Ah Shit! Here I go again

Tony Abbott has tweaked his doorstop schtick a little:  he's added a new sound bite. As well as repeating the  standard promises to repeal the carbon tax, repeal the mining tax, stop the boats, get the budget back in the black and cut red tape, he’s going to revitalise Work-for-the-Dole.

That promise to resurrect Work-for-the-Dole is straight out of the Liberals' policy platform Our Plan – RealSolutions for all Australians: The direction, values and policy priorities ofthe next Coalition Government. It's fleshed out on page 20 of the plan. The Liberals promise that they “will deliver higher productivity growth by boosting workforce participation” and “encourage every Australian to be a productive contributor in the nation's life”.

'Housing Affordability Crisis' Hits Home

On the whole, 2008 has been a pretty good year for me. I enrolled in a post-graduate course at Melbourne Uni - if I keep it up I'll be a licensed Master of Publishing and Communications. Hell, I might even go do the mortarboard and gown thing for the first time when I finish this one. By dint of not so persistent practice and application my drawing steadily improved to the point where I felt up to hanging a few of the better ones on the study wall. Things were looking good, as long as I ignored the 'housing affordability crisis' - in plain English, Australia's chronic housing shortage.

Then in late October, when I was out in the outer leafies, dog-sitting again, the usual happened: that cantankerous old bastard in the sky, the one in whom I refuse to believe, dropped a big, fat jobbie into my life. I came home for an overnight stay, after a class, and Zeppo Bakunin showed me the notice to quit that we'd received from the agents. Our landlord and landlady were splitting up and the landlord and his daughter needed a place to live. Moving us out, so that they could move in, was cheaper than moving into a rented house, in a tight rental market, and keeping up the mortgage payments on this place, regardless of the rental income and negative gearing. I used to like our landlords but, sooner or later, this country's housing market forces everyone involved in it to act like a bastard.

So now Zeppo Bakunin and I are looking for the opportunity to perform our own little act of bastardry - we're looking for a house we can move to. Whatever we look at, there's bound to be at least one young family looking at the same place. People who'll use the extra bedrooms for sleeping in, rather than accomodating desks, computers, books and assorted stuff.

Since the market is very tight at the moment, it's wise to have back-up plans. My plan B is to get really active on internet dating sites, and try to find someone with really low expectations with a bungalow in the backyard. Plan C is to pack up all or most of the stuff, put it into self-storage and use my pensioner Christmas bonus to do a bit of travelling: the way the economy is heading, I reckon the first edition of The Rough Sleeper's Guide to Australia will find a ready market.

At times like these, I envy the Swedes. Back in 2002, I read a World Bank report which gave the Swedish government a slap on the wrist for allowing a surplus of public housing to develop. This was, of course, a waste of economic resources and therefore economically irrational, if not irresponsible. Given the choice between economically responsible government and a roof over my head, I know which one I'd take right now.

Plimer Throws Debate, Wins Plaudits

Ian Plimer took to the hustings in Sydney on Tuesday, to defend religion against the charge that we'd be better off without it. As third speaker for the negative team, Plimer used the occasion to denounce the 'new religion' of environmentalism. Plimer's speech has been reproduced at Andrew Bolt's blog and at Jennifer Marohasy's blog of socratic irony.

I suspect Plimer's team-mates were a lot less impressed with Plimer's performance than Bolt and Marohasy.

Qu(ot)e?

It's time for an Australian Enlightenment, where once again reason and facts prevail over mysticism and ignorance...

An Australian Enlightenment would restore ideas to the place they have occupied over the last 5cm of the football field...

Craig Emerson, Minister for Small Business, in The National Rupert Daily.

If I Hadn't Been ROFLMAO, I Might Have Got Angry About This

There's one thing I've learnt to like about global warming obstructionists like Dr Jennifer Marohasy: their intellectual clowning on the subject is sometimes hilariously funny. Today (Saturday, August 16) excels herself by reproducing this argument from Alan Siddons of Holden, Massachusetts:

Radiative equilibrium is one of the foundation stones of radiative forcing theory. But it is not a law of physics, only a rather archaic and untested supposition found in climatology textbooks alone.

"For the Earth to neither warm or cool, the incoming radiation must balance the outgoing."

Not really.

Yes, really. If the Earth were to cool without radiating energy to some other part of the universe, or to warm without receiving additional energy from elsewhere, that would break a very basic law of physics: the law of Conservation of energy.

It’s best to regard radiant energy simply as a finite power source — indeed, that power is expressed as watts per square meter. An object is said to "cool" by radiating, yet this would seem to imply that restricting its radiation will make it get hotter and hotter. That’s the very premise of greenhouse theory, of course, that by disturbing outgoing radiance any magnitude of temperature gain is possible. But this is easy to test.

Confine a lightbulb inside an infrared barrier (like a globular mirror) and electrically feed one watt to it. After a while, will it be generating the heat of a thousand watt bulb? No.

When its temperature is consistent with the input, further heating stops.

This is complete codswallop, written by someone whose technical vocabulary exceeds his technical understanding. Stripped of the technobabble and trivia, the question posed, and then answered incorrectly, is "What happens if you put a light bulb in an enclosed environment and turn on the electricity?"

The correct answer to that question is that the light bulb will radiate light and heat, any air in the environment will be heated by the bulb, then whatever enclosure you've put the light bulb in will start to heat up. At that point the whole system - light bulb, air and enclosure - starts to lose heat to the outside environment and reach a thermal equilibrium where the energy it loses is equal to the energy being put in. Turn off the electricity and it will cool down again.

It’s like water seeking its own level. Lacking any means to radiate to its surroundings the lightbulb ...

The whole purpose of a light bulb is to radiate energy to its surroundings. That's what makes them useful. All that putting a lightbulb inside a reflective enclosure achieves is to make the surroundings smaller.

