Public Opinion

Energy Policy

There was a report in the Australian Financial Review last Friday (subscription required, 26 03 04, p. 18) highlighting the current vacuum in the federal government's energy policy. The report said that all the different sectors (coal, petroleum, electricity etc ) are united in criticising the Howard Government for its delay in releasing its long-dealed national energy policy.

Such a national energy policy should be concerned, with developing energy resources, investment security and enabling a move away from fossil-based primary energy resources to one based on the increasing use of renewable sources, such as wind and sun.

Currently, we do not have many renewables connected to the national electricity grid. Nor do we have much in the way of support to ensure this connection. Nor has there been much support to get the manufacturing of green technology going in Australia.

The problem that appears to exist is that the push for renewable energy through Mandatory Renewable Energy Targets (MRET) is seen to threaten not supplement the coal and aluminium industry. Is this the reason for the policy vacuum? The reason for the long over-due national energy policy?

Could there be a Mexican stand off between the different ministries within the Howard Government? A standoff instead of a joining up of policies and portfolios?

Strange isn't it. Energy underpins economic and social development and the shift to the sustainable use of this resource is crucial. Yet we have a stalemate in terms of the development of a national energy policy built on a sustainable energy future.

The implication? A lack of commitment to invest in innovation to drive a smart low carbon growth into the future other than geosequestration - the capturing and burying carbon dioxide underground. Does not this lack undermine Australia's future competitiveness in the global marketplace? Does it not undermine investment and jobs in rural and regional Australia?

This is not just fringe groups putting the pressure on the government. It's also the big end of town.

Israel: any common ground?

This weblog is becoming the site of conflicting opinion about international affairs especially the Middle East. Iraq and Israel are the ground of conflict. Emotions are highly charged on the latter issue, and the conflicting voices more often than not speak past one another.

The accusation running through the comments box is that the extreme right and the left demonize the Jewish state, accuse it of practising genocide and equate the Jewish state with German fascism.

Maybe we can try and use the odd post here and there to sort things out a bit instead of yelling at one another.

For starters. Things are bad between Israel and Palestine. The Oslo Accords are history and the road map has gone nowhere:

unknown (anyone know the name of the cartoonist?)

Presumably we can all accept that. Now the next step.

I'm currently reading Alan Dershowitz's The Case For Israel. Let me state simply and clearly that public opinion accepts a two state solution---a Palestinian state alongside a Jewish state---that was initially proposed by the Peel Commission in 1937 and then by the United Nations in 1948.

Public opinion accepts the idea of the two state solution though not the proposed detailed territorial partitions in the above proposals.

That should put to one side those who say that the criticism of Likud policies and actions on this weblog implies the elimination of Israel. It does not. Both people's have a right to their homelands.

Update

On the Palestinian side it would seem that the Palestinian Authority is an empty shell and that Hamas is the de facto effective government. That would mean a fundamentalist Palestinian state under shariah law that would be harsh on women, gays and Jews.

Yet the only way forward is to ensure that the occupied territories are transformed into independence of Palestine comprising Gaza and the West Bank. This implies acknowledging that the Palestinans can, and should be, a free people in a free country.

standard operating procedure

I guess the map mostly refers to the colonialism practised by imperial powers.

Leunig

However, as it stands it is a spoof on a military conquest manual. The process used to be called pacification back in the days of Vietnam. It goes back to the Romans. They just lacked the technology of the tanks and guns to pacify the Jews in the first century. What they attempted to do was de-Judaize the independent kingdom; eg., they called it Palestine.

Leunig's satire ignores two things. First, the creation of a subservient adminstration in the conquered country is not mentioned. It is not just a case of barbed wire. Iraq, for instance, was cobbled together into a modern nation state through an odd hybrid of colony and monarchy in 1921 by the British Empire for its own purposes, with no attention to the desires of its inhabitants. It was founded on the violence of the British brutally putting down massive anti-British nationalistt revolt. As Juan Cole says

"The British brutally put it down from the air, slaughtering 9,000 Iraqis, both insurgents and civilians, and employing poison gas for the first time in Iraq. In the aftermath, London realized that it could not hope to rule the country by fiat, and that it needed a proxy government... the British installed [Faisal] as monarch in Baghdad in 1921....The British were faced then, as the Americans are now, with ruling a huge territory on the cheap .... To compensate for lack of troops, they relied on air power, conducting bombing raids from the sky against tribes that rebelled or refused to pay taxes."

