ATTACK ON RELIGIOUS SCHOOL IN PAKISTAN

The BBC, and other media, are covering the attack in Pakistan by three rocket firing helicopters on a religious school suspected of harbouring extremists and claiming to have killed about 60 people. The attack, according to the report was so devastating that most of the bodies could not be identified. There is at least a chance that students may have been at the madrassa, depending I suppose on the time of day.

To me the implication of this attack is to widen the war in Afghanistan and the hence spread the reign of disruption and chaos that is spread across the Middle East. The attackers minimized their casualties, but allowing for the requirements of military tactics and overall circumstances that they would have at least warned people and given them the option to surrender. The fact that this did not happen means the anti has been raised.

The Independent reports:

The raid sparked angry protests in Chingai, Khar and other Bajur towns as local tribesmen and political leaders denounced the military, saying innocent civilians - not terrorists - were killed.

The bodies of 20 tribesmen killed in the attack were lined in a field near the madrassa before an impromptu burial attended by thousands of angry locals, according to an AP reporter at the scene.

At the madrassa, dozens of villagers collected the remains of another 30 bodies from the rubble of the building, placing the mutilated body parts into large plastic bags normally used to hold fertilizer.

Thousands of people traveled from nearby villages to inspect the destroyed madrassa, some crying and others chanting "Long live Islam." The blast leveled the building, tearing mattresses and scattering Islamic books, including copies of the Quran.

This to me is just another instance of the foolishness of supporting dictators and military dictators in particular.

Postscript: 31 October 2006

The BBC has provided follow up reports suggesting widespread protest in Pakistan with an Anti-American tone:

Funerals have been held in Pakistan for people killed in a helicopter strike on an Islamic school which the government says was used by militants.

There were angry scenes as they were buried - with denunciations of Monday's attack by Islamists, who say most of the 70-80 people who died were pupils.

But officials insist the victims were fighters. The raid occurred in a remote tribal area near the Afghan border.

The region is said to provide refuge for al-Qaeda and Taleban militants.

A local leader with suspected links to al-Qaeda, Faqir Mohammed, addressed a crowd of 10,000 mourners.

"The government attacked and killed our innocent people on orders from America," he is quoted as saying by the Associated Press news agency.

"It is an open aggression."

The attack is alleged to have been either carried out by the Americans, or at their instruction:

Monday's attack may create a similar controversy, with one media report claiming that the missile attack was launched by a US drone.

An eyewitness interviewed on the telephone by the BBC News website appeared to corroborate that view.

"We heard two blasts at about 4:50 am, whereas the Pakistani helicopters appeared a good 10 minutes later," the witness, who did not wish to be named, said.

The question is, why would the government risk another controversy at a time when it was close to signing an agreement with the militants?

Also, the law and order situation in the area has not been bad enough to warrant a surgical strike.

If there were any intelligence reports to justify an attack, they have not been shared with the media.

Some circles believe the attack was either conducted by the US, or under their pressure.
Others expect some political repercussions but think President Musharraf will weather this storm as he did the last one over the Damadola attack.

Postscript: 31 October 2006

The management of perceptions is critical. Neither the US or any other Western Governments have condemned the manner in which the raid was conducted. According to The NY Times, the Pakistan Government has accepted responsibility by denying US or other national involvement.

Map via The New York Times

International Law may well apply, if as appears likely innocent people have been slaughtered.

Postscript: 01 November 2006

This report from The Boston Globe does not resolve the issue about US involvement, but it does suggest that there was a drone in the area, and confirm that such aircraft can fire missiles. The Taliban appear to have popular support at least in these tribal areas. For the locals the international boundaries created by Imperialists are not as meaningful as ethnic and tribal identifies.

MID-TERM ELECTIONS

The mid term elections, we are told, are usually characterized by a lower turnout than is usual for US elections. Perhaps this piece of conventional wisdom may be turned on its head this year, at least in some of the close Senate and House races. The accepted wisdom is that the Republicans are better at turning out the vote than the Democrats.

From the view of an external viewer, the interest will be the effect that Iraq wreck has on the vote. On this matter, Juan Cole believes that Red State religious traditionalists will turn on the Republicans. If he is correct, this will represent a electoral seismic shift in political alignments.

The state of play is suggested here at electoral-vote.com, which has at this moment(via History Unfolding). Based on various opinion polling, the Republicans ahead by three in the Senate, underlining the importance of the media-based propaganda in Virginia and Tennessee, and the Democrats appear set to take the majority in the House of Representatives. These results are supposedly updated daily.

Looking at the map, the significance of the Republicans overturning the Democrat gerrymander in Texas seems apparent.

The paucity of choice with respect to selection of political parties, ideologies and representation never seems to occur to American commentators.

Postscript: 30 October 2006.

Another striking observation from an Australian perspective is that some States are not holding Senate elections this year. I just took it for granted that each State has two senators and one would be elected in each consecutive election. And yet I am not aware of any States holding elections for two Senate positions.

Of course, we have twelve senators from each State and two from each Territory with half-Senate elections currently synchronized with elections for the House of Representatives. Senators have six year terms.

So you will appreciate why I am slightly confused.

And here is the answer, via Wikipedia:

Senators serve for six-year terms that are staggered so elections are held for approximately one-third of the seats (a "class") every second year.

So now I know, illustrating the value of visual presentation of information.

"TRANSFORMING THE WORLD"

Robert J Samuelson in his article in The Washington Post, "Capitalism's Next Stage" concludes:

Just as John Jacob Astor defined a distinct stage of capitalism, we may now be at the end of what [Alfred F] Chandler perceptively called "managerial capitalism." Managers, of course, won't disappear. But the new opportunities and pressures on them and their companies may have altered the way the system operates. Chandler admits as much. Asked about how the corporation might evolve, he confesses ignorance: "All I know is that the commercializing of the Internet is transforming the world." To fill that void, someone must do for capitalism's next stage what Chandler did for the last.

I am not sure that "the commercializing of the Internet is transforming the world", although I have to admit that even I have purchased airline tickets for the next stage, made hotel bookings, and bought opera tickets (not for myself) over the Internet, and have been pleasantly surprised at how convenient it has been. I would expect that the commercializing of the Internet will continue and broaden, as in we ain' t seen nothing yet.

What I am interested in is the politicizing of the Internet, which it seems to me has simultaneously possibilities for local politics as it does for transnational politics, which may carry with it a possibility of transforming the world.

In either case, we might expect that it will not be business as usual, and given the state of the planets health and the health of democracies, with or without the Internet, cannot be.

CODA:

Tom Peters, business guru, is a great advocate of the possibilities corporations, or at least businesses, transforming the world, as witness by his comment here. I wonder whether it might be possible to create truly democratic businesses? If nothing else this is an intriguing thought experiment.

Postscript: 29 October 2006

On broadly the same theme, but with different references, see the modern guise of St George Orwell in the form of Eric Blair at Lavatus Prodeo, "Globalization, Islam and Class". On this occasion, principally because of the contribution of Katz, the comments make for worthwhile reading.

FRIDAY NIGHT DOG BLOG - HEADS OR TAILS

Dogs tails it occurred to me might also be used a means to define space, but if that is a reason it pales by comparison as a means of balance and expression. Dexter's tail seems more prominent than is Sasha's, reflecting different breeds.

Sasha is still for a moment. 24 October 2006.

Similarly, Dexter pauses. 21 October 2006

Sasha and Dexter at cross purposes. 21 October 2006.

Dexter still for a moment. 22 October 2006

Looking up as well as down. 22 October 2006

"Yes Dexter, we will be going up the hill". 23 October 2006.

Moment transfixed by the camera. 23 October 2006

A common interest. 26 October 2006.

Sasha aglow. 26 October 2006.

Tangle of leads and legs. 27 October 2006.

Different interests. 27 October 2006.

Appearing relaxed. 27 Ocotber 2006.

On the wall together. 27 October 2006.

As usaul we will be aiming to board Friday Ark#108 at Modulator and join in the Carnival of the Dogs at Mickey's Musings.

It would be nice, if it were possible to enlarge some of these photos by clicking on them.

KNESSET FACTIONS

Jonathan Cook in CounterPunch labels Israeli politics as factious, which arises from the proportional representation electoral system with, at least to my knowledge, no threshold barriers for representation. It is interesting to see how a PR system works in practice, and the minorities in the Knesset always seem to be taking governments further to the right, although the Kadima and Labor parties alliance seems strange to begin with.

