Even though 2004 was a pretty awful year, there was at least some good news. At the global level, Europe has continued to give an example of a path towards spreading democracy that is not carried on the end of bayonets. The peaceful resolution of the crisis in the Ukraine and the election of a government committed to integration with Europe was one instance, as was the decision to open negotiations with Turkey, which has made great progress in the last few years towards providing a model of an Islamic democracy. As a couple of commentators have already pointed out, there are big challenges ahead and the whole enterprise may fail. Still such challenges have been overcome in the past as the admission of ten new members shows.
Russia’s decision to ratify the Kyoto protocol was another hopeful development. But we’re going to need more than Kyoto and it seems unlikely we’ll get it as long as Bush is in the White House.
At a local level, it’s worth remembering that the loss of life from even the worst disasters that have affected Australia is tiny by comparison with the continuing carnage from road crashes. In this respect, at least, we are making progress. New South Wales recorded its lowest toll in 55 years in 2004, and Victoria its second-lowest
Finally, there is some hope that the response to the tsunami disaster may go beyond the usual short-lived outpouring of sympathy and half-delivered promises of aid. Criticism of the stinginess of the initial response struck a chord, and focused attention on the weakness of the rich world’s aid effort, a weakness made more striking by the willingness to spend hundreds of billions on war. If we must have international rivalry, a race to see who can give most to help others seems like a good outcome.
Update An important piece of good news I forgot to mention was the signing of a peace settlement between the Sudanese government and the southern rebels. Assuming it holds, this will bring to an end a war that has lasted for decades and cost hundreds of thousands of lives. Unfortunately, the fighting in Darfur (in the western part of Sudan) which began more recently is still going on. The world’s attention to this problem has been fitful and inadequate, but perhaps we’ll see something better in 2005.
John Quiggin 
This is going to be a tough week. This morning’s count of the dead went something along these lines – one more added to the confirmed dead, 100 or so believed to be dead and about 1000 missing. At this stage, confirmation of identity is way beyond the visual, and is going to proceed (slowly, very slowly) according to the standards of ID that will stand up in our courts.
When people start switching off holiday mode, and mixing with neighbours and workmates, they will learn of the true extent of the disaster as it has affected Australian families. All of which is what the government has been saying all along, but it won’t bite in until we see it confirmed in the places we look to for our reality – the actual photos and video of the grieving in newspapers and on the magazine shows. Considering the magnitude, it’s enough to give one grief-fatigue, just thinking about it.
When the production crews from the 6.30 shows get back on the job, they will have their pick of nice, tasty Grief. Will be interesting to see how they deal with it. There may be a chance of decent moderation, instead of obscene races for footage, because the affected areas were pretty popular holiday spots for a lot of us, including the TV industry.
Democracy is not in itself a good; elevating it to that level is confusing means and ends, which was allegorically considered “idolatry” in earlier times when that was the way people handled concepts. It risks stopping when you have installed the means, accoreding to your own lights. In fact, it is precisely how the neoconservatives consider Iraq a “success”; Iraq is notionally democratic, and anything else can be ignored.
You are are also testing success by measuring the inputs when you say “…as the admission of ten new members shows”. It no more shows success than throwing people in the water proves they can swim (particularly since these things take time to show failure – as the history of independent colonies now shows).
P.M. Lawrence (as usual) takes the (side-) issue at hand past breaking point. No one really thinks of democracy that naively.
As far as the prospects of Turkey and “Islamic democracy� go, there’s an oxymoron within your choice of phrase, John. Democracies can be comprised of people adhering to one, many, or no religion(s), but – and here especially in the first case – abundant separation of church and state is required. Informal theocracies (e.g. Saudi Arabia, a nominal monarchy that is the world’s ultimate basket case) are the worst of all worlds – either a Saddam clone (secular dictator) or an Ayatollah (theocratic absolutist) would be a preferable, if far from ideal, Saudi government, IMO.
This is not an argument about Islam, BTW – “Christian democracy� is likewise an oxymoron. Where P.M. Lawrence may be on the right track is with the possibility of the US pro-Iraq war kingpins themselves comprising/engineering a (necessarily toxic) informal theocracy of sorts.
I’ve never really understood why we obsess so much about the road toll. Yes – many of them are probably avoidable deaths. But then so are a great many others that occur each year.
Here in Australia we almost seem to treat the road toll liek a sport – we keep a progress tally of the edad and each year we try beat last years score.
Soviet President Vladimir Putin has celebrated the advent of majority rule in the Ukraine by raising the price of their oil and gas, 90% of which comes from and/or through Russia.
I guess Putin thinks that the Ukrainians need to use less fuel nowadays seeing they have all those colourful orange scarves to keep them warm.
If the Ukrainians resist this pressure they will deserve the distinction of being the first nation in history to value ideals higher than fossil fuel.
To put it bluntly, the political divisions in the Ukraine are too evenly balanced and too passionately expressed for one to expect national unity in the face of Russian pressure.
