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The Daily Briefing 28/11/05
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1 Simon Jenkins on Aljazeera and Iraq leaks/Sunday Times (link below)
2 Frank Rich on the lies behind the Iraq invasion/NYTimes
3 Column calls for action on violence against women in India/IHT (2 links below)
4 Nicholas Kristof on the genocide in Darfur/NYTimes
5 Martin Kettle on making the US sane again/Guardian (2 links below)
6 Report on how the nuclear war was to be fought/Telegraph
7 Jenni Russell on skewed child-adult relationships/Guardian (link below)
8 Germaine Greer on the George Best she knew/Independent
9 Report on blogger accepting the corporate dollar/NYTimes (link below)
10 Belle de Jour on the good s*x writing award/Times (2 links below)
11 THE REST: Simon Hoggart on messages from abroad/Guardian (8 links below)
12 IN THE PAPERS: National, Opinion, Business round-up
1 Blair, Bush and a thousand leaks
What a comfort it must be for John Howard, as he watches his counterparts Bush and Blair being assailed over Iraq, to govern a country whose media cares so little for our national sovereignty and dignity that it does not similarly put him to the test. It seems our journalists accept that Howard was a mere lackey going along for the ride on this misadventure, and so there is no point questioning him about over-cooked intelligence, torture, white phosphorous or the failed occupation. Yet Australian troops helped invade Iraq, Australian troops are part of the occupation force and if predictions of decades of blowback in the form of terrorism are correct, Australian civilians will die because of Iraq. And yet Iraq barely rates as a domestic political issue.
In the UK, historian Simon Jenkins looks at the revelation that George Bush raised the possibility of bombing Aljazeera in Qatar and thinks the ban on further reporting of it is designed to cover up differences between the two to protect Bush domestically. "Blair is desperate not to have any split with Washington on public view. He senses that a dam may be about to burst, revealing Anglo-American splits over Iraq just when Bush’s policy there is facing domestic opposition. So far discipline has held on this front. Britain’s military and diplomatic elite may excoriate Pentagon policy in Iraq and excoriate Blair for failing to use leverage over it. But the public line has held that there is “not a rice paper” between the two leaders."
The Sunday Times reports that as chance would have it, Donald Rumsfeld slammed Aljazeera one day before the meeting at which Bush and Blair are said to have discussed bombing it.
SIMON JENKINS/THE SUNDAY TIMES
2 What wasn't a lie?
The sound of someone blowing their own trumpet is rarely pleasant, but allow us this one toot at least - Frank Rich refers and links to four articles in the column below, all of which were highlighted last week in TDB. And Rich makes a comment the briefing made along the way - is there a single aspect of the Bush-Blair-Howard case for war that has not been discredited in some way? "The more we learn about the road to Iraq, the more we realize that it's a losing game to ask what lies the White House told along the way. A simpler question might be: What was not a lie? The situation recalls Mary McCarthy's explanation to Dick Cavett about why she thought Lillian Hellman was a dishonest writer: "Every word she writes is a lie, including 'and' and 'the.' " If Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney believe they were truthful in the run-up to the war, it's easy for them to make their case. Instead of falsely claiming that they've been exonerated by two commissions that looked into prewar intelligence - neither of which addressed possible White House misuse and mischaracterization of that intelligence - they should just release the rest of the President's Daily Briefs and other prewar documents that are now trickling out. Instead, incriminatingly enough, they are fighting the release of any such information, including unclassified documents found in post-invasion Iraq requested from the Pentagon by the pro-war, neocon Weekly Standard."
FRANK RICH/NYTIMES
3 India's 50 million missing women
Swami Agnivesh, a former education minister of Haryana State, Rama Mani, course director at the Geneva Center for Security Policy and Angelika Köster-Lossack, a former member of the German Parliament for the Green Party, declare India "the undeclared winner in the contest of violence against women" and explain why they participated in a march across its worst-affected northern states earlier this month. "The practice of female infanticide has a long history in India: Because of the widespread cultural preference for sons, many baby girls used to be killed after birth. But modern technology, particularly the ultrasound machine, has made it easier for parents, and highly profitable for doctors, to practice female foeticide without great risk of detection and punitive legal action."
