Call for Nominations

Saturday, 8 March 2003

Reading this post at John Quiggin's blog reminded me that I'm stuck for a "Dummy Spit of the Week" to start next week's blogging. I'd like to keep it as a more or less regular feature (at least for the next few weeks), so if anyone can remember any likelty candidates from the last weeks events in politics, please post a comment (preferably with a link, of course).

By the way, John's bloody lucky to be getting mentioned in this context after this post on the strange silence that has descended on his little corner of Ozplogistan, where yours truly doesn't rate a mention as one of the bloggers who have been "busy and interesting" this week - evidently, nothing I've written since Tuesday has been up to scratch. I wouldn't have mentioned Mr John Bloody Smart-Arse Quiggin at all if he weren't consistently one of my own top 5 referrers. Still, Tim Dunlop remains way out in front by miles, which says something about the relative good taste of his readers compared to sodding Quiggin's.

Sharp As Blu-Tack™

Friday, 7 March 2003

I found this article by Boris Johnson (Bojo to his fans) through the site of a certain self-styled "journalist, commentator and oppressor". It's about Iraq. In it Boris explains the rationale for the war in Iraq in terms one of his characters could understand:

You know how it is when you are a teenager, and you have a hot date with a chick on, say, Friday. It has taken a lot of guts to organise, and you feel sure that, if you play your cards right, it could be your lucky night. Like the world at the end of the Cold War, you are in a state of pleasurable excitement, not unmixed with anxiety. And then round about Tuesday of that week, you notice something worrying. Somewhere on your left cheek - roundabout the place where Iraq is on the globe - something begins to throb. There is no getting away from it. The thing is a zit.

Boris canvases how you might deal with this problem, and arrives at the conclusion that, if you're really serious about getting your end away, you'll just have to put aside your worries about collateral dermatological damage, bite the bullet and squeeze the damn thing. And the global community has to do the same with Saddam Hussein: he's a zit that has to be squeezed.

This just leaves two questions:

What's the geopolitical equivalent of getting your end away on Friday night?

How come the Eton and Balliol educated Mr Johnson has never heard of Clearasil™?

Update (Saturday, March 8): in the comments thread, dj provides an alternative, folk remedy for facial suppurations. It's not hard to see where this discussion is going to go.

Bullshit Tactics (and How to Use Them)

Thursday, 6 March 2003

I found a list of "Bullshit Tactics Used Against Libertarians" at the Australian Libertarian Society site yesterday. Most of them are pretty good so I decided the list would be a good basis for a series on how to really piss off the libertarian in your life. There are 14 tactics in all - we'll just have to see how far I can get through the list before I get bored and move on to something else. Here's number one:

1. Pointing out that there are gray areas between voluntary and coercive action, and pretending that the existence of gray areas destroys the distinction and, hence, the very idea of liberty. Libertarianism is illusory.

This is obviously inadequate, and needs a little fine tuning. I suggest you begin by reading the Euthyphro from The Last Days of Socrates, to get an idea of how a master would handle things. Then, rather than pointing out those grey areas, just put this simple question: "Just what do you mean by liberty?" Don't take "Oh come on that's obvious" for an answer: insist on a definition.

If you get something like "Freedom from tyranny", you're on an easy winner - just follow up with "OK what's tyranny?" If you can't lead your libertarian adversary into a circular argument, you're just not trying hard enough. On the other hand, beware of asking the question "What are the responsibilities of consciousness?" You're very likely to get a long lecture on the importance of recognising that a straight line is a straight line and not, say, a parabola with the equation f(x) = 0x² + bx + c.

Your goal, by the way, is not to show that "Libertarianism is illusory": it's to show that your adversaries idea of libertarianism is naive because it relies on an unquestioned and ill-defined conception of liberty. If you're dealing with someone who has a more developed notion of liberty, from reading John Stuart Mill's essay On Liberty for example, you may have to put in a lot more work to reach the point where your exasperated libertarian says the magic words "You're full of shit!" I think we'll save that for the advanced course.

Welcome Light Relief?

