Overnight, US President Barack Obama announced that US troops will be withdrawn from Iraq by the end of the year.
The announcement, in the White House briefing room, came after the president completed a secure video conference with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.
[..]
Officials had been discussing with Iraqi leaders the possibility of several thousand U.S. troops staying beyond 2011 to train Iraqi security forces. However, Iraqi leaders had refused to give U.S. troops immunity from prosecution, something that was seen as a deal-breaker.
Talks with the Maliki government did not begin in earnest until August of this year. The White House had authorized the ambassador there to negotiate the possibility of up to 5,000 trainers remaining — though Gen. Lloyd Austin, the commanding general, had requested upwards of 15,000.
[..]
Capitol Hill sources indicated Friday that, while the troops will come home, the standard presence of Marines will be kept to guard the U.S. Embassy there.
Given that Iraq won’t permit US troops to stay and won’t give them immunity from prosecution, I understand why they’re being pulled out…but I don’t think Iraq is either safe enough or stable enough on their own just yet. That said, Obama should have disagreed with Al-Malaki and either continued negotiations now or later, based on the advice he has received over and over again from military and intelligence leaders.
Iraq is not a safe place just yet. It is getting there and we are making wonderful progress, but there are still some very unsettling influences over there which have enough power to wreak havoc without the presence of US and other international troops. Give it five or ten years and I expect that we’ll all be back there fixing a whole new mess as a result of this withdrawal.
I find myself with furious agreement with a couple prominent Republicans on this. First up, from the above article, Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina:
“I respectfully disagree with President Obama. I feel all we have worked for, fought for, and sacrificed for is very much in jeopardy by today’s announcement. I hope I am wrong and the president is right, but I fear this decision has set in motion events that will come back to haunt our country,” Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said in a statement.
And secondly, Minnesota Congresswoman and Presidential Candidate Michele Bachmann (currently my second pick behind Herman Cain):
“Today’s announcement that we will remove all of our forces from Iraq is a political decision and not a military one; it represents the complete failure of President Obama to secure an agreement with Iraq for our troops to remain there to preserve the peace and demonstrates how far our foreign policy leadership has fallen. In every case where the United States has liberated a people from dictatorial rule, we have kept troops in that country to ensure a peaceful transition and to protect fragile growing democracies. We will now have fewer troops in Iraq than we have in Honduras – despite a costly and protracted war.
“President Obama’s decision represents the end of the era of America’s influence in Iraq and the strengthening of Iran’s influence in Iraq with no plan to counter that influence. We have been ejected from a country by the people that we liberated and that the United States paid for with precious blood and treasure. The administration claims that we got exactly what we needed, but today’s announcement demonstrates otherwise. The United States needed a working democratic partnership in Iraq and we should have demanded that Iraq repay the full cost of liberating them given their rich oil revenues. I call on the president to return to the negotiating table with Iraq and lead from the front and not from weakness in Iraq and in the world.”
As I’ve said before, when you go in to a war, you have to be in it to win it. We are making great strides in Iraq, but the job is not done. We should not be leaving yet, and if this situation remains unchanged (I can’t see Obama changing his mind on this one…I think he is beyond caring how bad the polls are now and just wants to finish implementing his ideology before he gets booted out of office by either the 2012 election or a Democratic Party Primary challenge) then I fear that we will have to do all of this hard work all over again in a few years…and if that happens, then what do we say to the families who lost loved ones fighting for something that we are apparently not fighting for any more? And what about the poor people of Iraq who are just starting to get back on their feet? I suppose that if they agree with their Prime Minister, then they are just as responsible for whatever happens…but this seems like such a bad idea on so many levels.
And just when I thought we might be getting a handle on the Middle-East…I have long thought that the Middle-East would be the flashpoint for the start of the next world war, and now I get to worry about that all over again. We need to stay in Iraq at the moment, for their sake and for our sake. It is Obama’s job to convince the Iraqi parliament of that…I can’t say that I’m surprised that he got that wrong, just like almost everything else he has ever done in government.
I have to admit that I am quite enjoying watching the Republican Presidential candidates battling it out for the nomination at the moment. There have been some very interesting moves, some interesting policy ideas which have spawned further policy ideas from other candidates, some “moments of truth” where my thoughts on certain candidates have been confirmed, and the utter frustration of watching Mitt Romney and Rick Perry battle each other in to oblivion and irrelevance. On the latter two points, anyone who claims that Ron Paul is coherent clearly lacks even basic knowledge of the English language; and while I have my differences with both Romney and Perry, I wish one of them would just drop off so that the current crazy battle could cease and the other one could spend some time actually talking about policies.
Right now, my preferred candidate is Herman Cain, mainly on the back of his 9-9-9 tax reform plan where he would throw out the existing federal tax code (side point: I was amused by the infantile David Gregory on NBC’s Meet The Depressed being unable to understand the difference between state and federal taxes) and replace with it a flat 9% business income tax, a flat 9% personal income tax, and a 9% national sales tax.
There are five things I like about this plan:
1. It replaces a gigantic monstrosity of a tax code with something which is simple, eliminating most (if not all) of the existing loopholes and removing the need for much of the IRS bureaucracy in the process.
2. At the moment, the top ten percent of income earners in the US pay the vast majority of the tax bill, and 53% of the population pay ALL of the income tax bill. This is a serious impediment to the willingness of the high income earners to earn more and employ people, and an impediment to the low income earners to enter a job where they would start paying income tax. Making the income tax 9% across the board would eliminate all of these impediments and spur economic growth.
3. The payroll tax disappears. A gigantic expense for businesses in employing people disappears.
4. The national sales tax means that a decent chunk of the tax bill moves away from incomes and move to consumption, which means that to a large extent, people are responsible for choosing how much tax to pay by virtue of how much they spend. It also means that more money is available in the form of incomes due to the lower tax burden on incomes, meaning that people will have more money available to spend, again spurring economic growth.
5. The whole plan, with all of that economic growth, is designed to provide the federal government with roughly the same amount of tax revenue as it currently receives. In the short term, this makes it much easier for the federal government to reduce its debt without needing to cut spending as quickly as it needs to do under the current tax code, and in the longer term makes it more likely that tax rates will be able to go down (not up as certain sections of the media want to claim) as combined economic growth and lower government spending (both of which are in Cain’s plans) would mean that the federal government would need less revenue as a percentage of national incomes…which in turn leads to more economic growth.
I like the plan and think it would do wonders for the economy and the people, and given that I also like most of Herman Cain’s views and ideas, it’s fairly obvious why he is at the top of my list of preferred candidates at this time, however something happened overnight which made me stop and ask a few new questions.
Herman Cain’s 9-9-9 tax plan will be 9-0-9 for the poorest Americans, the candidate said Friday, in remarks that appeared designed to blunt recent criticisms that he would raise taxes on those of modest means.
For people living under the poverty line, “your plan isn’t 9-9-9, it’s 9-0-9,” Mr. Cain said in a policy speech in Detroit. “Say amen, y’all. If you are at or below the poverty line…then you don’t pay that middle 9” – i.e. the individual flat tax.
First of all, I ask how “poverty line” is defined. One of the big issues with the current tax code is that 47% of people pay no income tax, meaning that middle and high income earners are left to foot the bill. Given that virtually all jobs are created by high income earners, this is an impediment to the economy. How much of the population would be considered to be “at or below the poverty line”?
Secondly, 9-9-9 was designed to provide the federal government with approximately the same amount of revenue as the current tax code, albeit with a simpler and more economically-friendly (now there’s a term we should hear more) way. Giving some people 9-0-9 will obviously produce less revenue for the federal government. How much less? And where is this shortfall made up? If the answer to the second question is “spending cuts” then I’m happy with that.
Thirdly, taxing income once it gets over a set threshold produces a disincentive to ever earn an income which is over that threshold. What is the plan to overcome this? For example, if the cutoff rate at which taxes go from 0% to 9% is $20,000 and the tax remains is a flat tax and not a progressive tax, then people earning $20,000 are worse off than people earning $19,999 as people earning $19,999 would pay no tax and would keep their entire income, but people earning $20,000 would pay $1,800 in tax and would therefore only keep $18,200. In fact, people would have to earn $21,979 in order to take home more than people earning $19,999 ($20,000.89 would be the net income of someone earning $21,979).
At low levels, this might not be a huge disincentive to earn more, but it’s still a disincentive. If the proposal is to make the first X amount of income a “tax free” amount and just tax the rest, this solves the problem entirely, unless of course the plan involves a tax free threshold until people reach certain income levels, in which case the disincentive would be shifted to a higher (and arguably more economically dangerous) level of income and we would be seeing the start of a whole new progressive tax, which I would be unable to support.
At this time, Herman Cain’s website does not explain the details of this, which I find a tad odd given that he noted on Twitter that this announcement is the “last part of my 999 plan for Revitalizing America”. That said, his website does tend to be a little bit behind the eight-ball on his announcements, so I’ll give him a little time to publish the details. I do eagerly await those details though as my ongoing support may hinge on some of them.
