It’s time for the regular Monday message board, where you are invited to post your thoughts on any topic. I’ll probably be fairly quiet this week, as I have to give a couple of conference papers, so feel free to take up the slack
31 thoughts on “Monday Message Board”
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John Quiggin 
One thing that got me thinking on the weekend is the Prime Minister’s comment that the Government would seek legal advice before considering a formal apology to Cornelia Rau, the German-born and apparently mentally ill woman who was detained at Baxter Detention Centre for 10 months.
Presumably the legal issue is whether a formal apology constitutes an admission that could later be used as evidence in proceedings against the Government.
This, for me, is troubling. It appears that the Prime Minister’s view is that even if an apology is warranted, it may not be forthcoming because of its legal (and therefore economic) implications. Surely the only ethical stance is to offer an apology irrespective of its consequences to the Government?
Well, I for one can’t blame the immigration authorities for locking this woman up. Consider: as everyone knows, all people claiming to be refugees are “sleeper” Muslim terrorists, Cornelia Rau is German, the German government opposed the war in Iraq (what would you expect, with their history?) … join the dots, it’s obvious.
Anyone who criticises Amanda Vanstone and her department over this is nothing but a left liberal hater of western civilisation, an enemy of freedom, and probably an arts academic to boot.
The price of freedom is eternal vigilance.
Conelia Rau deserved everything she got.
Michael Burgess – am I right, or am I right?
An ethical stance by Howard and/or members of his government? Is that possible?
I don’t know you, Dave Ricardo, so I hope what you wrote above was tongue-in-cheek.
If not, then perhaps you might be the next one who gets locked up.
It was tongue in cheek, Ron, but let’s not go out of our way to entice Michael Burgess into this one, lest he be tempted to recapitulate his position.
Here’s an interesting story that’s getting no airplay at all in the US. The promoter of this bill is James Sensenbrenner, a right wing Republican with “interesting” racial views. He is also Chair of the House Judiciary Committee, so he’s no lone nut.
US media, as sampled by Google News, seem to have missed this one completely.
“A U.S. draft law, introduced on January 26, 2005, states that any foreigner representing the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) would be treated as a “terroristâ€?.
The bill states that: “An alien who is an officer, official, representative or spokesman of the Palestine Liberation Organization is considered, for purposes of this Act, to be engaged in a terrorist activity.”
http://www.aljazeera.com/cgi-bin/news_service/middle_east_full_story.asp?service_id=6969
It keeps occurring to me as we hear of the inhumanity involved in the Rau ill treatment that Hitler was democratically elected and then began to beat, imprison and abuse those who are outside the mainstream.
We have as a country demonstrated that we don’t want people coming here without an invitation – especially if they hold ideas which oppress women. We don’t need to import men to do that when we have those, who sniffing unbridled power, seek to control women by chaining them to the kitchen sink – no abortion, no protections in the workplace, no maternity leave. The PM gives a half hearted reassurance but quickly buckles to this desire to control.
And all that stands between us and this vision is Kym Beazley!!!! And reasonable human beings, of which, thankfully, there are still plenty.
What nonsense Jill. Rau was imprisoned because she spoke a foreign language, gave a false name and claimed to be a non-national. What on earth could anyone reasonably do in this situation? To compare this situation with Hitler’s Germany shows a painful lack of contact with reality.
And to see the rights of women in terms of their unrestricted ability to kill unborn children. Give us a break. Is this oppression of women or a complex ethical issue that involves the rights of the unborn as well as women?
Finally, John Howard as a controller of women who seeks to chain them to the kitchen sink and Beazley as their saviour. You are having us on aren’t you?
“Rau was imprisoned because she spoke a foreign language, gave a false name and claimed to be a non-national.”
There we have it, three heinous crimes: she spoke a foreign language, gave a false name and spoke a foreign language.
The horror! The horror!
“What on earth could anyone reasonably do in this situation?”
I wouldn’t have imprisoned her. If it had been up to me, I have would have executed her on the spot.
Correction:
here we have it, three heinous crimes: she spoke a foreign language, gave a false name and claimed to be a non-national.
(Even worse.)
“I have would have executed her on the spot.”</em
Please wait your turn, Dave! The debate on the reintroduction of capital punishment will follow the 'debate-we-have-to-have' on abortion.
Oh, what a jolly time we are going to have while the Liberals (it really is time to reconsider whether that is the right name for the party, fellas) control the senate over the next few years.
