debasing political databases

The Democratic Audit of Australia describes how political parties use databases in Australia to entrench themselves in power.

Paradoxically, because political parties are private organisations they are exempt from Freedom of Information (FOI) requests which can only be made to government or quasi government organisations. Political parties can log information about voters without their consent, yet they cannot be made to disclose what information has in fact been logged. Clearly this state of affairs violates core principles on which our representative democracy prides itself.

Political party databases challenge effective representative democracy in Australia in two very important ways: by entrenching incumbency advantage and violating voter privacy. The resources used for databases largely derive from parliamentary entitlements. Staff to operate the systems, telephones to acquire voter information for database entry, and postage allowances to distribute targeted literature, are all examples of the advantage given to the incumbent government and/or local member in operating political databases. Compulsory registration to vote coupled with compulsory AEC handover of voter information to political parties is also a violation of individual voters’ privacy. Political party databases storing voter information are excluded from privacy laws which prohibit the retention of such information by private organisations other than political parties. However they are not subject to freedom of information rules either. Until this situation is remedied, political databases will continue to present a threat to key values of the Australian political system.

The situation in the US is worse, far worse, than in Australia because the state legislatures write the electoral boundaries for the US congress, because they use bipartisan rather than nonpartisan redistribution machinery for state legislatures, because they do not have compulsory voting, because different localities within the same electorate use different voting methods and because their databases are more advanced than Australian parties have yet managed. Nevertheless, Australians should look at the this with alarm, especially as control of parliament gives control of the executive as well. If the US is where this is going then the future looks grim.

Whatever Happened to Competitive Elections?

Nearly 80 percent of all state legislative seats are up for election around the country this year. On paper, legislative politics look as close as they could possibly be. In 2002, Republicans pulled ahead of Democrats in the total number of seats held nationally for the first time in half a century, but by the narrowest of margins - only about five dozen, out of 7,400 total across the 50 states. This year, there are 23 legislative chambers where a switch of three seats or fewer would change the party that holds the majority.

Looking at the country district by district, however, the reality is that true competition exists in only a tiny fraction of places. Even where political strength is closely balanced in the aggregate, the vast majority of individual districts are lopsidedly drawn in favor of one party or the other, engendering no real contest at the polls.

Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan are all battleground states in presidential voting, but they are not battlegrounds in the contest for legislative power. Republicans control them; Democrats haven't a prayer of gaining a majority in any of the chambers in those states. The redrawing of the lines that followed the 2000 Census is the primary culprit.

The ability to create the desired political effect increases every decade with advances in technology, making it easier for legislators and advocacy groups to target partisan precincts and predict their likely voting behavior for years to come. "Dummymanders" - sociologist Bernard Grofman's term for overly greedy gerrymanders that backfire - have become increasingly rare as sophistication about redistricting grows.

Good redistricting software and powerful databases were available during the 1990s - and partisan gerrymanders certainly took place well before the dawn of the computer age - but this time around, mapmakers benefited from a technological advance that at first glance seems trivial: high-quality color printing. The subtly shaded maps that were possible in the latest redistricting round allowed legislative staff to cycle quickly through dozens of permutations until their legislative bosses were perfectly satisfied and the gerrymanders were airtight. One more traditional element of uncertainty was thereby removed.

The new gerrymandering has political significance that goes far beyond the fall campaign. To an increasing extent, it governs the relations between the two parties when the legislature is in session. "You have more and more non-competitive and very liberal or very conservative districts where the only threat comes in a party primary," says Larry Sabato, a University of Virginia government professor. "Therefore, there is simply less centrism, less moderation and less encouragement for legislators to compromise, just as we've seen in Congress."

Florida is electing a state legislature this year. The same article reports:

How lopsided? Of 22 contests for the state Senate, only six feature candidates from each of the two major parties, and just 34 of the 120 House races will have two-party competition. Even where there is nominal competition, it doesn’t amount to much. Two years ago, the average margin of victory in both House and Senate races was 21 percent. Incredibly, the winning margins were, on average, even higher in open districts, showing more clearly than anything how much the districts themselves favor one party’s chances.

We do not want to become Florida. before we congratulate ourselves on how much better our election machinery is, we should think about the postal vote system. The parties, not the electoral commission, administer postal votes. That should change and the electoral act should be amended to provide competitiveness as a new criterion for redistributions.

Only three seats but look at the vote

Those five are: NSW - Cunningham, from the Greens, a seat embracing Wollongong, lost in a 2002 by-election under Crean's leadership; Parramatta, from the Liberals' Ross Cameron, a self-anointed adulterer; and Richmond, on the North Coast, lost by the Nationals' Larry Anthony; and the Liberal seats of Adelaide and Hindmarsh in South Australia.

The eight seats the Liberals took from Labor are: Bass and Braddon in Tasmania, both seats embracing the top half of the island state; Hasluck and Stirling in Perth; Wakefield and Kingston in Adelaide; Greenway, in Sydney's western suburbs; and the new seat of Bonner, east of Brisbane city.

Labor went into the election with 63 seats - not 65, as keeps being misreported (Labor won 65 at the 2001 election, but lost the Cunningham by-election and the outer Melbourne seat of McMillan in a redistribution of boundaries). Labor comes out of it with 60, to the Government's 87 - 75 Liberal, 12 National - and three independents in a legislature of 150. That is not the disaster constantly repeated. Beazley, in defence of Latham, has said twice since polling day that Labor's 'grave' electoral position a month before the leadership change from Crean last December was the potential collapse of 30 seats to the Government.

What is sobering for Labor, despite the small net loss in seats, is the massive gap in the primary vote this election between Labor and the Coalition. At the close of counting on election night, Labor's national primary vote stood at 38.3 per cent, a bare half per cent above the 37.8 per cent Labor gained in Beazley's second losing election three years ago, a level of popular support which ranked as Labor's worst federally since the 1931 election that killed the Scullin Labor government after just two years in power.

However, in the two weeks of continued counting, Labor's overall primary vote went on sliding until, by close of counting on Wednesday this week, it had fallen to 37.79 per cent, eclipsing the 2001 vote achieved under Beazley's leadership. By Thursday night that figure was 37.71 per cent, and early yesterday afternoon had dropped to 37.65 per cent. No federal Labor vote in the past three-quarters of a century has registered such a poor standing.

And in another first since the formation of the Liberal Party 60 years ago, the count of the Coalition popular vote this election, by mid-morning yesterday, exceeded the Labor primary by a clear 1 million votes - 5,303,170 votes (46.5 per cent) to 4,299,220 votes (37.65 per cent). The only comfort for Latham in the figures is how strongly the disparity emphasises that Labor's marginal seat campaign, however much it has been derided, was able to keep actual losses to a minimum.

This is better than the other SMH report I've blogged, but not by a lot.

Yes, a net loss of 3 seats is not a train wreck.

Yes, Labor's primary vote is collapsng on the same trajectory as 2001.

The serious question is where those primary votes are going. If they were just going Green or Democrat and then coming back to Labor as second preferences there would be no problem as long as Labor continued to outpoll the Greens and Democrats. Clearly that is not happening.

We've just had a campaign that resembled 2001 in ignoring the values issues like mandatory detention, indigenous matters, and the war. Voters lost in 2001 have not come back. Hw long does Labor maintain this losing streak with campaigns and platforms that do not succeed?

Below the line and beyond belief

The October 9 election will be a dot in the rear vision mirror by the time the Senate representatives are finally determined. In NSW, counting to determine the sixth and final seat has at least another two weeks to run.

The reason? A voting system so complex that even if every house in the country had its own walking, talking Antony Green doll in the living room it's doubtful many more people would understand it.

In NSW, Labor's third candidate, Michael Forshaw, will probably be elected, scraping in ahead of Fred Nile with the help of the 66th preference of those who voted for the Fishing Party.

If, like more than 95 per cent of voters in NSW, you numbered a single box above the line for your Senate vote, the chances are you have no idea where your vote - or a proportion of it - will finally end up. That is decided by the parties three weeks before the election, when a preference ticket (or two, or three) is registered with the Electoral Commission.

Information on where those preferences will flow is available on the commission's website and, possibly, if you had asked at your polling booth for the 'group voting ticket' booklet, officials might have been able to show it to you. But if you could then figure it out, you would be lucky, suggests the ABC's election analyst, Antony Green.

I am not sure where to start with this string of journalistic howlers.

1. Preferential voting works the same way in single-member and multi-member districts.

2. The quota calculation is always to divide V by S+1 where V is the total number of votes and S is the number of seats. That gives you >50% in a single member district and >14.2 percent in a multimember district electing 6 candidates.

3. There's never a surplus to distribute in a single-member district. There is in a multi-member district.

4. In both kinds of district your vote is counted to your first preference. If they can't be elected your vote is transferred to the next available candidate until it can elect someone.

5. The transfer value for surplus ballot papers is calculated as (T-Q)/T where T is the total number of votes and Q is the quota.

