Posts by Terence Wood
Last ←Newer Page 1 2 3 4 5 Older→ First
-
The Indecent Left review of Nick Cohen mentioned above is here. It's well worth a read as are some of his posts on Ollie Kamm.
It's not so much Cohen's initial support of the invasion of Iraq that irked me - I thought it was a tenable position even if I ultimately disagreed with him. It was his (and Kamm's and Harry's Place's) actions afterwards that got my goat. Despite it becoming clearer and clearer that: the war was a disaster; the Bush adminisatraion was truely, truely inept, corrupt and bereft of ethics; and that the invasion was a massive own goal in the 'battle' against violent Islamic fundamentalism - there seemed to be no pause for thought of critial reflection. Instead they just moved on to a critique of a tiny portion of the English left. Really, if human rights and the global good are their concern, you would have thought they might have written a bit more about Climate Change for example, or the actions of some of our allies, or even just spent the time thinking about how one might pragmatically improve things in Iran. But no, it's all about the SWP and respect, and somehow apparently this tars the rest of the left too...
Compare this with Johann Hari, who supported the war, who continued to focus on the welfare of Iraqis after the invasion, and who has written strong critique about bush et. al.. And who was open in print about the fact that he was wrong on Iraq (something that Cohen has not done.)
Neil, as for alternatives this question needs to be broken into two parts:
1. The threat that Hussein represented outside his boarders.
and
2. The threat he represented to his own people.
In terms of 1, as the complete absence of WMDs showed, the containment strategy was working; moreover, smart sanctions and oil for food removed the worst of the welfare consequences of santions on Iraq's people.
In terms of 2: given the number of deaths since the invasion, and the number of lives that could have been saved had the money been spent on development elsewhere, the situation pre invasion - as appauling as this sounds - was the lesser of two evils.
Still I have to admit that I always hoped that there might be a better option still out there. Some potential alternatives were - wait until there was a better US govt. with international support to invade (still a riasky strategy) and also to slowly ramp up the constraints on Saddam's political power (think the no fly Zones over Kurdistan etc. and then let the opening of political space ultimately topple him). Mary Kaldor makes this argument well here
-
off topic and a request for assistance:
A week or so ago in comments to one of Russell's posts a debate erupted over Democracy. One poster noted that democracy could only be grown from the grass routes up to which Craig R replied (more or less) "what about Germany and Japan". I foolishly didn't bookmark the thread and now want to write a blog post of my own using some of those comments as a lead in. Does anyone know which thread it is?????
(ps I have tried searching - both with the PA search and with Google advanced search - to no avail). -
The adds don't bother me at all (to be honest I'm more likely to be distracted by the Monty Burns figurine standing on top of my screen).
If given the choice between paying for an add free site and adds - I'd definitely deal with the adds*.
*If you were to threaten me with those evil pop up video things I might yield though.
-
(Although a policy statement on market rents for public housing would seem relevant.)
I agree entirely; IIRC one of the most significant findings of both Charles Waldergrave (et al's) studies on poverty in the 1990s and the Economic Living Standards Index (ELSI) work is just how much housing costs contribute to poverty.
I thought it was pretty darn revealing when National tried to slip market rents in, in the lead up to the last election. And it didn't seem to bother Key then - I wonder what he thinks now.
-
Thanks Tze Ming, I stand corrected!
oh, and frictional unemployment is just a fancy name for the short term unemployment of people in between jobs.
The wikipedia has a good entry on unemployment types
-
That's a really great post.
There's only one thing I'd quibble with: that is that if I recall correctly the number of longterm unemployed as a percentage of overall unemployed probably isn't decreasing. I could be mistaken here but I think you'll find that while, absolute numbers of long term unemployed may be decreasing, because frictional and other short term unemployment is very very low right now, the long term component of overall unemployment is probably higher than usual.
Nevertheless, it is still a small absolute number and I'm always surprised by the sound an fury (and disproportionate responses) the problem generates.
Polly Toynbee, had some pretty sensible things to say about the same issue in England recently:
But yesterday Hutton shook a threatening stick at those he regards as social-contract defaulters. He made a good case: one in 10 of those who draw jobseeker's allowance has spent six of the past seven years on benefits, yet in many areas there are unfilled low-skilled jobs alongside high rates of unemployment. If the jobs are there, why don't they take them? He picked on Glasgow, which has above average unemployment and twice as many unskilled vacancies as the national average.
Is it that simple? There is a very grey line between the plain idle and those who are illiterate, mentally unfit, psychologically odd, ex-prisoners, unattractive to employers, non-English speakers (Labour has stopped free English courses), drug addicts, alcoholics and other bad prospects. In Glasgow, for example, what are these vacancies? Mostly part-time hotel and catering, bar work and waitering with unsocial hours. Those running programmes to help the unemployed into work say these are student jobs, or for young foreigners: the hardcore unemployed are simply not equipped to do this work. Many live on peripheral estates miles out of town with no night buses back - a taxi costs three hours' work at the minimum-wage.
I think her description of the real problems faced by long term unemployed - rater than just apathy - is probably pretty true here too.
-
Simon and Merc,
Fair call. Although, in my opinion, Melbourne still has the edge.
-
It's always worth remembering, of course, that, with racism as with everything else, Australia is not homogeneous; some parts of the country are much less racist than others. Sydney's pretty bad, Melbourne (which is an international city like none here in New Zealand) not so much.
-
Stephen,
Particularly when the innate tendency is not racism but 'us and themism'. This is something that can be overcome (or at least minimised) through social and political conditions, constructive dialogue, positive engagement, peace building etc.
Neil,
Thanks for the book ref (link doesn't seem to work, but that's fine). I've got Singer's book on globalisation and global ethics lying around here somewhere and I enjoy his writing. It's always interesting even when I don't necessarily agree with it.
-
on the race thing. i think we need to acknowledge that racism is actually normal. doesn't matter whether you like it and practice it or not, it occurs in near any society that has contact with outsiders.
Perhaps not Che. In his book Nature Via Nurture (pp 284-266 in the paperback edition Matt Ridley describes a slightly more optimistic take on human nature.
While, on the surface at least, it does appear that human beings have a natural tendency to racism (or at the very least to view race as a distinguishing feature) reality appears more complex. Some ingenious research by a couple evolutionary psychologists seems to show that a tendency to distinguish by race isn't in our genes. Instead, what exists is a tendency to break human groups into 'us and them' (and when you think in terms of competing hunter gatherer clans you can see why this trait would be an evolutionary advantage). However, when people find themselves in (experimental) situations where people from other races are part of the 'us' rather than the 'them' they cease to distinguish (and presumably discriminate).
So what Howard was playing on was not Australian's latent racism. But rather their fear of the Other.
The optimistic thing about this assessment, to me, is that different races aren't forever destined to be at each other's throats. It's only when people convince themselves (or are convinced) that the other race is the dreaded Other that they become so repulsive.