But India has some tough competition when it comes to the oppression of women. The NYTimes reports on the millions of African girls forced into marriage often before puberty. "Mwaka ran away, and her parents took her back after six months. But a week's journey through Malawi's dry and mountainous north suggests that her escape is the exception. In remote lands like this, where boys are valued far more than girls, older men prize young wives, fathers covet dowries and mothers are powerless to intervene, many African girls like Mwaka must leap straight from childhood to marriage at a word from their fathers. Sometimes that word comes years before they reach puberty."
Not that the West is a matriarchal utopia. Figures published last week suggested Britain was experiencing an epidemic of violence toward women, and that many people still believed women were to blame if they were the victims of sexual violence. Naomi Wolfe says the only way to deal with both problems is tough action against offenders. "When rapists began to be locked up for rape - even rape of their wives, their dates, their ex-girlfriends, the kinds of rape that had been tolerated before - then attitudes on the street began to change. And when victims began to bring civil suits against their assailants, then attitudes really began to shift. The answer is not in softball advocacy but hardball politics."
INTERNATIONAL HERALD TRIBUNE
4 How much genocide is too much?
The genocide goes on, Nicholas Kristof continues his campaign for international action to stop it, and TDB links to his columns. Same story, only the horrific details remain the same. In huge letters at the Dachau concentration camp are the words "Never Again". If only. "It's true that a few hundred thousand deaths in Darfur - a good guess of the toll so far - might not amount to much in a world where two million a year die of malaria. But there is something special about genocide. When humans deliberately wipe out others because of their tribe or skin color, when babies succumb not to diarrhea but to bayonets and bonfires, that is not just one more tragedy. It is a monstrosity that demands a response from other humans. We demean our own humanity, and that of the victims, when we avert our eyes."
NICHOLAS KRISTOF/NYTIMES
5 God and science
Martin Kettle checks in on the American Museum of Natural History's tribute to the life and work of Darwin and says the whole world should be grateful for it. "We live in a world dominated by the United States. The US claims and asserts military and economic -and moral - primacy in that world. And yet, not least in the estimation of many of its people, the US is not like the rest of the world. In their eyes, it is a special place whose specialness is part, and even proof, of a divine purpose. It is but a small step from there to say that divine claims should take precedence over science, and rhetoric over reason. Is America a nation in the vanguard of the modern world? Or is it also a nation in revolt against the modern world? One thing is clear: America will not resolve this dilemma until it is more honest and courageous with itself about science and religion than many Americans are today."
In the Journal of Philosophy and Scripture, Lewis Gordon looks at the difficulty of teaching theology in a secular age. " The search for Truth is a philosophical one through which we encounter a struggle with religion as well. Religion, whose province is myth and faith, has the luxury of taking on this task without the encumbrance of the limits faced by philosophy.25 Its media can therefore be poetic, mythic, and mystical. Philosophy, after all, seems to stop where the mystical and the faithful would both leap, although, as Jaspers correctly points out, "Reason is 'mysticism for the understanding'" and that "Philosophy through the millennia is like one great hymn to reason—though it continually misunderstands itself as finished knowledge, and declines continually into reasonless understanding.""
In The Observer, Lynn Barber interviewed Robert Winston about his new book and television series "The Story of God" (panned by some reviewers) and a somewhat tetchy Dr Winston, who seems to have completed the transition from scientist to media celebrity. "But surely it is not unreasonable to ask the author of The Story of God whether he believes in God? 'Do I believe in the conventional God who sits on a throne in heaven and judges people on earth? No I don't. I don't believe that because I believe in free will. And if you have free will then you can't have a god that intervenes - it doesn't make sense. But you can have a divine idea or divine spirit within you, which I believe. And I come from a religious tradition which is as much concerned with how you behave as how you believe. Judaism is one of the few religions which makes no demands on faith.'"
