Category Archives: Politics

Trump

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I know, I know. It’s high time I made a pronouncement on the US presidential election. On this occasion I defer to another deep thinker, because he expresses my own thoughts more eloquently than I can express them myself.

Philip Welsby, my relation-by-marriage, has drawn my attention to a 10-minute talk by Sir Roger Scruton that was broadcast by the BBC and may still be heard at the BBC website. Sir Roger (pictured below) explains, dispassionately and succinctly, what went wrong for the US political class and why Donald Trump is President Elect. I found myself agreeing with everything in his talk and I recommend it.

rogerscruton

Multiculturalism

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Wherever I am in the world I read the Sydney Morning Herald online. This is one of the newspapers published by the Fairfax Media group with a generally centre-left slant, balancing the definitely right-of-centre slant of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp.

I don’t pay anything to read this excellent newspaper, so when they asked if I’d take part in an online survey I agreed. The questions were mainly about my opinion on a range of social, moral and political issues and I had only to click one of five boxes on the scale ‘Strongly agree’ to ‘Strongly disagree’.

I was motoring along quite easily until I came to the question about multiculturalism. Has it gone too far in Australia? (I’m paraphrasing.) I hesitated, hand on mouse. I wanted to say, “What do you mean by multiculturalism?” But there was no-one to say it to.

When the term came into usage in Australia in the 1980s it was never, as far as I remember, defined. Some people thought it was just about having people from many diverse cultures living side by side, and having more kinds of restaurant to choose from. But that’s not an ‘ism’. I took it to mean that all cultures represented in the population would have equal status, which sounded OK and consistent with my own internationalist world view.

But at that time cultural diversity did not have the political and ethical connotations that it has today. The cultures we were thinking about were different but not contradictory. Italians were more family-orientated than Anglo-Celts, exemplified by bus-sized extended families that went to the airport to meet or farewell travelling members. Chinese liked gambling and pushing their children to get good grades at school. Indians drove taxis and opened corner shops. Nothing threatening there.

But what about today’s Muslims? And I’m not talking just about a tiny lunatic fringe. What about the 100,000+ demonstrators in Jakarta who called for a Governor to be imprisoned for allegedly ‘insulting the Koran’? What about the 52% of surveyed British Muslims who believe homosexuality should be illegal, and the 8% who sympathise with those who commit acts of terrorism for political ends?*

I will stick my neck out and suggest that in many respects mainstream Islamic culture directly contradicts that of Australia’s dominant population, which I would describe as secular with a strong Judaeo-Christian influence. Sharia Law is not compatible with Australian civil law. Islamic attitudes to women, LGBTI people, atheists and followers of competing faiths are quite out-of-step with prevailing attitudes. Equal cultural status is not possible.

I have on my bookshelf Mahathir Mohamad’s book The Malay Dilemma. I bought it in Singapore because it was banned in Mahathir’s own country of Malaysia. He introduces the concept of ‘definitive people’, meaning the ethnic group which may not have been the earliest to settle on the land, and may not now be in the majority, but whose language, values, customs and laws are generally accepted as those of the country and therefore have to be accepted by all other comers.

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Now that we have progressed beyond the nation state to the multinational state, it is essential to have a commonly accepted set of rules. Mahathir’s concept is a useful one. As far as Australia is concerned the definitive people are my people, and I’d like to keep it that way.

I have nothing against Muslims, by the way. The great majority were born and brought up in Muslim societies and had no real choice. But I do have quite a lot against religion in general and Islam in particular. You might like to read my earlier post ‘Seeds of Evil’.

* Survey undertaken by ICM on behalf of Channel 4 and reported in the Guardian Weekly.

Interest Rates

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Monetarism was in the early stages of its ascendancy when I was studying economics. I remember one of my lecturers describing Milton Friedman, doyen of the Chicago School, as “that amiable fascist.” Now we are living with the fall-out of Governments’ delegating economic management to their central banks and using fiscal policy as a means of appeasing noisy interest groups and winning elections.

I came across this graph yesterday and felt I should share it:

ustreasury10yieldgraph

If this is how interest rates have to behave – even dipping into negative territory currently in Denmark, Japan, Sweden and Switzerland – to balance inflation and economic growth, we should all be on the lookout for flying pigs and white rabbits with pocket watches.

Australian of the Year . . . ?

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It’s a dilemma, I know. We are at war, de jure or de facto, with Daesh and sundry other Islamist organisations in the Middle East and Africa. (For the purposes of this article ‘we’ applies to the people of Australia, but it could apply to the citizens of any militarily active Western democracy.) We are also allied with the USA, other nations and other organisations whose interests align with our own.

So what should be our attitude if a citizen, a civilian, decides to go overseas to fight with one of those organisations? It’s illegal to fight overseas except as a member of the Australian armed forces, and I can see why such a law should exist. How can one be sure that the person concerned has not in fact been fighting on behalf of our enemies – either directly or as a spy or saboteur operating within an allied organisation? What moral responsibility would we be forced to accept it the person were killed or injured or captured or accused of a war crime?

