The Winds
(from the Arabic)
At fifty, the Khamsin can ruin your day
and the foul Simoon poison
a week of revelry. When you were young,
your garments loose, with a curved sword
and a town girl in a swirl of perfume
hanging on each arm, you?d laugh at the wind.
Now, rising from the arms of the rosy-fingered
Goddess of the Egg, the Sirocco
reminds you that here under the dusty sun
in the tent of one you despise
you?re missing out on the F�hn.
�
Oh, that the Bora, Master of Migraine,
might sweep down from the north
and clear the air. The Mistral is the master here
on this bitter coast, and speaks of yachts
as fodder. But when the sky holds its breath
and a French eucalypt drowsing in the heat
decorates the surf with a fringe of scent
a young man, too long expatriate, dreams
of a Southerly Buster and a cold Australian beer.
John Tranter
17 May 2003
Murray-Darling thoughts
Last December my friend David and I were at Kinchega national park in the Western division of NSW. Driving in from Broken Hill, you pass the Menindee sailing club. The Menindee lakes, part natural and part constructed, are big enough for sailing but the drought has left the club house about a kilometre from the water. David and I stopped beside the Darling river to look at a wrecked boiler tank.
In 1872 the paddle steamer SS Providence tied up at the town of Menindee. The river failed during the night and they were forced to stay in Menindee until the river rose enough to float them. They waited a year. When the Darling flowed again they had a drink or two at the Menindee pub and set off. Sadly (it may have been the drink) they fired up their furnace but forgot to refill their boiler. When their boiler exploded it obliterated both the boat and its crew, except for the cook who was thrown clear but died within hours of appalling injuries. All that's left is a rusting boiler which lies where it fell, about 40 metres from the river.
David (an admirably unreconstructed hippie) clapped three times to recognise the dead. It would be a good thing for a few members of parliament to go and look at that chunk of rusted iron because its story tells us a great deal about living in Australia. Our inland rivers are all deeply unstable and they were deeply unstable long before European settlement. Managing them by benign neglect, or worse, by rhetoric without action, does not work. The Murray-Darling basin is dying and, until yesterday, no-one much in parliament seemed worried by that.
Opposition Leader Simon Crean made his speech replying to the budget last night. There was nothing in the budget providing any vision or any resources to keep the Murray and Darling rivers flowing. Crean said:
Australia is by far the driest continent on the planet. The average annual rainfall is 472 millimetres (18.5 inches). Falls concentrate on the coast leaving the arid interior with even less rain than the average expresses.
Rainfall effects politics. There's no need to start hunting through sources on hydraulic despotism. Robert Kaplan argued in 1995 that any region with an annual average rainfall of less than 20 inches (500 millimetres) 'will sustain a human population only with difficulty.' That's the whole of this nation.
Kaplan wrote in The Atlantic Monthly that:
Treating water as a free resource has been a disaster for inland Australia. The basin is governed by the Murray-Darling Basin Agreement which sets up a joint authority comprising the Commonwealth, NSW, Victoria, Queensland, South Australia and the ACT. Federalism may be a good thing but dividing the basin between 6 different governments is not. The upstream states want the water for irrigation. South Australia draws 52% of all its water from the Murray. According to the Murray-Darling Basin Commission: 'irrigation in the Basin accounts for 52.4 per cent of all water used in Australia, and 75.0 per cent of all irrigation water is used in the MDB'. So there are many competing interests all dipping into the same finite supply.
The basin does need investment and Riverbank (if it's ever enacted) could be a good start. The basin also needs serious thinking about water rights. We need to throw money at the problem. We also need to make sure that the mix between public authority and private property is right. Ideally, the basin states should refer their powers to the Commonwealth so that a single agency can fix policy for the whole catchment. We cannot let these rivers die.
When David and I left the rusty boiler with its sad interpretation plaque we moved onto the river itself. Thousands of kilometres from the ocean, a flock of pelicans flying overhead surprised us. There was no river. The Darling was a string of standing pools gone gangrenous with agricultural runoff. On the other side a dying sheep staggered down the steep bank to try and reach the water.
We must learn to understand that this river dries up and ceases to flow as part of its natural cycle. 'Dry' politics - the market is the only way to allocate resources - will not work in this environment. We must stop drawing water from the Darling and its daughter the Murray as if there was no end to the supply. The river is not infinite.
Last December my friend David and I were at Kinchega national park in the Western division of NSW. Driving in from Broken Hill, you pass the Menindee sailing club. The Menindee lakes, part natural and part constructed, are big enough for sailing but the drought has left the club house about a kilometre from the water. David and I stopped beside the Darling river to look at a wrecked boiler tank.
