Archive for the 'Foreign policy' Category

More ABC bias

Published
by
Mark
4 months ago
in Foreign policy, International and Media
. 97 Comments

I’m watching ABC tv news at the moment, and there’s a classic instance of the sort of thing I was complaining about in a previous post. A story by Greg Jennett on Kevin Rudd’s trip to Japan was introduced and framed with the claim that it’s “an open secret” that the Japanese government was deeply unhappy with Rudd’s supposed focus on China. The only support for this “objective news” in the story was two grabs from Opposition shadow foreign minister Andrew Robb, whose partisan spin was identical to the alleged facts in the intro from the newsreader and in reporter Jennett’s story.

So “news” becomes the press gallery narrative, which is identical with the opposition’s claims.

Wouldn’t any journalist worth the name have actually tried to ask the Japanese government what they were thinking? Continue reading ‘More ABC bias’

Australia’s War is over II

Published
by
Mark
4 months ago
in Ethics, Foreign policy, Howardia, International, Iraq, Law, Media and Middle East
. 55 Comments

There’s been some comment here on a previous thread about why Australia’s withdrawal of combat troops from Iraq has stimulated so little debate - either in the media or in the blogosphere. My comment on why that might be so is here, and I’d add that the rather narrow concept of the political in Australian public discourse tends to mean that issues which are “politically neutralised” are quickly forgotten. That’s most unfortunate - because going to war on the basis of specious legal justifications and distortions and lies about intelligence is hardly a trivial matter. We owe it to ourselves as a nation to ensure this never occurs again, and the risk of it occurring again is surely heightened by a failure to remember.

I want to highlight in this post two exceptions to the rule of silence. First, in the blogosphere, Gandhi has written a comprehensive post analysing the week’s news and developments, highlighting the attempts of some in legal and activist circles to bring John Howard’s actions before the notice of the International Criminal Court, a move supported by Democrats leader Lyn Allison. Similar action in the United Kingdom was the subject of much publicity and debate, but there’s been little reporting of the substance of the brief prepared or its justification in this country. It’s important to remember that John Howard - I suspect on legal advice - ruled out “regime change”, human rights abuses or democratic goals as sufficient conditions for the Iraq War in a speech to the National Press Club on 14 March 2003. According to Howard at the time, only Saddam’s purported possession of weapons of mass destruction constituted an appropriate ground for the decision to go to war. All his later bloviating, by his own standards, was just political piffle.

It may well be that Howard had advice that the only legal justification for war was the resolutions of the UN Security Council regarding weapons inspections. That was certainly the advice given to the British government, as we know after a series of inquiries in the UK. I’m no lawyer, but it might well be that this figleaf provides sufficient legal cover for Howard to escape any culpability for his actions. It may also be that the subsequent UN recognition of the occupation of Iraq would provide some sort of retrospective immunity. Nevertheless, given the enormous importance of clarifying the legal basis or otherwise for wars of pre-emption, it seems to me eminently desirable that such an argument - an argument based on international law - be tested in an international tribunal.

That takes us to the issue of intelligence, because as we now know, Saddam Hussein had ended his WMD program in the 1990s. Continue reading ‘Australia’s War is over II’

Keating v. Rudd

Published
by
Mark
4 months ago
in APEC, China, Developing world, Foreign policy, International, Media and Politics
. 45 Comments

Much as I like the bloke, the headline on one of several op/eds Paul Keating has in the papers today criticising Kevin Rudd’s Asian Union idea says it all really - “I got it right the first time”.

I found it interesting this week to see what some of my students in Political Communication at QUT - doing group presentations on political leadership and campaigns - made of PJK. Most of them were very young indeed when Paul Keating was PM, and landmarks such as his Redfern Speech, or for that matter, the famous hand on the Queen incident aren’t present in their recollection. Researching Keating from scratch, as it were, you turn up lots of stuff about his colourful rhetoric, but seemingly, you also come to the conclusion that the man isn’t happy with his place in history - which I think is probably right.

When I was thinking about this, I decided that his criticism of Julia Gillard and Kevin Rudd’s advisors last year probably related to this - because of his great hatred of John Howard, he was worried that Labor wouldn’t get over the line when Howard’s defeat looked so likely, and speculating in his mind how he might have fought such a campaign.