6. The distortion in the system is the Group Voting Ticket. People voting below the line is hard work. Anyone doing it is unlikely to do it lightly. An informed media might have noticed that twice as many people cast their own preferences in Tasmania as elsewhere. They might even have noticed that Family First's lead was 4300 and the number of below-the-line votes was 60 000 in that state. The Family First candidate is unknown and the Green candidate has been a prominent state MP. Why do you think Tasmanians are avoiding the party ticket? To vote Family First or to vote Green?

Describing single member preferential voting as 'regular' and multimember preferential as 'irregular' simply proves the journo in question has no idea of his subject. He seems to condemn GVT voting, but then he calls his article Below the line and above belief.

Should votes count less if someone votes for a small party? Should voters who decide their own preferences instead of following a party ticket be penalised?

Or is the fault, dare I say, an ignorant media who declared the Senate election with insufficient information and now need a by-line to justify their own bungle? There are quite a lot of simple and informative books on voting systems. Surely the SMH can afford to go out and buy one?

If they did they would discover preferential voting is easy for the elector, you start with who you want elected and then work your way down. Pity Labor, and the media, forgot this in Victoria and Tasmania.

The capitulation of modern Labor

Labor failed to stitch up a coalition between the aspirationals, who were presumed to have narrow economic preoccupations, and people who were preoccupied with moral or quality of life agendas. It was not necessary to offer much to people with non-economic priorities (for example, the Friends of the ABC) - but Labor should have at least acknowledged that they were there.

Labor lacks a set of core beliefs. The party must identify and promote them.

The ALP has a thousand tacticians - and no strategists. Giving ALP Senate preferences to Family First in Victoria and Tasmania is a classic example of a tactical decision that would have probably looked clever if it helped Labor win seats at no cost to itself. But clearly this decision was never considered strategically - when Labor's vote collapses, would the party really prefer a Family First senator to a Greens senator?

Targeting Peter Costello was both a tactical and strategic mistake. So was Medicare Gold, which proved to be a turkey, after an enthusiastic debut. The substance of the Tasmanian forests policy was right, but the timing was appalling.

The dominant role of factions has contributed to ALP demoralisation. There is a complete disjunction between the feelings of branch members, as expressed in the recent national vote for party presidents, and the policies set forth in the election.

Preselections are now the gift of the factions, who reward those who are loyal and those who accept the conventional wisdom. The first Hawke governments had probably the greatest collection of talent in Australian political history. Given more recent arrangements in the ALP about preselections for safe seats, it is unlikely such a spread of talent would be available from the House of Representatives - or the Senate, where endorsement is now generally a reward for factional fidelity.

Barry Jones, who the ALP should regard as a treasure, not an embarrassment, hits it on the head, as he usually does. The ALP's core beliefs need to run a little further up the ladder than getting a McMansion on every plot and don't mention the war. That not fly in the aspirational electorates. We lost Greenway. Let's not waste another 3 years hoping that somehow or other the aspirational strategy will achieve its aspirations.

Time for the Greens and the Democrats to merge

In a last ditch attempt to save the sinking ship, the Democrats decided to direct their preferences to the Family First party ahead of the Greens. While the final Senate results will not be known for some time it seems likely that the result of this deal will be to scuttle the chances of a number of Greens senate candidates and deliver one, possibly two, Senate seats to the new conservative Christian party.

While an at times bitter rivalry has existed between the Greens and the Democrats as they jostled for similar supporters, on a fundamental level the two like-minded political parties had, until this election, worked constructively to achieve similar goals. Not any more. Not only have the Democrats harmed their own political prospects by facilitating the emergence of Family First, they have weakened the potential voice of Greens in a Coalition-dominated Senate.

It should not of course come as a surprise that the Democrats have once again made a decision that harms their own interests and their supporters. The GST deal and their refusal to unite behind Natasha Stott Despoja are clear evidence of a self-destructive tendency that, by definition, cannot last for long in politics.

In 2001 the Democrats managed to win four seats under Stott Despoja's leadership. At the weekend's election they won none; it was their worst-ever result. When the four senators elected in 2001 face the voters again in 2007 the party, except perhaps for Stott Despoja, will in all likelihood vanish. It is time for the progressive voices in Australian politics to unite.

This should happen. The Democrats would lose their conservative wing but that wing has delivered little in terms of either votes or policy. The Gang of Four coup against Stott Despoja's leadership achieved nothing except the prompt and utter destruction of the Democrats' electoral chances. The Democrats would benefit from the Greens' passion. The Greens' would benefit from the Democrats' superior understanding of the importance of process.

When the Senate results are finalised it will be interesting to add together the votes of the Greens and Democrats and see what a single party might have achieved.

a spectacularly silly attack on the Greens

The media are pretty much reporting an election that has not happened yet. We don't yet know the final composition of the Senate. We're looking at Labor losing a maximum of 5 seats in the House. That's a bad loss but it is not a landslide. Losing the Senate is the result of incomprehensibly bad ticket choices by Labor in Victoria and Tasmania.

Greens are no friend of Labor

The net effect of the Greens' rise has been to weaken Labor and entrench the Coalition. On October 9, most One Nation voters returned to the Coalition, as did a substantial proportion of Democrats voters.

Despite preference deals, the fact is that, all along, the Greens have really been running against the Labor Party, not with it. Success for the Greens comes through taking seats and votes away from Labor, not the Liberals. If Labor cannot learn the lesson from its own experience, in which it gave the Greens everything they wanted in terms of forests only to see its electoral fortunes reversed, perhaps it should look across the Pacific.

George Bush owes his 2000 election victory above all to one man: Ralph Nader, the unreconstructed leftie crusader who dragged precious votes away from Al Gore. And who did Nader represent in the presidential ballot? The Greens.

This is a spectacularly silly piece of reporting. Labor did not lose the election solely because of the collapse in its primary vote and there is, in any case, no way of knowing yet whether the lost voters went to the Greens, Family First or the Coalition.

Invoking the ghost of Nader is the silliest in a string of non-sequiturs. Spoiler candidates like Nader cannot happen under preferential voting. If the US used preferential voting Nader's minuscule primary vote (vastly less than the Australian Greens') would have broken massively in favour of Gore when his second preferences were distributed and given Gore the White House.

It's bad enough comparing apples to oranges but comparing them to watermelons is worse.

Zarqawi and al-Qaeda, unlikely bedfellows

But the letter doesn't make sense when one considers the bitter strategic split between Jordanian Zarqawi and bin Laden. This is the first time ever that al-Tawhid wal-Jihad has even considered abdicating its ruthless sovereignty. The al-Qaeda nucleus is a mix of hardcore Saudi Wahhabis and the Egyptians of Ayman al-Zawahiri's Islamic Jihad. Zarqawi's group contains basically Jordanians, Palestinians and Syrians. They are Salafis, Islamic purists. The incompatibilities are not only ideological, but also methodological: al-Qaeda never attempted kidnappings or beheadings of Muslims. On the other hand, the black and orange brigades in Iraq are growing - these are disgruntled Sunni Iraqis increasingly attracted by the hardcore methods of al-Tawhid wal-Jihad, whose symbol is black and orange.

European Union experts from a counter-terrorism special cell in Brussels tell Asia Times Online, 'We are working on the possibility that the letter may be an attempt to justify the current offensive by Iyad Allawi's government against the Sunni insurgency.' That's also the predominant popular view in the Middle East. But counter-terrorism experts also worry about the likelihood of a code message for al-Qaeda fighters - assuming the letter is authentic. The Brussels experts are particularly intrigued by the mention of Ramadan as the 'month of gifts and triumphs'. Fundamentalisms are mutually attractive. The key consequence of Bush, a born-again Christian, invading secular Iraq has been the convergence of all sorts of Islamic fanatics in Mesopotamia. As much as apocalyptic Christians view the 'war on terror' as a mission from God, apocalyptic Islamists would view 'Zarqawi's' allegiance to al-Qaeda as transcending a mere war and placing the whole thing as a do-or-die clash of civilizations.

In the end, this could be merely another US intelligence 'black operation'. Allawi wants Fallujah to hand him Zarqawi. Fallujah tribal leaders say Zarqawi is not in the city. Now, with alleged 'proof' in writing of a Zarqawi-bin Laden link, there are no holds barred to leveling Fallujah. This October surprise from 'the land of two rivers' is far from being the last.

It's a theory. It fits the facts somewhat better than Zarqawi suddenly getting struck by lightning on the road to Damascus. After all we know this White House is an empire that creates its own reality.

Google 'saved' Australian hostage:

John Martinkus was seized in Baghdad on Saturday, the first Australian held hostage in Iraq since the US-led invasion.

But his captors agreed to release him after they were convinced he was not working for the CIA or a US contractor.

He was reported to be making his way home to Australia on Tuesday.

His executive producer at Australia's SBS network, Mike Carey, said Google probably saved freelance journalist Martinkus.

'They Googled him and then went onto a web site - either his own or his book publisher's web site, I don't know which one - and saw that he was who he was, and that was instrumental in letting him go, I think, or swinging their decision,' he told AP news agency.

The other part of the Martinkus story is the increasingly shameless fabrication by the Foreign Minister of Kleenex, who announced Martinkus had ignored embassy advice and gone to a dangerous area of Baghdad.

Martinkus was abducted outside his hotel opposite the Australian embassy. Expect the customary blather explaining this discrepancy. I'd recommend the minister learn how to use a search engine but that would clearly be adopting the tactics of terrorists.

Sacked Iraqi judge likens Govt to Saddam

One of Iraq's leading judicial champions has been sacked, fanning concerns the US-backed Government is adopting strong-arm tactics reminiscent of the old regime in its war against insurgents.

Central Criminal Court's chief investigating magistrate, Zuhair al-Maliky, said the authorities had given him no reason for his dismissal, which came after repeated clashes with state security agencies over arbitrary arrests and other suspected abuses.

It was the US-led coalition that originally gave Mr Maliky the task of investigating alleged abuses by Iraq's fledgling security apparatus.

The judge insisted he was unrepentant about his crusade for due process by the security services.

'Nobody is above the law,' he told AFP.

'That's the mistake Saddam [Hussein] made. When he made some people above the law ... that was the disaster for Iraqi society.'

A former US official confirmed Mr Maliky had been engaged to probe alleged bribery and brutality by members of the police major crimes unit, back in April, two months before the caretaker government took power.

'There was a lot of cases of torture, illegal detention and corruption,' recalled Mr Maliky, adding that his investigation resulted in the arrest or conviction of at least 20 policemen.

Five of the cases involved the use of electric shock on detainees, leaving one man partially paralysed, he added.

Just another quickstep in the march to freedom.

launching a magical foreign policy

Boost Phase missile defense strategy not feasible against many potential threats

The APS Study Group looked at boost-phase defense systems utilizing land-, sea, or air-based interceptors, space-based interceptors, or the Airborne Laser.

The effectiveness of interceptor rockets would be limited by the short time window for intercept, which requires interceptors to be based within 400 to 1,000 kilometers of the possible boost-phase flight paths of attacking missiles. In some cases this is closer than political geography allows. Even interceptors that were very large and fast and that pushed the state of the art would in most cases be unable to intercept solid-propellant ICBMs before they released their warheads.

A system of space-based interceptors, also constrained by the short time window for intercept, would require a fleet of a thousand or more orbiting satellites just to intercept a single missile. Deploying such a fleet would require a five- to tenfold increase in the United States' annual space-launch capabilities.

The Airborne Laser currently in development has the potential to intercept liquid-propellant ICBMs, but its range would be limited and it would therefore be vulnerable to counterattack. The Airborne Laser would not be able to disable solid-propellant ICBMs at ranges useful for defending the United States.

'Few of the components exist for deploying an effective boost-phase defense against liquid-propellant ICBMs and some essential components would take at least 10 years to develop,' said Study Group co-chair Daniel Kleppner. 'According to U.S. intelligence estimates, North Korea and Iran could develop or acquire solid-propellant ICBMs within the next 10 to 15 years. Consequently, a boost-phase defense effective only against liquid-propellant ICBMs would risk being obsolete when deployed.'

Although a successful intercept would prevent munitions from reaching their target, live nuclear, biological, or chemical warheads could strike populated areas short of the target in the United States or in other countries, shows the study. This 'shortfall problem' is inherent in any boost-phase defense and difficult to avoid.

Ozplogistan is fast filling up with reports and denunciations of faith-based politics. Over the weekend a string of much-blogged articles spoke about Bush's war against actuality, the suppression of dissent, the manufacture of al-Qa'ida and the fabrication of Zarqawi. The rhetoric is two-edged, and talks about US eccentricity as well as Bush's war on reason..

Bummer. We have our own eccentricities. Australia has signed up for the Son of Star Wars madness. Is that a commitment to doing whatever we're told or has the Man of Steel developed his own fantasies.

Son of Star Wars does not work and probably cannot work. The US Missile Defense Agency can claim it works only because they keep ignoring test results. As a high imperial official said:

The aide said that guys like me were ''in what we call the reality-based community,'' which he defined as people who ''believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.'' I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. ''That's not the way the world really works anymore,'' he continued. ''We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.''

Magical thinking is a cognitive disorder, not a policy. And the Man of Steel has decided to take Australia out of the reality-based community. That decision went unchallenged in the election campaign.

Not quite yet, prime minister

2004 Federal Election. Senate - TAS Results. Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC)

If all votes are assumed to be ticket votes, then the final vacancy in Tasmania goes to Jacquie Petrusma of Family First ahead of Christine Milne from the Greens. However, the final margin of victory is only 4,300 votes. In 2001, one in five Tasmanian votes, or around 60,000 ballot papers, were cast below the line. Christine Milne is a well known political figure in the state, and it is quite likely that many below the line votes from the Labor, Liberal and Australian Democrat tickets will leak to Milne. The final result in Tasmania will now be known until all below the line votes are entered into the computer counting system, and the button is hit to distribute preferences.

4300 is a lot less than 60 000. Until the below-the-line votes are counted in Tasmania and Victoria we don't know what will happen to the sixth seat. It's a fair assumption that below-the-line voters are likely to be some form of protest against the ticket votes registered by the parties. Truly, it's fairly weird to allegedly report anything else until the AEC counts these votes.

Labor returns to power in Canberra

Ha! Gotcha! Sadly, it's only the ACT. Still, the 'landslide' received by the Man of Steel did not last all that long. More on that when the final figures are posted. The number of seats changing hands in the House of Representatives really does not indicate a landslide. The ACT result does not indicate an opposition headed for permanent oblivion.

Stanhope claims 'unprecedented' ACT victory

S
Chief Minister Jon Stanhope has claimed victory in the ACT election, with the Labor Party set to secure at least nine of the Assembly's 17 seats, the Territory's first ever majority.

"It is a fantastic result for the Labor Party. It's a tremendous victory and at least a 6 per cent swing across the board," he said.

"That is an unprecedented result for not just the Labor Party but any political party in Australia. In two elections we have increased our support by 22 per cent.

"This result is a vindication of how we have governed."

Liberal leader Brendan Smyth conceded defeat but says it is by no means a train wreck.

"Where are we? It's quite apparent that the Labor Party will be returned to government. They clearly have eight seats and there's a Green," Mr Smyth said.

"I'd like to say congratulations to John Stanhope and his colleagues for a return to government. I wish you well."

Labor could possibly take 10 seats, the Liberal Party is expected to retain its six seats, with the Greens occupying the cross bench.

It's hard to compile an ACT two party preferred at this stage of counting but the results are impressive.

Low-cost climate-change insurance could help ensure better future

The least cost, the researchers found, is to implement a carbon tax that starts out at $10 per ton of carbon (about five cents per gallon of gasoline) and then gradually climbs to $33 per ton in 30 years. Such hedging effectively “buys insurance” against future adjustment costs and is extremely robust, especially when compared with a wait-and-see strategy.

“It would be much less expensive to buy low-cost, climate-change insurance now, than it would be to wait and act later,” Schlesinger said. People voluntarily purchase insurance as protection from extreme events when the risks are private, he said, but societies can require insurance when potential losses are distributed across a population. In the past, risk has influenced policies where voluntary action could prove insufficient.

“In the United States, for example, we allow drivers to decide how much insurance to carry, but we require minimum levels of coverage,” Schlesinger said. “We also allow individuals to choose how much to contribute to their retirements, but we use Social Security taxes to guarantee minimum levels of income protection.”

The study incorporates the uncertainty in the sensitivity of the climate system estimated by Andronova and Schlesinger in 2001 by using a simple atmosphere/ocean model to reproduce the observed temperature change from 1856 to 1997 for 16 combinations of the radiative forcing by greenhouse gases, the sun and volcanoes.

“Recent work by five independent research teams has shown that climate sensitivity could be larger than the 4.5 degrees Celsius upper bound published by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change,” Schlesinger said. “In fact, climate sensitivities as high as 9 degrees Celsius are not implausible.”

Paralysis in near-term action could make temperature targets as low as 3 degrees Celsius impossible to achieve if the climate sensitivity turns out to be higher than 6 degrees Celsius, Schlesinger said, and the cost of adjustment measured in terms of discounted gross global product could be many times higher for lower climate sensitivities if nothing were done for 30 years.

The Man of Steel has built a political career arguing the evils of moral hazard. Somehow the need to plan ahead and make prudent arrangements for the future does not exist when it comes to climate change.

Nuclear material taken by experts not looters, say diplomats

The removal of Iraq's mothballed nuclear facilities took about a year and was carried out by experts with heavy machinery and demolition equipment, diplomats close to the United Nations have said.

The UN nuclear watchdog, which monitored Saddam Hussein's nuclear sites before the US-led invasion last year, told the UN Security Council this week that equipment and materials that could be used to make atomic weapons had been vanishing from Iraq but neither Baghdad nor Washington had noticed.

'This process carried on at least through 2003 ... and probably into 2004, at least in early 2004,' a Western diplomat close to the International Atomic Energy Agency said.

US, British and Iraqi officials have downplayed the disappearance of the equipment, saying it was part of widespread looting after the March 2003 invasion, which the US, Britain and Australia said was to rid Iraq of weapons of mass destruction.