Wednesday, 5 March 2003

With all that's happening in the world at the moment I felt desperate for a little humorous reading last night, so I resorted to my Penguin Classics copy of Dante's Inferno, translated by Dorothy L Sayers, noted medievalist and author of several books of detective fiction including "The Nine Tailors, a fascinating novel about campanology."

Dotty's translation of Dante's immortal work is notable for two things: her truly appalling terza rima and her equally appalling explanatory notes, which make up the bulk of the text. I've been told by friends that the subsequent volumes of The Divine Comedy are also worth reading (if only to get the whole of Dante's allegory rather than just the sordid first third) but the idea of ploughing through another two volumes of questionable rhymes and didactic endnotes that belabour the patently bleeding obvious doesn't appeal. Except for one thing - quite unintentionally, Dotty gives us fascinating glimpses into the psychology of a Cultural Conservative with two Ps and a silent Q. Here for example, is the conclusion of her description of Dante's Universe (which is basically your standard medieval geocentric, or Ptolemaic universe, with the planets mounted on transparent spheres revolving around a fixed Earth):

The Ptolemaic universe is the universe we recognise, as we recognise a photograph or picture of the house in which we live. It is inferior to the Copernican in that its mathematics, even when corrected by modern knowledge, would be too complicated for ready calculation; but it is superior as a description of what the heavens have to show us, because it is a direct transcript of the observed phenomena.

Reading this passage, with its nostalgia for a simpler world where eternity was only a few thousand miles away, beyond the sphere of the Fixed Stars, you can understand why CP Snow got grumpy about the "two cultures". It's not merely that Sayers is woefully ignorant of the science, or even the history which resulted in the Ptolemaic view being replaced by the Copernican view. It's that she prefers to be ignorant and seems, at some level, to prefer that the rest of us were ignorant too, happily living in a glittering snow-dome cosmos with God on the outside peering in through the Primum Mobile. It reminds me of certain contemporary cultural conservatives who wring their hands over what we have lost in the inevitable cultural decline that followed the disbanding of the Doobie Brothers. There's something seriously weird about people who are nostalgic for times and places outside their own experience.

Today's Strikes

Wednesday, 5 March 2003

Angry loggers have backed down from their threat to disrupt this weekend's Grand Prix, contenting themselves with leaving 100 timber trucks parked around Victoria's Parliament House. That's a bitter blow for those of us who hoped to see a Mack prime mover take the chequered flag this year.

Victoria's screws are also taking industrial action, over the possibility that one of their number might face criminal charges for discharging his firearm at an escaping prisoner. The prisoner, Garry Whyte, 39, a remand prisoner, was attempting to escape from St Vincent's Hospital in Melbourne. According to a screw's union spokesman on ABC local radio this morning, the fact that criminal charges have been laid against a screw who exercised the authority given to him by Parliament to discharge his firearm to prevent an escape creates uncertainty for other screws. Until they receive a clear indication that they still have authority to discharge their firearms at escaping prisoners the screws won't be carrying firearms or undertaking escort duties where they might be tempted to discharge their firearms in the wrong belief that they have been authorised to do so by government regulation when in fact they might still be liable for the results of a discharging of firearms under criminal law. Got that? If not, keep an eye on this page for the next couple of days: they might put the audio of Jon Faine's interview with Julian Kenelly up. It's worth a listen if you have a robust sense of humour.

Word of The Day: Homonym

Wednesday, 5 March 2003

Which, according to my usual source, the Macquarie Dictionary means

a word like another in sound and often in spelling, but different in meaning, as meat and meet.

Or say, John Howard and great Australian Prime Minister. What brought it to mind was a report on AM this morning where the reporter kept talking about a small West Australian town called "New Nausea". Right now, New Nausea has a monastery and will soon be getting a European Space Agency tracking station. I'm waiting for the transcript so that I can get the correct spelling.