I predict that the newly-elected government will find it impossible to govern effectively. This government will be forced to:
1. Grant major concessions to the Russophile East and South.
or
2. Endure electoral defeat
or
3. Be overthrown in a Pinochet-style coup led by domestic interests and bankrolled by the Russian government. This can happen only after the Ukrainian people have suffered sufficiently from the chaos that always accompanies an oil-shock.
countries have enjoined the community of democratic nations soley under USE auspices again? The Ukrainian opposition was sponsored by the US and Soros. Turkey’s democratisation & integration with the USE has been sponsored as much by its integration with the USA-run NATO as the (Islamophobic) French-run USE.
The USE has recently been laggard in promoting democracy by military force. The genocidal fascists in charge of Serbian death squads operating in Bosnia, the sectarian militias of East Timor and the medieval theocrats rejoice in Europe’s unwillingness to promote democratic values at the “end of bayonets”.
The US, believe it or not, has actually protected and promoted some democratic values without the use of bayonets (eg aid to Liberia). The Marshall plan, the USAID & Reagan’s democracy promotion program are all cases in point.
All these UN & USE democratic covenants are mostly useless hot air without the US’s militaristic sword. (eg WWII & Cold War). The US has sucessfully promoted democracy by force of arms in recent years. It was overwhelming US military force bought the Serbian, Pathan and Javanese anti-human parties to an end.
Jaw-Jaw and Law-Law is always better than War-War if the political progress effected is the same. No doubt the USA should do more in the welfare stakes, but the USE should do more in the warfare stakes.
A Silver Lining
by James Cumes
“Look for the silver lining,
Whene’er a cloud appears in the blue…”
The words of Jerome Kern’s famous song buoyed our spirits in the depths of the Great Depression. Perhaps they can do something the same for us now.
The devastation wrought by the tsunami has reminded us of the common vulnerability of us all. The natural extension should be that we hold together for our common protection and defence, we support one another in adversity and reject the concept of fighting each other in order to extract some “benefit” for one part of humanity from some other part.
Strangely, the devastation of the tsunami has given me comfort, because it has brought forth a response from so many societies. That response has not been to indulge in some exercise of “shock and awe” of the kind we have seen so often in recent years. Nor has it been to ignore the suffering of our fellow human beings – to stand aside and, at best, to engage in empty rhetoric about what we will do or might do at some time in the vaguely defined future.
There was a short period of a few days when the world, seemingly traumatised by the catastrophe, did not seem to know what to do. But that period soon passed. Now the response – the practical response – has come from most parts of our world society – often from those who are poor, suffering and traumatised themselves, as well as from the rich and those who have been spared most of the suffering endured by others.
In some ways, the devastation itself is reminiscent of the terrible destruction of life and property during the Second World War. Whole towns and cities have been destroyed – have ceased to exist as functioning human societies. At that time of world war, shocked by what we had done, we devised ways of reconstructing the devastated areas and restoring life to those human societies.
Just as in the years after World War Two, we have now revealed our capacity for generosity to our fellows and we have revealed too just how great that capacity is – or can be. I have said “generosity to our fellows” but that is not really an accurate way of describing our response to earlier devastation brought about by our own conflicts or the devastation now caused by the awesome power of natural forces. In reality, we are being generous to ourselves – we are, by our common effort, shoring up our defences against the terrifying vulnerability of us all.
How great is this “generosity”? To this day, just one week after the catastrophe, it has, in money terms, already exceeded $2 billion. Like the tragic and ever-increasing numbers of the dead and displaced, this tally of aid has been increasing hugely day by day and the indications are that it will continue to increase as the days and the weeks pass and the enormity of the disaster is borne in on us all ever more emphatically.
We are aware too that it is not only money that has been and will be given. Food and clean water, shelter and medical supplies, restoration of infrastructure and of the means for people to ensure their livelihood, are already being delivered to the needy. For now, it is only a trickle – a melancholy trifle compared with the needs of the survivors. However, each day – each hour – more facilities are being set in place, more supplies are being provided, to enable the trickle to become a flow and for the flow to become a flood – a flood of practical help to make good the flood of devastation caused by the waters of the tsunami.
We cannot yet be sure that the spirit of the world society will hold up long enough to provide all that is needed for as long as it is needed. All we can have at this moment is hope and a belief – not entirely firm – that we have learned the lesson of our common humanity, our common vulnerability and our need to support each other when any one of us is in trouble.
Perhaps the past years – the past decades – have placed too much stress on the “bottom line”. Perhaps we have assigned too much virtue to making money and too little virtue to distributing our resources more fairly. Perhaps governments – and yes, the international agencies for which governments are responsible – have assigned too much virtue to doing less and spending less for human welfare, for the well-being of their own citizens and others, on cutting taxes and other social income that might be used to alleviate human suffering. Perhaps we have assigned too little virtue to providing a “safety net” for everyone – a safety net that the tsunami has reminded us, might be needed at some time in all our lives, by each and every one of us, whatever our race, our religion, our economic and social status, or any other criterion by which we shortsightedly seek to divide our common humanity.