I do not really know how the Iraqi involvement will work out over the course of the next ten, twenty, or fifty years, but I am confident that Arab-Israeli war will continue, and in all likelihood intensify in the absence of substantive peace negotiations. As far as I can tell Australia's two major parties have a one-sided commitment to Israel. On that basis the movements in political alignments in Israel has significance.

The collapse of the Soviet Union had several reprecussions, including a significant migration to Israel. This migration boostered the Jewish population of Israel in relation to indigenous Arab population. Now the leader of the party representing the Russians has joined the government, and the prospects for peace have lessened, rather the liklihood of continued Israeli repression against Arabs in Gaza and the West Bank, and within Israel, has increased.

Avigdor Liebermann is now the Minister for Strategic Threats. The new migrants had it is suggested trouble fitting in to Israeli society and no sympathy for the Palestinians, and now they a voice in making of the present and future Israeli governments.

Israel may well be going to hell in a hand basket, with the immediate consequent of further and intense suffering for the Palestinians. For the next two years of Bush, regardless of the Iraqi wreck, this situation will continue.

Postscript:

I was almost correct about there been no threshold. The threshold is 1.5% for parties in a chamber with 120 members. They encourage diversity of opinion in Israel.

Gary at Public Opinion labels Avigdor Liebermann as a racist, who is now part of the Israeli cabinet.

THE TOLL OF IRAQ

There is an air of the despicable, the craven and the cowardly created by those in denial of what their actions have wrought in Iraq. In this instance, unlike in other examples, the United States and its dear ally Britain were not merely making money by selling weapons, and allowing others to carry out the killing without saying a word.

No, in this example, they got into the act, burying their elbows in the blood and suffering of Iraqis, such is their death lust, then acting in denial of the consequences and their responsibility while attempting to create myths of noble causes and noble lies. Thankfully such design is unravelling, but as yet there are no war crime tribunals in evidence, but the hope for the residual decency of humankind is not beyond the bound of human possibility.

Tom Engelhardt at TomDispatch notes:

The fact is that the Lancet figures have largely been avoided because most Americans, including most reporters, can't entertain the possibility that our country might actually be responsible for a situation in which almost 400,000, or around 655,000, or possibly 900,000+ "excess" Iraqis have died. At the top end of that continuum, you would have to think of the recent wars and serial slaughters in the Congo or the Rwandan genocide. At 655,000, you're talking about slightly more than the dead of the American Civil War. With the bottom figure, you're already at well over one hundred times the dead of September 11, 2001, almost seven times the American dead of either the Korean or Vietnam Wars, and over three times the dead of atomized Hiroshima. And let's keep in mind that any of these figures are purely provisional, since George Bush has over two years to go in office and has sworn not to pull American forces out of Iraq before he departs, even if, according to the Washington Post's Bob Woodward, only his wife and dog still back him on the subject.

THE CONSERVATIVE SOUL

David Brooks reviews this book written by blogger Andrew Sullivan in The New York Times.

What caught my attention was the aside made by Brooks that "most bloggers get inflamed on a daily basis." I suppose I read regularly a limited number of blogs, but I have not noticed that they are more or less impassioned than columnists in the MSM, and in my opinion based on my limited consumption, I regard the commentary as superior than that provided by the papers. So much for the argy bargy between the blog world and the media world.

Still, I must say, rather against my predilections David Brooks does not do a bad job of reviewing the book. Andrew Sullivan I interpret to be saying with Bill Clinton something about the importance of reasoning and the importance of ideas. To engage in radical social and institutional change as Bush and Thatcher is surely not conservatism at all.

Conservatism, so it seems to me, is not confined to the right side of the chamber of deputies. It also extends to the left side. Such think for example of the traditions that are important to the Labor Party, for example the struggle by working people for conditions, rights and human dignity. Actually not too far from where I sit in the mid-nineteenth century at the dawn of Australian democracy, there was a rebellion or protest of the ordinary people inflamed by the entry of scab labor. Some real gains were made, and then under the nostrums of economic rationality and the stench of greedy self interest they have been stolen away.

OUR ECOLOGICAL FOOTPRINT

So we accept the statistics about climate change, or not? Let us suppose as the figures suggest, and what seems to be to eminently reasonable in relation to carbon gas emissions, that the climate is warming. Then let us look at what we might be responsible for, our statistical ecological footprint, which reflects the social consumption patterns that translates on a per capita basis into water shortages and environmental degradation.

Now it is the case, in a very minor way and in joint ownership I am a real property owner, but I think the sense of that is the continuation of the custodianship of the indigenous people of this continent, who through the thousands of years stepped lightly on the earth with the realization that the environment sustained them. We are disconnected. Sitting before our screens we are removed from an actual reality as the water comes through pipes from remote reservoirs and energy is transmitted through lines from sources with side effects that damage the planet.

The ABC reports on the WWF Report that Australians, who are not alone, are stamping an impression on the available resources in a detrimental way, since the rate of use is greater than the rate of renewal. We need to get our consumption into balance, and that will require both changes to our behavior and public policy, which inevitably be confronted by powerful interest groups arguing the case of technological fixes.

The technological fixes are often suggested to be on the macro-scale, such as the "clean and green" nuclear power rather than the "clean and green" solar energy. In recent days, the BBC was requesting suggestions for a shower song that the customers of Energy Australia could sing which would get them out of the shower more quickly so that they did not over-consume electricity. Converting to solar heating is the obvious answer which seems to have escaped the self interest of Energy Australia. And so it goes.

Six years later, Australia still ranks sixth in the world (so the graph for 2002 is still relevant). One factor among others in Australia, similar to Norway, is the high use of private cars - so we need public transport policies that will provide alternatives.



I note in passing the Sweden, where nuclear power has been abandoned,or that course has been considered, has a smaller per capita footprint than Finland, where nuclear power is being developed. Nuclear power represented 45% of Sweden's power supply in 2005.

This year's report was launched in Beijing including two major indicators of Planet Earth's well being, which the report summarizes as:

The first, the Living Planet Index, measures biodiversity, based on trends in more than 3,600 populations of 1,300 vertebrate species around the world. In all, data for 695 terrestrial, 344 freshwater and 274 marine species were analyzed. Terrestrial species declined by 31 per cent, freshwater species by 28 per cent, and marine species by 27 per cent.

The second index, the Ecological Footprint, measures humanity’s demand on the biosphere. Humanity’s footprint has more than tripled between 1961 and 2003. This report shows that our footprint exceeded biocapacity by 25 per cent in 2003. In the previous report (based on data to 2001), this figure was 21 per cent. The carbon dioxide footprint, from the use of fossil fuels, was the fastest growing component of our global footprint, increasing more than ninefold from 1961 to 2003.

Countries of over a million people with the largest footprint, in global hectares per person, are the United Arab Emirates, the United States of America, Finland, Canada, Kuwait, Australia, Estonia, Sweden, New Zealand and Norway. China comes mid-way in world rankings, at number 69, but its growing economy and rapid development mean it has a key role in keeping the world on the path to sustainability.

SPEAKING PORTUGUESE

As perhaps is to be expected, given the cognate cases in English, the language they speak in Brazil is somewhat different to that spoken in Portugal. There are eleven million Portuguese in the home of the language. The New York Times reports:

SÃO PAULO, Brazil — More people speak Portuguese as their native language than French, German, Italian or Japanese. So it can rankle the 230 million Portuguese speakers that the rest of the world often views their mother tongue as a minor language and that their novelists, poets and songwriters tend to be overlooked.

An effort is being made here in the largest city in the world’s largest Portuguese-speaking country to remedy that situation. The Museum of the Portuguese Language, with multimedia displays and interactive technology, recently opened here, dedicated to the proposition that Portuguese speakers and their language can benefit from a bit of self-affirmation and self-advertisement.

“We hope this museum is the first step to showing ourselves, our culture and its importance to the world,” said Antônio Carlos Sartini, the museum director. “A strategy to promote the Portuguese language has always been lacking, but from now on, maybe things can take another path.”

REVISITING DAISY, PROMOTING NANCY

"These are the stakes: to make a world in which all God's children can live, or to go into the dark. We must either love one another, or we must die."

- Lyndon Baines Johnson(1964).

The politics of fear worked forty-two years ago in the famous Daisy Ad, showing a little girl counting from one to ten as she pucks the petals of a flower, followed by an nuclear explosion and the LBJ voice over, and it will work now, except the Democrats are too principled for this behavior, or so the story goes. George Bush is enough to make any sane person afraid. Still the Republicans seem to have the fear stakes lead, but will that be enough to prevent the loss of their majority in the Senate and the House of Representatives?

51% of Americans report they are in favor of impreaching George Bush, and thereby making Richard Cheney President. I say impreach both Bush and Cheney and make Nancy Pelosi president, on the basis she looks nicer, and probably is.

