Dispatches From the Moderate Left

It's Over

2006-10-30T12:47:00.000+10:30

I think it's time to make official what has been pretty obvious for the past few weeks... this blog is no more. There's various logistical reasons, exams, sporadic internet access, employment next year, but mainly I don't have much left to say. I was thinking of converting my recent essay on the WTO and Democracy for a final post, but it's a fairly technical subject and I'm not sure I can condense the essence of the argument into a post which isn't ridiculously long.

Anyway, blogging has been a fun experience, I like to think I wrote some fairly thoughtful stuff on a lot of subjects, thought I'm sure much more of what I wrote would inspire cringing if I re-read it. I've maintained a reasonably consisteny readership of about 20 visitors a day, about half of which are from search engines, which is pretty much what I expected given how technical and sporadic my writing tends to be. Thanks to everyone who's read and especially to those who've commented (if you've read and not commented, I'd be interested to hear from you now!).

I'd like to finish with some witty and enlightening summary of my political philosophy and the world around me, but I can't really. I think my last quote of the week does a pretty good job of summing why I've become so pessimistic about politics over the past couple of years - "as a rule we disbelieve all facts and theories for which we have no use". Very little political discourse I see on the web or elsewhere makes any attempt to meaningfully grapple with opposing views and data, which is a depressing state of affairs.

My further political pessimism comes from a slow realisation at how little impact the sort of political discourse I observe and occasionally participate in has on the wider electorate. Parties and Presidents don't seem to get voted out of office unless factors largely out of their control go haywire (the economy, petrol prices). Fuzzy concepts like good governance, civil liberties (I'm still somewhat depressed that the US legalised torture), parliamentary/ministerial responsibility, openness and accountability are essentially ignored and even things like basic competence seem to take a back seat to the image which can be projected.

My pessimism is fuelling my current feeling that the US Republicans won't lose either house in the midterms, that the Bracks government will leave its promises of open and transparent government further behind when it's re-elected and that the only thing thing which will put Labor in power Federally is a recession. That's not to say I don't believe that the political process can generate good outcomes, overall the Australian political system seems to me one of the most moderate and rational around. I just think there's a massive disconnect between what the "political class" cares about and what influences voters, meaning political discussion can be interesting and occasionally enlightening, but very rarely a catalyst for actual change.

So much for a short final post... that's all, I'm out.

This is Not Me

2006-10-19T12:10:00.000+09:30

Just in case you were wondering (as one sharp-eyed reader did!):

That is my name, but it's not my face. Nor would I do this:

Strict Mormon Campbell Walshe is taking legal action against his league, claiming discrimination after missing a premiership play-off last month.

The midfielder and two teammates, ruckman Jeremy and fellow midfielder Stephen Hoare, abstained because their religion forbids sport on Sundays.

"Sunday is the Lord's day," Walshe said. "It is a day devoted to worship, attending church and spending time with family and friends."

I mean, even if I played footy, I'd have the same attitude to playing on Sunday, but legal action seems to be going way too far. I mean what happens if Sunday is out so they have to go to Saturday and then a Jewish player invokes the 4th commandment? I can't see how that'd work...

Quote of the Week

2006-10-07T14:37:00.000+09:30

The way our pre-existing biases influence the way we interpret new data is something that has long been of interest to me. For example, I find it fascinating the way that political radicals and conspiracy theorists have a habit of using the fact that something is verified by mainstream sources as a point against its veracity and openly embrace claims by 'fringe' sources without much critical examination. On that note, I recently ran across a quote by an American philosopher/psychologist, William James, from a collection of his late 19th century writings:

[A]s a rule we disbelieve all facts and theories for which we have no use.

So very, if regrettably, true.

Picture of the Week

2006-10-07T11:50:00.000+09:30

Following on from my previous post, this telling photo is doing the rounds:

How many countries in the world are dangerous enough that Condi needs to wear a bullet proof jacket at while disembarking at the main airport? And in how many of them has the US spent a few hundred billion dollars and a couple of hundred thousand troops in an attempt to establish security?

Mission Impossible

2006-10-03T17:10:00.000+09:30

Ever since the occupation and insurgency of Iraq began in earnest, right wing commentators and bloggers have been attempting to spread the meme that things in Iraq aren't as bad as the media makes it look like and that the country will soon be stable. Some three and a half years of unabated violence later, it's pretty clear that the rosy picture in those people's minds is far from reality. There were reports last month that 7,000 civilians had died in violent circumstances in the previous two months, a conservative estimate given that data was not collected from two regions due to them being too dangerous. This represents a death toll of about 120/day, which is an enormous figure in a country of some 28m people and, sadly, empirically comparable to the average number of people killed by Saddam's regime.

The Brookings fact sheet, which is a fantastic resource for Iraq statistics, gives a further impression of the continuing high level of violence. Bearing in mind that the line graphs there look somewhat misleading because they count figures from the first few days of October, almost every indication of the level of violence in the country has either been roughly steady for the past two years (US and Iraqi troop fatalities, car bomb levels) or increasing (multiple fatality bombings). And while some of the polls in that fact sheet show Iraqis to be fairly optimistic about the future in the face of this violence, a recent poll also seem to indicate that they don't think that international troops should stay around to help them to a more peaceful future.

These statistics are genuinely depressing but not of themselves useful to those of us less interested in beating anti-Iraq war horses and more interested in the question of what should be done now to try and fix these problems. Unfortunately, as a recent Slate rundown of foreign policy thinking on the subject shows, no one really seems to know how to answer that question. The hawkish wing of the spectrum is advocating that the US send more troops, which might be an idea worth thinking about if there weren't no more troops to send.

The opposite end of the spectrum continues to advocate short-term withdrawal, without any real attempt to grapple with the question of what that would do to the security sitiation in the country. Those in the middle have put up ideas ranging from an "oil-spot" approach to a radical breakup of the country, which have either been tried and failed in Iraq already (the former) or seem exceptionally likely to create failure in the region formerly known as Iraq. And, finally, the US ambassador to Iraq has another idea - involving "manipulat[ing] the military balance of power among Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds to coerce them to negotiate" - which seems somewhat crazy to me, given that it would involve the US to attack milita belonging to the Shia majority.

To conclude - the US is losing the war in Iraq, the Iraqi people are being killed by terrorists and their fellow citizens at an alarming rate and no one, of any political leaning, has any real idea of how to make the situation better. And looking at all the options, I'm not even sure which is the best of a bad bunch. These are the sorts of problems you get when you invade a country with cavalier optimisim and no real plan for what to do once you conquer the place. I get absolutely no satisfaction from concluding this, but I haven't read anything in the past six months that isn't consistent with it. And it's yet more confirmation that war is the H-Word.

Disillusion Everywhere

2006-09-30T10:23:00.000+09:30

What popular lefty blogger Atrios writes isn't usually frothing at the mouth extremist stuff. It's militant and regularly somewhat over the top, but it usually has a hint of moderation and insight into reality. But for whatever reason (perhaps because of their completely open nature) his comments attract a very extremist crowd which responds to most posts with at least a hundred voices crying out in almost perfectly uniform rage, repeating perfectly predictable hyperbole. So Atrios' comments are a good place to go to gauge the mood of the far left. And while the far right is certainly disillusioned with their party in the leadup to November's US mid-term election I think I might have underestimated just how disillusioned the far left is.

Before voting against the recent Torture Bill Hillary Clinton gave a fairly stirring speech higlighting America's long, principled opposition to torture. It's a little long (5:29) but it's worth watching:

Atrios recently posted the full text of the speech, without comment. As of today he has received 1621 comments in reply. Now, comment mining is usually uninformative, but I think a sample of the comments gives an extraordinarily strong impression of disillusionment at Democrats among the far left, to the point where it is going to be extremely difficult to motivate a lot of them to vote. Ellipses in between each comment, edited for language and some comments in italics:

Wasted words, I'm afraid.
...
She's filibustering, right?

Right?

