According to Judge Christopher Weeramantry, launching a new “International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons”:
The main reason we are held hostage by the most destructive technology on earth is simple: the complete lack of international resolve to ban nuclear weapons and banish them from the arsenals of the world.
Malcom Fraser also likes the idea.
While I’m sure the good judge, and the medical professionals behind MAPW are sincere, I’m really perplexed as to how they think this can actually be achieved any time soon. There are plenty of other reasons, other than laziness, why nuclear weapons cannot be abolished by the stroke of an expensive fountain pen on a treaty document:
Continue reading ‘Eliminating nuclear weapons??’
As Ken L reports over at Surfdom, Howard is flicking the switch to philosopher king, giving a speech in Brisbane today which as Guy at Polemica writes, is supposed to “position him as a political visionary”.
Mr Howard will today go on the offensive with the first in a series of speeches setting out a wide-ranging coalition agenda for the future with an address to the Queensland Media Club in Brisbane today.
His speech, entitled Australia Rising, will attack Mr Rudd’s workplace policy.
Mr Howard also hinted at a strategy focusing on a future dominated by the economic powerhouses of Asia.
“Today’s speech will focus, amongst other things, on the kind of world that we will all face, by say the year 2020,” Mr Howard said in his weekly radio address.
Obviously Howard is trying to counter the view that he’s old and out of ideas, and that he has no imagination and no policy creativity in the areas that will count in the future - climate change and productivity. Labor under Rudd has been very successful at demonstrating that the Opposition understands the imperatives facing the nation, that the government has dropped the ball on them, and that the ALP has pragmatic and appealling policies to meet our most pressing challenges.
Continue reading ‘Be your own focus group’
While simply following the historical wire of the small Jewish nation, one sees that it could not have another end. It is even praised it to have left Egypt like a horde of robbers, carrying all that it had borrowed of the Egyptians: it makes glory never not have saved neither old age, neither the sex, nor childhood, in the villages and the boroughs which it could seize. It dares to spread out an irreconcilable hatred against all the nations; it revolts against all its Masters. Always superstitious, always avid of the good of others, always barbarian, crawling in misfortune, and insolente in prosperity. Here are what were the Jews with the eyes of the Greeks and the Romans who could read their books; but, with the eyes of the Christians lit by the faith, they were our precursors, they prepared us the way, they were the heralds of Providence.
Voltaire, Essai sur les Moeurs et l’Esprit des Nations tr as Test on manners and the Espritdes Nations (Google, 2007 – my emphasis)
Sometimes, you just have to make do. I couldn’t find an English translation of Voltaire’s Essai sur les Moeurs et l’Esprit des Nations available on-line so, in this post, I’ll be working from the Google translation of an on-line copy in the original French. Where I can, I’ll render the Google transliteration into something a little more readable.
Continue reading ‘Sour Cherries from the Orchard of M Arouet’
DeviousDiva, a pseudonymous British expat living and blogging in Greece, has been harassed by Greek nationalist bloggers, threatening to out her, for writing a series on the maltreatment of the Roma in Athens. Thankfully the major culprit blog has now decided to withdraw DD’s private details from the posts criticising her coverage of the issue, but the issue has drawn out more discussion of pseudonymity/anonymity/standing-by-your-words etc yet again.
Sheelzebub wrote on it at Pinko Feminist Hellcat and Pandagon, and there’s an amusing sidejourney into charges of hypocrisy from Vox Day well covered by Chris Clarke (also Pandagon).
Lindsay Beyerstein of Majikthise concludes:
So, thanks, racists, for calling attention to the plight of the Roma in Athens–something you were so scared the world would find out about that you tried to silence the young mother who blew the whistle.
Yep. DD was a small voice that gained some small attention. Now she’s gained a lot of attention from both traditional and new media. Will the international attention stick on the issue of the Roma? Maybe, maybe not. But thousands of people online now know about it who didn’t before because racists made threats. Jolly good own goal there, chaps.
crossposted at Hoyden About Town
It’s not only fascinating docos about Dolly that display the government’s creeping balance-isation of everything on tv. After the turkey slap stoushes of 2006, Big Brother 2007 is trimming its sails to the prevailing electoral winds. (Let’s not forget that the BB06 incident also led to crazed regulate the intertubes and all who sail in them draft bill from the immaculately coiffed but ever policy deficient Senator Coonan).
