Public Address - Hard News (Home)

A great occasion of state | Aug 17, 2006 09:52

Maori, who do funerals so well, have gone a generation without such a great occasion of state as the tangi for Te Arikinui, Dame Te Atairangikaahu, will be. I think the ceremony will be good for us all, if only because it - and the subsequent succession - will change the media narrative on Maori for a week or two. The debate within Maoridom about the Kingatanga might be as interesting as anything else.

I'm republican by instinct, but I'm also aware of the mythical and ceremonial value of monarchies, even those, as this one is, without any formal constitutional status. If any readers are attending the tangi and would like to write about it in a guest post, or simply share their observations, they should feel free to get in touch. Good links are welcome too.

Te Ara has an entry on the King Movement, as does NZHistory - and of course Wikipedia. Naturally, Wikipedia is more up-to-date, and its entry for the late queen is being frequently updated this week (it was in fact The New Zealand Collaboration of the Fortnight up to August 13).

Simon Pound, an Atlantic Monthly subscriber ("it's awesome!") has kindly taken advantage of a service offered by the magazine's site which allows short-term links to be generated for friends. There seems to be no prohibition on sharing those links - and I'm sure you'd find Simon very friendly if you met him - so here are the links to James Fallows' Declaring Victory story, which contends that we should "declare the war on terror over" and get on with the next part, and Fallows' follow-up. The links die in two days.

The Bush backlash is definitely on. MSNBC host Joe Scarborough (no weedy liberal) has devoted a 19 minute programme segment to the question of whether the President is in fact an idiot, presenting a reel of Bush's greatest hits as evidence. The humour isn't only in the flubs: the Wall Street Journal columnist gamely arguing that the president is intelligent but simply has a "communication deficit" is amusing. And then Scarborough commits his own Bushism as he signs off, struggling unsuccessfully to find the word "curiosity".

Yamis on Blogging it Real takes a pointless and arbitrary what-if scenario on the NRL points table from the SMH and substitutes it with an interesting and relevant one. How would the table look without the stupid "golden point" rule that prevents any game being drawn? Quite a bit better for the Warriors, it turns out.

From the same source, a look at SPARC's new funding programme, which purports to focus on excellence, but leaves out softball, where our national team has won the last three world championships.

Moana is blogging her 2006 European tour. Lovely pics.

Mark Broatch of NZBC interviews Canterbury University economist - and copyright specialist - Richard Watt.

Spare Room has the story on this week's sizzling Sun scoop with the partying princes. Turns out the photos are three years old and the Sun's story is basically made up. But I can't help but be struck by the fact that everyone in the photo looks trollied. Check out the sweats on the heir to the throne.

Meanwhile, Jim Anderton continues to protect the nation from harm: this time by moving to strengthen the ban on drug paraphernalia legislated by the last National government. I can see some sense in preventing the sale of P pipes - a very specific piece of equipment - but the lengths to which he is prepared to resort to ban the bongs, and even things that could be made into bongs, seem silly. As Keith Richards demonstrated during his visit here, a makeshift bong is never further away than the nearest fresh apple. Ironically, if his ban-the-bong gambit drives pot smokers to lash together a couple of ZigZags (and you can't ban those), Anderton will have succeeded in inducing pot smokers to smoke more of that strong modern marijuana. I wouldn't expect police command to be delighted about having to police this.

Hey, if any readers have DIY bong stories from their misspent youths to share (discreetly of course) they are welcome to send 'em in for the Friday funnies.

Digg this Scoopit!

The Crazy People | Aug 16, 2006 09:41

Glenn Greenwald has a bunch of links to angry conservative proclamations about Israel's decision to take the UN peace deal. The universal theme is effectively that Israel has let down Team America by declining to throw itself into the meat grinder.

More particularly, Israel has deprived them of their war with Iran. Now, you certainly wouldn't want to weather a full-scale war with Iran if you were an Israeli, especially when your Big Friend is dangerously overcommitted elsewhere. For that matter, if you drive a car you wouldn't be too keen on a pan-regional conflagration either. But these people have an implacable faith in the projection of military force, whatever the evidence.

