Troppo Armadillo

Non-fiction bestsellers: the good the bad and the ugly

by Nicholas Gruen

Bestsellers are often disappointments. They promise a great deal – fascination, revolutions in our thinking, entertainment. But they almost invariably under-deliver. When skimming through the pages of Thomas Friedman’s tome the Lexus and the Olive Tree – he’s got a new one out which I’m glad of if only for this hilarious but somewhat laboured attack on it* – I came up with what I call my holographic theory of the bestseller. Read a couple of pages at random and you know all you need to know about the bestseller.

This certainly works for Friedman – in fact I’m so confident of it that I never did read the rest of the Lexus and the Olive Tree. I tried, but the theory somehow overtook me when trying to test it – every time I tried to read more than two pages I just couldn’t go on.

In any event here is a review (or a brief discussion) of three bestsellers.

Gulags and Guantanamo

by Nicholas Gruen

Ted Barlow has a great post over at Crooked Timber. One of the things about ideological warfare is its relentlessness. Tactics and attitudes that emerge to respond to bad situations build up a kind of second nature in their adherents which continues to roll on even where many of the important objectives of the movement have been achieved. I marvel at the continuing vigilance of feminists, the constant baying for more positive discrimination of various kinds as a kind of reflex action. The instinctive defence of old positions - or rather the insistance that, in crafting new positions to resopnd to obvious inadequacies in old positions, ideological toes are not trodden on. I put Clive Hamilton's 'rethinking' of the left agenda in a similar category - constantly telling us that he's really being true to the left (who cares?)

Ted's post is an open letter to the New Republic for joining in on the critique of Amnesty International for comparing the Guantanamo Bay prison used to to make its inmates beyond the reach of due process with Soviet Gulags. It puts me in mind of Ken Parish's great comment on a post by Don, which should be posted up here as a prelude to Ted's words.

The straighteners and punishers are audaciously attaching the straightener and punisher label to the forces of tolerance, acceptance and freedom. The latter don't seem to know what to do to combat such radically dishonest rhetoric, and the cool, disengaged crowd neither know nor care enough to realise that it's a classic three card trick.

Anyway, here's Ted.

Quiggin on Burke's power line fantasy

by Ken Parish

John Quiggin has undertaken a more detailed analysis of NT CLP Opposition Leader Denis Burke's bizarre election campaign promise/proposal to build a power line from southern Queensland to Darwin. I discussed the proposal here. JQ's analysis was published in today's Australian Financial Review, but is reproduced here.

Burke's power line promise seems to be an attempt to provide some vaguely plausible basis for his negative campaigning claim that electricity is "the most expensive in Australia" under the Martin Labor government. Of course that is true, but it was true under the previous CLP government as well. Both electricity and petrol have always been very expensive here, because of the remoteness and tiny population. In fact, the last significant rise in electricity charges was under Burke himself as Chief Minister in 2000! Presumably he's punting on the fact that the NT population has a very high turnover rate, and hoping that with a bit of luck even some of those who lived here in 2000 might have forgotten! With just over a week until election day, we'll soon find out.

Soliciting a meetup

by Ken Parish

I'll be in Sydney this coming Saturday to Tuesday inclusive. The visit is mostly (well, entirely*) for urgent family reasons, but I should have some time to catch up with any Sydney-based bloggers or readers if anyone is interested. I know it's pretty short notice, but a cleansing ale or two or a meal might be doable.

*Mostly I'll be trying to convince my 82 year old dad that he's unsafe at any speed behind the wheel of a car, and for a family crisis meeting about their future living arrangements. Dad is very reluctant to contemplate a retirement village option until they're so incapable that there's absolutely no choice. I can't say I blame him really. A lot of them are quite salubrious, but you can't really avoid that pervasive "God's waiting room" feeling.

A class bound, hide bound, establishment bound country snaps into meritocracy when it matters

by Nicholas Gruen

Troppodillians have seen some of this week's Courier Mail column coming in an earlier post. This week's column is about the strange way in which Great Britain snapped out of the 'low dishonest decade' of appeasement. It seems to me that there is something remarkable about the way in which it turned to the right people, despite their transgressions against the establishment.

In some ways it was the very cosiness of the establishment that meant that when the chips were down the right 'chaps' could be turned to and the formalities could be dispensed with. If Keynes wanted a word with Churchill he could meet him at the Other Club.

I wonder whether someone like Keynes would have been as influential in a more formally meritocratic system. Apart from being an 'outsider' he was also extremely forthright in his criticism of the establishment, and I can't see that being taken too kindly to within the modern Australian bureaucracy. But who knows?

