Saturday, December 18, 2010
Friday, December 17, 2010
Saturday, December 11, 2010
Cryptic clues to intricate diplomacy | The Australian
POLITICIANS everywhere are reeling at the content and implications of the leaks.
THE scale and random nature of the WikiLeaks affair exposes the weakening grip democratic governments have on their secrets, delivers another body blow to American prestige and reveals the vulnerability of databases to individuals with access and expertise.
These leaks will become a milestone in changing the operations of government and diplomacy. The point is they are driven by technological capability. The leaks occur because they can occur, not because of any political cause such as exposing corruption, ending the Vietnam War, fighting human rights abuses or bringing democracy to China.
As usual, the US occupies the forefront of change. But this is a double-edged status. The control functions of the US state are being undermined by a small, elusive and hi-tech WikiLeaks outfit headed by an Australian, Julian Assange, whose narcissism is barely disguised by his polemical recruitment of the ideology of free speech, the great American virtue.
Start of sidebar. Skip to end of sidebar.
Related Coverage
- WikiLeaks: Rudd stays cool under pressure The Australian, 12 hours ago
- PM now plumbing new depths Herald Sun, 12 hours ago
- WikiLeaks: key points for our region NEWS.com.au, 1 day ago
- Labor rejects Arbib spy tag Adelaide Now, 1 day ago
- Arbib leaks to US 'like a sieve' The Australian, 1 day ago
End of sidebar. Return to start of sidebar.
If you want a reality check, read what the leaker, Bradley Manning, now in solitary confinement, said of his "unprecedented access to classified networks 14 hours a day, seven days a week" for more than eight months: "I would come in with music on a CD-RW labelled with something like 'Lady Gaga' . . . erase the music . . . then write a compressed split file. No one suspected a thing . . . [I] listened and lip-synched to Lady Gaga's Telephone while exfiltrating possibly the largest data spillage in American history . . . Hillary Clinton and several thousand diplomats around the world are going to have a heart attack when they wake up one morning and find an entire repository of classified foreign policy is available in searchable format to the public . . . everywhere there's a US post, there's a diplomatic scandal that will be revealed. Worldwide anarchy in CSV format . . . it's beautiful and it's horrifying."
Welcome to the new world of cyber insecurity. Welcome to the attack on government secrets precisely because they are secrets. The politicians, stranded by an event beyond their control, seem clueless. The Gillard government kept mumbling about illegality. The Obama administration wants to throw the book at WikiLeaks. But the politicians, ultimately, face a losing battle and the huge publicity Assange has generated gives him a cult status that guarantees more leakers will service WikiLeaks down the track.
Indeed, this is a marketing campaign the power of which could never be purchased. The core idea of WikiLeaks as a superhighway for whistleblowers, hackers and public officials bent on betrayal is unstoppable.
Any newspaper editor would seize and publish the cables the Fairfax papers are publishing in Australia. Such disclosure is the red meat and circulation driver of journalism. But nobody should indulge the prattle that these stories constitute a service to free speech and human rights. They are nothing of the sort and such pomposity is ludicrous. The sour taste left by WikiLeaks is that its inevitable focus is the US, with no sign that it will trouble the closed tyrannies of China, North Korea and Burma where democracy is denied.
The WikiLeaks cables about Australia are fascinating, revealing, embarrassing yet unsurprising. The bottom line after three days (with more to come) is that Kevin Rudd, target of so much cable traffic criticism, is taking heavy political water. Rarely, if ever, has such strong US criticism of an Australian PM's foreign policy been documented so close to his time in office. While Rudd's fidelity to the US alliance was never at issue, the embassy plugged into the standard criticism of Rudd, that he was a control freak, prone to micro-management and obsessed with the media cycle.
Indeed, the US reports were superior to much of Australia's media in identifying the reasons Rudd would fall.
This judgment contrasts with the early Whitlam years when the US embassy in Canberra was ill-informed and shooting wildly about the so-called risk Gough Whitlam constituted, a reminder that relations work best when diplomats are on the money.
Nobody should be surprised that the US embassy was speaking regularly to Labor figures such as NSW powerbroker Senator Mark Arbib, former minister Bob McMullan and MP Michael Danby.
It is a long tradition. The intimacy of political exchanges between the nations helps make the relationship special and has been facilitated by annual meetings of the Australian-American Leadership Dialogue.