However, several diplomats close to the nuclear agency said on Thursday that this was not the result of haphazard looting.

They said the removal of this dual-use equipment - which until the war was tagged and closely monitored by the agency to ensure that it was not being used in a weapons program - was planned and executed by people who knew what they were doing.

It really is extraordinary that the Coalition of the Willing is so good at churning out lies to explain away its failures. It's almost as if explaining away how the war to contain nuclear weapons became the single greatest proliferation event of the decade was more important than stopping the actual proliferation.

ACT goes Family Last

ACT election mirrors federal campaign:

MATT BROWN: Canberra is having its election now because the ACT has fixed three-year terms and Jon Stanhope says the national election has largely drowned out the local campaign.

JON STANHOPE: It's been very hard to get the message out, to communicate, to grab the space in both newspapers and the electronic media.

MATT BROWN: That may have made it difficult for the Opposition to make the case for change and in response the Liberal Party has bought itself an advertising blitz in the last week.

BRENDAN SMITH: And let's face it, there's voter fatigue out there. We've had six weeks of the federal and now we've got one week of the ACT free and clear, so yes we concentrated it in the last week and we've concentrated on a couple of key issues.

MATT BROWN: In the dying stages of the campaign, Liberal leader Brendan Smith has been denying Government claims that his election promises have a $400 million hole in them.

BRENDAN SMITH: The figures stand, I can deliver them.

MATT BROWN: The ACT voting system uses proportional representation to elect seventeen members of the legislative assembly from three separate electorates, and Jon Stanhope says that can throw up some anomalies.

JON STANHOPE: Because of the vagaries of the Hare-Clarke system you can actually win an election by more than 10 per cent of the primary vote and still not get an extra seat and that's a real possibility for us. It's one that I think would be something of a travesty.

MATT BROWN: But a poll commissioned by The Canberra Times and published this morning predicts a convincing Labor victory, and in a possible breakthrough, a government that will not rely on support from independents or minor parties.

Brendan Smith is still hoping the voters of Canberra will turn his way but, if not then he is prepared to work with all comers.

The big difference between the ACT legislative assembly and the senate is that the ACT does not allow ticket voting. I had hoped to see how Family First did without the advantage of preferencing deals with the ALP. Sadly, they're not running so the Wallace thesis cannot be tested.

And just for the record...
Canberra's own election: "

First election for the Legislative Assembly held in 1989. Others in 1992, 1995, 1998, 2001. No party has ever had an outright majority.

ELECTORS About 225,000.

CURRENT ASSEMBLY Seventeen members: eight Labor, six Liberal, one Greens, one Democrats, one independent.

VOTING METHOD Proportional representation under Hare-Clark system. Electronic voting - an Australian first - in some booths.

SEATS Three, each returning multiple members: seven from the central one, Molonglo, and five each from Ginnindera in the north and Brindabella in the south.

CANDIDATES Brindabella 21, Ginnindera 23, Molonglo 33.

Ticket voting should be abolished. At minimum the NSW practice of letting above-the-line voters determine their own preferences should be adopted. And the Victorian ALP head office should hang their heads in shame.

Will Terror Alert Level Show Its True Colors?

A Cornell sociologist says he has found scientific evidence that, whenever the government issues a terrorism alert, President Bush's approval ratings go up, even on domestic issues, such as his handling of the economy.

Robb Willer, assistant director of the Sociology and Small Groups Laboratory at Cornell -- someone else runs Large Groups? -- tracked about 26 occasions since 2001, including the major Code Orange alerts by the Department of Homeland Security, when some agency -- the FBI, the State Department or someone else -- announced a potential threat to Americans.

He tracked those with 131 Gallup polls taken during that time up until May. Willer, a doctoral candidate in sociology, found that, on average, each warning prompted a 2.75 point increase in the president's approval rating the following week.

Willer said yesterday that his research 'controlled' for various things such as the Afghan war, the beginning of the Iraq war and the capture of Saddam Hussein, though not for economic good news or other positive developments. His study says he conducted 'several time-series analyses' and used 'regression models' and stuff like that.

Government terrorist warnings boost President Bush's approval ratings, a Cornell sociologist finds

Willer's study is published in the Sept. 30 issue of Current Research in Social Psychology , a peer-reviewed online journal, at http://www.uiowa.edu/%7Egrpproc/crisp/crisp10_1.pdf .

When Willer linked the warnings to presidential ratings from 2001 to 2004, he found that each terror warning prompted, on average, a 2.75 point increase in the president's approval rating the following week.

Willer points to the aftermath of the Sep. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States as an example of the tendency. After Sept. 11, 2001, approval of Bush's job performance jumped from 51 percent on Sept. 10, 2001, to 86 percent on Sept. 15, 2001, in a Gallup Poll. Similarly, approval for Bush's handling of the economy jumped from 54 percent on July 11, 2001, to 72 percent on Oct. 5, 2001, says Willer.The findings are consistent with social identity theory, says Willer. The theory postulates that individuals tend to identify with a specific group to the extent that they see themselves as more similar to the members of the group than to its most significant out-group.

"Once individuals identify with a group, they develop significant biases toward their group, which help them maintain high self-esteem as members of their group. From the perspective of social identity theory, threats of attacks from foreigners increase solidarity and in-group identification among Americans, including feelings of stronger solidarity with their leadership," explains Willer.

When the out-group threat includes terror, Willer says that the social-identity effects are further heightened. He notes that his findings also are consistent with terror management theory, which indicates that threats involving mortality not only increase in-group biases but also nationalism. "This research suggests that individuals may respond to reminders of their mortality, like terror warnings, by supporting their current leaders," Willer says.

I always wondered why we hear so much abut threats at the same time as we hear so much about Coalition success in the War on Terror.

If you've got them by their advertising budgets, their hearts and minds will follow

The Australian media did not perform well in the federal election. The level of bad performance varies from the Fairfax management banning the editorials staff from an endorsement, to the convenient invention of terror incidents, to the general inability to even question the government's record or intentions.

Australian media have a patrimonial approach. Most of it is part of the Murdoch or Packer patrimonies, so that's hardly surprising. Various people (Murdoch and Packer) 'own' the media so they can print or broadcast what they like. In fact, they're entirely dependent on advertising. Ultimately we pay these people by paying the advertising costs they pass onto us through the price mechanism.

In the US, a broadcaster has decided to put out a slam piece on John Kerry just before the presidential election. Talking Points Memo has excellent coverage on how to respond. Our media are going to be excitable for the term of this government. The prospect of Howard controlling the Senate is their first chance in years to get the cross media laws repealed and may allow them to lock up cable as a monopoly forever. They really want stuff from the Man of Steel. But they still need advertisers...

Pandering to Howard's Whingers

Do you see what's happening? Just as Medicare Gold would have favoured people on the basis of their age rather than their need, so Howard has already changed the tax system to differentiate on the basis of age rather than ability to pay.

If you're old, you shouldn't be asked to pay tax. If you're on the same income but are a young couple saving for a home or a family, however, you should pay full freight. This sounds like a fair thing?

Today's young people are compelled to save for their superannuation while also paying taxes to cover their parents' and grandparents' pensions and prescriptions. They've been lumbered with HECS debts. And the Howard Government's economic miracle has priced them out of the housing market while delivering a huge, tax-free windfall gain to their home-owning oldies.

If the pollies can't control their urge to buy the oldies' votes at every successive election, they're pouring petrol on a generational powder keg that may one day blow up in all our faces.

Perhaps at the next election Labor might start contesting an economic miracle that has, for many, ended the Australian dream of owning a home. Or promoting generational equity rather than geriatric handouts. Or even addressing those Australians who do not fit into the ever-narrowing definition of family.

How to achieve your own Cannae

The Senate runs on group voting tickets. It doesn't have to. People who voted Labor in Victoria did not have to tick the Labor ticket, they could have filled out their own order of preferences. My guess is that most Victorian Labor voters did not want and did not know that Labor above-the-line votes in Victoria run:

1
CARR Kim John
Australian Labor Party

2
CONROY Stephen M
Australian Labor Party

3
COLLINS Jacinta
Australian Labor Party

4
LEWIS Marg
Australian Labor Party

5
TOZER Roger F
Ex-Service Service and Veterans Party

6
BROWN Pam
Ex-Service Service and Veterans Party

7
CLANCY Steve
liberals for forests

8
FIELDING Steve
Family First

We are facing Coalition control of the Senate for many reasons. One of them is the idiocy of the Labor group voting ticket in Victoria. Whoever was responsible should be falling on their sword right now.

Don't head for New Zealand Just yet

The state of the parties in the House of Representatives is unchanged at 22:35, although doubtful seats will give the prime minister an increased majority.

• Liberal 40.7% +3.2 75 seats
  
• National 6.0% +0.4 12 seats
  
• Labor 37.9% +0.0 58 60 seats
  
• Greens 7.0% +2.1 0 seats
  
• Democrats 1.1% -4.3 0 seats
  
• One Nation 1.2% -3.1 0 seats
  
• Others 6.1% +1.7 3 seats
  

The Senate looks scary. Victoria may elect a Family First senator and give the government control of the Senate for the first time since 1980.

