The new face of Australia

Pic from Canberra Times, 17 Nov 2005, News p.5.

This pic stunned me. It's the face of a very tired and bereft Terry Hicks. Terry is the father of David Hicks, the Australian who has been held in Guantanamo Bay for 4 years. I needn't recount the story. Quotes from David Hicks' defence lawyer, the US Marine Major Michael Mori, say it for me. "He just wanted to know why the Australian Government didn't want him to come home...I couldn't answer his question except to say that he had not violated any Australian law but that his government had decided to leave him there in Guantanamo anyway...He didn't understand this and neither do I. Still don't. I couldn't understand how Australia could abandon its own citizen this way. Britain didn't, neither did Italy or any other European country. We don't do that. As an American, there is an expectation that citizenship means something. No American was sent to Guantanamo. No American will be tried by military commission." And even more damning is this. "This is a process designed by the President and the Vice-President and the imperative is to get convictions... This process is nothing like a court martial, nothing like it. I'm still not an expert on international law, but I know enough to know this is not justice." (Sydney Morning Herald, 19-20 Nov 2005, News Review, p.30).

David Hicks in not the first sacrifice on the altar of political power and influence in recent Australian history. Refugees are an obvious offering, and now terrorists take their place as the devil to be feared. It's a simple picture that's painted: with us or against us; good or evil; black or white, no shades of grey. And no understanding of the other allowed (see how the press not allowed to present images of refugees our camps) and little sought. David Hicks is unlikely to be the last. Heaven help us. We are on a dangerous path. It's one that's been seen before, but with our common ignorance of history, it's one we are likely to tread again.

Ya gotta laugh

Well, everything seems to be going pretty badly these days (climate change, Australian IR and Terrorism legislation, US political foolishness, Iraq, fundamentalism and other unreason, climatic disasters, etc), so it's hard to retain your sanity and some sense of humour. Lots of people just give up and retreat to the nest, which only allows these influences further rein to reign further.

But even so, you have to wonder how the forces of unreason can be so influential when you read junk like this -

"'It has been established beyond doubt that the placebo-controlled, randomised controlled trial is not a fitting research tool with which to test homeopathy.' A spokeswoman for The Society fo Homeopaths on a study in The Lancet that showed homeopathic medicine works no better than placebos (BBC news online, 29 August)".

New Scientist, no. 2515, 3 Sept 2005, p. 10.

Another end is nigh

I’ve written here before on peak oil. It will cause huge changes in our economies. I was about to say it’s being ignored, as it’s not a hot topic of political conversation. But really it’s influencing lots around us: the Iraq war; the Toyota Prius; even high rise construction near Canberra city centres.

And today there was another Canberra Times’ Opinion piece on peak oil. Here are some quotes:

“The Oil Age … is about to come to an end … Not as doom-mongering environmentalists have falsely predicted, because the black gold is about to run out. But much more subtly, because world production will start falling in the next few years, demand will outrun supply, and prices will shoot up.”

I can’t see that the environmental movement ever got it wrong here. It’s strange that the author, or perhaps his confidant, seems to have to stick the boot in. I don’t think environmentalists ever suggested there was a tap that would turn off from one day to the next. The “tap”, when it arrives, will be rationing by various militaries and governments. And this tap won’t be turned off from one day to the next (short of some major emergency) but it will be turned off from one year to the next. Some sort of rationing will be necessary. But we are yet to see whether the decisions on rationing will be as sensible as the initial decision to ration.

“Over lunch Matthew Simmons, chairman of one of the world’s largest oil investment companies and an advisor to the US president, predicted that the price would reach $US100 ($A130) a barrel within three years, more that three times as high as just a few years ago. This month it topped $US79 ($A91).”

“The orthodox oil industry view is that there is plenty of time: peak oil will not occur until the 2030s … US production peaked in 1971, Britain’s in 1991. The British-based Association for the Study of Peak Oil estimates that the Middle East’s peak is just five years away; Simmons believes it may already have passed”

“The end of the oil age is in sight, but who’s looking?” By Geoffrey Lean. In Canberra Times, 20 Sept 2005, p.11.

The end is nigh

Claims of end of the world always catch the attention, but there may be some justification this time around. Global warming increasingly seems to be living up to the dire predictions claimed by the environment movement.

Katrina was a warning, as is the drought in Eastern Australia. And a string of observations are pointing in the same direction. Climate is a complex thing, and no one event can be specifically ascribed to global warming, but climate scientists predict climatic events will be more severe as global warming takes hold.

There was one scientific indicator that was not in synch, and so was used to question global warming - lower atmospheric temperatures as measured by satellites. But recent research has found errors in calibrating the satellites, and reviews of observations have come into line with other measurements of global warming.

Then last Saturday’s Canberra Times reported observations which suggest the melting of the northern polar icecap is well and truly underway. The implication is sea-level rise, from melting of ice over Greenland and the Arctic. And, during discussion of Katrina, I heard that it’s all speeding up, because the heat sink which was the ocean has reached its limit.

“The greatest fear is that the Arctic has reached a ‘tipping point’ beyond which nothing can reverse the continual loss of sea ice, and with it the massive land glaciers of Greenland, which will raise sea levels dramatically”

and…

“The number of high-strength cyclones, like Hurricane Katrina, has nearly doubled in 35 years in all five of Earth’s ocean basins, which scientists say could be linked to global climate change.”

Both quotes from “Ice melt may be past recovery”. In Canberra Times, Saturday 17 Sept 2005, p. 20

After arguing against global warming for years, even Bush & Co have recently conceded that it’s occurring, but of course, they have their own response to promote.

Alternative voices have been effectively defeated for now. I often feel there’s nothing to do but sit back and watch Rome burn, and have the pleasure of saying “I told you so”. For me, this response has been growing over time, but it’s firmed up following the result of the last federal election, the strength of the right, the poverty of Labor, and the sleepiness of the citizenry. This may be a satisfying response, but it’s self-defeating. Anyone with kids has to fear this outcome. It seems much closer than we imagined only a few years ago.

I’m also amused by the whole concern over petrol prices. What we don’t pay now for petrol, we’ll be paying soon enough. That is, assuming petrol is still available for private use. I can’t see private cars being feasible in 20 years time, at least not ones that run on petrol. But it’s not just petrol for cars. Oil is the basis of so much in society – three’s no alternative for air transport; plastics and fertilisers are by-products; delivery of oranges from California or computers from China requires it. Does this herald a return to local production? Perhaps under computer control from another spot on the Earth. The future looks exciting, but also perilous. I’ll see the start of it, but our kids will make in this big change … or suffer the big crash.

Look about in fear

I need only quote from Brian Toohey in the recent Canberra Sunday Times to demonstrate a frightening trend. The action on Scott Parkin, the proclaimed pacifist and anti-Hallibuton protestor, is a warning of an uncertain future.

“In 2002, Carr introduced the Terrorism (Police Powers) Act which protects police who abuse their powers. The new law states that nothing the police do during a declared terrorism incident, whether a false alarm or not, may be challenged, reviewed, quashed or called into question on any grounds whatsoever before any court, tribunal, body or person in any legal proceedings. Removing any role for the courts, as Carr has done, undermines fundamental protections all citizens are supposed to enjoy in a free society.

“Those of a conservative disposition, who believe in imposing checks and balances on the power of the state, cannot be heartened by the plans of the Western Australian and South Australian Labor governments to give more authority to the police so long as they invoke the justification that they are handling a suspected terrorism situation. Although full details are lacking, it seems the police will be able to issue their own search warrants, without bothering with court approval.

“At the federal level, the courts are being pushed aside also their proposed new laws to allow preventive detention of suspects without charge and for the federal police to skip the normal warrant process and order companies to produce materials of alleged relevance to terrorism and other serious offences, so far unspecified.”