Dummy Spits of the Week

Tuesday, 4 March 2003

Time to brush the carpet fluff off the Trotsky dummy and resume blogging after a weekend of fear and loathing somewhere near Syracuse (that's the ancient city in Sicily, rather than any contemporary US namesake). The big dummy spit in Oz politics was produced by ACT Treasurer Ted Quinlan who, according to the ABC's AM, was one of four signatories to a letter to Federal Stealth Treasurer Peter Costello saying that there was no way that mr Graeme Samuel was acceptable as the new chair of the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission. Why? Because

... Graeme Samuel has not only a pedigree at the big end of town, but he also has the image of a pedigree at the big end of town, and both those things I think mitigate against it being an appropriate appointment.

Mr Quinlan also expressed his hope that Mr Costello would display more maturity than himself and that the ACT would not lose Commonwealth funding as a result of this ... principled stand.

But the soft patter of silicon rubber hitting the carpet was loudest from Washington this week. On Saturday, Whitehouse spokesman Ari Fleischer dismissed Iraq's decision to destroy its Al-Samoud missiles as

... propaganda, wrapped in a lie, inside a falsehood.

Fleischer continued this dismissive line in his press briefing of 3 March: as far as the Bush administration is concerned it's too little, too late. The optimist in me wants to believe that this is a case of the US government talking tough to get the result it wants (Saddam disarmed) but the pessimist doubts it. Still, I'm determined to look on the bright side - as soon as I can scrape a few thousand dollars together I'm investing in Brie futures. They're bound to go up once this whole thing is settled, one way or the other.

Reading and Other Matters

Wednesday, 26 February 2003

I picked up a shitload of books from the Moreland Library on Sunday: The Mismeasure of Man by Stephen Jay Gould (what I really want to be reading right now on this subject is Race In Mind: Race, IQ, and other Racisms by Alexander Alland junior which, I gather on the basis of a short review in The Age, continues the ongoing task of refuting the Sax-Rohmerist theory of the racial distribution of human intelligence. I've also got Trollope's Doctor Thorne and Framley Parsonage for "light reading" and a copy of Nigel Bagnall's The Punic Wars which I bought a couple of years ago to get through.

As if that weren't enough, I received The Diviner's Son by Gary Crew in the mail today. I won it by singing the chorus to Ruby Tuesday on one of those late night quizzes on the ABC. With a reccomended retail price of $14.95, it works out to 83 days of my 18 cents a day that I just got back. That's one in the eye for all you anti-Auntie whingers out there.

Best of all, we've just picked up some work! A $20,000 contract to build a new web-site, which should get the company back on the right side of the fine line between solvency and impending bankruptcy and perhaps allow it to pay some wages - or at least I might get a small "back-rent" bonus out of it, which ought to get the real estate agents off my back.

Dummy Spits of the Week

Monday, 24 February 2003

(This post is slightly overdue - let's all just pretend that I wrote it last Friday).

Federal Health Minister Kay Patterson decided not to attend a national conference of Health Ministers last week because, to cite various explanations offered by Senator Patterson herself, it was an exercise in grandstanding by the State Labor Governments in the lead-up to the New South Wales state election and she didn't want to be "hi-jacked" by the States (who organised the conference). As a result, Senator Patterson didn't get to hear the various submissions made to the conference by health professionals and administrators on the current state of the public health system: a fact that the Senator regretted but, as those sneaky State health ministers didn't bother to tell her that they were holding a conference on health spending with real doctors, it's not her fault that she denied herself this opportunity to hear some expert opinion on her portfolio responsibilities. If the impending war on Iraq weren't occupying so much attention, Senator Patterson's brilliant own goal might have got more notice than it has.

All the same, there's probably room for someone on the Government side of federal politics to take Senator Patterson in hand and give her a few pointers on dealing with hostile State ministers. Stealth Treasurer Peter Costello would be ideal for this job - you may recall the calming effect his charm had on New South Wales State Treasurer Michael Egan. Mr Costello briefly departed from his usual ground-hugging political flight path last week to comment on another burning political issue, the Liberal Party presidency. Mr Costello expressed some pique at the fact that current President Shane Stone did not seek his (Costello's) opinion before deciding to run for another term, saying:

I think that somebody who wanted to engage in wide consultation would have spoken to me about it, yes. But obviously, that's a question of the style and the degree to which they want to engage in consultation.

