Let them come

I’ve never thought the issue of asylum seekers, or ‘boat people’ was all that complex. There are plenty of places in the world at the moment where people are getting bombed, or systematically killed off by their government – and it makes good sense for them to come here (by whatever means they can manage). It seems straight forward that we should be able to process them efficiently and humanely, accepting genuine refugees and deporting the imposters. This was as true back in 2006 as it is now. That immigration policy is so hard to enact here in Australia is no doubt due to the logic-free fear mongering that forms the basis of the public debate.

Let’s get a couple of things clear. First, the number of asylum seekers that Australia accepts is capped at about 10,000 – a relatively generous commitment by international standards, but still a drop in the ocean amongst our 22,000,000 inhabitants (this is also in the context of the 300,000 new migrants expected to arrive legally this year). Worse still, the recent media blitz concerning the ‘waves of boat people’ focused on just 78 Sri Lankans, fleeing the end of their civil war and systematic hunting by their government. Amongst the estimated 20-odd million refugees worldwide our ‘problem’ is definitely all style and no substance.

Second, much of the political backlash felt by the Rudd government has been due to the perception that he is somehow softer on refugees (perish the thought) and that the boat-flood gates are only just opening. While boat numbers dropped precipitously from a peak in 2001 (5516 refugees), coinciding with Howard’s Pacific Solution, there haven been about 1500 arrivals so far in 2009. While I agree that removing the deterrent effect of up to 3 years mandatory detention on a remote pacific island has contributed – it is surely the deteriorating situation in Afghanistan and the crushing of the ethnic Tamils by the Sri Lankan government that is the chief cause of this increase. Some 800,000 Tamils have been displaced by the fighting (and government routing) with 150,000 pouring into camps in neighbouring India alone.

As with many of these apparently hot button issues, it is easy to side passionately with the political Right (and with intolerance) – until you have a single moment of real empathy. It’s easy to be against gay marriage, until your daughter is born a lesbian (see Dick Cheney) and easier still to be pro-war until your son is shipped to Afghanistan. Here in Australia we have the supreme luxury of judging the boat people, free as we are of religious or political persecution, or the risk of stepping on a land mine on the way to work. When you’re next getting your nightly serve of migrant-invasion propaganda, wonder what lengths you’d go to keep your family safe.

State of the Art

Posting has not been as feverish around the Fake White House lately as I would’ve liked. Blame Obama and K-Rudd. It’s harder to be knife-edge vigilant when operations are now being conducted with sanity and moderation. Sure, both men are still guilty of mis-steps now and then – but the malice has disappeared from our governance. Obama is the Man of the People we’ve waited for, and Rudd is boring but generally a force of good (which is a nice change). Content that we’ve been given a reprieve from the fast train to Hell, the fever pitch has subsided.

Still, I’ve not quite gone into a coma. In fact, last week when the Hilltop Hoods released their 6^th studio album I was ready and waiting for it. The Adelaide hip-hoppers (Pressure, Suffa and DJ Debris) have been chiselling away at success since the early 90s, but started to make serious waves with The Calling (2003) and The Hard Road (2006). They do some party songs: Dumb Enough (“if I forgot your name I’m sorry – you’re probably pretty ugly”), What a Great Night (“put your hands up if you’re not too drunk to stand up”); chronicles of their slow rise to fame: The Hard Road (“I was going nowhere like a children’s letter to God”) and occasionally some political/message stuff: Circuit Breaker (“John Howard knows the taste of George’s dick!”).

The latest album, State of the Art (2009), has a similar mix of songs and the classic Hoods sound. But this is not a music review – and my heightened interest in the new album is due largely the standout last track: Fifty in Five. MC Suffa chronicles fifty years of history in a five minute track – covering off on politics, pop culture, current events, the War(s) on Terror… it’s really an epic. The song has played over and over in my head since I heard it, and as a conscientious President, I thought you should all be exposed to its power. Enjoy the clip below. I recommend reading along with the lyrics, the first time, for the full effect.

Torture – Plain and Simple

After some years in the media wilderness, torture and its ethics have returned to the spotlight. Following the recent change in Administration, the Bush spin machine – once so efficient and clinical – is dead. Nuanced differences between ‘enhanced interrogation’ and torture are over and it’s time to take stock of the damage done. After some heated in-fighting, Obama de-classified a series of memo’s which amounted to Bush administration directives to the CIA allowing them to torture al-Qaida and other suspects held at Guantánamo and secret detention centres round the world. After eight years of secrecy and slight-of-hand, this kind of transparency makes me kind of nervous.

