I really despise Rudd, but he was elected by the people of Oz, and today he was treated like shit on the bottom of a union bosses' shoe today ... and scraped off. I bet he feels like it too.
Gillard is a smart and brave woman. I agree with her anti-teacher's union policies. Of any labor figure i'd prefer her as PM.
But i'm sure she'd prefer to have been elected by the Australian People rather than ALP faction bosses.
These are dissapointing circumstances for such a historic occasion. The first woman Australian PM deserved to be elected like Thatcher. Not marched in to the job with a gun to her head. The people of Australia, the women of australia deserved that too.
Nevertheless PM Gillard deserves congratulations. The glass ceiling is no more. I hope Australian girls and women feel more confident for this historic event.
OK enough empathy for labor. They have been holding my country back for 100 years and it's an insult to the hard-working people of this country to consider Labor politicians as human beings for more than a few seconds every electoral cycle.
So from our perspective, is PM Julia Gillard a game changer?
I dont honestly think so tonight. Gillard has more appeal than Rudd, sure, but watching the news reports tonight they all give almost as much airtime to the devious backroom machinations of the ALP as they do to the historic appointment of a woman PM.
I think that australia has equality of the sexes. I dont think that being a woman will protect Gillard from criticism, nor will it prevent Abbott from attacking. After all Labor are personal in their attacks on Abbot. We also have Julie Bishop on our side.
Labor has installed female leaders recently in queensland and NSW. Bligh was confirmed in her job by the electorate but since then the gloss has worn off Anna Bligh and CHristina Keneally pretty quickly. And it's only fitting that any person in high office be judged on their merits. I dont think Julia Gillard will be any different.
Gillard is fundamentally tied up with certain ALP policies that are not popular and very difficult to change without them losing huge swathes of their base: The ETS reversal, the building education revolution rorts, and the lack of control of our borders.
I really dont see how she can change policy on this and i dont think Aussies are that dumb that they will think a change in salesperson is a change of product here (to quote the Libs today)
Without taking back the ETS the left voters will stay away from labor.
Without moving to the right on asylum the right voters will stay away. They are stuck.
She cant change the BER policy failures without writing history. Labor tried that in true Big Brother style today with it's first references to the "Gillard Government". Kevin Rudd is not the un-Prime Minister of whom we do not speak.
The one thing Gillard can change is the mining tax. and progress has been made. Abbott in parliament today was trying to say that the policy would not change as long as the revenue from the tax is fixed in the budget.
I think we can rest assured, if this labor backflip is a con, the miners wont be fooled. The Ads on both sides have been suspended for now. But unless the retrospectivity of the tax is removed, the rate reduced, the rate of profits at which the tax kicks-in increased, and different rates for different minerals are negotiated and signed off then i see a return of the ads and the mining industry throwing their weight behind the libs, and a liberal victory.
This is about more than the tax aswell. The miners have had to put up with strikes recently. They can see the unions flexing their muscles. The unions need one more term in govt to consolidate their power and take us back to the bad old days of class war and economic retardation. The miners dont want this after spending so much effort to get unions out of the mines in recent years.
Nevertheless business rolled over at the last election. I dont trust them to defend themselves and the future prosperity of the nation this time around.
The best thing to come from all this is that the machinations of the labor party factions have been brought into the open for all to see... well, as much as they can be. They remain secret but we know they are there , and we know they are ugly. IT has always been that way. It will always be that way. As i wrote before labor is about intimidation. Labor thinks a carrot is a short orange stick.
This is all the eventual result of Howard taking on the unions with workchoices. I still contend that Howard knew WC was an electoral dud. It was always bait to trap the unions into a fight that would resolve itself in Australia's favour a decade or so later. Union power relies on them remaining in the background. Their hubris has brought them into the open. They are exposed.
Every tear Kevin Rudd shed washed away the false idea that the Labor party is the guardians of morality in politics. They are utterly without mercy.
The idea their fight for worker's rights gives them the moral high ground is simple false. Workers are not just the people who work with their hands. Bosses are workers too in that they work hard and also that they are usually employees. Shareholders are the ultimate "bosses" but they are the mums and dads of australia with money invested and super funds. The idea that black hearted cigar smoking men are behind the scenes bleeding the people of australia for their profit is bullshit. Always was.
I just finished reading the history of BHP. They've had their oversights in public and industrial relations, but Australia became an industrial nation largely because of the energy and enterprise of their management and staff.
Short of being and ANZAC, I dont see how you can get more public-spirited and patriotic than that.
Thursday, June 24, 2010
Friday, June 4, 2010
Two-face Intimidates while claiming the miners are doing the intimidating
Two-face aka Rudd has caused people to lose their jobs, and is claiming that this is not his fault but rather an intimidation tactic by miners.
THis is typical labor hypocrisy. To straighten out this twisted view of morality lets ask the PM a few questions -set him an exam, if you will:
Q1) Out of the PM and the miners, who can command the police to enforce the law as they see fit?
A: Obviously the PM.
Q2) Who can refuses to use the police enforce to the law against illegal strikes if they so desire?
A: The govt.
Q3) WHo can change the law at will, even without any consulation with any other person in the country apart from their mate the treasurer ?
A: The PM. (if it were not for the Fact that Abbott can block it in the senate. thank god)
Q4) who can coerce union-members into giving up more money against their will to pay for a advertising campaign that damages their own job prospects?
