I am an Australian and many of my country men and women, would find the title of this post confusing, as our major Conservative Political Party is called the Liberal Party.
The term liberal as used in this post refers to the US usage of the word, and it refers to a preference to openness, change, tolerance and acceptance that government has an important role in developing a better society.
The talk is at TED and is given by Jonathan Haidt.
He considers that there are five foundations of morality:
1. Harm / Care
2. Fairness / Reciprocity
3. Ingroup / Loyalty
4. Authority / Respect
5. Purity / Sanctity
Interestingly, according to Haidt most politics involves conflict around Ingroup, Authority and Purity issues.
Showing posts with label Politics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Politics. Show all posts
Saturday, March 24, 2012
Sunday, October 2, 2011
Rob U Blind
Monday, September 19, 2011
Did Julia Gillard Lie?
It is often claimed that Julia Gillard is a liar on the basis that she said before the last election that she would not introduce a Carbon Tax. The argument continues that as she is now introducing a Carbon Tax she lied. Some people have taken to calling her JuLIAR.
There are two issues to consider here:
1. What did Gillard actually say before the last election?
2. What is the nature of the legislation that is currently before the parliament?
The day before the election the Australian published an article on Gillard that can be found at this link.
Here is the direct quote from Gillard from that article:
"I don't rule out the possibility of legislating a Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme, a market-based mechanism," she said of the next parliament. "I rule out a carbon tax."
The Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme mentioned in the quote is the Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) that was negotiated between the Rudd Government and the then Opposition led by Malcolm Turnbull. (The Opposition kicked out Turnbull, but only by one vote, the then reneged on the agreed ETS.)
So she ruled out a Carbon Tax but not an Emissions Trading Scheme.
See this post and this post for analyses of the differences between a Carbon Tax and an Emissions Trading Scheme.
So what is the Government introducing a Carbon Tax or an Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS)?
The clear answer is that it is an ETS.
There is an interesting wrinkle though. For the first few years of the scheme it will operate somewhat like a Carbon Tax as the price per tonne of carbon released will be charged at a fixed price ($23 per tonne). There are differences though as the permits can be traded.
The reason why there will be an initial price placed on carbon emissions is to facilitate the transition to a full ETS and avoid the problems of excess permits that occurred in the early years of the European ETS.
So the simple answer to the question: did Gillard Lie, is clearly no.
She did not rule out an ETS before the election and she is now introducing an ETS to the parliament.
It is significant that the quote from Gillard came from the Australian newspaper. This is not some left of centre paper. The Australian has made its life work to destroy the Gillard Government.
Here is a link with comments by Gillard on how the price mechanism would work.
The best speech in the Federal Parliament given on the topic of Carbon Pricing was by Malcolm Turnbull. The speech can be found here.
This post emphasises the importance of checking original sources. For an interesting take on this issue see this post.
The climate policy worked out by the Multi-party committee - Government, Independents and Greens - is based on the Garnaut review, the summary of which can be found here.
There are two issues to consider here:
1. What did Gillard actually say before the last election?
2. What is the nature of the legislation that is currently before the parliament?
The day before the election the Australian published an article on Gillard that can be found at this link.
Here is the direct quote from Gillard from that article:
"I don't rule out the possibility of legislating a Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme, a market-based mechanism," she said of the next parliament. "I rule out a carbon tax."
The Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme mentioned in the quote is the Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) that was negotiated between the Rudd Government and the then Opposition led by Malcolm Turnbull. (The Opposition kicked out Turnbull, but only by one vote, the then reneged on the agreed ETS.)
So she ruled out a Carbon Tax but not an Emissions Trading Scheme.
See this post and this post for analyses of the differences between a Carbon Tax and an Emissions Trading Scheme.
So what is the Government introducing a Carbon Tax or an Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS)?
The clear answer is that it is an ETS.
There is an interesting wrinkle though. For the first few years of the scheme it will operate somewhat like a Carbon Tax as the price per tonne of carbon released will be charged at a fixed price ($23 per tonne). There are differences though as the permits can be traded.
The reason why there will be an initial price placed on carbon emissions is to facilitate the transition to a full ETS and avoid the problems of excess permits that occurred in the early years of the European ETS.
So the simple answer to the question: did Gillard Lie, is clearly no.
She did not rule out an ETS before the election and she is now introducing an ETS to the parliament.
It is significant that the quote from Gillard came from the Australian newspaper. This is not some left of centre paper. The Australian has made its life work to destroy the Gillard Government.
Here is a link with comments by Gillard on how the price mechanism would work.
The best speech in the Federal Parliament given on the topic of Carbon Pricing was by Malcolm Turnbull. The speech can be found here.
This post emphasises the importance of checking original sources. For an interesting take on this issue see this post.
The climate policy worked out by the Multi-party committee - Government, Independents and Greens - is based on the Garnaut review, the summary of which can be found here.
Thursday, August 11, 2011
A requiem for newspapers
This is a talk that Bruce Guthrie gave at the Wheeler Centre.
Guthrie has been editor of The Sunday Age, The Age, Who Weekly, the Weekend Australian Magazine, the Herald-Sun Wish.
In this talk he discusses the newspaper business, the changes brought about by the Internet, the threat posed by the decline of the very lucrative advertising pages and particularly his experience with the Murdoch Media Empire. He also discusses his book Man Bites Murdoch.
Guthrie has been editor of The Sunday Age, The Age, Who Weekly, the Weekend Australian Magazine, the Herald-Sun Wish.
In this talk he discusses the newspaper business, the changes brought about by the Internet, the threat posed by the decline of the very lucrative advertising pages and particularly his experience with the Murdoch Media Empire. He also discusses his book Man Bites Murdoch.
Tuesday, August 9, 2011
Thomas Friedman
This is a talk that Thomas Friedman gave at the Melbourne Town Hall. the video comes from the Wheeler Centre.
Freidman notes four major issues:
1. Adapting to the IT revolution
2. Adapting to globalisation
3. Managing our whole entitlement, deficit and debt issue
4. Energy and climate
The first two merge into one issue as globalisation drives more IT revolution and more IT revolution drives more globalisation. Together they are hyper flattening the world. By flat Freidman means the inter-connectedness of the world.
He wrote The World is Flat in 2004. What particularly took my attention was the following:
Freidman notes four major issues:
1. Adapting to the IT revolution
2. Adapting to globalisation
3. Managing our whole entitlement, deficit and debt issue
4. Energy and climate
The first two merge into one issue as globalisation drives more IT revolution and more IT revolution drives more globalisation. Together they are hyper flattening the world. By flat Freidman means the inter-connectedness of the world.
He wrote The World is Flat in 2004. What particularly took my attention was the following:
If you pick up a first edition of that book and look in the index under “F” you will notice that Facebook isn’t in it. So when I wrote The World is Flat, Facebook didn’t exist, Twitter was a sound, the Cloud was in the sky … applications were what you sent to college, Linked In was a prison and Slype for most people was a typo”. All of that has happened in six years.
Sunday, May 8, 2011
The new Australian complacency
The video below is of a talk that Robert Manne gave at the Wheeler Centre.
Mann describes a historical culture of Australian self criticism and a sense of “hoping to reinvent the nation”, which came to an end with the Howard Era.
A very important part of the change of attitude involves Climate Change. His comment that Climate Change is “in some ways the simplest public issue I’ve ever had to think about”, whilst also one of the most complex from a political and international relations perspective, is telling.
See this post for an explanation of the obviousness of the public policy issue - ie the science, and this post for a take on the politics.
He closes with the comment:
“For the rest of my life — and for the rest of my children’s lives — the issue will be whether humans have the capacity to act on climate change, it seems to me. I don’t think any other issue is even remotely as significant now.”
Here is the Wheeler Centre summary of the talk.
