Category — Politics

International Women’s Day always comes around in a surprise for me. I used to love celebrating it in Brisbane. Although a working day, there were often lunches and dinners organised by various organisations and, after a morning of work, you could toddle off to a series of functions with good food and flowing wine and make a very nice day of it.

In Poland, the day — which used to be celebrated in a major manner — has now slipped a bit in disuse as the society designates it a “Communist” day. In fact, it was created by the Socialist Party of America in 1909 (back in the day when the USA actually had a socialist party and an Anti-Imperial League; Mark Twain was one of the League’s more vociferous members) and, so Wikipedia tells me:

Demonstrations marking International Women’s Day in Russia proved to be the first stage of the Russian Revolution off 1917.

In Malaysia, the celebrations are low-key, if they exist at all. I’ve tried to find an article in Sunday’s The Star for you but it doesn’t appear in any online searches. For those who have the paper, it’s in Sunday’s edition, on page N17. The article is headed “Women’s Day forum receives poor response”:

An International Women’s Day 2010 forum organised by the … [Penang] … government received poor response with only 10 people attending the morning session although chairs were allocated for 100 participants.

State executive councillor, Lydia Ong, who’s been “active in non-governmental organisations (NGOs) since 2005″ goes on to say that:

“We noticed that whenever forums or talks on ‘hard issues’ are held, the turnout is poor compared too say, classes on cooking or self-grooming.” … Ong attributed this to the “very low” level of awareness among women of their rights.

Of course, as you dig deeper into the article, you find that you had to pay to attend the forum and that the poor response was for the morning, Mandarin, session. The afternoon session, in English, attracted 60 people, which isn’t bad. I still wonder about that comment of Ong’s however: do women shy away from politics and human rights, actively preferring seminars on cooking and fashion? Does anyone have a comment they’d like to make about this?

So, anyway, it’s International Women’s Day today. If you’re at all thankful to the women around you, from mother to co-worker, take a moment to be appreciative. It may be as simple as buying them a coffee or even sparing some time to give your mother or sister a phone call. It could be buying your daughter a lollipop as a treat. Whatever it is, it will be very much appreciated. And a good Day to all!

You listen to who?

(Sorry about Wednesday. Had to get into Singapore for something. Back to normal programming now. Er, maybe.)

I’m going through an Umberto Eco kick at the moment. I finished his “How to Travel With a Salmon” and have delved back to re-discover “Travels in Hyper Reality“. I think I’ll write on that volume sometime in the future, but what struck me was a congruity between the introduction of Hyper Reality (written in the original Italian back in the early 70s) and Immanuel Wallerstein’s latest commentary (this week).

(ASIDE: Immanuel Wallerstein is an American sociologist who’s interested in world systems. He’s Senior Research Scholar at Yale. I subscribe to his Commentaries so get them via email, but the one I’m alluding to (Number 275), can be found here.)

Eco mentions that, on a visit to the USA, he was asked by a reporter how he reconciled his work as a scholar with that of a columnist with one of Italy’s most widely-read newspapers. It’s interesting that Eco sees no conflict between the roles but that the US journalist does.

And in reading Wallerstein’s latest commentary, I was struck by the following paragraphs:

At this point [of great governmental impossible choices] enters that greatest of world pundits, Thomas I. Friedman, to write a column entitled “Never heard that before.” What had he never heard before? He heard non-Americans talking at Davos about “political instability” in the United States. He says that in his past experience such a phrase had been used only about countries like Russia or Iran or Honduras. Imagine that. People actually think the United States is politically unpredictable. And Thomas Friedman never heard it before.

There have been some people who have been writing this, and explaining this, for some forty years at least, but Thomas Friedman never heard it before. That’s because he has been living in a self-constructed cocoon, that of the political Establishment in the United States and its acolytes elsewhere. Things must be really bad for them to recognize this basic reality. The United States is politically unstable – and likely to become more so, not less so, in the coming decade.

While the USA makes a wonderful target for this specific post, I would like to posit that the point I wish to make is broader. See if it applies to your country.

The line between Thomas Friedman and Umberto Eco begins and ends with politics. In Country X (again, is it yours?), the major political newspaper columns are written by people with little knowledge of the subject upon which they’re pontificating. Of course, you get the normal self-serving guest spots by politicians attempting to show how they were more ethical and rational about a particular issue but, in general, the calls to explain — or change — domestic or foreign policy are usually doled out by people in, as Wallerstein put it, “a self-constructed cocoon”.

Thus, an escalation of the war in Afghanistan is usually trumpeted by people with little knowledge of history but their own vested interests. A desire to have a war with Iran is written by people with little knowledge of geo-politics but their own vested interests. And the war with Iraq was prompted by people with little knowledge of UN resolutions … and little moral fibre. But with their own vested interests. As a result, the catastrophic breakdown of the wall between investment and commercial banks was pushed through by financial lobbyists … with nary a word of publicised protest. The anything-but-not-a-public-option medical “reform” was/is touted highly by insurance companies … with nary a word of publicised protest. And the mushrooming of the USA defence budget has been encouraged by arms manufacturers .. with nary a word of publicised protest. None of the above parties are uninterested bystanders looking at the big picture, but very interested players looking at the bottom line.

That’s not to say there isn’t any protest. The apoplexy, disbelief and refutations from certain sectors of the country are strident and never-ending. But, by and large, they are the academics, the intellectuals, and so are beneath the notice of the general population. (When did you last read Gore Vidal or Noam Chomsky? No no, they’re still alive. And still commenting. Just not anywhere the average citizen is likely to read about it.)

What Wallerstein says is correct. The idea of the United States as a politically unstable house of cards is not a new one, but the people who know this, who are aware of this, are not heard because … they’re academics. And Country X is very very firm about drawing a line between its intellectuals/academics and its columnists.

To a degree, it’s also a self-censoring situation. For a non-political reference, just recall how shabbily Carl Sagan, an eminent scientist, was treated by his peers. The derogatory label levelled at him was that he was “a populist”, as if making complex ideas accessible to the general population is a bad thing.

The problem is, of course, it is. Because if you understand things, then you may start questioning things. And if you start questioning things then — oh, I don’t know — you may actually start to behave like a citizen in a democracy and demand answers of those people you’ve elected to their positions. And we can’t have that.