In 1872 the paddle steamer SS Providence tied up at the town of Menindee. The river failed during the night and they were forced to stay in Menindee until the river rose enough to float them. They waited a year. When the Darling flowed again they had a drink or two at the Menindee pub and set off. Sadly (it may have been the drink) they fired up their furnace but forgot to refill their boiler. When their boiler exploded it obliterated both the boat and its crew, except for the cook who was thrown clear but died within hours of appalling injuries. All that's left is a rusting boiler which lies where it fell, about 40 metres from the river.
David (an admirably unreconstructed hippie) clapped three times to recognise the dead. It would be a good thing for a few members of parliament to go and look at that chunk of rusted iron because its story tells us a great deal about living in Australia. Our inland rivers are all deeply unstable and they were deeply unstable long before European settlement. Managing them by benign neglect, or worse, by rhetoric without action, does not work. The Murray-Darling basin is dying and, until yesterday, no-one much in parliament seemed worried by that.
Opposition Leader Simon Crean made his speech replying to the budget last night. There was nothing in the budget providing any vision or any resources to keep the Murray and Darling rivers flowing. Crean said:
The Murray River is dying. If we don't restore the health of the Murray, there will not be a river system capable of supporting farmers into the future. It's time for action - not passing the buck.
A Crean Labor Government will:
* Deliver 450 gigalitres of environmental flows within the first term of a Crean Labor Government - enough to keep the mouth of the Murray open;
* Deliver 1500 gigalitres in environmental flows within 10 years - the minimum required to restore the health of the river;
* Create Riverbank to fund the river's restoration and make an initial capital injection of $150 million; and
* Establish the Environmental Flow Trust to manage environmental flows.
Australia is by far the driest continent on the planet. The average annual rainfall is 472 millimetres (18.5 inches). Falls concentrate on the coast leaving the arid interior with even less rain than the average expresses.
Rainfall effects politics. There's no need to start hunting through sources on hydraulic despotism. Robert Kaplan argued in 1995 that any region with an annual average rainfall of less than 20 inches (500 millimetres) 'will sustain a human population only with difficulty.' That's the whole of this nation.
Kaplan wrote in The Atlantic Monthly that:
Indeed, had the United States been settled from west to east rather than the other way around, the big government agencies necessitated by scarce water would have preceded the freeman tradition that took root on the well-watered eastern slopes of the Appalachians in the eighteenth century, and a mild form of hydraulic civilization -- highly centralized and authoritarian regimes, like those that built the great water and earth works in India, China, and Mexico -- might have arisen here.
Treating water as a free resource has been a disaster for inland Australia. The basin is governed by the Murray-Darling Basin Agreement which sets up a joint authority comprising the Commonwealth, NSW, Victoria, Queensland, South Australia and the ACT. Federalism may be a good thing but dividing the basin between 6 different governments is not. The upstream states want the water for irrigation. South Australia draws 52% of all its water from the Murray. According to the Murray-Darling Basin Commission: 'irrigation in the Basin accounts for 52.4 per cent of all water used in Australia, and 75.0 per cent of all irrigation water is used in the MDB'. So there are many competing interests all dipping into the same finite supply.
The basin does need investment and Riverbank (if it's ever enacted) could be a good start. The basin also needs serious thinking about water rights. We need to throw money at the problem. We also need to make sure that the mix between public authority and private property is right. Ideally, the basin states should refer their powers to the Commonwealth so that a single agency can fix policy for the whole catchment. We cannot let these rivers die.
When David and I left the rusty boiler with its sad interpretation plaque we moved onto the river itself. Thousands of kilometres from the ocean, a flock of pelicans flying overhead surprised us. There was no river. The Darling was a string of standing pools gone gangrenous with agricultural runoff. On the other side a dying sheep staggered down the steep bank to try and reach the water.
We must learn to understand that this river dries up and ceases to flow as part of its natural cycle. 'Dry' politics - the market is the only way to allocate resources - will not work in this environment. We must stop drawing water from the Darling and its daughter the Murray as if there was no end to the supply. The river is not infinite.
Imperial temptations
A must-read, especially for the blood-and-iron nincompoops in the White House trying to solve 21st century problems by 19th century methods. If these people can't run a garbage collection service in Baghdad what makes them think they can rule the world?
Astute strategists learn to anticipate such cooperation and try to use it to their advantage. For example, one of the most successful diplomats in European history, Otto von Bismarck, achieved the unification of Germany by always putting the other side in the wrong and, whenever possible, maneuvering the opponent into attacking first. As a result, Prussia expanded its control over the German lands without provoking excessive fears or resistance. Pressed by his generals on several occasions to authorize preventive attacks, Bismarck said that preventive war is like committing suicide from fear of death; it would "put the full weight of the imponderables . . . on the side of the enemies we have attacked."6 Instead, he demanded patience: "I have often had to stand for long periods of time in the hunting blind and let myself be covered and stung by insects before the moment came to shoot."7 Germany fared poorly under Bismarck's less-able successors, who shared his ruthlessness but lacked his understanding of the balance of power.