Mann describes a historical culture of Australian self criticism and a sense of “hoping to reinvent the nation”, which came to an end with the Howard Era.
A very important part of the change of attitude involves Climate Change. His comment that Climate Change is “in some ways the simplest public issue I’ve ever had to think about”, whilst also one of the most complex from a political and international relations perspective, is telling.
See this post for an explanation of the obviousness of the public policy issue - ie the science, and this post for a take on the politics.
He closes with the comment:
“For the rest of my life — and for the rest of my children’s lives — the issue will be whether humans have the capacity to act on climate change, it seems to me. I don’t think any other issue is even remotely as significant now.”
Here is the Wheeler Centre summary of the talk.
In his first Lunchbox/Soapbox, public intellectual Robert Manne speaks of his disappointment in observing the arrival of a cultural and especially political complacency in contemporary Australia.
Manne applauds the manner in which Australia’s shift to a non-discriminatory migration policy was “not really a contentious matter”, but argues that we are yet to come to terms with the racism inherent in the (White Australia) policy that preceded the era of multiculturalism.
Referring to a quarter century of cultural nationalism and quirky, exciting and unique popular artworks which came to a close around the time of the Sydney Olympic Games, Manne contends that the values which made this period creatively robust — namely a culture of self criticism and a sense of “hoping to reinvent the nation” — are, in the present, painfully absent.
Instead, he argues, the Howard epoch saw Australia taking membership in the “triumphalism” of the anglophone West. Militarised nationalism grew alongside the rise of a “right-wing commentariat” (in which he includes Bolt, Akerman and Albrechtson and others) who backed the common sense of ordinary people.
Manne laments our failure to act despite our knowledge that climate change exists; a challenge he describes as “in some ways the simplest public issue I’ve ever had to think about”, whilst also one of the most complex from a political and international relations perspective.
In fact, Manne believes that climate change will not be solved on an international level, but rather by individual nation states taking independent steps to ensure their own longevity, creating a “benign domino effect” of shaming the largest carbon producers into action.
In closing, he offers the following as a testament to the importance of the challenge at hand:
“For the rest of my life — and for the rest of my children’s lives — the issue will be whether humans have the capacity to act on climate change, it seems to me. I don’t think any other issue is even remotely as significant now.”
Monday, May 2, 2011
Post-truth politics
Climate science going back almost two hundred years makes it clear that:
This is Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW). There are multiple lines of evidence supporting AGW. See this post for examples of this evidence.
Consequently it is not a surprise that virtually all scientific organizations support the AGW view. See this post for the evidence of the AGW consensus.
The only response for those who are desperate to cast doubt on the science is conspiracy theorizing. Recently I came across an example of this while in conversation with an acquaintance. I made the point that the Australian Academy of Science, Australia's peak science organiaation supports AGW; that the CSIRO, Australia's peak science research body, supports AGW; and, that the Bureau of Meteorology, Australia's main atmospheric research body, supports AGW. The immediate answer that I received was "but those are corrupt organizations."
It is hardly a surprise then that when emails were stolen from the Climate Research Unit, at the University of East Anglia, the contents of the emails were scrutinized for anything that could be distorted to indicate mendacity on the part of the scientists.
The video below describes some of the deceit by those who would cast doubt on the science. (Although there are many examples like this video that debunks the "skeptic" arguments, this one is interesting as it included Dr Muller, of Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature project.)
When five official inquiries demonstrated that the claims of the "skeptics" were baseless, the "skeptics" did not reconsider their positions, instead they just enlarged the conspiracy to include "the inquiries" as well as "the scientists". Here is an example of this conspiracies wrapped up in conspiracies thinking from Australia's premier climate denier.
This conspiracy theorizing is evident in more areas than climate science. Another example are the claims of "birthers" in the US. The video below provides some interesting discussion of conspiracy theories, emphasising that those who hold such views are impervious to truth.
How has modern politics came to this amazing pass where large sections of the electorates in advanced countries believe demonstrable nonsense. David Roberts has investigated this issue in an article called, Policy in the Age of Post Truth Politics. His conclusion is:
Roberts agrees with Jonathan Kay (in the video above) that thanks to the Internet people can intellectually live in a bubble of like minded people, who reinforce their beliefs. In this environment crazy, un-factual ideas are not challenged.
There are problems in the main stream media as well, involving the way journalists describe the political process. Most people receive their information about issues and current events from journalists, but it seems that journalists are more interested in describing politics - the day to day machinations of politicians - rather explaining and discussing policy. Lindsay Tanner, Australia's Finance Minister before his retirement, has written a book that discusses these issues. The book has not been formally released yet but here is a post covers the issues well.
If the crazies are immune to reason and evidence then maybe all we can do is laugh at them. President Obama did this brilliantly at the 2011 White House Correspondents Dinner recently:
- the planet is warming
- the major cause of the warming is very likely (better than 90%) human activities, and,
- the warming is dangerous.
This is Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW). There are multiple lines of evidence supporting AGW. See this post for examples of this evidence.
Consequently it is not a surprise that virtually all scientific organizations support the AGW view. See this post for the evidence of the AGW consensus.
The only response for those who are desperate to cast doubt on the science is conspiracy theorizing. Recently I came across an example of this while in conversation with an acquaintance. I made the point that the Australian Academy of Science, Australia's peak science organiaation supports AGW; that the CSIRO, Australia's peak science research body, supports AGW; and, that the Bureau of Meteorology, Australia's main atmospheric research body, supports AGW. The immediate answer that I received was "but those are corrupt organizations."
It is hardly a surprise then that when emails were stolen from the Climate Research Unit, at the University of East Anglia, the contents of the emails were scrutinized for anything that could be distorted to indicate mendacity on the part of the scientists.
The video below describes some of the deceit by those who would cast doubt on the science. (Although there are many examples like this video that debunks the "skeptic" arguments, this one is interesting as it included Dr Muller, of Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature project.)
When five official inquiries demonstrated that the claims of the "skeptics" were baseless, the "skeptics" did not reconsider their positions, instead they just enlarged the conspiracy to include "the inquiries" as well as "the scientists". Here is an example of this conspiracies wrapped up in conspiracies thinking from Australia's premier climate denier.
This conspiracy theorizing is evident in more areas than climate science. Another example are the claims of "birthers" in the US. The video below provides some interesting discussion of conspiracy theories, emphasising that those who hold such views are impervious to truth.
How has modern politics came to this amazing pass where large sections of the electorates in advanced countries believe demonstrable nonsense. David Roberts has investigated this issue in an article called, Policy in the Age of Post Truth Politics. His conclusion is:
But the crucial fact of post-truth politics is that there are no more referees. There are only players.
Roberts agrees with Jonathan Kay (in the video above) that thanks to the Internet people can intellectually live in a bubble of like minded people, who reinforce their beliefs. In this environment crazy, un-factual ideas are not challenged.
There are problems in the main stream media as well, involving the way journalists describe the political process. Most people receive their information about issues and current events from journalists, but it seems that journalists are more interested in describing politics - the day to day machinations of politicians - rather explaining and discussing policy. Lindsay Tanner, Australia's Finance Minister before his retirement, has written a book that discusses these issues. The book has not been formally released yet but here is a post covers the issues well.
If the crazies are immune to reason and evidence then maybe all we can do is laugh at them. President Obama did this brilliantly at the 2011 White House Correspondents Dinner recently:
Tuesday, April 19, 2011
Monday, March 14, 2011
The decoy muslim threat
The Onion is a wonderful satirical website. It is easy to became VERY ANGRY with all of the nonsense that we hear today, but maybe the best solution is to laugh at the loons:
Al Qaeda Populating U.S. With Peaceful 'Decoy Muslims'
Here is an Australian approach to laughing at the Islamophobics:
Al Qaeda Populating U.S. With Peaceful 'Decoy Muslims'
Here is an Australian approach to laughing at the Islamophobics:
Friday, March 4, 2011
Pricing Carbon
Some politicians and journalists are spreading confusion about the Government's Carbon Pricing Mechanism. In her appearance on QANDA the Prime Minister was asked the following question:
She gave a brief but clear explanation:
In parliament she gave a longer and more politically charged answer:
Source here
Gillard is to be congratulated in noting that there would be price rises. As she explains, a large amount of the money raised will go to people to compensate for the price increases. It is important to notice though that people will still choose the cheaper, low carbon, alternatives.
