Old face, New face

Lately there have been two sides of Australia on display. Both bringing out the ugly face of nationalism as well as highlighting an emerging face of a new Australian ethnic identity.

The first story involves the detention of illegal immigrants. In 2001, post 9-11, the Oz elections were decided on the platform of protecting fortress Australia from illegal immigrants smuggled in boats from Indonesia (the few hundreds of them; read Muslims). The PM even claimed,

"we decide who comes to this country and the
circumstances in which they come"

Fast-forward to 2005 and it turns out that a mentally-ill Australian, of German origin, was detained in one of the detention centers. Next thing you know there may have been nearly 200 Australians detained, some even deported. The decisions to detain seem to be based on the fact that the individuals did not have any form of identity and didn't have a genuine Aussie accent.

Race doesn't appear to be the deciding factor but one's Australianness (some comfort). This worries me as I know a few people that have gone through mental breakdowns and reverted to their native tongues. In a modern multicultural nation I find this to be an unacceptable treatment of citizens and would like a few heads at the Department of Immigration to roll. Could I be next? Interesting discussion at catallaxy.

Schapelle Corby, a 27yr old woman convicted of taking drugs to Bali, Indonesia (It's a cheap holiday destination). On the evidence presented, IMHO she is guilty. However the story has a few complications and some unknowns. Indonesia is currently conducting a war on drugs.

.... trafficking cases leapt to 7410 compared with 1833 in 1999. Indonesian police havearrested more than 700 people in recent raids across the country. In Jakarta alone there were about 150 arrests in April, some resulting in shoot-outs. ....

It was just another news story until GTV9, one-time TV ratings darling but now struggling, decided to take part in populist journalism bordering on xenophobia. Could it be that the media [I recommend watching the videos] is taking its lead from the 2001 elections?

Nearly all columnists and commentators, including the hard-right oriented like Andrew Bolt, agree that the judgement seems fair. However, it caused a shit stir and has brought out the ugly Aussie. Some want to boycott Bali, some reportedly want their tsunami contributions back and some have started using the word "monkey" with intent.

IMHO, this fear of the other is a pathological problem that manifests itself in the Australian public discourse every 5-8 years or so (more about it some other time). It seems to be grounded in a fear of invasion by south-east Asians caused by WW2 Japanese bombings. An interesting discussion at larvatusprodeo.

Position Vacant: Conservative Democrats need apply – Part2

Having previously looked at H.L.D Mahindapala’s primary thesis, before further examining his ideas, arguments and views, we should examine HLD's self-expressed principles and values in regards to Individuals, Ethnic Groups, The Democratic State and the relationships between them.

The individual and the state

The rights of individual are universal.

.... universalities and commonalities in the rights of individuals transcend the rights of group ....

.... a state that recognizes individual rights can resolve those rights non-violently, through principles of justice implemented by its democratic institutions, which can ease and alleviate the grievances and aspirations of groups .... [link1]

.... those who seek to make a difference to this world are not morally entitled to fold their hands and remain neutral[link2]

On multiculturalism

.... universalities and commonalities in the rights of individuals transcend the rights of groups ....

.... group rights in multi-cultural societies tend to clash head-on causing multiple and irreversible injuries to individuals and groups. The proliferation of multi-cultural societies in the modern world, leading to the rise of competing claims within nationalities dominated by established majorities, demand a fine balance between the rival groups. Invariably the redressing of historical imbalances is at the core of group conflicts. .... [link1]

The liberty of individuals and limits

... liberty has limits. Liberty without limits is chaos. In fact, liberty is enhanced when its limits are defined ....

.... one man’s liberty ends at the point where the other man’s nose begins .... [link1]

The morality of using violence

.... violence cannot be left to the whims and fancies of individuals. It must be restrained by law and morality. The politics of violence is all about who has the right to use violence against whom and under what circumstances. It is the moral content in political violence that distinguishes it from other kinds of mindless violence ....

Political violence must be strategized and used only as an extension of a valid morality......Violence not justified by morality loses its validity either as an instrument of political power or as a base in a political discourse ....

