Howard to the rescue as Europe bashes Bush: “Prime Minister John Howard faced down a wave of anti-American attacks at the World Economic Forum in Davos, leaping in to defend absent ally George Bush from European critics.”

Firstly, I’m really quite embarrassed that Howard has just become a spokes person for the Bush administration as Australia and the US continue with policies of militarism and market fundamentalism. Both ideas are fundamentally flawed and we are part of a shrinking minority that are supporting them.

Secondly, doesn’t it say something that pretty much all of Europe – including close ally Britain – are now taking issue with US (and therefore Australian) foreign policy. The fact that these countries who have supported the US so much in the past, who devised the international institutions that have ensured the dominance of the US and Western Europe on the global stage, are now taking issue with the unilateral approach that the US is using to undermine these institutions which are there primarily to prevent militarism and generate stability. On a ideological level it is the difference between the post-modernist approach of Europe and the modernist approach of the US. On a day to day level it means the lives of Iraqis, acid rain in Zimbabwe and shocking labour condition in the Economic Processing Zones of Indonesia.

Yet little Johnny stands up and takes one for Bush. Certainly not the first time.

EDIT: It is also noteworthy that the US government did not attend the World Economic Forum. Surely this has, in the past, been a bastion of US economic dominance. However, like the WTO which the US is frustrated with because it is adhering to loosely (and very loosely) democratic ideals and commitment to multilateralism, the US is now choosing to abstain from these debates and enforce its wishes through the use of economic and military dominance in other spheres where it is in complete control. The US-Aust FTA was a significant undermining of the WTO, perhaps this snub is a significant undermining of the WEF.

In a move that would have been unheard of in 2001, and was a major issue at that World Social Forum, Debt Relief is finally on the agenda of the World Economic Forum. I can do little more that applaud this initiative but I remain skeptical about the implementation of this.

What is dumbfounding however is Howard’s response: “I think the biggest thing the developed world can do to alleviate poverty is to remove trade barriers.’

”The benefits of that are infinitely better than direct aid. Direct aid works well in some cases, in many other cases, because of poor governance, it works very badly.

”Sovereign debt relief in the short term rewards the treasuries of the indebted countries and unless there’s a guarantee that that is then channelled to poverty alleviation, it can be very unproductive.

”That’s not to say we’re opposed to all debt relief. We have involved ourselves in programmes helping the highly indebted developing countries.”

His comments are just so painfully wrong, it defies the imagination. It is precisely this dogmatic market fundamentalism that has driven the IMF since the 1980s and precisely the reason these countries are in the states they are in. Moreover, to flatly describe every developing nation as corrupt is not only wrong but the opportunities for corruption are generally magnified with liberalisation. More often than not this means the selling of state assets at deflated prices while corrupt leaders skim off the top.

Mr Howard would do well to read Stiglitz’s book (which I’m reading at the moment). What is needed (if you adhere to a ‘gentler’ market-based solution) is a careful program of ‘synchronisation’ where economic barriers are slowly reduced as the country’s economy can manage. To automatically drop all trade barriers is to ignore the route to prosperity that just about every developed country in the world has taken, and arguably still takes. All of the G7 and the Asian Tiger Economies took their time to liberalise their markets and this is what makes them strong today.

Howard’s comments simply don’t make economic sense, let alone social or environmental sense.

Incidentally, I’m disappointed but hardly surprised that the World Social Forum has not received one mention in the mainstream press.

I was just reading about the ineptitude of the National Indigenous Council, which is hardly the fault of those on it but the complete removal of any power from the indigenous population by the Howard Government. I was thinking that the Indigenous communities should put together their own Aboriginal rival advice council when I came across the article I’ve linked to.

It is a superb idea considering the increasingly important role of NGOs in the international arena it would not surprise me if the government was eventually forced to take them seriously. I also hope that they take their case to the international arena to increase pressure on the government as has happened before.

I guess my main concern is the mandate of this council. In these initial stages I would suggest that based of their broad membership they have a mandate but this is one that could easily be lost if they are not careful to impose innovative democratic measures. That said it is an opportunity to start ATSIC from scratch and hopefully develop a voting system that is effective.