Mrs Pelosi on a recent Letterman show explains that should the Democrats win the majority in the House, the Speaker would be third in line for the Presidency, which on present indications would be the position she would fill.

UPDATE: 24 October 2006

Pelosi says "impeachment is off the table", and "making them [Bush and Cheney] lame ducks is good enough for me"

AFGHANISTAN PROSPECTS

The failure of the American strategic objectives in Iraq is gradually being accepted. The lag realization of the significance of an event and its acceptance and then its public acceptance is a wonder to behold whether in Washington, London or Canberra.

There are more participating nations in Afghanistan, and there is now a suggestion with the increase in frequency and range of resistance activity that there is cause for concern. It seems remarkable to a distant observer that the Taliban has re-emerged. The Taliban have been, as far as I know, mostly connected with the Pushtun in the South.

This BBC report, from an embedded journalist, suggests that the Taliban have gained acceptance from the corruption of minor government officials, including among the Army, and can call upon the services of suicide bombers. Furthermore, my sense is the British are struggling to hold their own against them.

To lose Iraq might have been careless. To lose Iraq and Afghanistan would be ineffable.

Jonathan Steele, originally in The Guardian, via Common Dreams, argues that using the foreign military whether under Nato or UN was the wrong way to go. What works, and works best, is a set of agreements as has been demonstrated in the North West Provinces of Pakistan and recently by the British.

A MORE PERFECT UNION

Bill Clinton's speech at his alma mater last Wednesday was given to a domestic audience, and it did not cause much of a stir outside as far as I can tell The Washington Post and The New York Times, which did not amount to much. For example, the NYT report was under the headline:"Clinton Reflects on His 2 Terms and Hits Hard at Republicans" and opening was:

With fewer than three weeks until the midterm elections, former President Bill Clinton resumed his role as chief communicator of the Democratic Party on Wednesday in a speech that wrapped policy objectives in soaring rhetoric about bringing Americans together behind a single purpose.

Under the banner of securing the “common good,” Mr. Clinton reflected on his eight years in office as a time of effective governance and pressed Democrats to fight back against Republican claims of moral superiority.

As a non-American, and I should not talk for everybody, I sometimes just do not fully get it, even in the age of globalization and the internet. The phrase "a more perfect union" Clinton mentioned in his speech comes from what might be described as the purpose statement of the US Constitution:

We, the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect Union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provided for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty, to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

In the speech, Bill Clinton related the notion of the common good to the idea of a more perfect union:

In the context of late 1991, I defined the common good as a new covenant for equal opportunity, shared responsibility, an inclusive community and an aggressive approach to try to create those values throughout the world at the end of the Cold War. It was what I thought America should do to advance the common good, really just a restatement of what our Founders pledged their lives, their fortunes, their sacred honor to, to form a more perfect union.

Given the nature of the political debate today, I think it's important to point out that that 18th-century construct in 21st- century language meant the following: we are not perfect, we never will be perfect, no one has the whole truth, but we can always do better. That's what a more perfect union meant. It is a permanent mission for America designed to make America a permanent work in progress.

In Australia, as a derived democracy, we do not have a story of struggle of elites making bargains to avoid revolution, but we do have a long history of the struggle by labor to improve working conditions and the historical echo of "the Commonwealth".

A search in Google lists quotes from Noam Chomsky's book entitled, "The Common Good".

It is good, as Bill Clinton did, to call for vigorous debate, but it pays to remember how narrow the debate has become in the US because of the absence of minor parties. The range of debate wholly attributable to an electoral system in such a parlous state that it cannot be relied upon to validly measure and reflect public opinion in the election of public officials and representatives.

To implement democratic change is more difficult than it appears, and far less difficult than apparently destroying constitutional rights eg Habeas Corpus, by legislative edict. It seems to me that the legislation signed by Bush is unconstitutional?

FRIDAY NIGHT DOG BLOG-TWO DOGS, ONE SMILE

Sasha just keeps on being the same, except when on occasions she has a burst of energy, either shooting off on a tangent or engaging in rough play with Dexter. Dexter does bored from time to time, and makes it known. Out on his walks he is usually just trotting looking contented. Problems could arise when both of them take it into their heads to act together, as when there is another dog. I realize in those situations, if I can remember, it is probably best a strong and authoritative voice without going crazy.

Dexter as lookout. 14 October 2006

Sasha, relaxed with Dexter looking. 15 October 2006

Looking down their noses. 15 October 2006

So you wanted something? 16 October 2006

Dexter takes a bite. 16 October 2006

Sasha in action. 17 October 2006

Dog Alert.

In public space. . . 19 October 2006

. . . taking it easy. 19 October 2006

Responding as one. 19 October 2006.

As usual we seek to step aboard the Friday Ark# 109 and join the Carnival of the Dogs.

VEILED THREAT

Photo via ABC (Reuters)

The Koran apparently requires both men and women to dress modestly, which in the latter case is variously interpreted as requiring the wearing of veils. The dress requirements have varied according to country, culture and social class. For example in Turkey with the modernization of Ataturk, and in Iran under the Shah women were not permitted to wear veils in public.

Recently in Britain, some women have taken to wearing the niqah - the full veil that leaves only the eyes exposed. Jack Straw, former foreign secretary and now leader of the House of Commons declared he would not talk with women wearing the niqah. Then a young women assistant teacher was suspended from teaching at an Anglican School in Yorkshire for wearing the full head gear. The school authorities and the local government educational authorities claimed this attire showing only her eyes prevented her from doing her job. The matter is now before the court.

Then it seems, after beat ups in the newspapers, including a headline including the expression "veiled terrorists", the prime minister, Blair go into the act with a sequence of Yes, But statements, which we are so pleasantly familiar with coming from the eloquent mouth of John Howard. For example, The Independent reported:

Tony Blair has said that the veil worn by many Muslim women in Britain is a "mark of separation" that makes people from other backgrounds feel uncomfortable.

The Prime Minister came off the fence in the heated debate over Muslim customs by urging them to integrate more fully into British society. His remarks confirmed a significant shift in the Government's thinking amid fears that its support for multiculturalism may have encouraged the growth of "parallel lives" that never meet.

Al Jazeera quotes Blair as saying:

People want to know the Muslim community in particular, but actually all the minority communities, have got the balance right between integration and multi-culturalism. We need to conduct this debate in a sensitive way, but it needs to be conducted.

The lawyer representing Aishad Azmi, the teaching assistant, declared that the prime minister had through his comments interfered in the case and demanded retractions.

According to The Independent, a candidate for deputy leader of the Labor Party, Jim Cruddles argues that Ministers are playing "fast and loose" with religious tensions. He said:

"The solution does not lie in an ever more muscular bidding war among politicians to demonstrate who can be tougher on migrants, asylum-seekers and minorities. Nor is it in using racial or religious symbols to create controversy. That only makes the situation worse.

"It is not the role of politicians to play fast and loose with symbols of difference, especially when they drive the political centre of gravity to the right as a consequence."

Jonathan Freedland, commentating in The Guardian observes:

The veil, for example, has found feminists among both its champions and critics, proving that it's no straightforward matter. There should be nothing automatically anti-Muslim about raising the subject, not least since many Muslim women question the niqab themselves.

Similarly, Ruth Kelly was hardly out of line in suggesting, as she did last week, that the government needs to be careful about which Muslim groups it funds and with whom it engages, ensuring it leans towards those who are actively "tackling extremism". Other things being equal, that was a perfectly sensible thing to say.

Except other things are not equal. Each one of these perfectly rational subjects, taken together, has created a perfectly irrational mood: a kind of drumbeat of hysteria in which both politicians and media have turned again and again on a single, small minority, first prodding them, then pounding them as if they represented the single biggest problem in national life.

And, of course, these matters, despite the pretense are not being considered in the cool light of day, for as Jonathan Freedland also observes:

In fact, the courageous politician would refuse to join this open season on Muslims and seek to cool things down - beginning with an explanation of how we got here. The elements include many of those that feature in any build-up of hostility to a single, derided group, here or across the world.

The foundation is fear. Many Britons have since 9/11, and especially since July 7, come to fear their Muslim neighbours: they worry that the young man next to them on the train might have more than an extra sweater in his backpack. Next comes ignorance, a simple lack of knowledge about Muslim life which leaves non-Muslims open to all kinds of misconceptions. That feeds into a simple discomfort, personified, in its most extreme form, by a woman whose face we cannot see.

From across the Atlantic, The New York Times takes a broader view including developments in other European countries, the reappraisal of British society following the London Bombings last year, the commitment to the invasion and occupation of Iraq.