For context, the public have known about enhanced interrogation since Bush coined the phrase in 2002; a euphemism encompassing a range of aggressive and questionable practices – and equating very literally to torture (Bush continued past this time to insist that “we do not torture” – content to split linguistic hairs). At that time after a lengthier than usual rant, I concluded that while the appropriate position on torture was to avoid it (and to grab what little moral high ground was left) – the Bushies should at the very least be honest about the lengths they were going to, “to keep us safe”. Well they didn’t and they weren’t. And now, someone should answer for it.

I’m not actually sure what to be most angry about, wading through the recent disclosures. Maybe that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was waterboarded 183 times (so much for tricking him into simulated drowning – I think he’s on to you!), that the frequency of torture spiked just when the US were looking to justify their invasion of Iraq, or that Cheney and Rumsfeld really were the black hearted sons-of-bitches that we feared they were (don’t even get me started on that prick Alberto Gonzales…). While Obama is content to “look forward”, I want to see all the Bushies that dragged us down into the moral quagmire to be held accountable. If it’s good enough for Clinton, it’s good enough for Bush – bring on the show trials.

While we all wait for that not to happen, I can recommend some reading/viewing to give this whole torture thing a face you can see: 1) The 2007 Jake Gyllenhaal movie, Rendition. It tries to give a sense of the complexity of the torture question – but confirmed for me the obvious dangers of such primitive techniques: getting the wrong guy, and the validity of his torture-induced testimony; 2) Enemy Combatant: A British Muslim's Journey to Guantanamo and Back, a book written by former detainee Moazzam Begg. I defy you to read it and not feel empathy for the way he was treated – even before getting to Gitmo. Treating any human this way, guilty or innocent, murderer or terrorist is abhorrent and 3) A recent essay by Atul Gawande appearing in The New Yorker. In summary, solitary confinement will send a regular man crazy in about a month. Three tops. It’s chilling. While it focuses on the use of isolation in the US prison system (it’s rife) – I couldn’t help but think of poor old José Padilla, held in solitary for 3 and a half years, until he finally cracked…

Tipping Point

The US is a notorious chain-dragger on a range of progressive issues. They seem to have a disproportionate number of evolution deniers, extremist pro-lifers and ‘traditionalists’ (read: homophobes). Increasingly, these issues are being decided in state and federal courts and finding their way onto ballot propositions (like Prop 8). While there have been setbacks (and there will be more), I get the feeling that on same-sex marriage at least, the scales may well be reaching tipping point.

While Proposition 8 was passed in California, effectively banning gay marriage in that state – Massachusetts and Connecticut continued granting marriages to same sex couples. This week, Vermont became the first state to pass laws to legalise same sex marriage. The legislature overturned the governor’s veto with overwhelming votes in both houses (100-49 and 23-5). So, 3 New England states (of the 50) support gay marriage – that’s hardly a turning tide, you might say – especially when 29 states have constitutional amendments explicitly barring the recognition of same-sex marriage…

What gives me hope on this issue is the recent battleground of mid-western Iowa. On April 3 their Supreme Court ruled the state's ban on same sex marriage was unconstitutional – a clear victory in this war. Still, my interest was not only in the win – but in the arguments used by the prosecutors. Out-loud, in a courtroom, gay marriage opponents argued to continue the ban in order to: protect tradition, promote a good environment for children, promote procreation, promote stability in opposite-sex relationships, and save the state money. Let that sink in for a minute.

Now while, Judge Robert Hanson had the good sense to dismiss this arguments as insufficient, I’m pleased that these reasons were articulated – as I find them especially damaging to the opponents of same sex marriage. The prosecutors moved beyond simple religious (God Intended It) reasoning and skated out onto some very thin ice. Applied to the whole community, will marriage be denied to couples who create a ‘bad’ environment for children, or who choose not to (or are unable to) procreate? And are we seriously expected to contemplate that gay marriage undermines the stability of opposite-sex relationships? Please.

Overall, it was a pretty farcical case, which I hope does irrevocable damage to anti-gay crusaders everywhere. The stated reasons are based largely on a number of false gay stereotypes and could not possibly be digested by any self respecting individual (or court). The heterosexual community leaves in a giant glass mansion on this one, and I strongly suggest keeping these stones un-thrown.