Let’s consider the actual case of Ashley Dyball (pictured below), a Queenslander who has returned from Syria where he fought bravely and effectively alongside Kurdish forces against Daesh.

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On his return he was questioned by police and still lives under the threat of arrest, prosecution and imprisonment. But to most Australians he’s a hero, on a par with foreigners who went to Spain to oppose Franco in the 1930s. I would even suggest that he should be nominated for Australian of the Year.

There are thousands of people of warrior age who while away their time playing shoot-em-up video games, or who flee the fighting for lack of means to defend their communities. We should be encouraging those people to take up real arms and kill real enemies – enemies who are the closest thing to embodied evil that we are likely to see in our lifetimes.

The Pope in Georgia

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The Pope just left Georgia, where Mrs SG and I have been for the past 5 weeks. It’s a friendly, interesting place that has, after a bit of a false start, been the most successful of the former Soviet Republics in making the transition to liberal democratic capitalism. It has an Association Agreement with the EU and is very open to Western ideas, trade and investment. Corruption was almost eliminated under President Mikheil Saakashvili, but is creeping back now, we hear.

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But back to the Pope. As he does everywhere, he performed a mass at a venue that would accommodate the expected crowds – in this case a sports stadium. But only a few thousand turned up. It has been reported that the leadership of the Georgian Orthodox Church, which rejects ecumenism and has 83% of the population as followers, advised those followers not to attend.

Apparently ill-feeling engendered by the Great Schism that split Western and Eastern Christianity nearly 1,000 years ago is still strong in Georgia. The Pope was even greeted by demonstrators carrying insulting placards, written in English. According to eurasianet.org they were members of the Union of Orthodox Parents. The same source cites examples of discrimination against Roman Catholicism and other minority religions.

I feel stroppy about this because Georgia seldom gets mentioned in global news reports, and when it does it’s a pity if the news makes the country appear mean-spirited or downright stupid. I am here to tell you that a handful of religiously-inspired hate-mongers are not representative of the Georgians I have met.

Hitler is History

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A story in today’s Sydney Morning Herald made me really, really stroppy. A private school in the Northern Territory of Australia encouraged pupils to dress up as literary characters in celebration of Book Week. One pupil chose to dress up as Adolf Hitler. It so happened that a group of exchange students from a Jewish school in Melbourne were present and found this representation of the man who attempted to annihilate their race in Europe confronting.

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Now everyone is falling over themselves apologising and counselling one another and promising it will never happen again.

So why am I stroppy?

First, the presence or otherwise of Jewish children should have no bearing on the case. Hitler was an enemy of mankind and victimised Slavs, Gypsies, homosexuals, the handicapped, Catholic priests… please add to this list as you see fit.

Second, airbrushing events and individuals out of our cultural landscape, and therefore out of the knowledge that we pass down to our children, is a pretty good way of ensuring that the mistakes of the past are repeated in the future.

And third, dressing up as someone does not have to imply endorsement of their character, their politics or their actions. Prince Harry was castigated a few years ago – unfairly to my mind – for going to a fancy dress party as Hitler. Nobody has suggested that he did so because he wanted a revival of Nazism.

If one goes along with the mock-shock-horror and handwringing that followed an innocent child’s efforts to get into the spirit of Book Week, one should ask oneself which other historical figures should be off-limits. Genghis Khan? Henry VIII?

ghengiskhan henryviii

What about some biblical figures who had a pretty shady reputation when it came to human rights? Moses and Joshua come to mind. How would a descendant of the Canaanites feel if they saw someone dressed as one of those two genocidal criminals? And what about some other unsavoury characters who are still alive and at large?

moses joshua netenyahu

PS   If you think this post is gross, I would point out that it is my 144th.

Burkinis

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OK, I know what you’re thinking: When is StroppyGit going to pronounce on the row in France over burkinis? Never let it be said that I am insensitive to popular demand, so here goes.

First, I completely agree with those who see the burka as an instrument and a symbol of patriarchal oppression of women. The great majority of women who choose to wear it do so because of the cultural/religious environment into which they had the misfortune to be born. Muslim women who live in Western societies and wear the burka in public must expect to have difficulty making friends and getting a job. They should also realise that they are reinforcing prejudice and hostility against their religion, whose values with respect to gender relations are utterly opposed to modern secular values. In any situation where security is an issue, faces must be revealed and body searches must be submitted to.

Having said all that, it does not follow that a bathing costume that covers everything except the face, hands and feet should be banned. Yes, it may be provocative inasmuch as it is associated with Islam, and most non-Muslims find aspects of Islam objectionable. But is it a religious symbol, in the way that a cross or a crescent or the star of David are religious symbols? I don’t think so. I see it rather as a cultural by-product that will fade away as the culture that spawned it matures.

I like this photo, by the way, which I took from a website – but I forget which one. If it was yours, or if you took the photo, please tell me and I will add an acknowledgement. It’s brilliant because of the almost-exact equivalence of the two women’s figures and movements; the matched horizontal stripes on both costumes; and most of all the happy smile on the face of the burkini-wearing woman. Well done, whoever took it.