I’m still a little suspicious that PJK might have, in one way or another, contributed to the spate of criticism of Kevin Rudd early this week on the grounds of supposed policy drift. Continue reading ‘Keating v. Rudd’

Australia’s war is over

Published
by
Kim
4 months, 1 week ago
in Energy, Foreign policy, Iraq, Middle East and Politics
. 35 Comments

Australian combat troops are being withdrawn from Iraq. Some Liberal MPs are still running the cut and pasted “cut and run” line. Others are decrying the withdrawal as a “diversion” from the all important issue of petrol prices. Apparently oblivious to the fact that the Iraq War might have something to do with… petrol prices.

Rewriting Zimbabwean history

Published
by
Mark
5 months, 3 weeks ago
in Developing world, Foreign policy, International, Media and Politics
. 47 Comments

The grandiosely professioned “author, poet, lecturer, journalist, editor, and lawyer”, Hal Colebatch, aka Quadrant contributor and freelance culture warrior, has the ultimate reductive explanation for the tragic situation in Zimbabwe - it was all Malcolm Fraser’s fault, and he should fix it. I’m sure Fraser - if he felt that he had any influence on Mugabe - would exercise it of his own accord, but the article really isn’t about a solution to the impasse which sees Zimbabwe on a most troubling precipice. Rather, Colebatch is playing one of the favoured games of the culture warrior - take advantage of atrocity to pin the blame on your domestic political opponents. It’s a habit they just can’t break. It appears to stem from some sort of Cold War nostalgia. Unable any more to tar even the most centrist of lefties with the communist brush, they (and we) stand condemned before the bar of history’s judgement for Stalin and Saddam (and in the whackier reaches of the right, Hitler as well - National Socialist, don’t you know?).

Leaving aside the fact that apparently African tyrants have no agency, and are pawns manipulated by liberal graziers from Victoria, there’s at least one big furphy in Colebatch’s article:

Continue reading ‘Rewriting Zimbabwean history’

The food crisis

Published
by
Robert Merkel
5 months, 3 weeks ago
in Developing world, Economics, Environment, Foreign policy, International, Policy, Politics, Poverty and Trade
. 50 Comments

First it was oil. Now it’s food, and the people of the developing world are, as usual, copping the worst of it:

Basic access to food is slipping out of reach for many people in developing countries. The cost of the rice has risen by more than three-quarters in two months and the price of wheat has more than doubled in the same time.

The desperation in dozens of countries has turned deadly of late. In the past week alone there have been violent, food-related riots in Haiti, Indonesia, the Philippines and Cameroon.

While there are short term factors pushing up food prices - amongst them, the drought in south-eastern Australia - there are also long-term factors pushing the price up, some not easily fixable, and some that are. Continue reading ‘The food crisis’

World Bank finances 4-gigawatt coal plant in India

Published
by
Robert Merkel
6 months ago
in Climate change, Developing world, Environment, Foreign policy, International and Poverty
. 5 Comments

The New York Times’ environmental blog, Dot Earth, has the story

The troubling tension between propelling prosperity and limiting climate risks in a world still wedded to fossil fuels is on full display this week. India’s Tata Power group just gained important financial backing from the International Finance Corporation, a branch of the World Bank, for its planned $4 billion, 4-billion watt “Ultra Mega” coal-burning power plant complex in Gujarat state.

While it might be tempting to decry this development (and I’m very, very tempted), the alternatives aren’t exactly cheery either. This plant might be huge, but they’re at least built with state-of-the-art coal technology, which is substantially more efficient than the alternatives. And the global abstract concerns of climate change are brought into perspective when you realize (As pointed out in their comments thread) hundreds of thousands of Indians die every year from pollution - the pollution of the air in their house from cooking fires. And while we all might like this to be made redundant by solar panels or windmills, the more likely alternatives are millions of petroleum-fuelled small generators, or dozens of small, inefficient, and even more polluting smaller coal-fired plants. Or nukes - if they could get the uranium from somewhere…

If you’re going to San Francisco…

Published
by
Mark
6 months ago
in Activism, China, Foreign policy, Sport and USA
. 58 Comments

While we (or most of us at any rate) were asleep, the Guardian’s Eleanor Schor was liveblogging the progress of the Olympic torch relay/rally through San Francisco. Or rather, on a boat circumnavigating San Francisco.

Watching from Kiwiland, No Right Turn asks a pertinent question:

Is it a relay if no-one can see it?

