over-reacting and causing an incident that will endanger the players' safety.

Meanwhile, Zimbabwean Opposition Leader Morgan Tsvangirai's treason trial started today in Harare. CNN reported:

Police with batons cleared the court's entrance on the first day of the trial on Monday, striking out at reporters and jostling opposition MPs and supporters. Ish Mufandikwa, a freelance journalist, and several other people were arrested on the street outside the court.

Police said the courtroom was full, but lawyers inside said the public benches were virtually empty. Opposition officials said Tsvangirai's lawyers would protest. "This is a public place and it is supposed to be a public court. Obviously the state has something to hide," said opposition lawmaker Priscilla Misihairabwi. Police with riot clubs held across their chests pushed her away.

Police in blue paramilitary uniforms yelled at German observer Jan Van Thief to "get away from here" as he showed his diplomatic identity pass, The Associated Press reported. "You are no longer a diplomat. We will get you," one policeman shouted over the chaos.

In addition to all this, the odds of military action in Iraq commencing before Australia's World Cup match in Zimbabwe is played are shortening by the day. Prime Minister John Howard said on tonight's SBS News that there was no evidence that Al Qaeda had any terrorist cells active in Zimbabwe, but you would have to think that the Aussie cricket team would be a prime target for terrorist action in those circumstances, or at least violent demonstrations. Only 1 - 1.5% of Zimbabwe's population is Muslim, but it doesn't take many sympathisers to form a terrorist cell.

Given all those factors, the ACB needs its collective head read to allow the match to go ahead. The risk level is now simply unacceptable. Are they trying to prove their masculinity by putting their players' lives at risk? Or to appease Pakistan and the West Indies, who seem to want to characterise any reluctance to play there by white cricketing nations as "racism"? Or is it fear of being sued by TV rights holders? If it's the latter, John Howard has been quoted today as saying that the Australian government would assist the ACB financially if it decided to insist on cancellation of the Zimbabwe match. There just isn't any reasonable excuse.

2003-02-02T15:26:00.000-08:00

Rumbling Rumsfeld

I see Anne Summers has an article in this morning's SMH giving a fairly detailed rundown on US assistance to Iraq's WOMD programs during the Iran-Iraq war, including Donald Rumsfeld's role in it. It makes some good points, but ends with this bizarre paragraph:

"It is in no one's interests for Saddam Hussein to retain deadly weapons he has shown no compunction about using in the past, including on his own citizens. But by what crazy logic does the West go to war to disarm him of weapons it supplied in the first place? Instead of so-called smart bombs, how about a bit of smart diplomacy?"

As I suggested in my Pollyanna piece yesterday, why should a former expedient alliance with Saddam disqualify the US from moving decisively to disarm him now, however belatedly, when all less drastic measures have failed? Dave Ricardo made a good point in the comment box when he observed "Why doesn't Bush just say, 'We made the mess. We have an obligation to clean it up, and we're going to.'' Fair comment, but Summers' stance is simply illogical. What does she think the UN has been doing (however ineffectually) for the last 12 years? Diplomacy, surely, though maybe not very smart diplomacy. And what does she call the Arab nations' offer of safe exile for Saddam and his henchmen, supported by the US? Anne exhibits the Left's typical inability to grasp the fact (or perhaps admit to herself would be a better way to put it) that sometimes there really is no sensible alternative to military action. Unless Saddam very quickly stops playing games, this is one of those times.

Update - I should have noted earlier that Stephen Hill has blogged an excellent and very balanced piece about the prospects and risks for Iraq post-Saddam. It's based on 2 articles by Thomas Friedman in the NY Times. Recommended reading.

Update 2 - Lapsed leftie Christopher Hitchens (MSN Slate, February 1) gives a well-deserved serve to Nelson Mandela for his egregious remarks on possible US-led military action in Iraq. Hitchens also takes side-swipes at every recent UN Secretary-General along the way. His final paragraph:

"I have never in my life kept a photograph of myself with any politician or celebrity except the one I have of my meeting with Mandela. I can remember sitting and drinking several times with his successor Thabo Mbeki, in the latter's student leftist days. Nothing can take anything away from the imperishable movement that they and others led. But this latest garbage is a very timely caution against our common tendency to make supermen and stars and heroes out of fellow humans. Iraq is not Saddam any more than Zimbabwe is Mugabe, and being on the right side of history once is no guarantee that the subsequent fall will not be from a very great height."

Update 3 - Will wonders never cease !? The Guardian has an article by Julie Burchill (link from Patrick Hynes) that echoes many of the points I've been making in my last several posts on Iraq. I doubt that she's closely related to Scott, though. Lastly, and I should have pointed it out before, Margo's Web Diary last Thursday carried two excellent reader contributions by John Nicolay (who pays out brilliantly on Carmen Lawrence) and Nicholas Crouch. Unfortunately you'll have to scroll down past an especially fatuous diatribe from the seemingly ubiquitous Karen Jackson to get to them. But take heart. Both contributions are well worth the effort. Here is a short extract from Nicolay's piece:

"In my view, you simply cannot be taken seriously as an opponent of war unless you are prepared to acknowledge what sort of leader Saddam Hussein is, extrapolate what his record suggests about his intentions and ambitions, and recognise that his conduct towards weapons inspections leaves no other rational possibility other than that he has or is developing weapons of mass destruction and intends to keep them.

By no means does recognising all those facts lead inexorably to the conclusion that war is necessary, but it is only once you do take these things into account that you engage in the duty that real policy-makers have in a situation like this: of considering all possible outcomes and choosing the one with the least worst results."

Nicholas Crouch makes similar points just as eloquently:

"So Margo, if those of you who are working so hard to prevent war miraculously succeed, then by all means you will be able to say that you helped save many thousands of innocent Iraqis from being killed in a war. But you must then also accept the consequences of stopping the war - and those are the effects of the continued reign of Saddam Hussein and his successors, and the thousands of innocent Iraqis that will die because of that. It is no good starting sentences with "I don't like Saddam Hussein but..." If you don't like Saddam, and you have the capacity to, then you have to DO something about it.

People on the left of this issue are full of good intentions and your aims are noble - unlike the far right whose aims are based in bigotry and hate - but just because the far left has good intentions does not make it less dangerous. Jimmy Carter is almost universally acknowledged as the worst US President in modern history. He also probably had the best intentions, the best ideals - and still does. I like him, but he is a far better former president than he was a President."

As I've observed before, while Margo publishes an awful lot of undisciplined, unedited rubbish, she does publish reader contributions on all sides of an issue, and mostly without fear or favour. It means there are often gold nuggest hidden amongst the dross.

2003-02-02T14:59:00.000-08:00

Reach for the stars!

The News Limited website has an article suggesting that the Columbia space shuttle disaster may have been caused (in the broad sense) by the fact that the shuttles are obsolete, 30 years old technology. An article in Time magazine by Gregg Easterbrook makes the same point, but then goes on to advocate a much smaller scale space program:

"that the shuttle be phased out, that cargo launches be carried aboard by far cheaper, unmanned, throwaway rockets and that NASA build a small "space plane" solely for people, to be used on those occasions when men and women are truly needed in space."

Personally I think this is unimaginative, defeatist thinking. Dubbya should adopt a JFK-style vision and commit America (preferably jointly with Russia and Japan) to having a man on Mars by 2020. That would mean new generation space shuttles, and either a large scale orbiting space station or a permanent, self-sustaining moonbase as a staging post for missions to Mars.

As with the Moon program in the 1960s, there would be huge commercial spinoffs and an enormous boost to both pure and applied scientific research. More importantly, I think the human race needs the challenge of new frontiers: "to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life forms and new civilisations, to boldly go where no one has gone before." As the Australian Democrats don't seem likely to be around for very much longer, space is the obvious alternative for satisfying these fundamental human aspirations.

Update - Stewart Kelly also has a good, rather more considered piece on the future of the US space program.

Update 2 - Stephen Dawson, one of the neo-liberals over at Australian Libertarians blog, has a predictable response to the Columbia space shuttle tragedy: - privatise the space program!! This is undoubtedly an inspired suggestion. If privatising NASA proves as efficient and successful as the privatisations of water and electricity in various Australian states, railways in Britain, or Australia's asylum seeker detention centres, there'll be so many fatal shuttle crashes that they won't even make news any more. I'm still waiting for the greenies to claim the Columbia crash was caused by global warming or the hole in the ozone layer.

2003-02-02T14:32:00.000-08:00

Ten (non-political) reasons to be anti-American*

(1) Retail personnel saying "Have a nice day".

(2) Friends, Ally McBeal and Everybody Loves Raymond.

(3) Michael Jackson.

(4) Fran Drescher.

(5) Pulp fiction by people like Tom Clancy, Robert Ludlum or John Grisham.

(6) Country and western music (with rare exceptions) and line dancing (with none).

(7) "Reality" TV shows that glorify rugged individualism i.e. ruthless, self-centred bastardry e.g. Survivor. Mind you, they're less repulsive than some of the Japanese reality TV shows, but fortunately we don't get them in Australia. Actually, before someone corrects me, I should acknowledge that some of the reality shows that screen in Australia had their genesis somewhere in Europe (I can't remember exactly where - was it Holland?).

(8) US gun laws, the Second Amendment, gun lobby advocates and their academic apologists (well, that one was a little bit political, I confess).

(9) Mike Tyson, 157 different "world" boxing bodies, Don King manipulating just about all of them.

(10) Having a baseball "World Series" when almost no other nation plays the game. Then again, rugby league (possibly still the majority football code in Sydney and Brisbane but insignifiant anywhere else in the world) is about to promote a "World Sevens" series.

* This item was, of course, inspired by Karen Jackson, the streaker and failed Australian Democrats candidate who had an idiotic piece published on Margo's Web Diary last week by the same title (but political). I can't help thinking that the Dems might have done a lot better if only Natasha S-D had taken a leaf out of Karen's book, got really pissed and run across the SCG clad only in her Doc Martens.
** Feel free to post your own nominations to this list in the comment box. BTW Tomorrow I intend publishing "Ten Non-Political Reasons to be Pro-American".

2003-02-02T04:57:00.000-08:00

A sharp rejoinder from Rob

Rob Schaap blogs a very long piece (almost as long as some of mine) aimed at refuting my Pollyanna piece on Iraq earlier today. Essentially, Rob takes issue with these 2 passages in my essay:

"Realistically, liberal democratic nations like the US have little choice but to make occasional expedient alliances with some fairly smelly regimes."

"American policy throughout the Cold War involved forging expedient alliances with anti-communist regimes, including some pretty odious ones."

Rob makes the very reasonable point that the US, in Iraq at least, not only jumped into bed with an odious regime, but actually created it in the first place. However, he could have saved himself a very long blog if he'd emailed me first (or posted a comment on the comment box), because I agree with him. America's strategy to defeat communism did indeed involve creating anti-communist regimes as well as forging expedient alliances with existing ones. I confess I should have made that point for the sake of completeness. Moreover, the artificially CIA-created regimes have far too often been amongst the most appallingly oppressive and bloodthirsty of US allies. The Pinochet regime in Chile is another example, as were successive South Vietnamese puppet regimes (although they were more utterly corrupt and incompetent than bloodthirsty).