MARTIN KETTLE/THE GUARDIAN
6 Mutually assured destruction, the map
Poland's newly elected government has revealed some of the secrets from its Warsaw Pact military archives, including a map which shows how the Russians expected a nuclear exchange from either side of the Iron Curtain to be played out. "On the map, western Europe lay beneath a chilling overlay of large red mushroom clouds: Warsaw Pact nuclear strikes, using giant warheads to compensate for their relative lack of precision. Soviet bombs rain down on cities from northern Denmark down to Brussels, the political headquarters of Nato. Large red clouds blot out cities such as Hamburg, Frankfurt, Stuttgart, Munich and Baden Baden, Haarlem, Antwerp and Charleroi, above the Franco-Belgian border. "
THE DAILY TELEGRAPH
7 Children and death denial
It may take a village to raise a child, but as Jenni Russell describes the modern world, children are being raised in a cocoon, shared only by their parents. According to Russell, this has come about because adults are fearful of being accused of s*xual abuse if they interact with children not their own, and through parents insisting on their own individualistic approach to child-rearing. "This is a historically unprecedented way for children to be brought up - leaving the job exclusively to parents and paid professionals. It is a toxic combination, for just as adults have been forced to retreat from a generalised responsibility for socialising the young, so many of the families that retain it have either been disintegrating, or finding themselves so preoccupied with work and their own needs that there is little time left to respond to their children. The evidence of inadequate socialisation is everywhere, from Ofsted's concerns about increasing numbers of four-year-olds arriving at school unable to talk, to the anxiety about teenagers behaving badly."
And yet more words on the baby-boomers, this one something of a mish-mash (with all the usual cliches), but it does occasionally become interesting when it wonders if Western denial of death isn't more pronounced among boomers. "Conquering death can be seen as the supreme boomer project. These are secular-minded people; they don’t expect an afterlife in heaven or hell. They just want this life, with its sat navs and its snowboarding, to go on for ever. And so they’ve gone way beyond death-denial to something like death-refusal. During the Vietnam war, boomers chanted “Hell, no, we won’t go!” Now, approaching 60, they’re looking at the cemeteries and chanting the same thing. And the weird thing is, given their record, it just might work."
JENNI RUSSELL/THE GUARDIAN
8 Why I didn't sleep with George Best
Millions of words have been written about George Best, soccer genius and flawed human being, but none are more interesting than Germaine Greer's as she describes the person she knew, explains why she didn't sleep with him and shows off an unexpected knowledge of football. "George was a genuinely hard man, but hardness results in fragility. His working-class Ulster-Scots upbringing afforded him no way of coming to terms with that fragility, except to deny it and order another round of drinks. Throughout his illness, he showed again and again that, though he would not conform, would not make even the slightest attempt to deserve his new liver, he would not complain either."
GERMAINE GREER/THE INDEPENDENT
9 When blogs sell-out
Historically, the internet has been anarchic, rebellious, and free, but inevitably as it grows in popularity, it has also become a means to buy, sell and make money. The article linked to below reports on how this is changing the nature of blogs. "After beginning as a vehicle for anti-establishment, noncommercial writers, many Web logs have laid out welcome mats for corporate America in the last couple of years. No one tracks how much advertising money is flowing to Web logs. Nor is it clear how many bloggers, like Ms. Campbell, disclose their sponsors. But when writers have not been completely open, their fellow bloggers have been quick to criticize."
The NYTimes also reports on how some retailers are trying to encourage more people to shop online. "This holiday season, shoppers are expected to spend nearly $20 billion on non-travel online purchases, up 24 percent from last year. While the Friday and Monday after Thanksgiving are typically bigger shopping days -- both online and in bricks-and-mortar stores -- some savvy shoppers checked their lists on Thanksgiving between bites of mashed potatoes and pumpkin pie."
NYTIMES
10 Houellebecq, Cattullus and good s*x writing
As the Literary Review is about to announce its annual Bad S*x Awards, The Times, with the help of Bell de Jour (her of the infamous blog about life as a high class call girl, links in Archives), announces the Good S*x Writing wards. "Written s*x also has the distinction of being the only erotic art one can indulge in on public transport without fear of arrest. This is a truth well known by schoolgirls, who from the age of 13 onwards pass round dog-eared paperbacks, the good bits underlined for easy reference, as if they held the secret to life itself. Schoolboys, by contrast, are slaves to images, while we girls knew that in just a few years’ time we’d have our own three-dimensional versions of what the lads spent so much effort trying to catch a photographic glimpse of."
In The Sunday Times, Lesley White interviews Michel Houellebecq. "Houellebecq has become an international mascot for the dissenting classes, a black-humoured would-be rock star of ideas, one of the few novelists - or writers, for that matter - for decades with a radical and persuasive critique of how we live. He works in fiction but his vision of the greedy, lazy, morally disfigured wretches we've become is one with which no vote-conscious politician would ever dare concur, and every half-sentient reader relates to."
