Red Rag

Sometimes exams make me blog a lot — I am a chronic procrastinator — but for some reason, they haven’t this year. I suspect I won’t be posting much for a while after exams either, due to (1) a severe hangover, and (2) a lack of motivation. I hate these “Sorry for the lack of posts” posts, and yet I’m compelled to keep typing. Sorry.

A generous heart: “Der Red Kros and Salvoos. … DO NOT GIV MY MUNNY TO THE BRAHN PEEPL IN BALI! THEY MAID CHAPEL CRY! WHEN PRIDDY GIRLS CRY AN ANGLE DIES IN HEAVN!! I no they got sqashed by the waiv but it was gods will.” Fortunately, not everybody wants to abandon Bali.

Mark Bahnisch passed me the music baton. Last time, I got it from my blog crush Elmo (though it was a tiny bit different) and I notice she was given it again in the same round that passed it to Mark. The blogosphere might be growing, but it’s still a small town.

Total volume of music files on my computer

I keep it all on the iPod, but there’s about 7 GB.

The last CD I bought

I can’t remember which barcode was scanned first, but it was either “We Got Communication” by Love of Diagrams or Soviet Valves by the Soviet Valves. (I plan to buy “The Futureheads” by The Futureheads as soon as possible.)

Song playing right now

Gene Krupa & His Orchestra — How High the Moon

Five songs that I listen to a lot, or that mean a lot to me

Weezer — O Girlfriend:

When Carita went to Timor Lorosae (which is where she acquired the nickname Manas) I listened to this song a lot. Delightful melancholy.

Fabulous Disaster — Down the Drain:

Chick rock… well, rocks. And this is an awesome party song.

Pearl Jam — Indifference:

It was hard to pick a single Pearl Jam song to include in this list, but I picked Indifference because it helps me get through the shit times:

I will hold the candle ’til it burns up my arm,
Oh, I’ll keep taking punches until their will grows tired,
I will stare the sun down until my eyes go blind,
Hey, I won’t change direction, and I won’t change my mind.

The Futureheads — Le Garage:

I’m addicted to this song, with its contradictions and jaunty layers.

Guster — Fa Fa:

My friend Sarah introduced me to Guster when she was in Fremantle on student exchange. Every time I hear them it reminds me I need to get over to the US to visit her. I like Fa Fa because of the beautiful flute line (I was a mediocre flautist in high school).

Five people to whom I’m passing the baton

Manas, Nick Evans, John Quiggin, Kilbot, and Le Driver (because she didn’t finish, and because you can’t have Le Garage without Le Driver).

I wasn’t going to blog about Schappelle Corby’s conviction, but after reading Miranda Devine’s insightful comments I can’t resist:

The Australian public has seen what Corby’s defence team saw long ago: a transcendent grace that makes her guilt implausible. Her … careful styling and stunning good looks, improved in recent months by jail-time weight loss, have bolstered her claim she is innocent…

What. The. Fuck.

I have two objections to this. The first is flippant: beauty must be in the eye of the beholder, because in all the media coverage Corby has received, I’ve never been prompted to think, “Wow, what a stunner!”

The second is that “transcedent grace” is no evidence of innocence. Crying on camera is no evidence of innocence. Being baptised is no evidence of innocence. Vague claims of corruption against unidentified baggage handlers are no evidence of innocence.

Twenty years is certainly a harsh penalty for her offence, but Corby was found guilty because the evidence was overwhelmingly against her, and the fact that her supporters are now clutching at straws — “But… but… she’s so pretty!” — reflects the weakness of her case.

Exams start tomorrow. Wish me luck.

What do George W Bush and Obi Wan Kenobi have in common?

(Yes, this is a post about the political relevance of the latest Star Wars film — but perhaps not in the sense you expected.)

Dubya and the Jedi are both antisocial, according to a British shopping centre and Tony Blair, because they wear baseball caps and hooded tops. The Brits want to ban young people from wearing those clothes, because there is a perception that they signify gang behaviour.

The perception was fuelled by police who said that more than half of robberies were committed by hooded youths — despite the fact that “only 1.2 per cent of robberies involved someone wearing a hooded top.”

But the fashion police aren’t worried about reality, they’re only interested in public approval. As Padme lamented, “So this is how liberty dies: to thunderous applause.”

Why is it that torture advocates rely on absurd hypotheticals to make their case? The latest senior legal professional to advocate systematised inhumanity is Peter Faris QC (via), who hit the news after posting an example of acceptable torture on his blog:

A psychopathic murder [sic] has buried a teenage girl alive and he is captured by the police. He refuses to say where she is. He taunts the police with his knowledge. Torture is acceptable to find the girl and to save her life. (This example is taken from the film Dirty Harry…)

Yes, you read that correctly. His argument in favour of torture is based on an event that never happened. The thing about movies is that we know for sure the bad guy has the information in question. We know this because they are made up, and the person who made them up gave them that knowledge.

