Category Archives: Politics

Coalition dog-whistles as the election countdown continues

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THE Liberal-National coalition which forms the opposition in Australia has just confirmed that it is the party of xenophobes by proposing that whenever asylum-seekers are allowed to move into a neighbourhood on bridging visas, the people staying there and the police should be notified.

This is dog-whistle politics of the lowest kind, but the Coalition will do anything to get votes. A federal election is scheduled for September 14.

Should this extend to the asylum-seekers who are granted permanent residence? Or does the granting of such status suddenly make the asylum-seeker a person of good character?

The irony of this proposal is that Scott Morrison, the immigration spokesman for the Coalition, claims to be a practising Christian! Yeah, sure.

There is a streak of racism which is part of the body politic in Australia and that is very much present within the Coalition.

In the past, John Howard has displayed a kind of closet racism in his bid to stay in power. The 2001 election was shamelessly built on the arrival of asylum-seekers in a ship called the Tampa. Howard and his ministers lied their way to electoral victory on the backs of these poor souls.

And Howard continued in this vein right to the end of his political career. Ironically, he was voted out by immigrants who had grown to a pretty large number is his seat of Bennelong. Sweet revenge, indeed.

But the dog-whistle is still present in Coalition ranks. And it is blown whenever needed. As it has been today.

Xenophon should come into the 21st century

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AN Australian senator goes to Malaysia on an unofficial visit. His intention is to meddle in local politics. And when he gets thrown out of the country, he makes a noise!

What did he expect? That any white man who goes to an Asian country during election time, and is known to be a supporter of the opposition, will be welcomed with open arms? Perhaps Nick Xenophon has forgotten that the colonial era is long over.

Asian countries run their own affairs today. They realy do not need people from so-called Western democracies coming over and trying to lecture them on how to run their own affairs.

Xenophon expected to be treated like any Australian politician who goes there on an official visit. When he was detained at the airport and deported, he made an almighty fuss.

Australia deports people willy-nilly nearly every month. Back in 2005, Scott Parkin, a political activist from the US, was thrown out by the then government – for no reason.

And every now and then asylum-seekers are deported from Australia, people who often go back and are killed in their homw countries. This is in direct violation of Australia’s obligations under the UN Human Rights Convention, but hey, for people like Xenophon charity doesn’t begin at home.

The man is too busy trying to reform the poor, uneducated Asians, he has no time to see the shit in his own backyard.

Xenophon is living in the past. Asian countries passed the stage of taking orders from their former colonial masters in the mid-1990s. Twenty years on, we have a man expecting red-carpet treatment when he tries to meddle in other countries’ affairs.

Have a cold bath, sir.

USA 2012: the land of poll rigging

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AS THE 2012 US presidential election nears, the ugly spectre of poll rigging has reared its head, despite the fact that the last poll saw the Republican candidate, John McCain, being wiped out.

Given that there are cases pending over laws that insist on photo IDs if one wants to vote, the Democrats are now recalling the polls of 2000 and 2004, when the Republicans rigged the polls in Florida and Ohio respectively to get George the younger into the White House. Voting patterns show that black and Latino voters go for the Democrats to the extent of about 80 per cent, hence it is logical to assume that blocking these categories will strengthen the Republican vote. Many counties in Ohio have black majorities, and the rigging concentrated on these areas.

Thus it is not surprising that Struggle, a film on the 2004 rigging should be shown right now. The documentary was screened in a small theatre in Columbus, Ohio, on Tuesday (September 25) night, a rush job, but one that serves as a grim reminder of how powerful political operatives can function when they want to get their man into office.

In 2000, it was the Florida secretary of state, Kathleen Harris, who ensured that masses of black voters were knocked off the rolls so that the state would swing Bush’s way; even then, it was only stopping a recount that ensured Bush would slip through. In 2004, it was Harris’s Ohio counterpart, J. Kenneth Blackwell, who did the honours for the Republicans.

Crude means were used in 2004 – less voting machines than needed were provided, voters were sent from polling station to polling station until time ran out, voters were locked out with the excuse that time had run out, the machines themselves were rigged, and no paper trail was provided for cross-checking.

