verging_on_random

Venture capital wanted

I am sick of polls that tell me how people would have voted if an election was held today. As we all know, an election wasn’t held today … making the poll results rather pointless. Moreover, the endless inane ‘analysis’ about whether a small movement in poll results was down to Burkegate, or Santorogate, or the comparative attractiveness of Tip’s tracksuit v J-Ho’s nifty number, is excruciatingly boring.

However I concede that I am in a minority and that lots of people enjoy this sort of thing. Therefore I have applied my creative mind to improving the process and come up with an absolute bottler of an idea.

Remember the worm that they use in debates to show which side is winning the hearts and minds of the audience? I reckon they should apply the concept to polling. Sign up a random 100,000 voters to an online service and every 30 minutes, have them click on the party they would vote for if an election was going to be held that day. The aggregate results can be a permanent display at the bottom of every web page and TV screen in the country.

Is that a cool idea or what? We can see instantly the effect of a Rudd backflip, an Abbott insult or a Gillard kitchen makeover. Political pundits will be ecstatic writing ever more turgid analyses of what caused the 90 minute blip in support for the Greens at 6 am yesterday while the rest of us can get on with our lives.

I need a silent partner to fund the thing. If you were going to give your personal details to that chap from Hong Kong whose bank is holding all that money for the Iraqi general who got killed (so sad), please send them to me instead.

Ich bin ein Amerikaner …

This is truly weird and more than a little bit creepy.

I got alerted to it from reading a post by an indigenous Australian who was less than impressed that a mob of god-botheres had appropriated the national Australian ‘Sorry Day’ to launch the Australian ‘National Day of Thanksgiving’. Needless to say the god-botherers were horrified at the very suggestion that they had tried to steal the Kooris’ thunder. Pure coincidence they smarmed, never crossed their minds that Australian Thanksgiving Day might clash with anyone else’s anniversary.

Except of course that one of the ‘People to be honoured and thanked‘ in 2007 are:

Indigenous People - As we focus on thanking those who have laid a foundation in our nation we will also honour and thank our First Nation people.

I see … they’re gunna thank our indigenous people at the same time as they thank the whities who have ‘laid a foundation in our nation’. Sounds like a diplomatic triumph. And they want to honour indigenous people but they are so ignorant of indigenous people’s culture that they don’t even know this is kind of a bad day to hold Australian Thanksgiving. Seems like a funny way to honour them to me, and … hang on, ‘thank our WTF people???’

Since when did Australian indigenous people take to calling themselves ‘First Nation people’? Since never as far as I know … it’s an expression used by Amerindians. In fact now I think about it, isn’t ‘Thanksgiving Day’ vaguely familiar? I seem to recall hearing about it on some American TV shows and movies.

So what do the fatuous jerks promoting ‘Australian Thanksgiving Day’ want we should do to celebrate … cook a turkey? With candied yams? Watch a football game in the afternoon while we drink a few bottles of Bud? Who are these wankers anyway?

They list themselves here. God-squadders, a great fucking bunch of god-squadders, half of them subsidiaries of Jerry Falwell type American go-to-meeting menageries. Here’s a selection:

Koorong is a 100% Australian owned, Christian, family company. Offering over 100,000 products including books and Bibles, Australia’s largest range of software titles, a huge selection of Christian music, videos, gifts and stationery.

The goal of the Fatherhood Foundation is to inspire men to a greater level of excellence as fathers, by encouraging and educating them, thereby renewing and empowering families and helping children. They produce a weekly e-magazine for fathers and run fatherhood courses to help men excel as fathers.

Vision is Australia’s national Christian radio network, connecting faith to life through a mix of great music and engaging talk across it’s vast network of 250+ relay stations. Part of UCB Australia, Vision is heard in regional areas of every state as well as some penetration into Brisbane, Perth, Hobart, and the Gold Coast.

All this would be harmless enough if it was just the Christianists pretending they were in the good ol’ USA and having fun putting religion back into public life, but they have way more influence than that. They have messages of suppport from no less than John Howard, Kim Beazley and the Governor-General, what’s-his-name. Well actually the messages of support from these dudes are from last year (and they think Kim Beazley is still leader of the opposition) so maybe that means Howard and Rudd and what’s-his-name don’t support this bullshit exercise any more but if that’s the case they should get onto the Thanksgiving Day mob and make them take down the misleading information.