... merely gets as hot as a watt of power can make it, which is not much hotter than what it would be in the open. If not, we’d be able to generate incredible temperatures very cheaply. Just confine, wait, and release.

See above.

Conservation of energy: it’s not just a phrase...

Indeed not - it's a law of physics which Alan Siddons has misunderstood, at best.

The theory of radiative equilibrium arose early in the 19th century, before the laws of thermodynamics were understood.

The truth of a scientific theory isn't determined by how old it is, bnut by how well it fits the observed facts. And it appears that the laws of thermodynamics aren't universally understood, even today.

From The Analytical Theory of Heat:
The radiation of the sun in which the planet is incessantly plunged, penetrates the air, the earth, and the waters; its elements are divided, change direction in every way, and, penetrating the mass of the globe, would raise its temperature more and more, if the heat acquired were not exactly balanced by that which escapes in rays from all points of the surface and expands through the sky. — Joseph Fourier (1768-1830)

Fourier got that exactly right - later developments in thermodynamics haven't changed that one iota.

Update: more at Deltoid and Atmoz.

Socialised Medicine - It's Actually Good For You!

The New Yorker has a feature on 'superbugs' - antibiotic and drug-resistant bacteria such as multiply resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA). On page 4, you'll find this:

[Studies on how often, and for how long, antibiotics should be prescribed] are much easier to conduct in countries where medicine is largely socialized and prescriptions are tightly regulated. Recently, researchers in Israel, where most citizens receive their care through such a system, showed that refraining from empirically prescribing antibiotics during the summer months resulted in a sharp decline in ear infections caused by antibiotic-resistant microbes. (In the United States, a 1998 study estimated that fifty-five per cent of all antibiotics prescribed for respiratory infections in outpatients—22.6 million prescriptions—were unnecessary.) In Sweden, the government closely monitors all infections, and has the power to intervene as needed. 'Our infection-control people have a lot of authority,' [Dr. Christian Giske, a clinical microbiologist at Karolinska University Hospital in Stockholm] said, 'This is power from the legislation.' Once a resistant microbe is identified, stringent protocols are put in place, with dramatic results. Fewer than two per cent of the staphylococci in Sweden are MRSA, compared with sixty per cent in the United States. 'Of course, it’s only around ten million people, so it’s possible to intervene because everything is smaller,' Giske said, adding, 'Maybe Swedes are more used to this type of intervention and regulation.'

What do we want?

Advertising!

When will we get it?

Now!

Qu(ot)e?

Politics is about conviction, you sometimes get the impression that my successor is more interested in the process of government than the opportunity of leadership that government provides. (John Howard)

Maybe it's time for someone in the Liberal Party to take the Gnome of Steel aside and explain, politely but very firmly, that his opinions on the political process are no longer relevant or required.

Whitewash of the Week

The Extraordinary Rendition of Mamdouh Habib

Today, Chris Hammer of The Age reports:

THE United States sent Australian terror suspect Mamdouh Habib to be interrogated in Egypt in defiance of repeated pleas from Canberra not to do so, Australia's top spy has revealed.

ASIO director-general Paul O'Sullivan said the US was told several times that Australia opposed sending Mr Habib to another country for interrogation — a process known as rendition — after his arrest in Pakistan in 2001.

Mr O'Sullivan told a Senate hearing he believed Australia's concern at the time was that Mr Habib would be tortured, a fear later backed up by Mr Habib, who says he was brutally treated in Egypt.

Mr O'Sullivan made that revelation at the estimates hearing of the Senate Standing Committee on Constitutional and Legal Affairs. You can access the Hansard record of the committee proceedings here (PDF format) and here (Parlinfo web page).

According to Hammer's report:

Mr O'Sullivan said Australian officials in Pakistan formed the view on October 22, 2001, that Mr Habib might be "rendered" — transferred to a third country for interrogation — and conveyed concerns to Canberra.

A meeting in Canberra the next day — attended by then ASIO director-general Denis Richardson and senior representatives of the Federal Police and three government departments — decided that Australia would oppose his rendition.

This is a bit of a distortion of O'Sullivan's actual account of events, given in answers to questions from NSW Greens Senator, Kerry Nettle:

Senator NETTLE — I want to ask questions in relation to the rendition of Mamdouh Habib. I want to start with an answer that this committee received last week from the Attorney-General’s Department, which refers to a meeting that, we found out this morning, was on 23 October in 2001. In the answer from the Attorney-General’s Department it states that senior officials from ASIO, AFP, Foreign Affairs, the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet and the Attorney-General’s Department agreed that the Australian government could not agree to the transfer of Mr Habib. I want to start by asking you who represented ASIO at that meeting.

Mr O’Sullivan — Of course, I was not involved at that stage but, if I understand correctly, there was a meeting on another matter in Canberra. I do not know what that other matter was but at the end of it there was a pull-aside, to use an American expression, and Mr Richardson, my predecessor was the ASIO person at that meeting.

In plain terms, and contrary to the impression conveyed by The Age's report, there was no formally convened meeting between ASIO, the AFP and other departments about Mamdouh Habib's detention in Pakistan. It was discussed informally after 'a meeting on another matter'.

O'Sullivan's answers to further questions from Senator Nettle seem a little confused:

Senator NETTLE — The answer from the Attorney-General’s Department says that the senior officials from those various departments that I mentioned agreed that the Australian government could not agree to a transfer of Mr Habib to Egypt. Was there a request to transfer Mr Habib to Egypt?

Mr O’Sullivan — I believe no is the answer.

...