Although this was a clear explanation from Julia Gillard, the prize for the best speach on pricing carbon in the Australian Parliament still goes to Malcolm Turnbull, which can be found at this post.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: Prime Minister, isn’t the whole point of having a carbon tax to affect the prices that consumers pay? If there’s no change in consumer behaviour, you’re not going to achieve what you’re trying to achieve to reduce carbon pollution. So if it’s compensating households, aren’t you simply undermining the effect that your tax is going to have and ultimately make no change?
She gave a brief but clear explanation:
JULIA GILLARD: That’s a very perceptive question and I think a lot of people are thinking about his, about how does it work? If I’m getting compensation, what’s actually changing? Let me just explain that. The carbon price affects the big polluters. Yes, they will cause some price impacts for consumers. That’s true. We will then assist consumers and I can understand why people then intuitively go, well, how does all of this work? Isn’t, you know, sort of money going in and money going out? What’s the effect? Well, the effect is that in the shops when you come to buy things, products that are made with relatively less carbon pollution will be cheaper than products that are made with more carbon pollution. So you’re standing there with your household assistance in your hand. You could still keep buying the high carbon pollution products if you want to or what you’re far more likely to do is to buy the cheaper, lower carbon pollution products. That means that the people who make those things will get the consumer signal, gee, we will sell more, we will make more money if we make lower pollution products. That drives the innovation. So I want you to have that household assistance in your hand but I also want you to see price effects which make cleaner, greener things cheaper than high pollution commodities. That’s why it works.
In parliament she gave a longer and more politically charged answer:
Let me explain in detail our mechanism for pricing carbon. The first proposition is an incredibly simple one. At the moment carbon pollution can be released into the atmosphere for free. There is no disincentive for doing that. We will put a price on carbon, a price on every unit of carbon pollution. It will be paid for by businesses and as a result, because our business community is smart and adaptable and innovative, they will work out ways of pursuing their business and generating less carbon pollution. They will work out ways of making sure they pay less of a price when carbon is priced. Then they will enter into contracts, they will make investments on the basis of understanding the rules and understanding that carbon will be priced. And as they go about making those transitions, innovating, making the new investments of the future, we will work with those businesses in transition to a clean economy.
Having priced carbon and seen that innovation, yes, there will be pricing impacts; that is absolutely right. That is the whole point: to make goods that are generated with more carbon pollution relatively more expensive than goods that are generated with less carbon pollution. But because we are a Labor government this will be done in a fair way. We will assist households as we transition with this new carbon price. What that means is that people will walk into a shop with money in their pocket, the government having provided them with assistance. They will see the price signals on the shelves in front of them—things with less pollution, less expensive; things with more pollution, more expensive—and they too will adapt and change. They will choose the lower pollution products, which is exactly what we want them to do. Between the business investment and innovation, between households who have been assisted in a fair way by a Labor government responding to price signals, we will see a transition to a cleaner economy, to a clean energy economy, to a low-pollution economy.
What does that mean? Put very simply, it means jobs. It means that our economy will keep pace with a transition that is happening around the world. Our economy will keep pace and we will have the jobs of the future. What is the alternative? The alternative is to keep emitting carbon pollution. It is to see Australia left behind the tide of history with a high-pollution economy. It is exporting jobs to the rest of the world—jobs that Australian kids could have to build a future on. It is leaving households to deal with escalating electricity prices, which are going up because of a lack of investment certainty, and without household assistance in their pockets. And, of course, if we follow the Leader of the Opposition’s plan, it is also about ripping $30 billion off taxpayers. The efficient way to transform our economy is to price carbon and that is what we will do.
Source here
Gillard is to be congratulated in noting that there would be price rises. As she explains, a large amount of the money raised will go to people to compensate for the price increases. It is important to notice though that people will still choose the cheaper, low carbon, alternatives.
Although this was a clear explanation from Julia Gillard, the prize for the best speach on pricing carbon in the Australian Parliament still goes to Malcolm Turnbull, which can be found at this post.
Sunday, January 23, 2011
Jared Diamond: Collapse
In the video below, Jared Diamond discusses the findings of his book Collapse.
The point of the book is best described by its subtitle: How Societies Choose to Fail or Survive.
It would take days or even weeks to read the 560 pages of the book, but in only an hour, Diamond provides an effective summary in the video below.
Diamond developed a five point framework for considering the fate of societies. The following paragraph, taken from page 11 of the book, briefly describes the factors:
... I don't know of any case in which a societie's collapse can be attributed solely to environmental damage: there are always other contributing factors. When I began to plan this book, I didn't appreciate those complications, and I naively thought that the book would just be about enviromental damage. Eventually, I arrived at a five-point framework of possible contributing factors that I now consider in trying to understand any putative environmental collapse. Four of those sets of factors - environmental damage, climate change, hostile neighbors, and friendly trade partners - may or may not prove significant for a particular society. The fifth set of factors - the society's response to its environmental problems - always proves significant.
The point of the book is best described by its subtitle: How Societies Choose to Fail or Survive.
It would take days or even weeks to read the 560 pages of the book, but in only an hour, Diamond provides an effective summary in the video below.
Diamond developed a five point framework for considering the fate of societies. The following paragraph, taken from page 11 of the book, briefly describes the factors:
... I don't know of any case in which a societie's collapse can be attributed solely to environmental damage: there are always other contributing factors. When I began to plan this book, I didn't appreciate those complications, and I naively thought that the book would just be about enviromental damage. Eventually, I arrived at a five-point framework of possible contributing factors that I now consider in trying to understand any putative environmental collapse. Four of those sets of factors - environmental damage, climate change, hostile neighbors, and friendly trade partners - may or may not prove significant for a particular society. The fifth set of factors - the society's response to its environmental problems - always proves significant.
Saturday, January 22, 2011
Why the West Rules - For Now
This is a talk by Ian Morris about the thesis of his book Why the West Rules--for Now: The Patterns of History, and What They Reveal About the Future
Here are my thoughts and summary of the talk. The video can be found at the bottom of the post.
Morris starts with an apposite quote from Winston Churchill: "The farther backward you can look the farther forward you are likely to see."
Three kinds of things to know before answering the question, "Why the West Rules - For Now:
1. Biology - the study of what we are. Human Beings are all much the same, where ever you find them.
2. Sociology - similarities and differences between societies: why societies innovate and respond effectively to crises and why they sometimes don't.
These two issues help to provide a general theory of human history, about all people in all times and all places. But it is not enough to tell us why the West Rules for that you need:
3. Geography - but it gives an answer in complicated ways. Geography drives the development of societies but on the other hand, the development of societies drives what geography means. Simply put, geography drives the current distribution of wealtha and power. Agriculture (which was essential to civilisation) could only develop initially where there existed concentrations of domesticable plants and animals - ie a geographical effect. The place where these creatures were most densely concentrated was in the Fertile Crescent (in the current Middle East) so that is where agriculture first appeared, followed a few thousand years later by East Asia (China), the Indus Valley (Pakistan) and the Americas. As societies developed, based on agriculture, the meaning of geography changed, initially access to great rivers was very important which led to the great civilisations on Mesopotamia, and then access to seas - the classical European civilisations developed around the Mediterranean.