So, I think the more consultation the better, and I think it would've been advisable to consult in relation to this. But it's something that he must take into account in relation to his management of the organisation.

But really, for this one, you should listen to the audio. I swear, if you listen carefully, you can actually hear his lip quiver.

Raising the Potemkin

Friday, 21 February 2003

I was a bit anxious when I visited the Potemkin today, and found instead a Blogger page telling me that my trusty old tub was scuttled. A quick visit to the Blogger main site was sufficient to raise her from the bottom of the harbour. So, if you've just discovered that your own blog is cactus, just do what I did - go to Blogger and publish it again. It's a pain in the bum isn't it?

A Short Memoir

Thursday, 20 February 2003

At the risk of writing an egotistical post about how wonderful I am, I'm going to tell you about something that happened to me a couple of years ago. It's a memory that keeps bubbling up to the surface when I think about the Iraq situation. It happened one Sunday afternoon while I was travelling home from Melbourne on the train.

For those who have never travelled on a Melbourne train, you need to know something about the rolling stock. Each carriage has a communicating door at either end which allows you, if you want, to walk through to the next carriage. Between the carriages there is an open platform, with a safety chain either side, at about waist height for the average adult human being. A sign over the door informs you that the platform between the carriages is for communication only and that you shouldn't ride on it. Nonetheless, from time to time people do.

It wasn't a crowded carriage - I'd say that there were no more than twenty people in it including, at the end furthest from me, three young boys. At a guess, I'd say the youngest was about seven, the oldest around ten or eleven. As soon as the train entered the tunnels of Melbourne's underground loop, they slipped through the connecting door and all three of them stood crowed on the "inter-carriage platform". This didn't strike me as particularly safe, so I was very relieved when they came back inside the carriage at the next station.

As the journey went on, a pattern developed: after the train left a station they went out into the gap between carriages and came back inside as the train approached the next station. And I became increasingly anxious: the youngest of the three was quite short enough to slip under the safety chains if he lost his footing, either due to an unexpected motion of the train or a little over-boistrous horseplay. As they became more self-assured about being out there, I realised that I was looking at an accident waiting to happen. I started to become angry too: there were others in the carriage who should have been able to see what I was seeing, and they were much closer than me to the problem. Why the hell wasn't anyone doing anything?

...

...

That question answers itself: if I thought something needed to be done, it was up to me to do it. I decided that the next time the boys were safely back in the carriage, I would give them a telling off calculated to nail their arses to their seats. Why did I decide to wait? Because I thought (rightly or wrongly) that this was the best way to deal with the problem: I didn't want to do something to precipitate the very accident I was trying to prevent. it wasn't a comfortable position to place oneself in, knowing that while you were holding back on acting something quite appalling could happen any second. But the boys did, eventually get back inside the carriage safely and, ignoring the nagging little voice which was telling me that everyone else was going to think I was an officious prick, I walked the length of the carriage and delivered a blistering dose of sarcasm, starting with the statement that they were taking a bloody stupid risk and that I didn't want to be three hours late getting home because one of them had fallen under the train and got himself killed. They indulged in a little indirect cheek - repeating what I had said to each other in a derisive tone but they were entitled to that. In any case I got what I wanted: they stayed inside the carriage where they were safe.

So I walked back to my seat at the other end of the carriage, past all the other adults who were with me in that railway carriage, all of them conveying, through shaking heads and sidelong disapproving glances, their judgement that I was an officious prick. I found the whole thing a little upsetting but, when I talked it over with various friends, they all said that I had done the "right thing". Of course their judgement on this point may have been coloured by the fact that, as leftists, they might have been a little too willing to accept the idea that it was OK to tell people off for their own good.

Obviously, I wouldn't find myself thinking about this in relation to Iraq if, at some level I didn't think it was relevant. To some readers the relevance will be obvious: I acted decisively in a situation in which I saw a danger but no-one else was prepared to act. But to me there is as much relevance in those agonised minutes while I waited, knowing that the worst might happen, because to act too soon, and ineptly, might cause the very thing I wanted to prevent.