The exit polls in Ohio in 2004 showed John Kerry having a four per cent lead over Bush among male voters and a six per cent lead among females. Yet the final “result” showed Bush winning overall by 6.7 per cent, something incredible if one respects the laws of statistics.

This year, Democrats know that the incumbent, President Barack Obama, leads Republican Mitt Romney by pretty big margins in what are considered battleground states – for example, Obama has an eight per cent lead in Ohio and a four per cent lead in Florida as of September 25. They figure that Republicans are getting desperate now; after all, there are just six weeks to go for their man to swing things around.

Struggle director Roger Hill admits that the film is a rush job and that he is trying his level best to polish it up in order that it can be released on the web for people to be educated and avoid being cheated. Free Press Columbus editor Bob Fitrakis explained the mechanics of rigging to the small crowd that viewed the film in Columbus; he is a veteran of this kind of exercise.

But it shows one thing – the squeaky clean image that the US of A has been projecting for so long is pure fantasy; the reality is that crooks in the US, like those in every other part of the world, will stick at nothing to achieve their ends. The land of the brave and the free is also the land of A-grade cheats and thieves.

Dinosaurs should not be given oxygen

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AUSTRALIA is a sexist country. This is something I’ve said before. It bears repeating in view of the behaviour of a Liberal party hanger-on this week.

Grahame Morris is a former chief of staff to John Howard, who held the office of prime minister from 1996 to 2007. For some strange reason, Morris, who is best described as a slime, is given lots of air by the radio stations and TV channels to comment on political matters. He is a card-carrying Liberal apologist but is still championed.

Part of this refusal to let deadwood like Morris go is responsible for what happened. The co-host of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s 7.30 program, Leigh Sales, conducted an interview with the Opposition and Liberal Party leader, Tony Abbott, last week. It was a good interview and Sales did what a good journalist is supposed to do – she asked tough questions.

Abbott had not done his homework and came off looking rather foolish.

A few days later, another ABC presented, Linda Mottram, had Morris on the line. She asked him about the interview. Morris response was that Sales tended to be a cow in some of her interviews.

But why was Morris on the line at all? Why are fools like this given oxygen.

Sales responded by calling Morris a dinosaur on Twitter. His sexism should have been dissected and he should have been given a blasting by the politicians whose arses he licks.

But nobody wants to point to the extent of sexism in this country – the last time someone did so was back at the time of the elections in 2010 when a survey clearly indicated that many people had not voted for Julia Gillard because she is a woman.

Fossils like Morris should be put out to pasture.

Thomas Friedman, fraud supreme

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WHAT does one call a writer who pretends that the life experiences of others are his own, and passes them off as such? A fraud? A poser? A plagiarist? I have not been able to find le mot juste.

Lest there is any mystery over whom one is referring to, I am talking about the diplomatic editor of the New York Times, Thomas L. Friedman.

Friedman has been ridiculed by journalists like Matt Taibbi and Glenn Greenwald, and rightly so, for his ridiculous use of language and his incoherent writings which appear in what is apparently the greatest newspaper in the US. (That tells us why newspapers are closing down rapidly in that country.)

I’ve always felt that Friedman is an average reporter but a nothing writer. He cannot think straight and comes up with the daftest analogies and ideas to try and convey some meaning about complex situations. He fails, miserably. Maybe, as Taibbi puts it so eloquently, his editors are drinking rubbing alcohol.

But this kind of intellectual dishonesty aside, I never suspected that Friedman was also making up the anecdotes that go into his reporting. That was until I read this great piece by the late Alexander Cockburn.

Cockburn writes of a time in 1984 when his younger brother, Patrick, was in Beirut as the Middle East correspondent for the Financial Times. Friedman was doing the same job, for the New York Times.

One day, the pair returned to the Commodore Hotel, the place where most foreign journalists were staying, after a bloody day in the field – Lebanon was in the midst of a civil war. Friedman went upstairs to write his copy, Patrick found his way to the bar and sat down with a glass of whisky.

A little while later, a Shia gunamn entered the bar and proceeded to smash all the bottles in the premises. He did not spot Patrick, who was, according to Alexander, left with two conclusions: one, that “journalists drinking Scotch were unlikely to be viewed with fondness by the fundamentalist gunman”, and secondly, “he was drinking the last Scotch likely to be consumed in the Commodore for quite a while”.

According to Alexander, when Friedman descended later, Patrick told him about the incident. A few days later, it duly figured in one of Friedman’s despatches. But by the time Friedman wrote his first book, From Beirut to Jerusalem, in 1989, the incident had morphed into something that happened to Friedman! I checked it – you can find Friedman’s deceit on page 225 of the book as published by Fontana Press. “My first glimpse of Beirut’s real bottom came at the Commodore Hotel bar on February 7, 1984… I was enjoying a ‘quiet’ lunch in the Commodore restaurant that day when…”

Alexander put it down to Friedman’s monumental conceit. He is probably right.

But this is also fraud, pure and simple. It follows in the great American tradition of stealing and then calling something your own.

Blurring the message

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GONE are the days when politicians would speak directly to the people in order to communicate their message. These days, politicians use the media as a shield to try and get the message across.

That’s why they fail to win popular support.

It’s difficult to understand why, if politicians are seeking public support, they cannot go out and interact with the source of their power. Unless, of course, they are bad communicators, are afraid of being embarrassed in public, or are simply ill at ease with crowds.

The Australian Opposition leader, Tony Abbott, is not the most intelligent person in politics in the country; he is not an attractive individual in many ways. But he is brave enough to go out in public and mix with people. Sometimes he comes off as a buffoon, at others, h strikes a chord with the crowd. But no matter what the outcome, he takes that risk.

That is why a man who is detested by the intelligentsia at large now looks very much like becoming the next prime minister when the country goes to the polls in 2013.

Undoubtedly, once Abbott comes to power, people will tire of him pretty soon as he is largely a policy-free zone. He is akin to the premier of the state of Victoria, Ted Baillieu, who was elected in 2010 and had no real plan for the state. Hence he does nothing. He has no ideas, no vision, no plans. He just wants to keep things on an even keel – and that is a difficult proposition during a time when global economic conditions are conspiring against Australia.

Using the media as a shield is not always a good idea. At times, one comes across a journalist and then the politician stands exposed. Hence politicians tend to favour those who will give them an easy ride – people whom one cannot call journalists, people who are more oriented to behave as PR professionals would.

There is a school of thought that manipulation of public sentiment can continue ad infinitum. This is a serious mistake. At some stage, the people do react and will not take it any longer. News Corporation, the biggest media organisation in the world, found this out in a different context when it hacked into the phone of a deal girl and gave the impression that she was still alive; the public reaction forced the prime minister of Britain to act and now the brown stuff has fallen all over the company.

But taking a risk is not part of a politician’s routine. He or she follows the dictates of spinmeisters until the day of being ejected from that seat arrives. Then comes a vow to do it better the next time around. A time which, sometimes, does not eventuate.

The China wave

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PROFESSOR Zhang Weiwei is not particularly well-known around the world. An author and former translator for the Chinese supreme leader Deng Xiaoping, Zhang is, however, a very important figure in China.

He has written a ground-breaking book, The China Wave – which has not, as far as I can make out, been translated into English – about China’s way of approaching development and one that is attracting great interest in his home country.

In an interview with the one news service that seems to have a knack for ferreting out the interesting and the newsworthy – Al Jazeera – Zhang made some very interesting observations.

In the West, whenever China is discussed, there are plenty of Western “experts” on call who offer opinion after opinion, many of which are, frankly, silly and born of a lack of education. Western news services seem to fight shy of calling on the Chinese themselves to analyse their own country.

Zhang’s point of view, is, in this context, refreshing, simply because he turns the lens on aspects of China which nobody so far has even thought relevant.

For example, one of the West’s preoccupations is that in a few decades China could well become the most powerful country in the world; with that as background, Western countries are forever postulating how China should become a democracy.

