State of the Coalition's little sibling.
What does America possibly gain by damaging Iraq to this extent? I'm certain only raving idiots still believe this war and occupation were about WMD or an actual fear of Saddam.
Al Qaeda? That's laughable. Bush has effectively created more terrorists in Iraq these last 4 years than Osama could have created in 10 different terrorist camps in the distant hills of Afghanistan. Our children now play games of 'sniper' and 'jihadi', pretending that one hit an American soldier between the eyes and this one overturned a Humvee.
-From Riverbend's Baghdad Burning blog
It is said that roof access to old Parliament house gave one a quiet place to overlook the city of Canberra, whilst being able to clearly overhear the confidential Cabinet discussions. There's no anecdote as to the limits of Cabinet Security in the current parliament, but we do house the media two or three doors up the corridor to give them a sporting chance.
High school politics classes tell us that Cabinet secrecy is designed to produce better governance, that politicians may make decisions which are perhaps unpopular, may bring discussions to the table that they might not personally wish to be associated with, so that the executive may make the best possible decisions. Cabinet solidarity supports this further, as minority dissent must be quashed for the sake of a united front.
Why the civics lesson on livejournal? It has become clear that political expediency has overtaken good governance. There are people who believe that Howard won the election post-Tampa because he was right, that victory equates to correctness. The people have spoken, and that version of events is to be substituted for the truth. Admittedly, the source for that sort of information was a regular supporter in Andrew Bolt's blog, who, as such, has slightly less credibility than your standard Cronulla rioter crossed with a corgi on hallucinogens. Why should our politicians make the tough political decisions, when there's this fluid section of Australians who want to believe any fantastical imaginations a conservative figurehead, or indeed, the almighty little Johnny himself wants to dream up?
Even now the mood has finally shifted on climate change (much akin to shutting the gate when all the sheep have already run off to irresponsibly spend their centrelink income down the pokies) - there's an undercurrent of 'But of course, we won't actually have to make any lifestyle changes' and 'Well, the Earth might be heating up, but it heated up one time in the Medieval period, and they didn't even HAVE 4WDs'. In other words, there's a nice political game of 'But Uncle John knows it's not your fault' going on. This is the sort of political gameplaying that got us a Kyoto protocol that, even should our leaders bother to commit to it, allows for a net Australian increase of C02 emissions, something elsewise granted only to developing nations. We won't even commit to playing ball when they'll give us time-outs whenever we like and free lemonade at half time.
I have a suspicion that Uncle John still doesn't want to believe that climate change is happening, but that in his shrivelled, twisted heart of hearts, he wants to make full use of Australian natural resources, and he needs to justify digging up that 1/3rd of the world's uranium buried deep within our soil. It's a conservative philosophy thing, like selling off the national telco, and pissing off the unions. If we've got it, we should sell it, or use it for monetary gain now. We can sell uranium to India, because we know that even if it did find itself being used in dirty bombs, it'll only be against brown people, not Americans or Australians. For the man who won a term on the backs of children overboard, foreigners dying of radiation imported from Australia is unlikely to be restless in his sleep. After all, we'll even commit troops to a country whose government we covertly supported, thanks to AWB and Overlord Money, as well as the early onset dementia afflicting Alexander Downer, John Howard (who 'doesn't read all the important reports he gets sent, you know') and several others(I'm sorry, but 'I don't recall' precisely who). We give Saddam money for weapons, palatial renovations, hookers, scientists to develop weaponry- incentive to 'buy Australian'. The AWB kickbacks were the largest from any organisation, and our government knew about them even as Howard stood up in Parliament to tell us all that Iraq certainly had weapons of mass destruction, and Saddam was probably giving them to terrorists as he spoke. The bullets fired on Australian and American troops by Iraqi forces (and later insurgents who raided the state armouries) were partially paid for, in a sense, by the Australian government's complacency.
Speaking of the Iraq debacle, how about our support for the US allegiance at all costs? Sure, they may well provide us with a trickle of information. They may make Howard feel all important, (and no doubt intellectually superior, speaking with Bush, the man who makes lettuce look intelligent). But even Bush is no longer really claiming that going into Iraq was a good idea. He's basically just telling us 'Well, if we ran off now, we'd have to admit defeat, which we're not prepared to do'. It's a PR victory for the terrorists (term used here in its correct usage, meaning 'Anyone whose interests differ considerably with those of the USA'), sure. But guess what? Every flag draped coffin they won't show on CNN, the thousands of troops dying on the ground in Iraq - those are PR victories for the other side, too. As children the lessons of the World Wars are clear- in War, no matter who beats the other side, there are no winners. Contributing more cannon fodder to the theatre shows a stubborn resistance to rethink inadequate strategy. The more troops committed, the more targets, the more bodies sent home. The War on Terror was a joke to begin with, but now it's a rather sad little tragedy. Vietnam played out again without the television cameras.