A: Err. the Labor party
Comparing the PM's view that miners have a monopoly on intimidation with these obviously correct answers we can give him only one result: EPIC FAIL!!
Lefties dont get it. A capitalist can't force anyone to do anything. They cant punish you. They can only reward you. IF you want to work, you can be rewarded. If you dont work. they cant do shit about it.They cant even sack you under unfair dismissal laws. That's why strikes are effective - as long as the police refuse to enforce the contracts which workers legally entered into to actually GO TO WORK AND WORK THERE.
Indimidation is The Labor way. Use large men to scare hard-working people off work sites. ALways was this way, always will be . Picketing strikers have no legal right to block people who are not striking from working on site , because they dont own the mine and cant prevent access to it. Unless they have a complicit labor govt which refuses to enforce the law.
The government is doing all the intimidating here. Only the govt has guns. when push comes to shove. the govt has the power. when labor is in power they turn that power against he hard-working and innovative part of the community - because they envy them so much. It dropped a bombshell on the mining community and said "take it or leave it". the facade of consultation after that fact is merely that - a facade. Once the election is over Rudd will shaft everyone to whom he has promised concessions, just like he did last time, with one exception - his paymasters the unions.
Labor does not get that their tactics of intimidation are not open to business. Business is all carrot. Labor is all stick. This was first pointed out by Ayn Rand who said money is a not evil, because it changes hands when people get something in exchane for it. The brute force of governments is much more easily perverted to unjust ends than the exchange of payment for goods and services. Where's the intimidation there?
The only thing a capitalist can use as a stick is offerring a bit less carrot. If you dont like carrot, business cant force you to take it. only govts can do that.
But there is one thing that the government cannot force people to do. It cant force people to give a shit. It cant force people to work hard and get ahead. And it CANT FORCE BUSINESSES TO STAY OPEN EVEN THOUGH THOSE BUSINESSES DECIDE THAT IT'S NOT WORTH THE EFFORT.
When that happens. The industrious people just go "f*ck it. i'll become a bludger myself. Not only am i not making any more money than my staff whist stressing myself out all day and night. i spend my whole life taking shit for it - just because i'm the bastard who came up with the business idea in the first place and and lost sleep trying to make it a reality and GAVE OTHER PEOPLE JOBS. Well you can all get stuffed. I QUIT!"
Labor is so addicted to the drug of intimidation they cannot understand that the business sector wont respond to it. Rudd offers nothing to the miners, and expects them to make a deal and like it. That's not how business works. Where's the carrot?
A labor polician sees a carrot and thinks it's a short orange stick, and then procedes to beat hard-working industrious people do death with it.
Picture an army of unionised public servants commanded by labor commisars walking onto business sites across the country and beating managers to death with carrots. And when the staff question the wisdom of this they force-feed them carrots until they die from vitamin C overdoses.
That's the future of this country if you re-elect Rudd.
Mmmm, carrots.
THis is typical labor hypocrisy. To straighten out this twisted view of morality lets ask the PM a few questions -set him an exam, if you will:
Q1) Out of the PM and the miners, who can command the police to enforce the law as they see fit?
A: Obviously the PM.
Q2) Who can refuses to use the police enforce to the law against illegal strikes if they so desire?
A: The govt.
Q3) WHo can change the law at will, even without any consulation with any other person in the country apart from their mate the treasurer ?
A: The PM. (if it were not for the Fact that Abbott can block it in the senate. thank god)
Q4) who can coerce union-members into giving up more money against their will to pay for a advertising campaign that damages their own job prospects?
A: Err. the Labor party
Comparing the PM's view that miners have a monopoly on intimidation with these obviously correct answers we can give him only one result: EPIC FAIL!!
Lefties dont get it. A capitalist can't force anyone to do anything. They cant punish you. They can only reward you. IF you want to work, you can be rewarded. If you dont work. they cant do shit about it.They cant even sack you under unfair dismissal laws. That's why strikes are effective - as long as the police refuse to enforce the contracts which workers legally entered into to actually GO TO WORK AND WORK THERE.
Indimidation is The Labor way. Use large men to scare hard-working people off work sites. ALways was this way, always will be . Picketing strikers have no legal right to block people who are not striking from working on site , because they dont own the mine and cant prevent access to it. Unless they have a complicit labor govt which refuses to enforce the law.
The government is doing all the intimidating here. Only the govt has guns. when push comes to shove. the govt has the power. when labor is in power they turn that power against he hard-working and innovative part of the community - because they envy them so much. It dropped a bombshell on the mining community and said "take it or leave it". the facade of consultation after that fact is merely that - a facade. Once the election is over Rudd will shaft everyone to whom he has promised concessions, just like he did last time, with one exception - his paymasters the unions.
Labor does not get that their tactics of intimidation are not open to business. Business is all carrot. Labor is all stick. This was first pointed out by Ayn Rand who said money is a not evil, because it changes hands when people get something in exchane for it. The brute force of governments is much more easily perverted to unjust ends than the exchange of payment for goods and services. Where's the intimidation there?
The only thing a capitalist can use as a stick is offerring a bit less carrot. If you dont like carrot, business cant force you to take it. only govts can do that.
But there is one thing that the government cannot force people to do. It cant force people to give a shit. It cant force people to work hard and get ahead. And it CANT FORCE BUSINESSES TO STAY OPEN EVEN THOUGH THOSE BUSINESSES DECIDE THAT IT'S NOT WORTH THE EFFORT.