I’m attending a series of Customer Experience seminars at work at the moment and among the many fallacies that the instructor has regurgitated was one particular case study. She detailed a conference where two speakers were giving talks on the economic situation. The first speaker got up and told people that they weren’t out of the woods yet and that things may even get worse. He backed this up with various charts, showing the decline of several indicators. The mood in the conference hall when the first speaker was done, the instructor said, was sombre. The second speaker got up and told people that things were looking up! That the stock market has rebounded. And that major countries are facing solid growth.

“I much preferred the second speaker,” the instructor said. “He was optimistic and he raised the spirits of all in the conference hall. And that’s how you should operate because nobody likes listening to depressing news.”

Really? Is that what people would prefer? Pretty lies over ugly truth? Is that what you prefer? Because, if you do, then you’ve created your own problem. If all you’re after are the happy-happy-joy-joy moments, then you’ve set up a situation where you don’t want to hear from academics about the tortured, ancient morass of history that is the Middle East. And you don’t want to hear from academics why the repeal of the Glass-Steagall act under Bill Clinton was the baddest economic idea of modern times. And you don’t want to hear from academics why a country that condones, and even glorifies, torture (the cosy arrangement between the Bush government and the writers of “24″ being a case in point) is doomed to descend to brutality itself. And guess what happens? You wade into a region you know nothing about, you interfere with the checks and balances of the financial system (such as they are) and you end up dehumanising your entire society. And all because someone with a loud mouth and vested interests told you so, and you didn’t know any better and — perhaps — you didn’t want to know any better.

In the chaotic situation that we all now find ourselves in, cut loose from the tether of any kind of knowledge of how any part of the world works, we are tossed from one giant wave to another, clinging to the authoritative pronouncements of editors, pundits and columnists in our media, all of whom seem to change their opinions at the drop of a hat. One moment, the situation we’re facing is the direst in the world; the next week, everything’s looking up; the following week, it’s all doom and gloom again; and so on.

This is the time when we need, above all, some deeper analysis to understand the big picture and chart a way forward. Every society needs its intellectuals and academics, if only to present something to argue cogently against, if nothing else! What we don’t need, and are getting far too much of, is the kind of ten-second, gimmick-ridden, permanently fickle punditry of the Jim Cramer types. Don’t you deserve better? I certainly do.

All we have to do….

J and I have wonderful breakfast conversations. In fact, we yearn for compatible days off just so we can spend our time yakking over several mugs of tea and coffee. We’ll spend the time before our first meal of the day quickly scouring the ‘tubes for juicy gossip just so we can try to top each other with the most audacious political happenings of the past 24 hours. And they happen far more frequently than you would believe. For my American readers, the two US stand-outs from recent times are Obama’s “war is peace” Nobel peace prize speech (I swear it should be framed. Alternatively, we could put it on infinite loop playback right next to George Orwell’s grave and power an entire town from the energy generated by that poor corpse spinning in his grave. Nyuk nyuk.) and Jimmy Carter’s morally bankrupt repudiation of international justice in his apology to Israel. (I could never figure out why everyone thought he is such a great man; after all, when all’s said and done, he’s nothing more than a politician. Oh well.)

But back to the matter at hand, stalwart reader. How aggressive are humans actually? That was a recent topic. Are we animals that will make war at the drop of a hat, or is there something else involved? How many conflicts have begun, or got a great boost, from a provocation?

Now, neither J nor I are historians by trade, so we don’t presume to have the definitive list, but what we dredged up from memory was still rather interesting.

Vietnam. The Gulf of Tonkin incident that announced the entry of the USA into the Vietnam War was a lie. The unprovoked torpedo attacks from the North Vietnamese that sparked American retaliation not only never occurred, but the US destroyer Maddox was playing silly buggers in order to provoke things in the first place.

Poland. On 31 August 1939, German SS soldiers set up an attack on one of their own radio stations at the Polish-German border and the Germans broadcast a message, in Polish, urging Poles to kill the Germans who resided in the Silesian region.

Modern Poland. In the 1980s, the government carried out covert actions that were ostensibly anti-Communist (fires, infrastructure vandalism) in order to provoke the Soviet Union into invading and quelling the rising Solidarity movement. Thankfully, this one failed.

Iraq. The US gave the green light to Saddam Hussein to invade Kuwait, then used the invasion as the premise to start the first Gulf War.

Malaysia. There is now a book out that says that the infamous May 1969 race riots were actually engineered with the full cooperation of the incumbent government in order to further its own ends.

Indonesia. A different use of provocation, but still…. Military man (and wartime collaborator) Suharto turned a botched coup attempt by an opposing military faction into anti-communist propaganda, initiating a massacre that took the lives of more than half a million communists, sympathisers and (I’m sure) people who just happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time.

Israel. David Ben-Gurion had a reputation for giving the go-ahead for numerous provocations carried out by Israeli intelligence services throughout Europe against Jews, in order to convince them that Europe was completely anti-Semitic and that the best bet for their future was the new state of Israel.

China. The Marco Polo incident can be seen as deliberate Japanese provocation that essentially began World War Two in Asia in earnest (after some smouldering since the Japanese invasion of Manchuria in 1931). China was to Japan as Poland was to Germany … its liebensraum.

Germany. Hitler. Jews. ’nuff said.

Iran. The Straits of Hormuz incident (2008) was, especially if you view the videos, deliberate provocation on the part of the United States, and not the first either. Here’s an article from Asia Times that explains the significance of “international waters”, “Iranian inspections”, and so on within the context of the Straits.

There are plenty more examples of both blatant provocation and use of covert action by a government (it doesn’t matter which one, black or white, communist or capitalist, they’re all the same) either against its own citizens or against another country’s citizens in order to further its own ends. In fact, there are so many other examples that you have to wonder if we would have even had the amount of carnage humanity has sustained throughout history if it wasn’t for one small group of people at that time (and they weren’t solely men, so don’t fall into that trap) using spin to advance their aims … and to hell with their fellow human beings.