A must-read, especially for the blood-and-iron nincompoops in the White House trying to solve 21st century problems by 19th century methods. If these people can't run a garbage collection service in Baghdad what makes them think they can rule the world?
Riverbank and Medicare
The Crean speech was well-delivered. The policies were less well-thought out.
The conventional wisdom is that saving the Murray-Darling basin will cost $600 million. Launching a $150 million initiative on the basis that it's a start will not save the rivers. Opposing land clearing is going to be rough when we clear more land than any other nation and it's being done under the aegis of ALP premiers like Beattie. Land clearing in Queensland effects the basin all the way downstream to the Coorong. Irrigation systems upstream effect what happens when you turn on a tap in Adelaide.
We need those rivers. So really, while we have lots of enthusiasm merely because a federal politician has noticed the state of the basin we actually need a lot more done very soon. A lot of money needs to be thrown at this problem and it will be a brave federal leader who takes on the destructive neglect of the states.
Medicare is a universal health system based on access to the Medicare rebate. Crean should have bitten the bullet on universalism and defended the principle instead of (as with the Riverbank plan) promoting incremental change that will ultimately fail. The most infuriating aspect of the Medicare situation is that the crisis is entirely artificial.
The Parliamentary Library Research Note, Is medicare universal? says:
Gee whiz, what happened in 1996? And what was the Medicare rebate when Howard took the reins and what is it now? I suspect that spending a lot less money on ideologically-driven subsidies to the well-off such as the health insurance rebate and redirecting that money into raising the Medicare rebate might achieve a lot more than a scheme of special payments to doctors. More later.
And just a quiet word. Medicare is and always has been a Labor project. When suddenly the likes of John Howard and Peter Costello are allowed to lecture the ALP on the 'original intent' of Labor's own program it might be best to start arguing rather than wait for the axe. An energetic opposition might even have kept the falling Medicare rebate before the parliament and the people from the time it started - when Howard and Costello came to power.
The Crean speech was well-delivered. The policies were less well-thought out.
The conventional wisdom is that saving the Murray-Darling basin will cost $600 million. Launching a $150 million initiative on the basis that it's a start will not save the rivers. Opposing land clearing is going to be rough when we clear more land than any other nation and it's being done under the aegis of ALP premiers like Beattie. Land clearing in Queensland effects the basin all the way downstream to the Coorong. Irrigation systems upstream effect what happens when you turn on a tap in Adelaide.
We need those rivers. So really, while we have lots of enthusiasm merely because a federal politician has noticed the state of the basin we actually need a lot more done very soon. A lot of money needs to be thrown at this problem and it will be a brave federal leader who takes on the destructive neglect of the states.
Medicare is a universal health system based on access to the Medicare rebate. Crean should have bitten the bullet on universalism and defended the principle instead of (as with the Riverbank plan) promoting incremental change that will ultimately fail. The most infuriating aspect of the Medicare situation is that the crisis is entirely artificial.
The Parliamentary Library Research Note, Is medicare universal? says:
While bulk billing may not be universally available, it is a key plank of the Medicare system. Certainly it could be argued that one of the primary aims of Medicare was to promote bulk billing by doctors and thus promote the de-commodification of health services. That is, the take up of bulk billing by GPs was seen as a way of breaking the nexus between access to health services and capacity to pay. The steady increase in the percentage of Medicare services bulk billed from the introduction of Medicare in 1984 until 1996 provides some evidence that bulk billing was seen as a central and important component of the Medicare system. Other evidence of bulk billing's importance for the national health insurance system, Medicare, is provided in various statements and speeches made by the Labor government during the 1980s.
Gee whiz, what happened in 1996? And what was the Medicare rebate when Howard took the reins and what is it now? I suspect that spending a lot less money on ideologically-driven subsidies to the well-off such as the health insurance rebate and redirecting that money into raising the Medicare rebate might achieve a lot more than a scheme of special payments to doctors. More later.
And just a quiet word. Medicare is and always has been a Labor project. When suddenly the likes of John Howard and Peter Costello are allowed to lecture the ALP on the 'original intent' of Labor's own program it might be best to start arguing rather than wait for the axe. An energetic opposition might even have kept the falling Medicare rebate before the parliament and the people from the time it started - when Howard and Costello came to power.
unrealpolitik
From the Sydney Morning Herald:
This is an outrage. The UN Security Council must insist that Iraqis appearing as involuntary extras in US action/fantasy productions get paid properly in future.