Senator NETTLE — The reason that I was asking Mr Keelty about this this morning was that he previously provided information to this committee that the AFP liaison officer in Islamabad was present at a meeting in Pakistan on 22 October, the day before, at which the transfer of Mr Habib to Egypt was discussed. So, I thought that when we were here this morning with the AFP, perhaps that pull-aside or discussion had been initiated by the AFP. At that point I was told that it was not the Australian Federal Police but ASIO. Can you tell me if that is correct?

Mr O’Sullivan — I am not sure exactly what the dynamics of the arrangement were, but I think you might be overformalising it when you talk about who convened or chaired it? It is clear that a meeting took place and it is clear that Mr Richardson was a central figure in that discussion. Whether he convened it in the sense that you are using that word, I am not sure, but there was a pull-aside at the end of a meeting on another matter and he was centrally involved with it for sure.

Once again, O'Sullivan reminds us that there was no formal, minuted discussion of Habib's possible transfer to Egypt - merely a 'pull-aside' involving interested parties from various departments.

Senator NETTLE — Was it information from ASIO that led to that discussion occurring?

Mr O’Sullivan — I do not think it was information from ASIO exclusively. I think there had been a meeting the previous day — if I have got the dates correct — in Pakistan, that you are referring to, and one of the things that happened at that meeting in Pakistan was a discussion of hypothetical possibilities. One of those possibilities was that Mr Habib could be transferred from Pakistan to Egypt. What happened then at the meeting of 23 October in Canberra was that the officials, including Mr Richardson, considered that issue and came to the conclusion that you have described — that is to say that the Australian government would not give assent to such a process of rendition, if that is what you want to describe it as.

Senator NETTLE — What did ASIO do after that meeting to ensure that the decision of that discussion was conveyed and to whom?

Mr O’Sullivan — Mr Richardson conveyed that information to the United States.

And there's the only basis for the assertion that the US defied Australia's wishes when they transferred Mamdouh Habib to Egypt. The current head of ASIO has told a Senate Estimates hearing that the former head of ASIO conveyed the decision of an informal discussion of Canberra bureaucrats to the United States - somehow.

An interesting question arises here: was then Prime Minister John Howard told about this decision? That depends:

Senator NETTLE — Did ASIO brief the Prime Minister about that discussion?

Mr O’Sullivan — I do not know what conversations Mr Richardson may have had privately, but the essence of the meeting was conveyed to senior people in Canberra, including all those who had a need to know. I do not have the list of people in front of me, but it was a piece of intelligence reporting that was distributed appropriately in Canberra.

Unfortunately, because the information was highly classified, O'Sullivan refused to discuss who was on the 'need to know' list. There's also the small matter of the difference between 'need to know' and 'want to know' and John Howard's preference for governing on the latter basis.

Senator NETTLE — Can I ask you what ASIO did, beyond conveying to the United States the decision of that meeting, to ensure that an Australian citizen was not transferred to Egypt?

Mr O’Sullivan — Essentially, the issue of the transfer and treatment of an Australian overseas is a matter for the department of foreign affairs. ASIO’s job is to make sure that that department has that information, and that is what happened in this case.

...

Senator NETTLE — This morning — again, it is other people’s descriptions of ASIO’s role — I asked the AFP and I asked Attorney-General’s Department what action they took to ensure that the decision of that pull-aside was implemented. Their indication was that they did not take action and it was ASIO’s responsibility. I want to make clear what ASIO did, apart from telling the Americans.

Mr O’Sullivan — As I said, the Director-General of ASIO informed the United States authorities that it was not the Australian government’s policy and position to engage in practices of rendition. (emphasis added)

Later, under further questioning from Senator Nettle, O'Sullivan identifies those 'United States authorities' as people at a senior level in the US State Department and the intelligence community. If what they were told was as wishy-washy as O'Sullivan says then no-one in any level of the US government was told, clearly and unambiguously, that Australia didn't want Mamdouh Habib sent to Egypt.

What a cock-up.

The Ultimate Political Compass

Beguiled by Cruelty

How long will it be before 'Western Civilisation' once again accepts torture as a regrettable, but sometimes necessary, practice? Not long enough, when a discussion of torture leads even opponents of torture to start speculating about how it might be made acceptable.

According to commenter NPOV at Club Troppo:

I might accept that some type of torture could be (barely) ethically justifiable, whereby: a) the process was “humane” as possible - e.g. gradually increasing the dosage of a intravenously supplied drug that caused pain, with careful medical supervision to assure no risk of permanent damage or death, and no risk that the torturer stepped out of bounds b) there was a requirement of thoroughly determined “possession of knowledge” beforehand (in the same way we now determine guilt “beyond reasonable doubt” before jailing criminals) c) the method was determined to be a highly effective method of extracting life-saving information, when all other avenues had been exhausted I still wouldn’t vote in favour of such a proposal, but I wouldn’t strenously object to it either, as long the checks and balances were shown to be working.

It may be that NPOV's intention here is sardonic - that the conditions under which NPOV is prepared to turn a blind eye are impossible to achieve. But that intention is by no means clear.

The first condition - or something like it - is attainable. The essential fatty acid arachidonic acid is a biochemical precursor of the prostaglandins which contribute to pain and inflammation. A subcutaneous injection of arachidonic acid would have an inflammatory effect on tissues, causing the sort of pain that is usually relieved with aspirin. A local injection of bradykinin would work even better. Historical experience shows that medical supervision for torture sessions would be forthcoming, one way or another.

The only question remaining is whether there is a risk of the torturer stepping out of bounds - but the door has already been opened too far. It would take very little force of argument from an advocate of the use of torture to open it all the way.

To argue against the use of torture in this way is wrong-headed. Once it has been allowed that torture - under proper supervision - is acceptable, the requirements of proper process will be satisfied, quite quickly, in the same way that they have been satisfied in the past; by defining punctilious protocols for establishing and recording interrogations under torture to provide the appearance of due process.