I bought a packet of Arnott’s biscuits the other day and only when I opened them did I read that I was eating Arnott’s ‘Butter Crunch Cookies’. Cookies. Jesus fuckin’ Christ … since when did biscuits become cookies? Since weirdo Christianist sects got mainstream political figures to help import Thanksgiving Day I suppose.

So what you doing on 4th of July? How about we go let off some fireworks to celebrate our victory in the War of Independence? Don’t forget to bring your gun … it’s our constitutional right!

The enemy within

Neo-con American pundit Hugh Hewitt seems to think that the USA has ‘hundreds of thousands’ of illegal immigrants who are ‘jihadists’. He’s scared shitless the proposed law to allow illegal immigrants to be ‘regularised’ will let all these ’sleepers’ gain respectability … presumably until they’re ready to scream “Allahu Akbar” and start blowing themselves up in Times Square, or let off a nukular device at the Superbowl or something.

I suppose I shouldn’t joke about such things because an isolated incident like that (the suicide bomber, not the Tom Clancy stuff) will probably happen sooner or later, but two thoughts occurred to me:

1. Wasn’t the objective of the Iraq thing to fight the jihadists ‘over there’ so they wouldn’t come ‘over here’? If in fact hundreds of thousands of them are already ‘over here’, doesn’t that make the Iraq thing a fairly spectacular failure?
2. If there really are hundreds of thousands of jihadists in the USA, or just thousands - hell, a few hundred even - isn’t it a bit odd that they haven’t managed to do anything since 11 September 2001? Surely terrorism works best if there’s a continuous stream of atrocities.

No disrespect to Hugh Hewitt but on the evidence it seems unlikely that there is a massive terrorist fifth column ready to plunge the USA into turmoil. On the contrary, his paranoid ranting is all too reminiscent of the late Senator Joe McCarthy, who warned that there were Commies everywhere just busting to destroy the land of the free from within.

I bet it’s only a matter of time before Hugh or one of his equally crazed fellow neo-cons waves around a piece of paper claiming it contains the names of 205, or 57, or 81 ‘known jihadists’ working in the State Department or somewhere. While it seems to be subsiding in Australia (thank god), terrorist hysteria still seems to be alive and well in the USA.

Meanwhile, another 100 or so people got killed in Iraq yesterday … I don’t read Hughie getting concerned about them though.

WorkChoicesWorld … where every worker receives a prize

Are you confused by public discussion of WorkChoices? Do you have trouble relating the employers and union bosses who inhabit Joe Hockey’s world to the ones you see in your own workplace? Do blog commenters who enthusiastically endorse WorkChoices seem to be employed in an alternative universe where employers behave like no employers you have ever known?

Don’t worry, there’s nothing wrong with your perception of the world of work. It’s the supporters of WorkChoices who have parted company with reality. Let’s look at some of the myths they peddle to support their distorted view of employment relations.

Employers run the business

Most pro-WorkChoices rhetoric talks about an ‘employer’ to mean ‘the owner of the business’. The rhetoric fails at the most basic level because it pretends that relationships at work are between an ‘employer’ and its employees. In truth, the majority of relationships are between employees and their managers or supervisors. Once this is understood, it becomes obvious that most of the inductive logic supporting WorkChoices is flawed.

In very small businesses, the owner may indeed be the manager but once an organisation has more than about 20 employees, an increasing number of them report to a supervisor or manager who is not the owner of the business. Millions of people are employed by large organisations owned by anonymous shareholders where the owners play no role at all in employee relations. Moreover, about 25% of Australian workers are employed in the public sector or by not-for-profit organisations of various kinds where there is no conventional ‘owner’ at all.

Let’s see how many assumptions collapse once it’s understood that many organisations aren’t businesses trying to out-perform other businesses, nor are they being run by their owners. But first, let’s get one other urban myth out of the way:

Managers faithfully represent the interests of owners

Hahahahahahahahahahahaha. Now you tell one.