However, this says nothing at all about the point I was making, which was:

"Although that policy had some very unfortunate and unintended consequences (not least the creation of the Taliban and the training of Bin Laden), it was ultimately successful in achieving its primary aim of the overthrow of communism."

A better argument against my hypothesis is to assert that communism would have fallen almost as quickly anyway under the weight of its own inherent contradictions (an ironic point for those familiar with Marxist theory - which could conceivably be why Rob can't quite bring himself to make it). Personally, I doubt that communism would in fact have crumbled anywhere near as quickly in the absence of the implacable pressure exerted by the West (and led by the United States), but I can't prove it. Moreover, I can't measure the comparative misery index. Did the misery inflicted by evil anti-communist regimes like those of Saddam and Pinochet outweigh that inflicted by the USSR and its Eastern European satellite states? I don't know, and nor does anyone else. That's what I meant by the statement:

"The really hard bit is maintaining a reasonably clear vision of where to draw the line to avoid undermining fundamental principles that may destroy the very values you're fighting to preserve. You can mount a plausible argument that US foreign policy has crossed that line rather more frequently than one might have liked, but it's easy to be wise in hindsight."

2003-02-02T01:17:00.000-08:00

Declaring War

A couple of days ago I received an email from Gummo Trotsky, asking me two legal questions. I suspect they have something to do with the blog series Gummo is writing on the concept of a "just war", but the answers are interesting in their own right (at least to me):

"1. Would it have been possible for Parliament to be recalled early to debate the Blix report and the deployment of troops to the Gulf (as happened with the special sitting after the Queen Mother's death)?

2. Am I correct in thinking that it is section 68 of the Constitution that gives the Executive the power to deploy troops in this way?"

I answered Gummo's questions in the following terms .... read more (another long-ish blog)

2003-02-01T19:18:00.000-08:00

Pollyanna's Guide to World Politics

Tim Dunlop blogs an approving link to a piece by an American blogger styling himself MyDD, who in turn posts a photo of (now) US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld meeting with Saddam Hussein back in 1983 (during the Iran-Iraq war). Now, part of the thrust of MyDD's piece was to suggest (not unreasonably) that CNN appeared to have edited a story to reduce any embarrassment factor for Rumsfeld. The other message, however (which Tim apparently also endorses) is the suggestion that there was something inherently sinister about Rumsfeld meeting with Saddam (and that it's relevant to the current situation of contemplated military action against Iraq). MyDD says:

"Here's the photo of Rumsfeld shaking hands with Saddam Hussein. And recall, this is after Saddam had used biological weapons against Iranians, the Kurds, and other Iraqi's."

For a start, that's just not correct. First, both sides used chemical weapons against each other during the Iran-Iraq war, although Iraq almost certainly made more extensive use of them. However, I'm not sure that there had been extensive use of WOMD as early as 1983 (here's an excellent account of the course of the war for reference purposes). Certainly, and contrary to what MyDD says, as far as I know, neither chemical nor biological weapons had been used against the Kurds in 1983. As we know from Tim's own blog as recently as yesterday, the Halabja incident didn't happen until 1988. Moreover, it involved chemical weapons (either mustard gas, sarin, tabun or VX), not biological ones. I don't claim to be a font of encyclopedic knowledge on the Iran-Iraq war, but I haven't previously heard it claimed that Saddam used biological weapons at all against the Kurds. According to this chronology, Iraq didn't begin developing a biological weapons capability until 1985, although it first used a chemical weapon (mustard gas) against Iranian forces in August 1983 (about 4 months before the photographed meeting between Saddam and Rumsfeld). Finally, although Iraq undeniably developed biological weapons starting in 1985, I haven't heard it suggested that it ever actually used them during the Iran-Iraq war (although there are unconfirmed claims that they were used during the 1991 Gulf War). Some on the Left seem to have no qualms about switching almost instantaneously between exaggerating and minimising the extent of Saddam's misdeeds, depending on which stance happens to assist their argument.

However, the more important point to make about MyDD's Rumsfeld slag (and Tim's approving linkage of it) is this one made by a contributor to MyDD's comment box:

"So What? Times change as do the situations. This is so stupid. We worked with Noriega in Panama before he went wacko. And with the Afghani’s when they were fighting the Russians. We work with those people who have an enemy in common with us, when we need to. This meeting was before Saddam attacked Kuwait. You try to make something out of nothing for some pathetic attempt to smear a good man for your sick political agenda. Our State Department Heads need to meet with all kinds of foreign leaders, even the ones who are not such good people. Now the situation is completely different."

I agree. Realistically, liberal democratic nations like the US have little choice but to make occasional expedient alliances with some fairly smelly regimes. If they confined themselves to alliances with other liberal democracies which respect human rights, they wouldn't have too many alliances outside Europe (in 1983 anyway - things have improved considerably in South America since then, and in parts of Asia). Geo-political decisions, like decisions in just about every sphere of human endeavour, more often than not involve choosing between a range of very imperfect alternatives. A leader who waited for a perfect alternative would be condemning himself to permanent supine impotence. Doing nothing is in itself a positive choice. Where choosing to do nothing has probable consequences worse than those involved with taking positive action (however imperfect), inaction can hardly be reasonably regarded as the preferable choice. Lefties frequently scoff at 'realpolitik': I have to confess I've done it myself. However, the reality is that leadership in the real world necessarily requires hard choices involving shades of grey. The really hard bit is maintaining a reasonably clear vision of where to draw the line to avoid undermining fundamental principles that may destroy the very values you're fighting to preserve. You can mount a plausible argument that US foreign policy has crossed that line rather more frequently than one might have liked, but it's easy to be wise in hindsight.

We need to keep in mind the context of Rumsfeld's meeting with Saddam in 1983. The Ayatollah was at his peak of lunacy in Iran, and the Teheran hostage crisis was still very fresh in mind. Moreover, 241 American marines had recently been murdered by a terrorist bomb in Beirut (as Rumsfeld observed to CNN). The Soviet Union and communism generally remained a very real threat, with the USSR still occupying Afghanistan, and US-backed mujihadeen rebels (including Osama Bin Laden) actively trying to dislodge them. American policy throughout the Cold War involved forging expedient alliances with anti-communist regimes, including some pretty odious ones. Although that policy had some very unfortunate and unintended consequences (not least the creation of the Taliban and the training of Bin Laden), it was ultimately successful in achieving its primary aim of the overthrow of communism.

The US forged an expedient alliance with Saddam in the 1980s not only as a bulwark against communism, but also as a counter to the threat of extremist militant Islam represented by Khomeini's Iran. Saddam was (and remains) a secular strong-man of the Middle East, so the choice was understandable, even though we can now see it was ill-judged. One can reasonably criticise the US for being far too slow to wake up to the fact that it had made a bad choice of ally and to cut Saddam adrift. In fact, they didn't do so until after Iraq invaded Kuwait, leading to well-justified expressions of alarm from Israel and all Iraq's Arab neighbours. However, that slowness doesn't provide any logical basis for the Left's standard argument (usually by way of tacit assumption - as with MyDD's post and Tim's approval of it) that America's previous expedient alliance with Iraq somehow disqualifies it from taking action now. Better late than never.

2003-02-01T13:27:00.000-08:00

Space shuttle burns

My God! The US space shuttle Columbia has burned up on re-entry, killing all 7 astronauts on board. What can you say? Glenn Reynolds (Instapundit) is covering it, as is Steven Den Beste. Google News is probably your best bet for the latest mainstream coverage. In the ozplogosphere, Scott Wickstein and Matthew Bates have posted some preliminary thoughts.

2003-01-31T22:11:00.000-08:00

Sue the bastards!

Quite often, media stories claiming an explosion of civil litigation are self-interested beat-ups, frequently inspired by insurance companies keen on persuading governments to legislate exclusions of liability so they can boost their profits. However, sometimes they unarguably have a good point. Here are a couple of recent mainstream media stories extracted by American legal weblog Overlawyered.com:

"Disturbed, Angelo Delgrande shot and wounded his parents and himself in a June 1995 dispute. He then received surgery at a Westchester County, N.Y. hospital. That night, he yanked the tubes and monitoring devices from his body, then leapt off the second story of an adjacent parking garage in a suicide bid. He is now paraplegic. Delgrande sued the hospital for failing to treat his depression and keep him indoors. Last October, he won $9 million."

"A woman who says she was attacked by a 3-foot-tall goose is suing Palm Beach County, claiming the county should not have allowed the bird to roam in a public park." Darlene Griffin, 30, says she was attacked on Feb. 5 in Okeeheelee Park. The county contends that it has no duty to protect parkgoers from "obvious" dangers."

Fortunately, although Australian law was arguably heading in America's litigation-happy direction, at least prior to the recent Ipp and Neaves reports recommending substantial tort law reform, a case like that of Ms Griffin probably wouldn't succeed here. The leading Australian case is the High Court's 1998 decision in Romeo v Conservation Commission of the Northern Territory, where it was held (rather like the US county authority apparently contends in the Griffin Goose case) that a public authority has no duty of care to guard against obvious dangers. The facts in Romeo involved a 16 year old girl who got very drunk one evening by chugging a substantial part of a bottle of Bundaberg Rum at a beachfront park in Darwin, and then proceeded to stagger over a cliff which she knew was there and which was fenced (though not very well). She became paraplegic as a result.

On the other hand, there is the notorious Swain case, where an inebriated man won $3.75 million in damages from Waverley Council in Sydney after he dived into surf at Bondi Beach between the flags, hit his head on a sandbar and became a quadriplegic! I see that the appeal in Swain was argued just before Christmas (on 18 December). Arguing that the Court of Appeal should not order the case to be reheard before a fresh jury because Swain would now have no chance of success (given the prejudicial publicity about what a bad joke the verdict was), Swain's counsel Paul Menzies QC said his client had been "led to catastrophe" by the council's surf life saving flags. Menzies' submissions appear to have conveniently ignored the fact that swimming flags are always, and necessarily, placed adjacent to a (relatively shallow) sandbank. Any surf beach consists of sandbanks and deep channels. Waves mostly break onto the sandbank, and the water drains out to sea via the channels (forming rip currents in the process). The result of positioning swimming flags anywhere other than on a sandbank would be that many swimmers would be swept out to sea in the rips and drown!

Perhaps ominously for Mr Swain, one of the Court of Appeal judges hearing his case was Justice Ipp, who not long ago recommended to the federal government that tort law be reformed to restrict plaintiffs from pursuing actions like this one.