Amusingly, the commentators Greenwald points to are also turning their anger on Bush, forgetting their own pronouncements about never questioning the chief executive in time of war. He has committed "one of the biggest failures of leadership in Presidential history ... He is a dangerous failure, and America will be well rid of him." And then there's "Bush Administration Betrays Israel and America" and "Our war President has turned out to be a disgrace." Curiously, the fact that "his inability to speak effectively in public was a gigantic handicap" has only just become manifest in these circles.

And so on. It's not that the Middle East is in turmoil, it's that it's in not enough turmoil. When the US military is running out of men and money, they want a whole new, simultaneous war. These people really are nuts.

How nuts? Juan Cole extrapolates on Seymour Hersh's recent reporting:

Let me say this loud and clear, drawing on Pat Lang. Any US attack on Iran could well lead to the US and British troops in Iraq being cut off from fuel and massacred by enraged Shiites. Shiite irregulars could easily engage in pipeline and fuel convoy sabotage of the sort deployed by the Sunni guerrillas in the north. Without fuel, US troops would be sitting ducks for rocket and mortar attacks that US air power could not hope completely to stop (as the experience of Israel with Hizbullah in Lebanon demonstrates).

A pan-Islamic alliance of furious Shiites and Sunni guerrillas might well be the result, spelling the decisive end of Americastan in Iraq. Shiite Iraqis are already at the boiling point over Israel's assault on their coreligionists in Lebanon. An attack on Iran could well push them over the edge. People like Cheney and Bush don't understand people's movements or how they can win. They don't understand the Islamic revolution in Iran of 1978-79. They don't understand that they are playing George III in the eyes of most Middle Eastern Muslims, and that lots of people want to play George Washington.

By the way, Hersh maintains that US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld has at least some inkling of all this, which is one reason he hasn't been enthusiastically cheering on the Lebanon war.

Quite. How bad are things at the moment, more than three years after the invasion of Iraq? This bad. 300 US troops have landed back home from their Iraq deployment - believing they had done their tour of duty - and immediately been sent back to Iraq.

What these crazy people are doing isn't thinking, it's grieving. They're grieving for their dead philosophy. They seem to have moved from the "denial" stage to "anger", where they will likely be jammed for some time.

The suggestion by Israel's foreign minister yesterday that perhaps it was time now for "renewed dialogue" with the Palestinians and even Syria will doubtless be causing further foaming outrage as you read this. But really: if the filthy, murdering dictator of Uzbekistan can be showered with aid and invited to the White House, then surely it's viable to talk to a comparatively normal state like Syria. (And yes, I know Syria has a demonstrably poor human rights record, but if you had to choose between being a citizen there or in various of the "friendly" US client states in Central Asia, you'd choose Syria, believe me.)

Iran? More problematic, obviously, especially with the present millenialist loon in charge there. But it is worth recalling that in March of this year, the US administration did actually offer direct talks with Iran, prompting the country's interior minister to propose sharing information to help "curb Al-Qaeda's activities in Iraq."

The two countries actively co-operated over Afghanistan in 2001-2002, and were set for talks in 2003, when Iran was imprisoning al-Qaeda operatives, including Bin Laden's own son, Saad (the thinking is that Shia Iran isn't particularly sympathetic to Sunni al-Qaeda, but finds it handy to have some operatives under lock and key). In communications at that time with the US State Department, via the so-called "Geneva channel", Iran explicitly raised the prospect of cutting off its support for Hamas and Islamic Jihad and converting Hezbollah into a purely socio-political organisation. Was it a good-faith offer? We'll never know.

According to Lawrence Wilkerson, then-chief of staff to Colin Powell, that diplomatic engagement was blocked by neocons in the administration, led by Dick Cheney, who preferred the option of trying to further destabilise Iran in pursuit of regime change. Well this is what that gets: there are reports that amid the febrile atmosphere of the Lebanese war, Saad was released last week, bound for Lebanon. Not a good result. An unintended consequence, actually. Another one. I know, I know: pondering unintended consequences is letting-the-terrorists-win, but in light of the past month's events, it might be worth trying.