(See also: Enron, HIH, AMP, NRMA, Qantas …)

Employers have consistent IR policies

Once it’s understood that organisations are run by professional managers not owners, it’s silly to talk about what ‘the employer’ does, as if it’s one single actor in the employment relationship. In fact, as anybody knows who’s worked in a large organisation, IR decisions reflect internal power and politics. That’s why you might see everyone getting generous pay rises one year and 10% retrenchments the next. It just means that the balance of power in the top management team shifted when they sacked the HR Manager and made the new one report to the Finance Director. The employment relations behaviour of organisations is the outcome of a process of negotiation amongst various power bases and is therefore fundamentally irrational. The WorkChoices assumption that organisations make consistent, sensible policies to serve a set of rational objectives just ignores everything we know about organisational behaviour.

Managers are good at their jobs.

Hehehehehehehehehehehehehehehe.

There’s a reason why shows like The Office are not only hilarious but also make us uncomfortable … it’s because they are true to life. Around this great brown land, hundreds of thousands of men and women are exercising managerial authority for which they are either untrained or temperamentally unsuited, often both. They couldn’t act in the interests of the organisation even if they wanted to because they don’t know what those interests are or how to serve them. They don’t regard their subordinates as human assets for the organisation, they regard them as personal friends/enemies/potential sexual conquests/jokes/bastards/freaks/threats …anything but human beings to be coached with the aim of helping them do the best job they can for their organisation. Anybody who doubts this has never worked in a big enterprise.

Employers are interested in the performance of workers

This is the most persistent myth of all. “No employer would risk losing good workers,” goes the pro-WorkChoices propaganda, “Workers are too hard to replace. High turnover is a road to business failure.”

This is a wonderful example of something that appears to be so self-evidently true that most people don’t even try to rebut it. However, it’s far from true in many enterprises.

First of all, as noted above, about a quarter of all workers are employed by organisations that are not subject to market competition. Therefore it doesn’t matter if workers perform poorly and keep quitting as soon as they get another job. As long as blame can’t be sheeted home for clear breaches of the law or organisational policy, managers can be as bloody-minded as they like … and frequently are.

Second of all, many private sector organisations have deskilled their jobs so they can be done by virtually anyone. Therefore if workers don’t like their jobs they can piss off and the company will hire someone else without missing a beat. One good example is your favourite fast food company, which has designed its work so it can be done by school kids on a few bucks an hour, with staff turnover of anything up to 200% per annum. A lot of retailing is the same – in fact most jobs are like this in the casual/part-time sector where 25% of us are employed.

Finally, it’s a myth that employers are all concerned with the long-term success of their businesses. Many couldn’t give a stuff whether the place will be thriving in 10 years’ time. Businesses are increasingly becoming tradeable assets as opposed to sources of income. Many owners and managers are obsessed with short-term performance with a view to boosting the share price so they can sell the bloody thing at a huge profit. These days when a new CEO takes over it’s virtually compulsory to sack five or 10% of the workforce, just to show the stock market that the place is in safe hands. Workers are just pawns in these corporate games.

*****

Needless to say there are organisations out there where the owners care about the long-term, they see employees as their biggest assets and they don’t need a bunch of rules and regulations to make sure they treat workers fairly. They’ve also hired competent managers who have the organisation’s interests at heart. I know of some enterprises like that. However, it’s either naïve or dishonest to pretend that all employers meet that description. Many don’t.

Millions of Australians work in places where the owners are only interested in making a quick buck, or top management is on a little self-serving jaunt of its own, or many supervisors are incompetent; in many workplaces all three apply. Yet such workplaces barely register in the pro-WorkChoices rhetoric. If their existence is acknowledged at all, they are dismissed as an insignificant minority which will quickly go broke. The reality of course is very different. They are anything but insignificant and many of them survive and prosper because labour is sometimes not, in fact, an organisation’s most important asset.

That leaves unanswered the WorkChoices’R’Us crowd’s final argument: if workers don’t like their jobs they can just quit and get another one, so what’s the problem? This requires the demolition of a second category of urban myths about employment relations, which I’ll leave for a second instalment, coming to you soon!

(Cross-posted at Road to Surfdom.)

Thinking globally, acting locally

Dear diary,

I had a lovely trip to the shops today. The young people call it ‘the mall’ … where do they get their strange expressions?

I got a bit lost in Woolies. I couldn’t find the nice fresh dates that I enjoy with a piece of Kraft cheddar. Silly me, I was looking for the box where you used to be able to take them in bulk but now they’ve thoughtfully put them in a plastic tub, sealed with plastic. It’s a good idea of course, after all the only way you can buy cheese these days is in a thick plastic wrap. And meat has always come that way of course. It was so wasteful when they had to wrap it in paper.