According to the Guardian’s liveblog, the torch has since returned to land, a significant distance from its original route, and it may not even finish at the original location. So, they have no protestors - but no spectators either. So much for taking the torch to the people…

Update: According to the Students for a free Tibet liveblog, one of the torchbearers pulled a Tibetan flag, and had the torch taken away.

Meanwhile, Kevin Rudd has got up the goat of the leader of the Tibet Autonomous Region, Qiangba Puncog:

Asked about previous criticisms by Mr Rudd, Mr Qiangba, a Tibetan Chinese, said: “Australia and other countries should have a better appreciation and understanding that people in Tibet are now enjoying democracy and wonderful human rights protection and those remarks are totally unfounded.”

Whatever. They can’t expect anyone outside China to take that seriously. Obviously it’s part of their typical Maoist-era information control tactics, and to warn Rudd not to press them too hard on human rights. It’s to his credit that he’s undaunted.

Image from The Age.

Petraeus report open thread

Published
by
Mark
6 months ago
in Foreign Elections, Foreign policy, Imperialism, Iraq and USA
. 82 Comments

I’m teaching later this arvo, so I don’t have time to do any analysis, but I thought people might like a discussion starter on the Petraeus report to Congress on the progress of teh Surge. I do think recent events have only reinforced the validity of this conclusion:

The fate of the surge (and Omaar makes the point that larger numbers of troops have been in Iraq before) essentially rests not on anything the US does, but on the willingness of al-Sadr and his troops (and his grassroots) to maintain a ceasefire - basically for their own reasons. That’s all of a piece with the fundamental illusion that still grips what passes for discussion of the war in America - the denial that what America does, or doesn’t do (short of getting out altogether) really is one of the least important factors driving the changing nature of the situation in Iraq.

… And you can get a sense of that from this excerpt from TomDispatch:

Muqtada al-Sadr, the Shiite cleric who emerged triumphant from an Iraqi government assault on his Mahdi Army militia in Basra (and Baghdad) has called for a “million-strong” march in Baghdad tomorrow to mark the fifth anniversary of the U.S.-led occupation of Iraq. The demonstration just happens to fall on one of the days that General David Petraeus is to report to Congress on post-surge “progress” in Iraq. This is unlikely to be pure happenstance.

Whatever’s happening in Washington today might not have all that much to do with whatever’s happening in Iraq today. It’s likely to have more to do with how Iraqi events are spun through a frame which is heavily coloured by the American presidential election, and Bush’s desire for a “legacy”. And the Iraqi actors understand that only too well.

Zimbabwe developments open thread

Published
by
Mark
6 months, 1 week ago
in Developing world, Foreign policy and International
. 50 Comments

The news on the Zimbabwean election is moving very quickly, and after days of delay, it appears likely that official results will be announced while we’re all asleep. The state run Herald newspaper had access to what it claims are the tallies of the presidential vote - which while the paper wasn’t specific, are said to show Morgan Tsvangarai with 49% of the vote and Robert Mugabe with 42%, indicating a runoff election would need to be held. The parliamentary results released show the MDC with 99 seats and Zanu-PF with 96, with smaller opposition parties holding 16 seats. The MDC have claimed in the last hour that their compilation of polling booth results show Tsvangarai with an absolute majority, but that they would reluctantly agree to a runoff if the official results differed. Results were publicly posted outside each polling booth in order to prevent rigging, under pressure from other African countries and South African President Thabo Mbeki in particular.

Foreign Minister Stephen Smith was interviewed on Lateline tonight, and repeated his condemnation of the Mugabe regime as “brutal” and indicated that he was working to reinforce the will of the governments of African Union and neighbouring states to ensure a peaceful outcome which respected the will of the people of Zimbabwe. Interestingly, the International Herald Tribune is reporting sources close to the governing party indicating that Mugabe has expressed a willingness to stand down. It’s being intimated in several quarters that immunity from prosecution would be the price of his departure. Continue reading ‘Zimbabwe developments open thread’

Rudd saves country and world, opposition talks about itself

Published
by
Kim
6 months, 2 weeks ago
in Climate change, Foreign policy, Government, Health, Media, Politics and Water
. 21 Comments

That’s actually kinda how you could read the day’s news in politics - Victorian Premier John Brumby has agreed to sign up to the Commonwealth’s Murray-Darling plan (just over a year after it was pulled out of John Howard’s hat), Kevin Rudd thinks he might be able to end Japanese whaling through diplomacy, while he’s off re-engaging our fair nation with the world, and meanwhile the blame game just got ended, and health got a big injection of funds.

