Rudd's Reffo Bashing Redux

This isn't a post about policy. Not directly, not in the sense of asking the same questions about why this tiny number of desperate people are such favoured scapegoats for poor government, insecurity, and the self-evident failings of our education system. That's just too frustrating, coming as it does at the end of a minor-thesis-writing process that involved, in part, exploring the irrationality of so many Australians, the left as well as the right, towards the region, people in boats, the usual themes that have been used to de-secure life on an apparently vast and remote continent for well over 100 years. Prodeo's onto it, anyway.

No, this is a post about the meaning of 'never again', a mantra so many in the ALP, such as myself, hoped would prove true following the humiliating nonsense of Tampa. Some left back then, joining the Greens or retiring from political involvement altogether, while others such as myself sucked up the bad realpolitik and thought 'well, this has been a particularly nasty period in Australian history, but perhaps once the poor-bugger-me set have had their little vent, and the aftermath of 11/9 has settled, we can reach saner ground on this issue.' Quietly we waited, watching things improve a little, trusting in people's decency and empathy to slowly eat away at the policies. And for a while it appeared things had changed. Not remarkably, but perhaps enough to remove reffo-baiting (nonsensically known as 'border security', as if there were any threat whatsoever to the integrity of the border, as such) from the prime issue tray.

We were wrong. Abbott, the great prodigy of St Ignatius Riverview, my alma mater, with its Ignatian slogan Men For Others...

...The term has come to mean that if one person graduates from a Jesuit school lacking a sense of social justice, the school has not achieved its primary mission...

...has ramped up the hatred for the Samaritans, and in response Kevin Rudd- not desperately trying to get elected like Beasley, in fact from a position of notable political strength, has screamed 'ME TOO!'

Pathetic. And palpably dishonest. Any idiot who follows international affairs knows neither Afghanistan nor Sri Lanka has demonstrated any improvement in respect of the treatment of its vilified minorities. In Sri Lanka's case it's a bit like claiming that the Tutsis were safe once the Hutus had successfully taken power (or indeed, as the worm turned back, the other way around). But in any event that is a moot point, because if people cannot show the requisite risk of persecution then the process, stacked against them to begin with, should weed that out. The fact that Rudd has suspended the process demonstrates complete lack of confidence in the very argument he is asserting.

So where does this leave the 'never again' contingent? Did I in fact vow to leave the party if it ever stooped that low again? Perhaps assuming it couldn't possibly do so twice, that last time was the result of a particularly bad confluence of events and the sheer surprise factor of Tampa...?

Bizarrely, I'm to the right of many in Labor, at least theoretically. But I found myself arguing with a comrade at the last branch meeting I went to, she was from the left, and she was running the old 'better off than the other side' line I've run so often, and I found myself really struggling with it. Labor has been better, pound-for-pound, than the Howard Liberals, but is that the test we should be applying? There is another test, the opportunity-cost test, one I've often held the Greens up to. It goes a little like:

If there wasn't an ALP, in its present form, dominated by unions and factions, controlling the space it does, obtaining consent from the likes of us, what else could there be?

Or- is the only choice we have a choice between two social conservatives, with a hard left party sniping away from one side and some illiterate nutballs hurling bibles from the other?

If everyone who doesn't like the status quo just rolls with it, and accepts the apologia articulated by my comrade, will it ever improve?

Do I roll out my credit card again before May, keep up the membership, hope for something better if we win again? Wasn't that the hope the first time around?

Would I do more good dumping this policy shebang and going back to law, finding a way to a spot where I'm fighting tooth and nail to at least achieve some small wins for people who are getting screwed over?

Will we ever, ever, get over the fact that we're Girt by Sea?

Nobel Nothings- Could Obama become the next Kissinger?

While he made a bad situation worse by defending war during the Nobel ceremony, a nasty possibility is emerging from his decision to increase troop numbers in Afghanistan.

Among the allegations Christopher Hitchens levelled in his book 'The Trial of Henry Kissinger', which I admit I read several years ago, was a fairly convincing argument along the lines of 'Kissinger and Nixon took unilateral steps to flummox peace discussions late in the '60s and drew the war out, largely for political purposes'. Resulting in tens of thousands more people dying.

While it may not be clear for many years, what if Obama is essentially making his decision to continue in Afghanistan against a preponderance of the advice he has received, at least in relation to the likelihood of success there? What if, instead, this Nobel Prize winning Democratic President has made a decision to continue the war, increasing its intensity (and therefore the casualties that will inevitably follow on all sides), because he believes this is essential to his own domestic political survival?

Hugh White's recent article in The Monthly suggests, by implication, that this might be the case.

We might yawn at the idea of becoming upset at politicians acting cynically to get votes, but when it comes to waging war, this could open him up to allegations (as Hitchens tried to do to Kissinger) that he has committed a breach of the laws of war, maybe even a war crime.