And in The New Republic, a fabulous essay by Emily Wilson as she reviews a new translation of the poetry of Cattulus. "It is a superb piece of work, despite some disappointments. Green's translation should encourage readers of all kinds to read or re-read Catullus, one of the greatest and most influential of all classical poets. " (If they won't let you read it for free, send a message to editor@thedailybriefing.com.au)
BELLE DE JOUR/THE TIMES
11 Postcards from hell
Some of the more quirky odds and sods around. Simon Hoggart takes a break from skewering politicians to report on the horrifyingly breezy messages parents sometimes receive from their children travelling abroad. "Met a chief of a neighbouring town on Thursday. He's actually rather nice, 35, seven wives, and apparently looking for an eighth. Hope all fab, Love Cat."
The Scotsman reports that Britons are the biggest cocaine users in Europe and are increasingly likely to die from it (so it's not all bad news then).
Those who prefer more traditional mind altering substances can now get their alcohol 24 hours a day, although the guardian of middle England, The Telegraph, worries that something is being lost: "Haven't you got homes to go to?"
As TDB recalls it, there were reports last year of Sydney being afflicted by a bed bug plague. The NYTimes reports that the same is now happening in New York.
The same paper reports that an exhibition devoted to its slave past is having an affect on many of those who see it. "A white lawyer went into the booth twice to sort out his feelings. "This has just been devastating," he said. As he looked at the exhibition's array of documents, he said, he realized that the some of the laws used to isolate and dehumanize enslaved black New Yorkers became custom after the laws vanished and "contributed to the way whites look at blacks," even today."
Perhaps you have been wondering whatever happened to Esperanto, designed to be the world's second language. Not much, although all is not lost. And if you don't go to the article, you might enjoy this quote from it. "'I speak Spanish to God, Italian to women, French to men, and German to my horse," said Charles V, King of Spain and Holy Roman Emperor."
Should you ever find yourself looking for a room at an inn in Birmingham, Jeremy Clarkson knows a motel where even the ugly get lucky. Must be quite a place if even this professional petrolhead and lad abroad was taken aback.
And Sacha Baron Cohen, who uses a boorish, sexist and racist Kazakh alter ego called Borat to poke fun at interviewees has responded to a legal threat from the Kazakh authorities by satirically welcoming the move. Borat's repsonse was: "I like to state, I have no connection with Mr Cohen and fully support my government's position to sue this Jew."
SIMON HOGGART/THE GUARDIAN
| 12 IN THE PAPERS: National, Opinion, Business round-up IN THE BROADSHEETS Before moving onto the news of the morning, a look at another curious editorial in The Australian, which seems to use this space to fight its battles with various commentators (such as Ross Gittins in another example highlighted recently). This time the paper unloads on broadcaster Mike Carlton (whom it describes as a "shock jock") for suggesting in passing at the end of his week-end Sydney Morning Herald column "Cancel your Optus contract and don't fly Singapore Airlines" in response to the likely execution Nguyen Van Tuong. It is curious to see a newspaper puff itself up to its full height at such a casual suggestion, but it works itself into quite a lather as it warns "our military, security and diplomatic ties with Singapore" could be at risk (it also says such boycotts achieve nothing, which ignores the lessons of apartheid’s history, but that is by the by). A mighty strange, if not nigh inexplicable thing for a newspaper to do, unless of course you are aware of the tensions between Carlton and The Australian's editor-in-chief Chris "Order of Lenin" Mitchell over the war in Iraq. Carlton opposed it, Mitchell was a huge supporter and emails have been exchanged, to which Carlton made at least one derisory mention in his column. Using the editorial column, the official voice of the newspaper, to engage in petty personal scraps would, in a serious newspaper, be considered a bizarre corruption of the uses for which it is intended - but such behaviour is but one of the hallmarks of newspapers under Mitchell. On its news pages, The Australian reports that employees who refuse to work on key public holidays such as Christmas Day and Anzac Day will be protected from the sack under changes to the Howard Government's industrial relations reforms (but Howard is resisting calls to guarantee they are paid penalty rates). It also reports on Australia's newest detention facility -- a $210million, 800-bed "immigration reception and processing centre" that Christmas Islanders fear will be our very own Guantanamo Bay; that Attorney-General Philip Ruddock has flagged further reforms to anti-terror laws to protect journalists' notebooks from "fishing expeditions" by police; that Federal coffers are overflowing with tax revenue, which is $3.6 