-***-

Lost & Found

Monday, 17 February 2003

I've just noticed that Gary-Sauer Thompson mentions my witterings on just war theory in his post Just war theory is out of date?, where he takes the philosophical stick to Christopher Pearson's article on the subject in Saturday's Oz. The series has slipped off the front page today so here are links to the first three articles, bloggings or whatever they're called.

Part 1: A Long Overdue War Blog
Part 2: The Whackiest Little Constitutional Monarchy in the West
Part 3: When Meaning Well Is Not Quite Enough

Postscript: Gary also has a few things to say on the PM's 60 Minutes interview in Authoritarian Logic.

Just Another Slip of the Tongue

Monday, 17 February 2003

I don't usually watch Channel 9's Sixty Minutes - the picture quality on my AM/FM clock radio isn't really up to it - so I missed the broadcast of Charles Wooley's interview with Prime Minister John Howard last night. This part of the interview raised a bit of furore on our ABC this morning ("our" as in devotees of over-produced BBC adaptations of second-rate Victorian novelists and anyone well to the left of Mark Latham, of course. The rest of you have three commercial stations to choose from, so quit bitching. And don't give me that crap about paying for it through your taxes: where the hell do you think commercial TV advertising revenue ultimately comes from? There's something to think about next time you're wondering why it's costing so much at the bloody supermarket these days). Sorry about that rantlet - back to the interview:

CHARLES WOOLEY: Sure, but, for a leader of a democracy to go against the perceived tide of public opinion is still a considerable thing to do and it is true, to use the kind of vernacular that you use, "the mob don't like it".

JOHN HOWARD: Well, I don't think the mob, to use that vernacular, has really made up its mind on this issue and it can't really make up its mind until we know what all the alternatives are. Clearly, most people would like the general approval of the UN in some form. I don't know what the … [My emphasis]

I've emphasised the grab that the ABC used. As I said, there's been much furore and the eminently fair-minded Jon Faine had to inform a couple of talk-back callers (who naturally objected to the Prime Minister's apparent reference to mainstream Australia as "the mob") that Mr Howard was simply adopting the words used by his interviewer. Fair-minded lefty that I sometimes try to be, I more or less agreed with him, until I read the transcript this morning.

Granted, the main topic of the interview was Iraq but, even so, I think it might have been better if the PM had repudiated the vernacular that Wooley put in his mouth. It wouldn't take much, just a prefatory remark like: "Well Charles, I don't think I'd call the people of Australia a mob. I don't think they've really made up their minds ..." That's all it would have taken for the Prime Minister of this country to demonstrate that, unlike Charles Wooley, he actually respects the intelligence of ordinary Australians. Is this too much to ask of a man who is so proud of defending mainstream values against out-of-touch elite opinion and political correctness?

Rubbery Figures

Friday, 14 February 2003

I've just got back from the Peace Rally in Melbourne. I phoned a friend who watched it on the news and she gave me these estimates of the attendance figures:

Channel 10: 10 - 15,000.
Channel 7: 15 - 20,000.
Channel 2: 100,000.

The only comment I'll make on the numbers is that well before I started walking anywhere (I was on the corner of Swanston and Little Lonsdale, counting the Spartacists) the head of the march already looked like it had reached Flinders Street. When I got to Bourke Street, I stopped and let it go past for a while: it still took up the whole of Swanston Street and I was told by a passing stranger that the tail still stretched to the John Curtin Hotel. That's a lot of people, way above what the commercial stations are estimating.

Still, the only reliable estimate I can offer is for the number of Sparts: by my count there were 4, 3 to carry the banner and one selling The Spartacist. Their banner took my personal prize for the most stupid slogan of the day. It was really more of a manifesto printed on cheap fabric and read:

Australian Military get out of Persian Gulf, East Timor: Hands off Indonesia. Defend Iraq Against UN/US/Australian Imperialist Attack.

I wonder if they realise why so many people were giving them such a wide berth.

When Meaning Well Is Not Quite Enough

Thursday, 13 February 2003

(Part 3 of "Gummo Trotsky on Just War Theory". See also: Part 1, Part 2.)