The snow peas were packed the same way, in a plastic tub, and I got some of that baby corn, I couldn’t resist it in its little plastic bath-tub with its plastic sealing wrap. There were some pretty capsicums too, looking awfully cute in their own little plastic container.

I needed some socks today. They were all displayed in racks, each pair with its own little plastic hanger. The lass at the checkout made me take the plastic hangers because she said Woolies would just throw them away.

At the seafood section I asked for some frozen green prawns. The helpful chap behind the counter showed me where they were in the freezer cabinet. Apparently they don’t sell them in bulk any more, they come in plastic wrap inside a plastic box. So much more hygienic.

At the checkput I was so pleased that i had brought my green bag to save having to use plastic ones. I think it’s wonderful that the supermarkets introduced them to show how serious they are about saving the environment.

And so to bed. It was so cool tonight that I would have had to pull on a sweater if it wasn’t for the lovely air-conditioning!

A new democracy?

Andrew Bartlett has a post on his blog in which he discusses some issues about blogging and its links to conventional politics and the mainstream media. It prompted me to write down some thoughts that have been half-articulated in my head lately.

We all know that ‘democracy’ is a term that gets thrown around in so many contexts that it has become meaningless. We also acknowledge, or should do, that most countries labelled ‘democracies’ are anything but. The label is applied to virtually any nation that has a form of representative government and a halfway-respectable legal system, but that falls a long way short of a genuine democracy.

The problem with the long-standing model of democracy is that it makes unfounded assumptions about human nature. Fundamentally it assumes that individuals will take an informed interest in issues that affect them and exert themselves to achieve the outcomes that they believe are correct. If people actually behaved like this democratic government might work, albeit with the kind of occasional disruption that we see in France or Mexico. However we know that in most developed countries, people do not behave like this.

In ‘democracies’ like the USA where voting isn’t compulsory, half the population can’t even be bothered to vote. The same applies locally to micro-democracies like the NRMA and other member-owned co-operatives: most members completely ignore their entitlement to have a say in running the place.

The result in countries like Australia is that government has been hijacked by the major political parties, which like most contemporary organisations are run by management for the benefit of management, with citizens regarded as customers to be provided with the most marketable collection of policies and leaders that management can put together based on endless market research. This would be fine if it led to acceptable outcomes but on the evidence, it doesn’t. It leads to an opportunistic obsession with short-term popularity at the expense of long-term planning.

It also leads to government being in the hands of incompetent individuals. We’re prone to complain about the quality of politicians in both the Labor and Liberal Parties, and with good reason, but it’s pretty much unavoidable that we’ll get dysfunctional individuals in politics under the party system as it exists now. Let’s face it, very few normal, rational people would endure the life of a contemporary politician: on duty 24/7, every aspect of your private life subject to intense scrutiny, constantly being called upon to meet a menagerie of special interest groups, spending endless tedious hours at meetings and dinners and god knows what where you’re expected to be sober, serious and a good mixer. No wonder it attracts people who are a bit peculiar. No wonder they get a bit full of themselves when they get into power.

Online communications have created opportunities for alternative models of governance that we have barely begun to sense. Certainly I don’t pretend to be able to predict how they will develop but I’m confident they will. The singular benefit of online interaction is that it will allow citizens to take back control of government without having to resort to professional politicians.

Politics has become a full-time profession for practical reasons. Until now, the function og governing has required the presence of a group of people in the same physical space at the same time. Once the voting franchise extended beyond the aristocracy (who had nothing better to do), the only way to involve people in government was to make it their paid profession. However that need no longer be the case. The internet makes it easy for people to make collective decisions without having to conform to the tyrannies of time and place. The amount of time and effort that many people put into blogging is testimony to their willingness to participate in public debate without payment. In time there is no reason why that can’t be channelled into not just debate and discussion but decision-making as well.

Blogging, and co-operative online ventures like Wikipedia, demonstrate how democratic principles could be applied in practice by encouraging decision-making by consensus. That is at the core of genuine democracy: it’s not dictatorship by the majority but a process in which all interest groups are heard and their interests are taken into account to the maximum extent practicable.

