I’ve upgraded to WordPress 2.0. The initial shift went smoothly enough, with the usual hiccups, but some problems may pop up over the next few days.
If anyone has suggestions for plugins or other features beyond the minimal set I have now, I’d be grateful. I’ve had to abandon Textile, as it doesn’t work with Live Comment Preview.
I didn’t say anything about the career of Kerry Packer on his death, because I think it’s reasonable at such a time for family and friends to have an opportunity to mourn or celebrate the departed without interruption from others[1]. However, state memorial services are another matter. The provision of such a service, at public expense, implies that the person concerned has done substantial service to the public.
I’m not aware of any such service in Packer’s case. He was a man of great wealth and power, but he used his position almost entirely to accumulate more wealth and more power. Although the bulk of his wealth came from government-created licenses to print money (TV stations and casinos) he boasted of paying as little tax as he could. As Andrew Leigh notes, claims of great philanthropic activity also don’t stand up. Most stories of his generosity seem to reflect the grandiose largesse of the ‘big man’, also reflected in high-rolling gambling, rather than any real concern to do good.
In doing all this, Packer was no better and no worse than plenty of other people in business. The commentary on his death said that he was a good father despite having a miserable childhood himself, and obviously plenty of people liked and admired him. But if those were the criteria, we’d be having state funerals every day.
Packer justified his own tax minimisation by objecting to the waste of public money. Giving a memorial service to someone solely for starting out rich and getting a lot richer is a prime example.
fn1. There are exceptions. In 1953, Frank Packer’s Telegraph memorably, and rightly, ran the headline Stalin is dead. Hooray
The long-running guerilla war in the Indonesian province of Aceh is finally over. Indonesian troops (other than those recruited locally) have been withdrawn, and the military wing of the Free Aceh Movement has been disbanded and disarmed. The pointlessness of this long war was brought home to both sides by the catastrophic tsunami a year earlier, which killed 170 000 people and forced everyone to co-operate in rescue and rebuilding.
Sadly, a similar impetus towards peace in Sri Lanka, appears to have faded. And of course the slaughter just goes on in places like Iraq and Darfur.
Overall, though, it’s Aceh that is representative of the trend. The number and severity of wars and conflicts has declined greatly since the end of the Cold War.
It would be a salutory effort to look over the wars, revolutions and civil strife of the last sixty years and see how many of the participants got an outcome (taking account of war casualties and so on) better than the worst they could conceivably have obtained through negotiation and peaceful agitation. Given the massively negative-sum nature of war, I suspect the answer is “Few, if any”.
I just received an email drawing the (far from original) comparison between terrorism and cancer. It struck me that, to make this metaphor exact we’d need
* attacks on cancer researchers for seeking to ‘understand’ cancer
* even more attacks on anyone trying to find ‘root causes’ for cancer in the environment, such as exposure to tobacco smoke
* lengthy pieces pointing out that the only thing we need to know about cancer cells is that they are malignant
* more lengthy pieces pointing out that criticism of any kind of quack remedy marks the critic as “objectively pro-cancer”
I guess Steven Milloy and other “junk science” types come pretty close to providing the first two. Has anyone seen examples of the third and fourth?
In the right light, I certainly am, as has been noticed both by commentators here, and In Real Life. As far as actual ethnicity goes, I’m a mixed bag, but mostly Celt. Quiggin is a Manx name, and my ancestry on my mother’s side is mostly Scots.
None of that signifies anything much except the arbitrariness of distinctions over which a lot of blood has been, and is still being, shed.
This year, I had as close to a classic Oz Xmas as I can remember. At the beach, in Sydney, with prawns and pavlova for Xmas dinner. The atmosphere at the beach was great, with no hint of the troubles a couple of weeks ago, and no-one interested in much more than getting wet, grabbing a wave or two and soaking up some sun.
Admittedly I was staying at Avalon, about as far from Cronulla as you can get and still be in Sydney, but the scene was just the same all up and down the coast as far as I could tell. And even in that fairly Anglo stretch of the coast, the beach crowd was diverse, including a sprinkling of hajibs along with more traditional beach attire (or lack thereof).
Great prezzies too. I got a facsimile version of the last incomplete voyage of Aubrey and Maturin from my younger son, and, from my older son and his wife a high-tech corkscrew, guaranteed to uncork the old Black Stump Bordeaux at a rate of three seconds per bottle. Came in very handy as you can imagine. Plus A Hundred Years of Solitude, which I’ve never read, from my wife, along with more from Margaret Atwood and Shirley Hazzard.
A great time was had by all, and a slow return to normality is indicated.
Offering the converse of a point made here not long ago, the Economist observes that
France quarrels with America not because the pair are so different but because they are so alike
What struck me most about the article was a reference to the appeal in France of US culture, epitomised by “Harry’s American Sandwich Shop”.
Thinking about this, it struck me that this kind of reference to American culture always, for me, brings the the 1950s to mind – Marilyn Monroe, Elvis Presley, diners, Corvettes, the Mickey Mouse Club (OK, mainly Annette Funicello). And the same is true for France. I think of Sartre and existentialism, Bonjour Tristesse, Truffaut and so on.
By contrast, the 1950s in Australia are pretty much a blank for me – there was plenty happening before and after, but nothing then that made an impact. Culture at that time, and for most of the 60s, was something that came from overseas (this was true of both ‘high’ and ‘popular’ culture). Is all this something generational, a personal idiosyncrasy on my part, or do particular cultures have defining decades?
The blog seems to have been running itself very nicely during my summer slowdown, and with a big and lazy four-day weekend coming up it will have to.
Best wishes to all readers and commenters for Christmas and New Year, summer solstice or whatever other feast and holiday you plan to celebrate.
As usual, please comment on any topic of interest (civilised discussion and no coarse language, please). Feel free to put in lengthy contributions suitable for holiday reading.
Over the fold, my column in today’s Fin, which deals with the latest “don’t worry, be happy” theory on the US (but not Australian) current account deficit.
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In a US case reminiscent of our own cash for comment scandal, Cato Institute Senior Fellow Doug Bandow has resigned following the revelation that he wrote (for pay) articles promoting the interests of Jack Abramoff’s clients, including the Commonwealth of the Mariana Islands and the gaming interests of the Choctaw tribe. This is disappointing – I liked Bandow best among the Cato crew (unless you count Julian Sanchez). And the amount of money involved was piddling – $2000 a pop or about $24K all up. A few quick-and-dirty consultancy jobs could have brought in a similar amount, without raising the same conflict of interest.
Meanwhile, Peter Ferrara, a senior policy adviser at the Institute for Policy Innovation is sticking to his job despite taking Abramoff’s cash. No surprise there.
But the question that really strikes me is this: If Bandow’s relatively minor ethical lapse is a sackable offence, how can Cato continue to harbour Steve Milloy? He’s not only a corporate shill of the worst kind, but a walking offence to civilised standards of behavior. Cato Institute President Edward Crane, who has failed to sack Milloy, ought to resign before Bandow.
Update IPI responds, confirming the basic facts noted above, but criticising other aspects of the Business Week story I linked.