I'm afraid I can't help but quote the incantation "we shall fight on the beaches" again. I expect its unfashionable but I just love great rhetoric. Maybe I wouldn't be so smitten if I had been brought up within an organised religion - because religious texts appeal to something similar - they become more powerful, not less for being repeated. The words resonate with meaning.

Churchill could do rhetoric - he really could. Abe Lincoln even more so. One of the big fakers of rhetoric in my opinion was JFK - but I digress. . . .

NT election dispatch 2

by Ken Parish

This blog isn't called Troppo Armadillo for nothing. There's something about living in Australia's Deep North that generates frequent bouts of bizarre behaviour, not least in our politicians.

The phenomenon was strongly underlined in the first days of the current NT election campaign, when Chief Minister Clare Martin announced a new scheme for the mandatory imprisonment of habitual drunks (despite having dismantled the former CLP government's failed scheme for mandatory imprisonment of thieves soon after it was elected).

The evident contradiction involved in mandatory sentencing of drunks instead of thieves didn't deter Ms Martin for even a moment. Nor, so far at least, has the revelation that NT prisons actually don't have any space to accommodate large numbers of drunks. The outraged reaction of a number of indigenous organisations, who unsurprisingly see Clare's announcement as merely adopting the tawdry old CLP trick of playing the race card, didn't faze Clare either. Instead, she put the weights on prominent Aboriginal politician and outgoing Sports Minister John Ah Kit to make the supreme sacrifice for the Party and profess to support the policy.

Of course, the clincher is that, leaving aside all those factors, Martin's announcement doesn't even make sense in policy terms. Unless they're going to lock up drunks and throw away the key, such a policy will simply create a revolving door situation, with as many itinerant alcoholics being released from prison at any given time as are being locked up. At least I suppose the "long-grassers" (as Territorians call itinerant, mostly Aboriginal alcoholics) will have a comfortable bed and good nutrition for the duration of their incarceration, but they'll still be alcoholics and will inevitably go straight back on the grog as soon as they're released.

Presumably Clare's announcement was triggered by polling data showing that itinerant behaviour was a significant factor that might influence many northern suburbs voters, and presumably Clare's advisers figured that being seen to do something about it (anything, however stupid) would be a vote winner.

Even more bizarrely, CLP Opposition Leader Denis Burke responded by condemning Martin's announcement as draconian, and argued that alcoholism should be treated as a medical issue rather than one for the criminal law! He's quite right, but it's a spectacular reversal for both parties. It almost seems as if the respective leaders have accidentally swapped scripts. More likely, it's a cynical (though probably forlorn) pitch by Burke for the preferences of any independent indigenous or left-leaning candidates in marginal seats.

However, in case you're beginning to think that Denis Burke sounds like quite a sensible chap, don't leap to any rash conclusions.

Thorny thickets of the hippie trail

by Ken Parish

It seems that members of the Schapelle cheersquad aren't quite as numerous as one would have imagined from reading the hysterical outpourings in our mainstream media. Fifty one percent of Australians think she's innocent, but almost as many think she's guilty or don't know (the latter being the only position one can rationally take having not heard the evidence ourselves).

Mind you, as I discussed in my previous post, the evidence against Corby was pretty strong on its face, and it was well and truly open to the judges to find Corby guilty beyond reasonable doubt on the evidence. Moreover, although there might conceivably end up being cogent evidence flowing from investigations of corrupt baggage handlers which casts doubt on her guilt, close followers of the discussion in the Troppo comment boxes will also have noticed a couple of salient alleged facts which weren't before the Bali court, but tend to tilt the scales rather strongly towards a conclusion of guilt.

Selfishness and the community, Adam Smith and a couple of miraculous new modes of production

by Nicholas Gruen

Here's a short essay I've written. The magazine of the Aurora tower in Sydney (would you believe?) approached me to write something for them. They're even paying me!

Readers of my piece on open source software (pdf) that I discussed on Troppo a month or so back (now published in Policy) will recognise it as having similar themes to that piece. Comments appreciated.

Go hire "In my Father's Den" - now out on DVD

by Nicholas Gruen

The New Zealand film “In my father’s den” has been available on DVD for a few months now. I first saw this film in the cinema and saw it without any expectations – other than some good reviews. I thought it was a magnificent movie, one of the best I’ve ever seen and raved about it in similar terms on in a comments thread on Troppo.

I watched it on DVD a few nights ago some of its lustre faded for me. I guess these things are so mercurial that its not so surprising. To explain, the real centre of the plot is the relationship between Paul a man in mid career, say late 30s to early 40s and Celia, a girl of 16. Celia is the baby born to Paul’s ex-girlfriend 8 and a half months after he left provincial New Zealand to travel the world.