The British Empire quickly discovered the limits to the use of high-tech weaponry and air power to effectively rule a conquered but insurgent population.

By the 1960s the Americans were calling the shots. Saddam Hussein was their proxy government in the Cold War: he was initially a block against Russian expansionism that was legitimised in terms of fighting the communists.

Secondly, Leunig ignores the role in legitimating the conquest that is played by the lapdog media, (or the subservient Fox News network), the hack commentary and the corrupt academics.

We have just lived through one of these legitimating events. Remember the peddling of the false spin that Saddam Hussein was the evil one behind 9/11; or that he was in cahoots with al-Qaeda? Remember the phoney case against Iraq----that Iraq was a significant threat to Australia? Remember those paranoid fantasies paraded as Truth (big T truth that cuts reality at its joints) by the national security state?

We are now living through a moment when the watchdog media are trying to find out what has happened. What they hit is a wall of secrecy. One the way to the wall they hear about, and often encounter, the use of state power to punish political enemies.

it's not his role

I heard Tom Schieffer, the American Ambassador to Australia, on the radio yesterday morning in between the shrills from a rattled and edgy Howard Government laying it on about the ALP snuggling up to Osama bin Laden. Canberra rhetoric is often so politically simple-minded. Some Canberra politicians actually think that those of us living west of the capital are like little children who will swallow any tall tale fed to us by their glamourous media machine.

Did you catch the one by Ross Cameron about Osama bin Laden in the caves of Pakistan celebrating the advent of Mark Latham? Did you get the moral of the story? That the evil one's comments about bringing the troops home was an invitation to terrorists to belt Australia up?

The plan by Mark Latham to withdraw Australian troops from Iraq by Xmas is a reasonable decision. Australia is an occupying power in Iraq. The troops need to come home when Iraq forms its own government. And Australia is not an imperial power.

Tom Schieffer made a clear intervention into domestic Australian politics as an American Ambassador. He was commenting at length on Latham's decision. Here is part of the transcript from Radio National's AM programme:

"MATT BROWN: Just to be clear though, are you saying that Mark Latham's decision is a signal that could invite political bombings that target Australians specifically?

TOM SCHIEFFER: I'd hope that it wouldn't. What I'm saying is that a precipitous withdrawal of troops by the international community now could have very serious consequences and we have to be very careful in that, because that's not what we want… we don't want terrorists to get the wrong message here.

We don't want them to think the bombing in Madrid has paid some sort of political dividend, whether it is Spain or elsewhere and that's just something that we have to be very careful about and I hope that Mr Latham will take that into consideration before he makes a final decision.

....MATT BROWN: When the Prime Minister said those words last year – "I'm not talking about a period of twelve months or two years" – if he'd stuck to that, that would mean Australian troops would be coming out a few weeks from now?

TOM SCHIEFFER: I'm afraid that I just don't know what you're talking about, so you'd have to ask the Prime Minister about that.

MATT BROWN: It didn't register with you then?

TOM SCHIEFFER: I'm not familiar with that statement."

Criticize one side. Block on the other. Schieffer has directly challenged the ALP and supported the Coalition.

Schieffer has done this before. He was told to butt out then. He should butt out now.

It is partisanship and a public interference into domestic Australian politics.

Update
The shrills continue:

Bruce Petty

Petty captures the atmosphere of the House of Representatives on Thursday

And then there's the hysteria. Latham's troop's home by Xmas decision will brand Australia as a nation on the run thunders Paul Kelly It is hysteria because the Latham decision is based on a questioning of the Bush administration's claim that the US occupation in Iraq is central to its war against international terror.

A reasonable questioning I would have thought, given this sort of testimony to the US Congress by Richard Clarke that the imperial presidency president had diverted the focus on hunting terrorists to fighting an unnecessary war with Iraq.

Free trade and Media

The Howard Government is now under an obligation to shape its economy and mode of governance to fit in with the Americans. The Americans see the Free Trade Agreement as opening markets to the benefit American businesses. That increased access means a more open competitive economy, less barriers to American firms, greater business integration and removing state monopolies and state enterprises.

So what does that mean for the media? It means a more rigorous competition policy. What does that mean in this context?

It would mean dismantling the restrictive cross-media laws which stop companies owning newspapers and a television network in the one capital city.

We can gain some some further insight into this from a story in the Australian Financial Review by Jennifer Hewett and Toni O'Loughlin(subscription required, 25 03 04, p. 1) it means forcing Telstra to diverst itself of its 50% share of Foxtel and allowing Murdock (News Corp) and its PBL partner to acquire that share and gain control of a pay television monopoly in Australia. So there would be greater concentration of media ownership as the two main players get bigger and bigger and dominate the content side of the media.