When that happens. The industrious people just go "f*ck it. i'll become a bludger myself. Not only am i not making any more money than my staff whist stressing myself out all day and night. i spend my whole life taking shit for it - just because i'm the bastard who came up with the business idea in the first place and and lost sleep trying to make it a reality and GAVE OTHER PEOPLE JOBS. Well you can all get stuffed. I QUIT!"
Labor is so addicted to the drug of intimidation they cannot understand that the business sector wont respond to it. Rudd offers nothing to the miners, and expects them to make a deal and like it. That's not how business works. Where's the carrot?
A labor polician sees a carrot and thinks it's a short orange stick, and then procedes to beat hard-working industrious people do death with it.
Picture an army of unionised public servants commanded by labor commisars walking onto business sites across the country and beating managers to death with carrots. And when the staff question the wisdom of this they force-feed them carrots until they die from vitamin C overdoses.
That's the future of this country if you re-elect Rudd.
Mmmm, carrots.
Saturday, March 20, 2010
Like taking money from a baby, with the government's help
A loophope in the funding arrangements of the Julia Gillard memorial school hall rollout across the nation has granted the unions $80m.
Those big yobs in th CMFEU should have to apologise to the little kids at these schools. It's those poor little b*stards and all future generations that are going to have to pay back our commonwealth debt (to China) plus interest so that those bludging bozos could get their nice bonus.
Give the money back to the kids you thieving thugs. The fact that Rudd, Gillard and the ALP aided an abetted this crime just makes me sick.
The classic quote is the union official saying how the union yobs would use the bonus to "take their families our to dinner" or a "movie". Dont make me laugh. It's going straight to CUB and the TAB.
Talk about the dictatorship of the proletariat.
We'd all sooner have a meritocratic democracy where brains are rewarded - not brawn, cunning and intimidation.
Those big yobs in th CMFEU should have to apologise to the little kids at these schools. It's those poor little b*stards and all future generations that are going to have to pay back our commonwealth debt (to China) plus interest so that those bludging bozos could get their nice bonus.
Give the money back to the kids you thieving thugs. The fact that Rudd, Gillard and the ALP aided an abetted this crime just makes me sick.
The classic quote is the union official saying how the union yobs would use the bonus to "take their families our to dinner" or a "movie". Dont make me laugh. It's going straight to CUB and the TAB.
Talk about the dictatorship of the proletariat.
We'd all sooner have a meritocratic democracy where brains are rewarded - not brawn, cunning and intimidation.
Friday, February 19, 2010
Uranium not Racism: the real reason behind India's PR campaign against Rudd's Australia
2010 and i'm back again. Thanks for the encouraging comments. It's an election year so it's time to spit on the knuckles and start pummelling those sorry bastards who are determined to keep Australia in the 19th century forever - the ALP.
I'll begin with a post that is as close as i get to investigative journalism. a web-search lasting longer than 5 mins. I have found a trail of posts that highlight a narrative that seems to have been lost in the recent clamour of controvery over violence in Victoria against Indian students. That narrative tells the story of India's building fury with Australia, brought on not by alleged racism, but by one particularly bad diplomatic decision by the that dunce of diplomacy, Chairman Rudd.
Right from the outset in discussing Australian/Indian relations I must say that I do not accept for a second that Australia is any more racist than any other country, including India. Our diversity of races is conclusive proof to the contrary. Anyone who wants to know about the roots of Australian tolerance should read John Hirst's 2009 book "Sense and Nonsense in Australian History". It outlines beautifully that Australia has always been a tolerant place because Protestants and Catholics have lived here since the beginnings of the colony in virtually perfect harmony, certainly alot more harmoniously than they ever have done in Northern Island, or for that matter, France, England or just about anywhere else. The Irish catholics were much better assymilated into Australia than they ever were into America. Not that I ever like to have a go at the US, i'm just saying that in OZ we have a particularly good track record of tolerance and cohesion between different groups in society.
Andrew Bolt has been brilliant in arguing that racism is not a significant factor in student attacks in Melbourne. His best defense of your reputation is here. Furthermore, he attests that it's the Brumby government's inablility to enforce the law, and it's amazing ability to hide that fact, that is the real scandal. But I humbly submit that he does not answer one question. Why are the Indian media IN INDIA whipping up a massive frenzy over so-called racism in Australia? What has got them so mad? The answer can be summed up in one word: Uranium.
Sound crazy? Not at all. This Indian rage is about alot more than student safety. It's about an insult to Indian national pride and the denial of Indian prosperity, both delivered courtesy of Kevin Rudd.
Let me take you back to the last months of the Great and Glorious Howard Government (henceforth GGHG). Howard decided to sell Uranium to India after getting satisfactory guarantees that the uranium would only be used for peaceful power-generation purposes. Some had a problem with this citing that India are not signatories to the international Nuclear Non-proliferation treaty (NPT). I remember clearly at the that Howard's rationale was that we sell uranium to China, so why wouldn't we sell it to India? And in wonderful Howardian style that was the end of the argument. Decision made.
And India was happy. With the prospect of cheap power for India's future development our relationship with India was at an all time high. This article by Kaushik Kapisthalam from 23 Aug 2007 shows just how happy the indians were and gives a great justification of India's use of uranium dispite not signing the NPT. It does also end with an ominous warning:
Enter Kevin Rudd. As one of the very first actions of his government chose to end the relationship of trade in uranium with India. This was done on the basis that India is not a signatory to the Nuclear Non-proliferation treaty. The strict safeguards that Howard obtained from India was not enough for Rudd because he has ambitions to make Australia a permanent member of the UN security council, and probably to make himself UN secretary general, and therefore seeks to follow UN rules to the letter, and beyond. With this pedantry Rudd has put his personal ambition ahead of Australia’s national interest and indeed the interests of the Indian people who are trying to lift themselves out of poverty with cheap clean energy.