The Limits of Tolerance

The Catholic Church and I have an understanding. I let them continue to minister to their estimated 1.131 billion adherents and in exchange I expect them to keep their God-bothering to themselves. It’s like religious Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.  Admittedly, this has always been a tenuous relationship – they don’t care for atheists, and I’m not a fan of unabashed, arbitrarily administered social oppression. Still, we try. Unfortunately, His Holiness Joseph Ratzinger has been pushing the friendship lately, with a slate of proclamations and deeds that extend the limits of my considerable tolerance. I’m of a mind to put the Vatican On Notice, and here’s why:

1. Out loud Holocaust Denial

Look, I know that there are a percentage of nut-bags out there that insist that the Holocaust was manufactured by historians to increase sympathy for Jews. It’s not a new argument (though it never gets any more logical). Usually though, there’s an agenda: President Ahmadinejad needs to feed on anti-Semitic sentiment to distract his subjects from his ineptitude, while terror groups like Hamas and The Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood espouse it as a matter of course in their fight against the Zionists. Still, one expects the Vatican (who stayed ‘neutral’ during the actual event) to have the sense be keep inflammatory rhetoric to a minimum on the subject. Reinstating excommunicated Bishop Richard Williamson – who popped up on Swedish TV claiming “that two to three hundred thousand Jews perished… but none of them by gas chambers” didn’t seem like a super smart play. The Pope described the reinstatement of a Holocaust Denier as "an unforeseen mishap”.

2. An Unnecessarily Rigid Pro-life Agenda

I also know that being a staunch Catholic (or even Christian) is often synonymous with a zero tolerance pro-life stance. I’ve never been one for issuing decrees on personal issues such as these – but in any case, it’s nice to think that in exceptional circumstances even one’s most deeply held views can be flexible enough to allow reason to prevail. Let’s say, if a 9-year old girl was impregnated after her step-father raped her – she would be at least be entitled to avoid giving birth to her own siblings? Right? Well, when it happened in Brazil this month, the Catholic Church excommunicated the girl, her family and the doctors who performed her abortion. As told by Time Magazine: "God's laws," said the archbishop, dictate that abortion is a sin and that transgressors are no longer welcome in the Roman Catholic Church. Evidently, an open and shut case.

3. Treating Abstinence-Only Sex Education Like a Real Policy

Abstinence-Only Sex-Education is not effective at reducing anything, except the levels of Government funding going to Actual Sex Education. According to the British Medical Journal there is "no evidence" that abstinence-only sex education programs "reduce risky sexual behaviours, incidence of sexually transmitted infections, or pregnancy" – a small detail that did not prevent the Bush White House from spending exhaustively on it. Now, while Bristol Palin and I agree that it’s a failed ‘policy’ – Pope Ratzinger disagrees, arguing that it has a primary role in the global fight against HIV/AIDS. He claims that “[AIDS] cannot be overcome through the distribution of condoms, which even aggravates the problems”. Indeed.

Such as it is then, I’m at the end of my tether with dear Ratzinger. I’m of course not a fan of organised religion at the best of times – but the Vatican seems to be going the extra yard lately to alienate friend and foe alike. In the wake of hundreds of years of corruption and greed, decades of child abuse scandals and an ongoing refusal to join us in the 21^st century -  it makes a President wonder what it will take to bring the whole sham down.     

Too Big To Fail

As the United States government extended its bailout of massive insurance company AIG to USD$150 billion, President Barrack Obama and many others are declaring the company "too big to fail". This company did not materialise from thin air into a 200 billion dollar behemoth, nor was it operating under the radar prior to the financial crisis. It was merrily making enormous profits guaranteeing debts which in the climate of a booming economy is like fishing with dynamite. Much back slapping ensued and the regulators had a busy time congratulating themselves on creating such fine economic times to allow this prosperity. Then, wouldn't you know it, cracks started to appear in the aquarium and the AIG suddenly was reminded that the insurance business involves the risk that you'll occasionally have to pay claims. Further - if you're insuring copious sums of highly obscure engineered financial products like the CDOs that became worthless when the housing bubble burst, there's a very good chance that you'll find yourself having to pay lots of claims at once! Now of course as a business you would plan for such occurrences and spread your risk and keep sufficient capital reserves to survive such a scenario - wouldn't you...