In past decades the Americans had close ties with Bob Hawke, Kim Beazley and former senator Stephen Loosley. Rudd himself was a valued intimate of high-placed US officials in Washington when Labor was in opposition. This week Loosley told The Australian he had briefed the US nearly 20 years ago to expect Paul Keating to replace Hawke as PM. Insights into key events in domestic politics on both sides are integral to such exchanges.
You can lay money, however, these cables are mild compared with cables from the US embassy when Mark Latham was ALP leader. This provoked the greatest period of US alarm about Australia for decades. Concern about the damage Latham might perpetrate resonated at high levels in Washington, and Rudd and Beazley were involved in talks with US officials on how Latham could best be managed.
The practice of close ties between Labor's right wing and the US tended to be overlooked during the Howard era given the media's obsession about the links between John Howard and George W. Bush. That Arbib reassured the Americans about Julia Gillard is hardly a surprise. It is interesting, however, that he told them he backed the Iraq military commitment. The tradition of political intimacy between the ALP right wing and the US has passed to a new generation; witness Chris Bowen, Stephen Conroy, Bill Shorten and Arbib, each of them increasingly wired into US networks. These exchanges, of course, are not just one way. Australia has had a succession of Washington ambassadors with excellent inside contacts; witness John McCarthy, Andrew Peacock, Michael Thawley, Dennis Richardson and now Beazley. One of the consequences is that Howard expected Bush to become president in 2001 and had an agenda ready to greet him. In the context, talk about Arbib being an "agent of influence" or a US spy is naive and ignorant of how Australia-US relations are conducted.
For Gillard, the most damaging cables, so far, are those on Afghanistan. This is because they document an explicit contradiction between Rudd-Gillard Labor's public optimism about the war and its private pessimism. It is an old-fashioned credibility gap but is unlikely to be fully exploited because the Coalition also backs the war.
Rudd told visiting US politicians in late 2008 that Australia's national security establishment was "very pessimistic" about Afghanistan. A year later the US reports were that Australia's special envoy, Ric Smith, was "increasingly pessimistic". Australian officials are shown to be highly dubious about our capacity to train the Afghan National Police. The US notes Rudd's obvious reluctance to lift troops levels.
In her defence, Gillard will argue the situation has changed but her problem is summarised by Australian National University strategic analyst Hugh White. "There is a glaring gap between the Labor government's public optimism and its private pessimism," he says. "The cables verify the private assessments that many of us have been getting for some time. I think this gap between the public and private is highly significant. It means the government has misrepresented why Australia is in Afghanistan. Because Labor doesn't want to concede we are there primarily to uphold the US alliance, it has to argue we are there to achieve other objectives that are, in fact, being achieved. This distorts and misrepresents the real reason we are in Afghanistan."
However, the most enduring foreign policy fallout from the cables (so far) concerns China. Consider what Beijing is reading. Rudd presented himself to Hillary Clinton last year as a "brutal realist" on China, damned the Chinese as "paranoid" over Taiwan and Tibet and raised the prospect of military conflict with China. Meanwhile Beazley as ALP leader in 2006 is reported telling the Americans that in any conflict with China that Australia would always be with the US. For the record, this is an assurance Howard and former foreign minister Alexander Downer conspicuously refused to give, notably on Taiwan.
China is unlikely to be surprised by Labor's remarks. It will, however, incorporate them into its assessments of Australia. The conclusion is obvious: in the evolving strategic relationship between China and the US, Australia under Labor is tightly aligned with the US. This alignment is closer than Beijing or many Australian analysts would have believed when Rudd took office in 2007 as a Mandarin-speaking Asianist keen to focus on China. Indeed, judged on their public and private remarks, at least on China, Labor is more closely aligned with the US than was Howard.
The issue in dealing with the US and China is not the obvious risk of military conflict but how to structure debates and policy to avoid such conflict. WikiLeaks has given Rudd a tough week. He needs to avoid getting rattled but reflect on the lessons.
Link: http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/opinion/cryptic-clues-to-intricate-diplo... (sent via Shareaholic)
At last the beginnings of some mature reflections on WikiLeaks
The question we should be asking ourselves is "If its OK to publish confidential US documents around the world is it also OK to publish confidential personal Medical Records, Business negotiations, sexual preferences etc?" Or is it just OK to indulge in anti-American bashing?
Jeremy
Sunday, September 5, 2010
Tuesday, August 17, 2010
Seven reasons why the NBN will fail | The Australian
I agree entirely with this analysis and I think its very important that Australian voters understand what they are getting into with the NBN.Bringing broadband home
AUSTRALIANS understand high-quality, affordable broadband is a critical part of the infrastructure we need to prosper.As one of the founders of OzEmail, Australia's first big internet company, I believe passionately in broadband and the power of the internet. But as a businessman and member of parliament I also believe passionately in not wasting taxpayers' dollars on white elephants.
So what's the broadband debate about? On the one hand Labor is spending at least $43 billion (and maybe much more) on the most expensive network in the world.
On the other, the $6bn Coalition plan will fix those parts of Australia's broadband infrastructure where intervention is justified: increasing competition in the main networks that link towns and cities and subsidising faster connections in poorly served suburban, regional and rural areas.
The Coalition's spend is less but all Australians will have access to privately provided broadband services, most of which are virtually indistinguishable from Labor's, just at a much lower cost.Start of sidebar. Skip to end of sidebar.Related Coverage
- 'Turbo' NBN to cost taxpayers no more Australian IT, 5 days ago
- Fibre not a healthy option Australian IT, 6 days ago
- Coalition unveils $6.3bn broadband plan Australian IT, 7 days ago
- Industry slams Opposition's wireless plan Australian IT, 7 days ago
- Opposition pledges to offload NBN The Australian, 10 days ago
End of sidebar. Return to start of sidebar.
Scrutiny of the Rudd-Gillard National Broadband Network reveals no fewer than seven separate reasons why it is going to fail Australians.
First, the NBN will cost far too much to build. It will be the largest investment of taxpayer funds in the country's history. While Labor claims it will find private partners, the NBN is so risky and its likely returns so low that it will probably be entirely funded by taxes. And even the chief executive of NBN Co admits the final cost is highly uncertain.
Several countries have subsidised high-speed broadband, but not on the scale Labor proposes. The taxpayer contribution in Singapore was $200 a person and in New Zealand $330 a person. Labor's extravaganza will cost Australian taxpayers more than $2000 a person.
This vast expense is why the Rudd-Gillard government has refused to submit its plan to Treasury for cost-benefit analysis. It would show the cost of the NBN far outweighs the benefits.
Second, the NBN will increase internet costs for users. Once the government has built a white elephant utterly incapable of earning a reasonable return on capital invested but assured of a monopoly over carriage of internet services, what do you think is going to happen to user charges?
One possibility is that the monopoly provider jacks up prices. The implementation study estimates that for the NBN to earn merely the bond rate, real prices will need to increase 1 per cent each year, rather than decrease rapidly as they have in recent years. And if it doesn't, then its value won't equal the cost of investment. If the government instead decides to charge reasonable wholesale fees, the cashflows earned by NBN will not justify a value remotely near $43bn. Even if most households sign up, the NBN may be worth less than a quarter of that investment.
The trouble with the NBN is that it has been decreed by politicians, not driven by market demands.The fastest networks of today run over optical fibre and there are already many thousands of kilometres of fibre in our networks. The question is whether the huge extra cost of mandating every home in Australia be connected to fibre-optic cable is justified. Millions of Australians can already achieve fast broadband speeds over networks currently in place, and we know today's speeds will increase rapidly in coming years.
Consumer preferences often turn out to be very different from what politicians, engineers and bureaucrats anticipate. The reality is that broadband involves horses for courses: some consumers and businesses want fibre optic now; others will be fine with cheaper alternatives such as hybrid fibre-coaxial (which can already deliver 100 megabits per second) or very high speed ADSL; yet others will prefer wireless. Only bureaucrats think in terms of one size fits all.
And don't forget, Canberra is terrible at building and operating commercial services. Perhaps the most unbelievable aspect of the NBN is that a government-controlled entity can roll out a vast undertaking such as national fibre-to-the-home on budget and on schedule. This from the people who couldn't build school assembly halls without billions in rorts? Who tragically mismanaged the home insulation program? Who put less than half the computers promised in schools at double the cost?
For the past 30 years there has been a realisation that governments are better off leaving it to the private sector to run businesses. That is why Telstra (and its peers abroad such as British Telecom) were privatised in the first place.
In addition, Canberra will have a huge conflict of interest. A remarkable part of Labor's broadband fantasy is the idea that the government can even-handedly pursue the national interest when it is both owner of the monopoly broadband network and regulator of Australia's communications market.
Let's say the NBN turns out to be the dud that most business observers expect and that five years down the track an alternative emerges providing adequate service at a lesser cost; say a variant of wireless. Will the government surrender its monopoly, rendering its investment worthless? Or will it enforce laws barring households and businesses from using a cheaper and perfectly adequate substitute technology?