In an article by hugely influencial Indian columnist Brahma Chellany (quoted in the Australian here on 3/3/08) the author seeths with rage at Rudd's decision:
As Chellany so colourfully points out Rudd is actually going beyond Australia's duties under the NPT that allow the sale of uranium to non-signatory countries. He's sucking up to the UN. This is Rudd-style diplomacy, fawning and licking to the UN just like he does with China. It's no suprise to non-leftards when, Lo and behold, all that happens is that he and the nation he represents get treated with contempt.
So influencial Indians in the media and government of that country have been mightly pissed off with us for two years now because of Rudd's denying them uranium on a technicality - in true pencil-pushing style.
Now let's come back to the present, or the less distant past. May 30 2009 to be exact. On that day I was watching the new and saw a report of the Indian High Commissioner to Australia Sujatha Singh basically accusing the Victorian police of racism, by saying they showed a "lack of sensitivity" when Indians were the victims. I take it that she meant the police didn't really care about enforcing the law in these cases, not that they didn't say "there there" and hand over the kleenex. In response I thought two things: Firstly, try as they might, the Victorian police have trouble enforcing the law when anyone is the victim because they are crucially under-staffed and under-funded under labor. But what really struck me was that the ambassador from India to Australia, not some low-ranking official but the number one person charged with maintaining good relations between the two countries, was here undermining confidence in law and order in this country. I could not believe my ears. "OMFG!" I remember thinking, "This woman is going to incite a bloody riot!". If she had concerns of this nature the job of an ambassador is to have tactful discussion with other high-level members of the government and diplomatic community in order to bring the pressure to bear behind the scenes. Diplomacy is not about public speaking, and it sure is not about causing instability in the partner nation. I should have written it down that day because of what happenned in the immidiate aftermath.
The following day I was attending the Emerging Writers Festival in the attire of a Victorian (as in 19th century) Gentleman. After a lecture I decided to go outside onto Swanston st for a breath of fresh air. Imagine my suprise when I looked up from my pocket watch and I spied before me thousands of Indians marching down the street shouting and generally being surly. And there I was by myself metres away in the uniform of, a white colonial overlord. I have to say i fely a little trepidatious so i nipped back inside for a slug of brandy and a whiff of snuff to steady the nerves.
Because of the proximity in time of the High Commissioner's remarks and the protest i got a feeling, on top of the pleasant sensation brought on by brandy and snuff, that this protest was not a grass-roots movement of students concerned for their own welfare but rather the opposite: a top-down PR campaign if not explicitly organised by the Indian authorities then at least implicitly permitted by them, and intended to cast Australia in a bad light at home and abroad. In short, it smacked of revenge. "Revenge for what?", I mused, but a few gulps and snorts later, my mind moved onto other matters.
Over the coming months the issue just got bigger and bigger. Simon Overland has done a great job in my opinion never giving an inch to the suggestion that the Victorian Police are racist. But the Indians were not having a bar of it. And of course lefties here in Australia who so love to hate their fellow countrymen were all over the issue like a rash, re-enforcing the negative message again and again.
The Indians obviously kicked us right were it hurts, in our knee-jerk reflex for national shame. As another former colony they probably understand it well. The cringe. The teeth-grinding slow-burning humilialtion of of an imported sense of an inferiority. Both cultures should learn to relax because if we only visted the old colonial masters in Britain we'd realise they feel ever more inferior than we do, but back to the point.
As the issue grew I returned to ruminating about the cause for this rancor of Indians toward Australians? Do we not give them our cricket players for their IPL? do we not consume their delicious curries in huge quantities. DO we not love watching Bollywood with graceful actors dancing around in retina-burning colours, not to mention physiques. Do we not use the mathematical concept of zero and its symbol "0" (both invented in India) in the vast bulk of our daily calculations?
Apart from the the occasional 5-day period during a test match, we love india. Why the hell were they so pissed off with us? I just could not see how their anger was proportionate to issue of student attacks here in Melbourne. That would explain protests by Indians here, but the burning or effigies of Rudd in India??? I dont think so.
Then it hit me. Uranium. My memories of the fury in the Indian articles i had read came flooding back. Of course, i thought, this is not about the safety of a relatively small number of Indians in a far flung town in Aus. It's about the spit in the face that Rudd delivered to the entire Indian nation by denying them their very reasonable expectation of getting Aussie uranium. Who knows? Maybe they thought that decision was racist. In any event it piqued them. They felt the morally righteous Rudd was looking down his nose at them, as if they were children that could not be trusted with scissors. I know i get this feeling every time Rudd opens his mouth. I can't blame the Indians for hating him too.
But I was not sure whether this smearing of Australia, this whipping up of public hatred against us in two countries, was really orchestrated by the Indian intelligencia( the authorities and media) or was it a organic response to the concerns of the indian-man-in-the-melbourne-street. There was one more bit of info i needed to complete the loop.
I noticed on the ABC's coverage of the first Melboure protest regarding the treatment of Indian students on May 31st 2009 that it was organised by FISA, the Federation of Indian Students of Australia. So at what point did they announce they were having a protest? Was it a weeks long build-up of a grass-roots thing, which takes alot of time and effort to even tell people about let alone organise and gain council permission etc. Or was is on the spur of the moment?