Is not the alliance between News and PBL the antithesis of competition?

Labor has previously blocked these big moves by the Howard Government in the Senate. Australia has successfully blocked Murdoch's expansion into the electronic media with the exception of the 25% ownership of Foxtel.

But would Labor deliver on the big media moves when it is in Government? Will it allow the cross media laws to crumble?

Dining with death

It is a dicey hand that Ariel Sharon is now playing:

David Rowe

The liquidation policy is a military solution for a political problem.

Here is a round up of the Arab media's reaction to Israel's assassination of Hamas leader Sheikh Ahmad Yassin courtesy of Abu Aardvark.

Consider this argument from Senator Brett Mason under Matters of Public Importance in Federal Parliament on Monday(22nd March):

"It is not difficult to see why the Left has now picked up the mantle of anti-Semitism from the far Right. After all, the Left sees the free, liberal, capitalist United States as a source of evil and, conversely, lionises America's every enemy. The nation of Israel and the Jewish people represent all that too many on the Left despise: the unapologetic commitment to democracy, free market, nation-state and military strength. It is a miniature United States, a Western enclave on the sea of the developing world. Let me reiterate this point for it is an essential one: those who hate Jewish people and hate the state of Israel almost without exception also hate liberal Western democracies, such as Australia and the United States, hate all our values and hate all that we stand for and all that we cherish. Anti-Semitism is only the other side of the anti-American and anti-Western coin. Those who want to destroy Israel and vanquish Jews also want to bring the Western world to its knees. What this means in practice is that we—the Jews and liberal Gentiles—are all in it together."

This a lovely slide from being critical of the Likud Government to hating the nation of Israel and the Jewish people to hating democracy is it not? The left is non-liberal, totalitarian, racists, anti-American and anti-Western. The left is the same as the fascist right.

What is happening to liberalism? Why is it developing a fortress/seige mentality when it has been so triumphant over its enemies?

Telstra: anti-competitive conduct

The return of the privatisation of Telstra bill to the Senate (to sell the government's 50.05 per cent stake). The Howard Government just seems to be going through the motions.

What is the point of re-introducing the bill? What are they doing this for? Selling Telstra is not popular in the electorate given the very low service levels. Does it have something to do with the Free Trade Agreement?

We do need to address the competition side of things. Telstra's new cheap broadband prices are lower than wholesale DSL prices. We do not have a competitive market at the moment. The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) has questioned Telstra's tactics in the broadband market. Telstra is using its market power to stifle competition---"engaging in anti-competitive conduct" says the ACCC.

The Howard Government (Senator Minchin) is running the line that more competition can be delivered with privatisation and that the telecommunications market is highly competitive. This is cloud cuckoo land when the ACCC issued a notice to Telstra alleging that it was engaged in anti-competive conduct on broadband wholesale pricing.

What is needed is to give the ACCC the powers it needs to deal with the misuse of market power, including the power to break-up large monopolies.

Surely privatisation would increase, not decrease, Telstra's market power. As Chris Anderson writes in todays Australian Financial Review (subscription required, p. 63), an "unchained Telstra might bite."

If privatisation of telecommunications is to be the order of the day, then the power of the regulator needs strengthening to ensure a far more competitive market.

Update

In today's Australian Financial Review (subscription required) Daryl Williams, the federal Minister of Communications and Information Technology, argues that we should allow Telstra to compete unhindered. He says that:

"Driving the development of a competitive market is central to the future of the Australian telecommunication industry.This, coupled with consumer protection, is the government's core responsibility. The role of government is not to run Telstra.... To suggest that [Government] ownership of Telstra is required to effectively regulate Telstra...suggests that there is no effective means to regulate the rest of the market. This is plainly wrong. The decision the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission to issue a competition notice to Telstra last week is a perfect example of the regulatory framework at work."

Hardly. The argument is that the ACCC needs to be strengthened if we want the telecommunications market to grow and prosper. That's a different issue to the privatisation of Telstra.

hope she wins

Sydneysider's vote for their Mayor next Saturday. Local government suddenly looks fashionable. Let us hope that the Independent Clover Moore MP becomes Lord Mayor.

That would help to create an independent power base to the Carr Government and the Sussex Street machine. That shift to a balance of power is a plus for democracy. Local Government in Australia has been too accommodating to state governments besotted with development at any price at the expense of the environment and resident's quality of life.

