Well it seems we’ve managed to avoid a Koran burning, but we still had Christians ripping pages out of the Koran at the White House to protest “the charade that Islam is a peaceful religion”—what a shame these hypocrites don’t give the outrageous violence and intolerance in their own Bible the same scrutiny. The huge controversy surrounding the so-called “Ground Zero mosque” (which will actually be two blocks away and will be more of a Muslim community centre than what most people think of as a mosque) has only been inflamed by this year’s anniversary of September 11, however.

My own views on this issue are expressed very well by the video above—opposing this mosque is tantamount to equating all Muslims with Islamic extremist terrorists, which is the same as equating all Christians with Christian extremist terrorists. As critical as I am of the extreme violence and intolerance written into the both the Koran and the Bible, it is not reflective of how most Muslims practice their religion, just as it isn’t reflective of how most Christians practice theirs. And while it may seem strange for an outspoken atheist to preach religious tolerance, the fact of the matter is, without freedom of religion, there wouldn’t be freedom of no religion. Freedom of religion is one of the key things that makes us better than the terrorists—to deny this only brings us down to their level.

Having said that though, I can sympathise with Obama’s apparent attempt to have it both ways on this issue. I, like him, absolutely support their legal and constitutional right to build this mosque at this site. On the other hand though, it will be the subject of ongoing controversy, and will no doubt be the target of Christian extremist terrorism, which could have repercussions for the whole world. So I can also sympathise with Obama’s implication that building a mosque at this site may not be wise, and that the backers of this project should really consider building it elsewhere—for their own sake as much as (indeed more than) anybody else’s.

As they always do with this sort of issue, the conservatives have cynically tried to use it as a wedge against Obama, and have shamelessly tried to fan the flames by openly speaking out against this mosque with some very inflammatory language. This is in spite of their stated devotion (and that of their supporters) to the US constitution—which absolutely protects the right of Muslims to build a mosque at this site. Of course, this is really the same as their supposed devotion to freedom of speech—the conservatives only want freedom of speech and religion for themselves, and not for anybody else. I fear Obama could lose his presidency over what should really be a non-issue, just as the labour party very nearly just lost power in Australia, in part because of the complete non-issue of “boat people”. I will have more to say on the recent Australian election in my next post.

Okay, so I’m not entirely sure what “refudiate” means (as the word doesn’t exist), but as it seems she meant repudiate, I’m pretty sure I’m using it correctly! Sarah Palin’s difficulties with the English language are of course now legendary, and a favourite subject for commedians. It is however very disturbing that some one whose native language is English can be considered a credible presidential candidate, when they have so much difficulty speaking it correctly. I am far from a perfect English speaker myself, as I learned it as an adult—I would never dare to publish my unedited text here. But Sarah clearly has no problem with doing this, and even likens herself to Shakespeare! Still, a native English speaker who is a potential president should be able to publish their unedited text—the fact that she can’t should be an embarrassment to all American conservatives. The fact that it isn’t says just as much about them as it does about her, and is deeply disturbing. In essence, they celebrate poor education, stupidity and ignorance. This isn’t about right or left—this is about right and wrong.

The other thing the far right celebrates, of course, is bigotry, which as this video says, should be getting as much attention as Sarah’s choice of words. The outrage over the building of a mosque two blocks away from “ground zero” effectively equates all Muslims with the perpetrators of September 11, as that is the only way a simple mosque can be considered “stabbing the heart” of the American heartland. Yet at the same time, they claim not to be anti-Muslim, and Palin even calls on peaceful Muslims to support her! Why should they? If they are peaceful, then there is nothing wrong with this mosque (or rather, there isn’t anything more wrong with it than any other place of religious worship).

July 23 update: Well Julia has just announced her climate change policy, and while it certainly is better than the opposition’s, I think she’s taken the pragmatism a little too far this time, to the point where it looks like a bit of a cop-out. I’d really like to see her work together with the Greens (who will no doubt hold the balance of power after the election) to take decisive action on climate change.