The Liberal/National Coalition will control the House and form the government for the next three years. I'll think about this and scribble more over the next few days. Hindsight is useless, except there will be another election in 3 years time. I think Labor can win that election easily. Every issue from the economy to national security favours the government right now, but it's all built on the housing bubble, the special relationship with George Bush, the interest rates of mass destruction, and Labor's inability to get back the 2001 Tampa voters. Those issues will not be there in 3 years time. neither will the Man of Steel and Iron Mark will be a seasoned leader facing the happy alternatives of Abbot or Costello. Labor also needs to think hard about seats like Greenway and the advent of an organised religious right in Australia. Those votes wiill not come to Labor no matter how many principles are compromised.

The media has been spectacularly complaisant, but I think that can be changed over the next three years. If Family First wins the sixth Senate seat in Victoria an avalanche of legislation will scream through the Senate, That will make the choices much clearer next time around. The Man of Steel must be praying that interest rates, which respond to the global economy more than domestic policy, do not rise in the next three years.

Raining down policies once the election is declared does not work. You have to do what Whitlam did and run a permanent campaign. A year ago Labor was facing the loss of 25 seats. Holding seats in an essentially unchanged parliament is fairly spectacular achievement.

Bloggers need to get a lot more active and build a closer relationship with the parties of progress. After the Democrat implosion that means Labor and the Greens. We especially need to start riding the media in the way the US blogosphere does. More when I'm less depressed and when the Senate result is clearer.

unspinning group voting tickets

The strange allocation of preferences in the Senate, where Howard has associated himself with a fundamentalist confessional party (and perhaps legislated to gain their support) could be cured easily. The NSW 1999 election was also skewed by an outbreak of microparties with unlikely names and platforms who exchanged preferences in a fairly promiscuous manner.

Antony Green's New South Wales Legislative Council Elections 2003 (PDF) tells us:

While the new voting system retained the 'above the line' or group voting option, groups had to nominate full lists of 15 or more candidates to have access to a group voting square. Votes cast using the group voting method only counted as preferences for the selected party, and could not be directed to other parties. Like-minded parties running against each other would therefore split their base vote. Previously, like-minded parties had been able to compete for votes against each other, sure of their ability to swap preferences. At recent elections, several parties have used this tactic to elect MLCs despite receiving quite small totals on the primary count.

A new form of 'above the line' voting was also introduced, allowing voters to order parties above the line, in an analogy with the way candidates can be ordered 'below the line'. Data on ballot papers is not yet available, but from the details provided in the distribution of preferences, it appears that less than ten percent of voters took advantage of this new option.

A consequence of the changes was that only 15 groups nominated in 2003 compared to 80 at the last election. However, every group nominated 15 or more candidate, compared to just three groups in 1999. So while the number of groups fell, producing a much more manageable ballot paper, the number of candidates rose from 264 to 284.

and:

Two findings are clear from the detailed distribution of preferences in Section 1.

(1) Preferences played no part in the final outcome. Under the previous operation of group ticket voting, preferences flowed strongly between groups on the ballot paper, as more than 90% of votes had been cast using the group voting option. Under the new system, 80-90% of preferences exhausted between groups. The number of members elected from each group at the 2003 election was determined entirely by the level of primary vote support for each group and was unaffected by the distribution of between group preferences.

(2) Parties that divided their core support were disadvantaged by the new system. The Shooters Party, Independent Pauline Hanson, One Nation, the Fishing/Horse Riders/4WD ticket, and Australians Against Further Immigration, probably share a similar support base. Together they polled 1.63 quotas. Under the old electoral system, this support could have been accumulated using ticket voting, giving an outside chance of electing two MLCs between the groups. Under the new system, these parties split their vote, no preferences flowed and John Tingle from the Shooters Party was elected with less than half a quota, edging out Pauline Hanson for the final vacancy.

The way to resolve this is to abolish group voting tickets and applyRobson rotation:

Of special interest is a feature of the Tasmanian electoral system whereby through a process of rotation each candidate gets a share of the position at the top of a particular column. This system has been in use since 1979. This is an attempt to even out the donkey vote (simply voting up or down the ballot) which is said to favour surnames early in the alphabet, or candidates early in the list. This system of rotation was championed by Hon. Neil Robson MHA, and is often known as 'Robson rotation'

Under the current electoral process a draw is made for the position of Party or independent groups across the ballot paper. Other candidates are classed as 'ungrouped' on the far right of the ballot paper. Next the rotation process is applied. Since 1996 this has been achieved by batch printing which first places candidates in a random sequence in each vertical column, then 'rotates' the names evenly in the positions available.

On polling day only first preference counting occurs; after postal votes arrive the cut-up of preferences commences. Candidates who achieve or exceed a quota of first preferences are declared elected.

Family First have proved the flaw in group voting tickets - people's votes are going to parties and candidates they have no intention of voting for. We know they have no intention of voting for them because no-one, but no-one, ever knows the registered orders of preference in any detail. The NSW solution is not bad, but its discriminatory between GVT voters and individual voters. Pure Robson rotation, on other hand, skews things to strongly against GVT voters.

What we really want is a system that's neutral between Robsonian individualism and GVT colllectivism. If I had my druthers, and there is absolutely no prospect of that happening, I'd:

• get rid of the line altogether;
  
• list all candidates and tickets in the same area of the ballot paper and apply Robson rotation across the board;
  
• allow voters to give as many or as few preferences as they wish.
  

Boring technical points
There would need to be rules that :

• because each candidate would appear individually and on each ticket, a candidate could only receive the highest preference shown for them on each ballot.
  
• a ticket preference would count as the next available preference for each ticket candidate and then revert to the voter's individual order
  
• ideally the same rules would apply to House and Senate elections with the quota calculated as V/S+1 (rounded up) where V= the number of voters and S=the number of seats to be filled.
  
• ideally we will one day elect our president this way.
  

disco lights of mass destruction

The disco terrors

A Romanian village was left deserted when its inhabitants fled in panic, mistaking disco lights in a nearby town for an alien invasion.

Villagers in Cristinesti, eastern Romania, thought they were under attack by aliens when they saw multicoloured lights in the sky.

Police called to investigate discovered the lights were coming from an open-air disco, Adevarul reports.

At least they didn't invade New Mexico.

counting the polls, I mean the votes

I have no idea who will win this election. I find it hard to believe the Man of Steel commands the highest Liberal primary vote since Menzies. Blogic seems to demand that you're a feeble blogger if you don't 'call' the election, but the act is meaningless. Are you saying 'I want X to win' or 'I think X will win' or 'This is only a guess but if I get it right I just might improve my hit rate'? Both here and in the US the polls are contradicting each other, although in Australia they seem to show a clear trend towards the Coalition.

The opiate of the electorate

Opinion polls are the narcotic of choice for the politically active part of the US electorate. Like all narcotics, polls have their uses: they sometimes allow us to function better as political practitioners or even as dreamers, and don't forget that fabulous rush of exhilaration when our candidate shows dramatic gains. But polls are an addiction that also distort our political feelings and actions even as they trivialize political campaigns - and they allow our political and media suppliers to manipulate us ruthlessly. The negatives, as pollsters might say, outweigh the positives.

But let's start with the good things, the stuff that makes people monitor polls in the first place, relying on them to determine their moods, their attitudes and their activities. The centerpiece of all that's good in the polls lies in the volatility of public opinion, a trait that polls certainly discovered. The scientific consensus before World War II had it that political attitudes were bedrock, unchanging values.

and:

The emotional roller-coaster that results from misleading fluctuations in poll results, managed by manipulative media outlets, is the most dramatic symptom of the larger problem. They keep us riveted on the minutiae of the debates (in this case, "presentation and demeanor" are the major foci of the analyses of why Kerry won), while distracting the electorate from the underlying issues that have animated people's discontent with the Bush administration in the first place. Lost in the excitement over the Kerry first-debate victory are his promises of more troops and a more aggressive foreign policy. The rise in the polls makes this belligerent posture acceptable, and even dedicated anti-war activists end up suspending their politics in the excitement over the return of the presidential race to a "statistical dead heat".

Americans' reliance on polls for political validation combines with unscrupulous press coverage of these polls to create a lethal threat to our political sanity and our political effectiveness. Our addiction to polls has done more than enhance the already unacceptable power of the media; it has also redirected our attention and efforts away from policy and toward trivial personality contests at a time when much is at stake

The polls are declining in accuracy in both countries and are being drastically misused by media and the political apparat in both countries. No pollster has ever claimed that a poll predicts an election. All they ever say is that a poll detects how an election held on the date of the poll would come out, subject t the margin of error. Media pay a lot for polls and are not about to announce that their expensive purchase is not predictive at all. Equally politicians favoured by a poll become gung-ho about their 'lead' and those disadvantaged by a poll start mumbling about election day being the only poll that matters.

In polls we trust?

Is Gallup's poll pulling for Bush? The short answer is no; polling experts, even Democratic polling experts, consider Gallup transcendently nonpartisan, one of the survey industry's straightest shooters. Several pollsters say they resent MoveOn's attack on Gallup. But there's a more important side to the kerfuffle over the Gallup Poll, one that lays bare not only legitimate questions over Gallup's methodology but also, more generally, the possible shortcomings of all election polls as well as the mistakes the public and the media make in interpreting them. In addition, there are many reasons, these days, to be broadly suspicious of the truth according to pollsters. Not the least of them is that an increasingly large share of the population fails to respond to pollsters' calls (a phenomenon that may be responsible for Gallup's odd Sept. 17 poll results) and are possibly evading surveyors altogether by using cellphones and caller I.D. systems. In a tight race, these concerns are more consequential; and the polling industry sees no good way around the problems in the long run.

We live, today, in an era of polling ubiquity. In the 2004 election, we'll probably have more polls from more organizations over more topics than we've ever had before, and the public will enjoy far greater access to these polls than in the past. The many polls dictate media coverage and campaign strategy, determining from week to week and day to day how journalists and insiders call the race -- not only who's up and who's down but why, how, where and what they should do about it.

I tend to agree with the idea that the ubiquity of mobile phones skews results. I suspect the young and the poor tend to have mobiles, not landlines, these days and that they are under-represented in polls conducted by landline. I also suspect that people who dislike being rung at home are underrepresented in polls. We won't even speak about Internet junkies who only have a landline.

Labor can probably draw some comfort from antiwar votes in other US allies. The antiwar vote in Spain was there before the Madrid bombing. It had not been detected. The same story happened in Korea. Perhaps the doctors' wives will break for Labor and perhaps they're big among the unusually high number of undecided voters the polls are showing this year. No-one knows which way they will break.

I believe the story of this campaign could and should have been quite different. Labor should not have ignored the USFTA. Labor should not have abandoned Iraq as an issue. Running away from issues might be a good way to hold seats but it's no way to win seats. Alienating voters by supporting Howard's legislative bribe to Family First is not one of the brighter political strategies of recent years. My final preference will go to Labor. My first preference will go to a party that takes human rights seriously.

Labor's tax sums backed by Treasury

In a credibility boost for Labor on the eve of the federal election, the Treasury has endorsed the Opposition's costings of its tax cuts, rejecting claims by Peter Costello of a $700 million hole.

Two weeks ago, Mr Costello said he would stake his economic credibility on his assertion that Labor had understated the cost of its tax cuts, which provide up to $8 a week for low and middle-income earners.

But in a serious embarrassment for the Treasurer, his own department concluded in an analysis released last night that the tax cuts, in fact, would cost less than Labor estimated.

Now that the treasurer no longer (by his own judgment) has any economic credibility, does that mean re-electing him threatens the interest rate?

more on the Jakarta shakeout

The presidential election is finally declared. Yudhoyono now has to assert control of the parliament, the bureaucracy and the military. Beyond the arena of formal politics the election result is reverberating through the various hierarchies that constitute the Indonesian elite. To try and quickly summarise what's happening:

• Yudhoyono ally, Hidayat Nur Wahid, leader of the Islam-based reformist Prosperous Justice Party (PKS) won the speakership of the MPR by 2 votes over PDIP/Golkar candidate Sutjipto.
  
• Megawati's predecessor as president, Abdulrahman Wahid is calling for the removal of Hasyim Muzadi as head of Nahdatul Ulama, the larger of the main Muslim organisations who ran as Megawati's vice-presidential candidate.
  
• Amien Rias, head of Masjumi, the other main Muslim organisation, has left politics
  
• a number of minor parties are changing their leaders
  
• PDIP members demonstrated outside party headquarters demanding the resignation of Megawati's three closest advisers (inevitably known as the Gang of 3)
  
• Jusuf Kallar, the incoming vice-president, has announced he will seek the leadership of Golkar at the December party congress
  

In short a lot of Indonesia's hierarchies are changing and shifting in response to Yudhoyono's election. This is a crucial process because Yudhoyono only controls 10% of the DPR seats. If JK can take over Golkar Yudhoyno will control a narrow majority. The election of Hidayat Nur Wahid is an unexpected victory, although Golkar will control the DPR speakership.

The Majelis Permusyawaratan Rakyat or people's consultative assembly (universally and understandably called the MPR) was once a fairly corrupt electoral college comprising MPs, presidential appointees and military delegates. It was restructured by the Third Amendment to the 1945 Constitution into a joint sitting of the two houses - the Dewan Perwakilan Rakyat or house of people's representatives (DPD) and the Dewan Perwakilan Daerah or house of regional representatives (DPD). While the MPR still has supreme legislative power and can remove the president on the initiative of the DPR, it is no longer an electoral college.

Guantanamo has 'failed to prevent terror attacks'

Prisoner interrogations at Guantánamo Bay, the controversial US military detention centre where guards have been accused of brutality and torture, have not prevented a single terrorist attack, according to a senior Pentagon intelligence officer who worked at the heart of the US war on terror.

Lieutenant Colonel Anthony Christino, who retired last June after 20 years in military intelligence, says that President George W Bush and US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld have 'wildly exaggerated' their intelligence value.

Christino's revelations, to be published this week in Guantánamo: America's War on Human Rights, by British journalist David Rose, are supported by three further intelligence officials. Christino also disclosed that the 'screening' process in Afghanistan which determined whether detainees were sent to Guantánamo was 'hopelessly flawed from the get-go'.

The world did not change on 9 September 2001. The War on Terror may have made governments more anxious for intelligence, but that does not mean the exceptional methods authorised by the US now work if they did not before. Really, this just more of the magical thinking that says defeat will not happen because it is unthinkable.

governing on the dark side

Documents reveal plans for Iraq war

Australia took part in detailed planning to invade Iraq earlier than previously admitted, according to Pentagon documents.

The records emerged as Prime Minister John Howard refused to follow Britain's Tony Blair in apologising for presenting incorrect information on whether Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction.

It would be a 'terrible defeat for the West' if coalition nations pulled out of Iraq before security had been restored, a defiant Mr Howard said yesterday.

He said he had acted in good faith, assessing intelligence briefings before making the decision to go to war. 'I don't apologise for one moment for the fact that we joined in getting rid of Saddam Hussein.'

London's Evening Standard yesterday reported that the United States Central Command in Florida hosted a 'planning conference' for Iraq on June 28, 2002, with Australian and British military commanders.

PM called talks to derail renewable energy

The Federal Government and fossil-fuel industry executives discussed ways to stifle growing investment in renewable energy projects at a secret meeting earlier this year.

Prime Minister John Howard called the meeting on May 6, five weeks before releasing the energy white paper on June 14.

The white paper favours massive investment in research to make fossil fuels cleaner, at the expense of schemes boosting growth in renewable energy.

Mr Howard called together the fossil-fuel-based Lower Emissions Technology Advisory Group to seek advice on ways to avoid extending the mandatory renewable energy targets scheme.

The Government has touted the scheme as a key plank in achieving its Kyoto Protocol target to hold greenhouse emissions at 108 per cent of 1990 levels.

The Government continues to refuse to ratify the protocol, despite Russia's decision last week to ratify and bring the protocol into legal effect.

Russia's move further isolates the United States and Australia.

Labor attack Govt over Honan ethanol deal

ANNA BURKE, MEMBER FOR CHISHOLM: Prime Minister, was the Government contacted by the major Australian producer of ethanol or by any representative of him or his company or the industry association before its decision to impose fuel excise on ethanol?

EMMA GRIFFITHS: The PM's answer was clear.

JOHN HOWARD, PRIME MINISTER: Speaking for myself, I didn't personally have any discussions, from recollection, with any of them.

EMMA GRIFFITHS: But his statement's now in question, disputed by a document obtained by the Opposition under freedom of information laws and made public last week.

It records a meeting between John Howard and Dick Honan about ethanol, just six weeks before the decision.

The Opposition says Parliament has been misled.

The secret meeting is par for the course for the Man of Steel's government. Each time the Man of Steel gets caught in one he blames his staff for not sending the papers. The Manildra meeting was most dramatic because the prime minister's defence was apparently that his staff had not told him he attended a meeting.

The Bushiad - George Dreams

Who are you,' asks George, 'Where's the blackbird?'
'I am the blackbird, don't you know my name?'
He asks in deep and accented voice, resonant and rich.
Dressed in black he wears strange headgear and a cape.
'I can't remember,' George stammers, searching.
'Darth Vader?' asks George. His voice trembles.

'Not quite, young Bush, but close. Hussein's the name, Saddam.
I am your father!' 'No!' cries George, tries to pull away.
But Saddam won't let go, 'Join me, Son. Together
We will rule the world, Father and Son together at last!'
'Never!' shrieks George, 'The world is mine!'
Saddam lets go, and George falls.

The blackbird flies to the darkening east
Disappearing into the blackness.
Golden grasses glow beneath the setting sun.
Lost and alone between Texas wind and Maine surf
Confused, George gazes at a shining point at the horizon,
A lone star alongside the crescent moon.

Tip for The Bushiad and The Idyossey | The Epic Battle of Testosterone circa 2003 via Bad Attitudes.

Out of the Question - Is Bush's biggest mistake too awful to admit?