The reason I find this issue relevant and important is that, I suspect that liberal democracy holds a distinction between the private regime and the public stage, where in my opinion Australia has demonstrated success in tolerance and acceptance of people with different backgrounds, which seems to be undermined by the insistence of the private symbolized by the niqah.

Update: 20 October 2006

The ABC reports that Mrs Azmi won her case for victimization, but lost her case for religious discrimination, which suggests that the court upheld the school's contention that she could not teach with the niqah. Her statement presents a different side to the issue:

"Muslim women who wear the veil are not aliens and politicians need to recognise that what they say can have a very dangerous impact on the lives of the minorities they treat as outcasts," she said.

"Integration requires people like me to be in the workplace so that people can see that we are not to be feared or mistrusted.

"Sadly, the intervention of ministers in my case ... makes me fearful of the consequences for Muslim women in this country who want to work."

Update: 25 October 2006

The LA Times carries this personal report of wearing the niqah in London.

PALESTINE AND SADDAM

There is apparently a formula held by the major parties in Australian politics, an accepted assumption, which may assume the status of a cultural assumption, that is so embedded as to be unconscious, that Israel is good and Palestine is bad.

Consider this extract from Question Time in the House of Representatives, via ABC's program PM:

KIM BEAZLEY: Given Australia's anti-terrorist financing laws has the Foreign Minister asked the Governments of Israel and Jordon to investigate where the money paid by AWB into Saddam Hussein's bank account, the Rafidain Bank in Iman, was used by the Iraqi dictator to pay the families of Palestinian suicide bombers?

ALEXANDER DOWNER: I don't need to ask any government, whether getting rid of Saddam Hussein stopped Saddam Hussein funding terrorism, because it did.

But I do know if the Leader of the Opposition's policy had remained in place, Saddam Hussein would still be funding terrorism and you would have that on your conscience.

Any possible government of Iraq will support the Palestinians. As terrible and as indiscriminate as suicide bombing is, which I believe among other things has had the effect of weakening the voice of protest against Israeli atrocities, such as currently in Gaza, and the invasion and thrashing of Lebanon, there is no prospect of a peaceful settlement in the Israel v Palestine war without justice and forgiveness.

There are other causes, including the invasion of Iraq and the Western support for dictatorial regimes, including that of Saddam, that has fueled local terrorism, and now global terrorism, but a viable solution to Levant conflict would be an important step to make, and for which we should be committed.

I happen to conclude, but I am open to alternative solutions, that the two state solution is unworkable, with the implication that the Jewish people will form a minority within a bi-national, multicultural state which itself as the homeland for both Palestinians and Jews.

I know this is a large step for humankind and that it will require reconciliation - forgiveness. Of course, I do not know how such a proposition might be realized, but if it was the killing would stop.

IDENTITY FRAUD

Among the things we often do not think about include disposing of personal information into our rubbish bins. I do not know with any confidence what happens when I put my bins out in the street.

The Guardian provides a warning with some figures generated by garbageology:

Nearly half of UK households throw away all the information a criminal would need to steal a person's identity, according to a survey published today.

During the research, the rubbish bins of a street in south London were searched and revealed that 97% of households regularly throw away paper carrying their name and address.. . . In 48% of cases, households had thrown away all the information a fraudster would require to carry out identity theft. One third had binned their full credit or debit card number and 46% had thrown away an item containing their full bank account details.

. . . Tyron Hill, spokesman for document shredder firm Fellowes, which commissioned the report, said: "People spend thousands of pounds protecting their homes against burglary, from top of the range locks to lighting systems and alarms. "However, this research shows that virtually everyone in the country is literally handing over their identity to bin raiders. Your identity is the most important thing you have and people have got to stop being so complacent and must start to put up a fight against identity fraud."

Meanwhile, a recent report by Which? showed that an ex-partner, a friend or a former flat-mate was just as likely to steal a person's identity as a stranger.

CONFIDENTIAL COMMENTS

Kevin Drum bemoans the state of free speech in the world, not just the land of the free, and he surely has a point, but he does not consider what might be seen as offensive, who perhaps are not used to a fulsome debate, the best approach to the pursuit of truth, or simple political advantage.

However, it seems that the White House has fallen prey to the odd comment or two about the sanity of certain supporters of the Bush Administration, according to the BBC. I am not sure whether this tittle-tattle is a breach of confidence, telling the truth, or small demonstration for we of little faith, that the US government is not completely run by religious fundamentalists.

Update: 17 October 2006

In the spirit of fairness and balance, and in emulation of what "our" ABC, via David Tiley,will be from March next year, here is a view of the world which I take to be a Christian fundamentalist perspective seen darkly through the book of revelations. Interesting specualtion, I think. I don't think they like the Catholic Church much, which is odd when you remember, it was once synonymous with Christendom in Western Europe.

IRAQIS ON THE MOVE

Iraqi emigres boarding buses (Photo via BBC)

Should the estimate of the number of casualties of the war be questionable, so also might be the figures for the increasing number of people leaving the country and those that have been internally displaced, perhaps by religious cleansing.

The BBC reports:

Thousands of Iraqis are fleeing the country every day, in what the UN's refugee agency describes as a steady, silent exodus.

The number of Iraqis claiming asylum in the West is growing, says the UNHCR.

The agency also says the number of internally displaced is growing, with some 365,000 Iraqis uprooted this year.

Earlier this week the Baghdad government estimated that about 300,000 people had been internally displaced since February.

In a telling statistic for those who would claim the situation in Iraq is getting better, not getting worse, the report notes:

The [UNHCR] says that last year about 50,000 Iraqis returned from neighbouring countries. This year only 1,000 did.

And the extraordinary figure is quoted:

There are also increasing numbers of people leaving their homes but staying in Iraq. "The estimate now is something around 50,000 people per month are joining the growing numbers of internally displaced inside Iraq,"

While Iraqis are seeking refuge in adjoining countries such as Jordan and Iraq they are moving to most Middle Eastern countries, and as well represent the largest group of people seeking access to the EU.

Postscript: 16 October 2006

The actual UNHCR report is here in which the situation in relation to Iraqi refugees, especially the internally displaced is described as a "crisis". Crisis is defined as a situation in which humanitarian agencies and the government can no longer cope with the situation in which the people affected are subject to considerable deprivation and suffering.

Yes, withdrawal of the occupying forces would help, in that it would make more possible an internal peace between the warring parties. Invasions of militarily weak countries such as Iraq had become under Saddam is always a "cakewalk", but withdrawal becomes extremely difficult, especially after hanging around for over three years unwelcome. As the song says, "Bring 'em home", if only to avoid further unnecessary deaths and grevious injuries.

IRAQI DEATHS

Statistical results and methods are familiarly attacked by interest groups in regard to the connection between smoking and lung cancer, or carbon emissions and climate changes. What is often forgotten, in these cases, is that the statistics, given that problems have existed, simply confirm and quantify what reliable witnesses can often verify. I am subject to correction on this matter, nevertheless the practical test of observation can usually be applied. Do reliable witnesses confirm the relation? In other words can we relate the numbers with observations. In the case of smoking and lung cancer it is relatively easy, whereas it is more difficult to record deaths in Iraq given that bodies do not all end up in morgues.

The latest estimate in The Lancet, via John Quiggin, concludes:

We estimate that, as a consequence of the coalition invasion of March 18, 2003, about 655 000 Iraqis have died above the number that would be expected in a non-conflict situation, which is equivalent to about 2·5% of the population in the study area. About 601 000 of these excess deaths were due to violent causes. Our estimate of the post-invasion crude mortality rate represents a doubling of the baseline mortality rate, which, by the Sphere standards, constitutes a humanitarian emergency.

Juan Cole explains why these figures have not been confirmed by the Iraqi Department of Health:

The Lancet study asserting that the Iraq conflict has cost the lives of between 420,000 and 780,000 Iraqis continues to generate controversy. But Dan Murphy of the CSM quotes public health officials pointing out that its methodology was sound, contrary to what Presiden Bush asserted. Murphy's article also puts its finger on the likely source of the discrepancy between the Lancet numbers and those of the Iraqi ministry of health: The ministry employees cannot travel easily to places like Baqubah and Kut and Ramadi to collect death statistics from local officials. I can remember talking recently to a Shiite from Baghdad who said that virtually no one routinely goes to Najaf from the capital any more because the roads are too unsafe. Najaf was only an hour's drive from Baghdad in the old days.