I searched the FISA website for reference to the word protest. The only references that came referring to the May 31st protest had a later date and were merely commenting on it retrospectively. All mentions of a protest prior to May 31st were about those held by taxi-drivers. "That's be right", i thought. "Melbourne is the new Paris under Labor: wonderful wide boulevards, classy coffee-houses and a bleedin riot every second week". But nothing came up in my search about organising the student protest.
Then came my stroke of investigative genius, "What if i search for the word 'Rally'?". I puched it in and after a cupple of typos ... BINGO. Up came this page. "FISA calls for a PEACE RALLY" it proclaimed, in what i thought were vaguely aggressive capital letters. The date?
30.May.2009.
They day before the protest. And the same day as the High Commissioners remarks.
It might not be a smoking gun, but it's a still-vibrating sling-shot. To me this clearly demonstrates that the FISA protest was organised IN RESPONSE TO the public speach given by the Indian High Commissioner implicitly accusing the Victorian police of racism. She did not command anyone to do it (like Chinese authorities organising Olymic torch rally intimidation would have) but because she was saying the law was unjust she gave Indian students in Australia a moral justification for breaking it, which at the very least gives implicit permission to make a scene through civil disobedience.
The student's response was swift. Sure, it wasn't illegal except in one case, it wasn't the car burning of "youths" in Paris, but i can tell you that I felt threatened by what looked to me like an angry mob. And it would not have taken much more friction for many laws to have been broken that day. Once again its testimony to the stoic tolerace of Melbournians that they put up with the disruption to public transport until the student protest petered out and they went back to their theses.
Whether the ambassador intended for people to protest or not, and i'm not accusing her of that, I dont think the protests would have happened without her speech. It removed natural impediments to such action. I mean these people were university students. That means they have career prospects and visas that could be cancelled. Do you really think they are going to protest in the street unless they reckon their embassy has their back, and will support them publically if something goes wrong? I doubt it very much.
The anger that the Indian govt, Indian media and Indian people are feeling towards Australians has been building for some time - two years to be precise, since the day Rudd announced they would be denied our uranium. Remarks about "racism" must be understood in the context of the diplomatic dispute between the two countries. I do not poo-poo concerns about the safety of Indian students. These are certainly legitimate and would be best addressed by a return to law-and-order in Victoria. But pardon me, High Commissioner, this would be easier if you did not undermine the rule of law in our state by implying the cops only enforce it if the victims are white.
So what is the upshot of all this? It's obvious isn't it. We should stop slashing our wrists over "racism" and return to the policy of the GGHG and go back to selling uranium to India. After that we'll all be mates again.
Rudd's diplomatic blunder of refusing India uranium aggravated them in the extreme because it denied them both status as a trusted nation and cheap clean low-emissions power. Well actually they are getting their uranium from Canada now, so Rudd's little protest did nothing except deny australia loads of export income and cause our image to be besmirched in India for a generation. Now THAT's what i call a diplomatic own goal.
Uranium is the cause of all this drama and the drama will go on until that cause is removed. This is a top-level governmental and diplomatic issue. Rudd will never go back on his decision because his UN ambitions outweigh any other concerns (if indeed he has any) about the welfare of Australians and Indians. We cannot expect the normalisation of our diplomatic relationship with friends and cricketing rivals in India until a coalition govt is re-elected that is willing to deal with other nations as equals.
In the meantime at the grass-roots level I urge people to participate in Vindaloo against violence. Let's sit down for a chat with our Indian mates and stuff our faces.
UPDATE: Good to see that Julie Bishop is right on the case with his one
UPDATE: LOL! I just found by typing in the labels field that i already covered the topic of India Uranium nearly two years ago on the 3/3/08 here. I dont suck as much at this whole blog thing as I thought ;)
I'll begin with a post that is as close as i get to investigative journalism. a web-search lasting longer than 5 mins. I have found a trail of posts that highlight a narrative that seems to have been lost in the recent clamour of controvery over violence in Victoria against Indian students. That narrative tells the story of India's building fury with Australia, brought on not by alleged racism, but by one particularly bad diplomatic decision by the that dunce of diplomacy, Chairman Rudd.
Right from the outset in discussing Australian/Indian relations I must say that I do not accept for a second that Australia is any more racist than any other country, including India. Our diversity of races is conclusive proof to the contrary. Anyone who wants to know about the roots of Australian tolerance should read John Hirst's 2009 book "Sense and Nonsense in Australian History". It outlines beautifully that Australia has always been a tolerant place because Protestants and Catholics have lived here since the beginnings of the colony in virtually perfect harmony, certainly alot more harmoniously than they ever have done in Northern Island, or for that matter, France, England or just about anywhere else. The Irish catholics were much better assymilated into Australia than they ever were into America. Not that I ever like to have a go at the US, i'm just saying that in OZ we have a particularly good track record of tolerance and cohesion between different groups in society.
Andrew Bolt has been brilliant in arguing that racism is not a significant factor in student attacks in Melbourne. His best defense of your reputation is here. Furthermore, he attests that it's the Brumby government's inablility to enforce the law, and it's amazing ability to hide that fact, that is the real scandal. But I humbly submit that he does not answer one question. Why are the Indian media IN INDIA whipping up a massive frenzy over so-called racism in Australia? What has got them so mad? The answer can be summed up in one word: Uranium.