Heinrich Kramer and Jacob Sprenger's witchhunters' manual Malleus Maleficarum (MM) (1486) provides a good example of this under the heading 'Of the Third Kind of Sentence, to be Pronounced on one who is Defamed, and who is to be put to the Question':

THE Third method of bringing a process on behalf of the faith to a conclusive termination is when the person accused of heresy, after a careful consideration of the merits of the process in consultation with learned lawyers, is found to be inconsistent in his statements, or is found that there are sufficient grounds to warrant his exposure to the question and torture: so that if, after he has been thus questioned, he confesses nothing, he may be considered innocent. And this is when the prisoner has not been taken in heresy, nor has he been convicted by his own confession, or by the evidence of the facts, or by the legitimate production of witnesses, and there are no indications that he is under such a suspicion as to warrant his being made to abjure the heresy; but nevertheless he is inconsistent in his answers when interrogated. Or there may be other sufficient reasons for exposing him to torture. And in such a case the following procedure is to be observed.

The import of this passage is simple - once you have made up your mind to torture someone, for whatever you think good reason ('there may be other sufficient reasons for exposing him to torture') here is the proper procedure for recording the verdict - here's how you cover your bureaucratic arse.

The requirement that torture be found effective (NPOV's third requirement) is no impediment to the adoption of torture, Those who want to torture, or want torture used, will quite simply assume that it is effective, as did Kramer and Spenger. Accepting torture as a legitimate way to obtain information gives validity to testimony obtained under torture. This leads to a particularly vicious circle, where the 'truth' obtained through torture is used to justify the continued practice of torture:

[Here is] an instance which came within our own experience. For in the diocese of Constance, twenty-eight German miles from the town of Ratisbon ... a violent hailstorm destroyed all the fruit, crops and vineyards in a belt one mile wide, so that the vines hardly bore fruit for three years. This was brought to the notice of the Inquisition, since the people clamoured for an inquiry to be held ... it was ... that it was a case of witchcraft for us to consider; and among a large number of suspects, we particularly examined two women, one named Agnes, a bath-woman, and the other Anna von Mindelheim.

These two were taken and shut up separately in different prisons, neither of them knowing in the least what had happened to the other.

On the following day the bath-woman was very gently questioned ... and although she was undoubtedly well provided with that evil gift of silence which is the constant bane of judges, and at the first trial affirmed that she was innocent of any crime against man or woman; yet, in the Divine mercy that so great a crime should not pass unpunished, suddenly, when she had been freed from her chains, although it was in the torture chamber, she fully laid bare all the crimes which she had committed ... although there had been no witness to prove that she had abjured the Faith or performed coitus with an Incubus devil ... saying that for more than eighteen years she had given her body to an Incubus devil, with a complete abnegation of the Faith.

After this she was asked whether she knew anything about the hailstorm which we have mentioned, and answered that she did [and gave a detailed account of how she had caused the hailstorm]

... when on the next day the other witch had at first been exposed to the very gentlest questions, being suspended hardly clear of the ground by her thumbs, after she had been set quite free, she disclosed the whole matter without the slightest discrepancy from what the other had told ... Accordingly, on the third day they were burned.(MM, emphasis added)

How is it possible for two witnesses who have been separated to agree so much on the details of their crime? There are two common elements - the threat or use of torture and the inquisitors. The first alleged witch most likely told her interrogators what they wanted to hear. The second, after being 'exposed to the very gentlest questions, being suspended hardly clear of the ground by her thumbs' merely had to corroborate those details as they were put to her by her interrogators. This is how torturers obtain the evidence to support their claim that torture works.

In 2005, an Iraqi blogger who was arrested and tried for the crime of logging onto the blog Raed in the Middle posted an account of his experience in prison which includes the stories of other prisoners interrogated under torture:

Maysam And Nathom [were] two brothers, in their twenties, very poor, amazingly good looking, if there was an Arabic version of Hollywood, they would sure be Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt.

When I was in jail I cried twice, one of them was when Nathom came to the toilets from an interrogation session, and I was in the toilets at that time, and he started crying hard, he said that they beat him so much to the point that he had to say that his brother killed 300 people and stole many cars.

He came to the toilets while they started to torture his brother to make him confess of these crimes, I went back to the cell and cried for minutes, it was so unfair, so unfair.

That night we made jokes about it, and that since we all are supposed to be “terrorism experts” we knew that a sword can kill up to 50 people, so he must have used so many swords, or maybe he used chainsaw? How else would anyone kill 300 people with his own hands?

Yes, we made jokes about that, in prison, and when it’s such a silly situation, you learn to joke about it.
So the interrogator said: “so he killed 300 people?”
“yes sir” Nathom answered, and the interrogator writes the confession. “and he stole an Opel Car?”
“yes sir”
“a yellow one?”
“yes sir”
And then the interrogator put down the pen and said “you son of a b****, it has been more that two years since the war and I never saw one yellow Opel car”

(And it’s true, for some reason all Opels in Iraq are grey, some are black or blue but it’s rare, but no yellow ones!) All of that interrogation happened while Nathom is hanging upside down, and being hit at the same time. (emphasis added)

The pragmatists who would have us forget our 'squeamishness' about torture - our justified ethical repugnance at the idea of beating, electrocuting or waterboarding another human being until she is prepared to endorse any lies we want to tell about her and her friends and family - ignore this reality that has not changed from the fifteenth century to the present day.

Accommodating their arguments - even with ironic intent - is not the way to answer them. Beyond the ethical repugnancy of torture, there is a very sound political reason for citizens of a liberal democratic state to insist that the use of torture has no place. To allow torture is to open the way to a very different kind of state - the torture state.