Many people have dismissed Julia’s pragmatism as “backing down” and “not standing for anything”, but quite frankly, I think it is a good thing. This is politics after all: deals have to be struck and compromises have to be made to get anything done at all. As I’ve said here before, I often feel left wing/progressive voters are too idealistic—unless our leaders do a perfect job, we often don’t vote for them. But we have to face the reality that the nature of politics makes this virtually impossible. And it opens the way for conservative politicians to get into power, as conservative voters usually aren’t critical at all: they just believe what they want to believe (the facts be damned), and believe their politicians deliver on it, seemingly no matter what. We have to accept less than ideal solutions in the short term, so that more ideal solutions can be arrived at later. Otherwise, we are simply allowing the conservatives to turn back the clock.

The two most obvious examples of Julia’s pragmatism are her deal with the big mining companies on the government’s proposed new mining tax, and her new regional, offshore processing policy on asylum seekers. Yes, she did significantly decrease the level of the new tax to get it through, but at least she did get it through—which will still give Australia billions of dollars of extra tax revenue. As for her policy on asylum seekers, it has been dismissed as a return to the policies of John Howard, which many humanitarians were very critical of—including me. In reality though, this is only a very superficial assessment of the new policy, which is crucially different from Howard’s in a few very important respects. It is actually more of a return to the policies of the Fraser government in the 1970′s, which resulted in the resettlement of thousands of Vietnamese in Australia—something I am very grateful for every time I go to my favourite Vietnamese restaurant, or laugh at their jokes.

For one thing, Howard’s “Pacific solution” was cobbled together as a means of avoiding Australia’s obligations under international law, by shipping asylum seekers off to a country that wasn’t a signatory to the United Nations Refugee Convention (Nauru). Gillard’s policy, on the other hand, stipulates that all countries involved in the processing of asylum seekers in our region have to be signatories to the Refugee Convention. This is why she is so far refusing to consider Nauru, even though they already have a processing centre and want to use it. The other problem with Nauru is its remoteness: a major part of her policy is trying to stop asylum seekers from undertaking dangerous boat journeys, which obviously wouldn’t be the case if they had to sail to Nauru! Her preferred choice of processing country is East Timor, which is not only a signatory to the Refugee Convention, but is also right next to the country all the asylum seekers go through to get a boat to Australia (Indonesia). This would obviously make the boat journey to Australia completely unnecessary.

Another crucial difference between her policy and Howard’s is that she won’t be inhumanely and illegally turning boats back, which basically forces the asylum seekers to destroy their boat, leading to an obviously very dangerous situation. She also won’t be reintroducing Howard’s temporary protection visas, which also violated our obligations under international law, and were—like every aspect of Howard’s refugee policy—both cruel and inhumane. But Howard didn’t care about how many people his refugee policy literally killed, and all the suffering it caused—he only cared about winning elections, which very sadly, demonising asylum seekers allowed him to do with ease. And incredibly, the opposition now wants to not only reinstate Howard’s refugee policy, but make it even more cruel and draconian, by refusing to process asylum seekers who have lost or destroyed their papers. Even the Howard government rejected this policy, as they knew that asylum seekers often had to do this to escape their countries safely. But like their former leader, the current opposition knows this issue is hot enough to make a lot of working class people ignore their own welfare, and determine their vote on the basis of what is really a very minor issue.

Still, given that this is such a minor issue, why has Julia Gillard made this such a major part of her election platform? Quite simply, because she has to. You can be sure that if the opposition and the media didn’t keep making such a big deal out of this issue, it wouldn’t even be an issue in this election campaign, just as it wasn’t before a desperate John Howard decided to make it one. And knowing a winner when they see one, the conservatives have decided to keep it that way. Many on the left have criticised Julia for pandering to this issue, but what could she do? If she loses the election over this, we would have the opposition’s policy. At least Julia’s policy is still fundamentally humane. But cleverly and pragmatically, it also keeps asylum seekers offshore until they’ve been processed, which (hopefully) should be good enough for neutralise all the paranoia over this issue. And once this issue is neutralised, perhaps Australia can finally put this sorry episode behind it.

