I think I’ve figured out why Planet Janet is seeming increasingly irrelevant. Consider (as Paul Kelly would say) her latest column:
The leftist glitterati is justifiably upset about Mamet’s rejection of progressive beliefs.
Hundreds of words piled on top of each other about playwright David Mamet converting to Milton Friedman-ism or something. Earth to Planet: Couldn’t give a toss. Had never heard of Mamet. Don’t care what his political beliefs were or are. Don’t think a crusty old bloke’s move to the right proves some eternal truths about teh left or teh luvvies.
Aside from Planet, I don’t think anyone else in Australia has written a word about Mamet’s conversion experience.
Let me let you into the secret. Continue reading ‘Planet Janet located in the midAtlantic somewhere’
Guy Rundle in today’s Crikey (excerpt reproduced with permission):
One big story – or at least moment for stories – is the Iraq war, which turns five this week. Like most five-year-olds it can no longer comfortably be held, but nor can it be left unattended for a second, lest it pour the fishbowl into the toaster.
It has outpaced every war America has been involved in – including the revolution and Civil conflict – save for Vietnam, which, by this stage, was on the verge of the Tet offensive, which would pitch the US into a position of unwinnability.
Continue reading ‘Iraq War turns 5 this week’
On the car radio the other day, I caught a snatch of US Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
After five years of the war in Iraq and more than six in Afghanistan, the selflessness of our heroes continues to make us proud.
War extracts a terrible price. Just in the past three days, 12 more of our heroes have fallen in Iraq. Continue reading ‘Heroes and martyrs’
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.
Conventional wisdom has it that the Bush/Petraeus surge is working. Why anyone would believe anything that mob say any more is completely beyond me, but I think it’s significant that those seeking to cast doubt on the usual explanations for the alleged drop in violence are themselves American and the perspectives US-centric. Not that I’m dissing Americans (since I am a US citizen) and nor am I dissing Ken Lovell who links to one such view in a post yesterday:
One frequent point made is that the decline in violence has largely been achieved by paying ex Sunni insurgents to support the American occupation forces … a situation which would seem to be quite precarious and unlikely to endure in the long term.
The other, related, story is about the lack of political as opposed to military progress, which is a convenient out for Petraeus, at least, since it’s a story basically of his own invention, if not for Bush (and McCain, whose candidacy is only plausible because Iraq doesn’t appear to be the disaster area it was).
But it would seem to me that it might be valuable to read something from someone who’s been to Iraq, and who is British and thus not embedded in the American dominated narratives. So this article from New Statesman reporter Rageh Omaar is highly relevant. Continue reading ‘Teh Surge’
Apparently, the latest cash crop of choice in parts of Iraq is opium.
In other Iraq news, it’s a pretty strange world when some war supporters are quibbling over the numbers when the WHO comes to the conclusion that the Iraq war resulted in 150,000 deaths.
Continue reading ‘Iraq becoming like Afghanistan…’
Now our Prime Minister is treating voters like heedless children who simply haven’t thought carefully enough about what change might mean.
Mr Howard says there is always a risk with changing Government.
And he warns voters flirting with the idea that a Labor election victory is not like an unwanted Christmas present, that can be returned on Boxing Day.
“It’s not like that. It’s much harder than that,” he said.
How insulting.
If you read Tony Abbott in today’s SMH, it’s more of the same - this utter disbelief that the voters could possibly have a mind at odds with the wishes of the current government, and that any voters who are thinking of voting the Coalition out of office have simply overlooked the bleeding obvious about how hopeless, scary and ruinacious a Rudd government will be. The title condescends from the start: The goods or a gamble?
Something unprecedented will happen on Saturday. A highly effective government will lose despite generally good economic circumstances or 12 months of opinion polls will turn out to be wrong. Australians are not reckless gamblers, at least not with the future of their country, so I think it’s much more likely voters will prove the polls wrong than change the government.
Patronising shite.
Hugh Mackay, talking on ABC Radio with Virginia Trioli this morning, made some excellent points which I found largely persuasive. He argues that until this year, the Australian electorate has been largely disengaged from politics for a decade, and Continue reading ‘Careful there voters! You can’t return the Boogieman like an unwanted Christmas present, you know! But Unca John can keep your economy safe…why won’t you trust me?’
To sum up, then: it was about the oil and it’s still about the oil.
Crossposted at LP in exile., as comments here are closed due to our outage issues.
Well, not quite, but they reportedly have 100,000 troops, backed by all manner of heavy weaponry up to and including F-16’s sitting on the Turkish border with Iraq. The reason? An attack by the PKK, the Kurdish guerilla group, on an army base in southern Turkey that left 12 soldiers dead and more missing, probably being held hostage. The Turkish PM is threatening to use the massive force assembled at the border to go after PKK bases in Iraq.
According to Juan Cole the USA has turned something of a blind eye to the PKK - who are, after all, conducting attacks on a NATO ally - because the Kurds are the only reliable allies the USA actually has in Iraq.
While it’s still a big difference between putting on a show of force and actually invading, what has it come to when the most westernized Muslim country in the Middle East - one that is seeking to join the EU, no less - is posturing to invade a country under American occupation? All I can say is thank your favourite deity that Australian forces are in southern Iraq, a long way away from this particular brouhaha.