.... if a society has co-existed for a period of time, maintaining an estimable record of harmony and balance between competing communities, and also if it has shown a willingness to accommodate the reasonable claims of minorities to preserve their identity, cultural and political rights then the use of violence on mere perceived injustices, or on a manufactured political agenda would be inimical to the stability ....[of] any democratic polity .... [link1]

Violence and threats outside the parliament have destabilized and dehumanized society. .... [link2]

Democratic politics

.... in a democracy, however defective it may be and however tardy it may in introducing changes, it is immoral and a threat to the life, liberty and security of all individuals if any one group/s resort/s to violence based on exclusive claims that negates the rights of all others concerned ......

.... Democracy by nature is not geared to instant or radical changes. Incrementalism is the hall mark of progressive democracies. And as long as any political system has shown the capacity and the willingness to accommodate changes then those in a hurry have no right to resort to violence .... [link1]

.... In a democracy, cutting deals behind doors, or self-serving manoeuvres by the elected parliamentarians should not derogate the expressed will of the people ....

Unless any party .... can make pure morality the basis of all political actions, circumstances dictate....that the best option is to go for the lesser evil in the hope of guiding politics, step by step, for greater good in the future.

Parliamentary democracy triumphs over other political systems because of two invaluable fundamentals: (1) the transferring of power non-violently and (2) the granting of unfettered tolerance to opponents who act non-violently within the democratic process.

.... there is no rationale for violence and threats to be brought into the House.

Some parliamentarians, no doubt, entertain illusions about their omniscience and omnipotence. As a counter to this there are sobering checks and balances in the parliamentary system like elections, for instance, which give the people the decisive opportunity to bring them down to earth .... [link2]

After shifting aside the oft-repeated rhetoric and the statements of obvious political intent, I believe that it's these ideals that come to the fore in HLDs writing in regards to SL. Thus, in the next blog, it's with these in mind that I intend to look at the views expressed in his writing. Such statements as

Restoring the lost rights of the oppressed people .... [link]

.... in these condemnatory terms was the notion that only minorities had rights, aspirations, grievances ....[link]

....1) the inherent pacifism, liberalism and openness in the Buddhist culture and 2) the fact that the monks were in politics without being an integral part of running its day-to-day affairs.... [link]

....our people’s efforts to preserve this island as an undivided multi-ethnic nation, protected by democratic liberalism and pluralism, with respect for rule of law and human rights....[link]

That's it for today, more in the next blog.

I've come across some very "thada singhala" migrants in the diaspora with pro-JVP views and most of them tend to disagree with the '87-'89 period of violence. However, I have never really spoken in depth with them about this but HLD seems to have some info on the current support-base for the JVP amongst the diaspora.

JVP today is the most disciplined and the best organized party operating effectively at the political, grassroot and trade union levels. Unlike all other parties of south, it is the only party which has direct and powerful links to the Sri Lankan Diaspora. It has a substantial base in Italy and its branches are spreading their tentacles in Australia, Switzerland, France etc. ..... [link]

A few years ago while I was at my parents a SL lady rocked up for some signatures. Initially I didn't really understand what was going on but it turned out she was canvassing for votes (don't know about the party) for a SL election where her brother was running as a candidate. WTF?

BTW, HLD has a sense of humour too (I am not familiar with some of the mentioned)

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The equivalent of my amateur analysis here would be asking a political science major to write software in C++ so feel free to critique, comment and discuss what’s been written. No hate speech please there are plenty of other forums for that, otherwise open a damn blog yourself.

Note; Multiple quotes from the same article are grouped together with one link at end of the last quote.

Position Vacant: Conservative Democrats need apply – Part1

We are seeking a Conservative for Sri Lanka to defend the Democratic institutions and constitution of the nation. Your role is to uphold the Liberal Democratic Values central to the wellbeing of the citizens of this nation against over-zealous reformers wishing to implement ideologically driven reforms.

Today’s candidate is H.L.D Mahindapala. There isn’t a single up-to-date repository of his writings but most of it can be found at lankaweb, sentor or google. Of late he has been expressing his views as a columnist for the AsianTribune, an online current affairs site (A “newspaper” where I can’t seem to find some archived articles and it doesn’t have a search tool but more on that some other time).