So far this is fairly familiar to readers of Jarred Diamond's books, Guns, Germs and Steel and Collapse which is why I find the presentation compelling. The section of Diamond's Guns ... was his explanation of why Western Europe develped much more quickly than it main competitor, China, after about 1400. Ian Morris provides an interesting explanation, embedded in his geographical theme - that European development was driven by the discovery of the Americas, and that the Americas were twice as close to Europe as to East Asia. Before Europeans had ships that could safely traverse the Atlantic Ocean, this fact of geography was not important, but once they has such ships the meaning of geography had been changed by the new technology. This change of technology set up a cascade of new effects - in the fields of economics, the natural sciences, technology and mathematics.
So what about the future?
Great trends can help us predict future developments, but historical analysis also shows that the great trends of history have steadily developed forces that undermine them.
Projecting forward: the East will catch up the West early after 2100, assuming that rates of change will occur at 20th century changes. If changes occur more quickly (as is likely) then the East will castch up during the second half of this century. Morris predicts extremely rapid change in Social Development. Morris's description of a utipian future left me somewhat disturbed until he started discussing the counter point: that trends constantly generate the trends that undermine them. The same set of problems come up when civilizations collapse are familiar today: uncontrolled migration, failure of state organisatins, famine, epidemic disease, and climate change.
One of the most disappointing aspects of popular discussion of current events is the lack of a historical context, talks like this put our current predicament in a broad context - 15,000 years!
Here are my thoughts and summary of the talk. The video can be found at the bottom of the post.
Morris starts with an apposite quote from Winston Churchill: "The farther backward you can look the farther forward you are likely to see."
Three kinds of things to know before answering the question, "Why the West Rules - For Now:
1. Biology - the study of what we are. Human Beings are all much the same, where ever you find them.
2. Sociology - similarities and differences between societies: why societies innovate and respond effectively to crises and why they sometimes don't.
These two issues help to provide a general theory of human history, about all people in all times and all places. But it is not enough to tell us why the West Rules for that you need:
3. Geography - but it gives an answer in complicated ways. Geography drives the development of societies but on the other hand, the development of societies drives what geography means. Simply put, geography drives the current distribution of wealtha and power. Agriculture (which was essential to civilisation) could only develop initially where there existed concentrations of domesticable plants and animals - ie a geographical effect. The place where these creatures were most densely concentrated was in the Fertile Crescent (in the current Middle East) so that is where agriculture first appeared, followed a few thousand years later by East Asia (China), the Indus Valley (Pakistan) and the Americas. As societies developed, based on agriculture, the meaning of geography changed, initially access to great rivers was very important which led to the great civilisations on Mesopotamia, and then access to seas - the classical European civilisations developed around the Mediterranean.
So far this is fairly familiar to readers of Jarred Diamond's books, Guns, Germs and Steel and Collapse which is why I find the presentation compelling. The section of Diamond's Guns ... was his explanation of why Western Europe develped much more quickly than it main competitor, China, after about 1400. Ian Morris provides an interesting explanation, embedded in his geographical theme - that European development was driven by the discovery of the Americas, and that the Americas were twice as close to Europe as to East Asia. Before Europeans had ships that could safely traverse the Atlantic Ocean, this fact of geography was not important, but once they has such ships the meaning of geography had been changed by the new technology. This change of technology set up a cascade of new effects - in the fields of economics, the natural sciences, technology and mathematics.
So what about the future?
Great trends can help us predict future developments, but historical analysis also shows that the great trends of history have steadily developed forces that undermine them.
Projecting forward: the East will catch up the West early after 2100, assuming that rates of change will occur at 20th century changes. If changes occur more quickly (as is likely) then the East will castch up during the second half of this century. Morris predicts extremely rapid change in Social Development. Morris's description of a utipian future left me somewhat disturbed until he started discussing the counter point: that trends constantly generate the trends that undermine them. The same set of problems come up when civilizations collapse are familiar today: uncontrolled migration, failure of state organisatins, famine, epidemic disease, and climate change.
One of the most disappointing aspects of popular discussion of current events is the lack of a historical context, talks like this put our current predicament in a broad context - 15,000 years!
Thursday, November 25, 2010
Wednesday, October 13, 2010
Simpsons and Banksy
This is the Couch Gag of a Simpsons episode that recently aried in the US:
It starts off dark and gets darker - Bart dolls stuffed with kitten fur and a chained unicorn used to punch holes in DVDs.
The sting in the tail: the sweatshop is in the basement of 29th Century Fox, the makers of The Simpsons!
It has been claimed that this sequence was inspired by reports that The Simpsons was animated in South Korea.
The opening sequence and couch gag were written by graffiti artist and political activist Banksy, whose tag appears prominently.
Banksy's identity is a closely kept secret. The following video investigates Banksy and attempts to discover who he is:
Banksy's work is edgy, ironic and creative, often with a strong message. This video shows many of Banksy's works ...
... and this link contains many photos ...
This is not the first association of Banksy with The Simpsons as this link shows.
My home town became briefly famous for painting out one of Banksy's works.
Here is a post with an interesting take on Banksy. The site is fun as it satarizes white, citified, liberals, like me.
It starts off dark and gets darker - Bart dolls stuffed with kitten fur and a chained unicorn used to punch holes in DVDs.
The sting in the tail: the sweatshop is in the basement of 29th Century Fox, the makers of The Simpsons!
It has been claimed that this sequence was inspired by reports that The Simpsons was animated in South Korea.
The opening sequence and couch gag were written by graffiti artist and political activist Banksy, whose tag appears prominently.
Banksy's identity is a closely kept secret. The following video investigates Banksy and attempts to discover who he is:
Banksy's work is edgy, ironic and creative, often with a strong message. This video shows many of Banksy's works ...
... and this link contains many photos ...
This is not the first association of Banksy with The Simpsons as this link shows.
My home town became briefly famous for painting out one of Banksy's works.
Here is a post with an interesting take on Banksy. The site is fun as it satarizes white, citified, liberals, like me.
Thursday, August 12, 2010
Assylum Seekers
The graphic below sets out the utter absurdity of the Government and Opposition policies on Assylum Seekers. (Click on the graphic to open a larger version in a separate window or tab.)
I find myself in complete agreement with Malcolm Fraser (a former Liberal Party Prime Mininter) on this issue. In an interview with Margaret Simmons that can be found at this link Fraser said:
The Opposition plays politics with border protection.
The government has got a two headed policy, claiming to be more compassionate than Howard was and to an extent they are but on the other head of their policy they’re saying “we’re just as tough as Howard was”. They can’t have it both ways.
The opposition saying “You’re lost control of the borders" is arrant, absolute, bloody nonsense. (They) claim that 4 or 5 thousand people a year represent a threat to Australia. It’s not so. What we desperately need in this area is a government and an opposition that will develop a unified, sensible, compassionate, firm, if you like, policy, but one which they then take outside the realm of politics, because playing politics with this issue is playing politics with people’s lives, playing politics with people very often fleeing the most terrible tyranny or distress, and that’s the most unseemly thing we could do and it is something which is noticed right around the world and which just makes people wonder have we really put Tampa behind us and more extreme people will ask have we really put the white Australia policy behind us.
I almost feel like going to South Africa or Zimbabwe organise a boat load of white farmers, and I’d sail them into Fremantle harbour and that would expose the policy for what it is in one blow.
Note: the comment is towards the end of the interview. If you don't want to listen to the whole interview I have produced a verbatim summary at this post.
 |
I find myself in complete agreement with Malcolm Fraser (a former Liberal Party Prime Mininter) on this issue. In an interview with Margaret Simmons that can be found at this link Fraser said:
The Opposition plays politics with border protection.
The government has got a two headed policy, claiming to be more compassionate than Howard was and to an extent they are but on the other head of their policy they’re saying “we’re just as tough as Howard was”. They can’t have it both ways.