billion ahead of budget, according to an Access Economics review that argues for taxation reform (one of the many agenda being pushed by the paper); and that Gough Whitlam has called on Kim Beazley to promise a referendum on taking away the Senate's power over budget bills, warning that the next Labor government could be held to ransom as his was 30 years ago. The Herald reports that the Federal Government may make a written request for Singapore to have the looming execution of Nguyen Tuong Van referred to the International Court of Justice; that more than $130,000 sent by wealthy friends to figures in Jakarta to help free Michelle Leslie had disappeared and was rumoured to have been used for bribes, her Sydney lawyer, Ross Hill, has conceded; that the Liberal Party's disastrous loss in the Pittwater by-election has reopened hostilities on the left and right of the party, as the Prime Minister described the task of winning government in NSW as akin to climbing Everest; and that the Federal Government's boast that its workplace relations overhaul will benefit workers with families has been repudiated by a scholar on family issues. The Age reports that Royal Children's Hospital will be rebuilt in Parkville, in a controversial move critics say will not be in the best interests of patients, their families or the sensitive environment of Royal Park; that thousands of motorists will be inconvenienced when CBD car parks are shut as part of a pre-Christmas protest against the Bracks Government's new congestion levy; that workplace pressure appears to cool marital intimacy, says research which supports church concerns that the Federal Government's proposed workplace changes will damage family life; and that a vigorous campaign to try to stop Shepparton's first brothel from opening helped elect two members of the Christian right to Greater Shepparton Council at the weekend. A report of an abuse scandal sparked by a short phone video clip of a Chinese woman, stripped naked and forced to do "ear squats" makes the Herald's most viewed list; John Huxley looks at the growing popularity of scooters in Sydney; and cartoonist Sean Leahy reflects on the "changed" human rights situation in Iraq following the US invasion, a comment on this story: former Iraqi prime minister Iyad Allawi says human rights abuse in the country is as bad, if not worse, than it was under Saddam Hussein. OPINION The Age: Chris Middendorp thinks the outrage about Michelle Leslie trying to sell her story is misplaced in a society based on laissez-faire capitalism, which throws up more serious ethical dilemmas everyday; Michael Gawenda wonders what sort of influence the US would be able to bring to bear to abolish the death penalty but for the fact that it is about to execute the 1000th person since capital punishment was reintroduced in 1976; Natasha Cica thinks Maureen Dowd's book is about to kick off another round of the fertility and femininity debate and hopes it might lead to a return of interest in old-fashioned notions like civil society, citizenship and simpler lives; and Peter Rodgers (former Australian ambassador to Israel) wonders aloud about what outcomes might result from the recent changes to Israeli politics. The Australian: Glenn Milne connects John Howard to the week-end Pittwater by-election vote, says the NSW Liberal Party is a basket case, and wonders if the overall Liberal brand has suddenly started to go bad; Don D'Cruz is scornful of the idea that John Howard is committing political suicide with the industrial relations changes, arguing that the PM is onto something with the concept of the "enterprise worker"; Ian Moore thinks John Howard is being unfairly blamed for things Michelle Leslie, Nguyen Tuong Van and Robert Jovicic brought upon themselves; and John Cox looks at the failings of public-private partnerships and suggests a better way of setting them up. The SMH: Steven Crawshaw describes the industrial relations changes as "a recipe for the sort of uncivilised community that an independent compulsory conciliation and arbitration system, based on fairness to human beings, was designed to avoid" and thinks they may be open to constitutional challenge; David McKnight reveals an extraordinary connection between John Ducker of the NSW Labor right and ASIO which he says was used against the left faction; Andrew Stevenson looks at the role s*x plays in news values as he argues that Schapelle Corby, Michelle Leslie and Joanne Lees would not have attracted the same attention if they were male; Anne Davies reports that NSW Premier Morris Iemma is about to promote his credentials as an environmentalist to contain the Greens; and Michael Gawenda, see above. BUSINESS In The Australian, the Federal Government should have the right to direct the investment of the Future Fund, according to its inaugural chairman David Murray; Food company Goodman Fielder will be on the takeover trail for new food categories after it lists next month, according to new chief executive officer Peter Margin; and a lack of professionalism and ethics in Australia's information technology sector is to blame for debacles such as