“Politicians should stop stirring up terror plot” by Brian Toohey. In Canberra Sunday Times, 18 Sept 2005, p.25

For the record

I was just reading the New Scientist, and this quote appeared. I've recorded it here for future reference, in case we get another invasion justified by more bullshit (see formal definition in the previous post).

"'The biggest smoking gun that everyone was waving is now eliminated' A senior official, speaking anonymously, on the still-confidential finding that traces of uranium found two years ago in Iran came from contaminated equipment from Pakistan and is not proof of a clandestine weapons programme (The Washington Post, 23 August)."

New Scientist, No. 2514, 27 August 2005, p. 9.

It's been amusing me for some time how the US government, and presumably intelligence community, can still make claims of hidden weapons programs in countries thay've been railing against for other reasons for some time. It was Abraham Lincoln, that renowned American (sadly of another era) who said: "You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time". Wise words? Hope so.

Brian Toohey wrote an article on governments ignoring warnings of danger. He compared the US Government's tardy response to Katrina, despite plenty of warnings, with its ready action over WMD that didn't exist in Iraq. He noted that the Australian intelligence officer, Lance Collins, got it right in a memo to superiors dated 15 March 1998. But now, what do we find? Bush is still in place, and beset with problems, but Collins ..."resigned a few weeks ago, after being frustrated by efforts to undermine his contributions on the intelligence front".

Be very worried when truth is ignored in the pursuit of a pre-defined end. Facts will get you in the end, despite your strongest beliefs.

"When warnings of danger are ignored" by Brian Toohey. In Canberra Sunday Times, 11 Sept 2005, p. 24.

Is the truth still important to you?

I like quotes, but I steer clear of them. They are too packaged, and they define you thinking too easily. But these two concern spin and so are relevant, and, at least the second one helped me understand something very important, and very frightening, about current politics and society. Or, put another way: never mind the truth, seek the power.

“No matter how cynical you become, it is never enough to keep up.” Lily Tomlin

“… Princeton academic Harry Frankfurt’s distinction between lying and bullshit: a liar still cares about the truth, a bullshitter does not.”

“Too much cynicism is never enough” by Ron Ceberona. In Canberra Times, 10 Sept 2005, Panorama, p. 15. Review of the book Your call is important to us: the truth about bullshit / Laura Penny.

Just what planet do economists live on? No. 2

Here’s a note I wrote about 12 years ago, and I have just rediscovered. I remember this as a revelation at the time, and I’ve been searching for the book’s title ever since! The comment concerns itself with assumptions in Economics, but the implications stand for any discipline. Assumptions are useful, and even necessary, but they can be dangerous, and they always require testing at some stage.

Tumbling dice / Brian Toohey … gave some incredible (I assume true) facts about the neo-classical economic establishment in Australia, eg, did you know that the economic model developed by the Industry Commission assumes (as does neoclassical economics) that the movement of money (the financial system) has no cost (!), and that, when the IC was to do an inquiry into the banking system (for banking system, read a major earner of profits in Australia), it had to develop an extension to its model because the whole banking system was missing!

Tumbling dice : the story of modern economic policy / Brian Toohey. Port Melbourne : William Heinemann Australia, 1994.

Thoughts on Brogden's suicide attempt

Numerous issues swirl around my mind as I consider the Brogden suicide attempt. For those not in the know, he's the NSW opposition leader who resigned following journalistic accounts of racist statements and sexual harrassment and subsequently attempted suicide. As with most events of any importance, it is not easy to consider and to balance these issues.

Firstly, let me say this is a personal tragedy, and I don't minimise that. I've recently come to better recognise the nature of personal tragedies, and I don't trivialise them. But we still need to consider this in a socio-policitical context.

Was he up to the job? He seems to have buckled pretty quickly in the end. But I don't hold any weakness against him - it's just an element in this personal tragedy. More pertinently, should that be a reason to limit his role in politics? It's probably reason enough to question his suitability for the role of NSW premier.