2003-01-31T20:54:00.000-08:00

Beads and trinkets

If you judged only by the content of public debate in Australia, you would be convinced it's beyond argument that this country's contemporary record on land rights and Aboriginal self-determination compares very unfavourably with similar nations having indigenous minorities. The United States, for instance. Moreover, you'd probably be absolutely convinced that things have become much worse since the Howard government came to power.

Compare this article by Graeme Neate (president of Australia's National Native Title Tribunal) with this one by US academic Jacob Levy, about a breaking scandal involving the US federal government's Individual Indian Money (IIM) trust fund, and see if you still hold the same opinion when you're finished. Levy's opening remarks will give you some idea:

"In its dollar magnitude, it's almost certainly the biggest case of financial mismanagement in U.S. history. While a final tally is years away, in part because of suspiciously lost or missing documents, there's good reason to think that the dollar figures will dwarf WorldCom's $9 billion. It's a scandal that crosses partisan lines and reaches into high levels of both the Clinton and the Bush administrations."

Levy's article also briefly documents the history of American misdeeds with Indian lands following the conclusion of treaties during the 19th century. It isn't a pretty picture. I'm not making this comparison to foster complacency or self-congratulation among Australians, just suggesting that the reconciliation debate could do with a bit of perspective and proportion.

2003-01-31T16:18:00.000-08:00

All about oil?

Gummo Trotsky has just posted what appears to be the first of a series of blogs analysing whether military action in Iraq fits the definition of a "just war". It isn't too hard to work out where he's going, but it should be interesting to watch how he gets there.

Tim Dunlop notes claims that Saddam didn't really gas his own Kurdish population back in 1988 (which obviously suits the leftie anti-war case). In fact, so the claims go, it was probably the Iranians. To his credit, Tim has updated his post to link an excellent analysis by Glen Rangwala, drawn to Tim's attention by a contributor to his comment box, which appears to completely debunk such assertions. I have to confess that I lack the technical expertise to evaluate some of Rangwala's assertions, but the case he makes certainly sounds convincing. At least until someone points to credible material throwing doubt on Rangwala's points, I think we can safely conclude that Saddam did gas the Kurds.

Finally, Rob Schaap (and by the way, welcome back from holidays, Rob) says, in the comment box to my most recent blog on Iraq: "The White House is bent on a PNAC-inspired grab, not just to enrich its constituents, but to use its control of oil to keep the rest of the first world in its place. They said they'd do it, and they're doing it. " Of course, it's the stock standard leftie "it's all about oil" propaganda line, but it provides a useful springboard for a rant of my own.

Frankly, despite the fact that I've come to a pro-military action position, I don't disagree with the proposition that considerations having to do with Iraq's vast oil reserves are a part of US strategic thinking; it would be surprising if that weren't the case. As I've suggested recently, just about any government decision involves multiple motivations, or at least multiple considerations. Arguments that one factor is dominant over others are usually just displays of the protagonists' own political orientations. Incidentally, the same point disposes of Gummo's very interesting "just war" musings.

John Howard and others have attempted to debunk the "it's all about oil" line by pointing out that Bush could easily secure cheaper, assured oil supplies by doing a deal with Saddam for removal of sanctions. While that's probably true, it's also just as simplistic and misleading as the "it's all about oil" line he seeks to refute. Saddam would remain a wily customer who continued to play both ends against the middle, and would certainly continue to see advantage in playing cartel ball with OPEC to keep overall oil supplies sufficiently restricted as to maintain prices at a respectable level. By comparison, a more compliant client regime installed following US-led military action might well be amenable to opening the taps and forcing prices down to below $20 a barrel again, where many in the US would like them.

On a more micro level, it might well be that the US hopes that, in the long term, a more friendly client regime might be more favourably disposed to granting a greater proportion of new oil-related contracts to American companies. In the short term that's unlikely, because French and Russian companies seem to have things fairly well tied up, and their governments will certainly continue to threaten use of their UNSC veto powers to extract a US promise of honouring those contracts.

However, all this is merely one factor (albeit a significant one) among many involved in a decision to pursue the military option in Iraq. Saddam's longstanding and undiminished determination to acquire a major WOMD capacity, and to use it to achieve quasi-imperial domination in the world's most strategic region, is a far more important factor (but then, as I observed above, perhaps I'm just portraying my own political orientations). Similarly, and whether it's Bush's dominant motivation or merely an incidental benefit, the fact that military action will get rid of a particularly odious regime which oppresses and murders its own people in large numbers (and sponsors terrorism, albeit not by Al Qaeda), should not be underestimated or dismissed as irrelevant (as Rob Schaap and most others on the Left tend to do).

Postscript - I suspect Gummo is heading towards pretty much the same place Hugh Mackay has already reached in a single glib and utterly fatuous op-ed column in today's SMH and Age. Not that I'm suggesting Gummo's reasoning will be fatuous; Gummo runs rings around poor old Hugh in the brain-cell stakes - which isn't actually saying very much, mind you. On the other hand, Hugh has parlayed soft-left waffle into a very lucrative career, so he's certainly not silly from a material standpoint. Professor Bunyip puts it much more elegantly (if vitriolically) than I could ever manage. But I suppose Me No No will just write this off as another bad faith attempt to curry academic favour.

Postscript 2 - I note that, despite the fact that all the main left-ish bloggers (except Rob Corr) have posted in my comment boxes in the last 24 hours, not one of them has so far made any attempt to grapple with the principal substantive argument I've been advancing since I began posting on Iraq a couple of days ago. Just to remind you, that argument is that military intervention in Iraq is justified because the only viable alternative is long-term maintenance of weapons inspections and a supporting blockade, and that inevitably leads to ever-escalating anti-western bitterness in the Muslim world, and ultimately to Al Qaeda, Bali and September 11. I'm sure it's not a completely unanswerable argument, but a response is certainly required IMO.

2003-01-31T03:58:00.000-08:00

Lawyers stalking Harry Potter

The Evening Standard has a very strange story involving the latest Harry Potter movie:

"Dobby, the computer-animated elf in the new Harry Potter film, could be at the centre of a court battle over his resemblance to Russian president Vladimir Putin.

A Russian law firm is reportedly drawing up legal action against the special effects people who dreamt up Dobby, arguing that the ugly but caring elf has been modelled on Mr Putin.

The Kremlin and Warner Bros, producer of Harry Potter And The Chamber Of Secrets, have declined to comment but the controversy has stirred emotions in Russia."

Yale University's Lawmeme has some brief observations about it here.

2003-01-31T03:31:00.000-08:00

Tim Takes Talent To Ten

I can't think of anything wise or even sensible to say about the Waterfall rail disaster, so I think I'll just leave the families of the dead to mourn and wait for answers. A not quite as depressing story (but still pretty bad for Darwin sports fans) is that Tim Lane, the King of sports broadcasters, is leaving the ABC after 30 years to commentate AFL on the Ten TV network. Bruce McAvaney isn't fit to shine Tim's shoes, and the less said about Eddie McGuire the better.

The reason I said it wasn't good news for Darwin fans is that we don't get Channel 10 on free to air TV - only 7, 9, ABC and SBS. However, at least Tim was given a proper send-off by the ABC. There's a laudatory article on ABC Online, and I listened to a long, excellent career retrospective interview between Tim and a panel of local Darwin ABC radio sports staff earlier this afternoon. What a contrast with Packer's Nine network, where any employee who dares to defect is instantly and unceremoniously frog-marched out the door like a common criminal.

One thing that carping right-wing critics like Uncle at ABC Watch have never acknowledged (so far as I can recall) is the ABC's extraordinary role in fostering and developing Australia's broadcast media talent, not only sports journalists but also current affairs and children's TV. All three commercial TV networks are crowded with talent carefully nurtured and developed at public expense by the ABC. If it was ever abolished, as many conservatives seem to wish, then Packer, Murdoch and Stokes would actually have to spend their own money on developing local talent. Maybe that's why you never hear them joining the Tories' almost Pavlovian "kick the ABC" bandwaggon.

Update - I see Tony the Teacher has a much more jaundiced view of Tim Lane. It must be the shock of having all those little mongrels back at school after 6 weeks holiday. I said in a comment box earlier today, it'd be a boring world if we all had the same tastes. However, in this case there's no room for argument. Tony's just plain wrong, and he should pull his head in.

2003-01-30T19:36:00.000-08:00

Reprising Iraq argument

In my essay yesterday, I put up what I think is a reasonably logical reason which justifies military action in Iraq. Surprisingly (to me anyway) it hasn't attracted any discussion at all. Comment box debate got sidetracked by an interesting (but ultimately pointless) discussion about whether America had experienced war in the 20th century.

My principal argument is that regime-changing war is the only available alternative to a long-term weapons inspection regime and military blockade, which is the only other way to stop Saddam re-instituting a WOMD program. In turn, it's the presence of western forces on "holy" muslim ground which gave rise to Al Qaeda, and ultimately to September 11. Decisive military action would put an early end to western blockade and occupation, and remove the principal factor inflaming relations between the Muslim and western worlds.

In fact, with a somewhat different spin, much of the Left actually makes pretty much the same argument, when they assert that the US should examine its foreign policies to find explanations for 9/11. The main foreign policy factors they usually cite are the Gulf War, sanctions against Iraq and America's support of Israel.

The logic of the Left's position should suggest support for military action, as the only obvious way to put an end to sanctions and the oppression of the Iraqi people, but of course they don't see it that way. Instead, the Left usually avoids trying to suggest any viable solution to the Iraq dilemma (John Quiggin is an honourable exception). When you've seized the high moral ground, practicalities are beneath your dignity. Far easier to sit back and criticise the Great Satan whatever it does. The Left's position on Iraq is that of Pontius Pilate writ global.

2003-01-30T18:26:00.000-08:00

Mandatory life for murder?

John Quiggin blogged briefly yesterday on issues of crime and punishment. John raised a range of issues that I intend blogging about later; most notably I want to talk about "shaming" strategies as an alternative to imprisonment, at least for less serious crimes.

However, I responded in John's comment box with some observations about mandatory life imprisonment for murder. The Northern Territory's approach to this area is currently under review by the Martin Labor government. Mandatory life imprisonment for murder exists in many (perhaps most) States. However, generally it is possible for the sentencing judge to fix a non-parole period. It's then open to the offender to apply for parole (and re-apply annually if they want) once the non-parole period has expired. In the NT it's different: life means life. The judge has no power to fix a non-parole period, and the offender has no legal capacity to apply for parole at any time. When this system was introduced, defence lawyers argued that it would make it more difficult to obtain murder convictions, because juries would be reluctant to convict in those circumstances. That hasn't proven to be the case.

Despite the absence of any possibility of parole for murderers in the NT, they can apply for release/clemency under the "royal prerogative". That effectively means they can apply to Cabinet, which may "advise" the Administrator (the equivalent of a State Governor) to exercise the prerogative of mercy and release the prisoner. The former CLP government had an announced policy that it would not entertain release applications until at least 20 years after conviction. In fact, no murderer convicted since self-government in 1978 has ever been released from a NT prison.