Otherwise I don't want to hear from the b****
...
And as for Mr. Barack, I assume 'Osama' is the word in some indigenous Kenyan language for 'trimmer'. I have no idea what this means, but I'm pretty sure it's a fairly nasty slur at Rising Democrat star Barak Obama, whose speech opposing the amendment was previously posted in the same manner
...
So what? Stirring words, but so the f*** what.
...
More purty words.

So what?
...
They are all cowards and they cannot be trusted lead. In short, they are afraid.
...
The silence of the Democratic leadership is deafening and disturbing. Even if they win in November, is it worth this? Chucking habeas corpus? Allowing the Prez to determine FOR HIMSELF what the Geneva Conventions are, what torture is? Rendering prisoners in the fight against terror into a veritable black hole of hell, with no recourse for those who may be innocent?

If they think it is, then they are as damnable as the fascisti they're seeking to replace. They say they want to show they can govern, but if they can't stand firmly behind intrepid constitutional values, and a day or two away from the 60th anniversary of the Nuremberg laws, then they don't deserve anyone's vote.

They won't be getting mine.

These aren't entirely representative as there were some positive responses, but they're indicative of the fairly widespread anger there. Specifically, the commenters are mostly angy that no Democrat filibusted the bill which is a procedural tactic which minorities in the US Senate have previously been able to use to indefinitely stall debate on an issue unless they are overrided by a 60 senators (out of 100). I say previously, because it's not a tactic realistically open to the Democrats at the moment after the Republicans showed their willingness last year to abolish the filibuster entirely (the 'nuclear option'), a move which would only take a straight majority vote. The Democrats don't have a majority in the Senate and it's fairly unreasonable for their supporters to hold them to a standard of 'if you can't stop the majority, we won't vote for you', but looking over the comments there, that's pretty much what I see. And if their supporters are that disillusioned then that doesn't bode well for the Democrats in a few weeks time.

Update: I should also mention that the Republican senate has pretty much appeased the base on the issue I thought they were cracking up on - immigration - by passing an act which will create a fence/wall between the US and Mexico across much of the border. I'm going to go and make a rash prediction that the Dems will make electoral gains across the board in November but will not gain majorities in either the House or the Senate. Creepy sex scandals notwithstanding

This Week In History...

2006-09-29T21:28:00.000+09:30

...The US legalised torture. Not the very most severe torture, but torture nevertheless. I've said it before and I fear I'll have cause to say it again - it's not about them, it's about us. And the fact that the between the two just narrowed a litle bit in a crucial way is a sad fact worth noting.

The Pope and Islam

2006-09-26T18:22:00.000+09:30

I'm in essay writing mode at the moment, so in lieu of a proper post, I'll exceprt parts of an interesting interview (via Sullivan) with a dude with a fancy title - "president of the Institute for the Study of Religions and Cultures at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome" - on the Pope's recent and somewhat controversial comments regarding Islam. I found it interesting because it closely echoes my thoughts on the subject:

Q. Juan Cole of the University of Michigan has said that Surah 2:256 (“There is no compulsion in religion”)—to which the pope made reference in his speech—is not from the Prophet’s early days, as the pope asserted, but from when the Prophet was ruler of Medinah. Samir Khalil Samir, SJ, disagrees and says the pope’s dates are right. Who is correct? More important, can one make sweeping statements about Islam’s views on violence and religious tolerance relying solely on the Qur’an while ignoring the Hadith (commentary), the Sharia (law), and the entire history of the religion?

A.The consensus of scholars, both Muslim and non-Muslim, is that Surah 2 is from the Medinah period, when Muhammad had increasing political power.
...
The second part of your question is more important. It seems to me essential not to lock Muslims into one particular reading of their texts and traditions. It is nonsensical to say to someone who claims that Islam is a peaceful religion that he may not believe such a thing because the Qur’an says such-and-such. She should be encouraged to believe that Islam is peaceful and held to observe that.

There is much more violence in the Bible than in the Qur’an. Here is a line from the Psalms, the backbone of Christian and Jewish daily worship: “A blessing on him who takes your babies and dashes them against the rocks!” (Ps. 137:9). We cannot deny the presence of such verses in our Scripture and worship, yet we do not think of them as defining our attitude to enemies. As for the New Testament, it is not without verses open to a violent interpretation: “Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword” (Mt. 10:34).

The point of quoting these texts is not to claim that Christianity and Judaism are inherently violent religions, but to offer proof that scripture passages which apparently justify and even glorify violence do not necessarily make for a violent religion. Christians and Jews have ways of reading their scriptures that allow them to maintain their sacredness without considering large parts of them normative for behaviour or attitudes. Muslims have traditionally used similar methods of interpretation.

This is why trawling the Qur'an for violent verses and extrapolating from the findings to the actions and beliefs of modern day Muslims is an intellectually bankrupt exercise. Yes there do exist Muslims who justify their cause by using these verses but to declare all other Muslims guilty by association is as offensive/ridiculous to them as it is to accuse Christians of sharing the beliefs of the Crusaders or the Dominionists. Actually, it's worse because far too many people buy into the "Islam is a religion of the sword" argument.

Picture of the Week

2006-09-21T09:22:00.000+09:30

A post over at Brendan Nyhan's blog highlights the somewhat bizzare practice of US government departments' childrens mascots. I think this hyperactive bunch, the National Security Agency's CryptoKids, is my favourite:

Stanley Stat and Pie Chart Pam ("Agriculture and Maths Fun!"), from the US Department of Agriculture, have to be a close second.

Quote of the Week

2006-09-19T14:16:00.000+09:30

I'm reading some reasonably arcane international law stuff at the moment. The following quote, discussion some definitions in the GATT treaty, is unfortunately not satire:

The terms "directly" and "indirectly" do not refer to "direct" and "indirect" taxes. On the contrary, a tax applying "directly" to "products" is an indirect tax, while a tax applying "indirectly" to "products" is a direct tax. This terminological anomaly can be resolved by switching one's perspective.

Source: Kenneth W. Dam, The GATT: Law and International Economic Organization (1970).

LEO, Revisited

2006-09-18T17:19:00.000+09:30

I've mentioned before that I'm a fan of using a "Liberty, Equality, Order" spectrum for analysing political idology, in contrast to a simplistic left/right divide. I ran into this spectrum early on at university, and so I found a political scientist's attempt, at The LEO Test, to create a program which could automatically analyse the ideology of political writing very interesting when I ran across it a year or so ago. This spectrum sees the political landscape as populated by (some combination of) three distinct ideologies which can be reflected in moderate or radical positions - Liberty (libertarians, anarchists), Equality (progressives, communists) and Order (Conservatives, fascists).

Cam over at the fairly new (and quite good) group blog, Polemica, recently wrote a post expressing his dissatisfaction at the traditional left/right divide and in the ensuing discussion I brought up the LEO test. One commentor there thought that the spectrum wouldn't properly capture the ideology of post-left/right divide, community-values based parties like People Power so I decided to give the program supplied by Jonathon York another try (my last attempt at doing this showed the limits of the test as applied to judicial writings, more than disproving it more comprehensively I think). So I went to their web site and collated all the relevant text I could find, from their "about" and policies documents. Just to give an overview, here's what the party has to say for themselves (in broken html on the site):

families: the foundation of society but unrepresented by any broad, mainstream movement
consumers: our two main parties represent employers and employees, but not consumers
people with disabilities, chronic and mental illnesses and their families/carers: the most invisible and vulnerable Australians
the aged: regarded as not glamorous, important or productive in our culture
volunteers in communities: who are the glue in society but are unrepresented in any of our halls of power
small businesses and independent owners: the backbone of our economy and employment but overlooked by governments
individuals and communities who practice self-help: whose voices are rarely heard

Now, just looking at that you get the strong underlying message of "society is only as strong as its weakest member" which is a paradigm Equality value. This impression is borne out in a textual analysis of the 5000-odd words I put together from the web site:

The bars represent percentages of ideological keywords (ie 55% of keywords used reflected Equality values). Now, it's a relatively small sample of words but I think the analysis has hit on the essential ideology of the party. It's strongly egalitarian with no secondary preference for either order or liberty, given that order/conservative values of "family" and "regulation" co-exist with a respect for the dynamism and freedom of small enterprise.