Another Day, Another Bleg

I've been futzing around with ABS Census data for the past week or so, trying to get together a belated submission to the Senate Inquiry into Housing Affordability. The data I've been using has come from published Census tables listed on this page at the ABS web-site.

The first question I've looked at, from data in this ABS table is the numbers of dwellings in three categories: rented, being purchased and owned outright. I've aggregated the data (ignoring whether the dwellings were separate houses, terraces and units etc) in the table below.

Total Numbers of Dwellings by Tenure Type, 1996, 2001 and 2006 censuses, Australia wide

Census Year	Tenure Type	Total Dwellings	Percent
1996	Being purchased	1,656,062	27%
	Rented	1,865,961	30%
	Total	3,522,023	57%
	Fully owned	2,657,971	43%
2001	Being purchased	1,872,132	28%
	Rented	1,953,095	29%
	Total	3,825,227	58%
	Fully owned	2,810,917	42%
2006	Rented	2,063,945	30%
	Being purchased	2,448,211	35%
	Total	4,512,156	65%
	Fully owned	2,478,265	35%

(Note: the data in each year is sorted by the total number of dwellings in each category.)

There's an interesting change between the 2001 ands 2006 censuses: the statistical minority of households in fully owned dwellings fell from 42% to 35% of all households, so that there was a roughly equal split between renters, mortgagors (home buyers if you prefer) and home owners. The issue of housing affordability of renters isn't being addressed by the Senate inquiry - its terms of reference are limited to issues affecting mortgagors and would be mortgagors and looking for ways to bag the states.

The next step I wanted to take, before disaggregating the data into dwelling types was to look at the total numbers of individuals living in rented, mortgaged and fully owned dwellings, with a later disaggregation according to household type (single individuals, families and group households). The reason for that last is to look at ways in which individuals might be accomodating themselves to what, properly described, is a housing shortage: are we seeing the formation of more group households, for example?

As usual when I take on the ABS web-site, I've found myself a bit stumped, so if anyone can point me to data series that I should be looking at, please let me know.

Same Old Same Old

According to HL Mencken, nobody ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public. It's equally impossible to lose a political debate, or personal credibility, by underestimating the attention span and incuriosity of the Australian public. Especially on the internet.

A recent study by two Harvard University economists - Radha Iyengar, Jonathan Monten - published at the US National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) has been picked up by defenders of the war in Iraq as a rhetorical big stick, leftists for the whacking of. If you can't afford the $5 (US) NBER charges for electronic delivery of the paper, you can get some idea of its content from this US News report.

I first learnt of the study from this post on Andrew Bolt's blog - "Leftists Lie, Iraqis Die":

It comes with lots of important caveats, and yet:

Are insurgents in Iraq emboldened by voices in the news media expressing dissent or calling for troop withdrawals from Iraq? The short answer, according to a pair of Harvard economists, is yes.

Kudos to Bolt for mentioning that the study included "lots of important caveats"; no kudos for that inflammatory title and omitting those important caveats from his own coverage of the study. No kudos, either, for ignoring the ending of that US News report:

But before partisans go wild on both sides of the aisle, here are just three of the important caveats to this study:

• The city of Baghdad, for a variety of reasons, was excluded from the report. The authors contend that looking at the outside provinces, where 65 percent of insurgent attacks take place, is a better way to understand the effect they have discovered. Other population centers like Mosul, Basra, Kirkuk, and Najaf were included in the study.
  


• The study does not take into account overall cost and benefit of public debate. Past research has shown that public debate has a positive effect on military strategy, for example, and, in the case of Iraq, might be a factor in forcing the Iraqi government to more quickly accept responsibility for internal security.
  


• It was not possible, from the data available, to determine whether insurgent groups increased the overall number of attacks against American and Iraqi targets in the wake of public dissent and debate or simply changed the timing of those attacks. This means that insurgents may not be increasing the number of attacks after all but simply changing the days on which they attack in response to media reports. (emphasis added)

That last caveat rather detracts from Bolt's implied argument, that the left should jolly well shut up about Iraq - not that he's in favour of limiting free speech, of course, he just wishes that opponents of the war would wake up to themselves. It's not known, from the study, whether public dissent leads to new attacks, or whether the insurgents are timing their attacks to coincide with periods of public dissent.

Bolt's argument, such as it is, is tenuous. And pretty childish. "Every time you say that going to war in Iraq was a mistake Iraqis die" is little better than "Every time you say I don't believe in fairies a fairy dies."

I don't believe in fairies. I don't believe in fairies. I don't believe in fairies. That's three blokes who won't be going to the next Sydney Mardi Gras.

Bolt's argument is made even more tenuous by that last caveat - if debate merely influences the timing of the attacks, rather than the overall number, it becomes a case of "Every time you say you don't believe in fairies a poofter bashing happens".

I don't believe in fairies. I don't believe in fairies. I don't believe in fairies. That's three blokes I've just put into intensive care.

If you want to limit the chances of a skeptical reader - a potential critic - finding those caveats, you do as Currency Lad has done in this post. You link to the NBER abstract, which doesn't mention those embarassing caveats at all:

Finally, given the emboldening effect of anti-Bush agitprop and mendacious journalism, it would help if some observers grew up. If only they were as serious about liberty and peace as they are about "global warming."

There's one caveat to the study that US News doesn't list - perhaps it's omitted from the NBER paper as well. It's too bleeding obvious to rate a mention.

In the US, in particular, it's difficult to stifle dissent from government policy completely, because of that well known First Amendment to the Constitution. In Australia the protections are weaker but we like to at least pay lip service to the idea that we're a democratic society where freedom of speech is valued and respected.