One of the great victories of the Howard government was the introduction of Voluntary Student Unionism, which removed the mandatory burden of students of having to fund student unions. These unions, while they had their uses, were primarily in the business of providing services that could not survive if people had to choose to pay for them…in other words, services that the vast majority of students either didn’t want, didn’t need or didn’t have the time to use because they were busy mixing study and a part-time job (what I would call “keeping society’s wheels turning”). Worse still, these unions were almost all involved in a myriad of political activities on behalf of their mandated members who, in many cases, wanted nothing to do with the political activities due to disagreeing with the political stance of their union.
The act of making it voluntary to be a member of a student union meant something radical happened. The unions no longer had a guaranteed income and suddenly had to become responsive to the needs and wants of students in order to survive. The services and retail outlets that they ran had to do the same. A myriad of services and political activities which were unwanted by the vast majority disappeared. It gave students the right that everyone should have…the right to choose with whom they wish to associate, and it provided students with the ability to make it abundantly clear what they did and did not want out of their student union.
Around the time that this all happened, I recall the Canberra Institute of Technology got around the VSU legislation by deciding that they weren’t charging a “union fee”, but rather an “association fee”, and they knew that what they were doing was illegal but thought they would get away with it anyway. The primary role of this association seemed to be to provide discounted coffee to students at a rate which costed more in “association fees” than it did in coffee discounts…and we all know that the majority of the price of a cup of coffee is profit anyway, so goodness knows where this money all went, although I know that I saw some of it on display in the Never Ending Garema Place Protest About Anything And Everything that seemed to be in Garema Place all the time.
I don’t think CIT got away with keeping the fee in the form they did back in 2006, but it hardly matters right now, the point is that it was a useless black hole of student funds.
Fast forward to this year, and guess what happened in the Senate last week. While everyone was busy focussing on the Carbon Dioxide Tax in the House Of Representatives, a little law passed through the Senate which effectively repeals Voluntary Student Unionism. We are now back to the bad old days of forcing students to fund unions.
The story didn’t get a lot of media attention…in fact you could say that it really slipped under the radar. The Bendigo Advertiser had a decent writeup of the story with a quote from third-year student Ms. Jessi Muston
“I don’t think every student should have to pay. We’ve organised funding and sponsorship and I think that was a good experience,” she said.
And she is right. If there is a service that students want, need and desire, then they will be driven enough to organise the funding for it one way or another…whether that be by asking other students to pay for it or by arranging sponsorships by local businesses is up to them, but that’s the beauty of the free market. If people value a service, they will make it work. People should not be forced to pay for services just because a committee has decided that they will be the services that are offered this year.
Incidentally, at the time of writing this post, the poll on the Bendigo Advertiser’s article showed that 58.4% of respondents do not agree with compulsory student unionism.
But opposition tertiary education spokesman Brett Mason complained that increasing numbers of students were of mature age and part-time and did not have the time or the opportunity to make use of campus services.
[..]
“We have over one million students [who are] forced to pay for services most students don’t want, or can’t use, and political activity they don’t approve of,” Mr Mason said.
Precisely my point.
It was a bad day for students when this legislation passed the Senate last week. It’s just a shame that almost nobody knows that it happened. This was a big deal back when the Howard government introduced voluntary student unionism back in 2005 with passionate arguments from both sides of the debate, and yet right now we are hearing silence. This might not be as big a deal as the Carbon Dioxide Tax, but it’s yet another example of the Rudd/Gillard government attempting to undo all of the progress which was made under the Howard government…people deserve to know what is being done legislatively by their government, because if people don’t know, how can they voice an opinion?
Call me a conspiracy theorist if you like, but I do not think that the timing of this legislation passing the Senate while everyone was focussing on the other house of Parliament is a coincidence…and I wonder what else has been slipped through without anyone noticing.
The passage of the Carbon Dioxide Tax through the House of Representatives yesterday was a travesty and a major blow to those of us who don’t want the tax, and also those who simply want the Prime Minister to follow through on her pre-election promise that she would not introduce the tax. The tax will pass the Senate thanks to the numbers held by the Labor and Green parties, and sadly there is nothing that we can do to prevent that.
This is a blow, a big one at that, but is not defeat. If anything, this should make those of us who are opposed to the Carbon Dioxide Tax stronger in our resolve. The only way to get rid of this tax is to have it repealed, and the only way to do that is to vote this government out in a large enough margin so that people who pledge to repeal the tax can take control of both houses of Parliament. In particular I am thinking of Tony Abbott and many (but not all) of his Liberal/National Coalition colleagues, and various others such as the Climate Sceptics Party.