Finally, PA reader James Westlake offered another view being expressed in some quarters, contending that "it's not too far fetched to imagine Israel's actual goal was what they've got now - a large, toothy UN force to do the job of controlling southern Lebanon. Israel realised in the 90s they couldn't do it indefinitely themselves, and discovered over the last six years that the Lebanese Govt couldn't either. The third option, getting someone else to do the job, needed a serious crisis to get rolling, and the latest round seems to have done the trick."

I doubt that was the original intention, but it would be a good result for everyone if it happened. Apart from anything else, the United Nations being part of the solution would enrage the neocons like nothing else. And surely that's a good thing.

PS: James also notes James Fallows' Atlantic Monthly cover story, 'Declaring Victory', in which he argues that "the time has come to declare the war on terror over, so that an even more effective military and diplomatic campaign can begin." It's behind the paywall: anyone know of a liberated version online?

PPS: While the necons are fuming and farting, the Israeli public is justifiably outraged about this. Three hours after the two Israeli soldiers were kidnapped, IDF Chief of Staff Daniel Halutz went and cashed in an investment portfolio. It looks a lot like insider trading on war.

Digg this Scoopit!

Duh | Aug 15, 2006 10:50

Well, that was a debacle. Having killed about a thousand civilians, taken significant losses of its own, flattened southern Lebanon, wrecked the country's infrastructure and set back by years its re-engagement with the free world, displaced about a third of the Lebanese population, seriously undermined its own moral authority and left its target, Hezbollah, with its stocks higher than they've ever been, Israel took the UN peace deal without coming near the lofty goals it announced a month ago. Duh.

The Israeli public, as depicted in this widely-cited column by senior Ha'aretz editorial writer Ari Shavit (the very long comments thread below it makes interesting reading), has now turned on Ehud Olmert and his government, which seems a bit rich.

Even if Hezbollah hadn't demonstrated its unexpectedly excellent degree of preparedness and tactical ability, Israel was always going to face some of the problems which have undone the adventure. It should have staged a short, sharp attack, negotiated a prisoner exchange, launched a long-term diplomatic offensive (before it bombed the crap out of Lebanon, it did actually have people to engage with) - and stayed home.

Instead, as Gaila Golan wrote several days ago, Israel went to war with "little if any consideration … as to just what the results might be. Indeed the pronounced objectives seemed to have changed every week." He continued:

Moreover, we have probably seriously weakened the ability of the already weak and divided Lebanese political echelon, as well as large parts of the Lebanese public, to reduce the power of Hezbollah. The previous trend toward limiting and even disarming Hezbollah has now been stopped, possibly even reversed, since the indiscriminate bombings of Christians, Druze and Sunnis has created a wave of solidarity - against Israel. This may be temporary, of course, but moderates in Lebanon and elsewhere in the Arab world, from Morocco to Egypt to Saudi Arabia, are in fact concerned that Nasrallah has become a hero for the Arab public, including very many non-Shia Muslims. Indeed this is one of the more serious, long-term consequences of the war, and one for which Israel will now be blamed at least partially.

Other Israeli commentators have speculated that what was missing for Israel was the moderating influence of its Big Friend, that Olmert was expecting to be told to calm down a lot sooner than he was.

It appears to be a bit more involved than that. In the New Yorker, Seymour Hersh offers an intriguing insight into thinking in Tel Aviv and Washington. Daniel Levy's Ha'aretz column from last week, Ending the Neoconservative Nightmare (hat tip: Adam Bogacki) seems particularly salient. With more than a thousand civilians a week dying in Iraq, it would seem well past time to stop listening to the crazy people.