We send Australian troops to stand by American troops, and the children of Iraq play 'sniper' in the sandbox, waiting to grow up into the adults who will have to deal with the mess the coalition has made. For every one 'terrorist', for every insurgent downed in this war, there are hundreds of people who already have no great reason to love the West who lose family members, limbs, hospitals, electricity, opportunities. And make no mistake - these people do not loathe us because we harbour Christianity, or democracy or because, as Bush put it, we're 'Freedom lovers' (unless he meant in some further perversion of the English language to say 'People who fuck over freedom on a regular basis'). If they loathe us, why would it be for so abstract a reason, when it's been Western planes carpet bombing their homes? When it's been American bunker busters disintegrating their families? When it's Coalition forces bringing war into civilian loungerooms in a more literal sense than any Australians or Americans have ever, fortunately, had to experience? The legacy of the first Gulf War, and the use of depleted uranium, has been a high birth defect and cancer rate. What will the legacy of this war be? Al Qaeda has never had a more fertile recruiting ground than post invasion Iraq, and the twin failure of policy and execution that was the war itself and our involvement is something we as a people may one day answer for. If it's not enough for the Australian people to wake up and smell the blood on Howard's hands, then they might at least consider that- the government responsible for the greatest erosion of our civil liberties in the name of our 'defense' is the one that has put us, and future generations, at greater risk than ever before.
The warzone we have a part in creating in Iraq is something that doesn't trouble most of us on a day to day basis, just like most of the other big issues of the day- climate change, the erosion of civil liberties- not only here, but in the way we allow our citizens to be treated overseas by our wartime allies, AWB, children overboard. I'm not even sure that it's possible to live every day, to be constantly aware of all these things and remain sane until the next election. What do I know? That Baghdad blogger, Salam Pax, once the toast of Western talk shows, published author and journalist for the Guardian - has not posted since July 16, 2006. Of course, he may be fine. Alive and well and tired of blogging. Or, he may be one of the tens of thousands of Iraqis abducted, murdered, caught in the crossfires or standing in the wrong place when a bomb went off. He was a peaceful man who risked his life under Saddam and after, to tell the world about life in Baghdad. His country was turned into a war zone, our country helped, and it may have been for not much more reason than an incumbent president's flagging approval rating.
I spoke at the start about the point of Cabinet secrecy. What we have now almost makes it redundant. We have a government consisting of ministers who will openly lie to Parliament, and to the Australian people, in order to retain percentage points of approval or win an election. This has gone beyond non-core promises - it's not about offering to give us a tax cut and rescinding, people are losing the right to a fair and expedient trial, free speech, privacy, assembly, fair pay for work, and, in Iraq, the rather crucial right to continue drawing oxygen. Cabinet goings on doesn't need to be secret, because it's clear from the emergent policies that the best long-term decisions are not being made, merely the ones which are the most politically and philosophically convenient for a tired conservative government. Why should we protect that? Why should that not be made explicitly clear? Why should Cabinet be allowed privacy and secrecy, with which to devise laws to trample the privacy and security of its citizens? Despite the erosion of the principles of Australian governance- including an assault on the residual authorities of the States, as we saw with the Workcover bill - Cabinet secrecy is one principle which won't be overturned. I know this, and I would be willing to concede that there are relatively important genuine national security reasons for this to remain the case. But it nevertheless seems fair to ask why we allow the perversion of this principle of accountable government. Time was, when a politician was found to have misled parliament, he'd resign. Now, he's more or less congratulated.
I rather suspect the Australian citizenry as a whole doesn't really care about politics anymore anyway. Howard's a mascot to some, and an immobile reality to others, and if he wants to play fast and loose with the facts, revising them for some sort of moral victory- then they're not particularly worried. As long as he takes credit for the interest rates when they're low and blames someone else when they're not, as long as he's facing a Labor party led or rocked by a man like Big Kim, who comes across as unable to find his ass with both hands and a diagram, and as long as he talks like he's keeping us safe- people will see him as a harmless old man. They'll believe that he didn't know about Children Overboard. That he thought there were WMDs even though our very expensive security organisations told him otherwise. That he never knew about AWB, and that the scientists making dire predictions about the future of the planet and climate change are 'alarmist' whilst he is a 'realist'. That he could never have foreseen where his decisions would lead this country. And little by little, the country that we know is lost and the worst in us is brought out, displayed to the world.
First they came for the communists, and I did not speak out--
because I was not a communist;
Then they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out--
because I was not a socialist;
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out--
because I was not a trade unionist;
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out--
because I was not a Jew;
Then they came for me--
and there was no one left to speak out for me.