Personally, I think a system where decisions on release of prisoners are in political hands is extremely undesirable. Unequal justice may result: a government may be less likely to entertain a release application in the typical "Laura Norder" hysteria leading up to an election. Having such decisions made on an informal policy basis rather than pursuant to clear legislative rules is also undesirable, especially where the policy may change depending on which party is in power. This didn't seem like such a problem when it appeared that the CLP was in government in perpetuity, but it now seems likely that the NT will remain like other parts of Australia, with government changing hands periodically.

I favour a regime where life remains life, but murderers have a statutory right to seek release from an independent Parole Board (rather than Cabinet) after a designated period of time. I personally favour that period remaining at 20 years (as under the CLP's informal policy), but I could live with a slightly shorter specified period (say 17 or 18 years). The Parole Board would be expressly required not to permit release unless satisfied beyond reasonable doubt that the offender no longer posed a re-offending risk to the community.

You will note that this system allows no scope for judicial discretion at sentencing of the offender. The omission is quite deliberate. In John Quiggin's comment box, Dave Ricardo posed the question: "What's wrong with abolishing mandatory life sentences for murder? Let the judges exercise some judgement. That is their job." Here is my answer. First, murder is not like other crimes. There are gradations of other crimes, in the sense that you can meaningfully talk about more and less serious rapes or robberies. Murder, however, is different. It only ever has a single result: death of the victim, and grieving and permanent loss for remaining relatives. The fact that there may be differing degrees of violence and terror inflicted prior to death is irrelevant: the victim is no longer around to experience any differing results flowing from it. Nor do differences in the quantity of barbarism prior to death materially affect the grief and suffering of the relatives. Is a few moments of terror and agony a less bad experience for the victim than hours of torture and degradation? Remaining relatives will never know, although they ask themselves those questions again and again.

Criminological research shows that no type of sentence for murder has any measurable deterrent effect, either general or specific, so deterrence simply doesn't enter the argument. The highest incidence of pickpocketing in 18th and 19th century Britain occurred amongst the crowds watching pickpockets being hung.

Rehabilitation is less clear-cut as a factor. It may be that offenders released earlier have a greater prospect of rehabilitation than those who serve longer sentences, although again criminological research doesn't clearly show any such effect. Thus, there is no compelling reason why judges should be given a discretion to impose different non-parole periods on different murderers. I argue that individualised justice is best achieved at the other end of the justice system. Once the offender has served an irreducible minimum (18 or 20 years), a Parole Board must consider on an individualised basis whether the offender merits release. That decision is made on the basis of useful evidence having some probative value (like psychological reports, and the offender's record while in prison), rather than the crystal ball-gazing, wholly speculative nonsense that sentencing judges purport to take into account when fixing a non-parole period 12 or 15 or more years in advance of their decision taking effect.

Finally, the major reason why I strongly oppose allowing judges to set differential non-parole periods in murder cases is that it necessarily further brutalises and traumatises the remaining relatives. Under the NT's current "life means life" regime, a jury verdict of guilty of murder is instantly followed by the judge's imposition of a life sentence, and the prisoner's removal from court to begin serving it. The sense of relief, release and catharsis the victims' relatives experience at that moment is one of the most powerful and positive emotions any person can ever experience. That is when you can begin putting your lives back together, letting go of grief, making sense of the senseless. In States where judges retain a discretion to fix differentiated non-parole periods, that healing effect is drastically reduced. When the jury announces its verdict, the judge usually adjourns the case for argument on sentencing at a later time. For remaining relatives, the tension and uncertainty are extended. Frequently, the defence sentencing submissions then compound the agony, further traumatising and brutalising them. Defence counsel's job is to persuade the judge to impose the lowest possible non-parole period. That necessarily involves putting submissions about the offender's supposed good character (or alternatively his tragic and unhappy life), that the murder was totally out of character, and that it was much less objectively serious than the worst category of murder. A good defence counsel can make it sound like the murderer was the principal victim in the situation! The experience of this process for the real victim's family is quite simply appalling. For this most serious of crimes, I say the offender's actions in deliberately taking another life should result in his interest in individualised justice being subordinated to the interest of the victim's family in being spared the agony and further trauma of self-serving defence submissions aimed (in effect) at minimising the magnitude of the loss they have suffered.

2003-01-30T01:53:00.000-08:00

Comments still disappearing

I'm afraid I was over-optimistic. It seems that new comments are still disappearing (although again only some of them). it also seems to be happening to John Quiggin. As John suggests on his blog, if you think your comments are worth preserving (and many are IMHO), you should save them on your hard drive as well as posting them. That way, if they disappear you can repost them later.

2003-01-29T23:55:00.000-08:00

Tim Blair should lighten up

Tim Blair has posted a piece heaping abuse on some female streaker and Australian Democrats candidate I've never heard of. Apparently her name is Karen Jackson . Tim must be getting old. I mean, Karen's political views are pretty silly, I admit. But her website is pretty cool: lots of nudity and links to free nude young women's webcam sites and so on. I haven't found a photo of Karen on her site yet, so I don't know whether I could be persuaded to vote for her despite her silly policies. At the end of the day, though, a politician who promotes streaking and nudity can't be all bad.

Karen also seems to have been tipped off about Tim's blog story. Her website contains this note:

"Streaking Becomes Major Reason to Bash Lefties
Hello to all you right wing bloggers out there who've ended up at Streakerama because you hate me and all I stand for. Welcome. Have a look around. Enjoy. Please check out the smut page, it will calm you down.
Thought for the day: Running around naked after a few beers beats beating the war drum any day."

This girl has spirit! Then again, we could always run around naked after a few beers and beat the war drum as well. Just a thought.

2003-01-29T23:31:00.000-08:00

Comments disappear into cyberspace

Readers may have noticed that this blog has been very slow to load for the last hour or so, and the comments links have not been displayed. It appears that both problems were connected. The Haloscan website was also down until a few minutes ago.

The comments links have now reappeared at the foot of each post, and the comment box seems to be working. However, all existing comments seem to have been lost. AAAAAAGH!!!! I don't understand what has happened. John Quiggin also uses Haloscan, and his comment links disappeared at the same time as mine, but they've now reappeared and all his existing comments seem to be intact. I apologise to all Troppo Armadillo readers who have taken the time to contribute to the comment boxes. Please keep contributing. With a bit of luck it won't happen again in the immediate future, and the existing comments might even re-materialise (although I have my doubts). Maybe it's a blessing in disguise. I'm now determined to re-organise my priorities and shift across to Movable Type ASAP. However, it's still bound to take a week or two until it's up and running, so please keep visiting and commenting here until further notice. It's a bloody shame really, because there were some really interesting comment threads that have now been vaporised.

Update - Actually, it seems that most (though not all) of the existing comments further down the page are still there. It's just the last 6 or 7 posts (today and part of yesterday) where all existing comments have disappeared). I guess it could be worse, but it's still time to move to a MT blog. Both Blogger and the various free commenting facilities are hopelessly unreliable.

2003-01-29T23:05:00.000-08:00

Dave Barry blasphemes Tolkien

I have to confess I'd never heard of Dave Barry until I bought voice recognition software 2 or 3 years ago, and discovered that the training routine you have to do to get it to recognise your voice involves reading out loud about 20 pages of Dave's book Dave Barry in Cyberspace. I thought parts of it were pretty funny the first time, but after I reached the fourth re-read because my old PC kept crashing and erasing my voice files, the jokes began to wear a bit thin. As a result, I was never tempted to rush out and buy a Dave Barry book.

Dave, it seems, is an American humorous columnist with the Miami Herald, who frequently recycles his columns into books. This is a not infrequent scam among some columnists, although I can't see Phillip Adams, Janet Albrechtsen or even Tim Blair making huge book sales, and the less said about Hugh Mackay the better. Dave's most recent column takes the piss out of Lord of the Rings Part II. Although I'm an unapologetic LOTR fan, I have to admit the column is pretty funny. Have a read. Dave also now has a blog. I don't regularly read American blogs (except the legal ones), however I might have to make an exception for Dave.

2003-01-29T21:48:00.000-08:00

Jason's manifesto

Provoked beyond endurance by continual goading from Ron Mead that he's a leftie in the making, Jason Soon has posted a personal manifesto on his blog. It sets out his position on a wide range of basic and controversial political, economic and social issues. Seems to me it vindicates my assessment of Jason (in the drop down menus) as a centrist (at least by my fairly loose definition - that is a liberal democrat who doesn't take a doctrinaire neo-liberal view that just about all government regulation or intervention is bad).

Moreover, from my limited observations of Jason's belief system over the rather short time I've been blogging (6 months or so), Jason has not noticeably slid towards the left. In fact his belief system seems to me to be quite logically consistent (at least as much as most people). Ron seems to think that you can't really be a liberal unless you hold conservative social views as well as market-oriented economic beliefs, and that any degree of belief in the possible efficacy of government action disqualifies you from any claim to liberalism.

Incidentally, although I would qualify some of Jason's points in various relatively minor ways, my own views mostly coincide with his, except that I think maybe small tax rises might be desirable to fund areas like health, education, public housing and pure research and development at adequate levels. Jason seems to think that cutting out middle class welfare would do the trick. Make of it what you will.

2003-01-29T20:44:00.000-08:00

War creeps closer

This article in the Wall Street Journal (link courtesy Patrick) strikes me as being very significant. Its authors are Jose María Aznar, Jose-Manuel Durão Barroso, Silvio Berlusconi, Tony Blair, Vaclav Havel, Peter Medgyessy, Leszek Miller and Anders Fogh Rasmussen, who are respectively the prime ministers of Spain, Portugal, Italy, the U.K., Hungary, Poland and Denmark. Mr. Havel is the Czech president. They all express complete solidarity with President Bush and echo his stance by saying that "We are confident that the Security Council will face up to its responsibilities."

According to this article on The Voice of America:

"The U.N. Security Council has ended a day of closed-door talks on extending the inspection process in Iraq, with 11 of the 15 Council member states saying they favor giving inspectors more time.

France, Russia and China, three permanent council members with veto power, along with Germany, Mexico, Chile, Guinea, Cameroon, Syria, Angola and Pakistan, all supported extending the U.N. inspections.

Bulgaria and Spain backed the United States and Britain, which argue that Iraq has failed to disarm and must be made to do so.

On February fifth, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell is set to give the Security Council the latest U.S. intelligence information on Iraq. It is expected to show that Iraq is still hiding banned weapons of mass destruction. Mr. Powell is due to present information linking Iraq to terrorist groups

In Washington Wednesday, White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said diplomacy on Iraq is in its final phase."

With Russia indicating a tentatively pro-military action stance, it now appears very likely that the UNSC will vote to approve military action in the near future. Dr Blix is due to report again to the UNSC on 15 February. Depending on the impact Colin Powell makes on 5 February, I would expect the UNSC to pass a resolution authorising miltary action shortly after Blix's next report, well within the preferred US military action timetable. Given that Arab states have also been pushing for an option allowing Saddam Hussein to go into safe exile if he agrees to go quietly, the following sentence in the Voice of America report is also significant:

"Secretary of State Colin Powell said the United States will help find a haven for Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein and his top aides if the Iraqi leader agrees to go into exile."