But Zhang points to an aspect of this democracy debate that has never been highlighted – if China had had a one-man one-vote system, he says, the country would have had a peasant government given its population structure. Such a government would be very nationalistic – and would probably go to war with Taiwan. Or even with Japan.

Is that what the West wants? Certainly not, says Zhang, and that is a very good reason why China needs the kind of government it has at the current time.

Another argument that the West uses against China is the question of individual rights. Zhang points out given China’a past – when right from the 1800s the longest period of internal stability has been eight or nine years – the average Chinese values internal stability much more. For the last three decades, there have been no invasions or internal uprisings in China and from the Chinese point of view that is much more important than the freedom to protest.

The West often tries to pass off its system of government – where accountability comes at the ballot box every three or four years – as superior to that in China where a nine-man politbureau is the supreme decision-making body. But as Zhang points out, the basic criterion for any member of this body is that he or she should have been a successful governor of a province for at least two terms. And as he points out, these are provinces which often have four or five times the population of an European country.

Zhang even has a little dig at the US here, pointing out that under such a system as this, a man like George W. Bush would never have been chosen as a leader.

As to Western fears of Chinese expansionism, Zhang is quick to point out that Beijing built a great wall to keep others out; in other words, its main preoccupation is internal social stability, not taking over and running the affairs of others.

He emphasises the value that China places on its past, the fact that people always look to history to understand the present and the future. Despite the fact that Mandarin has been in use for nearly 3500 years, he points out that the teachings of Confucius can still be read and understood by the average educated school child. This is in stark contrast to the fact that even a professor at an English university often cannot understand the works of Shakespeare as they were originally written.

Thus, China has a vast store of historic cultural wealth in its vaults that it can draw on and use while deciding about its future. This is not available to the West.

Zhang also points out that while the West is prone to laud its systems as superior, there has been no job creation in the US since 2008. By contrast in China, every year for the last three decades, there has been growth and job creation at every level, down to the smallest unit under governance. Why should China then adopt Western systems which have been shown to be inferior?

In short, Zhang shows that it is often more useful to look at the East through its own eyes, rather than consistently yielding to the big mistake of trying to measure Eastern achievements with a Western tape measure.

Burma: the gold rush has begun

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THE push for democracy in Burma by the West has been going on for just one reason: resources.

Burma has gold, copper, tungsten, timber and oil in abundant quantities. All these years, the political situation and tight economic sanctions have not permitted exploration by Western companies. But now oil companies in the US are straining at the leash and waiting anxiously for the change to fly into Rangoon.

The Americans have already lifted some sanctions on Rangoon even though the only move towards a less rigid form of government has been an election in which the National League for Democracy was allowed to contest 45 of 664 seats. But what little has happened will be enough of an excuse for the Western carpetbaggers to start pouring the gates of the airport in Rangoon, the first real godl-rush since military rule was clamped on the country in 1962.

The Europeans are due to review sanctions on the country later this month and companies like BP and Shell are likely to be among the first companies to head for Burma once sanctions are, as expected, eased.

Nevertheless it looks like the generals who ran the country this long are now ready to put their hands out for American and other currencies. Like Suharto was encouraged to take over and divide the spoils in Indonesia in 1965, there will be a big auction in Burma too.

The American involvement in Afghanistan has turned out to be a total loss in terms of mining concessions and this makes the clinching of deals in Burma even more urgent. China and India have been the two big winners in Afghanistan and Canada picked up a solitary concession.

The Americans apparently believed they were entitled to get something, despite the mess they created in the country; Pentagon officials have even been heard complaining about it, claiming that they had done a lot for the country and got nothing in return! Which gives one a good idea about American naivety.

The Burmese people are dirt-poor and probably willing to work for less than the Chinese; China has already got a headstart in Burma and will be looking to consolidate. Thailand is another country which is looking to make some moolah in Burma. And one can’t discount India poking its nose in too.

Pakistan feels the blowback from the US

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WHEN Britain engineered the split of the Indian subcontinent back in 1947, there was little indication that the colonial masters would face a big blowback. The old policy of divide and rule was used to give the Muslims a separate state, resulting in one of the bigger bloodbaths in history as people fought during the partition.