As mentioned previously, this started from a discussion I was involved in over at Indi’s and at the same time coming across this article by HLD (read the very funny comment by Ruwani). Until a couple of months ago I didn’t know much about HLD and Chandare was kind enough to give me the 101 on his background.

I am not out to attack him just to analyse his views as expressed in his writing. FYI, If I wish to, I can consider myself to be a singhala-buddhist, a “kalu sudda” or a traitor to the motherland.

Eitherway what first drew my attention to HLD’s writing was his use of the words Liberalism, Democracy, Multiculturalism, Rawlsian welfare, Aristotle, etc, because these are words that encompass ideals and values important to me and the society(ies) I would choose to live in. As an outsider rarely have I seen these ideas being discussed in the public eye with reference to Sri Lanka other than for criticism. May be these words are discussed more often in the SL media and polity at large than I have seen, if so please let me know.

To limit the length of this blog I’ll by quoting only small portions from HLD’s writing. This should be enough for locating the relevant sections whithin the linked articles. Also, I am focussing mainly on his ideas and principles as much as possible and looking at the content in relation to these. Read the articles for the full content, rhetoric and/or context. Anyway, Let us start.

His primary thesis appears to be this historical analysis of N/E Tamil class/caste politics and the south (Warning my vulgar summary ahead).

Defining his method

Tracing the origins of any violent conflict can run in diverse directions with emphasis on one or the other cause that contributed to its growth and momentum…

… the most misleading path is to rely on any single cause…

Invariably, it is politicized history that would tend to focus on mono-causal interpretations…

A holistic approach, taking into consideration all the operative factors, is more likely to eliminate emotions and introduce a more balanced view of the evolving chain of events…

It is also important that events should be placed in the proper sequence…

… Therefore any meaningful analysis must necessarily step back from the immediacy of events and take a dispassionate view of the totality of forces that led to the crisis…

….mono-causal view turned into a popular and orthodox reference point…

…“1956” – a common starting point for those who advocate the mono-causal view….

…. History can be written in two main ways: 1) by picking the relevant and available facts from the ground that could lead, by the force of its own logic, to a comprehensive pattern that explains the past or 2) by constructing a theoretical formula at the top from selected facts to fit a preconceived pattern.

The holistic view

…. the grassroot forces breaking out of the old mould crumbling with the antiquated colonial empires fading into oblivion; the rough and tough transition from semi-feudalism to modernity; the caste-based ancien regimes resisting change in the hope of clinging on to their feudal and /or colonial privileges, powers and positions; the historical necessity of redressing imbalances of colonial legacies; the local leadership grabbing and diverting the internal forces to extremities; the stagnant economies that frustrated the hopes of youth looking for social mobility; the rewriting of old histories to justify new ideological claims to exclusive territories; the importing of new ideologies and political vocabularies from the West to rationalize extreme demands and violence; the dynamic interconnectedness of evolving events; the chance happenings and the actions and reactions….

….As in all other historical movements, the events rolling down the turbulent years collided with each other and exploded with a violent and unmanageable fury -- particularly the events originating in the post-1983 phase…

The analysis

I can’t do all the work can I. Actually, too many things to summarise presenting a summary of a historial summary would be unrealistics and given it's content de-humanise it. I would rather the readers come to their own conclusions and discuss it. You gals and guys are going to have to read the rest yourself. Also, compare it with this (pdf) analysis from the CPA Center for Policy Alternatives in SL, though not as historical.

Basically he seems to focussing on a set of historical events that unfolded according to the Law of Unintended Consequences leading to the issues of today.

That’s it for Today. We shall continue to analyse his qualifications for this role in the next blog.

Some of the stuff (including the Broken Palmyra) I’ve read about the situation in the N/E of SL squarely blames the progressive left at the time (in addition to the usual culprits) for not taking a principled stands and actions as they were too busy talking about revolutions to act on progressive policies, thus ensuring their ineffectiveness by ‘83. What I haven’t seen or read about are stands taken by committed and conservative democrats. The kind I’d expect to find in a polity versed in democracy and willing to break ranks and affiliations in standing up to the politicians who backed violence upto and including ’83. That’s why I wonder if there is a conservative democratic tradition in SL. If there is, can we add HLD to it? If not can he be considered for a starting role in this tradition? (Please let me know if I’m being naive in thinking that effective conservative democratic voices didn’t exist).