You probably would unless you were too big to fail. Then you might be forgiven for thinking that since the government is certain to bail you out if you find yourself with hundreds of billions in liabilities, you may as well enjoy the benefit of that taxpayer funded insurance policy and go on taking enormous risks to rake in the profits. It's a pretty sweet deal to be sure - keep all the profits and pay nothing for the guarantee you'll be protected if it ever does go bad. That's why you wont hear one word of complaint from me about the behavior of AIG. They behaved as any rational company would under the circumstances.

My complaint is with the policies of market self-regulation and minimalistic government that created this mess. The abject failure of the regulators to manage the growth of AIG and others like it into giants too big to fail has ironically expanded the governmental realm far beyond where even the left-leaning major parties would have it. The US government now officially owns 80% of AIG courtesy of these loans and cash injections. It has been nationalised. The fact of the matter is it actually owns the losses of the entire company as it has made it perfectly clear that if the company needs further help it will be forced to step in. It just doesn't own all the potential profits, only 80%. Worse, it has owned the entire company ever since it allowed it to become so large it's failure would catastrophically destabilise the financial markets - it just didn't collect any of the profits back in those prime days either. Now the taxpayers are finally entitled 80% of their rightful profits but they find themselves proud owners of a steaming financial heap still hemorrhaging money courtesy of the financial collapse brought on by the risk-taking behavior the regulators implicitly sponsored.

Think on that some, dear voters. Next time you hear someone touting the evils of government interference, the infallibility of financial markets self-regulation and other such talk I hope you will consider the consequences carefully. You are paying a premium for your car or home insurance and you rightly don't expect it for free. Learn from our mistakes and don't allow this situation to arise again where the tables turn and you are the one writing insurance policies.

Presidential Medal of Freedom

Still President Bush has another 11 days in office – and then we can start the clean up. It’s going to make Chernobyl look like a summer holiday. He’s been like a really bad tenant, cooking indoors on an open fire, raising chickens in the pantry and shitting in the sink. Unfortunately, the stakes were a lot higher than the upkeep of an investment. In the rudderless days of the transition between Presidents, Bush is focusing on crafting a legacy – while Gaza burns, economists despair and Afghanistan becomes the new Iraq (or Vietnam). Talk about bad timing.

In general, the long transition is a horrible idea. The outgoing President has idle hands and the knowledge that his position and privilege will soon be gone. In their final days in the White House, lame duckers often re-discover their power to pardon criminals (at random), dramatically modify legislation and tea-leaf that lamp that they’ve always liked so much. Bush so far has pushed through a few late night anti-environment bills and been sparring with his pardons (with the notable exception of Scooter Libby) – however, he is giving out Medals of Freedom like they’re candy canes at Santa’s Workshop.

The Presidential Medal of Freedom is the highest honour the US bestows on a civilian. It is awarded at the discretion of the President – I guess in a similar way to which the Queen hands out knighthoods. Past recipients include Mother Teresa, Muhammad Ali, Neil Armstrong (and Buzz), Jesse Jackson and Stormin’ Norman Schwarzkopf. All worthwhile  nominees, given  it is designed to recognize individuals who have made "an especially meritorious contribution to the security or national interests of the United States, world peace, cultural or other significant public or private endeavours."

What I take particular issue with here is that Bush is blatantly using the medal to reward cronies and collaborators past and present. In 2004, he hung the medal around the neck of former CIA head George Tenet. The same George Tenet that presided over the colossal intelligence failures that led to 9/11 and who called invading Iraq a “slam dunk”. Worse however, this month will see the honour bestowed on three particularly dubious suspects: Tony Blair, Columbian President Alvaro Uribe and our own John Howard. Apparently, “all three leaders have been staunch allies of the United States, particularly in combating terrorism”. More accurately, these three leaders have blindly stuck with the US during their failed two front war and offered carte blanche praise for the unpopular Bush.

The whole affair has just added a final sour taste to the shit sandwich that has been the Bush years. The ceremony, no doubt hailing the success of the ‘coalition of the willing, will be one of Dubya’s final acts as commander-in-chief (hopefully) and an integral part of spinning a positive legacy. In the years ahead, I hope the medals bring cold comfort to Howard and Blair particularly, as they lay awake and wonder of their complicity in the worst US Presidency the world has seen.