Factionalism in the Liberal Party. At his resignation, Brogden named a party hack (as I understand, of the right) who needed to think hard about his actions in this case. The suggestion is that it's another hatchet job by the right of the Liberal Party. It seems that both NSW Labor and Liberal rights play by the same rules, and they play hard both within and outside the party.

Role of the media 1. Crickey.com.au raised this issue. Why did it take 4 weeks or so for news on this to leak out. Apparently it was an open secret around town, and there were numerous journalists in attendance. I think the function was private, but not under Chatham House rules. Were the media giving politicians leeway on personal issues? Media has been good in Australia is not outing politicians' personal lives unless they could affect his/her political role or display some hypocrisy. But you could argue that Brogden's performance has bearing on a possible future role as NSW premier.

Role of the media 2. Brogden attempted suicide when he learnt that the Daily Telegraph was to publish accusations about other sexual peccadilloes in his past. Apparently these are just unsubstantiated accusations. In my paranoid moments, I could see a connection between the Murdoch media putting the boot into a moderate Liberal leader and likely premier, and thus assisting the Right to get its representative in place. Most likely, this is just my paranoia ... I hope.

Political Correctness and the Right. What strage and successful bedfellows they are! The Right just wins and wins with PC. They attack the elites for promoting PC. Then they use PC to destroy a moderate collaborator. No doubt, Brogden allowed this to happen. But it appears a Right-wing (and presumably anti-PC) Party apparatchik used issues of sexual and race morality to undermine an opponent.

Depression and suicide 1. Suicide now kills more Australians than road accidents. Compare the silence on suicide and depression with the clamour on the road toll or terrorism or paedophilia. There's lots of emotion and lots of fear created by these latter topics. And emotion and fear are tools for political power. They promote simplistic moral judgements in society - us-or-them - and this is dangerous. Yes, road deaths and terrorism and paedophilia are unwanted things. But, looking at it statistically, suicide kills more Australians but it's a minor political issue. Where's our balance?

Depression and suicide 2. It amuses me how politicians are hugely sympathetic when one of their own attempts suicide. I remember a case in the Commonwealth Senate a few years ago which created a huge outpouring of grief. To some degree this is just a normal human reaction to a tragic event, and I'm relieved they remain able to experience that feeling. I doubt Stalin or Hitler or Mao would have. But politicians make economic and other decisions every day which affect society. Many decisions lead to grief and despair and depression and perhaps suicide. If politicans are representing all of us, how come there's such a diverse reaction? This displays humanity, yes, but also distance from the electorate.

Depression and suicide 3. What does the level of suicide in Australia, and the developed world, say about our societies? This is the biggie, and I have my opinions. But it's the issue underlying our whole politics but it's too big for now.

So who’s the real elite?

Here's my response to a column in The Australian newspaper in February this year. It wasn't published, but I'll present it here anyway.

Let’s cease sham and name calling. Neal Brown ([The Australian] Aunty won’t be pleased, 25/2, p.15) ridicules others as café latte-drinking intelligentsia: other words for the conservatives’ bete-noir “the elites”. I reckon that an ex-Federal minister and QC, with a column in the Australian, is likely to be the real elite.

Winners seldom question themselves. But honesty, truth and rationality underlie democracy. Labor was not pure, but conservatives threaten democracy itself. “Relaxed and comfortable” is not a manifesto for an engaged citizenship; it’s a recipe for autocracy or worse.

Canberra Veteran has his say

Robin Gollan is an Emeritus Professor of History at the ANU. His recent letter to the Canberra Times (Sat 13 Aug 2005) has caused considerable interest. As a veteran, he apologies to a mate who died in his place during WWII, for the current state of Australia. Alan Ramsay picked it up for the Sydney Morning Herald this morning.

A few days ago, like thousands of other old men and women, I received a shiny medallion and a letter signed by John Howard and De-Anne Kelly. They thanked me for my part in protecting 'the Australian way of life in times of conflict' and for helping to build 'our community in times of peace'. It made me think of Ivan Barber, a West Australian wheat farmer who substituted for me on an operation, so I could take a few days' leave, and who died in my place.

