I'm afraid I don't believe it

While there has been a lot of whining by mining chiefs, and indeed threats to take their ball and run away...I am afraid I just can't believe it.
No one can blame the BHP Billiton chiefs for stating their case (here) but in the end do we really believe that these companies are going to walk away from the El Dorado which is the current Australian mining bonanza. While they may posture, and suggest that dividends may fall....and let's remember that's what is being talked about...not that there will not be great profits...but that the morality of obscene profit is checked by the proposed tax. There will still be great profits...so let's be realistic!!!
The Chinese government is capable of saying...well we won't take your expensive iron ore for two months...and in small economies like ours that makes us freak...but they come back (see here for example)
So let's keep our nerve.
Let's not do what we have so often done. Fritter away our national inheritance and made a few privileged fat cats...even fatter.
Let's start investing in our nation and using some of our national natural heritage to fund the future of the nation, to redress social injustice, and to add not to the girth of the fattest cats around, but rather to the national quality of life.

It's a concern!

Commentators are today suggesting that the world needs to commit to Haiti for at least 10 years. Having had 65% of whatever small economy generating package it has destroyed, this would seem inevitable.

What exactly such a world commitment might mean is unclear. Usually it means that the recipient will have to tow the line if they are to share in the largesse. We are not free from the practice of fettering our aid to our particular requirements (money directed to roads in PNG for example which will facilitate Australia's trading interests...coincidentally improving infrastructure, but what is the driving interest). The US has habitually used its economic might to ensure it has strategic military bases. Russia does the same.

China is following suit. Though it is interesting to note that some analysis of their present frenzy in Africa is much more directly promoting their commercial interests than former colonial powers used to like to attest to.

The attraction of Africa for many Europeans was cheap labour, China has steady supply of such and so often sends its own "guest workers" to staff factories,build roads and so on.

It's all complex stuff.

There is little or no doubt that Haiti will not make it on its own. There is also plenty of evidence that nations are by and large self-serving. It is not ideal, but maybe the most that can be offered.

God help Haiti which has little to bargain with.

The difficulty of China

It is worth reading A. Downer's article about Australia's foreign policy towards China(unfortunately haven't been able to get the link off the net yet). Not surprisingly he is critical (again) of the present government's performance. This is not really surprising since he was the minister responsible in a previous government of a different persuasion.
He does rightly make the point that foreign policy should be about pursuing the national interest and not about pleasing the Canberra Press gallery. It is good to be reminded that the situation in Tibet is more complex than most imagine. But perhaps a bit ingenuous to suggest that recent crackdowns are more the fault of the Tibetan resistance's agression than the Chinese military's disproportionate response.
There is no doubt that we need to be diplomatic in all our foreign relationships. But many of us feel particularly uncomfortable, when diplomatic seems to mean...if China doesn't like it then we capitulate, or keep quiet.
If nothing else diplomacy is surely not about allowing one side...no matter how large...to dominate.

The price is eternal vigilance

Nothing gives me the willies like the death sentence. Every now and then it just creeps up behind you and you think..."Given half a chance the populace would vote for it."
Its stupidity is exposed from time to time, and indeed its evil nature.
The announcement this week that China will execute two people involved in the milk scandal (you know where stuff got into milk, lollies...etc... and people died as a result) exposes some things about the death sentence that are worth noting.
Now China is China, and because they are big, influential and rich we usually just shut up and let them get on with it. But this is ridiculous.
Even in Texas they don't execute people for industrial malfeisance. It rather exposes that what China does so often with its penalties is to demonstrate that it is doing the right thing (in its eyes)...it is not punishing, it is showing it is tough.
Because we can see that it is stupid to even consider execution for such crime, it raises the question of whether it is justified for anything. Just what does it achieve other than the sense that we are tough.
What gives me the willies, then, is the fear that the bully in us..as nations and as individuals...often just wins out.It is not, and is never, about rationality.

The party's (nearly) over

It's difficult to imagine that the Olympics is now nearly all over. Though of course when you catch yourself watching European handball, synchronised swimming, and strange types of shooting...then you should probably recognise the signs.
What a concatenation of conclusions it brings about.
The stupid headlines which says "Phelps unseated as King" because now a runner has run faster than he can swim. Isn't there room for both.
The obvious sadness about the assessment of some (even many) that the Olympics has actually worsened the Chinese human rights situations...this depends of course on the side you are on.
And has the voice of Tibet been heard...the words "The Dalai Lama is a fool" from the mouth of a 16 year old resonate recurringly.
And then the incessant whining that we haven't won enough gold medals, as if some how our athletes have let us down. Read the story fo Anna Meares (here) who only won silver! I thought her father said the most perceptive thing I have ever heard anyone say..."I would have been pleased if she had come last!" Indeed all of them should be proud of just being there.
Any way, for most of us the Olympics will be put to bed until 2012.
Can't get enough of that synchronised swimming!

Olympic Fever

Each time some manifestation of international sport occurs we are gripped with fervour,or is it fever. So it is good to have a Chinese citizen in the house on this day when the Olympics open.
I think she is a bit non-plussed about why everyone isn't just totally in love with the Chinese State (as she is required to be - see below or here)
But it is good to have someone who is so proud of her country with us today. This mornign as we watched 5 mins of breakfast TV she said to me "What does 'Bag China' mean?"
I didn't quite understand until I saw the little footnote on the screen which said "Everyone takes opportunity to Bag China!"
I was a little sad to have to explain to her what this meant.