The opposition saying “You’re lost control of the borders" is arrant, absolute, bloody nonsense. (They) claim that 4 or 5 thousand people a year represent a threat to Australia. It’s not so. What we desperately need in this area is a government and an opposition that will develop a unified, sensible, compassionate, firm, if you like, policy, but one which they then take outside the realm of politics, because playing politics with this issue is playing politics with people’s lives, playing politics with people very often fleeing the most terrible tyranny or distress, and that’s the most unseemly thing we could do and it is something which is noticed right around the world and which just makes people wonder have we really put Tampa behind us and more extreme people will ask have we really put the white Australia policy behind us.
I almost feel like going to South Africa or Zimbabwe organise a boat load of white farmers, and I’d sail them into Fremantle harbour and that would expose the policy for what it is in one blow.
Note: the comment is towards the end of the interview. If you don't want to listen to the whole interview I have produced a verbatim summary at this post.
Wednesday, August 11, 2010
Time Warp Tony and the Thinking Voter
These ads say it all.
Abbot as Riff Raff and Hockey as a Sumo Wrestler!
Gruen Nation produced an add for The Greens. Sadly the ABC denied The Greens request to use it during the campaign.
The tag line is just so right!
On the other hand, after the election The Chaser had this take on Greens voters:
Abbot as Riff Raff and Hockey as a Sumo Wrestler!
Gruen Nation produced an add for The Greens. Sadly the ABC denied The Greens request to use it during the campaign.
The tag line is just so right!
On the other hand, after the election The Chaser had this take on Greens voters:
Tuesday, August 3, 2010
Our World in Crisis?
Over six nights recently I attended the Our World in Crisis? course run by Professor Jospeh Camilleri.
The course website can be found here
The course was very informative, challenging, and very well run. Thanks to Professor Camilleri for his organisation of the course and many interesting lectures and guest speakers.
The course covered the following:
Making sense of ‘our times’:
It is often said that we live in a globalising world? What does this mean? How different is today’s world from that of our parents or grandparents? Is the Modern world ushered in by the Renaissance and the revolutions of the 16th to the 18th centuries coming to an end? If so, what is taking its place?
The global financial crisis: why, where and how?
How do we explain the unprecedented growth of international finance? What factors have led to the current global financial crisis? What are the long-term implications of the crisis? What do we make of the responses of governments? Of the major international organisations? Where does the crisis leave the rich-poor divide? What are the prospects for greater international regulation?
Climate change: after Copenhagen
What are the key issues at stake in international climate change negotiations? Why are governments finding it so difficult to come to terms with the challenges posed by climate change? What are the prospects for stabilising global warming? Has Australia’s position on climate change shifted significantly since the election of the Rudd Government?
Arc of conflict: from Algeria to Afghanistan:
How do we account for the conflicts that have dotted the recent history of this part of the world? What lies behind the conflicts in the Middle East, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan? How do we make sense of the relationship between Islam and the West? Are international terrorism and the ‘war on terror’ here to stay?
Conflict resolution and the dialogue of cultures:
Are the world’s major civilisations on a collision course? With the decline of the world’s colonial empires, is Western dominance coming to an end? Are we seeing the rise of new centres of power and influence? Can collision be avoided? What are the prospects for dialogue and conflict resolution? How can dialogue be approached internationally? In Australia?
The puzzle that is Australia:
How well are Australians coping with the pressures of a rapidly changing world? How well is Australia managing cultural and religious diversity at home and in its relations with Asia and the Pacific? Does multiculturalism have a future? What of our relations with the United states on the one hand and China on the other? What are the options facing Australia over the next decade and beyond?
The assignments that I produced for the course and some of the research that I conducted on the topics can be found at the links below:
Globalisation, here and here.
Assignment letter to the editor here.
My notes on the Copenhagen conference here.
Assignment on the Global Financial Crisis here.
The Political Philosophy of Malcolm Fraser here.
The course website can be found here
The course was very informative, challenging, and very well run. Thanks to Professor Camilleri for his organisation of the course and many interesting lectures and guest speakers.
The course covered the following:
Making sense of ‘our times’:
It is often said that we live in a globalising world? What does this mean? How different is today’s world from that of our parents or grandparents? Is the Modern world ushered in by the Renaissance and the revolutions of the 16th to the 18th centuries coming to an end? If so, what is taking its place?
The global financial crisis: why, where and how?
How do we explain the unprecedented growth of international finance? What factors have led to the current global financial crisis? What are the long-term implications of the crisis? What do we make of the responses of governments? Of the major international organisations? Where does the crisis leave the rich-poor divide? What are the prospects for greater international regulation?
Climate change: after Copenhagen
What are the key issues at stake in international climate change negotiations? Why are governments finding it so difficult to come to terms with the challenges posed by climate change? What are the prospects for stabilising global warming? Has Australia’s position on climate change shifted significantly since the election of the Rudd Government?
Arc of conflict: from Algeria to Afghanistan:
How do we account for the conflicts that have dotted the recent history of this part of the world? What lies behind the conflicts in the Middle East, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan? How do we make sense of the relationship between Islam and the West? Are international terrorism and the ‘war on terror’ here to stay?
Conflict resolution and the dialogue of cultures:
Are the world’s major civilisations on a collision course? With the decline of the world’s colonial empires, is Western dominance coming to an end? Are we seeing the rise of new centres of power and influence? Can collision be avoided? What are the prospects for dialogue and conflict resolution? How can dialogue be approached internationally? In Australia?
The puzzle that is Australia:
How well are Australians coping with the pressures of a rapidly changing world? How well is Australia managing cultural and religious diversity at home and in its relations with Asia and the Pacific? Does multiculturalism have a future? What of our relations with the United states on the one hand and China on the other? What are the options facing Australia over the next decade and beyond?
The assignments that I produced for the course and some of the research that I conducted on the topics can be found at the links below:
Globalisation, here and here.
Assignment letter to the editor here.
My notes on the Copenhagen conference here.
Assignment on the Global Financial Crisis here.
The Political Philosophy of Malcolm Fraser here.
Saturday, July 31, 2010
The Political Philosophy of Malcolm Fraser
In week four of the Our World in Crisis? course we held a hypothetical. The basic scenario was that the Pacific Island Leaders called on Australia for a guarantee of access by Pacific Islanders and to accept claims of Environmental Refugee status for those who feel that their human security is at risk and medium term survival impossible because of the effects of cliamte change.
I played the role of Malcolm Fraser.
In my research for this role is discovered an inteview of Malcolm Fraser by his biographer, Margaret Simmons, which can be found here. The fact that I can now feel sympathy and interest in Fraser (who I hated for most of the 1970s) is a sign of how far the the right Australian politics has strayed in the last 30 years.
Here are my notes from the intervies - most of which are verbatim.
What is a Liberal?
Somebody:
• who has respect for other people no matter who or what that other person is.
• who believes in a fair go.
• who wants to maximise freedom for individual people so long as that freedom doesn’t trample on the rights and freedoms of other people in society
A government that will not seek to maximise actions but will seek to maximise opportunity for individuals to follow their own path but also a government that recognises that there are some things which governments just have to do which individuals can’t do for themselves. To establish a fair market place, to hold the ring to see that the world is fair and that people are treated justly, that the rule of law and due process are followed.
Sometimes I think in more recent times when people have said “market deregulation, self-regulation, corporations can do anything, banks can do anything” well it was that attitude that led to the crash of a year or so ago. Not so much in Australia where we behaved more sensibly, but certainly in a number of European countries and the United States. So while a liberal will want to maximise freedom for individuals there are obviously limits to that freedom because you start to jeopardise the future of all of us. A government that above all respects the rule of law and that’s something we haven’t had in recent times”
Where do we find the liberals today in politics?
Well I don’t know many. Petro Georgio is a liberal …
Children in detention and terrorism legislation is illiberal
Children in detention is a classic example of what a liberal ought not to do, indeed what any politician ought not to do, but the Labor Party didn’t seem to mind all that much, it supported the Howard government in totally illiberal anti terrorist legislation which could result in anyone of you being arrested as you leave this hall and you won’t know why you have been arrested and you can’t tell anyone, you just disappear, that’s not fantasy its in the law. And they only have to believe that you have observed something that might help them in their anti-terrorist enquiries. They don’t have to believe that you are guilty of anything, they know you are innocent, but they still have the power to detain you secretly, and if you talk about it afterward you go to jail for five years. If a journalist writes about it the journalist can go to jail for five years. I think such laws really promote the cause of terrorism, I don’t think they help in the fight against terrorism. But Labor and Liberal parties supported that sort of law. Well that’s not a liberal law in my book anyone who voted for it is not a liberal.
Is Malcolm Turnbull a liberal?
I think he is, yes. I think his attitude about people . I’m not sure when he was leader that he was able to define this adequately. I think he should have. One of the reasons why I think he was beaten. Those who opposed Turnbull wanted to get rid of him because he is a liberal, and the liberals turned tail and ran.
Is Tony Abbot a liberal?
Well he is the leader of the Liberal Party. He is proud of the word Conservative, he describes the party as conservative. People want to pick up Robert Menzies mantle and think that they are under his umbrella, but Menzies quite deliberately rejected the name conservative. If he would have been called a Conservative he would have taken that as an insult. As indeed I would have. He wanted a liberal party, which was liberal in philosophic terms, forward looking, progressive, willing to make experiments, willing to create opportunity. The Liberal party is very good at denigrating people who should be its heroes. Later Liberal party leaders distanced themselves from Menzies. When you look at Menzies education policy, his health policy, arguably the best health scheme that we have ever had certainly one that was designed to cover everyone in the community, and at a reasonable cost. Without his education policy, there are hundreds and thousands of people who wouldn’t have gone through University without Menzies education policies. He turned the Commonwealth into the biggest funder of universities. In more recent years, governments have been trying to pull money back. A liberal will want to invest in the future of the country and the best investment is in the future of young Australians. And to compete they need the best education available.
Asylum Seekers
Menzies government signed the UN refugee convention in 1954 – another one of the liberal things which Menzies did.
In the 1970 “we had no option but to take as many (indochinese) people who wanted to come here. The policy was thoroughly successful. Whitlam has originally made a decision not to take refugees from Indochina but when my government overturned that very early in the peace he did not oppose it, so it was a bi-partisan policy. We gained a very large number of very good Australian citizens as a consequence. A lot of whom have a sense of thanks to Australia, many of whom want to put something back into the community at large and who are doing so.
Was Gough Whitlam a socialist?
He has aspirations for Australia, he had a sense of Australian identity, he had a sense of Australian independence, he would not willingly wanted to go along with America but he would have recognised the importance of the American Alliance. I don’t want to say it in an unkindly way but in some respects, especially in economic matters he was disorganised. One year the Federal Budget increased by over 40% the next year it increased by 22% and that year the economic writers said “this is a responsible budget.” No one would regard a 22% budget increase as in any way responsibe.
Did John Kerr do the right thing and did he do it in the right way?
He did the right thing. He was in the very unfortunate position of being condemned or going to be condemned for doing the right thing or the wrong thing. There are many myths about 1975. John Kerr didn’t have fully frank and open discussions with Gough Whitlam because he would be sacked and a puppet would be put in his place and that Australia would be very much at risk. I think he had an obligation to speak openly to the Prime Minister and point out the dangers as he saw them. If John Kerr was right and he was sacked that would have immediately brought Her Majesty into the brawl because the monarchists would have said that the Queen should have been a backstop and therefore not remove John Kerr from the office. But ever since the appointment of Isaac Isaacs as Governor General the Monarch has accepted that the Monarch has no option but to accept the recommendation of her Australian Prime Minister. But the Queen would have been brought into the brawl by Monarchists who believed that she should have been a backstop. John Kerr knew this, and one thing for which he has not got credit is that he was determined to keep Her Majesty out of the brawl. He did that absolutely, the Palace was kept informed, but never once was the Palace asked for advice
Appartheid
In terms of just basic justice I couldn’t stomach a situation where a very small number of whites in South Africa wanted to keep total dominance over an overwhelming majority of black Africans.
Climate Change
For the first time the human race in two different areas has the capacity to destroy, not only the human race but the planet. I all of the history of people on this planet, human kind has not had that power before. Today we have it wrong decisions on climate change and we can do it wrong decisions in relation to nuclear weapons and we can do it through a nuclear contest. Other civilisations have destroyed themselves from internal decay. I hope Australia is going to play a constructive role in making sure that today’s people of the world make the right decisions, especially about nuclear weapons because I thing that danger is probably more urgent than the other.
Border protection
Opposition plays politics with border protection.
The government has got a two headed policy, claiming to be more compassionate than Howard was and to an extent they are but on the other head of their policy they’re saying “we’re just as tough as Howard was”. They can’t have it both ways.
The opposition saying “You’re lost control of the borders" is arrant, absolute, bloody nonsense. (They) claim that 4 or 5 thousand people a year represent a threat to Australia. It’s not so. What we desperately need in this area is a government and an opposition that will develop a unified, sensible, compassionate, firm if you like policy, but one which they then take outside the realm of politics, because playing politics with this issue is playing politics with people’s lives, playing politics with people very often fleeing the most terrible tyranny or distress, and that’s the most unseemly thing we could do and it is something which is noticed right around the world and which just makes people wonder have we really put Tampa behind us and more extreme people will ask have we really put the white Australia policy behind us.
I almost feel like going to South Africa or Zimbabwe organise a boat load of white farmers, and I’d sail them into Fremantle harbour and that would expose the policy for what it is in one blow.
I played the role of Malcolm Fraser.
In my research for this role is discovered an inteview of Malcolm Fraser by his biographer, Margaret Simmons, which can be found here. The fact that I can now feel sympathy and interest in Fraser (who I hated for most of the 1970s) is a sign of how far the the right Australian politics has strayed in the last 30 years.
Here are my notes from the intervies - most of which are verbatim.
What is a Liberal?
Somebody:
• who has respect for other people no matter who or what that other person is.
• who believes in a fair go.
• who wants to maximise freedom for individual people so long as that freedom doesn’t trample on the rights and freedoms of other people in society
A government that will not seek to maximise actions but will seek to maximise opportunity for individuals to follow their own path but also a government that recognises that there are some things which governments just have to do which individuals can’t do for themselves. To establish a fair market place, to hold the ring to see that the world is fair and that people are treated justly, that the rule of law and due process are followed.
Sometimes I think in more recent times when people have said “market deregulation, self-regulation, corporations can do anything, banks can do anything” well it was that attitude that led to the crash of a year or so ago. Not so much in Australia where we behaved more sensibly, but certainly in a number of European countries and the United States. So while a liberal will want to maximise freedom for individuals there are obviously limits to that freedom because you start to jeopardise the future of all of us. A government that above all respects the rule of law and that’s something we haven’t had in recent times”
Where do we find the liberals today in politics?