One of the Polemica bloggers suggested I try the analysis on the Labor and Liberal party platforms, these being the two dominant political parties in Australia. The Liberal party likes to identify itself with small-l liberalism values, but also has a strong socially/traditionally conservative element in it which is in tension with these values. The Labor party has historical roots in the union movement although moved away from those roots somewhat when it was in power in the 80s and 90s by governing in a style in some way foreshadowed the "Third Way" of Clinton/Blair.

These platform documents aren't ideal source material for two reasons. First, while the Labor platform is very large (100,000) which is good, the Liberal one is quite small (4,000). In addition, potential nuances in the party's policies in different areas such as law and order, social areas, welfare, economic regulation, industrial relations etc. aren't reflected in such a broad brush analysis. Still, given that I don't have time to do a full analysis I decided to see what the numbers brought up. I excluded one of the data source files from the analsyis because the word "Liberal" was included as an ideological key word, which is obviously inappropriate in assessing the Liberal party. This left me with three source files, and these are the averages of the results.

Some might be surprised that these aren't exactly the same, but I do think that these graphs are reasonably reflective of reality. The Liberal party, if you read its platform (I didn't, I just scanned, but you know what I mean) likes to fancy itself as a bastion of traditional liberalism and that preference is very strongly captured. The document also emphasises the "Australian" value of egalitarianim in its emphasis on "opportunity for all", which I think explains the relatively high E score. Now, the Liberal party's actions frequently belie their rhetoric, but I do think the simple test here is picking up the ideological flavour of their rhetoric quite well.

Likewise for Labor. The emphasis is much more clearly on Equality, with no strong secondary preference, although a slight leaning towards order which is not at all incosistent with the Labor party (it has only weak committment to civil liberties issues, for instance, and is unafraid to regulate private business quite heavily in some areas). I think it's also pertinant that neither party had particularly strong ideological preferences for their primary value (the highest marker was about 47% each) which is to be expected from relatively moderate mainstream parties. All in all, I think these rough analysis confirm the usefulness of the blunt textual analysis of The LEO Test in analysing the ideological content of political writing.

Off Topic

2006-09-18T12:21:00.000+09:30

In lieu of posting a proper post while I'm busy reading endless pdfs on international economic law, if you have Adobe 7.0 then load up any pdf and hit control shift v. If nothing happens, highlight the next bit of text - turn your speakers up! And make sure the .pdf is text-readable and not just an image. Maybe it's just me, and maybe I'm just board, but I found that way cool...

PS. Once you've done that, the answer to your next question can be found by highlighing the next piece of text - control shift e turns it off :).

Institutional Knowledge vs Spouting From the Sidelines

2006-09-16T13:53:00.000+09:30

Given that I can't be an expert on everything, I have a habit of defering to people with relevant expertise and experience on particular questions, unless they clearly have a conflict of interest or if I've seen relevant compelling evidence contradicting their position from someone with equivalent knowledge. I try not to base my opinion of an expert's opinion on my prior prejudices. Of course I might do that unconsciously anyway, but I do make a conscious attempt not to.

Take racial profiling as a police tactic. My gut instinct is that it's not a good idea for all the usual reasons - it gives both too many false positives and negatives as well as alienating the targeted group, which is the group which law enforcement is most likely to receive unsolicited tip-offs from if it doesn't feel too alienated. However, I am prepared to conced that it might be a valid tactic for law enforcement to utilise. A group like the Australian federal police or the US FBI have a strong vested interested in keeping potential sources of information open. They have institutional experience as to both the effectiveness or otherwise and the negative effects of profiling. Given that they are the ones who bear the retaliatory consequences if they're wrong and the ones with the hands on experience, I'm usually prepared to give them the benefit of the doubt. So I'm not prepared to say that, for instance, the FBIs "voluntary" request for interviews with thousands of Islamic-Americans in the immediate aftermath of September 11 was unjustified, for example.

This evidently isn't the approach that Tim Blair takes to these sorts of issues. This week the Commissioner of the Australian Federal Police, Mick Keelty, criticised profiling as a tactic:

In a revealing interview with The Weekend Australian, Mr Keelty said racial profiling was self-defeating because it risked alienating mainstream Muslims while ignoring the real danger of homegrown non-Muslim terror.

"I remind people that the firstperson who was convicted of a terrorist offence in Australia was a person with the unlikely name of Jack Roche," the police chief said.
...
Mr Keelty said the danger of mistreating people who felt "the least bit alienated" was that they would become permanent outcasts in the community.

I'm sure he's mindful, too, of the fact that the latest UK terror plot was apparently thwarted by an unsolicited tip-off from a member of the Islamic community which the suspects were a part of and that such a vital source of information may be jeopardiesed by rough handed police tactics. I'm often a bit sceptical of police statements about policing when they're asking for more powers, because they have a natural insitutional inclination towards wanting more power and a disinclination to take competing considerations into account. But that concern is irrelevant here - the federal police have the powers to adopt a profiling policy if they so desired, but taking local considerations into account they've decided that it's not a good policy.

Anyway, Tim Blair, former Bulletin Journalist, Blogger and pontificator extraordinare apparently knows more about policing than the head of Australia's federal police, responding to Keelty's interview with the statement "Modern policing apparently involves a disinclination to examine evidence." You know, I'm not big on shouting "double standard" but it seems to me that Blair is showing a disinclination to examine evidence about policing provided by our own chief policeman. Or maybe Blair has a secret career which has given him expert knowledge on policing that I'm missing? And, no, "reading conservative opinion pieces" doesn't count, I'm afraid.

Speaking Too Soon

2006-09-14T19:52:00.000+09:30

This has to be something of a record in me being proved wrong. This time last week I wrote a post on double jeopardy and in response to the apparent reluctance of Australian State governments to abolish the rule, I noted:

it seems the Labor Attorney generals managed to restrain their authoritarian impulses in this instance, which has to be something of a first.

Well, this'll learn me:

An 800-year-old legal principle that prevents people being tried twice for the same crime twice looks set to be overturned in Australia.

The New South Wales Government has now introduced legislation to scrap the double jeopardy principal.

And the other states and the Commonwealth are now considering following suit and are expected to release a report on the issue by the end of the year.

The piece quotes Morris Iemma, the NSW premier:

Where compelling new evidence comes to light to solve a serious crime, criminals shouldn't be able to hide behind what is a legal technicality. It's just common sense.

Providing yet another example where "thinking about an issue" provides a better basis for policy making than gut feeling. Now, because the media's reporting of legal issues is universally imprecise to the point of uselessness, I'm not actually sure what the substance of this proposal is. There's 3 possibilites that I can see from what was said there:

Allowing retrial where the acquitted person secured the acquittal by committing a peversion of justice offence (eg. intimidating the jury).

Allowing retrial if evidence which, scientifically, could not have been discovered at the time of the original trial (eg. DNA)

Allowing retrial if any "compelling new evidence" comes to light

That's a pretty broad spectrum. I actually would support the first. If an accused doesn't play by the rules of the criminal justice system, they shouldn't be afforded its protections (within reason of course). The accused in our accusatorial is permitted to "wage war" against the state only to a point (eg. by remaining silent, vigorously questioning evidence, instructing a lawyer to conduct their defence, demanding the prosecution meet its burden of proof) but there are justified limits placed on this ability, and intimidating witnesses, bribing officials and otherwise perverting the system goes beyond what is justified I think. In situations where the accused has perverted the course of justice and where this perversion is causally linked to their acquittal, the prosecution and police have done their jobs and quite possibly would have secured a conviction without the accused's conduct. In this situation, there is only minimal justification for not allowing a retrial.