the recent collapse of the Customs software system, the incoming president of the Australian Computer Society has warned. The Herald's lead reports that the Australian share market is about to undergo its most significant transformation in over a decade - brokers will no longer be able to see which firms are placing orders or making trades. The broker identifier code will be replaced with a generic identifier, "777-7". It also reports that NSW Government officials were making progress in talks with James Hardie over compensation for victims of asbestos poisoning last night, as a deadline for a deal came and went; and that it seems BHP Billiton and Rio Tinto will stop at nothing to maintain their duopoly over the Pilbara iron ore industry - even if that means doing deals with tiny explorers to lock up deposits in the region. In The Age, the Financial Services Union has begun meeting employees of ANZ Bank throughout Melbourne in expectation that the bank will send as many as 1100 jobs to Bangalore in the near future; James Packer will revisit his One.Tel horror today when he gives evidence in the Australian Securities and Investments Commission's case against former One.Tel managing director Jodee Rich; and Warburton is set to be reinvigorated as a health retreat following approval for two spa resorts worth a total of $90 million. STATE ROUND-UP The Daily Telegraph: The mother of condemned Australian man Nguyen Tuong Van has begged Singaporean authorities to allow her the dignity of hugging her son one last time; The NSW Liberal Party has been plunged into open warfare after losing the blue-ribbon seat of Pittwater at the weekend in one of the largest swings against a party in political history. The Herald-Sun: VCE students have been caught sending messages on mobile phones, taking calls during toilet breaks and getting others to sit their final exams; The mother of condemned Australian man Tuong Van Nguyen has begged Singapore to allow her the dignity of hugging her son one last time. The Courier-Mail: Almost half of all Australians aged under 25 have used illicit drugs and view their use as acceptable; Prime Minister John Howard has warned Singapore it faces lasting public resentment in Australia if the hanging execution of Melbourne man Tuong Van Nguyen goes ahead. The Advertiser: A dying mother of nine-year-old triplets is pleading with the state's MPs to pass legislation this week so that her children and others can receive compensation; The State Government has been forced to back down on its opposition to fitting seat belts in school buses following community concern about the safety of students. The West Australian: Attorney-General Jim McGinty is considering referring to the Corruption and Crime Commission Opposition Leader Matt Birney's admission that he added 18-month-old share information to the parliamentary financial interests register without telling anyone; After wasting away in hospital for nearly three months, critically ill Dianne Cave was sent home with her 19-year-old daughter to a tiny flat without air-conditioning, adequate medical equipment or any organised home nursing care. The Mercury: The State Government risks blood on its hands by refusing to upgrade the Derwent Valley's horror highway, says a community spokesman; A move to expand Tasmania's honey industry, with improved access to vital leatherwood areas in state forests and reserves, has been welcomed by beekeepers. SPORT Michael Hussey's phenomenally successful move to No.5 could not completely drive away the worries about Australia's malfunctioning middle order as the adaptable West Australian led Australia to a more secure position in the third Test against the West Indies; Eddie Jones is finished as Australian coach. George Gregan is finished as Australian captain. That is the upshot of the Wallabies ending their European tour in turmoil and with only one Test win to show from four matches after Wales enjoyed their first victory over Australia in 18 years at the Millennium Stadium; After watching Australia's 27-year international domination end with a record-equalling Test defeat in the Tri-Nations final at Elland Road, Kangaroos coach Wayne Bennett was asked whether he expected any recriminations when the team returned home. "What are they going to do, stop us from going back to Australia?" Bennett replied; Emotion got the better of Robert Allenby last night as he clutched the Stonehaven Cup at Moonah Links. THE DAILY BRIEFING |
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re: The Daily Briefing 28/11/05
No Bob, Stuart will truly surprise when he makes some positive suggestions for reforming the UN (which it surely needs), or alternatively, suggests a different model by which the nations of the world can at least attempt to co-operate to deal with global issues. (And, "whatever George Bush and the US wants" does not qualify as a positive suggestion.)
re: The Daily Briefing 28/11/05
Stuart Lord, fair's fair dear chap. After all, the UN did give Colin Powell the opportunity to lie his head off in preparation for the COW engaging in mass murder. A case of equal opportunity isn't it?