The bad thing about real life is that we are not made up, and we can never be sure what a bad guy knows or doesn’t know — even if they are bragging about some particular crime. Here is a real-life counter-example: “Two hundred people confessed to kidnapping Lindbergh’s baby, for example.” People confess to things they didn’t do, and the police will often believe them even if they contradict the physical evidence. Is Faris willing to torture them all?

But I think the rest of Faris’s example is worth quoting:

(This example is taken from the film Dirty Harry — in the film, Harry shot the man who then gave the information but the girl had already died).

He picked a movie in which the torture was useless! They tortured the suspect to death, and yet did not save the victim.

This just goes to show that those who support torture aren’t really interested in saving lives. They are just interested in inflicting horrendous pain, suffering and even death on people they don’t like, on the basis of an untested and unproven belief that the person knows about a crime. It is vengeful vigelantism, and nothing more.

PS: Here is a list of Faris’s favourite movies. Let’s hear your suggestions for other ridiculous arguments he will support by reference to these films.

The Liberal Party would never try to use Schapelle Corby’s plight for partisan political gain… would they? Update: Hawke says it wasn’t him.

John Brogden, has defended Lex Stewart’s right to join the Liberal Party, on the grounds that:

Everybody’s entitled to join the Liberal Party so long as they subscribe to our broad range of views.

Not every former One Nation voter or every former One Nation member is a ridiculous extremist. So I just don’t know what the guy’s views are.

Fair enough — you can’t expect the leader of a party to personally vet every membership application. But when it’s been brought to your attention that Stewart was a senior policy adviser to Pauline Hanson and has spoken at an event run by the Holocaust-denying Adelaide Institute, it’s probably wise to take another look.

Stewart’s involvement in other political parties raises further concerns. He was integral in the establishment of the Great Australians party, and was its National Leader in 2002. Just like the Citizens Electoral Council, GA calls for tax reform and economic isolationism. But just like the CEC, the party also believes in a global conspiracy involving international finance, global government and — of course — the Jews.

The Great Australians’ antisemitism is usually thinly disguised as opposition to the Bilderberg Group, a clique of politicians, businesspeople and academics from Europe and America that has met since 1954. In a 2003 newsletter (pdf), the Great Australians informs us about the threat it poses:

There are more bureaucrats in this country than there are rats. They are the backbone of our Government, together with the Labor Party, and their jobs are guaranteed by the WTO, the IMF and the World Bank. Why else have public servants received such phenomenal salary increases lately but to keep them in place for the Bilderbergers.

And later:

The only thing we can say in the defence of both these parties [Labor and Liberal] is that subtly Treasury instructs them to carry out the wishes of foreigners. They are … in effect the representative of the IMF and the World Bank; both controlled by The Bilderbergers (see Page 5).

On page 5 this conspiracy is fleshed out. It is a “shadowy world government” directing our lives from secret meetings; Bill Clinton and Tony Blair were “groomed at Bilderberg meetings”. A substantial portion of the material appears to be drawn from the Liberty Lobby’s Spotlight magazine, which reported regularly on the Bilderbergers until it folded in 2003 after a spat with its sister organisation, the Institute for Historical Review. The Great Australians’ newsletter includes an article, lifted from Spotlight, which explains how the Bilderbergers conspired to bring down Margaret Thatcher.

The subtext is very easily detected. Instead of talking about international financiers and Zionist Occupied Government, they talk about international financiers and Bilderberger Occupied Government. That Bilderberg happens to be a Jewish name is a neat coincidence that flags their true meaning to those who are more accustomed to open antisemitism.

But that’s not to suggest that the Great Australians are always so guarded. In an earlier 2003 newsletter (pdf), they made it quite clear who was in control of world affairs:

11 September … promptly bred a PR campaign which spread throughout the world – terrorism. If you think about it, this psychological warfare has probably been the worst effect of the unbridled Americans and behind them, the Jewish lobby, calling for one world government.

Lex Stewart’s involvement with the Great Australians was ended by a factional dispute in which he was accused of teaming up with David Oldfield to destroy One Nation. It’s true that Stewart’s role in One Nation is not supported by many on the Australian racist Right (he claims to have been behind Pauline Hanson’s eventual rejection of John Pasquarelli) but it is also true that the hard Right scene is more bitterly factionalised than even the hard Left.

The fact that John Cumming, Fredrick Toben and Jim Saleam do not personally get along with Stewart does not get him off the hook — on that basis you could argue that Jack van Tongeren is sane and saintly. The fact is, Lex and his critics have moved in the same extremist circles for many long years.

Lex Stewart helped establish an antisemitic political party, and gave a speech to a conference of racists and Holocaust-deniers. These are not matters that can be lightly brushed aside, and it is incumbent upon John Brogden to follow them up (there might be a perfectly innocent explanation) and decide whether such a person is welcome as a member of the NSW Liberal Party.

Sometimes I think academics write papers simply to attract media attention. Yes, I’m talking about the unpublished but much-discussed paper by Deakin law school’s Mirko Bagaric and Julie Clarke. The pair has jumped on the “torture warrants” bandwagon, arguing in favour of legalised torture.