Online democratic government would allow different groups of people to take control of public policy in their own fields of expertise. When you think about it, the notion that a bunch of lawyers (Coalition) or trade union officials and party hacks (Labor) should be allowed to decide on issues like global warming and industrial relations is ludicrous. What the fuck would they know? The fact that they now do so reflects unplanned institutional evolution, not some deliberate act of public policy.

Even the crude Wikipedia model demonstrates how a large number of informed people could contribute to a consensus decision about virtually anything. Why shouldn’t a group of 500 employers, workers, academics and public servants develop by consensus a new industrial relations system for Australia? Does anybody seriously think it would not be a
substantial improvement on any ideologically-driven model devised by either the Labor or Liberal parties?

As I said, I don’t pretend to have any idea what kind of mechanisms will actually emerge. Being online 24/7 using wireless technology is going to change a lot of our social institutions in ways we can’t yet imagine and there’s no reason to think politics will be exempt. I just think it’s exciting that at last there’s a practical alternative emerging to what seemed until recently to be the relentless concentration of governmental power in the hands of a political class increasingly disengaged from the bulk of the citizenry.

Provoking Iran

Who knows what the Bush Administration’s intentions are with respect to Iran? Maybe it’s a dumb question because it implies that a body of intentions actually exists. I rather suspect that it doesn’t, but that there’s a sullen intention to keep antagonising Iran in the hope that something might come up that can be grabbed opportunistically as the first step in an escalating conflict.

What’s known is that some members of the Administration regarded the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq as only the first steps in bringing about wholesale regime change in the Middle East. The big prize of course was Iran. Things started promisingly enough: The Taliban melted away, Mission was Accomplished in Iraq and Libya finally did a deal to abandon WMD programs.

The optimists suggested that the Iranian regime was so unpopular with its people they would rise up and overthrow it once they saw freedom on the march on the nation’s borders. Harder heads said it would first be necessary to engage in a bit of shock and awe. One way or another, however, the overall strategy was predicated on the relentless spread of regimes friendly to the US and its allies. It was a kind of domino theory of democracy.

Needless to say this has all gone hopelessly wrong. Afghanistan is a mess and seems to be getting worse, while there’s a growing belief that the US cannot achieve anything in Iraq beyond an indefinite military occupation. The grand vision of the Stars and Stripes flying in Tehran has evaporated - apart from anything else, the American people wouldn’t stand for any overt action against Iran now and there are signs that the American military would subvert (or maybe have already subverted) any attempts to engage in open hostilities on the part of Bush or his unhinged deputy.

Does this mean the dreamers of the New American Century have conceded defeat and gone off to become bitter old men whining about the way the gutless liberals betrayed America? Unlikely. The frustrated vision of an American-dominated Middle East must still burn fitfully in their imaginations. They would not be human if they weren’t looking for a chance to snatch vindication after years of disappointment and increasingly, being the butt of humour on US talk shows.

Consequently American policy towards Iran seems to be intended to foster a climate of bad-tempered hostility in which - who know? - the neo-cons might get lucky and have Iran do something intemperate that forces a turn-around in public opinion back home. If an overt attack on Iran is no longer a practical possibility, acting in self-defence would not be out of the question. So the US in the Middle East seems to be treating Iran as if it’s a rabid dog that’s currently lying in the shade giving an occasional snarl. The intention is to make faces at it and poke it with a stick and otherwise annoy it until it finally jumps up and bites someone, thereby justifying shooting it.

Thus we have had stories from US spokespeople about Iran training terrorists to be let loose in Iraq and stories about Iranian weapons being used by Iraqi insurgents and stories about roadside bombs and attacks on US troops that are ‘too sophisticated’ to be the work of locals and therefore must be the work of the ayotollahs across the border. We’re familiar with the way these kinds of stories get used from the pre-Iraq invasion propaganda of course.

There are other indications that the US is deliberately provoking Iran. For example, in this excellent overview of the USA’s difficulties in Iraq we’re reminded of the incident in January when five Iranian officials were captured and are still being held. It is alleged in the linked article that the real targets of the American mission were two much more high-ranking Iranian officials who were present in Iraq with the full knowledge and support of the Iraqi government.

Now there’s been another incident revealing a planned campaign to keep public opinion in America and Europe firmly anti-Iran. You might have seen this story last Thursday:

VIENNA (AFP) -

Iran blocked UN atomic experts on a first unannounced test inspection of an underground nuclear site where it enriches uranium, despite a pledge to allow such visits, diplomats told AFP Thursday.