The general thrust of the requirement for right intention is that we go to war for the sake of justice itself rather than national self-interest. This immediately invites a narrow reading of the criterion which excludes any justification which is "tainted" by considerations of national interest: this is often the implicit basis of the "It's all about oil" argument. To consider the issue of right intention in such a narrow way ignores the possibility that the national interest may coincide with the cause of justice without compromising it. It also makes the unrealistic assumption that ethical action is impossible without absolute purity of ethical intent. The challenge is to recognise, given that most human actions proceed from a variety of motivations, whether the ethical intent is the dominant consideration. In the political debate around war on Iraq a lot of effort has been put into rallying support for the war on the basis that, in the long run, it will liberate the Iraqi people which is an ethical purpose. However, if the dominant intent is something else, this argument in favour of war deserves to be rejected until its proponents can come up with a credible case that this is our major goal and that we can achieve it without an unacceptable level of "collateral damage", assuming that there is such a thing as an acceptable level of "collateral damage" and that this can be defined.

The issue is further complicated by the existence of motivations which do taint right intention: in the case of war these include hatred, blood-thirst, the desire for revenge or the goal of instilling fear in one's enemies. These are all, recognisably the taints of terrorism and anyone who advocates war on any of these grounds is, quite simply, a terrorist. In saying this I am transgressing against the normal code of civility which would require that I use such weasel words as "no better than" or "no different to" and so on but there is little point in attempting to make this assertion palatable to those who may think themselves, or their favourite politicians, on the wrong end of it: to advocate the use of atrocity and fear as rightful means for achieving political goals is to advocate terrorism. It should be possible to state this position without every reader leaping to the conclusion that I am accusing George Bush, Tony Blair, John Howard et al of being terrorists but no doubt there is someone out there who will make this intuitive leap.

...

...

The last preliminary consideration I want to raise on the issue of right intention is the importance of intention not only as a justification for action but as a guide in determining how we act. The goal of disarming Iraq and the goal of disarming Saddam Hussein are subtly but decisively different in this respect. In the first case, we make no clear distinction between the government of a nation and the nation itself and run the risk that we will choose means which are imprecisely directed: Iraq as the enemy is as much its people as its government. In the second case, we make it clear that the government of Iraq is the enemy and open the possibility of more discriminating forms of action which treat the people of Iraq less casually than as people who might, regretably, get killed because they stand in the way of our goal. Most of the pro-war rhetoric has been disappointing to me because often the words "Iraq" and "saddam Hussein" have been used interchangeably, as if they were one and the same thing. When these statements come from government, it doesn't inspire confidence that the actions taken will be (to anticipate a little) proportionate to the objectives of the war.

A judgement on whether we will be taking part in a war on Iraq with right intent requires that we identify our intent. Timothy Garton Ash offered a catalogue of the various motives for war in this article in the Guardian (link via ken Parish and Tim Dunlop). Here's a similar (but probably incomplete) catalogue of Australian motivations, based on what has been said by politicians and commentators:

1. Freeing the Iraqi people from Saddam Hussein.

2. Demonstrating our support for the US Alliance.

3. Disarming Iraq/Saddam Hussein.

4. Deterring future rogue states.

5. Prime Ministerial hubris or arse-licking or

6. Prime Ministerial clarity of vision and moral purpose.

Note: 5 and 6 are mutually exclusive.

...

...

Unlike Garton Ash, I'm not going to attempt to ascribe percentage weightings to these, except for the first which, after Alexander Downer's comments of February 11, 2003 can be confidently weighted at 0%: Australia's official reasons for going to war with Iraq have nothing to do with the welfare of the Iraqi people. US government thinking on the issue is different: there is some commitment there to the idea that a war must be followed by an effort to rebuild Iraq as a nation (link via Tim Dunlop again). This raises an interesting question: can we continue to use the liberation and democratisation of Iraq as a justification for Australian involvement in the war, when we have made it clear that we are going to be leaving this to others? Perhaps we can justify this on the basis of an international division of labour, with Australia in the international riot squad, leaving "wussy" nations (like the French and Germans) to form the international ambulance service who come in to tend to the injured once order is restored.

