Blogging the Bookshelf » Policy

Piracy as a Window to the World – “Twenty fragments of a ravenous youth” – Xiaolu Guo

Tim — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 04:30:06 +0000

You could find anything you wanted here. CDs, with a hole punched into the middle by customs. VCDs and DVDs of old classics like The Goddess with Ruan Lingyu, Zhao Dan’s Crossroads, even the 1940s film Spring in a Small Town. And so many foreign films. Mamma Roma. Central Station. The Lost Weekend. Plus films by Takeshi Kitano and Shunji Iwai. All piled on top of each other like firecrackers at Chinese New Year. I loved piracy. It was our university and our only path to the foreign world.

Means and Ends – “The Trial of Henry Kissinger” – Christopher Hitchens

Tim — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 23:40:06 +0000

If one can demonstrate that there was such a plan (to remove the President of Cypress), and that Kissinger knew about it in advance, then it follows logically and naturally that he was not ostensibly looking for a crisis – as he self-pityingly asks us to believe – but for a solution. The fact that he got a crisis, which was also a hideous calamity for Cyprus and the region, does not change the equation or under the syllogism. It is attributable to the other observable fact that the scheme to remove Makarios, on which the ‘solution’ depended, was in practice a failure. But those who willed the means and wished the ends are not absolved from guilt by the refusal of reality to match their schemes.

I found this to be an interesting quote, given that the last sentence in particular could be equally used to condemn Hitchen’s position on the Iraq War…

Through a Trapdoor at the end of a rope – “The Trial of Henry Kissinger” – Christopher Hitchens

Tim — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 04:30:05 +0000

Some statements are too blunt for everyday, consensual discourse. In national ‘debate’, it is the smoother pebbles that are customarily gathered from the stream, and used as projectiles. They leave less of a scar, even when they hit. Occasionally, however, a single hard-edged remark will inflict a deep and jagged wound, a gash so ugly that it must be cauterised at once. In January 1971, General Telford Taylor, who had been chief prosecuting counsel at the Nuremberg trials, made a considered statement. Reviewing the legal and moral basis of those hearings, and also the Tokyo trials of Japanese war criminals and the Manila trial of Emperor Hirohito’s chief militarist, General Tomoyuki Yamashita, Taylor said that if the standards of Nuremberg and Manila were applied evenly, and applied to the American statesmen and bureaucrats who designed the war in Vietnam, then ‘there would be a very strong possibility that they would come to the same end [Yamashita] did.’ It is not every day that a senior American solider and jurist delivers the opinion that a large portion of his country’s political class should probably be hooded and blindfolded and dropped through a trapdoor at the end of a rope.

International Law – “The Trial of Henry Kissinger” – Christopher Hitchens

Tim — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 23:30:05 +0000

Many if not most of Kissinger’s partners in crime are now in jail, or are awaiting trial, or have been otherwise punished or discredited. His own lonely impunity is rank; it smells to heaven. If it is allowed to persist then we shall shamefully vindicate the ancient philosopher Anarchasis, who maintained that laws were like cobwebs: strong enough to detain only the weak, and too weak to hold the strong.

I can’t see how this isn’t the perfect description of ‘International law’…

The Long Term Survival of the Human Species – “The Origins of AIDS” – Jacques Pepin

Tim — Sat, 14 Jan 2012 04:31:06 +0000

This is a reminder that the most dangerous threat to the long-term survival of the human species is the human race itself. Of course, this has been obvious for some time. My generation and the one before us grew up with the fear of a nuclear holocaust. Even though the number of nuclear missiles has been reduced, the list of countries possessing this technology has grown, and with it the probability that one day somebody will push the button. My children’s generation has grown up with the threat of global warming, a process whose consequences could be as destructive, albeit much slower. The human race is not very quick to understand novel threats. Just a few years ago, the president of the United States refused to ratify the Kyoto protocol on the basis that the ‘American way of life is not negotiable’, as if the core of American civilisation and values were the four-wheel drive vehicles produced by three large corporations that barely survived the end of this president’s term in office.

In this context, the one new message that the HIV epidemic, as chronicled in this book, should bring home is that well-intentioned human interventions can have unpredictable and disastrous microbiologic consequences. Mankind has emerged through a process of natural selection over billions of years. Apart from ourselves, there is probably no other living organism on earth that could destroy us completely, because if such organisms had existed, we would not have managed to reach our current status in the first place. But as I write these lines, there is renewed interest in sending humans on a wonderful voyage to Mars and back. The kids who watched Neil Armstrong’s small steps on the moon are now engineers, pilots, administrators and politicians. They think that their own generation also needs to push back a new frontier, that this is part of the human experience, and perhaps something that will provide an answer to perennial questions about the meaning of life. For a long time I have thought that space adventures were very unwise. What is the point of setting up a small human colony somewhere in orbit around the earth or even further away, when we are systematically destroying, day in and day out, the only planet which can sustain human life? Would it not be smarter to spend our resources and ingenuity on scientific adventures whose purpose would be to protect our earth rather than taking the risk of importing into our cherished planet a completely different form of microscopic life, perhaps not even based on DNA, and whose innocuous nature has not been proven by billions of years of natural selection and co-evolution with us?