What part of “imprisonment without trial” does Harry Clarke not understand?
What depresses me about this case is that Rau has received oodles of column space and air time because she is a blonde, attractive Australian resident. That does not mean I don’t think her case is unworthy of attention. Quite the reverse. But there is plenty of evidence of mental illness among asylum seekers, where again there isn’t a trial or even a criminal charge, but they’re not cute and their skin is too brown to merit the sympathy from Middle Australia that Rau gets.
“the sympathy from Middle Australia that Rau gets.”
She’s not getting a whole lot of sympathy from Harry. But maybe he’s not from middle Australia.
Dave, She was interviewed, claimed to be a foreign national without passport and spoke a foreign language or heavily accented English. She also gave a false name. What would immigration authorities be best off assuming? That she is a legal resident in Australia? That she is unlawfully in Australia? Or that she is a crazy whose own words should be disregarded? I assume you, and your nanny-state-loving cobbers, assume the latter but perhaps people’s claims about themselves should be respected.
We don’t have an open door policy. For good reason most non-residents need a visa and this person stated she was a foreign national who did not.
It was a mistake but hardly something that supports the paranoia and orgasms of despair being thrown around. It does not support the charge of xenophobia or fantastic claims about citizens being taken from the street and jailed. Its a beat-up that makes a mountain out of an unfortunate situation.
And Helen people who are unlawfully in Australia can be detained. It is the law. I can’t see that it has anything to do with the colour of her skin.
Harry, she was demonstrably mentally ill. Such people make all sorts of nonsensical claims and exhibit , in many cases, including Ms Rau’s, disturbing behaviour. This is why they are diagnosed as paranoid, schizophrenic, delusional, whatever, and given appropriate medical treatment. This is what a civillised society does. A civilised society does not imprison them on the off chance that they have breached the immigration laws.
So what if she claimed to be a foreign national illegally in Australia? On your logic, where even the mentally ill are taken at their word, if she’d claimed to be a chimpanzee, the authorities would have been justified in putting her in a zoo.
The Aboriginal community of Cape York were able to diagnose Rau as being psychotic. What’s wrong with the mental health professionals employed at vast expense by the Queensland and Federal Governments?
Baxter is located close to Port Augusta, which has a large Aboriginal community. Perhaps Australian taxpayers would get more accurate diagnostic outcomes if some of Port Augusta’s Aborigines were employed as mental health workers at Baxter.
This whole situation is risible. One can understand how Rau may have got herself into the belly of the detention beast, but there is no exculpatory explanation for her months of misdiagnosis and mistreatment.
The only reasonable explanation is that in comparison with other inmates driven mad by their detention, Rau didn’t stand out in a crowd.
Heads must roll.
I wrote last week that the RBA was preparing us for rate rises.
Well their Quarterly report released yesterday says just that.
My guess is that there will be only one or two.
They are worried about the highly geared household sector but they musy also be worried that the current account deficit( which may go close to 7% in the December quarter) will lead to the $A falling rapidly and that this will lead to rising inflation in such a strong economy.
And Helen people who are unlawfully in Australia can be detained. It is the law. I can’t see that it has anything to do with the colour of her skin.
Oh, but it does. I don’t see the authorities raiding the backpacker hostels and carting the tens of thousands of british overstayers off to Baxter.
I assume you, and your nanny-state-loving cobbers, assume the latter but perhaps people’s claims about themselves should be respected.
In that case, you’d respect Bakhtiyari’s claim that he comes from Afghanistan, not Pakistan? No? Being a little… selective?
The late C Wright Mills wrote that a vigorous intellectual community needs three kinds of interludes – on problems, methods, theory. “These ought to come out of the work of social scientists and lead into it again: they should be shaped by work-in-progress and to some extent guide their work. It is for such interludes that a professional association finds its intellectual reason for being”. This is in the appendix on intellectual craftsmanship to his classic “The Sociological Imagination”.
One of my works in progress concerns the marginalisation of the ideas of classical liberalism, especially the importance of free trade under the rule of law, for some decades from the early 1930s. This is apparent in “The Sociological Imagination” itself which does not even mention that tradition as an alternative to left-liberalism and Marxism. It may be that this situation came about from a mismatch between the doctrines of classical liberalism and the accepted methods, metaphysics and policy prescriptions that achieved dominance during that time. The Austrian school of economic and social thought suffered especially severely on that account, although it has staged a revival from the early 1970s.
