June 2004 Archives
Update: For a different slant, Tim Dunlop has also written on the same article.
Iraq now has sovereignty, of sorts, and like most fair minded people, I hope that the citizens of Iraq can pick up the pieces and move forward from this day on.
My hopes for the Iraqi people in no way change my view that the American led assault on Iraq was not justified. Hopefully, by the end of the year, regime change will have occurred in both the US and Australia, largely as a result of the dishonest way the leaders of these counties took us to war.
A discussion by John Keegan about the reasoning for our involvement, America's sense of mission has been no match for Iraq's ugly reality in the Sydney Morning Herald demonstates the clouded thinking by the people that got us into this mess. It also shows some clouded reasoning by the author himself.
The war was conceived and conducted in the honest belief that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction. It was justified by United Nations Security Council resolutions 678, 687 and 1441. It was, moreover, as a military operation, astonishingly successful, probably the most successful war ever fought between a democracy and a dictatorship.
"Honest belief?" There's more than enough evidence coming out over the past months to prove that the people in the intelligence gathering organisations did not believe Iraq posed any sort of threat from WMDs.
If you live in Sydney (or any other capital, for that matter) and bought real estate 20 years ago, you're looking good financially. If you're a parent enjoying this pleasant circumstance, give some thought to how your kids will cope with buying a first home.
An article How parents are paying a gains tax by Adele Horin raises this subject, and points to parents who feel duty bound to use the capital gain on their home to finance their kids' first plunge into real estate.
I'm no different to the people Horin describes, with the exeception that that it will be some years till my kids may need that sort of financial assistance.
Personally, I'd prefer that real estate was more affordable to the first home buyer, eg, my kids in later years, rather than have a paper profit on my property.
The point she makes regarding concessional tax rates on property in fueling the boom is spot on:
I don't know how the circle of academics feels about capital gains tax, but it's a dirty word to most home-loving Australians. Being free to make a huge, tax-free profit on the sale of the family home is part of the Australian way of life. Yet the generous tax treatment of housing is one reason young people can't get over the threshold without parental assistance.Housing prices have been driven sky-high not just by the operation of the free market, low interest rates, population growth, and land shortages. Federal Government policy has also played a part.
The failure to tax capital gains on homes - while taxing capital gains from other investments, such as shares - distorts the market. It means people plough as much money as they can into their homes, pushing up house prices. Or they are prepared to pay huge sums to upgrade to a bigger, better house.
And the generous tax concessions for property investors, in terms of capital gains and negative gearing, have also hurt first-time buyers. A young couple is no competition in a bidding war against investors buying their second or third property, with an eye to the handy deductions, and eventual windfall.
Political parties think it's suicide even alluding to the possibility of taxing of the family home, but surely it's time for some thought to be given to this.
Some type of gains tax to dampen the housing prices would benefit young buyers entering the market. It would also benefit the economy in general as more productive investments wouldn't be competing with the tax free or concessional gains to be had at present in real estate.
One other point on capital gains tax. The Howard government halved gains tax several years ago, making it easier to avoid tax if you can convert income into a capital gain. The result is that PAYE tax payers have to shoulder a higher tax burden due to this tax avoidance. Any changes to the gains tax should include raising the rate to the same levels as income tax.
What a weekend of football, for all codes.
Soccer: We have England loosing an international because FIFA can't think of a better way of deciding drawn games. What a joke!
Rugby Union: Just when the Brits thought it couldn't get worse, Australia flog them in Brisbane. Pity the game stands for little.
Aussie Rules: Best of all, the Sydney Swans beat Collingwood in a cracker game. Interestingly, a lot of people who were at the Olympic Stadium on Saturday night missed the first half of the game because they were glued to the Rugby test shown on TV monitors at the ground. Sydney is a footy polygot!
As a follow up to the previous entry, A new deal for North Korea is being negotiated.
The new US plan calls for a step-by-step dismantlement of North Korea's plutonium and uranium weapons programs in return for energy and food aid, multilateral security guarantees and easing of its political and economic isolation.
Lucky North Korea .... all other despots take note.
Wouldn't it be better if they just left them alone with the promise that if they launched one of the missiles, their country will be molten glass within an hour? This seemed to work for 40 years during the cold war.
Wedge issues are flowing thick and fast.
The Howard Government may expand its controversial involvement in the "son of Star Wars" missile defence program to build a missile shield to protect Australian cities.The move would dramatically increase the multibillion-dollar cost of Australian involvement and is likely to be used to campaign against Labor, which opposes the missile shield.
This would have to be one of the more stupid defence proposals put to the Australian public. Isn't today's threat terrorism? Fat lot of use a few billion dollars worth of missile shield will be against someone planting a bomb on a train.
Speaking to a defence and industry conference, he [Defence Minister Robert Hill] warned that ballistic missile systems "are now within reach of a number of erratic dictatorships".