Not content with pleasing Brownies and Ruddites with a totally Green House, BB07 has an on first inspection utterly vile housemate, Joel, who is a Young Liberal:
Fact 1: Joel is an elite athlete, neat freak and young Liberal.
Fact 2: He has been known to dress as a priest to meet girls.
Yep, Joel, that’s normally a surefire way to impress the gals!
I’ll resist the temptation, at this stage, to indulge in a rant about the triumph of the airheads in the serried and designer jeaned ranks of Australia’s conservative yoof. No doubt Miranda Devine and other apostles of South Park conservatism will be proud. Or not.
But, it goes on.
Continue reading ‘BB balance’
As is well known, the execrable Difference of Opinion is a direct response to the ABC balance police agenda. (Coming to a tiny audience tomorrow - are the kiddies connected or disconnected to phones and those intertubes and “what sort of adults will the digital generation become?”). I’ve heard it suggested it should be retitled “Moral Panic Monday”.
I can’t help wondering, though, if the rather intriguingly bizarre appearance of Dolly for two episodes of Australian Story (yes, the incredible true story of Dolly and his staffers and how funny Condi finds his wit!!!) is some sort of sop to compensate the Foreign Minister for the absolutely excellent Curtin. After all, we know that Dolly has strong views on the wartime PM.
Incidentally, how good was Geoff Morrell as Chifley?
“This is a nice piece,” Morrell says. “The writing doesn’t get in the way of the story. And there’s an interesting parallel to present-day politics. At that time we really were just the providers of fodder for the protection of the Empire. To have a prime minister who stood up to these foreign leaders and who genuinely had the interests of the people at heart, that really does bring into perspective some of the stuff going on today.”
And also not quite incidentally, can anyone imagine today’s men of steel straw facing the sorts of challenges our WW2 pollies met?
Continue reading ‘Dolly’s balance’
Former Senator and aspirant to the title of Australia’s own Iron Lady, Bronwyn Bishop, seems to have adopted a new role model. It used to be Margaret Thatcher – now she’s looking to the US and the example of a notorious former Senator.
On April 3rd, Dr Alex Wodak, was called before the House of Representatives Standing Committee on unAustralian Activities Family and Human Services as part of its inquiry into ‘The impact of illicit drug use on families’. Bronwyn is the chair of the committee. Here’s the transcript of what happened immediately after Dr Wodak had finished reading his opening statement: Continue reading ‘Tough but on What, Exactly?’
A guest post by Bernice Balconey
Lancet Editorial Volume 369, Number 9570, 21 April 2007
Australia: the politics of fear and neglect
Australian clinical and public-health research is an emblem of excellence across the Asia-Pacific region. That enviable position is being put at risk by Prime Minister John Howard’s indifference to the academic medical community and his profound intolerance to those less secure than himself and his administration. The latest example of his complacency was a comment he made on a Melbourne radio station last week. He said that people living with HIV should not be allowed to enter and live in Australia—“prima facie, noâ€?, he asserted. Australia already has tough immigration rules for those with HIV. All hopeful migrants aged over 15 years are tested for the virus. Their applications stumble if they are found to be positive.
To any visitor, Australian culture feels progressive and inclusive. This attractive exterior belies a strong undercurrent of political conservatism, which Howard is ruthlessly tapping into. As the Australian columnist Janet Albrechtson wrote recently, “the Australian polity is inherently conservative…a conservative coalition has ruled for 42 of 58 years�. 2007 is an election year for Australia. How the country interprets its past and sees its hopes for the future will be critical not only for the health of its people but also for the contribution Australia makes to world health. At present, Australian politicians are scoring well below their potential.
Take Aboriginal health. The current health minister, Tony Abbott, recently insulted Aboriginal peoples by claiming that those who spoke up for indigenous health were simply “establishing politically and morally correct credentialsâ€?. On climate change, environment minister Malcolm Turnball apparently sees little new in the latest alarming assessments by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
Reviewing the effect of successive Howard administrations on Australia’s academic community since 1996, the respected scientist Ian Lowe has written that “the present government has gone to extraordinary lengths to silence independent opinion within the research communityâ€?. This year provides an opportunity at the ballot box to bring a new enlightenment to Australian health and medical science.