When I first heard that the Australian Labor party had ousted Kevin Rudd as Prime Minister, I wasn’t happy. Labor wasn’t doing that badly in the polls, so I just felt they were panicking too much; indeed, I feel they’ve been doing this for some time now, which I think is the main reason why they ended up doing so badly in the polls in the first place. I think they’ve actually done a pretty god job of running the country under very difficult circumstances—for example, Australia survived the global financial crisis better than any other first world country. Yes, they’ve made some mistakes, but I feel their mistakes are vastly outweighed by their achievements. The problem is that their mistakes have all come in the last few months (with an election looming), and the electorate has a very short memory.

I also feel Kevin Rudd has been unfairly blamed for circumstances beyond his control. For example, he fought hard to get a deal with the Coalition on carbon trading, only to have it dashed at the last minute by a surprise change of opposition leader, accompanied by a complete reversal on climate change policy. Then he fought hard to get a deal at Copenhagen, but as we know that was dashed as well. Delaying further action on carbon trading was pretty much the only practical thing he could do under the circumstances, but the electorate saw this as a back down, and (I think unfairly) judged him to be without principles. Strange how his predecessor John Howard broke promise after promise, while the electorate just dismissed it as what politicians do, and kept voting for him. Ironically, Rudd was a victim of the fact that people actually believed he would deliver on his promises—and in fact he did when the circumstances allowed. But this back down made the electorate see him as another lying politician (once again, I think unjustly), and punished him in the polls for their disappointment.

Still, Rudd certainly wasn’t perfect. His devout Christian beliefs led him to make illogical decisions sometimes, such as his basically “go forth and multiply” population policy. This led him to continue the Howard government’s baby bonus, for example, which must be one of the worst social policies in Australia’s history: it is basically an inducement for people who can’t afford to have children to have them, which obviously has very negative consequences for those children and society as a whole. But like his predecessor, all Kevin could see was the fact that it raised Australia’s birth rate, which he saw as a good thing. His Christian beliefs also made him a social conservative, which meant that he refused to legalise gay marriage, for example. So while I felt he was a huge improvement over our previous Prime Minister John Howard (which he certainly was), it often seemed as though he wasn’t a true Labor leader; more a compassionate conservative. Hence, even though I was relatively happy with him as Prime Minister (compared to Howard), I would have preferred a more progressive leader.

So in spite of the fact that I don’t feel Kevin Rudd got a fair go from the media, the Australian public or his own party, I can’t help but feel elated about the leader who has replaced him. Much has been made of the fact that Julia Gillard is Australia’s first female Prime Minister, but for me the biggest thing about her is the fact that she is a childless and unmarried atheist—and even more remarkably, she has the balls to openly declare it publicly! And in the biggest policy shift since she came into power, she’s already announced a sustainable population strategy. This has been widely interpreted as simply immigration control, but I wouldn’t be surprised if she scraps the baby bonus after winning the next election (indeed, I’d be disappointed if she didn’t). And I believe Julia’s position is genuine: I do not think it is simply code for xenophobia and populism, unlike the opposition with their scare mongering over asylum seekers—Julia’s own comments in that regard have been very measured.

I feel very proud to live in a country where our leader can be a childless, unmarried, atheist female—and I’m even more happy about the fact that the Australian public seems to largely be responding to her very positively. I guess I shouldn’t get too excited until she wins the next election, but it has often puzzled me how politicians in Australia have always gone on about supporting nuclear family values by default, when in reality, the nuclear family is rapidly becoming the exception rather than the rule here. We have a so-called “Family First” party (although so far their only representative in the senate has just espoused the same old conservative values, often to the detriment of working families), but we’ve never had a singles first party, even though there are more and more of us here. Politicians frequently go on about Christian values, but until now, no one has ever been outspokenly secular, even though that’s what this country is really all about, and we have a huge (and growing) non-Christian population here, including many atheists. For the first time ever, we have a leader who represents these important, widespread, yet previously almost totally unrepresented values, which to me is a far bigger deal than the fact that she’s a woman (although that is of course significant).