We must stand up for what we believe. We must do so at the ballot box. One way or another, the people will have their say on this tax (for a second time, we rejected it overwhelmingly last time and I hope the same happens next time…it will actually mean something next time). I believe that it is vital for the future of this country that this tax is repealed, and I hope that the Australian people continue to see it that way at the next election.
Yesterday was a bad day, but a predictable impediment. Today we regroup and refocus our efforts on what needs to be done to get rid of this tax. The road ahead is long, but repeal is very achievable…don’t let Julia Gillard make you believe otherwise, rather make sure that she knows that her tax can and will be repealed, and that her attempt to reshape this nation will not survive.
We must be strong. We must continue. We must repeal this tax.
Today’s ruling in the Federal Court is a worry. It may very well be legally accurate (and I make no comment on its legal accuracy) but it spells out a very worrying precedent in this country.
HERALD Sun columnist Andrew Bolt has lost an action brought in the Federal Court in which the columnist was accused of breaching the Racial Discrimination Act.
Bolt was found to have contravened Section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act.
Nine aboriginal applicants brought a class-action against Bolt and the Herald and Weekly Times claiming Bolt wrote they sought professional advantage from the colour of their skin.
[..]
In concluding the eight day proceedings, counsel for the plaintiffs conceded Bolt’s writings did not incite “racial vilification or racial hatred”, rather they “constituted highly personal, highly derogatory and highly offensive attacks” on the nine individuals.
This ruling spells out in clear legal judgement that it is an offence in this country to offend someone. It has long been true in this country that we don’t actually have a right to freedom of speech as such, but that we have generally accepted that we are able to speak our mind with the exception of laws relating to defamation. For a very long time we have accepted this as being “fair enough”…but now I really do start to wonder.
How can a society be free if its citizens are not free to exchange thoughts and ideas? There is clearly no freedom of expression if merely offending someone constitutes a criminal act, and in the free exchange of ideas on controversial subjects, the fact is that people will occasionally be offended by the thoughts of others. I am very worried by the fact that the people who are offended now have a clearly defined legal ability to take somebody to court for offending them when, I believe, in a free society the appropriate recourse for being offended is to argue and disagree with the person who caused the offence.
In a free society, one should have the right to disagree with others, but one should not have the right to avoid being offended; one should have the right to seek legal recourse for defamation, but not for being offended.
Freedom of speech, which I admit never truly existed in this country, is officially dead, however it can be revived. I do believe that this country needs, enshrined in law and preferably the constitution, the right to freedom of speech, if it is to have any hope of long-term success as a free country. This may take time, so to start with in the short term, laws which inhibit freedom of speech such as the Racial Discrimination Act need to be repealed or amended.
Today’s ruling, no matter how legally accurate it may be, scares me greatly. It scares me because I can see the consequences that this type of law will have on this country, and it scares me because I worry about my own safety as a person who happens to have an opinion. It, sadly, adds to my reasons for wanting to seek freer lands.
I hold out hope that this ruling helps to pave the way for the citizens of this great country to stand up for freedom of speech and to do what is needed to protect it.
I hold out hope because, for the moment at least, one can hope, and one can dream, but one apparently can’t talk about it for fear of a court ruling that someone else was offended by it. What utterly ridiculous and dangerous times we are living in.
In the district infamously recently vacated by the aptly named Anthony Weiner, a special election was held yesterday (we would call it a by-election). The district, New York 9, has been held by a Democrat since 1923 and is generally considered to be a very safe district for Democrats, and is also a district in which Obama won by 11 percentage points in 2008.
Enter Bob Turner, a former television executive with no political experience, who ran on a platform opposing Obama’s disastrous economic policies and Obama’s dangerous cuddling up to the Palestinians at the expense of America’s important ties with Israel.
Republican Bob Turner was called as the winner of the special election for the 9th Congressional District, held to replace disgraced former Democratic Rep. Anthony Weiner, who resigned in June after admitting he sent sexually-charged messages to women he met online.
[..]
After being introduced as Congressman Turner — while Frank Sinatra’s “New York, New York” played in the background — the retired media executive and political novice told his supporters at the Roma View restaurant in Howard Beach, Queens, that he was ready to get to work.
As his supporters chanted, “Yes we can!” — a jab at Obama’s 2008 campaign slogan — Turner told the crowd, “It’s still me up here,” WNYC reported.
“Maybe we started something. I sure hope so,” he said.
“We’ve been told this is a referendum and we’re ready to say, ‘Mr. President, we are on the wrong track,” he said, according to the New York Daily News.
“We’ve been asked by the people of this district to send a message to Washington and I hope they hear it loud and clear. We only hope that our voices are heard. We can start putting things right again.”
Bob Turner won on national issues. He turned a safe Democratic seat in to a Republican seat…or to be more precise, Obama’s horrid policies and the effect they are having on the nation did that, Bob Turner is just the loud and clear voice of the people on this one.
Well, Obama gave another speech about his so-called “jobs plan” which would raise taxes and kill more jobs in the process and his press secretary Jay Carney ran the Democratic National Committee line of the week “oh, elections don’t actually matter”.
Q And Jay, what’s the reaction to the elections last night? How can they be viewed as anything other than a referendum on the President and where he stands with voters?
MR. CARNEY: I know I’m a little older than you, but you’ve been around long enough to know, as a reporter, as I was, that special elections are often unique and their outcomes do not tell you very much about future regularly scheduled elections. And I’m sure that you and everyone else here did not write, after Democrats won all, I believe, the special elections in 2009 and 2010, that that foretold a certain outcome in the 2010 midterms. Certainly, this election has no other bearing.
Q But those 2009 elections were before major administration policies were passed; it was before health care, it was before financial regulation. These seem more like a referendum on what’s going on, but if you’re —
MR. CARNEY: Hans, you can make those predictions and look foolish in 14 months or not. I’m simply saying that we do not view it that way.
Q Okay. Do you view these elections as a wakeup call, then? That you need to reach a —
MR. CARNEY: I think that the — one election in what had been a Democratic seat is unique to that district, to the circumstances around what created — that caused the special election to take place. And judge it as you will, I think it’s a very specific case in a specific district in, obviously, a very low turnout election.
Q So, not an indicator species at all? Won’t it all —
MR. CARNEY: I think I’ve answered the question. The answer is no. I mean, if you’re asking me — if you’re asking me, are Americans in general anxious, not happy with Washington, the answer is yes. And I would say, as we’ve said, that every elected member of Congress — elected official, rather, who is up for election in 14 months needs to take that mood very seriously. And the President certainly does, because he knows he works for the American people — that’s why he’s out there pushing the jobs act. And he believes that members of Congress need to take it seriously as well.
Regardless of their public bleatings, Obama and friends are obviously concerned, because they’ve launched yet another website asking people to report on the bad things which people say about Obama so that they can “stop the attacks on the President before they start” and “arm you with the truth so you can share the facts with your friends and family”. It’s a bit like a citizen-powered version of Julia Gillard’s inquiry in to how to make Andrew Bolt and The Australian newspaper be nicer to her (h/t TVTonight.com.au) in that the problem with both of these things is that attacks on Barack Obama (and Julia Gillard) tend to be on the factual basis that their policies are causing ongoing problems. If attackwatch.com wants to arm people with facts, it will simply forward the “attacks” to people.
It’s all a sign of the same thing. Barack Obama’s policies are running America in to the ground and people have had enough.
In some ways the dreadful events of 9/11 seem so long ago, but in others they seem like they happened only yesterday. Certainly, the memories of that awful day are as vivid today as they were ten years ago.
Everyone has their own memories of that day, but for me I was in Year 8 in high school. I was ill, so I was in bed when the first plane hit a little after 10:45pm Canberra time. The first I heard about it was when I got up the next morning and Mum informed me that some planes had crashed. I decided that I would watch one of the mid-morning news bulletins on the television, and turned the TV on a few minutes early. The TV was tuned to a station which wasn’t due to air a new bulletin for another 30 minutes or so, but they were already airing news which I thought was a bit odd, until I checked the other stations and saw that they were also all airing news.
I knew that something very big had happened at that time as the last blanket news coverage that I could recall was for Princess Diana’s funeral. It was a couple minutes later when I saw the footage of the plane hitting the second World Trade Centre building, and the footage of the two towers collapsing, that the enourmity of this event struck me. I was mortified, and was glued to the coverage for the rest of the day. The fact that I was unwell seemed to be irrelevant…in fact I gather that, at school that day, everyone was watching the coverage of the 9/11 terror attacks…in some ways I am glad that I was ill and was able to digest this dreadful news without the commentary of a school teacher getting in the way.
I remember on that day when the news anchors announced that they had just received footage of the first plane hitting the first tower. I remember when the word started to filter through that Osama Bin Laden was the prime suspect. I remember going to sleep that night trying to remember the name of our new enemy, a man so evil that he would mastermind the deaths of so many thousands of innocent people. I remember taking the “Bin” part of his name and remembering that “that’s where he belongs” as my way of remembering his name.
Above all else though, I remember the horrifying footage of the people who jumped from the towers. As horrifying as that was for those of us who were witnessing it, I shudder to think of how awful it must have been in those buildings on that day to cause so many people to prefer jumping to their deaths from such a great height rather than wait to burn to death…and how awful it must have been to be in that position to have to make such a decision.