The watchdog International Atomic Energy Agency had in March told Iran to allow its inspectors to install surveillance cameras at the site in Natanz but Tehran refused this and in return promised to allow frequent, unannounced visits.

A first test on April 21 of this agreement “was a total failure,” said a diplomat in Vienna, home to the IAEA, who added that a successful unannounced inspection has not yet taken place.

“The Iranians did not let the IAEA inspectors into the halls where the cascades of centrifuges are,” the diplomat said, referring to the production lines of centrifuges which enrich uranium.

“So they couldn’t get details of what is going on there,” the diplomat said.

Problems with inspections were confirmed by two other envoys in Vienna.

Pretty damning, eh? I thought so when I read it. Then I read more carefully and noticed that the source was ‘a diplomat’ …. hmmm. Not terribly precise. Moreover confirmation was supplied by ‘two other [equally anonymous] envoys’, making the whole story slightly dodgy, but still … surely AFP wouldn’t have run it if there were any doubts about its authenticity? So I reasoned, anyway.

I should have been more sceptical. Today it’s reported that the story is bullshit:

The United Nations’ nuclear watchdog has denied a report that Iran blocked its inspectors from visiting a nuclear facility where it is enriching uranium.

“There is no truth to media reports claiming that the IAEA was not able to get access to Natanz,” said International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) spokesman Marc Vidricaire.

“We have not been denied access at any time, including in the past few weeks. Normally we do not comment on such reports but this time we felt we had to clarify the matter,” he said.

I’ve looked in vain for any story revealing who the diplomats were who started the story or if they even existed. The whole affair stinks of a deliberate disinformation campaign designed to defame the Iranians and whip up anti-Iranian feeling amongst ordinary people. I confidently expect the lie to form part of the sins with which Iran is regularly charged from now on regardless of the IAEA’s denials.

The Iranian regime is a puzzle. There’s no doubt they say and do things that would be unacceptable in Australia. Moreover there’s every reason to suspect they’d like to have nuclear weapons - after seeing how Iraq and North Korea have been treated by the US, they’d be mad not to. Nevertheless they have behaved with considerable restraint in the face of American provocation, which suggests they understand the game the Bushistas are playing and they’re not going to fall for it.

For the sake of all the people who would die or have their lives ruined by a war between Iran and the USA, I certainly hope that’s what they’re doing.

UPDATE:

From yesterday’s Washington Post:

The divergent approaches toward Iran reflect the tensions within the administration, particularly between the State Department and the vice president’s office about whether to engage with Iran and, if so, how far to go. The bilateral talks being planned and the scope of discussion will be reviewed after the vice president returns from his tour next week, U.S. officials say.

Some in the administration refer to the divergence as a good-cop, bad-cop strategy, while others say that it reflects a deep policy divide, with Cheney trying to stall or undermine diplomatic outreach efforts.

Analysts say U.S. strategy is instead simply contradictory. “On the one hand, U.S. policy involves a series of coercive steps — U.N. resolutions, financial sanctions, arresting Iran’s operatives in Iraq, trying to mobilize the Gulf states against Iran, giving the kind of speeches with symbolism done today — that is quite comprehensive,” said Ray Takeyh of the Council on Foreign Relations. “On the other side, it’s an offer to negotiate that is not well laid out. But the conciliatory effort is totally negated by the coercive steps, which is why it’s not working.”

Great. Despite the Cheney/Rumsfeld record of one fuck up after another, Bush seems determined to let anyone except the State Department run US foreign policy.

The Balibo Five

It’s 32 years since five Australian journalists were killed in East Timor. The story that they were ‘killed in crossfire’ was always hard to swallow. On the balance of probabilities they were killed deliberately by the Indonesian military or by people associated with them.

I suppose I can sympathise with some of the men’s family in their persistent demands that somebody, somehow, uncover ‘the truth’ about what happened. I can sympathise with their determination but I don’t agree with it. I simply don’t see the point of such a crusade when it can never have a satisfactory ending. Without getting all Pontius Pilate about “Truth? What is truth?”, it’s obvious that getting the facts about what happened would be exceptionally difficult even if an inquiry had the full co-operation of all parties concerned. Without that co-operation, the task is impossible.