When it comes to motives 5 and 6, I doubt that anyone will be surprised if I say that I'm more inclined to explain the conduct of our Prime Minister in terms of number 5: This is the man who weaseled out of accusations that he misled the Australian public in the Children overboard affair on the spurious grounds that he was merely passing on the untruths that were told to him, the man who was such an ambiguous friend to Bill Heffernan - first, in effect standing aside while Heffernan defamed Justice Michael Kirby under cover of parliamentary privilege then left him hanging out to dry when Heffernan's allegations were proved baseless and most recently has found himself contradicted by none other than George Bush on the subject of Australia's pre-commitment to war in Iraq. While it is possible that on this issue he has rediscovered an ability to hold and act on moral convictions his past conduct doesn't inspire confidence on this point.

In the end, I'm unable to reach a conclusion on whether Australian involvement in a war with Iraq will have right intention: there is too much on both sides of the question to reach a definite conclusion.

- *** -

Bernie's Missing Link

Thursday, 13 February 2003

Bernard Slattery is mickle irritated over Annabel Crabbe's House on the Hill column in yesterday's Age. Thanks to that technological marvel, the Google Advanced Search facility, I'm able to present the full text of the item that has got Bernard's goat.

What's he got under that robe?

Lefties who lost their breakfast over the appointment of Dyson Heydon to the High Court vacancy left by Mary Gaudron can prepare to lose it again.

The gossip at yesterday's High Court blast to welcome Justice Heydon was that he is planning to take on right-wing commentator Janet Albrechtsen as his associate next year.

Albrechtsen, a lawyer and opinion-haver who has been published extensively in The Sydney Morning Herald, The Australian Financial Review and lately in The Australian, was at the ceremony yesterday and would admit only that "negotiations" were under way.

But she'd certainly have a cool reception in some corners of the High Court tea-room.

"Is the High Court inviting terrorists to Australia?" Albrechtsen wrote in December last year, in a piece that further accused Chief Justice Murray Gleeson, Justice Michael Kirby and Justice Mary Gaudron of having "trouble differentiating terrorists from refugees".

Presciently, she urged the Government on November 6 last year not to appoint another "hero-judge" such as Lionel Murphy or Michael Kirby.

(One would assume the rider "so Dyson Heydon gets the gig so I can have a job" was not even implicitly attached.)

Anyway, if the job comes through, it will cause havoc among the anti-Albrechtsen forces, not least Labor's Mark Latham, who has unleashed Project Vocabulary upon the unfortunate columnist, using privilege to savage her variously as a "filthy hypocrite" and a "skanky ho' who will die in a ditch to defend the Liberal Party".

It's going to be a sad day for me if Janet does become a hero-associate to a High Court judge: where am I going to find a hero-columnist who is remotely her equal?

Phoning It In

Wednesday, 12 February 2003

Despite my best intentions, my personal musings on whether a war on Iraq will be a just war have stalled, so today's installment on the issue of right intention has been held up. There are a lot of events to catch up on, particularly with the prolific posting that's been going on in the Blogmos lately so it may take a few days, especially as I have to spend a lot of time right now writing this sort of thing:

$s =~ s/\s+/ /g;

In the meantime, here are a few interesting bits of reading from other sites.

Tom Frame, Anglican Bishop to the Australian Defence Force applies the just war doctrine to the war on Iraq in yesterday's Oz. Strangely, he comes to the opposite conclusion to the one I'm increasingly drawn to: maybe as I get further through the series I'll come to agree with him.

From Slacktivist via Pedantry a former US president comments on the war powers of the US presidency.

From Life Sciences Network via Bizarre Science the latest weapon in the war of words on genetic modification: celebrity scientist gossip. When I read stuff like this I have to forcefully remind myself that I'm an agnostic on the basic science of genetic modification, give or take Barry Commoner's arguments which are "refuted" here.

And over at you-know-where, you-know-who has accumulated a great deal of reliable anecdotal evidence for his latest "bike-shed" theory of the possible origins of youthful leftism.