Ironically, Bush and Blair may have had better justification for going in at the beginning (to shut down Taliban terrorist training camps, which we know existed and which were used to attack the US) than Obama has for 'surging' the troops at this point.

I hope this hypothesis is wrong, I still have reams of respect for the man, and I hope (against the odds it would seem) that he actually succeeds and brings peace there.

Lest We Forget - The Abject Horror of Total War

What do we remember? What are we trying not to forget?

It is never clear if we are remembering solely to honour the fallen, a worthwhile task in itself no doubt, or whether we are remembering the democidal horror of war, of total war in particular, and the extraordinary folly and evil that combines to unleash it on humanity.

Memory is selective. Reflecting on my past couple of posts, there a proposition out there that anyone who reaches for the 'Hitler/Nazi' analogy should automatically lose an argument. I have some sympathy with this, but there is also an argument that says we have not learned the lessons of the past, whether from Nazism, Vietnam, or the Great War, and that lively recollection and debate about their relevance does no harm.

History weighs on my mind in many of Australia's racial, ethnic and population fault lines. I don't think about it because I want to be specious, I think about it because I've always been interested in history and I feel a certain churn in my stomach when I see things I thought and hoped I wouldn't see in my country. The Right has long relied on an extraordinary link drawn between the brutal totalitarian dictatorships of the 20th Century and wet, soft, democratically accountable government interference in the economy or the like. If such a self-evidently long bow, no not even a bow, a bamboo suspension bridge drawn into a hoop, can be given credence by any sane person, what is it about the Cronulla riots, the targetting of anyone of vaguely mediterranean appearance for brutal violence, the overt racial nationalism, that doesn't bring to mind the horror of the late 1930s and the vicious, paranoid bigotry unleashed upon the Jews?

It is not that there are pogroms, or mass murder. It is however that one thing led to another.

Behind such particular, smaller scale, analogies and partisan arguments, played out in nations largely benefitting from a sustained pax, there is the big thing that happened in the two World Wars. There is total war. Slaughter of millions. Loss of entire generations. Loss of cultures, great historical buildings and artifacts, loss of humanity.

I don't think we remember that, not really, and I don't think it's an issue of left or right. My greatest fear is not World War II, the model of the rampant dictator who can't be placated, but of the Great War, the combination of belligerent (if not quite Hitler-esque) leaderships, appalling diplomatic blunders, and the suction created by a set of interwoven alliances that draws nations that have no real gripe with each other into an unending slaughter.

Over all the others, all the other sacrifice, all the blunders and all the worthy causes properly fought for, it is the Great War I remember.

It is the Great War that we are most at risk of repeating. We, being Australia, not America, not China, not Japan. Australia. Lest we forget.

More comment on what I've suggested here over at LP.

Overheard in China: "What the fuck?"

So our leading intelligence agencies hold a similar view to your scribe; China poses no significant threat. So a few of the more hawkish military war porn types can't get their head around the idea. So Rudd, master of the Sinophile universe in his own mind, is sending out an explicit message that we view them as a threat?

Yes China are building their own capacity up, but surely even the more conservative realist observer can see that's a response to perceived competition, and potential security dilemmas, with the US, Taiwan, Japan and to a lesser extent India?

Of course Japan applauds Rudd's move- but Japan and China have a relationship that is testy for a number of reasons, including the failure to properly apologise and account for their imperial phase, the honouring of war criminals, and simply the fact that, aside from the lack of nuclear weapons, Japan is one of the most powerful military nations in the world.

And the message to Indonesia is...? What about the impoverished nations of the arc we accuse of instability? Is a big imperial-style navy a better way to bring security to our region than, say, helping them build schools, bridges and hospitals?

Whose security? Not mine, not yours.

Thoughts on swine, pandemics, and parenthood

Not surprised Doctors are sounding the alarm, global pandemic is considered by many to be the greatest threat to human security on the planet. Notably the UK:

An illustration of the major risks in the report suggests that electronic attacks on computer or communication systems and terrorist attacks are among the most likely threats, but would not have the widespread impact of a flu pandemic.

The Big One uses as its point of reference the so-called Spanish Flu of 1918-20, the pandemic equivalent (along with the more ghoulish but also distant spectre of the Bubonic Plague) of World War II. This is not irrational, and despite the advances in microbiology, general health and nutrition since the harsh years following the Great War there is no reason to think it couldn't happen again.

That flu had a (morbidly) fascinating effect of primarily hitting those we would expect to have the most resistance: young adults. Apparently this was due to causing an over-reaction in immune systems, so the stronger the immune system the more damage the disease caused- a cytokine storm.