Turning to methods, what has been the impact of the strenuous efforts to import the philosophy and methods of positive science into economics since the 1970s? The answer would appear to be rather little, judging from some books that are summarised in a recent piece on Catallaxy.
http://badanalysis.com/catallaxy/index.php?p=605
The answer may be to rehabilitate the thoughts of the non-positivist Chairman Karl Popper in partnership with some of the ideas of neoclassicism/Austrianism. Click the signature for a link.
This has gone down like a lead balloon with the Austrians who are inclined to regard Popper as something of a village idiot, an interventionist and a protectionist. Still, it is all good fun and it suggests a deep structural affinity between apparently diverse elements of Austrian thought – check out the Buhlers in psychology and Rene Wellek in the literary studies.
http://www.the-rathouse.com/Revivalist_winter.html
If my comments show a painful lack of reality – it makes me glad that I am not in Baxter where I could be mistreated.
I was not drawing a comparison with Nazi Germany – merely making the point that Hitler who was well known for mistreatment of those he didn’t like and democratically elected, led to a society that became increasingly brutal in tis treatment of disliked minorities. Harry demonstrates with his ridicule how easily such a thing could happen now if we aren’t aware of the dangers illustrated by historical events. We are not so different to the ordinary people of Germany and we have a Prime Minister who is more concerned about litigation than the care of his fellow citizens.
The culture that allowed the persecution of a clearly mentally ill person is going in a direction which can lead to other abuses.
What else could be done in the circumstances? – an assessment in a hospital would be the obvious one. Checking the missing person register another and lastly listening to those inside and outside the detention centre who said she was ill. Of course this would have to be approved by the Minister of Immigration.
If Mr Beazley promised a Bill of Rights for the Australian people it would be a move in the right direction.
how come no-one bar Steve Edwards has talked about the expulsion of an Israeli diplomat. given ASIO is involved this means national security was breached.
Why no comment?
Well thanks Dave Ricardo – So according to your reasoning if you supported the Iraq war and therefore the actions of Howard etc al as well as opposing political correctness including the playing down of excesses of Islam you must also therefore support the locking up in Immigration centres Australians with mental illnesses – well for your information I am extremely critical of detention centres, support high immigration, including Muslim immigrants who are freeing oppression in their own countries. All I ask for in return (as do moderate Muslim writers such as Irshad Manji) is for moderate Muslims to stand up more against the excesses committed in the name of their own religion and stop blaming Israel for everything.
In a previous post you suggested that I must be a deeply unhappy person to attack left/liberals so much. Well like George Orwell during the cold war (when many on the left and virtually all of the academic left were infected with the Marxist virus and were soft on communism) I and other of a minority of sensible lefties are rather pissed off with the fact that so many supposed progressives are so ideologically out to lunch and politically correct that they have made it so easy for the political right to dominate. The latest offering of the supposed progressive forces in Australian society is to have revolving prayer to open parliament-Christian, Hindu etc. Now personally I will stick to my enlightenment principals and continue to argue for no prayer as the solution to the perceived bias in favour of christianity.
The question remains, Michael, why you insist on droning on in this particular forum about cariacatured leftist views that not a single person who contributes to this blog, as far as I can tell, actually advocates. Yes, there are people, including me, who don’t think the benefits of invading Iraq outweighed the costs. And I’m happy to debate the issue. But instead of making your case, you adopt the tactic of saying: the war is opposed by ‘leftists’; some leftists I know subscribe to outrageous and morally degenerate opinions X, Y and Z (which you catalogue scathingly and at great length); therefore opposition to the war is outrageous and morally degenerate. Apart from the flawed logic, it’s a tactic that will only irritate people rather than draw them into constructive debate, assuming this is what you aspire to. I agree with Dave that the impression you give is that it’s something personal, especially in the light of your frequent references to friends. If they’re still your freinds, why don’t you talk to them and set them straight.
James, Re my supposed caricature of leftist views. For a view to caricatured it must an exaggeration of both the actual nature of the views (e.g. anyone who supports any government intervention in the market is a closet economic nationalist) as well the degree to which they are held. So are you suggesting, for example, that most leftist academics in the past were not rigid Marxists, that they were not more critical of the US than they were of the Soviet Union in the cold war, that most environmentalists are not prone to exaggeration where the state of the environment is concerned, and that many so-called progressives do not spend more time criticising the US than Islamic Fascism, or that the extent of extremism within the Muslim world is not greatly played down out of political correctness.