Perhaps – no, certainly! – we have spent far too much, criminally too much, on arming ourselves as never before with weapons whose only purpose is to kill our fellow human beings and destroy our civilisation. We have been obsessed with the idea that we can somehow prevail, if we can gather more and “better” weapons into our society and “shock and awe” our enemies, real or imagined. We have sought to reduce our common vulnerability by arming ourselves ever more fearsomely to intensify the vulnerability of others; and we have succeeded only in intensifying the vulnerability of us all.
Will the terrible catastrophe wrought by the tsunami prompt us to look at these issues again?
We must remember too that the world is full of other catastrophes: conflicts in other parts of the world, as well as within the region of the tsunami itself, that have killed millions of innocent people; and widespread, chronic poverty that shortens the lives and diminishes the enjoyment of life of tens and hundreds of millions more.
The reponse to the present catastrophe has revealed what we CAN do – what resources we CAN mobilise to meet a humanitarian crisis of the most terrifying dimensions. It has revealed too that we can be PRACTICAL in our response. We can mobilise, not just paper money, but goods and services that we all need to survive and lead lives of a quality to which we may all reasonably aspire.
We can do it. The question is whether we will do it. We have talked about a Marshall-Plan approach. In Victory Over Want, I have advocated such an approach, inaugurated by direct democratic initiative, since governments and their international agencies have so far totally failed to offer any such inauguration. Perhaps now there will be such a swell of world opinion that governments will be forced to change their past policies and apply their will and their resources to make our world a better place – a place where we can all be less vulnerable to the war and terrorism that are inflicted by mankind on itself and to the forces of nature that we cannot control but against which we can stand together in common purpose.
So perhaps we can recall a few more lines of Jerome Kern’s famous song –
Remember somewhere the sun is shining,
And so the right thing to do
Is make it shine for you.
A heart full of joy and gladness
Will always banish sadness and strife…
The challenge, at this time of “sadness and strife” must be, not to weep together in despair, but to make today a turning point at which we determine to join together, in practical ways, “to try to find” – for every one of us – “the sunny side of life”.
James Cumes
__________________
“Uncle Rupert is beautifully narrated, with a wonderful sense of warmth and detail.”
Order your copy from – http://www.magellanbooks.com/jamescumes.html or
http://www.authorsden.com/jameswcumes
At the global level, Europe has continued to give an example of a path towards spreading democracy that is not carried on the end of bayonets
Exactly comrade!
So much more is achieved by bravely facing the bayonets, hurling up one’s hands to the heavens, and proclaiming in a loud voice: “I’m ashamed of my culture, and I long for the tender sensation of the blessed yoke of Islam falling squarely upon my Dhimmi shoulders.”
The staff at Mentawai sanctuary at Padang on the west coast of Sumatra are urgently appealling for direct aid to get boats into ground zero. They are being bypassed it seems but need direct cash support urgently. Please repost this link.
There is a supply ship leaving from Geraldton tonight for Padang IIRC. But what’s needed locally is more urgent – funds can be sent direct or thru Surf Aid International
Paul Watson, it needed to be said not only because these things really need to be brought out from time to time. Also, there really are people who think that naively. I just got reminded of it by someone who started a thread on news:sci.econ that was headed “Democracy is a good in itself”. Yes, he came right out and said it. Furthermore, when I pointed out the problems, he didn’t catch on but restated his naive worldview.
Go and google for that thread on that newsgroup if you want to check.
Oh, and don’t take it for granted that I am going over the top when I look at extremes that no reasonable person would indulge in. There are a lot of unreasonable people and even more reasonable people who occasionally err, so these things do need to be checked.
-Good on ya for the car crash fact. The single greatest cause of death in the US for people under 30 is cars. Most of the demographic don’t even know that, for some reason.
-If I was Mikhail I’m sure I’d be ashamed of whatever culture I was calling “mine”, as it had turned me into a belligerent sniveler.
I, myself, do have an uneasy relationship with my own, American, culture. It’s the only home I’ve ever known, yet its hands are bloody with old and unacknowledged murder and fresh ongoing crime; it’s soul has been seized by a minority of unpatriotic manipulating thieves; and it’s people are led like Oedipus at Colonus, only instead of their eyes they’ve torn out their rational faculties – to avoid the horrifying truth of where they are and what they’ve done.
But it’s still my people and my land and I don’t long for the yoke of Islam, or the yoke of any zealous and self-privileged non-Americans. Or any yoke at all come to that.
-Democracy is good only in that it gives an opportunity to the common folk to direct their communal lives. It depends for its goodness on the people, because it reflects their virtue. Or their vice. A democracy composed of criminals or delusional sadists would reflect that, no matter how honest their elections were.
john – what is a reasoned economists response to debt forgiveness as a response to the tsunami disaster? Is it too unfocussed?
Any and all aid in a disaster when people are still coughing up sand is welcome. Forgiving debt is unfocussed but the problems facing these places are even more diffuse.
The true good news is the continuing economic progress of China. The bad news is the demographic regress of Russia.