Yes, and we know why they want them, too. Any 'erratic dictatorship' worth its salt would have noticed that the US is very reluctant to take military action against North Korea, who has a couple of missiles, compared to Iraq, which had none. Yet another unfortunate consequence of the Iraq misadventure.
Those of you who have visited before will notice the blog looks different.
I'm playing around with different templates. I don't have the time or resources to make subtle changes; it's all or nothing. Please bear with me till I have it looking ok.
Desperate for another wedge issue, John Howard is now proposing to link funding for schools with their willingness to errect (and I assume, use) a flagpole.
Flag waving ceremonies have gained populartity over the past 20 years or so. Baby boomers let the custom lapse after having nationalism rammed down their throughts during the Vietnam years. The younger generations seem to be more in tune with this sort of thing. I suppose it goes with the growing popularity of Anzac day observance.
As a member of the boomer generation, I have no desire to see flag cerimonies come back. I've always thought one of the nice things about Australia is its low key nationalism. Of course, this is anathema to the conservative view of the world. Strange really, as they accuse the left of social engineering.
I have no objection to schools using a flagpole if that's what their community wants, but surely it should be up to them, not as a condition of getting the money from a ratbag, conservative government.
Labor is being sensible by not reacting to this sort of issue. It will all be sorted, one way or the other, after the election.
Election yabber is increasing in the media and blog world. John Howard must be losing sleep as he is squeezed between the rock of unfavourable polls and the hard place of whether to run before or after the US presidential election.
I suspect that he won't risk going to the polls without Dubya. So it will be earlier rather than later.
Despite the polls, I don't think it's a foregone win for the Labor party. History has shown how the Liberal / National parties (the coalition) can hold power by manipulating the fears and prejudices of the electorate.
Labor was in opposition beween for 23 years between 1949 and 1972. In the 1950s, they were damaged by a factional split that resulted in the formation of the (now defunct) Democratic Labor Party.
In the 1961 election, Labor went within a few votes of winning government, but after that their electoral fortunes declined to the point where the coalition won the 1966 election by a landslide. The prime cause of the 1966 defeat was Labor's oppostion to the Vietnam War and Australia's participation in it. The coalition skillfully marginalised the ALP by talking up the population's fear of communism.
By the end of the 60s, the popularity of the Vietnam war and Australia's involvement in it decreased. Labor just lost the 1969 election, and won the 1972 election.
Howard would be well aware of the tactics his hero, Menzies, used to keep Labor at bay throughout this period.
Latham's declaration regarding bringing the troops home by Christmas is the biggest impediment his party has to regaining office after the coming election. The 'enemy' has changed but the method will be the same. The conservatives will talk up the threat of terrorism. A large portion of the electorate won't realise that Iraq has nothing to do with Bin Laden and Al Queda. The oft quoted call that Australians don't 'quit' will strike a chord.
I suspect that Labor will be forced to back down, perhaps promising to leave a small group of troops behind in Iraq to protect the embassy, or linking our involvement with the UN resolution regarding the formation of Iraqi provisional government.
No matter what other issues are raised during the election campaign, it is Australia's Iraqi involvement that will have to be managed carefully if Latham and Co want to sit on the Treasury Benches in the new parliament.
George Bush is deperately trying to debunk the findings of the Independent Commission investigating the September 11 attacks.
Washington: President George W Bush today disputed the September 11 commission's finding that there was no "collaborative relationship" between deposed Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and the al-Qaeda terrorist network responsible for the attacks."There was a relationship between Iraq and al-Qaeda," Bush insisted following a meeting with his Cabinet at the White House.
Maybe his mate Chalabi told him this?
From the same article .....
Although bin Laden asked for help from Iraq in the mid-1990s, Saddam's government never responded, according to a report by the commission staff based on interviews with government intelligence and law enforcement officials."There have been reports that contacts between Iraq and al-Qaeda also occurred after bin Laden had returned to Afghanistan, but they do not appear to have resulted in a collaborative relationship," the report said. "Two senior Bin Laden associates have adamantly denied that any ties existed between al-Qaeda and Iraq."
And from a piece from Paul McGeough, summing up the consequences of this entire mess ....
Now we find that the unnecessary Iraq war has sucked resources away from the War on Terror. Bin Laden is at large but Saddam is in captivity; Iraq did not help al-Qaeda or bin Laden and it was invaded, while Pakistan, which did help al-Qaeda and did sell its nuclear know-how around the Axis of Evil, has just been elevated to the exclusive ranks of "major non-NATO ally" by George Bush.
We can only hope the voters of the US and Australia do the right thing before the end of the year.
There were no credible links between Iraq and Osama bin Laden in the September 11 terrorist outrages in New York and the Pentagon in Washington, the independent commission investigating the attacks has found.
And this?
The commission said bin Laden met a leading Iraqi official in 1994 but it found "no credible evidence" of a link between Saddam Hussein's government and bin Laden's al-Qaeda group.