From a left wing perspective, it should be a great source of shame that a Dutch female politician originally from Somalia feels she has to switch alliances to the Dutch conservative party because the left are too political correct to support her crusade in favour of Muslim women’s right – right not to be circumcised etc. Furthermore, if I am guilty of caricature why is it that Tariq Ramadan is a sought after speaker in leftist and European intellectual circles where he is described as a moderate Muslim scholar. This is someone who won’t condemn sept 11 etc or even, if I recall, women being stoned to death. Unlike, many so-called progressives I do care about women’s rights in the Muslim world and will continue to drone on about them until things improve.
Homer Paxton. The answers easy to that one. Its because it was someone from Israel and we the people can’t be allowed to draw the conclusion that Israelis have anything other than the most honourable of intentions when it comes to statecraft. Helen Clarke should be given some type of medal for standing up to these people and for having the courage to stand up for her country’s sovereignty, which the Israelis clearly breached. Imagine the propaganda campaign if it had been someone from Syria or Iran? The indignation would be deafening.
Adrian,Given that both Syria and Iran sponsor terrorism, especially against Israel, and massively violate the human rights of their population, it would be rather bizarre if the existence of their spies did not generate concern. As for your comment ‘we the people can’t be allowed to draw the conclusion that Israelis have anything other than the most honourable of intentions’ – well actually a large proportion of the worlds population – including the extreme right, most of the left, European public and elites and of course the majority of Muslims –have somehow drawn the bizarre conclusion that Israel and its evil sponsor the US are responsible for much of the Muslims world problems and if only they would go away (i.e. allow themselves to be destroyed) Islamic terrorism would not be an issue. So don’t worry your in good anti-sematic company and HC is a rather disgusing opportunist.
There is much scholarship which clearly shows that Israel has committed numerous acts of violence against the Palestinians and other peoples at various times which pits them as the agressors in a broad attempt at their own survival and to retrospectively give themselves back what they themselves forsook almost two millennia ago. The Western media generally accepts the version of events which constantly frames Israelis as victims of some evil plot perpetrated against them by those “beasts on two legs” (according to one eminent statesman), the Palestinian people. Or, it plays down atrocities committed by the Iraeli Army (such as committing one act of violence a day for 60 days during a ceasefire between August 2004 and October 2004). You parrot the conservative line which blames Muslim problems on themselves as if they would want to be in poverty while an illegal State thrives on their doorstep with massive US subsidising. I suggest you read Lenni Brenner’s accounts of how Israel was established with Nazi assistance (Zionism in the Age of the Dictators, 51 Documents) and then have a good lie down.
Adrian, you refer to scholarship well Chomsky et al who you undoubtedly read are hardly scholars. As for toeing the conservative line –while this is a common refrain it is of course bizarre and indicates that you need to redo politics 101. The fact is that Israel is a liberal democracy where a diversity of options are expressed unlike in the rest of the middle east. Consequently, to criticism Palestinian terrorism against a liberal democracy hardly makes one a conservative. I suggest you read The Case for Israel by Alan Dershowitz. Or if you find reading a liberal Jewish writer unpalatable try the trouble with Islam by Irshad Manji. See what she says about Islam relative to Israel.
I bought “The Case for Israel” as a Christmas present for a friend, so though I haven’t had a chance to borrow it back yet I have given it a cursory glance.
It has some egregious revisionism right out in front, such as defining colonialism in a way that makes Zionism incapable of being colonialist. Yet if you look at the actual history of colonialism, and 19th century texts that describe (say) Germans as being better colonialists than the French before there was a German nation state, you see at once that “colonialism” doesn’t mean “state organised employing a state’s citizens”.
For what it’s worth, the early Zionist organisers clearly practised the techniques of “peaceful penetration” that the French used to settle non-French as well as French in North Africa.
“you refer to scholarship well Chomsky et al who you undoubtedly read are hardly scholars.”
Chomsky is Jewish, isn’t he?
He must be one of those self-hating Jews.
And he’s certainly not a scholar. Though I do wonder how he managed to become Institute Professor at MIT, a position normally reserved for the most distinguished of scholars.
Michael, Do you believe there were any Jewish terorist groups involved in 1948?