With any measurement, I remember, uncertainty is to be expected. So the actual numbers could in fact be greater or less, but if the methodology is valid and reliable, the numbers of dead are large and significant. John Quiggin observes:

In particular, the lower bound estimate is now around 400 000, so that unless the survey is rejected completely, there can be no doubt about catastrophic casualties.

These deaths have followed from the invasion and the occupation and represent people who otherwise would have been expected to live. So these numbers will be significant in regard to any possible future determination as to war crimes and war crime indictments.

Postscript: 15 October 2006

Brad DeLong takes up the issue of press reporting of the survey results, including by some commentators that they were released for political purposes prior to the mid term elections. I am interested to note he quotes Daniel Davies who also sees implications for war crime indictments.

Postscript: 17 October 2006

This piece by Gywnne Dyer, originally published in The Japan Times, via Common Dreams, gives a clear summary of the methodology and the results. It makes nonsense of some of the predictable criticism that I have read.

GUANTANAMO CRIMINALITY

Read this report from the BBC to the effect that prison guards have boasted about slamming detainees heads into cell doors, and what conclusions can be reached, given that not one detainee has been charged.

Even the British Foreign Secretary, has called for the prison to be closed, arguing:

"The continuing detention without fair trial of prisoners is unacceptable in terms of human rights, but it is also ineffective in terms of counter-terrorism."

The response from the American officials is more nonsense than it is an effective lie, accurately reflecting the level to which the American Government has reached in World opinion.

The effect of lack of accountability and responsibility, as much personal attitudes act as organizational constraints, which will tend to create excesses in any form of government, except that they are part of the essence of liberal democratic government and society. With that context I think it is possible to see how the President and those around the President, set the conditions for the behavior of those at lower levels. I think that is how the dots are connected. And it is possible that such behavior can be independent of the top, but that would not be behavior that is occurring consistently.

If it is concluded that Congress does not play its constitutional role, then you conclude the system is either falling apart, or has fallen apart.

The questions become: How did this happen? And what will happen next?

HONEST SOLDIER

Both Kevin Drum and Juan Cole have posted on the comments of the newly installed British head of army, General Richard Dannant. He argues that the British should leave Iraq, but stay in Afghanistan, the difference being that in the first case there was no invitation and in the second there was. The Daily Mail, via Political Animal, quotes General Dannant as saying:

"I am going to stand up for what is right for the Army. "Honesty is what it is about. The truth will out. We have got to speak the truth. Leaking and spinning, at the end of the day, are not helpful."

Kevin Drum wonders whether American generals might share Dannant's judgment, and whether they will speak out. Juan Cole suggests that it must now be clear that Blair is a lame duck, and that his successor will effect a withdrawal of British troops from Iraq.

Should all this come to past, and these reports and opinions are not merely straws in the wind, John Howard will simply change his tune with the expectation that we will all forget what he has been whistling for the last three years.

FRIDAY NIGHT DOG BLOG - HITTING THE WALL

Dexter is usually full of energy. He bounds around the front yard jumping athletically from one level to another. I encourage him by throwing a kom kong toy, made of a rubber he cannot easily destroy with his teeth, although as the weather has gotten hotter over the past days he has tended to decline the offer. I was stunned when I saw him lose his footing as he jumped and crash into the concrete wall. He is solid and travels with some momentum. He was stunned I think but he appeared to survive without injury. Sasha is more laid back, although she can have her moments. Her thing is to get into the dog pool after we come back and cool off.

Dexter: A fine set of teeth. 07 October 2006

Taking a close interest in Sasha. 07 October 2006.

Let's humour him. 09 October 2006.

Shadow Play. 10 October 2006.

A moment in the shade. 11 October 2006.

Enjoy, Dexter. 12 October 2006

Sasha takes it easy. 12 October 2006

It's pretty hot today. 13 October 2006.

The way I see it. 13 October 2006

I think she is right. 13 October 2006.

As usual we hope to get a boarding pass to Friday Ark#108 at Modulator and a ticket to The Carnival of the Dogs at Mickey's Musings.

300 MILLION

In the next week or so - it is that close - The Washington Post reports that the US population will reach 300 million, but the paper says the news is not all good:

One reason for anxiety may be that U.S. population growth is fueled in large measure by immigrants and their children, a circumstance that increasingly worries native-born Americans and makes politicians jumpy, especially four weeks before an election.

Immigrants, legal and illegal, account for about 40 percent of population growth. Immigration is also an important reason the "natural increase" in the population -- excess of births over deaths -- is significantly higher in the United States compared with Europe or Japan. Hispanics from Latin America, by far the largest share of recent immigrants, are driving the natural increase here. On average, Hispanic women have one more child than non-Hispanic white women.

Three hundred million is also a discomfiting reminder of a nation that, on its east and west coasts, at least, is running noticeably low on elbow room. More humanity is stirring up more traffic, more sprawl, more rules against growth, more protests against anti-growth rules, and more of the greenhouse gas emissions that cause global warming. A surging population in the arid Southwest is also straining the supply of water. The growth is adding to a country that represents 4 percent of the world's population but consumes 25 percent of the planet's oil.

As mentioned, without immigration, principally from Mexico and other Latin American countries the US population dynamics would be similar to those in Europe.

The article notes that the 300 millionth person will not be known, and so will not win a ticket to Disneyland, which is a shame.

Postscript: 17 October 2006

Kevin Drum celebrates the minute when the US population clock ticks past 300 million. How is that for timing?

THE POWER OF NARRATIVE

The stories that are told, however careful our efforts may be, at defining moments, I suspect, always contain elements of mythos as much as logos. We are at a defining moment now.

Despite the feeble protests of at least some of us, you must understand we say we are just the little people, the citizens of this democracy, and what could we do when a prime minister, as all prime ministers had before him, assumes the inherited, undemocratic, royal prerogative to support the American invasion of Iraq, including the idiotic refrain that "stuff happens" as thousands of people are murdered^1. and the artifacts of an ancient civilization thrashed.

Once it was claimed to be a noble cause. Then we discovered it was a "noble lie". The truth is more tawdry than we would like to imagine. But no matter. Even as the leader we followed blindly, and who led blindly, unable almost to express a coherent thought, let alone a pattern of coherent thoughts, the spin was supplied by those whose business is to cast a spell of beguilling words including the incantations that would frighten and Tom dispatch political opponents sufficiently to win elections in at least three of the invading countries.

Failure, recognized or denied, is not without consequences, immediate and long term, nor are decisions without historical context. Who will express the narrative that we now choose to follow? How are we to understand our circumstances, even if we are to understand that we stand at a defining moment?

What are the dimensions and ramifications of the American failure in Iraq, which historical experience might have predicted? You might read James Carroll's interview with Tomdispatch in which he suggests that America failed to impose their will over a population, despite the jubilation at the early Pyrrhic victory, in which the deeper narrative of Islamophobia within western history has been stirred, even as the mosquito, represented by Osama Bin Laden and Al Quaeda, flies unmolested despite the impressive displays of destruction and barbarity.

In this interview James Carroll lays out what seems a cogent narrative, without alluding to the evidence, which I see, if dimly, that liberal democracy may be unravelling, if not here at least there, in terms of valid and reliable election results and over dependence of corporate sponsorship for the major political parties and candidates alike. That aside, his prognosis is not orientated to the limitations of Bush or the administration.

A narrative of this nature is a historical framework combined with generation and implications. There are three examples, I can quote.

James Carroll notes the influence of fundamentalist Christianity, not merely in Congress but in the air force academy. And then, he turns his attention across the Atlantic, and by implication the Pope, speaking as he then was as Cardinal Ratzinger:

Meanwhile in Europe, Great Britain had, until recently, been a far more tolerant culture than the United States (as indicated by the British welcome to large populations of Muslim immigrants over the last generation). All of that is now being firmly and explicitly repudiated by British lawmakers. You see it in the great cities of Europe everywhere. When people in the Netherlands and France vote against the European Constitution in some measure because it represents to them an opening to Turkey and the world of Islam, something quite large is happening.

And, James Carroll reminds us that Islam played a critical role in the framing of the European mind:

We don't sufficiently appreciate how the paradigm of the crusades never ended for Europe. Europe came into being in response to the threat of Islam. The European structure of government, the royal families of Europe, they're all descended from Charlemagne, grandson of the man who defeated the Islamic armies at Tours [If you remember Charles Martel, Charles the Hammer]. More than a thousand years ago, a system of identity first took hold in Europe that defined itself against Islam. This is the ultimate political Manichaeism in the European mind.

We're the children of this. Of course, Islam had been forgotten in our time. Never mind that there were more than a billion Muslims in the world. All through the Cold War, we thought that the other, the stranger, the enemy was the Communist. But the Muslim world never forgot about us. The crusades are yesterday to them. They've understood better than we have that the West has somehow defined itself against them.