And Clover Moore might just regulate the property developers more than the rightwing ALP. The politics of development are going to get a lot tougher.

Plus she has an some interesting ideas about shaping a global city: turn it into a series of villages that would be based on the inner city suburbs with their own character and creative cultures.

It is a recognition that people identify with places. They also desire to protect the historical characteristics of each of these "villages."

It is an interesting response to globalization is it not? A different vision to that of the Carr ALP, which wants to turn Sydney into a regional financial hub a la Hong Kong. A financial hub controlled by a small political group.

It shows just how far local councils haved move away from rates, roads and rubbish. Maybe the Commonwealth will support local councils (fund them) to enable them to resist the power of state governments.

Update
I'm not convinced that forced amalgamations of local councils---as happened with Sydney and South Sydney---delivers all the cost benefits from efficiency gains that the bean counters and neo-liberals in state governments say. The efficiency bonus was only marginal under the merger mania in South Australia or Victoria according to Brian Dollery writing in today's Australian Financial Review (subscription required, p. 63). Merging into larger councils is not the panacea fro cash-strapped councils.

What is happening is that state governments are loading extra burdens and responsibilities onto local government without increasing their resources. Hence many face a financial crisis, since their only source of revenue is property rates.

We need to nurture our local councils because they are unrecognized in our constitution. They come under the legislative wing of our state governments who are often unwilling to recognize the autonomy of local government. After all, the forced amalgmation of South Sydney and Sydney Councils was undertaken by the Carr Government to assist Labor win control of the Town Hall through bringing more voters in. The state Government want a tame council that will go along with rubber-stamping development.

If we want independent local councils, then we need to change their source of income. They are too constrained by their only source of revenue being property rates.

Update
Clover Moore has done it. She wins. what was once taken away from her in 1987 by the then Unsworth Labor Government. The Labor Party machine in Sussex Street has been rolled back. Two cheers for local democracy.

It highlights the popular disenchantment with the Carr Government, its lack of momentum, its inability to fix infrastructure problems plus health and transport and obssession with power.

Did you see how well the Greens did? Doubled their representation. The ALP polled badly in the CBD and the inner-western suburbs. Maybe it will encourage the ALP to accept the need for green modernization instead of following the knee-jerk Labor Right strategy of attack attack attack whilst harvesting political donations from big property developers.

Sunday Cartoon

I'm on the road again. I have to catch a plane in a few hours. All the streets will be jammed from the crazy car race that turns petrol heads into a lethal missiles on the roads. The circus also brings out the desire of racegoers to see carnage on the track. The spectacle makes for good television.

Stavro

I do not speak Arabic. So I'm not sure what the words say. Tears for innocent lives lost?

You could say that the unity of Coalition of the Willing is fraying at the edges as tensions increase between"old and valued friends" due to them being taken for a ride. Iraq posed no significant threat.

The legitimacy of the occupation of Iraq is also fraying. It's good that Saddam has gone, but the Iraqi's want their country back. Hence the civil disorder within Iraq.

When will the United Nations be bought in to fix things up?

What is clear is that the war on terrorism is different from the invasion of Iraq. The latter was a turning into another pathway, but it now has the consequence of fueling international terrorism.

Update
Two quick comments. One by Robert Manne writing in The Age on the Keelty affair:

"The political purpose of Howard's silencing of Keelty is clear. By dragging the Police Commissioner into line, Coalition party members, senior public servants, members of the defence forces and the intelligence services were all taught a salutary lesson. Talk of Iraq and domestic terrorism is now forbidden. The attack on Keelty was, then, not so much an uncharacteristic stumble as a hastily improvised pre-emptive strike."

And the other comment is by Paul McGeough writing in The Sydney Morning Herald about Iraq:

".....something....fundamental is happening, something very democratic: leaders are being held to account, because the Bush case for war in Iraq has been proved to be a lie that was supported by Blair and Howard.

We were told the war was to get rid of Saddam's weapons of mass destruction - they did not exist. It was to save us from the link between Saddam and al-Qaeda - there was none. This was to be a quick war - the soldiers were to be welcomed with songs and flowers, but they will be stuck here for years to come and it might be a civil war that gives birth to the new Iraq - not Bush's liberation."

Paul says that the brutalised people of Iraq are indeed grateful to be rid of Saddam. But they loathe this occupation, are deeply resent the security crisis it has visited on them, and they feel humiliated by it. And they openly mock the superpower that said: "It'll all come right."