On the one hand, it makes me feel a bit optimistic because it tells me that, left to our own devices, people have a tendency to just generally want to get along with each other. On the other, it depresses the hell out of me because it also tells me how easily we can be manipulated by people we trust to do what’s best for us.

Something that perked me right up

I just had to share this with you. It appears that a Corporal Willie Apiata was just awarded the Victoria Cross. No problem there. And he’s a member of the SAS. Okay, as much as I ponder the psychological make-up of Special Forces members, no problem there either. There’s even a photo of him, most probably tanked up on adrenalin (the photo was taken just after an urban gun-fight) in Kabul. Again, so what? The kicker comes when you realise he’s part of the Special Forces of … wait for it … New Zealand.

Ah, New Zealand. You were one of the first modern countries to give women the vote (1893). In contrast, Switzerland thought that women were on the level of animals till 1971. And Liechenstein probably considered them less useful than assorted pets till 1984! (Western leadership in human rights. Gotta love it.)

The plucky little country (New Zealand, not Switzerland or Liechenstein) also gave the finger to the United States, disallowing nuclear-powered USA ships from docking at New Zealand ports, causing the USA to suspend ANZUS Treaty obligations to that country around 1987, I think.

Small yet fiercely independent and freethinking, that’s how New Zealand is regarded by others politically, when it’s regarded at all.

How did New Zealand stand on the GWOT (Global War on Terror)? And that Iraq thing? Well, back in 2004, Prime Minister Helen Clark said, according to the official New Zealand government website:

“This government said from the start that New Zealand would be prepared to provide humanitarian and reconstruction assistance [my emphasis --ksa] in Iraq…,” said Helen Clark … [and] … no further deployments of this kind to Iraq were being considered, … [although] New Zealand would consider formal requests from the United Nations for assistance in its headquarters in Iraq.

I single out “humanitarian and reconstruction” because it’s a familiar refrain once we reach Afghanistan. From New Zealand’s Scoop of January 2005:

“Projects to be completed during … [the] … six-month rotation [of NZ Defence Force personnel] will range from engineering projects and school refurbishments, to conducting health programmes in surrounding villages.

Engineering! Schools! Health programmes! So, the whole idea of Kiwi Special Forces (I want to say “men” here but, having spoken to many [EDITED TO ADD: military] people about SAS guys and coming from a military family myself, the only word that comes to mind is “lunatics”) running loose in Afghanistan, all buzzed from killing armed Taliban militants (natch!) is, er, somewhat disconcerting. Actually, for me, rather depressing as well, because I’ve always admired NZ’s purported “independence”. Woe is me for being so damned idealistic. Again.

But, to be honest, this is a song we’ve heard before. Remember August 2002? Then German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder saying that “Germany was not ready for any foreign policy adventures” in Iraq (memory jog here)? Remember the news that subsequently broke about Germany providing intelligence support to the USA in the run-up to that “adventure”? (See Document 42 of the National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 80 here].)

And what about Germany and Afghanistan? I love these official government websites. There is so much ammunition there for the shooting of feet. According to Germany’s own government site:

We have already made great progress since the end of Taliban rule in 2001: more than six million boys and girls are attending a school again [big school --ksa], the economy is growing, and the markets are working; medical care has been vastly improved, and infant mortality has fallen.

Got that warm glow yet? But wait, Germany, what’s for the future?

We shall stay for as long as it takes to ensure that Afghanistan can no longer become a source of danger to us. [I mean, seriously, was Afghanistan -- I mean, frickin' Af-ghan-is-tan -- EVER a threat to Germany? Soccer hooliganism, and bad German wine (*), is more a threat to Germany than a country that is consistently ranked as one of the world's poorest --ksa] That is why the international community is supporting the civil reconstruction process … Germany is particularly heavily involved in the establishment of a civilian police force that works efficiently and enjoys the trust of the Afghan people.

Ah-ha. Got that? “Civil reconstruction process”? Sounds like road-building, doesn’t it? Buses for schools. New light poles. Repaired roads. I sincerely doubt that the “civil reconstruction process” covers raining down bombs on Afghan civilians around fuel trucks resulting in a tremendous firebomb that fried to a crisp one hundred men, women and children, but you’ve got to give the Germans that much. When they commit, they really commit. To his credit, though, German Colonel Georg Klein said he pleaded with the Americans to use “smaller bombs” (on fuel trucks, no less), but you know what those gung-ho ‘mericans are like once they get their gander up? Poor Georg.

And poor German government. How do you describe the flaming napalm-like murder of civilians on your website? “Future clear for two dozen Kunduz children”? “Two hazardous waste containers were neutralised in a joint German-American operation, with the participation of scores of local Afghanis”? “A lake was created in a joint German-American operation that will, in the future, be used for recreational purposes for the communities that live in Kunduz province”?

Germany and New Zealand. Shining lights of strong principles, unfaltering honesty and Western ethics. What would we do without you guys?

(*) I won’t forget a memoir of Mark Twain’s, wherein he remarks that he was grateful for bottle labels during his trip through Germany, because he could thus easily distinguish between their wine and their vinegar. Yes, I’ve drunk German wine. Two words. (The Australians among you will appreciate the reference.) Blue Nun.

That term’s still trademarked to me, btw

Beyond all the huffing and puffing about climate change, and putting the science of it to one side for a moment, I can’t help but view the debate as one pitting North against South. It’s extremely difficult for anyone in the Global South, for example, not to view the strident demands of the Western developed world with anything other than cynicism. Since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, the West has been churning out great clouds of pollutants into the atmosphere and yet, now that the developing world is catching up, a boom is being lowered. Copenhagen captured that entire tussle quite succinctly, I thought.

But what does this have to do with the Neo Dark Ages™? I think the most important thing to note about the original Dark Ages was that it was more a state of mind than anything else. The social and mental climate affected economics, technologies … ideas. It was Dark (and only in Europe, btw) because that was the prevailing social climate. And now, and unfortunately, I can see the same encroaching mist of repression cover, not only the smallest continent in the world, but the world itself. And, as a citizen of that world, I find it most troublesome.

So, let’s begin with climate change and democracy via this article. Nico Stehr (Professor for Cultural Studies at Zeppelin University, Germany) and Hans von Storch (Professor at the University of Hamburg) plot out the case against democracy from various climate change scientists and it’s frightening to read.