Well I don’t know many. Petro Georgio is a liberal …
Children in detention and terrorism legislation is illiberal
Children in detention is a classic example of what a liberal ought not to do, indeed what any politician ought not to do, but the Labor Party didn’t seem to mind all that much, it supported the Howard government in totally illiberal anti terrorist legislation which could result in anyone of you being arrested as you leave this hall and you won’t know why you have been arrested and you can’t tell anyone, you just disappear, that’s not fantasy its in the law. And they only have to believe that you have observed something that might help them in their anti-terrorist enquiries. They don’t have to believe that you are guilty of anything, they know you are innocent, but they still have the power to detain you secretly, and if you talk about it afterward you go to jail for five years. If a journalist writes about it the journalist can go to jail for five years. I think such laws really promote the cause of terrorism, I don’t think they help in the fight against terrorism. But Labor and Liberal parties supported that sort of law. Well that’s not a liberal law in my book anyone who voted for it is not a liberal.
Is Malcolm Turnbull a liberal?
I think he is, yes. I think his attitude about people . I’m not sure when he was leader that he was able to define this adequately. I think he should have. One of the reasons why I think he was beaten. Those who opposed Turnbull wanted to get rid of him because he is a liberal, and the liberals turned tail and ran.
Is Tony Abbot a liberal?
Well he is the leader of the Liberal Party. He is proud of the word Conservative, he describes the party as conservative. People want to pick up Robert Menzies mantle and think that they are under his umbrella, but Menzies quite deliberately rejected the name conservative. If he would have been called a Conservative he would have taken that as an insult. As indeed I would have. He wanted a liberal party, which was liberal in philosophic terms, forward looking, progressive, willing to make experiments, willing to create opportunity. The Liberal party is very good at denigrating people who should be its heroes. Later Liberal party leaders distanced themselves from Menzies. When you look at Menzies education policy, his health policy, arguably the best health scheme that we have ever had certainly one that was designed to cover everyone in the community, and at a reasonable cost. Without his education policy, there are hundreds and thousands of people who wouldn’t have gone through University without Menzies education policies. He turned the Commonwealth into the biggest funder of universities. In more recent years, governments have been trying to pull money back. A liberal will want to invest in the future of the country and the best investment is in the future of young Australians. And to compete they need the best education available.
Asylum Seekers
Menzies government signed the UN refugee convention in 1954 – another one of the liberal things which Menzies did.
In the 1970 “we had no option but to take as many (indochinese) people who wanted to come here. The policy was thoroughly successful. Whitlam has originally made a decision not to take refugees from Indochina but when my government overturned that very early in the peace he did not oppose it, so it was a bi-partisan policy. We gained a very large number of very good Australian citizens as a consequence. A lot of whom have a sense of thanks to Australia, many of whom want to put something back into the community at large and who are doing so.
Was Gough Whitlam a socialist?
He has aspirations for Australia, he had a sense of Australian identity, he had a sense of Australian independence, he would not willingly wanted to go along with America but he would have recognised the importance of the American Alliance. I don’t want to say it in an unkindly way but in some respects, especially in economic matters he was disorganised. One year the Federal Budget increased by over 40% the next year it increased by 22% and that year the economic writers said “this is a responsible budget.” No one would regard a 22% budget increase as in any way responsibe.
Did John Kerr do the right thing and did he do it in the right way?
He did the right thing. He was in the very unfortunate position of being condemned or going to be condemned for doing the right thing or the wrong thing. There are many myths about 1975. John Kerr didn’t have fully frank and open discussions with Gough Whitlam because he would be sacked and a puppet would be put in his place and that Australia would be very much at risk. I think he had an obligation to speak openly to the Prime Minister and point out the dangers as he saw them. If John Kerr was right and he was sacked that would have immediately brought Her Majesty into the brawl because the monarchists would have said that the Queen should have been a backstop and therefore not remove John Kerr from the office. But ever since the appointment of Isaac Isaacs as Governor General the Monarch has accepted that the Monarch has no option but to accept the recommendation of her Australian Prime Minister. But the Queen would have been brought into the brawl by Monarchists who believed that she should have been a backstop. John Kerr knew this, and one thing for which he has not got credit is that he was determined to keep Her Majesty out of the brawl. He did that absolutely, the Palace was kept informed, but never once was the Palace asked for advice
Appartheid
In terms of just basic justice I couldn’t stomach a situation where a very small number of whites in South Africa wanted to keep total dominance over an overwhelming majority of black Africans.
Climate Change
For the first time the human race in two different areas has the capacity to destroy, not only the human race but the planet. I all of the history of people on this planet, human kind has not had that power before. Today we have it wrong decisions on climate change and we can do it wrong decisions in relation to nuclear weapons and we can do it through a nuclear contest. Other civilisations have destroyed themselves from internal decay. I hope Australia is going to play a constructive role in making sure that today’s people of the world make the right decisions, especially about nuclear weapons because I thing that danger is probably more urgent than the other.
Border protection
Opposition plays politics with border protection.
The government has got a two headed policy, claiming to be more compassionate than Howard was and to an extent they are but on the other head of their policy they’re saying “we’re just as tough as Howard was”. They can’t have it both ways.
The opposition saying “You’re lost control of the borders" is arrant, absolute, bloody nonsense. (They) claim that 4 or 5 thousand people a year represent a threat to Australia. It’s not so. What we desperately need in this area is a government and an opposition that will develop a unified, sensible, compassionate, firm if you like policy, but one which they then take outside the realm of politics, because playing politics with this issue is playing politics with people’s lives, playing politics with people very often fleeing the most terrible tyranny or distress, and that’s the most unseemly thing we could do and it is something which is noticed right around the world and which just makes people wonder have we really put Tampa behind us and more extreme people will ask have we really put the white Australia policy behind us.
I almost feel like going to South Africa or Zimbabwe organise a boat load of white farmers, and I’d sail them into Fremantle harbour and that would expose the policy for what it is in one blow.
Sunday, June 20, 2010
Where I Stand
We all think that our political views are reasonable and somewhere near centre of mainstream politics, so I was interested to come across a quiz that calculates a person's position in the political spectrum. The site can be found here.
The site provides two web pages of questions with buttons to click indicating the degree to which you agree of disagree with each statement and how important the issue is to you.
According to the site:
This quiz will let you know where you fall on social liberties, economics, foreign policy-- even the culture war. In truth, this isn't a quiz so much as a set of statements that you must agree or disagree with. Based on your responses we will place you on a graph--also termed a political compass--that separates social liberties from economic opinion ... We will also show you what type of foreign policy you support, and how liberal or conservative you rank in the culture war
Note that this is an American site so that they use the word liberal in its traditional sense. In Australia this can be confusing as our major conservative party is called the Liberal Party.
I was not surprised to find that I was a left social libertarian.
My Political Views
I am a left moderate social libertarian
Left: 3.31, Libertarian: 2.78
My Foreign Policy Views
Score: -6.23
My Culture War Stance
Score: -5.72
The site provides two web pages of questions with buttons to click indicating the degree to which you agree of disagree with each statement and how important the issue is to you.
According to the site:
This quiz will let you know where you fall on social liberties, economics, foreign policy-- even the culture war. In truth, this isn't a quiz so much as a set of statements that you must agree or disagree with. Based on your responses we will place you on a graph--also termed a political compass--that separates social liberties from economic opinion ... We will also show you what type of foreign policy you support, and how liberal or conservative you rank in the culture war
Note that this is an American site so that they use the word liberal in its traditional sense. In Australia this can be confusing as our major conservative party is called the Liberal Party.
I was not surprised to find that I was a left social libertarian.
My Political Views
I am a left moderate social libertarian
Left: 3.31, Libertarian: 2.78
My Foreign Policy Views
Score: -6.23
My Culture War Stance
Score: -5.72
Friday, May 7, 2010
Scientists hit back
There are many absurd attacks on Climate Science and some shocking personal abuse of Climate Scientists. See this post for some examples.
It is important that Climate Scientists make clear to the general public the urgency of reducing CO2 emissions and in reducing our impact on the globe.
Today 250 scientists have released a statement explaining the facts and decrying the irrational and immoral tactics of the deniers.