In related news, there’s currently a senate enquiry looking into a proposal for religious organisations in Australia to have to pass a public benefit test to receive tax exempt status. Also, the Australian Secular Party (of which I am am member) has just been officially registered as well. At a time when we are threatened with having the most conservative, overtly Christian Prime Minister in Australia’s history (the leader of the opposition Tony Abbot), we finally have a completely secular alternative!

I am constantly astounded by Israel’s ability to commit outrageous acts of military violence against civilians, then cast themselves as the victims. The above video is a great example: it singles out attacks on Israeli soldiers, but for goodness sake—the Israeli military is conducting a raid on an unarmed vessel in international waters! The people on board are doing whatever they can to defend themselves—they have no guns, so they’re using what they have. In response, the Israeli military opens fire on them! The result is up to 19 people dead—and not a single one of them was Israeli.

So what terrible crime were the people on this boat engaging in to receive such treatment? They were trying to bring aid to Palestinians in Gaza. And why did they need to do that? Because Gaza has been blockaded from receiving aid from the outside world by Israel! So this is, in effect, one outrageous crime against humanity, that has come about as a result of another outrageous crime against humanity—both committed by Israel. Yet Israel still tries to claim that they are the victims!

As always, Israel’s actions have received the usual piss-weak response from western governments, especially (also as always) the US. While I have defended Obama’s performance in many areas, on Israel I’m afraid I have to give him the same score as every President who has gone before him: a great big fat zero. How many more atrocities will Israel have to commit before the west (particularly the US, who have always stuck by Israel through thick and thin) takes decisive action to stop them?

I am very sorry about the lack of posts recently, but the reaction to my new sexy Bible readings has been overwhelming! Anyway, I’ve been intending to do a detailed article on the passing of Obama’s health care plan and the reaction to it, but I wanted to get a post up quickly to bring this petition to everyone’s attention: Tell the Republican Party to STOP Inciting Tea Party Racism! The extremism and hatred of the American right in what is supposed to be a civilised country is simply astonishing.

Indeed, the government and the Australian media seem to have taken to blaming the Indian media for stirring up this problem. Once again, there was originally some truth to this, and I’m sure it did amplify the hatred of the racists behind these attacks. But that doesn’t even come close to being an excuse for these attacks, which really have been happening (and they are continuing to happen, with the result that one Indian man has now been murdered, and another doused and set alight). This is totally and utterly inexcusable, and it has been going on for far too long now. The recent cartoon in the Indian media portraying the Victorian police as the Ku Klux Klan was certainly over the top, but I can understand how they feel—why is it taking so long for the Victorian police to get any leads on these attacks, when they’ve been going on for so long now? It just doesn’t seem to make any sense.

The Australian government and the Victorian police need to stop trying to deny the obvious racist element to these attacks—and trying to blame the Indian media for them—so they can take serious action to stop these terrible crimes. If nothing else, our huge foreign student industry depends on it.

After looking as though no deal might be struck at all, a last minute agreement has been reached at the Copenhagen summit on global change. Although the deal is disappointing, as Obama says, it is only the beginning, not the end, and in my opinion far better than no deal at all. At least now we have something to build on—as Australia’s leading campaigner on climate change Tim Flannery has said, I think we have to accept the political realities, and accept this deal as a positive outcome overall.

And boy, have their been a lot of political hurdles to overcome! Of course we’ve had the predictable acts of self interest from many of the countries involved. Most depressing of all, however—just when I thought we’d finally reached agreement on the reality of climate change (if not its cause or what to do about it)—has been the massive resurgence of climate change denial. Even here in Australia, we have had a change of leadership of the political opposition over this issue (the so-called ‘Liberal’ party, who are in fact anything but liberal, especially now). They have now staked out an election platform opposing an Emissions Trading Scheme as “nothing but a great big, fat tax”, even though (under their previous far more liberal leader) they had already agreed to support the scheme, and when they were previously in government, they ended up settling on a similar scheme themselves. This is blatant political opportunism, although this is nothing new for the Australian Liberal party, who don’t seem to have any principles at all, except for their desire to win elections at any cost.

The fact that climate change denial has become a political opportunity in the first place is the most depressing thing of all though. It seems that since the global economic crisis, people have become so obsessed with the almighty dollar that they want to ignore climate change, even to the point of wanting to convince themselves that it isn’t actually happening at all. People have become willing to accept the most improbable of conspiracy theories—a green conspiracy to deindustrialise the world, a United Nations conspiracy to impose world government etc.—while the reasons for climate change denial are very simple, clear and obvious: the desire of powerful, polluting big business to maintain as much short term profit as possible, and the desire of individuals to avoid paying extra taxes. It has gotten to the point now that whenever you do a search for political news videos on YouTube, you are greeted instead with endless conspiracy theory videos—it seems that the combination of human greed and insecurity makes us willing to accept the highly improbable over the blindingly obvious.

I will be the first to admit that human induced climate change is far from certain—there are just far too many uncertainties and variables involved, particularly as we are dealing with two of the most unpredictable things of all: the weather and the future. Climate change deniers love to pick up on every little uncertainty in the scientific data, and given the nature of this issue, there’ll be plenty of it. Yet at the same time, the climate change deniers are certain that climate change isn’t happening—this exposes their insincerity, as they can’t have it both ways. Furthermore, the contention that the world has been warming since the start of the industrial revolution is backed by a wealth of data, and quite frankly, it just doesn’t seem reasonable to me that all the crap we pump into the environment wouldn’t have any effect on it at all. Indeed, we know for a fact that it leads to pollution, which surely is in itself a good reason to reduce our emissions anyway. Even more importantly, we’re going to run out of fossil fuels eventually in any case, and as we do, their cost will become ever greater, and they will cause ever more wars. The cost of switching to renewable energy resources is relatively small, and will lead to huge cost savings in the long term. If human induced climate change is real however, the cost of inaction could be catastrophic—and likely will be anyway even if it isn’t real, as we fight over the last of the world’s fossil fuel resources, and the pollution of our environment increases. For goodness sake, let’s give the planet the benefit of the doubt here—this really should be a no brainer.

With Obama’s announcement of a 30,000 strong troop surge in Afghanistan, I thought it would be a good opportunity to look back on the so-called “war on terror”, and how well it has been prosecuted by both US administrations involved (Bush and Obama). Although I’ve always been of the opinion that the war in Afghanistan was probably a losing battle, given that the US and its allies are already there, I guess it makes sense to try and “finish the job” with a massive troop surge. It is different from the situation in Iraq, in as much as Afghanistan actually was a haven for terrorists, and likely will be again should the Taliban regain control of the country. Importantly though, there must be some kind of deadline for when the US and its allies pull out, regardless of whether the surge is successful or not. Obama’s timeline of a staged pull-out starting in 18 months seems reasonable.

Whether Obama’s decision ultimately proves to be correct or not, I think any reasonable person would agree that it is much better to focus military efforts on Afghanistan than to squander them in Iraq, as the Bush administration did. Indeed, a new report indicates that the Bush administration’s prosecution of the war in Afghanistan was always under-resourced, leading to the escape of Osama Bin Laden into Pakistan. The US military basically had him trapped in the Tora Bora mountains, but didn’t apply the force necessary to capture or kill him—instead he just slipped away into Pakistan. This once again leads me to wonder whether the Bush administration ever had any genuine intention of stopping Bin Laden. When September 11 happened, I was astonished that four large passenger aircraft could be hijacked within such a short period of time, and not only was nothing done to stop them, the government supposedly didn’t even know anything about it until the Twin Towers got hit by a second aircraft! Given the intelligence information warning of such an attack, this unbelievable lapse of security is even more astonishing—it really looks as though the Bush administration simply allowed it to happen. Please note that I am not saying the Bush administration actively assisted Al Qaeda (although this is of course possible), but they sure didn’t seem to try very hard to stop them.

So why would the Bush administration allow Al Qaeda to attack they US, and allow Osama Bin Laden to escape into Afghanistan? I think because they were desperate for an excuse to invade Iraq, and even more importantly, they needed an enemy to scare the American people into voting for them, and to allow them to take away Americans’ civil rights with the so-called “Patriot act”. Funny how republicans are always the ones who complain about their constitutional rights being taken away…