Hopefully Saddam will take up the offer of sanctuary, resulting in a "best case" outcome without any bloodshed.

2003-01-29T15:35:00.000-08:00

It's Time

Federal ALP leader Simon Crean's response to US President George W. Bush's State of the Union address was to ask rhetorically: "I mean, if they've got new information, first of all, why wasn't it presented to Hans Blix and the United Nations and the weapons inspectors, so it could be included in the report that was handed down yesterday?"

Several bloggers (e.g. Bargarz) have suggested one possible reason: the UNMOVIC inspection effort is hopelessly compromised, with French and other "moles" tipping off the Iraqis before a particular site is inspected. It may well be that the Bush administration has concluded that providing WOMD materials stash locations is tantamount to sending the information straight to Saddam so he can hide them somewhere better. Whether that is true or not, it is certainly clear that UNMOVIC is unlikely to achieve smashing success, not because Saddam doesn't still have a large stash of WOMD, but because he's become so adept at playing games of deception. As Bush observed in his S of U address:

"The dictator of Iraq is not disarming. To the contrary, he is deceiving. From intelligence sources, we know, for instance, that thousands of Iraqi security personnel are at work hiding documents and materials from the UN inspectors sanitizing inspection sites, and monitoring the inspectors themselves. Iraqi officials accompany the inspectors in order to intimidate witnesses. Iraq is blocking U-2 surveillance flights requested by the United Nations. Iraqi intelligence officers are posing as the scientists inspectors are supposed to interview. Real scientists have been coached by Iraqi officials on what to say. And intelligence sources indicate that Saddam Hussein has ordered that scientists who cooperate with UN inspectors in disarming Iraq will be killed, along with their families."

In any event, Bush outlined the information he argues justifies military action, although not (except in one case) the sources of intelligence on which it is based:

"The United Nations concluded in 1999 that Saddam Hussein had biological weapons materials sufficient to produce over 25,000 liters of anthrax enough doses to kill several million people. He has not accounted for that material. He has given no evidence that he has destroyed it.

The United Nations concluded that Saddam Hussein had materials sufficient to produce more than 38,000 liters of botulinum toxin enough to subject millions of people to death by respiratory failure. He has not accounted for that material. He has given no evidence that he has destroyed it.

Our intelligence officials estimate that Saddam Hussein had the materials to produce as much as 500 tons of sarin, mustard, and VX nerve agent. In such quantities, these chemical agents also could kill untold thousands. He has not accounted for these materials. He has given no evidence that he has destroyed them.

U.S. intelligence indicates that Saddam Hussein had upwards of 30,000 munitions capable of delivering chemical agents. Inspectors recently turned up 16 of them, despite Iraq s recent declaration denying their existence. Saddam Hussein has not accounted for the remaining 29,984 of these prohibited munitions. He has given no evidence that he has destroyed them.

From three Iraqi defectors we know that Iraq, in the late 1990s, had several mobile biological weapons labs. These are designed to produce germ warfare agents, and can be moved from place to place to evade inspectors. Saddam Hussein has not disclosed these facilities. He has given no evidence that he has destroyed them."

Much of this information is not, of course, secret in any event. It derives from verified UNSCOM findings of WOMD materials uncovered but not destroyed at the time the inspectors were ejected by Saddam in late 1998. If you believe that Saddam has maganimously destroyed these materials in the 5 years no-one was watching him, but somehow forgot to record the details or mention them in his 12,000 word declaration to the Security Council, then you believe in fairies at the bottom of the garden.

Saddam manifestly still has a formidable WOMD capability; has demonstrated a steely (if duplicitous) determination to retain and expand it for more than a decade now, in the face of world demands that he disarm; and shown a remarkable capacity to hide weapons capability despite intensive surveillance and inspection. Moreover, he is a leader with a proven track record of attacking and invading neighbouring countries and butchering and terrorising his own people. He clearly harbours ambitions of imperial domination of the Arab world if and when he obtains nuclear capability, which he has demonstrated he remains determined to do.

What are the alternatives to decisive military action? First, the UN could decide to proceed with the current round of weapons inspections, and turn it into a UNSCOM-style operation, destroying all weapons located over a period of years. Having regard to Saddam's long record of deceit and hiding of weapons capabilities, we could never be confident that everything had been found, even when that process was complete. At the very least, Saddam and his scientists will certainly still retain the knowledge to re-institute biological, chemical and nuclear weapons programs as soon as the inspectors leave and the UN blockade is lifted. It is literally impossible to locate every piece of paper, floppy disk, hard drive, zip drive, and CD in Iraq that might contain detailed information allowing WOMD programs to be re-commissioned rapidly. There is already incontrovertible evidence that Saddam has organised a large scale operation to hide documents and computer records. Saddam Hussein with nuclear weapons doesn't bear contemplation.

Of course, in theory, Saddam's ability to re-institute WOMD programs could be contained (as it has been between 1991 and now) by having weapons inspectors remain in Iraq more or less permanently, supported (as they would need to be) by an ongoing permanent naval and military blockade involving ships in the Persian Gulf and nearby areas, and troops on the ground in Saudi Arabia. Yet it is this very western military and inspection presence that has been the central, vital spur (along with the Israel - Palestinian conflict) to the creation of Al Qaeda, and the spiralling growth of bitter division and hatred between the Muslim and western worlds. In a very real way, both September 11 and Bali were a direct result of the ongoing necessity to have western troops and inspectors on the ground in "holy" Muslim territory, in the absence of decisive military action against Saddam.

It's time to stop the hand-wringing and take decisive miltary action to get rid of Saddam. War is horrible, and there will certainly be many deaths even on a best case scenario. But the available alternatives are even worse.

2003-01-29T04:53:00.000-08:00

World Social Forum

I just saw on SBS News (though I can't find the story on their website) that the greenies have been holding a "World Social Forum" in Brazil, to compete with the World Economic Forum in Davos. The Forum was addressed by great thinkers including Noam Chomsky, actor Danny Glover and Che Guevara's daughter. Delegates had no trouble agreeing that they opposed war in Iraq, global free trade and genetically modified foods.

I can't understand why this vitally important world event has been virtually ignored by Australia's media (except SBS). Surely at least the Sydney Morning Herald could have been expected to appreciate the Forum's relevance. I can only assume Margo must have been temporarily overcome by the stench of stale urine fumes from her bog. I only hope she at least flushes it after a Number 2, otherwise the methane build-up could lead to a nasty accident when she lights up one of those rollies she's just started smoking. I wish Bunyip hadn't drawn Margo's personal habits to our attention.There are some things it's better not to know.

Update - I underestimated the ABC. It has just reported that World Social Forum participants have been demonstrating against attempts by the great Satan USA to stop poor Bolivian farmers from cultivating the coca leaf for cocaine production. Apparently this is an example of US imperialist neo-liberal dominance. Where will Dubbya's infamies end?

2003-01-28T23:12:00.000-08:00

More global warming humbug

You know the greenies' propaganda is effective when the insurance industry starts jumping on the global warming bandwaggon. An article by Tony Coleman, chief risk officer and group actuary of Insurance Australia Group, in today's Australian, peddles all the usual grossly inaccurate and exaggerated global warming propaganda lines so beloved of green spokespeople . Of course, cynics might suggest that Coleman's pitch is not entirely unrelated to attempts to justify the insurance industry's huge increase in premiums over the last couple of years: if they can make us all feel guilty by persuading us that it's our own faults for not making John Howard ratify the Kyoto Protocol, maybe it won't occur to us that the insurers are ripping us off.

I can't be bothered going through the whole litany of misinformation in Coleman's article. Just one example will do. Coleman, along with greenies like Bob Brown, suggests that global warming might be causing the current bushfires:

"Scientists believe this global warming trend is driving climate change and could be causing new and increasingly unpredictable weather patterns and events.

The earth's climate is far too complex for global warming and resulting climate change to ever be identified as the cause of disasters such as a specific fire, storm, or flood.

But the consensus of the world's top climate change scientists, working with the UN-convened Inter-Governmental Panel on Climate Change, is we are likely to experience more frequent and intense extreme weather events in the future."

Is this actually true? Well, er, no. Chapter 2.7.4 (Summary) of the IPCC's latest report says:

"There is little sign of long-term changes in tropical storm intensity and frequency, but inter-decadal variations are pronounced. Owing to incomplete data and relatively few analyses, we are uncertain as to whether there has been any large-scale, long-term increase in the Northern Hemisphere extra-tropical cyclone intensity and frequency though some, sometimes strong, multi-decadal variations and recent increases were identified in several regions. Limited evidence exists for a decrease in cyclone frequency in the Southern Hemisphere since the early 1970s, but there has been a paucity of analyses and data. Recent analyses of changes in severe local weather (tornadoes, thunder days, lightning and hail) in a few selected regions provide no compelling evidence for widespread systematic long-term changes."

Chapter 9, dealing with future projections of weather and extreme weather events, also provides no basis for Coleman's alarmist assertion of a scientific "consensus" that extreme weather events wil lincrease. See especially Chapter 9.3.6.6 .

However, why let the facts spoil a good scare story? In fact, a fair summary of the current state of scientific knowledge (according to the official IPCC reports) is:
(1) There is no evidence of an increase in extreme weather events to date;
(2) Computer models do not in general predict any long-term net increase in extreme weather events;
(3) In fact if anything the reverse is the case. The computer models predict that the effect of global warming (to the extent it occurs) will be that most warming will occur at high latitudes, at night and in winter. This will decrease the temperature differential between equatorial and polar regions, thus decreasing global thermal circulations and, probably, reducing extreme weather events. This reduced thermal circulation is one reason why at least some climate scientists suggest an outside possibility that global warming might paradoxically trigger the early onset of the next ice age.
(4) Global warming will cause the earth, in net terms, to become warmer and wetter (not drier).
(5) Thus, in aggregate, rainfall will increase, and drought and bushfire conditions will decrease, not the reverse. Nevertheless, it is likely that rainfall effects will be unevenly distributed. Some regions will become much wetter, while some may even become slightly drier. However, computer models are incapable of predicting this with any precision, and scientists do not claim that they can.

On balance, therefore, the current drought and bushfires in Australia almost certainly have no connection at all with global warming. They are caused by 2 large El Nino events occurring slightly closer together than normal. You wouldn't learn any of the above facts from reading the mainstream media, Greenpeace propaganda etc, even though these are the clear findings of official IPCC research to date. Makes you wonder why it is Bjorn Lomborg being accused of "scientific dishonesty", doesn't it?