“We need an authoritarian form of government in order to implement the scientific consensus on greenhouse gas emissions” according to the Australian scholars David Shearman and Joseph Wayne Smith [in] their book The Climate Change Challenge and the Failure of Democracy. The well-known climate researcher James Hansen adds resignedly and frustrated as well as vaguely, “the democratic process does not work”. In The Vanishing Face of Gaia, James Lovelock emphasizes [sic] that we need to abandon democracy in order to meet the challenges of climate change head on. We are in a state of war. In order to pull the world out of its state of lethargy, the equivalent of a global warming “nothing but blood, toil, tears and sweat” speech is urgently needed.

Now, I hope your spidey sense is tingling. Whenever a system of representational government is attacked to pursue one particular agenda item, you know your “trusted” sources of information have feet of clay. This is true whether we’re talking climate change or national security.

(As an aside, one thing I was thoroughly sick of, was the hammering of the Australian citizenry about being “green”. We were constantly harassed to reuse, recycle, and reduce and, all the while, the biggest polluters in the nation — the heavy industries — were being given a free ride. I didn’t mind helping to minimise my footprint on the Earth but what really galled me was the sheer inequality of the measures, as if industry and its polluting ways didn’t exist. As an exercise to the stalwart Australian reader, please investigate how much water is being used by household Victorians versus how much water is being used by various Victorian industries. The results will surprise you and make you just a teensy bit angry when next the politicians start talking about Stage 3/4/etc. water restrictions for domestic users. But back to our scheduled programming ….)

Doing away with democracy under the guise of saving the planet? You can see where the monsters of the future will come from, can’t you? And the saying of the road to Hell being paved with good intentions comes even more sharply into focus.

I don’t care how good or pure your intentions are, you CANNOT advocate doing away with democracy as a prelude to saving yourself or your world. Hitler began his political career by (rightly) railing against the Treaty of Versailles and the corruption of the complicit Weimar Republic and look where that led us. Stalin’s famous purge may have begun because he wanted the Soviet Union to be united in case it was involved in war. Pol Pot got started as a reaction against a crackdown on left-wingers by the incumbent right-wing Cambodian government. It’s easy to have the best of intentions — “the way my country has been treated is unfair”, “I want us to be united”, “I’m only fighting for equality” — but it doesn’t take very long for the best of intentions to devolve into repression and brutality. (Read about Mobutu Sésé Seko — a personal friend of the charismatic Patrice Lumumba — a person of such potential, and see what he wrought.)

But if you think this era of repression is being played out only in the arena of science, you’re mistaken. As if to make sure that even my thick head gets it, Chris Floyd adds liquid nitrogen to the ice bath by citing Wednesday’s New York Times (how anyone can think that’s a “liberal” paper is beyond me):

In a sweeping opinion, a three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit found that the presidential war power to detain those suspected of terrorism is not limited even by international law of war.

Not “convicted”, merely “suspected”. “Not limited”, not even by “international law”. We’re talking indefinite detention, with the inevitable side order of torture, on mere suspicion of one perspective on wrongdoing. Could I be “suspected” of terrorism (by my public criticisms of various national policies on this blog)? Could you? If you were a cook for the wrong side of a civil war before the United States even intervened in the country, like Ghaleb Nassar al-Bihani? If you were a scared teenager who threw a grenade when an armed force attacked your village, not even killing anyone, but being framed for murder of a soldier, as Omar Khadr did? If you were an activist who lent an overseas visitor your mobile to make a private phone call, like Syed Fahad Hashmi? And, before you narrow in on the word “noncitizen” in the first paragraph of the NY Times article, I’d like to remind you that Syed Fahad Hashmi is a US citizen, yet he’s been held in appalling conditions and solitary confinement for almost three years, with the only evidence against him being given by the man to whom he lent his phone!

I can see a huge rolling back of freedoms and civil liberties in so many spheres of life — climate and environment, civil liberties, privacy, security, personal consumption, family care. Thousands of people gave their lives so we may take these things for granted, and now they’re being stolen from us without anyone saying a word.

So, here’s something from me: the next time someone approaches you about some way of “protecting” you or your family from an heinous consequence, do me a favour. Ask what the cost is. You may find, as do I, that — in almost every single case — it’s too high for society to bear.

ADDITIONAL: Meanwhile, if you’re of the “well, I haven’t done anything wrong, so I’m safe” line, have some sympathy for a Slovakian electrician who “unknowingly carried plastic explosives on a flight from Bratislava to Dublin” recently. High points from the New York Daily News:

[T]he man uwittingly had the explosives in his possession for three days before Irish security officials were contacted … Slovak authorities placed real bomb parts in nine passengers’ bags [but only eight] were detected …. [T]he electrician … boarded his flight … unaware that he was in possession of … enough [plastic explosive] to blow up the plane [in] mid-air …

The man didn’t find out he was carrying a bomb until Irish police, acting on a Slovak tip, raided his flat Tuesday. Police said they were led to believe the man might be a terrorist, until Slovak authorities told them of the security screwup [my emphasis --ksa].

A major Dublin intersection was closed and neighbors [sic] were evacuated while Irish Army experts inspected the explosive. The man was released without charge after several hours’ detention.

There, doesn’t that make you feel better? If nobody said anything though, how would the poor man have ever defended himself? Where will he go for his next vacation? Do you think he’ll be flying? And aren’t you just slightly more anxious after reading that? Feel that brain of yours closing up a little more? Feel the FUD getting nearer? That’s exactly what I’m afraid of.

For the man who has everything

Let’s be clear here. Like the Jews, my race was also the victim of genocide during WWII. So, when I heard about the theft of the Auschwitz sign — amid all the sighs and tirades on the intertubes — my first thought was not that it was a racist attack per se, but that it was stolen on behalf of a collector.

Let’s backtrack a little. What you may not know is that Auschwitz is monitored by closed-circuit cameras, sensors, lights, guards and what have you. In fact, it has quite a significant outlay of security equipment, considering that it doesn’t house any people or hold any economic benefit. Yes, I know that sounds callous, but I just want to set a comparison to the kind of stuff humans normally do expend security dollars on. The bottom line is, there is quite a bit of security around Auschwitz, a lot more than you probably think, and it’s beyond the ability of your average gang of racist thugs to get in there and actually manage to touch any building much less do anything to it.