Sound crazy? Not at all. This Indian rage is about alot more than student safety. It's about an insult to Indian national pride and the denial of Indian prosperity, both delivered courtesy of Kevin Rudd.
Let me take you back to the last months of the Great and Glorious Howard Government (henceforth GGHG). Howard decided to sell Uranium to India after getting satisfactory guarantees that the uranium would only be used for peaceful power-generation purposes. Some had a problem with this citing that India are not signatories to the international Nuclear Non-proliferation treaty (NPT). I remember clearly at the that Howard's rationale was that we sell uranium to China, so why wouldn't we sell it to India? And in wonderful Howardian style that was the end of the argument. Decision made.
And India was happy. With the prospect of cheap power for India's future development our relationship with India was at an all time high. This article by Kaushik Kapisthalam from 23 Aug 2007 shows just how happy the indians were and gives a great justification of India's use of uranium dispite not signing the NPT. It does also end with an ominous warning:
On the other hand, should Australian leadership after the next elections take a more dogmatic approach in defence of a failed treaty [NPT], they would be making a huge and futile mistake. India is likely to get uranium from other sources should its deal with the US go through and New Delhi would unlikely forget the slight it received from Canberra.
Enter Kevin Rudd. As one of the very first actions of his government chose to end the relationship of trade in uranium with India. This was done on the basis that India is not a signatory to the Nuclear Non-proliferation treaty. The strict safeguards that Howard obtained from India was not enough for Rudd because he has ambitions to make Australia a permanent member of the UN security council, and probably to make himself UN secretary general, and therefore seeks to follow UN rules to the letter, and beyond. With this pedantry Rudd has put his personal ambition ahead of Australia’s national interest and indeed the interests of the Indian people who are trying to lift themselves out of poverty with cheap clean energy.
In an article by hugely influencial Indian columnist Brahma Chellany (quoted in the Australian here on 3/3/08) the author seeths with rage at Rudd's decision:
"[Rudd] has made plain his intent to cosy up to the world's largest autocracy, China, while nullifying an important decision that his predecessor took to help build a closer rapport with the world's largest democracy."
"In touting its ideological resolve to uphold the NPT, the Rudd Government wants to be more Catholic than the Pope. Far from the NPT forbidding civil exports to a non-signatory, the treaty indeed encourages the peaceful use of nuclear technology among all states.
"Rudd has no qualms about selling uranium to China but will not export to India, even though the latter is accepting what the former will not brook - stringent, internationally verifiable safeguards against diversion of material to weapons use."
As Chellany so colourfully points out Rudd is actually going beyond Australia's duties under the NPT that allow the sale of uranium to non-signatory countries. He's sucking up to the UN. This is Rudd-style diplomacy, fawning and licking to the UN just like he does with China. It's no suprise to non-leftards when, Lo and behold, all that happens is that he and the nation he represents get treated with contempt.
So influencial Indians in the media and government of that country have been mightly pissed off with us for two years now because of Rudd's denying them uranium on a technicality - in true pencil-pushing style.
Now let's come back to the present, or the less distant past. May 30 2009 to be exact. On that day I was watching the new and saw a report of the Indian High Commissioner to Australia Sujatha Singh basically accusing the Victorian police of racism, by saying they showed a "lack of sensitivity" when Indians were the victims. I take it that she meant the police didn't really care about enforcing the law in these cases, not that they didn't say "there there" and hand over the kleenex. In response I thought two things: Firstly, try as they might, the Victorian police have trouble enforcing the law when anyone is the victim because they are crucially under-staffed and under-funded under labor. But what really struck me was that the ambassador from India to Australia, not some low-ranking official but the number one person charged with maintaining good relations between the two countries, was here undermining confidence in law and order in this country. I could not believe my ears. "OMFG!" I remember thinking, "This woman is going to incite a bloody riot!". If she had concerns of this nature the job of an ambassador is to have tactful discussion with other high-level members of the government and diplomatic community in order to bring the pressure to bear behind the scenes. Diplomacy is not about public speaking, and it sure is not about causing instability in the partner nation. I should have written it down that day because of what happenned in the immidiate aftermath.
The following day I was attending the Emerging Writers Festival in the attire of a Victorian (as in 19th century) Gentleman. After a lecture I decided to go outside onto Swanston st for a breath of fresh air. Imagine my suprise when I looked up from my pocket watch and I spied before me thousands of Indians marching down the street shouting and generally being surly. And there I was by myself metres away in the uniform of, a white colonial overlord. I have to say i fely a little trepidatious so i nipped back inside for a slug of brandy and a whiff of snuff to steady the nerves.
Because of the proximity in time of the High Commissioner's remarks and the protest i got a feeling, on top of the pleasant sensation brought on by brandy and snuff, that this protest was not a grass-roots movement of students concerned for their own welfare but rather the opposite: a top-down PR campaign if not explicitly organised by the Indian authorities then at least implicitly permitted by them, and intended to cast Australia in a bad light at home and abroad. In short, it smacked of revenge. "Revenge for what?", I mused, but a few gulps and snorts later, my mind moved onto other matters.
Over the coming months the issue just got bigger and bigger. Simon Overland has done a great job in my opinion never giving an inch to the suggestion that the Victorian Police are racist. But the Indians were not having a bar of it. And of course lefties here in Australia who so love to hate their fellow countrymen were all over the issue like a rash, re-enforcing the negative message again and again.