'I believe that when you know something's going wrong, you make it right,' Kerry said, explaining his vote against the $87 billion appropriation for Iraq. 'That's what I learned in Vietnam. When I came back from that war, I saw that it was wrong. Some people don't like the fact that I stood up to say no, but I did. And that's what I did with that vote.'

No, Senator. That isn't what you did with that vote. You haven't said no to the Iraq War as you did to the Vietnam War. And the reason is that this time, you're running for president.

But the greater shame belongs to the candidate who launched this war, refuses to admit his errors, and now holds the moral pride of his countrymen hostage, blackmailing them into shunning the truth. Tonight he scoffed, 'If I were to ever say, 'This is the wrong war at the wrong time at the wrong place,' the troops would wonder, 'How can I follow this guy?' '

Exactly, Mr. President. If you were ever to give them the correct assessment, they would ask the correct question.

Famously, Bush tells us that 'failure in Iraq is unthinkable'. Saletan seems to have found out why.

my last on Family First

I have a problem with the federal election. Instead of blogging up a storm I find myself yawning. I certainly hope the Man of Steel is defeated. I think Mark Latham would make make a much better (and certainly more honest) prime minister. Just once I would like to hear Latham say that unjust war is wrong. I'm just not finding all that much to say that isn't already being said elsewhere.

I'm interested that the Man of Steel personally brokered the preference swap with Family First. I would badly like the date of those negotiations. FF have a longish policy document. If you're prepared to download a .75 meg pdf and read the whole thing you discover part of putting families first is:

To this end Family First will pursue a range of strategies to reduce the incidence of and negative outcomes of family and relationship breakdown by:

• Providing relationship and marriage education as well as ongoing opportunities for building and developing skills so that families have optimal chances for success
  
• Providing relationship and family rescue and preservation programs for the provision of support and counselling for relationships and marriages under pressure
  
• Providing divorce recovery and separation programs that offer strategies and support to every family member
  
• Explaining the extra benefits marriage bring to family life and increasing opportunities to help people, especially young Australians to select marriage as the best environment in which to raise a family
  
• Affirming and defending the institution of marriage as being a union of a man and a woman to the exclusion of all others, voluntarily entered into for life
  

Oddly enough, the Commonwealth Marriage Act tells us at S6:

"marriage" means the union of a man and a woman to the exclusion of all others, voluntarily entered into for life.

That language was inserted in the Act by the Marriage Legislation Amendment Act 2004 which passed with Labor's support in the last few days of the old parliament. It is pirated from Lord Penzance's definition Hyde v. Hyde and Woodmansee, where he defined marriage as ‘the voluntary union for life of one man and one woman, to the exclusion of all others’.

It would be interesting to know if the marriage amendment was the subject of the Man of Steel's conversations with Family First. the government was certainly anxious to get the bill passed before the election. At one stage they were giving it priority over an anti-terror bill. It would be a great, great joke if Labor in its wisdom passed a discriminatory law in order to secure the Man of Steel's preferences.

Stealth politics is not completely unknown to the religious right in the US.

Downplaying Christian affiliation has become a tried and true strategy of American conservative evangelical organizations such as Focus on the Family, the Christian Coalition and the Heritage Foundation. During the 1990s, all of those robustly religious organizations began coaching their local leaders and campaign workers to avoid speaking what some strategists called 'Christianese' - the kind of overtly religious language, sprinkled with Biblical allusions and evangelical code-words ('born again', 'sin', 'salvation') likely to alienate secular voters. Instead, candidates and recruiters learnt to emphasise terms like 'family', 'common sense' and 'decent'.

The result was significant election successes. The 1994 congressional elections, which delivered Republican majorities in both houses for the first time in forty years, enabling the conservative Contract with America, is a case in point. In many cases, voters often only discovered afterwards that the candidates they had supported in fact stood on explicitly religious policy ground. No one was more frank about the technique than early 1990s Christian Coalition executive Ralph Reed: 'I do guerrilla warfare. I paint my face and travel at night. You don't know it's over until you're in a body bag. You don't know till election night.'

The appeal of ambiguously Christian rhetoric is not limited to minor parties. On the contrary, it has been central to the Howard government's shift of the Liberal Party to the socially conservative right. The most prominent example is the Lyons Forum, the recently reconvened 'family policy' pressure group whose spokespeople typically deny it is a Christian organisation, while affirming that its members share Christian principles. Its track record includes increasing censorship, the reshaping of tax and family benefits to favour single-income families with a stay-at-home mother (first articulated in the Forum's 1995 submission to the party executive on tax) and the Sex Discrimination Amendment Bill 2000 (first mooted by the Lyons Forum in 1997).

While you're at it, you should read Family First- One Christian's View at The Baliset Palimpsest. Tip via Dogfight at Bankstown. Kull wahad!

Slashdotting Family First

This is weird, but most Family First stories are. They want to censor the Internet. It's turned up on Slashdot (boldface mine) as:

Left wing Australian Christian political party Family First wants an annual levy of $7 to $10 on all internet users in Australia to fund a $45 million mandatory national internet filtering scheme aimed at blocking pornographic and offensive content at server level. (Read Family First's Policy Statement on Internet Pornography and Children (pdf) ) Great firewall of Australia, here we come!

Sadly, if you click the link, you find the source article reads:

Conservative political newcomer Family First wants an annual levy of $7 to $10 on all internet users to fund a $45 million mandatory national internet filtering scheme aimed at blocking pornographic and offensive content at server level.

Various slashdotters picked up the substitution of 'leftwing' for 'conservative' quite quickly. But why would the original poster try to conceal Family First's actual political stance?

In God we do not put our votes

Unlike in the U.S., Australia does not truly have a Catholic vote, or Jewish vote, or Hispanic vote, etc.

Mr Howard has frequently addressed Islamic and other groups and celebrated the multi-faith society we live in.

'The question of whether this is a Christian country or not is really a matter for individual viewpoints,' he said in 2001.

The Rev Fred Nile's Christian Democratic Party has a different view.

'In this federal election it is absolutely vital for Christians to vote for Christian candidates and for the Christian party,' it says.

Mr Nile's group argues that while the Liberal and Labor parties were founded by people with Christian values, the religious influence has waned.

Family First Party is supported by the Assemblies of God but claims it isnt a Christian party, which is why Mr Nile reckons it doesnt deserve a Christians vote.

The biggest enemy, according to Mr Niles group, are the Greens, which Mr Nile describes as 'the most pagan party ever to be formed in Australia'.

The Greens, by the way, have religious freedom as one of their policies.

Frightening. I agree with Fred Nile about Family First...




"

Al-Qaida would back Bush, says UK envoy

The Foreign Office was thrown into turmoil yesterday after the British ambassador to Rome, Sir Ivor Roberts, described President George Bush as 'the best recruiting sergeant ever for al-Qaida'.

His comment, made at a closed conference of about 100 British and Italian diplomats, politicians and journalists in Tuscany, was leaked to an Italian newspaper, provoking embarrassment in London.

According to one of those present, Sir Ivor had been taking part in a discussion on which candidate Europeans would back if they had a vote in the US election. The ambassador said they would vote for Mr Kerry but some people would want Mr Bush, not least al-Qaida.

'If anyone is ready to celebrate the eventual re-election of Bush, it's al-Qaida. Whereas it is clear that the Palestinians hope that a Kerry victory will unblock the situation,' he said.

Sir Ivor is obviously wrong. Recruiting sergeants have to attend for duty.

two different leaders

Latham's campaign address

Two days before this election, there's an historic anniversary: 7th October 1941, when John Curtin became Australia's Prime Minister.

Curtin's priority was the Defence of Australia - securing our country, in our part of the world.

In putting Australia first, he had to stand up not only to Winston Churchill but President Roosevelt as well.

But that didn't stop John Curtin building a new alliance, a new partnership with the United States.

And he built that partnership on the only worthwhile basis - mutual respect between two sovereign and independent people.

The Alliance is not the property of any Australian party or any particular American administration.

It belongs to our two great peoples.

I want to render the United States the best service any Australian Prime Minister ever could.

And that is to help the United States develop its true role of world leadership, based on respect, understanding and the cooperation demonstrated so powerfully after September 11, but undermined so tragically by the mistakes in Iraq.

Most of all, the impact of those mistakes in our region.

When Mr Howard sent Australian troops to the war in Iraq he knew, on advice, that his decision would make Australia less safe in the war against terror.

Now he says that he'll keep Australian troops in Iraq until they have finished the job. But he can't tell them what the job is.

The real job for Australia is in our region, working with our neighbours and with the United States.

And as Prime Minister, I'll sign up for that job, for as long as it takes.

This is where our permanent interests lie, not on the other side of the world.

This is where Labor will dedicate our resources in the war against terror - to our region, to our part of the world, to the real security of the Australian people.

Blair's conference speech

And what I learnt that day was not about the far left. It was about leadership. Get rid of the false choice: principles or no principles. Replace it with the true choice. Forward or back. I can only go one way. I've not got a reverse gear. The time to trust a politician most is not when they're taking the easy option. Any politician can do the popular things. I know, I used to do a few of them.