Such an awful day. Such a lot that we need to remember.
On this tenth anniversary, I am taking time to remember the awful events of that day, and the people who lost their lives that day. I give thanks for the brave souls who tried to save others, giving little or no consideration to their own safety in the process; the people who went in to the burning buildings; the passengers of United 93 who rose up against the hijackers and undoubtedly saved many more lives; and of course I give thanks for the wonderful brave troops who have gone to fight for our freedom and safety in the decade since that dreadful day.
In honour of all of these people, apart from remembering them, I am wearing my NYPD hoodie today and tomorrow. It might not be much, but it is a part of displaying that I am proud to say that I remember those people, and I stand as an ally of America on this day, and all days, but on this one in particular.
We must not let something awful like this happen again, and we must do all that we can towards that end.
At long last, one of the anti-carbon dioxide tax rallies is set to happen at a time when I am able to attend. As such, I feel that the following disclaimer about my attendance is in order.
Samuel wishes to advise that he will be attending the protest rally at Parliament House today with the intention of opposing the carbon dioxide tax. Samuel may or may not agree with other aspects of the rally, but will not be attending for those purposes. Samuel will be representing himself and only himself; he will not be attending on behalf of any organisation and his attendance should not be construed as having the endorsement of any organisation.
In particular, I believe that this is necessary so that it is absolutely clear that I am not attending this rally on behalf of, or in representation of, any media organisation to which I may have ties. I’m proud of what I stand for, but I respect the rights of the aforementioned organisations to remain neutral to this protest.
And with that out of the way…
I support this:
In an effort to stop this:
(Both songs courtesy of The Ray Hadley Morning Show and The Robertson Brothers)
I was somewhat alarmed yesterday when the news about Shell closing a refinery came out, and the union official who spoke about it on the radio was going on about how the union doesn’t believe that the refinery needs to close, and the closure should therefore be stopped. I can understand unions being concerned for their members, but I think that sometimes that need to realise that businesses do not exist to employ people, rather they exist to make a profit and they employ people as a side-effect of that, so forcing a business to be less profitable is not in the interests of the members of unions.
In the case of the refinery which Shell plan to close, it is simply not competitive in the global marketplace now that Asian refineries are producing so much more oil than it is. As a result, Shell plan to change from refining oil at the Clyde refinery to processing imported refined oil at the facility. Some jobs will be lost, but far fewer jobs than would be lost if Shell was forced, as the unions seem to want, to continue to run the refinery at a loss. It should also be noted that Shell has:
repeated earlier comments that it would relocate as many workers as it could to other Shell operations.
So, Shell wants to keep as many of its already-trained and presumably loyal employees as is practical by using them for other functions within the company, doing things which actually are profitable and could result in even more employment in the future, as tends to happen in healthy, profitable businesses.
You’d never know that if you ask the unions though.
The AMWU claims 500 direct jobs are at stake, while a further 1700 could be lost in downstream industries like petrochemicals and plastics if the historic refinery is shut.
Nonsense. Shell will continue to refine oil elsewhere, as will other companies, and Shell will be replacing the no-longer-locally-refined oil with imported oil. Downstream industries will not be forced to sack people due to a lack of refined oil as there won’t be a lack of refined oil. As for Shell’s employees, as already stated, Shell will offer them employment elsewhere within the business, and any employee who does not work elsewhere within the company for whatever reason is free to find employment elsewhere, and you can be sure that some of Shell’s competitors will be interested in hiring trained people.
Sadly, the unions go on
[The Australian Manufacturing Workers Union NSW secretary Tim Ayres] said it was time for the NSW government to seek assurances from Shell about the potential impacts of the closure, such as in reducing competition, raising prices and disrupting oil supply in NSW.
“If I was in (Premier) Barry O’Farrell’s shoes, I’d really want to be assured that we’ve got certainty over fuel supply,” he said.
“We really think it’s a big test for the NSW government,” he said.
“They should be rolling up their sleeves, getting engaged with Shell and with industry, and making sure we’ve got a viable future for that site.”
(h/t NineMSN, again)
So they want the government to force Shell to keep the site open at a loss, so that a (imaginary) degradation in competition will not occur. Ignoring the fact that Shell will continue to put as much refined oil in to the market for a moment, how far does this plan by the unions extend? What happens if this refinery ends up costing so much that Shell Australia can no longer pay its bills and has to put everyone out of work…do we make the government force them to continue to operate and force their creditors to write-off the debt. Similar government interference in the United States has already led to a financial collapse in recent years.
No, what matters here is not whether the refinery “needs to close” as the unions would put it, but rather what Shell want to do in order to make a profit and continue to be able to employ people as a result. If Shell want to close it down, then so be it. If somebody else wants to buy the site (or some other site) and try their hand at competing, then so be it. It’s called the free market, and it works by allowing businesses the freedom to shape their businesses as they see fit, to prosper, and as a result to employ people. From time to time this results in some job losses, but it also results in more employment. The freer the market, the greater the levels of overall employment.
The unions may argue with this and think that having the government dictate terms of employment and operation to businesses is the way to go, but it has failed each and every time. If Union bosses were really interested in the needs of their members, they would focus on wage and condition claims, but instead it seems that the vast majority of people in the upper echelons of the unions are more interested in claiming a spot in a centralised government-run economy than in looking after their members…is it any wonder that with antics like this, people are leaving unions in droves?
And to that end, we should not be setting arbitrary dates to get out of war zones. Apart from anything else, when we enter a war, we have an obligation to the people we are trying to protect to not leave the place in a worse or more volatile state than when we entered, or to leave it in a state where there is a real and present danger of volatility.
Unfortunately, we appear to be set to do just that. In an exclusive in The Australian today, Amanda Hodge writes about the very real concerns of Oruzgan Governor Haji Omar Shirzad.
THE governor of Oruzgan has urged Australia to stay the course in the troubled Afghan province and consider extending its troops’ presence beyond the NATO-agreed December 2014 withdrawal date if security does not improve.
In an interview with The Australian in his compound in the provincial capital of Tarin Kowt, Governor Haji Omar Shirzad said he feared the impact of a premature troop withdrawal on the fragile security gains that have been made within the region.
“If there’s an early withdrawal of troops it will have a negative impact on the security situation,” said the self-styled anti-corruption crusader.
“I don’t want them (Australia) to set a certain time for the withdrawal of troops. It should depend on the security situation.
“If it improves within a year then maybe they can reduce the force here, but if security doesn’t improve after one, two, three years they should think about staying here for a longer period.”
While he is completely right that if we go ahead with this preposterous plan of leaving at a preset date, we will be leaving Afghanistan with a real and present danger of the people we are fighting against regaining power and making the lives of Afghanis highly dangerous and destabilising the country, which would be a serious neglect of our duty, I think we have another very important reason for staying…one of self interest, and this applies to our allies who are also seemingly willing to leave as well.
We (Australia and our allies) went in to Afghanistan to fight the forces which were responsible for the 9/11 terror attacks and various other atrocities. We went in there to protect our security and our interests, and the in the process ended up helping the innocent Afghan people. If we leave before the job is done, then we will be leaving Afghanistan in a position where the terrorists can regain power and regroup, and then launch more attacks on us with a renewed vigour and aggression.
Right now we have the terrorists on the run for the most part. We should be proud of this and should use this to our advantage to finish the job. Unfortunately it seems that our elected leaders in parliament are more afraid of some bad press than of the long-term consequences of not finishing the job, and are willing to leave the job unfinished because, in a war zone, people have died. Rather than giving our fallen soldiers the dignity they deserve by having the courage to finish the job they started, our politicans are suffering from media-induced cowardice, and the worst part of this is that they are suffering from this at a time when we are gaining the upper hand, and having to enter some more dangerous situations to eliminate the harder to reach elements.
The point of going to war is to win, and you don’t win by telling the other side when you are going to leave. You also don’t win by quitting when the job is not finished…and when you effectively give up as our politicians seem to be willing to do, you create a dangerous situation for the people in the area, and set your own country up for great problems and damage down the track.
We must stay, for our sake, and that of our allies and the Afghan people.
The bit which I find interesting is that police also allege that this man was responsible for the attack which brought down Distribute.IT, a wholesale service provider of website hosting, domain names and the like. Distribute.IT was a fairly large player in the Australian market, providing wholesale services to many of the other players in the market.
The attack on Distribute.IT resulted in the total loss of somewhere in the order of 4,000 websites and chaos for the owners of many thousands of domain names, not to mention the retail service providers who had to deal with the fallout from it all. For .au domains, the chaos was slightly more contained as core systems (not run by Distribute.IT) which allow for the domains to be transferred to other providers continued to work, however for non .au domains, such actions were not possible and thousands upon thousands of domains were left in limbo…still operating to the extent of allowing traffic to be directed to appropriate servers, but unable to be managed in any way by their owners, and unable to be renewed if they were due to expire, which some did.