So, when I heard that the sign above the Auschwitz camp had been stolen rather than defaced, and factored in the effort involved in order to execute the theft, I had to wonder why. And it appeared obvious to me that, rather than being some kind of heinous racial attack (as was intimated), it was just going to end up as an albeit gruesome souvenir in someone’s private collection.

I came to this conclusion because I put myself in the thief’s shoes. If there was a Japanese concentration camp that had such a famous sign above it, who would I need to be to steal it? If I was arrogant, emotionally detached, filthy rich and morbidly interested in WWII atrocities enough, would I want that sign? And the answer is, of course! You can rant and rail about the morals of someone like that, but people collect the darndest things.

Worse than anything perpetrated by the Germans during the War was what the Japanese perpetrated against the Chinese. Not only the Nanjing Massacre, which the United Human Rights Council described as “the single worst atrocity during the World War Two era in either the European or Pacific theatres of war”, but also Unit 731, a Japanese experimental camp that systematically brutalised thousands of civilians in an effort to discover the perfect biological weapon. (You’ll be pleased to know that, as the nation who led the world in constructing an architecture to keep the peace, as a country who believes that the lives of their children and grandchildren will be better if other people’s children and grandchildren can live in freedom and prosperity — I think that’s what Barack Obama said at some small prize-giving ceremony in Oslo recently — the “scientists that were involved in [Unit 731] crimes were given amnesty by the USA in exchange for [their] experimental data.”)

Do you think there are bricks from the notorious unit that have been sold off to some callous human magpie somewhere? Or perhaps other memorabilia? Well, we’ll never really know because they were only Asians so who cares, right? But, getting back to Europe and strangely morbid people detached from reality, I could easily imagine someone looking at a 5-metre hole in their gallery and wondering how to fill it. The latest news is that a British collector outsourced the duty to a Swedish neo-Nazi group who hired a Polish gang to steal the sign. Unfortunately, the thieves were rumbled a day later by a member of the Swedish neo-Nazi group itself. Strange, no? Unlesss, maybe, you were the Swedish government who decided that the best way to monitor an undesirable group was to infiltrate it, and one of your moles stumbled across the plot and was quick to blow the whistle…?

Meanwhile, Israel is braying for battle against whatever party stole the sign, so I’m expecting a “true declaration of war” against Poland, Sweden and Britain pretty soon. Bring popcorn.

Think happy thoughts. Think happy thoughts.

BoingBoing is on fire at the moment with the case of Dr Peter Watts, a Canadian scientist and s-f writer who was held, beaten up and charged with assaulting a federal officer at the US-Canada border while on his way back to Canada after helping a USAian friend move house. For the record, he was beaten up by US guards, although Canadian authorities can be equally brutal, as the case of Robert Dziekański clearly attests.

BoingBoing are putting together a fund to help Dr Watts’ defence, and you can contribute via Paypal if you are so inclined. As a sideline, it’s an interesting observation that the USA is a place that makes a big deal about what “rights” a person has, until the time comes to actually exercise those rights (whether medical, economic, or judicial). At that point, you find out that the person with the most “rights” happens to be the one with the deepest pockets. Nobody else need apply.

What has been equally interesting to me have been the comments on BoingBoing, including a fair few that imply that Watts had it coming because he was probably “lippy” or “uppity”. And that got me thinking back to an incident at the Malaysia-Singapore border almost two years ago.

Lets face it, stalwart reader, you may think that being a writer is a cool thing but writers, by and large, really don’t fit into the normal, quiet mainstream population. They may seem quite okay from the outside, but there’s always some kind of dysfunction that separates them from the rest of the herd. And that dysfunction mostly manifests itself as questions. Writers need questions the way we need air. Without questions, quite simply, we wouldn’t exist. What if human civilisation dominated our galaxy? (Stories set in the Republic.) How would a romance work between a female bodyguard and the male she’s assigned to protect? (Guarding His Body) Is it possible for me to even think of a likely steampunk story and thus jump on the latest trend? (Alas, no.)

So, when questions are like life’s blood to us, it’s obvious that we will start asking them whenever something interesting happens. And therein lies the problem, because our Neo Dark Ages™ world doesn’t like questions. It doesn’t like anyone asking them or otherwise being lippy. Used to be that only applied to niggers, wogs, slopes, kikes, spics, etc., and women. But now, it doesn’t like anything other than silent subservience from anybody who doesn’t wear the appropriate uniform, period.

I’m reminded of the time our family crossed from Malaysia into Singapore. There were five of us, two adults with two kids, and J’s mother, who was visiting with us at the time. And it was also the time of the Mas Selamat flap. Singapore is very proud of Mas Selamat because he is their very own Muslim terrorist, and is thus like a badge of honour Singapore can wear and be inducted into the Western nations’ Hall of Countries Who Are So Wonderful That Everyone Else Wants To Have A Piece Of Us Out Of Sheer Jealousy. Unfortunately, this short man with a noticeable limp had escaped the detention centre by climbing out the bathroom window.

Anyway, the security at the border was pretty tight after he fleed (I believe he also threw spare rolls of toilet paper out the window before he jumped, to help cushion his fall) , and everyone had to submit thumbprints via an electronic reader, ostensibly to check against the thumbprints of Mas Selamat that Singapore had on record. They let our kids pass without any comment, but I had to wonder when they insisted that my mother-in-law submit to a scan. Yeah, I muttered to J, because Mas Selamat is so obviously hiding in the skin of an older, white woman from Europe.

If you tell me that this was not the smartest thing to do, especially within earshot of the Immigration official, I’ll agree with you. But, you know, it’s that question thing again that I was talking about. You think, “why the hell are they fingerprinting someone who so obviously isn’t Mas Selamat?” and, before your brain has time to answer “because it’s their job, stupid, just shut up”, your mouth opens and out comes some smart comment.