From the Sydney Morning Herald:
Hassam Hamoud, a waiter at a local restaurant, said the American advance party's interpreter asked him where the hospital was. "He asked: 'Are there any Fedayeen over there?' and I said, 'No'." All the same, the next day "America's finest warriors" descended.
Dr Anmar Uday says they must have known there would be no resistance.
"It was like a Hollywood film. They cried, 'Go, go, go', with guns and blanks and the sound of explosions. They made a show - an action movie . . ." All the time with the camera rolling.
There was one more twist. Two days before the snatch squad arrived, Dr Houssona had arranged to deliver Jessica to the Americans in an ambulance. But when its driver approached the US checkpoint, the soldiers opened fire. They fled back to the hospital.
This is an outrage. The UN Security Council must insist that Iraqis appearing as involuntary extras in US action/fantasy productions get paid properly in future.
16 May 2003
still $50 million to pay for the inquiry
From media release on theKeep Hollingwood Early Childhood initiative:
I'm glad the money is being spent on kids. I am forced to ask why this initiative was not included in the budget 3 days ago. Anyone know of a dramatic development in children's policy in the last 3 days? A development so dramatic it could change the government's previous philosophy of leaving it to the states?
From media release on the
Today's announcement is not a one-off. The government has already made a substantial contribution to protecting young children and promoting their interests. The $10 million commitment will be used to build on initiatives that the government has already developed, as part of the Stronger Families and Communities Strategy (SFCS).
The $10 million commitment announced today includes $1.2 million for a range of new projects to support children and families under the SFCS. These include:
Support for young Vietnamese parents, sponsored by the Wesley Uniting Mission in South Australia.
Parent groups and individual support for families at the Cooloon Children's Centre in NSW.
Playgroups for infants and children aged 0-3 with developmental disabilities, providing early intervention, parent education support and networking for families in Queensland.
Working with grandparents and young children right around Australia.
Funds for Professor Fiona Stanley's Australian Research Alliance for Children and Youth (ARACY), to improve collaboration in child-related research, policy and practice.
I'm glad the money is being spent on kids. I am forced to ask why this initiative was not included in the budget 3 days ago. Anyone know of a dramatic development in children's policy in the last 3 days? A development so dramatic it could change the government's previous philosophy of leaving it to the states?
The governor-general is on administrative leave, long live the governor-general
From Howard's interview with Ray Martin:
1. If Hollingworth did make a 'big error of judgment' (Howard's own words) then what is the problem with the church inquiry that found Hollingworth made a 'serious error of judgment'?
2. If we should be spending $60 million on children's services instead of a federal inquiry into child abuse why is that Howard's own budget, like its predecessors, kept such low federal outlays for children's services? Where is the $60 million?
3. I am glad that the prime minister now believes in fair public debate. All he needs to do to prove his conversion is tell us just a little more about the children in the water in the Truth Overboard incident.
4. Is this issue about to become a wedgie for the master of wedge politics?
From Howard's interview with Ray Martin:
MARTIN:
Do you think that he's had a fair go, that the public debate has been fair?
PRIME MINISTER:
Some aspects of the public debate have been very unfair. Some people appear to pick on him quite unnecessarily, I mean he was attacked for not going to Bali within the first few days of that tragedy. He really couldn't, decisions had to be made and the person who had to go to Bali was the Prime Minister and he had commitments in another part of the world which were important in celebrating a battle 60 years ago in which Australia had been involved and I think that was very unfair. He obviously made a big error of judgment in relation to that case in Queensland, he knows that. But beyond that I really don't want to get into further discussion. He stood aside, the administrator, Sir Guy Green, is being sworn in tomorrow morning, I called on him as a matter of courtesy at Government House this afternoon, life goes on, he'll be picking up Dr Hollingworth's programme and the show goes on.
1. If Hollingworth did make a 'big error of judgment' (Howard's own words) then what is the problem with the church inquiry that found Hollingworth made a 'serious error of judgment'?
2. If we should be spending $60 million on children's services instead of a federal inquiry into child abuse why is that Howard's own budget, like its predecessors, kept such low federal outlays for children's services? Where is the $60 million?
3. I am glad that the prime minister now believes in fair public debate. All he needs to do to prove his conversion is tell us just a little more about the children in the water in the Truth Overboard incident.
4. Is this issue about to become a wedgie for the master of wedge politics?
spare the gun and spoil the child
Tim, over at the Road to Surfdom, blogs:
I'm appalled. How could Tim accuse that nice Mr Rumsfeld of being an old softie. Next he'll accuse him of being a pointy-headed, panty-waisted, knock-kneed, lily-livered liberal. Secretary Rumsfeld may say that he's not going to shoot children but he obviously means non-threatening children. If any of those dangerous Guant�namo-style children are around they'll be filled full of lead as fast as the secretary can whip out his six-shooter.