Plasma Markets – “The Origins of AIDS” - Jacques Pepin

Tim — Sat, 14 Jan 2012 02:00:05 +0000

HIV transmission among paid plasma donors were reported in Valencia, Spain and Pune, India. In the latter city, among commercial plasma donors, HIV prevalence was 0% in November 1987 but 78% seven months later, illustrating the exponential transmission of HIV through unhygienic plasma collection practices.6–11 These outbreaks, although tragic in their own right, were dwarfed by what happened in China in the early 1990s, several years after the risk of HIV transmission via plasmapheresis was understood, and a decade after the transmission of HCV had been documented in the same Chinese centres. In rural areas, poor farmers were recruited by ‘plasma pimps’, to sell plasma to increase their meagre income. They received $6 per donation, which could be repeated twice a month in theory, more often if donors attended more than one collection centre. There were several hundred plasma collection stations set up by blood product companies. In the most-heavily affected provinces of Henan, Anhui, Shanxi, Hubei, Hebei, Shandong and Jilin, approximately 250,000 paid donors (a quarter of a million!) acquired HIV.12–14

…

What do all these stories have in common? Poor people looking for a quick source of income and willing to sell their blood repeatedly. Profit-driven blood collection centres where a small number of entrepreneurs try to make as much money as possible by cutting costs, re-using needles, syringes and tubings, while being unaware of or not caring about the risk of transmitting blood-borne viruses. A lucrative market for these blood products, either locally or internationally. Finally, a ‘patient zero’ who introduces the pathogen.

Lumumba – “The Origins of AIDS” - Jacques Pepin

Tim — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 23:32:05 +0000

In September 1960, Lumumba was dismissed by Kasavubu, and in turn Lumumba dismissed Kasavubu. The constitution did not allow for either of these moves. After a few days of confusion, Lumumba was definitively overthrown in a bloodless military coup led by the very person he had just appointed head of the army, colonel Mobutu. Lumumba’s appeal to Moscow had provided the perfect justification, if one was needed. Mobutu quickly expelled all Soviet advisers. Placed under house arrest, Lumumba tried to escape to Stanleyville where his support remained strong, but he was captured after a few days on the run, imprisoned and then transferred to his arch-enemies in Katanga. One might wonder how the central government in Léo could transfer a prisoner to the Katanga secessionists, against whom they were fighting a low-grade civil war. The explanation is simple: Belgium controlled both ends of the equation, and thought it would be easier to eliminate this dangerous man in Katanga, where he had no political or tribal support. There, in January 1961, five hours after his arrival, he was executed by a firing squad supervised by Belgian policemen. Days later, his body was cut up and dissolved in acid. A state crime had been committed, ordered by the Belgian minister of African affairs, who had cleared this decision with his prime minister.

Immigration and Race – “The Unfinished Revolution: How New Labour Changed British Politics Forever” – Philip Gould

Tim — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 04:30:05 +0000

The politics of grievance can be harsh and it is never easy moderating a group where the sole focus is immigration. But immigration, like crime, like welfare abuse, is not an issue we can avoid; we must deal with it head on. Not just because of the sense of unfairness that people hold but also because it is for many an issue of democratic involvement. Immigration has changed Britain, culturally and ethnically, and in my view for the better, but this was not a process over which the electorate felt they had sufficient control or influence. It has left many who had little power in the first place feeling yet more disempowered. So much of this is about control, insecurity and fear.

I think this holds for Australia too…

Perhaps most important, the politics of grievance is about control and empowerment and voice. If people are heard, if they have genuine influence over their communities and their lives, then they will feel less resentment. Paradoxically, the more people are empowered to act, the less extreme their opinions may be. The politics of identity and of empowerment must go hand in hand. We must hear the people on these issues, we must be tough where necessary and above all competent, but we must be confident that in the end progressive solutions will work, and conservative solutions will not. The answer to unfairness is not more unfairness; the left must win fairness back in all its various forms.

Sustaining a Reforming Government – “The Unfinished Revolution: How New Labour Changed British Politics Forever” – Philip Gould

Tim — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 23:31:06 +0000

David Marquand calls this the progressive dilemma:

‘How to transcend Labourism without betraying the labour interest; how to bridge the gap between the old Labour fortresses and the potentially anti-Conservative but non-Labour hinterland; how to construct a broad-based and enduring social coalition capable of not just giving it a temporary majority in the House of Commons, but of sustaining a reforming government thereafter.’

This is the test by which the New Labour government should be judged. When critics attack New Labour for caution, for failing to be radical enough, early enough, for making tough economic decisions, for trying to impose order and discipline, they are trapped in the conservative mind-set that kept Labour in opposition for so long. If a progressive coalition can govern Britain for a majority of the time then more poverty will be removed and more real change implemented than could ever be achieved by short, sharp, occasional spasms of radicalism. Lasting change can only happen over time, as part of a progressive project for government. The alternatives have failed Britain and its people. We lack schools that are good enough, hospitals that are modern enough, streets that are safe enough. The British people lack skills, opportunity and ambition. Our public infrastructure has been allowed to crumble, our national identity is uncertain. We have let people who do not use our schools run our education system, and people who do not use our health service run the NHS. This is the price Labour has paid for losing the last century. We need a new long-term radicalism, to ensure that progressive instincts become rooted in the institutions of the nation, just as conservative instincts were in the past. New Labour may have won an election, but now it has to win a century.

This is a fine articulation of why electoralism must underpin the progressive project.

One Nation – “The Unfinished Revolution: How New Labour Changed British Politics Forever” – Philip Gould

Tim — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 00:04:05 +0000

Blair said he wanted to base his conference speech around the concept of ‘one nation’. He had mentioned this as a theme in his leadership campaign notes, but I had forgotten. I did not like the idea much, nor did anyone else – it seemed too abstract – but he would not let go of it and as the conference speech came closer it became clear that this concept met the moment. It was centrist, and in origin it was a Conservative concept. Benjamin Disraeli first used the idea in his novel Sybil, or, The Two Nations: ‘Two nations between whom there is no intercourse and no sympathy … THE RICH AND THE POOR.’ But the one-nation philosophy is as relevant now as it was in the 1840s. It articulated Blair’s concept of community in a new way, which it linked to a new patriotism.