Eventually another provider, NetRegistry, bought Distribute.IT’s assets without any of their liabilities and set about restoring the horribly compromised Distribute.IT systems to some form of functionality before moving customers across to their own systems. While debate rages about whether NetRegistry’s move was the best possible outcome (moves were afoot by authoritative bodies within the industry to dissolve Distribute.IT’s domain registrar accreditation which may have resulted in people being able to move their domains to other providers more easily, but could also have been very messy) and I don’t propose to try and decide which option would have been better, what I can say is that the full functionality of the management side of the affected domains has still not been restored, and that this hacking has resulted in many thousands of hours of lost productivity throughout the Australian internet services industry and in other industries which rely on it, such as businesses with online stores.
I think that this is a much bigger and more interesting story than an intrusion in to the systems of a company which happens to have an agreement with NBN Co. and am somewhat disappointed that it won’t get anywhere near the amount of coverage, although I suppose when it is all added together and you take in to account the fact that the man who police allege is responsible for it all has no formal qualifications in IT whatsoever, it does go to show what many people in the IT industry have been saying for a very long time. Experience trumps qualifications every time.
Yesterday morning I went along to the National Press Club to see Czech President Vaclav Klaus’ address on the subjects of climate change as well as socialism, communism and the like. When I arrived, I was a tad early, so I was directed to the club’s lounge where I had a cup of coffee and was pleasantly surprised to find that Lord Monckton was in the room, however he was busily engaged in conversation so I did not interrupt, although I was fortunate enough to say hello to him and have a quick chat with him when he opened himself up to the handful of people in the room who wished to say hello.
After this, I went downstairs and found that for some peculiar reason I was registered on two tables, eight and nine. I forget which table I ended up sitting at, however I had a very pleasant conversation with the other people at the table. The club provided barramundi for lunch and then the speech began.
President Klaus made it quite clear that he was no in the country to advise the government, but rather to offer up his own views based on his own experiences and observations.
On the subject of climate change, President Klaus spoke at some length about how he sees no real evidence of the changes in the climate being unusual, extreme or dangerous, and that to the same extent he sees attempts to control the climate as futile, and from an economic perspective considers adaptation to any changes to be the more prudent approach, and one that has worked well for us for a very long time.
President Klaus also recounted some of his observations from his time within the former communist state of Czechoslovakia, including some of the difficulties he encountered being a believer in the free market in such a state. He also, while making clear that he does not believe that the global warming agenda is a socialist plot (he did mention at one stage that he simply does not believe in conspiracy theories), noted that he sees many similarities between the actions of those who claim that global warming is a problem and have a solution, and the actions of the socialist leaders, and this worries him greatly.
After his address, during the period of time dedicated to questions from the media, President Klaus was asked about his views on the policies of our current government and opposition. Having already made it clear that he sees carbon trading as a pointless and economically destructive idea, he focused on the Coalition’s “direct action” policy which he said was slightly better than carbon trading because it was a more tangible idea and easier to account for, but that he still regarded it as a “crazy” idea, something which those of us in the room who believe that the Coalition really wouldn’t do anything about climate change took some comfort in.
After all of this, the Press Club presented him with their usual gift, a bottle of wine and a pen, which caused some amusement within the room due to an incident which occurred in Chile earlier this year where he was caught on video pocketing a pen during an official visit and was widely accused of theft in the international media, however both he and the Chilean President deny that there was any theft and instead say that the pen was a gift to President Klaus.
I thoroughly enjoyed the address and the company of the various people that I met, and found President Klaus’ address to be quite illuminating, and I’m very glad that I went in person and did not merely watch on television.
That said, it is good that it was televised as this allows me to share the video of the event with you in the hope that you will also find it quite interesting.
I’ll have more to say about President Klaus’ address to the National Press Club tonight after I have rewatched it, however I do need to set the record straight on The Australian’s first attempt at an article on the subject.
The majority of the story is accurate, however the end is quite misleading. The article ends thusly:
He was more upbeat about the merits of Coalition’s direct action policy.
“I would say that, in some respect, I would be in favour of direct action,” he said.
“Direct action is visible, understandable and probably people can more easily discuss the cost benefits of such measures.”
This, sadly, is a misrepresentation. Yes, it’s a direct quote, but the context is missing as President Klaus was not “upbeat” about the Coalition’s “Direct Action” policy, in face he went on to call it “crazy” and stated quite clearly that he is opposed to any of the current government or opposition policies on dealing with climate change. As noted elsewhere in the article, he stated that trying to fight the climate is futile, and adaptation is the better approach.
This first attempt was from Joe Kelly and with the exception of the noted problem, was a good article. I don’t know if Mr. Kelly was there or not, but I do know that Christian Kerr from The Australian was there and asked a couple pertinent questions, so I look forward to Mr. Kerr’s article which I trust will be a more full and frank account of the address.