At this point, we were directed to another office, had our passports confiscated and were left watching a blank wall while the rest of the border world went on behind our backs. After twenty minutes, an officer came out, smiled, handed us our passports and told us we could go. No explanation was given, although she was very courteous. You’ll be pleased to know I kept my mouth shut that second time.

In retrospect, and after reading what Watts and others have gone through, we got off very very lightly. Which is scary when you realise that the courtesy in newly-developed or developing countries actually currently exceeds that in fully-developed countries. We may rant and rave about lots of things, but I wouldn’t want to be in the line entering the USA, Canada or the UK. In contrast, Singapore was an absolute cakewalk, despite my overt sarcasm. Terrifying, isn’t it?

You’ve been had!

As you may know, stalwart reader, I’ve been a climate change sceptic for a little while now. I spoke about bogus weather station placement here more than a year ago, the despicable side-lining of an eminently useful Japanese paper on climate change here back in February, and the lack of transparency of the Climate Research Unit (CRU) here in August.

And now it appears that the general public have time to catch up in a controversy everyone is calling (and I’m cringing as I type this, believe me) Climategate.

Can I get a timeline over here, please?

20-Nov: Bishop Hill breaks the news that the CRU at the University of East Anglia (UEA) has been hacked and there is a “massive file of emails and code up on a server in Russia”. But, with a sceptic’s view that warms my heart, he wonders if all of this is too good to be true.

20-Nov (later): Someone from UEA confirms that the CRU was hacked. Oh-oh.

21-Nov: People start dissecting and posting analyses of the emails. It doesn’t look good.

23-Nov: People start dissecting and posting analyses of the data and code. It looks even worse.

I’ll skip ahead to the conclusion before I backtrack a bit. I’m sorry to have to tell you, but the current “global warming” scare looks to be pretty well bogus.

But, before I get into the meat of things, you may like to read a post by Willis Eschenbach that makes the same point I made in August; i.e. the entire attitude of the CRU is anti-science. Eschenbach has a nice diagram of The Scientific Method, as well as an account of how researchers tried, and were hampered in, obtaining public data on climate change as was used by the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) in their many reports.

The post marries the dates from the hacked emails with independent FOI (Freedom of Information) requests, to get such gems from purported scientists:

“I wouldn’t tell anybody about the FOI Act in Britain”, “Data is covered by all the agreements we sign with people, so I will be hiding behind them”, and “We also have a data protection act, which I will hide behind. Tom Wigley has sent me a worried email when he heard about it – thought people could ask him for his model code. He has retired officially from UEA so he can hide behind that.”

So, whether I believe in climate change or not, one thing that is reprehensible to me is the attitude of CRU towards other researchers. It doesn’t matter whether someone wants to hang your hypothesis by the genitalia. If you are a scientist, you are duty bound to make your data and methods available so that other scientists can — or not — replicate your model and either applaud you loudly or make minced meat out of your sacred cow. That. Is. What. Science. Is. About. That is what separates science from religion. And, first and foremost, what you have here, with attitudes that are obstructionist and malicious, is an heinous subversion of science.

In trawling through the Climategate analyses, I came across someone else who was treated as shabbily as the Japanese; namely, Dr Demetris Koutsoyiannis, professor at the National Technical University of Athens. His guest post at the Climate Science blog is readable, succinct and illuminating. If you can’t be bothered diving into statistical method, his is an excellent summary that you might want to ponder for an hour or two.

Having had several negative experiences in my (rather indirect) interaction with mainstream “scientists” involved in “climate change” and “climate change impacts” (I put all these quotation marks because I believe that the latter terms are not scientific), I must say that what I’ve been reading in the recently hacked and released confidential files from the CRU (aka “Climategate” documents) is not a surprise to me. Rather, and sadly, it verifies what I had suspected about some in the climate establishment. I wonder if they take pride in seeing their own words—now in a public forum:

“I tried hard to balance the needs of the science and the IPCC , which were not always the same.” (http://www.anelegantchaos.org/cru/emails.php?eid=794).

“I can’t see either of these papers being in the next IPCC report. Kevin and I will keep them out somehow – even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is !” (http://www.anelegantchaos.org/cru/emails.php?eid=419).

“I’ve just completed Mike’s Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) amd from 1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline.”  (http://www.anelegantchaos.org/cru/emails.php?eid=154).

“The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t. The CERES data published in the August BAMS 09 supplement on 2008 shows there should be even more warming: but the data are surely wrong.” (http://www.anelegantchaos.org/cru/emails.php?eid=1048).

“If anything, I would like to see the climate change happen, so the science could be proved right, regardless of the consequences.” (http://www.anelegantchaos.org/cru/emails.php?eid=544)

“The skeptics appear to have staged a ‘coup’ at ‘Climate Research’ … Perhaps we should encourage our colleagues in the climate
research community to no longer submit to, or cite papers in, this journal.” (http://www.anelegantchaos.org/cru/emails.php?eid=295).

“It’s one thing to lose ‘Climate Research’. We can’t afford to lose GRL [Geophysical Research Letters]” http://www.anelegantchaos.org/cru/emails.php?eid=484).

Go read the entire thing. To say it’s damning is a gross understatement.

If you’re a programming statistician, and the above has done nothing more than whet your appetite, you might be interested in the initial analysis of the hacked data and algorithms, all documented at The Devil’s Kitchen.

And now that the cat’s out of the bag in one place, it appears that the seams are rupturing even as far away as New Zealand, where it has been discovered that Kiwiland’s average temperature has not risen as much as the National Institute for Water and Atmosphere (NIWA) has claimed. In fact, if you have a look at the two graphs in the article (the NIWA graph above, and the actual temperature graph below), I do believe you’ll be struck by the difference.

In summary, it appears that the IPCC has been using New Zealand as a bit of a climate change bellwether. However ….

According to NIWA the temperature trend over the last 100 years has been 0.92°C/century, which is higher than the 0.6°C/century that the IPCC claims as the global average during the 20th century. In contrast to NIWA’s figures, the NZCSC reported a statistically insignificant warming trend of 0.06°C/century since 1850.

So, a concocted increase of almost one degree per century, versus an actual increase of less than one tenth of a degree per century. Two paragraphs from the Quadrant report are beautiful:

NIWA responded in a press statement released late the next day claiming its “analysis of measured temperatures uses internationally accepted techniques, including making adjustments for changes such as movement of measurement sites.” It then cited one example of such adjustments before also claiming that it had previously explained these adjustments to members of NZCSC.