Even if this current coronial inquiry makes a finding that the men were probably killed by Indonesian soldiers, what purpose will have been served? The prevailing mentailty seems to be that once the truth is known, some named person or persons can be blamed … for not preventing the deaths, or not doing something about them when they happened, or covering up the truth, or something … it’s never really been clear what people expect to achieve.

We’ve known for years that the Whitlam Government was aware of Indonesia’s intenton to occupy East Timor and condoned the action. The Fraser Government did not change this policy significantly. Of course nobody wanted five reporters to get killed during the exercise but in the immortal words of Donald Rumsfeld, “Stuff happens”.

The first foreign policy responsibility of any Australian government is to try to maintain a constructive relationship with Indonesia. The task is made incredibly hard by the fact that most of the population have never grasped how much our security depends on the goodwill of the Indonesians - much more so than theirs depends ours. Even with the benefit of hindsight, and assuming that Whitlam and his ministers knew the five deaths had been deliberate, it’s hard to know what they were supposed to have done about it. Declared war? Sure they could have issued all sorts of stiff protests but they wouldn’t have achieved a thing and they risked triggering a wave of anti-Indonesian sentiment in Australia that could have spiralled out of control.

I have this nagging feeling that the endless demands to find out what happened to the Balibo Five is just a cover. I think that there are powerful people and institutions in Australia who believe the decision to support Indonesia’s annexation of East Timor was wrong - morally wrong, not politically wrong, althouth they’d probably argue that too - and they’re pissed off because nobody’s ever been punished for it. They’re the same people who have backed Jose Ramos-Horta to the presidency despite his repeated “No, let this cup pass from me” protestations that might be sincere but to me smack just a tiny bit of calculated self-promotion.

So I feel sorry for a weeping widow … but I think the inquiry into her husband’s death is a proxy for a campaign against the foreign policies of the Whitlam and Fraser Governments with regard to Indonesia, a campaign that’s been going on for more than 30 years. I suspect the people behind that campaign aren’t a million miles removed from the ones agitating for Free Papua, and Free Aceh, and Free anywhere else they can go stirring up their Christian converts to rebel against their evil Muslim rulers.

The Balibo Five were the victims of a crime a long time ago. Nobody is now going to be held accountable for it and it’s time to accept that and mourn the dead with dignity. They should not be used as a device to stir the considerable pot of anti-Indonesian sentiment that’s never far from the surface of Australian populism.

More on work

The European countries’ contributions from time worked have been negative; in other words they have been working progressively fewer hours which has reduced GDP. In the USA, on the other hand, time worked has been virtually unchanged. This has predictable caused the USA’s GDP to increase at a greater rate than Europe’s but the Europeans, especially France and Germany, have partially offset this by increasing productivity at a higher rate than the US. Not surprisingly, because capital chases opportunities for growth, new investment in the USA has outstripped that in Europe.

Needless to say, conventional wisdom in Australia portrays this as a triumph for the USA. However, it’s a very one-dimensional perspective that privileges income over leisure. If, as the UBS report suggests, Europeans are simply expressing a preference for leisure over income then there is nothing inherently ‘better’ about either approach, at least economically.

What is better is that the European choice makes less demand on non-renewable resources and the environment. In a climate where everyone isn’t obsessing about maximising income, the EU has been able to make some tentative steps towards tackling global warming even though they will affect GDP, whereas in the USA the over-riding instinct is not to do anything that will harm ‘Teh Economy’.

It’s hard to say how and why Australia stopped being a European nation and became an American one. Nor is there any sign that we are having second thoughts; Howard’s mob are doing everything they can to force people back into the workforce and to deter them from retiring while ever they can be gainfully employed but there are few signs of public resistance. Anything for a new home theatre system and an extension on the house to put it in, apparently.

I have a sneaking suspicion that sooner rather than later, income growth around the world is going to come to a shuddering halt. It seems to me that psychologically, the Europeans are reasonably well-placed to adapt to such a development and we know that the Japanese are because they already did it through the 1990s. Australia and the USA? I suspect they won’t fare so well … when your life’s values are based on acquisition of material goods financed through endlessly increasing income, having to swap income for leisure will be a hard blow.

Not for me though … I took the European alternative 12 years ago .

Hey Toto …

May 6, 2007 on 7:51 pm | In Uncategorized | No Comments

We’re not in Kansas any more ….

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