There's a very obvious double standard in play in both cases. Bolt and the Currency Lad have this week lauded the publication of Geert Wilders' Fitna on the web as a victory for free speech. Yet here we see them advocating restraint of free speech when it comes to discussion of Iraq. Debate on that thorny topic would be best conducted if one side - the critics of the war - just kept their mouths shut. Critics of Fitna, those who dare to suggest that Wilders' film shouldn't have been published - bad evil opponents of free speech. Bolt and Currency Lad, who would like public debate on Iraq to be conducted without the participation of the war's opponents - defenders of "responsible" free speech.

There's a name for that. It's one of the words that George Orwell is credited with introducing into the dictionary: doublethink.

When Is a Shortage not a Shortage?

When it's an "affordability crisis" of course.

After I'd looked over my selections for Missing Link today, I made the mistake of re-reading this one, and following the link to the web page of the Senate Select Committee on Housing Affordability in Australia. Then I got really stupid and looked at the committes's terms of reference:

That a select committee, to be known as the Select Committee on Housing Affordability in Australia be established to inquire into and report upon:

The barriers to home ownership in Australia, including:
a. the taxes and levies imposed by state and territory governments;
b. the rate of release of new land by state and territory governments;
c. proposed assistance for first home owners by state, territory and the Commonwealth governments and their effectiveness in the absence of increased supply;
d. the role of all levels of government in facilitating affordable home ownership;
e. the effect on the market of government intervention in the housing sector including planning and industrial relations laws;
f. the role of financial institutions in home lending; and
g. the contribution of home ownership to retirement incomes.

After reading that, I decided that I was a lot less revved up to do write up a submission to the inquiry, because the committee is basically wasting its time and I see no good reason to sacrifice any of my time on such a pointless exercise.

Calling the current state of the housing market in Australia a " housing affordability crisis" is like calling a doubling of the price of caviar in Manhattan (caused let's imagine, by a sudden die-back in Black Sea sturgeon populations) a "caviar affordability crisis*". What we have is a housing shortage, in both rental housing and mortgaged housing.

Calling the housing shortage an "affordability crisis" is simply a way of avoiding this unpleasant fact. I have very low expectations of a committee whose terms of reference avoid the real issue with a euphemism. And when those same terms of reference refer explicitly to "barriers to home ownership" it's pretty clear that the fix is in. The committee's job is to come up with a package of "reform proposals" that will appeal to "working families" without putting any of the major corporate players in the housing market off-side.

(I'll stop there if you don't mind. Enjoyable as this recent prolific posting over a wide range of topics has been, it's not a good sign when too many ideas come too easily. There'll be plenty of time for more later.)

* I could have done a whole post riffing on that concept, but April Fool's day is over. Another opportunity missed!

Education Revolution? Pull the Other One.

It's going to be interesting to see how Kevin Rudd's "education revolution" progresses over the next couple of years. My prediction is that there isn't going to be any education revolution.

Granted, a lot of parents might get tax rebates on the price of lap-tops that they have bought to further their children's education - an initiative no more misguided than One Laptop Per Child's efforts to provide a free lap-top for every child in the world, and no less effectual in improving their educational prospects. There will be a lot of sound and fury about educational standards - from the Liberals we'll once again hear about the malign legacy of the Maoist long-march through our educational institutions, Kevin Donnelly and others will get on their high horses about the importance of the literary canon and we'll all have a lot of ideological fun raising a thoroughly discordant racket on our own trumpets, while we try to manage the tricky feat of pushing our own barrows at the same time.

In the end there will be a few marginal changes to the education systems of the individual states and territories, the brouhaha will end and we'll all find something else to have equally pointless arguments about. Finally, in at least a decade, the Coalition, or whatever effectual opposition replaces it, will sweep the ALP out of office State by State, and perhaps Federally too. One of its major campaign promises will be to do something once and for all to get the appalling state of our education system sorted. Then we'll have the whole futile debate again, because that's the way we do things in this country.

All of this kerfuffle will be quite beside the point because the outcome of the debate and hence the direction of the "education revolution" has already been determined. Not by any secret conspiracy of the Socialist Left of the ALP, or some coterie of cultural conservatives who have the ear of Kevin Rudd, but by the language which is habitually used when we debate the subject of education and our habit of surrendering education debates to institutional and economic interests. So that what's hyped as revolution turns out a mere tinkering around the edges of the status quo.

I haven't been following Andrew Leigh's writing avidly enough to know whether he's an "education revolutionary", but the evidence of his latest AFR article suggests not. So, in fairness to Andrew, it's worth noting that most of the preceding four paragraphs were written a couple of months ago; they've been sitting around the hard-drive since then, while I waited for either the inspiration to develop the ideas further or a convenient excuse to wheel them out. Nonetheless, his article follows roughly the same rhetorical course that leads from revolutionary hype to bathetic tinkering.

Andrew suggests that the way to make progress on the issue of education funding, is to agree to four basic principles. The first is a motherhood declaration that you'd have a hard time arguing against:

First, the wellbeing of children is more important than anyone else. Teachers and school administrators matter, but the top priority of education policies is to help kids, not adults.

Even teachers and school administrators would have to agree with that one, wouldn't they? Parents - for whom teachers and school administrators are often the natural enemy when it comes to arguments over their kids' education would be especially inclined to agree. Of course Leigh here is constrained by the limitations of the op-ed format - a full catalogue of all the adults whose interests, and perceived interests, need to be discounted in order to focus on the wellbeing of children might well exhaust his word limit. They include politicians and political lobbyists, business proprietors and managers, corporate stockholders, progressive educational theorists, regressive educational theorists and, in some notable instances, parents. On examination, the entire adult community consists of people who are, on occasion, apt to confuse their own professional and personal interests with those of children - theirs, or more usually someone else's - so there's little point in singling out any one social or professional group on that score - be they teachers and educationists or economists.