The second possibility, I'm much, much more equivocal about. In those sorts of situations the accused has played by the rules and, presumably, secured an acquittal by holding the prosecution to their burden, a burden they were evidently unable to satisfy. In this case it was the State's fault that the accused wasn't convicted, their fault for bringing a case against a person with insufficient reliable evidence to secure a conviction. The problem with allowing a retrial in such a situation is that it implicitely encourages and condones the State bringing to trial marginal cases. Police and prosecutors love bringing charges against people, especially in cases which reach the media spotlight, in fact doing so is a large portion of their reason for existence. This isn't to cast personal aspersions against people in these bodies, far from it. It's simply an inherent aspect of an adversarial prosecutorial culture. Just as 'ambulance chasing' tort prosecutors gain professional satisfaction in nailing the next big company, so to do public prosecutors relish the process of prosecuting the criminal bad guys. This isn't a bad thing, but it's why society needs rules to constrain them and to encourage them to take into account the interests of the person they are accusing because that person might just be innocent.

Now, I acknowledge that a specific DNA-exception is, on its own, singularly unlikely to encourage a more aggressive prosecutorial culture given that it would only apply to cold cases. But the message it sends isn't unlikely to have an effect. What it says is that, if you bring a case against someone now without enough evidence to convict them, then that isn't the end of the story. Some day in the future when we have ever better forensic technology, you might be able to charge them again. So you can be more aggressive now because there will be less consequences for you if you don't get the desired result. This is a worrying message to send.

As for the final possibility, which is as wide or wider than the English exception, it's extremely worrying. All of the above factors are relevant, but to a stronger degree and with more negative baggage. Not only would it encourage agents of the State to bring more marginal cases before the courts, it would implicitly encourage them to not diligently seek out all possible evidence safe in the knowledge that if the accused is acquitted and one of the leads they didn't seek to pursue eventually turns up "new and compelling" evidence, they could ask for a retrial. This is bad public policy, pure and simple.

The fundamental problem with the "victim's rights" movement, for all the perfectly valid feelings which underpin it and the occasionall excesses which give it just cause for complaint, is that it sees the job of the criminal justice system to produce factually correct outcomes, nothing more, no matter what the cost. But the job of the criminal justice system is to regulate social behaviour on a broader level and the rules of the system are designed to both give legitimacy to a system which takes away citizens natural rights (of self defence and retribution, for example) and prevent the State abusing the assymetric power which it has relative to its citizens. The rules are also designed to reduce the ability of the media and citizens (whether aided and abetted by the political power of the day or not) to carry out witch hunts on unpopular or superficially guilty individuals. Thhe potential (partial or full) abolishment of double jeopardy in Australia adds another worrying bow to the quiver of the populist crime media. If double jeopardy goes, and the public megaphones kick up a big enough stink then they potentially have a new prize within their grasp - retrial.

Alright, I'm Curious

2006-09-11T19:52:00.000+09:30

A couple of months ago I wrote a post about a James McConvil newspaper opinion piece from late last year "Law of the Jungle is the Best regulator." Ever since I wrote that I've been getting a consistent stream of Google hits, about half of which are people searching for the exact phrase "Law of the Jungle is the Best regulator" and half which are just searching for those words. Now, this isn't a particularly common phrase on google. The exact phrase gives 6 hits - two for the original newspaper article, one for a reprint of that one for this blog and another two for a different (and interesting) blog post on the article. The non-exact phrase obviously gives many more hits, but the newspaper article and my post come up first and second because they're obviously the closest.

My question is... why is this phrase being searched so regularly? I'm really at a loss. With the exception of the slightly creepy "black market kidneys" searches I regularly get (my posts on the subject will not help you find one, sorry people), this is the most common source of my google traffic. I've had a few dozen, perhaps close to 50 hits from either the two previous searches which is a lot by the standards of this blog. It's especially weird to me because so many of the searches are the exact phrase. It's almost as if McConvil is camping google, searching for references to his article which I would believe, except I can't believe he'd keep on clicking on the link and in any event, a reasonable number of the searches are from international sources.

Anyway, I'd really like it if someone who finds this post by searching for that phrase could clear this up for me! Is this article being studied at schools/universities? Is there a book or something with that as the title? I've turned anonymous commenting back on so hopefully someone will be able to enlighten me...

Update: Problem solved! An anonymous commentor left this in the original post:

hey mate
I'm studying Comp Law and Policy at Deakin univsity. Believe it or not we have to do a compulsory assignment critiquing James' article, focusing on s 45 and 45A of the TPA. I'm citing your blog in mine - don't whether i'm supposed to or not.

I knew there was something!

Quote of the Week

2006-09-09T23:37:00.000+09:30

I realise that Queensland Premier Peter Beattie's "average bloke", "not a politician-politican" image is carefully managed/crafted by his PR team and amplified by the media reporting his actions through that prism but, still, this is a stylish way to celebrate an almost unprecedented election victory:

Tonight we're going to have a few drinks but tomorrow we're back to work.

And the Labor stranglehold on Australian State parliament's is secure for another month at least. It looks to be another landslide, too, with Labor barely losing any of the 60 (out of 89) seats it held after the last election and probably picking up some of the three seats it lost to the Liberals in recent by-elections. Much as I'm not a huge fan of many aspects of the current crop of centre-right state Labor administrations, you gotta admit that they all seem to have found pretty good formulae for winning elections.

(Moving) Picture of the Week

2006-09-09T22:25:00.000+09:30

Irwin's career in a parodic nutshell:

(Note, you might need the latest version of Flash player plugin if you don't see the above).

"Irwin": As we steer our boat down, looking for these dangerous predators... boy, there's a king croc right here. He must be four meters; 12, 13 feet long at least. This croc has enough power in its jaws to rip my head right off.

Kenny: (Oh, no!)

"Irwin": I've got to be careful. So, what I'm gonna do is sneak up on it and jam my thumb in its butthole.

(later)

"Irwin": Well! That was quite an angry croc! But I managed to escape with only a few bruises and a shattered left testicle. Next week we'll look for more of these beautiful creatures, so we can learn more about them by pissing them off immensely.

It's never surprised me that someone so blissfully unaware of concepts like irony and understatement found a more natural home in the US than in Australia. I do of course feel sadness at his passing, sympathy for his family, respect for his position on the world stage and appreciation for what he did to shine light on Australia's natural world. But in the end, he was more of an oddity than a "hero" from where I'm sitting.

As an aside, it's interesting that a number of commentors at Landeryou's blog agreed with Germaine Greer's general sentiments in this interview:

I'd encourage you to hear what she's saying, rather than what other people are saying about what she's saying cause what she's saying isn't that crazy (except for on two occasions when she got called out on some minor hyperbole and let herself get frustrated with the interviewer). Also interesting that Landeryou didn't actually try and rebut any of her substantive points in his accompanying commentary (calling her "owned" by the interviewer doesn't count). He instead chose to attack a random straw man ("Perhaps she'll have something bitchy to say about the fossil fuel use of the late Peter Brock") and some comments made by someone writing about Greer. Strange.

PS. Yes, I have just figured out how to steal youtube imbeds... I'll try to keep their use to a minimum.

Triple Jeopardy?

2006-09-07T14:14:00.000+09:30

I've never seen it, but I understand that the plot of the movie Double Jeopardy is something like this. Woman is framed for the murder of her husband. The framing is successful and she goes to jail. She later discovers that not only is she not guilty of the murder, she could not have been guilty because her husband is still alive and responsible for her being framed. Armed with her extensive knowledge of double jeopardy law she goes on a manhunt to kill her husband in revenge when she gets out of prison, safe in the knowledge that she can’t be prosecuted for the ‘same’ murder twice thanks to the double jeopardy rule.