Postscript - A very slight qualification to the above. There is one passage in Chapter 9.3.6.3 of IPCC Report 1 concerning non-tropical storms which shoud be noted for completeness:

"An analysis of an ensemble of four future climate change experiments using a global coupled model with increased CO2 and sulphate aerosols showed an increase in the number of deep low pressure systems in Northern Hemisphere winter, while the number of weaker storms was reduced".

Otherwise, the effect of the IPCC Report is exactly as summarised above i.e. almost exactly the opposite impression you would get from reading green propaganda and the work of lazy mainstream journos who never bother to check the research for themselves.

2003-01-28T21:26:00.000-08:00

Suing Google

Lawmeme has an interesting story about a commercial "linkfarm" outfit in the US which sells web services to clients, involving linking lots of sites to each other in order to boost their Google PageRank (Google's technology assigns ranking to search results on the basis of how many other sites have linked to them - which is one reason why even quite obscure blogs often achieve considerable prominence in Google's search engine - linking other blogs is central to blogging).

The Linkfarm outfit ("SearchKing Network") has commenced proceedings against Google, claiming that it illegally interfered with SearchKing's business by reducing the PageRank of SearchKing's clients after Google discovered its artificial attempts to make a buck out of subverting Google's ranking algorithm.

Unfortunately for SearchKing (but fortunately for users who rely on Google producing authentically relevant results), it looks like Google probably has a lay-down misere defence based on First Amendment freedom of speech.

2003-01-28T20:09:00.000-08:00

Gianna's new blog

Gianna (surname blank) has begun a blog probably called She Sells Sanctuary (although there's no title at the top of the page - maybe she accidentally deleted one of the Blogger template tags). From memory, Gianna has been a fairly frequent contributor to Tim Dunlop's comment boxes. Moreover, I suspect she was inspired to begin blogging by Tim's excellent recent piece Letters to a new blogger. Well done, Sir Tim (he was also the one who recruited yours truly to the blogosphere, so now you know who to blame).

BTW Tim, when can we expect the second Letter to a New Blogger?

2003-01-28T19:01:00.000-08:00

Watersheds drain on the blogosphere

It must be something to do with the drought (or maybe global warming), but two ozploggers from opposite sides of the ideological divide have separately come up with "watershed" theories to explain current political phenomena (albeit on totally different subjects).

John Quiggin claims that the 1970s were a watershed for "progressive" politics: up until then the world was steadily "progressing" towards a democratic socialist paradise, but then history was hijacked by the evil neo-liberals, whose policies (John thinks) can only be characterised as "reactionary" or "conservative" (never progressive). Apparently socialists have a mortgage on progress. I comment further (not favourably, as you may have gathered) in John's comment box.

Professor Bunyip also nominates the 1970s as a "watershed". He hypothesises that until then US "realpolitik" alliances and interventions tended to have unfortunate consequences (like creating bloodthirsty, tyrannical client states arguably worse than the leftist regimes that might otherwise have prevailed). After that time, however (according to the Professor) the US got its act together, and its foreign interventions thereafter had largely benign or neutral effects (and sometimes even benign motives). Bunyip skates over a few situations that don't really help his theory: Nicaragua and Panama, for instance, not to mention ongoing uncritical sponsorship of Israel notwithstanding its treatment of Palestinians. Nevertheless, Bunyip has a point: the US does mostly pursue policies aimed at fostering the development of liberal democratic states, albeit that it still frequently forges expedient alliances with some very obnoxious regimes (Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, for instance). Bunyip's argument, though oversold, is a useful counterweight to the kneejerk "Great Satan" nonsense habitually peddled by much of the Left.

Update - John Quiggin's point was a bit more subtle than I gave him credit for (although I still disagree). Go and read his comment box, and add your own thoughts.

2003-01-28T16:57:00.000-08:00

McMillan on refugee law

ANU legal academic John McMillan has an excellent paper on refugee and immigration law on the Samuel Griffith Society website. It takes a fairly conservative stance; a refreshing antidote to some of the more extreme nonsense from the refugee lobby in the mainstream media. I agree with most of McMillan's points.

McMillan's paper is well worth reading (as are all the 2001 conference papers, which have just been posted at the SGC site). Mind you, the papers are very right wing almost without exception, and include a vacuous but entertaining diatribe from Piers Akerman and a typically ideologically-blinkered paper from that great favourite of the leftie blogosphere Janet Albrechtsen.

Come to think of it, it's rather a pity that the Samuel Griffith Society has become so thoroughly a creature of the Hard Right. The Society's ostensible raison d'etre is to foster the federalist ideal against the march of centralism. While that is certainly a common obsession of conservatives, federalism isn't inherently an exclusively Tory preserve. In fact, it's one of the more important components of Lockean liberal democratic constitutionalism. The Society's capture by the Right tends to detract from the potential it might otherwise have to galvanise support for federalism from those of a somewhat more progressive liberal persuasion (like moi, for instance).

2003-01-28T16:38:00.000-08:00

Gary goes to MT

Philosophical blogger Gary Sauer-Thompson has made the big move away from Blogger to a Movable Type blog. Check it out. Apparently Gary effected the big MT move with the assistance of that techno white knight of the blogosphere Bailz. Incidentally, Bailz has offered to give me similar help when I eventually bite the bullet and get a MT blog. In case Bailz (or Gareth Parker, who's also kindly offered similar assistance) is wondering why I'm dragging my feet, it's because I'm intending to co-locate my MT blog with the Victims of Crime website. I still have quite a bit of work to do on the V of C site, and I'm not likely to get time to finish it at least for the next few weeks. Hence I decided that a (probably temporary) move back to Blogger was better than just not blogging at all for that length of time.

Incidentally, I see Gary S-T has blogged on that perennial electoral harlot Laura Norder, with particular reference to mandatory sentencing (which the Libs' John Brogden is apparently threatening to introduce in New South Wales if elected). It's a topic on which there's lots to say: I can feel a blog coming on. But probably not today.

2003-01-28T16:17:00.000-08:00

American lawyers argue over abortion

As I mentioned a couple of days ago, American constitutional law academic Jack Balkin has been musing on his blog about what might happen to Roe v Wade (the Supreme Court's decision holding that a woman's right to abortion is constitutionally protected) if/when President Bush appoints ultra-conservatives to replace two Justices who are soon to retire.

Another US legal blogger, Matt Evans, puts the contrary position, and does so very powerfully IMHO. Evans seems to be something of a Christian fundamentalist (which is a long way from my own orientation), but his argument strikes me as rather more intellectually solid than Balkin's. Like many "critical legal studies" scholars (the US po-mo lawyer clique - there is no Australian equivalent), Balkin often seems to use legal reasoning as little more than a flimsy pretext to bolster his personal political prejudices. Of course, that's what CLS/po-mo advocates argue all lawyers do; it's just (so they think) that they themselves are more honest about it. Evans' response to Balkin's abortion musings demonstrates the intellectual bankruptcy of such an approach.

2003-01-28T14:55:00.000-08:00

Jeff to the rescue

In an item posted yesterday, I expressed puzzlement at an apparent contradiction between US Supreme Court Justice Scalia's advocacy of an originalist approach to constitutional interpretation, but a textualist approach (essentially a sophisticated version of literalism) to interpreting ordinary legislation. I expressed the hope (rather lazily I confess) that a reader more knowledgeable than me about US law might come to the rescue in the comment box. Fortunately US academic lawyer and fellow blogger Jeff Cooper did so. He pointed me to a long essay by Justice Scalia in a book titled A Matter of Interpretation. It also includes commentary on Scalia's approach to interpretation by other legal luminaries including Ronald Dworkin. Here is a useful summary of Scalia's approach in a review from the Princeton Law Journal.

Essentially, Scalia in fact takes the same approach to interpreting the US Constitution as he does to ordinary legislation. The approach is to search for the objective original meaning of the text, rather than the subjective intentions of its enactors. The search is for the meaning the text would have had when read by an ordinary educated person at the time of enactment. Scalia's interpretive philosophy is almost indistinguishable from the predominant interpretive approach of Australia's High Court when interpreting the Constitution.

For post-modernists (or indeed those familiar with Wittgenstein or just about any other philosopher of the last 150 years or so) this may seem a bizarre and meaningless conceit: language doesn't have a single "objectively" determinable meaning, and can't be understood divorced from context. As I've mentioned previously on this blog, Justice McHugh acknowledges quite frankly that the search for objective original meaning is patently a fiction, but argues (quoting Samuel Popkin):

"The simple act of thinking about the meaning of statutory language in this broader context - which the judge must do - requires judgment about how the text should interact with its past and future. That is why, despite its being an obvious fiction, the judge when engaged in statutory interpretation is unable to do without the concept of legislative intent. Intent is matched with text as an essential aspect of statutory meaning, not because the judge has any confidence that legislative intent is knowable, but because 'intent' (or 'will') captures the idea that choices must be made in order to apply a text to facts. Legislative intent is a useful judicial construct because the judge is required to make the choices that best express the statutory text's meaning."

An originalist approach may be seen as reasonably persuasive when interpreting a constitution. Australia's Constitution, like its US counterpart, was drafted by delegates at a series of conventions. It was the product of a committee process, not a single guiding mind, and it will frequently be impossible to isolate any individual or group whose intentions were clearly determinative.

The application of that sort of fictionalised approach to determining the meaning of ordinary contemporary legislation (as opposed to a constitution) is much more democratically problematic. The intentions of the enactors more often than not will be fairly clearly known. They are elected by the people while judges are not. Nevertheless, Scalia argues (as summarized in the Princeton Law Journal article linked above):

"Scalia rejects the use of legislative history - floor debates, committee reports, and committee testimony preceding the enactment of a piece of legislation - as a tool for interpreting laws. ...

Ironically, says Justice Scalia, the use of legislative history arose as a backlash to freewheeling use of "legislative intent" as a cover for novel (mis)interpretations of laws from the bench. By attempting to ascertain what the legislature actually did intend, lawyers hoped to preclude the falsification of "intent" by judges. Now, however, says Scalia, the use of legislative history has grown so widespread that the old joke, "One should consult the text of the statute only when the legislative history is ambiguous" is no longer funny; one brief he read began its argument with a discussion of legislative history and then continued: "Unfortunately, the legislative debates are not helpful. Therefore, we turn to the other guidepost in this difficult area, statutory language."

Scalia rejects legislative history because he does not feel it helps to resolve ambiguities in the law. "On balance, [legislative history] has facilitated rather than deterred decisions that are based upon the courts’ policy preferences, rather than neutral principles of law." Almost any judge can find something in the legislative history to support the interpretation he personally wants to give to a law."

Scalia's argument may have a certain force in the American constitutional system, where the legislative and executive arms of government are entirely separate, and where political party discipline is nowhere near as rigid as in Australia. In the US, the executive government effectively loses control of legislation once it enters Congress, and it may well emerge amended into a quite different shape than it started out (even when, as now, the President's party controls both Houses). As with a constitution, ordinary American legislation may often not be the product of a single guiding mind, so that some form of search for objectified intention may make sense.