Martin Niemoeller
Al Qaeda? That's laughable. Bush has effectively created more terrorists in Iraq these last 4 years than Osama could have created in 10 different terrorist camps in the distant hills of Afghanistan. Our children now play games of 'sniper' and 'jihadi', pretending that one hit an American soldier between the eyes and this one overturned a Humvee.
-From Riverbend's Baghdad Burning blog
It is said that roof access to old Parliament house gave one a quiet place to overlook the city of Canberra, whilst being able to clearly overhear the confidential Cabinet discussions. There's no anecdote as to the limits of Cabinet Security in the current parliament, but we do house the media two or three doors up the corridor to give them a sporting chance.
High school politics classes tell us that Cabinet secrecy is designed to produce better governance, that politicians may make decisions which are perhaps unpopular, may bring discussions to the table that they might not personally wish to be associated with, so that the executive may make the best possible decisions. Cabinet solidarity supports this further, as minority dissent must be quashed for the sake of a united front.
Why the civics lesson on livejournal? It has become clear that political expediency has overtaken good governance. There are people who believe that Howard won the election post-Tampa because he was right, that victory equates to correctness. The people have spoken, and that version of events is to be substituted for the truth. Admittedly, the source for that sort of information was a regular supporter in Andrew Bolt's blog, who, as such, has slightly less credibility than your standard Cronulla rioter crossed with a corgi on hallucinogens. Why should our politicians make the tough political decisions, when there's this fluid section of Australians who want to believe any fantastical imaginations a conservative figurehead, or indeed, the almighty little Johnny himself wants to dream up?
Even now the mood has finally shifted on climate change (much akin to shutting the gate when all the sheep have already run off to irresponsibly spend their centrelink income down the pokies) - there's an undercurrent of 'But of course, we won't actually have to make any lifestyle changes' and 'Well, the Earth might be heating up, but it heated up one time in the Medieval period, and they didn't even HAVE 4WDs'. In other words, there's a nice political game of 'But Uncle John knows it's not your fault' going on. This is the sort of political gameplaying that got us a Kyoto protocol that, even should our leaders bother to commit to it, allows for a net Australian increase of C02 emissions, something elsewise granted only to developing nations. We won't even commit to playing ball when they'll give us time-outs whenever we like and free lemonade at half time.
I have a suspicion that Uncle John still doesn't want to believe that climate change is happening, but that in his shrivelled, twisted heart of hearts, he wants to make full use of Australian natural resources, and he needs to justify digging up that 1/3rd of the world's uranium buried deep within our soil. It's a conservative philosophy thing, like selling off the national telco, and pissing off the unions. If we've got it, we should sell it, or use it for monetary gain now. We can sell uranium to India, because we know that even if it did find itself being used in dirty bombs, it'll only be against brown people, not Americans or Australians. For the man who won a term on the backs of children overboard, foreigners dying of radiation imported from Australia is unlikely to be restless in his sleep. After all, we'll even commit troops to a country whose government we covertly supported, thanks to AWB and Overlord Money, as well as the early onset dementia afflicting Alexander Downer, John Howard (who 'doesn't read all the important reports he gets sent, you know') and several others(I'm sorry, but 'I don't recall' precisely who). We give Saddam money for weapons, palatial renovations, hookers, scientists to develop weaponry- incentive to 'buy Australian'. The AWB kickbacks were the largest from any organisation, and our government knew about them even as Howard stood up in Parliament to tell us all that Iraq certainly had weapons of mass destruction, and Saddam was probably giving them to terrorists as he spoke. The bullets fired on Australian and American troops by Iraqi forces (and later insurgents who raided the state armouries) were partially paid for, in a sense, by the Australian government's complacency.
Speaking of the Iraq debacle, how about our support for the US allegiance at all costs? Sure, they may well provide us with a trickle of information. They may make Howard feel all important, (and no doubt intellectually superior, speaking with Bush, the man who makes lettuce look intelligent). But even Bush is no longer really claiming that going into Iraq was a good idea. He's basically just telling us 'Well, if we ran off now, we'd have to admit defeat, which we're not prepared to do'. It's a PR victory for the terrorists (term used here in its correct usage, meaning 'Anyone whose interests differ considerably with those of the USA'), sure. But guess what? Every flag draped coffin they won't show on CNN, the thousands of troops dying on the ground in Iraq - those are PR victories for the other side, too. As children the lessons of the World Wars are clear- in War, no matter who beats the other side, there are no winners. Contributing more cannon fodder to the theatre shows a stubborn resistance to rethink inadequate strategy. The more troops committed, the more targets, the more bodies sent home. The War on Terror was a joke to begin with, but now it's a rather sad little tragedy. Vietnam played out again without the television cameras.