Andrew's second principle is formally independent of the first but it's a nice rhetorical follow-through:

Second, we should not penalise parents for spending more on their children’s education. To the extent that education has ‘positive externalities’ (higher productivity, more social capital, better civic engagement), we should encourage it. There is a real difference between a policy that says ‘the richer you are, the less the government should give your child’ and one that says ‘the more you spend on your child’s education, the less the government should give you’. The former targets resources to those who need them most, while the latter operates like an education expenditure tax.

This argument is nonsense. How, for example, would an economist suggest that we encourage parents to spend money on their childrens' education? The obvious answer, is a tax rebate on educational expenditures, such as private school fees. How do we avoid directing money to the children of the rich for services that the rich have demonstrated they will pay for themselves anyway - such as the positional good of a privately funded education at one of those elite private schools? By withholding government funding from those services. The proposal here is that instead of funding private education directly, through subsidies to schools, governments sling the money to parents and achieve the same result indirectly. The real difference, in terms that matter to economists? Zero per cent of bugger all.

Third, schools should be judged on outputs, not just inputs. At present, the federal government allocates billions of dollars to private schools, but asks little in return. Taxpayers who fund these schools have a right to demand that they provide empirical data such as test scores, dropout rates, or parental satisfaction surveys.

Excuse me, but what was that first principle again? "First, the wellbeing of children is more important than anyone else." Before we give the taxpayer the right to demand data such as test scores, dropout rates and the results of parental satisfaction surveys, perhaps we should establish that these measures accurately reflect schools' capacity to care for and foster the wellbeing of the child.

Fourth, funding should be transparent. Parents should know precisely how much government funding they bring to their child’s school.

I've got nothing agains transparency in the funding of education but once again, we've lost track of that first principle.

In fact, at no stage in Leigh's article has he examined that issue of the "wellbeing of children". Instead, it's been used a springboard for Leigh to launch into an argument on how education should be funded, not on how schools are to achieve the difficult task of educating children.

And that's why there ain't going to be an education revolution any time soon. Because until we're prepared to tackle that question, looking at what education kids need to prepare themselves for life, and not just a guaranteed place of standing in the labour market and the status hierarchy, a lifetime of usefulness to the nation and the economy, we'll continue to miss the point.

Just Getting My Hand In

As Ken Parish has announced in this comment at Club Troppo, I'll be joining the Missing Link team on a mutually probationary basis (I'll get an "I told you so" from Ziggy Stellenstaub, my personal head care specialist when I tell him about this). I figure it won't do any harm to put in a little practice before I actually have to start producing those snippy little notes about who's hot, and who's not. Here goes...

The knives are out for Petro Georgiou again, with ex-Howard-staffer Joshua Frydenberg making another bid for preselection. The former Mr Lefty is all for it because narrowing the Liberal Party church is "the way back to government, after all". The ever truthful Andrew Bolt is for it too, because "safe seats aren't for keeping warm".

Ironically, the bid is sponsored by the Costello/Kroger forces within the Victorian Liberal party and Costello's made his position on his political future quite clear on the night of the last Federal Election - he was only going to stay in Parliament to keep the seat of Higgins warm, while he sought opportunities in the private sector. Perhaps they're keeping Higgins as a back up, in case Frydenberg's bid for preselection in Kooyong fails yet again.

Will Someone Please Sit on This Man's Head?

Preferably while he's prone, but supine will do - as long as it stops Laurie Ferguson getting pronouncements like this out of his mouth:

"People fear there is a monoculture in some suburbs. They believe there is an over-dominance of some cultures in schools, which is denigrating the quality of education," Mr Ferguson told The Age [through its earpiece, reporter Jewel Topsfield].

"So they are withdrawing their kids from government schools and sending them to religious or selective high schools. This leads to further concentration of marginalised communities in government schools and the further stigmatisation of these schools."

Through the rest of the report Laurie is given ample opportunity to demonstrate seven shades of stupidity. Calling for refugees to be housed across a wider spread of suburbs sounds reasonable - until you ask the question, and where are these people going to find the community supports they need to get themselves settled, even integrated to a degree, in their new environment. And in the following statement, Laurie takes off into cloud-cuckoo land with his finger pointed in the general direction of a possible scapegoat:

Mr Ferguson told The Age [through its earpiece, reporter Jewel Topsfield] more needed to be done to avoid children from places such as Africa, who had grown up in refugee camps and had limited education, being so heavily concentrated in some areas and schools. "Deliberate policy decisions" needed to be made about diversifying the location of housing for refugees and humanitarian entrants.

He said settlement workers should also try harder to find private rental properties for their clients in a broader range of areas, rather than simply dealing with the same real estate agents. (emphasis added)

What makes him think that settlement workers aren't trying hard enough to find private rental properties for their clients? Hasn't he heard of the current housing shortage housing affordability crisis, or did that simply slip his mind?

When it comes to stupidity, The Age (through its earpiece, reporter Jewel Topsfield), shows it's no slouch itself, with this cursory investigation of the problem of "white flight" from the public education system:

The president of the Victorian Association of State Secondary Principals, Brian Burgess, said the exodus from state schools in Victoria was "more like a middle-class flight" than a white flight.

"It has more to do with middle-class people living in lower socio-economic areas moving into private education or what they would view to be a more upmarket secondary school in the next suburb," he said.

But teachers at racially diverse schools, who asked not to be named [by The Age (through its earpiece, reporter Jewel Topsfield or her offsider, Bridie Smith)], told The Age [through its earpiece, reporter Jewel Topsfield or her offsider, Bridie Smith] white flight was occurring in Melbourne.

There's nothing like investigating the facts and checking the evidence for yourself, is there? Nothing like it there at all.

Elsewhere, Andrew Bolt suggests that the term "white flight" is a misnomer. Excuse me, while I go off somewhere quiet to grind my teeth for a couple of minutes.