Just so we can all sleep safely in our beds, we are told:
Shame on Tim for misrepresenting the new policy in this way.
Tim, over at the Road to Surfdom, blogs:
Well, a euphemism is a wonderful thing, but apart from the use of them ("agressively targetting") the only specific denial given here is that children won't be shot. Those old softies. Other than that, there doesn't really sound like there is a much of a change at all.
I'm appalled. How could Tim accuse that nice Mr Rumsfeld of being an old softie. Next he'll accuse him of being a pointy-headed, panty-waisted, knock-kneed, lily-livered liberal. Secretary Rumsfeld may say that he's not going to shoot children but he obviously means non-threatening children. If any of those dangerous Guant�namo-style children are around they'll be filled full of lead as fast as the secretary can whip out his six-shooter.
Just so we can all sleep safely in our beds, we are told:
US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has defended the detention of the boys - aged between 13 and 15 - at Camp Delta, saying they are "enemy combatants", captured while fighting for the Taleban or al-Qaeda in Afghanistan.
General Richard Myers, chairman of the US military's Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the boys were being held "for a very good reason - for our safety".
"They may be juveniles - but they're not on a Little League team anywhere," he said at a news conference along with Mr Rumsfeld at the Pentagon on Friday.
"They're on a major league team, and it's a terrorist team. Some have killed. Some have stated they're going to kill again.
Shame on Tim for misrepresenting the new policy in this way.
15 May 2003
The Southerly Buster
Henry Lawson
THERE'S a wind that blows out of the South in the drought,
����And we pray for the touch of his breath
When siroccos come forth from the North-West and North,
����Or in dead calms of fever and death.
With eyes glad and dim we should sing him a hymn,
����For depression and death are his foes,
And he gives us new life for the bread-winning strife?
����When the glorious Old Southerly blows.
Old Southerly Buster! your forces you muster
����Where seldom a wind bloweth twice,
And your - white-caps - have hint of the snow caps, and glint of
����The far-away barriers of ice.
No wind the wide sea on can sing such a poean
����Or do the great work that you do;
Our own wind and only, from seas wild and lonely?
����Old Southerly Buster! To you!
Oh, the city is baked, and its thirst is unslaked,
����Though it swallows iced drinks by the score,
And the blurred sky is low and the air seems aglow
����As if breezes would cool it no more.
We are watching all hands where the Post Office stands?
����We are watching out hopefully too?
For a red light shall glower from the Post Office tower
����When the Southerly Buster is due.
The yachts run away at the end of the day
����From the breakers commencing to comb,
For a few he may swamp in the health-giving romp
����With the friendly Old Southerly home.
But he never drowns one, for the drowning is done
����By the fools, or the reckless in sport;
And the alleys and slums shall be cooled when he comes
����With the weary wind-jammers to port.
Oh softly he plays through the city's hot ways
����To the beds where they're calling 'Come quick!'
He is gentle and mild round the feverish child,
����And he cools the hot brow of the sick.
Clearing drought-hazy skies, up the North Coast he hies
����Till the mouths of our rivers are fair?
And along the sea, too, he has good work to do,
����For he takes the old timber-tubs there.
- Tis a glorious mission, Old Sydney's Physician!
����Broom, Bucket, and Cloth of the East,
- Tis a breeze and a sprayer that answers our prayer,
����And it?s free to the greatest and least.
The red-lamp?s a warning to drought and its scorning?
����A sign to the city at large?
Hence! Headache and Worry! Despondency hurry!
����Old Southerly Buster's in charge
Old Southerly Buster! your forces you muster
����Where seldom a wind bloweth twice,
And your - white-caps - have hint of the snow caps, and glint of
����The far-away barriers of ice.
No wind the wide sea on can sing such a poean
����Or do the great work that you do;
Our own wind and only, from seas wild and lonely?
����Old Southerly Buster! - To you!
Henry Lawson
THERE'S a wind that blows out of the South in the drought,
����And we pray for the touch of his breath
When siroccos come forth from the North-West and North,
����Or in dead calms of fever and death.
With eyes glad and dim we should sing him a hymn,
����For depression and death are his foes,
And he gives us new life for the bread-winning strife?
����When the glorious Old Southerly blows.
Old Southerly Buster! your forces you muster
����Where seldom a wind bloweth twice,
And your - white-caps - have hint of the snow caps, and glint of
����The far-away barriers of ice.
No wind the wide sea on can sing such a poean
����Or do the great work that you do;
Our own wind and only, from seas wild and lonely?
����Old Southerly Buster! To you!
Oh, the city is baked, and its thirst is unslaked,
����Though it swallows iced drinks by the score,
And the blurred sky is low and the air seems aglow
����As if breezes would cool it no more.
We are watching all hands where the Post Office stands?