The Indians obviously kicked us right were it hurts, in our knee-jerk reflex for national shame. As another former colony they probably understand it well. The cringe. The teeth-grinding slow-burning humilialtion of of an imported sense of an inferiority. Both cultures should learn to relax because if we only visted the old colonial masters in Britain we'd realise they feel ever more inferior than we do, but back to the point.
As the issue grew I returned to ruminating about the cause for this rancor of Indians toward Australians? Do we not give them our cricket players for their IPL? do we not consume their delicious curries in huge quantities. DO we not love watching Bollywood with graceful actors dancing around in retina-burning colours, not to mention physiques. Do we not use the mathematical concept of zero and its symbol "0" (both invented in India) in the vast bulk of our daily calculations?
Apart from the the occasional 5-day period during a test match, we love india. Why the hell were they so pissed off with us? I just could not see how their anger was proportionate to issue of student attacks here in Melbourne. That would explain protests by Indians here, but the burning or effigies of Rudd in India??? I dont think so.
Then it hit me. Uranium. My memories of the fury in the Indian articles i had read came flooding back. Of course, i thought, this is not about the safety of a relatively small number of Indians in a far flung town in Aus. It's about the spit in the face that Rudd delivered to the entire Indian nation by denying them their very reasonable expectation of getting Aussie uranium. Who knows? Maybe they thought that decision was racist. In any event it piqued them. They felt the morally righteous Rudd was looking down his nose at them, as if they were children that could not be trusted with scissors. I know i get this feeling every time Rudd opens his mouth. I can't blame the Indians for hating him too.
But I was not sure whether this smearing of Australia, this whipping up of public hatred against us in two countries, was really orchestrated by the Indian intelligencia( the authorities and media) or was it a organic response to the concerns of the indian-man-in-the-melbourne-street. There was one more bit of info i needed to complete the loop.
I noticed on the ABC's coverage of the first Melboure protest regarding the treatment of Indian students on May 31st 2009 that it was organised by FISA, the Federation of Indian Students of Australia. So at what point did they announce they were having a protest? Was it a weeks long build-up of a grass-roots thing, which takes alot of time and effort to even tell people about let alone organise and gain council permission etc. Or was is on the spur of the moment?
I searched the FISA website for reference to the word protest. The only references that came referring to the May 31st protest had a later date and were merely commenting on it retrospectively. All mentions of a protest prior to May 31st were about those held by taxi-drivers. "That's be right", i thought. "Melbourne is the new Paris under Labor: wonderful wide boulevards, classy coffee-houses and a bleedin riot every second week". But nothing came up in my search about organising the student protest.
Then came my stroke of investigative genius, "What if i search for the word 'Rally'?". I puched it in and after a cupple of typos ... BINGO. Up came this page. "FISA calls for a PEACE RALLY" it proclaimed, in what i thought were vaguely aggressive capital letters. The date?
30.May.2009.
They day before the protest. And the same day as the High Commissioners remarks.
It might not be a smoking gun, but it's a still-vibrating sling-shot. To me this clearly demonstrates that the FISA protest was organised IN RESPONSE TO the public speach given by the Indian High Commissioner implicitly accusing the Victorian police of racism. She did not command anyone to do it (like Chinese authorities organising Olymic torch rally intimidation would have) but because she was saying the law was unjust she gave Indian students in Australia a moral justification for breaking it, which at the very least gives implicit permission to make a scene through civil disobedience.
The student's response was swift. Sure, it wasn't illegal except in one case, it wasn't the car burning of "youths" in Paris, but i can tell you that I felt threatened by what looked to me like an angry mob. And it would not have taken much more friction for many laws to have been broken that day. Once again its testimony to the stoic tolerace of Melbournians that they put up with the disruption to public transport until the student protest petered out and they went back to their theses.
Whether the ambassador intended for people to protest or not, and i'm not accusing her of that, I dont think the protests would have happened without her speech. It removed natural impediments to such action. I mean these people were university students. That means they have career prospects and visas that could be cancelled. Do you really think they are going to protest in the street unless they reckon their embassy has their back, and will support them publically if something goes wrong? I doubt it very much.
The anger that the Indian govt, Indian media and Indian people are feeling towards Australians has been building for some time - two years to be precise, since the day Rudd announced they would be denied our uranium. Remarks about "racism" must be understood in the context of the diplomatic dispute between the two countries. I do not poo-poo concerns about the safety of Indian students. These are certainly legitimate and would be best addressed by a return to law-and-order in Victoria. But pardon me, High Commissioner, this would be easier if you did not undermine the rule of law in our state by implying the cops only enforce it if the victims are white.
So what is the upshot of all this? It's obvious isn't it. We should stop slashing our wrists over "racism" and return to the policy of the GGHG and go back to selling uranium to India. After that we'll all be mates again.
Rudd's diplomatic blunder of refusing India uranium aggravated them in the extreme because it denied them both status as a trusted nation and cheap clean low-emissions power. Well actually they are getting their uranium from Canada now, so Rudd's little protest did nothing except deny australia loads of export income and cause our image to be besmirched in India for a generation. Now THAT's what i call a diplomatic own goal.
Uranium is the cause of all this drama and the drama will go on until that cause is removed. This is a top-level governmental and diplomatic issue. Rudd will never go back on his decision because his UN ambitions outweigh any other concerns (if indeed he has any) about the welfare of Australians and Indians. We cannot expect the normalisation of our diplomatic relationship with friends and cricketing rivals in India until a coalition govt is re-elected that is willing to deal with other nations as equals.