Coming Soon: The Return of the Worried Well

MENTAL health treatment could fall victim to the Rudd Government's budget razor gang, with Health Minister Nicola Roxon flagging cuts to Medicare coverage for the mentally ill...

Asked whether the Rudd Government would keep the present funding for the program, Ms Roxon said it was looking at ways to spend money more "effectively" and would not rule out cuts the Medicare-funded mental health program.

"I'm not going to rule things in and out, but we are certainly looking at ways mental health money is being spent to make sure it is effectively being used in the community," Ms Roxon said.

She said she was reviewing which treatments Medicare would continue to fund...

Ms Roxon said she had been alerted to possible misuse of the services. "I certainly won't rule out that part of my job as Health Minister is to make sure that money is being spent effectively … for people who have mental health problems." (The Age, emphasis added)

I'd say that Leo Shanahan's parsing of Roxon's statements on the Mental Health Reform Package is pretty well spot on - "looking at the way money is spent to make sure it is effectively being used" is fairly obvious bureaucratese for "looking for any spending cuts we can conceivably get away with". And when a minister mentions "possible misuse" of services, it's pretty much a dead cert that the cuts will be found.

It won't take long, in the absence of any evidence to the contrary, for the "possible misuse" Roxon mentions will have become "public concerns over possible misuse of health funds" then "a public perception of misuse of health funds" and on to "public outrage over the rorting of Medicare rebates under the so-called Mental Health Reform Package". This scandalous misuse of the taxpayer dollar will, of course, be a very bad thing for working famblies. It will have to be stopped.

Is the money really being spent on "people who have mental health problems"? Here's a web page that says it is, but clearly the page is out of date:

Who benefits [from the Better Access to Psychiatrists, Psychologists and General Practitioners through the Medical Benefits Schedule Initiative]?

Patients with a clinically diagnosed mental disorder who would benefit from a structured approach to the management of their care needs, using the short to medium term treatment available under the Better Access items.

Reading Shanahan's report didn't do anything for my depression, but it worked wonders on the constipation.

Word of the Day: Ex Gratia

ex gratia - adv. as a favour; not from (esp. legal) obligation - . granted on this basis (ex gratia payment) (Latin = from favour).

So, for example, a tip (or gratuity) is an ex gratia payment from a customer to a staff member of a bar or restaurant in recognition of services rendered - unlike the cost of the meal, or the bar tab.

That's worth keeping in mind when you read statements like this:

The carer bonus was paid ex gratia by the previous federal government over the past four years, to families caring for people with disabilities, chronic illness or age frailty, in recognition of the unpaid care provided by those families eligible for the carer payment and/or carer allowance. (Jean Tops at On-Line Opinion)

Tops' OLO article is yet another contribution to the confected public outrage over the "Rudd razor gang's" threat to "axe" the Howard government's carer's bonus, one of several ex gratia payments made by the previous Government over its term of office.

I've no argument with the rest of Tops' article (I haven't read it through yet), nonetheless I've a small suggestion. Let's drop the confected outrage, and look at the question of what the Rudd government - and any government that follows it - should be doing to assist carers. That's a debate worth having.

As for the question "Is it proper for a democratically elected government to dish out ex gratia payments to particular sectors of the voting population?" I think that's pretty much a case of asked and answered.

Note: this post was written ex gratia. I don't have to do this you know.

Freedom of Association

I can't remember when this happened - some time way back before I got married, obviously. When I'd finished Uni, had a job and enough income to afford a flat of my own.

It was a Friday night - I was in my poky little kitchen, turning a chook over in the black cast iron roasting dish, when I heard a knock on the door. "Bugger, she's early!" I thought. The chook still had a good half hour to go and so did the spuds. I hadn't got round to blanching the haricots vert yet, nor had I set the table or crammed the candles into the necks of the Mateus bottles.

But it wasn't her at the door - it was some bloke I hadn't ever seen before, and behind him a few people who all had one thing in common - they were complete strangers to me.

"G'day, I'm Eric," he said, "Tom said you might be able to help us out."

"Uh, I'm a bit busy right now - I've got a friend coming over for dinner at eight."

Tom I knew only vaguely - he was the weird downstairs neighbour with the Che Guevara poster glued to the outside of his front door who'd buttonhole you on the staircase to ask you if you were interested in going along to a forum on the socialist approach to stopping the international arms trade and other such exciting events.

"Yeah, well the thing is, we need somewhere to hold our meeting tonight."

"And?"

"Well Tom told us your thinking was fairly sound - for a bourgeois - so maybe we could use your place."

"I've got a friend coming over for dinner at eight."

So then this bloke, who still hadn't introduced himself to me gives me a pointed stare and said:

"You've heard of freedom of association, haven't you? It's a basic human right."

I gave him one of those blank looks you give someone who's just said, or done something totally astonishing, then patiently repeated:

"I've got a friend coming over for dinner at eight." Since that clearly wasn't going to be enough to get the message across I spelt out the consequences "You'll have to find somewhere else to hold your meeting."

"Typical f'k'n bourgeois pseudo-leftist..." he grumbled, "Care more about your own bloody sex-life than basic human freedoms!" His firends all gave me disapproving glares and disappeared into the night.

A few days later the managing agents for the flats came round to inspect Tom's place and he received an eviction notice. Apparently there'd been a few complaints from one or two of the other tenants about loud music in the wee small hours and other strange goings on. I didn't learn about it until I bumped into him as he was moving his stuff out to his new place.

"What sort of person would do something like that?" he asked, after recounting the events just described, "Where's the class-consciousness?"

"No idea." I said and went upstairs to sit down and listen to Bach's Mass in B Minor, on vinyl, confident that this time the et resurrexit wouldn't be interrupted by The Ballad of Joe Hill coming up through the floor.