Burkini

Being practical, the case is very clear. Banning the burkina is even more provocative than wearing it. Making Muslim women display an amount of flesh that is for them unthinkable will simply amount to a ban on their being part of the beachloving community and enjoying the healthy pastime of swimming in the sea. It will further isolate those women from mainstream secular society and retard their advance towards enlightenment and freedom. And it is a propaganda gift to the Islamists who want to portray Western society as hostile, corrupt and ungodly.

StroppyGit has spoken.

PrEP

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PrEP stands for Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis – a combination of two medicines (tenovir and emtricitabine, sold under the trade name Truvada) that greatly reduces the risk of HIV infection. It is a prescription drug taken daily by people who are at high risk of infection. According to the US Centers for Disease Control (CDC) the risk reduction is at least 90% for sexual transmission of HIV and at least 70% for injected drug use.

I’m in the UK at the moment and a big news story has been the dispute over who should pay for PrEP. The disputants were the National Health Service (NHS) and the local authorities. The NHS argued that it was a public health issue, so the local authorities should pay. The local authorities argued that they couldn’t afford it. The judgement came down against the NHS.

So what is there to get stroppy about? Well, it seems to me blindingly obvious that the cost of PrEP should be born by the individuals who need its protection. The pills cost GBP13 (USD17) per day. This is as much as five café-bought cups of coffee every day. That’s a lot of money, but I’d hazard a guess that a drug habit costs more. And for people at risk of sexual transmission, good old-fashioned condoms are a very affordable alternative.

This point was made in a Radio 4 interview with a lobbyist. She seemed affronted and said that it was not always practicable to use a condom every time one has sex. By way of elaboration she said that people were often too drunk to remember to use a condom. Finally, in words that could have been crafted to create maximum stroppiness, she said that if taxpayers declined to pay for PrEP they would be up for much higher expense to treat HIV-positive people. “That sounds like blackmail,” said the interviewer. The lobbyist disagreed.

Sometimes public policy should not be based simply on cash flow projections. Principles should come into the picture too. Every time a principle – the principle of personal responsibility, for example – is violated in favour of financial pragmatism it becomes harder to invoke that principle the next time.

Tampon Tax

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Two years ago someone in Australia went public with the idea of exempting tampons – known in the trade as ‘feminine protection products’ I believe – from GST (Goods and Services Tax, the Australian equivalent of VAT).

This was presented as a gender equity issue, which was clearly nonsense. But politicians were fearful of opposing a noisy interest group which had potential support from half the electorate. So Joe Hockey, the then-Treasurer who had attracted howls of outrage for announcing the end of the Age of Entitlement, said that he’d consider it; and the Labour Party embraced it, saying that GST on tampons was ‘an anomaly’.

The photo below (by Alex Ellinghausen) shows demonstrators dressed as tampons dancing in front of Parliament House in Canberra.

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Now Bill Shorten, Leader of the opposition Labour Party, has publicly and unambiguously rejected that policy. During an election campaign, with the polls the two major parties neck-and-neck, that shows a degree of courage and leadership and rationality that Australians have been longing for. Click here to see the clip of Bill Shorten (pictured below) giving this straight answer to a straight question.

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Good on you, Bill!

Bigotry of Low Expectations

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We rarely go out on Monday nights because we don’t want t miss ‘Q&A’, an hour-long ABC TV programme with a panel of interesting people and a live audience.  Usually there are two Australian politicians from opposites sides, but this week the panellists were all foreign writers who were attending Sydney Writers’ Festival.

The most interesting, I thought, was a woman called Ayaan Hirsi Ali.  As you can see from the screenshot below, she is remarkably beautiful.  And as you might guess from her name, she was born a Muslim.  She writes about the need for reform in Islam.  One of her books is called ‘Heretic’: I haven’t read it, so I can’t personally recommend it.

AyanHirsiAli_QandA

I was particularly taken with her accusation that white liberal infidels are reticent about criticising Islamic dogma and custom, even those aspects that stand in stark contradiction to the ideals of liberal democracy – including forced marriage, devaluation of women and persecution of homosexuals and religious minorities. She used the phrase “bigotry of low expectations,” referring to a failure to hold Muslims to account because they cannot be expected to meet the standards we demand of our own kind.

This resonated with me. I am guilty of this kind of bigotry and so are most of my fellow-citizens.  For example, Aborigines are not expected to succeed in the mainstream world of study and work.  They are patronised, subsidised, favoured and cosseted in ways that guarantee a continuation of low achievement from generation to generation.

By the same token we make excuses for unconscionable conduct for which perpetrators claim a religious pretext.  I am thinking, for example, of halal and kosher slaughtering of animals and opting out of the general obligation to vaccinate one’s children.  There was even a case, reported this morning, where a group of accused men refused to stand when the judge entered the courtroom.  Their lawyer claimed that their faith forbade them to stand for anyone but Allah, and cited precedence.

Perhaps it’s our legacy of colonial guilt that makes us unwilling to demand as much from people of other races and faiths as we demand from ourselves, but I agree with Ayaan Hirsi Ali.  This is bigotry and we should shrug it off, and tell people to pull their socks up and behave like decent, responsible citizens irrespective of their ethnicity or religious affiliation.