This is the full text of a just published editorial in The Lancet, a British-based medical journal, the second most cited medical journal in the world. Continue reading ‘The Lancing of Howard’
What are the two best posts/articles you read online this week, LarvyProdders?
A link and a short paragraph each describing what appealed to you, please.
(If you post more than two links you’ll be automoderated, sorry.)
The full report that prompted the PM’s dramatic announcement about the potential cessation of irrigation in the Murray-Darling is available at the bottom of this ABC News story.
The doomsday scenario outlined by the Prime Minister is not that likely, based on past statistics - as the irrigators have said, much of the water arrives in winter and spring, and even if there are no allocations right at the start of the season there may be some later.
That said, however, in the three weeks or so since the report (and the various other drought updates it was based on), was prepared, it has not rained in the Murray-Darling’s key catchments.
An open thread where, at your weekend leisure, you can discuss anything you like.
I read yesterday that one quarter of Australians (or, to be more accurate, one quarter of those surveyed in the Human Beliefs and Values Survey) said they wouldn’t want gay neighbours, according to Love Thy Neighbour: How Much Bigotry is there is Western Countries, a paper interpreting the survey statistics by Brisbane economist John Mangan.
His co-author was Professor Vani Borooah of the University of Ulster - an interesting little irony as the northern Irish topped the list of bigots, with 36 percent not wanting to live next door to homos and 19 percent thinking immigrants and foreign workers weren’t desirable neighbours either.
Now, there are statistics, lies, etcetera, etcetera, and I haven’t read the paper. But as one of the apparently undesirable, I find these results intriguing. It never would have occurred to me that so many of my countrypeople would not want to live next door to me. What intrigues me is exactly what they think would be the problem.
Continue reading ‘(not) Everybody loves good neighbours…’
We are afraid to put men to live and trade each on his own private stock of reason; because we suspect that this stock in each man is small, and that the individuals would do better to avail themselves of the general bank and capital of nations and of ages.
(Edmund Burke, Reflections on the French Revolution)
If you do a quick Google Search for “Edmund-Burke +own-private-stock-of-reasonâ€?, you’ll find plenty of web pages where that comment on the English attitude to reason is quoted. A few bloggers seem taken with it too. And why not? It’s such a fine, juicy looking cherry and always looks ripe for the picking. It has a certain plausibility too, once you get past the distracting metaphor. No wonder that it’s considered a good decoration for conservative confections.
Continue reading ‘Mr Burke’s Acclaimed Cherry’
There’s been some discussion on the other thread of the fact that Cho Seung-Hui was a creative writing student. Let’s dispose of the claim made by some wingnuts, desparate to throw up a smokescreen to obscure the fact that gun control is the only way to prevent such killing sprees or just deranged, that being an English major is some sign of degeneration and potential madness. The other issue raised, and it’s been raised very prominently by Cho’s English professor, Lucinda Roy, is whether action should have been taken resulting from his violent creative writing term papers. There’s an interesting article about this from Sarah Elizabeth Richards at Salon.
But I’m not sure all the issues are properly separated out. There really are a number of issues that arise for analysis and discussion.
The first point to make is that, as one of “America’s most dangerous professors”, Michael Bérubé argues at Pandagon:
The critical thing to remember is this. It is all but impossible to prevent shooting sprees before they happen. As the Chronicle of Higher Education reported yesterday, college counselors don’t have any reliable way of identifying students like Cho Seung-Hui or restraining them once they’ve been identified. Sure, it would be nice if we made it a bit more difficult for people with a documented history of mental illness to purchase guns, even as we assure everyone that we have no intention of infringing on anyone’s Second Amendment rights. But you can’t lock up people on the grounds that they have written disturbing things in their creative writing classes. You can’t profile anomalous people for preventative detention: East Asian English major — OK, boys, let’s bring him downtown for deconstructive questioning. And you can’t simply “lock down�? a campus once there’s been a shooting.
I’ve seen some commentary suggesting that the College should have informed his parents, or suspended or expelled him. But Universities are not High Schools and students are adults with rights.
Continue reading ‘Virginia Tech and (violent) creative writing’
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