����We are watching out hopefully too?
For a red light shall glower from the Post Office tower
����When the Southerly Buster is due.
The yachts run away at the end of the day
����From the breakers commencing to comb,
For a few he may swamp in the health-giving romp
����With the friendly Old Southerly home.
But he never drowns one, for the drowning is done
����By the fools, or the reckless in sport;
And the alleys and slums shall be cooled when he comes
����With the weary wind-jammers to port.
Oh softly he plays through the city's hot ways
����To the beds where they're calling 'Come quick!'
He is gentle and mild round the feverish child,
����And he cools the hot brow of the sick.
Clearing drought-hazy skies, up the North Coast he hies
����Till the mouths of our rivers are fair?
And along the sea, too, he has good work to do,
����For he takes the old timber-tubs there.
- Tis a glorious mission, Old Sydney's Physician!
����Broom, Bucket, and Cloth of the East,
- Tis a breeze and a sprayer that answers our prayer,
����And it?s free to the greatest and least.
The red-lamp?s a warning to drought and its scorning?
����A sign to the city at large?
Hence! Headache and Worry! Despondency hurry!
����Old Southerly Buster's in charge
Old Southerly Buster! your forces you muster
����Where seldom a wind bloweth twice,
And your - white-caps - have hint of the snow caps, and glint of
����The far-away barriers of ice.
No wind the wide sea on can sing such a poean
����Or do the great work that you do;
Our own wind and only, from seas wild and lonely?
����Old Southerly Buster! - To you!
weird little bit of history
By the way, a little bit of history here and just a touch of irony regarding those Abrams tanks on Baghdad streets. Tanks were invented by the British, and originally called "land ships." But in an effort to keep their development secret from German spies, they were said to be mobile water tanks for use in Mesopotamia. The name "tank" stuck and, heh, heh, the name Mesopotamia didn't. In the postwar partitioning of the Ottoman Empire, it became Iraq.
Nuclear watchdog fears terrorist dirty bomb after looting at al-Tuwaitha
Of course, if this nightmare scenario actually happens it will probably be used as justification for an invasion of France or something. Link courtesy of Gyre.
United Nations nuclear inspectors, barred from Iraq by Washington, are increasingly worried that the widespread looting and ransacking of Iraq's nuclear facilities may result in terrorists building a radioactive "dirty bomb".
The inspectors' concerns are shared internationally and the British government has reportedly offered to raise the matter with Washington to try to get agreement on a return of the UN nuclear inspectors to Iraq.
The main worry revolves around the fate of at least 200 radioactive isotopes which were stored at the sprawling al-Tuwaitha nuclear complex, 15 miles south of Baghdad. It has seen widespread looting, and reports from Baghdad speak of locals making off with barrels of raw uranium and the isotopes which are meant for medical or industrial use.
"If this happened anywhere else there would be national outrage and it would be the highest priority," said a senior source at the UN nuclear watchdog, the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency.
Of course, if this nightmare scenario actually happens it will probably be used as justification for an invasion of France or something. Link courtesy of Gyre.
The Unseen War
I am beginning to understand why my friends in the US had such different views of the war from what I was hearing and seeing. Link courtesy ofDormouse Dreaming.
Read Krugman on this issue as well, although his focus is governmental, not marketing, pressure on the media:
I am beginnning as well to understand why The Australian, Murdoch's Oz flagship, is suddenly getting allneoconservative fair and balanced lately.
Before arriving in Doha, I had spent hours watching CNN back home, and I was sadly reminded of the network's steady decline in recent years. Paula Zahn looked and talked like a cheerleader for the US forces; Aaron Brown kept reaching for the profound remark without ever finding it; Wolf Blitzer politely interviewed Washington's high and mighty, seldom asking a pointed question. None of them, however, appeared on the broadcasts I saw in Doha. Instead, there were Jim Clancy, a tough-minded veteran American correspondent, Michael Holmes, a soft-spoken Australian, and Becky Anderson, a sharp and inquisitive British anchor. This was CNN International, the edition broadcast to the world at large, and it was far more serious and informed than the American version.
The difference was not accidental. Six months before the war began, I was told, executives at CNN headquarters in Atlanta met regularly to plan separate broadcasts for America and the world. Those executives knew that Zahn's girl-next-door manner and Brown's spacey monologues would not go down well with the British, French, or Germans, much less the Egyptians or Turks, and so the network, at huge expense, fielded two parallel but separate teams to cover the war. And while there was plenty of overlap, especially in the reports from the field, and in the use of such knowledgeable journalists as Christiane Amanpour, the international edition was refreshingly free of the self-congratulatory talk of its domestic one. In one telling moment, Becky Anderson, listening to one of Walter Rodgers's excited reports about US advances in the field, admonished him: "Let's not give the impression that there's been no resistance." Rodgers conceded that she was right.