There are, inevitably, many voices - usually those of people in no danger of fighting or dying - insisting that Israel should simply have pressed on, and continued to bomb Lebanon even flatter until its enemy was dead (along with, of course, many more Israeli soldiers and civilians). The problem with this theory is that, as Billmon observed all of three weeks ago, "that logic ends in this kind of war: defeat or genocide."

And as Lebanon was unravelling, there came the news of the terror plot being hatched in Britain and Pakistan. I think it's clear there was a particularly horrifying plan in train - but also that its execution was not imminent. None of the conspirators had air tickets and some of them didn't even have passports. And NBC News has both British and US "officials" saying that the British authorities were "pressured" by the White House into making arrests sooner than they wanted.

And in probably-not-unconnected news, the Republican Party, with Cheney to the fore, sought to make maximum political mileage out of news of the plot. The WaPo's Dan Froomkin has a feast of links on that angle in his White House Briefing column.

And now, of course, air travel has become a pain in the ass thanks to emergency regulations that don't always make much sense. BoingBoing - whose authors and readers fly a lot - has been hot on this; pointing out that obliging passengers to dump their potentially dangerous liquids into a big bucket in the middle of a crowded airport is really dumb. Especially if, as some people are supposed, the real danger isn't liquids being mixed to create an explosive device, but to produce hydrogen cyanide gas. There are also reader reports, including one of an incident in which a female passenger at Dulles airport was told to unwrap her banana.

Speaking as someone facing the very real prospect of flying to the US next week and not even being allowed to take a goddamn book to read, I'm not very happy.

Even on domestic flights here yesterday, the alert was up. One of the security people at the Air New Zealand terminal yesterday explained that they had been ordered to wand everyone who passed through, even if the metal detector had not sounded (she then managed to whack me in the nuts were her wand). Oddly, on the return flight from Christchurch, there was (I asked) no such order. No, this isn't making much sense.

I was down in Christchurch yesterday to talk to students at the CPIT Broadcasting School. It was a two-hour talk, but - unlike those at a certain other institution where I've given my time in recent years - the students were engaged and interested and asked good questions. Good course, that.

On Friday and Saturday, I spent some time at Going Bananas. The launch was Friday evening at the city library. Shortly after arrival, I was introduced to New Zealand Chinese Association chairman Kai Luey, who recognised Public Address as the place where Tze Ming blogs: "I call her the stirrer," he said, not altogether unkindly.

Going to a lig organised by OG Chinese had its amusing moments. Chinese don't really drink, and after apparently being slightly appalled at the guzzling last year, the organisers had decided not to pour any drinks until after the powhiri and other opening festivities had been completed, which meant a long, dry hour in a stuffy room. And even then, they ran out of white wine almost immediately. I had my first - and last - taste of golden kiwifruit nectar, whose taste lies beyond my powers of description.

But I was struck by how much networking there was to do at the launch; all the people I was keen to meet, or knew and wanted to talk to. After a series of high-intensity networking conversations, I was starting to feel exhausted. I prudently bailed out on dinner plans and went home, but stayed up late anyway, waiting the replay of the Canterbury-Waikato game. Finally, a good game of rugby.

I caught some of the conference the next day, including a great presentation from Victoria University's Dr James Liu: Chinese New Zealanders – our sense of belonging in the NZ context, in which he cited a lot of interesting research, much of it conducted in New Zealand. Unsurprisingly, he found that the "single most powerful factor" governing the success and ability to integrate of Chinese students here was the level of discrimination they met. Also, an awareness of their cultural identity is a significant positive factor for young Chinese New Zealanders' ability to integrate and participate in society. The least successful were those estranged from their family, their in-group (ethnic community) and their host group (the rest of us).

His section on the much greater "filial piety" of young Chinese New Zealanders in their relationships with older relatives got plenty of laughs. Anyone who thinks Chinese are humorless just isn't telling the right jokes. Get the material right and they'll laugh like drains.

The conference as a whole had a nice buzz about it. I wasn't at last year's event, but there seemed to be many more young people in attendance this year. Good do, and one I'm proud that Public Address sponsored.

Digg this Scoopit!