Australia went to war in Iraq because of the United Nations' inability to do anything about the country's weapons of mass destruction, not because of any terrorist links, Defence Minister Robert Hill said today.He was responding to a report from the commission investigating the September 11 attacks which found no credible evidence of a link between Iraq and al-Qaeda in attacks against the United States.
This contradicted US President George W Bush's assertion that such a connection was among the reasons it was necessary to topple Iraq dictator Saddam Hussein.
And the most surprising of all .......
No such weapons have yet been found.
In the proud tradition of Robert Menzies, whose government in the 1950s and 60s ignored new inventions like the transistor and computer to concentrate on more useful technologies (sic) such as cloud seeding (rain making), we now have John Howard promoting nineteenth century power generation technology.
The risk is that we will miss, yet again, a golden opportunity to be at the forefront of a lucrative emerging technology.
The Weekend Warrior has compared the right's outpouring over the death of Ronald Reagan with the veneration the left demonstrates in Australia over (the still living) Gough Whitlam.
Tim Dunlop is bemused by what he calls the veneration of Ronald Reagan by US conservatives. I am slightly surprised by this- it doesn't seem any worse than the "Whitlam Worship" that we see here by the Australian Left.
So, what did Whitlam do to deserve his deity status? Personal recollections follow.
Peter Garrett ends the speculation and joins the Labor party. Time to examine if drafting him is a good idea.
I have a problem with the concept of an individual joining a party one day, and being nominated for a (virtually) guaranteed parliamentary seat the next. The well publicised dissent within the local ALP branch was warranted and unsurprising. How disappointing and demoralising this must be for such a strong and committed ALP local organisation to be overridden by head office in this way.
After banging on for a few weeks, at last, someone reads my blog!
Many thanks for the comments. You wouldn't believe how encouraging it is.
And a special mention to Swade; yes I know my spelling is suspect. I've had the dictionary open at lot, but some do slip through. It's my engineering background.
Tim Dunlop has asked readers to comment on a list of questions regarding Australia's relationship to the US. It's a topic too good to ignor.
There's been a lot written in the past 24 hours about Ronnie Reagan's presidency. The following is my personal recollections about his term in office. Appologies if the memory is not quite accurate.
Perhaps I can shed some light on the oft written phrase, "Reagan won the cold war" as queried in
the road to surfdom.
Just how willing is Australia as a contibutor to the Iraq rebuilding effort?
Well, a quick look at the Department of Defence web site shows there are 850 personnel in the Middle East. A rough breakdown is:
175 on a naval frigate;
150 servicing two transport aircraft (not in Iraq);
160 servicing two Orion surveylance aircraft (not in Iraq);
An undisclosed number at the Joint Taskfore Headquarters.
Those actually in Iraq consist of:
65 air traffic controllers at Baghdad airport;
90 security personnel to guard the embassy and protect Australian interests;
15 analysts looking for non existant WMDs;
12 RAN sailors training Iraqi sailors;
53 army training personel.
90 logistics and communications personel.
Various odds and sods at Coalition Headquarters.
The only essential people are the 90 security personel. The rest could go tomorrow without making one bit of difference to the situation. The US has about 150,000 troops in Iraq.
This handful is what all the argument is about.
Today, the US President interfered with Australian internal politics.
The Prime Minister was with him during a visit to the US.
The president voiced disapproval at the ALP's stated policy of pulling Australian troops out of Iraq by Christmas.
In my view, this is totally unacceptable. The US has no right to meddle in Australian domestic politics.
We've had enough of this sort of thing from the US Ambassador to Australia.
Imagine the uproar if an Australian Prime Minister meddled in US politics?
John, tell your mate George to butt out! (I won't be holding my breath!)
As a novice blogger, I've been trawling the web looking at blogs for ideas and inspiration. I acknowledge that I lack a natural creativity and writing skills, and that I need all the help I can get.
Most blogs seem to be personal diaries, and not really what I'm interested in. My interest is more the 'big picture.' I've tended to concentrate on blogs about politics and events written by Australians. In seeking out these political blogs, I'm struck by the number of really angry right wing bloggers out there.
These blogers seem to have two very large bees banging away in their bonnets. They hate the ABC, and they are desparately trying to justify the disastrous goings on in the middle east.
In the mail today, Liberal Party election propaganda disguised as government information, paid for by you and me.
In it, a personal letter from Johnny about the Medicare changes, featuring the new 'safety net', and changes to bulk billing.
Funny, I thought that Medicare itself was the safety net.
I expect this lot is the beginning of a flood of government junk mail.
Mark Latham would do well to promise to control this type of thing, but then, they do it too when in power. Nothing we can do about it. Fodder for the recycle bin.
There must be an election coming on. Where do I get this insightfulness you ask? Well, I can just feel it in me bones.
Take two events recently reported.......
Banner Designed By:
