Amazing factoid of the day

I just found out via a Lateline story about weapons theft and purchases by Mexican drug cartels in Texas that the US Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) is prohibited by Congress from keeping a computer database of firearms and their serial numbers... so they process tracing of stolen and illegally procured guns using paper files!!!

Boston Globe Big Picture

Every week the Globe produces a photo essay with georgeous large format pictures on some theme called "The Big Picture"... you can get an RSS feed, so I highly recommend subscribing.

This picture of Afgahn refugees in Pakistan really left me gob smacked:

Here's the whole photo essay...

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The Freedom Agenda

It's making me sick right now seeing the American conservative commentators try and claim that Obama's position on Egypt has been cynical and inneffective (which of course it has) in contrast to the "freedom agenda" of  George W Bush, and his daddy and Ronny Regan before them (oh and Tony Blair gets credit too) - Charles Krauthammer raves on here. As if somehow the Egyptian revolution justifies the invasion of Iraq, because "freedom" was the premise behind both of these regime changes. Never mind that the Iraqi change resulted in the deaths of 100s of thousands of innocent civilians - some directly at the hands of the invaders, and many because they didn't have a fucking clue about internal politics of the country. Whereas the few 100s of Egyptians who died placed themselves willingly in front of the tanks, but were killed by cowardly police and their agents at the behest of the regime in the guise of a counter-protest.

Their blatant revisionism of "freedom loving" Regan, and 2 Bushes, and their records on "small government", and keeping the state out of the private affairs of Americans is also laughable. The footnote on the bottom of the Regan "legacy" always reads: he left the government with the biggest debt in history, and the largest military/espionage complex (not in terms of headcount in the military - but in terms of the resources it sucks from civil society) in history. And from that complex, the head of the CIA took over and started promoting his freedom agenda. Do the phrases "head of the hated secret police",  "amassing vast private wealth", "Dynastic succession" ring a bell? Did any one of them (or Clinton for that matter - whichever one you wanna talk of) have any impact on the freedoms of anyone in the middle east (except for Israel).

Each successive government of the USA, despite rhetoric of private enterprise and civil society has managed to further pervert the way in the which the goverment spends the people's tax money. When I was working for DSTC in between 1994-2004 our little research centre in Australia received some significant cash from the American government. This was from 2 agencies: 1) DARPA, the largest research funding source in the US government for research... and I'm talking about human/computer interaction, and distributed systems - which had to justified to the Generals in terms of "steel on target"; and 2) "an unnamed agency" - you know, the one that was actually unnamed for it's first 40 years or so - "no such agency" (they now have tie-died T-shirts for sale with the NSA logo on them in the gift shop) Hi there you snooping Motherfuckers! (I doubt that any human in a bunker in Virginia will read this, but it's certainly going to processed by machine there - just like every phone call I make, every SMS I send, etc). Just my little window in the militarisation of the whole university system in the US and by contamination, her allies.

And don't get me started on Saudi Arabia.....

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Tragedy & Farce

At Jim's suggestion I went to look at the footage of Anwar Sadat's assassination on YouTube.

The comments of the last few days were an "hilarious" mix of hate, praise, and comedy... check out the middle comment:

"A strong supporter of Israel"

Last night's Four Corners was interesting... a profile of Joolya, our PM. (Nice to see that Kerry O'Brien is still around, I thought he'd retired, but that was just from the 7.30 Report apparently).

I'd seen/heard much of Joolya's background in a frenzy of media when she gazumped Kev, but the extra detail provided in the profile last night cemented my dislike for her. But then I'm always more keen on people of principle, rather than pragmatists. Give me Gough over Hawke any day, or Mal over Johnny for that matter. I'm surprised that no one used the word Realpolitik last night. (Aside: Paul Howes: "I think Julia's as left wing as my right foot" was the quote of the show.)

During the interview with Liz Jackson, Joolya consistently refused to have words put in her mouth, and any time Liz asked her to confirm or deny a quote from someone else or a perception put in her words, Joolya would always come back with her own phrasing (or a slightly off topic statement) - as we expect from politicians. But the one phrase that she repeated back verbatim was: "I am a strong supporter of Israel".