If you watch the film you eventually find out whether their own suspicions about whether they are father and daughter are confirmed. When I watched it in the cinema, I found the presentation of this dilemma really one of the most powerful things I’d ever seen in drama. The two people had a powerful relationship in any event but they knew not quite what it was. A bit like a hypercharged version of real life really.

Seeing it last night I was less gripped by this than I was the first time around – but then the first time around was really something. When I first saw it, I regarded the dénouement of the plot as a minor flaw – five minutes of melodrama. Last night I was struck by the fact that I had completely wiped from my memory the plot version of what had happened to Celia. My memories were conditioned by the power of the presentation of her relationship with Paul and by the final scene in the movie – which is a flashback to an earlier time.

And watching a DVD (with someone) is quite different to being in a cinema (in this case on my own). I was much less gripped by the relationship this time. One could even form the view that the film was just a quite well done melodrama with some exceptional acting. But I still heartily recommend the film. Indeed, I’d put it pretty close to a ‘must see’. Casablanca would have been an ordinary film without Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman. With them its an unforgettable classic. See the DVD for the actress who plays Celia’s naïve but yet courageous opening up to life’s possibilities. Her portrayal is matter of fact, without a hint of sentimentality and at the same time very powerful. Go get the DVD and watch it for her alone.

Bling bling for asylum seekers

by Ken Parish

Nicholas Gruen posted an excellent piece about asylum seekers the other day, and Andrew Bartlett has another one today that's also well worth reading. Andrew's post exposes the mealy-mouthed hypocrisy of John Howard's utterances on the issue, especially in relation to the detention of children, which even Howard labels as "regrettable" while blaming the parents! As Andrew points out, successful asylum seekers are not "illegal immigrants", they are refugees whom Australia has promised the world it will give shelter. They have both a legal and moral right to stay in Australia, and Howard's ongoing attempt to blur this critical distinction and demonise them by affixing the "illegal immigrant" label is typically duplicitous and sleazy.

Nevertheless, I've commented numerous times previously that there are real and legitimate issues surrounding the handling of asylum seekers. Despite Howard's cynical, sleazy politicising of the whole area, they need to be addressed constructively by anyone who proposes dismantling the current system, obnoxious as it unquestionably is.

In many countries where asylum seekers are broadly housed in the general community while their applications are being considered, the rate of absconding among unsuccessful applicants is very high indeed. Britain is a prime example, where around 2/3 of unsuccessful asylum seekers disappear into the illegal economy. No doubt that causes a degree of social tension, but it probably isn't critical in a country that has no official migration policy.

In Australia, by contrast, we have a very substantial migration program and our national interest undoubtedly requires that public confidence in it must be maintained. That may well require a level of constraint on asylum seekers that would be shunned in the best of all possible worlds. I doubt that the Australian public would tolerate an absconding rate anything like that of Britain, and embracing policies that led to such an outcome would merely play into the hands of a Pauline Hanson-style racist demagogue.

Corbymania

by Ken Parish

A number of readers have emailed urging me to say something about the bloody Schapelle Corby case. God knows why they'd want to read yet another pundit whittering on about it; surely Schapelle has already consumed enough column centimetres for even the most hardened legal soap opera addict. Not to mention the fact that all that moronic, manufactured hysteria about the case seems now to have provoked some even bigger lunatic into a letter bomb biological attack on the Indonesian Embassy. If I never hear anything more about Schapelle Corby it will be too soon.

In fact I have previously blogged about her case here, where I said:

Corby was caught red-handed with 4 kilos of gunja in her boogie board bag, which she (allegedly) initially refused to open when challenged by Customs at Denpasar airport. That would be sufficient evidence to sustain a possession charge in any part of Australia, in the absence of a cogent defence. And Corby hasn't produced one.

Shouting hysterically that "it must have been planted" doesn't amount to a defence in Australia any more than (one suspects) it does in Bali.

Hannibal and Skasey

by Ken Parish

Jason Soon has an interesting post drawing attention to research suggesting a link between psychopathic and sociopathic personalities and abnormal brain development. The research suggests that 'unsuccessful' criminal psychopaths (i.e. those who get caught) tend to exhibit specific brain development abnormalities which may correlate with being "insensitive to cues that predicted punishment and capture" and therefore being more likely to be caught.

And most of the psychopaths (successful and unsuccessful) also exhibited a significantly larger and longer corpus callosum than others:

With an increased corpus callosum came less remorse, fewer emotions and less social connectedness - the classic hallmarks of a psychopath, he said.

“These people don’t react. They don’t care,” Raine said. “Why that occurs, we don’t fully know, but we are beginning to get important clues from neuro-imaging research."