I am beginning to understand why my friends in the US had such different views of the war from what I was hearing and seeing. Link courtesy of
Read Krugman on this issue as well, although his focus is governmental, not marketing, pressure on the media:
And the implicit trading surely extends to news content. Imagine a TV news executive considering whether to run a major story that might damage the Bush administration ? say, a follow-up on Senator Bob Graham's charge that a Congressional report on Sept. 11 has been kept classified because it would raise embarrassing questions about the administration's performance. Surely it would occur to that executive that the administration could punish any network running that story.
Meanwhile, both the formal rules and the codes of ethics that formerly prevented blatant partisanship are gone or ignored. Neil Cavuto of Fox News is an anchor, not a commentator. Yet after Baghdad's fall he told "those who opposed the liberation of Iraq" ? a large minority ? that "you were sickening then; you are sickening now." Fair and balanced.
We don't have censorship in this country; it's still possible to find different points of view. But we do have a system in which the major media companies have strong incentives to present the news in a way that pleases the party in power, and no incentive not to.
I am beginnning as well to understand why The Australian, Murdoch's Oz flagship, is suddenly getting all
14 May 2003
Prime Minister's statement to parliament
This is just factually wrong. The alleged mobile labs remain in question although alternative explanations have been offered. In his early February address to the Security Council Powell claimed many other things - aluminium tubes, the African uranium procurement, the poison and explosive training center camp - that we now know do not exist. Two mobile labs, now disavowed, do not match what Howard claimed to parliament in his war address on 18 March. In Powell's address, btw, he also complimented the UK on their 'fine paper' which we now know to have been plagiarised.
It's bit sad that the massive programd escribed by Powell is now reduced to 2 mobile labs whose purpose is not beyond doubt. At least the prime minister has abandoned the silly signposts metaphor.
In addition to meeting these obligations, the coalition is working hard to rid Iraq of all weapons of mass destruction. The hunt for these weapons will not be easy. We know that in order to protect them from inspectors, the Iraqi regime broke them up and hid them in their disaggregated condition in different parts of the country.
We are starting to uncover the evidence. We have found what appear to be mobile biological weapons production facilities, just like those described by Secretary of State Powell to the Security Council in February.
It is going to take considerable time and resources to complete the investigation and destruction of the regime's weapons of mass destruction. But at least we will no longer obstructed by a hostile regime.
This is just factually wrong. The alleged mobile labs remain in question although alternative explanations have been offered. In his early February address to the Security Council Powell claimed many other things - aluminium tubes, the African uranium procurement, the poison and explosive training center camp - that we now know do not exist. Two mobile labs, now disavowed, do not match what Howard claimed to parliament in his war address on 18 March. In Powell's address, btw, he also complimented the UK on their 'fine paper' which we now know to have been plagiarised.
It's bit sad that the massive programd escribed by Powell is now reduced to 2 mobile labs whose purpose is not beyond doubt. At least the prime minister has abandoned the silly signposts metaphor.
Blogmatcher
Interesting site that tries to compile a link-based index of similar blogs. My 3 most similar are blogs The road to surfdom, Troppo Armadillo and the eponymous John Quiggin. You'd think all 3 would blogroll me at the drop of a spelling correction...
Interesting site that tries to compile a link-based index of similar blogs. My 3 most similar are blogs The road to surfdom, Troppo Armadillo and the eponymous John Quiggin. You'd think all 3 would blogroll me at the drop of a spelling correction...
Senate lists governor-general's faults as it calls for sacking
Next the Howard government will claim Peter Hollingworth had his fingers crossed when he promised to tell the truth.
The Government also narrowed its defence of Dr Hollingworth. Previously senior ministers had sought to quarantine his actions as archbishop from those as Governor-General, saying he had done nothing wrong in his current role.
However, yesterday the Government leader in the Senate, Robert Hill, refined this further in the face of allegations that Dr Hollingworth may have given inaccurate evidence to the church inquiry while he was Governor-General, saying he had done nothing wrong in his official duties.
Next the Howard government will claim Peter Hollingworth had his fingers crossed when he promised to tell the truth.
13 May 2003
Coalition forces arrest Magneto
Okay, they didn't really. Well not yet. When 'Mrs Anthrax' was arrested a few days ago a number of people blogged that the nom de guerre was a recent invention of the media.
Now we have the arrest of Dr Germ. Step through a Google news search and you'll find that the phrase 'Dr Germ' was first used on 29 April. Somehow no-one ever calls Bush the Illusionist or Mr Chad. I know the media want exciting catchy titles for all these people but do they really need to make the human catastrophe of war palatable by making it read like a comic book?