I wondered what he and the more than 40,000 men and boys who died defending our country in World War II would feel about John Howard's Australia. Certainly most people are materially better off. We have shared in the bounty of the one-fifth of the world which has become rich. But we have become a country governed by lies and fear.

John Howard has surrendered the self-reliance, for which we fought, to curry favour with the most dangerous military power in history. He has stoked the fear of terrorists who may target us because of his fawning subservience to US President George Bush. He boasts he stands for mateship and egalitarianism at the same time he attempts, by his industrial relations 'reforms', to destroy the institutions on which those qualities have been nurtured.

The chief law officer [Philip Ruddock] seems not to understand the principles of the rule of law and calls those who do 'armchair critics'. He and Howard undermine the very principles of democracy in the name of defending them. The Foreign Minister rails against those who don't accept his opinion as fools. He supports his stand by some weird interpretations of history.

Yes. We would not have survived without the American alliance. But the Americans I served with believed, correctly, we were defending a great democracy. Today the alliance, for which Howard and his coterie are prepared to sell our soul, is a militaristic plutocracy.

I'm sorry, Ivan.

Robin Gollan, Scullin, ACT

Beautifully and powerfully said. I hope Prof Gollan will accept my publication of his letter on aginspin. He says this for many of us who despair of the state of government and politics in Australia these days.

See Alan Ramsay's article on the SMH site while it lasts - http://digbig.com/4egfs

Un-Australian behaviour

Someone who damns one or more others as “Un-Australian” is as trustworthy as the person who says “Trust me”. A person who unconsciously recognises his/her own deceits is drawn to deny them. It should be a truism of psychology. So we hear “It’s not that I’m racist, but …” or similar. It’s such an obvious give-away. "Un-Australian" seems to serve the same purpose. And I doubt "Un-Australian" is even Australian! I suppose it’s cloned from the US phrase “Un-American” as in "House Committee on Un-American Activities”, ie, the Macarthyist campaign during the Cold War. Perhaps there was an earlier history than that, but I doubt it’s an Australian history.

Overland did an issue on the theme of "Un-Australian" behaviour. Here are some telling quotes from the editorial:

“The great political achievement of the Howard Government has been to redefine Australia as a monoculture”

“The degree of idealisation [of the Anzac tradition] has only become possible since the original Anzacs, in all their human fallibility, have disappeared from view”.

“Implicitly and explicitly, the concerns and desires of people who do not fit the cultural norm have been presented as selfish, sectarian, divisive or threatening, as though the government-led refusal to acknowledge cultural difference is not political”.

“Even when a deeply paranoid and mean-spirited white Australia is detaining refugees in concentration camps, it is actually us who are under threat; from their ‘moral intimidation’.”

“Ironies abound. These groups most loudly proclaiming who is and isn’t Australian are generally direct offshoots of American organisations and closely follow a political-, economic-, and cultural-campaign model established by the far Right in the US.”

“…if Australians have traditionally understood their culture as being most strongly characterised by antipathy rather than acquiesence to authority, as historians and sociologists generally suggest…”

And on the other hand, “the Australian Left denies and diminishes anti-Jewish violence”.

Un-Australian behaviour [editorial] by Nathan Hollier. In Overland 175, Winter 2004, p. 2-3.

No wonder they despise Keating

We all learned to despise Keating in the eighties and early nineties. But the conservatives, including Howard, seemed intent not just on destroying the person, or the access to power, but also to grind his memory into the dust. It always seemed excessive to me, but I didn’t understand why.

But Keating has recently reappeared a little on the scene. He spoke ardently and combatively the other day about IR changes. And today I came across a quote from 2003 which reminded me just how powerful was his rhetoric. Listen to this and gasp. No wonder the right needs to annihilate this man.