If the summary of their argument published in the Sydney Morning Herald is anything to go by, the article is little more than a rehash of Alan Dershowitz’s ideas. They claim that because torture occurs against the law, the problem can be solved by legalising it. They suggest that they might just be playing devil’s advocate, because the public needs to “think more carefully about moral judgements we collectively hold”. They even apparently share Dershowitz’s enthusiasm for jamming sharp objects under people’s fingernails.

However, Bagaric (and possibly Clarke, but I’ll give her the benefit of the doubt) appears to deviate from the Dershowitz position in a key respect. As far as I’m aware, Dershowitz has never defended the use of torture on innocent parties; Bagaric has no such qualms:

[I]n some extreme cases, where it is almost certain someone has information that could prevent many lives being lost and there is no other way to obtain that information, the mere fact that they’re not directly involved in creating that threat doesn’t mean they can wash their hands of responsibility. (My emphasis.)

In fact, Bagaric believes that it is permissible to kill an innocent person who “almost certainly” has information we would like:

In those circumstances you would start with a minimum degree of harm; if that didn’t work, you would escalate it. And if that unfortunately resulted in an innocent person being killed, in those circumstances that would be justified. I think as a society we would accept that one person being killed to save thousands is legitimate.

This seems to be entirely incompatible with his later comment that “[o]nly torture methods that did not cause lasting damage should be used” — what damage can be more lasting than death?

And what if we were wrong? What if, despite our “almost certainty”, the person had no knowledge of the possible future crime, and because they were unable to help us before we moved beyond playing with their fingernails, they died as a result of our torture? I’m afraid I can not so callously dismiss innocent life as Bagaric does.

Australia does not endorse the death penalty, even for the most heinous crimes, and even where the convict has been given a fair trial and exhausted a lengthy appeals process. We do not endorse the death penalty, even in those cases, because we recognise that mistakes are made.

Bagaric believes that the authorities should have a right to kill an admittedly innocent person for failing to offer up information that we can’t be sure they have. What’s more, he supports the right to kill them without charge, without trial, and without appeal.

It takes some nerve for a man holding such repugnant views to accuse others of making “distorted moral judgements.”

Not The West is looking spiffy.

Cameron Burnell has been working in Aceh with Caritas Aotearoa, and his blog is very interesting — especially the photos.

Peter Collier was elected to the Legislative Council in February. He hasn’t even taken his seat yet, but the Liberal Party are already trying to distance themselves from him:

Western Australian Opposition Leader Matt Birney has refused to explicitly support incoming MP Peter Collier following claims he acted corruptly in the lead up to the 2001 election.

Former Liberal Party campaign manager Lorraine Allchurch has accused Mr Collier of forging signatures on party membership forms and using people’s names without their consent in order to secure support for his preselection.

The police are investigating Collier for fraud, and if he’s found guilty it will be very embarrassing for the Opposition.

Mind you, they should have seen the controversy coming. Collier is a member of the “Northern Alliance” that exists to parachute dud candidates into parliament. Alan Cadby’s recent spray about branch stacking in the Liberal Party mentions Collier’s alleged role and motivation:

[Colin] Edwardes boasted on several occasions that he would secure my spot on the upper house ticket, and that he would do anything to get there. The tactics used by him and his team included lies, corruption, persuasion, strongarm tactics, branch stacking and the like. It was easy for him to persuade Collier to join in his activities, because Collier was motivated by blind ambition; he wanted to go along for the ride and get a place in this house.

Noel Crichton-Browne also presents a version of events:

In an act of breathtaking stupidity [because it paved the way for one vote one value] and factional greed, the Liberal Party dumped one of its first term up and coming Legislative Council members to provide a seat for a very ordinary party official who was barely able to answer a question at his pre-selection.

The recipient of the seat, Mr Peter Collier is part of the new breed presently controlling the Party. Collier’s contribution was to stack out and deliver the Curtin federal Division. His claim to fame in the WA Liberal Party is that in stacking out Bra[n]ches he was caught signing other people’s names on membership application forms without their knowledge or authority.

Collier was sprung when one of the alleged applicants received a letter welcoming him to the Liberal Party. The person in question responded in writing that he had not applied for membership and did not wish to be a member.

This unsavoury incident did nothing to dent Collier’s promotion within the Liberal Party. With the support of his backers who had been beneficiaries of his branch staking, he was subsequently selected onto the Upper House ticket for the North Metropolitan Province at the expense of sitting MLC, Alan Cad[b]y.

NCB also alleges that Liberal rising star Sue Walker represented Collier during internal party disciplinary hearings and argued for a cover-up.

Update: ABC radio says the police do not intend to proceed any further “due to insufficient evidence,” but the campaign worker who raised the allegations has not backed down and says she is prepared to defend her claims in court.

I have no idea whether Blogger’s new moblogging service is any good, but it has a cool jingle!

Excellent news: “A British Nazi who set up an online hit list of anti-racist campaigners has been raided. Simon Sheppard’s Redwatch website publishes photos and personal details of leading left-wingers … to encourage attacks on them. He was thought to be untouchable because the site was registered in the US. But police have swooped on the ex-BNP member’s home in Hull and seized computers and books under legislation which outlaws incitement to racial hatred.”