The final NIWA point surprised the [New Zealand Science] Coalition, which has documented numerous instances of NIWA’s failure to respond to requests for this information. The Coalition pointed out that the first of NIWA’s points is a “fob off” that says nothing more than “trust us”, but Climategate has shown us that “trust us” is not a credible response in climate science at the moment and maybe never will be in the future.

Back in February, I wrote the following:

Global warming, as it’s being portrayed now, plays straight to the unthinking consumer, of which there are too many to contemplate without wanting to slit your wrists. It pats on the head all those little, lazy, PC do-gooders like “Mark” who, according to Anna Shapiro said:

“What a relief …. Finally, I can stop arguing in my head with all these conservatives, trying to sway faith with reason, you know? …. Obama’s much smarter than I am. I’ve handed it off to him. [my emphasis]“

What a lovely attitude to have. Democracy? Nah, we don’t have to fight for it, watch it, know that its price is eternal vigilance and constant criticism. No, if someone who even looks a quarter-decent comes along, I’ll just hand the entire responsibility over to him. Likewise, global warming? Nah, we don’t have to think about it, try to understand it, read up on it more. So what if the effects will last multiple generations? What this mob say (the IPCC) sound okay, and those pictures of penguins are heart-breaking, so I’ll go with them.

…

We’re — well, you’re — being scared into taking for granted something that has not been fully vindicated. It’s a big responsibility (and takes a lot of time) to go wading through the facts and come up with your own independent opinion. What a pity most people aren’t going to bother. After all, it’s only the future economic and political landscape of our planet that’s at stake. We can leave it to the big guys, right? I mean, they did such a good job on finance, what the hell’s there to worry about?

At the end of last week, the major newspapers were doing hatchet jobs on the sceptics. However, as the veracity of the hacked information has continued to stand up, the tone has slowly, glacially, been changing. And, as of 30 November, the CRU appears to be changing its own stance. But, if you know what to look for, it’s more mealy-mouthed side-stepping. According to The Age:

Professor Trevor Davies, the university’s pro-vice-chancellor, research enterprise and engagement, said: “CRU’s full data will be published in the interests of research transparency when we have the necessary agreements.”

My question is this: what agreements?

The climate data were collected at publicly-funded weather stations and sent to publicly-funded scientists who used publicly-funded equipment at publicly-funded institutions to do their work. Under such circumstances, any member of the public can reasonably demand the data and have it given to them. That’s the whole idea behind public research. It’s like software. If you read the legislation (as I have done in Australia), you’ll find that one government department is duty-bound to give (yes, give, as in free) any software, or product they develop, to another government department upon request. That’s how I managed to negotiate $200,000 worth of GIS modelling from one department to another. For free. That’s what it means to be funded by the public. So I’m dying to find out what these “agreements” are that Prof. Trevor Davies is whittling on about. Anti-science strikes again!

Stay tuned.

ADDITIONAL: El Reg has a nice summary, including the history of the CRU, if you’ve only just joined us.

Shooting yourself in the foot, Malaysian style

We’re not supposed to talk about it. The different races. We’re all supposed to pretend that everyone gets on really well with everyone else, even though an incredibly unfair set of discrimination practices are in place. We’re all supposed to pretend it doesn’t exist, even though Malaysia must be the only country in the world that actively discriminates against its own citizens.

The Malays make up the majority of the population in Malaysia, at around 60%. Then you have the Chinese, at around 25%, the Indians at around, say, 9%, and there are various communities of Other, including us Portuguese Eurasians.

Nobody will say it out loud, but the major tension is between the Malays and the Chinese. The Chinese are the engine of Malaysia’s economy, but the Malays rule the country. In order to keep it that way, various laws are put in place that favour the Malays above and beyond any other ethnic group in the country. Now, you may argue about the nefarious nature of those laws and, while I agree with you, I can also understand why the Malays instituted them. It becomes completely obvious around festival time. At Hari Raya, you may find a few shops closed for two or three days but, at Chinese New Year, it’s like the entire country shuts down for a week. It’s this huge economic power that the Malays are fighting against when they first instituted the New Economic Policy and its mutated children.

(Personally, I believe that the Malays are doing themselves a disservice by retaining the NEP. (I’m actually quite sympathetic to their plight, but the NEP goes way too far.) All it does is set up a culture of dependency, and it makes others doubt a person’s competence. “Did you get to that position because you’re smart, or because of the NEP?” The problem is, I’ve met many very smart, very competent young Malay professionals, but I’ve slurred them upon first meeting because that’s the first question in my mind. It doesn’t do the credibility of Malays any good to have such a two-edged sword hanging over them. And the Malays are lucky with the Malaysian Chinese, who must be one of the most laid-back bunch of Chinese I’ve ever met. Bring Hong Kong Chinese here and the average Malaysian, regardless of ethnicity, wouldn’t last two seconds. Everything will be in Mandarin within a snap of the fingers.)

So, now that you have a fifty-words-or-less rendition of the last six decades of Malaysia’s history, let’s move on.

Recently, the government decided that the instruction of Science and Maths was to move back to Malay from English. This has been greeted with dismay from every Malaysian, except the Chinese language die-hards and the rural Malay population. What’s a parent to do?

Point One: I pose one question: who owns the private schools and colleges in Malaysia? Overwhelmingly, they are Chinese. The Malays have their own system worked out in the regular state schools and universities. So, as with the owners, the children attending private institutions are also overwhelmingly Chinese.

Point Two: At the moment, any international school (a subset of private schools) in Malaysia can accept Malaysian children, up to 40% of its total enrollment.

Point Three: Private schools are loathe to switch the teaching of Science and Maths to Malay and many are preparing formal exemption proposals to the Malaysian Ministry of Education even as I type.

The Star covers the topic of education in Malay/English here. It also mentions a few schools by name, so let’s go on a tour.