The last I read about it Australian governments had bought out large stockplies of drugs and related flu management equipment, but this is earmarked for 'essential services' rather than widespread vaccination of the general populace. What the rest of us could hope to do is probably to make the call early enough and stay home, or run for the hills. Stockpiling, as much as it is reminiscent of cellars full of provisions for nuclear war, probably makes sense:

But Woolworths and Coles, the nation's two major supermarket chains, will run out of stock within two to four weeks without a supply chain – or even faster if shoppers panic.

This has prompted a team of leading nutritionists and dietitians from the University of Sydney to compile "food lifeboat" guidelines to cover people's nutritional needs for at least 10 weeks. Their advice – published in the Medical Journal of Australia – would allow citizens to stay inside their homes and avoid contact with infected people until a vaccine becomes available.

The lifeboat includes affordable long-life staples such as rice, biscuits, milk powder, Vegemite, canned tuna, chocolate, lentils, Milo and Weet-Bix...

We will likely be victims of our own society, the primacy of work and the difficulty we would cause for ourselves, and those who work with and rely on us, if each time a pandemic threatened we stayed home from the outset and battened down the hatches for a week.

If in doubt I have told Beloved I would like her to retreat to the family farm, up in the foothills of the Snowys, with the kids, before the rush, in that awful grey zone where the likelihood of a biological holocaust is becoming realistic, but the impact is not yet visceral enough to allow me, most of us worker drones, to lose the guilt and flee from our workstations.

Take me. Do not take my children.

UPDATE: a literary analogy that came to me while commenting at LP:

The awful quandrary could be likened to that of the townspeople in Everything Is Illuminated, hearing of the approaching SS and the tales of what was happening to Jews but, in most cases, unable to make such a stark call as to pack up their things and flee, until it was too late.

UPDATE II: Roxon reassures, we have almost 9 million doses of antiviral stockpiled. This must be reassuring for the mathematically ungifted.

UPDATE III: Rather less than amusing in Mexico.

UPDATE IV: Heightened risk of pandemic, says WHO.

Others: Robert at LP hopes we dodge the bullet. Bullet? So much worse.

Queue-Jumping Boat People Are Flooding Our Shores!

Love those flood/water/tsunami metaphors, as the Australian wheels out the headline 'Rising tide of boatpeople'. A tide, a flood:

...49 suspected asylum seekers...

Shit, I better run home and lock up my wife and daughter.

...the sixth boat to arrive this year...

*stops breathing*

...a total of 276 unauthorised arrivals...

*skin turns clammy*

There have now been 455 unauthorised arrivals since the Rudd Government announced the changes last year.

There it is, the clincher, the underlying narrative being rebuilt for the grand purpose of domestic regime change- Labor is bad for your security and is going to let brown terrorists overrun our great land where beer flows and men plunder.

We have 6 figure immigration but 455 UNAUTHORISED arrivals is a crisis. Remind me again, after the last time we went down this path and victimised these desperate people, how many ended up being found to be legitimate refugees? I don't have the number in front of me* but I believe an accurate characterisation would be 'an overwhelming majority'.

So, let's have it again, if they are genuine refugees then their attempt to gain asylum is legitimate and legal.

And someone is snivelling along, betraying his claims to being smart and liberal as he lets his incoherent attack dog try to whip up the hysteria again:

Opposition foreign affairs spokeswoman Julie Bishop said the Rudd government had given a green light to people smugglers and put out the welcome mat for illegal migrants.

Come on Turnbull, surely even you draw the line at stooping this low...

* Wiki has "over 80%" as the figure, anything out there to contravene that?

Asians and what won't Malcolm say to find a spike?

Can you picture Labor handing China a blank piece of paper, let them write a wish list that included rewriting our intellectual property laws, then claiming victory with a 'free trade agreement'?

What about China getting into a bit of a spat, self-evidently a stupid one, flicking it's fingers and finding our panting leader by their side, directing the ADF onto the battlefield? Far fetched?

I think so too, which is why you can rest assured that no matter how close our government get to Beijing, there will be none of the complete abdication of policy responsibility that took place under Malcolm's party. More than that, the fact that the Liberals not only had much closer ties with a range of elements in the US, but labled anyone who questioned that closeness as 'anti-American' and 'weak on security' (baffling to anyone who knows what security means in international relations discourse), shows that they have no problem with completely attaching to a foreign power that self-evidently has different national interests.

So, is it so absurd to ask whether race, or at best completely discredited notions of yellow peril, underpin their tub thumping about Labor and China?

The only explanation I can find for Turnbull's playing to the lowest denominator, the utter dumbing down of the man many of us thought would be a fascinating and more likeable leader of the Liberals, is that he has lost his bottle. He is flailing for the 'Howard touch', and it won't come to him, he is not that person, to his credit, and this course will surely lead him into cognitive dissonance and further collapse.