India has gone on to become a force in its own right and somehow has survived any number of problems; it has been under democratic rule for all but 26 months since the partition. Pakistan, on the other hand, has been under various forms of dictatorship during its history and become something of a vassal state for the US.

Every state that has gained nuclear weapons has done so in order to be taken seriously by the countries that make global policy; only in Pakistan’s case has this not worked. The US continues to do what it wants within Pakistan’s borders and the killing of 24 innocent civilians recently is but the latest indication that it has scant regard for Pakistan’s internal problems.

But no matter what abuse it receives at the hands of the US, Pakistan cannot move away. Without American aid, the country will wither and die. It has no option but to cater to American demands, outrageous as they often are. It has to subjugate itself to American foreign policy and only hope that Washington can muster the cash to send across every year.

During the years of the cold war, India was firmly in the Soviet camp. But economic dependence did not develop; India has always been able to meet its own internal and external commitments from its own funds. And as the 1990s came along and India became a place where foreign companies came and did business, Delhi has become something of a rising power, able to tell the Americans what they should do and not the other way around.

American companies are now often dependent on the success of their branches in India to report a profit; were any of them to be asked to leave, it would impact adversely on the company’s bottomline. The US needs India, not merely for its economic well-being but also as a bulwark against the rising might of China.

Pakistan, sadly, has not been able to develop its own industry sector even a tenth as much as India. The people are essentially the same but the lack of political stability and the level of corruption have got in the way of the country developing as a whole. And Pakistan has always had to please its masters in the West, something that India has not had to do.

There is a myth in foreign policy circles that India would like to destabilise Pakistan. In truth, the last thing that India wants is an unstable Pakistan; it views with horror even the thought that there could be another 150 million who could become refugees and seek refuge within its borders. Memories of the 1971 war that led to the creation of Bangladesh have not gone away altogether.

For Pakistan, the only option is to wean itself away from the US and try to attach itself more firmly onto the Chinese teat. China already provides assistance to Pakistan; the latter will have to solicit a much more closer relationship if it does not want to have its own people dying in numbers due to US drone attacks every now and then.

The people of Pakistan have suffered a great deal due to the machinations of their rulers. At least in the case of many other countries, it could be said that the mess they are in is of their own making. But in Pakistan’s case. its people live in a mess of other countries’ making.

Australia gets ready to bend over for the US – again

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After being in force for seven years, the free trade agreement Australia has with the US has yielded the former little benefit. The US has been the net beneficiary – last financial year imports from the US totalled $26 billion while exports were $9 billion. [1]

The figures for 2004-05 were $21.4 billion and $9.2 billion respectively. [1]

Given this, one would naturally conclude Australia would be wary of further deals that would expose it to being taken advantage of by the US.

Surprisingly, such is not the case. Since March 2010, Australia has been talking to the US and seven other countries about a deal known as the Trans Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPPA), one that was supposed to be finalised in Peru in the week ended October 28. President Barack Obama is expected to announce a framework for the deal at the forthcoming APEC summit in Honolulu.

The talks have been held in secret and there has been practically no coverage in the mainstream media. The seven other countries involved are Chile, Vietnam, Malaysia, Singapore, New Zealand, Brunei and Peru.

But, despite US efforts to maintain secrecy, there have been leaks: in February, the draft text of the IP section of the TPPA was leaked online [2] to an organisation known as Knowledge Ecology International.

And just before the talks in Peru more documents were leaked to the Citizens Trade Campaign, an US advocacy group. [3]

According to the leaked documents, one of the chief aims of the TPPA is to empower big drug companies to attack schemes such as Australia’s Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS) and New Zealand’s Pharmaceutical Management Agency (PHARMAC) that provide citizens of these countries with lower-priced drugs.

If the proposals made by the US are accepted, it would mean greater restrictions on generic competition and rising medicine costs for the Asia-Pacific region.