Who’s behind Sri KDU? The CEO is Ms Teh Geok Lian. Others involved are Mrs AK Chan, Mr Muhammad Azhar Bin Abdullah, Mr Ong Keng Siew, Dato’ Teo Chiang Quan, Dr Chia Chee Fen and Cik Rohana Tan Sri Mahmood.

What about Garden International School? Managing Director is Dato’ Loy Teik Ngan. Others are Mrs Abby Loy, Dr Khoo Soo Peng, Mr BK Gan and Mrs YY Chew.

Hmmmmm. Starting to sense a pattern here? Let’s try another school mentioned in the newspaper article.

How about Sri KL? Executive Chairman is YB Tan Sri Dato’ Ir. Orthman Merican. And others include En. Hanif Merican, En. Rais A Manas … oh and then it starts to slide again … Ms Shirley Hai, Mr Chew Teck Ann, Dr Tan Khun, Mr Ngoo Kee Min, and so on.

The Malaysian government has managed to shoot a number of toes off with this reversal of policy in language. Quoting liberally from The Star article cited above, let’s go through them. First, the effect on private and international schools:

Several private and international schools … said that they had been inundated with calls from Malaysian parents in the weeks after the decision [to switch the language of instruction from English to Malay] was made.

Secondly, the effect on the Malaysian curriculum:

… [T]he government’s decision to reverse the PPSMI policy “has forced Sri KL to adopt the Cambridge International Primary Programme … [B]y 2014, Sri KL Primary School will no longer offer the [federal curriculum standard,] KBSR with the exception of Bahasa Malaysia for the UPSR examination [equivalent to the old UK 11-plus exam -- ksa].

And, thirdly, the effect on Malaysia itself:

… [T]he trend to opt for international schools is also apparent around Asia as Korea and China are starting to recognise the global importance of English. “The demand for an English-medium education worldwide has never been greater.”

So, the upshot is that rural Malays — who were held up as the reason for the reversion to Malay — will continue to be discriminated against in the future global marketplace. Those with money, or the ability to save up enough for their children’s education, regardless of race, will continue to have their children educated in English and overseas. And the Chinese, who own the private and international schools will, due to an incredibly increased demand, clean up, money-wise. If it didn’t disadvantage so many children — of all races — undeserving of such a future fate, I’d be in stitches right now.

Are we there yet?

I think it was Maria who pointed out that you appear on search results based, mostly, on your blog headlines. And it occurs to me that I’ve been a bit, ah, obtuse in my headings. So, in order to get more hits to my poor little blog — and, by corollary, to my website, and thence to leviathan sales, natch! — I’ve succumbed to the “bleedin’ obvious headline” picker.

So, first off the block, Indymedia. As leftist as I am, this is the first time I’ve heard of Indymedia, which just goes to show that I’m obviously not as committed as I should be. Anyways, Indymedia received a subpoena from the US Justice Department asking for details of all site visitors on a particular date. While the story may head up with “IP addresses”, as you read the article, it actually gets worse:

The subpoena … from U.S. Attorney Tim Morrison in Indianapolis demanded “all IP traffic to and from www.indymedia.us” on June 25, 2008. It instructed Clair to “include IP addresses, times, and any other identifying information,” including [are you holding onto your hats? --ksa] e-mail addresses, physical addresses, registered accounts, and Indymedia readers’ [here we go! --ksa] Social Security numbers, bank account numbers, credit card numbers, and so on.

Whoo-hoo. Party on, Justice dudes! But, seriously, what is the matter with you, United States? I thought you already had this information on me! Even though I live outside the USA, I honestly thought you already had my daily visits to US-hosted sites sitting on some server deep in the bowels of the planet somewhere, along with any comments I’ve made to any website (cross-referenced), how long I spend at each site, whether I contribute financially to any site (and in what amounts) and who exactly I have on feed. To now find out that the Justice Dept. had to subpoena this kind of information from a website is kinda disappointing to the gleeful leftist nut-case conspiracy buff in me. Or maybe it’s Homeland Security that already has that intel and they won’t share. Aaaah, that makes me feel better.

And speaking of feeling better …. Look, you’ll get no balanced, “oh poor babies” rhetoric from me on the next issue. I speak as a bitter epubbed RWA member here. Timeline! Can we get a timeline over here please?

17-NOV :: Harlequin announces vanity press venture, Harlequin Horizons. Unlike Carina Press, that has a different name, the very inclusion of the word “Harlequin” in the newly-launched self-pub biz is enough to drive a fair percentage of Harlequin authors to swoon like it’s cover art of the 1950s. You can go to Dear Author for various takes on this.

19-NOV :: In a rare instance of responding in a timely fashion, RWA (Romance Writers of America) throws down the gauntlet:

With the launch of Harlequin Horizons, Harlequin Enterprises no longer meets the requirements to be eligible for RWA-provided conference resources. This does not mean that Harlequin Enterprises cannot attend the conference. Like all non-eligible publishers, they are welcome to attend. However, as a non-eligible publisher, they would fund their own conference fees and they would not be provided with conference resources by RWA to publicize or promote the company or its imprints.

Fisticuffs at dawn! Especially amongst epub writers, the relevance of the RWA has been questioned in recent times and now we can grab the popcorn and settle down to see who will win! It’s like an unrigged wrestling match … you don’t really care who triumphs as long as there’s plenty showing!

Of course, the biggest upshot of this — that someone (I forget who) was quick to point out — was that, with Harlequin officially struck off The Hallowed List of eligible publishers for the time being, this means that NO! Harlequin author — from any of the imprints, Modern to MIRA — can enter their book in the RITA competition (RWA’s Romance Novel of the Year, essentially). Oh ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. Yes, all that bile from a bitter epub author — that I thought long since excreted, or whatever it is that happens to bile — magically appears and rises in my throat, causing me to laugh my socks off. (Don’t try to analyse that sentence, just go with the flow.) Oh, this piece of news just gets better and better.

(Harlequin is a very smart business. But its treatment of non-Anglo cultures in its staple romances make me want to upchuck. RWA pushes hard for the ongoing professional recognition of romance. But its short-sighted views on both romance (no icky GLBT or eroticism here!) and technology make me want to upchuck too. )

There has been a lot written about the serious implications of all these duelling press releases but, for myself, I’m just going to sit back and have some fun and suggest you do the same.