“Former Prime Minister Paul Keating suggests that, in the future, all that will remain of the conservative, mean-spirited haters of our present will be ‘a smudge in history’:

‘They absolutely insist of their view and the lessons they see in our history. Yet in their insistence, their proprietorialness, their derivativeness and their rancour, they reduce the flame and energy within the nation to a smouldering incandescence. What they do is crimp and cripple our destiny. It’s like suffering from some sort of anaemia; robbing the political blood of its energy.’

Keating believes, however, that ‘the undertaking is simply too big for them’. Despite their insistence, ‘[n]o great transformation can come from their tiny view of (Australians) and their limited faith in us’.”

Whew!

Paul Keating’s quotes are from his speech at the launch of Stuart Macintyre and Anna Clark’s The History Wars, 3 Sept 2003). This whole quote is from "Making the future: Activism memory and hope" by Sean Scalmer & Sarah Maddison. In Overland 173, Summer 2003, pp. 34-35.

Another quote from earlier in this article also hit me. It's about this government's method of silencing dissent. If you follow the news, you will know of other such instances (HR&EOC, government contracts with religious groups and youth representation come immediately to mind)

“Mick Dodson has sniffed defeat in the battle for Indigenous rights. The Howard Government has been vicious:

‘If you dissent you get punished. That’s what they do, they just take your money away if you’re dependent on it. They are very vindictive people who are full of hate, and anyone who wants to try to stand up to their ideology or their philosophy is silenced’.”

Ibid, p. 31

About Ruddock and his UN mashing

Crikey has an article on "Ruddock's peculiar view of human rights" in its recent email newsletter (although I can't seem to find it on their website, or is the RSS feed). Charles Richardson writes about Ruddock's claims "that the UN Convention on Human Rights requires the government to suppress civil liberties in order to fight terrorism" and argues that Ruddock "fundamentally misunderstands what human rights treaties ... are all about".

"We don't need a human rights treaty or a bill of rights to tell us that governments should be protecting the citizens' lives – that's their job. The point of a bill of rights is to constrain the way governments go about doing their job ...

Ruddock's view sets up a moral equivalence between government actions and government failures to act, but a moment's thought shows that this is absurd. If the police fail to prevent a murder, it's unfortunate, but it happens all the time – it's not a human rights issue. But if the police kill innocent people, it's a much more serious matter, because it puts us at risk from the very agency we have established to protect us.

If one thought that Ruddock really believed his own argument, it would be disturbing that we have an attorney-general who could muddle up such basic issues. It is much more likely, however, that he's cynically making whatever argument he thinks will serve the immediate purpose, and trusting that the media will be too incompetent to expose him.

Sadly enough, he's probably right".

Excuse the lengthy quote, but it's just what I wish I'd written in my last post. Congratulations to Charles Richardson for his clear thinking.

"Ruddock's peculiar view of human rights" by Charles Richardson. In Crikey Daily, 27 July 2005, item 14.

You can subscribe to Crikey daily (free) or the full service (charged) at http://www.crikey.com.au/

My privacy or your death

This is the tenor of the choice outlined by Bob Carr the other day. He was arguing for rights for Police to randomly check bags and for more video cameras in public places. Of course, I expect we’d all agree that, if the choice really was one inspection of one bag vs one death by terrorism, that the bag checking would be the preferred option. But that’s not really what’s meant here. We are really talking of vastly increased rights to invade privacy on one side, and a possibility that we prevent (or perhaps only more easily investigate and prosecute) terrorism or other crimes.

I’m not clear where I stand on this. We are talking of setting up an infrastructure which will limit privacy. We can protect against it, to some degree, by legislation. But legislation can change, or can be evaded or even ignored. I’m wary, even fearful, given the battled-hardened approach of modern politics. I don’t put it past modern machine politics to sacrifice individuals for success in political battles. You just need to recall children-overboard or Siev-X or David Hicks to show how hard politics is now played.