It's in this context that we have to understand the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. A thousand years ago, as now, the political fate of Jerusalem was the military spark for the marshaling of a holy war. The crusaders, after all, were going to Jerusalem to rescue the Holy Land from the infidel, and the infidel was defined as a twin-set, Muslims and Jews. The attack on Muslims happened simultaneously with the first real attacks against Jews inside Europe. The ease with which, in the Middle East, the conflict in Israel has come to be subsumed as the defining conflict with the West is part of this phenomenon.

In Cologne [Germany] last week, I met with the head of the Jewish congregation and also the imam who heads the Muslim community, and they both reported the same experience. They both feel they're on the table -- the table of sacrifice -- in Europe. They're both feeling vulnerable to attack and they're right to feel that way. It's a very curious turn.

And if you think, as some have expressed the view, the crusades should be by now irrelevant, James Carroll has an earlier historical reference:

We're not sufficiently attuned to the fact that we of the West are descended from the Roman Empire. It still exists in us. The good things of the Roman Empire are what we remember about it -- the roads, the language, the laws, the buildings, the classics. We're children of the classical world. But we pay very little attention to what the Roman Empire was to the people at its bottom -- the slaves who built those roads; the many, many slaves for each citizen; the oppressed and occupied peoples who were brought into the empire if they submitted, but radically and completely smashed if they resisted at all.

We Christians barely remember the Roman war against the Jewish people in which historians now suggest that hundreds of thousands of Jews were killed by the Romans between 70 and 135 CE. Why were the Jews killed? Not because the Romans were anti-Semites. They were killed because they resisted what for them was the blasphemous occupation of the Holy Land of Israel by a godless army. It would remain one of the most brutal exercises of military power in history until the twentieth century. That's the Roman story.

I might have cherry-picked, the least of the importance that James Carroll had to say. He has a powerful story, which we might accept or reject. What story will prevail, and how will that shape our being?

Footnote:

^1. David Tiley looks at the figures, considering what they mean.

PAKISTAN NUCLEAR SOURCE

This is news to me. I had thought that North Korea may have obtained their nuclear know-how from China, but it seems that the Pakistani scientist AQ Khan played the critical role according to The Independent.

If one country can be supplied, then it is possible that other countries have been as well. This means that the problem of nuclear proliferation needs to be re-examined, not least the role of uranium ore supplier countries such as Australia.

For the moment the new Japanese Prime Minister is saying that they will stay non-nuclear, which means that they are dependent for their security on the United States' nuclear umbrella.

The Chinese, I suspect, must be considering their options.

The issue of an nuclear-armed North Korea will be brought into focus the next time, which must be in the immediate future, when North Korea undertakes further missile tests.

THE POLITICS OF CULTURAL DESPAIR

I do not really know about this history of how sophisticated societies such as Germany and even Argentina could fall into the abyss of fascism, or how the other countries of the English-speaking world avoided the allure and the snare.

Tom Reiss reviews Fritz Sterns Five Germany's I have Known in the New York Times. He concludes by observing:

Yet the value of Stern’s work is precisely that it has refused to keep Nazism safely on the other side of a historical and geographic chasm. His first book, “The Politics of Cultural Despair” (1961), is one of the durable masterpieces of 20th-century history because it seems to locate the roots of a peculiarly modern malaise. As he explained in a later edition of the work, “I attempted to show the importance of this new type of cultural malcontent, and to show how he facilitated the intrusion into politics of essentially unpolitical grievances.”

Rather than looking for obvious parallels among contemporary dictators who ape the style of the Nazis, Stern looks for the nihilistic undercurrents in our own educated, commercial societies. Hunger and poverty have little to do with the politics of cultural despair. It thrives especially well at moments of plenty and prosperity, when people have enough social advantages to dwell on their inner alienations and resentments.

By probing history for answers to how Germany progressed from radical illiberalism to Nazism, Stern has created a cumulative canon of warning signs for the degeneration of any great nation’s politics. The more personal history in this book adds power to an argument that has been a lifetime in the making.

The first chapter of the book, Ancestral Germany, may be opened here.

NORTH KOREA WITH THE BOMB?

Photo: Rice University.

Should reports prove to be reliable, such as ABC Online, it seems that North Korea has exploded a nuclear device. This directly affects Japan, South Korea and China, but no less Australia as we are close to the region.

Surely this is a dramatic development, and makes any plans that the Bush Administration for the invasion of Iran an absurdity for all to see.

The running down of international institutions and arrangements, in particular the Nuclear Non-Proliferation treaty, which Australia has been a part of, has lead to this situation.

Of course, nuclear weapons are not as lethal without the means to deliver them, and the missile testing by the North Koreans can now be understood. Japan and South Korea will feel compelled to react to this realization of a new and potent threat in their immediate environment.

John Quiggin makes the point that Britain and France have retained their nuclear weapons long past there possible use by dates. Elsewhere, Tim Dunlop on The Road to Surfdom has more information.

But I want to know: How did North Korea, a country that cannot feed its own people, obtain the technical resources and know-how to build a nuclear device?

The New York Times reports on the reaction of China, who presumably is the crucial facilitator of the nuclear technology. The report observes:

It remains unclear what leverage China might be willing to use against the North. Beijing has long argued that along with denuclearizing the country it also intends to preserve peace and stability there, and Chinese leaders are likely to reject any proposals for military action.

They may also seek to water down any sanctions to ensure that restrictions on the North’s trade do not topple the government, an event China fears could set off an influx of refugees and a volatile political environment on its border.

Postscript: 10 October 2006
Brad DeLong quotes Michael Froomkin. Common sense this suggests the way it has worked. The invasion of Iraq had a demonstration effect as was intended.

NATIONAL CURRICULUM

Illustration: Rod Clements. SMH. 09 October 2006.

Howard and his government continue to fight the cultural wars, and some have suggested with considerable success. I have no direct knowledge of the eight curricula in Australian schools. So I do not know whether it is "educational sludge" or not whether they all, or some, were inspired by "the ideology of Mao", or not.

However, such language creates suspicion. I know nothing about post-modernism, although it seems to me that Hamlet, from a feminist perspective could be useful. That is the perspective, in its full generality, that might represent a perspective of half of humankind. Different perspectives are valuable it seems to me, since they represent different ways of knowing, and they help to create insight and understanding.

Citizens in a liberal democracy need to see past the spin and the lies, which is their daily diet, no less from this government, but the from the governments that are likely in the future. We citizens of democracy need to appreciate that by changing the government we change the personnel, to some extent the values and the ideology, and in the longer term our self interest may be served better by one or other party, but we do not change the system, and so many of its outputs will be the same regardless of which party that holds power.

Many of us refuse to see, or are blind to the ailments that afflict the body politic, and have done so for a number of years, perhaps all our lives, and nor do we fully apprehend the current dangers and challenges. Totalitarian educational ideology is not what a liberal democracy requires. Without the acceptance of diversity, the cultural wars are a battle between ideologues, as the language used suggests. If true, such propositions would suggest an education requiring questioning is more important than ever.

The hypocrisy of the Howard government knows no bounds. Legislation is rammed through parliament with token debate, and totalitarian arrogance, and yet they have the impertinence to preach about Australian values. This behavior is described as leadership, but to where? Democracy is always seemed to me to be as much about means as ends.

Still Jane Caro and Lyndsay Connors, in The Sydney Morning Herald, take a cool view of the government's proposal saying there is merit in national uniformity, without taking the blunderbuss approach. I like the argument that if the "ideologues" in the long march through the institutions can infiltrate eight departments they might find it easier to infiltrate one. I suspect that the government will insist that they are ideologues of a different stamp, thus reifying another victory in the cultural wars, which, I suppose, is the point of Caro and Connors conclusion:

The real challenge in curriculum is to find a process for dealing with curriculum overcrowding, for systematic refining, updating and culling. That is an issue worthy of national debate.

What we have to be careful of, however, is that we create a national curriculum free from the ideological imprint of any political party, because that is precisely what would make it most like a curriculum devised by Chairman Mao.

Indeed, it may be the mark of a successful and robust curriculum in an open society that the incumbent government, of whatever persuasion, finds it uncomfortable.

BLOGGING AND COMMENTS

Don't get me wrong, I think it is great when people comment, and usually I comment on their comments. I would sometimes appreciate comments, especially on those occasions, and there are quite a number, when I do not know as much as I would like about a subject, and am thinking "what hav'nt I included here that is relevant and important", or when I have tried to describe something, usually some medical ailment or experience, and I am wondering , "have I described this circumstances, adequately." In the first case that is inevitably so, and in the second there are some for whom it seems grammar is the point of writing rather than let it subtend good writing because it works for the intended reader^1..