EDIT: I meant to mention Dream on Black girl as the motivation for this post but somehow forgot to work that in. Stupid fucking whiteman.

An interesting comment byJohn Quiggin: on the Australian Blog Awards: “The left wing of Ozplogistan swept the awards, which is partly a reflection of who bothered to vote, but partly a reflection of the extent to which the left now dominates the virtual sphere in Australian politics, however poorly we may be doing In Real Life. When I started blogging in the distant days of 2002, right-wing bloggers dominated the scene. A year ago, I’d have said the balance was about the same as in the Australian electorate as a whole. Today, although there are some good right-wing and centre-right blogs, they are a distinct minority.”

I’m inclinded to agree and often wonder why. It seems that overall the left adapts to technology better – particularly in the rhelm of ICT. However the right often follows their lead in a much more sinister way (ie fake industry blogs etc).

ALP Leadership

Gillard‘s call for Kim Beazley to stand aside from his factional allegiance to the Right is about the most sensible thing that has been said in the whole post-Latham leadership challenge. While I still think Gillard is the ALP’s best hope, she’s not while the right is still dominant in the ALP.

That said I can see merit in Beazley being elected unopposed considering the electorate’s fairly narrow reading of the leadership contention. A seemingly unified poistion could only help the ALP’s chance of becoming elected.

A couple of notes on Australia Day

I thought Michael Jeffery‘s Australia day comments were surprisingly good. He “fears that young Australians are becoming disengaged from the democratic process and says ways must be found to draw them back.”

Did anybody note that all three Australian’s of the year (including Senior Australian and Young Australian) were born over seas? Moreover the Young Australian of the year was a Vietnamese boat person. Now half of me says “that’s fantastic – yay Australian multiculturalism”. But Howard is hardly the great multiculturalist. I can’t help but suspect a political motivation here. I don’t want to detract from the achievements these people have made and their obviously invaluable contribution to Australia but one must wonder.

A deeper analysis of the SpongeBob SquarePants incident

This strikes me as an exciting initiative: International Commons – Australia

Just really good to see some Australians getting involved – and active.

Britain’s Dossier proclaiming that it would not intervene in Iran is a positive step and reads, in laypersons terms as: “Actually, the whole Iraq thing seems to have turned out to be a bad idea – for both our reelection prospects, and for Iraq. We sure won’t be doing that again.”

While any increase in Rumsfeld‘s power seems to me like a very bad thing.

Stiglitz v Monbiot

I’ve just finished reading Monbiot’s Age of Consent (which was excellent and I will post more on it soon), and have just started reading Stiglitz’s Globalisation and its Discontents. One common feature that strikes me is that they both recognise that ‘the revolution’ will be violent because when you seriously challenge the State which has a monopoly on the legitimate use of force, you will be violently opposed and the death of a protester at Genoa was just the beginning of many deaths (in some senses, in others the deaths are prolific – it just depends on the way you look at it).

As Stiglitz points out: ‘the death of a protester in Genoa in 2001 was just the beginning of what may be many more casualties in the war against globalisation’ (p 3).

How ever I do take issue with the ‘western perspective’ that Stiglitz has. I think he underestimates the Global Justice Movement of the South and the influence it has had on the global North.

Both highly recommend reads for any budding Global Justice Movement activist.

Please join Ezequiel Adamovsky, Vittorio Agnoletto, Michael Albert, Tariq Ali, Patrick Bond, Leslie Cagan, Noam Chomsky, Bill Fletcher, Eduardo Galeano, Susan George, Marta Harnecker, Boris Kagarlitsky, Subcomandante Marcos, George Monbiot, Suren Moodlar, Hector Mondragon, Tanya Reinhart, Carola Reintjes, Arundhati Roy, Lydia Sargent, Howard Zinn, and many more in signing the We Stand for Peace & Justice statement.

‘Mummy, I love SpongeBob. Does that mean I’m Gay?’

‘No my child, but I am concerned about the pictures the Telly Tubbies on your brother’s wall.’

I think it’s best we laugh at this sort of thing. After all, it is a joke.