Here’s my personal story to add to this debate. I recently spoke to someone from the Police IT Office (PITO) in the UK. He told me of the use of speed cameras to record, OCR and store records of passing number plates. Apparently they are now doing this routinely in the UK, and it has helped in the solving of various crimes. I thought back to a recent visit to the UK when I had been amazed by the numbers of speed cameras. I had driven around Coventry regularly for a few weeks, and there must have been cameras (or at least the boxes containing them) located every few hundred metres along some major roads. So our movements were being automatically recorded and stored, and presumably could have been searched. It’s a scary concept.

On the other hand, I have often joked that we have no privacy, at least on the Internet, so we may as well get used to it. And I’m not alone in saying that.

Plenty of people argue that you needn’t worry if you have nothing to hide. But that’s putting a lot of faith in a state apparatus. I prefer mechanisms that don’t lend themselves to abuse, rather than infrastructures which can support abuse, but require trust. A set of Yankee check & balances; and eternal vigilance.

On top of it all, I see that Ruddock is arguing that the UN Convention on Human Rights supports greater security measures. “Federal Attorney-General says there are provisions within the United Nations' Human Rights Convention, which justify tougher security measures against terrorism” (ABC News Online, http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200507/s1422621.htm 26 July 2005). Apparently “Mr Ruddock says Article 3 of the UN Human Rights Convention specifies that governments have an obligation to protect human life, and that may come at the expense of civil liberties” (ibid).

Well, I checked this reference, and this is what Article 3 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights actually says: “Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person” (http://www.unhchr.ch/udhr/lang/eng.htm 26 July 2005). I read this to mean a country must protect all of the above – right to life, liberty and security of person. It is a balancing act, but the Declaration does not specify how to achieve this balance. I dare say he’s reading into the Convention.

Another revelation

It’s only so often I have a revelatory experience.

The last big one was some time after the Stolen Generations report when I realised the horror of a government’s self-defence in the face of the report. I had recently become a parent so I knew the intensity of parenthood. No longer could I accept so easily that parents were so careless of their children. I could perhaps accept a few, but not whole generations of parents. I remain dubious of bureaucracy interposing itself in the place of parents who reportedly don’t care for their kids. I just feel the bonds of parenthood are likely to be far stronger than those of social workers or bureaucrats or especially politicians. To argue that generations of aboriginal parents cared so little for their kids is unbelievable. Similarly, to argue that parents throw kids overboard in the middle of the ocean is dubious. And we saw how that story turned out to be a furphy in the end.

Today I had another revelatory experience when I heard on the news that two kids were incorrectly taken into immigration custody 4 months ago. The scene was out of fascist textbooks. Government agents come to a school unexpectedly, and remove 2 kids, aged about 10 or 11, from the classroom, and take them to a detention camp. The mother is also taken into custody at the airport, as I remember. It was a ghastly and difficult story to take at the time, and even then I was uncomfortable. Now, after 4 months of detention, and today’s release, the revelation of inhumanity of all this immigration control business hits me square in the forehead. A strange coincidence it is, too, that it follows a report into immigration botch-ups (which is damning despite its limited terms of reference). And I understand there are still 199 cases to be investigated. Would this release have happened without this report, or the threat of more investigations? I may be slow, but the coin has flipped now. Rationalise all you like. I’m a lost soul on this one, as I am on so many other emotive stories of this government.

Another Howard distraction

You've got to give it to him - he's good. Where did the ID card come from? We haven't heard of it for years, then suddenly it's all over the news. In fact, it's distracted us from the other big news - IR legislation. Just when Howard had suffered a drubbing as people come to question just who his IR legislation will really serve, along comes the London bombing. And with it, Blair's proposed legislation with possible identity cards in the UK, which would have done nothing to interfere with the bombings, anyway. (These were not people who had snuck into the country, or were otherwise unknown: they were actually considered and ignored by the intelligence agencies). Then Beattie comes along to give Howard his ammunition by raising the issue of identity cards once again. Presumably to avoid some blame related to Vivian Solon and/or Cornelia Rau, who were each caught up in bungles by DIMIA and perhaps by Qld govt agencies. But Howard's the master, and he lets it run. Questions on both sides. Divisions in his own party. Note that Labor's off the agenda, as the Liberal Party debates its soul, for what is more an issue of a liberal's (although perhaps not a Liberal's) soul than privacy. And where is IR? Lost. Forgotten. Except for the Govt marketing campaign there in the background bubbling away, and the dollars dropping.