I know it's hard for people to keep faith. Some of the people may have a different take on me. But I have the same take on them. I trust their decency. I trust their innate good sense. I know I am the same person I always was, older, tougher, more experienced, but basically the same person believing the same things. I've never led this Party by calculation. Policy you calculate. Leadership comes by instinct. I believe the British people will forgive a government mistakes; will put the media onslaught in more perspective than we think; but what they won't forgive is cowardice in the face of a challenge.

The answer to any of these challenges is not easy.

Beyond all Blair's talent for sounding pious while denouncing principle, all he is really doing is advocating action at the cost of anything else. His position is as meretricious as his master's in Washington. Latham's appeal to Australian history and principle may not play quite so high-minded and high-sounding, but it's honest. I doubt his services will be welcome in Washington.

...and just to keep us all feeling comfortable and relaxed

Family First seeks net gag

Conservative political newcomer Family First wants an annual levy of $7 to $10 on all internet users to fund a $45 million mandatory national internet filtering scheme aimed at blocking pornographic and offensive content at server level.

The party, which holds a state seat in South Australia, is considered a strong candidate for a Senate spot after concluding preference deals with all the major parties except the Greens.

These are the people the Man of Steel personally brokered a preference deal with.

Los Angeles Times Editorial | How Dare Kerry Speak Up

The suggestion that terrorists support Sen. John F. Kerry for president is ugly, but basically silly. The suggestion that Kerry supports the terrorists is flat-out disgusting. President Bush has allowed surrogates to spread the former idea, but he himself has helped to promote the latter. Last week, Bush declared that Kerry's criticism of him and his Iraq policy 'can embolden an enemy' and called Kerry 'destructive' to the war on terror.

Since election day 2000 and through his first term, Bush has talked a better game of democratic values than he has played. And he is not one for nuances in any event. But the point here is not subtle: The right to criticize the policies of those in power is not just one of democracy's fringe benefits; it is essential to making the democratic machinery work. And questions of war and peace -- dead young Americans, dead Iraqis, a radicalized Middle East, billions of dollars: Was it worth all this? -- are the ones that need democracy the most. Why would any president even wish to plunge this country into war and keep it there without a level of support from the citizenry that is strong enough to survive the obvious counterarguments?

and:

Compared with Kerry, George W. Bush is a coward. This is not a reference to their respective activities during Vietnam. It refers to the current election campaign. Bush happily benefits from the slime his supporters are spreading but refuses to take responsibility for it or to call point-blank for it to stop. He got away with this when the prime mover was the shadowy Swift boats group. Will he get away with it when the accusers are his own vice president, high officials of his own administration (Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage) and members of Congress from his own party (House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert or Sen. Orrin Hatch)? The answer is yes: Based on recent experience, he probably will get away with it.

I was staggered to read this in a major US newspaper. Maybe the US media is finally prepared to say the Great and Powerful Dubya is an meperor without clothes.

changing the guard in Jakarta

Today is the last day that the MPR, Indonesia's supreme legislative body, includes police and army delegates. In future the MPR will consist only of elected members of the two legislative chambers, the DPR and the DPD. The departure of the military is part of the deal struck in 1999 when reformasi reigned supreme. The shift from indirect election through the MPR to a popular vote for president was agreed at the same time.

In another mark of how the presidential result is changing the political landscape, MPR speaker Amien Rais has announced he is leaving politics to return to university teaching.

Rais brokered the deal, which ultimately proved disastrous, to pass over Megawati, despite her lead in the popular vote, in favour of Abdulrahman Wahid in 1999. 18 months later Rais changed sides and organised the impeachment and removal of Wahid in favour of Megawati. Earlier this year, Rais' party, PAN, scored a much smaller share of the Muslim vote in the legislative election than Wahid's PKB. Rais went on to lose the first round of the presidential election badly. He ended this record of triumph by helping arrange the Nationhood Coalition to support Megawati in her spectacularly unsuccessful attempt at the second round of the election.

The Nationhood Coalition, essentially an anyone-but-Yudhoyono movement, has more than 300 deputies out of 550 but its grip on its own deputies is tenuous at best. Yudhoyono's allies in parliament number 100. Megawati' PDI-P is a shambles after the presidential defeat, as is Golkar.

The next political figure to depart the scene will probably be Akbar Tanjung, the DPR speaker. Tanjung ran for the Golkar presidential nomination, only to be defeated by Wiranto, who then ran a distant third to Yudhoyono and Megawati. Yudhoyono's vice-president, Jusuf Kalla is expected to defeat Tanjung for the Golkar leadership in December.

At that point Yudhoyono will acquire a legislative majority in addition to his spectacular 61% victory in the presidential election. The old politics, inherited from Suharto's New Order regime, by which members of the Jakarta political elite horse-traded power among themselves without a lot of regrd for their supporters, is dead. When Suharto fell in 1998, his methods of political management survived pretty much unscathed among the new reformasi leaders. You can see that in the record of ducking and weaving in the careers of figures like Rais and Tanjung. You can also see Suharto's heriage their loss of any ability to actually mobilise their followers. A majority of Golkar's members and supporters appear to have voted for Yudhoyono.

The next question is what will Yudhoyono do about the economic, legal and institutional reforms Indonesia so badly needs.

Howard now has God on his side

John Howard has personally brokered a deal with the Family First party that would see the Coalition consult over policy with the Assemblies of God-backed party in exchange for preferences for most lower house candidates across Australia.
With the Coalition keen to counter the Labor Party's dominance of the preference flows in a tight election, the Liberals signed off on the deal after a series of conversations between the Prime Minister and Family First chairman Peter Harris.

While the preference flows of the socially conservative minor party may have limited effect in most states, they will be crucial in the three marginal South Australian seats held by the Liberals.

It is almost a political mirror image to the sweeping preference deal between Labor and the left-leaning Greens for Senate and 26 lower house seats reached last week.

Under the deal with the Coalition, Family First will lead a direct advertising attack against the Greens and its liberal policies in four states from this weekend.

Announcing the deal, Family First representatives said Mr Howard would make some joint family policy announcements with Family First within a week.

'I think that it's a watershed moment for Australian history that a new party can have influence even prior to the federal election going ahead,' Family First SA Senate candidate Andrea Mason said.

Wow. The ALP strategy of consenting to Howard's homophobic marriage and adoption bill really worked well for Labor. Pity about the principle...

Saint has lots of detail on the stealthy politics of Family First.

Two Hundred Million Dollar Man

The election began to feel real for me about the middle of Week 4, when the prime minister pre-empted his policy of noncore pre-emptive strikes, ably assisted by the Indonesian ambassador, the Malaysian deputy prime minister and the Filipino foreign secretary. It seems the Man of Steel says one thing to the governments of South East Asia and another to the Australian people. Then along stumbled the Foreign Minister of Kleenex to explain to an amazed world that Thirty Seconds over Jakarta actually meant a surprise descent on Nauru or Kiribati. All in all, not a good look for a government running on competence and candour.

Now we have the Coalition policy speech.

Laura Tingle writes in today's Australian Financial Review (registration required):

He started spending at 12.12 pm, and stopped spending at 12.42pm, setting a new land spending record of about $200 million a minute.

This election gets weirder and weirder. It's not just that the Man of Steel has suddenly discovered that social spending is a good thing, but he's also discovered that targeted middle class welfare is a good thing, that centralising everything in Canberra is a good thing, and that Coalition spending has no effect on interest rates, but Labor spending drives interest rates up faster than you can say 'interest rates in the water'. I seriously doubt the spending spree will change the result that much. Those inclined to change the government are not going to be effected much. The other side of the electorate will find reasons to approve the Man of Steel's cutting and running from every principle he's ever argued.

The speech ends with a significant rhetorical error.

Promises made in an election campaign mean nothing if you don't have a strong economy providing the wherewithal to make those promises affordable and achievable.

Really, it should be child's play to argue that the Man of Steel is always a bit rubbery when it comes to keeping promises and economic circumstances can and will be used to revoke any undertaking. The avalanche of spending promises is cleverly targeted at various constituencies and marginal seats. It might be too clever. There might just be too many proposals for individual promises to reach the groups they are aimed at.

Despite passionate uxorial avowals, the credibility of the Man of Steel is on the slide. If that goes, the government goes.

the Bushdate of Heaven

Between 1851 and 1864 the Taiping rebellion convulsed China. Armies despatched to suppress the rebellion were invariably victorious. Each conquering general immediately reported his success to the court. Each success happened closer and closer to Beijing. The grand eunuchs who controlled the flow of information to the throne decided their palace careers would be improved by ignoring this regrettable lack of military success. Their careers flourished.

The Xianfeng Emperor continued happily issuing bulletins and proclamations recounting each success more splendid than the last to a bemused populace. The Xianfeng Emperor's missives were not read in south or central China. The Taiping ruled there. Eventually the Western powers decided their interests would be improved if they kept the collapsing Qing dynasty in power and Western armies threw the Taiping back from Shanghai.

There is, of course, no resemblance between China and Iraq There is a lot more sand in Iraq.