Now I had to go hunting today because people have been using jump the shark a bit lately and 1. I didn't know what it meant and 2. I felt left out because I couldn't use it. It strikes me that comic booking these previously unknown Iraqis as Mrs Anthrax and Dr Germ gives the impression that 1. the new coinage is of long standing and 2 their crimes are so well-established as to be beyond question.
Okay, they didn't really. Well not yet. When 'Mrs Anthrax' was arrested a few days ago a number of people blogged that the nom de guerre was a recent invention of the media.
Now we have the arrest of Dr Germ. Step through a Google news search and you'll find that the phrase 'Dr Germ' was first used on 29 April. Somehow no-one ever calls Bush the Illusionist or Mr Chad. I know the media want exciting catchy titles for all these people but do they really need to make the human catastrophe of war palatable by making it read like a comic book?
Now I had to go hunting today because people have been using jump the shark a bit lately and 1. I didn't know what it meant and 2. I felt left out because I couldn't use it. It strikes me that comic booking these previously unknown Iraqis as Mrs Anthrax and Dr Germ gives the impression that 1. the new coinage is of long standing and 2 their crimes are so well-established as to be beyond question.
snark of the week
In Southerly Buster's continuing effort to reward good vitriol wherever it occurs, this week's prize goes to Clare Short:
An honourable mention to CalPundit:
In Southerly Buster's continuing effort to reward good vitriol wherever it occurs, this week's prize goes to Clare Short:
Mr Blair had failed to stand up to President Bush - and was not so much a poodle ("poodles get off their lead and jump about") as a figleaf. "Fig leaves just stay where they are," she told the Guardian.
An honourable mention to CalPundit:
Bush is aggressive, he gives no quarter, and, in fact, pursues only popular programs. Tax cuts? Check. War with Iraq? Check. Bashing the UN? Check. As Tapped notes, on the only genuinely tricky decision he's had to make, therapeutic cloning, he took a wishy washy stance guaranteed not to offend anyone too badly. The same thing seems to be happening right now in the Middle East too, where Bush has so far been unwilling to take a bold stance that carries with it any serious risk of failure.
Short update
The resignation speech is now available. Link courtesy of DailyKos.
In Australia ministers generally only resign when forced out by their leader, when trying to depose their leader, or when caught doing something unacceptable. Nothing in Short's remarks about the decaying structure of cabinet government in Britain would be unfamiliar to an Australian observer. One suspects that the sovereign's traditional power to be consulted, to advise and to warn is more easily exercised by Elizabeth II than by a governor-general now dependent on John Howard for his continuance in office.
Short's point that a prime minister backed by an automatic legislative majority has much greater powers than an executive president should be drilled into the resisting brains of the delegates at the next constitutional convention. In fact, because party discipline is much stricter here only the continued existence of an independent senate (opposed by the prime minister and his courtiers) acts as any real check to the executive power.
The resignation speech is now available. Link courtesy of DailyKos.
In our first term the problem was spin. Endless announcements, exaggeration and manipulation of the media that undermined people's respect for the Government and trust in what we said. It was accompanied by a control-freak style which has created many of the problems of excessive bureaucracy and centralised targets that is undermining the success of our public sector reforms. In the second term the problem is the centralisation of power into the hands of the Prime Minister and an increasingly small number of advisers who make decisions in private without proper discussion.
It is increasingly clear, I am afraid, the Cabinet has become in Bagehot's phrase a dignified part of the constitution adjoining the Privy Council. There is no real collective responsibility because there is no collective, just diktats in favour of increasingly badly thought-through policy initiatives that come from on-high.
The consequences of this are serious. Expertise in our system lies in departments. Those who dictate from the centre do not have full access to this expertise and they do not consult. This leads to bad policy.
In addition under our constitutional arrangements legal, political and financial responsibility flows through Secretaries of State to Parliament. Increasingly those who are wielding power are not accountable and are not scrutinised. Thus we have the powers of a presidential type system with the automatic majority of a parliamentary system. My conclusion is that these arrangements are leading to increasingly poor policy initiatives being rammed through Parliament, straining and abusing party loyalty and undermining the people's respect for our political system.
In Australia ministers generally only resign when forced out by their leader, when trying to depose their leader, or when caught doing something unacceptable. Nothing in Short's remarks about the decaying structure of cabinet government in Britain would be unfamiliar to an Australian observer. One suspects that the sovereign's traditional power to be consulted, to advise and to warn is more easily exercised by Elizabeth II than by a governor-general now dependent on John Howard for his continuance in office.
Short's point that a prime minister backed by an automatic legislative majority has much greater powers than an executive president should be drilled into the resisting brains of the delegates at the next constitutional convention. In fact, because party discipline is much stricter here only the continued existence of an independent senate (opposed by the prime minister and his courtiers) acts as any real check to the executive power.
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