The Australian context is quite different. Here, Ministers are Members of Parliament, and virtually all Bills are products of the executive government and are carefully shepherded through the Parliament by the responsible Minister. Even in the Senate, which the government rarely controls, the Minister, or a Senate ministerial colleague representing the Minister in the Senate, will handle the committee stages of the debate where the Bill is examined and amended clause by clause. Where the Minister accepts amendments, the reason for it (that is, the statutory purpose or intent) will generally be made very clear.

In a system like that, ignoring the actual intentions of the parliament (and the executive government that guides its deliberations), in favour of a fictionalised search for "objective" intent, begins to look a lot like overt judicial defiance of the will of the peoples' elected representatives. That is certainly how former Chief Justice Garfield Barwick's employment of a textualist approach to interpreting ordinary legislation (most notably taxation legislation) was perceived. That perception led directly to the enactment of sections 15AA and 15AB of the Acts Interpretation Act. They expressly oblige judges to give effect to Parliament's actual intentions rather than the judge's fictional conception of "objective" intent derived in oracular fashion from the tea-leaves of the text with the aid of mysterious Latin incantations like expressio unius est exclusio alterius. That isn't to say that traditional textual interpretation has no place in Australian law, simply that actual legislative intent takes precedence where it is evident (as it usually will be, whatever the situation may be in the US).

2003-01-27T23:43:00.000-08:00

Bloke-ism is contagious

The Professor seems to have succumbed to rampant unreconstructed misogyny. Here at The Parish ... (oops Troppo Armadillo), we stoop only to puerile giggling about vaginas. One has to maintain standards, after all.

2003-01-27T21:30:00.000-08:00

What does it all mean?

The Volokh Conspiracy notes a US Supreme Court decision handed down today (FCC v Nextwave Personal Communications) which features an interesting debate between Justices Scalia and Breyer over textualist versus intentionalist approaches to statutory interpretation. Strangely, Justice Scalia, who is the arch-intentionalist on the Supreme Court Bench when it comes to interpreting the US Constitution, adopts a classical textualist approach (essentially a literal and legalistic approach to determining meaning) to interpreting ordinary statute law.

I have to confess I haven't read Justice Scalia sufficiently closely to be able to explain how he rationalises these apparently inconsistent approaches. Hopefully a reader more familiar with Scalia's thought and the US Supreme Court generally might help out in the comment box. Scalia (in the majority) observes in his usual trenchant style:

"The dissent finds it 'dangerous . . . to rely exclusively upon the literal meaning of a statute's words,' post, at 2 (opinion of BREYER, J.). Instead, it determines, in splendid isolation from that language, the purpose of the statute, which it takes to be 'to forbid discrimination against those who are, or were, in bankruptcy and, more generally, to prohibit governmental action that would undercut the 'fresh start' that is bankruptcy's promise,' post, at 4. It deduces these language-trumping 'purposes' from the most inconclusive of indications."

In Australia, this sort of judicial debate no longer occurs (at least at such a fundamental level). The Federal Parliament amended the Acts Interpretation Act in the early 1980s by including sections 15AA and 15AB, which provide respectively that courts must interpret legislation in accordance with the purpose or object for which it was enacted, and that in determining that purpose(s) they should have regard to extrinsic aids to interpretation like Hansard, Parliamentary Committee and Law Reform Commission reports, and the like.

Just about every State and Territory has enacted similar provisions governing interpretation of legislation at that level as well. Accordingly, in this country it's really only in relation to interpretation of the Commonwealth Constitution (and State constitutions) that there remains any real scope for judicial debate about whether strict literalism or the enactors' (Founding Fathers') intentions should strictly govern interpretation of meaning.

Yes, I know it's a dry subject, but I thought at least someone might be interested.

2003-01-27T20:32:00.000-08:00

Father and Son

Another new-ish Australian political blogger ventures into the wilds of cyberspace. Michael Darby describes himself in the following terms:

"Observations on politics and poetry by Australian bush poet, Michael Darby. Michael was born in Sydney in 1945 and is a former Australian Army Officer who has been writing and broadcasting on politics and economics since 1972."

What really caught my interest about Michael, however, is that he's the son of Douglas Darby, long-time local State MLA for Manly (on Sydney's northern beaches) where I grew up. Doug Darby was the Member for Manly for a remarkable 35 years, from 1943 until 1978. He was a (very) right-wing Liberal member for most of that time, but was re-elected twice as an Independent in the early 70s after the Libs dumped him in an effort to introduce new blood into the Parliamentary Party. Darby was a hard-working local Member.

Douglas Darby was also a genuine eccentric and a staunch anti-communist; in some ways a Protestant State-level version of B.A Santamaria. One of Darby's many passionate interests was his sponsorship and development of cricket in Taiwan. He also advocated a missionary approach to teaching cricket to the mainland Chinese and Soviet Russians. Chaps who played cricket, Darby believed, could never be communists! If Michael Darby is even half as eccentric as his father, his blog should make entertaining reading.

I vaguely recall that Michael Darby stood unsuccessfully for his father's seat of Manly after Douglas's retirement in 1978, but I might be mistaken. Unfortunately for Michael, Manly's demographics have veered gradually towards the soft left over the last 20 years or so. It's become a sort of northern beaches version of Balmain, full of latte-drinking yuppies. Manly returned a Labor member for a short time during the 1980s, and left-leaning general medical practitioner Peter McDonald was the local Member through most of the 90s. The current local Member is another soft left-ish Independent named David Barr, who seems a nice enough chap, though rather ineffectual. The main result of a decade or so of Independent representation for Manly appears to have been that both Liberal and Labor State governments have felt free to foist massive over-development on the area despite resident protests, and to ignore almost completely the northern beaches' transport and infrastructure needs.

2003-01-27T18:08:00.000-08:00

Quiggin on Windschuttle

John Quiggin has published the most compelling general audience critique I have read of Keith Windschuttle's controversial book The Fabrication of Aboriginal History. You can read it here on the Evatt Foundation website.

John observes that: "Windschuttle has presented a polemical defence of an extreme position, ignoring or downplaying evidence that contradicts his case for the defence of British settlers in Australia". In that sense, I guess he performs a function in the public debate not unlike that of Bjorn Lomborg in relation to environmentalism. Both go over the top in promoting 'corrective' viewpoints to prevailing leftist orthodoxy in their respective chosen fields. Moreover, as John pointed out correctly in relation to Lomborg, they purport to debunk positions that the more careful 'leftist' theoreticians don't actually espouse. Henry Reynolds, for example, emerges relatively unscathed from Windschuttle's book (contrary to impressions created by some mainstream media coverage). The same can't be said for Lyndall Ryan, at least so far.

However, just as Lomborg was aiming his attack at populist propaganda machines like Greenpeace, which habitually make extreme alarmist claims that simply can't be sustained, so Windschuttle's attack has much greater force against some of the more extreme claims of the Aboriginal guilt industry than against the cautious academic types at whom his book is ostensibly aimed. That is ultimately what makes Windschuttle's book much less defensible than Lomborg's The Skeptical Environmentalist. Lomborg's book is unabashedly a work of populist polemic (despite John Quiggin's unconvincing attempts to portray it as dishonestly masquerading as a detached scholarly work because of its extensive use of footnotes). Windschuttle's book, on the other hand, does purport to be a work of original scholarly research, when in fact it's nothing of the sort.

Finally, I was also struck by John Quiggin's concluding paragraph:

"I am always puzzled by the ease with which some people can repudiate their own past views while maintaining a dogmatic conviction of the infallible correctness of their current beliefs. Keith Windschuttle is, regrettably, an extreme instance of this phenomenon."

It occurred to me that I might be accused by some of making a similar lurch to the right in relation to asylum seeker policy. As recently as 1995 I was accused by then Keating Labor government Immigration Minister Nick Bolkus (along with Melbourne University legal academic Pene Mathew) of "emotive bleating" in favour of asylum seekers. As regular readers of this blog will realise, my current position could hardly be characterised in that way. However, I'd like to think my more hardline sceptical position in relation to onshore asylum seekers arose from careful evaluation of the evidence rather than the sort of bad faith lurch to the right of which John Quiggin accuses Windschuttle. Moreover, I'm certainly not convinced of the 'infallible correctness' of my own beliefs. When you expose yourself to the public scrutiny of the blogosphere, you tend to get proven wrong too often to be able to maintain self-delusions of infallibility. Maybe Keith Windschuttle should start a blog. I won't hold my breath waiting.

2003-01-26T21:47:00.000-08:00

Cornucopia

The other day I somehow found myself listening to Triple J while driving to somewhere or other. I suspect my daughter must have tuned the car radio there; Triple J usually isn't my first listening choice. However, they played a rap song that was really very funny, if utterly obscene and grossly sexist. I couldn't help thinking of Jason Soon and the undergraduate erotic poetry he occasionally blogs.

This song, however, was more hard core porn than soft erotica. It's called "Cock Mobster" by DJ Paul Barman. I guess it's a pun on the old B52s hit "Rock Lobster". I'm sure younger bloggers are familiar with it, but the song sure was a shock to this boring old fart. Some of the lyrics and rhymes were, however, quite ingenious and screamingly funny IMHO. The chorus, for instance, begins "It's a porn utopia, A cornucopia of warm fallopia". You get the picture. Here's a link to a promotional page where you can access the lyrics and download an MP3 version.

It carried me back to the increasingly distant days of my youth, when I once lived in a share house with a group of American exchange students. One of them was a very well-endowed young blonde girl from Oregon State University. Apparently their football team is called The Beavers. My housemate (I can't remember her name now, but I can picture her as clearly as if it were yesterday) had been a member of the team's cheerleaders. She was in the habit of wandering around the house clad only in a pair of knickers and the cheerleader T-shirt, which was emblazoned with the motto "Bet you can't lick our Beavers!". It was a challenge I never had the chance to surmount, not least because her boyfriend was also a housemate.

Postscript - It occurs to me that the more poetically inclined might want to have a go at composing additional lines or verses to "Cock Mobster", and posting them in the comment box. However, we probably should leave out Jack Nicholson's co-star in "As Good as It Gets". Her name, of course, was Helen Hunt.

2003-01-26T19:35:00.000-08:00

Balkinization

Jack Balkin is a law academic at Yale University. His area of specialisation is constitutional law, which is why I'm pleased to see he's recently joined the blogosphere. His blog is called, appropriately enough, Balkinization. Balkin's political orientation is left-liberal Democrat, and his predilections lie in a post-modernist direction (though lacking much of the balance and humour of practitioners of that black art such as Don Arthur).

However, don't consign Balkin's blog to your "never to be visited" list just yet. He's a good writer, and his blog contains some interesting stuff. Balkin muses, for instance, about the prospects for Roe v Wade (the US Supreme Court decision holding that the right to abortion is constitutionally protected) if, as expected, Prsident Dubbya appoints arch-conservatives to replace two Justices about to retire from the Court.