Madrid bombings

Steve Bell

The Spanish people have just elected a left-of-centre party to power. The Spanish elections were a victory for Spanish democracy not a “resounding victory” for al-Qaida.

It was not an act of surrender, dishonour and shame as the war party maintains. A large majority of the Spanish people (around 90%) had always opposed the conservative Anzar Government's participation in the war in Iraq. The election was a triumph of democracy, a revulsion against the political manipulation of terror by the Anzar government.

The Spanish people have every right to bring their troops home from Iraq. José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, the new Socialist prime minister, said they saw this to be a war that was based on deception and lies.

Will the fallout from this democratic decision result in a more independent, collective European position in opposition to a hegemonic US?

no blank cheques

I've been watching the general conservative reaction to the Madrid bombings and the Spanish elections with interest. The issue for then is the global conflict between free states and fundamentalist terrorists.

This conservative discourse overlooks the domestic context in Spain. The conservative Partido Popular (PP) government had the economy humming along but turned a blind eye to corruption and administrative dysfunction. Economic growth has been viewed in the context of European Union (EU) enlargement and EU subsidies. The Spanish people were overwhelmingly against the Iraq war and the Aznar government’s support of it even though they oppose the threats posed by terrorism.

However, there is a also the international context. The bombings look to be the largest terrorist attack on European soil in the continent's modern history.Something has just shifted in the international relations, though I'm not quite sure what the fallout is. The tides are starting to flow differently? The chickens coming home to roost in Spain? A tectonic plate has shifted? A watershed?

Peter Hartcher over at the Sydney Morning Herald suggests that the occupation of Iraq is seen as something diferent from the war on terror. The war was not fought as a counter measure to 9/11. Does this mean a more isolated Washington?

Behind the conservative's “al-Qaida victory” interpretation of the Madrid bombingsthat has shaped responses here in Australia, we can see the new conservative discourse more easily. It is a combination template of a watered down "free market"+ a strong security state at home and empire abroad. The social conservative culture is one of patriotism, the flag, suburbia and the nation united. As the recent election commercials of President Bush illustrate, this conservatism creates fear about hostile external threats:

"The ad claimed (falsely) that Kerry had a plan to raise taxes by $900m. Then came a triptych of rapid images: a US soldier - was he patrolling in Iraq? - a young man looking over his shoulder as he runs down a city street at night - was he a mugger or escaping an attack? - and a close-up of the darting eyes of a swarthy man - was he a terrorist? The voiceover: Kerry would "weaken America". The images were racial and subliminal, intended to play upon irrational fear."

The empire acknowledges no limits on its global ambitions, has a preference for unilateralist initiatives, discounts consultations with its friends, is hostile to the United Nations and talks in terms of the "war of civilisations". The empire's allies- those who act as a proxy for the U.S. such as Britain, Australia, and Canada--are compelled to give Washington a blank cheque.

Washington allows a loyal Australia to do the onerous chores of policing the vast South Pacific, and even taking some initiative on Indonesia. Policing is another name for deputy sheriff.

The Spanish people said no to the blank cheque. They said no to the uncritical faith in fictions and to a flamboyant unilateralism premised on false promises and information.

The upshot for Australia? We need to cut through the extensive media manipulation and conceptual confusions around the war with Iraq has made the fight against terrorism synonymous with a project of empire, territorial occupation and unnecessary violence.

The campaign trail: looks like veneer to me

Whilst John Howard's re-election strategy is centred on 'the economy and national security', Mark Latham is currently walking a tightrop between economic growth jobs and environment in Tasmania. Latham's ALP is trying to neutralize national security as an issue with a quick stir of human concern about children in detention centres.

We have been experiencing 3 days of John Howard here in South Australia. The PM is basically trying to shore up the marginal Liberal seats in Adelaide (eg., Makin, Hindmarsh, Adelaide) with some smoke and mirrors. This involves federal funding for a high tech hub for manufacturing in Elizabeth; more funding to improve the economic and environmental future of the Murray River in South Australia; and funding stormwater retention and new production methods for viticulture in the Adelaide Plains).

There is also a strong attack on the Rann Government's proposed workplace laws; and the standard 'Labor does not understand how to manage the economy' script at a SA business lunchen.

Meanwhile, Latham is trying to keep Tasmania for the ALP whilst trying to win the inner urban seats of Melbourne and Sydney with some green veneer. o far he has endorsed clear felling of old growth native forests, job protection, no changes to the regional forestry agreement, and an unwillingness to retrain forestry workers.