The federal government has indicated it may accede to US proposals: back in 2010 – the first round was held in Canberra – the Australian ambassador to the US, Kim Beazley, was quoted as telling a US hearing that “everything” was on the table. [4] Australian Trade Minister Simon Crean has reportedly said the same thing. [5]

The leaked draft includes a proposal to lengthen and create new pharmaceutical monopolies, grant additional exclusive controls over clinical trial data and eliminate safeguards against the abuse of patients.

The US proposal seeks to ramp up second-use patents for minor variations on known drugs and any new uses of these medicines.

There is also a proposal to increase drug monopolies by patent term adjustments that will delay the bringing to market of generic equivalents of drugs; this will mean higher prices for patients.

The US wants to remove any safeguards against the abuse of patents and prevent third parties from challenging patent applications. It wants to extend the control over clinical trial data, providing an extra three years of data exclusivity for new uses of existing products.

This is in addition to five years for first uses of the same product.

Recent events have indicated that the federal government is moving to soften the public to the changes that will come with the TPPA – after all, Australia’s only response when told “jump” by the US, has generally been to respond “how high?”

For one, the idea of changes in the Medicare system has been floated recently; in the last week of October Health Minister Nicola Roxon floated the idea of a revamp of the $17 billion system. [6]

Apart from the impact in the IP area, the TPPA also seeks to make it easier for foreign companies to control the conditions for investment; such clauses exist in the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).

In the 1990s, when Canada mooted the idea of plain paper packaging for cigarettes, it was threatened with legal action by Philip Morris. Any such action would have been judged by an international body, and not Canada’s judicial system as this is specified by NAFTA. The result was that Ottawa backed down. [7]

Australia is contemplating a similar move by July next year and has been threatened with legal action by Philip Morris; the government recently said [6] that it would delay the adoption of plain paper packaging until December next year.

If, as seems likely, the TPPA is finalised by then, Philip Morris would have a much better chance of winning its case because it would no longer be judged by the Australian judicial system but by an outside tribunal.

In effect, what this does is to compromise the sovereignty of a country to make its own laws.

The IP draft of the TPPA contains some scary proposals. Draconian measures are proposed to apply to ISPs. Laws will have to be put in place to require ISPs to co-operate with copyright owners in preventing unauthorised storage and transmission of copyrighted materials.

Legal liability for ISPs will extend beyond the provisions of the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Internet users will, by law, have to be identified by an ISP if copyright owners have given “effective notification of claimed infringement”.

There is also a proposal to extend the copyright period to a minimum of 95 years from creation of a work to a maximum of 120 years. Parallel trade in any copyrighted goods is ruled out altogether in the draft.

There is no indication that the Labor government will oppose the US on any front. Indeed, when the US free trade agreement was negotiated in 2004, the prime minister John Howard thought he would get some sweeteners from the US because of his close relationship with George W. Bush. But Australia got nothing. The present government has nothing like the relationship that Howard had with Bush; its chances of getting something from the TPPA are even more remote.

As the US moves into its election cycle, campaign donations assume even more importance. Media and drug companies are big donors and have to be kept happy.

Obama will need all the money he can get to fight for re-election next year, given that his poll ratings are low. The state of the economy is no help to him.

In that context, the rights or otherwise of Australians are of no importance. There are bigger fish to fry and the US appears intent on giving its big corporates the pound of flesh they are after.

1.http://www.theage.com.au/business/free-trade-pact-a-dud-for-australia-20111104-1mzze.html

2.http://keionline.org/sites/default/files/tpp-10feb2011-us-text-ipr-chapter.pdf

3.http://www.citizenstrade.org/ctc/blog/2011/10/22/leaked-trans-pacific-fta-texts-reveal-u-s-undermining-access-to-medicine/

4.http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/politics/weve-nothing-to-gain-from-us-trade-deal-20100321-qo2v.html

5.http://www.smh.com.au/national/nations-ponder-terms-for-pacific-free-trade-20100315-q9qd.html

6.http://www.theage.com.au/national/plain-packaging-for-cigarettes-delayed-for-five-months-20111101-1mtuv.html

7.http://www.thespec.com/opinion/columns/article/577718–the-carlisle-quarry-and-nafta