Black Hat View

While the article as a whole offers a particular perspective and clearly focuses on the different historical threads, writing a simplistic summary of this worries me. What I find scary is that a summary focusing on a particular caste and it's relationship with the northern polity would most likely end up being one degree of seperation from hate speech. The kind of speech that can be easily used to demonize the "other".

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The equivalent of my amateur analysis here would be asking a political science major to write software in C++ so feel free to critique, comment and discuss what’s been written. No hate speech please there are plenty of other forums for that, otherwise open a damn blog yourself.

Update:

Clarified my reluctance to summarise the "analysis" and added the Black Hat View.

oops I did it again

Here I was planning to write something long about an article I had seen while not being involved in an interesting discussion with sanjana over at Indi's. Unfortunately while riding to work in the morning I put my back out. Found it hard to sit up in front of the computer all day and finally got a lift back home.

After visiting the physio I've been instructed to sit or lie in the most awkward positions where typing feels like extreme-yoga. Apparently I have aggravated something between Lumbar Nerves L4/5 in my back. Oh ..Ok.



Hopefully by tomorrow I'll get around to finishing that blog . For now, over at Indi's there are a few interesting discussions are going on.

Budgetting for anxiety

How is your status anxiety today? Hope it's under control. Have you checked if the latest budget offers some prozac?. Apparently it's supposed to give tax cuts to the high and middle income earners over the next two years. Andrew Leigh from Imagining Australia has some analysis. To summarise,

viewed per individual ... Report (pdf) [see pages 8/9]

Here is the annual pre-tax income distribution for adults (aged 18-64 with positive incomes), and the corresponding tax cuts in the budget.

• Poorest 25%: $6,830 per year ($80 tax cut)
• Median: $29,890 per year ($312 tax cut)
• Richest 25%: $49,000 per year ($312 tax cut)
• Richest 10%: $70,000 per year ($1752 tax cut)
• Richest 5%: $90,000 per year ($2752 tax cut)
• Richest 1%: $162,000 per year ($4502 tax cut)

These income figures are from the 2003 HILDA survey....

viewed per household ... Report (pdf)

• The share of the tax cuts going to the richest 1% of households will be 3% in 2005-06 and 4% in 2006-07.
• A greater share of the 2006-07 tax cuts will go to the richest 5% (19%) than to the poorest 50% (11%).
• Middle-income taxpayers get substantially less than an even share of the tax cuts.

This probably didn't help your anxiety as everyone else in the same income bracket will get the tax cuts. In case you've forgotten how well off you are in Oz this should help you relax.

Native language blogging in Sri Lanka

Just a heads up to let you all know that you can now blog in Singhalese using a standard English keyboard and minimal effort. Indi has developed a new font for phonetic singhalese that relies on english letters (romanization) to sound out (phonetically spell) singhalese words. As for Tamil there has been a lot more work on developing it. Here is a good starting point.

You need to install the ekottu font and enable the International keyboard[Instructions (pdf)]. Once you have done this you can type singhalese in most of the Winodws applications (eg. MS Office apps, etc) using the Keymaps.

I don't plan to blog in Singhalese anytime in the near future as my written word is atrocious due to a lack of usage. Given past expreiences, it takes me a period of 2-3 weeks in SL to regain fluency in just reading the language. It's quite easy to use this method. Even with my limited grasp of the language I can type out stuff like

dAn' siØíhl BaSaevn' b'elog' krn'D puluvn'

Chandare has good examples of bilungual blogging. Thanks Indi, keep scratching those itches. Hm, that doesn't sound too good but you know what I mean.

The Mad Monk who would be

Been promising this for a while and I've finally got around to writing something about Tony Abbott the Federal Liberal Government's Minister for Health, AKA the "Mad Monk". The blogsphere is full of entries about him so feel free to Google. In the meanwhile here is my contribution.