If this were my only exposure to the rule, I would think it was pretty stupid. What’s the point of a legal rule which gives people leeway to commit crimes with no fear of being punished? Thankfully, as with so much popular understanding of legal theory the protagonist’s understanding of double jeopardy law in that movie is completely wrong. Double jeopardy only prohibits a person being tried for the same crime twice (The term ‘double jeopardy’ actually encompasses four distinct doctrines, but this is the most important one. If you really care about the other ones, feel free to ask). On no reading of the law could the murder which didn’t take place and the murder which the protagonist intends to commit be seen as the same crime. They would happen in different places and circumstances and at completely different times. Not to mention the fact that one would actually exist while the other wouldn't (ok, it's a film so neither would, but you know what I mean). What would happen, if the woman had ended up murdering the husband for real, is that she would receive an acquittal for the first crime which she didn’t commit and then be promptly charged for the new murder.

The double jeopardy rule is potentially topical in Australia at the moment. As far as I can see the biggest obstacle to the re-trial of Jack Thomas, who recently had his conviction for terrorism-related offences quashed by the Victorian Supreme court, is that it would be a violation of the Double Jeopardy rule. Thomas’ lawyer, unsurprisingly, seems to be aware of this and used the language of double jeopardy in his initial submissions opposing a retrial - ‘If ever a case called for finality, this one does.’ Sounds like a good enough excuse for me to run over the case for the double jeopardy rule.

The single most persuasive reason for the double jeopardy rule, in my opinion, is that it discourages sloppy policing. If the State could simply turn around and re-prosecute an acquitted person there would be no incentive for the police (or prosecutors) to do a decent job. Even if you limited this to circumstances where ‘new information’ came up it would still discourage a complete searching out of all available information. It might even encourage police to deliberately not expend resources pursuing certain leads, because if they get a conviction without doing so then they’ve saved themselves the resources and if they don’t get a conviction, they can then investigate that area and find out ‘new information’ necessary for a re-trial. Given the mental and physical strain involved in the trial process for witnesses, families/related parties and the accused themselves, as well as the cost to society of maintaining courts and prosecutors, anything which encourages police to get it right the first time is a good thing.

There’s a few other ‘practical’ justifications for the rule. The further from the events themselves that a trial occurs, the less reliable the existing evidence becomes. Physical evidence degrades, gets contaminated or gets lost and witness testimony becomes based less and less on memory and more and more on external sources. So if a new trial could be called every time some new piece of evidence came to light, the trial process would have an increasingly lower chance it has of reaching the correct factual outcome.

But practical justifications only get you so far. They provide the reason for having a general rule, but not for having extremely limited scope for granting exceptions to it. Most of the more abstract justifications for double jeopardy rely on an axiom that underpins Common Law criminal law tradition – ‘ it is better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent person suffer’. I’m not going to go into an extended defence of that maxim here, but the two chief justifications for it are (1) the vastly unequal power relationship and access to forensic/inquisitorial resources between the individual and the state in a criminal trial, (2) the asymmetry of harm done to an individual wrongly convicted compared to the harm to society of allowing a guilty person to be acquitted. So if you think of an innocent person who is wrongly accused of a crime, double jeopardy is an important safeguard in that it encourages police to only bring cases founded on solid evidence (because they don’t get a second bite at the cherry if they lose a weak case), it reduces the inevitable stigma associated with being constantly dragged before courts for the same crime and it eliminates the ability of the state to keep retrying the same issue time and time again until they find a sympathetic jury.

There’s other more abstract justifications for the rule. Double jeopardy gives accused criminals (whether guilty or innocent) finality in that the State isn’t permitted to hang a sword of Damocles over their heads for the rest of their lives. Relatedly (not a word), it greatly hampers the ability of the State to use perverse prosecution, with the associated social stigma, as a political weapon against innocent but unpopular defendants. Double jeopardy also upholds juries’ traditional right to give ‘peverse’, against the fact or mercy verdicts which a the citizens’ final line of defence against truly obscene laws.

The reason for the title of this post is that England essentially abolished Double Jeopardy in a 2003 Act and replaced it with ‘triple jeopardy’, in that individuals can be tried for the same serious time twice provided ‘new and compelling evidence’ and public interests tests are satisfied. They still can’t be tried a third time, though. I think this aspect of this Act (and many others) goes much too far. On the specifics of the law, the presumption of innocence is essentially neutered if a jury is looking at a person whom a court of appeal has determined there to be ‘compelling’ evidence of guilt as they must do so for a person on their second trial. Further, the arguments relating to sloppy police work seem particularly applicable to the English situation, where police corruption and ineptitude in the prosecution of crimes (eg. the murder of Stephen Lawrence) somehow lead to calls for the abolishment of a rule which gives police strong incentives to do their job right the first time.

I do actually support some tinkering at the edges of the rule, especially in regards to trials where the accused is found to have committed a perversion of justice type offence and trials for collateral crimes such as perjury. But I’m glad that double jeopardy isn’t seriously in jeopardy in Australia, at the moment. It isn’t one of our two and a half (weak) constitutional rights, however, so it could be overturned at any time by a government determined to do so. There was some indication that it would be neutered following public outcry at the Carroll decision (where the High Court took a ridiculously strict position on a collateral double jeopardy rule that NZ, UK and, previously, Queensland courts had opposed on straight common law grounds), but it seems the Labor Attorney generals managed to restrain their authoritarian impulses in this instance, which has to be something of a first.

Many Happy Tax Returns

2006-08-29T12:09:00.000+09:30

I wrote an essay on tax policy earlier in the year in which I argued for an abolishment of mandatory self-assessment (filling out a tax return) accompanied by a general simplification of tax laws and better tax administration. One of the comments I got back from my lecturer was that it would be electorally unpopular because, among other reasons, Australians like receiving tax returns. And she's right. Whether it's a couple of hundred or a couple of thousand dollars, people (including myself) really do enjoy getting a lump sum back from the tax office a few months after the end of each financial year (depending on how slack they are in getting their forms in).

If you think about it, this response is completely batty. The current system of tax overpayment and then delayed returns makes people financially worse off. For one, people not have use of this money throughout the year and people value present consumption more than future consumption (see: credit cards). Additionally, individuals do not get a chance to save or invest this money and receive interests or other returns on it. So why do people seem to be so irrational and like a system which makes them financially worse off?

Well, I don't really know, but I've got a few ideas. The most common reason that people say they like getting a lump sum tax return back is that it's like compulsory saving. This idea that people would like to save more money than they do but are unable to control themselves in the short term to do so is anathema to economists who assume that people are rational calculating machines, but it's a common experience. That's why government programs like compulsory super-annuation payments can make people better off even though it's restricting their choices.

Another reason is probably that most people simply don't notice, say, a $20/week average tax overpyament but they certainly notice it when they receive a $1,000 lump sum in August. The former figure is not mentally salient and so doesn't register in our mental accounting, while the latter does. The former doesn't significantly decrease our subjective wellbeing (even though it makes us financially worse off) but the latter increases it.

This idea is relevant to a policy much favoured by tax economists but which is seen as political suicide by those who decide these sorts of thigns - tax indexation. As you might be aware, the government in effect sits over a large and mostly hidden income tax increase every year as incomes rise in line with inflation. Even if no one in the economy is actually getting a net salary increase (over and above what inflation robs them) income taxes rise as a greater percentage of people's income moves into higher tax brackets. This does not require people to actually cross into a new tax bracket, a nominal rise in income will always increase the proportion of a person's income which is taxed at a higher rate (assuming they earn enough to be in two tax brackets).

Anyway, economists don't like this hidden tax. They think that governments should be honest about their tax increases so that people can better evaluate tax policy. To this end, they suggest that the level at which each tax bracket cuts in should rise every year in line with inflation. The problem with this is that governments would no longer be able to give fiscally pain-free "tax cuts" by refunding people's hidden tax increase back to them in highly publicised "you'll be $15/week better off!!" budget measures. In contrast, the tax saving that people receive from tax indexation would be entirely hidden, especially given how little the underlying concept of fiscal drag is understood (eg. many people think that "bracket creep" is only an issue if you move from one tax bracket to the next).

Now, this may be an argument for educating people more about tax policy. But I actually think that even if people know about the underlying irrationality of their preferences, they still would prefer a regular tax cut to an indexation of brackets in the same way that people who understand that receiving a lump sum tax return shouldn't make them happy still enjoy receiving one. Humans are funny creatures, but our quirks should be taken into account and not assumed away when making economic policy.