One day perhaps you will surpprise us by engaging in a discussion about where the UN's problems really stem from.
re: The Daily Briefing 28/11/05
You know, we can see the true worth of the UN being played out in the Sudan at the moment. And Zimbabwe.
And it adds up to not much. Especially when Mugabe is being invited to UN conferences to give Bush=Hitler speeches, and being applauded.
No matter who is at fault, it all points to the total and overriding uselessness of the UN to do anything in a crisis situation.
Indeed, it best counts bodies in graves in these cases. I guess that comes from experience.
re: The Daily Briefing 28/11/05
The Greens want the United Nations (UN) to determine whether the new federal anti-terrorism laws breach Australia's international human rights obligations.
Greens leader Bob Brown says he has referred the legislation to the United Nations for assessment.
How long will it be before the two clowns Nettle and Brown report the positions of our troops to the Insurgents in Iraq. Methinks The Greens need watching very carefully.
It is just as well not many people take them seriously.
re: The Daily Briefing 28/11/05
Wayne, good points but first the recognition is required, then the solutions.
I note the Poms don't want to apply the Bolton remedy, which is wise. Calm heads and objectivity are required.
We seem now to share a common pursuit, ie., up early trawling for news, mine being in a specific area. Fun and addictive. The benefit of cyberspace. And we do live in interesting times.
re: The Daily Briefing 28/11/05
Tony Phillips: "If the former, well it’s hardly surprising but it should make him unworthy of office by any civic judgement. If the latter, well the man's an incompetent and gullible fool and so are the organisations advising him."
And it follows logically that....but when has it ever been established that electorates are logical? (Repeat, Fiona: Democracy is still the best of a bunch of rotten choices...to paraphrase Winston Churchill - a statesman who to some extent expiated his follies. I wonder if JWH will ever do so?)
re: The Daily Briefing 28/11/05
The inability and uninterest of the media in following up Howard on Iraq is a question worth asking. While it could be that they just don't want to offend the PM, since "I find that offensive" is his stock answer to most questions he doesn't want to answer, other more serious reasons seem important.
(a) the institutional structures of Australian democracy, and the political culture underpinning it, are far weaker than in the United States, so the press has less to lead it re reporting the misleading of the public and perversion of government power
(b) press diversity and press independence is weaker than it is in either Britian or the United States
(c) the PM and his government have made deception a by now scarcely remarked upon feature of their regime. This has been bolstered by their continual re-election, indicating that a majority of Australians don't care enough about it or are simply ignorant. (A not dissimilar situation to that in Italy) Thus it's now not news that Howard deceives, and won't be until the news is that a large enough number of people care about it or he gets caught having told a huge and unambiguous whopper. Or, perhaps, if members of Australian services begin dying regularly in Iraq.
From another perspective it is actually strange that the debate about "whether people were deceived by government about going to war" is even happening. There was ample evidence at the time of the war, and leading up to it, that deceit and spin were as one. However it was an Alice in Wonderland world where public figures, wedged into position by incumbent leaders trumpeting "allusions to" and "scraps of" secret intelligence, kept signing up to completely absurd and contradictory declarations by leaders of the coalition of the willing. They did so regardless of statements by numerous credible whistleblowers and experts. All that is happening now is that the deceit is being documented more fully and public figures are airing dissent about it.
In the case of Howard’s place in the mire of deceit and destruction in Iraq, if the question is ever asked, it is this - did Howard deliberately deceive the public since he couldn't trust them to just follow his largely realpolitik agenda (we needum American friend, we makum small blood sacrifice, it Australian way), or did he genuinely believe the intelligence. If the former, well it’s hardly surprising but it should make him unworthy of office by any civic judgement. If the latter, well the man's an incompetent and gullible fool and so are the organisations advising him.
re: The Daily Briefing 28/11/05
If God needed a first pick in the Heaven's eleven he has just found it.
RIP Georgie boy.
re: The Daily Briefing 28/11/05
Stuart Lord, the tone of your post suggests that you are likely to skip the deep and objective research and analysis required to comprehend the problems of the UN, the causes and how they can be addressed.
Just get rid of it, eh? And replace it with what? Open slather for the criminal Bush administration?