My conscious policy is always to encourage comments. But my purpose is never to write to attract comments per se. I don't care for those blogs, or post writers, that are written for the gathering of adherents that attack others in a spirit of religious fervour. It is better, in my opinion, to have a monologue than a discussion, and you are supposed to observe that word is close etymologically to "percussion". Whatever political position is held, it is diminished by arguing against the person, over generalization, and all the rest of the techniques. At the same time, I realize I as much as anybody is likely to fall into these mistakes from time to time. If you point it out to me I will try and recognize my folly, or more likely try to explain what I meant to say.

My purpose is usually political, if not obviously so. For example, the title of this blog, indirectly (as least in my mind) refers to duckspeak. But mostly I write about stuff that I happen to be interested in, and I am always curious if other people are interested as well. I am not an expert on anything. But, I am not going to let that stop me. Firstly it fun to write freely, as if words were like paint on a canvas, with the option to push the boundaries, while thinking reflectively in another corner of my brain, I may a reader. Secondly, I am one of those who has not thought anything or have an opinion until I have written it down, mostly because I am too calculated in what I say, which translates to saying as little as possible in most situations, worst still not being able to think of the appropriate thing to say.

Having set out some qualifications, there is simply the affrontery to writing something. I think, much like the Quakers in their meetings, it is the democratic spirit, in the belief that god can speak through any member of congregation, or like the Athenians when it comes to ship building we should listen to the ship builders, or in a modern democracy when it comes to citizenship, we might listen to the citizens. It is a worrying problem that while god may speak through any of us, understanding and speaking may not be directly correlated.

So for me this blog can live without comments. Realistically, I do not expect them. Generally it is true, as I have suggested before, there is a relationship between a threshold number of readers and comments. I suspect that this threshold, he says without any evidence whatsoever, might be having a minimum of 100 or 200 readers. I fall far short of the twenty visitors I aspire to in my wildest expectations. Such numbers of readers are beyond my competence, and that attention might change the nature of the exercise.

Footnote.
^1. The Federal Minister for Education is attempting to take over responsibility for secondary school curricula, currently held by the various State Government authorities. One of the quotes, that formed part of the spin, was the assertiong that some Law Schools were having to provide "remedial grammar".

Now the go-to bloggers in relation to such matters for me are Andrew Norton and Andrew Leigh.

FRIDAY NIGHT DOG BLOG - SCENTS AND SENTIENCE

We know that dogs are conscious and cognizant, but not in the ways that human beings are conscious and aware of their surroundings. I was in a hurry today, and then I was aware that the dogs want to linger over the smells that interest them, but which I cannot apprehend.

Sasha relaxes. 30 September 2006

In public. 30 September 2006.

Patience. 30 September 2006.

At the Edge. 01 October 2006

Attending. 01 October 2006.

What's that Sasha? 03 October 2006

Time to relax. 03 October 2006

Staying alert. 03 October 2006

Sasha & Dexter. 04 October 2006.

"You blocks, you stones, you worse than senseless things!" 04 October 2006

Sasha stands her ground. 04 October 2006

We do not mind this. 05 October 2006.

Enjoying. 04 October 2006.

Can't say more. 04 October 2006.

There's Maxie, with his owner. 04 October 2006

On the trail. 05 October 2006.

Sasha poses. 05 October 2006.

I see our dogs as familiar strangers, as if words are all that matters. Still sometimes, they do respond to my words.

Again this week, we will try to join the Friday Ark#106 and the catch The Carnival of the Dogs.

MYTHOS AGAIN

Don't take what I say as gospel, but obviously I think I might be right. According to Wikipedia, mythos is a collection of [stories] in the scholarly sense. I am very much prone to stories, and so am inclined to generalize that propensity to the rest of humankind.

Don Arthur sets the case up better, he writes, via Troppo:

Nothing’s easier to understand than a story. It’s as if human beings were hardwired for narrative — stories with beginnings, middles and ends populated by people doing things. According to cognitive scientists Roger Schank and Robert Abelson that’s not far from the truth.

Back in 1995 Schank and Abelson hypothesized that virtually all human knowledge is based on stories constructed around past experiences. Whenever we come across something new we try to fit into the framework provided by an old story. So it’s no surprise to find, as Andrew Norton does, that most of Australia’s top public intellectuals are storytellers and moralists rather than social scientists.

We tell stories inspite of ourselves, regardless that we espouse, and so caught up by the rigors of the real as Nobel Prize winning physicist, Robert Feynman (1918 - 1988). You might like to listen to his lecture, including Photons Corpuscles of Light, delivered at The University of Auckland in 1976, via originally referred to by Brad DeLong, and then watch him telling his own stories. The "I am irresponsible" story, I suggest, even though it was constructed consciously is still I think a myth, even as it created think for him to think about the problems of quantum mechanics.

Postscript: 09 October 2006

I think this may be relevant. Jason Soon draws attention to this recent article at Catallaxy. For what it is worth, I am trying to get my head around the proposition that pre-Settlement Aboriginal societies, for example, had a more integrated cosmology than we do, even as it must be admitted we potentially know far more. For one thing, I am guessing, Aboriginal society did not have numbers of priests, professors and other experts we need. Or you could say, as Robert Feynman does in Ancient Egypt, for examples, the priests were the professors. I recall a quote from Thales to effect, "I spent seven years of my life with the geometers of Egypt." It is a fair guess the geometers were also priests.

WORLD UNIVERSITY RANKING

The Guardian lists the top universities in the world:

1. Harvard
2: Cambridge
3: Oxford
4: Massachusetts Institute of Technology
5: Yale
6: Stanford
7: California Institute of Technology
8: University of California, Berkeley
9: Imperial College London
10: Princeton

You might notice that these are all English speaking universities mostly from the US with some British institutions, which may be explained by the fact the assessement is by the Times Higher Education Literary Supplement. The article observes:

Beijing University and the Australian National University were the first outside the UK or US to appear on the list, securing the 14th and 16th positions.

Still it seems there are other rankings, but not much argument as to which are the best.

The University of Melbourne has again been ranked among the 100 top universities in the world in the prominent Shanghai Jiao Tong University’s (SJTU) Academic Rankings of World Universities 2006.

The SJTU has ranked Melbourne at a clear No 78 – jumping from No 82 in 2005. Melbourne has been steadily moving up the rankings since it first appeared in the SJTU rankings in 2003 at No 92.

Melbourne and ANU are the only two Australian universities in the top 100. Harvard, Cambridge and Stanford have again taken the top three places. Melbourne was also ranked seventh in the Asia Pacific region with Tokyo University in top spot.

I am not sure how these rankings are worked out, and I wonder why they do not assess particular faculties or departments. So what are the criteria for a good university?

Of course, seen from another perspective, this represents just another example of globalization.

TWO HUNDRED YEARS

Barry Jones, who was on Late Night Live last night made a very neat observation. He noted that it was exactly 200 years from the the fall of the Bastille in 1789 and the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.

I suppose it should be observed that this represents symbolic history. The Bastille was more of a symbol than the Berlin Wall, which represented a practical barrier to anyone seeking to escape from the East, whereas the Bastille had been cleared of prisoners when it fell. Nor is it true that the ground swells of history, often building inexorably over the long term, are not defined by neat delineations by dates. Still, I suppose, dramatic events give us pause and jolt us out of our preconception that tomorrow will be just like yesterday, although it often is as we wait for the reverberations of history to reach us. And then, of course, we do not recognize them when they do.

LIBERAL DEMOCRATIC DIAGNOSIS

In my screed below, Perils to Democracy, I was trying to address the issue, one I suspect is not given sufficient attention, that democracy can go wrong. The examples that come to my mind are Germany and Argentina. Our body politic is not immune to ailments, and may be suffering from several.

By analogy, I ask: What are the factors that should be measured or otherwise assessed? Even if the diagnosis is not as good as a medical diagnosis might be, and even if medical diagnosis could be improved as per The Patient from Hell, such an analysis may be useful for public policy prescription.

For example, Juan Cole's pithy conclusion:

Another four years of the one-party state, and the Republic will be finished, if it is not already.

That metaphorically knocks me off my chair. I remember the causality and ideology of the Howardista worldview: What Bush America thinks, we think. Where Bush America goes, we go. Where America stands, we stand. Where America falls, we follow.

TRAGEDY IN PENNSYLVANIA

The BBC report notes that "the Amish shun modern life". However, modern life does not shun the Amish.