A few weeks ago, on September 26, the Spanish daily newspaper El Pais published the transcript of a meeting between then Spanish Prime Minister José María Aznar and US President George W Bush in Texas on February 22, 2003 — a few weeks before the Coaliton of the Willing invaded Iraq.
The transcript makes clear that Bush had already decided to invade.
Saddam Hussein won’t change and he’ll continue playing games. The time has come to get rid of him. That’s it.
…
There are two weeks left. In two weeks we’ll be militarily ready.
…
My patience has run out. I won’t go beyond mid-March.
Mark Danner has written an essay on what this transcript tells us about George W Bush, to be published in the November New York Review of Books but previewed on Tom Dispatch.
It’s almost inconceivable that Australia’s Prime Minister John Howard and his Foreign Minister Alexander Downer didn’t have similar conversations with Bush. Continue reading ‘Downing Street Memo II’
Well might George W. Bush ask himself that question.
Let’s not forget that Nelson Mandela was a highly educated lawyer. Where have the Iraqi middle class gone? Those who the neo-cons banked on to form the social constituency for “instant democracy” and provide its leaders? Fled.
40% of Iraq’s middle class, it’s estimated, are refugees. Most are in Jordan or Syria. A lucky few are in countries such as Canada and Sweden. Very few have made it to America, where they’re basically not wanted:
An aggressive American intake of refugees would suggest their quick return to Iraq is improbable: that smacks too much of failure for Bush. Moreover, you have to scrutinize refugees from countries “infiltrated by large numbers of terrorists,” Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff opined recently.
And the secular parties that had a commitment to modernity and national unity? Wiped out through the political system established by the Americans, who empowered the theocratic Shi’ite parties.
Roger Cohen writes:
People who risked their lives for America are dying or being terrorized because of craven U.S. lethargy. Others are in limbo. Bush now says “Saddam Hussein killed all the Mandelas.” That’s too glib; one may be waiting to be saved.
And not the one in Sydney at the moment, but in related news…
We’ve seen the “Good News from Iraq” theme creeping back in lately, from the powers that be (temporarily til they lose their seats). The surge - it is working! You could of course contemplate the fact that Vietnam was always being won according to “kill counts” prepared by that maestro of metrics, McNamara, accompanied by demands from General Westmoreland for more and more troops to “finish the job”… Or you could contemplate that polling shows that a majority of the American people expect that the Petraeus Report will be a farrago of falsehoods dressed up in the White House to justify Bush’s “place in history”… Anyway, should you be unStrayan enough to disagree with JHo that we need to “stick by our mates”, here’s hilzoy’s great guide to the lies currently being told about teh Surge.
In his various rhetorical battles with Democrats (and increasing numbers of Republicans), George W. Bush has recited something similar over and over again - usually with service personnel as props for his visuals. “We shouldn’t second guess the Generals in the field”, blah blah blah. The funding standoff ended with legislation passed which required the commanding General in Iraq - David Petraeus - to report to Congress on the progress of the “surge” in September. But as the deadline approaches, and as the Iraqi government fractures, and Petraeus has been dropping ominous hints about successful counter-insurgency campaigns taking ten years, suddenly it seems that the Petraeus Report will actually be written by - The White House. And he won’t be testifying publicly to Congress either. Rove may be gone, but his legacy lives on. What Congress will no doubt be presented with is some partisan piece of nonsense worked over by elves in Dick Cheney’s office.
Shorter Bush administration: the legislative branch shouldn’t politicise war, but it’s fine if we do it.
You will get people electing governments that do want just to walk away from Iraq
Alexander Downer tells the Iraqi government that if they don’t try harder there will be consequences for the Australian coalition and the US Republicans at the polls.
Joe Hockey said on Lateline last night that it felt as if he was in the longest election campaign ever. No kidding. As I’ve been suggesting recently, the blowback from Howard’s tactics of permanent campaigning might have already hit home. And as we get closer to the actual campaign, the government is doing what it accuses the opposition of - “me too-ism”. John Howard has written to the Iraqi Prime Minister “warning” him that Australian troops may leave if the usual impossible dreams of political reform which underpin the comprehensively failed surge aren’t fulfilled. As you’d expect from the Dear Leader, the text is hedged around with so many qualifications and weasel words that you could probably interpret it almost whatever way you’d like. But as Ken Lovell observes at Surfdom, very clearly Howard is preparing the ground to “neutralise” Iraq as an issue domestically. It’s, of course, risible in light of all that he’s said before, and I imagine that if he can bring himself to pop up on tv for an interview, he’ll be reduced to repeating “I’m not dishonest” twice as he did on the 7 30 Report. Big biz, spending a bucket on awful tv ads backed up by government funded dodgy advocacy research, should be wary that we won’t see the PM discovering the virtues of a centralised award system (provided only that it’s administered by an army of bureaucrats not the dreaded union bosses). Where will Howard draw the line?
The bizarre thing is that Howard appears to want to remove almost any points of differentiation with Labor, presumably so he can warn sternly and very loudly indeed about the twin evils of teh unions and teh Labor states. But surely he is only reinforcing the perceptions that he is a “tricky” and “clever” politician? Since all the evidence suggests that he fares very poorly in a contrast with Rudd, what’s the sense in reducing the substance of the campaign to… a contrast with Rudd on personality?
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