Laughably Inaccurate

2006-08-26T15:17:00.000+09:30

About a year ago I wrote a post explaining why I think the sections of Victoria's Racial and Religious Tolerance Act which prohibit fairly wide classes of speech are, by and large, a bad idea. As I explained previously, the speech that they seek to prohibit may well be extremely distasteful and possibly even harmful, but these considerations aren't enough to override the general justifications for freedom of speech. Specifically, vilification laws such as these are likely to increase the harm caused by the speech by publicising it to a wider audience and creating "martyrs" out of those prosecuted under them. Freedom of speech isn't an absolute right, but placing a test of "reasonableness" on controversial speech, as Victoria's vilification Act does, is going too far. These laws are back in the news because the two pasters - Daniel Scot and Danny Nalliah of Catch the Fire ministry - who were found to have vilified Muslims are currently arguing their appeal before the Victorian Supreme Court.

In taking this position I unfortunately find myself in bed with right wing scare-mongers such as LGF and Bolt. What annoys me is not that I agree with these sorts of people, but that they seem to find it necessary to either mis-characterise the breadth of the law as ridiculously wide ("thoughtcrime", "Sharia Law by Stealth") or mis-characterise the actions of Scot and Nalliah as ridiculously trivial. Take Bolt's latest tirade which is chock-full of inaccuracies, selective quoting and what I can only assume is a deliberate failure to tell the whole story. I realise this is par for the course for Bolt, but gets to me in this case because (a) I agree with his conclusion and (b) the implication of his arguments that these laws are wrong because they prohibit reasonable speech is that similar laws (eg. against Muslim groups) could be jusitified if only they were applied to unreasonable speech which Bolt doesn't like.

But he's wrong. The pastor's conduct wasn't reasonable and thus should be protected speech, it was unreasonable but still should be protected. Just to set the mood, here is my previous summary of what Scot and Nalliah presented at the conference which was the subject of the vilification trial. The underlying theme of the conference was that Australian Muslims were engaged in a process of 'silent Jihad' which involved:

Deception of the majority non-Muslim population as to the peaceful nature of Islam. This deception would only be revealed when the Muslim population gained sufficient strength.

Bribing people with up to $10,000 to convert.

Aiming to obtain Muslim numerical majority in Australia at which stage the non-Muslim minority would be forced to convert or leave the country.

This numerical majority was being achieved through the high birthing practices of Muslims, with respect to non-Muslim Australians, and through immigration. The latter situation was accelerated through the current Islamic 'control' over the immigration department and ‘infiltration’ of parliament.

At this stage those that would not convert would have to pay a punitive 'poll tax' (jizya) or have their head cut off.

Muslims were to be encouraged to participate in this by the promise of looting the material possessions of non-believers, as well as threats of divine damnation.

The judge found that these statements were not made in good faith (which is part of a defence to a finding of vilification under the act) for the following reasons:

Their agreement with a statement put to them that most Australian 'Muslims were peaceful, decent God-fearing, honest citizens', in contrast to the views expressed at the conference

The presentation of 'silent Jihad' with little relevant evidence and without distinguishing between different groups of Muslims

The use of the unusual ‘Pickthall’ translation of the Qur’an where it had stronger language

The exaggerated paraphrasing of certain passages of the Qur'an where it was claimed they were being directly quoted

Scot’s use of the name 'Son of Ahmed Siddiqui' (his birth name) in literature distributed at the conference to give the impression it was written by an independent Muslim when he hadn't gone by that name since 1971

The mis-attributing of statistics to the Australian Bureau of Statistics and the incorrect mathematics used to describe Muslim growth rates

Out-of-context quoting of the Qur’an, such as reading vs 38, 40 and 41 of one passage while leaving out vs 39 which would have made the passage seem less extreme

Citing a figure on the number of verses in the Qur'an which spoke of Jihad which was highly misleading (the figure included, for example, verses on the punishment for murder)

An admission that he should not have asserted that Muslims 'control' the immigration department, he claimed he should have used the word 'influence'

Misleading and evasive testimony at trial

He laid out extensive (and tedious) evidence for these findings and they seemed to be justified on the facts presented. Bear in mind that these summaries were based exclusively on my reading of the 110-page judgement and formed the actual reasons for the findings made by the judge in that case. Just to emphasise that I am not mis-characterising the judge's findings, I quote his summary of his reasons for a finding of vilification:

Pastor Scot, during the course of the seminar, made statements -

(1) that the Qur'an promotes violence, killing and looting;

(2) that it treats women badly; they are to be treated like a field to plough, "use her as you wish". Further, in Hadith Bukhari, women, dog and donkey are of equal value;

(3) that domestic violence in general is encouraged;

(4) that Muslims are liars;

(5) that Allah is not merciful and a thief's hand is cut off for stealing;

(6) that Muslims are demons;

(7) the practice of abrogation that is cancellation of words from the Qur'an and the Hadith solely to fit some particular purpose or personal need;

(8) that Muslims operate a silent six jihad, which is the use of business connections; using money to induce people to convert to Islam, and the training of Muslins in Madrassihs and the statement there are millions of people right now under training in these schools, implying a threat to Australia;

(9) that Muslims have a plan to overrun western democracy by the use of violence and terror, and to replace those democracies with oppressive regimes;

(10) that people study for six to seven years and they become true Muslims, and we call them terrorists, but they are true Muslim; they have read the Qur'an, they have understood it and they are now practising it, that is the connection between the Qur'an and terrorism;

(11) Muslims intend to take over Australia and declare it as an Islamic nation;

(12) Muslim people have to fight Christians and Jews, humiliate them and fight them until they accept true religion;

(13) Muslims in Australia are increasing at substantial rates and have influence or control over the migration of people to Australia. Figures are quoted which are wrong. It is said the figures are produced by the Bureau, implying the Bureau of Statistics, whereas they came from a different source, and that they are increasing at a rate which was incorrect.

It is obvious that Bolt and I are reading the same document, but Bolts seems to be reading it with his bizzaro-world glasses on. From his most recent piece:

But by now you must think these two pastors surely said something especially wicked to have been silenced so completely. Maybe Mortimer [lawyer for the Islamic Council of Victoria] is on the side of justice.

All right, I won't hide from you the sordid truth.

With a setup like that, you just know where he's going.

VCAT's Justice Michael Higgins in December ruled that Scot in particular had broken the Government's vilification laws by quoting the Koran in a way that got "a response from the audience at various times in the form of laughter".
...
In his judgment, Higgins listed 13 examples of how Scot had "made fun of Muslim beliefs and conduct".

That is a surreal mis-reading of the judgement of Lynch-ian proportions. The passage Bolt is referring to is this:

Pastor Scot, throughout the seminar, made fun of Muslim beliefs and a conduct. It was done, not in the context of a serious discussion of Muslims' religious beliefs; it was presented in a way which is essentially hostile, demeaning and derogatory of all Muslim people, their god, Allah, the prophet Mohammed and in general Muslim religious beliefs and practices.

Time and again this occurs and, on any view, produces a response from the audience at various times in the form of laughter.

This is followed by "Pastor Scot, during the course of the seminar, made statements - " and the 13 statements extracted above. The judge was not, on any possible reading of the evidence, saying that Scot had caused his audience to laugh at those 13 statements. I don't even know how it would be possible to make a joke about "Muslims have a plan to overrun western democracy by the use of violence and terror, and to replace those democracies with oppressive regimes". The passage Bolt is referring to is contained in the judge's summary of the case. In this summary, he first paints (in prose) an overview of the atmosphere at the seminar. At the end of that overview, he makes the above mention of laughter. And then he itemises (in dot point), more specifically, the facts on which he based his finding of vilification. It is beyond ridiculous to suggest that this finding was based on Scot causing his audience to "laugh" at the above 13 points, as Bolt does. The sorts of things the audience was laughing at was this:

As an example, it is stated that Allah has 99 names and the Hadith "tells us Allah has actually hundred names, but the hundredth name is not known to Muslim people, that's only known to a camel. So you have to inquiry from a camel to find out the hundredth name".