Meanwhile, Joe Hockey is whining:

Making fun of the Liberal party seems to be the new national sport, Joe Hockey has complained.

The shadow health minister and former workplace relations minister told Fairfax Radio everyone was picking on the party following revelations a serving federal MP - Scott Morrison - was denied membership of his local branch because of a factional dispute.

“Will everyone please stop bashing up the Liberal Party at the moment,” he said.

“It’s like a national sport for people, particularly journalists, at the moment to belt up the Liberal Party.”

“I think it’s in the national interest that the Liberal Party be a viable, feasible alternative government at state and federal level.”

Two points.

Continue reading ‘Rudd saves country and world, opposition talks about itself’

The terrorists are were coming to get us!

Published
by
Kim
6 months, 2 weeks ago
in Foreign policy, Iraq, Media, Middle East, Palestine and Terrorism
. 114 Comments

It’s a bit weird in a way that if you bought the dead tree edition of The Australian today, almost the entire review section or whatever it’s called was devoted to the fifth anniversary of the Iraq War (the topic of earlier discussion here on two threads). Weird because as far as Australian domestic political debate goes, the Iraq War is off the radar - as Foreign Minister Stephen Smith observed in Question Time on Thursday, Brendan Nelson has claimed that John Howard would have pulled Australian troops out this year, and all the rhetoric about “a great victory for the terrorists” from the Coalition disappeared on November 25 2007. Since, with the exception of revelations (interestingly timed) about Saddam Hussein’s regime’s plot to assassinate Martin Indyk (about which Indyk himself appears unconcerned, and which if you read the fine print, appear to be about low level flunkies rather than Saddam and his acolytes) and the killing of an Australian aid worker in the Kurdish region of Iraq in 1993. there’s no actual news, you’ve got to wonder what all this ideological posturing is in aid of.

But we get a reprint of Christopher Hitchens’ article from Slate, and the usual raving and name dropping from Greg Sheridan, and even Geoff Elliott’s article which is quite critical of the current US stance gets christened by a subbie with the headline “Noble fight to depose a monstrous dictator”.

Continue reading ‘The terrorists are were coming to get us!’

Free Tibet!

Published
by
Kim
6 months, 3 weeks ago
in China and Foreign policy
. 44 Comments

There’s an excellent article in Der Spiegel by Jürgen Kremb which really gets to grips with the politics of the Tibetan situation - and the severity and scale of the repression and the protests in Lhasa - in a way I’ve rarely seen. Kremb’s comparison of Tibet with the Gaza Strip, while not exact (the attempt to submerge Tibetan culture through Chinese settlement is an obvious contrast), really does go to the history of the current crisis - most strikingly the parallel with the development of militant movements within Tibet itself (and completely detached from the Dalai Lama) being inspired by the last major round of violent repression in the 1980s.

Kremb also points to concrete steps towards a political solution - which again is usually absent from the debate in the West which has a tendency not to transcend either the sloganeering I’ve emulated in the title of this post or the perhaps facile calls for “restraint” from Foreign Ministers.

Bolted down?

Published
by
Mark
7 months ago
in Culture, Developing world, Foreign policy and Media
. 13 Comments

Blogging is supposed to encourage responsibility from writers through accountability to readers. How true is that with regard to tabloid MSM blogging? After all tabloid journalism isn’t known for responsibility, but for irresponsibility in the search for maximum sales.

Over at The Orstrahyun, Darryl Mason has tracked the disappearance (and occasional reappearance) of some of Andrew Bolt’s blog posts. Apparently its apparent deletion was a “pure accident”. Interesting.

Contrast

Published
by
Mark
7 months ago
in Afghanistan, Developing world, Foreign policy, Industrial Relations, Iraq, Politics and Religion
. 81 Comments

Compare and contrast, as they say, Kevin Rudd in PNG building bridges and restoring relationships and John Howard in Washington ranting about “Islamic fascism” and dwelling on the past.

It’s the exact same dynamic as in the election - Rudd accentuating the positive and looking to the future, and Howard mired in negativity and defending his “achievements”. Still, I thought it was neat that both were overseas at the same time - it really does shine an interesting light on their differences.