Balkin also blogs at length about anti-discrimination laws, affirmative action and "color-blindness". However, perhaps his most bizarre piece involves consulting the I Ching about the prospects for any US invasion of Iraq! Balkin's communing with the great Chinese oracle leads (surprise! surprise!) to his concluding that invading Iraq would be a very bad idea.

My old mate Ray Marshall (now sadly deceased), a journo and occasional TV and screen actor, once wrote the astrology column for one of Sydney's major daily newspapers. He used to reckon he wrote his best horoscopes after three quarters of a bottle of scotch: you needed to be creative, Ray said. I don't know whether Lao Tzu had the benefit of rice wine when penning the I Ching; in fact I don't even know what hallucinogen Jack Balkin was on when he blogged his silly piece on Iraq. Balkin says:

"There is one lesson we might draw. The theme of this hexagram is the need for reform and for returning to the right path after a long period of strife and confusion. We may be looking at this crisis the wrong way. For the President and most of his advisors, the issue is simple: Saddam is a threat, or may soon become one. We need to strike at him preemptively, whether with our friends or standing alone. Too much is at stake not to act.

However, it may be that attacking Saddam directly is not the best way to disarm him or get rid of him. We do not yet understand everything that is going on in this situation, and we may be confused about what is in our best interests and the world’s. If we wait a bit longer, we may build a case that isolates Saddam in the world community and makes our unilateral action unnecessary. The great military strategist Sun Tzu once said that the greatest general is one who never has to go to war. Such a general arranges his alliances and shapes the terrain of battle so effectively that his foes dare not attack him, but instead act according to his wishes because they have no better strategic alternative."

Sun Tzu would undoubtedly be very popular with UN Security Council members like France right now. Personally I prefer General Colin Powell's view:

"Containment [of Saddam] is not the issue. The issue is disarmament. Contain him until what? Circumstances arrive in the future when he could pop out of containment? We did containment. And I didn't have any problem with containment. You know, that containment would eventually solve the problem. It hasn't. The problem is still there."

John Quiggin apparently favours a "messy compromise" to military action. Fair enough, except the measures John suggests would provide no solution at all, messy or otherwise. U2 spyplanes are useful in monitoring suspicious activity, but they're a long way from foolproof. The only reliable way to prevent a wily and determined WOMD-acquirer like Saddam from getting nuclear weapons would be a long-term intensive weapons inspection team presence, backed by a credible threat of force. It's extremely unlikely that other UN nations would agree to such a long-term abrogation of Iraq's national sovereignty. A short, sharp, regime-changing military action looks like a better bet to me.

Trouble is, I suspect John and Kevin Batcho are right: it would be very unwise to assume that Tony Blair will ultimately be able to get Labour Cabinet agreement for Britain to participate in a non-UN authorised military operation. Quite a few American commentators (and bloggers) don't seem to understand that Blair doesn't have presidential executive powers: he's entirely subject to the will of Cabinet. If the UK doesn't participate in a "coalition of the willing", it remains to be seen whether Bush would proceed with just a handful of uncritical allies like Australia. Personally I hope he does. It might just result in the implementation of Arab nations' plans to offer Saddam and his senior henchmen safe exile as a way to avoid an American-led invasion. That outcome looks like the best endgame to me. If,as I suspect, Saddam is a rational (if brutal) despot, he might just accept that solution once he can see that there's no way out.

2003-01-26T14:33:00.000-08:00

Another shot in the culture wars

Gary Sauer-Thompson and his guest blogger historian Cathie Clements have written at length recently about the so-called "culture wars", with particular reference to Keith Windschuttle's recently published book. Another shot in the culture wars was fired in this morning's Australian by Jonathan King. He eloquently defends the restoration of a more traditional approach to teaching children history:

"Today, many NSW students, who must do 100 mandatory hours, rarely hear about navigators such as Flinders, who charted and named Australia. They rarely hear about Burke and Wills, the first explorers to cross the continent. And they rarely hear about the gold rushes that transformed colonies, the fight for Federation, surviving the Depression, Gallipoli, and the heroic Australian efforts in the Somme, Tobruk, El Alamein, Kokoda, Korea and Vietnam.

Not surprisingly, students' ignorance of our history is becoming so appalling that one school leaver thought Gallipoli was a surfing beach in Queensland; another thought it was where we defeated Hitler. Few even know when, how or why their continent was set tled.

By sweeping mainstream history under the carpet, teachers have produced crops of empty-headed young people who don't know much about the nation's achievements. Australian history has been taught in such a negative way that young Australians also grow up feeling ashamed to be Australian."

No doubt PM John Howard would heartily endorse King's sentiments. However, even for those who habitually denigrate Howard, that doesn't make King wrong about this. As a parent of an almost 15 year old in Year 10 at high school (and a high achieving student at that) I can certainly attest to the abysmal ignorance of young Australians about quite basic aspects of our history.

However, King doesn't advocate air-brushing Australia's history (which is undoubtedly what occurred until consciousness about the invasive, dispossessive, violent aspects of Australia's history was raised by people like Henry Reynolds from the early 1970s):

"Of course, let's include shameful chapters in our past - no one can deny the tragedy of the Aboriginal experience; but it does not help to inflict guilt on our children with an apologist history. After all, we do have much to be proud of. Avoiding politically loaded words such as genocide, teachers should teach - not preach - what actually happened, not what should have happened, in plain English. They should present historic figures as people of their time - not judged with 2003 attitudes.

Having established different cultural perspectives, teachers should explain inevitable clashes, dispossession and destruction of the traditional Aboriginal way of life (not least through disease) as a terrible price of settlement rather than the objective of settlement. Tell stories from both sides but confirm Australia had more good news events than bad."

I won't even attempt to strike a Don Arthur-like inscrutable stance. I agree with Jonathan King.

2003-01-26T04:41:00.000-08:00

A law degree and a short back and sides

No less than 8 other bloggers, not to mention a motley assortment of readers, have taken the opportunity of emailing me (in varying tones of glee) about this article by right wing op-ed pundit Paddy McGuinness, in which he took aim at Canberra's supposedly pampered public servants, and also hit Darwin and its university in the cross-fire:

"But it was filled up with Canberra carpetbaggers and a useless collection of white-collar workers, and provided with a form of self-government which guaranteed incompetent administration. It even led to the creation of a so-called university which has never been much more than a jumped-up hairdressing college, and which is once again in crisis."

I'll post a longer rant about regional universities in the near future, but in the meantime I'll just observe that I'm not taking chardonnay-sipping Leichhardt denizen Paddy too seriously. McGuinness has overdosed on neo-liberal dogma to such an extent that he probably goes to bed mouthing a variation on Orwell's Animal Farm mantra: "Private good, public bad".

Anyway, the new NTU Vice-Chancellor has been musing about changing the University's name to Charles Darwin University as a positive PR gesture. Presumably he thinks that dubious prospective students will fail to notice that it's the same institution with a different name. He doesn't seem to have asked himself whether we actually want students who are that thick! However, Paddy has given me a brilliant idea. My workplace should henceforth be known as the Joh Bailey campus of the Vidal Sassoon University. It has a certain je ne sais quoi, n'est ce pas?

2003-01-26T04:25:00.000-08:00

Defensive gun use

I wonder if this incident would qualify as defensive gun use under the criteria used by John Lott Jnr and other American gun lobby apologists? It certainly counts as poetic justice in my book, canine kharma if you will.

2003-01-25T23:16:00.000-08:00

Two steps forward and one back

Well, as you can see, here I am back at Blogspot after a 3 month experiment in manual blogging. I found it had numerous advantages over the frustratingly idiosyncratic, bug-ridden and unstable Blogspot system. However, Blogspot has one critical advantage from my viewpoint. You can make posts almost instantaneously from anywhere, and without slow, painstaking copying and pasting of the sort I had to do every time. The result of the extra time involved in maintaining a manual blog was that my posts have become increasingly infrequent of late because of time demands.

You'll also have noticed that the blog has a new name and address. The pretext should be clear from the quote in the top banner. The motivation for the changed name is that I wanted to depersonalise the blog to some extent. A couple of people have expressed some interest in participating in a group blog (like Catallaxy or the new Libertarian blog), and I though a slightly more generic name might assist that process. Given that the demands on my time are likely to increase if anything from now, I suspect the only viable way of sustaining sufficiently frequent posts to retain an audience is to bring in other contributors. Any readers (or even other bloggers who may be feeling the strain of keeping up a decent frequency of posts) interested in particpating in a group blog may wish to email me separately (which reminds me I forgot to put an email link in the template - with a bit of luck the oversight will be fixed by the time you read this).

I actually think moving back to Blogger is positive in another sense. Posting manually (and creating archive files, indexing each post etc) was so laborious that I tended to concentrate on a relatively small number of longer posts. The effort involved for just a short "grab" tended to feel too great. The result was, I think, a blog that was a little too solemn and turgid. I think a better blend between short, catchy blogs and longer, contemplative pieces can be achieved using Blogger. I'll also be able to blog from NTU much more easily (when I feel like a break from whatever I'm doing). It was also very complicated to blog from NTU manually. I could ftp to the site OK, but I then needed to email the post to my home computer and update all the folders when I got home in order to keep them in sync. Again very time-consuming.

However, creating that complex, indexed blog structure at The Parish Pump wasn't all wasted. I still intend uploading longer essays there and then posting a short introductory 'teaser' extract here on the front page. It helps to keep the front page at a manageable size, and avoids making readers scroll down past Jack Strocchi-length posts.

I should also thank Tim Dunlop for putting me onto the W.Bloggar program, which certainly makes blogging on Blogspot much easier and more flexible (and gives a much wider range of formatting options without needing to key in the HTML tags manually). I highly recommend W.Bloggar to other bloggers.

Finally, you'll notice that I've implemented drop down menu boxes for the blogrolls, and separated bloggers into right, left and centrist orientations. Feel free to dispute my classification if you believe you belong elsewhere. However, the wonderful thing about blogging is that I can appoint myself the final judge of those sorts of things. Also, I'm not soliciting yet another argument about whether 'left', 'right' etc are useful classifications. I agree they have their limitations and can be misleading. Few of us fit neatly into boxes of that sort, and everyone means something slightly different when they use the terms. The bottom line is that I had to divide up the blogroll somehow, or it would have been too long for the drop down menus! I thought about adopting John Quiggin's division of "cultural and satirical blogs", but I eventually concluded that the traditional left/right/centre classifications were preferable. It should be interesting to compare my subjective perceptions with bloggers' positioning on the Political Compass chart, when Robert Corr finishes updating it. Actually, now that I look at it, Rob has updated it. However, he left Bargarz and me out (even though we both sent him our results from the quiz). Slack bastard! I'm miffed now!

2002-10-20T22:35:00.000-07:00

The blogging move is complete!

The Parish Pump has now moved. No further blogging will take place at this Blogger site. The new Parish Pump blog is here. Please make sure to update your bookmarks and hyperlinks. Testing the template change. And again. And again. And again. And again.