Free flow of capital vs Restricted flow of Labour

Over pumpkin soup & potate salad, I read an interesting debate in the Guardian between Gary Younge and David Goodheart on identity, race and migration.

Gary Younge makes some good points:

"In a world that has placed a huge premium on the free movement of capital, we should not be surprised if what follows is a desire for the free movement of labour. As free trade and deregulation force privatisation and low tariffs on poor countries so residents of those countries will move to where the wealth is concentrated. We used to slam the eastern bloc for not letting people out; now we won't let them in.

Herein lies the hypocrisy of the desire of Europe's wealthier nations to discourage immigration from accession countries. With no commensurate attempt to regulate the movement of capital to and from those countries, they allow the rich to go in search of profit while denying the poor the right to seek work.

People come to the west looking for opportunity because opportunism, in the form of western capital, has gone to the developing world looking for them. If we want to manage migration, we should start by looking at fair trade and international aid. Building higher walls and slashing the welfare rights of migrants may offer temporary respite from the chaos we wreak beyond our borders. But it will do little to relieve the source of desperation that forces them to leave."

It's interesting to look at Australia & the increasingly xenophobic attitude to refugees:

1) Most Australians are migrants
2) Most Australians come from diverse backgrounds all over the world
3) Most Australians benefit from working, living or travelling all over the world

Why are we so afraid that we have to lock up women and children in detention centres and treat them as criminals without trial?

The moral bankruptcy of the Australian government ...

On the moral bankruptcy of the current Australian government, Julian Burnside QC at an RACV dinner reported in Crikey:

"Australia has made a choice with terrible consequences. We have chosen a government which shows contempt for human rights, whilst posturing as champions of decency and family values; a government of hypocrites whose dishonesty has made us relaxed and comfortable only by anaesthetising the national conscience.

In her latest novel, The Prosperous Thief, Andrea Goldsmith says of Germany in the 1930s: "The Government was a meticulous launderer of the public memory". I live in hope that, at the next Federal election, the Australian public will recover its memory of the days of Chifley or Menzies, its memory of the days when the idea of a fair go meant something, the days when decent treatment of other human beings was more important than blind pursuit of self-interest. If that happens, even for a moment, the Howard government will lose office and we will have a chance to return to the values which truly mark Australia as a great nation. "

...

"The government's recent hard-line stance on the refugee issue is officially justified in the name of our sovereignty. To guard our sovereignty, the government calls boat people "illegals", and it locks them up.

It is the great lie on which government policy rests. People who come here informally are not illegal. They commit no offence by arriving without papers, without an invitation, seeking protection. They may be locked up for months or years, but our moral conscience is lulled to sleep because we are told they are "illegals".

The fact is that to come to Australia without authority and seek asylum is not an offence against Australian law. There is no provision of the law which says it is an offence to arrive in Australia without permission. Much less is it an offence to arrive in Australia without permission and seek asylum. To the contrary, Article 14 of the Universal Declaration, entered into force on 10 December 1948, guarantees to every human being the right to seek asylum in any territory they can reach. Those who come here trying to exercise that right are locked up in desert camps or, more recently, in remote desert islands."

Ahh I miss the 80s ...

" ... my ambivalent attitude to that narrow strip of the 1980s, after post-punk but before dance, that held my teenage years. We had the worst of 80s excess - truly terrible clothes, the high watermark of Thatcherism, Reagan, Aids, the miner's strike, the Style Council and the Alarm. But we also had the Smiths - so there."

This Charming Shrine, Will Woodward in the Guardian

Ahhh the Eighties, I remember the Eighties.

I remember when I first met you.

Somewhere, sometime in the mid eighties a long time before we rose up slowly. A long time before the phenomenon.

Catching the bus from Adelaide to Sydney and listening to the Queen is Dead over and over again
Reagan & Thatcher
Kajagoogoo & Pseudo Echo haircuts
Heaven 17 videos
The Uncanny Xmen at the South Adelaide Supporters Club
Blakes Seven
Brideshead Revisited
Dr Who & The Goodies on TV every weekday at 6pm
Listening to Meat is Murder on Jerry's record player in his dusty garage bedroom

The pretence that we live in countries that have values

Gary Younge in the Guardian on the murder of democratic accountability:

"The premise for this war was not security but politics - it's the politicians who should be in the dock.

The fact that they will not be reflects badly not just on the governments concerned but on all of us. If a country can be led to war on false pretexts and there are no substantive consequences as a result, there is something seriously wrong with both politicians and the political culture that produces them. In a democracy worthy of the name, if the machinery of government cannot call those responsible to account, civil society and the ballot box must.

This war is not just killing Iraqi civilians, resistance fighters and coalition soldiers. It's murdering any pretence that we live in countries that value, let alone practice, the principle of democratic accountability. It calls into question our ability to rein in political excess and to root out state-sponsored incompetence."

I guess people have values but nation states/politicians do not.

Alan Ramsey quoting Richard Wollcott, distinguished former Australian diplomat and secretary of the Department of Foreign Affairs, in the SMH:

"It seems without doubt now that Bush, Blair and Howard exaggerated intelligence on weapons of mass destruction and used intelligence selectively to support a predetermined decision to go to war ... In my experience leaders, whether elected or authoritarian, tend by nature to identify the national interest with their own personal or political party interest.

"We have also seen a carefully orchestrated campaign of military censorship and other techniques of news management, combined with the tacit acquiescence of some news organisations, aimed at ensuring that what Australians know about the war and the reasons for it was what the Government wanted them to know. In our dedicated efforts to support Washington in its Iraq adventure, the principle of truth in government was compromised and diminished ...

"To conclude, ladies and gentlemen, I believe the whole concept of truth in government - truth in Parliament - and accountability to the public has been tarnished and the credibility of our political process seriously eroded. It is a sad commentary on the integrity of our Government that the cartoonists in our major newspapers now regularly caricature the Prime Minister and several of his senior colleagues as liars ... "


"

I got a laugh from this ...

The most powerful man in the world ... but then I realised it's not funny at all.

They never let Hans Blix finish his work.

Bush, Blair & Howard lied.

They went to war. People died.

The world is not a safer place. It makes you sick.

Howard is more culpable - if only for the simple reason that Australia goes to war because America says we should irrespective of what the Australian people think.