If you don't think this Labor government would do that, you are wrong. Its heads of agreement with Telstra requires Telstra not to offer cheaper HFC broadband of 100Mbps because it would compete with the NBN. Good for the NBN monopoly, perhaps, but terrible for consumers.
Last, money spent on the NBN can't be spent on other services. In economics, one of the most important concepts is "opportunity cost", the idea that once you spend your money on one thing, you can't spend it on something else. If tens of billions of taxpayer dollars are invested in this low-yielding yet risky venture they can't be spent on better hospitals, schools, roads or public transit. There is no benefit to taxpayers or the Australian economy from spending $43bn or more if the NBN is worth a fraction of that when sold. Such risk is better borne by the private sector so shareholders, not taxpayers, lose out if the plan goes off the rails.
Clever governments understand that you fix problems by empowering initiative and enterprise, by creating an environment where the ingenuity and flexibility of the market is best able to deliver the cheapest and most effective solutions.
Malcolm Turnbull is the Liberal member for Wentworth.
I would add the point that it is planned that the NBN will take 8 years to roll out and these projects always overrun.
In the meantime I can't see my ISP upgrading my speed knowing that the NBN will destroy their investment. So I could be stuck with low speeds for more than 8 years!!!!
Most of the sites I visit are outside Australia and the NBN won't do anything to improve my access to these.
Don't fall for the ALP smoke and mirrors. Without the NBN you will still be able to stay home and have a specialist diagnose your illness over a video link, as ISPs improve their technology at a far lower cost.
Monday, August 2, 2010
The start of a new painting?
This is the underpainting and I haven't got a clue where it will lead to if anywhere. Have to see how it progresses.
Sunday, August 1, 2010
Today's work
An imaginary landscape of the Kimberley and a portrait of my parents when they were young and my father before he died. Comments welcome.
Thanks....Jeremy
Saturday, July 31, 2010
New Peach Tree Gallery open today
We have a small gallery next to my studio in Mount Helena, Western Australia. With new carpets and paintings it looks fantastic. We had our first visitor this morning who bought 3 paintings.
If you live in WA you are welcome to visit at any time, just give us a ring first to make sure we are in.
Paintings in the gallery can be seen at my web site www.jeremyholton.com
Wednesday, July 21, 2010
test
Jeremy Holton
phone: +618 6394 1592
mobile +614 11580 903
my art gallery Peach Tree Gallery
email: jeremy@jeremyholton.com
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Contact me:
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jeremyholtonThursday, July 8, 2010
Tuesday, June 22, 2010
Dell Streak: The versatile 5-inch Android tablet - Direct2Dell - Blogs - Dell Community
Jeremy Holton
phone: +618 6394 1592
mobile +614 11580 903
my art gallery Peach Tree Gallery
email: jeremy@jeremyholton.com
My profiles:
Contact me:
jeremyholton jeremyholtonSaturday, June 12, 2010
Art Resale Royalty Scheme
I have only just realised that as an artist I should be registering in the CAL database (and possibly all my paintings!) so I thought I would pass this article on. Registration is easy on a poorly designed form.
Australia’s Art Resale Royalty comes into effect
Australia’s new art resale royalty scheme comes into effect today, and last night at 8:16pm the appointed administrator, Copyright Agency Limited, finally sent out an email letting the art industry know what the administrative requirements would be.
If that’s not poor management of a scheme, I don’t know what is. This is not lay blame on CAL – the original Government Tender only ever allocated a few short weeks to have the website, and a public education campaign designed and delivered. The planning of this program has been of questionable quality from the get-go.
None the less, its here now and certain legal obligations must be met by people buying or selling art in Australia.
To summarise, all resales of artworks from today onwards must be reported to CAL within 90 days.
Certain resales of $1,000 or more will incur the payment of a 5% royalty, but this will not apply to the first change of ownership after 8 June, even if that is a resale. Furthermore:
- it applies to resales of existing as well as new works;
- it applies to a range of original artworks, included limited edition prints authorised by the artist;
- it does not apply to a private sale from one individual to another;
- a royalty is not payable on the first change of hands after 9 June, but all resales must be reported;
- a royalty is not payable on resales for under $1,000;
- the scheme will be extended to artworks from countries that have similar schemes.
Artists, beneficiaries and dealers are advised to register with CAL. Registrations can be conducted quickly online.
The following detailed fact sheets are available from the Resale Royalty website
Jeremy Holton
phone: +618 6394 1592
mobile +614 11580 903
my art gallery Peach Tree Gallery
email: jeremy@jeremyholton.com
My profiles:Contact me:
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