With all the crisis in Egypt (F.I.R.E.I.N.C.A.I.R.O. not heard on any coverage, BTW), and the Middle East in general, my mind started racing... I've occasionally talked to people about issues around Israel/Palestine, but never really been able hold A Position before.

For a start, I'd rarely be caught saying anything about supporting or opposing a whole country. I would usually state my opinion in terms of what a particular government or leader was doing, or the mainstream culture of a country, or the laws of a country. What exactly does the aforementioned statement mean? (a) That you support all the actions of a succession of governments of Israel? Or in the case of Israel (b) that you support the existence of such a nation state, as opposed to, say, having all it's people massacred or driven into the sea, and replaced by another nation state called Palestine. I'd strongly reject (a), but support (b)...

And then my opinions on the existence or otherwise of Israel dry up... having read the wikipedia potted history of the Mandate of Palestine, and the formation of the state of Israel, it's just too complex to untangle. I can't help but come back to the position of "two wrongs don't make a right", and surely there's a better way for Israel to ensure that weapons and warriors are not being imported into Gaza than blockading the whole territory, and leaving its people with no economic prospects, and ever growing resentment.

I guess A Position is still beyond me.

Disappointing analysis on Egypt on Q&A

I just finished watching Q&A, and of course Egypt came up - but late and briefly. But despite the presence of Gerard Henderson ("a historian" by his own description) who I don't like, but whose analysis is usually pretty reasoned; and Richo (who usually has an interesting take any every subject); there seemed to be no insight into the situation. (And as an aside I found Amanda Vanstone fairly genial, and as usual was annoyed by Catherine Deveny, who wouldn't even comment on NSW politics - so what hope did we have of anything intelligent on Egypt.)

Anyone seeing my google reader blog recommendations will have seen a number of posts that attempt to answer the question of whether Egypt will go the way of Iran, and have a broad based revolution co-opted by Islamic fundamentalists.

My reading of middle east watchers says that a number of important differences between the two countries mean that this is much less likely in Egypt. In short: it's  a majority Sunni country, and the Shiite allegiance/subservience to the clergy which plays a large role in Iran is not present in Egypt. Also, the powerbase of the anti-Shah forces in Iran - the bazaar - which was a small finance/business sector under pressure from big business is very different in Egypt, where its equivalent - the souk - is dependent on tourism for its living, and therefore anti-fundamentalist. This excellent article spells out these, and many more points of difference.

The other thing which frustrates me in the mainstream media is the blanket use of the term "islamists", which fails to distinguish between Islamic political parties which want to work inside a democratic system, fundementalist proponents of theocracy which want to replace/subvert it, and outright terrorists. What I infer from political blogs is that it's likely that the Moslem Brotherhood has been conveniently painted as extremist by the Moubarak regime simply because they are a possible viable political opposition, and not because they are violent radicals hell bent on the destruction of democracy/The West. In fact the leadership of the MB has been careful to distance itself from terrorist groups like al Qaida.

Now don't get me wrong - I would not like to live under a Moslem Brotherhood government (or any form of Islamic rule for that matter - they don't tend to treat us hommus-sexshuals, and our women friends very nicely). But I think the test of political parties in "real democracies" (and I have my problems with 2 party systems, which are usually used as exemplars of these, like the USA) is whether or not they hold free elections at regular intervals, as governed by a constitution, and will cede power if they lose an election. I think the aspiration to become like Turkey or Indonesia is more relevant here than any likelihood of following Iran or the USA... a strong secular military providing a safeguard against any political party refusing to leave when defeated at the polls. Note the word "aspiration". The Indonesian Military under Suharto looked a lot like Mubarak and the Egyptian Military now, and yet Indonesia has a functioning democracy in terms I set forth earlier, and Turkey has recently become more than a one-party dominated state. (Now they just have to fix corruption, and subject said military to the rule of law).

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