Not "Muslim people have to fight Christians and Jews, humiliate them and fight them until they accept true religion". The problem that Higgins J Identified with the above 13 points, presented in bad faith, was not that they "made fun of Muslim beliefs and conduct" as Bolt suggests. It was that they inspired hatred, serious contempt for, revulsion and fear about Australian Muslims. It might seem I'm making a mountain out of a molehill here, but Bolt's central argument – in a piece entitled 'A Very Scary Laugh' – is that Scot and Nalliah went down simply because they made a bunch of Christians laugh and that this is a 'dangerous' thing to society. That argument is as absurd as it sounds.

Anyway, to continue with Bolt's claims:

In his judgment, Higgins listed 13 examples of how Scot had "made fun of Muslim beliefs and conduct". And here is where this case gets surreal: at least eight of them involve Scot quoting the Koran -- and, I believe, quoting it accurately.
It's true, the Koran does indeed say men may "beat" their wives. It does indeed urge believers to "kill disbelievers where you find them". It really does call for thieves to have a hand chopped off.
Scot may have spoken too luridly for my taste and yours, but Higgins did not identify anything he said that was actually false, other than an immigration statistic. Oh, and Scot failed to quote a Koranic verse that said Allah actually was merciful, so there.

The eight he's talking about are, presumably, points 1-5, 7, 10 and 12 above. There's a number of things, er, missing from Bolt's summary here. For instance Scot did indeed get into trouble for not pointing out a verse saying that Allah was merciful. The context for this was Scot attempting to paint Allah as an unmerciful god (in an unfavourable comparison with Jesus). To support his argument, Scot read out 2 verses from Chapter 5 of the Qur'an. The relevant verses read something like:

Guess which two verses Scot read out? Hint: 39 wasn't one of them. His response to the court was that he didn't have time (para 251 of the judgement).

But more importantly, Bolt fails to mention the reason why even Scot's accurate quoting of verses from the Qur'an were held to be vilification. The problem was not the quoting of the verses, it was the use of these verses to argue that they reflected the way Australian Muslims lived in the 21st century. Scot argued that every verse he quoted or misquoted, was applied literally by Australian Muslims.

To see why this might be a problem, I'll quote some Bible verses (King James Translation). Leviticus 24:16:

And he that blasphemeth the name of the LORD, he shall surely be put to death, and all the congregation shall certainly stone him: as well the stranger, as he that is born in the land, when he blasphemeth the name of the Lord, shall be put to death.

Leviticus 21:9

And the daughter of any priest, if she profane herself by playing the whore, she profaneth her father: she shall be burnt with fire.

Applied in Genesis 38:24

And it came to pass about three months after, that it was told Judah, saying, Tamar thy daughter in law hath played the harlot; and also, behold, she is with child by whoredom. And Judah said, Bring her forth, and let her be burnt.

Genesis 22, various verses:

And he said, Take now thy son, thine only son Isaac, whom thou lovest, and get thee into the land of Moriah; and offer him there for a burnt offering upon one of the mountains which I will tell thee of. And Abraham took the wood of the burnt offering, and laid it upon Isaac his son; and he took the fire in his hand, and a knife; and they went both of them together. And they came to the place which God had told him of; and Abraham built an altar there, and laid the wood in order, and bound Isaac his son, and laid him on the altar upon the wood. And Abraham stretched forth his hand, and took the knife to slay his son.

And I could easily go on, and on. Numbers 31 and Deuteronomy 13 are particularly juicy, especially if you consider that the war crime in Numbers 31 was inspired by some Israelites sleeping with Midianite women.

Anyway, imagine a Muslim preacher getting up in an Islamic country with a small, marginalised and poorly understood Christian or Jewish minority and using these verses to say that this is how Christians and Jews live their lives. They stone those who don't believe in their religion to death when they get the chance, they regularly burn people at the stake as punishment and they sacrifice their children.

Now there's some factual problems here, given that the burning punishment was 'merely' a branding and Moses wasn't actually required to sacrifice Isaac, but the fundamental problem is the taking of historical passages used, if at all, by modern practitioners of the religion to teach very abstract lessens (eg. God doesn't tolerate sin) and inciting fear and revulsion in the audience by arguing that this is how these people actually live their lives. In essence, that's what Scot and Nalliah did and that's why they were found to have vilified Australian Muslims even though some of the conduct establishing that vilification was 'merely' quoting the Qur'an. Indeed Bolt seems to acknowledge this:

Higgins found Scot erred because he "failed to differentiate between Muslims throughout the world (and) preached a literal translation of the Koran and of Muslims' religious practices that was not mainstream".
And perhaps he's right. Perhaps he knows better than does Scot, who was born in Pakistan and has studied the Koran for years, what is mainstream Islamic teaching and what is not.

The trouble with Bolt's appeal to the authoritative knowledge of Scot is that, in contrast to what he presented at the conference, Scot acknowledged at trial that he believed that most Australian Muslims 'were peaceful, decent God-fearing, honest citizens'. So Scot did realise that the 'Silent Jihad' thesis he was promoting at the conference wasn't mainstream (to say the least), but he presented it as such in a manner which calculated to inspire fear, hatred and revulsion in an audience which had turned up to a seminar entitled 'Insight into Islam'.

Like I said, I believe these vilification laws are bad public policy. But Bolt and other supporters of Catch the Fire do themselves no favours by mis-characterising what was said at the seminar, whether wilfully or through ignorance. What Scot and Nalliah presented at the conference and in associated papers was outrageous and not in any way calculated to give their audience a balanced impression of Muslims living in Australia. Their speech should be condemned in the strongest possible terms but the best response to it more speech, not laws which will make them 'martyrs' in the eyes of those inclined to believe what they say.

Picture of the Week

2006-08-22T11:56:00.000+09:30

I don't necessarily agree with the sentiment, but I do like a good Ad-Bust:

Source: Me and my phone, which explains the shoddy quality. Original design here.

Quote of the Week

2006-08-22T11:37:00.000+09:30

The Supreme Court of Victoria released a summary of their reasons for quashing the conviction of Jack Thomas, the first person convicted in Australia under the Commonwealth's post-September 11 anti-terrorist laws. The reason the conviction was quashed was because the evidence on which it was based was coerced from the accused, as they note:

The applicant was explicitly proffered by the Pakistani officials the possibility of returning to his family on the one hand and a very different fate on the other. The Australians present made no attempt to distance themselves from this position but impliedly endorsed it.

That has to be in contention for understatement of the year. From Jack's evidence of his interrogation, which the court accepted:

Joe kept insisting that I knew the next operation or next target and I kept insisting I did not get involved in that kind of discussion, and had no knowledge of such things. He wasn’t believing me so he was ratcheting up the pressure. He said I would be sent back over the border into Afghanistan, where the latest technique to extract information was twisting testicles. ‘I love to hear the sound’, he said, ‘-‘when they twist their testicles. They just scream.’ He said the guards would not treat me like that here. I would be bashed and beaten every day. He said: ‘You’re just going to have to prove it once you get there.’ I felt sure I was being sent there and no matter what I said wouldn’t console him. I just got to a stage when I broke down because of what he was saying, especially about my wife and sending agents to Australia to rape my wife.

You know, I think I'd say all sorts of things if they were my choices. I think it's an unequivocably good thing that evidence obtained under these circumstances isn't seen as reliable enough to support a conviction in our legal system. No matter how bad a person the accused may appear to be, if the prosecution doesn't have reliable evidence that the crime has been committed then our courts shouldn't allow a conviction to stand. It's also good that the court hasn't closed the door on the prosecution's case, apparently leaving open the prospect of a re-trial based on what seems to be a more reliable confession - though I must admit my knowledge of the double jeopardy rule leads me to question whether this is a likely prospect.