I have reproduced the statement below:
"CLIMATE CHANGE AND THE INTEGRITY OF SCIENCE
Lead Letter Published in Science magazine, May 7, 2010
From 255 members of the US National Academy of Sciences:
We are deeply disturbed by the recent escalation of political assaults on scientists in general and on climate scientists in particular. All citizens should understand some basic scientific facts. There is always some uncertainty associated with scientific conclusions; science never absolutely proves anything. When someone says that society should wait until scientists are absolutely certain before taking any action, it is the same as saying society should never take action. For a problem as potentially catastrophic as climate change, taking no action poses a dangerous risk for our planet.
Scientific conclusions derive from an understanding of basic laws supported by laboratory experiments, observations of nature, and mathematical and computer modeling. Like all human beings, scientists make mistakes, but the scientific process is designed to find and correct them. This process is inherently adversarial— scientists build reputations and gain recognition not only for supporting conventional wisdom, but even more so for demonstrating that the scientific consensus is wrong and that there is a better explanation. That's what Galileo, Pasteur, Darwin, and Einstein did. But when some conclusions have been thoroughly and deeply tested, questioned, and examined, they gain the status of "well-established theories" and are often spoken of as "facts."
For instance, there is compelling scientific evidence that our planet is about 4.5bn years old (the theory of the origin of Earth), that our universe was born from a single event about 14bn years ago (the Big Bang theory), and that today's organisms evolved from ones living in the past (the theory of evolution). Even as these are overwhelmingly accepted by the scientific community, fame still awaits anyone who could show these theories to be wrong. Climate change now falls into this category: there is compelling, comprehensive, and consistent objective evidence that humans are changing the climate in ways that threaten our societies and the ecosystems on which we depend.
Many recent assaults on climate science and, more disturbingly, on climate scientists by climate change deniers, are typically driven by special interests or dogma, not by an honest effort to provide an alternative theory that credibly satisfies the evidence. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and other scientific assessments of climate change, which involve thousands of scientists producing massive and comprehensive reports, have, quite expectedly and normally, made some mistakes. When errors are pointed out, they are corrected.
But there is nothing remotely identified in the recent events that changes the fundamental conclusions about climate change:
(i) The planet is warming due to increased concentrations of heat-trapping gases in our atmosphere. A snowy winter in Washington does not alter this fact.
(ii) Most of the increase in the concentration of these gases over the last century is due to human activities, especially the burning of fossil fuels and deforestation.
(iii) Natural causes always play a role in changing Earth's climate, but are now being overwhelmed by human-induced changes.
(iv) Warming the planet will cause many other climatic patterns to change at speeds unprecedented in modern times, including increasing rates of sea-level rise and alterations in the hydrologic cycle. Rising concentrations of carbon dioxide are making the oceans more acidic.
(v) The combination of these complex climate changes threatens coastal communities and cities, our food and water supplies, marine and freshwater ecosystems, forests, high mountain environments, and far more.
Much more can be, and has been, said by the world's scientific societies, national academies, and individuals, but these conclusions should be enough to indicate why scientists are concerned about what future generations will face from business- as-usual practices. We urge our policymakers and the public to move forward immediately to address the causes of climate change, including the unrestrained burning of fossil fuels.
We also call for an end to McCarthy- like threats of criminal prosecution against our colleagues based on innuendo and guilt by association, the harassment of scientists by politicians seeking distractions to avoid taking action, and the outright lies being spread about them. Society has two choices: we can ignore the science and hide our heads in the sand and hope we are lucky, or we can act in the public interest to reduce the threat of global climate change quickly and substantively. The good news is that smart and effective actions are possible. But delay must not be an option.
The names of the 255 scientists can be found at this link.
In normal times signing this type of document would be unexceptional in a western democracy, but with the personal abuse and legal threats aimed at climate scientists, the scientists are showing considerable personal bravery.
It is important that Climate Scientists make clear to the general public the urgency of reducing CO2 emissions and in reducing our impact on the globe.
Today 250 scientists have released a statement explaining the facts and decrying the irrational and immoral tactics of the deniers.
I have reproduced the statement below:
"CLIMATE CHANGE AND THE INTEGRITY OF SCIENCE
Lead Letter Published in Science magazine, May 7, 2010
From 255 members of the US National Academy of Sciences:
We are deeply disturbed by the recent escalation of political assaults on scientists in general and on climate scientists in particular. All citizens should understand some basic scientific facts. There is always some uncertainty associated with scientific conclusions; science never absolutely proves anything. When someone says that society should wait until scientists are absolutely certain before taking any action, it is the same as saying society should never take action. For a problem as potentially catastrophic as climate change, taking no action poses a dangerous risk for our planet.
Scientific conclusions derive from an understanding of basic laws supported by laboratory experiments, observations of nature, and mathematical and computer modeling. Like all human beings, scientists make mistakes, but the scientific process is designed to find and correct them. This process is inherently adversarial— scientists build reputations and gain recognition not only for supporting conventional wisdom, but even more so for demonstrating that the scientific consensus is wrong and that there is a better explanation. That's what Galileo, Pasteur, Darwin, and Einstein did. But when some conclusions have been thoroughly and deeply tested, questioned, and examined, they gain the status of "well-established theories" and are often spoken of as "facts."
For instance, there is compelling scientific evidence that our planet is about 4.5bn years old (the theory of the origin of Earth), that our universe was born from a single event about 14bn years ago (the Big Bang theory), and that today's organisms evolved from ones living in the past (the theory of evolution). Even as these are overwhelmingly accepted by the scientific community, fame still awaits anyone who could show these theories to be wrong. Climate change now falls into this category: there is compelling, comprehensive, and consistent objective evidence that humans are changing the climate in ways that threaten our societies and the ecosystems on which we depend.
Many recent assaults on climate science and, more disturbingly, on climate scientists by climate change deniers, are typically driven by special interests or dogma, not by an honest effort to provide an alternative theory that credibly satisfies the evidence. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and other scientific assessments of climate change, which involve thousands of scientists producing massive and comprehensive reports, have, quite expectedly and normally, made some mistakes. When errors are pointed out, they are corrected.
But there is nothing remotely identified in the recent events that changes the fundamental conclusions about climate change:
(i) The planet is warming due to increased concentrations of heat-trapping gases in our atmosphere. A snowy winter in Washington does not alter this fact.
(ii) Most of the increase in the concentration of these gases over the last century is due to human activities, especially the burning of fossil fuels and deforestation.
(iii) Natural causes always play a role in changing Earth's climate, but are now being overwhelmed by human-induced changes.
(iv) Warming the planet will cause many other climatic patterns to change at speeds unprecedented in modern times, including increasing rates of sea-level rise and alterations in the hydrologic cycle. Rising concentrations of carbon dioxide are making the oceans more acidic.
(v) The combination of these complex climate changes threatens coastal communities and cities, our food and water supplies, marine and freshwater ecosystems, forests, high mountain environments, and far more.
Much more can be, and has been, said by the world's scientific societies, national academies, and individuals, but these conclusions should be enough to indicate why scientists are concerned about what future generations will face from business- as-usual practices. We urge our policymakers and the public to move forward immediately to address the causes of climate change, including the unrestrained burning of fossil fuels.
We also call for an end to McCarthy- like threats of criminal prosecution against our colleagues based on innuendo and guilt by association, the harassment of scientists by politicians seeking distractions to avoid taking action, and the outright lies being spread about them. Society has two choices: we can ignore the science and hide our heads in the sand and hope we are lucky, or we can act in the public interest to reduce the threat of global climate change quickly and substantively. The good news is that smart and effective actions are possible. But delay must not be an option.
The names of the 255 scientists can be found at this link.
In normal times signing this type of document would be unexceptional in a western democracy, but with the personal abuse and legal threats aimed at climate scientists, the scientists are showing considerable personal bravery.
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