In the meantime at the grass-roots level I urge people to participate in Vindaloo against violence. Let's sit down for a chat with our Indian mates and stuff our faces.
UPDATE: Good to see that Julie Bishop is right on the case with his one
UPDATE: LOL! I just found by typing in the labels field that i already covered the topic of India Uranium nearly two years ago on the 3/3/08 here. I dont suck as much at this whole blog thing as I thought ;)
Tuesday, December 1, 2009
Abbott says "that's bullshit" to the ETS, and WINS!!
I think i know why Tony Abbott won the Liberal leadership today. That's because conservatives fundamentally hate bullshit. I am reminded of the time during the last election campaign when Tony said "that's bullshit" to Nicola Roxon when she said he was only late because he didn't care enough about being on time.
There is a real climate of bullshit around the global warming issue at the moment. Especially with the leaked pommy emails about "hiding the decline". Whether you are a believer, an agnostic or a warming athiest nobody can approve of the dodgy tactics the warmists use to make the whole world feel guilty, and give them money.
Turnbull and Rudd put the guilt trip on us and said we don't care if we don't support the ETS.
Abbott said "that's bullshit" and so did the vast bulk of the Liberal party room.
Many of the so called small-l liberals sided with him in the election ballot and even more on the secret party-room ballot on the ETS. That's because even the lefties in the liberal party are still conservatives - otherwise they would be in the labor party - and the fundamental instinct of any conservative is to seek out and destroy bullshit wherever it is found.
I propose that Abbott amend the definition of Conservatism in his book Battlelines to account for this.
I have not made much of show of posting since Turnbull took the Liberal leadership. I spent that time writing a book, but there was another reason, my heart wasn't in it. I just could not be bothered getting behind the Conservative movement of this country if they could not be bothered being conservative.
I had already lived through Cameron's take-over of the British conservative party, Howard's loss, Obama's win and it seemed to me that proper free-market Conservatism was well and truly out of fashion. There seemed to be an endless appetite for bullshit. Rather than wake up every day and feel angry about that I decided not to blog.
Today I am once again finding the motivation.
Today I am proud. Proud to be an Aussie. Proud to be a member of the Liberal Party of Australia. We are now the only mainstream political party in the world (apart from the Nationals) that has the guts to be conservative.
Australia is leading the war on bullshit.
I am also proud that this fight happened out in the open. The Liberal Party, like Australia, is a true democracy. This show of conviction from opposite sides could never be shown in the ALP, because if labor party members ever said what they actually believe they would say how they wanted the end of capitalism (and prosperity) as we know it. The left have been the masters of manipulation and bullshit even since Lenin.
If I have any residual readers out there after my long absence please comment on this post as I am tossing up whether to put more time into blogging in the lead up to the next election. Your support would be greatly appreciated
There is a real climate of bullshit around the global warming issue at the moment. Especially with the leaked pommy emails about "hiding the decline". Whether you are a believer, an agnostic or a warming athiest nobody can approve of the dodgy tactics the warmists use to make the whole world feel guilty, and give them money.
Turnbull and Rudd put the guilt trip on us and said we don't care if we don't support the ETS.
Abbott said "that's bullshit" and so did the vast bulk of the Liberal party room.
Many of the so called small-l liberals sided with him in the election ballot and even more on the secret party-room ballot on the ETS. That's because even the lefties in the liberal party are still conservatives - otherwise they would be in the labor party - and the fundamental instinct of any conservative is to seek out and destroy bullshit wherever it is found.
I propose that Abbott amend the definition of Conservatism in his book Battlelines to account for this.
I have not made much of show of posting since Turnbull took the Liberal leadership. I spent that time writing a book, but there was another reason, my heart wasn't in it. I just could not be bothered getting behind the Conservative movement of this country if they could not be bothered being conservative.
I had already lived through Cameron's take-over of the British conservative party, Howard's loss, Obama's win and it seemed to me that proper free-market Conservatism was well and truly out of fashion. There seemed to be an endless appetite for bullshit. Rather than wake up every day and feel angry about that I decided not to blog.
Today I am once again finding the motivation.
Today I am proud. Proud to be an Aussie. Proud to be a member of the Liberal Party of Australia. We are now the only mainstream political party in the world (apart from the Nationals) that has the guts to be conservative.
Australia is leading the war on bullshit.
I am also proud that this fight happened out in the open. The Liberal Party, like Australia, is a true democracy. This show of conviction from opposite sides could never be shown in the ALP, because if labor party members ever said what they actually believe they would say how they wanted the end of capitalism (and prosperity) as we know it. The left have been the masters of manipulation and bullshit even since Lenin.
If I have any residual readers out there after my long absence please comment on this post as I am tossing up whether to put more time into blogging in the lead up to the next election. Your support would be greatly appreciated
Wednesday, September 2, 2009
Sunday, February 8, 2009
Sincerest condolences to the victims of the Victoria fire disaster
The last blog item was too awesome not to blog, this one is just too awful.
The bushfires this weekend in Victoria have already claimed 84 lives.
I'm sure everyone who has ever read this blog is thinking of the victims and their loved ones at this time, myself included.
Our best wishes to them all
The bushfires this weekend in Victoria have already claimed 84 lives.
I'm sure everyone who has ever read this blog is thinking of the victims and their loved ones at this time, myself included.
Our best wishes to them all
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