Petrol Blogging Pt III

2006-08-21T13:07:00.000+09:30

For whatever reason, the petrol price debate is the only issue which I feel like I have something meaningful to comment on in the last couple of weeks. It seems a relatively trivial topic to continually blog on in the light of various terror alerts and Middle Eastern wars (of the anti-terrorist and civil varieties), but I simply feel I don't have much to add to the discussion of those issues which is why I don't bother trying. Anyway, here's petrol post #3, and the last in a while I promise!

Economists tend to get a bit of flack from natural scientists when they call their discipline a science. Some of this criticism is fair (especially with regards to the pseudo-scientific mathematics fetishised by modern economists), but fairly often economics presents testable conclusions, based on reasonable and necessary assumptions about the real world in a way which at least justifies the label "social" science. An article by Paul Higgins in the Age last week is a good example (as an aside, he's described as a "futurist" which sounds like a seriously cool job):

AT RECENT conferences on the future of biofuels, I have offered a $10 bet to anyone in the room that the West Texas intermediate oil price will be less than US$40 a barrel within three years. So far only three people have taken up the bet.

My view that the oil price will fall to this level by 2009 may seem ridiculous given the hysteria in the media on rising oil and petrol prices. Some commentators regard ongoing rises in oil prices as a fait accompli. However, a logical analysis of the forces driving oil prices creates an extremely plausible scenario in which oil prices will fall significantly.
...
The only caveat to my scenario is if we have reached peak oil production — the point where we can no longer increase the amount of oil that is produced annually.

A range of views place peak oil production somewhere between 2005-2036. Once we reach peak oil, then there will be a crunch in oil supply and price that makes current pricing look like a picnic, and my money is already on the table.

His basic argument is entirely reasonable. Supply and demand for oil are highly resistent to change in the short run, so the price of oil is characterised by regular price spikes when supply/demand get slightly out of sync due to something like a middle east war, major refinery downtime or a sudden increase in demand. Because supply is slow to increase significantly (involving a process of exploration, development, extraction and refining) and demand is slow to reduce (eg. purchase of more efficent vehicles) in response to price rises, price spikes are an expected feature of the oil market.

As he notes, for supply to increase and reduce prices it must be possible for more oil to be produced, so the theory breaks down if we are at Hubbert's Peak (peak oil production). This creates a difficulty, because only hindsight lets you conclusively see if this point has been reached. Hence the necessity of making an assumption in making this sort of economic analysis. It doesn't make the analysis any less scientific, it's simply a result of working in a field where the underlying parameters are inherently uncertain.

On a diferent track, The Age's economics editor, Tim Colebatch, wrote a strangely incoherent piece on the petrol price issue last week. After discussing the LPG subsidy and other measures to deal with the situation announced by the government last week, he noted:

Just as important, however, was what the PM did not do. He did not decouple Australia from global oil prices, which have pushed petrol prices up by 63 per cent in four years. And he did not cut taxes on petrol, whereas in 2000-01, he made cuts that have reduced today's prices by 15 cents a litre.

Thank God he didn't. You do people no favours by making it cheaper for them to use up a product in short supply. It encourages us, when making investments, to assume that the product will remain cheap, when it can't.

Those cuts to petrol taxes in 2000-01 encouraged Australian buyers to invest in fuel-inefficient vehicles such as big 4WDs. They encouraged our manufacturers to keep producing fuel-inefficient cars. Both would be better off now had the Government left taxes alone, and allowed the scarcity of oil to be reflected in its price.

The voters are right: rising petrol prices are driven by global supply and demand, from which no Government can shield us. As Howard put it, it's the result of surging demand for oil from China and India, and decades of under-investment in oil refining.

It could be because the length of newspaper opinion pieces are tightly constrained, but there's an apparent flaw in this logic - the current price of petrol doesn't simply represent its scarcity, a not insignificant component of it is a specific government excise. Now, I've made the case that this sort of tax is economically and socially justified on environmental grounds, but Colebatch doesn't even mention that factor. He seems to be saying that the natural price of petrol (the price which reflects its scarcity) includes the proportion which is due to the excise tax, which is simply not correct. If it weren't for the aforementioned environmental reasons, there would be a much stronger case for the government cutting the excise tax.

The article also veers off track when Colebatch expresses concern about the anti-competitive effect of the supermarket petrol price dockets. The concern is that Coles/Safeway use their supermarket business to subsidise their petrol wings in the hope of putting independent petrol retailers out of business, at which time they can raise their prices (a classic predatory pricing argument). This concern is not coincidentally raised most often by independent petrol retailers and is considered wrong by the ACCC. But even if it were correct, as Colebatch seems to be implying, getting worried over anti-competitive price rises seems strangely inconsistent with his instruction not to get worried about tax induced price rises. If it's a good thing that petrol prices are artificially high, because it reflects the underlying scarcity of the product, why should it matter if the government or private sector is responsible for those price rises? There might be a case to be made that the government would spend extra revenue better than the private sector in this area (although, given the amount of exploration money the government gives oil companies that might seem a strange argument), but that's an argument Colebatch doesn't even begin to address. He just seems to ignore the apparent inconsistency in arguing that government price rises = good, private price rises = bad.

Commenting Change

2006-08-18T14:53:00.000+09:30

Thanks to an anonymous idiot provocateur, I've had to turn off anonymous comments for the time being. I have no problem with people dissenting but what I've been getting isn't dissent it's the sort of thing that people/employers googling my name will have serious questions as to why I'd allow that sort of thing to remain on my personal web site. The personal responsible for this will no doubt gain great pleasure from this move, but I'm willing to give him his pathetic kicks.

Silly Subsidy

2006-08-14T13:47:00.000+09:30

...And, one weak later, Howard looks like he's going to break and cave in to popular discontent on fuel prices with an expensive an ill-conceived subsidy on LPG conversion:

The Prime Minister is today expected to announce subsidies to encourage people to convert their cars from petrol to LPG.
...
But John Howard is set to announce a $1,000 subsidy for motorists to convert to LPG.

The package is also likely to include incentives for petrol stations to install enough LPG tanks to cope with increased demand.

That he apparently stole the policy from Labor is no indication of its desirability.

I argued in my previous post that measures to artificially reduce fuel prices might be superficially attractive but a bad idea because rising prices force people to take into account the true social cost of petrol consumption, primarily greenhouse gasses. Additionally these higher prices will spur the development of alternative fuels which is the only long term solution to a price situation which is fundamentally related to a mismatch of demand and supply of oil as India/China (among others) accelerate their economic growth.

Anyway, that's the argument with respect to petrol and it isn't much different as far as LPG gas goes. It turns out that burning LPG emits less greenhouse gasses per litre than normal petrol, 1.6kg/l compared to 2.5kg/l according to this handy government site. But you have to take into account the fact that LPG engines are less fuel efficient, by approximately 30% according to a RACQ pamphlet. Plugging those numbers into the emissions calculator on the government site I just linked tells me that a car running on LPG emits approximately 15% less carbon dioxide than a standard petrol car.

Now, that's a good thing, no doubt. It also provides an argument for prefferential tax or subsidy treatment of LPG gas on environmental and economic grounds. So what's the problem with this new subsidy? There is already extremely preferential tax treatment of LPG fuel. There is currently no federal excise tax on LPG, which is equivalent (if I read this correctly) to $.125/l or about 25% of the cost of the fuel (if it's at $.45/l). The cynic in me says that the fact that we are almost entirely LPG self-sufficient is probably the true reason for this subsidey, not environmental reasons, but that's neither here nor there. The latest subsidy was actually due to be implemented in 2011 when this concessional excise treatment was to be phased out, but now that it's been brought forward it seems pretty clear that the combination of concession and subsidy is far disproportionate to any environmental benefit flowing from having cars run on LPG.

I think the fact that the environmental arguments aren't even being mentioned in the selling of this subsidy is evidence that they aren't seen as a genuine consideration by the government. Good politics? Probably. Good policy? Not a chance.