Habib’s day in court

John Quiggin61 Comments

Having seen Mamdouh Habib’s 60 Minutes interview the other night, I’m keener than ever that he should have his day in court. I think it’s clear enough that Habib’s allegations that he was tortured in detention are true in general (why else would he have been shipped to Egypt?) and that the Australian government either knew or, in its Children Overboard mode, chose not to know about it – most likely some mixture of the two.

That said, Habib said nothing[1] to refute the government’s allegation that he’s a terrorist, claiming that he would give his answers in court. I certainly hope that this takes place. Both Habib and the government have a lot of explaining to do, in my view.

At this distance in time, I find it hard to believe that there’s much in the mooted excuse that producing the government’s evidence would compromise intelligence sources. Habib’s alleged crimes took place in 2001, when the Taliban was still in power, and Al Qaeda was operating more or less openly. The failure to detect the S11 attacks [on the government’s own account, a matter of common gossip for Habib] suggests that there can’t have been much in the way of intelligence penetration of AQ at the time and the destruction of the Taliban government must have rendered most such sources obsolete.

fn1. To be clear, he denied the allegation, but did not respond any questions about the details.

The Garbage Gene

John Quiggin58 Comments

This piece by Nicholas Kristof encapsulates everything I don’t like about ‘evolutionary psychology’, particularly in its pop mode. Kristof makes the argument that the success of the religious right is due to a predisposition to religious belief grounded in supposed evolutionary advantages, supposedly reflected in a particular gene, referred to by its putative discoverer as ‘The God Gene’. This is pretty much a standard example of EP in action. Take a local, but vigorously contested, social norm, invent a ‘just so’ story and assert that you have discovered a genetically determined universal. Kristof doesn’t quite get to the point of asserting that there exists a gene for voting Republican, but it follows logically from his argument (Dawkins defends the idea of a gene for tying shoelaces, for example).

Where to begin on the problems of all this?
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Going with the Zeitgeist

John Quiggin9 Comments

Well, I just bought my first pack of hot cross buns. Until now, I’ve vaguely tried to adhere to some notion of what’s appropriate to the season, but I guess I have to accept that Easter begins as soon as the last marked-down mince pies and Christmas puddings have been cleared from the shelves. Then I suppose there’s a month or two each for Mothers’ Day and Fathers’ Day before Christmas starts again in October (plus the various smaller occasions like Valentine’s Day).

My capitulation to the Zeitgeist on this matter doesn’t worry me too much. After all, I like hot cross buns. But I’m getting increasingly frequent comments on my furrowed brow. It’s no longer seen as the product of deep thought, but rather an indication that I’m too cheap to spring for Botox.

Weekend reflections

John Quiggin21 Comments

This regular feature is back. The idea is that, over the weekend, you should post your thoughts in a more leisurely fashion than in ordinary comments or the Monday Message Board.

Please post your thoughts on any topic, at whatever length seems appropriate to you. Civilised discussion and no coarse language, please.

The medium banana

John Quiggin52 Comments

I’ve been the Australian Agricultural and Resource Economics Society meetings which were in Coffs Harbour this year, as the New England branch put them on. A nice change from the usual capital city locations, though this is the rainy season in Coffs just as it is in Brisbane.

One Coffs Harbour icon did not live up to my memories of the distant past[1]. The Big Banana isn’t very big. For me, it’s always been the exemplar of Australian bigness, but at 40 years old, it belongs to the Triassic era of Big Things (along with the Big Trout at Adaminaby, which I like a lot). The Big Prawn and so on are on a more Jurassic scale, and the Big Merino at Goulburn is positively Cretaceous: the ultrasaurus of such things.

fn1. I’ve driven through Coffs quite a few times, and not realised this, but that’s because I didn’t notice the Banana even when I was vaguely looking for it, expecting, as I did, something much bigger.

Colin’s canal, again

John Quiggin32 Comments

My piece in today’s Fin, over the fold, brings together arguments about the Kimberley canal project, which has been debated here on the blog. As usual, I got a lot out of all the comments, whether or not this is obvious in the published article. Thanks to everyone who contributed to the debate.
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Illegals, again

John Quiggin105 Comments

The government’s position on the Rau case seems pretty clear. Ms Rau was an ‘illegal’, that is, a person found to be in Australia and unable to satisfy the authorities that she had a legitimate right to be here. As was established in apartheid South Africa, where the term originated, illegals have no human or civil rights. They can be locked up in atrocious conditions, denied contact with the outside world and so on. Now the authorities are satisfied about her status, and she has been duly released.

Many commentators, including bloggers, have insisted upon both the term ‘illegal’ and the fact that such people have no human rights. All that is new is the discovery that an ‘illegal’ is anyone the government chooses to detain.