Tony Abbott is the pitt-bull of the right and seems to have trouble separating his politics and policy submissions from his Catholicism. This leads to him having a love-hate relationship with the public and the media. He grew up in one of the more affluent suburbs of Australia and as Mark Latham put it,

He's the son of a North Shore medical specialist. He's the product of an expensive private school and Oxford education. He's a former editorial writer for The Australian. He's a past press secretary for the Liberal leadership. He's a former head of Australians for Constitutional Monarchy

BTW, Latham was his former opponent and at first glance the opposite of Abbott in every possible way, however he seems to have self-destructed...more on him at another time.

In university in the mid-70s Abbott was involved heavily in right wing student politics. To quote the SMH on his uni days,

"...He was a very offensive, a particularly obnoxious sort of guy..."
"He was very aggressive, particularly towards women and homosexuals".
...after a narrow defeat in the university senate elections in 1976 - Mr Abbott's first year of an economics-law degree - he kicked in a glass panel door...
In the ensuing two years, he was repeatedly accused in the university paper of being a right-wing thug and bully who used sexist and racist tactics to intimidate his opponents.

Abbott went on to be a Rhodes Scholar and attend Oxford. However, as he let it be known in 1998, while at uni he was contemplating being a priest (thus the "Mad Monk"), practiced Vatican Roulette with his then girlfriend and fathered a child. In keeping with his faith he "helped" the girlfriend give the boy up for adoption. During the pregnancy they split up, he packed his bags and went overseas (Take a look at fluffy's funny take on this). To put a twist in the story. He found the long lost son in December 2004 but later DNA testing showed that he wasn’t the father. It turned out to be the GFs old flatmate. This has led to him being called a cuckold in the context of modern relationship dynamics. (more after the link).

This decision to adopt-out has been the cornerstone in his anti-abortionist Adopt-out not Abort mantra. In keeping with this belief, in the recent past he has made a number of attempts to limit funding for abortions and now he is attempting to limit the government's financial support for IVF (I don't think this is motivated by his faith but economics). The women in the government are not having a bar of it and poor Tony has taken a step back each time (may be sideways).

Abbott sees himself as the intellectual leader in the government. He is a political conservative but some of his views seem to clash with liberal-democratic traditional conservatism as discussed here. For a wider aspect of his views have a look at his speeches (I, II). Politically he is a skilled player. He gets legislations passed but afterwards it turns out that the policies were severely under-costed and needing extra funding. First it was the JobNetwork now it's Medicare (the latest election promise to be broken). He was instrumental in helping One Nation destroy itself into the grave of populist politics.

Abbott is ambitious and wants to be a future leader of Australia. Preferably in an Australia still governed under a monarchy. His arch enemy has always been Mark Latham of the opposition but he isn't in the picture now.

In my view he has two problems. The first, His overt religious activity and the tendency to link it with his policies. Australians tend not to like policies driven by religious agendas. A more detailed discussion over here. However, IMHO his biggest problem will be with female voters in these post- feminist times. I don't know if someone (read woman) hurt him as a child because he constantly gets on the wrong side of females across the political spectrum. Throughout is adult life he seems to have a problem with women. Why?

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Version It. Damn it!

This is a post of frustration stemming from chasing dependencies and versioning of components. You know what it's like, working on a new product, have half the time needed to deliver the project, design docs are "good enough", you or your team drag in 3rd party components put them in the runtime environment don't check or note down the version numbers anywhere (oh yeah, you can always check versions numbers online) . Reviews...well no time for most of that.

That was last year and this week it was time to move the dependency packaging out of the individual products to baseline the 3rd party components across the our product suite and the supported application server (JBoss) environment. Not a big problem unless the version numbers are not in the manifest files, does not form part of the filename and the used versions are not documented. Then it sucks as it involves time consuming detective work.

This should be Software Engineering 202.

a) Provide the necessary meta-information in every component you produce. This makes it easier for developers to determine dependencies and compatibilities. I found out this week that a lot of people, including some Sun, Apache and F/OSS developers have been guilty of producing jars with jack all in the manifest files. I can't comment on the latest practices/componets but looking at jars produced over the past couple of years it's not always good news.

b) If you are developer adding 3rd party components check the version details and include them in the design and/or implementation docs. If not, at least in the code. Remember to do step (a) if you are writing your own components.

That's it for now. More blogs to come over the weekend.