The seemingly inexplicable tragedy, as it seems now, will probably turn out to have some kind of explanation. For me the suffering the parents must be experiencing is too heart-breaking to consider. What quickly will become yesterday's news for everybody else, will be something they will live with every day. This is also true for the people in Lebanon and Iraq.

No doubt the gun lobby will resist any calls to reduce the availability of guns, which seems to me to be common sense.

It was suggested to me today, that this tragedy was the making of some male pathology. Now the protagonist is dead, any explanation for the behavior will be speculation.

Postscript: 4 October 2006

The Amish don't lock their doors. They are, I suspect, for good and ill, a close-knit society, which might be described as collectivist. They do not live American values. And then you have this guy, and I don't know all the relevant details, who drives a milk truck, with a wife and kids,without a history of mental instability, but with a bee in his bonnet about some sexual or other indignity he suffered as a young boy tweny years ago. The only answer he sees is to gather up guns and other objects that can cause death, pain and suffering to young children. Wow! Individualism gone mad?

I think there is a problem of the availability of guns here, but there are other problems as well?

PERILS TO DEMOCRACY

I studied politics, principally Australian politics and democracy on two occasions, but I did not go, or else the topic was not covered, where the discourse has turned to the ways that democracy can go profoundly awry.

Australia has a long experience of liberal democracy dating from the middle of the 19th century, and sometimes it has been rough and ready, with for example the use of gerrymanders to install sectional interests in government. Second chambers were historically justified as means to limit the passions of the ignorant multitude. The Senate was a pragmatic part of the federal settlement whose principal rationale was to assuage the smaller states in population that their interests would be protected. It was not inspired by democratic principles. Under the winner take all, first past the post voting system, the Senate acted as either a rubber stamp or a roadblock, and so clothed in pragmatism proportional representation was introduced in 1948, which gave rise to the representation of independents and minor parties, and the constitutional crisis of 1975 in which the government was sacked by the Governor-General. There was, as we see from the wisdom of hindsight, an earlier premonition of this action where the Governor of New South Wales had sacked the State Government in 1938. Politics through the twentieth century were dominated by the two major parties, broadly representing labor on one hand and capital on the other.

I remember been part of a demonstration in Perth, more than thirty years ago, opposed to some measure or other. As the demonstration moved along St Georges Terrace, I remember the police taking photos of the marchers. We stood beneath the parliament of Western Australia, which loomed over us like a fortress, and I remember the people on the upper floors of the parliament spectating and being dismissive of the protesters. I remember toward the end of proceedings a section of workers took up the call for direct action by storming the doors in the face of the arrogant indifference of the government, symbolized by the building, and how the leaders of the demonstration prevailed by arguing for the longer term. The two party system was built on social and economic identification, which underwrote a pragmatic commitment to the system.

Historical judgments are always fraught without a deep understanding of history. Luminaries, including John Curtin, and lesser lights have reflected on the personal and institutional shortcomings of the political process, which as far as I can tell have always seen to be plainly evident. For example, the increasing concentration of power around the office of the Prime Minister is a long term theme. But having set out the qualification, I wonder whether we have not crossed a Rubicon with the prime ministership of John Howard and the adoption of the "war on terror".

This rhetoric is more often shallow, and often absurd, but it seeks to generate fear. The most recent instance, is the foreign ministers huffing about the poll response that recorded 84% of the Australian electorate accurately perceiving that the invasion and occupation of Iraq had increased terrorism. Earlier last month we had the floundering and foolish George Bush, for example in his intimate conversations with journalists says that he is acting to protect them from the terrorists. As has been documented in doing so he is removing fundamental principles such as As has been documented in doing so he is removing fundamental principles such as habeus corpus - what would William Penn make of that - and the promotion of torture, presumably so the facts can be twisted around the truth, and the truth be twisted around the facts. Still we might contend with the consistent public opinion of Iraqis, who seem well aware of the reasons for the invasion and occupation, and demand the invaders leave.

Rhetoric is as old as democracy. It is not the issue, even when it is trumpeted by major commercial media outlets combined with a government imposed straightening of the public media, in our case the ABC, so that they serve up government propaganda as we can regularly see on ABC Online. Propaganda only matters if it changes behavior. I know that I am not supposed to say this, but I cannot get out of mind that very capable political operator Joseph Goebbels said in effect we have to tailor our message to our audience, some will be easier to win over than others, but our real test will be Berlin that had a sophisticated political culture.

Spin is part of the discipline that a political leader must master, and the media cycle must be managed, and the media budget available to governments, when skillfully employed, an advantage of incumbency. The media cease to independent commentators but seem to become part of the process, or at least that is the danger. Nor do they seem to see their role as challenging the deep framing of the debate, whoever does that most successfully wins, especially when combined with focus groups and marginal seat strategies.

For the House of Representatives, success in winning the marginals is all that matters. The Senate represents the second vote, and allows for strategic voting, which can have unpredictable results, but nevertheless are dominated by the preference agendas of the major parties in a list system.

The bitterness of defeat, and the triumphalism of victory, an Australian characteristic in blood sports, not least cricket, no doubt had the effect of sharpening John Howard's approach to elections and government. The adoption of the Republican party play book has been evident for some time. We can observe from afar how the effect of those strategies have brought a proud republic to its knees to grovel in shame curiously it seems by elevating mediocrity combined with the rule of inside operators, and it probably will continue to exercise an invidious effect on Australian institutions and democracy, more particularly, despite protestations of innocence, Howard has introduced the instruments of class war with his Industrial Relations legislation. Howard builds his triumph on convincing lower class Australians, his battlers, to vote against their economic interests and for the fake nostrums of social conservatism, such as the nonsense about Australian Values.

This set of developments, both of long and recent history of political trends and technological developments, is taking place in the context of the war on terror. What is sometimes forgotten is that the war on terror is in fact a war on liberal democracy, as it is intended to be by the terrorists. They say, for instance, that we have suffered the effects of autocratic government combined with torture, as in Egypt, long supported by the Americans and their allies, so why should not the West suffer as we have? The reasons for the invasion of Iraq are well understood by the Iraqi people, and that is why they consistently and overwhelmingly demand the invaders and occupiers leave.

There are examples of democracies that descended in dictatorship and torture, in particular Germany and the Third Reich, and Argentina and the dictatorship of Juan Peron. No doubt they have lessons of which we should be aware, but I am not convinced those examples fit the Australian experience. We can see elements in those historical cases that may serve as warnings and lessons. In Germany you see the use of propaganda. You see the example of "war on terror" in the invasion of Czechoslovakia. The persecution of the Jews may stand as an indictment of both European governments and Churches. Argentina, I think is fair to say, was for historical reasons, a more divided society than Australia, and here I think, much as they are maligned, elites part an important role, with a weaker institutional basis than we have as a given.

Still much as we might scorn the proposition the world changed when the aircraft were flown into the Twin Towers in 2001, much as it was supposed to do with that rifle shot in Sarajevo in 1914, the conclusion cannot be avoided that liberal democracy is now under threat. Perhaps it is axiomatic that ignorance is always a danger, to democracy as it is to our personal well being.

Despite our personal mediocrity some of us have been privileged with a formal education of the half blind. We must speak, if only on a soapbox on an empty street corner, for it seems no one else will, who no doubt infinitely wiser talks on this matter.

MYTHOS ON LOGOS

I made reference to the "Mythos on Logos" argument on Andrew Bartlett's blog which is apparently well known to people who study Ancient Greece. Needless to observe, I do not know much about it, but I was reminded when I read Karen Armstrong's Wikipedia entry of reading about it in Robert Pirsig's Zen and the Art of Motor Cycle Maintenance.Isn't Google a marvel? Matt Kundert covers the issue in a way that makes sense to me, and in doing so points to much I simply did not get, as per the Glasses Analogy in Pirsig's other novel, Lila. There is also an interview between Robert Pirsig and an interlocutor, via email, called Julian Baggini.

I am delighted to keep on stumpling across things, that I unconsciously knew must be there. For example, Gerald Hall writes:

If the task of philosophy is to understand reality, and reality is something other than myself or my specific culture or worldview, then philosophy needs to become an intercultural activity. This has not always been the case. If I assume that my culture is singularly gifted with access to truth, the philosophical task is primarily pedagogical and dialectical. However, once it is admitted that the other who does not share my cultural worldview is an original source of human understanding, traditional philosophy is called upon to unmask its pretensions of universal understanding. The same is true for theology.

I stumbled over these propositions arisign from what the Pope said. I suspect that the mythos and logos understanding is important to an endeavour to pursue reconciliation from which to construct peace and justice.