Therein lies the core of the problem. Your "No matter who was to blame" is avoiding the issue. That member states fail to comply with the obligations they assumed in joining the UN is the heart of the matter.
That should be a basis to work from, not using the UN as a scapegoat and as a diversion from the guilt of others.
So please, if you want to write an article, do so from a basis of objectivity and not another pro-US propaganda piece.
re: The Daily Briefing 28/11/05
Wayne Sanderson and Bob Wall, you've given me the genesis of my next article. Thanks, I guess.
But for a shorter answer - I consider the UN too sick to fix - it is a beast to be slaughtered, not an unruly hedge to be pruned. Why? Because no matter who is at fault for the UN's inaction, the fact is that the UN stands most condemned for this inaction, as a major and extremely important role is to deal with/stop/prevent situations like in Sudan or Zimbabwe ever occuring, yet time and time again finds itself completely incapable of effective action.
Think Bosnia or Kosovo (NATO). Think Rwanda. Think Angola. Think the Congo (and the UN peacekeepers subsequent child abuse actions there and elsewhere, including East Timor). Think Lebanon. Think Chechnya. Think Afghanistan. Think Saddam's Iraq (would have the US intervened if there wasn't a dictatorial tyrant and his murderous reigme in place?). Think the USSR. Think Tibet. Think Burma. Gross failures of inaction, or half hearted action.
No matter who was to blame, the fact is that the UN hasn't been fulfilling its role in these instances in any meaningful way. Apart from to count bodies, and to set up a justice system where the accused will probably die of old age or boredom before the trial ever concludes. If we are going to have a proper system of international discussion, action and justice, it needs to be effective, something which the UN patently is not.
re: The Daily Briefing 28/11/05
Stuart Lord, think UN then think food. Think medicines. Think aid.
Think USA then think tank.
re: The Daily Briefing 28/11/05
Damian Lataan, last time I checked, who gave the UN the most money to do its job?
Who had the largest number of NGO's giving out aid, teaching, starting construction and infrastructure projects? Who raised the most privately to help other nations?
Oh no, not AmeriKKKa!
Bob Wall: I'll look at why the UN is useless, but the fact is that no matter why, its uselessness condemns it completely. I'm not going to pander around saying 'if the US did that' or 'if Israel didn't exist' or 'if the Arab and African bloc's actually did anything' or 'if Europe got off its collective ass' or 'if Asia was more morally involved' etc. You can do that, and can point fingers all day. You can point it at the structure of the UN General Assembly, the Security Council, the various organisations run by the UN, the leadership of the UN, the lax and incompetent administration and management of the bodies, etc.
Unfortunately, it would be easier, and far, far faster to talk about what is right about the UN - and it would consist of about half a dozen lines, if I was looking at the last decade and a half.
All this indicates to me is that something new is needed, not something old given a bit of a polish. As for what, a few ideas will be put forward, both mine and others that have been proposed before.
re: The Daily Briefing 28/11/05
Bob Wall, feel free to contribute articles anytime, I'm sure they would go down a treat. Or would it end your tradition of sniping from the sidelines?
Damien Lataan, nice attempt to differentiate. But last time I checked, those people who support those NGO's and give so much are the same people who turn around and vote in elections, right? When they vote in their fascist governments of evil and might? How can you reconcile this? Do only Democrat's and Green's supporters contribute? Well?
A nation is nothing if not its people.
re: The Daily Briefing 28/11/05
Stuart Lord, I gather from your responses that your article will be of a kind with your previous efforts. Of well, let the tradition be maintained.
re: The Daily Briefing 28/11/05
Stuart Lord asks: “…who gave the UN the most money to do its job?” Who hasn’t paid their share yet to allow the UN to do its job?
Stuart Lord also asks: “Who had the largest number of NGO's giving out aid, teaching, starting construction and infrastructure projects? Who raised the most privately to help other nations?” Americans.
Not the US.
re: The Daily Briefing 28/11/05
Stuart Lord, how dashedly generous of you dear chap. Have you seen the Irises thread lately? Oh, silly me, I was forgetting that you cannot see things that do not suit you and see non-existent items that do suit. No need to remind you, eh?
One would have hoped that after 6 months of being reminded about the requirements of ethical and honest debate it would finally sink in. However, it appears that these lessons have not been learned. Pity.