We send Australian troops to stand by American troops, and the children of Iraq play 'sniper' in the sandbox, waiting to grow up into the adults who will have to deal with the mess the coalition has made. For every one 'terrorist', for every insurgent downed in this war, there are hundreds of people who already have no great reason to love the West who lose family members, limbs, hospitals, electricity, opportunities. And make no mistake - these people do not loathe us because we harbour Christianity, or democracy or because, as Bush put it, we're 'Freedom lovers' (unless he meant in some further perversion of the English language to say 'People who fuck over freedom on a regular basis'). If they loathe us, why would it be for so abstract a reason, when it's been Western planes carpet bombing their homes? When it's been American bunker busters disintegrating their families? When it's Coalition forces bringing war into civilian loungerooms in a more literal sense than any Australians or Americans have ever, fortunately, had to experience? The legacy of the first Gulf War, and the use of depleted uranium, has been a high birth defect and cancer rate. What will the legacy of this war be? Al Qaeda has never had a more fertile recruiting ground than post invasion Iraq, and the twin failure of policy and execution that was the war itself and our involvement is something we as a people may one day answer for. If it's not enough for the Australian people to wake up and smell the blood on Howard's hands, then they might at least consider that- the government responsible for the greatest erosion of our civil liberties in the name of our 'defense' is the one that has put us, and future generations, at greater risk than ever before.
The warzone we have a part in creating in Iraq is something that doesn't trouble most of us on a day to day basis, just like most of the other big issues of the day- climate change, the erosion of civil liberties- not only here, but in the way we allow our citizens to be treated overseas by our wartime allies, AWB, children overboard. I'm not even sure that it's possible to live every day, to be constantly aware of all these things and remain sane until the next election. What do I know? That Baghdad blogger, Salam Pax, once the toast of Western talk shows, published author and journalist for the Guardian - has not posted since July 16, 2006. Of course, he may be fine. Alive and well and tired of blogging. Or, he may be one of the tens of thousands of Iraqis abducted, murdered, caught in the crossfires or standing in the wrong place when a bomb went off. He was a peaceful man who risked his life under Saddam and after, to tell the world about life in Baghdad. His country was turned into a war zone, our country helped, and it may have been for not much more reason than an incumbent president's flagging approval rating.
I spoke at the start about the point of Cabinet secrecy. What we have now almost makes it redundant. We have a government consisting of ministers who will openly lie to Parliament, and to the Australian people, in order to retain percentage points of approval or win an election. This has gone beyond non-core promises - it's not about offering to give us a tax cut and rescinding, people are losing the right to a fair and expedient trial, free speech, privacy, assembly, fair pay for work, and, in Iraq, the rather crucial right to continue drawing oxygen. Cabinet goings on doesn't need to be secret, because it's clear from the emergent policies that the best long-term decisions are not being made, merely the ones which are the most politically and philosophically convenient for a tired conservative government. Why should we protect that? Why should that not be made explicitly clear? Why should Cabinet be allowed privacy and secrecy, with which to devise laws to trample the privacy and security of its citizens? Despite the erosion of the principles of Australian governance- including an assault on the residual authorities of the States, as we saw with the Workcover bill - Cabinet secrecy is one principle which won't be overturned. I know this, and I would be willing to concede that there are relatively important genuine national security reasons for this to remain the case. But it nevertheless seems fair to ask why we allow the perversion of this principle of accountable government. Time was, when a politician was found to have misled parliament, he'd resign. Now, he's more or less congratulated.
I rather suspect the Australian citizenry as a whole doesn't really care about politics anymore anyway. Howard's a mascot to some, and an immobile reality to others, and if he wants to play fast and loose with the facts, revising them for some sort of moral victory- then they're not particularly worried. As long as he takes credit for the interest rates when they're low and blames someone else when they're not, as long as he's facing a Labor party led or rocked by a man like Big Kim, who comes across as unable to find his ass with both hands and a diagram, and as long as he talks like he's keeping us safe- people will see him as a harmless old man. They'll believe that he didn't know about Children Overboard. That he thought there were WMDs even though our very expensive security organisations told him otherwise. That he never knew about AWB, and that the scientists making dire predictions about the future of the planet and climate change are 'alarmist' whilst he is a 'realist'. That he could never have foreseen where his decisions would lead this country. And little by little, the country that we know is lost and the worst in us is brought out, displayed to the world.
First they came for the communists, and I did not speak out--
because I was not a communist;
Then they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out--
because I was not a socialist;
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out--
because I was not a trade unionist;
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out--
because I was not a Jew;
Then they came for me--
and there was no one left to speak out for me.
Martin Niemoeller