Tibet or not Tibet

Tibet will no doubt get more coverage in the next couple of weeks, so it was opportune to ask QQ(a Chinese school student presently staying with us) about Tibet.
"The Dalai Lama, you know, " she told me, "is a fool!"
I obviously reacted visibly, but it did not stop her continuing the official line that such a young one has been so effectively delivered in her schooling.
It was difficult to continue the converse with one so young, without breaching good hospitality.
I suppose what shocked me most was how uncompromising the indoctrination has obviously been.

Caring Little, Caring Less

Few Australians know or care much about Tibet. What we do know seems to be largely romanticised twaddle about a Shangri-La like culture which existed before the Chinese occupation just after the war, which sent the Dalai Lama into exile in Northern India.
The Dalai Lama is an exemplary person who appears to live out in reality what he proclaims in practice, non-violence. Whilst being articulate and outspoken, he nevertheless has refused to be drawn into a slanging match with the Chinese.
If China decided to end the Tibet crisis it could do it now. The truth is that China can essentially do what it likes. It comes from being the biggest kid in the classroom. It doesn't do it (presumably) because it cannot afford to isolate itself from world opinion when it has just spent the best part of the last two decades getting back into the mainstream.
Australia has discovered an interesting thing, we can be frightened or we can be strong. Frightened that we alienate the world's largest market. Strong as we realise that we are not without bargaining chips...coal. But also a sense of place in the world.
We cannot get too cocky, China could sit on us as easily as it sits on Tibet.
But we should try and be strong and do what is right. That's what seems to be hapenning.
Cooperating does not mean agreeing to every whim. Nor does it mean being painfully priggish.
But one imagines no one will pretend any more that the Olympicxs are or can be politics free

Carrying the torch

It is, I suggest, a vain hope that the Olympic will be free of political interference or issue. Even the Sydney Olympics had the question of who would open them, our Head of State or our benevolent dictator!
That question is mild by comparison with the complex of issues that surrounds the Chinese dragon, not the least of which is Tibet.
Although we have Olympic representatives like Monsieur Rogge wanting us to believe that there should be no protests, and that some how they should be kept free of politics, this is rather laughable. There will be protests (here), because the Olympics are political.
China, in wanting to stage sthe Olympics, is acting politically (when has it not). But it is nto alone in doing that. The IOC uses its not considerable influence to curry favour and influence in the whole process of country selection, it (if you like) plays the politcial situation off against itself.
The idea that 'sport' is some how pure and above the mortal plain is clearly laughable in these days of doping, sponsorship the billion dollar industries it spawns.
We should get real.
I think Rudd is right in not getting too alarmed by the possibility of protest. By saying that in Australia it is OK, and indeed we expect the right, to protest we are doing more for democracy than whisking the torch into some warehouse so that it is not some how 'defiled'.
China likes to do wrong in the world's eyes, and to use its might to forbid discussion.
That doesn't sound to me like new found freedom or emergent democracy, it looks rather like bullying and tyranny!

What is it Watt? Watt, what is it?

Goons fans will recognise the quotation in the title, which has nothing to do with this post about 'democracy'. But I was reminded of a previous post I made about the use of language...in particular the word 'democracy' (see here)...that post was about the dangers of translation as a discipline.
My question is about the use of politically loaded panaceas to cover the multitude of sins
What sort of 'democracy', for example is being promoted by the electoral process in Pakistan? The struggle for 'democracy' in Kosovo, as it asserts its independence this week; what is that about?
The trouble with the word is that it is bandied about...but ill-defined
America in high flight leading up to democratic election, would seem to be the plumb line by which democracy is gauged and yet:

• Never yet has there been a woman president or a black president.
• Women are grossly under-represented at almost every level of government
• Health care in the world's most influential democracy would seem to be almost totally dependent on how wealthy you are, and whether or not you have a job.
• The US seems to have little regard for any small country that stands in the way of its self-interest, and little or no compunction about invading the territroy of other independent nations
• By and large the elected agents of the government in the federal and state legislatures of the US are the rich and powerful elites

We have little discussion anywhere in the world about what constitutes a democracy. And so we can assert that anything American is whilst anything Russian or Chinese is clearly not!

But we surely need to have some discussion about rights to education, healthcare and housing. Access to government, and the ability to genuinely influence policy. In this regard the most 'democratic' nations on earth are not neecessarily without spot.

What price election freedom?

We were struck when we visited the UK earlier this year about he number of security cameras you see [watchers of The Bill will observe that almost every crime can be solved by finding the CCTV (closed circuit TV?) footage which seems to cover 99.9% of the country...even out in rural areas we noticed!]
The security against terrorism issues is a big attention grabber if not necessarily a vote winner (which it may be)
So it was not a surprise to see the re-emergence of the 'dob your neighbour in' adverts last night.I imagine we will see them increasingly between now and election day. The incumbent Government are clearly under the (mis?) apprehension that Australia feels more secure with wee Johnny than with Mandarin speaking Kev.
The Washington Post has a couple of interesting security posts. One which reveals how easily telcoms can 'cooperate' to give access to to the email system...(I really wonder if we would even begin to tolerate interference with snail mail in the same way) (see here)
The other, (here) a perhaps darker story, about the extent of Yahoo's cooperation with the Chinese government with regard to access to internet records.
Eric Blair (here) was perhaps thirty years out with his timing for the absolute intrusion of the State into the very fabric of everyone's lives. But we are well and truly within the era now.

And a reminder that in his literature the plain truth as spoken by our masters is almost the reverse of the real truth. I think we are living in that era now!