That poses a problem. The ALP strategy is an old one: to influence preferences in key seats in Melbourne and Sydney is going to need more than reassuring the timber industry and unions in Tasmania. Still, Latham has another day to learn the green talk, send the right messages to get those crucial green preferences and put together a coherent, sustained case for reform.

I do not expect much to come out of this Tasmanian visit. It's about political expediency. Latham's writings are neo-liberal in tone (roll back the bureaucracy, open up the market, foster social entrepreneurship) etc etc; and they show little understanding of the way that the economy is dependent on ecology. Latham sees resources not ecology. So he will miss the way the Gunn's veneer mill uses a miniscule fraction of forest destroyed by the unprecedented levels of woodchip destruction of the wild forests.

Oh, I've also heard about little about liberal corporatism in Tasmania from the federal ALP. Then, they always were corporatist, were they not? Hence their historical resistance to the democratic project. Today they serious about political power and willing to sacrifice substantive social and environmental reform.

Update
So Bob Brown endorses Mark Latham even though Latham endorsed the Tasmanian government position on logging. Latham did not concede an inch on forest policy.

Bill Leak

Leak is a bit tough. After all, Bob Browm has raised the profile of the issue from a state to a national issue. Good for him.

So what does Brown's endorsement of Latham mean?

A deal: Green preferences to go to the ALP in the House of Representatives; ALP preferences to go to the Greens in the Senate. That means the Democrats have been cut out. That means more Green Senators in the Senate.

Here's a question. If the Greens hold the balance of power in the Senate (as I suspect they might do) then will they work with the government of the day? Or will they say no as they have been doing throughout this term of Parliament?

blowback?

I've been puzzling over the recent comments on the Madrid bombings by the senior members of the Howard Government. More than a defensive denial mode is operating here.

These comments say that the international terrorists are opposed to us because of our values. They are at war with us because we are a western, Christian and liberal nation. We are a target because we are who we are and not for what we have done.

We can infer from these remarks that Australia's conservatives and neo-conservatives believe in the "war of civilisations".

Their political pressure on Mick Keelty, the federal Commissioner of Police, to change his views on the blowback from the Iraqi war. Keelty said about the Madrid bombings: "If this turns out to be Islamic extremists responsible for this bombing in Spain, it's more likely to be linked to the position that Spain and other allies took on issues such as Iraq."

The Government attack reinforces, and makes explicit the notion that Islam and the West are in conflict. An interpretration of Alexander Downer's remarks, "I think (Mr Keelty) is just expressing ... a view which reflects a lot of the propaganda we're getting from al-Qaeda", is that his view of the world of nations is based on the absolutes of Good and Evil.

What surfaces form the political unconscious of these conservatives is that blowback from our role in Iraq is irrelevant. Why so? Because the war on terror is a war of civilization based on good (West) versus evil (Islam.) Or the benevolent West versus the cruel East. There is no ambiguity here. It is just black and white. Behind that surface lie the moral Absolutes.

The spinners of the national security state then roll into action. They thunder out the old emotional subtext of appeasement. Ignore the seductive siren call of the appeasers they say. The struggle is eternal. Constant vigilance is required. The enemy is everywhere. Those who are not with us are against us. Treason needs to be flushed out.

Update

You can see the Manichean view in Miranda Devine's terrorism vs appeasers piece in the Sydney Morning Herald. She says:

'The alternative is to turn our backs on the world's only superpower, base our foreign policy on the whims of Osama bin Laden and still be on the terrorist hit list, for the simple fact we are a nation of "infidels".....So those who want to follow Spain's path of appeasement should also be ready to follow Ridley's example and convert to Islam.'

The problem with this Manichean view of the world is that it collapses liberal Islam into a fundamenalist Islamist one. There is no recognition of the diversity within Islam. It results in hostile American actions towards towards the Arab media, such as Al Jazeera. It ignores views of a critical Islam, such as Tariq Ramadan, who endorses the principle of rational argument and public contestation and rejects the closed minded literalism of the Islamic fundamentalists.

What is ignored is the possibilities of the Arabs people building a modernist Islam. According to the neo-con's Manichean view of the world, a modernist Islam can only introduced from the outside by an imperial power.

Update 2
Over at the Sydney Morning Herald Alan Ramsay has a good blow by blow account of the politics of Howard muffling the Federal Commissioner of police.