New Scientist - always fascinating

Just a quick post on the latest issue of New Scientist that I've got to read. This one is New Scientist, no. 2507, 9 July 2005.

You can start to worry about the nuclear industry when it's revealed that "83 cubic metres of escaped liquor contain[ing] 20 tonnes of plutonium and uranium dissolved in nitric acid" was not noticed to have been lost for 8 months. The proportion of plutonium to uranium is not given here, but from what I understand about plutonium, this is potentially a species-threatening amount. (p. 6)

This month's editorial concerns itself with the latest ruse by creationists to challenge evolution. The latest approach is "Intelligent Design" which argues that "various biological structures are too complex to have been created by natural selection and so must have been designed". Associated with this is "irreduciable complexity" which "proposes that some molecular systems ... cannot be broken down into smaller functioning units, and so could not have been created by natural selection". As NS argues, "only with scientific understanding does it become clear that they are fundamentally flawed", and "crucially, they cannot be tested in any meaningful way, so they cannot qualify as science". The problem is not so much that some scientifically-ignorant people believe this stuff, but that they are promoting it in various schools, museums, and similar, in both developed and other countries. Some frightening examples follow. Kansas School Board had all mention of evolution deleted from state school standards in 2002. Thankfully, they were reinstated soon after, but the battle for control of these institutions continues. In Britain, private donors can gain some control over what is taught in a school by investing in its refubishment! NS recounts a case involving a millionaire car dealer and Christian fundamentalist. In Turkey, only creationism is presented in school texts! In Pakistan, evolution is not even taught in universities! Well, any country that goes down this path will eventually fail, given that their policies will not match testable reality, but what damage is done in the meantime? Are we entering, or are we in, the era of the new irrationality? (Editorial p.5, and p. 8-12)

How about these for a few factoids to challenge your relaxation and comfort? "13 computers that route all internet traffic are to remain under US supervision, the government said on 30 June". And "Supercomputer enigma: almost half of the 500 most powerful supercomputers in the world have an unspecified use". I'm not sure what this means; defence, perhaps? (p. 23)

Just a few snippets from another issue of this wonderful news magazine of science.

Logical discontinuities

"…free nations are peaceful nations. Free nations don’t attack each other. Free nations don’t develop weapons of mass destruction." (Quoted in Duckspeak crusader, by Martin Hirst & Robert Schutze. In Overland, 176, Spring 2004, p. 24)

These are the words of George W Bush, at the May 2003 speech declaring the war in Iraq was over. I can only look at these comments and despair. Let’s just think about this. What is the one country which has dropped atomic bombs on another? How many nuclear warheads are now held in readiness by the US? Did they finally find WMD in Iraq? For that matter, who invaded whom?

I have no truck for Saddam Hussein. Despite the threat of misinformation, I still think he was most likely a very bad guy. But, we (the USA, with the willing compliance of the UK and Australia) invaded this country, and it’s clear that many thousands of innocent people have been killed. Are Bush’s words in disjunction with the evidence? I’ll leave you to think further on this.

Everybody loves a quiz

Here are two quizzes I discovered on the Net. Thanks to Richard Chappel for his post on Philosophy, et cetera.

The Political Compass. Where do you sit on the two scales of Authoritarian (Fascist) / Libertarian (Anarchist) and Left (Collectivism) / Right (Libertarianism). BTW, I ended up somewhere in the Libertarian/Left sector, near Ghandhi and the Dalai Lama. Nice comfy spot.

The IPIP-NEO personality test. This will take a little more time, so I don't have a personality to offer to the blogosphere just yet.